Never Too Late to Build the Wall

Monday, January 28, 2019

This story seemed to go by unnoticed: "Speaking Black Dialect in Courtrooms Can Have Striking Consequences"  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/us/black-dialect-courtrooms.html

In a study, court reporters "made errors in two out of every five sentences" when played recordings of sentences spoken in "African-American English."  No doubt, inaccurate transcripts of trial testimony or depositions can badly skew an understanding of a case at hand.  Most surprising: "Black court reporters who participated in the study made errors in transcribing at roughly the same rate as their white peers."
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A lot has been said about the racial exclusionary result of the single test for admissions to Stuyvesant High School.  This week's issue of The New Yorker describes how, more than 60 years after being founded as an alI-boys' school, Stuyvesant came to admit girls.  This happened almost a dozen years after I left and, until now, I knew none of the details. 
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-a-thirteen-year-old-girl-smashed-the-gender-divide-in-american-high-schools
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This weekend had another wonderful example of the graphic representation of information by the The New York Times, this time illustrating the backgrounds of the members of the current US House of Representatives.    

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/26/opinion/sunday/paths-to-congress.html

Maybe the most predictable factoid, lawyers "constitute less than 1 percent of the voting-age population but more than one-third of the House."  

Tuesday, January 29, 2019
What does an examination of long commute times, unemployment rate, hours worked, population density, home-price-to-income ratio and percent of uninsured population yield?  The Most Stressed Cities In America. 
https://www.zippia.com/research/most-stressed-cities-in-america/ 

The top 10 are an odd mix: Miami, Jersey City, Newark, East Los Angeles, Inglewood, CA, New York, Elizabeth, NJ, Chicago, Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale.  When I lived in Los Angeles, the most stressful thing was figuring out how to get back to New York.
. . .

Speaking of stress, for the last three weeks, starting before our trip to California, I have been coughing my head off.  A visit to Doc in the Box before we left was reassuring.  Just a cold, I was told.  Still I coughed across the country and back.  Today, I had a previously scheduled appointment for my annual physical with Dr. Michael Perskin, who has ministered to me for 25 years, during which we both aged well.  Sure enough, the good doctor found a bit of pneumonia.  Why am I bothering you with his information?  You probably have your own aches and pains.  I just want you to know that I am not turning over a new leaf by staying home for lunch.  It's not entirely voluntary.
. . .

On the subject of public health, I was surprised to learn that "[o]lder adults are taking an awful lot of pills these days — 66 percent take five drugs or more per day, and 27 percent take 10 or more per day."  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/upshot/pharmacists-drugs-health-unsung-role.html

I'm happy to report that, by this measure, I am not an older adult.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Staying home isn't the worst thing, especially with snow and sub-freezing temperatures outside.  Had I been inclined to venture out, I still don't think that I would have pursued "The Absolute Best Matzo Ball Soup in New York."  http://www.grubstreet.com/bestofnewyork/absolute-best-matzo-ball-soup-in-nyc.html

It's a very interesting collection of joints, about half of which I have patronized at one time or another, but never for matzo ball soup.  I like matzo ball soup; I've had it twice in the last week in trying to fight what I thought was a simple cold.  It's just that matzo ball soup belongs at home.  You don't go out for matzo ball soup.  That's why they invented mothers.  Sit down and eat; relax and eat; eat and enjoy. 
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The Merriam-Webster dictionary web site found that justice was the word looked up the most frequently in 2018, 74% more than the year before.  The web site suggests that "[t]he concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year: racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice.  In any conversation about these topics, the question of just what exactly we mean when we use the term justice is relevant, and part of the discussion." 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year-2018-justice

So, what do we mean by justice?  Generally, I believe, that justice is equated with fairness, the Golden Rule: Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.  This concept goes back thousands of years and you can find versions of it in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Persia, ancient Rome, Confucius, Hillel and on through the millennia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Ancient_Egypt

Our legal system codifies justice/fairness as due process; for instance, no double jeopardy, confronting your accuser, a jury of your peers, no ex post facto laws.  Is it sufficient that justice be regarded as a path, not as a destination?  I think that the average person perceives justice when she prevails, not just when she is offered due process.  It is hard to be satisfied with merely being considered a good loser. 

Is it possible to define justice as a thing, a goal as elusive as love?  In many disputes that justice thing is indivisible, forcing a winner and a loser.  What we then feebly do is try to mollify the unsuccessful parties with the assurance that they were treated fairly, regardless of the result.

Thursday, January 31, 2019
Thanks to my brother's good example, I grew up a rabid Brooklyn Dodger fan.  Yet, while living in a segregated neighborhood (two black brothers were the only non-whites in my elementary school, K-6) and raised in a not particularly progressive household, I felt the excitement when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers and relished the team's and his success for the next decade, including Brooklyn's first World Series victory.  Therefore, when in late 1957 the Dodgers traded Robinson to their bitter rival, the New York Giants, followed within a year by moving to Los Angeles, my enmity towards the Dodgers was established forevermore.

Today is Jackie Robinson's 100th birthday, and The New York Times has a special section in his honor, with 100 photographs of his life and career.  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/sports/jackie-robinson-photos-100th-birthday.html

My friend Tavish recalls that we met Rachel Robinson, Jackie's charming widow, at a numismatic convention in 1997, where several commemorative coins were being issued on the 50th anniversary of his entry into the major leagues, breaking the foul color bar.

Friday, February 1, 2019

Let's be clear about this.  The Jews were there first.  In World War II, Agnes Waters said: “There are 200,000 Communist Jews at the Mexican border, waiting to get into this country.  If they are admitted, they will rape every woman and child left unprotected.” 

Who was this prescient Agnes Waters?  At first my research was stymied because, according to Wikipedia, Agnes Water (sic) "is a town and a locality in the Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia."  It is the most northerly surfing beach along Australia's east coast.  After wading through all the references to this coastal community, I finally found the Agnes Waters person in Women of the Far Right: The Mothers' Movement and World War II by Glen Jeansonne (1997), where she gets a whole chapter. 

Although claiming to be descended from British royalty, Agnes was militantly anti-British, maintaining that Neville Chamberlain paid Hitler to pose as a danger in order to raise taxes.  She attended the 1936 Democratic National Convention as a Roosevelt supporter, but her hatred of Communism drove her to the far right and beyond.  

A sampling of her ideas includes:

• Roosevelt and Churchill were disciples of Lenin.
• At the end of the war, Hitler would reveal himself a Bolshevik.
• Jews would bring the United States into the British Empire.
• The "British Israel" movement was scheming to build a world government led by the Duke of Windsor.
• The New Deal was written in Moscow.

Waters frequently testified before congressional committees on matters of domestic and foreign security.  She sought the presidential nomination of both major parties in 1944.  If elected, she promised to shoot every black person in the country, since most were traitors and Communists.  She would withdraw from the war and let the rest of the world fight it out.  She vowed to expel all Englishmen and Russians from the US, arrest Communists, Nazis and Jews to prevent obstruction of national defense, and prohibit immigration.  When the parties nominated Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, little more was heard from her.

It seems that the 200,000 Communist Jews never made it across the border into the United States, but there is lasting evidence of their presence in Mexico and therein the threat they posed.  What, after all, are burritos but the Spanish name for blintzes?