Pretty much the one and only tradition on this blog is my annual shoutout to the greatest game never invented* on its most important day of the year, Opening Day.
Pinning down actual Opening Day this year is a little difficult because at this writing, March 27, 2025, Major League Baseball's official Opening Day, one of Chicago's two MLB teams, the one that plays on the North Side of town, is already 0-2, having played a series last week with the World Series Champion LA Dodgers in Japan. So it's a little hard to say the traditional Opening Day aphorism: "all hope springs eternal" to the Cubbies who are already winless, two games under .500.
And saying it to the other Chicago team, the one that plays on the South Side, my favorite team, carries with it not a little touch of irony as last year, The Chicago White Sox posted almost the worst win/loss record in the era of the 162 game Major League season, second by a hair only to the woebegone 1962 New York Mets. 1962 incidentally was the Mets' first year of existence. The White Sox who played their first MLB game in 1901 can't use inexperience as an excuse.
As the Sox have not done much to improve their team in the off-season, (on paper in fact the team is a little weaker than it was at the start of last season),the best thing we Sox fans can say today, at least before the 3pm CDT first pitch this afternoon is: "well at least we're two games ahead of the Cubs.
Yea team.
To give you an idea of how pathetic last year's season was, in the MLB they say: "Every team wins at least sixty games and loses at least sixty games in a season, it's what they do in the remaining forty-two games that matters."
Turns out as far as the winning part, the 2024 ChiSox came up nineteen games short of that milestone of futility.
An ancient sport's adage we Chicagoans all learn while still in our diapers is this: "wait 'till next year."
Well next year is here and hmmmm, we'll see. Can't do any worse than last year can we?
Never say never.
There are other reasons to be less than enthusiastic about opening day. One is that my son's baseball career as a player is all but over as last year he graduated from college, and from his school's baseball team. He didn't get to play much college ball but he did make the team all four years, and being a member forged several life-long friendships, many great experiences, as well as a deep sense of belonging. I have to say since graduation, he's lost much of the twinkle in his eye.
Another depressing thing I just found out is that more of the iconic Wrigley Field experience is about to disappear as several of the classic Chicago hundred-year-old three flat residential buildings just beyond the right field bleachers are about to be torn down and replaced by a standard 2020's issue apartment building. As demolition has just begun, Cub fans at their games this season will have the sight of the beautiful buildings' destruction to look forward to, which may actually be less depressing than watching their team.
For their sake I hope I'm wrong.
It's all fitting because baseball, as the late A. Bartlett Giamatti pointed out in his wonderful essay "The Green Fields of the Mind: "...breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart."
And how.
Just not today.
Happy Opening Day.
Play ball!
* Much to the contrary of its popular creation myth, the game of baseball evolved over several decades from already existing games rather than being invented as say, basketball was.
The typical two-week news cycle has predictably shifted and today, hard to believe, almost two months after they started, hardly anyone is talking about the fires that devastated a large portion of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities.
But of course, the suffering goes on.
Frankly there's precious little I can add of merit to this tragedy other than saying my heart goes out to everyone who calls the City of Angeles home, whether they currently live there or not.
A few months before his assassination nearly 62 years ago, American President John F. Kennedy, standing before the Rathaus Schönebergin West Berlin delivered what many consider his finest speech. In front of a crowd estimated at nearly a half million Berliners, Kennedy shouted out a clarion call of solidarity to the residents of that great city which at the time was an island surrounded by hostile neighbors who built a wall (sound familiar?) completely surrounding it. Here are some excerpts:
I am proud to visit the Federal Republic (West Germany), with your distinguished Chancellor (Konrad Adenauer) who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress...
Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "Civis Romanus sum", (I am a citizen of Rome). Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!"...
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in -- to prevent them from leaving us...
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system for all the world to see -- we take no satisfaction in it; for it is, as your Mayor (Willi Brandt) has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together...
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
(It would be nearly another three decades before that day finally came.)
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner." *
Twenty four years later in a much different time, a much different American president gave another speech in Berlin. Perhaps not as eloquent as Kennedy's, but it's message of democracy, freedom, progress and especially solidarity with the people of Germany the rest of Europe, and indeed countries all over the world would be our ally, rang clear as a bell.
Standing before the most enduring symbol of Berlin, the centuries-old Brandenburg Gate which at the time stood permanently closed just east of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan delivered perhaps his own greatest speech. In the middle of his remarks, Reagan spoke directly to the leader of the Soviet Union:
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!
Then came the money quote:
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
But Reagan's speech that day was more than a collection of aphorisms, among other things it was a history lesson. Here are a few tidbits:
In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: "The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium--virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.
Ronald Reagan in front of the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg Gate, June 12, 1987
The American government and their allies learned their lesson after the Armistice following the First World War, where the victors imposed harsh conditions on the defeated, the results of which planted the seeds of World War II. Realizing that winning the war against Hitler and totalitarianism was meaningless without winning the peace, the Marshall Plan was an initiative of the United States, to contribute mightily in both treasure and manpower, to the rebuilding of Europe, including its vanquished enemy, Germany. A similar plan was in place doing largely the same for Japan. Consequently:
...in West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty--that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.
As Allied victory over Germany appeared imminent in early 1945, the leaders of the "Big Three" Allied powers, the U.S. (Roosevelt), the United Kingdom (Churchill) and the Soviet Union (Stalin) met in the city of Yalta on the Baltic Sea to outline the post-war map of Europe. That map was formalized after the war during another meeting in the German city of Potsdam with Harry Truman replacing the recently deceased FDR.
In a nutshell, in exchange for Stalin's agreement to enter the war in the Pacific against Japan after Germany's impending defeat, Roosevelt gave in to Stalin's demands that Eastern and most of Central Europe, be brought under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, thereby sealing those nations' fate for nearly one half-century. **
It was also agreed that after Germany's unconditional surrender which would took place on May 8, 1945, the country would be divided in four, with each region occupied and governed by one of the main powers that formed the backbone of the alliance, plus France which would be brought into the mix. The capital city of Berlin was also divided into four zones, American, British, French and Soviet.
Germany's four zones would be tenuously governed as one body by the Allied Control Council, made up by representatives of each of the four powers. However, trouble was brewing as the socialist Soviets balked at the plans of the other three powers to collaborate economically. In addition, the U.S., the U.K. and France all made known their intention to eventually leave the Council, entrusting governance in the hands of the Germans. For their part, the Russians were especially distrustful of an independent, unified Germany, not unreasonable considering the unspeakable devastation the war brought to the people of the USSR.
Another major sticking point became the divided city of Berlin which was located in the heart of the Russian zone.
The city's precarious location and situation resulted in one of the first volleys of the Cold War as the Soviet Union, wanting Berlin all to itself, blockaded all land and water routes in and out of the city, literally in an attempt to starve its citizens into submission. That act was answered by the Allied nations who organized the Berlin Air Lift, which provided the city with the essential materials, most importantly food, to keep the city alive. It is said that there were nearly 300,000 of these flights in total over the period of one year, working out to about on plane taking off or landing in Berlin's Tempelhoff , Tegel and Gatow Airports every 30 seconds.
Seeing its futility in light of the resolve of the West Berliners and the Allies, the Soviets ended their blockade in the spring of 1949. But tensions between East and West only ramped up. While the three Western powers would remain briefly as an occupying force, on May 9th of that year, the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany was announced, with its capital city moved to Bonn. In response, on October 7th of the same year, the German Democratic Republic (DDR in German, popularly known as East Germany) became a reality. Its capital would remain in Berlin.
Despite all that, after the blockade and the airlift, Berlin would remain an open city with unrestricted travel between east and west for a decade. This proved to be a dire problem for East Germany as Berlin became the major conduit for the exodus of nearly 3.5 million East German citizens to the West. To stop the hemorrhage, East Germany built its infamous wall that surrounded with city of West Berlin. Construction of the first phase of the Berlin Wall began on August 12, 1961. It's fall coincided with the collapse of East Germany, on November 9, 1989, a little more than two years after Reagan delivered his speech in Berlin. In that time at least 140 people, but probably more, lost their lives attempting to cross the wall from East to West.
The post-war tensions created by the Berlin Blockade, the creation of the two Germanys, and especially the division of Europe between East and West, all the foundations of the long-gone Cold War, have ramifications that are still felt today.
To bolster the defense of the new western alliance against the increasing likelihood of Soviet aggression, 1949 also saw the signing of the North American Treaty, the defense pact originally signed by ten Western European nations, the United States and Canada. The most significant element of the treaty is Article Five which stipulates that all members of what would become the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), would be obligated to come to the defense of any other member nation, should they be attacked.
While NATO has participated in numerous operations, mostly acting in support roles in European theaters of conflict, in all its years of existence, Article Five was invoked only once, after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Today there are 32 member nations, the last of which to date that have been admitted were Finland and Sweden which became members in 2023 and 2024 respectively, in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, itself not a NATO member.
Finally, President Reagan in his speech in front of the Berlin Wall in 1987 invoked his predecessor:
When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.
Always successful or not, always sincere or not, promoting democracy, freedom and progress over the forces of tyranny, slavery and regression has been the stated goal of the Western Alliance which has held strong with the crucial membership of the United States as both its most powerful member and its greatest beneficiary for the eighty years since the end of World War Two.
Until now.
A couple weeks ago the current vice president of the United States addressed a group of representatives of the Western Alliance at their annual security conference in Munich, whose main concern at the moment was how to best support Ukraine in its ongoing war in Russia. He told them essentially the biggest threat to the world was not Russia, it was them. Then he said this:
In the United States, there's a new sheriff in town.
But that's a story for another day.
*Once again, I have to point out that the phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner", one of JFK's most quotable lines, unequivocally means exactly what Kennedy intended, expressing solidarity not with a pastry, but with the people of Berlin. Looking like a fool, I learned this the hard way after bringing it up with German friends of mine in Frankfurt, one of whom a Berliner very much around at the time Kenndy delivered his speech. They both assured me the suggestion of the phrase being a malapropism was nonsense, mere urban legend, that no German then nor since, ever got a chuckle from the term having a double meaning.
Here's the deal: "Ich bin Berliner" without the article "ein", which some suggested he should have said, means "I am from Berlin", which Kennedy obviously was not.
**The United States' use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, made the Russin invasion of Japan a moot point.
The spin doctors were having a field day last week with the gesture Elon Musk made at Capital One Arena in Washington after the presidential inauguration. Some insisted that the richest man in the world was inspired by a gesture supposedly used by the ancient Romans.* Others said it harkened back to the Bellamy Salute which American school children once used when presented the American flag while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Still others attribute it to Asperger's Syndrome, a condition Elon Musk acknowledges he has, symptoms which his defenders claim cause those who have it to "act weird" sometimes. After all he did prance around like a drunken cheerleader at that rally in Pennsylvania last October, didn't he?
Well, if anyone understands the true meaning of an outstretched right arm with the palm facing down, it is the Germans.
The title to this op ed piece published last week in the German weekly Die Zeit translated into English reads: " A Hitler Salute, is a Hitler Salute, is a Hitler Salute.
Here's what Musk himself had to say:
Can we please retire the calling people a Nazi thing? It didn’t work during the election, it’s not working now, it’s tired, boring, and old material, you’ve burned out its effect, people don’t feel shocked by it anymore, the wolf has been cried too many times.
The strange thing is I agree with him. It is old and tired to call people you don't agree with Nazis and comparing them to Hitler.
That is unless they do something deserving of that comparison.
What if I were to walk around in public with a tee shirt emblazoned with a swastika, should I be left alone, expecting people seeing it to assume I'm just wearing an ancient Indian peace symbol?
Yeah right.
Or what if I introduced my child to someone as "little Adolph", would I be right to expect people to buy my explanation that my wife and I simply liked that name?
I don't think so.
The one beef I had with the Die Zeit article is the author's choice of the term "Dog Whistle" to describe Musk's gesture. A dog whistle is a signal intended to be only perceived by its intended target. In this case, the author suggests Musk is sending a signal to white supremacists who as it turned out, reacted very positively to the gesture.
But any person with the slightest understanding of history, with eyes to see, and a scintilla of a brain to process information, understood exactly what Musk was doing.
If Musk himself didn't, as he and his apologists claim, then he, and they are far stupider than I could ever imagine.
As a metaphor, siren would be much more appropriate than dog whistle.
When I first saw the illustration above, without the blue tape used for effect to cover up a gesture that is illegal to make in Germany, I was appalled beyond belief. But it got worse. I saw another image with a different cropping:
Not only does his facial expression appear more brazen than in the first image, but as you can see, Musk is making that vile gesture while standing behind the official Seal of the President of the United States.
I'll share a little personal story of the first time I became conscious of the presidential seal. It was on November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated. My most vivid image of that day, there would be many more from the days to follow, was of a man solemnly removing the presidential seal from a podium. To my five-year-old mind, that was a very powerful gesture, an act meant to symbolize the death of a president.
I've carried that image with me my entire life even though I hadn't entirely understood its context nor saw it reproduced again for at least fifty years. When I finally saw a clip of the removal of the seal all those years later, it dawned on me that it was actually a quite trivial act repeated every time a president delivers a speech, that is, when after the speech is made and the crowds have left, a worker takes the seal reserved for the president down. But to this day the poignance of that particular moment has not been lost as it took place at the site of the intended destination of the president's motorcade where Kennedy was to deliver a speech that he never got the chance to make.
To this day I never see that seal and not think of the significance of it as a symbol and of that terrible day.
Unfortunately, now I have something else to think of.
Symbols matter, and this for many, including me, will be the enduring symbol of the current administration. It didn't help that the guy at the top, the one with ,with the funny hair and orange skin, bent over backwards to whine like a baby about the Episcopal archbishop of our nation's capital, demanding her apology after having the gall to beseech him to act like a Christian, said nothing about someone whom he's promised a major role in his administration, sieg heiling while using the symbol of his office, and of all the presidents who came before him as a prop.
It seems that with this president, nothing is sacred or for that matter, profane, which couldn't be less of a surprise.
Which leads me to say directly to all the people who voted for him the following:
Take a good look at that photograph, this is what you voted for.
* There is absolutely no evidence to suggest the ancient Romans ever used this gesture.
About five years ago, I thought I made headway with a friend on the issue of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Like many MAGA devotees, this friend, a real friend whom I have known for more than forty years, could rattle off the names of victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants as if they were his own grandchildren. As you might expect, these names formed the backbone of his argument that all undocumented people in this country should be deported, extenuating circumstances be damned.
One name he failed to mention, because his story was not reported on Fox News, was that of a relative of mine by marriage, my wife's cousin. He was killed as he was driving with his wife from a wedding in Chicago to their home in suburban Milwaukee, when their car crashed head on with a car driven by a man going the wrong way on an interstate highway as he was being pursued by the police. Fortunately, my cousin-in-law's wife managed to survive the crash, meaning their two young boys who were thankfully home at the time, were not left orphaned. As these things so often go, the perpetrator of this tragedy who was intoxicated, also survived.
He'll have plenty of time to think about his actions that terrible night while he sits in an American prison, before he is sent back to Mexico where he'll most likely have more time on his hands to contemplate.
I brought this up with my friend just to let him know that I did in fact, have skin in the game when it comes to the subject of undocumented people in this country committing crimes. I wanted to point out to him that despite the unspeakable tragedy of the senseless death of a loving husband, father, brother and friend, I do not hold all undocumented people in this country accountable, only one.
That's the way it goes with human beings. If you take a representative sample of any group of people, then make a graph that measured the quality of their character, you'll inevitably come up with an enormous bell curve, with a handful of exemplary people at one end, an equal number of despicable people at the other, and a whole mess of people like my friend and me, average folks somewhere in the middle.
Then I pointed out for every undocumented alien who commits a crime, there will inevitably be at least one who did something remarkable in the service of others. It's just that for some reason, their story doesn't get reported very often, especially on the ultra-right-wing media outlets my friend and millions of folks like him gravitate toward.
Nonetheless, my friend seemed to get it. That is until our next argument when again he parroted off the names of all the American victims whose story he heard on Fox.
Well today, you-know-who is about to become president again and he is promising mass deportations starting tomorrow, his first full day in office. With it will come some justice I suppose along with unimaginable human suffering. And I'm willing to bet my firstborn that none of this will do one iota to improve the lives of the American people as promised.
The new president, the first and hopefully last Felon-In-Chief, plans to start deporting people by the way, right here in Chicago for reasons I can only assume stem from his animus toward this city. I don't know why he hates us so much, one of our largest buildings proudly displays his name so it can be seen for miles around.
He loves that kind of shit.
But I digress.
When I told my friend that for every undocumented resident who commits a crime, there is at least another who does something remarkable to help someone else, it seemed so obvious that I just let it rest at that. Now I have something to back it up. Last week as Los Angeles was burning uncontrollably, this story came across the wires. (so to speak).
Be sure to read it.
In a nutshell, as people were forced to evacuate their homes and their communities for their own safety, another group rushed in to help them. In addition to the first responders who were heroically doing their job, there were many others who volunteered to help put out fires in order to help save homes that hadn't yet caught fire.
Many of these people were undocumented. Here's the money quote. Israel Garcia from Guatemala made this comment as he was in the middle of saving a stranger's home:
I don't know who lives here, I don't know if they had children. But if they did, I'm thinking about what the children are going to feel when they come back and see that their house is gone. And I ask myself, how would I feel?
Interestingly enough, just now as I went in search of an article to share with you, I googled "undocumented immigrants help put out fires in LA." Dozens of articles with the story came up. Not surprisingly, none of them came from Fox. The lone article that popped up from that beacon of "fair and balanced journalism", as they once described themselves (but not anymore), was an article with the headline: "Man arrested near LA fires with a 'possible' blowtorch was an illegal immigrant." I read the article and so far, at least at its writing, the man had not been charged with anything.
And so it goes.
In other news, this month we said goodbye to Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States. Due to circumstances largely beyond his control, Carter was perhaps not our best president but was without question, our best former president. Jimmy Carter was a man of remarkable good will and charity, someone who took to heart the fundamental teaching of his faith, that is to say, love your neighbor, even if he is your enemy.
Present at his funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. were all the living presidents, including one current and one future, as well as one recently deceased. These six men, as a representative sampling of Presidents of the United States are a good example of the bell curve of human nature. At the one end, representing exemplary character is Jimmy Carter.
At the other end, well let's put it this way, enjoy the next four years.
Something happened this month that remined me of this post published on the fortieth anniversary of the first lunar landing.
I noted at the beginning of the piece that the 1960s was a decade filled with life defining moments as far as national and world events were concerned.
Today the news outlets call it "breaking news", but in the competitive business of reporting the news 24/7 these days, "breaking news" can refer to anything from an assassination attempt to the proverbial cat stuck up a tree.
Not so in the sixties when these words: "We interrupt this program to bring you a news bulletin..." meant serious business, often the preamble to what would become one of those life-defining moments. And the news that followed those ominous words, was usually bad.
Except once.
I still get chills whenever I think of Walter Cronkite's reaction the moment when from almost three hundred thousand miles away, the voice of Neil Armstrong came through loud and clear: "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."
Talk about a life defining moment. I feel privileged to have been around to experience it, old enough to appreciate it, but not old enough to be cynical about it.
This month's re-opening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris after a 2019 fire nearly destroyed the 900 year old treasure, was another of those life defining moments for me.
You can read why in this post, written shortly after that devastating fire.
In addition to being one of only a handful of pieces of good news in a very challenging year, I've found other parallels between the restoration of the cathedral and the moon landing.
The most profound similarity is that both accomplishments are sterling examples of triumphs of the human spirit.
Today I'm too old to be cynical about it, but not nearly old enough to not be able to fully appreciate it.
I imagine many of the folks who sat on the Rice University football field one hot Houston September afternoon in 1962 listening to President Kennedy proclaim his intention to successfully send astronauts to the moon (and back!) by the end of the decade, must have thought he was crazy.
Maybe it was the heat.
Granted we had already sent astronauts into space four times, but the difference between the Mercury missions of the time which orbited the earth, and the Apollo missions which would land men on the moon, is a little like the difference between driving in Chicago rush hour traffic, (no small accomplishment) and climbing Mount Everest.
In his speech which you can read here, Kennedy mentioned that the "missile" required to send a spacecraft out of the earth's orbit and on to the moon, would need to be as tall as the football field they were sitting upon was long. And it would need to be constructed out of metal alloys that had not yet been invented.
Obviously, those were only two of the hurdles necessary to accomplish Kennedy's goal.
Given the timeline, this must have seemed an impossible task to anyone paying attention.
No doubt that was the response of many who heard on April 15, 2019, the words of French president Emmanuel Macron who proclaimed as he was standing before Our Lady of Paris while it was still ablaze, that the cathedral would be rebuilt, and would reopen in five years.
It turned out that with five months to spare, the crew of Apollo 11, backed by tens of thousands of dedicated individuals, maybe more, carried out Kennedy's goal.
And here, in photographs ripped off the internet, is how the cathedral looked inside and out earlier this month, just over five years after the fire, thanks to perhaps the same number of dedicated individuals:
If you've ever been there, it doesn't look exactly as it did before, does it? Gone is the austere look of centuries' worth of grime and soot, it's now bright and shiny, almost good as new. So much so it's actually a little jarring. To get an idea of the transformation, the sculpture at the lower right interior shot above is "The Virgin of Paris" a work from the 14th Century. You can compare it to my photograph of it made in 2010, seen in the post linked to above.
The restoration will still take several more years, but just like when it was first built back in the Middle Ages, the cathedral will be open during the construction.
Just like the moon missions, there were detractors.
Aren't there always?
Obviously, a good chunk of money went into the restoration, money which some believe, like the moon missions, would have been better spent elsewhere. I dealt with that subject in both my post about the moon landing and the one on Notre Dame, so I won't go into it here.
Suffice it to say, I disagree.
All I'll add to that is this: if monumental treasures such as Notre Dame, the Pantheon in Rome, the Great Pyramids of Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Taj Mahal are not worth saving, then quite frankly, nothing is. Yes, these were all buildings built to serve a particular religion, but because of their beauty, their historical significance, and their status as indelible symbols of the place in which they reside, they have all transcended their original function and today belong not to any one country or religion, but to the whole world. The loss of any of these irreplicable works of art, and others that I don't have the space to list, is a loss for the whole of humanity, even for people never fortunate enough to step inside of them.
Finally, I know there are some who would say the herculean task of restoring Notre Dame in little more than a blink of the eye, is nothing short of a miracle.
Again, I beg to differ. While I did toy with the notion (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) that given the timing of the fire, perhaps some superhuman force (you'll have to read the post to see which one), was at least partly responsible for the catastrophe, its rebirth, like the moon mission, is entirely a human effort. From the Paris Fire Department whose quick thinking and flat-out heroism prevented irreparable damage, to the fundraisers and those who contributed money to rebuild the cathedral, to the architects, engineers and artisans who employed in their work techniques many thought had been lost for centuries, to the construction workers, laborers and the folks who fed them, and everyone I'm leaving out who made the plans a reality, to President Macron who set it all in motion, and to the people of France who demanded the cathedral be rebuilt exactly as it was meant to be, all their efforts are a lasting testimony to the fact that when a critical mass of human beings work together for a common goal, almost anything is possible.
I think that's a splendid thought we all should take into 2025.
Well if you can't beat 'em, join 'em as I say. Sure, things didn't turn out as I had hoped this November and come January 20, our country will turn back the clock and return to a time that about 50 percent of the electorate hoped and prayed was gone for good.
So be it. I've made an early new year's resolution to stop caring. Of course, like all resolutions, don't hold me to that. In that vein I decided to wean myself from my former daily regimen of reading, watching, listening and talking about politics. Instead of reading for example the New York Times, The Atlantic, and my other once go-to sources of information about the world outside my door, I've only been reading about sports. I've also given up the habit of automatically tuning in to the local NPR affiliate on the radio, instead I have my dial set to a station that plays nothing but Christmas music 24/7. I've also given up discussing politics on social media and have turned my attention there solely to watching cat videos. And instead of watching news and political commentary on TV, I've turned to watching nothing but Italian soap operas.
The problem is that never before in my life do I remember a bleaker time for Chicago sports teams. So listening to endless stories about the futility of the prospects for all the hometown teams I've rooted for my entire life, does little to alleviate my depression of the thought of...
Well, you know.
While I still love Christmas, for reasons I care not go into, the holiday has lost much of its sparkle for me. Consequently, the din of sleighbells, ho ho hoing and perfunctory cheer tends to induce more melancholia than merriment these days.
And subjecting myself to hours of cat videos makes me seriously question what I'm doing with my life.
All I can say is this: thank God for streaming TV and Italian soap operas.
Anyway, in the midst of decking the halls with mistletoe while rockin' around the Christmas tree, I did sneak in an NPR break. And on what subject were they reporting? Christmas music of course.
The story reminded me of a Christmas long ago and a conversation my brother-in-law and I had with our very Catholic father-in-law. As was their tradition, our wives' parents had non-stop Christmas music playing on the radio. I think it was just to pull his chain more than anything else, but both my brother-in-law and I brought up the fact that most of the Christmas music we were hearing that day was written by Jewish composers.
Our in-laws, whose annual Christmas decorations consisted of a wreath on the front door and sign on the window that read, "Put Christ back in Christmas", were incredulous.
But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. For starters, the percentage of Christmas music written by Jewish composers closely reflects the percentage of Jewish composers of popular music.
As the popular music industry is above all. a business, success means having your songs played a lot, which naturally translates to sales (a difficult subject these days in the music industry) and everything that entails. Now think of all the pop songs that actually make money compared to the total number of songs that are written and recorded in a given year. I have no idea what that number is, but it has to be extremely small. And when a song does become a hit, meaning one of the most listened to songs of a particular moment, that moment is the window of opportunity to make serious money. And that window opening, unless the song becomes a major hit, is fairly short lived.
Now imagine writing and recording a hit Christmas song. If it catches on with the public, not only is there a window of opportunity to make beaucoup bucks soon after the song is released, but also during every subsequent holiday season.
But I never realized HOW lucrative Christmas music can be. The NPR piece pointed out that at this writing, the top five songs on the Billboard hot 100 (the industry standard for determining the most popular songs of a given week), are all Charismas songs, some of them recorded over 60 years ago.
I don't have anything to back this up, but I imagine Paul McCartney has made more money on his insipid (to my ears) Wonderful Christmastime, than he has on Hey Jude. According to this article about the public's enduring ambivalence to his holiday song, McCartney makes between 400 and 600K per annum for all the times WC gets played between October 31st and December 24th in all the Walmarts, Shopcos, and Piggly Wigglies across this great land of ours, and their equivalents around the world.
But that number pales in comparison the reported 2.5 million dollar royalty check Mariah Carey gets every year for what has become the most popular Christmas tune of all for the umpteenth year, All I Want for Christmas is You.
And it seems that the really successful Christmas tunes if anything, gain traction over the years, so the window of opportunity for them to make scads of money only becomes wider every year. Who knows what Mariah and Macca (by then in his nineties) will be making on those songs in ten years!
So the moral is, if you want to be a pop songwriter, try your hand at writing Christmas tunes. Cha ching, you just never know.
The other not surprising in the least thing about non-Christians writing popular Christmas music is that the vast majority of it is not religious at all, and probably a majority of the non-religious stuff is not even about the holiday. Much of it centers around winter, and all the fun things you can do in the snow such as riding in a one-horse open sleigh. Or if that doesn't float your boat and you find the weather outside frightful, you can stay inside where it's warm and delightful, and go wherever your imagination desires, while resigning yourself just to let it snow. One wonderful, racy and to today's ears somewhat controversial song is the 1944 Frank Loesser diddy Baby I'ts Cold Outside, which doesn't even leave to the imagination what you can do inside.
One of my favorite pop music Christmas songs that really is about Christmas is the 1943 classic, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, written for the film Meet Me in St. Louis by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine. It's about the very real pain of celebrating the season during a time of suffering and loss, made especially poignant as the song was written and originally released during the middle of World War II. Of course, that sentiment runs contrary to all the feelings we're supposed to feel this time of year, so the song's lyrics were altered several times over the years to make it "less depressing." Today it remains one of the most popular Christmas songs that you'll hear played incessantly along with Holly Jolly Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,Jingle Bell Rock, and the rest at your local Target.
Heck I'm going there now, oh boy!
Which brings up one final thought.
The web is filled with articles about surveys of people's favorite and least favorite Christmas songs. Should anyone be surprised that the same songs are on both lists?
While I wouldn't put it on my list of least favorite Christmas songs, by the third or fourth time I've heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas played on the same shopping trip in the same store, I wouldn't mind never hearing it ever again. That goes for a lot of songs that at one time I really loved.
You can guess how I feel about the Christmas songs I've never loved in the first place.
So what do folks like me who love Christmas, just not the same 20 songs played again and again every holiday, listen to by choice?
Sometimes songs are popular for a reason and finding good alternatives can be a little challenging.
One way is to match artists with material you wouldn't automatically associate them with.
When you think of Christmas, the last person you might come up with is Screamin' Jay (I Put a Spell on You) Hawkins. Halloween yes, Christmas no. In preparation for this post, I discovered with great joy and expectation that he does indeed have a Christmas song.
Unfortunately it really sucks.
I listened to the whole thing expecting a payoff at the end, but it never came. Screamin' Jay really should have stuck to Halloween.
The cool cats go for kitsch and what could be better than the Queen of Kitsch herself, Marlene Dietrich? Here she is, singing Little Drummer Boy, in German no less.
Not bad but a little maudlin in my book. Like Sreamin' Jay's Christmas song, perhaps the idea of it is better than the song itself.
But five years ago I found it, my perfect Christmas song. It's a song we all know, sung by two wonderful artists who while not being as far-removed from the idea of Christmas as say Screamin' Jay, or even Marlene, nonetheless are a little out of their element here.
That's why it works so bloody well.
And it truly captures the spirit of joy of the season as well as any song I can think of, heck I wouldn't even mind hearing it a thousand times a year.
The best part is that I will never have to. Here's Leon Redbone and Dr. John, together singing Frosty the Snowman:
The video isn't so bad either.
Anyway, Christmas the secular holiday that is, will be over in a couple of days and along with it all the popular holiday music. Then the real Feast of the Twelve days of Christmas will take place and with that, the sacred Christmas music which in my book never grows old, will continue.
Then will come January 20 and with that who knows, Armageddon perhaps?
Let's hope not.
Communque, avremo ancora la televisione italiana, e non vedo l'ora.
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