The President Gets a Spanking!

The promise of change is but a blurred memory!
by Charlie Leck

A number of friends have written, asking me why (Why?) I have not yet expressed myself about the Massachusetts senatorial election. Frankly, in all truthfulness, I am stunned by the events in Teddy K’s state and I haven yet recovered from the thrashing

The extraordinary defeat in a state where Democrats usually reign is enlightening. It portends troubled waters ahead for the Party in November. Unless the economy makes a surprising and unexpectedly strong recovery in the next six months, there will be doom and gloom among Democrats in November. I am not predicting that the Republicans will take control of either congressional body, but they will seriously weaken the Democrat’s majority.

Why the turning against Democrats?
I see two basic reasons why the voter is dissatisfied enough to move toward the Republican Party even in a state so solidly and traditionally Democratic as Massachusetts.

The Democrats and the economy!
The voters are bright enough not to blame Democrats for the original plunge of the American economy. Those causes lie elsewhere. However, the voters want to know why the Democrats haven’t done more to help the nation recover. They don’t like it that the job market remains so weak. They don’t like it that big banks have been coddled, romanced, kissed and gifted so vigorously by this administration and this Democrat controlled Congress. While that little affair has been going on right before our eyes, the little guy has been ignored and refused any affection whatsoever.

You may argue, if you wish, that this is perception only and not really factual. Let me tell you, in politics perception is 99.91 percent of the game.

And, here’s the other perception among the voters and the second reason why they voted so harshly against the Democratic Party in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

Change? What change?
The American voter is not a fool. They know what the President’s most basic promise was in the 2008 election. He promised us change and there has been no change. For that, both the President and his party will be punished.

President Barack H. Obama is conducting himself and the affairs of his office in the same old way Bush-Reagan-Clinton-Bush conducted themselves. Obama is an ordinary, and not an extraordinary, President. Deal making is one of the primary tools of his office – along with glad-handing, backslapping, favor-dealing and ass-kissing.

The President may have very innocently thought that this was the way to promote his programs and get them slid through Congress. If so, he was dead-wrong.

Those of us who voted for him wanted a different approach. We would have preferred to see a number of his proposals crash and burn in Congress rather than watch him compromise on his promises to the American people. He should have stood fast on real health care reform. When it failed, he could have taken his case to the American people and shown them the real culprits who destroyed America’s dream.

Instead, the President was willing to dilute and dilute his health care proposal to win over every single vote he could possibly get. Those to whom he made his promise that things would be different were not impressed.

The President shows every sign that he will conduct himself in this manner on all the great issues of his campaign platform.

Yes we can! Sorry, the chant has now become: “Sorry, we thought we could!”

The President, because of his compromises, is deeply and personally embedded in each defeat he suffers and will suffer in Congress. He failed to stay above the fray and became an integral part of it.

The people want to know how there can be change when the President carries on with all the good-old boys over there in Congress who are doing things the same, same-old way.

The American people are about to spank the President for his failure to really change the way things are done in Washington. The people of Massachusetts already have.

Watch how voters in Pennsylvania will do the same thing in November. Say good-bye to Arlan Spector!

Alan Furst

Do you like a good historical spy-thriller?
by Charlie Leck

Some time ago, some writers and, therefore, of course, avid readers, told me about Alan Furst. They were surprised, in a condescending sort of way, that I had not read anything by him – that I really didn’t know about him. They knew full well that I enjoyed really good spy thrillers.

“Furst is the best,” they chimed out together. “He’s absolutely the best.”

Those are awkward kinds of moments, when you feel really silly, small and stupid. So, that evening I did some reading about Alan Furst and, sure enough, because of my enjoyment of the spy-thriller,I should have known about him and I certainly should have read him.

“Start with Dark Voyage,” they had told me when they saw me slumping and looking shamefully inadequate. “You must start with that one and then do whatever you want in reading the rest.”

They rattled off a series of titles I ought to pick up: Dark Star, Red Gold, Blood of Victory, Night Soldiers.

Well, I began a search for Dark Voyage. I’ve told you before that my favorite source for book buying is the American Book Exchange (better known as ABE) and I go to that web site to search for and buy most of my books. I was pretty disappointed to find out that the book, in a first edition copy, was not in stock anywhere and was very difficult to come by. I put it on my wish list at ABE and heard only last week that one dealer (Thriftbooks) had come up with it. I okayed the order and sat back and waited for the mailman (a lady in my case) to deliver it. I could have gone to the Alan Furst website and ordered a paperback edition, but I’m a snob and don’t much care for paperbacks.

I was able to get started on Dark Voyage on the evening it came. I began with what appeared to be a very brief, even tiny, prologue. It was intriguing.

“In the first nineteen months of European war, from September, 1939, to March of 1941, the island nation of Britain and her allies lost, to U-boat, air, and sea attack, to mines and maritime disaster, one-thousand, five hundred and ninety-six merchant vessels.

“It was the job of the Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy to stop it, and so, on the last day of April, 1941…”

I dropped the book to my lap and thought about that. The man had just written that Britain and her allies had lost 1,596 merchant vessels in a period of two years and six months. The United States, I remembered, had not yet entered the war. How devastating! With angst, I flipped forward to the beginning of the book.

Within a sentence or two I was able to know with certainty that I had in my hands a book by a real and talented writer.

“In the port of Tangier, on the last day of April, 1941, the fall of the Mediterranean evening was, as always, subtle and slow. Broken cloud, the color of dark fire in the last of the sunset, drifted over the hills above the port, and streetlamps lit the quay that lined the waterfront. A white city, and steep; alleys, souks, and cafés, their patrons gathering for love and business as the light faded away.”

It is the marvelous thing about reading any extraordinary novel; that is, it takes you with it to new places and to other times. Furst had drawn me from my easy chair and brought me to Tangiers. There I was, witnessing the events of that early evening and totally at his mercy.

John le Carré does that to me when I read him. I’ve always considered The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)to be the best spy thriller I had ever read – until now, that is.

My somewhat snobby, writer friends had been correct. Furst is absolutely extraordinary. He is a brilliant story teller and he is a classy, talented writer. What a remarkable discovery! What a treat! How in heaven’s name had I escaped any knowledge of him? Again, I felt small and silly.

What you must know about Furst is that he is among that genre of “historical spy-thriller writers.” There really is a significant concentration on placing the plot and characters within an accurate historical perspective. It is this that makes writers like Furst and le Carré much more intriguing to read than Daniel Silva and his slash and burn action style.

Furst is a Manhattan boy (Upper West Side). He received his B.A. from Oberlin in ’62 and an M.A. from Penn State in ’67. He’s also lived in the south of France and in Paris. For a short time he worked for the legendary Margaret Mead. He wrote for magazines such as Esquire and, for a period of time, wrote a weekly column in the International Herald Tribune. Furst now lives out on Long Island. He calls Paris “the heart of civilization” and I am not going to argue with that. His novels have never sold in staggering numbers, but, over the years, he’s built a steady, large and loyal group of followers.

If you want to read a quite good and creative story about Alan Furst and how he works, read this article from the NY Times (June, 2009) by Charles McGrath

“North, and north. Into the heart of the storm on the evening of the sixteenth, where the wind shrieked and thirty-foot waves came crashing over the deck and sheets of driven rain sluiced down the bridge-house windows. It was DeHaan who took the storm watch, but Ratter and Kees were on and off the bridge all night long, everybody in oil-skins, including the helmsman, hands white on the wheel, who stood a two-hour shift before DeHaan sent him below and had a fresh one take over. The force of the storm blew out of the west, and DeHaan kept giving up a grudging point at a time, fighting for his course, because Noordendam couldn’t take it full on the beam. Finally Kees said, ‘Turn into the goddamn thing for Christ’s sake,’ and DeHaan gave the order, swinging due west and heading up into the wind. Mr. Ali came up, now and again, blinking as he wiped his glasses with a handkerchief, to report distress calls coming in on the radio – the North Atlantic taking hold of the war that night and trying to break it in half. Then a savage gust of wind snapped the aerial and Ali appeared no more.”

END of blog!

Il Trovatore

On this quiet, early morning, thunderous music surrounds me!
by Charlie Leck

On this day, January 19, one-hundred and fifty years ago, at the Teatro Apollo in Rome, Giuseppe Verdi’s extraordinary opera, Il Trovatore, was premiered. More than two years later, in May of 1855, significantly revised, it was performed in New York City at the Academy of Music.

I am not, by any means, an aficionado of great opera; yet, if I needed to pick one particular opera I could see, it would be this work by Verdi. Why? My answer is not that of an opera expert or musically inclined person. I simply like the music – especially the triumphant pieces. I think so many of the various movements from this opera are stunning and inspirational. It is the only opera I have in recorded format. Occasional (usually during the winter) I pull it out to listen to it.

If you want to see and hear what I am talking about, you can watch and listen on You Tube as Giuseppe Sinopoli conducts the famous Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore (The Troubadour).

This morning, needing a boost of energy and some motivation, I have my CD of the opera playing here on my computer as I write. My recording is one done in 1976 featuring Liciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Home, Ingvar Wixell and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Richard Bonynge conducts the National Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Opera Chorus. I like it very much but I don’t know how it ranks among other great recordings. I’ve heard Plácido Domingo do some of the songs from Il Trovatore and he is remarkable. So is Jose Carreras.

Errico Caruso once explained that it would only take four of the greatest singers in the world to successfully perform Il Trovatore.

Again on You Tube, you can listen to the extraordinary Soldier’s Chorus. It will give you more of a sense of the operatic nature of this work.

And also, here is Pavarotti, in a performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, singing Di Quella Pira from Il Trovatore.

As in most Opera, as far as I am concerned, it is not the story that attracts us; and, in this case in particular, Il Trovatore does not tell a compelling tale. I won’t even bore you with it. To me, it is the grandness of the music that is so attractive.

Enough for the 19 January 2010 post. The year is upon wings and is flying!

Thanks for opening your wallets and your hearts!
So many of you wrote back after my blog of a few days ago about the crisis in Haiti, telling me you have already made, or soon will make, contributions to the great needs there. Thanks so much for both coming to my blog occasionally and for being so generous in this time of great brotherly need.

Slow Response to Haiti Tragedy

I've dawdeled and diddled and watched in absolute horror!
by Charlie Leck

I've got excuses by the thousands and I've had plenty of good intentions. How about you?

Have you donated money yet? Have you given so that it hurts a little in order to help out in Haiti? I hope so. If not, it's time to get off the dime and send a little money (or a lot of money if you can afford it).

I've been sitting on my checkbook, as they say, waiting for something. What? Some kind of inspiration about some organization to which I should give my dough. I've hemmed and hawed and napped on it. I just haven't gotten it done.

But right now -- just the second I post this blog on this Sunday morning -- I am going to go on-line to the Red Cross and make a contribution. I absolutely promise.

What has happened to Haiti is one of the extraordinary disasters of our life-time. The estimates of the dead that keeping coming in are horrible and painful. I only hope they are grossly exaggerated.

You must understand that it could have happened in our country and in our own neighborhood. Deborah Blum, of Madison, Wisconsin, wrote a piece this week for the NY Times [click here to read it] that was really worth the reading time.

"I used to be a science writer for a California newspaper, where I learned to think of the ground beneath my feet as something alive. It crawled and shivered and quaked. It was the thin, wrinkled skin of an A.D.D. planet whose muscles and bones constantly twitched beneath it."

Haiti's disaster could just as easily have been in California. Those poor bastards down there could have been friends or family on the west coast, living atop the San Andreas fault.

Blum quoted Will Durant in her piece: "Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."

Then Blum goes on to call it a "rebuttal of our natural hubris, our assumption that we inevitably lord over this small sphere in one of our galaxy's lesser solar systems."

In fact, we are but infinitesimally tiny and insignificant specks in the great universe, yet we have hearts, souls, feelings and generous concerns for our neighbors. We cry!

This mighty quake in Haiti had a biblical tone about it. It speaks of what we don't understand about life and death and the future

I hated the awful things the Reverend Pat Robertson said about these events in Haiti. He was dead wrong and he was ignorant and repulsively non-biblical. It was his own miserable vanity that thought and spoke these things -- things that we should revile and hold in contempt. Robertson is a fool -- a piece of waste with a wasted mind. I have no time for such contemptible people.

Robertson called the quake in Haiti a sign of God's wrath over that nation state. I was stunned as I listened to his comments. They made no sense. It all had something to do with the Haiti's achievement of independence from the French.

“They were under the heel of the French…and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you’…and so, the devil said ‘Okay, it’s a deal’ and kicked the French out,... They need to have…a great turning to God...”

Robertson has always been one of the great dummies of religion and theology. He has never earned any stripes as a great thinker. If there is a God who can hear us, She must have cringed when Robertson spoke about Haiti. Robertson is the same mean man who blamed hurricane Katrina on the wickedness of New Orleans.

Rush Limbaugh, it is hard to believe, went and did Pat Robertson one comment even more horrible.

"We've already donated to Haiti,'' Limbaugh responded to a caller on his radio show. "It's called the U.S. income tax."

Limbaugh twisted and squirmed and wormed his way into the mud, somehow trying to tie blame for this great earthquake to President Obama. What puke! I can't find daintier or cuter words this morning. He discouraged donations to Haiti, declaring that all such donations would do is get you on "Obama's email list."

Look it, my dear, wonderful and compassionate readers, these comments by two of the world's leading idiots are only more reason to make donations to some Haitian aide fund. I've just gotten myself so worked up that I am going to double my contribution.

It's a wonderful Sunday morning. We are going to spend the afternoon with mild and delightful people. I shouldn't be so upset. I quake!

Gotta Have that Book

Doesn’t it happen to you, too? Once in a while you hear about a book – perhaps on the radio – and you just have gotta have that book. Right now!
by Charlie Leck

[Post edited signficantly, with corrections, on 17 January 2010]

The fabulous Missus came home last night and told me she’d been to the book store, trying to get a book for me. She said she’d heard the author on the radio and the book sounded right up my alley.

“You know you shouldn’t buy books for me,” said I. “I like to buy my own.”

“Yes, but this one is right up your alley. I know you’ll love it.”

“Okay. What’s the title? Who’s the author?”

“Uhh! I forgot. But, I heard the author interviewed on public radio and it sounded just like the stuff you enjoy – it was about the campaign last year and how it worked. Hillary played a little dirty. So did some other candidates. There’s a lot of controversy about the book. It’s gotten plenty of people angry.”

“Which radio show?”

“Uhh! I don’t remember. It was in the afternoon. The major part of the book deals with the campaign, but it’s also about Obama’s change from candidate to President. It’s gotten remarkably good reviews.”

My taste is strange. I rarely pay new price for a book. I buy a lot of books for a dollar. I don’t care if they're five or six years old. Yet, once in a while a new book comes out and I’ve just got to have it – like THE CLINTON TAPES. I heard its author, Taylor Branch, interviewed on public radio and I just had to run out and pick up a copy. Taylor Branch is a terrific writer (PARTING THE WATERS).

The extraordinary woman in my life had piqued my curiosity. I hit the computer and searched the afternoon schedule of the public radio station. Suddenly, there it was. I found it. I clicked the little magical button, (How did they ever invent this extraordinary Internet?) and there it was – the entire interview with author John Heilemann about a new book he wrote with Mark Halperin, GAME CHANGE.

I sat, spellbound, in front of my computer and listened to the interview from top to bottom. The star of my life was correct. My blood heated up and my heart was pumpin’ and my corpuscles were jumpin’ and I had to get this book.

Heilemann writes for New Yorker Magazine. He’s well known and a quality writer. Halperin is an editor and political analyst for Time Magazine who has covered 6 presidential elections. I’ve got to have this book.

Heilemann called it a “fire storm” – this reaction to the book. He hadn’t expected it. Everyone’s talking about the book. Lots of people are buying it. What a wonderful combination!

"Why’d you write the book?" The interviewer cut to the chase and posed the question bluntly. Heilemann stumbled for a moment and then smoothly answered.

“… the book covers the entire 2008 election, and you know, part of the reason why we sat down to write it in the first place was that, as we say and as the subtitle indicates, you know, we thought it was the race of a lifetime, and there were so many pieces of it that were historic.

“I don't think we'll ever see an election like this in our lifetimes again, where you have the election of the first African-American president, the first female - plausible female candidate for president in Hillary Clinton, the rise of Sarah Palin, which has obviously led to a whole movement in the Republican Party that's kind of transforming the Republican Party. Those are all big pieces. You also had John McCain, who in any normal year would have been a figure of kind of - would have been a facile, kind of celebrity figure and the most interesting person in the race, and in this campaign, he was the fourth-or fifth-most-interesting person in the race.

“But as you point out, the arc of Obama, the unknown Barack Obama, coming to the Senate and getting it into his head that he can win against the formidable frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, how he did that and how the two of them end up on the same side at the end of the book is obviously probably the overarching, single-most kind of historically important narrative in the entire book.”

Let me guaranty you, though it is already Saturday morning, before the weekend is done, I’ll be into this book. My eyes are bothering me these days and I’ve been advised not to drive, but I’ll somehow roll the car through the streets to the bookstore, so I can pick up a copy. Naturally, you’ll hear more about it next week.

Ken Rudin, the Political Junkie and a regular guest on Talk of the Nation, explained my feelings precisely.

“John, what I found so fascinating about this book is that: one, before I opened it, I figured look, here we go again. We know everything that happened. Some guy named Obama won. We know the other people lost, and that would be the end of it. And yet I could not - I still haven't been able to put this book down. I also want to say it's really well-written, and it's a great book.

“What I found most fascinating, not only watching the Obama thing, the way the Obama people thought about whether he could actually run and win, but to watch what Hillary Clinton had to go through, knowing the vulnerabilities, knowing the problems with Bill Clinton and yet how she so carefully tried to make herself the
inevitable candidate and watch it fall apart on her face.”

The book is the product of more than 300 interviews and over 200 sources. Both of the authors actively covered the campaign. Heilemann kept stirring my juices as I listened to the interview.

“…we penetrated into the Clintons' world in a way I think very few authors ever have before. And the story that you tell there, again another historic theme of this book, is, you know, the down - the fall of the House of Clinton. They had been the dominant family in American politics for the past generation, and how Hillary Clinton missed her opportunity in 2004.

“One of the big pieces of news in the book that's also been ignored a little bit is how close she came to running, Hillary did, in 2004. We argue in the book that she - it was probably a better chance for her than in 2008, and in some ways, by not running in 2004, she opened the door to Barack Obama. She opened the door to John Kerry getting the nomination, who then named Obama his keynote speaker in 2004. How she then decides, having not run in 2004, that 2008 will be her year and goes through, as you said, all of the vulnerabilities, fights them all off, fends off the concerns about her husband, fends off all of those problems, manages to put herself in this - what seems to be an unassailable frontrunner's position and then manages to see it all snatched away by this most unlikely challenger in the person of Barack Obama.”

Heilemann’s description of John and Elizabeth Edwards and their part in the great story of this campaign was one of the most intriguing elements in the interview. I’m not sure I want to dig that deeply into Elizabeth Edwards’ emotional catastrophe during this campaign, but, on the other hand, the way Heilemann depicts it makes it irresistible.

Sarah Palin is a big part of the story of the 2008 campaign and Heilemann carefully detailed how they sourced the material they wrote about Palin (because she has refuted much of what they say and called it “untrue”).

“It’s true. And - I mean, I - Sarah Palin took issue with a number of things on television the other night. All I can say is that in that -in the case of Sarah Palin is that we, again, what kind of like the Clintons, I think we penetrated into Sarah Palin's world in a way that very few others have. We were - we spoke to - as you probably know, there were warring camps to the McCain campaign. There were people who were very sympathetic to Sarah Palin. There are people who also are very - who were very critical of Sarah Palin. We spoke to all of them.

“And on every single story of a factual nature of the conduct that we're talking about here, things that were gaps in her knowledge, we had confirmations on those stories from people who were in both camps - people who were critics and people who were sympathetic. And so I understand why she feels the need to deny those stories, because they're embarrassing, but we're very comfortable with them and feel that they are - we stand by them 100 percent.”

The disheartening thing to hear was that the book is gosh darn hard to find. It has sold so well that most bookstores are out of it. Drat! I get these buzzes on about books and I can’t stand waiting for them.

If you’ve read the book already, let’s hear from you about it. As soon as I can read it, you’ll be getting my report.

[To read the entire Talk of the Nation interview or to listen to it, click here!]

My Kind of Guy!

You can have your heroes if you want, but I’ll take this guy as my hero. Let me explain!
by Charlie Leck

I toasted an English Muffin this morning (from Thomas – they’re the best you can buy) and read through the local, pathetic newspaper. Then, there on the bottom of the page, I spotted the curious headline: MODEST IN LIFE, LIBRARIAN STUNS WITH GIFTS AFTER DEATH.

The guy’s name, Bob Olson, is as plain and vanilla as the way he lived his life. This past summer, at the age of 82, he passed on. He was just a few days short of his 83rd birthday. At the time, his estate was valued at approximately 878,000 dollars. No one had any idea that Bob had that kind of money and they certainly didn’t know, in his will, he parceled out all that money to some interesting benefactors. Right off the top, of course, he directed that two of his neighbors should receive $50,000 each. They had been particularly good to him and helped him in his older years and Bob wanted to express his appreciation.

Bob’s generosity didn’t end there. He gave the city of Minneapolis, as his way of saying thanks for all the good services, a pleasant little gift of 100,000 dollars. There were no restrictions attached to the gift. Bob wanted the city to use it any way they wanted.

Now, at this point, I was starting to warm up to this fellow, Bob, and thought he might be a really neat guy. He had no other heirs, so he wanted to spread his money around as a way of saying thanks to people and institutions. He even left some funds for his former employer, The University of Minnesota Libraries. Bob had worked there for 23 years. He cataloged books. Bob left his former employer several hundred thousand dollars. Bob graduated from the University with a degree in Library Sciences. He went to a high school right in the neighborhood where he lived and died.

You know, when Bob died, virtually no one took notice. A couple living across the alley felt sad about Bob’s departure. They enjoyed sharing tomatoes and raspberries from their garden with Bob. They also helped Bob around his house a bit. Bob appreciated them and left the money as his way of thanking them. They were stunned when told about the gift. One of the neighbors who received Olson’s generous gift is out of work. The gift comes as a blessing.

Another of his neighbors indicated that Olson was a grateful man who always said “thank you” for anything one did for him.

Well, any of the above you could’ve read in the newspaper and I’m just regurgitating it here.

I guess what I want to say about the story is that I felt so damned good after reading it. However, there’s a story about a murder right next to the story about Bob Olson. It happened a few nights ago in Bob’s neighborhood. A couple of teenagers slid into a neighborhood grocery store and demanded money. Something went wrong and they started shooting, killing three people – one a store employee and another a customer.

Bob loved his neighborhood. It would have distressed him. He also liked Seward Market and Halal Meats that had opened a couple of years ago. It was owned by some Somali folks. Bob was comfortable with that. There was room in the neighborhood for them and the store made shopping for groceries convenient. It was odd looking down at the paper, seeing the two stories juxtaposed on different sides of the page.

There’s so much goodness in the world. And then, there is the insanity, too.

I wish I had known Bob. I’d ask him for some advice about being a more grateful and generous person. I’d chat with him, too, about Haiti and ask him what he thought of the comments the Reverend Pat Robertson made about the horrible events down there.

“Jesus, Bob, those comments confuse the hell out me. What do you think? Has Pat Robertson gone around the bend?”

Bob would probably tell me I ought to be sending some money down there. He’d be correct, of course, but I founder around trying to figure out which agency to use to get my money into the "right" hands. Any really grateful person would already have made the contribution.

My land, I’m confused. Pat Robertson gets me so angry I can’t think straight.

THIS & THAT

Here's some good stuff I picked up in my reading yesterday that is still fresh enough for you to check out.
by Charlie Leck

You know, this morning I took a look at the left over French baguette from dinner two nights ago. It was hard as a rock. What a waste!

That’s the attitude I had when I set up a little place to live in Paris as a young man, searching for F. Scott, Ernie and Sylvia Beach. One morning, George, the fellow who lived in the flat next door, saw me taking a stale hunk of baguette to the trash. He nearly flipped out and struggled to tell me that this was not the French way.

“Mais non, Monsieur,” he shouted to me. I looked at him in wonder and couldn’t imagine what had stirred him up so.

“Vous ne devons pas gaspiller le pain,” he continued (You musn’t waste the bread!). “Venez!”

He motioned me to follow him into his flat. I watched him fire up his oven and push it up to broil.

“Je vais vous montrer quoi faire! (I’ll show you what to do!).

He sprinkled a little water on both sides of the bread and then, with a sharp knife, slit it long-ways right down the middle. He slapped a little butter on the inside of both slices of the bread and slid them under the hot fire.

After a moment, he smiled at me and had me peek through the little crack he left in the oven door.

“Regardez! Le pain est au coeur de la vie,” he said to me with a big smile, speaking slowly so I might follow. “Nous Français ne jetez jamais de pain! (We French never discard our bread!)

The bread browned up beautifully before my eyes. George removed it carefully by stabbing it with a fork. He pulled the slices from the oven and put one on a plate for me and another for himself. He had steaming cups of hot chocolate ready. He motioned me to sit down. He pushed the butter toward me.

“Plus de beurre sur le pain!”

Yes, yes. More butter. I spread a healthy (or unhealthy) amount across the long piece of baguette. George pushed some kind of jam toward me also and pointed at it.

“Confiture de fraises,” he said, pointing toward my slice of bread. “Avec de beurre!”

We sat and ate the French toast together and both of us smiled with pleasure. We sloshed down our hot chocolate – chocolat chaud! The baguette was better than even the night before.

“Merci, mon ami,” I said to George, “merci beaucoup! Le pain est trés bon!”

“Allon-mous aller aux courses de chevaux?” George asked me if I wanted to go to the horse races. It was a daily activity for him. He tried to make a living that way. By the looks of his dismal garret apartment, he wasn’t doing too well.

He was not exactly the fellow I’d come to Paris to meet up with, but perhaps this is how John Dos Passos got started as well.

“Oui,” I stuttered out, “trés certainement, allons!”

So, below I’ve browned up for you some day-old baguette. It is still delicious and maybe, upon reflection and after this bit of browning, even better than yesterday, when it broke in the papers.

CHINA & GOOGLE
China is clearly lagging behind where we had hoped it would be in terms of granting both human rights and freedom of information to its people. We, half-way around the globe, need to remember that China is not a democracy or a republic and is, therefore, in the precarious position of needing to protect the position of national leaders who would be threatened by too much information spread among the people and certainly by granting human rights too freely.

“This is not your father’s China,” as I once said here in a blog; however, it is also not yet a free and open society.

One of the mega-corporations has stepped up to challenge China by informing the nation that it is willing to pull its sizeable investment out of there and leave the nation before it will allow it’s systems to be hacked, attacked and abused by the government. It’s a brave stance and we need to watch the story closely. [You can read the NY Times story about Google challenging China by clicking here!]

TAXING THE EXTRAVAGANT BONUS
Someone at the NY Times (in an editorial) has sprung a marvelous idea. Let’s wallop the crazy, astronomical corporate bonuses with an astronomical mega-tax in return. That’s a way to attack our deficit! What a great idea! The paper also endorses a White House idea to levy a substantial tax on large banks to make up for the bail-out money that had to be spent to stabilize an industry that had been run very poorly in the first decade of this century. Go for it! [Read the NY Times editorial!]

LOOKING FOR PURITY IN YOUR FOOD? JOIN THE RUSH TO KOSHER!
The New York Times carries a feature story this morning about the rush by non-Jews to buy kosher food. The story indicates that only 15 percent of purchases of kosher food are for religious reasons. I honestly don’t know a great deal about kosher foods and this article was helpful to me. You might enjoy learning a bit about the subject, too. [You’ll find the NY Times story here!]

SENSA
Sensa is a diet fad! I’m married to the greatest woman in the world. She’s spectacular in a thousand ways. However, she’s got this weakness. She just believes every advertisement she sees or hears. I try to keep her away from commercial television and radio. I urge her to stick to her iPod and her Audible books and to public broadcasting only. Recently, in an effort to help me get hold of my exploding weight problem, she purchased some Sensa for me. She heard, on an ad, how miraculous, quickly and easily it works. With Sensa there is no need to exercise or change the foods you eat. Sprinkle some of the miracle product on top of your food and, voila, you will begin to lose amazing amounts of weight.

Do you believe that claim? If you do, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I want to tell you about. (Boy, I love that one and it’s as old as I am and my old man said it a thousand times within my hearing: “I’ve got a bridge to sell you, boy!”) Keep those bridge salesmen away from my wife.

No charge for Sensa for the first month. Completely free trial. Only problem is that the second, very expensive month is already posted on our credit card and we’ll have a dickens of a time getting it back. Sucker punched again.

You can read a thousand reviews on-line (try googling) about why Sensa doesn’t work. The Fitness Shack blog has one of the best of them, but that’s only the beginning. In a year or two you’ll never again here the word Sensa, but its current promoters will have made off with millions by then.

Here’s a cute one for you: “If you’ve got any sensa, don’t buy Sensa!” (I’ve got ‘em by the thousands, you know!)

HARRY REID IS NOT A RACIST
Oh my god, I’ve heard that crap from people a million times! I mean, you know, I’m talking here about what Harry Reid said ages ago (2008) about Barack Obama’s good chances of election because he was “light skinned” and basically free from the “Negro dialect.”

A bunch of people out there have brought that up again and suggest that Reid ought to step down from Senate leadership! Here’s the problem: If everyone who said something stupid like that had to step down from what they’re doing there’d be several million vacant leadership spots in the country. I sure would have to stop pretending to be a blogger.

There’s a real good take on this issue on AlterNet, a really significant alternative news source.

ELECTION TUESDAY IN MASS TO FILL TEDDY’S SEAT
Boy this is an interesting one! None of us thought it would be. We thought it was a “walk-off” victory for the Democrat Martha Coakley. Instead, we’ve got a very close race and anything could happen in the election on this coming Tuesday.

What the heck happened? Well, first of all, her opponent, State Senator Scott Brown, has proven terribly capable. He did a great job in a debate between the candidates and he is well received on the campaign trail. Even if he loses, but makes it a close race, eyebrows are going to be raised and questions asked about how it could happen in such a heavily Dem state. A lot of fingers are going to be pointed at the President. [If you’re interested in this there’s a really good story about the race in the Washington Post.]

Hey, don't throw away that day-old baguette!