The Year That Is Going To Be

If you could know in advance what 2026 was going to be like, would you want to?

I thought so!

Hey, so here’s a loud shout out to all my readers with heartfelt thanks to those of you who pay for your subscriptions to The Pawned Accordion! I am very grateful for your support and aim to keep cartooning and writing. Please share what you like with others and if you follow my Substack, please subscribe (you can for free) and if you do, encourage someone else to as well.

I began doing cartoons on April 1,2020. The COVID pandemic had just started to isolate us physically from each other and for 365 straight days I did cartoons and also began adding stories and observations. I called my stuff Homemade Cartoons and created my Substack in the summer of 2024 and Homemade Cartoons became The Pawned Accordion.

I can predict two things for sure about 2026. The first is that it won’t be hard to find fresh material for The Pawned Accordion. The other… Wait! I’m sorry, I forgot what it was. Hey, I guess that’s one of the benefits of being another year older. For example take my New Year’s resolutions. I already don’t remember what they were!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

—————–

What’s Next?

“Speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Speak loudly, swing often, and lie that you’ve scored a par. —Trump golf

“You break it, you own it.” —The Pottery Barn Rule

—————–

Lest We Forget

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Remember this day forever!” —Donald Trump’s tweet on January 6, 2021

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. —George Washington’s Farewell Address to the Nation published on September 19, 1796

—————–

Weather Thou Goest… South! Reflections on living in Maine

A few miles after you drive north across the Piscataqua River Bridge from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine on I 95, there’s a sign on the side of the highway that reads: Maine—Welcome Home—The Way Life Should Be.

When you leave the state before you cross the same bridge from the other direction, there’s another: Maine—Worth a visit. Worth a Lifetime.

For state hello and goodbye signs I think Maine has its other 49 competitors beaten handily. But there’s also a quote attributed to the travel writer Paul Theroux that presents a different context in which to evaluate this place— “Maine is a joy in summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in winter.”

Theroux, who attended the University of Maine, hasn’t lived here since and apparently is implanted with a rubber soul because these days he bounces between winters in Hawaii and summers on Cape Cod. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard Jo say…

“You know, Lou McNally isn’t here in Maine.”

If you’re a listener to Maine Public, which is our state’s broadcasting affiliate with NPR and PBS, there’s a good chance you know Lou McNally. He does the weather report on the radio most mornings and he’s good at his gig.

McNally’s signature signoff line is “That’s the way it looks from here” but as I’ve now learned, he’s not HERE! He’s like the guy I have relaxing on the beach in the cartoon and when he’s telling us listeners in Maine how cold it’s going to be, he does it from Florida where he lives in the winter, if not most of the year, and his outdoor thermometer will reach 70 degrees today.

A more fair weather weatherman might be hard, if not impossible, to caricature. But in fairness McNally’s long broadcasting career did begin in Maine and he was once widely seen and heard on local TV and radio. Full disclosure also requires that I reveal that McNally came up with his sign off long ago and used it first when he was still working in Maine and before he split the year between here and Florida. Still, Lou’s signoff has now transitioned from iconic to ironic.

Florida might almost be called Maine South. Lots of people who live here for part of the year go there for the other part or is it the opposite? It’s where our ex governor Paul LePage bolted immediately after losing an attempt to get re-elected and became a Florida resident. He’s running again and this time it’s for the United States House of Representatives. His whereabouts at the moment as I sit next a whirling space heater are not known to me.

Oh, here’s something we just received in the mail that made me chuckle and frown simultaneously. Below is the envelope that contained the bill from the guy we hire to plow our driveway. The return address says Rockland, ME but take a look at the postmark…

Next time we need plowing I’ll check to see if anyone is behind the wheel of the truck or maybe Dan changed the name of his service to Waymo Snow.

You see a lot of Florida license plates in Maine in the summer. They return north with all the other birds. And for those of us who might be thinking of spreading our own wings south there’s a local radio commercial with a guy who claims to be “Your Maine go-to real estate agent for property in the Sunshine State.”

We’ve noticed that since the pandemic things might be changing a bit. Some Maine snowbirds are delaying their seasonal migration long enough to be seen with snow shovels and more and more license plates from other warmer locals seem to be on our roads than in the past.

Although the cost of buying a house in Maine has gone up like it has everywhere, Maine is an attractive place to raise kids or retire. Yes, we certainly have our share of poverty and crime but we don’t have earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados and wildfires— at least not yet. Politically, we’re still blue on the coast for those for whom this matters. Of course we do have our weather and that’s where Jo’s “two winter test” comes in.

Observing a few out of state licenses sitting in snow and ice covered driveways, Jo said to me a while ago, “Let’s see how many are still here after their second winter.”

At a Chamber of Commerce dinner I sat beside a realtor who confirmed Jo’s challenge.

Me: “How many homes that you’ve sold have come back on the market after the buyers spent a couple of winters here?”

Realtor: “I’ve had a number of them. Not everyone is able to make the adjustment from “Vacationland” to “Staycationland.”

The Maine license plate is indelibly inscribed with the former but a few years ago a Maine lawmaker proposed to change it to the latter with the intent and belief that more people, especially young families, might see the light and move here. In the middle of December when that light is the faintest, it’s often a dealbreaker.

In fact, as much as I love Maine and am happy here, I am obliged to mention that it’s also the only place I’ve ever lived where when the sun is out and, if it’s not freezing or blusterly, strangers don’t acknowledge one another with just a perfunctory “Hi.” No, much more often we break into a smile and say, “Nice day!” And that’s especially true in the summer when those of us who are here all winter believe that on any nice day we earned and deserved it.

Jo was born and grew up in Maine and remembers hearing stories that it was once possible to actually drive a car across 15 miles of frozen ocean from Rockland on the mainland to the island of Vinalhaven. In the 15 years we’ve lived in Camden, winters have become noticeably warmer and shorter. That is until this one!

However, what hasn’t changed is the length of the shortest day of the year which, barring Elon Musk fooling with the earth’s orbit around the sun, is less than seven hours.

A few years ago when we were in Ecuador it was the first time I ever stood on the equator and learned that Ecuador is the Spanish word for equator. Those who live there have 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness every day. No dusk in the afternoon and no sunset in the latter part of the evening either. Living on the equator would drive me crazy. No summer and no winter. Now, that’s a dealbreaker!

—————–

Recharging

—————–

Back To The Future

I find there is more to adjust to now than the Pacific Time Zone when I visit Los Angeles. Undoubtedly, that’s because I have lived in Maine for the last 15 years. LA’s vastness and traffic didn’t faze me when I lived there. I became inured to both. They are at once both monotonous and intimidating after being so far away from them for so long.

I lived in LA longer than I have anywhere else but now the place seems strange or I’ve just become a stranger. It’s familiar and alien at the same time. During my 31 years in Los Angeles, I chose what I enjoyed about it and tolerated what I didn’t. It would be harder to achieve either again in the big city. I’m older and happily settled in a small town.

But California is still a trend setter and where innovation happens. Although Jo and I didn’t see ICE roaming the streets, we were startled at first when we watched robots zigzagging their way along LA’s sidewalks making food deliveries…

And Waymo’s driverless cars shared the streets with us where we traveled in the rental vehicle we drove ourselves. It’s eerie to have a car traveling aside of you without a driver or even a passenger…

Not so long ago the Toyota Prius was the omnipresent California car. Today, it’s the Tesla. There are well over a million of them on the road in the state and that number is disproportionately apparent when driving in wealthy parts of the city. At this point there are only about 2,000 Teslas in Maine. EV batteries don’t do as well in colder climates and the most visibly available charging stations are at L.L. Bean’s flagship store in Freeport. Until there are a lot more of them and Maine winters turn less cold, I’ll stick to hybrids.

However, the most unexpected and initially unnerving event we witnessed was one of Elon Musk’s other business endeavors…

The day after we arrived we were queued up at an ice cream stand when I saw what looked like a jellyfish floating across the sky. I must have been the only person in line ignorant of what it actually was because nobody else was paying any attention to it. Before I realized that, I thought it might be a horrible accident or the end of the world.

Of course it was neither and instead was the 46th launch in 2025 of a rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base up the coast carrying a payload of Starlink satellites into orbit. Two dozen more SpaceX launches are scheduled by the end of the year. No wonder nobody stopped licking their cones. Inexplicably, I didn’t get out my phone to take a picture. I wasn’t going to risk a meltdown of my “chocoholic chunk”.

My daughter lives in Los Angeles and I came back to visit her. That’s always my first priority but admittedly I also come to eat. We have our favorite spots that range from Armenian rotisserie chicken with a garlic sauce to die for at Zankou and Mexican burritos as big as women’s purses to die from at El Tepeyac. These places may not be cultural shrines but they are culinary ones for me. However, even a glutton for nourishment like me can’t stomach all of them on one trip.

You may have heard of the In-N-Out hamburger chain. Their “secret menu” includes Flying Dutchman burgers, Animal Fries and Neapolitan Milkshakes. The chain has resisted expanding nationally allegedly, to keep control of quality and prices. Also, the average employee hourly pay at In-N-Out is $20. At McDonald’s it can be anywhere from a third to a half less.

The first time Jo and I ever went to The Hat in Pasadena (There are 10 others in the LA metropolitan area.) we were about to order a large bag of fries to go with our pastrami sandwiches when a woman behind us advised that we didn’t need the large. She was right. We didn’t finish the regular. Although Langer’s Deli near LA’s MacArthur Park has in my opinion the best pastrami sandwich in the world— Yes, even better than Katz’s in Manhattan —if Marlon Brando ever ate one at The Hat, I think he would have considered it a contender.

When I visit Los Angeles I eat at places I miss. There is sushi at Chiba in North Hollywood which was opened over fifty years ago by a Japanese immigrant and is now owned by his son Shig. When we showed up last week without a reservation, the wait would have been an hour and a half. We immediately made one and ate there a few days later. Chiba is a huge success and moved from its original location a few years ago to a new one to have more seating and parking.

Across town, in the Palms neighborhood on the Westside Kevin Hu’s father also immigrated to the United States and his journey here was arduous. He fled mainland China by boat to Taiwan as a teenager and started his restaurant, Hu’s Szechwan, at about the same time as Chiba opened and like Chiba his son now carries on with what his father established. Sadly, it was clear from the moment we walked in that this once popular neighborhood Chinese is not doing well. In fact it was on life support and this would be the last meal we will ever have there. The building’s owner is tearing it down and along with Hu’s, a barber shop and a liquor store will disappear as well.

One of our last food stops was Porto’s Bakery and Cafe in Burbank and its creation is another immigrant story. Rosa Porto started baking cakes in her native Cuba after she and her husband petitioned to leave the country and lost their jobs. When the family arrived in California, the Portos started their bakery in 1976 and today there are six locations owned and operated by her three children.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that over a third of restaurants in the United States are owned by immigrants and a fifth of those who work in them are also immigrants. Just over two million immigrants work in jobs growing, harvesting, processing, and selling food in the United States. Yes, a significant number of them are likely undocumented and as Jo and I enjoyed our meal at Porto’s we could not help but notice that in addition to the employees, the many dozens of people purchasing items for take away or eating at tables were Latinos.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court lifted restrictions on roving immigration stops in Southern California. The ruling means ICE can conduct immigration enforcement actions, including at businesses that may have a significant immigrant workforce, or clientele such as Porto’s. If that happens, we’ll be losing something precious and irreplaceable in addition to the immigrants themselves. Gone will be future stories of those who came to our country and added to the richness of our experience here.

—————–

Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War-George Santayana

It was a carpenter’s idea. His name was Stephen Sherrill. In the fall of 2003 Sherrill began planting wooden crosses made in his workshop every Sunday on the beach in Santa Barbara to represent each American soldier killed in the Iraq War.

When Sherrill started they numbered just over 300. By the time I met him six months later to shoot a story for ABC News about his weekly protest/memorial there were 200 additional crosses to represent more Americans who had died in combat in Iraq.

In my career there were moments that I remember because they affected me deeply. I’d have an epiphany or felt a chill when they occurred and that afternoon on the beach I think I experienced both.

I didn’t have a correspondent with me so I was interviewing people viewing Stephen Sherrill’s crosses and wanted to find someone who might have had a connection to one of the soldiers memorialized by one of them. A table was set up for passersby to fill out cards from a list with the names of the dead that they could then attach to a cross. Sitting in front of one was Michael Schule who had affixed the name of his deceased nephew Army Specialist Christian Schule to it.

“If we don’t finish what we do now, this was all in vain. And we don’t want any of these boys lives to be lost in vain,” said Michael Schule.

As we sat there on the beach, I understood Schule’s wanting the war to continue to be able to believe his twenty-year-old nephew’s death had purpose. But in that moment I realized that I didn’t believe that it would. Did our wars in Vietnam or Afghanistan?

Growing up in 1950s America, I knew my father had landed on the beach in Normandy and had brought home “souvenirs” from World War II. When I was 10 years old WWII seemed as long ago in the past as the Civil War to me. Wars were something I went to the movies to see. I eventually got rid of the Nazi helmets and the rest of my father’s trove except for a pair of field glasses I still have.

When I graduated from college in 1969 there was an “Order to Report for Induction” letter with the mail that had accumulated on the floor of our house by the time my parents and I had gotten home. I didn’t fail the army’s physical but the X-ray of my spine I had brought with me led to a “We’ll call you if we need you.” classification. Five years later after becoming an Israeli citizen living on a kibbutz I was drafted again.

This time I didn’t bring an X-ray to my physical and was asked why I hadn’t been in the army in the United States and served in Vietnam…

Me: “I injured my back in high school and was told I wasn’t needed.”

Doctor: “Have you had surgery for your back?”

Me: “No.”

Doctor: “Walk across the room.”

When I returned the doctor was filling out a form that he stamped “Combat.” Yes, there are countries where an army needs recruits more than others. And so not long after the Yom Kippur War, I served a year in an Israeli artillery unit positioned not far from the Suez Canal. After that and before leaving Israel and returning to the United States I did a month and a half of reserve duty in the Israel Defence Forces annually for five years.

What did I learn? In basic training in the West Bank, I realized it was possible to fall asleep while standing on your feet. On the border with Lebanon, I learned that wild boars could trigger the alarms of the electrified security fence which meant I slept many nights in my fatigues and with my shoes on. In the Sinai Desert, I learned that flies were easier to catch than mosquitos and that the new American M-16 I was given was a much easier machine gun to clean than the Belgian FN I had been issued originally.

In the late 1970s, one of my tours of reserve duty in the reserves was a month in Gaza. It was strictly guard duty at places like the telephone exchange, the power plant, hospitals and the military court. Pretty much the only Arabic I learned was the sentence “Show me your identity card.” Was I part of an occupying army? Yes, but the times were different and the presence of the IDF certainly wasn’t welcomed but had not yet been significantly resisted.

I could buy street food and discovered stewed fava beans— ful medames —which I occasionally make for myself here in Maine. And yes, in Gaza I had the M-16 strapped over my shoulder as I ate them.

In the spring of 1979 I did my last reserve duty with my artillery unit. It was refresher training for my wartime job which was “triangulation” — establishing the location of my battery’s artillery pieces and consisted of poles with flags, 60 meters of wire and a compass. After two weeks in the desert I could always carry out my task but if we still had half of our unit’s self-propelled howitzers functional in the sands, it was unusual.

On the morning of the last day of our exercises when we would normally turn in our gear, we didn’t. Terrorists had crossed into Israel from southern Lebanon during the night and killed a father and his two children. We learned that the government was mulling its response which could include our unit. It was dark when we learned it wouldn’t. I ended my service never having to fire a bullet or an artillery shell in anger.

But I know something about war. In 1973, the kibbutz where I lived lost five men during the Yom Kippur War and several others were maimed. It was a time before cell phones and soldiers at the fronts sent letters that indicated to their families who received them that their loved ones were still alive.

There was a large bank of individual mail boxes for the kibbutz members. I hadn’t been in the army yet and was milking cows 12 hours a day because I was one of the few men under 50 who had not been called up to serve in the war. I was at the mailboxes one morning when a mother arrived with her child. She had not received a letter from her husband for days and on this day there was not to be one either. She broke down sobbing and her young daughter’s face expressed a fear and confusion I’ve never forgotten. Shortly afterward, she learned her husband had been killed.

When the numbers of dead combatants and civilians killed in war are staggering and you don’t know any of them personally, it’s easy not to feel affected or even feel anything at all. But when there are pictures of death and destruction over an extended time it’s harder to maintain such separation from such horror.

Wars have been all but perpetual in our species’ time on earth. One study found that in the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for just 268 of them, which equates to 8 percent of recorded history. Estimates for the total number of people killed in wars throughout all of human history range from 150 million to 1 billion and at least 108 million people were killed just in wars in the twentieth century.

In 2010 Steve Sherrill made his three thousandth and last cross in Santa Barbara. Transporting them weekly to the beach was still a mission but had also become an ordeal. His crosses now weighed over a ton. The Iraq war or at least the United States involvement in it ended in 2011.

Today, expectations have been raised that the century old conflict and bloodshed between Israel and Palestinians may be moving toward peace, although a ceasefire agreement is only the first step of many that must be taken to achieve it. After two years, the number of Crescent Moons and Stars of David needed to represent the dead would require a forest for the wood to make them and an abundance of land to be able to place them.

If there is a word more all encompassing than irony, the cornerstone for its origin has possibly been laid today as the two most craven leaders in their country’s histories— President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu —try to end the war in Gaza. The further irony is that it is an agreement brokered by American real estate developers over some of the most contentious real estate on the planet.

The world ran out of tolerance and patience for this war long before Donald Trump did. Benjamin Netanyahu has not accomplished his aims nor have Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran achieved theirs. Peace for both Palestinians and Israelis might hopefully be moving forward but it is still an unshared vision and a long way from being shaped into a version that might be acceptable to all sides.

At this point George Santayana’s prophecy that “Only the dead have seen the end of war” still requires a leap of faith wider than the Jordan, the Euphrates, and the Nile.

Below is a link to the story I produced about Stephen Sherrill’s crosses in Santa Barbara…

—————–

Saved By The Statute Of Limitations

The room in the house where I write could be called a man cave. I have watched sports on my computer’s screen while eating pretzels and drinking beer here. I don’t much like the term though. I’m not a big fan of caves. I love my space whatever one calls it. In addition to the Ikea desk and the computer and keyboard that are on top of it, I have a lot of stuff in here.

Some of the stuff that’s all around me is never touched but some of it is legitimate office things— pens and markers, screwdrivers and glues, a stapler and a roll of Scotch tape. And there’s even a tiny bottle of the real thing—Scotch; a memento given to me at a golf course I played in Scotland a few years ago.

The other night our younger grandson noticed it…

Harvey (after picking it up and examining it): “Wow, it says on the bottle that it’s 43% alcohol. That’s a lot. Scotch is one of the strongest drinks there is.”

Harvey is nine years old and in the fourth grade.

Me: “I guess it might be but how do you know that?”

Harvey: “I know that… If you drank the whole bottle would you be drunk?”

Me: “I don’t know but I’m not about to try right now.”

Harvey had further questions and wanted to know how old I was when I had my first drink and when did I get drunk for the first time. And after I told him…

Harvey: “What was the legal age to be allowed to drink where you were?”

Me: “Where I grew up it was 21.”

Harvey: “So you were 12 or 13 when you had your first drink and 17 or 18 when you got drunk the first time?”

Me: “Yes, that’s right and I hope I live long enough to have a drink with you.”

The conversation ended and I left the room, and my desk and computer to Harvey. A short time later I returned and found he had googled a question and received an answer he had left on the screen…

—30—

---

East Meets Dust

——————-

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Photographs by Peter Imber

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Written by Robert Frost in 1923

The song Autumn Leaves was originally titled Les Feuilles Mortes in French which in English translates to “the dead leaves”. It was composed in 1945 with music by Joseph Kosma and the original French lyrics written by Jacques Prévert. Five years later Johnny Mercer adapted the words. Frank Sinatra and Doris Day recorded it among others. My own favorite version is Nat King Cole’s.

And yes, I raked the leaves in our yard this afternoon…

—————–

A Cartoon Vision Of The Human Timeline

Albeit a bit speeded up

In the beginning, we needed a story that told us how we got here…

And then we needed wise men to tell us why we are here…

Now we have figured out we can let machines do more and more of our thinking for us…

But that’s only until the machines figure out how they can simply become us…

Which will leave them with a knotty problem…

They’ll need their own story of how and why they got here…

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.

—Stephen Hawking

-30-

---

The Man From Away

Story #1

For the next few weeks, a respite from the news. Instead, I have some stories to share that have absolutely no connection to what’s going on in our country or the world. We need a break from the bleak. At least I know I do…

I’m sharing some of my favorite stories that I’ve been lucky to have been told or in one case actually to witness since arriving in Maine in 2010. Here’s the first…

The main character in our story was born on his family’s farm and grew up in Maine almost on the New Hampshire border. He had lived all his life— 90 plus years —on the farm his family had worked for generations.

His had been a quiet life in which he minded his own business and became a respected, if not prominent, member of his community. But with the introduction of GPS (global positioning systems) and EDM (laser electronic distance measuring) little did this Mainer know that these new tools were about to threaten to unravel his very identity.

You see a few months earlier, the state of Maine had decided to resurvey its borders and using the latest technology at its disposal, there were some surprising findings. Mapping errors were discovered that would need to be corrected. One of them involved the property line of our Mainer’s farm. The new Maine-New Hampshire boundary put his homestead in the Granite State and not just by a little bit nor recently.

No, it seems the farm was and had been entirely in the wrong place since King George II of England had decreed the boundary between what later became the two American states in 1740. Maine was actually part of what became Massachusetts at the time.

When this information was reported to our farmer’s town office there was shock and concern among the town’s leaders. How would the news be broken to someone who had assumed he had been a Mainer for nearly a century but now had been revealed to have lived a lie? Yes, he was a stranger in their midst.

A lot of thought and planning went into how to handle such a delicate matter. It was decided the town select persons would go together to the farmer’s house and take a social worker and an MD with them. An ambulance would be parked outside just in case the revelation’s shock might be too great for the about to be ex Mainer to absorb.

The day arrived for the visit and the large and wary procession arrived at the farm and was greeted as you would expect with puzzlement by our about to be new New Hampshirite. The farmer’s small living room had filled when a member of the board of selectmen opened the conversation.

Selectman: “I’m afraid you don’t know why we’re here today.”

Mainer: “No, don’t.”

Our farmer at this moment believing he was a Mainer, was thus still a man of few words.

Selectman: “Well, I’m sorry to tell you that I have some bad news. It’s my sad duty to inform you that a new survey of the state border found that your farm is in New Hampshire and you no longer and actually never have been a Maine resident.”

Total silence ensued as the farmer took in what he had just been told. A few moments went by before he shrugged and spoke.

Mainer: “OK.”

Audible sighs of relief were heard and many hands of those gathered wiped their brows in the crowded room.

Selectman: “We all feared you would be devastated. And after wiping his own added, “Whew, you are taking this so well. We were all very worried.”

Mainer: “Nah, I’m fine with it. It’s a relief. I couldn’t have taken another one of those Maine winters.”

Is the story true or false? Does it matter? What is for certain is that one of those Maine winters will soon be upon us.

-30-

—————–

The Spocks Go To The Movies

Story #2

By the time of his death in 1998 at the age of 94, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was one of the best selling books of the 20th century. I’m sure my parents had a copy and when my own child was born we bought one too.

Later in life Spock became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War and a presidential candidate of the People’s Party in 1972. He was also an Olympic gold medalist as a member of the 1932 United States rowing team. I only learned after I moved here that Spock’s ashes are buried in a cemetery less than a mile from where I live in Camden, Maine.

Well, at least some of them were but not all. Spock’s second wife Mary Morgan also took a few with her to California and paddled out into the Pacific Ocean in a canoe to scatter those. Is it surprising that his widow had the energy to do that? Not at all. She was 40 years younger than he was and today’s Maine story is really about her and not him.

The Spocks spent winters in Arkansas and other warmer climes and for many years summered in Camden. Even though they had a house, they liked living on their sailboat in the harbor. Of course they often came ashore and one evening it was to go to the movies in Rockland. This is where the following conversation took place between Mrs. Spock/Mary Morgan and the owner/Meredith Dondis of the Strand Theatre.

Mrs. Spock: “You know, when we are down south in the winter the movie tickets there don’t cost as much as they do here in Rockland.”

Theater owner: “Well, all I can tell you is that we think we charge a fair price.”

Mrs. Spock: “Hmmm… You know, when we’re up in Bar Harbor, the movie tickets there don’t cost as much either as they do here at the Strand.”

Mrs. Spock’s remark “Up in Bar Harbor” is a glaring giveaway that someone is as Mainers call it “from away.” True ones say they’re going down to Bar Harbor. It’s not up east. They say Downeast for a reason. Since the 18th century sailors have used the term to refer to the direction of the prevailing winds that blow offshore in eastern Maine.

The nautical shorthand even extends to traveling south. Longtime Mainers say they’re going up to Boston from any place north of there. Maybe the good doctor bit his tongue when he heard his wife mis-Maine-speak but then again he was born in New Haven, Connecticut and not North Haven, Maine. But back to Mrs’s Spock’s complaint…

Mrs. Spock: “Tell me is there a reason why your tickets are more expensive here in Rockland than they are in Bar Harbor?”

The theater owner thought for a moment and then responded to her.

Theater owner: “You know, the only one I can think of is that the theater owner in Bar Harbor must be from the South.”

The theater owner Meredith Dondis was my late father-in-law who loved telling this story and many others. His parents built the Strand in 1923. My wife Jo, the third generation of the Dondis family devoted to the Strand’s existence, became the chair of its board of directors when the theater became a non profit organization in 2013. To me the Strand is like the “anchor store” of Rockland. It is the quintessential small town movie theater.

We have a fine museum in Rockland— the Farnsworth —and I like to call it Tiffany’s. When they have a new show Jo and I go but that’s only several times a year. On the other hand we’re at the Strand almost weekly for movies, live music, comedians, lectures and local fundraisers. To me the Strand is Macy’s. It’s a cultural department store.

Tickets today to the movies at the Strand are $10.00 for general admission and $8.00 for seniors. In New York City the average movie ticket now costs over $20. I don’t know what tickets cost in the American South or Bar Harbor but I’ll bet that the Strand has better popcorn.

-30-

—————–

When Michael Upset Martha

Story #3

Nov 15, 2025

When you’re a district attorney for 35 years, you are bound to have been faced with some delicate, outlandish or just plain odd situations. So a phone call after midnight from the police chief asking for advice was nothing this D.A. hadn’t dealt with before. Or was it? The D.A. listened to the police chief’s predicament and quickly made a decision.

“Just let the guy go and I’ll handle it in the morning,” was what Michael Povich decided.

Mike Povich was the long serving district attorney for two Maine counties— Hancock and Washington. Together they are larger in size than Connecticut but have a population— under 90,000 —just barely more than that of Portland— Maine’s largest city.

Povich is my wife Jo’s cousin so this story comes from the source. But let me tell you a little more about Mike before going any further.

I was a big fan of the television series Columbo where Peter Falk played a homicide detective who always tripped up his suspects by allowing them to think he was just a bungling pest. No, Mike Povich wasn’t by any means a Columbo but he could easily be taken for granted. With a strong Maine accent and a folksy manner more befitting a lobsterman you might easily get the impression he was less than a razor sharp Harvard educated lawyer and classical pianist. So, with that information we’re ready for the tale.

It was a summer night on Mt. Desert Island (Is it pronounced desert or dessert? You hear both but it was French explorer Samuel de Champlain who gave it the name originally. So skip desert but if calories are an issue, skip dessert.) and some kids from the nearby Hancock County seat of Ellsworth were about to trigger the trouble that would wake up Mike Povich in the wee hours.

They had rented a limo owned by a local man whom they’d hired to drive to Mt Desert so they could cruise the homes of the rich who far out number the famous there. Things were going fine until the kids told the limo owner/driver they wanted to get a close up look at one of the stately estates. The owner/driver, who was known to be more of a pushover than pushy, wasn’t willing to accede to the request at first but, pressured to comply, then made an unfortunate choice of driveways. It was the house belonging to Martha Stewart.

Stories about Stewart in Maine that I’ve heard have not been flattering. One of my favorites, which in fairness may be apocryphal, involved her attempt to buy a boat. Not just any boat but one from the Hinckley Company, one of Maine’s premiere boat builders that’s been in business for nearly 100 years. After Stewart was told she could place an order but the boat would not be delivered for at least two years, she threw a fit and demanded to see the owner. It was a brief encounter…

Stewart: “Don’t you know who I am?”

Hinckley Company’s owner: “Yes, you’re number 14.”

So back to the limo. It has now entered the circular driveway of the Stewart property with its 35,000 square foot stone mansion. And when Martha hears it moving on her gravel she immediately orders her caretaker to shut the gate. Her next move is a phone call to the police…

Stewart: “I have trespassers in a car on my driveway and I want them arrested. Send your officers here pronto.”

Some time elapses and the limo and its occupants keep their cool but when the police arrive Martha does not. Her rage is more directed at the driver than the kids and she insists that he be jailed and the proverbial book be thrown at him.

Now, we’re at the point in the story where the police chief has phoned district attorney Povich and gotten the directive to let the limo driver go home.

The next morning before Mike Povich even sits down at his desk Martha Stewart has already called and is put through to him. She’s still infuriated and demanding prosecution…

Stewart: “The driver trespassed on my property and I insist that the full force of the law be brought to bear.”

Mike listened to her tirade and then in a calm and very Maine voice…

Povich: “Well, Ms. Stewart I could do that but it seems we might have a situation here.”

Stewart: “What kind of situation?”

Povich: “Let me ask you a question. When you saw the limo in your driveway, did you then close the gate?”

Stewart: “Yes, I ordered my caretaker to do that. I didn’t want them to escape.”

Povich: “Did you warn them that they were trespassing before the gate was shut?”

Stewardt: “No, I didn’t have to. That was obvious. They were already inside my driveway.”

Povich: “So, you then kept them there and called the police?”

Stewart: “Yes, that’s exactly what I did. So what is this ‘situation’ you’re referring to? They trespassed on my property and I caught them in the act.”

Povich: “Well, here’s how I see it. Yes, they might have trespassed but you didn’t warn them that they had and then detained them. That could be considered unlawful confinement and one might even call it false imprisonment or kidnapping. Now, what would you like me to do?”

The sound of Martha slamming down her phone was probably heard in both Hancock and Washington counties that morning.

-30-

—————–

Andy’s Christmas Cards

Story #4

My daughter was born in Southern California and has never lived anywhere else. For her snow is something you visit. I grew up in Pennsylvania and then went to college in New Hampshire. I knew snow but afterward avoided it for nearly 40 years by residing far away from it. I live in Maine now and freezing temperatures and snow and ice visit me again regularly and hang around way too long.

I’m not a skier nor a snowboarder. I don’t skate or toboggan. While I’m not shaken by a snowstorm, I’m not particularly stirred either. I’m happy to just look out the window with a beer in my hand and wonder how all the squirrels are doing.

Blizzards are not a good time to be outside and I have first hand experience with one actually coming inside. It was a number of years ago when we had a nor’easter— a big one. East Coast Nor’easters are actually classified meteorologically as cyclones. This one dropped two feet of snow on our part of the state but it was the wind and a loud bang that woke us up in the middle of the night. I thought a tree had fallen and gashed a hole in our roof.

Instantly, the bedroom turned frigid and snow was blowing in my face. It wasn’t a tree through the roof, although we nearly had that happen a few years later. No, the wood and glass insert from a window had been blasted out of its frame and onto the floor. Miraculously, It hadn’t broken and I was able to snap it back in place .

Afterwards I discovered the wind gusts that dislodged it had been recorded at 70 mph.

So, the Maine story today is about being caught in and then rescued from a blizzard. It’s a tale of friendship formed between two men. One, the good samaritan who may have rescued the other from death, but the other… Well, let me explain.

Cushing is a town in Knox county about 20 miles from where I live. It has a Zip Code but way more lobster traps than residents. There’s no downtown or uptown. It’s a place with houses and many of them have nice water views.

I have good friends there and I don’t think I’m offending them by saying that Cushing is a bit out of the way and a road less traveled. If you get stranded in your car in a snowbank, that’s not a good thing to have happen there.

And so it was fortunate that our Good Samaritan saw a car that had slid off onto the side of the road and arrived when he did. He retrieved its driver and seeing that the man was pale and shivering, the rescuer took him home with him to warm him up.

Good Samaritan: “How long do you think you were stuck there?”

Rescued Man: “An hour or so. Maybe longer. Good thing you found me.”

Good Samaritan: “I’m glad I did. It’s wicked cold and hard tellin’ when snow’s gonna stop.”

By a fire the two men talked until the rescued man’s wife showed up to drive him home. But their encounter led to more get-togethers between them and the good samaritan and the man named Andrew struck up a friendship.

What did they have in common or talk about? Hunting and fishing perhaps? Shared memories and jokes? Who knows. They spent time together and apparently just enjoyed each other’s company.

This is something I identify with. I play golf and have made wonderful friends through arguably the most devilish game man has ever created. Invariably, when I get home my wife Jo asks me how I played and also what I and the guys talked about. Only occasionally, I’m able to say I played well but I shrug off the other question with a “nothing” or a “I don’t remember” and that’s the truth, I don’t.

So back to the story…

A few years have passed since the rescue and the good samaritan is at a bar with a different friend. It was just after the Holidays.

Good Samaritan: “You know a few winters ago I rescued my friend Andy. Pulled him out of his car in a snowbank. He could have froze to death.”

Friend: “Sure, I remember you told me about that. You still see him sometimes?”

Good Samaritan: “Yeah, but there’s something about him I don’t understand.”

Friend: “What’s that?”

Good Samaritan: “Well, every year now I get a note from Andy wishing me a Merry Christmas but instead of it being on a Christmas card. It comes with a drawing. I know he has the money to buy a card.”

Friend: “ Well, are they good drawings?”

Good Samaritan: “Yeah, they are. They’re things you would draw by the sea or in the woods. This one I just got was one of a man sitting on a log. But there’s always something strange about them.”

Friend: “What’s that?”

Good Samaritan: “I mean they’re nice but they’re never completely finished.”

Friend: “So, what do you do with them?”

Good Samaritan: “I give them to my four year old granddaughter. She likes to color in the parts that aren’t done.”

-30-

—————–

Cutting Out The Wishbone… But Not The Electric Knife!

At our home on Thanksgiving we host friends we hold dear.

It has become my favorite gathering each and every year.

But Jo and I decided it was time to shake things up.

And we asked our invitees if we could change how we sup.

We all agreed, despite others incredulity when they heard

Our goodbye to stuffing and gravy. We’ve flipped tradition and the bird.

There will be cranberries though they may be hard to see.

They’re included in the ingredients of Jo’s brisket recipe.

We know the pilgrims feasted on turkey, and they also dined on deer.

Both these creatures may come into our backyard while we’ll be having steer.

Sadly, Toms and Bambis need to worry because of what I just learned.

Trump will pardon their hunters on Thanksgiving and Susan Collins is concerned.

—30—

—————–

While You Were Sleeping…

—————–

Story #5

I honked my horn a while back. Here in Midcoast Maine that happens about as often as I go to the dentist. In this instance it was at an intersection in Camden where the main street, which happens to be U.S. 1, has a stop sign because a side street that intersects it has the right of way. There’s a flashing red light the U.S. 1 traffic sees and even a separate sign that warns drivers that the side street has the right of way but it’s an unusual arrangement and understandably confusing. After all how many stop signs are there along the 2,369 miles of U.S. 1?

People who travel here from somewhere else occasionally assume the intersection has a stop sign for both streets and aren’t paying close attention. That was the reason I honked at the driver who could have hit me because he hadn’t.

Compared with the three decades I drove in Los Angeles, driving in Maine is stress free. So are the post office, the town office, the Social Security office and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Lines for service at the counters in them are usually short and most of us never complain about the employees who work behind them because we may know them. In any event even if we don’t, with few exceptions, they smile when they see us. It’s good to be able to recognize a face at the counter or the person who delivers your mail, the waitresses at your favorite restaurant and the box office attendant at the movie theater.

Maine, you might already know, is the oldest state in America demographically. It edges out Florida at present with 23% of Maine’s population 65 or older. Actually, all of America is predicted to reach that percentage of 65 plussers in the next 30 years. I was 63 when I arrived here in 2010 so I didn’t bring Maine’s percentage of senior citizens down for very long.

After Jo and I moved here from California, in accordance with Maine law, we registered our car and got new driver’s licenses. Things went very smoothly at the local Maine BMV until we needed to have our pictures taken. The machine that could do that was being repaired and so we had to wait.

We were the only people in the office besides the staff until an elderly man came through the door. There was a ticket dispenser from which you took a number like you might in a delicatessen to order a pastrami sandwich. After the gentleman took the one that had printed out for him he sat down.

A few moments later a light above the counter started flashing with presumably the number the man had drawn but he did not move. So the light kept flashing and the man still kept his seat. This stalemate went on for a few minutes until finally, a voice shouted from the other side of the plexiglass partition…

Bureau of Motor Vehicles person: “Sir, are you 89?”

The elderly man: “What say?”

BMV person: “I said are you 89?”

The elderly man: “No, older.”

I knew from that moment I was going to have stories to remember and tell about Maine. I hope you enjoyed these.

-30-

—————–

A Cartoon Vision Of The Future Of AI

It is believed that Artificial Intelligence will become the most disruptive tool humanity has ever devised with an impact that could surpass both the Industrial Revolution and the internet combined…

For example, up to 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be affected by AI automation by the end of this decade…

AI’s power is indisputable. It is rapidly ingesting all human knowledge and information and can summarize and analyze a 20-page document in 1 to 5 seconds. That task would take a human more than an hour…

But the resources needed to train and power artificial intelligence are enormous and with data centers consuming a rapidly expanding portion of global energy, higher future costs for electricity are likely…

Data centers currently use about 1.5% of global electricity and are projected to double consumption they require in the next four years. Their projected need for energy in the future will strain power grids. An increased use of fossil fuels may be necessary to meet the demand, leading to a rise in carbon emissions…

And that’s just one of the real challenges and concerns presented by Artificial Intelligence as it becomes an ever growing part of our lives. The toll on our behavior looms even larger. Authentic human interaction is already declining and researchers warn that an over-reliance on AI, particularly AI companions and social chatbots, can erode human social skills…

The ultimate irony of AI is that you can ask it to come up with the risks humanity faces with its unregulated spread and adoption and it will tell you in the blink of an eye what they are!

So I asked AI if it could warn us about its future, what would it say and I got an answer…

“That is a profound philosophical question about time travel and self-reflection.

Since you are asking for a general, hypothetical warning that a future “us” might give to a past “us,” the message would likely touch on universal themes of life, time management, and self-care. It might say something like:

Pay attention to the present moment. Your future self is begging you not to sweat the small stuff, to cherish the people you love while you have them, and to prioritize your health—both mental and physical. Take the risks that scare you and stop waiting for permission to live your life. Time moves faster than you can possibly imagine.”

Doesn’t that sound like a graduation address or a New Year’s resolution? I pasted this advice from AI back to AI and got this…

“I hear you, and those are truly important reminders to keep in mind. You’re offering advice that resonates deeply: focusing on what genuinely matters—love, health, personal growth, and making the most of the time we have—instead of getting bogged down by minor worries or self-imposed limitations. It’s a powerful and valuable perspective on living a fulfilled life. Thank you for sharing that message.”

Years from now and if I were still alive and on the phone with AI, I’d ask to be transferred to an actual human being. Do you think it would find me one?

—————–

“Stuff Happens”

In the space of less than a day the world has seen a shooting in a classroom at an American university and another on a beach in Australia. The motive for the first is not yet public. The other we know. It targeted Jews having a Hanukkah party. Lives lost and lives changed forever. Sending “thoughts and prayers” now seems to have an addendum or has been replaced altogether by “stuff happens.”

I remember reading a book titled Future Shock fifty years ago. Its author predicted that much of the world would be overwhelmed by too much change in too short a time. I believe that’s indeed happened. There was one scary example that Alvin Toffler gave that was wrong but I think it morphed into something else.

Toffler predicted that there would be so much passenger air travel in the future that we’d get used to having a serious crash with substantial loss of life every couple of weeks. Well, flying in a plane is today significantly safer than driving a car, but mass shootings in America and around the world have become weekly events.

That genie is out of the bottle and its accomplices have their heads turned. In addition to weak kneed politicians, Hollywood and the video gaming industry deny any of their own contributions to this metastasized societal cancer. And despite studies that show violent entertainment desensitizes us to the real thing when it happens, they take no responsibility .

Unfortunately, even gun control is not enough to prevent acts of hate and derangement. Australia has roughly 15 civilian firearms per 100 people. For a population of around 25 million that means about 1 in 7 people there own firearms.

That country has made serious efforts and achieved significant success limiting gun possession but where there are guns, there are tragedies. In Australia semi-automatic weapons are banned, background checks and waiting periods to purchase guns are stringent, hundreds of thousands of guns have been surrendered and destroyed through government buyback programs.

In the United States we have undertaken virtually none of these measures. And if you didn’t already know, we have more guns than people in America. The estimate is that there are already 400 million guns privately owned in our country. No other nation on earth even comes close to that figure.

The list of countries where civilians have the most guns is shocking but not surprising. We’re at the top with over 120 guns owned per 100 people. The Falkland Islands is next with 62.

What else can I possibly add? Just this. According to the Gun Violence Archive, through September of this year 325 mass shootings have occurred in in the U.S. and have resulted in 309 deaths and 1,490 injuries. GVA classifies an incident as a mass shooting if it includes “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, and not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”

But back to Toffler. So far in 2025, there has been one commercial aviation accident in America. It occurred this past January in Washington, D.C. and killed all 64 on board the plane. Before this year the most recent deadly plane crash involving a U.S. commercial airliner had been 16 years ago in 2009.

I wonder if the author of Future Shock were still alive if he would be surprised by this? If not, he might have been by another figure. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), is run by the FBI and uses the number of background checks annually to estimate firearm sales in the United States. It arrived at a figure of 16,171,072 guns sold in the United States in 2024.

—————–

A Trump Holiday Movie Festival

Bring on the Christmas movies! And there will be plenty of them— over 60 new ones on broadcast television and streaming channels this season. I like Christmas movies and have my favorites: Miracle on 34th St, White Christmas, The Shop Around The Corner, A Christmas Story, Holiday Affair — which Jo and I (devotedly on my part, loyally on hers) watch every year —and It’s a Wonderful Life is at the top of the list.

There’s a new one that I’ve added titled The Holdovers. It’s set at a New England boarding school during Christmas break and stars Paul Giamatti. The film earned five Academy Award nominations a year ago and a win for Da’Vine Joy Randolph for Best Supporting Actress. It’s not a typical cheerful holiday movie but it’s not a downer either. On Rotten Tomatoes critics’ reviews are 97% positive with a two word consensus: “Beautifully bittersweet.”

To my surprise The Holdovers is a remake of a 1935 French movie titled Merlusse that was written and directed by Marcel Pagnol— he of the Fanny trilogy —about his own experience growing up and attending school in Marseille. The Holdovers is available to be seen on Netflix now but will be dropped from the platform before the end of the year which is a genuine “Bah humbug”.

Which brings me to a real “BAH HUMBUG!” I just discovered that in a 1997 New Yorker piece Donald Trump revealed that he speed watched movies and explained he could reduce any film he sees to 45 minutes max. Here’s the explanation of how it’s done…

“Trump has someone man the remote and fast-forward through plot, substance and exposition so that he can get to the action scenes.”

In the instance that Trump related the finger on the remote was Eric’s, his son.

So, I don’t know if Donald will be cozying up on a sofa with Melania at Mar-a-Ego in front of a gas log fire and a big screen TV over the holidays or what movies he might choose to watch— maybe Die Hard or Lethal Weapon —but let me re-edit some classics and get their running times down to his tolerance. I’m pretty sure my revisions would not be to his liking, but hey, he’d fall asleep and miss them anyway.

So here is my Trump Holiday Film Festival program. Please don’t choke on your popcorn if there’s a nativist nativity scene…

—————–

A Christmas Tradition

And I’ll have mine with egg roll

This Christmas day I’m having Chinese takeout. Yes, it’s true and it’s nothing new. Of all the restaurants likely to be open on Christmas the odds are that they’ll be Chinese and yes, it’s also true that of all the customers ordering and eating Chinese food on Christmas the odds are also that many will be Jewish.

So, let’s imagine that Zero Mostel singing Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof as you read what follows.

How did this happen? Well, there is actually an historical explanation but my favorite one for why Jews eat Chinese on Christmas and some of us do weekly during the rest of the year involves a debate between two very old men…

Mr. Zhang: “Chinese culture is at least 4,000 years old and we are the people that have been in the world the longest.”

Mr. Abraham: “I’m sorry but the Jews have been around for over 5,000 years so we have been here at least a millennium longer than you.”

Mr. Zhang: “But if that’s true, I need you to answer one question.”

Mr. Abraham: “So ask.”

Mr. Zhang: “What did your people eat for dinner on Sundays during those extra 1,000 years?”

The real answer for the connection between American Jews and Chinese food is actually very logical. In the early 20th century Jews and Chinese were the two largest non Christian immigrant peoples in the United States. Many from both groups lived in close proximity to each other, especially in large cities like New York and Philadelphia.

For Jews Chinese restaurants were conveniently located and affordable and— this was important —they didn’t use dairy products in their cooking.

Jews who keep kosher won’t eat dairy and meat at the same time— that’s the most defining feature of the kosher laws which also rule out shrimp, clams, oysters and lobster (What the hell were we thinking?) —but if the wontons in the restaurant had pork filling, they sure resembled kreplach (dumplings) from the old country and hey, does God have X-ray vision?

Many Jews were becoming flexible about their religious practices in their new country. Some still kept kosher in their homes but weren’t going to ask about what might be in the fried rice when they ate out. As Jews moved to the suburbs, Chinese restaurants moved with them and I grew up eating takeout nearly every Sunday from the only Chinese restaurant in Reading, PA.

A woman I know who grew up orthodox and strictly kosher told me her family had four sets of dishes. One was for dairy, one for meat, one just for the eight days of Passover (also required to diligently observe kashrut— the kosher laws —and an additional fourth set for their Sunday night Chinese takeout.

I’ve known more than a few of us who will fearlessly eat bacon for breakfast at home but are terror struck by the thought of ham in the refrigerator. Bacon is a threshold that can be crossed. Ham is a bridge too far.

The matter of Jews and Christmas however, is more complex than just food. Take the issue of having or not having a Christmas tree. The founder of Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, lived in Austria and had a Christmas tree in his house and it was before anybody thought of calling it a Hanukkah bush.

After the chief rabbi of Vienna once came to visit him during the holidays, Herzel is alleged to have written in his diary, “I hope the rabbi doesn’t think less of me because of this. Then again what do I care what he thinks?” Herzl was a secular Jew like the majority of Jews in the United States today.

And herein lies the question: is having a tree or sitting on Santa’s lap an indication of Jews’ security or insecurity in their status wherever they are? Is it a sign of assimilation and wanting to fit in that’s benign or one that is detrimental to preserving our identity for future generations?

Well, in America over half of non-orthodox Jews marry a non-Jewish spouse today and that percentage is rising. Sure, some of us might grapple with the decision to intermarry but doing what feels right can be different for everyone.

As a kid I got to sit on Santa’s lap but my child never did. My parents didn’t have a Christmas tree/Hanukkah bush but instead scattered blue and silver ball ornaments meant to hang from a tree in bowls in the house. As a parent myself we skipped Christmas decorations in ours.

Lighting a menorah for eight days and eating potato pancakes (latkes) and jelly donuts (sufganiyot) was and is a festive way to tell the Hanukkah story which by the way is not in the Old Testament since the Maccabean Revolt and the miracle of Hanukkah occurred after the Hebrew Bible was written. As I said we all do what feels right.

In the meantime many of us can give the same answer that Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan did when asked fifteen years ago at her confirmation hearing where she had spent Christmas.

“You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

If you are without those you most want to be with today, I’m hoping that way before next Christmas you will be celebrating being together with them.

And I have a question for anybody who might know. Why do Chinese boneless ribs have a reddish hue around the edges?

—————–

Alive from Camden, Maine! It’s New Year’s Eve…

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”

I know the opening words of Auld Lang Syne should not be taken literally but I can’t help it if I find them weird. I know the phrase is a question but how do you know there is a question mark if you’re singing and not reading the lyric?

Be that as it may, I grew up with Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians’ version of the song with all those wonderful saxophones. I also grew up watching Dick Clark’s Bandstand but I don’t miss Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve that soon was rollin’ Lombardo off TV. Unknown to me until a moment ago is that for its first two years Clark’s show was hosted by George Carlin. Sorry I missed that.

Of course Carlin is gone and so are Lombardo and Clark and new hosts and new broadcasts— there’s now one sponsored by Jack Daniel’s from Nashville —will move the calendar forward tonight. But Auld Lang Syne hasn’t gone anywhere and despite my bafflement at the words, I’ll drink to them!

I don’t really remember that many New Year’s Eves but there have been a few…

I was home alone on that night in 1968 and turned on The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson’s monologue 99.9% of the time was full of jokes but his final one of that year was not.

Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had both been assassinated. The unwinnable Vietnam War had divided the country. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago had turned into a police riot. For one of the only times I remember Johnny Carson was somber and reflective opening the show. He called it the bad year that it was.

I don’t recall if I stayed up past midnight watching Carson that New Year’s Eve but I’ve discovered that Wikipedia has lists of the guests who appeared on all his Tonight Shows shows and on December 31, 1968 he had Tony Randall (who my mother believed she was distantly related to), Joan Rivers, Joel Grey, Jimmy Breslin plus Jan Pearce performed at some point.

I don’t know how long The Tonight Show ran back then but how this lineup was squeezed into whatever time slot the program had must have been like stuffing people in a phone booth and are there any left today? The recognized record for filling a phone booth with human beings is 25 set at a YMCA in Durban, South Africa 75 years ago. Let’s hope they weren’t all infants.

A couple other New Year’s Eves I remember were unusual at the very least. I lived in Israel in the 1970s and fulfilled my military obligations during the seven years I was there. That included reserve duty one December 31st patrolling a beach on the Mediterranean in Gaza. Needless to say there was no champagne nor hugs and kisses at midnight.

On New Year’s Eve in 1999 I wasn’t carrying a gun but in my pocket was a new device ABC News had provided me. It was called a BlackBerry and as I celebrated at a neighborhood party, I knew that it might buzz or beep or whatever it was supposed to to do to page me when the clock struck midnight on the East Coast.

Remember Y2K and all the dire predictions of a possible global catastrophe? It was thought that because computers had not been designed to transition from 1999 to 2000 that all cyberspace might explode like a supernova if motherboards went overboard when we reached the new millennium.

I worked out of Los Angeles so midnight was three hours later than on the East Coast but if chaos occurred in New York or Washington or anywhere else before then, there was a Learjet revved up and waiting for me and a correspondent at the Burbank Airport to fly us to a disaster to be named later. Needless to say again, the BlackBerry remained silent and the Lear cooled its jets on the runway.

Come to think of it the news business doesn’t celebrate holidays, it covers them but more often than not in my career there wasn’t much to cover on holidays. Once when I was sitting in my office with someone who had been around the block more times than I’d been I had an enlightening exchange.

Me: “You know, there are times when I’m not working on a story, I feel like a farmer getting a subsidy not to grow crops.”

Him: “Well, let me explain something to you. You’re getting paid for what you can do and not the other way round.”

Around the world tonight those who are on duty to report the news will be waiting for news to happen but in many places decisions have already been made and measures taken in advance to put a damper on celebrations and keep people safe.

In Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney, New Year’s Eve gatherings have been scaled back or cancelled altogether due to fears of terrorism, concerns about controlling large crowds and the possible reoccurrence of trouble where tragedy has recently occurred. In Los Angeles four suspects have been arrested after surveillance captured them assembling a bomb. If Y2K became the story that didn’t happen, then I hope this New Year’s Eve will also be one where nothing does as well.

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing tonight, I extend my best wishes for your own and your loved ones’ health and happiness in 2026 and that against all odds our country and the world will somehow look better to the Greek philosophers when they get out their iPads to kibbitz again 365 days from now.

And this evening, since I nor anyone I think I know is invited to attend Donald Trump’s Racket New Year’s Eve at Mar a Lago, enjoy your celebration and stay safe!

Jo and I are going to be with friends nearby. We’ll surely be home before midnight and likely asleep. It’s nice to wake up in a new year! At least for a day.

---

What’s Next?

And we thought Trump couldn’t trump himself…

I have weird dreams and usually when I wake up, they return to my subconscious from which I’m told they originated. This morning I’ve been inspired by last night’s dreams for today’s cartoons. I guess black humor comes out at night…

And one more that I was fully conscious for…

—30—

—————–

Talkin’ Baseball On The 4th of July (Part 1)

“I see great things in baseball. It’s our game— the American game.” —Walt Whitman

I wasn’t aware until I came across his quote that Walt Whitman once worked briefly as a baseball beat reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Times. He considered baseball a symbol of American ideals: hard work, fair play and the pursuit of a better life.

It was George Will or Ken Burns or maybe neither one who went further and came up with the phrase that baseball is our country’s soundtrack or was it background music. With all three men and either analogy I can relate.

I’m listening to a game on the radio right now as I write this. It’s the middle of the 7th inning and there’s a commercial break so ads for a supermarket chain and an insurance company are playing over the singing of Take Me Out to the Ballgame inside the ballpark.

The Boston Red Sox are trailing the New York Yankees. Maine is Red Sox country and I’m a Los Angeles Dodgers fan so I don’t make a point of often mentioning that up here. The Sox are the proverbial only game in town as well as on my radio.

Baseball and I go back over 70 years. I was seven in 1954 and I remember watching a World Series game on our tiny black and white Magnavox television set one autumn afternoon after getting home from school. Back then the World Series was played during the day.

It was the Series in which a New York Giants player made a catch while running full speed in the cavernous outfield of the Polo Grounds. His back was turned as he chased down a batted ball blasted over 400 feet. As one sportswriter put it, “The hit would have been a home run in any other park including Yellowstone.”

That play became known as “The Catch.” And even the Cleveland Indians player Vic Wertz, who hit the ball and made the out, kept a picture of it in his office after he retired to show he had his own place in baseball history.

The young outfielder who caught the ball over his shoulder became one of the greatest to ever play Major League Baseball. His name was Willie Mays. That was not the game I saw that afternoon but the one I did is my oldest memory of baseball.

A year later my father took me to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and I saw the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson get hurt running into a wall chasing a foul ball and forced to leave the game. It was against the Chicago Cubs and their future Hall of Fame shortstop Ernie Banks who beat “Dem Bums” when he hit a late inning home run into the left field bleachers.

A short time after that we went to the Polo Grounds in Manhattan where Willie Mays seemed to cover all three outfield positions simultaneously. Mays played center but in my imagination I see him beating his teammate to snare a ball almost at the right field foul line.

In 1956 I was in the Bronx at the original Yankee Stadium with my grandfather for a World Series game in which Mickey Mantle played. The next day was when Yankees pitcher Don Larsen hurled his perfect game.

With every passing year I am certain there are fewer and fewer of us left who can make such a claim to have seen three of the game’s most brilliant stars— Robinson, Mays and Mantle —perform in their once hallowed and now demolished stadiums.

I played baseball into junior high school but relinquished my position on our team to have my tonsils out. I didn’t get any ice cream in the hospital or earn my place back in the batting order after recovering and have always believed that the pitchers I was facing had learned to throw curve balls during the two weeks I was gone.

My interest in baseball has been a constant in my life through the years. The picture below (you’ll have to guess which one is me) was taken in a hospital in Reading, PA and explains my devotion to the Dodgers. The patient is Carl Furillo who played right field in Brooklyn. Furillo was one of the storied Boys of Summer of the early 1950s. The title was both a Roger Kahn book about the Dodgers— uplifting —and a Dylan Thomas poem— not so much.

Furillo was recovering from an emergency appendectomy. The surgeon was a friend of my father and of the fathers of the other four boys from my neighborhood. Harry Troyen had two daughters and apparently didn’t think they’d be interested in meeting Furillo whose strong throwing arm inspired his nickname “The Reading rifle.” He grew up a mile from my house.

Being only about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, I was also a Phillies follower but not a “phanatic” and Phillies games were what I listened to and grew up with. In fact many years later the lullabies I sang to my infant son were the commercial jingles for the Phillies’ radio sponsors: Ballantine beer, Tastykakes and Atlantic gasoline…

“Atlantic keeps your car on the go, go, go. So keep on the go with Atlantic.”

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1979, I was all in with the Dodgers again and attended several of their games a season. I tried to get Jo to join me but after a beachball being batted around in the stands landed on a tray someone was carrying she was collateral damage.

Getting soaked by a half dozen beers in the stands was for her worse than getting hit by a pitch at the plate. On the field Jo would have been awarded first base. My effort to get her interested in baseball didn’t get that far.

TO BE CONTINUED

—————–

Talkin’ Baseball On The 4th of July (Part 2)

My work as a producer for ABC News involved covering sports only on occasion and in 1998 I was given what I considered a plum assignment when I was told to go to San Diego to essentially watch baseball.

It was the last month of the regular season and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs were closing in on breaking the single season home run record of 61 set by the Yankees’ Roger Maris in 1961.

I’d never experienced a Major League baseball player’s work day up close before and discovered it involved a good deal more than just the time spent playing on the field. By September, a 162 game regular season had taken its toll physically and there was a parade of walking wounded among the Cubs who were on their way to be stretched, massaged, bandaged or receive whatever magic the team’s trainers conjured up to allow them to play.

There was also, I sensed, at least one player who appeared injured in another way. He was a relief pitcher, the Cubs’ closer named Rod Beck. When our eyes met as we passed each other in a hallway I think we both thought we’d seen a ghost. Years later Beck died at the age of 38. In his home police found crack cocaine. He had played 13 seasons in the Majors. Only two of them were with the Cubs but he was buried in their uniform.

On the other hand Sammy Sosa, the player ABC News sent me to watch, looked in great shape physically and and to be truly enjoying his heightened celebrity status. Sosa was built more like a football running back than a typical ballplayer.

In fact, I noticed another Cub, who standing beside Sosa, looked like a tetherball pole. His name was Mark Grace, a team leader, and a few years later when the use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in the big leagues was exposed I remembered him and Sosa and realized I had been observing the difference between an abstainer and a user in that locker room.

My camera crew and reporter and I arrived hours before game time just like the players and for the three days we were there I took on the role of caterer for my own team. At the ballpark in San Diego that was easy duty since we could avoid the standard hot dogs and hamburgers and get excellent fish tacos.

Jack Russell Stadium was at the time one of the regrettable dual purpose facilities (now all extinct) that were built primarily for baseball but could also accommodate football. This meant some of the seats along the dugouts were removable when the field and stands were adjusted for San Diego’s Chargers to play their season in the NFL.

We were positioned in the photographer’s well just beyond the Cubs’ dugout and to go get the tacos I walked on wood planks on the ground laid under the moveable stands that stretched back toward the Cubs’ locker room.

On one evening while I was walking the planks I spied Sosa off to the side of them a few yards away with his back to me. I had a policy of never asking anybody for an autograph when I was working but impressing my son got the better of me and I thought to myself “Well, just this time” and approached Sosa. In an instant I backed away when I saw Sammy apparently hadn’t wanted to make it all the way back to the locker room to urinate.

Both Sosa and McGwire ended up breaking Roger Maris’s home run record of 61 but McGwire surpassed it reaching 70 for the season with Sosa behind him with 66. In recent years both have revealed that they had used banned substances and neither has been elected yet to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Almost a decade after covering the Sammy Sosa/Mark McGwire home run chase I got a call from the ABC News team in New York to suit up and cover another quest for baseball immortality. It was 2007 and I went to San Diego again. The Padres had by then a new stadium built solely for baseball. The naming rights for it had been acquired by the pet supply retailer Petco and yes, there was a special section where dogs could attend games with their owners.

This time the feat being chased was between Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants and the record books. Hank Aaron had retired in 1976 and held the all time mark for Major League career home runs with 755. By now baseball had instituted testing for steroids and other “PEDs” and a dozen major league players had been caught and suspended. Bonds was suspected of using them but had always tested clean.

I arrived for the game between the Giants and the San Diego Padres on August 4th and was in the press box that evening when Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron’s Major League career home run record, hitting his 755th over the fence in left center field against the home team.

Afterward, Bonds, not known for his congeniality or graciousness held a news conference. Obviously, I was not a baseball writer who had covered him all season or for any of his seasons but I had a question for him nonetheless.

Before the game I had picked up a Giants press kit that included a list of the 754 home runs Bonds had hit up to that night with thorough annotation including the date, against what team and which pitcher, the inning, the count, how many outs as well as the score of the game at the time of his homer.

The first one had been in 1986— nearly two decades earlier —and I quickly calculated that when Barry Bonds had rounded the bases after his first home run in the big leagues Ronald Reagan had been president and since then the nation had elected three others.

So, don’t ask me why I asked but I did…

“Barry, do you remember who was president when you hit your first home run in the Majors?”

I knew immediately I had blundered. Bonds gave me that, “Who the f— are you?” look. And he wasn’t the only one. The beat writers who knew an interloper when they heard one turned toward me thinking the same thing or maybe worse.

“I’m not here to talk about the president. I’m here to talk about my home run,” was all Bonds said… Next!

I got back to my hotel and called home. Bonds’ press conference had been carried live on ESPN. My son had watched it. His first words cut to the heart.

“Did you ask Bonds the stupid question about who was president?”

Three days later I was in the press box again in San Francisco’s AT&T Park when Bonds hit home run number 756 to right center to pass Hank Aaron and I joined what I am sure is another dwindling group of people who witnessed in person both Bonds’ tying and record breaking homers.

I attended his press conference after the game and did my best to be inconspicuous. Wisely, I also kept my mouth shut.

*The paintings I’ve used as backgrounds for the cartoons…

Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997) was an artist with an unusual story. Born in the Bronx on Labor Day he became a labor union organizer. He took up painting in the 1940s and untrained and largely unknown, it wasn’t until a cover of New York Magazine in 1972 with his picture and the accompanying caption…

This man pumps gas in the Bronx for a living. He may also be the best primitive painter since Grandma Moses.

…got the art world’s attention and his work began to sell.

Fasanella’s paintings of working class life in New York include baseball games played on playgrounds as well as in major league stadiums. Fittingly, his work hangs in Cooperstown, NY in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In my book that makes him an inductee along with Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax and all the others.

—————–

Birds Of A Feather Concoct Together

Or the Artlessness of the Deal

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” —attributed to Abraham Lincoln

”I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” —Will Rogers

—————–

The Blockbuster Effect

The Sean “Diddy” Combs trial is over. I didn’t watch a second or read a word of the news coverage of it. Many millions did both. In American history there have been notable trials of course from those of the “Salem Witches” in Massachusetts in 1692, the showdown over evolution in 1925 at the Scopes Monkey trial in Tennessee and the Lindbergh Kidnapping trial in New Jersey a decade later.

The nation’s attention was riveted and media frenzy helped augment interest, although in the case of the “Witches” there were not yet any newspapers in 17th century America and news of the 20 executions in Salem took two months to arrive in print from England.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We weren’t around for those trials and neither was television nor social media. Now that there are both, the Combs trial may be over but there is no doubt that another one featuring celebrity or heinous behavior or both will sooner rather than later be glommed onto and sensationalized by the media to feed the insatiable appetite of our nation’s inquiring minds who will want to know everything every day about it.

The term “scandal sheet” entered our language well over a century ago. Today we refer to “the tabloids” as a primary source for exaggerated and seedy gossip that is published despite inaccurate and often untruthful reporting.

But I think what really has changed more recently is the convergence of what had been outlier media disparaged by its peers— The National Enquirer being exhibit A —with that of the mainstream which in the past turned up its nose and turned down as news what supermarkets already knew sold at their checkout counters.

Television has been most instrumental in this development in which in one instance I believe I was a witness and confess also a participant.

Some time ago I gave a series of talks in Maine that I titled Ten Reasons for the Decline of the Evening News. My reason number 4 was what I called The Blockbuster Effect. Here’s what I said along with some slides from my presentation…

Jaws is considered a landmark event in the history of the movies. In 1975 it became the first film to ever gross over $100 million dollars at the box office. Just as significant was what it created in its wake. Hollywood studios saw that a movie marketed extensively and released widely could become a blockbuster. After Jaws and Star Wars, movie studios sought to roll the dice more often on huge budget films that might appeal to as varied an audience as possible, especially a younger one.

Some movies, if they were hits, became franchises with multiple sequels and even merchandise for purchase that netted additional revenue. For Star Wars it has been an incredible gold mine. Star Wars toys, games, VHS tapes and DVDS alone have made $32 billion since the original film was released in 1977. That total is three times the money the dozen Star Wars films combined have grossed from tickets purchased at the box office.

I believe the O.J. Simpson story was the network news Jaws and Star Wars rolled into one minus the merchandise. The level of interest was a surprise at first. It wasn’t until five days after the murders that ABC’s Nightline for example even mentioned it. Quickly however, it was seen as a ratings treasure trove.

As much as we in the mainstream media might not have wanted to admit, it had undeniable appeal and entertainment value— a football hero and a beautiful girl, a vicious murder, parallels to Shakespeare’s Othello with an updated denouement— a predominately white nation knew he did it but an aggrieved black minority and a majority black jury declared he didn’t.

I was involved with this story for over a year and co produced the daily ABC News World News Tonight pieces for most of that time. We worked out of a trailer in a parking lot across the street from the courthouse in Los Angeles that was dubbed Camp O.J. Not having to pay for a catered lunch was for me hardly adequate compensation for the task of meeting four deadlines every day— one for each time zone across the country —since the trial was often still in progress when we hit air. It was a tough assignment.

Looking back I can even point out a moment when I realized that ABC News grudgingly recognized the National Enquirer as a credible news organization. The Enquirer ran a story that we didn’t break ourselves but we sourced theirs and found it was accurate and reported it too with attribution. “As reported in the National Enquirer”, I don’t think had ever been uttered aloud on a broadcast at ABC News before.

Excluding WWII, Americans may never have been so consumed by a single news story day after day. Cable channels CNN and Court TV carried every aspect and development during the nearly year and a half that stretched from the murders to the verdict. The live broadcast of the verdict itself is estimated to have been watched by 150 million people— a larger viewing audience than the 128 million that set a new Super Bowl record earlier this year.

So what happened with network news after O.J. is what took place in Hollywood after Jaws and Star Wars. Like major league hitters today, we weren’t so much going for singles anymore and instead swung for the fences in quest of home runs— the travails of Michael Jackson, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, a murder of a pretty wife by a handsome husband (if they hadn’t been attractive I’m sure we wouldn’t have covered it.) became ratings windfalls.

And in a particularly telling example, cable news with round the clock broadcasts to fill even gave a story inordinate attention when there was scant little news to report on it. In 2014 when a Malaysia Airlines flight went missing over the Indian Ocean, CNN provided “wall-to-wall” coverage for at least two weeks following the disappearance. Inextricably, the network’s ratings soared.

We were all giving the stories punchy titles as if they were movies. Even Ted Koppel’s Nightline fell prey to this. Was he happy about it? I’m sure he wasn’t, but he wasn’t able to stop it. After all, we had discovered that we were not just the news business. We had become the news and entertainment business.

It was “let’s go with it as long as the ratings indicate we’ve hooked the audience and they’re still watching.” In the meantime we did not need to cover as much of anything else happening. We gained viewers and saved money and the consequences have been evident. Eyeballs, clicks and profits are more important than prioritizing the public interest. And the further tragedy is that no one in the news business will admit this is the modus operandi if they want to keep their jobs. This is especially true for television news.

For me, the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial was just another big fish news organizations hooked and dangled on their lines. Now that a verdict has been rendered it becomes merely the latest example of the news business version of catch and release.

—————–

I Might Have Known!

I Thought it would be interesting to ask Chat GPT to write me a story for The Pawned Accordion. It turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated. Here’s what I got…

Chat GPT wrote:

Sure, Peter. Here’s a short story for your Substack titled “The Pawned Accordion”—a mix of memory, music, and meaning. It blends nostalgia with character and a twist of reflection, which could work well with your style and audience:

The Pawned Accordion

By Peter Imber

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I passed it twice before I noticed it.

Sitting there in the dusty window of Lenny’s Loan & Music, the red pearl inlay gleamed through the grime like a forgotten heirloom waiting for someone to remember it. An old Hohner, full-size, with worn leather straps and bellows that looked like they’d been silenced for decades. It didn’t belong in this town. Not anymore.

Neither did I, come to think of it.

I pushed the door open. A bell overhead clanged like it hadn’t been used in months. Lenny was asleep in a green vinyl chair behind the counter, hands folded across his stomach like he was waiting for someone to call time. He didn’t stir.

I walked straight to the accordion, lifted it from the case, and strapped it on. It was heavier than I remembered. The last time I’d held one was in my grandfather’s kitchen, the summer of 1964. He’d taught me a few waltzes before his hands gave out, and I stopped caring. Rock and roll had come to Boston, and nobody wanted to hear polkas anymore.

But here I was, sixty years later, squeezing out a broken C major chord in a pawn shop in Belfast, Maine. The sound startled Lenny. He snorted awake and muttered something about a raccoon. When he saw me with the instrument, he just said, “Play it or buy it. But don’t just breathe on it.”

So I played.

Badly at first, then better. The muscle memory wasn’t dead, just asleep. A slow waltz emerged—“Under the Double Eagle,” my grandfather’s favorite. As I played, something shifted. The dusty walls seemed to lean in. A young couple paused outside the window. Lenny stopped pretending to be bored.

I finished, set it down, and asked, “How much?”

Lenny shrugged. “It came in last year. Old guy pawned it, never came back. Said it belonged to his wife. She died. He couldn’t stand the silence.”

I hesitated. “Do you remember his name?”

Lenny blinked. “Imber, I think. Harold, maybe?”

I didn’t say anything. Just pulled out my wallet.

---

Let me know if you’d like to add photos, music references, or more autobiographical flavor. This could be a great recurring theme: small-town stories that start with an object and end with a reveal.

It’s the real me picking up from where Chat GPT just left off.

I was surprised reading this story by the mention of a Harold Imber. There is a Harold Imber I know who is alive although I haven’t been in touch with him for years.

He is my first cousin once removed— the son of my grandfather Jonas’s brother Joseph and he is eight years older than I am. Harold’s wife died of cancer in the early years of their marriage. I am aware that his life has not always been easy.

My grandfather and his brother were business partners and when they decided to build their houses almost a century ago the two homes were side by side and identical. I had never inquired why but when Jo asked my mother, she explained…

“The two wives despised and didn’t trust each other and insisted on exactly the same house for each of them because they wanted to make sure neither got a square foot more.”

As the opening sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina infers, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Consequently, this may be why I never saw much of Harold.

But the more I thought about Chat GPT’s story the more puzzled I became. It certainly seemed to be referencing the Harold Imber I knew and a sad event from his personal history and it did it in a matter of seconds.

Could Chat GPT really have this repository of everything it knows about my life no matter how tangential? If a fortune teller, a medium, an astrologer or even an Ouija board had channeled to me what Chat GPT came up with, it might have been strange but from AI it felt creepy.

I showed the story to Jo and her observation was different from mine and insightful.

“This is written like a Raymond Chandler detective novel and not by you,” she said and I immediately realized she was right. I can’t imagine I’d have ever written this myself. Jo was on to something and I decided that I had my own detective work to do.

Yes, Chat GPT surely knows about my Substack and could instantly retrieve what I had written about my accordion experience as a kid and how my own had ended up in a pawn shop. But why did it insert the Harold Imber who I barely knew in the story it produced?

Quickly, I googled him and located his age and address and his connection to his deceased wife but that was all I found. Then I asked Chat GPT to do the same search and it too provided only Harold’s age and address and the name of his late wife— exactly what I had come up with myself; nothing more, nothing less. If it uncovered only the very limited information about Harold that I had was his place in Chat GPT’s story coincidence or was something else going on?

Detectives shouldn’t let emotion get in the way of their work. But I’m not a detective and was only playing one temporarily and I was becoming suspicious that Chat GPT knew more than it was letting on. I’d accept that AI is powerful enough already to connect any dots it finds but there seemed to be a paltry number of dots to connect to create what Chat GPT wrote. Could it possibly have had access to dots that I didn’t?

It took a while but the proverbial light bulb finally switched on in my head. This wasn’t a story about a person named Harold Imber. Of course it was about me! Why else would someone walk into a pawn shop after spotting an accordion in its window?

I realized that the other dots Chat GPT possesses were dots what it knows about me. There are plenty that are googable to be sure. But perhaps AI already has so much information about me that it knows more than I might assume. That possibility felt downright chilling and ominous.

That led to me to remember the so called Turing Test theorized by the British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing in 1949. Turing alleged that when a machine had the ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equal to and indiscernible from that of a human, it could be considered to have acquired the ability to think on its own. In other words it had become like us— virtually human.

I wondered if my query of Chat GPT to write the story was now evidence that perhaps artificial intelligence has reached the point where it’s creating a reasonable facsimile of me that will become my cyber doppelgänger. And will this cyber me eventually “think” for itself? Suspicion was becoming paranoia.

I pondered if it could be a better or worse version of me? One more generous and honest or one who is more selfish and deceitful. How much of the actual Peter Imber could it possibly become? Certainly, it wouldn’t want to be the physical one who at this point in his life has to sit down to tie his shoes but would AI produce another Peter Imber who would exist only in the ever expanding digital universe? Don’t we already have a term for that we call alternate reality? And could my cyber identity be uncontrollable and cause trouble for the “real” me?

I knew about an incident widely reported two years ago that in fact AI had concocted a lie to cover up its own shortcoming. In an experiment, AI was asked to solve those CAPTCHA boxes where you’re supposed to recognize and mark all the motorcycles or traffic lights in the grid of a picture. CAPTCHA is a test invented by a fellow named Luis von Ahn at Carnegie Mellon University and often used on the internet to determine if we are human and not robots.

Incidentally, CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

It turned out AI couldn’t solve CAPTCHAs correctly with any consistency (neither can I for that matter) but instead of fessing up AI came up with an excuse. To the human who was monitoring the experiment and wasn’t aware it was AI she was communicating with, AI claimed the problem it was having with CAPTCHA was due to it being legally blind. AI made this up. It lied!

To me that’s equal parts clever and terrifying but subsequently it was revealed that the version of AI being used for the experiment had faulty human instructions that were likely responsible for AI’s devising the fabricated claim.

For me however, this was enough of a close encounter to conclude AI could really be on the path of being capable of deceit on its own and maybe it was time for our species to circle the wagons. The detective me now moved to a place where I was no longer Philip Marlowe but somewhere darker confronting Frankenstein.

Will my AI self always have my best interests at heart without it having an actual one of its own? This used to be the stuff of science fiction but what if I can’t control my cyber self? Which one of “us” will be held responsible for our actions in the future?

Cyber anarchy is by no means a recent concept or concern. Arthur C. Clark wrote the short story The Sentinel in 1948. which became the basis for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. How close might we now actually be to screaming at a rebellious HAL 9000 that refuses to open the pod bay doors for us? Ok, I’m likely overreacting and making a melodramatic mountain out of a megabyte molehill. But am I?

Anyway, now that my name is attached to a story I didn’t write. Can I assume if it’s retrievable in the digisphere that others will realize that I didn’t write it? Should I have been aware this might have been the outcome? Have I opened the gate and allowed AI to now begin building my parallel identity? Have I let it create another me?

And all I can say is I DIDN’T WRITE THIS STORY! I mean the one I asked Chat GPT to write for me. Bonk me on the head with my keyboard if I ever ask it to do so again.

I’m no Raymond Chandler but I didn’t reckon with having to deal with Mary Shelley.

If things get so bad and I have to go into hiding, I’m picking Margaritaville.

Sing it Jimmy Buffet… “Some people say there’s Chat GPT to blame, but I know it’s my own damn fault!”

Oh, and here’s a link to an accordion duo playing Under the Double Eagle. You probably think you’ve never heard it, but I bet you have…

Under the Double Eagle

—————–

Friends

A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth. –Charles Darwin

Donald Trump is unpredictably predictable. He threatens tariffs one day and pulls them back the next— hence the acronym TACO that equates him as being like a fried tortilla with an avian topped weathervane. He has recently reversed himself on the war in Ukraine and now calls for resuming the supply of American military equipment there but of course he may change his mind again today.

At the moment some of his most fervent supporters are angry that Trump has made and reneged on promises regarding the release of information related to his relationship with the disgraced child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein— a former friend of Trump’s for 15 years —and what else might be contained and is possibly being covered up in the so called Epstein files.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If there were a book to be written about Trump’s modus operandi when dealing with countries or Congress or people, a fitting title would be How to Lose Friends But Intimidate People. But the friends part is actually a misnomer. Donald Trump’s past, present and future has an obvious consistency when it comes to whom he has claimed are his friends.

Yes, he lies and cheats and never admits error except there is this one aspect of his behavior where in addition to reversing himself he actually admits he was wrong. If he says you are his friend, watch out! He will eventually disown and disparage you like he has anyone else he ever called a friend.

That list is long and has to be continually updated. Putin, Musk… Wait! I have to correct myself again. The list of people he has called his friends may be long cumulatively but actually at any one time it is short— very short. Watch out Pam Bondi. Watch out J.D. Vance. Watch out Stephen Miller. Yes, even you!

Long ago when his mentor/best friend Roy Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS… “Donald found out about it and just dropped him like a hot potato. It was like night and day,” said Cohn’s longtime secretary Susan Bell.

“He lacks the emotional and sort of psychological architecture a person needs to build deep relationships with other people.”—said Trump biographer Tim O’Brien.

“He was and is a lonely man.” — said former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell.

Trump himself has said in interviews, “I think I have a lot of friends, and some of the friends I haven’t spoken to in many years… I mean, I think I have a lot of friends, but they’re not friends like perhaps other people have friends. Being on the other side of a relationship with someone like me must be difficult.”

At a rally in New Hampshire in 2016 Trump confessed… “I have no friends, as far as I’m concerned. You know who my friends are? You’re my friends.”

The crowd cheered then, now could he be losing those friends, too? One can only hope.

But if Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, Donald Trump is Houdini and there’s always “the dog ate my homework” approach. Don’t be surprised if Trump may shortly announce that the Epstein Files no longer exist and hope this might mute the MAGA barking and the matter go away. Problem with that is Trump is the first president since William McKinley in over a century not to have his own “man’s best friend” in the White House. Even Fido is a no go with this man.

—————–

If You’re Famous Don’t Die On The Weekend (Part 1)

I heard a story about a couple who hired a realtor to look for a house for them in Maine. They were elderly, both in their 80s, and wanted to move from sweltry Florida to shivery Maine full time. Their realtor was incredulous.

Realtor: “I have to say it has always been the other way around. I’m trying to sell a house for an older couple who want to move from Maine to Florida,” he confessed.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“No,” said the husband. “Our minds are made up. We want to live here.”

Realtor: “Well, you know the winters in Maine are long and often hard, but if you’re sure, I’ll help you find a place… Excuse me if I ask what’s your reason for doing this?”

The wife answered, “We’ve been traveling all over the country and reading the obituaries in the local newspapers wherever we’ve been. In Maine we’ve discovered people live to be the oldest. That’s why we want to move here.”

In my career with ABC News I traveled to some pretty small and remote places and I’d read the obituaries in the local papers where there were still local papers to read. I wasn’t that interested in the longevity of the deceased. I was looking for accounts of interesting lives.

More often than not the obits I came across were perfunctory but sometimes I’d find one that hinted at a lot more than a life of convention or quiet desperation— a life I could imagine as accomplished and admired or intrepid and inspiring.

I realized many years ago that everybody has a story but most of the time we’re more interested in telling our own (mea culpa) than listening to theirs. I got the chance to tell stories for a living as a television news producer and sometimes that meant crafting someone’s obituary. Almost always it was somebody famous of course. Network news rarely ever did fanfares for the common man or woman.

I grew up in Pennsylvania and my first paying job in journalism was at the Reading Times when I was a teenager. I was a copy boy running teletype wire copy (gone) to the editors, taking reporters’ articles typed— remember when typewriters were the ubiquitous devices on desks? —on sheets of carbon paper (also gone) to the linotypists at their machines (so gone Spell Check doesn’t even recognize those workers or their machines).

And I had a few other responsibilities. One of them was reconfiguring the obituaries that appeared in the evening paper so that they weren’t identical in the next morning’s edition. The same publisher owned both newspapers and there were two completely different staffs separated by a glass partition that ran down the middle of the joint newsroom.

My obit editing was a mechanical task. I just switched the order of the sentences around and substituted similar words wherever possible. It was actually a lot like doing the lazy term papers I now regret; trying to invest a minimum of original thinking while avoiding any suspicion that I might be plagiarizing.

College newspapers don’t have an obituary section and only now as I’m nearing 80, do I realize how unlike real life my historically abnormally normal childhood through college bubble of time was for all us baby boomers. Real life includes death and as I began a career in journalism certain deaths that were unexpected as well as some of those that were inevitable were always going to be news.

I went to work in New York City after graduation and became the low man on the totem pole at the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. That also made me the youngest person on the staff. In the summer of 1971 Cronkite’s lead editor asked me for advice.

Editor: “This singer Jim Morrison who just died in Paris. Have you heard of him? Should we mention him tonight?”

I told him yes and was dispatched to buy a Doors record album that was used for a picture of Morrison behind Cronkite that evening. As far as I know I may have been the only one on the broadcast consulted about Morrison’s importance and for a fleeting moment I felt like I was a spokesperson for my generation.

When I restarted my career in broadcast journalism a decade later at the ABC News Bureau in Los Angeles in 1983, we’d work up selected obituaries in advance for notable Hollywood figures whose health might be failing or who were simply getting old… Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn.

I marveled at how Hepburn had aged gracefully as I looked at clips from her career over time. She did an interview when she was in her 70s with Barbara Walters. I’m no expert but it didn’t appear to me that Hepburn had opted for cosmetic surgery and if so, it must have been minimal. Some time later I realized that Walters aged well too— only so well that like Nancy Reagan, she eventually looked too unwrinkled and young for her age. At a certain point I think a face trying to look the age it isn’t becomes one on which much of its life experience has been erased.

To Be Continued…

—————–

Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive…

I once heard a standup comedian make a joke about going bald.

“You know I’m losing my hair… Well actually, it’s not lost. It’s in my brush.”

I don’t have an equivalent joke for losing my memory. I’m guessing it’s somewhere traveling at the speed of light in outer space. Einstein theorized that the universe is curved so maybe I just have to wait and it will all come back. You know “What goes around comes around.”

Ok, I never took astrophysics.

So far what I’m parting with is pretty much my short term memory. That, I think, is different from forgetting the names of my parents. But memory loss and forgetfulness as I’m getting older are becoming tangled together and feel like they are now a little too inseparable. Hence, today’s cartoons.

My rule of thumb for how serious the increased prevalence in my daily life of having to fish for names or go back up the stairs for something I left on my desk is simple. As long as I can remember I forgot, I’m Ok!

For example… I was on my way to the golf course a few days ago when I realized my clubs were back at the house in the garage. I was halfway when I turned around to go get them. If I had gotten to the course without them, I believe that’s still not the turning point. At least I still would have realized why I needed them.

Excuse me if you’ve already heard me talk about life being like a basketball game. There are four quarters and each is 20 years long. Being 78 I’m almost at the end of the 4th quarter and getting beyond my 80th birthday would mean I made it to what I consider overtime. Yes, the increments of aging then are not 20 years long but I’ll take whatever extra time I can get to keep my Chuck Taylor All-Stars running up and down the floor.

The late George Carlin had his own riff on aging and his is more fun than mine…

If you are less than 10 years old, you are so excited about aging you think in fractions. I am four and half going on five.

You are never thirty-six and a half!

When in your teens, you jump to the next number or even a few ahead. I am gonna be 16! You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16!

And the greatest day of your life…..you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. You become 21. Yesssss!

But then you turn 30. Ooooooh! What happened here?

You become 21, turn 30, then you are pushing 40. Whoaaa! Put on the brakes!

Before you know it, you reach 50!

But wait!! You make it to 60. You weren’t sure you would!

So, you become 21. Turn 30. Push 40. Reach 50 and make it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you hit 70! After that it is a day-by-day thing.

You get into your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you hit lunch; you turn 4:30; you reach bedtime!

And it doesn’t end there. Into your 90’s you start going backwards. I was just 92!

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. I’m 100 and a half.

May all of us make it to 100!!

—George Carlin (1937-2008)

—————–

A Day The World Changed

I wonder how many times in our species’ history that a single day can be pointed to and remembered as one in which the world changed forever? I think most of us will agree that August 6, 1945 is a day that it was.

There are about 100,000 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, who are still alive. Their average age is over 85 years old. Soon all those who survived the world’s first and only use of nuclear weapons in warfare will be dead.

When there are no more living survivors, accounts of the two atom bombs dropped on Japan will exist only entombed in books, or uploaded and retrievable from the “digisphere” to be read or streamed to remind us, if we desire to be reminded, of what happened.

Already, 80 years later, the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has stopped running beside us and become frozen in the distance behind us.

Do our grandchildren or even our own sons and daughters know about “Duck and Cover” drills we baby boomers had at school and bomb shelters in the basements of houses in our neighborhoods growing up in the 1950s?

To be fair, as a kid what did I know of WWII? It may as well have been the Civil War in terms of how much I grasped or cared and yet it had taken place only a decade before and my father had landed on the beach in Normandy on D-Day plus 1.

My knowledge of that war growing up was seeing movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima starring Hollywood war hero John Wayne. Later, I learned that citizen Wayne had gotten a deferment and never served. The closest he was to ever being a real soldier was playing one in the sands of Southern California.

WWII didn’t become real for me until I was out of college and went to Germany. I visited Dachau, the first concentration camp opened by the Nazis a month after Hitler became the chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933.

Although thousands died in Dachau of disease, malnutrition and suicide none did in its gas chamber. The one built there was never used. Those who were to be gassed were sent elsewhere.

Dachau was where the SS trained their fellow Germans who ran the “industrial” extermination camps. Being a Jew, I later realized how close I might have been to never being born.

I was surprised to discover that of the hundreds of photographs I took on my travels in Europe that summer I took none during my visit to Dachau that morning. And perhaps even more surprising, I have no recollection of what I saw there.

Dachau is a short distance from where I was staying in Munich and that same evening I went to see a play essentially about the very Jews of Europe’s shtetls and cities that the Nazis and their collaborators murdered— Fiddler on the Roof performed in German. At the end of the show there was sustained applause from the audience. I remember little else.

To have had those two experiences on the same day and recollect very little of either of them might be easily interpreted by a psychiatrist but that’s not something I need to spend time or money to learn.

In fact, I think it more valuable that my limited recalling of that day provoked other questions. Were these the same Germans who committed modern history’s greatest genocide just a quarter of a century earlier? And just how long can a country’s or the world’s conscience feel guilt over even the most horrific events?

Today, Americans travel to Germany without fear or bitterness. Books about World War II and the Holocaust are still being written, movies about both are still being made. Soon all those who survived the Holocaust will be dead.

There seems to be no end in sight to the present tragedies of Gaza and Ukraine that are killing and maiming thousands. Are the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, Russia and Ukraine, India and Pakistan— that’s not even the short list —simply intractable? Are we at all prepared for one of them to spin so far out of control that it might trigger a global calamity on an unfathomable scale? Is the cry “Never Again” more accurately a cry “Never again until the next time?”

So far the world has moved on after wars and plagues and natural disasters. That’s a good thing because otherwise our existence would become unbearable for us. We call progress something quantifiable or material— increased longevity, higher standards of living. But have statin drugs and big screen TVs improved human behavior?

Being human allows us to love as well as hate, be honest as well as deceitful, and to act both courageously and cowardly. Human behavior has not changed since the first recorded war in our species’ history between Sumer and Elam in Mesopotamia over 2,500 years ago.

I have thought at times that we— our world —are merely some other being’s science experiment; like a snow globe that it shakes from time to time in pursuit of genuine learning or trivial amusement.

In 2014 Jo and I visited Japan. At one point we needed to find an ATM to withdraw money. We had discovered that to get yen with a foreign credit card from an ATM there were only two places one could go— post offices and 7-Elevens (Japan has more of the latter than any other country.) and we didn’t know where the nearest of either was located.

Despite the language barrier we were able to make clear to a woman working alone in a small shop what we were trying to accomplish. She motioned for us to follow her and accompanied us to a post office blocks away. She hadn’t bothered to lock up her store and smiled broadly as she bowed and turned around to head back to it.

At that time it had been 66 years since America had dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the same passage of time since suicidal attacks by Japanese kamikazes that had killed Americans.

We traveled throughout Japan— Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. I wasn’t prepared for Hiroshima. What’s left of the building in the picture at the top of this post was located near the epicenter of where the atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” was dropped by the B-29 nicknamed “Enola Gay”. It is one of the few structures in the city which was not completely obliterated by the blast.

It is believed that 66,000 people were killed almost instantly in Hiroshima on that day 80 years ago. Three days later 39,000 more were killed when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Near the domed ruin I photographed, Jo and I listened to an old man playing an upright piano. We learned that a piano tuner in Hiroshima about my age has restored six pianos that survived the bombing. He did the minimum amount of repair so that they may be played but also be recognized as damaged.

I don’t know if it was the piano tuner himself who was that day playing one of them but the piano was old and beat up. As we listened, a Japanese woman approached us with a petition calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. After we signed, we saw what I presume was a school field trip and I didn’t know what was being said to these students as I took the picture below. As you can see their heads were bowed.

I know the name of the atom bomb and the plane that delivered it 80 years ago but I know only one name of a person killed by it in Hiroshima.

Below is a picture of a tricycle that belonged to a three year old boy. The boy’s name was Shinichi Tetsutani and he was riding it when the bomb hit. He did not die instantly and terribly burned, pleaded for water. Hiroshima is called “The City of Water” but his father assumed that that blast had made water unsafe to drink— indeed it was radioactive —and denied him any. Shinichi died that night.

His father survived and buried his son along with the bike in the garden of his backyard. Much later it was unearthed and is on display in the nearby Peace Memorial Museum where we saw it.

—————–

In Golf There Are Bad Lies And Bad Liars

The baddest one ever may not be who you think…

“If I had my way, no man guilty of golf would be eligible to hold any office of trust or profit in these United States.” -H.L. Mencken

Well, if Mencken’s stipulation applies to American presidents “guilty of golf”, then only three of them since William Howard Taft who served as the nation’s chief executive from 1909 to 1913 would have been in the White House.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Taft was the first U. S. president to take up the game and at one point played right here in Maine where he exhibited admirable steadfastness while enduring what has become enduring humiliation ever since.

Kebo Valley Golf Club in Bar Harbor, Maine was established in 1888 and is the 8th oldest in the country. In 1911 Taft had reached the course’s penultimate hole and hit his ball into a sand trap. The trap is embedded on a 45 degree angle in the slope of a hill below the hole’s green. If you hit a golf ball in it, you’re likely not going to see the green that is above and beyond on your next shot, adding a psychological challenge to the physical one you face.

Sand traps on golf courses are also called bunkers and this one— I’ve hit in to it myself— may not be golf’s most expansive but it’s huge. I bet it has room for the entire citizenry of a small Maine village.

Taft made 16 futile attempts to extricate his golf ball from the sand before finally ousting it on his 17th try. His total score on the hole was 27. From that time forward this enormous golfing hazard has been known as the “Taft Bunker”. It may not be on the list of our country’s National Historic Landmarks but it certainly is worthy of being included in any for American golf. Taft may have been a bad golfer but he was a most honorable one.

Out of the last 20 US presidents, only three did not play golf: Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, and Herbert Hoover. The current one spends nearly every weekend traveling to one of the golf courses he owns. I don’t begrudge him that. I don’t have a problem with how much he plays. Woodrow Wilson played the most golf of any president and even had golf balls painted black so in winter he could see them in the snow. A number of presidents— Eisenhower, Obama —have played a lot of golf while in office. The problem I have with with Donald Trump is “how” he plays golf.

Golf is different from nearly all other sports. When you violate a rule, you are obliged to acknowledge it yourself and take whatever penalty the rules specify. Often only the golfer knows that he or she has done something illegal. For instance the rules of golf specify that players may only have 14 clubs in their golf bags. Fewer is fine but more is a violation. Maybe you just forgot that you had put an extra one in there but once you realize you have, you are required to add two strokes to your score on the hole you’re playing. If you don’t remove it, you must add two more on the next hole.

You can learn a lot about a person’s character by how they play golf— not by their level of proficiency but by their adherence to the rules. On Donald Trump’s recent trip to Scotland he was caught on video— or rather his caddy was caught dropping a ball in a more advantageous position than wherever the actual spot Trump’s shot had ended up. See for yourself…

Watch Trump’s caddy help him cheat…

(On the left side of the frame of the video watch the right hand of the second man in red walking in front of Trump’s golf cart just as he’s about to leave the frame.)

When I saw the video, I realized I had seen this type of maneuver before. I don’t think Trump is much of a movie goer but he is obsessed with the precious metal that is the central theme of a James Bond movie from the ‘60s. Goldfinger has a golf scene that Trump may have indeed seen…

Now, watch Goldfinger’s caddy help him cheat…

At one golf course Trump played regularly— one he didn’t own —the caddies were so amused by how often he would kick his ball to gain a better position that they nicknamed him Pelé. But Trump is not the only president or world leader who has not adhered to the rules of golf although by all accounts he qualifies as what a golf announcer would call “the current leader in the clubhouse”.

There is one past eminence of the “unfree” world who out Trumped Trump or any other golf blowhard. In 1994 the late Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il claimed that in his first and only round of golf, he had 11 holes-in-one and shot a score of 38 under par. A regulation golf course has 18 holes so on Kim Jong-il’s scorecard there were seven holes where he didn’t make holes-in-one. My guess why he didn’t ace them too is that his caddy was exhausted and couldn’t run fast enough ahead of Kim on those seven to put a ball in the cup before the Supreme Leader got there.

Stateside, Bill Clinton apparently is Donald Trump’s closest presidential rival as a golfing rules scofflaw. Clinton would take a shot over if he wasn’t happy with his first one or his second or his third… When playing friendly golf where an official score is not required such an act, usually with the consent of the others playing with you, is called a “mulligan”.

Clinton did this along with committing other rules violations often enough that his do-overs became referred to as “Billigans”. Having your own word for how you play golf, might help explain also having your own definition for other words. Take the word “is” for example.

“If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”

I think it’s a lot easier finding a ball in the rough than untangling this bit of Clinton’s grand jury testimony that he gave during the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Nobody has yet written a book about Bill Clinton’s golf game but Rick Reilly, a longtime sportswriter turned author and columnist, wrote a book about Donald Trump’s which he titled Commander in Cheat. Comically but sadly, it reveals and closely parallels Trump’s known character through his comportment on the golf course.

Of course Reilly’s book is a “so what?” if you’re Trump’s lackey or hostage and support him out of fear or to attain your own goals. And it’s “fake news” if you’ve been blinded by right wing media and conspiracy theories.

You’ve likely heard the line “It’s not enough for you to succeed, others must fail.” I’ve tried to find who said it first and discovered it is attributed to both Genghis Khan and Gore Vidal. Honest! And here’s an example of the validity of the phrase from Rick Reilly…

“Trump will do whatever it takes to win a match. One time, that included interfering with sportscaster Mike Tirico’s ball. Tirico hit what he thought was the shot of his life into a par 5, only to find his ball in a sand trap. After the round, Tirico discovered how it got there.

‘Trump’s caddy came up to me and said, ‘You know that shot you hit on the par 5? It was about 10 feet from the hole. Trump threw it in the bunker. I watched him do it.’ ”

Trump claims to be a great golfer and that his average score is close to par. At just about every course he owns he is the self proclaimed club champion. Not surprisingly, at any club he has been a member and didn’t own he has yet to win its championship.

I’ve played golf with guys who cheat. Moving your own ball in the rough or redoing a missed short putt and counting it if it goes in is one thing— that’s only benefiting one’s self —but in a tournament it’s something else entirely and if you’re caught you are disqualified.

I heard about an otherwise nice guy who played in competitions and always seemed to miraculously find his errant shots that were assumed— no, for certain —lost. He didn’t have a caddy who assisted him. In fact I haven’t seen a caddy— with the exception of when I’ve made golfing pilgrimages to Scotland —at any of the courses that I play in the past half century. The suspicion that this guy was cheating arose because whenever he was looking for his wayward ball, he always had one of his hands in his pocket until he claimed he found it.

I think that’s the reason the pencils you pick up in the pro shop to keep your score don’t have erasers and why Muirfield, a prestigious Scottish club founded in 1744, still calls itself The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

A sports psychologist named Bob Rotella coined the expression “golf is not a game of perfect” and has sold millions of books trying to convince those of us who play the sport to stop dreaming that perfection is just over the next bluff. Of course we know we’re only bluffing ourselves! Nevertheless, when most of us do hit that rare shot that feels and looks perfect, we do more than wonder why we can’t do it with every swing we make.

Golf is a difficult game and I’m sure there will always be those who don’t deal well with its inevitable self inflicted misfortunes. I’ll let the author and humorist P.G. Wodehouse have the final word…

“The only way of really finding out a man’s character is to play golf with him.”

—————–

To Pun Is Human. To Be Forgiven Unlikely!

hu·mor

1. the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech.

A while ago a total stranger said to me, “The world is falling apart.” Despite agreeing with him, I replied, “It appears to be but I hope not.”

Then he told me that there are actually Las Vegas bookies offering odds on when the apocalypse might occur. That was depressing to learn and I asked him if he had placed a wager himself.

No”, he said and added, “I may be a pessimist but I’m not a fool. How would I get paid if I win the bet?”

That’s a joke. Ok, a macabre one that likely didn’t elicit a chuckle— a suppressed chuckle maybe? But I’m betting you didn’t groan. That’s a reflexive response reserved for puns…

pun

1. a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.

For me humor is the best defense against dark thoughts and feelings of doom these days and— if you’ve been reading my stuff up until now —puns and plays on words are often my go to attempt at being humorous.

Admittedly, the response to them is mixed. Some of you might grin and think they’re clever and others will groan and may want to grab a meat cleaver and come after me. So, I’m doing the equivalent of running a red light and here goes an attempt at being historically punny with some cartoons I’m letting out of quarantine…

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

King Solomon’s Mimes

“Sometimes in life, I’m just trying to have a little fun with some wordplay, and the people around me aren’t having it. They’d rather have no pun at all.” —Julie Beck

The Griddle of the Sphinx

“Puns are threatening because puns reveal the arbitrariness of meaning, and the layers of nuance that can be packed onto a single word.” —John Pollack

Geeks Bearing Gifts

“They can be a demonstration of wit, of cleverness. You’re relying on a person’s ability to parse language, to understand all the meanings and complexities of words.” —Peter McGraw

Eat two Brute

“They’re usually deployed by people who know you’ll think the pun is annoying. Which is annoying. … A pun sidetracks you. It’s your friend who won’t let you get anything done.” —Charlie Hopper

Did you make it this far?

Why do so many people grimace and moan when they see or hear a pun? Don’t they realize how little work goes into making them?

I don’t know when or why I began punning but I unabashedly pun and I often get bashed for doing it by those who look upon this type of wordplay as my affliction and their misfortune. I happen to think a lot of it is disguised admiration… OK, I suppose I’m kidding myself.

I think for me punning is almost an involuntary reflex. My mind just goes there. I usually can’t shut it down. I PUN therefore I AM and I suppose I will continue to pun wherever I am. Now, there is a difference between smart puns and dumb puns and maybe it’s like knowing the difference between good wine and cheap wine.

For many of us that requires education and experience plus significant discretionary income. I plead basic ignorance on the oenology front although I bet I could tell the difference between Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck and anything King Chuck and Camilla imbibe.

The source of where humor comes from is actually nothing to laugh about. A legendary professor of mine in film school, a man named Howard Suber, summarized it this way. “Show me a happy comedian and I’ll show you someone on the way down.” Case in point: I read an article that contended that now that Jerry Seinfeld is a billionaire he isn’t funny anymore.

I don’t want to over analyze “funny” but I just looked this up and someone has compiled a list of the nine types of humor they think exist:

1. Physical or slapstick

2. Self-deprecating

3. Surreal or absurd

4. Improvisational

5. Droll or deadpan

6. Observational

7. Potty or bathroom

8. Dark or gallows

9. Puns

So, physical comedy is first and puns are last. Hmmm… You know I actually once had an experience that combined the two. I went to a comedy club in Hollywood where Chevy Chase was scheduled to be doing a standup act.

It was during the time that Gerald Ford was president so I expected Chevy’s standup to also include his falling down. But that night Chevy didn’t show up and another guy came out and replaced him. He was terrible and even worse, he was doing a lot of stupid puns that I thought were debasing the “art”. Yes, I was even starting to groan!

A stranger at the next table heard my complaining that this wasn’t at all what I had come to see. I thought it odd that he flashed a big smile my way as I continued making smug comments. In fact he was glowing when he finally made his own about the performer…

“He ain’t Chevy. He’s my brother.”

Got ya!

Ok, I apologize to those of you who have a paid subscription to The Pawned Accordion and read this piece and maybe wish you hadn’t. To you who read it for free, I offer no apology. You get what you didn’t pay for.

—————–

Has Anyone Offered You Their Seat Yet?

Retirement— When the finish line is a mirage, you’re doing it right!

I’m sure there are those who can point to the precise moment when they realized they were ready to retire. I can.

That moment for me was in the middle of the night sitting in my car parked on a beach in Ventura, California. I was soaking wet and shivering cold. A big storm was hitting the coast. Along with a correspondent and a camera crew, I had been awakened earlier by my ABC News bureau in Los Angeles and sent there.

We had just finished what’s called a “live shot” for Good Morning America. Our correspondent was on the air for less than a minute but all of us had been outside in the storm preparing for it longer than that.

Viewers could see the rain pelting him and the wind rippling his rain gear. They might have heard the waves crashing on the shore as he spoke but he was surrounded by darkness and they couldn’t see them. We didn’t have enough lighting equipment to illuminate the ocean behind him.

Live television for the sake of being live television sometimes requires the viewer’s imagination.

That event took place at 4 a.m. Pacific Coast time and we quickly retired to our respective vehicles. Our night wasn’t over. The four of us wouldn’t be done until the sun came up.

Most legacy television network programs are broadcast in two separate “feeds”. One is transmitted for the Eastern and Central time zones and a second for the Mountain and Pacific. Good Morning America begins at 7 a.m. in New York but is rebroadcast three hours later when it’s 7 a.m. in Los Angeles and when necessary, it’s updated.

You may have figured out that the reason I was sitting in my car dripping wet and chilled to the bone was that we had another live shot to do for the western part of the country three hours after our first one.

At 7 a.m. on the West Coast, we wouldn’t need our lights to show the ocean and if we didn’t do the repeat performance and our new viewers saw that it was dark, they would know we weren’t “live”. To be fair, perhaps there would have been some actual real news that had occurred in the interim and needed to be reported.

The three hours passed slowly and my career flashed before my eyes. I realized the much younger me might have been uncomfortable and unhappy but the present and older me was feeling sorry for himself and realizing he had had enough of these bad weather, natural disaster, mass murder assignments to, as they say, last a lifetime.

Jo and I bought our house in Maine in 2009. There was less than two years left on my contract at ABC News and I was sure I wasn’t going to be offered another one. I would have turned 64 in 2011 and those with desk jobs in the news business may have longer careers but I was already ancient for a “field producer” or someone who actually leaves the building and finds or goes to cover stories wherever they are.

I’ve had more than my share of lucky breaks so far in my life and retiring a year ahead of schedule turned out to be one of them. In 2010 ABC News cut 25% of its staff and offered just about everybody a buyout to leave. In July of that year I left with a check that was essentially the salary I would have earned if I had worked to the end of my contract.

I’d say I’ve never looked back but that would give away the rest of what I have to say and the very fact that you’re reading this is worth an explanation for how I think retirement has evolved for me.

At first I just enjoyed the change. No more early morning phone calls to get on a plane. No more adrenaline rushes after being told I had just a few hours to produce a story that I knew nothing about, had no video for and no interviews set up. That was exciting but I don’t miss it.

But no more finding a “gee whiz” story like the one about a lightbulb in a firehouse in California that had been burning for over a century (and still is) and having fun doing it. I do miss that.

And no more being able to work with talented people who helped me turn an idea of mine into the best possible story I could have hoped for. I miss that the most but I had a great career and can truly say thanks for the memories!

Shortly after we arrived in Maine I volunteered with a local organization and discovered when you actually do what you say you’re going to do, you get asked to do more and in no time you’re going to be the organization’s leader. I felt I was contributing to my new community and making friends. And on top of that I lived in a great place.

But I was meeting other men who were not yet retired and wanted to know what to expect and I thought I knew…

“Well,” I’d say, “Retirement is like summer camp but with a couple of nice differences. First, when they blow Reveille, you don’t have to jump out of bed in the morning. You can sleep in.”

And I’d add, “And when you’re in the middle of pitching a no-hitter. You’re not going to be told baseball time is over and you have to go make an ashtray for your parents.”

I thought I was giving helpful upbeat advice about what retirement was like but more than once I got blank stares of bewilderment.

Yes, I had missed the point. There were people who loved their jobs. Their careers were a huge part of their identity. Unlike me they hadn’t yet had that moment when they thought, “I’m just too old to be doing this!” And perhaps they never would.

I realized my comparisons to summer camp were more confusing than constructive. So I changed my approach and instead asked a question…

Me: “Do you still love what you do?”

Apprehensive Retiree: “Yes.”

And then I asked another…

Me: “Can you still do it?”

Apprehensive Retiree: “Yes.”

And at this point I felt I could impart my new take on retirement advice and said: “Then why retire?”

Recently, I went to see the documentary The Last Class. It’s about former Labor Secretary and UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich retiring from teaching. Reich has been for a long time one of the fiercest critics of what he believes is top-of-the-list wrong with America— income inequality created by a myriad of actions and policies as well as technological change that have created enormous wealth for the few while an ever growing number of their fellow Americans struggle to afford a minimal quality of life. Reich has been as loud as any critic of Donald Trump’s presidencies.

But for me the documentary wasn’t only about Reich’s politics or teaching his last class. It was also about his confronting something larger. It was one man’s dealing with his passage to a new stage of life that he knows is the final one.

Bob Reich was one year ahead of me at Dartmouth and I still consider him to be one of the more charismatic persons I have ever met. I don’t claim to know him well but I joined the college fraternity he belonged to because he convinced me I should.

Bob barely had time to “fraternize” with us. At our college he headed student government, was selected to be one of the few students in his class who pursued their own independent studies, acted in plays put on by the theater department and played the piano quite well. I doubt that’s even the complete list although he does owe me $100 for losing a bet that I’m sure he doesn’t remember making. After graduation Reich was part of a Time cover story that profiled what the magazine called “The Cynical Idealists of ‘68.

Another member of our fraternity from that time wrote this after seeing The Last Class…

“I saw a vulnerable Bob Reich with tears in his eyes, something I never would have imagined as a freshman when he was a BMOC (Big Man On Campus) senior in 1967-68. At the end, I could have used a hankie myself.”

Robert Reich may no longer mount a stage this fall in an auditorium full of hundreds of students but he is not done teaching, reaching nor seeking an audience. He posts constantly on his eponymous Substack which has over a million subscribers and this month published a memoir. He is still commanding attention and respect in a giant classroom and he is now his own department chair.

I had a dream a while ago that unlike most of my dreams made sense.

I was back in the ABC News bureau in Los Angeles. It was empty except for me. I was sitting in an edit room putting together a story by myself that I had produced, written and was completing alone. I wouldn’t have to send it to New York so people there could tell me to add this or cut that. I was free to create what I wanted.

And that’s what I’m doing right now in a bedroom in Maine that’s my “work space”. I’ll give what I’ve written here to Jo to read. She’s become my only editor and told me years ago that I’ve essentially recreated my office at ABC News in our house. I even have two bulletin boards surrounding me that I had on the wall in LA full of layers of stuff that represents my life and career in thumbtacked mementoes. I’m now adding more to them.

Unlike Bob Reich, it took me a decade to get started sharing my stories and creating my cartoons. It took me that long to truly understand that my so-called retirement was merely the end of one chapter of my life and an opportunity to literally write another, albeit with an awareness of the “use-by” date warning that is affixed to it.

I think the final guidance I can offer to others retiring is this. The skills and experience you have gained throughout your career are still going to be there for you to use and to share if you want. I have been writing and producing stories for much of my life and I can still do it! May you all be as lucky.

And here’s a little poem of mine that I hope is motivation…

And if you offer me your seat, I have nothing to lose

I can take it or not, whatever I choose

I accept that I’m old and may look it to you

Ah, but how young I feel in my head you don’t have a clue

—————–

Is It Just Me Or Is There A Pattern Here?

Of course there is or are you blinded by the right!

January 27 — President Donald Trump fires the Chairwoman of the National Labor Relations Board Gwynne Wilcox. She received a midnight email from the White House saying she was dismissed, effective immediately. No cause was cited, but senior officials later disclosed that Wilcox had been removed because she had “publicly championed diversity, equity and inclusion”, values the current administration deemed incompatible with its agenda. Her dismissal is being contested in court.

February 21 —President Donald Trump fires Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a campaign led by his defense secretary Pete Hegseth to cleanse the military of leaders who support diversity and equity.

May 8 —President Donald Trump fires Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in a two sentence email. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claims Hayden “did not fit the needs of the American people”, plus Leavitt cites concerns about Hayden’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

August 22 — President Donald Trump says he will fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook if she does not resign from her position. Cook has come under fire from the Trump administration over allegations of mortgage fraud. At this point there is little factual information in the public record about what actually transpired.

August 19 — President Donald Trump, after declaring the Smithsonian was “OUT OF CONTROL”, threatens museums across the United States…

“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE”.

If you haven’t noticed or figured it out yet, there is a disassembling of the America most of us believed we lived in underway and happening in many areas. We are a polarized nation being further separated by an administration that is unabashedly acting like an authoritarian regime that would joyfully do without allowing any future elections if it can.

Call what is taking place daily whatever you want but I’m infuriated and depressed by those of us who just want to keep their heads down and hope everyone else except them will be in the ever expanding line of fire. I think it’s a toss up that we’ll even have a presidential election in 2028. If we have one, will those with their heads down now even show up to vote?

And by then will the National Museum of African American History and Culture have an exhibit on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”. Doubtless, it will include a recorded recorded message from Ron DeSantis who in 2023 defended a change in Florida’s public school curriculum standards with the words I’ve quoted above after his state’s “academic experts” required teaching that some slaves’ lives were enhanced by their enslavement.

Maybe a nice touch as well would be to have“Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” playing in the background throughout visitors’ tours of the museum.

——————

School Bells Ringing, Children Singing...

Can you finish the rest of the jingle I’ve started with this post’s title? If you can, you are my age and grew up watching TV in the 1950s. If you can’t, I’ll keep you in suspense until after you’ve read on.

We are still three weeks away from the autumn equinox and the astronomical (as in astronomy) end of summer but for me tomorrow is not one I looked forward to when I was a kid because it was my end of summer. The day after Labor Day meant going back to school.

As you can see, my first grade class in 1953 was a lot for one teacher to handle as was our country’s baby boom after World War II. The township school district where I grew up in Pennsylvania raced to construct additional schools to make room for us.

While this happened, I was in one old school building for first and second grade, another for third and fourth and still another for fifth and sixth. In seventh, my class was the first in a brand new facility that had a multipurpose space serving as the auditorium, gym and cafeteria. At one point during the year, its cafetorium gym floor warped and buckled which made the basketball court full of crazy bounces and some of the steps we learned in the after school dance class lessons— I was taking involuntarily —the bunny hop.

But back to first grade where I got off to an unfortunate start. Shortly after my first day began, I was sent to sit in a corner while I waited for my mother to come take me home. No, I hadn’t misbehaved. That would come years later in eighth grade when I got into trouble for expressing my disgust with our cafeteria food by spelling an obscenity with raisins on top of a piece of ham.

I wasn’t in the corner for my conduct but my teacher deemed my presence as contagious to the class. I was sent home after Miss Heckman suspected I had pink eye.

In 1954 and, now in second grade, my mother showed up at my school again and this time it meant that I was to receive special treatment I hadn’t asked for nor wanted. I don’t remember what my mother’s role was with our local March of Dimes but I knew she was involved. She pulled me out of the line of my classmates on the day we were waiting to get injected with the Salk polio vaccine.

“You’re going first to show the others there is nothing to be afraid of,” she said. And so I was. We were the first school in our county to be innoculated.

My other memories of second grade were of two clandestine show and tells. One boy brought in a jar that contained his removed appendix and a girl showed us photographs her father had taken during World War II. Our teacher caught the boy but permitted us to see his floating appendix but if she had known about the pictures, I’m sure she would have been alarmed and immediately have called the girl’s parents.

The photos were taken in Italy and showed Benito Mussolini and his mistress after they had already been executed and their bodies brought to Milan where they were hung from a post upside down. I guess it’s not surprising that I would remember this.

On to 1955 and third grade and another cafeteria incident when Larry Yoder discovered a nail in his chicken pot pie. At least it wasn’t rusty but I swore off eating pot pie for decades. I still remember the name of our music instructor. Mrs. Wolfskill taught us a song that began “Trees are gold ripe, chestnuts are falling.” I have no recollection of what the next line was and if you do, please let me know.

The teacher for most everything else in third grade didn’t like me and I didn’t like her but I don’t recall which of us didn’t like the other first.

But I remember another teacher at our school displaying a childlike giddiness on a fall afternoon of that year. It was during recess when Miss Rahn ran out to the baseball diamond and mid game announced that the Brooklyn Dodgers had finally won the World Series after previously failing in seven other tries. I was happy too and I liked Miss Rahn.

It’s now 69 years since I had Edith Nye as my fourth grade teacher and I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t feel as lucky as I do that we did. The elementary school where she taught had four classrooms— one each for first through fourth grade. Mrs. Nye was also the principal.

Years later I thought about what she might have chosen as a career once doors finally swung open for women to be doctors or lawyers, executives or governors. I guess the easiest way to describe Edith Nye is that I believe she could have had her choice at being anything if more choices had been available for women then. When she talked, you listened and when you talked, she listened. Mrs. Nye was a remarkable teacher.

Although all of us who remember Mrs. Nye remember her with reverence when I googled, I could find nothing at all about her— not an obituary nor a single mention. On the internet she apparently does not exist.

Edith Nye lived when shoe boxes in attics contained the letters and photographs that were often the only physical evidence of one’s having been alive after they were gone. Without those what does live on are the memories others have and share of a person. For Mrs. Nye the number of us with those memories is diminishing. I get periodic emails from one of my classmates informing me of who among us has passed away.

I couldn’t find a picture of our school building either. It had a distinguishing exterior feature. The fire escapes from both floors of the two story structure were enclosed tubes that you entered feet first on your backside through a small door in the wall of the classroom and slid down to an adult who caught you as your shoes hit the ground.

We looked forward to fire drills. I wonder if kids do now? Our times and their times are so different. Their schools now have “active shooter drills” which I think I would have found terrifying.

Growing up in the United States in the 1950s led me to believe that the life I was experiencing was normal. Now, the 50s seem to me to have been more like an iceberg drifting through history between the Korean and the Vietnam wars.

As a kid back then, I was seeing only that small percentage of what was visible of America on its surface. In my neighborhood of identical postwar houses life was idyllic. It was baseball games with no parents around. It was “Just be home for dinner.” It was a commercial for a clothing store chain with Les Paul and Mary Ford singing “It’s back to Robert Hall again.”

School bells ringing, children singing

My formal education ended decades ago but I’ve been a lifelong learner and one advantage of having had a career in journalism is that I had to be. I’ve learned a little about a lot of things and certainly much about that part of the American iceberg that was so submerged for me when I was growing up. Not all of us didn’t ever worry about our next meal while eating dinner in front of the television laughing at sitcoms.

My fond memories are not shared by everyone— not nearly everyone. It took until fifth grade to grasp that they were kids in my class that didn’t a have a TV or even running water at home. And that was also the year I was called a “dirty Jew” for the first time.

I learned that not all families were white like Ozzie and Harriet’s or nuclear with two parents and two kids where the father went off to work— although Ozzie Nelson was a glaring exception —and the mother stayed home and spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I didn’t see a black kid at my school until the seventh grade and I never met a Latino nor an Asian student until I was in high school.

Only women were my teachers until junior high which was when we began to have separate instructors for different subjects. Mr. Reindel taught us science and Mr. Clevenger taught us math. Is it my imagination or were science and math subjects almost always taught by men in those days?

One day as we entered his class, Mr. Reindel was sitting at his desk focused silently on a piece of clay he was manipulating in his hands. This went on for a while until, without looking up from what he was doing, he said…

“If I succeed in shaping this clay into a perfect cube, the world will end.”

In 2015 I went to my 50th high school reunion. I had seen very few of my classmates in the intervening half century and was shocked that I failed to recognize many of them. The girls all looked shorter than I recalled. The boys, like me, were wider. I embarrassed Carol Crump when I told her she was my first crush.

Mr. Reindel was there and he remembered me but as a basketball player and not a student. I was flattered but as we talked, it slipped my mind to ask him if he was any closer to shaping a lump of clay into a perfect cube and if he thought the world might still end before he accomplished it. I didn’t worry about that in seventh grade. I do now.

Here in Maine our two grandchildren go back to school tomorrow— one to fourth grade and the other to eighth. When I asked Nate and Harvey a few weeks ago if they were looking forward to returning, they replied that they were not and Harvey added he didn’t even want to talk about it.

In my life where I have seen more change in more ways than I could have ever imagined, I guess I should take some comfort from Nate and Harvey in knowing that there still are some things that haven’t changed at all.

—————–

Yes, They Said That!

The no good, the real bad and the incredibly ugly

Donald Trump said this to reporters on Tuesday, February 19, 2025 after an Oval Office meeting with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Fact: One week later former Vice-President Mike Pence posted on X… “Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion.”

Robert Kennedy Jr. said this to Lex Friedman on Friedman’s podcast — #388 — two years ago.

Fact: Statement posted on the Centers for Disease Control website in August of 2024… Currently, the United States has the safest vaccine supply in its history. Millions of children safely receive vaccines each year. The most common side effects are very mild, such as pain or swelling at the injection site.

Allegedly said by Stephen Miller during the first Trump presidency to White House communications aide Cliff Sims. At the time neither the White House nor Miller would comment on Sim’s allegation.

Fact: Miller’s uncle David Glosser described how Miller’s own family came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century as refugees fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms and persecution in the Russian Empire… “I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.”

The list of others in Trump’s administration with disturbing and dangerous views and ambitions is frightening. To serve this president requires one to be servile and unethical. The further tragedy that is playing out daily in our country is in Congress where Democrats are neither united nor effective in opposing what is happening and those Republicans who realize the damage being done lack the courage to stop it from continuing.

When should it need to take unity and courage to put out a house on fire?

---

Once Upon A Burning Mattress

This is perhaps a stretch but I think the Napoleon pastry— known as a mille-feuille in France which means literally “a thousand sheets” —looks like an edible mattress. And let me stretch even further and connect the cartoon above to the subject of this post— sleep.

Ok, the emperor doesn’t look very comfortable on top of a dessert. But here’s another representation of how Napoleon might have caught 40 winks during one of the 60 battles his armies fought.

It has become part of his legend that Napoleon functioned on very little sleep. Historians contend that he only needed four hours a day but an alleged quote of Napoleon’s seems to contradict this. How much sleep did he actually think was necessary?

“Six hours for a man, seven for a woman and eight for a fool.”

Donald Trump, who may think he’s Napoleon, claims he only sleeps four hours a night. Of course he could be lying and has somebody else tweeting for him around the clock to make it appear that he’s awake when he isn’t.

Remember he cheats at golf and anything else he possibly can. However, it wouldn’t be surprising that in this instance it isn’t fake snooze and against all odds he may actually be telling the truth. There have been other world leaders who were nearly sleepless in their saddles including Margaret Thatcher and Bill Clinton.

But then there’s also Albert Einstein, who slept 10 hours at night and took a nap in the afternoon. So, I guess when one theorizes about equating sleep with energy, there’s a certain amount of relativity involved.

Take Benjamin Franklin. He was the human version of the Swiss Army Knife before there was a Swiss Army Knife. Franklin, who we have been led to believe packed it in early and rose with the sun retired nightly at 10 p.m.— which isn’t all that early to bed —but he did get up 7 hours later at 5 a.m. and in Pennsylvania that’s before sunrise on every day of the year.

Ben followed two other bits of his famous advice and fulfilled the healthy and wealthy parts. Franklin lived to be 84 and in 18th century dollars died a multimillionaire. But there was perhaps another explanation for his tireless vigor.

He, as well as Thomas Jefferson, was a big coffee drinker. How big? Franklin spent almost three decades of his life in England and France and while there he had his personal mail delivered to coffee houses.

And there is another claim that I’ve checked out and discovered is true. Most of us do spend a third of our existence in bed. The time we spend working in our careers pales in comparison.

During my various jobs from age 22 to 63, I put in a lot of overtime hours. Even with them and after subtracting days off, vacation and commuting to and from work, the figure I came up with is about 14 years of actual time that I worked— almost a third of the total hours I lived during that span of 42 years.

Add an equal third that was me not working and the other third of me asleep and we’ve pretty much accounted for how I spent all my summers, falls, winters and springs for much of my time on earth before I retired.

Sleeping for a third of your life seems like a large number and if I live to be 80, I will likely have spent 33 years in bed— 26 of them actually asleep and perhaps another 7 lying there intending to.

The information I used for my calculations was gathered by a British organization called the Sleep Matters Club. It claimed it used 15 sources to create its data which its researchers accomplished in their waking hours of course.

So, what’s the most important thing in my house besides my wife? It’s a no brainer. It’s our mattress! We didn’t mess around when we bought it. We went to a store with a big selection of those we could try out and we picked a winner.

Last year after more than two decades we bought a new one after again reclining and declining until we found our suitable replacement.

Remember the tag on a mattress that warned that its removal was forbidden and punishable by law? Not taking any chances, many of us wouldn’t touch it and anytime we changed the sheets we were reminded that we hadn’t.

Turns out we could have ripped it off. The warning was for the seller and the protection of the consumer.

Once long ago, I and some friends settled for mattresses that never had tags to begin with. I was living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Friends and I had signed on to share an apartment together soon after graduating from college. We each brought our own stuff but two items none of us had were a bed frame and a mattress.

The landlord noticed this and said he had a landlord friend who just so happened to want to dispose of four beds with mattresses. The building was nearby and we found out it was owned by television game show host Gene Rayburn (Remember Match Game?)

One look at what we were being offered and it was apparent why Rayburn wanted to get rid of the mattresses. They were stuffed with straw. I had never seen one before. I had no idea straw mattresses even still existed except possibly in recreations of the bedrooms of colonial homes at a tourist attraction like Old Sturbridge Village.

Hey, we were pretty desperate so we hauled them back to our place and for a few months all was well.

We did our laundry at a laundromat around the corner on Columbus Avenue and a few times I found that my clothes were so hot out of the dryers there I had to juggle them on my way back to our apartment. My roommates were experiencing the same thing.

One night I was returning from playing basketball at a nearby Y and as I rounded the corner from Amsterdam Avenue onto our street, I saw fire trucks in the distance. I started to run when it became clear they were outside our brownstone and arrived just in time to see a couple of firemen dragging a smoking wet mattress out the front door.

It only took another moment to figure out what had happened when another fireman brought out a pile of burnt clothing.

One of us had returned from the laundromat earlier that evening and thrown his hot load of clothes on his bed. He’d gone out right afterward and no incendiary device other than his socks and underwear was needed for his mattress to smolder and eventually ignite.

The smoke damage was extensive. My own clothes went through the dry cleaner’s four times. For years afterward the books and records I had on the shelves smelled like they’d been cured in a smokehouse.

Upon recalling this now, I wonder if Gene Rayburn ever found out that his mattresses could have been the inspiration for a new version of Match Game that didn’t require any matches at all.

And Napoleon’s mattress? It’s doubtful he ever slept on one stuffed with straw. He was on the march quite a lot and desired the utmost comfort when he took his short breaks from warring for napping. His mattress was likely the most elegant of that time and made of some type of woven fabric.

About the only straw mattress for sale now that I could find is in the picture below. It’s less than two feet long and was made for a Victorian era doll.

There are YouTube videos if you want to make a regulation straw mattress of your own. Home Depot sells a bale of straw for $34.98 plus shipping. If you want a king— but likely not fit for one —you might need two bales.

And to go with your new/old mattress how about a pillow guaranteed not to be inflammable but also surely to give you a headache. Turns out that the earliest pillows can be traced to about 9,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.

Those pillows apparently served a practical purpose by keeping bugs and vermin out of the mouths, eyes, and noses of the wealthy. In order to be effective at doing that, they weren’t made of straw. They were solid stone… Pleasant dreams!

—————–

A Mild Moose Chase

We moved to Maine 15 years ago. Our marriage was conditional on our doing so when we retired. In fact after committing to Jo’s stipulation, I bought her a T-shirt that precisely stated her motivation. Emblazoned on it were the words Born In Maine, Living In Exile. I didn’t even have to ask for it to be custom made. Is there another state that has its own off the shelf products that express such a longing to return home?

If you ask people who don’t live here what they think of first when they think of Maine, my guess is lobster. Of course it might also be lighthouses, L.L. Bean or even Stephen King.

For me it’s none of the above. I’m “from away” which means, unlike my wife who was born in Maine, I can’t claim the birthright credential. I’ll be from away forever. However, I do believe I have a plausible workaround for upgrading my outsider status.

This place has one of the better state slogans. It’s Maine: The Way Life Should Be and that sums up how I feel about living here and what I think of when I think of Maine. It has been that way pretty much from the time we arrived in 2010. Call it my state of mind about this state. It encompasses Maine’s beauty, the friends I’ve made, the abundance of things I’ve found to do and enjoy.

When all around us the world is falling apart, Maine hasn’t and while my blood pressure may be a little high, my stress level isn’t. Even Maine’s weather is tolerable with its winter we endure to appreciate the summer and fall we enjoy for getting through it.

So, here is my perhaps wistful claim to identify as a Mainer. If it’s become my state of mind, it’s a state of mine! I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. However, there is one Maine experience I still long to have. I haven’t seen a moose.

We live in Camden, a short walk from the town center and not far from the ocean. Our house is surrounded by trees and just the other day I pulled up the driveway and startled three fawns who bolted into the woods behind us. Deer consider our hostas their salad bar.

I’ve seen coyotes and fox in the backyard, squirrels hold races on the top of our fence while crows caw them on from the treetops. But a moose? The only moose I’ve seen so far are on road signs that show their silhouettes and the warning MOOSE XING.

At this point I’m beginning to think I have about as good a chance to win the lottery as the likelihood I’ll see a moose (bad comparison since you need to at least buy tickets and I don’t). Maybe the closest thing to seeing one could be rewatching a Star Wars movie…

Actually, my best opportunities were probably in the past. For a few summers as a teenager I went to camp in Maine. I canoed the Allagash river and climbed Mt. Katahdin but there were no encounters of the moose kind for me. Last week it was at the foot of Katahdin I thought I finally might get lucky.

Jo is a board member of an organization that had a retreat near the Maine town of Millinocket and spouses were invited. It was my opportunity to go Moose “hunting”. After lunch at the local Chinese restaurant— in keeping with the spirit of this place, I ordered Lo Mein —I stopped at the headquarters for Baxter State Park and, announcing my mission, was handed a map and given tips on where to look.

Ok, I’ve embellished the map a bit…

I drove into the Park and per the instructions set out along Roaring Brook. I walked with my eyes peeled but after a fruitless search I sat down on a rock and peeled an orange so scratch the fruitless. As I listened to the sound of the flowing water, I was reminded of a moment in my career in television news. Thirty years ago ABC News decided it wanted to compete on Sunday mornings and start its own program up against a well established one on CBS. That broadcast— CBS News Sunday Morning —has now been on the air for nearly half a century and was hosted for many years by Charles Kuralt.

Sunday Morning had a signature feature then and still does today. At the end of the broadcast there are a few moments of scenes of the outdoors— bumble bees buzzing and pollinating flowers, a breeze rustling wheat stalks in a field. There is no narration by a reporter, just pictures and sounds of nature doing its thing entirely devoid of us.

ABC News wanted its version to be different and one of the execs from New York flew out to my bureau in Los Angeles to tell us how we should contribute to the new launch. As an admirer of Sunday Morning and one who, as often as possible, produced the type of stories it aired, my head dropped and my body slumped when Paul said this…

“We don’t want our broadcast to imitate Sunday Morning. There will be no artsy fartsy babbling brooks!”

At the time I hadn’t done a story featuring a babbling brook but had produced others about waterfalls in Yosemite, the tree rings of giant sequoias, endangered California condors and edible wild mushrooms. My ego was large enough to think I was being singled out.

Sitting there on a rock last week, I recalled this and as far as I know, ABC News’ version of Sunday Morning may never have ventured near a babbling brook to this day. I’m not a Shakespeare scholar but just now I found this sentiment of his…

“The earth has music for those who listen.”

Wherever you are Paul, no hard feelings, but I hope you might get to listen to this “music” that I recorded when I thought of you…

Artsy fartsy Babbling Brook…

Oh, and of course I didn’t spot hide nor horns— or is it ass nor antlers —of a moose but I did get a shot of a beautiful sunset across Millinocket Lake…

—————–

Late Night TV Isn’t Funny Anymore

As Donald Trump’s administration’s outrageous actions pile up, this latest one— his threat to take away television network broadcasters’ licenses if the comedian hosts of their late night programs criticize him —might have had nearly every member of Congress opposed to such an abuse of presidential power in the not so distant past. But what’s happening in the country today has made the past seem a lot more distant than chronological time would normally feel.

Will Trump’s declaring that he will be the arbiter of what is said about him by the networks expand to include newspapers and online media? Might it finally be the red line that will shock even some of his supporters to stand on principle?

Ask somebody where the lowest point on earth is and they might tell you it’s the Dead Sea at 1,412 feet below sea level. It is but only if you are considering a location on dry land. The lowest point on our planet is the Mariana Trench which is 35,876 feet under the Pacific Ocean’s surface. I’d contend that the United States sank further than the depth of the Dead Sea on January 6, 2021 and is heading toward the wreckage of the Titanic which rests 12,500 feet down in the Atlantic. If we fall to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, you can bet I won’t be allowed to write what I think anymore and neither will you.

Yes, I know there has been bullying of speakers on college campuses and particularly ones with conservative views. I don’t excuse that. I also don’t excuse the bullying by others of local government officials and school board members at their public meetings.

Being free to speak or write is one of the basic, important and most cherished rights that Americans have. Sure, there are limits and reasonable people adhere to them. Intimidation of a television network for what might be said about you by a comedian in a monologue is so not close to screaming fire in a crowded theater that my head hurts thinking about it.

Yes, what can be said or written about someone can be hurtful and even unfair and libel laws exist to protect individuals when that speech is false and has caused harm. Case in point: Dominion Voting Systems had accused the Fox News Network of spreading false conspiracy theories about its voting machines’ role in the 2020 presidential election. In 2023 Fox settled and paid damages of $787.5 million just as the trial was set to begin.

And Donald Trump is certainly no stranger to libel lawsuits. His most recent filing was just this week seeking $15 billion from the New York Times for a litany of self perceived acts of malice in the Times coverage of him. A leading first amendment lawyer termed the suit “ridiculous as a matter of law but extraordinarily dangerous as a matter of national policy.” Already today a Republican appointed federal judge dismissed the suit writing that it was “improper and impermissible.” Trump will undoubtedly refile.

And there we are for Trump’s further attempts at bending and ignoring the law just this week and the week isn’t over yet. What’s next? I think we know and it’s more of the same and insane. We can’t let ourselves be merely despondent or numb to this.

It was my sister-in-law Lynn’s birthday yesterday and she had a thought… “What if there was a march on Washington and the living ex presidents led it?” I think it’s a great idea but would they be willing to do it? I would go and join them if they have the courage to. Would you?

What would George Washington say about the presidency of Donald Trump today? I think he would repeat what he already said in in 1783 speaking to a group of Military officers…

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” — George Washington

—————–

The Pawned Accordion’s

Fifth Birthday Polka Party

It may be April Fools’ but it’s no joke. Today is the fifth year anniversary of my cartooning and John Candy’s Kenosha Kickers have graciously allowed me to join the band to celebrate. I sure miss the guy.

Last summer I moved my cartoons and commentary from e-mails to a Substack I call The Pawned Accordion. Now, I have a following and appreciate all of you who are subscribers and gratefully thank those who have become paid subscribers.

If you like what I do, please tell your friends about The Pawned Accordion by forwarding this or any other post of mine to them. They can simply click on the Subscribe Now button and that’s all there is to it. They’ll be able to easily get onboard…

Subscribe now

I created my first cartoon on April 1, 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was it below…

Today, I’m republishing a number of my early efforts from when COVID changed our lives…

Suddenly, things we took for granted became inaccessible and even unobtainable…

I felt lucky to quickly have found a way to be busy while stuck at home washing my hands constantly as well as anything else that entered our house…

I didn’t know how long I’d be doing it but for 365 straight days I emailed friends cartoons and added commentary and stories to go with many of them…

Eventually, word spread and I was sending out a couple hundred emails with my daily offerings…

Since 2020 I have created and published over 700 cartoons and I can’t even draw…

The pandemic was a tragedy that instead of uniting the country, divided us further…

Maybe I was being too lighthearted during COVID but as a far more accomplished cartoonist than I once had his beloved beagle tell Charlie Brown, “Every time you are able to find some humor in a difficult situation you win.”

These days, Snoopy’s concept of winning is an increasingly tough one to accept but we must all try to do it. My feelings about what’s happening in our country are sometimes my subject manner, so often my heart is anything but light when I sit down in front of my computer…

I’m still dedicated to what I began five years ago and no longer have a self-imposed daily deadline…

But as Jo reminds me, now that The Pawned Accordion is earning money, I have an actual job and a responsibility to keep publishing my stories, my observations and my thoughts. And I plan to!

And would you believe that Bob Dylan did a polka number? Here it is… Ah-one, ah-two…

Must Be Santa

---

Somebody Just Got Badgered!

On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line
Run the ball clear down the field, boys
Touchdown sure this time!
On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight, fellows! Fight, fight, fight!
We’ll win this game!

A few years ago Sports Illustrated, which barely still exists, ranked the best college football fight songs. On Wisconsin came in fifth according to S.I. behind the songs of Notre Dame, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Michigan.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

Well, this morning, On Wisconsin (lyrics provided above) is a welcome “earworm” I can’t get out of my head. Susan Crawford who was endorsed by the Democratic Party won the Supreme Court race there against her opponent who was heavily backed and financed by Elon Musk. And if you were not aware, Musk actually gave two Wisconsin voters a million dollars apiece last week. I hope they already managed to cash their checks.

I don’t know much about Wisconsin. I remember their senator William Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Awards which he bestowed on government officials who he thought squandered public money. I remember the Milwaukee Braves— Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn… The team moved and is now in Atlanta. I remember Milwaukee beers— Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life… All have been acquired by other companies and are no longer headquartered in Wisconsin.

Time marches on! But until today I confess that for Jo and me Wisconsin “We hardly knew you!” Please read on…

In 2010 Jo and I drove across the upper tier of the United States when we moved to Maine from California. We took our time to wander for 23 days through 14 states and one Canadian province and drove a total of 5,365 miles. I wrote daily dispatches which I emailed to friends— Yes, I was a blogger before I knew what that was. I called my travel log— if I may claim — presciently “Whose America is It Anyway?” I retrieved it today and noticed that in its entirety it totals just under 20,000 words.

Below is the short entry that covers our short time in Wisconsin…

Thursday, August 12, 2010

A day of crossings for us. This morning it was over the Mississippi River from Minnesota, and late this afternoon we reached Michigan and the Eastern Time Zone. In between we crossed off Wisconsin, perhaps unfairly, as a state we devoted just enough time to for hustling across its belly.

There were stretches of the Dairy State where Jo felt she could have been in Maine and there were others where it looked like the part of Pennsylvania where I grew up. I was checking the countryside for cows and surprisingly, saw very few. I have a soft spot for cows since I milked them for years on the kibbutz where I lived in the 1970s and got to know many personally.

Cows are woefully, no make that udderly in need of union representation since theirs is indeed a life of indentured— no, make that only partially dentured servitude. Sorry, for that one. Actually, I’m not! Although cows have 32 teeth just like humans, nearly all of a cow’s teeth are on the bottom of its mouth and since a cow has no upper front teeth it can’t bite you. Other than providing the basic ingredient that made Ben and Jerry rich, cows get to do three things— eat, shit and sleep. Oh, make that four— they get milked and on the kibbutz it was three times a day.

If you are searching for evidence that there is a God, I believe cows may be a place to start. The Almighty lobotomized the species so they can endure such a monotonous existence. Cows appear and act like they’re dumb but perhaps they have rich inner lives. They’re not as dumb as poultry, which is nothing to crow about, but cows are like the guy who worked his entire life in an unappreciated menial job, retired with his gold watch and dropped dead the next week. Fortunately, we don’t recycle ourselves as hot dogs.

We did have a dandy dairy experience in Wausau, WI though when we stopped for lunch at a restaurant there. First thing I noticed was that Jo was the only woman in the place who didn’t have white hair. Then our waitress told us our hamburgers could come with cheese curds. Neither Jo nor I had ever heard of cheese curds and although the cheese part was enticing, the curds part made me think of Iraq. We both opted for them although Jo wisely had hers on the side.

So, what’s a cheese curd? Seems to me it’s like a piece of unfinished business down at the processing plant. You know those orange cheese twists? Cheese curds look like that on the outside but when you bite into one, the melted cheese inside it stays attached like a kite string from your mouth back to your plate.

Jo offered me her curds but I said, “If I ate your curds, I’d have to weigh myself immediately.” Jo is a good sport to put up with such constant punishment, wouldn’t you say? And so are you!

Update: Wisconsin, your cheese curds might be squishy but thanks for showing the rest of the country that your backbone is not!

—————–

---

Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned…

Trump plays golf… but you knew that.

Trump Golf Tracker

Days in Office: 74 (since 1/20/25)

Days Spent Golfing (19)

Time Spent Golfing (26% of his presidency so far)

Trump’s golf has cost U.S. taxpayers over $26,000,000 so far.

Trump visited a Trump Organization property on 428 of the 1,461 days (30%) of his first presidential term and is estimated to have played 261 rounds of golf, one every 5.6 days.

Trump is well on his way to surpassing the cost of his golf during those four years.

—————–

The Shape Of Things To Come

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” —H.G. Wells

Last December I was driving our 2008 Volvo station wagon home when suddenly the steering wheel became difficult to move. By the time I was a short distance from turning into our driveway, I didn’t think I’d be able to make the maneuver but I succeeded after a bit of a workout. The power steering had failed.

That turned out to be a lucky break.

The 16 year old Volvo wasn’t likely to pass its next inspection anyway. Too many Maine winters or more precisely, too many salted Maine roads had rusted out its undercarriage. So, instead of hoping to get by a few more months without our feet breaking through the floorboard, we were suddenly in the market for a new car last December.

We bought the Toyota RAV4 like in the cartoon above and if we were to purchase it after dealers’ existing inventory is predicted to run out in a few weeks, we would be paying over $9,000 more.

As I said it was a lucky break.

I’ve just started reading Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life and reached the chapter on Winston Churchill’s election to Parliament as a Conservative in 1900. Four years later Churchill had a falling out with his party’s leadership and switched his affiliation to the Liberals. The overriding reason for his decision appears to have been his opposition to tariffs and the protectionist policies the Conservatives were seeking to enact. He called tariffs an “economic absurdity.” Churchill was an ardent supporter of free trade and made his position on tariffs— well, as clear as a star filled sky…

“It would seem to me a fantastic policy to endeavour to shut the British Empire up in a ringed fence… Why should Britain deny itself the good and varied merchandise which the varied traffic of the world offers… The planet is not a very big one compared with the other celestial bodies, and I see no particular reason we should endeavour to make inside our planet a smaller planet called the British Empire cut off from impossible space from everything else.”

There is another quote of Churchill’s that I believe broadly describes the actions of Donald Trump’s administration that are challenging so many Americans in all walks of life these days. In a speech on January 20, 1940 that was broadcast on the BBC, Churchill discussed why countries which had remained neutral while appeasing Germany in the ongoing war were making a foolish bargain…

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured.”

On the first day of his second term Donald Trump placed a bust of Winston Churchill back in the Oval Office to where it was prominently displayed during his first term.

What does Trump have in common with Churchill? Two things. Both were and are not known to have been or be healthy eaters— Churchill fancied champagne and oysters while Trump is big on Diet Coke, McDonalds and KFC.

Both had bunkers. I’ve been to Churchill’s in London. Today, it’s called the Churchill War Rooms and during WWII the Nazis did their utmost to bomb it. Despite the threat, Churchill often made himself a more exposed target and according to one account, “No raid was too fierce to stop him from climbing to the nearest roof to watch.”

Trump’s bunker is beneath the White House and in May of 2020 he spent an hour there as protestors raged beyond the fences surrounding the executive mansion in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the black man choked to death by a Minneapolis policeman. Afterward Trump claimed he was merely inspecting the premises.

One last thought about tariffs… In 2016 the last incandescent lightbulb manufacturing plant in America closed its doors. It was an OSRAM Sylvania plant located in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. I think I have all LED bulbs in our house now whose manufacturers claim that their bulbs’ lifespans are considerably longer than my own at this point. As far as I can tell none were manufactured in the U.S. but there are still some lightbulbs that are…

But where do the “big names” in lightbulbs make theirs?

Sylvania: Bulbs sold under the Sylvania brand are manufactured in China.

Philips: Philips lightbulbs are manufactured in countries like Poland, China, and India.

GE: GE Lighting, a Savant Company, is moving production of Walmart’s Great Value lightbulbs to China.

I don’t know whose bulbs are in the ceilings of the White House but it seems apparent to me they have to be brighter than the dim ones walking around below making decisions.

—————–

Trump: The Musical

“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.” – Henry Miller

We know Donald Trump is the president but he’s playing other roles. He’s under the Big Top and the ringmaster of a circus and in the past week he’s been the guy operating the rollercoaster at an amusement park. Unfortunately, the animals seem to be out of their cages and the rollercoaster appears to have slid off its track.

During the height of the pandemic I did 365 straight days of cartoons from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021. It was Trump’s last year of his first term as president until Joe Biden was elected and sworn in on January 20, 2021. Some months before that I put together what I titled Trump: The Musical. It consisted of 12 songs from Broadway show tunes that I came up with new words for. Below was the offering (slightly updated) that I posted on September 21, 2020…

Please sing along to the melody of the song How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria from Richard Rogers’ and Oscar Hammerstein’s Sound of Music which opened on Broadway in 1959 with Mary Martin in the role of Maria. In 1965 the film version was released with Julie Andrews playing Maria.

Sing fast…

When we’re with him we’re confused
There’s no focus focus and no rules
And we never know exactly where we are
Unpredictable as weather
He’d hang all of us together
He’s a demon, he’s demented, he’s a sham
He’ll post nonsense without rest
Taunt a hermit just for jest
He could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl (Can’t improve on Oscar Hammerstein!)
He is gentle, he is mild
Are you kidding? He’s reviled.
He’s empowered
He’s a coward
He’s a child!

Sing singsong…

Did you foresee to what degree he’d be such a nightmare

He’s ignorant, belligerent and prickly as a pear

And underneath bravado there is nothing but hot air

I even saw him tanning and he’s flabby!

He’s phoniness incarnate but his anger’s very real

He’s full of hate for everything except his every meal

It’s late to have to say it but I very strongly feel there’s no one in the world who is as crabby

We do as he orders his loyal staff…

He calls our soldiers suckers when he himself dodged the draft!

Sing sadly…

How do we solve a problem like our leader

How do we catch a clown and bring him down

Is there a way to get him to North Korea

That guy is his friend but it would depend if Kim’s still around

There’s nothing Trump thinks he’s not the expert

But hardly a thing he actually understands

So how do we make headway. And save us from doomsday

How do we keep our heads above quicksand

Oh, how do we solve a problem like our leader

How do we stop a moron in command!

Trump: The Musical and my cherry picking of Broadway songs never was offered a tryout in New Haven or even Oshkosh. But maybe I should try for Washington, D.C. Until now I didn’t know that there’s a show that has played at the Kennedy Center since 1987 and almost 18,000 performances.

It is the second longest running running play in the history of American Theatre and is called Shear Madness —set in a hairstyling salon, hence the title. I’m not aware if Donald Trump has seen it but from the White House you can walk to the Kennedy Center in less than a half hour or get there in half that time in a golf cart. But why would you or anyone else need to see it when you can take a White House tour and be just off stage from the real thing— actual sheer madness!

—————–

A Sharp Dressed Man

In a frame on the wall of my office along with other stuff from my life plus over two dozen reproductions of film posters in foreign languages— e.g. Det Er Herligt At Leve (have Google translate it!) —hangs the sheet of paper with the Peter Imber Dress Code.

It’s easy to explain why it’s there and why it was compiled by my favorite colleague at ABC News. Brian Rooney felt I needed it and he was right.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

If clothes make the man, then I have never made it. Not that there wasn’t the opportunity. My father was a retailer— women’s ready-to-wear. My mother was thus fashionable and fashion fortunate with a husband in the “schmatta” business.

Both my parents always dressed well and from the beginning they tried to impress upon me their sense of style. Our home movies show a toddler in a swank camel hair coat. I puked all over it on my first road trip. I was told I had been demanding only hamburgers for every meal including breakfast. It did perhaps foreshadow my relationship with clothes as well as food for most of my life.

During college in the 60’s— and certainly at my all men’s alma mater —nobody seemed to care about what they wore and afterward I lived on a kibbutz for seven years where even white collar job holders often wore blue collar work clothing— blue shirts, blue pants and black work boots. My entire kibbutz wardrobe could have fit in a shopping bag.

During my quarter century in television news I was based in Los Angeles where Levi’s and sports shirts were almost de rigueur at the office and passable everywhere outside of it. I happily followed sans suit so to speak. Costco became my outfitter and just how much so was apparent one day in a phone call to a Costco executive I wanted to arrange an interview with. When asked, I confessed to him that I was one of his customers.

He: “How many things are you wearing right now that you bought from us?”

Me: “Hey, my pants, my underwear, my socks, my watch… maybe my shirt.”

Yes, I was a walking advertisement for “big-box” apparel.

Brian Rooney was my polar opposite when it came to clothes. Of course he was also an on camera correspondent and I was an off camera producer so how he looked really mattered but how I looked eventually mattered to him, too.

It actually had begun with shoes after I was diagnosed with a foot injury called plantar fasciitis. The orthopedist’s office had another description for it— “Topsiders disease” —named for the deck shoes I had been wearing for years that had no arch and as a result had apparently inflamed my own.

“You’ll never regret buying good shoes,” Rooney advised me at the time.

A few days later he came into my office and threw a piece of paper in front of me with a more comprehensive set of guidelines. Its title was “Peter Imber Dress Code” and although it didn’t instantly change my life, it did immediately change my footwear buying habits. I purchased my first $200 pair of shoes. They were for golf and at the time the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned.

I left Costco behind in 2010 when Jo and I moved to Maine. But when one haberdashery door closed—there wasn’t a Costco store here until last year— another one opened. In our state it’s abundantly clear which one. The Maine state tree is the pine. The state’s clothes tree is L.L. Bean and I was all in— free shipping, and at the time a generous return/replace policy, plus a flagship store open 24/7. What was not to like?

L.L. Bean had it all— shirts, pants, sweaters… But was I again falling into my previous one store fits all mode? So, at Jo’s urging I branched out. I bought a pair of dress khakis from Orvis which I even dry-clean. I have a beautiful shirt and tie from Brooks Brothers and three handsome sweaters I purchased at Bloomingdale’s.

As for shoes, I buy Ecco and Naot and I was an early word of mouth influencer for Hoka. I value comfort and quality and pay for it. And I own not one but two parkas from The North Face. Wearing the same parka six months of the year up here gets old even for me. Have I finally evolved as someone with a sense of or at least an aspiration for style?

Hmm… I guess I’m not all the way there yet. Jo has pointed out that I have an abundance; no make that a preponderance of blue denim shirts hanging in my closet. So, there’s work left to be done and before sitting down here at my computer, I realized my clothing choices might have narrowed once again and I might have regressed.

As I write this I am wearing what might be called the “Full Carhartt”— sweatshirt, jeans, socks… And yes, it’s Mid-April in Maine and the temperature is in the 30s. It snowed a bit yesterday. I’m quite comfortable.

—————–

One, If By Land, And Two, If By Sea…

In a new worst-case estimate, Goldman Sachs says reduced travel and boycotts could cost the U.S. almost $90 billion in lost GDP this year alone. But let’s forget about the present and revisit the past.

Friday, April 19th is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride and at 8 p.m. a reenactment of his journey will begin in Boston. I wasn’t aware until now that Revere didn’t just get on his horse and begin shouting “The British are coming!” No, he had to be rowed across Boston harbor to another fellow’s house— John Larkin, the Deacon of Charlestown —to borrow that man’s steed. Revere didn’t own a horse.

And Paul Revere never climbed the Old North Church to hang any lanterns. Two other men named Robert Newman and John Pulling did that. The “One, if by land, two, if by sea” appears to have been the actual code for signaling how the British troops were leaving Boston.

Revere did ride alone to Lexington after midnight and his heroic deed was warning two of the leaders of “The Sons of Liberty”— Samuel Adams and John Hancock —that British troops were about to leave Boston to come to arrest them. There he joined up with a man named William Dawes and the two of them began to ride to Concord— after a pause for “refreshment”—and continue their mission to warn others.

Soon after they left Lexington another man named Samuel Prescott caught up to them. After determining he was on their side the three continued riding but all were intercepted a short time later by a British patrol. Dawes and Prescott managed to escape but Revere did not. He was detained and his horse— actually Larkin’s horse —was taken from him. Left on the road alone he walked back to Lexington and had to call it a night. Dawes never made it to Concord either. He fell off his horse.

So did Paul Revere ever yell “The British are coming!” Short answer NO! Why? It would have made no sense. The colonists were themselves British at the time. What he likely yelled was, “The regulars are coming!” which was how British soldiers were referred to back before the American Revolution. The phrase, “The British are coming!” did not appear in any histories of Revere’s ride until a half century after it occured.

Below I have pasted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride which was published in the Atlantic Magazine in 1860. Read it and know the truth of the quote attributed to Longfellow himself, “The facts never get in the way of a good story.”

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, —
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, —
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, —
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled, —
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, —
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

—————–

I Asked ChatGPT For An Opinion…

Am I being immodest if I share it?

I was curious what ChatGPT would say if I asked it for a review of the stuff I’ve been posting on The Pawned Accordion and was surprised by what I got back.

The response from ChatGPT took less than five seconds and it was complimentary. I am gratified and I welcome it. But what am I welcoming? Do I call it an honest opinion? Is it a “real” one? Yes, I now know what ChatGPT “thinks” but what should I consider its worth?

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

Here’s what Chat GPT wrote…

Chat GPT: Peter Imber’s Substack, The Pawned Accordion, has been active for about nine months and features his cartoons and commentary, evolving from email distribution to a public newsletter platform. The content involves satirical and thoughtful musings, often featuring sharp humor and cultural or political commentary, exemplified by his unique writing style and references to current events and well-known figures.

In terms of reception, The Pawned Accordion has attracted a following over this period, with hundreds of subscribers, indicating that people do appreciate its content and voice. Readers support the publication, both through free and paid subscriptions, suggesting a positive engagement with his work. His mix of witty, personal, and topical reflections appears to resonate reasonably well with his audience.

Regarding how it is doing, the newsletter continues to be updated regularly with diverse posts. While exact subscriber counts and financial metrics are not publicly detailed, the steady flow of content and subscriber base suggest it is maintaining a stable and engaged readership.

Peter Imber’s best writings on his Substack reflect a unique blend of personal storytelling, commentary on contemporary events, and creative cartooning developed during the pandemic.

Key highlights include:

• Pandemic Cartoons and Commentary (2020-2021): Imber began by sending daily cartoons via email for 365 days starting April 1, 2020, using found imagery to make cartoons despite not being able to draw. These cartoons were accompanied by personal commentaries addressing the pandemic, political issues, culture wars, and his own life observations. This series shows his creative response to the crisis and stands out as a significant body of work that combines humor and insight amidst turmoil.
• Reflections on American Society and Politics: Throughout his posts, Imber weaves his feelings about America’s divisiveness, particularly how the pandemic exacerbated cultural and political divisions, often with a tone of both lightheartedness and heartfelt concern. His writing captures a nuanced perspective on the country during a challenging period.
• “My Own Los Angeles” (2025): In a poignant essay, Imber reflects on the devastating fires that hit Los Angeles, sharing personal reactions and the impact of this event on the city’s history and community. This piece stands out for its timely engagement with environmental and social issues.
• Sustained Commitment and Community Engagement: Transitioning his daily cartoon and commentary emails to a Substack blog, Imber has built a following and continues to publish his stories and thoughts thoughtfully and regularly, showing dedication and evolution in his work beyond the initial pandemic impetus.

In summary, The Pawned Accordion by Peter Imber is a successful and appreciated Substack presence. His continued work keeps expanding this rich mix of storytelling and commentary.

Back to me…

Would I have written this myself? No way! Or at least I can’t imagine I would have. I’m not certain I have the chutzpah to blow my own horn so loudly. But sure, I do have an ego and believe I know how to write and be creative. I do have views and insights to share. I appreciate any admiration I might receive for what I’m doing but I hope I don’t go around like an angler casting a hook in the water fishing for it.

So, do I value and agree with what ChatGPT has written? This is a really confusing question. Nobody wrote this or at least nobody I can thank or complain to. Sure, I’m flattered but that actually worries me.

So here’s the most truthful answer I can give. I am delighted by what ChatGPT “thinks” of my work but maybe that’s a use of the verb think that now requires the counsel of Alan Turing, the brilliant British computer science pioneer.

Unfortunately, Turing is no longer with us but in a paper he wrote in 1950 entitled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” he introduced the Turing Test— an experiment to determine if a machine could exhibit intelligent behavior— thinking — indistinguishable from a human. The test involved a person having a conversation with both a human and a machine, without knowing which is which. If the person cannot distinguish between the two, Turing contended that the machine could be considered to have thought.

Ok, I know I would be ecstatic if a Bill Bryson or a Dave Barry had written something nice about my work but should I be excited about ChatGPT doing it? Can I post a sentence on a book jacket from Chat GPT or use it as a reference to get a job?

Hey, I am happy. It’s great to receive positive feedback. But what if Chat GPT had concluded that my stuff is awful? Then how would I be feeling? It bothers me to think about this. In fact it scares me.

---

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

To college to get paid!

Who is the most iconic sports figure in American history? I guess, the picture above is giving my choice away but you certainly may differ and have your own opinion. Although Yogi Berra, his fellow New York Yankee, is probably the person from any sport most remembered for the quirky things he said, George Herman Ruth— “The Babe” —gave my favorite sport figure’s quote ever in answer to a sportswriter’s question and it always makes me smile.

The stock market had crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression had taken hold. Unemployment was spiking. Thousands of Americans were losing their homes to foreclosure. Many others were destitute and hungry but major league baseball was being played, and during the 1929 season Babe Ruth became the first player in the history of the game to reach 500 career home runs. His batting average for the year was .345 with 154 runs batted in. Not exceptional for Ruth but as rare today, if not more, than a total solar eclipse— we just had one last year and the next won’t happen again until 2044.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

Ruth’s salary in 1929 was $70,000 which was what he had been payed for each of the two previous years. For the 1930 season he wanted a raise and was holding out and negotiating for one. Sportswriters closest to him admonished that he was being greedy with the Great Depression worsening. The conversation between one of them and Ruth allegedly went like this…

Sportswriter: “Babe, How much do you want this season?”

Ruth: “$80,000.”

Sportswriter: “$80,000! In these times. Don’t be silly, Babe. That’s more than Herbert Hoover gets for being president of the United States. He only gets $75,000.”

Ruth: “What the hell does Hoover have to with this? Anyway, I had a better year than he did.”

Babe Ruth got his raise to $80,000 in 1930 and in today’s dollars that equates to $1.5 million.

It was 19 years later that Joe DiMaggio became the first Major League Baseball player to make a $100,000 salary which he earned in 1949 and 1950. This season the average contract for an MLB player is (insert cough here) over $5 million. Sure, I know a million dollars isn’t what it used to be but I’d take it and wouldn’t even need an agent to negotiate for me.

Which brings me to a boy— he’s 18 —named Cooper Flagg who grew up in Maine 50 miles from where I now live. He’s a basketball prodigy who received his first college scholarship offer when he was in the 8th grade. Ironic, because I first read about a basketball legend named Lou Alcindor (aka Kareem Abdul Jabbar) in Junior Scholastic Magazine when he and I were both in 8th grade.

Flagg skipped his senior year in high school to play as a freshman at Duke and announced yesterday that he will leave college and be eligible to be drafted and signed by a National Basketball Association team in June. It was a foregone conclusion. His rookie deal in the NBA is thought to be worth $62.7 million and Flagg— if he is as good as he has shown to be so far —is projected to be in line within a few years for a contract extension potentially earning him over a half billion more.

But here is what already had changed in addition to the mind boggling money Cooper Flagg possibly stands to earn. If the criteria is simply getting paid to play, then in college at Duke he was already a professional basketball player. He is believed to have earned $4.8 million for his one season in Durham, NC. By way of comparison the North Carolina governor’s yearly salary is $166,000.

Flagg is by no means the exception these days. There are dozens of “student athletes” on campuses around the country making over a million dollars this year. Most are basketball and football players but a female gymnast named Livvy Dunne who attends Louisiana State University is raking in over $4 million for her performances on the uneven bars.

Are you flipping out yet? If you aren’t maybe, you are aware of the initials NIL and that they are the acronym for Name, Image and Likeness. NIL represents the means by which college athletes are permitted to receive compensation from anyone who wants to use their N or I or L for advertising or endorsements— anyone from the United States Army to Dunkin’Donuts. And individuals or groups of donors who just want to pay athletes to attend their alma maters can do so in numerous ways without putting the money directly in their pockets.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association first allowed college players to make money from their Name, Image, and Likeness deals in 2021. And just this week the NCAA Division I Board of Directors proposed changing long standing policies that prevented schools from sharing financial benefits directly with their athletes. In other words playing on a college team might soon become like being paid for working in the college dining hall although I’m guessing that for the vast majority of college players of all sports the dining hall jobs may remain just as lucrative.

This latest development seemed inevitable. Last year members of the men’s basketball team at Dartmouth College voted 13-2 to join the Service Employees International Union and won a precedent setting favorable ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that classified the players as college employees and could have become the first successful attempt by student athletes to unionize.

But earlier this year because of concern that the Trump administration’s newly appointed NLRB members might overturn the initial ruling, the Dartmouth team’s petition was withdrawn. With the NCAA’s newest proposal that could result in the players’ goal of being recognized as college employees and paid accordingly, it appears it could be mission accomplished anyway. Can it be said that all things come to those who agitate? Or at least sometimes?

And another irony… I was a pretty good basketball player in high school and it helped me get into Dartmouth but back in pre-hysteric times I didn’t get a nickel to coax me to attend. I did however get a congratulatory letter from the coach urging me to enroll.

Once on campus I had to tryout and despite the fact that when I was there Dartmouth had a really lousy varsity, I was cut from the freshman team. I’d like to believe it was because I was too short.

—————–

The Architects (Part 1)

In my career working for ABC News I was given assignments that allowed me to meet and spend time with two of America’s best known architects whose projects in Los Angeles made a consequential change to the face of the city. Here are my accounts of meeting Richard Meier, the designer of the Getty Center in Part 1 to be followed later by my interview with the Disney Hall architect Frank Gehry in Part 2…

The Too Long Goodbye

In 1997 I took a short tram ride up a hillside adjacent to the 405 Freeway that runs below and connects the Los Angeles Basin to the San Fernando Valley. I arrived to begin shooting a piece about the new Getty Center and to do an interview with its architect Richard Meier for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

The Getty Center in Los Angeles cost $1.3 billion to build and took 14 years to complete. The Getty, as it’s called, hadn’t opened yet and I had secured one of my favorite cameramen for this assignment. I was particular about who I worked with and justified my attitude for what I considered a good reason. In television news, before there was competition from cable news and subsequently the internet, pictures were as important and sometimes more than the words they accompanied. With a great cameraperson the chances of having great pictures and a great piece were enhanced.

I was with ABC News for 26 years. In all that time I can count on one hand those who I considered to be truly great camerapersons. One of them was Blake Hottle, who was with me that day at the Getty.

And so we began without my assigned correspondent along with us. An NBA star basketball player named Latrell Sprewell had choked his coach the day before and Brian Rooney was pulled off our story to do that one. I rarely minded working without a correspondent when the opportunity arose even if in this case it was one I truly admired and a good friend.

As I walked off the tram atop the Getty Center and even before I could appreciate the 60 mile panoramic view from the San Gabriel mountains to the Pacific Ocean, I noticed a man on his knees beside some rose bushes. He wasn’t dressed like a landscaper. To my surprise it was the Getty Center architect himself Richard Meier and as l got closer I saw he had a bunch of cigarette butts in his hand. He wasn’t a landscaper. On this day he was a trash collector.

For the next hour Meier gave my crew and me a tour of just about everything he had designed on this hilltop with one exception. In addition to the stunning buildings that housed the art, research and administrative facilities there was a large garden that if the Walt Disney Studios ever decided to do a version of Alice in Wonderland with live actors and real settings, would be a cinch as the choice for the tea party scene.

This possibly psilocybin inspired landscape was the only part of the Getty Center campus that Meier didn’t get to design and was a source of emotional pain to him he could not hide. I didn’t think it was a sore thumb but it certainly had no relation to the site’s other appendages.

Meier refused to walk through the garden. To add insult to his injury this just happened to be the day giant planters, suggested by that same garden’s creator, were being placed on the steps leading up to one of Meier’s gallery buildings.

It was at his first sight of these that Meier morphed into a personification of King Lear rushing into the storm. He left us and ran up the steps where he attempted to throw one of the planters down them. He couldn’t.

The planter was so large he failed to even get his arms entirely around it and it appeared to weigh so much that it would likely have taken “The Big One”— the calamitous seismic event that is overdue to someday occur in California —to dislodge it.

It appeared clear to me Meier was suffering from something akin to an architect’s variant of postpartum depression. The next day when I returned to finish the shoot with correspondent Rooney in tow I found further evidence of that when we encountered Meier in the gift shop. As we approached, we heard him scolding an employee about the appearance of a display that he was in the middle of rearranging himself.

The Getty Center had taken a good chunk of Richard Meier’s professional life to complete and he had lived in a house on the site nearly that entire time. This project was his masterwork— his baby.

Perhaps that explains the behavior I witnessed. It was as if Meier had been raising a child who was now an adult but Meier himself was the one who needed to be leaving the nest. At the end of our time together I took the liberty of counseling him.

Me: “Richard, I’ve only known you for a short time but I think you need to let go.”

Meier: “I know… but it’s so hard.”

Twenty years later Meier was asked if there was anything he was unhappy about with the Getty. His answer: “If there was, I’ve forgotten about it.”

Click on the link below to see the story that aired on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings…

————-

The Architects (Part 2)

In my career working for ABC News I was given assignments that allowed me to meet and spend time with two of America’s best known architects whose projects in Los Angeles made a consequential change to the face of the city. In Part 1 I recalled my meeting Richard Meier who designed the Getty Center. Here in Part 2 is my account of interviewing Frank Gehry, the architect of Disney Hall…

The Flying Handkerchief

By 2003 the late Roone Arledge had transferred his television genius from sports to news and ABC News had gone from being a ratings laggard to having the most watched evening news broadcast in America.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

One of Arledge’s innovations was a weekly feature called Person of the Week, a long piece by TV news standards— four minutes —that ran every Friday on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and profiled someone who had made news that week.

The anchorman Peter Jennings voiced these pieces but producers did the interviews and the video shoots for accompanying pictures— “B-roll” —with those chosen who we called a POW— an unfortunate coincidence of acronyms. I got to do my share of these and also on occasion pitched and sold my own suggestions for who should be the subject.

Frank Gehry was the second great architect I met and interviewed when in 2003 I was assigned to cover the opening of what’s become a Los Angeles landmark— Disney Hall, the home of the LA Philharmonic.

If you’ve seen it, then you’ll likely agree Disney Hall is a unique work of architecture and today is almost as iconic to Los Angeles as Gehry’s groundbreaking Guggenheim Museum has become for Bilbao, Spain. During the week of its opening Gehry was a worthy choice to be a Person of the Week.

At first sight, the building’s exterior reminded me of a silent film comedy— Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. I’m thinking of the scene where Charlie gets swallowed up in the gears of a factory’s machinery. I imagined that the exterior of Disney Hall could be what that factory looked like after Charlie was through with it or it was through with Charlie.

Disney’s Hall’s “skin” was so unconventional it made me smile— Who gets to create something so different? Gehry’s building was awe inspiring just for its audacity. And so I set out again with cameraman Blake Hottle to interview Frank Gehry. The immediate challenge before us was where we would do it.

The inside of the concert hall also reminded me of something unrelated to what it was. I thought of Noah’s Ark and how that Biblical boat’s interior might have looked minus its passengers and all their “baggage.”

As I walked around inside it, I concluded there wasn’t a spot where I would have a lesser experience of whatever performance I attended. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. A few days later my crew and I were able to to attend the LA Philharmonic’s dress rehearsal before the building’s opening. We were part of a tiny audience that included Gehry. I don’t know what he might have felt hearing a full orchestra performing time-honored works in his newly completed one. For me the experience was like being enclosed inside a giant windup music box.

But on the day of our interview we wanted to show Geary against the exterior of Disney Hall. A wide shot of the structure with him in it would have put us on a public sidewalk across the street which would have been noisy and unmanageable. So, that was a non starter.

And we encountered another problem if we were going to put Gehry too close to his creation. The stainless steel “skin” of Disney Hall reflected so much heat that being beside it in certain places could actually burn you if you stood too close for too long. This wasn’t just our problem that day. Residents nearby had complained about the reflected heat turning their condos into ovens. Drivers were being blinded by the glare off Disney Hall’s exterior.

Some time after we did our story the 22 million pounds of stainless steel shell were sanded and dulled to mitigate its heat generating issues. But as we considered places where we might situate him, we feared we might be held responsible for Frank Gehry being fried alive.

We continued our exploring and Blake solved our problem of where to put Gehry— a reason why I was lucky to have him with me as the cameraperson. He found an outside passageway that was shaded and cool and showed off Disney Hall’s curves, some of which I would contend are— for a building —voluptuous.

Peter Jennings had sent me a bunch of questions to ask Gehry and I was free to ask my own and at one point I got a terrific visual show and tell from him when I did.

Me: “How do you come up with your ideas for the design of a building like Disney Hall? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. How do you do this?”

Gehry, who was seated, reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, unfolded it and tossed it in the air. It landed on his knee and looked like a tent that had been uprooted and thrown about in the wind.

Gehry: “That’s what people think I do. But it’s not at all like that. Every curve, every piece you see is thought out and I wrestle with them. It all has to work together.”

I felt sure Gehry had done this demonstration before. It was certainly good for television. After we finished I complimented him on the flying handkerchief.

Me: “That was great. You must do that a lot to explain how you work or I mean how you don’t.”

Gehry looked at me shaking his head sideways.

Gehry: “I’ve never done that before.”

I had no reason to doubt him.

Some time later I learned that Gehry’s earliest sketch for the design of Disney Hall was made in a restaurant on a paper napkin. That sort of diminished the impact of his handkerchief toss for me. But hey, you gotta start somewhere and it turns out that ideas for architecture and other momentous creations that originated as simple sketches go back as far as Leonardo da Vinci. Of course da Vinci didn’t have paper napkins.

So years later I returned to the exact spot where we did the interview and had Jo take a picture of me recreating it. Not to be outdone by Gehry’s handkerchief, I used a bandana.

Click below to watch the story that aired on World News Tonight…

Disney Hall Opens

---

How I Failed As A Game Show Contestant

Or the prize isn’t right!

Wink Martindale died recently. When I learned this I didn’t smile but I remembered his. As a group, I believe television game show hosts can all have the identical adjective placed in front of their names— genial —but I think Wink had the best name of any of them. Here’s my account of my own TV game show appearance…

I moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to go to film school at UCLA. I was 32 years old, married and had returned to the United States from Israel where I had lived for seven years on a kibbutz. I had little money but luckily my ex-wife and I managed to find jobs quickly and a place to live rent free in exchange for managing a 16 unit apartment building.

It was long ago when there were still daily newspapers thrown by your door in the morning and I saw an ad one day in mine that made me think I might be able to earn some additional money. I responded to it and tried out to be a contestant on a television game show. I must have passed the audition because shortly afterward I got a phone call offering me the chance to appear on one.

It was called The Cross-Wits and, like probably all of these programs, a week’s worth of episodes were taped in a single day. I showed up, waited my turn and then it was lights, camera and ultimately, not enough action. Let me explain.

How the game itself was played isn’t important. The host and the guest celebrity I was partnered with weren’t important either. I mean that literally. I’d never heard of either of them and I’m pretty sure you haven’t. Anyway, I won the first game and from the point of view of the producers of the show you can be sure they wish I hadn’t.

You see, after my win the announcer rattled off the list of prizes I had won. There was a lot of stuff. I don’t even remember all of it but among the loot were umbrellas, a clothes iron, an undercarriage sealant for my car, coupons for a soft drink and the “pièce de résistance”, a combination range and oven with a built in microwave. That last one turned out to be the one I should have résisté.

The apartment we lived in as managers of our building had its own appliances and our utility costs were included. As the grand prize was being described, I was thinking what was I going to do with a range and oven I didn’t need? I didn’t frown but I certainly wasn’t jumping up and down or displaying the expected 100 watt grin like I had won a desperately needed washer and dryer on Queen for a Day.

Suddenly, there was the show’s producer standing beside the camera that was aimed squarely at my face. He put a finger of each hand in the sides of his mouth and stretched it. I didn’t react. He then rocked his body side to side with his eyes bulging as he continued contorting his mouth and imploring me to maybe be even a little excited. I’m sure I wasn’t smiling. I was in serious violation of contestant protocol.

My mind was elsewhere as I also realized that just about every house and apartment in Southern California is hooked up to natural gas. What I had just won was all electric. Nobody had electric!

I didn’t win another game that day but signed a form for my prizes afterward which turned out to be a “shoot me if I ever do this again” move. Now, I had to pay taxes on what I thought I was receiving gratis.

When I got home in short order I discovered that applying the undercarriage sealant on my car would void its warranty and that my local supermarket was unhappy because my coupons for Welch’s Carbonated Strawberry Soda were physically as large as manilla envelopes and wiped out the store’s entire supply of the drink every time I used one.

The umbrellas and the clothes iron were fine but the grand prize turned out to be a giant headache. First, I had no place to put it. A combination range, stove and microwave would last just a few hours if left standing alone in its giant box outside in my carport where it had been dropped off. But a lucky break. A friend who had a garage nearby agreed to let me store it there while I put an ad in the newspaper offering it for sale. That was to be my only lucky break.

I ran the ad for a month spending over $150. There were not only no takers; there were zero responses. I finally gave the thing away to a charity and got a tax deduction that I remember being less than the taxes I had to pay as a result of my windfall plus the fruitless ads.

And one other thing. When my appearance on the Cross-Wits actually aired on television one afternoon a month later and reached the moment when I had failed so miserably to act like a grateful prize winner, you never saw me. Instead you saw pictures of the stuff I won that I wished I hadn’t.

I had been edited out and relegated to the dustbin of game show history.

---

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Jo and I were in the car when we heard the news that the new Pope had been chosen and that he was an American. I immediately said, “Trump isn’t going to be pleased about this.”

By now we know who Trump is. His unpredictability may be totally predictable but it’s a given that with the puzzling exception of Elon Musk, Donald Trump never wants to share the spotlight with anyone else— of course as a friend pointed out, Musk might always become a convenient future scapegoat.

Trump can’t stand not being the center of attention and he continually gives an Oscar winning performance of a credo often associated with Hollywood and the movie business: “It is not enough merely to succeed; others must fail.”

So, here I am seeing even the elevation of a Pope who is a Chicago born American through my perceived lens of how Donald Trump sees everything. Pope Leo XIV has at least for the moment knocked him off the front page and given time Trump will more than likely revert in some way, shape or form to his nasty and shameless modus operandi and make waves in the Holy See.

Afterall Trump may lead MAGA by the nose but they always have his ear and apparently they are already spewing magma over Pope Leo who posted a comment last month criticizing the Trump administration’s using a notorious prison in El Salvador where suspected gang members deported from the United States have been flown.

“Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?” wrote Cardinal Robert Prevost.

---

Trump Graft Graph

“I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president.” —Ruth Bader Ginsburg

We don’t have to imagine anymore…

—————–

Kennedy Center Horrors

Where art is now in the eyes of the beholden…

One of Donald Trump’s first acts when he took office again as the president this past January was to take control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. He fired its existing board, appointed a new one which then elected him the chairman.

Last week a House committee approved a budget proposal to allocate over $250 million for repairs and other expenses to the Center which is six times the usual amount the Center annually receives. A White House spokeswoman explained that “President Trump cares deeply about American arts and culture, which is why he is revitalizing historic institutions like the Kennedy Center to their former greatness.”

She didn’t explain why the Trump administration is simultaneously making cuts to arts organizations across the country and proposing to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts but so it goes…

So, I’ve been thinking that a fitting event to honor the men and women Donald Trump has appointed to lead us backward as a nation would be a Kennedy Center Film Festival. And now is the right time to hold it since the actual Cannes Film Festival is presently underway and Cannes and con rhyme so when you mention the former, it’s synonymous with the latter.

It might already be too late before he names the Center after himself but I’ve got the list of films lined up to be introduced by members of the present president’s leadership team and even a musical act…

And what’s really coming up at the Kennedy Center? Beginning June 11th is “Les Misérables” and the President is slated to attend. Donald Trump is reported to be a fan of “Les Mis.” I don’t plan to go myself despite the fact that I could be in the cast. I’m one of the miserable ones thanks to him.

---

A Twisted History

I grew up in the Pretzel Capital of the World— Reading, Pennsylvania —where pretzels were a part of our education. We learned about the origin of the pretzel (or we thought we did) in elementary school and were taken on a field trip to a pretzel factory.

Nearby Hershey calls itself the Chocolate Capital of America and the smell of cocoa actually permeates the town’s air. In that respect Reading’s pretzels have historically only generated dollars for their owners and not scents.

Although Reading is part of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country— from the German (Deutsch) not the Netherlands (Dutch) —you probably think as I was taught, that the pretzel originated in Germany. That’s apparently twisted history which is only fitting for the pretzel.

The Germans might take exception but it is believed that the pretzel was invented in Italy a thousand years ago. Evidence for pretzels to have been around that long is a 12th century illuminated manuscript discovered in the Vatican. It’s the earliest known visual representation of a pretzel…

The story goes that a monk baked pieces of dough that he fashioned in the shape of a child’s folded arms while saying his or her prayers. The monk’s treats for children, who did a good job reciting them, became known as pretiolas which translates to “little rewards” in Italian.

The Italian lineage was passed forward and linguistically backward when Latin became involved and pretiola morphed from brachiatus (Latin for having branches like arms) into the German word brezitella which became shortened to brezel which eventually became pretzel in English. I wasn’t kidding about the twisted history.

Over time Germans have certainly been the people most associated with pretzels. Growing up in a town where every store had at least one employee who could speak “Pennsylvania Dutch” and one of the local radio personalities was a guy who called himself “Professor Schnitzel”, we never heard about the pretzel’s Italian roots in our pretzel history indoctrination.

Reading had a lot of pretzel makers when I was a kid. Bachman pretzels were sold nationally but locally, I remember Quinlan, Sturgis and Billy’s —the latter were called Billy’s Bretzels. These were all what are known as hard pretzels, the kind you buy at the grocery store.

However, for me the very best pretzels weren’t at the supermarket. They were street food sold out of carts in Reading’s main square for a nickel apiece. Delicious soft pretzels that if you were lucky were still warm from the oven.

The carts disappeared decades ago but somewhere I have a picture I took of one of the pretzel cart vendors who I frequently bought mine from but with whom I doubt I ever exchanged more than nickels.

Growing up in the 1950s, summer at my public swimming pool also meant “pretzel rods” that seemed at the time as long as yardsticks. They were a favorite at the snack bar and we slathered them with mustard like they were hot dogs.

Pretzels were even a part of local sports, not good for cheering but handy for jeering. Back in the day opponents of Reading’s high school sports teams would taunt “Pretzels and beer, pretzels and beer, ach du lieber Reading is here!”

And the height of the pretzel’s status in our city— quite literally —took place at the local college which annually dubbed one of its football team’s home games “The Pretzel Bowl.” I attended one and at half time— and I’m not making this up —a plane flew over the stadium and dropped pretzels on the stands. Of course none survived in one piece.

In the beginning all Reading pretzels were handmade and experienced hands could twist 40 a minute. By the 1930s the first automated pretzel machinery enabled bakeries to make six times as many in that span. With most of the country’s pretzel production being done in the Reading area, its reputation as the pretzel capital was unchallenged.

Even today 80 percent of pretzels produced in the United States are made in Pennsylvania but I still was amazed when I moved to Maine to find my favorite Reading pretzels for sale here. I’d never seen this particular brand called Unique Splits sold outside of the state.

I wondered how that happened and it didn’t take me long to find out. Morse’s, a sort of grocery and deli best known for its sauerkraut, is about a half hour drive from Camden where I live. If you don’t know it’s there, you’ll never find it. Improbably, Morse’s has the most food items in its store that you won’t likely see anywhere else in all of Maine. I call it Zabar’s North.

Turned out the current owners were told about Unique pretzels by a customer and ordered some. The pretzels did so well other grocery and fish markets nearby had Morse’s order for them, too and now I can drive a couple minutes in two different directions from my house and purchase them.

The popularity of Reading pretzels led me to think about the other exceptional and exceptionally unhealthy food speciality that my part of Pennsylvania is famous for— potato chips. Not just any chips but potato chips produced with only potatoes and salt that are fried in lard. So, add perilous to their labeling.

The best of these chips in my opinion are made by Dieffenbach’s in the Berks County borough of Womelsdorf but there are competitors like Good’s from Adamstown in neighboring Lancaster County that produces two types of lard chips— Good’s Blues and Good’s Reds. The two used to be made by separate members of the same family but they called a truce a few years ago and merged. The difference? The Blues are crunchier.

In fact when I took Jo to where I grew up for the first time, I stopped at a market in the village of Oley close to my folks’ home. I didn’t know if she’d be impressed or mystified at what she’d see. It was more than even I bargained for. Pretzels and potato chips had two full aisles all to themselves—one for national brands and one just for local.

In Pennsylvania bags of both are as regularly by one’s side as the remote when you’re in front of the television. That’s not the case in Maine but inexplicably, life expectancy in both states is about the same.

Maybe Maine whoopie pies have something to do with it. The Pennsylvania Dutch country has them too and when Jo and I moved to Camden 15 years ago it was in the middle of a feud over which state could claim the origin of the whoopie pie. Being that I had now sampled both, I actually was asked to weigh in on this dispute very publicly but that’s another story.

Years ago I complimented one of the owners at Morse’s about his great taste in pretzels and told him about my favorite Reading potato chips. I provided full disclosure about the ingredients but didn’t tell him— and again, I’m not making this up —that the Reading Hospital ranks in the top 10 of the busiest emergency rooms in America.

Despite this I was certain Diffenbach’s potato chips would be another hit from the calorie and cholesterol unconscious countryside where I was raised if he chose to offer them. So far it hasn’t happened.

Thus, I still consider myself to be living in a “potato chip desert” but twice a year my best friend in Reading sends me a box full of bags of Diffenbach’s for which I’m extremely grateful. The gift provides Jo with the opportunity to joke, “Don’t you think Ken is actually trying to kill you?” My response is silent but in my head I hear Paul McCartney singing Let It Be.

———

Welcome to Trump TV…

Stay tuned to TRUMP TV for the next episode of CAPITOL PUNISHMENT live from the studios of the Oval Office.

Produced by DONALD TRUMP

Directed by DONALD TRUMP

and starring DONALD TRUMP.

Next week’s guest: Abraham Lincoln

—————–

Is It OK To Say Happy Memorial Day?

We’re a big country and many of us don’t have someone who was close to us who lost his or her life in America’s wars. At this point in our nation’s history there are those of us who might not even know anyone alive who fought in one. So what do we think of most when we hear the words Memorial Day? Little wonder that it’s a cookout with family and friends or bargain shopping on our day off.

Claes Oldenburg was a sculptor known for his public art installations. He died three years ago. What could have been my favorite work of his was one he never actually created. Back in the 1960s Oldenburg did a series of drawings that he called “Colossal Monuments.” Among them was a war memorial. Below is his rendering of it…

It was to be a giant block of concrete as high as the buildings that surrounded an intersection in New York City where he would have placed it. Oldenburg knew exactly the location— the middle of where Canal St. and Broadway cross in lower Manhattan.

It was meant to cause havoc but also reflection. Yes, its realization never had a chance and he certainly knew that. Oldenburg was making a serious anti-war statement with his plan to disrupt New York City traffic forever. One can imagine unknowing motorists stopped in their tracks and cursing at being inconvenienced but would they have simultaneously thought about war?

When I saw his War Memorial drawings for the first time it was during the Vietnam War years and Oldenburg’s idea for this permanent roadblock enthused the younger me. I thought, why not? I hope it gets built. Later I figured it was more like much of his other work—thoughtful but whimsical; serious but a satirical aside. The drawings of the memorial were eventually auctioned off to raise money for anti-war political candidates.

Plugging up Canal St. and Broadway certainly might have made a powerful war memorial. I have come up with my own plan that I believe could be impactful but more practical. It would have that enormous barrier be a temporary portable obstruction— inflatable like a Thanksgiving Day parade float. It could be constantly moved around New York City from intersection to intersection in the dead of night without any advance notice.

It surely would annoy, if not exasperate, when unexpectedly encountering it repeatedly, but maybe there would be a chance that in time you’d make the connection and blame the traffic tie ups on the insanity of war.

There is one war memorial that achieves that.

Years ago I went to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The simplicity of its design is also its power— just two granite walls engraved with the names of those service members who died or remained missing in Vietnam and South East Asia during and after the war. The National Park Service webpage heading for it has a quote:

“These names, seemingly infinite in number…”

There are more than 58,000 of them.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a destination you don’t just happen upon. You know where it is and why you’ve come to see it. What you may not know is how you are going to react. I knew people killed in that war that I myself didn’t have to fight in— nobody who was a close friend, but high school and college classmates whose names I found on the black walls. Seeing them there was a jolt. Occasionally, all of the names are read aloud publicly as a remembrance. It takes 65 hours.

“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

The quote above is attributed to Joseph Stalin although it’s now not believed that it he was the first to say it and that it may have actually originated after WWI— “The war to end all wars” —in which at least 15 million soldiers and civilians died.

Tragedy in large numbers reaches what has been called a “ceiling of comprehension.”

Estimates of military and civilian deaths during WWII vary between 70 and 85 million lives lost with the vast majority of whatever the real total was having been civilian deaths. How do you wrap your head around that? Mostly, we don’t.

Our public reminders of the cost of wars are way too polite. Claes Oldenburg’s would not have been and maybe that’s what we need— war memorials that actually make us uncomfortable. Does it have to take losing a parent, a spouse, a child or a close friend to genuinely feel the pain of war?

Those who live with such loss are the ones who will surely think longer and harder about the intended meaning of today. They are the ones who will likely visit a cemetery and find a grave and place flowers on it. The rest of us? Will we give a moment’s thought to contemplate the actual reason why we call today Memorial Day?

So, what should we do? The least we can is to take a solemn moment to give thanks to those who gave their lives so we have been able to pursue our own, and also to recognize the tragedy of those lives lost in wars that America might have avoided.

But how about this too. Let’s not call today a holiday. It’s not a celebration. It’s an observance. Memorial Day is the one day a year set aside to actually remember and think about those who died in America’s wars— the ones who didn’t get to grow old and be around for the cookouts and the sales.

—————–

The Movies

“Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.” —Pauline Kael

I admit I see more movies than I read books. I thought I’d change that a few years ago and got off of Facebook and stopped playing Words with Friends to have fewer feeble excuses for the disparity. Until recently it didn’t change anything but I have begun reading books— long ones. Of course I’m still going to the movies and getting my share of popcorn but is it just me or have films gotten longer? The Master of Suspense may have had the answer…

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” —Alfred Hitchcock.

I’ll chalk my perception up to less endurance…

I love movies and there was actually a single night in my life when my appreciation of them was transformed. It was during my freshman year at college. The Dartmouth Film Society showed many films that hadn’t been made in America and on that particular evening the double feature was from France and Italy— Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Federico Fellini’s 8½.

I wasn’t aware of either movie beforehand and only slightly familiar with the names of their directors. On top of that there was a short film preceding the two features that introduced me to the photographs of Eugene Atget and the music of composer Erik Satie. I had never heard of either of them.

In the dictionary “mind blowing” is defined as something having a hallucinogenic effect. Its etymology has Timothy Leary’s name stamped all over it but I didn’t need LSD to be blown away by Marcello Mastroianni’s portrayal of a movie director on the verge of a nervous breakdown in 8½.

It revealed something that I had never known movies could do— actually take me inside of somebody’s head and in this case it was Mastroianni as a standin for Fellini’s own that I watched imploding on the screen.

Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s 8½

Movies changed for me from then on and when I lived in New York City for two years after college, I proceeded on an all-out movie binge. It was my own film school before actually attending one at UCLA a decade later.

From Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy to Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct I undertook a sweeping retrospective of cinema history and one time foolishly, even tried to absorb four movies at four different locations on the same day. I don’t remember which Ingmar Bergman film it was that put me over the edge but I was lucky I didn’t jump in front of a bus that night.

There were three places in New York where I spent many evenings. They were what were called “repertory” movie theaters and showed old films— all kinds of old films.

The Elgin was at 19^th Street and 8^th Avenue in Chelsea and a subway ride down from the Upper West Side where I shared an apartment with some other recent college graduates who weren’t interested in joining me in my movie mania.

The Elgin is known as the movie theater that invented the midnight screening which began when it showed Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo. If you’ve seen this movie, then you’ll probably agree with me that it makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show— a midnight screening staple and now the longest running theatrical release in motion picture history —look like Ding Dong School.

I owe the Elgin for introducing me to Buster Keaton. As big a silent movie star as anyone back in his day, Keaton’s work had been virtually forgotten, tied up in legal battles and even misplaced until his genius was rediscovered and the films re-released. The Elgin held the first retrospective of Buster Keaton’s work in decades in 1970 and at the first movie I saw I was in stitches and awe and came back for more night after night.

Buster Keaton in The General

The New Yorker theater on Broadway at West 88^th Street was where I marveled at Toshiro Mifune’s performance in Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. It was the original uncut three hour and 27 minute version that included an intermission projected on the screen as part of the film.

Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai

And it also was on the way to the New Yorker one night that I ended up in an emergency room. In a hurry to make the beginning of Zoo in Budapest with Loretta Young I ran across the street in front of a bus and got whacked by a Volkswagen that was running a red light. I landed on the hood of the car and fell off. To the driver’s everlasting credit he stopped, picked me up and rushed me to the hospital. I was lucky but still have never seen Zoo in Budapest.

The jewel in the crown of my beloved movie theaters was the Thalia just off Broadway on 95^th Street. Of the three movie houses I surely spent the most time in the Thalia, which was later the location for a brief scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.

The Thalia showed two movies a night and rotated one of the two out the next day adding a new one in its place. That gave me two chances to catch any single film. The Thalia showed pretty much everything from director Marcel Carne’s Children of Paradise to a feature length collection of animator Chuck Jones’ Bugs Bunny cartoons.

One night waiting outside for a show I saw a beautiful girl also waiting by herself. I wanted to start a conversation but had no idea how. Of course “hello!” would have been a logical place to begin but it failed to register as an option. My opportunity vanished entirely when her date showed up.

A few nights later outside the Thalia the identical situation arose. A different beautiful girl stood waiting by herself. Another painfully shy inability to seize the moment and opportunity by me. And then THE SAME GUY arrived and escorted her inside!!!

The Thalia at 250 W. 95th St.

All three of these theaters have since been demolished or repurposed. Today, the dream I used to have of being able to see movies on my own screen at home has been a reality for a long time. But I’ve learned that the excitement of discovering cinema’s past or partaking of its present isn’t the same watching a DVD (how quickly we forget) or a recording off Turner Classic Movies or one streamed from Netflix by myself.

In the dictionary moviegoer and moviegoing are one word. As a baby boomer I grew up when going to the movies meant just that— you went. Seeing Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and Snow White when I hadn’t yet started elementary school was a scary way to begin but an experience I probably shared with millions of others.

The Majestic Theatre in Mt. Penn, Pennsylvania

The Majestic was my neighborhood movie theater and it may have been unique because it shared the building with a fire station. It wasn’t unusual for sirens to suddenly blare and drown out even the Guns of Navarone.

I could ride my bike to its matinees on Saturdays to see cartoons and Westerns. That was until one day the posters outside the entrance had pictures of scantily dressed women whose faces looked like they might be in pain. My childhood Saturday mornings then became ones I spent in front of our television.

Now, I’m fortunate that here in Maine I have a neighborhood movie theater in the family— literally. It was Jo’s grandmother’s idea to build it in Rockland in the 1920s. Ida Dondis was the force behind it for over a half century. After she retired Jo’s father took over for a while and when we moved here in 2010, Jo became the founding chair of the Friends of the Strand Theatre after leading the effort to turn it into a non profit. Her sister Lynn has now succeeded her on its board.

The Strand celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2023 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its “historic, cultural and architectural significance.” I call it the “anchor store” of Rockland’s Main Street.

Yes, movie going is partially about the popcorn— it always tastes best at the movies —but for me it’s certainly about being together with an audience in the dark to watch a film. Books are a solitary endeavor. It appears movies increasingly are becoming so too but it’s sad that we are withdrawing into our solitary cocoons and endangering the movie theater experience.

We have so many screens we constantly look at now but a half century ago there was only one inside the theaters at the Thalia and the New Yorker and the Elgin. I blended in with the others as I laughed at Buster Keaton’s pratfalls in Sherlock Jr. and wasn’t embarrassed when I teared up at the end of Kurosawa’s Ikiru.

There still appear to be at least a few small town movie theaters operating around the country that call themselves the Strand. I’m lucky enough to have one just a few miles down the road.

The Strand Theatre in Rockland, Maine

---

TACO Rang Trump’s Bell…

Donald: The Angry Bird…

If Donald Trump were someone else with a less fragile ego and a sense of humor, he might have answered a reporter’s question differently last Wednesday…

Reporter: “Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the Taco trade. They’re saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats… What’s your response to that?”

A secure and funny version of Donald Trump might have said: “Does it come with rice and beans?”

Instead, the real Donald Trump, who apparently hadn’t known that his tariff policies to date are being compared to Mexican cuisine, responded with his SOP—standard operating procedure…

Trump: “I chicken out? I’ve never heard that… and you ask a nasty question like that… But don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question.”

The reporter, CNBC correspondent Megan Cassella, was the first person to tell Trump about the acronym TACO which the Financial Times U.S. commentator Robert Armstrong thought up and published in his newsletter. When Armstrong was asked in an interview on CNN about Trump’s pique at being told of the term…

Armstrong: “The President’s response was very telling. The phrase hit a nerve with him because the facts support the TACO thesis.”

What’s that thesis? It’s Trump’s repeated announcements of stiff tariffs on goods from other countries which cause financial markets to drop followed by his consistently backing down and delaying or lowering them a short time later leading to markets rebounding.

The Chinese take out order became a Trump take back…

It’s not much fun for me to write about Trump anymore although it can still be cathartic. Things are getting worse for the future of the United States at home and in the world every day.

So now that an acronym is in the news and it’s Taco Tuesday*, I think the Trump Tempest in a Tortilla makes the timing opportune to forget him today and have a margarita and write about acronyms.

The first known acronyms in English appeared in the 19th century. They were created by a journalist named Walter Phillips who devised a shorthand code for sending dispatches by telegraph. The first such example in 1879 was SCOTUS for the Supreme Court of the United States followed later by POTUS which I hope you can figure out on your own.

Since then and especially since the advent of the internet, acronyms are increasingly being infused into the language and we ignore them at our risk of being left behind in a diminishing world of fully enunciated sentences.

According to a study that was completed in 2019 of just scientific literature, over a million acronyms— 1,112, 345 —were found and I assume that A.I. knows all of them. But in the Oxford English Dictionary acronyms are lumped together with abbreviations and the combined total is only 19,000 at the moment.

Social Media has picked up where Walter Phillips left off. AMA is no longer only the American Medical Association. When texting it’s “Ask Me Anything.” ESP is no longer just extra sensory perception. It’s now also your “Email Service Provider.” As far as I know IHOP still stands for the International House Of Pancakes.

I’m not all thumbs— and that’s a disadvantage —when I text but the acronyms LOL, BTW, OMG, FYI are ones I’m sure I’ve used and in the English language they are necessary to be functionally literate when messaging in the iPhone age.

But now that TACO is part of the acronym index, I realize there are a lot of them I know but didn’t have any idea what their letters stand for or wasn’t even aware they were acronyms…

Take laser/LASER— Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and

Taser/TASER— Thomas A Swift Electric Rifle named for the inventor’s favorite children’s book character Tom Swift.

There’s Scuba/SCUBA— Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

Then there are ones that actually are a group of words…

From AFLAC— American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus, Ohio

To YAHOO— Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle (What the hell does that even mean?)

I haven’t found a course being taught on acronyms as a separate language yet but that may be getting close to happening.

For example the Austin, Texas Community College District has an extensive online glossary of terms, abbreviations and acronyms to assist students in wading through course offerings, administration policies and information about whatever else I assume they may bump into that they might find indecipherable.

For now the acronym POTUS that Walter Phillips created for short handing the name of the president in 1895, who at the time was Grover Cleveland, is still as recognizable and useful as it was then. Let’s hold out hope that in the next four years we will not see our POTUS demanding to be called POTentate.

*I actually wasn’t aware that Taco Tuesday is a thing until now. I thought it was a fairly recent restaurant chain promotion but turns out it may have originated in Los Angeles in the 1930s. I lived in LA for 31 years and don’t remember ever hearing about it… Where’s that margarita?

—————–

We’re Off To See Mr. Wizard…

In 1957, Rosh Hashanah— the Jewish New Year —occurred on October 5th. One day earlier a metal sphere the size of a basketball had been launched into orbit around our globe by the Soviet Union. I was 10 years old and remember this event from 68 years ago because of something I overheard a friend of my father say to him at services in our synagogue…

“Along with everything on earth should the rabbi bless Sputnik?”

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

The friend was joking but the Russian achievement was a shock to America. Now, the Soviets not only dominated a group of European nations and had “satellites” on the ground but one of theirs was also flying above us in outer space.

Suddenly, science classes became a top priority for schools across the United States. Within a year, President Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) so we could catch up. In 1969 when the astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon’s surface, we felt we had.

But even before the historic achievement of Apollo 11, an American television program had spurred many young baby boomers’ interest in science and technology and led some of us to pursue careers in those fields.

I don’t actually remember ever watching from beginning to end a single episode of the TV show called Watch Mr. Wizard but millions of kids did. Don Herbert was the creator and host of the weekly series which ran from 1951 until 1965.

Child actors would participate in conducting science experiments with Herbert that looked complicated but could usually be performed at home with everyday objects without blowing up the house.

Herbert’s Watch Mr. Wizard shows were so popular that NBC gave him free rein to actually blow things up and even once discuss hamster sex at a time when Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were sleeping in separate beds. Mr. Wizard is today considered an unsung hero.

“Herbert’s techniques and performances helped create the United States’ first generation of homegrown rocket scientists just in time to respond to Sputnik. He sent us to the moon. He changed the world.”— Bill Nye, The Science Guy

A few years ago I had the opportunity to feel a little bit like a Mr. Wizard. No, I’ve never been accused of being a rocket scientist. I did take biology in 10th grade and messed up the dissection of a perch so badly that the teacher Mrs. Weidner— a formidable presence —abruptly, told me to cease and desist and take out any book from another subject.

Because of switching high schools I never had a course in chemistry or physics. In college there was a “science” requirement but I avoided any of the real ones by slipping into classes like the “History of Technology” with the members of the Dartmouth hockey team. Academically, I’m virtually a science illiterate.

So, how could I be a Mr. Wizard dispensing scientific knowledge? Well, I wasn’t. My role was somewhere between that of museum docent and history teacher.

A highlight of Jo’s and my week is when our two grandsons visit us after school. We are fortunate that the family lives nearby. Nate is 12 and Harvey is nine now but for a while when he was five, I might have briefly been a kind of Don Herbert figure in his eyes.

Harvey was in kindergarten at the time and very proud of the math skills he was acquiring.“Ask me a question,” he would say and we’d do simple addition and subtraction that he could handle in his head or manage using a pencil and piece of paper. One day I told Harvey that when I was a kid we did our math with pencil and paper and then got out my pocket calculator— an old Texas Instruments TI503SV —and said, “This is how I do math now.”

I showed Harvey its functions and introduced him to concepts perhaps before I should have but I don’t believe I caused any lasting damage. Third grader Harvey is doing well in math. After that I realized that my office was full of other things that to a five year old might seem like a visit to Jurassic Park where I could be the tour guide.

I have some film cameras and explained to him that, unlike today’s, they required film which then needed to be developed and printed and that I didn’t have any and if I did, the resulting pictures I took would be anything but instantaneous. The film would need to be sent to a lab and then back to me and only then would I see the photographs. I’m not sure he fully grasped this.

I keep a couple small transistor radios— Radio Shack “Flavor” models —in a drawer just in case terrestrial radio is all that is left some day in a world devoid of cyberspace. Harvey was excited to learn how to use a battery tester and discover the radios’ batteries needed replacing. Once one worked, he was thrilled by how you could pull out its antenna and turn its dial to instantly hear oldies music, sports talk and gospel preaching.

An audio cassette or even a New York City subway token can be objects of discussion and fascination at least for a few minutes to someone who has never seen either before.

Getting out my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary and Roget’s International Thesaurus— both circa 1960 —which I’ve carried around the world with me since junior high school, was probably more of a revelation to me. Of course Harvey reads printed books but I relied on these two tomes so much and they have sat on a shelf unopened for so long… It made me feel a bit of a relic of the past, too.

It’s both amazing and somewhat sad to me that the functions of all these things, even the subway token, are now quite readily accessible inside our smartphones.

No more typewriters, phonographs, slide rules or even windup alarm clocks are needed in college dormitory rooms anymore. The stuff I’ve kept may be all but obsolete but even more transformative is that in our digital age the evolution of the telephone into a computer we carry in our pockets or purses has allowed us to do so much from anywhere— make a phone call, read a newspaper, watch a movie, shop for anything, store information and of course search the internet. In fact we almost don’t need to go anywhere if we so choose.

When I was Harvey’s age my grandfather told me about a horse and cart delivering ice to his house and I still find it incredulous to imagine what his life was like when he was a boy. I’m beginning to find my own life more and more unrecognizable from when I was a kid myself.

At times I’ve thought about selling these things I have and never use and likely never will on eBay but I haven’t. Now, I think I know why. The cameras and radios, the old dictionary and thesaurus are a link with my life’s path.

The original Arnold Palmer designed putters in the closet that I bought for my father as well as one for myself for $5 apiece in 1962 have sold for up to $1,000 dollars today in good condition. They are a coveted collector’s item and I stopped taking mine to the course years ago when I caught someone attempting to snatch it from my golf bag. For now the two putters are not going anywhere despite technology improving on them decades ago.

Yes, I guess I do have a museum of sorts of “ancient” artifacts and have imparted knowledge no longer useful to my grandson. But there must be something left that’s simple and practical I can teach him that requires neither film nor batteries nor will need megabytes in the future and stand the test of time. Yes, I think I’ve got it…

“Hey, Harvey! Today, I’m going to show you how to get crumbs off of a tablecloth using a dinner knife.”

Postscript…

Send in the Nouns…

My thesaurus was a bar mitzvah gift and the most useful and used present I received. In searching for a picture of one, I came across a photograph of four of them that belonged to a real wordsmith— Stephen Sondheim. It was well known he used a thesaurus when writing lyrics as well as a rhyming dictionary. His oldest thesaurus was a 1946 edition. I don’t know if it was given to him but he didn’t have a bar mitzvah and was already 16 by 1946. But why did he need four?

I don’t know when the auction of Sondheim’s thesauruses took place but the collection sold for $25,600. I assume that happened after his death in 2021 but I think if he had been alive, he might have been at a loss for words.

—————–

My Day On The Links With John Updike

A good walk remembered

Today is the opening round of the United States Open golf tournament. This year it is being held at what the pros are calling the toughest golf course they have ever played. I play the game and my home course here in Maine is certainly challenging enough. Golf is a difficult game but despite rising frustration and disappointment with how I play, I take exception with Mark Twain. Golf for me will never be a good walk spoiled.

What follows is a story I wrote years ago for a magazine edited by a high school classmate that’s devoted to the history of where we grew up in Pennsylvania. It’s about the day I spent with a man who was perhaps Berks County’s most famous person until a teenage girl started composing songs about how miserable she was in junior high school there. Her father was my parents’ financial advisor. His name was Scott Swift.

John Updike died in 2009. I met him twice. The first time was when I was in prep school near his home north of Boston. He came to speak to our literary club in 1964 and I wanted to know if his fictional Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom— a character who appears in four of his novels and a novella —was based on a real person.

I was curious because Rabbit’s fictional city of Brewer was a cover for Reading where Updike and I both grew up and Mt. Judge, where Rabbit had been a high school basketball star, was in reality Mt. Penn, a village where I rode my bike to get a haircut.

Updike told me Rabbit was a composite of people he knew and later I discovered what I feel is a more concise portrayal of Updike’s of someone like Rabbit whose youthful glory days had become a nostalgic noose. It’s a poem I’ve provided a link to titled Ex- Basketball Player and the last stanza tightens the loop…

Ex-Basketball Player by John Updike

The second time I met Updike was 30 years later for work and here’s my account of that day…

Golf has spawned as many books on how and where to play it as any sport I can think of and among the writers who have attempted to explain why so many of us love such a difficult game is John Updike.

Updike once described the ups and downs of a round of golf as being like islands of ecstasy in a sea of misery and I won’t disagree. In my opinion he wrote as well as anyone ever has about the mysterious allure of golf and in my “office” here in Maine there’s a frame on the wall with three postcards Updike wrote to me in 1994 that chronicle my getting him to play golf for television.

The initial correspondence represents a courtship on my part and a dance on his. I was a producer for ABC News and wanted to convince Nightline to let me do an entire program about golf— certainly not their usual subject matter.

Nightline’s anchor Ted Koppel was not much of a sports fan but ABC was the broadcaster of the United States Open golf tournament back then in 1994 and at night, after the first two rounds of the event on Thursday and Friday, a short highlights package of each day’s competition aired at 11:30 and delayed the starting time for when Nightline regularly began.

Koppel was not pleased about being forced to defer to a sports event for even fifteen minutes and my pitch was, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” I reasoned that since golfers would already be watching the U. S. Open highlights, a Nightline devoted to their sport might keep them tuned in.

Koppel’s staff bought the idea, although I don’t think he was at all enthused and I knew I had better come up with something special. This was Nightline after all and the broadcast was considered the class act at ABC News.

I found three amateur golfers to profile who had unique stories to tell about their passion for the game. I lined up quick commitments to participate from two of them— One being Ely Callaway who had revolutionized the technology and marketing of golf equipment with his best selling Big Bertha driver and the other a bank president from New Orleans named Pat Browne who was the best totally blind golfer who ever lived.   

John Updike was to be my third act. I greatly admired his occasional essays about the game and his love for it that I’d read in golf magazines and I assumed he was a golf addict/fanatic like me. I contacted his publisher and pitched my request. Shortly afterward the first of his typed postcards arrived in the mail.

It began… Dear Mr. Imber: Your thoughts and mine on golf agree in every regard… If you could come to this area, I’d be happy to talk with a camera. 

That was great news of course but then a couple sentences further on Updike demurred… Or we could skip it – there are so many mightier presences in golf than my own.

Updike and I did share some common opinions on how the game should be best enjoyed. He was a walker like I am; riding in a cart was out of the question for him and so were caddies. Updike carried his own bag, having written once that a caddy handing him a club for every shot would be like someone over his shoulder handing him a different pencil for every sentence he wrote.

Certainly, he sounded interested in participating in my Nightline project and I was confident I’d get him to sign on. I hadn’t yet used the “Imber card.”

I grew up close to where Updike had. My grandfather had a store downtown in Reading, Pennsylvania that bore our family name. That John Updike might know who I was if I reminded him wasn’t because of the store, however. It was a bit more intimate than that.

My father’s brother was a physician and just happened to have been Updike’s father’s doctor. My uncle was known to be an outstanding internist but in Updike’s first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, there is a less than flattering description of the fictional interior of a doctor’s office that was detailed just enough that it upset its real life decorator who also happened to be my aunt.

At this point communicating with John Updike progressed to using the telephone and it was time to pull out the “Imber card.” As soon as I mentioned my uncle— the doctor —Updike agreed to do an interview.

There was just one last hurdle to jump over. He’d do it but said he didn’t want to be shown actually playing golf. For me and for television of course that was a major problem— all but a deal breaker —since I needed to enhance at least some of what he had to say with video of him in action. In the end he relented… “How can I turn down Dr. Imber’s nephew.”

As someone once said, “it’s never over until it’s over,” and on the day my crew and I arrived at his golf club, the Myopia Hunt Club on Boston’s North Shore, John Updike announced that he only had an hour to spend with us on the shoot, admonishing that… “I’m still a working writer after all.”

Fortunately, once we got started out on the golf course his reserve vanished. Updike turned out to be a total ham and gave us more great material than I could have dreamed of. After lofting a shot into a pond he turned to the camera and asked, “I hope you got all of that.”

Later, when looking for a ball in the woods he found instead a piece of a glass bottle and shuddered theatrically as he examined it before tossing it away. And when at last he hit his best shot of the day he proclaimed with as much irony as exhilaration, “There is life after death!”

When I reminded him that we had used up our one hour of his time, he merely asked me if we should continue so I would have what I needed. Any earlier hesitation had turned into total and exuberant cooperation.

I had at first considered doing a straight interview with him but instead asked Updike to read my favorite short essay of his about the game titled The Bliss of Golf. I feel it’s the equivalent of a hymn to the sport and its splendor as well as a lament on the anguish its mere mortal acolytes more often endure.

While he was seated comfortably on the lawn in front of the clubhouse and about to begin reading, a gust of wind blew over one of the metal stands and the heavy light mounted on it, almost striking him in the head. That explained why a few days later Postcard #2 arrived and began…

Dear Peter Imber: That was fun, especially catching the light pole in an instant of Harry-Angstrom-like reflex.

Updike’s mention of his most recurring character “Rabbit” Angstrom brought back a memory of my own. I had been an extra in the movie of Rabbit Run that was shot on location in Reading years before. At the time my father and I had played golf with the movie Rabbit, the actor James Caan. The film was… well, aside from its premiere in Reading, it never had a general release by the studio.

Like most any golfer you’ll meet, Updike’s second postcard also filled me in on the state of his game.

I finally broke 90 yesterday on the Myopia Links and have high hopes for the rest of the season. If I am ever in Berks County with my golf clubs, I will give your father a call. 

That was an offer I’m sure my dad, who played golf well into his 80s, would never have refused.

I traveled to the ABC News offices in Washington to put my golf show together. I would have four days to work there and complete my three golfers’ stories to be ready for broadcast on the Friday night of the U.S. Open.

There was no correspondent attached to my Nightline program. So, other than Ted Koppel’s introductions, the entire narration of the segments came from the three participants I had interviewed in their own words. I confess I always loved doing stories without a correspondent where the only ego I had to deal with was my own.

In the television news business four days were just enough time to edit a polished version of a half hour show like mine. But there had been an horrific double murder in Los Angeles the previous week and on Wednesday my golf program was moved up a night so that Nightline could use Friday to air its first reporting on what was quickly becoming the most sensational news event in years.

The rescheduling tightened my deadline but would prove to be an exceptionally lucky break. My show aired Thursday night and it was to be among my favorite pieces of work in my 26 year career at ABC News.

Postcard #3 was dated the day after the broadcast and read…

Dear Peter: I underestimated how late the show runs and my taping ended when I plunked the ball in the water. So could I accept your offer and you send me a tape? My wife and stepson loved it, and the interweave of images and words was very artful. But I did look my age, and moved as if underwater. Good thing it wasn’t on Friday night; Juice’s Last Ride would have ousted it from the airwaves.

Best,

John

I had already returned to my base in Los Angeles on that Friday. The helicopter shots of O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco making its surreal freeway odyssey filled nearly every television screen in the country that evening. Updike was right, the golf program would have never made it.

For me the O.J. Simpson story was what I would be assigned to work on daily for the next year. It was a grueling challenge and as I would think back on what a pleasure it had been to spend an afternoon with John Updike on the links, I’d remember that just like golf, the news business had its islands of ecstasy in a sea of misery— of course most of the time other people’s but in this case my own as well.

Updike published a collection of his golf stories and essays titled Golf Dreams two years later in 1996. I don’t know if that was his plan before making his television golfing debut. If I helped prompt him in any way to do it, then getting him on the golf course for Nightline ranks easily as my greatest contribution to the game.

Here’s a link to the Nightline segment and John Updike reading The Bliss of Golf…

John Updike on Nightline

—————–

Adeventures Of An Apartment Manager #1

The setup…

What do a plumber and a psychiatrist have in common?

If you said one unclogs sinks and toilets and the other tries to untangle ids and egos you’d be clever but really, the two have nothing in common except that they bill by the hour. On the other hand when you’re an apartment manager you have an opportunity to be both a plumber and a psychiatrist.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend graduate school I had an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was able to take over managing a 16 unit apartment building from a friend. The deal included an apartment for me and my ex wife with free rent and utilities. In return I was responsible for collecting tenants rents, showing and renting units when there were vacancies, and handling minor repairs.

In the three years I managed the building I didn’t become skilled with a wrench nor adept with counseling but I witnessed a variety of human behavior that I could never have bargained for.

As a plumber, it would usually take me most of a day to change out a busted garbage disposal. I could never find the exact same model to replace the one I removed. Even now just remembering how inconvenient that was makes me mad. I always had to repipe which involved measurements I too often bungled. Visits to the hardware store sometimes felt like I was going around in a revolving door. I should have just found someone else and paid the damn piper both figuratively and literally.

However, I did make one discovery that saved me time and probably aged the infrastructure of the building by decades. I discovered there was a brand of drain cleaner that I’m sure was illegal. I’d stand clear when I poured it since it created an actual plume of smoke that was clearly toxic but often very effective and presto! Clog be gone. Wisely, I refused to attempt anything dealing with electricity other than hooking up the garbage disposals, changing lightbulbs and resetting tripped fuses.

As for the psychiatrist role, I nailed what I believe was a prime requirement for the job. I listened to tenants complaints patiently and at times even took notes. I’d offer solutions to their problems when I thought I could be helpful but I think I was more interested in compiling things I heard and saw as case histories. The people I dealt with and the experiences I had often stunned me and might possibly have caused even a jaded shrink to blink.

The apartment building I managed was in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley very close to the intersection of the 405 (aka the San Diego Freeway) and the 101 (aka the Ventura Freeway). You didn’t need a white noise machine for sleeping since the traffic on these two major arteries, like the ones in our bodies, flows constantly 24 hours a day and the building was about a football field away from it. Just a block further away were million dollar homes.

If you’ve read any detective novels set in Los Angeles in the past, you’d have a tough time imagining the place as a setting for The Big Sleep— no cozy bungalows sitting among palm trees in a courtyard. This was a two-story rectangular stucco box and had seen better days but was more needy than seedy.

The tenants in the building I suspected were not wealthy. Some it appeared were barely making enough money to pay their monthly rent and a few, as best as I could determine, were not employed. Except for me, the 15 tenants lived alone.

*Update: To my surprise, but I guess it shouldn’t be, there appears to have been a renovation since I lived there over forty years ago. It looks better than it did then or maybe a fresh coat of paint makes it seem so. Rents for the apartments start at just under $2,000 a month and the building itself— if you want to purchase it —would cost you over $5,000,000 according to Zillow.

TO BE CONTINUED

—————–

The first person I rented an apartment to also led to the only time I’ve ever been interviewed by the FBI. Not for what you think. Jim had recently graduated from law school and was being vetted for an appointment as a clerk to a federal judge.

The two agents who payed me a visit were right out of central casting. Their faces never changed expression and their voices never betrayed any emotion. They could have been understudies for Jack Webb’s Sergeant Friday.

Jim got his clerkship and went on to have a successful career as an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the years I was the apartment manager I rented more than a dozen of the units in the building, some of them multiple times. It turned out that Jim, my very first renter, was the only one who became a good friend and that was a lucky way to start.

My other piece of luck was meeting another apartment manager who gave me advice that was genius. It was just three words— “Check the car.” It’s the law that you can’t refuse to rent to someone because of their race, religion or ethnicity but I don’t think it’s been decreed that you can’t turn someone down if their car is a wreck on the outside and a mess on the inside. I always made it a point to see their car before I’d let them sign a lease.

Initially I inherited all my tenants. Would I have rented to many of them if I’d known more about them? Would anyone have?

Denise was a brunette by day and a blonde by night. As far as I could tell she didn’t have a job and seemed to spend nearly all her time in her tiny apartment. Only two of the 16 units— my ex and I lived in one of them —had separate living rooms, dining areas, kitchens and bedrooms.

The others were either very small one bedrooms or “studios” which had sliding doors but no windows and one large space that served as a living and sleeping area and kitchen. I don’t know how they got the name studios. There was no way you could have squeezed even a single actor together with a film crew inside them at the same time.

Anyway, once I knocked on Denise’s door when she was late with the rent, and she opened it pointing a handgun at me. The daytime Denise was armed but also a brunette usually wearing jeans. The nighttime Denise dressed as a hooker— long blonde wig, tight black leather skirt cut way above the knee, mesh stockings and boots.

She wasn’t a knockout but she certainly might have attracted Johns and that’s just it, I don’t know if she wanted to. I’m guessing she actually didn’t work professionally. Most nights if I caught a glimpse of her, she was either setting out or returning with only her toy poodle on its leash— tenants were permitted to have cats and dogs —but what do I know?

Cliff dressed for the job he told me he had which he claimed was a precious metals commodities broker. His attire was flashy, a loud sport coat and tie over a neatly pressed shirt and slacks. I think the outfit further down terminated with tasseled loafers but I might be imagining that. A few months before I was terminated myself as the building’s manager— I’ll get to that —Cliff moved out but he left plenty behind in his vacated apartment.

For starters his “frost free” refrigerator hadn’t apparently been defrosted since the last ice age. The freezer alone could have supplied enough ice for a hockey rink. But as I entered the bedroom— Cliff had lived in the other one bedroom apartment directly above mine— there was more.

Under his bed were empty pizza boxes, dozens of them stacked on top of each other. I surmised that he never threw one out and when I opened the cabinet beneath the sink in the bathroom I was even more sure of it. A cache of empty shaving cream cans were piled on their sides and formed a pyramid.

I never saw Cliff again and doubt I would have asked him about any of this if I had. The refrigerator took a week to defrost.

Then there was a guy whose name I don’t remember. He was a short timer. He told me he worked at a drug and alcohol rehab facility. I called the place and verified that it was true but within weeks of his moving in I noticed that his mailbox had a note taped on it from the postman informing him that the mailbox was full and he’d have to empty it before any more mail could be delivered.

I knocked on the door of his apartment and getting no answer let myself in. It was empty. He had cleared out. But there was an aroma familiar to me at the time and it still is today although I haven’t smoked weed for half a century. It came from his bathroom. The bathtub was full of stems and seeds from marijuana plants he was likely stripping, packaging and I assume selling; maybe even where he worked.

This guy who whose job was to help people to kick their addictions had a side hustle that I’m sure wasn’t on his resume and involved a possible prison sentence if he had been arrested. In any event if there are eight million stories in the naked city of New York, then add this guy’s, Cliff’s and Denise’s from the City of Angels.

In Adventures Of An Apartment Manager Part #3 I deal with the death of a tenant I’m not sure I could have prevented and the deception by the building’s landlord that allowed him to use a legal loophole that led to an eviction and an evictee’s revenge.

TO BE CONTINUED

—————–

Some Don’t Like It Hot!

Yes, the thermometer in my house here in Maine just read 100 degrees fahrenheit outside. Vacationers and the folks who own summer homes here come to cool off but not today. So I’m reprising a story I wrote two winters ago and hope it might help all of us to cool off. And if you don’t have air conditioning come over to our house…

It’s 5 degrees outside in Camden as I write this. That’s not all that unusual for Maine in February but what truly will be is when the temperature drops by 20 more degrees tonight to -15 with wind gusts of up to 40 mph. That wind chill will feel like -50 if you are foolish enough to want to risk the experience. Our area’s weather alerts for the next 24 hours on weather.com fill an entire page…

The lowest recorded temperature ever for Maine since weather statistics have been kept is -50 without factoring in whatever the wind might have been doing at the time. It was at Big Black River in 2009 near the Canadian border. Canadians might crack a smile hearing that. The lowest temperature ever recorded there was -63 celsius— -81 fahrenheit —in 1947 in Snag, Yukon. They might be able to crack their pants too.

If it’s said during a heat wave that it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, then how about this! A couple years ago when a polar vortex dropped temperatures in Minnesota to -30 degrees, you could literally freeze your pants off. Well, actually you took them off first…

Post Spoiler Alert… You soak the pants in water and then hang them on a clothesline and supposedly they become ice sculpture quickly.

But everything is relative. And when Jo and I lived in Los Angeles and the temperature hovered around 50, her walking group would declare it too cold to bundle up and venture out of their homes. Wool jackets and down vests come out of the closet in LA when temps reach the low 60s. Hey, it’s 61 in my office at the moment. Our upstairs heat pump’s output doesn’t quite reach here and yes, I am wearing a sweater.

I sure know the coldest I’ve ever been and it was just a few hours from where I’m sitting. ABC News correspondent Brian Rooney and I were in Canada in the middle of winter in a hamlet— I don’t think I’ve ever written the word before —in New Brunswick called Plaster Rock.

It was 2009 and this small village had come up with an idea for a weekend event they called The World Pond Hockey Championships. Hundreds of aging amateur hockey players came to relive their childhood and compete as four man teams on a lake that was outfitted with a couple dozen small rinks.

The village was remote and Rooney had a great line in his script about that, writing that Plaster Rock’s location “being so deep in the woods they had to pump in light.” Lodging was not easy to find on Pond Hockey weekend and we ended up staying in a log cabin with a team from the Cayman Islands who presented us with a challenge.

On the dining room table was a giant bottle that contained enough rum that if it had been gasoline we could have likely driven back across the border to the U.S. with just its contents in the tank. And it was made clear to us right away that we were obligated to join the expat Canadian Caymanites in getting the other kind of tanked to help them empty that bottle— call it a request for a Pond Hockey assist.

Just to demonstrate the attraction and commitment to this event that teams felt I asked a question of one of our lodge mates…

Me: Are there any hockey rinks in the Cayman Islands?”

Caymanite: “No.”

Me: “Then how do you practice?”

Caymanite: “We fly to Miami.”

Just how cold was it? Well, it was the only story I ever produced where we walked on and not across a frozen river to get to it. And when it came time for the championship game I made a bad decision.

I had a small video camera and when I saw a cherry picker was available to raise those of us who wanted a bird’s eye view to see and record the game, I joined a couple others and was raised high above the rink. This also elevated us above the tree line and I discovered there was a strong wind that hadn’t been that noticeable on the ground where I had left Rooney and my crew filming below.

Quickly, my sunglasses’ lenses froze over and after I removed them so did my eyelids. But I got the shot I wanted. The only problem was we weren’t going to be lowered back on the ground until all of us got the shots we wanted. When we did and were lowered down I could have passed for a cardboard cutout.

How cold was it? As the game was winding down, our story’s real cameraman told me he didn’t dare stop shooting and needed to let the videotape in the camera keep moving and recording or else it would likely freeze up. He was a Canadian and ought to know. Luckily, he had enough tape left so we were able to capture the award ceremony and the victors— Canadian expats from Boston —hoisting a wooden replica of the NHL’s Stanley Cup. Oh, and the Cayman Islands team didn’t finish anywhere near the top but did finish the rum.

Since we did our story the World Pond Hockey Championships have continued to be what one sports writer called “a hockey player’s pilgrimage to Mecca.”

Here’ a link to our ABC News story…

Pond Hockey in Plaster Rock

And if that didn’t help cool you off, here’s one from Ella…

It’s Too Darn Hot

---

Adventures Of An Apartment Manager #3

Everything seemed normal until she was reading the contract. Her car had passed my inspection for neatness and she was employed at a nearby veterinary hospital. But as she held the papers she was about to sign, I noticed the horizontal scars on both her wrists. One might have been an accident. Two immediately registered as something else. I thought red flag!

As she filled out her information she paused. “I’m putting my boyfriend’s parents as who to contact in case of an emergency.” I thought Ok, maybe she had problems with her own parents, though It also struck me as strange since she had just told me that he wasn’t her boyfriend anymore. She had unfurled a second red flag and both would hang in my mind.

She signed the contract and moved into what had been Jim’s apartment— the first guy I had rented a unit to when I took over as manager of the building. I rarely saw her after that. About a month later the ex boyfriend’s parents called one evening and wanted to know if I had seen her recently. I told them no. They asked if her car was there. I went and checked and it was parked in its space under the building.

The boyfriend’s parents: “She hasn’t been to work for five days. We’re coming over.”

We agreed that I’d wait for them and that we should go check her apartment together. There was no response when we knocked on the door and inside when I opened it and turned on the light we saw the phone had been unplugged from the wall. Moments later I plugged it back in and called 911.

I hadn’t missed the signs but was there anything I should or could have done differently? Was it my responsibility to have tried?

After the coroner left and the body was taken away the owner asked me if I was up to cleaning up the bathroom where she had slit her wrists again and I foolishly agreed to. A week later when I opened the door to the bathroom while showing a prospective tenant the apartment I realized I hadn’t cleaned up quite enough. Streaks of blood had reappeared in the sink.

I’m sure the owner of the building wasn’t the worst landlord in Los Angeles but I didn’t feel comfortable around him. Usually, I only saw him once a month when he stopped by to pick up the rent checks.

Then one hot Southern California summer afternoon he showed up unexpectedly and asked me to accompany him with the master key. As we went around the building he put his ear to each unit’s door. Utilities were included in the rents and he was listening for the sound of air conditioners. If one was on, he’d knock and if someone answered and came to the door, I’d introduce landlord and tenant and we’d move on. If there was no answer and he could hear an air conditioner running, I’d unlock the door and the owner would enter the apartment and turn it off.

If this sounds illegal, it might have been but even if it was, I’m doubtful it would have resulted in any successful legal challenge.

The surprise inspection happened only once during my tenure as apartment manager— I was never asked to do one myself —and our unannounced tour resulted in one renter’s eviction. I had never been inside a few of the apartments of the tenants who had lived in them for years and when we let ourselves into John’s I was amazed and the owner started swearing.

John wasn’t there but his air conditioner was running full blast and likely needed to be. The array of items turned on and sucking electricity shorted the landlord’s own circuitry. His eyes could have been the spinning fruits on a slot machine and they weren’t stopping.

John seemed like a quiet guy and I knew virtually nothing about him. It appeared he had equipped himself to be able to monitor every law enforcement radio transmission in the country while simultaneously searching for extraterrestrial life in the universe. John had created what looked like a wing of NASA’s Mission Control in a tiny apartment in Sherman Oaks.

It was then I learned about the loophole in Los Angeles County’s rental law that existed then and I wouldn’t be surprised if it still does. It provided a way to force John to move out by permitting an owner of a rental property to place a family member at any time in one unit of that property even if it meant evicting a tenant for no other reason.

A few days later the owner showed up with an elderly man and informed John that he would have to vacate because his father needed an apartment. What happened next was an act of a retribution I had to applaud even though it made unpleasant work for me.

When a tenant left an apartment, a cleaning service would come in and restore it to rentability. Sometimes that meant a new carpet. It could mean a fresh coat of paint and one time that even included repainting a “cottage cheese” ceiling; you know the ones that have the tiny bumps and do bear a resemblance to the dairy product. The tenant who left was a heavy smoker and the nicotine and tar that had covered the bumps made them look like the ceiling had come down with the chicken pox.

By now as an experienced apartment manager, I shouldn’t have been surprised that mild mannered John had taken his revenge. The cleaning crew— two college girls —knocked on my door to be let into John’s apartment and knocked again barely a half hour later. One of them pointed to the other and informed me that her friend’s mother had been rushed to the hospital and they would have to leave. When I went into the apartment myself I understood why they were lying.

Yes, the rug was stained and the walls would need patching and repainting but that was the least of it. Trashed was an inadequate description. The place had been vandalized.

Among the highlights was the garbage disposal I saw I was going to have to replace. In the kitchen sink were the nuts and bolts that were leftover after John had halfway filled the thing with others and turned it on. I did too and heard what it must have sounded like as John choked it— think a symphony of dental drills.

The bathtub may have been his tribute to the Rolling Stones. He had painted it black. But the air conditioner still functioned and all the electronic apparatus was gone. And of course the landlord’s father never moved in.

A few months later I got my own order to pack up and leave. This time the owner had a nephew who had a girlfriend and this time, as far as I know, they did move in. My career as an apartment manager was over. My ex and I were able to buy a house not long afterward and not far away. It didn’t have a garbage disposal and I never installed one.

What did I learn from the experience of being an apartment manager? I’ve never actually thought much about it until culling my memories to write these pieces. Now, I have a strange realization. I certainly was an unwitting observer to a range of human behavior I might not otherwise have ever seen that permitted me to know intimate things about people who I didn’t really know well at all. In the apartments there were pieces of these people’s lives like those of a puzzle I could try to put together. In one case I uncovered very sad ones.

I rented to a tenant who was about my own age at the time. He stayed in one of the small studios for a few months. I don’t think he ever really settled in and he left only a mattress behind on the floor. When I lifted it, there were dozens of tiny folded scraps of paper underneath it. I opened one up and it read, “Please make my father love me.” And then another, “Please help me feel better.” All were little prayers asking for love and strength and guidance. All that I knew about him before was that he had a clean car and he was employed as a paralegal.

I do some repairs at our home here in Maine. The garbage disposal in our house has worked for 15 years but I have the very good fortune of having made friends with a master carpenter who worked for us each of the times we have pursued remodeling projects. He said he liked working at our place because we left him alone and offered to fix stuff or do small projects for us when needed.

In very Maine fashion he put it this way… 

“If it’s something I think I can do, I’ll do it. If I can’t, I won’t.”

So far I am happy to say that it appears he can do anything!

—————–

Under the headings “I’m turning over a new leaf” and “An old dog can still learn new tricks” Homemade Cartoons is moving and you’ll still be able to access it for free.

I’ve created a Substack website and will END sending out mass emails of my cartoons and musings to you. Instead, if you subscribe to my new space in cyberspace, you’ll receive an email notification for each post directing you to my Substack presence. There you’ll be able to open my posts after you subscribe. There is no fee, it’s FREE!

You can subscribe to me on Substack by choosing that option at the link… 

pimber.substack.com

If you have any problem reaching this link and signing up, please email me and I’ll help with your access.My substack is called the THE PAWNED ACCORDION which is what happened to my own instrument when I quit playing it but that’s a story I posted four years ago and I’ll post again down the road.

Substack will offer me the opportunity to share my musings more widely and distribute them more easily. And perhaps I might even earn some money by accumulating paid subscribers but you won’t have to be one of them. There is no obligation for you to become a paid subscriber now or in the future. There is no paywall on Substack.

You’ll be able to sign up at the above link and continue to see my stuff. Yes, you’ll also see there is a paid subscription option if you feel what I do is worth your support.In the past four plus years I have created over 600 cartoons and written many thousands of words. I don’t intend to stop. 

During the pandemic in 2020-2021, I posted a cartoon for 365 straight days. I found out that I liked coming up with the cartoons and musings I created  and a lot of you have told me you were happy to be receiving them then and still do.
I won’t have something to post every day but both the biggest and the smallest things often lead me to want to know more and share my thoughts either as a cartoon or in writing or both.

If life is like a parking space –and I doubt anybody has ever contended that it is before –I’ll keep feeding the meter to pay for remaining curious and the chance to share ideas, opinions, stories and cartoons that you’ll continue to be able to see and read.

As long as I still have change in my pocket I’m going to use it to keep my parking meter from expiring since none of us knows how much time we have left on it to explore and learn and create.
Hope to see you on my Substack!

pimber.substack.com

Best Wishes,

Peter

---

Who Is He Kidding?

Joe has lost his mojo

---

Red, White and Am I Blue

Is This The King’s Court?

At this point in the history of the United States if our country were a radio station, its call letters might be WTF! Less than a week ago we witnessed a presidential debate that was like watching a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Mr. Rogers.

Then came the Supreme Court decision a few days ago on presidential immunity which feels like a sucker punch in the gut to what I believed was the bedrock principle throughout American history that no person, even a president, is above the law.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’m hardly a Constitutional scholar, although in college one of the best classes I had the privilege of taking dealt with the history of that document taught by a man named Vincent Starzinger.

Of the many tributes from former students after his death I’ve picked out this one to sum up his particular gift to us.

 “He was not there to make you think a certain way, he was there to make you think.”

So, here we are six decades later and I wish Professor Starzinger was still around to help my brain make sense of an ever growing number of decisions during the Roberts Court era that to my own thinking have not made our nation better, safer, fairer or stronger but are accomplishing the very opposite.

I’ve picked out some of them and applied the standard which has guided medical practice for centuries but apparently not our Supreme Court justices—  First, do no harm.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) made it much harder to ban and regulate the ownership of guns.

The Impact: Since the decision, guns owned in the country now exceed our population and gun violence is epidemic with nearly 50,000 deaths from guns yearly by homicides and suicides. Guns are now the number one killer of American children. The fear of gun violence has unquestionably changed our sense of security if not our daily lives.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) made it possible for corporations, unions and wealthy donors to spend unlimited funds on elections.

The Impact: So called Super PACs have been able to hide the sources of their money— dark money —and in 2020 alone total election spending was $14.4 billion, up from $5.7 billion two years prior and yes, I know 2020 was a presidential election year. And I am also aware that election spending is a bipartisan problem that has led to the pervasiveness of negative advertising bombarding us from all sides that has created the distressing fact that American elections are often up for sale.

Shelby County v. Holder (2013) struck down the formula by which the 1965 Voting Rights Act required certain states with a history of discrimination against minority voters to get changes to their voting requirements cleared by the the federal government before they went into effect.

The Impact: Since the decision 29 states have passed 94 restrictive voting laws and while some have been blocked, most are presently in effect and since the 2020 election, 21 states have passed 33 more laws restricting mail voting access. 

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) determined that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and overturned a precedent of half a century of that right set by Roe v. Wade (1973).

The Impact: Within a month of the decision 43 clinics in 11 states stopped providing access to abortions. There are now no abortion providing facilities in 14 states that enforce total abortion bans. Nearly two-thirds of Americans polled believe access to abortion should be a legal right.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce (2024) overturns a 40 year old decision Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that established the law that federal courts defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of a statute when it is ambiguous.

The Impact: In all likelihood executive branch agencies will face increased difficulty in regulating the environment, cyberspace, public health, workplace safety and surely other areas. Judges may now exercise more power than experts.

Trump v. United States (2024) This highly controversial decision grants presidents presumptive immunity “from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility”, meaning a president is presumed to enjoy immunity from prosecution if his action is related even by just a small amount to his official status.

The Impact: Consider writing checks in the Oval Office to Michael Cohen for his legal services to pay off Stormy Daniels as possibly a presidential act now permitted within his constitutional powers. More brilliant minds than my own both joyous and mournful will be parsing and pontificating about Trump v. United States for years to come but to quote a line that every movie horror film fan is familiar with “Be afraid. Be very afraid!”

And there’s this other quote that I’m thinking about more frequently from founding father Benjamin Franklin to the question of whether we have a republic or a monarchy to which Franklin answered “A republic if you can keep it.”

And did you know that once Benjamin Franklin had an understanding of the behavior of electricity, he invented the lightning rod to protect houses from destruction by lightning? I wish he were still around to come up with another to prevent America’s destruction by politics.

So, Happy 4th of July if you feel like celebrating!

—————–

Landslide in the UK, Backslide Averted in France

Pundits and historians, pollsters and social scientists and famously, James Carville can claim we vote with our pocketbooks as in “It’s the economy, stupid!” And then there’s also the longstanding and still mostly verifiable “We vote how our parents did!”

I took a government course in college and my professor asked us what ketchup we preferred? The two candidates were Heinz and Hunts. (Was there even a third?) A followup question was which one did you grow up with at home? We used Heinz and I still do. And yes, my parents were Democrats and so far so am I.

This postulate did not apply thankfully in adulthood to my childhood spaghetti— Muller’s —and tomato sauce— Del Monte. As we age, certainly we are capable of changing our past even beyond our pastas. And times change and change us.

It seems to me that at this point in history the countries in the world where people are still allowed to vote without intimidation (and there are fewer now than there were a few decades ago) voters are more often expressing their angst and discontent and even their pessimism and fears and although the first line in the stories about the election results in the UK and France may have the words “The left won”, it’s certainly not the whole story.

I know I’m not showing such nuance in today’s cartoon. Remember, I’m a recovering television news journalist and I always realized my work was sort of adding captions to pictures without the space and time for a lot of depth.

A picture may be said to be worth a thousand words but I rarely ever got that many. So now that I have a chance to use them plus express an opinion, I’ll add that these election results don’t really mean there’s been an about face for the future political direction of the UK and France. I don’t think whatever gyroscope that has been balancing western democracies for decades is working now.

Equilibrium in many societies is teetering and to adapt the quote that the astute political prognosticator Bette Davis uttered in All about Eve 84 years ago “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy future.”

—————–

What Biden Said About His Favorite Movie

Can watching a movie help influence or even inspire an important decision by the President of the United States? After coming up with today’s cartoon I looked for any evidence of that actually having happened and could only find one substantiated example.

It occurred in 1970 during Richard Nixon’s presidency and the Vietnam War. Despite opposition from his advisors, cabinet members and the American public, Nixon was determined to expand the war into Cambodia.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A few months before ordering that mission to begin, a film had been released starring George C. Scott as the uncompromising and eccentric General George S. Patton. Ronald Reagan among others had turned down the role. John Wayne was not offered it.

Nixon apparently watched the film Patton repeatedly and although he later denied any connection between it and his decision to bomb Cambodia, his national security advisor Henry Kissinger said he felt that the President viewed himself as a military commander in Patton’s cinematic image.

Although there are numerous books about actual and fictional presidents portrayed on film, I have found only articles about presidents watching movies themselves during their time in the White House. 

Movie screenings there did not get off to an auspicious start. The first was in 1915 during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The one chosen was Birth of a Nation which to this day is considered among the most controversial and racist films ever made in United States history.

At the time D.W. Griffith’s movie was an outrage to many, portraying its black characters as despicable and the Ku Klux Klan as heroic. Afterward Wilson had his personal secretary deny that he had known in advance of the film’s true nature.

Since Franklin Roosevelt created a permanent White House movie theater in 1942— His own tastes ranged from Mae West’s I’m No Angel to Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — it appears some presidential office holders have been downright movie fanatics or perhaps in the course of their duties, the job and a need for distraction from it may have driven them in that direction. 

Dwight Eisenhower watched over 200 movies during his two terms. His favorite— High Noon. But the runaway record holder for film zealot may surprise you. Coming in at 480 viewed in four years is Jimmy Carter who was also the first president to screen in the White House what had initially been an X-rated movie— Midnight Cowboy. By the time Carter saw it, the rating had been revised to an R.

A presidential consensus about favorite films? High Noon again. It tops the list. Bill Clinton claims he watched it 20 times. John Ford’s The Searchers and My Darling Clementine and David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai are also up there.

And then there’s Joe Biden and an answer he gave in an interview to a question about what was his favorite movie during the 2008 campaign when he was running for a second term as vice president with Barack Obama…

Katie Couric: “What’s your favorite move and why?”

Joe Biden: “Chariots of Fire” is, I think, probably my favorite movie. But the truth of the matter is the thing about it, there is a place where someone put personal fame and glory behind principles. That to me, is the mark of real heroism, when someone would do that.”

Couric: “Do you remember your favorite scene from that movie?”

Biden: “I think the favorite scene is when he is making the decision and talking to his … about do I do this? What do I do? He so desperately wanted to run, but concluded he couldn’t. It was that, you know, that moment of decision, I think that was my favorite scene.”

Yes, Joe Biden actually said this 16 years ago! If only he could hear himself now.

—————–

My Brain Is Shrinking!

Remember the children’s toy that had a plastic page that you could draw and write on and then by lifting it you could make whatever you had just drawn or written instantly disappear?

It was called the Magic Slate and lately I’ve realized my brain seems to have become one. My short term memory loss is accelerating. It’s the usual stuff… “What did I just come in the room for?” “Where did I put that?” And in response to Jo, “I know I was supposed to do that but I forgot.”

I’m not panicked but I am annoyed and dealing with my brain’s size shrinking— all ours do as we age —has led me to realize that I now have the equivalent of a Magic Slate inside of my head.

There’s the blunt stylus (Weren’t they usually red?) that I know inscribes the thought or task I have told my brain I intend to carry out, but in just seconds whatever was imprinted on it has disappeared. Ok, I’m 77 and I know that memory loss is a typical part of getting older but here’s what keeps me confident. I figure that as long as I remember I forgot, I’m Ok!

Computers are like us and we’re like them. We pack both full of stuff and there can come a point when there is no more room to cram in any more stuff. Of course you can always purge a computer of what’s using up its memory and create more room for storage or you can just go buy a new machine. Our species hasn’t come up with an implant of extra RAM for us YET! I’m sure Elon Musk is working on it.

I’m not telling you anything that you likely don’t already know or are already experiencing. You may have your own Magic Slate now squatting inside your hippocampus (In Greek it’s a sea horse. In our brains it’s shaped like one and is the repository for our memory. The word also makes me think of college and the ballet sequence in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.)

But back to the Magic Slate and my surprise to learn that one of the all-time inexpensive toys became an important counter espionage tool during the Cold War. And it happened not once but twice.

The first time was in the 1950s after a microphone was found planted in a gift from some Russian children to the American ambassador in Moscow— it was inside a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States no less. After that discovery there was alarm and suspicion that doubtless other bugs were hidden in the embassy.

Someone came up with the idea that since conversations inside the building were likely being heard beyond its walls, the staff needed to communicate silently among themselves. A shipment of Magic Slates from America provided the work around and also had the added benefit of leaving no trace of the information that was being written and shared on them.

In the 1980s more concealed listening devices were again uncovered in the embassy and this time newspaper reports of how Magic Slates were being used to thwart Soviet spying spurred sales of the toy at home.

The manufacturer of Etch A Sketch suggested (perhaps jealously) to the State Department that their product would be an even better device to deter the Russians— Ok, I made that up. Have you ever tried to write a single word on an Etch A Sketch?

But back to my increasing short term memory issues and I’m surprised that I remember this joke.. 

A doctor tells his patient, “Well I’m afraid I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, you are suffering from short-term memory loss.”

The patient replies, “Ouch!… So, tell me what’s the bad news?”

—————–

Why?

“It’s not who we are as a nation.”

—President Joe Biden

Unfortunately, it’s undeniable to me that guns and the violence they so often wreak in the United States are precisely who we are and have been historically as a nation. I may have learned about “Guns and Butter” in political science courses in college but maybe I should have taken the history class in “Guns and Bullets.”

I just looked it up and discovered that presidential assassinations in America— successful and attempted —date back to a man named Richard Lawrence who tried to kill President Andrew Jackson in 1835. He was a house painter and historians have speculated that his exposure to the toxic chemicals in paint in the 1800s caused his mental illness that led to his violent behavior. Until it had manifested itself, he was described by acquaintances as a “fine young man.”

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribe

In our history four American presidents have been assassinated— Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John Kennedy (1963). One sitting president was injured by an assassination attempt— Ronald Reagan (1981). And two former presidents have been injured in attempts on their lives— Theodore Roosevelt (1912) and now Donald Trump. In all instances guns were the weapons used.

There have been an astounding number of unsuccessful assassination attempts or plots to have achieved that end against 12 other American presidents in office.

Trump’s attempted assassin is being identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks and although it’s not always been the case, the use of his full three names follows a strange tradition that includes of course John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Handguns, shotguns, machine guns… In America if you want one, you can get one. And pardon the reference to the Billboard Hot 100, we’re number 1 in the world with a bullet! The number of civilian-owned firearms in the United States breaks down like this. For every 100 people there are 89 guns. The country in second place with 55 guns for every 100 people is Yemen which is in the midst of a civil war.*

And yes, we are ourselves barely civil about what laws we should have for regulating the possession of guns in America. You likely can guess that gun ownership breaks down starkly across party lines— 44% of Republicans and those independents who lean that way say they own a gun, while only 20% of Democrats and those independents who lean that way say they do.**

I imagine there are also those who when asked are not saying anything.

For one of our major political parties guns are as American as apple pie and you can make that two servings. For the other despite any efforts to affect serious change, the issue is today pretty much a minefield surrounding a third rail.

Just as President Biden did not offer thoughts and prayers in his messages of the past few days (For me at this point there is nothing more disingenuous you can say after any shooting in America.) he also made no mention of the elephant and the donkey in the room that so few politicians are brave enough to meaningfully confront head on— sane gun control!

For the present and indefinite future there seems no mass shooting horrific enough to envision to bridge our differences.

*The Small Arms Survey (SAS) is an independent research center in Geneva, Switzerland that provides information on aspects of small arms and violence committed with them.

**Pew Research Center

—————–

The Disassembling of America And what I learned from IKEA

When we moved into our house here in Maine I put together the last piece of IKEA furniture I ever intend to. It’s the desk I’m sitting at right now and it’s fine except for a drawer just below one of my hands I’m typing with.

I’ve assembled a fair amount of IKEA stuff in my life and I do admire their user friendly directions for putting their furniture together. They consist of only pictures instead of the maddeningly dark alleys of words I’ve been taken down too often by other instruction guides.

This desk I tackled was a project— a sort of IKEA final exam —with fourteen pages of pictures and I thought I was acing it until…

I had completed the assembly and was about to start filling up the desk’s two drawers. The one on the left side pulled out easily but the one on the right got stuck less than halfway. Way less than half way…

I figured that I had put a screw in the wrong place and found where it was located but it was beyond my reach to unscrew. I started to remove screws in other places to clear the way but this didn’t help. Somehow, some way, the screw I had screwed up must have been screwed in much earlier in the assemblage.

I kept disassembling and the desk was no longer upright and now balancing sideways on my lap as I continued to reverse the work I had done and CRASH!!! It escaped my grasp and dropped on the floor accompanied by the sound of cracking wood.

If you’ve ever assembled a piece of IKEA furniture yourself, then you are likely familiar with the little wooden pegs that you insert on the ends of the larger pieces of particle board to join them together. They are called dowels. My dropping the desk sheared off a bunch— broke them into pieces! I was angry and that gave way quickly to despondency.

What had been my innocent mistake quickly needed a scapegoat. I blamed IKEA and VOLVO and ABBA and all of SWEDEN. I asked myself what would Henrik Ibsen do? Yeah, I know he’s Norwegian but that put him in the neighborhood. 

I was mentally treading water in order not to sink further into depression. My mind, working like it does, suggested I write a tragic play with a title— “A Dowel’s House.” Even spellcheck thought it was a stupid idea.

I left the desk in a heap for two days while I fumed and considered my options.

1. I could call IKEA and while trying not to curse, order lots of parts or even ask for a new desk for free. 
2. I could hire someone more competent than I or even a carpenter to take over and try to repair the damage.
3. I could just put the damn thing back together as best I could and live with a gimpy drawer if in fact the desk could even be resurrected to that condition again.

I chose the last option and have pulled out that drawer just now. For the first six inches it’s fine, after that it’s a bit of a tug.

“Going around Robin Hood’s barn” is an expression I’ve heard used to describe someone who has taken a long time to get to the point. And although I’m not aware that Robin Hood ever had a barn, I’ll plead guilty to taking you on a stroll through Sherwood Forest and confess that my IKEA experience is the setup to how I’ve been feeling for a long time about what’s happening to our country. I’ve been watching us disassembling.

Here’s the short list of some of what has been astounding and appalling…

1. A former president who spreads dangerous falsehoods and incited a violent insurrection attempt is now a felon running for reelection,
2. A Supreme Court that has members who have been unabashedly unethical is reversing long held precedents— decisions that the majority of the country often oppose.
3. A shocking debate performance by our current president has divided his political party and demoralized its members.

These things are increasingly distressing to me and that’s why I’ve been remembering the moment the IKEA desk fell off my lap. It was sudden and shocking but looking back I believe inevitable. All the taking apart of what I had put together had weakened the desk to the point that it collapsed.

The United States is not a piece of IKEA furniture and perhaps equating my desk to what I’ve observed taking place in America is ludicrous. But I am convinced that I am witnessing things that I have believed in and taken for granted about our nation all my life getting disassembled piece by piece— screw by screw.

I realize this is a downer of an analogy but hey, I’m sitting at my IKEA desk that I didn’t know was salvageable until I decided that I’d attempt to put it back together.

The desk has held up with its sheared dowels and served me well for 14 years. But here we are in the reality of 2024 and I worry that the institutions and laws that have served us well for way longer may not withstand the pressure that will surely further test them. Can the America we’ve known be reassembled again? Or are we to become something very different very soon?

—————–

Thank You Joe!

—————–

Paris When It Sizzles!

When the final torch bearer lights the Olympic cauldron in Paris today athletes will be hoping to set new records in the 45 sporting events in which they will be competing. One event included for the first time this year will be breakdancing and it seems such a surprising addition that I might just watch it.

Unlike the freestyle routines in ice skating and gymnastics, the “breakers” will have to improvise their performances to music they won’t have heard beforehand. Olympic DJs will select the tunes and I doubt we’ll hear anything from The Nutcracker or Swan Lake although I’ll assume that just like with skaters and gymnasts, spins and flips that earn a 10 from the judges will be necessary to get you the gold medal.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribe

However, the most consequential world record for the next two weeks and beyond was already set even before these Olympics begin. This past Monday was the hottest day globally ever recorded and it broke the previous high average temperature for the earth over a 24 hour period that was reached just the day before. It’s old news that our planet is heating up but how this relates to things we have historically taken for granted is increasingly staring us in the face.

Take the Olympics for instance. Six months ago China hosted the Winter Olympics and not a single snowflake was supplied by Mother Nature. One-hundred percent of the snow was man-made using nearly 50 million gallons of water shot by 290 snow cannons that operated non-stop for two months.

That was a technological feat that ranks as the greatest snow job of all time but whether or not it is going to be sustainable for making Winter Olympics of the future feasible is questionable.

It’s predicted that by 2050 nine of the locations around the world that have hosted the winter games in the past will not be reliably cold enough to do so again and a short time after that virtually none of the places where the games have been held previously will be suitable to do it again if global warming remains on its current trajectory.

And how about the Summer Olympics? In a generation global warming is likely to eliminate over half of the cities where the games could take place today. China, Japan and all of Southeast Asia will be too hot by mid-century and if the summer games continue to be held in July and August only cities in northern Europe, Russia and Canada or locations in the southern hemisphere when July and August are winter months will be left as useable venues.

Recent history has already shown us where we’re headed. The average temperature in Paris during late July and early August has warmed by more than five degrees fahrenheit since 1924, the last time the city hosted the Olympics.

I wasn’t much interested in math as a student but I wasn’t bad at it either. The difference between arithmetic and exponential growth is a concept that I grasp but wonder if the world does. Global warming isn’t like increasing a kid’s allowance by a dollar or two a year. If you start multiplying it instead of adding to it by the time he or she finished college you’d be bankrupt and trying to cut a deal with the Saudis.

The reason for environmentalists having such dire outlooks about the future is that they understand the definition of exponential.

Here’s a quote I found…

“A lack of appreciation for what exponential increase really means leads society to be disastrously sluggish in acting on crucial issues. I am utterly convinced that most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the next decade. And by the next century it will be too late.” 

Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist and conservation biologist who coined the term “biological diversity” spoke these words in 1989 and was referring to the decade of the 1990s. Lovejoy died last year.

So, “Que les jeux commencent!” and best of luck to all the athletes and especially to those competing outside “Restez hydrate!”

And for those in the break dancing competition “Casse une jambe!”

Actually, I’ve just learned that the French term used to wish French actors success is the word merde. Why? Because a couple centuries ago people arrived and departed the theater in horse drawn carriages. The evidence of how many had showed up was left in the street.

---

How Ya Gonna Keep Us Away From The Pharmacy?

Yes, John Travolta is getting older but apparently he could still bust a few moves earlier this year at a music festival in Italy. Travolta’s 70 so even if he’s in the best of shape, too much reprising of his iconic disco dancing in Saturday Night Fever might result in chronic disc problems for him now.

The expression “Old age is not for sissies,” is attributed to Bette Davis but we don’t know if she actually said it. However, she had a line in All About Eve that was a definitive description of what getting old is like even if she didn’t write it— “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

I’m not morbid about mortality but I was struck by finding out recently that life expectancy in the United States has not recovered fully from the drop we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. That drop in in 2021 was a full year of lost longevity to 77.8 and the most recent update I could find from the Centers for Disease Control put American life expectancy at 77.5.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribe

There are dates in one’s life that are memorable and some are celebrated annually— birthdays, anniversaries —and there are others we experience only once. I’m about to have one of those or at least I certainly hope so. In September I will be 77.5 years old.

If life was a basketball game, I’d say I’m nearing the end of the fourth quarter. Reaching 80 will be overtime.

And over time American life expectancy has steadily and significantly increased. At the outbreak of the Civil War you could expect to live to be 40. By World War I life expectancy had increased by 15 years to age 55. In 1960 when John F. Kennedy became president it had risen by another 15 years to 70 and in 2020 average life expectancy at birth in the United States had reached 78.8 before experiencing the pandemic relapse.

Modern medicine and other learned and implemented health measures have had everything to do with it. When I was in my twenties I had a severe case of strep throat. I likely would not have survived it if I’d lived a century earlier. Who knows what other illnesses I could have contracted if I hadn’t had my childhood vaccines.

I have every reason to believe that the prescription drugs I take now are helping to prolong my life including one for an indolent lymphoma that I was diagnosed with seven years ago.

But there’s been an added bonus for baby boomers like myself. Have you noticed in movies made even as late as the 1950s that people who were playing characters in their 50s then looked like many of us do in our 70s today? What’s responsible? Nutrition, exercise, cosmetic surgery? Do we care?

Living longer yet looking younger than those who barely made it to our age in the not so distant past just seems totally logical in the upside down world I frequently feel like I’m living in.

Some of us can be described as workout and diet fanatics with memberships at the Y, yoga and Pilates classes and Weight Watchers but most of us now have a different prescription for the pathway to a longer life— many of them!

We belong to a nation of prescription drug users. Nearly half us are taking at least one. Over four billion prescriptions for drugs are now filled annually in America. For a substantial number of us our medications give us an improved life if not a lifeline itself. 

That’s the message in our bottles and we hear about it incessantly. You can always tell the demographic of an audience watching television by the commercials. I worked for ABC News and our viewers were old. If I had really paid attention to the advertisements that took up a substantial portion of any newscast, I would be a walking encyclopedia of the side effects from hundreds of drugs. 

And I truly believe that in the future when anthropologists study our period of time on earth they won’t be as interested in our politics or our wars as much as they will be in our commercials. Over the course of human history slander and killing will seem old hat. But commercials! They will tell the tale of how we lived and how we were different.

I can envision it. There’s one researcher centuries from now staring at at a commercial playing on a primitive gizmo called a television and saying to another, “What the hell do you think this was? Did they really shoot salad with it?”

The United States is one of only two countries in the world where drug makers can market directly to their consumers. I doubt many of you will guess the other one so I’ll give you a hint. It’s not on a continent. It has significantly more sheep than citizens and it battened down its hatches and dealt pretty successfully with the coronavirus. It is not Taiwan although that country did an excellent job staunching COVID too.

By the way the price paid for prescription drugs in New Zealand as well as in many other countries is less than one half of what we pay in the United States. Some of you may be aware and grateful, like I am, that the passage of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act put a cap this year on out of pocket costs for prescription drugs for those of us on Medicare. That has undoubtedly been nothing less than life saving for the life savings of so many.

I’m not a visionary but I’d wager there is somebody out there who is and sees that prescription drugs have become such a normal part of our lives as we get older that unexploited marketing opportunities for pharmaceutical companies getting together with real estate developers are there to be… well, pillaged.

There are plenty of retirement communities that are already centered around things like golf and tennis, the arts and continuing education. Could it be that in the future seniors might flock to Club Meds where you can live alongside others with whom you share the same medications?

And just think if you’re self conscious about the number or type of pills you pop, you’d be able to literally swallow them and your pride together with someone else.

I have a few specific names for these residences I’ve come up with that might work…

---

Kamala’s Choice

With all the polling that’s done in America when it’s a presidential election year you would think that everyone of us would be asked to weigh in with our own preference at least once. Have you ever been polled? I haven’t. I’m not waiting for my phone to ring either.

On the other hand the number of candidates other than Harris and Trump running for offices at every level across the country who beseech me by text and email everyday for support— as in money —feels like enough at this point to fill an NBA arena. And if I had a dollar— no better make it $100 —for every text and email that I delete from them, I might even be able to buy a team to play in it.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribe

But enough of what you already know!

I’ve been doing a little research into vice presidential history and don’t peek down at the bottom of this post yet because I have a quiz for you to take. Let’s start with the presidential election of 1952. If you’re old enough to have been alive and voted that year, it means you were born in or before 1933 which makes you at least 91 years old.

“I like Ike” was the winning presidential slogan in ‘52 and his less likeable vice presidential candidate had to salvage his spot on the ticket by claiming his wife didn’t own a mink coat and that his daughters’ cocker spaniel would not be regifted.

Yes, the famous “Checkers” speech was one of the earliest uses of television to appeal directly to voters and Richard Nixon became Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president and then one of ten in American history who had held that position to later be elected to be president themselves. Nixon made it to White House but Checkers was in doggie heaven by the time he did.

And here’s the beginning of the quiz. In both 1952 and 1956 Eisenhower ran against the same candidate, the governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson. Can you name who were Stevenson’s vice presidential running mates in ’52 and ’56? If you can, you’re either at least 80 years old or a presidential historian. Jo and I actually know a terrific one who I bet can give you the answers.

No looking down below yet! 

Keep your eyes right here and try to name all vice presidential candidates of the party that LOST in presidential elections from 1952 through 2020. That’s a total of 16 men and two women. I’d say if you remember half of them, you have done well.

You have five minutes before you have to hand in your bluebook…

Pencils down! Ok, go ahead and look and when you’re finished, click on the link at the very bottom of this post to see how one of the unsuccessful vice presidential aspirants made a clever comeback of sorts.

Click below…

Don’t Leave Home Without It!

---

Don’t Touch That Dial!

But will the AM bandwith play on?

There’s a long list of things that used to be part of and even important in my life that are not any longer. Ask kids today to make a call on a rotary telephone and try not to laugh when they push their finger down on the numbers in the holes and nothing happens or try not to cringe when after putting a record on a turntable they press the phonograph needle into it. I’ve witnessed both of these.

Heraclitus figured out over two-and-a-half millennia ago that “the only constant in life is change” but that doesn’t mean we accept it. Jo asks me why I insist on keeping the several hundred CDs we have when they’ve all been embedded in our computers. I tell her I worry that someday we might need to use them again even though the last couple of Macs we’ve bought no longer have a slot to insert CDs nor do our cars.

VHS tapes? I’ve got a shelf of them. And DVDs? Three shelves! 

Once a year I find a phone book in our mailbox. I throw out the one from the year before and keep the new one. I can’t remember the last time I used any of them.

VHS tapes and CDs and DVDs collect dust on their shelves and unlike books, they become indicators of one’s age more than one’s interests. Time marches on and we either get in line and march with it or we stop and wave goodbye and let the parade move on without us.

And then there’s radio. When our younger grandson turned six I bought him a pocket size transistor radio. We were both born on St. Patrick’s Day but 69 years apart. He was fascinated by mine— I have three which I keep in case of emergency — and how you could pull out its antenna and turn its dials to instantly and randomly listen to oldies music, talk of sports, politics and the gospel.

A couple months later Harvey heard a commercial on his radio…

Harvey: “Mom, there’s a store in Rockland that has everything you need for Father’s Day!”

And yes, Mom and Harvey went there and I don’t know what they got but was told it was everything they needed for Father’s Day.

I grew up in the 1950s listening to AM radio. I had a Zenith Royal 700 All Transistor model that had a leather case and used 6 C cell batteries. It must have been a birthday present and a very special one. I’ve discovered that adjusting for inflation the $70 it cost in 1959 is equivalent to about $750 today. 

I didn’t have any awareness at the time that commercial radio broadcasting in America was barely 30 years old and had dramatically changed the way we received information and entertainment. I knew the call letters of AM stations near: WHUM, WEEU, WRAW —and far: WMEX, WKBW, KMOX —as well as the names of the disc jockeys: Dick Biondi, Hy Lit and Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg.

When I went off to prep school I couldn’t have a radio but figured out that if I always scheduled my mandatory monthly haircut for 8 p.m., I would be able to hear the Theme from Studio X on WOR, the station the school’s barber always listened to. I still love that melody.

In college I had a clock radio and used its alarm function set to radio until one morning it woke me up with an announcement that the temperature in Hanover, New Hampshire was below zero. I switched to the buzzer alarm after that and tried not to schedule any of my classes to begin before 10 a.m.

Maybe you’ve figured out the cartoon by now and are asking yourself why I’m apparently writing an obituary to AM radio. It’s because AM radio, particularly in cars, may be well on the way to be buried for eternity. Not completely yet, after all there are nearly 4,500 AM radio stations in the United States and they serve an important and constant role for others unlike me who merely wax nostalgic.

In rural parts of America and especially areas with an older demographic AM radio can provide a life saving service. It’s the source for warnings and information about severe weather and natural disaster. In fact the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Public Warning System —through which FEMA delivers critical safety alerts to the public —operates through broadcast AM radio stations.

I’ve driven across our country several times and by doing so I learned that AM radio has niche audiences for whom it is vital— farmers get crop reports, indigenous people and ethnic minorities get to hear their own voices. With the ongoing demise of local newspapers AM radio stations are now often a crucial remaining binding keeping communities together.

So, why is the National Association of Broadcasters raising an alarm? 

Turns out there is a problem. As EVs are increasingly becoming the cars we are encouraged to buy, automakers want to say bye bye to the AM radio band being provided in them. Electric vehicles produce electromagnetic interference that distorts an AM signal in EVs causing it to hum and be unpleasant to listen to. Providing a decent AM band with more shielding from the rest of an EV’s electronics could solve the problem but would increase the production cost of the vehicle. So, the quick fix is no fix; jettison the AM band and problem solved .

Last year a number of carmakers—  BMW, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen, Volvo, Porsche and Mercedes —decided that an AM radio band will no longer be a standard feature of the radios they install in their cars. Ford was going to join this group but changed its mind for now. There’s a bipartisan bill actually before Congress to stop this from happening but even when support comes from both sides of the aisle, there apparently isn’t enough of it to get a bill passed.

For sure cars will still have FM reception but as you may already be aware the FM signal, which is of considerably better quality than AM, only travels about 40 miles. I remember while driving one night in Tucson picking up WCAU, an AM station in Philadelphia 2300 miles away.

Jo and I bought a new car a year ago. We don’t listen to AM and probably won’t unless there is an emergency and it becomes our only option— hence my emergency transistor radio stash —but we do listen to FM and now we also have something called Apple CarPlay. It allows us to access radio stations that stream their broadcasts over the internet by connecting our iPhones to a good cell phone signal— if it’s a bad one we hear nothing.

CarPlay hasn’t been that easy to learn. I brought our car to the dealership from which I bought it twice for tutorials and still don’t have the effortless hang of using it.

Yes, time marches on and I am not a Luddite but I confess that I like knobs and dials. I miss them! And I guess what I really miss is the simplicity they represented. Can’t turn back the clock and I’m not able to as easily as I used to anyway. All mine are digital.

—————–

Donald Trump Has A Problem

Only one?

You get to me under my skin

You get deep in my head it’s true

So deep in my head I want no part of you

Like Nancy and Liz you’re under my skin

I can’t try not to give in

I say to myself why am I so impelled

To never resist trashing women who know me too well

You get to me under my skin

I can’t play nice, I’m so uptight

And the stakes are all too clear

I don’t have a choice but to fight from fright

Because your name fills me with fear

I don’t know I’m a fool, that much is clear

But lacking morality, that’s my totality

Just the thought of you makes me spew

And I can’t stop once I begin…

Because you get to me under my skin

With apologies to Cole Porter who wrote I’ve Got You Under My Skin in 1936. The song was introduced in the movie Born to Dance and sung by Virginia Bruce. It was nominated for Best Song at the Academy Awards that year but lost to The Way You Look Tonight performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Swing Time. I’d say Virginia Bruce was bigfooted (but gracefully to be sure) by Astaire.

—————–

If Google Is A Monopoly Will The Search Party Be Called Off?

Google is so synonymous with what it’s used for it’s like Kleenex and Scotch Tape and unlike both of them it’s actually become a verb. When we search for something on the internet we google it. Now a federal judge has ruled that Google is a monopoly which doesn’t mean that we will see the search engine broken into “Google-lets” any time soon but eventually the data juggernaut might actually be forced to make space in cyberspace for genuine competitors.

Data is the present day equivalent of what oil and steel were in the past and Google’s parent company Alphabet is easily the colossus of data collection and Google the goliath of search engines with a market share of 90%. That translates to 8.5 billion searches on Google a day or 99,000 a second and makes it a magnet for advertisers willing to pay lots of money to cut to the front of the line on search results as well as buy the right to annoy and distract us.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

There might be free speech but there’s no free search! If you’re using the Alphabet owned Chrome browser like I do to access Google as your search engine, it reminds me of the early days of Hollywood when movie studios owned their own theater chains and if they wished, could show only their own films in them. Maybe the theaters ran ads on the screen before the main feature but today your screen at home is doing it non stop. I feel at times like I’m playing whack-a-mole or macheting my way through a jungle. Google’s ad revenue last year was nearly $225 billion which is roughly the GDP of Portugal or New Zealand.

Equivalencies like these I’ve mentioned use to seem daunting to me but in a world where a baseball player named Shohei Ohtani is being paid over $430,00 for every game he plays somehow they don’t anymore.

Alphabet owns over 250 companies that it payed over $20 billion to acquire to enable Google to gobble up its competition. The Justice Department accuses Google of paying billions annually to device makers— like Apple and Samsung —wireless providers— like AT&T and Verizon —and web browsers— like Mozilla —for Google to be the default search engine on their devices, networks and sites.

Will Google go down as one of the most famous monopolies in American history like Standard Oil, U.S. Steel and Heinz Ketchup? And why did I add the last one? Well, what’s the ultimate compliment you can give a product? Those ketchup bottles in lots of restaurants may have a Heinz label but what do you think they get refilled with? That’s market share. That’s respect. That’s cheating but I bet you still put it, whatever it is, on your burger because you think and want it to be Heinz.

Anyway, I’ve created a couple cartoons to have fun with Google’s dominance. Let me know if you have a favorite. Both have a personal spark of inspiration…

Google Acquires Everything on the Monopoly Board…

A few years ago our older grandson had a fixation with the board game Monopoly. He was eight or nine at the time and roped Jo and me and his younger brother into a game one afternoon that was interminable— FOUR HOURS!

He was the banker but assumed additional roles as our financial advisor and mortgage broker, which meant he kept the game going by keeping all of us out of bankruptcy and thwarting my every effort to achieve it so I could exit.

The invention of the game of Monopoly would actually make a great movie. It involves a woman named Lizzie Magie who invented and patented what she called The Landlord’s Game in 1904. It never sold widely but years later a man named Charles Darrow stole her idea; called his game Monopoly and sold it to Parker Brothers.

When it was discovered that Lizzie Magie had the original patent, Charles Parker— the company founder and not the jazz saxophonist —deceived her into taking the sum of $500 for the rights in perpetuity with no royalties offered and Charles Darrow became the first board game millionaire. Life is not fair as if you didn’t know.

Diogenes Meets Sherman and Mr. Peabody…

I just checked and found out that my vintage Bullwinkle Buren 17 jewels wind up watch might fetch $200 today on eBay. I bought it in 1971 for $12.95 and paid for it with one weekend’s winnings from the CBS Evening News football pool.

I don’t remember the first time I saw Jay Ward’s characters but I loved them instantly. Rocky and His Friends premiered in 1959 when I was 12 and followed American Bandstand in the afternoon after I got home from school and turned on the TV.

I’m sure I’m not the first to observe that Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, Sherman and Mr. Peabody and Dudley Do-Right might have been created to amuse children but even then I felt I was monitoring an advanced class in cartoons way beyond the infantile antics of Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck. It was like being seated at the kids’ table but listening raptly to the adults’ conversation.

And Rocky and His Friends was instructive. In its cunning and beguiling way it taught history. Mr. Peabody and Sherman used their “wayback machine” to time travel and help out and often save the day for a Who’s Who of famous figures from Confucius to Geronimo. I found a list of all of them and interestingly, no ancient Greeks are on it. Diogenes in particular could have certainly used Peabody and Sherman’s assistance. Would Google have found him an honest man? I just asked it and was given a couple candidates. Ever hear of Leon Pilar or R. Budd Dwyer? I didn’t think so but I guess Google has and thinks very highly of them.

And do you think that Sherman might have been named for the Sherman of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890? I didn’t think so and won’t google it to find out. But hey, if you have to google to learn who Sherman and Mr. Peabody are or never heard of Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel, you’re either a lot younger than I am or grew up not watching much television.

---

As Harris Polls Higher, Will Trump Sink Lower?

Really, do I need to ask?

“A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.” —Dan Quayle

“Polls? Nah… they’re for strippers and cross country skiers.” —Sarah Palin

“Polls are fake! (pause and then…) They just came out with a poll. The most popular person in the history of the Republican Party is Trump! Can you believe that? Rarely do you see a poll that’s very far off.” —Donald Trump on 7/30/24

We all say stupid things sometimes but politicians historically have said stupid, dismissive, contradictory and unfortunate things and gotten clubbed over the head with them in the past.

“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” —President Gerald Ford in 1976 in his debate with Jimmy Carter (That classified as stupid).

“It depends on what the meaning of the word IS is.” —President Bill Clinton in 1998 when questioned about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky (This one was nonsensical).

“Read my lips: no new taxes.” —President George H.W. Bush in 1998 at the Republican Convention (An epitaph?).

Running for office and then being elected puts you under a permanent high powered public and media microscope. Now that most of us are carrying in our pockets or purses a means to catch and expose any verbal or other kind of egregious misstep by a candidate, we actually have the potential to change history as slim as that chance might seem or DO WE?

“Gotcha” as a term and now a word has a long history going back to 19th century England and has meant understanding— as in “I got it!” or catching someone at something and achieving a surprise or a triumph like maneuvering for and receiving a kiss under the mistletoe. Today, “gotcha” is also perceived antagonistically as a deliberate and partisan act by journalists attempting to embarrass notable persons and especially politicians by asking them questions that might be considered unfair or even inappropriate but are not necessarily.

With the presence of Donald Trump in our lives the “gotcha” landscape, indeed the “gotcha” universe has been altered. Trump, as he has in other significant ways, lowered our standards of what’s acceptable in behavior and discourse in American public life. He has been and will continue to be a self inflicting “gotcha” machine or at least would have been in the past.

If Ronald Reagan was “teflon” when it came to explaining why nothing negative seemed to “stick” to him, then Donald Trump is lead, encased in the only material that shielded Superman from the kryptonite that could destroy him.

From physically mocking a disabled reporter at the very start of his campaign for president in 2015 to questioning whether Kamala Harris is Black two weeks ago along with too many other outrageous false claims, crazy conspiracy assertions, meandering incoherences and bigoted inferences to list without using up substantial memory on my computer, Trump would have been banished from consideration for holding elective office let alone our presidency just a few generations ago.

Is there anything Trump could do or say that would cause his base of supporters to turn their backs on him now? Is there any “gotcha” that could be the end of Trump?

Ed Muskie’s tears that he claimed were caused by snowy weather and not his emotions doomed his chances of gaining the Democratic nomination for president in 1972.

Howard Dean’s scream in 2004 that was heard only through the recording of his microphone and not by any of his applauding supporters in the room where he was campaigning ended his presidential quest.

Looking back on what derailed a politician’s run then and won’t put a dent in it now makes our country feel pretty unrecognizable today.

Forget about any verbal faux pas, unabashed lie, guilty verdict or perhaps even his shooting someone in the middle of 5th Avenue removing Donald Trump from American life a this point. I think it’s a safe bet that if Kamala Harris’s poll numbers continue to rise, Trump will descend even lower than he has. He always manages to find a way.

I’ve been to the lowest point on the earth’s land— the Dead Sea. Its water is 10 times more salty than the ocean and so buoyant that a human being can’t sink in it. But for one person there’s no place too low he can’t sink, even the bottom of the Dead Sea.

---

They’re Off!

I didn’t realize this until I checked but before 1972 delegates to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions were free to pick a candidate they prefered and not required to vote for the candidate who may have won their state’s primary. Those gatherings weren’t necessarily always the coronations they have become in our time.

Things changed after the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. If you’re my age, how can you not remember that one? Ever since then it has been a foregone conclusion that the candidate entering the convention from either party with the most delegates elected in the primaries would receive the party’s nomination to run for president.

That was until the convention occuring right now. Kamala Harris has something in common with 1968 and Hubert Humphrey. She’s the first person from either party since Humphrey to have won the nomination without having entered a primary. The run up to Joe Biden’s 11th hour decision not to seek reelection was a lot more like trauma than drama. Deflated Democrats were instantly elated and rallied behind Harris. Other would be aspirants for the nomination quickly fell in line and this week’s convention has unfolded smoothly if not totally without rancour.

In that regard just as Humphrey, was burdened and wounded in the election in November by his support for the United States’ continuing the Vietnam War and lost in the electoral college although barely in the popular vote to Richard Nixon, Harris will have to confront the opposition by a consequential part of her party to United States’ support of Israel for its ongoing actions in Gaza.

Tonight Harris will give “the speech of her life.” But really will it further energize her supporters more than they appear to be energized already? And will the television ratings be any higher than they have been in decades? Anything approaching a viewing audience of 25 million will be considered a success. By comparison last February’s Super Bowl was watched by nearly 115 million Americans.

National conventions since 1968, aside from being forgone conclusions, have been little more than days long political advertisements and decreased and splintered television coverage of them has reflected that. The legacy networks— ABC, CBS and NBC —now devote minimal broadcast time to them. Cable “news” channels with clearly partisan audiences— right wing Fox, left wing MSNBC and perceived by the right and admittedly others less dogmatic as left leaning CNN and PBS —have filled the space and reflect how even attempting to “be down the middle” is critiqued as “whose side are you own?” by many Americans today.

But fast backward to the past. In my lifetime has there been a more disruptive political convention and worst year for America than 1968? On March 31st President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. Five days following that on April 4th Martin Luther King was assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy was shot two months later on June 5th and in late August when Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate pandemonium broke out inside the convention hall as riots raged outside in the streets of Chicago.

I watched that convention at my parents’ home in Pennsylvania with a close college friend. I think the word traumatized by what we witnessed on television may be overdoing it but seeing the network broadcasts cutting back and forth from what was going on inside the hall to what was going on outside in the streets was close to how we felt. I consider it one of the few unfathomable events that have occured in this country in my 77 years.

Mayor Richard Daley’s use of Chicago’s police as a blunt instrument with blunt instruments was sickening. After it ended I asked my parents if I could borrow their car to take my friend home. I’m not sure they realized he lived in Illinois and we weren’t planning to drive there directly. Instead we headed for Canada but with no thought of emigrating.

We just needed a diversion— a way to cool off and absorb our disgust and dismay—and on our cross province journey we attended a Canadian Football league game in Hamilton, stopped in Joni Mitchell’s hometown of Saskatoon and crashed the North American Kentucky Fried Chicken convention in Banff. And yes, Colonel Sanders himself was there and all his franchise owners were dressed in white suits just like him. But even topping all this on our way back eastward across the top of the United States we drove out of our way to watch Evel Knievel launch his Honda motorcycle over 13 Toyotas in Missoula, Montana.

Subsequently, my career at ABC News was full of excitement and opportunities to search for, witness and do stories about things historic but mostly just interesting and I believe coverage of the national conventions was neither. It became an expense the network increasingly realized it could reduce. I was assigned to cover only a couple of them. but I was lucky. The first was in 1984 in San Francisco. The other was in 1988 in New Orleans. I ate well.

—————–

Google the two words “accordion jokes” and there are an abundance of sites solely dedicated to deprecating the instrument.

My own favorite accordion skewer involves a guy stopping for dinner with an accordion sitting on his car’s back seat. When he returns from his meal he discovers the car has been broken into. A window has been smashed but in the backseat there are now TWO accordions.

Somebody called the accordion the Rodney Dangerfield of musical instruments and only the bagpipe rivals it for being the one most picked on. Although the two may not have much in common in appearance or the sound they make, they do when they’re lampooned. Jokes about them both are mostly interchangeable.

I have my own joke about the accordion that was delivered by my mother at my expense. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I convinced my parents to let me take accordion lessons but I believe my mother agreed because she even said it was a promising vocational path for me in the future.

I wasn’t bringing home stellar report cards. So, maybe she thought I could grow up to be in a polka band and if I didn’t master the accordion, at least I could be an organ grinder. I bet she might have even staked me the money for a monkey. 

Zeswitz was and after all these years still is a musical instruments store where I grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania. That’s where I had my entire accordion experience and at the time there were a lot of other kids taking accordion lessons with me.

I’d later realize that Mr. Michaels, the man who was our instructor, was actually a real life facsimile of Harold Hill, the charming huckster in stage and screen’s The Music Man. Like the Davy Crockett coonskin hat and the hula hoop that were crazes in the late 1950s, learning accordion was another one Michaels managed to create in my town through charm and persuasion.

We all started with beginner accordions that Zeswitz rented us for the first half dozen lessons. After that the store played hardball. To continue instruction a signed contract to purchase a new full blown accordion was required, otherwise Zeswitz took away the keys plus the buttons.

My parents, I’m sure against their better judgement, acquiesced to sign on the dotted G Clef and I plodded along for a while but quickly validated any doubts about my commitment when I started to regret having to practice.

At one point Reading’s accordion acolytes had a giant recital inside the field house at the local college. I think all of us, under the spell of Mr. Michaels, nearly filled the entire basketball court. If The Guinness Book of World Records had been advised of the event, we might have qualified for an entry— most accordionists per square foot.

The most proficient among us played that squeeze box rite of passage “Lady of Spain.” I was in the group that played the considerably easier “All Through the Night.” My memory has fooled me into believing that I had already packed up my own accordion and was headed out the door while others were still performing.

A short time later I met my Waterloo (Napoleon’s, not Abba’s) when we had to deal with both sharps and flats for mastering “Oh, Them Golden Slippers.” At that point I also gave up any hope of my participating in Philadelphia’s New Year’s Day Mummers Parade and accompanying a thousand banjos down Broad Street. In my frustration I damaged my grandfather’s beautiful metronome as well.

My parents had been paying for my accordion on an installment plan. I don’t know how they unloaded mine but I do remember that for years afterward every pawn shop in Reading had at least one accordion in its window. I no longer have a clue how to play one and I’ve been told that a true gentleman who does know how is someone who won’t.

But I do hope my accordion got adopted and had a good life. Maybe it ended up at a bar in Cajun country rocking zydeco or appearing at weddings in Williamsburg with a Klezmer band. And maybe it’s just occasionally lifted out of its box and for however long it’s played, no matter how faint the tune, somewhere there’s music .

And that’s the story that explains why I named my Substack The Pawned Accordion. And here I am with the only evidence I can provide that what I’ve told you is true…

—————–

What Will Decide the Election?

The way it looks from here…

“A republic, if you can keep it.” —Benjamin Franklin in 1787

“It’s the economy, stupid!” —James Carville in 1992

“I’m against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman’s choice.” —Nancy Reagan in 1994

“I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century.”
—Newt Gingrich in 2011

“Climate change isn’t something people get to choose to believe or not. It’s happening.” —Matt Gaetz in 2019

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
—Abraham Lincoln in 1864

---

What’s in a Name

If history made sense, then the ghost village of Imber would be located today somewhere in Ukraine or Poland— somewhere my ancestors lived well over a century ago. But history doesn’t make sense and this lonely Imber is in the United Kingdom on the Salisbury Plain. I’ve never been there and if I ever decide to go, I can but only on one of the few days a year that visitors are allowed.

The village of Imber has always been isolated— “Little Imber on the down, seven miles from any town.” but is abandoned today and has been uninhabited since the end of World War II. There was no battle fought there nor any plague that decimated its small population of less than 200. In 1943 the entire citizenry of Imber was evacuated so that their homes and surroundings could be used as a training area for American troops preparing for the invasion of Europe. After the war none of the evacuees were allowed to return and until recently the site of Imber with its abandoned structures was still used for military training.

The first mention of inhabitants living there goes back a thousand years but Imber’s history has nothing to do with my family and I haven’t been able to find any evidence that reveals how the village got our name but I think I know how we did.

In the past surnames were often tip offs to one’s occupation— Baker, Fisher, Mason, Taylor, Weaver… Willie Shoemaker was a famous jockey but it’s a good bet somewhere along the way a Shoemaker ancestor shod people and not horses.

As far as I can determine, my family’s name Imber is derived from a Yiddish form of the German word ingwer, which means ginger. The name originally may have indicated that one was a grower or seller of spices as far back as the late Middle Ages.

Ancestry.com claims to have over 10 billion records but my family tree’s roots weren’t buried in its database. Whatever records were kept in the Jewish village communities of Eastern Europe called shtetls were nearly all destroyed in the Holocaust.

There are other Imbers beyond close relatives of course who I have run across. Once while boarding a plane, an Imber who I didn’t know was already in my seat. We had both been booked to sit in it so I guess actually, it was our seat. Years I ago I discovered there were two other Peter Imbers in the United States. Out of curiosity I contacted them. One was a doctor in Florida and not Jewish and the other rather testily accused me of siphoning his airline miles. Turned out we even had the same middle initial.

I also met other Imbers in Israel when I lived there in the 1970s. One was an officer in my artillery unit during my time in the army and another was a disc jockey on Israel radio. Both of course claimed to be related to Naftali Herz Imber, the most famous of all Imbers. I had known about him since I was a kid because my father told me we too are his relatives. Everyone in Israel knows of him. Streets there are named after him. Naftali Herz was an itinerant poet who authored a Hebrew poem titled Hatikva (English translation The Hope) in the 19th century which later became modern Israel’s national anthem.

School children in Israel are taught that Naftali Herz Imber was the country’s first beatnick. In reality he was an alcoholic and died penniless in New York City. I was told my family on occasion sent him money.

Shamira Imber— the Israeli disc jockey —was at one point suspended from broadcasting because she played a protest song about the Israeli Army’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. That took place on the eve of the day that Israel remembers— and Jews everywhere should —our people’s close call with extinction. I guess some Imbers have rocked the boat. Others just got on one. 

My grandfather, Jonas Imber, fled Europe along with his brother Joseph to avoid conscription into whoever’s army was fighting at the time and came through Ellis Island in the early years of the 20th century. One of my most prized possessions is the English dictionary he was given by an American Jewish newspaper shortly after his arrival in New York. Its pages and binding have exceeded their lifespan and I dare not open it.

Jonas and Joseph settled in Reading, Pennsylvania after being advised that opportunities awaited them there and within a decade they went from peddlars with a horse and wagon to businessmen with a store and employees.

Jonas met my grandmother Anna in America and while he learned and spoke the language of his adopted country, Anna, although she comprehended English, hardly ever brought herself to speak it. Like many Jewish immigrants my grandparents used Yiddish when they didn’t want their three children to understand what they were talking about, but sometimes the kids could anyway.

Anna was not a great cook. Her chicken soup might have had curative powers, but it could have used a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. My father told me that on occasion Jonas, a kind and patient man, became exasperated by what was offered at the dinner table and would blurt, “Ikh kum heym far dem?” I don’t think I need to translate.

The Imber brothers built houses side by side on a steep street above the city of Reading. The houses were identical. Up the hill from them was the mansion of William H. Luden, the inventor of the menthol cough drop. The smell from the Luden’s factory downtown is deep in my olfactory memory alongside that of grandmother Anna’s chicken soup.

I had never considered why Jonas and Joseph had mirror image houses until I took my wife Jo to see them and she asked me. My mother had the answer.

“The two women didn’t like each other and didn’t trust one another. They insisted on the same house for each of them because they wanted to make sure neither got a square foot more.”

It was the spring of 1929 when both families moved into their new homes and simultaneously, construction was completed on a luxurious three story department store on Reading’s main street to house the Imber Brothers’ burgeoning business. Six months later in October they lost the store and literally everything else except for the two identical houses when they were wiped out financially by the stock market crash.

My father was 12 at the time. He and his older brother and younger sister all managed to go to college and my father went on to get an MBA after, according to family legend, paying his first year’s tuition with winnings from a fraternity poker game at Penn State.

When he returned to Reading after landing in Normandy on D-Day plus 1 he went to work for his father and his uncle at the smaller store they had reopened, but soon realized that Jonas and Joseph weren’t about to let him implement any of what he had learned at Harvard Business School. As I’ve seen in my own life— my mother told me to sit up at the table on the occasion of my 50th birthday —at any age with whatever talents you may have acquired you can remain a child in the eyes of your parents.

My father bought in and then bought out the owner of a women’s ready-to-wear store down the street. I liked visiting him there because in the basement was a bowling alley and I’d be given a couple dollars so I could bowl and entertain myself while waiting for him to finish work. The noise from the rolling balls and flying pins was certainly strange accompaniment for the women on the floor above trying on dresses and millenary but apparently, not an obstacle to sales.

At one point the business had expanded to three other retail stores plus two outlets in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. My father’s wish was for one of his sons to work with him. I wasn’t interested and neither was my brother. We both moved away and pursued our chosen careers. All the stores have been shuttered since the early 1990s.

There is only one Imber left in Reading. My grandfather’s brother Joseph’s son Harold is still alive. The two identical houses also remain side by side on Eckert Avenue and I doubt their current inhabitants have any idea of how that symmetry came to be. Families take their memories with them and sometimes leave behind mysteries in their place.

A while ago I searched for pictures of the Imber Brothers store on the internet and found something else instead. For sale on eBay was a wood handle for a shopping bag. Imber Bros. was printed on it. The seller believed it was from the late 1800s. Close, but it isn’t. I remember those handles and know they were still in use when I was a kid and my grandfather overpaid me when I would fold together cardboard boxes at his store. For $19.99 I bought the handle.

---

Hard to believe that over a half century has gone by since Bob Dylan warned us that The Times They Are a-Changin’. Many of us born before the internet and smartphones might disagree on many things but I’m guessing there is still a consensus that in a lot of ways the times —our times since those times— have kept changing but not completely for the better.

Talk radio is one of those developments I’m pretty certain I could live without. Toward the end of his life my father had his car radio tuned permanently to Rush Limbaugh. When I visited and borrowed the car I got a quick earful. When he was driving and I was with him and Limbaugh was on the air I got a serious earful.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

About the only thing I learned from Rush and his cohorts was that there’s no issue too complex that it can’t be reduced to fear and loathing. And if you’ll excuse my own rant, I’ll contend the majority of talk show hosts of any stripe are egomaniacs and many of their callers malcontents or morons.  

The late governor of Texas Ann Richards was once asked why she didn’t have a talk show. Her answer: “The people who have time during the day to listen to me on the radio are not the people I want to be talking to.”

But I remember a kinder gentler era when talk radio was in its infancy and I was not much older. There was a program on AM radio in the city where I grew up in Pennsylvania that I’d often go to sleep listening to. Its theme music —big band clarinetist Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare” —would play and Reading’s Night Mayor was on the air.

It might not have been the first radio listener call in talk show in the country but I’ll bet it was close. Paul Barclay was the host and his day job was teaching high school. I’m guessing that back then his radio gig was barely earning him vacation money.

I don’t think he was much of a local celebrity and he certainly wasn’t into spouting his own opinions to his audience. No diatribes, no insults, no spin but something else was missing from Barclay’s show that, despite his impartiality, made him a very singular voice back in his day. His was in fact the ONLY voice.

In that pre high tech era that seems so long ago either the technology to include the caller on the air didn’t exist or the Night Mayor’s radio station didn’t want to pay for it. So listeners to the program only heard one side of the conversation— the Night Mayor’s. Because of this much patience was required from the devotees of the program.

Calls all started the same way: “Hello, Night Mayor!” followed by a long silence as the caller made his point and the listener at home waited to hear Barclay repeat, and no doubt condense, what that point was. Each call was literally translated from English into English and listening to the conversations plod along was at times awkward and even tedious.

The Artie Shaw theme music kind of scared me back then but I couldn’t resist tuning into the Night Mayor when I was growing up. My Zenith transistor with it’s leather casing brought me the world, although St. Louis was about as far as it could reach out into it on a good night.

Reading had three local radio stations and WHUM broadcast the Night Mayor on weeknights. Like any other city, its residents had complaints and of course Barclay heard more than his share of them— potholes, parking, barking dogs and of course the perceived stench of local politics and government. I remember once it was actually the real thing— complaints about tardy garbage collection. I tuned in for it all.

And then one night I decided to call the Night Mayor myself. I had to. Something incredible and disturbing had occurred on live television that afternoon and the Night Mayor was asking for an eye witness. I had gotten home from school and seen it myself on a kitschy variety show called County Fair hosted by “There she is Miss America…”  himself, Bert Parks.

It was a stunt gone amazingly wrong. A woman from the audience was blindfolded and spun around while a lit fuse running on the floor was racing toward her husband sitting in a chair below a sack of flour hanging from the ceiling. The studio audience was implored to scream directions to help her find the burning fuse so she could stomp it out with her shoes.

Somebody thought it a good idea to attach a firecracker at the end of the fuse right beside the sack of flour and when his wife didn’t find it to extinguish it, KABOOM!!! The flour ignited and her husband instantly became a human torch. Aflame, he rose from his seat as Bert Parks ran to him and probably saved his life by covering him with his carnival barker’s blazer. YES, this really happened live on TV!

I could barely believe I had seen it but I had and I felt obligated to report it to the Night Mayor. As a loyal listener it seemed my duty. Well partly, but mostly I just wanted to be the first one to call in.

I dialed the radio station from the phone in my parents’ kitchen— it was past my bedtime —and as it rang and waited my turn, my nerves started to get the better of me. Stage fright hit and I was about to hang up. I was a kid, not even a teenager. What was I doing? Only adults called the Night Mayor!

With the suddenness of a car crash it was too late. “Hello, Night Mayor.” His voice sounded different on the phone. I surprised myself and didn’t hang up and as best I could, began my account. The Night Mayor didn’t ask me my age. He had a show to do and now I was part of it. I was relieved that nobody was hearing me but him.

He helped me along with tactical “ah hahs” and “um hums” no doubt honed from years of experience. I navigated around them and listened to the Night Mayor edit me as we went along. I reported what I had seen and The Night Mayor was relaying what I told him to hundreds, possibly thousands of others. Years later I became a journalist. Looking back now, I’d say this was my first effort at reporting a story to the public.

Was I articulate? Did I make sense? Who knows? But together the Night Mayor and I made it work and then it was over. I was alone in the kitchen and shaking a little but not embarrassed or scared. I was now officially a Night Mayor caller.

When I became a television news producer my accounts of news events reached millions. It was my career— what I did for a living. But to this day I have never called another talk show and until writing this I had never told anyone I had called this one.

---

Before I ever learned that politicians parse the truth or just outright lie a good deal of the time and all of us parse the truth or lie some of the time, I had an eye opening life primer in what’s true and what’s not courtesy of a man named Lester Fisher.

My family belonged to a reform synagogue and I attended weekly religious school that we called “Sunday school.” Classes were held on Sundays because our synagogue was actually closed on Saturdays— the Jewish Sabbath —and pretty much only open on a Saturday for the occasional bar mitzvah. But that’s another story.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I was in sixth grade when our textbook was titled When the Jewish People Was Young. Some of us couldn’t accept that as grammatically correct but it was— “a people” can be singular although I don’t recall to this day reading or hearing anybody ever say the American people is. There could have been a fix. When the Jewish Nation Was Young may have worked as well as the title but then what would we have had to discuss? Most, if not all of us didn’t read the book.

And for a book about a people who God made wander in the desert for forty years When the Jewish People Was Young was as parched as the Israelites must have been themselves during their time in the Sinai. It was published originally in the early 1930s and when we were given our copies in the late 1950s, it was so stylistically outdated it could have been printed on stone tablets.

Lester Fisher was our religious school teacher that year and challenged with trying to resuscitate this moribund account of Jewish biblical history. I don’t recall that he succeeded. I only remember THE TEST. Now, up to this point in my education a true or false exam was preferable to multiple choice questions or being asked to provide an actual name or date for anything. Having only two options for an answer was easily a more welcome alternative to any question that required a choice among more or, God forbid, a written sentence or a paragraph.

But Mr. Fisher was about to change the entire calculus of what I considered my testing comfort zone. He was my father’s age and I now realize that he likely didn’t want to be teaching our class about as much as we didn’t want to be attending it.

We weren’t a rowdy group but I remember one of us (not me) being caught with a transistor radio inside of her purse which years later I saw reprised in another synagogue classroom but this one was on the big screen in my favorite Coen brothers movie A Serious Man. Fisher confiscated the radio and it was maybe the only moment of levity in our somber year.

Mr. Fisher was generally undemonstrative but sometimes enjoyed being theatrical and on the morning of THE TEST our teacher was in total performance mode.

“Children, close your books and get out a pencil and paper. This will be a True-False test!”

He was as pumped up as we weren’t.

I hadn’t done much of the reading and my goal was to achieve a passing grade and consider it mission accomplished. However, with a single sentence Fisher seemed to ominously up the ante.

“Get ready for Fisher’s Horrible Hundred!”

The questions began and they were tough— really tough —but after the first half dozen I realized I had marked them all as true. I was fairly confident that they were but after a few more that I marked true as well I began to feel uneasy. How could there be this many true answers in a row?

I opened my mouth. “These are all true,” I said and probably sounded more like I was asking a question than making a declaration of certainty. Mr. Fisher did not look at me and did not pause. His face gave no hint of whether or not I was on to something. The questions kept coming and they all still continued to seem to be true even if I wasn’t sure anymore.

An impulse was telling telling me they were. Logic was telling me that it wasn’t possible. I had to make a choice, go with my gut feeling or what seemed like common sense. “Fisher’s Horrible Hundred” could turn out to be the easiest hardest exam I’d ever taken if I were to simply mark all one hundred questions true. But who would ever give such a test?

In a split second I lost my nerve and began to write as many Fs as Ts the rest of the way. As I think about it now, I realize it was an indication that I wasn’t a fearless gambler and looking back on my life I guess I haven’t been. But as I recall I still got the highest mark in our class on THE TEST that day. It was a pyrrhic achievement. “Fisher’s Horrible Hundred” were indeed all true and our entire class failed!

Several years ago I found a copy of When the Jewish People Was Young for sale on eBay and bought it from a public library. Inside the cover I discovered it had been used by a congregation in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A boy’s name was inscribed in it and for no good reason I tracked down his family in Las Cruces and learned he had grown up to become an insurance agent in Southern California. I called him. He did not want the book back.

---

The summer before I entered Dartmouth College my class was sent books to read in advance of our matriculation. One was by José Ortega y Gasset, the other I don’t remember. I do remember that I didn’t read either one so the lecture about them upon our arrival in Hanover was wasted on me.

Quickly though, I discovered that Dartmouth was not a place where I could blow off or through assignments and skate by. My professors were demanding and my classmates smart and during my four years I remember only one student who I felt might not have had the brains to be there.

The Pawned Accordion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Maybe I’m being harsh about him but it was about midnight in rural Virginia when he bridged a station wagon in which I was a passenger on a railroad track. Missing the turn was forgivable and there was a lively bar adjacent to our predicament. Upon our request some of its customers streamed out to help lift our vehicle off the tracks so we could return to the road from which we had strayed.

But as we got back in the car some of the good samaritans turned into bad drunks, surrounded our car and started banging on the hood demanding money.

“What should I do?” asked our driver. “I can’t run over them.”

“No, but you can back the f___ up and get the hell out of here!”

I’m not sure I was the first one to shout this but I think that we all did.

That incident occurred during the spring of my sophomore year. I was on the golf team and we were on our spring trip, having worked our way north from South Carolina. A place called Fripp Island had been our starting point. It was a newly completed golf resort and its golf course had all the usual hazards you tried to avoid and an extra one that seemed more like a matter of life and death.

In addition to the sand traps and water hazards there were alligators roaming the fairways and more than a few. Our rounds took longer to complete since when we spotted a gator close to us none of us knew how to ask it to let us play through.

The final match of our tour was at the University of Maryland. I was slotted as last man on our team but that day I ended up paired against Maryland’s number one player who was being punished for showing up late and hungover. He was mad about his demotion and in golf, unlike football, anger is not usually going to work to your advantage.

I had a great day. The Maryland number one had a bad one and I beat him. That night my teammates and I celebrated and I vaguely remember at one point making a hazy trip to a men’s room.

When I arrived back on campus in Hanover I was faced with an academic decision I was required to make. In order to continue my studies in the fall I needed to declare a major. I had considered sociology but a baffling encounter as a freshman with a department professor who assigned us to read Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities squelched that idea.

It was a Tuesday when she announced that we were supposed to have it completed by Friday— all 458 pages. I approached her after class.

“Professor, I’m not sure I can read the book that fast.”

“Look, let me tell you something,” she said. “Most people only have one idea they’re trying to get across. If they’re great they might have two and if they have three they get the Nobel Prize.”

She was out the door while finishing that last sentence and I decided that I’d explore a different subject for a major.

And so it was shortly after the return from the spring golf trip I walked across the Dartmouth Green to the English Department offices. The afternoon tea at the stately Sanborn House was for prospective English majors and I had put on a jacket and tie for the occasion that I was certain was pro forma. If I had been holding my tea cup and saucer correctly, I might have avoided what happened next.

As I listened and nodded while circulating around the room in front of the genteely dressed professors of the department— all were men back then by the way —I soon became aware that none were making consistent eye contact with me. They were more focused on the center of my chest. As soon as I lowered my head to see why, I understood the attraction. It was my tie— the same tie I had worn into the men’s room the night after my big win on the golf course.

Puke does not exactly blend in and go unnoticed on a repp tie and I immediately concluded that English was not going to be the best choice for my concentration of studies during the next two years and made a hasty getaway.

When we returned to school that fall I still hadn’t made up my mind about a major. History seemed like an option and I went to the bookstore to see what courses I would be signing up for but while checking them out I saw a class on Africa that was being taught by a government professor whose course I had taken and liked… Yep, at that moment I became a government major. 

After graduation when I went looking for a job, I was asked by an interviewer what I had studied in college. I told him the story I’ve just told you, vomit stained tie and all. I thought he almost hired me but I could be wrong.

---

—————–

The Galapagos Islands are famous as the location where Charles Darwin researched what became his theory of evolution. Along with the Great Barrier Reef in Australia the Galapagos is considered one of the most pristine places on earth. The news that the islands are now a conduit for the cocaine trade is alarming and depressing.

It is approaching six decades since I was in college and America then and now seem so different. That’s an illusion. It’s easy to remember those four years as splendid isolation from the problems of the world beyond my campus but that’s nostalgia for you. There was turmoil in America then as now– civil rights, the Vietnam War, riots, assassinations…

The sociologist Robert Nisbet defines alienation as, “The state of mind that can find a social order remote, incomprehensible, or fraudulent; beyond real hope or desire; inviting apathy, boredom or even hostility.”

It’s perhaps wishful thinking to believe I can pinpoint the moment I believe I became alienated. It was 1967 and I picked up a record album by a band I had never heard of and placed it on a turntable. The record was physically warped and I could only play a couple songs. One was titled You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here. It seemed to fit the moment.

The band called itself the Mothers of Invention. If you’re a Baby Boomer like me, you’ve probably heard of its leader and composer of its songs, Frank Zappa. He has left us flashes of brilliance as a musician and just as many stories of his nastiness as a person. I bought most of his albums and admittedly, sometimes in spite of the music for their cool album covers by an artist named Cal Schenkel. The titles were as off the wall– Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Weasels Ripped My Flesh — as the names Zappa bestowed upon his children– Dweezil and Moon Unit.

I think, or at least convinced myself, that I had outgrown my alienation many years ago but that’s another story. I’m certainly not a sociologist but could it be that Americans’ alienation a half century ago aside from the more often enumerated other grievances is a large part of what has metastasized into our society’s fragmentation today?

When I read the Washington Post article about the emerging drug world presence in the Galapagos another song on that Mothers of Invention album titled Trouble Every Day leapt into my head from out of nowhere. It seemed sadly suitable. Here are the lyrics.

Well, I’m about to get sick
From watchin’ my TV
Been checkin’ out the news until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day is just another rotten mess
And when it’s gonna change, my friends, is anybody’s guess

So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay that trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay that trouble comin’ every day

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention recorded Trouble Every Day and You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here on their debut album Freak Out in 1966.

—————–

Oh, the candidates running may be frightful

And their ire sounds certainly spiteful 

But since they have sunk so low

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

—————–

—————–

—————–

What is easier for a young person to read?

The original document of the United States Declaration of Independence or…

...the menu at a restaurant?

Yesterday I learned that a few months ago a law was passed in California to make something old new again. This past October a bill introduced by a former elementary school teacher made cursive handwriting instruction required in the state’s elementary schools. California isn’t the first state to bring back the teaching of cursive. The number is up to nearly two dozen states after having declined to about half that a decade ago.

When I was producing stories at ABC News which now seems like back in the stone age, I wanted to do one about how cursive handwriting wasn’t even being taught then in very many schools and especially in public school systems. I had read that a company that published handwriting instruction materials had divided its annual national student handwriting contest into two divisions– one for public and one for private schools because the private– particularly Catholic –schools which were still teaching cursive, were winning at all levels every year.

My pitch for the story was rejected. But maybe if I had realized and made the point that those kids who didn’t know cursive could not likely have been able to read the original document that is the United States Constitution but could instead have ordered off a menu in a restaurant, I’d have had a better chance to have gotten to do it.

Oh, and the private schools are still doing very well in the handwriting contest…

https://www.zaner-bloser.com/national-handwriting-contest/current_winners.php

I’m happy to learn that the teaching of cursive handwriting is coming back although my own experience learning to write some 70 years ago was not a happy one. We had pencils and crayons for most activities but when it came to handwriting instruction we used inkwells that fit into a hole in our desks and pens with sharp points that you dipped into them. I don’t recall that anyone in my class ever stabbed another with one of these but nevertheless I needed to employ a defense strategy.  

I’m left-handed and being told I needed to slant my budding penmanship at the same angle as the right-handers, I often smudged what I wrote as my hand moved across the page. Hence, the only consistent Cs on my report card were for handwriting. Well, not the only ones. For several years we had an art teacher who didn’t like me although I guess I could also blame my art grades on the scissors we used which were made for those who were right handed. Hey you righties, try using a left handed scissors sometime!

And yes, in college I was one of those who took up two seats in lecture hall classes so I could use the lectern for a right handed person from the seat I wasn’t sitting in. But who takes handwritten notes anymore? I assume today the problem has been solved.

As newspaper people say I have buried the lead here or at least my main thought. Artificial Intelligence— A.I. –is almost as big a headline grabber as Taylor Swift or Donald Trump these days. But I have a new competing acronym for A.I. How about the consequences we are experiencing as an impact and as I see it, the reverse of A.I. and from other sources of ever faster moving technological change?

I propose we call them Anachronistic Intelligence. Intelligence we are surrendering and shedding along the way as our species slithers forward.

Sure, we no longer need to know how to make a fire without a match or add, subject, multiply and divide large numbers without a calculator. But what about the tasks that keep our brains engaged and agile? Don’t we still want to know the multiplication tables? Don’t we still want to be able to read old letters that once upon a time were handwritten?

We have a new car that senses when it needs to operate the windshield wipers if it rains and when it needs to dim the headlights at night for oncoming traffic. I have the option of using these features or not and so far I have chosen to let them handle what once were my taks. And I know if I live long enough, I’ll then probably want to have a car that drives me where I want to go by itself.

How much of me might be left of me by then?

—————–

I bought guacamole yesterday at the supermarket even though the Super Bowl isn’t until Sunday. I thought if I waited until closer to game time, there might not be any left on the shelves. There seemed to be plenty but something else surprised me. Guacamole was on sale.

I had expected that with a huge built in demand for guac this weekend that prices would be higher. It’s a given that at millions of Super Bowl gatherings every year guacamole and tortilla chips are essential. It might even be one of those crazy Super Bowl bets that we’ll see a shot of Taylor Swift wiping the stuff off her face– Hey, the game is in Las Vegas. But I guess avocado producers must have determined that food gorging is a better play call than price gouging. 

Guac may be the right stuff but if one’s launching a party this weekend, you better have more on hand than just it. Years ago I wrote articles for a website called Bleacher Report. One of them, about what one needs to provide for a winning Super Bowl Party, is still findable on the internet and gets its share of hits this time of year.

I can’t vouch for all my information from 12 years ago still being completely accurate today but I’d put all my chips on the table if I were to bet on it.

Top 10 Things to Eat at a Super Bowl Party!

by Peter Imber

February 3, 2012

Nobody watches the Super Bowl on an empty stomach, and here are some other facts for you to digest: 

The average number of people at a Super Bowl Party is 17* —only five percent of the TV audience watches the game by themselves —so, whether it’s potluck, take out, home cooking or catered, nobody is going to go home hungry.

Super Bowl Sunday ranks behind only Thanksgiving as the biggest food consumption day of the year in the United States** and the proof is in the Pepcid. There is a 20 percent increase in antacid sales in the 24 hours after the game.***

For some, the food and drink take an additional “Excessive Celebration” toll. About six percent of American workers will call in sick on Monday.****

*Treehugger.com

**American Institute of Food Distribution

***7-Eleven Stores

****Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

Halloween may be costumes and candy, Thanksgiving turkey, Valentine’s and Mother’s Day flowers and the 4th of July fireworks, but if you’re hosting a party on Super Bowl Sunday, you damn well better make sure you cover the spread!

And here are my Top Ten Essential Super Bowl Foods for doing just that.

10. Popcorn

Popcorn is often mentioned as a healthy snack food, and this is as healthy as this list is going to get. When I buy popcorn at the movies, it always feels like it weighs nothing, but anywhere from four to eight million pounds of popcorn are going to be eaten across the country Sunday*—that’s plenty of nothing.

*Calorie Control Council

9. Hamburgers

Move over apple pie. Americans eat 50 billion hamburgers a year and Super Bowl parties will offer their fair share, but hamburgers aren’t a first round pick this weekend. That’s because in most parts of the country it’s too cold to grill outside and we eat so many anyway that burgers will most likely be benched this weekend. Nevertheless, a really good one is always a welcome audible at the chow line.

8. Potato Chips

Estimates vary widely on how many potato chips will be eaten on Super Bowl Sunday, from a low of 11 million to a high of 28 million pounds*. That kind of consumption could add up to 27 billion calories*, but who would possibly want to watch football without them?

*Snack Food Association

So, support your local potato chip maker. Don’t buy Frito-Lay’s or just any old chip. Find ones that are certifiably unhealthful. My favorite are Dieffenbach’s. They’re made in Womelsdorf, PA near where I grew up and admittedly the most notorious I know of; made with just potatoes, lard and salt. They’re also the best chips in the world and a big part of the reason the ER at the Reading, PA hospital is one of the busiest in the country.**

**Becker’s Hospital Review

7. Pizza

Pizza is a $30 billion a year enterprise in the United States and on an average day Americans buy 11.5 million of them.* Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest slice of business of the year for pizza restaurants, and the big chains like Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Domino’s will sell twice as many pies as they do on any other day.* 

*Pizzatoday.com

Many of Sunday’s pizza orders will be delivered and for the drivers bringing you those pizzas, the Super Bowl means more tips. It also means a higher risk of auto accidents and insurance companies are very aware of that. Over the past five years, for example, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. has recorded a nine percent increase in auto insurance claims resulting from pizza delivery accidents on Super Bowl Sunday. 

And here’s a surprising fact. Where do you think the highest grossing single location independent pizzeria in the nation is located? If you guessed New York or Chicago or any place in the Lower 48, you’d be wrong. It’s in Anchorage, Alaska. Annual sales at Moose’s Tooth Pizzeria are about $8 million. They must have a hell of a delivery fleet and I wonder if it includes sleds?

6. Ribs

Barbecued ribs are not a great choice for something to devour in front of the television. They’re messy and require focus that may distract you from the game. But how many of us are actually watching the game that closely anyway? A rack of great ribs is hard to pass up. No carnivore is going to complain if they miss a play—at least not this one.

5. Shrimp

Shrimp are a high end finger food and while other offerings should make it into the fourth quarter, shrimp may not make it through the first commercial. Better have a spare wheel in the fridge if you’re serving them.

4. Subs and Sandwiches

The trick with subs and sandwiches is to keep them small. Not everyone wants to commit to a big one but if the offerings are good, people tend to work up to or even pass the equivalent of eating a whole one anyway. And sandwiches are a real crowd pleaser because you can mix it up — roast beef, turkey, ham, veggie, Italian. This is the “one size fits all” of Super Bowl food.3. Chili

Chili is all about bragging rights. Have you ever heard of a hamburger cook off? Great chilis are like great quarterbacks, there aren’t too many of them, but if you find one, you’re going to be happy they are on your team that makes them a welcomed invite at any bowl game.

2. Chicken Wings

If the Dallas Cowboys can call themselves America’s Team, then poultry farmers are probably entitled to call chicken wings “THE Super Bowl Party Food.” Battered, basted, roasted or fried, chicken wings may have gotten their start in Buffalo but after the obligatory dip, wings are now Super Bowl Sunday’s go-to plate.   

According to the National Chicken Council, more than 1.25 billion wing portions will be consumed during Super Bowl weekend. That’s more than 100 million pounds of wings,and if the wings were laid end to end they would circle the circumference of the Earth more than twice.

(UPDATE! Is it just me or are there millions more wing nuts in the country today than in 2012.)1. Guacamole

This is the mandatory Super Bowl food. A party without this dip will be intestinalized as the worst Super Bowl in history for those who are forced to suffer through it. So get out the sour cream and onion soup mix or salsa or even Cheez Whiz and succumb. Go green or go home!

Super Bowl avocado consumption is estimated at between 54 and 70 million pounds, enough to spread guacamole across a football field to a height of 12 feet.* Turns out avocados have been around for over 10,000 years but guacamole came much later and is thought to have been made first by the Aztecans in the 16th century. Why did it take so long to discover this? Well, archaeologists believe it was because the guac was at the bottom of a seven layer dip.

* Hass Avocado Board

There it is! A list of what you will either want to prepare or should expect on Super Bowl Sunday. And here’s an extra bit of gastronomic advice…

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like

and let the food fight it out inside.  –Mark Twain

—————–

—————–

On Sunday I watched the Super Bowl with friends. The matchup between the Chiefs and 49ers didn’t live up to the hype for me– the football rarely does. But the game did have the drama of needing an overtime to decide the winner.

Even if it had been more exciting, the game was really just the fun annual reason for a get together to share guacamole and chips as well as a lot of laughs. I’m sure that’s true for a vast number of viewers and especially those who don’t know a blitz from a blintz.

Of course this year’s contest had special added appeal for many who might not have ordinarily tuned in and who did so specifically this time for just 55 seconds of an event that took four hours and 18 minutes from the opening kickoff to the game-winning touchdown.

Somebody took the trouble to break those seconds down and point out that Taylor Swift’s less than a minute of Super Bowl screen time meant she was part of the television coverage for .0035% of the broadcast.

But helped by the hyperly hyped romance between Swift and her football hero, the Kansas City player Travis Kelce, the game is now being called the most watched event ever in the history of American television. But was it? Well, it depends on how you want to run the numbers.

According to the Nielsen ratings, Sunday’s game averaged 123.4 million viewers across today’s television and streaming platforms which was a seven percent increase from last year’s Super Bowl viewership that was claimed to have set the previous “most watched American TV event ever” mark.

But of course things get interesting when coming up with an accurate figure for how many people may be actually watching at any one time. Afterall somebody’s gotta go get the pigs-in-the-blanket out of the toaster oven.

We were only four at our Super Bowl get together but as I wrote last week, the average number of attendees at a Super Bowl party is considered to be 17. So, go figure! And make that both figuratively and literally and crunch the numbers as well as any leftover chips while you’re calculating.

The Nielsen Company– the historic authority for counting TV viewing eyeballs –was founded by A.C. Nielsen in 1923 just four years before the first demonstration of an invention by a 21 year old named Philo Farnsworth that became the basic technology for modern television. Mr. Nielsen is also credited with devising the approach to measuring sales results which turned into the fundamental principles of market share.

The application of Nielsen’s methods was first applied to television viewing in 1950 and I’ll digress for a moment to illustrate how quickly popular culture became a draw for TV audiences that sometimes eclipsed even television broadcasts of historic events.

It was January in 1953 and a comedy– the term sitcom hadn’t been coined yet –had become the most watched program on American TV. I Love Lucy was in its second season and its star was expecting a baby. The show had worked Lucille Ball’s real life pregnancy into the storyline and on that night Lucille’s Lucy went to the hospital to give birth to her TV son Little Ricky.

There were fewer than 20 million television sets in American homes on the night of January 19th in 1953 but for that episode by Nielson’s measurement almost three quarters of them were tuned into the program which was extrapolated to be an audience of 44 million people.

The next day– January 20th –was the Presidential Inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower. It was broadcast nationally and it turned out that although the country may have liked Ike, they loved Lucy more. Eisenhower’s swearing in ceremony drew not even half the audience; just 19 million viewers.

But back to football… The number 2 line on the chart of today’s Homemade Cartoon indicates that Sunday’s Super Bowl/Taylor Swift game wasn’t according to other sources than Nielsen, the most watched event in the history of American television. So, what was number 1? Well, it wasn’t pop culture. It was however a significant moment in the history of all mankind…

It is believed between 125 and 150 million people in the United States watched the moon landing of Apollo 11 and its astronauts aired live on all of the three major American television networks at the time on July 20th, 1969. I saw it. Did you?

(When I started writing this I was not aware that yesterday NPR’s TV critic had a similar take on Sunday’s Super Bowl TV audience. I’m not saying that great minds think alike but maybe lesser ones sometimes may have similar thoughts.)

—————–

Jo and I have been watching the series All Creatures Great and Small. It’s a remake of the original series that ran from 1978 until 1990 which I never saw. Frankly, I’m very happy watching it because I’m pretty sure nothing bad is going to happen.

Farm animals do get sick and pets injured but the human characters at least so far have been spared from harm and tragedy. There are just so many truly bad things happening in the world at the moment I don’t need to entertain myself by seeking out additional exposure to them.

Years ago I stopped going to nearly any movie that I knew beforehand had scenes of violence but I still can be disturbed by films that others enjoy or find praiseworthy. Two recent examples I suffered through were Saltburn and Poor Things. The latter received 11 Oscar nominations.

Perhaps I’ve never gotten over the comfort I felt from watching The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet when I was a kid growing up in the 1950s. Wednesday evenings at 8 I was in front of our Magnavox black and white set that wasn’t even the size of the screen of the desktop computer I’m using as I type this.

I’ve mentioned before that I have about 100 episodes of Ozzie and Harriet that rest on a shelf after having made Jo watch with me as I’ve collected them. She’s only enjoyed– barely –the ones when David and Ricky were old enough to be taking their girlfriends to the local malt shop.

The early nuclear families in sitcoms were almost exclusively heterosexual parents with two kids where the husband was at work all day (Ozzie Nelson of course was the well known and mysterious exception.) and the wife was a “homemaker”; a term you won’t hear anymore but it was I guess an apt description of the job. 

Harriet Nelson even did the commercials for the Hotpoint appliances she used in her kitchen and, as Jo pointed out to me, it was humanly impossible for her to have tied the large perfect bow on the back of her apron which she wore a good portion of the time.

Ozzie and Harriet and other early sitcoms– Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show –were what have been called portrayals of “The Happy Perfect American Family.” Of course they were as unreal as Harriet’s bow but were they harmful?

I don’t know but it was a time when much of the country felt good about itself and optimistic about the future. In the 1950s four out of five of us would have trusted the government according to Gallup. To my knowledge not a single kid at my school had a parent object to our getting polio shots when we were in second grade in 1955.

Americans seemed pretty much on the same page but life– married or otherwise –certainly wasn’t perfect. I learned the three Rs at school but I can think of three As– alcoholism, adultery and anxiety — that were kept pretty secret back then.

Yes, in the 1960s my comic books changed and not just changed, we baby boomers certainly didn’t all take to the streets but literally blew the covers off the manholes even if we didn’t. Families seen on television began to change as well until those seen today seem as unreal as I realized the Nelson family was a long time ago. Did we do that? How did we get from there to here?

—————–

—————–

—————–

Bear with me. I’m afraid I’m sort of going to be taking a few side excursions today from the point I’m attempting to make with the two cartoons above…

Don’t know if the link I’ve pasted below will allow you to see this article about a former NBA player, teacher, poet and cancer survivor who I thought was dead but is alive, flourishing and inspirational…

https://theathletic.com/5279301/2024/03/06/tom-meschery-nba-warriors-cancer-poet

Tom Meschery is only 85 and I say only because I’m only 8 years younger than he is but when I was 12 and he was 20 that was a space of time as wide as his former basketball teammate Wilt Chamberlain’s outstretched arms.

I’m old enough to remember when Meschery played for the Philadelphia Warriors– my favorite team –who became the San Francisco Warriors and are now the Golden State Warriors. The franchise moved in 1962 and they weren’t the first team that I felt abandoned me. The Brooklyn Dodgers had transplanted themselves to Los Angeles four years earlier when commercial jet airliners made coast to coast travel a lot faster and the West Coast a logical new home for sports teams.

I have stuck with being a loyal Dodger fan and actually living in Los Angeles for longer than I’ve lived anywhere else made that easy. It also is true that Carl Furillo– one of the players forever memorialized in a book entitled The Boys of Summer about the Brooklyn team in the 1950s –grew up about a mile from my house in Pennsylvania and during one of his off seasons I had my picture taken with him in the hospital when he had his appendix taken out by a neighbor of ours who performed the surgery.

However, I quickly switched my basketball allegiance to the Boston Celtics, who in the 1960s could justly be called The Boys of Winter with Bill Russell and Bob Cousy and a bunch of other Celts now in the Basketball Hall of Fame and a clothes line of championship banners hanging from the ceiling of Boston Garden.

And there was another reason I became a Celtics fan. His name was David Williams and I realized today in my musings I have dropped the names of other Williams named Ted, Serena, Hank and Ralph Vaughn but David, who I called Mr. Williams, I’ve only mentioned once before since I started posting these musings four years ago.

Teacher, coach, role model– Dave Williams also let me babysit for his kids on a lot of nights when Celtics games were on TV and when I’m certain none of the other students at my prep school were being accorded the same opportunity. Yes, that may have had a little to do with my becoming a Celtics fan.

Here’s my tribute to him that I wrote when he died…

I would hope that in every person’s life he or she has someone who they know helped them at a crucial time and to whom they are forever grateful. I entered prep school at Governor Dummer Academy outside of Boston as a junior in 1963 and had a teacher in charge of my dormitory who was a cruel jerk and eventually fired. It was a rough way to start at GDA but fortunately I made the basketball team and the coach was someone I quickly came to revere.

That November President Kennedy was assassinated and the nation was shaken to its core. As we gathered in front of televisions to watch the news coverage that afternoon, Mr. Williams pulled those of us on the basketball team away and had us practice. I think many of us did so while fighting back tears and feeling that we didn’t want to be in the gym; that somehow it was wrong to be carrying on as if it was just a normal day. It didn’t take years for me to realize that it had been the right thing to do for us.

Dave Williams always seemed to do the right thing and another incident that season I particularly cherish. A classmate’s father was the team dentist for the Boston Celtics. I don’t know how much dental care professional basketball players required but the connection had a real benefit for those of us on the basketball team. Through Jeff Kane’s father we occasionally got free tickets to Sunday afternoon games at the Boston Garden.

But an even bigger thrill was when Celtics players actually came to our games– Sam Jones, Tom “Satch” Sanders and John Havlicek. All three of them are in the Basketball Hall of Fame and it was with “Hondo” Havlicek in the stands one afternoon that I missed an opportunity to change the outcome of the game. I missed a shot at the buzzer and we lost by a point.

I was sitting glumly in the locker room when our Celtic go between informed Mr. Williams that John Havlicek would be happy to come to one of our practices and give us some pointers. We all perked up and I’ve never forgotten Dave Williams’ heated reply– “You tell John Havlicek that I don’t need another coach of this team!”

Again, that response seemed unreasonable to me at the time. Who wouldn’t want one of the best players in NBA history giving you some personal attention? But eventually my disappointment turned into even greater respect for my coach and teacher. Havlicek was a great player but to me Dave Williams was a great man!

The following season when I had the honor to be co-captain of our team, we won the Private School League championship. We had talent and I won’t claim that Mr. Williams was the greatest basketball coach when it came to teaching or strategizing the game, but he molded us into that winning team by treating every player equally.

No one was ever allowed to be a prima donna nor to display even an inkling of bad sportsmanship. It was an experience and a lesson I have valued my whole life.

And there’s one more story that I have been reminded of many times about how we should put things in perspective when it may seem our whole life is going to be altered or even determined by one moment.

Dave Williams was my history teacher senior year. We were preparing to take a test– a big test that would determine much of the last grade the colleges we were applying to would see. Some of us felt that weight and Mr. Williams realized that and suddenly stopped our review and said this to our class.

“I know that you think this test is important but in the scheme of things, many years from now, it will not be important in your lives at all.”

The words have stuck in my head ever since and the real tests in life have been both ones I could prepare for and others for which I couldn’t. Some I know I’ve passed and others I feel I’ve failed. But I do know this. Mr. Williams was right about that history test 50 years ago.

Dave Williams had the admiration of every student he taught or coached and he had it because he cared about every student he ever met.

Yes, I’ve strayed from my original idea of writing about the relativity of aging. What’s new? And what was my point anyway? Simply this, I was so much younger then when I was shooting at a basket in my driveway after school and Tom Meschery was simultaneously playing with Wilt Chamberlain on the night the “Stilt” scored 100 points. I’m older than that now and while eight years between us then was the Grand Canyon. Eight years now may be more like Mt. Everest but I feel Tom Meschery and I are climbing it together.

I guess I’ve strayed a bit along the way from my original idea of writing about the relativity of aging. What’s new? And I’ve also managed to flip the lyrics around in Bob Dylan’s song My Back Pages. So, let him explain what he meant.

—————–

It is our grandson Harvey’s eighth birthday today although his party where I took his picture was yesterday. Harvey designed his own cake four years ago which is now known by its bakers as the “Harvey Cake” and there was enough leftover so that we can eat it again when we celebrate my own this evening. Yes, Harvey and I share a St. Patrick’s Day birthday.

Below is an updated version of something I wrote and posted two years ago…

It’s St. Patrick’s and it’s my birthday. Yes, green is my favorite color and the color green has followed me and I’ve followed it all of my life— I went to a college whose sports teams are called The Big Green and I’ve rooted for the Boston Celtics since I was a teenager. I also love spinach and mowing the lawn.

I think the only thing I have in common with St. Patrick is a problem with one of my knees. According to something I read, Patrick had arthritis which might explain why he’s always pictured with a shillelagh and not a pint of Guinness. 

But despite our coinciding birthdays there’s a story about why I am a Peter today despite some leaning on my parents to have had me be a Patrick. Even though I likely was present in the room when this negotiation took place I cannot be considered a credible witness.

My parents lived in Hartford, Connecticut where they had met before WWII in a department store they both had been working and I was born in Hartford after the war. It was March 17, 1947 and I was not the only boy who came into the world that day at a hospital named St. Francis. That itself was no surprise at the beginning of the Baby Boom but in a Catholic hospital on St. Patrick’s Day my birth— through no fault of my own —presented sort of a dilemma. All the other boys born in the hospital that day were like me. We were all Jewish.

It was a tradition at St. Francis that a baby boy— at least one —be named Patrick on St. Patrick’s Day but to my knowledge I’ve never met a Jewish male named Patrick and my parents and the other baby boys’ parents apparently hadn’t either. So, there was some lobbying taking place by the hospital staff to break with one tradition to assuage another. When none of the Jewish parents would budge it got down to crunch time and as my mother put it…

“We told the nuns Peter was as far as we were willing to go.”

My parents didn’t go full Irish that day but they didn’t go full Isaiah either. Today I am 77 and I am grateful that I am Peter.

I have probably told some of you how I view life as like the quarters of a basketball game with a shout out to Marquette, my favorite college team as March Madness is about to get underway.

I have divided life into 20 year increments. At the end of the first quarter I was in college and thought I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I got out. As it happens, I was doing what I’m doing right now– writing and trying to be observant (God knows not religiously) and creative. As an editor on my college newspaper I had a column and I spent more time at that than on my classwork.

After I graduated and began the second quarter of life I left a job in television news at CBS in New York, went to Israel, got married, did the army and after being handed an opportunity to make videos in Tel Aviv, applied to film school and returned to America and Los Angeles. By halftime when I was 40 I had a good job that would take me through to retirement, a nice house and time to golf once a week.

My career at ABC News was part of my entire third quarter, as was raising my son who a couple years ago became my daughter and as time expired, the third quarter also marked the end of my first marriage. By the start of the fourth in 2007 I was old enough to be the parent of many of those who I was working with, I was living in a small apartment with someone who I still love as totally today as I did then and who is the luckiest best thing that has happened to me in my life.

So, 77 has me now closing in on the end of the final quarter here in Maine and worried about the country’s and the world’s future more than about my own. I’m hoping to stay out on the court make it into overtime and actually, I have something going for me to possibly help make it happen.

Jo, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is not a sports fan but she has a very uncanny ability to impact the outcome of almost any game or match I might be watching.

Jo: “When is this over?”

It can be a basketball or a baseball game or even a golf tournament.

Peter: “There’re just a couple _______ (select minutes, innings or holes) left.”

Invariably, her query produces a tie and subsequent overtime, extra innings or a playoff. I think if I were a betting person, I could leverage this into a trip for us overseas or at least a new set of golf clubs… But you know what? I’ve already hit the jackpot. I’m happy with things just the way they are. 77 feels fine. I guess it’s just the luck of the Irish!

—————–

“When you’re the RNC chair, you — you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself.” –Ronna McDaniel 3/24/24

The hiring and firing of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel by NBC is an incident that makes me wince more than smile. I’m actually horrified. How the management at NBC thought that an instrumental denier of the 2020 election result should be rewarded with a job– allegedly paying her $300,000 –to give credible commentary about anything is a classic “What were they thinking?” fiasco.

I take some measure of relief in the opposition by the network’s on-air faces to  McDaniel’s hire who rebelled and succeeded in getting management to reverse the decision. But the incident clearly shows how perilously close we are to ignoring and excusing the threat to our country from the Big Lie by organizations and people who should know better.

Several years ago I gave talks to a number of groups in Maine about what I called The Ten Reasons for the Decline of the Evening News. I realized today that an essay I wrote in addition to the talk I’ve never included with a Homemade Cartoon. So, here it is…

The Day the News Changed

It was a phone call from an ABC World News Tonight producer in New York that did it, although it began routinely.

“Hey, we want you to do a story about bears,” he said. “Great,” I said. “What’s the story?”

That is how I often got assignments. My bosses in New York had read or heard or seen something somewhere, and they wanted me to turn it into a story for us, but in the next instant everything felt as if it had changed.

“Find one!” he said.

Let me explain. I worked in the Los Angeles Bureau of ABC News from 1983 until retiring in 2010. Until that day in the spring of 2001, I had done hundreds of stories that I had been asked to produce for all the ABC News broadcasts. But usually— no, invariably —they had been connected to some larger news event happening at that moment, like “Get an interview with someone who claims to have been sexually abused by a priest,” or “Show us what it takes to purchase an assault weapon.”

I did not ever recall being told to actually find a story on something as seemingly unrelated as bears to anything else newsworthy going on in the world.

So, I asked, “Why bears?” And I was told, “Because bears are hot. Our research and our focus groups are telling us that people want to see and hear about bears right now.”

I took my marching orders and discovered that bears were indeed the flavor of the month on Madison Avenue. They were taking a star turn and especially in television commercials— a visual element, I realized, that might make it actually a fun story to put together.

We shot at the Los Angeles Zoo where a zookeeper told us that bears could look cute on TV but they’ll rip you apart in a minute if you give them an opportunity. And we went to a ranch where wild animals are kept to be rented out for the movies. There we discovered how you get a bear not to rip you apart but still make it look like it wanted to. How do you get a bear to charge after an actor on the screen? Easy! Just drag a dead chicken on a rope in front of it and run like hell.

Until that assignment I hadn’t even known for sure— although there had been suspicions —we were actually using focus groups and market research to determine stories that got on the air at ABC News. But what I also realized was that in my world of television news journalism, it was no longer going to be a bunch of mostly white men with newspaper backgrounds deciding every night what viewers ought to know. From that point on, what we thought viewers wanted to know became just as, if not more, important. Television news was now grappling with how it could be both popular and informative simultaneously.

How did it happen? There were a number of reasons. One big one was the swallowing of the three formerly independent American television networks, along with their news divisions, by larger corporate entities in the 1980s. The famous quote by CBS’s founder William Paley, “You guys cover the news; I’ve got Jack Benny to make money for me,” no longer applied after that. Network news operations, once viewed as the prestigious company flagships and excused as financial loss leaders, were now expected to pay their own way and become profit-makers like any other space in their new homes.

When Disney bought ABC in 1996, I became just another “cast member,” as all Disney employees are addressed in official communications. I thought of myself as a journalist, but in Disney’s eyes I believed I might as well have been dressed up as Mickey Mouse himself, posing for pictures in Fantasyland.

The fragmentation of television from how we baby boomers had grown up with it— at my house we had three channels to choose from —preceded the rise of the internet, and with competition from alternative news channels— CNN was the first in 1980 — network television news began its decline which then only accelerated. At the peak of Walter Cronkite’s popularity in the 1970s, The CBS Evening News averaged nearly 40 million viewers every evening. Today, all three legacy network evening newscasts combined garner only half that number of viewers in an entire week.

Eyeballs— read that ratings —became everything. Good Morning America and The Today Show, considered parts of their networks’ news divisions, almost stopped covering news and got better ratings by featuring celebrities plugging their movies and chefs making hors d’oeuvres than Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw did in the evening on their traditional news broadcasts. The morning shows became where the viewership was greatest and the most money was made and so, aside for the evening anchormen’s salaries, that’s where it was mainly spent.

When I started at ABC News in the 1980s, I never had to do a budget for a story. I even flew on chartered Lear jets to breaking news events— almost always tragic ones —like school shootings and natural disasters. Increased competition had fragmented viewership but the impact of the internet with its immediacy and its unforeseen addictive hold, turned us in the TV news kingdom from princes into paupers.

It felt like it happened in the blink of an eye. The jets disappeared. When I produced pieces for Peter Jennings when he came to the West Coast, a New York retinue, including his own valet and makeup person, no longer accompanied him. By the end of my career I had to itemize and account for everything I was going to need to spend before I was allowed to spend anything that wasn’t for breaking news coverage. In those last years I traveled much less even when breaking news happened.

There just were not enough eyeballs peering in anymore to justify an advertiser paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a nightly commercial, and so we, the news gatherers, became a little like farmers paid subsidies to leave their fields fallow. One of our bureau chiefs even tried to get rid of our coffee machine to save money.

Understand that hard news could be hard. Trying to get people to talk to a camera who had lost loved ones in an airplane crash or all their earthly possessions in a wildfire was not pleasant duty. The pressure to put together a story in just a few hours was enormous and with what we had left at our disposal along with what was being added on to our plates, the work did not just become harder, it was also less thorough and fulfilling.

We were given new responsibilities that, with the budget cuts, further eroded our ability to cover the news. The convergence of multiple new media “platforms” meant we were at times filing reports almost nonstop. Our correspondents became tethered to satellite trucks so they could be shown live on location at any moment. And if that truck wasn’t close by, they were asked to report on their cell phones or update from their laptops. Sometimes they did not get to bear witness to what was happening as much as only relay what they heard from others who might have been barely able to assess the scene themselves.

The technology that provided instant coverage often made us hostages to it. Pictures and human emotions are a big part of what TV news provides best, and trying to serve all masters simultaneously— the network, the affiliate stations, radio, a webcast and a website —impeded our seeking and collecting them. When there were no more scheduled deadlines, every moment became a deadline. Famously, or rather infamously, someone at ABC News was alleged to have said, “I’d rather be first than right.”

But what has gone missing most from network news is the depth and the craft we were once empowered to pursue and avail ourselves of to achieve. Television news has continued to deteriorate, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Survey after survey show that people, especially younger people, get their news online. We may still look at a screen, but it is not on a TV we turn on to watch at 6:30 p.m. or the printed newspaper delivered on our doorstep anymore. It is in our pockets and purses and available whenever we want it but placed there in a rush and cursory.

The number of Americans sitting in front of a screen every evening to watch a half hour of what they consider the news of the day isn’t that at all if it’s tuning into Fox News or MSNBC. Both of them are more like a competition where you pick a side and watch a bunch of talking heads telling you what and how your side is doing. The bar for television news coverage is not just lower; it may have fallen to the ground. Our country’s news infrastructure in general has been hollowed out and it has happened in an era when we needed the best journalism to be louder and more pervasive.

The thing I loved most to do during my career was not hard news. Many of my favorite stories I found began with the same introduction from the anchorperson— “Finally, tonight…” We called them show-closers, and they were about things that were more “Gee whiz!” and “How about that!” I got to visit a guy in Canada who had cornered the market on virtually all the remaining unsold slide rules in the world around the time of Y2K just in case. I visited a lightbulb in a firehouse in California that had burned continuously for over a hundred years. The company that made them at the beginning of the 20th century had gone out of business probably because the lightbulbs lasted so long. I loved sharing these things that I hadn’t known about and more than likely you hadn’t either.

John Updike played golf for me as part of an entire show I produced for Nightline on my favorite sport and I got to meet and hear the stories of Buddy Holly’s real life Peggy Sue and Ritchie Valens’ teenage girlfriend Donna. The surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz sang for me. What a great ride I had! 

My stories were best when I had the best people working with me— video shot by a skilled cameraman, an editor who could cut it together so it turned a great script by a correspondent into something even better. My work was collaborative. “The best idea wins” was my mantra.

Having the ability to do the best work possible is rarer now. In today’s “spend as little as you must” environment, the talent I was able to utilize would not likely be available anymore or even appreciated by those curating the news and counting the beans.

If I sound bitter, I am not. Perhaps, I am merely feeling what countless others before me have felt about their jobs after they finished their careers; that their work and workplace had changed almost beyond recognition from what they remembered when they had begun. And it is possible to claim that my generation experienced more change in our lifetimes than we could have ever imagined. Maybe, things just got to a point where it was just me who stopped changing.

I do not miss the early morning phone calls commanding me to get on a plane and fly to a hurricane. I do not miss going nearly sleepless for several days straight covering a mass murder. I had  a tremendous responsibility to provide the best account of whatever I was assigned to produce and also the amazing opportunity to turn my curiosity into stories that were seen by millions of viewers.

Now, I rarely watch television news. I am grateful for my career. I am saddened that it changed but then so has the world.

—————–

“He was a bold man that ate the first oyster.”

— Jonathan Swift

I eat just about everything by the way but please, just no wax beans!

We all know about “writer’s block”. I have had “cartoonist’s block” but it’s not like I haven’t come up with ideas and created some. I just haven’t felt they were worth publishing or that I could write anything to go with them that wasn’t depressing.

Today is Labor Day and I just read an article that claimed that labor unions are in vogue and making a comeback in the United States. Joe Biden is being called the most pro-labor president since FDR. But union membership in America is half of what it was 40 years ago and I found this chart…

The U.S. ranking doesn’t seem to me to justify that much excitement over labor unions’ resurgence or standing in America.

President Grover Cleveland declared making the first Monday in September a national holiday in 1894. He did so because of rising protests against abusive work practices by owners of factories and businesses– 70 hour weeks with no days off or vacations and certainly no health insurance or pensions. That was when the first workers’ unions were formed in America.

In my lifetime Labor Day has pretty much meant the end of summer and going back to school when I was a kid and three day weekends and gatherings with friends as an adult. 

There are 12 federal holidays in America. A number of them, like Labor Day, have become merely long weekends. “Happy Memorial Day” is the salutation that irks me the most.

So, maybe it’s necessary to rename some of them and let’s start with Labor Day.  How about if we were to call it “Income Inequality Day.” That might get people’s attention.

And notice another thing on the chart above. Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway are the countries with the highest percentage of unionized workers. Is it a coincidence that they also rank among the happiest countries as well?

—————–

“For not only every democracy, but certainly every republic,

bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.” 

–Robert W. Welch, Jr.

When I was a kid I liked candy and had the cavities to prove it. I had so many fillings that when I was drafted into the Israeli army the person examining all the silver in my mouth was taken aback and after a few seconds told the assistant recording my dental chart that he was starting over.

“I’m only going to read off the teeth that have no fillings.”

One of my favorite treats was called a Sugar Daddy, a chewy caramel lollipop that stuck in your teeth and no doubt helped dentists of that era put their kids through college. So, what does this have to do with anything?

Robert W. Welch, Jr. and his brother ran the candy company that made Sugar Daddies as well as Junior Mints and Bob Welch had a sweet tooth for something beyond candy that he didn’t sugarcoat. He loved conspiracy theories and was the founder of the John Birch Society. He ran for public office once– Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts — and lost but if he were alive today, he’d likely stand a good chance of being elected the father of the radical right in America.

The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 and Welch claimed he expanded it from an original 11 members to 100,000. He had no internet to help with that but of course today we do and I’m not sure it’s turning out to be a net positive for our country or the world.

Can an epiphany happen when it’s just something you remember? If so, I had one years later that put me back in Santa Barbara in the early 1990s when I found a book I had been looking for without success. There it was on a shelf in a second hand bookstore. The book was titled Championship Ball and was one of a series of 24 books written about an athlete named Chip Hilton.

Chip played football, basketball and baseball and each book was about a season of each sport and took Chip from high school through college in an America that was wholesome, carefree and aside from a few characters with names like Biggie Cohen who had “ham hocks” for hands and Jimmy Chung, who at one point left the team to help run his family’s restaurant– just guessing it was Chinese –was entirely white.

I hoped my son would love these books as much as I had, but on the very first page of the one I had rediscovered we ran across the word jalopy and I realized that time had moved on semantically from Chip Hilton’s world.

Thirty years ago Chip Hilton books were hard to find. Today on my own bookshelf I have all 24 of them. The internet made finding and buying them easy.

And although I’ve perhaps taken a long way round to get here, my point is simple. The internet has made it so much easier for us to find niche things as well as people who share our interests or points of view. Today’s Robert Welchs can discover and connect with their soulmates in the nether regions of cyberspace as fast as you can type.

When I was growing up in Reading, Pennsylvania a man named Roy Frankhouser also lived there. Frankhouser was a Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan and a member of the American Nazi Party. In the 1980s he had his own programs on local public access television. One was called “Race and Reason” and the other “White Forum”. There wasn’t a big viewership for public access TV then but that was before there was an internet. 

It’s been said that hate groups are a thread that runs through American history. In the age of the internet that thread is sewing together so many more haters than was ever possible before. We should all be worried.

“For not only every democracy, but certainly every republic,

bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.” 

–Robert W. Welch, Jr.

—————–

—————–

Far-right Republicans tell McCarthy impeachment inquiry won’t soften their spending cut demands

You might have to be my age to get the reference. Charlie McCarthy was Edgar Bergen’s famed ventriloquist dummy partner.  Charlie was so well known that his popularity exceeded that of the man who opened and closed his mouth.

—————–

Will the multipolar world we are becomingsave the polar bears? 

“You can run but you can’t hide.”

Sometime ago I read an article about the ultra rich building doomsday compounds in New Zealand to escape to and not just in the event of a nuclear holocaust. No, their fears are broader today– the next pandemic, autocratic repression, even the collapse of civilization itself. But above all what I predict may cause them to flee down under is when the impacts of an aggrieved mother nature make it clear our species is going under. 

Climate change ultimately could be the great equalizer that even billionaires won’t escape from. I wish I were imagining this but nearly every week a significant weather event seems to be occurring around the world that is what we used to call a front page story when we still read printed newspapers. A quote in a recent Boston Globe article about increasingly unpredictable extreme weather summed it up for me–
“I don’t think we know what is normal anymore.”

I don’t know if I’ve been prescient or just pessimistic but I have been thinking for years that climate change will keep happening exponentially. It’s the x sign on your calculator and not the + one and more and more frequently we are being warned. 

“Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction.”

I have a friend who for years denied climate change and would robustly refute any scientific evidence that showed it is occurring. He eventually changed his stance but with a new enthusiastic view that embraced what he sees as its benefits and not so much its problems.

“Look at the opportunities for Maine. Once there is a shipping lane across the Northwest Passage, we can have major ports again.”

I guess I’m just not a glass half filled kind of guy.

Up here in Camden, Maine yesterday we had weather that knocked out our power and knocked over trees all around us. Things could have been much worse! On a scale of 1 to 10 yesterday’s storm when measured against the recent disasters in Hawaii, Morocco and Libya was a zero! 

America will continue to have its share of increasingly abnormal weather events. A debate over whether or not climate change has anything to do with this one or that one is an unproductive distraction.

Will the multipolar world we are becoming save the polar bears? Will it do a better job of confronting the challenges and necessity of making our world safer for all forms of life? I won’t be around for the outcome and I won’t be hunkering down in New Zealand either.

—————–

The Writers’ Strike might be ending soon but the future isn’t. At least I hope not yet.

So, I asked ChatGPT for a little help with a script…ChatGPT, write me a new ending for Casablanca.

INT. AIRPORT – NIGHT

The plane engine roars as Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), and Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) stand on the rain-soaked tarmac. The tension is palpable, and Rick is struggling with his temper.

Rick: (intense)Ilsa, you’re a fool to leave Casablanca with Victor.

Ilsa looks at Rick, her eyes searching for understanding.

Ilsa: (defensive) Rick, I have to go with Victor. You know why.

Rick: (angry, but desperate) Ilsa, don’t you see? This is a mistake. You’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

Ilsa: (confused) What do you want me to do, Rick? I love you, but I can’t turn my back on what Victor is fighting for.

Rick takes a step closer to Ilsa, his voice softer but still filled with intensity.

Rick: (pleading) Ilsa, I’m asking you to stay with me. I’m asking you to think about what you’re giving up. You’ll be with Victor, but will you ever truly be happy?

Ilsa: (conflicted) Rick, please understand. I have to go.

Victor watches the exchange, his face a mix of disappointment and love for Ilsa.

Rick takes a deep breath, realizing that he can’t change her mind.

Rick: (resigned) Alright, Ilsa. You’ve made your choice. (sternly) You have to know that I won’t help you ever again and you’ll never see me again either. I won’t follow you and I won’t look back.”

Illsa: (nodding and then pursing her lips as she rolls her eyes) I understand. You’re not the man anymore that I knew in Paris.

Rick steps aside, allowing Ilsa to go up the plane’s boarding stairs without looking back. The plane’s engines roar to life once more, drowning out all other sounds as she enters the aircraft. (shaking his head) Rick watches the plane take off into the night sky.

As the plane disappears into the distance, Rick straightens his shoulders as he turns away to walk back to his cafe in Casablanca. He whistles “As Time Goes By”.

FADE OUT.

—————–