Thursday's Olympic Talk -- Don't Crow, Democrats, Don't Crow

A commentator on air this morning said yesterday's election results spell the "extinction of MAGA." In my view, just the opposite is true. 

MAGAs may hunker down and hide, but white male MAGA's resentments will worsen as a result of these elections.

What resentments? Resentment of elites' disdain. Resentment of urban values riding roughshod over those of rural and small towns. Resentment of being dissed, of being ignored. Resentment of women in power. Resentment of Don and Eric and Jared making millions (billions?) off Dad.

Look at the results: they only exacerbate white male MAGA's resentments and their sense of being left out. Such resentments are fuel to populists and would-be authortarians. Populists and charismatic men with easy answers will burn bright on that fuel.

The challenge for Democrats will be to fix things in ways that respond to MAGA complaints. 

• How do you address health care costs while being MAGA sensitive? By funding rural hospitals and expanding medicaid in the name of Christian, Bhuddist, and Muslim obligation to care for the needy. 
• How do you deal with corruption? By passing legislation that prohibits stock trading by public officials and mandating they put all their assets into blind trusts; by prohibiting Federal no-bid contracts. By prohibiting foreign investment in any enterprise of which a realtive of Executive Brand officers is a pricipal.
• How do you deal with being denied a voice? By banishing Executive Orders. By protecting the filibuster. 
• How do you deal with their feeling of not being heard? Of being dissed? By forming advisory committees; by holding not rallies but listening sessions, aka town halls, where presenters are the community and the senator or representative is the audience. By facilitating unionization. By underscoring in actions and not just talk, the rule of law. 
• Indict and try corporate leaders and bankers who transgress; who cause harm to the environment, to children, to students, to the elderly. Put a Chinese Wall between the Dept. of Justice and the Executive.
• How do you deal with affodability? By rasserting control of tariffs and putting the Dept. of Commerce and Executive Branch into an advisory role. Restore SNAP. Focus on costs that effect both urban and rural households: foremost, energy -- heating oil, electricity, gasoline, diesel. Proclaim free tade in hay, soy beans, and corn. Put in place incentives on FHA loans for and reduce local impediments to new housing.

And don't crow. Make MAGA reduction, Democrats, a priority equal to your solution of socio-economic problems. 

Don't crow, Democrats. Don't crow.

My 17th Mid-term

Finally! Election Day. Release from all the polls, predictions of results, the horrors unleashed if so-and-so is elected and the disasters to befall us if so-and-so is not returned to office. The hysteria, the crassness, the mean-girl nastiness of this mid-term hasn’t been seen since the first half of the 19^thC. (and no, while I am old I don’t go back quite that far. I read avidly of it.) The worst of it, from the President of the United States down, legitimizes religious bigotry. Don’t we have a right to expect more from POTUS? Where, oh where is Jed Bartlet when we need him?

The first mid-term in which I was qualified to vote was 1958 (yes, I are old,) during the Eisenhower administration. Ike was getting old; the recession of ’57-’58 wounded Republican candidates; right-to-work anti-union laws were a hot issue; and Sputnik had just put a dent in America’s self-confidence. I do remember all of that. Democrats gained 49 seats in Congress and 15 in the Senate – OMG, wouldn’t the Democrats kill for that outcome today!

But truth to tell, I didn’t vote in the ’58 mid-term; I was in basic training (MOS: auto mechanic. What can I say? Army logic) I had failed to apply for an absentee ballot, besides which I was a resident of no state. So, the first mid-term in which I voted was ’62, as a resident of Minnesota.

The big issues going into the '62 mid-term were the recession of ‘60-’61 and the Republican and Southern Democratic Representatives slow-walking Kennedy’s New Frontier and civil rights initiatives. He was getting nowhere. But on October 22, just 15 days before the election, we learned the Soviets were installing missiles in Cub-er; the airwaves talked of nothing else. Though the crisis was de-fused by Kruschev on the 28^th, the election on Nov 6^th became singularly a vote of confidence on Kennedy’s foreign policy chops.

Today’s mid-term is my 17^th. We are by far at our most polarized, most disrespectful of one another, most crass and vulgar of any of the others.

“Most important in your lifetime!” screamed over and over. What I wish for is a mid-term NOT the most important in my lifetime. And perhaps for a return to gathering with neighbors in the middle school, checking in with Nancy Ericsson, keeper of the voter roll, being given a paper ballot, stepping into a booth, closing the curtain, filling or punching it out, and being given an “I VOTED” label to stick on one’s jacket. And for seeing xxxx who we see at school board candidate meet and greets: "that dope. I know who he'll vote for. Idiot." ("Dope" and "idiot" are neither vulgar nor bigotry, though I admit somewhat disrespectful.)

I voted by mail, legally -- for in Washington State we have no other choice. We vote only by mail on all elections, from Presidential down to town council. Trump signed an Executive Order making voting by mail illegal, Too bad, Donald, you don't get a vote here, by mail in or person.

In pre-mail days, I often was greeted by shy Nancy, a brilliant Vassar and Chicago-trained physiologist, married to Lowell Ericsson, our equally shy precinct Capt., both deeply eager to get everyone, regardless of party, to exercise their franchise. They had faith in our Democratic-Republic. Some among us have lost that faith and begun to embrace the less stressful path of abdicating responsibility and delegating it all to some guy who has all the answers; it’s happening all over the world.

Perhaps today’s turnout will restore some of that Ericsson energy, commitment, and confidence in our system. Perhaps. I hope high turnout is not driven by hatreds but, rather, by serious concerns and awareness that we need in Congress good, thoughtful people of decency and common sense. I hope.

Where Did Halloween Come From and Where Has It Gone?

I awoke as usual aroung 4:00 and could see out our four picture windows that we were enshrouded in fog. Appropriate for Halloween, spooky and dark. So where is Bela Lugosi? 

'Tis the night before All Hallows Day or, in these modern times, all Saints Day. A hallow in early English was a holy person.

The end of harvest season, the earlier onset of darkness, the failing of the light, the symbolic delineation ‘tween life and death, seemed to Celts and Romans the right time to commemorated their dead. Thus, the end of October morphed into two days of remembrance and paying honor, one for dead saints, one for the dead souls of the unsaintly like us. All Saints Day. All Souls Day. Further South, it’s Dias de los Muertos, the Days of the Dead, hence ghosts and skeletons and skulls, oh my.

And so, as darkness gathers, the evening of the day before All Hallows Day, today, becomes hallow’s eve – Halloween. In the Middle Ages in Europe, the indigent would beg for food on this day, offering in compensation to pray to the household’s saints and for their dead. And soon came masks to obscure the identity of the supplicants.

This morning’s fog brought to mind SeaTac and my days of business travel. They couldn't have picked, said my associate John Calhoun, a foggier spot in King County on which to build an airport. According to climatological records, in  November and December Seattle fogs up only two days a month on average. That can’t be right; I ran into foggy November morns a couple of times a week, it seems. At least that’s my recollection of trying to fly out of Seattle to LA or Chicago or Hong Kong or Seoul. “We’ll load up and take off as soon as it clears” said the chipper gate agent, “don’t go far.”

So that explains all the symbolism and masks and costumes, but tricks? Where in hell did tricks come from? If a Medieval household did not respond, did not give alms or food, it would be bedeviled, that is, cursed and tormented. Trickery afflicted the stingy.

When I was a kid in the 1940’s (yes, I are old) we did tricks. Soaped windows. Rang doorbells and ran. Elaborately, I would notch the rim of one of Mom’s empty thread spools, rap string around the spool; use a 10-penny nail as an axle, and holding the spool against a window pane, pull the string hard thus spinning the ratcheted spool against the glass and making a hell of a racket. Then run like hell.

Our tricks were tame compared to the earlier generation’s. Dad recalled dismantling a Model T and re-building it atop its garage. Tipping over outhouses. Using purloined dynamite caps to derail the rickety trolly car that ran along Booth Bay Harbor.

A few years back, we occasionally saw TP'ing trees, but even that appears to have faded away. Today’s kids seem focused solely on treats. They offer blank looks when asked what tricks they threaten. Sugar and chocolate prevail. Thus has Western civilization become enfeebled. Alas!

Today, here, Halloween is just a commercial opportunity. (By contrast, in Mexico, especially rural Mexico, families still spend this night picnicking by candlelight on the graves of departed loved ones.)

Costumes and masks and candy are big business. Tariff-inflation and climate-change chocolate prices have hit; candy sales are off 7%. Costume sales appear just slightly off; I guess moms and kids just love dressing up. Ann is offering salty snacks, (she always knows better than you what is good for you) bags of Cheetos and Fritos and potato chips. No wonder we get so few neighborhood kids.

I carved a neat pumpkin this year, one of peeled translucent areas the light shines through. Still lots of meat left from which we make pumpkin pie and Jack-o-lantern Soup.

So, here I am – a foggy Halloween. I wish some kid will soap our windows.

Olympic Talk -- Maturity or Immaturity -- Which Do You Choose?

Olympic Talk 10/29/26

(These are eight-minute speeches that, were I still delivering talks at the Olympic Club on Thursdays, I might have given. My public speaking skills are deteriorating: my voice is reedy and flat, my gestures wooden and unconvincing. But I still like scripting speeches and have things to say. So, in my dotage . . . call me Speechwriter.)

Maturity or Immaturity: Which Do You Choose?

Last night Ann and I went to the Opera to watch Salome have John the Baptist beheaded. And then, to give his head a big, wet kiss. It was a Richard Strauss Opera – all recitative and in German, to boot; nothing lyric about it. You don't go home from a Strauss opera whistling a melody.

The Oscar Wilde version of the tale from the Books of Mark and Matthew, is dramatic: a pubescent teen teetering on the brink of adulthood, pursued by lecherous Herod the Great, her stepfather; obsessed with John whom Herod has incarcerated, wielding her royal position and new found sexual power to wreak vengeance on John for . . . for not looking at her. She hates John; she is obsessed with John; she loves John. She demands his head on a silver platter and King Herod complies. A story of inability to control impulses, of teen-age ego-centrism, of immaturity encased in a mature body.

How do we judge maturity? When we say someone is immature on what do we base our judgement? Physical traits of course; does she or he show body development that makes us think “infant” or “child” or “teen” or “adult?” Salome (of the seven veils) is fully adult on this standard.

But on judgement and behavior? She is clearly immature, unable to reason, unable to control her impulses, acting out utter, unreasoned vengeance for an imagined slight.

What behaviors are generally seen as immature? Tantrums, of course. One of my grandsons is a clinical family therapist. He, thinks I am overly self-controlled and recommends that I have a tantrum once in a while:  lay on the floor, kick my feet, hold my breath until I turn blue, scream. In my decrepit state, by the time I struggled to get down onto the floor the need would have long passed, And scream? Me? These ancient vocal cords would twang in two.

But if I did throw a tantrum, would you not say "OMG, how immature?" Same with losing one's temper. What would you say if were to become so outraged here at the Olympic Club that I threw a ketchup-laden hamburger against dining room wall? How mature would that be?

Is seeking revenge for disappointment, for a minor slight, is hounding a person, mounting a vendetta against a group, or trashing a whole nation with vulgarity, is that rational behavior of a mature man or more than a bit irrational?

Is compulsively telling fibs the behavior of a mature person or a sign of irrational immaturity?

The ability to postpone gratification, to act appropriately is used in tests of maturity. A rational, mature person can reason, can choose to wait for a better time or for a more appropriate way, or to accept frustration while the immature man-child may not be able to control his  impulses. He wants it now! He wants his own. He wants it all and doesn't care how it looks to others. Why is it among the first words a toddler learns is "mine"? "Mine, mine!"

The immature often lack self-confidence. They often plaster over their lack of confidence with tough talk, violent and vulgar language, bullying, and – of course – getting others to echo their fibs and tough talk.

Age can impact mature judgement and action. In Cincinnati, I worked a few years for a family of brothers who were headed by the eldest, in his late-seventies. As we encountered problems, he would became increasingly erratic, child-like, immaturely insisting his was the only way. And yes, he threw tantrums – and even, once an ashtray, at one of his brothers. When admonished: "Albert, don't get angry" he responded gravely, pounding the conference table on every word, "I am not angry; I am merely, … being …  emphatic."

~~~~~

So, to the question: maturity or immaturity – which do you favor? In whom, the man or the man-child, the mature or the immature, do you place your trust? Which would you choose as investment manager? Which would you choose as God father of your child? Whom do you choose as leader? Whom do you choose to follow?   

The Rains Have Returned

 

The rains have arrived.

They are late this year.

Time for cocooning by the fire,

with Dvorak sonatas,

woolens, Kinda Blue,

Bill Evans and Monk,

a hot toddy,

and you.

 

This morning, I awoke as usual around four. Raindrops on the roof made the Johnny-call all the more urgent. The rains and grays apparently have arrived. For some of us Seattleites, those with a touch of melancholy in our soul, t'is time to woolen-up and settle-in.

For others, Sun-yearners, those drops on the roof signal time to flee to the tennis courts and greens of the desert. That’s how Barb and I wound up owning a home in Medina and a townhouse on a seventh fairway in Palm Desert.

Our seasonal separations surfaced more basic incompatibilities; the divorce followed a few years later. After the pain numbed, it all worked out. She found sun-loving companions; I found Ann.

By the fire and in the early dark. time to borrow into a book or better, into an author’s series of tales that take one away. That’s why Seattle is annually #1 in US per capita book sales. My current escape has been Anthony Trollope’s Palliser Novels, often called his Parliamentary Series.

It was Karen Lane, that remarkable Francophile, my successor as President of the Horizon House Board, who mentioned being in an Anthony Trollope reading club. Trollope! 1860s! That old fossil? “Yes, try him. He’s wickedly funny and cynical, and ever so pertinent today.” In high school English, I had been made to read Trollope’s Barchester Towers; what a drag, as bad to callow teens as Moby Dick.

A couple of years ago, I re-read Moby Dick: what a delight! Earlier this year, I found Barchester Towers listed in the Kindle library. In deference to and in memory of Karen, I thought perhaps it’s time, these three-quarters of a century later. Again, what a delightful revelation! This wickedly funny and cynical tale of the politicking in a CofE bishopric, the back-biting and lobbying and editorializing over the selection of a new Bishop for Barchester is as relevant to todays party politics (or university politics or corporate politics) as if written last week. My high school English teacher was right in literary judgment though in error when judging the capacity of teenage males. Karen was also right, and I’ve become a Trollope roadie.

So, suffer my ruminations as the rains, delayed no doubt by El Niño, finally return to our Pacific Northwest. Bundle up, light the fire, and find a good book. And don't fprget the toddy.

The Pungency, The Poignancy of Memory

I am not attending the Olympic Club these days, my luncheon speakers’ club, even though my mobility has improved enough to enable me to do so. I’m not sure I know why I have opted out. Today, a Thursday, brings my choice to mind because this is the weekly meeting day of the Olympic Club.

I don’t miss giving speeches. My public speaking skills have deteriorated over time; as with so many things, I must ruefully acknowledge that I am not so good as once I was. My gestures are stiff and unconvincing; my voice reedy and flat, without inflection. 

But, still, I have things to say and I enjoy the discipline of keeping a speech to eight minutes, (OK, truth be told: that always was hard for me to do. More often than not, I overran my time and suffered the time-keeper’s clanging censure.)

This morning I awoke with this notion: why not retreat and become a speech-writer? Prepare and script an eight-minute speech and post it on Northwest Ruminations? So, here is the first of what may become a Thursday feature on NWR: Olympic Talks.

Olympians: if these scripts trigger thoughts you'd like to use, feel free. Or, if you'd simply like to deliver one of these as practice for reading a speech (itself a skill to be practiced) or to lift parts of one, I'd be honored. Feel free.

 Olympic Tallks, 10/22/26

The Poignancy, The  Pungency of Memory

My purpose, in this talk, is to get you to reflect on the power of memory.

I had stayed overnight at Peter’s after another late-night, Senior-bash, still celebrating our graduation from Sidwell. It was a warm, bright Bethesda morning, the kind of morning that forewarns Washingtonians that it will be a scorcher. Peter and I saddled up his old Plymouth coupe and drove over to Chevy Chase to call on Mary -- his girl, my dear friend, our classmate Mary.  

Our plan -- no, a mere notion -- was to drive around a bit and hang out and see what the day revealed. Perhaps we’d pick up Barb, my girl, also a Chevy Chaser. I had never before been to Mary’s, so was more than a bit awed as Peter pulled up before an imposing brick Colonial Revival home, tall and stately, just the sort a decorated Rear Admiral might own seven years after the War.

A somber gentleman answered the door. He politely but firmly turned us away. “The family has suffered a tragic event” said he “and is unable to receive visitors. Thank you for coming.”  I still don’t know who he was; a friend of family? Perhaps from the Navy Dept.? Perhaps a funeral-home person? He was firmly tight-lipped about the “event.”

We soon pieced together that Peter and I had arrived about an hour after they had scraped up the Admiral’s body from the drive out back of the house beneath the third-story window out of which the Admiral had dived headlong: another belated casualty of WWII.

We now call such PTSD, a glib, too-comfortable label we’ve used to paper over tragedy, as if by naming it, we’ve denied it wrenching at our gut. 

End of summer: we callow teens went our ways, I to HamiltoSn, Mary to Smith, Peter to Princeton, Barb to Skidmore. Mary was not invited to Barb's and my wedding. By then, she had dropped away from our circle. I never saw Mary again.

But the chagrin of arriving at the wrong place at the wrong time has never left me. The feeling of shameful inadequacy, the somber firmness of the man at the door; the warmth of the sun, the sound of the Plymouth; these details and images I cannot leave behind. They haunt me to this day. I trust they always will.

This was my first confrontation with the reality of Loss. Of Grief. Yet there was no confrontation; it was all second-hand. Pungeant, none-the-less. I would have to wait years to own grief and loss of my own.

Do childhood or teenage memories haunt you? Are they pungent? Are they poignant? Do you treasure them or wish to be rid of them? Do they come unbidden from a secret somewhere mysteriously triggered by an unknown what?

~~~~

I live in a house made of memory. A house furnished with hidden triggers. Don't you? Do not we all?

"Vintage Nature"

I just ran into this phrase on a retail web site I was visiting:

Please note that due to their vintage nature, some items may exhibit charming signs of age and gentle wear, adding to their unique character.

If the shoe fits, Fletch, wear it.