Slow News Month

Not much happening in the news lately.

Oh yeah, the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, almost forgot about that one.

So what did I learn from that?

Well first of all it's been a good opportunity to think about a few things regarding one of the great passions of my life, photography. 

You may have had the chance to see the amazing photograph of the exPOTUS shortly before he was grazed by a bullet, with the track of another bullet whizzing by him to his left (our right). We know this isn't the bullet about to hit him because the shooter was to his right (our left), meaning the bullet in the photograph had already passed him. In the amount of time it took to make the exposure, what we call the shutter speed, the bullet travelled a bit of a distance, meaning that it was not frozen still in the photograph, but rather was recorded as a blur, from its location at the beginning of the exposure, to its location at the end, and all points in between.

From looking at the photograph, I'd estimate the bullet covered about two feet during the exposure. Given that, one could presumably estimate the rate of speed per second of the bullet by multiplying those two feet, by the denominator (the bottom number) of the exposure time which is measured in fractions of a second. 

According to the photographer, Doug Mills of the New York Times, the photograph was shot at 1/8000 of a second. So multiplying two feet by 8000 gives us a velocity of 16,000 feet per second, about three miles. 

I wasn't up on the subject of bullet speeds before seeing the photograph, but that seemed way too fast. I looked it up and indeed it is. A bullet from the type of weapon used in the assassination attempt typically travels in the vicinity of 3,200 feet per second. 

So what gives, altered photograph? fake news? conspiracy?

Actually, there is quite a logical explanation for the distance bullet covered to appear greater in the photograph than it actually was. It has to do with the type of shutter on the camera that Mills used. The shutter is the part of a camera that opens up to allow light coming from the lens to fall upon the light sensitive material, be it film or in Mills' case, a digital sensor., that records the image  The shutters found on most modern cameras are known as focal plane shutters. Unlike leaf shutters which open from the center, focal plane shutters open from the side. They consist of two curtains, a leading curtain that opens up a window between the lens and the light sensitive material to make the exposure, and a trailing curtain traveling in the same direction that closes to end the exposure. After the picture is taken, the shutter has to be "cocked" to return the two curtains back to their original location before the exposure was made, so the process can be repeated. 

With slower shutter speeds, usually below 1/200 of a second, there is a gap of time when the entire "window" is open and the whole digital sensor (or piece of film) is exposed to light. Above those speeds however, the trailing curtain begins to end the exposure before the leading curtain is completely open, meaning there is never a time when the entire image is exposed at once. The faster the exposure, the smaller the gap of time there is between the opening of the leading curtain and the closing of the trailing curtain. 

By the time you get to 1/8000 of a second, the fastest exposure you'll generally find. the gap between the two curtains is very small, meaning only a very small slit of the image is exposed at any given time during the exposure.

Now the amount of time it takes for the two curtains to make their complete journey is usually quick enough to stop most motion like race cars, but not bullets*. Assuming the speed of the bullet was around 3,200 fps, in 1/8000 sec, the bullet would travel approximately 3 inches. Which means that if the shutter were moving in the opposite direction as the bullet (imagine yourself in a moving car observing another car traveling in the opposite direction) , there would have been a very small window of time for the bullet to reveal itself in front of the camera during the exposure and the resulting image would have seemingly compressed the trail of the bullet to less than the actual 3" covered by the bullet in 1/8000 second. Conversely, if the bullet and the shutter are traveling in the same direction (now imagine observing a car moving the same direction as your car but at a different speed), as appears to be the case here, there is more time than 1/8000 sec to track the bullet's trajectory. Therefore, we have the appearance of more distance covered during the exposure. 

Moral of the story, photographs lie, or at the very least, mislead.

I already knew that part.

Something I also already knew about photography is this: a well-made still photograph is vastly superior at capturing an important moment than a comparably well-made a moving image. I understood this long before I was able to express it, back when I was a child looking at the great weekly magazines of my childhood such as Life and Time. 

Think of the iconic photograph of the late Wille Mays with his back to home plate catching a fly ball off the bat of Vik Wirtz in the 1954 World Series. In that photograph, we can contemplate everything from the ball about to be caught, to the position Mays is in relation to where the ball is coming from, to the reaction of the fans in the stands, many of whose vision of the play was blocked by the peculiar architecture of the old Polo Grounds. The moving image of that catch is remarkable as well in its own right but as it exists in little over the blink of an eye, it mainly serves to help put the still image, forever frozen in time in our memory, into context. 

The same is true for the most memorable photograph of the Trump assassination attempt, one of several of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist to the crowd after members of the Sevret Service helped him back onto his feet, after literally pushing him out of his shoes to get him out of the line of fire. 

The one that stands out of all of them was made by AP photographer Evan Vucci. 

Here's a link to the AP page that features the photograph along with the story.

Dare I say, this is about as close to perfection as a press photograph can come. it is a shoe-in for a Pulitzer Prize.

Its composition is somewhat reminiscent of one of the most famous press photographs ever made, the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the raising of the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. 

Here is an interesting video that gives a little background of that photograph. So you can compare the difference between still and moving images of the same event, the video includes a short film of the flag raising made by a Marine Corps photographer standing beside Rosenthal. The video also refutes the common misconception that the photograph was staged.  

Like Rosenthal's photograph, the American flag is prominently featured in Vucci's picture, flapping in the breeze at the top of the frame. But in Vucci's image, the flag is mere window dressing as Trump himself replaces Old Glory as the object to which all the action is centered upon. In his photograph, four Seret Service agents, three men and one woman are caught in the middle of propping the bloodied Trump up, each one well defined in a distinct pose as they attempt to shield the former president from exposure to any other would-be assassins. If that weren't enough, they were also struggling with Trump in the attempt to haul him off the stage, while he defiantly pumped his fist to the crown admonishing them to "fight."

The photograph became an instant icon, expect to see it again and again through November as team Trump will use it to promote their man's alleged courage in the face of death.

Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, I haven't been afraid to share mine, you can't deny the man has more than his share of chutzpah, having the presence of mind to pump his fist to the crowd after being shot, while an average Joe like me would have crawled away to safety like a snake in the grass.

Or maybe it was just too perfect?  

I have to admit having been a little skeptical as I followed the event in real time on the radio while driving home from grocery shopping that Saturday afternoon. My first thoughts after hearing that he pumped his fist at the crowd after being shot was that this was all a setup. I later discounted my own little conspiracy theory after I learned that other people at the event actually did get shot, one of whom died.  

But not everybody gave up their theories.

The funny thing about conspiracy theories is they always portray the narrative of the people who promote them. In this case, I didn't hear any Democrats claim that Joe Biden tried to have Trump assassinated and I didn't hear any Republicans claim it was all a setup by Trump and his minions.

Just for fun playing the devil's advocate, if we could for a moment put the moral implications aside, let's examine the likelihood of a conspiracy, shall we? First of all, assuming this was a conspiracy put in motion by one of the political parties, who would have had the greater motivation to carry out an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Democrats or the Republicans? 

Well, it seems to me the Democrats had everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by snuffing out Trump. As we have witnessed again and again, adversity that befalls the exPOTUS, including the myriad of impeachments, indictments and felony convictions against him, only works in his favor. After the failed assassination attempt, Trump was greeted at the RNC in Milwaukee, just days after the shooting, with religious fervor as many claimed him to have been personally saved by God himself. Using that logic, apparently God didn't care about the retired fireman who was killed by the would-be assassin's bullet, not to mention the children killed in the school attack in Uvalde, TX, or the thousands of people who die from senseless violence every day in this country. 

If the shooting were not bad enough for the Democrats, had Trump been seriously injured or killed, it would have been worse, as his status as a martyr figure among the faithful would have been unstoppable. Heck, even a dead Trump might have won the November election against an increasingly frail Joe Biden.

Fortunately, that didn't happen, and Trump had his moment of glory in Milwaukee as God's chosen one.

So, as the assassination attempt clearly worked in Trump's favor, it's obvious the Republicans had far greater motivation to carry it out than the Democrats. 

But did they? 

Of course not. 

Let's just use some common sense.

It was a real shooter using real bullets who really killed and maimed people. The shooter was a 20-year-old who didn't make his high school shooting club because of his bad aim. And he was using a weapon more suited for taking out a nest of enemy combatants or a classroom of third graders than for picking off a target one and a half football fields away.

I don't know about you but if I were going to sign off on a fake assassination attempt against myself and have someone shoot in my direction, this wouldn't be the guy I'd pick to carry it out.

I think what impressed me the most about this whole unfortunate event, is how vulnerable we all are to conspiracy theories. "How could this happen?" was the question I heard most in the media, social and otherwise, and in real life. 

My answer to that question is "how could this not have happened sooner?" In my 65 years on this planet, I've witnessed countless acts of violence carried out in this country, starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The names of the assassins of the sixties are forever etched into the memories of anyone who lived through those particularly violent years. Many of us however have forgotten the would-be political assassins who were less competent in carrying out the task at hand.

But I haven't. These are names I didn't have to look up: Arthur Bremer, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinkley Jr. all of whom attempted to kill either presidents or presidential candidates in the seventies and eighties.

I don't remember the names of other would-be assassins such as the ones who more recently tried to kill Congress members Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise, but political violence is no stranger to this country, nor has it ever been.

I suppose we haven't witnessed close encounters with assassination attempts on presidents in the last several decades simply because Secret Service protection has been beefed up significantly, which made the attempt on the life of Trump lead to more questions about who was involved. 

But seriously folks, the Secret Service participating in a conspiracy to kill a presidential candidate? I simply don't buy it.

Let's face it, even at the highest level mistakes happen and given the political climate in this country at the moment, it should come as no surprise at all that someone would seize on the opportunity to take out a former, current or possibly future president.

If we're willing to accept that people are willing on their own to commit heinous and senseless crimes like massacring children as they attend school, why should it be so hard to understand someone on their own attempting to kill a politician? 

This unfortunately is nothing new, we live in a violent world and a violent country.

Anyway, despite the terrible tragedy that fell upon Corey Comperatore and his family, I'm happy Donald Trump lived to see another day.

Other than that, not much happened this month.

Oh wait...

*The well known photographs made by Dr. Harold Edgerton and others that capture bullets in mid flight were made possible not through the use of fast shutters, but strobe light, the duration of which can be much shorter than 1/8000 of a second. 

Job Number One

An analyst before the debate said the president had to win the first three minutes or else he'd lose the entire debate. Then the debate started and from my perspective, Joe Biden lost the first thirty seconds. 

Then it got worse. 

Yes, Biden lost the debate, but it would be a stretch of the imagination, a huge one, to say that Donald Trump won. With Trump, especially last Thursday night, fact checkers would have had a much easier time enumerating the things he said that were facts. I watched the entire debate and for the life of me, I still can't think of anything Trump said that was remotely true.

Never mind the verbal stumbles and the occasional losses of train of thought, Joe Biden lost the debate because last week Donald Trump handed him talking points on a silver platter that he failed to take advantage of. 

Warning, here comes another sports analogy:

In ice hockey, when a team has a two-man advantage, that is to say when two players on the opposing team are sent to the penalty box at the same time, it's usually a pivotal moment in the game. If the team with the advantage fails to score during that opportunity, they often lose the game.

Using that analogy, Joe Biden had a two-man advantage for at least half the debate.  

At times he appeared even to have a three-man advantage, something not possible in hockey, yet he failed to score. 

The subject of abortion was Biden's greatest missed opportunity. Unbelievably, Trump once again brought up one of his most egregious lies ever, perhaps even worse that his claim that he would have won the 2020 election were it not for voter fraud. Regarding late term abortions he said this:

(Doctors) will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth.

I find it understandable that people would be particularly sensitive to abortions that take place late in a pregnancy when the unborn child has developed beyond a certain point and in our time, might even be viable outside of the womb. 

But using late term abortions to sum up the "pro-life" argument is a logical fallacy, a classic example of the "Strawman", that is, basing an argument upon exaggerated and faulty assumptions. Trump's assumptions here were doozies, not only faulty, but outrageous and shameless, something we've all come to expect from the man.

First of all, everyone agrees that willfully taking the life of a child after birth is nothing short of murder, which has never been legal anywhere in this country. Suggesting otherwise as Trump has done now for at least eight years, needs to be called out for the bullshit it is, unequivocally. 

Biden didn't do that. 

Beyond Trump's reprehensible claim of obstetricians willfully murdering babies outside of the womb, late term abortions need to be addressed for what they really are. These are not cases as Trump suggests of capricious women deciding late in their pregnancy that they can't be bothered with giving birth. 

The most eloquent words I've heard about the subject were spoken by current Secretary of Transportation and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg:

Let’s put ourselves in shoes of a woman in the situation, if it is that late in your pregnancy that means almost by definition, you have been expecting to carry it to term, we are talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name, women who have purchased a crib, families that get most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible choice.

It would have been nice if Biden could have responded to Trump's stupid, uninformed comment with one tenth of that eloquence. But instead, we got crickets. He even pivoted mid-response from one of the Democrats' most powerful issues this year to one of their least, immigration.

Yes, it was a terrible performance, one perhaps for the ages. Immediately after the debate, one of the TV commentators said that he loved Joe Biden, that Joe Biden was his mentor, but that Joe Biden needed to step down, he's simply not up to perhaps the most difficult job in the world. 

One word immediately came to mind:

Fuck.

But I've had a week to think about it. Quite honestly, I am a little pissed at Biden because I do remember him saying four years ago that he intended to be a transition president and as he would be 81 in 2024, wouldn't intend to seek a second term. Had he lived up to those words, we wouldn't be in this situation today. Of course, the situation could have been worse with another candidate, who knows.

By any reasonable standard, Joe Biden has been a good president. Yes, inflation is still a problem; we're all feeling the pain myself included, especially at the gas pump and the checkout counter of the supermarket. And yes, this is also a terrible time if you want to buy a home for the first time. But the fact of the matter is that's the way of economics, we've been here before and were it not for the selective memory and/or historical amnesia of many Republicans, they'd see it as it is. It's also true as I pointed out in a recent post that the extremely dire warnings made by economists four years ago of an imminent recession did not come true. 

I have to laugh hysterically because if Trump were president now with the current state of the economy, you wouldn't be able to shut him up about how the stock market continues to shatter records, how we're producing fossil fuels in record amounts, and how we have at the moment, the strongest economy of practically every nation in the world. Which reminds me of a line from Bill Clinton, "if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat."

Biden has also had to face numerous challenges, especially two major wars that threaten to destabilize the world. The current president has remained steadfast in the American tradition of supporting our longtime allies, democracies that are facing existential threats from totalitarian regimes. In contrast, Trump has shown nothing but admiration for those totalitarian regimes, especially those in North Korea, China and Russia.  

And Biden has addressed the issue nearest and dearest to the hearts of the right, namely immigration, by working on a bipartisan bill to stem the tide of immigrants crossing the southern border. That bill was quashed by Trump who insisted the Republicans kill it in order to prevent the Democrats from having another issue they could campaign on against him.

 

By contrast, Trump had few challenges during his first three years in office. He inherited a strong and growing economy from his predecessor, much of which he erroneously took credit for himself. There were also few international incidents for which he also, without any credible evidence, continues to take credit.

In the final year of his term, he had one tremendous challenge that had he done even a slightly credible job of addressing, that is, no better than a C-, he would have won reelection in 2020 handily. Instead of bringing the country together as any good leader does during a time of crisis, Trump used COVID to further divide the country, this time over the proper response to a pandemic, resulting in the United States having one of the highest rates of mortality from the disease of any nation in the world. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump supporters died of COVID at a disproportionately high rate.

Yet even that doesn't seem to dissuade his supporters. 

Nor does the fact that he attempted to wage an insurrection in order to overturn a free and fair election. If you disagree with that last part, show me the evidence, not just theories. 

Is Trump the existential threat to our democracy that many people insist? Well I happen to believe that beyond having been a terrible president, he is a threat and has no business of ever setting foot in the White House again.

Naturally in my opinion, it's job number one to beat him in the election in November. Biden's performance last week certainly didn't help in that matter.  

So in that vein, where do we go from here? If Biden should decide to step down, I would support and respect that. But then what? To me the natural replacement for him on the Democratic ticket would be his vice president. Personally, I would vote for Kamala Harris in a heartbeat, in fact I was kind of rooting for her to win the Democratic nomination in 2020. But truth be told as I pointed out in another post, I'd vote for my cat in a heartbeat over Donald Trump. 

But I'm not sure if Harris could beat Trump in the electoral college in November, since many people seem to despise her as they did Hillary Clinton. As an aside, it dawned on me the other day that their hatred of these two women is perhaps not prejudice against strong women as I once thought. Could it rather be a prejudice against smart women? Margorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are both strong women who get a lot of support from the Right. But certainly no one ever accused them of being smart. 

One thing's for sure, I'd sure love to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump. Trump would never let that happen though, even he's not that foolish. 

The polls today show that a Democratic candidate other than Biden would do well against Trump. Unfortunately, "Democratic candidate other than Biden" is not going to be a choice on the ballot in November. And I'm afraid that if the Democrats were to go above Kamala Harris's head and select someone other than her for their candidate, that would lead to a lot of hard feelings, with good reason. 

I also think that the Democrats forcing Biden out would be a terrible idea as he is the candidate who was elected by the people, including me, who voted in the Democratic primaries. 

To me the only credible options for the Democrats going forward are for Biden to voluntarily step down, turning over the reins to his vice president, or Biden remaining the Democratic candidate. 

Both options are fraught with risk but frankly I don't see any other option.

Which means for the first time in a long time, the Democrats are going to have to get their act together and unify themselves in unequivocally getting behind their ticket in November. That means if Biden remains the guy, to assure the public that he can do the job and if by some chance he can't, he has a very capable vice president who can easily fill the shoes. 

If Harris is the woman, again, to a person the Democrats will have to get behind her full speed ahead.

In either case the Democrats, and by that I mean every single one of them, will need to be on the same page doing a full court press (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) to show the country the difference between their party and the other one.  

On the bright side, I believe this week, the largely Trump-picked Supreme Court handed the Democrats a tremendous gift in ruling that a president has complete immunity in his or her official acts while in office. Why do I believe it's a gift to the Democrats? 

Remember that the Supreme Court ruling goes both ways. As Joe Biden is the current president, he could now do all sorts of things including enacting an executive order banning convicted felons (have anyone particular in mind?) from running for president. Heck while we're at it, he could even, thanks to the Supreme Court, take out a contract on his chief political opponent with likely impunity. True he might get impeached by the Republican House but likely won't get convicted by the Democratic led Senate.

By not doing any of that, he's showing the nation that he means business by not wanting to be king or dictator, which six members of the Court seem to have said is his right. 

Assuming these things won't happen, the Democrats will be able to rightfully say that Republicans,  including an obviously biased Republican leaning Supreme Court, not the Democrats, want to increase the powers of the president in ways never imagined in the Constitution. Combined with the 2025 Project, the work of the Heritage Foundation which is effectively the planform of the Republican Party in the upcoming election, the Democrats can rightfully argue that they are the party committed to preserving and protecting the Democratic Republic that has served this nation well for the last 248 years, while the Republicans in what they are calling a "new American revolution" are looking to overthrow all that and return this country to the monarchy it rejected on this day, July 4, 1776, or worse, introduce a type of government that no one in their right mind ever imagined for this country. 

Between that and the Dobbs ruling which overthrew the federal government's protection of a woman's right to choose her own healthcare, the Democrats will have a lot to work with in terms of convincing the American people that they are the party that looks out for the rights of the people and the fights for the preservation of the democracy we have enjoyed for nearly 250 years. 

Of course, all bets are off if the Democrats drop the ball and lose sight of the big picture by letting their personal grievances take precedence and refusing to compromise their more extreme positions. 

I understand that it may not be the best of choices this year, but there couldn't be a more clear choice.

It's a 50/50 chance at best the Democrats and their voters will come together to do that but if they do, I'll bet my firstborn the Democrats will win in a landslide this November, no matter who leads their ticket.

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans.

Let's not fuck it all up.

Tourist Spots Worth the Effort

If you're a faithful reader of this blog you probably know I'm a sucker for internet lists, you might call it a guilty pleasure of mine. It's always fun to note how a particular list, say someone's opinion of the greatest movies of all time (which I recently covered), compares to a similar list I might come up with. 

This time is wasn't a list that inspired me, I came up with the idea for this one on my own. But I'm not claiming it for myself. Google the theme, and you'll find ten thousand similar lists. 

When it comes to travel, people "in the know", want cool, hip, out of the way destinations, far from the maddening crowd so to speak, places you won't discover from mainstream sources. This makes sense because let's face it, crowds of tourists other than yourself that is, can get annoying. 

On the other hand, popular tourist destinations attract a lot of people usually for a good reason, they're interesting places to visit. Dullsville, USA usually doesn't make a lot of top ten lists of best travel destinations in the world, even though it may have a great hardware store or watering hole.

What inspired this post was a comment from a former colleague who came back for a visit. Her current job is in New Orleans and it so happened that my son was headed there at the same time as her visit. Although I've been to New Orleans and love it, I felt obliged to ask her for some tips that I could send along to him. 

"Well first of all..." she said, "don't go to the French Quarter."  That was expected because the French Quarter of New Orleans is usually the first place people generally think of when they think of the Crescent City. So naturally, it's loaded with tourists, day and night. And when people think of the French Quarter, what then immediately comes to mind is Bourbon Street, named after the French Royal family, not the distilled spirit which may seem more appropriate if you've ever visited that world renowned street. 

But not visit the French Quarter? 

Come on, that's a little like going to New York City and not visiting Times Square, going to L.A. and not visiting Hollywood, or going to London and not visiting Buckingham Palace. Come to think of it, I've been to London twice and still haven't been to Buckingham Palace. But you get the idea. 

It turns out that one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Galatoire's, sits directly on Bourbon Street, and hands down my favorite place in New Orleans is just off it. That place, (read on to find out what it is), exists almost entirely for tourists, yet missing it in my humble opinion, is missing out on not only a big chunk of the heart and soul of the city, but on the heart and soul of the United States. 

I'd like to say that all the entries on my list carry that much weight, but the truth is this list covers everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. What these entries have in common, beyond their attraction to tourists, is that they are unique experiences that well represent the cities in which they are found. And they are all places I dearly love.

I have intentionally not included sites that are destinations in themselves, so you won't for example find the Taj Mahal, or Machu Picchu here. You also won't find them on my list because I have yet to visit them, another requirement. I've also excluded cultural institutions such as museums, because I don't think I need to convince anyone that say, the Louvre (found on several of these lists) is a worthwhile place to visit, that should be self-evident. And while my list is arranged by city, I haven't included cities themselves on the list as some lists do. Why? Because it's my list dammit.

The point of all this is to mention places that bring me joy, either in the sense of being moved, exhilarated, wowed by them, or simply because they put a smile on my face. What's more, your snooty friends who wouldn't set foot anywhere near these places will roll their eyes, basking in self-gratification over their vastly superior hipness when you let them know how much they meant to you.

In other words, it's a win-win, how cool is that?

OK, here's my list in no particular order of touristy places that in my opinion, are well worth the effort, arranged by the cities in which they reside.

NEW YORK CITY- When I wrote about going to New York and not visiting Times Square, it occurred to me that there is more than one reason to visit a place you know will be overrun with tourists. When I spoke above about the feelings the sites on this list evoke for me, I can assure you that almost sixty years ago when as a small child I first visited The Great White Way, it really did evoke those feelings, every single one of them. 

Today, Times Square unfortunately falls short on all of them, which is the reason it's not on my list. Yet I stand by my statement that you have to experience Times Square at least once in your life because it is such an iconic symbol of its city and there is nothing like it, at least outside of Asia. That, I believe puts Times Square in the bucket list category, perhaps a list for another day.

On the other hand, going to the observation deck of the Empire State Building certainly ranks as one of the many New York attractions rating a check on the list of things to do before you kick the proverbial bucket. But it is so much more. First of all, there is no more iconic symbol of New York City than this glorious building.

Although today there are taller buildings in the vicinity, The Empire State continues to dominate the Manhattan skyline, not a small accomplishment.

It was the world's tallest building for forty years, a record held far longer than any building built in at least the last 150 years since the advent of the skyscraper. When the Empire State Building was built, it shattered the previous tallest building record, the Chrysler Building, by 19%. That is obvious from the observation deck of the ESB where the Chrysler Building about a mile away, lovely as it is, looks downright puny by comparison. 

That's also obvious from the observation deck of the GE (Formerly RCA) Building, as seen in this, the opening scene of the 1949 film On the Town. 

My guess is the filmmakers chose to place the sailor-tourists on the top of the RCA Building instead of the Empire State Building in order to highlight the magnificence of the latter, which appears in many of the shots in this clip.

But take your pick, both buildings are equally magnificent and visiting either, (it's probably not necessary to go to the top of both), is well worth fighting the crowds and the over-the-top admission fees. 

My only beef with this scene is that they softened up the lyrics to the song. In the original play, the lyrics (written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green) to the refrain go: " New York New York, a hell of a town."

Which it certainly is. 

If fifty bucks a ticket is a little steep for you, for me no trip to the Big Apple is complete without doing the first thing the three sailors did after disembarking form their ship, enter Manhattan by foot, over the Brooklyn Bridge. In fact, when I took my son to New York a few years ago, I planned, unbeknownst to him, that his first entrance into Manhattan would be the same as the sailors', one of the greatest urban experiences possible with the possible exception of, well you'll just have to read on to find out. 

Just like the best walk anyone can have anywhere in the world, the next few sites won't set you back a penny or a pence, other than airfare, lodging, meals and incidentals:

WASHINGTON DC- Here's another famous film tourist scene from ten years earlier:

Hokey as this might seem to us in our cynical world, if you truly believe in the ideals if not necessarily the actions of this nation, I defy you to roll your eyes when Mr. Smith (played by Jimmy Stewart) walks into the Lincoln Memorial and reads the words inscribed on the wall of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, observes a young man and his immigrant grandpa reading together the Gettysburg Address, and witnesses an elderly black gentleman who conceivably could have been born into slavery, remove his hat and reverently approach the great Daniel Chester French statue of the 16th president. 

If the parts of the Memorial dedicated to Lincoln aren't enough to move you, on one of the steps leading up to the monument are carved four words: "I have a dream" marking the spot where Martin Luther King delivered one of the most important speeches in American History. For my money, standing over those four words written in stone while looking across the Washington Mall toward the U.S. Capitol, have the power to move me far more than the somewhat bombastic memorial to Dr. King, about a half mile away, which is still worth the visit in my opinion.

But wait there's more. Flanking the Lincoln Memorial to the north and south are the two magnificent war memorials, dedicated to the fallen of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. 

Behind the Lincoln Memorial is Memorial Bridge, crossing the Potomac River into Virginia, connecting the literal and symbolic divide between the North and the South. You can cross the bridge by foot into Arlington, Virginia where you will end up at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. There lie the remains of nearly 400,000 American servicemen and women. At the highest point of the cemetery sits the one-time home of General Robert E. Lee, who after deserting his country to join the forces of the Confederacy, had his property confiscated by the Federal government and his land turned into a Union military cemetery just to spite him. Beneath the Lee mansion sits the grave of President John F. Kennedy, and the light from its eternal flame can be seen from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at night. Not far from there sits the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, guarded round-the-clock by members of the U.S. Army.

If there is a more sacred spot in the United States than the Lincoln Memorial and its immediate surroundings, I certainly cannot think of it. 

LONDON-

...when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Samuel Johnson

No truer words could be written which makes selecting a spot in London for a list like this rather difficult. But never fear, I came up with one and as I'm about to write down what it is, I can hear the collective groan from you, dear readers, followed by the comment, "you couldn't have possibly come up with a bigger cliché could you?" 

Well in a way, clichés are what this post is all about. So here goes:

Big Ben.

For a little clarification, Big Ben refers to the enormous bell that tolls the hours inside the clock tower of Westminster Palace, perhaps the most well-known government building in the world. (Or is it the U.S. Capitol Building? I'm not quite sure). I was prepared to write something about the bell but wouldn't you know it, I already did back in 2010 when I first visited London. Sorry folks, can't come up with anything better than this so you'll have to be satisfied with a rerun:

I was put up in the heart of the city, just off Trafalgar Square. The first thing I did on my own was visit the public square that the author of my guidebook criticized severely for its lack of architectural cohesiveness. Perhaps, but what a collection of treasures, The Church of St. Martin in the Fields (home to its eponymous orchestra), the Admiralty Arch, Nelson's Column, the National Portrait Gallery (who paid for my trip thank you very much), and the indescribable National Gallery. It was from that great museum's porch that I was struck with my first view of the bell tower of Westminster Palace, home of the Houses of Parliament.

Someone told me that in London, it's difficult to get one's bearings as the streets are so narrow and winding. But there it was, the city's most iconic landmark clear as day, big and beautiful, beckoning me, off in the distance, my first assumption to be shattered.

Within a few blocks of the tower, I heard the familiar chime of the three quarter hour, the Westminster Chimes. It was 12:45 and I knew that in 15 minutes I might have my one and only chance to hear Ben himself chiming the hour. One clang would be all that I would take home from that magnificent chunk of metal. The wait certainly was not time wasted. Big Ben has tolled on the hour virtually non-stop for nearly 150 years. It has been heard in person by millions, billions perhaps courtesy of the BBC. All the Queens and Kings of England since Victoria have heard it. It was heard daily by Disraeli, by Lloyd George, and by Churchill. More than likely it was heard by Sir John Herschel and Charles Darwin, by Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf . It was heard by Charlie Chaplin and the Beatles. During the Blitz of 1940, German bombs landed within feet of it destroying the House of Commons, but were unable to silence it. It rang throughout the war. All the words I read, all the images I ever saw, all the dreams of London I ever had were summed up in that one brief moment. I had finally arrived.

PRAGUE- The epitome of a city that suffers a bit from its sheer beauty, it's almost impossible to hear anyone speaking about visiting the magnificent Czech capital, without hearing complaints that it is overrun with tourists. 

Once again I beat myself to it and wrote about an essential walking tour of Prague that starts at the Medieval entrance to the city, the Powder Tower, takes you through the Old City past the famous Astronomical Clock, in Old Town Square, over the River Vltava across the Charles Bridge, into in my opinion, the most beautiful section of the city, Mala Strana, then ends up at  St. Vitus Cathedral in the heart of Prague Castle. This route is called the Royal Way as it was the official route the Bohemian kings made before their coronation in the Cathedral:

Along the route, one walks through not only a glorious city, but eleven centuries worth of history and architecture. Like Melbourne, Prague's architecture is an unapologetic clash of styles. Certainly, Prague is one of the most enchanting places imaginable with its fairy tale vistas featuring Medieval towers and bridges spanning the Vltava, the river that plays such an important role in Czech culture. Yet its physical beauty barely scratches the surface of the experience. Prague is the perfect walking city, as each few steps lead to a new discovery. You walk not only in the footsteps of kings, but also the likes of Kepler, Mozart, and Kafka. That's not to say its history is set in stone; like any vibrant place, its story is written daily by the people who walk its streets, from saints to sinners, and everyone in between. 

Then lo and behold, I finished up that piece with a fine way to describe the theme of this piece: 

Great cities are about life, past, present and future. Any city that invites people to explore by walking around its streets and alleys, discovering secrets hidden in its underbelly, is a treasure to behold. After all, the art of the city resides not only in its buildings, monuments or civic plans, but in the ways people interact with them. Take people away from the equation, and all that's left is a beautiful architectural rendering, or a dead city.

So, as your typical American visitor might say: "Maybe all them tourists ain't so bad." 

Just a bit of a hint though, perhaps its best to visit Prague during off season or at off hours. Trust me, the tourists will still be there, just not so many of them, especially at the Clock and on the Charles Bridge.

SAN FRANCISCO- If there is an American city that comes close to the beauty of Prague, this is it. But in contrast, San Francisco owes at least as much of its beauty to its natural setting as its built environment. In addition to the glorious Bay and the Pacific Ocean inlet that lent its name to arguably the most beautiful bridge in the world, The Golden Gate, San Francisco has all those crazy hills that make walking around town a good workout for even someone who's in the best of shape. 

And it's those hills that necessitated the invention of what is certainly the city's most iconic feature.

The story, perhaps apocryphal, goes something like this: Andrew Smith Hallidie, an entrepreneur who was involved in the manufacture of wire rope, witnessed a horrific accident involving a horse drawn streetcar trying to make its way up one of those hills. The weather was inclement, and the horses lost their traction on the road causing the whole contraption, horses and all, to slide down the hill, killing all the animals and an untold number of passengers and passersby. Hallidie resolved to alleviate the hazardous situation by creating a mechanical system to safely propel streetcars up and down those treacherous hills, based upon the system of hauling carts up and down mine shafts using you guessed it, wire rope. 

Working with the German born engineer William Epplesheimer and several wise investors including Abner Doubleday, the man erroneously credited with inventing baseball, the fruit of their labor was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the world's first cable hauled railway, better known as the Cable Car System.

The basic concept is simple enough, propel the streetcars by wire running continuously underneath the streets. But the execution is anything but, especially if you want the cars to be able to start and to stop. Much of the brilliance of Epplesheimer's work involves the grip system operated by the driver who through the grip is able with the help of a lever to grab onto the cable when he wants the car to move, and release it when he needs it to come to a stop. Further complicating matters are when two cable car lines intersect, which necessitates tremendous effort on part of the driver (also known as the Grip) to briefly release grip on the cable, retract the mechanism to avoid it coming into contact with the intersecting cable, allow the momentum of the car to carry it beyond the intersecting cable, then reverse the process after safely clearing the interfering cable, to carry on.  

Then there is the tremendous infrastructure required to run and maintain hundreds of miles of cable under the city's streets. Cable cars are the paradigm of audacious 19th Century industry and technology. For a while, they were incorporated into the transportation systems of several American cities including Chicago. They didn't last long however because of the tremendous effort and expense it took to keep them running. 

Except in San Francisco. 

Today you might still find locals riding the cable cars but the vast majority of passengers are tourists. Consequently, you might find yourself waiting in a queue for an hour or two to hop aboard one of these lovely 19th Century contraptions.

It's worth it. 

Cable cars are a feast for at least four of the five senses:

• While walking on the streets you can feel the vibration of the cable running beneath your feet.
• From blocks away, you can hear each Grip driver's distinctive bell ringing style as they alert pedestrians and motorists of their presence.
• The burning odor of the Douglass Fir brakes (which have to be replaced every three days), is one of the most distinctive and evocative smells of the City by the Bay.
• I don't recommend trying to employ your sense of taste on the Cable Cars, save that for the Chioppino, which was also invented in San Francisco.
• The view from aboard the cable cars can't be beat, especially climbing Nob Hill with San Francisco Bay at your back, while hanging on for dear life, standing on a coveted spot on the outside running board. Frankly, this is one of the greatest urban experiences anyone can have, anywhere, especially at night, which also happens to be the time of day with the fewest tourists.

Another win-win.

PARIS- Speaking of audacious 19th Century technology... Naturally, Gustave Eiffel's Tower is a no-brainer on my list. Need I say more? Here is my ode to Paris from twelve years ago. 

And here is another, this piece was devoted to the second most special of all the places on this list to me, written right after the fire that nearly destroyed it, Notre Dame de Paris.  Given that, appropriately enough, the post begins with a personal account of the most special place on this list to me.

BERLIN - And this is my ode to Berlin. Here's an excerpt:

Cities contain both the best and the worst of humanity, the great cities only more so. This goes all the way back to Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, part of the cradle of civilization, center of art, law and science. But Babylon still has bad connotations to this day implying the degenerate behavior found in big cities.

The great cities of the world all have had their share of decadence, heartbreak and misery.

Of all the cities that I have visited, none has had to overcome more of all three in the course of one human lifetime than Berlin.

My wife and I are currently in the middle of watching the compelling German TV drama series Babylon Berlin. For the record I'd like to point out that the series started production in 2017 while my Berlin post was written in 2009, so my association of Babylon with Berlin in the post, and the movie's, are not related. Just thought you might like to know.

When I visited Berlin in 1994, the Berlin Wall had been down for only a few years, and there was still a stark contrast between what were once West and East Berlin. I'd be very interested to return today and see how the two cities have melded together into one. 

One thing I'm certain that has not changed is you still cannot walk a few blocks in the city and not be reminded in one way or other of World War II and the Holocaust. That is by design, and I give the German people a great deal of credit for honestly confronting their past. We Americans can learn a great deal from that. 

Despite being a great city filled with vibrant culture, a hopping nightlife, a diverse population, and virtually all the things that make a city alive and vital, there still is a cloud of melancholia that hangs over Berlin, which will probably be around for a good long time. 

So after confronting places like the old headquarters of the Gestapo and its accompanying museum aptly called the Topography of Terror, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Hitler's Bunker, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the old Reichstag Building whose 1933 torching, set in motion the sweeping suspension of civil liberties in Germany by the Hitler government, and the haunting Jewish Cemetery in Prenzlaurerburg which testified to the time when Berlin was the center of Jewish culture in Germany, what I really needed after a good cry, was a glass of beer.

Which I treated myself to every day I was in Berlin. 

But not just anywhere. 

If you've been watching Babylon Berlin, you may have noticed this recurring logo: 

Ka De We, short for Kaufthaus des Westins, was, and continues to be, one of the grandest department stores in the world, right up there with Harrods in London and Printemps in Paris. 

In addition to constant reminders of the War, practically everywhere you go in Berlin, are photographs on display of prewar Berlin, and what a place it must have been. The producers of Babylon Berlin have done a good job using CG to recreate the look and feel of the city of the twenties, which was bombed to kingdom come during the forties. 

The Berlin of today gives one ample opportunity to put beside the past (without ever forgetting it), and look forward to the future. Yet a part of me still longed to visit the Berlin that existed before the horrors of the Nazis and World War II. Visiting Ka De We in the flesh, which was rebuilt to faithfully resemble its prewar self, fit the bill. 

Shopping there might have been a little beyond my means, even with a per diem at my disposal, but having a beer while sitting in the sixth floor food hall with its splendid view of central Berlin including the Tiergarten, the Winged Victory Monument, the Brandenburg Gate and the city's main drag, Unter den Linden leading into what once was East Berlin, put me into a place where I could briefly forget the horror of what went on right outside that window, not so long ago.

But not completely. In that great German beer hall, I didn't drink just any beer, I drank exclusively Budweiser Budvar and Pilsner Urquell, Czech beers in honor of my father who spent much of the war as a conscripted laborer from Czechoslovakia in Berlin. 

We do our part any way we can.

MEMPHIS-  In terms of American popular music, most roads lead through Memphis. 

Chicago may be known for its Blues scene, but most of the great Chicago Blues men and women came up from the Mississippi Delta through Memphis before moving north. Detroit is justifiably known as a capital of Soul Music, thanks in large part to Barry Gordy and his baby, Motown. But Memphis produced its own version of Soul through the Stax label (and others), less polished, more gritty, more down to earth, more raw and in the end I believe, more influential. My favorite line from the movie The Blues Brothers which despite being set in Chicago, featured mainly artists who were based in Memphis, came out the mouth of Donald "Duck" Dunn, the bassist for Booker T and the MGs who said this: "we had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline." 

Indeed.

Here are just some of the names of the first group of great Memphis blues and soul musicians enshrined in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012:

• Bobby Blue Bland
• Booker T. and the MGs
• Al Greene
• Isaac Hayes
• Howlin' Wolf
• W.C. Handy
• B.B. King
• Otis Redding
• The Staple Singers
• Rufus Thomas

And that's just for starters, the Queen of them all, Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis, and recorded her greatest music down the road in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Then there's that other baby of the blues, rock and roll, which for all intents and purposes was born at Sun Records in Memphis. 

Here's the story as told in Jim Jarmusch's 1988 film Mystery Train:

Then there's Graceland. Now I love Elvis as much as the next guy, but I'd have to put Graceland, home of Elvis Presley and without a doubt the biggest tourist attraction in town, on my bucket list list, having checked it off my own bucket list (before I knew there was such a thing) about 35 years ago. But it's not on this list. Maybe it's just me, but Graceland is just too damned depressing. 

Maybe it's because the lights went out for good on the King in the seventies, the decade marked by the worst taste in design in the entire century. Graceland, preserved as it was the day Elvis died, reflects that. Maybe it's because he died in the bathroom upstairs and on our tour, as I'm sure most others, some smart aleck asked the tour guide if we could see the bathroom. Maybe it's because the tour ended in the garden which contains the graves of Elvis and his parents. Compounding that today is that the new residents of that private cemetery are to be Elvis's daughter Lisa Marie, who recently died at the age of 54, and her son Ben, who took his life at 27.

Graceland isn't the only downer in Memphis. The Lorraine Motel was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Anyone who was alive in 1968 and can remember that horrific event will no doubt feel a jolt coming upon the parking lot and facade of the motel which have been preserved to look as they did in that famous photograph taken on the afternoon of April 4,1968, of Dr. King laying mortally wounded on the balcony of his motel room while Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy and other associates of Dr. King, point in the direction of where the fatal shot came from. Even the cars parked in the lot are still there. 

The National Civil Rights Museum now occupies the site behind the preserved facade of the motel. It was just about to open when I visited Memphis, so I haven't had the opportunity to visit. A friend confirmed that it was well worth visiting although Dr. King's room, complete with a reproduction of the plate of dinner he never got the chance to eat, was a bit macabre.

Like Berlin, Memphis is a great city with a lot going for it, including a vibrant contemporary music scene. 

Also like Berlin, you may need a little relief, especially after visiting the Civil Rights Museum and/or Graceland. 

Well friends, I have the answer for you, located right in the heart of downtown Memphis.

The Peabody is a classic early 20th Century hotel, built along the lines of the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. While it lacks the Fairmont's Tonga Room (another spot worthy of this list), in addition to its glorious roof-top sign, the Peabody has a feature I believe is completely its own: 

The Peabody Ducks.

Two times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, a red carpet is rolled out for four female mallards and one very lucky male duck who are escorted with great fanfare by their Duck Master via elevator to and from their state-of-the-art rooftop penthouse, to hold court in the fountain of the hotel's elaborate lobby.

The ducks have been around since 1930 when the general manager of the hotel who got a little peppered on a hunting trip, decided as a lark that it would be a trip to bring some live decoy ducks to swim in the fountain of his hotel. Thinking the better of it after sleeping off his stupor, the next morning he went downstairs to find that the ducks were a big hit, and a tradition was born.

You can read all about the Peabody Ducks here in a magazine I never miss an issue of, Garden and Gun.

OK I promised you the ridiculous, now here's the sublime:

NEW ORLEANS - A little over a year ago I wrote a piece about American food culture, yes indeed there is such a thing. In the post tasked myself with coming up with what I would consider the quintessential American dish. I didn't even consider the obvious choices, the hamburger or the hot dog, or even that most unique of American meals, Thanksgiving Dinner. 

Instead, I chose Gumbo. Let me explain: 

A microcosm of the United States, but unique in so many ways, New Orleans like most major American cities, is a mix of people from all over the world. Specifically. the Crescent City is a mix of European, African, Latin, Carribean and Indigenous American cultures, with a little Asian thrown in for good measure.

And Gumbo is the dish that represents all the cultures found in Louisiana. As anyone who has made it knows, the heart and soul of Gumbo is the roux, a mixture of flour and fat that originated as its name implies, from France. From there the dish is thickened either with okra, a vegetable first cultivated in Africa, or file (pronounced "FEE lay"), ground sassafrass leaves, introduced by Native Americans. The hot seasoning comes from the settlers from the Spanish Canary Islands, and the andouille sausage from the Cajuns, via the French-speaking part of Canada.

Like Paella, Gumbo originated as a peasant stew, infinitely adaptable to whatever ingredients its maker has lying around the kitchen.

Also like Paella, everyone has his or her own recipe. As such, Gumbo has made its way onto the tables of homes and restaurants of Louisiana from the humblest to the swankiest.

Like America, coming from humble beginnings, Gumbo is infinitely diverse, and like Americans, it can be whatever it wants to be, good, bad, and everything in between.

It's a little easier to come up with the most American of art forms. That would have to be jazz, and as far as jazz music goes, all roads lead to New Orleans. Unlike Memphis, or just about anywhere you have to seek out the music, in New Orleans, music comes out of its pores. You can't help but hear it all over the French Quarter and other popular neighborhoods, either from street musicians or coming out of bars and other tourist venues.

But music is a part of everyday life as well in New Orleans. Of course, you hear it all over the city during the mother of all public festivals, Mardi Gras. I haven't been to Mardi Gras, nor do I intend to go because even I can't deal with THAT many folks all together in one place, at least not since I spent New Years Eve in Times Square. But while much of the city's economy depends on the tourists who show up for the festival, it would be a mistake to assume that Mardi Gras is an event put on for tourists. Rather, Mardi Gras the day, and Carnival which proceeds it, are deeply rooted in the culture of the city and almost every resident of the city takes part in the festival in one way or other. 

However in a city that doesn't need much of an excuse to celebrate, you needn't show up during the period between Epiphany and Fat Tuesday to find a good party. While you're there, you might even be lucky enough to stumble across a Jazz funeral. 

Unfortunately, we didn't get that chance but did manage to take part in the next best thing. It was the day after a wedding we attended and my friend who was the groom's best man, his wife, his parents and my wife at the time were looking for something to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. He found a notice in the paper for a jazz parade in Algiers, the neighborhood across the Mississippi River from downtown. Those were the days before GPS so all we had to go on was an address and the kindness of strangers offering us directions. We stopped at the first place we could find off the ferry which was a bar. My friend went in and asked around where we could find the parade. The folks turned around, looked at our lily-white faces, just like theirs, and told us in no uncertain terms that we didn't want to go there. They didn't need to say why. But we assured them we did and by the way we were from Chicago and could handle ourselves. So they pointed us in the right direction and sent us on our way.

We brushed aside their trepidation, attributing it to good ol' boy racism, until black people began stopping us in the street asking us if we were lost. Unlike the guys in the bar, and very much unlike experiences I've had at home being in neighborhoods in which I did not feel welcome, to a person everyone who stopped us was very much concerned about our well being. One woman driving her car even turned around and drove to our destination just to see if what we were looking for was legit. She came back and assured us it was. I'm sure she would have driven us there herself had there not been six of us. 

Anyway, when we got to the location, about half an hour after the scheduled start of the parade, there was no indication that anything was about to happen. Assuming we already missed it, we asked someone who didn't know about the event but told us: "Hey this is New Orleans, nothing ever starts on time here. 

When the parade finally began about an hour later, it turned out to be the most wonderful, joyous, life-affirming event I ever attended. It seemed like half of the neighborhood came out of nowhere turning out for the parade which featured two local "crews" with their member musicians, dancers, friends and relatives. As I pointed out in a previous post, "It was the real deal, not the manufactured mayhem of Bourbon Street." Ours were the only white faces to be found, and I think it's safe to say we were probably the only tourists present. No one batted an eye.

As we walked back from the parade, we ran into many of the folks who expressed their concern for us on the way there. One woman was standing in front of her church and when we passed by, after exchanging pleasantries, she invited us in for the service. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that we politely declined. 

But we were exhausted and actually had plans for later that evening, we were headed for Preservation Hall. You may wonder, why go to a venue that caters exclusively to tourists when we had just experienced the real thing? 

The answer is simple, music is music and New Orleans music, wherever or whenever you hear it, is sublime, we just couldn't get enough of it. Like Memphis, I could write a list of all the great musicians that came out of New Orleans but I need only mention one to put the whole thing into perspective: 

Louis Armstrong.

Not every visitor to New Orleans has the gumption to do what we did in seeking out that parade. I can honestly say that if it were not for my friend and his family, my ex-wife and I on our own probably would have heeded the advice of the locals and not continued walking in the direction of an event that at the time, seemed hit or miss at best. 

But in the end, it was the kind of adventure that every seasoned traveler longs for, the off the beaten path encounter that takes effort, perseverance, and a little nerve to pull off, the kind of experience that might impress even the snootiest of your friends.

By contrast, the only perseverance required to attend a performance at Preservation Hall is to be willing to stand in line to get in. And if you're at all claustrophobic, sitting cheek by jowl with a crowd of sweaty tourists in a room that looks like it should have been shut down by the fire marshal years ago, may take a little nerve. 

But let me assure you, the payoff was the same. It's all about the music.

Would I recommend going the extra mile to seek out a "real" New Orleans experience as we did that Sunday afternoon, or take the easy route and head to a venue that everyone in the world knows about?

That's easy, I'd recommend doing both as we did, and then do it again and if possible, again once more. As I write this it just dawned on me, that's what really separates this list from the bucket, been there done that list.

So, there you have it, a dozen or so places in the U.S. and Europe that you will definitely find in your guidebook, and one that you won't, that will hopefully move, thrill, excite and maybe even put a smile on your face, if you're anything like me. That last part is the key because you're probably not like me, and your list of worthwhile places to visit might be completely different from mine, which is exactly as it should be. 

The point is that traveling, one of the great joys of life, is a highly personal thing, and you shouldn't ever feel compelled to visit, and more important, not visit a place in order to impress anyone other than yourself.

With that in mind, happy travels, bon voyage, gute Reise, šťastnou cestu and above all, laissez le bon temps rouler!

Rigged!

My late father-in-law, may God rest his soul, was a life-long, die-hard fan of the Green Bay Packers football team. 

He can be forgiven for that. 

But there was one particularly aggravating aspect to his fandom, for him there were only two possible outcomes to a Packer game, they could either win, or else the game was rigged, stolen from them by the refs. Could the Packers legitimately lose a game? Unthinkable.

This isn't an unusual trait of many passionate sports fans, a word which of course is short for fanatics. Fortunately, those folks are in the minority because if they weren't, if enough people seriously believed that the games were not played on the up and up, the world of legitimate spectator sports would lose all credibility and become a mere offshoot of professional wrestling.

What? Professional wrestling not legitimate? I'm shocked, shocked!!!

That's precisely why ever since the mother of all sports scandals, the 1919 Black Sox fiasco, Major League Baseball has been so strict in regard to its dealings with players and coaches who have been caught betting on the game. Just last week, Tucupito Marcano, who was until last Monday a middle infielder for the San Diego Padres, was banned from baseball for betting on games that involved his team at the time, the Pittsburgh Pirates. While MLB denies that the outcome of any games was affected by Marcano's wagering, the mere hint of impropriety was enough to get Marcano booted out of the game for life. 

Legitimate spectator sports work because of three fundamental principles:

• Everybody plays by the same set of rules. 
• Everyone involved with a team, from players to coaches to support staff, is committed to putting the best team they possibly can on the field.
• The acceptance that there can only be one winner at any given time.

These three principles form the basis of a covenant between fans and the sport. The first two are a matter of faith, fans trust the leagues to ensure fair play, and they trust the teams to do their best to win. The third and most important of the three, is the expectation that winners will be gracious in victory, and that losers be sportsmanlike in accepting defeat, and will be around to play another day.

Unfortunately, like everything that involves human nature, these principles are aspirational. In other words, shit happens. 

• Bad calls, especially a series of them, can make fans seriously question if everyone does in fact, play by the same set of rules. 
• Seeing a player "dogging it" during a play can make it appear like he or she is not putting every ounce of effort into their performance, or worse, has an ulterior motive.
• Bad sportsmanship, truly the root of all evil in sports, deflates or even has the potential of destroying the very spirit of athletic competition.

Therefore, in order to preserve the covenant between the sport and its fans, the governing bodies of legitimate sports do their utmost to address these issues. 

Some would say they don't do enough while others would say they do too much.

I guess you just can't win.

But they must be doing something right because legitimate spectator sports continue to be a remarkably successful endeavor in this country and in much of the rest of the world.

And in my humble opinion, that's a very good thing because there are few things in this world that bring people together like sports, once you cut through all the business and political BS that is. Think of the World Cup, the Olympic Games, or on a more parochial level, the Superbowl, just for starters.

During these events, people set aside their religion, political ideologies, and most of the things that separate us, sometimes even allegiance to a team, to celebrate the sport.

Because in the big picture, it's the game that really matters, and while almost every fan favors a particular team or athlete, in a perfect world at least, every sports fan is at heart, a fan of the game, be it baseball, Australian Rules Football, Wife Carrying, yes, such a thing exists, or whatever.

As hackneyed, trivial and downright off-the-wall as what I'm about to say may seem, legitimate spectator sports are in a sense, a model for democracy. There, I said it.

 

Let me explain:

A democratic republic like legitimate spectator sports, depends upon a few basic principles in order for it to function, ideally:

• Everybody plays by the same set of rules.
• Chosen by free and fair elections, legislative and executive representatives govern reflecting the will of the majority, while protecting the rights of the minority clearly spelled out by a constitution.
• While there can be only one winner of any election, new elections without fail, are held on a regular basis.

Again, like sports these principles form the basis of a covenant, this time between citizens and their government. The first two again are a matter of faith, here citizens trust the electoral system and if necessary, the courts to ensure free and fair elections, and they trust their elected officials who, without ulterior motive, govern to the best of their ability. The third is the expectation that winners of elections will be gracious in victory, and that losers magnanimous in accepting defeat, will form the loyal opposition, and have the opportunity run for office another day, if they so choose.

Talk about aspirational.

One would think it a no-brainer that most people would want to live in a country ruled by the will of the people, rather than the will of an all-powerful king or a dictator. In the United States, we've been living so long in our own democratic republic, nearly 250 years, that we have taken it for granted, assuming that nothing could ever come around to destroy it. But not so fast. 

I think it's fair to say that the most important part of a democracy is that despite differences of opinion, a critical mass of its citizens, and by that I mean a super majority, ultimately put their country ahead of their ideology and political party. 

Doing so means supporting the government, the electoral system and the safeguards built into it, as well as the judicial system, even when their actions don't exactly jibe with what one would like. At times it may take quite a leap of faith to do so, but that trust is essential in keeping any democracy alive.

Which brings to mind the 2000 presidential election, the closest in American history. Al Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes but where it really counts, the Electoral College came down to one state, Florida and its 25 electoral votes. That year the winner of Florida would become the next president. But that state was painfully close as well, separated by only hundreds of votes, and battles over technical errors at the polls, (anyone out there remember the hanging chads?) had to be resolved in the courts. In a controversial 5-4 decision reflecting party lines, the Supreme Court overruled a Florida State Supreme Court mandated recount which turned out to the deciding factor in the election. Gore technically had other opportunities to challenge the result but for the sake of the country, elected not to. As Vice President he even had to face the unenviable task, as Mike Pence did in 2021, of certifying the Electoral College Vote in favor of his opponent. Gore even had to declare his Democratic allies out of order when they refused to accept the slate of Florida electors for George W. Bush.

If any presidential candidate in history had a reason to gripe about the electoral system, it was Al Gore in 2000. For the record, in that election I voted for Ralph Nader teaching me a lifelong lesson on the futility of voting for third-party candidates. 

As I said above, shit happens. True, Al Gore was screwed that year, but managed to move on in a respectful and honorable way which went a long way to help preserve our democracy.

But when members of government fail to live up to their part of the bargain, that is to say governing with ulterior motives such as abusing their position in the quest of disproportionate power or financial gain, or the failure to accept the result of elections just to name three examples, all bets are off.  

Which brings us to you-know-who.

The 2020 election was nowhere near as close as 2000, in fact it wasn't close at all. Yet the loser of that election, the incumbent president at the time, insisted without evidence, "just lots of theories" in the words of his lawyer Rudy Giuliani before a judge, that the election was "stolen" from him. Today nearly four years after the event, that exPOTUS has yet to concede the election to President Biden.

The election denial came as no surprise to anyone paying attention as the same candidate claimed before his successful 2016 election that only two possible outcomes for that election would be possible: victory for him, or a rigged, stolen election. Sound familiar? Although he won the Electoral College and the presidency that year, he still griped about losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes to Hillary Clinton, claiming that was made possible only through fraud. 

His supporters however with a world class case of selective memory, ignored that obvious pattern and chose to believe his lie about a rigged election, casting grave doubts about our election system.

Well he's at it again, this time whining about a "weaponized Biden Justice Department" doing everything in their power to persecute him. 

Once again, he and his sycophants have a boatload of theories but zero evidence to back up that very serious charge.  

It's been a little over a week at this writing since a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to cover up another crime, election interference. Granted, it's not the most glamorous or egregious crime imaginable, remember the Feds got Al Capone, (whom the likely Republican nominee for president this year likes to compare himself to), for tax evasion. 

The crimes for which he was convicted in New York for example, were not as bad as say, absconding with hundreds of boxes of highly sensitive and top-secret government documents from the White House, showing them off to patrons of his country club, then refusing to return them when the government asked for them back. They're not nearly as bad as trying to blackmail the Georgia Secretary of State into "finding" just the right number of votes to put him over the top in that state in 2020, or extorting the president of Ukraine by demanding he dig up dirt on his political opponent, the current POTUS, an act which resulted in his first impeachment. And they're practically nothing compared to his actions surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, in the effort to illegally overturn an election which he lost, an act for which he was impeached a second time.

But a crime is a crime, and one of the most essential parts of democracy is that no one is above the law, not even the president. 

One can only imagine the outrage and moral indignation among Republicans (which would have been justified), had those crimes been committed by a Democrat. Remember the kerfuffle over Hillary's emails?  Remember the constant chant of "lock her up"?

As their dear orange leader rightfully claimed during the 2016 election, he could murder someone in cold blood and not lose any supporters. 

I like to think that by any definition of the term, it is inconceivable that any reasonable person would make a claim like that, especially at an official event during a presidential campaign, even in jest.  

As I don't consider the exPOTUS to be either a reasonable or a rational person, I can't really blame him for every moronic thing he says and does, and there are a lot of them. 

Quite honestly, I don't blame his base either. After all, his life and his countless indiscretions are an open book. If his base wants as their president a whiney, adjudicated rapist baby man narcissist who compares himself and his problems to those of Jesus, talks about retribution incessantly and little else, has a man crush on criminals and brutal dictators, denigrates current American service members and veterans, and led a failed insurrection in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States, they found their man in Trump. That's their opinion and while this is still a free country, they're entitled to it.

But I DO blame the people who know better, first of all, Republican politicians and members of the right wing, Trump enabling media who have made it abundantly clear countless times in the past that they would gleefully dance on the exPOTUS's political grave were it not for their mortal fear of the folks mentioned in the last paragraph. 

Because of that, knowing full well that a good number of Americans haven't a clue what the difference is between a fact and an opinion, or between evidence and theories, they continue to perpetuate the old lie of a stolen 2020 election and the new lie about a weaponized Justice System, casting doubt on two of the most important safeguards of our democratic republic. 

And if the exPOTUS should win the 2024 presidential election, a distinct possibility, I WILL blame the voters who do know better, but plan to either sit this one out or vote for a third candidate because Joe Biden isn't a worthy enough candidate to earn their vote. Maybe they feel he's too old, they don't like his policy on the war in Gaza, or or that their lives haven't improved sufficiently because he hasn't done enough to curtail inflation.

What these folks fail to take into account is that yes Biden is old and has lost a step or two over the years, as have I. But his opponent is also old and appears to have taken way too many direct shots to the head. Check out this speech from this past Sunday.

If they don't approve of Biden's support of Israel in the war in the Middle East, imagine what a reboot of Trump would bring, the man who instituted a Muslim ban and controversially moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem? 

And they don't understand economic realities enough to realize that a president has little direct control over inflation. The truth is that Biden inherited a precarious economy, a result of the pandemic. I distinctly remember many economists predicting a very high likelihood of a recession or worse in the coming months after the 2020 election. Yet where are the voices singing the praises of the Biden administration for averting a real economic disaster?

My biggest fear is that the true culprits of a possible second term for the exPOTUS will be those voters who know what a disaster he is, yet who in failing to vote for Biden, will be effectively casting a vote for Trump. Yes, the Democrats are going to have to work hard for their votes, which is a good thing, but the voters themselves have some serious soul searching to do.

Bringing this post full circle, in his pre-political career, the exPOTUS was very much involved in two sports industries. His foray into the legitimate sport of American football didn't work out so well as he single-handedly destroyed a professional football league. You can read about that here.

He was much more successful in the world of professional wrestling where he in fact is a member of World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Fame. 

He must be very proud of that honor.

Now I'm not quite sure what political system professional wrestling is a metaphor for.

But it sure ain't democracy.

Even if a Trump reboot could possibly flatten out the rising cost of living, (which it can't), for my money, preserving our democracy is sure worth the extra buck for a gallon of gas.

Think First

 As I’ve said many times before, if liberals remain confused about Islamic extremism, the appetite for right wing authoritarianism is going to continue to grow throughout the West. We need to do everything we can to avoid this.

Hold on to that thought.

That is how Sam Harris wrapped up a recent podcast the transcript of which you can find here in which he castigates in no uncertain terms the lack of thought (my term, Harris is more direct by using terms like sheer ignorance and outright stupidity) that pervades the current movement at college campuses, protesting the ongoing war in Gaza.

I have a few gripes with Harris's piece, namely that, as in previous podcasts, he does little more than pay lip service to the unspeakable humanitarian crisis that has befallen the people of Gaza. No matter which side you are on in this debate, or like me you take no sides between the Israeli and Palestinian people (if not their respective governments), it is impossible to ignore the pain and suffering of the millions of Gazans who want nothing more than to simply live their lives.  

As I've stated in earlier posts, the argument of who has the moral high ground is meaningless when it comes to tens of thousands of innocent people killed, and many, many more injured, displaced, their lives forever altered and their future seriously in doubt. The fact that probably half of these innocent people are children compounds the tragedy logarithmically,

Every decent human being should mourn their loss and grieve over the bloodshed that goes on to this day.

Nonetheless, I have to say I agree with more of what Sam Harris has to say than disagree.

To put it simply, as brought up by a friend, "Why is no one protesting against Hamas?"

On October 7th of last year, Hamas was, and continues to be, the de facto government of Gaza. Therefore, the unprovoked and unspeakable attack they carried out that day against the people of Israel, besides being vile and reprehensible in every sense of the words, was an act of war, no different than Germany's unprovoked invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, no different than Japan's unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

As such, Israel had every right to declare war against Hamas.

Today, people of good will all over the world are calling for a cease fire, for an end to the killing, for the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas, alive or dead, to be released and for both sides to come together and negotiate peace. 

That's all well and good, but there's a big problem.

The stated goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel, it always has been, and continues to this day.

We could argue all day and all night for the rest of our lives about the merits of the creation of the State of Israel three generations ago, after the Holocaust, but the fact of the matter as I've also repeated over and over again since last October is that Israel, a sovereign state since 1948, is not going away. 

Neither are the Palestinians.

Therefore, some reasonable compromise must be negotiated in order for there to be any semblance of peace in the region, a long shot at best but what other choice do we have?

It is impossible to negotiate when one side in a war is unabashedly devoted to the complete destruction of the other side. Hamas is not interested in making peace with Israel in the slightest.  As long as Hamas continues to have any teeth left, we can expect acts like what took place on October 7, Israel's equivalent of 9/11, to be commonplace, obviously, unacceptable for the Israelis.

Therefore, from the Israeli point of view, which is not unreasonable in the slightest, Hamas must be destroyed or at the very least, its ability to wage war, eliminated.

Make no mistake, Hamas knew exactly what they were doing in the planning and carrying out of the October 7th attacks. They understood full well that Israel would respond with deadly and overwhelming force and that the vast majority of its victims, fellow Palestinians, would be innocent civilians, including children. They knew that because Hamas routinely uses its own people as human shields, intentionally placing them in harm's way between their fighters and the Israeli military. Any chance of taking out Hamas fighters in battle inevitably leads to civilian casualties. And Hamas understood all too well that the outrage over the carnage would cause support for themselves around the world among otherwise well-intentioned people who refuse to look beyond their own biases, or simply won't bother to dig any deeper than the proverbial ten second soundbite.

It was all by design, the blueprint for the slaughter of 30,000 and counting Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023 was brought to the world courtesy of Hamas, pure and simple.

For their part, Israel is continuously lambasted for not having responded "proportionately" to the Hamas attacks, as the current toll of Gazans killed is well over 30,000, while around 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7.

But what does a proportionate response even mean? Should Israel's response have been tit for tat, in other words, would the war have been OK if they had stopped at 1,200 dead Gazans?

To put it into perspective, 2,403 U.S. military service members died as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the event which resulted in the U.S. declaring war on Japan, thereby entering World War II.

By that war's end nearly four years later, in the words of retired U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley:

…we (the United States) destroyed 69 Japanese cities, not including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We slaughtered people in massive numbers – innocent people who had nothing to do with their government – men, women, and children.

I would add that during World War II we also fire-bombed German cities, causing the pain and suffering of innocent civilians some would argue, far more agonizing even than that caused by the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This in no means is to minimize or trivialize the suffering and death of innocent civilians in fact, quite the opposite.

During a recent conference at the Carter Center in Washington, General Milley, who brought up other examples of civilian casualties caused by the actions of the U.S. military, including those in which he participated said: 

War is a terrible thing, but if it’s going to have meaning, if it’s going to have any sense of morality, there has to be a political purpose, and it must be achieved rapidly with the least cost, and that you do by speed.

Here I would question as in the case of Sam Harris, Milley's use of the term "morality", as that term when applied to war is fraught with much difficulty. A war can be just, it can be a fight for survival, but can there ever be a moral war? The answer to that question is way out of my pay grade. 

But Milley got to the crux of the matter when he commented on the overt support for Hamas on American college campuses:

They’re out there supporting a terrorist organization, whose very written charter calls for the death of all Jews – not just in Israel, worldwide. I mean, come on now. If you’re going to support that, you’re on the wrong side.

If you have doubts about Milley's remark about the "death of all Jews" as I did, please refer to the last sentence in Article Seven in The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas's 1988 manifesto) which you can find here.

Article Six of that document gets to the real motivation of the group, which can be heard in the popular chant heard on university campuses throughout the U.S.: 

Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.

In other words, the entire land that is now occupied by Israel. But not to fear says the text:  

(Hamas) strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the one wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned.

That last part sounds all well and good until you talk to residents of other utopian Islamic theocracies such as the biggest supporter of Hamas, Iran. 

Truth be told, many of the Jews who represent about one hundredth of one percent of the population of Iran, (that number was a lot higher before the Islamic Revolution of the 1970s), claim to be free to practice their religion in Iran without much governmental interference. 

The same cannot be said of members of non-Abrahamic faiths such as the largest religious minority in Iran, the Baha'i, whose members have been routinely persecuted ever since the Ayatollahs took over. 

The same certainly cannot be said for members of the LGTBQ community.

Nor for women who choose not to conform to the dress code of Iran's morality police. Just ask Mahsa Amini when you meet her in heaven, or the nearly 500 people killed there while protesting her death.

The saddest part is that Iran is a paradise for those groups and others who don't toe the hard line of the religious zealots, compared to places like Afghanistan under the Taliban, and portions of Syria and Iraq under the control of the Islamic State.

Now you might say I'm just cherry-picking extreme examples of radical Islam that have little relevance to the political group that is currently in control of Gaza who are merely "fighting to bring justice to the Palestinians". 

Well, the following is Article Eight of the Hamas Covenant in its entirety:

Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.

If that doesn't send shivers up your spine, I guess nothing will.

Quite difficult it is to negotiate with people who are not only willing and eager to kill you and annihilate your people, but are also willing and eager to die themselves, or at least send their underlings who are more than willing to die for them.

Yet here we are.

I disagree with Sam Harris when he intimates that what we've been seeing on college campuses since October 7 is driven primarily by antisemitism, equating it say with the tiki torch carrying, swastika wearing mob in Charlottesville, VA chanting "we shall not be replaced." 

Rather in my opinion anyway, what's driving these protests beyond a genuine concern for the people of Gaza, is the myopic point of view held by many in contemporary academia and in the Left of hostility towards and rejection of the dominance of western culture, manifestly expressed through colonialism. 

That said, the widely reported harassment and assaults of Jewish students by protestors and the faculty members who support them is, if not outright antisemitism, then a good impersonation of it. So is openly calling for intifada. And so is calling for an end to the State of Israel. 

Beyond the lack of thought, (I'll be generous and leave it at that), beyond the catchy radical chic chants and slogans, beyond the misguided efforts of many Americans to address the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with a one-size-fits-all solution, is a profound failure to look at the big picture. 

As I wrote above, the war in Gaza is an unspeakable human tragedy. But innocent lives will not be spared by the efforts of protestors however well-intentioned, who haven't thought the whole thing through.

As Sam Harris suggests capping off his podcast, the movement on U.S. college campuses to condemn Israel and only Israel in the war in Gaza, is a godsend to right wing political extremists who exploit the chaos and lawlessness of the demonstrations, which they greatly exaggerate of course, the tacit support for an extremist, terrorist organization which cannot be denied, and most of all the antisemitism, both real and perceived, to gain a foothold among American voters who are not on the margins of the political spectrum, by claiming the moral high ground on this issue.

Far more serious is the perilous division it is causing among Americans who honestly value the rule of law as proscribed by our Constitution, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, the separation of church and state, the promoting and nurturing of ethnic and racial diversity, reproductive rights, the freedom to marry whomever you wish and to live your life however you see fit, and all the other rights made possible by a liberal democracy, which is currently under threat by extremists, both at home and abroad, with a much different agenda.

We've come too far as a nation to let that happen. From time immemorial the modus operandi of totalitarianism is divide and conquer. To those of us who cherish living in a democratic republic and the values that have held this nation together, flawed as it may have been for nearly 250 years, we can disagree on any number of issues but in the end, we can't let ourselves become divided over the big picture. 

If we do, we'll only have ourselves to blame when it all comes to a screeching end. 

Think about it.