Simone Biles Proved Her Greatness, Yes. But Something Else Is Pretty Great, Too.

We know how unselfish and mature the U.S. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was by recognizing that first, she had freaked out enough so that her performance would never approach what she was used to; and second, to give her teammates the maximum chance to do as well as they could, she needed to step aside from this, her ultimate world stage, the thing she'd been preparing for--and what everybody believed she would kick total butt in--for five years, since the last time she did it. That alone is plenty to admire.

But there's more that we shouldn't ignore. Namely that Biles cleared the decks for Sunisa Lee to step up, take the spotlight, and win the women's all-around gymnastic competition, an incredible feat if there ever was one, one as great as the decathlon--perhaps greater, since far more dangerous performances are necessary.

Sunisa Lee is Asian. Uh-huh. A black woman got out of the way for an Asian woman to win. They're both Americans.

That, in this view, is totally excellent, and the best news of all. No white people were dominant in a sport formerly reserved for whites. This time, they weren't as good.

I can think of several million other Americans, narrow as they can be in their white supremacy, who are trying to find ways to diminish this. They can't.

We'll hear nothing about this from the person who leads them down the primrose path, either. Simone and Sunisa just shut him up.

I wonder how they'll handle it. Is the white race getting soft? Is this proof that America is continuing to go down the tubes?

Sunisa Lee won't be wearing any other uniform other than that of the U.S.A. when she ascends the podium. She won't be listening to any other anthem but our own.

This is how America is changing. This is how undeniably the numbers play out. Brisbane will get the Summer Games in 2032. By that time, just about half the country will be people of color.

That's just eleven years away. No ban on immigrants, no trashing of candidates for federal offices, will be able to stop it.

No new de facto segregation or discrimination in education will stop it, either. Black kids, Asian kids, Hispanic kids, are all graduating and they're pretty smart. We already knew they were as smart as white kids. That will be on display very soon.

I'm as proud of them as I've ever been of anyone else, and just as happy to be identified, however remotely, with them.. I'm close to 70 years old now, and my time is getting short. The doubling down on racism practiced by some folks in my country has embarrassed and frightened me. But with developments like this, there's still a chance that we can overcome that.

There's a chance that what I tried to teach a bunch of white, upper-middle-class kids won't be wasted. This is a land of opportunity that none still surpass. No one should have anyone hold them back from surpassing anyone else.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Fascist Traitors:" Now, They Will Be Exposed

Jamie Raskin has a way of saying things that stick. He made another statement today, at the Special Committee on the Events of 1/6 hearing, that stuck well and I hope this phrase resonates throughout the investigation.

Fascist traitors. That's what the Congressperson from Maryland, the leader of the indicting group during ex-'s second impeachment trial, called the people who assaulted the Capitol Police and assaulted the Capitol itself that day. Many of them have been rooted out and arrested; they await prosecution.

There wasn't much new, as Pete Williams said on MSNBC today, that was discovered during the riveting testimony of four of the besieged officers who were outnumbered, like the rest of the threatened phalanx, something like 160 to 1. But giving them a chance to speak, to display their disgust and sense of betrayal, was a great way to begin the committee's investigation.

Nothing about that day can now be denied, although the Republican cult surrounding ex- is still trying, and will try, to deny it or at least to diminish it. In perhaps its most ridiculous sense, Elise Stefanik even tried to put the blame for the relative lack of security on Nancy Pelosi, as if Pelosi could have known the exact nature of the threat that day. She knows better, but she must tell another big lie to enhance her status within the cult.

Now that the committee has launched, it has rough work to do. I, for one, believe it will find that:

• The white supremacist groups directly involved coordinated their assault in a brief gesture of unification;
• Either each of them individually, or someone representing all of them together, had direct contact with ex- before 1/6;
• They understood full well the nature of what they were doing--a no-holds-barred coup d'etat; designed to cancel an otherwise token Electoral College certification vote;
• Once gathered, they knew of the sign or code words given to them by ex- to begin the assault;
• Certain members of Congress also knew about the assault beforehand, which is why they took people on tours of the building, pointing out areas that could be breached;
• The lack of timely response on the part of the National Guard that day, and the lack of effect due to its tardiness, was part of the plan of assault, known by military officers directly in charge of releasing them, the idea being to put them out there far too late and with vague, unclear orders to make a show of pretending that they cared; and
• Specific members of Congress (for instance, Democrats trying ex- during the first impeachment trial), as well as then vice-president Mike Pence, were targeted and would have been harmed if not killed by the mob.

Whatever else will be discovered will be gravy. Most importantly, the investigation will continue until it has been thoroughly completed. It is good that more than six months have passed since this despicable event, because:

• The Republicans are still defending it, which tells you the degree to which they are still tethered to ex- ;
• The discussion surrounding it has never subsided;
• We need to view all this again and reckon with it, because we never really have.

There was a shock factor connected to this that obscured relevant facts. It was way too much for anyone to take in all at once. Chaos does that. The relevant facts need to be packaged and delivered to us by members of both parties, especially those as courageous (who shouldn't be regarded as such, but there is where Republicans are now) as Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger, two of the very few left who will put country before party. 

Both voted for ex-. Both have strong policy disagreements with Democrats. But both still believe in the America most of us still want to believe in, where compromise overrides paranoia.

The Republicans plan on making a counter-investigation. What they do could backfire. First, their sources must be unimpeachable. Second, they must find things that the Special Committee can't, which means they stand to be accused of subterfuge. Third, they must counter what's already been filmed with the pretense that the film either isn't real or distorts the real event. Ex-'s recent campaign was filled with film clippings that, combined cleverly, presented a completely twisted scenario of anti-facts. I have no doubt that the same producers will soon be at work.

It's vital that we keep our heads on straight and try to reduce our outrage at what will be a new and unique set of Republican lies. That's all they know how to do. That's what they're best at. They're incredibly intimidated by the number one menace to democracy we have ever seen, too. They lust for power. Like Kevin McCarthy, they think they can keep it. They can't. If we remain vigilant, they won't.

Fascist traitors. That's what the mob became by assaulting the Capitol. Keep that in the front of your head. Play that card if someone obnoxiously tries to attack the Special Committee's investigations. Because that's what they were. And are.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Guardians? That Sounds So Very, Uh, Cleveland

Guardians.

It's just so, so Cleveland.

In case you don't know and you're wandering around like you've been hit over the head, Cleveland's major league baseball team will soon be named after iconic statues created for an old bridge so they could become Guardians of.....Traffic.

To quote the great Dave Barry: I am not making this up. Maybe Cleveland isn't the only place that could come up with something this half-baked. Maybe someone other than Cleveland's proud, long-standing baseball franchise could have percolated a name that distinctly sounds as if it belongs in Class A somewhere in rural Alabama. Who knows?

Not that it's an altogether bad thing. At least Cleveland will soon be rid of "Indians," with the gleeful logo that's always suggested that the Natives have had such a great time of it since the white folks took over. Yes, they did the right thing by trashing that.

It's kind of like the Washington Football Team's management finally getting it through their thick skulls about the possibility that "Redskins" just might be the most racist thing by which you could name or represent anything--and that no amount of money spent attempting to downplay or ameliorate or diminish or even justify the name will remove the awful stain, except to rename the franchise altogether.

Notice that it's taking its good-natured time, as decision-makers in Washington usually do, before their big decision. Let's hope its new name beats Cleveland's. Let's hope it can establish a better, less offensive tradition.

Let's get this straight, too--prolonged, racially imbedded nonsense is not "tradition," something to cling to with great memories. It is stupidity, deepened daily.

One of the great indicators that Cleveland has done the right thing is that ex- has said that it hasn't. He's said that the Indians are actually insulted by it. Now, nothing is absolutely unanimous in public discourse, ever, and Robert Kennedy (how I hate putting him in the same paragraph) once said that twenty percent of anybody will be against anything (paraphrasing), but assuming the impossible and believing dreamily he'd have the energy, I'd want ex- to find a hundred Natives who think that renaming Cleveland's team is a bad idea. Or that anyone will ever really miss it, regardless of how clunky the substitute name is.

There's going to be only one, controlling variable concerning the advisability of such a name change: Whether or not the franchise will lose much money on it. We'd always like to think conscience overcomes profits. We know it rarely does. But the product continues as do the games. 

Milwaukee has had a Native label as well. Its team was once named the Braves. Nobody ever put pressure on that franchise to make a name change. But that was another, un-woke time. 

Now they're in Atlanta and they've been there 45 years. Calling something a "Brave" isn't meant to be pejorative. But if the Natives think so, will we be turning a deaf ear to them yet again?

Milwaukee isn't quite off the hook, though. Marquette University, located there (from which I have a master's degree), used to have their teams called the "Warriors," and that name died hard. Now the sports teams are called the Golden Eagles. Some greybeards are, of course, still mournful, but those days of relevance faded long ago.

The name got cleared up, but not the logo. That still features, supposedly, Father Marquette standing up in a canoe (just about as dumb as Washington Crossing the Delaware; sit down, you idiot), pointing to some direction that a Native is supposed to be steering him, paddle in hand like the help usually had.

As if the reverend knows where he's going, or wants to find new stuff, he who's checking out the property for the very first time. Doesn't that kind of have it criss-crossed? Who's supposed to be doing the pointing? Isn't that suggestive of a kind of master-obedient servant relationship, one our history is kind of used to? "Oh, I know where I'm going. Let's do this."

Can't you see the Native's eyes rolling? Sure, Padre, anything you say. His is an adventure of great discovery; the Native's is another place to go fishing.

Sounds absurd, I know. Calling some team the Guardians isn't quite so bad, considering the alternative. We bump along forward, awkwardly, with good intentions.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

McCarthy Thinks He's So Smart. He's Just As Naive As Ever. So Are So Many.

Nancy Pelosi couldn't possibly let Jim Jordan on the special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection. She couldn't let Jim Banks on it, either, after he trashed it before it even began.

She gave Kevin McCarthy a win-win, at least in his eyes. For now, her rejection of his proposed list of Republicans gives him, and them, these advantages:

• It allows them to pose as victims;
• It allows them to make Pelosi look mean;
• It allows them to make Liz Cheney, the only Republican member remaining on the committee, look like a collaborator, something that's starting to have wartime status of ignominy;
• By pulling the entire proposed list of Republican members, it gives McCarthy the opportunity (and the requirement) to look tough in the face of 'injustice', enhancing his status to become Speaker in case the Republicans, who are also busy quashing voting opportunities, should regain the House majority in 2023;
• Another chance to try to deflect negative attention toward their legitimately defeated standard-bearer; and, most importantly,
• With the claim that Republicans will hold their own investigation, another chance to create another scenario that looks legitimate, but isn't.

Fictionalization is an important part of being Republican these days. Of course voting has to be legally limited; there's plenty of fraud out there. Of course gun rights must be liberalized; the right to have a gun supersedes government's concerns about hurting people. Of course nobody can be made to get vaccine shots; their individual rights supersede my rights to be free from getting disease from them. Of course the 1/6 commission must be opposed; the whole thing has been blown out of proportion anyhow.

The strategy is bold-faced:

• Hide what you don't like (as in the so-called Kavanaugh investigation);
• Deny it if it's discovered, or at the very least admit nothing;
• Minimize it; and/or
• Throw it back to the other side by pretending they've done worse.

For style points, they've copied everything their defeated, exposed standard-bearer has done and continues to do. Which, of course, pleases him. Which, of course, is now required.

The moment McCarthy decided to visit the defeated president at Mar-A-Lago and continue his legitimization was the moment from which the Republican Party decided to hitch itself to him forever--not in victory, for that's easy, but in defeat, from which it could have pushed itself away and explained it as a failed experiment. Instead, he, and it, chose to stick itself in the mud and play the manipulation game, fixing the state voting systems and make Electoral College verification contingent not on numbers, but on political approval. That showdown will be awful and could destroy our democracy.

McCarthy does not care. That can be solved later. He thinks he has this all figured out: Just demonstrate that you're still loyal to the person who thinks he still should be president (and who, along with Mr. Pillow, thinks he'll be reinstated next month), and you'll keep the required number of Republican Congresspeople on your side. But that isn't going to work. He thinks he's so smart, but, like millions, he's just as naive as ever.

It doesn't matter about the displays of loyalty. It doesn't matter about not making someone angry. When he chooses to turn on you, he will. Nothing else will matter. If he wishes, he will write McCarthy off in a moment, in a comment of dispersion, and that will be that. All that work of McCarthy's at being all that balanced, all that effort at being so, so careful, will have been for nothing. Not even unflagging loyalty will matter. One thing he has said at another time, taken out of context, will do the trick.

It'll be McCarthy's turn to get thrown off the wagon, and not one regretful moment will be had. That McCarthy still does not understand this is incredible and almost sad, except his weaseling has been so off-putting that, once shunted to the side of the road, he will soon be forgotten. He is facing that and he will not be saved from it.

He has, also, helped twist the truth so far out of sync that trying to return to it will be unsatisfying and useless. For Republicans are now caught in a exitless, downhill freeway of lies and exaggerations that can't be curbed. Explaining oneself isn't necessary now; you just make up yet another reality and travel down that spur. The nonsense they will now be forced to concoct due to the attempted insurrection has already been floated, willy-nilly, through ersatz media outlets; they will now be combined in a polished package of utterly ridiculous anti-logic.

Too many people are still insisting to rely on this. Too many won't get their vaccine shots, even though Republicans here and there have awoken to this poppycock. (Such as Alabama's governor, who now sees that her state, too, can become one enormous hot spot.) It's all still a toxic stew, and no facts can or will reverse it but the direct facing of danger and disaster.

We spill toward an enormous tragedy of incredible proportions, all because of stoked fear and refusal to accept what the facts are saying--about the climate, about the plague, about the potential end of democracy. It points toward 2022 being as vital as 2018 was about stopping the mindlessness and keeping the foothold of rationality, as tenuous as it may be.

Kevin McCarthy believes that for him, this will be a win-win. It will, instead, be a lose-lose.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

50 Years, and It Took Another Ridiculously Talented Large Person, More American Than America Itself

I don't write much about sports anymore--too many far more important things--but when something happens that hasn't in fifty years, well, it's time to pull off the road and celebrate it.

Like: The Milwaukee Bucks are still here. Here, in Milwaukee. A franchise in a major professional sport, in what has become a very small market, never moved. It went through some very good times and very bad, yes. But it's here and its following is quite remarkable.

Last night, 65,000 people gathered outside to see an inside sport. Someone put up a huge TV screen, it didn't rain, so they drank (a lot) while trying to watch, except if you were in the back of that throng you probably didn't see much. Not that it mattered.

Because the Milwaukee Bucks won another NBA championship last night, somehow outlasting the Phoenix Suns, who won more games than any other team in the league did during this pandemic-stricken season, 105-98. They won it like they did the last time they won it, fifty years ago: With the very vital assistance of a very large person so talented it boggles the mind.

in 1971, that person was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. People were still making a big deal out of that name because it was a Muslim substitute for Lew Alcindor. It even made people angry, even though it was in fact a religious act that, said its owner, brought him closer to God. Thirty years later, someone else with an unusual Muslim name would cause us to put that into better perspective. 

In the meantime, though, we just called him Kareem. His skyhook was fun to watch and nearly impossible to stop. It was graceful and arching and devastating to opponents. He did more, though: He rebounded and blocked shots and figured out how people created holes in their defenses when they tried to stop him, so he passed to open teammates so they could have easier shots. People forget how good of a passer he was.

And luck intervened. One of the teams who could have stopped the Bucks were riddled with injuries. They were from New York, and they were the defending champs. They never got to the finals. But that's how it is in sports: It is as often survival as it is a victory of skill, because at that level, the skills are so similarly matched that you could flip a coin to make a prediction on any one night.

Fifty years later, so much has been repeated. The team that could have stopped the Bucks were from New York and riddled with injuries. This time they actually faced the Bucks in the playoffs, and for one inch of a misstep on what should have been a 3-point basket delivered at a devastating time, they would have succeeded anyhow. But it didn't happen, so the game fell into overtime. The Bucks somehow won that seventh game and moved on.

They managed to force their way through into the Finals by the efforts of an absurdly talented, enormous person who they took a chance on eight years ago, a chance that was dismissed by so many. It has been great fun to see him grow, quite literally, into perhaps the single most feared player in the league, another person with an unusual name, Giannis Antetokoumpo. People still don't say his name right, they sure can't spell it, so they settle for his first name, pronounced Yan-nis. You just say it, and people shake their heads.

They shake their heads because he, too, has become unstoppable. This was the one series the Bucks needed to have him succeed in the display of all of his incredible skills. He did so at exactly the time he was needed, and did it while injured. There are plenty of players in the league who simply amaze you, but don't come through when it's all on the table. Giannis did so and relished the opportunity.

This is how good he has become: Most Improved Player. Most Valuable Player, two straight years. Best Defensive Player. Leading scorer. And now, Most Valuable Player in the Finals.

Beyond that, he, too, has figured out the schemes teams have employed to stop him, and has now become a good passer. At one vital time in the fifth game of the Finals, he rebounded a badly missed free throw by tipping it backwards towards a teammate who he knew could would be fouled and would probably make the one free throw that was needed to seal the victory. That awareness impressed. He knew just what to do after hustling downcourt with those gaspingly enormous strides, getting a high lob pass from Jrue Holiday (after a great steal) to create a full-speed slam-dunk, which gave his team a three-point lead with a few seconds left. They needed one more point, though, and they got it from Khris Middleton, someone everyone knew would make at least one.

That Giannis was fouled was an afterthought. It used to be the one chink in his armor: Of course you foul him. Free throws have been an adventure. He had the form--he practices it before each free throw, in fact--but the ball always seemed to come off his hand differently. It isn't that rare; other very large people who have played this game have struggled with it. But some, like Wilt Chamberlain, stayed with it and became much better.

So has Giannis. He did miss two free throws last night, but made 17--an output the best shooters in the league, in the world, would have gladly accepted. In fact, after a while, the Phoenix Suns kept fouling him because they had reason to believe that sooner or later, he'd start missing, and the free throws would become like turnovers, free opportunities to take the lead. But while it might have seemed self-sustaining, it became self-destructive.

Because they learned, too, that Giannis knows himself, knows his weaknesses and his determination to do it all--drive right past opponents who are braced to stop him with those very long strides and a wingspan that astonishes so he can get to the rim regardless; pass to open teammates; block shots and rebound like a vacuum cleaner; whatever needs to be done whenever it's needed--will take a little time but he'll get there.

What observers have marveled at, too, is his intensity, rare for a professional player. None of them are lazy, but with the long, grueling season, some have been known to cruise at about 80 percent of their speed and effort, to let someone else handle some plays. Not Giannis: You can tell, too. If there's a game still on the line, you'll hear from him, one way or another. 

If he's behind twenty points, you'll still hear from him. You'll have to deal with every bit of all of him. If you had come from a poor family and a foreign country, unknown and unheralded, with a strange name and few prospects, though, there's no other way for you to consider the world you've parachuted into but to take it on with all you have, every single time.

Opposing fans have given him a very hard time as he prepares to shoot his free throws. It's something that has entered the culture of the NBA, counting off the seconds allowed between being given the ball and actually releasing the shot (ten), although a little fast, to rattle him into missing. And until last night he did miss about half of them, as he usually does. Some sportswriters thought he was being affected. Yes, he was, though not quite the way they thought.

Because he adjusted. He took it on as he always has, as great athletes always do, pivoting on adversity. He made his pre-shot routine a little more streamlined, took just a little less time, and the effect was to improve his concentration and motion and--voila!--the shots started dropping, sometimes even two at a time. He taught himself, through harassment and necessity, the way great shooters have learned to shoot them: with the ball rotating off his fingers front-to-back, sometimes the ball swishing perfectly but other times hitting the front of the rim right in the middle so the ball bounces forward softly against the backboard and drops right in, like a machine. Just when you thought he had nothing more to prove, he proved something else, something his team needed desperately (because only one of them, Bobby Portis, raised his output in the sixth game), something else to carry them over the threshold.

Because that helped raise his point total to a staggering 50, something only one other player has ever done in a deciding game of the Finals--Bob Pettit, of the then St. Louis (formerly Milwaukee in its first attempt for an NBA team, for a bit of trivia; now Atlanta) Hawks, 64 years ago. Yet, he's very quick to praise his coach and teammates, never forgetting how much they need each other.

Because he believes in togetherness. His first goal in being an NBA player was to take care of his family, the one he came from and now the one he has created. Kareem did not care for Milwaukee's rather limited culture: He would go on to win several more titles with the Los Angeles Lakers. But Giannis loves Milwaukee and thinks it's a great place. He's here to stay. He is the Milwaukee Bucks.

There cannot possibly be another, more exemplary American. Rich as the Bucks organization has made him, his first thought was not to disappoint Milwaukee by going elsewhere. Now, who the hell thinks that way anymore? He could have bargained with some team from New York, from Los Angeles, from anywhere that had a more expansive media market. But no: He takes you off guard with his talent and his humility to boot. 

He is foreign, he is black, he speaks with a strong accent, he does not seem American. He is more American, though, than America itself, he with the funny, unpronounceable name.

As long as he's here, and beyond, so will the Milwaukee Bucks. Kareem stayed another four years and only got back to the Finals once more, so we'll see if Giannis can do better at that, too. I doubt that that will matter that much, though. 

We love this guy and he loves us. He brought us the NBA title. It's fun to be from Milwaukee again.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Man Who Saved Grafton, Iowa

I rode into Grafton, Iowa on a gorgeous Sunday morning that promised to be warm but not too warm. The peak of Turkey Days had been reached--probably at about one or two that morning at the second of two scheduled dances. I was not around to see it. I had stayed in my hotel room to watch the exciting, nervous Bucks playoff game.

But I had been there on a mission that had been for the most part completed. Grafton, Iowa has two celebrations of note: One in late winter, called its Winter Prom, where you really can dress in prom-like clothes for a dance in a high school-type (Grafton no longer has high school) gym and nobody will think less of you. It is a gathering of relief that we've all made it through yet another bleak winter so the drinks are cheap and stiff and the music is easy to shake a leg to. People know about it from all over. In northern Iowa, at that time of the year, you take what you can get.

The other is Turkey Days, done in commemoration, more or less, of the turkey farms that used to fairly cover the surrounding landscape. There's only one left now, but the spirit of the times, I guess, are brought back the third weekend of every July. The Friday night beer tent, for instance, featured large turkey legs that went for five bucks and that satisfied any hunger anyone could ever want. Sandwiches were not thinly stuffed.

I had learned of its resurrection, post-pandemic, by getting on Facebook. I read the announcement on Wednesday. I had nothing else pending. Off I would go. Based on my experiences with them, I would not recommend every hotel in northern Iowa, but the beds were all right. But I had promised myself to see every Grafton twice--I have to get going now; that lost year can't be replaced--and here was my chance to check off the Iowa box.

There were softball tournaments and beer pong and the featured parade, probably the shortest and most unadorned I have yet seen. But it had the prerequisite cars with advertising on the doors, and kids scooping up the small bits of candy that get thrown from them. They don't fill their pockets anymore; they bring Baggies to handle it.

My goal is to visit, and get to know at least a little about, all the Graftons in the United States. To the best of my knowledge, there are eighteen of them, most of which are incorporated. Grafton, Iowa, population 252 or so, is not the smallest incorporated Grafton on the map. But it is organized, it is clean, and on Sunday morning, it is as quiet as a mouse would be inside Immanuel Lutheran Church, still the town's centerpiece.

The rest was pretty much as it was upon my first visit, in early March 2018, at about noon: Eerily quiet. Not one other car on any of its streets--not one. No one appeared to be doing anything outside, which was far odder than in early March, when the cold winds whistled. It was Sunday, the day of rest, after church. And Grafton was resting.

I had two goals before returning to Milwaukee later that day. The first was to find Lowell Walk's grave. He was still alive when we met in 2018, and I managed to get out of him the story of how he had succeeded the sadly killed (in a boiler accident) mayor, went to Iowa State to a conference which warned of the demise of the small town (in 1970; prescient, that) and returned full of fire. He called a town meeting at Immanuel, laid out the crisis, and the intrepid bunch assembled split into discussion groups and came up with recommendations, many of which were acted upon. (See, back in the day, there wasn't some blithering blowhard saying, I alone can fix this.)

Lowell Walk was a member of a number of families that settled in Grafton and pretty much never left. He served, as did so many others, in World War II; another gravesite had noted that the poor fellow died in Normandy a month after D-Day. After the tragic accident, Walk replaced the mayor and stayed in office for 26 years. 

Nobody can know what would have happened if he had not stepped up, but it can be reasonably said that he saved Grafton, Iowa from an uncertain fate. I met his daughter, Nancy, the town librarian, and she mentioned he was still around, though he didn't like to talk to strangers. I coaked her to coax him, and sure enough, he showed up. After talking a bit about his war service and the town in general, he got comfortable enough to pose for this picture with Nancy, before taking me around a town of which he was duly proud:

When he showed me the town's Community Center (the best thing that meeting produced, and really impressive for such a small town), he opened a room filled top to bottom with Nescos into which fresh turkey meat would be cooked. (Remember those?) That's one of the reasons I had to have a big leg--in remembrance of him. I took it on faith that it had been cooked in a Nesco. Tasted just fine.

When I returned last weekend, I learned that he had passed on, said Nancy, as the pandemic began but not of the pandemic itself. He was 96. Though it wasn't unexpected, she clearly missed him. She had directed me to the gravesite, but typically, I'm terrible with directions. I entered what I thought was the north end of the graveyard, looked to the left as she had said and found graves, all right, but not his. 

Then, almost by magic, a small fellow drove up in a red pickup truck, probably to do some mourning. He'd been around a few years. I had pulled the car slightly inside the gate, so I thought I might be doing something improper, but I was merely incorrect.

He came up from behind on foot. I rolled down the window. "You're fine," he said of my car's position. "I've left room for you to back out."

"Do you know where Lowell Walk's grave is?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah," he said, in a tone that revealed more than it said: If you're from around here, everybody knows. "It's down there at the north entrance."

Oh. The north entrance. I was north, but not north enough. I thanked him and drove another hundred yards or so.

The gravestone is simple. Considering his accomplishments and importance to the community, he probably deserved something much larger, but he wouldn't have liked that. He wouldn't have liked a big deal made about him. So many who served then were similar.

He lies next to his wife. A designation of his membership in the American Legion--the membership, as small as it was, took the typical place in the parade yesterday, short-sleeved white Oxford shirts, black ties and bulging beer guts but prideful, with those in their lawn chairs rising as the flag passed--stands next to it, and the gravestone has his U.S. Air Force service noted. (Actually, the Air Force as such didn't exist until 1947. It should have said "Army Air Forces," but who's to quibble?)

Lowell spent a considerable time in India, which is a place Americans don't usually associate with the Second World War. His job was unsung but vital: loading planes to fly over the Himalayan "Hump" to deliver supplies to the Chinese, most of whom were then our friends. Not long before he died, someone had come looking for him to try to form a group of those who were still left from that unit. Despite his protestations--he preferred face-to-face discussions, never trusting anything done over the phone--he agreed to write down some of his wartime travels so they could be at least told to someone calling from California. I asked Nancy if she still had them. She did. She was kind enough to run off a copy. 

Some of those details will appear later. The second of my goals for the day could not be achieved, but that could easily be done online.

I had been gone three years. My journey to Grafton, Iowa has been completed. I know enough. I know that Lowell Walk has passed on but left something no one has yet taken away: A tight-knit community still filled with descendants of several families that, for one reason or another, never thought it was to their advantage to move. You drive through Grafton, Iowa on a Sunday morning and it's so incredibly quiet that you wonder what's really there. If Lowell were here, he could tell you.

He left a Grafton of Winter Proms and Turkey Days and pathetically small parades; all kinds of hokey stuff. But he did leave it intact, still going, though challenges remain. Maybe it will become another Grafton ghost town someday, swallowed up by corporate consolidation and excess. But it sure didn't while he was here. It sure wouldn't on his watch.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Starbucks: Down to Its Last Straw on the East Side?

There are two nice coffee shops at the opposite ends of the small but relatively vibrant (pandemic notwithstanding) Downer Avenue area: Stone Creek Coffee at the north end, and Starbucks at the south. At this point, Stone Creek has the decisive edge in attracting business.

There are reasonable explanations and practical consequences. Stone Creek has not only reopened its sitting space, but has always had its courtyard, filled with wooden and metal seats and tables for people to have their lattes and enjoy the weather in a spread out fashion, doing some people watching or being watched as you either bring your laptop, read some quality literature, or chat with friends. If you simply walked up, sat down, and spend the whole afternoon reading without ordering a thing or talking to a soul, nobody would be there to hurry you along, but most people depart without hogging the spaces. The acceptance of the quid pro quo--you know, you're tacitly supposed to buy something--implictly involved is, for now, being observed with respect. Not only that, but if you go there either before or after hours--why I couldn't possibly know--the wi-fi works just fine. It never gets turned off.

Stone Creek also has short-order food made in a small kitchen in the back. Starbucks has food, but it's wrapped and not cooked on site. The inside part of the cafe is also brighter and more inviting, with more windows. It's just a happier-looking, more energetic place. Starbucks has never looked bright and inviting. It's positioning doesn't lend itself to it. That isn't its fault, but it is its disadvantage.

Not only that, but Starbucks hasn't yet brought back its tables to fill in its much smaller site; all drinks are still to-go. It has outside tables outlining the shop, but there are very few of them and no sense of the breezy coming-and-going that Stone Creek has. Stone Creek also has curbside ordering, still active and still safer than doing it inside, though it has recently began serving inside customers without masks.

That is a detriment to Boswell Books, Milwaukee's best independent bookseller, next door to Starbucks.

It used to have its southern French doors open to people who came and went from it either before or after their bookgazing, pre-pandemic, with an in-between room to set up laptops and pound away. That room is now closed. The combination of businesses gave either valuable commerce in the kind of relaxed style that sophisticated East Siders are known for. Not allowing Starbucks customers to settle in and do their reading at that end of Downer hurts the bookstore fiercely and, I would think, vice versa.

Much of book shopping consists of previous browsing, and any discouragement in addition to Amazon or other online booksellers can do and has done serious damage. I live just a block away and I'm always coming over and browsing. There have been nothing like the crowds Boswell's used to have. It can't all be blamed on the slowness of the public's response post-pandemic. It just doesn't look like as much fun anymore.

Starbucks used to have Sunday newspapers available for purchase, too, but the franchise disposed with that practice before the plague. Tokenly, it offered an app that would give you many big-city newspapers at $69.99 per year. But I can't imagine anyone besides a journalism student wanting that overload of stimulation. Besides, the CVS down the block had, and still has, Sunday papers including the New York Times, so that isn't much of an inconvenience.

So Starbucks, I think, is down to its bare essentials and is, by any measure--all you have to do is look at any time during the day--near pointlessness. Unless you want one of its frappes, which are superior in both  taste and accoutrements. Which is to say, its straws work.

They work because they're plastic. The plastic lids on their cups--remember, all orders are to-go there--have an odd slit into which straws are supposed to fit. Which is to day, they really don't. You have to make a special effort to get the straw into the slot, which has a kind of rectangular/oval shape, not round and not sufficiently spacious to just fit it without going to some trouble. But a plastic straw can be made to fit into that slot, and it springs right back to its original shape once it's inside.

Not so with paper straws, even those with an attempted stronger base, like the ones used at Stone Creek. I've tried them. Horribly inadequate. They give you the same strange slot in their cup lids, then expect you to squeeze the paper-based straws into that. You can, but they don't rebound like the plastic ones. They also wear down much faster. They don't bend with resilience, either.

Frappes being what they are, just down from ice milk, they force you at times to stir the contents so that they remain fluid. But doing that wears out the paper-based straws, too. They've tried to make reinforced paper that feels like it can withstand the usage, but it isn't working. 

It all reminds me of the kinds of straws we used to have at St. Joe's School, where some of the kids insisted to use them (or maybe they did because it was in front of them, like so many of us did because it was there and we assumed some authority demanded it--come on, you can't tell me you never did), but they flattened out way before they were finished and the milk dripped out of them. Like, total ick. I never used them. I just opened the damn carton and swallowed.

Look, I get it: I'm supposed to encourage people to use the paper-based straws so they can be more easily recycled. But here's a place where environmental awareness meets practicality and loses. When you consider the number of straws Stone Creek uses throughout its franchise, and the same for Starbucks, I'm telling you it makes a difference. But here's something else: At the Starbuck's, they don't include the straw with the frappe order. You have to ask for it.

Maybe the staff has been ordered from on high to make it optional as a cheesy, default way to express awareness. Maybe it's a local option. But certainly, fewer plastic straws will be used over the long run.

It really is about the only reason I return to Starbucks, which used to have some lively traffic coming and going. Now it's only good for loyalists who only have to walk two blocks to a very similar but far more logistically oriented place where there are far more clientele of all ages. It's dying, and considering that nothing has changed about its now normal post-pandemic operation, I think the top folks are waiting for it to do so. At worst, over the past two months, I've been the third person in line regardless of time of day. The others, obviously, have gone up the street to a happier, more vibrant locale.

If the plastic straws are the only things that are keeping people from abandoning Starbucks altogether, it may not be enough to keep it open. Its last straw is still waiting to be played.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Things Are Slowing Down. Can You Feel It?

Things are slowing down. You can feel it, can't you? It's almost boring. Almost.

There's less to be upset about, or at least to be upset about as much as we were upset, say, a year ago. Then, we walked around upset as much as we breathed; tense, distracted, and afraid of another four years of lies, nonsense, exaggerations, and bad, racist policy. We tried not to scream and succeeded only because help was coming, or at least we got ourselves to believe that and, thank goodness, it turned out to be true.

The other side continues to demand denial, but the edge is wearing off. Arrests for Jan. 6 continue. People are getting more confident, or annoyed, in their pushback against the lies. Time between the main event and the present day, without proving anything else decisive or in the least way deviant, grinds on, and with it, grinds false claims into sawdust.

Decent government, and the facts, restore order. Chaos keeps pushing. It's finding a wall.

Remember the big deal about Arizona? Where did that go? Now Republicans in Pennsylvania want to try. Fine. Let them. All that energy, and for what? There is no magic, no sudden discovery of treachery. Numbers are numbers. All signed off and tracked properly. Done.

I'm ready for someone to say the word "irregularities." I have three questions:

• To what are you referring? Please answer with verifiable facts;
• Tell me how the 2020 election was soooooo much worse and/ or dishonest than every other election, ever; and
• Tell me how that translates to Joe Biden not being president.

I try not to think about it beyond that. Like you, I'm getting tired of following, and responding to, all of this. We'd like a rest. The other side won't allow it, though. They'll keep pursuing it and attacking an empty fortress and grabbing headlines. It's all a variant on the mentality of attack and victimization: Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, and now critical race theory.

It's mostly an attempt to create exhaustion. That, and the new voting restrictions that have been ratified by a twisted Supreme Court, might easily turn the country backwards once again. That is, if we decide that when it's time to act, we don't.

But maybe not. Nobody has said that someone can't vote. Some people just want to make it harder to do so. It's vital, like it was in 2020, that we respond to the new restrictions with new determination. There is an end point to all this, and we're approaching it. Meanwhile, we have to ramp up the energy again.

If ideas really do matter, the structural blockades Republicans keep putting up there won't stop them. They really will start to lose to numbers that will be decisive. Wisconsin's gerrymandering is running into a Democratic governor who will intercept it. Stay tuned. In the meantime, patience and persistence are necessary.

We can't change the anger. Most of the time, anger is irrational, anyhow, and the more people stay angry, the more reasons they have to create to do so. Things become more and more absurd. Q-Anon remains viable if only because it's kind of fun to tweak the powers that be with absurdities and the demonize the relatively decent and normal because, well, they aren't decent and normal. At least not anymore.

We can't wait for this tantrum to pass. All we can do is outvote it. To lose connection due to sheer boredom and de-energizing is tempting. It's important that we don't. If we stop paying attention to what's in the news, we'll stop caring what the point is. If we don't go to the trouble, it'll be the sure way to get back into the four years of trouble we've just endured.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

How Far Have We Come Back? Take A Flight. You Might See.

I wondered what it would be like to fly now that the pandemic has taken its toll on normality. We've returned to it, but it's a hybrid.

Everyone wore masks inside the airport. Makes sense. You can't observe social distancing, especially as flights are called. You can try, as I did, but there's a problem: There are other people in the world, too.

So there you sit, waiting to be called, having to wear a mask even though you've gotten the required two shots and there's news that maybe that's all you ever have to worry about, again--that you'll die, of course, but not from Covid-19. But people didn't show the relief.

Instead, they seemed strained. They threw themselves over the gate chairs as if they were the final resting place. There was a sense of exhaustion.

Also makes sense. It's taken an extra storage of energy to get through this. There should be a national nap time lasting about a week. We need a nap.

We need a break from considering that the reason why the masks are still required is that about one-third of the country thinks its personal freedoms are more important than public health--maintaining their very existence. Face it: Those people wear us out.

I'm reading some Isaiah Berlin, who isn't exactly Erma Bombeck. He takes some concentration and it's tough to get a laugh out of his writing. But in the end, he boils things down pretty understandably. To wit: There are two kinds of freedom. They eventually overlap, and the basic conflict between people takes place where they do. And they explain why being in an airport is, well, awkward.

There is freedom to do things, Berlin writes, and freedom to avoid things. The two are not the same, until they are.

Let us take masks, for instance. Please. Take them. I'm betting that you, like me, are getting quite tired of them. And around where I live, masks are being liberally discarded, since people have gotten their shots.

The new normal? I resist. I want to be free from masks. But I also want to be free to walk around. The two rub up against each other in an airport.

They're taking no chances, either. Walk around without a mask, and they'll escort you right out. But people are sneaky; they aren't wearing their masks every second inside the airport. I can tell you that I didn't.

Why not? As I've said, I have my shots. I trust their potency. I'm feeling fine. The chances of me getting something to spread to others is extremely low. Nothing is certain and the virus continues not to care, but you can drive yourself into quite the state of paranoia if you keep fearing the worst.

And yet and yet: Entering an airport increases the odds of sickness anyhow. In the days in which I was flying a lot, I would come down with wicked sinus infections, no doubt from the air filtration systems of airplanes. There were awful poundings of pressure in my head. 

So you play this game with yourself: I'll put the mask down if nobody's around. No reason to worry about spreading stuff. When people get near, I'll be considerate because they can't be sure about me, either.

Don't think of me as particularly persnickety or naturally resistant (though I am). The airlines play the same games. They still pass out free water (sorry, no ice because someone at some point would have to touch it) or juice or soda on their flights, as well as those token pretzels in the phony agreement that assumes they've fed you. 

So how to get that past the mask? They simply say it's okay to put the mask down to eat and drink.

But wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the mask? Well, not exactly, if you've been keeping track. It's the spray from one's voice or breath that serves as the greatest spreader of the virus, but it has to happen, apparently, on a continuous basis for about 15 minutes.

I mean, I would have had to get up in the face of the guy sitting next to me reading Sean Hannity's screed Live Free or Die, at which I sneaked a couple of looks. I decided that Hannity tries to sound like an intellectual (good for him), but like many of his ilk, decides to cherry-pick famous writings with which he automatically agrees and/or spins so that they sound as if he's been right all along or as smart as those philosophers (he certainly isn't). 

It took some serious self-control but I figured: Forget it. Won't change his mind, especially if he's gone out of his way to get a book with which he already agrees. At least he was smart enough to get it from a library instead of dropping thirty bucks or so. He's got horse sense, I figured: Something you can tip your hat to. It's a big country. Too many stories of rowdy flights, anyhow. No sense adding another one.

Otherwise, the airlines figure that, well, you only have those little cookies or a small bag of pretzels, and nearly no one asks for a second cup of water, so--everybody will, in all likelihood, be done consuming whatever in 15 minutes. There: safe. No lawsuits. Masks back up, please.

One thousand counties have a vaccination rate of less than 30 percent, says CNN. We, and our processes, are being held hostage by that. Instead of having cards saying you've had shots, now people should have cards which, on demand, say that they haven't. "Back to normal" is being blocked by them and their selfishness. It's a big country. It's a big hybrid.

The variant awaits, too. In the meantime, if you want protection, get on a plane. Happy Fourth of July.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Right to Strike: The Only Path to Respect

It's been ten years now since Mr. F. Gow (Most Recent Former Governor Of Wisconsin) foisted Act 10 upon Wisconsin's teachers and support staff, giving their bargaining rights back to them in an all but useless, skeletal frame. The mockery blistered.

Its core purposes have worked. Wisconsin taxpayers are paying less for education now. The damage to teaching and education have been ignored, and the pandemic only underscored that.

In fact, Act 10 was the culminating part of a strategy that began when the Qualified Economic Offer was introduced by Governor Tommy Thompson, eliminating raises beyond a pre-arranged legislative ceiling during budget time.

The core issue, one of abject cruelty, was ignored for the time being: Using educators' attitudes against them. But that goes back to the original arbitration law. After devastating strikes in Hortonville and Racine in the 1970s, WEAC agreed to binding arbitration to solve contract disputes without the right to strike except in extreme circumstances. At the time, it seemed to make sense. Legislators were back on their heels. But educators, too, were tired of the showdowns. 

Educators don't mind being in a union, but their very nature, what made them choose education as a profession in the first place, opposes what unions have to do to gain, and regain, the respect that gets threatened with every attack.

I know. I once was one of them, and I battled those feelings. But I overcame them. I saw and felt, sometimes, how little school boards care, how out of touch they are with teachers and kids, how cheaply they thought education could continue without disturbing its basic nature.

To say that it didn't bother anybody else would be absurd, but others swallowed the mistreatment and soldiered on without discussion. They were often too cowed by accusations that they only cared about themselves. That was all kinds of nonsense, but you can't maintain respect by waiting for someone else to care. And you can care equally about kids and yourself.

It's possible. And necessary, because otherwise you'll get walked all over inside the classroom and out. The job wears one down enough: You've got to have a wind at your back somewhere to survive.

Act 10 took all the wind out of teachers' sails. They can't bargain working conditions. They can't put into a contract the prep periods, the sufficient lunch breaks, the work hours. Only traditions and the logic of people who don't work inside those buildings measure those things now. And there's nothing they can do about it, since arbitration has been removed.

To say it is unfair underestimates it. Arbitration seemed a fair way to figure things out, although preparation for them and the hearings that preceded them taxed negotiators on both sides. But it was better than the alternative. And, as we entered the 21st Century, 55% of Wisconsin's cases were being decided in favor of the school boards. So a rough balance was being struck.

But then right-wing propaganda took over, and the unions were smeared as uncaring and stealing people's money. As has been demonstrated again and again, their messaging resonated. They got out in front of liberals by a good three decades before it occurred them that they were being hustled.

You could see the sapping of power, slowly and inexorably. And now, the pandemic put educators in impossible conditions. They were doggie toys, being shaken back and forth without relief.

But the unions around the country are afraid to become strident. During the last decade, teachers in a few states got so mad they walked off their jobs and went to the state capitol. Some got their way. In other cases, they didn't. But there was little else to do. Thing was, the unions often didn't lead them. They'd been messaged into a corner, taking away the one thing they do well from the people who badly needed it and who've been made to believe unions are bad for them: Organize.

But organizing isn't enough of a reason for people to rely on them, not in the long run. Organizing doesn't appeal to people's souls. It feels like work. It's unemotional. It's the same thing they do in their classrooms. And other people proved they can organize without them.

Unions need a better place to stand, and that includes WEAC. They need to define themselves better. I spoke with its Vice-President, Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, the other day, and she told me that membership increased during the pandemic. People are wising up. They're getting tired of the abuse.

But they need one more place to go: The right to strike. If you get to take away educators' rights that they once had, it's only fair to have the countervailing right to choose not to work, to use the ultimate weapon to get someone to address your concerns.

It doesn't mean that all locals would take a strike vote immediately or even seriously consider it at first. But without it, locals have absolutely no weapon with which to fight back. They must acquiesce to Act 10 and wait for Godot for Democrats to tip the scales back in their favor, what with gerrymandering unarrested.

With that weapon, unions can measure circumstances and put their support behind those locals who are getting the worst of it. They can test-measure the public's acceptance of the new reality, one local at a time. And they can slow down the removal of rights with such a warning hanging over school boards' heads.

Of course they won't get it: Republicans are in overwhelming majorities in both houses. But it's the positioning that will get people's attention. And some of the more libertarians among the Republicans will be tempted to approve, because it's a libertarian position that's being touted. Freedom? How can you deny it here?

It doesn't have to be a shout out. It's merely logical. It can be a negotiating position fashioned out of whole cloth, no less valued been though no negotiating is considered feasible: If you insist on Act 10, we insist on demanding the right to strike.

Risky? Perhaps. But since no strike is ensuing it is at least a claim that can engender conversation.

Trust me: This won't scare the conservatives and blind followers of ex-. If it scares anyone, it will scare the liberals who may then feel that they have nowhere to go. In the miracle event of an improvement in conditions and atmosphere, though, such a position can be withdrawn or measurably reduced.

But it must be taken now. The question must be asked soon, lest WEAC slide into regrettable irrelevance to anyone but its members. Quoting 1776: Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

Radical? Once it would seem to be such. But what's being done to educators right now, at least in Wisconsin, is radical. They are now in chains. They need to have the opportunity to be radical right back.

Act 10 grips educators in an iron fist. The right to strike, if only symbolic for now, serves to loosen it. Let's find out. Nothing left to lose.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark