I Voted!

Those who have seen my Facebook profile picture know that I have said I will be voting for Bloom County characters Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin, representing the Meadow Party. County strip creator Berke Breathed used the two for satirizing the American presidential election process in 1984 and 88, not realizing that 2024 would produce an election that defies satire.

At the polling place today, I wrote in those names. My state's election laws forbid write-in votes, so my choice to do so made my presidential vote invalid -- the conscientious poll workers explained that to me when I told them my intentions. Of course, the political realities of my state invalidate my ballot already. Even when state government was deep, deep blue we did not give our electoral votes to a Democrat, and have not since 1964. Since I will never vote for Donald Trump, my presidential vote is irrelevant. Other matters, such as judicial nominations, I took far more seriously -- I have no intention of letting our current governor have any say in three state supreme court justices, for example.

Some might wonder if the choice to vote for cartoon characters indicates I'm not taking this presidential election seriously. Indeed, I am not.

But neither major party did either. This election has been about vibes, memes, joy, couches, accusations of fascism, the Handmaid's Tale, who is and is not weird...and a full brigade of other matters that have nothing to do with the job of President of the United States. In the last couple of days prior to the vote, dueling billionaires told their supporters that an incorrect vote might make this the last election ever. Elon Musk assured people at a GOP rally that such was the case, and Oprah Winfrey told supporters of Vice-President Harris they face the exact same danger if they vote differently than she urged them to do. I don't remember much from high school math, but I'm pretty sure opposites cancel each other out and leave you with zero. Which is coincidentally the value of such statements.

The candidates mentioned things like foreign policy, border problems and a few other actual issues, but not in any way that suggested they had substantive ideas about how to deal with them. Former president Donald Trump suggested that wages earned from tips and Social Security payments not be taxed. Ms. Harris suggested large scale lending programs to help minority men start businesses.

Neither candidate addressed the recurring budget deficits and the ticking time bomb of our national debt. Neither candidate has a plan for what to do when money runs out for Social Security and Medicare, triggering deep and painful automatic cuts enacted in bills by legislators now retired or, well, buried.

Mr. Trump is a goof and an ignoramus, a man who is for any policy that gets him cheered for by whatever crowd he is in front of. Ms. Harris ran a failed campaign in 2020 that floundered before a single primary vote was cast. She became the Democratic nominee when her party took a look at the man behind the curtain of pretended mental acuity and found him napping.

Other people are voting for one of these two candidates or one of a handful of also-rans. Many of them thought about what they wanted from a President and decided which candidate most closely matches it. Many more took a look at what they didn't want and are voting for the candidate that overlaps that list the least.

Though I am holding to a banner that suggests neither two major party candidates are worth the ink it would take to check their names, I respect any voter who thought about this election and made a decision. Every one of them put in more intellectual work than either major political party has done all year.

In 1988, Opus the Penguin became the Meadow Party VP nominee because he had gone out for snacks when the vote was taken. He took over most of the campaigning because presidential candidate Bill the Cat had joined a cult (better than the '84 campaign, when he was dead. It's a long story). The storyline is of course absurd when compared to real life.

But if you close one eye and say, "Thppt! Ack..."

Ten-Seven

My Facebook header pic of an Israeli flag has been up for 10 months and will remain so until every living hostage is at home and every murdered hostage rests in native soil.

But on the first anniversary of the terror attacks by Hamas, I also think of my own country, and how in far too many places, even pictures of those hostages are not safe. We often consider ourselves and our views of the 21st century as far more enlightened than previous days, and how our understanding of other cultures is more inclusive.

In this one area, though, I think a figure of the 18th century might teach us today, and the words of the first president could prove fruitful for his successors’ contemplation. George Washington’s letter “to a Hebrew Congregation” in Rhode Island in 1790 during the second year of his first term is a response to a letter of congratulations from The Congregation of Khal Kadosh Yeshuot Israel, sent to mark Washington’s visit to Newport, RI. In it, the new president quotes the synagogue leader’s words back to him and assured that the in the new nation, there would be “to bigotry no sanction; to persecution no assistance.” He closed with this paragraph:

“May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Of course we note how far short Washington fell of his own standard, especially when it came to racial attitudes and slavery. But at least he held a standard, and claimed it, and it is one when it is kept could be an aspiration of all of us toward all of us.

The standard so visible on college campuses and in the tearing hands of poster vandals is a different one, I fear. An older one, come round again at last, that seeks not a lasting solution, but a final one.

Lord Love the Children

When recently applying for a writing job, I came across some old clips from my days as Ace Reporter Friar. One was this, from a visit to observe Chicago teacher Marva Collins in July 1991. Though it's 25 years old, I still kinda like it:

“Lord Love the Children”…

Renowned Educator Shows Students It’s All Inside Them

By BRETT THOMASSON El Reno Daily Tribune

 

He who eats my bread does my will.  -- Marcus Aurelius

That stern Roman proverb serves as much more than a memory exercise for students who have Marva Collins for a teacher -- it tells them what their lives will be like.

“There are two kinds of people in the world, children,” she says. “There are creators, and then there are second-handers; there are parasites. What will you be?”

Creators, she said, have “an unbarred vision.” They may suffer and be opposed by people, but they will win. Second-handers will do what they’re told.

Collins was a Chicago public school teacher in 1975 when she became disillusioned with the way public schools worked. So she founded her own school, and has been featured on “60 Minutes,” had her story told in a TV movie, and turned down offers from two presidents to serve as the United States Secretary of Education.

Through the Marva Collins Westside Preparatory School Foundation, teachers and principals at 25 Oklahoma schools, including Webster Elementary School, have taken part in training designed to spread the word about her methods.

Two teachers from Webster traveled to Chicago to watch what goes on in Collins’ school. In this year’s state standardized tests, the students in their classrooms scored 20 percent above last years results.

For three weeks, the foundation is sponsoring a visit from Collins and two of  her teachers at Ponca City’s Marland Mansion. This is the first time she has tried her techniques outside of her own school.

Collins said the ability to succeed like the Webster children did is in each child. “This is no miracle of Marva Collins,” she said. “I don’t put anything in these children. It’s there, I just have to work to get it out.”

Among the things that were “there” in a group of about 20 nine- to 11-year olds: the ability to count to 10 in a variety of languages, including Punjabi, Japanese and Swahili; the ability to discover the Latin roots of words; the ability to expand base words such as parentheses and Bacchus into parenthetically and bacchanalian and more. A lot more.

There are arguments against teaching children this young such things. Collins has heard them, and her most potent defense is the string of academic success her students have produced: scholarships to private high schools, academic honor academies and advanced degrees from prestigious colleges.

She has other answers to people who say students can’t learn or understand that much. “Can’t” is probably the worst four-letter word someone can utter in Collins’ hearing.

“Children, do you know the words to rap songs?” she asks when someone stumbles in reciting a poem. “Raise your hands if you know the words to at least one rap song.” A sea of hands waves excitedly.

“Then you can learn this poem,” she says. The poem is “Wonderful Word” by William Rans. “What is the difference between a rap song and a poem?”

The children agree that rap songs are more fun to listen to, but there isn’t much difference in learning them. “See, you can learn it.”

The problem, she says, is that they have learned to equate a mistake with failing. If she can cure them of nothing else, she can cure them of that.

“What is school, children? School is a practice place. Even the greatest masters did not always create a masterpiece. Their back yards were probably full of wadded-up old canvas they threw out.”

If they cannot make a mistake, the children repeat, they cannot learn.

“You see, you’re afraid of looking ridiculous. Children today are afraid of looking ridiculous. If you live long enough, you’ll look ridiculous. Only a fool is perfect, and that’s just because he doesn’t know he’s a fool.”

Again, an answer comes slowly. “Who wrote ‘Beat It?’” she asks.

“Michael Jackson,” is the quick response.

“Now, why didn’t you answer the other question that quickly? Yooou…taaalk…liiike… thiiiis…fooor…Miiisses…Collliinss…queeestion, but when I asked who wrote ‘Beat It,’ you said ‘Michaeljackson.’ Your speech did not what, children?”

“Did not go trippingly upon the tongue!” they recite loudly with her. “And who wrote that? It was William…”

“Shakespeare!”

“And he was a playwright, which means he wrote…”

“Plays!”

What on Earth good does it do, detractors ask, for children to know the numbers from one to 10 in Punjabi? Will they remember it? And how much can children understand of the proverbs that they memorize, such as Henry David Thoreau’s “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”

They understand some, Collins says. And since they must learn things, they might as well learn things that they will one day use and want to know.

Attention wanes as lunchtime nears, and young bodies become restless. There are nearly 20 people in this room who couldn’t care less if something is Daedelusian or Icarian.

“Children, you will not remember everything you learn here in the three weeks we are together,” Collins says. “Some of these things will not stay with you.

“But there was a man named John Donne, who said that when he was 6, his father would read all kinds of books to him. When he grew up, he said, he didn’t always remember what he had heard then. But the seed had been planted.

“That’s what we are doing here. It’s exposure. We’re planting a seed that will germinate.”

How an assignment is presented is as important as the assignment itself.

“Punch those adjectives in that poem,” she says to a reciter. “Make them stand out. You’re a bright boy, you know you are and let me hear your bright boy’s voice big and strong!”

It is the next student’s turn. “’Wonderful World,’ by…” she begins.

“Mrs. Collins, I shall recite for you…” the correction comes.

“Mrs. Collins, I shall recite for you the poem…”

“We must learn to speak in complete sentences,” Collins says when the reciter is finished. “If we do not speak in complete sentences, we will not write in complete sentences. Children, if we do not speak in complete sentences, we will not what?”

“Write in complete sentences,” they finish for her.

“What must we do to write in complete sentences?”

“Speak in complete sentences.”

The extra work and higher expectations, Collins says, are useless without extra support and extra care.

“I put all work up on the wall, errors and all,” she says. “I’ll work with the errors anyway, and if I don’t put the work with errors on the wall, I’m just beating that child back down and telling him his best wasn’t good enough.”

“I think your teachers must like the top of your head,” Collins says to a young reciter. “You’re always looking down.” She lifts a chin. “I do this in my sleep sometimes,” she laughs, repeating the motion.

“Look at me, bright girl. I don’t want to see the top of your head, I want to see your bright face and those pretty eyes.”

Another student adds a word or even a line into the poem as he reads. “I love your creativity,” Collins says. “It didn’t say that the way he wrote it, and I love the way you created something else in it.”

The children must learn more than words in books and on papers.

“Remember The Wizard of Oz? How they already had what they were looking for? You already have everything you think you need. You’re unique! That person you admire; you have something they don’t have!

“You’re too bright to be a second-hander and do what someone else does when it’s wrong. You’re too bright to use drugs; you’re too bright to steal.”

Even when it’s necessary to lecture on improper behavior, there is no lack of support. “I love you,” she repeats while she works through the problem. “You’re my friend, but friends disagree sometimes.”

The extra effort from Collins is extra effort that can come from any adult who works with a child. Any teacher can support and push a child upward, to borrow one of her phrases; but they may choose not to try.

Although she doesn’t say so in so many words, the idea is that there’s nothing right with a child that an adult can’t make wrong and nothing wrong that an adult can’t make worse.

“If you don’t want to learn and you just sit there, and you don’t make a noise or cause trouble, you’ll be left alone. The teacher will let you sit there. But you won’t learn,” she said.

“It’s your right to fail, but it’s not your right to drag us down with you.”

As the younger children in the other classrooms line up for lunch, Collins sets her meal down to speak with them and to give and receive hugs. There are obviously perks to this job.

“Look at you,” she says to a little girl with glasses and a denim jumper. “You’re dressed just like her again,” she continues, and clasps the hands of a second girl. This one is shorter, with her hair in pigtails at the side.

“We’re twins!” the first girl pipes up.

“We’re going to be twins again tomorrow,” her friend says. Collins’ face lights up and she leads the pair around to the other adults working with her.

“Look at these two,” she says, beaming. “They’re dressed alike and they say they’re going to be twins again tomorrow. Lord love the children, keep the grownups away from these two.”

The twins, one shy with a freckle or two on her pale cheeks, the other with laughing brown eyes and a brilliant smile on her dark brown face, just keep smiling.

-30-

Old Bahama Straits

 In writing about an earlier book in this series I noted how author Chris Durbin's choice to begin his hero's adventures during the Seven Years War of the 1750s and 1760s gave him so many more un-sailed seas in which to maneuver. The Napoleonic era is replete with series hashing and re-hashing the different events of that conflict to the degree that readers might actually be able to prepare a quality research paper on the subject using only fictional works as sources.

Durbin's 15th volume makes the advantages of the choice as clear as could be, as Virginia-born Edward Carlisle captains his fourth-rate, 50-gun ship of the line Dartmouth during the English invasion and capture of Havana. A secret treaty between the kings of France and Spain brought the latter into the war, making the capital of the Spanish territory an obvious target.

What isn't obvious is how to attack Havana, which rests at a confluence of straits and currents that allows it to see attacking fleets from a distance and have its own naval forces enter battle at an advantage. But one of our heroes, Edward Carlisle, has successfully (more or less) navigated the treacherous Old Bahama Straits and on the orders of the admiralty devises a clever plan to guide the invasion fleet through them. Success will bring them upon the city before its defenders can respond, and allow the English and colonial forces to lay siege and then force Havana's surrender.

One of the features of the Carlisle-Holbrook series has been the way that Carlisle's mind rapidly calculates the solution to a problem before him. Whether it's capturing a wandering Spanish brig (that turns out to contain a very important messenger) or altering a ship's angle so its guns can reach much higher than ordinary, he sizes up situations quickly, deduces a course of action and puts it into motion, usually faster than the enemy can cope. It's on full display in this volume, which may be one of the best of what is a high-quality series. Characterizations, action sequences and sea battles all fall neatly into place in what is a truly great read.

The reviewer has set aside following several other historical naval fiction series as they have become dull, repetitive and have a shadow of their earlier flash. Now fifteen books into his own work, Durbin has yet to disappoint, and finishing number 15 only begins the waiting for number 16.

No, Really, I Come to Bury Oscar

Excitement over the Killers of the Flower Moon movie made in my community translated in me being interested in the Academy Awards for the first time in many a day. I was especially interested in Lily Gladstone, nominated for best actress, and Scott George, nominated for the best original song.

Gladstone was nominated for her portrayal of Mollie Burkhart, the woman whose bravery and determination eventually helped expose the murder of Osage people by white men trying to secure the wealth of their oil. George's song "Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” was featured in the movie in a scene showing modern Osage dancing.

George and several Osage singers and dancers performed the song onstage, a historic moment in itself. "Wahzhazhe" is the name of the Osage people in their own language before it was Franco-fied by the French-speaking traders who met them, and Osage people shot off fireworks near town when the performance aired.

He lost to "What Was I Made For?" from Barbie. Academy members often pride themselves on their liberal or even progressive attitudes about most social issues, but they have always been gun-shy about going all the way to elevate something entirely from another culture and in another language. The first movie not shot in English to win a statue was the Korean horror move Parasite in 2019.

While "Jai Ho" won best song from 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, it was an English translation of the song in the soundtrack. "Naatu Naatu" from the 2022 Telugu-language action movie RRR was the first and only non-English song to have won an Oscar. The vaunted progressivism goes out the door when given a chance to reward music from Native Americans -- and correct the gross caricatures of  "Indian music" from movies of years past. The Academy's songwriting members went with a hit song from a hit movie about one of the most ubiquitous toys in America.

Gladstone, along with Annette Bening (Nyad) and Carrie Mulligan (Maestro), played a historical character. Diana Nyad is an out LGBT journalist who, after several tries, swam from Cuba to Key West in 2013 at the age of 64. Mulligan played Costa Rican actress and activist Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, the wife of composer Leonard Bernstein, the maestro of the title. Winner Emma Stone of Poor Things and Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall played fictional characters.

Despite my antipathy towards the awards, I've always believed that the nominees for different acting categories are generally good performances from talented people. Yes, Whoopi Goldberg won the Best Supporting Actress category in Ghost, but every theory has holes.

But when given the chance to make history and buttress its progressive bona fides by rewarding Gladstone's performance, or to honor actresses who brought two other extraordinary women's lives to the screen, the Academy's acting members thought it best to laud an actress who plays a woman given the brain of her unborn child who then indulges in lots of sex and socialism.

Over the last 25 years or so, women playing characters in normal situations or playing historical characters have occasionally won Oscars, but it's not the way to bet. When there's weirdness or excessive sexuality (or both), lay your money on the actress playing that character. Because the Academy voters probably will.

Prodigal Returns?

An update on my wandering package: At 10:32 AM today it made it back to Tulsa and now has a reasonable chance of reaching my mailbox. Of course, Tulsa is where it went awry before, so who knows?

In any event, I’m looking forward to hearing about what the New Orleans suburbs are like.

Neither Snow nor Rain nor Sleet...

So on February 8 I ordered a book. It was in a store near Houston. ABEbooks sent me the tracking number, so I could see what our mighty Postal Service was doing with the book. I've looked things up before like this, because sometimes it's interesting to watch them come from distant places.

This time it was very interesting. The book made it's way up through Texas to reach Oklahoma City by February 10. Later that day, it went to Tulsa, and the expected delivery date showed Feb. 11, which was early. The next day it was still in Tulsa and showed a delivery date of Feb 12. Instead, on February 12, my book from near Houston arrived at the United States Postal Service Shipping Center in New Orleans, and the due date disappeared, replaced by a message that my package was "moving through the system" and would be delivered late. All through today it showed "In transit to the next station." It arrived at the next station -- Saint Rose, LA, at 8:58 PM local time. Saint Rose is a suburb a short way west from New Orleans.

So I tried to figured out why my package started heading towards Louisiana, and your guess is as good as mine. The city of Roseland, Louisiana, has a ZIP Code that has the same digits as mine except the second and third digits are switched, which right now is my best guess. Fortunately my exact street address does not exist in Roseland, so there is a chance someone will wake up and send it back to Pawhuska.

There are days when I neither want to send anything through the United States Postal Service nor order from anyone who ships with them. So far, all of the days since the original expected delivery have been those days. And counting.

An Interesting Idea

Writer Leah Libresco Sargent reviews a book in the latest edition of National Review on how the efforts to use social media algorithms to keep users scrolling have “flattened culture.” I haven’t read the book, by Kyle Chayka, but Sargent’s opinions on the same issues are interesting in themselves.

Other books and articles have shown us that social media algorithms are designed to keep our eyes on the app, and that they exploit some of humanity’s most atavistic traits to do so. We evolved to keep an eye out for danger, so we are drawn to bad news. It’s more informative than good news in terms of identifying threats. That’s why many of the articles we read have clickbait ads at the bottom such as one that tells us sugar doesn’t cause diabetes - this does! Or that doctors beg Americans not to eat this food. Often accompanied by grotesque pictures that have little to do with the subject at hand but which activate the part of the brain that wants to slow down and see the wreck, they are junk science at best. But the advertiser doesn’t care if these ads are true - only that you click on it.

Chayka says that social media as it currently exists is just a more genteel version of the same thing, designed to grab eyeballs with less grotesque but equally intriguing lures. Sargent says both hide an identical hook, and neither proprietor gives a durn about the impact of their offerings. Her suggestion that we think of Big Tech offerings as another so-called sin industry - like alcohol, tobacco or pornography - probably goes a little too far. But creating the idea that social media is best used, if at all, in sparing doses by grown-ups would probably make a bunch of things better.

All Warm and Fuzzy

That feeling you get when you see your preferred football team’s logo painted for the Super Bowl…on the home field of your longtime hated rival.

The Sophie’s Choice Election

In the Norman Styron novel and Meryl Streep movie of the name Sophie’s Choice, the title character carries with her a dark secret. On being sent to the Auschwitz death camp, she was told she could keep one of her children and she sent her daughter Eva to the gas chambers.

I can’t be the first person to compare an election to the horrible choice forced on the fictional Sophie Zawistokawa. But I think this election merits it. We seem overwhelmingly likely to be forced into a 2020 sequel in the presidential election, and we will probably have to experience January 2025 through January 2029 with either a sack of raging overbronzed suet behind the Resolute desk or a President who gets told “Good boy” when he finishes signing a bill without a nap.

Much is made of how the primary voting system allows the people to speak on their candidates, taking the choice out of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms of the days of undemocratic (small D) party bosses selecting the “right person” (non-political use of the term ‘right’). But no smoke-filled room ever produced two men so completely unsuitable for the office of President or so uniquely incapable of doing the job.

Recently, Republican candidate Nikki Haley was asked if she would accept a vice-presidential spot on a ticket with Mr. Trump. She said she wasn’t running for second place (a significant overestimation of the vice-presidential role). That was smart, because saying, “My body couldn’t stand the weight loss of all of the barfing I’d do whenever I was on stage with this offal” might have looked bad. Yes, she worked in his administration, but as the Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Not Washington. 

Even though he’s likely to win the nomination, Mr. Trump couldn’t let Ms. Haley say she wouldn’t take the job - he had to say it wouldn’t be offered. At a rally in New Hampshire, he said she wasn’t “presidential timber.” Sticking with that metaphor, Mr. Trump isn’t either. Unless “presidential timber” describes an empty shell of bark on the forest floor that crumbles when touched.

President Biden is simply a different kind of awful. His reversal of what he believed to be Mr. Trump’s unfair border policies has resulted in a deluge of people crossing the border unprocessed - in numbers large enough that Senator John Fetterman equated them to “essentially Pittsburgh showing up at the border.” Pres. Biden, in a brief Q & A with reporters, said there is indeed a problem at the border, and he’s been saying so “for the past ten years.” He said - ostensibly to Congress, otherwise that reporter’s on the hook for a lot of dough - “Give me the money.” But there isn’t any money, Mr. President. You gave it away at the beginning of your term in a third Covid-relief package that brought us Saturday Night Fever-era inflation rates.

President Biden could truly serve the country by selecting a running mate that could be President, since he’s almost certain to become unable to perform his duties should he win in November. But acknowledging that Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t do the job would require him to admit to a mistake and to piss off most of his base. No modern politician has that kind of courage, so it won’t happen. It would get him my vote, though, because I could claim I did not vote for a senescent grifter, I voted for the competent understudy. 

If Mr. Trump truly loved the country he wants to make great, he’d step aside for either Ms. Haley or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Either of them would build on his seemingly unintentional first-term victories and have the advantage of 1) Not mounting a batshit insane revenge party and 2) Not being batshit insane. But again, he’d have to admit mistakes, see reality and act for the greater good of someone other than himself - courage and vision impossible for a modern politician.

The choice in my headline is this lousy pun: Vote for awful? Or vote for offal? On the page, the words sound the same but mean different things. The horrid reality of November 5, 2024 is the reverse: They sound different but mean the same thing: Four years of dreary rage.