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From the hockey hotbed of Israel comes a reminder that today, May 24, is the 40th anniversary of Bob Nystrom’s goal that gave the Islanders the first (of what would be four consecutive) Stanley Cups.
"You're tellin' me?!?!" Nystrom told journalist Hillel Kuttler in their phone conversation, which is part of Kuttler’s podcast series about how noted athletes are trying to stay safe during the virus plague. A few weeks back, Kuttler reached the hallowed Brooklyn Dodger nonagenarian Carl Erskine. Kuttler, a Queens boy now living in Israel, had to remind me that the best team I ever covered has a Big Four-Oh anniversary. Kuttler had a 30-minute chat with Nystrom, who is currently holed up in Boca Raton, Fl., but has been a resident of Long Island since playing for the Islanders. Kuttler recalled “that glorious afternoon when I sat on a stool at the Charlie O's pub in Rockefeller Center, glued to the TV throughout a terrific game, climaxed by Nystrom's magical goal off superb feeds by Henning and Tonelli.” It’s true. In that final sequence, the broadcaster described how a Flyer “took a hit from Nystrom” -- that was known to happen – and the puck went squirting up the ice, followed by a back pass from Henning to Tonelli on the right side and a cross to Nystrom for the goal, just as they practiced it, for years and years. The Islanders had been showing talent and discipline but a lot of potential dynasties never happen. This one did. The Islanders won three more, and Nystrom, a tough guy from out west in Canada, was a vital part of it. He could play with skill…and he could play rough….and he could handle the guff from Al Arbour the bespectacled coach when he needed somebody to scold in practice. Nothing bothered Bobby Ny. One of the last N.H.L. players to not wear a helmet, as the league got serious about safety, Nystrom was the guts of those four teams. The Islanders, a frugal outfit run by Bill Torrey, were not restocking with expensive stars as the Yankees did, so the team stuck together under Arbour. Sixteen of them played on all four Stanley Cup teams and three others played on three championship teams. Go ahead, Islanders fans, try to remember all of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_Islanders_players Every player on that list evokes a smile from me…and I am sure from Kuttler, and all Islanders fans of a certain age. Kuttler asked Nystrom how he would rank the Islanders with other Stanley Cup dynasties like the Oilers who followed them, or the Canadiens, who preceded them, and Nystrom said: "I would put us up there with the best ever to win the Stanley Cup." These days I don’t indulge in much nostalgia -- life is too serious. Haven’t seen a second of Michael Jordan and don’t plan to watch a second of Lance Armstrong, and I don’t watch old games even when Willis Reed or Rocky Swoboda or Mookie Wilson or Mike Bossy are involved. But I love the old days, and I love hearing Bob Nystrom, 40 years after his goal, talk about social-distancing. He never did much of that on the ice, back in the day. Hillel Kuttler’s interview with Islander immortal, Bob Nystrom: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bobby-nystrom-n-y-islanders-stanley-cup-hero/id1510442568?i=1000475553985
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When the Trump era ends next January – if some of us make it through – our descendants will want to know what we knew about this guy that convinced us to put up with his reeking malicious incompetence. But time is short and we may need to set up a time capsule. I would search for the Paul Revere moment when somebody rode through the countryside crying, “The sociopath is coming! The sociopath is coming!” I would pay homage to the great reporting and snarky social media and legislators who tried to reign him in, but I would make sure the time capsule included three videos of John Mulaney, making us laugh, and cry. To be honest, I never heard of Mulaney until he materialized as the host of “Saturday Night Live” in 2018. He has since made two more appearances, both hilarious, both biting. Mulaney’s evolution on the Trump issue began with a guest appearance on Nov. 19, 2015 with Seth Myers, who prodded him about the strange New Yorker threatening to run for president. Mulaney, who lives in New York, had been paying attention to Trump as poseur billionaire builder and ham reality show host, and pronounces him "an odd person." Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. (see above video, the first few minutes.) By June 9, 2017, Trump had been president for five months, beginning his regime by exaggerating – lying, really – about the size of the Inauguration crowd, and going on from there. By now, Trump is something more than an "odd person," which is clearly on Mulaney’s mind as he danced through his interview with Stephen Colbert. The first 7:20 are fine late night chatter but you can skip through it. Then it gets good as Colbert prods him about this strange phenomenon in the White House. The thing is, Mulaney ponders, it’s almost like….you know….there’s a horse…in a hospital. Some in the audience start to titter as they start to get it, which encourages Mulaney to keep tossing out fragments of thoughts about this horse…in a hospital….and soon people are applauding...and then are roaring, wanting to hear more….but there is no more. Was it spontaneous combustion? I don’t know. Comedians have their creative ways, always trying stuff out. I only know that by February of 2018, Mulaney is on tour as Kid Gorgeous, appearing in Radio City Music Hall.This By now this slim and strangely graceful comic has the horse routine down, choreographed, informed and anxious, emphasizing the punch lines at high decibels, exhaling hard for each “H” in “Horse” and “Hospital.” He prances and points, he pauses and resumes. And he has saved two marvelous punch lines for the end. And remember: this show was two full years before the present Covid-19 plague, when Trump shows not the slightest grasp of details, only wanting to goose stock prices, claiming he drinks an untested substance to ward off the virus, at danger to anybody who still believes anything he says. Trump belittles scientists and doctors in front of them, on live television. He shows no ability to organize anything (No wonder he tapped out on his daddy’s money.) John Mulaney had it right. Years ago. "Odd." In this medical crisis: There’s a horse! In a hospital! (Now, check out the video below)  Dortmund celebrates -- from a distance Big-time sports returned to the tube -- and to empty stadiums -- on Saturday, with the Bundesliga returning first. Two squads -- and four socially-distanced ball persons in the four corners of the yawning stadium -- celebrated, at discreet distance. But was it worth the cost, real or potential? Many of us have been mulling this over since various major leagues have tried to figure out whether to tempt the fates, and Covid-19, by providing "bread and circuses," as one reader asked recently, citing Cicero. Just watching the normally-emotional Ruhr regional Revierderby from the safety of my living room, I could appreciate the skill of the players after a two-month layoff. But what was risked, in Germany itself or around the world? Do we need this circus when people around the world are struggling to produce....and find....the bread part? The game itself was fine. Dortmund beat FC Schalke 04, by a 4-0 score, and let us see Erling Haaland, the 19-year-old prodigy from Norway. But how many sacrifices, how many tests and masks and medical attention were spent, just to produce this spectacle? Germany may not even be the best example for the risks because, as Rory Smith pointed out in his Saturday soccer column in the NYT, Germany already has a good record in lowering the damage from the virus, plus it already has a good national health program. Germany is also blessed with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has "the mind of a scientist and the heart of a pastor's daughter," in the words of one observer. What happens if the U.S. and Canada start playing baseball again, or hockey, or basketball or soccer? What could go wrong? I had a revelation on Friday when I joined a Zoom link of baseball/writer pals who normally have lunch once a month. A few were hopeful about a start of the baseball season, but other buffs, who can cite arcane stats from half a century ago, seemed willing to let this year slide past without baseball, so that a few more tests could be available to a giant and deprived nation. We all miss the games, but we have bigger questions. I'm not going near my barber, or doctors, or even the hardware store, until I think it won't jeopardize my wife and me. I was happy on Tuesday when some of the parks opened near me on Long Island, but only to "passive" exercise. On my way back toward my car, I spotted a miniature ball field, with artificial turf, and I stood at home plate, in the left-handed batter’s box, and pretended I was Jeff McNeil, the old-timey cult figure with the Mets. McNeil flicked his bat, smacked a single into left-center field, and I felt immense joy that this might happen sometime again soon. Then reality struck me. Should kids actually use this field this season? On Saturday, we saw German players making contact on a corner kick or running into each other "by accident.?" , Assuming labor and management can agree how to share the TV income from games in empty baseball stadiums, we might observe the players, coaches, managers and umpires all violating each other’s breathing space?  Social distancing -- until crowds arrive. Given the murderous intruder, does any of this collective behavior make sense? The world is also suffering an economic crisis, cited by the disturbed man in the White House, unable to take in information from experts.
Sports seem to fall into the category of "opening up" the economy. Now we have thuggish Trumpites, back up his rantings. Carry the economic "opening up" to people playing sports for our entertainment. I would hate to think the ball players are posturing about safety for a better slice of the TV pie. It's their lives at stake. The players want to play, but their concerns are obvious from the Twitter stream by Sean Doolittle, the Washington Nationals’ closer and one of the more thoughtful heads in the game. https://twitter.com/whatwouldDOOdo/status/1259920490992410626 And what about the health of clubbies who pick up damp towels the players deposit on the floor (never, ever, in the basket)? What about the physios who knead aching backs or hamstrings for hours at end? Is any of this risk worth it so players can play, and owners can take their half out of the middle? Here, I am guilty of gross hypocrisy: If they build it, I will watch -- in the safety of my den, messaging with my son in his own lair. I enjoyed watching the Bundesliga Saturday and the Fox broadcasters tried to explain the Revierderby in this vital region of Germany -- hard to tell from an empty stadium. Americans did get to see Weston McKennie start for Schalke. He's had better days, but his was better than the day of Gio Reyna of Dortmund, who hurt himself in warmups and did not play. Those were fan sub-plots. For the players and support people in empty stadiums in Germany on Saturday, these are life-gambling decisions. I hope they know what they are doing. Your thoughts? Comments welcome.  NOT TO BE MISSED: Thomas Beller's loving depiction of Jerry Stiller as Hasidic elder, from the West Side, one neighbor writing about another.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/a-few-words-about-jerry-stiller * * * (From me:) As a New Yorker who has never lived in an apartment, I am fascinated by friends’ buildings. Friends were said to live in the same West Side building as a singer I love. Whenever we would visit for a Seder, I would imagine getting on the elevator with the singer. Never happened. Another friend lived in the same Village building as a noted writer and doctor. My wife had some questions for him, if we ever got on the same elevator. Never happened. However, two friends of ours did live in the same building as Stiller and Meara. One summer in the 80’s, our friends, sisters, threw a Sunday 5 PM cocktail party on the penthouse patio – classic New York. Noted rabbi. Noted historian, female, who wanted to talk about Pete Rose (before Pete had been found out.) And Stiller and Meara, one of the gang, chatting with everyone. She was gorgeous, and friendly. He, not so gorgeous but equally friendly. I could not resist. I told them how much I admired their work, which, to me, consisted of their ultra-droll commercials for Blue Nun, a semi-sweet wine formerly known as Liebfraumilch. Never do this. But I did. I told them my favorite Blue Nun commercial was about a radio-detective type sitting in his office when a mysterious redhead appears. I am ashamed, but I wasn’t then, to semi-imitate their voices, as I recalled the dialogue: He: “From the moment she walked into my office, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had legs that went from here to there – and back again.” She: “You’ll have to excuse me for not sitting down, but I’ve got legs that go from here to there and back again.” (Anne Meara was indeed way taller than Stiller, surely part of the attraction. Somehow a detective and long legs led to a pitch for Blue Nun wine.) They both gave me deadpan looks, shook their heads. Sorry, each said, I just don’t remember that one. (The point being, there were so many.) Then they asked me about the Yankee game I had just attended. They fit right in. West Side neighbors. I never met Anne Meara again but I used to bump into Jerry Stiller at The Garden. This was before his Seinfeld renaissance, and he was just another West Sider, saying hello at halftime. I reveled in the success of their daughter and son, plus his success on Seinfeld, grouchy and loud, at the next table in a deli. (We all remember that bustling ambience, don’t we.) Anne passed in 2015. Jerry passed the other day, at 92. The NYT ran a lovely obituary – of the two of them, really – with classic Seinfeldian sub-plots about a fitting obituary, and a killer last line by Peter Keepnews. Better you should read it for yourself. Meantime, farewell to that classic West Side couple, Stiller and Meara: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/arts/television/jerry-stiller-seinfeld-dead.html?searchResultPosition=2 NB: Please save your best stuff about resumption of BB/Soccer, seasons, etc.. I am planning a piece on this by midweek when the plot thickens some more. Best, GV * * * Last week I wrote about missing the Kentucky Derby – the place, the season, the event itself. Some readers mentioned other grand sports sites and events – Jim Nabors singing at the Indy 500, walking into Yankee Stadium (or almost any other ball park) and seeing the green grass, a day trip to Saratoga during “the season.” I wracked my brains about sports places I have visited: --Ebbets Field in 1944, when I was 5 and my dad took me to an off-season bond drive event. --My first assignment to Notre Dame football in 1964, remembering a nice man up the block when I was a kid, who took me to see a few live Notre Dame games in a movie house in Flushing, and told me proudly about having been on a great Notre Dame team and never, ever, getting into a game. --Azteca Stadium in Mexico City in 1986, feeling the place physically rock when El Tri was on the move – the appeal of any home team during the World Cup, but particularly for our neighbors to the south. That was just three off the top of my head. Last night I remembered going to the Montreal Forum in 1984 and getting a tour from Camil DesRoches, the grand old publicist of Les Habs. Camil was old school – suave, bilingual, mustached, loved the cultures of Canada plus the U.S. He implanted the lore of Les Habs in my brain, so I wrote about it. I kept up with Camil for many years after. He would send me cassettes, particularly of Montreal’s chanteuse, Danielle Oddera, and her duets and interpretations of Jacques Brel. Nowadays, the Forum is a cineplex; my friend Camil DesRoches passed at 88 in 2003; I still treasure my visit to this home to a great team, a great culture. Please write about a sports shrine in your life: * * * My column from 1984: SPORTS OF THE TIMES; FIRST VISIT TO THE FORUM By George Vecsey
He pointed to a color photograph on his office wall, a picture of the Montreal Canadiens who won their fifth straight Stanley Cup 24 springs ago. His total impartiality was tempered not in the slightest by his being employed by the Canadiens for the past 46 years. Camil DesRoches spent yesterday morning escorting a greenhorn on his first visit to the Forum, a pilgrimmage somewhat akin to the first visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, or St. Peter's in Rome or Westminster Abbey in London: the feeling of closeness to the soul of a people. ''I always say that hockey is like a religion here in Quebec,'' Camil DesRoches was saying. ''We are perhaps 90 percent Catholic, but we are all hockey fans.'' Camil DesRoches is a classic Gallic gentleman, nearly 70 years old, with a thin mustache and a large heart. He loves his wife, he loves Broadway musicals (he saw ''Oklahoma'' 26 times), he loves wine (''We have never had a bottle of milk in my house, and I still have all my teeth''). But just as strongly, he loves the Canadiens, and he loves the Forum, for which he is now the publicity director. He was conducting the tour on a day of both sadness and anticipation. Yesterday morning, there was a funeral for Claude Provost, a member of the five-time Stanley Cup champions, who died on a tennis court in Florida last week. Later in the evening, the current Canadiens would work on stopping the Islanders from winning a fifth straight Stanley Cup. The Islanders were taking a brief workout as Camil DesRoches led the visitor into the stands. Outside, on a perfect spring morning, the Forum seemed an ordinary brick building, surrounded by traditional Montreal tenements with their dark fire escapes. But inside, the Forum seemed a holy place, where one lowered his voice. On the morning a Canadien was being buried, it was not hard to remember that in this building in 1937 the body of the great Howie Morenz was put on public display after his death from complications following a broken leg (suffered, as the history books always say, when he crashed into the boards on the St. Catherine Street side of the Forum). The Forum was filled with 15,000 people, yet it was as silent as a cathedral. Yesterday the Forum's lower red seats glistened, as if painted five minutes earlier, and so did the middle white and upper blue sections, forming a classic tricolor. The stands of the Forum are oval-shaped, following the shape of the rink itself, just as the best bull rings and soccer stadiums of Europe are tailored for one sport, rather than multi-purpose arenas not quite right for any sport. ''There used to be eight columns,'' Camil DesRoches was saying. ''So in 1968, we rebuilt the Forum completely in five and a half months months, leaving only the seats. Look how narrow they are. But nobody complains, because we get more people in that way, 16,400 seats in all.'' From the rafters hang 22 banners, signifying the club's Stanley Cups, 20 of them won since the Forum opened in 1924. ''The best game I ever saw here?'' he said. ''Maybe in 1936, when the Maroons beat Detroit in six overtimes when Mud Bruneteau scored. I got home at 2:25 AM. Or maybe it was Dec. 14, 1965, when our so-called amateur club beat the Russians using Jacques Plante, who had just left the Rangers a few months earlier. ''Or maybe it was March 23, 1944, when Maurice Richard scored all five goals to beat Toronto, 5-1, and they named him all the top three stars of the game. Or what about the game in 1979, when Boston got a penalty in the last minute and Lafleur and Lambert scored to win it?'' The pucks from the Islanders' target practice started slamming into the shining red seats, so Camil DesRoches continued the tour. He pointed out Le Salon des Anciens - the Old Timers' Room - where former Canadiens are welcome. The Canadiens are noted for their propriety, including a private room for the wives of the players. Only recently have patrons been allowed to carry beer to their seats, an experiment that would end at the first abuse. In the lobby, two escalators form the pattern of crossed hockey sticks, a sight Ken Dryden, the retired goalie, always found compelling. Nearby, is the Pantheon of Montreal hockey, the plaques of 30 players and coaches from Quebec who had their best years wearing the bleu, blanc, rouge. Near the entrance is Le Club de Bronze, 11 bronze busts of journalists and broadcasters considered to be friends of Montreal hockey. The 12th bust is of Camil DesRoches. ''I feel funny every time I see that,'' he said with a shrug. The next stop was the Canadiens' dressing room. On one wall are plaques containing the names of every player since 1917. Above the lockers is a line from Dr. John McCrea's poem, ''In Flanders Fields.'' In English it says: ''To You, From Fallen Hands We Throw the Torch, Be Yours to Hold It High.'' On the other side of the room, Camil DesRoches has translated it into French: '' Nos Bras Meurtris Vous Tendent Le Flambeau, A Vous Toujours de le Porter Bien Haut.'' Camil DesRoches said: ''I have been told I did a good job of translating but also making it rhyme in French.'' Over a glass of vin rouge, Camil DesRoches talked of being the youngest of 19 children, of being taken to the cellar when he was 6 years old and being shown the barrel of beer and the bottles of wine. ''My father said: 'You are almost grown up now. You can drink what you want - but never get drunk.' I got drunk once, when I was 17, and my father made me stand almost naked in front of my family, in that condition. I never got drunk again in my life.'' Sipping his wine, he compared three of the great Canadiens of his 46 years: ''Maurice Richard was the Michelangelo of hockey - such dedication, he would work on his back painting the Sistine Chapel, never give up. Jean Beliveau, complete finesse, what style, he was the Da Vinci of hockey. And Guy Lafleur is like Raphael, whose career was not long, but he was an artist and he had a great time.'' When lunch was over, Camil DesRoches concluded: ''I hope you enjoyed the visit to the Forum. Also, I hope you see what it means to our French environment here in Quebec, just like the language, part of our life.'' ###  The classic view from Montjuich, the Olympic site in Barcelona, facing the classic (and unfinished) Sagrada Familia. John Jeansonne, my Newsday pal, refers to Montjuich as a sports shrine in his comment below. GV  Under normal circumstances, the world would be turning its attention to a horse race in Kentucky on the first Saturday in May. This year, nothing is normal. In other years, people from all over the world – rich horse owners, trainers and jockeys, gamblers and hustlers, once-a-year swells, young party people – congregate on the south side of Louisville in a throbbing spectacle of energy, the polar opposite of social distancing (particularly in the mosh pit of the infield.) The ritual got to me. We lived in Kentucky for only two runnings of the Kentucky Derby, 1971 and 1972; I went to a Derby party of black professionals on the West End one year and my wife organized a Derby-night party the next year. I took a cab home from the track in 1972 and the driver charged me some horrendous figure and when I protested that I was a resident, not a tourist, he told me “Derby rates, Chief.” I think about that every first Saturday in May, back home on Long Island. When the grandkids were younger I would make them stand up for the playing of the official song of the Commonwealth of Kentucky: “My Old Kentucky Home,” and they shook their heads, as if to say, “What is it with Pop?” It’s the spectacle -- women sporting colorful broad-brimmed hats with gaudy flowers, as if they dressed that way every day. But this is one day a year – when Louisville emerges from the mists, like “Brigadoon” or Atlantis, some mystical civilization. Yes, I know it’s only a horse race – the prime American event in an industry tarnished by copious deaths of horses in recent years. And yes, I also know I am getting sentimental over a song – “My Old Kentucky Home,” by Stephen Foster, now scrubbed of overt words and nostalgia that seemed to glorify the very worst tradition of the South. There is a legend that Foster, from Pittsburgh, never set foot in Kentucky but as a boy he visited an uncle who was president of tiny Augusta College, in northeast Kentucky. Quite likely, Foster heard blacks worshipping – singing -- at a church in the little town. As an adult, Foster wrote a song about a slave who was sold down the Ohio River, saying farewell to all he knew. Although he used the worst words and stereotypes, Foster apparently meant the song as a criticism of slavery, taking his cue from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that sensitized the North to the evils of slavery. Both came out in 1852. Long ago, Kentucky changed some of the lyrics about how happy the “darkies’” children were, rolling around on the cabin floor. Over recent decades, Kentucky maneuvered the song into the sentimental remembrance people have for their home towns, their home states, the goods and the bads. I was a news reporter based in Kentucky, with no illusions. When all the Derby celebrants in blue jeans or expensive frocks stand up for the state song, I always think about the coal-camp shacks in some gritty bottom land, or modest farmhouses in the western part of the state. The wind whistling across Long Island on Thursday reminded me of the tornado I covered in 1972 that impaled a boy on a tree branch while he slept in his own bed, only an hour southeast of Louisville, or the killer tornado in 1974 that blew through our old neighborhood on the East End, blowing the roof off the grade school our children had attended, before doing much worse just north in Xenia, Ohio. ("I knew it was coming," my wife said, now back home.) When they play the state song on the first Saturday in May, I think of Dec. 30, 1970, after the “shot man” had employed illegal outdoor sparking fuses in the gaseous mine, a violation of rules and common sense, causing 38 miners to be blown to Kingdom Come. For all that, I celebrate the spectacle on TV – don’t bet, don’t drink juleps or anything else, but I do love to watch. I don’t pay attention to racing now that I am retired, but I love the pre-race program when NBC educates instant Derby fans. Last year, alone with my wife, I stood for the anthem, then watched several thoroughbreds veer dangerously close to each other. “Hold on! I shouted at the gallant jockeys, inches from danger. Nobody fell, but I was not at all surprised when stewards took down the winner (can't remember the names) because he had been the most blatant factor in the near collision. Nothing will happen on Saturday. Nothing at all. Theoretically they have pushed the Derby back to Sept. 5, but I have major doubts we are going to see sports crowds any time soon. By-and-by hard times will come a-knocking at my door Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight * * * About Stephen Foster: https://www.wnyc.org/story/hidden-meaning-my-old-kentucky-home/ One of my greatest sports thrills came the day after the Derby in 1989: https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/ill-be-talking-about-kentucky-and-writing-this-saturday In honor of the Kentucky roots of John Prine, who passed from Covid-19 recently, here is his recording of “My Old Kentucky Home.”  Emu and tinfoil casting reflection -- futile, first day. Two of my favorite NYT bylines on the same weekend: Elaine Sciolino gave us a walking tour of her street in Paris – how Rue des Martyrs is still feeding (and delighting) locals during the time of troubles. And Margaret Renkl writes from another part of the world I love – Nashville – about the proliferation of wildlife around the world: sheep in a Welsh village, wild boars in Barcelona, coyotes all over the place. Renkl also notes that global warming has affected her part of the world – Middle Tennessee -- causing birds to migrate northward, but not all of them: She glories in spotting a couple of bright red-headed male flickers, strutting their stuff for a female in the vicinity. I’m happy for Renkl that she can see the mating competition in the woods near her home, but migration also explains the matinal fusillade of flickers on our home on hilly northern Long Island. We agree with Renkl that the retreat indoors by noisy, destructive two-legged mammals has given wildlife more space and peace. (I’m still looking for the red fox that inspected our driveway so haughtily a few years back.) The bay window in our breakfast nook overlooks the front lawn. On days when the most dreaded invader of all – the gasoline-powered blasters – are not blowing leaves and dust and pebbles and decibels around the spring air, the squirrels and birds are frolicking on our meager lawn, pecking away at last fall’s acorns, assorted bugs and worms, and other goodies. With no place to go at the moment, we enjoy watching the most prosaic birds of the Northeast – sparrows, robins, blue jays and my favorites: having lived in Kentucky for a few years, I don’t call the state bird "cardinals" but rather "redbirds," lovingly, the way people do in Louisville or Whitesburg or Bowling Green. Margaret Renkl revels in the maneuvers of the flickers the way Elaine Sciolino delights in the sales pitches of the shopkeepers with their delicious wares. (One vendor tosses in a few pears and suggests she make a tarte. Vive la France, toujours.) If climate is truly taking the flickers northward, I know exactly where those rascals are going – the flyway near Manhasset Bay. In the glacial hills where we live, some birds chirp or tweet, but the flickers and other species of woodpeckers get up early and start battering the shingles and wood and siding of our home -- just as annoying as the day-to-night blasters and power washers we all use. As the family early bird, so to speak, I seem to have the job of scaring the flickers away from their breakfast. I get out on the deck and clap my hands – which works to chase migrating starlings spring and fall, but does not intimidate the woodpeckers, who seem to be here to stay. On Sunday, the creative half of the household fashioned a tinfoil streamer, like a silvery scarf, and wrapped it around the long neck of the emu she fell in love with at Home Goods a few years ago. According to Web experts, the fluttering and reflections of the tinfoil upsets the delicate little bug-eating creatures. I know that most people who keep boats on the nearby bay post a fake owl to scare off the gulls and other airborne pests. They say it works. Dubious of most sales pitches online, I was curious to see if the silver scarf on the family emu might work. I was up at my usual 6:30 AM on a cool, misty Monday. While preparing coffee, I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of something. I couldn’t blame any particular species but something was drilling into our house -- perhaps another byproduct of global warming. * * *
 Smirk. Earring. This man wrote "Twelfth Night." Today, Thursday, is the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth in 1564, or his death in 1616, or both. Preparing for this double event, I have just finished reading “Shakespeare,” by Anthony Burgess, with lavish illustrations, a treasure that seems to have been a college textbook of one of our children. My lasting impression of Shakespeare is the so-called Chandos portrait, believe to be of the bard, but without proof. All I know is that when you walk into that room in the National Portrait Gallery (closed now for three years of repairs) you see the smirk on somebody’s face, and an earring glittering on his left ear. I am more than willing to assume it is Shakespeare, thinking of a good writing day he just had, or an assignation ahead of him, or both. My fascination with Shakespeare stems from having attended Hofstra College from 1956-60 when the absolute best thing on campus (with all due respect to our great sports teams) was the annual Shakespeare Festival, on the stimulus of the school president, Dr. John Cranford Adams, a major authority. The school had a Globe theater, installed every March. I can still see an undergraduate named Francis Ford Coppola with a hammer tucked into his overalls, working on the sets, and I see a classmate – now known as Lainie Kazan – playing one bawdy role or another. For all the drama classes I took, and the performances I witnessed in the John Cranford Adams Playhouse, I am still learning about Shakespeare. Burgess quotes Rev. John Ward’s notebooks as saying that, in retirement in Stratford, Shakespeare had a “merrie meeting” with Michael Drayton and Ben Johnson and ate too many pickled herrings and drank too much Rhenish wine. “He sweated, took cold and died.” He was 52. Lately, much has been made that Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” in 1606, during a major plague. (The Guardian had an article yesterday, citing James Shapiro as the source, and that more than works for me.) https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/mar/22/shakespeare-in-lockdown-did-he-write-king-lear-in-plague-quarantine If he could write during a plague, what are mere scribblers like me doing with our time? Blogs? I don’t think so. Burgess is very good on innuendo and gossip. In this book I learned that Shakespeare took a room for many years in a place run by one Marie Mountjoy. Given my dirty mind, I can only think that if she did not exist Shakespeare would have created her. Also, I don’t know why it took me so long to discover that a noted writer named William Davenant was rumored to be the illegitimate son of Shakespeare, who often passed through an inn in Oxford where Davenant’s attractive mother worked as a hostess. Davenant himself seems to have advanced the rumor. Shakespeare clearly lived a busy life, however slight the documentation, and I have no doubt he wrote all the plays attributed to him. Today, my wife and I plan to watch the latest offering by the National Theatre of London, currently closed down, of course. “Twelfth Night” was filmed during a live performance in London recently, and we saw it at the Kew Gardens Cinema in Queens. One of the quirks of this version is that Malvolio has switched genders from male to female (Tamsin Greig.) Given that young men played all the female roles during Shakespeare’s time, this is not such a big leap. Looking out from the Chandos portrait, the smirk and the earring seem to twinkle even more brightly. Shakespeare lives. * * * (Link for "Twelfth Night" below, 2 PM Eastern.) https://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/twelfth-night-39 (The trailer for "Twelfth Night," starting today at 2 PM, Eastern. Donations are welcome.)  How are we doing by you, Madre Tierra – aside from the virus and global warming, that is? I remember the first Earth Day, 1970. I was in my first go-around as a baseball writer that spring, switching between the Mets and the Yankees. As one of the so-called Chipmunks, the chattering youth of the press box, I loved the concept of Earth Day as a logical extension of protests against the Vietnam War and demonstrations for civil rights. Ecology, to me, mostly focused on cigars -- weapons wielded by older men in the pressbox and newspaper offices. For most of the ‘60s, I worked for the great newspaper, Newsday, with a rotating schedule in sports that meant working in the office sometimes, well past midnight, with no rules against smoking. We had our own little clubhouse – teammates of sorts, who bantered and cussed and popped a beer or two in the midnight hours. Still, I would grump about the cigars while the older guys would look at me with shrugs. That crazy kid, there he goes again. When I got home at 2 or 3 or 4 AM, the house rule was: dump my clothes in a hamper and take a shower before even thinking of sleep. But my throat would be sore from the smoke, and I would cough myself to sleep. Pressboxes were just about as noxious, and baseball clubhouses were acrid with the players’ smoke. (Yankee manager Ralph Houk would spit tobacco juice on the cement office floor, near the shoes of reporters who displeased him.) Some of the old reporters would even bring a soggy cigar butt onto the team bus. (In those days, reporters were part of the team entourage.) The worst offender was….well, no names mentioned….an old guy who could be smelled before he could be seen or heard. Sometimes we would ask him to put out the cigar, and he would just shrug, mutely. On that hopeful April 22 of 1970, I was boarding a team bus to some airport or ballpark, and there was our colleague, with an odiferous lump of tobacco hanging out of his mouth. “-------,” I said, using his last name, affectionately, of course, “don’t you know today is Earth Day? No smoking on the bus today.” He stared at me mutely. No clue. Well, I had tried. At some point, while I was off working in the Real World, reporters stopped traveling with the team – just as well – and pressboxes and clubhouses began to cut down on smoking. (Chewing tobacco was banned, after a crusade by the sainted Joe Garagiola and others.) By that time, I was encountering strip-mining in Appalachia – lopping off mountaintops to get at the coal, and dumping the debris into the valleys. I saw wind-blown damage from acid rain and smelled the befouled creeks of the coal region. Earth Day, indeed. Nowadays the glaciers are melting and the seas are rising and this once hopeful country is ruled by avaricious know-nothings like Trump and McConnell. Their aversion to facts has been endangering the world – even before the killer virus arrived and the red-state preachers and rabble-rousers protested the alleged loss of their liberties. Our leaders make the old pressbox smokers seem downright harmless. * * * (courtesy of my one-lady research staff, a few pertinent links: (how the NYT covered the first Earth Day, glorious bylines like Joseph Lelyveld, Gladwin Hill and McCandlish Phillips:) https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/04/23/issue.html How to celebrate, or mourn, the endangered planet today: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/arts/design/earth-day-digital-coronavirus.html And in homage to John Prine, who died recently at 73, his witness to the destruction of his parents' home town, the coal-destroyed Paradise, Ky:  Orson Welles. Seventh Game. Same night. Omigosh, you never know what will pop up. I picked up “the paper” in the driveway on Monday and there in the sports pages was a column I wrote 33 years ago, and it seems like yesterday.
Actually, it did involve two yesterdays – a seventh game of a Stanley Cup series that began Saturday night outside Washington, finished Sunday morning on Long Island (I was columnizing from home) and appeared in the Monday paper. In those days, there was no Web, no 24-hour urgency to the newspaper business. I watched the Islanders (descendants of the mythic champs I had loved covering from 1980-83) battle the upstart Capitals for the right to move on to the next round. Sports columnists were caught up in the interminable pedaling on the hamster wheel, the typing, the travel, the creating - - a mission, an honor. Only six months before, also on a Saturday night, Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner had gotten caught up in another epic game. In the long madness of that night, I declared that the Red Sox’ misery was somehow linked to their disposal of Babe Ruth nearly half a century earlier. One gets very wise very late at night. (And speaking of momentous marathons in the middle of the night, one of my favorite books about sports, and suffering, is “Bottom of the 33rd,” about baseball’s longest game between Pawtucket and Rochester, by Dan Barry, now one of my favorite bylines at the NYT. By the quirks of the calendar, that April 19 was both Holy Saturday for Christians and Passover for Jews, spiritual overtones galore.) The Islanders-Capitals marathon also began on Holy Saturday and led into Easter Sunday while the lads kept playing, and playing, and playing. I was living the life of the sports columnist, circa 1987 – when you knelt before the editor-in-chief and he tapped you on the shoulder with a mythical sword and dubbed you a knight of the keyboard, giving a modest raise for the honor of working your fingertips and frazzled brain around the clock, around the calendar-- three or four columns and week, often on deadline, deputized to explain sports to Times readers (and editors.) I took my mission seriously and went out to slay dragons around the clock, around the week, around the cycle of sports as we knew it then. Fact was, I loved it, the freedom to think, and type, and see it in the paper, regularly. (How trivial it all seems now, when most of the “news” of sports is about whether to resume competition, while in the Real World people are merely hoping they and their loved ones can continue breathing and eating. It is just possible that the longing for sports only leads to more Foxed-up yahoos picketing state governments to get people “back to work,” no matter what those scientists say about the killer virus. Personally, I don’t miss sports at the moment, well, except for the Mets.) As my column from April 1987, materialized in the NYT, I was proud to read the way a columnist could converse regularly and familiarly with readers. After the Islanders outlasted the Caps, I seem to have slept for a few hours, and gotten up early on Sunday and written about our Saturday evening – walking the dog often, my wife prepping Easter dinner (we had two friends coming for dinner), our youngest-the-busboy coming home from Louie’s smelling like fried shrimps, and how I switched channels so often that I also watched chunks of my all-time favorite movie, “The Third Man.” But I wrote the column – keeping the faith with the holy mission of the sports columnist. Thirty-three years later, how much fun it was – and still is. * * * Here is the 1987 column: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/20/sports/sports-of-the-times-the-late-late-show.html?searchResultPosition=1 Here’s a review of Dan Barry’s lovely book about the longest baseball game: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/books/bottom-of-the-33rd-by-dan-barry-review.html?searchResultPosition=1 (The eulogy for three citizens can be found from 3:00 to 10:00.) I don't know much about Gov. Phil Murphy from the neighboring state of New Jersey -- but I do know he has two admirable assets in a leader: a brain and a heart.
These were amply evident on Thursday when Gov. Murphy spoke about the impact of the pandemic on New Jersey, starting with the horrible facts and then moving into the personal. In six-plus minutes, he eulogized three residents of New Jersey who had died of the virus. They were selected as a balanced ticket – a Roman Catholic white man, a black man, and a Jewish woman, who had survived as a 15-year-old in Bergen-Belsen and remained a witness and a teacher, into her 90s. As he introduced these three pillars of his state, Gov. Murphy used terms often heard at wakes and funerals, invoking some version of an Almighty to bless their hearts, bless their souls. I doubt that any non-believer, even those allergic to religious presence in public, would be offended by the opening of Gov. Murphy’s own heart. He was feeling the tragedy of losing people, good people, to a killer. By blessing their lives, he was helping all of us feel the humanity of the fallen, and ours. This is one of the highest callings of a leader, in any field. When David Stern passed recently, many people recalled him as tough negotiator as commissioner of the N.B.A., but I also recalled the day he had to banish a player (Micheal Ray Richardson) for life, for repeated violations of drug policy. Rather than be vindictive, Stern seemed to be feeling deeper emotions as he blurted, “This is tragedy.” He felt it. He made me feel it. This was leadership from the heart, as was President Obama’s visit to the church in South Carolina where worshippers had been murdered by a man with a gun. The President took a deep breath and sang, a cappella, the first lines of “Amazing Grace.” He called a blessing on all. He made us feel the horror. Amidst all the legal skirmishes about the presence of religion in public life, leaders often give witness to their faith, sometimes recklessly. Jerry Falwell, Jr., has insisted on re-opening Liberty University; 78 cases of the coronavirus have since been detected in the immediate area. (Personal note: I covered religion in the late ’70s and knew and liked Falwell’s father. I bet Falwell, Sr., would have had enough sense to listen to medical experts.) Nancy Pelosi often ascribes her public policies to her Roman Catholic faith. Former vice president Joe Biden and current New York governor Andrew Cuomo – who applies real facts, real logic, in his daily seminars on the plague – are said to bond in their faith. Meantime, evangelicals ascribe a previously undetected faith to the current president. Preachers told their flock to vote for him in 2016 and I am sure they will again in 2020. He has speculated out loud about the eternal destination of the deceased landmark member of the House, John Dingell of Michigan. There is no evidence that Donald Trump holds any belief in the goodness, inherent or potential, of others. His worth is measured in the stock market, how much relief money he can slip to his cronies. Life is a battle to make himself look good, pushing the rock uphill with every event. It is all about him. Gov. Murphy helped us love the lives of the three citizens, as stand-ins for all the others who have fallen in recent weeks. However we felt it, however we expressed it, in religious or secular terms, we knew it was a tragedy. May the governor have fewer occasions to introduce us to the fallen of his state. * * * The transcript of Gov. Murphy’s eulogy for the three citizens: https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/approved/20200416b.shtml A separate clip about Margit Feldman: Holocaust survivor, NJ resident dies of COVID-19, honored by governor  Henry VIII menaces family of Sir Thomas More; daughter Margaret observes Doing what we were told to do – get the heck out of the way if you have no skills – some of us are hunkering, blessed to be healthy at the moment, with a roof over our heads, and food. It sounds trivial, but while many people suffer and some serve (and suffer), others are at least able to catch up on one thing or another for diversion. People are cooking at home, putting things in order, just in case, reading, exercising, getting in touch. Some are watching the gift of plays (from the National Theatre!!!) movies, operas, ballet, concerts, literally streaming before our eyes and our minds. Sometimes the themes are universal: louts and bullies, fools and despots, always with us. On Saturday evening, the PBS station in my town played the classic film “A Man for All Seasons,” from 1966. It holds up magnificently, including lush scenes on the River Thames. Viewers never can get away from the multi-menaces of our time. In this version of history, a young and lean satyr of King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) menaces Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) to approve the king’s desire for a divorce, and a son and heir. Henry romps through the mud of low tide to visit the More family, where he notices the educated and comely daughter Margaret (Susannah York), and drops a phrase of Latin on her. She replies. He is impressed. He drops another phrase of Latin on her. Then, with the skilled grace of Martina Navratilova rushing to the net, she responds with a stream of Latin. King Henry VIII goes blank as the ball/phrase whizzes past him. He is exposed. We have seen that look before – often, recently – as the talk, the concepts, the facts – get too much for another satyr in our midst. Henry backs away, over his head in much more than mere river muck. You know how that movie ends. On Sunday evening, NBC played the 2018 version of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the 1970 rock opera, filmed live in an armory in Brooklyn. Jesus (John Legend) wanders through the hippie dancers, far more befuddled than the committed Jewish mystic of the Bible, but look, it’s a rock opera.  Christ is passed up the chain of command, all the way to King Herod of Judea – none other than Alice Cooper in the role he was born to play. Mincing and menacing, Herod takes the measure of the feared preacher, offers him a way out, and is infuriated by his mute resignation. “Get – out --- of – my – life!” Herod spits. You know how that rock opera ends, too. There is no ducking the contemporary menace here – the addled bully who cannot comprehend what the committed know and do. Furious sacrifice is never out of style – Melville’s “Billy Budd,” a prime example. (Actually, I think Trump's obsession with Barack Obama is like the rage of Claggart toward Billy Budd.) I am sure Dr. Anthony Fauci, from Regis High and Holy Cross University, knows all the themes here. He does not seem afraid as he stands near our Dolt for All Seasons, our orange-hued Alice-Cooper-Without the 60’s Leather Outfit. Dr. Fauci was still here, as of Tuesday morning. * * * In addition to being menaced by the virus and our freebooter president, Americans in the South and East were menaced on Monday by a brutal storm. On Long Island, we double-hunkered, moving to safe parts of our homes, away from windows, on lower floors, if possible. It could have been worse. At 6 PM, the sky lightened in the west, the sun appeared. People who have been staying the heck out of the way emerged for exercise, for air, for the illusion of normalcy. I went on a walk, encountered dozens and dozens of liberated strollers, some with their dogs. I did not see one mask in the quiet streets but people swerved on wide paths. I heard a couple of guys talking about a rainbow, but I had not seen one. Then I ran into John and Reina Teeger, long-time friends, out for their stroll. John showed me his smartphone capture of the rainbow, arched across the western sky. We talked about our families. For a few moments, life was normal. Then we headed to our homes, later to catch up on the spreading menace of the virus in Third World countries, the cupidity of Mitch McConnell and his mute White Citizens Council, the mounting evidence that our Herod, our Henry VIII, was deep over his head in this crisis. May the rainbow protect us.  Photo by John Teeger  My friend Mendel Horowitz has a lovely essay on the op-ed page of the New York Times today.
It's about one memorable Passover with his wife's bubby, her grandmother, a survivor. You could/should click on the link right here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/passover.html?referringSource=articleShare Mendel is a New York guy, who moved his family to Jerusalem. He is a husband, father, rabbi, psychotherapist, volunteer first-responder, runner, Mets fan and soccer buff, and also very much a writer, currently working on a book about Orthodox Jewish men, group therapy and faith. We get together for lunch once a year or so when he comes back to Long Island. I love his stories about the male group sessions, or how, when he responds to a crisis with the medics, he never knows if the victim(s) will be speaking Hebrew or English or Arabic – “and it doesn’t matter.” Two years ago at this time his article on Passover and baseball was published in the Jewish Journal. https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/232675/why-is-this-sport-different/ I can only imagine how many Seders this evening will be asking why this year is different. One answer might be that Jeff McNeil should be swinging at the first pitch and smacking it into left-center field to set up a lead for Jacob DeGrom. I suspect there are deeper answers. * * * Another writer, my classmate from junior high and Jamaica High in Queens, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, is in the midst of a glorious career. She issues a personal newsletter from time to time, and in her current one she includes a snarky political cartoons and photos. For the why-is-this-year question, and how we can make the most of it, she reproduces a poem by Kitty O'Meara. (It has been attributed to Kathleen O’Meara, a writer of the 19th Century, but the Web says it is by Kitty O'Meara, a contemporary, different person. Thanks to reader Paul Rerecich for the update.) And People Stayed Home by Kitty O’Meara: And people stayed home and read books and listened and rested and exercised and made art and played and learned new ways of being, and stopped and listened deeper. someone meditated someone prayed someone danced someone met their shadow and people began to think differently and people healed and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways, dangerous, meaningless and heartless, even the earth began to heal and when the danger ended and people found each other grieved for the dead people and they made new choices and dreamed of new visions and created new ways of life and healed the earth completely just as they were healed themselves. * * * Letty finishes with her holy days wish: Wishing you a sweet Passover starting tomorrow night. A happy Easter on Sunday. And a generous Ramadan starting April 24. Stay strong, stay safe, stay home. – Letty “Chag Pesach Sameach" -- GV  Corden, both Guvnors, and on the left, Dolly In the grip of terror and incompetence, a few laughs wouldn’t hurt. Nearly three hours of slapstick are being sent our way this week by the National Theatre in London – for free, unless you are inclined to donate. Thursday was Opening Day, and I looked forward to it the way I normally look forward to baseball’s Opening Day. Baseball teams normally open the season with their best pitcher; NTLive began with the smash hit from 2011, “One Man, Two Guvnors,” starring James Corden as an oaf in a checkered suit, willing to do almost anything for a few bob here and there. Starving, he falls in with a bunch of grifters and mugs and hustlers and dimwits, the likes of which I had not seen since the last televised Cabinet meeting, except those blokes in DC are not funny at all. The plays originated from the three-theatre shrine on the Southbank – our favorite place in England. My wife has been known to see two plays a day, all week long, while I was laboring at Wimbledon. In recent years, a selection of the best plays has been available as NTLive in movie houses around the world, for a price. But with London shut down, NTLive found a way to send a selection to the huddled world, via the web and outlets like YouTube. I could not locate it on the YouTube site, which contained a thousand things I did not want to watch and no apparent directory. But I was easily able to pull up “One Man” on my laptop. Corden came into my periscope only recently, through his romp in “Carpool Karaoke” with Paul McCartney – on Penny Lane and other holy places. That inspired us to catch “One Man, Two Guvnors,” when it popped up in Patchogue, Long Island, last fall, one day only. We roared as Corden performs pratfalls and inter-acts with the audience – including one charming plant – as his character escapes violence from his two raffish guvnors, as he ogles the pub food and also a new lady friend named Dolly. This collection of characters has been adapted by Richard Bean from the original Servant of Two Masters (Italian: Il Servitore di Due Padroni), a 1743 Commedia dell'arte comedy play by Carlo Goldoni. There is a bit of everything in “One Man, Two Guvnors” – various thugs, a ham actor, an old-fashioned skiffle band, a scheming woman in drag who knows how to brandish a knife, a charming little breakout of Calypso steel band, and a hapless old waiter – 86, with the shakes -- who keeps getting knocked down the stairs or hit by a cricket bat. Gets your minds off the troubles for a bit. NTLive, bless its heart, has brought this diversion into our living rooms. Without further ado, here is the link to the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzqcRwWVv8k * * * “One Man, Two Guvnors” is available at home until next Thursday, followed by weekly appearances of “Jane Eyre,” “Treasure Island” and “Twelfth Night,” with Malvolio as a woman, so 21st Century. It's almost always terrific. We have already seen “Jane Eyre” and “Twelfth Night,” via NTLive, in The Kew Gardens Cinema,” in my home borough of Queens. NTLive, we owe you, Oh, there is a way to donate from The States. We just did. https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/  When he is not juggling plates, Tom Edden is falling down stairs.  Mets and Cubs are greeted before game in Tokyo Dome, 20 years ago. Oh, my goodness, it was 20 years ago. Today, the NYT reprinted an article I wrote 20 years ago today, on the Mets-Cubs league game in Tokyo. It was a pleasant surprise to be back in the paper and be reminded of a great trip and how much I love visiting Japan. This, at a time when there is much sadness at postponing the Tokyo Olympics to next year. ごめんなさい Gomen'nasai (I am sorry) The article jumped out of the Monday sports section – about Benny Agbayani’s grand-slam, pinch-hit homer in the 11th inning that defeated the Cubs. /www.nytimes.com/2000/03/31/sports/baseball-against-the-odds-agbayani-gets-mets-home-even.html?searchResultPosition=1 It was the end of a grand assignment – two Mets exhibitions around Tokyo, plus two official games, showing me how much the Japanese fans know about baseball, and America. It kicked off so many memories: ---Japanese fans booing good-heartedly when activist Mets manager Bobby Valentine (with his love and knowledge of Japan) had Sammy Sosa walked intentionally with first base open. “Japanese fans never boo the manager for this,” a Japanese reporter told me. “But they know it is normal in American baseball.” How cool – like young couples on Friday date night, going to TGIFriday’s glittering outlets all over Tokyo, for ribs and fries. ---Standing outside the Tokyo Dome that week, watching fans congregate and spotting a woman wearing a Mets uniform with Swoboda 4 on the back. Haruko told me, in quite good English, that she was a Mets fan – had seen a Nolan Ryan no-hitter in the States (for the Angels) and in fact had stayed with Ron and Cecilia Swoboda in New Orleans. ---The great Ernie Banks, retired by then, sidling up to me around the batting cage and repeating his iconic phrase: “Let’s play two.” ---How I spotted Masanori Murakami, the first Japanese national to play in the American majors – I covered that game, too, in 1964 – and re-introduced him to the Mets’ roving pitching coach, Alvin Jackson, who was his opponent in that epic debut. They laughed and shook hands and chatted, so comfortable with each other, as old players are. Alvin passed last year; I was so honored to have shared that moment with him. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/31/sports/sports-of-the-times-murakami-will-always-be-first.html?searchResultPosition=1 My other memories of that trip are less baseball-centric: ---Zonked on jet lag, taking my wife on the Tokyo subway, telling her how easy it would be, and emerging in sunny Ueno Park for a nice stress-free walk (and subsequent first meal in a neighborhood) ---Being driven from bustling Tokyo to a famous shrine by our former Long Island neighbors, Fumio and Akie, the nicest couple. Originally from Osaka, Fumio did not know every inch of Tokyo – does anybody? – but he relied on a novelty GPS built into his dashboard, and he negotiated all the tight little turns and ramps to get us on a freeway to a leafy shrine. --- Salarymen – and women – stopping to offer us directions when we appeared baffled by the odd numbering systems. --- After the baseball work, visiting historic Kyoto, where a woman addressed my wife in French; she had lived in France and loved to use that language. My wife, who speaks some French, sat on a bench and they chatted for an hour, about La Belle France. ---And finally, since it was 20 years ago this week, having people in Kyoto apologize to us because the cherry blossoms were late. In this grim spring, I think of all the places we cannot go, but when I think of baseball…and Japan….and friends….and spring...and having been privileged to go places and write stories, the day seems better.  Haruko sent me this photo the other day, as we lamented the disruption of baseball. She mentioned the "transient beauty" of cherry blossoms, and quickly added that she and her brother did not make the pilgrimage this year.  The Ballpark is Self-Quarantining Jacob DeGrom was supposed to throw the first pitch to the champion Washington Nationals, a few miles west of me, on a sunny, cool day.
Instead, I was going to write something about the absence of baseball. Then I read about a valued colleague who passed the other day, from the virus, and that delivered another reality check. We have enough reminders that life is not normal – and when will it be again? I go out in our town just enough to run a few errands. The other day we ordered takeout from one of our favorite places in our town. It was gut-wrenching to join a small line indoors, six feet of separation, picking up packages. It was mid-day. The place should have been packed with moms and their squeaky little kids, with rambunctious teen-agers from the high school, with working people on a break. Instead, chairs were upturned on tables and a few workers were packing up pizza and regular meals for the customers. A lady in the drive-in window at the bank smiled at me from behind the glass. From my car, I nodded at the crossing guard near the post office. The Town Dock was blocked off. Normally, dozens of people would be parking at mid-day, to sniff the salty bay and maybe take a walk. I don’t need to discuss the ominous details about the virus in the NYT. Did you see those amazing charts – online and in “the paper?” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html We get the paper delivered every morning in blue bags, straight from my friends at the plant in Queens. They cannot work from home. Be safe, all of you. Our family sounds okay – six other adults working at their homes, three younger ones doing schoolwork online, two others also safe, last we heard. My wife was on this early, urging me not to ride the subway, see old friends for lunch. We are getting by. Blessed. But there is the anxiety – expressed by doctors and nurses who go on TV, talking of shortages, displaying what soldiers in combat call The Thousand-Yard Stare. They are on the front line, sent in without the right equipment, in a nation nominally in charge of a business failure who was already a dangerous fool when people voted for him. Now the combat is raging. Leaders like Andrew Cuomo try to pull things together, shaming “the government” into getting a clue. Friend of mine is self-quarantined in his apartment. His doctor thinks he might have the virus, but cannot help him get a test. “Opening Day,” I texted. “Robin Roberts vs. Don Newcombe.” That is our generation. The Brooklyn Dodgers were our team. Sometimes, for a few minutes, baseball will get you through. My man Mike From Northern Queens sent me a link about picking the best catchers in the history of every major-league franchise. Yogi and Campy. And some, from newer franchises out west, I hardly recognized the names of the choices. That is the beauty of baseball – the history, the meaningful statistics at all positions, never mind the new analytics. The arguments. Carter or Piazza? https://www.mlb.com/news/best-all-time-catcher-for-every-mlb-team Opening Day. Baseball fans believe there is nothing like it. So much tradition. My colleague Bill Lucey in Cleveland sent me a piece he wrote a few years ago about the history of presidents at Opening Day. https://www.wplucey.com/2011/03/comparing-us-presidents-love-of-baseball.html I remember in the early 80s, when the Mets’ opening day was snowed out, and I squawked, how nature could do this to us? Sports don’t cut it right now. I don’t care if the Olympics were postponed, or even the European soccer tournament. I wish I could concentrate on the Mets, fret about whether the Mets will finally give a steady position to Jeff McNeil, let him swing at the first pitch and get something going. I wish I could worry about the starting rotation, now that Noah Syndergaard is getting Tommy John surgery today. (Apparently this is considered essential surgery.) Yankee fans, other fans, bless their hearts, may have their own preoccupations. However baseball is not essential at the moment. What is essential is convincing our “leader” that instead of sending people back to work with a nasty virus on the loose – to save “his” economy – we need to stay in place, including baseball players and baseball fans and people who work at the ballpark. No Game Today. Of course.  In the failure of federal government, volunteer patriots sew masks. Photo: San Diego Union “Call a person over in Venezuela,” blustered the man with the orange goo slathered on his face.
“Ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well." The Dear Leader was responding to questions about why the American government was not mobilizing businesses to make the masks and respirators needed for endangered health-care people to care for endangered patients. He’s all for Congress supplementing his friends in big business in this crisis. He just doesn’t want to tell them what to do with the money. This in a country that mobilized auto plants to produce airplanes during World War Two, as David Leonhardt recalled in the NYT on Monday. This in a country where hospitals are begging people to donate masks and other medical goods they are “storing” in their homes, in order to save the actual sick, until The Orange Guy thinks of something. Ordinary citizens are sewing masks in their homes, patriots in the old style, because the federal government cannot get a handle on this. I immediately thought of an entitled woman I met in Cuba, making soap in her own kitchen. I said “soap,” not “soup.” I met the woman when I covered the Pan-American Games in Havana in 1991. A friend in New York had told me about her, a talented woman who had gone to school in the States, had a medical background, whose husband, a high-ranking officer, had fought and died for his country. She was eager to be my guide to the complicated world of Cuba, when I was not directly covering sports issues during the Games. She was loyal to the country and she knew how things worked, and did not work. She had a car, one of those classic 50s cars, in good shape, and took me around Havana as well as the Bay of Pigs, where her husband had served. For a sense of how people lived, she took me to her building, in a genteel if fading neighborhood. The lights were out on the stairway. The apartment was roomy, if dated. They had raised their family there, and now some members were doctors, working in the state hospital. She pointed at the stove, at a pot of soap slivers in water, waiting for her children and their spouses to bring home more soap remainders from the hospital, so she would boil them down, sanitize them, turn them into something approximating soap bars. “I’ve become my own grandmother,” she said. I think of her remark and those soap scraps now that Americans are begging the federal government to supply the goods to keep them alive. I think of our portly poseur, who has fooled some Americans into thinking he has business sense, any sense at all. He wants American money in the hands of Mnuchin and other gunnysack cabinet members rather than in the hands of the people who do the work. He’s not going to induce American enterprises into making make goods needed by endangered people. Medical people are begging for equipment, but this is not his department. He has his principles. He rolls over and plays nice for Putin and Kim but he talks big about Venezuela. His instincts are toward one-man rule. On Monday it seemed he had disappeared Dr. Anthony Fauci, an authority on the virus who lately has been verbalizing some of his concerns. Fauci was missing from the press conference Monday, like some Politburo big shot who had been airbrushed out of a group photo. Maybe Fauci would return on Tuesday. To be continued. In the meantime, thank goodness we are not a third-world country like Cuba, like Venezuela. * * * Trump’s Venezuela babble: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/23/819926854/fact-check-trump-compares-defense-production-act-to-nationalization David Leonhardt’s riff on mobilization before World War Two: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=4 * * * QUESTION: A friend asked me yesterday if he could be put on my email list for my occasional rant. I said there is no such mailing list; I put my precious little ramblings out there on the Web like a message in a bottle, tossed out to sea, and hope people find it. Only rarely do I send something directly to a friend. Could I get a show of hands from anybody who would like to be on a totally-anonymous and confidential list for these occasional pieces? Thanks. My email is: georgevecsey@gmail.com NB: Comments here are welcome. Nay, beseeched. GV.  Trying to move the ball against large obstacles Watching Dr. Anthony Fauci politely try to clear up some of the most egregious errors by Donald Trump, I am fascinated by his political poise. Dr. Fauci was at his best Friday, calmly labelling Trump’s claims that a malaria vaccine might help stop the Coronavirus as "anecdotal." Trump had a “hunch.” Fauci had experience and facts. And character. And discretion. I’ve been impressed by Dr. Fauci since he escaped Trump’s dungeon for inconvenient experts. You know, the Deep State. People who know things, like Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 -- six presidents, two Democrats and four Republicans. Apparently, in this Dark Age, circumstances dictated that one qualified person should be up front with all the Pences and Pompeos. So there he was, this tiny man (the web does not seem to divulge his actual height) who keeps a straight face while Trump is making stuff up during a grave crisis. And when Dr. Fauci speaks, he does so in a mixture of scientific knowledge and a gravelly accent that says, “Noo Yawk." * * * NB: Maureen Dowd spoke to Dr. Fauci. Great quotes. She also uses the word "gravelly," only proving that great minds think...or hear....alike . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/opinion/sunday/fauci-coronavirus-trump.html * * * I did not know anything about Dr. Fauci, but felt I knew him from my home town. He reminded me of the humble comedian, Jimmy Durante, a presence in my childhood, always ending his TV show with the mysterious salute:“ Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” The good doctor also sounds just like Lou Carnesecca, the beloved ex-coach of St. John’s basketball, still very much alive at 95. Looie, bless his heart, would usually begin his post-game summary by saying: “Two t’ings,” which he would then enumerate. And he always raved about New York pizza and bagels, claiming they were superior because of the elixir in the city pipes. Turns out, I was on the right track, comparing Dr. Fauci with Looie. My brother-in-law Rich recalled Tony Fauci as a star athlete at Regis High School in Manhattan, one of the best Roman Catholic high schools in the city. Anthony Fauci was the captain and starting point guard for Regis. before concentrating on his studies at Holy Cross and med school and has had a long and honorable career. Surely, running the offense against larger players prepared him for the gross lack of expertise and leadership in this ailing country. I watch him while Trump is bloviating. He looks straight ahead, no eye-rolling, no twitching, no raising his hand to make a point. Some people might see him as going along with the program, just another Trump toadie, but I see him as Tony Fauci, point guard, trying to find space amidst the blockheads, and taking the charge for the good of the nation. * * * (Another alum of Regis is Colin Jost, the pleasant, deceptively sly co-host of Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live.” Jost recently published a sweet little article in the New Yorker, about commuting from Staten Island – bus, ferry, subway, 90 minutes each way, for four years, and the interesting species he encountered, two-legged and four-legged. It’s part of a book he has coming out.) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/16/my-high-school-commute * * * Links about Dr. Anthony Fauci: Very nice column by Jenni Carlson of the Oklahoman: https://oklahoman.com/article/5657826/coronavirus-in-oklahoma-take-heart-sports-fans-americas-leader-in-this-pandemic-fight-misses-the-games-too https://brooklynreporter.com/2020/03/brooklyn-born-disease-expert-dr-anthony-fauci-says-we-may-be-on-the-brink-of-a-pandemic/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994641/ https://www.regis.org/article.cfm?id=10280   Christopher Gregory, The New York Times My family has a little text-message chain going on – perfect for this time of troubles: Two elders and six certified adults. On Sunday, we started playing can-you-top-this for comfort food, with accompanying photos.
Upstate: Quarantine with saag chicken. Long Island: Sausage in wrap. Bit of birthday cake from the freezer. Deepest Pennsylvania: "We see your saag paneer and we raise you by homemade chicken and minestrone soup." That got us through Sunday. The Monday NYT in the driveway brought a column by Margaret Renkl, who has become one of my top-ten favorite bylines in the paper – from Alabama, now living in Nashville. She writes so well about ecology, and life. Her column was about making corn bread on a cast-iron skillet, to ward off the blues. The words reminded me how much I loved roaming the region a few decades ago. I remembered a modest luncheonette in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which featured – in the early 70’s! – a fresh vegetable plate, okra, white beans, tomatoes, whatever was in the kitchen, plus buttery, crumbly corn bread. I’ll bet Margaret Renkl’s corn bread is even better. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/comfort-food-coronavirus.html Then there was the email from my man Mike From Whitestone, supplier of daily wisdom via the Web, designed to get us through.  I had never thought of it that way. Mike also sent this one:  To close, may I suggest this chorus from the Grateful Dead. Make it your mantra for the day, for this time of the troubles -- with fresh cornbread on the side. Check out this poor schlub being interviewed by Rep. Katie Porter of California.
More important, check out the faces behind him – presumably colleagues or family. They are wincing as Dr. Robert R. Redfield is exposed as yet another Trumpite bumbler in the time of Covid-19. Rep. Porter, in her first term, has become the scourge of corporate and government “leaders” who try to out-wait her few minutes of questioning. Originally from Iowa, Rep. Porter went to Yale University and Harvard Law School, where her mentor was Elizabeth Warren. On Thursday, she was doing what she does best, in a hearing into the lack of preparation for the rampaging virus – specifically the lack of tests and who will bear the cost when any tests are finally available after a scandalous delay. Rep. Porter said she had violated her own rule of not alerting the hapless witnesses. She sent her line of questioning to Dr. Redfield’s office a week ahead of time so he could be prepared. But he appears to know nothing, nothing -- staff work in the time of Trump. Dr. Redfield is a 68-year-old relic, a virologist who previously “served” in government during the early days of AIDS. In his unprepared and ignorant fashion, Donald Trump tried to do away with government medical and research agencies but was forced to find a few people who could pretend to expertise, while Trump’s family and friends filled their gunnysacks with loose cash. In 2018, Dr. Redfield was brought in as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Not even having the bluster of a bank president, Dr. Redfield was confronted by the terror of the House. Rep. Porter had her facts and figures on hand – how much a test would cost. But most people seeking emergency treatment could not afford this perhaps life-saving process. Would the government cover the cost of a test, Rep. Porter asked. Dr. Redfield took the punches, waited for the bell to ring. But Rep. Porter kept telling him: not good enough. She wanted to know if the government would take care of its people. She told him she has researched his powers. You can do this, according to law, she said. Rep. Porter does this better than I can describe it, better than any lawmaker I have ever seen. Most legislators talk about themselves. She talks about law, about reality. Watch the video. It’s a Perry Mason moment – the stunning reversal in real time—that almost never happens in trials or hearings. In the end, battered and beaten, Dr. Redfield succumbs, seems to promise government coverage. I do not know if his foggy submission has any legality. Trump might well fire him any hour now, say it was all a mistake. Once again, Katie Porter has exposed the stupidity and callousness of this regime. * * * Dr. Redfield: https://www.cdc.gov/about/leadership.htm Rep. Porter: https://porter.house.gov/about/  The Hon. Reggie Walton From Donora, Pa. On Thursday, a federal judge characterized the public statements of Attorney General William P. Barr as “distorted” and “misleading” in his early descriptions of Robert S. Mueller III's report last year. I missed the name of the judge at first, but later the name drifted from the television in the next room. “Oh, my God, that’s Reggie Walton!” I blurted, a bit informal toward a prominent judge. I learned about Federal Justice Reggie B. Walton a decade ago when I was writing a biography of Stan Musial, the great baseball player from Donora, Pa. I was blessed to have two mentor-guides to that hard-times steel town: Bimbo Cecconi, one of Pitt's great athletes, and Dr. Charles Stacey, the former school superintendent and a town historian who was proud of both Musial and Walton. “You ought to talk to Reggie Walton,” Dr. Stacey said. Later, on his own, he called his star pupil and suggested he give me a ring. That is the Donora connection – the pride of people who survived the mills and the streets and the hard times. There was a history to Judge Walton. His parents worked hard -- the job market was always tougher for African-Americans -- and had high hopes for their son. Reggie was a competitor, who goaded his football teammates not to quit against much bigger teams, but he also ran with a tough crowd. In his senior year of high school, he thought he was going to a fist fight between two gangs from opposite sides of the Monongahela River. Somebody pulled a sharp object and a boy from the other side was stabbed. Reggie Walton helped him get medical help, and then he decided to make himself scarce from gang activity. People in town pointed him toward West Virginia State University, a historically black college, to play football, and maybe to study. The football was all right, but the studying was better. Reggie Walton is now a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., who has been in the news a few times since being appointed by President George W. Bush. In 2005 the judge broke up a street brawl near the courthouse, and in 2007 he presided over the trial of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, for outing a C.I.A. agent. The jury convicted Libby and the judge sentenced him to 30 months, but President Bush set him free, and President Trump later pardoned Libby. The judge was reportedly not amused, either time. I finally got to meet Judge Walton in 2011 as he prepared for the perjury trial of Roger Clemens in the steroids frolics. Maybe because of his former school superintendent, Judge Walton agreed to meet me, on the grounds that we not discuss Clemens, at all. I thought maybe I could slip in a question or two, but after five minutes in his office, I knew better than to try to make a fancy journalistic feint through Judge Walton's defense. Nobody pulls the okey-doke on Judge Walton. I was in the courtroom in the first hour of the Clemens trial, when the prosecution alluded to a witness who had been ruled off limits. The highly-paid defense lawyer stuck up his hand and made an objection and the judge called a timeout, saying he needed a few minutes to think it over. After consulting his colleagues in back chambers, the judge declared a mistrial. This year Judge Walton was assigned a case questioning whether the attorney general had accurately portrayed the Mueller report long before the public could see it. The judge alluded to “inconsistencies” from the attorney general. In football terms, the liaison between the president and the attorney general has produced a dirty game for the past three years -- lots of grappling in the mud, kneeing and gouging in the pile. All I know is, when the oblong football skitters loose in a legal scrimmage, I want it to roll near Reggie Walton, from Donora, Pa. The article I wrote in 2011 before the brief Clemens trial:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/sports/03vecsey.html Judge Walton's official website: https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/content/senior-judge-reggie-b-walton  Pete Buttigieg and Chasten Buttigieg We sat in front of the tube Sunday night and made that exclamation, watching a politician kiss his husband and then deliver a gracious and hopeful speech. The love in the room was tangible, following months of campaigning by Mayor Pete in far corners of the United States, where he was treated with respect and affection by wide swaths of the population. In the narrow sense, this was not a triumph, since Buttigieg had just been ignored/rejected by voters in South Carolina, who had other agendas, quite understandable. But Buttigieg knew he had taken his youth and hope and skill to the American public and received votes, delegates, and promise of a future. So, yes, this scene was not something we had thought we would see in a national election, any time soon. In a way, it reminded me of the hope of turning, dare I admit it, 21 in the election year of 1960, and seeing a candidate I thought represented youth and idealism, John F. Kennedy, beating Richard M. Nixon. For anybody believing in equal opportunity, there was pride in that religious barricade coming down, but much more it was the hope of another generation coming along, that would sort things out, or so we hoped. More to the point, Buttigieg’s speech, clearly without prompters or notes, celebrating values like honesty and equality and facts, reminded us of a speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, by a senator, of color. My wife caught it live, and told me about it, and said Barack Obama would be president, and soon, because he could express the hope and ideals of the nation. Four years later, we saw an appealing family, husband and wife and two little girls, walk onto a stage in Grant Park, Chicago, to acknowledge being elected president. “Did you ever think you’d see that?” I can only speak for myself, but the magical sight reflected to my upbringing, the highly “progressive” political values of my family – the adoration for Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, the records by Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson in our house, and the discussion group of working class people in Queens, intentionally maintained at 50-50, black and white, that sometimes met in my family’s living room. How often do you see family ideals expressed on worldwide television from a jammed lakeside park in Chicago? For all the birther crap being spread about the Obamas, this was a family victory. Now it is a gay couple, Pete and Chasten, married, kissing in front of the world, celebrating the reality that Mayor Pete had been accepted – chosen in primaries and caucuses – particularly by older folks, in a time when younger people are much more comfortable with gender diversity. And then Mayor Pete gave a speech that reminded us of Barack Obama in 2004. Nobody knows what will play out in the coming days and months. I won’t even go into the glaring and dangerous failures of the current president. I only know that Mayor Pete kissed his husband, and gave a great speech, and that made us feel better, if only for the moment. “Did you ever think you’d see that?”  Grant Park, Chicago, 2008  "Lord of the Flies."
Circular firing squads. Mass suicides. That’s what the Democrats have going for them, self-destructive fools that they are. They are trying to beat The Worst Person in the World and none of them can summon enough dignity and knowledge to help their causes. (There is even published talk of seeking a compromise candidate if Bernie Sanders cannot get enough delegates by the convention. Sounds like more anarchy ....except.... except.... for months I have been sad that Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio did not run for president. It's bizarre that at this point there is still strong sentiment for "another" candidate and even the fantasy that Michelle Obama would agree to run for vice president. I wouldn't wish it on her. But that only speaks to the desperate need to upgrade the leadership of this country.) I never realized how degraded the primary system is until CNN held a so-called Town Hall from Charleston, S.C., Wednesday night. We caught Bloomberg, Biden, Klobuchar and Warren, all with an hour of their own, to answer thoughtful questions from screened members of the audience – clearly an elite group. Without yapping and trying to draw blood from a fellow candidate, all four displayed their strengths, often going for 3-4 minutes on one question. Their answers were such a contrast to the inarticulate, uninformed blather from Trump when he tries to assure us that the Coronavirus will be fine with Mike Pence (Mr. Science) in charge. Bloomberg was highly informed and adult, talking about being a mayor of a world city. Biden was touchingly knowledgeable about the reasons for brain cancer affecting the military, including his beloved son Beau. At the end of his hour, he motioned the questioner to come to the front and he would supply references. Klobuchar still talked about all the bills she had helped send “to Mitch McConnell’s desk,” still appearing self-centered but also emulating past senators who ran (and won) presidential contests. And Warren, while still overly kinetic and anecdotal, reminded us of the lawyer/senator who has effectively reigned in the bandit banks and insurance companies. The format was a welcome relief from the Trumpian reality shows, the Simon types sneering at contestants, Jerry Springer dragging human misery onto the stage and goading people to attack each other. Maybe America is not terminally afflicted with show-biz hysteria. Instead of turning public figures into survivors, it is time to do away with these hideous mass “debates” that turn into pie fights. And while they are at it, let's do away with the caucuses, all that inscrutable and inarticulate milling around -- not democracy in action but rather a theater of the absurd. This is important. America has a president who is a lethal mix of malicious and stupid and greedy. Earth cannot afford more of this. If there is still time, let's restore a touch of gravitas to the process. No more mass “debates.”
It's Black History Month in the U.S. -- time to acknowledge people who have succeeded despite the shackles of slavery and segregation -- America's original sin, still hanging over us.
By sad coincidence, two of America's great strivers passed within days of each other, and have been honored in lavish and literate obituaries by two star writers in The New York Times. Katherine Johnson and B. Smith both had singular success in demanding fields, breaking barriers and stereotypes. Mrs. Johnson escaped segregated schools to qualify as a mathematician for NASA, and later made the pre-computer calculations that helped take American astronauts into space. (My Appalachian buddy, Randolph Fiery, points out in a Comment below just how difficult it was for Mrs. Johnson's parents to seek a high level of education for their precocious daughter, involving a long trek over the mountains of West Virginia.) Katherine Johnson and her black female colleagues were later depicted in the movie “Hidden Figures.” She died at 101 on Monday in Virginia and was honored in an obituary by Margalit Fox. “NASA was a very professional organization,” the obituary quoted Mrs. Johnson telling The Observer of Fayetteville, N.C., in 2010. “They didn’t have time to be concerned about what color I was.” B. Smith began as a model, wrote and was a television host and designed household goods, but was best known for the restaurant bearing her name in the Theater District of Manhattan. She died at 70 on Saturday on Long Island. The obituary by William Grimes told how Barbara Smith from Pennsylvania was a dynamo in childhood: “I inherited a paper route, I sold magazines, had lemonade stands, I was a candy striper and into fund-raising,” she told The Times in 2011. “I’ve always enjoyed being busy.” She had her self-image, and she was not shy about describing it: “B. Smith’s brand is about is bringing people together," she said, speaking of herself in the third person, as basketball superstars do on occasion. "I think that if Martha Stewart and Oprah had a daughter, it would be B. Smith,” she told National Public Radio in 2007. The success and resolve of Katherine Johnson and B. Smith, as they ignored stereotypes, would be inspiring anytime. In Black History Month, the accounts of their accomplished lives lit up my day. * * * (The obits are too long to reproduce here, so I am enclosing the links to the NYT website. People who do not subscribe can pull up a certain amount of free links per month. Other obits of these two achievers will surely be on the web -- GV.) Katherine Johnson: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/science/katherine-johnson-dead.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage B. Smith: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/obituaries/b-smith-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1  It's come to this The other day I referred to the current debates as a "horror show." Then came Wednesday night's Democratic slap-down from Las Vegas, with all the candidates greeting Mike Bloomberg with all the ear-ringing civility of the old Jerry Springer show, or maybe a Trump stalk-a-thon from 2016. It's all a reality show now. What would happen if, say, Adlai Stevenson and Robert Taft, prominent candidates of the left and right from the 1950's, wandered into that raucous scrum? Hard to maintain dignity in this melee. Rip Van Bloomberg blinked and shrugged and pursed his lips at the political Billingsgate being heaved at him. Rotten fish and unkind verbiage. Didn't they know who he is? I'm typing this in mid-morning on Thursday. It wouldn't surprise me if Mayor Mike said "screw this" before noon and fired up his private carbon-burner for a weekend in his mansion in London. (Beats the hell out of Mar-a-Lago.) What does he need this for? I'll leave the ratings and snide points to the paid observers in the media. I only want to add that Joe Biden maintained his avuncular posture while people around him were tossing verbal chamber pots around the stage. Maybe that means Uncle Joe is irrelevant? Or he is going to wait for Senator Amy and Mayor Pete to be led away for mutual assault? It's a battle of attrition out there while Trump pardons body-double criminals who remind him of, well, himself. Meanwhile, Joe Biden stayed on his feet, hair and syntax in place. (Here's what I wrote about him the other day, before Mayor Mike wandered onto the stage, stunningly unprepared:) * * * On Monday I strolled past an active television screen and saw a poised gent making sense (at least, to me) and I paused to take a look. Omigosh, it was Joe Biden, the candidate that the national hangin' jury has consigned to oblivion. Time to take Grandpa to the Dog Track. Biden sounded and looked healthy, focused, experienced and decent -- not the distracted old-timer out in public beyond his bedtime in this circus of primaries, outdoors in small, snowbound states. He spoke rationally about the danger of the disturbed man currently defiling the post of President,. He spoke in some detail about the right way to run his country. "Wait a minute," I said out loud. He sounded like somebody who could pick a cabinet much better than the current collection of self-serving ghouls. He sounded as if he had some job experience, could absorb facts, as opposed to the illiterate and sadistic buffoon we currently have. Joe Biden was being interviewed by Nicolle Wallace, the reforming Republican who has become one of the very best hosts on MSNBC. She asked good questions, did not interrupt or blather like some people I could mention. So he's old. So are most of the other leading candidates. I'm three-plus years older than Biden, blessed to be in good shape, but I can easily imagine a president wanting to sneak off for a nap. Then again, look at the bloated, addled oaf we have now. (Old president? Get a younger running mate. Stacey Abrams, age 46, jobbed out of the Senate by Georgia's establishment, would be a perfect running mate.) So Biden stutters a bit -- a lifelong condition he has mostly overcome, which sounds worse in the circus carnival of primaries. Listening to him the other day, I could see him making sense with leaders of other countries, members of both parties, corporate executives, union officials, as well as citizens of all political leanings. I could see him delegating chores to responsible assistants. The former Veep has been there, done that. (I know, I know, the "borrowed" speech, Anita Hill, the vote on Iraq, his unqualified son taking a cushy "job" in Ukraine, complaints that Biden is a bit too old-school hands-on.) For 14-plus minutes, Joe Biden looked and sounded presidential -- perhaps more than anybody else in this mad roller-coaster of a campaign. For that moment, I was once again ready to reconsider the potential candidates to save this country.  In church in South Carolina, recently, |
 With Dalai Lama, 1979
Loyal Reader Hansen Alexander has filed an interview with, of all people, me. It's on his blog. (Just past photo of rat!) My thanks for his interest. GV notesfromnewratcity.wordpress.com/blog/ MODERN LOVE:
David Vecsey's sweet tale of distant love before the Web, now NYT Podcast, narrated by Griffin Dunne. Please see: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/before-the-web-hearts-grew-silent.html?referer= Categories
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