Would Biden eliminate windows, abolish suburbs?

Well, so much for that.

We absolutely can't elect Joe Biden president.

He wants to abolish windows. And the suburbs, for goodness sake.

Next thing you know, Biden will go after white bread and Kool-Aid.

Before you decide life is hopeless and decide to take your own life, calm down a little.Biden hasn't said he will do any of these things. America's favorite fabulist, Donald Trump, claims these will be the result of some of Biden's policies.

Never enough friends to start throwing them away

"Nothing is more important than friendship. Not fame. Not money. Not death."
-- BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY

There is a scene in the movie "Tombstone" when an acutely ill Doc Holliday leaves his sickbed to help Wyatt Earp in a gunfight Earp can't win alone.

Turkey Creek Jack Johnson asks, "Doc, you oughta be in bed, what the hell you doin' this for anyway?"

Holliday responds, "Wyatt Earp is my friend."

'Free college' could be a very good thing for America

"Free college? What a crazy idea!"

If you live in the U.S., you have almost certainly heard people saying that. You may even have said it yourself.

"Hey, nobody gave me free college."

"Hey, I had to pay for my own college. Why should they get it for free?"

Well ...

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century -- 110-115 years ago -- the fairly standard level of education for many people was finishing the eighth grade. They learned to read, write (penmanship, not creative writing) and do simple mathematics.

Then they went on to apprenticeships to learn trades, or clerkships to become attorneys, bankers or other such white-collar jobs.

Eighth grade was enough for most people. My grandfather Paul Kindinger (b. 1895) had an eighth grade education and he was a police officer for 20 years and was police chief of his small town for 12 years from just before Pearl Harbor into the early '50s.

Different times require new solutions for new people

Another time, another place

Different times?

Different places?

Maybe, but the truly sad part of it all is that we are different people than we were 70-80 years ago.

We have heard the so-called "Greatest Generation" praised so much it's almost painful, and it is not my intention to do that here.

They were different, though. Mostly because they had to be. When you grow up during the Great Depression and the Second World War, you learn quickly there are things you have to do and things you have to do without.

When there's no money for food, you go hungry. Or you get in line for bread or soup. And given the way you were brought up, you feel somewhat guilty over not being able to support yourself.

If we don't make things better, they'll just get worse

The uncertain future

"On the day Trump leaves office, we’ll still have a younger generation with worse life prospects than their parents had faced."
-- DAVID BROOKS, New York Times"

David Brooks might be the closest thing we have to a philosopher among modern newspaper columnists.

The talk about one generation not having it as good as the previous one has been around for a while.

In fact, my late father who was born in 1926, often said his generation had it much easier than ours in several respects. He essentially worked for one employer -- the U.S. government -- for his whole life.

Uncle Wiggily a fond memory from a long time ago

1949 edition.

Sometimes memories come from the strangest places.

It has been many years -- maybe even half a century -- since I have given any thought to Uncle Wiggily.

There aren't a whole lot of cultural things still around that I would honestly say were before my time.

In 1910, a writer named Howard R. Garis published the first Uncle Wiggily story in the Newark News. Between then and his retirement in 1947, he published more than 15,000 stories about the long-eared rabbit in that newspaper.

Don't blame Trump for lack of historical perspective

You will never hear me say anything nice about Donald Trump.

It has nothing to do with politics. Trump has been a joke to me since I first heard of him more than 30 years ago. He has fewer human qualities than any human being I have ever known.

When he originally scheduled his Tulsa campaign rally for this Friday, folks were outraged that he scheduled it for Juneteenth, the day celebrating the end of chattel slavery in 1865.

They compared it to Ronald Reagan kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

Not much can save this year except baseball

I have long believed that the happiest memories of all are when wonderful things happen to people you love.

Most of the truly special days of my life have involved the people I love, just as some of the truly awful ones have been when bad things happen to the same people.

June 2010, Houston, Texas

But what about the great days that are just about experiencing things that make you happy? Those days matter too, even if we don't get to share them with anyone else at the time.

During seven decades on Earth, the people I love have mattered the most to me, and acquiring six grandchildren over the last 12 years has given me so much more to enjoy.

After people comes baseball. From my first double-header in 1957 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati to stadiums -- major and minor -- all over the country over the next 60 years, there are no bad times at baseball stadiums.

July 2010, Arlington,  Texas

Well, very few.

I wasn't that lucky when I went to the Rangers' ballpark in the summer of 2010. I got a great field box seat for $80. The rain was supposed to stop, but it didn't and I had to leave to drive back to San Antonio.

Well, at least I saw the ballpark.

Once we moved to Georgia later in 2010, I started doing something I really never thought I would do again -- I watched ballgames on television.

The last four years, I've bought the MLB.TV package so that I can watch Washington Nationals games. I have played Rotisserie Baseball every year since 1991 and a couple of years in the '80s before that.

Baby Shark and Clutch & Drive

The thing was, when baseball struck and cancelled the World Series in 1994, I was so angry with the ongoing games between player and owners that I promised myself if anything like that ever happened again, I would say goodbye to baseball for good.

Of course, I never expected that the previous season would conclude with one of the happiest moments of my life -- the Washington Nationals winning the World Series.

Almost as special as Virginia winning the NCAA men's basketball championship earlier the same year.

So a great year is followed by a ridiculously awful one -- my wife had major surgery for a life-threatening condition, my brother in law died after a long battle with cancer and a beloved fraternity brother died in his mid '50s.

In addition, Donald Trump is still president and there's been no baseball because the owners keep crapping around with the players.

2020, please get lost.

Next year had better be a lot better.

It's not enough not to teach children to hate

We Americans have always been good at teaching our children to hate.

We were settled by people who believed it was the duty of folks we later called WASPs to educate the other races and bring people with no religion (or maybe just the wrong religion) home to Jesus.

Some call slavery America's "original sin," but what we did to black Africans actually started after our genocide against native Americans. We take pride in religious freedom and say our country stems from a Judeo-Christian tradition, but countless German and European Jews died when Adolf Hitler was willing to let them leave because too many "good" American Christians thought we had too many Jews in this country already.

Half a century since a truly memorable time of life

The older I get, the more time's distances seem amazing to me.

I think it was Tennessee Williams in the wonderful "Glass Menagerie" who called time the longest distance between two points, and as I slip uncontrollably into old age I see how right he was.

Fifty years ago this spring was one of the happiest times of my life up to that time. Although I didn't really know it at the time, May 1970 marked the final weeks of my first real relationship.

It was about three weeks till the lovely Shelley Marcus would return home to Connecticut for the summer, and except for a strange week in September, that was it for us.

There are two things I remember vividly about that time.

First was Kent State. The killing of four antiwar protesters by the Ohio National Guard on the sunny Monday in Kent, Ohio, sent shock waves through our generation. And some of the responses around the country showed us that what was called the "Generation Gap" was maybe as wide as that big hole in the ground in Arizona.

"They got what they deserved."

"They should have killed 400 of them."

"Bums."

Only 5/12 gone, but one horrible year already

It's been a helluva year, hasn't it.

Five months gone out of 12, and we've gone from a toxic presidential campaign to a virus that has killed more than a hundred thousand Americans to a racial incident in Minnesota that is turning everything upside down.

George Floyd's death in Minneapolis at the hands -- or more accurately, the knee -- of a racist police officer has resulted in demonstrations and/or riots all over this country and in Europe as well.

It seems as if President Trump has become such a disaster that the whole world is watching America even more than usual.

No baseball the toughest part of my COVID-19 spring

Ryan Zimmerman

“Baseball is like church. Many attend but few understand.”
-- WES WESTRUM

In many ways, I haven't been hurt at all by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It hasn't changed anything for us financially. I've been retired for more than 12 years, and our monthly income hasn't been affected at all except for the total value of our retirement yo-yoing with the market.

I used to go to the movies regularly, but I've only seen three in theaters since we moved to Georgia in 2010. I don't go to ballgames in person, either.

Indeed, the one way my life has really changed -- other than wearing a mask every time I go somewhere -- has been a spring without baseball to follow. For the last four or five years, I've paid for the MLB-TV season subscriptions so that I can watch ballgames whenever I want.

And no, I do not want to watch Korean baseball.

The last game I saw was Washington's wonderful come-from-behind victory in Game Seven of the World Series. If you want irony, how about the two teams I have followed since I was a teenager -- Washington baseball and Virginia basketball -- winning their first championships in my lifetime the same year.

And then both having their next seasons disrupted by the pandemic.

Sometimes life really sucks.

***

Short takes and random thoughts for a May weekend:

-- Donald Trump has been a disaster as president from Day One, but despite analysis that 90 percent of deaths could have been avoided had he not delayed in acting, he continues to insist he has done a wonderful job. Unbelievable.

-- Just finished watching George Takei's wonderful Broadway show "Allegiance," about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The entire cast was outstanding, but the amazing Lea Salonga stood out as always.

-- Every few years I go back and watch episodes of "The West Wing." Along with "Moonlighting," it's one of my two favorite TV series ever. There have been plenty of other good ones, but the one recent series that comes awfully close to making that list is "Madam Secretary."

-- An unnamed White House source put an interesting twist on the old saying about someone playing chess while their opponents play checkers. The source, no fan of Trump's, said that while some people are playing chess, Trump is eating the pieces.

Some experiences don't stand the failings of memory

What's almost as bad as not experiencing something?

How about experiencing it and not remembering?

From the time I was a little kid, I knew that Halley's Comet would pass within view of Earth exactly once in my lifetime. The comet gets close enough to see with the naked eye once every 75 or 76 years.

Naivete of Americans becoming a frightening thing.

Being optimistic is nice.

Being naive is less nice.

Being delusional is not nice at all.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released today said that 77 percent of Americans surveyed who have been furloughed or laid off during the current pandemic believe they will be rehired by their former employers once the stay-at-home order ends.

Donald Trump: Egg or Plant?

In other results, 62 percent of the same group said they believe in the Easter Bunny and 54 percent believe Donald Trump's tan is real.

Something like 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance the last six weeks, and it's expected that when unemployment figures are released Friday, they will be the highest since the Great Depression.

So how will the end of the stay-at-home order change that?

Something like two-thirds of American workers have been employed in what is known as the "service industry," meaning that these are people who one way or another wait on customers.

Trump looking worse and worse as pandemic spreads

"LIBERATE MICHIGAN!"

-- Donald Trump

Gretchen Whitmer is trying to save the people of Michigan whether they want her to or not.

And Donald Trump is going to cause trouble no matter what the Michigan governor does.

With the number of Americans dead from the Coronavirus heading toward six figures and beyond, Trump is trying desperately to keep people from blaming him.

As of today, more than 72,000 of Trump's constituents have died, and more than 30 million have filed for unemployment.

Many companies have been reporting that their business is off as much as 90 percent. When unemployment numbers for April are announced Friday, they may be as high as 20 or 30 percent of the workforce.

Eulogy for a great guy who will be sorely missed

Marty Malin

Real geniuses don't need to tell people how smart they are.

Generally the folks who brag about their intellect -- as the "very stable genius" does -- are trying to make you believe they're something they're not.

I first met Marty Malin at Christmas 1994 when my sister Hilary brought him to Virginia to meet the family.

Before the decade was out, I had a brother-in-law and two nephews.

My sister is one of the smartest people I know, so it didn't surprise me when her two sons turned out to be gifted. Actually, incredibly gifted.

Unbridgeable differences push U.S. to the brink

Right about now, a lot of Republican senators who refused to convict Donald Trump and remove him from office ought to be very worried.

Why?

Because yes, he really did suggest at his press briefing Friday that an instant cure for COVID-19 might be ingesting some sort of home disinfectants.

Of course he swears he was being sarcastic, but no one who saw him saw any trace of sarcasm. As he floundered for an excuse, he even said it was a prank and that he said it just to see how people would react.

Fake news?

No, fake president.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Pandemic might force meaningful change in U.S.

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday.

If that unifies the Democratic Party and makes it easier to defeat Donald Trump in November, it's all for the best. To primary voters this year, Sanders was just a bridge too far. I always felt his proud use of the word "socialist" was a mistake. I'd have gone with Social Democrat.

I feel like Sanders saw this election as one for revolutionary change, while most Democrats -- myself included -- wanted more than anything just to get rid of Trump.

The great irony is that the Coronavirus pandemic may have transformed circumstances enough that it ought to be a true change election. Particularly in the area of health insurance.

Americans dying due to Trump's horrific priorities

NYC

"I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps ..."

The last time I visited New York City was a little less than two and a half years ago.

It was the first time I had been in Manhattan since the mid 1990s, when my middle sister got married.

In October 2017, Nicole and I stayed in a hotel near the Empire State Building. We only had two days and three nights, and it was raining hard one of those days.

Mostly, we visited Ground Zero and the museum that honored the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It was sort of overwhelming, but as I look at pictures of present-day New York, I find myself thinking that not even Osama bin Laden could shut New York down the way the Coronavirus has.

I imagine we'll go back at some point. I know my wife wants to. NYC is one of my three favorite American cities I have visited numerous times but never lived there. The other two are on the West Coast, San Francisco and Seattle.

When we visited NYC in the fall of 2017, the streets were as crowded -- even on the rainy night -- as anywhere I've ever been. I cannot even comprehend streets as empty as in the picture above.

Where the other day's quotes came from

Casablanca

There are so many great movie quotes.

Most fans would recognize the true classics right away.

"Gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Of course, there's always my personal favorite.

Animal House

"You f**ked up. You trusted us."

The 15 quotes I posted yesterday don't rise to that level of specialness, but they're all interesting and they all demonstrate what made their movies interesting.