Fifty years ago, but still so vivid in my memory

I love listening to Harry Chapin.

I saw him twice in concert, and I think at one time or another I've owned nearly all of his albums. He died at the age of 38, which cost the world another 30-40 years of great songs. Maybe even more if Chapin had been as prolific as his hero, Pete Seeger.

Anyway, there's one song that always touched my heart and evoked strong, wonderful memories. Chapin's "Old College Avenue" tells the story of a young man's first love affair while in college, and it always makes me think of the winter of 1969-70, when I was at George Washington University.



Her name was Shelley. She was 18 and beautiful and I was 19 turning to 20 and still pretty innocent when it came to girls.

We had a winter and a spring together, but we didn't survive a summer apart. We did so many things together, goofy things like walking in the rain and eating pizza at 3 a.m. and wonderful, optimistic things like falling in love and planning a future that never came.

America drifting apart into two different nations

Note: This is a piece that originally appeared on a different Website in the Summer of 2008. I thought it might be appropriate in 2019.

I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother in the last year or so before she died.

My grandmother, Florence Kindinger, in 1960

She was born in 1895 and lived until 1990, and amazing changes took place during her life. When she was born, the telephone and the electric light were still relatively new; most folks in small towns didn't have either.

The very first automobiles were being built, but 99 percent of Americans hadn't even seen one. Motion pictures were still a few years away, and radio and television, airplanes and computers, were still off on the distant horizon.

In her lifetime, men went to the moon.

I'm nowhere near 94 yet, but I've been thinking about the ways our country has changed since my own birth in 1949. Many of them aren't as dramatic -- planes fly faster, computers do more with less space, there are a lot more channels of television and things that weren't portable are now.

But not all the changes have been positive ones; indeed, many of the things we would call "progress" have actually served to balkanize us and divide us from one another.

I always get a kick out of comedian Jeff Foxworthy talking about growing up in the '50s and '60s and saying kids had it tough because there were only three channels of television -- ABC, CBS and NBC.

"And if the president was on, your evening was shot."

Now there are hundreds of channels, on all the time, and a hit show is lucky to garner 20 percent of the audience. You can watch television for women (Lifetime), for kids (Nickleodeon), for guys (Spike), or for almost any interest group you can imagine.

So nobody watches the same show.

Nobody has the same frame of reference anymore.

But on January 19, 1953, 44 million Americans, nearly 72 percent of the audience, watched the episode of "I Love Lucy" in which she gave birth to her first child.

Think about it. Seventy-two percent of the audience. Super Bowls don't draw that well; the Olympics or the Academy Awards would kill for that kind of viewership.

I started thinking about this yesterday when I found the YouTube clip of Sarah Brightman singing on the Johnny Carson show in 1991. I can't remember the last time I heard someone reference something that happened on late-night television, but there was a time when folks who were still awake at 11:30 p.m. tuned to NBC so they could at least hear Carson's monologue before falling asleep.

Are we one country anymore? I don't know. I've heard so much about red states and blue states that I'm starting to hate those colors. But we're far more divided than that. We're secular America and Christian America. We're beer America and wine America. We're meat America and vegetarian America.

2019 update: And of course, the greatest division of them all, Trump America and non-Trump America.

Is there anything other than a 232-year-old idea that still holds us together?

2019 update: 243 now.

I wonder.

After all these years, not so strange to be 70

It was the spring of 1968 and I was about halfway through what I'd have to say was one of the three or four worst years of my life.

I had been at the University of Virginia for more than six months. My grades were beyond atrocious and I hadn't made a single friend. Pretty much all I had was the music, and when Simon & Garfunkel came out with their long-awaited "Bookends" album, I found myself listening to it again and again.

The song that touched me the most was "America," about a couple who went on the road "to look for America," something a lot of us thought of doing back then. I was 18 going on 13 and desperately unhappy. If "Old Friends" and its wonderful line, "How terribly strange to be 70," didn't much register with me, it's probably because I never thought I would ever see 70.

Heck, I didn't think I would see 30.

Was the day of greatest success as far back as 1967?

I had an odd question pop into my mind recently.

What was the happiest day of my life that didn't involve other people?

So that rules out falling in love, wedding days, anything involving children or other family members.

Senior year

As trite or even corny as it might seem at first, the day I came up with was the first time I was ever on television. I don't remember the exact date, but it was in April 1967 as my senior year of high school was winding down.

The story began in the late spring of 1966. "It's Academic" was a fixture in Washington, D.C., a high school version of the "College Bowl" quiz show. Each D.C. area high school sent a group of juniors down to the WRC/NBC studio to try out for the show.

I believe there were 15-20 in our group, and we sat in a semicircle facing the questioner. It took about an hour, and one of our guys -- let's call him Ralph -- dominated the hour by answering 25 questions correctly -- and first, of course.

One year after, let's be happy for Cheryl

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of one of the worst days of my life.

Not for anything that happened to me and not because it was the 55th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Nothing like that.

Instead, I opened a message on Facebook from one of my closest friends in the world.

"Cheryl died today."

His wife of 39 years.

The mother of his three children, a woman who had been ill one way or another for most of her adult life. Her three kids -- a boy and two girls -- are older than she was when she got married in 1979. She considered being a mom the great joy of her life, but she didn't make it to grandmother.

People talk about three score and 10 as the expected Biblical lifespan. Cheryl didn't get the 10, and however long Mickey and their three children live, all they will have from her is memories.

It's not enough, but it isn't nothing either.

Unless Cheryl was mistaken in her beliefs -- beliefs I agree with, by the way -- she is happier now than she has ever been. In Paradise with Jesus and looking forward to the day she is reunited with her loved ones.

All the bad stuff -- fear, anxieties and the rest -- is gone now.

Or so we believe.

Instead of saying how much we miss her, we should say how happy we are she finished strong. How glad we are we have a friend to put in a good word for us.

I'm reminded of a short poem in one of Allen Drury's last books, the thoughts of an elderly man just before dying.

"The course is run, the race is done.
"I hardly knew it had begun
"... Son of a gun!"

How to end this?

There's really only one thing that comes to mind.

"Happy first birthday in Heaven, my friend. Maybe you live a billion years ... and more."

Worst day of the year? Maybe, but what a great year

"People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

-- Hall of Famer ROGERS HORNSBY

We are the champions.

If the best day of the year for a baseball fan is Opening Day, it's pretty obvious which day is the worst.

It's the day you wake up and realize the World Series is over and there will be no more ballgames that mean anything for five months.

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the ball alone."

It's a shame Bart Giamatti didn't live longer. He had the mind of a philosopher and the soul of a poet.

I have loved baseball longer than most people have been alive.

As a kid in southwestern Ohio, my first favorite team was the Cincinnati Reds. I was overjoyed when they won the National League pennant in 1961, even though all that did was put them in line to be slaughtered by one of the greatest Yankee teams.

I have always been a voracious reader, and I have devoured baseball fiction whenever I could.

I remember the Duane Decker books in the '50s, a series that went position by position through a Yankees-like team called the Blue Sox. I would love to acquire some of them, but even used versions are $150 or more per book.

I read all of Clair Bee's Chip Hilton books and John R. Tunis's books about a fictionalized version of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Whe[n I was a little older and more mature, I discovered Mark Harris's incredible books about Henry Wiggen. When the middle one was made into a movie, "Bang the Drum Slowly" became one of my very favorite films.

Of course I read a lot of non-fiction as well, and one of the highlights of the early part of my sportswriting career was the three hours I spent in April 1983 in my kitchen talking with the great Roger Kahn while he drank most of a fifth of my vodka to keep away the cold.

My goal was always to cover a major league team as a traveling beat writer, and while that never happened, I did spend the 1990 and 1991 seasons covering all the Dodgers' home games.

Half a loaf, I suppose.

In 1995, I did cover all the games -- home and away -- of a baseball team, but it was the Class A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the California League.

I saw the rarest play in baseball that season -- an unassisted triple play. Runners on first and second, no outs. Batter hits a low line drive up the middle on a hit-and-run play.

Second baseman spears the line drive for one out, steps on second for the second out and tags the runner coming in from first for the third out.

Most baseball fans have never seen that in person.

Today is the day after another season has ended. As bad as that is, this season was something special. It ended last night in Houston with the team I care about the most -- the Washington Nationals -- winning the World Series for the first time in franchise history.

Not just winning, either. Fighting hard after a slow start to get to the playoffs and then coming from behind time and time again to stave off elimination and win.

Some wonderful memories to savor as I stare out the window this winter and wait for spring.

Pain makes it difficult to go day to day

"Won't you look down upon me, Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You've just got to see me through another day. My body's aching and my time is at hand. I won't make it any other way."
 -- JAMES TAYLOR, 1971

A few months ago, this verse got stuck in my head, and it took me a lot longer than usual to remember the song. "Fire and Rain" was one of the great songs of its time, and might possibly have been the best song ever from James Taylor.

The last three months of my life almost epitomizes this song. Between spinal problems -- a degenerative disk in my lower back -- that likely will never leave me, and double vision that has plagued me for about four months now, my body is definitely aching.

That doesn't necessarily mean my time is at hand. I intend to be here as long as my wife needs me, and it would make a huge difference if could just get past the double vision and see normally again.

The back pain is at its worst at night. In fact, it has been at least a month since I have slept through the night. Generally I awake after sleeping for 60-90 minutes. Then I'm awake for up to three hours before the pain goes away enough to sleep again.

Things will get better.

They just have to.

***

Free stuff?

For people who aren't billionaires?

Is Bernie Sanders crazy?

Actually he's not, but he is allowing himself to be pushed farther and farther to the left in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

His most recent proposal -- eliminating $1.6 trillion in student loan debt -- would have an incredible effect on the last two generations of college students.

Maybe too much of an effect. One thing that is absolutely true is that if you're going to forgive all student loan debt, you're going to put an end to the student loan program. So even if you're going to make all public two-year and four-year colleges tuition free, what do you do about living expenses?

And what about private colleges and graduate schools?

Sadly, giving people something for free makes them value it less. But if we reworked the original idea of the G.I. Bill after World War II, we could have people perform public service -- military or civilian -- and earn college.

In the same way, we can demand service in exchange for student-loan debt forgiveness. Say a year of service to reduce $25,000 of debt. Not only does it take away the stigma of "free stuff," it creates a feeling pride in serving the community.

You want a lesser solution that would still help some? Forgive all interest on student loans. If someone borrowed $50,000 for college, they pay back $50,000. If that doesn't seem like a big deal, you've never dealt with a loan shark.

As the late great Rodney Dangerfield once said:

"I borrowed $100 from a shylock. I paid him back $25 a week for four years and still owed him $300."

'Bosch' house evokes amazing California memories

I have lived in a lot of different places, some special and some not so special.

Some provided spectacular views, others were pretty mundane. Seeing the monuments and memorials of Washington, D.C., at age 13 pretty much blew me away. By 32, when I was getting ready to move to North Carolina, it was "been there, done that" for the Nation's Capital.

As I worked my way across the country in the 1980s, I saw the Mississippi River (and the Gateway Arch), the Rocky Mountains and the deep blue of Lake Tahoe. But it was April 30, 1990, my first day on the job as a suburban sportswriter covering the Los Angeles Dodgers that gave me my first look the the most amazing view I would ever see.

Dodger Stadium by night.

You sort of have to imagine this one from the photo. The press box is essentially at the top part of the photo, behind home plate.

Parking for reporters was at the top level behind the home plate portion of the stands. When I came out of the building at 11 p.m. and looked to the southwest, the lights seemed to go on forever.

Incredible, and for most of the next two summers, it was a view I saw almost every night.

Random thoughts and perspectives for a May day

In a world of too much information, there are many things I would rather not know.

For example, I'd rather not know ...

Down the stretch

... that Donald Trump thinks the horse that crossed the finish line first at the Kentucky Derby was disqualified because of political correctness.

... that when comic books started being called graphic novels 25-30 years ago, people who read real novels let them get away with it.

,,, how long it will be before I can stream the latest "Avengers" movie. I certainly don't want to go to a theater to see it.

Still in jail, but Rule Brittania and another cheer

What's it all about (Alfie)?

Well ...

It's the eighth day since I deactivated my Facebook account in response to a 30-day suspension for so-called "hate" speech.

I'm not going to write again about what happened and why. The only purpose of mentioning it is that whenever I first go to my computer in the morning, Facebook is one of the first websites I visit.

Over the last 10 years, Facebook has been my primary tool for keeping up with friends and family. In fact, with many people, the only contact I have with them is on Facebook.

I'm sort of at a loss where to start.

It ain't Supermax, but Facebook jail is no fun at all

Again!?!

As you can see from my post several weeks ago, I received a seven-day sentence in Facebook Jail for what they called hate speech.

I referred to Donald Trump as "(rich) white trash."

I served my sentence, did my time, and when my sentence was up, the warden gave me a suit of clothes and a $20 bill and told me the next train to Memphis was leaving in two hours.

Huh?

Never mind. I promised to be more careful and began posting again.

Rich have it good, but there are ways you can succeed

Back in the 1950s, there was a television show called "The Millionaire" that ran for six seasons.

The premise was that a wealthy recluse named John Beresford Tipton would select a different person each week and give them a check for $1 million. They were not allowed to tell anyone where they got the money.

In a country where the average family income in 1955 was about $5,000 and the average home could be purchased for less than $12,000, a million was big bucks indeed.

Fortune magazine reports that in 1955, there were only about 30,000 American executives who made in excess of $50,000 a year, and they paid about 40 percent of that in taxes.

Numbers aren't easily available for every year, but in 1953 there were about 27,000 Americans worth at least $1 million.

A very special week and a handful of random notes

As sports weeks go, the one we're in the middle of right now might be my late friend Tom Kensler's favorite of the year.

Two of the events he most enjoyed covering for the Denver Post happen in this particular week. First is the NCAA men's basketball championship game. It takes place on Monday night. I don't know how many Final Fours Tom covered, but it was more than my two.

2013 in the ATL

In fact, the last time I saw him alive was the morning after the 2013 championship game, in which Louisville beat Michigan in the Georgia Done right here in Atlanta.

Strangely enough, the last Final Four I covered also was a Louisville victory, in 1986 at Reunion Arena in Dallas. I don't think Tom was at that one.

But it's the second event of the week that makes it so special. Starting Thursday, right here in Georgia, the best golfers in the world get together at Augusta National Golf Club for the tournament known as the Masters.

After half a century, Virginia's one shining moment

And in the end ...

When I sat down to fill out a bracket before this year's NCAA tournament, I did it with my heart rather than my head.

The fact is, despite a good long run covering college basketball in the '80s and '90s, including two seasons as a voter in the Associated Press poll, I've never been good at predicting.

I didn't do that well this year either. I picked Nevada, a team I covered for two seasons 20 years ago, to win the Midwest Region and reach the Final Four.

Nevada lost in the first round.

I missed on Texas Tech, predicting a Sweet Sixteen loss to ... wait for it ... Nevada.

My bracket

I did pretty well on the top half of the card. I had Duke and Michigan State in the East Region and I even had Sparty winning and moving on to the Final Four.

I had the South Region too. Virginia and Purdue in the final and Virginia emerging.

That's where my heart came into play. I have followed Virginia basketball faithfully for more than half a century.

After last season's shocking first-round loss to UMBC when the Wahoos were the top-seeded team in the field of 68, I figured redemption would come this year.

So I picked the 'Hoos to go all the way and win their first-ever NCAA title.

And they did.

A week in Facebook jail is an unpleasant surprise

"Isn't it ironic that our classy black president was followed by a (rich) white trash one?

Imagine my surprise when I called up Facebook on my computer screen and learned that for the next seven days, I cannot post, comment or use Messenger because of what is considered a hateful comment.

I have had Facebook delete comments of mine before, most memorably when I was commenting on Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem "The White Man's Burden."

Lucky enough to have had one great sports event

It isn't often that I overlook books by my favorite authors.

When Dan Jenkins died recently at the age of 90, I wasn't surprised.

Hey, 90.

But with everything of his I've read, all the way back to "Semi-Tough," I somehow missed the semi-memoir that came out five years ago.

Much of what was in there was in one earlier book or another, but it was still a great read.

One of Jenkins' stories of his childhood in Fort Worth was of the amazing 1937 college football game between undefeated Texas Christian and undefeated Southern Methodist. SMU won the game, but each school was named national champion in different polls.

"Two national champions from Texas, and I'd seen them play. Every kid should have a big sports event in his life."

Terrible tragedies remind us of fragility of life

This is a horrible story, and I have to tell it in a way that preserves the anonymity of the subject.

You'll understand why.

I have a friend from back home in Virginia that I haven't seen for nearly 40 years. Around the time we lost touch, one of her three brothers died after a long illness.

I remember thinking how sad it was. I have four younger siblings, and losing any of them would be tragic to me.

Anyway, she and I lost touch. But as has happened with so many people in this age of social media, we established contact a few years ago through Facebook. We're both past 60 now, although I'm further past it than she is.

My four siblings -- ages 57 to 67 -- are alive and kicking, and her two remaining brothers were doing well too.

Until recently.

'Best' accomplishments bring on mixed emotions

What's the best thing you ever did?

This isn't a moral question. I'm not talking about right or wrong, or good or evil.

It's about doing something and trying to do it better and better. Like being a golfer and trying first to break 100, then 90, then 80 ...

Or writing a book, and then writing a better one and then one that's even better.

9th hole, Sun City Peachtree

Or improving at something and achieving a personal best. It took me five years to break 100 and another four or five years to break 90.

By the time we moved to Georgia, I had been playing golf for more than 15 years. Playing regularly on the same course, a course suited to my game, I reached the point where at my very best, I could break 80.

On my very best day, I played nine holes and came within one shot of a par 36. I shot eight pars and then bogeyed the ninth hole. The great irony there is that the ninth hole is the one I par most frequently of all.

That was a wonderful two hours, but I have equally wonderful examples that took much longer.

Seaver sadly facing indignity of the 'Long Goodbye'

Dementia.

It's a horrible word, one that seems to become more relevant to us as each year passes.

Not just more relevant, either. Sadder.

The great Tom Seaver

It's actually a strange word in this context. "Demented" used to mean mentally odd in some strange way. There is a syndicated disc jockey called Doctor Demento who plays all sorts of bizarre songs.

Calling someone demented was basically a synonym for weird or twisted. It had little to do with aging.

Of course it was also a medical term. Dementia doesn't refer to one specific disease, but to a family of diseases that result in memory loss or impaired judgement.

The best-known disease is Alzheimer's, largely because of President Reagan. When people first started talking about Alzheimer's, some folks misheard the first word and called it Old-timer's Disease. Cute.

Scary movies used to be a lot scarier

It's fascinating the way we remember things.

If you were to ask me if I was a fan of the horror genre -- both books and movies -- I'm not sure how I would answer.

Classic horror, sure. I've watched nearly all the great old films from the '30s and '40s, from "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" to the gloriously goofy "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." Two of the very earliest -- in the 1920s -- were "Nosferatu" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," both of which I was fortunate enough to see in theaters.

Editor's note: Not, of course, in their original release.


Just because the 1920s seems like ancient times to me as I approach age 70, to my children's generation the '50s is when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It isn't as if there haven't been great horror films since then, some of them great movies -- Hitchcock's "Psycho," Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby," Friedkin's "Exorcist." All three won Academy Awards and were nominated for others.

Some films that are thought of as great horror movies are actually genre-crossers. Is "Alien" a horror movie or does it fit better into the science-fiction pantheon?

Late nights not the same since Johnny Carson left

Doc Severinsen, Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson

Last night I watched a tape of Johnny Carson's final show on YouTube. I had only seen it once before, on May 22, 1992, on the television in the living room of my last apartment just off Beach Blvd on the way down to Huntington Beach.

In four months, I would meet Nicole and my life would change completely. But I was covering the Dodgers that spring, and I usually got home just in time to see the late night shows. Actually, I had been watching Dennis Miller on Fox that spring, back when he was funny.

But when the announcement came that Johnny Carson was retiring, that May 21 would be his last show with guests and the following night would be an hour of reminiscing, I wasn't about to miss either one.

Beauty is in the eye -- just one -- of the beholder

How about those best-laid plans.

I set out to resume regular blogging this year, and I said I would do my best to post something 3-4 times a week. So of course today I'm writing for the first time in 11 days.

It's the eye, of course. It's difficult to get used to seeing with only one eye, and it's particularly rough on my depth perception. I feel a little like Governor LePetomane in "Blazing Saddles," trying to put his pen back into its holder.

[the Governor is having trouble putting his pen back into its holder]
Hedley Lamarr: Think of your secretary...
[the pen goes straight in]
Governor: Thank you. That's a good one.

It has been nearly three weeks since my little stroke gave me double vision, and it has actually gotten a little worse before it will get better.

When I stared into the bathroom mirror with the patch off, my right eye looked normal in its positioning, but the left was pinned as far to the inside, as crossed as it could possibly be.

Neither Snake nor Rooster, but I do have the patch

Talk about annoying.

A little less than a week ago, my distance vision started getting a little more blurry than usual.

Then on Saturday, that blurry vision turned into double vision. By Monday morning, everything outside of about 18 inches away was coming up twice, side by side.

If I covered my left eye, I could see almost normally, but of course that was nothing more than a short-term fix.

So I went to the doctor and he told me I had had a stroke.

Editor's note: No he didn't.

Well ...

Trump channels Nixon in his state of the union

The president had been there before and knew what he was doing.

It wasn't, as they say, his first rodeo.

“Mr. Speaker, and Mr. President, and my distinguished colleagues and our guests: I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year,

“I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate affair. As you know, I have provided to the special prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material. I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.

"I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.”

'Stan & Ollie' shows why Laurel and Hardy live on

Stan & Ollie

Thursday I saw a movie in a theater for just the third time in eight years.

I saw the last Harry Potter movie in 2011, largely because I had just seen the one prior to it on DVD and I didn't want to wait six months for the next DVD.

I took my wife to see "A Dog's Purpose" in 2017 because it was based on a book we both loved.

And yesterday I drove over to the 16-plex in McDonough for a matinee showing of "Stan & Ollie," the BBC movie about Laurel and Hardy's final tour of England in 1953.

I had been eager to see the movie since I first saw the trailer. I have always liked John C. Reilly, and seeing him as Oliver Hardy just blew me away. The only problem was that his voice is so distinctive and there were times I had trouble getting past that.

British actor Steve Coogan was outstanding as Stan Laurel. I hadn't seen him in too many things before, although he had a small role as the Roman centurion in the three "Night at the Museum" movies.

Coogan and Reilly, Laurel and Hardy

I hadn't realized that Laurel was very much the senior partner. He was paid significantly more than Hardy because he wrote the scripts and supervised much of the productions.

If there was one thing apparent as their careers wound down, it was the love the two men felt for each other.

Their films were completely a product of their time. While Marx Brothers movies and others that relied on wordplay hold up very well, the slapstick in movies like "Way Out West" goes on almost to the point of being painful to watch.

But the rest -- the little dances and songs -- have a sweetness to them that long outlives the two men.

And they were the best.

Better than Abbott and Costello, better than Martin and Lewis, better than any other duos. It's why people still watch and enjoy their films 80 years or more after they were made.

Yes, it was a fine mess.

A very fine mess.

What on earth is so interesting about Uniontown?

Uniontown, Pa.

I have never been to Uniontown, Pa.

In fact, other than driving through the area on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I don't recall ever being in southwestern Pennsylvania other than changing planes in Pittsburgh one time in 1984.

It's a small city a little less than an hour south of Pittsburgh and definitely part of what they call the Rust Belt. Some famous people were born there, most notably General George Marshall and mystery writer John Dickson Carr.

Quick attacks on Harris' plan show ruling class fear

Senator Kamala Harris

Well, it certainly looks as though Kamala Harris has made a big impression.

Harris, a first-term senator from California, jumped into the 2020 presidential race with big ideas.

First, higher taxes on incomes of more than $10 million a year.

Second, Medicare for all.

A government-run, single-payer health care system that would eliminate private health insurance.

In other words, a system similar to those of nearly every other western nation.

Super cold weather brings back super cold memories

Sixty below zero?

Sweet Jesus, that's cold. Yes, it's just wind-chill, but the actual temperature Sunday night in International Falls, Minn., was 45 below zero.

But it's often cold there, isn't it?

It certainly is, but Sunday night's low temperature broke the old record by 9 degrees, a record set 53 years ago. And it will only get worse. Temperatures Tuesday night may drop as low as 25 below zero in Chicago for the first time in more than 30 years.

Before we go any further, get it out of your head that this disproves global warming or whatever. What is happening is climate change, and it shows itself with bigger hurricanes, more extreme storms and all sorts of other fun things.

Outer suburbs in Northern Virginia much closer now

There is a picture that keeps coming to mind lately, although I'm not sure why.

It's a person I haven't seen for more than 35 years in a place I haven't been for more than 40 years.

Modern-day Reston, Va.

Reston, Va., didn't look anything like this in February 1975. What is now a town of more than 58,000 was in its early stages as America's first planned community.

My fiancee and I had just moved into a nice new apartment on the north side of Herndon in a community called Stuart Woods.

Greatest irony is Trump as an evangelical hero

Jesus wept.

We have apparently reached a level of stupidity in this country that people's first reactions to tragedies are completely inappropriate. Such as the folks who reacted to the Florida MAGA bomber's arrest by calling it a "false flag" operation designed to embarrass Donald Trump.

And the very next day when Trump himself reacted to the shooter who killed 11 people and wounded six others in a Pittsburgh synagogue by saying they should have had armed guards inside to prevent incidents like this.

Our hapless leader did something most people would have found very difficult to do -- he made the shooting about him and claimed that the bomber and the shooter had hurt the momentum Trump and his fellow Republicans had been building going into the midterm elections.

Jewish leaders and civic officials in Pittsburgh asked Trump not to come to Pennsylvania until after the funerals. In fact, leaders at the synagogue said they didn't want to see Trump until he made a statement renouncing white supremacy.

Of course he came anyway, bringing his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law with him.

Pain in the neck, Trumpo's fear and a little nostalgia

Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:

WISH I COULD BE MORE STOIC: I think most of us wish that. No one wants to think of himself as a whiner or someone who is always complaining, so when my wife said -- albeit sympathetically -- that I had been fussing about the lower back pain that keeps me from taking two steps without pain, I challenged her.

I don't complain, I said. I do sometimes cry out involuntarily when a misstep bumps up the pain-o-meter.

That's true, she said.

Bone spurs in my upper spine and my lower spine seem to be kicking my ass all the time. I also have periodic pains in both hands, both feet and one elbow.

I'm not a complainer.

I may, however, be a puss.

***

SPEAKING OF WHINERS: Donald Trump, aka Trumpo or Trumpo!, basically showed his 34-day government shutdown was for naught Friday when he agreed to reopen the government before discussing anything else.

Looks like we're enjoying a heck of a winter

"Now is the winter of our discontent ..."
-- BILL SHAKESPEARE

Boy, isn't it?

Is there anything that could be going wrong right now that isn't? Whether it's Donnie & Mitch shutting down the government or referees cheating the New Orleans Saints out of a Super Bowl visit, or any list of other annoyances, the winter of 2019 is looking like one heck of a bad time.

We're into the second month of the government shutdown, and the two biggest stories out of Washington this week are whether Trump will get to make his State of the Union speech and how embarrassing it was the he bought fast food for the visiting national champion Clemson Tigers.

Is it too late to save newspapers as check or balance?

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."
-- THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1789

I need to start by saying one thing that will probably annoy a lot of people.

Freedom of the Press is about newspapers and magazines.

So-called broadcast media -- radio and television -- is something else entirely. Just as working people weren't helped when personnel departments became "Human Resources," it didn't do newspapers any good when folks started calling the press the media.

America's 'faithful' need to look at their hearts

Some people shouldn't be allowed in restaurants.

At least in this country, people are expected to understand that a large part of the money wait staff earn comes to them in tips. Whether it's 15 percent, 18 percent or more, without it the people doing the serving are little more than serfs.

Kansas 'Christians' failed to tip.

Lately, though, tipping -- or more accurately, failing to tip -- has become something of a political statement.

In a Wichita restaurant recently, a family of "Christians" left their waiter what appeared to be a generous $20 tip.

He was pleased ... until he realized what they had left him was a religious tract designed to look like money.

My son learned a lesson I wish I had learned in time

My son called from the Southern Hemisphere on Christmas Day. Virgile and his wife Sterling are halfway through their third and final year in Asuncion, Paraguay, where it is early summer.

Sterling and Virgile

He has been in the Foreign Service for 10 years now and in his early 30s, he has either lived or visited every continent except Antarctica (no embassies there) and maybe Africa (I'm not sure).

Virgile is an amazing guy. People say things about him that most of can only dream about hearing about ourselves.

On his first tour, his supervisor wrote in his evaluation that "Virgile is the best young Foreign Service officer I have seen in 20 years."

Eight years earlier, in his first year of college at Cal State Northridge, his roommate told me that "Virgile is the nicest person I have ever met."

Wow.

I can't claim credit for that. Nobody ever called me the best young (or old) anything, and certainly no one ever said I was the nicest person they ever met.

American Dream is more than just what we own

Many people still alive remember the time when the United States of America was known as the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

Some will even remember when the "American Dream" wasn't about getting rich or owning a business, but just doing well enough to have a home and a family and some leisure time to enjoy life.

People pretty much got to choose how much they wanted to succeed. If they were satisfied to work hard enough to support their family and not much more, that was OK. If they wanted to work hard enough to become a big success, they could try that too.

We had yet to become the Consumer Society, where our worth was based on how much we owned and how often we gobbled up the newest televisions, or computers, or cars.

1938

We had yet to learn the glories of consumer debt.

People bought things after saving for them. The idea of "buy now, pay later" came along after World War II, and bank cards -- essentially revolving loans -- were a generation further in the future.

When the troops came home from Europe and the Pacific, and when rationing ended, folks who hadn't been able to buy anything for four years all of a sudden splurged.

And all of a sudden we were off to the races, acquiring possessions at nosebleed speed and not even really asking ourselves whether each new thing we owned was actually making our lives better.

When my parents were first married, they were on a tight budget. Each payday, they cashed their checks and put money into envelopes for each of the bills they had to pay.

The first envelope was always savings. Whether it was $5 or only $2, they always saved something.

We got dumb when we stopped reading books

Sometimes it amazes me how much professional pundits try desperately to avoid the truth.

I was reading an article in the Washington Post by Mitchell Lerner, a professor at Ohio State claiming that the end of the Cold War was a major contributor to the ultimate election of Donald Trump.

 Lerner said Americans put aside their hatred of the federal government because of the need to battle the Russians in the Cold War. Once it ended, Americans no longer had use for the federal government.

That's a nice conservative point of view.

Of course it's wrong.

The right wing has spent more than 50 years attacking the government, defending the right of states to treat their residents badly.

We're one of the only countries in which you have fewer rights and/or privileges if you live in, say, Mississippi instead of New York.

The great irony of it all is that it's the people in those states who are conned into believing that they might be poor and ignorant, but they have more freedom than other Americans.

Lives of quiet desperation give us our Trumps

Anne Frank

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. ... I think peace and tranquility will return again."
-- Closing paragraph, "The Diary of A Young Girl,"Anne Frank

So where do we go from here?

I remain basically an optimist about the good hearts of most people, and I was definitely taken aback -- and seriously flattered -- by a reader's comment about me being the "last best hope for a permanent MIDDLE viewpoint."

And anyone who doesn't believe in the basic goodness of people -- especially in view of the fact that a young girl hiding from the Nazis can feel that way -- is either seriously afraid or a serious misanthrope.

I even believe that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had basically good hearts, although I'm not at all sure about Dick Cheney.

That's a joke, folks, although I remain flabbergasted at the idea that someone could shoot an old man in the face and then make him apologize for getting in the way.

But what do you say to someone if they're shot or killed by some lunatic who believes the Jews or the Blacks are out to get him? Too bad? Tough luck? You should have ducked?

What do you do when you encounter hate like that?

In the fall of 1989, I was covering a 49ers football game for my employer at the time, the Reno Gazette-Journal. After I filed my story, I walked to the Candlestick Park parking lot to find that someone had smashed the passenger window in my car.

Since I faced a 220-mile drive across the Sierras to get back to Reno -- in December, at night -- I was also faced with basically freezing.

When I got into the mountains, I couldn't take the cold any longer. I pulled off I-80 and went into a convenience store to buy a pair of cheap gloves and a ski cap. A perfectly nice-looking man, manning the cash register, made conversation with me and asked me why I was buying those particular items.

"Somebody smashed my window and broke into my car at the 49ers game," I said. "I'm freezing."

"Probably your ni**ers," he said. "Your ni**ers will do stuff like that." (If you can't figure it out, the * replaces the letter g)

I knew I wasn't going to convert this individual to tolerance, and I was getting tired, so I just thanked him, got my change and went back to my car.

If I had been younger, if I hadn't been a tired 39-year-old who had seen too much, I probably would have criticized his racist remarks. But except for the racism -- and I know that's an "except for that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln" remark -- he didn't seem like a bad guy.

He didn't say what he said in an angry voice. He was more old and ignorant than anything else, and I'm not convinced we should hate people for being old or ignorant.

All that happened a long, long time ago. And so much has happened to make it more difficult to stand against hate. We have a president who rode a platform of hate and anger to the White House. Whether he won fairly or was installed by the Russians doesn't much matter after nearly two years. We have to deal with the fact that he's there and at least for now has a great deal of power.

Bad year for health & friends, but a great family

A new year?

Boy, did we need one.

Queen Elizabeth II once referred to a year late in the last century as an annus horribilis, and except for the fact that I'd probably get snarky about the first word, I might be tempted to describe 2018 with that same phrase.

I have two very close friends I have known forever. One lost his wife on Thanksgiving Day, the other lost his mother on Christmas Day. That one had been chronically ill for years and the other was 88 years old may have made it less surprising, but that's about all.

My own mother is slipping away. She'll be 92 next month, and she has outlived her husband of 52 years -- my dad -- by more than a decade. I have nine siblings, five of them brothers and sisters in-law, one one of them learned recently of an advanced case of liver cancer.

Albanie

I don't remember who it was who said it first, but we all reach a point in our lives when life begins taking away more than it gives us. The "gifts" it has been giving me in recent times are chronic arthritis pain in my neck and upper spine, stenosis somewhere in that same area that has me almost blacking out at times, and worsening pain in my left hip that has me worrying I'll need a hip replacement.

Oh, and assuming I live another 344 days, I'll "celebrate" my 70th birthday in December.

Seventy.

Damn.