Knee surgery in the past without all that much drama

"What a week I'm having ..."

With apologies to Eugene Levy for stealing his wonderful line from "Splash," after a rough start to the week it hasn't been all that bad.


My oh-so-minor knee surgery was scheduled for Tuesday at 10:15 a.m.,  and I learned late Monday afternoon that my cardiologist had not provided the necessary cardiac clearance.

So I started scrambling and got an appointment to see the cardiologist at 8:15 a.m.

I was up before the sun, and the cardiologist -- one of my doctor's partners -- gave me the clearance with one caveat. She saids my blood pressure was high enough that they might not risk doing the surgery.

Klobuchar coming out of the shadows for Democrats

“There’s an old story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and when he died, his body was put on a train and went up across America, and there was a guy standing by those tracks along with so many Americans, and he had his hat on his chest and he was sobbing, and a reporter said, ‘Sir, did you know the president?’ And the guy says, ‘No, I didn’t know the president, but he knew me. He knew me.’ I will tell you this, there is a complete lack of empathy in this guy in the White House right now. 

"I will bring that to you. “If you have trouble stretching your paycheck to pay for that rent, I know you and I will fight for you. If you have trouble deciding if you’re going to pay for your childcare or your long-term care, I know you and I will fight for you. If you have trouble figuring out if you’re going to fill your refrigerator or fill your prescription drug, I know you and I will fight for you.”
-- AMY KLOBUCHAR, Feb. 8, 2020

Senator Amy Klobuchar

I think it was last September when I first put the bumper sticker on my car.

I spent a lot of time thinking about who I would support this year. In many ways, I think the 2020 election might be the most important of the last 50 years.

I had thought for a long time I might be supporting a senator from Minnesota for president in 2020. Of course, I once thought it would be Al Franken.

Overwhelming need to win infects us all

If there's one thing about history that is truly ironic, it's that heroes can turn into villains without changing anything about themselves.

In fact, it happens for many of them long after their deaths.

I'm not talking about Founding Fathers who owned slaves. The case I have in mind is far more recent.

Take Vince Lombardi, probably the most legendary of NFL coaches. He had amazing success in the 1960s and was the winning coach in the first two Super Bowls.

His most famous quote was the one in the box to the right, and while Lombardi never suggested cheating to win, he later realized that when you say there is nothing other than winning, stuff happens.

Roger Kahn's books show a true love of baseball

It was April 1983, and the early spring weather was raw.

Baseball season had started, and the Class A Gastonia (NC) Expos had a doubleheader scheduled with the Columbia Mets. I was covering the Expos for the paper now known as the Gaston Gazette, and had in fact been honored as South Atlantic League sportswriter of the year the previous season.

I was the proverbial big fish in a small pond when it came to baseball writing, but on this day I was going meet the biggest fish in the ocean. Roger Kahn, the man who wrote "The Boys of Summer," was coming to town with the Mets.

Roger Kahn

Kahn was a minority owner of the Columbia Mets, and he was planning to spend the summer with the team writing a book about minor league baseball.

It didn't work out that way. The owner of the franchise was a minor-league George Steinbrenner, and he got angry every time people talked about Kahn.

After a month or so of that, Kahn gave up on Columbia and shifted his attention to the Utica Blue Sox of the short-season New York-Penn League for the book that turned out to be "Good Enough to Dream."

Macy's closings one more sign of vanishing social life

Back in the early 1970's, the wonderful humor group Firesign Theatre had a newscast on one of its albums that included the following exchange between two "happy talk" anchors:

"Well, Patty, last year, the world ended."

"As we know it, Hugh."

(both laugh)

You might have to be under the age of 60 to believe this, but the world -- at least the one we grew up with -- is coming to an end.

I know starting out this way makes me sound like a grumpy 70-year-old, which at the moment is what I am. Still, what sparked the idea was news that Macy's will close 125 of its stores between now and 2023, most of them in "lesser-performing malls" around the country.

Is the American Dream vanishing or can we save it?

"I need to get personal here. Given the Senate hearings last week, I am trying not to spiral down through hopelessness and bitter cynicism about the end of the dream that was America. It is exhausting to keep your heart beating with the hope and trust that most Americans understand or care about how things stand today and realize what is slipping away.

"If you did not see a lot of the Senate 'trial,' consider yourself fortunate, as one feels fortunate when not looking at a gory car wreck. If you did, can you help me just not give up on this country right here and now? You can criticize me all you want for this post, or give me the usual platitudes and attitudes, but there has to be someone who understands and perhaps still has a lifeline to hope that they can share?"

***

One of my closest friends in the world posted this on Facebook Sunday morning, and I have literally been sitting here for an hour looking at her post and searching for an answer.

I've thought about Mencken and his 100 years that I've quoted so often, or about Sinclair Lewis and his character Buzz Windrip. But what I keep returning to is Benjamin Franklin and his answer to the person who asked what kind of government we were going to have.

"A republic ... if you can keep it."

When it comes down to it, there are really only two different types of governments -- authoritarian and non-authoritarian. It has always been a lot easier to be a citizen of the first type. You don't really have to think. You just follow the rules.

You obey.

That's all that is expected of you in that sort of society.

The shocking thing is that in many ways, we have been living in that sort of society for the last 35-40 years.

Maybe a lot longer.

I'm not sure there was ever a Golden Age. You look at things a lot differently if you're a white male of a certain age. I do know that during World War II, folks who ran companies made 14 times as much per hour as the average employee in those companies.

I know that in the 1950s, the top income tax rate for the biggest wage earners was 91 percent and that even after a major tax cut in the early '60s, the rate was 70 percent.


I know that at peak, roughly a third of American workers belonged to labor unions, including most of those in good manufacturing jobs. Unions made it possible for someone with a high school diploma to buy a house, support a family, buy a new car every few years, take yearly vacations and send their kids to college.

Back when we made things for the world.

We made things the world needed. Cars, appliances, steel, and workers from Michigan to New Jersey worked damned hard and took great pride in what they did. As long as they worked hard and followed the rules, they didn't have to worry about arbitrary firings or layoffs.

They didn't have to worry -- at least they thought they didn't -- about health insurance or retirement. Their unions negotiated those things for them as part of their contracts.

The problem was, though, that while working class people might tend to see their gains as a sort of new normal, the megarich tend to see things like that only as temporary setbacks. They're always looking to claw back some of what they lost.

And if there is one thing they don't want, it's employees who feel secure in their jobs and in their lives. The big bosses want to see their minions sweating when they walk into the room. When they say jump, there are only two appropriate responses.

You can jump.

Or you can ask how high.

Of course the entire world isn't like that. In the free countries of Western Europe, folks pay more in taxes and get far more in return. They get health care, retirement and at least four weeks vacation a year. If you look at it, life in France and Germany for working people is a lot like it was here in the '50s and '60s.

I have a feeling America is basically finished for the baby boomers. I've got three close friends who are past traditional retirement age and are all still working. Not so much because they want to, but because they need to. Two of them have had life-threatening illnesses.

They may end up working till they drop. Nearly half of all boomers have little savings and will have little to live on other than Social Security.

My friend Christine, who lives in Florida, actually had a pretty good idea. She suggested that four or five friends who were alone in the world could get together and rent a house together. Splitting expenses five ways could enable folks to live a lot better.

Will America get past all this?

Maybe, but our children and our grandchildren will have to work damn hard -- and fight even harder -- to get this country back to a place where everyone is in it together.

I don't know about your kids, but I'm betting mine can be a big part of the solution.

In a Molly-free world, mediocrities like Trump thrive

Sometimes the good actually do die young.

It just depends on what you mean by young. Molly Ivins was 62 when she died of cancer in 2007, not that young for an athlete but as a columnist she might have had another 15-20 good years.

She was the one who coined the name "Shrub" to describe George W. Bush, the one who described a lesser Texas politician by saying he was so dumb that if he lost any more IQ points he would need to be watered twice a day.

That was when we first heard the outraged whine from the right wing.

"Molly Ivins can't say that, can she?"

She could ... and did. For more than three decades she was the funniest, most sardonic voice of Texas liberalism. More than just being liberal, though, she was the voice of the average person against the rich and powerful.

A 2019 film.

In the early '90s, when Rush Limbaugh was becoming popular, he was ranting about how racism was a thing of the past and liberals should stop complaining. Ivins was in a Texas diner and heard several men agreeing with Rush. "What will the ni**ers find to complain about now?" one of them said.

When his fans raved about how funny he was, Ivins pointed out that the definition of humor is exactly the opposite of what Limbaugh does.

Humor is about making fun of the powerful, not humiliating the powerless. Ivins said Limbaugh's ridicule of the homeless, of people with AIDS and poor people in general was about as funny as kicking a cripple.

I don't remember if Ivins ever wrote about Donald Trump. He did have some political involvement in the 2000 election, although he was never as big a deal during her lifetime as he became later.

I think Trump is damn lucky Ivins isn't around to write about him.

We will never see her likes again.

***

Here's an example of her greatness.