April,  come she will,  but May, she will stay.

What If

 What if the kindness of strangers is not forthcoming.

 Still, it's important not to overrate what Carlson's leaving means for Fox News. Fundamentally, nothing has really changed for the network. As we learned from the Dominion lawsuit, Fox's profitability depends on pandering to a MAGA audience that's drunk on the increasingly baroque conspiracy theories they pick up on social media. Carlson is an especially talented purveyor of disinformation, but his commitment to unadulterated nonsense is the norm on the network. With or without Carlson, Fox News will remain a fact-averse propaganda network for the far-right.

-Salon.com

Making Sense of Paul

 The scholarly literature on Paul is massive and exhausting.  There is no way I can read it all and come to scholarly conclusions of my own.  All I can do is scape the top of some of it and come to some tentative conclusions of interest to me personally.  Pauline have always disagreed amongst themselves. What can do?

Did Paul's calling as an apostle Gentiles lead him to forsake his background and therefore renounce Judaism in favor of Jesus---his goepel of Jesus Christ raised from the dead for our salvation in the soon to be establishment of God's kingdom on earth?  I say no.  Paul did not renounce Judaism for Jews.  Jews were going to be saved in the soon coming climax of history along with Jesus believers.

Did Paul know what he believed from the outset or was he feeling his way along trying to figure things out as he went along.  I say yes.

The traditional view of Paul is that he preached against the Law and Israel. I surely hope this view is wrong.

Paul did not become a Christian because the nascent Christian religion did not yet exist.

The current consensus is that for Paul his central was Gentiles and their place in the Jesus movement.

Paul was not a theologian of the universal human condition.

Paul has to be understood totally within the context of his personal historical situation.

Paul's world rapidly ended. His world is not our wold.

 Who goes first at a 4-way stop? According to Sigmund Freud, it goes back to your early childhood. Interesting conjecture like why did the chicken cross the road? Paper, rock, or scissors? Who's your daddy? Good for about 3 minutes of conversation. Which is about the length of most conversations these days.

 Education in Florida: SHUT YO' MOUTH! A funny way to educate our young people. Sounds more like indoctrination.

 I used to know some interesting things like I could recite the Pythagorean Theorem, the Gettysburg Address, and the words to "Louie, Louie." I could even intelligently discuss the menu at Applebees with experienced passion and hold my own in a discussion of "Moby Dick." My riff on the whiteness of the whale would cause people to swoon.

All of that is gone now, and all I have left to talk about now are rerurns of "Diagnosis Murder" and the best lunch in Montgomery in 1978. Unfortunately I don't know anybody who cares about these things. Not half the man i used to be, I feel the Victorian vapors settling in.

Peter Golenbock - Whispers of the Gods - Notes

 Finally a book about baseball memories from my era---the 50's and 60's---first hand accounts from personal interviews by the author.  This is nostalgia dripping nonstop.  "Tales from baseball's golden age told by the men who played it."  An epitome of ORAL HISTORY, the players speaking for themselves.

JIM BOUTON

The author was friends with Jim Bouton.  Ralph Houk was a good manager, but a company man all the way when he stepped up to the GM job after the '63 season.  After winning 21 games in '63 Bouton asked for a $10,000 raise.  He held out briefly and settled for $8,500 with mean Ralph Hour.  Houk had no say in the hiring of Yogi Berra as his successor as manager.  Despite winning the pennant in 1964, Houk fired Yogi because he simply didn't like him.

(Chatting with Trent, retired academic, who taught at Fordham in the Bronx and who is a big Yankees fan and Mickey Mantle fan)  

 Johnny  Keane didn't work out as the Yankee manager in 1965.  The vaunted Yankees had a certain culture and Keane did not fit in.  P. 10

The Yankees had a losing record in 1965.  Twenty games into the '66 season Keane was fired.  The Yankees were out of contention for the next decade.  An amazing decline of that historic franchise.  P. 1

ED FROELICH

Ed Froelich was a trainer who knew Babe Ruth (he called himself Baby).  The greatest character in the history of the game and arguably the greatest baseball player ever.  Two points.  He did not point to a homer in that series against the Cubs.  Babe seldom hit homeeruns to centerfield, always to right field.  Why would he had pointed to centerfield.  This account puts an end to that legend.  Also, he really was a great pitcher.  He could change speeds.  He could hit spots.  He had movement on his pitches.  Case closed.

MARTY MARION

Marty Marion, long-time all-star shortstop for the  Cardinals, talks about the thrill of playing the Yankees in the World series in Yankee Stadium,  I can only imagine the thrill.  P. 28

If you don't like Stan, you don't like anybody, a real country boy.  P. 30

When Ted Williams bounded around the bases with his homer in the 1946 all-Star game, he said to Marty Marion as he rounded second base, "Don't you wish you could hit like that"  P. 33

Country Slaughter scored the winning run in the 7th game of the World Series in 1946 from first on a single to left field.  Johnny Pesky, th cut-off man, had his back to the plate, and no one told him to throw home.  Slaughter was not going to stop no matter what.   P. 34

Marion's defense of the Cardinals regarding Jackie Robinson, that he knew of no threat of a strike by the Cardinals over Robinson, rings  hollow.  Marion does himself no favors in his account here.

REX BARNEY

The first major league game Rex Barney saw he pitched in it.  P. 40

Rex Barney says that Pee Wee Reese was Jackie's greatest champion, more so than Mr. Rickey.

Barney says that Pee Wee put his arm around Jackie.  Mrs. Robinson says that never happened.

Mr. Rickey traded people right away who did not desire to play with Jackie like Stankey.  P. 45

The abuse that Jackie Robinson was horrendous.  P. 45

Jackie Robinson was the most exciting player he ever saw.  P. 46

STAN MUSIAL

Native of Pennsylvania.

Though a Pirates fan, his father signed his 17-yr son to a Cardinals contract. P. 52

He started in the minors as a pitcher.  Had a strong arm in high school.  Every HS has at least one kid who could throw hard.

stan is not bashful about bragging on himself.  P. 54

The Cardinals outdrew the Browns but the fans were pulling for the Browns at Sportsman Park.  P. 55

"Money was secondary in those days," Stan says.  Hard to believe.  P. 56

JIM BROSNAN

Clearly a most literate baseball player.

TED WILLIAMS

The Splendid Splinter praise Shoeless Joe Jackson.  Indeed, why is Shoeless Joe not in the HOF?

GENE CONLEY

One of only 13 athletes to play both professional basketball and professional baseball.

PHIL RIZZUTO

He says he was the last of the old guard Yankees after DiMaggio retired because Casey wanted him gone in favor of the young kids who would be loyal to him.  P. 115

RON SANTO 

Ron Santo iwas a great third baseman and one of the great gentlemen of the game.

ROY CAMPENELLA

Maris was a great all-around baseball player, though he will always be known primarily for the 61 homer's in 161 and the home run race with Mickey Mantle.  That 1961 season was the most memorable baseball srson of my youth.

His 1957 Tops vasevball card is my all-time favorite.

One of the all-time great catchers in major league baseball.  Started in the Negro Leagues with the Baltimore Elite Gains.  He was the second African American baseball player to break the color barrier. He became the Dodgers catcher in 1948 and wen to with NL MVP recognition in 1951, 1953, and 1955.  His tragic accident ended his baseball ended his career before he could play in Los Angeles.

Grew up in Philadelphia.  Bought his first for $25 and had to push it off the lot.  As a kid worked for 25 cents a day.  Started playing for the Elite Gians in 1937 at the age of 15.  

ROGER MARIS

Maris was a great all-around baseball player, though he will always be known primarily for the 61 homer's in 161 and the home run race with Mickey Mantle.  That 1961 season was the most memorable baseball srson of my youth.

 I have always wanted to be Bohemian but I don't know how. How can a man be Bohemian if he's from a small town in Alabama, likes to wear knit shirts, and he's not sure what the word means anyway? Still: Since I'm not tall, dark, and handsome I'd like to be Bohemian to add some style to my persona. I have a great hair hat. That's a start.

 Now I've got to give credit to the Dunning-Kruger Effect: incompetence doesn't recognize itself. We've got something here to hang our hat on. In other words, if you're stupid and ignorant you don't know it.

 Who needs books, who needs to read serious writing, who needs critical thinking skills, who needs libraries, who needs to be educated, who needs what should be the common knowledge of our civilization? You can find everything you need on your own on the internet. Right?

One Can Immediately

 The truth is, the "grooming" accusation is a particularly brittle fig leaf, and not just because the books in question are clearly not pornographic. The war on libraries is part of a larger GOP assault on the very concept of public provision of education in any form. Part of the reason is a larger right-wing skepticism of the concept of a "common good." In 2019 for the New York Times, journalist Monica Potts wrote about how her small community of Van Buren County, Arkansas had gone to war over the existence of the library. This was before the current book-banning craze, and so the anti-library forces in her community were more upfront about why they wanted the library gone: Because Republicans believed that it was a "waste of taxpayers' money" to provide that resource. In her interviews with residents, Potts discovered a deep hostility among conservatives to the very idea of learning and education, and a desire "to keep people with educations out." 

"Call me narrow-minded but I've never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree," one resident told her.

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"The people who didn't frequent the library argued that the community didn't really need it anymore, anyway," Potts writes. "After all, if you have internet, you can get whatever you want in a day."

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One can immediately understand, in the age of Donald Trump, how turning people away from books and towards the internet benefits the anti-democratic desires of the GOP. Books range in quality, of course — they let Ann Coulter write them, after all — but overall, there's a stronger chance of someone developing qualities of thoughtfulness and empathy if they actually read books. The internet has a lot of great stuff on it — you are reading this article there! — but it's also notoriously good at turning people's minds to mush. You're unlikely to join up with QAnon or become radicalized by incels at the library. The internet, however, is very good at turning otherwise normal people into blithering idiots who love Trump and hate democracy. 

-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

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 Perhaps it's a sign that they're still traumatized by the 2016 election. Or, more likely, it's just that elite members of the pundit class have subconscious anxieties when they see rich people actually held to account for their crimes. But far too much media chatter after Donald Trump finally faced indictments got caught up in a hand-wringing contest over who was most fearful this would somehow help him electorally. Well, score one for common sense over the received wisdom of the punditocracy: A new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows Trump's already low favorability ratings have plummeted even further, to 25%. 

-AMANDA MARCOTTE IN SALON.COM

I automatically Like

 I automatically like people who share my wacky sense of humor. I automatically like people who read the same books that I read. I automatically like people who attended my land-grant university. I automatically like people who share my political views. Psychologists call this phenomenon implicit egotism. We like people who are like us. P.S. I also automatically like people who like psychological jargon like IMPLICIT EGOTISM.

 David G. Myers  -  HOW do we know OURSELVES = Notes

I automatically like people who share my wacky sense of humor. I automatically like people who read the same books that I read. I automatically like people who attended my land-grant university. I automatically like people who share my political views. Psychologists call this phenomenon implicit egoism. We like people who are like us. P.S. i also automatically like people who like psychological jargon like IMPLICIT EGOTISM P. 3

Fear of losing trumps subverts chances to win. Fear of losing is more powerful than the opportunity to win. P. 89

William, James pointed out that it is best we forget many things. P. 84

Psychology's biggest question: how do nature and nurture form us? This author seems to lean more on nature. P. 74

Birth order predictions of family dynamics and personalities have been overdone. Birth-effects tend to evaporate after accounting for family size. P. 72

Social psychologists must be the most jargon-laden social scientists in the Western world. They have a specific scientific sounding name for every commonplace phenomenon.
Anything seems obvious once it happens. They call it "Hindsight Bias." I knew it! I knew it! I knew it was going to happen (after it happened). Remember: Hindsight Bias.
I have my own jargon. One I call "A Leg Up."
I put my pants on one leg at a time. One leg in the pants. Second leg in the pants. One at a time.
One Leg Up. I don't put my pants on a nail and jump into them.
I am not a social psychologist. I came up with this on my own. P. 42

Most of us see ourselves as better than average.  P. 55

 Now I've got to give credit to the Dunning-Kruger Effect: incompetence doesn't recognize itself. We've got something here to hang our hat on. In other words, if you're stupid and ignorant you don't know it.

To succeed you must be willing to fail. P. 167

Mere exposure breeds content. P. 203

The author claims that replication failure does not doom "psychological science." P. 208

 

I certainly see it in the conspiracy theories, whether it’s birtherism or fluoride in the drinking water. Birchers had a theory that fluoride was essentially poison and part of a Communist plot; that this was big government forcing people to put poison in their bodies.

And I see it in a more explicit racism. Trump had dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes a couple months ago. Nick Fuentes, who is a Holocaust denier and white supremacist, recently said that his organization, the Groypers, is really an extension of the Birch Society. He called it a prelude to the Groypers.

The last area is a very hard-line culture-war stance, especially around issues of education, books, and what young people are being taught. The idea that progressive education and a rich exposure to a variety of texts and ideas and perspectives is fundamentally un-American—it tramples on the genius of American history and of the Republic—and that schools and libraries and texts that people are exposed to have to be policed.

-MATTHE DALLEK IN THE THE new Republic

 Life can be full of surprises. Like I woke up this morning. Like I had a nice conversation with my mother this morning. Like the ladies who went to the tomb on that first Easter morning were certainly surprised by what they discovered. As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

A - Day 2023

 A - DAY

It’s raining in Auburn as it is in Pelham.  I watch the game on ESPN +.  Cold and rainy.  Coach Freeze says they were going to air it out but not on this rainy day.  Before the scrimmage he wants to see assignment football and effort.  The game is structured with the defense up 24 to 

0 so the offense has to score more than 24 to win.

FIRST QUARTER

The offense scores on its first possession all on the ground with one pass batted down.  Robbie Ashford looks quick scrambling just like last year running for the touchdown.  On the other hand, not much defense.

24 - 7

Hunter and Alston are noticeable but Sean Jackson looks tough.  TOUGH day for passing and it shows.  All running so far.  You are not going to get any passing today whether the weather of it’s just not there.

END OF FIRST QUARTER

Short FG on the last play of the second half.

24 - 10

Sean Jackson looks like a bona fide power runner.  We’ve got four talented running backs.

One nice Ashford completion to Dawson.  Ashford certainly looks like the fall starting QB.

END OF SECOND QUARTER

The scrimmage moves quickly with 10 minute quarters and seldom clock stoppages.

THIRD QUARTER

24-13

24-21

No fourth quarter,

COMPETITIVE  GAME

LAST PLAY OF THE GAME FG

24 - 24

Josh Cohen - How to Live. What to Do - Notes

 A psychoanalyst and a professor of modern literary theory writes about how our inner lives connect with literature and Freud.    I read this as an entertainment. How to live.  What to do.  The author poaches the title from a poem by Wallace Stevens.  P. XVII

About To Kill a Mockingbird.  Scout Finch's childhood of endless fun and joyous summer frolics are menaced by racism and intolerance stifles her openness to the world.  P. 44  (I can see why Harper Lee fled Monroeville for New York).

Racial and class divisions in the South in the 1930's.  P. 44

Atticus tried to teach Scout empathy.  You can't really know a person until you step into his skin.  P. 45

The impoverished lives of the Southern white people.  P. 45

Racism impoverishes everyone.  P. 46

Atticus is noble as he explains to his daughter why he is fighting a losing battle in representing Tom Robinson.  P. 48

I like the author's comments on To Kill a Mockingbird.  

The lines between rich whites, poor whites, and blacks.  P. 49

A life genuinely alive with creativity and desire is possible only if we can continue to allow ourselves to come out and play.  P. 50  (Whatever this means)

____________________________________________________________________________

The trauma of school that even Freud talked about,  P. 69

____________________________________________________________________________

A liberal education can be thrilling to break the logjam of a restricted upbringing, but it can also be threatening and dangerous.  My liberal education has continued for 50 yrs.  It's been quite a mind expanding experiencing.  P. 91

_____________________________________________________________________________

"It's no fun when your heart is in the hands of someone who holds all the cards, empowered to grant or withhold her favor, impervious to change or reason."  P. 155

______________________________________________________________________________

P. 53

______________________________________________________________________________

Psychoanalysts  love early childhood.  It's never too early to mess up your life.  Hence, an interest in Jane Eyre.  P. 57

______________________________________________________________________________

Psychoanalysts talk about transference in the therapy process.

"Past objects of the patient's love, hatred, and desire come to be represented in the image of the analyst, this new significant other who offers to attend to our deepest needs and wishes.

Psychotherapy brings into sharp focus a fundamental truth of the human condition, that we are burn helpless.  Lacking the means to secure our own care and growth, we find ourselves consigned to the care of others---parents at first, but then all kinds of surrogates: other family members or friends, nannies, child minders, teachers, sports coaches, music tutors, mentors.  

We can be made to feel safe or frightened.  P. 92

______________________________________________________________________________

This world should destroy your narcissistic fantasy that you are unlike anyone else.  P. 93

______________________________________________________________________________

The Freudian sees the human psyche as a constant battleground between the id and the superego.  Neat and simple.  P. 121

___________________________________________________________________________

Looking down at our younger self from the vantage point of midlife realism, we seem impossibly unworldly, silly and sweet.  P. 138

___________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                                                                        

Being a parental sage is difficult.  P. 171

___________________________________________________________________________

Three of the Men From Next Door

 Three of the men from next door just accosted me at Starbucks including the phony main one. "We missed you last night," one of them said with his smooth, insincere smile. I was unresponsive. No need for a confrontation. The bell jar from Sylvia Plath's novel protects me. I will remain where I am inside my own bell jar.

We Are All on Our Way to the House

 We're all on our way to the house even if different houses. Mine has cats, Picasso paintings adorning every wall, the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning, and a bay window with a scintillating view of sunsets. Inside or outside seating available for sunset viewing. YOU are invited to my house any time. As Neil Diamond would say: HOLLY HOLY.

The Mystery of Jay Gatsby

 The mystery of Jay Gatsby, mysterious for sure once and always, probable bootlegger, always one step ahead of the law, we will always have with us, we who have read the book. What I have never understood is what Gatsby ever saw in Daisy, who is nothing more than a shallow, totally materialistic airhead, without an original thought in her entire life. I suppose she is a symbol of the just for him woman, who would have made his life fulfilled, a paragon of the perfect woman in his mind. Every time I read this book leading to its tragic end, I want to scream to the OLD SPORT: Get away from her! She's no good, Gatsby. But every time Gatsby ends up face-down in his bloody swimming pool, the choir in the background singing solemnly "Nearer my God to Thee." Chasing the wrong dream, the orgiastic green light in the distance, some people never learn.

Originalism is Bunk

 Originalism was a fringe legal theory when it was developed beginning in the early 1970s. It arose in reaction to the perceived excesses of the Warren Court, which had worked a legal revolution in the 1950s and 1960s with freewheeling decisions on the rights of criminal defendants, civil liberties and voting rights — among other issues — that conservative critics said were grounded in the majority’s policy preferences more than in the Constitution itself.

Among those developing an alternative, and supposedly more legitimate, legal theory was Robert H. Bork, then a Yale Law School professor. In a 1971 Indiana Law Journal article that was to become famous during his failed Supreme Court confirmation hearings 16 years later, Bork first laid out what came to be called originalism. (The term was coined by a liberal critic, Stanford Law professor Paul Brest.) “Where constitutional materials do not clearly specify the value to be preferred, there is no principled way to prefer any claimed human value to any other,” Bork wrote. “The judge must stick close to the text and the history, and their fair implications, and not construct new rights.”

The Press Falls for Trump Every Time

 The press falls for Trump every time. We keep on giving him oxygen to feed his vileness, like Lesley Stahl just did with Marjorie Taylor Greene on "60 Minutes."

This month we acknowledge the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege at Waco that helped spawn  the rise of militias, strengthened the NRA and gave birth to the fear of the "deep state." Trump is celebrating it because he knows who his core supporters are — the same people who venerate the Branch Davidians.

The key to understanding Trump and the press lies in Trump's affinity with Waco.

Brian Karem in Salon.com

What Happened to us?

 “What happened to us?”

She said these words to me with a sly smile sounding genuinely curious , and I wasn’t sure if I were supposed to know the answer or not. The voice, the face, the personality, all were familiar to me, yet I could not remember her name or how I came to be sitting by her.

When I stumbled for an answer, she looked away and said, “I guess you don’t remember. So sad.”

I felt overwhelming sadness also. She abruptly got up and left and I was left staring at some dude playing with a Rubik’s Cube. He was still working on it when I left.

Trump as Savior

 The book "When Prophecy Fails" is a classic work of social psychology that examines a UFO doomsday cult waiting for the end of the world. Of course, the special day arrives, and the world does not end. How do the cult members respond to this failure? By becoming more convinced that the prophecy is correct.

Donald Trump is at the center of a similar pseudo-religious cult prediction as well. His most loyal followers truly believe him to be a type of divine, messianic, and all-powerful leader. In reality, there is nothing divine or messianic about Donald Trump. He is a mere mortal who has been credibly accused of many serious crimes. Nevertheless, right-wing Christian evangelicals and Christofascists (to the degree those two groups are distinct and separate from one another) have rationalized their support of Donald Trump (and Trumpism) through the biblical myth of Cyrus. The belief is that God uses a wicked man as a tool of divine destiny and will.

Donald Trump is not a practicing Christian; moreover, he looks very uncomfortable in church and at other religious gatherings. In reality, Donald Trump is a pathological malignant narcissist and compulsive liar who is the God of his own personal religion and self-contained universe. Trump views right-wing Christians in a transactional way. They are a tool to help him get and keep more power.

Still, white right-wing Christian evangelicals' faith in Trump the prophetic figure was rewarded grandly. While president, Trump enacted a range of policies that furthered the creation of a white Christofascist theocracy in America. The white right views him as a revolutionary leader, a force of destiny and history, a Destructor who will force a new age where diversity, pluralism and globalism are destroyed and replaced by a White Christian empire where white men rule unopposed over all things. The QAnon conspiracy cult with its apocalyptic obsession over Trump's retributive act of destruction known as "the Storm" is one example.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Trump's Fallacy

 There's this widespread assumption in the GOP and even in the media that Trump's popularity with Republican voters is due to his charisma as if he has a cult leader-like hold over his people. Maybe some of his followers, sure. But he's really not that charismatic and his voters mostly know he's a boor. MAGA doesn't worship Trump so much as they weaponize him. He's a fascist and a clown, which is exactly what they value about him. They think those qualities will help their agenda. 

What is that agenda?

First, MAGA is a revanchist movement for conservative whites who believe they are entitled to a stranglehold on power. Growing racial diversity, urbanization and women's liberation have turned them into a minority. They worry, for real reasons, that the power they feel is their due cannot be achieved any longer through democratic means. What Trump offered them was a fascist's contempt for rule of law and democracy. He spent most of 2020 signaling blatantly that he would attempt a coup if he lost. The seeding of false claims of election fraud helped rile up his voters because they saw him as the candidate they needed to destroy a system that doesn't benefit them as much as it used to. 

The second most important part of the MAGA agenda is, pathetically, "owning" the liberals. Because Trump's ego only grows as his already meager intelligence degrades, he is especially annoying to people they hate. His grossness was his appeal because it was a form of revenge on the rest of the country. Trump gets this, which is why he calls himself "your retribution" when speaking to his fans. 

But the more legal trouble he gets into, the more Trump's narcissism and self-pity cloud his understanding of what his voters see in him. They like him when he's bullying people and bragging, but not so much when he's whining. Trump rallies are an interesting indicator of this. People will line up for hours ahead of time, and they clearly enjoy hanging out with each other, eating snacks, and vibing with their fellow MAGAheads. But when Trump himself starts speechifying, they get bored and leave. And who can blame them? All he does is whine about his problems. When he does get to the parts of the speech where he talks about how he will supposedly help them, he sounds checked out. You can tell he cannot wait to get back to his favorite theme: No one has suffered more than Donald J. Trump. 

-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

Have You Ever

 Have you ever driven Alabama Highway 157 (The Univ. of North Alabama Highway) from I-65 in Cullman to Colbert County? No? Good for you, but you've missed the heart of the Heart of Dixie.

First off the Jack's in West Point was packed. Big deal there: breakfast or dinner (lunch) at Jacks. A venue choice of one.

The Dutch Oven Bakery is still open, but I did not stop. Have stopped there many times before but I still do not speak Dutch. I pass on by today.

It took to beyond Moulton to see my first and ONLY Confederate flag. So disappointing. I expect to see one in every front yard.

Eight houses were having front yard junk sales. Saw some things that looked pretty interesting but I kept going. I have enough tacky used furniture already.

Turning off 157 to Ford City you pass thru Leighton, the home of Percy Sledge. But still no sign in town acknowledging one of the greatest singers of all-time. The ONLY sign of life was in front of the Dollar General store. There is also the Leighton Museum. What on earth could possibly be there? Toot's Diner is still boarded up as it has been for the last 55 yrs. I've given up on a reopening.

On to Ford City to take a breath and the big Dollar Store there. Is there a single small town in Alabama without a dollar store?

Alissa McQuart - Bootstrapped - A Review

 by Mary Elizabeth Williams from Salon.com

Thanks to his family's wealth, Donald Trump was already earning more annually when he was a toddler than many of us will ever dream of. Kylie Jenner grew up in a mansion. On television. Yet both have calculatedly peddled their images — like plenty of the born rich do — as industrious, self-made success stories. Why? Because America loves a good story of someone picking themselves up by their bootstraps. But it's all a myth. It's more than a myth — it's a joke.

In Alissa Quart's "Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream," the author of "Squeezed" and "Branded" explores the roots of our obsession with individualistic success; unpacks how it's helped give rise to everything from Trumpism, hustle culture and crowdfunding as ad hoc healthcare; and explains how the zeal for autonomy has undercut our humane impulse to interdependence.

Salon spoke to Quart recently via Zoom about how we got here, and how we might just be able to find a better way out — together. "Writing this has really changed me," she says. "I see myself as proud of the ways I'm dependent." 

Before I read this, I had not understood the origins of the whole "bootstrap" platitude and how, actually, it was meant to be a joke. Talk to me about what "bootstrap" was supposed to initially mean. 

It was a joke. It was an absurdity. There was a guy named Nimrod Murphrree, and he was being mocked. "Probably Mr. Murphrree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland river, or a barn yard fence, by the straps of his boots." In 1834, this was seen as totally outlandish, and the bootstraps were a metaphor for this. In the Racine Advocate some ten years later, they said the governor must be trying to pull himself up by the bootstraps. Again, like a figure of fun, because you can't really pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

It was even used as sort of a metaphysical joke. Somebody wrote in the 1860s that the attempt of the mind to analyze itself is analogous to the one who would lift himself up by his own bootstraps. The mind cannot analyze itself. That, again, is equivalent of bootstraps. But over time, it becomes this thing that people are earnestly striving for. When you deconstruct a lot of these things, like the Horatio Alger story, it is not quite what people have thought. And he certainly wasn't who people thought.

Even the "American dream" meant something different in its earliest incarnation. When I look at these words, there's a real range of meanings. What is it about America that our symbols start as jokes, and then are taken deadly seriously and we use them to punish each other? 

There's been this misrepresentation of phrases and of historical figures too. In some ways, that's how culture works. But I feel like the trend is to turn them into something that is punitively individualistic, and against fresh ideas and against multitudinousness and against minorities. It's not coincidental that the way they're bastardized and depleted serves certain interests. It's just not.

I think that's part of it with "bootstraps." You use that absurdity, and you deny its absurdity. I met someone who told me he'd grown up in Ohio, and said that all his teachers use the phrase bootstraps in public schools, just as a matter of course. "You're gonna have to get out there and pull yourself up by your bootstraps." This is what his history and his English teacher thought was inspiring. It wasn't just, like, the football coach. It's been a very normalized refrain. 

In the book you brought up "Little House on the Prairie," which is a narrative that speaks very specifically to the ways in which bootstrapping looks different to girls, and from a very young age.

It's also kind of exclusionary. What's been interesting for me was reading some of these texts with these new eyes of what the assumptions around class and masculinity and power the reader was supposed to have. You're going to follow these people into self-sufficiency. And you're supposed to identify with Emerson, whom I had loved. I never followed Horatio Alger, but I had recognized that there was a pretzel-like shape that the reader was being asked to contort — especially a female reader — themselves to fit into the world and the Walden system. 

And yet, absolutely, one of the foundational arcs in storytelling is this rags to riches hero's journey, where the the humble person is called to greatness. What's the difference?

Horatio Alger wrote over one hundred books, and they sold just millions upon millions, and they were all the story of this young man making it. He's a very handsome very young man who had been a busker or a peddler or a hat salesman or whatever. He meets a much older, wealthy man who saves him. That is the Marriage Plot. But that's not the Horatio Alger story. The Horatio Alger story as we're told is somebody who does it just by luck and pluck, hard work alone. That's the bootstraps. No, he allures an older man. 

It's the Marriage Plot without the marriage, because it's homosocial. It's actually probably the way power works. It's more realistic. But it's not the Horatio Alger story. The sexuality and the nepotism and the sociality of the actual Horatio Alger story was really stark to me. These kids are not just making it by selling lots of ties. They're meeting an older guy and charming him with their beauty. It's definitely about this relationship. 

So the claim then goes backwards that he actually is somehow making it by himself. We're making invisible perhaps, for heteronormative reasons, the relationship between the older man and the younger man. 

One of the linchpins of the book is that it's not so much about what I can get. It's the fear of what I will lose. 

Loss aversion is a theme throughout. This is true, obviously, of Trump supporters. This was written about in the aftermath of the Trump administration.

The average salary of a Trump supporter in 2016 was $72,000. The Trump supporters made a lot of more money than you'd imagine. The way I understood their fear was something called "loss aversion." The fear of losing money and status is twice as powerful as the joy from gaining something. These are not poor people. I think that explained a lot of the fixation on the self-made man. They wanted to align with that guy they think is rising, because they're so afraid of losing what they think is fragile. And they're not wrong. This is part of what I wrote about in the last book. Even at $72,000, they could be laid off. There's so little job protection.

"That helped me understand better, on a heart level, why people are obsessed with the self-made myth and with people like Trump."

They don't see it that way. They don't think that you need the loss of unionism is the problem, but it is partially, and they are more fragile. Their identification with somebody who they believe is strong and self-created gives them ballast. I really liked this chapter, particularly the Trump supporters, because I was trying to do justice to their fear. I didn't want to just demonize. There was a union guy, and he's talking about his co-workers who are all Trump supporters. You know, he loved them. They were his brothers. But he was also like, what has happened to them? What are they afraid of? Some have been they've been laid off and he's seen them cry about their job security. I thought that was poignant and interesting and helped me understand better, on a heart level, why people are obsessed with the self-made myth and with people like Trump.

Driving to Dawn's Funeral

 Driving to Dawn's service for the first time a long time means driving up Highway 157, a most dismal drive.  It was a long drive before; still long.

The Best Part

 

After Trump indictment is handed up, late-night hosts bring house down

“I didn’t know it would feel this good,” Stephen Colbert said of Trump’s indictment, the first in U.S. history for a former president.

By Timothy BellaMarch 31, 2023 in the WaPost

The best part of the indictment is the howling of the Republicsns.