In 2004, more than a decade before Donald Trump first became president, Philip Roth published a novel entitled, “The Plot Against America.” There was an effort to make it into a TV show, but it failed — initially. After Trump was elected in 2016, it was green lighted into a six-part series.
The novel has nothing to do with Trump and takes place during World War II. It’s an alternative history. But reading it now, it carries an eerie sense of familiarity and dread. It actually gave me chills. Frankly, with Trump in his second presidency, I’m surprised it hasn’t been reissued.
Charles Lindbergh
In the novel, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt loses his 1940 re-election bid to Charles Lindbergh, the America hero who in 1927 flew solo from New York to Paris in his small plane, The Spirit of St. Louis. In the novel and in real life, Lindbergh was an American Firster who wanted to keep the U.S. out of war. In the book, if not in real life, Lindbergh is sympathetic to the rise of Adolf Hitler and exhibits anti-Semitic tendencies.
Columnist Walter Winchell
Once in office, he signs an official truce with Hitler to keep America out of the war. Then he begins a series of programs to marginalize American Jews, mainly moving them out of urban enclaves (the book is set in Newark, N.J.) and scattering them about the Christian Midwest, hoping they assimilate and discard their Jewishness. Out of fear, some leave for Canada. The main voice of opposition – almost the singular point of dissent — is columnist and radio commentator Walter Winchell, a Jew. Frightened Jews rally around him and listen to his Sunday night broadcasts with both fear and hope.
Then, Winchell is fired from his job, runs for president, and is assassinated. Jews protest. This sets off a violent wave of anti-Jewish pogroms. Murder and mayhem come to the streets of Jewish neighborhoods while Lindbergh’s government remains silent. Antisemitism builds and spreads, bursting like a volcano. Then Lindbergh, while flying alone back from a speech (he does this frequently) disappears. He and his plane cannot be found.
Author Philip Roth
Hitler (who, we learn later and secretively, may have kidnapped him; we’re not sure) claims Lindbergh was killed by a Jewish conspiracy, and the anti-Jewish rioting further intensifies. Much intrigue and strange happenings follow. The vice president takes over and arrests the top Jewish leaders in America, including real life figures Henry Morgenthau Jr., Herbert Lehman, and Bernard Baruch. Also arrested is New York Mayor Fiorella La Guardia, seemingly the only non-Jew to condemn America’s turn toward fascism. Ultimately, a level-headed Mrs. Lindbergh, acting like a widow who knows something we don’t know, calms down the nation and announced that the Jews did not kill her husband. With her help, FDR is reelected, stops the pogroms, enters the war against Germany and Japan, and (we guess) saves America.
Joachim von Ribbentrop
What makes this story contemporary is the immense popularity of a conservative president who takes the country in an entirely new direction. Everything he does, including the relocation of Jews, is framed in a positive, pro-American narrative and is readily accepted by nearly all Americans, including – at least at first – many Jews. Lindbergh has enlisted the help of the nation’s top rabbi to convince his people that all is well and right. The rabbi is given a top position in the government, is treated and feted like a celebrity, and attends state dinners and other functions, including one where the guest of honor is Hitler’s foreign secretary, the real life Joachim von Ribbentrop.
So many people, big and small, compromise themselves because they see a winner and want to be on his team, and they assume when the government goes after people, it does so for a good reason, and will never come after them.
Newark, N.J. in the 1940s
As intra-family squabbles take place today, in the book Jewish families fight among themselves about whether or not the government is good intended, whether America is stronger by staying out of the war, whether they should move to Canada or take part in the relocation program, and more. We see how people are not worried at first, then as the Lindbergh policies take hold and escalate, the worrying begins. But people still aren’t sure. It takes violence, murder, and assassination before they realize what’s taking place is wrong.
If you can, look in on the book, “The Plot Against America” or stream the TV series on HBO or Hulu. (Here is the trailer) Perhaps you won’t see it as I see it … or maybe you will see it as an even darker specter of what is to come.
Today’s young hipsters just love their vinyl records. In my day, we had music on cassettes, but we also loved vinyl. At a party, we’d stack them up on the turntable and just let them go. Meanwhile, everyone at the party would just let themselves go.
There was one particular party where an inebriated fellow, let’s call him Dave, snuck off to a dark room with a young woman he was not especially attracted to or even fond of. And the vinyl played.
When the party ended in the early morning, the woman – nicknamed “The Pillow” — was gone, but he remained in a stupor on the floor, barely able to raise his head.
“Have fun?” I asked Dave. His answer, in the form it took, was unexpected and seemed to introduce a new type of metric not usually associated with the activity in which he had been engaged.
“Three sides of a record,” he said with a slur. “The Pillow blew me for three sides of a record.”
Taken aback, I had to ask him to repeat that, as if I didn’t understand, and in fact, I didn’t.
“She blew me for three sides of a record,” he said.
Yes, that’s what I thought he said.
Partly owing to liquor and partly owing to a lack of enthusiasm, Dave did not reach his moment. During the encounter, he simply sat there on the carpet in the dark room while the vinyl played and The Pillow attended to him. But he obviously paid attention to the music. That’s what I found both intriguing and offsetting. His audio preoccupation during his time was, to my mind, not an effective way to optimize the experience. With a woman seeking to give you extreme pleasure, does one count? That might be the last thing I’d do.
And it must be noted that the records David spoke of were not skimpy 45s. These were LPs – that’s short for long playing. LPs were and are 12-inches wide. Each side hold roughly 22 minutes of music. So, for Dave and The Pillow, their marathon session lasted in excess of an hour. If you were watching TV, that’s a full episode of Bonanza.
When LPs were the dominant form of music, record owners knew their recordings intimately. This was the ‘70s, and we called these precious pieces of vinyl “albums.” Each was a treasure to its owner, who knew every song and the order in which they appeared, knew when the A side or B side was playing, had studied the album cover art for hidden messages and symbols, had read the album notes and knew who was playing on each track. Considering all this, perhaps it was unnecessary for Dave to count each song or even pay much attention to the music. Instead, he could have just checked in occasionally, recognizing a song from one album, then focusing back on the performance in front of him, savoring it, enjoying it, then checking back on the music later, hearing another song and realizing the initial record had finished and a second one had started, and so on.
This seems much more realistic than counting individual tracks. But now, so many years later, I wished I had asked him how he did it, how he knew three sides of a record had played.
Then there’s the question of how it ended. I never asked this either. Did she tire and quit, or did he tell her to stop? Maybe the party just ended and so did they. A more vexing question is: Why in God’s name do I even think about this?
That may be the most disturbing aspect here. I’m oddly triggered when I see vinyl. I don’t reminisce about the mystical music. I dwell solely on the sides, three sides to be exact. For a certain activity, that’s a lot of sides. And it’s an everlasting memory for me. I can’t imagine what it is for Dave.
Ah, he’s probably forgotten.
And fortunately for me, all my music today is digital. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In 2001, I was the editor of a newspaper. In that same year, a woman name Christine, whom I did not know and never met, was working on the 87th floor of the north tower at the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Two weeks after the September 11th attack that killed 3,000 people, she wrote a lengthy email to friends and family. It detailed her experience of horror and her remarkable survival. She copied me on that email. I read it, of course, then printed it out and stuck it in a desk draw. Last week, as the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attack approached, I discovered it under a bunch of papers. Now, I share it with you. It’s always good to remember.
Hello everyone,
Please forgive the impersonal nature of this group email blast, especially since each of you took the time to contact me directly with messages of concern, love and support since Tuesday, September 11th.
I can hardly believe that it was almost 2 weeks ago that the World Trade Centers collapsed. In some ways the attack feels like it happened months ago, yet I don’t really know where the last two weeks have gone. All I do know is that I am feeling stronger with each day that passes.
Many people have been asking me what it was like when the plane hit the building and what it was like in the stairwell on the way down. Here is the entire detailed story.
At 8:45 am on Tuesday, September 11th, I sat at my computer checking my email. I worked on the 87th floor of the North Tower, the first one hit, the second tower to collapse. There was a very loud crack and crash, like an explosion, or a bomb. With the tower shaking and swaying, I yelled to Yvette, my coworker, to get under her desk. The roof had caved in on one half of the office and smoke and fire was coming from the same area. The office filled with smoke very quickly. I looked out the window to the north, which overlooks Manhattan and saw a snowstorm of debris diagonally whipping passed the window.
“What happened?” asked Yvette, my coworker.
“I don’t know. Maybe a bomb,” I speculated, remembering the 1993 bombing in the World Trade Center.
Although the plane’s impact was very powerful and loud, at the time, I would not have guessed it was a full-size passenger airline hitting the building. The explosion we felt simply didn’t seem that destructive.
Fred, another colleague of mine, yelled frantically to make sure that we were not hurt. Then, Fred told us that there was water running down the windows on east side of the building, which we would later learn was jet fuel.
Within seconds after the crash, we heard dozens of fire engine and police sirens, which mildly calmed both of Yvette and me. “At least they know something’s happened up here,” Yvette said.
I picked up the phone and dialed 911, but was put on hold due to the flood of callers. I waited on the line for about a minute and then hung up. I tried to call Craig at home to tell him that something had happened, that I was OK and to send him my love. This time, the phone was dead, and I couldn’t get through.
Our eyes started to burn and we were coughing. I asked Fred to get each of us a bottle of water stocked in the fridge. We placed wet napkins over our mouths to prevent smoke inhalation. The smoke was getting thicker as the fire started to creep further towards us.
“We’ve got to get out of here! Let’s get to the stairwell!” yelled Fred. All four of us fled the office’s side door. Fortunately, the office had an alternate exit as the collapsed ceiling and fire blocked the main entrance. In the hallway, a brave man was fighting the fire with an extinguisher. I assume he was the floor’s volunteer fire warden. He was an employee of May Davis, a brokerage firm that occupied the other office space on the 87th floor.
Apparently, Joseph, the fourth Thor employee at work, was right behind us, but I don’t recall seeing him.
Once in the stairwell, we hurried down the stairs quickly. Both Yvette and I were wearing clunky sandals, which slowed us down somewhat. Then, at the 78th floor we hit a dead end — a locked door. We banged on the door and yelled at the top of our lungs, “Open the door! Open the door!” People behind us were queuing up shouting at us, “Open the door!”
“We can’t! It’s locked!” we yelled back.
A large burly man grabbed a waist-high steel fire extinguisher and started ramming it repeatedly against the door. With all his might, he slammed the steel canister into the door in an attempt to break it down. Foam from the extinguisher sprayed all the people behind him. The door was so robust that he couldn’t even make a dent in it. Then, he tried to smash in the wall next to the door so that we could crawl through a hole in the wall, but after a few attempts, it was clear that the concrete wall wasn’t going to give either.
Just as I started to panic over being trapped, a building maintenance worker with a walkie-talkie shouted, “We’ve got to go back up to get down!” Everyone followed behind him, walking up the stairs to the 83rd floor and exiting the stairwell into an office. Half of the corridor was blocked by a caved-in wall and electrical fire. Another brave man was trying to extinguish the flames. As we scurried over the soaked carpet, bypassing the flames, we felt the heat of the fire and the spray from the extinguisher. I remember wishing I hadn’t worn a polyester shirt that day.
Once in the second stairwell, the descent toward the lobby was fairly calm, but very slow. Many times, the line stood completely still. The further we got down, the worse the traffic became as dozens of people evacuated into the stairwell.
For over an hour, we slowly moved downstairs. Around the 40th floor, the smoke cleared significantly. People were composed, nervously joking with each other to pass the time and stay upbeat. It was very hot and sweaty. A couple of men told us of their experience during the tower’s bombing last decade. Another woman from the 89th floor told us that the roof of her floor had also caved in, but all of her colleagues had escaped without harm.
I asked a couple of people in the stairwell whether they knew what happened. A man told me that he heard on the radio that a plane hit the tower. After brief speculation, we all agreed that it must have been an accident with a small two-seater plane or a traffic helicopter or something incidental. My colleague Fred suggested a terrorist attack. I dismissed the comment and suggested that he was a conspiracy theorist.
We were asked to stand to the side and make way for injured people. “Clear left! Clear left!” shouted the people who escorted a couple of injured folks passed us in the stairwell. Although it was a little frightening to see these people bleeding, the injuries appeared to be minor.
An-abandoned wheelchair was left in the stairwell. Down one floor ahead, I could see a woman who was being carried down the stairs by four other men. A man supported each of her four limbs and carried her very slowly; stopping for rests along the way. She told them to go ahead and leave her behind. They refused. I later found out that this woman got out of the building safely.
We also encountered a couple of very overweight people who had trouble making it down the stairs. One obese man was being carried down the stairs by two strong men. I later learned that these men were from May Davis, the trading firm from our firm’s floor.
I overheard the May Davis guys encouraging the heavy man to keep moving. He was resting on the stairs. “Aren’t we safe here? Can’t we just stay here?” he puffed.
Around the 45th floor, the smoke started to clear. The stairwells were hot and clammy, but everyone had removed the handkerchiefs from their faces. We started to feel safer. People entering the stairwell were nonchalantly conducting business and seemed annoyed by the interruption to their tight schedules. A man in a suit talking on his cell phone entered the stairwell saying, “Yeah, it’s nothing–I’m just heading down the stairs now… so, let’s schedule Thursday at 10. I’ll block you in. Where’s convenient for you?”
Many people have been surprised by the fact that everyone inside the building was so calm. We didn’t really have a reason to be panicked. We knew the fire was upstairs, we were on our way out to safety and the firefighters were on their way. Also, I think that seeing how relaxed the people on lower floors were, helped to lift our anxiety.
A lot of people in the stairwell were trying to use their cell phones. I kept trying to call Craig as Yvette tried to reach her sister and parents. We knew that our families would be worried about us and we wanted to let them know that we were OK.
At the 30th floor, we were instructed to make way for the firemen who were passing us up the stairs. About 20 firemen, fully dressed in 90-pound fire suits, and carrying tanks on their backs pulled themselves up the stairs with the handrail. They were exhausted and drenched in sweat. We met eyes with many of them; thanking each one individually as they ascended. People in the stairwell broke into applause and cheered the men up the stairs.
At the 20-something floor a tall, thin Hispanic man with a mustache, stood at the stairwell entrance, touching each person’s shoulder, “Take care. Be safe, now. God bless. Watch your step,” he said to each person passing him. We thanked him and smiled. “Come on, why don’t you come with us and get out of here?” asked a man behind me. “The Lord put some of us on this earth to watch over others. This is my duty, I guess,” he replied with a warm smile. I later saw this selfless man’s photo on a missing poster in Grand Central station.
As we neared the ground floor, the stair were pooled with water as the sprinkler systems had been operating on the lower floors. The stairs were quite slippery and a couple of people lost their footing and fell down the stairs on their rear end.
Finally, Yvette and I hoorayed over the sight of daylight at ground level. The stairwell exited at the main plaza where the copper globe fountain had been. I gasped with shock as I caught a glimpse of the unrecognizable area. It looked like a war zone covered in two feet of gray debris and dust. “What the hell happened down here?” I asked under my breath.
“Hey Christine!” yelled my colleague Fred from over my left shoulder, “Looks like we made it,” he said. But before I could reply, a huge thunder and cracking erupted from behind us. Then, a strong wind swept toward us. People started to scream and run. Within seconds, the roof collapsed, and debris fell all around us. Then blackness. “Get down!” I yelled at Yvette pulling her hand to the ground. We curled together in a fetal position clinging to each other. I covered my head. Store windows smashed, roof chunks dropped and debris crashed around us. It felt like a tornado. “This is it,” I thought to myself, “This is where it ends for me. Is this all I get? 27 years? No fair.”
The first tower was collapsing, although we didn’t know what was happening at the time. I prayed. I never pray. I pleaded with God to either take me quickly or let me survive unharmed. I didn’t want any in-betweens. I feared being pinned down by a falling beam or getting badly injured and unable to move.
It seemed like an eternity before the crashing stopped. When it did, there was dead silence followed by coughing and cries for help. I couldn’t see anything. The smoke was so thick it was difficult to breathe. I spat the dry grit from my mouth. It was pitch black. We sat in the cold water in the blackness and I could feel the cold water on my rear end.
“Are you OK?” I asked Yvette.
“I think so. Are you?” she said.
“Yes.” I replied. I wondered how long we would wait before being rescued. Then I wondered if we would be rescued. Did anyone know to look for us?
“Help me. Hello? Help me. Is there anybody there?” cried a woman in front of us.
“Yes! We’re here, we’re right next to you,” I told her.
“Reach out to me! Where are you? Can you reach out to me?” she yelled.
We fumbled around with our hands extended until our arms touched. She crawled closer to us tripping over the debris that surrounded us. Many people were shouting to each other. “Hello? …. Help! Hello?” In the darkness, the people responded to each other’s cries, while panic, confusion and chaos grew with each second that passed. Everyone waited for the voice of authority, the voice of direction, someone who was coming to save us.
A man next to us lit his cigarette lighter so that he could see. At least three people shouted simultaneously, “No! No! Put that out! There could be gas in here!”
“Yvette, we’ve got to get out of here,” I said, “let’s crawl.”
Determined not to lose each other in the dark, we formed a human chain
on the ground with each person clutching the ankle of the person ahead. We crawled over the glass and debris toward a faint light that turned out to be the 1/9 subway entrance. We stood up but were unsure of how much clearance we had to stand. A few people stood in the doorway looking for help. The smoke and dust was so thick that I couldn’t see the faces of the people standing right in front of me–only featureless figures.
When we realized that there was no exit through the subway, we turned to move in the opposite direction. We started walking very slowing, tripping over broken debris. “My feet! Ouch! I can’t walk, I have no shoes!” cried Yvette.
I heard a man in front of us and asked if he could carry my friend who had lost her shoes. He whipped off his laptop and tossed it to the ground. I felt the thud as it hit the ground and reached down to pick up his bag. He lifted Yvette to give her a piggyback. “Girl, what have you been eatin’?” he joked with her.
A cluster of six or seven of us moved around in the dark. I don’t think any of us knew where we were going. A few seconds later we heard a man’s voice in the darkness.
“Follow my voice! There is an exit over here! Follow my voice!” We moved toward the man’s voice; toward a hazy faint light. At the bottom on a small stair well, two firefighters argued with each other over whether the exit was safe and clear or not. “I just took a dozen people out this way five minutes ago!” one fireman insisted as he gathered us together. “Come on! Let’s move!” he shouted.
Once we were outside, I barely recognized Vesey Street. The street was littered with smashed up cars with dangling bumpers.
The man carrying Yvette put her down and gave her a hug. I handed him his laptop bag, which he accepted with a pleasant surprise. We thanked the man and both hugged him. I kissed his soot-covered cheek. All of our faces were caked with gray soot. I don’t think we’d ever recognize each other again, although I would like to thank that man.
Everything was coated in a foot of debris consisting of papers, file folders and dust. I kicked off my shoes so that I could run. The debris under my feet felt soft.
I looked around for someone to help us or tell us what to do. Where do we go? Is there a central check-in station? What now? I began sensing how chaotic the situation was. No one was in-charge. Even the policemen were frantic.
They shouted at people to keep moving. We ran North. We didn’t really know where we were going, but we knew that we needed to flee the area. We ran and ran and ran.
A few paramedics stopped us to ask if we were injured. They handed us water and told us to wash off our faces, but to avoid getting the soot in our eyes. The streets were filled with spectators watching in horror and fascination. Yvette and I kept running hand in hand and didn’t look back.
Reporters frantically snapped our photos without response and asked for comments. We kept moving.
Then, people started to scream when the second tower started to crumble. I looked back for a split second, but couldn’t watch. We just kept running.
One woman burst out crying in terror as we passed her in the street. Perhaps she saw how badly we looked and she knew someone in the building.
I took Yvette to her sister’s work on Houston and 8th Avenue and made my way home. I hitchhiked a series of three rides home. That may be the one and only time I hitchhiked in New York.
When I rang the doorbell and Craig opened the door, he collapsed to the ground with sobs of relief. He held me, grabbing my flesh to make sure I was real. He had been going crazy for hours, knowing that I was in the building, but not having heard from me since I left the house that morning. He was so happy, but told me to call my parents immediately. They, too, had been calling, wondering if he had heard from me. After a number of attempts, I finally reached my mother in Calgary, whose reaction of relief matched that of Craig’s.
Although people had told me what happened, I wasn’t really able to comprehend the facts on that day. I was still in shock with adrenaline racing through my system. In fact, I didn’t really start to process the terrorist attacks until the next day.
It has now been 12 days since the disaster. Each day I feel better than the day before and I’m getting stronger with each night’s rest. Craig and I have been attending memorials and candlelight vigils, taking walks in the park and trying to establish routine and normalcy to our lives.
September 11, 2001 was the worst day of my life and it was the best day of my life. It’s a miracle that I escaped.
Thank you very much for your thoughts and prayers over the last two weeks. I have booked a trip home to Calgary for the week of Canadian Thanksgiving and can’t wait to see my family and friends. Hugs will be issued to everyone!
Take care and stay close to your loved ones. Love to you,
(I don’t usually publish fiction here, but I’d like to share this short story. Please let me know what you think.)
By Lanny Morgnanesi
I hope this is worth it, stewing in an airport during a five-hours delay then, after freaking out to a supervisor, getting compensated with a first-class upgrade. Well, at least I’m sitting next to someone famous.
He is one of those conservative podcasters with a thousand million followers. Goes by the name Rook Arnold. He mostly visits college campus and debates short-sighted, overzealous students who think with their hearts instead of their heads, exhibiting poor reasoning skills and coming across as mildly comic. Rook Arnold asks them things they do not know and points out – somewhat effectively – that college is a sham and a waste of time, suggest they are dumb, and that he, Rook Arnold, who never went to college, is prepared to unleash a bevy of all-convincing facts that the rolling camera can easily record and make him look, to his legions of followers, heroic.
He has the window seat. I the aisle.
A major claim in many of his online clips is that systemic racism is NOT the reason blacks, comprising 13 percent of the population, commit 26 percent of all crimes and 51 percent of all murders. The reason is culture, he explains. Black students go a little nuts when he says this. I’ve always wanted to be there and ask him: What generates culture?
I guess I could ask him now. I mean, he’s sitting right next to me.
Best to wait for an opening.
He probably would call me a liberal, but I’m not. I can’t even remember pronouns let alone use them. I don’t care about abortion, for the selfish reason I’m unlikely at my age to get anyone pregnant. And regardless of your opinion on anything, I believe you should be able to speak freely and not suffer the wrath of those you offend. Liberals are so easily offended, plus, they are way too serious. I’m not. If someone like Rook Arnold tried to debate me, I’d probably make a joke.
“Do you even know who wrote the Constitution?” he would say.
“I do know who wrote the Constitution,” I would answer. “Many credit James Madison, who only came to the constitutional convention because he had a mistress in Philadelphia. He rarely showed up. One day an angry group told him to get to work and start writing. So, he told his valet, Henry Squib, to write the Constitution and mostly copy the one used by Massachusetts, which was good enough, he said. And that’s what happened. Henry Squib, a valet, wrote the Constitution while James Madison was boinking a floozy.”
While I don’t care about much, I am bothered by racism. I’m bothered on moral grounds, and because I think racism hurts everyone. It creates a sub-stratum of people who are not permitted a proper education, who are not permitted to fully contribute to society, who are not eligible for loans to fix up their homes, whose businesses are ignored by white customers, who, with a nearly invisible hand, are kept separate, and who unleash a police response when they try to take what they feel is theirs or exercise rights that should be God given. This kind of society is not optimized. It is costly. It is dangerous. It is nonproductive and stressful. It is one hand tied behind your back. An engine not running on all cylinders.
Conservatives like Rook Arnold speak against racism but claim it no longer exists. They contend that black people are fully protected by civil rights laws and can achieve anything to which they aspire. In a way, that’s true, but difficult. Achieving what you aspire is a longshot even for whites.
The pilot comes on and tells us our altitude and speed. The weather at our destination is sunny and pleasant, he says. Then Rook leans towards me and speaks.
“Looks like we got a DEI hire.”
From the pilot’s voice, he sounds black. Rook’s well-known opinion is that programs with rules or guidelines for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion end up hiring the less qualified and even the unqualified.
This is my opening, but I don’t want to get on his bad side right away, so I laugh and say, “Don’t worry. These planes fly themselves.”
Drinks are served.
Then I say, “You know, I’m a lot older than you. We called DEI affirmative action. I’m sure there were and are bosses given quotas to fill, and that some bosses dropped their standards because they were lazy, in a rush, or didn’t care. But affirmative action – DEI – was designed as a prod to overcome a common reluctance to hire those who are different – not cut people breaks.”
He looks at me a little funny and starts to speak. Boldly, I cut him off, but he cuts back in.
“Race should not be a factor in hiring,” he says.
“Exactly,” I say. “There should be no advantage to being white. Ever hear the joke about the bank manager trying to hire a teller?”
“I don’t think so,” Rook says dismissively, looking at a magazine on his lap.
“Well, the manager tries out three candidates. At the end of the day, the cash drawer of one is $10 over. Another is $15 under. The third comes out perfect. Which person did he hire?”
“Tell me.”
“The one with the big tits. That’s a joke. In real life the answer is the white one. That’s why we have DEI.”
He puts the magazine aside.
“I’m the first to acknowledge past discrimination, denial of rights, segregation, Jim Crow, redlining … all that,” Rook said while ordering a second drink. “But it’s over. It’s over. We all need to move ahead together, without everything being tainted by race. Your problem is your age. You remember all the bad stuff and refuse to believe it’s gone.”
“Feelings and attitudes about people linger, even after laws change,” I say. “Laws don’t erase hate, and those who hate find ways around the laws.”
He’s silent. No debate. I don’t think he wants to do for free what he normally gets paid to do. Meanwhile, I continue.
“In the mid-60s, my parents were taking me and my two sisters to a day resort in Jersey called Lake Lonnie. It may not be there anymore. There was a long line of cars trying to get in, but it moved quickly. When there was just one car ahead of us, the line stopped. They wouldn’t let the people in front of us in.”
“Yes, it happened,” Rook says. “That was yesterday.”
“Yeah, yesterday. So my father gets out of the car to investigate. He comes back and say they won’t let the people in because they aren’t members. I asked my father if we were members. He seemed disgusted. He said we were not members, but we’d get in, and we did.”
Rook put on a smirk.
“Of course, the people who didn’t get in were back. This was a different era. Today, the people denied entrance to Lake – what was it? – Lakota, would have …”
“Lonnie. Lake Lonnie.”
“The people denied entrance to Lake Lonnie would have sued, and come up with a huge settlement, more than they could expect to earn in a lifetime … maybe 10 lifetimes.”
“I guess you don’t see much of that anymore,” I say. “But on July 4th, I was back in Jersey, to the shore. Very crowded. Not an inch of sand unclaimed. I went down to the ocean, got my feet wet and walk 10 or so blocks. I could be wrong, but I didn’t see one black face. It was just like Lake Lonnie six decades earlier. Nothing had changed.”
Rook’s experience at debating uninformed college students made him quick to answer such questions.
“Culture,” he said. “Culture took them someplace else. In lots of cases, blacks continue to frequent the beaches they were restricted to during segregation. They prefer those places. Culture drives them to certain spots, just like it drives a disproportionate share of our population to commit murder, or for fathers to abandon families.”
“But what drives culture?” I ask. “Let’s switch to Jews. Why do Jews eat bagel?”
No quick answer this time, just a look of bemusement.
“A bagel is basically boiled dough,” I say. “There was a time in parts of Europe when Jews, who were barred from many trades, weren’t permitted to be bakers. So instead of baking bread, they boiled it. Often, it’s a negative, outside force driving culture.”
I don’t think Rook Arnold had heard this bagel story, and I assume he understood my implication that black crime and family abandonment are reactions — protective, defensive, vengeful, whatever – to unpleasantness put upon them by others. There are experts who study such things, with research, and data points, interviews, and intricate analysis, but even simple people know, even if they don’t admit it, that minorities face a rash of cruel and regular hardships. Comedian Chris Rock, who is black, sums it up perfectly when he tell his audience, “There’s not one white person here who would switch places with me – and I’m rich!”
Rook Arnold reacts to the bagel story with this: “My main argument, and I hope I can get this through to you, is that society today is, for the most part, just and fair. It does not hold back people who want to get ahead. Today, you bake what you want, bread, bagels, lasagna. It’s your free choice.”
“And yet Jews still eat bagels.”
With a hint of anger, Rook says, “We all eat bagels.”
Now I pause. I’ve been so busy talking I’ve not enjoyed or appreciated the comfort of first class. I guess the food will be along soon. I haven’t even looked around much. Nor have I seen my friend, a federal sky marshal on this flight. We’re both getting off in Denver for a hunting trip. He’s in coach.
“Sorry,” I say. “No more bagels.”
Rook shakes his head.
I say, “The students you debate, they often tell you poverty and the unjust incarceration of blacks cause the high black crime rate.”
“That’s right. And they are wrong,” he says.
“An ex-con I know – a white guy who committed armed robbery and is now getting his Ph.D in psychology — once told me half the guys in prison wouldn’t be there if they had been shown a shred of dignity on the outside. A person can live happily while poor, but not without dignity … not if he or she is routinely treated as a subhuman, as someone deserving of less than the average white man, as someone who isn’t wanted in that restaurant or golf club or hotel, or position of authority. In that situation, you either go crazy and kill yourself, maybe with drink or drugs, or you lash out … or you do both. Even as children, you go to broken down schools, with few books, dirty floors, clocks that don’t work, and the worst teachers. That’s a message. It carries meaning about what people think of you.”
“Well, some people don’t deserve dignity,” Rook Arnold said. “They father children, then leave. An astounding 64 percent of black children grow up in single-family homes. There’s no parenting, no guidance, no instruction for being a good, upstanding human being. These children grow up to be monsters.”
“Yes, I agree. If you treat someone like a monster, they become monsters.”
Rook’s body language was signaling that our conversation was over, and I don’t blame him.
“Can I tell you one more story?” I ask. “Then I’ll go to the restroom, come back, eat my meal, read a book and shut up.”
“One more. And that’s it. I actually have some work to do.”
“OK. There’s this NFL assistant coach. He was the first black football player at a small, rural, mostly agricultural college. Lots of students were from small towns. Aside from football, there were two things about him. He was good at math, and he washed his hands a lot. To earn pocket money, he tutored other students in math. One told him he had never met a black person before but was taught they were dumb and dirty. ‘But you’re not dumb and you’re not dirty,’ the student said. ‘So, I’ve got to think, what else have I been taught that’s a lie?’ That’s my story. Be mindful that it takes generations, if ever, for lies to dissipate. Now, I’m off to the restroom.”
“Thank you, Jesus,” Rook said.
Instead, I went back to coach and saw my friend, the sky marshal. We chatted briefly. I was back in my seat for dinner when my friend came into first class. He politely addressed Rook.
“Excuse me, sir,” he says. “I’m a federal marshal. May I see your boarding pass?”
“Why? What is this about?”
“And some identification, please,” the marshal says. “What is the reason for your trip and where is your final destination?”
Rook, under questioning, attracted the stares of his fellow passengers.
“I don’t have to answer these questions,” he says. “Do you know who I am.”
“I’m very sorry, but we’ve received some potentially threatening information about a passenger who fits your description. If you cooperate, this will be over in a few minutes. Please produce some identification, sir.”
“Are you accusing me of something?” Rook asks.
“No sir. We just want to check out a tip.”
“What kind of tip?”
“Just some identification, please.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“Sir, if you don’t cooperate, I’m going to cuff you and take you to the back of the plane.”
This is when I step in.
“Look, I can vouch for this guy,” I say with confidence. “He’s all right. He’s famous. No threat to anyone. Could you please leave us alone so we can finish our meal?”
The marshal pauses and looks directly at me and then at Rook.
“Very well,” he says. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
Artificial Intelligence recently gave me an opinion of my writing. It was more than flattering. The assessment, by the learning machine ChatGPT, made me seem almost brilliant. While I know I am not brilliant, I initially was quite proud of what it said about the unusual piece I had written. Then I became frightened. Then skeptical. Ultimately, I was confused.
My encounter with AI involved a short story that will soon appear in an anthology of mine. The story focuses on something ridiculous – a sweater that was vomited upon at a college party — but later, in contrast, asks deep philosophical questions and even doubts the nature and structure of contemporary fiction.
The story is called Sweater in a Jar. I believe it is entertaining, but I have no false hope that people will grasp what I was trying to accomplish. Last week a friend agreed to read it. Unsure of what he was reading, he ran it through ChaptGPT to get a better understanding of what it was. Then he sent me this non-human literary review. I was stunned that the machine was able to comprehend, accurately and precisely, my intentions for the piece
Here are its comments:
The sweater’s fate serves as a metaphor for the elusive and fragmented nature of truth and memory, mirroring the way human experience is shaped by perception rather than objective reality. The story juxtaposes absurdity with profound existential questions, pondering whether art and life can ever reveal an “ultimate truth” or if their power lies in crafting meaningful illusions. Through the narrator’s musings on genetics and storytelling, the piece suggests that while science may define human potential, art provides the emotional and metaphorical lens through which we interpret and transcend that reality. It’s a meditation on how small, seemingly trivial events can carry profound, lasting impacts on identity and meaning.”
I’m a genius, right?
So, what’s with ChatGPT? How did it know? I decided to look deeper.
Taking very little time, I wrote a 500-word story with absolutely no literary merit. Then I ran it through ChatGPT to see if this time it would deem me an idiot, like it should. I apologize for burdening you with this, but here is that story:
A Weekend Visit
It was a bright and sunny day when Jerome Jeffries went to the train station to pick up his old college friend, Sidney. Jerome arrived at 3 p.m., just as the train was getting in from St Louis. Just in case the train was early, Jerome had hoped to get there at 2:30, but his older sister, Gilda, kept pestering him with questions about Sidney, and so he was later than he wanted to be. But it worked out.
Sidney took the train, a trip of two days, because St. Louis was snowed in an no planes were flying. He enjoyed the ride. “It was pretty cool,” he told Jerome. “No WIFI, but you could look out the window and see the American countryside. I didn’t know there were so many cows in Ohio.”
What Sidney didn’t tell his friend was that, while on the train, he received a compromising picture on his phone from Jerome’s sister.
From the train station they went right to a McDonald’s for a snack. Jerome had a Big Mac. Sidney had a Quarter Pounder with cheese. They both got large drinks and large fries.
“Do you think these fries are a little salty?” Sidney asked.
“They are,” Jerome said. “Cover up the salt with more ketchup.”
When they got to Jerome’s house, Sidney was introduced to everyone, mother, father, and sister Gilda, who wore a tight-fitting yoga outfit and, for some reason, did a series of bend-over stretches.
Sidney was shown his room and told to put his clothes in a dresser. He used three drawers, one for his underwear, one for his street clothes, and one for miscellaneous items like his brush and toothpaste. He wore his sneakers but put a pair of dress shoes by the bed, just in case they went somewhere fancy.
After a short time, the door to the room opened and Gilda entered. She was wearing a bikini and asked if Sidney wanted to go swimming. He paused and said no. “Your brother and I have lots of plan,” he said.
In the family room, Jerome and Sidney met up, and discussed their plans until Jerome’s mother served a dinner of meatloaf, mash potatoes, and peas. There was pie for dessert, but no coffee. Jerome’s family didn’t drink coffee.
After dinner, Jerome said, “Let’s go to a movie.” And they went to a movie. It was about time travel and alternative universes.
“Is this science fiction?” Sidney asked.
“Yes, it’s science fiction,” Jerome said.
“I like science fiction,” Sidney said.
“Everyone does,” Jerome said.
After the movie, the two friends walked the town streets.
“Tomorrow we will go to a ball game downtown, and I want to take you to a giant flea market where you can buy many things for under $5. Later, we’ve got to go to my favorite bar. There is so much to do.”
“I realize that,” Sidney said. “But sometime this weekend, do you think I can go swimming with your sister?”
Jerome paused. “Maybe. But only once. And for a short time. We’re going to be very busy.”
Ho hum, right? Here is what ChatGPT said about, A Weekend Visit.
This short story presents an intriguing narrative, though it is somewhat odd and leaves room for interpretation. Here’s an evaluation of its elements:
Strengths:
Character Relationships: The dynamic between Jerome and Sidney is clear: they are old friends reconnecting. There’s an underlying sense of warmth in their reunion, especially with the mention of old college days and their shared history. Jerome’s protective nature towards Sidney also comes across—he seems to want to ensure their time together is meaningful, while Sidney seems more laid-back and open to new experiences.
Humor and Absurdity: The story is sprinkled with moments of absurdity that add charm, especially the quirkiness of Jerome’s family members. Gilda’s unexpected behavior, like stretching in a yoga outfit and later wearing a bikini, feels odd but adds an element of intrigue to the family dynamic. Sidney’s casual comment about cows in Ohio and the throwaway line about the fries being too salty are small but effective moments of humor.
Pacing and Structure: The story’s pacing is easy to follow. It moves smoothly from one event to the next, from the train station to McDonald’s to Jerome’s house. It has a natural flow, which helps keep the reader engaged. The decision to present the day-to-day experiences in a somewhat banal but detailed way (e.g., their meal choices or the description of Sidney’s packing) keeps the story grounded in reality.
Areas for Improvement:
Underdeveloped Themes: The story doesn’t delve deeply into any particular theme. While there are moments of tension—like Sidney’s secretive interaction with Gilda—these are left unexplored. The plot feels like it hints at something more (perhaps involving Gilda’s behavior), but it never fully materializes. The story seems to build toward something deeper or more meaningful, but it doesn’t follow through.
Character Depth: Jerome and Sidney’s personalities are sketched briefly, but they don’t evolve much throughout the story. The most significant development is Jerome’s brief internal conflict about Gilda’s behavior and his protective attitude toward Sidney. Sidney, on the other hand, remains mostly passive—he enjoys the trip, mentions some trivial observations, and asks about swimming with Gilda, but there’s little else to make him stand out as a fully realized character. This could have been an opportunity to explore their relationship more or to introduce a deeper tension between them, but the focus remains surface-level.
Ambiguous Relationships and Subtext: The interaction between Gilda and Sidney raises questions that go unexplored. Sidney’s comment about wanting to swim with Gilda could be read as a subtle hint at something more, but it’s left hanging in the air. Gilda’s strange behavior (stretching in a yoga outfit, wearing a bikini) feels unmotivated and makes the reader question whether there is some unspoken tension between her and Sidney, or between her and Jerome. Without exploring this further, the reader is left with an unresolved and somewhat uncomfortable sense that there’s more going on than is revealed.
Tone Inconsistency: The story seems to straddle different tones—there’s an almost slice-of-life casualness in the first half, but as Gilda’s actions become more peculiar, the story takes on a slightly surreal or uncomfortable edge. The narrative never fully commits to this shift, making the tone feel inconsistent. It’s unclear whether the story intends to be comedic, quirky, or darkly mysterious, which can leave readers unsure of how to engage with it.
Overall Impression:
The story succeeds in creating a comfortable, ordinary scenario that becomes increasingly strange and unsettling. There’s potential in the relationship between the characters, particularly the dynamic with Gilda and her interactions with Sidney, but the story leaves too much unexplored. If the narrative delved deeper into these relationships and played with the tension hinted at by Gilda’s odd behavior and Sidney’s secret photo, it could have been much more engaging. As it stands, it feels like a brief snapshot of a weekend that might have been more interesting with a little more depth and development.
In short: The story has charm and humor but could benefit from a stronger narrative focus and deeper character exploration.
***
ChatGPT found humor where there was none, found the pedestrian interesting, mentions charm that was absent, speaks of imagined subtext, and said its banality keeps it grounded in reality. Yes, there is a bit of well-deserved criticism, but it is too kind, a little obsequious. It reminded me of the guys in the office who sucked up to the boss.
The review should have simply said this is juvenile, lousy, and idiotic. Yet it didn’t. ChatGPT addressed A Weekend Visit as a serious piece of writing, and wrote a serious review that would garner a good grade for any student calling the review his own. And I think that is what this is all about – providing a service for students uninterested in doing their own work.
My test confirmed there probably was no genius in Sweater in a Jar, and no genius in ChatGPT. It’s a tool, maybe impressive and useful, but only a tool. I can go to sleep tonight know it will not take over the world.
Still, I’m slightly fixated on this idea that maybe – just maybe — the banality in my deliberately bad story has – as ChatGPT suggests – meaning and merit. My banality was deliberate and written to be banal. Nevertheless, could there be something deep in my mind – the genius mind seen by ChatGPT – that unconsciously pushes me to use banality effectively, maybe as subtext, whatever that is? Can my stilted dialogue about a science fiction movie be considered, by intellectual and machines minds, as something equivalent to Andy Warhol’s globally famous soup can, which I never liked?
American poet T.S. Eliot is shown seated in his London Office on Jan. 19, 1956. (AP Photo)
Maybe there is a muse on my shoulder that won’t let me write badly, even when I try. ChatGPT, however, did get me thinking about the existence of critically acclaimed banalities. For example, T.S. Eliot, considered one of the world’s greatest poets, launched into a near-epic piece and used such common phrases as:
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
… and …
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
… and my favorite …
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Admittedly, these are much better than, “Do you think I can go swimming with your sister?” but I’m beginning to realize I might have something that I didn’t know I had.
I’m going to be patient about Artificial Intelligence and see how it all plays out. If ChatGPT starts buying and recommending books based on its own reviews, I should be in pretty good shape as a writer. That’s a future to look forward to.
I’m not necessarily a Yankees fan, but I respect and admire the team’s tradition of excellence. I’m more than willing to pay homage to Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris, and all the others. They are legends of hard work, talent, and accomplishment.
Aaron Judge, a six-time All Star and the 2017 Rookie of the Year, is a contemporary reflection of past greatness, an equal to the best of Yankee history with his 2024 regular season stats of 58 home runs, 144 RBIs, 180 hits, and a .322 batting average. His brilliance, however, dimmed in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Judge’s inability to hit caused me discomfort and concern, as if his setback was my own.
It also made me remember the fate of a guy named Sonny Z, the best ball player ever to play in our neighborhood.
We were 12 when Sonny Z entered out lives. He was not from our neighborhood but had a girlfriend there, the older sister of someone in our gang. Although he was 19, Sonny Z often came out to our diamond and played with us.
Sonny Z was everything that baseball was. He talked like a ball player, walked like a ball player, looked like one, spat like one. There was little about him that wasn’t baseball. Baseball was his preoccupation and his obsession. They say he played in semi-pro, or in an industrial league, or maybe just Legion ball. I can’t really remember. But the thing about Sonny Z was he played on a level much above ours, and he always played hard — even against 12-year-olds. We loved that about him.
Out on our sandlot, he’d amaze us with his catches. When he came to bat, we watched him intently. We wanted to see his swing, to learn from it, to feel its power and to hear the thunderous crack of his bat. Inevitably, he would send our centerfielder running after a ball that landed way over his head and rolled and rolled and rolled, nearly into the next county.
Sonny Z sometime sat with us and told us of his baseball exploits. We were a rapt audience. Once, the subject of his name came up. The “Z” stood for a long Polish name we could not pronounce. And “Sonny,” it turned out, was not his real name. His real name was Marion. We thought “Marion” was a girl’s name and wondered how the very masculine Sonny Z ever got such a name.
“It’s spelled with an ‘O.’ That’s a man’s name,” he said. “The girl’s name is spelled with an ‘A’.”
One hot summer day, Sonny Z visited his girlfriend and joined us later on the ballfield. The bases were loaded with two outs and Sonny Z was up. He was, of course, going to hit a grand slam home run and clear the bases. We all knew this. He even told us so. The pitch came and – bang – there went the ball, high and far to centerfield. Playing center that afternoon was . . . me, one of the least-skilled athletes in our group. But when Sonny Z came to bat I knew enough to play deep. As the ball soared above me, I ran as fast as I could. I can’t recall if I was looking up or down, or even if I had my eyes open. I just remember running. Finally, in near exhaustion, I stuck my glove in the air, tripped over my own two feet and fell to the ground. When I got up, the ball was in my glove.
A little shrimp, a talent-less pipsqueak, had robbed the great Sonny Z of a grand slam home run.
Across the infield, the outfield, and among the players on the sidelines, there was a pronounced sigh of disappointment. And I felt guilty, as if I had done something wrong, as if I had harmed someone I loved. As I ran in to bat and Sonny Z ran out to take the field, he patted me on the head and said coldly, “Nice catch, kid.”
A month later there was big news. The biggest news of the summer, or perhaps of ever: Sonny Z was going to try out with the Philadelphia Phillies.
For us, this was like winning the lottery, or having your parents buy a candy store, or your new teacher being a former underwear model for the Sears cateloge. Better than all that. Soon we would have a friend and pal who is a for-real professional ball player. Someone who played on our modest little sandlot will be taking the field on game day at Connie Mack Stadium. We’ll know his name, we’ll know him, we’ll know his girlfriend. We’ll know the things he says and does, like flipping an imaginary switch on the heel of his glove and saying, “OK. The vacuum cleaner has been activated.”
When the day of the tryout came, we were too nervous to play. Instead, we sat around trying to anticipate how the tryout would go. Would Sonny Z send one out of the park? Would he make a flying grab? Would he get on base and quickly steal second? I think we even prayed, which we had never done as a group.
Then we waited.
It may have been the next day, or a couple days later. Sonny Z returned to our neighborhood. We ran toward him and leaped about. He looked solemn, but we ignored that and considered it modesty. “How did you do?” we asked. “How many hits did you get? Did they take you? Will you play this season or next, or go to the minors first? What was it like? What was it like?”
Sonny Z’s girlfriend was standing in the doorway of her house. Just standing, like it was a normal day. Sonny Z looked back at her, then to us. “I guess I did OK,” he said with vacant eyes. “Hit a couple. Made a good catch. There were lots of good players there.”
As a group, my friends and I deflated. Our soaring spirit crashed onto an already cracked pavement. Although it was hard to believe, we slowly, fog-like, accepted this new reality. The truth way, Sonny Z had been told by the Phillies that he was ordinary, which in the world of ambition is the worst they can say about you.
Sonny Z’s girlfriend called, and he walked away.
“Will they give you another chance?” we asked, and he did not answer.
I can’t recall if we ever saw him again, or ever heard of him again. But he did break up with my friend’s sister, which took him out of our neighborhood and our lives. We were not hero-less, but for a long time it felt that way. I’m sure the Yankee fans know the feeling.
People need to know their ship captain can sail through the storm; that their general will get them through the war; that the person they back for president will win; that when it’s the ninth inning, with two outs and the tying run on second and the go-ahead run – the hero — at the plate, he will do the job he was destined to do.
The hero makes life bearable for the ordinary. When Aaron Judge can no longer hit, those who are ordinary – the great masses of us — experience personal failure. That’s why we depend on our heroes to succeed, and to succeed with honor and valor, with dignity and a kind of magic. We only triumph through them. If they cease being heroes, then we are doomed in our ordinary-ness.
The most frightening thing for me about the Yankee-Dodgers series was the look on Aaron Judge’s face as he waited for a pitch. He’s a giant of a man with a granite jaw. Still, there was something about his face during those plate appearances that questioned his very being. It was deep doubt. A series like his would destroy an ordinary person. It would send most to the dust heap. As a professional, the great Judge surely will get past this. He’s not Sonny Z. As a dimmed hero leaving behind darkness, he can only shine brighter when the new season begins. And then everyone outside of LA can once again feel special, and the ordinariness of life will fade away, like the sun going down over the rightfield fence.
Near my home, in a place called Lahaska, there’s a tranquil spot of beauty and commerce called Peddler’s Village. It was built by a somewhat eccentric man named Earl Jamison. The village is spread over 42 acres. It has old-fashioned shops, restaurants, bars, lodging, even a carnival merry-go-round. The peddlers at Peddler’s Village peddle everything from clothes to hats to paintings to fresh pastry, popcorn, maple syrup, and beef jerky.
Part of the attraction is the artful landscaping. Jamison liked gardening, and when he was alive you could mostly find him at Peddler’s Village on his knees, tending to plants. That kind of attention and that kind of tradition has been passed on to others. The place looks great.
The summer day of my recent visit was pleasant, and everyone was having a good time. Parents, kids, babies, older couples, dogs. In this part of suburban Philadelphia and at Peddler’s Village, the crowd is mostly – what’s a good word? – Anglo. With a fair number of Asians. The people who walked the brick promenades seemed comfortable in their lives, safe, and secure. As I did. This was an enviable America.
This simple Saturday was starkly different from the America depicted in the political ads of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Tump, both of whom want to lead a country they have extreme doubts about. During the broadcast of the July Olympics in Paris, Harris and Trump ran harsh ads designed to shock and get you to the polls. There was an inescapable onslaught of these ads. I couldn’t tell which America was worse, the one the Republicans blame the Democrats for, or the one the Democrats blame the Republicans for. It wasn’t much of a choice. Made me think horrible things about a country that, to me, seems all right.
Shoppers relaxing
The trump and the Republicans presented a nation ravaged by inflation and overrun with invading foreigners who bring in drugs and commit a wide assortment of crimes, including murder and rape. These same foreigners suck the money and life out of our social service and health systems, so there is little left for us. Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, is said to be dangerous and weak, a radical who clearly will destroy whatever is left of the America that they say once was great but obviously no longer is. The Democrats, for their part, cast Trump as a crude, weird, racist dictator whose speech and actions resemble Hitler’s.
What these ads showed and preached was nothing at all like the idyllic Peddler’s Village, where not even a trace of discontent could be found. And so I thought of my own life and happiness. As my wife shopped, I sat on a bench and enumerated the America I knew and appreciated, and that I think others would recognize, regardless of the horrors in the political ads.
In my America:
No one is shooting at me or dropping bombs on or near my house.
My home is nice, comfortable, and in good working order.
I have clean water and plenty of food.
The stores are filled with everything I could possibly need or want.
They take away my trash and sewage.
They take away the snow.
We have good hospitals and good doctors, and you can get appointments.
We have good schools.
The police protect us.
We are free to go where we want, when we want.
Contrary to what some people may prefer, we can say whatever we want.
We have a strong tradition where the rule of law prevails, and the legal system works.
We are allowed to invest our money in companies that can make us money.
Generally, you don’t have to bribe a public official to get something done.
I’ll stop there. I hope you can see the difference between what the presidential candidates are saying and what I am living.
Elsewhere, beyond me and beyond Peddler’s Village, there are people living lesser, unenviable lives. In these last few decades, inequality in America has bounded ahead in a rampage. There is nothing unusual about inequality in America, but it has gotten worse. For many there is food insecurity, job insecurity, little or no medical attention, poor or no housing, poor schools, high crime, discrimination and lack of opportunity. None of this was on display at Peddler’s Village.
Philosophers and do-gooders will say that in a country as rich as the United States, poverty is unnecessary. Others will say poverty is the self-inflicted disease of the shiftless and not something for government to fix. But in almost every society and culture, the natural, human tendency is for a strong and aggressive minority to acquire nearly all the wealth and broker all the power. Sometimes, this inevitable pattern is halted or reversed by uprising and revolution, but only for a period, and then the inexorable progression of the dominant human forces continues, and the once-again complacent majority – usually with a very worse-off minority substrata –allows its modest wealth to trickle up.
Therefore, it is difficult for a nation such as ours to eliminate poverty and establish of nation of Peddler’s Villages.
In my mind, eliminating poverty is not about giving money to the poor. Rather, it is about allowing the poor to be productive. This requires removing the often-invisible restraints and barriers holding them back, as well as reorienting a defeatist mindset and the established alternative culture of the outsider.
Not an easy thing to do. Maybe impossible. But for the sake of discussion, let’s see how much money is out there for the poor, as if we just wanted to give it to them, which of course we do not.
Forbes magazine says there are about 400 billionaires in the US. It says they are worth a total of $54,000,000,000,000 – that’s $54 trillion. (The entire federal budget in 2024 was about $6.5 trillion). The top five billionaires are:
Elon Musk — $244 billion
Jeff Bezos — $197 billion
Mark Zuckerberg — $181billion
Larry Ellison — $175 billion
Warren Buffett — $150 billion
If, in some crazy world that is not ours, we took 25 percent of the wealth away from the 400 billionaires and handed it to the 37 million people living in poverty, each would receive $36,000. I guess a family of three would get more than $100,000. That’s enough to start a small business, send the kids to college, or maybe get a mortgage on a house.
This is just fun with numbers and of no meaningful purpose when it comes to problem solving. It is for perspective only. A more practical solution to income inequality is a return to tax policies of the ‘50s and ‘60s that allowed for a more even distribution of the wealth.
To illustrate the change, in 1963, the wealthiest families had 36 times the wealth of families in the middle class. By 2022, they had 71 times the wealth of those families. The top 10 percent now own about 70 percent of the nation’s wealth, with the bottom 50 percent owning 2.5 percent.
The charts below show how the money was spread out then, and how it is spread out now. The blue is the money. The poor are on the left. The rich are on the right. Most of us are in the middle.
If we can find the strength and courage to eliminate barriers to opportunity, and there is a redistribution of some wealth, without so much money sitting in the hands of so few, maybe there will be enough money to fix things up in our country. Maybe our crumbling cities can look like Dubai, or Shanghai, or Singapore. Maybe, if neighborhoods aren’t economic dead zones, they’ll be welcoming places and not fearful haunts to be avoided. With the proper changes, maybe escalators and streetlights will work. Maybe we will have fast trains, and wide, smooth roads, and bridges not in danger of collapsing, and JFK airport won’t be a 21st century embarrassment. Maybe we can prop up Medicare and Social Security and have a good universal health care program. Maybe, state universities can be free. It’s not that we need free stuff, it’s that we’ve worked hard enough to get them, and that wide access to education and health care will result in a stronger, more productive country with greater participation by its population. With a vibrant, involved population, there will be great costs savings in law enforcement and prisons, mental health, public housing, all kinds of things. This is a great trade off.
New York City subway
I was disheartened when I heard of an American who returned home after living for a decade in Japan. “Nothing works here,” he said. “And the public bathrooms are disgusting.” So let’s fix things up. Fix ‘em up good.
There is a theory that if you don’t repair a broken window in a building, the entire neighborhood will eventually collapse. If you do repair it, the entire neighborhood will keep itself up and thrive.
I want the latter for my neighborhood and my country. Why don’t others?
Visit the clean, the organized, the efficient, the beautiful Peddler’s Village and perhaps you will change your mind.
An old friend came home for our 55th high school reunion and had a criticism of my recent novel, The King of Ningxia.
The book uses a shifting timeline and is loosely based on my experiences in China during the mid-80s. The story is about the relationship between an American man and a Chinese woman, whose antics together help illustrate China’s great ascent in the world and its changing relationship with the U.S. But the book also includes a stupid joke. My friend was disappointed that only an abbreviated version of the joke appears, rather than the elaborate version I told years and years ago.
My friend felt the short version misrepresented the joke, was a disservice to the joke, was a disservice to his memory of the joke, and also a disservice to the novel.
I, of course, disagreed.
From my adult perspective, the joke is juvenile and not even funny. But my friend remembers how our gang laughed and laughed and laughed as I extended and stretched out the simple story of a guy trying to sneak a duck into a movie theater. To do so, he places the duck in his pants. Once in the theater, he opens his fly to give it some air. The lady next to him sees the duck’s head popping out of the pants zipper and says to her friend, “Look at that.” Her friend responds with a shrug, “When you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.” To which the first woman says, “Yes, but this one is eating my popcorn.”
Now according to my old friend, I would tell this joke for 20 or 30 minutes. I’d do the voices of the duck owner, the ticket taker at the theater, the two old ladies, even the duck. I would push the joke farther than it was supposed to go, provide great detail and back stories, improvise and go on and on. My friend especially liked how I had the guy pleading with the ticket taker to let the duck in, saying the movie – a film starring Donald Duck – was his all-time favorite and his pet just had to see it.
I told this joke at parties back in the late ‘60s and reminded my friend that most people at those parties were using a substance that made them laugh at anything.
“It was marijuana telling the joke, and it was marijuana laughing at the joke” I said. “The joke, by itself, is not funny.”
He held his position and said the entire joke – which I certainly could not recollect – should have been included in The King of Ningxia. At this point, I had to explain why a short version is in the book, and what it was designed to do.
It occurs during a scene where the main character, the American male, tries to learn about Chinese culture by asking a Chinese person to tell a joke, to see if the humor translates. The person agrees and tells a story of a guy who sneaks his duck into a movie theater. (In real life, this is what happened when I asked for a joke). Rather than popcorn, this Asian duck eats the woman’s sunflower seeds, which is what Chinese people eat in movie theaters. The actual punchline is a bit different as well, but it is still the same joke. In response, the American tells his version of the joke, and they compare the two.
So, I say to my friend as we prepare to attend the reunion, “Do you see the purpose of the joke? It was not to get a laugh from the reader. It was to show that an aspect of culture can jump 10,000 miles across an ocean, from a capitalist country to a communist country, and be enjoyed by two entirely different people. It says something about the oneness of humanity, about the commonalities of our minds, about the strength of global reach, of geography’s inability to contain us and the uselessness of political barriers to stop the flow of information.”
“Yeah,” said my friend. “But when the guy in the joke practically gets on his hands and knees and cries, ‘It’s Donald Duck, his favorite actor. You’ve got to let him in.’ How could you not have included that?”
It was as if my friend was still smoking weed.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe in my next novel.”
I really should end this here, but in contrast to the duck joke, I want to relate a funny Chinese video – Chinese howl at this one – that Americans just don’t get. It’s a video of a street scene in China, and there is a horse in the street. A man walks by and pats the horse on the ass. The horse then violently kicks the man in the head.
Why is this funny?
It is funny because there is a famous Chinese saying that to get ahead, you must pat the horse’s ass, meaning you must suck up and flatter authority figures. People who don’t suck up are angry that those who do receive special privileges. Therefore, the video gives the non-suckers delight in showing that sucking up does not always work.
Are you laughing yet?
No? Did you hear the one about the duck in the movie theater?
(ALL NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY)
By Lanny Morgnanesi
When I first tuned into the FX/Hulu TV show called The Bear, which just concluded its third season, I had no idea it was about a restaurant. Actually, it’s about two restaurants. Season One opens in a popular but gritty eatery best known for its Italian beef sandwich. Season Three ends in a classy, upscale joint (run by the same people) where the food on each plate is equal in size and weight to a Snickers. The Chicago-based series is about many things, including the obsession with perfection. But it is also about restaurant culture, a culture I was exposed to from age 15 to 22; a culture that I liked, appreciate, and understood. It was more than a culture; it was an education, one that was rare and unique.
And it all came rushing back after watching The Bear.
As a teen, I was unaware of myself. I knew I was not especially athletic, or especially smart, or especially funny. Other than that, I was blank. I didn’t know my quirks and idiosyncrasies, and assumed I didn’t have any. Early awareness, however, began developing after I took a job washing dishes at a place I’ll call De Luca’s, a small suburban restaurant that mostly served pizza, hoagies, steak sandwiches, and pasta dishes.
At De Luca’s, dishes were washed by hand, in a triple sink, with one empty, one having sudsy water, and one having a rinsing solution. On my first day, I found myself appalled that a fellow dishwasher was dumping sauce-covered dishes right into the sudsy water, turning it red, meaning all other dishes, even cleaner ones, would have to be washed in a tomato broth. Although I was the least experienced person at the restaurant, with no stake whatsoever in its management, I insisted that the saucy dishes be rinsed in the open sink before being placed in the soapy water, and I took it upon myself to change the soapy water at regular intervals.
On a busy Saturday, I expressed panic when the senior chef and consiglieri, the uncle of the owner that every called “Uncle,” tried dropping a large stack of saucy dishes into my sink. I stopped him abruptly and told him I needed to rinse them first. He looked at me with one eye and said, “OK Mr. Clean.” From then on, Uncle always called me Mr. Clean.
Next in my restaurant education, I was forced to ponder the conflict between morality and capitalism. It centered primarily on the quantity and quality of certain ingredients.
Between lunch and dinner, the dishwashers helped making meatballs. There was a set recipe to follow, and it included what I thought was an overabundance of breadcrumbs. I was outraged and started calling them bread balls. Clearly, the customer was being cheated (although they did taste good). Later, I was shocked to learn that on All You Can Eat Pizza Night, less than half the regular portion of cheese was used. What shocked me more was that no one cared. Furthermore, we were instructed to cut the lunchmeat paper thin. There were some complaints, but only because it took longer. All this led me to feel like an abnormal outlier, a crusading do-gooder that no one listens to. Then, the Uncle restored my confidence in mankind.
When I was cutting salami for hoagies, he happened to walk by with one of the managers. He saw what I was doing, paused, and looked around the table where I was working. He looked on a nearby shelf. He picked things up and looked underneath then. His head went left and right. The manager standing by his side asked, “Is something wrong?” Uncle answered, “I was just looking for the razor you use to cut this salami.”
Salvation. I was not alone. Morality and fairness can at least be a minority voice in capitalism. Humanity had been saved.
De Luca’s owner, let’s call him Tony De Luca, did have his moments of generosity. At Christmas, every employee – even lowly dishwashers — received a gift, a nice one. And every supplier, the truck driver or whoever it was that brought in the cartons of canned tomatoes, the heavy sacks of flower, the produce, received a fifth of whiskey. Once a year, Tony, a member of the Kiwanis service club, would donate hundreds of hoagies for the club to sell at its fundraiser. My young mind thought: Wouldn’t it be better to not do these things and instead make the meatballs meatier? Ultimately, I concluded, with no evidence, that what appeared like generosity was actually business decisions with a positive financial return; that goodness and kindness had only a little to do with it.
Thus was my early grounding in American capitalism and the world of commerce.
Next came my realization that common-sense rules, made sacrosanct and beyond question, had their purpose.
Growing up, I don’t recall being faced with rules that couldn’t be bent or challenged. But in the restaurant business, such rules existed, and while they meant more work for me, I considered them logical and important. I was more than willing to comply.
Three of those rules were:
Break down all boxes before putting them in the Dumpster.
When putting new supplies on shelves, rotate the old stock to the front.
Do not leave the restaurant at night until it is thoroughly cleaned.
These rules, never written down, showed me people, even obstreperous ones, can be compliant in the interest of building a great institution or even a great civilization. This was an important lesson for a guy who had too many opinions of his own.
As a person who read books and intended to go to college, I felt superior to most of my restaurant co-workers. So, when they showed flashes of intelligence, as they often did, it caught me off balance. Once I was asked by a manager if I could operate a certain food processor. I said I could not, and he walked away. That’s when a guy named Freddy, who would spend his life in restaurants, told me, “You never say no. Say yes, and when they take you to the machine, say this one is a little different than the one you used. Ask him to show you the basics, and then teach yourself how to use the machine. You’re smart enough to do that.”
Basically, Freddy was telling me the adage, “Fake it until you make it,” which I hadn’t yet heard.
The educational level of De Luca workers was shown in their limited vocabulary, but some knew more than they let on. I recall a manager named Leon scolding a waitress, saying, “You know what your problem is? You’ve got ASS-mosis. Every time your ass sees a chair, it sits down.” After that, I had to assume he was familiar with the scientific process of osmosis, and Gpd knows what else.
Another vocabularic surprise came from a waitress who, during this period, might be described as “hard.” Rita used to hang out with her gang, drinking, smoking, and intimidating people on their “turf” behind a shopping center. She and I talked once about a De Luca’s employee who was fired. “The guy was a real jerk off,” Rita said, using a term often applied to people you don’t like. But then she added, “I mean he was literally a jerk off. He’d call you into the backroom and when you got there, he’d be stroking it.”
Writers and scholars often confuse the words “literally” and “figuratively,” but Rita, a young hoodlum, got it right.
De Luca’s was filled with thought-provoking characters and innumerable personalities. There was Ralph, who today would be persona non grata for his incessant use of sexual innuendo and inappropriate quips. We all thought he was funny, and – sorry — he was. Each year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he’d kindly tell every waitress, “Have a good holiday, but don’t get too much bird.”
Then there was Sidney, the brother of the owner’s wife. He was the kind of person only a relative would hire. Sidney fancied himself a tough, with-it guy who had learned everything from the streets. In truth, he was of genuine low intelligence, with a mumbled, tortuous way of speaking. He was difficult to understand, but he liked to talk. When he talked to me, I listened politely and just nodded my head.
Sidney took a liking to an obese young waitress with a clever mind and, unlike him, good verbal skills. She took to him, too, and they paired up for life – a short life. She died of kidney failure. He died trying to stop a robbery in progress.
I remember a Jewish guy who started working several years after I started. For some reason, he told us to call him Bean. He had shoulder-length hair and spoke like a Malibu surfer. One day, for a reason I cannot recall, I was contemplating the meaning of the Yiddish word “shiksa.” I didn’t know if it was a reference to all gentile woman, or just used to disparage them. During a slow period, I asked Bean, “What’s a shiksa?” Bean thought a moment, then pointed to a cute blonde waitress wearing a short skirt and showing cleavage. “You see her? That’s a shiksa.”
Funny story. Even funnier is he married her.
There was a pecking order at De Luca’s, with some holding high status and some holding low. Luther was one of high status. These were the ‘60s, and Luther was a full-blow hippie living the counterculture life. He was sarcastic and smart and knew things. At 19 or so he left home, married a hippie chick, got his own rundown apartment, plastered the walls with the covers of Rolling Stone magazine, and began working the grill at De Luca’s.
There was something about him, an air of mystery, or of danger, and he was treated like a celebrity by the other workers. Years later he came out as gay. Even later, he died of AIDS.
Old and young got along at De Luca’s. There was a middle-aged guy, Nico, who had been working lots of overtime. To perk himself up, he borrow some methamphetamine from a high school student working as a waitress. Then he borrow more, and more. I recall him up on the platform making pizzas on a busy Saturday night and the waitress who loaned him the drugs laughing loudly. “Look at Nico,” she said. “He’s speeding his ass off.” I just thought he was working fast.
Jocularity was always a part of work. A running joke or gag or bit would circulate and be repeated for weeks, until it was overused, dropped, and another gag adopted. There was a period when everyone called each other “cuz” – meaning cousin. Cuz this, cuz that. Hey cuz, get over here. Cuz, they are waiting for you. “Cuz” was used affectionately, to express like-mindedness, or ironically, to suggest strong disagreement. In cases of the later, the mock would sometime be answered with a sneering, “I’m not your cousin.”
I forgot what followed the “cuz” craze, but I was glad when it ended.
At De Luca’s, we were not all family, but we were close. Over time, we grew together, sharing large parts of lives. That happened with me and one of the partner’s daughters, let’s call her Melissa, who sometimes worked as a hostess.
When I first met Melissa, she was probably (hard to remember) 17. I may have been 19. Melissa was a special project. She was being groomed by her father, Nicholas, and Tony De Luca for the world of Show Business. She was their investment, and they expected a large payout. Several days a week, her father would shuttle her off to New York for dance, singing, and acting lessons. To protect their investment, Nicholas and Tony sheltered Melissa from boys, keeping her too busy to have time for them and directing her down a path they could not follow.
But one New Year’s Eve, everyone within and even without the De Luca circle was going to a huge party at a local night club. Melissa begged to be included. As a compromise, possibly as a controlled experiment, her brother-in-law (who also worked at the restaurant), enlisted me as her date. I was happy to oblige.
On New Year’s Eve, fresh through the door of the club, Melissa, whom I don’t believe ever drank, started doing shots. One after the other after the other. She was drunk in no time. After a dance or two, she grabbed me and led me out to my car. Then she jumped on me like a feverish cat. It was quite exciting. In the midst of that pleasure came a disturbing thought: I could loss my job. Worse, I could destroy Nick and Tony’s investment and they’d murder me. Neither possibility helped the mood.
Fortunately or unfortunately, there was a bang on my car door. It was the brother-in-law, who ordered us back into the night club. Yes, a controlled experiment.
In the aftermath, Melissa and I dated a little. On Saturday nights after closing, her father would finish up the bookkeeping while we’d wait in the car and neck. That was fun. But the most fun came for me one Saturday evening at a place called Paulie’s Starlite Ballroom, which was more of a bar than a ballroom. Saturday was a work night for me, Melissa and her father. However, an arrangement had been made that after closing, we would go to Pauli’s and Melissa, even though she was underage, would perform. And we did just that. I didn’t quite know what to expect, and I didn’t anticipate anything special, and nothing special happened. Even so, the simple experience of it, once I comprehended it, gave me a Sinatraesque feeling that put me on a cloud and transformed me into something I never thought I could be, even if it was only in my imagination.
There I was. Nineteen years old. At 2 a.m. Inside Paulie’s Starlite Ballroom. Being served shots and beers – for free. With my girlfriend up on a stage looking and singing like an angel.
Who was I? Obviously, someone very cool.
All from a humble beginning as a restaurant dishwasher.
When I watch The Bear, with all its gut-wrenchingly realism, I sometimes tear up. I did that during the Third Season’s finale, about the closing of a famous Chicago restaurant. There is a “funeral dinner” held to honor the restaurant, and restaurant people from all over town attend. When they filmed this scene, they included verité-like testimony from actual chefs. Toward the end, Olivia Colman, the actress playing the owner of the closing restaurant, gives a speech. She says of all the years and all the food, the one thing she will never forget are the people.
I was jubilant on my final day at De Luca’s. By then I was an assistant manager making pizzas. As I prepared to depart, there was no sadness, no melancholy, no regret. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, knowing that I would never again have to spend hot summers standing in front of two 450-degree ovens. My new destination was the University of Missouri, where I would earn a master’s degree in journalism. I looked so forward to a future where I would do something important and serve people who were hungry for news and information – not food.
But having now watched The Bear, I realize everything I’ve done since De Luca’s has been impacted by De Luca’s, and that my memories of Tony and Uncle and Bean and Freddy and Luther and Sydney and sweet Melissa and all the others are much stronger than of any professor at Missouri, or of any high dignitary I covered as a journalist. I also realized that the invisible energy and palpable excitement that invades and dominates a packed restaurant on a Saturday night, even to someone washing dishes, is indescribable, euphoric, and almost impossible to duplicate.
One final note.
In the early ‘80s, about a decade after I last saw Melissa, I was walking through the lounge at an Atlantic City casino. There was a stage and on it was a band fronted by an attractive, stylish woman. It was my old girlfriend, and she saw me. When the number ended, she ran off the stage to hug and kiss me. The audience watched and, God bless them, applauded.
Since writing my novel, “The King of Ningxia” (available on Amazon), I’ve been using TikTok to offer unconventional writing tips, the kind generally ignored by the literary world. Find them on TikTok by searching for my site, NotebookM. Here’s my latest advice video
notebookm.com 