—————–

The Mad Monk and the Inventor Mentor

X marks the rot!

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Cloak Room at Mar-a-Lago

(To be sung to the tune of Everything’s Coming Up Roses from the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy. Music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Sidney Sondheim and originally performed by Ethel Merman.)

Ring the bell and donate
Write the check, why hesitate
Starting here, starting now Everyone’s coming up spineless

Genuflect to the max
You’ll have nothing to pay on your tax
Just submit, join the crowd Everyone’s coming up spineless

Do his bidding
Trump has made it so clear
You know you’re cowed
Honey, it’s just the beginning

Stocks are up to new heights
You’ve got nothing to fear but Maga-ities
Catch a plane, take a train
Ride a bike, make the hike…

Your lack of guts is really nothing new Everyone’s coming up spineless so get in the queue

Yes, the inspiration for my sing-along cartoon is someone else’s cartoon.

This cartoon by Ann Telnaes, the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Washington Post, showed representations of the billionaires Sam Altman, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Mark Zuckerberg and Post owner Jeff Bezos along with The Walt Disney Company icon Mickey Mouse. All but the prostrate rodent are holding up bags of money at the feet of what can be inferred as Donald Trump (reasonably identified by his girth and long necktie).

Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times both disallowed their editorial boards’ endorsements of Kamala Harris to be published last year. The Walt Disney Company recently paid Trump $15 million to avoid a suit he filed against it from going to court.

Telnaes’s editor nixed her cartoon’s publication in the Post citing that the newspaper had recently published a column on the same subject— money buying favor for individuals and companies by their ponying up large sums of it to the president-elect’s inauguration fund —and was intending to run another one on the same topic in the near future.

The Post’s opinion editor said, “The only bias (against Telnaes cartoon) was against repetition.”

Telnaes resigned from the newspaper on Friday. I thought you should see her cartoon which inspired my own.

And there’s another tune with the lyric “Imagination is funny. It makes a cloudy day sunny.” It was written nearly 100 years ago. Maybe it needs an update. “Intimidation isn’t funny. You only think you can escape it with money.”

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Every Day is a Holiday

Did you know that every day is a cause for celebration? And not just for being alive. There are apparently a multitude of reasons for celebrating on every one of the 365 days of the year.

At least that’s according to something called the National Day Calendar. Listed on it every day are ceremonies, commemorations or promotions that occur annually. We’ve already missed National Hangover Day, National Fruitcake Toss Day and National Static Electricity Day was yesterday. Are you shocked? Don’t be. Here are some of those you can observe today, January 10th…

National Houseplant Appreciation Day

National Oysters Rockefeller Day

National Bittersweet Chocolate Day

National Save the Eagles Day

And this isn’t even the complete list! Having “National” days to mark just about anything you can think of is, I think, a quintessentially American thing.

Click on the link https://nationaldaycalendar.com/ and you’ll find that there are nearly 1500 National Something Days during the year from National Personal Trainer Awareness Day on January 2nd, which feels definitely like a scales pitch, to National Whiners Day on December 26th, which I guess is for those who didn’t get what they wanted for Christmas.

Many of these days involve food— escargot, s’mores, Wiener schnitzel. The tooth fairy even has two of her own, one in February and another in August. If your child is the appropriate age, this seems a little like the parent having to pay quarterly estimated taxes.

There is something for everyone. National Bubble Bath Day and National Argyle Day were both two days ago and you can take out your disappointment at not getting to celebrate them when tomorrow it’s National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day although you may have to supply the puddle as well as the friend.

To be fair not all the observances are frivolous. Tomorrow is also National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

But let me cut to the chase and the “cut to the chase” expression comes from the silent film era and yes, there is a National Silent Movie Day. Has this National Day thing reached the point of no returns?

I suppose it’s not harming anyone and maybe I’m taking things way too seriously but having on average over four National Days every day adds to the mountain of observances and rituals that have become so numerous and frequent in the United States that in my opinion it has made most of them all but meaningless.

And Another Day, Another Award

And here’s another annoying example of adulation inflation. To paraphrase Henny Youngman, “Take awards shows, please!” We all know the Oscars, Emmys, Tonys and the Grammys. These have long histories and I’m not saying awards don’t have their place. People work hard to earn recognition for their efforts. It’s just that there have become so many of these shows that they are beyond ho hum which rhymes with dumb.

Aside from the ones with well established identities, there are dozens of other awards from organizations with acronyms like CMA, TCA and SAG, probably so they can fit their awards’ names on whatever piece of brass or glass they’re handing out to their recipients.

How many times in one year can the same person win an award for the same film or show or song and deliver the same acceptance speech? Answer: A lot!

On almost any day multiple awards events take place across the country particularly for promoting our entertainment culture. Here are ones I found that are scheduled for today:

AFI Awards Luncheon*

Music City Film Critics’ Association Awards (MCFCA)

Producers Guild of America nominations (PGA)*

AARP the Magazine Movies for Grownups Awards (AARP)

* Likely postponed because they are to take place in Los Angeles.

Full disclosure, I have a few awards and I’m proud of them so you can call me a hypocrite if you want. One of mine is from the News and Documentaries branch of the Emmys and it even came with explicit instructions on how its statuette should be placed on display. I don’t remember which side of Ms. Emmy’s face shows her best profile so I hope if I’ve guessed wrong, I don’t have to give it back.

And all false modesty aside, I was nominated for Emmys for three other stories I produced. When I told my mother I finally won, she of course said what any Jewish mother would— “So, what was wrong with the others?”

And then there’s an award I received from The Walt Disney Company after my 25th year of working at ABC News. Another statue but a different lady— Tinker Bell. It didn’t appear to have any utilitarian value until I realized it might make a good doorstop. That’s what I did with it but shortly afterward I bumped into her and cut my ankle. I’m not making this up; Tink’s wings are sharp.

What I really would have liked is the statue of Donald Duck. I can identify with his temper but you only get him after 40 years of working for the Mouse which means if I were still at ABC News I’d have earned him last year. Who gets to work for 40 years for one company anymore anywhere? I think you would have to be a cartoon character!

However, the most prestigious award in our house for work in television and the most coveted award in all of television news wasn’t given to me. Jo has a Peabody Award for her work as a producer on an educational series that ran on PBS. I am insanely not jealous.

—————–

The Donald Made Me Do It!

Zuckerberg’s METAmorphosis

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” ―Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I doubt my name will ever be attached to a quote that lives on well after I’m no longer around but Senator Moynihan’s association with the one above has. And if facts can be put on the equivalent of life support, MAGA, Meta, mega billionaire Mark Zuckerberg seems to be attempting to hasten Moynihan’s quote landing in an ICU.

If truth is an essential value for reasonable people then Zuckerberg, with his abandonment of any oversight by moderators of posts on Facebook and Instagram, should just hang up a sign that has this one, “Even if it’s sick, whatever makes you click!”

The poll above was done in 2021 by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. It found among other things that conspiracy theories claiming…

1. Vaccinations implant microchips, 2. The earth is flat and 3. America’s manned moon landings were fake were believed by a small but nevertheless disturbing number of those Americans who responded.

When broken down by respondents’ political leanings and age, two groups were significantly higher in their agreement with conspiracy theories— Millennials, and supporters of Donald Trump.

On his first day in office the last time in 2017 President Donald Trump’s press secretary lied about the size of the crowd attending the inauguration. His aide Kellyanne Conway then defended the secretary’s remarks by saying he had merely given “alternative facts.” Earth (the round one) to The White House: THERE ARE NO ALTERNATIVE FACTS!

As for Mark Zuckerberg I ask, don’t we already have enough conspiracy theorists, hate mongers, cyberbullies, trolls, doxxers and scammers on all sides of the political and whatever other spectrums and types of behavior human beings are capable of adopting and abusing? Aren’t you now encouraging them?

Are you personally motivated not to fact check anymore on Facebook and Instagram by your belief in freedom of speech or your fear of intimidation by the once and future president and his minions? The latter seems to be going around.

So, another quote sadly comes to mind…

—————–

My Los Angeles

Last week I watched as parts of Los Angeles were destroyed by the worst fires in the city’s history. I watched from 3,000 miles away in Maine in safety and comfort and sadness.

I lived in Los Angeles longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. Once on a Christmas morning for no reason I got on the nearest freeway just because I figured it was the only chance all year its lanes might be empty and for a mile or so they were. I don’t surf but for a moment barreling along with no other cars in sight I felt like I had caught the perfect wave.

For me, LA lends itself to imagining you are somewhere else. I consider it the closest thing to actually living off the earth. On Sunday mornings I’d drive over 10 miles to make three stops to pick up bagels, lox and cream cheese at three different locations on Ventura Boulevard.

The Boulevard is 18 miles long. It’s all business— retail stores, restaurants, supermarkets. Every mile of it is like every other mile of it. I could have been in outer space evading asteroids instead of dodging other cars and I envisioned myself as George Jetson darting about in a flying saucer.

I lived in Sherman Oaks and then Studio City— neighborhoods without any distinguishing identities compared to Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Upper West Side. Mine were neighborhoods but I never thought of them as communities and certainly, not my community. Maybe that’s because I worked 60 hours a week for years and traveled a lot.

The City of Los Angeles is huge— 44 miles north to south and 29 miles east to west. In square miles it’s bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware. We call those two places states, not communities.

What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland— “There’s no there there” has been forever misinterpreted. Stein grew up in Oakland and returning on a visit as an adult she discovered the “there” she knew and remembered from long ago wasn’t there any more.

The “there” I knew in Los Angeles was the one I created for myself. That’s what you needed to do. LA is different from other cities and so outsiders exaggerate what they experience when they come…

“I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.” —Jack Kerouac.

Or what they believe they see…

“Who would want to live in a place where the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?” —Woody Allen

I’m betting neither man was ever in Los Angeles long enough to create their own “there.”

My own LA included Zankou, an Armenian fast food chain serving chicken Colonel Sanders could only have dreamed of.

It included the Rose Bowl Flea Market. I don’t think I ever bought much of anything but with its thousands of sellers and buyers, the hunt for treasure was always full of discovery. In California a Roy Rogers lunch box qualified as an antique.

And it included golf in Griffith Park where coyotes crisscrossed the fairways and where when I was playing, peacocks from the LA Zoo escaped onto the course and formed a gallery of spectators.

After last week’s fires the most important “there” that exists for all of us was changed forever for so many in Los Angeles. Instead of taking years of absence like it did for Gertrude Stein to lose her “there”, the thousands who lost their homes to the flames had it happen in minutes.

Those who live or have lived in Los Angeles understand that the place exists in a perpetual cycle of danger. Rains can trigger mudslides which afterwards produce abundant new growth of vegetation on the sides of the mountains and canyons. The last time Jo and I were in LA two years ago we had never seen it so lush and green. There had been an abundance of rain but then drought turned things dry and brown and fire has now made much of it black.

I covered a lot of fires as part of my job at ABC News. There was a bad fire in 2009 in the hills above Santa Barbara and my crew and I were momentarily caught in the middle of it. We got out safely but I had an uncomfortably close lesson in how quickly and uncontrollably winds spread fires. After that I had thought Santa Barbara, which is wedged narrowly between its hills and the sea, would be the city most likely to burn up first. I was wrong.

If you are not in denial, you know that the odds are high that periodically some event either geologically, topographically, meteorologically or environmentally by itself or in combination with the others is going to happen to Los Angeles and it will be bad but hopefully not bad for you.

In California a potential earthquake is something you shove in a drawer inside a bureau in the back of your mind to get through the day and to sleep at night. Like fire, once you’ve been through a 7.0 trembler and can’t move while it’s happening, you know who’s the boss and it isn’t our species.

Sure, even when LA is unscathed, unscarred and whole and its TV weatherpersons appear to be the most overpaid in the world— “Today, just like yesterday and tomorrow, it will be mostly sunny.” —the city isn’t the most beautiful place on earth, not even close.

So, why do people live there despite inevitable peril? Because even after being charred and chastened Los Angeles is still attractive enough. It’s The City of Angels and The City of Dreams and it’s where there are infinite possibilities to create your own “there.”

—————–

Shock and Awful

To be sung to the turn of Almost Like Falling in Love from the 1947 Broadway musical Brigadoon. Songwriters: Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

What two days these have been
What a foul mood I’m in
Why, it’s almost like being in shock
There’s a frown on my face
What is left to debase
Why, it’s damn close to being in shock
All the actions of Trump may well key
A living hell we’ve been fearing to see
And from the way that I feel
As I see weak men heel
I would swear, that we’re falling
It’s completely appalling
And I know I am reeling in shock.

And I will recover and so will you and we’ll work to Make America America Again!

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In a World…

The Oscar nominations announced by AI so far…

Best Actor: HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey)

Best Actress: The Wives (The Stepford Wives)

Best Supporting Actors: R2-D2 and C-3Po (Star Wars)

And now the Nominees for Best Picture:

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Transformers

The Matrix

The Terminator

Robo Cop

WAIT! A new entry has just been submitted for best screenplay. It’s Casablanca with a revised ending written by ChatGPT!

It’s Chat’s first Oscar nom and you can read an excerpt below…

As the plane engines hum in the background, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa stand near the tarmac. Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid) waits near the plane, looking back at them with a mixture of understanding and urgency.

“Ilsa,” Rick begins, his voice low and steady. “You’ve got to get on that plane with Victor. It’s the only way you two can keep fighting for the cause.”

Ilsa looks at him, her eyes glistening with tears. “What about us, Rick? What we had in Paris, what we found here—does it mean nothing?”

Rick exhales deeply, fighting to maintain his composure. “It means the world, Ilsa. But the fight Victor’s waging—it’s bigger than us. Bigger than anything.”

A silence falls between them, broken only by the distant whir of the engines. Then, something shifts in Ilsa’s expression. She takes a step closer to Rick, her voice trembling but resolute:

“No, Rick. I can’t do it. I can’t leave you again. Paris was our world, and I won’t let it be just a memory. Victor will understand—he has his fight, and I have mine. My place is here. With you.”

Rick stares at her, stunned. “Ilsa—this could ruin everything Victor’s worked for.”

Victor approaches, his face calm but resolute. “Rick,” he says, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Ilsa is right. The movement needs me, but she is not a soldier. She’s a woman in love, and I can’t take her with me knowing her heart lies here.”

Rick looks between them, the weight of the moment settling heavily. For the first time, he allows a small smile to creep onto his lips. “Victor, you’re a hell of a man. You always were.”

Victor nods, then turns to Ilsa. “Be safe, Ilsa. And be happy.” He takes her hand briefly, then boards the plane, which soon roars to life and disappears into the night sky.

As the noise fades, Rick and Ilsa stand together, the cool Casablanca air wrapping around them. Rick tilts his head and smirks. “Well, Ilsa, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful… second chance.”

(Yes, I asked ChatGPT to write an ending where Bergman gets on the plane with Bogart. The rewrite took about three seconds. Welcome to the Hollywood of the future.)

*And you might not know him but if you ever went to the movies, you most likely heard him. Don LaFontaine was an American voice actor who became identified with the phrase “In a world …” He recorded more than 5,000 movie trailers and many more television commercials. Today, AI movie trailer voice generators have replaced him.

—————–

Trump Trumps Trump

And it’s only been a week!

For any cartoon I publish, I usually discard a few others. After this week and its torrent of trying events, I created four and it’s hard to pick just one so here they all are…

I think something that is being overlooked in all the commentary about Trump’s first week as president the second time around is his business track record. That trail of bankruptcies, unethical practices and over 4,000 legal cases from 1973 through 2016 may be instructive and predictive in anticipating where the United States of America may well be headed in the next four years.

Whatever legitimate business successes he has achieved are vastly outnumbered, tainted or have been accomplished through his ceaseless deception and dishonesty. Here are Trump’s business endeavors that have failed that I have found documented and detailed…

Trump Airlines — Trump borrowed $245 million to purchase Eastern Air Shuttle. He added gold bathroom fixtures. Two years later Trump could not cover the interest payment on his loan and defaulted.

Trump Beverages — Although Trump touted his water as “one of the purest natural spring waters bottled in the world,” it was bottled by a third party. Other beverages, including Trump Fire and Trump Power, do not appear to have made it to market. And Trump’s American Pale Ale died with a trademark withdrawal.

Trump Game — Milton Bradley tried to sell it, as did Hasbro. The game went out of production.

Trump Casinos — Trump filed for bankruptcy three times on his casinos. Trump avoided debt obligations of $3 billion the first time. Then $1.8 billion the second time. Then after reorganizing, shuffling money and assets and waiting four years, Trump again declared bankruptcy. He was finally forced to step down as chairman.

Other Trump casinos and resorts have filed for bankruptcy an additional three times including for amassing debt on New York’s Plaza Hotel.

Trump Magazine — Trump Style and Trump World were renamed Trump Magazine to earn advertising dollars from his name recognition. Trump Magazine went out of business over 15 years ago.

Trump Mortgage — Trump told CNBC in 2006 that “I think it’s a great time to start a mortgage company.” Then the real estate market collapsed. Trump had hired E.J. Ridings as CEO of Trump Mortgage. It turned out Ridings had only six months of experience as a stockbroker. The venture ended shortly afterward.

Trump Steaks — Trump closed Trump Steaks due to a lack of sales while owing Buckhead Beef $715,000.

Trump’s Travel Site — GoTrump.com was in business for one year and then failed.

Trumpnet — A telephone communication company that abandoned its trademark.

Trump Tower Tampa — Trump sold his name to the developers and received $2 million. The project went belly-up with only $3,500 left in the company. Condo buyers sued Trump for allegedly misleading them. Trump settled and paid as little as $11,115 to buyers who had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Trump University or the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative — Trump staged wealth-building seminars costing up to $34,995 for mentorships that would offer students access to Trump’s secrets of success. Instructors turned out to be motivational speakers sometimes with criminal records.

Trump Vodka — The business failed due to a lack of sales.

Trump Fragrances — Success by Trump, Empire by Trump, and Donald Trump: The Fragrances all failed due to being discontinued as a result of few sales.

Trump Mattress — Serta stopped offering a Trump-branded mattress, likely due to weak sales.

Truth Social — This existing Trump business’s stock is down 10% from a year ago despite the Dow Jones being up 17% in that time.

But I guess there still aren’t enough voters who have been cheated or swindled by Trump to deter his re-election…

WARNING! This just in… If you have bought any recently offered $Trump and $Melania crypto currencies please read on:

“As of Friday night, the family owns, at least on paper, $23 billion worth of $Trump at its $29 price — already a 60 percent drop from the peak. That price would crash even further if the family did a so-called rug pull and moved to rapidly sell off its holdings.” —from The New York Times on 1/25/25

Oh well, add a likely “Klepto” currency endeavor to the list.

If I need to limit my description of Donald Trump to one sentence, then to me he will always be more of a shakedown artist than a mover and shaker. Ok, I’ll amend that. He has moved enough of the electorate to decide to make him president again and that has left the rest of us mournfully shaking our heads.

And if you appreciate my efforts please tell your friends who you think may appreciate them too. Sure, you can keep getting most of what I post as a free subscriber but think about becoming a paid one. I have a bunch of you and I thank you all!

Jo has told me I’ve essentially recreated my office at ABC News in our house. I have the same two bulletin boards on the wall that I had there and now, I have a job again! Best, Peter

—————–

Right Now It’s 89 Seconds to Midnight Everywhere in the World!

“This clock is a stark diagnosis of our reality. At 89 seconds (to midnight) the clock stands closer to catastrophe than at any moment in its history.” —Juan Manuel Santos (recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 and today’s keynote speaker at the Doomsday Clock announcement)

The hands on the Doomsday Clock have been set again as they have annually for nearly eight decades and by definition this act signifies that in the view of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists the world has edged either further away from or closer to oblivion.

I was born in 1947, the same year the Clock was created, and remember when I was five watching a nuclear test in the Nevada desert and its mushroom cloud on television. If we ever had a “duck and cover” drill in school I don’t recall but I do remember being puzzled by a sign in front of the only public bomb shelter in the city where I grew up. It stated the maximum number of people who could fit in it was 50. At the time the population of Reading, Pennsylvania was over 100,000.

The founders did not intend for the Doomsday Clock to be seen as a prediction for how close the world might be to an apocalypse and our annihilation. No, at that time their concerns were primarily about the advent of the atomic age and specifically, the development and potential of further use of the atom bomb and that threat to humanity.

By moving the clock closer to midnight today by only one second from where it has been for the past two years, I doubt this adjustment which represents 1/86,400th of a day will set off many, if any, alarms or lead to real and significant progress toward solving the challenges our species and our planet face in 2025.

Their Doomsday Clock was originally more like a metaphor, like a string of worry beads for its originators and the rest of us to hold physically and move between our fingers while contemplating the risks that the splitting of the atom might hold existentially for our planet.

Midnight straight up on the clock represents a cataclysmic event like a nuclear holocaust actually happening and initially, 78 years ago the hands on the Doomsday Clock were set at 11:53— 7 minutes to midnight. Since then the clock has been set forward or closer to doomsday 17 times and backward and away from it 8 times. The clock is either reset or remains unchanged every January.

The year 1991 marked the furthest from midnight the Doomsday Clock has ever been set— 11:43 — and I bet with a little contemplation you can guess what happened in the world that year to warrant that adjustment. If not, I’ll tell you at the bottom of this post.

The closest the clock has been to midnight before today was in 2023 when it was set to 11:59:30. Again, I think you might come up with the event that occurred two years ago that was the reason for the second hand on the clock being moved ahead by 10 seconds.

So, who created the Doomsday Clock in 1947? Before any mention of them I think their motivation for why they did can be described with words like conscience, fear and guilt. The three creators after all had a role in creating something else first.

Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Eugene Rabinovitch all made major contributions to America’s building the world’s first atom bomb, although only Oppenheimer and Rabinovitch actually worked on the Manhattan Project. Einstein, whose famous equation E=mc² provided the theoretical foundation for understanding the energy released in a nuclear reaction, was denied a security clearance to be with them. We humans can be oddly funny that way. Einstein was excluded from the project but if there had been no Einstein would there have been a bomb?

The first and only atom bombs ever used were dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Their blasts caused massive destruction and the deaths of nearly 200,000 people. Almost immediately the detonations brought an end to World War II.

I guess it’s ironic as well as somewhat logical that the people who conceived what was at the time and still is the ultimate doomsday weapon would afterward be the ones to remind us that it was they who let the atomic genie out of the bottle to begin with and maybe regretted they had.

Right after the war the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded by Einstein and a group of others who had worked on the Manhattan Project and two years later in 1947 the Bulletin devised a measure to show how close to catastrophe it thought things might be. The concept for using a clock was the idea of the artist wife of a Project physicist.

Rabinowitch was majorly involved in shepherding the creation of the Doomsday Clock and became the individual who personally decided at what time it was to be set from its inception and for the first 26 years. His determinations were made on the basis of consulting with other scientists and conferring with political leaders around the world which he did until his death in 1973. Now, the yearly judgment is made by committee as happened today.

At its outset the primary factor in determining the clock’s setting was the perceived threat of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation but over time other dangers to the future of civilization have become apparent. That list has become longer in recent decades. Climate change was the next ominous development after nuclear obliteration to be considered and, according to the Bulletin, climate change’s increasingly dire impacts have now been joined by a new category of peril called “disruptive technologies.”

These newer dangers include the potential risks from biological weapons and cyber warfare and the spread of mis and disinformation via the internet. Most recently— Surprise! — the growth and implementation of artificial intelligence is considered a potentially ominous development.

We have witnessed the internet become a nefarious tool for the spread of untruth, hate and fraud and how drones, which were going to be a delivery air force for pizzas, have instead turned into lethal weapons of war. Artificial Intelligence is racing ahead with no barriers to its use. Will AI eventually evolve into the savior of mankind or will it create the greatest challenge to life as we know it since the invention of nuclear weapons?

Yes, I wrote this post myself but I admit that AI was helpful in my research! Years ago I would have gone to the library and made phone calls and likely taken several days instead of a couple of hours to accomplish it. But despite the benefits of AI, I fear the likelihood of it being misused and its leading to devastating consequences could outweigh them.

One statement stood out for me as I watched today’s Doomsday announcement;

“I used to believe that we believed in reason and reality as the foundations of discourse. That you could make an argument with somebody, that you could reason with… We’re moving into an environment in which reason and reality are replaced by rage and fantasy… We can’t even agree on a set of facts let alone a solution.” —Herb Lin (Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University)

We may think that our world’s end might occur because of nuclear war or climate transformation that makes the earth uninhabitable or technology that creates chaos and Frankensteins. Turning back the Doomsday Clock appears to require that we examine and even discard things we have created and grown accustomed to. And above all we have to agree we need to do it at a time when so many of us hardly agree on anything.

Oh, and those two years with events that moved the second and minute hands so dramatically on the Doomsday Clock?

1. When the Doomsday Clock was set back to 17 minutes before midnight in 1991 it marked the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 independent states and the Persian Gulf War began and ended.

2. In 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine after the Clock had been set earlier. By 2023 the war had been going on for nearly a year and concern over Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons and the increased evidence of the effects of climate change prompted the Bulletin to advance the clock to 11:58:30.

—————–

That Was The Week That Still Is

I think cartoons speak louder than words right now…

That’s it folks…

—————–

The Breaking Point…

I just received my daily post from The Atlantic. It’s titled The Breaking Point of Eggs. I haven’t read the article yet but I’m sure like many of you, I’m a lot more worried about the breaking point for the foundations of America.

Wednesday, I drove to Maine’s capital Augusta for a rally to protest the blitzkrieg of Trump’s executive orders and a tornado’s swath of damage being created by Elon Musk as he upends our government as we knew it.

The event today wasn’t well publicized. I only found out about it on Tuesday from a friend. Several hundred of us stood there, most with signs. One guy had a trumpet and played patriotic anthems. Another showed up with a megaphone but didn’t inspire me or I don’t think anyone else. Mostly, we chanted things that people would yell out spontaneously. I tried “unite and fight.” It didn’t catch on.

It’s been a cold winter in Maine and today in Augusta the temperature was in the teens. No one in their teens was there which explains why I and some other men left after 45 minutes to find a bathroom.

I got home and realized that instead of chanting, we should have had a moment of silence, sort of an abbreviated version of the deafening one that the people I voted for in Washington have been observing since Trump was elected. Then without thinking very hard I created a bunch of cartoons…

—————–

Get Your Kicks at Super Bowl LIX

We call it Super Bowl Sunday but in recent years we may as well call it Armistice Day. We used to have one— an Armistice Day —to commemorate the end of WWI but in 1954 the name was changed to Veterans Day which was sensible since wars kept happening and creating more veterans.

An armistice is by definition a ceasefire or a truce and although the Super Bowl is a football game and only metaphorically a war, for those attending it or watching it, I can’t think of a better or bigger example of what will hopefully be a brief pause in our nation’s present dysfunction and disunity.

As divisively as the country is politically polarized, fans of the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs will be both Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and Socialists and for a few hours won’t even notice or even know that they’re rooting for the same teams.

We may argue about which team has the better quarterback but we won’t care what his stances are on abortion and DEI, at least not during the game and the usual hundred or so interruptions for commercials.

Sports may well be one of the few means by which Americans on different sides of the political spectrum can still communicate with each other with civility instead of hostility. Sports events that we share together are a respite in these astoundingly troubling times.

Of course I’m willing to bet in the case of the Super Bowl, a vast number of us who will be watching the game might not know a sack from a touchback and won’t care. It’s also certain we won’t be thinking about the citizenship status of those who made our guacamole either.

Some have called American football a metaphor for America writ large. Maybe it is. For sure there’s a hierarchy and income inequality. Quarterbacks get the most attention and this year the 18 highest paid players in the National Football League are quarterbacks.

You might have heard of Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady but how many NFL linemen can you name? We all know Musk, Bezos and Zuckerman, right? How many employees at Tesla, Amazon or Facebook do you know?

At its core, football is a brutal sport. We may not be the most violent country in the world but we do have the most guns and school shootings. So, we can be grateful to football for channeling part of whatever propensity and fascination we have with violence in a way that only hurts the participants who play it.

A survey a decade ago found that over 90% of retired NFL players said that they experience daily pain they attribute to having played football. Many report having cognitive issues likely linked to repeated head trauma and concussions sustained during their playing days. I suppose we should be thankful for their service.

But does it actually serve any purpose to bemoan the dangers and criticize the sport? Football is not going away. I just checked and eight of the largest stadiums in the world are on American college campuses for their schools’ football games. That’s right, the world!

I played football in junior high school. One day I scored my only touchdown on a long run. It was during practice and as I turned around in the end zone pleased but expressionless— spiking the ball hadn’t been imagined yet —our coach blew his whistle and commanded that the entire team including me run a lap around the field. My football career ended after that season.

I watch football but not much. My father went to Penn State. I went to graduate school at UCLA. If either team is any good, I’ll tune in for their games. I’ll record this weekend’s Super Bowl game that begins at 6:30 and begin watching a couple hours after it starts. That way I can mercifully skip the bulk of the commercials and the halftime show but I probably might catch up to the event in real time anyway when it’s still going on towards midnight.

Donald Trump plans to be in New Orleans and we can only hope his presence won’t cause more than a momentarily disruption of the otherwise non political vibe when he gets introduced. But by being there Trump will be competing in a game within the game.

I won’t be betting on who will win the match on the field but I’ll wager that Las Vegas will let you place one on who will get more camera time, Trump or someone vastly more popular than he is. Taylor Swift’s boyfriend plays for Kansas City and she’ll be there in a luxury suite too. Normally, I’d think she’d get the more camera cutaways. But guess what? It’s the Fox network’s year to be the broadcaster so I’m thinking Trump will have the edge and the fix is probably already in.

The Chief’s Travis Kelce is playing for his fourth Super Bowl ring and there’s speculation he may present his girlfriend with an engagement one after the game. But here’s what I want to know. Will Trump try to make Taylor kiss his ring first?

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It’s Elementary School My Dear Socrates!

Once a week we pick up our 8 year old grandson after school and a few months ago when Jo asked him how his day was he smiled and said, “Good! The philosophers came.” And it turned out they had. Harvey explained that he has a regular weekly class where two women with PhDs in philosophy come to his school to ask the kids what’s on their minds.

So, Jo asked Harvey what had been on his and Harvey told her, “I wanted to know if my life was real and how I knew I wasn’t a character in a book or a movie?”

Yes, we think he is a bit precocious and I can’t imagine I had those thoughts when I was in third grade but what did the philosophers tell him? No surprise, they were philosophical and told Harvey his was a question philosophers have wrestled with for a long time.

Not quite a definitive answer but I’m glad Harvey brought it up because in the past few weeks I’ve asked myself the same question. You may have as well. Trump, Musk… is it real or is it Memorex?

The philosopher who introduced and leads Harvey’s weekly session was the founder of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children in Seattle and recently moved to Camden. And as Dr. Jana Mohr Lone explained in a New York Times article five years ago…

“We are not teaching children about philosophy. We’re teaching them actually to do philosophy themselves.”

Philosophers by definition seek to discover and express truth through analysis and reasoning. So, is Harvey and are all of us characters in a book or actors with parts we portray in some cosmic terrarium? As Harvey was told, a philosopher’s task is to think deeply about the answer and not necessarily to have one.

I don’t have the answer either but on the other hand prophets are different. They claim that they do— usually by way of an inside connection on high —and if they don’t, they will let us know what kind of trouble we’re in if we can’t come up with the answers ourselves.

In our day most of those who we consider philosophers go to college and get degrees. But I believe prophets still can appear at any time anywhere— even in comedy clubs —and even if the last thing he and she would assert is that they were divinely inspired.

Which brings me to someone I’ve been thinking about. How I wish George Carlin was still with us. I bet that in Biblical times at least one of the prophets was doing stand-up in a tent in the Sinai or a coffeehouse in Jerusalem.

I’ve thought for a long time if Carlin had lived then, we might have had the Book of George today. Would I feel better reading it if it existed? No, but I would read it and likely laugh and right now I need to and maybe you do too.

If you don’t remember or know of George Carlin who died in 2008, his standup comedy reflected who he was, a cynic who never saw any aspect of life that was off limits. Carlin’s humor was dark— pitch black and blasphemous —and reflected his low opinion of humanity.

Mark Twain also had a low opinion of our species. Twain was called a humorist but I think Carlin took things to another level. He wasn’t just a comedian. He was scathing and provocative. If Twain’s writing was informed by his experiences behind the helm of a riverboat on the Mississippi, then George Carlin’s standup must have been honed by driving a hearse. Call him a prophet of doom, but he was just picking up where others had left off in the Old Testament. Take Hosea….

Hosea 4:6 “My people perish for lack of knowledge,”

Carlin: “If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”

Or Ezekiel…

Ezekiel 7:7 “Doom has come upon you, upon you who dwell in the land. The time has come! The day is near!”

Carlin: “I think we squandered a great gift… We’re on a downward glide. I call it circling the drain.”

I’m glad that our grandson is excited by his philosophers. I certainly wouldn’t want him and his grade school friends to be taught “George Carlin”—that’s strictly an adult ed. offering. But learning to be inquisitive and contemplative, especially when faced with challenges is a plus at any age. It may also help one to accept disappointments in life. Harvey hopefully, is getting a foundation for handling those. That’s something he’ll surely need and don’t we all?

Many books have already filled shelves attempting to explain how we— our country and so much of the world —got into this mess. Viewing a few George Carlin routines might save others who want to add to that archive from making the effort. Ten words he spoke years ago could just be all that is needed…

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

George, I know you’re neither up or down there but I hope your observation about power and stupid is not a prophecy that will be fulfilled in my or Harvey’s lifetime by any of us you left behind.

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Will This Be The Shot In The Back To The Shots In Our Arms?

Susan, we never expected anything other than this vote from you. It’s your MO.

Bill, you’re a trained gastroenterologist. I’m not, but I can tell you where your guts are.

Mitch, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for you. You had your chance to be a hero.

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Do You Know Where Your Country Is?

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Things We Baby Boomers Didn’t Know And Should Be Glad We Didn’t…

I’m a baby boomer. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of those of you I’m reaching with my posts are too. Maybe because I didn’t like Fizzies back then, I rarely need Alka Seltzer now…

And despite a spine in decline when I bend over, I can at least still see my toes…

But short term memory! Look, I figure if I still can remember I forgot, I’m Ok. So, I consider myself lucky— very lucky! If you’re a boomer, I hope you see yourself that way too.

The baby boom generation in America encompasses those of us who came into the world between 1946 and 1964. I got in early on St. Patrick’s Day of 1947. According to the United States Census Bureau, we were around 76 million people— that’s the number of us who were born in the United States during those 18 years.

How many of us baby boomers in the country are still alive today? How about 72 million. What!!! Yes, when I saw this I was disbelieving and confused too. I’m reading way too many obituaries of people my age. Did none us smoke or drink or eat burgers and fries? Did all of us workout at the Y, and do yoga and run marathons? Are we all that healthy? Is it our pill boxes then? That must be it… No it isn’t!

The baby boom after WWII was world wide and so it includes the millions of others born elsewhere around the globe during those same years. The U. S. Census Bureau counts all those who were born between ‘46 and ‘64 who have since emigrated to the United States in its population by age breakdowns for our country.

That’s how and why our numbers have remained static. We have been replenished with a baby boomer generation augmentation. I doubt the infusion inclusion will shape our generation’s legacy any differently. In fact if the subsequent generations— X, Millennial, Alpha and most recently Beta —realize we still have Social Security, Medicare, pensions and 401ks and it’s questionable they will… Yikes! I don’t blame them for feeling envious or even furious.

Former television news anchorman Tom Brokaw titled his 1998 book The Greatest Generation and it has become a phrase that is now part of the language. We know it refers to our parents— those born before 1928 who had grown up during the Great Depression and the many who went on to serve and fight in World War II. With the exception of his family, my father considered the time he spent in the army during the war his proudest achievement.

I’ve used Brokaw’s phrase often enough and usually add that we baby boomers have not only been the beneficiaries of The Greatest Generation but if there isn’t already a book, there will be one written about us someday called The Luckiest Generation— we, who grew up eating TV dinners while watching Ozzie and Harriet and who,—or at least a great number of us —have had lives unburdened by economic hardship and uninterrupted by military service.

I think by any measure we boomers have much to be grateful for. So, these days I think about how shocked my parents and likely your own would be at how the world they left us has changed. We have safer cars and bigger televisions. Our phones are cameras, encyclopedias, stores, banks and post offices. Yes, we have seen many advances in medicine that might have kept our parents alive longer but would they be happy with what they would see if they were with us now?

What hasn’t changed and needs to the most has been the fundamental flaw in the history of humanity— one unsolvable by knowledge, uninvented yet by technology, unconquered by science nor cured by medicine.

Yes, call it human nature, human behavior, the human condition or whatever it is that makes our species both loving and hateful, brave and cowardly, empathetic and unfeeling, selfish and generous. Opposites may attract when they’re magnets. We’re seeing right before our eyes what happens when a nation is no longer bound together and magnates and worse take it over.

If a brain is a horrible thing to waste, our country will be a terrible thing to lose.

Hopefully, today’s cartoons may have made you smile. If they have, I’m glad. It’s tough for me to manage one these days. How about you?

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Our Governor Has Guts!

On Friday Maine’s Governor stood up to President Trump. I am proud of Janet Mills and salute her for refusing to be bullied. I hope we all will show such strength and courage in the days ahead.

In my opinion we are facing the biggest challenge of our lifetime. The Man Who Would Be King is no longer just a book and a movie. Now, it’s the person in the White House.

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The Center Didn’t Hold

Quotes from the people…

I’m a democrat, but I can summarize the problem a lot faster than a poll or a focus group? Too many people see the party as full of crap.

The Dems are a Harvard elite scratching their heads asking themselves how they lost the working class.

You lost black people. We woke up!

The country is angry. I am angry. We wanted an angry candidate.

I have a different question. Like what can replace the Democratic Party?

It’s clear the Democrats have a lot of work to do. Right now it feels like they haven’t started.

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I don’t know if this is typical or just cynical but from my three graduations— high school, college and graduate school —I don’t remember any of the commencement speakers offering me any advice that I took. In fact it wasn’t until many years later that a piece of advice really stuck.

In 1991 H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (not to be mistaken with the singer Jackson Browne) published Life’s Little Instruction Book and it became the first book to ever be the number one best seller on the New York Times list in both hardback and paperback simultaneously.

The genesis of what turned into a publishing phenomenon was Brown’s son going off to college. Life’s Little Instruction Book was a compendium of a father’s words of wisdom for his son to take with him and I guess could be considered preemptive advice that the boy wouldn’t have to wait four years to receive at graduation. I read the book and one of the over 500 instructions on how to live a happy and rewarding life has been something I believe I have faithfully adhered to ever since. Here it is:

 ” When complimented a sincere thank you is the only response.”

Oh, I admit there have been times I would have liked to have responded by saying more after someone had said something nice about something I did but once I got used to “thank you” it became easy to keep my mouth shut after the two words Brown says are response enough.

My father, like me, loved golf and played the game into his 80s. He was pretty good and as he got older he played well enough to accomplish a feat most golfers can only dream about. In his late 70s he scored his age. He was 76 and shot a round of 76.

Doing better than a score of 80 in golf is an achievement that fewer than 5% who play the game ever accomplish at any age. My father’s golf game in his last years was truly the exception. In fact one day after he hit a particularly nice tee shot I saw a much younger onlooker get down on his knees in supplication and beseech the golf gods “Please, let this be me someday.”

But when I got out on the golf course with my father during those final years there was something that bothered me. I realized my father didn’t know how to receive a compliment. Whenever a fellow golfer praised a shot my dad hit, his reaction that met it was a shrug of his shoulders accompanied by a muttered “almost” or “getting better.”

So, one day I confronted him with my observation and recited H. Jackson Brown, Jr,’s compliment protocol. My father looked at me like I was crazy and said nothing. The issue never came up again. It stayed unresolved with me until several years after he died and, still puzzled by my father’s behavior, I had an insight into what I’d like to think might have been going on.

For my father golf wasn’t just about being able to play a game. No, I think it was more of a passionate journey. And I don’t mean it was a quest for perfection. That’s unattainable in golf or just about anything else. Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, claimed he only hit a few shots that he was happy with in any round he played.

No, it may simply have been a journey my father didn’t want to see end and maybe by displaying gratitude for praise late in his life he would have been acknowledging that his journey was soon coming to an end. I wouldn’t call my father a student of the game but he sure didn’t want to graduate!

As psychoanalysis that’s worth the money you paid to read it. And perhaps Life’s Little Instruction Book’s advice on handling compliments doesn’t apply to everything anyway. Where my father might have subconsciously equated golf with mortality, his son sees golf, at least at the outset of each round I play, as a moment when I’m inexplicably the most optimistic about life.

“Today’s the day,” I always think to myself as I’m ready to hit my first shot and despite the inevitability with which that conviction is always crushed, in my own way I don’t want to graduate either.

P.S. I wrote the above some time ago and since then my attitude on the first tee is still sunny but no longer because I’m full of expectation or even hope that I’ll play the best round of my life. No, I’m just happy if I hit a few good shots in the company of good friends. Life has a way of balancing aging and realism.

And below is a photograph taken by Jo of me playing a magnificent golf course in Scotland called Elie a few years ago. I made two trips to Scotland to play golf with my father and on another particularly scenic course he said to me, “We must be in golf heaven.” As you can see it was a glorious day when Jo took this beautiful picture and if there is indeed a golf heaven, I’m thankfully not in it yet but I hope my dad is… Oh, and I’m not posing here. I remember I hit a good drive!

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Now Batting Donald Trump…

“I will be open to the considered views of my colleagues on the bench, and I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability, and I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” —from the opening statement of John G. Roberts, Jr. at his confirmation hearing for Chief Justice of the United States on September 12, 2005.

So, let’s continue with another baseball analogy. At the moment it’s spring training in Florida and Arizona for Major League Baseball teams and there’s something new that is being tried out. It’s called ABS which is an acronym for Automated Ball-Strike system. Without going into great detail ABS is a system of cameras that track whether a pitcher has thrown a ball in the strike zone.

So unlike the professed role of Chief Justice Roberts, the job of a human umpire behind home plate is now overseen and for the first time in the history of baseball can be overruled by technology. If MLB eventually decides to adopt ABS fully, not only will the game’s umpires no longer call balls and strikes but the 10 umps who are in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York will likely be the last to have been so honored.

I’m not a lawyer and haven’t ever played one on television either but the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. United States seems to have taken away or at least restricted the Chief Justice and the other members of the Court’s powers for calling those balls and strikes by now granting this and future presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for their “official acts.”

That sounds like the equivalent of putting a president above the law, or in baseball terms, giving the batter the advantage of a strike zone so small he won’t likely be called out. In the case of this president in particular it will limit the court’s power to adjudicate what has been the scope of the historic powers of an American president.

This week’s ruling where a 5-4 decision against the Trump administration withholding foreign aid already authorized by Congress to relief organizations for work performed was a setback for the President. The decision needed the votes of Roberts and Justice Coney Barrett along with the three liberal judges to create that one vote majority. The ruling was kicked back to a federal judge for his further clarification which still might lead members of the Court to change their minds.

There will doubtless be many cases coming before the Court that will challenge the President’s actions during these next four years. With the otherwise clear majority appointed by him and past presidents from his political party to the Supreme Court, I’m apprehensive about whether the Chief Justice’s job to call balls and strikes will now be often superseded by an automated umpire called Trump v. the United States.

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Is Winter Drawing to a Close?

One of the great joys for Jo and me these past few years has been having our grandsons living nearby. This winter they discovered snowboarding and today was our turn to take them to the Camden Snow Bowl where Jo skied herself when she was a kid.

When we arrived at their house only Harvey, the younger boy was suited up for the slopes. Nate had injured his foot and asked me if we could come up with a cartoon together.

After dropping Harvey off we brainstormed on the way back to our place. This cold and icy Maine winter was on both our minds and Nate observed that instead of global warming, the last couple months had been the opposite and more like “global chilling.” When I suggested it has been so cold that wildlife might have needed clothes to cope, Nate’s idea of what to draw became clear to him— a parka sale in Antarctica.

There are no penguins in Maine but I’ve been walking like one this winter. Yet that precaution didn’t prevent me from slipping and landing on my head last week. I’m fine now but happy to share cartooning duties today with the best apprentice I know.

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Go Tell It On The Mountain…

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Birthday Math

Although the only math I do these days is figuring out how much to tip, I submit for your approval— as Rod Serling used to say on The Twilight Zone —my concept of Birthday Math. Here goes…

On the day of our birthdays every year we add a year to our age. Since at birth we started at zero, I contend birthdays are misunderstood. We may be 9 or 78 on our birthday but we don’t actually “turn” 9 or 78. We move forward into our next year and on our birthday we are adding to those completed 9 or 78 years. If we’re “turning” anywhere, it’s toward being 10 or 79. Even Jack Benny, who was perpetually 39, was always 39 plus.

Ok, am I’m being picayune and pedantic? Do I have too much free time on my hands? Nevertheless…

Through childhood and adolescence Birthday Math is all about addition. You learn to read and write and hopefully tie your shoes. You may earn a a degree, start a career get married and have kids— that’s serious addition.

And then at a certain point Birthday Math also begins to be a process of subtraction. I stopped playing basketball in my 30s after snapping the same tendon in my calf a second time. In my 50s I stopped ordering a milk shake with my hamburger and fries. And in my 70s what club I use for a shot on the golf course is now adjusted annually. If I happen to hit a drive over 200 yards at this point, it is either down a hill or with the assistance of a strong following wind.

I have hearing aids which Jo often reminds me I’m not wearing and while once upon a time my vision was better than 20/20, I now carry two sets of readers in my pocket— one for printed material and the other for a desktop computer screen.

And how about other deterioration for which there are no audiologists or optometrists to offer a modicum of restoration? Well, I’m no longer always coming up with three cherries after I pull the lever of the slot machine that is my brain. I still remember mama but not the name of the person I was introduced to ten minutes ago.

This is a long way around to reveal that our grandson Harvey and I share a birthday. Today he finished his ninth year and I my 78th. So, while he can easily blow out his candles, I would need a fire extinguisher to douse mine. Our birthdays are on St. Patrick’s Day and neither of us is Irish but green has been my favorite color since I became a Boston Celtics fan first and a Dartmouth College “Big Green” alum later. Harvey’s favorite color? You’ll need to ask him. It changes.

Age wise Harvey and I are separated by centuries. I played pinball on machines made by Gottlieb in Chicago. He plays games on something called a Nintendo Switch that was made in China. At his age I watched Mickey Mouse Club on one of the only three channels our television “set” could receive. Harvey watches someone called Mr. Beast on YouTube and has infinite other options for viewing “whatever” on the “net.”

What else is there to say? Well, there’s my grandmother. She’s not the one whose chicken soup had an aroma that was strange and unappetizing. She’s the other one who sent me homemade knishes in the mail when I was in college. Toward the end of her life when I’d visit her she always requested that I bring the same lunch.

“Get me a Whopper and a Bud.”

So, one day after she had bit into the burger and reached for the beer she paused and said,

“You know, I’m 80 something but in my head I feel like I’m in my 30s.”

It took many years for me to understand and concur with the truth of her observation. Yes, I know my belief that I’m much younger than I am is all in my head, but it’s there and stubbornly embedded. Physical appearance to the contrary it’s how I feel and I’m sticking to it.

Ok, Ok, I accept I’m not a 30 something but how about 40? However, that is not at issue today as Harvey and I celebrate moving toward being 10 and 79. So, let’s party!

In past years Harvey and I have had separate birthday cakes. He designed his own that had four layers of different colors. The bakery that produced it started referring to it as the “Harvey cake.” This year we’re having only the cake Jo makes for me. It’s called the “Wellesley Cake.” I by no means pressured Harvey. He arrived at the decision himself. He likes my cake better and I can’t blame him.

The Wellesley Cake has a “rich” history attached to it. In 1870 the founder of Jo’s alma mater declared, “pies, lies, and doughnuts should never have a place in Wellesley College.” So, of course the students there quickly came up with a recipe for what I contend is the most decadent chocolate cake known to women or men.

As you can see Harvey and I look like we blew out the candles on our cake together today but truth be told I faked helping him. Why? Because although he and his brother Nate can’t provide the strong following wind for me on the golf course, I’m happy to let them do it where and when they can.

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The Hotpoint of No Return

I listened to a discussion on the radio this week about the Democratic Party’s failure in recent federal elections to stave off the defection of “working class” voters. The participants didn’t have any simple fix for how to get their support back and neither do I, but I can claim to have been present at the beginning of the unraveling and estrangement of what the Democrats once considered their reliable base. Please read on…

Remember Hotpoint? I grew up in a house with a trifecta of Hotpoint products in our kitchen— stove, refrigerator, dishwasher. I also grew up watching The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and one of its sponsors happened to be Hotpoint.

The stars of television shows often did the commercials themselves back in the early days of TV. The Nelsons split that duty on their weekly series with Harriet showing off the convenience of her Hotpoint appliances and Ozzie bragging about his family photos taken with the latest Kodak camera.

In the 1950s television became the most successful advertising tool in American history and for a change the generals weren’t in the rear but on the front lines— that is General Electric, General Motors, General Mills.

Approximately 8,000 U.S. households had TV sets in 1946. By 1960 that number grew to 46 million. But what was being sold was more than just Coca-Cola and Chevrolets.

Very quickly after WWII TV became the predominant way we consumed entertainment and television commercials showcased all the material things American audiences could and should procure to keep up with the burgeoning middle class lives of the likes of the Nelsons, the Andersons on Father Knows Best, and the Cleavers on Leave it to Beaver.

During the Eisenhower years from 1952 to 1960 the average family in the United States saw its income increase by 15% and wages for factory workers rose by 20%. These gains both occurred as inflation averaged less than 2% during that eight year period.

By the early 1970s the number of Americans who were statistically considered to be in the middle class reached just over 60%. But by 1982 I became aware that the happy perfect lives portrayed on the 1950s sitcoms were not ones many of us were going to be able to hold onto.

Why? Let’s look in the rear view mirror.

In 1895 Ontario, California became one of the first electrified cities in America. The wife of the supervisor of its power station complained to him about how difficult it was to iron around the buttons of his shirts because the point of the heavy metal iron that she had to constantly heat on her stove just didn’t remain hot enough.

A commercially viable electric iron hadn’t been invented yet but the woman’s complaint inspired her husband to do just that. His new iron was also smaller and lighter and yes, now connected continually to electricity so that it kept a hot point. He started a business making and selling them and it took off. He called the product… Yes, you guessed it— the Hotpoint iron.

General Electric eventually ended up purchasing the little company and retained the name Hotpoint for its clothes irons and many of its other products. Until GE closed the Ontario operation in 1982, the vast majority of metal steam irons sold in America and other parts of the world were produced there.

What made this particular plant shutdown historically significant is that it was later believed to be the first instance where a factory in the United States had been shuttered while it was still making a profit. The reason for its closure was purely a strategic one by General Electric.

By sending its jobs overseas to be done for less money than what Ontario’s workers were being paid and deciding to build a “state of the art” facility from scratch in Singapore to manufacture a new mostly plastic model to replace the metal iron, General Electric never considered updating the Ontario, California plant. The company kept its plans to close it a secret.

Six hundred workers were put out of work at the factory in 1982 and several hundred more jobs in the community were also impacted.

As this type of abandonment of manufacturing in the United States became more frequent it inspired a term to describe it. What took place in Ontario was called an example of a “runaway plant” —not the kind you grow but the ones you abscond with for the opportunity to make larger profits.

I was a film student at U.C.L.A. at the time of the closing and made a documentary I called Iron Capital of the World about what happened to that General Electric clothes iron facility. Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes did their own story about the Ontario shutdown a year after me.

One of the interviews I did was with the president of the local union of the United Electrical Workers. Mary McDaniel foresaw the plant closure coming when she noticed that GE had stopped advertising its metal irons in trade journals and subsequently, found out that the company was going to open a plant elsewhere. 

“GE swears the metal iron is finished and won’t be made anywhere anymore,” she told me. “They’re going to make only plastic irons in North Carolina where there are no unions and Singapore where our plant’s jobs are going. You wait and see. I’d bet anything that they’ll be making metal irons again somewhere.”

She was right. That’s exactly what Black & Decker did after purchasing General Electric’s small appliance division a few years later. There was still consumer demand for the heavier metal iron and I came upon the resuscitated version one day on a store shelf. On the box were the words “The Classic” and in small print “Made in Brazil.”

I interviewed many of the workers who lost their jobs. Their anxiety was easy to record with a camera and microphone. Some expressed anger, others despondency and pessimism. Some saw and predicted the long term implications for America right away.

At the time I could comprehend what they felt. What I missed, and what so many of us did for a long time, was how devastating the impact would be on our country of the loss of so many good middle class jobs.

In 1960 a third of American jobs were in manufacturing. Today it’s 10%. Will the Trump administration’s tariff policies bring those jobs back? It’s not something that realistically can happen and certainly not fast and especially not now.

Advances in robotics and the increasing applications of artificial intelligence will likely stymie efforts to restore that past percentage of manufacturing jobs in the United States. And although it may not be Newton’s law of gravity, it’s a lot easier to break things than to fix them.

Since Donald Trump’s election last fall, I keep hearing the same lament— Democrats have lost the working class! They have been forgotten and abandoned by the party that used to be their home. But who actually are the working class in America today?

—Is it comprised of union members? In 1960 about a third of workers in the United States were in unions. Today, that number has fallen to a third of that. So, that’s a much smaller part of today’s so called working class.

—Are working class Americans those without a college degree? In 1960 only one in ten of us had a college diploma. Today, that number has increased to one in four. So, I’m not sure that having a B.A. is a totally accurate way to measure who’s on which side of the working class divide either.

It seems to me that we need to come up with a new definition of today’s working class or maybe we should think about doing away with the classification altogether.

As one commentator always begins his commentaries— “Here’s my take,” my idea of the working class today is not necessarily defined by what kind of work you do or the level of education you’ve attained. It’s more a group of people who work but may earn less than others and are often being paid only for the hours or days that they do work.

They may or may not do physical labor that doesn’t require advanced education but even with it, it doesn’t matter. College graduates, even those with a PhD, may be employed and have neither benefits nor job security nor adequate incomes.

If they get sick, they don’t get paid and only have health care coverage if they have subscribed and paid for it. When they retire, they may have only their savings if they have accumulated any and rely solely on their Social Security checks. That’s often barely enough to live on these days. These are the people who have been hurt and many of them for a long time.

When I made my documentary in 1982 Ronald Reagan had been in office for just over a year. It was “Morning in America” when the General Electric workers in Ontario were let go and among the first Americans to be left behind because of what has come to be called globalization. It’s actually a term an economist named Theodore Levitt coined in an article he wrote in 1983 just a year after the closure of the GE facility in California.

Years after I completed my documentary I discovered an additional irony. In 1956 when Ontario’s General Electric plant had manufactured its 50th million iron, it presented a gold plated model to Ronald Reagan. It was before he had entered politics and at that time he was the television host of General Electric Theater on CBS.

As for the workers I interviewed in 1982, several years ago I reached out to as many I could find to learn what happened to their lives. Not one of those I spoke with told me that he or she had found a better job than the one they had lost when they were let go by GE.

Here’s a link to a short excerpt from my documentary Iron Capital of the World. Keep in mind the voices you’ll hear were speaking to me over 40 years ago…

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Yo Can-a-da…

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life, it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line
The man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

For What It’s Worth is a song written by Stephen Stills and performed by Buffalo Springfield. It was recorded and released in 1966.

We left Camden with our friends for a visit to Quebec City last weekend more curious than concerned about how Americans are now being welcomed in Canada.

At the border crossing north of Jackman, Maine the Canadian Border Service Agency officer wasn’t hostile but didn’t smile as he examined our passports and asked questions which included the standard “What is the purpose of your visit?” and the more probing “Has any one of you ever been convicted of a crime?” We hadn’t and were on our way in less than five minutes.

But as soon as we crossed the border we knew what we were really worried about. It wasn’t how Canadians might behave toward us. No, what made us anxious was something none of us would have ever imagined in what now seems the distant past.

We were unsure what we might encounter when we attempted to cross the border to reenter the United States on our return trip home. In fact we had already taken steps to deal with the possibility that we might be interrogated, delayed or even detained.

I certainly don’t want to end our trip before it really begins so I’ll get to all that later.

Old habits surface when I write. Questions pop up and being a recovering journalist I like to find answers when they do. So I learn a little about a lot of things. Call much of it trivia or trivial but it’s good for showing off at cocktail parties. Of course one has to be invited and until I am here’s some I’ve come across…

Just as Maine officially became a state only after separating from Massachusetts in 1820, well after the United States gained its independence, the Maine-Quebec border was established by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty even later— in 1842. It became one determined by geology and largely follows the direction water flows off either side of a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains.

Water that flows north to the St. Lawrence River became Quebec and Canada and water that flows south to the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean became part of Maine and the United States. I wish all territorial disputes could be this easy to settle.

Over 80% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the United States border and the difference in the present day topography between our two countries is immediately apparent. Maine has been harvesting its forests for over two centuries but 90% of the state still remains forested— the highest percentage of wooded land that exists in any state in the nation.

The province of Quebec is even more forested. In fact it has an amazing 2% of the world’s total forests. It is also 19 times the size of Maine. But once you enter Canada trees that flank the roadsides in a virtually uninhabited part of our state soon give way to vistas of cleared farmland and small communities in the province. The narrow rural road up to the border quickly becomes a Canadian highway equal to an American interstate.

It was there we had our first encounter with what we perceived as hostility to our presence or so we thought. A car pulled up in the left lane and the driver waved his hand at us in what seemed like an agitated and even menacing manner. I was driving and Jo and the friends we were traveling with urged me to let the guy pass and get far ahead of us.

We continued on and arrived in Quebec City when a second incident occurred. While waiting at a stoplight a man on foot suddenly appeared and tapped on the driver’s side window. My immediate thought was that he was a cop but I saw he wasn’t in uniform and he was smiling. He pointed but not at me. No, his finger was aimed at the rear of our car and he motioned in a way that indicated he had closed the open cover of the gas tank.

Yes, a short time before being accosted by the driver who I believed was gesturing at me in anger, I had stopped to fill up with gas. l, along with the other three of us in our car, had totally misunderstood what he was signaling. It certainly wasn’t a reaction to our Maine license plate. It was an unclosed gas tank cover that needed closing.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life, it will creep

Our time in Quebec City was very pleasant. In an antique store I took the picture above but maybe I shouldn’t think finding a Statue of Liberty in the only Canadian province where French is the official language ironic. Even at the present moment when relations between our two countries’ governments have become less cordial. After all, France created the one that stands in New York harbor as a gift that it shipped to the United States in 1884— recently, some there have called for us to give it back.

Canadians are proud of their country and united in their defiance toward Donald Trump’s taunting of their sovereignty. It wasn’t at all a surprise to find proof of that which Jo and I both purchased in solidarity with Canada as seen below…

But during our time in Quebec our apprehension didn’t center around how Canadians might react to us. No, never far from our minds was anxiety about returning home. We were worried enough that we had even planned ahead and arranged backup support.

Although American citizens cannot legally be denied entry to the United States, we prepared in case we might have difficulty. We told a family member to be on alert and called her as we got near the border. She knew if she didn’t hear from us again within a couple of hours to spring into action and call a designated lawyer.

Here’s what actually happened.

The border crossing near Jackman, Maine is one of America’s least busy. A logging truck was in front of us and our two vehicles were in the only open lane. When it was our turn, a single U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer scanned our passports, asked us where we had been, where we lived and then had one other question about our friends’ damaged car…

“Hit a deer?” said the officer. We knew were back home.

But was our concern/paranoia unwarranted? Maybe, but maybe only not yet. Recent events have certainly shown that what’s legal and what’s not in America is being challenged, redefined or ignored by the Trump administration.

One last thought. We don’t know if we would have been allowed entry into Canada if one of us had answered yes to the question that he or she had been convicted of a crime. It will always be astonishingly sad for me that so many in our nation voted to elect Donald Trump again despite the fact that if he were anyone else, he might not have been able to even cross the Maine border to Quebec today.

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The Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.” —Terry Pratchett

And for your listening pleasure…

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