Public Service Announcement: If all goes well, I will be off to Ireland and Northern Ireland later today. This news was met with great excitement from my friends and neighbors. I had all kinds of offers to take me to the airport and nary a one to pick me up. I wonder why?

Some Wisdom to Share: Let’s face it, my so-called wisdom is shamelessly stolen from others. After all, is there anything at all that hasn’t been already said … and better than I possibly could? Besides, you are getting this for free.

I do well in the above list except for 6 -8. Not bad though.

After 8 horrendous weeks of taking accordian lessons, I knew I wasn’t a musician.

Nothing bothers me more than those who work to prevent the young from becoming critical thinkers and would turn our great universities into upper level tech schools.

Read, and then think or even discuss. Then read some more … and keep on!

We are often silent witnesses to our own moral compass.

Women: can’t live with them, really can’t live with them!

Finally!

Professor Tom may well post from the other side of the pond. We will see how that works.

The people at Gallup recently released some updated numbers on the political divide in America. Apparently, there are some substantive differences in beliefs and values. For some time, it has been clear that the MAGA crowd hate us ‘WOKE’ types with a vitriolic passion. Those on my side of the divide (at lleast the ones I know) much much less hate but a good dose of pity mixed with a form of paternal sadness for our less educated and enlightened bretheren. The fact that they support views clearly counterproductive to their self-interests and follow politicians who have never worked on their behalf (and I mean NEVER) leaves us scratching our collective heads. But there you have it.

Here are a few issues on which the ‘left’ and ‘right’ disagree (I’m not sure there is much of a center anymore):

DEMS REPUBS

General Issues:

Federal Govt. has too much power …………………. 31% 73%

Retain a strong trust in police ………………………… 31 60

Policy Questions:

In favor of a more universal health care system… 85 30

Protect environment over energy development.. 81 26

Favor stricter gun laws ……………………………………….. 84 20

Believe global warming is a serious issue …………. 87 35

Satisfied with state of race relations ………………….. 23 40

Values Issues:

Abortion should always be legal …………………………. 55 12

Divorce is morally okay ……………………………………….. 88 69

Sex between unmarried partners is okay …………… 82 63

Would accept a child-out-of-wedlock ………………… 82 61

Yes, there are real differences separating us. However, the visceral animus that separates us goes deeper than any divide on issues. It is rooted in basic world views, in essential personality attributes, and perhaps in our physical makeups. The gap will not be breached easily and now, with no external threat to bind us together, the center may not hold.

A word of caution, however. Some of these numbers have varied over time. Republicans had more faith in the federal government until Obama took charge. After several years of Trump propoganda, their faith in our central government has fallen into the crapper. One merely hopes they are not pining for a ‘strongman’ to bail us out. That’s what many Germans wanted in 1933.

As you know, I am befuddled by how the MAGA extremists view the world, all Republicans these days to be accurate. Take Ron Desantis … no, really, take him somewhere, anywhere! I used to live half the year in Florida, was even a legal Florida resident for a while. There was a time when I suffered under far right governors in both Florida (Rick Scott and then Desantis) and Wisconsin (Scott Walker). Talk about two living Hells.

Such politicians throw around the term ‘woke’ as if it were the equivalent to being a sociopath or a pedophile. No, they consider it much, much worse than being either of those despicable types. If afflicted with ‘wokeness,’ you are nothing less than Satan’s spawn. That is why Governor Desantis is on a crusade to eradicate this abominable evil from the Sunshine state. Hmm, being one myself (one of those ‘woke’ types), I wonder sometimes what I did to deserve such negative animus. One thing you can say about the contemporary version of conservative values, those clinging to the Republican faith can be nasty, especially since they often brag about being such nice, loving Christians. Perplexing indeed.

How odd that they should hate folk like me so intensly. I’m such a pleasant sort … a virtual saint in my own mind! Okay, perhaps I am not ready to be canonized by the Vatican, but I am reasonably harmless, that’s for damn sure.

But here’s the thing … in my own mind at least. If you look closely, the dispositions and perspectives of all those ‘woke’ types at whom the ‘right’ hurl their invective are rather special and surely pose little threat. Let’s look at some of the attributes associated with these dastardly ‘woke’ blokes.

If ‘woke,’ you are someone who reads books, not burns them. In fact, you revere the classics and hope the young will absorb their lessons, and to think through critically what might pertain to their own lives (or not). You don’t ban the very literature that elevates and educates us and, most of all, helps us to be critical thinkers capable of understanding our world a bit better.

You embrace and cherish science, not reject it and the people who labor to both better comprehend what is all about us and (more importantly) improve our lives. Science is not absolute truth, but the honest pursuit of truth according to rigorous methods that have been refined over a long time. Our journey toward greater understanding is one of the most sacred tasks we have, and is a faciliity which makes us unique as a species.

A malleable perspective on what we know is critical. A ‘woke’ individual is willing to change their minds when new and credible information becomes available. This does not suggest shallowness of thought. Quite the opposite, it suggests an appreciation of the complexity of life, and a desire to pursue more credible truths based on reason and evidence.

You understand and appreciate that most issues are not black and white. We do not live in a binary world. Some things seem set in stone, like the speed of light. Even there, though, quantum physics suggests tantalizing exceptions. That is the joy and mystery of life itself … the joy that comes with discovering new things and appreciating the complexity of all about us in this mysterious and marvelous universe that is just now opening up to our understanding.

A ‘woke’ person believes in equality of opportunity for all people. This does not mean you believe in some notion of absolute equality of outcomes. That ancient Marxist trope was a non-starter from the beginning. But a ‘woke’ iindividual would like to see everyone have a reasonable shot at the starting line of life. The ‘freedom to succeed’ American narrative is largely a joke when our individual paths through life are so hideously uneven. Sometimes, we all need a helping hand.

A woke person has empathy, or at least treasures it. What demarks a ‘woke’ individual from many on the other side is that the strive not to be a sociopath or a psychopath or a malignant narcissist. They can ‘feel’ what others are experiencing and facing. It is not ‘all about them.’ Life is not a Dickensian horror show, or shold not be at least.

Similarly, someone who is ‘woke’ embraces cooperation, civility, and community. We recognize that collaboration is better than unfettered individualism. It is what marks civilization and is responsible for much of human advancement. Margaret Mead, the iconic anthropologist, argued that finding skeletons with serious injuries buried with other members of nomadic tribes was a huge step forward for the species. Our ancestors started to care for one another rather than let the weaker members die alone. Working together helped us advance in the past; It is the way forward in the future.

A ‘woke’ person respects and defends the rights of others. We recognize that ‘no man is an island.’ If we do not defend the rights of others, we have no rights ourselves. We all recall the saying about “they first came for the disabled but I was not disabled, so I kept quiet; then they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist, so I kept quiet; then they came for the Jews …” In the end, if we always look the other way there will be no one left to fight for us when it is our turn.

When you are ‘woke,’ you believe that the arts, our creative impulses, have value. You value both art and artists. Life is more than the mere acquisition of material things, it is mostly about experiencing those perceptions and feelings that elevate our minds and souls. We must encourage and support such activities that explore deeper meanings. He who has the most toys at the end is not the winner in life. He who has experienced life more fully and with deeper feeling is richer by far.

And a ‘woke person’ cares about humanity and the planet. Let’s face it, we are a fragile species existing on a lonely planet on the fringe of one galaxy among billions, or trillions of such worlds. As far as we know, we are special and alone. We have a duty to preserve the human experiment as a whole (not just one nation or race or our own peculiar tribe), and to do our best to be a good steward to this planet on which we live and upon which we depend. Perhaps, if we don’t screw things up royally, we just might be in the process of creating our own form divinity in a way, since we have no way of anticipating where evolution might lead.

There may be more but this is a damn good start on defining what being ‘woke’ is. Call me ‘woke.’ I embrace the label. I really cannot think of a higher compliment!!!!!!!!

‘A Week from Hell’

We see daily stories about heat records being broken, in various southern states like Arizona and Florida. Foor example, Arizona had 31 straight days of temps over 110 degrees, a streak that just came to an end. That has become expected. We usually hear less from overseas, perhaps because we Americans are rather provincial, or I am at least. Even from other parts of the world, we can see alarms being raised if we bother to look. Chile has broken heat records for early August, winter on that side of the equator. UK boy scouts were evacuated from South Korea because of debilitating heat. If there is one certainty about climate change, it is the inconvenient reality (to steal a pithy phrase from Al Gore) that it is a global phenomenon, not merely a local irritation.

The title of this blog, ‘settimana infernale’ is Italian for a phrase heard often in that country this summer … a week from Hell. That is, it has been damn hot there recently, even for a people used to intense summer heat. Then again, so much of this is relative. Those not ordinarily exposed to hot or humid weather will react when their typical norms are replaced with something different. It will be easy to dismiss such changes as temporary anomolies … until it is too late.

Had we paid attention to what matters as opposed to Megan and Harry or Hunter Biden’s laptop, we would notice many other disturbing reports. The U.K. hit 40 degrees Centigrade for the first time last year (104 F) and recently had its hottest June on record. In southern Europe and around the Mediterranian area, temps have been hitting 50 degrees (122 F) with alarming regularity this summer. Stories have emerged about hospitals in China and the U.S. immersing patients in bags filed with ice to lower body temps. Last year, some 60,000 deaths in Europe were attributed to abnormal high temps. Stories are coming out of Central America that local farmers are migrating since they no longer can live off their parched lands. Many fear that this is the tip of the iceberg (pun intended) where masses will begin to move as their traditional homes become uninhabitable. This is a challenge that goes beyond nation, ethnic group, or tribe. It is global in character and thus will demand, guess what, a global response.

Here’s the thing. Hot weather is more than an irritation or an inconvenience. It can, and already has, become a mass killer though the body count has yet to attract widespread attention. Too many eyes remain fixed on the shuffling of College football teams among the power 5 conferences in search of more media money … what a joke in the larger scheme of things. Short of mass deaths, rising temps are an affliction that can cause serious health issues, especially for those already vulnerable, as well as significant social and economic dislocation.

We can see impending disaster about us. Many Americans hibernate for several months out of the year since daily temps heading north of 110 degrees Farenheit (now 120 degrees) make life outside uninhabitable. In the desert southwest, this has become routine. Arizona recently ended a 31 day streak of 110 plus temps. Florida has somewhat lower temps but dew points high in the70s, an unlivable experience for a delicate flower like myself.

Many, of course, cannot stay hidden away in air-conditioned comfort. They must work outdoors or are sensitive to heat due to age or some other condition. And what happens when prolonged heat waves of historic proportions tax our energy grids to the breaking point or water supplies dry up or all other sorts of anticipated disasters become relality. Where can those facing sustained periods of fettimana infernale hide then? The Covid pandemic might look like a walk in the park compared to what is just around the corner. But let’s obsess about Hunter Biden’s business deals?

This raises an interesting question. Just how vulnerable are we as human organisms to excessive heat, foregoing for the moment all the ancillary consquences of a climate disaster (crop failures, coastline cities disappearing under water, deserts replacing arable land, wild fires ravaging life-giving forests, and devastating storms, to name a few).

Let’s just focus on the heat question as it affects our bodies. From what I’ve read, we can expect something like the following. Our bodies are an amazing machine, working hard to achieve a homeostatic state where there is some constancy of critical internal properties. One key to this is our hypothalamus which acts as a thermostat of sorts. This organ sends signals to various parts of the body to react when external conditions push our internal body temperature outside the normal range of roughly 37 degrees C (our normal 98.6 F), plus or minus a degree or two.

Of course, my normal is more like 36 C, but then there has always been some question as to whether I am a mammal or not. If your internal temp rises to 40 (C), or about 103 (F), you will experience physical changes like faintness at the very least. At 42 (C), or 107 (F), you are close to buying the farm, if you are not already arguing to St. Pete about your reservation within the Pearly Gates. If you have some condition that renders you vulnerable, age or pre-exisiting health issue, your ticket almost certainly has been punched.

The body does put up a fight as external conditions wage war on these internal regulatory responses. Given exposure to prolonged heat, your body temp will start to rise. Your heart begins to work harder as blood is pushed to the skin surface as a way of expelling excess inernal heat. An extra liter of blood circulates the body each minute, pushing one’s heart rate from a more normal 55 beats a minute to 87 beats (in a test case). Breathing rates increase from 10 per minute to 15 or higher as stress levels increase. Blood flows to the brain lessens by 8 to 9 percent, and therefore short term memory loss becomes measurable. This is not good for old geezer like me who normally forgets why I just walked into a room to get something very important that I can no longer recall. Soon skin temperature rises some 4 degrees (C). One’s body will put up a good fight but without relief or medical help, a typical person will progress from heat exhaustion to heat stroke to death.

That is the micro-impact on the individual unless, of course, science comes the rescue. And it is not inconceivable that there are technical solutions to many, of not all, of the challenges we can easily anticipate. I feel, though, that our dowmfall will be the result of a more predictable human failure. Look at the American response to a global pandemic. We fought over the science, over government regulations to save lives, over the costs both direct and indirect. The possibilities of political conflict and a failure of human will is much greater in this climate arena. Pandemics do exhaust themselves. This will not go away on its own.

Hell, Rand Paul, chief Libertarian nutcase, is trying to get authorities to throw Dr. Anthony Fauci in prison for, in his warped mind, lying to him. I can still see the Republican member of Congress arguing that there is no global warming as he brandished a snowball in that august chanber … compelling evidence indeed (that he should be held for a 72 hour psych evaluation. And these are the leaders who will lead us out of the greatest potential natural disaster since that big meteor hit the earth 60 plus million years ago and wiped out most large species on earth. The big diference is that T-Rex could do nothing about it. We can!

I will say this one more time, but surely not the last time … I am so glad I’m old.

Nothing says Irish better than humor, storytelling, and drinking. The next picture well captures the essence of having ancestral connections with the Emerald Isle. And I must say, I eagerly embrace most of my presumed Celtic gifts except for that drinking part. I did inherit that particular Celtic curse from my father. Fortunately, I kicked it with some difficulty almost four decades ago when I realized I had already consumed my lifetime allotment of spirits. Still, despite this failing, and a couple of others, you have to admit the Irish are a devilishly charming lot.

I’m thinking on such matters (as I laugh out loud at this truly awful joke) since I am soon off in a few days to the old sod for a short trip … mostly Dublin and Northern Ireland. Truth be told, I have never been to the six counties that remained attached to Britain after the Republic began to separate from English domination in the ealry 1920s. For that matter, I haven’t been in Dublin for over a half a century. How foolishly I wasted my life on things like work of all things … a classic four letter word I suggest others avoid if they can.

Dublin, an original Viking settlement and the city of James Joyce (Ulysses), will tug at my heart strings. It did in 1969 when I stopped on my way back from India. I am certain of that. I am sure to visit the old Central Post Office which was the heart of the Easter Rising of 1916. Patrick Pearse and other idealistic dreamers thought that the opportunity to break away was there, since the British were bogged down in Flanders and elsewhere on the Eastern Front in France. But the rebels soon were surrounded in their Post Office citadel by British regulars armed with cannons. While resisting bravely, they were pummeled into eventual surender. Some 16 of the leaders were quickly executed though the iconic Michael Collins would be spared (because of his young age) to lead a more successful fight for freedom after the war, only to be assassinated by those of his own tribe for signing an agreement with the Brits that left Northern Ireland separated from the rest of the country. Irish politics are complicated and, like most sectarian conflicts, can be unforgiving.

What has been less complicated is how the Irish feel toward the ‘old country’ and the history of oppression suffered by their tribe. I had my first lesson at a very young age. I was a toddler at the time when someone asked me ‘what are you?’ In Massachusetts, that meant I was to identify my ethnic origins, a way of communicating where one stood on the complex hierarchy of status which seemed imortant back then, and foolish now. But I was too young to even get the question fully. I recall thinking that I spoke English so maybe that was the answer to this strange query. [You could sense the budding academic in me even then.] Out it came … I’m English!

Bad move on my part. My very Irish father, born and raised early on in South Boston (an Irish Ghetto), was standing next to me. To say the least, he was not amused. I got my first lecture on being Irish AND why we hated the Brits. We were not far removed from WWII at the time. I would learn of stories where British sailors docked in Boston Harbor were told to avoid certain parts of the city. The so-called ‘Limeys’ would risk life and limb in Beantown … they would be safer visiting Berlin during the war.

Several hundred years of English domination had left its mark. It didn’t help that Oliver Cromwell made a serious stab at genocidal savagery. He surely attempted to wipe out the dominant culture based in a fervant form of Catholicism. Gaelic was prohibited, local peasants weref forced into a form of serfdom to British landlords, and great pressure was put on locals to convert to Anglicanism though that merely drove the country people deeper into their ancient customs and religion.

In the great potato famine of the mid 19th century, the Brits behaved with cavalier disregard for the native population. As a million starved to death, and well more than a million emigrated in a desperate move to survive, British landlords (often absentee) took harvests from their Irish estates and shipped them to other countries for profit. When starving peasants petitioned for soup and bread to survive, it might be offered but only on condition that they leave their Catholic amd Popish religion and swear allegiance to the Anglican Church of Ireland. Those who did were known as ‘soupers’ and were ostracized from their communities … another form of death.

It is not hard to see where relgious animosity in Ireland originated. Those ancient conflicts were never more evident than in Northern Ireland where a Protestant majority asserted dominance over the Catholic minority. For several decades in the 20th century, an uneasy peace held as tensions simmered underneath. The Republic of Ireland eventually found complete independence even as the North remained within the British fold. In Derry, Northern Ireland, a city west of Belfast, a Catholic majority bridled under minorty Protestant rule (unlike the rest of Ulster where the Protestants were a majority).

An ‘Orange Protestant’ contingent (after Willian of Orange who defeated the forces of Catholic James to guarantee British aegis early in the 17th century) annually would march through Catholic neighborhoods to taunt their ancient enemy and rivals. In 1969, allegedly inspired by the American civil rights movement, a Catholic mob attacked these enemy marchers. That is considered the begining of three decades of conflict, killings, and mahyem commonly known as ‘the troubles.’

During ‘the troubles,’ the two sides, along with British troops who generally sided with the Protestant majority, went at each other. This semi-civil war sometimes was fought with unconscionable brutality. Over three decades, some 3,500 people were killed, of whom about half were civilians and a third were members of British security forces. Only one-in-eight of those killed were members of paramilitary forces … either the Catholic IRA (Irish Republican Army) or the Protestant loyalists (the Unionists). The IRA is believed responsible for 60 percent of all deaths, the Union Loyalists 30 percent, and British Security Forces the remaining 10 percent.

At times, the carnage reached beyond the borders of Ulster with bombings of businesses, buses and subways in London itself and with the assassination of famous individuals like Louis Mountbatten, member of the Royal Family and the last Viceroy to India. The IRA came very close to assassinating PM Margaret Thatcher when they exploded a device which killed several and injured many at a Tory Annual political gathering at a seaside resort in the early 1980s. Names like Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley, and Bernadette Devlin became internationally recognizable during these years. Other actions caught the attention of the world as 10 IRA prisoners went on a hunger strike, demanding to be treated as prisoners of war as opposed to mere criminals. The ‘iron lady,’ P.M. Thatcher, refused to budge and all 10 starved to death.

BY the 1990s, people were getting fatigued by the killings and the fear that violence would continue indefinitely to no productive end. After prolonged peace talks faciltated by U.S. Senator George Mitchell, the Good Friday peace accords were signed in 1998. All sides agreed to lay down their alms. Belfast had become a divided city. Walls separated Irish and protestant neighborhoods, some taller and more formidable than those erected during the Cold War or being planned for our Southern border by Trump and his minions. Apparently, colorful murals remain on walls depicting events and heroes of those troubled days … a kind of living memorial to lost and futile dreams.

I am anxious to visit Belfast and Derry (Londonderry to the Protestants). I want to get a feel for these places where so much hate festered for so long. I am told that a newer secularism has taken hold. I hope so. While religious devotion sparks positive sentiments in some, it is just as likely to generate the worst hatreds and atrocities in others. Few hate with as much virulence as those who act in the name of their gods.

I am told that hope has replaced hate. I fervantly wish that is true. I will let you know what I discover. But remember this! There are only two types of people in the world … those who ARE Irish and those who WANT to be.

Erin go braugh!

See link below:

https://jerryweiss.substack.com/p/what-have-we-lost-what-will-we-do

Not long ago, a guy I know (his late spouse was a resident in the same memory care facility as mine) mentioned seeing the movie ‘Sound of Freedom.’ He said it was really good. Being clueless about so many things, I mentioned I hadn’t heard of it. He went on to say it was about human trafficking of children and assured the rest of us that they had avoided going overboard with graphic scenes. I thought, ‘hey, this is my kind of movie.’ I love serious movies about serious topics, especially if truth and justice triumphs in the end. Hey, I can cry at sappy movie moments with the best of them.

Before seeing the flic, I ran across a couple of news items talking about how controversial this movie was. Admittedly, I didn’t look for many such stories about the film, since I had already decided to see it. Still, it seemmed that the only substantive criticism focused on the fact that most kids caught up in this horror were kidnapped (as happens in the film) when, in reality, most are sold into slavery by people they know. I would presume this happens when family members are desperate or overly greedy. That struck me as a non-issue. Who cares how they got there. It really should be abut the vicitms no matter how they wound up in a living Hell (though I can see some benefit to having some data on this issue when crafting solutions). Still, this made me wonder. What’s going on?

At the end of the flic, more intrigue. There was a message from the star actor, Jim Caviezel. He asked the audience to spread the word since they didn’t have a big budget for marketing as most A-List movies have. Even more odd, it took some 5 years from completing filming to getting it released, and then only after many battles and overcoming significant odds. They even had an icon on the screen that you could scan and buy tickets for others to see the movie who might not be able to afford the cost of a ticket. Now, that was a first for me. By this point, I’m really wondering … what the f$#k is kerfuffle about!

So, when I got home, back to Google it was for me. It turns out that the movie, and the star, have divided the country like so much in our contemporary political world. Jim Caviezel is known for being a very devote Catholic and for having hard right-wing views, apparently bordering on the extreme at times. One of his previous movies was about the life of Christ (or the Crucifiction at least) where he played, guess who, Jesus himself. (They tried to cast me as Satan but I was otherwise engaged.)

Apparently, many on the right including Satan hmself (Donald Trump) endorsed the film, a fact that would ordinarily send me rushing to the nearest bathroom to vomit up lunch. Perhaps most importantly, the producers could not get the damn thing released since none of the major distributors (no major studio nor NETFLIX nor AMAZON) would touch it. They SAID they thought it would be a money loser.

Can you believe the entertainment industry brainiacs were wrong … again! It cost about $15 million to make (it strikes me that many actors waived their usual fees or agreed to a percentage of net profits). Hey, you can’t make a Super Bowl commercial for $15 mil. Those who went with a percentage deal (if any) lucked out. To date, it has earned ten times that amount, over $150 million and is only now being set for international distribution. The revenues have blown past several contemporaneous Hollywood releases with huge marketing pushes.

[Side note: The producers wanted a knpwn actor, Donald Sutherland, for a low-budget independent film titled Animal House. They hoped he would take a percentage of the profits deal as opposed to cash on the barrel head. He turned down the percentage offer thinking this turkey of a flic would never fly. WRONG! Animal House went on to make hundreds of millions (certainly in today’s dollars). Donald would have been a very rich man.]

But Hollywood big-wigs getting it wrong borders on the cliche-ish. What really bothers me is what the kerfuffle about this movie says about our society. I cannot escape the feeling that many attacked the project, or ignored its potential, simply because of the politics of those behind it. Of course, those conservatives promoting the project also got a little conspirital in their paranoia, as is their wont. Some of them claimed that movie theaters played dirty tricks to hamper ticket sales … like turning off the air-conditioning during showings. I can say with pride that the movie house in that liberal bastion of Madison Wisconsin kept the temp very comfortable, though the showings were oddly timed. Oh well.

Here is my beef! Child human trafficking sucks, period. I don’t care what your politics are. There are some issues we can all agree on. This is not a conservative issue or a liberal issue, this is a basic human issue. This is clearly an issue of right versus wrong. There are moments when we can all walk across the divide to shake hands. Even Newt Gingrich, the Republican father of never compromise with the enemy (Democrats), agreed with Bill Clinton on NAFTA though he twisted himself into knots to defend his one moment of bi-partisanship.

I don”t care who was behind this project. The movie was a powerful indictment of an international tragedy of epic importance. And, it is based on reasonably true events from what I can tell. CIaviezel plays an ex Homeland Security guy who know runs an international child rescue organization and did do what was portrayed in the movie, though perhaps dramatized a bit. Beyond that, this sytemic form of sexual child abuse remains a huge blot on our humanity. It is claimed that child (human) trafficking is a $150 billion dollar a year industry. They further note that there are more enslaved people today in the world than when slavery was legal. I am sure that is in absolute numbers. After all, the world’s population is much larger, so the proportion enslaved may be much less. Still, a shocking reality.

Bottom line … the movie is worth seeing. It is overly melodramatic at times (for my tastes) but I was engrossed throughout. More to the point, the human tragedy it displays is all too real to be ignored. The line that is used several times in the movie is ‘God’s children are not for sale.’ Who cannot agree with that, even if you (like me) do not believe in the conventional notion of a divinity?

In the end, it makes no difference whatsoever whether or not you are a believer in God or a believer in Animism, whether a Democrat or a Republican, whether a conservative or a radical ‘woke’ person … we can all acknowledge and denounce evil when we see it.

My rant for today! Thank you for putting up with me.

Time for something on the lighter side. I can’t be doom and gloom every day, even if it is the ‘real’ me.

Below are a few stolen bits that struck my fancy.

ENJOY!

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS!

[Note: I was going to work on this some more but I had too many technical difficulties, so here it is as. Could be better.]

I zoomed with several of my old Peace Corps buddies the other day. The nominal reason for this cyber gathering was that one of our aging flock recently met with our Peace Corps training director who, as we realized at some point, was not much older than we were when he helped prepare us for our adventures in India. Now he is in his 80s while the rest of us are in our upper 70s. In some ways, our long ago a excursion to the other side of the world seemed like it happened yesterday. In other ways, it might have been from someone else’s life.

Let me say a few introductory things about the trials and tribulations of India-44. As the number suggests we were the 44th group to go to the sub-continent. We were all college kids, chosen in our junior years and given extensive training over two summers before being sent over upon graduation. All this happened during what has often been called the ‘wild west’ of Peace Corps service during the mid1960s when we started our service, or preparing for it at least. They hadn’t worked out all kinks yet and we were the guinea pigs for a number of innovations and experiments. But we were young, idealistic, and naive. Some of us thought it would be a great excursion into the unknown. Indeed it was.

Can you find me?

The training would be long and, in some ways, arduous. We started at the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where we were immersed in language training, technical preparation, cultural awareness initiatives, physical trianing, and a whole bunch of tests and challenges to see if we were fit and likely to survive. We met again during our between semester break in our senior years before returning for more intensive preparation before being sent abroad for (guess what) more training.

Amidst the on-campus lessons, I spent time on a Native American reservation in South Dakota (truly the end of the world) where we were exposed to a cross-cultural experience. The next summer I spent time on a farm just north of Madison in Waunakee Wisconsin where we lived in tents and tried to become farmers. I’m guessing the whole ordeal would have gone better if they had not changed the focus for India 44-B (my specific group) from poulty to agriculture. I am guessing the pic below is from our tenure on the farm. I’m the tall one in the middle and beginning to look a bit scruffy.

From a detailed journal kept by Mike Simonds (the young man on the left of the pic above), we were reminded of the grinding schedule. He lsited out several days of activities, classes, events that went from the crack of dawn to late in the evening.

At every turn you wondered if the ax would fall. Someone would be brought in for a meeting and sent home. The choices were bizarre. How could they have kept me when others who appeared more talented and dedicated were sent packing. Still, in the summer of 1967, we were off to India. This is me, looking over the Thames during our a brief break in London. I wonder what was going through my mmind at this moment? Probably somehting like ‘what the hell have I gotten myself into.’

Of course, we then landed we did more training. Here are a bunch of us from 44-B (see below), the would be Ag experts now refining our skills (or perhaps realizing for the first time that many foods grow out of the ground and do not appear by magic in grocery stores. Despite the staff’s good intentions, you cannot turn college kids from the city into farmers in a few weeks. Well, they couldn’t turn me into one.

You might be asking what happened to the women. They were assigned to 44-A, a public health group that were to be stationed in Maharasthra, the adjacent province to our south where Mumbia (then Bombay) could be found. While we learned Hindi, they learned Maharati. We were sorry to be separated but I suspect they were thrilled to be safe from a bunch of testosterone laden young males. I know they were ecstatic to be away from me. I tended to drool a lot when around them.

Can you find me here?

There were some high moment before we were sent off to our sites. We played several basketball games against the local college kids (see pic below) whipping them soundly before they got ther revenge. For the last game (before a large crowd) they brought in a new team, either from the army or the local prison. These bruisers did a job on us to the delight of the cheering local onlookers. Every time I drove to the basket, I would get pummeled. Hard to make many shots when your hurling them toward the basket from 50 feet away. But we survived.

Even better, three of us were asked to join a team representing Udaipur (we were to be stationed in the vicinity of this lovely city in Rajasthan) in the all India tournament in Jaipur. Myself (lower extreme left), Bill Whitesell (next to me) and Hatwood Turrentine (4th from left) were selected to help bring basketaball glory to the area. What we didn’t know was that the other teams could really play the game. We were soundly defeated in our first game, then won a consolation game, before heading home in shame. But it was fun.

In September of 1967, those of us who survived were sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. We had one last party at the Lake Palace before two years in the desert. The Lake Palace was a former playground of the local Maharaja situated in the middle of lake Pichola. It is now considered one of the most luxurious hotels on the world. A good deal of one James Bond movies used it as a site (Octopussy?). Two of my colleagues stayed there a decade ago and attested to its splendor. It was like the last feast before the slaughter, the final meal before the long walk to the ‘chair.’

I am on the left (glasses) talking to Usha (one of our language instructers) on the right. I, and a couple of others, actually got to know Amar (next to Usha) and her family quite well. We were invited to the Punjab to witness the marriage of her brother (a military officer), a lavish affair that went on for what seemed like days. Indian marriages (and celebrations there in general) can make ours look tame. Making such connections enriched the experience immensly.

Reality hit the next day when three of us boarded the back of a truck with our trunks and all out wordly goods and hurtled out of the Adravelli Hills into the desert to the south. We arrived here on a Sunday. No one greeted us. Here was the local Panchayit Samiti, the government development office and our new home. The town of Salumbar was about a mile further over the next hill. The third of our group was to be located even further from civilization, there was no way he could survive.

I yet remember hopping on my bike and cycling to find someone who might be in charge, which I did. Randy (my site partner) and I took one of the government houses (far right). No other government official lived there, preferring to live in town. I could go on about life here, which had its good and bad moment. We were really isolated, no electricity for 6 months and never running water. We relieved ourselves in a small, smelly room with a hole in the floor. That bodily function was not easy to negotiate on nights without moonlight.

The temps often were north of 110 drgees except in the brief winter and the monsoon season (when all type sof crawling and flying creatures came to life). I recall checking out a desk in our place and finding a scorpian looking at me. During the rainy season, you kept a lid (a book?) on your cup, only lifting it to take a sip, then covering it again. If you didn’t, you would be ingesting several bugs with your next swallow. It was not for the weak of heart. Still, we often spent the evenings on our roof, as the desert cooled and the most amazing field of stars were revealed to us. I have never since been so close to nature.

Most of us felt quite incompetent. What made that critical in a way is that most farmers were marginal. They had small plots that could yield just enough to get them to the next year. But we were there to motivate them to try new seeds and techniques. Fine, but these innovations required good practices performed at the right times. If things went wrong, and so much could, the poorer farmers would be in deperate straights and our guilt would be astronomical. So, we selected our guinea pigs carefully. Below is one demonstration plot we worked on as an example to the community. Looks good to me.

Still looking for things to occupy our time, we thought a poultry demo would be good. We built this ourselves (the ONLY thing I have ever built in my life) on our roof to keep predators away. I still recall the excitement when the first egg was laid. Success was measured in the smallest ways.

And we did a bunch of other small things. Here is a modest garden outside our remote place. Our protective wall (at my back) worked for a while but not forever. We lost the crop at some point when the local predators breached our defenses. But we knew our produce was edible. Oh well, A for effort.

Below is a street scene in Salumbar. We spent a good deal of time here, made a few friends, and became part of the community. This scene best captured how I felt about the place. It struck me as a throw back to Dodge City in the 1880s. I thought surely Matt Dillon would face off with a desperado at high noon. I still recall one day watching several men, riding camels down a street (probably this street). They had rifles slung over their shoulders and belts of ammunition. I thought, the James Gang come to town to rob the bank. No such excitement.

On another occasion, a group of Jain Saints visited to great local fanfare. Apparently, this entourage walked around India and it was a significant event if they made their way to your town. What I recall most was one Saint pulling all his bodily hair out as an exercise in self-mortification. I then realized why I had left the Church.

Meanwhile, our sisters in 44-A were laboring in villages to our south. Since I had worked in a hospital while in college I had hoped to get into the public health part of the program. Such was not to be. I considered appealing my assignment early on in training but feared rocking the boat.

In any case, here are two of the intrepid gals, Mary Jo and Carol, doing something medical in their site. Mary Jo (on the left) was a nurse and one of the few with actual and relevant skills. In the end, nothing bothered us more than the feeling we had little to offer. I seemed to recall that there were two rumors about why we were there. One option was that we were CIA spies but there was nothing to spy on here. The other was that we were there to learn agriculture so we could be farmers back home.

Despite all the doubts, probably more got done that we recall. There were demonstration plots, some schools were built with volunteer help, wells dug, and so much else like poultry initiatives. We did not change the world but we might have altered a few lives. That is enough in the end.

What you don’t forget are some of the connections that are made. Here are the three I mentioned above that the local Udaipur College boys chose to play on their basketball team in that ill-fated tournament (discussed above). There is Haywood on the left, me, and then Bill. We are at the Delhi home of Amar (pictured in the Lake Palace foto). We grew close to that family.

In some ways, the three of us represent the diversity of our group. Bill was from a large Catholic family, perhaps considered lower middle class. He went of Yale on an academic scholarship, later getting a business degree from the Wharton School, and then a Ph.D in economics, from NYU. In life, he started out in banking in Paris but wanted to do something more worthwhile (and more ethical), ending up with the Federal Reserve. Haywood grew up in a large, and very poor, share cropping family in North Carolina. He always said they had no money but plenty of love. He credits Peace Corps with exposing him to new possibilities … eventually going on for advanced degrees in Geography and Theology and becoming a successful operative for a national labor union.

As I look at the faces below when we gathered for our first reunion in 2009, I am still in awe of the talent and accomplishments. I don’t know if Peace Corps had some magic in their selection methods or the PC experience itself altered people’s lives. However, the accomplishments of these people (not all are pictured here) are simply amazing. I am so proud of being associated with them.

Here is another group shot (below). It was taken in 2011, in Washington DC where we had our 2nd reunion. There was a 50th reunion of the creation of the Peace Corps and we thought that a good reason to gather. We are dressed up since we are on our way to the Indian Embassy for a fete they have arranged for those of us who served there and were in town. Apparently, we must have left a decent impression on them even though the country program ended in the mid-1970s.

We had just finished an edited collection of stories (written by individual volunteers), which I was able to hand over to the Embassy officials with great fanfare. The top Indian official there that night said something that resonated with us. He believed that the value of the program was not in the technical expertise we brought to their land. No, it was in the sharing and learning about each other that took place. In the end, I think he nailed it.

One last pic before ending. Below is a Google Earth shot of our site. Remember that lonely and bleak desert shot above Today, that same area looks thriving with all kinds of development including a hospital. A wider shot would show green fields and advanced irrigation where merely desert had been. I would like to take credit for all this but humility prevents me (LOL)

This was a cook’s tour of an incredibly complex esperience, one that did change all our lives. If you want more, here is where to go … Our Grand Adventure: The trials and triumphs of India-44!

Madison at twilight

I think I first noticed this phenomenon right where I live … Madison Wisconsin (Dane County). This is the site of the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin system, the seat of state government, and the locational choice of an increasing number of hi-tech and professionally-oriented firms and businesses. What else makes the place special? It has become a liberal, should I say progressive(?), enclave.

In fact, it is shifting the balance of political power in a state that has been a toss-up arena for some time now. For years, voters in Dane and Milwaukee had offset strong Republican support coming out of the Milwaukee suburbs and the very rural areas of the state, those places where more cows than people live. Often, the votes from smaller cities decided each election, most of which were pretty close. More likely, voter turnout determined winners and losers with state-election outcomes being settled by razor thin margins. There were more Democrats in the state overall but victory depended on whether they could be persuaded to vote in large enough nuumbers.

That equilibrium seems to be changing. Democratic Governor Tony Evers, not the most dynamic campaigner you will ever meet, has won the last two Gubernatorial races. Even more surprising, the liberals have won back control of the State Supreme Court last spring and rather easily at that. This reversed a number of earlier losses where huge amounts of corporate money successfully backed very conservative jurists. Huge turnouts in Dane county with increasingly larger Democratic majorities explain much of these recent successes. The SCOTUS votes from Dane County in this last election totaled more than were cast in Milwaukee (the state’s much bigger city). More importantly, some 82 percent of all these votes were cast in the Democratic column.

It was not always this way. When I moved to Madison in the very early 1970s, I thought I had stumbled into a large farming town. Sure, the University (and an active anti-war movement) was here but the culture overall was not that progressive. The rural parts of Dane County held sway over the county board; there were almost no upscale restaurants; and local TV and radio ads were dominated by pitches for agriculture products. They kept warning me about root worm. It took me several months before I realized that was something that attacked corn, not humans. I was rather appalled by my surroundings at first.

That began to change soon enough when they got their first upscale restaurant (called Ovens of Brittany) and when a former left-wing student activist from Chicago named Paul Soglin upset the establishment by being elected city Mayor. His critics used the usual fear tactics, that the city would become a Commie satellite if this (Jewish) radical took charge. Amazingly, it didn’t work this time. On his election, a number of shocked Madison residents sold their homes and moved beyond the city limits, fearing God knows what. However, Paul turned out to be a superb mayor who led the city into modern times, eventually serving as chief executive off and on for several decades.

Today, the city and county are nothing like the burgh to which I relocated over five decades ago. It is an exciting and growing urban center with a plethora of cultural opportunities in all the arts, an array of fine eateries and ethnic restaurants representing cuisines from around the world, an extraordinary number of firms that attract highly educated and well-paid employees, and ample recreation opportunities. Mad city is no longer a sleepy big town (or was it a small city then) but now has emerged as a cutting-edge, cosmopolitan urban center where young professionals seek to to live and work.

Campus and Capitol

Not surprisingly, the cutural and intellectual winds have become decidedly progressive including several significant ethnic communities along with a vibrant LBGTQ+ community. It was recently ranked the 5th most educated city in the nation and the 6th most fittest city in the land. It often ranks in the top 3 in many such polls including where professionals want to live, a good place to raise families, and a superb place for those who enjoy the outdoors. Oh, and I just read an article suggesting it is the #1 college sports town in the nation (the Badger fan base admittedly is a bit wacko). The unemployment rate hovers around 2 percent or less and the place is growing like mad. They cannot put up new housing units fast enough with demand pushing the median price of single family dwellings to the $400,000 mark and beyond.

Republicans are not unaware of what is happening. Perhaps that is why they are trying to hurt the University so badly. Recently, the Republican controlled Assembly and Senate wacked $32 million from an already spare budget to attack diversity initiatives in higher education. They also refused to approve a new, and badly needed, engineering building, apparently out of sheer spite. Really, who turns down efforts to enhance the education of students in the STEM disciplines these days. You have to be totally deranged to do that. Oh my, I almost forgot which group I was talking about … Republicans.

Perhaps the words of former Republican Governor (and Presidential candidate) Scott Walker gets at their motivations. “Young voters are the issue. It comes from years of radical indoctrination … on campuses, in school, with social media, and throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.” Of course, we fear Scott doesn’t know much about college campuses. He dropped out of college (or was thrown out depending on whom you believe) with a 2.4 or so GPA after a brief tenure at Marquette University, a decent (but not superior) Catholic Institution of higher learning in Milwaukee.

On paper, I would be one of the brainwashed college students that Republicans worry about … way back in the 1960s’ that is. I entered Clark University fresh out of my stint in a Catholic seminary and yet imbued with many core traditional values straight out of the playbook for my ethnic, working class culture. By the time I left to go to India after graduation, I was a very different young man. Among other sins, I had led the anti-war activities on campus.

Still, my political and intellectual metamorphesis seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with any brainwashing, at least not as far as I recall. I merely had access to a wide range of honest information about the world and, much more importantly, was encouraged to think rigorously and independently about things around me. To my recollection, no one told me what to believe, just how to think. That is a critical distinction. Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of conservatives more than people being able to think for themselves.

[Digression: My change of heart on the Vietnam war came early on. The key moment occurred in a day long dialogue with a fellow student as we both were working on our individual National Science Foundation sponsored undergraduate research projects (he deserved his, not sure about mine). Anyway, he stayed in psychology and went on to get his Ph.D. at Harvard. I certainly knew even then that he was a most worthy opponent. Still, being a stubborn Irishman, I told him at the end of the day that we would have to agree to disagree. But in my heart, I realized he was right and I was defending a hopeless position. I yet look upon that day as when my core political perspective began to shift.]

My Undergrad Alma Mater:

It changed my life.

Back to my main thesis. The call by Scott Walker to do something has not been ignored. Beyond Republican attacks on some of America’s leading research universities (Wisconsin is ranked among the top 50 such institutions in the world), the ‘right’ is mounting their own form of brainwashing to counter what they believe the ‘left’ is doing. Hillsdale College, a small and very conservative liberal arts college in Michigan, is leading the charge to reshape the perceived indoctrination of the young toward a more conservative direction. They only have 1,700 students but an endowment approaching $1 billion, enough to push it’s hard right agenda on to the wider world. I had been on their mailing list for some time, but I found their stuff extremely hard to stomach. I do like to keep in touch with a broad range of opinions but only when shared by those who function in the real world.

They have initiated what they call the 1776 Curriculum. It reframes American history to emphasize what we think of as American Exceptionalism. You know, we are a Christian nation blessed by God to do good in the world and always have been such and done so. It mostly is aimed at high schools but they touch other levels as well. Some 8,400 teachers and administrators have downloaded the materials so far, which also includes suggestions on which books to ban. Their lessons and perspectives have crept into the college ranks. Some Florida schools of higher education are teaching that slavery was good for black people since it taught them useful skills. Perhaps, but it doesn’t come out very well for the enslaved in a benefit-cost analysis when all pros and cons are considered.

The potential Wisconsin political shift story is illuminating but only part of this larger story. There are some 171 cities and counties designated ‘college towns’ where the ambiance and environment is materially impacted by one or more local schools, at least as defined by several metrics. Since 2000, some 38 have flipped from red to blue, while only 7 have flipped in the other direction. Moreover, the Dems grew their percentage of the vote in 117 of these jurisdictions (representing an average of over 16,000 more votes) while less than half that many (54) drifted to the ‘right’ (by a smaller average of some 4,000 votes). Overall, the shift clearly is in a blue direction. In the year 2000, these towns went 48 to 47 percent for Gore. By 2020, the gap had grown to 54 to 44 percent for Biden.

Bascom Hall (Univ. of Wisconsin)

The University of Michigan is like the University of Wisconsin in many ways. Both Big 10 public universities though Michigan slightly outranks the Badgers on the academic prestige scale (both are considered world class schools). The home of the Wolverines is located in Washtenaw County which gave Gore a 34,000 vote plurality in 2000. Two decades later, they gave Biden over a 100,000 vote margin. Like Dane county, Washtenaw may be swinging the entire state into the blue column in what had become a swing state in recent times. Other states are seeing similar swings. Travis County Texas (the University of Texas) has seen a growth of some 290,000 democratic votes between 2000 and 2020. Henneppin County (the University of Minnesota) has seen a similar trend, up some 245,000 over the same period. The triangle area in North Carolina is driving similar trends in that state.

Unlike Scott Walker, I don’t blame recent Republican concerns all on so-called brainwashed students. They have other issues like knowing that your core base prefers candidates better suited to the looney bin than high office. And there are those large demographic trends. Caucasions of European ancestry are becoming a minority in this country, likely in another generation, an inevitability stoking the hostile animus of White Nationalists.

Putting such factors aside, I suspect a less obvious dynamic is at play here in these college towns. Younger people are concerned about things like climate change, growing hyper-inequality, and the still hidden consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) … things that are important to their future. The Republican Party focuses on abortion, the southern border, and mythical attacks on Christianity … emotional issues but hardly fundamental concerns to our future survival. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure who is interested in governing and who is playing classic bait and switch politics. The GOP tells you to focus on this non-issue cultural thing over there while they feverishly continue to make their wealthy friends even richer (really, do the 1%, or the .01%, want it all?).

As students (and younger people generally) swing to the left in places where they tend to congregate, they inevitably set a broader tone for the community. Such places create a more accepting and progressive culture. More than that, research universities attract hi-tech and professional firms which, in turn, demand educated employees. A reinforcing cyclical pattern emerges. Smart, young, accomplished people are not likely to be embedded in the cultural grudges about which Republican enclaves stew. These are people much better able to connect the dots in general, absorb news critically. They tend to have stimulating conversations socially, read a lot, and can see the bigger picture.

My social gatherings (book clubs and just ordinary get togethers) are dominated by sparkling conversations of a remarkably high intellectual order. While my friends are from the geriatric set, they are really smart and accomplished … retired lawyers, engineers, doctors, academics, and other such types. We remain astonished that people out in the rural areas of the state continue to supprt a Republican Party that has evidenced absolutely NO interest whatsoever in addressing their problems or providing solutions for them … and I mean zilch, nada, zero interest. That conundrum continues to amaze me, especially when I see signs on rural farms saying Trump in 2024, stop the bullshit. Really? They are looking to the the biggest conman ever in public life for honesty? Now, that is insanity totally beyond measure.

No one knows what the future will bring but the above trends give me a measure of hope. Remember that our electoral college permits candidates to be swamped in the overall vote but still be elected. While Biden won by a 7 million vote plurality in 2020, some 50,000 to 60,000 votes distributed differently in just five swing states could have handed Trump the White House a second time. When national outcomes remain in doubt, extant trends in these college towns may prove to be a life raft for our democracy. They may save us from going over the edge into the abyss of conservative authoritarianism and even totolitarianism.

I hope so. I’m a bit old to seek political asylum in a foreign country though I may check out getting Irish citizenship (being of Irish decent on my dad’s side) during an upcoming trip to the old sod.

The Wisconsin State Capitol