How ugly was he?

That's from my son Chris, who, as I told you before, is in the midst of a project of reading a biography of every American President. He reads his books in book form, so he texts photos of paragraphs when he's got something to share.

The paragraph above comes from Ron Chernow's "Grant" (commission earned).

How ugly was General Benjamin Butler? Pictures, here, at Wikipedia. He looks bad, but not as bad as those words make him sound. As Chris put it: "You have to really hate someone to describe them that way."

Here's Butler's General Order No. 28 (with rhetorical flourishes that may remind of a certain modern-day President):

Chris and I independently thought that seemed like a Trump tweet! The capitalization is so evocative. And that willingness to use strong interpretations of law to intimidate those who are affronting you....

Maybe Trump is tapping into a deep vein of American rhetoric.

Until now, we had, living among us, the grandson of the 10th President of the United States.

I'm seeing this in The Richmonder: "Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. president and longtime Richmonder, dies at 96."

Born on Nov. 9, 1928 in Richmond, Tyler was the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler and Sue Ruffin. His father was a son of President John Tyler and president of William & Mary for more than three decades; his mother came from another Virginia family of long lineage and ardent support for slavery and secession.... President John Tyler was 63 when Lyon Gardiner Tyler was born; Lyon was 75 when Harrison entered the world.... At age 8, he was invited to the White House to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt....

My son Chris, who is dedicated to reading a biography of every American President, read "President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler," by Christopher J. Leahy (commission earned). Chris does not read books on Kindle, so when he wants to share something with me, he texts me a photo. For Tyler, he sent this:

A new chapter in The History of Ears.

I'm reading "From Van Gogh to Mike Tyson: a brief history of ears," a 2009 Guardian article, by Lucy Mangan.

Found after trying to think of a list of famous ears, a list to which Trump's ear will now take one of the top 2 spots. I think Van Gogh's ear still belongs in first place.

I'd thought of the ear Mike Tyson bit off but had forgotten whose ear it was. (It was Evander Holyfield's.)

I'd thought of a movie ear —

In the year 3035.

I'm reading "U.S. Tightens Car Mileage Rules, Part of Strategy to Fight Climate Change/The shift, which could reshape the American auto market, is designed to encourage sales of electric vehicles and hybrids" (NYT):

Thanks to my son Chris for noticing that... 

 

I love the idea of the culture around pickup trucks in 3035.

Anyway, seriously:

"The presidency is really hard, people age during the presidency. Maybe he’s just what a lot of 80 year olds would be like if you made them work that hard."

Texted my son Chris, in a discussion about some recent Biden videos — the one about cannibalism, the one about little kids in the west giving him the finger, and the one where he has trouble closing a box:

Joe Biden can’t close a box and struggles to order a milkshake at a Wawa convenience store… But democrats somehow think you won’t notice and will believe he’s going to be able to solve the complex problems of the world. 🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/ZfbXtME7aV

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 19, 2024

Chris had asked, "Do you think he really has dementia? To me he’s always seemed like he had a screw loose. Even in What It Takes" (commission earned link)("What It Takes" is a book about the 1988 presidential campaign, which Chris just read and I am rereading).

I said: "Maybe he’s faking it.... Faking it and having a little dementia mixed in." 

He said: "To me he seems extremely low energy. The presidency is really hard, people age during the presidency. Maybe he’s just what a lot of 80 year olds would be like if you made them work that hard."

The idea of driving 80 year olds to work extremely hard, under 24/7 high stress, is quite disturbing. Who can imagine a torturous work camp like that? Of course, we aren't making Joe do it. He's insisting on it for himself.

In an alley next to the Palace Güell in Barcelona, Spain...

... my son Chris photographs that mural and this poster....

A closer look:

"This is not the first midcentury, middle-America food craze to find new life online: Jell-O molds, 1970s-era desserts and 1970s-themed dinner parties..."

"... have all made unexpected comebacks. That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s.... For some, the box mixes and cans — triumphs of postwar prosperity — are a rosy portal to an imagined 'simpler time' of family dinners and easy living. 'That is nostalgia for America,' she said. 'That is our national comfort food.'"

From "Watergate Salad Makes a Comeback/The 1970s-era dish made with pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple and mini marshmallows has caught the curious eye of the TikTok generation" (NYT).

It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.

And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today." 

Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:

Instagramming from Tokyo.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Althouse Cohen (@caltcoh)

 

Photos by my son, Chris.

Althouse and Meade text, just now, about Biden's announcement that he will end the Covid 19 emergency on May 11th.

 

(The photo I shared with Meade comes from my son Chris. You can see a larger version of that picture here. From there, you can get to more of his photos from Kobe (and Kyoto), Japan.)

"Bob, he's a genius. He's like Picasso. He sees the angles and planes in what, for you, is ovoid."

I wrote, discussing Bob Dylan's analysis of "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves." 

And then I saw something my son Chris sent me from across the sea, from the coast of Barcelona — a photo:

"We take a human-centered approach to design a future massively better for everyone."

I love this phrase, painted on the window of a design firm in Munich, Germany:

 

Massively better.

The photo was taken by my son Chris, who also made this video walking around the Marienplatz ("Mary's Square"):

At the Over Lode Café...

... you can write about whatever you want. 

***

No sunrise photo today. It was raining. What you see there is a photo my son Chris took of me hiking the Over Lode Trail in Blue Mound State Park a few days ago.

"Did you notice Bill Maher did a 'new rules' that was all about toxic masculinity and then two days later Will Smith did that thing? I feel like maybe he was influenced by Bill Maher a little."

Said my son Chris, sending me this clip from Maher's March 25th show: 

 

My response on watching that was: "Wow. That was very pro violence and for the wrong reason/I see your point re smith/And many people, especially women, supported smith."

One can't know if Will and Jada caught that episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher." I'm just saying that, watching the clip, I easily imagined them watching the show and then arriving at the idea that Will ought to stomp up on the stage and whack Chris Rock in the face.

Now, here's how Bill Maher talked about the incident on the new episode of his show, which aired last night:

 

"I just want to say to Will Smith: I got your back. April Fool's. You're a dick."

"What do you think of Howard Stern’s painting?"

My son Chris asks, texting this:

Here’s my latest painting. pic.twitter.com/E4cUtf7Y1U

— Howard Stern (@HowardStern) June 28, 2021

 

ME: it doesn’t seem to express anything about him...
        just looks like a tediously copied photo...
        he’s such a special person. he should express himself! 

CHRIS: His paintings always seem like realistic paintings of flowers and stuff like that 

ME: maybe what he’s expressing is that he’s a big old dullard!
        maybe it’s a meditation or self-calming
        maybe he’s atoning for his shock-jockeying 

CHRIS: Yeah I think he does it as a hobby as a calming thing
        His show has changed a lot over the years

Chris also sends that kitty-cat-in-a-shoe painting below. That's a Howard Stern painting from last year. 

ME: it’s like he wants women to love him
        before he was overdoing his effort at appealing to men
        but where is the real howard stern?
        maybe inside he feels like nobody

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A post shared by Beth Stern (@bethostern)

The Women's March in Madison.

At the state capitol today:



The photos are all by my son Chris, not me.

Let's close in on the "Forward" statue — often seen in my old pictures of the Wisconsin protests of 2011. Today, it had on a "pussy hat":



I was critiquing a Women's March poster earlier today — one that was way too complicated — and I said: "Keep it simple. Pick one idea and present it clearly." So I was pleased to see this image:



The Fallopian tube is giving the finger. And it's saying "Boy, Bye," which obviously means about the same thing as giving someone the finger — brusque rejection. If you know the  Beyoncé song, "Sorry," it calls to mind the lyric:

Middle fingers up, put them hands high
Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye
Tell him, boy, bye, boy, bye, middle fingers up
I ain't thinking 'bout you

I'm reading the placard to mean: Get government out of my uterus. The "boy" is Trump and the sign is warning him away from any impingement on the female body. This is a good, straightforward message, and I agree with it.

I do see 2 problems:

1. One might read the "boy" as an unwanted child, waved "bye" through abortion. That's unfortunately mean and not helpful to the abortion rights cause. Abortion is better presented as the woman's choice about what do with her body, not any hatred toward the unborn.

2. The message Get government out of my uterus is a compelling libertarian message, but the Women's March may be seen as demanding more than the continued protection of reproductive freedom (which Trump does endanger, since he's said he wants a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade). Here's a list of the Women's March "unity principles," and it is not a "boy, bye" to the government. It's demanding that the government get very involved in women's bodies:

We do not accept any federal, state or local rollbacks, cuts or restrictions on our ability to access quality reproductive healthcare services, birth control, HIV/AIDS care and prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education.

It's more of a "hi" than a "bye" — more of a hi, get in here and never go away. If that's your message, that Fallopian tube ought to be waving furiously.

The sign says "wildlife habitat."

Chris sends a photograph from Austin.

Sheep of New York.

My son Chris texted me this photograph from New York City. It's on Mulberry Street. So... as we say in kidlit, And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

ADDED: Here's an explanation, in The Wall Street Journal: "Sheep May Safely Graze, in Nolita/Three ewes fulfill a pastoral vision set by the church’s pastor; ‘it adds this very bucolic element to an urban environment.’" The church is the Roman Catholic Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, dedicated in 1815. The groundskeeper retired and...

“From the very beginning when we mentioned, ‘Gee, we might get sheep,’ we’ve gotten ear-to-ear smiles,” said Msgr. Sakano.

The first set of lambs arrived in September, got acquainted with the grounds and chewed the cud for a month before returning upstate, according to parish leaders. When they left, parishioners immediately asked for another set.... Cuteness aside, sheep are deeply woven through Scripture and religious imagery. Psalms, Chapter 23 starts, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

And as part of the Communion rite, Catholics pray, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: Have mercy on us.”

Sheep “are a symbol of cooperative life,” said Msgr. Sakano.

The sheep also hold special appeal to young parishioners and other city-dwellers who have “been urbanized, separated from the elements that have surrounded human beings for millions of years, have sustained them and given them comfort,” he said.

Beautiful.

"Vigil outside Stonewall."

Today. (More pictures at the link.)

"In Baltimore, they call it a 'rough ride'... a dark tradition of police misconduct in which suspects, seated or lying face down and in handcuffs in the back of a police wagon, are jolted and battered by an intentionally rough and bumpy ride..."

"... that can do as much damage as a police baton without an officer having to administer a blow. The exact cause of the spinal injury that Freddie Gray, 25, sustained while in police custody in Baltimore before his death April 19 has not been made clear. The police have said that he was not strapped into a seatbelt, a violation of department policy. That has led some to wonder whether he was deliberately left unbuckled, reminiscent of a practice that while little known has left a brutal, costly legacy of severe injuries and multimillion-dollar settlements throughout the country."

From a NYT article titled "Freddie Gray’s Injury and the Police ‘Rough Ride.'"

My son Chris says that the descriptions of what may have happened to Freddie Gray remind him of a disturbing scene in the Quentin Tarantino movie "Death Proof" (originally part of "Grindhouse.") Here's the scene:



"Hey, Pam, remember when I said this car was death proof? Well, that wasn't a lie. This car is 100% death proof. Only to get the benefit of it, honey, you REALLY need to be sitting in my seat."

At the Last-Night-in-Austin Café...

... save me a place at the table.

ADDED: The restaurant is the East Side Showroom. Highly recommended!