Before QAnon There Was....

Anyone who thinks whacko conspiracy theories are a new thing should watch "Dr. Strangelove". It was streaming free on Amazon Prime Videos recently--an opportunity of Kubrickian proportions.

Peter Sellers played three different roles (RAF Group Captain Mandrake, Merkin Muffley, a weirdly Stevensonian President of the United States, and Dr. Strangelove, himself, the 'former' Nazi nuclear scientist.) 

I had forgotten how brilliant George C.Scott was as General Turgidson, head of the Air Force, and how 'Slim Pickens' the determined B-52 pilot, went through checklist after checklist, ticking off boxes like an accountant, while avoiding Soviet air defenses and ignoring desperate American efforts to cancel his mission. Supposedly, Kubrick didn't tell him the movie was a satire, in order to guarantee a 'straight' performance.

What particularly sticks in the mind in this age of QAnon was the performance of  Sterling Hayden, as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, a military bureaucrat committed to a satirical version of the John Birch Society theories wherein the Commies (and women) have ganged up to steal men's 'precious bodily fluids'.

 His self initiated attack on the Soviet Union, with all its fatal consequences, was a scary, demonstration of how close we are to having an impaired person one button away from Armegeddon, no matter what precautions are taken to avoid it. 

Yes, it was funny-- 

And haunting--

And the closing voice-over, Vera Lynn singing 'We'll Meet Again", brilliant--

How it Went Down

 If you were raised in New England in the 1940's and 50's, especially if you read any Robt. Frost--not just the lyric poems, but story poems like The Death of the Hired Man, you are likely to have acquired an affinity for austerity, and a polite resistance to other people's ideas for your improvement. So it should not surprise anyone that last Wednesday, a day I might cheerfully have died (except for all 'those promises to keep'...) I finally succumbed to my wife's oft repeated suggestion that I call the 'advice nurse' at our wonderful HMO. The nurse listened a minute and advised me to go to 'Urgent Care'. I ordered a Lyft--and was duly delivered to Urgent Care, which was on the verge of closing. There didn't seem to be anybody around--but a transport tech showed up with a wheel-chair (Lord knows how the nurse had detected the necessity) and whisked me past other late arrivals, no doubt wondering how my 'urgency' could be more urgent than their urgencies. 

At this point I was fitted up with the usual IV annoyance on my right arm--because I have no veins in my left arm, and was interviewed by a fabulously good looking Dr. whose name I did not get, partly because I was too polite to stare at her name-tag, but mostly because she was asking a lot of personal questions, like what were my resusitation directions, death options, etc. She was Spanish, or perhaps Portugese. Her name might have been  Dulcinea del Tobosa, a student of the great Avicemma. I was getting a little confused, but a lot of these HMO doctors are from foreign schools--and more power to 'em, I say.

With these consent issues resolved to her satisfaction, I was once more transported past the 'not quite sick enough' petitioners in the Urgent Care Waiting Room, and delivered to Emergency Care. There I enjoyed the attentions and services appropriate to that department, memorable only for the unexpected stick up my right nostril, and shortly afterward (so it seemed to me--I may have fallen asleep) the ER Doc, announcing through a crack in the door, to my already compromised caregiver, "Positive". Some paperwork followed and I was transported, by gurney this time, upstairs to room 349--where I was to remain for three more days. The people there were wonderful--regular ministering angels--possibly saints. (I'm not Catholic, or even a believer, so I'm not 'up' on the rules for admission.) 

I hold them entirely responsible for my survival. 

Let it be duly noted that a bunch of them were also immigrants, or American women of poor back-grounds, who had worked hard to become 'Health Care Professionals'. Oh what a valuable class of people! Note to Joe and Kamala: We need to elevate them, not with some dinky certificate or bonus check. They embody the best hopes of the America. Their aspirations for themselves, for their families, their touching belief in America, deserve Something Transformative, like the GI Bill. We should help them become their very best, and in their turn, they will raise up America with their dreams and hard work. The truth is, we cannot live without them--we middle-class Americans have lost the ability to take care of ourselves. 

(I have other groups in mind for similar 'Hosannahs'. One at a time, one at a time.)

Another unexpected discovery: Trump wasn't wrong about everything. Remdecivir, with a dash of Predizone, is good stuff. In three days you are back on the job, pretending to run the country, or in my case, with lots of highly useful suggestions for Joe and Kamala--an incurable Democratic Party disease, for which there is no known Physick. 

Perhaps the moguls of the Drug Industry prefer it that way.

A Proper Upbringing

Unless you were born in the late 1930's in Litchfield County, Connecticut, you have already missed your best chance for a proper upbringing, so what follows is not a 'how-to' but a nostalgic reminder of how things might have been if fate had favored you.

I do not mean to suggest that my upbringing was ideal, or even entirely proper. Definition happens at the margins, that black line that tells us the difference between the subject and the background. My upbringing was uncomfortably close to that line, which may also be evoked by the cliche, 'skating on thin ice.'

Money: In those days money was not the sole criteria of respectability. In the midst of a terrible depression that (my parents believed) President Roosevelt had so unjustly blamed on Herbert Hoover, most people had very little, and (as often happens) many of the wrong people had the most. For those without much, respectability was thought to turn upon other criteria. Still, there is an ineffable nexus between money and propriety. Having a bit of lolly never hurts, and having a lot will often offset other deficiencies. We had none, so we skated as fast as we could along that line between the firm ice and the thin ice--a slightly hazardous enterprise.

In our favor was the God of the Puritans. He was with us, and we were (of course) with Him, so there wasn't any question that we were right, but the Congregational Church, once so aggressively evangelical, was still recuperating from the Civil War. The challenge of freeing the slaves, and the effort to rectify the whole country, had exhausted God's undoubted elect. Congregationalists were taking a temporary break from telling everybody else what to do (while reserving the right to resume that dutiful burden in the future.)

Family: We were poor relations (which we fully understood) and worse (although we didn't yet realize it) the poor relations of a family already bypassed by Irish and Italian Democrats, who, in the midst of the Great Depression, and the Second World War, held many of the political sinecures we considered the due reward of our cousins and other Republicans. Even more astonishing, their children had graduated from famous universities, and were practicing law and medicine. Happily, family privilege had not completely eroded--my father had a guaranteed, albeit low paying, job as a the bookkeeper and (eventually) vice president of a mutual savings bank organized by one of his ancestors.

Education and Culture: We had as much as we thought we needed. We read a lot--but our reading was entirely undiscriminating--everything from the backs of cereal boxes to the latest 'great novel'. Everybody in our block had a copy of "Kristin Lavransdatter" on their bookshelf, (probably no more than half read.) On average, our reading lay in a fairly narrow channel defined by what the right people (e.g., Dad's Uncle, a small town banker and a sometime Republican candidate for Governor) would consider acceptable, TIME, LIFE, The Torrington Register on weekdays, The Herald-Tribune on Sundays, and every month a copy of The Reader's Digest--so Mom could talk about books, if ever she had a moment to spare (which she never did--having had too many children for a WASP.)

On the plus side, I was a pretty good student, and by reading everything within three feet of my eyes, had accumulated a mountain of trivial information that served me well on entrance examinations. My infallible sense that "Helm is to Hat, as picklehaube is to porkpie,' brought me an academic scholarship--although nothing so lucrative as the awards to promising quarterbacks, and (alas) not at Yale, the alma mater of choice for the more prosperous branch of our family.

(To be continued)

Further Thoughts on Memory

As previously mentioned, Mr. Henry Ford, an otherwise capable fellow, supposedly remarked that "History is bunk!" Whether or not he actually said it, I partly agree. I'm not suggesting history can be ignored. It's back there all right, but we don't remember it accurately, and as time goes by some memories get crowded to the side. For example, you may not be aware of what happened in the summer of 1948, but I vividly recall my sisters, who were in high school, being gaga over 'Frankie' Sinatra. I thought they were pretty stupid. I was ten, a serious kid. I had a paper route.

I was a bit scared of the old man who repaired bicycles and lawn mowers--but he knew my father, and my father said he was O.K.

Mr. Seibert didn't remember my name. He called me 'boy'. "Let me show you something, boy."

I was reluctant to stop. I still had thirty papers to deliver, plus, he was crazy. Everybody said so. Not scary-crazy. He was O.K. with me--maybe because he liked my father. Everybody did.

"It'll only take a minute."

I followed him into his shop which was an undersized garage--built for a Model-T. Bicycle parts hung from the rafters. In the center was an old kitchen table he used as a work bench. There was some kind of gadget on it.

"Know what this is?" he asked.

I looked carefully, "A really bright light, and a lens, and a piece of tin with a slit cut in it."

"That's one way of looking at it, or you could say it's the explanation of Universe, if only we could understand it. Watch this." He shut the garage door. It was dark. I was nervous being in the dark with a crazy man, no matter that my dad liked him. He turned on the projector light, which was focused through a small hole drilled in the lens cap. He shined the beam through the slit in the tin.

"Do you see it? Do you see it?"

"Yes."

"Well... what do you make of it?"

"I don't know."

"Right! You don't know. I don't know. Albert Einstein doesn't know. The first one of us to figure it out wins the Nobel Prize."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really. Well... maybe not. Depends on your definition of Reality--but if we understood it we'd know a hell of a lot more about Light--which is a kind of metaphor of Everything. I shine light through one slit and it's particles. I shine it through two slits and it's a wave. What the hell?"

"It's weird," I agreed. "Is it important?"

"It's the most important experiment of the century. The biggest Question, and also the ultimate Answer, if we could only understand it."

I didn't believe him. His apparatus looked like a toy. Anybody with a bicycle shop could have made one. I knew about Science. It happened at colleges where they had a lot of scientific stuff. So he must be crazy, or pulling my leg. I eased myself toward the door. He didn't notice, still staring at the screen. "They're called 'photons'. One slit and they're little discrete packages of light--and the Universe is probably finite. Two slits and they're waves--so maybe it's infinite."

He shrugged, "And here's the deal, kid... I'm pretty sure Consciousness is something like light--made of memories strung together like a beam. Little particles, or maybe waves, in a field. And our heads are part of the field, attracting all those particles or waves, like gravity attracts photons. I call them 'mnesyons'. Everybody's got them, and they're fundamentally the same for everyone, but how they combine to make ideas, and memory, depends on where you are in space-time, what's happening around you. You and I are pretty close, so we share a lot of them, but maybe in Zululand, they might whirl in the opposite direction. I wrote to Einstein about it, but he brushed me off. He claimed to have '... other questions on his calendar..."  A bit 'hoity-toity,, I thought."

He turned off the projector and opened the garage door, "Well... that's what's on my list today. What's on yours?"

"I was hoping to borrow your bicycle pump. My front tire keeps going flat."

Instead of answering, he seized my bike and lifted it into the air as if it weighed nothing. He pinched the front tire, holding the valve close to his ear. He fetched a little tool from his peg-board and tightened the valve. He pumped up the tire and dipped it into a tub of water. We watched for bubbles, which would tell whether the tire was still leaking. There were none. He hoisted the bike onto his work bench, tightened the chain and sprayed it with WD-40. The bicycle was fixed, but I was more obligated than I had intended.

"How much do I owe you Mr. Seibert?"

"How much do I owe you for the paper?"

"It's twenty-five cents a week."

"And how much of that do you get to keep?"

"Ten cents, if everybody pays--but I have to pay fifteen cents for each customer's papers, whether or not I get paid."

"Hmmmm... Capitalism... It sucks, for sure." He thought for a minute, "O.K., you need a bike to be in business, and I need to fix bikes to support my research, so let's say ten cents, half today, and the other half in six months if we're both still in business."

I thought for a minute, but it seemed fair. He gave me a quarter and I gave him the nickel I'd been saving for Coca-Cola.

"Thanks for showing me the experiment," I said.

"Sure. No charge. Let me know if you think of the answer."

We parted on good terms.

Reparations

I am interested in history--more for its utility than its veracity. I'm not so dull witted as Mr. Ford who (might have) said, "History is bunk," by which I suppose he (might have) meant there is nothing truly reliable, or even interesting, in the (presumably) settled past.

Dead wrong, Henry. It's back there, all right, and it's interesting--a toxic compost of facts, myths, lies, opinions, triumphs, failures, and serial catastrophes--and that's only the visible portion of the iceberg. But a tenth is more than enough, so long as we can mine this detritus in support of our current opinions. So, history remains a 'work in progress'. It's never settled as long as somebody can dig up some truffles of  'relevance.'

Historical research has an uncomfortable parallel in 'legal research.' Real people imagine that the law is inscribed on granite pillars at the state capital, but anyone who has contemplated the millions of legal opinions shelved at The University of Michigan Law Library (a great temple of legality) will understand what we Pharisees pretend to ignore, i.e., that a lot of what is called 'Law' is nothing more than what some other lawyer found  plausible under supposedly similar circumstances.

Unlike scientific research, which begins with an observation and gropes forward toward a theory, legal research begins with a theory and scratches around in the chicken litter, (i.e., the opinions of other lawyers) for a favorable precedent, based, in turn, on favorable precedents in other (possibly) similar cases (the more citations, the better.) It is a bit like the lady who couldn't believe that the earth floated in space. She thought it rested on the back of a giant turtle, who rested on the back of another turtle, and when asked the inevitable question, replied: "Turtles all the way down!'

The object of most legal research is to find what Alfred Hitchcock called 'the MacGuffin'--(the lost fortune, the missing girl, or whatever it is that everyone imagines the movie is about) whereas the real point of the show is to sell tickets. Just so with legal research--precedents are not 'law' so much as plausible examples supporting the judgment you desire. 'Putting a face on it' as an elderly judge once told me. It's what the civil courts are about, a brokerage wherein past distress can be sold for present dollars.

There are limits, the statute of limitations, the rules governing admissibility of evidence, and even some lingering rules about what constitutes a legally cognizable claim. (Fifty years ago we filed 'demurrers' in every case, on the off chance that the judge might conclude that what was alleged in the complaint was not something that the law could remedy.) These barriers to recovery are meant to keep people from abusing the courts with implausible arguments and shaky evidence. 

Much the same applies to 'repairing the past'--it can't be done (that's why it's 'the past') but there's always hope that a present benefit can be picked from the pocket of history.

The justification for the present discussion of 'reparations' is essentially similar to a class action lawsuit. There is a clientele, many of whom are undoubtedly injured, seeking a remedy, which is not to be found in the ordinary courts. Perhaps it is recoverable in the higher forum of White Liberal Guilt--the modern successor to Abolitionism which sacrificed 400,000 men serving its writ.

A noble effort--but insufficient. It is, perhaps, regrettable that General Sherman's rash (and unauthorized) promise of forty acres and a mule (approximately the entire tidewater region) was never carried into effect, but can we project that broken promise forward to the present day, and translate it into dollars. Probably not. Nor should we forget the prior claim of the Native Americans who, by the same logic, are entitled to be reimbursed for the entire continent.

The past cannot be repaired. It is there. A great lump of pain and dismay, an unresolved cancer of bitterness--biting at our surviving organs.  

The moving finger writes and having writ 

Moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 

Nor all thy tears wash out a line of it.

Historical Facts, Fictions and Forebodings

I sometimes contemplate buying a DNA program, but they cost $99, and I suspect they would confirm what I already know--that half my genes are from Britain, and the other $44.50 worth are from Southern Germany (maybe a few from Switzerland.) I don't anticipate any surprises, but failure to anticipate is the definition of surprise, so the question remains: Would I be $99 better off if my expectations were confirmed, or $99 worse off if they weren't?

I don't know much about my Germanic genes. They were carried to America by my Great-Grandparents sometime between 1870 and 1880. My impression is that these ancestors were Catholics in Germany, but became Congregationalists in the bracing air of Massachusetts. It's also possible that an ancestor named 'Koch' was Ashkenazim, or Anabaptist. Either would be fine.

My British genes came to New England in two tranches--about half arrived under sail in the 1600's, and the rest zipped over by paddle-wheel steamer in 1866. Grandma Barker was always a bit dubious about her Johnny-come-lately husband, a kindly man with suspicious Episcopal tendencies--so uncongenial to her Congregational heritage. They didn't marry until she was thirty, so maybe she had to take what she could get. Anyway, I am among the (possibly unintended) consequences.

Like all Yankees, even of the 25% dilution, I have searched for a Mayflower antecedent. The best hope is the ship's carpenter, Peter Brown.  Everyone with a Brown in their ancestry looks to Peter, but there is some obscurity in the early record, leaving the issue in doubt.  On the other hand, researching the Brown connection reveals that Great Grandmother Pelton was a cousin of John Brown. Oh... nothing serious, a second or third cousin, at least a generation removed. She probably wasn't aware of it, herself, and with all the time that has passed I don't suppose 23+Me can tell us much about it. For what it's worth, the three of us were born in the same town, all firmly opposed to slavery.

I think about Cousin Jack now and then--and wonder how someone from our not-at-all-fanatical, family was so eager to kill you (and your wife and children) to demonstrate how right he was. The question becomes more pertinent as each day passes. Kansas was the shopping mall of the 1850's--full of innocents beleaguered by armed wind-bags, shouting their way toward violence. Nobody was listening to anyone else.

Part of the answer can be found in Jane Smiley's brilliant novel, THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON, wherein an intelligent, but poorly educated, woman (aged thirty, by coincidence) marries her last hope, a Boston intellectual determined to live by abolitionist principles. They move to Kansas, carrying with them a box full of 'Beecher's Bibles', carbines purchased for 'Free State' settlers by his friends in New England.

When her husband is murdered, Lidie follows his killers into Missouri, seeking revenge. She suffers a miscarriage and is rescued by the daughter of a prominent slaveholder. The daughter, Helen, and her supposedly devoted house slave, Lorna, nurse Lidie back to health.

Smiley is one of our greatest writers. Her novel reveals the conflicts, both internal and external, that bedevil her heroine, and the tragic consequences of adhering to principles, while ignoring the humanity of other people. No other novel is as relevant to today's political situation, or as poignantly true in its human story. The three women, Lidie, Helen, and Lorna, lead three different, but almost equally tragic, lives.

As often happens in a Jane Smiley novel, things end badly.

How could they not? The book is populated by armed blowhards, shooting off their mouths and their guns. All around the three women, men taunt and damn each other, boasting, shouting and shooting their way toward 1860. It didn't have to end that way. If only Franklin Pierce had been a better President... or... or, if only everyone had shut up for a moment and listened. But part of the truth of the novel is our knowledge that, just beyond the last page of her story, our great national tragedy is about to begin.

The book should be required reading.

Long Forgotten Fourths of July

July 4, 2019

I rarely think about my brief military career, but July 4 brings it to mind. It was on the first weekend of July, 1961, that I reported for training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, along with a busload of fellow reservists from Northwestern Connecticut.

I was supposedly 'in charge'. As the oldest recruit, with the most formal education, I had been given the temporary rank of 'Sergeant' complete with easily removable chevrons. Nobody listened to anything I had to say. It was a raucous bus ride that ended outside some run down WW 2 barracks which would be our 'home' for following eight weeks. We were hustled off the bus and chivvied into the barracks by the training sergeants, who took the opportunity to teach us some of the basics of Basic Training--like how to get into a line, and which foot was the left.

But we were left alone for most of the following day, the Fourth of July. In those happy days, even soldiers were allowed to enjoy the national celebration--unlike today's service members who must march through the heat and humidity of Washington D.C. to feed the ego of our contemptible Commander in Chief, 'Bonespurs' Trump.

It happened that one of the training sergeants was a black man named Sergeant Barker. He was delighted to greet me as I got off the bus, with my removable stripes. "Ah," he greeted me, "another Sergeant Barker..." From then on, although not in charge of my platoon, he took a 'familial' interest in my military career, sometimes addressing me with ironic courtesy  as 'Sergeant Barker'', although I was as miserable a recruit as any that ever served.

In those days (and I hope still today) the army selected its training sergeants from among the best it had to offer. Sgt. Barker was a veteran of the battle at the Chosin Reservoir. My own platoon sergeant, Sgt. Mastrovito, a small Italian man, not a great deal taller than his M-1 rifle, was also an admirable example--a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge--a first class leader and teacher, well able to turn recruits into something resembling soldiers.

At the end of Basic Training most of us were sent to Fort Sill for Basic Cannoneer Training. This course was run by Captain Wing, a Chinese-American officer, and his Battery 'top' Sergeant Rodrigues--who warned us all to remember that although born Mexican, he was "A U.S.Army citizen."

Again, he and the other artillery training sergeants were outstanding teachers and leaders who returned us to our Reserve Unit eight weeks later as reasonably competent artillerists. Several months later I returned to Ft. Sill for OCS training under Captain Dawson, a professional soldier, and his 'Tac Officers', Second Lieutenants, who had been outstanding graduates of an earlier OCS training cycle.

I was certainly not destined to be a soldier, but tutored by these men I came to realize that there was honor and satisfaction to be had in a military career. I admired them, and I still do. It has not escaped my notice that many of them were minorities. Contrary to those who mock the military and suggest that professional soldiers lack the qualities required for success, 'in the real world', I admire that great institution for nurturing and utilizing abilities which might otherwise have gone to waste in a less 'color-blind' civilian society.

I wonder what happened to them later.

I would not be surprised if Captain Wing became a general--and I dearly hope that Sergeant Rodrigues achieved his retirement dream of processing and selling Mexican food--which, in those long ago days, would have been a new thing.