Baltimore Trip Log

“The yearning had no object, no subject, it was just there. And maybe her mother was correct when she said it was ’eternity set in her heart’.”

Tues:  Why Baltimore? It was partially inspired by the atmospheric writing of one Ham of Bone, who wrote a novel about Edgar Allen Poe. Then too there was the draw of the Babe Ruth museum inspired by my reading of his biography by Jane Leavey. Then there was the sentimental angle that some of my ancestors sailed into port here in the late 1880s. Finally it’s old (by American standards). What more could you want? I’ve already been to NYC, Boston, and D.C. on the northeast coast, so it was either Baltimore or Philly.

Started off on the adventure by checking into the stately Lord Baltimore. They live up to their brand, with posh, old-fashioned lobby, classical music playing, and historical markers mentioning that Babe Ruth stayed here and Amelia Earhart attended a dinner here. There’s a lot of history in Baltimore, beginning with in 1662 with the first settlement, becoming a city in 1728, being the hometown of the Charles Carroll, Frederick Douglass, and Babe Ruth among many....

One of my short list of 8-10 “must see” ballparks happens to be in Baltimore. (List off the top: Wrigley, Fenway, Detroit, Yankee stadium, Dodger Stadium, SF park and Camden Yards.). Today I got to see Camden Yards. I love that I was able to walk there rather than Uber or drive and park. What a thrill to “live” close enough to walk to a ballpark. Thankfully the O’s are wOeful, so tickets were easy to come by. It helped that it’s a Tuesday evening I suppose. Maybe 9000 fans?
A google search shows attendance terrible in April: "The paying attendance of 6,585 last Monday night was the lowest crowd in Oriole Park at Camden Yards history, and that’s just the start of an ugly story."  (Amazingly, the Clippers draw about as many as Camden Yards!)

The park reminded me of our own Huntington Park in Cbus, not surprising since Huntington was modeled after this park I believe. I still think Great American’s more impressive, but this park is certainly charming and “old school”, built in ‘92 in the intentionally retro fashion.

My first surprise was during the penultimate line of the national anthem: “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave...”. I was startled by crowd yelling “oh!” (obviously because the Orioles are the O’s).

I find a spot in the right field stands just above the scoreboard where you can stand. I had no desire to hunt up my seat in the nosebleeds. And immediately, first half of inning number one, there’s a line drive headed directly for me and Lord it was hard-hit. I shamefully backed up instead of try to catch it but I felt better when the young guys next to me said they did the same thing, saying they weren’t gonna try to catch that thing. It’s a 21 foot scoreboard and he hit the 20 foot mark and I’m standing at 23 feet.

Post-game I looked for a convenience store and found one in a sketchy part of town. You know when the store has a sign saying, “No ski mask and hoodies inside the store” that it feels legit. I documented my bravery by taking a picture of it, making up for the backing away from the fly ball.

Wed:

Next up was the great Peabody Library. There was a Shakespeare concordance a mile thick and proof that Bardolatry was alive and well at time of publication. How many authors, save the Biblical ones, have concordances?

Words fail at the beauty of that “cathedral of books”, a masterpiece of a library. I walked around it, explored it’s side “altars”, took pictures and breathed the smell of old books. Thought it would be a great place to read except for the temperature (near freezing). I also considered how it’s kind of a shame that the Internet has taken over the knowledge search business, to a great extent. I kind of envy those 17th century learned souls who actually could read everything important enough to have been put on parchment. There was, then, a circumscribed limit to what we knew, while now it’s sort of hopeless.

Afterward I walked to Mount Vernon square and it was a stunner. Really it’s only equal were some I’d seen in London. Just plain beautiful. In the middle a great pillar to George Washington, completed well before the Washington Monument and far more attractive. Herman Melville wrote of it in Moby-Dick:

“Great Washington … stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’ pillars, his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go.”

A beautiful pool and fountain of a Naiad completed the tableau. On the other side another fountain, which wag once called "Washington's urinal".

Afterward I headed south to the Baltimore Basilica, the oldest in the United States. So much history there, including “visits from at least 15 saints or potential saints”. St. John Paul II, St. Mother Teresa in our day. The genesis of the Baltimore Catechism. The oldest churches in America, in “Mary’s Land”.

Afterward walked through Little Italy, including the street named for Nancy Pelosi (she grew up on the street). It was sad, kind of, seeing how little effect the efforts of so many priests and teachers could not keep her Catholic enough to vote like one. But so it’s always been; if our physical lives are vulnerable how much more our spiritual.

A guy with booming stereo speakers in his car sat at red light with his windows down, and you could hear an African-American motivational speaker exhorting from a half-mile away: “If you mind is weak, you a motherfucka! You’re no Schwarzaneggar. I don’t care if your body is strong, if your mind is weakling then you ain’t no f-cking Mr. T.”  Not in Kansas anymore.

I get a ride to Admiral Fell’s Inn on the wharf and walked the dock. The Fell Inn was okay but the feel of the area was very much like Columbus German Village and thus a bit too familiar. I wasn’t too sad about skipping out staying there.

Come 2pm I had a pretty-looking Guinness and lunch at The Horse You Rode In On Saloon, one frequented by no less than Edgar Poe. Including supposedly on his last day on earth.

This city is a highly social one. A loud, talkative city. At Barnes & Noble, you’d think there wouldn’t be a cacophony of voices, but there is - both inside and on the full-of-potential third floor outdoor covered deck. The downside of a social nature: loud arguments, this time a very angry young man in his 20s who was yelling and mad at a spurned lover but no one did anything for the 20 minutes it went on.

Sitting in Poe’s saloon today it felt ... hard to imagine him sitting in there. Sure, the wood looked old and perhaps even original, but... I thought about the elements that were different, starting with the way folks were dressed. And even if re-enactors came in, in period dress, it wouldn’t be the same. It would be phony, like a man dressing up like a woman. Plus there’s the language that’s changed, the proprieties, the customs and coinage and music and even the drinks, to some extent. Even if you got all those externals right, you can’t get inside their head - or can you? Are they basically the same as us on the inside? Or is the past like a “foreign country” and if you begin from such different world views and media inputs... Does it mean anything really that Washington slept here or Poe drank here if the externals have changed, let alone if what made them tick is foreign? Is it the externals - the horse and buggy and tight clothing - that makes them who they were or the shaping of ideas and world views?

We’re searching, I think, for solidarity with the past not so much on the cheap celebrity plane in which we get selfies with TV stars but that if Washington slept here than that some of his patina may rub off on us if we can imagine him being here. We can feel connected with him and thus connected to his patriotism and mission. Sort of the Jesuit school of spirituality: put yourself in the gospel scenes.

Thurs:

I didn’t see Poe’s original grave site on Wednesday and it turns out that’s where the famous “Poe Toaster” laid roses and cognac annually. Oddly, it almost feels like this legendary homage to Poe has eclipsed where his bones actually lie. Or at least it feels just as iconic. It seems strange that the choice of cognac toast was not where his bones are, but it does feel like I missed something in not seeing that shrine. (Later: saw the original site on my way to Ruth museum.)

Lovely morning. The only downside of this hotel room is the dearth of natural light. But I sit next to the nearly lightless window surrounded by buildings, prop my footsore feet on the bed and read my purchase at B & N yesterday: The Judge Hunter by Christoper Buckley. Set in the olden time of the 1660s, it’s a tasty read so far. Something about those old Puritans that attracts.

Walked in the surreal heat and wonder-sun (it sure feels like the South here, and we are south of Mason-Dixon) to the Babe Ruth Museum. Some really “interesting” streets, hard-looking for sure. The museum highlight was the rosary that he carried with him all his days and which were hanging on his hospital bedpost when he died. His love and outreach to sick children reminded me that despite his faults he sure had some huge virtues.

Then walked to Poe house, straggling down dull-looking, unshaded streets towards the manna of air-conditioning. The house was ok; he lived there only two years and I feel like it wasn’t a formative influence, didn't feel like he'd haunt it. And I’ve never been that much into Poe although I appreciate his genius and influence.

Ubered to Washington Monument and felt in sync with driver. He lived most of his life in Cincy and Indiana and wants Skyline Chili in Maryland pronto. Said he roots for Reds/Bengals “when they’re good”, which means not much of late. Said he can’t root for Ravens since all his friends are Ravens fans and he wants to be the contrarian. He said people are much different in Midwest, more laid back and more accepting of obstacles. Uptight types in Baltimore apparently.

A return visit to the Peabody Library. It seems the sense of satisfaction the space presents is that all knowledge could be contained within. Or at least all written knowledge as circa 1750. It’s the same desire to complete a baseball card set, to collect all cards issued in one year. Similarly this container of books acts like a complete set of knowledge, or seems to promise it.

And of course there’s the pleasing “variation within order”, like a symphony. The varied hues of books versus the stately repetitive order of the balconies and cornices and wrought iron, all of muted grey with gold relief. Very much a great sense of order and cleanness here.

It’s like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. Or a super large six-layer wedding cake.

Afterward, since the art museum was free and close by, I headed there and looked at some great art... Dawdled over dinner plans; I wasn’t particularly hungry but felt like I wanted to get it over with. Finally the weather decided - a storm coming in 6 minutes! Had to hustle back to hotel just in time. Well, thirty seconds to spare. Kindle, iphone and AirPods represented vulnerable electronics on me. 

Next up is Ascension Thursday Mass at the traditionalist parish of St. Alphonse. Only time you can view the church is when it’s open for Mass so...when in Baltimore, .... Read up on it and it was built in the mid-1800s and was pastored at one time by St. John Neumann! Wow. Likely the first U.S. parish I’ve ever attended Mass which was pastored by a saint. I imagined the saint preaching from that same (extremely) high pulpit.

It was known as the “German parish” back in the day, and it’s gothic to the max. Unabashedly gothic. It has a lot going on, a million statues. It’s sort of like every single space in the church has some flourish. I had hoped for a short half-hour mass but it was a Latin high mass, which means long mass, but I couldn’t seem to justify skipping out early and thus skipping communion in favor of getting back to hotel for beer o’clock. Just a really bad look there, so I stayed and profited.

I thought of how Babe Ruth’s mentor, the guy who changed his life, was a Catholic religious at St. Mary’s Industrial School, and how that fellow ought be the famous one. The greater our grasp of reality the more our celebrities are the saints and religious heroes. Brother Matthias Boutilier was a Canadian who moved to the States and became a Xavierian brother at age 20, in 1892.

Baltimore was the second U.S. city to have a presence of the teaching brothers; first was Louisville, KY in the mid-1800s. The order was begun in 1839 by a former Dutch shoemaker, Theodore James Ryken. 

So the road for Ruth’s success began with a humble shoemaker who, at age 19, felt a calling to God to become a Catechist.

__

Not my idea of entertainment: 

Skye acknowledged that some Baltimore teens seem to use public spaces as an opportunity to meet and hash out beefs — something she feels is a form of play that has become more common.

"It gets boring, so they try to make fun out of anything,” she said of her peers. “It's entertaining to watch a fight. You get videos out of it or bragging rights.”

Fri:

Did an hour walk towards downtown east and south. Very pleasant warm and sunny day. Got to love the nearing summer equinox. Saw the modest red light district; with the tree-lined streets and absence of actual red light it seemed almost gentrified. It's right by the police station, ironically or not.

___

Postscript: Feel a bit of pine for olde Baltimore, the baroqueness of it, the germination of Catholic America, the dare of slum streets, the small but real thrill of finding a “clean, well-lighted place” for morning breakfasts, the twilight at Camden Yards, the breath-take and peace of Peabody Library, the bright, beautiful sunlight, the topography of Federal Hill, the run till the (near) rain to Lord Baltimore, the classical music and elegance therein, the plenitude of hat ladies wearing their grandiose hats, the excitement of the check-in and checking out the new pad, the light of the old Cathedral, the graveyard worthy of Savannah and her ghosts, the cigar enjoyed mid-city, the somber London-fog view out the hotel window, the squirreling of beers and chocolate cake in the ‘fridge, the puzzling if pleasing interior of the Barnes & Noble’s at Inner Harbor, the refresh of fresh reads on Baltimore and Poe and a novel of early America, the retracting Ruth’s & Pelosi’s youthful steps, and the theater of how a minute into the Oriole’s game there’s a double a foot below me...


Reading Bone’s book
At the boneyard
Where Poe ghosts trellis
Beside the greystones.

Later at lordly Lord Baltimore
Inked sheets of King-sized expanse
Emblemed flora and font-a
Olde English ye
The lush of covenant time
I lozenged the lilting silence
Waiting for a boredom that never came.

Mornings brought the stream-sun
Amid the salmon-run
north to the wonder-bus of a breakfast joint
pregnant with tweed’d professors and the gilt-interior
Befitting a former bank.

The plaintive rain drops outside St. Alphonsus Liguori
(Oh, Grandma’s Liguorian magazines!)
Mornings mapping out le’ day,
Evenings in the 19th century,
And the lure of the lobby and its Mozart and leather couches
Where laptops like lit jewels spawned from wired girls.

.

Politicians, Bishops, and Other Swear Words

So the U.S. bishops are gathering in Baltimore to rearrange chairs on the deck of the U.S. Catholic Titanic. A few things come to mind: One, why is it that groups and committees are so ineffective? I’m thinking of Congress as well as the bishops. A decent number of individuals within these groups seem reasonably smart or well-intentioned and yet as a group they mire in a blackhole-like suckitude. It’s a mystery. They say the only effective committee in history, the exception that proves the rule, was the one that created the King James Bible.

We see it on a federal level in that the branch most effective is the executive, answering to one. The second most effective is the judicial, answering to nine. And the least effective, the one begging the other two to take away the little power it occasionally exercises, has hundreds.

The other thing that comes to mind is how disgust at bishops rhymes with our disgust with politicians, which could be because bishops act like politicians. What are the prime characteristics of a politician?

1. He values his job and reputation more than the common good.
2. He refuses to call a spade a spade (in D.C., a gaffe is said to occur when someone inadvertently speaks a truth).
3. He spouts content-free bromides that are intended to be inoffensive and speak to the widest possible audience.
4. He abhors transparency and accountability.

But these characteristics can lead to a disgust that leads to whistle-blowers. Trump, for sure, who calls spades spades and tells all sorts of inconvenient truths, inconvenient as far as if his goal is to expand his base. Pope Francis was intended by the cardinals to whistle-blow the corrupt Vatican bank, but alas he turned out to be corrupt as well. And Cardinal Viagno, the volatile anti-politician who leaked that McCarrick had been under sanctions and that Francis essentially lifted them, is the whistle-blower extraordinaire.

One thing the bishops have done is give priests and laypeople a chance to bond, a “misery-loves-company” feeling, both laboring under a cringeworthy hierarchy.

Liz Breunig on McCarrick’s, “Actually, No Thanks..."

Lino Rulli, the Catholic Guy on SiriusXM admitted he no longer finds Pope Francis the most interesting person in the world. If you’ve lost Lino...(well, Lino says he still loves Francis)... but he’s turned off by how the pope will say something like women ought to be more involved in the highest levels of the Church and then does nothing, as if he as Pope has his hands completely tied on the matter.

I’m disappointed in Francis for other reasons, like saying he couldn’t recall being told that McCarrick was a problem. So many clerical abusers, so easy to forget..

WaPo columnist Liz Breunig has an insightful take on her podcast on the situation as it stands:

I think [the confirmation of sanctions on McCarrick] shines an interesting light that what’s going on in the Church right now because I think for the majority of us the sex abuse crisis and its coverup look like an issue of a powerful institution making calculated moves to protect itself. What this suggests instead is that a lot of the coverup is due to lawlessness and weakness in the institution, where you have attempts by senior Vatican officials including Pope Benedict to censure McCarrick, by stopping him from traveling on behalf of the Vatican and putting an end to his fundraising and therefore his power, and McCarrick just says, ‘Actually, no thanks on all those penalties.’ 

And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. The Vatican secretary of state and Benedict and the nuncio, none of them were able to do nothing about it. How are you going to enforce it? They basically rely on guys like McCarrick saying, ‘ok, that’s fine I’ll respond to these sanctions and take them seriously out of the goodness of my heart’. But is he really going to do that? No. It looks like an institution that’s stumbling and scrambling in light of the crimes of the powerful...

This time it picked up media interest. So then you had an authority outside the Church that was able to pressure the Church, which appeared to not only cause the Church to act but it served as an enforcement mechanism for McCarrick: How are you going to travel around, go do fundraising events and be “good Uncle Ted” if the entire media is focused on you with a fury. You become like Harvey Weinstein, you can have all the power and money in the world but as long as there is this enormous force of the media, and then of course the point of which it all became publicized the civil authorities got involved. Then enforcement became a real possibility and eventually the Vatican did take the highest measures against him. That was helped along and made possible essentially by media sanctions, a force outside the Church...

She goes on to say how ironic that integralism is given how the Church can’t even govern itself.  She summarizes:

The rock and the hard place is that really only the civil authorities and the media can do anything for them [to clean up corruption], but at the same time the media and authorities hugely diminish the institutional prestige that they’re trying to cultivate by exposing the great weakness and infirmity that was hidden in the institution...I don’t what the answer is in terms of how do you recover an ability in the institution to self-govern, I don’t know that there is a way to do that in contemporary life.

The Storyteller

I had occasion to use an Uber recently, and I feel “taken” by the driver. Feel like a sucka. “Jeffrey” self-reports* as a 60 y/o black, married 39 years, with a brother & sister who are Black Panthers, has a best friend whose son played in Super Bowl, that best friend was drafted by the Eagles but was shot in the head which ended his career though not his life. Has 96-y/o father living with his sister and drove till 93. Has a cyst in stomach that at any day could rupture (cysts aren’t fatal - found via google so I know it's true). Has son who pitches for the Texas Longhorns, a Junior (rhp) with 97mph fastball and who has put his name in for the 2019 mlb draft but has a plan B, an internship at KPMG.

So the level of detail here is pretty astonishing given it seems likely it was all made up. I suspect that’s his hobby, lying to the Uber passengers, telling made up stories. Because his kid isn’t on the Texas roster for ‘18 or ‘19, and isn’t eligible for the draft this year. No one going by the name he gave me is in draft. So I’m thinking the whole fantastic story about his friend getting shot in the head and not dying was made up as well.  Gull, meet ible, ible meet gull.

So I spent WAY too much time trying to nail down his story in order to return my faith in humanity.

* - I've decided to self-identify as a great novelist.

Friday Four

It’s funny how any time work lets us go early on a holiday weekend, everybody in our neighborhood is already home. I got home around 3pm and Dave, 28, is home working in his yard. As was neighbor Ron, 45, and other neighbor Larry, 55, and Mike down the street, 36. (All ages approximate.). It’s really like I wonder if anyone works anymore. It’s like I live in a retirement villa only everyone is young enough to be working.
___

It’s funny how enthused I get about the smallest of things regarding the new Honda. Like how I can open it without getting the keys out, or how there’s a small compartment above me that holds my sunglasses. You press on it and it releases a mirror and, of course, the sunglasses. The ergonomic ease of use is what pleases. And yet it’s a ridiculously tiny savings of energy over where I used to put them, in the door of the driver’s side. And I should want to move more, stretch more, even to the point of cursing those (wonderful) automatic windows that roll down sans effort. “Ease of use” is not how humans have evolved. Use it or lose it.

Part of my appreciation is surely the cool factor, of something hidden coming to light like how some rooms have a bookcase that when you press a button moves out and reveals a hidden room. Or like how James Bond could press a button in his apartment and his bed folds out. This was a tool in his seduction ploy, by making the barrier to entry, so to speak, between making out and sleeping together less cumbersome.

__

Oh the astonishment of summer eves after the grind of winter! How fresh this season of May with her long tresses of days and occasionally jaw-dropping warmth? How regal this season before the flies and mosquitoes and humidity, when bounties come without price.

__

Intrigued by Blinkist - a little 15-minute summary of thousands of non-fiction books. I’m on the free trial period now and gobbled up Fukayami’s Idenity about, what else, the bane rise of identify politics. His thesis is that Socrates said man needs three things: physical necessities (food, water, etc), rational thinking (i.e. ability to forego rotten meat even if hungry) and thymos which “yearns for dignity and recognition from other people”. That explains a lot, he says, like how the gay movement was not just about getting treated fairly but being positively viewed and esteemed. The rise of it just as religion gets downplayed makes sense because if you don’t have a view of your dignity as child of God you’ll seek it in other lesser incantations like your skin color and sexual preference. He says that individualism combined with identity politics has made the government become on the hook for its citizen’s mental health and so therefore is in the business of laws toward that goal (like “hate” crimes).

Also read a biography of Martin Luther and a bit on Brexit. It’s a pretty cool way to digest books I would never likely read but for this app - or it might just lead me to buy these books based on the snippets.

My Prediction: the McCarrick File Resides Permanently in File 13

Still pondering the whole McCarrick thing and whether there's a responsibility for the Vatican to be transparent in explaining who enabled it.

Journalist John Allen wrote recently:

“It’s been more than five months since the Vatican promised a review of its [McCarrick] files, and nothing has been reported. One obvious question is why American bishops, either publicly or privately or both, aren’t being more vigorous in demanding that the Vatican deliver, since they’re the ones most exposed to pastoral blowback over the failure to do so.

One answer is this: Bishops everywhere, very much including the U.S., hesitate to do anything the boss and his team might perceive as disloyal. By now, being seen as siding with Viganò is regarded by Francis allies as virtually a sin against the Holy Spirit, and unless a bishop has been living under a rock, he’s gotten the memo."

The refusal of Francis to allow the U.S. bishops to police their own really opened my eyes (back in November) and I think the lack of pushback from the U.S. bishops during that conference wasn't their finest hour.

Perhaps all of this even leads to Pope John Paul II.  The question I keep coming back to is perhaps a prudential one and thus without an easy answer: at what point is there “too much” transparency? Are there some church clergy “too big to fail”?  Is it true the only way to prevent something from happening again is understanding how it happened, or does that ignore the fact that institutions can change merely from immense pressure without airing every secret? It’s perhaps an act of mercy to save reputations, but if so where do you draw the line -- the Church has obviously had problems in the past saving reputations of priests by moving them around after cases of abuse.

The average parishioner is stuck between folks with agendas: journalists, to uncover the story heedless of consequences, and bishops/popes who want to bury the story, heedless of consequences.

I’m certainly not hopeful that Cbus Bishop Brennan will show fortitude on this issue given his newness to the office and his appointment by Francis.

A bishop or pope with lots of credibility is Pope Benedict, who recently put out a letter that is much along the lines of "wheat and tares" and makes no mention of the issue of transparency that I saw. He might feel crimped, of course, given his pledge of silence (though the letter itself is a breaking of silence).

I go back to a couple of things: one, is that perfidy in popes is “permitted”, certainly by God, in the sense that we understand there have been bad, immoral popes and don’t have a lot of control over it and that it doesn't change the status of the Church.  Therefore I should not be surprised that bishops, who are essentially unsupervised popes of their diocese, are similarly bad. The high view of the role of bishops in the Church tends to explain the lack of supervision and accountability they experience. So it is what it is. Hence the famous biblical analogy is the wheat and tares even within the hierarchy.

Secondly, McCarrick’s rise was partially due to his skill at fundraising, and one could look at it in the way Mother Teresa accepted donations from bad folks. You accept help from whatever source, regardless of the iniquity of that source. Of course where it differs with McCarrick was a source of bad behavior directly affecting the church in other ways, seminaries, etc. But then I go back to the point above about their "right to be evil" without molestation, just as tares are allowed to grow without molestation until the harvest.

Also there’s a truism that Americans tend to look at admin policies instead of spiritual solutions, the latter being the only truly effective measure.

We’ll Always Have ‘16

Continued my every-six-months hobby of tuning in via YouTube to 2016 election coverage. It’s ironic I get more pleasure from the election of someone I didn’t vote for than in any election previous.  I guess seeing the gods get stuffed is the stuff of legends. Akin to a Patriots-hater seeing Tom Brady lose.

This time I watched CNN. Wolf Blitzer robotically gave the numbers, constantly using the adjective “impressive”, as in “impressive lead in North Carolina”. He was touched when numbers changed rapidly, showing the enthusiasm of a small child observing a bouncing ball.

There were only two analysts, a blonde gal and Jake Tapper, and they seemed smart and sober and not crying in their beer. Not much opportunity for schadenfreude on my part. Tapper seemed unduly worried about the markets which in hindsight is hilarious given how the Dow has spiked since Trump took office.  His concern over the price of gold hasn’t aged well.  The moment du jour though was when Jake looked incredulously into the camera and said, “Donald Trump was right and all the pundits wrong about the polls and reaching disaffected voters.” This feels deja vu given how similarly Trump said “no collusion” while everyone in D.C. had Trump going to jail. The media likes to gamble all their chips on iffy propositions. But at least they’ll always have the inaugural crowd size (i.e. the really important stuff).

It certainly seemed like these two CNN’rs were far more awake and alert to what was happening than the crowd at ABC, who dined on denial a good deal longer.  They didn’t have as much air time but when they were on they were made insightful comments and took their loss manfully, which was kind of inspiring in its own way.  (Although I only made it till around the 9:30pm mark, so although by then they knew what was happening I didn’t see if despair came later.)

Proof GOP is More Bipartisan than Dems

We hear often from the hard right that Republican officeholders are squishy when it comes to principles compared to Democratic officeholders.

And based on non-partisan evidence...they're right.

Republicans are much more likely to work with Democrats than vice-versa. You can see that from the non-partisan work of the Lugar Center.  A whopping 9 of 10 of the most bipartisan senators are Republican, while 8 of 10 of the least bipartisan ones are Democrat:

http://www.thelugarcenter.org/ourwork-Bipartisan-Index.html

The simplest and most likely explanation is that the media media protects and allows extremism in Ds more than with Rs.

Regardless, it takes a lot more courage to be a conservative in Washington than a liberal given the twin pressures of elite opinion and the grass roots progressive groups (who camp out in offices, harass senators in elevators, etc...).

How Can an Asian Possibly Even Relate to This Ad?

I'm always amused by how painstakingly circumspect advertising photos are these days. It's never accidental and I find it especially ridiculous because it's as if no human can identify with another human unless they're the same skin color, gender or non-gender, etc... It's anti-science for one thing, given how much we have in common DNA-wise.

In this case, a company recognition program called "Bravo" shows a team giving themselves high fives:



So let's do the math; insert tongue in cheek. We have five individuals:

40% women.
40% black, although guy on right is a tweener, maybe half-black, so 30%.
20% young white male hipster.
20% with some age on them. 

Reasonably well distributed, but if I were Hispanic or an Asian... (the latter is the last acceptable prejudice).  Heck maybe the guy on right is Hispanic and we can check that box off.

Comfy in Your Own Skin Metric

So it occurred to me that one of the characteristics of Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Reagan and Clinton was a supreme comfort in their own skin combined with some measure of charisma (W. Bush being the exception, but he was running against Albert Gore and John Kerry so he looked like Elvis).

I wondered how to view this admittedly subjective metric with regard to the 2020 race (and 2016).

In 2016, of all the GOP contenders, those truly comfortable with themselves combined with some measure of charisma were: Christie, Trump, and Huckabee.  Christie was fatally wounded by the bridge incident, and Huckabee never caught fire for whatever reason (some say that 2012 was "his moment", which he missed).  I liked Rand Paul but I suspect part of that was simply that I liked what he was saying, which is sort of why so many liked Trump. My father-in-law said exactly that, that Trump was saying what he wanted to hear and that's why he liked him.

There's a very thick overlay between liking what you hear and liking the person. I see that with many Catholic priests who, for me, can be very dry and charisma-lite, but because they are talking about things I wholeheartedly agree with (even if in a trite way), I like them, feel a kinship. 

So teleporting to 2020, my exposure to Democrat candidates is small given that what they say is generally nails-on-chalkboard. But based on the comfort in skin and charisma characteristics you could say that Biden and Bernie (and Buttigieg from what I hear) are extremely comfortable in their own skin.  For that reason they could be formidable candidates for Trump.  Biden and Bernie are Trump-like as far as bluntness, outrageous statements and insults, although the insults are more general than specific as in Trump's case.

My sense is that the easy candidates for Trump to defeat would include Booker, Warren, Beto and Gillibrand. I haven't seen much of Harris to even guess.

What's interesting is how when a party tries to win over the other side with folks who they think the other side might like, it mostly goes up in flames.  Like McCain, Romney, Kerry, Gore.  Gore was a Southern Democrat who didn't talk like Dukaksis. Kerry was seen as the calm alternative to the wild-eyed Howard Dean and was a military vet, which was "against type" given the liberal ethos.  Romney of course set up health care in MA and McCain bucked his party maverickly.

All of them failed.  Is Biden the "calm alternative" (to Sanders this time) like Kerry was - and thus a failure in the making - or is he completely different than Kerry since he's comfortable in his own skin and a friendly pol unlike the reserved New Englander Kerry?

A decent test is if a conservative can listen to someone from the other party and not be disgusted.  I could listen to Clinton in 1991 and not be repulsed (that came later).  I could listen to Obama similarly in 2007 (that came later).  Bernie passes this test now with me, so by this metric Sanders is the most electable 2020 candidate.  Perhaps in a perverse way the conservative's greatest friend may well be the DNC and the other Democratic elites who want anybody but Bernie.

Recent Reads

Watched television show documenting building cabins off grid, and I got a kind of small pleasure in seeing the wood beams wrapped in some sort of vapor layer, a thin layer of fabric that protects the wood from the elements.

It reminds me how satisfying it was to learn that the ancient Newgrange monument in Ireland, made of stone 4000+ years ago, has never had a leak.

I think my appreciation could be related to water flowing indoors, both downstairs in the basement and upstairs (twice, in separate incidents!) due to imperfections of the sunroom build, since corrected. Or maybe simply appreciating a hint of permanence in an impermanent world.

And I think of how the stone and windows of Notre Dame cathedral were apparently able to withstand that great fire.

So now I seem to get a perverse joy in defeating Mother Nature, to the extent we can.

Nice Peggy Noonan piece:

Finally, people sense Notre Dame is most powerful and central in its moments of suffering. “The Greek word for church is ecclesia people gathered together. On the night of the fire it was gathering people together,” literally, around the church and around the world. “Notre Dame is most potent gathering them in suffering.”

This reminded me of something someone said on social media after the spire fell: Maybe the old church burst into flames so we would look at it and really see what it is.

Interesting point, and certainly I’ve actually had far more interest in the cathedral now than before, going so far as to watch a documentary on amazon Prime Video.

What’s intriguing to me is how I wonder much we’d have remembered Jesus had he not been crucified. Certainly his crucifixion dominates the gospel accounts. Obviously had he not been risen Christianity also would not have taken off, but it’s as if you need both the suffering and the rising to have effected maximum attention from people.
__

Also read more about the fascinating artist Eric Gill. The guy had no scruples, no sexual morals, but was courageous, generous, and eccentric. And he was a pacifist/socialist who wanted the altar in the middle of church with everyone gathered around it like a meal. Seems a bit of a prophet given Vatican II and the general direction of the church, an errant direction one could persuasively argue.

He had a lingering illness at the end and was downcast but more importantly was said to have had a peaceful death, receiving viaticum and confession. “Sin boldly” he did. He seemed naive about evil and seemed to think there was no such thing as intrinsic evil and was taken aback and undermined by the shock of Nazi Germany. He was neglectful of the possibility of sexual sin, a priest asking him if he had somehow been protected from the Fall. (He had the good sense to put “Pray for me” on his tombstone.) Unlike modern libertines, he did seem to eschew masturbation and contraception.

“If naked bodies conceal a hell-hunger of lust, they can and do kindle a hunger for heaven.” -Gill