First Amendment Day: A Time to Reflect

September 25 is celebrated, at least in some spaces, as First Amendment Day, because the Bill of Rights, of which the First Amendment is the crowning achievement, was approved on September 25, 1789. The First Amendment is seen as a gateway to democracy. I think it is democracy. Without it, nothing else in the Constitution would matter, nothing would hold up.

The document is so sweeping as to take your breath away. It encompasses so many potential actions and previous activities that its scope surpasses astonishment. But it is what we're made of. Without it, there's nothing about America that makes it unique or pleasant to live within.

If you wade into the First Amendment, though, your head begins to spin. The first set of issues must come from the first part of the statement: Freedom of religion. The "establishment clause" is supposed to stand in direct juxtaposition with the "free exercise" clause that immediately follows. That is, government can't establish an "official" religion because I'm supposed to be free to deal with religion as I see fit, including not at all. The phrase is there to keep government out of my mind, within which I am free to think as I please and free to express myself in like manner. No coercion allowed, in other words. 

There is supposed to be a separation of church and state. And in the most practical sense, ask any legislator of either party, whether they're inclined to admit it or not, whether discussion of What Jesus Would Do enters any hearing on any budget. It's all symbolic and meant to be no more than a salve.

Maybe that's what the Supreme Court had in mind when it allowed a high school football coach to lead his team in prayer after a game, in full sight of the crowd and all. But isn't there implied coercion behind joining the team in prayer? Isn't there a chance that, if push comes to shove, a certain player wanting to be on the starting team wouldn't be allowed to because he took a principled stand?

But the Supreme Court is now filled with Catholics. They won't leave that on the shelf. They listen to a source we were supposed to be free from. Supreme Court justices should not be religious. To the contrary, they should be agnostics. These issues should be moot. Laws should not be passed nor activities governed by whether or not they please the almighty as someone understands them.

Onward to freedom of speech and press, closely bound in practice. A current case in front of the Supreme Court asks whether social media sources which have become widely used can ban certain people from belonging to them. 

It's a tricky issue as the current Supreme Court is put together. The majority believes that businesses should be allowed to function in the freest atmosphere possible, ideally without interference. So a private corporation (which has been interpreted to be a 'person' in Citizens United) can allow or disallow membership as it pleases, right? But if that social media becomes so pervasive, like Twitter or Facebook, so that 'everybody' uses it, isn't that unfair and a denial of rights that have fused onto everyone else? If I'm excluded, I'm free to establish my own social medium, right? But the economic burden placed upon me is beyond enormous. It's folly to assume that just anybody can create their own corporation, right? But if that's true, where did the creators of Facebook and Twitter get their impetus? So that doesn't work, at least not logically.

But since ex- has been muscled out of Facebook and Twitter, his sycophants in important positions, such as Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general, come rushing to his defense of being able to spread innuendoes and lies in the most popular and widely-used medium. So is the purpose of such media to spread the truth? Or to spread information and misinformation (i.e. lies) to allow the public to make a decision as to the degree of believability it wishes to accept? Stay tuned. This one will be interesting.

Of things in print, recent bannings have become frenzied and ghastly irrational, as I have documented not long ago. Let me ask this, though: If To Kill a Mockingbird can be banned, wouldn't that also be true of a recent book published by someone named Helgard Muller, referring to ex- as The Son of Man--the Christ (Which is, reportedly, being distributed at ex-'s rallies now)? If that is permissible for open discussion, as incredibly crazy that assumption is, what in To Kill A Mockingbird would be equally as absurd? And what would be in it that would ban its distribution and allow Muller's obvious pack of lies to be distributed?

Free press is free press. Publish and be damned. And I hope Muller is. But to ban it would bring down opprobrium on the censors, make Muller and ex- into victims (again), and draw more attention to it (as I've said here before). Better to allow stupid people to be openly stupid, to reflect the desperate extremism that is beginning to emerge due to a doubling-down on the same fears that got ex- into the ultimately inappropriate position he unfortunately occupied for four long years. The meaning of that enormous mistake is just as eligible for analysis as any other public act or office.

That's allowing the "marketplace of ideas," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called it long ago, to function as it should, as a self-regulating force that allows reason to overcome nonsense. But that assumes that people will step up and make their stands known. That cannot be guaranteed. But the First Amendment protects that, too.

Meeting in assembled places is also covered by the First Amendment. That includes meeting to complain as well as celebrate. Ex- showed us what he thought of assemblies he didn't like when he sent police both on foot and mounted horses to break up a Washington, DC, Black Lives Matter protest just outside the White House upon George Floyd's murder in 2020. But he praised the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 as being "good people." You can't have it both ways, though. You must allow the stupidly unthinking to say what they wish, as long as they don't get in anybody else's reasonable way.

That's the double-edged sword of freedom. That's what we have to live with in order for liberty under law to continue to function. Should ex- get back into power, one of the first things he'll do is to try to stifle those outlets who are unrelentingly critical of him. He will not merely criticize them, either. He will try to take 'official' steps to keep them from bringing him back into public scrutiny, which is what free speech and press are supposed to be for.

That's why he must be stopped, and the rigging of election results so that one side is guaranteed victory must be stopped, too. That will take a huge roar of outcry. Our jobs, our collective and individual jobs, of preserving democracy aren't finished yet. Indeed, they are just beginning. 

That should be the message of First Amendment Day: Preserve it while it can yet be preserved. Once lost, it will be practically impossible to get it back. The shadow of fascism lurks, and the First Amendment is the only thing that can ward it off.

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

Mister Mark

The Plague of Banned Books

I got hold of a part of USA Today last weekend, which featured a large and ever-growing number of books that someone or other has decided needs to leave shelves because they threaten--well, you'd have to ask them. Some of these titles astonish me:

The Odyssey

Lord of the Flies

Of Mice and Men

A Light in the Attic

Maus

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Animal Farm

The Catcher in the Rye

The Things They Carried

Beloved

To Kill A Mockingbird 

The Outsiders

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1984

The Hunger Games

The Handmaid's Tale

The Color Purple

A Separate Peace

Born A Crime

The entire Harry Potter series

There were several others, but I gather that you've heard of the above.

Yes. Cancelled. Forbidden. I can't even.

Granted, I haven't read all of these, but I've read enough to understand that banning them, even calling them into question, violates any decent sensibilities and reflects a staggering paranoia that, while it could be called natural because of the current regressive state of things, calls thinking into question.

To these people, thinking must be dangerous--thinking that isn't pre-conditioned, I suppose. Except nobody can do that. Nobody can tell anyone what to think and then guarantee that that thinking will be all the thinking that people do. It's not only arrogant and slavish, it's downright stupid.

Plus what are people going to do--cancel, or force to cancel, cable television? When adaptations to To Kill a Mockingbird or Animal Farm or Of Mice and Men or The Hunger Games or Animal Farm are shown, will they put out notice and warn parents of the awfulness of those films?

Here's the ultimate irony of book banning: 1984. I book about control of thinking banned by people who want to control thinking. A book about the manipulation of language brought by those who supported the man who told them not to believe what their eyes were telling them--and meant it.

Maus? Really? An allegory about the Nazis abusing and killing the Jews? What are the banners doing, joining the Holocaust deniers? Or is it that they just don't like rats? If not, avoid All Quiet on the Western Front, too (which, by the way, has also been banned), because there are plenty of rats and the atrocities they commit (or merely following up on ongoing atrocities, take your pick) in that work.

Is this a drilling down on Black Lives Matter? On critical race theory, which is a concoction of graduate school thinking which, until a radically conservative conjurist introduced, had never been in any mainstream conversation in any school, public or private?

Or is it just that someone thinks that kids can't read about bad things at all? Things like:

• Gayness (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, A Separate Peace)
• Bullying (Blubber)
• Racism (The Hate U Give, Eleanor & Park, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter)
• School shootings (Nineteen Minutes)
• Atheism (The Golden Compass)
• Colonialism (The God of Small Things)

You know, stuff like that. If anything, I now want to read these books and discover what someone had a problem with. The fact that there are many best-sellers among these is, what, evidence of the damage in our culture? With our sinfulness? With our lack-of-straightness?

And do people think the assigning of these books, with their tax dollars (and how much money per person in any jurisdiction covers the cost of a copy or two of any book?), represents a betrayal of their values? That whatever school libraries and teachers assign must align with their thinking, however ill-informed it may be? That because they think a certain way, everybody else's thinking is not only bad, not only wrong, but is to be prevented somehow?

So much of this is about race and gender. People have never stopped being afraid of a lack of whiteness. They have never stopped being put off by gay people acting in loving ways in public. The thoroughly neanderthal candidate for Wisconsin governor has said as much: no public displays of gay affection. Keep that in your closet. (Would he introduce legislation preventing it? If elected, don't put it past him.)

Reducing information feels comforting. But it builds walls. It encourages the same behavior everywhere. And it never, ever works.

Of course, not all school libraries are banning all of the above books. To compile lists in such a big nation as ours leaves one with the impression that all books are under examination and that we are all being whitewashed, excuse the pun. But it is bad enough.

This is what happens when minds are stifled and paralyzed, when negative possibilities overwhelm the positive, always easier to do. When panic meets exaggeration. It is a human element that we do not prefer and that we too often ignore.

What to do? Talk up the problem. It is not true that where it does not now exist, it won't or can't. That will become true especially where Republicans seize power, where it becomes popular to bring out phraseology such as "woke," to confirm that whatever a particular book contains cannot be good for kids.

No. Do not wait. Don't assume rationality surrounds you. There are ways to fight this, and fight this we must.

Talk about it openly, logically, and especially calmly. Ideas, by themselves, are just that--ideas. They can cultivate minds and often do, not poison them. 

And do not accept the cherry-picking that reactionaries insist upon to justify their inclinations to take books off shelves. Use the word context often and with effect. Ask those who would censor, "Have you actually read the whole book? Is it utterly without merit or importance?"

Staying calm and speaking out is not walking away. Staying calm and speaking out is being an advocate for reading, for intellectual curiosity, for thinking, for kids. Kids are wiser than we think. But they also need guidance now, more than we think. The world is a different place, yes, but not one that we can hide them from. We must stay rational and keep the lines of communication not only open, but inviting.

Banning the above mentioned books, though, robs young people of important opportunities to know things about the world that they will need to know once they emerge into it as adults. Fear cannot overtake it. It won't. Reading these books under guiding hands is the answer, not preventing any challenges whatsoever.

They're smarter than us, anyhow. They'll find a way around it this plague, as contagious as the viral one we've endured. Ask yourselves this: Is this more dangerous than having guns?

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

Mister Mark

Give It Up, Chuck, and Save It

I'm not a monarchist. Seems to me Americans gave that up in 1776, and we've been none the worse for wear since (though this country is in bad, bad condition). Plus, I've always wondered what it would be like to be a "subject," which is the word used to designate citizens of monarchies. Subjected to what? (We've been subjected to ex- for four years. That's plenty enough.) But Great Britain and America have been excellent friends for almost the whole time after the War of 1812, so it's worth speculating upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II recently, given that she was so beloved by so many of the British. Her importance to them cannot possibly be equivalent to us, but importance nonetheless deserves to be reflected upon.

I'm not sure how much I care about the British monarchy, either, especially in the wake of having watched the cable series "The Crown." What it's supposed to represent, and what it actually does, cut to the essence of image and its maintenance vs. reality.

One of the best, and most recently shattered, examples of this was the dicey progression of then Prince Charles and his stunning wife, Diana, through a marriage that he didn't want but felt forced to accept by his Mr. Uptight father and then, due to jealousy, pretentiousness and disloyalty for which royals are known, made sure she didn't want it, either. Both acted unethically but within a kind of by-law that dictates that if you do that, you try very hard to make sure nobody in the public knows--except people do.

This time, though, having been one-upped by his recalcitrant wife and thus thoroughly embarrassed because the female took it upon herself to violate the Male Prerogative of having something on the side, Charles forged forward and broke up the hypocritical union. He quickly re-connected, or perhaps publicly connected so as to avoid all doubts, with the one woman he always clearly adored, Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Diana? She got around. One of those liaisons led to her very premature death, one that has been lionized and practically drowned in obsession--the 25th anniversary of which has just been observed.

When the basis of one's life and the solidity of one's future has clearly been shattered, when getting up in the morning becomes one's major challenge, one is likely to do some things that amaze and shock some and cause others to wink and grin gently, when feeling better in the short run wins all hands and feeling better in the long run can't be foreseen under any circumstances. When one is faced with survival, the survival mode is anything but normal and regular, conventions be damned. Maybe one gets over it, like Charles. Maybe one doesn't. Diana might have, but we'll never know.

But poor Charles. He's still attached to Diana as the bad guy, even though he tried to address the reality of the matter and set things straight, to do the right and honorable thing, not to maintain what others might call the right and honorable thing, except that the right and honorable thing doesn't always ring true and genuine, especially after having done what nobody thinks is right and honorable. Divorce has pain and inevitable labeling to it, normalized in western culture now to such an extent that it is no longer considered all that unusual--which may be the route that we've taken to decadence, whether we like it or not. We continue to go through the trappings of marriage and all its celebrations, hoping that all who have done so will fulfill its challenging hopes, but quite aware that they often don't.

Diana lives on in immortal legend, though she became just as guilty in proclivity to put her vows in some dusty room and help herself in deserved but very tricky revenge. But because she came off as much less the fuddy-duddy to Charles' traditional snootiness, she is practically worshipped now. Magazine publishers bring her back every so often to raise their coffers. She would have wrinkles by now, but nobody dares create a projection of that.

All this provides ready-made tarnish to the inevitable succession of Prince Charles to being King Charles III upon the passage of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who (according to the TV series) stood to accept at least part of the blame, through inertia, for the aforementioned, doomed union.

Charles is doing his best to fall into the grooves that tradition and practice demand. Yet most people will view him in opaque terms. He is tainted regardless. He will do his best to rise above it, but that's not his call anymore. When one is out in front of the public, the public applies the label. That can be cruel, but it is nonetheless true.

This will hamper Charles like a leg brace, or an operation that didn't go entirely well. It can be viewed as not even his fault anymore, but it always can be referred to. He enters this batter's box with a strike against him.

There's a way he can salvage credibility, though, and restore some of the monarchy's dignity. Time and service will be one, and he will doggedly apply himself to it. But he's getting on, too, and the status of outliving one's enemies can't be guaranteed. The anti-monarchists will have fresh meat to chew, and the forces that dubiously introduced Brexit can be a mighty force if given a new grist for its mill.

So maybe he should do this: After, say, a year or two in which the presence of the British monarchy has been re-established and noted by both pro- and anti-mavens, he might want to abdicate the throne and give it to his first-born son, William, who seems to be perfectly happy with his beautiful wife, Kate, a traditional, unabashed mom, enjoying a relatively happy family life, and appears to be royal in all things he has done and will do with his calm bearing and ease of representation. It might be viewed as the restoration, if you will, of what anyone who likes that particular monarchy would be waiting for upon Charles' ultimate demise, but wouldn't otherwise get it for twenty years or more. William has only turned 40. His reign might be another four decades, maybe more.

Charles could cut a better deal than Prince Edward, the planned successor to the throne that opened up after George V's death in the 1930s. But he ran headlong at his American, divorced lover, determined to marry her, ran away from the throne because he knew what it meant and couldn't fight the feeling. Of course, according to "The Crown," he turned out to be a genuine Nazi sympathizer and overall leech upon many people's doings. I don't think Charles III would do that. 

But he might become something of a royal consort himself, kind of what lawyers of counsel become once their time has passed an nobody knows what else to do with them; they get the last phone call, but they do get one. Edward tried to do that, but upon his own invitation, which proved to be every bit the annoyance that had been predicted. Charles might insist upon consultation, but might also, with that sense of history, avoid meddling.

So Chuck, it's worth thinking about. In yielding the trappings of privilege (or at least the bulk of them), you might in fact be bringing a stamp of legitimacy upon the scars of what you earned in a street fight that has long since passed, but never forgotten. Okay, it happened. But okay, you hung in there and understand that only with a fresh start can your beloved monarchy have, or earn again, the luster you crave for it. You have a son who seems to guarantee the respect and honor that you can never completely regain. Better to step aside and watch it soar again, if it possibly can.

If a monarchy stands for anything, and I'm doubtful about that, it should stand for whatever it can claim to be good and decent. William's succession to a throne abdicated by Charles III might just do that. Worth a try, anyhow.

Sometimes, you have to give something up so you can go on, unburdened. Divorce is like that. Charles knows that, too. It's humbling, but it's also liberating and presents the possibility of a future one can be proud of. He should think about giving up something else that, in so doing, might more closely guarantee him an honored place.

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

Mister Mark

The Day I Met Bill Russell

I met Bill Russell once. I was bold and brave, and one had to be.

The stories about Russell being reserved and private were very true. I knew that as I approached him.

It was in an airport, I forget which one: They all blended together after a while. I want to say Oakland, but it might have been Orlando, on one of my NEA junkets to a meeting or conference or something. No matter. He seemed to be trying to make a connection. I saw that I had one moment to move in, and I took it.

Like so many others of our generation, I revered Russell. Who didn't? His basketball success with the Boston Celtics, unequalled then and now, and willingness to take his notoriety a step farther on social issues had made him an American icon.

He gave interviews sparingly, not to just anyone. He did a personal reflection article for Sports Illustrated, back in the day when it was taken far more seriously, saying that, for example, he didn't give autographs because he believed it was far more important to shake hands with someone to show by touching them that he cared about them. 

He also collaborated with Taylor Branch, the author of a famous trilogy of the civil rights movement, for a book called Second Wind. It was a memoir, a reflection, and a way of telling the world that life goes on for athletes who are no longer competing. It was very personal, unique and stated very eloquently at times. I thought it was excellent and inspirational.

And I thought it might be a good moment to tell him that some white guy had read it. It was one of those times when one gets into the amazingly right place at the right moment. Had I stopped to stare and admire him, that moment would have been gone.

The hell with it, I thought, not the first time I had said that to myself, taken a risk, and succeeded beyond what I had imagined. Sometimes, said Tom Cruise in the film "Risky Business," you just gotta say "What the fuck!" and make your move.

So as Russell started up some ramp on the way to his gate, I walked up to him. He hesitated but did not stop walking. I'm sure he was suspicious. He sure looked it.

"Mr. Russell?" I said. He looked at me, deadpanned. Some white guy he didn't know. Swell.

He was not pleased. Didn't I know? Nobody else had stopped him. I found it difficult to believe that nobody else knew that here was Bill Russell, for heaven's sake, the winner of all winners, crusader for civil rights, and not a soul seemed to know it. But maybe everyone else knew their boundaries better than I did. His dignity surrounded him like cellophane. But I had made up my mind to take the once-in-a-lifetime chance.

I introduced myself, as if he would remember, offering my hand. I said I was from Wisconsin. I told him that I had read Second Wind and thought it was a great book. I thanked him.

He raised his hand slowly and took mine, though not strongly. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate for him to offer his first. But I had remembered what he had said about the importance of shaking hands, and to overlook that would be perhaps insulting. 

He must have sensed the respect. "Thank you," he said. He sounded sincere. I bothered him no more. He walked on.

I thought that that was a lot to get out of him. I thought I had accomplished a great deal in that single minute. I had met one of the great legends of sport, of America. By sheer chutzpah, by friendly ambush, I had met Bill Russell. 

He actually spoke to me, too. Wow. I was proud of myself: I hadn't frozen up. I've met ex-presidents, and I hadn't been so nervous.

He is gone now, having left his enormous legacy that will only grow with time and tide. I admired the way he lived his life, aware of his celebrity status, at times eager to utilize it but unafraid to draw lines to keep away unwanted annoyances. In a way, I crossed that line that day, but he knew that I had done it with the best of intentions, a true admirer who just wanted to touch him for a moment.

We need, and have needed for some time, more Bill Russells. We need people who transcend the present, clashing moment and show us a way past it. By standing among us, this proud black man exuded the fierce determination of trying to find somehow, some way, for others not black to recognize latent equality--not just in the law, but in our hearts. If we do not see his equal for a while, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

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

Mister Mark

A Deep Voice Is Stilled: Reynolds Honold

If you had heard his voice, it would have stayed with you: Deep, resonant, baritone. He didn't speak often, but when he did, Democrats listened.

That's how I'll remember Reynolds Keith Honold, who passed away the other day at 86. I can't say I was a great friend. I rubbed up against his influence more than twenty years ago, but when I did, he helped make the most of it.

In 2000, I was assigned the organizing of what apparently was supposed to be a pro forma arrangement to supply the Wisconsin Democratic Party with a decent number of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Typical of me at the time, I got carried away.

Apparently, I was supposed to acquire a had-been list of former delegates, call them and ask if they wanted to do it again, and/or get substitutes if they said no. At least, that's what I've surmised at a downwind distance. Subtle, quiet, almost apologetic.

But I sensed that George W. Bush represented a much greater threat to public education than your typically clueless Republican candidate. He had already set a record for disingenuousness with his now classic phraseology, "no child left behind." He meant nothing of the sort. He wanted to eliminate the influence of the NEA on public education to the greatest extent possible, and introduce, wherever he could, the undermining, terribly damaging influence of privatization.

So, as a member of the NEA Board of Directors, I set out on a statewide visitation of WEAC's various Uniserv Board, speaking to and encouraging people to either try to become delegates themselves--it was far from automatic; in fact, very competitive--or to suggest potential delegates that we could contact.

The WEAC budget for all this was pretty fat, I thought, so paying me for mileage wouldn't dent much of it. In fact, one night I was even so bold as to rent a plane to hit meetings in both Rhinelander and Beloit, two locales which encompassed nearly the whole north-south traverse of the state. That raised a lot of eyebrows. But hey--the powers that were put me in charge. That's what they got. 

I thought that this particular time had a great deal of importance attached to it. I wasn't, as the more cynical intraunion pols suggested, trying to feather my own nest and gain access to a future statewide position. At the time, I believed I had gained the pinnacle of my ascension by being elected to the NEA Board. (I would be wrong, but had no idea back then.) All I was trying to do was be sufficiently thorough so that nobody could complain that I hadn't put my best effort into it.

Anyhow, we made quite the dent in Democratic Party representation at the National Convention. In fact, we set a record of sending delegates that hasn't yet been surpassed. And that's how I met Reynolds Honold and his wife, Linda.

Linda was then the Executive Director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, so I got a big foot in the door of access to the process of selection, both for me and others in my Congressional District (which is how the Democrats arrange selections). Reynolds stood by in support. I was swept up by the energy, and a couple of others were, too. WEAC had gained a solid representation in the 5th District, which included me.

Both Reynolds and Linda were easy to be with. They were assertive without being overbearing. They were there to help us. We circumvented, as it were, the proscribed method of getting oneself on the slate by cutting a union-based deal. Linda was at the center of it all. She must have sensed my determination and enthusiasm. Reynolds, influential as he was, had her back. The job got done.

The Convention, in Los Angeles, was one of the pinnacles of my (now that I look back on it) meteoric political rise. I got asked to be on a radio talk show, among other privileges. It was heavenly, like a dream. Other WEAC members, too, went on to be significant Democratic Party activists. It felt good to pay it forward like that. I had delivered a product to the mother union that would not be forgotten. That was what I was proudest of.

And that is what I mentioned when I stood in line to greet Linda upon her loss. I would have driven anywhere to pay my respects, but the wake was just at a church just a block from my apartment. "Funny, but I had thought about that," Linda said.

It was nice to be remembered, 22 years later. I will remember the Honolds, too, and that marvelous baritone. May Reynolds, a good man and a great Democrat, rest in peace.

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

Mister Mark

The 6-Year-Old on 8th and Locust

We've had a spate of good weather lately: Pleasantly warm, not a lot of humidity, mostly clear skies. The thing that the Midwest can provide in July.

I went to my chiropractor as I do occasionally the other day. Returning via freeway, I must get off on Locust Street, at the point at which, more or less, the rough part of town begins. Nonetheless, not two blocks from the exit ramp, a small grocery store maintains its business, pandemic or no.

It's at that store that, I stand to think, people buy a slew of bottles of Gatorade or similar fluids and try to peddle them for a slight profit, making the transaction in the 45 seconds or so that the light remains red. I say that without knowing for sure, for I've never made that purchase.

I have never seen a white person make those efforts, either. 8th and Locust is thoroughly The Hood, and nobody who looks like me would ever get caught buttressing their incomes on such an enterprise in such a location.

But I was impressed, then distressed, with who it was that approached my driver's side window that day. She couldn't have been six. Someone had put her up to taking that "shift," I suppose, while they went off and did, well, something else.

Yes. She was alone. No one to watch her. No one to take care of her. No one to spell her. There she was, the face of the awful franchise.

Is that the way six-year-olds are supposed to be enjoying their summer? They should be at the library, like some kids were at Zablocki Library on 35th and Oklahoma when I went to vote early. But those kids were white.

She should be on a playground. She should be playing hopscotch. She should be playing, not greasing someone's palm, for you know very well that whatever money she made during that stay, she would be allowed to keep little of it if at all.

I doubt that she did. It would get to be about 83 that day. It wasn't what we here in Wisconsin would call hot, which is somewhere nearing 90. I have lived in Arkansas and Texas, where 90 is not even worth a comment. The heat wave that envelops those regions has just been experienced and will soon return. Those people need Gatorade whenever and wherever they can find it, not Badgers in their air conditioned cars.

I found that unrelentingly sad. I wonder what that kid thought of her relatives, some of whom probably made her stand there. I wonder what she thought of white people, who seemed coldly uninterested in relieving themselves from the heat. I wonder if she thought that her race had something to do with it.

The discomfort from being approached like that sometimes causes people to take pity. Whatever. Their dollar bills have the same value. But just as many, seeing that potential motivation, are quick to reject any offers.

I thought of the film which I saw the previous week, called "Growing Up in Milwaukee," at Cedarburg's Performing Arts Center, after which I was invited to join a panel discussion, whether I really deserved to be there or not. It wasn't about the whole city of Milwaukee. It wasn't about a cultural milieu. 

It was about growing up, or growing up way the hell too fast, in the thoroughly black section of town, in which the previously mentioned street corner is in the very southeast region. It featured a close look at the lives of three black youth: one who wanted to get better but can't (for the moment) get out of 10th grade; one who got pregnant at 14 and had to give up the baby, but now wants to become a singer (she's really good); and one who wants to play basketball and will, but whether he can hang on to his eligibility is another matter. None of them had anything close to a normal, decent childhood. I had to wonder whether the little girl on 8th and Locust would join them in a world that defeated them before they really got started.

Like the other three, she's already trapped on that street corner in what would otherwise be the kind of summer kids dream of. It's not her fault, it's not her doing, but it sure as hell is her fate. How jaded would she be by high school age? How desperate will she be to get out of that situation, and make exactly the same mistakes as others have? Used as she is right now, will she be able to tell the difference when others wish to use her for other things?

Should I buy some Gatorade next time? I don't know. If I knew what it really meant, what I was really contributing to, maybe I would. But maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I would call the police instead for a fairly blatant case of child abandonment.

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

Mister Mark

As the New Dark Ages Begin

With three decisive, deeply penetrating rulings last week, the reactionary wing of the Supreme Court embarked us upon the new Dark Ages of America. We will now descend into a dystopia that we all saw coming, but were helpless to prevent.

Once with their hands on the mechanisms of access to power, the Republican Party threw off all pretenses of legitimacy as a harbinger of a certain kind of democracy. It is now angry at everything, desirous of everything, and ravenous in its intensity. It does not believe in democracy. It does not care.

People like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the ones with rational heads on their shoulders once connected with the Republican core, have seen and removed themselves from this horrible mentality of authoritarian bullying. But they are on the edges, the periphery. Yes, people once solid behind this cultishness are becoming somewhat shaky, but the 1/6 hearings will soon remove themselves from notoriety, and that will soon fade from view as having relative significance--that is, assuming the Justice Department does little to follow up. 

We don't know that yet, of course, and that is now our only hope--to rely on the last vestige of genuine detachment from partisanship. But that was arranged only by the victory of the last vestige of genuine interest in a just conclusion, run by an aging president who is being attacked from all sides, including his own, mostly for being a decent person and making decent decisions within a chaotic milieu foisted upon us by the deep and abiding corruption of the immediate ex-president, which continues unabated.

As he fades from view, the Democrats have little to replace him with. In the meantime, he must deal with three horrible mistakes that the Supreme Court reactionaries have dropped on his desk:

• Roe v. Wade's destruction--an absolutist's Garden of Eden. A feminist's nightmare.
• Strolling around with weapons if you want--Exactly the wrong stance at the wrong time.
• Open prayer to connect with religion on publicly-paid land--The ultimate twisting of freedom of religion to favor Christians alone, as if they were ever victims of anything.

He must also deal with the results of a horribly divided Congress, led by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a tease if there ever was one. He never wanted to do what Democrats do; he just wanted it all to go away. Finally, confronted with options that made perfect sense but which provided him no place to hide (an important component of much legislation for many legislators), he had to come out and say no. That he waited so long to do so can be hidden by posturing about knowing all options with the vagaries of the dance of legislation, but someone with his experience and knowledge knew very well what options he had to choose from. He just didn't want to do it.

So we sit here with crippled methods of dealing with climate change, because Joe Manchin thinks he'll be re-elected if he stands like a rock and continues to promote his West Virginia constituents drilling into the rock for coal--a mineral we need to walk away from, and quickly. He won't. That won't do it. He figures to campaign as a moderate Republican, but that won't even do it, either.

But that is the detritus of the result of an evenly-split Senate and a nearly evenly-split House, of trying to get something accomplished when there are so many opposing forces about. It makes one wonder why Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, edging up on perhaps their last go-rounds as chamber leaders, don't just pack it up early and keep going right on vacation after the August recess.

Because it appears as if the forces of backwardness, of disingenuous "originalism," which is nothing more than an excuse to make laws and rulings that propel us into an abandoned past, are succeeding enough to grind everything to a screeching halt. That may be the best we can hope for--that things don't get worse.

But inflation is still with us. Ukraine hangs on with hope but fewer soldiers who need more advanced weapons, about which we can see more brinksmanship with a twisted, depraved Putin monster. And we sit in an increasingly hot summer with only hopes that things will get hotter. And, of course, we are only starting to see the awful results of the above awful rulings.

Going backwards isn't going to work. Trying to wish things would settle down isn't, either. Not now. Not in the new Dark Ages.

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

Mister Mark