Dr. Jack

Finally!

This will be a short entry, but I wanted to let everyone know that, after more than a quarter century of work, my novel, The Forest Primeval, has been accepted for publication. Written Dreams Publishing, from Green Bay, Wisconsin, after an initial rejection, has agreed to publish the book. There remains a lot of rewriting and polishing to do before it is ready, and they have other projects in line before my book, which means that it will not be released until fall 2023. After several dozen rejections over the past decade, however, this is welcome and exciting news.

I’m still not sure how all of this will work, but here are some of the details as I understand them: The book will come out in hardcover, paperback, and e-book formats. It will be distributed through a third party company with links to libraries, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Apple itunes, and independent bookstores such as Fox Den here in River Falls. I will probably have a book release party here in town (Fox Den?), and I’d like to figure out how to have others in Chicago and Nashville. I’ll keep you posted on all of this in the future.

Written Dreams is a much smaller operation than the big publishers in New York, but it is also much more personal. The owner of the company has been in contact with me repeatedly since I first submitted my work. That in itself is a huge step up from my frustrating experiences with literary agencies while attempting to get an agent to represent me. In trying to communicate with the New Yorkers, I often would not hear back from them for weeks or even months after I first reached out. When I did hear from them, it was usually just a standard rejection in an email without even referring to me by name. Many of those companies simply failed to respond at all. I have never been able to get an agent to show any interest, and New York publishers won’t talk to an author without going through an agent, so I had been stymied.

Then Kathleen recently showed me an article about a book being published by Written Dreams, and a friend also mentioned them in a happy hour conversation. I perused their web-site and found that they preferred to work directly with the author, rather than going through an agent. (Hooray!) I also discovered that they were looking for books with a local setting (half of my book is set in northern Wisconsin, the other half in Chicago). I was able to contact WD through their web-site, and they got back to me quickly, requesting the full manuscript. After reading it, they initially rejected it. I persisted, however, and asked what their objections were. I also assured them that I was willing to put in the work and do any rewriting that they suggested. That assurance seemed to do the trick and they decided to take a chance on me. An hour-long phone conversation with the owner of the company followed, and she sent me a contract.

Written Dreams is also putting together an anthology of stories by new authors writing about their experience in writing their first novels. They’ve asked me to submit a chapter for that book, although the deadline is only a month away. I’m guessing that my experience is probably a little out of the ordinary, so I decided to take a crack at it. I’ll keep you informed about that as well.

If there is a lesson to be learned from my experience, it is that persistence pays off. I first learned that lesson as a teenaged distance runner who was not very good. Running 1000 miles every summer turned me into a much better runner, and that talent took me to college. Similarly, I didn’t finish my Ph.D. until I was in my forties. In light of my past history, I guess getting my first novel published when I will be nearly 70 should not be surprising. Call me a late-bloomer.

The Old Course

I’ve been watching the British Open golf championship this weekend. This is a special year, as it is the 150^th Open Championship, having been held 149 previous times since the first tournament in 1860 (it has been interrupted by two world wars and Covid). This year, the tournament is being held at The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews, Scotland. Also known as the “Old Course,” the course is wedged between the town of St. Andrews and the North Sea on Scotland’s east coast, and is acknowledged by many to be the official birthplace of this ancient game.

The game of golf dates back 800 years, to the 1200s. It started with shepherds (“sheep herders,” get it?) who were bored while watching their flocks graze along the flat, treeless, coastal lowlands of Scotland. Using their crooks as clubs, they entertained themselves by hitting rocks into rabbit holes. From there, the game evolved. They carved rounded balls out of wood, dug holes in the ground, and shoved sticks in the holes to mark them. The first recorded reference to the game came in 1457, when Scottish King James II officially banned the game. It seems he worried that his soldiers spent more time on the links than in practicing archery. In St. Andrews, golfers shared the links with grazing sheep, cows, and goats, fishermen drying their nets on the thorny plants called whin or gorse, women bleaching cloth, children playing in the low hills, and soldiers shooting longbows at targets. The Old Course was eventually shortened from 22 to 18 holes, and that number became the standard size of a golf course. In 1754, a group of local gentlemen formed the Society of St. Andrews golfers and established the first 13 rules for the game. From that point on, golf was regarded as a rich man’s game, as working people could not take time off to play, and it cost a week’s worth of hard labor (6 days) to afford a single golf ball stuffed with goose feathers.

Old Tom Morris, one of the early groundskeepers of the course, had a great deal to do with the present layout. Morris was one of the first golfers to make his living from the game. He won the Open Championship in 1861, ’62, ’64, and ’67, and his son, Tommy, or Young Tom, also won the title of “Champion Golfer of the year” four times. Purses were small in those days, however, with the winner taking home just a couple of pounds (usually about $25) for their efforts. The real money came from betting on yourself to win and playing head-to-head matches against other top players. To provide a more consistent form of income, Old Tom made clubs and golf balls, caddied, and did the work of maintaining the Old Course. That maintenance was in the form of physical labor that he performed by himself with little assistance.

He generally left the fairways as they were naturally. That’s why Scottish courses look so strange to Americans more accustomed to carefully manicured, table-top fairways of bright green grass. Each St. Andrews’ fairway is marked by hundreds of small hillocks and brownish-green grass that has to be hardy enough to grow on sand beaches and withstand the harsh Scottish weather. A ball hit in the middle of the fairway might roll straight, but it could just as easily kick left or right and wind up resting in the waist-high gorse bushes with no chance to reach the green in regulation. Sand traps were also established in places selected by nature, not a course designer. Most traps were places where sheep or other livestock burrowed into the soft turf next to higher ground to wait out the cold, driving rain during storms. They chewed on the thin grass until a sandy hole emerged. Old Tom used those holes as sand traps, although later groundskeepers added fresh sand and sod walls to make them even more formidable. He moved tee boxes and greens, created new holes, and reshaped the course to a significant degree. Finally, Tom put a great deal of labor into the greens, carrying dirt from one place and putting it in another in a wheelbarrow, leveling it, and experimenting with different seeds until he found the right mixture. All of this was done by hand and most of it by one man. While building a new green for the finishing eighteenth hole, Tom found a mass grave where cholera victims had been buried during an outbreak in 1832. He simply mounded dirt over the grave and went on with his work. The result of these Herculean efforts is a course that, while not as beautiful as the more modern links, has a unique quality laced with history and romance.

Mary Stuart, better known to history as Mary Queen of Scots, became Queen of Scotland in 1542, at the ripe old age of 9 months. Later, as an avid golfer, she made an important contribution to golf when she began calling the lads who carried her clubs around the course “cadets.” This term was eventually shortened to “caddy,” and their job was made easier in the 1800s when they began using archery quivers as cases to carry the clubs and extra balls. (I was actually a caddy when I was 11 and 12 years old. I weighed about 80 pounds, and I swear some of the bags I carried weighed nearly that much. But, on a good day, when I managed to get a round with a golfer in the morning and another in the afternoon, I could take home over 3 dollars, including tips, for being at the course for 12 hours. I was a shrewd businessman even then.) It was said that Mary was playing a round of golf while her husband was being murdered, giving her a solid alibi. And her cadets may have been handy for finding lost golf balls while on the course, but they could not help her when she lost her head while plotting to overthrow her cousin, Elizabeth, as Queen of England.

Some of my favorite caddy stories took place in Scotland, where caddies are often older adults. These guys have been reputed to take a drink on occasion, and have been known to put down a bet or two based on the information they gathered while following golfers around the links. In the 1860s, club members at a Scottish club hosted a tournament for caddies, putting up a turkey for 1st place, and a bottle of whiskey for 2^nd. It was a strange finish as one golfer after another purposely mishit their ball in an attempt to lose the lead and take home the 2^nd-place prize. Caddies are an invaluable resource to golfers who are new to a particular course and need information that might help them improve their score. At Carnoustie, a wee bit north of St. Andrews on the eastern coast, a player once asked his caddy what to expect from the weather. The caddy gestured toward the sea and said. “There’s a rocky island a half-mile off shore. If you canno’ see the rock, it’s raining. If you ken see the rock, it’s aboot to rain.” Gary Player tells the story of his introduction to St. Andrews as a 21-year-old in his first Open Championship. He was assigned a grizzled old caddy who knew the course like the back of his hand. The inexperienced Player was understandably nervous as he teed off on the legendary course. His first shot was a terrible hook that landed well out of bounds. Embarrassed, he teed up again and sliced a ball out of bounds the other way. The unimpressed caddy watched closely, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. Player finally landed one safely in the fairway and began walking toward it. The caddy walked up next to him and asked, “Where are you from?” Gary said, “South Africa.” The caddy said, “What‘re you doing here, then?” Gary replied. “I’m here to play in the Open Championship. I’m a professional golfer.” The caddy shook his head and said, “Well, you moost be a helluva putter.” Over time, caddies have developed their own folklore and stories. My favorite is about two golfers who teed off together back in the 1800s. One of them had a heart attack and died halfway through the round. The other man threw the dead body over his shoulder and made his way back to the clubhouse, where a gentleman member said, “That’s a fine Christian thing you’ve done.” The golfer said, “Aye, the worst part was lyin’ ‘im down and pickin’ ‘im up again between shots.”

A few years ago, Kathleen and I took a tour of Scotland, and our bus stopped in the medieval town of St. Andrews. The Old Course is right in the center of the town surrounded by homes and businesses, the golfing equivalent of Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. Each member of our tour was given a bucket of balls to hit on the driving range so that they could return home and brag that they had “played” at the birthplace of the game of golf. Most of our group was elderly, so they thought I was some sort of wizard because I could hit the ball 50 yards in the air.

Still, standing there and looking at the course, I could feel the history of the place and my imagination conjured up images of Old Tom Morris, pipe in his mouth, leaning into the wind and hitting an approach shot to the green he built on top of a mass grave. I nodded to the apparition, and Old Tom tipped his Tam O’ Shanter in response.

Summer Blockbusters

During this Fourth of July weekend, from Friday (July 1^st) through Sunday (July 3^rd), the latest installment of the Despicable Me franchise, Minions 2: The Rise of Gru set the all-time record for box-office receipts on the first weekend of its release. This fact might have escaped you, but for us, the release date of July 1^st for this summer blockbuster was unavoidable. You see, our 9-year-old grandson reminded us of that impending date every time we saw him. He saw the film on opening day with his parents and sister, but has let us know emphatically that he would be willing to see it again. Kathleen and I don’t mind taking him to see it again either, because we also find the Minions movies to be hilarious. Then there is the added pleasure of hearing Lucas’s uninhibited, infectious giggles echo through the theater during every scene. Finally, at the Falls Theater here in town, it’s only $5 a ticket, and popcorn is only $2.

The other thing that crossed my mind on Monday was the question: Is there an iconic 4^th of July movie? Everyone has a favorite Christmas movie or two, but how about one for the 4^th? Mine would undoubtedly be Yankee Doodle Dandy, and I watched it again from beginning to end on the 4^th. At a time when the American flag is seen in news footage being wielded as a weapon against police officers in Washington and used as a symbol for hatred by Trump supporters, it’s nice to be reminded that the flag was, until recent years, a symbol of hope and democracy around the world. The patriotic theme and stirring music of YDD were perfect for the US during that first year of WWII (1942), and it always inspires me. While watching it, though, I began to wonder about other films that would fit the holiday. Several movies are aired on TV that day every year, so some programming directors must have decided they fit the holiday theme. One is 1776, a musical about the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence. Some people really like that one, but I find the songs to be abysmal and the whole thing painful to watch. (If you like that sort of thing, the recent musical Hamilton is light years better.) Another film that shows up every year on the 4^th is Independence Day, a sci-fi shoot-em-up that takes place on July 4^th. If you like special effects and invading aliens, it might be the film for you. But the plot is thin as paper and the characters are cardboard cliches. It finally occurred to me that the 1975 thriller, Jaws, might also fit the bill, because all of the action takes place around the July 4^th holiday.

Jaws was the first “blockbuster” film and its producers created the business model that has dominated the film industry since it first appeared. The novel of the same name had already been read by millions of people, so anticipation was high for the film version. But myriad problems beset the production, delayed the filming and caused the budget to double. Director Steven Spielberg, a young and unproven filmmaker, insisted on filming on the ocean, rather than in a back lot in Hollywood. A number of screenwriters worked on the script, but Spielberg found himself rewriting scenes every night before they were filmed, leaving the actors to wonder what they would be saying on film that day. Then the mechanical shark, in many ways the star of the film, failed repeatedly to work properly. That caused Spielberg to treat the Great White shark as primarily an implied menace, rather than an on-screen presence as he had planned.

The studio saturated the air-waves and other forms of advertising for months ahead of the film’s late-June release. Then, the film premiered on hundreds of screens across the nation, rather than a few select screens as had previously been done. The result was that the film broke all existing box-office records and created the marketing strategy that has been used in countless summer blockbusters since then, from Star Wars in 1977 to Minions 2 this week.

The story itself is a familiar one to those who have read Moby Dick. In the 1851 Melville classic, Captain Ahab is obsessed with finding and killing the white whale who took his leg in an earlier encounter. It is told from the point of view of a crew member who introduces himself in the novel’s famous first line: “Call me Ishmael.” In the final confrontation, the white whale gradually destroys the Pequod, Ahab’s ship, and drags the captain to the bottom of the ocean, leaving just one survivor, Ishmael, who rides an empty casket until he is rescued.

The film version of Jaws, which differs in many respects from Peter Benchley’s novel, owes much to Melville’s book. The story is told from the point of view of police chief Martin Brody, who has an aversion to water and a pronounced fear of drowning. When a Great White Shark terrorizes Brody’s beachside town of Amity and kills several people in the days leading to the July 4^th holiday, the mayor refuses to close the beaches. He becomes the symbol of unrestrained corporate greed, because he puts business and profits ahead of the safety of beachgoers. More people die on the 4^th, leading Brody to rely on a marine biologist (Matt Hooper) and a professional shark hunter named Quint to fight the beast. Quint, like Ahab, is obsessed with sea creatures, having been stranded in the water surrounded by sharks during World War II and watching one after another of his shipmates being eaten by the voracious predators. The last half of the film shows the battle between these three men and the massive White Shark. They each bring a different approach to the conflict. Quint is the old-school fisherman, using a lifetime of experience and the type of weapons used by Ishmael and the crew in Moby Dick. Hooper is the scientist, using modern methods and technology. And Brody is “everyman,” seemingly the one who brings no skills to the table, but the man who ends up winning by using common sense and ingenuity. As in Melville’s story, the shark drags them out to sea before systematically destroying Quint’s ship, the Orca. (His boat is named for the killer whale, the only natural predator of the shark). In the end, Brody kills the Great White, and (in the book) is the sole survivor, afloat on a piece of wreckage from the Orca. (In the film, Hooper also survives.)

The film launched Spielberg’s career and made him, along with George Lucas, the king of the summer blockbuster film. It also gave a huge boost to John Williams, who wrote the music for Jaws, and is best remembered for the iconic, two-note theme which appears whenever the shark has zeroed in on another victim. Often, we see the victim from the point of view of the shark while that music increases in intensity, a technique that rachets up the suspense and has been copied by nearly every slasher film made after 1975. Williams went on to write the score for countless film franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Home Alone, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter.

Moby Dick might be the most analyzed novel ever written, with layer upon layer of symbolism confounding literary scholars for 171 years. Jaws has also had its share of analysis. One writer thought the film, coming just a year after Nixon’s resignation, represented a sort of national catharsis, “a communal exorcism, a ceremony for the restoration of ideological confidence” following the national cynicism that followed Watergate. I don’t know about any of that. The truth is, that for me, both the book and film make for rousing good tales, and I prefer to leave it at that. Next year, I think I’ll have a double feature, watching Yankee Doodle Dandy for the 7, 212^th time, then enjoying Jaws. I’ll sip on some root beer, and eat a couple of hot dogs, too. Heck, I might wash it all down with a slice of apple pie.

Unrequited Love

I have been a Cub fan for my entire life, a disorder I blame on my grandmother. When she first came to the US from Scotland in 1922, she stayed with relatives on the North Side of Chicago, 5 blocks from Wrigley Field. She didn’t really understand the game right away, but she listened on the radio and went to the park often enough to become a big fan. Living up to the stereotype of the tight-fisted Scot, she attended only on Fridays, which were known as “Ladies Days” back then, and admission was free for females. My dad inherited the Cubs as his team of choice from her and passed it on to his children. His ashes now rest in Wrigley, having been deposited there in two separate installments by my brothers, Dan and Mark.

My love affair with the team began when I was eight years old; 1962 is the first season I recall with any clarity. The Cubs had two-time MVP Ernie Banks, along with future Hall-of-Famers Billy Williams and Ron Santo. They still managed to lose 103 games in a 162-game season, finishing ahead of only one team: the worst team in history, the expansion New York Mets. That entire decade, they struggled to win games while the cross-town White Sox were often in the midst of the American League pennant race. I lived on the South Side, surrounded by Sox fans, but I didn’t care. The Sox had strong pitching and weak hitting, so they often won games 1-0 or 2-1. “Sure the Cubs lose a lot, I would explain to friends, but they lose 9-8 or 11-9—those games are fun.” My dad, who was used to disappointment while cheering for the Cubs, would tease me about my optimistic view of the team. I would come home after playing ball all day and ask, “What did the Cubs do?” He would answer, “Cubs won!” I would celebrate accordingly, then he would add, “Cardinals Eight.”

Then came 1969, the year it all came together for the Cubs—until it didn’t. They had a team full of All-Stars, and a great pitching staff led by another Hall of Famer, Fergie Jenkins. They dominated the league all summer and had a big lead in late August. It looked like the year they would finally win it all. Then they collapsed in September and finished eight games behind the Miracle Mets, who shocked the sports world by winning the pennant and the World Series. I always date the end of my childhood and the beginning of facing the realities of the world to that summer. They broke my heart many times after that year, which is why I chose “Unrequited Love” as the title for this entry.

In my 20s, I especially loved sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I went to a couple of games a year, but the bleachers offered a different experience from the rest of the park. Tickets were still just $1.50, and you could walk up to the gate at game time and get a seat. Because it was so cheap to sit out there, you could see the entire spectrum of American society at the game. Lots of strange people and behavior. You might smell pot, hear arguments that turned physical, and see drunks stumbling around, but you could also see a father patiently explaining the game to his daughter at her first ballgame. The “bleacher bums,” as they were called, often had a pool going for the daily attendance total. Someone passed a baggie around that contained a little notebook and loose change. You would put a quarter in, list your name, seat number, and your guess for how many people were in the ball park that day. When the attendance was announced in the seventh inning, they would give the bag full of quarters to the person who was closest to the actual figure. It was all done on the honor system. Ronnie, the “Woo, woo!” guy was always out there. He was famous for yelling a high-pitched “Woo!” for no apparent reason, often in conjunction with a player’s name, such as “Sandberg, woo! Cey, woo! Bowa, woo!”

After the game, my brother Dan and I would often visit the Wrigleyville bars or another favorite haunt of ours, Ollie’s on Clark Street. One time, we were heading home when we were stopped by one of Chicago’s finest. He stared at Dan’s license and said, “You’re from Oak Lawn? You’re a long way from home, fellas.” Dan explained, “We were at the Cub game.” The cop looked confused and said, “Son, that game’s been over for twelve hours.”

If I had to pick a single game that best captured my unrequited love affair with the Cubs, it was one that occurred 43 years ago today, on May 17, 1979. This game has been on my mind because my dentist, David Page, recommended a book about that particular game during my last dental visit. It’s hard to argue with a man who has his hands and sharp objects in your mouth at the time, so I bought the book and read it. The book is called Ten Innings at Wrigley Field, by Kevin Cook, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves baseball. It chronicles the entire incredible game, inning by inning, as well as discussing what happened to the teams and players before and after that momentous game.

It was one of those magical days at Wrigley, a warm spring day with temperatures in the high 70s and the wind blowing off of the lake, directly out over the left-field fence. The blustery wind was a steady 17 mph, with gusts up to 30. It was the kind of day that made hitters lick their chops, pitchers close their eyes and duck after every throw, and outfielders pray that they could corral flyballs in the swirling winds without getting hurt. I was working in a Chicago factory when the game started at about 1:30 that afternoon. I listened to the games on the radio each day, which helped break up the mindless monotony of my job.

I quickly grew disgusted about the game, as the Phillies exploded for 7 runs in the top half of the first inning. I wandered away from the radio to work in another area of the storeroom. My friend, Brian, was working with me. A short time later, he called me over and said, “Don’t give up yet, Jack; the Cubs just scored 6 in the bottom of the first.” That inning set the tone for the rest of the game. After a scoreless 2^nd, Philadelphia tacked on 8 more runs in the 3^rd, then 2 more in the top of the 4^th, making the score 17-6. An inning later, they had a 12-run lead, 21-9. The wind was howling off of Lake Michigan, blowing routine fly balls out of the park and turning every pop-up into an adventure. On a day like that, however, a team is never out of the game, and the Cubs started to claw their way back into it with a 7-run fifth. I’d venture to say that precious little work got done that afternoon in my factory, as a large crowd gathered around my radio listening to the non-stop action.

At 4:30, quitting time came, the game was already three hours long, and it was far from over. My dad worked at the same factory, and he invited us over to his house to watch the end of the game. A caravan of cars raced to his house, about five miles away, running stop signs along the way. My brother Dan was in the parade, along with Brian, and several other friends. By the time we reached my dad’s house, it was the 8^th inning, and we barely had time to pop open a beer before the Cubs had tied it, 22-22. In a tension-filled 9^thinning, both teams threatened, but failed to score. This game was too good to be contained in just 9 innings.

(Here comes the unrequited love affair part.) After making that spectacular comeback, the Cubs, as they always do, broke my heart. Hall-of-Famer Bruce Sutter, pitching for the Cubs, gave up a game-winning homerun to Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt in the 10^th inning and they lost 23-22. There were 11 home runs in the game, 2 by Schmidt, and fifty hits. Dave Kingman hit 3 homers for the Cubs, one of which left the ball park, cleared Waveland Avenue, and landed in the yard of the 4^th house down a perpendicular street. He also drove in 6 runs, which was the 2^nd highest total for the Cubs that day (Bill Buckner drove in 7). A Chicago reporter who was at the game wrote, “It was historical; it was hysterical.” During the winter in those days, WGN, the station that broadcast the Cubs games, always showed the best game of the previous season in its entirety. In January 1980, they showed this game. It always seemed fitting to me that the best game of 1979 was one which the Cubs lost.

Shortly after that extravaganza, I wrote a song that tried to capture the flavor of the bleachers as well as the craziness of that particular game. It’s called Bleacher Bum.

1. You call yourself a traveler; you say you’ve been around;

You’ve seen the mighty pyramids, and dined in London Town;

You thought Hong Kong was something, but the truth must be revealed:

My friend, you ain’t seen nothing ‘till you’ve been to Wrigley Field.

2. There’s fights and drinking all around, the language is obscene;

The violence and hatred is the worst I’ve ever seen.

It’s not a Friday night in Texas, at the Busted Head Saloon,

Just a picnic in the bleachers on a Sunday afternoon.

Chorus:

If you don’t like the way I look, don’t tell me what you see;

I’m just a burned out bleacher bum, and that’s all I’ll ever be.

So tell me I’m obnoxious—I’ll just say I’m having fun,

‘Cause when I’m in the bleachers, Lord, I’m proud to be a bum.

3. Someone’s sipping whiskey, someone else is smoking dope;

When cheering for Chicago, you should never lose all hope.

It’s seventeen to seven, but we’ll win without a doubt,

‘Cause it’s just the second inning, and the wind is blowing out.

(Chorus)

4. Left fielders from opposing teams have bad dreams every night;

The Surgeon General warns it may be hazardous in right.

The things we call George Foster would turn Cincinnati red;

When he goes back for fly balls, we throw beer down on his head.

(Chorus)

5. Last night I dreamed of Heaven, of Matthew, Mark, and Paul;

There weren’t no clouds or pearly gates, just ivy covered walls.

I didn’t see no angels, or no harp-playing band;

Just forty-thousand Cub fans with a beer in either hand.

(Chorus)

In 2016, of course, the Cubs ended their century of futility. My stepson, Ben Morgan, had season tickets for the Cubs that year—yes, that’s right; he lives in River Falls, not Chicago, but he had season tickets—and he invited me to join him for one of the games. Thanks to him, I was able to see the Cubs in the World Series. Fittingly, given my history with the team, they lost that game. But then, miraculously, they came back to win the last three games and the world championship. My world view was turned upside down for a while, but the Cubs have since returned to mediocrity. For one brief and shining moment, however, my love for the Cubs was reciprocated.

Code Name: Columbo

After being retired for several years, I was surprised to receive the call from “the Company.” They wanted to send me on one more mission. With Putin’s war on Ukraine dragging on, and a new Cold War emerging from this conflict, the US government had decided to call upon some of its most dependable former operatives to take up the torch of freedom once again. (Most people are unaware of the crucial role that Kathleen and I had played behind the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991). Under the guise of a vacation to Eastern Europe, we were ordered to find and make contact with certain Russian operatives who would then work with our government to overthrow Putin, or otherwise put an end to his violent and authoritarian regime. While we were reluctant to bring our daughter into the family “business,” they also persuaded us to recruit Kristin into the operation as our technological expert in this top-secret mission. It was only yesterday, after the mission was completed, that we received permission to reveal the nature of this and earlier operations to the public. At long last, the truth can be told.

To avoid suspicion, Kristin flew separately from us. She even persuaded her husband, Kevin, to undergo bypass heart surgery several months ago to provide a plausible explanation for his absence on this family vacation. Kathleen and I flew from Minneapolis to Chicago, then overnight to Frankfurt, Germany, and finally to the twin cities of Buda and Pest, in Hungary.

After checking into the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Pest, we linked up with Kristin in an out of the way bistro. At a dark, corner table, over appetizers and wine, we opened our dossiers and discovered our code names and the details of our operation. Kristin was given the name “Trebek” because of her Jeopardy experience, while they dusted off Kathleen’s old name of “Pavlova,” given due to her background as a prima ballerina. Over the years, she had carefully disguised her talent as a dancer by pretending to be a person with limited rhythm, balance, and agility. She cultivated this persona so successfully that even long-time friends were unaware of her terpsichorean skills. I received the new name of “Columbo,” and my orders were to operate much like the old TV detective of the same name. Thus, we were to emulate the character played by Hungarian actor Peter Falk, bumbling about, pretending to be clueless American tourists, while doggedly pursuing our duel objectives. We were to establish contact with a Russian operative who would work with us from within the Kremlin, or, failing that, we were to allow ourselves to be contacted by a spy with similar goals. Sliding easily into our “spook” roles, we even ordered a second bottle of wine that night and feigned having a great time talking and catching up.

Budapest, in a formerly communist country that is once again under the thumb of an autocratic, Trump-like leader, is nonetheless a beautiful city that brought back many memories of battling the KGB during the Cold War. For three days, we stumbled around and took many wrong turns as if we were typical tourists without a clue of where we were going. Trebek, however, had done her homework ahead of time and guided us expertly over serpentine routes through neighborhoods that were established in the 1800s. She also taught us the conversion rates of the Hungarian Forint (they don’t use the Euro) and the way to use the public transportation system. We left no stone unturned as we searched for spies or other Russians we might be able to turn. We looked in the Hieronymous Bosch exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. We found no spies, but I woke up screaming in the night, with images from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights dancing in my nightmares. We went so far as to take in the famous public baths, willingly displaying our septuagenarian and forty-something bodies in bathing suits next to fit twenty-year-olds in our relentless pursuit of that elusive contact. In one particular pool of warm, ninety-degree, mineral water, I slid over next to a man who I thought was Russian. He got the wrong idea, however, and, with a heavy Hungarian accent, politely, but forcefully asked me to get away from him.

At one point, we were afraid we had blown our cover while exploring Liberty Square with its monuments to those who had fought for Hungary’s freedom over the years. At a unique fountain at the end of the park, Trebek walked directly into a ring of water shooting up from the ground. Just as she stepped into the fountain, however, the water where she stepped miraculously stopped flowing and she walked into the center of the shooting water still completely dry. She had learned of this fascinating fountain from her research on the city. At that moment, however, a guard at the nearby US Embassy eyed her activity with a suspicious eye. I froze with indecision, but Pavlova shrewdly seized the initiative by adopting the role of a bumbling tourist. She copied Trebek’s actions and walked directly into the spraying water, but in an area that did not contain the sensors that stopped the water from shooting up. She stood there, dripping water from head to toe, while Trebek and I pretended to laugh uproariously. The guard turned away without a word, and our cover was preserved.

While in Budapest, Trebek also struck a blow for American foreign relations. In the lobby of our hotel, she spotted a young Hungarian boy wearing a NASA sweatshirt. Her cover job happens to be working as a NASA engineer, so she pulled a logo pin from her purse and gave it to the boy. The smile on his face could have illuminated Red Square during an evening May Day parade.

After two unsuccessful days of searching, we continued our quest by booking a week-long cruise with Viking on the Danube River. The ship was amazing, the food incredible, and the service immaculate, but we, of course, paid no attention to such trivial details while on the case. The Viking crew prides itself in trying to meet every request from a passenger. In one conversation I overheard, a passenger ignored the gourmet menu offerings and requested a unicorn and peanut-butter sandwich. The Serbian waiter did not flinch, replying “Will that be on ciabatta or pumpernickel bread.” To remain undercover, we also signed up for the Silver Beverage package which gave us unlimited top-shelf wine and liquors while on the cruise. We had taken along our CIA-issued anti-inebriation pills, however, so any signs of intoxication displayed by Columbo or Trebek were actually a carefully choreographed act designed to give false impressions to the unsuspecting passengers and crew. We even pretended to be drunk when we won a bottle of champagne at a ship-board trivia contest.

The next stop was at Vienna, Austria, the scene of a tense Cold War meeting between JFK and Khrushchev in 1961. We learned more than we needed to know about Franz Joseph, the longtime Hapsburg ruler, and Gustav Klimt, the great artist, but it was an amazing, clean, and historic city. We did a walking tour of Vienna, visited the Schoenbrunn palace, and saw sites from the classic film noir movie, The Third Man. As I viewed the iconic Ferris Wheel in a public park, I thought of that film and heard the words of Harry Lime, cynically looking at the city from the heights of that gigantic wheel and observing, “You know in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and blood-shed; but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock !” On our second night in Vienna we attended a concert that featured the works of Mozart and Strauss, with a little opera and ballet thrown in for good measure. For that night, I purchased a rumpled, London Fog overcoat in keeping with the disheveled appearance demanded by my code name. We made no contacts, but Pavlova was apparently reminded of her dancing past, as she shed her shoes on the way out and left the theater walking on the tips of her toes in a perfect exhibition of the pointe technique.

In Vienna, Gottweig, Passau, and Regensberg, we saw cathedrals that had elements of both Gothic and Baroque architecture, and three of them claimed to have the largest pipe organ in the world according to esoteric criteria of one sort or another. I thought I saw a potential contact in one such church, and I surreptitiously followed her beneath the high, vaulted ceilings, dramatic stained glass, and garish, gold decorations. When she slipped behind a large, ornate door, I thought I had her, but as I threw open the door I heard her say, “Segne mich, Vater, denn ich habe gesündigt,” (Bless me Father, for I have sinned), and I knew I had failed again.

In Passau, on the German/Austrian border, our tour guide moved so slowly, used so many rhetorical questions for which he expected answers, and spoke so long about mundane objects, I felt certain that he was speaking to us in code. At one point, we walked at a lazy pace down a narrow medieval alley, and he paused next to some plastic garbage cans. He said, “Zese are ze trash cans. Do you know what zay are used for?” After a long, awkward pause, someone in our group muttered, “Garbage?” He nodded and, in his slow monotone voice, said, “Ja, ja. Zay are used for ze trash, . . . und ze refuse, . . . und. . . . ja, even for ze garbage.” After many such thrilling and informative explanations, we realized he was not a spy, just a terrible tour guide. I tipped him five Euros anyway. In fact I handed out five Euro notes to everyone who came within arm’s distance of me, hoping it would lead to a contact with our Russian friends.

Near the middle of our cruise, we were losing hope of ever making a viable contact. As we sat in the ship’s lounge that afternoon, Trebek pulled out her needlepoint of an abstract Klimt pattern and began working on it. It was an effective tool for attracting curious people, and several stopped by to ask about it while I sipped my Maker’s Mark Manhattan. When I was drinking a Sapphire Gin and Tonic, Trebek even sewed her needlepoint to her skirt on purpose in an effort to project an image of ineptitude. I nursed an Ardberg Scotch and water while smiling at the memory of Trebek’s mother using that same gambit while on assignment in Poland in the late ‘80s. It was her needlepoint work that first attracted the attention of labor leader Lech Walesa, and, well . . . the Berlin Wall came down. Finally, a man named Cero approached Trebek with needlepoint questions and we made plans to eat dinner with him that night.

At dinner, our East European waiter suggested a full-bodied red wine called “Trilogie,” and I wondered if that was perhaps a veiled reference to my undercover trio. I casually glanced at his nametag and read, “Milorad.” A Russian name! Eureka, we had found our contact! Alas, an attempted conversation with him proved fruitless, as he spoke only limited English, and we were back to square one. Cero and his husband, Tom, joined us, and we had a dinner of good wine, excellent food, and even better conversation. They turned out to be former physicians, Cero from Brazil, Tom, from the US, and they are now retired in Portugal. After a similar dinner the next night, Tom slipped me a coded letter. It turned out that they were also CIA agents, sent to pull us out of Europe before we damaged international relations any further. I cannot reveal all of the contents of that letter, but they were particularly upset about our bar bill and the cost of my London Fog overcoat.

The next day we found ourselves on a flight from Munich to Chicago, defrocked spies, but harboring a shipload of fond memories. My only regret is that I never got the chance to turn around slowly, scratch my head while holding a dormant cigar, and say, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand . . .”

Killing My “Darlings”

As many of you are aware, I have been working on writing a novel for the past quarter century or so. I started this project back in the 1990s, blithely unaware of what it took to get a book into print. I started by writing a scene or a chapter during summer vacations, or spring and Christmas breaks while still teaching. I finished my first full draft of the novel in about 2015, and tried to learn the process involved with getting that manuscript polished and onto the shelves of bookstores. Or, to be closer to the truth in the internet age, onto a digital list somewhere in Amazon-Land. I have read dozens of books and internet articles over the years, and attended many conferences in order to pick up this esoteric knowledge. Today, I thought that I would explain a little about how that process works and some recent developments.

Set in 1969, the story involves a teenaged, Native-American girl who is the sole survivor of a reclusive tribe in Northern Wisconsin. She lives alone in the forest on her reservation until she is taken into the home of a corrupt Chicago lawyer as a foster child. The lawyer discovers that her land has ancient, old-growth pine trees that are 200 feet high and worth millions of dollars. He will stop at nothing to gain control over those woods and its valuable trees. The final confrontation takes place on the reservation, where the lawyer and his thugs fight a guerrilla war against the teen, two of her teachers, and an ex-con who is modeled after my Uncle Buddy. After many years of re-writing and editing, I think the book works well as a suspenseful crime story, and there is enough humor laced throughout to keep the reader interested.

As I said, I finished the book in 2015, but, at 420 pages, it was too long for a first novel. I have edited and rewritten the entire book over a dozen times since then and managed to whittle it down to about 310 pages. I had help in this, as several people read the entire manuscript and offered valuable suggestions. Kathleen, my wife, read the entire thing as I wrote it and took great pleasure in pointing out my grammatical errors. My brother Dan read it shortly after completion, and a teaching colleague, Peter Goodwin, was the first to really see the overall story arc and suggest changes that forced me to cut out large sections. Nobel Prize writer William Faulkner once wrote, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” The phrase has been quoted so often that it has become a cliché, but it is useful advice. Faulkner meant that writers must be willing to ruthlessly eliminate any words, characters, side plots or turns of phrase that we personally love but do nothing for the story. Finally, a friend since college, Bruce Radowicz, used his experiences as a police chief to help eliminate obvious flaws that pertained to laws, criminal behavior, and weapons. He also has a keen eye for continuity errors and other writing mistakes that slipped past me during my many rewrites.

Since 2015, I have also been trying without success to get the manuscript read by someone in the publishing industry. This effort has proven to be extremely difficult. You should first understand that publishing companies don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. Instead, they rely on professional literary agents to screen books before they agree to take a look at them. Agents are sometimes called the “gatekeepers” of the industry. “So,” I thought, “I’ll just hire an agent to work on my behalf.” I soon learned, however, that agents hire you much more than you hire them. You have to find one who works in your particular genre, get them interested in your book, and contract with them to present your work to a publisher. A good agent has a working relationship with the publishing houses and only presents books that they believe will be successful. Agents usually work for a percentage of the book’s profits (about 15%, which comes out of the author’s end), so they, too, are unlikely to waste their time on a book that will sell only a few hundred copies.

This has proven to be the most difficult part of my lengthy journey. You have to first get the attention of an agent with your one-page letter of introduction (called a “Query Letter”) which explains the book, why you chose that particular agent, who you are, and your target audience. I’ve written and rewritten my query letter scores of times. If you pique their interest, they ask for a writing sample. This has also been frustrating, because they only want to see the first chapter, the first page, or, sometimes, only the first sentence. If they are not interested after reading this brief sample, you are rejected. I have an entire computer folder dedicated to my emailed rejection letters (usually just impersonal form letters). At a writers conference, I heard a successful author explain that he once received a rejection letter 7 years after he had first sent his query; in the meantime, the book in question had risen to the top of the New York Times list of best-sellers.

The final problem with getting an agent to represent you is who they are demographically. Most of the agents I have met or with whom I have been in contact are young (25 to 30) and fresh out of college or grad school with a Masters of Fine Arts degree (MFA). Over 80% are female. They are trying to work their way up the chain so that they can become editors or be the ones selecting books for the publishers. Becoming an agent is sort of an entry-level position for the profession. Most of them say they are looking for fantasy stories (“Something like Game of Thrones”) or dystopian Young Adult (YA) novels (“I want the next Hunger Games”), or LBGT stories. I don’t write any of those. And there is a disconnect here. While there are breakthrough books like those from time to time, the type of novels which consistently appear on the best-selling lists of the past twenty years are romance novels or else crime thrillers by people such as James Patterson, Michael Connolly, Mary Higgins Clark, John Sandford, and Jonathon Kellerman. Those suspenseful crime novels are what I write. Yet these younger agents seem uninterested in such books. Still, I keep trying, feeling a bit like Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby when he says, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

On a more positive note, I have recently hired a professional editor so that I can give this manuscript one more shot. Searching for an editor was a bit like trying to find an agent. Again, they have to accept you and your book before they agree to take on the project of editing your book. I was delighted to find a well-known editor who agreed to work with me. She is Aja Pollock and has edited many books on the best-seller lists. She has edited auto-biographies of Bruce Springsteen, Amy Poehler, Cindy Lauper, and Dave Grohl (from Nirvana and the Foo Fighters). She has also worked with Ken Follett, Neil Gaiman, Mary Higgins Clark, James McBride, and Isabel Allende, among others. She is well-respected as a “story doctor” within the industry, and I am hoping this will help me improve the book enough to get it past the gatekeepers.

In the meantime, I have continued to work on several other books, including a historical murder mystery set in 1870s Chicago. This all keeps me busy, but I haven’t yet given up on the first novel. I’ll just keep beating on, against the current . . . Oh, wait; I already used that line.

The Price at the Pump

In recent months, we have been beset by one crisis after another. Covid, the attempt to overturn democracy at the nation’s capital, inflation, Putin’s attack on Ukraine, and now, rising oil prices. The last of these has been the most difficult to grasp, but it is clearly more complicated than simply a result of the war in Ukraine. Prices were rising before that invasion, and the U.S. only imports about 7% of our oil from Russia (after the recent sanctions, we now get no oil from them). Only an idiot would suggest that it is all Trump’s fault or all Biden’s fault, yet I have heard that reasoning from the left or the right, respectively. The question remains, if we don’t get oil from Russia, why are gas prices so high? The more complex explanation is “Market Forces,” but it also helps to look at the history of oil production and how that affects us even today.

Oil was first turned into a useful product in the mid-to-late 1800s. Even before automobiles and electricity, it was used for lubrication of machines and kerosene for lamps. John D. Rockefeller figured out that there was no real money in drilling for oil, as that end of the business was a crapshoot, and wells ran dry, as happened in our first oil fields in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Instead, he focused on the refining end of the industry, because all crude petroleum, regardless of where it came from, was useless until impurities were removed and it was turned into a finished product such as gasoline, grease, kerosene, diesel or jet fuel. Rockefeller bought out his rivals or forced them out of business with ruthless business practices that made him the hated symbol of Robber Baron rapaciousness in that era. By 1890, he controlled 90% of all of the refineries in the world.

In the early 1900s, oil was discovered in other places around the world, but production in Texas and Oklahoma topped the industry. Later, even huge oil fields in the Middle East and Indonesia were dominated by the West, especially the US, Great Britain (BP, or British Petroleum), and Holland (Shell Oil). With the advent of the family car and motorized militaries, the demand for gasoline skyrocketed. In fact, had the gas-starved Nazis conquered the USSR in WWII and taken over their oil fields, the war could have turned out very differently.

The big turning point in petroleum as a geopolitical factor came in 1960. Before that, gasoline was plentiful in the US and cheap. People my age can recall filling a gallon gas can for their lawnmowers for a quarter. The price fluctuated, but generally stayed between 25 and 35 cents a gallon for many years. We pumped as much oil from the ground as possible—until those supplies in Texas and other US states began to run out. Then we bought oil (at low prices) from other places around the world. In 1960, however, those other nations that produced oil grew tired of seeing all of the profits from their vast oil fields going to Western corporations. Five countries, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Venezuela created OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Other nations from the Middle East (ME), Africa, and South America later joined. Today, the 13 OPEC nations control 44% of the world’s oil production and 81% of its oil reserves.

OPEC did not really flex its muscles until 1973. In that year, war broke out between Israel and Egypt (known as the Yom Kippur or October War). Since the Six-Day War of 1967, the Soviet Union had supported Egypt in that continuing Middle Eastern conflict, and in response, it being the Cold War and all, the US automatically supported Israel. The Muslim, ME members of OPEC wanted to rid their region of the Jewish State of Israel, so they struck back at the US by issuing an Oil Embargo, in which they cut off all supplies of oil to the US. By this point, the US was heavily dependent on ME oil and a genuine oil crisis hit the country for the first time. The embargo soon ended, but OPEC exercised its newfound power by employing the basic principles of supply and demand to their favor. They controlled the amount of oil they produced each month by turning the spigots on or off. In that way, they could artificially raise or lower the price of gasoline when they wanted. Gasoline prices quadrupled overnight, to over a dollar a gallon. Plus, inflation hit us hard, because every product we consumed was transported by planes, trains, ships, and trucks that used some form of petroleum fuel. We experienced gas shortages at several times, and, for the first time, realized that our dependency on fossil fuels was a real problem.

Since the 1970s, gas prices have fluctuated with world events, ME conflicts, natural disasters such as Katrina in 2005, or just because of the whims of OPEC and their allies (of which Russia is one). Americans become concerned during times of high prices and purchase fuel-efficient cars, but as soon as the crisis passes, they go back to huge, gas guzzling SUVs and assume we will never run out of fossil fuels. My favorites are the massive pick-up trucks designed for heavy farm work, but which are purchased by suburbanites who apparently plan to haul a cruise ship over the Rocky Mountains. Car manufacturers have worked to make cars lighter and more fuel efficient, and the results have been good. Electric cars such as Tesla are here, but prohibitively expensive at the moment. A mid-sized, four-door auto in 1970 got fewer than 10 miles per gallon of gas. By 1990, that was up to 20 MPG. On our recent trip through 13 states, our 2018 Toyota Camry hybrid clocked in at 47 MPG.

The solution offered for high prices or shortages is always, “Drill, baby, drill.” The problem, of course, is transporting the oil once it is pumped from the ground. The Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989, the BP oil spill of 2010, and the numerous accidents involving pipelines from Alaska or Canada stand as cautionary tales involving permanent environmental damage. Fracking, or the practice of extracting oil that is trapped between layers of sediment is fraught with similar problems.

Back to that issue of supply and demand. When Covid hit in 2020, and people stayed at home rather than driving to work or vacations, demand for oil plummeted. OPEC countries, Russia, and American corporations all slashed production in order to keep prices high and protect profit margins. In the past year, though, we have had the greatest job increases in our history and the strongest economic growth since 1984. These factors, coupled with a pent-up desire for travel, have led to an increasing demand for oil. When Covid subsided and oil companies tried to ratchet production back up, however, they ran into the same problems that have plagued all other businesses and caused such sharp inflation: labor shortages and supply-line bottlenecks. The people and equipment they need simply are not available. Further, oil companies do not want to drill more. They are under pressure from Wall Street and stockholders to pay higher dividends, not spend money on drilling. Finally, the US companies have been closing refineries, rather than repairing or upgrading them, so there is less refining capacity than there used to be. This means that there has been high demand for oil, even before Russia was cut off, while supplies are low. In short, this is a recipe for high gasoline prices. And, of course, inflation in the prices of everything else is closely tied to fuel increases, since everything we eat, wear, drink, or otherwise consume gets to us in some form of transportation paying those higher gas prices.

All of this is by way of explaining that the owner of Swede’s Gas Station on the corner has little to say about the price you pay at the pump. Surprisingly, neither does Chevron, Shell, BP, or other corporate giants. Europe uses 60% of Russia’s oil, and China uses 20%. Most of the oil pumped from the ground in Russia may not come to the US, but it does affect the price of gasoline around the world. World commodity markets and the laws of supply and demand set oil prices based on a lot of complex factors. So, the next time someone next to you at the bar, or a dimwitted TV personality tells you that high prices for gas are the fault of one person or one political party, just shrug and say, “Oils well that ends well.”

Ukraine Crisis

This morning, I woke up to the expected news that the Russian megalomaniac, Vladimir Putin, has started the invasion of neighboring Ukraine. As a historian, this occurrence has brough ominous echoes of past events that shattered the world. It’s time for a little history lesson and a brief explanation of how this military action in Europe might affect us.

In 1935, Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy ordered the invasion of the African nation of Ethiopia without a declaration of war. As reasons for the invasion, his propaganda argued that Italy had a right to colonize Abyssinia, as Ethiopia was once known, because of their ancient cultural ties. By that, he meant that Abyssinia was once part of the Roman Empire, many hundreds of years earlier. The real reason was that Italy was struggling with economic problems and unemployment during the Great Depression, and Ethiopia had defeated Italy in an 1896 attempt to take over the African nation. Mussolini figured that a military invasion would provide jobs to Italians in the military and raw materials for his factories, and an easy victory would increase Italy’s military prestige and national pride. It was indeed an easy victory, as Italy used modern weapons, tanks, and airplanes against a country using spears, bows, and obsolete weapons left over from the 1896 conflict. Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, appeared before the League of Nations (the forerunner to the United Nations) begging for assistance. In an impassioned speech, he said, “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” Preoccupied with the Depression and wishing to avoid war at all costs, the U.S. and the other European powers did nothing. Italy, Japan, and Germany were emboldened by the lack of a response, and World War II drew inexorably closer.

Three years later, in 1938, Adolf Hitler, the Fascist dictator of Germany, invaded Austria, arguing that he was helping the Austrian people, who needed protection from rioters and wanted to become a part of the German Empire. This event became known as the Anschluss, or annexation. His propaganda cited the decades-earlier 1871 unification of German in which Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck had excluded Austria from the new nation of Germany. The real reason for the invasion was to provide jobs for the unemployed, raw materials for his factories, and to increase national pride and the prestige of the German military. He presented the annexation as Austria having “invited” him to take over, but, in fact, he had issued an ultimatum: allow Germany to take over or face a military attack. Once he had control, Hitler immediately rounded up all dissenters, Gypsies, and Jews, sending them to concentration camps. Eventually, the Holocaust was extended to Austria. The League of Nations, the U.S., and the European powers did nothing, thus encouraging Hitler and Japan to become more aggressive. Later that year, Hitler used the same arguments to annex a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. World War II drew inexorably closer.

In 2014, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin invaded and annexed a part of Ukraine called the Crimea. He argued that he was protecting those people and that the Crimean peninsula had belonged to the Russian Empire since the 1700s. Ukraine had been a part of the USSR, as Communist Russia was known from 1917 until 1991. It has been an separate nation since it broke away from the USSR in 1991. Putin has wanted it back since he first became president, and he has repeatedly said that he believes it is a part of Russia, not an independent nation. For the past few years, he prepared to invade the rest of the Ukraine, citing cultural ties dating back centuries. The reality is that Russia is struggling economically and a war would provide jobs for the unemployed, raw materials for his factories, and would increase national pride and help people forget their economic problems. This morning, he attacked more than a dozen places at once, including the capital city of Kyiv. Unlike the appeasement of the 1930s, the U.S. and President Biden have led efforts to unify opposition to Russia among European and NATO allies. Thus far, those efforts have been primarily in the form of economic and diplomatic sanctions, but that situation could change now that Russia has actually invaded.

What sort of a man is Putin? He was acting President of Russia from 1999-2000, then he served two terms as the democratically elected President from 2000-2008. The Russian constitution barred him from running for a third consecutive 4-year term, so he had himself appointed Prime Minister for 4 years in order to continue running the nation. Then came two more terms, now 6-years each, as President. In 2020, he changed the constitution so that he could succeed himself for two more 6-year terms, effectively making him President-for-Life. He has gradually removed all elements of the government that would qualify it as a democracy and established himself as a dictator in an increasingly authoritarian government. His lies and propaganda have returned Russia to a nation which cannot ever be believed. There have been many pro-democracy protests against him, but political opponents, protestors, journalists, and those calling for free elections have been jailed, intimidated and otherwise silenced. He has worked vigorously to repress LBGT groups and gays. Like Mussolini and Hitler, he has secretly organized well-trained paramilitary groups to quietly enforce his will.

Before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin was a long-time member of the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency. As such, his entire objective was to undermine the United States and weaken the primary opponent of the USSR. He has continued to pursue that objective as President. He has used computer technology to hack into financial institutions in the US to disrupt our economy. The US intelligence community discovered the extent of this hacking, reporting that Putin interfered in various ways with the 2016 election to help his friend Donald Trump get elected. In a famous Trump press conference in which he was questioned about this, the American president stated that he accepted Putin’s denials of such activity over our own CIA and intelligence reports, saying “He said he didn’t do it, and I believe him.” Like the weak-kneed politicians of the 1930s whose inaction allowed Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan grow stronger and bolder, Trump fawned over Putin’s every move while President.

It is clear that Trump admired the dictator’s power and wished that he, too, could have shut down the media and arrested those who spoke out against him. Just yesterday, while the democracies of the world lined up against Russia and their impending invasion of Ukraine, Trump referred to Putin as a “genius,” and once again expressed admiration for his military power. His former secretary of state Mike Pompeo recently called Putin “Very shrewd, very capable” adding, “I have enormous respect for him.” And the Trump mouthpiece on Fox, Tucker Carlson, indicated that he was rooting for Putin and that there was more to fear from the Democrats than Russia. History will deal harshly with Trump, Pompeo, Carlson, and others who support the sort of naked aggression exhibited by Putin. In the 1930s, such prominent Americans as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford expressed admiration for Hitler and conducted rallies in support of the Nazis—right up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Those men and others like them saw their reputations destroyed by that support. Those of you as old as I am will remember the furor that erupted when actress Jane Fonda was seen supporting the North Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War.

Why should we care about all of this? How will this war affect us? First of all, the entire world will feel the economic impact. An increase in inflation and gas prices is certain. These two things have been on the rise due to shortages and supply-line problems for some time now. Russia controls a significant share of the world’s oil. That supply line will stop flowing today, driving oil prices up considerably. The stock market, which always reacts badly to the uncertainty of a war, will take a huge hit and this downturn will not be a short-term thing. Putin has already begun using Russia’s hacking skills to disrupt Ukraine’s financial institutions. If, the US gets involved, Russia may turn those skills against our banks, the stock market, etc. This will cause more economic distress. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, our mutual-defense alliance, so the US will not be sending troops to fight there. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, however, are suddenly vulnerable and they are members of NATO. We will be sending military forces to beef up our defenses of them and other Eastern European allies. While we won’t be directly fighting in Ukraine, we will probably be aiding the people of that nation with supplies and weapons in a revival of the “surrogate wars” of the Cold War. Then there is the fear that China will take advantage of this war to invade Taiwan. Like Putin’s attitude toward Ukraine, China has always regarded the island nation as theirs, rather than the independent nation it has been since 1949. In short, this regional conflict could easily spread to military confrontations around the world. Of course, the concern for which no one dares speak is the fact that Russia is a major nuclear power. Should the war go badly for them, Putin is unstable enough to use them—and he won’t confine them to Ukraine.

When Joe Biden took office last January, he inherited the worst set of crises faced by any new President since FDR. Today, that situation grew worse by several magnitudes. Every other time in our history that the US was faced with a serious threat to our security, the American people have forgotten their differences and banded together. If that can happen once more, perhaps some good can come out of this dire situation.

Of Mice and Men

The best laid plans o’ mice an’ men go oft awry.

–Robert Burns, 1786

We’re in the depths of winter here in Wisconsin, and respite from the cold weather is proving hard to come by. The temperatures have been below zero on most days, with the wind-chill numbers dipping even lower. I’ve grown my winter beard, but my morning walks have been bracing, to say the least. Plus, every time we start to feel as if Covid is behind us, that deadly and shape-shifting virus rears its ugly head once again. The result has been that many of our plans for the winter have had to change.

Last Friday, I was supposed to attend a party hosted by my employers from Kilkarney Golf Club. They had come up with the creative idea of providing dinner and a different sort of entertainment at a bar in Stillwater, Minnesota, a short distance from here. The featured activity at this bar, called The Lumberjack, is axe throwing. Apparently, that is a real thing these days, although I’ve never done it myself. I was so excited about taking part in this unusual competition that I tried to figure out how to practice this esoteric art form. I had sold my axe when we moved from Nashville, so I was forced to practice with my chainsaw. I figured, they’re both used to cut down trees aren’t they? The neighbors became alarmed when they saw a whirring, sharp-toothed implement flying across my backyard, so I had to “cease and desist,” in the words of the court order. My stepson, Ben, a doctor, expressed dismay over the fact that I planned to attend, but I argued, “What could possibly be dangerous about being in a crowded bar with drunken 22-year-old people throwing axes?” Then I realized that he was talking about Covid, which has been rampant up here, so I had to bow out.

We’ve also received several pieces of bad news from friends. In December, our son-in-law, Kevin was told he needed quadruple bypass surgery because of heart problems. He had the operation in early January, and he and Kristin were unable to visit us during the holidays as we had originally planned. The good news is that he came out of it in good shape and is now mending well. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I learned that a friend of mine from Chicago had died. I had known Mort for forty years or so, and he was married to a good friend I’ve known for even longer. Mort was an interesting guy, and I always knew I was in for a fun evening when I saw him. He also was rather unconventional by modern standards. For many years, he refused to get a driver’s license. Where he lived, on the South Side of Chicago, public transportation was available and for years he could get along without driving. I think he finally caved and learned to drive, but he was probably into his forties when that occurred. He also rarely had a traditional sort of job. For a long time, he ran a sports book as his primary source of income, taking bets, setting odds and all of that. Later in life, he also bought a little neighborhood bar in the suburb of Burbank, where I lived during my high-school years. The sports-book endeavor was especially surprising since his brother-in-law was the chief of police of Burbank (and my college roommate). I was never sure how they worked all of that out. Mort was also a stubborn guy who refused to go to doctors. He had a painful knee ailment, but refused to ever have it looked at. That refusal might have been his ultimate downfall, though. He probably died from Covid, but still would not go to a doctor or hospital, so it was never officially diagnosed. Mort was a great guy and he will be missed.

The last piece of bad news reached us in a strange way. Our friend Mary was a teacher with Kathleen in the ‘70s. She served as a mentor for her and they remained Christmas-card friends for many years. About 18 years ago, we visited with Mary and her husband, Bill. Bill was a Cub fan and history teacher, like me, so we hit it off right away. Bill died in 2019, but we stayed in contact with Mary, and she sent me some of Bill’s Cubs memorabilia. In 2020, just before Covid hit, she invited us to use her winter home in Punta Gorda, Florida. Kathleen and I stayed there for a week and had a wonderful time. Last summer, we had a great dinner with her in her suburban Chicago home, catching up with an old friend. At that time, she offered us her Florida home for a full month and refused to take any money for our stay. We planned to go there for the month of February. That was Mary’s most striking characteristic—her kindness. She used to be a nun, and she was always generous with her time, money, and possessions. After Bill died, she thought about selling the Florida place, but decided to keep it, primarily so that she could lend it to her friends for a month at a time. This is a wonderful home, a short walk from a golf course and stores, with a screened back yard, complete with heated pool. She kept up the utilities, cable, maintenance, etc. just so her friends and relatives could enjoy the home when they wanted. As of last week, we still had not heard from Mary, nor had she replied to Kathleen’s Christmas letter. By way of the internet, Kathleen discovered that she had died in December. We knew she had cancer, but the surprising news still hit us both pretty hard.

Okay, this is the part where I display my shallow, self-centered personality. After hearing about Mary’s death, I had a brief George Costanza moment. In this scenario, I could picture me, in my George persona, showing up at Mary’s viewing and saying to the family, “You know, Mary said we could stay at her place for February. Do you think you could delay putting it on the market until March?”

Alas, even I am not capable of such a callous act, and we had to scramble to rearrange our February plans. Instead of our month in sunny Florida, we will remain in Wisconsin for most of the month. Our frozen winter will be broken only by a visit with Kathleen’s step-mother in Southern Illinois, followed by a trip to see Kristin and Kevin in Huntsville, Alabama. We still hope to go on a spring trip to Europe for a Viking cruise with Kristin and Kevin, but we’ll have to see if Covid will cooperate with those plans. As usual, Bobby Burns knew what he was talking about.

Yes, Virginia . . .

We believe what we’re told we’re supposed to believe,

We believe what we want, or we believe what we see.

–from my song, King of the Classroom

Christmas is right around the corner, and many parents are wrestling with the dilemma of what to tell their inquisitive children who are beginning to doubt the existence of Santa Claus. In 1897, an 8-year old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the New York Sun seeking a definitive answer to her question, “Is there a Santa Claus?” A reporter named Francis P. Church responded with a famous, uncredited editorial by saying, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.” It was a great seasonal sentiment, typical of the Victorian Age, and his response became the most reprinted editorial in history.

Our grandson Lucas, also 8 years old, is a sweet boy who will undoubtedly cling to his childhood beliefs for as long as possible. Last week, as he eagerly helped us hang ornaments on our tree, we explained that we bought each of the decorated items during our various travels, and each ornament carries special memories of a place we had visited together. He nodded and said sagely, “Yes; Christmas is the time for memories.” In contrast to Luke’s enthusiasm, his older sister Abigail, is reluctant to partake in anything that smacks of sentimentality. She developed a pronounced eye-roll about the time she started pre-school and probably gave up her belief in Santa, the tooth-fairy, and the Easter bunny around the same time. Abigail is 11, and already a strong skeptic on pretty much everything. I feel sorry for her Catholic-school teachers when they get to religion classes.

Meanwhile, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold in America. Since 2017, the “Birds Aren’t Real” movement has spread across the country. The essence of the theory is that all birds have been replaced by government-controlled drones for the purpose of spying on Americans. This spying, purportedly, all began as a CIA plot back in the 1970s, and the mechanical birds recharge themselves by resting on powerlines. In attempt to make people aware of this menace, information and the slogan “Birds Aren’t Real” have appeared on T-shirts, billboards in major cities, and on social media outlets such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The group has held well-attended protests when they burned a Cardinal flag beneath the St. Louis Arch and when they demanded that Twitter stop using a bird as their logo.

Before you start shouting, “I knew it!” and asking where you can learn more, I should tell you that it’s all an elaborate hoax. The movement is a parody of the various other theories into which people have bought over the past few years. The whole idea, begun by a disillusioned college drop-out named Peter McIndoe, is to poke fun at the numerous “Big Lies” currently circulating and see how many people will go for the bait. The “Big Lie” is a tactic used effectively by Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy, even before the spate of lies that proliferated over the past few years. Like those luminaries, the Birds Aren’t Real perpetrators made up a lie so preposterous that people laughed the first time they heard it. They told it so often, and with such conviction, however, that many people who lack the ability to think critically began to believe it. McIndoe came up with and elaborated on the idea after watching helplessly as people bought into incredible lies such as: Hillary Clinton controlled a child-sex ring, Barack Obama is not an actual American, vaccines of all sorts are dangerous, Biden stole the election from Trump (the latest polls show that 60% of Republicans actually believe this one), the January 6^th terrorists who tried to kill Mike Pence and end democracy were actually just tourists enjoying a stroll through the Capital, and Covid isn’t a serious problem, despite 800,000 deaths. If people will believe those things, he thought, they might even believe that birds aren’t real. It was, as a BAR organizer explained, “fighting lunacy with lunacy.”

Birds Aren’t Real today has many thousands of followers across the country. How many of those are true believers and how many are “in” on the joke is impossible to say, but McIndoe was always conscious of not going too far, lest the naïve minds who accepted those other lies actually buy into his. “Dealing in the world of misinformation for the past few years, we’ve been really conscious of the line we walk,” he said. “The idea is meant to be preposterous, but we make sure nothing we’re saying is too realistic.” Ultimately, he hoped that it would cause people to examine the conspiracy theories and beliefs to which they adhere.

This all reminds me of the old fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes. This folktale, which dates back to the 1300s, has a vain emperor falling for a scam presented by two con men. They sell him a magical suit of clothes that are supposed to be made of the most magnificent cloth in the world, but, they say, the cloth is invisible to those who are stupid. No one, including the emperor, wants to admit their lack of intelligence, so they all go along with the scam, pretending to see the wonderful cloth and even praising it. Finally, as the emperor marches in a grand parade to display his new clothes, a child yells out “He’s naked!” and they all realize what fools they’ve been. (The child was probably Abigail.) All, that is, except the arrogant emperor, who continues to walk proudly, head held high.

I guess McIndoe is hoping for the same sort of result. “Yes, we have been intentionally spreading misinformation for the past four years,” he said, “but it’s with a purpose. It’s about holding up a mirror to America in the internet age.” The ultimate message of Birds Aren’t Real is: If it sounds crazy, it probably is.

Eight-year-old Virginia, as all children eventually do, probably grew up, started to think critically about things, and gave up her belief in Santa Claus. Even the Bible (King James version, 1 Corinthians 13:11) says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” The “Yes, Virginia” editorial was perfect for its day and for a long time after that. Today, however, perhaps we need a new editorial, one with a little more truth, to combat the farcical nonsense in which many people believe. Today’s editorial should read something like, “Yes, Virginia, Trump lost the election by a wide margin, Barack Obama was born in the U.S., and vaccines will save your life and that of many others.”