Coronavirus Journal: Care and feeding

Our last meal at Cafe Lutecia in Philadelphia before
moving away in 2016. It was our home away from home.
I still miss it fiercely. We were going to visit this summer.
Now I wonder if we'll ever get to go back.

Today's lunch: Canned kidney beans and green chilies sauteed in olive oil (salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder added), served over brown rice with shredded cheddar and a healthy dash of Tabasco.

It's actually kind of tasty?

I'm not really a cook. But I watched SALT FAT ACID HEAT and the occasional YouTube cooking video. If I'd been smart, I'd have thrown in a piece of bacon. Next time, assuming there's still bacon in the house. Funny thing is, I'd never make that lunch for myself normally. I'd head out for something ... less healthy, in all probability.

I think I'm eating less overall. I'm curious what my blood sugar levels are going to look like at the end of this. Assuming I survive. Which I don't assume.

Coronavirus Journal: And now, a word from Czeslaw Milosz

I read this poem in the New Yorker in the early aughts -- at almost precisely the moment I was taking my leave of the church. I have tried to let it guide how I interact with people of faith since then. And I've been thinking about it lately.

These days, I have one foot in and one foot out of the church. I have always missed the community of my last congregation. I often miss the hymns. But I can't quite get myself to fully engage, either. I go back for a week or two, then disappear for months at a time. The people there still love me, oddly enough. That's God enough for me, for now.

But it's early in this crisis. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. I don't think that's actually true. I think I'm about to find out if I can survive this kind of challenge without permitting my hope to overwhelm my head. I honestly don't know. And I'm not sure that it matters. We're all about to experience PTSD -- the lucky ones among us, that is. Whatever gets us through, right?

Other notes:

* We were going to be frugal in the face of the pandemic, but really: We don't spend near as much money if we don't leave the house. We're spending a bit more on groceries, and a whole lot less on everything else. Of course, that's what's contributing to the collapse of the economy, but it's still the right thing for us to do.

Coronavirus Journal: Routines amidst despair

Cello practices continue. Today, in the garage, to the fresh air.

I've been working from home for nearly four years now, and I've never been terribly great at establishing a routine.

I'm great at meeting work deadlines. But other things -- getting out of the house, going to the gym -- I've been hit-or-miss. I always mean to get a little bit better ... tomorrow.

Now we're all at home almost all of the time, and a few routines would probably be good. For my health. My mental health. For my son and wife. Right now, though, I'm doing a worse-than-usual job.

Mostly, I can do my assigned work. And other than that, I've been spending hours each day watching social media, watching the tragedy unfold slowly and in real time.

I haven't read much, despite buying some new books. I haven't walked outside much at all. Mostly, it all takes energy devoted to witnessing the world break down. I am sleeping more deeply now than I have in years, and it takes a real fight to get awake in the morning.

But I'm trying to fight my tendency to go into a ball. For the sake of my son. For the sake of my wife.

So I've got one routine established. I'm playing one game of chess with my son each day.

Yesterday, he beat me for the first time ever. It made me happy. Life goes on.

I hope.

For more from the Coronavirus Journal, click here.

Coronavirus Journal: Is this the end?

After a year off Facebook, I broke down and went back.
Social distancing is tough for me.

So far, I'm lucky: I write a regular column for The Week, and -- for now anyway -- they're still using my services. I saw a story today that said one in five Americans had already lost their jobs or seen hours reduced because of the coronavirus crisis.

I'm lucky to still have work. But I also have to think about my work a bit differently. I've never wanted to be a hack -- I've worked hard to avoid it -- but we are at a historical moment. To have such a platform is a privilege. To "mail it in" would be sin. Especially if one considers: What if the end of my life is coming soon? The end of my career? What will my final contributions be? How will I want to be remembered?

Last night, I wrote a column. 800 words roughly. Sent it to my editors. Then I realized it was inadquate to the moment, focused on small-bore politicking instead of the big concerns that face us all.

So I withdrew the column, and wrote a whole new column. It was about something important.

I'm glad I did.

Coronavirus Journal: Thoughts and Prayers

My son has insisted we start daily family yoga for the
duration of the lockdown. He's a bit of a showoff.

I'm not much of a praying man. My theological beliefs are fuzzy, at best, and I have long believed in Huckleberry Finn's maxim: "You can't pray a lie."

But for the last couple of weeks, as it has become apparent that coronavirus would upend our lives, I've become a praying man again.

This is tricky, because I've never wanted to treat God -- or whatever name you have for whatever force there might be in the universe -- as Santa Claus. "Dear God, give me this thing that I want," seems both pointless and selfish. I want to be healthy and not lose my livelihood during this time. But so do a lot of people who have, or are about to, lose either their health or their livelihood. I'm not sure that God, to the extent God exists, works that way.

But here's the thing: I'm not in control of what's about to happen.

And now, a timely reminder from Louise Erdrich

"It seemed to Thomas, as they sat in the sinking radiance, shucking bits of shell from the meat, dropping the nuts into a dishpan, that he should hold onto this. Whatever was said, he should hold on to. Whatever gestures his father made, hold on to. The peculiar aliveness of things struck by the late afternoon sunlight -- hold on to it."

The Night Watchman, pages 66-67 

Coronavirus Journal: Togetherness

T and J wait for the water to boil. She is teaching
him to make macaroni and cheese. He is going to learn
a lot of self-sufficiency in the coming weeks.

When President Trump was elected, J and I hosted a brunch for crestfallen friends the following Saturday. The idea was to affirm that though a terrible thing had happened -- and I will not apologize for that sense, nor do I think we were overreacting -- we still had each other, we still had community, we were still together.

Now a new crisis has arrived, and if the medical authorities are correct, the worst thing I could do to comfort my friends at this point would be to bring them all together.

 Isolation, it seems, is the only thing that can save us.

 Or most of us.

 Except: It won't.

Yes, it will help slow the spread of the virus -- and for that reason, we're obeying the "social distancing" requirements to the extent possible -- but it also creates two new problems: Isolation, and loss of livelihoods.

We are social creatures. I've seen videos of people in Italian neighborhoods standing on their balconies, entertaining each other with music. Here in Kansas, we don't live that close to our neighbors -- enough to separate ourselves and yet still be in that kind of face-to-face contact with each other -- but I suspect we'll find ways to fight through the isolation. For many of us, this might be the greatest-ever era to be quarantined: We can still talk to each other on the phone, or video chat, or simply snark at each other and post updates on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

 I'm a bit more worried about all the people I know who work in a service economy. I know of one catering service here in town that just laid off its part-time staff because all its bookings for the next two months have dried up -- it's a beloved local business that will find it challenging to survive. My local bookstore has responded to events by offering to deliver books for free to customers -- they'll drop the package off outside your front door, let you know they've arrived, and walk away. Hopefully, some businesses will survive by using that kind of creativity.

We need each other, it turns out.

Even in an age of polarization and tech-driven isolation, we need human contact. And we need, frankly, human commerce. And those things are going to be tough to come by. I fear that the loss of these things might ultimately produce suffering and deaths that the virus alone can't accomplish.

There's a real tension between all of our human needs during this crisis, is what I'm saying.

That's on the large scale. On the small scale, my wife, my son and I are stuck in a small house together for the duration. We're doing to find it difficult to get away from each other. T, now 11 years old, had already spent increasing amounts of time behind a closed door, in his room.

It appears that trend will accelerate.

He announced today: "Sometimes kids need a break from parents." Right now, he's in his room.

I get it, son. I get it.

P.S. Speaking of togetherness, there will be no church services at most Lawrence congregations tomorrow. The pastor at Peace Mennonite Church today sent along a guide to worshiping from home. Seems like an important thing to preserve.

For more from the Coronavirus Journal, click here.

Coronavirus Journal: Chapter 1

In full-blown hobo mode. All I've been able to do this week is stare at Twitter,
refresh, and stare some more, until I'm too exhausted to do anything but sleep. 

I became a journalist because I wanted to see history with my own eyes.

The realization came to me in the summer of 1989, when brave Chinese students were protesting their government at Tiananmen Square, and then paid a dear price for it. Journalists from the west showed us what was happening, live, and I knew watching it on TV that were looking at a critical moment. Being a history buff already, I set my sights on being a journalist.

Well, we're living through history now. I don't have to go to China, or New York, or anyplace else to experience it. All I have to do is sit in my home, try to keep my distance from others, and hope that me and my family don't either A) become victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, or B) unwittingly pass the virus on to somebody we love and end up killing them.

Just a couple of hours ago, President Trump finally declared a national emergency, but this journal shouldn't and won't be about him. I can write about him elsewhere. Instead, it will be about life in my home and in my community over the next weeks and months as we hunker down and try to survive -- not just the virus, but the economic fallout, and the costs of "social distancing" that we're now being asked to perform in order to slow the spread of the virus. Historians will know the other stuff. We should preserve the tales of real life for them as well. This is my humble attempt.

I'm worried. I'm worried that things will never be good again. I'm worried that I'm raising my son to become an adult in a world in which thriving is impossible, that the work of survival is difficult and mean. 

I worry I'm going to die, penniless, under a bridge, unable to provide for myself or my family.

I worry a lot.

And to be fair, I worry about some of those things even when there isn't a generation-defining pandemic before us. But I worry more, now.

Remember, though, I'm lucky: I have a wife who is more optimistic and resilient than I am. I have a smart and funny child who is going to be a nuisance to keep at home until the storm clears, but that's because he's 11 years old and full of energy and we live in a small house. And for now, we can afford to live a few months even if all our income suddenly dries up. Which -- knock knock -- I hope it doesn't.

We've stockpiled some dry goods, as far as food, but J declines to go into full hoarding mode. For one thing, she says, buying up (say) all the bulk rice at the grocery store means somebody else can't have it, and that's not fair is it? So she's not just optimistic and resilient -- she operates from a place of kindness to others.

I hope we can maintain that outlook over the next few months.

We shall see.

Hindu nationalists are making a hero of Gandhi's assassin

NYT:

Indians consider Gandhi one of the fathers of their nation. But the rise of a Hindu nationalist government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has uncorked many extremist beliefs, and admiration for Gandhi’s killer, among some, has become more open. It is a sign of how much India has changed in the five and a half years since Mr. Modi took power. 

“Gandhi was a traitor,” said Pooja Shakun Pandey, who blames Gandhi for partition and who participated in a recent ceremony worshiping Mr. Godse on the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination. “He deserved to be shot in the head.”

If your ideological or religious beliefs lead you to admire assassins, your ideological or religious beliefs are evil and and should be discarded.

Oh, and: Sound familiar?

Prominent Hindu nationalists still invoke Gandhi, but in many cases they are trying to co-opt his legacy — presenting their policies, however divisive, as congruent with his beliefs. One example: a recent citizenship law pushed by Mr. Modi’s government that, critics say, discriminates against Muslims and threatens the secular state that Gandhi had envisioned.

A lot of that going around.

Did impeachment make President Trump more popular?

Seeing a lot of this on Twitter this afternoon:

It's probably good to note that 49 percent approval rating is still mediocre -- and, very technically (but barely) means that just more than half of the country is not in the segment that approves of the president.

Nitpicking aside, it's difficult to tell Democrats -- politicians all -- that they should ignore the political ramifications of impeaching Trump because they did the right thing.

However: They did the right thing. The president did the wrong thing.

And if a process meant to expose and cleanse that wrongness from government instead lodges the president more firmly in office, well, that sucks. But it's not a judgement on whether the president was right or wrong to try and subvert the 2020 election. (Again: He was wrong.) That increase in popularity is, instead, ultimately a judgment on the institutions that put and kept Trump in office, as well as the media and voter infrastructure that can look at his wrongdoing and make him more popular.

There was no perfect way to do impeachment. We will be litigating "what ifs" for decades, though, I suppose. But whatever problems you think there were with the process, Donald Trump deserved to be impeached. That it wasn't successful or isn't popular isn't the point. Sometimes, calling out wrong is the right thing to do, even if the incentives and payoffs indicate otherwise.

Shadi Hamid's 'America is evil' strawman

Hamid, at The Atlantic:

The United States has done terrible things in the Middle East. To even casual observers of the region, this should be clear enough. That, however, doesn’t mean there is a moral equivalence between Iran and the United States. Elevating America as a somehow unique source of evil takes necessary self-criticism and turns it into narcissism. It insists on making us the exceptional ones, glorifying ourselves by glorifying our sins. To suggest that American officials are at the rarefied level of the deliberate, systematic mass murder and sectarian cleansing that Soleimani helped orchestrate isn’t just wrong; it’s silly.

It's also ... not what is happening.

American criticism of the Soleimani assassination generally hasn't suggested that America's bad guys are as bad as Iran's bad guys. (I'm not sure how to do that moral balancing, anyway, but that's not what the criticism has been.) Instead, the criticism has been that Trump's decision didn't make Americans safer, and that it might have been a dangerous and unnecessary escalation of the low-level conflict that could lead to a shooting war the United States seems ill-equipped to win.

 That's a different critique. But it's the one most critics of the president are making. Hamid's piece doesn't really make sense.

Fixing 'The Rise of Skywalker': A slightly better story

I saw The Rise of Skywalker last night. Didn't like it. But I can fix it.

Star Wars

Episode IX

The Return of Palpatine

The film opens at Leia's funeral. Rey is at the foot of Leia's deathbed, grieving, when Kylo makes a force connection with her. We know from TLJ he was hesitant to kill his own mother. Now he is overcome with grief -- a grief that will push him further to the dark side.

He tells Rey of an old Sith legend -- about Darth Plagueis the Wise, who uncovered the secret to eternal life. He can still save his mother. He will find the final resting spot of Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, and extract the secret there.

Rey realizes that Ren in possession of such power would amount to a final victory for the Dark Side, and final defeat for the Resistance. So she, Poe and Finn race Ren to Endor. Finn discovers the draft-dodging ex-Storm Troopers. Rey and Ren meet on the Death Star ruins and battle - it appears Rey will win, but Ren escapes with Palpatine's Sith books (like the Jedi books Rey has) to go to Exegol.

Rey tracks Ren, thanks to their force connection. Lando and Chewie summon allies. The First Order and Resistance make their final meeting over the planet. Ren, meanwhile, uses the Sith books to summon Sidious back to life as an experiment before raising Leia - but Sidious proves even more mad and more evil than we remember, debilitating Ren with a bolt of lightning just as Rey arrives. Palpatine turns his attention to Rey, preparing to kill her, when Ren summons his last reserves and together with Rey they use their force powers to kill the Emperor at last and for real. Ben succumbs to his wounds.

Up above the planet, the Resistance and their allies win.

The movie ends with Rey's pilgrimage to Tatooine. As she visits Luke's home, she looks up and see the Force Ghosts of Leia, Luke, Han, Annakin and Ben -- a happy, united family at last.

This solves several problems with TROS:
• Shoehorning Carrie Fisher footage into the movie.
• Too much plot.
• Retconning Rey's parentage.
• It brings back Palpatine in a way that makes sense instead of as a seeming afterthought to fix plot holes.

Dear Disney, I'm available for future script consultations. 

Criterion Queue: 'Dark Victory' and Bette Davis

Three thoughts about Dark Victory, appearing now on the Criterion Channel:

• There's a reason there was a song called "Bette Davis Eyes."

• They don't really make movies like this any more, that end with the beautiful, aesthetically perfect death of the protagonist. Maybe on cable TV now and again? (Makes sense: "Dark Victory" was remade as a TV movie in 1976, starring Anthony Hopkins and Elizabeth Montgomery from "Bewitched.") Maybe Martin Scorsese was onto something.

• There's a reason there wasn't a song called "Ronald Reagan is a skilled actor of remarkable nuance."

Things that trouble me: Loving your enemies

Just saw this posted by a prominent African American attorney in Philadelphia:




And I get it. There's a history in this country of "Christians" using their religion to subdue black people. I'm reminded of this:

On display now at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., is a special exhibit centered on a rare Bible from the 1800s that was used by British missionaries to convert and educate slaves. 

What's notable about this Bible is not just its rarity, but its content, or rather the lack of content. It excludes any portion of text that might inspire rebellion or liberation. 

"About 90 percent of the Old Testament is missing [and] 50 percent of the New Testament is missing," Schmidt says. "Put in another way, there are 1,189 chapters in a standard protestant Bible. This Bible contains only 232."

A religion that contorts itself to maintain the mastery of its adherents is bad religion. It is propaganda parading around in the garments of faith. But I'm going to resist the temptation to say the people who do such things aren't "real Christians," because let's face it: Christianity is whatever its adherents actually do.

On the other hand: Loving your enemies is really fucking hard to do. Almost nobody is inclined to try, and very few make the attempt.

And I'm convinced that the proportion of people claiming to be Christian who really endeavor to love their enemies is exceedingly small.

I'm maybe not the person to lecture on this. My own faith is ... shaky. I can best be described as agnostic-with-one-foot-still-in-the-faith. But I believe Christianity's ideal is a challenge for adherents, not because of its sexual ethic, but because it requires us to love the most unlovable of people, in the most unlovable of situations.

That is an extraordinary demand. That so few of us follow it make the meme above seem pretty reasonable. But I hate that it is so.

How Republicans' impeachment defense undermines the Electoral College

Republicans defending Donald Trump from impeachment keep making a curious argument:

Of course, Donald Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, received nearly 66 million votes. That's ... more. But she lost the Electoral College, which places more emphasis on where voters cast their ballots than the number of votes a candidate receives, and Donald Trump won the presidency.

Ever since, Republicans have argued for the rightness of the Electoral College by arguing the founders had antimajoritarian designs on protecting the people's rights, and it's a lousy argument -- one I guarantee they wouldn't be making if they'd lost two elections in 20 years despite winning the popular vote (just as most Democrats would also be on the other side of the issue) -- but fine.

That's what makes the "63 million voters" argument against impeachment so interesting. It relies on a particular kind of democratic legitimacy that Donald Trump hasn't earned. If we're so concerned about overturning the will of 63 million voters, we surely ought to be concerned with overturning the will of 66 million voters -- which is what the Electoral College does. If you take the GOP argument seriously, Trump would have a stronger argument against impeachment if he'd won the popular vote. He didn't and he doesn't.

'The Band Wagon': MGM's Month of Musicals

The Criterion Channel on November 1 unveiled a collection nearly two dozen classic MGM musicals for streaming this month. One blogger's mission: To watch each and every one.

A number of musicals from the early 1950s are about the pre-war generation of entertainers finding their way in a new era. White Christmas is most explicit about this, with its "Choreography" dance number, as well as the overall story of two buddies who find a way to pay tribute to their washed-up former commanding officer. Singin' In the Rain, which tells the tall of the conversion from talkies to sound, is somewhat more oblique about it, but the themes and sense of disconnect and discovery are still there. The Band Wagon, about Fred Astaire being a washed-up movie star, then finding new vigor by taking over a failing "modern" show, is more of the same. But at least we get this expression of cinematic joy:

And this one:

That's why we watch this stuff.

'Broadway Melody of 1940': MGM's Month of Musicals

The Criterion Channel on November 1 unveiled a collection nearly two dozen classic MGM musicals for streaming this month. One blogger's mission: To watch each and every one.

Pure joy. In this series of posts, I've often become hung up on how musicals of yesteryear often fall short of modern standards of morality and ethics. No need to with this movie, which largely dispenses with story in favor of just being entertaining. Lots of early musicals nod back to the vaudeville days; Broadway Melody of 1940 pretty much is vaudeville. Otherwise, how are you going to get a scene like this?

Or this?

That's some crazy shit. There's still plenty of music going on. Cole Porter was in charge of the music and lyrics in this movie. I realize, coming to this Broadway Melody, that I know precious little of Eleanor Powell, and that's an oversight I now want to fix. She's amazing. Check this out.

This is why we love musicals.

'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers': MGM's Month of Musicals

The Criterion Channel on November 1 unveiled a collection nearly two dozen classic MGM musicals for streaming this month. One blogger's mission: To watch each and every one.

My son, during old movies, has gotten in the habit of pointing out problematic gender politics. He was busy during this one.

Let Wikipedia explain why:

The screenplay, by Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, and Dorothy Kingsley, is based on the short story "The Sobbin' Women", by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was based in turn on the Ancient Roman legend of The Rape of the Sabine Women.  

Wait. What?

The Rape of the Sabine Women was an incident in Roman mythology in which the men of Rome committed a mass abduction of young women from the other cities in the region. It has been a frequent subject of artists, particularly during the Renaissance and post-Renaissance eras.

The word "rape" is the conventional translation of the Latin word raptio used in the ancient accounts of the incident. Modern scholars tend to interpret the word as "abduction" or "kidnapping" as opposed to a sexual assault. Controversy remains, however, as to how the acts committed against the women should be judged.

It's not that difficult. But it is discomfiting to watch a movie where the last third is dominated by women being kidnapped from their homes -- and then, in the movie's climax, marrying the brothers because each claimed to be the victim of what we would unquestionably view as rape today.

It's played for laughs and joy in the movie.

I don't expect people of the 1950s to make movies from a 2019 moral view. But I can't help but watch a movie in 2019 from that point of view. And that makes Seven Brides a movie I can't really fully enjoy. What's more: I hate to be a killjoy. But I'm glad my son points this stuff out. He's thinking about this stuff already and I'm glad.

Which is too bad about this movie. Because it has Russ Tamblyn, at his most athletic and youthful, dancing in it. And that is, context aside, a joy to behold.

'The Pirate': MGM's Month of Musicals

The Criterion Channel on November 1 unveiled a collection nearly two dozen classic MGM musicals for streaming this month. One blogger's mission: To watch each and every one.

After the sour taste left by the ugly love story of "The Harvey Girls," "The Pirate" is a refresher indeed. Yes, Gene Kelly is a cad chasing Judy Garland, but the framing here is a Shakespearean-style farce, full of hidden identities, disguises, star-crossed romance and Cole Porter rhyme schemes. 

My family loves watching these old movies. But not in an uncomplicated way. We find that -- even after an MGM musical -- we have to pause and talk with our son about the racial attitudes depicted in those old movies. 

Which brings us to the Nicholas Brothers.

Gosh, I hope you know of the Nicholas Brothers. They only starred in one of the greatest dance routines ever put on film. Check this out:

I mean ... holy cow.

Anyway, they make a brief appearance in "The Pirate," along with Gene Kelly, for the movie's real show-stopping number, "Be A Clown," and ... I mean ... holy cow. (They show up about a minute into this clip.)

Amazing, right? And here's why we need to stop the movie and talk with our son:

The film's musical production final sequence, "Be a Clown", composed by Cole Porter, featured the acrobatic and dancing talents of the Nicholas Brothers, with Gene Kelly, who choreographed the dance number. Judy Garland joins Kelly's act and the film ends with the two of them singing a reprise of "Be a Clown." The dance sequence was the first time The Nicholas Brothers had danced onscreen with a Caucasian, while it was Kelly's insistence that they perform with him. The Nicholas Brothers were the ones punished. When released to the feature movie theater circuit distribution, this Nicholas Brothers sequence was deleted by MGM when screened in the Southern States, such as Memphis, because it featured black performers, the result of racial bigotry in the South. Only in the Northern States' movie theaters, were audiences allowed to view the entire end production presentation. Essentially blackballed, Fayard and Harold moved to Europe and did not return until the mid-sixties making a comeback appearance on The Hollywood Palace (1964) hosted by Roy Rogers and Trigger.

And that is why it is difficult to enjoy even the most innocuous of things.

Notable songs: "Be A Clown."

Does this movie contain one of those weird Gene Kelly dream sequences that his musicals always seemed to have during this era? Yes. 

Any other racist stuff going on? Gene Kelly in brownface.

See it? Yes. The stuff between the musical numbers is actually reasonably entertaining.

'The Harvey Girls': MGM's Month of Musicals

The Criterion Channel on November 1 unveiled a collection nearly two dozen classic MGM musicals for streaming this month. One blogger's mission: To watch each and every one.

The Harvey Girls is a reminder that you don't always -- or ever -- watch musicals for the story. Because this movie has one of the shittiest love stories ever. Judy Garland plays a young woman who heads west, under what turn out to be false pretenses, to get married, only to have her plans fall apart when she arrives in Sandrock, Arizona. She goes to work for the local Harvey House. John Hodiak plays the pencil-mustached pimp with a heart of gold -- he runs the brothel across the street from the Harvey House, but the love of a good woman helps him see the error of his ways.

Yeah, they get together at the end. No, Hodiak's redemption story doesn't earn him Garland's love. But having created these characters, in this era -- 1946 -- of movie musical, it has no choice but to end up with them together anyway.

Ugh.

But like I say, we don't watch musicals for the stories. We watch them for the music! And the dancing. So let's talk about Ray Mothereffing Bolger.

Like me, your main exposure to Bolger may be from him playing the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. In HG, Bolger's character has a lesser role -- but it's made of pure entertainment. It's no surprise to see the same guy who played the Scarecrow offer up the same style of loose-limbed dancing.

It's just a goddamned delight.

That's great. But he's also capable of great grace. (Start about four minutes in.)

The man is a wonder to behold.

Notable songs: "The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe."

Best dance: See Bolger, above. 

Best early youthful performance by Hall of Fame-level star: Cyd Charisse.

See it? Nah. Check out the YouTube clips of the highlights. You'll be happier.

'For Me and My Gal': MGM's Month of Musicals

The Criterion Channel on November 1 unveiled a collection nearly two dozen classic MGM musicals for streaming this month. One blogger's mission: To watch each and every one.

For Me and My Gal is one of those early musicals that collects a bunch of songs not for any particular storytelling reason, but because they were the songs the producer decided to use. In this case, at least, a rationale is offered: We're witnessing a story of love and loss -- lots of loss; everything that can hurt somebody's feelings in this movie ends up happening -- on the World War I vaudeville circuit. George Murphy loves Judy Garland loves Gene Kelly who loves fame so much that he'll betray Garland -- and his country -- to achieve it.

This is Kelly's first film role, and he bursts onto the screen fully formed -- the smile, the charisma, the muscular style of dancing. He's a bit of a cad in this role, but you can't keep Gene Kelly down: His character finds his way to redemption.

Judy Garland is all glistening-eyed melodrama in this one -- her heart gets broken in a half a dozen different ways. And she oozes talent in this role, belting out her songs and dancing up a storm.

George Murphy is the actor whose star has dimmed a bit over time. He went on to be the US Senator from California -- he was elected even before Ronald Reagan -- and you can see why from this film: He doesn't have the talent of Kelly or Garland, but he does have an All-American gee-whiz earnestness that lets him function as the moral center of the picture.

The film was directed by Busby Berkeley, one of the most famous directors of early American musicals, so if you're looking for a first-rate example of the form, this is it.

Notable songs: 'For Me and My Gal,' 'Oh You, Beautiful Doll.'

Best dance: 'Ballin' the Jack.'

Best line of old-timey dialogue: Garland to Kelly: "You'll never be big time because you're small time in your heart."

See it? Yes.

The next election is sacred, too.

The next election is sacred, too.

In recent weeks, Republicans have defended President Trump against the prospect of impeachment by suggesting that Congress would be undoing the results of the 2016 presidential election by removing its winner from office. If Democrats in Congress were acting in the complete absence of wrongdoing by the president, the GOP argument would be powerful. But there is plenty of evidence of wrongdoing, and the Republican argument is misguided.

It isn’t difficult to understand why. But let’s break down what the president is accused of doing, and why it is impeachable.

The allegation is this:

That President Trump abused his power…

...to pressure Ukraine officials to investigate Joe Biden and his family…

...in order to undermine Biden’s chances of winning the White House in 2020.

Again: President Trump used his official power — the power voters gave him — to put his thumb on the scale for the 2020 election.

The 2016 election was important. It was fought under rules I don’t like or believe to be sufficiently democratic — that’s been the case since before I was born — and, yes, I found the results appalling. But mostly because I fully expected President Trump to abuse his power early and often. Which the evidence suggests is exactly what he has done.

But the 2020 election is important too. And if the will of the people matters as much as Republican say it did in 2016, then the role of the federal government and its officials — including Donald Trump — is not to put their thumb on the scale, but to protect the integrity of that election.

Trump, by trying to get Ukraine to act against Biden, threatened the integrity of that election. He threatened the will of the voters of 2020.

Impeachment, then, is a necessary corrective. Otherwise, I don't know how the American people can trust the election process in the future.

If the next election matters in any democratic sense, then the GOP argument against impeachment makes little sense. If we want the voters to have the final say on who occupies the Oval Office, that must be true in the future as well as the past.

The sailing lifestyle in Kansas (plus, my favorite YouTube sailing channels)

Over the last six months, I've become somewhat addicted to YouTube sailing videos. There are lots of channels created by people who gave up the rat race, bought a boat, and started the "cruising life" full time. I'm not going to abandon my own life for the Bahamas anytime soon, but I've noticed some things about the videos I admire most -- how the people live their lives -- that I can probably duplicate in Kansas.

• They do a lot of yoga. There's not a lot of room on a small boat for a workout program. Lots of the video people do yoga pretty regularly. As I get older, I increasingly realize a stretching routine saves me pain, increases flexibility, and generally gets me through the day with a better attitude. No reason I can't do this on dry land.

• They read a lot. If you're on a long passage, there isn't a lot to do -- most people don't have wifi in the middle of the ocean, only connecting when they get near land in a marina or while at anchor. So. Lots of shots of people reading instead of staring at screens. I've become a little too screen-dependent lately. I need some book time to feel human.

• They spend a lot of time outside. Duh.

• They tend to be active explorers of whatever environment they're in, on land or under water. As a freelancer, it's easy for me to get stuck at home, both working and living. It's time to get out more.

Five of my favorite sailing channels:

Sailing Soulianis: A young Midwestern couple buys a boat, pilots it from the Great Lakes down the river to the Gulf, and begins -- after much work -- cruising.

Sailing Uma: Another young couple, two architects -- one from Canada, the other from Haiti. They spent a couple of years cruising the Bahamas and environs. Now they're about to make the North Atlantic passage to Europe.

Sailing La Vagabonde: Possibly the most famous channel -- they have 1 million subscribers. I didn't get into this for awhile, because it looked like another of the million or so sailing channels that exist to show off young women in bikinis, which I don't find interesting. But then the Australian couple at the center of this channel had a baby and kept cruising. And that made them much more interesting.

The Adventures of Tarka: This one is about to end, because the young man at the center of things has a family to return to. Still. Interesting because he started out as a solo sailor in a relatively small boat. It's charming and I'll miss it.

Sailing Zatara: I have a love-hate relationship with this channel, but it was the first one I started watching with my son. A family of six abandoned their life to cruise around the world, first in a monohull and then a catamaran. There are occasional whiffs of ugly Americanism that sometimes spill over into full-blown MAGAism, so the bloom is off the rose for me, but it's the series that pulled me in.

This is why journalism is necessary, vital and completely doomed as a business model

This is familiar:

As a service to all our readers, unlimited access to Hurricane Dorian coverage on MiamiHerald.com is available throughout the duration of the storm. 

We are working to keep our readers safe and informed during this time. Throughout Hurricane Dorian and its aftermath, the Miami Herald will be providing you with South Florida’s most complete coverage of the storm. Please stay up-to-date with MiamiHerald.com, our mobile apps, newsletters and daily e-Edition. Our team will be providing continuous news, photos, videos and stories throughout this severe weather event.

Journalism is the only business in the world that makes its product free just as demand goes through the roof.

There's a reason for that: The public service aspect of journalism outweighs the moneymaking aspect in times of crisis. But it's a reason why purely market-based approaches to saving newspapers probably won't work. 

Make Blogging Great Again

I keep seeing this “blogs were better” sentiment on Twitter lately.

I agree! But we’re not forced to use Twitter. If you like blogs better, why not…start blogging again?

Getting healthier: How to keep moving when part of you hurts

The pain in my right foot flared up, just a teensy bit today, so I only spent 10 minutes on the treadmill.

Not really a full workout. (Right now, as I get up to speed, I'm trying simply to move a half-hour a day.) But I'm not ready for a weights day. What can I do?

How about the arm ergometer?

The ergometer is basically an arm bicycle machine. And mostly, it's designed for the old and the injured.

Me, I'm injured. Not just the foot -- that should go away. But my torso is pretty badly broken, the result of some invasive surgeries I had nearly a decade ago that saved my life but left me, ulitmately, less than whole. Finding a good exercise regime since then has been difficult: So much of modern exercise is based on strengthening the core and I don't really have core muscles anymore. Yes, this sucks. But it's also the way things are. So.

The ergometer is a great machine. It isolates movement pretty much to arms and shoulders. I don't get quite the aerobic workout I might on a treadmill, but for me the point is to keep moving. I feel better after a half-hour on the ergometer than I do if I do nothing at all. Something, exercise-wise, is almost always better than nothing.

Today, I chose something.

Getting healthier: Energy begets energy

Photo by Jack daniel from Pexels

I've done a better job in 2019 of exercising regularly than I've done since, well, the couple of years right after 9/11. I've not lost weight, but I feel better and my mood is noticeably better when I've had some physical activity. (Who notices? My wife. I'm not mean when I get down. But I definitely get down.)

Alas, I'd had a slowdown over the previous few weeks. And it mattered tremendously. Somehow, I injured my right heel working out - I think it was the bad use of a couple of machines I normally never use - and stayed out of the gym for a little bit. My energy went - I could barely stay awake during most the daylight hours. My spirits declined drastically. It felt like I was going into permanent decline.

Then, on Thursday night, my wife took me to the gym.

It was kind of her. (Sometimes I need that little bit of help getting started. I appreciate that she offers it.) So was her advice: "If you can only do 10 minutes, do 10 minutes."

That's about what I was able to do - 10 minutes of walking on the treadmill before my legs gave out.

She took me again today. Somehow, I did 20 minutes on the treadmill, plus some light weightlifting. And I didn't have to fight low energy levels all day. There was an afternoon nap, but mostly I was alert and engaged.

For me, when I lose momentum in exercise, it takes tremendous effort to renew it. That's what happened again to me in July. But I also have found that energy begets energy. If I invest a little bit, I usually get more in return. I hope to keep building on this.

It pays off for me. It pays off for my family, too. My wife just told me she's taking me to the gym again tomorrow.

Reader response: Are immigrants 'invading' America? (No.)

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

In response to my "End the Border Patrol" column for The Week, a reader who identifies himself as a retired Air Force colonel writes:

What we have on our nation's southern border is no less than an invasion. An invasion of people trying to enter this country illegally--i.e., against the law. And who makes the laws of this country? You know good and well--Congress. So, we obey the laws that exist and if Congress wants something else, than they should DO THEIR JOBS.

Attila the Hun invaded Western Europe with fewer people and this nation cannot let its borders and sovereignty be disregarded as being done by these modern day invaders.

There's more, but you get the idea.

My response, in part:

I thank you for your letter, but I must strenuously disagree with your use of the word "invasion." As a member of the military, you surely know better.

If war is politics by other means, than an invasion is pointedly and purposefully political: A concerted attempt to commandeer the rule of people and land from the current owners.

The current wave of migration we see is no such thing. People and their families are fleeing poverty and violence in order to pursue better lives. They seem willing to work for that chance at improvement; I see no evidence they are trying to usurp American self-government, that they're trying to take property that isn't theirs, or even that they're really all that organized, "caravans" notwithstanding.

If you found your family threatened by violence, and yourself unable to financially support them, I daresay you might try to move to someplace you could. You would not be invading that new place.

Anti-immigration activists try to treat migration in militaristic terms, as invaders. Actually, they more closely resemble the pilgrims whose migration to America planted the seeds for the holiday we collectively celebrate tomorrow. That's no invasion.

This is a pretty lousy argument against reparations

I'm not sure how an effective reparations program would work, but I do know that this is probably about the worst argument against it:

  The room grew raucous at times, with spectators hissing at Republican witnesses and Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the subcommittee’s senior Republican, when he spoke against the measure. In a comment that rippled throughout the hearing, Mr. Johnson suggested that great black leaders like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington thought African-Americans should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. 

“Those great leaders encouraged people to take responsibility for their own lives, because that gives every human being a greater sense of meaning and satisfaction,” he said, adding that the bill “risks communicating the opposite message.”

 It's the old "bootstraps for thee" argument, and it presumes that whites have achieved their greater wealth by dint of hard work and grit, so why can't African Americans do the same? The problem is that a lot of wealth that whites hold they hold by dint of A) government action and B) being the "right" race.

Ta-Nehisi Coates demonstrated the falsity of the bootstraps argument in his "Case for Reparations" that kicked off the current debate, a few years ago in The Atlantic.

When President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, 65 percent of African Americans nationally and between 70 and 80 percent in the South were ineligible. The NAACP protested, calling the new American safety net “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.” 

 The oft-celebrated G.I. Bill similarly failed black Americans, by mirroring the broader country’s insistence on a racist housing policy. Though ostensibly color-blind, Title III of the bill, which aimed to give veterans access to low-interest home loans, left black veterans to tangle with white officials at their local Veterans Administration as well as with the same banks that had, for years, refused to grant mortgages to blacks. The historian Kathleen J. Frydl observes in her 2009 book, The GI Bill, that so many blacks were disqualified from receiving Title III benefits “that it is more accurate simply to say that blacks could not use this particular title.” 

 Whereas shortly before the New Deal, a typical mortgage required a large down payment and full repayment within about 10 years, the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in 1933 and then the Federal Housing Administration the following year allowed banks to offer loans requiring no more than 10 percent down, amortized over 20 to 30 years. “Without federal intervention in the housing market, massive suburbanization would have been impossible,” writes Thomas J. Sugrue, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. “In 1930, only 30 percent of Americans owned their own homes; by 1960, more than 60 percent were home owners. Home ownership became an emblem of American citizenship.” 

 That emblem was not to be awarded to blacks. The American real-estate industry believed segregation to be a moral principle.

So the bootstraps argument is just so much hooey. African Americans haven't been given access to the same types of programs that allowed whites to get ahead. Generations of white Americans didn't get a better mortgages than their black neighbor across town because they had "taken responsibility for their own life." They had the advantage of policies that reflected this country's longstanding white supremacy. That's one starting point for any honest discussion of reparations.

Are Iran and Al Qaeda allies? Prove it.

This story sounds very familiar:

Administration officials are briefing Congress on what they say are ties between Iran and Al Qaeda, prompting skeptical reactions and concern on Capitol Hill that the White House could invoke the war authorization passed in 2001 as legal cover for military action against Tehran.

Why skeptical? Well, remember...

  Iran is a majority Shiite Muslim nation while Al Qaeda is a hard-line Sunni group whose members generally consider Shiites to be apostates. The two have often fought on opposing sides of regional conflicts, including the Syrian war.

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember how the Bush Administration tried so very hard to connect Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was completely false. Some Republicans, naturally, choose to believe it anyway. But asserting that connection helped the administration make the case for the unnecessary and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Given that history, there's every reason to make the U.S. government prove this latest allegation beyond a reasonable doubt.

 For the moment: I sure as hell don't believe it.