Author Archives: Editor

📖  Not that my opinion carries much clout, but I’ve formulated a 70/30 rule for books.  Fiction or non, no more than 70% of books are worth reading 30% of the way through, and no more than 30% are worth reading 70% of the way through.  The middle 40% is where one must decide, is it time to shelve this thing or am I already too invested?  My follow-up rule is, one is never too invested in a book to stop wasting precious time on it.

🙋🏻‍♂️  It so happens that I’m 45% into Laughing at the Gods: Great Judges and How They Made the Common Law by Allan Hutchinson, and I’ve arrived at that junction: is it worth my while to continue?  Hutchinson first profiles William Murray/Lord Mansfield (who?) of England, followed by John Marshall of the fledgling United States and the legendary Oliver Wendell Holmes (often conflated with his fictional cousin Sherlock Holmes).

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for 30 years (1902-1932) and is noted for his long service.  (Aside: Clarence Thomas has now served — and has been serviced — for 33 years.)  In May 1927, Holmes and the Court issued the following opinion allowing Carrie Buck, a “feeble-minded” Virginia woman, to be involuntarily sterilized:

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. … Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Again, I learned of this event in a book about judges whom the author, misgivings aside, deems great.  With respect to Laughing at the Gods, I think I’ve read enough.

[Note:  Ms. Buck was in fact sterilized soon after this decision, the first of over 7,000 such procedures performed under Virginia law into the 1970s.  The ruling was never overturned or the law declared unconstitutional, instead there were apologies.]

🎶 If I ever start a wildly-successful rock band, I will not ask my spouse to be part of it… not because she isn’t talented, but because it would forever be a point of contention in social media as to who or what caused our band’s tragic break-up.  We’ve seen that story often enough.

In that light, I think it would be best that my band not become wildly-successful, which is easily accomplished if I don’t start a band at all.  End problem.

👨🏻‍💼 But say I did start a band!  I would name it General Relativity to honor my hero Albert Einstein (and out-rank Sergeant Pepper).  I would be The General, with wild hair, vest and pocket watches, the band’s songwriter and keyboardist.  Lead guitarist would be Darc NRG with M.C. Squared on drums and gravitational waves.  [Nerd jokes.]  “Hize” Heisenberg would be on bass — and though he plays with uncertainty, I would keep him in the band as a matter of principle.  [Another one.]

😡 On the intersection of  Music and Tragic: I wonder if readers of my cohort recall any of the songs in the pre-rap era that were surprisingly violent yet were also pretty much taken in stride at the time.  I’ll let this thought sit a bit before I share my list.

💲  Forbes, the magazine for those who want to own more, publishes an up-to-the-minute list of the richest people in the world and what they are worth.  Surprisingly, the #1 slot is occupied not by an oil sultan but by Bernard Arnault and family ($230 billion).  Arnault is CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the brands that help the rich make the rich feel richer.  Farther down the list at #97 ($18.9 billion) is Rupert Murdoch of Fox News and Co., and enough said about him.  James Dyson, the vacuum whiz, is #232 on the list, having sucked up $9.7 billion from his enterprise.  Donald Trump’s rump, according to Forbes, rests in the 1,254th spot at $2.6 billion.  For now.

💲  The U.S. harbors some 750 billionaires, or one of 350,000 American adults.  For some reason, U.S. billionaires do not distribute themselves equitably among the various states.  Five states — Alabama, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia — together have 7 million adults but zero resident billionaires, or 20-some billionaires shy of expectations for those five states.  Now why would that be?

Could it have something to do with the distance to the nearest Tesla dealer?

💲  U.S. billionaires should do their patriotic duty and move to states like, say, Alabama, to even things up and help struggling businesses like, say, IVF clinics, stay afloat.

🥸 Ranting further on billionaires.  My lib friends might enjoy this article by Nick French, “Don’t Fall for the Myth of the Job Creator.”  It includes this incisive quote by musician and producer Steve Albini:  “Nobody earned a billion dollars.  It’s literally impossible to be paid for work and end up with a billion dollars.  You get a billion dollars by having other people work for it, then taking it.”

📃 My spouse told me last night that if Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) led a church, she would attend every service.  For her, here is a verse from Ferlinghetti’s I Am Waiting (published 1958) that I connect with:

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again

🦉 Mister Rogers: Dog Person or Cat Person?  Let’s weigh the evidence.  It is known that Fred Rogers had both a dog (Mitzi) and a cat (Sybil) during his lifetime.  On the canine side, Rogers’ show regularly featured Bob Dog, portrayed by local radio talent Bob Trow.  As to felines, there were the puppets Henrietta Pussycat, Daniel Stripèd Tiger, Grandpère (another tiger) and Collette (Grandpère’s granddaughter).  So cats win, right?

Not so fast.  Rogers had an aquarium on his set and would feed his dozen or so pet fish at the start of every show.  So that makes him… a Fish Person?

Fred practiced vegetarianism from the 1970s on, saying he didn’t want to eat anything that had a mother.  (This would seem to exclude everything but rocks and Hitler.)  But since his dog and his cat and his fish all ate meat, one wonders how Fred reconciled this and what exactly to call him.  I would say that he ate in the land of make-believe.

§§  Negotiate (v.)  What spouses do when only one of them wants anchovies on the pizza.  We don’t need to say which one because it’s obvious.  Same with the outcome!

🎹  OK, time to return to those violent Boomer Era songs.  How many do you recall?

• El Paso – written and recorded by Marty Robbins, 1959. “Off to my right I see five mounted cowboys / Off to my left ride a dozen or more / Shouting and shooting, I can’t let them catch me / I have to make it to Rosa’s back door / Something is dreadfully wrong, for I feel / A deep burning pain in my side / Though I am trying to stay in the saddle / I’m getting weary, unable to ride.”
• Folsom Prison Blues – written and recorded by Johnny Cash, 1955, 1968 and beyond. “When I was just a baby, my mama told me, Son / Always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns / But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”
• Hey Joe – performed by Jimi Hendrix and many others, written by Billy Roberts, 1962. “Hey Joe, I heard you shot your woman dead / Hey Joe, I heard you shot your woman dead / Yes I did, got both of them lying in that bed.”
• Run for Your Life – The Beatles, 1965, written by John Lennon. “Let this be a sermon / I mean everything I’ve said / Baby, I’m determined / And I’d rather see you dead / You better run for your life if you can, little girl / Hide your head in the sand, little girl / Catch you with another man / That’s the end, little girl.”
• Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) – Cher, 1966, written by Sonny Bono.  “Bang bang, he shot me down / Bang bang, I hit the ground / Bang bang, that awful sound / Bang bang, my baby shot me down.”

Bang bang, we played with guns, bang, bang, we had some fun, bang bang, desensitized, bang bang, now count the homicides.

🖖  While there is no dearth of reasons for one to feel outrage these days (or any day), it is hard for me to justify spending my time to corral the outrage, and then condense, shape it, and finally express it here in a way that you might want to read, only to make you sigh, “Oh, more of this shit again,” and sending y’all on your way over to Wordle.

And that is why I’m closing this post with something nice to say about (gasp!) Facebook.  My only Facebook friends are my immediate family — and the only reason I visit Facebook is to read their messages or see if they’ve posted something about the grandchildren.

But as of late, Facebook has been populating my newsfeed with topics that I am actually interested in: photos and stories about The Beatles that I’ve never read or seen; same deal with Star Trek; various Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes cartoons; classic comedians like Groucho, Laurel & Hardy… It’s as if some (gasp again!) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has somehow gleaned my interests and finally decided that the best way to keep me engaged on Facebook is to show me items that I enjoy!

I am sure that Facebook, besides gathering up tons of info on me as I cruise the web, has developed some algorithm to gauge how much eyeball-time I spend on various posts in my feed in order to offer me more of the same.  I say, I love The Beatles and Calvin & Hobbes, so I’m fine with this.  Facebook, don’t mess with your algorithm again.

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* As always, I invite you to explore the links, else I wouldn’t bother to include them.