Category: Uncategorized

Cuomo Resigns

Well, I was wrong.  A week ago I posted an essay about Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, under fire by the New York Attorney General’s report about his sexual harassment of women.  My essay, titled New York, New Yorkconcluded that Andrew Cuomo would not resign from office, at least not soon.

He quit today.

He did it in typical New York fashion.  After his personal attorney (a woman) went point by point through the report, raising questions and trying to discredit its conclusions, the Governor came out to speak.  The first half of his speech was both an apology to those he harassed, and an explanation why he didn’t believe it was all harassment.

Then it turned, and he began the process of explaining how he was unwilling to “waste” the taxpayer’s money on continuing investigation and “litigation”.  He resigned from office, effective in two weeks.  

Politics

Politically Cuomo was boxed in.  It was clear that the New York Assembly would in fact impeach and convict, remove him from office and ban him from running in the future.  There were no Democrats in New York left standing for the ten-year Governor.  Not that there was any love lost by Democrats for Cuomo even before the report.  The Governor was a tough and ugly competitor in the ugliest politics in the nation, New York.  

Impeachment and conviction would bar Cuomo from office for life.  Now he is trying to box the Assembly in.  If they proceed with impeachment, then they are “wasting the taxpayers’ money”.   What privately looked like a “hit job”, where the Attorney General of the state served as judge, jury and executioner; would become a public campaign of vengeance against the disgraced Cuomo.  At least, that’s how Governor Cuomo would characterize it.

Reality

Back in the 1980’s, when I was a young teacher, a colleague was accused of sexual contact with a minor decade’s before.  I believed he was innocent and thought he should fight for his reputation.  Back then, schools made “deals” with teachers like that.  He could resign quietly, giving up his teaching license and career.  Or he could have a public fight, face ridicule, and perhaps still lose his teaching career and possibly end up in jail.   He resigned. 

At the time I thought that was a confession of guilt.  

Looking back, he probably was guilty.  But he also recognized that there was no way out; even if innocent, he couldn’t win.  The mere public accusation itself was enough to end his career.  Resignation let him go on with a life, even though it cost him his livelihood.

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York and potential candidate for President of the United States, resigned from office yesterday.  Like my friend, he probably is guilty, at least for some of the accusations.  And he will take resignation and disgrace, rather than risk impeachment and permanent ban.  He still faces litigation in the Courts, mostly civil but perhaps some criminal as well.

The List

There is a long list of men who thought the power of their office gave them “extra-privileges” over their subordinates.  Bill Clinton is the most obvious, but with the “Me-Too” movement many more have been removed and disgraced.  Cuomo said in his speech, the rules have changed.  But the rules really haven’t changed, what changed is privilege.  

Powerful office or notoriety used to grant “privilege” to ignore the normal rules of sexual conduct.  There are stories of Babe Ruth, the famous baseball player of the 1920’s, running by reporters on the train naked as he chased women down the aisles.  But it was “OK” and never reported – he was the greatest baseball player in history.  In more modern times, we can go back to President Kennedy to recognize how high office somehow made it “OK” for him to ignore the normal rules of behavior. 

Me Too

That began to change in 1988, when Senator Gary Hart, running for President, challenged reporters to violate his “privacy” and expose his extra-marital affair.  He was shocked when they did.  The rules were changing.  His campaign for President was over.

But it took the power and courage of the “Me-Too” movement, of women willing to risk the notoriety that Monica Lewinsky faced, to make it possible for the women harassed by Andrew Cuomo to come forward.  And while the Governor in his speech claimed that “the rules changed”, it wasn’t the rules that changed.  It was the “privilege” that was taken away.  And the loss of that “privilege” left Cuomo naked to his enemies.

As the saying goes, it’s time for Andrew Cuomo to “go home and write his book”.  Oh wait, he already did that, on the taxpayers’ dime  last year while he was Governor.  

Division

Our national political obsession is division.  The Republican Party divides (unequally) between Trumpers and Never-Trumpers.  The Nation (supposedly) splits between Black Lives Matter and “Blue” Lives Matter, and for sure fractures into vaccinators versus anti-vaxxers.  

We are rural or urban, north or south, classic rock or country.  And of course, there is the “calamitous” division of the Democratic Party, one that the media, particularly the right wing media, constantly dwells on.  There are the “leftists”, the Social Democrats, who right wing media claim control the agenda, and the “regular” or “moderate” or even “corporate” (heard that on Morning Joe) Democrats.

But is it really “calamitous”?  Is the Democratic Party, my Party, so ruinously divided that 2022 will mark a return for Congressional Republicans to power. Will McConnell and McCarthy triumphantly taking the leading roles?

Short answer for that long question:  nope.

Big Tent

We are a “big tent” party.  A “big tent” means there’s lots of room for lots of different views, ideas, and beliefs.  In the Republican/Trump Party, dissenters are driven out. But since we are Democrats, we all feel very free to voice our views.  All of that action and conflict, can lead “outsiders” to believe that the Democratic Party will self-destruct.  

And we have managed to do that in the past. In 1968,  the critical issues were civil rights and the war in Vietnam.  Almost every Democrat was in agreement on continuing Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to expand civil rights.  

But more than half of the Party was opposed to the war in Vietnam, a war that President Johnson was committed to continuing.  That opposition came to a head at the Convention in Chicago. The leadership, committed to Johnson and his Vice President Humphrey, used the Chicago Police to physically put down anti-war opposition.  That division ultimately cost Democrats the general election in November.

Establishment Dems

Hakeem Jefferies in the Democratic Congressman from New York, representing part of Brooklyn.  Jefferies is also a party leader in the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Democratic Caucus.  That makes him an “establishment” Democrat, a supporter of Speaker Pelosi and the “main” Party.  But on all of the key issues:  minimum wage, health care, student loans, traditional and human infrastructure improvements; Jefferies agrees with the “left” wing of the Party.

In fact, most of the Democratic Party agree on most of those issues.  It’s an issue of degree:  Joe Manchin’s $11 minimum wage versus Bernie Sanders $15.  

And what about President Biden?  Biden is definitely from the establishment part of the Party, a career politician who has always been near the center of Democratic political thought.  In fact, many of the White House’s current stands are surprising – Biden has taken a more “progressive” stand than expected.  Need proof?  There’s nothing really moderate about spending  $3.5 trillion on “human” infrastructure.

Clocks and Calendars

Doug Collins, the former Congressman from Georgia and now the next in a long line of Trump lawyers, coined a phrase in the first Russia Hearings – “a clock and a calendar”.  And that’s what the Biden Administration is up against.  The clock is ticking on the 117th Congress.  Sure, they will be in office until January of 2023.  But the reality of Congressional life is that once February 2022 rolls around, the entire House and a third of the Senate stops worrying about legislating and focus on re-election.  

Certain agenda items have to be dealt with:  renewing the debt ceiling, budgets and getting Biden appointees into the Federal Court system.  But for everything else, it will get increasingly difficult to get anything to a vote as the election grows nearer.  The President and Congressional leadership have already established the “order” so far.  First it was the COVID relief package, now it’s the bipartisan infrastructure bill, quickly followed by the “big” totally partisan infrastructure bill.

What comes next?  Probably the voting rights legislation.  And as that will also be a wholly partisan action, it will surely be a compromise proposal designed to the needs of the most moderate Democratic Senators and Congressmen.  Expect that the fall of 2021 will be about that.  Congressional Majority Leader Jim Clyburn said it best:  “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.  

One More Chance

And what about environmental concerns, and the minimum wage, and student debt, and all of the other items on the Democratic list?  Well that’s where the arguments begin – if there is one item left that might get done before the New Year, which is the most important.  All “wings” of the Party are going to loudly advocate for their most important issue. 

Expect that “right-wing” media will misinterpret that advocacy into a “Party of self-destruction”.  But the vast majority of Democrats are still in our “Big Tent”, and recognize the need to expand our leads in the House and the Senate, instead of consuming the moderates who created those majorities in the first place.  In short, if you don’t like where Democrats from West Virginia and Arizona stand – then elect more from Wisconsin or Florida (or North Carolina).  Or maybe even elect one from Ohio.

Saturday Morning

Our dogs don’t know what day it is.  Pretty much every day is the same to them, and regardless of my murmuring “…It’s Saturday, we can sleep in”, they’re intent is to get me up. It’s a little after six in the morning, and that’s when they eat – every morning.  And while I used to be able to talk the oldest, Buddy, into going back to sleep for a while, with five in the house right now there’s always one who’s hungry enough to make sure everyone else gets moving.

There’s not a lot of barking involved.  It’s strategic:  Buddy scratches my shoulder, Atticus goes in for a kiss (usually on the lips), Lou lays on my legs, and Keelie – well she’s just trying to snuggle me right out of the bed.  The foster pit bull pup, CeCe, is still crated.  She would be on my side, willing to sleep in, but with all the action, she’s up waiting when we get to the door.

So it’s on my feet, regardless of the day or what time I went to bed.  

There are all sorts of rituals:  the “communion” of cheese to make sure everyone gets their meds, then impatient waiting as I sort three types of food into five dishes.  It takes a bit of time, and there’s always some wrestling in the kitchen while I get it done.  And then, finally, when all the bowls are emptied – the dessert course – carrots all around.

The Games

It’s Saturday morning – the last day of competition in the Tokyo Olympic Games.  The women’s 10,000 meters is a long, long race on the track, interspersed with men’s javelin and women’s high jump.  But the dogs did me a favor. I will get to see my favorite track races, the 4×400 relays, live.

I’ve watched Olympics since I was twelve, in that incredibly confusing year of 1968.   That’s fifty-three years, and of course the coverage has improved.  But the National Broadcasting Company has outdone itself with the current multiple streaming technologies.  That I can sit at the kitchen table, watching in-depth broadcasts of live field events without interruption (except for refereeing the “Olympic” dog wrestling matches here in Pataskala) is amazing.  

American Pole Vault

I watched the Olympic Pole Vault, men’s and women’s, qualifying and finals, from the first vault to the gold medal efforts.  As a forty-year pole vault coach, what did I learn?

Without getting ridiculously technical, there are lots of ways to “pole vault”.  And after watching the Olympics,  while I am confirmed in “my” technical theories, there are world class vaulters who use other techniques.  They aren’t “wrong”, just different.  It’s a lot like life:  lots of different paths to reach the same goal.  As a coach, or a person, it’s easy to think your way is the only “right” way. It’s just not.  And the question I have, is how much do you “accept” the differences in the athletes you coach?  Do you learn how to coach “the other” techniques – or continue to “bend” them to your “right” way?

I’ve known some national caliber vaulters, and the Olympics confirmed what I already knew.  They are incredibly dedicated and amazingly talented, but they are still regular people.  They laugh, they cry, and they get incredibly nervous in the crucible of competition.  Some can channel that nervous energy towards improvement, but with the delicate balance of speed, technique and strength in the vault, it’s easy to get thrown off.  Ask the Olympic Gold Medal winner, Katie Nageotte from Olmsted Falls near Cleveland.  She was a last vault away from being out of the competition at the very start. But, she found a way to calm herself, clear the opening height, and move on to win the gold.

The Bar

By the way, the American men had a great vault too.  The best “American” is vaulting in the blue and gold of Sweden, even though he grew up in Louisiana.  But that’s OK, twenty-one year old Mondo Duplantis is the “golden boy” of vault, no matter what uniform he’s wearing.  He attempted to clear a world record after he won the gold.  American Chris Nilsen of the US was silver medalist.   The other “best” in the world, American vaulter Sam Kendricks, went home with a positive Covid test before the competition.  

And one last pole vault observation.  It seems like a competition, person against person, but it’s really not.  Pole vaulting is a competition between the vaulter and the bar – and all of the vaulters are united in trying to clear it.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is almost always a camaraderie among the vaulters.  They clap, cheer, and commiserate with each other in the competition.  They all want to “win” – but they all know it’s not the other vaulters that “beat” them.  It’s the bar.

On the Track

That’s different in the running events.  There the stopwatch is important, but finish place is all.  And places ARE decided head to head. So the “camaraderie” of the running events isn’t quite the same.  Runners share so much suffering together, they can relate, but the friendship is usually after the competition is over.

On this final day, the United States Track Team wanted to make sure that the world knew they “wanted” to win.  There’s been a lot of criticism of team management – bad relay exchanges and just slow running by the men’s sprinting squad has left an audience with a bird‘s eye view questioning their commitment.  

So it was a “hammer” women’s 4×400 team, with Allyson Felix as the one pure “400” runner. The veteran ran with two 400 hurdlers and an 800 meter specialist to win the gold medal within a second of the world record. 

The men’s 4×400 did the same – gold medal “by a country mile” as the Australian announcer proclaimed.  It may sooth some of the “wounds” of the competition – but questions still persist.  Every good high school coach can diagnose the US 4×100 relay exchange failures.  They’ve been going on for more than a decade, and the “best” coaches in the world haven’t solved the problem.  It’s all about spending time and making a commitment – something that the US men’s team doesn’t seem to do.

Olympic Ideal

There’s still the marathon competition tonight, and I’m sure there’s a dramatic closing ceremony tomorrow.  But as a track guy, the 4×400’s mark the end of the meet.  Monday morning it will be back to the news, back to the seemingly endless crises the United States faces.  Like the dogs, we will all be back “on schedule”.

The last track medal ceremony is for the women’s high jump.  The gold medalist is from Russia. Because of past drug offenses, Russia is not allowed to participate as a national team. Their athletes compete under the Olympic Flag. So it is fitting that this last track ceremony is ending with the Olympic anthem rather than a national one.  The few coaches and remaining athletes are dancing in the stands.

For one last moment, they all stand united in the Olympic ideal.   

• The Sunday Story Series
• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21

What About

“Why don’t you do your job?” was Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis comment to President Joe Biden this week. “Why don’t you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t wanna hear a blip about COVID from you.”  That’s after Florida had the second highest COVID infection rate in the Nation, up 119% in the past two weeks (Louisiana is highest – NYT).  Biden and the White House are frustrated with DeSantis’s lack of action. In fact, DeSantis not only prevented the State of Florida from acting, but also restricted local authorities in Florida from instituting individual controls.

And with the traditional “what-about-ism” of his hero the 45th President, DeSantis tried to deflect Florida’s growing COVID crisis by changing the subject to border security.  It didn’t work – hospitals in Florida are reaching capacity, and the Delta variant is still spreading.  Unlike his fellow Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who wished he could mandate masks (he signed a law removing his own authority), DeSantis still spouts mask wearing as a “personal freedom” issue, make you own choice.  

DeSantis isn’t stupid.  He is a former Naval Officer, and a Yale and Harvard graduate.  So he knows that “personal freedom” won’t stop COVID-19 variants.  And he also knows that it’s “I don’t want to hear a…” ‘bit’, or ‘whit’ or even ‘shit’”:  but not a blip.  

Who’s Protected

DeSantis knows – just like most folks – that vaccination slows the spread of COVID, even the Delta variant  (Pfizer – 64% to 94% for Delta versus 90%-96% for original,  Healthline).  But just half of Florida citizens are covered.  And the Governor knows that the vaccines almost guarantee that if a person does gets the variant, they won’t be hospitalized or die.  DeSantis also is surely aware that masks reduce the spread of this much more highly transmissible version.  And finally he knows that this variant is having a greater impact on younger folks.  

My experience with Florida is that it’s a great place to retire, but a bad place to get sick.  Perhaps it’s because there’s such a large elderly population in Florida, that it seems so difficult to get effective care.  But most of the elderly in Florida aren’t stupid, they got the vaccine, and they are prepared for the Delta variant.

Who doesn’t have the vaccine?  Younger folks, and particularly school aged kids.  And now, the Delta variant’s transmissibility is comparable to the chicken pox. For those my age, remember how quickly the chicken pox could spread through a grade school classroom?  Younger folks don’t know about that – because almost all got the vaccine for chicken pox.  There’s a vaccine for COVID-19 too, but instead of encouraging vaccination and masking of the young, Governor DeSantis simply cries “Personal Freedom” (WAPO).  

Science

The science is not a matter of opinion.  While we can argue the impact of the infrastructure spending on the economy, or the role of the United States in international affairs, or even US policy on the Southern Border:  Covid is about facts, not opinions.  So it’s hard not to think that DeSantis and his like are making a cruel choice.  They are choosing political expediency over public health, another “Big Lie” over lives.

And for those, like DeSantis, who say “the science” has changed – he’s absolutely correct.  That’s the nature of science (and of nature).  As we learn more, we alter the assumptions we started with.  School systems teach the scientific method:  observation describes a problem, create a hypothesis about the problem, test and evaluate the hypothesis, draw conclusion and refine the hypothesis.  Science is constantly testing, constantly refining, willing to say “what we thought was true was not, and here’s the new answer”.  

Facts Don’t Matter

So when Dr. Fauci early in pandemic crisis did not recommend masks – he was working on the hypothesis that COVID didn’t transmit well in the air.  When he got new data, better data, he refined his hypothesis and recommended masks. Unlike politicians who are afraid of becoming “flip-floppers”, Fauci is a scientist, who follows the facts.  And he followed the facts to the new Delta variant, recognizing that the solutions of last April and May or not the solutions of August and September.

And “Ivy League” Ron DeSantis knows it too.  But “personal freedom” is such good politics, that he doesn’t give a shit.

For those who read Our America and wondered where Tuesday’s essay was – it was finals of the Men’s Olympic Pole Vault – even the dishes didn’t get done!!!!!!

Press Conference

Here’s one – let’s talk about a major political figure who should resign for his conduct – and his name isn’t Trump.  But here’s a spoiler alert – that’s not going to happen.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James had a major press event yesterday, where she presented her office’s findings of sexual harassment accusations against Governor Andrew Cuomo.  “(It) revealed a pattern of criminal conduct”.  But James did not in fact file any charges, civil nor criminal against Cuomo.  Instead, she presented her investigation, full of evidence of wrong doing ranging from unwanted kisses, to accusations of  criminal groping.  

She dropped it on the people of New York and the nation, and said it could “be used” by any victim who wanted to file a civil suit, or picked up by a District Attorney that wanted to consider charges.  In fairness, her office doesn’t have general prosecution powers in criminal actions.  But she could file civil cases, and she could file corruption of government civil charges.  Instead, she presented an incredibly damning investigation, like throwing raw meat in the lions’ cage, and walked away.

Due Process

It’s a lot like former FBI Director James Comey’s 2016 summer press conference announcing that there would be no charges against Hillary Clinton. After he announced the FBI was done, he then explained all of the terrible things that Secretary Clinton did.  There was no place for Clinton to defend herself, no trial before a judge and jury.  Comey condemned her, then pardoned her.

AG James yesterday was judge, jury and executioner.  

It’s possible that the Albany District Attorney may take up criminal charges, as he has local jurisdiction.  And the New York State Legislature could use the investigation as the basis for impeachment of the Governor.  Or this investigation could serve as the basis for individual lawsuits filed by the victims.  But one thing is for sure – Andrew Cuomo isn’t going to resign.

Franken and Northam

The lesson learned is the “Al Franken” story.  Senator Franken was accused of inappropriate conduct (not illegal conduct) and there was evidence that it might be true.  The Senator did “the right thing”, especially in the context of the Alabama special election, when statutory rape was an issue for Republican Judge Roy Moore. Franken resigned his seat in the Senate.  But regardless of the “minimal” offenses Franken was accused of, and despite his abject apologies:  once he resigned, his political career was over. 

Andrew Cuomo is sixty-two years old.  He has been the Governor of New York for over a decade.  Just a few months ago, he was a possible 2024 Presidential candidate should Biden not run.  Now, he’s just hanging onto his current job, maybe not even through the 2022 election.  But one thing is for sure.  If he resigns, his political career is at an end.  If Al Franken couldn’t come back from the Roger Stone generated charges of “inappropriate touching”, then for sure a resigned Cuomo is done, retired from public office for life (much like his predecessor who was  caught soliciting prostitution, Eliot Spitzer). 

And then there’s Ralph Northam, Governor of Virginia.  Northam wore blackface as a college student.  That’s bad; but when the pictures were revealed, he botched the response.  First, he denied them, then he apologized, then he really wasn’t sure.  By the time he was done, everyone (including me) was calling for his “head”.  But Northam (and the other senior government officials caught up in the mess) just stayed.  They didn’t resign,  they put their heads down and went to work.   And they’re still in office today.

Impeachment

And for those who note that the State Legislature, the Attorney General, and the Governor are all in the same political party:  beware.  The Democrats of New York are exceptionally good at self-immolation.  It was only a few years ago that Democrats gained a majority in the State Senate, and then several Democratic members defected to vote for the Republican leadership. 

They have returned to the fold – but the fissures in the state party remain.  For example, Cuomo is the Governor, but Bill DeBlasio, also a Democrat and Mayor of New York City, are often at odds.  Just being a “Democrat” doesn’t mean loyalty in the Empire State. 

The New York Assembly might impeach, or they might end up in a typical New York political scrum.

Defense

The Governor is likely to use the “Old Italian” defense.  “Old Italians” are physical:  kissing and hugging women, men and children indiscriminately.   “It was OK in my day” is the argument; the “Me Too” movement changed the rules and he didn’t catch on.   Bill Cosby used a similar kind of defense.  

But the world has changed in the past four years.  And it was NEVER OK to grope women, even as an “Old Italian Man”.   But there will be some sympathy for the “Love Gov”, the now unfortunate nickname coined by his CNN host brother, Chris.  It was in “better days”; the middle of the pandemic crisis.

Chris – “I’ve seen you referred to a little bit recently as the Love Gov…”

 Andrew – “I’ve always been a soft guy, I am the Love Gov. I’m a cool dude in a loose mood. You know that. I just say let it go. Just go with the flow baby.” (Oprah).

Don’t be surprised if Governor Cuomo doesn’t “go with the flow” and ignores resignation calls, even from the President of the United States.  He’s got nothing to lose by staying.

Track Coach

I am a track coach, or at least a retired track coach.  We are in the “heart” of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.  So it just seems fitting that I should comment on the Games.  

My wife looked at me yesterday, watching the qualifying in the 800 meters, and said, “You are in Coach mode”.  She was right, I was standing in the middle of the family room, only a few feet from the 60” television screen, fists clenched, watching American 800 meter runner Marcus Jewett get tripped up in the final 150 meters of his race.  Oh, and I’m a track official as well, you could tell because my right hand was in the air, the universal official signal of raising the “yellow flag” of a foul. 

However, no foul was called.  Jewett and the Botswanan runner, Nijel Amos fell to the track and out of the race.  In an act of mutual sportsmanship they helped each other up and jogged the final straightaway together to the finish line.  And in an act of international track politics, Amos, who by all track rules should have been disqualified, was reinstated to the finals.  He is the favorite to win.  Jewett was not so favored.  He won’t be running for the Gold.

On the Field

Anyway, if it seems that this essay is taking a bit longer to write than usual, it’s because NBC has found a way to take me right onto the field.  It’s Tuesday morning in Tokyo, and the women are qualifying for the finals in the pole vault.  There’s an entire “channel” for that, with split screens for the two pole vault pits used in the preliminary competition.  I can watch EVERY vault, here at 6:30 am in the morning.  So while it might only look like a period and a space in this essay, it was really an American vaulter clearing a low height, with a poorly lined up plant on a soft pole.  

It is kind of amazing.  Watching pole vault on the Olympics used to mean seeing the last two or three vaults of the finals, with American commentator and former high jumper Dwight Stones trying to describe the action.  Now I can be right at the pits, both of them, listening to the field announcements and analyzing vaults.  I do miss the “Olympic Anthem” at the beginning, bringing back memories of  the grainy pictures of amazing sprints and jumps from 1968 in Mexico City, and the tragedy of the terror attack in Munich four years later.  

 

Citius, Altius, Fortius

I did hear the Anthem last night though, when I watched the “regular” network coverage.  And that’s amazing too:  from beach volleyball to gymnastics, BMX biking to swimming, swimming, swimming.  Athletes at the prime of their careers, some falling to the pressure of world competition, and some rising beyond themselves to literal new heights of success.  “Altius, Citius, Fortius,” ‘Higher, Faster, Stronger,” is the motto of the Games.  (And for those way too deep into track and field, the opening words spoken by Donald Sutherland in the movie “Without Limits”).  As they strive to lift themselves, their efforts lift us all.

Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela jumped into history yesterday, setting a world record in the triple jump to win the Gold.  And to prove a point, she did it with “bad” technique, showing that sometimes talent overcomes every obstacle (and coaches don’t know everything).  Her jumps were impressive, and her reaction to the final record breaking attempt was amazing.  Goals fulfilled beyond even her own expectations.  

Sharing the Win

There were five competitors at the final height in the men’s high jump yesterday.  Clear the bar set at 7’8 ½”, and win the Gold Medal.  But none cleared.  In track and field, the tie breaker is based on missed attempts (each competitor gets three tries at each height) – fewer misses wins the tie.  There were only two jumpers,  Mutam Barshim from Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy, who were “clean” – no misses until the last height.  

The rules are clear:  if there is a tie for first place, the competition proceeds to a “jump off”.  Another jump at 7’8 ½”, if both clear the bar goes up, if both miss it goes down, first clear wins.  But what if neither competitor wants to jump?

As the referee explained the rules, Barshim asked the question:  “Do we have to jump?”  The referee paused, and the jumper said, “Can we both get Gold?”.  Tamberi looked at Barshim, as they both realized they could achieve a lifetime goal, together.  Barshim nodded to Tamberi, and the Italian leaped into the Quatari’s arms.  The final act of the 2020 Olympic Men’s High Jump was to share the dream, and share the Gold.  

 

In the Rain

This essay will go a little faster now, it’s raining in Tokyo and the vault is on pause.  

As a pole vault coach, I’ve never coached an Olympic caliber athlete.  But I have coached many at the state championship level and some collegiate athletes.  And in each of their careers, there was a time when all of a sudden, they couldn’t “go up”.  They could run down the runway, they could put the pole in the “box” to start the vault.  But then they would “run through”, unable to jump.  Sometimes it was for a day, sometimes it lasted weeks.  

Pole vaulting is exciting and challenging, but obviously it also can be dangerous.  Experienced vaulters are attuned to their body position, to what feels “right” and what doesn’t.  And when things don’t feel “right”, even if they don’t know why, they don’t go up.  There’s lots of coaching “tricks” to try to get over “running through”, but they all take time.  And sometimes, a vaulter just can’t compete – it’s not a matter of will, it’s a matter of mind.

Healthy Mind

So when Simone Biles said she didn’t know where her body position was in the air during her gymnastics, I got it completely.  She’s too good an athlete, with too much speed and power, to “force” herself to jump.  That’s a recipe for disaster.  All the folks saying she should just “Suck it up” or “Man Up” or “Grow a set”  (inappropriate on so many levels) just don’t get it.  I’m not sure that’s all about mental health.  It’s survival instinct, and there’s nothing unhealthy about that.  They say she’ll compete on the balance beam.  I hope she wins, but more importantly, I hope she’s safe.

The rain has stopped in Tokyo.  They have a really cool roller machine to dry the runways and the women are warming back up for the vault.  It’s a good thing this is only every four years, the competition sucks me in and wipes out the rest of my day.  

Oh wait, only three years to the 2024 Games in Paris!

Here’s this week’s Sunday story.  No politics, no great philosophical points.  This is the story of a lost dog, and the efforts of a lot of people to get him home!!

The Queen’s Dog

Corgi’s are best known as “the Queen’s” dog.  Queen Elizabeth has had over thirty Corgi’s during her reign, and is even responsible for a new breed – the Dorgi.  That’s a  dachshund-corgi mix.  Their connection with the Queen makes them seem a more regal dog, a bit above all that “doggy” stuff. But they are a loving breed, “snugglers” who like nothing more than a couch, a warm fire and a nearby lap.

And Tito is all of that.  He is his owner’s emotional support dog, helping her through anxiety issues.  And he goes everywhere with her, in a job that requires travel to car races all over the Midwest.  Tito is always there, beside her or in the camper, waiting for a snuggle. 

Race Time

Saturday night is a big night at the Eldora Speedway races.  After the evening events, there’s celebration with fireworks and plenty of partying back in the campground.  Tito, who never left the area around the camper, just had to go – outside to potty. Unfortunately, just as he finished and was climbing back into the camper, the fireworks began.

He panicked and set off a series of events that went on for two weeks and covered dozens of miles.  Tito dashed off into the dark corn and soybean fields of nighttime Western Ohio.

Tito wasn’t the only dog to head into the cornfield when the fireworks started.  But by Sunday morning, all the others found their way back to their respective campers.  Unfortunately as racing wrapped up on Sunday afternoon there was still no sign of Tito. 

Travelling Man

The first surprise came on Tuesday morning. Tito wandered up to the door of a small building truss manufacturing plant, two miles away from the races and way out in the country at the corner of Dull and County Line Road (not making those up!).

Dogs often wander in the country, and one of the plant workers shooed Tito off, telling him to “go home”. It wasn’t until around noon that Tito’s owner stopped by to drop off a flyer, only to hear the news that the Corgi had been and gone. Tito’s “Mom” (and Grandma) drove desperately around the area, searching along the roads and ditches between the corn and soybean fields.

They pulled back up to the truss plant later in the afternoon, just in time to see Tito emerge from the corn. But before they could get the car stopped, several of the factory workers thought they could “save” Tito, and ran out of the plant calling his name. Tito, reasonably thinking all these strangers might be a danger, sprinted (on his very short Corgi legs) back into the corn. He was later seen in the evening behind a home across from the plant.

LPR

Lost Pet Recovery (LPR) decided to get involved.  LPR works out of Columbus, Ohio, and the dog went missing near St. Henry’s, Ohio, over two hours away near the Indiana border.  But Jenn (my wife)  was already working on a dog in Fairborn, north of Dayton on Wednesday, “just” an hour away, so after trapping a dog gone missing for a couple days there, we headed up to “the country”.  I was along for the ride, and it looked like an easy catch.  

There was the area behind the house across the road, right beside the cornfield, perfect to set a trap, and a trail camera.  “Mom” and “Grandma” were still at the campground, hoping to take Tito home.  If Tito went into the trap, Jenn would see him on camera, and could notify “Mom”.  An elaborate plan was set up:  take Tito in the trap to a garage, and release him in there where he couldn’t run back into the corn. (Dogs that are “on the run” are usually terrified – even of their own “people”.  It takes a few minutes for them to recognize that they are in safe hands). 

But Tito had other plans.  Clearly the truss gang freaked him out enough that he moved on.  The trap and camera sat for a couple of days.  Meanwhile Tito was spotted near a house, a mile north of the plant.  

The Worst News

There were several other sightings of Tito, all around the area, but no clear place where LPR could “get ahead” of him to set up a trap. “Mom” had to go back home to Indianapolis, about 90 minutes away. Two local volunteers passed flyers to local stores and farm houses.   And Friday morning we got a terrible report.  A man driving on SR 119 late on Thursday night saw Tito peeking out of the cornfield.  The man swerved, but thought that Tito came out into the road.  He heard a thump, but when he came back, couldn’t find any evidence of the dog.

Jenn and I dropped some food for another lost dog in Dublin, Ohio, then headed out the 120 miles to SR 119.  We searched alongside the highway, underneath the bridge over the Wabash River (while the Wabash becomes a major river in Indiana, here in Ohio, it’s little more than a muddy creek).  Then, with permission, we marched down the rows of the cornfield, covering the first several to see if Tito dragged himself in there to hide. (As a guy who grew up in the city, this was my first experience hiking in the middle of a cornfield.  No wonder the “country” kids played hide and seek there). 

But there was no sign of a Corgi – though there were dog prints in the mud.  They looked a lot bigger than Corgi prints, maybe coyote sized.  That wasn’t a good sign either.  Jenn set a camera under the bridge, hoping to see Tito go by to get a drink.  Then we headed home, unsure whether the Tito story was over.

Sightings

You can’t catch a dog you cannot see.  Lori and Robin, wonderful volunteers who lived a half hour away and had helped LPR in the past, put signs out around the area.  You can usually tell an LPR sign – bright pink, “LOST DOG – DO NOT CHASE”, followed by a phone number.  It’s those phone calls that allow the team to plot where a dog is going – and hopefully get ahead of him so he can be trapped.

But for two long days there wasn’t any word of Tito.  Don and Kim, the leading “trappers” for LPR, went back to the bridge to see if there was any sign of him, but found nothing.  Kim got injured trying to get down to the river to check for evidence.  That’s one of the risks of trapping dogs.  (She’s sore and bruised but will be OK).

And this would be a really sad Sunday story if it ended here.

Little League Field

St. Henry’s is a small town, a few miles away from the bridge.  There’s a Dairy Dream, a Food Mart, and a couple of small restaurants.  On Sunday, Tito showed up behind one of them, and the phone call came in.  Lori and Robin sped over to check. They found Tito hanging out in the middle of the Little League baseball field on the north side of town, waiting for the next game to start.  

The word passed quickly: “The Lost Dog of Eldora” was here. Kids roamed the streets, looking for Tito – so there was more chasing, and more dodging into the nearby cornfields. Lori, followed too, but from a safe distance. She found Tito’s “safe zone”, behind a farm house where he had water, peace and quiet. She let everyone know: leave him alone! Then she called Don.

It’s a two hour drive from Columbus, but as soon as he could, Don headed up to set up a camera and a trap near the ball field.  And it took another night, but on Monday morning there Tito was on camera, calmly waiting in the trap for someone to come and get him. 

He was soon reunited with his family.  After ten days, a couple dozen miles of corn and soybean fields, a brush with a truck: adventures all on short little Corgi legs, he was a little skinnier but healthy.  And he was home.

LPR doesn’t always have success.  Sometimes searching for dogs is beyond frustrating; they are never found, or even worse.  But the reunions are awesome – and that’s a happy Sunday Story ending.

To learn more about Lost Pet Recovery or support our efforts – click here

• The Sunday Story Series
• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21

Seven Days in December

A few days before Christmas last year, I wrote an essay called Seven Days in December.  The title was an homage to Seven Days in May, a book from the early 1960’s about a military takeover of the United States government.  It later became a movie starring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Eva Gardner and Fredrich March (movie trailer).  Rod Serling wrote the screenplay from the Fletcher Knebel novel.

The generals were plotting to take over the country, creating a national “crisis” to use troops to control communications and transportation.  Some Senators were “in” on the plot, encouraging the military to move against their political rival, the President.  It was a dark story and literally a dark movie, shot in black and white.  It was left to the loyalty of a lowly Colonel to the United States Constitution over “his general” to save the nation.

The reason I wrote the essay was the fear that somehow Donald Trump, after losing the election, would try to launch a similar action to stay in power.  I wasn’t “making up” the concern:  there were news report of a meeting in the Oval Office about declaring an “Insurrection” and using it to rescind the results of the election.  Former General Mike Flynn was in the middle of the plot and the meeting descended into a screaming fight among the Trump aides.  It happened.

Insurrection for Real

We all know what we saw on January 6th.  We all felt how close our nation was to a major turning point:  when the mob took over the Capitol, and disrupted the Constitutional certification of the vote.  And within days we found out how close the mob was to “capturing” Vice President Pence, Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the legislative leadership.  It was a matter of minutes, even seconds.  If they were seized, the course of our national “experiment in Democracy” would radically change. 

The House of Representatives select committee on January 6th began their investigation this week.  We listened to four police officers describing a “medieval” battle for control of the Capitol building, the battle we all watched.  They told us about the hours of hand-to-hand combat, and their personal costs from that struggle.  

There are those that, like Holocaust deniers, want to pretend that January 6th really wasn’t that big a deal.  They want us to dis-believe our own eyes and ears, saying that the crowd was simply exercising free speech;  and those that broke into the building were just “a few crazies”.  But that’s not what we saw and heard on that fateful day.

So it is incumbent on this committee to document what actually happened.  In this age of “fake news” and the “Big Lie”, we need clear evidence of what occurred.  After World War II, the Allies carefully filmed the death camps, because they knew that their horrors were unbelievable.  So too, we need documentary evidence of January 6th to dismiss those who pretend nothing happened.

Thousands of Questions 

(Questions – Buffalo Springfield)

But there are so many other questions that need answered.  If an “essayist” (sounds so much better than “a blogger”) in Pataskala, Ohio, could warn of “insurrection” seventeen days before January 6th, how was the national leadership caught so unaware. Or were they unaware at all; was there an actual plan for the certification to be disrupted?  Were the actions of January 6th spontaneous, just a reaction to the goading of the Trump speakers on the Mall?  The crowd around the Capitol was estimated at ten thousand or more, drawn to Washington directly by the President.  Is it more incredible to believe this just “happened”?  Or was there more organization behind this event? 

There are five areas of questioning that the January 6th committee must address.

• What caused the attack on the Capitol?
• Why was the Capitol unprepared for the assault?
• What kept help from arriving at the Capitol for so long?
• Where there any political interference in aiding the Capitol defense?
• What steps need to be taken to prevent future assaults on the Capitol? 

The Battle Continues

Each of these questions has dozens of sub-questions, all leading back to the fundamental issue.  Was January 6th an orchestrated attack on our Democracy, planned by the Trump Administration, or was it the “accidental result” of the throwing gasoline on the mob’s fire? 

We need to know: the whole nation needs to know.  Because the January 6th Insurrection isn’t over, it’s going on in the State Capitol buildings of dozens of states.  Who can vote, when they can vote, how they can vote: all are being restricted because of the “Big Lie” and in spite of the results of the 2020 election. To paraphrase Senator Teddy Kennedy:   the battle continues, and the work to win goes on. 

                                                                                                            July 28, 2021

Senator:

I am not one of your constituents, but I hope you will still take the time to read a note from a fellow Democrat.  

First, thank you for your service to West Virginia and to the Nation.   There has to be an incredible amount of pressure to follow your state’s current governor and switch to the Republican Party.  You haven’t and I am glad that you are willing to take “the heat” of being the only statewide Democratic office holder in the state.  Your colleague, my Senator Sherrod Brown, shares that same distinction.  

I think I understand your position on the filibuster.  Not only are you a “traditionalist” in the Senate, unwilling to change that long-standing practice, but you are a political realist as well.  There may be a day when the Democrats don’t have control, maybe soon.  By opening the door to ending the filibuster, the door is open for Republicans to do the same.  It’s gaining power now, but perhaps losing critical control later.  

There’s no guarantee that Republicans wouldn’t do that anyway, but there are a lot of traditionalists in their caucus too.  So I get that.

I watched the House January 6th Committee hearing on Tuesday.  I was struck with the testimony of the policemen, who, regardless of their own political views, did their job to protect the Capitol.  They were defending the Capitol, the rule of law, and the Constitutional process of choosing the President.  They risked their lives to do so.

In part because of their efforts, the Insurrection failed in its goal of keeping Donald Trump in office.  Those officers and the action of most of our legislators stopped the direct result of the “Big Lie” campaign waged throughout the nation.  But they didn’t stop the “Big Lie”. 

It’s still out there, this “Big Lie” cause of the Insurrection.  And it’s driving the Republican legislatures throughout the country to change the voting process.  Like the REDMAP program a decade ago, this wave of election “reforms” will fulfill the Republican goal:  minimizing the votes of Democrats, particularly Democrats of color.  What wasn’t won in the halls of the Capitol building in January, they are winning in the halls of state capitols throughout the nation.

And that is not only a threat to the Democratic candidates.  It’s a threat to our Democracy writ large. We are stepping back to a time before 1965, when the right to vote was dependent on skin color.  Sure it’s being done “legally”, just as the “Jim Crow” laws were legal.  That in no way makes it right.  It’s a continuum from the Big Lie, to the Insurrection, to voter suppression.  And the only way to stop that procession is for the Federal Government to step in, just as it did in 1965. 

I also understand that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed with 77 votes.  That assured that the next Senate wouldn’t turn around and take it all back – as the Republican Senate tried again and again to do with the Affordable Care Act.  Passing voting rights today by 50 votes lays open the prospect of an “anti-voting rights” act in the next Republican Senate.  But it’s a very different era than 1965.  It’s hard to imagine, but we are even more polarized, more divided than they were over the Civil Rights movement.  There was no “insurrection” of 1965; and no one in the position of Donald Trump, “fooling some of the people, all of the time”. 

Senator, I am asking for you to find a way to protect the right to vote for all Americans.  It’s clear that there will be no Republican colleagues willing to cross the aisle in this cause, no compromise available for bipartisan support.  The compromise must be with you, and it must be over the filibuster.  Some way, a “carve out” or some other modification,  must be reached to allow our Federal Government to protect the most basic right of our democracy – the right to vote.  

Thanks for your time, and your service.

Sincerely, Martin Dahlman

Civil War

Let’s go back in time a little bit.  It’s the fall of 1865, three months after the last Confederate troops surrendered in Texas.  The Civil War is over – like it or not, the Union is reunited and the nation is moving forward.  Reconstruction troops occupy many parts of the former Confederacy, there to guarantee that the Rebellion, the Insurrection of 1861, remains over. 

But what if Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, instead of being held for treason in leg irons at Fortress Monroe, was allowed to go from town to town and speak in favor of the Rebellion?  What if instead of moving on from the Insurrection, the more than 600,000 dead, the four years of brother against brother and father against son, we allowed the leaders of the Confederacy to continue to preach for their cause?

It would have made no sense.  It would have denigrated the ultimate sacrifice made by the Union dead.  Even the departed Lincoln, with the final words: “With malice towards none, with charity for all…” recognized that victory required recognition of the victors, and acceptance by the defeated.

MAGA Mailing

Somehow, I ended up on the  mailing list of an organization called “Save America”, a joint fundraising political action committee along with another title, “Make America Great Again”. It says it’s not authorized by any candidate, but it’s website is donaldjtrump.com.  This is the Trump campaign, of 2020.  It continues, because there are huge financial gains to be made by “campaigning”, whether Trump ever intends to run for President again or not.  There are Trumpian bills to be paid, and many still willing to donate.

Here are Mr. Trump’s bullet points:

• Hydroxychloroquine works
  • The China Virus came from a Chinese Lab
  • Hunter Biden’s laptop was real
  • Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op
  • The Russian Bounties story was fake
  • We did produce vaccines before the end of 2020, in record time I might add
  • Blue state lockdowns didn’t work
  • School should be reopened
  • Critical Race Theory is a disaster for our schools and our country
  • Our Southern Border security program was unprecedentedly successful.

Ignoring History

It’s like the whole history of our nation from November of 2020, through the inauguration of Joe Biden in January of 2021, didn’t happen.   It’s as if Jefferson Davis was debating the Constitutionality of secession after the War was done. (Jefferson Davis WAS anxious to continue that debate, and hoped to do so in his treason trial.  Instead, he ultimately was allowed to leave US custody on $100,000 bail, and departed to Canada, until Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1868).

The “Big Lie” of non-existent election fraud led to the Insurrection of January 6.  But it’s not just that lie that empowers Donald Trump.  It is a series of “little lies” that have been going on since that “Golden Escalator” moment in 2015.  The “little lies” softened us up.  We got so used to the lying, that we stopped calling them lies:  they were “alternative facts”, and the New York Times had long conferences on using the word “lies” (NYT).  They were afraid by using so often, it would lose impact.  It did.

Little Lies

We became inured to the lies, overwhelmed by the number and volume and sheer audacity of them.  We were told not to believe our own eyes and ears, to only believe what HE (in a godly, capital letter way) told us.  And after five years, when HE came out with the “Big Lie”, and incited his followers to attempt to overthrow the Constitutional process of choosing the President, we weren’t ready.  The shock of the battle of the Capitol didn’t really set in, until we watched it “live”.

And now we are told again to not believe our own eyes and ears.  And the “little lies” continue too.  The former President’s list is still full of them.  By the numbers:

• Hydroxychloroquine still doesn’t work for COVID (National Institutes of Health)
• We still don’t know how the COVID-19 virus began (Washington Post)
• Lafayette Square was cleared moments before Trump spoke (Washington Post). (An inspector general report that the Park Police only cleared it to install fences never looked at the roles of the Attorney General, Secret Service or other agencies in the park “clearing”. 
• Lockdowns saved lives (Health Feedback).

The others – it’s hard to factcheck Hunter Biden’s laptop to a non-opinionated source – unless you use the New York Post, and  the Russian Bounty story factuality is still undetermined.  

Credit where credit is due:  Operation “Warp Speed” did produce the vaccine quickly (though Pfizer didn’t get any of the research money) (NPR).

Fortress Monroe

But the “little lies” continue to dilute our world of facts.  And the “Big Lie” that led to the attack on the US Capitol and the constitutional process, remains a “fact” for many.  Unlike Jefferson Davis, Donald Trump is still selling it to his followers, like a dealer to his junkies. 

Fortress Monroe is still available.

Braveheart

“FREEDOM!!!” They just need some blue face paint and a kilt, and of course Mel Gibson, and they’re all set.  “FREEDOM” from the oppression of – vaccinations and face masks? And the “FREEDOM” to risk not just themselves, but their fellow citizens with a COVID variant that can “breakthrough” the vaccines?  “FREEDOM” to throw out all of the reasonable expectations of public health, expectations that began during the Black Plague in medieval times?  

And who are “they”, crying out “FREEDOM” and threatening to lift their kilts?  

Well let’s start with the candidate for Governor of  Arkansas, former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  Her current platform is her promise of “FREEDOM”, from all of the public health measures designed to protect her potential constituents.   

“If I’m elected governor here in Arkansas, we will not have mask mandates.  We will not have mandates on the vaccine, we will not shut down churches and schools and other large gatherings, because we believe in personal freedom and responsibility. It’s one of the key cornerstones, frankly, of our country.”

Of course personal freedom and responsibility doesn’t include a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, or a transgendered child’s right to choose their gender identity.  But that’s not really the point of this essay.  

Arkansans

Arkansas is 49th in the percentage of the population vaccinated, with only 35% fully covered (Becker).  Frankly, one of the “key cornerstones” of the United States is sacrifice for the public good.  It’s why we pay taxes, and in times of crisis, accept increased government controls including rationing and even compulsory military service.  And the “sacrifice” that Arkansans might be asked to give?  Get the vaccination.

Exercising personal “FREEDOM” by not getting vaccinated means risking infection.  It means that the non-vaccinated person is choosing not to get a near guaranteed protection from hospitalization and death.  And, just like smoking cigarettes, they could argue that it’s their choice, and their fate.  And even if you discount the increased costs of medical care for everyone due to infection and hospitalization, again, like cigarettes, it’s their choice.

But here’s where their “personal choice”, their “FREEDOM”, does more than just sicken or kill them.  Viruses mutate by widespread infection.  Stop the widespread infection, and there’s much less likelihood of the virus changing.  Mutations create new risks for all of us; the risk  that the virus will change into something not protected by the vaccines. By Arkansans having their “personal freedom and responsibility”, the great state of Arkansas becomes a petri dish for COVID virus mutation.  And that’s when their vaunted “FREEDOM” impacts us all.

For Us All

It’s like because you smoke cigarettes, we are all forced to smoke.  Not just secondary smoke, but we all have to light up and inhale:  men, women and children.  Arkansas, and the other states that refuse to take reasonable health measures won’t just have more infections of the COVID viruses we have now, but may well create new ones we don’t know how to control.

Sander’s isn’t the only one in Arkansas demanding “FREEDOM” from masks and vaccines.  The state legislature banned schools from imposing mask mandates (though prisons can).  So while other national Republican leaders, late to the game, are encouraging vaccination, Arkansas is “doubling down” on “FREEDOM”.  And they are likely doubling down on increased COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Let “FREEDOM” ring.

Common Sense

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has finally figured this out.  Alabama is 51st in vaccinations, with only 34% fully covered (Becker).  When asked about the rising infection and hospitalization rate in her state, Ivey replied:

“Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down…The new cases of COVID are because of unvaccinated folks.  Almost 100% of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks.  And the deaths are certainly occurring with unvaccinated folks.”

Somehow, both Governor Ivey and Candidate Sanders have determined that the “common sense” of the good people of Alabama and Arkansas will save the day.  They will mask, social distance, and even close down, all on their own.  But even if COVID hadn’t become intertwined with Trumpian politics, it’s not likely that citizens would lead in sacrificing.  We have always looked to our leadership, in hurricanes and forest fires, in wars and now in disease. 

But some of those leaders are more interested in following than leading.  They don’t want to be up front with the hard realities of COVID and viral infection.  Instead – they find it better to lead with phrases steeped in “Red, White and Blue”:  FREEDOM.   Freedom to infect us all. 

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series.  There’s no politics here, just some stories from my years of running and coaching.  Enjoy!!!

An Old Jogger

I started running again three weeks ago.  I’ve run a lot in my life. There was a track career as a sprinter in high school and college. Then I became a distance running Cross Country Coach. And finally there were early, early morning conditioning as a track coach.  Since I retired from coaching, I’ve tried to keep my conditioning up. But a knee injury put me on machines for a while. I tore cartilage in my knee kicking mulch, it doesn’t get any stupider than that.  And for the past year and a half, from before COVID and right through, I’ve been on an elliptical machine.  That’s working out in a room, watching TV.

Now the elliptical has been great, and I stayed with a consistent program.  But when track season rolled around this year, I found the I had same problem as when I was coaching.  Three or four track meets a week wore my legs out to the point that something had to give.  Doing both was just wearing me down.  I took a break.

Back on the Streets

So it’s been three months “off”, and I’ve decided to try running again, on the streets, outside, in the world.  At my age I start really slow, a jog for a little more than a mile, trying to remember what all of the muscles feel like.  Running is different than “elllipticaling”, there’s more balance, more work for all of the little muscles that keep you upright whether the sidewalk is cracked or a root protrudes from the path.  It takes more energy over less time than the machine.

But the best part of running, is it brings back all of the decades’ worth of memories.  Sure I’ve run the same roads and trails for generations (of kids), but it’s not just the familiar places.  While I struggle to get my “mileage” in, I also am flooded with memories.  Here’s some of them.

New Grass

There is nothing like the smell of newly cut grass on a just getting-hot summer morning.  I’ve experienced that smell my whole life, but it’s all linked to running.  Whether it was the long run summers when I was going six or seven miles a day, or just a more recent excursion of one mile (and some change – working to get to two), hot-cut grass in the summer takes me back.  Summer runs with the Cross Country team or discussing philosophy with David Taylor as we jogged (well, he jogged, I was running pretty fast for me) down McIntosh Road. 

A million (or at least thousands) of runs up Watkins Road from the school, before it became all housing developments, when it was cornfields and soybeans and grass.  There was no need for “OPP” (on potty patrol – bathroom breaks) as long as the farmers were growing corn.  Kids would disappear into the “fields of dreams” and come back ready for more mileage.   

Hillsboro

Coaching at the Hillsboro Invitational, where the short-cut to the two-mile mark took as long for me the coach as it took the runners in the race. The course was mostly old farm fields, grass cut lower on the course but piled up along the sides.  The “new hay” smell was all over.  

Hillsboro had some great memories – cheering my best teams excelling early in the season.  And also some of my worst – it’s where I decided that I needed my heart checked. Running to the two mile mark it felt like someone took a wire brush to my throat. I made it there, but had to walk back and didn’t get to see the finish.  It seemed stupid to die in Hillsboro. I had a stent placed within a month.  The stent went in on a Monday, and I was running around at the Conference Meet at Big Walnut that Saturday, feeling great (though my Assistant Coaches weren’t very happy about that).  The doc told me I couldn’t do any more damage – so the stent got “field tested” a little bit.

Crows

And then there’s the cawing of crows early, early in the morning.  I’m not running that early yet, it takes me a lot longer to physically get going than it used to.  But I do have dogs (see almost any post on this blog) and they get up very early. So we are up, walking around in the very early light, listening to the crows let everyone around know that they are awake.

We used to take our Cross Country team to a Boy Scout Camp, Camp Falling Rock, for a four  day summer camp.  We put the kids in a cabin, dorms with bunk beds with two big rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys.  I was always up early there, to get some coffee going before the kids were awake for our 7:30 am run.  Walking from the cabin up to the Lodge to make coffee, I was always greeted by the crows, dozens of them, hanging out in the trees and a little bit concerned that someone else was sharing their hilltop.

And on really good days, the birds were joined by a herd of deer that grazed on the grass at the top of the hill.  It was a mellow feeling, a good start to the day; sharing the sunrise with the crows and the deer, quietly feeding away but always with one eye on the sleepy looking guy staggering up to get some “joe” in before the morning trail run.

Trail Runs and Deer

That was a tradition, those early morning trail runs.  Everyone stayed together, running at “sub Dahlman pace”.  It was just to shake out the legs for the day, nothing crazy.  But tradition was that at least once a camp we would “get lost”.  It really wasn’t intentional (they were following me).  It was always a matter of can we get “there” a different way than “the regular” way.  Sometimes it worked, but sometimes the morning run ended up a lot harder than it should.  Everyone always came home, with a story to tell, of a cliff, or a stone, or a road that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Speaking of deer, my favorite deer story is of a pre-dawn solo run in the streets of Pataskala.  I was getting the “town loop” in. That’s once all the way around in the dark before there were any cars on the road.  As I ran down High Street, past the historic Pataskala Elementary School, I sensed I had a companion running with me.  It was a deer, a younger buck, who decided I would be good company for a bit of his pre-morning search for flowers.  We went about a block together, before he realized that I really was only running on two feet, not a “brother” deer at all.  Then he headed west as I continued south.

Sunrise at the McGowan

While coaching I had the opportunity of managing the McGowan Cross Country Invitational for thirty-some years.  The last decade or so, it was one of the largest meets in Ohio, with nineteen races and over five thousand kids running.  It was an all-day affair, with the first race at 9 am and the last ending around 6 pm.  There were lots of folks who made it happen, with everyone pitching in to do their part.

I always got there super-early, before 6 am, in the pre-dawn darkness.  In fact, we turned on the soccer field lights for the first hour, so that we could see to work.  That wasn’t a problem for years, but then a housing development was built right up against our running course.  Nothing like field lights at 6 am on a Saturday morning.  But somehow, we never got complaints.  I guess they knew what they were in for when they were bought their new house.

 Our scoring was in the soccer press box, where all the computers and printers had to be networked to work together.  That was one of my early morning tasks.   But I always took a break, just as the sun came up. It peaked over the starting line a quarter-mile to the east, highlighting the dew in the grass of the field leading towards the soccer fence.  Sunrise is always a fresh start; whatever the day before had been, today was something new.  “Sunrise over the McGowan” was a personal tradition.  Then the running would begin!

Sunset on the Track

And there was one more track tradition.  The Watkins facility has woods and pine trees to the west, out past the baseball field, the woods where we ran most of the cross country course.  At the end of the hundreds of track meets we ran at Watkins, at least the ones that finished in the daylight, I would always pause long enough to watch the sunset over the woods.  

It won’t be quite the same anymore:  new home bleachers are built on the west side of the track and field, and the sunset will now be behind that.  The home spectators will love it: no more staring into the setting sun during football games.  But it was often beautiful and always peaceful, a good end no matter how the track meet turned out for the home team.

• The Sunday Story Series
• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21

Aware

I don’t like the new-speak “woke”, but to quote Peter Townsend from The Who, I “became aware” in 1968 (We’re Not Going to Take It).  I was eleven, and it was the year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.  Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Olympics, the Democratic Convention in Chicago dissolved into violence, and Richard Nixon won the Presidency.

I was as child of the Kennedy Presidency.  Some of my earliest memories are of learning of the President’s death. I watched his funeral on our black and white television (you had to turn it on early – it needed to warmup).  It was only a month or so later that we went to Washington.  The service hats were still surrounding the “eternal flame” lighting his grave.  

Bobby Kennedy took up his brother’s legacy.  It was in January of 1968 that the myth of American victory in Vietnam exploded like an overfilled balloon.  The Tet Offensive showed that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were not only undefeated, but uncontained and willing to accept tremendous losses to gain control.  Now a Senator from New York, Bobby wasn’t the first to speak out against President Johnson.  But his words and actions, his willingness to place his life on the line and run for the Presidency himself, made him Johnson’s powerful opponent. 

It got him killed.   There was another funeral, this time in “living color”,  another procession to Arlington Cemetery.  He was buried beside his brother:  an Attorney General, a US Senator, a candidate for President, a final chapter of the “Camelot” dream.

The Burden

There must be a terrible burden in the Kennedy name.  

Robert Kennedy Junior is the third child of the eleven Bobby and his wife Ethel had.  He grew up in the great “Kennedy” tradition, graduating from private school in Boston and going onto Harvard, the London School of Economics, and, like his father, the University of Virginia Law School.   He made his mark as a leading environmental lawyer for thirty-five years, founding the “Waterkeeper Alliance” and as senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council.   Kennedy also advocated for minority and poorer communities, particularly when environmental issues combined with their interests.  

As an outgrowth of his environmental involvement, Mr. Kennedy became an outspoken critic of the use of the chemical compound thimerosal in vaccines.  Out of that original concern, he has evolved into the leader of the “anti-vaccination” movement in the United States.  According to Center for Countering Digital Hate, he is one of dozen leading “influencers” on social media. 

Kennedy has come out against many vaccines, including those against COVID-19.  He also claims that 5-G cellular telephone radiation is linked to the coronavirus, and claims, without evidence,  that a “…wave of suspicious deaths” are tied to the vaccines (NPR).

Easy to Hate

Robert Kennedy represents the odd union of progressive politics and conspiracy theory.  And it all began with a now discounted theory linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine with autism, published in the British medical journal The Lancet (it has since been retracted).  The author subsequently was stripped of his medical license.   But the “cork was out of the bottle” – and the anti-vaccination world had what they needed to attack.

I guess there’s some logic in the movement.  Big industry spent years hiding and denying pollution.  Some big pharma companies have made a fortune on drugs that ultimately did more harm than good – the opioid crisis comes to mind.  So when “evidence” comes out that vaccines are “bad”, it’s easy to accept.  And when investigations by institutions, like the Food and Drug Administration or the American Medical Association, refute that “evidence”, it’s easy to claim that it’s just “big money” buying their acceptance.

Anti-Hero

But it’s just as easy to go from selective understanding to total “anti” everything.  And that’s a problem.  Vaccinations work, ever since 1796 when Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine.  My generation saw the end of smallpox and polio, and the fading of the typical “childhood” diseases that took a toll in disability and death every year:  measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, scarlet fever and chicken pox.  Vaccinations worked so well that we forgot the dangers of the diseases themselves. We focused instead on the minuscule risks of the vaccinations.

It’s hard when the leading spokesperson for the “anti” movement is the son of a hero, a man with a long record of service to causes you support.  Hard to maintain common sense, and not fall into the black hole of conspiracy theory and pseudo-science.  Social media is good for so many things, from finding lost dogs to selling campers.  It gives us access to all sorts of information, some legitimate, and a lot of it junk.  But what it also has done is given every “snake oil salesman” a platform, with slick graphics and realistic lab coats.  

Legacy

Robert Kennedy takes his family name and wears it like a “lab coat”.  It gives him legitimacy, an echo of his father and uncles and an earlier, simpler time.  He has spent a career battling the “corporate interests” that damaged our environment.  But now he has stepped beyond the truth – and instead of protecting folks, he is putting them at risk.  He is appealing to their worst instincts, and with the imprimatur of his family, it works.

His uncle said:  “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”.  What Robert Kennedy is doing for his country is helping more people die.  It’s a sad chapter in the Kennedy legacy.

Old Times

It’s just like “old times”, at least old times four years ago.  Back then these essays were called Trump World, all about the 45th Presidency.  From those earliest entries on Trump World, I wrote about the influence of other nations on Donald Trump.  If  we’d only known.  “Russian intelligence” made their first appearance in Drip, Drip, Drip and Drip, Drip, Drip – Part Deux.  That was early March of 2017, barely six weeks after the Inauguration.  

So here we are, six months into the Biden Presidency.  The President did a CNN Town Hall last night, speaking from Cincinnati.  Biden was everything we thought he’d be: a little halting, but   folksy and plain spoken.  He described the first time they played Hail to the Chief for him.  He turned around to look for the President.  But he also came clearly prepared and able to articulate on the issues; from the COVID resurgence to current inflation, US stature in the world to Senate negotiations for the infrastructure plan.

Cabinet Meeting

He held his first full cabinet meeting this week in the actual Cabinet Room of the White House.  In past months a bigger room was used as part of the COVID protocols.  And they looked “packed in” this time, with the President shoulder to shoulder with Secretary of State Blinken to his right and Secretary of Defense Austin to his left.  Those advisors didn’t pay “obeisance” to the President, there wasn’t a round of “how great you are” like the Trump Cabinet.  And that was only one of the big differences between the Biden Presidency and his predecessor.   

Highest Bidder

We now know that many in the Trump Presidency were sold to the highest bidder.  At least three of those closest advisors to the President were directly on the payroll of another nation.  They were “on the take”:  receiving big bucks to influence the President of the United States to benefit their employer.  At least three had another “master” besides the “Eagle flying” on their paychecks.

We know that Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort was corrupted by debt to the Russians.  We know that Trump’s National Security Advisor General Flynn was on the continuing payroll of the Turkish Government.  And this week we learned that his close friend, advisor and the Chairman of his Inaugural committee Tom Barrack was on the payroll of the United Arab Emirates, to the tune of over a billion dollars.  

A Billion 

A billion dollars:  what kind of influence does that buy?  I remember when I was managing a Cincinnati City Council campaign, the candidate and I had long discussions about accepting a $10,000 contribution.  It was a big chunk of change for us, and we were concerned how much influence we were “selling” to the contributor.  That was .0001% of a billion.  For a billion dollars, they get what they want.

And we may never know how much influence others had over Jared Kushner and Don Junior, keeping the constant flow of money going needed to refinance their disparate real estate holdings.  We do know that Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue building was refinanced with $1.1 Billion from Qatar, a ninety-nine year lease with the entire cost paid up-front.  

Policy Bought

Russia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and of course Saudi Arabia: all these nations seemed to have a “sweet spot” in the Trump Administration.  And of course Israel, with a direct personal connection from Netanyahu to Kushner.  The Israeli Prime Minister was like an uncle to Jared.  And financially, Israel had a “legal” money line.  The late billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, a financial force in both American and Israeli politics, made sure the Trump campaign was well financed.  At least that was “legal” cash.

But from Russia poisoning their former citizens throughout the world and hacking into American politics, to Saudi’s bloody execution of Jamal Khashoggi, to the strange blockade of Qatar quickly removed (just before the 666 deal was settled), to Israelis shooting Palestinians across the border:  how much was America’s reaction and policies determined by how many of the Trump Administration palms were greased?  We may never know the answer for sure.  But we do know this.  The former President of the United States was surrounded by those bought by other nations to influence him.

And he was a President most easily influenced.

Coaching

I’ve never coached at the Olympic level.  But I’ve had a couple of “national” quality athletes, and lots of “state” athletes, and that gave me an understanding of what goes into making decisions in an athletic season.  Certainly it starts with talent.  At the highest level, everyone is talented; there is nothing that can make up for a lack of that.  Add to that fierce dedication to “the goal”.  Without that dedication, talent is wasted.  Every coach had that the “most talented” who couldn’t didn’t have the fortitude to excel.  It’s a “lead the horse to water” thing.

But when an athlete has the combination of talent and dedication, as the coach, you “get the shot”.  You get the opportunity to use all of your knowledge, skills, and experience to hone that athlete to an elite level.  

The next factor is structural.  Does the athlete have the physical structure to handle the extreme stresses of training that are required?  Where is the “breaking point”, and how far can you go before it’s “too late”?  There’s a reason athletes can go through an entire season, and then, at the crucial moment, pull a muscle.  They have reached the limit, of speed, of stress, and of training – the edge between the success and disaster.  And they go too far.

Luck Factor

And then there’s the luck factor.  As athletes train, it stresses not just muscle and tendon, bone and ligaments.  It stresses their entire bodies, from the brain to the immune system.  There are points where they are most vulnerable to sickness, where the impact of hard training drops their defenses.  While coaching teams, I could tell to the week when some would get sick.  It was around the week of highest intensity.  

It’s one of the tough decisions I’ve made as a coach.  I took a group of athletes to the National High School Championships in New York City.  One had “his shot”, the chance to win.  But that morning of the race, he came down to breakfast looking awful. He was coughing, struggling to breath, and running a fever.  There wasn’t really a choice, but telling him that he wasn’t going to run when he was so close, the number literally already on his jersey:  that was hard.

The Vaccine

So what’s this essay all about?  The Olympics haven’t even started yet, and athletes are falling by the wayside to COVID. How could they not have been vaccinated?  Common sense – well common sense would seem to say they could have easily protected themselves from this threat.

And that’s true, they could have.  But let’s look at the timing.  And because I was a track coach, let’s look at it through the lens of a track athlete, one likely to have spent a lifetime, and particularly the last five years (one more than expected) to make the Olympic Team and compete in the Games.

An Olympian

There are two parts to making it to the Olympics in track and field.  The first is making the “standard”.  That’s a mark or ranking established by the International Track Federation (IAAF) that says you’re good enough to compete in the games.  And the second part is you have to actually “make the team”.  In the United States, that means finish in the top three at the Olympic Trials.  

So as an athlete, you have three goals:

            – run (or jump or throw) well enough to qualify for the Games

            – finish in the top three in the Trials to actually make the national team

            – run (or jump or throw) at the Olympic Games themselves (medal?).

Achieving the standard can occur as much as a year before the games.  But the other two come in quick succession.  The Olympic Trials were in June, track and field starts in Tokyo next week.  Track athletes are on carefully designed training programs, schedules set up to allow for two “maximal performances”, one at the Trials and one at the Games.  That is, unless they are still in college, then there’s one more maximal performance, at the NCAA Championships.

These athletes did everything they could to protect themselves from COVID.  They had little contact with others, wore protective gear, and literally went to practice and went home – that was it.  When they became eligible to get the vaccine, in mid-April, many of them were right at that moment when there training was at the highest intensity – and knew they were most vulnerable to sickness.  

Weigh the Risk

Their “teams”, coaches, trainers, and the athlete; weighed the risk.  If they got sick from the vaccine, there’s lost training time at a critical point.  If training is disrupted then maybe there isn’t the “maximal” performance – no Olympics.  But, of course, if the athlete gets COVID – well that’s much worse.

And if they didn’t get the vaccine in April, then surely not in May – nor June before the trials.  And while maybe right after the trials would be the “shot to get the shot”, that would still disrupt a training cycle designed for Olympic medals.  

Their COVID protections were working – they dodged the virus for over a year.  I’m sure when it was all added up, some athletes took the chance and got the vaccine.  And some, took the chance and didn’t.  

It was one more gamble, one more risk to take in the quest to achieve their goal.

Pocket-Box

The vast majority of Americans, at least aged twelve and older, are plugged into the world in a fashion no earlier generation experienced.  We, almost all of us, have more computing power in our pockets than broke the Enigma code, developed the atomic bomb, sent the Apollo rockets to the moon, or controlled the Space Shuttles.  And that power is linked to the rest of the world, for many of us, literally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Christmas, Passover, Ramadan and Diwali (yep, I had to Google that).  

All of that connection empowers us in many ways.  When a technical question arises:  “Who is that Senator from Louisiana”, or “What goes into a Low Country Boil,” we no longer rush to the books or the library.  We literally (verbally) ask our pocket-boxes, and instantly it reaches out across space and time to gain the answer.  My Dad in his later years used my Mom as his “external hard drive”.  His own memory was “corrupted” by strokes; there were years that no longer were “accessible”, so she served as his “backup” for names, dates, and events he knew he should have.  

Now, for a lot of us, there’s a pocket-box to serve that role.

Education

Ask a middle or high school teacher what the most distracting thing is in their classroom, and invariably they “call out” the pocket-box.  Every student seems to be “texting with Mom” all the time.  And while Mom isn’t always at the other end of that conversation, it’s true often enough to raise a whole different question.  

The pocket-box is a leash as well as a gateway.  The Ronald Reagan line, “Trust but verify” is the mantra for parents today.  Their child is a close as a text, anytime, day or night.  And if they fail to answer, “Find Phone” will give an exact location to their decimal geo-position.  But that child will still take their phone with them, even to an illicit party. Leaving it at home is less likely than forgetting to put on pants. 

That distracting “box” has changed education.  What in my era was “Get out your slide-rule” (a device for solving mathematical equations that didn’t require batteries) and then became “Get out your calculator (HP-85 or Bowmar “Brain”),”, now is “Get out your phone”.  And that honest teaching phrase, “I don’t know that answer, could someone research that for us?” is now answered in under thirty seconds.  It becomes a race of “pocket-boxes”; digital dexterity tested rather than research prowess.

Adaptation

Teaching has adapted.  Notes on a chalkboard (those don’t exist, someone might be allergic to the dust) are only in the movies, and usually in black and white.  The dry erase boards are gone too, with electronic “Smart Boards” the common tool.  Even “powerpoints” are “way old school”.  Since finding facts and performing functions are absolutely accessible, education has become what we once called “group work”, now termed “collaborative learning”.  Everyone works together, pooling their resources to accomplish whatever task is assigned.   It enforces socialization, in an era where electronic connectivity perversely creates increased personal isolation.  No one needs a computer, it’s in their pocket.

One Score

We all know the Lincolnian phrase, “Four score and seven years ago…”, eighty-seven years.  But it was less than one score, twenty years, from chalkboards to smart boards.  Our society is moving literally at the speed of light. Information good or bad, false or true, religiously uplifting or sexually explicit, is completely accessible and totally unrestrained in everyone’s pocket, from children to old men.  

It’s the era we hardly dreamed of in the 1950’s and 60’s; far beyond Dick Tracy’s wrist radio or the HAL 9000 computer.    But all that accessibility does not guarantee veracity.  A lie can travel just as fast as the truth, perhaps even faster.  In our “post-truth” world, the “facts” are determined more by how many people “agree” that they’re true, rather than the actual accuracy.  It’s the ultimate “democracy”: “the people” decide “truth”, true or not.  And that choice determines who else they “listen” to on their pocket-box.  Their version of “truth” reverberates and is reinforced.  The volume and quantity of repetition is constantly providing “verification”, right or wrong.

Crowd Source

In our world the truth is “crowd sourced”.  And we restrict our “crowd” to the truths we want to hear.  So all of that accessibility, all of the networking, or as the previous generation called it, “world-wide webbing”, puts us right back where we were.  We listen to who we listen to, we ignore the information we don’t want to hear.  What used to be “I don’t know” has now become “I don’t want to know”.  But the result is still the same. 

What happens from here?  Maybe we need to ask Facebook.  I’m sure they will provide the answer.

It will be  whatever answer we want to hear.

Bad Labeling

I have never been formally educated in “Critical Race Theory”.  I have of course, spent some time trying to understand it, and to see through all the “noise” made by those who decry it.  

The “debate” seems to me to be a lot like “Defunding the Police”.  That’s a lousy label for taking a close look at how we spend public funds to protect our society.  Do we really want Police officers to be our “front line” for mental health and addiction?  Do those police officers want to be on that front line?  I think all of us would agree that those cases put good officers in positions that others are better equipped to handle.   Re-evaluating why we use heavily armed and protected officers for that, and to direct traffic, or enforce evictions isn’t a slam on those who protect us from dangerous criminals.  But the word “defunding” is a challenge – bad labeling. 

Academic Lens

Critical Race Theory isn’t a political label.  No one is holding up “CRITICAL RACE THEORY” banners at the Black Lives Matter rally, or anywhere else for that matter.  It is an academic lens for focusing study, a way at looking at our history to determine what happened.  There are forces that drive us:  our behavior, our legislation, and our economics, that are beyond individual efforts and biases.  Critical Race Theory is a way at looking at how that happens.

Here’s an example.  Most of the American Founding Fathers were slave owners, or benefitted from slavery.  Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Hancock, Jay all had economic connections to slavery.  But the “philosophers”, particularly Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton, truly believed that slavery would disappear in the next fifty years.  They did “kick slavery down the road” for the next generation to solve (they banned the slave trade, but not for twenty years).  But they believed it was a solvable problem by that next generation. Madison saw the “Three-Fifths Compromise” as a step towards that – “three-fifths” is better than “zero”.   Then something changed.

Cotton Picking

Cotton was grown in the South.  It was an important cash crop to the Southern Planters, not so much for the Virginians, but in the deeper South of Georgia and South Carolina.  And while we all know about the “Triangle Slave Trade”, the trading ships of the North also took cotton to Europe, where it was sold for other goods and brought back to the America.  So right after the American Revolution, the South and the North were vested in cotton.

But cotton has two characteristics that make it difficult to grow.  First, the cotton plant takes nutrition from the soil.  Unlike other plants, such as soybeans and peanuts, it does not return nutrition.  After a few years of use, the cotton yield of a field drops.  It takes years of other crops for that field to regain its nutrients after cotton.  But all of that didn’t matter before the 1790’s, because cotton was so hard to clean.  

Growing and picking cotton is labor intensive.  But even after the cotton is picked, each individual piece of cotton must be cleaned of cotton seeds.  Someone could pick cotton all day, but it would take that same person all-night to clean what they picked.  So the plant itself was self-limiting, a planter could only grow so much, because only so much could be cleaned.

The slave owning Founding Fathers didn’t see cotton growing as the ultimate reason for slavery.  In fact, Thomas Jefferson found himself unable to free his slaves, not just because of his “need” for their labor, but because they were the collateral for the money he borrowed.  The enslaved people were guarantors of his repayment, and Jefferson was deeply indebted.  Regardless of his personal beliefs, he was unable to act upon them. (I’m not offering that as some absolution of Jefferson – just the fact of his situation).

Remove the Cork

What changed?  An invention by Connecticut gunsmith, Eli Whitney.  He visited a friend’s plantation, and saw the enslaved people working late into the night, pulling the seeds from the cotton.   So he designed a hand-cranked machine, a series of combs, that removed the seeds.  Now instead of hand cleaning a pound of cotton a night, the machine could clean fifty pounds.  (By the way, Whitney wasn’t trying to make “life better” for the enslaved.  He saw that he could make a lot of money by building his “engine”). 

The “cork” was out of the bottle.  Planters could grow as much cotton as they could plant.  But now they needed more workers – enslaved people – to plant, tend, and pick the cotton.  With the seeds no longer the hold up, profit was based on the number of workers available.  And the money was rolling in.

Except that the land would wear out, and so the Planters continually needed new land.  The territories of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and Arkansas had great land for cotton.  The planters went, and they took their “cotton engines” or “gins”, and of course, their enslaved people to work the land.

They moved into the coastal areas of the Mexican province of Tejas as well.  And when the Mexican Government outlawed slavery – they rebelled and set up their own nation of Texas. (That’s not necessarily what your Eighth Grade American History book said – protecting slavery makes the Alamo a lot less “romantic”).

No Clean Hands

But the North had their stake in cotton as well.  Much of the early manufacturing in the Northern states consisted of textile mills – weaving the Southern cotton into cloth.  The industrial revolution opened the manufacturing flood gates, and the demand for Southern cotton increased astronomically.  The Northern industrialists wanted to buy the cotton, the Southern planters wanted to grow cotton, the new railroad magnates in both North and South were making money by moving that cotton.  

The only group that didn’t benefit from cotton were the enslaved Black people. That “next generation” of American leaders weren’t interested in emancipation.  Their future was vested in cotton profits, and cotton profits depended on enslavement.  And while a growing minority of Americans were in favor of ending slavery, the “money” was definitely on cotton, and thus the continuation of enslaved labor.   It was critical to the cotton industry, and cotton was “King”. 

A Civil War 

So when the new Republican Party, voiced by Abraham Lincoln, demanded that slavery should be restricted to the current slave states, it meant that the current cotton model would fail.  And that’s why the Southern leaders saw the Republicans and Lincoln as the ultimate threat – to enslavement, and as importantly, to cotton.  This was more than the individual racist views of American leaders.  This was a founding industry built on the backs of enslaved peoples.  Those people were Black – and that’s an issue that Critical Race Theory examines.  

After the Civil War, the cotton industry still needed the laborers.  So, instead of enslavement, share-cropping developed which trapped the worker to the land.  The state governments backed that up in law, first with the Black Codes and then Jim Crow, keeping the now-freed laborers in the fields.  If they couldn’t have slavery, then share-cropping was the next best thing.

So the legal and economic reasons to treat Black people different than others continued after emancipation.  How those restrictions have continued into our present is another area that Critical Race Theory examines.

Of course racism was a part of our history. Whenever one race holds another as subordinate, that racist. But that racism also crept into our institutions and laws, and became part of our economic foundation. As it took hundreds of years to take root, it will take time to uproot. To say that isn’t to call “everyone” racist, but it does say we are all obliged to dig in our own gardens.

So that’s your history lesson for the day.  I hope you don’t feel “violated” – somehow contaminated by this analysis.  It’s just a way to examine our history, and how that history still impacts us today.

Senior Finance

When my parents got in their late eighties, I did what many children do. I started helping out with their bookkeeping.  That was a big deal – Dad spent most of his adult life dealing with “big” finances.  He negotiated multi-million dollar deals on restaurant napkins (one was framed in his office).    But Mom was responsible for the “checkbook” at home, I suppose because for years Dad spent his weeks “on the road” selling television shows.  And it always drove Dad crazy that Mom rounded all transactions up to the nearest dollar.  The checkbook was never “right” for Dad, a University of Cincinnati accounting graduate.

So when some bills started slipping by, I offered to help. Mom and Dad were “snowbirds”, spending about half the year in Florida. There was the main account in Cincinnati, but there was a second account in a Florida bank. And there were two sets of bills, ones for each house, and so things got confusing for everyone. And It didn’t help that it was the early 2000’s, and “online” banking and billing were becoming a thing. For my parents, the “checkbook” controlled all and the fact that I had a spreadsheet accounting a thousand miles away that I updated weekly didn’t make things clearer for them.

Health Costs

What I discovered though, is that my parents were spending a lot of money on prescription drugs.  That was my first experience with Medicare.  It was the thing called the “donut hole”.  Medicare would cover the first $2000 of drug costs, then wouldn’t pick up any cost until $5000 was reached.  And my parents, being in their eighties, had tens of thousands of dollars of drug costs.  

So we struggled along keeping up with Medicare changes, and what was covered and what was not.  Whenever a medical bill came in, it became the medical lottery game.  The first move was not to pay, because the first bill was NEVER the final bill.  There was what Medicare would pay, and then there was what the secondary insurance would pay, and then there was always a “final accounting” when you found out if you “won” and really had to pay anything at all.  To Medicare’s credit, a lot of times you were “a winner”.

And when Mom and Dad reached their last days, there were the “final” bills to take care of.  Mom was struggling with lung issues, and with spinal fractures.  When she needed to go to the hospital, the only way to get her there was by ambulance.  Somewhere along the way, the “wrong” box was checked on a form.  What was an emergency trip was classified as “transport”.  It was a four thousand dollar error, a fifteen minute ride that was billed at $267/minute.  For a year we argued with different medical staffs.  No one would take responsibility for checking the wrong box,  I suppose that would get them in trouble with Medicare. (After Mom’s death, we ultimately settled that bill for $1400).

Down the Rabbit Hole  

So I thought I had a pretty good handle on Medicare and “senior” insurance.  But now I turn sixty-five this fall, and I’ve got to get the “Medicare” issue figured out for ME.  It’s no wonder that Mom and Dad needed help.  

Everyone “assumes” that when you hit sixty-five, you get free government health insurance called Medicare.  But, like most assumptions, it’s just not true.  Medicare is not a “free ride”.  You have to pay into Medicare to get it for “free”.  For most Americans that’s not a big deal:  you paid into Social Security for forty quarters (ten years) and you “earned” Medicare coverage (it’s listed as FICA on your paycheck).  But some jobs, including mine, were exempted from paying into either Medicare or Social Security.  The idea was that as public employees, the public pension systems were enough and “we” wouldn’t need Medicare or Social Security.

I guess I thought that was a “benefit”. What  I didn’t realize it was that “exemption” meant no one paid.  While I am still eligible for Medicare, if I want it now, I have to pay for it. 

Figures and Figures

So for the uninitiated, there are actually four parts to Medicare Insurance: Parts A, B, C, and D.  Part A covers hospitalization costs, and Part B is major medical costs.  Part C is if you want to be in a total health “plan”, and Part D is for drug coverage.  If you work your forty quarters, you are eligible for “free” Part A, the most expensive coverage.  But you still have to purchase the rest.  And if you didn’t pay in for the forty quarters, you have to pay for Part A as well.

To give you numbers:  for me Part A costs $5652/year, and Part B $1776/year.  And since Medicare covers 80% of expenses, a private “supplemental plan” would be (at least) another $1200 a year, which ends up at $8538/year, not including a Part D drug plan.

You don’t have to take Medicare Part A when you hit sixty-five, though if it’s free you should.  But if you choose not to, make sure you’ve got health insurance for the rest of your life.  Because for every year you don’t buy Medicare after you turn sixty-five, you pay an extra ten percent on the cost if you did end up purchasing it.  (I suspect, but don’t know, that if you are in a Pension system that drops health coverage, a real possibility if you are a teacher, Medicare would waive that fee).

Senior-Hood

I’m lucky. As it turns out, I’m eligible to be on my wife’s insurance, even though she’s retired as well. So I can buy Medicare B and still be covered for everything else (I don’t even HAVE to buy Part B, but it will save me money in the long run). But it’s no wonder that senior citizens (more senior than me) struggle to understand what’s right for their financial situation. It’s complicated. Even the folks at Medicare themselves don’t understand all the in’s and out’s. It took several calls to find out I could buy Part B without buying Part A.

Here’s an out of the box new “niche” business, Medicare Advisor (without pushing a separate insurance product). There’s a whole new group turning sixty-five every year, and they all need help.  But that’s for someone else.  I’m not looking for a new job –retirement’s good.  It would’ve been nice, though, if there was someone with “all the answers” to help me through the process.  It is a rude welcome to senior status. 

But, like birthdays, I guess it’s still better than the alternative!

Fair and Accurate

Extra!! Extra!! Read all about it!! The 2020 election was the most secure election ever held in the United States!

Here in Ohio, the Secretary of State (Ohio’s election chief) just released the numbers. Out of almost six million votes cast – thirteen votes were cast by non-eligible voters.  That’s .000223% (needed the big calculator for that one), or 2.23 illegal votes per million cast.  Hardly enough to change an election; in fact, well within the “margin of error” for just counting the votes.

And that accuracy and integrity is mirrored throughout the nation.  It’s a marvel of our democracy.  At the worst moment in our national pandemic, when the most dangerous action was to gather in large crowds indoors, the United States conducted the largest election ever held here.  Over 159 million votes were cast, 28 million more than the previous biggest turnout in 2008.  

And for those of you who think the turnout size itself is “evidence” of election fraud – the US population as a whole increased by over 24 million since 2008.  Yes, a higher percentage of folks voted, but the voter “pool” was bigger as well.

Meet the Moment

We did it with masks and with mail-in ballots.  We did it by allowing folks to vote early, and vote longer.  The election workers of America did everything they could to make voting safe (from COVID).  And we found what should be the “model” for American voting – the “model” that enabled more Americans to vote than ever before.

Talk about a time to “pat yourself on the back”!  We did it, and we found ways to do it safely.  There weren’t viral “super-spreader” events.  And we took a huge step towards achieving the American dream, of EVERY AMERICAN citizen having the opportunity to vote.  Isn’t that what America is supposed to be about?

But in almost every state in the Union, the 2020 election has caused an outcry in the state legislatures, and in many, laws that restrict voting.  Instead of fireworks and parades for our great election success, many states are limiting voter access, and taking election authority away from those officials who pulled off America’s great success.  

Big Lie

If you’ve read my essays in “Our America” very often, you know I’m no fan of the 45th President.  And certainly he provided the impetus for voting restriction with his “Big Lie” strategy of eroding America’s confidence in the voting process.  He “lit the fuse” that led to January 6th Insurrection.  And there is a large segment of Americans who still “secretly” believe his lie.  

But there is a difference between “the fuse” and “the bomb”. It’s taken a concerted effort of many politicians who know better than to serve as “the bomb” blowing up our national election expansion.  And before anyone says it – these are not the “uneducated” masses that the 45th President is so fond of.  These are our “leaders”, some with advanced degrees from the most prestigious universities in our nation.  

Two quick examples:  on Fox News a guest commentator, Pete Hegseth, continues to push the “Big Lie”, including refusing last week to confirm that Joe Biden even won the election.  Hegseth is a Princeton graduate (2003)  with a Harvard advanced degree.  Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri who still leads the charge to undermine the election: Stanford undergrad (2002), Yale Law School.  So much for a “Liberal” arts education. 

Future Republicans

There is more to the voter suppression movement than the Presidential election of 2020.  It’s all about the Republican Party’s decision to “double-down” on white “victimization” rather than looking to expand to include the interests of minorities.  That’s a demographic nightmare for Republicans.  The United States is moving inexorably (I love that word) towards a “minority-majority” nation.  Whites will be less than 50% by 2045.  So a political strategy that depends on winning white voters only is a “losing” strategy – at least in the long run (and that’s only twenty-four years).  

So here’s the “simple” math.  Republicans depend on white votes to stay in power. Whites make up a shrinking percentage of the population. So, Republicans must do two things.  They must get an increasing percentage of the white vote, and they must keep the non-whites, the votes they have given up, from voting.

The “bomb” was set before the 45th President, and before the pandemic.  But the exigencies of pandemic voting pushed even the Republican election officials in places like Georgia and here in Ohio to expand access to voting, putting them in direct conflict with their own Party.  They did their job first – got people to the polls – but now are “retrenching” to Party goals.

Rig the Vote

And for those election officials in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona who happen to be Democrats – the Republican state legislatures are changing laws and even state constitutions to remove their powers.  Many Republican legislatures are trying to take over the power to determine whether the vote count is “acceptable” – putting themselves as “super electors” over the popular vote.

It’s an ugly process, and one that is truly Un-American.  The inexorable (there it is again) tide of history and population growth is against them.  Democrats may lose some battles, like those they are gallantly fighting in Texas and Georgia.  But in the longer view, Republicans are betting on a losing strategy.  And the longer view really isn’t that long.

(that happened during my life)

by Babs Dahlman

This is a series of short storied written by my Mom, Babs Dahlman.  She had an English Literature Degree from the University of London, and I have edited her writing only very lightly!!!!

I began thinking several months ago of so many coincidences that have happened in my life and thought I would write them down.  They are not in chronological order, however.

The Cabby

Perhaps I could begin with one that happened maybe forty-five years ago.  I was in New York with Don.  He was attending a convention and I was at one of the museums, and found myself late at getting back to the hotel. I hailed a taxi and said, “The Swiss Hotel”.  The driver looked back at me and said, “I know you”.  I said, “I do not know you”, but he said again, “I know you”.  

I was getting a little agitated but went ahead and asked him how he knew me.  He said, “I was a military policeman during World War II and at the First Peace settlement in Germany which General Montgomery signed at the little Red School House.  I escorted you to a seat there.  General Bradley knew you were in the vicinity and arranged it.  Is this not true?”  Of course, it was true, and I was there.  When he stopped at the Swiss Hotel he jumped out of the cab and would not take the fare.  He said, “It is a real pleasure knowing you Ma’am”.

Finnish Furniture

I was in San Francisco, again on a business trip with Don.  How lucky I was to have all those trips!  It was a dreary morning, and I was looking for something adventurous to do.  I had always wanted to sail on San Francisco Bay, so I made my way down to Fisherman’s Wharf where I knew you could sail with a tourist boat.  However, when I got there the captain said it was a little rough that day and no passengers.  I was very disappointed.

As I turned away, a young man came up and said, “I will charter the whole boat and this lady can come along.”  The captain consented and I was thrilled.  He outfitted us with life vests, and  off we sailed into a fairly rough sea!  We sailed for about four hours.  The young man was from Finland and a delightful companion.  We talked of politics and art and had a great time.  He was on a business trip – in the furniture business.  When we got back to the port, he offered to take me for lunch, but I said “No thanks” and then said “Ships that pass in the night” or some such phrase.  

I was pretty wet and decided to go into a restaurant, clean up and have a late lunch.  I did so and ate a delicious meal.  When my bill came, the waiter said a foreign gentleman came in and left twenty-five dollars for my lunch!  When I got back to the hotel for the cocktail party, everybody asked, “Where have you been?”  I’ve been sailing on San Francisco Bay,” said I.

A year or so later, again in New York, I was hailing a cab when a voice said, “The English lady who sailed with me on San Francisco Bay.”  It was my man from Finland.  We shared a cab, he to the airport, me to the hotel.  He paid the fare!

Across the Back Garden

Two years ago I was sitting on the beach at Vero Beach, where we spend our winters, when I saw a couple strolling along the water’s edge.  She was holding a little bowl and collecting something from the sea.  I was intrigued and asked her what she was collecting.  She answered it was bait for her husband’s fishing trip.  We started talking and she said, “Oh, you are English”.  I said “Yes, it is my birthday and I had a card from the Queen.”  

She threw her arms around me.  I asked her where she lived in England and she told me, but then said she used to live in Wallington, Surrey.  “Well,” said I, “so did I.  Where did you live?”  She said, “Hawthorne Road.”  I lived on the next road, Brambeedown Road.  On comparing numbers ,we shared back gardens.  How extraordinary we should meet four thousand miles away in a different country.  We have become good friends in our golden age.

John Hill

This in my favorite, though I am not sure that Don likes it so much.  When I was nine years old, my sister Eileen was dating a young man named John Hill.  He  was very handsome.  I was in love with him myself and went to Woolworth’s and bought a ring and told everybody one day I was going to marry John Hill.  I even had a photograph made and gave it to him.  Kid stuff, of course.  He was wonderful; didn’t laugh or make fun of me.  Well, he and my sister parted, and she married someone else.

John was well liked by our family and kept in touch and visited us.  He and I had a correspondence through the years.  John came to London in 1943 – the same year I met Don and fell madly in love with him.  Don, I mean.  John, at that time, asked me to marry him.  The answer was no because I loved Don.  He left and later married an Englishwoman and they went to live in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Africa.  I kept up a casual correspondence with him over the years and we saw him and his wife a couple of times.

We decided for my seventy-fifth birthday to take everyone to England – children, grandchildren, etc.  I wrote to John and Sue and told them we would like to meet them and they would get to see our family.  I gave them some idea of our itinerary, but I did not get a reply.

We all went to England, and my niece and nephew gave a wonderful party for me the second day we arrived.  Unfortunately, during the party I fell down some stone steps and splintered my pelvis in three places.  I was in a wheel chair for the rest of the trip.  We rented three houses in various parts of England – Canterbury, Oxford and Cornwall.  The thought of seeing John Hill had gone from my mind.

My daughter Terry was driving from Oxford to Cornwall.  We stopped to pick up my sister-in-law in Exeter Down.  We packed a picnic, which we frequently did.  On our way to Cornwall we stopped to eat our picnic.  It was at a pit stop, and we decided to go on.  Terry said, “Mummy, look for a nice shady place as we drive on.”  I  saw a sign saying to miles to Lake _______.  Should we do that?  We decided yes.

We arrived at the lake and they were all helping out of the car when a strong arm came around me.  I looked up and it was John!  “What are you doing here?” I said.  He said “I wrote you to meet me here at one o’clock.”  It was one o’clock.  We had a great time sharing our picnic.  He met some of our children, and we said goodbye.  He died the following year.

When we got back to Cincinnati and collected our mail, there was the letter from John which said to meet him that day in that place at that time.  What an extraordinary coincidence.

From the War

Soon after I was released from the Officials Secrets Act, I was having a luncheon with an English friend in Clifton, and the conversation got around to World War II.  I told her about my involvement with Special Operations in Europe and detailed some of my missions in France.  Some weeks later she called and invited me to a dinner party she was giving, and mentioned she had also invited someone she would like me to meet.  I accepted the invitation.

It was quite a large affair, and soon after we arrived, she came over with a lady, a French lady who was a professor at the University of Cincinnati.  She was about fifteen or twenty years younger than I, and to my amazement, she threw her arms around me.  I was slightly alarmed.  She said “You are Virginia, aren’t you?”  I was shocked for a moment because my code name in Special Operations was Virginia. 

My friend evidently told her about me and she remembered when she was about five, her parents, who were part of the Underground, would go out to meet a Lysander (the plane that brought the spies into Occupied France) and she said they always talked about the young British spy called Virginia.  They were both caught and shot by the Germans. 

Whoever thought that a little French girl would meet the English spy Virginia in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Siblings

My brother Leslie was thirteen years older than I and there were three siblings between us.  But Leslie and I were always very close to each other.  When I went to finishing school in Liege, Belgium, he and his wife lived in Brussels and I spent most of my weekends with them.  My brother was extremely talented – spoke eleven languages fluently and was also a great athlete.

When the War broke out in 1939, he sent his wife and children back to England but stayed as the British Army was driven back into the sea at Dunkirk.  The British Government asked him to evacuate all the British citizens out of Brussels to Dunkirk, where, hopefully, there would be a boat to take them across the Channel.

Before he did this, he quickly organized an escape route across Europe for British and (eventually) American pilots who were shot down.  He and his fellow countrymen had a perilous journey to the coast and got on the last boat to England.

Meanwhile, I was doing my bit for my country in Special Operations.  I was called one day for a mission and my briefing was at Tempsford where the Lysanders were.  To my complete surprise, my brother Leslie walked in to do the briefing.  I had no idea he was associated with S.O.E., and he had no idea I was involved.  He was more than a little perturbed that he might be sending his favorite little sister to her death, but that was what war was all about.  How strange, and what a coincidence that was.

My brother was given the Order of King Leopold after the War, and also made a Commander of the British Empire by King George VI.  Unfortunately, he was killed in his own aero plane fifteen years after the War.

Sylvia Beach

When I was at the University of London studying History and English and Literature, I was fascinated by reading of a woman who owned a bookshop in Paris and who had published James Joyce’s Ulysses when nobody else would publish it.

Her name was Sylvia Beach and her bookshop was The Shakespeare Bookshop.  She held poetry readings and her companions were famous writers from all over the world who converged on Paris at that time.  That included James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Alice B. Toklas, etc.  I imagined her to be beautiful, sophisticated and elegant.  I longed to meet her and talk to her.

During the War on one of my missions my assignment was Paris, which was then occupied by the Germans.  I was dropped by Lysander in a small place in a field in the middle of nowhere, I thought.  It was about thirty miles outside of Paris.  I was met by a French agent who drove me into Paris in his Citroen and left me at his aunt’s apartment.  She was also a French agent.

The apartment was just below the Sacre Coeur.  I was led to the attic where I was to spend the night.  It was a sweet little room overlooking the roofs of Paris.  As I stood at the window in my cotton panties and cotton bra, I thought how strange to see Paris this way.  I was a British spy, and in the movies the spies were always in black satin nightgowns with a string of pearls and diamond bracelets and a handsome man to go to bed with, and all I had was cold, damp sheets to step into.  Oh, well.

I noticed an envelope on the bedside table and, as I opened it, in code I found the name of my contact;  Sylvia Beach.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  What a way to meet her.

The next morning I got up and made my way to the Shakespeare Bookshop, stopping to say a prayer at the Notre Dame Cathedral.  As I was saying my rosary, a young German officer came and sat beside me.  I thought, “I am going to be caught” and prayed to the Holy Mother in my hour of need.  The German officer turned and smiled at me and took his rosary out. 

I left soon after and made my way to the bookshop.  I have related this story in a previous paper  — sorry to bore you.  I went in – rather musty and dark – and there she stood.  I was disappointed.  She looked old and frumpy and badly dressed.  Then I looked into her blue, blue eyes and knew she had seen the world and had revolutionized the book world by publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses. I introduced myself and told her who I was and how much I had wanted to meet her.  She was very patient and kind.  Finally, we planned the mission and I left. 

I returned to London the next day and went  to my fake office at the Ministry of Health.  Mr. Baker looked at me and said, “Been out with a Yank all night?”  Little did he know that I had been on a mission to an occupied country and my dream had come true.  I had met Sylvia Beach.  Such a coincidence.  (here is the full  Sylvia Beach Story).

Stolen Art

On one of my missions for S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) in Paris, I again met with Sylvia Beach.  Our assignment was to dynamite a train outside of Paris to delay a troop train with German troops going to the front.  We heard that it was not going to be a troop train, but was going to be full of art on its way to General Goering’s underground museum in Dresden.  This information was given to us on good authority by the Maquis.  We could not contact London, so finally decided to about the operation, save the art and let the train go through.

Some years after the War was over, Don was asked to go to Le Mans, France, to represent Dayton and to honor the Wright Brothers who had their first (European) flight there.  It was a very exciting trip, starting in Paris where the US Ambassador was to have a cocktail party for us.  On the way to the party, we were caught in a traffic jam in the same tunnel where later Princess Diane had that awful accident.  Anyway, by the time we arrived at the party, people were leaving.

The next morning we took the train to Le Mans accompanied by the ambassadorial staff, NBC news and camera men.  We were met by the Prefect (Governor of the Province) and he and his entourage led us through the old city where a reception was given.  Then onto the Le Mans car race track where we were driven at 185 mph around the track.  It was very exciting.  Then there was a fly-by for us – we felt very important.

There was another reception and then Don proceeded to lay wreaths and the various places and made speeches lauding the French and the Wright Brothers.  He did a super job.  I was so proud of him.

Then the Governor took us back to his chateau where we enjoyed the most wonderful lunch.  After lunch the Governor said he had an important announcement to make. He said that the art stolen from Paris by General Goering had been returned – that very day.  My heart turned over!  I was still under the Official Secrets Act so could not say a word, but what a coincidence that I should be there when the art was returned.  How fortunate we aborted the plan to dynamite the tracks and let the train go on and save the art.