Film & Television, Literature, Oddments

Nihilism and Nightlights

little-man

The Little Man movie rating system has been used by the San Francisco Chronicle since 1942. The excited Little Man above signifies a critic’s greatest satisfaction and is equivalent to a four-star rating.

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The following is one of a series of six film review parodies I wrote for the Sunday Punch section of the San Francisco Chronicle some years ago. In each piece I wrote about nonexistent foreign films and reviewed them in the voice of a dry and humorless film critic. This was the second parody of the six.

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Among the new foreign film releases this season are two films by female directors: Bebe Francobolli’s ode to Dada, Ciao Chow Chow, and Christiane de Geronimo’s children’s thriller, Nightlight.

Francobolli is the daughter of the Suprematist painter Mazlow Molotov (“The Black Russian”) and Constructivist painter Kiri de Kulpe Kloonig (a former courtesan known as “The Dutch Treat”). Bebe’s parents met in Rome at an international stamp-collecting convention and became Italian citizens before their only child was born.

Named Bebe Francobolli (literally Baby Postage Stamps) after her parents’ avocation, she refused to become a philatelist and rejected the art of her ancestors. She turned to Dada, the nihilistic movement that created “non-art,” laughed at overly serious artists and spawned Surrealism.

These influences can be seen clearly in Ciao Chow Chow, in which Bebe herself stars. Translated from Italian into English, and then back into Italian again, with no subtitles, the film begins and ends with Bebe waving goodbye to her beloved Chow dog, Antipasto, symbol of her lost youth and of her ridiculous early films.

Ciao is a parody of a self-parody, masterful in its simplicity and in its bold statement that life is to be laughed at, and that nothing is serious or sacred.

Basically nihilistic, with Dadaist subject matter and camera angles, this film is convoluted and uneven, personalized and stylized, and will make no sense to anyone who has not seen Bebe’s early travelogue films. Yet, Bebe promises that it will be her last film work, and that alone has prompted critical acclaim.

Avant-garde director Christiane de Geronimo’s Nightlight tells the terrifying story of the night the Mickey Mouse nightlight burned out in the Turner household. Little Bobby Turner is forced to face The Clown Puppet, The Vicious Animal Slippers and The Dreaded Man from Under the Bed.

Filmed in black and white, Nightlight captures the shadowy horror of every child’s bedroom, and forces even the adult viewer to come to grips with The Thing in the Closet. Not for the squeamish.

De Geronimo’s earlier attempts at children’s thrillers include The Teddy Bear with No Face, Scream, Barbie, Scream and Revenge of the Katzenjammer Kids, in which comic-strip characters from the past are set loose on an unwitting Nebraska farm town.

Nightlight, the third of her bedtime stories series, features the late French film star Estella de Lumiere in her final role before the dreadful accident on the set of Murder on the Trampoline.

Next month, two recent remakes: Canadian filmmaker and ice-hockey champion Pete Steed’s sport-oriented version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Fujiko Shiatsu’s sumo wrestling remake of The Music Man.

Film & Television, History, Literature, Politics & Current Affairs

The Joyful Legacy of Rob Reiner

In 1987, I was a young film reviewer for the San Jose Metro (now Metro Silicon Valley), the South Bay Area’s popular weekly newspaper.  By October of that year, I’d reviewed about fifty movies for the paper, most of them cheaply made and awful teen movies with one-word titles, or lo-fi sci-fi from off-brand movie studios like Cannon Films. The paper’s senior reviewers wouldn’t waste time on such garbage, but I was the newest kid on the team, the “dog patrol” reviewer assigned to the worst dreck and drivel being shown at Silicon Valley’s cinemas. And I loved it. 

Most of the time, my job was to describe a bad film in 150 words. The trick was to warn people away from the worst flicks, and use humor to entice them to return next week for more funny zingers about upcoming films. In return for two hours with a bad movie, and an hour crafting and shaping a clever review that night, I earned two free movie tickets, $7.50, and my name in print. The Metro was the most popular paper among my colleagues at Apple, where I had a day job as a software test engineer, so everyone I knew was reading my work. That’s a heady experience for someone barely out of college. And it was a fun weekly Sunday afternoon gig for a kid in her twenties to share with a friend.

Very occasionally (maybe one time in ten), I was asked to write the week’s featured review. Each was 300 words and paid about $15. I sometimes reviewed an art house film; I occasionally saw a (not very good) foreign movie. But in October 1987, I was assigned a real winner. Based on one of my favorite novels by William Goldman, that week’s movie was the classic Rob Reiner comedy The Princess Bride. When I got the assignment, I felt joyful, but a little anxious, too—Reiner’s movies This Is Spinal Tap and Stand by Me (based on Stephen King’s novella The Body) had each come out not long before, and they were wonderful. I’d loved them, as nearly everyone did. But Goldman’s story was special to me. It needed just the right touch of silliness, madness, romance, adventure, and heart to work the way it should. Could Reiner pull it off? 

You know the rest. The film was glorious. I was rapturous. I gushed about the movie in my 300-word featured review, and urged all my friends to see it. The performances and so many of the best lines (written by William Goldman himself, who adapted the screenplay from his novel) have become indelible parts of the film canon: 

“Inconceivable!” 

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” 

“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

“Have fun storming the castle!” 

“As you wish.” 

Of the 65 or so films I reviewed over two years at the Metro, none came close to entertaining me as much as Rob Reiner’s magical movie. Reiner had that rare gift of helping his audiences connect emotionally and immediately with his characters, whether through laughter, fear, love, or tears. As we’ve all heard and read many times by now, he also had that rare talent of connecting deeply and honestly with the people behind those characters. He made them feel trusted, cared for, and safe enough to give us brave, silly, beautiful, or heartbreaking performances. Their work hit us hard and stuck with us because it felt so human. 

Poster for the movie The Princess Bride—the image is a collage showing all of the film's main characters
The cast of Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987)

By all accounts, Reiner was a man who felt things deeply, and who loved collaboration. His sets, casts, and crews were famously collegial. In his work, he most enjoyed urging people upward and onward through kindness, decency, and humor. And when he wasn’t writing or directing award-winning films, he was helping to make connections among people who could effect lasting social change. He and his wife, the talented producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were ardent and generous campaigners for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community. They spent millions of their own dollars and countless hours successfully advocating for marriage equality. They also fought hard for early childhood education and healthy child development.

Rob Reiner was ardently and outspokenly liberal, and passionately critical of conservative Republicanism and Donald Trump. However, he also found friendship with people of different political persuasions, including former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Reiner spoke admiringly and kindly about Erica Kirk’s gracious words of inclusion after the murder of her husband, far right commentator Charlie Kirk, whose political beliefs were diametrically opposed to Reiner’s. The director sought to help people with opposing views to coexist and find common ground. He was a man of strong convictions, but also of great heart.

We’ve all heard many stories of people in the movie business who are good at playing heroes, but are less than gracious or kind behind the scenes. It’s always refreshing and moving to learn about titans of the entertainment industry who use their immense talent and influence for good. We’ll miss Rob Reiner’s continuing creativity and positive life force. But thank goodness we’ll always have his films to remind us of the importance of art, heart, compassion, and humor.

Articles, Film & Television, History, Literature, Theater

Charles Dickens: “Mankind Was My Business”

Christmas Carol Cover

[Originally published in 2020.]

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know … that any … spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

—A Christmas Carol

In my family, A Christmas Carol is almost a sacred text. My grandmother quoted from it each Christmastime, and she, my mother (a teacher of English literature) and I watched each film and television version of it, cocoa and Kleenex in hand. We recited along with Marley’s Ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Present, Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, weeping and hugging and loving every moment of the story.  Each viewing or reading of A Christmas Carol left us renewed in our commitments to each other and ourselves to hold Christmas in our hearts all through the coming year, and to remember Jacob Marley’s exhortation that looking after each other and lifting up those around us was our true reason for living. A Christmas Carol reminded us that humankind was our business, that “charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence” were our collective responsibility to each other, and the source of humanity’s greatest joys as well.

When my own daughter was old enough, I began reading Dickens stories aloud to her, and of course A Christmas Carol was among them. I read the whole of it to her in one evening, stopping occasionally to compose myself. She and I went to see a beautiful theatrical production of it in Seattle when she was a girl, just as my mother and I had seen multiple wonderful versions of it at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco during my childhood. Seeing A Christmas Carol has always meant far more to me than attending any production of The Nutcracker ever could.

This masterful work, so perfectly composed, so moving, so excitingly paced, was written in just six weeks when Charles Dickens’s fortunes were flagging, his coffers low and his popularity waning. But it was not worry about his purse or his reputation that inspired Dickens; it was his childhood spent in a debtor’s prison with his family that made him speak out so powerfully on behalf of the poor. While still a young boy, Dickens was forced to leave school to work in a boot blacking factory. There he spent his days pasting labels on bottles in hopes of making enough money to bail his father out of his debts. It was only through the efforts of children that Dickens’s father could pay off his debts and at last leave the Marshalsea Prison. Though Dickens later grew prosperous and world-renowned, he never forgot his time spent among the poor, the sick, the fearful and the abandoned.

In early 1843, Britain’s Parliament published a report on the damaging effects of the Industrial Revolution on poor children. The Second Report of the Children’s Employment Commission moved Dickens deeply, and he planned to write and publish an inexpensive political pamphlet to encourage commissioners and other lawmakers to do more on behalf of the poor.

Dickens gave a fundraising speech in October of that year at the Manchester Athenæum, urging workers and employers to come together to combat ignorance with educational reform. It was during that visit to Manchester that he realized his greatest ability to influence and inform was not through political tracts and speeches but through his works of fiction. In those early days of October 1843, he devised the plot of A Christmas Carol. When he returned to his home in London, he worked in a fury to complete the story in time for Christmas publication, and just made it: it was published on December 19, 1843.

Film & Television, Music

The Wham of Sam: My Sammy Davis Jr. Ephiphany

In honor of Sammy Davis Jr.’s 100th birthday today, I’m sharing this piece I originally wrote about him back in 2006. Thanks again, Sammy.

A few months ago, I was doing a difficult job that lasted six weeks instead of the two I thought I’d signed on for. I was commuting about 10 hours a week (and I hate driving), and the job required intense focus on thousands of important details. I learned a lot, the people were kind and helpful, and the work they did was important, but I felt out of place, frustrated, and blue.

I tried reminding myself of all the things going right with the job: I was employed, working with good folks at an institution that improves people’s lives, making enough so that I didn’t have to work two jobs, and setting a good example for my daughter by showing that sometimes we do things we don’t enjoy in order to pay our dues, fulfill our obligations, be helpful, and earn a living.

Of course, while my brain understood all this, my heart felt cranky and sad. I was frustrated that the talents I feel are the most valuable and worthy ones I have to offer weren’t being used to the extent I’d like to use them. And then I had my Sammy Davis Jr. epiphany.

To try to make the hours in stop-and-go traffic feel less gruesome, I realized I needed to find fresh and uplifting tunes. I love NPR (which recently featured an interview with Sammy’s daughter, Tracey, who discussed her new memoir of her father), but sometimes focusing on the latest events in Fallujah while stuck on a bridge for 30 minutes just feels too nasty and I need music. I rummaged through my CDs and found one I’d bought a few months back but hadn’t listened to much yet. It was a CD of songs performed by a man I must now admit I used to think of as one of the poster children of Vegas kitsch: Sammy Davis Jr. But the best part is the name of the album: “The Wham of Sam.”

I must digress at this point. Are you already asking yourself, why would Laura buy Sammy CDs in the first place? Well, because I heard one of his songs in a store somewhere and was reminded what a fine voice and a great sense of expression, style, and warmth he had at his best moments. The many TV appearances he made during the 1960s and 1970s were so filled with Vegas schlock and corny stylization that he was almost a self-parody by the time I started listening to music in earnest. He was doing campy, obvious, cool cat riffs during his showy performances with Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas and on The Tonight Show, and I couldn’t be bothered. I knew I’d loved his portrayal of Sportin’ Life in the film Porgy and Bess when I’d seen it on TV as a tiny kid, but I don’t think it’s been on TV since about 1970 so my memory is now faint, and I loved his performance as the Cheshire Cat singing “What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” in a strange 1966 animated parody variation of Alice in Wonderland.

His turn as groovy evangelist Big Daddy in Sweet Charity is a classic sixties moment that featured Sammy’s charismatic rendition of the song “The Rhythm of Life,” but somehow I forgot about that. The big hits he had when I was a kid, like “The Candy Man,” felt too cutesy and pat to me, and I dismissed him, with his goofy hipster patois and giant diamond rings, his membership in the Rat Pack, and his public support of Nixon was too bizarre. (I still shudder when I remember the much-publicized photo of Sammy’s adoring, awkward, full-body hug of Nixon.)

But when I heard him singing over the speakers at some chain store I thought, damn, no wonder this man was so popular. Listen to the feeling he puts into that line! What clear, clean enunciation! What sophisticated, tasty phrasing! So I swallowed my pride and hung out at a CD store listening station for a half hour, listening to selections from a number of his albums. I bought two, one of ballads and one of swingier songs. What a good move that was. But then I got distracted and hardly listened to them.

Anyway, back to my commute-hour epiphany. I popped “The Wham of Sam” into my CD player, and right there, boom, I was hooked with the first song, the star of the album, “Lot of Livin’ to Do.” The horns grabbed me immediately, and the energy, which starts out high, somehow continues to build with every measure of the song. The band arrangement by Marty Paich is fabulous, swingy in the style of Sinatra’s terrific “Ring-A-Ding-Ding” album (one of my favorite albums of all time, by anyone—it was arranged by the legendary Nelson Riddle).

“Lot of Livin’ to Do” is big and brassy and has something new going on at every turn, but the band never outshines Sammy, whose phrasing is exact and elegant. His syncopation is so sure and it builds right up to the payoff moments. He knows when to pull back a little and when to let it rip. The intonation and enunciation are beautiful, but beyond his technical chops, he works the lyrics just right. He’s thinking about what he’s saying, he means what he’s singing, and I believe every word. He was sizzling and I was thrilled, sitting in a traffic jam on a bridge near Seattle at 8:30 a.m., bouncing up and down in my seat.

I must have listened to that song six times in a row on the way into work. The words crept into my brain and Boom! I had a revelation. The words aren’t Shakespeare; they’re standard upbeat lyrics, and the song was originally written for the musical Bye Bye, Birdie, which is fun but not Sondheim. But somehow, sung with that bravado and joy and excitement and underscored by that hot band, the lyrics spoke to me:

“… [T]here’s wine all ready for tasting / And there’s Cadillacs all shiny and new / Gotta move ’cause time is a-wastin’ / There’s such a lot of livin’ to do. / There’s music to play, places to go and people to see / Everything for you and me / Life’s a ball if only you know it / And it’s all waiting for you / You’re alive, so come on and show it / There’s such a lot of living to do.”

I heard it, and I believed it. I figured, hey, this slight man had a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit, a glass eye, grew up without his mom, had to deal with relentless racism from day one, and performed in hotels that he was barred from sleeping in because of the color of his skin (until he became a big name and helped break the color barrier in show business). And man, did he love life. He ate it up and went over the top, drinking and smoking and skirt-chasing, and hanging out with some unsavory folks, yes—but he also took a song like “Lush Life” and sang it like he’d lived it. He sang every song as if he lived it. And he meant every word.

He brought fun and swing and life into everything he sang. Sometimes the hipster kitsch of it was too much for me, and sometimes the low-brow, I’m-gonna-please-everybody style of his later years felt like he’d dumbed-down his act, especially considering what sophistication he was capable of. His desire to please everybody and be up, up, up all the time cheapened his rep in the eyes of many of us, but the joy he brought to life, the beauty he found in it and made for others.

That devotion to wringing every drop from it reminded me how lucky I was and how many wonderful things are around for me to enjoy. I thought it seemed a sin to waste another day in disappointment that I’m not doing more exciting work, and I vowed I’d make good things happen, find them, make sure they’re a part of every day of mine, and every one of my daughter’s days, too. I figured if Sammy, who had so much trash to contend with, could take his talent and shoot it off like fireworks, why can’t I take whatever gifts I have and make something fine and exciting of them, too? I may not be the dynamo Sammy was, but I don’t have his struggles either. And one doesn’t have to be a superstar to find something splendid in each day, or to make fine things happen.

So from that day forward I’ve reaffirmed my dedication to finding and doing good work, to making beauty, to learning something good and doing something kind each day, to being grateful for the opportunities to enjoy life more and to worry less about my dwindling savings (and how long it takes to find good jobs), and to writing regularly and with purpose. In a roundabout way, I have Sammy to thank for inspiring me to start this site. The wham of Sam, indeed.

History, Politics & Current Affairs

Why We Still Need World AIDS Day

Today is the 37th annual World AIDS Day. Each December 1 we commemorate the lives of millions of people who’ve suffered and died from HIV/AIDS around the world. On this day each year, we’re reminded of the millions who continue to suffer from the effects of the illness, the trauma caused by it, and the impact that losing loved ones to AIDS has had.

2025 White House World AIDS Commemoration Canceled

The photo here shows the World AIDS Day event at the White House in 2024, when Joe Biden was president. Note that the lawn was covered in AIDS memorial quilts that honor the memories of people killed by AIDS. These quilts have been international signs of commemoration and activism against the deadly disease for four decades now. But for the first time in 37 years, the White House under Trump has canceled all 2025 World AIDS Day events, and refuses to continue the tradition of annual remembrances of those lost to the disease. Trump has also ended former President George W. Bush’s phenomenal PEPFAR program, a U.S. government initiative which saved untold numbers of lives around the world since it was launched in 2003. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was the largest commitment by any nation to a single disease. It focused on saving lives, preventing new infections, providing treatment and care, and strengthening health systems in over 50 countries. It provided antiretroviral treatment, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and care for orphans and vulnerable children, among other essential services. But now it’s gone.

HIV/AIDS is still a major health threat around the world. Despite Trump’s decision not to mark or mention World AIDS Day at the White House any longer, it is still an important day to commemorate the people we’ve lost, the battles we’ve won, the research that continues to improve treatment options, and the terrible inaccessibility of necessary HIV/AIDS treatments for millions of people who desperately need it.

But Isn’t the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Over?

No; it’s a continuing worldwide health threat. AIDS was first identified in 1981, and the link from AIDS to HIV was made in 1983. As of 2024, over 44 million people had died of AIDS worldwide. HIV continues to spread and kill massive amounts of people annually. An estimated 630,000 people died of it just last year.

It’s true that antiretroviral medications have saved untold millions from suffering and death caused by HIV/AIDS. But millions more with HIV still don’t have access to such drugs, and many people can’t tolerate them. About 1.2 million people in the U.S. have HIV today, and an estimated 13% of them don’t know they have it. Without treatment, they could become very ill, unknowingly pass the illness on to others, or even die.

Early Years of HIV/AIDS Awareness & Research

AIDS was an epidemic first identified in gay men, and prominent gay men were the first public faces of the disease. Entertainers like Rock Hudson attracted attention and scorn for being outed as both being gay and having AIDS in a highly homophobic era. But they had inspiring and powerful friends, like Oscar-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor, who’d been a close friend to Rock Hudson for decades. She co-founded amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, one of the nation’s most influential and important AIDS-related organizations. The UK’s wildly popular Princess Diana also made expanding awareness of and compassion for people with HIV/AIDS one of her biggest goals. Ms. Taylor and Princess Diana normalized treating people with HIV/AIDS with warmth and compassion, visiting them, hugging them, and holding their hands and laughing or crying with them, instead of treating them like pariahs.

In 1980s America, President Reagan refused to even say the word AIDS publicly for several years, while it ran rampant, eviscerating the gay community—including many of his personal friends, among whom were many closeted gay actors. But during that time, the spread of AIDS galvanized activists, who established powerful awareness groups like ACT UP. Public health giants like Dr. Anthony Fauci researched the causes of AIDS and its spread, and provided essential public health services and advice.

Fauci’s initial experiences with anti-AIDS activists were contentious. Many activists verbally attacked him for not taking their greatest concerns seriously enough. To his credit, he recognized that he was not working effectively with the people most hard hit by the AIDS epidemic. He met with them, listened, and apologized for his previous arrogance. Dr. Fauci turned leading AIDS activist Larry Kramer from an adversary to a friend by learning how to better work with communities impacted by disease through mutual respect and dialog. Over time, Fauci learned not to bristle when the famously (and necessarily) outspoken and irascible Kramer gave him hell.

AIDS Treatment in 2025

In 1992, after the death of many friends—including the 1991 death of Freddie Mercury—from AIDS, Elton John established the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which is still going strong. The foundation has raised over $650 million to support more than 3,100 projects in 102 countries to end the stigma, discrimination, and neglect associated with HIV/AIDS. Since the organization was established, the world has seen huge forward movement in the prevention and treatment of HIV.

As a result of the successes of hospitals, researchers, activists, and community health initiatives, and the excellent HIV/AIDS meds now available, it’s no longer the uncontrollable public health menace it once was. Indeed, many assume that getting HIV today isn’t that big a deal, since you can take PrEP drugs to prevent it, or antiretroviral drugs to treat it. However, about one in ten people with HIV develop intolerance to treatment, or they become drug resistant. Many more people have a lack of consistent access to healthcare or insurance, and can’t afford meds. So the need for awareness, healthcare access, affordable (or free) medications, and counseling for those affected by HIV/AIDS is still great, and the services are vital.

How You Can Help Stop HIV/AIDS

World AIDS Day is a great time to find a way to support AIDS prevention, treatment, or counseling organizations. To find reputable and successful organizations that rely on public donations in the U.S., check out Charity Navigator, which vets organizations and lets you know which ones are most reputable, reliable, and spend their money most wisely. You’ll find a link to Charity Navigator’s best AIDS charities in the comments below.

History, Literature

My Grandfather and the Lost Generation

Much is made of the “Greatest Generation”—the people who fought in World War II and kept the home fires burning. We owe them an enormous debt, and it’s right and good to remember and honor their memories, today and every day. But the generation that fought in World War I was the first to experience the terrible technology of modern war. The millions who fought and died in what was long known as The Great War experienced previously unknown horrors. Those who came home were forever damaged by what they saw and were made to do. The psychic and physical damage done to them was so great that writers of the 1920s like Hemingway and Fitzgerald became famous for their stories of the Lost Generation—people so damaged by the war that they could never again regain their footing on this earth.

My grandfather was one of the men who went off to World War I, determined and duty-bound. These were his dog tags, given to him when he joined the U. S. Army in 1917. How his German-born mother must have ached as she watched her eldest child (of 10!) go off to fight against the children of those who were once her compatriots.

Grandpa George fought in France, fell in love, and said adieu to his French sweetheart when it was time to go. He sailed back home with his souvenirs, including a mortar shell and a German officer’s helmet. But, as the WWI-era song goes, how are you gonna keep ’em down on the farm (well, in St. Paul) after they’ve seen Paris?

Grandpa followed his younger brothers into the meatpacking business. He spent a little time as a butcher before wanderlust overtook him and adventure called. He rode the rails West, going weeks without bathing while hopping trains and looking for work. When he got to Montana, where he worked on a ranch for a while, he could finally take off his boots to let his feet relax. But when he did, the dime he’d so carefully stored inside his sock was gone! A dime was enough money for a meal, so he undertook a rigorous search.

After a while he realized that the callus he’d developed on his foot had actually grown around the dime. It had been so long since he’d removed his tight boots that his skin had stopped being irritated by the foreign body and just subsumed it. Good thing he had his Army knife on him to cut it out.

Eventually, my grandfather made it back to the Midwest. After a close call with an angry upside-down hog whose hoof nearly slit Grandpa’s throat before Grandpa could slit his, my grandfather left the slaughterhouse business and moved to Detroit, where he became a welder for General Motors. A staunch union member, he was part of a famous strike against General Motors in which GM attacked its own employees who were striking outside in the snow with high-pressure fire-hoses. The extreme pressure of the water knocked the wind out of strikers like my grandfather, who were forced onto the sidewalk and rapidly covered in ice.

When we think of the miseries of working for The Man nowadays, it’s good to keep in mind those who came before us. People like my grandfather stood up for the trade unions who fought successfully for eight-hour days, five-day work weeks, and safety laws that kept employees from dying on the job, or being hunted down by angry employers who didn’t like uppity employees who spoke out for what was fair and just.

Soon enough, Grandpa made the move to Ford Motor Company in nearby Dearborn. There he became their chief tool and die welder, and came up with many inventive improvements that helped Ford better their automobiles (but for which he received no credit or bonuses, of course). But in his decades at Ford, he could afford to buy a new car every few years, and he earned the pension that kept him and my grandmother going after retirement. What’s more, the company bestowed their much-coveted full scholarships on both of his daughters—the first time that two children from the same family ever won Ford Scholarships. They were the first people in their family to go to college, and both made much of their educations, and passed on their parents’ love of education to their own children.

He may only have had an eighth grade education, but my talented (if eternally cranky) first-generation-American grandfather fought for his country, raised and supported his family (and gave his girls the means to excel at college), and became a valued employee of the Ford Motor Company. He read Goethe in German, and Shakespeare in English for fun. Grandpa had seen abominable things, but felt he had no right to do other than fulfill his duty to his country, his family, and his company.

Much of his generation (my dreadfully poor grandparents included) grew up in deep poverty with little to fall back on but cussed determination to make things work. When fascists came to power in the 1930s in Europe, it was my grandparents’ generation who had prepared those of the “Greatest Generation” (like my Uncle Woody) to have the spine and steely determination to do what needed to be done. When we honor those who came before and fought to safeguard our way of life, let’s not forget them.

History, Literature

Dulce Et Decorum Est: The Poetry of Wilfred Owen

When World War I broke out in 1914, many young men with stars in their eyes signed up to be soldiers, expecting war to be glorious. Based on all the pro-war propaganda they’d received throughout their short lives, most thought primarily of the honor of serving their country, and of the glory that would accrue to their names if they should fall in battle.
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But the war was much more brutal, enormous, and seemingly endless than expected. New war technologies (planes and tanks among them) and endless miles of muddy trenches were nightmarish, and left millions of men exposed to the elements and to attack from every direction. The endless horror was too much for many men who retreated into their minds and lost contact with the world. Shell-shock was rampant.
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Rather than hide their broken souls from the world, some writers during and after the war poured their horror and hopelessness out on the page.
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“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. It describes the horrors of a mustard gas attack. The Latin title is from a verse written by the Roman poet Horace: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” In English, this means, “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”. The poem, which delivers a wry and ironic quotation of Horace’s words, is Owen’s best-known work.
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Wilfred Owen was killed in battle one week before Armistice Day. His parents learned of his death on the day the war ended. Their son was only 25 when he died, but he and his friend Siegfried Sassoon remain the best-remembered and most often-quoted English poets of World War I.
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Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

History, Politics & Current Affairs

Trump & Tariffs: Increasing Inequality Is the Whole Point

Donald Trump’s attacks on parents who buy a lot of toys for their children have nothing to do with dolls or pencils. His recent comments have made some parents think, “I feel guilty about how many possessions my kids have; maybe Trump’s right and they SHOULD have fewer toys.” But he’s just attempting a diversion from the real issues he doesn’t want you to think about.

A Way to Shift More Power to the Richest 1%

Do you think Trump ever gave a thought to whether rampant materialism would make his children more selfish or shallow? Of course not. He doesn’t want you thinking about how he’s trying to create a future with even greater wealth inequality. He supports the restrictions on freedom, product availability, and product quality caused by restricting market availability. He likes billionaire-owned companies that engage in monopolistic practices. He’s all for power grabs by autocratic government entities and corrupt politicians—as long as he gets a cut.

The autocrat in chief and his friends want to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be able to buy, at what prices, and from whom. They want to control the market so they can create more opportunities for themselves to receive more financial kickbacks or power. Their support for heavy tariffs is about increasing their power while taking away yours.

Free Trade Increases Peace, Prosperity & Safety

Isolationism doesn’t make a nation stronger, safer, happier, healthier, or more peaceful. Strong international relationships, including trade, lead to a greater variety of available products, lower prices, and many more chances to buy things of better quality. People have known this for literally thousands of years. By trading with other countries, all countries involved can optimize sales of products they’re good at and that they have enough resources to create. That way nations can import things that are too hard or expensive to make at home, improving the standard of living across nations.

Greater access to affordable commodities leads to fewer wars. Wars interfere with the benefits of free trade, destroying trade routes and stopping the influx of needed materials, and the outflow of products from exporters who rely on foreign markets.

Beneficial Trade Agreements Lead to “Soft Power”

Making trade with other countries easier and more affordable makes our trading partners fonder of our products, sure. It also makes them fonder of us as people. The incentives to treat our trading partners with greater respect and appreciation lead to warmer relations. When we make trade deals, we also build positive relations that give us “soft power”—the power that comes from positive feelings, trust, and mutual respect. Strong trade agreements can lead to greater tourism, cross-border business deals that allow for faster innovation and business growth, stronger border agreements, and more information sharing regarding health and security matters. Strong trade agreements also help countries build alliances against rogue states who might want to attack or invade them.

Limiting Trade Restricts Freedom

Adding heavy tariffs and destroying trade agreements benefits oligarchs and corrupt government officials. Such people have the power or money to create regional monopolies, decide what items the market will or won’t sell, and push resources toward their favorite suppliers. When oligarchs and autocrats are in charge, they make international trade agreements giving lower tariffs to countries that promise to bend the knee politically, or that pay kickbacks to corrupt officials in our country.

The reason for Trump’s tirades about how many dolls or pencils small children own isn’t based in concern over modern child-rearing methods. He’s not stoking your guilt because he cares about your children’s welfare. Trump harps on dollies and pencils because he doesn’t actually believe in a free market. He wants to up-end conservative support for free-market capitalism, the holy grail of traditional Republicanism.

For its many faults, pure free-market capitalism does support the freedom to buy what you want, whether the purchase is wise or foolish, well-made or shoddy, bad for you or good, as long as you can pay for it—or can pay the bank fees on your line of credit. A free-market economy is the antithesis of having a government entity tell you what you can and can’t buy, use, or enjoy. It also tends to lower prices, and lower prices on commodities means increased freedom and opportunity to buy exactly what you want, at a price you can afford.

Protectionism & Isolationism Don’t Lead to Safety or Prosperity

Protectionism is the belief that taxing imported goods more highly, restricting or refusing their importation, and giving special deals to domestic businesses benefits domestic businesses and helps one’s own nation’s economy to grow while avoiding providing unfair benefits to those outside one’s borders. Isolationism, which often increases at tiems of greater protectionism, preaches that outsiders, their products, and their ideas are not to be trusted, and that we leave ourselves weakened and vulnerable if we make treaties, trade agreements, or join organizations like the United Nations that seek to create international legal structures and encourage economic, social, and health equality.

Such “America first” protectionist and isolationist politics and economic leanings have been popular at various times during the last two centuries. Many who have followed them believed that such policies would exclude unwanted “foreign influences” on culture and business, and would avoid the dilution of a supposed American way of life.

The result of this distrust of interactions with outsiders has instead often been a more insular way of thinking that led to greater xenophobia. What’s more, protectionism and isolationism left U.S. businesses and financial institutions at greater risk of failure because they did not diversify their funds, product pipelines, or markets across national or continental borders.

Doesn’t Capitalism Have Significant Flaws?

Free-market capitalism tends toward rampant materialism and encouraging ever-expanding markets, even when that causes pollution, dwindling natural resources, or social problems. It supports a mentality that says buying more is necessarily better, and that your success and appeal are based on what and how much you buy. It encourages waste and disposal instead of repair or reuse of resources.

Clearly, this system has many terrible flaws. But there are limitations on these downsides, including environmental impact laws and free-trade agreements that ameliorate many downsides of unfettered capitalism.

For millions, the chief attraction of a free market is that it supports the individual’s freedom to choose what to purchase and how much, IF a person has sufficient capital to do so. A good thing about a free market open to many sellers and buyers is that competition provides downward pressure on prices, and it tends to push the worst products out of the market based on lower demand. Those who can provide a greater variety of goods at better prices tend to do better.

Antitrust Laws Help Balance Free Markets

For the past century, the U.S. has had strong antitrust laws to avoid monopolistic practices (like having one big company buy up or destroy all its competitors, thereby driving up prices and driving down quality). Limits on monopolies help us avoid price-gouging and lowering of quality standards, and allow small businesses to compete more fairly with larger ones.

Other Laws Affecting Free Markets in the U.S.

Over the past century the U.S. has also developed a strong legal framework regarding the health and safety of products sold in the U.S. We’ve also passed thousands of laws about the safety and working conditions of those who produce goods and services on U.S. soil. These laws help to ameliorate further downsides of expanding markets. These include risks to human beings that are increased when competitiveness is prized above health, safety, and wellbeing.

Heavy Tariffs Are Hardest on Small Businesses

On the other hand, creating significant impediments to free trade through untargeted tariffs widens imbalances between resource-rich and resource-poor countries and people. This often leads to greater hostility between nations, and between people of different financial means. Smaller, more entrepreneurial companies bear the greatest brunt of high tariffs, and are at greatest risk of failure because they don’t have the scale and resources to pay huge tax levies or customs bills.

Higher Tariffs on Imports Can Lower Our Own Standard of Living

When Trump slaps tariffs on foreign-made goods imported to the U.S., he drives up prices at home, destroys jobs, crushes U.S. businesses and industries that rely on export sales, and destroys the trust of other nations in our government, or financial instruments, and our companies. The primary reason for a U.S. president to do that is so he and his friends and family can make more money and consolidate more power by taxing people in the U.S. who want or need imported goods. This takes money from everyday people and lowers their standard of living.

That shift, which disempowers the vast majority of the U.S., is the point of this unnecessary financial mess. Trump doesn’t care about you or your child. He doesn’t want to reset U.S. buying habits out of concern for the moral or financial welfare of the nation’s people. He just wants to grab a greater share of your resources for himself and his buddies.

Don’t fall for it.

Film & Television, History, Politics & Current Affairs

Anti-Fascist Podcasts to Help You Through Dangerous Times



If you’re feeling hopeless and frightened about what’s to come under Donald Trump, I recommend two excellent fact-based podcasts with riveting stories about just how bad things have gotten in the past in the U.S., what we learned from those times, and how we moved forward. To find them, log into your favorite podcast provider and listen to Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra (seasons one and two), and Oona Chaplin’s Hollywood Exiles podcast. 

In the 20th century, many anti-constitutional fascists held powerful positions in the U.S. government, both overtly and covertly. They used their power to badger, intimidate, blackmail, and destroy the lives of thousands of law-abiding people of all races and levels of power, fame, and influence. Federal government branches and agencies largely moved beyond using fascist tactics as a matter of course—for a while. But people in power are using them again, and things are likely to get extremely ugly over the next four years. Understanding how long and hard we fought against fascism within our government in decades past, and how its power waxes and wanes over time and around the world, are essential. Learning this painful but necessary history reminds us what we have overcome before, and how important fighting against the encroachment of authoritarianism and fascism are to the health and strength of this—or any—nation.

The Constitution’s power will be tested again in the coming years. Our social safety net, national security, the immigrants within our borders, and our alliances with other nations will all come under fire. Safeguards against increasingly dangerous climate change will be impacted as we again step away from the Paris Agreement, and we’ll lose the respect and support of allies we’ve relied on for decades, even centuries. Will we make it through this time as a democracy? I don’t know. But I find it helps me to understand how the pendulum has swung back toward freedom and away from fascism throughout the history of the U.S. It can do so again—but only if we are vigilant and brave enough to fight against the encroachment of authoritarianism.

You may be familiar with Rachel Maddow. She’s been a broadcast journalist on radio and TV for decades, and is the most popular and respected news analyst on the cable news channel MSNBC. After her years studying at Stanford University, she was a Rhodes Scholar, and then she went on to become a successful writer, progressive radio personality, and television news journalist. She’s written several best-selling, well-received, carefully researched books on the oil and gas industry, American military power, the grift and scandals surrounding the vice presidency of Spiro Agnew, and the history of fascism in America. She’s been on MSNBC only one night a week for a couple of years now as she works on her podcasts and works with Steven Spielberg’s movie version of Maddow’s podcast Ultra. However, she’ll be back on MSNBC at 9 p.m. Monday through Friday for the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. She’s excellent at setting news into historical context, and explaining how events differ from those in the nation’s past, and how our leaders compare to those of other times and other nations.

Maddow’s Ultra is about the rise of fascism in America, particularly from the 1920s to the 1950s. The podcast details the stories of senators and congressmen, religious leaders, supposed patriots like aviator Charles Lindbergh, and even FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover—the most powerful lawman in the country—and his henchmen blackmailed people, spread damaging lies about people’s politics and actions, infiltrated legal gatherings, and hounded people—sometimes to death—with innuendo, subterfuge, threats, thugs, even physical violence. Hoover even had the FBI send Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an anonymous letter encouraging him to kill himself. I’ve read a great deal about the ugly underside of this period of U.S. history over time, but I still learned much from Maddow about just how extensively our government was infiltrated by fascists and even literal Nazis during the 1940s.

Oona Chaplin is a young (born in 1986) actress who comes from a storied family. Her mother’s father was actor, director, producer, and early film production innovator Charlie Chaplin, the most popular actor of the early 20thcentury, and perhaps the most famous man in the world in the 1920s. Her mother’s grandfather was the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, who won four Pulitzer Prize awards for drama. She was named for her grandmother, Oona O’Neill Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’s fourth wife. Oona and Charlie Chaplin had a long and happy marriage despite Charlie having spent most of their life together being hounded by J. Edgar Hoover and anti-communist agitators in or related to the movie business.

Hoover’s FBI threatened Charlie Chaplin with deportation while the actor was traveling outside of the U.S. Despite Chaplin having spent four decades living and working in the U.S., building up its film industry, paying millions in taxes and raising millions more in World War II war bonds, and never being part of or affiliated with the Communist Party, Chaplin was under constant surveillance and threat by the FBI. While on a trip outside the U.S. in the early 1950s, Chaplin was warned that he was not welcome to return to his home in the U.S. He did not set foot on U.S. soil again for two decades, and he never lived here again.

Oona Chaplin’s deep investigation into communism in the film industry is fascinating and well told. Parts of her story are personal, including interviews with her mother, actress Geraldine Chaplin, who moved abroad with her parents Charlie and Oona when her father was blacklisted while she was a child. But Oona Chaplin also dives at length into the stories of other film industry notables whose work and personal lives were ruined by the Hollywood blacklist. Her interview with the daughter of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, the most famous member of “The Hollywood Ten,” is riveting. The Hollywood Ten were ten movie screenwriters, producers, and directors who refused to answer questions about supposed or real (and completely legal) communist affiliations when questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare. They were imprisoned for contempt of Congress for refusing to name names of others who were communists or who had attended communist meetings (which were, again, legal), and were blacklisted by Hollywood for over a decade.

Dalton Trumbo wrote Academy Award-winning screenplays (including the classic Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday) under pseudonyms during his years on the Hollywood blacklist. Oona Chaplin’s interview with his daughter Mitzi Trumbo is powerful. So is her interview with actress and professor of acting Ellen Geer, the daughter of blacklisted actor Will Geer, whose career was destroyed until the early 1970s, when he had a late-life resurgence when he played Grandpa Walton on the TV show The Waltons in the years just before he died.

Chaplin provides keen insights into her own fascinating family’s experiences during the days of Hollywood’s and the FBI’s anticommunist witch hunts. But she also sets them in the context of their time, making their stories and those of other victims of Hollywood blacklists understandable and accessible to listeners unacquainted with this sad part of American history, while providing new details for those of us who have followed this saga for decades.

While the stories Maddow and Chaplin tell are often dark and frankly horrifying, they’re important to resurface and re-examine if we want to learn from the nation’s past mistakes, and to fight the encroachment of fascist tendencies into our government and our personal lives today.

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Charlie Chaplin as The Little Tramp and Jackie Coogan as The Kid in Chaplin’s 1921 silent movie The Kid

History, Politics & Current Affairs

Fighting for Freedom

It is devastating but right and beautiful that the U.S., Canada, the UK, and other nations give brave service people a day every year to remember what they have given for us, and to thank and bless them for their unimaginable bravery and willingness to put others’ lives before their own. My deepest thanks and gratitude to all who have served, been wounded, sacrificed, and died to keep this nation a Constitutional republic. I bless and honor those who have fought and died to help other nations stay and become free countries that upheld the rule of law, extended justice and equality to their citizens, and gave refuge to those who escaped from fascism and other horrible political systems to find a better life. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”—and those whom he (or she, or they) would count as friends.

On this and every Veterans Day, I hold my Grandpa George’s World War I dog tags in my hand and remember what he did for this country. I am grateful to the members of my own family who’ve put themselves in harm’s way to serve their country, including my father, my Uncle Woody, my Cousin Mike (currently serving), and both of my grandfathers. My Grandpa George, who was born of a German immigrant mother and a Swiss immigrant father, spoke only German at home, and was still reading his beloved Goethe in blackletter German script on his deathbed. Grandpa and his nine siblings were deeply steeped in German literature, poetry, and music. How horribly painful it must have been for him and his family to see him go to Europe to fight against and kill his mother’s former countrymen when they invaded France during World War I. And how many millions of other U.S. service members have given everything, everything, everything they have to protect us, to keep other nations free, and to fight against invasion, aggression, terrorism, fascism, communism, and religious extremism? Bless them and the many millions more at home who suffered, feared, sacrificed, and grieved for those they loved who went to war and gave up everything for us.

Their sacrifice is beyond imagining. Let’s be worthy of it. Let’s stand up for our nations’ freedoms, laws, values, and constitutions. It’s the very least we can do to properly thank those who served and died on the battlefield to make and keep the U.S. and other nations democratic republics. Let’s continue to fight the good fight in honor of our ancestors—and for those who are still to come.

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My grandfather’s World War I dog tags, given to him when he joined the U. S. Army in 1917.