Jen Pawol

Even while living in a sleepy little town in the South, you sometimes have an opportunity to rub shoulders with history.

The last thing I ever expected was to meet up with Jen Pawol, the first female umpire to call balls and strikes in major league baseball history.

 

Jen Pawol became MLB's first female umpire this year.

G'wan. Get out of here. In Lexington?

But, yes. It really happened. 

When our neighbor, Pam Zanni, knocked on our door yesterday afternoon, she wanted to know if we'd received her email invitation to join her and her husband, Jason, for their Christmas party that night. She couldn't remember if she sent us the invite or not. Umm, no. I don't think so.

"Well, come over around 6 p.m., " said Pam. "It's going to be a surprise. It's sports."

The surprise lasted maybe all of five seconds because then she added, "Jen Pawol's going to be here."

To be honest, the name "Jen Pawol" didn't set off an immediate fire alarm. I'm an old guy, memory is fuzzy these days, and besides, we're out of baseball season. My mental Rolodex was spinning. But somewhere in the next minute or so, the word "umpire" popped up in the conversation – Jason umpires professionally as a side hustle – and everything came into focus.

Pam Zanni (left) and Jen Pawol.

 Just for a refresher, in case your memory is fuzzy, too, Pawol finally reached the majors last August after umpiring baseball for about nine years at the minor league level. Then, on Aug. 9, she was called up as a fill-in ump for the Miami-Atlanta series at Truist Park.

She took the field as the first-base ump in the first game of a doubleheader that day, and you could hear the glass ceiling cracking like ice on a thawing pond all over major league baseball. Maybe everywhere. It was that historic. Baseball is America's pastime, after all.

Then, the next day, she was behind the plate. When you're the plate umpire, all 40,000 eyes in the stadium are on you. You can feel the weight of the glare. It's the game's feature position, with all the attendant pressure. Double that pressure if you're female. C'mon, man. It's balls and strikes. Meat and potatoes.

Pawol graded out well at 91 percent that day. Not bad for her first performance in the Big Show. The major league average is about 94 or so. 

Pawol ended up working 18 games last year and she'll come into the 2026 season as one of 15 minor league umps on the fill-in list. There are 76 fulltime umpires in the MLB, but with injuries, vacations, personal leave and whatnot, Pawol should have plenty of opportunities to work more games this year. And to gain more experience. She'll be 49 years old in a couple days and the ultimate goal still remains to become a fulltime MLB ump.

When she did show up at the Zanni party – she was there because of Jason's umpiring connections, plus there were at least five collegiate level umpires there last night – I think the last thing she expected was to be interviewed. I introduced myself and my wife, Kim, to Pawol and told her that I was a retired sports editor from the local paper. 

I didn't have prepared questions, or a note pad, nor did I turn on my cell phone recorder, mostly because it's hard to conduct a proper interview while standing over the horseradish dip with people milling around. But she was gracious and patient as I asked my several questions and then filed her responses away for future reference. 

MLB is introducing the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) this year. It's high-tech umpiring with Hawkeye cameras tracking the pitch to a player's defined strike zone. A team gets two challenges per game to question an umpire's call and doesn't lose a challenge unless the original call stands. Pawol said she was OK with that.

"I'll do whatever they tell me to do," said Pawol, who won Baseball America's Trailblazer of the Year Award. "I'll paint the bases green if they want me to." (Pawol, incidentally, is also an artist with a Master's in Fine Arts. I suppose she can paint anything she wants.) 

Doe's she have a sense of her place in breaking baseball's glass ceiling? 

"It felt empowering," said Pawol. "It gave me so much joy and satisfaction. Baseball gives me joy. It's a great game. It really is."

Does she get the support she needs for her accomplishment?

"Everybody's been wonderful," said Pawol. "And I'm grateful." 

Her cap, the one she wore in Atlanta when she made her historic MLB appearance, was requested by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY and to which she gladly donated. So now she is enshrined in baseball history for all of posterity.

As Kim and I were leaving, we thanked Jason for the evening.

He pulled me aside for a quiet word.

"Can you believe this?" asked Jason. "If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd have a major league umpire in my house, I'd have said you were freaking crazy. This is amazing." 

 Indeed, it was. It was a home run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legacy president

Now our country, under convicted felon president Donald Trump, is committing piracy on the high seas by seizing oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela and brushing it off as policy. He said he'll do it again.

It's pretty outrageous stuff. In fact, Trump's presidential legacy (I prefer to call it his criminal legacy) as he enters the middle of his second term seems to be nothing more than one outrage followed by another outrage of even greater proportion.

I think this all started in his first term when he addressed the border issue in 2017-18 by separating families – parents from their children – who were seeking asylum from the horrors of their own oppressive nations. Instead, many of those parents seeking new lives found themselves prosecuted as illegal aliens and deported while their children were put in cages and placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Remember that? More than 5,500 kids were separated from their parents. To this day, about 1,200 children are still looking to rejoin their families – if they can find them.

Thanks, Trump. 

I thought that was impeachable stuff, but no. America's political backbone for presidential outage was dissolving.

The next big outage came with the Covid-19 pandemic. Huge numbers of People were dying worldwide at an accelerated rate. When the pandemic hit American shores, Trump claimed it was only "one or two" people who were dying in this country and the virus would be contained before it got worse. Instead, within weeks, hospitals were overwhelmed. There were not enough ventilators to go around. Corpses had to be placed in refrigeration trucks serving as morgues and bodies were often buried in mass graves. Oh, you forgot that part, did you?

Trump, to his credit, initiated Operation Warp Speed in 2000 in an effort to find a Covid vaccine. And it happened. In a miracle of modern medical research, mRNA vaccines were developed, reviewed and reviewed again (with over 600 peer reviews). To this day, the vaccines are credited with saving 14 million lives globally. This is about the only moment where I can find that Trump actually did something good for the country.

But then he came down with the virus.. His life was saved by a cocktail of medicines that only a president could afford. When he returned to the White House, he defiantly ripped off his mask, thus invigorating – if only metaphorically – the anti-vaxxer movement. Hundreds of thousands of people continued to die by refusing to be vaccinated.

The legacy of the anti-vaccination movement is that now measles – an illness once eliminated in this country – is now back and flourishing because there is resistance to getting measles shots. What other empirical evidence do you need that the shot works? Measles vaccines, no measles. No vaccine, measles returns. There. Believe the science. Same for Covid. Same for flu. Same for anything that requires a vaccine. And, no, shots do not cause autism. Period.

Then came Jan. 6 2021 when Trump-inspired conservative hooligans (Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys) stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the ceremonial electoral count to affirm Joe Biden as president. That was a horrifying moment in American history where a coup to overthrow the government actually took place in front of our eyes.

We had a four-year hiatus from Trump as the economy grew and inflation dropped to 3 percent from a world-wide high of 9 percent, but then Trump was somehow elected as president again, this time bringing with him Project 2025. You remember Project 2025. It was a blueprint for American as seen by the ultra conservative Heritage Foundation. It's basically a primer on how to make America white again in the face of demographics that show the country is actually becoming browner. Some folks are frightened of that.

What Project 2025 brought us, among other things, is the absurdly named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the elimination of American influence in third-world countries (America first!), the elimination of climate protections, the call for mass deportations of all those brown-skinned people, and a host of other anti-American actions (read the Constitution) that are printed in over the project's 900 pages.

Meanwhile, the Epstein files are about to surface. Trump, who has been declared an adjudicated rapist by a Federal judge following the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit. Trump was also found guilty on 34 counts for falsifying his business records in an attempt to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels for a sexual affair between the two. So why should a connection to a known pedophile like Jeffrey Epstein surprise us?

Rape. Porn star. Pedophilia. Those words are not often associated with active U.S. presidents.

That pretty much brings us to now, where this country is seemingly committing war crimes by blowing up alleged drug traffickers in their speedboat. The premise is that the speedboats are ferrying drugs across 1,000 miles of water from Venezuela to the United States. So instead of relying on due process to stop them, Trump is blowing them up without evidence. So far, nearly 90 people have been killed, and for what? Fentanyl does not come from Venezuela, it comes from China and is manufactured in Mexico. Cocaine comes from Venezuela, but most of the deliveries are destined for European markets. So good. We're making Europe safe again.

And we might be committing war crimes – or murder – if we're blowing up survivors clinging to wreckage with follow-up missile strikes. 

And now, we're taking control of oil tankers. This one, nautically named The Skipper, flies the flag of Guyana, which makes its seizure problematical under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

It could be piracy instead. 

The idea behind this seizure is that the oil is under US sanction – it cannot be sold – but by doing so, the United States might be able to effect regime change in Venezuela in an effort to remove president Nicolás Maduro from office.

Or perhaps the US can muscle Venezuela into a war. I mean, why not? Venezuela has the richest oil reserve in the hemisphere. Why can't it be ours? Naaaa. That's ridiculous.

Isn't it? 

The litany of outrages might speak differently. 

 

Adrift...

 "Meaning of 'Respect and Protection' of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked. The wounded, sick and shipwrecked must be respected and protected at all times. This means that they should not be knowingly attacked, fired upon or necessarily interfered with."

            – Department of Defense Law of War Manuel, section 7.3.3 Shipwrecked, P. 451

 

On Sept. 2 of this year, the Department of Defense, under Secretary Pete Hegseth, began its campaign of attacking and destroying alleged drug-running speedboats from Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. These attacks have been done without due process and without the approval of Congress. Mostly, they appear to be deadly operations conducted by a rogue Department of Defense.

The very first in the series of drone attacks – there have been 22 so far, resulting in 88 deaths – took nearly everyone by surprise because after the boat was destroyed, two survivors were seen to be clinging to the wreckage of the hull. They were in the water for perhaps up to an hour as the DoD tried to figure out what to do next because, well, they didn't plan for this. The survivors were seen waving their arms, probably in distress, perhaps to catch the attention of aircraft seen overhead.

What to do next should be explained in the DoD's own Law of War manual, which states that shipwrecked persons cannot be knowingly attacked or fired upon. Section 7.3.3 of the manual draws much of its language from the Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding humanitarian rules and international standards, which says the sick and wounded are to be retrieved and given care. Not blown up.

Instead, the DoD responded with a second attack, this one incinerating the two survivors.

I don't know if the DoD's manual carries the weight of law or if it's just a collection of suggestions. But there is international law. There is maritime law. There is The Hague and the Court of International Justice. There is the International Criminal Court. 

This entire violent operation puts our country in a difficult position. The Trump administration insists we are in a war with narco-terrorists and the attacks are therefore justified if we are to stop the flow of drugs crossing our borders.

But only Congress – not the president – has the Constitutional power to declare war on a sovereign nation. So here we are: we are either a nation at war committing war crimes (as suggested by the DoD's own manual regarding shipwrecked survivors not to be fired upon), or we are a nation committing murder on the high seas. Take your choice.

After last week's congressional hearings into the matter (where video of the second "double tap"strike was seen) the supposedly bi-partisan meeting predictably retreated to party lines. Arkansas Republican Senator and former veteran Tom Cotton absurdly claimed the video he saw showed the survivors trying to flip the bow half of their overturned motorless boat in order to continue their mission, adding that the attack was "righteous." Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, by contrast, said the attack was an "extrajudicial killing."

Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner asked "Are they drug boats, are there narco traffickers on those boats?. If there are, why don't you interdict them and show the world rather than simply blowing them up – to make sure that sailors are not doing something that's inappropriate?"

Warner makes valid points. Usually, it's the Coast Guard that intercepts and boards alleged drug boats, bringing with them due process. That's their job description. That way there's little question whether the crew of the targeted speedboats are running drugs. That's how you show us the evidence. 

In addition, if the crew are found to be running drugs, you then have actual living prisoners – not cadavers – to interrogate for more information about the cartels. Why has the Coast Guard's mission seemingly been abandoned in favor of lethal assaults – which might include illegal orders, thus putting our servicemen in legal jeopardy? This is exactly what the six Democratic congressmen were talking about a few weeks ago when they cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice that a serviceman has a duty to disobey an illegal order.

Interestingly, the Coast Guard has noted that in at least  25 percent of their boardings of suspected boats, no drugs were found. Extrapolate that statistic to the government's war on suspected narco terrorists, then you could possibly presume that 22 of the 88 dead were ... simply murdered without cause.

We are treading strange and murky waters with a dangerous undertoe here. Do these assaults make our country look strong or out of control? Are we an humanitarian nation, or are we a ruthless oligarchy without a moral compass?

Are we a nation that believes in the rule of law?

Or are we not? 

 

 

 

      

Turkey daze

Over the past 10 years or so – and possibly even longer than that – Kim and I created and continued a cozy little tradition where we go out to eat a Thanksgiving meal at a local restaurant on the eve of the big day.

The logic behind this is that I can squeeze in two turkey meals on consecutive days. 

Welcome to Bill's

 Usually, it comes down to Southern Lunch, Village Grill or Stamey's in Tyro. They're not bad places to go and they each offer a good meal in comfort-food style. Family style. 

Then, on Thanksgiving Day, we have a sumptuous meal at our next door neighbors, the Wests. The Wests have given us a standing invitation to eat with them every Thanksgiving since they moved into their home about five years ago. They know that Kim and I don't have immediate family nearby and their offer always brings a lump to my throat. Without fail.

Kim usually brings her dressing – which has become a West request the past few years – and perhaps a sweet potato casserole, or mashed potatoes or a dessert of some kind. I bring my sparkling wit and personality.

I've looked forward to this meal every year, but this time things were going to be a little different. The Wests had plans to be out of town with relatives on Thanksgiving Day, so the idea was for us to get together the day after. You know, for just a small meal shared by friends. Nothing fancy.

That meant Kim and I had to fend for ourselves for a couple of days. So this year, we drew up a new battle plan.

On Sunday, we were going to have the Old 64 Diner's meal in Southmont. We never had theirs before, so we thought we'd give it a try. Kim, in her infinite wisdom, suggested that I call first, and that turned out to be a brilliant idea because Old 64 had already sold out by 4 p.m. They did have some vegetables left, though.

The Wests' dinner table.

Scratch Sunday. I believe we ended up at McDonald's, which shows you that one thing is for certain: Kim and I know how to think fast on the fly.

On Monday, we decided to go to Village Grill and to make it a to-go order. But when Kim called, they, too, were out. What's going on here? A run on turkeys?

Scratch Monday. I think Kim whipped up some German potatoes from Aldi and I was thinking grilled cheese. But we were 0-for-2 for Thanksgiving.

Then Tuesday came and we finally struck paydirt. We went to Southern Lunch. The place was bursting at the seams when we arrived, but we found seats in the back room and settled in for some turkey and dressing. Yay.

On Wednesday, we went to Stamey's, a popular barbecue restaurant that usually doesn't sell turkey meals, but they always seem to do a decent job for this holiday offering. We were now 2-for-4.

Thursday, we knew, would be our toughest assignment. First off, I could see Kim was about as hungry for another turkey meal as she was for a plate of snails. And secondly, who would be open on Thanksgiving Day anyway?

Then Kim suggested, how about Bill's Truck Stop, just off I-85 in Linwood?

Yep. Good ol' Bills, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No problem.

We'd last eaten there maybe 30 years ago just on a whim and remembered that the food was actually pretty good. But, still. Kim did a little research and discovered they had an alarmingly low 80 inspection rating. Uh-oh. But that rating turned out to be ancient history. She checked again on an updated site Thursday morning and saw that the restaurant, now under new management, had just been inspected and earned a 97.0 rating.

So we went. If you don't mind eating in an ambiance of windshield wipers, air filters, Peterbilt lumbar support seat covers and window cleaners, you're in for a surprise. The turkey – real turkey, not processed – was tender. The mac and cheese was tasty, the cream potatoes were excellent. I bought a slice of pumpkin pie to take home. I was stuffed.

I've decided we're going to put Bill's in our restaurant rotation because it's so difficult to find a place that's open on Sunday in Davidson County. But Bill's is. We're there. All I need now is a truck.

On Friday, things got back to normal at the Wests. Kim and I brought over the dressing and a side of scalloped potatoes, while Stacy went nuts, like she usually does, with cranberry salad, spring garden salad, sweet potatoes, green beans, cauliflower and broccoli. Billy Ray not only fixed a melt-in-your mouth turkey, but a glazed ham as well. There were three pumpkin desserts from which to choose. So much for nothing fancy.

But it was the absolute best meal of the week, flavored with camaraderie and warmed with affection and love. It was a true cornucopia of Thanksgiving.

We should all be so fortunate.

 

 

Pete Jones

Back in 1993, when North Davidson's Pete Jones announced that he was retiring as the Black Knights basketball coach after 31 memorable years, I ran out to the high school in Welcome to interview him for the story.

Pete Jones conducts a practice.

I was the newly-minted sports editor for The Dispatch at the time and I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this moment. Sad, I think. I'd already been covering Pete for 17 of those 31 years by that point. He was unarguably a living, breathing icon within the community and that kind of respect doesn't happen often.

So I tried this approach when we started the interview – maybe more for me than for him.

"I told my wife you're retiring," I said to Pete. "She said, 'You mean I won't get to see him jumping up and down on the sidelines anymore?'"

Pete smiled and chuckled. "You mean that's how I'm going to be remembered?"

To be sure, he could be animated on the sidelines, running up and down the coach's box, gesturing, pleading, working the refs for a favorable call.

We call that good coaching. 

Jones peacefully passed away at his home Wednesday, taking an era with him. He was 92. 

Indeed, the numbers speak for themselves. In his 31 years as basketball coach, he posted a 491-282 record (Don't we wish he would have stayed around a little longer for that oh-so-close 500th victory?). His teams won nine conference championships (spread over three different conferences) as well as seven conference tournament titles and eight Christmas tournament championships.

North won the old Western North Carolina High School Athletic Association championship in 1974-75 with a 25-4 record. His best season came in 1980-81, when the team went 27-3, but lost in the regionals.  

He also coached North's baseball team from 1962 to 1979, producing a 226-88 record and two state titles in 1966 and 1967.

In 2003, he was inducted into the Davidson County Sports Hall of Fame. 

Those are the numbers, but what the numbers don't show is the measure of the man.

If you knew Pete at all, even just casually, you knew he almost always had a smile and a handshake waiting for you. He might even offer you one of those omnipresent Lance crackers that always seemed to be within his reach. I think he had a hidden stash somewhere.

Pete was as even-keeled as any coach I ever knew. He was kind and generous of his time in post-game interviews, which was reflective of his easy-going personality. I never felt uncomfortable in his company, even after a hard loss.

The thing to remember here is that Pete was not only a coach, but a teacher who set and lived by example. Generations of North Davidson student/athletes benefited from his presence.

When North built its current gymnasium in 1997, there was little doubt it would be named The Pete Jones Gymnasium. More recently, the court was baptized "The Pete." That should tell you something about the man's legacy.

An abiding spirit. A class act. A treasure.

 

 

 

 

Here we go again

I wonder every time Trump, the adjudicated rapist and convicted felon who somehow is this country's president, ever really considers what he is saying when he flies into one of his child-like temper tantrums.

Usually, these tantrums are reactions to somebody or something who/that defies or disagrees with his own vision of how to run the country. An authoritarian, in other words. A fascist.

The latest episode (unless something happened last night that I don't know about) occurred after six Democrat Congressmen released a video on Tuesday reminding military and intelligence officers that they have a duty to refuse illegal orders.

Trump, not understanding the Constitution, which he clearly has never read, almost instantly flew into one of his patented rages, declaring that the six Congressmen (Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly and Representatives Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan and Jason Crow) "should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL." (The caps are Trump's because he thinks he's shouting and we can hear him better).

The nonsense continued hours later with Trump, showing his illiteracy, claiming "It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.

And then, perhaps most grievously, he posted "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!"

Here was Trump calling for the execution of his political foes, who just happen to be duly elected members of the United States Congress. 

And he couldn't be more wrong.

First off, the Congressmen were reminding service members of their duty to not follow illegal orders. Make sure the word "illegal" sticks in your mind because Republican response have conveniently ignored that word to make it sound like the Congressmen are urging servicemen to ignore orders, which clearly they are not.

Secondly, what the Congressmen are doing is basically reading the Constitution. They are explaining the Uniform Code of Military Justice, primarily Article 90 and Article 92. Both articles establish that military personnel obey lawful orders. According to Article 92, an order is unlawful if it violates the Constitution. An exception to Article 90 says a service member is not required to obey an order that violates the law. In fact, they are obligated not to follow an illegal order.

That would have been nice at My Lai. Or Abu Ghraib. Look them up.

Thirdly, what the Congressmen did was not sedition. And sedition is not a capital offense. The only capital offense stated in the Constitution is for being convicted as a traitor, not for reading what is written in the Constitution.

When is a military order illegal? Courts have held that an order's unlawfulness must be clear and obvious. Examples include:

• Orders to target civilians (My Lai).

• Orders to falsify documents.

• Orders to commit crimes such as theft or assault.

• Torturing or abusing detainees  (Abu Ghraib).

• Engaging in unauthorized domestic law enforcement actions, such as using military force to suppress lawful protest of First Amendment Rights or the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement.

In other words, pretty much common sense. But if a service member has doubt if an order is illegal or not, he still has the judge advocate general (JAG) to consult.

JAG officers (lawyers) are embedded with most troops. 

Even at this moment, there is discussion as to whether Trump's drone attacks on alleged drug boats – which so far have resulted in 82 deaths – are legal. The senior JAG officer at U.S. Southern Command, is concerned the deaths are extrajudicial killings. But guess what? Officials at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, as well as other senior government officials, have overruled JAG. Then what's the point of even having a JAG? This administration has already devastated the inspectors general corps, a critical guard rail for a democracy.

So now the question arises: just who is in violation of the law? We've seen the National Guard and Marines sent to major cities to quell presumed violence. We've seen speed boats blown out of international waters without the benefit of due process. We've seen people – citizens – rounded up and deported for no other reason than having brown skin.

Trump, by definition, is the country's Commander-in-Chief. He might want to consider the legality of the tantrums he's suggesting.

Like calling for the execution of your political opponents. 

 

 

 

What the polls say

I was always taught that even if you disagreed with the current presidential administration, you still showed at least a modicum of respect for the office.

After all, presidential elections come every four years, which is this country's built-in Constitutionally guaranteed revolution. If we didn't like a president, we could vote him out of office and try a different direction. An electoral uprising, as it were.

That was the genius of our Founding Fathers. We could change our leadership without anybody getting hurt, with the point being that you respected the office, if not the man, because if the president was successful, then the country was successful.

Donald Trump changed all of that, of course. His Make American Great Again (MAGA) philosophy of government was/is the theory (perhaps conspiracy theory) that a deep state (a hidden, camouflaged shadow government cabal that actually ran things). He was going to come in and drain the swamp. Tens of millions of voters, aggrieved (or motivated) by foggy perceptions of socialism and other assorted misinformation, voted for him.

We can measure presidential popularity – and thus a president's effectiveness –  through polling. The first known straw polls came in 1824 and they were basically regional and informal. By 1916 –  with World War I raging in Europe – the first national poll was conducted by The Literary Digest. Twenty years later, George Gallup conducted a poll using statistical survey methods, predicting that Franklin Roosevelt would win the election, which FDR did. The Literary Digest blew that one and hasn't been seen since.

And now we're here with polls for measuring everything. 

For the third time in this country's history, we have a president who is a convicted felon. The reason he hasn't been sentenced is because a friendly Supreme Court has ruled that he is immune from sentencing and thus is the only American who is above the law. Given that kind of permission, Trump has unilaterally imposed (without the consent of Congress, as instructed by the Constitution) illegal tariffs, illegal deportations of brown skinned people whose only crime is having brown skin), illegal acts of war on the high seas and alleged acts of pedophilia as suggested by the current revelations of the Epstein files so far released, where his name is said to appear at least 1,200 times. While the wealthy are receiving tax breaks, the common citizen is being buried by high prices for groceries and a stubborn inflation rate that is fueled by those illegal tariffs.

The polls are reflecting this. You can take issue with polls as much as you want, (dealing with numbers is tricky stuff) but I think they still reflect the beating heart of the nation.

So when the current polling shows Trump an approval rating of just 39 percent in CNN's Poll of Polls (an amalgamation of several independent polls), we can't help but feel the nation senses that it's on the wrong track. The Associated Press has Trump with a 36 percent approval rating. Other polls are hovering around the same numbers.

Trump is at 67 percent disapproval in his handling of the economy; 65 percent disapproval in healthcare; and 57 percent disapproval in his immigration policy. He's basically under water in every major issue.

We want a president to succeed. But we don't want incompetence in the office. We never have.

 

 

A bit of hope

I try not to get too excited about these things, because I've been disappointed enough before.

You know, like  President Trump being convicted 34 times of felony in the first degree for falsifying business records and yet not being sentenced to any jail time at all. Like being declared immune from prosecutions by the Supreme Court which apparently found in our legal system that at least one man is above the law.

But after Tuesday's off-year elections, which saw an incredible blue wave sweep across the country in repudiation of early everything the felon Trump is doing, well, I felt a little bit better.

In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill became the first female Democrat of that state to be elected governor, winning by 13 percent over three-time loser Jack Ciattarelli. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger was the first female to be elected governor of that state, winning by 15 percent over Winsome Earle-Sears. In Pennsylvania, three liberal state supreme court justices were given 10-year extensions to their terms to preserve swing state control. In California, voters approved a new House map to counter the Republican gerrymandering of districts in Texas. In New York, a Socialist Democrat (not a Communist. Learn the difference), Zohran Mamdani, was elected mayor. In Maine, voter ID and absentee ballot restrictions were defeated. In Georgia, Democrats flipped two seats on the state's Public Service Commission.

The sweep was a loud rebuke of anything Trump. Reasonable people are tired of ICE violations by severely untrained and unfit masked agents and illegal roundups of innocent brown people; people are tired of drones blowing up speedboats of alleged drug runners in international waters because we'll never know who they really are if due process isn't served; people are tired of the tacky gold trim in the White House; people are tired of Trump's unilateral actions without the consent of Congress, which is how fascist monarchies are run.

Tired? Just look at the polling. Trump, the felon, is under water in nearly every category.

And now we're tired of Trump's government shutdown, primarily because about 42 million Americans – many of them Trump supporters – will go hungry as funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program runs dry.

On Friday, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made an offer to the GOP, saying Democrats would agree to a one-year extension of the expiring premium tax credits that support the Affordable Care Act. Without those credits, healthcare coverage will suffer for millions of Americans as the cost of premiums will skyrocket. About 75 percent of Americans want the credits to continue.

But the GOP rejected the offer outright, which put them in the position of rejecting the reopening of the government. They own the shutdown now, as if there was ever a question of who was responsible.

And just who is responsible for this immoral chaos? Trump refuses to engage with the Democrats in ending this disaster. Meanwhile, he's in Mar-a-Lago for another golf weekend as he defies constitutional duties.

And, oh yeah, release the Epstein files. 

 

 

SNAP! Crackle! Pop!

It's unbelievable to me that the current felonious Trump administration is playing games with peoples' lives.

Trump's failure to fund SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program  (food stamps) that provides food aid for approximately 42 million Americans is illegal (according to two federal judges), insensitive, invalid and immoral (according to me), especially as the country endures Trump's government shutdown.

SNAP provides assistance through monthly rechargeable credit cards. About 1 in 8 Americans are served by SNAP in what is considered a major social safety net. It's what government does for its people when government works well.

Until now. So for the moment at least, we have hungry Americans. Hungry children. Who could have thought?

"The administration is choosing not to feed Americans in need, despite knowing that it is legally required to do so," said U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture committee that oversees SNAP.

She's right. Massachusetts judge Indira Talwani ruled the US Department of Agriculture has to pay for SNAP, writing that the suspension is unlawful. She ordered the government to advise the court by tomorrow whether it will use emergency reserve funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits during the shutdown.

A family of two can qualify for up to $536 a month in food aid.

"...suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure the continuation of SNAP payments," she wrote on Friday. "This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program."

In Rhode Island, judge John McConnell ruled that SNAP must be funded using at least the contingency funds. He asked for an update on Monday as well. 

So I guess we'll learn something tomorrow about the cold, beating heart of Trump.  SNAP or not to SNAP?

Meanwhile, Trump is apparently enjoying himself, thinking he can shift the blame for the shutdown and any subsequent horrors on the Democrats.

That would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Republicans control all three branches of government. That means in order to break the 60-vote filibuster (they only have 53), they have to negotiate and compromise with Democrats. So far, nada from the GOP.

Trump wasn't even in the country last week. He was wandering aimlessly through review halls in Japan accomplishing very little except further embarrassment. And when he did return to the United States, he held a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party for his wealthy donors at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. Talk about tone deaf.

This trip to Florida cost the American taxpayer $3.4 million, bringing the total to date to $60.7 million that taxpayers spent on the 76 golf outings (so far) in his second term.

But he can't find the funds to feed his own citizens? 

And it gets even more ridiculous. There is, of course, the $350 million destruction of the East Wing. He announced that the Lincoln bathroom in the White House has also been renovated.

And the man who so desperately wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize because, heck, President Obama did, is blowing up speedboats suspected of smuggling fentanyl, and doing it without due process or congressional approval. That makes at least 64 people who have died in these strikes. Trump is committing murder and needs to be in prison.

Not only might we be on the verge of a shooting conflict with Venezuela (Trump wants to overthrow the Nicolas Meduro regime), but also with Nigeria because he's claiming they are killing Christians.

Americans going hungry because of a cruel president. Others dying in international waters because of a heartless president. When did my country shift to some alternative reality where you can hear people joyfully claim, "That's what I voted for!"

 Where am I?

 

 

 

 

East Wing debacle

Kim and I were hoping at some point in the new few years to make another trip to Washington DC and behave like tourists. 

You know, take in the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and other sights. Including the White House. It's been decades since we last did that.

But the recent razing of the historic East Wing by convicted felon president Donald Trump has dampened our enthusiasm for such a trip. The White House campus just won't be the same as we remembered, what with his proposed 90,000 square foot (two acres), $300 billion ballroom looming over the South Lawn like some irritating bully.

Artist's proposed conception of Hell No.

 And it happened so suddenly. We woke up on Monday and the next thing we knew, the East Wing was being assaulted by bulldozers and dump trucks. By Thursday, the building that served as offices for First Ladies since World War II was gone. A memory. An American memory, mind you, pulverized into dust to make room for the felon president's vanity project. I don't even remember anybody even talking about the need for a White House ballroom prior to this travesty.

MAGA world promptly went into defense mode, rolling out story after story about how previous presidents added their own imprints to the White House. What you don't hear from MAGA is how Trump destroyed a portion of The Peoples' House without Congressional review or consent. He simply bulldozed his way through the entire process, ignoring the National Capital Planning Commission that is designed to oversee federal building construction. The NCPC even has priority over Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which exempts the White House, the Capitol and the Supreme Court from review. But the White House is still subject to review from the NCPC as well as the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

Codes and permits have been ignored in the razing process.

MAGA insists this entire scheme is different because it is being funded by private donors and not tax dollars, but that just raises another issue: is the ballroom being built with bribe money? Consider this: because of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, Google gets an $18 billion tax break, Amazon gets a $16 billion tax break, Microsoft gets a $12 billion tax break and Facebook gets an $11 billion tax break. Meanwhile, the country is enduring Trump's government shutdown as federal employees – those still remaining after the DOGE cuts – find themselves nothing more than pawns in a political game of his undertaking.

It's been said that the proposed ballroom – which will make the existing White House 55,000 square foot building look like the add-on – is in reality nothing more than a monument to corruption. It likely will be Mar-a-Lago North on the White House campus. 

Game? The latest horror came Friday when the felon president said that while the government is in shutdown, it would not use any of the $6 billion held in reserve by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) upon which 42 million Americans depend to put food on the table.

This is unparalleled cruelty. I always thought government was designed to help its citizens to a path of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Meanwhile, Trump somehow finds $40 billion to prop up Argentina. So much for America First.

The destruction of the East Wing has become something of a metaphor for Trump's presidency. Because the East Wing is gone, so, too, is the symmetry of the grounds. The White House itself features a neoclassical architectural style that draws from the ideals of democracy and government from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The uniquely American influence offers us the Federal style that suggests the simplicity and balance of our nature as opposed to the European monarchies. from which we separated.

The assault on the East Wing is an assault on all Americans. It's an assault on our history, on our collective memory, on our democracy, on rule of law, on fair play and on the virtues we thought made us Americans.

 

 

 

 

No Kings, again

It's incredible how easy it is to get some MAGA people wound up these days. All you have to do, it seems, is take to the streets to exercise your First Amendment right to assemble, speak freely and protest, and suddenly you've become an ignorant clown who is suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome for a laughable cause.

 

We add our First Amendment voice.*

Some of that blowback came our way after about 200 of us participated in the utterly peaceful No Kings demonstration held at the Old Courthouse on the Square Saturday. While the local crowd appeared to be a bit smaller than the Hands Off/No Kings demonstration held in June – an estimated 300 folks took part in that one – yesterday's event was tied to the larger national protest that drew an estimated seven million participants.

Seven million. It was the second largest political demonstration in American history. The largest gathering was the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million citizens gathered to create awareness of the Earth's fragile ecology. Earth Day was soooo woke that it appeared to us in an era before wokeness was a MAGA target of derision. In fact, Earth Day was so woke we didn't even know we were woke back then. It took Trump Republicans to tell us what wokeness is. And diversity, equity and inclusion, too. The old hippie in me thought wokeness and DEI were good things – righteous things, Christian things – to be, but apparently not in Trump world, where the cruelty is clearly the point.

A sample of No Kings day in Lexington.

 Why else would you separate immigrant children from their parents (an estimated 1,300 children are still missing from the first Trump administration's attempt to discourage asylum seekers from entry into the country)? Why else would you create concentration camps and deportation centers in America? Why else would you create a paramilitary agency like ICE to literally sweep brown people off the streets by denying them due process? When did that become the American way?

Why are we picking a fight with Venezuela? Why is Argentina getting $20 billion from us but we can't fund healthcare? Why are National Guard troops encamped in peaceful American cities when state governors – under whose control they belong – have not asked for them? Why are we blowing up boats (and killing people) in the Caribbean without the Coast Guard boarding them with due process?

When did we become lawless? 

MAGA tried its best to downplay No Kings day, responding mostly with retorts that we don't have a king in this country and so what exactly are you protesting, fool?

That response misses the point of the symbolism behind No Kings day, of course. Trump, the convicted felon who has been given a free pass from sentencing (and perhaps prison) by his buddies on the Supreme Court, has been busy centralizing the power of the presidency in his second term per Project 2025. Among numerous other violations, Trump has:

• Invoked capricious tariffs, which by Constitution only Congress can do.

• Impounded congressionally appropriated funds from federal agencies in violation of the law.

• Fired federal employees in violation of the law.

• Signed unconstitutional executive orders.

In other words, Trump is trying to seize the powers of Congress. As envisioned by the Founding Fathers, a president can make treaties with the approval of the Senate; veto bills and sign bills; represent the nation in talks with foreign countries, enforce the laws that Congress passes; act as Commander in Chief during a war, and call out troops to protect the nation against an attack. Those are the constitutional powers of the presidency.

Any other perceived powers Trump has of the presidency actually make him more like a monarch than an executive with limited powers. Hence, a king – exactly what we rebelled against in 1776.

The Founding Fathers struggled with the idea of a president as leader. They didn't want an all-powerful individual in charge, which is why we are a federal democratic republic with a division of power that is theoretically protected by a brilliant combination of checks and balances which gives the power to the people. If they can keep it. If they want it.

I want it. I want to keep it. It's why I protest against a king governing this country. 

*Photo by Kristi Thornhill. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MTG, my newest hero

The last thing I ever expected to find myself doing was to defend wacky Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extreme right-wing Republican Congresswoman and conspiracy theorist who believed secret Jewish space lasers were responsible for starting the devastating California wildfires a couple years ago, and who once told us in 2022 that the "gazpacho police" were guarding the Capitol building.

Yes, the cold soup police. She meant Gestapo, of course, even though I doubt she knows of the horrors they committed in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s. 

Yet here I am agreeing with MTG as she tries to create some space between her and convicted felon president Donald Trump, who is allowing his current government shutdown to continue. 

Welcome to the Resistance, MTG.

She is primarily concerned with the rising costs of healthcare that are on the cusp of spiraling out of control under the Trump administration, who would rather pay for tax cuts for bazillionaires than help the average American stay healthy, many of whom voted for Republicans. She even cited her own adult children as being unable to afford  the projected rise in healthcare premiums.

She's making more sense now than she ever has. Proof, I guess, that some people can grow.

She's speaking out against the administration, and primarily House Speaker Michael Johnson, who has kept House members out of session since Sept. 19. Say what? By keeping the House out of session means its members cannot work on the budget, which, by extension, means they are not working to find a way to extend healthcare premium tax credits.

It also means there is no swearing in of Representative Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who won a special election on Sept. 23. She represents the 218th vote on a discharge petition that would release the Epstein files, which nearly every person in American – well, except those with the last name of Trump and those committed to protesting the Trumps – are clamoring to see.

Johnson keeps postponing the swearing in so we don't get to see the proof that Trump is a pedophile. Why else keep postponing?

Republicans are working hard on one thing, though, and that is trying to blame the Democrats for the shutdown. But considering that the GOP controls the House, the Senate, the Presidency and, in essence, even the Supreme Court, that accusation is as transparent as it is laughable.

Meanwhile, Trump continues with his childish but dangerous retribution campaign against perceived political opponents instead of actually governing the nation. ICE rounds up brown-skinned people without due process using agents that cover their faces with masks and wearing no name tags, acting like Gestapo.

Even MTG can see this. 

 

 

The week to come

I have a website bookmarked on my laptop called "The Drudge Report", which is a website that basically collects the https's of various news sources for easy acquisition. Created by Matt Drudge in 1995, it was once considered by some to be a conservative outlet, but not so much anymore. I mean, if you want quick access to The New York Times, go to Drudge.

Best of all, it's a collection of websites from all over the world. You can access The Daily Mirror in England just as easily as you can Die Zeit in Germany or The China People's Daily. It's a pretty handy tool to have if you want to take a peep at differing points of view.

So I took a quick look this morning, and the first story to hit my eye is "Trump ordering troops to Portland...Authorizes Full Force."

Uh-oh. Here we go again. Our convicted felon president is sending troops to yet another American city to quell rioting that doesn't exist except in his mind. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek hasn't asked for troops (it's unclear if the troops will be National Guard or general military, like the Marines or the U.S. Army). Neither has Portland Mayor Keith Wilson. This looks more like performative theater by Trump to satiate the MAGA faithful.

One of the things the Founding Fathers feared most was a standing army. That's mostly why the military is under civilian (Congressional) control. Plus, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limits the role of the military in domestic law enforcement. So what Trump is doing here, without Congressional approval, is probably illegal.

Kind of like raising tariffs without Congressional approval.

And what does "full force" mean anyhow? Is he laying siege to an American city? You good with that?

Anyway, right next to the Portland story is this headline: "USA Preps Military Strikes in Venezuela."

What? I don't think planning military strikes on sovereign nations bodes well for any Nobel Peace Prize considerations, which is something Trump is desperate for. You know, because Obama has one. You'd think blowing up Venezuelan speed boats without issuing due process would be enough, but I guess not.

Drudge is usually timely with its news collection, but with a government shutdown looming for Tuesday, I can't find anything right now. Maybe I will later in the day as the news cycle refreshes.

In the meantime, maybe I'll check out "MAGA Coming for the WNBA." 

Charlie Kirk

When I turned on the news Wednesday afternoon after a couple hours of working in my yard, the first thing that came on the screen was the real-time coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, the controversial right-wing podcaster, political influencer and activist.

"Uh-oh," I thought to myself. "This isn't going to be good."

As I watched the coverage, a kind of odd familiarity took shape: Rooftops. Crowds. Guns. Always guns.

And, minutes into the insanity and chaos, it was announced that Kirk had died of a single gunshot wound to the neck. Now the shooting had morphed into murder. 

I didn't know much about Kirk. I never listened to his podcasts because his political views aren't how I swing and I didn't need his kind of influencing or reinforcement to my life. I remember hearing that Kirk was the guy who said if he saw a Black pilot on his plane, he hoped the pilot was qualified. Sweet Jesus. He also suggested – among other things – that some Black women "did not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously." Seriously? The movie and book "Hidden Figures" quickly comes to mind here.

DEI apparently wasn't in his alphabet. 

I sometimes got him confused with Charlie Sykes, another conservative political commentator who is often the voice of reason. Maybe I got them confused because they're both named Charlie, followed by a single syllable last name. Yep, that's how I roll. Complex.

When I learned that Kirk was only 31 and left behind a wife and two young children, I cried. Assassins never account for who else gets hurt when the bullet leaves the gun. Collateral damage. There used  to be a time, I think, when you could disagree with a neighbor on politics. It was the Norman Rockwellian American way. You could sit around the cracker barrel and hold heated discussions, pretty much knowing you wouldn't get shot. Now even the cracker barrel invites division.

I am so weary of this shit. 

As the days passed, I soon learned that Kirk was a brilliant debater, often taking on college students in places like Cambridge, even though he himself never graduated from college. Sharp. Quick. Slice and dice. I would've been mincemeat in a debate with him even though I know I disagree with his core values. My best responses in disagreements always seem to come about two days later, when I realize, "That's what I should have said."

I also heard in the wake of Kirk's assassination that this kind of violence "isn't who we are."

What? It's exactly who we are. We live in a gun culture where finality is often discharged in feet per second. Why are there so many guns? Why are they so easy to obtain? What exactly are we afraid of? Why does this happen in America and hardly anywhere else in the world? We are the only nation on the planet with anything resembling a second amendment, and we are killing ourselves with it. I'm still upset with the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. Why kill John Lennon? He was a Beatle, for God's sake. A musician. Hell, I'm still mad that Abraham Lincoln was murdered and I missed that one by 86 years.

I don't know what the answer is. Reasonable gun control has to factor in the mix somehow, especially now that school children have become targets. We also have to figure out how to disagree without malice, when to walk away, to understand somebody else's perspective without literally being triggered. But I don't know.

It means we have to change who we are.

I think we need good luck with that one. 

 

 

 

 

Art for art's sake

It's not every day you see an artist setting up his easel on the Old Courthouse Square in Lexington, taking a favorite bristle brush and applying some welcomed color and perspective to our lives.

The Square certainly makes for an unusual workplace.

But that's exactly what Lexington's Kenrick Jobe is doing these days as passing motorists take a gander at his work during red lights, or honk their horns in appreciation (we assume) in what is something like a drive-by studio.

Kenrick Jobe creates art on the Old Courthouse Square.

 Why the Square?

"The Square is probably one of the top three busiest places in the area," said Jobe, 30. "So I thought, 'Why not take advantage of that?' So I tried it.

"And I realized, it's a great way to meet new people there," said Jobe. "So I'm like, why not do that? You know? You live here in Lexington. I don't really want to move anywhere. I feel like this area would be nice to build something solid.

"And I've met some of the best people here." 

There is the occasional peeper who comes up to Jobe, stands behind his shoulder and watches as he works a canvas into something that can stir the soul. That's what artists do, after all.

A car horn shouts at us. We both look.

"You got fans?" I ask.

Kenrick Jobe

 "Well, I've definitely got support," said Jobe, a 2017 graduate of East Carolina University, where he majored in art. "I don't mind if somebody comes up and looks over my shoulder while I'm working, even if they don't say anything. 

"I kind of like it," said Jobe. "Maybe I get some people thinking, you know?"

Jobe doesn't consider himself to be a "struggling artist", but he hasn't exactly hit the financial jackpot, either.

"Right now, I'm just working from home," said Jobe, who is originally from Summit, NJ, but came to Lexington when he was 12. "But I do a lot of commissions and stuff like that. I did a mural here in the Old Courthouse. And I'm also an artist in residence at Grace Episcopal.

"At the end of this month, I'll be doing an art workshop at Duke. I think that's going to be pretty much fun."

On the day that I talked with Jobe, he was working on a piece featuring white blossoms. It was stunning. He often videos himself painting in rapid time lapse, so you get to see the painting's progress, and then he posts his projects on Facebook with a description.

In the painting that you see in this blog, Jobe wrote, "I think I'm most proud of this painting. When I look at it, I see growth. These days I'm so optimistic for the future, it's overwhelming. I know something big is on the way."

In just the few minutes I spent with him, I discovered that you can feel his enthusiasm – and optimism – reach out to you. It's almost contagious. Now that would be a pandemic worth having, wouldn't it?

In another post, for a different work, Jobe wrote, "It's hard to ignore someone that paints outside every day. I'm full of love and gratitude. I'm ready to meet every individual that wants to meet me. Let's talk Art. Thank you for giving me a chance to achieve my dream."

In a streetside studio that is filled with sensual stimuli – the scents, the sounds, the motion, the colors – Jobe often paints simply what he sees in his mind's eye.

"Sometimes I might get an idea by looking at a picture," said Jobe. "But then I'll go on it by myself because I don't want to keep looking back and forth at something. So you visualize. I want it to have character. I don't want it to look exactly like a photo, right?"

Jobe doesn't have a gallery – a gallery remains a goal – but his work is for sale. Some pieces can go for several hundred dollars, while others go for several thousand. "It all depends," said Jobe, echoing nearly every artist's pricing strategy.

In the meantime, Jobe continues on with brush and paints in hand and a smile on his face.

"Art is the only constant for me," writes Jobe. "That, and God." 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Go See Van Gogh

When I was a student at Kutztown State College (Pa.) back in the early 1970s, one of the courses that was required was art history.

Van Gogh's 'Bedroom in Aries' in 3-D

 I have no idea why. I was studying to be a U.S. history teacher, and later, when I decided I couldn't speak in front of groups of people who knew more than me, I switched to Liberal Arts English and became a sports writer. 

I think the idea behind requiring art history was to help make us informed and well-rounded citizens of the world. It probably didn't hurt that Kutztown was a teachers' college that massed produced art teachers for public education. Anyway, as I recall, the textbook for the class was outstanding, and I wish I still had it. To this day I can close my eyes and see selected works of such artists as Delacroix, Monet, Manet, Czanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh virtually jump from the pages and into my mind's appreciation vault.

I was fascinated.

So, decades after my introduction to art history, the Van Gogh Immersive Experience showed up in Winston-Salem last month at the former Jo-Ann's Fabrics Store off of Stratford Road, I had to go.

Kim and I went last week, and we thought it was spectacular. As you enter the exhibit, you get to see at least 100 copies of Van Gogh's work, accompanied in most cases with explanatory text. Then you enter the immersive room, the crown jewel of the place. Projections of Van Gogh's artistic style swim across the room and floor, literally engulfing you with stimuli as you relax in folding chairs or bean bags. You can let yourself float upstream and into the Starry Night.

•   •   •

I wasn't a very good student at Kutztown. I was a commuter who drove 45 minutes each way in my Volkswagen Beetle, five days a week, to keep my tuition down to around $50 a semester. No student loans for me. Much of my day was spent just trying to stay alive making the commute.

Anyway, as noted, Kutztown specialized in graduating art teachers, and every once in a while, those art students would hold exhibitions in the school's modern and spacious library.

I had two good friends that I'd meet with at the library most days, and instead of studying, we'd mess around, talking this and that, checking out the women instead of books. Stuff like that.

One day, we noticed one of those student art exhibitions going up. I decided to participate.

I took a sheet of composition paper and, with my multi-colored pen, drew four parenthesis (the singular of parentheses) in a single row, each parenthesis a different color. Like this: (  ) (  ). Then I ripped the page out of my composition book and placed it on the floor, near the other exhibits, which I feel certain to this day were being graded. We chuckled and didn't think much else of it.

Until the next day. My work was still on the floor. As it was the next day, and the next, and the day after that. We couldn't believe it. On one of those days, we saw a library worker vacuum around it. On another day, we saw a patron walk up to my work, stop for a few moments and rub his chin in contemplation as he took it all in.

I was beginning to think I had accidentally created a study in philosophical rhetoric: What is art? I never did find the answer to that.

Apparently I had switched my major yet again, this time from Liberal Arts English to Liberal Arts Smart Ass. 

As it turned out, my work stayed on the floor for the entire two weeks of the exhibit. It was the first and only time I've ever been displayed in a gallery. True story. Thank you very much. 

 (The Van Gogh Immersive Experience will remain in Winston-Salem through September. It's $35 per adult on weekends and $25 on weekdays and begins at 10 a.m. each day. There are small discounts for seniors, etc, so ask if you qualify.)

 

 

 

 

The Beatles: Her First Concert

She probably couldn't know it at the time, but Midway's Jane Pacific was kissed by stardust in August 1964. She was gifted a memory that only a fortunate few can ever share with the rest of us because, well, you know, that's how stardust memories work.

She was an eyewitness to Beatlemania. 

Jane Pacific with her Beatles ticket stubs.

 "I think I was around eight years old," said Jane, who grew up in Lakeview Terrace, Calif. "My parents got us tickets to see The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.

"It was my first concert. 

"Yes, I was young, but I was still old enough to know what was happening," said Jane. "My older sisters, Karen and Kris, were into The Beatles, and my mom and dad both loved The Beatles. And so did I. I knew all the songs and loved them." 

The first of three Hollywood Bowl concerts – now iconic in the lush lore of Beatlemania – came only seven months after The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in February. That televised moment changed everything about the way we listen to popular music, from stage to studio.

Ironically, Jane couldn't hear a note The Beatles sang that night at the Hollywood Bowl. The nonstop decibel-splitting shouts of teenage girls drowned out The Beatles and their hopelessly inadequate amplifiers. Basically, Jane and her family attended a screamfest. Welcome to Beatlemania.

"I don't think we did any screaming," said Jane, whose family had pretty decent seats about halfway up from the stage. "I know my sisters said they didn't scream like that. But, yeah, the screaming is what I remember most. Not being able to hear the music as well as I wanted to. The whole concert was like that.

"I remember standing on the top of my seat because everybody else around me was standing, too." 

What the fans who were interested in the music missed was a setlist that went like this:

1. Twist and Shout

2. You Can't Do That

3. All My Loving

4. She Loves You

5. Things We Said Today

6. Roll Over Beethoven

7. Can't Buy Me Love

8.  If I Fell

9. I Want to Hold Your Hand

10. Boys

11. A Hard Day's Night

12. Long Tall Sally

And that was it. Twelve songs, clocking in at just under a half hour. G'night, folks, and thank you very mooch. Tickets went for $4.50 then, which comes out to about $46.00 per ticket today. Is that good enough for a half hour of The Beatles? That, my friends, is a rhetorical question. It needs no answer.

Anyway, Jane's family enjoyed the experience so much, they did it again. This time, they went to see The Beatles perform two years later at Dodger Stadium on August 28, 1966. By now, Beatlemania was shedding some of its luster. Beatle John Lennon had alienated a number of fans a few weeks earlier when he famously suggested the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ, and they weren't selling out some of their venues.

 But, you know. They were still The Beatles.

"What I remember about this concert is that from our seats it seemed like they were very far away and small," said Jane. 

Baseball stadiums can do that to you. The setlist at Dodger Stadium included:

1. Rock and Roll Music

2. She's A Woman

3. If I Needed Someone

4. Day Tripper

5. Baby's in Black

6. I Feel Fine

7. Yesterday

8. I Wanna Be Your Man

9. Nowhere Man

10. Paperback Writer

11. Long Tall Sally

"Sometimes I can't remember which concert was which in my memory," said Jane. "But it was pretty much the same thing at Dodger Stadium: screaming girls and a lot of people standing around me. I do remember my parents taking my hand and dragging me through all the people to leave."

As it turned out, Jane was witness to another bit of history. The Beatles performed at San Francisco's Candlestick Park the next night, and then they immediately gave up touring to focus solely on studio work. So she saw the next-to-the-last Beatles concert ever (the Savile Row rooftop doesn't count).

"Is that right?" said Jane. "I didn't know that."

Soooo, 60 years later, Jane can produce several ticket stubs from both the Hollywood Bowl and Dodger Stadium concerts. Who's smart enough to think to do that?

"When I was a small girl I had a little box that I kept stuff in," said Jane. "That's where I kept my tickets. I even have my Mom's ticket stub. It's just a box full of keepsakes that I'll never let go.

"They have real emotional value for me."

 Indeed. How could it be otherwise?

Note: https://youtu.be/KqOsmUthz74 is a link to The Beatles 1964 Hollywood Bowl performance. When Jane's husband, John, showed the video link to her several weeks ago, she said it brought tears to her eyes. And why not? Stardust memories, you know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women, good and bad

Unless you're an Atlanta Braves fan, this one might have slipped underneath your radar.

But Major League Baseball made some significant history Saturday in its doubleheader sweep of the Florida Marlins. Jen Pawol became the first female to umpire in a regular season game when she took the field behind first base in the first game of the twinbill, which the Braves won 7-1.

Jen Pawol

 She covered third base in the nightcap without incident as the Braves won 8-6.

Today, she is scheduled to call balls and strikes behind the plate in what should be another historic moment. What's her strike zone like? She'll be in the spotlight and in clear focus. After all, nobody ever shouts "Kill the ump!" at the first-base umpire.

I suspect she'll do well. She was the first woman to umpire a Triple A championship in 2023. She also was the first woman to umpire in a spring training game last season. She is the seventh woman to umpire professionally, but the first to reach the major leagues.

A former three-time all-conference softball selection at Hofstra, where she played catcher, Pawol started umpiring softball in the early 1990s. What followed was a steady and yet passionate climb up the ladder, finally reaching her professional pinnacle yesterday.

"The dream actually came true today, and I'm still living it," said Pawol, 48, between games of the doubleheader. "I am just so grateful to my family, to Major League Baseball for just creating such an amazing work environment. To all the umpires that I work with ... it's just amazing camaraderie."

In today's political atmosphere, I wonder how long before some MAGA freak suggests that diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) was involved, even though women have been calling games in the NBA (six females) and NFL (three) for several years. The question for baseball is what took so long? And what is the NHL waiting for?

•   •   •

While Pawol has given most of us reason to celebrate the accomplishments of women swimming in vats of testosterone, we have Ghislaine Maxwell to consider

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her part in the sex trafficking crimes as Jeffrey Epstein's associate in procuring minors for sex work.

But suddenly, Maxwell finds herself moved from a Florida prison to a new minimum security facility in Texas MAGAland. This came about when assistant attorney general Todd Blanche paid Maxwell a visit behind closed doors in Florida last week. Within days, she found herself in a very different circumstance.

Kinda makes me wonder if this is the Trump version of DEI. Trump, a convicted felon who is also an adjudicated rapist who happens to be president of the United States, is frantically trying to disassociate himself from Epstein after it was learned that Trump's name appears in the Epstein files.

Do you suppose Maxwell didn't incriminate Trump in her interview with Blanche in hopes of receiving a presidential pardon? Speculation is that she did not implicate Trump of anything improper. Imagine that.

The cruelty behind all of this is astounding. Brown-skinned people who don't speak English (now the country's official language) are being rounded up by the SS, er, ICE, for either deportation or detention, often without due process, and often labeled by Trump as the worst of the worst.

Meanwhile, a pedophile sex trafficker might potentially wrangle a pardon from a criminal president for one of the worst crimes an adult can commit against children.

We are living in strange times where the Constitutional guardrails are being disassembled in front of our very eyes. 

 

 

 

 

Connect the dots

The president is a pedophile.

That's the first thing that came to mind when I heard a week or so ago after The Wall Street Journal (now my favorite newspaper. Who saw that coming?) ran a story that said Attorney General Pam Bondi informed convicted felon President Donald Trump that his name appeared "numerous times" in the Epstein files.

You, too? 

Jeffrey Epstein, we know, was the high falutin' financier who was convicted of child prostitution. He then mysteriously died in prison of suicide while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage females to the rich and famous on a U.S. Virgin (oh, the ugly irony here) Island he owned called Little Saint James.

Suddenly, after years of MAGA world screaming for the Epstein files to be released, because, you know, high profile names of liberals like Clinton, Gates, Hanks, et al, would be revealed, embarrassed and prosecuted, we're now told there's nothing to see here.

Except for maybe Trump's involvement. For the first time ever, MAGA is furious with Trump. What? You mean you're the deep state? You lied to us? Release the files! What are you afraid of?

Trump's name appearing in the files is no proof of guilt of anything, and on the surface, that's true.

But when you start connecting the dots of his character...

• Like Trump's 34 convictions stemming from his attempt to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn star (Stormy Daniels) who said they had sex. Dot connected.

• Like accusations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by at least 25 women. Dot connected.

• Like being declared an adjudicated rapist by a federal judge. Dot connected.

• Like the hot mic capturing Trump telling interviewer Billy Bush that women like to be grabbed by their genitals when you are a star. That was during the 2016 presidential campaign, and why that wasn't a disqualifier for the presidency is beyond me. Trump got elected. Bush got divorced. Dot connected.

•  Like owning the Miss Universe pageant franchise, which he felt allowed him to walk into women's dressing rooms while they were changing clothes. Dot connected.

• Like Trump's early associations with Jeffrey Epstein that goes back to at least 1990. At one point, Trump is quoted as saying "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Dot really connected. Holy crap.

There's more. I could fill today's blog with this stuff. but you get the point.

Trump, for his part, is predictably denying any of this because he is God's chosen angel and can do no wrong. In the past few weeks, sometimes on consecutive days, he's tried his favorite deflection tactics: like telling us that President Obama committed treason, or that Obama rigged elections (sounds like projection), the releasing of 200,000 pages of Martin Luther King Jr. files (but not the Epstein files?), Rosie O'Donnell, Harvard, tariffs, NPR and PBS, and even changing back the names of sports teams like the Guardians and Commanders back to their original Indians and Redskins. Please, lookit this and not this Epstein stuff. You still taking about him? He's been dead a long time.

It sounds like he doth protest too much. Dot connected. 

There are too many dots for me. There are too many connections. I could be wrong about where the dots lead me, but so far, Trump's not been able to talk himself out of the disgusting and distasteful deep-state swamp that he's created here. So for now, I have it in the back of my head: the president is a pedophile.

 

 

 

Epstein

I never saw the backlash coming. And when it did come, I never expected its fury.

Finally. A cry for accountability.

In case I'm being too opaque, I'm talking about the Jeffrey Epstein situation here. Epstein, of course, was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and who allegedly invited the privileged elite to his private Caribbean island for romps with underage females. Epstein supposedly kept an incriminating list of client names and flight logs that had everybody from Prince Andrew to Bill Clinton to Tom Hanks shaking in their boots.

And now perhaps even Donald Trump – himself a convicted felon as well as an adjudicated rapist, famous party boy and somehow the current president of the United States with that résumé – might be connected.

After all, Trump and Epstein were once close friends. There's video of Trump doing his fist-pumping white-boy boogie next to Epstein at a party, which kind of documents their friendship from more than 20 years ago.

Epstein was arrested again for sex trafficking of minors and was in prison in July 2019. A month later, he was found dead in his cell, apparently a suicide. But the circumstances of his death remain murky.

Meanwhile, since Epstein's death, MAGA has been clamoring for the release of the Epstein files, no doubt in hopes of embarrassing (and perhaps convicting) the privileged elite. Everything appeared to be headed in that direction until a couple weeks ago when Trump-appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi told MAGA world there was nothing in the files, that there's nothing to see here.

And thus the current outrage from Trump supporters who suddenly feel betrayed by their idol and are now screaming about a deep state cover up. "This is not what I voted for!" bellows MAGA. Given ICE arrests and deportation of immigrants, passage of the Big Bad Bill that will take health care away from millions, the deconstruction of the Department of Education that will send millions of children into poverty if not hunger, illegal tariffs that are just now raising inflation numbers, just what the hell did you vote for?

How Trump deals with the schism within MAGA could be the actual measure of his accountability, even if his name never shows up in the Epstein files. 

An interesting side note in the Epstein case is what is to become of Ghislaine Maxwell? She is Epstein's associate who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for child sex trafficking. With Trump claiming the Epstein files are fake and a hoax, can Maxwell now ask Trump for a pardon, or at the very least, a retrial? Trump, of course, wants her to stay quiet.

Trump is asking Bondi to release "pertinent" aspects of the Epstein grand jury testimony, but that's not a simple thing to do – not even for a president. By law, grand jury testimony can only be released by a judge and a court order, and that will take time. If it happens at all. Grand jury testimony is almost never revealed.

It's a freaking mess. But the MAGA monster seems to be eating its own over this. I don't know. Trump has wriggled out of accountability so often before that we've come to expect it to happen again.

Maybe this time it will be different.

 

  

 

Review

Last month I participated in my second political protest since my college days in 1970 – 55 years ago – when I joined about 300 other demonstrators for the "No Kings" rally on the Square by the Old Courthouse.

I was holding a hand-crafted cardboard sign that said "Hands Off Our Democracy" when a fellow came up to me and asked me point blank, with more than a little reproach in his voice, "Do you think we're a republic or are we a democracy?"

The question caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting to attend a Q and A event. But without giving it much thought, I responded with a smile, "A little bit of both, I think." It's what I was taught in civics class back in high school, when civics was an actual subject and public schools were not considered a platform for leftist propaganda.

"You're wrong," he replied. "We are not a democracy. We're a republic," and then he stormed off to stand behind me, where he promptly gave a smart military salute to the American flag waving proudly on the tall pole in the Square.

I swear to God he did. 

Several thoughts raced through my head at once. I'm pretty sure his earnest salute to the flag was a protest to my (our) protest and that possibly he thought he was the only patriot in the crowd that day. I told myself, "Wait a minute. I'm exercising my First Amendment right to free speech here. I'm as much a patriot as you think you are. It's because I love this country that I protest against a president who sends brown-skinned people to detention camps in an overt act of racial prejudice and without due process, who places the Marines in American streets to intimidate protesters, who fosters an enforcement agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE) whose members wear masks and no identification, and who does all of this without the consent of Congress and through executive decisions that are probably illegal and can be challenged in court.

I want this country that I love to be better than this. 

In retrospect, I should have stepped next to this fellow and saluted the flag with him. All my best thoughts come after the fact.

I bring this up because I recently heard a conversation on TV where this Trump supporter tried to explain why this country is a republic and not a democracy. OK, I get it now. That's where I've heard this argument before. It's a MAGA talking point. If you take democracy out of the equation, you can justify to yourself that a president is all powerful. A monarch. A king. This is exactly what the Founding Fathers tried to avoid and why presidents were given limited powers in the Constitution.

Originally, a president was commander-in-chief of the armed forces; he could negotiate treaties (with Senate approval); he could appoint ambassadors and other officials (with Senate approval); he could grant reprieves and pardons, and he had the power to veto legislation. There's nothing there about suspending due process or building inhumane detention camps in the Florida swamp.

So what kind of government are we supposed to be? 

I see us as a constitutional federal democratic republic.

It is constitutional because we follow the  U.S. Constitution; it's federal because power is divided between national and state governments; it's a democracy because its citizens (We The People) have a voice through free and fair elections, and it's a republic because we elect a representative government.

There's not a lot I remember from high school. I do remember slow dances with Peggy, running cross country in the fall, chess club on Fridays. And all those civics and history classes. 

That was the good stuff worth remembering. 

 

 

 

 

1776

Every Fourth of July, I treat myself to a viewing of the Broadway musical 1776. I taped the show off TCM about seven or eight years ago and tucked it away in my video library, so I always have access to it. I can watch it any time I want to.

But mostly, I like to watch it on the Fourth.

As you might expect by the title, it's a Broadway rendition of the birth of our country. And while many aspects of the film (and the musical) are either composites or half-truths to move the narrative along (for example, Martha Jefferson never came to Philadelphia to be with her horny husband), it's still an inspiring film – especially given that the Second Continental Congress was held in secrecy and the nascent nation was in the midst of a shooting revolution.

If nothing else, the movie reflects the sense of purpose the Founding Fathers had in breaking away from England and the tyranny of King George III and thus drafting the Declaration of Independence. The half-truths and composites are not only entertaining, but they feel real. At least they do to me.

Anyway, the signing of the Declaration ultimately led to the creation of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 – just seven years after the end of the Revolutionary War. I tend to tie those two incredible documents together. The Revolution was fought to separate the colonies from a monarchy and the Constitution was designed and created by We the People to prevent the rise of another King George III.

The Founding Fathers were aware of this problem as they grappled with the danger of a strong president who could become a tyrant. That's why they created a bicameral Congress with three branches of government that is empowered with checks and balances to reign in a rogue president. 

It works when everybody does their jobs. 

Fast forward 237 years...

Somehow, some way, the Supreme Court has granted a felonious president with 34 criminal indictments complete immunity for the length and duration of his term. Where is the logic in that? Where is the logic of removing 50 years of settled law to prevent a woman from having control of her own body? How do detention camps exist in America after what we saw in World War II?

On this Fourth of July, felon president Trump signed the Big Beautiful Bill (who comes up with these stupid names anyway? Alligator Alcatraz. Really? It sounds like we're getting our government from out of a comic book) that will add $3.3 trillion to the nation debt over 10 years. It will cut $930 billion from Medicaid, thus endangering the existence of possibly 300 or more rural hospitals and perhaps 25 percent of the country's nursing homes. A total of $170 billion will be cut from Medicare. Another 12 million people could lose their health care. How about a $285 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? All of this in order to pay for a tax break for billionaires in what is amounting to be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. How does this help the American people? All it does is make us hungrier, poorer and sicker. Many of us will die before our time because of this immoral bill, but, hey, we all die anyway, right Sen. Joni Ernst?

Meanwhile, $10 billion is earmarked for missions to Mars (what?) and another $150 billion to immigration enforcement (those masked men from ICE who don't bother with piddly stuff like due process). You know all those criminals they're supposed to be deporting? Turns out less than 10 percent have committed violent crimes, and that is from ICE's own data. Another 65 percent have committed no crimes at all except, apparently, for the color of their skin. And to meet a quota.

I have a feeling this type of paranoid, fear-mongering government isn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they penned We the People. I might be wrong, but I assumed their concept of government was a bit loftier. Perhaps more idealistic. Certainly kinder.

I guess I might have to wait for the musical 2025 to find out.