Why this Liberal Won't Fly the Flag

Unless you know your neighbors very well, I would suggest you not make friends with them on Facebook. I've done this twice in the past few years and it has not been a good experience. One neighbor, whom I know her husband well but not her, was posting conspiracy theory memes about Hillary Clinton murdering Vince Foster and Jeffery Epstein. It is amazing how someone can believe that the most investigated person in American history can get away with murder. What a criminal mastermind Hillary must be!  I was in a quandary, of course, I must response to this nonsense. But how? I don't want to argue with my neighbor. The other option was to ignore the postings, but they kept coming. I didn't want to see my neighbors this way. So I unfriended her. Denial is easier. Now I wonder what she thought about my posts and if she reads my blog. Whenever, they don't return my calls, I wonder, do they see me differently now.  When it comes to neighbors, I just want to maintain the peace. 

The other neighbor is a guy I thought I knew well. He is very talkative so you think I would know him better. His FB feed was pretty quiet but when he did post, he said some fairly awful things about liberals. With my "Bernie for Senate" sign greeting him each day, he had to know that he was talking about me. The last one I saw was a meme that said something like "liberals don't put flags in front of their houses because they hate America," something of that ilk. I could not find the exact meme but I probably shouldn't share that bullshit if I did. I unfriended him. Many problems are solved with a simple click.

I saw him yesterday and he had a Trump t-shirt on. This made sense to me. Has he been radicalized by Trump or was he always like this, simply being polite to my face. I'm not sure if it matters, but one good thing has come of this experience. It got me to think about the flag. I have never flown the American flag in front of my house. My dad used to put it out on Independence Day, Veteran's Day, Memorial Day and perhaps, Flag Day. He was a WWII vet so his relationship with the flag was complicated. Mine is not. I just don't like the flag, period. But why? 

Mostly, it is an empty gesture without a lot of meaning to me. Like when a politician wears a flag lapel pin, it is more a gesture of posturing than it is of allegiance. So you love America? What does that mean, really? When you fly the flag, what are you saying that you love? Is it the government that you love? I think not. Is it the military that you love? That's a possibility. That is certainly a reason for me to not wave the flag. I do not love the military. That still does not seem right, though does it?

There is too much ambiguity in it all. Do I love America? I am not sure. Mostly because I don't know what that means really. I certainly don't hate America, but I hope for America to do better. I love somethings about being an American: the security, the opportunity and a certain level of liberty. Also, American history is fascinating but complicated and rife with problems. Racism, sexism and imperialism (I am sure a ton of other isms) is prevalent in our history. When I fly the flag, am I saying that I love that as well? When my father flew the flag, he wasn't. But he didn't think about such things, as far as I know. Life was less complicated back then, especially for us white guys. We didn't have to think of such things. This is called privilege. 

I am not a fan of nationalism. This is what the waving of the flag means to me. A blind allegiance. Nationalism leads to xenophobia, isolationism and war. I like America, but I also like Canada, France, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Portugal (these are my favorite countries which I have visited). Their histories are complicated as well. I think of them as good friends, while I think of the Earth as my mother. I only have one mother. Here's where I beat this metaphor to death: when any one of my friends give my mother a swift kick, it may seem like I hate them, but I am only protecting my mother from one of my friends who has been a bad decision. I just want America to change, to meet its potential and stop beating up on Mother Earth.

Okay, perhaps my relationship with this piece of cloth is complicated after all. My relationship with the Trump t-shirted neighbor isn't what it used to be. We had him over once. We used to chat a lot. Now I say "hi" when I walk or run by. I don't want to talk to him anymore. I just want to maintain the peace. Facebook is supposed to bring people together, but in a lot of ways, it can push us apart.  

I just wonder what he is going to think when I hang up my planet Earth flag. 

 "

Notes on Reading For Whom the Bell Tolls

I am at the point in my life that I have a bathroom book. Since I have committed myself to reading one classic of literature every year for the rest of my llife, these are perfect bathroom books. It means that I may take months to read some of these tomes, two or three pages at each "sitting." Think of me as a contemporary Leopold Bloom with a blog. 

Andy Warhol has a short experimental film called Haircut that I can't help think of when I read Hemmingway. The film is just of a haircut, other than the haircut nothing really happens, and it is quite boring. At some point towards the end of the film, someone sneezes. That simple sneeze seems momentous only because your sense of time and action has been altered by the film. It slows your brain down. This is what it is like reading Hemmingway. 

If you ask someone what For Whom The Bell Tolls is about, they generally say it is about a mission to blow up a bridge during the Spanish Civil War. I take issue with this description. It is really more of a book about a bunch of characters talking about a mission to blow up a bridge. They mention blowing it up on the first page, one hundred pages into the six hundred page novel they are still talking about blowing up the bridge ... page 350 they are still talking about the dam bridge. Nothing much happens, a lot of dialogue, but when the action happens, it just seems momentous, like Warhol's sneeze. The last chapter, the bridge is blown. 

I knew this going in. Slowing your brain down is particularly difficult in the internet age, my brain seems to be hardwired to expect stimulus every few seconds. When I was younger I read The Old Man and the Sea, an entire short novel about a guy trying to catch a fish. I also read the very short story, "A Clean Well Lighted Place," about an old guy in a bar being talked about by waiters. Reading something with so little plot may not have been a problem decades ago, before the rewiring, but it is now. Maintaining my attention span is a task which I have to put work into. I can only read it in spurts, a few pages at a time hence the bathroom reading. My mind wanders too easily for Hemingway. I started reading For Whom The Bell Tolls in late November 2020, I started blogging about it, this post, in December. I expected that I would not be finished until March. I write this sentence today and it is April 2021, I am on page 350. I finally finished the book in early June. 

I don't want to give the impression that I am not enjoying it. I am. Partially. I am saved by the beauty of the writing, here is the opening paragraph of Chapter 9:

They stood in the mouth of the cave and watched them. The bombers were high now in fast, ugly arrow-heads beating the sky apart with the noise of their motors. They are shaped like sharks, Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the light mist of  their propellers in the sun, these do not move like sharks. They move like no thing there has ever been. They move like mechanized doom. 

Regardless of how well it is written, it is as boring as hell. It is a chore reading it, not an enjoyment. I have a completion complex. Once I start a book, particularly a classic, I have a thing about finishing it, so finish it I did. When I read a classic like this I always wonder what a modern editor would do to it. I've always thought that the middle third of Moby Dick would be removed completely if it were published now. If I were editing For Whom the Bell Tolls, much of the flashbacks seem unnecessary. The bullfighting would be yanked from this book. Some love the bravado of it all, but I am bored stiff with it. I'd move the last chapter to the beginning, parts of it, and make a flashback of the time in the cave. 

This is a book about death, not about a mission to bomb a bridge. The mission plot is mere background. It chronicles the four days before the mission, the characters are stuck in a cave about half the time. They know their death is near. Death lingers among them almost as if it were a character in their midst. 

This is a book with a lot of sex and a lot of violence, but it is written conservatively, not salacious or gory. Here is an example of how sexuality is handled, the opening paragraph of Chapter 33:

It was two o'clock in the morning when Pilar waked him. As her hand touched him he thought, at first, it was Maria and he rolled toward her and said, "Rabbit." Then the woman's big hand shook his shoulder and he was suddenly, completely and absolutely awake and his hand was around the butt of the pistol that lay alongside of his bare right leg and all of him was cocked as the pistol with its safety catch, slipped off. 

Sometimes artists can used the limitations imposed upon them and make great beauty with it, as if the limitation are just another color in their pallet. Hemmingway does this with self-censorship. 

Because there is not a lot of action, the dialogue drives the plot forward and it is a challenge. It was written in English but the characters are supposed to be speaking peasant Spanish. This presents a challenge to a writer because Spanish, like French, has a polite form while English has no such thing.  Hemmingway resolves this by using "thou" and "thee" in dialogue. Here is an example of this from Chapter 25:

       "He should learn to control them," Pilar said. "Thou will die soon enough with us. There is no need to seek that with strangers. As for thy imagination. The gypsy has enough for all. What a novel he told me."

        "If thou hadst seen it thou wouldst not call it a novel," Primitivo said. 

All the dialogue reads like this. It makes for odd reading until you realize why it is written this way. 

Also, the characters are very foul mouthed, but not explicitly. Hemmingway censored himself, because he knew the book would not have been read or published otherwise. Instead of swearing he used words like "expletive" or "unprintable," or used words that rhymed with the real word, like "muck" instead of "fuck." 

Here is a line from Chapter 35, this is the protagonist Robert Jordan talking to himself: 

You're mucked, he told himself. You're mucked for good and higher than a kite.

It is odd at first but you get used to it.  

Robert Jordan, our protagonist, is a stoic, tough and honorable character fighting Franco's fascists on the side of an underdog. He is constantly in a state of self-questioning and doubt. In chapter 39, he refers to another character, Pablo, as being "on the road to Tarsus."  I am familiar with the "road to Damascus" but I really had to think about and research "the road to Tarsus." The "road to Damascus" is a reference to Paul conversion while he walked to Damascus. He changed his name from Saul to Paul and became a disciple of Jesus. Paul's hometown was Tarsus. The "road to Tarsus," is returning to where you came from, a pulling back from your conversion. Jordan may be referring to Pablo, but he is also referring to himself. He wonders what he got himself into. He is in love with Maria, a woman he just met and knows they will not have a life together because their mission is doomed. His challenge is one we all have, do we go with our convictions or do we play it safe? In those four days, they live in the moment and things get tense between the characters. 

Jordan is full of shame. He is ashamed of his father for killing himself. He believes he is "flying above" his father when he joins the cause of the war, which America has no stake in. He is an American Spanish language professor and a munitions expert. Somehow he is pulled into this conflict. It is a losing cause and ultimately, him being there is a suicidal act but his cause is just, unlike his father's.  

I would not recommend this book to everyone, but it is hard to see what American literature would be without it, or American film as well. I see Robert Jordan in Casablanca's Rick and even in Rocky. The film version just arrived in the mail, from my Netflix queue, and I am looking forward to seeing it. With Gary Cooper as Jordan and Ingrid Bergman as Maria, I am expecting to hate it. 

Killing Garfield (the President, Not the Cat)

Americans tend to fetishize our presidents. We put them on a pedestal often representing entire eras, but they aren't that important. The American Presidency doesn't have that much power. Yet, they serve as a fulcrum to balance our understanding of history. I was at a physical therapy appointment today and the guy working my should asked me about the book I was reading. I told him it was about the assassination of President Garfield (Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Mallard). He said, "hmm, I don't think I knew Garfield was assassinated." That PT does better than most of us, because most people don't even realize that we had a president named Garfield. This is unfortunate because he could have been a great one but because of an assassins bullet, he is relegated to mere footnotes of a very turbulent ear. 

He was only president for five months, two of which he spent on his death bed. He was a reluctant candidate, he didn't want to be president, his party nominated him for the 1880 election and the Democratic party at the time was mostly ex-Confederates who had no chance of winning. This was a pivotal time for our nation. The reconstruction of the South, after the Civil War, was badly handled by the Federal Government. After Lincoln was assassinated we had Andrew Johnson who was impeached. After Johnson, we had Ulysses Grant who was a decent president for one term, but all the progress he made in his first term was erased by the drunken stupor of his second. After Grant, there was Rutherford B. Hayes who was the epitome of corruption. With the Confederates populating almost half of our Congress, getting any type of reform done was close to impossible. You think we are divided now. Check out this Electoral Map of the 1880 Presidential Election:

Yeow! It makes our current situation look united.  

Garfield was one of our log cabin presidents. He was fatherless at the age of two. He left his home in Ohio at age 16 to work on the Ohio and Erie canals. He was responsible for a mule who pulled ships through the waterways. He got sick less than a year later and returned home. While he was recovering, his mother convince him to return to school. His education was his salvation pulling him out of poverty. He attended college by doing handy man, carpenter and janitorial work. He ended up being an academic, a professor dealing in ancient languages, literature and mathematics. He wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem once that surprised everyone when they discovered it was written by a politician. 

It was as a college student where Garfield had a change of heart about politics and the slavery question.  He grew up as a Disciples of Christ which was a religious sect that believed that you could not be a Christian if you were involved in politics. In college he attended two lectures where he heard two fiery lectures by abolitionists that blew his mind and changed his beliefs on the subject. College will do that to you. He was eventually made the President of Hiram College. When a member of the Ohio State Senate passed away, he was convince to run for his seat by the, then-liberal, Republican Party. By the time the Civil War starts, his state of mind is that the War is a holy crusade against a Slave Power.  He becomes a Colonel in the 42nd Ohio Infantry and by the end of the war, a Brigadier General. Before the end of the war, he is elected to Congress and services as a Congressman, representing Ohio. He did so for 17 years. As a Congressman, he fought for equality of freed slaves. He was considered what they called at the time, a Radical Republican, which was the liberal branch of the party. 

Like the party is now, the Republicans were split into two factions, the Radicals (also called the Half Breeds) and the Stalwarts. Stalwarts were mostly from the South who supported Grant to be president again. The 1880 Republican Convention was totally crazy. unlike anything we have seen in modern times. Primaries didn't exist back then, they actually nominated the candidates at the Conventions. In four days, they had 36 rounds of votes for 14 candidates. In the first round, Garfield had received one vote about of a possible 755. The top three were Grant, James Blaine and John Sherman (General Sherman's brother). During the first 33 rounds of voting, Garfield got one or two votes each time. It wasn't until the 34th, when future president, Benjamin Harrison, started promoting Garfield as a happy alternative to both sides of the party. He received 17 votes in the 34th round, 50 in the 35th and eventually 399 in the 36th (well above the 379 needed for the nomination). He may be the first president that had no interest in the job but he took one for the team (in more ways than one).

When Lincoln was assassinated only 16 years earlier, it was thought of as an anomaly, an eccentricity of life during wartime and nothing to be concerned about for future presidents. Presidents were not thought to need security so Garfield had none. When madman, Charles Guiteau shot Garfield while he was standing on a train platform in DC, he had his two young sons and two members of his Cabinet with him. No security!  The bullet missed all major organs and if this happened today, he'd be up and about a few days later. We'd find the bullet with an x-ray and would remove it without any infection. The bullet didn't kill him but the infections did. While he was on the platform bleeding, a local doctor was sticking his finger in the wound looking for the bullet. Can you think of anything more unsanitary than a subway platform? He suffered for a couple of months and eventually died after every doctor and their ego chimed in on his health. The one doctor they should have listened to, Joseph Lister, was considered a quack by many. He is now considered the "father of modern surgery" and he tried to get doctors of that era to wash their hands and their instruments, but he was laughed at by the gentry. Fifteen years later, we'd have the x-ray and would understand asepsis. 

You really have to wonder what this country would be like if this great man had survived. It wasn't until the early 20th century that we would have another strong president (Teddy Roosevelt).  After Garfield we had a string of weak and ineffective executives. Much of the problems we have today stem from the Civil War era from racial inequality  to unbridled/unhinged conspiracy theories. Northerners and Southerners still have wide fissures on how we see our country. When the Garfield died, the entire country mourned. Mourning his death was the first thing we did as a country together, reunited after the war. If he had time to use this popularity to actually reconstruct the South, we may not have had a KKK, Jim Crow or the Great Migration. Somewhere, perhaps, there is an alternative universe with Garfield is on Mt. Rushmore, the Proud Boys don't exist and Trump was never President. If so, I'd like to go there. 

 

Picks of the Year: 2020

The year has been rough, but for me, 2016 was worse for me personally. The pandemic didn't affect me much. I have been telecommuting since 2007, I am an introvert and I live in one of the states that has been handling this crisis very well.  This is more of the same for me. The only big difference is that I have more people at home than usual. 

I saw only one film in the theater this year and attended no concerts. Boredom is this year's hobgoblin. I cannot wait to get to a rock show. We should at least have some outdoor shows this summer, right? 

I made up for it by watching a lot of television, did some reading and bought a lot of new music.

BEST ALBUMS:

I bought 16 albums in 2020 ... that is, all the song in MP3 format on a release by an artist. I am not talking about vinyl. 

There are some surprises. All but five of these artists are fairly new to me. The Eels, Dan Bern, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Bob Dylan are performers I have been listening to for years.

I like them all but if I had to put them in order best to worst, it would be as follows: 

1. Song For Our Daughter - Laura Marling: I never heard of Marling until this year. I heard a few songs on Spotify and I was blown away. She has a Joni Mitchell-ish style of singing with some powerful lyrics. I bought her latest album and I wasn't disappointed. 
2. The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury - Gretchen Peters: This would have been #1 but there is one song that I just don't care for. The entire album is a group of songs by a late song writer that I have never heard of.  I have been listening to Peters for a few years now. I buy a song here and there. This is the first album of hers I've ever bought.  This is great stuff and only one song is "too country" for my taste. 
3. Bonny Light Horsemen - Bonny Light Horsemen: This band is the first folk supergroup that I ever heard of. It consists of Vermont's own Tony winner Anais Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson from The Fruitbats and The Shins and Josh Kaufman from The National and Hiss Golden Messenger. I hope they stay together and continue to make music together because I love their sound. 
4. Sex Education Original Soundtrack - Ezra Furman: One of my favorite shows of the year also a great soundtrack all by the same guy. Do I love the music because I loved the show or did I love the show because of the music? Probably a little bit of both.  
5. LP5 - John Moreland: This is my first Moreland album as well. This is a great bluesy folk singer that can write a great song: "you can't reach salvation from your rocking chair". He's got the Texas sound. 
6. Kingdom in My Mind - The Wood Brothers: Another new one for me. Chris Wood is famous for his other band Medeski Martin & Wood. He teamed with his brother Oliver and this is their eighth album together. It is folk rock, Americana, blues ... I don't know, I call it great. 
7. Rough and Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan: Dylan is my guy. Whenever my wife says to me, "Did you hear?" I dread that it is about Dylan's demise. He's 79 years old and still putting out amazing stuff. This is his 39th album (if I counted correctly). Not all of them are great, but he's been on a roll lately. His past few albums have been great. 
8. Good Souls Better Angels by Lucinda Williams: I guess I went folk rock this year. She's been one of America's best song writer for decades. This is her 15th album and as good as any of them. 
9. Reunions - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: I love this guy. I love his work ethic, his dedication to the music and to his fans. More importantly, I love his tunes. 
10. Earth to Dora by The Eels: I was a little disappointed in this album by one of my favorite bands. Their songs usually grab me immediately. It hasn't happened yet. 
11. Ghosts of West Virgina by Steve Earle: Lots of songs about coal mining. I like it, I don't love it though. 
12. Rivalry by Dan Bern: I discovered this guy a couple of decades ago at Falconridge Folk Festival in Up-State NY. He is not your typical folk musician, he is over six feet tall, wears fatigues and sometimes scares his audience. He is a painter and an ex-ball player and writes songs about Henry Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Monica Seles and going down on Madonna. He put out three CDs during the pandemic. The one I bought was about baseball. Not as witty as usually, but I am such a ball fan, it almost doesn't matter. 
13. What Are We Frightened Of? - Alberta Cross: I always thought this band was from Alberta, Canada. They're from East London. Nothing on this album has really grabbed me yet. This is their sixth album. They started off as a two piece: Petter Ericson Stakee (singer and guitarist) and Terry Wolfers (bass). But this is the second album after Wolfers left the band. It is really just a Stakee solo album. Maybe that is what is missing. I still enjoy the album but it is not as good as their other stuff. Stakee, give Wolfer a call. 
14. Xoxo - Jayhawks: Alt-country at its best, but I've heard better from them. 
15. Holy Smokes Future Jokes - Blitzen Trapper:  I've heard better from them as well. The songwriter just doesn't seem to be there on this album. 
16. Friendly Figures - KULMA: A little bit of rap, a bit of techno, a bit of jazz. I know nothing about them but I still enjoy it. 

BEST SONGS

I bought 310 songs in 2020 totalling 20 hours and 9 minutes. One of these years, I will have an entire day of new music. Please note, this is new stuff that came out this year. I bought plenty of other stuff from prior years (like Deer Tick, Kamasi Washington, Peter Gabriel, ELP and Gov't Mule). This blog post will talk about just the songs that came out in 2020. It has been great year for recorded music. In an era when musicians can stay home and create an album on their laptop, the pandemic is not going stop creatives from creating. 

Below are all the favorites for the year. Some of my favorite musicians are here (Dylan, Ani, Bird, Bern, Earle and Isbell) and some musicians I never heard of (Coriky, David Alvin, Geek Music, David Dondero and Twisted Pine). Some of my favorites this year came from television shows with Ezra Furman's amazing soundtrack to Sex Education and perhaps, my favorite song of the year, "You're Dead" by Geek Music which is the theme song to What We Do In the Shadows. 

I never heard of Shirley Collins. I don't know why. It bothers me. She's right up my alley, a raspy and jaded folk singer. I may be buying a lot of her stuff in the coming hear. 

I bought some great cover songs this year, some of them I don't know the original version. My favorite cover this year is David Alvin's reinvention of "Highway 61 Revisited". It is a talking blues version with a driving steel guitar. It blows me away every time I hear it.  

Keep the Damage to Myself - Alberta Cross 

Hark! - Andrew Bird

Do or Die - Ani DiFranco

Hard Time Come Again No More - Arlo Guthrie

Murder Most Foul - Bob Dylan

The Roving - Bonny Light Horseman

Clean Kill - Coriky

The Legend of Yasiel Puig - Dan Bern

Highway 61 Revisited - Dave Alvin

Easy Chair - David Dondero

Thoughts and Prayers - Drive-By-Truckers

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Ezra Furman

You're Dead - Geek Music

The Sailor and The Night You Wrote that Song - Gretchen Peters

Overseas and St. Peter's Autograph - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Living in a Bubble - Jayhawks

Let Me Be Understood and Harder Dreams- John Moreland

How Lucky - Kurt Vile (with the late John Prine)

Look What They Did and Private Lives - Low Cut Connie

Big Black Train - Lucinda Williams

My Brother, My Keeper - Mandolin Orange

Terminal One - Rymden, Bugge Wessenltoft & Magnus Ostrom

Sweet Greens and Blues - Shirley Collins

Black Lung - Steve Earle

Quarantine Blues - Steve Poltz

Papaya - Twisted Pine

Jitterbug Love, Don't Think About My Death and Little Bit Broken - The Wood Brothers

BEST TELEVISION SHOWS

I used to look to HBO for great television, but this has changed. HBO has because pretentious and in love with themselves while the other networks are putting out some great stuff. Here is all the new shows I watched this year. I tried to put them in order. Please note that this does not include shows that weren't new to me. I'm still loving The Crown, it is just not new to me anymore. 

Sex Education (Netflix) - Love this. The son of a famous sex therapist turns therapist to his fellow classmates. Everything is great about this show, especially the soundtrack. 

Ramy (Hulu) - A friend of my wife turned us onto to this. It is a very funny, poignant and educational. It is about a Muslim single guy trying to find a wife. 

What We Do in the Shadows (FX via Hulu) - Mockumentary about vampires. Hysterical. Need I say more?

Ted Lasso (AppleTV) - This is more heart warming than funny. Ted is an upbeat American football coach who gets hired a soccer coach in the England premiere league. It is a funny Friday Night Lights where they say "Wanker" a lot. 

Normal People (BBC3 via Hulu) - I almost forgot about this one. I published and went back to add it. It was very good and shouldn't be missed. This is about two Irish students growing up together and having an on-again-off-again romance. The writing and acting are top notch. 

Derry Girls (Channel 4 via Netflix) - I have to rewatch this with the subtitles on. The accent is a bit much but it is about teenage girls in Northern Ireland during "the troubles." Another one of those shows that is funny but also informative. 

Pen15 (Hulu) - This is cringe comedy. Two adult comedians, play themselves when they were teenage girl losers. It is sometimes hard to watch because you feel bad for them. 

Devs (FX via Hulu) - This is a sci-fi thriller about quantum computing created by the same guy we created the movies 28 Days Later and Ex Machina. I just loved this. It has surprises around every corner. This is a real sci fi. Not a bull shit action film pretending to be sci-fi. This is a mini-series so I guess I'm done with it but I don't want to be. 

The Flight Attendant (HBO) - This one surprised me. A flight attendant wakes up in bed with a one-night stand stabbed to death. Very well done. I wouldn't have guessed it by the trailer. 

The Boys (Amazon) - This is a super hero show outside the DC and Marvel universes. It is very good and profound at times. I had never heard of this series going into it. 

The Morning Show (AppleTV) - This has so many big stars that I expected it to be crap, but it was quite good with Steve Carell playing the bad guy.

Tehran (Apple TV) - This is another surprise that I just found by clicking away.  It is political intrigue between Iran and Israel with lots of spies. You like the characters but you hate the system they are intertwined in.   

Roadkill (BBC One via PBS) - This is a political intrigue drama starring Hugh Laurie which I really enjoyed but it only has four episodes. Come on BBC. 

Perry Mason (HBO) - This is not your father's Perry Mason (TV show from the 50's) but based on the original source material, the novels by Erle Stanley Gardner. Mason is not yet a defense attorney but an investigator. I almost didn't finish this, it took a while for me to get into it but it ended up being very good in the end. It is very gritty and it came close to being cliche, but it never crossed into it. 

Waco (Netflix) - I don't know how accurate this was about the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in 1993, but it is thoroughly entertaining. 

Red Oaks (Amazon) - This is very light but enjoyable. It is about a country club in New Jersey 1980's. Think of it as a less silly Caddyshack. 

Defending Jacob (Apple TV) - A kid is murdered in Newton, MA and the assistant DA's son is the suspect. Did he do it?  Honestly, I can't remember if he did or not. 

The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) - More people with super powers told in a creative way. As usual, this show suffers from the Netflix second series syndrome ... but not quite as bad as other Netflix series. First season, quite good. Second season, not quite so good. Maybe they've learned their lesson because it isn't as pronounced as some of their other shows. 

F is for Family (Netflix) - I still watch this occasionally. I think it is implied that F is for Fucked up Family. Regardless, it reminds me too much of my fucked up childhood. I love Bill Burr's humor, but it can be a bit depressing at times. Get out of my memories Bill Burr!

The Outsider (HBO) - Another Stephen King horror show. It is fun, it is gross. Not a lot else going on. I just expect more from HBO. 

The Undoing (HBO) - I would watch Nicole Kidman read the phonebook. Hugh Grant is her murderous husband. I liked this until the last episode. What a disappointment. 

Star Trek: Picard (CBS: Access) - But this is the year's biggest disappointment. One of my favorite Star Trek characters gets his own show. When disc one arrived in the mail, I reminded my wife to make time to watch it tonight. Mid-way through episode two - "Do you know what's going on?" You shouldn't have to look up a plot on Wikipedia to understand what is happening.  I am well versed in Trek lore. So far, I am not impressed. I also predicted the ending at around episode six. I hope season two is better. 

Queen's Gambit (Netflix) - I loved this show until she grew up and the show turned into sex and drugs and checkmate. I stopped watching. I am reading the book now. Maybe I'll watch the rest of the show later. 

Reckoning (Netflix) - I had to look this up because I couldn't remember what it was about.It was that unmemorable. Oh ya, that serial killer show. That's all you really need to know. That's all I remember. Nothing new here. 

Killing Eve (BBC America via Hulu) - This is another disappointment. It is okay but I stopped after season one. Maybe I'll return to it again, but it is certainly not as great as people claim.

Away (Netflix) - The personal lives of astronauts on a trip to Mars ... *yawn* Stopped watching.

Castle Rock (Hulu) - Another Stephen King series ... yada yada yada. 

Industry (HBO) - Hateful people doing things I don't understand on computer screens. Stopped watching. 

Lovecraft Country (HBO) - Lovecraft was a racist!? Oh ya, I guess he was. There is some interest stuff in this show but mostly it is over-produced and poorly written. Come on HBO, you can do better. Stopped watching. 

Next (Fox via Hulu) - Another AI is taking over the world. I wish an AI would take over the writing of this show. Stopped watching. 

Schitt's Creek (Netflix) - I'm not sure why so many people likes this show. It is basically Green Acres without the laughs and likeable people. They are annoying and pretentious. Worst of all, they aren't funny. I would  have stopped watching this long before I did (like the second episode), but my wife wanted to keep giving it another try. Eventually, she gave up and I was grateful. 

BOOKS:

I've committed to reading at least one classic a year for the rest of my life. This year's was a small one, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, which I enjoyed. This is the third of his novels that I've read and my second favorite. I've read The World of the Worlds and The Time Machine with the latter being my favorite of his.

I only read eight books this year so it should be easy enough to rate them in order of preference:

Circe by Madeline Miller

Girl at War by Sara Novic 

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

The Lake House by Kate Morton

Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern (Vermont writer)  

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro 

Open Season by Archer Mayor (Vermont writer)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The first two books I really loved. Circe is a retelling of Circe's story from Homer's Odyssey. I generally don't like fantasy but this was so well written and since it was based in a story I already knew, it made it more palatable. 

Girl at War is about a war orphan from Yugoslavian civil war and her transition into being an American. 

The Lake House was good, but I've never been a huge mystery fan and everything wrapped up a bit too nicely in the end. 

I have determined that I am not a Neil Gaiman fan. This is the second book by him that I've read and hated. So be it. No big deal. Maybe I'll like his graphic novels. 

2021's classic is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. I'm about a third though now.  Wish me luck. 

Electoral College: History, Pros, Cons and Alternatives

After the American Revolution was over, the revolutionaries had a most difficult task. What now? Many of the 13 colonies did not see the advantage of joining a new nation. James Madison's idea of elections being based on popular vote scared some of the smaller states. Some thought joining an old world nation, like Spain, was more advantageous. To keep the small states happy and within the union, a bicameral legislature (with two houses) was proposed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, much like England's the House of Commons and House of Lords. This came to be known as the Great Compromise of 1787. While the House of Representatives would be based on population giving large states like Virginia and Massachusetts more power, the states would be equally represented in the Senate. Delaware, who had recently became independent of Pennsylvania, jumped at this and signed the Constitution becoming the first state to ratify it. 

Once the big stuff was over, most of the convention attendees returned home. Those who were from far away had a long trip ahead of them. George Washington went fishing. The rest of the constitution, much of the stuff that we complain about was created by the smaller committee called the Committee of Unfinished Parts which only had 11 representatives from different states). 

• Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire 
• Rufus King of Massachusetts
• Roger Sherman of Connecticut
• Jonathan Brearly of New Jersey (Chairman)
• Gouvernuer Morris of Pennsylvania
• John Dickinson of Delaware
• Daniel Carroll of Maryland 
• James Madison, Jr. of Virginia
• Hugh Williamson of North Carolina
• Pierce Butler of South Carolina
• Abraham Baldwin of Georgia.

This is where they came up with the one person executive, the president's term of office, rules for treason and impeachment and of course, the electoral college. The electoral college was considered, at the time, innovative because it was a temporary body that met for only one reason. It was believed to be less corruptible than if the task of selecting the leader of the Executive Branch fell up Congress to do.  

When we vote for President, we are not voting for him/her directly but for electors who then vote for President for us. There are currently 538 electors (since 1964, 535 from the states and 3 from DC.) Each state gets one elector for each of their Senators and one for each of their Representatives. So the larger states get more but not proportionally more. Wyoming gets three while California gets 55. Wyoming is the least populated state with a half million people. For every 193,000 people they get an elector. California is our largest state with about 39.5 million people and one elector roughly every 718,000 people. Whatever candidate that gets a state's popular vote, gets all of that state's electors. Trump could get 10 million votes in California but if 10,000,001 voters chose Biden, all of the electors go to Biden. Winner takes all. You can understand why voters feel disenfranchised and don't show up.

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that are not winner take all. They award only two electors to the state popular vote winner (for the Senators). The rest of the electors are given to the popular vote of each Congressional district. It is messy. Everything that was ever created via compromise is. Originally, most states were more like these two. Virginia was the first state to change to winner take all in 1808, the largest state at the time, in order to get their man, Thomas Jefferson, elected. 

A total of five Presidential candidates won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. The two most recent occurring in the 2016 and 2000. Two other presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888—became president without winning the popular vote. If Grover Cleveland had won in 1888, he would have been president for three terms, but we have no way of knowing if he would have run in 1892, if he had won in 1888. In the 1824 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Jackson won the popular vote but neither won a majority of Electoral votes. Adams secured the presidency only after the election was decided by a vote in the House of Representatives, a procedure provided for in the Constitution. Arguably, none of these presidents were very good. Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump may go down as the two worst presidents we ever had. B. Harrison, Hayes and Q. Adams have never cracked the top ten on anyone's list.  

This is clearly a problem. The most important decision any president makes in their time of office is their selection of judges, specifically the Supreme Court. We currently have nine judges, more than half of whom were appointed by presidents who didn't get the popular vote. Roberts and Alito were appointed by W. Bush. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed by Trump. These judges make very important decisions about our everyday life (regarding our healthcare, our privacy, our bodies, our elections etc.) and yet, most Americans voted against them. This is hardly democratic. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by over 2 million votes and yet Trump ended up with three Supreme Court appointments. That is just gross.  

Doing away with the electoral college altogether would require an amendment. We have come close. The Bayh-Celler amendment passed in the House in 1968 but died in the Senate. It even had support by then president Nixon. Again, the senators from states with smaller populations opposed it. If passed, we would be electing our Presidents via popular vote. This also has some drawbacks. Campaigning in rural areas would be ignored completely and they would be limited to the large metropolitan areas. Why would candidates spend time and money in areas that had few votes? Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, more people getting more attention. One of the advantages of the Electoral College is that the minority isn't ignored, but one could say that the minority (in this case, rural voters) gets too much power. 

Some creative ideas have come up. Since 2007, fifteen states and DC have passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This an association of states declaring that during a Presidential election, all of their electoral votes will be given to the winner of the National popular vote. It doesn't take effect until it accounts for 270 votes so it wasn't applied in 2016 or 2020. Currently, it accounts for only 196 (MD, CA, VT, RI, CT, DE, CO, IL, NJ, HI, WA, OR, MA, NY, DE, DC) needing 74 more. There are bills in every state to pass this. Once it is passed, it will effectively make the Electoral College defunct. The problem with it, is that it is currently only Democratic leaning states that have signed on. It would have had no effect in 2016 with its current list of states. In 2000 it would have flipped Colorado making Gore the President. We might still have a couple of magnificent towers in Manhattan if this happened. They need some battleground and Republican states to pass it for it to be effective but they will never have enough votes. Republicans won't backed a bill that is clearly against their interest. 

The electoral college doesn't need to be completely trashed. Its original intent was a good one. The rights of the minority is important. We have millions of citizens, like myself, that live in rural areas. Our needs need to be considered in the executive branch. We just need to jiggle some numbers around perhaps. The states are disproportionately larger than each other than at our founding. In the 1790 census, Virginia (the largest state) had 111,000 people while Delaware had 12,000, roughly. This is a little over nine times the size. Currently, California is 79 times the size of Wyoming. California really needs to be split up into four or five different states and split Texas into two or three. While we are at it, we can merge the Wyoming into Idaho and merge the two Dakotas into one. Californians would probably love this. Not so much the Wyomingites.  This is not going to happen. I can't imagine the Republicans agreeing to loosing the Senators in Wyoming and giving the Democrats a few more in California, but it is fun to think about. 

What seems more practical is removing the two electors assigned to the states for their Senators. Very small states getting three electors instead of just one is throwing the math all off. All states would lose two. This would bring CA down to 53 electoral reps and give them a vote per every 745,000 people. Not a big change for them. The big change would be that Wyoming would get only one vote for their entire state of 500,000 people. That is a lot more equal than the 193,00 they currently have. The point here is that change is hard and getting an amendment passed is almost impossible. The last one that passed (the 27th in 1992) took over 200 years to do so. A little change might be easier to pass.

The problem with this one is that Clinton still would have lost in 2016 under this new count. Clinton lost to Trump because he won 30 states and she only won 20. He had 306 electoral votes and she only had 232 even though more than 2 million people voted for her. If you removed the Senate electoral votes from this count, he would lose 60 votes and she 40. She'd still have less votes. 

Even if you went with the Maine/Nebraska model and vote were divvied up via Congressional District, Trump would be victorious. He won 232 districts while she won 203. He just won by smaller margins and in smaller districts. In order for Clinton to have had an electoral college victory in 2016, we'd have to use both methods taking away the Senatorial electors and the Maine/Nebraska model. If you mess with the Electoral College that much, you might as well just go with a popular vote. 

Pro-lifers Are Not Pro-life

The term "pro-life" was first used by education philosopher A.S. Neill in 1960 and it had a different meaning to how we use it now.  It was a progressive term he used to condemn mistreatment of other human beings such as child abuse, homophobia, corporal punishment, war etc. In 1973, when abortion because legal nationally (due to Roe v. Wade), anti-abortion groups began using the term to mean anti-abortion. Those who disagreed with them and supported abortion rights didn't like the moniker of "pro-death" or "anti-life" so they came up with "pro-choice" acknowledging that it was a deeply personal decision that a woman had to undergo. This is the political framing we use today and it hasn't changed much in 50 years.  

The media portrays the difference between these groups as clear cut and black and white, but it is a lot more gray than it appears. If you don't believe me, check out this video from the Holy Post. I don't agree with it 100% but I am impressed with how aligned I am with what they are saying but I consider myself pro-choice and they are clearly not. Often the media lets radical factions define our culture while the rest of us are left scratching our heads. Middle ground does exist. Most, if not all, pro-choicers believe that abortion is a pretty awful thing and something to be avoided. Only the very careless see it as a birth control option. Most, even many people who call themselves pro-life, agree that birth control should be used to avoid pregnancy. 

I don't like the term pro-life because those who call themselves pro-life often only seem to care about the lives of the unborn at the exclusion of other lives. Can you still call yourself pro-life and also be pro-death penalty? Or pro-war? Many people supported Trump because they believe that he would appoint conservative judges and that he did. He was able to change the makeup of the Judiciary to favor the conservative ideology. not just on the Supreme Court level. He appointed 194 judges to Federal benches. In four years, that is more than half of what Obama did in eight years (312) and more than twice Clinton (84). All of Trump's appointments are anti-abortion. But they are anti a lot of other stuff as well like the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and they are actively chipping away at this law that has given about six million Americans health care. This is during a pandemic, kinda sick. If you were actually pro-life wouldn't you be concerned about people getting affordable healthcare. Both his appointees to the Supreme Court are against the ACA. This law could very well be overturned during Biden's term in office. Will they still call themselves "pro-life" when their neighbors can longer afford their insulin or their mood stabilizers? 

In 1988, long before he was president, Trump placed this ad in several NYC newspapers trying to bring back the death penalty in New York State. 

This was in response to the Central Park Five who were five young black men who were wrongly imprisoned for the rape and murder of a white woman. In 2002, they were exonerated and released from prison. As you would expect, Trump never apologized. This man has a long trail of hate like this, yet many so called "pro lifers" support him solely on the basis that he'd appoint "pro-life" judges. Since July this year (2020), Trump has approved the execution of seven Federal prisoners and three more are schedule before he leaves office. Before this spree, we had gone 17 years without a Federal execution. Pro-life? I don't think so.

Yes, Roe v. Wade, the legal decision that effectively legalized abortion in this nation, could be overturned thanks to this President. If that is all you wanted, congratulations. All it would mean is that states would be able to make it illegal again and many states will. This will not stop abortions from happening in this country. People can just drive to a neighboring state to get it done. Even if every state made it illegal, they could drive to Europe, Canada or Mexico etc. It would just inconvenience the rich and prevent the poor from getting a legal and safe medical procedure. An estimated 25% of abortions would be prevented. Any economist will tell you that if a demand exists so will a market. Illegal abortions will happen and many of them will not be safe. Also, there will be self induction. Before legal abortion, this was popular. We don't want people giving themselves abortions. Before the internet, girls would use poison, pills, coat hangers or throw themselves down the stairs to end their pregnancies. In a misinformation age, I can't imagine what awful stuff you would find if you started googling how to do your own abortion. An estimated 200 women a year died seeking illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. But hey, if you want to call yourself "pro-life," go ahead, I just call you a hypocrite. This is why I use the term "anti-choice" to describe pro-lifers. They are not in protecting life at all; they are just into taking away other people's rights.  

If you want to be pro-life, you might want to start by not voting for scum like Trump. Abortion in America has decreased since the Roe decision and this has little to do with Roe. It has to do with the fact that we have increased sex education, increased women's access to healthcare and birth control and made adoption more affordable. All of these still need improvement. Putting an extremist like Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court for a rest of her life is not helping the matter. 

Future of Local Journalism and the Collapse of the Fourth Estate

Disruption (or creative destruction) in an economy can be a great thing and an awful thing simultaneously. When the automobile was introduced, this disrupted the livelihood of thousands of people who sold and serviced horses (horse-breakers and blacksmiths) and wagons (wheelwrights). While they all lost their jobs and businesses, thousands of businesses and jobs were created making cars, paving roads and selling gas. Disruption is inherit in capitalism. Technology is not the only disruptor, but it is the most common. The biggest disruptor in my life has been the introduction of the internet and ecommerce. Almost every industry has been affected: music, education, retail, movies and gyms among others. 

Brick and mortar stores are being killed by Amazon, movie theaters are being killed by Netflix and music stores almost don't exist anymore because you can buy a song instantly on your phone or stream for free. Jobs and careers have really been shuffling for the past decade or two. I have benefited by this as well. I have been able to have a high-tech job and tele-commute to NYC each day while living in my rural home in northern Vermont. This wasn't possible twenty years ago when I moved to VT. 

Of all these disruptions, the one that bothers me the most is what is happening with local newspapers. Local news is expensive. Newspapers have to employ reporters who attend town and city counsel meetings, local events, sporting events, car crashes and fires. This is, of course, in addition to their overhead and the expenses of producing the paper. Traditionally their revenue streams are the selling of advertisement space and classifieds. When I was young, if you were looking for a job or looking for a kitten, you had to pick up the local paper. Now you can go on Craigslist for free. Craigslist devastated the classified revenue for papers, which in turn greatly reduced circulation. When circulation is down, it is harder to sell advertisement. Collapse ensued. 

In 2000, the advertising revenue for newspapers peaked to over $70 billion in the US. In 2018, it had dropped to under $15 billion which is lower than the 1950's. As of 2019, 65 million Americans live in a county with one or zero local news sources. How do citizens stay informed if there is no local news source? How can they vote confidently? How do they find out about businesses that is polluting their water or a politician that is stealing from them? They don't. Meanwhile, your local clueless jackoff has a YouTube channel, he's "telling it like it is" and giving it out for free. People are not just uninformed, they are misinformed. 

Some papers are hanging in there with a digital presence, but digital advertising revenue is still very low. There is also an increase of digital subscription in the past few years. Four in ten people under the age of 35 have at least one digital subscription. Young people are figuring out that paying for media means you get better information. Regardless, the outlook for local news to remain local is not good. When is a local paper not local? 

Since its founding in 1906, Gannett has been going around buying up small newspapers and other media markets. In addition to owning US Today, they currently own 260 daily local newspapers and about 300 national papers. These including The Providence Journal, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, El Paso Times etc.  They own media in 47 states and Guam. This is a lot of power. Gannet is not immune to circulation problems. They are losing circulation even higher than non-Gannett papers. Here in VT, our "local" Gannett paper, The Burlington Free Press, circulation is down more than 36% since 2017. How long can they can survive with numbers like that? 

The Void: In capitalistic societies, the voids left by failing industries and businesses are often filled quickly but not always in desirable ways. The New York Times this week ran an article about how pay-to-play organizations are filling this void. Political and/or corporate PR groups are paying free lance reporters to write articles supporting their agendas. That agenda could be to promote their business or attack their opponents in an election. These articles are then sold to less than credible "news" papers and not labelled as advertisements, which they should be (according to the Federal Trade Commission). Here is a list of them organized by state. You may recognize some of them. Perhaps you get one of them free in the mail or perhaps, you pick one up outside your local market. They look legit because they might have a real article about your local high school soccer team or a local fire, but they are not. In 2010, there were five of these. Now there are over 1200. Something you should always remember, when you get something for free, it is not the commodity, you are. You are being manipulated into voting for someone or buying a product.  It is not journalism that you are reading but an advertisement. 

On a more positive note, David Plotz, one of my favorite podcast journalists, has created a new venture called City Cast. Print may be dead or dying, but podcasting is thriving. He is trying to create a network of local podcasts in cities around the country where the void is at its worst. I listen to podcasts all day at work. When I jump in my car, I put them on. We listen in bed. If there was a local podcast that I liked, about my town or larger local towns, I'd be listening. I feel so clueless about local news and politics. He is trying to get this going, guess what? ... he's hiring.  Contact him if you are interested. I contacted David on Twitter to find what towns they are going to start with and I haven't heard back yet. I assume medium size cities like Portland or Cincinnati. Regardless, I am excited about this. Hopefully it is coming to your town soon.