Wind's Rising

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks.”

― Raymond Chandler

One of the grimmest recurring images in literature is a hot wind.

A harbinger of mayhem and violence, it blows in summers across cities like Los Angeles, turning the streets pitiless. 

As tempers and the red stuff in thermometers rise, beatings, stabbings and shootings spike.

As cops and criminologists know, a hot wind does things to people.

America's cities are in for a hot wind this summer. 

Last year, the homicide rates in large cities rose, on average, 30%. 

In some cities, the increase was far worse. In Minneapolis, homicides rose 72%; in Portland, 82%.

This summer will be even more violent.

"Unless the American people speak out," the Miami chief of police told CNN this week, "it’s gonna be a long, hot, bloody summer."

Child's Play

A child loves his play not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.

— Benjamin Spock

The recent rehabilitation of Mr. Potato Head has led me to consider whether one of my favorite childhood games—Cowboys & Indians—can be similarly salvaged, or whether it's so outré it must remain on the ash heap of history.

When I was a kid, we'd exhaust ourselves playing the game. 

We'd dress in partial costumes and chase each other around the parks, playgrounds and backyards for hours, in hopes of catching anyone from the other side off guard.

Cap guns made the game especially thrilling.

Woke being only a preterit in the late 1950s, no one—least of all, the adults—questioned the politics of the pastime. 

It was, after all, the era of TV Westerns like Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, The Lone Ranger, and The Rifleman.

If Cowboys & Indians is to be suitably reformed for today's kids, fundamental changes to the game will have to be made.

First, the name.

Although the word order unjustly prioritizes the colonizers, Cowhands & Indigenous Americans would seem best. But only the full name should ever be used; never the acronym.

Next, the objective.

Cowboys & Indians' goal is simply to eliminate as many of your opponents as possible in an afternoon. The goal of Cowhands & Indigenous Americans should be for both sides to meet and negotiate the restoration of broken treaties (including appropriate reparations). The change will mandate that all players dress as attorneys.

Finally, the rules.

Under the new rules, Cowhands will be required to wear body cameras at all times. Purchase of a cap gun will require training, licensing, an intensive background check, and a two-week wait period (except in Texas). The use of bows and arrows, if certified authentic, is permitted. No player may pad her billing.

  

As Dr. Spock said, child's play isn't easy.

Silver Girl

Sail on Silver Girl,

Sail on by.

— Paul Simon

On this day in 1968, I stood on the mobbed platform of my local Penn Central station to watch "Silver Girl" take Robert F. Kennedy's body to Washington for burial.

My 15-year-old self came to think of RFK's funeral train by that name 18 months later, when Simon and Garfunkel laid the soundtrack of a brand-new song over film footage of it. 

We're now all-too familiar with that mournful song.

Sail on Silver Girl,

Sail on by.

Your time has come to shine,

All your dreams are on their way.

See how they shine.

Although the song became a smash hit, Simon and Garfunkel's televised sermon didn't suit most Americans' tastes in late 1969. A million viewers switched off the duo's TV special after seeing the train.

Camelot was out. Nixon was in.

On History.com, historian Steven M. Gillon recalls why RFK's cortege drew so many people trackside 18 months earlier, on June 8, 1968.

A true humanitarian had been slain. Not a poser, but a rich, once-ruthless Cold Warrior who'd been reborn a hippie; a peacenik, labor leader, friend of the middle class, and civil rights spokesperson—and the only man in America who could fill the shoes of the just-murdered Martin Luther King.

"RFK was the only white politician in America who could walk through the streets of both white and Black working-class neighborhoods and be embraced by both," Gillon writes.

Shot by a Palestinian who opposed his stance on Israel, RFK had died on June 6, at the age of 42. The Kennedy family immediately arranged his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on June 8, and his burial the same day at Arlington National Cemetery. 

The family then enlisted the Penn Central to shuttle the body and 700 family friends between the two cities. The railroad cobbled together a train composed of two locomotives and 21 passenger cars. RFK's casket rested in the last one, on top of red velvet chairs.

The idea of using a funeral train seemed right, "because his people live along the tracks,” John Kenneth Galbraith said at the time. 

But none of the family or friends expected what would happen.

"As they emerged from the tunnel under the Hudson River into the bright sunshine of northern New Jersey, the passengers got their first glimpse of the enormous crowds gathered to view the train," Gillon writes. 

"In the marshlands of northern Jersey, hardened workers stood atop trucks with their hands placed over their hearts. One man knelt in prayer by the trackside. In New Brunswick, a lone bugler stood on the station platform sounding taps. In rural areas, girls flocked to the railroad on horseback, and boys looked down from trees. Outside Philadelphia, a junior high school band played 'America the Beautiful.' At the Philadelphia train station, onlookers linked arms and sang the Civil War anthem 'Battle Hymn of the Republic,' one of RFK’s favorite songs.

"Gazing out the window, journalist Jack Newfield witnessed 'tens of thousands of poor Blacks, already bereft from the loss of Martin Luther King, weeping and waving goodbye on one side of the railroad tracks.' And alongside those Black mourners were 'tens of thousands of almost poor whites on the other side of the train, waving American flags, standing at attention, hands over their hearts, tears running down their faces.' 

"'Inside the train, you couldn’t hear anything,' said journalist Art Buchwald. 'But on the platform, you could hear the cheers, and the people crying.'”

Oh, if you need a friend,

I’m sailing right behind.

The trip lasted for eight hours—twice as long as it should have—because more than a million people had massed along the tracks to say goodbye. Journalist Russell Baker noted that "not a single face in the crowd smiled.” It was a million-man catharsis.

Like a bridge over troubled water,

I will ease your mind.

Like a bridge over troubled water,

I will ease your mind.

"Dave Powers, who had been part of the Kennedy Irish mafia dating back to JFK’s first campaign for Congress in 1946, did not want the train ride to end," historian Gillon writes. 

"'I wish this thing could go through every state, just keep going.'"

Sail on, Silver Girl.

POSTSCRIPT: Find an album of contemporary photos here.

We Must Not Allow an Imposter Gap

I think we should look at this from the military point of view.

― General "Buck" Turgidson

Four centuries ago, Russia experienced a decade of anarchy citizens would soon call "The Time of Troubles."

Cossacks roamed the countryside, looting and pillaging, while millions of peasants mobbed the lawless cities, searching for food. The nation's government, minus a legitimate leader (the czar had died without a successor), collapsed. A third of the population died or were murdered.

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories about the czardom proliferated—as did pretenders to the throne. 

Russians called the many imposters "False Dmitrys" (the real Dmitry should have succeeded his father, but was assassinated as a child). 

At least four False Dmitrys gained loyalists; and one, with the help of Polish Jesuits, was actually crowned czar on his promise to save the country. 

False Dmitry I, so called, reigned for eleven whole months, before being killed in a bloody coup. Wearing a jester's cap, his body was put on display in a Moscow square before being burned. His ashes were then shot from a cannon aimed at Poland.

Flash forward four centuries to our own Time of Troubles. 

Conspiracy theories proliferate and we have False Donald, our very our own pretender to the throne.

While news organizations and pundits like Rachel Maddow and Steve Schmidt issue dire warnings, I'm unalarmed.

The way out of our mess is simple: every American named Donald Trump should declare he is the real president. 

We would have not one, but 21 pretenders to the throne.

After all, the Russians had four. Shouldn't the US have more?

We must not allow an imposter gap!

HAT TIP: Ann Ramsey inspired this post. Spasiba.

Laughorisms

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

— Umberto Eco

Those pansophical gems known as aphorisms have captivated me since I first encountered them in Nietzsche.

"How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism?" the Victorian writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton asked.

Aphorisms—what one writer calls "the world in a phrase"—beguile you with their sagacity.

For example:

Many people are obstinate about the path taken, few about the destination. (Nietzsche)

The heart has its reasons that reason does not know. (Pascal)

Common sense is genius dressed in his working clothes. (Emerson)

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. (Thoreau)

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road: they get run over. (Bierce)

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. (Wilde)

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. (Twain)

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. (Dorothy Parker)

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. (Sartre)

From the pens of quipsters—Bierce, Wilde, Twain and Parker, to name a few—aphorisms are like sunny classrooms: you rejoice in what you learn from them.

From the pens of savants—Pascal, Thoreau, Emerson, Nietzsche and Sartre—they're like Agatha Christie cozies: you're charmed but stymied, until you figure them out.

But aphorisms from the pens of windbags are another matter. 

They're haughty, but stupid, like the bumbling stuffed-shirts in Three Stooges films. They wish to be taken seriously; but you can only laugh at them.

A case in point.

I belong to the Facebook group Practical Existentialism, where windbags post witless aphorisms by the dozens every day; for example:

Every skill is ultimately an extension of instinct, because something cannot be created from nothing. The profound evolves from the basic.

I rejoiced to see the post earn this comment:

What? Just quit this pseudo crap already. Jack Handey had deeper questions.

Laughable aphorisms—laughorisms—abound in social media, particularly in the posts of personal coaches, sales trainers, motivational speakers, gurus, clerics, psychotherapists, retired journalists, and amateur philosophers.

Here's a smattering (names withheld to protect the innocent): 

What you believe doesn't matter. How you believe is everything.

Truth is never the whole truth. Truth is not literally true.

To make a difference, you must first overcome indifference.

Nature is chaos and our minds are its children.

We’re little balloons floating through a godless universe. Nihilism is the slow leak.

Inertia has a momentum all its own.

Forever coiled, never sprung.

Everything is darker at night.

Fear dying, not death.

"Aphorisms are very seductive," says says philosopher Julian Baggini. "But I often think they’re too beguiling. 

"They trick us into thinking we’ve grasped a deep thought by their wit and brevity, but if you poke them, you find they ride roughshod over all sorts of complexities and subtleties. 

"A person who has an aphorism for everything gives thought to nothing."