Author: Dr. Jack

Historical Perspective

The 2024 Presidential election is in the books and it’s time to take stock. I’ll let the political science people analyze the results, but one number jumped out at me. Trump won an election for the first time in his life with slightly more votes than he received in 2020. The big difference was that Kamala Harris received about 9 million fewer votes than Joe Biden had in 2020. Again, other people are more equipped than I to comb through these results and explain them, but, as a historian, I can offer some thoughts about the presidency in a general sense.

Every few years, someone conducts a poll among historians and other scholars, asking them to rank the presidents from best to worst. The sort of criteria used by these polls usually include various questions, but they fall into three main categories. (1) How did the president do in terms of foreign policy? (Did they keep us out of unnecessary wars, strengthen our status in the world, make us stronger militarily, etc.?) (2) How did he do with domestic affairs? (Did the economy improve or decline?;  How did he handle the rights of minority groups?; Did he rule on behalf of all people, not just the wealthy,?; Were there political scandals or corruption connected with his administration)? (3) And finally, if faced with a crisis, how successful was he in resolving the situation?

Because of the assortment of people polled and criteria used, the results have varied over time, but certain patterns emerge from these polls. The top three presidents in these polls are invariably the same: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George Washington.

Washington ranks highly because of his steady guidance and restraint through the process of establishing exactly what a president’s role would be within the brand-new, checks-and-balances system of a democratic government. Most important of all, he set the incredible precedent of willingly stepping down from the presidency and conducting a peaceful transfer of power to the next president. This may not sound like much, but it had never happened before in modern history. Before Washington, most national leaders in the world had been kings, absolute monarchs, or military leaders who were loathe to even share power, let alone surrender it. George’s amazing act set an example that was followed in the US until 2020 and was copied by many other nations.

FDR makes these lists because he guided the nation through our two greatest crises of the 20th Century, the Great Depression and World War II. In the process, he did several things that helped elevate the country to world dominance and greatness. First, he legalized labor unions, thus allowing millions of workers to improve themselves economically and even join the middle class. Also, he passed the Social Security Act, called by many the single most important piece of legislation in US history. The SSA provided security for millions of people who had previously lived on the dangerous edge of poverty. Finally, he laid the groundwork for an alliance system that provided national security for the US and numerous other countries across the globe for decades. Before his international leadership, the US had floundered on the periphery of the world’s stage and pursued a policy of isolation, assuming that we could go it alone, without getting involved with other nations, especially in Europe. It was this myopic stance by the isolationists that allowed Adolf Hitler to take over one country after another in Europe until he was almost too powerful to stop. FDR elevated the US to a position of leadership that we have never fully relinquished since the 1940s.

Lincoln stands at the top, poll after poll, for obvious reasons: he ended the odious institution of slavery and held our nation together at its most critical moment, the Civil War. I could write pages more about the greatness of Lincoln, but this will suffice for now.

Toward the bottom of these polls, you will find the usual suspects. Those connected with massive corruption, such as Warren G. Harding, Ulysses S. Grant, and Richard Nixon (although Nixon’s reputation has improved in recent polls), show up repeatedly. Also, those who demonstrated utter incompetence in the face of a crisis show up here. This would include Herbert Hoover (The Depression), Andrew Johnson (Reconstruction), and especially James Buchanan. I just read Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest, which is about the start of the Civil War, and Buchanan, with the nation at a critical breaking point, repeatedly tried to appease the slave-holding states or pass responsibility off to the next president.

All of this is preamble to an attempt to speculate where our last two presidents will fall in these polls. I should preface these remarks by saying that historians never like to discuss current events. We are trained to delay analysis for at least several decades to allow the passage of time to cool partisan passions and, hopefully, create a more objective viewpoint. That said, this is my attempt to guess what historians will say about the recent presidents fifty years from now.

Biden will be complicated. A good comparison might be Harry S Truman. FDR died in April, 1945 and his VP, Truman, took over during one of the most difficult moments in the nation’s history. It fell to Truman to end the war against Germany, defeat Japan, rebuild the economy after the war, and develop an alliance system to oppose an aggressive Russia. After the war, millions of former soldiers returned home, expecting to find jobs, buy homes, and start families. However, at that very moment, factories that had been supplying tanks, airplanes, machine guns, uniforms, and other things for the military, suddenly shut down in order to convert to making civilian goods such as appliances, clothing, and automobiles. Unemployment was rampant, and the grumbling began. Further, because of shortages of consumer goods, prices shot up as people were willing to pay higher prices for almost everything. Economists predicted a return of the Depression that had ended with the start of the build-up for war. So, although none of this was the fault of the President, Truman got blamed for the lack of jobs and the high inflation. His approval ratings plummeted, hitting a low of 22%. He was regarded as a bumbling bureaucrat who was in over his head as President. His campaign song for his re-election was “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” but detractors, noting the lack of enthusiasm for the Democrat, altered it to “I’m Just Mild About Harry.” Despite all of that, he managed to win re-election in a close vote. Still, his 2nd-term approval rating remained mired in the twenties and low thirties. Historians, too, ranked him among the weakest presidents of all time.

Then, twenty years later, something remarkable occurred. In the early ‘70s, in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, his reputation enjoyed a resurgence. After dealing with Nixon, people suddenly looked at Truman as an honest, decent man who spoke frankly, rebuilt our peacetime economy, and started the nation on a quarter century of world-wide economic dominance. Moreover, he stood up to the aggressive Russians, who were trying to take over all of Europe, and limited their expansion. About the time of his death in 1972, his popularity soared. There was a one-man show on Broadway called “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry.” That play was made into a movie, and a best-selling book titled, Plain Speaking detailed his life and career through his speeches and quotes. His ranking in those presidential polls began to climb as well, and the most recent one I saw had him ranked as the 6th best president of all time, just behind the Big Three, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt.

I am suggesting that, fifty years from now, Joe Biden’s presidency will be looked at in a similar fashion. He took office during another critical period in our nation’s history. Like all Democratic presidents over the past 40 years (Clinton, Obama, and Biden), he inherited an economy from his Republican predecessor (Bush, Sr., Bush, Jr., and Trump, respectively) that was in a severe recession. Covid was still killing tens of thousands of people every day, unemployment under Trump had been as high as 15% and millions of people were still out of work. The stock market had bottomed out under Trump, with the Dow Jones Avg. hitting a low of 23,000. Many economists were predicting a depression or a prolonged recession that would devastate our country. Moreover, our alliance system had been greatly weakened by Trump, the US had abdicated its leadership role in world affairs, and we were stuck in a war in Afghanistan that had lasted nearly twenty years and seemed to have no end in sight. Finally, the previous president, Trump, tried to overthrow the legitimate government and conduct a coup that would have, in effect, ended democracy.

With all of these obstacles in his path, Biden managed to pull us out of the mess he inherited. He used the full power of the government to facilitate the final development of a vaccine and distribute it to the people for free. The Covid crisis slowly subsided and people were able to return to work. The jobless rate improved dramatically, reaching levels not seen in six decades. The Dow recovered rapidly and now sits at an all-time high of over 44,000, thus helping everyone’s IRA and retirement accounts. Biden worked with the handful of Republicans who actually cared about the country more than they cared about Trump and passed important, bipartisan legislation such as the infrastructure bill. Every president of the 21st Century had tried and failed to pass such a bill. As soon as the economy recovered, however, another crisis reared its head: inflation. As in Truman’s case, the rise of prices came about because of worldwide problems, in this case supply-line shortages caused by Covid and higher gas prices caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and sanctions put on Russian oil by the West. Every industrialized nation experienced bad inflation, but Biden’s aggressive approach to the problem meant that the US recovered faster and more effectively than the rest of the world.

In international affairs, he was equally successful. Bush, Jr., Obama, and Trump all promised to extricate us from the lengthy war situation in Afghanistan. All of them, though, quickly realized that to do so would be a messy and unpopular proposition. Biden was the only one to follow through with that promise. It was, as expected, an ugly withdrawal, and it could have been handled better. Still, he gets high marks for getting us out of an unwinnable war that had resulted in over 23,000 Americans being killed or wounded. Most important, Biden rebuilt the alliance system that had been greatly weakened by Trump. This became crucial in February, 2022, when Putin and the Russians invaded Ukraine as part of his plan to start a new Russian empire in Europe and Asia. Biden is seen as something of a hero in Europe for taking the lead in organizing NATO’s resistance to this naked aggression, and the US is a stronger nation because of this alliance. It should be noted that we would have not won WWI, WWII, or the Cold War without allies who helped present a united front to our enemies.

Biden was heavily criticized for his inability to solve the immigration problem at our southern border. In that regard, he certainly did no worse than the other three presidents in the 21st Century. Trump proposes shutting down the border completely and expelling millions of immigrants now living in the US. My question to him would be: What do you plan to eat if you do that? I have recently seen some startling statistics about immigrant labor in this nation. In the lily-white state of Iowa, 73% of all agricultural workers were born in another country. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, as many as 80% of the low-paying, filthy jobs in the beef and pork industries are held by immigrants, most of them illegal. I expect that similar numbers of immigrants are involved in fruit-picking and other agricultural jobs across the country. Instead of railing about the problem without offering a real solution, as Trump continues to do, Biden worked with Republicans and law-enforcement authorities along the border and helped design an actual policy that would provide a possible solution to the problem. That plan, of course, was effectively vetoed by Trump, who ordered his GOP minions to defeat the bill rather than see Biden and the Democrats get credit for solving the problem.

Despite all of his accomplishments, the media, as they did with Truman, focused on Biden’s missteps and his obvious diminished capacity near the end of his term. As a result, his approval ratings hit a low of 36% at one point, bad, but not as low as Truman’s 22% or even Trump’s low of 34% when he was president. I believe that, fifty years from now, Biden’s presidential record, like that of Truman, will be re-evaluated and his status will be much higher than it is today. If one of those polls were taken today, I expect that Biden would rank somewhere between the top 15-20 presidents in history. Like Truman, though, I think history will be good to him, and he will rise into the top ten in a half-century.

Trump’s status is much easier to ascertain than that of Biden. Historians will certainly focus on one issue in evaluating his first term. The fact that he tried to instigate an insurrection, overrule the democratic election, and institute a coup d’état is the only factor that matters. That alone places Trump as the worst president in US history. No other person tried to interrupt the 250 years of peaceful transfers of power and establish himself as dictator.

Looking at the other factors historians use to evaluate presidents, Trump will fare no better. The only crisis he faced was the Covid virus that raged during his term in office, and he failed miserably in dealing with that issue. He gets points for helping allocate government money toward finding a vaccine, but he dramatically undermined that effort by downplaying the virulence of the virus. Focused much more on getting re-elected than dealing with the crisis, he pronounced it “no worse than the flu” and discouraged people from taking even the most rudimentary precautions. As a result, many thousands died needlessly because they refused to wear masks, avoid crowds, or get vaccinated when the shots were available. Domestically, the only meaningful thing he accomplished was a large tax break for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Those tax breaks helped the top 3% of the people, but put the financial burden of the nation on the other 97%. Further, these breaks increased the national debt more than any president in history by greatly decreasing the amount of money the government took in each year. Our grandchildren will have to deal with that burden in the future, and the corporations repaid the government’s generosity by gouging the consumers and making inflation much worse when prices began to rise.  In terms of corruption, Trump’s administration stands alone. Never before has a president or former president been found guilty of multiple felonies (although Nixon was pardoned before he could face a judge or jury). The president himself, of course has been indicted and convicted of numerous crimes. Because of his stranglehold on the government and the judicial system, however, he will never be held accountable for those horrendous crimes. Moreover, dozens of his closest aides and accomplices in crime have already been convicted and have served time in prison.

In international affairs, Trump made the US a much weaker country. He failed to do anything about immigration except separate parents from children at the border and build 40 miles of a proposed 2000-mile-long wall. He vowed to get the US out of Afghanistan, but did nothing when he realized that such actions would be complicated. He withdrew from the nation’s traditional role of world leadership by refusing to take part in worldwide agreements concerning the environment or even standing up to Russia’s aggression. Instead, he lauded Putin and encouraged him by indicating the US would not stand in his way should he want to expand his borders in Eastern Europe. Finally, he denigrated the US military personnel by labelling anyone who fought for their country as “losers” and “suckers.” Even the generals who served under him have characterized Trump as a dangerous man with fascist tendencies. In short, there is no way to view Trump’s first term other than as a complete disaster. So, what does the US do with the worst President in American history? They give him a second chance.

It should be noted, of course, that Trump has not even started his second term, so his legacy is not yet complete. When he first took office in 2017, many observers urged caution in judging Trump prematurely. He can’t be as bad as he sounds, they said. No one could be that bad, they said. The Republicans in Congress will rein in his excesses and teach him how a responsible leader of the Free World behaves, they said. Instead, the GOP complied with all of his selfish wishes and kissed the ring (and other body parts) whenever he demanded. The result was a failed presidency of epic proportions. But perhaps this time will be different. Maybe he has learned from his countless mistakes and will now rule as a decent human being.

Perhaps. And perhaps Hell will freeze over, the world will stop spinning on its axis, and all leopards will suddenly change their spots. Check back with me in fifty years.

Fantasyland vs. Jack and Kathleen Henderson

Good afternoon, visitors. You have been waiting in line for nearly an hour, but you will now be allowed to enter the courtroom in Orlando, Florida for the exciting conclusion of case number 4530, the People of Fantasyland vs. Jack and Kathleen Henderson. Although the 21st-Century is not yet a quarter of the way through, journalists are already referring to this legal battle as “The Trial of the Century.” Please step into your seat as the revolving visitors’ gallery approaches, move to the far end of your row to make room for others, and remain seated for the entire ride, or, um, trial. Keep your hands and feet inside the seating area for your own safety. You may want to remove your hats and mouse ears, as this promises to be a fast-moving trial, with numerous twists and turns. Those with weak hearts or high blood pressure and pregnant women are encouraged to skip this event. And, as always, you must be at least 42 inches high to attend. We join the trial, already in progress:

Defense Attorney: How would you characterize this trip?

Jackleen: A wonderful time. Going by the numbers, it was 4 days, 5 nights, 32 rides or roller coasters, 4 separate theme parks, 5 great dinners, an average of 22,000 steps a day—I kept track (chuckles from the jurors), and, in terms of money, well over 5 digits worth of fun.

Defense Attorney: That makes me tired just hearing it! (More laughter). And how were the kids?

Jackleen: They were great. Fourteen-year-old Abigail is a smart girl with a strong cynical streak who suffers terribly from FOMO—the Fear Of Missing Out on something. Lucas turned 11 during the trip, he adores his sister, and he parrots every thought or word she expresses. They had both received a generous cash gift from their Uncle Dan before the trip and were dying to spend it. We sent them to the gift shop in the hotel to spend their loot, and they surprised us when they returned wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Abigail, despite her usual cynicism, sported a set of ears with a mortarboard, complete with gold tassels, in the middle, and the words “Class of 2024.” She lit up when complete strangers offered congratulations, but the highlight of the trip for her may have been when someone asked her if she had graduated from high school or college. I think she enjoyed the opportunity to be herself without the embarrassing chance of being seen with her family by someone she knows. Lucas chose a set of ears festooned with all of the colors of the rainbow simply because he liked the colors, and they were the only ears he could find without a ribbon in the middle. He was completely unaware that June is pride month at Disney or what that might signify. In any case, they both wore their ears with great pride for the entire trip.

Defense: And did they contribute anything to the trip?

Jackleen: Oh yes. Lucas was sweet and wide-eyed the entire time, with an infectious good humor. At meals, he liked to organize activities such as ranking the roller-coasters or the various parks, and we were all expected to elaborate and explain our rankings. Abigail is, . . . well, she’s 14 years old. She tries to hide her positive feelings whenever possible, rolls her eyes a lot, and grumbling is her default position, but she was at her absolute best on this trip. She also is light years ahead of her grandparents when it comes to technology. She became an expert navigator and the one who mastered the Disney App that showed the wait times for the various rides with long lines. The best money we spent was the extra $25 per person per day for a special pass that enabled us to reserve a spot and skip the long lines by taking the “Lightning Lane.” Instead of waiting an hour or more for the most popular rides, we never waited more than 5 minutes. Abigail conquered that system so well that, by the last day, at the Wild Kingdom park, we were able to get off of one premium ride, walk to the next one, and immediately get on. At first, we felt guilty walking past those throngs of hot, sweaty people who had been waiting for over an hour, but we got over it. For us, the highlight of the trip was the relationship between the two siblings. At home or under normal circumstances, the two kids bicker constantly. Lucas wants to hang out with Abigail and do whatever she is doing, while she enjoys her time alone and finds her little brother annoying at times. At Disney, however, they were great buddies, often walking with arms around each other, and bonding over their annoyance with their grandparents.

Defense Attorney: Okay, let’s get into that. Exactly how old is Nana Handerson?

Jackleen: She will be 75 in September.

Defense Attorney: And can I assume that she is not exactly an athlete?

Jackleen: That is a safe assumption.

Defense Attorney: Does she like the climate of Florida in June?

Jackleen: She hates heat. She hates humidity. She hates crowds. She has a health condition in which she develops a violent rash on her ankles if she remains on her feet for long periods of time. So, the answer would be a resounding no.

Defense Attorney: Then why on Earth would you go on such a taxing trip?

Jackleen: It was for the kids. We promised Abigail we would take her anywhere she wanted to go for her 8th-grade graduation. We thought she would pick Paris or some European city, but she chose Disney World. Then, we decided we might not be in good enough health to take Lucas on a similar trip in four years, so we took them both this time.

Defense Attorney: Did you make any special accommodations for Nana Henderson?

Jackleen: Yes. Every so often, we would find some shade and let her sit for a few minutes. The kids also agreed that we would take a break for a couple of hours in the afternoon, when the heat and the crowds were the worst. The kids were pretty accepting of that idea for the first few days. By the last day or two, though, Abigail’s FOMO phobia kicked in, and she wanted to ride roller-coasters from dawn to dusk without a break. Other than that, Nana was a trooper. Before the trip, there was concern that some—or all—of us would chicken out on some of the scarier rides, but that was not the case. Everyone rode on every ride, and no one backed out.

Defense Attorney: I understand that many Disney officials considered Nana a security risk.

Jackleen: Apparently. They stopped her repeatedly at the metal detectors, and once did everything but strip search her at the entrance to a park. Another time, a handler with a drug-sniffing dog stopped her while the dog did a thorough search of her person. Finally, she was stopped at least six times at the secondary entrances to the parks while they took her picture for comparison to known felons and terrorists. I’m happy to report that they found no weapons or drugs except for her blood-pressure medicine.

Defense Attorney: You said that Lucas had a birthday during the trip. What was that day like?”

Jackleen: It was exhausting, but fun. As on most days, we left the room just after 7 a.m., had a full breakfast in the hotel, and were inside the gates of one of the parks as soon as they opened. That day, we went to The Hollywood Studios park and started with the Tower of Terror, Twilight Zone ride. I had my arms around Lucas when it started and his little heart was pounding at about 150 beats per minute. We hit 4 more rides that morning, including the two Star Wars rides that Lucas wanted to experience. We returned to the hotel for a break about 1:00. Grampa Jack took the kids to the pool while Nana took a quick nap. Then we were off to Epcot for some more rides and a great dinner, complete with costumed Disney characters and a special cake for Lucas’ birthday.

Defense Attorney: Wow. That’s a full day. I’m guessing you returned to your room after that.

Jackleen: Yes, but just for a few minutes to drop off the leftover cake. At 9:00, we headed out again, this time to the Magic Kingdom park for fireworks and more rides. You see, Magic Kingdom had special hours that day. Instead of closing at 11:00, as usual, they were open until 1:00 a.m., and we told the kids we would let them stay up late for those extra 2 hours. After standing in a crowd for the fireworks, after walking to Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Adventureland, and a few other lands I can’t recall, we hit more rides, some for the second time. The adults were fading fast as midnight approached, so we let the kids go alone to wait the 50 minutes for the 7 Dwarfs Trail Ride while we sought a place to sit down. They finally rejoined us at 12:15. But something was different. Abigail was now dressed in a business suit. The Mickey Mouse ears were gone, replaced by a businesswoman’s bun and glasses. She even carried a briefcase full of legal arguments that she was ready to unleash at any moment. All we could figure was that, while she was on the 7 Dwarf’s ride, the Evil Queen of Snow-White fame had put a magical spell on her that transformed our sweet granddaughter into a lawyer.

(After a brief recess, the trial resumed with the prosecutor—who looked suspiciously like Abigail—interrogating the grandparents.)

Prosecutor: So, the way I understand it, you had a verbal agreement to stay in the park until 1:00 in the morning. Is that correct?

Jackleen: Well, yes, but we didn’t want to get caught up in the long lines at the Monorail if we waited until the park closed at one.

Prosecutor: That’s not what I asked. Did you agree to stay until 1:00?

Jackleen: Well, we said we would go to the park during the special extended hours.

Prosecutor: Which ran from 11:00 to 1:00. Correct?

Jackleen: Yes.

Prosecutor: Not from 11:00 to 12:15 or 12:30, but to 1:00. Correct?

Jackleen: I guess so.

Prosecutor: There is no guessing involved. The park was open until 1:00. And at what time did you decide to leave the park.

Jackleen: At 12:16. I checked my watch. The kids came off of the Seven Dwarfs ride at that time and said they wanted to ride the Space Mountain roller coaster again. But, that ride was a 10-minute walk away, and the App said there was a 40-minute wait to get on it. Since the park closed in 44 minutes, the math didn’t work. We were all exhausted, we had been on the go for nearly 18 hours, and we had walked over 27,000 steps that day. So, we decided to leave.

Prosecutor: Objection! Immaterial! I didn’t ask how many steps you had taken; I asked what time you decided to leave. Your honor, I want everything after 12:16 stricken from the record. Instruct the witness to simply answer the questions that are asked.

Judge: So ordered.

Prosecutor: You decided to leave at 12:16, a full 44 minutes before the promised leaving time.

And how did the children react to this abrupt and egregiously unfair change of plans?

Jackleen: Well, you have to understand that they were completely over-tired, cranky, and unreasonable after a full day of activities—

Prosecutor: Your honor!

Judge: Just answer the question, please.

Jackleen: They were upset. They still wanted to go to Space Mountain, hoping that some miracle would happen, and that they could squeeze in one more ride.

Prosecutor: So, you admit that the children were upset, that it was not yet 1:00, and that the grandparents made the arbitrary decision to leave, despite the prior agreement.

Jackleen: I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes, it was our decision.

Prosecutor: Ah hah! You decided to leave early without even consulting with the children. And what time was it when you got back to your room at the Contemporary Hotel?

Jackleen: It was 12:52.

Prosecutor: (Nodding, smiling, and looking at each juror knowingly.) 12:52. Eight minutes before 1 o’clock. You returned to your room while the park remained open for another 8 minutes. Eight full minutes that could have been spent having fun, riding roller coasters, and engaging in other activities. (Pausing dramatically to allow those words to register with the jurors) One final question: 12:52 is not 1:00, is it?

Jackleen: No.

Prosecutor: Your honor, I rest my case.

Excerpt from the prosecution’s closing arguments:

And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the facts of the case are clear. The grandparents, despite a prior agreement, and with malice aforethought, did knowingly and intentionally drag the children from the Magic Kingdom before the closing time, causing both children irreparable emotional harm. But forget these children for a moment. I ask you to render a guilty verdict not for Lucas and Abigail. For them it is already too late; the damage has been done. (At this point, the prosecutor’s eyes welled with tears, and her voice cracked) Nay, I ask you to find these grandparents guilty for other children, for the future generations of children who might otherwise be so grievously abused by equally insensitive grandparents. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, “For never was a tale of such travail, as that of Lucas and Abigail.”

[Disclaimer: This was just my way of poking fun at Abigail and her lawyer-like tendencies while illustrating some of the fun things we did at Disney World. I hope that no one misconstrues this story and thinks that the kids were anything less than appreciative for the trip.]

Not-So-Innocents Abroad

In 1869, Mark Twain published a book called Innocents Abroad that is still regarded as one of the best travel accounts ever written. Two years earlier, he and a group of similarly adventure-minded people had taken a steamship across the ocean to the Mediterranean, explored that area, took a locomotive up to Paris and back down to Italy, before visiting the Holy Land and Black Sea area and returning home. The book remains an entertaining read today because of Twain’s clever wit, acerbic commentary, and keen eye for the colorful anecdote.

This month, Kathleen and I, along with children Ben and Kristin and Ben’s wife Amber, retraced some of Twain’s steps on a Viking ocean cruise that included several stops along the Western Mediterranean. Along the way, we spent time in Barcelona (with a side trip to Montserrat), Spain, Avignon, Monaco, Tuscany and Firenze (Florence), Italy, before flying home from Rome. After three Viking river cruises, this was our first cruise on one of their larger ocean-sailing ships. The service, quality, and attention to detail that marked the river cruises was also present on the big ship, and we decided there were plusses and minuses to each of the different ships. While the ocean ship was much larger than the river boat (900 passengers, compared to about 200), the ratio of passengers to crew members, servers, etc. remained the same (2-1), which meant there was impeccable service at all times. At one point, I finished my coffee while strolling around the ship, and I looked around for a place to dispose of the paper cup. Surprisingly, I could not find a trash receptacle. However, when I accidently dropped the cup, it never hit the ground. I sensed a flash in the corner of my eye, but never saw an actual person. I later determined that a shadowy crew member must have swept in and caught the cup in midair, spiriting it away before it could clutter the immaculate deck. Moreover, if we left our cabin for five minutes in the morning, when we returned, the room had been completely cleaned, the bed made, towels changed out, and the mini-bar restocked, as if by fast-working fairies. Speaking of the mini-bar, we had somehow been upgraded for this cruise, so we were given a spacious cabin and a few on-board perks, including free access to the mini-bar.

Kathleen and I have now taken about a dozen cruises, including six since I have retired (Rhine, Alaska, Danube, Caribbean, Main/Moselle in Germany, and this one). Therefore, I feel qualified to offer a few Dos and Don’ts on foreign travel.

Do, whenever possible, travel to Europe in the off-season. This is easier to do after retirement, so we tend to travel in winter, spring or fall, rather than the crowded and hot summer months. On this trip, we found few lines or hordes of tourists. On top of that, the weather was consistently comfortable and sunny, with temperatures ranging from the mid-forties to about 60 degrees.

Don’t act in such a way that reinforces the stereotype of the demanding and entitled American tourist. On our stop at Séte, a port town a short distance from Montpellier, France, we had a young tour guide who spoke poor English, and seemed to know little about history or culture of his home town. He was charming, however, and kept us entertained with anecdotes about local places and people. At every bar or cafe we passed, someone would see him and call out his name, giving an indication of how he spent most of his time. In the middle of our tour, at about 1:30, a sixtyish woman from our ship grabbed his arm and interrupted his description of a summer festival. “I was supposed to be on the 10:40 tour,” she announced, “but I overslept, so I’ll just join yours.” Kristin whispered, “Oh no! It’s the Ugly American!” Our guide shrugged and picked up where he left off. She broke in again after a minute or so, saying, “I’m bored; where can I buy a tee-shirt?” He pointed to one of the numerous souvenir shops along street, and she disappeared in her quest for a shirt to commemorate her spiritual connection to the charming port town. Later that day, we were in a large lounge area of the ship enjoying tea, snacks, and classical music played by a female piano player. The UA appeared again, interrupting the musician in mid-song and making a request. When the pianist began playing the song she wanted, the UA crowded into our small sitting area in order to film and record the song on her phone. Kathleen gently said, “We’re actually saving that seat for someone.” She just rolled her eyes and said, “They’ll have to find another seat, then, won’t they?” A day or two later, while visiting the national church of Monaco, she appeared again as part of our small tour group. I thought, “With 900 people on this ship, how the hell do we always end up with her?” As we were looking at the graves of Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly in the quiet church, she loudly asked the guide if we could end the tour early and go shopping for tee-shirts. By that point, I was looking around and wondering if there was a third hole available for dead bodies in that church.

Do, when visiting Barcelona, make sure to include a visit to the spectacular Sacrada Familia. We spent two days in Barcelona before beginning the actual cruise, and while I loved the city, the Gaudi church was the highlight. I had previously read about the idiosyncratic architect, Antoni Gaudi, in the past, and I knew a little about his masterpiece church, the unfinished Sacrada Familia, but never really appreciated his work before this trip. After numerous excursions to Europe, moreover, I had pretty much reached “Gothic Cathedral Overload,” an affliction that makes the many medieval structures across Europe begin to run together in the mind, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend several hours touring this one. Most of those other incredible edifices were built in the 1100-1300 time-period, using similar technology, and having essentially analogous designs. While impressive for their day, they tend to be dark and ponderous places today. Gaudi’s church emulates those ancient cathedrals to a degree, but incorporates modern ideas and engineering techniques. Construction began in 1882, with his involvement running from about 1883 until his death in 1926. Thus, he had access to new technology, such as steel and concrete, to take the idea of the Gothic Cathedral to new levels. The result is a much brighter and cleaner version of the “Cathedral,” infused with light, nature, and color in an incredible combination designed to awe the visitor with the presence of God. Gaudi loved nature, and, as a devout Catholic, he saw the hand of the divine in the living world around him. Thus, instead of heavy, static columns and flying buttresses to support the roof and walls, a series of columns designed to look like growing trees give the impression of an organic structure that is a product of the Earth, rather than something standing apart from the natural world. Indeed, the church is literally organic and still growing, as it remains unfinished a century after Gaudi’s death. Barcelona has a lot to offer tourists, but this building should top any visitor’s list.

Don’t be afraid to develop your own, distinctive travelling style. We had travelled with Ben and Amber before, and with Kristin several times in recent years, but this was only the third time we had all travelled together. Kathleen and I have developed our preferred manner of travel over many years. In essence, it involves getting off of the ship or leaving the hotel, walking a short distance, and stopping in a street café for coffee or a glass of wine. Then we might visit one of the local museums or other attractions for a while, and stop at another café. Rinse and repeat. It’s clearly not a style designed for everyone, but it works for us, and Kristin has fallen into our leisurely rhythm when visiting a new place. Ben and Amber, however, are busy doctors and parents who like to make the most of every moment they have on vacation. That means they are constantly in motion, rushing from one place to another with little down time. They crossed paths with us occasionally as we sat in a restaurant enjoying a pastry with some local wine, but they rejected invitations to join us because they had read about some landmark, such as a toilet designed by Gaudi, and rushed off to see it. The thing that makes these opposing manners of travelling work, is that there is no judgement expressed about how to properly visit a new place: they do their thing and we do ours.

The only time our contrasting styles collided was in the middle of our trip. That day, our ship was docked at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, a strip of densely populated land stretching from Cannes in the west to Italy in the east. Kathleen and I decided to take a bus to the walking tour of Monaco, Ben and Amber wanted to visit Nice (pronounced Neese), several miles to the west of our docking position, and Kristin opted for a relaxing day in the spa on the ship, sitting in the warm, massaging waters of the pool while sipping a gin and tonic, and dipping into a snow-filled room on occasion to enjoy the Scandinavian tradition of alternating hot-and-cold temperatures. At dinner, we asked Kristin how her relaxing day had gone. She told us that the energetic and athletic Ben and Amber invited her to join them on their exploration of Nice just as she was getting ready to go to the spa. She went along, not knowing that Ben had decided they would eschew public transportation and simply walk over the small mountain that separated Villefranche from Nice. It looked like a good idea on the map, but it turned out that it involved a steep climb, no direct path to the other side, and a lot of switchbacks, making it a longer, more strenuous, and more taxing hike than Kristin had anticipated. She ended the day, sore, tired, and cursing her brother.

Do start planning your next journey as soon as you get home. We didn’t plan to do that as quickly as we did, but a few hours after we got home, still jet-lagged and bleary eyed from a twenty-hour trip home, we found 13-year-old granddaughter Abigail knocking on our door. She rode her bike to our house, but we weren’t sure what she wanted to talk about. She unpacked several boxes of snacks and a water bottle, a clear indication that the ensuing discussion would not be a brief one. We had promised her and her brother Lucas a trip to Disney World in June, but told her we would talk about it when we returned from Europe–I just didn’t think it would be the very minute we returned. She had apparently spent the entire time we were gone researching the hotels, parks and restaurants in the massive Disney complex in Orlando. She had purchased a fancy new notebook for this research project, and it was organized by subject and color-coded in her perfect hand-writing. She had lists of prices and which hotels offered enough beds so that she would not have to share sleeping space with her little brother, along with a description of how the Disney app worked. Finally, she had a comprehensive list of rides and attractions in each of the four parks, prioritized into categories of “Must,” “Maybe,” and “If we have time.” This girl clearly has inherited her parent’s zeal for travel and does not intend to waste a second of our time in Orlando.

Now, if only her grandparents have the energy to keep up with her.

Going Postal

So, there I was, the day before Christmas, ten days before my seventieth birthday, doing what most septuagenarians do on unseasonably warm Sunday mornings in December: I was delivering the mail. Actually, I wasn’t delivering those ads, catalogues, charity solicitations, and other detritus that fills our mailboxes on a daily basis. I was lugging last-minute Christmas packages from my overflowing truck to the doorsteps of eager River Falls residents. That’s right, folks, I have added still another occupation to my already lengthy resumé.

The first thing everyone—including my lovely bride—wanted to know is “Why do you want another job? You’re supposed to be retired, and you don’t need the money.” It’s a good question. There are a few easy answers, I suppose. First, being a mailman is one of the few things I haven’t done in my lifetime, so, why not? Second, I have grown increasingly frustrated waiting for my editor/publisher to get my manuscript back to me with suggested edits so that I can take the next step on getting my novel out there. She has now had the book for fifteen months, and I’m still waiting. Rather than pacing angrily around the house, I decided to burn off my irritation with some strenuous labor. Third, the extra money can finance more trips to the casino. I like craps. I like blackjack. I like slots. But I never take anything out of the bank for gambling forays—that cash comes from “extra money.” So, the money I earn from this job qualifies.

For more complex, psychological reasons, Kathleen and I discussed the possible explanations for my need to move constantly forward and keep trying new things. I decided it probably had something to do with the way my dad raised us. When we were little, my brother Dan and I would be recruited to help with the latest home-improvement project in our house. If I bent a nail while hammering it, my dad would snatch the hammer away from me and say “Go read a book. You’d better get a good education, because you’ll never make a living working with your hands.” Conversely, if Dan made the same mistake, my dad would say, “Try it again. With your lack of brains, you’re going to have to get a job in the trades, so you’d better learn to do it right.” Thus, we were put into particular pigeon holes at an early age. Dan became an ironworker, and I kept going back to school for higher and higher academic degrees. It took years for me to finally figure out that my dad was wrong, and I was actually pretty good at doing lots of different things. So, if a psychologist were to analyze me, he or she would probably say that I have spent the last sixty years of my life trying to prove to my dad that I’m capable of doing things outside of academia. In any case, I love the challenge of trying something new and proving to myself that I can do it. Finally, I’ve always been curious about how the complex system of the U.S. Postal Service operates.

Regardless of the reasons, I started applying for a postal job at the first of November. There was never an actual interview with a human being, just a bunch of steps to be completed on the internet. I had to be fingerprinted in Minnesota, give a detailed education history, and explain the various jobs I’ve had in the past. So, yeah, it took a while to fill out all of that. When they eventually accepted me, I was sent to a two-day orientation and defensive-driving course in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Then I spent another day in Hudson learning to drive one of the right-side trucks I would be using. The adjustment to the right side has been remarkably smooth, and I don’t even notice the difference anymore. In fact, the vehicles have such a tight turn radius that I like them better than my regular car. The condition of the ancient trucks—well, that’s a different story. Most of the ones I’ve seen are over thirty years old and pretty beat up. The first day I tried to drive mine, I couldn’t get the key out of the ignition. A manager showed me that I have to shove the gear shifter (on the column) hard into park and hold it there with my right hand, while weaving my left hand through the steering wheel, and wiggling the key just right in order to get it out. The gauges are dark and difficult to read, and I can’t see what gear I’m in, so I have to select drive, neutral, or reverse by feel and sound, rather than being able see it visually.

The day after I passed my driver’s test, they put me right to work. It was the weekend before Christmas and they were desperate for help, so they threw me into the deep end without much of an explanation about what I was expected to do. The River Falls P.O., like most in the country, was built to handle letters and mail, but today’s world deals primarily with packages. On my third day on the job, our little office delivered over 6,000 packages. When I walked in the first day, the main room was chaotic, with a flurry of activity and no floor space to even walk across the room. My “training,” such as it was, consisted of: “Here’s your truck, there are the packages. Organize them, drive around, and deliver them to right address, just outside the front door.” It was a bit more organized than that, but much of the job involved learning-by-doing. In order to make up for the time I lost trying to find my way around the neighborhoods with which I was unfamiliar, I often jogged up the long, uphill driveways, and back down to the truck. The packages ranged from small things you can fit in one hand, to large boxes up to seventy pounds. At my training and orientation session, I was made familiar with an assortment of cardinal rules which are never to be broken. I think that, out of necessity, I violated every single one of those rules on my very first day. I was sore, tired, and frustrated my first few days, but, just a week later, it’s all starting to come easier and feel more familiar. I’m finding it challenging, but kind of fun, too—especially the organizational end of things. The metaphor most of the workers use for packing their trucks efficiently is the old video game of Tetris.

The people I work with have been amazing. Having worked twelve-hour days or longer for several weeks leading up to the holidays, often without a day off, they are exhausted and stressed at times. But they deal with it all with a sort of gallows-humor specific to their profession. I overheard many such conversations while out on the loading dock. On my first day, I heard one guy singing, It’s the most wonderful time of the year, in a sarcastic warble. His compatriots responded by throwing boxes at him or using obscenity-laced outbursts to politely suggest that he quiet down. Another driver ranted, “These greedy fuckers keep buying more and more stuff that they don’t really need!” I have discovered that the Postal Service delivers about one-third of all of Amazon’s parcels. Because of that, several people have been heard exclaiming the various creative ways they would like to kill and dismember Amazon owner Jeff Bezos.

Despite the stressful conditions during the holiday season, these dedicated people are amazing to watch. About half of the people who work here are women, and, regardless of gender, they all work with speed, efficiency, and good humor. In the morning, while it’s still dark outside, the music blasts and people sing along while quickly sorting packages into carts representing the various routes in and around River Falls. Joe, the guy I have been assisting, sometimes spends from 6:30 to noon just sorting the mail he will deliver that day, while I use his truck to distribute packages. After my second run, he takes over the truck, while I switch to my car to head out with another load. Once, he showed me his truck before he headed out. It was completely jammed with letters and packages, without an inch of space left empty (again, the Tetris comparison applies). Even the step up to the cab, the dashboard, and the floor next to his seat were crammed with parcels. I think he had a box on his lap, too. Despite the apparent chaos, the truck was meticulously organized with a system that only he understood, in such a way that he could follow his route without any wasted motion. As he pulled out of the parking lot that afternoon, I knew that he could not possibly complete his route until long after dark.

The hard work and diligence of these men and women is all pretty inspiring, and once again, I find myself striving to prove that I can be a valuable member of a new organization. Maybe someday I’ll be able to say, “Dad would be proud.”

Living and Dying in 3/4 Time

I woke up this morning to the news that Jimmy Buffett had died at age 76. For me, Jimmy was part of the “Holy Trinity” of performers, along with John Prine and Steve Goodman, who inspired me to become a folk-singer back in the 1970s. While he started out as a folk and country singer, Buffett invented his own brand of music and became a business mogul who owned bars, hotels, restaurants, and resorts worth over a half-billion dollars by the time of his death.

I first saw him perform in 1974 at my second college, Western Illinois University—and I didn’t go to see him in particular. He was actually the opening act for a rowdy country-rock band called Heartsfield, one of my favorite bands in those days. I had barely heard of him before that, but he had had a minor hit with his song Come Monday, which received a small amount of airplay on the radio. That night, he sang with just his acoustic guitar and a barstool—no light show, no band, no back-up singers. The barstool held his capo, a few extra guitar picks, a glass of water, and a bottle of Chivas Regal, still unopened. He won me over that night with an assortment of songs that ranged from sweet, to thoughtful, to funny, to downright raunchy (Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw). Just before the last song of his 45-minute set, he twisted off the seal of the bottle of scotch, toasted the audience, and took a big swig. Two hours later, during Heartsfield’s encore song, he danced back onto the stage, waving an empty bottle of Chivas above his head.

After the show, I went home for the night (possibly), but Jimmy did not. First, he did a hilarious, drunken interview with the school radio station that I heard replayed numerous times after that night. Then someone invited him to an off-campus party, and he got lost searching for the address in the rolling cornfields near Macomb, Illinois. It was well after midnight, and he was badly in need of a nap. So, he took one, despite the fact that he was driving at the time. He was rudely awakened when his car smashed into a tree. When he regained consciousness, wondering if he was dead or alive, he saw a tire swing hanging from the tree and knew he’d be okay. He memorialized the incident in a metaphor-for-life song called, Life is Just a Tire Swing.

The next clear memory I have of a Buffett song came in 1977. Along with two of my college roommates, Bruce and Wheels, I joined about twenty of my closest friends for a camping and boating trip to Lake Shelbyville, in the southern part of Illinois. While others were out in fast boats, tubing and water-skiing, I opted for a more sedate trip on a pontoon that raced through the water at a bracing 3 miles an hour. The “sound system” we took with us consisted of a $10 cassette recorder upon which we played several Buffett albums, in keeping with the nautical theme of the day. After an afternoon on the lake, we pulled back alongside the dock with the sun setting in the background. As we were tying off the pontoon, the song It’s Been a Lovely Cruise came on the tape. My friend Kirk, another huge Buffett fan, looked at me and smiled, saying, “Perfect.”

Meanwhile Buffett’s career had taken off with the hit song Margaritaville in 1977. He played to sold-out arenas around the world, and his shows grew larger and more elaborate. Ultimately, he developed a new genre of music that combined, folk, country, reggae, calypso, and rock sounds. His devoted fans, known as “Parrotheads,” emulated his laid-back lifestyle, followed him around the country, and visited his favorite hangouts in the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. I myself saw him perform in Chicago, Milwaukee, Austin, Denver, and Gainesville, Florida.

Inspired by Buffett, my brother Dan and I went down to fish and camp in the Keys for the first time in 1981, and Dan went down there every year after that for several decades. I joined him when I could. The picture at the top of this post is me playing guitar on that first trip in 1981. While down there, it seemed sacrilegious to play any songs but those of Buffett, even my own. Judging by the morning hair and the bleary look in my eyes, I was singing Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season, a song Buffett wrote while dealing with a severe hangover. In my shows, I played lots of his songs, but three, in particular, became staples of my concerts. Tin Cup Chalice always evoked memories of the Keys for me. I started including Little Miss Magic in honor of two friends (Kirk and Kathy Hodul) who welcomed their first daughter into the world in those years. Finally, God’s Own Drunk, a long, narrative song about a man, a bear, and a moonshine still, was always a crowd pleaser.

I last saw Buffett perform in 1991 in Gainesville. It was great, but I was bothered by the fact that the show had become a massive production, with the crowd screaming out the lyrics to every song, often drowning out the actual performer. I guess I will always be an unapologetic folkie, and I actually preferred that 1974 show when it was just Jimmy, his guitar, and a barstool.

I’ll leave you with the lyrics to one of his songs that I mentioned earlier. Thanks Jimmy, for the fun, the music, the memories, and the inspiration.

So, drink it up; this one’s for you. It’s been a lovely cruise.

Cover Reveal

This past weekend, my publisher released what they called the “Cover Reveal,” in which they celebrated the design of the outside of the book-to-be. The whole thing struck me as a bit strange, like those “Gender Reveal” parties young couples throw themselves these days during which they tell their friends and relatives what sex their future child will be. In those parties, the parents devise some dramatic way of unveiling the gender of their baby. Some of them send up pink fireworks or balloons. Others spray their audience with blue paint or use some other nonsensical way to illustrate to friends and family whether they will be having a boy or a girl. A few of these dramatic events have ended in tragedy in the form of explosions, forest fires, or even plane crashes when a plane trailing a banner with “It’s a Girl!” written on it crashed in the water in Mexico, killing two people. I can promise no such over-the-top drama, but I first started working on this novel in the mid-nineties, and I am ready to finally give birth to this, my child, after a gestation period that has lasted more than a quarter-century.

Moreover, my baby is “trans,” if we are still talking in terms of gender. When I first wrote the book, my teenaged protagonist was a boy. At one point, though, smarting from another spate of rejections, I stepped back and re-evaluated my  entire story. I asked myself what sort of character I most enjoyed seeing in literature or films. I decided that I especially liked strong, young females who are often underestimated by their adversaries. Three such characters are Lisbeth Salander, from Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series (Dragon Tattoo, etc.), Katniss Everdeen, from the Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books, and Arya Stark, from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones). Another rewrite began, and my teenaged hero underwent a gender transformation, changing from male to female. As I wrote, moreover, and crawled inside the head of this new character, it all felt right, as if this was how it should have been from the start. This significant change also affected the manner in which other characters interacted with her, so it involved much more work than simply altering the pronouns. Now that I think about it, I suspect that some of those parental hosts of Gender Reveal parties may be in for a surprise down the road when their child comes up to them and says, “Mom, dad, I have something to tell you . . .” Those parents may find, as I did in writing this book, that you have to be flexible these days.

Anyway, the Cover Reveal has been exciting for me simply because, after all of this work, it is the first tangible sign that this endless project will finally come to fruition. Here are the details of what is to come, at least as far as I know them at the moment:

–Along with the cover reveal, Written Dreams has begun taking pre-orders at their website (writtendreams.com). You might have to poke around a bit in order to find my book, but the pre-orders will be shipped as soon as the finished product is available.

–When the book is complete and printed, sometime this fall, it will also then be available worldwide in hardback, paperback, and e-book formats (I am not sure of the prices at this moment). I am assuming Amazon and other websites will carry the book, too.

–I have to coordinate all of this with my editor/publisher, but my plan is to have three book-release or signing parties. The first will be in River Falls, followed by similar events in Chicago and Nashville. My brother Dan will be hosting the Chicago party in a local bar, but I am open to suggestions for the River Falls and Nashville gatherings. Due to the timing, my best guess is that these things will have to be held indoors.

Thanks to all of you who have read my scribblings over the years and supported me in this endeavor. I hope to see many of you soon.

European Vacation

After a 14-day journey which took us to Paris, Riems, Luxembourg, several German cities, and Prague, we returned home only to discover that we had contracted Covid. Even a week of illness, though, could not diminish the memories Kathleen and I accumulated while traveling with daughter Kristin and her husband Kevin. We saw incredible works of art and architecture, but also learned quite a bit about the cultures of the various places we stopped.

I won’t bore you with a slide show of “What I did on my summer vacation.” In fact, I left my phone home and didn’t take a single picture. Here are a few highlights though: First, we spent four days in Paris and saw an amazing cemetery in the Montparnasse neighborhood (with the graves of Alfred Dreyfus, Guy de Maupassant, Jean Paul Sartre, and his lover, Simone de Beauvoir, the first modern feminist); ate dinner at several wonderful outdoor cafes; visited St. Denis, the first Gothic cathedral and burial place of most of the kings of France; the Rodin Museum; the Musee d’Orsay with a special exhibition of the work of Edgar Degas and Eduoard Manet, along with many other impressionist works (I even discovered a new favorite impressionist, Gustave Caillebotte, about whom I had known little before); a night cruise on the Siene; and a full day at Claude Monet’s Giverny gardens where he conducted his spectacular artistic experiments with light and color. The Notre Dame Cathedral was under massive repairs following the tragic fire of a few years ago, so we were not able to get inside. The French were working feverishly to finish those repairs and many others in time for next year’s Olympic Games to be held in Paris. In fact, we ran into construction and preparations everywhere we went, and our hotel was host to Olympic committees from countries around the world.

We experienced a minor disappointment because, instead of the rude Parisians we expected to find, we encountered only helpful and pleasant waiters and clerks everywhere we went in the city. Viking picked us up at the hotel and took us by bus to the Rhine on our fifth day. We stopped at Reims to see the incredible cathedral where the kings of France were crowned and, at lunch, we finally met the waiter of those legendary anecdotes. He spoke only French, but took our orders in an aggressive way that left us wondering what it was we had actually ordered. When Kristin tried to clarify her order, he grew angry and began shouting. I’m not sure what he said, but I caught the words “Non, non, non! Imbecile! Vous ne pouvez pas modifier votre commande!” After that, we quietly sipped champaign and cheerfully ate whatever the hell he wanted to bring us, knowing that we had now enjoyed the full French experience. And yes, I still tipped the man far more than he deserved.

More highlights: the American cemetery in Luxembourg, where many of the US soldiers killed in the Battle of the Bulge rest; the city of Trier, Germany, with Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance architecture sitting next door to modern office buildings; so many castles and palaces along the Rhine, Moselle, and Main Rivers that they began to run together in our minds; lunch in Heidelberg with a charming, English-speaking college student; a stop in Nuremburg with the Nazi parade ground (If you have seen Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, you know the one in question) only a short distance from the court building where the war criminal trials were held after the war; a tour of the city of Prague, complete with a naked woman posing for pictures in the Old Town section of the city.

The Viking cruise itself was wonderful, as it has been on all three trips we have taken with them. Kristin and I, the cynical ones, developed nicknames for those on the cruise who annoyed us the most. “Anchorwoman” was the newswoman from Kansas City who brought four suitcases full of clothes so that she never had to wear the same outfit twice (I’m not sure where she kept them in our tiny staterooms). “Sticks,” a loud and obnoxious man, had bad knees and walked with two canes at all times. Yet, as a former marine, he could not admit weakness, so he insisted that he could keep up with the faster walking-tour groups. Thus, we were constantly waiting for him while he leaned on his crutches and lit another cigarette. “The Magpies” were three insufferable women who talked and cackled at great volume at the bar through every speaker’s presentation. Finally, “Single Malt” was the Scotch connoisseur who loudly ordered a “single-malt Scotch” at the bar. We were sitting nearby, and heard the exchange which followed. Jason, the bartender (yes, I was on a first-name basis with him), nodded and said, “Scotch whiskey; yes sir.” The guy said, “No. I don’t want whiskey; I want a single-malt Scotch.” Jason tried to explain that Scotch was whiskey, but the man would have none of it. Jason surrendered the field and prepared to pour the Scotch when the man said, “Mix it with Sprite.” Again, Jason winced and explained that the expensive whiskey is best enjoyed when sipped straight up or with a few drops of water, and to dilute it in such a way would destroy its taste, but the man insisted. Kristin looked at me and whispered, “He will forever be known as ‘Single Malt.’”

I was especially fascinated by the cultural differences we encountered. Visiting Europe, it always boggles my mind to be in one country for a while, with one type of currency, cuisine, music, language, and customs, then, after a short drive, be in a completely different country with a new language, money, food, and culture. The best guides we had wove together historical elements of a particular place or building with explanations of the culture of their country. In Nuremberg, our guide Andreas spoke passionately about the post-WWII years, in which the old guard—some of them former Nazis—still controlled Germany and preferred to brush the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes under the rug and pretend they had never happened. After the global student unrest of 1968, however, a new generation of leaders emerged who believed that all history, good and bad, needed to be taught and understood if those horrors were to be avoided in the future. Today, he said, all German students are required to learn about the Holocaust and visit one of the Death Camps. I was able to have a private conversation with him in which I explained the way in which conservatives in the US are similarly trying to expunge the teaching of the Holocaust or slavery from textbooks, libraries, and schools, under the misguided belief that students should never encounter uncomfortable facts about their history.

I also found the presentation of news in Europe to be interesting. In many places we stayed, and on the Viking ship, the only live, English-language TV shows available were newscasts of the BBC from England. First, it was a relief to escape the daily accounts of Trump’s latest indictments for his never-ending crimes against the people of the US. In fact, they rarely mentioned the disgraced former president. Second, as you might expect, the focus was different—they concentrated on Europe more than the US, the economy, and the Ukraine War. For the economy, I learned that inflation is much worse there than it is in the US. They blamed inflation, correctly, on supply-line issues resulting from Covid and Vladimir Putin’s war which reduced the amount of oil available world-wide and drove up costs of transporting goods. Surprisingly, they also praised Joe Biden’s aggressive approach to reducing inflation and pointed out that the US inflation rate is currently at 4.1%, while in England and much of Europe, it was still twice as high, above 8%.

They talked much more about the Ukraine War than we do, and acknowledged the fact that, should Putin be allowed to annex the Ukraine, there is no telling where he might stop. They regarded Russia’s threat as similar to that posed by Hitler in the 1930s and recognized the need to stop him in Ukraine. They also gave credit to Biden for repairing Trump’s damage to NATO and other alliances and applauded him for making the US and Europe more secure than they have been in decades. Thus, it is interesting that Biden gets more credit around the world for his successes than he does in the media of his own country.

All in all, it was a fun and enriching two-week trip. I might complain about the long, uncomfortable flights and the inconvenience of travel every time we cross the ocean, but I always return feeling grateful that we took the trip. I also begin looking forward to the next journey. Next up: our first ocean cruise with Viking in February, going from Barcelona to Rome.

The Band with the Law-Firm Name

This weekend, a bright luminary from my high-school and college days, Graham Nash, will perform in Minneapolis. The newspaper story to promote that concert caught my attention, because I had recently read a collective biography of the first rock-and-roll supergroup, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (by David Browne, 2019). Nash’s appearance coincides with the 54th anniversary of the group’s first album. The eponymous record, sans Young, was released in May 1969 and had a huge impact on the pop music of that era.

I won’t go to the concert for a couple of reasons. First, I have no desire to see an 81-year-old singer struggle to perform the songs he had written in his rebellious twenties. I prefer to listen to the old CDs and remember the performers the way they were in their prime. Watching a wrinkled Rod Stewart strut around the stage and croon “Don’t ya think I’m sexy” at 78 holds no appeal for me. Second, I saw CSN&Y perform the Auditorium Theater in Chicago in 1974. I have fond memories of that show, despite the fact that I was the only audience member who was not stoned (I was still a distance runner in those days). I recently found the ticket stub from that show (historians save everything), and one thing stands out for me on that faded piece of thin cardboard: the price. The band was roundly criticized in those days for the high price of their concerts, so it was probably a struggle for me to come up with the SIX DOLLAR admission price. The Nash concert, circa 2023, lists prices as “$100-140.” Even allowing for a half-century of inflation, paying 20 times the price for 25% of the product qualifies as dubious economics in my mind.

All four members of the original band were already regarded as stars when they first coalesced in the late ‘60s. Nash was a founding member of the Hollies, a British group that had a string of hits such as Bus Stop, Look Through Any Window, On a Carousel, and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother. Stephen Stills and Neil Young were both members of Buffalo Springfield, an early and influential folk-rock band best known for a song that became something of an anthem for the protest movement of the ‘60s, For What it’s Worth. David Crosby started with the Byrds, who had major hits with covers of Bob Dylan songs such as Mr. Tambourine Man, All I Really Want to Do, and Pete Seeger’s Turn, Turn, Turn. With Crosby kicked out of the Byrds and the others chafing under the restrictions of their respective bands, they came together in Southern California in 1968.

Stories vary about the exact origin of the group, as decades of time and years of drug use have generated conflicting accounts. The most credible version, however, is that Crosby, Stills, and Nash first sang together at a gathering of musicians in Laurel Canyon, California at the home of Cass Elliott of the Mamas and the Papas. Everyone in the room immediately recognized they were hearing something special, as the tight harmonies of the three seemed both natural and magical. The ball started rolling, Nash and Stills quit their bands, and they began practicing as a trio. Hoping to avoid the pitfalls and restrictions of performing only as a group, they chose the name Crosby, Stills, and Nash so that they could all pursue solo careers while coming together as a group when they felt so inclined.

The multi-platinum record Crosby, Stills, and Nash won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and featured an iconic cover photo of the three performers sitting comfortably on the front porch of an abandoned house. Along with the Byrds and the Band, CS&N are credited with ushering in a new style of pop music that people began calling “folk-rock.” Along with the hits Marrakesh Express and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (which Stills wrote for his girlfriend, folk-singer Judy Collins), the song Helplessly Hoping has been used ever since to teach alliteration to high-school English students (“helplessly hoping, the harlequin hovered,” and “wordlessly watching, she waits by the window and wonders”). Within five years, performers such as the Eagles, America, Fleetwood Mac, and Jackson Browne would emulate the group and help create what became known as the “California Sound.”

Since Stills had played almost all of the instruments on the album, the band added a drummer and bass player for the planned live tour to promote the record. They also recruited a former Stills bandmate who had often been seen tooling around L.A. in an old hearse, Neil Young. (The hearse, or one of the hearses owned by Young, was immortalized in his song, Long May You Run) The group played one show together in Chicago in the summer of 1969 before being invited to play in an outdoor concert in upstate New York. At Woodstock that August, Stills articulated their nervousness by exclaiming to the 500,000 audience members, “This is only the second time we’ve played in front of people, man. We’re scared shitless.”

Their second album, Déjà Vu, generated hits such as Woodstock, Teach Your Children, and Our House (which Nash wrote about domestic bliss with his then-girlfriend, Joni Mitchell). As the title of their live album, 4-Way Street (1971) implied, though, they were a group preparing to separate after three years together. All four members took advantage of the open-relationship of their collaboration and went their individual ways to record solo albums. After that, the dysfunctional super group fell into a pattern that repeated itself over and over again for decades. They would (1) come together to begin another studio album or tour together. (2) Frictions or jealousies, often exacerbated by excessive drug use, led to an acrimonious breakup. (3) They pursued interests in various combinations of CSN&Y or with new bands, often sniping at the others in the media. Finally (4), one of the members would tentatively reach out to the others and suggest a new attempt at reconciliation. For fifty years, the quartet acted like an old couple that marries, divorces, and remarries over and over again. The death of David Crosby earlier this year ended any speculation that they would ever reunite as a full band.

The members of the band often played or sang with other stars of their era. James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Rita Coolidge, John Sebastian, and Art Garfunkel all sang on one of the solo albums or had members of CSN&Y singing background with them. After reading the Browne book, another fact jumped out at me: The window of opportunity for a particular genre of music was remarkably small in the 1970s through ‘90s. The landscape of popular music changed rapidly. Folk-rock soon gave way to Disco, Heavy Metal, Punk, New Wave, Spandex-and-Big-Hair Rock, Rap, Hip-Hop, Grunge, and so on. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, like other stars of their time, struggled to find or maintain relevancy. They produced occasional hits, but increasingly found themselves relegated to “oldies” or “easy listening” radio formats.

In my memory, though, they will always appear as they did in that 1974 concert in Chicago. The stage was simple, without any of today’s massive Broadway-like production elements. They stood in front of massive speakers, around mic stands trailing thick black cords, with three members clustered on an oriental rug, sometimes sharing one microphone, and one guitar player off to the side. As the show unfolded, four distinct personalities emerged. The bushy-headed, walrus-mustachioed Crosby served as the hippie bard, a cloud of marijuana smoke wafting around his head. Stills was the intense technician, focused on replicating the sound they had created in the studio. Young was the one who stood apart from the group, aloof, sometimes playing with his back to the audience, and battling Stills for control of the sound. He seemed intent on allowing spontaneity and the spirit of the moment guide the music, rather than an artificial product of the sterile studio. Occasionally, Young would win, luring Stills into soulful, back-and-forth, dueling solos on their electric guitars and eliciting a smile of pleasure from his bandmate. Nash was the fourth member, serving as amiable host, introducing the songs, and occasionally leading the good-natured barbs that provided comic relief. Then there was the harmonic convergence of their voices. Unlike the harmonies of bands before them, in which multiple singers would hit specific notes and hold them, their voices swirled together, sometimes soaring above the melody, other times weaving in and out with each other. Each voice seemed to draw strength from the others while at the same time leading the others to greater heights. This was definitely a case of the combined whole being stronger than the individual parts.

So, I will not be attending this week’s Graham Nash show, and he will have to Carry On without me. Instead, I will close my eyes and try to recreate the majestic sound of those intertwined voices uniting on Carry On or Judy Blue Eyes. It makes me smile just to think about it.

3:56.4 in 1964

While rummaging through my storage room recently, I stumbled across an old sports program from 1964. I had apparently kept that ragged keepsake for nearly sixty years, and the mere sight of it brought a smile to my face. It was a program for a track meet that no longer exists, held in a building that no longer exists, sponsored by a newspaper that no longer exists. But the memory of that evening is as alive for me as if it were yesterday. Fifty-nine years ago, Chicago’s Tom O’Hara set the track world on its ear by setting two world records within 21 days in the marquee event of indoor track, the mile run. A product of Chicago’s St. Ignatius HS and a member of the Loyola University team at the time, O’Hara ran a world record 3:56.6 for the mile on February 13, 1964 in New York City. Then, on March 6th, he returned home for an attempt to break that record at the Daily News Relays, held at the old Chicago Stadium.

I remember that day well because it was the first track meet I ever saw in person, and it made me a life-long track fanatic. Ten years old at the time, I managed to get free tickets through the Chicago Sun Times and something called “The Fun Club,” which I believe was a promotional gimmick to help kids get to see big-time sports events. I had gotten the tickets weeks earlier, when there was little interest in the meet, but, after O’Hara’s world record in New York, it had become the hottest ticket in town. My dad never wanted to leave the house after a day’s work in the factory, but he, too, was excited by the hype built around the race and agreed to take me to the meet that night.

The Daily News Relays was one of the premier stops on the indoor track circuit in 1964, and many of the sport’s stars were competing. The city’s papers, of which there were several at the time, played up the meet and Chicago’s own world record holder in the days preceding the event, so there was a standing-room-only crowd of over 18,000 on hand at the Chicago Stadium that Friday night. As the attendance would indicate, track was still regarded as something of a major sport in those days. Further, the city had no professional basketball team to distract attention, as the Chicago Zephyrs had moved to Baltimore the previous year, and the Bulls’ franchise would not be born for another two years. So, the entire city was focused on the skinny, red-headed local runner that weekend.

The track itself was typical of indoor facilities in the 1960. The standard size of 160-yards-per-lap, 11-laps-to-a-mile, was dictated by the size of arenas built for basketball and hockey: the track had to fit inside the stands. The track was made of plywood and pieced together in sections, with banked curves so that the runners wouldn’t fly off into the stands on each tight turn. The wooden sections were old and chewed up by years of being exposed to metal running spikes, so the bouncing, splintered surface was not especially conducive to fast times. Moreover, smoking was allowed at sporting events in those days, so I recall a haze of cigarette smoke hovering over the entire interior.

Despite the presence of track stars such as high jumper John Thomas, pole vaulter C.K. Yang, and two-miler Bruce Kidd, the “Banker’s Mile” was clearly the main event. (In the days of so-called “amateurism,” local sponsors such as Chicago banks would put up piddly prizes like a wrist watch for feature events and get the event named for their business). To assist O’Hara in his effort to topple the record, the field was limited to five runners, one per lane on the narrow track, and a pacesetter was provided to keep the field at the proper speed on the early laps. It was a solid field, with the challengers led by Oregon great, Jim Grelle, who at one time boasted impressive American records in the outdoor mile (3:55.4) and 2-mile (8:25.4). The gun went off, and O’Hara shot to the front immediately but soon relinquished the lead to a pacesetter from Canada. The 58.1 first quarter was two seconds faster than the time in his world record race. He passed the half-mile mark in 1:58.8, gaining even more time on the previous record pace. Shortly after the half, Tom surged to the lead and every person in the house rose to their feet, cheering, willing him to break the record.

If you remember Chicago Stadium as I do, it was the loudest sports arena on the planet. I attended a Black Hawk game there once where the wooden rail on which I was leaning, high in the rafters, was visibly shaking from the incredible noise, and I felt certain the entire structure would soon collapse, and I would plummet to my death. The volume approached that sort of decibel level as Tom broke away from the field and set off on his own. Grelle gave chase for a while, but this was O’Hara’s night. All alone, he passed the ¾ mark in 2:59.8 and everyone in the place knew the record was within reach, as he had what was regarded as a blazing finishing kick. When the gun fired for the final lap, the noise increased exponentially, and I could no longer hear myself screaming. He crossed the line with the clock frozen at 3:56.3, a new record, and the place exploded with even more ear-piercing cheers.

The official time was eventually announced as 3:56.4, two-tenths under the old record, which may not sound spectacular compared to today’s times. But the new mark stood for a full decade, until Tony Waldrop took it down in 1974. Such luminaries as Marty Liquori, Dave Wottle, Steve Prefontaine, and Jim Ryun had numerous chances, but could not beat that time, although Ryun tied it once with his own 3:56.4.

Dozens of athletes have run faster than O’Hara’s time since then, using better equipment, competing on bigger and faster tracks, and utilizing superior training methods. For me personally, however, nothing will ever top that race. The day after the record, a ten-year-old Chicago boy was out on his sidewalk, holding a stopwatch his dad had stolen from work, in the bathing suit he thought looked like track shorts, running laps around the block, training for the mile. I certainly never attained the heights that Tom O’Hara did, but I still have the yellowed program from that meet, and I can still hear the cacophonous cheers reverberating in that decrepit old building. Distance running took me to college, broadened my outlook on the world, brought me some life-long friends, and gave me the opportunity to dream of a bright future. One glimpse of that old souvenir reminded me that, in less than four minutes back in 1964, Tom O’Hara forever changed the path of my life.

Here is the video of that race.

A Toast to Coach

For 36 years, when they were living together and then when they were married, my brother Dan and his wife Esther have always had Esther’s mom, Juanita, living with them. Because Juanita enjoyed watching Cubs games, Dan began calling her “Coach.” The name stuck, and all of our friends and relatives who came to know her called her Coach. In fact, while writing this, I had to look up her real first name, because I couldn’t recall anyone calling her anything but Coach.

Coach Morantes died yesterday in her mid-nineties.

Dan called me yesterday evening with the sad news. Sad, but not unexpected. Coach has been in and out of assisted-living homes for the past few years and in declining health. Dan and Esther brought her home during the Covid year, but the 24-hour care she needed proved to be too much for them. She has been in another home for the past couple of years, and Esther and Dan visited her for several hours a day, at least six days a week. In June, Coach appeared to be near the end, and Esther ordered that she be taken off of all machines. She said she just wanted Coach to be comfortable and pain free as she passed, but did not want machines to keep her alive artificially. They brought in hospice. They prepared themselves for her death. Then she rebounded. Hospice was there for a full seven months. Dan called me one day and said, “When the world comes to an end, there’ll be nothing left alive except cockroaches and Coach.”

Coach had a tough time in her early life. I don’t know all of the details, and I never wanted to ask too much that might bring up painful memories for her or Esther. Coach has always been child-like. For as long as I had known her, she acted more like a twelve-year-old than an adult. She was left to care for her children alone (I think there were four siblings, but I never knew for sure if they all had the same father). When she was a young girl, Esther had stepped into the role of adult and took care of her mother. While Coach was a bit slow , she somehow managed to hold a job at a factory for many years. Esther always made sure Coach was clean, ate a healthy diet, and got regular exercise. And she dyed her hair black long after she turned grey. That meant Coach never changed for me. I knew her for 36 years and she always looked the same. When she was in her 80s, they were concerned about senility, but it was difficult to tell because she always had jet-black hair and acted like a child.

Dan met Esther when I was singing in a club in Chicago. She was in the audience with a date, but when the guy got up to go to the bathroom, Dan slid in next to her and said something like, “Why are you here with this boring guy? You should be with me!” Then he hounded me to get her contact-info from my mailing list so he could call her. When they started getting serious as a couple, she made it clear that Coach was part of a package deal, “If you take me, you take my mother, too.” Now, you should understand that Dan can be an obnoxious man. He is crude, hard-assed, loud, tough, demanding, and (fill in the negative adjective of your choice). But can also be sentimental and loving, and he adopted Coach as his own and never backed away from the challenges she undoubtedly posed. When I talked to him yesterday, I said, “It’s hard to categorize your relationship with her. She’s not like a mother or even a mother-in-law. She’s not even like a sister.” He interrupted my thoughts by saying, “No. She’s like my child.” Esther and Dan never had kids of their own, but they have served as Coach’s parents for decades. She loved going to bingo, and they would take her to play often. When she grew too feeble to go out, Dan bought a toy version of the game and played with her for several hours once a week, calling out numbers and helping her find them on her cards. They would give her candy or scratch-off lottery tickets as prizes.

It hurt Esther and Dan when they could no longer care for Coach and they had to put her in assisted living. Still, the care she was given was never enough for them. As I said, they spent hours with her nearly every day. They bathed her, fed her, and gave her care that the facility did not always provide in a reliable manner. Dan grew adept at changing her oxygen tanks and cleaning various hoses hooked up to her. Dan would throw fake punches at her and growl, “That’s it; I’m gonna have to punch the shit out of you!” and she would just giggle while the nurses looked in the door with alarm. They would sing songs that she knew and encourage her to sing along. On the good days, she would sing, but not always in recent months. Dan’s go-to song was This Land is Your Land, while Esther sang Let Me Call You Sweetheart with her. Before losing her sight, Coach would watch the same Elvis and John Wayne movies over and over. She called Dan, “The Big Guy,” and he always included Coach in the family Christmas card (see picture above from a few years ago by Al Capone’s grave; Coach is standing by Dan).

I have two memories of Coach that make me laugh every time. Once in the ‘90s, when living in Gainesville, not far from Kathleen and me, Dan and Esther had to go out of town near Easter time. They gave Coach our phone number and told her not to call us unless it was an emergency or she needed something important. Kathleen was home alone when Coach called and said it was important. Kathleen jumped in the car and raced to their house. When she got there, Coach told her that Esther had promised to get her some of those marshmallow Peeps that are sold at Easter but must have forgotten to buy them. Kathleen drove her to the store and the “emergency” was resolved.

The other incident I heard about second hand, from Dan. He and Coach were home alone and putting a large Christmas tree into the stand. Dan was sprawled on the floor, squeezed under the low-hanging branches, tightening the bolts. Coach was tasked with standing across the room and telling him when it was straight. They made a few adjustments and things were going well. Unfortunately, her favorite TV show, The Jerry Springer Show, came on in another room, and she kept leaning in that direction to see the fight that had broken out on the stage. By the time Dan asked for the final time if the tree looked straight, Coach was leaning at a 65-degree angle. It looked straight to her, so she told Dan it was “perfect.” Dan, a big man, extricated himself from the branches and crawled to his feet. When he stood up and saw the tree standing at that same 65-degree angle, with Coach leaning into the next room transfixed by the TV, he couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

Rest in Peace, Coach. You will be missed.