Quote of the Day (The Poet Virgil, on Singing)

“If we fear the night may gather rain
Ere we arrive, then singing let us go,
Our way to lighten; and, that we may thus
Go singing, I will case you of this load.”— Roman poet Virgil (70 BC-19 BC), Eclogues, Book IX, line 64 (37 BC)

Photo of the Day: Woodrow Wilson’s Pierce-Arrow

Presidential transitions can be fraught affairs. As I write this, a substantial portion of the country is worried about the mental state of the outgoing President. A century ago, the physical health of the incumbent was the problem (though the extent of his impairment was not commonly known, thanks to concealment on the part of the First Lady).

What you see here symbolizes the power and popularity of Woodrow Wilson at its zenith—and his ultimate tragedy following his disabling stroke in October 1919. I photographed his Pierce-Arrow limousine while visiting the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum in Staunton, Va., in the fall of 2010.

This handsome vehicle was waiting for the nation’s 28^th President in New York when he returned from negotiating the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. As the first president to join AAA, Wilson loved being driven around (he is not known ever to have driven it himself), so when he left office admirers purchased the 3-ton, 16-ft.-long car on his behalf for $3,000.

This limousine was considered top of the line a century ago. One feature it lacked—understandably, for the time—was heating. On cold days, then, the incapacitated President covered himself inside with a camel-hair blanket.

According to Bill Lohmann’s 2018 article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, during Wilson’s last miserable year and a half in office, he experienced his few happier moments in this car. At Washington Senators baseball games, he would sit in the car in foul territory so he would not have to go into the stands. (A player with a glove with stand in front of the car, ready to catch any foul balls that might come its way.)

Following his death three years after leaving office, Wilson’s widow Edith—the de facto President following his stroke—donated the Pierce-Arrow to the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace Foundation—the first item given to what became the presidential library.

Quote of the Day (Frank McCourt, on His Students' Reaction to Required English Class Reading)

“Put everything away and open your books.

“What books?

“Whatever books you have for English.

“All we got is this Giants in the Earth and that's the most boring book in the world. And the whole class chants, Uh huh, boring, boring, boring.

“They tell me it's about some family from Europe out there on the prairie and everyone is depressed and talking about suicide and no one in the class can finish this book because it makes you want to commit suicide yourself. Why can't they read a nice romance where you don't have all these Europe people all gloomy on the prairie? Or why couldn’t they watch movies?”—Longtime Irish-born New York schoolteacher—and future Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist—Frank McCourt (1930-2009), 'Tis: A Memoir (1999)

(The photo accompanying this post of Frank McCourt was taken by David Shankbone on March 21, 2007, at New York City's Housing Works bookstore, for a tribute to recently deceased Irish poet Benedict Keily. It comes from the photographer's blog post about the death of Frank McCourt and the memory of this photo.)

Photo of the Day: Stone Point Park, Old Tappan, NJ

This afternoon, while driving in northern New Jersey, I came across Stone Point Park. Founded in 1962, the site has four baseball fields, two basketball courts, a playground, a seasonal skate park, and four soccer fields. 

Given the cold temperatures, none of these areas was being used today—except for the path circling the park that I photographed, where several other people besides me were walking or jogging.

Quote of the Day (Yascha Mounk, on ‘A President Who Openly Disdains Basic Constitutional Norms’)

“For the first time in its history, the oldest and most powerful democracy in the world has elected a president who openly disdains basic constitutional norms—somebody who left his supporters ‘in suspense’ whether he would accept the outcome of the election; who called for his main political opponent to be jailed; and who has consistently favored the country's authoritarian adversaries over its democratic allies.”— Yascha Mounk, lecturer on government at Harvard and host of “The Good Fight podcast,” The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It (2018)

In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Yesterday, the current—and, hopefully, departing—occupant of the Oval Office became The Arsonist of Democracy.

Let there be no mistake: The storming of the Capitol was not like the storming of the Bastille, a movement against a hated symbol of oppression. 

This was an assault on a symbol of republican government, completed in the Civil War as a glorious representation of the order and freedom that the Confederacy was trying to rend asunder. 

This was an insurrection carefully planned, as noted in Jesselyn Cook's Huffington Post article, for days in far-right message boards, encrypted messaging apps and other social media channels--an activity winked at now, as it has been throughout his term, by the man from whom they took their cues. 

Whatever else might be said about him, Donald Trump has, through a long career in the public eye, proven that he could never learn, never leave well enough alone. His latest despicable act—in effect, inciting a riot, then walking away from the consequences—was so predictable. Mounk has been among many observers who discerned his problematic political pattern and warned where it might lead.

Last year, the GOP let Trump off the hook without even a slap on the wrist during the impeachment hearings. Now, the ones with any sense among them act so shocked at what has taken place. Why?

They thought that by acquitting Trump, despite massive evidence that he tilted foreign policy to undermine the leading candidate to replace him in the opposing party, they were ensuring survival in their next primary.

But they were only ensuring that their feckless party leader would turn a nation with only 4% of the world’s population into one with 20% of all COVID-19 deaths.

They were only ensuring that a businessman and media personality with a long, documented history of discrimination and insults against minorities would be in charge when racial unrest broke out in earnest over police shootings.

They were only ensuring that the political extortionist exercising his prerogative against the Ukraine a year ago would again practice extortion against Georgia state election officials within the last week.

They were only ensuring that a sociopath with bottomless rage would, as his time in office ended, turn on longtime members of the party that elected him, thereby ensuring loss of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

How long do his longtime Capitol Hill and White House enablers expect to keep fooling themselves about their responsibility for all this? How long do they expect the rest of America to be similarly naïve?

Yes, I feel sorry for the five people who died in yesterday's assault. They died for a chimera—the patent falsehood of rampant voter fraud disproved in court after court in multiple states. They died for the Chaos President.

But I feel even sorrier for the people caught inside the Capitol, a building with strengthened restrictions against foreign terrorists 20 years ago but all too vulnerable against a domestic mob, many of whom wielded pepper spray against police.

I don’t blame those who assaulted this symbol of our democracy. Believe it or not, I don’t even blame Trump, who has never shown that he learned anything in his youth about civics, let alone balancing the books or even common courtesy.

Instead, I blame those who should have known better—the business executives who overlooked his financial and moral bankruptcy while they profited from his tax legislation; the alleged “news” network that in reality was a propaganda tool in the world’s proudest democracy; the privately troubled Republicans who kept finding excuses not to call Trump to account, as well as the shameless party opportunists who thought they could benefit from the inchoate, unreasoning resentment he unleashed.

If there is any justice, the GOP as its currently constituted Trump cult will be so utterly discredited in the eyes of the electorate that it will cease to exist, as the Federalist Party did after broaching secession at the Hartford Convention of 1814.

Back then, the Whigs coalesced (for about 30 years, anyway) out of the wreckage of the party that Alexander Hamilton brought into being. But these days, who knows what will happen?

The scary thing is that Americans can no longer say, "It can't happen here." Yesterday, it almost did, courtesy of the Arsonist of Democracy.

TV Quote of the Day (‘One Day at a Time,’ With Schneider on ‘One of the Basic Rules of Grammar’)

Julie Cooper [played by Mackenzie Phillips]: “Barbara, do you spell 'faithful' with one 'L' or two 'Ls'?”

Barbara Cooper [played by Valerie Bertinelli]: “I think it's one 'L'.”

Dwayne F. Schneider [played by Pat Harrington Jr.]: “It's two 'Ls'.”

Julie: “Two? That doesn't sound right. Are you sure?”

Schneider: “'Course I'm sure. It's one of the basic rules of grammar. Whenever the 'F' precedes a vowel, it's always two 'Ls', except after 'C', unless it's used in conjunction with a pronoun. Whaddaya think, I forget these things?”

Julie [looking it up]: “Schneider, 'faithful' - one 'L'.”

Schneider: “When was that dictionary printed?”

Julie: “1974.”

Schneider: “Well, there's your answer! It's outdated. It's an old dictionary.”

Barbara: “What has that got to do with it?”

Schneider: “Well, it's just like automobiles. If they don't change the way words are spelled every couple'a years, how they gonna sell new dictionaries? Come on!”— One Day at a Time, Season 2, Episode 20, “The Butterfields,” original air date Feb. 22, 1977, teleplay by Norman Paul and Jack Elinson, directed by Herbert Kenwith

My Irish father and I didn’t always share the same cultural tastes (Lawrence Welk vs. Bruce Springsteen was a rather big divide), but about one matter we absolutely agreed: Dwayne Schneider, the cocky building custodian of Norman Lear’s 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time, was a hoot and a half whose mere appearance was enough to make us guffaw at will.

Maybe it was a shared Celtic thing among us and the actor who embodied the character. Pat Harrington Jr., who played Schneider throughout the nine-season run of the series, was the son of a song-and-dance man who was part of a circle of Irish-American entertainers that also included Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien and James Dunn.

Pat Jr. must have inherited at least of his father’s body awareness. At least I’ve come to believe so, thinking again on how, as Schneider, he would swagger into the apartment of single mom Ann Romano and her two daughters, jangling his tool belt and letting his cigarette pack poke out from his T-shirt, practically winking with a Neanderthal come-on.

“The ladies in this building don’t call me ‘super’ for nothing,” Schneider announced early on. The joke was on him, of course—nobody fell for the act, anymore than they would for that thin moustache he felt was so appealing.

I have never gotten around to seeing the recent cable reboot of the series. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe, as Jen Chaney claimed in a 2017 New York Magazine article, that the new incarnation of Schneider was superior to Harrington’s. Only in a hyper-politically correct time could anyone fail to realize the insecurity (including, in the above quote, the patriarchal need to be an Authority On Everything) behind the painfully thin macho membrane of Schneider.

Harrington’s skill in milking laughs—even as he let you see the anxious character beneath—accounted for why Lear came to regard him as “the comic strength of the show”; why the sitcom’s writers relied on that gift to make the series’ lessons on feminism and sexism sound less overtly preachy; and why the actor won a Golden Glove and Emmy for his performance in the role.

Pat Harrington Jr. died five years ago today at age 86 of Alzheimer’s Disease, leaving more than a few viewers—including a father and son in New Jersey—smiling at his memory.

This Day in Revolutionary War History (Arnold Raid on Richmond Rattles Jefferson)

Jan. 5, 1781—Facing only token opposition, Royal troops in Virginia under their notorious new commander, Benedict Arnold, plundered and destroyed at will public buildings and private residences in Richmond, the recently designated capital of the commonwealth.

The attack was so unexpected that few troops were available to stand in the way of the traitor who, for all his double-dealing, continued to display the energy and skill that had once made him so valuable to the Continental Army.

Having no clue until too late as to Arnold’s ultimate destination, Governor Thomas Jefferson (pictured) tried in vain to instigate a military counter-offensive and maintain civil authority in the small community he had done so much to bring into being as the new seat of government in Virginia, leading to charges of incompetence and even cowardice that dogged him for the rest of his life.

Arnold's raid—as well as the larger five-month campaign he conducted in the interior—also had consequences for Jefferson’s personal life. To avoid capture by the English, he sent his wife Martha and young children packing for Tuckahoe, the plantation where he had spent much of his childhood. That journey through the wilderness in the deepest heart of the winter led to his five-week-old daughter Lucy catching a cold that worsened until she died in mid-April.

Forty years ago, in a college seminar on the American Presidency, our professor was fond of pointing out that for many Presidents, their prior experiences as governor foreshadowed how they would act in the White House. How, then, should we view Jefferson’s performance as an executive?

Unlike fellow Virginian George Washington, the “Sage of Monticello” had no experience of physical combat. Unlikely as it might seem, he had even less appetite for political combat. He left after two terms as both governor and President exhausted from the struggle, with the braying of his enemies ringing in his ears.

It is true that the powers of the Virginia governor were weak, requiring consensus by an eight-man Council of State. It is also true that any occupant of the office would be handicapped by the inability to raise funds at that time.

On the positive side, Jefferson had enough popularity to win a second term, and enough foresight to have drawn up, four years before, enabling legislation to move the commonwealth’s capital away from Williamsburg—easily accessible to invading troops attacking with a navy—to a more defensible interior location in Richmond. Moreover, he took care to move arms and necessary papers to safety.

But Jefferson lacked the personal charisma of predecessor Patrick Henry, Washington’s hard-won recognition of the many ways that things could go wrong in a military campaign—or the willingness to exercise the authority of his office up to its constitutional limits. Thus, he did not receive word until late that Arnold was pressing inland from the coast; did not notify Washington in time that Continental troops were needed to repel the invaders; did not guess correctly that Arnold would press towards Richmond rather than Petersburg; and did not call out the militia in time to defend the capital.

(In the case of the militia, Jefferson—suspicious of the threat posed by a standing army to republican government—remained, even three decades later, deeply naïve about the ability of poorly trained soldiers, signed up for limited service, to carry out significant military duties. His belief that Canada could be captured as a result of “a mere matter of marching” turned out to be spectacularly wrong, and the burning of Washington under his successor, James Madison, echoed his own experiences with Richmond.)

Unable to capture Jefferson himself, the redcoats took some of his slaves from the governor’s residence in Richmond. They then proceeded to Portsmouth, establishing there a base from which they could continue to launch raids in the countryside.

With Jefferson’s second term drawing to a close in early summer and no successor in sight, the English reached the Monticello, the mountain estate that he thought would be safe from English deprivation. Again he was wrong, forcing him to gallop away so hurriedly that some mistook it for cowardice.

Following an embarrassing inquiry into his conduct of the defense of Richmond, the legislature adopted a resolution praising his “ability, rectitude and integrity.” But critics began to complain about his lack of decisiveness in directing the campaign—notably Major General Baron von Steuben, who had won Washington’s gratitude and trust for intensively training Continental troops. Steuben was indignant that Jefferson had not used his office to order militiamen or even slaves to construct a fort at Hood’s Point.

Just a few weeks before his death in 1826, Jefferson had been willing to sit down with a son of onetime critic Henry Lee to provide documents justifying his role in the Richmond campaign. But the former President was too exhausted by what proved to be his death struggle to respond at the necessary length.