Dr. Jack

The Taxman Cometh

Listen my children, and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere

Those words, of course, come to us from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem written in 1860. The poem commemorates the famous 1775 trip taken by a Boston silversmith, Revere, and another, lesser-known personage named William Dawes. They each rode over separate routes through the New England darkness to warn the people of Lexington and Concord that British troops would be marching out of Boston the following day to confiscate cannons and ammunition stored in a rural barn. Most people have never heard of Dawes, a man whose role in that historic ride was as important as that of Revere. One can only assume that Longfellow chose to write about Revere because his name lent itself to catchy rhymes better than the name of Dawes. After all, I doubt that millions of schoolchildren would have been forced to memorize the poem had it read:

Listen up kids, and hold your guffaws; here’s the story they tell about old William Dawes

Just doesn’t have the same resonance, does it?

Anyway, both men warned the countryside of the impending invasion, the minutemen were ready, and they drove the Brit troops back to Boston. After shots were exchanged and many British soldiers were killed, there was no turning back. Weeks later, when word finally crossed the ocean to the king, Parliament sent fifty-thousand troops to the colonies in America, and the Revolutionary War began in earnest. Although not an official national holiday, the third Monday in April (close to April 19^th, the date of the Battles of Lexington and Concord), has been celebrated (since 1894) in New England and other places as Patriot’s Day. This year, Patriot’s Day happens to fall exactly on the 19^th.

The date is always commemorated with speeches, a parade, a Red Sox baseball game in the morning, and the most famous footrace in America, the Boston Marathon. First run in 1897, the Boston race was the only marathon contested in the US outside of the Olympic Trials and the actual Olympic games until fairly late in the twentieth century. From its inception, the race was a national news story and was covered by media from across the country. Eight years ago, the race became an even larger story when a terrorist bombing killed three people and injured hundreds. After that frightening day, the fact that the Boston Marathon takes place on Patriot’s Day took on added significance.

For me, I always feel as if my personal Patriot’s Day takes place a few days earlier, on April 15^th. That is the day that our federal income taxes are due (this year, due to covid, we have a later deadline). Most people hate paying taxes and have trouble understanding how I can possibly celebrate the day in which we have to hand over money to the government. But hear me out.

I am not and have never been a member of the military. I don’t work for the government in any way. Therefore, I don’t have any tangible way to contribute to the continued greatness of my country, state, and local community—except by paying my taxes without complaint. I have always viewed paying taxes as a patriotic act. I don’t always agree with the way in which those collective funds are spent, but in general I see my taxes as a way to contribute to the greater good of the nation.

As I said, most people despise taxes. Even Ben Franklin, when asked about the potential success of the brand new Constitution, shrugged and said, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Over the past decade, the self-labeled “Tea Party” movement coalesced around several ideas, but the most prominent issue was opposition to taxes. Studies showed that these people were predominantly—but not exclusively—white, male, and wealthy. So this group, having enjoyed the benefits of this nation—having a strong military, national (although crumbling) infrastructure, access to a good education, a professional diplomatic corps that make international trade and a strong economy possible, and myriad other things paid for by taxes—opposed paying the taxes that made their privileged life possible. When we lived in Tennessee, a rural politician took this idea to extremes, legally changing his middle name from “Anthony” to “Low Tax” in order to attract voters who shared his animosity toward taxes. In 1998, Byron “Low Tax” Looper’s promising political career took a turn for the worse when he shot and killed his Democratic opponent. At the time, he was under indictment for 14 counts of theft and other forms of political corruption, so he might not have won anyway.

Like anything else in life, you get what you pay for. In Tennessee, we had no state income tax and paid incredibly low property taxes. The result was public schools that were abysmal, and wealthy people all sent their kids to private schools rather than pay for decent schools for the poor. Here in Wisconsin, we have relatively high state income taxes and pay property taxes that are 2 ½ times higher than what we paid in Tennessee. The public schools in River Falls, however, are very good and have excellent facilities in all areas.

Of course, as many people will point out, taxes are not always levied fairly. There is no question that the wealthy and corporations pay less than their fair share. This fact was driven home to me during the 2012 election when the presidential candidates revealed their recent tax statements (as have all candidates in past half-century except Donald Trump). Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate and a man for whom I have some respect, made $42.5M in 2010, but paid only 13.9% of that as tax. That same year, I made about $50,000, but paid over 20% in taxes. As a result, after taxes, Mitt had to struggle to make ends meet with only $36 million, while I was left with about $40,000. As this personal example shows, the tax system, an incredibly complex animal, has been backloaded with so many loopholes that many of the wealthiest people in the country pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. As we have recently learned, the more unscrupulous among the rich (E.G.: Trump) pay virtually zero taxes while claiming to have billionaire status. I don’t care what party you support, this is flat-out wrong.

It is not just wealthy individuals who have benefitted from friendly tax laws over the years. Corporations, too, have seen their tax rates go steadily down for the past forty years. During 1950s and 1960s, a period of unparalleled US economic growth and unchallenged dominance in world trade, those rates fluctuated within a narrow range between about 48% and 53%. Our economy was rocking and rolling in those years, so no one could possibly argue that the high tax rates hurt corporations in any significant way. Even in the 1980s, rates hovered in the mid-40s until the Reagan corporate tax cuts began a downward trend that continued under the two Bush presidents and Bill Clinton. Still, those rates were in the mid-30% range for that entire period. In 2017, however, Trump rewarded his corporate buddies by dropping the rate from 35% to a historic low of 21%, where it remains today. The drop from the 1980s until now resulted in small, incremental economic growth, but massive profits for corporations—in short, tax cuts did what they were designed to do: they made corporations and the rich much richer while the middle class and the poor enjoyed only modest gains or fell further behind.

Now President Biden wants to raise those modest corporate tax rates gradually, from 21% to 28% over a number of years, in order to pay for the desperately needed infrastructure improvements. Conservatives are screaming that this rate hike will destroy our economy, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this would be the case.

It’s time for corporations to quit whining and do what I do every year at tax time: look at it as a patriotic act, pay your fair share of the taxes, and whistle a chorus of I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy as you sign the forms.

Vegas Vacation

The weather has finally warmed up a bit, and Kathleen and I have begun engaging in some time-honored spring rituals. March Madness is upon us and Opening Day of baseball season is around the corner, but first, we took a trip to Las Vegas and challenged Dame Fortune in various games of chance.

“Austerity Month” in February was successful by any measurement. I didn’t have so much as a beer for over 30 days, we restrained ourselves from extra spending, and I lost five pounds. In short, we were rested and ready for March decadence to roll around. First came a surprise: in the first few days of the month, the temperatures rose into the 40s. My employers at the Kilkarney Golf Club decided, “Warm enough,” and opened the course. Thus, on March 12^th, I found myself behind the bar and the front counter in the pro shop, and the course was open for business. As I drove up the tree-lined driveway to the clubhouse that afternoon, I was met by a curious sight. Snow still covered the ground in shaded places on every hole, yet carts were lined up on each tee box. These Wisconsin golfers are hardy sorts, and a little snow doesn’t stop them from getting in a few holes.

Coinciding with the opening of golf season was our annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas. Luckily, we had had both vaccinations and waited the requisite two weeks in time to fly out on March 14^th. Ben and Amber had kept the kids out of school since last spring, largely to protect us, so once we were safe, Abigail and Lucas went back to live classes and we were able to leave town. For the first time in a year, we ate dinner in the same room with the two doctors and their kids and hugged them all when we left. It was a fun night. Kathleen was finally able to go to a stylist and have her wild mane of Covid hair trimmed back to a more-manageable length. Men are often ridiculed for not noticing some subtle change of hair-style by their wives, but I have to tell you that it works both ways. I shaved off my winter beard a few days before heading to Vegas, but Kathleen never mentioned it. Then, two days later, while watching a Florida basketball game, she said, “It looks like the Gator coach shaved off his beard.” I said, “Oh, so you notice his beard is gone, but don’t notice mine?” She got a good laugh out of that. At least that buys me a “get out of jail free” card for observational omissions in the future.

Among other adjustments to Covid, we tended to confine our shopping to local stores and avoided driving into Minneapolis. Acting on a tip from friends in our happy-hour group, we discovered that the local wine available at Aldi’s discount store, Winking Owl, was a tolerable vintage, just right for our sophisticated palettes—and it sold for an inviting $2.95 per bottle. We have never been connoisseurs of any sort, so we decided this was fine stuff. During our long confinement, Winking Owl became our drink of choice. Then, on the 14^th, we arrived at the airport early, checked in, and ordered a glass of wine. Surprisingly, Winking Owl was not available on the bill of fare, so we opted for the house chardonnay. When we received the bill, we suffered a degree of sticker shock, as the price for two small glasses of wine was $30. The $6 tip brought the total to $36, prompting Kathleen to point out, “Do you realize, we could have bought an entire case of Winking Owl for that price?” Welcome back to the outside world.

We have visited Las Vegas nearly once a year since we got married, usually during my spring break in March, and we have had some memorable experiences in that unusual city. About a decade ago, we stayed at Sam’s Town Casino, well off the Strip. Sam’s Town markets itself as a casino for locals. Thus, in addition to the usual gaming and restaurants, they have a multi-screen theater and a big bowling alley. As soon as we arrived, we noticed that an inordinate number of patrons seemed to have purple hair, arms full of tattoos, and multiple facial piercings. Also, the music being piped into the casino was unusually harsh and abrasive. I finally asked a blackjack dealer what was going on, and it turned out that we were just in time for the annual “Punk-Rock Bowling Tournament.” These folks were terrible blackjack players but a lot of fun to play with. While trying to return to our room late at night, Kathleen was a bit unsure of what to do when we found one on these rascals sprawled out on the hallway floor . She’s a trooper, though, and she followed my lead by gingerly stepping over the snoring punk rocker.

Another year, I sat down at third base on what I thought was an empty blackjack table. Only when the dealer was exchanging my cash for chips did I notice that there was a guy in a wheel chair hidden at the opposite end of the table, at first base. As the dealer distributed the cards, the man in the wheel chair leaned closer to the table and peaked over the edge to see his hand. We played that way for a while, then a woman with tubes in her nose came wheezing up to the table pulling her wheeled oxygen tank behind her. She sat down and joined the party, cigarette dangling from her mouth the entire time. While I was still adjusting to the bizarre nature of our little group, another guy pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. He seemed normal enough, and he helped another man squeeze into the last remaining chair. I was concentrating on my cards, trying not to get distracted from an approximate count of the deck, so I didn’t notice at first that the second man was blind; the first man wasn’t actually playing, he was simply reading the cards to the blind guy. By this point, I had the feeling that I was in a Fellini film of some sort, and I examined the table for a place-card stating that this was perhaps a special table for handicapped people. Then, I took stock of my various limbs to see if there was something wrong with me. It took some getting used to, but I ended up having a big time with my new friends.

This year, as Kathleen and I escaped the confinement of our home, we weren’t sure what the outside world would be like. In the airport and on the plane, they seemed to enforce masking restrictions, but both were so crowded that we would not have felt safe had we not been inoculated. Vegas was very different and went to great lengths to make people feel safe. Some casinos required a quick temperature check at each entrance, masks were required throughout all properties, and employees constantly reminded patrons to keep their masks up when not eating or drinking. The gaming tables were all separated by plexiglass dividers so that there was a level of protection while throwing dice or playing cards. I have to admit, though, that the plastic dividers caused me to lose some of the sense of camaraderie that I usually enjoy at the tables.

Vegas has changed in other ways, too. Primarily, it has become much more expensive. We seldom have to pay for rooms or food while in Las Vegas due to comps that we receive from gambling. These days, however, the casinos tack on “resort fees” of $40-50 per night, so even a “free” room can cost considerable money over a multi-day stay. Also, they have become stingier with their comped meals, meaning that we had to pay for food as well. Further, the days of the cheap buffet meals in Vegas are gone. Just three years ago, we could find a good buffet at our casino of choice, Palace Station, for $5.99. After an expensive remodeling project, however, this off-strip property now sees itself as a premier destination and has jacked up the prices of everything. Buffets now range from $15.99 to $28.99, depending on the meal and the offerings, and the other cheap food options on the site have closed and been replaced by high-dollar restaurants. What affected us the most, however, was the higher price of gambling.

I should preface the prior statement by stressing that we are not exactly “high-rollers.” I used to be able to joke that Kathleen could make a twenty-dollar bill last all day while I played at the tables. In recent years, though, the cheap slot machines that she could formerly play for 9-to-20 cents per spin have been removed and replaced by ones requiring 60 or 75 cents per spin. On my part, I started playing blackjack and craps back when two-and-three-dollar minimum-bet tables were prevalent. Even on our last trip to Palace Station two years ago, I played many sessions at a $5-minimum craps table and won over $1800. When I play craps, I might have four or five bets out at a time at the minimum level, but I increase my bets when the dice get hot and I’m playing with house money. I looked forward to returning to the tables this trip, but, to my consternation, the minimums had all been tripled to $15 per bet. I don’t have deep enough pockets to play at those stakes. Often, a casino will lower the minimums during slow periods to lure gamblers to the tables. Not this time. Even at 6:00 in the morning, the tables sat empty, a four-person crew standing idle, with the $15-minimum sign still up. When we moved to Bally’s on the strip for our last two days, the same was true except for one morning at dawn when they lowered the stakes to $10. I played briefly without success, but otherwise was unable to shoot craps for the entire trip. Our formerly cheap vacation option seems to have disappeared, and we have decided that we probably will not return to Vegas—there are plenty of more-affordable, Native American casinos available in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The upshot of all of this is that our first foray into the outside world resulted in a financial loss, but a great deal of fun for us. We even made some small sports bets on basketball, the Masters, and baseball, so we have something to cheer for in the future. More important, it felt liberating to be out of the house and traveling again. There are still a lot of idiots out there who will refuse to get the vaccinations, but for us, the past few weeks have signaled the start of a return to normality in safe conditions. I hope that all of you will be able to get the shots and enjoy that feeling soon.

Fathers and Baseball

These are the greatest of possible words, “pitchers and catchers report.”

Everyone has their own way of determining the end of the long winter. For some, the first sighting of the red-breasted robin serves as a harbinger of spring. Some rely on a Pennsylvania-based hedgehog and the likelihood of the overgrown rodent seeing his own shadow. Others, antagonistic to the idea of a farcical hibernal ritual to determine seasonal transition, use scientific data such as rising temperatures as a guide. For me, the onset of spring begins with the words, “pitchers and catchers report to spring training camp.”

The line of iambic pentameter at the top of this page is actually mine, but I’m paraphrasing the 1910 poem by Franklin Pierce Adams, written about the early Chicago Cubs’ double-play combination, “Tinker, to Evers, to Chance.” I’m celebrating the fact that on Wednesday, February 17, spring training for the major leagues officially began. Every February, even as a little kid, I would look forward to reading those words in the newspapers. For me, the phrase “pitchers and catchers report” indicated winter was drawing to a close, baseball had begun, and spring was on its way. It’s difficult to think about spring during this week of record cold, snow, and ice, but, for me, those words always conjure up images of baseball—and my dad.

My dad also loved baseball, and he encouraged my ill-fated affection for the Chicago Cubs from an early age. Later, in my more rebellious years, it was like the Daniel Stern character in the film City Slickers said, “Back when my dad and I couldn’t communicate about anything at all, we could still talk about baseball.” In my mind, baseball and memories about my father will always be inextricably intertwined.

As far back as I can remember, I was a Cub fan. The first season I clearly recall was 1962, the year in which a 21-year-old Cub player, Kennie Hubbs, won the Rookie of the Year award. I related to Hubbs, because I, too, was a “good-field-no-hit,” middle-infielder. In fact, I hit a robust .163 for my Little League team that season. On those rare occasions when I managed to get on base, however, I was fast enough to steal my way around to third. My manager, knowing that my only realistic chance of reaching base was if I walked, would send me to the plate with the encouraging words, “Henderson, if you take that bat off your shoulder, I’ll break your arm.” The era of promoting self-esteem in children had not yet arrived in Chicago.

Nor had it affected Southern Illinois, if Kathleen’s father was any indication. When we began dating in the 1980s, we were watching her daughter Kristin’s team play a game in Carbondale. These were tiny little kids playing at a level that was not much above T-ball. If a miracle occurred, and a girl managed to hit the ball, the fielders had no idea what to do with it when they picked it up. Also sitting with us was her dad, Raymond McCormick, a former Marine who had fought at Iwo Jima. He had played baseball for years and managed championship American Legion teams. He knew the game well, and, where fundamentals were concerned, he apparently cut no slack for his grand-daughter or other ten-year-old girls. In this particular game, with a runner on first, a girl hit the ball to Kristin at shortstop. She scooped up the ball, and, wonder of wonders, threw to first in time to get the runner hustling down the line. The stands erupted in cheers, those parents never before having seen a play executed correctly. In the midst of this wild celebration, however, Raymond shook his head in disapproval and pointed toward the infield. “The play was at second,” he told me gravely, as if those girls were certain to turn the double-play had they simply thrown to the correct base. I just nodded in response.

My father was from that same generation as Raymond. They weren’t big on praising children, being more concerned that their kids would “get a big head” than boosting self-esteem. That is not to say that my dad wouldn’t stand up for us when we had been wronged. One 4^th of July Little League game stands out in my mind. It was a hot day, and the game had dragged on for hours. It was a typical kids game in many respects. Our pitcher had a no-hitter going, although he had walked about 14 batters. Meanwhile, my team had racked up twenty or so runs, largely through a combination of errors and walks. Late in that 20-to-nothing game, my manager scanned the bench to see who he could send in to hit at that crucial moment. He pointed at me and told me to grab a bat. As I eagerly headed to the plate, he yelled, “Henderson! If you . . .”

I rolled my eyes and said, “I know: if I take the bat off my shoulder you’ll break my arm.” I stepped into the box and banged the bat against my tennis shoes as I had seen Ernie Banks do many times. My family was in the stands that day, so, despite the admonition from my manager, I was determined to swing if the pitch was anywhere near the plate. The first pitch bounced in the dirt, two feet in front of the plate. I held off. “Strike!” the umpire barked. I was confused, but I dug in again. The second pitch almost hit me in the hip, but I deftly avoided the ball with a maneuver that would have made a Spanish matador proud. “Strike two!” I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I understood the cardinal rule of baseball that says you should never argue with the ump about balls and strikes. Behind in the count, and feeling a bit like Casey from the famous poem, I grew more determined than ever. The third pitch came in, well over my head, and I coolly let it sail by. “Strike three!” the umpire called, with a little more enthusiasm than I thought the situation merited. I trudged back to the bench with tears streaming down my face. I wasn’t upset about striking out—that had happened a lot; it was because of the injustice of being called out on three pitches that were clearly out of the strike zone.

I was embarrassed about my performance as I headed back to the car to meet my family. That’s when I saw my dad. He had the umpire pinned against the cinderblock wall behind the dugout. My dad was a big guy with a long history of barroom brawls, so the umpire, with fear in his eyes, was listening attentively to what he had to say. Despite his aura of menace, my dad spoke calmly and distinctly. He said, essentially, “Sir, I understand that it was exceedingly warm behind the plate, it was a one-sided game, and you would like very much to get home to your family. But these lads are trying to learn which pitches are strikes and which are balls, and your calling every pitch a strike, regardless of its proximity to the strike zone, could prove deleterious to a young man’s fledgling batting eye.” My memory might be somewhat faulty, so his words were probably put more crudely, and perhaps punctuated by profanity and other colorful terms, but he got his point across. The umpire, apologized profusely before sprinting to his car when my dad released him.

There was one other instance in which my father intervened on our behalf in a baseball-related situation. My house in Chicago was on a barely paved street directly across from a cemetery. In the wide gap between the cemetery fence and the street was a double set of railroad tracks and a narrow strip of grass perhaps fifty feet wide that led to a small embankment on which the tracks sat. That strip of grass stretched for the entire block and served as the neighborhood playground for football, baseball, and hockey, as well as for games of “Cowboys and Indians” or “Army.” One spring, we noticed that our next-door neighbors, the Boggio family, was occupied for an entire morning, doing something to the grass across the street from their house. When they finished their task, we discovered to our horror that they had planted a flower garden smack in the middle of our multi-purpose field. They had set up neat lines of brightly colored flowers accented by a dozen or so bushes that would eventually grow into a solid hedge surrounding the garden on three sides. The problem, of course, was that it was directly behind second base of our baseball diamond. We didn’t know what to do, so we waited anxiously for my dad to get home from work. In those days, we had five kids (two more would come later), and dad had to work two jobs to feed us all. Several times a week, he returned from his factory job about 4:30, showered, shaved, and changed clothes before heading out for another eight hours of tending bar. The only opportunity we had to talk to him was the five minutes while he was shaving. My brother Dan and I saw our opening and briefed him on the critical situation:

“Dad! Mr. Boggio built a garden in our baseball field!”

“I saw it.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But, we’ll have to walk a mile to the park just to play baseball.”

He stopped shaving, turned to us, and said, in a voice that indicated the conversation was over, “Don’t worry about it.” We walked away dejected, feeling as if he had let us down.

The next day, a Saturday, we woke up to an amazing sight. Overnight, something had happened to Mr. Boggio’s garden. It looked as if King Kong had ravaged the area, leaving flowers and hedges uprooted and scattered in all directions; some greenery was even stuck high in the barbed wire atop the cemetery fence. There was nothing left of the garden but an area of black dirt where plants had once grown. Before we could ask our parents what had happened, we heard a knock on the front door. My dad answered it, and we could hear Mr. Boggio’s voice, but we couldn’t make out the words. My dad, in a voice oozing with Eddie Haskell-like sincerity, replied, “Gee, I don’t know anything about your garden.” Mr. Boggio spoke again, and my dad said, in a much louder voice, “I told you I don’t know anything!” and slammed the door. He calmly walked past us, sat down and returned to his coffee and morning newspaper. As Dan and I added two and two together, we could hear my dad chuckling behind the newspaper he held up in front of his face.

He never told us what happened, but we assumed that he returned from the bar about two in the morning, after having imbibed several cocktails in the course of the evening, saw the flowers shining in the streetlights, and took care of the problem with great energy and no small amount of flair. We aren’t certain of this, but, knowing my dad the way we do, it seems the most likely scenario. Regardless of the true story, we had our field back, and the garden never re-appeared.

When my dad was too young to really remember, the Cubs won the National League pennant every three years, in 1929, 1932, 1935, and 1938, losing in the World Series each time. Then, when he was 17 and stationed on Guam with the Navy in 1945, they won again, so he missed the World Series (which they lost). He told us that he wrote his brother, “Oh well; I’ll catch them the next time they’re in the Series.” Of course, that “next time” never occurred in his lifetime. He died seven years before the glorious World Series of 2016 when the Cubs finally won it all for the first time since 1908. I thought about him a lot that season.

In fact, that year, I probably started thinking about him in February, when I heard the words, “pitchers and catchers report.”

Song for a Winter’s Night

When you live in Wisconsin, as we do, February is the longest month of the year, despite having only 28 days. It snows at least once a week, the white piles mount higher and higher along the streets and parking lots, and temperatures hover near zero or lower. When you mix in the Covid isolation and our self-imposed austerity (dieting, no drinking or excess spending), it’s a concoction that could be terribly depressing. The urge to get out of the house and do something to fend off cabin fever can become overwhelming, so every day, I set out for a long walk. These solitary excursions remind me that there is beauty in the winter landscape, and that life goes on beneath the gelid surface.

Yesterday, I woke up at 4:30 and checked the online weather page for River Falls. I don’t like to do this, but it’s apparently some sort of requirement in Wisconsin. The same way that other people my age check the obits every morning to see if they’re listed there, each day, people in Wisconsin check the temperature and the snow forecast. They read about the projected snowfall or plummeting temperatures and smile and nod with a strange sort of pride, saying “Ah, yeah; it’s gonna be brutal.”

I usually wait until it gets light and warms up a bit before heading out for a long walk of an hour or more. On Monday, when I woke up, it was 12-below with a wind chill factor of about 20-below. Later, I drove downtown to get some variety in my walk, and when I passed the bank on Main Street, the clock read 8:30 and 8-below zero. By the time I had walked completely around the college campus and returned to my car, though, the sun was warming things up, and the temperature was up to 6-below. The sunshine is bright, giving the illusion of warmth, and it feels great to be outside.

Everyone tells me that it’s been a mild year in terms of snowfall, but there’s well over a foot of the white stuff in the yards, and the plows have pushed it into massive piles that are taller than I am. I hated snow when I lived in Chicago, largely because it turned black and depressing within a day or two. Because of the light traffic and more-frequent snowfalls, though, that doesn’t usually happen here. In fact, this week, a quarter-inch to an inch of snow fell each night, like a fresh coat of paint on a dingy wall. It wasn’t enough to require shoveling, but just enough to make it pretty again. The snow on the streets is packed down and slick, but everywhere else, it’s beautiful and white. In fact, last month, we had a full week of an incredible phenomenon that I had never seen before. It’s called “Rime Ice,” and it’s a special situation where weather conditions create lots of fog, but at night the fog freezes into a crystalline state on everything. The result (see picture above), is a fantastic display of nature at its most beautiful, with ice shining like diamonds on the streets, on top of the snow, and on the branches of trees and bushes.

The weather is cold, but I’m better prepared for my second winter in Wisconsin. My most frequent online purchases have been from Eddie Bauer and L. L. Bean, so I now have good boots and a light-weight coat that claims it will keep me warm in temperatures down to 35-below. I don’t plan on testing that lower extreme, but it’s comforting to know that I could. The boots make it difficult to run, but I walk fast, and they don’t hinder me in that regard. I’ve grown a winter beard, which is also required by law in Wisconsin, so the only part of me that is cold is my pink cheeks above the white beard. I picture myself as a thinner version of Santa Claus as I roll through town. On the coldest days, my tears freeze on my eyelashes, and the condensation from my breath forms little balls of ice on my beard.

On my walk today, I saw one scene that reminded me of a Currier and Ives print from the 1800s. Near the downtown area, a mail-delivery girl, in sunglasses because of the bright sun, was high-stepping her way through the deep snow, trying to reach the mailbox on one particular house. In River Falls, the older sections of town still have boxes attached next to the front doors, and the mail-persons deliver it right to the door. I felt bad that the owners had not shoveled the walk leading to their mailbox, but despite the snow and her heavy load, she had a big smile and greeted me cheerfully. Another great moment occurred a few days ago when we attempted to pick up the kids for a home-school session at our house. A heavy snow and underlying ice made it difficult for Kathleen to get up Ben’s fairly steep driveway. She was stuck halfway in the driveway and halfway in the street. I was frantically trying to shovel the drive and get some salt down because a snow plow was bearing down on us from a block away. Instead of being angry at us for blocking his way, the driver stopped, got out with a big smile, and asked if he could help us. If that same situation had occurred in Chicago, we would have been buried in a shower of snow while the driver flipped us off and sped past. I love River Falls.

One day, I chose the more difficult route along the foot paths that follow the Kinnickinnic River. The river and its South Branch are frozen over, with solid white portions of the surface broken up by shiny sections that look like glass. If you look closely, you can see beneath the surface where the water continues to bubble and move downstream, toward the St. Croix River, seven miles away. Similarly, I saw no animals, but tracks were visible everywhere in the fresh snow, mostly deer, rabbits, and squirrels, with the occasional large paw prints of some critter I hope to avoid. A large tree, which I had noticed weeks ago, now lies parallel to the ground, a victim of the local beavers. The trunk is over a foot in diameter, and I noticed it earlier because you could see that the felling work had begun, with busy teeth cutting a deep vee uniformly around the trunk. Those relentless efforts were eventually rewarded, and the tree came down. Smaller trees in the area have also been chewed down. I edged to the bank of the river, but could see no lodge or dam under construction. Perhaps dam-building is a springtime endeavor. The nearby Powell Dam, about which I had written earlier, is still open, and Lake Louise remains drained. The city recently said that the dam may never be repaired, as the $100,000 cost to fix a dam that they are planning to take down in a few years anyway seems senseless. I was amused by the irony of one dam being scheduled for demolition, while, a quarter-mile downstream, the beavers are preparing to build another.

I paused to contemplate the fact that, beneath the surface, there are probably many animals in hibernation for the winter. This is a fascinating annual condition for many creatures, wherein their cardiovascular systems slow down dramatically, enabling them to conserve energy during times of extreme cold and a lack of food sources. Tree frogs, the greatest hibernators of them all, actually stop breathing and pumping blood completely during the winter. As I walk along the river, I contemplate the possibility that box turtles, bats, birds, and hedgehogs, cousins of the famous Punxsutawney Phil from Pennsylvania, could be hibernating within a few feet of me. A bit more unnerving is the thought that there could be a nest of hundreds, or even thousands, of garter snakes, hibernating and curled together for warmth, in a nest beneath my feet.

I guess the theme here is that while, to all outward appearances, everything is quiet and dormant, there’s a lot going on if you take the time to look closely. Also, despite the snow, ice, and frigid temperatures, this is a beautiful place to call home.

I just read the forecast for tomorrow, and a weather advisory warns that the wind-chill factor will dip down to 50-below zero. Perhaps my new coat will be fully tested after all.

I leave you with a short video. The school at which I taught, Harpeth Hall, has a special program called Winterim in January. For three weeks, the juniors and seniors travel to Europe or other exotic locales, or they serve internships of one sort or another. Meanwhile, the freshmen and sophomores take unique, brief courses that are only taught at that time. I always enjoyed Winterim, because I could teach anything I wanted for those three weeks. Among other courses I created was one I team taught with an irrepressible colleague, Joe Croker. We called it “Songwriting for Guitar,” and we took ten novice musicians and tried to teach them how to play guitar and compose their own songs in just three weeks. In 1999, my second year of teaching that class, we had a remarkable group of freshmen. At the end of the class, we recorded some of the songs they wrote and some cover versions of other songs. I recently found that CD and, this week, I made a film to accompany a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s Song for a Winter’s Night. The four girls were all 14-year-old freshmen, most of whom had never sung in front of others or played guitar before that class. I was amazed at the sophisticated harmonies they worked out for this wonderful song. Enjoy.

Song for a Winter’s Night

A Delicate Balance

I received a question from a friend recently as a comment to a previous blog. It was a good question, and it deserved a longer answer than a simple reply in the comments section. The question was:

“I respect your insight, just wondering what you think of all these executive orders, especially the XL pipeline that cost thousands of union jobs? Another one that really bothers me is boys in girls sports! I know you were a coach, what are your thoughts on this?”

Political questions are always more complicated than we would like. These are not simple yes-or-no, thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down issues. Among my favorite poems is one written by Stephen Crane about 120 years ago:

When the prophet, a complacent fat man, Arrived at the mountain top, He cried, “Woe to my knowledge! I intended to see good white lands and bad black lands—But the scene is grey.”

That’s what we have to understand; there are no black-and-white answers to these issues. We may not like it, but the solutions are often grey. This stark reality might make us uncomfortable, but we have to accept the fact that this complex, modern world requires solutions that satisfy no one completely, but are the product of compromises that seek the middle ground.

Okay. Simply put, Executive Orders (EO) are directives by the President that help manage the federal government. This basic description has received a wide range of interpretations by different leaders over the years, leading to a diverse variety of these directives, some of them controversial. There have been over 13,000 of these since the days of George Washington, and every president except William Henry Harrison (who died a short time after his inauguration) has signed at least one. The most famous EO is Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which freed the slaves held by rebellious states. Some of these directives have been challenged in court and overturned by the Supreme Court. In fact, Lincoln was so doubtful about the constitutionality of his Proclamation, that he immediately started the ball rolling on an amendment to the Constitution that would permanently outlaw slavery. This, of course, became the 13^th Amendment in 1865. FDR signed the highest number of these things, but that makes sense, as he was elected four times and dealt with crises such as the Great Depression and World War II that required immediate action, without congressional delays. Many EOs, especially when the presidency changed hands, have been used to reverse the EOs of previous presidents from the opposition party. Thus, the flurry of Executive Orders we have seen in recent days, is slightly unusual, but not dramatically so. As of today, President Biden has signed 42 of these orders, about half of which deal with the Coronavirus and the economic fallout that resulted. This health disaster is worse than any situation inherited by an incoming president since FDR, and thus qualifies as a legitimate crisis. Another handful of the new orders reversed policies established by Trump, who, in turn, used EOs to reverse policies established by Obama. In the immortal words of Sonny Bono, “and the beat goes on.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a complex issue that has been the subject of political wrangling, protests, lawsuits, and heated debate since at least 2008. Without going into excruciating detail, the 1200-mile pipeline would carry crude oil from Canada, where it is pumped from the ground, to Nebraska, where it would join another pipeline that would take the crude oil to the refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. A Canadian company, Trans-Canada Energy, would be the main beneficiary from this project, but British, Dutch, and American oil corporations would also share in the profits. Right wing tweeters, such as that intellectual giant Ted Nugent, have claimed that as many as 28,000 to 83,000 jobs will be lost. The truth is, that 1,000 jobs will be lost now, and a potential 10,000 more temporary jobs building the pipeline will be lost down the road. These are good, well-paying jobs, but they are temporary, lasting only until the pipeline is completed.

On the other hand, the pipeline presents a genuine threat to the environment on a huge scale. This is not just a matter of a small leak killing a few birds or animals, as it is often portrayed. At issue is an underground reservoir called the Ogallala Aquafer, over which the pipeline would run. This is a massive water table that stretches under eight states from South Dakota to Texas. I happen to be reading a novel right now that is set in the Texas Panhandle (That Old Ace in the Hole, by Annie Proulx), so I have only recently become aware of this water source and its importance to people of the Great Plains. Over 2.3 million people depend on this supply for all of their water needs. More important, each year, $20 Billion worth of agriculture, livestock, and ranching products are dependent on the water that is pumped from the Ogallala. Experts believe that a pipeline leak that contaminated the aquafer is a question of “when” rather than “if.” Many leaks of such pipelines involve millions of gallons of crude oil. Even a small leak could make that entire body of water unusable for human or agricultural needs. If that arid region was deprived of water, the livelihoods of those 2.3 million people would be put at risk, and the economy of the entire nation would be negatively affected by the loss of that $20 Billion. Thus, the loss of from 1 to 11 thousand jobs must be weighed against the potential impact on the whole country. Further, the land through which the pipe would run must be confiscated from private owners through the law of eminent domain; the government would compensate the owners, but often for less than it is actually worth. If you have seen the Kevin Costner series Yellowstone, you understand how rugged individuals such as John Dutton view the loss of their land to eminent domain laws. That is why farmers and ranchers have often led the opposition to XL.

The question of the XL Pipeline gets at the crux of all issues that pit environmentalists versus corporations and economic concerns. Even the issue of climate change, in many ways can be reduced to this equation. On the left extreme, you have the tree huggers that want to save every tree and every earthworm. On the right extreme, you have those who view things in a very short-sighted way based on one question: “Can I make more money today?” and to hell with the future. In most of these issues, there is a huge middle ground that is often ignored. What we have to do is find ways to use the environment and its resources in responsible ways that don’t destroy the planet. Think of logging contracts that require lumber companies to plant several trees for each one they cut down. Most political issues have lots of room in the middle and we need to get back to reasonable, moderate politicians who will negotiate to find that centrist position. More than that, our leaders have to look at the long-term effects, as well as considering what will help us in the immediate future.

This question reminds me of a folk song by a Chicago guy, Tom Dundee. It says, “It’s all such a delicate balance; takes away just as much as it gives.” The fact is that most political questions are complicated and multi-sided. As I used to tell my students, any time you hear a politician tell you that an issue is “very simple,” and he or she reduces it to a cut-and-dried solution, as Hitler (and now Trump) did, they are either lying, or they’re not intelligent enough to understand the question. Often, they are just telling people what they want to hear, rather than the truth.

This whole issue of gender or gender identity, has been around for a long time, but has gained more attention in recent years due to the availability of more information and the increasing willingness of people to speak up about it. There are an incredible number of gender terms out there, many of which overlap, and even more definitions that seem to shift over time. Something like 1% of all people are born with chromosomes from both genders to greater or lesser degrees, they have excessive hormones from the opposite gender, or they identify as one sex when they have been assigned the other at birth. To a non-science guy like myself, it is far too complicated to understand. I am completely ill-equipped to deal with this question, but I can give a few insights from track and field.

This question has been a track issue since at least the 1930s, when the International Olympic Committee instituted the “sex test” to determine an athlete’s gender. A Polish athlete, Stella Walsh, won the gold medal in the women’s 100 meters in 1932. When she died in Cleveland years later, an autopsy revealed the she had no uterus and an undeveloped penis. She was labeled “hermaphrodidic,” as a person who was born with sex organs and characteristics of both genders. Today, she might be called “intersex.” Intersex people are individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, hormones, or genitals that do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies. More recently, South African runner Caster Semenya made waves by winning several major competitions while appearing to be more male than female. One source explained, “Semenya is an intersex woman, assigned female at birth, with XY chromosomes and naturally elevated testosterone levels.” Does that make her a male or a female? She had a natural, albeit unusual, condition, and unlike the Russians and East Germans during the Cold War Years, she did nothing to alter the cards that God or nature dealt her. Sports competitions have been legislating gender for nearly a century, but as our understanding of gender and sexual identity evolves, it has become more difficult for sports to exist within a neat, gender division.

Nature seems to have a sense of humor in this regard that messes with our normal expectations for human life. I guess the big thing to remember here is that these people did not choose to be different or unusual. Some wrestle with this issue for their entire lives. I think of Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn. I was in a track meet against him when we were both in college, and he was an impressive athlete even before his Olympic fame. He was married three times and had six children. Then came his bombshell announcement in 2015 that he identified as a woman and planned to undergo a sex-change operation. Apparently, the question of gender identity tormented her for her entire life. I taught several girls/boys over the years in an all-female school who struggled with this problem, and they were usually miserable, not sure of who they were or where they belonged. I have painful memories of one particular student in tears in my empty classroom, crying because she felt completely out of place with the other students. I later discovered that she identified as a male, but she didn’t fit in with either gender group. These people are not seeking advantages, although some will probably game the system for that purpose. Most, however, simply want to be treated equally, without discrimination, and that is what Biden’s EO addresses.

Am I comfortable with all of this ambiguity? Of course not, but I’m trying to understand it. At times, I find myself relating to Archie Bunker, who, at the start of each episode of All in the Family, sang about the good ol’ days, saying “And you knew where you were then; girls were girls and men were men.” But nature isn’t perfect and there are all sorts of permutations of the conventional idea of binary genders.

As I’ve said before, I don’t have any answers, only more questions. For me, these issues are just more reminders that the modern world is incredibly complicated and there are no simple solutions to the multi-faceted problems we face. We may not like it, but we have to become more comfortable with the ambiguity and the lack of easy, clear-cut solutions. When I was a kid, I saw things in terms of black-and-white. The world was simple and easy to understand. As I grew older, though, read more, moved around the country, and experienced a lot of different things, I began to realize that the world was much more complex than I imagined.

I had climbed the mountain, but, like Stephen Crane’s “complacent fat man,” I had discovered that “the scene is grey.”

Austerity Month

February 1^st marks the launch of an annual tradition that Kathleen and I started some six or seven years ago. We call it “Austerity Month,” and this year promises to be a special one.

This tradition began one year when, like many people, we struggled to recover from another holiday season. By mid-January each year, we felt as if we had spent several weeks eating too much, drinking too much, and spending too much money. In order to regain control of our waistlines, our livers, and our pocketbooks, we decided that we would cut back on everything for an entire month. It is no coincidence that Austerity Month each year is declared for February, which is, of course, the shortest month on the calendar. We wanted to cut back, but we weren’t going to be crazy about it.

The rules were simple. 1) No drinking. That one was pretty straightforward. It felt strange not having a couple of beers while watching the Super Bowl or Gator basketball games or having wine with dinner, especially at restaurants, but we soldiered through. This rule was occasionally broken, as when our friend, Joy, had a destination wedding in Aruba in early February. Then, last year, during our first winter in the frozen North, we allowed ourselves a glass of wine with our wonderful happy-hour group on Wednesday afternoons. This year, there will be no restaurants, happy hours, or destination weddings, so we should be okay there.

2) Lose a few pounds with healthy eating. This, too, is fairly easy to follow. We select meals based on the point system of Weight Watchers, cut out snacks, and avoid sugar and starches. It’s not too bad, and, when combined with a lack of high-calorie alcoholic drinks, we can usually drop a few pounds during the 28 or 29 days of the month.

3) Cut way back on spending. After throwing money around like sailors on liberty for two months, we refrain from all extra purchases during the month. As long as we plan ahead a little, we’re usually pretty good about this as well.

After all of this abstemious living, we are ready for March to arrive, and we welcome the new month with dinner out and a nice bottle of wine. March was the month when I had spring break from teaching, March Madness in basketball, and the start of the baseball season. We usually threw in a trip to Vegas for good measure. We were able to tackle those challenges feeling virtuous and rested after our ascetic month.

This year, the arrival of March will be especially welcome. You see, yesterday, we received our first shot of the Covid vaccine. We got ours at a local clinic in Baldwin, Wisconsin, and the entire process was remarkably easy and well-organized. We are scheduled for the second shot on February 26^th. We have to wait another week for that one to kick in, but by that first week of March, we will be good to go.

A short time ago—okay, it was 48 years ago—in January 1973, I was in my freshman year at Knox College in Illinois. As with most colleges, the school brought in well-known speakers, and this particular night, they had Dick Gregory speak. At that time, he was a well-known stand-up comedian (a major influence on Richard Pryor), author, and civil rights and anti-war activist. I had read his semi-autobiographical book and related to him because he had been a middle-distance runner at Southern Illinois University in the 1950s. After studying the life of Gandhi, he began to use hunger strikes as a political tool. That night in 1973, he explained that he was on a hunger strike until the Vietnam War ended. From the podium, he said, “So if tonight we get word that the peace talks have resulted in an end to the war, I wouldn’t recommend standing between me and the nearest hamburger.”

Similarly, on March 3^rd or so, when Austerity Month has ended, and we are officially cleared to re-enter public life, I wouldn’t recommend standing between us and the Nutty Squirrel.

(Footnote: I saw Gregory on January 22, 1973. The Vietnam War didn’t end that night, but a few days later, Jan. 28, a cease-fire was signed that effectively ended the US role in the senseless conflict. What did happen that night, while Gregory was on stage, was he received a note that told him LBJ had just died. It was fascinating to see him explain the note and stand there silently for several minutes, struggling with his emotions. He said that he regarded Johnson with great ambivalence. After all, as President, he had done more for Blacks than any politician since Lincoln. On the other hand, he started the War in Vietnam by lying to the American people about an attack on US ships in the Tonkin Gulf, near North Vietnam. We now know that attack never took place. Gregory said, “I have never loved a man so much or hated one so much as I did LBJ.” It was a poignant moment for me, sitting in the audience, and I’ve never forgotten that night.)

Great Again?

September 11, 2001. That was the last time I felt gut-punched like I did yesterday. That was the last time that someone attacked our government, our democracy, our country. As we did on 9-11, Kathleen and I spent all day glued to the television, flipping channels, and trying to make sense of the disgusting images unfolding on the screen.

As I write these words, I am already breaking my New Year’s resolution to avoid talking about politics in my blog. Obviously, the events of yesterday moved me to take this step and made it impossible to remain silent. As a historian, I had images flashing through my mind of other times when our Capitol was under attack. In 1812, invading British forces took the city and burned the White House; in 1856, a Southern congressman used a cane to beat a US Senator bloody and unconscious at his desk in the Senate chamber because he was an abolitionist who spoke out against slavery; a few years later, that same issue resulted in a civil war in which Washington DC had to be turned into a fortress because the city was under assault from an invading army; in 2001, the Pentagon and White House were targeted by another enemy who sought to destroy our government. Those efforts all failed to accomplish their goal and our country survived. Even yesterday, all that was accomplished by the sickening, lawless mob was a slight delay of the inevitable. Late at night, despite these attacks and weeks of threats and failed law suits by Trump, both houses of Congress officially affirmed Joe Biden’s decisive victory.

For months leading up to the election, Donald Trump warned the voters that the election of Joe Biden would result in anarchy. He was right. He just didn’t explain that he would be the cause of that anarchy. I now have new images of attacks on Washington to join those of my historical memory. Thousands of seditious thugs tried to stop the operation of democracy while their hats, shirts, and flags bore the slogan “Make America Great Again.” They seemed to have no sense of irony at the fact that the four-year-long reign of terror by King Donald has ripped apart and destroyed a formerly great nation. Nor did they see the disconnect between the waving of American flags while attacking the very things that the flag stands for. All of this happened at the behest of their messiah. At a rally earlier, he repeated his lies about a “rigged election,” and exhorted the mob of mindless cult members to march down to the Capitol Building to disrupt the proceedings. (You can now add “inciting a riot” to his long list of criminal acts while president).

It reminded me of a film biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that I used to show my students in World History. In 1966, in an event known as the Cultural Revolution, Mao became angry that China seemed to be slipping toward capitalism and away from “pure communism.” He started holding massive rallies with young people and college students, stirring them up with propaganda, and he organized them into groups he called “Red Guards.” They wore red bandanas similar to the MAGA hats and carried copies of a small book called “Quotations of Chairman Mao” (AKA, The Little Red Book). For three years, these people worshipped Mao as a god and became fanatical, marching through the streets attacking journalists, intellectuals, and anyone else who disagreed with their narrow view of the world. (See picture above) Hundreds of innocent people were killed, and by 1969 the nation was so disrupted by their mob actions, that the government had to step in, quietly force Mao into retirement, and try to restore order. Many of the fanatical followers, however, refused to cease their activities, so they were “sent down” to the countryside and forced to do hard labor that sapped their revolutionary energies. I vividly recall a film clip of one such girl who was so unrepentant and radicalized that they harnessed her to a plow in place of a draft animal. The film showed her with a huge smile on her face, happily straining to pull the plow through the fields for the good of China. Perhaps, after January 20^th, we can do something similar to the Trump lemmings who attacked our nation yesterday.

Seriously, though, yesterday’s events were all a result of the forces of hatred and intolerance unleashed by a narcissistic president who believes himself to be above the law and who cannot admit to himself that he is a loser.

Something else has been unleashed by Donald Trump, however. During the chaos of the afternoon, the final votes were tabulated in Georgia, and Jon Ossoff was declared the other winner of the runoff election to determine the state’s two senators. In a result that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago, Ossoff, a Jew, and Raphael Warnock, the first Democratic African-American ever elected to the US Senate from a Southern state, will now become part of a Democratic majority in the US Senate, US Congress, and the White House. They, like President-Elect Joe Biden were pushed over the top by people voting for the first time, many of them Black, people who were moved to exercise their right to vote by the dangerous excesses and dictatorial power wielded by Trump. The events of the past four years moved them to take this step, and, like me, it became impossible to remain silent. And make no mistake, the electorate, like the country, is changing. Voters of the near future will be younger, more engaged, and more accepting of differences in race, color, sexual preference, and religion than the people who elected this horrible man.

Hopefully, this dramatic change in government leadership is just the beginning of something that will, indeed, make our country great again.

Oh, Fudge!

As I write this, we are still several days before Christmas, but as the song says, “We need a little Christmas now.”

In an attempt to start the holiday a bit early, Kathleen and I, with help from the grandkids, have made the inside of the house a sparkling display of Christmas lights. Then, in anticipation of a visit from Kristin and Kevin (daughter and son-in-law), we decided to make fudge over the weekend. We had never attempted this culinary treat before, but, I thought, as in the oft-quoted last words, “How hard can it be?” So confident were we of our success, that we opted for a double-batch of the chocolate delights. Kathleen carefully prepared and measured out all of the ingredients ahead of time, so my job consisted primarily of mixing it all together in a large pot and stirring constantly as it slowly built to a boil. Stage one went well, and a fascinating chemical process unfolded as the heat liquified sugar, butter, and other solid ingredients into a smooth, gooey concoction. So far so good.

Then, we added a massive amount of semi-sweet chocolate chips and miniature marshmallows. The going got tougher for your intrepid stirrer, and the liquid slowly morphed into a solid mass as those final ingredients were added. The plastic cooking spatula soon proved inadequate to the task, with the handle bending uselessly. I asked for a big, plastic spoon, but it, too, failed to make much of an impression on the huge, brown globule in the pot. Likewise for the metal spoon. Then a bigger plastic one. By this point I was dripping sweat and panting with exertion, so Kathleen pronounced it adequately mixed. She returned to her recipe and read, “Pour the contents into a shallow cake pan.” We burst out laughing, as “pouring” was clearly not an option with our volleyball-sized mess.

It was at this juncture that we realized something had gone terribly wrong, but we soldiered on. I placed the coffee-colored ball into the pan, and, with some considerable effort, mashed the malleable substance until it sort of resembled a one-inch-thick pan of fudge, albeit a bit lumpy. I was tired, but triumphant, as I slid the pan into the refrigerator in time for the kickoff of the SEC championship game. At halftime, we were ready for a tasty treat, so Kathleen pulled out the pan and tried cutting it into small squares. At least that was the plan. The knife she chose had little impact, so she called me over, and I gave it a shot. I tried for several minutes. Sounding like Chief Brody in Jaws when faced with his own great white shark, I said, “We’re gonna need a bigger knife.” After trying again with a larger implement, I chose a knife with a serrated edge. Then I tried a bigger blade that had teeth like a carpenter’s hand saw. By this time, we had tears in our eyes from laughing, but only an eighth-of-an-inch groove in the top of that cut-resistant substance. I found a knife with a sharp point on the end and tried to pound perforations into the fudge, hoping to break off pieces like plastic. No dice. I was heading downstairs to get the chain saw when Kathleen waved the white flag. So, the result was an inedible block of cement, and we didn’t get any fudge that night. We later determined that, when the recipe called for 5 ounces of evaporated milk, a number “one” in front of the “five” had been partially obliterated, and we missed it. It should have been 15 ounces. So, when we doubled the recipe, instead of thirty ounces, we used ten. That explains it.

Meanwhile, outside of our kitchen, the world remains a bleak place. Several times over the past couple of weeks, we have had more deaths from Covid in one day than died at Pearl Harbor (about 2400) or on September 11^th (about 3000). As people are driven indoors by the colder weather, the Covid crisis continues to spiral out of control. The first doses of the vaccine have been administered, but it will still be months before we can start to feel safe again.

And the President . . . does nothing. He doesn’t even mention the virus in his increasingly rare public appearances. The only thing we have heard from him involve his self-absorbed and dangerous attempts to steal the election. He packed the federal courts over the past four years, counting on his hand-picked judges to vote his way should he lose the 2020 election. In terms of his law suits, his record thus far, however, is 0 and 50. Even the hapless New York Jets won once this year. Most of these efforts have been laughably inept, once being turned away by the Supreme Court with a one-sentence rejection. The problem is that courts want evidence, and Trump can’t understand that concept, since he has gotten his followers to believe everything he says without evidence for four years. Now that it’s clear he has been decisively defeated, most his efforts have been focused on trying to figure out how to pardon his friends and family for crimes they committed on his behalf.

While all of this has been going on, the most serious breach of our defense system during the computer age occurred, with Trump’s pal Putin hacking our top-secret security systems and obtaining access to everything from phone numbers to nuclear codes. And the President . . . remains silent. Thousands of jobs are disappearing by the day—and he does nothing. Congress is—finally—doing a little to help the people being destroyed financially by the crisis, but the President provides little or no assistance.

While the world crumbles around him, Trump has, for all intents and purposes, abdicated the office and retired to the golf course. In terms of leadership, during this crisis that has more aspects than a Swiss Army Knife has blades, we will have to wait until Jan 20 to see if anything can be done.

When I was a kid, I saw the 1957 comedy Auntie Mame, which was a tour de force for lead actress, Rosalind Russell. I liked it so much, that I read the Patrick Dennis book on which it was based. Then in 1974, I looked forward to the musical version of the book, simply called Mame. It was terrible, and Lucille Ball captured none of the flair of the original film. However, there was one shining moment in the musical version. That was a joyous Christmas song that sprang up right when the characters were at a low point in their lives. If you are not familiar with the story, Mame Dennis is a rich, eccentric woman raising her nephew in New York. When the Great Depression of the 1930s hits, she loses everything but her apartment. She and her loyal servants have sold off most of her furniture and everything of value to stay afloat, but Mame can’t hold a job and things look increasingly dire. So one day, Mame announces that Christmas is coming early this year because they need it so desperately. None of the actors, including Lucy, are singers, but the song captures the idea that we should never allow ourselves to be defeated by circumstances. We need some of that indomitable spirit for the final act of 2020.

So, like Auntie Mame, I’m declaring Christmas a few days early this year, because “we need a little Christmas now.”

Click on the link to see the song.

Have You Ever Noticed . . . Movie Edition

Andy Rooney, the bushy-browed curmudgeon on 60 Minutes, closed the show for over thirty years with his witty observations and wry comments about nothing in particular. While this was a popular segment of the show, it should be noted that he never said, “Have you ever noticed . . .” In 1981, however, Saturday Night Live’s Joe Piscopo began impersonating him using that phrase and the newsman has been associated with those words ever since. Today, I’m going to steal the phrase to discuss something I recently noticed while watching far too many movies from the 1980s and ‘90s on cable.

Have you ever noticed how, fairly often, two or more movies with an almost identical plot or subject appear in about the same year? I’ve been aware of this for a while, but I didn’t know until recently that there’s actually a term for this phenomenon. It’s called “Twin Films” and it has been happening since 1934 when The Rise of Catherine the Great and The Scarlet Empress were both released at the same time, and both featured the long-dead Empress of Russia. In 1940, Young Mr. Lincoln and Abe Lincoln in Illinois appeared with the same subject matter. You’re probably remembering similar pairings of films now that I’ve mentioned it. Just three years ago, for instance, Dunkirk, Churchill, and Darkest Hour all dealt with Winston Churchill and the miracle escape by British forces from Dunkirk, Belgium in 1940. In fact, historical figures and events often figure in these remarkable coincidences. In the past quarter century or so, we’ve had Tombstone and Wyatt Earp (1993), Braveheart and Rob Roy (1995), Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Prefontaine and Without Limits (1998), and Infamous and Capote (2005).

Other such similarities can be seen in The Prestige and Illusionist (2006), which both dealt with Victorian Era magicians, and Ed TV and The Truman Show (1999), both featuring a main character whose entire life is the subject of a reality TV show. Then, in 2011, both Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached featured friends who agree to have a sexual relationship, but not get emotionally attached. Certainly, Hollywood is often accused of lacking originality and stealing ideas from any place they can find them, but is this simply a case of plagiarism? I’m not sure, but perhaps there is, on occasion, a script floating around Hollywood long enough that two studios decide to make the film, but only one wants to compensate the original creator for his or her work. I don’t understand how this happens, but I do know that the trend probably reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In 1987 and 1988, there were an astounding five films produced with virtually the same plot in a genre we’ll call “age-shifting.” In Like Father Like Son (1987), 18 Again! (1988), Big (1988), Vice Versa (1988), and 14 Going on 30 (1988), characters of different ages magically switch places, or a young kid suddenly becomes an adult. Freaky Friday (1976 & 2003) and 13 Going on 30 (2004) show the enduring popularity of this theme. Big, in which 12-year-old Tom Hanks changes into an adult overnight, was by far the best of this batch of films, and it leads me to another collection of Twin-type films.

I call these the “any idiot can do this job” films, and they were prevalent in the late ‘80s. I don’t know what the trend tells us about the time period. Perhaps it has something to do with having a mediocre Hollywood actor pretending to be president for most of the decade, but I think the trend began in 1987 with The Secret of My Success. In this film, just-out-of-college Michael J. Fox gets an entry-level job in the mail room of a big corporation, but he pretends to be an executive in order to move up more quickly. His innate financial wizardry helps him organize a hostile takeover of the company, proving that, although completely inexperienced, he deserves to run the corporation. That is the theme that runs through these movies: someone without qualifications finagles their way into an upper-level job, and ends up doing it better than their predecessor. The next year, Melanie Griffith, in Working Girl, follows this plotline as a secretary who lies her way into a position of power, but quickly puts together a blockbuster corporate merger. Also in 1988, Tom Hanks gave his career a huge boost with the aforementioned Big. Not only does the pre-teen magically become an adult, but he rises to the top of the toy industry because of his instinctive wisdom and child-like observations.

This theme continued into the early ‘90s, with SNL’s Dana Carvey starring as a con man in the underappreciated Opportunity Knocks (1990). While robbing a house, Carvey hears a phone message intended for the owner. Seeing the potential for a scam, he assumes the identity of the best friend of the wealthy son of a corporation CEO (played by Robert Loggia, who also played Hanks’s boss in Big). He uses this fake persona to impress the CEO with keen business insights based on a confidence man’s understanding of human nature. He ultimately confesses, but gets a top job with the company anyway. In 1991’s dark comedy, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Christina Applegate is a teen who must get a job to take care of her younger siblings while her mother is out of the country for an extended period and the babysitter suddenly dies. She fabricates an impressive resume, pretends to be an accomplished adult, and quickly rises to the top of the fashion world as a designer and executive, proving that any high-school kid is capable of running a Fortune 500 company. Finally, in 1995’s Dave, Kevin Kline is a small-town man who resembles the President of the US. When the President is debilitated by a stroke, he is called in to impersonate the leader of the free world, and soon demonstrates that he is better suited for the Oval Office than the man who was elected to the position.

Most of these preposterous plots, then, are generally about people in lower-level jobs, who pretend to be executives, come up with brilliant ideas regarding their particular business, get huge promotions, and (with the exception of Big) get the girl or guy who was previously “out of their league.” In any case, all are designed to show that, under the right circumstances, “any idiot can do this job.” I don’t know if that’s true, but if you see something often enough, you start to believe it.

Finally, have you ever noticed how, when he has nothing particular to say, Jack still manages to waste ten minutes of your valuable time with a pointless blog?

I have.

It’s Great to be Together

I wanted to write some sort of holiday message of peace, reconciliation, and coming together, but nothing came to me immediately. Then it hit me: I already wrote something that’s perfect for Thanksgiving in this bizarre year of 2020. I composed this song during my folk-music days about 35 years ago, but it has everything that we have seen this year. There’s fighting, temper tantrums, division, and even social distancing in the form of being forced to eat at the “kids table” in the basement as a fully grown adult.

As a kid, my extended family used to gather for every major holiday and most minor ones. In addition to the usual religious and civil holidays, there were birthdays, 1^st communions, confirmations, graduations (from both high school and middle school), weddings, anniversaries, etc. I took a quarter-century of those family holidays and mashed them into this song. Not everyone has such raucous celebrations, but my family did. Who can forget the infamous Christmas Eve fistfight of 1981, when my dad and my sister’s husband went hooks over whether little-league baseball was superior to “learning it on the streets.” The whole family was involved before that one was over. Then, with swollen eyes and split lips, we hugged and sang Christmas carols. Ah, the memories. I remember my friend Bruce once saying, “They should make a TV show about your family.” After watching the Showtime series Shameless, Kathleen thinks they did.

Those innumerable family gatherings began to wear on me after a while. In fact, when I was 23, I moved to Texas, in part to avoid the constant familial demands. Then to Colorado. Then to L.A. Then to . . . well, you get the idea. Still, while typing the lyrics to this song, it occurred to me that I’d give anything to have just one more Thanksgiving with everyone gathered together.

Like everything else this year, Thanksgiving arrives under unusual circumstances. My family lost my Uncle Don and my cousin Dawn this year, and it might be a good time to take a moment and think about friends and family that you have lost. Celebrate in small groups, wear masks when not eating, and for God’s sake, don’t talk about politics.

Here are the lyrics to the song. Believe or not, the Chicago public radio show, Midnight Special, used to play this on Thanksgivings. The people mentioned by name are my siblings.

Great to be Together Again, by Jack Henderson, 1985

It’s great to be together at this time of year,

But who dropped the olive in my glass of beer?

If we ever stop fighting, we’ll be loaded with cheer,

‘Cause it’s great to be together again.

—

Robb’s friend is knocking, but he can’t come in,

‘Cause today we’re eating butter ‘stead of margarine,

And Danny has his elbow in Gary’s chin,

‘Cause it’s great to be together again.

—

Randy took a drumstick, but he only ate the skin,

So dad started shooting dirty looks at him.

We’ll eat until we’re sick and that makes Grandma grin,

‘Cause it’s great to be together again.

—

Mark spilt the wine, but it’s no great loss,

So pass the sweet potatoes and the cranberry sauce;

The Bears didn’t win, and so we’re all pissed off,

But it’s great to be together again.

—

We’ve got uncles in the kitchen, and cousins everywhere,

So Debbie, go and get the broken folding chair.

And dad’s still swearing ‘bout the “goddamned Bears,”

But it’s great to be together again.

—

Mom is a magician, and every year’s the same,

She’s got eight different courses on the Radar Range,

And it’s ready to eat at half-time of the game,

‘Cause it’s great to be together again.

—

Mom forgot asparagus when she was at the store,

So dad got mad and wouldn’t eat no more;

He threw his mashed potatoes on the kitchen floor,

Boy, it’s great to be together again.

—

Well, I’m down here with the kids although I’m twenty-five,

Eating in the basement with the spiders and flies;

I guess I’m stuck down here until somebody dies,

But it’s great to be together again.

—

Well it’s great to be together at this time of year,

But who dropped the olive in my glass of beer;

If we ever stop fighting we’ll be loaded with cheer,

‘Cause it’s great to be together again.