A Second and a Half and the Aftermath

Where I didn't wait long enough, leading to a long chain of consequences.

For the past 10 months I’ve dealt with the aftermath of the most consequential second and a half of time in my life. On June 9, 2018, around 11:30 pm, I stopped at the railroad crossing in Katonah, NY. I was only car stopped by the gate, heading east. The train passed, the flashing gate rose and I drove over the tracks.

Immediately, I saw flashing lights, as a police car swept out from a hard-to-see parking lot to stop me. The gates were still rising and blinking when I went on the tracks, and that’s illegal in New York State. Had I waited a second and a half, I estimate, I would have been in the clear, but I did not do that.

The officer, young enough to be my son, checked my license and insurance and said I would get a notice of the infraction, to which I could plead guilty or not guilty. If I pleaded not guilty, he’d be in court when I appeared. I mentally noted this comment and what seemed like a hint to plead not guilty.

The irony of the moment did not escape me. I’m a very cautious driver, the kind who drives the speed limit and annoys other drivers who apply a heavier foot on the gas pedal (that is, 99 percent of the population). Packs of cars on the Saw Mill Parkway constantly approach, surround and then pass me,  leaving me in their figurative dust. I don’t mind; I’m not in a race. I drive at my pace and if they want to go faster, go ahead.

The court notice arrived in July and with a shrug I decided to plead guilty and take my lumps. Gritting my teeth, I got a cashier’s check for $293 ($200 fine, $93 surcharge) and went to town hall. To my surprise, the clerk there appeared startled at my plea. With more emphasis than the officer who stopped me, the clerk suggested I could still change my plea, despite having checked the guilty box and appeared check in hand.

By now, it dawned on me that, maybe, just maybe, I should change my plea and have my day in traffic court. How many public servants need to raise the issue with me? Two was enough. I wrote a note to the town justice asking to change my plea, based on not understanding the impact of the violation on my insurance and points on my driver’s license.

The justice accepted the change and I waited for the notice to appear in court, not for a trial but for a discussion. That date, I had been told, could take a few months. That’s an understatement; not until January 2019 did I get a letter requesting the pleasure of my company for a pre-trial conference on February 12. I worked myself into a state of high anxiety as the day approached. I brooded over what I would say when I could discuss a plea bargain.

Mother Nature chose February 12 to unleash one of those polar vortexes, with enough snow and cold to close the court, which hears traffic cases only on Tuesdays. This gave me yet more time to stare at my navel and plan my comments on railroad crossings. The new hearing date was March 19 at the Town of Bedford Justice Court.

What would court be like? I was in small claims court in Brooklyn  in the 1980s, then divorce court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 2003, two quick but wrenching experiences that gave me a visceral disinterest in court appearances (being called for jury duty is another matter, and I always enjoy doing my civic duty, even if I’ve never actually been placed on a jury). Still, I had changed my plea to have my day in court, so I’d go and see what how things went down.

I hoped to discuss my first-hand ideas for addressing the deadly serious issues of safety at railroad crossings. For example, six people were killed in a 2015 collision in Valhalla, NY, at a crossing I passed through hundreds of times during my years commuting from Katonah to Grand Central Terminal.

Since my episode at the crossing, I had taken photos at the Katonah station whenever the crossing gates came down and then rose, to collect evidence of the extent of cars crossing before the gates were totally up and violating statute VTL 1170 0B, as I did. Flagrant violations happened at least half of the times I observed, which disturbed me. I drafted a multipoint plan that combined publicity, surveillance cameras and public appearances to emphasize the need for attention at crossings. If my experience could lead other drivers to change their behavior, then my ticket would have value far above my own awareness.

My day in court

March 19 came, with no polar vortex to delay the proceedings this time. Restrictions on items forbidden at court meant I couldn’t take my cellphone or supporting materials. I jotted my talking points on the envelope with the appearance notice; otherwise I had only $400 in cash to pay whatever my fine ultimately was.

I arrived early and found TSA-level security in place at the court’s entrance. I passed through and showed my notice at a desk. I soon met with the officer who stopped me, who asked if I realized the seriousness of my offense. Yes, I did, and we discussed a plea deal that would lower the fine and number of points on my license. I agreed to that, as we stood in the back of the courtroom where maybe 20 other people waited for their cases to be heard. With the plea discussion done, I gave my pitch for a program to bring more public awareness to the crossing issue. I would write press releases and op-ed and do whatever I could with the police and Metro-North communications teams. The officer acknowledged the points I was making and said he would pass them along.

I sat on a chair in the courtroom, where I had recently listened in on planning and zoning hearings involving my synagogue. The town justice called my name, he reviewed the plea bargain, I agreed to the deal. The next stop was to pay the fine of $240  total, a combination of the actual fine and a court fee. And that was that.

Doing the PIRP walk

Actually, that wasn’t that. A brochure about the state DMV’s point and insurance reduction program (PIRP) suggested next steps. It outlined the in-person and online courses to “refresh your driving knowledge” and make me eligible to have points removed from my license. I signed up for an online course through the American Automobile Association.

The brochure said PIRP courses last a minimum of 320 minutes. I logged on and soon discovered that taking the course online, rather than spending a weekend in a course classroom, was more complex than I expected. While I had several weeks to complete the course, I struggled to concentrate in the midst of a family health crisis and work responsibilities. I did what I could on nights and weekends.

As with everything else in this 10-month tale of infraction and correction, my PIRP course took unexpected turns in a digital roundabout. I never looked at FAQs for tips on how to take the program. I just winged it, a questionable decision on my part. To sign up, I had to read lists of numbers for voice authentication, so that when I logged on, the program could tell I was watching the videos and answering the questions, rather than a ringer (good idea for the SATs). Authentication popped on at random points, to foil cheating.

I slugged ahead, then encountered tech problems. The voice authentication system became erratic in recognizing my voice, so I had to contact customer service online to log in. Then I twice exceeded the 90-second time limit for responding to the random requests for voice authentication, which forced me to call customer service to identify myself. I learned, with more than a dollop of alarm, that if I exceeded the time limit a third time, then I would not be able to complete the course and would have to start all over again. That would be a problem, since I had only two days left to complete the course and I loathed the idea of grinding through the hours of work involved.

On Easter Sunday I closed the door to my home office, to keep out the cats who like to skitter across my laptop’s keyboard, and vowed to finish the course without stopping, figuring two hours would get me to the checkered flag. I clutched my cellphone at a DefCon 2 level of hyperalertness, ready to call the toll-free number and sloooowwlly and cleeearly state the row of numbers within the 90 seconds allotted for the voice authentication. I would use no headset, no speakerphone, just me and my iPhone 8 ready to make authentication magic.

Lesson after lesson sailed by smoothly and I could see the finish line beckoning me, just one segment ahead.

And then the authentication notice popped up and the 90-second countdown began. I dialed in and read the numbers. Honestly, Laurence Olivier himself could not have rendered a clearer, more precise, more lucid recitation of numbers in the Queen’s English at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Alas, the program, unimpressed with my heartfelt reading, kicked me off and told me to call customer service. This being Easter Sunday, I feared I wouldn’t get through on this, my second or third call of the day.

However, a woman answered and I told my tale of audio woe. No, I wasn’t using a speakerphone. I learned my lesson on that. She must have listened to the recording since she said the reading was garbled. Inasmuch as I hadn’t timed out on the authentication, I knew I wasn’t going to get the dreaded heave-ho, but I still worried. The customer service rep lifted the block and reminded me against timing out.

I asked, “I have one segment left, is it possible I’ll get asked for authentication again?”

That could happen, she said.

Forewarned, I girded my digital loins and plunged back for one more segment. Success! I had no more authentication requests and simply confirmed information so I could get my treasured certification of completion for the DMV and my insurance company.

What I learned

The course did, as promised, refresh my knowledge. I hadn’t had driving instruction since driver’s ed in high school in 1974. AAA’s PIRP course had eye-opening material:

• Roundabouts are strange for Americans but shouldn’t be scary.
• In New York, you stop for school buses even if the bus is on the other side of  a divided highway.
• Following distance is now defined by time between cars in seconds rather than the previous guideline of one car length for every 10 MPH of speed. This reflects that people are better judges of time than distance.
• Keep a cushion of space around your car and look for a direction to move in case problems happen ahead of you.
• Impaired driving can involve prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines, beyond alcohol and illegal drugs.
• Highway signs indicate whether an upcoming exit is to the left or right.
• Do not keep loose objects in your car, even something as small as an iPad. Left unsecured, they can fly around with great force in a collision. This really got my attention. This also applies to pets.
• Don’t tailgate. This has never been my tendency, but I now especially notice when other drivers do this, even at traffic stops. I've always kept a distance from the car ahead, so if I'm rear-ended, I avoid or lessen the odds of a chain reaction (something that has happened to me). 
• Hold the steering wheel at the 3 and 9 positions, or 4 and 8; this is a change from the 2 and 10 positions I learned in driver's ed 35 summers ago.
• ALWAYS give trains the right-of-way. They simply cannot stop quickly and their sheer size and weight trumps any other vehicle, even police or EMS. I particularly noted the content of this section, since it dealt directly with what got me in trouble.

That’s what I got out of the course; the program also had a space where I could send comments to the company that produced it. I gave the PIRP high marks and commented on two areas in particular:

• The interface needed rethinking, given the problems I found with the voice authentication. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. This became a huge distraction. There must be a secure and reliable alternative to ensure the participant is the actual person who signed up.
• The railroad crossing section did not address the issues behind my infraction. Yes, it gave the statistics of 2,000 annual collisions and 250 fatalities, and that collisions with trains are 20 times more fatal that car collisions. However—and I made a note to myself in these words—it ”doesn’t say anything about gates being completely up and lights off.” I made sure the company that produced the PIRP got the message, which I also related to one of the customer service reps when she asked if I had anything else on my mind. 

An immense wave of relief washed over me that Sunday afternoon when I finally, certainly, most assuredly finished my AAA course on defensive driving. While I regret the second and a half of rushed time that landed me in traffic court and a fine, I did learn some terrific driving ideas in the course. I’m already applying them as I tool around Westchester County in my Prius. My passion for safety at railroad crossings could lead me to share my corrective thoughts with town and railroad officials. A reactive approach that snags individual drivers like me will never change collective behavior. By doing my civic duty, I hope to encourage drivers to treat railroad crossings with the same instinctive caution that drivers now afford school buses when their warning signs are flashing.

A final note: The Bedford town justice who heard my case on March 19 was arrested on April 22 for driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors. He has been relieved of his judicial duties for the time being. He treated me fairly and I wish him well as he addresses the issues that led to this incident. I believe everybody can learn from their difficult experiences, even if they only last a second and a half.

Keep waiting, don't risk getting slammed, in the legal, financial or physical sense.

Goin’ Back to Princeton Town with Day Edgar ‘25

The book sat on a shelf for years after I bought it for pocket change at a library sale. A glance at the contents showed a writing style so antique that I kept delaying a serious scan, despite the compelling title: In Princeton Town.

As part of my occasional downsizing efforts, I marked the book as something I could donate to Goodwill. First, however, I owed it to myself to read it as a member of the Princeton Class of 1980. I knew I should read it just to feel its resonances, decades later.

And so I did, and I’m glad I did. Written by Day Edgar ‘25, the book appeared in 1929. Once I got into the rhythm of Edgar’s sometimes convoluted prose, I enjoyed the stories. They depict a Princeton that’s both utterly familiar—the Chapel, the Daily Princetonian, the Freshman Herald, houseparties, Reunions, precepts, the Dinky to Princeton Junction, the Honor Code—and foreign, with the all-male student body, the relentless attention to the fashionable clothing, raccoon coats, telegram deliveries, young women with bobbed hair picking up students in their “roadsters,” complete with rumble seats, and, looming above all, the existentialist terrors of bicker to gain entry to the “right” eating clubs of Prospect Street.

Edgar’s clever conceit is that the book only mentions “Princeton” in its title. The stories talk about campus locations and institutions in a nameless sense, except for the Bric-a-Brac annual, the Triangle shows and the Freshman Herald. Even the University is called, well, the University. The book’s fun comes from recognizing essential parts of Princeton without them ever being explicitly named. Triangle must have merited a mention because Edgar co-wrote and performed in Triangle Club’s “Scarlet Coat” show, according to his memorial in a September 1970 edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Edgar’s stories stand as independent units, although a few characters pop up across the book, including the firm, forbidding but often humane “Dean” in the administration, and sophomore Stumpy Frothingham. Most stories are light in tone, usually involving an obsessive need to meet a young woman or finagle connections with the in-crowd (athletes or class leaders) to ascend to the right eating club. The behavior toward women borders on what we would today consider stalkerish, combined with boorish he-man advice on how to convince women to go on a date. 

Class divisions, both in economic status and in the literal sense of whether you’re an underclassmen or upperclassmen, run rampant. The story “Snob’s Progress” involves two sophomore cousins rooming together, with one strongly objecting to the arrangement. Andrew MacDonald, the club-obsessed one, talks over the problem with his former roommate, Schuyler Browne, who dropped out of Princeton after his freshman year. Here, they’re discussing the economically strapped cousin-roommate, Lawrence East:

For a long time the two friends were silent. Browne extended a gold case from which MacDonald took a straw-tipped cigarette. Leaning back in his chair, Browne wrinkled his eyes behind a veil of smoke.

“As I see it,” he began, “you can’t get out of rooming with him, and you’ve got to take him as he is. Now here’s the question: What’s the best course to follow?”

“Exactly,” agreed MacDonald, anxiously watching the other’s face.

“Unquestionably the thing for you to do,” continued Browne, “is to keep on as you’ve started. Simply going about your affairs, I mean, and take no responsibility for East. Let it be understood around campus that you don’t expect to drag him into a club with you. After all, everybody’s got cousins—I’ve got two myself that are fairly crude citizens—and it isn’t your fault that East happens to be what he is. Always keep well-dressed, and above everything else never be seen with anybody but the right sort of fellows.”

“I’ve been very careful about that.”

“Stick to the policy you and I started out with,” advised Browne. “It’s a shame they ruled cars off the campus. Otherwise, I’d say send for that new roadster of yours and keep it here—as long as your family has money you might as well let it be known. Make the most of your acquaintance with Danny Wharton, because he’s practically going to run that bicker committee.”

“The Kind Women Like,” describes Reunions from the 1920s, with visions of costumes that would be reviled as “problematic” by today’s standards. The P-rade sketch, however, rings true and shows the continuity of Princeton traditions over a century and more:

In the forefront marched two color-bearers holding aloft the Stars and Stripes and the silken banner of the University; next—the first graduates of the procession—walked several erect members of the class of Sixty-two; and following them, ranked according to the year of their graduation, came other classes. As the white-haired classmates in the lead came abreast of the stands a loud handclapping rose; and this, breaking out afresh, followed their progress around the field. Similarly, applause and cheers led by a nimble undergraduate greeted reach class passing in review while the parade, like a great, multi-colored serpent, slowly drew its length in through the gate. The forepart of the serpent moved placidly enough; but the portion nearing the tail seemed troubled with a species of St. Vitus’ dance, for the younger classes showed an increasing desire to skip and desire to skip and cavort upon the green turf.

“Oh,” exclaimed Anita, “it’s just too divine!”

Edgar keeps a tight focus on a certain slice of students from the Roaring 20s: mostly wealthy or upper-middle class, often Southern (a character in “The Last Patrician” is named Lee Barber, after Robert E. Lee) and obsessed with their social standing. Some students fall outside the magic circles, such as the poor cousin Lawrence East, the most likeable character in the book. Especially striking is the rampant lack of interest in academics. Cutting classes is common and being studious comes across as subversive. Learning stands more as an obstacle than a goal, something to cram in at the end of a term rather than zestfully pursue. Career goals are also a rarity, other than one Big Man on Campus, Thomas Griffith Pendleton, who, in the last story, “Spotlight,” plans to attend Columbia Law School, although a romantic obsession with a Broadway star puts him far along the path to flunking out.

Inside the cover, a view of the Graduate College.

While mostly comic in tone, the stories hint at a darker side of Princeton. The teenaged “Princeton Men” can come across as depressed, lost or barely functional outside the comfortable home environments. Hearty false fronts are a common personality trait. Relations between the sexes in the hothouse of an all-male campus are fraught, leading to poor decisions and self-defeating behavior (coeducation would not arrive for another half-century, a few years before I arrived on campus in 1976). Several stories have an O. Henry-like twist at the end, as characters escape disaster, learn life lessons and, in one case, ruefully acknowledge the power of the Honor Code.

The stories led me, naturally enough, to think about the Princeton of the 1920s in reality. As luck would have it, the day I finished In Princeton Town I watched the DVD of The Catcher Was a Spy, a fictionalized film based on the life of Morris “Moe” Berg ‘23, the astounding linguist, Major League Baseball catcher and OSS operative in Europe during World War II. The film was solid enough, with reat period costumes, and a scene set at what must have been the Princeton Club in New York after Pearl Harbor, tuxedos all around, with a performance by an a cappella group, with the stirring line, “I ask you, gentlemen of Princeton, to join me in singing, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’”

According to an article in PAW in 2012, when a baseball collector donated Berg’s papers to Princeton:

Berg straddled several worlds without being completely at home in any of them. The child of Jewish Russian immigrants, he was a social outsider in the WASPy Princeton of the early ’20s, but he was a true student-athlete who knew Sanskrit and a half-dozen other languages and was a star shortstop on the baseball team. The Brooklyn Robins signed Berg less than a month after graduation and put him in their lineup the next day.

Being Jewish and possible gay must have placed Berg on the far outskirts of the Princeton scene. But I wondered, he overlapped with Edgar for two years at Princeton; would they have have known each other? Was sports a connection? The inscrutable Berg kept his thoughts to himself.

Based on his PAW memorial, Edgar found his creative zest at Princeton and kept right on writing. He was on the editorial board of the Daily Princetonian, and was named “wittiest” and “most original” member of his class as a senior. He worked for an advertising firm after graduation and taught at Temple University. He then spent 20 years as an editor of the Saturday Evening Post, overseeing the “Postscripts” humor column among other duties. He edited the 1963 volume The Saturday Evening Post Reader of Sea Stories.

(And now, let's take a break to play a thrilling round of the six-degrees-of-Princeton-separation game. To start, one of Edgar's most esteemed classmates was George Kennan '25, the U.S. diplomat and author. According to one account quoted in Wikipedia, "Unaccustomed to the elite atmosphere of the Ivy League, the shy and introverted Kennan found his undergraduate years difficult and lonely." He served in diplomatic posts in Lisbon, London and Moscow at the same time Berg was attending to OSS matters in Europe. Kennan went on to have a monumental impact on U.S. foreign policy at the start of the Cold War. I'm bringing up Kennan because in September 1976, right after I reached Princeton, I attended a seminar on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, I think on the topic of "Solzhenitsyn as a Historian of 1917." That summer of 1976 I had been reading Kennan's books, owing to a blossoming interest in Soviet affairs, so I knew about him and recognized him. He asked some good questions. This fleeting brush with a world-historical figure who was a classmate of Day Edgar's remains one of my favorite Princeton memories.)

In Princeton Town merited extended comments in PAW’s issue of October 4, 1929, a few weeks before the stock market crash. Written by Julian Street, Jr. ‘25, it gives ample evidence that Edgar suffered the same academic perils as his characters:

His friends were my friends, his icebox was my icebox, and when he gave up cigarettes, as he did every day, the economy, what there was of it, was mine as well as his. . . . when, as a Senior, he emerged from the Midyears’ exams with the incongruous record of three First Groups and one abysmal flunk, imperiling his diploma, his anguish was my anguish. However, he managed to survive, and so did I, and when at last he clutched the precious sheepskin we shared a common joy . . . As Dean Gauss wrote from his summer home, “Day Edgar certainly knows his campus. He has picked his characters so engagingly and yet left them so human and so real that I might as well have been back on Nassau Street or in Nassau Hall.”

Street closes his remarks by saying that “In Princeton Town is sure to delight graduates of the University, and I believe it will also delight undergraduates, even though it makes them squirm a little. At all events, it will enable undergraduates to test their own appreciation of themselves.”

After finishing Edgar's book, I started researching other fictional portraits of Princeton. Other than seeing A Beautiful Mind, about mathematician John Nash *50, and Risky Business with Tom Cruise and Rebecca de Mornay, I haven't read or watched other entertainment about Princeton (my friends and I still quote to one another the Risky Business line "Princeton can use a guy like Joel," although we substitute our own names in there). The long orange-and-black line of fiction goes back to His Majesty, Myself, set in the 1840s and published in 1880 by William Mumford Baker 1846. In a precursor of Edgar's story "Snob's Progress," the book involves two cousins rooming together in Nassau Hall.

Inspired by Edgar's underappreciated look at the University, I might check out some novels to see how others look at the place and its quirks, charms and intrigues. This list gives an updated set of books and movies with a Princeton angle. And who knows, I may decide to try my hand at Princeton-flavored fiction, something along the lines of A Reunions Romance, with smoldering glances stolen under floppy orange-and-black hats during the P-rade.

Or maybe Tigers Against Robots, a sci-fi epic chronicling humanity's last stand against the self-replicating grey goo accidently unleashed by, um, the world's richest man (really, it was a good idea that just got out of hand and then self-delivered itself at no charge to consumers worldwide!). From a secret command center in the basement of Nassau Hall, a global brain trust led by George Schultz '42 along with an iron-willed Senator from Texas, a charismatic former First Lady, several Supreme Court Justices, the coach of the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys, a couple of Nobel Prize winners, a beautiful and brainy actress and model known for her Calvins, the world's greatest author of chick lit, a retired FBI director looking for his next gig, and the holographic reincarnations of John Nash, Moe Berg and George Kennan plan a devastating but environmentally and culturally sensitive response using STEM concepts discovered in Woodrow Wilson School conference reports.

Together, they pool their superpowers to counterattack the unstoppable nanotechnology rolling up Route 1 from Trenton. In the climactic scene, they don their orange-and-black Kevlar beer jackets and matching bermuda shorts, climb into their armor-plated tiger-striped Reunions golf carts, set their plutonium phasers on "Beat Yale," make final donations to Annual Giving and bequests to the 1746 Society, and then roar into the ultimate conflagration while screaming, "Three cheers for Old Nassau!"

So, I'm glad I scooped up In Princeton Town when I had the chance. You never know from where inspiration may come. Thanks, Day Edgar '25.

Walls and Borders, the Tribal Memory

Every time I hear about the path of the border wall, it sends a jolt of recognition through me. I grew up in Mission, Texas, right on the border with Mexico. The wall will cut through land south of my town, down by the Rio Grande. That includes a state park I have visited, the National Butterfly Center and La Lomita Chapel, the small Catholic church that actually gives Mission its name. My home town and the Rio Grande Valley are in the news every day, especially during President Trump’s visit to McAllen, the big city east of Mission. With the border wall now the point of contention in the government shutdown, the place is more notorious than ever.

The idea of moving among countries is familiar to me, as is the idea of staying in a place for generations. That all depends on what side of my family I talk about. On my father’s side, the rootlessness is very obvious. My grandfather, father and myself were all born in different countries: Ukraine for my grandfather, the United States for my father, and France for me, when my parents were living on a US Air Force base in the 1950s. My grandparents came as the typical Jewish families who got out of Eastern Europe, fleeing the pogroms and poverty. They came through, legally, and settled in St. Louis. My father was born there, but he had a wanderlust that took him back to Europe in the 1950s after he married my mother in Texas. In his case, he went to France to work in the auto racing industry. My brother and I were both born at the Air Force hospital there. But the marriage ended and my mother brought us back to her home town, Mission, and that’s where we stayed.

As that story of return suggests, my mother’s family shows a great attachment to place. I can’t think of anybody in the family who permanently left Texas, other than me, and I’m here in the Northeast for over 40 years. Family members came to New York from Germany in the 1840s and to Texas by the 1860s or before. One was the first ordained rabbi in Texas. He was my great-great-grandfather, Hayyim Schwarz. Zooming through time 150 years, my brother’s twin grandkids had their second birthday earlier this month. They are the seventh generation in Texas, living in a town outside Houston that’s just 35 miles south of Hempstead, where the esteemed rabbi Schwarz settled in 1873. Three or four generations can be found in the Jewish cemetery in the town of Gonzales, between San Antonio and Houston.

So when I see the wall, I think of people on one side, leaving what they have known for the unknown in search of something they can’t get where they live. I also people on the other side, where they’ve been for generations, feeling their sense of place and society threatened by disruption.

That’s been humanity’s pattern for hundreds of thousands of years. Move away or stay and fight, conquer or resist, adjust or repel, welcome or ignore, cooperate or clash, assimilate or stand apart. I can sense that story from both sides of the dynamic. The plans for the border wall may be new, but the emotions the wall evokes by are as old as our tribal memories and stories our ancestors told under the stars and by the rivers of Babylon.

As for me, maybe it’s time to look into applying for an EU passport. I was born in France, after all. I should keep my options open in case the wanderlust strikes me for some reason I cannot imagine.

Mary Poppins Returns in a Time of Social Convulsion

I came late to the Mary Poppins party. I must have seen the 1965 film as a kid since I recognize the songs although I don’t remember the film. In contrast, my Significant Other is a major fan and can sing all the songs. We watched the original last month in preparation for the release of Mary Poppins Returns. We saw the sequel on New Year’s Eve and I now I feel compelled to say something about it.

But what? As a musical, the sequel has some catchy songs that could become known, such as the touching "The Place Where the Lost Things Go," although not on the level of “Chim-Chim-Cheree” and “A Spoonful of Sugar” and, you know, that song with the long title. The hip-hop inflected songs with Lin-Manuel Miranda, set in a music hall, bring a dash of that Hamilton magic to the show. The dance sequences are OK, but don’t expect An American in Paris. The costumes are gorgeous with the over-the-top colors and styles now seen on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Emily Blunt brings a mesmerizing quality to the role with her style, wildly posh accent and bright lipstick. The rakish angle of her hat in the movie's posters suggests a femme fatale from 1940s film noir.

What intrigued me most was Blunt's depiction of Mary Poppins, along with the chaotic world she touches. The movie grabbed me on the level of social commentary, myth and psychology. If Julie Andrews played Mary Poppins as a kind, caring and firm nanny in the original set in the evolving post-Victorian London, Blunt remade the same character with a layer of chilly, cyborgian empathy in a London ravaged by the 1930s depression and the looming threat of all-out class warfare.

Both movies, but especially the sequel, have Mary Poppins flying in to a household of embattled and flailing men, economically adrift in a society convulsed by social pressures and marked by women raising their voices for change—women's suffrage in the original, support for the destitute working class in the sequel. The children prefer an energetic free-range lifestyle that alarms the parents. The men (father in the original, son in the sequel) work for a bank that embodies the rapacious values of soulless capitalism. Park attendants stand for those who enforce the rules with a ferocious intensity, while a sea captain and his loyal assistant make obsessive gestures in defense of the dying empire. From the depths of the social order, the grimy and jolly chimney sweeps and lamplighters wield their tools with the force of iron-willed Bolshevik revolutionary cadres in Ten Days that Shook the World, ready the sweep away the established order.

Into this chaos flies Mary Poppins with her talking umbrella and carpet bag, just as in the original, to set things right and have fun in the process. She’s a character in search of a comparison. Is she the silent stone Monolith from 2001? No, too faceless. A strict Freudian psychoanalyst, inscrutable and silent, upon which patients project their own emotions as they struggle for insight? That’s getting closer with the notion of projecting an identity on to Mary Poppins, but a psychoanalyst is passive and not directly involved in the patient’s daily life. Besides, Mary Poppins likes to talk.

She strikes me as a firm and creative parental influence, but one who insists on keeping an adult distance that preserves her private sphere. After mulling that thought, it struck me that Mary Poppins reminds me of Shane, the drifting gunslinger who helps a beleaguered homesteading family under attack from a cattleman. In the 1953 film Shane, the lead character forms a deep bond with the family’s son Joey while also having unexpressed feelings for his mother, Marion. Like Mary Poppins, Shane shows Joey values and defends the family through the climactic crisis. Shane and Mary Poppins are both snappy dressers with a talent for dancing. Shane ends, like both Mary Poppins movies, with the unreadable hero leaving the loving family, coming from nowhere, going somewhere else.

The last scene of Shane could apply to a revised conclusion of Mary Poppins Returns, with children calling after the nanny with pleas that unintentionally reveal the depth of emotion of a parent toward the departing stranger. This would require a gender reversal in Mary Poppins Returns, but I could see the widowed Michael Banks yearning for more with Mary Poppins, and the children begging her as Joey did to Shane:

Pa’s got things for you to do, and Mother wants you, I know she does! ShaneI Shane, come back!

But Shane rides on into the mountains, destination unknown, just as Mary Poppins ascends into the sky with her tight, knowing smile and faraway eyes. She never explains what she does, and denies involvement in any of the marvelous adventures she arranges for the children and her robust blue-collar companions (Dick Van Dyke in the original, Lin-Manuel Miranda in the sequel). A bit of eye moisture hints at her feelings, but to the end Mary Poppins remains a beautiful and tightly wrapped enigma, beyond the reach of those who care for her.

In all fairness, the Mary Poppins books evidently give far more details about her family and friends, and the personal vanity just hinted at in the movies. Mary Poppins Returns does have a song-and-dance number with her eccentric cousin, played by Meryl Streep speaking with an accent that blended Yiddish and Russian-princess tonalities. I found the scene more jarring than illuminating, since it brings in a family element that doesn’t fit with the austere blank-slate Mary Poppins otherwise envisioned.

Dick Van Dyke appears in both movies, 53 years apart, and reprises one of his two roles from the original to great effect. He shows off his 91-year old dancing chops, a great crowd pleaser. I can only hope Emily Blunt can do the same when she's 91. For the record, the Significant Other remarks, "I bet Julie Andrews could dance on the table, she still looks great."

Mary Poppins Returns closes on an effervescent hopeful note, thanks in part to the capitalistic wonders of compound interest. The final scenes shimmer with goodness and social solidarity confirmed against the “lovely London sky” and the evil capitalist banker humiliated one more time for good measure. Will Emily Blunt reprise the role and sail down with the East Wind for more adventures, perhaps Mary Poppins Battles the Blitzkrieg or Mary Poppins Parties with the Rolling Stones? Will she team up with Bruce Willis to make Die Hard With a Spoonful of Sugar?

Only the box office knows for sure.

Peeking at the longevity tables

Matters of health are on my mind these days. On Tuesday I had a colonoscopy, with two benign polyps snipped out, the same result as the last colonoscopy 5 years ago. People in my life have been dealing with serious health matters, too, like leukemia, congestive heart failure, cancer, and hip replacements.  

With all this going on, I decided to use an online longevity calculator to figure out how old I can expect to live. I answered questions about physical activity, drinking and smoking habits and other indicators. One said 88, another said 90. I can live with those figures, although for all I know they may be as accurate as a Buzzfeed poll or a Ouiji board. But the numbers are pointing in the right direction. My father passed away at 92 in March. His father lived to be 91 or so, another good indication. My father’s younger sister lived into her early 80s and then—Parkinson’s disease.

The wild card? My mother. A smoker, she died of cancer at 63, when I was only 26 years old. She lived long enough to see my brother married, but she missed my marriage and her three grandsons. I tell myself the smoking and the state of cancer treatments in the early 1980s made her cancer more lethal than it would be today. Maybe. But the number 63 stays lodged in my mind, looming like a stormcloud just over the calendar’s horizon. I’m now 61, the age when she got the last diagnosis. She left her job, closed down the house we had rented for 21 years and moved in with her older sister for the last two and a half years of her life.

For all these reasons, I can hear what poet Andrew Marvell called “time’s winged chariot” at my back, hurrying near. What should I think, should I respond to hints of mortality? I’m not in a midlife crisis – at 61 I’m a little past that, although this fall I got a 2015 Toyota Prius and an iPhone 7 Plus, big lifestyle upgrades for me. But I am in a time of reflection on what I’d like to do in X number of years or decades remaining.

A big change came in the spring, when I stopped commuting after 22 years and now work at home for the same job. I have replaced train time with things like sleeping later and lunchtime walks to the library. I’m not as exhausted, so I have more time for personal writing projects—short stories, blog posts, those long-delayed ideas for novels. I’m helping a 93 year old World War II veteran edit his memoirs of his escape from Germany in 1941, then his return as a GI in 1945, and that’s deeply satisfying. 

After a lifetime of writing, I finally have the energy and focus to actually get projects moving and completed. Maybe not quickly, but I don’t give up like I used to in frustration. Because if I don’t write it now, I may not remember what I want to say down the road.

I’m going back to old loves. I signed up for an online harmonica class, a thwarted interest of mine for a half-century. I may never be the King of the Delta Blues Harpists, but maybe I can finally learn to bend a note. This fall I took a Photoshop class so I can improve the digital photos I’m always taking.

Personal stuff? I talk to my brother more and he sends me photos of his twin grandkids. I write letters to friends, always delighting them when a real handwritten letter shows up in their mailbox. I text my son, our preferred way of communicating. My girlfriend and I go out for date-night dinners, movies in Pleasantville at the Burns Film Center, hikes around Westchester County, trips to New York City to dash from one museum to another (the Society of Illustrators to the Guggenheim to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on one recent Saturday). I don’t obsess over the latest political uproars; to me, many of them are sound and fury, signifying nothing. At the same time, I very involved in my synagogue and have attended zoning hearings at Bedford Town Hall as a form of civic engagement. I don’t even check my retirement accounts unless the market is up. And I only get on the scale when those numbers are down.

So what about those longevity surveys? Do I enjoy 90 and beyond, or is time’s winged chariot closer than I imagine? I’ll hope for the best, but, as the Good Book says, no man knows the day or hour. I’ll get what I can from my days, take what I want and leave the rest. And there’s always technology. I joke around with Princeton cronies about our reunions, a big deal for us. I tell them I plan to attend my 100^th reunion in 2080 as a hologram stored on the Amazon cloud. I just hope Amazon offers post-mortem Amazon Prime for the eternal support of my uploaded personality.

Car Stories

[For an open-mic performance of this essay, follow this link.]

My name is Van. I’m named after a car, the 1950s British racecar called the Vanwall. As you might guess, my father was a car nut. My younger brother is Cooper, but don’t call him Mini Cooper.

You’d think I’d be a car nut myself. But apart from primal male lusting after Corvette Stingrays and the Maserattis and Ferraris we see tooling around Katonah, I’m not. In fact, I’m a very cautious, even anxious driver, the old guy who never exceeds the speed limit on the Saw Mill Parkway.

Still, I need to get around. I was very happy with a 2004 Hyundai Elantra I bought in 2005 at the Hyundai dealership in Stamford. It was a corporate car, barely used and I happily drove it for over 13 years. That is, until the steering seized up and the engine started smoking a few weeks ago. Rather than get it repaired, I decided to put the money into a down payment for a new car. 

Me, a new car! The Elantra lasted longer than cameras, cell phones and computers. But for all my mooning over American muscle cars and curvy Euro roadsters, my practical turn of mind drove me in another direction. All my research, especially Consumer Reports, pointed to the Toyota Prius. Reliable, good for the environment, and I could get from a local dealer—a big issue since Hyundai dealerships kept closing on me.

So last week I bought a 2015 Prius at Rivera Toyota in Mt. Kisco. The leap in technology is amazing. Besides the battery power, the Prius has a CD player. Was I the last person in Bedford, NY, to drive a car with a tape deck? I drove around with boxes of tapes in my car so I could groove to Miles Davis and the Texas Tornados; now I’ve donated most of them to Goodwill. I even donated the Elantra to Goodwill.

I picked up the car on a Monday and faced my first test on Tuesday as a nervous driver. I had to go to Norwalk for a dental appointment, then to downtown Stamford to serve as the photographer at an event at my employer’s office. That’s not much mileage, but the day had pounding rain . . . and I was driving a new car . . . and I had to drive on I-95 . . .

Actually, for me, the anticipation is much worse than the reality of doing. That applies to all kinds of life activities. I steered the car to Norwalk, a good warmup. Then, true to form, I missed the convoluted entrance onto I-95 in South Norwalk, but finally found an entrance a few miles away in Rowayton. I immediately got the full I-95 fun ride: Rain, big trucks, meandering lanes.

But what happened? Knowledge kicked in. I’ve driven I-95 plenty of times before. I knew where I was going and the traffic patterns. I knew exactly what to expect when Exit 8 for Elm Street appeared. I found the company garage, parked and that was it. The car worked fine and I liked the windshield wipers that didn’t go “skree, skree” like a crazed raven when I used them.

Little waves of relief rolled over me when I packed up my camera to leave. All I had to do was get home. I hoped for blue skies that late afternoon. Instead, the police had blocked off Elm Street under I-95 because the downpour was flooding the roadway. Cars going north on Elm Street created waves like speedboats. Rather than risk stalling my shiny new wheels in the sudden pond, I exited on East Main – with traffic bumper to bumper, I couldn’t move over to turn left. The street carried me east, further from where I needed to go. Years ago I would have broken out in a cold sweat. This time, however, I drew on my reptilian memory of having lived in Stamford for seven years, so I knew the place.

I saw an intersection coming up for Glenbrook Road, which goes north to where I used to live in Stamford. I turned right, turned around in a parking lot, and headed north. The Prius crept north in the monsoon, wipers slamming back and forth. I felt calm in the situation, like I had threaded the needle of proper response. The GPS from my phone, cradled in my lap, told me where to turn. As long as I kept moving north, I’d eventually get return to the snug confines of Katonah, and I did. Once again, I learned that a little life experience goes a long way in coping with anxiety.

I’m still making the car my own. My sense of space is filling it in, that sensation when you and the car merge, like a hand in a glove. I’m still plowing through the instruction manual, which has about 25 pages on how to lock and unlock the doors. I’m putting it through the paces of the familiar ant trails I use to get around the area. For the first time in my life, I set up that Bluetooth function on my phone to connect it with the audio and map display of the car, although I haven’t figured out how to use it. But that’ll happen. As I have learned, experience on the roads counts for a lot.

I’m looking forward to selecting a stack of CDs to keep in the car. Which one will have the honor of being the first to spin in the CD player?

Maybe I don’t need to feel nostalgic for the Elantra’s tape deck after all.

Fathers and Sons, Doors and Prisons

John S. McCain Jr. and George Stephen Morrison lived parallel lives of military service. Both graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy—McCain in 1931, Morrison in 1941. They served in the Pacific in World War II and had careers that lasted into the Vietnam War era. McCain was Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater from 1968 to 1972. 

Morrison was the commander of the Carrier Division during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin episode. He reached the rank of Rear Admiral in 1967 and retired in 1975. While they were 10 years apart in age, the two men were both admirals from 1967 to 1972.

Besides educational and career similarities, the men both had sons who had notable careers: John S. McCain III, Navy pilot, 2008 presidential candidate and Senator, and Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors.

The death in August of Sen. McCain at age 81 deserved attention, as he rose to the highest levels of American politics. I wouldn't ordinarily associate him with a musician who wallowed in the mire of the dissolute rock lifestyle and died at 27. Morrison died in Paris in 1971 while McCain languished in a North Vietnamese prison, wracked by torture and isolation but bolstered by an iron sense of loyalty to his fellow American prisoners. However, McCain and Morrison shared the personal history as sons of admirals, sons who chose different paths in life. Their fathers, too, had to deal with traumas involving their sons. How did those complex father-son relationships play out?

Jim Morrison and his father, George Morrison, on the bridge of the USS Bon Homme Richard, January 1964 (Photo: US Navy) 

Adm. Morrison, the youngest admiral in the history of the Navy, and his son had a tormented relationship that became no relationship. I winced to read about the primal clash between the boy and the Admiral:

Due to the admiral’s career, the Morrisons were always on the move. By age four, Jimmy had already lived in five different places, coast to coast. Since his father was gone for long periods, his mother Clara became the disciplinarian. Jimmy grew rebellious. Returning home from duty, his father, accustomed to thousands of men obeying his command promptly and without question, had no patience with his first son’s insubordination and backtalk. He spared no effort trying to get the boy on the straight and narrow.

In disciplining his eldest son, George Morrison used a military “dressing down” approach: he would humiliate the boy to submission and apology. When this became less effective with his precocious, increasingly rebellious son, Admiral Morrison got old-fashioned. According to one biographer, Stephen Davis, the father beat his son with a baseball bat. Jim also confided to his lawyer that his father had sexually assaulted him, and that he never forgave his mother for allowing it. Clara dismissed the charge as one of her son’s malicious lies. “In spite of his medals,” said Jim of his father, “he’s a weakling who let her [his wife] castrate him.”

Long after Jim’s death, Adm. Morrison and Jim's two siblings talked to writer Ben Fong-Torres for The Doors by the Doors, an authorized 2006 biography. From the comments, Adm. Morrison’s reflections sounded wistful, and, to my ears, emotionally jarring:

"We look back on him with great delight . . . The fact that he's dead is unfortunate but looking back on his life it's a very pleasant thought," George Morrison says in the book.

Jim Morrison, a difficult teen who rebelled against his father's military lifestyle, went on to become one of the most magnetic performers in rock 'n' roll. But he disowned his family, and once made a throwaway comment that they were dead. He also referenced his parents in the Oedipal rant “The End,” singing that he wanted to kill his father and sleep with his mother.

Yet, the Lizard King pose could have intertwined with familial yearnings. A December 6, 2013 article by Paul Beston in The American Conservative, “Remembering Jim Morrison: The Doors frontman and his admiralfather lived a generation’s turmoil,” explored the father-son relationship and found this story, which I found very touching and believable:

In fact, during Morrison’s time in Paris, the admiral had been on his mind. Alan Ronay, an old college friend, spent weeks with Jim there. “One night we had a conversation that was totally moving,” Ronay told Morrison biographers James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky. “It was full of affection … Jim telling funny stories about his dad and so on. The stories were really tender and warm. I wish his parents could’ve heard it. I really felt that he’d totally reclaimed himself.” But a few months later, he was dead.

Adm. Morrison outlived his prodigal son by 37 years. Unable to work things out in life, the father did what he could in the decades that followed. The Morrison family paid for upkeep of Jim’s grave in Paris, and Adm. Morrison “traveled to Jim’s grave in Paris and installed a plaque of his own making. Translated from Greek, it reads: True to his own spirit.” The Greek said: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ.

While Jim Morrison pursued his muse, the future Sen. McCain was trying to stay alive. How did his parents react to his plane being shot down? Here is one story about it:

McCain's son, naval aviator Lieutenant Commander John S. McCain III, became a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in October 1967, after being shot down and badly injured during a bombing raid over Hanoi. McCain's prominence made the downing of his son front-page news. McCain and his wife Roberta treated the news stoically, attending a dinner party in London without indicating anything was wrong even though initial word indicated their son was unlikely to have survived the shoot-down. McCain would later say little about his son's captivity in public, other than that they had indications he was alive and "that is something to live for.”

Like Adm. Morrison, Adm. McCain did not let family issues override his military orientation. He ordered the April 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, including the Hanoi area where his son was held prisoner. Ultimately, after the Paris peace accords, Sen. McCain was released in 1973.

John McCain meets his father for the first time after his release from a North Vietnamese prison, March 31, 1973

A column in Forbes magazine from December 31, 2017, provides an extended look at Adm. McCain’s career and his response to his son’s capture. Titled “On Senator John McCain, Son of Admiral John McCain,” it deserves quoting at length. This passage shows his focus on military over family matters:

Admiral John McCain was named Commander in Chief of the Pacific during the time when his son, Lieutenant Commander John McCain, was held as a Prisoner of War by the North Vietnamese. His son’s captivity could have colored decisions that Admiral McCain might have made. Admiral McCain, Rowland believes, dutifully made a commitment that he would isolate the fact that his son was a POW so that it would never affect any of his decisions as Commander. Rowland:

 "Admiral McCain made it crystal clear that no one would mention Lt. Commander John McCain’s name in his presence. The day I signed in I was told in no uncertain terms that the quickest way to get fired and kicked out before sunset you would be to do so. My job was POWs,” recalled Rowland. 'I handled enemy prisoners. My duties also transferred over to the Geneva Convention and American POWs. I never, ever, briefed Admiral McCain but for one time on a very distantly related issue which I will share.”

“Many years later,” said Rowland, “when Senator John McCain was running for president his mother was interviewed on TV. It was revealing to me that when she was presented with the observation, ‘That must have been some experience for you to have your son released from captivity after Admiral McCain left the command.’ Roberta McCain said, ‘It was as if he had come back from the dead.’

And yet, as with Adm. Morrison laying a plaque at his son’s grave, Adm. McCain had deep human feelings for his son in captivity. How could he not? While these were men raised in a time where many emotions were reserved for the private sphere, they experienced love, regret, longing and happiness like all of us. In an article published in the Atlantic during the 2008 presidential campaign, “The Wars of John McCain,” Jeffrey Goldberg reports a telling anecdote from retired Army General John Nelson Abrams, son of Gen. Creighton Abrams, Commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. It says,

“You could see there was genuine fondness between them, and maybe in part because of the family commitment to the war, they were absolutely focused on winning,” John Abrams said, speaking of the relationship between his father and Admiral McCain. McCain, however, did not speak of his son’s captivity. “He would never show his emotions like that,” Abrams told me.

After John McCain was released, in 1973, he learned that on several Christmases during his captivity, his father had traveled to the northernmost reaches of American-held territory, to be as close to him as physically possible. And only in 1973 did Admiral McCain learn that John McCain III had been singled out by the North Vietnamese for especially rigorous torture because he was the son of an important admiral. The North Vietnamese, in fact, referred to Admiral McCain’s son as the “prince.”

I wonder how a meeting between John McCain, the Senator, and Jim Morrison, the Lizard King, would have gone; they never met in real life and for all I know never knew of each other's existence. Fate had other plans for both of them. But had the fates decided otherwise, I like to think of McCain and an older, sober Morrison getting together to talk about their naval upbringing, their hard-charging fathers, and their lives in public service and public entertainment. They'd share some laughs and reflections, argue about politics, maybe listen to Doors albums and then go sailing on the ocean blue.

The Port Huron Statement, Up on the Shelf

One small pleasure in life: after I work out at the New York Sports Club in Baldwin Place, NY, I browse the book and CD section of the nearby Goodwill store. I'll scan books that catch my attention, buying some and noting others to get from the library.

Last Sunday my eye traveled to "The Port Huron Statement: The Visionary Call of the 1960s Revolution," written in 1962 by Tom Hayden (with contributors), then a 21 year-old student at the University of Michigan and a founder of the Students for a Democratic Society. This version of what's known as "PHS" dated from 2005 with a new introduction from Hayden, plus photos.

So far, nothing much to catch my attention. Then I looked at the inside cover. There, I saw that Hayden himself had signed the book—and signed it for somebody whose name I well recogized. The note said,

Katrina—who's to say—but without The Nation there might have been no Port Huron Statement. Thank you for embodying the radical reformist spirit! Tom

That wouldn't mean anything to most readers, but I knew it referred to Katrina vanden Heuvel, Princeton Class of 1981, and editor and publisher of The Nation, a magazine founded in 1865. Back in 1996 I had written a short profile of her for the Princeton Alumni Weekly (so I recalled, although I can't find the clip), so I always felt a certain connection to her, even if our politics differ. To hold a historical book signed by the author, addressed to somebody I met, packed a thrill that makes book hunting a passion for me.

I could only compare this to finding "Man's Quest for God," signed by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, for $1.

I bought this book for the inscription, but then I decided to see what all the excitement was about, given that the book outlined ideas that became part of the Great Society. After all, the PHS ignites media reflections whenever the anniversary of its publication rolls around. Hayden and co-author Dick Flacks wrote about it in The Nation in 2002. I had read about it in Kirkpatrick Sale's 1973 book "SDS: The Rise and Development of the Students for a Democratic Society."

The book's content ranges widely, from antique themes to startlingly familiar. Hayden mentions "in loco parentis" several times, referring to the idea that colleges act like students' parents. The prose reflects a prefeminist vocabulary: "We regards men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love." That emphasis is in the original.

A bit later in the opening chapter on values:

Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man today. These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management, nor by improved gadgets, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolotrous worship of things by man.

Improved gadgets—society didn't follow the PHS way of thinking on that topic.

PHS covers all the issues of the day, especially the global economy, civil rights and discrimination, colonialism, the Cold War, communism and foreign policy, domestic politics (with references to the "Dixiecrat-Republican alliance"), the search for meaning in life and the impact of automation on the workforce, and wraps up with a policy agenda. Some of the ideas are nothing if not ambitious: "We should undertake here and now a fifty-year effort to prepare for all nations the conditions of industrialization."

On the domestic side, PHS almost ventures into the realm of science fiction, and I mean that in a positive way. Examples:

Mechanisms of voluntary association must be created through which political information can be imparted and political participation encouraged.  That sounds a lot like the Internet to me, even if Hayden didn't have a technology solution in mind.

Institutions and practices which stifle dissent should be abolished, and the promotion of peaceful dissent should be actively promoted. PHS mentions here the House Un-American Activities Committee, loyalty oaths, and the Smith and McCarran Acts, adding, "The process of eliminating the blighting institutions is the process of restoring democratic participation." These are smart ideas, freshly applicable to the intolerance now found on college campuses and the threat of deplatforming of controversial thinkers by technology providers.

All told, PHS reads as a time capsule that captures a mood, and looks ahead to other generations of political and social tumult. It never ends

Finally, to circle back to the beginning, one more comment on that PAW profile of Katrina vanden Heuvel that I can't find. Owing to her outspoken political views and media visibility, the profile started circulating online, with my name attached to it. Most of the ruckus has died down, but the quotes can still be found on websites' archives, like this one.

But as the Port Huron Statement counseled, I'm all in favor of the promotion of peaceful dissent and analysis, whatever the source.

A Sunday Morning Post about "The Saturday Evening Post"

As is my wont in a doctor's waiting room, on Friday I passed the time by flipping through magazines; I'll look at anything. What really caught my eye was a name from the distant past: "The Saturday Evening Post." Seeing that title startled me: The Saturday Evening Post still exists?

Many baby boomers may recall the Post as one of those staples of middle-class reading material. In the Wallach household in the 1960s and 1970s, we had subscriptions to the Post, Life, Look, National Geographic (I only read it for the articles), Boys' Life and Sports Illustrated, with my mother also getting Good Housekeeping and the Ladies Home Journal. With only two TV channels then serving the Rio Grande Valley of Texas (KGBT and KRGV), magazine subscriptions gave us a window into the turbulent world.

The current incarnation of the Post appears every two months, published by a nonprofit organization that also publishes children's magazines Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill. Its articles and advertising match what you see in AARP publications, trending toward an elderly demographic. As I waited for the nurse to call me in, I found the articles ranging from interesting to compelling, with some real food for thought: "A Second Chance for Ex-Cons" and "The New Nomads: Living Full-Time on the Road." The issue reprinted a short story from black author Zora Neale Hurston, one of the many top-level writers to contribute to the Post.

As the short story suggests, the Post can draw on an enormous library of material to fill issues, as you would expect for a magazine founded in 1821. Its time as a weekly came at the end of the 19th century:

It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines for the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached millions of homes every week. The magazine declined in readership through the 1960s, and in 1969 The Saturday Evening Post folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication in 1971.

The Post issue I read impressed me with the editorial content and also its adroit use of the Post's bottomless inkwell of illustrations. The Post showcased Norman Rockwell for decades, but the issue shows the talents and themes of other illustrators. One feature pulled together drawings about mothers, a time-capsule view into the interests, values and fashion styles of past generations. We're into Betty Draper territory here, where nostalgia switches over to cultural anthropology. 

The Post's deep library does get remarketed, such as a huge book of its covers. Norman Rockwell merits his own section in most (remaining) bookstores. Other books cover cars, Christmas and short stories and, showing a serious side, "Untold Stories of the Civil War." The Post hasn't gone in the direction of Life and the other Time Inc. magazines that festoon supermarket checkout lines with special issues, mostly on celebrity themes ("Elvis," "Princess Di," "The Kennedys Like You've Never Seen Them," etc.). 

The collection of motherhood illustrations is a good example of what I'd like to see more of; I could envision the Post pulling those together the way The New Yorker does collections of dog and lawyer cartoons. 

The Post already shows a sharp appreciation of its resources. The website has tabs for cover art, history, fiction and humor, each worth some clicking. Norman Rockwell rightly merits his own section. 

The fiction section is highlighting the story "Clever Women are Dangerous Too," complete with an illustration. A website blurb hyperventilates,

Summer is for steamy romance. Our new series of classic fiction from the 1940s and ’50s features sexy intrigue from the archives for all of your beach reading needs. In “Clever Women Are Dangerous Too,” Australian magazine editor Charlie looks to a young, new cover girl for love, but his longtime colleague with a sharp tongue won’t let him get away without a struggle.

Australian author Jon Cleary wrote romance and crime stories for the Post at the dawn of his prolific career as a novelist and screenwriter. Under his editor, Graham Greene, Cleary wrote fiction of all stripes, from war stories to political thrillers to his famous Scobie Malone detective series. His snappy dialogue and whip-smart prose made him a hit, selling about 8 million books in his lifetime.

Reading about the Post as it was and as it is, I thought about the point at which mild nostalgia trends into history and its meaning for current issues. Digging into the Post, I found the history resonating for me. There's the Civil War collection mentioned above, and the website now features its World War I blog, which I found riveting in showing the attitudes toward the conflict as it unfolded. A similar blog covers War War II.

Post archives director Jeff Nilsson did a great job making the archives relevant to today's issues with his online article, "When Freedom of Speech Hit an All-Time Low," about the restrictions on speech between 1917 and 1919, with a focus on socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who was convicted and imprisoned for violating the Espionage Act—then met with President Warren Harding at the White House after his release in December 1921 after Harding granted him clemency. Nilsson looks at the social and legal issues of the Debs case, and includes a link to an October 17, 1908 profile of Debs in the magazine.

Socialism, violations of free speech, suspicion of dissenting opinions—what could be more timely today? If journalism is the first draft of history, then curious readers can find history in the making over the past century and more at the Saturday Evening Post. I wish it continued success as it moves into its third century.

Eric Bogosian Does Double-Duty on Billions and Succession

I've been a fan of the business-oriented series  Billions (Showtime) and Succession (HBO) since they started. Both unfold in New York amidst the lifestyles of the incomprehensibly wealthy: hedge funds for Billions, a family-run (or mis-run) media empire Waystar Royco on Succession. Their worlds float on a soulless ocean of estates, fixers, lawyers, security goons (on an as-needed basis), lissome models, deal hustlers and mostly ignored children. In these circles, far too much is never enough.

In a flight of fancy, I imagine crossovers between the series, as in those CSI programs and Marvel superhero movies. I'd like to see Billions' Bobby Axelrod join the team making a hostile takeover bid for Logan Roy's faltering media empire. His irresistible Queens ruthlessness and resources perfectly match the immovable force of ailing Logan Roy. Their corporate helicopters could sprout Hellfire missiles as they engage in aerial combat over Westport and East Hampton.

The two series already share one actor who plays two very different characters. That's Eric Bogosian, who appears as Lawrence Boyd, CEO of investment bank Spartan Ives on Billions; he's also liberal presidential candidate Gil Eaves on Succession, where he bitterly opposes Waystar Royco's influence and vows to hammer its expansion plans with the help of Logan Roy's insurrectionist daughter Siobhan (Shiv).

Bogosian brings a gravelly voiced weight to both roles—intelligent, scheming, weary, driven by ambition and haunted by his wife's suicide on Succession, wheeling and dealing out of a sense of self-preservation on Billions.

While I doubt HBO and Showtime would intermingle characters (does Macy's tell Gimbel's, as the phrase used to go), perhaps they could agree to take a page from 1961's The Parent Trap, a movie where Hayley Mills played identical twins Sharon McKendrick and Susan Evers, trying to get their parents back together again. Bogosian could play both Lawrence Boyd and Gil Eaves on both series. As Gil Eaves, he'd be especially useful on Billions as a possibly sympathetic character, with the moral center sorely lacking from most of the characters of Billions. As banker Lawrence Boyd, he'd be one of the scheming financiers on Succession, and he could teach the youngsters a thing or two about the investment strategies. Unlike Axelrod's in-house business psychiatrist, Wendy Rhoades, Boyd wouldn't be shown prancing around in bondage gear in his more intimate hours, although it couldn't hurt (maybe it would hurt a little, but he'd have an appropriate safe phrase, like "peso-denominated municipal bonds!").

Another snappy idea: since both series involve woefully strained family relations, especially Succession, why not bring in Hayley Mills as Sharon and Susan, now veteran family therapists tasked with bringing parents and children back together? Granted, Succession already pursued that plot line with a therapist who had an unfortunate pool accident, but now it's time to bring in a team therapy approach, and who better that Sharon and Susan interacting with Lawrence and Gil to get everybody on the straight and narrow golden road to peace and happiness?