Travelogue – Delightfully funky

Saturday, August 10

We had a 40 minute drive into Darmstadt to visit the Mathildenhöhe Artist Colony. The enlightened local ruler founded the campus just before 1900 to foster arts. The place has a very good reputation now because the founders of a couple early 20th Century architecture movements, one of them the Bauhaus movement, went to school here. The school got another boost when Darmstadt was flattened in WWII and the city needed quick solutions to rebuild.

We toured the museum, walked the grounds, visited the Russian Orthodox Church on the grounds (not sure why that denomination), and went up the tower to look over the city.

It was just a few blocks to the Waldspirale. The literal translation is “forest spiral.” It is a large apartment building with a floor plan in a large U shape. At one end of the U it is about 3 stories high. At the other end it is 11 stories. That's the spiral. The forest is because there are trees growing on the roof. A main description of the place is delightfully funky. I don't think any two windows are the same, some appear oddly positioned. The outside is painted in bands of color. And... well enough of words. Pictures are better.

We bought food at the next door Aldi's for lunch. Then drove the rest of the afternoon heading north (well, northeast then northwest because no highway goes directly north from Frankfurt). We are now in Bad Salzuflen which is close to a few more ancestral villages. We'll be here three nights.

Not far from the hotel in the middle of town was a festival of some sort. I saw lots of booths set up, and saw a couple offered food. So we waded into the crowd. I soon realized all the rest of the booths sold only drinks. So, a German party where everyone drank. No thanks.

We went to an Indian restaurant for supper. Niece will suggest this style of food every chance she gets. Brother used to have clients nearby so has been in town before and even to this restaurant. We had pleasant seats outside with grape vines hanging from the beams over our heads. The temperature was a delightful 75F. Alas, 20 minutes passed before our order was taken and well over an hour after that before we were served. It wasn't just us. I saw people at three other tables tap watches as they complained about the slow service.

Because of the slow service I didn't have time to go through photos to go with already written posts.

I could hear the band playing at the party well into the night.

Travelogue – Why leave a pretty place?

We're back in Munich now, in Brother's apartment. We arrived last evening.

Today is a day to recover. We slept in. I did laundry, though with Brother's machine it took a while.

First was the wash, which took 2 hours. The machine played a merry tune when it was done. At least the machine is happy. Then the same machine is used to dry. When starting it announced drying would take 3.5 hours. That included more spin cycles and more sounds like a washer (though, thankfully, without flowing water). So I sat around in my pajamas and Brother and Niece walked to get our lunch at a Turkish takeout. When the dry cycle was done, now after 2:30, I found the clothes quite hot. It seems this model doesn't know about permanent press cool down. I will be championing the rumpled look this week.

No big need to go out today (other than we're in Munich!). Rain has been falling much of the day.

So while I waited I was able to finish writing these blog entries and will post them as I choose photos.

Friday, August 9

Today we headed up the Burgisher Strasse, a road with the Odenwald and its hills on one side and the Rhine River on the other. There are several picturesque towns along the route. We stopped only at Bensheim. We walked around the central city a bit, got some coffee and tea (so we could use their restrooms), and were on our way again, heading into the hills.

Another branch of my mother's family is from this region. We've left Baden behind and are now in Hesse. Three-great grandfather Johann Jacob Lück (spelled Leeak in America) was born in Starkenburg in 1801. I can't find a city of that name in modern maps, though we did pass Starkenburg Castle. See the tower up on the hill.

His wife Eva Gießmann was born in Lindenfels in 1802. They were married in Reichenbach in 1828 and traveled to America in 1831 with two small children. The trip was nearly a disaster as the ship ran aground just outside the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. Thankfully, no lives were lost.

Our first stop was Reichenbach and its church. Johann's parents were also married here, but we don't know any more than that. We scanned the churchyard. The only family name we found was Bitsch, the maiden name of Eva's mother Elizabeth. Again, that was assurance we were in the right area.

Lunch in Reichenbach was at the only place open – a little place that sold Turkish pita sandwiches.

On to Lindenfels. A city-family book (this one online) allowed me to trace Eva's family back another five generations to 1609. I have ancestors from Lindenfels as well as the surrounding villages of Ellenbach, Winkel, Schlierbach Eulsbach, and Glattbach.

Lindenfels is up on a hill. There is an old, somewhat ruined castle at point of the hill and from there one can see the other villages in the valley.

We looked in the Protestant church in Lindenfels, but there was no attached graveyard to check whether there are people with the same last names in the area.

After walking to the castle we drove through some of the other villagers. Because they're so close and so small this didn't take long. We did see the Bitsch name on such things as war memorials.

Brother asked: Why someone would want to leave a village that is as pretty as Lindenfels to go to America? I listed various forms of oppression that could force a person to leave. One of those was the failed uprising of 1848. That led to a bit of reading about that year and a spirited discussion over supper of that event and ancient and modern parallels. Niece can be quite a debater!

We spent the night in a hotel in Gadernheim, north of Lindenfels. The innkeeper came out to the parking lot to greet us and guide us through the back door to the desk that served as reception and bar. Just inside the back door was the elevator – one walked directly into the elevator from the back door and through the elevator to go into the hotel. I noticed it on the way in. Brother and Niece noticed it when we took the elevator to our rooms and had to do it in two trips because it was so small. Once upstairs we thought of taking the stairs but had a hard time finding them (though if we had come in the front door of the hotel we would have seen the stairs right there).

The innkeeper was from Budapest so had Hungarian dishes on the menu. The goulash was delicious!

Travelogue – Palace and castle

Thursday, August 8

Our room in Maulbronn was an apartment for the three of us. There were two twin beds (side by side) in a bedroom (I thought it was going to be two bedrooms) plus a single bed in the kitchen-living area. This was the top floor so there was a sloping ceiling at the ends and exposed beams (strangely, at waist height).

Niece promptly claimed the bed in the living area. Before conceding to sharing a room with Brother I asked if he snored. He said, well, maybe a bit.

We sat around the living area, companionably together but each typing on our own computer. Then to bed around 10:30.

At 12:45 I was awake. Brother was snoring. It was just a little bit of noise at the end of each breath. But that was enough. I don't sleep when someone in the room is snoring. I found that out many years ago. I tried jostling Brother, he didn't waken. I decided since he was already snoring by 12:45 it meant the rest of the night would get no better.

I had to do something. I pulled my matress, similar to a futon, off the bedframe and took it into the living area outside the bedroom. I slept pretty well there.

Niece later reported that I snored for a brief period. I had said that even when I snore the noise wakes me up. Since I live alone I can't tell whether that is really true. She agreed that I probably woke up from my own noise.

So I got up a lot later than I had on other days. I didn't hear Brother step around me to get to the bathroom and take a shower.

Our first stop was the palace in the town of Bruchsal. It is in the Baroque style, which many today would consider over decorated. This is the palace of the Bishop Prince – yeah, he was the head of both church and state.

The palace had significant damage two months before the end of WWII. Many of the wonderful ceiling paintings were recreated in the 1960s. Many of the rooms on the second floor were not redecorated until about 10 years ago and even now they still don't have their plaster curlicues.

We got the audio tour and wandered through perhaps 20 rooms. A big part of the palace collection are tapestries, which were packed away and relocated about a month before the city was bombed.

We had lunch in Bruchsal at outdoor seating. The weather was delightfully in the mid 70s F. Afterward we wandered the palace grounds for a bit.

Then off to Heidelberg. The hotel we stayed at – above an Irish pub – is on the Hauptstrasse, which through the afternoon and evening is a pedestrian zone. So no parking at the hotel. I had arranged with the hotel to use their parking spot for the night. That was in a parking garage on the other side of a large block. It required I go to the hotel and get the garage key, then go back and park the car (and because of the way the streets are laid out it wasn't easy), then schlep bags back to the hotel. We saved a few Euros by not using a public garage that was closer but the savings wasn't worth the hassle.

We walked over to the funicular that took us up to the hill to Heidelberg Castle. We had missed the last English tour of the interior by more than an hour. However, we were able to walk the grounds and see both the ornate exteriors of some of the buildings and the view across the city below.

Satisfied with that we took the funiclar up higher to what is called the King's Seat with an impressive view of the area.

Once back down the hill Niece said she wanted to try a Turkish restaurant nearby. Once supper was over we walked to one of the bridges over the river for a view up to the castle, both in the fading light of day and with the castle illuminated for night.

Travelogue – More ancestors

Our days have been so full and included such long suppers that I usually have time to either record the events of the day or to search through my photos for appropriate images to include. But I usually don't have time for both. So I'm about a week behind on actually telling you about my travels.

We decided today needed to be an easy one. We won't go to a planned museum. Even so, the hotel wants us out by 11:00 and it is already 9:30 and I still have to choose photos for this post.

Wednesday, August 7
Today was much cooler and there were periods of rain, the kind that settles in for hours.

We started at the grounds for the Karlsruhe Schloss (palace). There was a flower garden and a large park, essentially the palace owner's back yard. We got in a good walk. We didn't go inside because we didn't want to wait for it to open and then to spend time on the tour.

So, off to another ancestral village, this one rather close to Karlsruhe. The village is Grünwettersbach. Two-great grandmother Christina Ullmer was born in Gruenwettersbach in 1841. Her mother Elizabeth Bonning was born there in 1809. All we have of Elizabeth's parents is their names. We don't have a big connection to the town (based on what we know now) and didn't find the cemetery. So we didn't stay long.

Only 25 minutes later (driving through rain) we were in Göbrichen. Thanks to another city-family book we know a lot more about this branch of the family. Elizabeth Bonning's husband was Michael Ullmer. He was born in Göbrichen in 1811. He married Elizabeth there in 1839. They came to America with two children in 1847.

Michael's father was Michael Sr. He was born in nearby Dietlingen. We only know the names of his parents. Michael Sr.'s wife was Margaretha Elsäßer. We know five more generations before her.

Both of today's villages were somewhat hilly, though far less than Waldprechtsweier.

We didn't find the cemetery, so after lunch (when the rain had settled in) we were on our way again.

Less than 20 minutes later we were in Maulbronn, known for its Kloster, what we call a monastery. It was founded around 1150 and is the best preserved monastery north of the Alps. It was in use until the Protestant Reformation when the local ruler forced the monks to leave. Soon after a Protestant congregation took over the building. It is still being used in that way. Here is a view of the cloister.

The only way to get an English tour of the main building was with personal audio guides. It told us about the buildings and the monks, with such details as explaining only one room in the place was heated. We all felt it was a worthwhile visit. Supper was in one of the other buildings of the Kloster, now turned into a restaurant. Another building is now the town hall.

Travelogue – On the ancestral trail

Tuesday, August 6

Brother, Niece, and I left Strasbourg by train this morning. There was a bit of delay. When we boarded the train (a good 12 minutes before it departed) I asked for the toilet. None on this train. So I dashed back into the station and Brother and Niece wisely got our stuff off the train. Of course, it took a while to find the facilities. The train left before I got back. We took another one 30 minutes later. That one did have a toilet on board.

In Offenberg we walked over to the car rental agent (not as close to the train station as I would have thought). We rented a car here rather than in Strasbourg because we are returning the car in Cologne and even though the European Union is supposedly without borders car companies won't rent in one country and accept a return in another.

We drove from Offenberg to Altenheim, the first of our ancestral villages. My three-great grandfather on my mother's maternal line was Jacob König. He left Altenheim as a young man in 1852. His parents were Georg König and Catarina Anselm. Thanks to a city-family book that compiled various church records, I know ancestors back another six generations before Georg and Catarina.

Alterhiem is close to the Rhine River with the hills of the Black Forest not far to the east. The land of the river floodplain is flat. It is still mostly a farming community.

We have no records of family who stayed behind. So we don't know if there are distant cousins still around. However, we did see the names König and Anselm on war memorials and on gravestones in the cemetery. Even though we don't know of those people were actual relatives. It felt like we were in the right town.

German cemeteries don't allow for much confirmation of ancestors. Brother said that the family only rents the burial plot and when the family stops paying that rent the plot is given over to someone else. Whether or not that's the reason it was rare to see a gravestone older than 50 years. The back of the cemetery in Altenheim preserved a few of the older markers, but they weren't on active burial plots. So there is no way for me to find when Catarina Anslem, born in 1798, died.

Though historically frustrating, the new markers are beautiful and creative. They are not just rectangular slabs of stone. Instead, they're a lot of different shapes.

We had lunch in Altenheim. Then on to the next village, which was Schutterzell, only a few kilometers away.

Jacob König's was Veronica Weiss, who was born in Schutterzell. Veronica's mother was Katarina Klein. Brother thinks Katarina was bold for having four illegitimate children baptized at the church. Katarina married Georg Weiss. He adopted the children when Veronica was 7.

We don't know Katarina Klein's parents, so don't know how many generations were in Schutterzell. Because of that we didn't feel as much of a connection to the place. It is also much smaller than Altenheim. We looked through the cemetery and were soon on our way.

It was 3:00 already so we decided to skip a couple palaces in Rastatt and go on to a third village, Waldprechtsweier. I'm amused by the village name because it is at the north end of the Black Forest and the name roughly translates to “the woods are white.”

A big surprise of Waldprechtsweier is that it is quite hilly, even though the drive to it was mostly flat.

My two-great grandfather Berthold Kistner was born in the village in 1842. His wife ,Ida Klein, was born there in 1845. But they didn't marry there. She immigrated to Missouri in 1856 with her family, he in 1868. They married soon after he arrived. We know two generations before them were born in Waldprechtsweier. We know the names of one more generation, though don't yet know where they were born. This is the only Catholic branch of the family. The rest is German Protestant.

Again, we looked through the cemetery and found a lot of people with the same family names.

We drove into Karlsruhe for the night. I chose the hotel because of a great price and pretty good internet reviews. However, there were a few problems. (1) No air conditioning to enjoy after a warm day. (2) No elevator to get us to the 2nd and 3rd floor. (3) No one at the reception desk. A sign said we were to call a particular number. That person told Brother to enter numbers into a keypad and our room keys dropped down below.

Supper was at an Indian restaurant. Niece has been asking for this type of food. Rain began to fall as we headed back to the hotel, a short distance away. Once we were in the hotel a thunderstorm opened up.

Travelogue – Astronomical!

I titled the previous post Travel begins. You might think travel began when I flew from Detroit to Munich. Well, yeah, it did. But that train trip described in that post began a two week adventure away from Munich with me, Brother, and Niece.

Monday, August 5

Niece wanted to sleep in (still recovering), so Brother and I wandered into Strasbourg and over to the cathedral. I had heard about the Astronomical Clock and wanted to see it. I learned tickets were sold inside, so we got in the long line of tourists. Not a big deal, there was only a check of packs and bags at the entrance so we were inside in five minutes. We bought tickets to the clock and wandered around. A nice place!

At 11:15 everyone was ushered out. It was time for the people who paid to see the clock. Brother and I went around to the side entrance and stood in line. This time the crowd, once inside, was in a much smaller place.

This Astronomical clock was built about 1838-1842 and is quite big. It is in one of the transepts of the church. The number of people who can crowd in front of it is rather small, at least compared to the crowd who wanted to see it in action.

Actually, what the clock does at midday isn't much – the rooster crows and two sets of figures circle around. It's all the other stuff the clock does that is so impressive. Especially because it is all mechanical.

* It has two sets of hands on the time face, one for what the government says the time is, and one for the solar noon. The clock goes off at solar noon, or 12:30 according to the government.

* Around the time face it also has a big wheel showing the day of the year. There are additional arms for the current position of the sun and moon (it has accurately predicted eclipses) and in doing so takes into account of the changing speed of elliptical orbits. More arms point to the time of today's sunrise and sunset.

* Another face shows the positions of the visible planets around the sun (with a moon orbiting the earth). Saturn does its orbit in 28 years, and that is accurately portrayed.

* And then the big one – every December 31 it calculates the date for the next Easter, which is dependent on the full moon after the spring equinox.

All that without modern computers – and even without electricity.

We learned all this through a video that was shown before the clock did its thing. One narrator spoke French, another spoke German. We could read English subtitles as the German narration was spoken.

Once the clock was done the doors were opened to the public again and Niece appeared. I waited while her father pointed out a few cool things about the building.

We walked across the cathedral plaza to a restaurant that got good recommendations. I was amused the restaurant name was a French word and a German word (I don't mention them because I don't remember the German word). The food was good. We had to order fast because the kitchen closed five minutes after we got there.

After lunch all three of us went to Palace Rohan near the cathedral. This really had been a palace. It now houses three museums and we decided to go for all three. The first was the rooms of the palace residence and a wing of the decorative arts (lots of porcelain) fit for a resident bishop. The second was a regular art museum. Niece appreciated the Medieval art. I liked the works from the 19th Century. The third was an archeological museum showing the range of residents of the Alsace area from earliest man to the modern era. Alas, we had only 20 minutes to closing.

The climb to the top of the cathedral was still open, but that had to wait until we could power the climb with gelato. Once that detail was handled we climbed the 330 steps (pausing frequently for photos taken out the windows of the stairwell). At the top is a large platform with great views of the surrounding area. We stayed there for a half hour, until closing. I pointed to the southeast and commented to Brother that between where we stood and the hills in the distance (part of the Black Forest) is a village where at least eight generations of ancestors lived. More on that tomorrow.

We found a restaurant for supper (good quality, but not great). Then back to the hotel for the night.

Travelogue – Travel begins

Brother, Niece, and I left his Munich apartment by 11:00 this morning for two weeks of travel. We were at the main train station in plenty of time for our 11:47 train. It was late, by about 15 minutes. By the time we got to Stuttgart we were only 7 minutes late, not a big deal with what should have been a 35 minute layover. But the train out of Stuttgart was also late. Though it was traveling 250 km/h (150 m/h) at times we got into Strasbourgh 50 minutes behind schedule.

No big deal. But enough of pokey transportation. We checked into the hotel and set off on foot to see central Strasbourg, or at least a bit of it. We walked around the Petit France district. We wondered why there were four channels to the river. We saw signs saying that's because it allowed for four water mills. What used to be the industrial center is now the tourist zone.

We had a pleasant supper in an outdoor restaurant. The area specialty is (I think) “tart flambe.” I thought it might be a sort of tart that is set aflame at the table. Alas, no. It is more like a pizza without the tomato sauce. Brother and Niece each had one. I had chicken cordon bleu, which was way too big for one person (at least if that one person is me) and didn't have enough savory sauce.

Niece decided that was enough for the day. Brother and I wandered around the central island until after the sun set. We'll see more of it tomorrow.

Travelogue – Arriving in Munich

I forgot to bring along my Blogger password, so I had to declare I had forgotten it and had to suffer through the reset instructions in French (I'm in Strasbourg at the moment, details in the next post).

Thursday, August 1
The trip got off to a slow start. Shortly after everyone had boarded the plane the pilot announced the weather radar was not working properly. The parts were nearby and easy to install. The delay should only be 40 minutes. Well, there was another 40 minute delay while another part was replaced. Then the paperwork needed to be filled out. Then the adjacent plane had to be pused back before ours could be. Then ... Whatever it was, we took off three hours late. With that much time passed the plane was not able to make it up.

Because of the delay supper was served after 10 pm.

Friday, August 2

I'm sure my brother was glad of the extra sleep since he didn't have to meet me at 8:30 am. Instead, I got to the Munich airport about 11:30. He met me outside of customs and we took the train into town – the airport is quite a ways outside of the city.

I met my niece in my brother's apartment. She was not feeling her best, so in the afternoon Brother and I left her to rest and we walked along the river for a while. We met some of Brother's cycling friends at a Greek restaurant for supper. These are two English couples who have lived in Munich for decades. I was amused at the choice of restaurant because Brother had just returned from a lengthy trip with his elder daughter and family that included a couple weeks in Greece. Brother definitely found the food to his liking.

Brother doesn't have a car anymore so our adventures around town are by public transport and by foot.

Saturday, August 3

Both Brother and Niece were in recovery mode this morning, so I did a walking adventure by myself. I had printed out a map of the area neighborhood then forgot to take it with me. So I made sure I spotted landmarks so I could return the way I came. I walked to the main train station (because that was at the end of the street I was on) and over to a church I could see down a side street. In the church I saw yesterday and the one today, both Catholic, I noticed something unusual – there was no crucifix at the front of the church. In yesterday's church it hung to the side of the nave. In today's church it wasn't there at all.

Back at the apartment and after a tiny lunch (didn't want a big one) Brother and Niece talked about an afternoon bike ride. A couple rainstorms later we agreed bikes weren't going to work. Niece had been talking about a shoe store on the opposite side of town. We saw that to make it there before it closed at 4:00 we would have to skip the bikes and take public transport. We got to the store seven minutes before it closed. Niece decided they didn't have what she was looking for.

The rain held off, though the weather was cool (70F). This was considerably better than the heat Brother and family endured while traveling in Italy and Greece. We walked over to the English Gardens (I'd have called it a park). After walking the north half of the park we stopped at a beer garden for supper. Then another walk back to public transport and home.

No fight for the soul of the party

I didn’t watch the debate of the Democratic candidates for president last night. I’m not watching tonight. I didn’t watch the two nights of the previous round. But I have perused sites, such as Daily Kos to see if there are any big ideas that came out of the debaters or the debates.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discusses one of those big ideas. It isn’t so much what the candidates said as it was the moderators trying to get them to say. And what the moderators wanted was a “fight for the soul of the party.”

A week ago I wrote about the media’s ten rules of hate. The big media companies have found that they sell more product and earn more product if it dished out in terms of hate. This is a supremacist thing – hate, the struggle to dominate, being on constant conflict – is one side, one type of viewer, being able to feel superior to others. The second rule in the list is “These two ideas are in permanent conflict.”

In a debate where all the candidates are Democrats there aren’t Republicans to be the other side. But there are moderate Democrats who espouse catering to the nasty guy’s base as the way to win. That’s close enough.

But again, they’re all Democrats. There really isn’t a huge difference in policy proposals. There isn’t a lot of conflict among them, certainly not enough for Big Media. Most of those demanding support of a social hierarchy have already joined the GOP, which is all about supremacy. Many of those left in the Democratic Party – especially black women – are much more interested in abolishing the social ranking. So, in contrast to the GOP, there isn’t a lot of conflict.

To be sure, most, maybe all, the white guys in this group maintain an air of privilege, especially Sanders and Biden. Which is why my favorites are the women and men of color – Warren, Harris, Booker, and Castro.

Back to what the moderators were doing at last night’s debate. Since there wasn’t enough conflict (see above) the moderators tried to manufacture the conflict. They did this by turning to the lesser candidates (the lesser known white men) and asking them to explain why the front runners were wrong. As Sumner wrote:

Throughout the evening, the typical Jake Tapper question took the form of “Elizabeth Warren once said this, now Candidate No One Knew Was Running, please explain why that’s too commie to play in Sheboygan.” And if the candidate didn’t give the desired soundbite against Warren or Sanders, they were rapidly shut down, and someone else got the call. And the designated time for reply meant that Sanders or Warren rarely got to finish a sentence before Tapper was throwing the next dead fish their way.

Comparing communication by Bach and Jefferson

A couple more posts before leaving home.

Alonso del Arte of the Daily Kos community talks about efficiency in 18th Century communication. He begins with figured bass, which was used in music at that time.

I taught some aspects of figured bass when I was a college level music theory instructor so I understand the extensive examples del Arte goes through. I’ll summarize it quickly to get on to his major point.

JS Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and their colleagues, even somewhat into the time of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart, wrote out a bass part intended to be played on two instruments. One was a typical bass instrument, such as cello, or bassoon. The other was a keyboard instrument such as a harpsichord or organ. So a “trio” – soprano, alto, and bass – actually needed four performers. This keyboard player didn’t just plunk out the bass line, he read the figures – numbers and other symbols written with the notes – to work out what harmony is to be played by the right hand. The composer wrote out only what was necessary to tell the performer what to play. The musical standards and tastes of the time also constrained what the keyboard player did.

Del Arte turns his attention to another document written during this time, the US Constitution. In the same way as composers of the era Jefferson or Madison put in the Constitution only as much as they thought they needed to get their point across. A lot of context was assumed to be understood by citizens (at least well educated citizens).

So a judge or justice who declares himself to be an “originalist” should be looking at phrases from the Constitution within the context of the society of the time. A couple examples:

“The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” says the Constitution. Which means the president has sole authority. Well, no. The guys who wrote the Constitution had just been dealing with a tyrannical King George III and wanted to make sure such abuse of power couldn’t happen here.

Then there is the Second Amendment, the one about the right to bear arms. The rifle of the 18th Century took a while to load and fire one bullet at a time. If you got hit by that bullet and didn’t die, you could be patched up with a few stitches and be on your way. But in the 21st Century we have assault rifles that, by holding down the trigger, will spray lots of bullets in a short amount of time. One doesn’t even need to aim carefully. These bullets cause a lot of damage. If you didn’t die you probably lost a limb. Jefferson and Madison didn’t know about assault rifles and their capability of mayhem. So, in this case does a text that makes sense in the 18th Century apply to the 21st?

Picnic at the border

I leave on Thursday for extended travel. I may not be able to post again before I go.

I am going to Germany with a side trip to England. My brother currently lives in Munich and he has gotten as interested in genealogy as I am. So he, his daughter, and I will travel for two weeks with the goal of visiting several of the small villages my mother’s ancestors are from. And that little jaunt into England will include a cluster of villages where one branch of my dad’s ancestors are from. Of course, there will be lots of other things to see in Germany and England. And I shouldn't forget France – our first stop out of Munich will be Strasbourg because the first village to visit is across the Rhine River from there.

For the duration of the trip this blog (as I’ve done before) will become a travelogue, perhaps even with pictures.



Some bits of news (something I hope to ignore for a few weeks). First the bad:

Last Thursday I wrote about how the nasty guy and his minion Attorney General William Barr needed a distraction, so announced the resumption of criminal executions at the federal level, something that hadn’t been done since 2003.

Twitter user Jaded Vet thinks there is a much more chilling reason for resuming the death penalty:

Anyone else think that Barr's reinstatement of the #DeathPenalty is a precursor to Trump accusing his political opponents, criminal investigators, critical journalists, human rights activists, etc. of treason?

A response from user Malcolm Nance’s Woodchipper of Justice:

That was my *first thought*. They'll start with people everyone hates – murderous rapists and pedophiles – then gradually move along the path to drug dealers, et al. and eventually end up at political opponents.

Now the good:

Last week, in the same post I referenced above, I wrote that after Special Counsel Robert Mueller talked about Russia continuing to meddle in American politics Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had a hand in preventing yet another attempt to have the Senate vote on bills to protect our elections.

That prompted conservative pundit Joe Scarborough to coin a new nickname: Moscow Mitch. That’s a lot easier to type than “democracy gravedigger,” which I’ve used a few times now. This new nickname has been gaining a lot of usage, even trending on Twitter. Even better, the word “treason” is used along with it. As in: MoscowMitchMcTreason. A few tweets exploiting that are here.



California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that says for a candidate to appear in a state primary election they must disclose at least five years of tax returns. The reason for the bill is to force the nasty guy to release his taxes.

Commenters debate what might happen. Some think this will achieve nothing because the nasty guy doesn’t need California to win, and certainly won’t get it. So what if he doesn’t appear on the ballot at all? Though the GOP state legislators might not agree with that. Others note that in California the primary rules say the two who get the most votes, even if they’re from the same party, go on to the general, so the nasty guy may not get on the ballot anyway.

Even so, I appreciate the California legislature’s efforts and wish other states would do the same.



And the wonderful!

Resistance comes in many forms. Mauricio Martinez tweeted a short video of an art exhibit designed by Ronald Rael. The art is three bright pink seesaws that go through the border fence. This allows a child on one side of the border to play with a child on the other side.

A comment to the Martinez tweet took me to another bit of border resistance. Artist JR created a piece of art showing two eyes, one on either side of the border. On the last day it was on display JR turned it into a giant picnic table so guests in Mexico and the US could share a meal together. People shared food between the slats of the fence and a band accompanied the meal with half the players on each side.

Samantha Schmidt wrote about the picnic for the Washington Post. Her article included a couple more photos that show another nearby bit of work also by JR, one that I had written about before (though I haven’t found that previous post). This art is of a huge photo of a little boy who, from the American side, appears to be peering over the border fence. We see the picnic table was placed in front of the huge photo.

Rocket Men

Earlier this week I told you about the first book I read during my trip to St. Louis. Now to tell you about the second book, which I finished after I got home.

The book is Rocket Men by Robert Kurson. While marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon it seemed appropriate to read the story of … Apollo 8. This was the mission to first take men to and around the moon. Kurson does a pretty good job saying Apollo 8 was much more important and much more risky than Apollo 11.

Kurson delves into the background of the three men on this mission – Frank Borman, Commander, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders. Lovell would later command Apollo 13, the one that where an explosion prevented the crew from landing on the moon. In the movie Lovell was played by Tom Hanks.

Kurson also portrays the astronaut’s wives, Susan, Marilyn, and Valerie and the effect their husband’s careers had on them. During the flight Susan was convinced Frank wasn’t coming home. Kurson had a lot of information to work with because Life magazine had a great deal of access to the women while their men were in space (I would have called it a significant invasion of privacy).

The book sets the flight in historical context – they were at the moon on Christmas of 1968. Other than this success, that year was horrible – the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, race riots in several cities, protests against the Vietnam War, riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the election of Richard Nixon, and much more.

In the summer of 1968 NASA had a series of flights mapped out that would test the big Saturn V rocket, the Command Module and its joint Service Module, and the Lunar Module. The rocket had problems in its last test (supposedly fixed) and the Lunar Module wasn’t ready yet. The Soviets looked like they would soon launch men to circle the moon. And there was only 18 months remaining in President Kennedy’s pledge to get men onto the moon by the end of 1969.

So George Low of NASA thought of a way to switch the schedule around. Fly Apollo 8 to the moon without the Lunar Module – they weren’t going to land so it wasn’t needed. But that meant there was only four months to train the crew for a significantly different mission. NASA usually did such training over a year. Anders, in particular, had to learn about the hardware in a big hurry.

As they’re deep into training, the Soviets successfully launched an unmanned rocket that circled the moon. And then the Soviets announced they would send men to the moon – and do it two weeks before the scheduled date for Apollo 8. That Soviet flight didn’t happen.

The book shows all the preparation for the flight and half the book is of the flight itself. Their capsule did ten orbits of the moon, each taking two hours. So in those mere twenty hours while they’re at the moon what astronaut is going to volunteer for even a short sleep shift? Both Lovell and Anders insist they couldn’t possibly sleep. Borman has to order them to set their cameras and equipment aside and take a nap.

Kurson wrote that each of the three men granted extensive interviews and answered many more questions by phone and email. Valerie Anders and Marilyn Lovell also freely discussed their side of the mission – Susan Borman was already lost to dementia. Kurson had access to NASA archives and audio of the entire six days of the mission (which is online somewhere).

In all, a book I highly enjoyed.

Sources of truth are off the table

Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos staff wrote a post about the nasty guy and asymmetrical information. This is similar to asymmetrical warfare except it is being waged with words rather than bullets.

To explain a little more… The nasty guy has information and is making sure nobody else has it. Congress is feeling suffocated by the lack of data. The administration has produced nothing that Congress has subpoenaed. Congress issues contempt citations and the nasty guy’s Department of Justice ignores them.

Yet, the nasty guy has told his Attorney General William Barr he has free access to classified info and do with it as he pleases. Which includes passing tidbits to GOP Congresscritters. We can be sure it it helps the nasty guy it will be passed along. If it will be damaging it will be hidden. Sumner explains:

The ability to selectively release any information out of context is indistinguishable from the ability to simply make things up. Trump, Barr, or anyone they are feeding information to can make *any claim* without being disputed. Against anyone. … Where would anyone turn for the truth?

In addition, because of the DoJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the nasty guy has no reason pay any attention to a Supreme Court that orders him to release documents. And if an underling is ordered to release documents the nasty guy has a way around that too – a presidential pardon.

The result of Trump's actions, in concert with Barr and McConnell, is that the United States is extraordinary vulnerable to misinformation, propaganda, and plain old lies. Because the sources of truth are off the table.

It leaves impeachment as the only possible option. But it also means that any impeachment inquiry is also likely to face a repeat of the stonewall. There seems to be no force left that can move Barr to take any step to help in such a proceeding, and no threat from the judiciary that they can’t simply shrug off.

How an autocrat in absolute control of the sources of information and the ability to mete out justice is dislodged is anyone’s guess.

I see that there is a way around the problem that Sumner poses. Treat the refusal to produce the requested documents as an impeachable offense.

Just another political tactic

The nasty guy wanted to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census forms. The Supreme Court stopped him. But wait! There’s more! The Census Bureau routinely creates and tests census forms to see how well they work before running the real thing. The nasty guy minions will ask about a quarter million (selectively targeted) households to fill out a test form. Seeing the citizenship question on the test form will likely trick some immigrant families into believing the same question made it onto the real form. And they’ll be less likely to fill out either form.



Georgia Logothetis of the Daily Kos community highlighted a little bit from Laurence Tribe of Newsweek. Tribe says the writers of the Constitution wisely added the impeachment mechanism because sometimes things have to be done within a four-year cycle. So the strategy that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using – that voters will “impeach” the nasty guy by voting him out of office –

is not just wishful thinking but smacks of the very logic that the framers wisely rejected when they provided Congress with this surgical tool for protecting constitutional democracy and the rule of law between elections and not just every four years.

Twitter user UnidentifiedSource describes circles of hell around the nasty guy. In the inner ring are those willing to help the nasty guy murder someone.

One ring out are those who would never murder, but would help chop up a body. They consider themselves morally superior to those in the inner ring.

One ring out are those who would never chop up a body but would help hide a body. They also consider themselves morally superior to those in inner rings.

The rings widen with those who would do all they can to avoid finding out if there is a body, those who declare the nasty guy deserves privacy and nobody should search for a body. They also feel morally superior to those in inner rings. And:

Surrounding all of this are those who believe that if the answer to a question is 50, and the Democratic position is that the answer is 49.998 and the GOP position is that the answer is “a mayonnaise filled electric eel” then “Clearly BOTH sides are wrong.”

These are the folks who feel that if you would rather not be beaten to death with a baseball bat, the only compromise permitted is for you to allow yourself to be instead beaten half to death.

I think this is a blurb from the New York Times:

These Michigan Voters Show Why Trump’s ‘Go Back’ Strategy May Work
* As President Trump presses his attacks against four women of color in Congress, many conservative voters in Port Huron, Mich., are embracing his message.
* They said they did not see it as racist, expressing their own misgivings about the women and voicing support for Mr. Trump’s re-election.

Oliver Willis tweeted a thread in response. Here’s part of it:

This is how you normalize open racism. Just treat it -- one of the worst things you can do in our society -- like its just another political tactic. Like appealing to soccer moms or black union workers.
…
What @nytpolitics and @patrickhealynyt refuse to understand -- or care about -- is that this does harm to people in this country. it is not weighing in on one side or another for the ny times to be against racism. by writing stories like this, the ny times takes a side. w hate.

Race + gender + sexual identity aren't just a bunch of issues good people can disagree on like - taxation, property rights, etc. they are fundamental to our existence. if you're against racial equality, gender equality you oppose my right to exist in this world and country.

A tweet from Anna Kruk Corbin

I just told someone that some people are so poor, they can't afford to get jobs.

He laughed.

But I wasn't kidding.

Gas money, child care expenses, and lack of clothing to meet dress code requirements are often barriers to employment for low income individuals.

Now you know.

A response from drowning in books

I used to work with low income students. The commute for many was 2 hrs on buses. I lived further away but I had a car so—only 30 mins.

Some people think, oh “they” just need to work harder. What “they” need is better transportation, higher wages, child care help — and empathy.

Anna is the mother of Jackson Corbin. He’s a 13 year old health care advocate because he has a medical condition that would kill him if he didn’t have health insurance. His Twitter account has a tweet at the top that includes his testimony in support of keeping the Affordable Care Act. He wonders why the GOP wants to replace the ACA with something that protects preexisting conditions (like his) when the ACA already does that.

Terrified to speak the obvious

So former Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller testified before Congress yesterday. And a lot of political voices are talking about his performance.

Many of those voices concluded: it was underwhelming. There were no bold pronouncements that galvanized the watching public into concluding the nasty guy really does need to be impeached.

Sigh.

Though Mueller was “shaky” and “hesitant,” Daily Kos writer Mark Sumner says these hearings provided enough information to begin impeachment proceedings (as did the actual report, which came out months ago). Re. Hakeem Jeffries pointed out that the nasty guy’s actions met every requirement for a charge of obstruction of justice. Rep. Ted Lieu got Mueller to say the nasty guy would have been indicted if there weren’t the Office of Legal Council instructions (which are not law) that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

But there were many more things Mueller refused to talk about. That leaves us wondering what else he knows.

Sarah Kendzior, in an article for the Globe and Mail, published in Canada (tellingly, not in America) talks about that hesitancy Mueller displayed.

Throughout the hearings, Mr. Mueller acted as if outside forces constrained his ability to answer questions. But he is no longer an employee of the Department of Justice, and they can no longer tell him what to say. The decision to narrow the scope of the questions and even his method of response (he refused to read his own report out loud) was Robert Mueller’s.
…
He acted like a man terrified to speak the obvious.

The question remains: why? An informed public is a powerful public, and a powerful public is crucial when a country is transitioning into autocracy. Any attempt of officials to hide the truth – whether through deliberate lies, institutional obfuscation, or pure gutlessness – hurts the body politic. Mr. Mueller had the opportunity to deliver insight and validate his own work. Instead, he was timid in the face of both Republican smears and Democratic inquiries. He kept noting that he knew the answers to questions that are of great public interest, but that he had no intention of revealing them.

The public has the right to know whether its own government constitutes a threat to national security and if the president is complicit in a crime. Testifying to Congress was Mr. Mueller’s patriotic obligation, and he should not have required a subpoena to show up. His question-dodging mirrored the reticence of his probe: he did not want to indict anyone even when their offences were blatant, and he did not want to explain why. It is disconcerting that one of the few things Mr. Mueller would confirm is that Americans are not safe.

Alas, Kendzior does not know the answer to her question.

One thing Mueller confirmed was that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, is meddling now in American politics, and will continue to meddle through the 2020 election. Senate Majority Leader and democracy gravedigger Mitch McConnell has prevented votes on at least a couple dozen bills to fix the problems. In response to Mueller’s testimony Democrats tried to force a couple election protection bills onto the Senate floor for a vote. But Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked that move. She later tweeted that the bills were “partisan.”

Even though Mueller wimped out, the nasty guy and his minions saw the need for a distraction. So this morning Attorney General William Barr announced the resumption of executions of federal prisoners on death row.

There have been no federal executions since 2003, for a variety of reasons. These include not wanting to mistakenly execute an innocent person and being skeptical that existing execution protocols are humane.

The executions probably can’t happen before December and will definitely face court challenges.

Hunter of Daily Kos wrote about this announcement and ends with this:

If we were to be extraordinarily cynical about it, we would note that regimes around the world have long staged new rounds of prisoner executions to distract the public during times of rising opposition to government leaders. Sometimes the prisoners are indeed very bad people. It makes for good press, something new to discuss and have emotions over in the cafes while the government brags about the obvious good it is doing. If we were to be extraordinarily cynical about it.

Hate, Inc.

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone. He has written the soon to be released book Hate, Inc., Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another. He wrote an essay based on the book for The Washington Spectator titled How the Media’s 10 Rules of Hate Sow Discord and Make Us Despise One Another. The Spectator usually has 2 major essays and a few smaller ones in the eight pages of a monthly edition. In the July 2019 edition Taibbi’s essay takes over the entire eight pages.

In his introduction Taibbi reminds us that today’s major media companies are businesses that make money. They have found that they make more money when they train their audiences in hate. That extra money is more important to Fox News, the company that started down this path, than a civil society.

We need you anxious, pre-pissed, addicted to conflict. … We’ve discovered we can sell hate, and the more vituperative the rhetoric, the better. This also serves larger political purposes.

So long as the public is busy hating each other and not aiming its ire at the more complex financial and political processes going on off-camera, there’s very little danger of anything like a popular uprising.
…
Hate is a great blinding mechanism. Once you’ve been in the business long enough, you become immersed in its nuances. If you can get people to accept a sequence of simple, powerful ideas, they’re yours forever.

On to the ten rules:

1. There are only two ideas. Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, left and right. All other ideas, such as Thoreau urging us to connect with nature or the sarcasm of Jonathan Swift, are ignored.

2. These two ideas are in permanent conflict. Which means the discussion is about the conflict, not about the policies.

3. Hate people, not institutions. Fox News struck gold in the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. But big media found no profit in doing big exposes on corporate corruption because, (1) big corporations tend to sue, and (2) the public didn’t seem to care.

4. Everything is someone else’s fault. Can the story be blamed on someone? It’s a win! For example, the condition of concentration camps for refugees at the southern border can be blamed on Obama. (Cue the old joke: I didn’t say you did it. I said I’m blaming you.)

The best news stories take issues and find a way to make readers think hard about them, especially inviting them to consider how they themselves contribute to the problem. You want people thinking, ‘I voted for what? Most problems are systemic, bipartisan, and bureaucratic, and most of us, by voting or not voting, paying taxes or not, own a little of most disasters.

But you never see that in the media.

5. Nothing is everyone’s fault.

The bloated military budget? Mass surveillance? American support for dictatorial regimes like the cannibalistic Mbasogo family in Equatorial Guinea, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia? Our culpability in proxy-nation atrocities in places like Yemen or Palestine? The drone assassination program? Rendition? Torture? The drug war? Absence of access to generic or reimported drugs?

Nah. We just don’t do these stories. At least, we don’t do them anywhere near the proportion to their social impact. They’re hard to sell. And the ability to market a story is everything.

And that marketing depends on how the story fits into the two party conflict. Nomi Prins wrote a book about the 2008 economic crash. But she doesn’t get much news airtime because, as one TV host put it, “I can’t tell if you’re progressive or conservative.”

6. Root, don’t think. Political shows are intentionally becoming more like sports shows. Elections are now discussed in sports metaphors, such as trackers for the “% chance of victory.” Because of that…

By 2016 we’d raised a generation of viewers who had no conception of politics as an activity that might or should involve compromise. Your team won or lost, and you felt devastated or vindicated accordingly. We were training rooters instead of readers. Since our own politicians are typically very disappointing, we particularly root for the other side to lose.

7. No switching teams.

Two years ago, unnerved by a lot of the same comments about “false balance,” I wrote: “The model going forward will likely involve Republican media covering Democratic corruption and Democratic media covering Republican corruption.”

This is more or less where we are now, and nobody seems to think this is bad or dysfunctional. This is despite the fact that in this format the average person will no longer even see – ever – derogatory reporting about his or her own “side.”

Being out of touch with what the other side is thinking is now no longer seen as a fault. It’s a requirement.

8. The other side is literally Hitler. Sean Hannity of Fox News began spewing that line after the 9/11 attacks. If liberals refused to accept the existence of terrorist evil, then they are also evil, and thus just like Hitler. But…

There’s nowhere to go from Hitler. It’s a rhetorical dead end. Argument is over at this point. If you go there, you’re now absolving your audiences of all moral restraint, because who wouldn’t kill Hitler?

Taibbi then discusses the nasty guy. He’s Hitler? A case can be made. But what about his base? “Did it really make sense to caricature 60 million people as racist white nationalist traitor-Nazis?”

Here’s where I depart a bit from Taibbi and his excellent analysis. No, not all 60 million of those who voted for the nasty guy are racist. But he built his campaign on supremacy. It was also supremacy that trash talked Hillary Clinton so much that many voters couldn’t bring themselves to vote for her. Supremacy was essentially his only issue and has been his only issue while president. I maintain that his core supporters (which isn’t the entire 60 million – some of them regret their vote) love him because of his enforcement of the social hierarchy and the way he implies they’re with him at the top of the hierarchy.

Taibbi shows a great understanding of supremacy (including his next two points). But with this miss on nasty guy supporters I wonder if Taibbi understands how thoroughly the striving up the social hierarchy is entrenched in modern white male culutre.

Taibbi finishes this section with:

It’s a fight for all the marbles. Politics is about one side against another side, and only one take is allowed now – pure aggression.

9. In the fight against Hitler everything is permitted.

Meanness and vulgarity build political solidarity, but also audience solidarity. Breaking barriers together builds conspiratorial closeness. In the Trump age, it helps political and media objectives align.

The problem is, there’s no natural floor to this behavior. News and commentary programs will eventually escalate to boxing-style expletive-laden pre-fight tirades and open incitement of violence.

If either side is literally Hitler, this eventually has to happen. What began as *America v. America* will eventually move to *Traitor v. Traitor*, and the show does not work if those contestants are not eventually offended to the point of wanting to kill one another.

10. Feel superior.

We’re mainly in the business of stroking audiences. We want them coming back. Anger is part of the rhetorical promise, but so are feelings of righteousness and superiority.
…
We invented the “Wimp Factor” for George H. W. Bush and saddled Dan Quayle with the “bimbo” tag. This was propaganda, of course, as the idea was that politicians could only not be losers by bombing someone. But we were also telling audience that a loser was someone who didn’t attack.

Politicians should be fair game. But the obsession with winners and losers runs so deep in the press that it has become the central value of the business.

Taibbi concludes with:

The idea behind most political coverage is to get you to turn on the TV and within minutes have you tsk-tsking and saying, “What idiots!” And, from there, it’s a short hop to, “Fuck those commie-loving tree-huggers!” or “Fuck the Hitler-loving freaks!”

We can’t get you there unless you follow all the rules. Accept a binary world and pick a side. Embrace the reality of being surrounded by evil stupidity. Feel indignant, righteous, and smart. Hate losers, love winners. Don’t challenge yourself. And during the commercials, do some shopping.

Congratulations, you’re the perfect news consumer.

At the Arch

I’m home again. My trip to the St. Louis area was successful, though the details aren’t of a general interest to this blog.

I flew to St. Louis on a Friday. I spent part of that afternoon and a good chunk each of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and the following Sunday doing genealogy research. That included three trips out to the town where my grandfather was born and grew up, twice to pore through church records at the town historical society, and once to visit the county records office. The church records show various family births, marriages, and deaths, though nothing about my 3-great grandfather’s first wife. The county records showed that this 3-great grandfather bought and sold property just south of town.

Wednesday through Saturday was spent at a handbell seminar. About 425 people took part. We attended classes on various aspects of improving handbell performance. There were early afternoon and early evening concerts each day by some excellent handbell ensembles – well, most of them were excellent. One was bad enough people wondered why they had been invited, perhaps the idea of karaoke accompanied by handbells couldn’t be refused (though it should have been). Another group combined bells with electronic music, which perhaps worked, though the group did way too many loud and fast pieces.

This hotel was the closest one to the St. Louis Gateway Arch (the hotel even includes the phrase “At the Arch” in its name). So one could see it (well, part of it) simply by glancing out a window. The entire group stood near the base of the Arch while a member of the organizing committee took photos from the top. Many days were so hot (well above 90F with the legendary humidity of St. Louis) we were glad that we didn’t have to leave the hotel.

On Sunday (a couple days ago) I enjoyed about an hour at the museum at the base of the Arch. It had been redone a couple years ago and looks pretty good.

The book I read during the first half of the trip was Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. I bought it in Australia last year. A blurb on the cover describes it as “an Australian To Kill a Mockingbird.” Well, not quite, though racism is a large part of the story. The story opens with Jasper, about age 15, knocking on the window of Charlie, age 13, asking for help. Jasper leads Charlie to a glen out in the bush, an area Jasper considers his own private space. But a crime has happened here and Jasper, who is mixed race with a drunken father and dead mother, is sure if the authorities find out about it he would be immediately accused and locked up. So Jasper and Charlie try to figure it out on their own. This wasn’t so much about the boys at the center of a mystery as it was a general coming-of-age story.

The story is quite well written, though the beautiful language was of Charlie as an adult looking back on the events. A thirteen-year-old wouldn’t have used words and shared insights like that.

I was amused the author had lots of references to American authors – Harper Lee and Mark Twain in particular – but no references to Australian authors.

Here’s a quote that amused me. Jasper offers Charlie his first cigarette, then offers a swig of whiskey.

I take a small incendiary pull. Of course, it attacks my mouth and burns down the length of my throat. I gag immediately, wiping my lips trying to keep my lungs at bay. I slant my head and pretend to read a label that isn’t there through my clouding eyes. This shit is poison. And I realize I’ve been betrayed by the two vices that fiction promised me I’d adore. Sal Paradise held up bottles of booze like a housewife in a detergent commercial. Holden Caulfield reached for his cigarettes like an act of faith. Even Huckleberry Finn tapped on his pipe with relief and satisfaction. I can’t trust anything. If sex turns out to be this bad, I’m never reading again. At this rate it will probably burn my dick and I’ll end up with lesions.

Charlie tries to understand the crime he witnessed (he didn’t see the crime being committed, but did see its horrible results). He reads newspaper articles about those who commit such crimes. He has been bullied for what some kids believe is showing off in class. Charlie’s friend Jeffrey is Vietnamese and is great at cricket, but none of the other kids let him play. He laments not finding any answers:

What kind of lousy world is this? Has it always been this way, or has the bottom fallen out of it in just the last couple days? Has it always been so unfair? What is it that tips the scales so? I don’t understand it. … What kind of world gives birth to Fish and Cooke [two criminals he reads about], lets them fester and hate, lets them torment the innocent and make good people afraid? What kind of world punches someone for using big words?

Verbosity. Verbosity. Verbosity.

A world that kills parents and makes orphans of children and kicks away cricket balls and lies through it sharp teeth. That makes a decent person feel rubbish all his life because he’s poorer and browner and motherless. That hosts three billion folks, each of them as lonely as each other. A world that’s three quarters water, none of which can quench your thirst.

Bugger it.

Thirteen-year-old Charlie doesn’t understand, though I think I do. The search for supremacy is one of the strongest human drives. Everything that Charlie laments, everything in this book, is driven by the seeking of supremacy.

Second trip of the summer

I leave tomorrow morning to fly to St. Louis. I'll be attending a national handbell event. I'll also be visiting my cousin and with her doing genealogy research. My mother's family is from St. Louis and elsewhere in Missouri. I'll be gone ten days. I probably won't post during that time.

If you won’t stand up for an abused stolen baby

Fernand Amandi tweeted:

Don’t know of a single reputable Constitutional expert, scholar or lawyer who strongly agrees with @SpeakerPelosi’s current approach towards impeachment. Do you?

Catherine Pikus replied with a thread explaining impeachment proceedings. Here’s part of it:

McConnell has nothing to do with and cannot stop an impeachment inquiry in the house.

Suggesting he can or will block it shows a complete lack of understanding of the process

Impeachment inquiries are televised and carry addition weight in the courts. There are hundreds of
witnesses to call and it will all be controlled by the House Judiciary Committee.

McConnell is powerless to stop house hearings. Period.

After 3 months of Prince, Deutsche Bank, Cambridge Analytica, Flynn, Cohen, Manafort, Popadopolous, Gates, McCabe, Brennan, Priebus, Hicks, McDaniel, Jr, Butina, Sessions, Comey, Spicer, Yates, and on and on testifying in daily live televised hearings do you really believe Trump will be stronger?

After 6 months of GOP on the defensive do you really think they'll be more likely to hold the Senate?

After 12 months of educating the Am public on sex crimes, money laundering, emoluments violations, abuse of power, lying, & obstruction do you really believe less Americans will support impeachment?

Nancy Pelosi isn't making the case. She's not even trying to. She's discouraging her caucus from it.
Her master plan is wait til 2020 & hope voters bail out dems Coincidentally, stall til 2020 is Trump's plan too The fact that they have the same goal should concern everyone. Esp when not even opening an inquiry means a large % of Americans believe it means there's no evidence.

Back to Amandi’s question, Sarah Kendzior answered:

I don't know of any constitutional scholar who agrees with her. I also don't know any social scientists who specialize in autocracy who agree with her. Everyone I know is deeply alarmed by her appeasement.

In another tweet Kendzior wrote:

I've never seen such clear-cut victims and villains responded to with such gutlessness.

If you won't stand up for an abused stolen baby -- then for whom?

If you won't stand up against a sadistic, white supremacist, mafia-backed rapist -- then against whom?

What does it take?

This is directed toward officials who have the power to stop or slow these horrors and won't, and those who defend them and minimize the harm. I know there are lots of ordinary people who do care and try to help the best they can -- and some reps actually doing a good job too.

One of those reps is Rashida Tlaib, who represents me. Jamil Smith tweeted:

What did Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and Ocasio-Cortez do to Pelosi to make her so dismissive and cruel to them? It’s evident that she views their worth purely in terms of their votes in Congress—labeling their public support as “whatever.” She goes out of her way to insult them. Why?

The closest Smith gets to an answer is pointing out that these four went to a concentration camp and talking a lot about what they saw there. And Pelosi didn’t.

Pikus says Pelosi’s strategy is to beat the nasty guy in 2020. Journalist Jonathan Katz responds:

I don’t know what the “we’ll just beat him at the polls” folks are thinking. If Trump loses in November 2020, we’re in for three of the most dangerous months in American history. To put it another way, there are about 809,000 minutes between now and noon ET on Jan 20, 2021, in which Trump can launch a nuclear missile at any moment he likes.

This is a good place for a quote from Teddy Roosevelt published in 1918.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

We are sorely lacking patriots.

From that same Daily Kos post is a story of kids protesting climate change. It prompted their local city council to pass a climate change resolution that actually meant something.

Just ignore the Supreme Court

The Supremes batted away the nasty guy’s desire to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Those who work for and understand the census says such a question is a bad idea because minorities will be less likely to fill out the form, leading to an undercount (which, according to uncovered memos, is the reason why the question was proposed). Alas, the Supremes didn’t say you can’t do that. They said the nasty guy’s stated reasons were contrived. So the nasty guy’s lawyers spent the holiday weekend trying to contrive a reasons that wasn’t so obviously contrived.

And along comes Attorney General William Barr to say there really is a legal way to get the citizenship question onto the census. Translation: this president can ignore the Supreme Court. That prompted Melissa McEwan of Shakesville to respond:

See, when there's no one empowered to hold the president accountable who is willing to do it, what happens is that the president turns the Justice Department into a rubber stamp for his authoritarianism.

Commenter Widminter shares an idea heard elsewhere. So what if some of the census forms are already printed? Not everyone in the country has to get the same form. Perhaps the forms with the question go to the states with the most immigrants.



McEwan does a summary of the nasty stuff perpetrated by the nasty guy and the GOP. She titles them with the number of days the nasty guy has been in office. Today is day 900. Yeesh!

In today’s summary she notes an article by Drew Harwell at the Washington Post describing how the FBI and ICE have turned to state drivers license databases and facial recognition software into a gold mine. This has become “the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.” McEwan responded:

A lot of folks will read headlines about this item, see "ICE," and assume the technology is only being used to "nab illegals." It isn't. It's already being used against citizens. And, even if it were only being used against undocumented immigrants, that's bad enough. But the population's indifference to abuses against undocumented immigrants will mean this surveillance programs expands without much pushback. So, let's make some noise.

You do know your representative and your Senators. Don’t you?



Sarah Kendzior tweeted in response to an AFP news agency story:

At least 15000 media jobs will be eliminated this year, over three times as many as in 2017, and the most since 2009

Kendzior studies authoritarianism and knows they don’t like independent journalists. Even if independent media companies fire people for economic reasons, it fits a nasty guy plan.