FLAWS. REALLY?

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If someone is ill, is injured or has a health problem, there is a flaw – to accept? Or should that person go to a doctor?

If someone talks and is full of ignorance because news is being repeated or sentiments from a witless bloke with an interesting accept is being relayed, there is a flaw. Should persons be educated with books or pursue further investigation to remove the flaws of ignorance?

If someone has an art and does not work or improve skills and talents, is it a flaw because the artist is quitting and is relying on laurels?

The question of art is the greatest flaw because at whichever age, not thinking, not trying, not improving, not adding skills, not doing, goes to the essence of that human being. In the mind that person has quit, and been typecast. For a writer if is a flaw to repeat everything again and again – no new settings, no true change of characters, similar elements in the stories (perhaps rearranged) and no new bad guys. It’s FORMULA producing flaws where points of everything can be outlined, almost to the exact line on which pages each should appear.

WE ARE LINCOLN MEN

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David Herbert Donald

Every man who was a friend or had exposure to Abraham Lincoln wanted history to know that each of them was Lincoln’s best friend. They were all wrong. WE ARE LINCOLN MEN tells why.

This book is about friendship among human beings. It uses Abraham Lincoln as the person everyone wanted friendship with, not always during his lifetime. Over those fifty-six years, in society and work, Lincoln was a pleasant, resourceful fellow to have around with an inexhaustible supply of stories and antedotes, and hiding his imagination and intelligence. Lincoln liked persons like himself: Story tellers and persons who were fountains of tales – clean, dirty and engaging.

But what is friendship? The book does not answer the question directly. Communication is key, and talking is the primary means to convey what one person or another is thinking, is doing, might do, and how reactions come out; discretion of friends is necessary. Some stuff might never be repeated, and some might be repeated only long after the telling. And acceptance and going forward is always a goal – life goes on in the company of friends.

Each of these elements is present in WE ARE LINCOLN MEN, but none of Lincoln’s friendships had a chance to come to fruition: Interrupted by time and travel – Illinois, Washington; position – country lawyer, President; issues and thinking differently about the Constitution and solutions, concerns about slaves, the union and state’s rights.

Of course, Lincoln was a master of politics and law but handled as best he could issues before him, until his assassination. There is a tendency to make Lincoln prescient, a master and in control. No, he sometimes was making it up as he came to him – using his intelligence, collecting all information and opinions and ingenuity to make the best decisions. David Herbert Donald wrote an excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln and next, this book. Many of those decisions are in these books.

If there is a shortcoming in either book was defining Lincoln’s imagination and originality. In many ways he thought originally, and how that manifested itself to the American public was in speeches and amongst men, with humor, and sometimes gallows humor. This part of the story is difficult to tell because the assassination cut short Lincoln’s life at War’s end.

Humor – what delighted Lincoln, what amused him, what intrigued him – tells much about the man. There are collections of stories and antedotes but no systematic analyses connected to the President’s life and actions. Many human beings finding entertainment in the mind – concepts, organizing ideas and facts, storing it in the memory and using it when appropriate – is exercising the imagination. This process makes human beings different from all other animals. Getting

within a brain and learning how a biographical subject works, thinks, responds – sometimes on impulse, greatly aids the work of the writer. Whether a subject can recall something from memory quickly (being bright) or it rolls in after a few hours, makes the subject likable, engaging and social.

One trait coming from Lincoln is explaining his thinking to others. He told stories, and they were sometimes metaphors. Metaphors are not always understood, e.g. the British ambassador, but using that means to communicate suggests that Lincoln sought the polite way to urge persons to do what he wanted: Metaphors are by nature indirect.

On the friendship premise alone, I recommend We Are Lincoln Men.

LOVE DEMANDS (OR BE A HUMAN BEING)

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Long before The Beatles sang, “All you need is love…,” love was craved in New York society in the Eighteenth century. John Adams, founding father, second president of the United States, said about New Yorkers, in 1776 “I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town. As their entertainments, there is no conversation that is agreeable. There is no modesty, no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast and all together. If they ask you question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again and talk away.” In short New Yorkers were excited about flattery, were delighted by praising, nourished by tidbits of pleasantries and receptive to sweet talk.

How does Don Trump fit into that fanciful world, now transported to Florida? Don Trump fits to a tee (pun intended). Apparently while searching for golf balls on the course, Don Trump has men reviewing social media posts and repeating every favorable thing said about Don. Those utterances of praise, flatterers, and words of sweet talk make getting through a round of golf tolerable for Don, who is not a golfer. Many photos show Don standing in the rough, probably next to a ball he dropped because he could not find the ball he hit.

And the American people know that Don can’t play golf. Otherwise, he would have promoted his course prowess: “I play a better round of golf than Barack Obama!” Obama was a hoops guy who never won a cup in golf. But Obama didn’t grow up with the game like Don. So Don’s shortcomings have-not been broadcast.

Imagine needing words of praise, tidbits of flattery, morsels of nourishment and the ultimate sweetnesses during the worst moments of the day – send balls into the dink, a slice hitting a tree and bouncing the wrong way, missing a three foot putt. I am happy those flattery slaves are there to keep Don steady so he can drive the golf car safely without accidents and park it where it can be found the next day.

Supposedly, we all appreciate love, but not the sort hippies once tried to foist on society, to save the world, and not the type that swells breasts for Don Trump. Love cannot be treated that casually. Thought and emotions, controlled and uncontrolled, go into it and human being reflect. Love can not be trivialized, but that is easily to do in today’s world.

CALIFORNIA GASOLINE PRICES

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There are too few refineries to turn oil into gasoline and diesel in California. That shortage cannot be fixed overnight. No new refineries will be built. At best it takes ten years to get all the approvals to construct an ugly edifice and get a refinery running. And California is trying to make gasoline obsolete by its residents buying electric cars. Once Californias can putt-putt around in golf cart like vehicles, everyone will be happy because NO GASOLINE, NO OIL.
So no one’s going to pay billions of dollars to build a refinery.

Gasoline prices have risen (almost 25 percent) at the end of the summer driving season. Why? The explanation is every refinery has maintenance problems and is changing to the winter blend. Of course, refineries have had to change to winter blends for 30 years, but they have never had a collective maintenance melt down in late August/September, and prices rise.

Oh why, oh why, oh why did rising prices happen this year, 2022. The best answer is that California was dumb enough to announce in May/June 2022 that it was giving every California driver a rebate check, to pay for increased gasoline costs. Californians were assured of having cash in their pockets during the fall of 2022. Now the beneficiaries of California’s largess are the oil companies/refineries who have created the shortage of gasoline (based upon the so-called maintenance issue). The oil companies owning refineries have already gotten the rebate money from consumers who are waiting for rebate checks.

The refiners are laughing. That money donation is water under the bridge, OR can attorneys in California do something about it?

FLIGHT 192

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Dina Meyer

AVOID

Agent Dina Meyer works for the FBI and has a corner office, which suggests she’s high up in the FBI hierarchy. The crime involved is committed during the day and is public.

While Agent Dina is on a transcontinental flight, her seat mate is unusually chatty. That doesn’t raise alarm bells for FBI Agent Dina. Talk and chats draft to a shoe dropping: Agent Dina’s family has been kidnapped in their Los Angeles home and obviously Agent-Dina is supposed to supply, delete or deliver the goods so her family will be released. I assume Agent Dina is familiar with FBI procedures during a kidnapping and when they are public; they can end tragically.

What’s Agent Dina do in the movie? She goes along with the kidnapping plot, following all instructions of the chatty seat mate. It’s a big drama about Agent-Dina’s predicament and the fate of her family. In the end Agent-Dina gets a gun and shoots bad guys for another sappy movie where characters are witless until a gun can be drawn.

Imagine the same movie based on reality. Agent-Dina hears of her family’s kidnapping and immediately silences the chatty seat mate. Agent Dina calls the stewardess while she restrains and secures the chatty seat mate. Agent-Dina identifies herself, FBI Agent, and issues commands: All communications between the jet and the ground cease; the plane has a mechanical problem and is returning to LA; using the plane’s radio Agent-Dina calls the FBI; on alert, the Bureau send out swat-teams to Agent-Dina’s house which is not far from the FBI offices in the radiator building in Westwood. [Agent-Dina’s house is an upscale westside landmark with an expansive million dollar kitchen – one wall of big matching stainless steel appliances useful when holding a party for hundreds].

The remainder of the real story is how the FBI unravels the plot which extends to Agent Dina’s work at the FBI. Bad guys are killed or arrested.

The end of the film is a party in Agent-Dina’s kitchen which substitutes for the movie’s wrap party.

L.A. NOIR

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John Buntin

Written in a journalistic style, this history supports the notion of Los Angeles becoming a city by accident. Primarily, there was no law enforcement. Crime rates were high. For a long time Los Angeles Police were paid off by various sorts of law breakers: Gamblers, smugglers, white slavers; and white collar criminals – rule breakers, favor-for-favor enthusiasts, and rich or influential persons taking advantage. Los Angeles seemed a city (and county) which was unmanageable and unpoliced. Counting the population growth was a feat, let alone policing with an undermanned police department.

Robert Parker became a Los Angeles policeman in the 1920s. He was thoroughly incorruptible. His primary focus was overcoming organized crime coming from eastern cities: Mickey Cohen. Cohen was elusive and laws were not enforced, like paying taxes to the IRS. Cohen died owning the federal government more than $500,000, yet he was in and out of prison (mostly out), living the high life (people gave him gifts). His attributable income for a year exceeded the amount of taxes he ever paid in taxes for a decade. He never ratted. He was smilingly approachable to the press but vague with answers to committees and to courts. During a Congressional hearing Cohen was accused of threatening a man “to put his lights out.” Cohen’s response: “Look it, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not an electrician.”

Parker like many crusaders was blind to the changing population and to social forces. 1950s Los Angeles was not white as it was during the 1920s when Parker joined the force. World War Two brought in hundreds of thousands of African-Americans; the Mexican-American population grew as rapidly. Parker did not change his views of either minority and their criminal ways. NOTE the book only mentions organizational shifts in the Police Department from 1930 to 1970. So Parker’s management abilities are difficult to evaluate.

From 1910 to 1960 the book gives enough detail to tell the foregoing story (pages 1 – 300). But three events – Watts Riots 1965 – Kennedy Assassination 1968 and Rodney King and those riots (1991) are presented in 46 pages. The point the author tries to make is Parker’s ordinances and regulations isolating the Police Chief from the whims of the Los Angeles City Council were changed in 1992. Thereafter, Daryl Gates (presented as incompetent but scored well on texts) was removed.

NO HISTORY

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The American Civil War in Missouri, 1864-1865, did not end in 1865. Violence spread across the center of the country and west, and ended later. Most of the behaviors held by Americans in 1865, resulted in quick resorts to violence, arising from unsettled conditions.

An explanation of why this occurred is told in The Collapse of Price’s Raid, Mark Lause. Along with a prequel, that book tells of battles in Missouri during the Civil War. Every word is as accurate as can be stated. The biggest drawbacks are (1) the numbers of players – who led these men in each skirmish or raid, (2) what they were thinking or what they believed, and (3) where each encounter happened and (4) the sense of the battle. Specifically, there are no maps and no diagrams indicating where attackers and defenders were. From the words of the book alone, the Confederate forces were wastefully expended; captured Union fighters might be executed. Of course, the Union prevailed.

The most telling statement about Missouri of those years and afterward was in the last paragraph of the book:

…the peace that settled over the western border also required peace among the Confederates and peace among the Unionists as well. And that mandated was, for most whites, a blessed forgetfulness about the real issues and experiences of the Civil War. (emphasis supplied, p.194)

There was NO HISTORY. If men who did the fighting kept everything untold for 40 or 50 years and died with those experiences, without challenging, discussing and coming to some sense of what actually happened, little was learned and nothing was gained from the Civil War. What passed to succeeding generations were made up stories and fantasies about feats, deeds, glorious times and burdensome oppressions and phantoms that the fighting men generated and reenforced years after the fighting, and told to succeeding generations. The Collapse of Price’s Raid is a book which explains why the Confederacy did not succeed. Divisions among Confederate soldiers and raiders were as deep and rank, as those with the enemy, or between the rich and poor today.

Today, on the Left in America made up facts and stuff from LBJ’s Great Society plus the Vietnam War (largely forgotten) form the basis for what proponents envisioned that America should be today. These people are satisfied with benign neglect. Anyone proposing change like Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton are villains. (Clinton less so.) Their moves to get people away from comfort zones, and country going forward were significant during the 1980s and 1990s.

On the Right appears a more ludicrous set of facts and thoughts. Some of the proposals want to take America back one hundred years, to the years of jazz, partner dancing and snappy band music and movies, but no pensions and no social programs. Those years left Americans distrustful and suspicious of their neighbors. Americans were identified by the country where

their parents or grandparents came from, e.g. Irish, Italian, Swedish, German, Greek, Pole. Minorities were a smaller part of the population and marginalized. Today minority populations, put all together, constitute a sizable minority.

Who wants to wonder today about a person’s country of origin, if living here and being productive is the outcome? Returning to the thinking of the 1920s ain’t going to help America go forward.

For the United States having its population thinking diverse things about supposedly accepted facts and incidences makes governing more difficult. Americans seem to chose the course of the Missouri soldiers after the Civil War – not at peace with one another and forgetful of the facts in the past, and facts going forward. It is the role of politicians to rectify and smooth differences about facts, not trumpet and promote every erroneous interpretation of facts or documents. Wrong facts are not so cherished when they become principle and can never be changed – and ideas can never be changed? – and nothing can ever be changed?

The value of books like The Collapse of Price’s Raid is to set out facts, so everything can be changed and considered. Learning and collection of facts present circumstances, plus time alone forces thoughts and attitudes of human beings to change.

BEING ROSE

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Movie Review: MUST SEE

Congratulations to Cybill Shepart, James Brolin, Pam Grier, the writer and the producer.

Being Rose portrays fairly and accurately end of life-elderly issues from the perspective of the dying person (the character of Rose, Cybill Shepard). The movie suggests to Americans elder care responsibilities, intervention but more independence. At the start of the movie Rose is outside her home, and she disdainfully says, “This is my life,” meaning the emptiness of materialism. She tries to make up with an estranged son in a distant city; he is a self-centered jerk. She wants to avoid burdening a new love interest in her life, a short life ahead: “I have nothing to give you,” she tells James Brolin. The audience gets the impression that she dies on her own terms after she feels water of a mountain creek on her feet.

Try not to cry.

GOING GREEN – A LONG TIME

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Europeans have been lying to the world – green this, green that, save the planet, prevent heat from CO2, we’re following the Paris Accords, on, on and on, etc, etc. and etc. The Europeans are hardly advanced in preventing the heating of the planet.

The News of 2022 supports this view. The Europeans don’t seem to have done, do-do. Nuclear power supposedly produces clean electricity, no harm except the rosy glow of radiation, and deconstruction costs of very hazardous waste. Natural gas is supposed to save Europe. Burning it produces far fewer emissions than almost every other abundant fossil fuel. People disapprove of natural gas because the means of attaining it, and it still produces too many emissions.

So the energy-hungry Europeans are supposed to use natural gas from Russia, unacceptable supplier, but now might not meet their pollution, CO2/climate goals. The Europeans are slackers while proclaiming their virtues. Their energy sources should be more secure and more available, if the Europeans had followed their-own advice and met their promises: The so-called energy crisis in Europe over the upcoming winter would be less alarming.

California is on a hurried path to a green economy, but the Europeans provide a poor example. California will not build a bullet train soon of any functionally. That train is scheduled to make all the stops the Amtrak currently makes. As time goes on it, seems Americans will rely on petroleum products for most energy until 2050. e.g. there will not be sufficient recharging stations on highways; there will be inadequate electrical storage facilities in remote locations. In California much of the electric grid needs replacing. Current solar panels are not as efficient as advertised. Reinvestments in solar panels bought today will have to be made again in ten or fifteen years. And, unfortunately in the United States and other countries, going green means crime – criminals attack and dissemble green equipment and sell the materials individually.

As the Europeans have proven, expecting the world to be green soon will be delayed. Europeans will use Russian natural gas when it becomes acceptable; apparently the cost of going green prevents people of choosing green. And next the Chinese. They don’t give a hoot about going green. They burn all fossil fuels and have already poisoned their land so thoroughly that China is unable to feed itself.

H.L. Mencken

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MY LIFE AS AUTHOR AND EDITOR

Salient in the life of this journalist with a name is asking what type of American he was. Mencken came from Germany and during World War One and World War Two he was pro- German and pro-Hitler. He lost his newspaper job with the Baltimore papers in 1941. Apparent German actions again other peoples were dismissed because they were not Germans. Carrying on with that antiquated thinking (feudalism or before) into the Twentienth Century makes Mencken an unexplained throwback, and given the quality of writing in the book, a throw away.

The book presents an autobiography of part of Mencken’s life. I have no idea how much he drank, womanized, or contributed to established art and literary politics. The book describes some of this editorial activities, but does not set human beings in business except to say this happened that happened and the reasons for any disagreements – the other person was Jewish, or was a woman, or would not do what Mencken advised. Mencken dismissed film and California completely without realizing it dramatized American short stories many times better than the writer could put it on a page.

The book was Mencken’s final writing effort with time qualities reflected in the writing. It tells its story sloppily, if at all. It appears Mencken chained himself to a typewriter and merrily typed. There is no sense a wordsmith was at work, edited or believed the manuscript needed further work. The book’s editor, Jonathan Yardley did his best, but elementary flaws flow throughout the writing.

A few observations early in the book should be noted:

“…I am convinced that writing verse is the best of all preparations for writing prose.
I makes the neophyte look sharply to his words, and improves the sense of rhythm and tone-color – in brief, that she of music which is at the bottom of all sound prose…” Page 5-6)

“Under the influence of my father…I emerged into sentience with an almost instinctive distrust of all schemes of revolution and reform. They were…only signs and symptoms of a fundamental hallucinations…the hallucination that human nature could be changed by passing statutes, and preaching gospels – that natural law could be repealed by taking thought.” (page 34)

“…my interest in Roosevelt 1 was always born of delight in the mountebank, not of belief in the prophet.” (page 34)

Work at home: “We … wondered why none of our colleagues had hit on the device of staying way for their offices…we escaped the burden of listening to countless visitors who infest such places – mainly authors trying to sell their manuscripts, not on the merits

thereof but by selling talk. Virtually all our business was done by mail, and it was thus possible for us to do it at our own convenience, and with expedition. On my trips to and from New York I read more manuscripts than the average editor could get through in ten times the time in his office. It was not until long afterward that I discovered that a number of English magazine editors had practiced keeping clear of their offices before we thought of it.”(Page 50)

Paying writers: The Saturday Evening Post’s “…editor…not only paid much higher prices for manuscripts…but he also paid off once a week. As a result [he] got first whack at virtually all the better fiction of the time…” (page 51)

Personal responsibility/memory: “After [Zoe Atkin’s] removal to New York, she let it be known that [Reedy] had not only discovered her but also seduced her, and in the course of time she pushed back this catastrophe back in time until in the end he was depicted as her undoing when she was but sixteen years old. This, if true, put it in 1902, when Reedy himself was forty.”(Page 68)

1920’s Greenwich Village: “…the Village, like the Paris Left Bank, was much less literary artistic than sexual, and most of its male denizens lived on women. The typical menage consisted of a widow or spinster from some small-town in the Middle West, come east to spend her dead husband’s or father’s money and see life, and a bogus painter or pulp- magazine fictioneer who let her feed, clothe and love him.”(page 95)

Any sort of writer putting together an autobiography would have given thought to organization. Little does Mencken’s story at the typewriter evince such expansive thinking – just put together antedotes loosely. What lacks is the potential for an authoritative description of the literary artistic scene on the East Coast i.e. the market Mencken was involved with. Mencken should have stepped back to write the Big Picture. But he could not escape his profession, journalism and its need to advance facts (and Mencken’s opinions) in detail without describing the setting, or telling any reasons. Influences (other than getting drunk), the environment (Mencken did not believe important) and competition (society) – did not writers know one another? As an editor did he not know writers talked and exchanged ideas, concepts and reactions?

So this book falls short in its organization and in its writing.