Have You No Shame, Sir, At Last? Have You No Shame?

I echo the famous question “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at last? Have you no sense of decency?” asked of Sen Joe McCarthy by Joseph Welch, counsel for the US Army at the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. That marked the turning point of McCarthy's career.

To President Trump, I ask: Have you no shame, sir, at last? Have you no shame?

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump disgraced himself and the Presidency in his hypocritical remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, put into his mouth by some lackey, perhaps Stephen Miller who prepares many of his speeches. This Draft-Dodger Donald J. Trump, who received in 1968 a 1-Y deferment from his Queens draft board after his fourth student deferment had expired (and later, in ‘72, a re-classification to 4-F) on the basis of his claim to have a letter from a doctor (Podiatrist Larry Braunstein who, it turned out, was a tenant of Fred Trump’s) attesting that Donald J. Trump had bone spurs. Trump later said the bone spurs were “minor” and “cured themselves without treatment.” How convenient. And where is this purported letter?

This is same Donald J. Trump who during the 2017 wreath-laying at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, turned and asked his chief of staff, General John F, Kelly “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” General Kelly, who rose from enlisted infantryman to four-star General, was renowned for his leadership, presence, and accountability. Kelly was stunned.

This is the same Donald J. Trump who in August of 2018, upon the customary lowering of flags to honor Sen John McCain’s death, stormed “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser.”

Yesterday, President Trump indulged in hyperbolic eulogies for “fallen heroes”, who answered their nation’s call, “borne the battles” and “formed ranks of mighty walls of flesh and blood”, “lived through nightmares so that we could live the American Dream” and so on and on. What hypocrisy!

He also broke the law forbidding political use of National Military Cemeteries for political purposes by calling out by name his predecessor and lying about the Biden administration’s management of the VA.

In the past, I have shrugged off Trump’s lies and stupid claims (yesterday’s? That we won WWI) but now he has gone too far – cynical, hypocritical claims of loving, respecting, revering veterans and military service – this from a first order draft-dodger. He has defamed those buried at Arlington; has dishonored men like Gen. Kelly; men like Major General Bill Boice with whom I travelled in Sicily; like close friend USMC Capt. John Meredith, who voluntarily undertook two combat tours in Viet Nam.  Trump has made a mockery of such service. 

At the recent Hegseth meeting of general officers from across the globe, Trump accused them of being soft, of "wokeness", of not being martial. He threatened that if they did not like his directives, they should get out, losing their rank and their retirement. He had previously said, to Kelly, that he "wants generals like Hitler's generals", evidentally totally ignorant of their disdain for Hitler and of Operation Valkyrie's attempt to assassinate him.

Moreover, yesterday at Arlington and Tuesday, a week ago, at the Pentagon, he disgraced himself. 

With his hypocrisy and disdain for selfless service he has besmirched the office of POTUS – and this is unforgiveable. 

Have you no shame, sir, at last? Have you no shame?

 Fletch Waller (SSgt. USAR, 1958 - 1964)

The Middle Eastern Nation I Long to Love

Yesterday, at the Olympic Club, I gave a speech under that title. It was suggested that I post it to give others access to it. This is a blog version of that talk. Which middle eastern nation? I dedicated the talk to Kourosh and Darius, new members of the Club, both Iranian-American.

Yes, it is Iran that I would most like to admire, to visit, to love. But of course, I am not talking about today's Iran, but of the Iran it once was and could become again. Five reasons I long for that new Iran.

First, I long to love Iran because of its Persian Heritage.

We, educated in the Western canon, focused on Greece and its heritage, and most of us don't know of or appreciate what Greece's implacable enemies, the Persians, have given our culture. The first monotheist of which we have records was Zoroaster, founder of what became Persia's state religion, Zoroastrianism. Though dating is fuzzy, he preceded Akhenaton and Abraham in preaching monotheism to polytheistic societies. Zoroastrians also believed in an affirmative evil. To Christians who might ask how a loving God could make a Hitler, a Zoroastrian would answer that there is a competing evil God,  not just an absence of good or demonic possession but an affirmative Evil. Zoroaster also gave us judgement day.

Moreover, Persia gave us civic order by rule of law (at about the same time as did Hammurabi) and in architecture, the arch -- long before Roman engineers came on stage. 

Shiraz, a lush valley surrounded by dry mountains

And man-made oases with gardens and water features, not for supply, but in which to relax and fuel the soul with beauty.

Eram Garden, Shiraz

Second, because of its modernity

Until the advent of Fundamentalists Khomeini and his son Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran had a middle class -- now battered and impoverished, caught between Iran’s fundamentalists and our hostility and sanctions -- but still aspiring to middle class lives.. Before the theocracy, Iran had a representative parliamentary system; Iranians know how to run elections. For the first 3/4 of the 20thC, Iranian women enjoyed access to education, workforce participation, the professions, and had legal rights of property and independence. Under Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Sharia law was suppressed. Iran increasingly urbanized.  True, the Shahs Pahlavi, father and son, had autocratic powers over the legislature. None-the-less, Iran's economic, social, and political structures had much ours could relate to and work with. Iran has experienced more modernity than its neighbor Islamic states.

Third, because it’s Shia, not Sunni

This may strike some of you as prejudice, but reflect with me:                        

• Of the 19 airliner hijackers who attacked America on 9/11, all 19 were Sunni.
• Sunnis appear to grow radicals: ISIS, Al Qaida, The Islamic Brotherhood, the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, Salafi Jihadism, etc.: all Sunni. Yes, theocratic Iran sponsors Hezbollah, the Houthi, and Hamas as instruments of state policy, but they don't have such a track record as have the Sunni of home-grown terror movements. 
• Traditionally, Shia have shown more tolerance of non-Muslims than have Sunni though Khomeini changed that for the worse.
• There is no in-grained history of animosity to the US until the modern era of oil politics. British Intelligence with CIA aid and encouragement changed that in 1953 by deposing democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh because he moved to nationalize Anglo-Iranian Oil (now known as BP.) By contrast, prickly Sunni governments, especially the Saudi Wahabis, have long resented US interference and presence in the region.

Fourth, I'd love to love Iran for the sake of my old friends – i.e., my 13^th & 14thC friends, the great medieval Persian poets.

Persia was polylingual: Arabic was the language of theology; Turkish, the language of administration; and Persian, the language of poetry. Persians revered their poets. Rumi, of the13thC, is perhaps the most famous, but in fact he was not Persian. He wrote in Persian, but he was born in what is now Afghanistan and raised in Turkey (Ann and I have been to his grave at Konya.)

My favorite bed-side companions, a century younger than Rumi, are from Shiraz. Shiraz, the beautiful, lush city of vineyards and rose gardens, of nightingales and wine shops. Yes, wine. In medieval Iran?  Shiraz was governed liberally at that time, though from time to time, conservative reformers shut down the wine shops. The wine shops were to Persian villages and towns what the pubs are today to English and Irish towns.  

Hafez wrote of love: love lost, lovers lost, unrequited love's despair, love of wine, of wineshops, and of youthful wine servers (picture barkeeps.) Hafez loved beauty and youth. He wrote of his love for girls and for boys. Muslim critics and clerics have woven a veil of propriety over Hafez's words, claiming his talk of loving boy or girl was a symbol of his love for his celestial maker, for God. Well, there is no evidence from Hafez for that. I don't believe Hafez ever gave a hint of that interpretation. My translator, Dick Davis, applies Occam's Razor to the work and simply takes at face value what Hafez says about liking boys and girls. Hafez's poetry is moving and beautiful despite what to us are occasional references to the unacceptable. (Persian society was not alone; the ancient Greeks and Romans condoned homosexuality and adolescent sexuality.)

Tomb of Hafez, Shiraz.

His companion on my beside table is Jahan Malek Khatun, an educated woman of the 14thC, a published poet, a royal princess, who sincerely and movingly wrote of love from the distaff side, but with little of the self-deprecating humor that endears Hafez to me.

The translations I use are Dick Davis's from Faces of Love (in which he also includes the works of Obayd-e Zakani, the bad boy of Shiraz who loved to write about his naughty bits and shock the 'nice' people of Persia, causing much clutching of pearls, I'm sure. I don't know this, but my guess is that some of the Pythons must have found him amusing.)   

And my Fifth reason for longing to love Iran are my new Iranian-American friends and acquaintances 

        such as

• beautiful Shiva S, Dir. of marketing and communications for the Friends of Waterfront Park. Shiva fully lives up to her name, which in Farsi means charmingly expressive;
• Shawn T, a medical entrepreneur in San Diego, a B’hai refugee from fundamentalist persecution; and
• Kourosh and Darius T whom I met through their/our Olympic Club. Kourosh, another refugee from fundamentalist persecution, has found acceptance here in hopefully still tolerant America.

Those, then, are my five reasons for longing to accept, to reach out to, to love Iran. But obviously, one cannot do so today. 

What would it take for me to come to love Iran? Change: big change in Teheran and Qom, big change in Washington and Miami Beach.

       From Qom:

• The passing of Ayatollah ali Khamenei and a return to moderation; 
• A middle-class uprising against theocracy; the dismantling of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts;
• A blossoming of participatory republicanism;
• A restoration and opening of Shiraz -- its rose gardens, vineyards, and nightingales (and its wine shops;) 
• And for Kourosh and Shawn, the freedom of choice, to choose to go back or to make their homes here, the freedom to visit their homeland in confidence and safety.

       And from Washington:

• A suspension of ideological intolerance; a repudiation of blood and soil as a litmus test of Americanism;
• An end to needing an "enemy” to justify autocratic rule by Executive Order; (fill in the blank _________. Venezuela? China? Iran? Canada? Who will be next?)
• A willingness to listen, to be present and really listen, and to discuss rather than bluster and threaten, or economically punish with tariffs;
• An acknowledgement of our differences but without judgement or proselytizing or coercion;
• A genuine search for common ground for collaborating on addressing common concerns. 

Iran is significant. Three times the land mass of France; half again as many people. Can we just feud and strangle this potential, modernist Middle East nation, or should we work toward an accommodation with it? My answer is evident if you have read this far. 

Yes, it will take regime changes, here and there, to enable me to love Iran, the Middle Eastern nation I most long to love. Will I live to see it? Probably not, but if my children persist and demand  change, my grandchildren might. Some of them might visit Shiraz one day and raise a glass to me. I sincerely wish so.

Fletch

For Those Who Care

My recent post (below) urges you Democrats to leave ideology aside for now and deal in proposals and programs that address people's life problems: e.g., accessible and affordable healthcare; universal preschool and day care; affordable housing; education expense and quality; inflation and the cost of living; protections of alien residents from arbitrary deportation; -- these are the issues that effect people's legitimate pursuit of happiness each day. 

Now, some have responded that they do care most passionately about threats to our democratic-republic's institutions and rights. I certainly agree that these are critical issues that must be addressed, just not now at the cost of investing our resources, energies, and voices to winning back the power of majorities in the House and Senate. Win back the power and you can roll back the autocracy.

But, for those of you to whom the threat to democratic-republicanism is uppermost, and for all of the rest of us, here is a sort of primer cobbled together from recent and forceful commentaries. Read these, ye who care. (To open these, click on each and then on re-direct; you will get the article in a new page,)

• An Extraordinary Opinion for Extraordinary Times from Preet Bharara
• Trump Is Not Afraid of Civil War. Neither Is Stephen Miller. from Tomas Edsall
• There’s No Precedent for This Shutdown  from Michelle Goldberg

A Call to You Democrats: Stop Agonizing About Liberalism

All this angst about the capability of liberalism in the face of growing fascism: it’s time to set aside liberalism and replace it with pragmatism. Stop bickering about progressive vs. moderate; you only give independents and Republicans material with which to mock and diminish you. Take a leaf from Bill Clinton’s book and focus not on ideologies but on effectiveness at improving the lives of people, even in his case, of “triangulation” i.e., of borrowing Republican positions.

Is fascism growing? Of course. Undeniably, yes. The latest manifestation is the intent of Larry and David Ellison to become the new Rupert Murdoch dynasty by welding together CNN, CBS, TikTok, Paramount, and Warner Brothers Discovery into what will be in effect a single voice espousing the views of the Haves. Look at AG Bondi’s threat to criminalize opposition voices and Commissioner Carr’s threat to pull the licenses of broadcasters – all at the name of protecting free speech, which really means speech of which we approve. Look at State investment in private capitalism, parallel to the German and Italian National Socialism of the ‘30’s and Chinese SOEs of the aughts. Look at Trump’s intrusions into corporate mergers and acquisitions. But, as real as these dangers are, set them aside for now. Your only avenue to remedying is control of Congress,  First things first: focus on November of '26; on winning majorities in Congress and the privilege of nominating judges. Leave ideological philosophicals for later.

It is time for Democrats and Independents to give voice to the Have-Nots and Would-Haves by adopting what let’s call an R to the 5th strategy

1. React: do not let pass unchallenged lies and slanders from the right. Don’t shrug and say “Oh, that’s just Trump being Trump.” Meet every one with strong rebuttal using spokespersons of credibility and energy.
2. Resist: show popular resistance and rejection by peacefully demonstrating on the streets and by suing (note how Trump, Besent, Holman, Miller, and Vought keep losing in Court?)
3. Retard: use work stoppages, boycotts, parliamentary rules, civil impedance of ICE arrests and deportations, to slow down activities and interests of those entities that support the administration, increasing their costs and thereby weakening their support.
4. Recognize: acknowledge and show empathy for the concerns of the Right; show MAGAs they are being heard.
5. Remove Barriers: propose programs, not “policies”, that remove barriers to children’s and grandchildren’s education; to accessible, affordable and responsive health care (especially in small towns); to affordable day care; to affordable housing; to support of rural libraries and public TV stations. (Look at all the semi-colons: sure signs of one of them elitists.)

Don’t indulge in theoretical arguments about saving Democracy or the dangers of autocracy. Yes, these things are of undeniable importance and of concern to the educated, thoughtful, and secure among us. But, Democrats: lay aside your concerns and focus first and always on how to improve others' lives. Deny opposition's debating “isms” rather than programs and solutions by avoiding trigger-words like liberal, progressive, socialism, fascism, communism, and whatnot. Define addressable problems. Find Republican co-sponsors for proposals. Force debate on programs, not ideologies.

Further, every program you propose also should be tied to reducing inequalities of income and wealth, and of education. No one admires inequality except the Have-Lots. Social dysfunction is directly, highly correlated with inequality (See The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pigott. Amazing charts of direct relationships between income inequality, the Gini Index, and such dysfunctions as teen pregnancies, incarcerations, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on. Even graffiti!) 

We cannot guarantee our own liberty and pursue our own happiness unless all of us have the opportunity to do so. 

The arc of the Commonwealth should be moving toward equity and functionality , , ,

, , ,  so, Democrats, push it along. Forego theory; deal pragmatically.

An Open Letter to my Grandchildren

Dear Frank, Peter, Corriell, Liza, Ella, Norah, Max, Parker, and Molly:

The nine of you (five by blood, four by marriage) range in age from thirties to teens. So, what if anything can I say on this first day of my 92nd lap around old Sol that is relevant to each of you, that might be useful to the life you are developing in these times so very different from mine at your ages? I dare not give advice for an old geezer’s advice is merely quaint. And who am I to advise from the brambles of my life? Actually, for me, my life has been wonderful. Watching you nine is a big part of that wonder.

No, rather than presuming to advise, let me instead tell you what I wish for you.

I wish you good health, of course. Through taking sensible care of yourself; through AI-driven genetic, epigenetic and pharmaceutical science; through research breakthroughs at Universities like our UW, my Harvard, and my newly discovered Cambridge; through the NIH and CDC, your odds of reaching 91 are improving every year. I know, you can’t imagine becoming 91. I recall, as a college sophomore, telling my roommates I hoped to see the arrival of the 21st century. That would have been at a ripe old 65! The odds are you will become 91 and you will be able to do so very much in the 60 or 70 years between now and then. I’m jealous to think what I’ll miss and can’t begin to imagine all you will see.

I wish for you a secure future, i.e., a reliably funded social security system, accessible low cost if not free health care, and low-cost if not free tertiary, technical and vocational education.  And I wish there be smart people among you to figure how to deliver it,

I wish you see restored a democratic republic and these divisive, hate-filled days of dysfunctional politics fade away. I have confidence that they will, that Americans’ sense of fair play and love of problem solving will overcome. I wish that you avoid fundamentalism, the abdication of thinking for yourself and turning over your life to an ideology or creed or holy writ or cult leader.

I wish for you a skeptical turn of mind. Not pessimism or negativism but a thoughtful skepticism about what others want you to believe or think. The skeptic asks what’s the source? Why does this channel or newscaster or op-ed or official want me to accept that? What is their agenda? Does this make sense to me? I’ve also learned that complicated questions are, in a word, complicated; simple solutions and slogans won’t cut it. Simple solutions to complicated questions are almost invariably wrong. Make America Great Again is nonsense; we have always had great potential; we have never fully lived up to it; nonetheless, we are and continue to be a great nation.

 I wish for you the joy of social or public service. Your great-great grandfather served as a YMCA Secretary (their version of CEO) and Chair of the Akron, Ohio School Board. My Dad remembers watching a KKK cross burnt on their front lawn to terrorize and express the Klan’s displeasure at Halley Waller’s welcoming, as the YMCA Secretary (like CEO,) and facilitating settlement of immigrants, migrants and especially Catholics in Akron. In his turn, Fletch Sr, my father/your great-grandfather, served during WWII as the War Dept’s Asst. Director of Civilian Manpower and, during the Cold War, as Deputy General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission. I have served as officer and/or director of several social service, arts and cultural not-for-profit orgs, and have run – unsuccessfully – for public office (Port Commissioner), all to my benefit and satisfaction. I wish for you to savor the challenge and satisfaction of public service.

I wish you appreciate what a young and resilient nation we are and draw confidence from that. To illustrate, subtract my 91 years and we arrive at my birth in 1934, the heart of the Great Depression, from which we recovered our strength. Go back another “Fletch” and it’s 1843, before the Civil War, in which we purge our original sin of slavery. Just two lifetimes! Had I been born in 1843, I might have been in the Union Army as a 17yr old trooper – I say Union because that side of your family was of Vermont, Massachusetts and New York stock. Perhaps, had I been killed, would you even be here?

Go back a third “Fletch” and it’s 1752, twenty years before the Revolution and our becoming a nation. Had I been born in 1752, I might have been fighting alongside 6x-greatgrandfather Israel Waller and his son Joe in The Green Mountain Boys, Ira and Ethan Allens’ militia. Vermont was just disputed territory then, on  the way to proclaiming itself five years later an independent nation.

Imagine: it takes only 6 generations of Wallers to span the existence of our country: Octavia and Joseph, Philena & Chester, Josephine & Henry, Florence & Hallie, Ellie & Fletcher, and Barbara/Ann & I. Trace the Janes back: you’ll find the same thing, except starting in Canada. We are still a young nation. With your generation’s help and leadership, we’ll muddle through this adolescent rebellion. Have patience, keep the faith, and make your voices heard (oops, there, I gave advice.)

I wish for you my love of history. It gives me pleasure and an understanding of how things have come to be, the better to understand them. I wish for you my love of reading, of discovery. I’m not knocking Tik Tac or whatever the hell it is, or Instagram or The History Channel, but I get my perspective from reading different versions in books. If any of you want some of my library, come and get it!

Going hand-in-glove with history is Ann‘s and my love of travel; I hope you share that and experience the wondrous variety of our world and its peoples. There’s no substitute for going, seeing and listening for yourself. That’s why I went to Nicaragua during the Contra days: to see who was telling the bigger lies, Ronald Regan or Daniel Ortega. (I concluded it was a tie.)

Our goal, and I wish you consider adopting it as well, is to become educated. Become is the operative word, for one never achieves full education. “Lifelong Learning” has become cliché. Ann and I regard Learning as Life. That’s why we go to summer school at Cambridge University, taking fifteen hours of classes a week and attending 25 or so plenary lectures from world experts on every subject imaginable. We’ll go again for two weeks next summer, God granting us good health and stamina. Our thirst to become educated is why Ann took several semesters in UW’s access program; why we sign up for workshops and lectures from all sorts of orgs; why I can’t resist a history book. I wish for you to keep trying to become educated even while recognizing that you never will fully reach the goal.

I wish for you the challenge and satisfaction of putting your mark on whatever institution you are part of – company, church, school, civic org, whatever. Looking back, it appears as if I was intent on getting through Hamilton College without leaving a mark on it; now I am trying to make up for that by serving as class secretary. (I did a bit better at Sidwell Friends, holding the school record for javelin for a few years, being first in my class to earn a varsity letter, being our good field/no hit third baseman, being President of the Boys Athletic Association, while also being the most inept JV football player in school history. Yes, I also got good grades.) Subsequently, I learned to speak up and volunteer, to take charge of a project or program; this has emboldened me and enabled me to make a mark on groups of which I am a part. (That speaking up has also gotten me fired twice, but that’s another story.) And I wish for you the discovery of how enriching it is to work with a variety of people of different backgrounds and values and viewpoints. My projects are always more successful if I have suffered working out differences with and coming to appreciate contributions of folks unlike Fletch.

Lastly, (yes, there is an end) I wish for you the joy of expressing yourself in art, as Frank Sr. and Ann have discovered in their painting; Amy, in her jewelry design; Ella, in her tattooing; Max, with his trumpet. Nothing has brought me more joy than my sculpting, as amateurish as it is.

So, there it is: looking back helps me see what I wish for you.

Get to know and cherish each other.

Ciao for another year.

                                                                                            G’pa Fletch 

PS: Rowing. One more wish is that you discover the thrill and pleasure of crew. There’s nothing else like it. Ann crewed with Martha’s Moms. Amy, Jeff and Norah have crewed on the Mississippi. Rowing for Brown, Cam won an ICAA championship in 4’s. Grant crewed in high school. My crewing and coaching days are now over. I so miss being on the water as the sun comes up over Mt. Rainier, being, as it were, one of The Boys in the Boat. Go crew!

                                                                                                                                G’pa F

We Shot a Five-Week Hole in the Seattle Summer . . .

. . . but no regrets. A month or so ago, I promised to “soon” post about our three-weeks in Germany. In the meantime, we spent two weeks in summer school at Cambridge University. We can't both have our travels and summer at home at the same time, obviously. While I regret missing the shank of a Seattle summer I wouldn’t change anything. (Nor do I have second thoughts about our upcoming week in Ketchum, Idaho, in the shank, to use that cliché again, of September. Clichés are useful, aren't they? They become a cliché because they are so. But I digress; this is not about style or clichés. My style is confounding enough to me, much less to others.)

The two trips, so different in purpose, are curiously entwined and resonate with one another. The German trip was one of Classical KING’s annual music tours, this time to Dresden, Leipzig, and Weimar. Eleven musical performances, some private just for the 17 of us, others public events such as Dresden’s Semper Oper doing Turandot and the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig presenting an evening of Bach, Honegger, and Brahms symphonies. Private events ranged from string quartets to 

Sebastian Freitag, the young domorganist of Dresden's 
Kathedral Sanctissimae Trinitatis

organ recitals to leider: eleven musical events in seven days(!) spread out over nine. If you are a classical music fan who supports KING you should take a look at these tours. Ann and I tacked on five days in Berlin. She and I had not been there in decades: I went through Checkpoint Charlie in ’82; she, in ’65!

Breakfast at Boutique Hotel mittendrin Berlin, 
a must-stay if you're in Berlin

-

Our summer school at Cambridge was our second year of this tonic in the shank (OMG, again?) of an English summer. The two weeks of a class each morning and afternoon, punctuated by three daily plenary, campus-wide lectures by Oxbridge experts on every subject imaginable, and having breakfasts and dinners with some 400 students of all ages from 70 countries, is an intense and stimulating experience. My afternoon pint of Guinness helped calm me down. 

Lunch on the patio of Millworks, on its millpond
off the Cam

But the special joy of this was sharing the experience with Ann; of meeting for lunch somewhere lovely, reporting what we had learned that morning, sharing over evening cocktails the ideas to which we had been exposed. Our course choices were varied: she took International Development, The Origin of England and the English, i.e., Anglo-Saxon England from the 5^th to the 12thC., and The Rise of Civilisation (as they spell it; recall George Bernard Shaw’s description of us as two peoples separated by a common language) as seen through comparative archeological excavations in Mesopotamia and Mexico. I also took the latter, as well as Five Famous Trials, The Magna Carta, and Art Movements of the 20thC. We attended an outdoor performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, part of the Cambridge Summer Shakespeare Festival. So, much, much, much to talk about. And to savor Cambridge's summer.

Everyone gets out and about along the Cam

How intertwined? In Dresden, we saw the remarkable choices the community made, both before and after reunification, to rebuild, to restore rather than replace the palaces and churches and opera halls and museums that had made Dresden the cultural and artistic center of Germany from the 15^th to the 20thC. 

Dresden's Frauenkirche, 1946 . . .

. . . and today

In Weimar, we saw the destruction of a democratic republic and the rise of fascist autocracy. In Leipzig we learned of the Friedliche Revolution, the people’s Peaceful Revolution that toppled the GDR and its Stasi and brought about the fall of the wall and reunification. 

In Berlin, we traced the rise of National Socialism and its scapegoating of Jews which gave the world the Holocaust, and witnessed German determination that today's youngsters do not repeat our mistakes. 

Between 1933 and 1939, thousands 
of antisemitische Gesetzgebung were passed  

In Cambridge we learned how a people is formed and strengthened by the merging of different folks bringing different values and viewpoints. 

The heterogeneity of Cambridge

We learned how villages and towns and cities form, and how governments evolve in those city centers and attempt by different means – the Stasi, the Gestapo, mythology, divine right, rule of law -- to get large numbers of individuals to conform. We learned how the Great Charter of the English, the Magna Carta, established that no man should be above the law. The treason trial of Charles and the fall of the GDR showed us how autocracies must give way to the people. The Scopes Trial pitted the village values of tradition and shared creed against the city-based elites’ science and skepticism. The same conflict played out in the trial of Penguin Books for making D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover accessible to the mass public. And the history of failed international development efforts demonstrated the limits of top-down governance. Artists calling out such impositions are of crucial value. 

The trial of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, called into question the whole idea of national identity and citizenship. And, of course, Dresden and the English Civil Wars showed the folly of reverting to war to resolve some of these fundamental questions of how societies and civilizations should work. And throughout the five weeks, and since, what we saw and learned and discussed echo every day as Ann and I read the papers and watch the news.

So, yes, shooting a five week hole in Seattle’s summer was no loss. We gained an enriched and broadened worldview together. 

Well, I don't like your tie.

Trump's firing of the Director of Labor Statistics reminds me of a confrontation half a century ago at General Mills. A young market researcher of mine was presenting to our Exec VP results of a comparative consumer taste test between a new product and its competitors. The product team, developers, and all of us sat in a conference room, with slides projected on the screen at one end, the Exec VP, who was very enamored of the product and its market, enthroned at the other.

As disappointingly lackluster results rolled out, suddenly the EVP burst in: "I don't like your numbers." The room audibly inhaled. My research guy, a bit nonplussed, paused and then responded "Well -- I don't like your tie." Now the group inhale turned to a group gasp. 

After what seemed an interminable gap, the EVP burst out laughing. To his great credit. 

The tie is a tie; the numbers are the numbers. So be it.