The historical view

In spite of his entitlement, his upbringing, his privilege (white or otherwise), Mafia Don has to cough up millions of dollars more ($83.3 million, to be exact) as punishment after losing his second defamation case against writer E. Jean Carroll.

It's his second loss in a defamation claim to Carroll, because he immediately defamed her after being made to pay $5 million when he lost his first defamation case against her. That was the sexual abuse and defamation case where U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan said, by any standard, Trump raped Carroll.

I'm wondering if it's just a matter of time before Trump, in an uncontrollable fit of rage, defames Carroll for a third time. I hope so. The $88.3 million total in damages so far represents nearly a quarter of the cash Trump says he has on hand. I hope so. Keep talking, Don.

What's remarkable about all of this is that Trump, a former president of the United States, is running for that office once again. The fact that he is within a hair's breadth of winning the Republican nomination is phenomenal to me: A judge has said that Trump is a rapist. Trump went through an unprecedented two impeachment hearings as president, and he is currently fighting 91 – count 'em, folks, 91 – criminal charges spread over four indictments. Some of those charges are for stealing top secret documents. Some of those charges are for election tampering. Some of those charges are for instigating an insurrection.

Losing just one of those charges could result in jail time. No wonder Trump is claiming that a president should have universal immunity, even for "crossing the line."

And yet, he is the darling of his Republican MAGAt base as well as a morally-corrupt Republican Party that keeps running to the rescue of a rapist.

As I sometimes do, I wonder how history will look back on all of this. Say, maybe 50 years from now.

If our democratic republic survives the Republican threat to take over our Constitutional government by fascist tactics this election cycle, I suppose scholars and historians will look back on this time as a curious anomaly where we narrowly avoided disaster.

I wonder if they'll wonder how a cult figure could generate such an intense and devoted following, completely devoid of facts and, well, even common sense. I guess it's easy to point to social media as a source of transmission for "alternate facts," but even Hitler generated a cult without the Internet, so it does go deeper than that.

It goes to the soul. It goes to the soul of the candidate, and it goes to the soul of in informed electorate to divine the truth from what they hear.

It goes to the heart of what is right.

I hope so.

Good-bye, SI

A few months ago I wrote about possibly not renewing my 55-year-old subscription to Sports Illustrated. I'd just gotten my third renewal notice and the time for making a decision whether to renew or not was drawing nigh.

Then, on Thursday, I received my fourth and final notice. Or so it said, with "Final Notice" written in big block letters across the envelope and in smaller letters telling me what a deal I could have for being such a loyal subscriber.

Some of my favorite issues of Sports Illustrated.

 I'd pretty much made up my mind that I was not going to renew when the very next day, Friday, a story crossed my computer's news feed that Sports Illustrated's publisher, The Arena Group, was laying off some of the magazine's staff after SI failed to make a $3.75 million payment to its license holder, Authentic.

"Whaaaaat?" I asked myself.

The first thing I thought of was that this had to be some  kind of joke. I mean, Sports Illustrated had been one of the country's most respected platforms for sports journalism – no, for journalism, period – for decades. The writing was crisp, original and incisive. The photography was world class and involved. There was nothing else like it. I awaited each weekly issue for the mail to arrive with great anticipation and often carried around copies as if they were the Bible (which, in a way, they were).

The reason I thought this might be a joke is because Sports Illustrated played one of the most notorious April Fool's Day hoaxes ever on its readers – and others – when celebrated writer George Plimpton wrote a story about a baseball phenom named Sidd Finch, a Mets pitching prospect who could throw a baseball 168 miles per hour without warming up and while wearing only one shoe (that should have been a clue right there).

I halfway believed the story because, you know, it was in Sports Illustrated. I halfway couldn't believe it because it was so unbelievable. Peter Ueberroth, the MLB commissioner at the time, even contacted the Mets to find out more about this guy.

When it became clear this whole thing was an April Fool's hoax (April 1, 1985, was the cover date), I briefly wondered if the solemn, unspoken contract between journalist and reader for providing the truth above all else had been broken.

Then I got my swimsuit issue and all was forgiven.

But the recent news that Sports Illustrated was furloughing its staff was unnerving, even though the magazine was losing its relevance for me. Like much of print journalism, it was foundering in murky waters created by the Internet, social media and AI. Weekly issues became biweekly, and then, monthly.

Some of my conservative friends, who thought the mag was too liberal to begin with what with transgender swimsuit cover models, shook their heads and said, "See what happens when you go woke?"

I don't subscribe to woke paranoia, but I can no longer subscribe to a magazine that is trying to find its niche with a younger crowd that Tik Toks its way through the sidelines.

It's still unclear if this is the actual end for SI. There's a chance it could hang around for another three months or so before a solution is found, but that remains to be seen.

Steve Huffman, a friend of mine and a former sports writer himself, recently wrote in a Facebook post that "if SI existed as it once existed, people would continue to support it. I know I'd continue to subscribe."

Hear, hear.

Snow field

Shhhh.

But word is out that there's a chance for a local snow sighting, perhaps sometime late Monday night or possibly early Tuesday morning.

You know. While you're still in bed.

But the very suggestion of snow is getting some people excited. Sid Proctor, the acknowledged amateur guru of weather prediction from Welcome (he's amazingly accurate) has written in his latest Facebook post on Saturday that "Our first chance of a snow event is in the forecast late Monday into Tuesday." He then goes on to talk about polar vortexes and low pressure systems that involve North Carolina. He provides convincing weather maps and graphs. It could happen, I guess.

(Keep in mind that we didn't get so much as a flake of dandruff last winter, much less snow.Yay, I say. No snow is one reason why I moved south from snowbound Pennsylvania.)

Anyway, some people around here have taken hope of finally seeing some snow after going a whole year without it.

And they're doing anything they can to encourage it.

 One of my neighbors religiously puts a white Crayola crayon on a window sill when snow is in the forecast. I say "religiously" because I don't know if there's prayer involved, but there might be.

"Oh, God. Let there be snow."

I think she's done this for years.

I'd never heard of this snow ritual before. I thought it might be a Southern thing, but my southern-born wife, a native of Lexington, said she never heard of doing this, either.

So I Googled "white crayon for snow" just to see if there was such a thing, or if it was something only my neighbor knew about. And practiced. Religiously.

And, lo, not only was there an explanation for the white crayon ("...if you put white crayons on your window sills then you could possibly see a picture of snow outside your window the following morning."), there was a whole list of tricks to encourage Mother Nature to shake her flakes.

More of those in a moment.

It's not clear to me whether one white crayon on one window sill is enough to bring on a snowfall, or if you have to put a white crayon in every window of your house. My friend lives in a large house with hundreds (seemingly) of windows. She might not be doing enough.

There are other avenues to follow:

Wear your pajamas inside out. This one makes absolutely no sense to me, but apparently it's regarded as one of the most accurate of snow superstitions. But I, for one, refuse to wear my boxers inside out...

Sleep with a spoon under your pillow. Okay. This one doesn't make much sense to me, either. Plus, the spoon has to be frozen. That's a no-go right there.

The spoon thing might be used in conjunction with Place a spoon (or white crayon) in the freezer. You don't have to sleep with it. Just leave it in the freezer.

Those last two suggestions give me a whole new dimension to spooning that I can't now get out of my head. And I used to like spooning...

Flush ice cubes down the toilet. Not sure what the root source is behind that one, either. A similar plan is to throw ice cubes on your porch, but I see some liability issues there.

Brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. This makes no sense. What if you're amphibious (ambidextrous)? No chance of working.

Sleep backwards. At first glance, I didn't know what they were going for here. But apparently if you sleep with your head at the foot of your bed, you get snow the next day. Presumably you do this wearing inside-out pajamas. Or boxers.

Snow dance: This one might have some substance. Native Americans, specifically the Southern Ute Tribe in Colorado, are said to do this. So does Snoopy in A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Run around the dining room table five times: We got yelled at as kids when we ran through the house, so I see no hope for this one. I sure am not doing this as an adult. Vertigo.

Shake a snow globe: Of all the non-scientific related-to-weather rituals there are, this one makes the most sense to me. Seems obvious.

I don't know. Maybe you have to do all of these things at the same time.

I have this fear I might go up to Weathervane Winery in the next few weeks and see white crayons in all of Sid Proctor's windows. Yikes.

As a child of the North, I loved snow when I was a kid. We built snowmen and snow forts and had ginormus snowball fights all day long. Plus, it got us out of school. Even to this day, I like to watch a silent snowfall, as long as it melts when it hits the ground.

But the moment I had my own car, my view of snow changed drastically. Driving in the snow in your $30,000 vehicle amongst all those other crazy drivers who know nothing about driving in the snow – even in Yankeeland – is harrowing.

I can't remember if we had rituals to prevent snow. Like heating spoons and putting them under your pillow. Or green Crayola crayons on the window sill.

I think I'll just take Sid Proctor's word for it. He is, after all, da (snow) man.

 

Deciding for democracy

Saturday marked a seminal moment in U.S. history.

It was the third anniversary of the second coup attempt on the nation's government. It is now known simply as January 6. When you say Jan. 6, everybody knows what you mean. It's like when you say 9-11, or Dec. 7. You just know.

The first attempted coup came 163 years ago. That one was called, simply, the Civil War. Nearly a million Americans (civilian and military) died in a span of four years in an effort to resolve whether we were really the United States, or otherwise a loose collection of states more or less independent of each other. Or, more to the point, whether we'd be a democracy, where each person is a free agent, or a slavocracy, where not all men are created equal. (Yes, Nikki Haley, slavery was the cause of the Civil War. The South said so itself. Just read their ordinances of secession here. The word "slavery" is littered across their documents).

Now, a century and a half later, democracy finds itself on the precipice again. This year, 2024, is a general election year. The choice of candidates is binary: the Founders' democracy, as embraced by President Joe Biden, or autocracy, as promised by former president Donald Trump.

Biden gave an uplifting speech in Valley Forge this week, standing on ground where George Washington once trod, illuminating the success, so far, of the American experiment in democracy. 

By comparison, Trump as asked for the suspension of the Constitution. He paraphrases Adolf Hitler. His platform is retribution against his political enemies because the Republican Party, as such, is a party of grievance that has other no serious agenda to present to the people. He rapes women, he separates nursing children from their mothers, he wants to imprison women who try to take responsibility for their own health care, he celebrates his failed coup attempt with a Big Lie, he accepts bribes from other nations. Why is he even a viable choice for president to so many Americans?

If you disagree with Biden's policies, or you think he is just too old to run (he's only three years older than Trump), or any other perceived flaw in the man, that's fine.

But for the first time that I can remember, this election will not be so much a choice of personality or individual character. It will be, rather, a choice of ideology. It will be a choice between democracy or autocracy, plain and simple.

It's your choice.