The Organist

In one of those great Wall Street Journal A-Hed pieces this past Tuesday, Jacob Bunge writes about ballpark organists playing sly, teasing snippets of music to go along with the action on the field.

Jacob is a Deputy Chicago Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. I know this because that's what his Twitter/X tells us (@jacobbunge).

Being located in Chicago Mr. Bunge has lots of stories about the organist at Chicago White Sox games, Nancy Faust. Ms. Faust has been playing the organ at Sox games now for 40 years, a considerable amount of time.

The 78 year-old Faust is considered the High Priestess of the ballpark organists by the few organists who are left who play at ballparks. Anyone who has been to a ballpark now realizes they also bought a ticket to a rock concert, because the speakers are calibrated to produce tremendous sound. (For some, it's noise.)

The last few times I've been to Citi Field for a Met game here in New York I've been under one of those speakers. You can't hear yourself when the walk-up music is played for say Francisco Lindor, "My Girl." Yankee relief pitcher Mariano Rivera entered from the bull pen to Metallica's "Sandman." You could count on it.

My favorite piece of music is when for whatever reason when something on the field happens, (or is not happening) whoever is in charge of these things, will press a button to release the opening strains of Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" to get the crowd going.

Harry's been dead now for two years, passing away at 96. His recording career ended a long time ago. "Day-O" was one of his major hits.

Whenever I hear it at the ballpark, or catch from the TV broadcast, I think of two things: How many people in the crowd know it's Harry Belafonte singing, and how many know that the song is about workers singing for the daylight to come so their night shift of unloading bananas will be over. They're unloading at night because it's cooler, and dawn means they can go home. Oh well, it wakes up the crowd regardless of what they know.

Mr Bunge sprinkles in some samples of Ms. Faust's teasing prowess when he tells us that when she knew George Brett had recently undergone hemorrhoid surgery, she played the Dovells'  "You Can't Sit Down," when he came up to bat. Fits, but very subtle; a lot depending on what you read about Brett's rear end keeping him out of the lineup for a bit. "I Can't Sit Down" from 'Porgy and Bess' would have worked as well.  

Ms. Faust also sprang into action at a minor league game when a swarm of bees burst out of a dugout. "Flight of the Bumblebees," "Honeycomb" and "Let it Be" danced from her fingers.

I wrote a Tweet to Mr. Bunge about an organ rendition played at a New York Ranger game in 1972. Mr. Bunge never replied, and never replied to the follow up email I sent.  I have to think he's on vacation, or just jealous (you know, New York vs. Second City) that my story from over 50 years ago could have trumped his stories. I wrote about it as part of a Phil Esposito posting written May 25, 2015. I reprint it here in case anyone's interested.

May 25, 2015

The other Uncle Phil moment is one I personally witnessed at Madison Square Garden during the Bruin/Ranger Stanley Cup finals in 1972.

The movie 'Doctor Doolittle' starring Rex Harrison had already been out. It had a jaunty musical score, featuring the song 'Talk to the Animals.' Sammy Davis Jr. had made a hit recording of the song, and it was quite familiar to many people, even years after the movie.

A Ranger/Bruin rivalry was as intense then as a Yankee/Red Sox one. In that era of arena fan entertainment there were no light shows that spun around the building. But the atmosphere was no less noisy and kinetic. A building virtually on a square block of Manhattan could be felt to shake at times when the crowd really got into wanting something from the team, or appreciating a play.

No blaring, thumping rock music came from a massive set of speakers, but the selections from the organist could be heard quite vividly. In the case of the Garden, the long-time organist was Eddie Layton, and a spot was carved out for him at the press level, nice seating, just at the top rim of the Red Seats. Thus, Eddie was able to match music to the action, and he did it very well.

So, when the pre-game skate was under way and the Bruins filed out from the corner of the arena, trading awkward choppy steps on runner mats for smooth gliding ones onto the ice, Eddie Layton launched into a clear, loud, spirited organ version of 'Talk to the Animals.'

Anyone who has even been to the Garden before the start of the a game might wonder why, with barely minutes to go before the puck is dropped at center ice, there seems to be so many empty seats in the joint. But take a look around after the anthem is finished, and everyone is in front of a seat, about to sit down. (Hopefully, if they're in front of you.) New Yorkers just seem to cut it close.

So, here was have the Bruins streaming out onto the ice, not a tremendous number of people assembled yet in the place, and Eddie Layton is playing 'Talk to the Animals' as the Bruins swirl around in warm up circles.

The matching of the song and the appearance of the Bruins is not lost on many in the crowd, and it is especially not lost on Phil Esposito, who stops his pre-game skate and starts to hector Eddie Layton on his musical selection. Uncle Phil doesn't just say a few choice words and skate away. I'm in no position to hear the conversation that is taking place, but Phil is jawing and tapping his stick blade on the ice for emphasis for a good while at Eddie Layton. Earl Weaver and a home plate umpire.

I don't believe the music stops, but if it did, it picked up again. I mean, who is going to accede to Phil Esposito's complaint about the organist's selection? No one. Phil always had a red ass, meaning he was easily irritated about things. 

Phil is eventually traded to the Rangers in a still-mystifying deal that saw Jean Ratelle being traded to the Bruins. Nothing got better for either team. 1972 was at the time the last time the Bruins won the Cup for quite a while, and the Rangers wouldn't do it until 1994, 54 years after 1940, when, as Sam Rosen told us all, "the waiting is over."

After 11 years of season seat attendance, I wasn't there when The Rangers finally won the cup. My attendance was poorly distributed over their final success at winning. No problem.

I've still got a great image of Uncle Phil being pretty mad at the organist. And I've got another indelible image of George Brett leaving the dugout in distress (Not from hemorrhoids.)

Funny that in Mr. Bunge's article there is a George Brett reference. Too bad Ms. Faust wasn't at the Yankee home game that has became known in baseball lore as The Pine Tar game, when the umpire ruled that George Brett's bat had too much pine tar on it, which made it an illegal bat, and therefore what would be the game winning home run that George just hit wasn't going to count. Bedlam.

What would Ms. Faust have played? I like to think 'Crazy."

http://www.onoffframp.blogspot.com

All Connected

The headline for a recent New York Times obit told you everything you needed to know about the deceased without even glancing at the size of the tribute obit: they were wealthy. Incredibly wealthy.

Clue No. 1. Their first name ended in an "e". Second clue: "de" followed before their surname. Put the two together and you have the obit for Christophe de Menil, Designer and Patron of the Arts, Is Dead at 92.

A famous thoroughbred trainer Christophe Clement recently passed away. A male. This Christophe is decidedly female. One look at a dress she wore and there is no doubt.

The 19-gun salute takes up six column and nearly an entire page accompanied by 7 photos! Count them. Unless you've donated the crown jewels to a Metropolitan Museum dinner, you're not likely to have ever heard of her. The circles she traveled in are so tiny that saying she was part of the 1% of wealthy people would be an insult.

Ms. de Menil is seen above in what to me looks like a Grace Kelly pose in a four-leaf clover dress, a dress so wide that if Grace Kelly wore it in the movie 'Rear Window' she would have never made it through the door to help photographer Jimmy Stewart in his attic aerie overlooking a murder suspect.

The lede to the obit, as usual tells us all:

Christophe de Menil, a costume designer, an oil heiress, philanthropist and financier of scores of the world's leading figures in art, design and architecture, died on Aug. 5 in her home in Manhattan.

With a lede like that, Manhattan is the only possible place she could have passed away in.

A far more playful lede, that would no doubt be rejected by the editor and certainly land the writer in newsroom purgatory, could have been:

Christophe de Menil, whose first husband was Robert Thurman, eight years her junior and who was deep into mind-altering drugs, who, when he and Christophe divorced, remarried Timothy Leary's (think LSD guru) ex-wife, a German-Swiss model, one of whose children they had together was Uma Thurman, a best supporting actress nominee.  

Now, if you were to have known all that, then you sat next to Ms. de Menil at a benefit dinner for something and someone whispered in your ear.

There is absolutely no way that at the start of Ms. de Menil's obit could you have ever predicted LSD, Timothy Leary and Uma Thurman would factor into the narrative. We live on a Möbius strip.

Of course it is a tangential link to Timothy, LSD and Uma, more like within Kevin Bacon and the Six Degrees of Separation.

Ms. de Menil's fabulous wealth—no figure given; a W-2 statement probably never had her name on it—came from her mother, Dominque, being part of the Schlumberger family oil fortune. The company still exists today.

One of the sub-headings tells she was: An heiress whose life focused on intensive artistic involvement.

Ms. de Menil was a fashion designer herself, and next to Alexander McQueen, she was a favorite of  her own designs.

Aside from Timothy Leary's name appearing in her obit (it probably made some intimate friends wince) there are more bold face names mentioned than you can count. It's a week's worth of New York Post Page 6 bold face names.

•Robert Wilson, avant-garde theater director
•Willem de Kooning, artist
•Twyla Tharp, choreographer
•Frank Gehry, architect
•Robert Rauschenberg, artist
•Merce Cunningham, dancer, choreographer
•Kitty Carlisle Hart, actress, television personality, Moss Hart's wife
•Susan Sontag, writer
•John Cage, musician
•Patricia Lawford Kennedy, actor Peter Lawford's wife and JFK's sister
•Larry Gagosian, art dealer
•Philip Glass, musician
•Charles James, fashion designer
•Robert Whitman, multi-media artist
•Hans Namuth, filmmaker
•Uma Thurman, actress
•Trisha Brown, choreographer
•Michael Heizer, sculpture
•Terry Riley, composer
•Marie-Helen de Rothschild
•Bianca Jagger, model, actress, Mick Jagger's wife (for a while)
•Alexander McQueen, fashion designer

Marie-Christophe de Menil traveled in circles I was never in. I like to think I once held th door for Ms. de Menil when I delivered flowers to her building. But that never happened either.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Oh Well

The guys and gals at the New York Times obit desk have missed another salient nugget when they updated the advance obit for Ron Turcotte, Secretariat's jockey in perhaps the most memorable Belmont Stakes ever. 

Ron had a brother Rudy who was also a jockey. The obit staff can be forgiven for this omission since Rudy died in 2019 and William Grimes, who wrote the advance obit and Ama Sarpomaa, who updated it, likely haven't spent the last 50+ years of their lives at racetracks trying to pick winners. William Grimes was a fine wine and dining reporter who eventually moved onto to obits before retiring. I know nothing of  Ama, other than I suspect she's not over 30 and has a recent byline covering a wedding.

Rudy of course is not the subject, but it's a nugget missed. I didn't know Rudy rode Angle Light in the 1972 Garden State Stakes when Turcotte rode Secretariat to victory and Angle Light finished second. Both horses would have been 2-year-olds.

Angle Light and Secretariat, both being from Meadow Stable, would run as a coupled racing/betting entry. In the above photo from Secretariat's Kentucky Derby win in 1973 he's, 1A , as Angle Light would be 1 (Angle Light finished 10th). In the 1973 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 21, 1973 Angle Light was entered with Secretariat, and basically saved the bettors' bacon by winning wire-to-wire, with Secretariat struggling to finish 3rd. Not the prep race you would like to see just weeks before the Derby. I was there.

Turcotte of course wound up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life after his horse clipped heels with another in 1978 at Belmont, and Ron's spine was basically crushed in the spill. Unmentioned is that Turcotte had a protracted lawsuit against  New York Racing Association claiming there was a defect in the track that caused the spill.

There must have been some basis for his lawsuit, since there had been some other spills in that exact spot. Years went by and then the lawsuit must have been settled out-of-court since eventually Turcotte started showing up on the grounds representing the Disabled Jockeys Fund and signing autographs.

Turcotte was a reliable jockey who never scared you off the horse if you liked the horse. I had forgotten that the spill was not that many years after the Triple Crown in 1973.  

I didn't realize Turcotte once won 6 races on a card at Aqueduct, a rare and astounding feat. Lots of French Canadians are harness drivers, since harness racing is wildly popular in Canada. Flavian Pratt, a first class jockey right now comes from a harness racing family.

Turcotte and Secretariat will forever be entwined. I get a little more nostalgic when I look at the 1973 photo of Secretariat winning the Belmont since now the rider has passed away, of course the horse has, and my friend Fourstar Dave, who I was with in the last section on the third floor at Belmont, standing on the seats and yelling to look at the telemeter, as Turcotte was, at the fractions and eventual final time, likely never to be achieved again.

The NYT Turcotte obit is right now not in the print edition. The announcement of Turcotte's passing was announced on the racing program in the afternoon yesterday as it became known. There are statues of Secretariat in paddocks, but this photo is my statue of Turcotte with Secretariat, the photo I have overhead when I look up from this desktop. Oddly, the Belmont picture is not used in the online obit, but my guess is it might get used tomorrow, when I give it 5/2 that the Turcotte obit hits the front page on Sunday.

It would be fitting.

Note:

Front page didn't happen.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Down a Man

There is one less old fashioned horse player popping vouchers into betting machines these days: Johnny M. has passed away, and The Assembled are down a man.

Appropriately or not, he passed away on Belmont Day, prevented from placing a bet on Sovereignty, which I know he would have done, because he passed away quietly in his favorite wingback chair, hours before post time. He was 84, two weeks shy of his 85th birthday. No one lives long enough. There's always an end.

John Mulligan was a life-long friend of myself and my wife for over 50 years. There are so many memories of things we did together that there is almost no point in listing them. The most prominent one though is going to the racetrack, Aqueduct, Belmont, Saratoga. I will feel a little empty going to them now.

John and I started talking horses at a company picnic sometime in the early '70s. John ran a printing press in our duplicating department at Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield at 2 Park Avenue.

My wife Liz, who wasn't yet my wife, who also worked at Empire, knew John from the print room. So, at the company picnic John and I fell into conversation about the Sport of Kings.

One of my favorite stories about being at the track with John was in 1983, February 11, when we were holding down the fort at Aqueduct's Equestris bar.  In those days I think that was the observance of Lincoln's birthday, and we had off.

Aqueduct basically ran the whole year round. They had a winterized inner track to keep the ponies going. We thought nothing of using the day off to taking Walter's Transit bus from Main Street Flushing and heading to the track. Weather report? Who pays attention to that when you're deep into the Racing Form?

Well, we're at Equestris seeing that it's starting to look lousy outside, but we still had no idea how bad it was getting from that high up. I can still see the bartenders start to put things away and tell us the track will be closing soon. Four races have been run.

We each get a rain check as we're leaving the track and realize, holy shit!, it's really! coming down. There's no visibility. Snow. A blizzard.

Head for the bus, but it's pulling away. I race to the bus, pound on the door as the bus is moving, feel my heart jump, bus stops, door opens and we get in and return to Flushing. I think 15 inches fell from that storm. Being stranded in South Ozone Park was not appealing.

As usual, I kept the program. I've framed the page for the 5th race and tell anyone who looks at it (not many) to try and tell me who do they think won the race? It's obviously a trick question, because the race was never run. We of course used the rain check in no time.

Nowhere will John be missed than going to Saratoga. He and I (and sometimes my wife) have been going for a week for over 20 years. We only missed because of Covid. It started when one of John's nieces (He has many. More on that later.) stayed at the Greycourt Motel on Route 9 in Queensbury, NY.

The Greycourt is an old fashioned motel with a nice swimming pool and perhaps 30 rooms in three blocks of buildings. All very clean, neat, and near everything. Additionally, there are 4 cottage-type buildings in the back that have two bedrooms. The landscaping is bucolic.

Owning this place happens to be an older brother of someone John went to grammar school with, Tom McDonough, and his wife Marianne. The motel was Marianne's mother's place, and she grew up working there. They have three daughters, one of whom works there.

The McDonoughs were a large Irish-Catholic family rom Rego Park, Queens, NY, as were the Mulligans. John was the middle child of 4 sisters, two older, two younger. I used to tease John that it's amazing he didn't grow up wearing a dress.

The room we always got, No. 9, opened with an old fashioned key fob, was always assigned to us. I called it the Gordie Howe, who always wore No. 9. The linen room was on one side, so it was always quiet. As they got older, Tom and Marianne got selective about who they rented anything out to. The VACANCY sign was often switched to on, even though the place was hardly full.

The motel's location was great for anyone going to Great Escape amusement park just down on Route 9, with miniature golf and go-karts across the street. Queensbury sits between Lake Gorge, a little further to the north, with Glens Falls to the south. It was no more than 35 minutes straight down the Northway to Exit 14 to get to Saratoga. We were Exit 19. Staying there was never prohibitively expensive. We probably got a bit of a discount due to John's boyhood relationship with the brother. A horse players' hideout in the Adirondacks.     

And so the Greycourt remained a destination accommodation up to 2021 when the owners, due to their age, put the place up for sale. The deal hasn't gone through yet, but Tom McDonough's aim was to have the place run as it was. Tom, a lawyer, who when first marrying Marianne commuted from his Queens practice to Queensbury on weekends is adept at making his own deal.

Thus, our pilgrimage to Mecca at the finish line in 2022, 2023, and 2024 had to be accommodated at other places, which proved subpar. We stuck to the Queensbury area but wound up at places that we knew would be more expensive, but were also lacking in basic services, like making the bed up.

We decided this year to take a hiatus from going to Saratoga. We made this decision early in the year. Tickets to the track were not sought. All this before the passing of John.

When Saratoga was running racing at 6 days a week with Tuesday dark, we took in the races on Monday and explored the area as tourists on Tuesday.

We made many day trips to local places, none more memorable than to Ulysses Grant's cottage inside a prison's grounds, and another to the nuns at New Skete, who produce fruitcakes and cheesecakes from an industrial kitchen. They have an online business and hip anywhere.

Up until 2014 the Grant cottage, where he passed away, was located within the grounds of the Mount McGregor Correctional Facility, a low security prison in Wilton, New York. The cottage is a National Historic Landmark, and open to visitors if you identify yourself at the toll booth that you're there for a visit to the cottage. I had read that you're supposed to stop.

Well, John didn't stop despite my telling him, and he apparently didn't hear the guard in the toll booth yelling at him.(I'm not sure they did.) As we reached the top of he drive we were met with a very angry prison guard whose car was blocking the road.

He didn't make us get out, but I think he might of checked the trunk for firearms, despite our telling him we didn't have any. Trust, but verify. We were contrite, and he let us park for the cottage.

The cottage is a decent take. The tour guide told us that when Grant died they stopped the clock by his bed to signify the time he passed away. That was the custom of the era. When I was allowed to return to my desk several days after the shootings at work in 2002, I looked at my desk calendar—one of those tear the page away kind—at the date: September 16. I kept the calendar, never tearing off the page. It was Grant's clock to me.

One other notable take was visiting the nuns at New Skete and their bakery in Cambridge New York. Years ago, on one of our Vermont leaf peeping visits when John came up with us to a cottage we rented for a week on Beebe Pond, we drove down Route 30 to Fair Haven Vermont, a town just inside the New York Border.

There is a great Greek restaurant, still there, the Fair Haven Inn. The dessert menu featured an item, cheesecake from the Nuns at New Skete. As good as Juniors. So, what's the story here?

Turns out the nuns run an industrial bakery and turn out a variety of fantastic cheesecakes and fruitcakes. The monks at the monastery train German Shepherds for the police and the blind. The nuns and the monks are part of an order of Orthodox Christians under the aegis of the Orthodox Church of America. New Skete refers to a type of smaller monastic settlement.

Cheesecakes are available for purchase, and if it's off hours you can enter the lobby and in an honor system take a cheesecake from the freezer and leave the money. Their cakes are available through mail order and at Hannaford supermarkets, a local chain. On the way home we passed a Hannaford and always bought a cheesecake. 

The day trips ended when Saratoga went to 5-day race week, Wednesday through Sunday. There were no dark days for us since we either arrived on Wednesday or Tuesday and went to the track for 4 straight days, coming back on Sunday.

Aside from the pleasure of John's company, will be the void on who I can talk racing to. My wife has no real interest in racing, and just hears me when I talk out loud at the TV.

My friend Dave passed away in 2021. Dave was the inspiration behind naming a horse Fourstardave, the Sultan of Saratoga. I've written about this several times, and an adventurous reader can find out more using the link.

Until John's cars got totaled by being hit while parked in the Wild Wild West of Flushing driving, John was over the house regularly for dinner, always bringing a bottle of wine that he and my wife had no problem finishing during the course of the evening.

We would watching racing on TV. John lived ascetically and didn't bother with cable. There was a bit of a monk in his living. I was only ever in his Flushing apartment maybe twice in the 40 years he lived there, not too far from our house in Flushing.

His place was sparsely furnished, with really just the living basics. I'm not sure he even had a sofa, but he did have a wingback chair that was his favorite.

It was in that wingback chair that John's hastily assembled family found him after I altered them that something might be wrong. John was due to meet us at the bus stop by his building,—the usual spot—at 1:30 on June 7th, which was when we were picking John up to go to the high school graduation party in Pleasantville for my granddaughter, Emma.  Emma's mother, my daughter Nancy, is John's Godchild.

Calls to John's landline and cell phone went unanswered. I had confirmed with him the date and time the day before. Gaining entry to his building and fairly banging on his door, produced no answer.

When we got to Pleasantville I still tried to connect: nothing. I alerted his brother-in-law who lives in Centerport that someone should get inside and check on John. They did.

The Emergency Services Unit police couldn't pick the lock on the front door. No one had keys to John's apartment. I think he might had a police lock on his door. His building is a pristine, old, solid building on Northern Boulevard and Bowne Street. The brother-in-law told me they eventually got in via the fire escape accessed from the neighbor's apartment. John was found dead in his wingback chair, likely from a heart attack. The clothes he meant to wear to the graduation party were laid out on the bed.

One of his nieces who came with the brother-in-law and a few others, is a nurse and had all the medical details for the police for John. She even arrived in her scrubs.

John had bypass heart surgery perhaps 12-15 years ago. He wasn't in any kind of bad health lately. His hearing had become a bit compromised due his print job, and apparently his stint  in the army with a howitzer unit in Hawaii in the early '60s. No ear plugs then. No autopsy was needed. I don't know

who signed the death certificate.

John never married, and I never knew him to have a companion. He lived alone. Being from a family of four other siblings, the family is large with many nieces, nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews Live long enough and the number of relatives can increase. 

He is  buried in a family plot in St. John's cemetery off Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens, in with his mother, father, a brother who died in childbirth, and a niece who died from cystic fibrosis at a young age.

John is not missed more than when I watch racing and make a few bets. There is no one to readily share my track observations with these days. The four of us who I dubbed The Assembled are now three. We will likely meet again at Aqueduct in the spring, waiting for Belmont to open in October 2026.

Bobby G. will be over 90 when that happens, and I will be closer to 80. Jose, the youngest will probably make it in from Connecticut where he now lives. Of course, we have to be alive for all this to happen.

I like to think we'll make it to the new Belmont, its third iteration, and I will be able to get in touch with enough of John's relatives (the immediate ones aren't so young either.) and arrange for a gathering in a NYRA dinning room with enough people that they will name a race after him—The John Mulligan.

NYRA will name a race on the undercard for a sufficient party of people with a winner's circle presentation.. I have no idea what the cost will be. NYRA sets some extortionate prices these days. Dinning in the Easy Goer room at Saratoga for the buffet is set right now at $121 per person! Joey Chestnut couldn't eat that much to make it worth the price.

Based on the promo material that they're producing for the new Belmont, one has to worry that they'll charge $10 or more to get in, seating will be costly, and eating there will be prohibitive. They show a lot of upscale looking accommodations. 

It would not be unlike NYRA to act they they're producing a Broadway show or an opera, and price accordingly. After all, how are they going to repay New York State the loan they got from Governor Hochul to finance the new Belmont for what is one big day racing, the annual Belmont Stakes, and one hoped for two days of racing for the Breeders' Cup, which rotates around, and I think is slated for 2027 for Belmont. Other than that, it's just people like me, all 2,000 of us who might show up on a given day of racing. NYRA is something else.

But we'll see. Until then, I'll continue to follow and bet on racing, and save up all my observations—Kendrick Carmouche is riding lights out right now; Linda Rice is right behind in the trainer stats beneath the perennials, Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher; fields are short due to program scratches that leave 4 horses in the starting gate; they misplaced the starting gate for a 11/8 turf race and ran it at 11/16, the rails out confused them; favorites are winning at about 40%, with win payouts not topping $10.00 very often; the Ortiz brothers, Irad Jr. and Jose own the jockey standings; Bobby G's friend, Richie, has had two starters at Saratoga so far, winning with one, Accelerated News, as the second  choice, he goes again this Thursday; the other one, Fleeting Free, is pretty much a failure, running last; Dylan Davis, who we first bet on and won with when he was an apprentice is doing well; The trainer Christophe Clement passed away at 59 from an aggressive cancer; his son Miguel, who was always the assistant, has seamlessly taken over with success; Ricardo Santana Jr. is always worth a second look because he's been doing well —to silently tell him what's happening.

http://www.onofframp. blogspot.com

Bluff

A woman walks into a restaurant, has the maître d' direct her to a table of A-list business gentleman, she pulls a gun out of her purse, doesn't eat, but she shoots, and leaves. She's two-thirds of the story of the panda in Lynne Truss's book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

No spoilers will be given, but if you read the blurb on the back of Jane Stanton Hitchcock's last novel, "Bluff" you'll know the whole plot. And if you've read her obituary on her very recent passing, you'll know which parts of the book are part of Ms. Hitchcock's real life.

I became intrigued by the book by the obituary. After all, it won a Dashiell Hammett prize in 2019, so how bad can it see?

The cover is stylish. A rich woman wearing a rich looking hat, under a bit of dripping blood. The editors have spent money on Ms. Hitchcock's books because, well, they sell. The paperback book is 305 pages, in somewhat a large font, generously spaced lines, and many, many short chapters. There are 56 chapters. I think the editors missed this one. Since Ms. Hitchcock is a poker player, and Maud is a poker player, then there should have been 52 chapters. Oh well. No big deal.

Somewhat late in Ms. Hitchcok's life she became hooked on playing poker. She started, probably like many, with online poker, Texas hold 'em. She graduated to tournaments, and with some encouragement from Lara Eisenberg, a poker buddy who in 2021 won the World Series of Poker Ladies Championship (there is a thing for everything) With her, Ms. Hitchcock honed her bluffing skills, which were enhanced by being a 56 year-old woman who when she sat down at the table the men's eyes went "ka-ching." But she was always underestimated, and won some significant change.

Maud is an older woman who has many nights of experience playing alongside people whose real names are on rap sheets, are likely carrying weapons and did time for transgressions, in an illegal, high stakes game at "Gypsy's" in Washington, D.C. In a bad neighborhood.

Maud's mother was an actress, Lois. Ms. Hitchcock's mother was an a actress, Joan. Maud's mother was fleeced by a celebrity accountant Burt Sklar. Ms. Hitchcock's mother was rendered penniless by a celerity accountant named Kenneth Starr (not the independent counsel investigating Bill Clinton). Kenneth Starr fleeced many A-list celebrities out of their money.

Ms. Hitchcock at Starr's sentencing

In real life, there are no murders in Ms. Hitchcock's life. But there is comeuppance when she works diligently to get indictments against Kenneth Starr, who is later convicted of fraud and is sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. He is now out, and is 84-years old.

The obit tells us that the prosecutors wanted a 12-year sentence but the judge felt sorry for Mr. Starr and gave him a shorter sentence because "his victims were well all off and that Mr. Starr had lost his moral compass because of his affection for the fourth wife, a former pole dancer." 

Paraphrase "The Merchant of Venice": If I am rich and you steal my money, are you not still a thief? Didn't work all the way, apparently.

There is a pole dance/stripper in "Bluff", a sweet, young, very attractive girl who isn't very sophisticated, but who wins  people over with sincerity.

The settings are mostly Manhattan, and all places that the wealthy prowl. Maud, now an older woman, and on the other side of beautiful, still knows how to look the part of wealth.

At the opening of the book she assembles herself carefully. She knows how to look when she goes to the Four Seasons on Park Avenue not to eat (The Four Seasons is no longer there.)

She decks herself out in an Yves St. Laurent, black wool suit; in her lapel is a decent copy of a Ventura pin (she hocked her real one); her shoes are secondhand black patent leather Louboutins, scuffed soles, bought at a thrift shop recently. (That's some thrift shop.) Her mirror tells her she now looks like a middle-aged lady of means, "with a conservative sense of style." She is sure to get past the maître d' with swagger. In her purse are the usual female items. The gun is not a usual item.

"Bluff" is not a whodoneit. We know whodoneit. Will Mad Maude get her revenge and somehow not pay for it?

Read the book.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Irish Sports Pages

If you happen to be a long time New York Times reader and can remember when the Sunday sports section was No. 8, then you might be like myself, and shake your head at the complete demise of the NYT sports page.

It's inhabited by non-beat writers of varying degrees of competence from the outsourced entity called The Athletic. The section has shrunk so much that it can sometimes be only two pages. It's sad, when you think of the great Pulitzer prize winning writers that brought you sport stories. The only writer The Athletic has who was part of the NYT roster prior to the outsourcing is Tyler Kepner for baseball.

The managing editors think that long-form stories with massive color photos are a decent sports section. It is sad. I call it a newspaper Sports Illustrated, which I think doesn't even print a hard copy anymore.

But, all is not lost. There is something called The Irish Sports Page. Never heard of it? Marilyn Johnson, in her seminal book on obituary writing, The Dead Beat, Lost Souls and Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries delivers a narrative about it. 

Of course, obituaries are not perverse. That's a little tongue-in-cheek, since most people don't realize how informative and well written the tribute obits are. And the best of the best can be found in the NYT on a daily basis, written by a staff of seasoned senior writers whose bylines can sometimes appear twice on the same day for two different subjects.

In her book, Ms. Johnson tells us that the former poet laureate of the United States,  Billy Collins— who she unexpectantly happens to be sitting next to on train while she's headed into the city to interview the then obituary editor of the New York Times, Charles Strum—tells her his father, (and many others no doubt) used to call obituaries "the Irish sports page."

I sent the current obituary page editor, Bill McDonald, a Tweet/X a while ago suggesting that the NYT should consider giving him a separate section, or make an obit an A-Hed piece like the Wall Street Journal, on the front page, since the sports page these days is so dismal. I'm not so full of myself that I expected to hear back from Bill, ( I didn't.) but around the time of that Tweet/X I started to detect what seemed to be a few more obits making it to the front page at a more than expected rate.

I know from "Obit the Film", a documentary that made its way into some art house theaters a few years ago, that centered around the obit process of the NYT obituary desk, that the editor, Bill McDonald, attends an afternoon meeting with other editors to go over what might make it to the front page.

Well, if Bill were a baseball player, he's he batting over .400 right about now. No less than a tsunami of obits have floated over the dam and onto the front page since July 1st. I'm not going to bother going any further back, but my guess is in the time from July 1st to today (which has a front pager on astronaut James Lovell Jr.), there have been more front page obits than in all of the first 6 months of this year.   

Did someone at the Paper of Record feel that since the sports page is so crappy that obits on the front page might make the Times the Irish Sports Page?

I've written about this before. The Irish are on the earth in the hopes that when whey pass away they will have a good wake. My wife, who is an Irish-American Catholic from the Bronx (a BIC), has viewed the obit page several times and learned of the passing of people she knows. These aren't the tribute obits, but the small print death notices.

So, who has the Times promoted to the front page since July 1st, and running through today, August 9th? It is an eclectic list of 7:

•Jimmy Swaggert 
•Connie Francis
•Ozzy Osbourne
•Hulk Hogan (Now I know they're pulling out the stops.)
•Cécile Dionne
•Eddie Palmieri
•James Lovell Jr.

And the first two months of the second half of the year are hardly over. What's the over/under bet for the rest of the year going to be?

Bill, you did it. The front page is the Irish Sports page. I'm there.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com0

When You Know, You Know

I consider the 1970s to be when I came of age. I got married, had our first born, and was at seminal sporting events that could remain the envy of anyone. Will list the sporting events, in no particular order, although the photo at the right gives away my ranking, or at least a tie for first, if you can recognize the fighters and place the date. And the outcome.

•1972: Stanley Cup finals at Madison Square Garden. No, the Rangers didn't win, Boston did, 4 games to 2. But, I did get to see the Cup paraded around MSG ice by Boston. The Cup is very shiny. Just the wrong team was holding it.

•1973,1977,1978: At Belmont for each of the '70s Triple Crown Races. Been going to the track since the Belmont Stakes of 1968 won by Stage Door Johnny. And continuing with that tradition of attendance, made sure to attend every Belmont Stakes—at least until the management at NYRA invokes a complete reserved seat basis for anyone who wanted to sit on anything other than a toilet seat.

The most exciting of the three Triple Crowns, and probably a first place tie for the pictured sporting event above, was Secretariat's devastating margin of victory in winning the race and the final time. When I look up from this desktop computer in my home office, I see the large black and white photo I have of Ron Turcotte looking at the tote board and his posted time as he glides to victory, nearly a 1/16th of a mile (110 yards) over the second place horse.

The victory is so historic that they've put up a "Secretariat Pole" in blue and white colors of Meadow Stable, at the spot where the second place horse, Twice Worthy, was when Big Red crossed the finish line. That is unprecedented.

I keep the chart of that race framed, as well as a photo a friend of the track photographer, Bob Coglianese, took that shows Secretariat, all alone rounding the far turn as he begins to achieve what will be a 31-length lead. It's a fantastic photo I picked up in a store on Broadway in Saratoga Springs. Bob's son Adam, now the track photographer, told me it was taken by a friend of his father.

The photo is so outstanding because at that point there are no other horses in view. It looks like a workout, except the rider is wearing the silks of Meadow Stable. 

When Affirmed beat Alydar for the third time with a margin of victory that was photo finish close, I uttered what were prophetic words: "It will be a long time before you ever see that again."

I was right in that it took getting to 2015 when American Pharoah did the trick and won the Triple Crown, dramatically, but nowhere near as dramatically as Affirmed. I had long since stopped going to Belmonts by then.

Seattle Slew's 1977 Belmont kept his unlikely unbeaten streak alive. I was not a fan of Seattle Slew, thinking he was more lucky than good, but he proved a durable horse, racing as a 4-year-old, as did Affirmed, and easily got into the Hall of Fame. Triple crown winners will always make the Hall of Fame.

When you go into Saratoga the back way through Henning Road to take advantage of free parking, there are signs, markers, along the dusty road for each Triple Crown winner. You might park near Citation's marker adjacent to the Oklahoma training track, or some other winner. Sir Barton's marker is the first, as it should be.

•!971: Ali/Frazier I is pictured above. I was there with three $20 tickets, last row of the Blue Seats, as high up as you can go, received in the mail directly from Madison Square Garden box office.

I've written about this before, but will emphasize that it was the hardest ticket in town to get, and I had three. My friend from work and my father were with me.

Apocryphal, or not, I heard that the bibulous, cigar waving, hat wearing, full of shit boxing writer Bert Sugar didn't even have a ticket. Mayor Lindsay was in perhaps the 20th row on the floor. Sinatra and Burt Lancaster patrolled ringside, Sinatra with his Nikon acting like Sports Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer. As the ring announcer Johnny Addie proclaimed, "Everyone is here." I was too.

Rahaman Ali has passed away at 82, Who Hung Up His Gloves to Help a Brother Become 'the Greatest.' the NYT obit of August 5th tells us.

It's a six column obit, not spanning many column inches, with one picture of Rahaman with Ali at the "Thrilla in Manilla" fight against Joe Frazier.

I read what is a perfunctory obit by Alex Taub awaiting to read what I know about Rahaman Ali's fighting. Taub tells us Rahaman won his first fight on the same card as when Ali beat Liston for the heavyweight championship in Lewiston, Maine. 

Rahaman went on "to earn a middling record of 10 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw. Rahaman retired in 1972." [Boxing Record has him winning 14, 7 by KOs, 3 losses and one draw. Boxing records are very slippery.] So what's missing?

I know from my reviewing the fight program from that night that I have many copies of, Ken Norton of San Diego, California was on the card of Ali/Frazier I, but was substituted for another fighter.

What's missing is that Rahaman fought on the same card as Ali/Frazier I on March 8, 1971, a Monday night against Danny McAlinden, a 6-round loss on points.

This did not make it into the obit. Neither Alex Traub, or his editor William McDonald, knew this. They missed it.

When you know, you know    

http://www.onofframp,blogspot.com

Escalation

•For the want of a squirrel, help arrived.

•The lad who was trying to get his pet squirrel that slipped the leash and climbed the tree is arrested, handcuffed, and stuffed in a police car. No mention is made of the whereabouts of the squirrel.

•The help that arrived got mad at the police.

•They staged a "tree-in" and attracted a crowd. A big crowd as can be seen in the photo. I'm sure there was chanting.

•More people climbed into the tree to protest what they felt was rough handling of the poor kid who was just trying to get his squirrel back. (Anything is common in Washington Square Park.)

•Police tried to calm everyone down, but more people formed. Lots of people. It looks like Woodstock.

•People became unruly and several were arrested. 

•It is 11 p.m. before calm is restored.

It was 1968 in Washington Square Park, summer, since people are in shirtsleeves, and my blog of September 26 2018 helped complete an investigation for someone who saw the above photo in a flea market and wanted to know more about the photo.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my blog this morning and saw someone had left a comment on my latest posting: My Favorite Punching Bag. 

It was a posting about my continued dislike for the NYT columnist, Maureen Dowd. And someone commented? I don't get many of those.

The comment had nothing to do with agreeing, or disagreeing about Maureen Dowd. The Alert Reader explained that as they were trying to learn more about the photo, they got a link to my posting of September 28, 2018 which offered enough details that they were grateful. They asked for my email, which I provided, and they sent me the above photo. As I explained in the posting, there were no photos then of event to include with the original posting or the NYT story on page 1. Until now.

Two in fact. There is a photo of a newspaper story about the event from a local newspaper at the time, The Journal Times. Also forwarded by the Alert Reader.

The blog commentator explains in an email how the search was touched off. Several people were involved in the search.

"The photo found its way online just within the last week from a user over on Reddit, they posted it to the 'Unexplained Photos' subreddit asking for information about what was going on in the image. The user had bought the photo at a flea market some years ago - it was a darkroom print and quite large at 14 x 14 inches, but there was no information on the reverse of the print."

In their email to me, they explained that they recognized a section in the photo that told them it was Washington Square Park. After whatever they did, they were lead to my posting of September 28 2018. By some act of providence, all my postings back to 2009 are still retrievable from the blog's website: www.onofframp.blogspot.com. The Internet is a galaxy. 

The commentator further explained what they and their squad of researchers could also glean from the photo. It is impressive, and I suspect they might get their own show: "Unknown Explained." Wait for it,

A few of us set about identifying the location and thanks to the Alexander Lyman Holley Monument seen in the background we confirmed it as Washington Square Park. Next was trying to figure out what event or gathering this was, we estimated it was mid-to-late 1960's based on people's clothing and the pre-1972 NYPD uniforms. We did some digging and another user found a newspaper scan of The Journal Times from August 5th 1968 which included a different photo - albeit a low quality one - of the incident, where the same person with red hair and a plaid shirt can be seen in the tree, here's the clipping: https://imgur.com/a/dtD5uJv

 

We then found your blog with more extensive writing about the incident and our mystery was solved! We initially assumed this was some sort of counterculture gathering or protest, and we were amazed when we found the real story, it's so odd and wonderful.

 

The photo I've attached is great quality. With it being square format I believe it was taken on a 6x6 TLR camera on colour negative medium format film, which was certainly more niche and relatively expensive at the time compared to 35mm photography - so this was taken by a professional photographer or quite a serious hobbyist.

I like to think my postings might someday help solve a murder. We need a police white board to trace how all this got started.

•My posting of September 28, 2018 was a riff on a re-tweet from @sarahlyall.
•She in turn was re-tweeting a young journalist, @emmaesquared, about the attention grabbing headline that appeared in the NYT, page 1, on  August 5, 1968, 4th column, top of the fold. (You'll need a  NYT online subscription to get there.)

                                   22 HELD IN MELEE
                                   IN WASHINGTON SQ. 

                                Disorder Set Off By Arrest
                                of Boy Who Climbed Tree
                                     to Get Pet Squirrel

I had a similar experience of trying to locate the source of a photo I once saw in a storefront gallery. It was of a Chinese laundry as a corner storefront. There was no identifying where the laundry was, but in the photo they were selling there was a beauty salon adjacent to the laundry that displayed their phone number.

I called, got their address, and learned I was looking at a storefront in the West Village, on Charles Street. This was quite a while ago. I don't think there was Google Earth then, but I wanted my own photo of the place rather than spend whatever it was they were asking for it at the gallery. The laundry is no longer there. I've got a piece of old New York.

I took a trip downtown and took a series of photos with my 35mm camera. I got what I wanted, and had one framed and it hangs in my home office.

I've written about Chinese Laundries and shared my unlikely experience in one with a posting on January 23, 2023.

If there is anything to say about all this, it is proof that we live on a Möbius strip.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

My Favorite Punching Bag

It has been a while since my favorite punching bag, Maureen Dowd, has written something that's moved me to elucidate ( I had to try and use a word she might have chosen, when I "tell you" might do.) why I don't like her. 

Usually, when I manage to look at a Sunday column (she only does one column a week) it's a screed about Trump and Republicans that I don't need to read any more of. She can't be a happy person with all that bile swirling around in her intestines. But give her credit. She hasn't moved to Ireland and joined Rosie O'Donnell on a podcast, despite her red hair and Irish heritage.

President Trump asked about Rosie, shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe she's got Trump derangement syndrome." Soon to be added to the "International Classification of Diseases?"

It is refreshing to see Maureen hasn't changed when she's not giving Trump an enema She drops more names than pushing the Manhattan white pages off a desk. (Do they still print phone books?)

This Sunday she gets off the venomous Trump trail (although he does make his way into her column slightly) and reacts to the recent story about how males don't seem to be reading fiction. Women readers account for 80% of the fiction readers. Obviously there's something to this, right? "Attention, Men: Books Are Sexy!"

The hoped for trend to get males to read again will be pushed forward by the upcoming Netflix miniseries, "Sex in the Stacks," set in the main branch of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue, NYC. Wait for it.

The article Maureen takes up the cause for is a December 7, 2024 NYT Guest Essay by David J. Morris titled: The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.

I love when the NYT accompanies a story with a graph or a cartoon that echoes the theme of the article. Mr. Morris's story is illustrated by a male, dinosaur skeleton in a museum indicating that prehistorically they once wrote. It's a gem.

Just how really worried we all should be is open to debate. Mr. Morris teaches writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and tells us the male/female ratio in his writing classes has skewed heavily toward women in the last 20 years. This alarms Mr. Morris, and apparently Maureen.

I'm sure factors not named by Mr. Morris can be causing this, but whatever it is, it should scare us. I'm not sure I can feel fear in this observation. Pandemics, fallout from a nuclear blast, terrorists, might be more of what might worry me, not enrollment in writing classes, or the fact that now more of the best sellers on the NYT (of course) best seller lists are skewed heavily toward women writers these day. 

Mr. Morris claims the shift to more women writers, thus more women readers, is probably a good thing. But get this. He follows with the following flashing red light:

"But if you care about the health of our society—especially in the age of Donald Trump (there's that guy again) and the distorted conceptions of masculinity he helps to foster—the decline of literary men should worry you." 

Wow. When you put it like that...Real men don't eat quiche; they don't write fiction like they used to; they don't read fiction like they used to. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Okay. Next.

But back to Maureen and her name and place dropping.

•Maureen was once seated next to Mike Nichols, the prolific filmmaker and theater director, at a dinner in L.A., who let it me known to her that his favorite novel was Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth."

Maureen's memory is phenomenal, since Mike's been dead since 2014, so this encounter had to be some time ago. Was he just trying to get in her pants?

If Oscar Levant once quipped that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin, I knew of Mike Nichols before he went onto all those films, plays and awards. I remember when he and his partner Elaine May appeared on network variety shows and talk shows in the '50s doing satirical comedy sketches that probably wouldn't be very funny today, but did refrain from using the word "fuck" repeatedly.

BTW, Elaine May is still with us at 90. She won't get to read it, but there's an advance obit awaiting her demise, and maybe even a front page, below the fold placement in the NYT with a black and white photo from the '50s. Still, hang in there, Elaine.

•Maureen tells us she too, she has read the book, "over and over, finding it a great portrait of a phenomenon that is common in politics. Someone makes a wrong move and is unable to recover, slipping into a shame spiral. (This does not apply to Donald Trump.)" There's that name again.

Since Maureen only writes a column once a week, my guess is there is lots of free time to revisit these classics and read them "over and over."

•She tells us she interviewed Tom Stoppard in Dorset (my guess Vt., or could be the U.K.) a few years ago whose house has a "romantic-looking bookcase full of first editions of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens." He complains of being constantly burglarized. By guys wanting to read I guess.

•She tells us it is ensorcelling when she "interviewed Ralph Fiennes and it turned out that he loves Shakespeare and reciting Beckett at 3 a.m. under the stars." With no complaints from the neighbors I guess, because either he does this quietly, no one bothers Ralph Fiennes when he gets in a mood, or he lives in isolated surroundings.

I've commented in other postings that Maureen is one writer who will send me to the dictionary, and enscorcelling did it. (My blog tells me to check this spelling. It is right, and way beyond the words they have loaded into spell checker. No doubt Maureen must be a formidable opponent at Scrabble,) Definition: enchant, bewitch; fascinate, words of course that escape Maureen's use because she went to J-school somewhere.   

Jimmy Breslin, or Hunter S. Thompson would have said of Maureen that they are someone who reminds them of someone who went to college. Why enscorcelling, when "delightful", or even "wonderful" would do?

No need to be reminded. Maureen will do it for you. She tells us that late in life she "wrote about how getting my master's in English literature from Columbia underscored for me that "we need the humanities even more when technology is stripping us of our humanity. 

Works like "Frankenstein" and "Paradise Lost" shed light on the narcissism of the powerful male tech geniuses birthing a world-shattering new species, A.I." Only guys are coders?

Another wow. Well, when you put it like that...

Maureen peppers the article with her encounters with Susan Sontag, and Richard Babcock, a former magazine editor and novelist who taught writing art Northwestern. Maureen knows these types.

I don't remember seeing the essay by Mr. Morris. Given its title. I would have quickly skipped it. Maureen doesn't mention a more recent article in the NYT (of course) on July 3, 2025 by Joseph Bernstein: "Men are leaving fiction reading behind. Some people want to change that." I do remember seeing that one, and I skipped it because of the title. Did not interest me. Pegged it for more psycho-babble from the NYT.

But now I dive in. A bit. Mr. Bernstein relates the story of Yahdon Israel, a 35-year-old senior editor at Simon and Schuster who asked at the first meeting of his book club for men to bring a favorite work of fiction. Not all brought an example of fiction.

Mr. Israel, no stranger to organizing book clubs, organized this specific book club for heterosexual men last December in an "effort to inspire heterosexual men to read more fiction." He solicited guys over social media. He got seven to show up.

Mr. Bernstein tells us of Mr. Israel, "for the second meeting he assigned a story collection by James Brinkley, "A Lucky Man" which examined contemporary masculinity. For two hours they discussed the book."

I'm not familiar with the book, but it really must have gone deep into their psyches and dredged up some awful memories. Mr. Bernstein tells us, "the next day Mr. Israel had a panic attack. Two days later, he said, he was diagnosed with depression.

"He has spent months since grappling with painful realizations that came out of the discussion, about how toxic masculinity has harmed his own marriage, especially the idea that real men do not share their feelings. It was an epiphany out of James Joyce, unlocked, he said, by that conversation in the book club." Poor bugger. He answered his own question of why men aren't reading the stuff.

Personally, I wouldn't go near James Joyce with reading glasses. I do read books, fiction and non-fiction. As a teenager I read nearly all of Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, a little Hemingway; of course "Catcher in the Rye," "Catch-22", and I'm sure other books I've forgotten.

Currently my taste is less literature and more what I'm sure the intelligentsia (translation: people I don't know) would classify as non-literature; however, still books, by real authors like Carl Hiaasen, Ben Macintyre, Scott Anderson and Margalit Fox. Lately I'm diving into "Bluff" by the recently departed, Jane Stanton Hitchcock. I'll also read books about odds, probabilities and risk taking. Gamblers.

By guess is these selections would not get me into a book club discussing things that send readers to a therapist. I don't care.

Maureen can't help but keep us informed about the people she hangs out with—Mensa types, I guess. After her master's she tells us a "New Yorker named Paul Bergman emailed her an invitation to his book club—all men, lawyers and a judge who had gotten to know one another from the Brooklyn U.S.  Attorney's office. Bergman wrote her 'for the past 45 years we've been sharing our thoughts on books we've read. Would you join a few sessions on "Middlemarch'?' Jesus H. Christ! You mean that book written by a woman with a guy's name?

Maureen tells us she did join. No doubt another column is cooking somewhere, where she'll tell us what smart occupations the attendees held, or retired from, if one of them is using "a Caran d'Ache fountain pen with a six-sided barrel" (must be rare and expensive) to take notes, what they had to east and drink, and what the view from the window looked like.

I can wait.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Our Daughter the Fish

Susan is our second daughter, forever the youngest of the two, even if anything to do with the word "young" almost seems inappropriate, since she and her sister Nancy are now both over 40. Yikes!

Both were competitive swimmers on swim teams; Susan did a year in college, but thought the coach was an A-hole so she stopped showing up. Nothing wrong with that.

Susan has stuck with swimming competitively a bit longer, joining Masters teams. She was a Jones Beach lifeguard—on the beach, one of the few females—with her friend Donna for over 5 years. She put up with all the make egos, and even enjoyed their bad jokes. She was on the same stand with the legend Reggie Jones, who was a lifeguard on the beach for over 40 years. 

When it comes along, she will swim in open water, otherwise known as the ocean, or Long Island Sound. You're not guaranteed a smooth surface in open water, like a pool. On Saturday she took part is a charity swim, Swim Across America for Cancer Research. She raised some money. Pictured above she is with the mascot of the swim, Dash the Dolphin.

Saturday's swim was a fun swim, picking your distance. Susan did two miles from Priybil beach in Glen Cove on Long Island's North Shore. Susan said the water was choppy, which added to the challenge. She was hardly alone. There were perhaps 150 other people choosing to swim various distances for to raise money for charity.

She was always a bit adventurous, and aside from swimming has done three marathons, San Diego, Chicago, and New York. Also many other road races.

She's even done some shorter triathlons, just not the Iron Man distances. She did one years ago at Montauk. My wife and I were there as her "handlers." The first part of any triathlon is the swim. I forget the opening distance, but it is a sight to see all these people in the water splashing with their windmill arm action, propelling themselves like torpedoes.

Not first, and certainly not last, I spotted Susan swimming toward the shore line finish and getting out of the water. On her arms were her bib number, marked with a marker of some kind I guessed. Watching her rise out the water and start trotting onto the beach like some human amphibian, it was like a  demonstration of Darwinian evolution with fish becoming humans. And her bib/arm number? My four digit ATM pin. I kid you not.

Saturday's race didn't have the same coincidence. Sunscreen has dulled the number, but it has nothing to do with my banking.

And how did the newest member of the family, grandson Matthew, take it all in? Here he's resting from all that viewing, cuddling with the race mascot. He's already been learning to swim. When your daughter is a fish, you can expect the offspring to be a fish as well. 

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Point Roberts, Washington

Have I mentioned before that I love maps? My father had his engineering degree when he was either drafted, or enlisted (funny, I never knew which) and was placed in the Army Corps of Engineers during WW II. He was assigned to a cartography unit, where, guess what, they made maps.

In his case he was eventually assigned to a base in Guam where they turned reconnaissance photos of Japan into maps to guide bombers.

As a kid, there was a large jigsaw puzzle map of the United States (then only 48 of those) on my bedroom wall. By when I don't know, but I knew every state and every state capital, and the shape of every state by a very early age.

With President Trump in his 2nd non-consecutive term of office, The New York Times makes every effort they can to report bad effects from Trump being president, whether it be from invoking tariffs, executive orders, deficit legislation, the paper is there to paint a bleak picture.

An example of this zeal is to send a senior reporter, Ken Belson, and a photographer, Ruth Fremson, to Point Roberts, Washington to give us what is really an interesting article on many counts, that was headlined on June 15, 2025:  How a Tiny Community Got Caught Up in Trump's Attacks on Canada.

Point Roberts is a 5 square mile piece of land that juts out from Canada's British Columbia, Vancouver area that sits below the 49th parallel. So what you might say? Well, it is the 49th Parallel declared in the Oregon Treaty in 1846 between the U.S. and Britain, that places above it are in Canada; below, the good old U.S. of A. All across the top of the United States, the 49th parallel separates U.S. states from Canadian provinces.

So why is Point Roberts part of the Unite States? Well, it is below the 49th parallel, and despite only being 5 square miles, that on a road map of Washington looks no bigger than raisins I've eaten, this peninsula can only be reached by water, or by going through customs between the U.S. and Canada. Talk about being boxed in!

The dual location of Point Roberts formed the basis for a clue in a recent "Jeopardy Masters" competition. "What parallel is Point Roberts beneath?" I think it was Yogesh Raut, the eventual winner, who buzzed in quickest with the correct answer.

Look closely at the above map. I purposely got a road map of the state of Washington, not because I'll ever be driving there, but because I wanted to see Point Roberts in the context of its surroundings. It is small.

Look at the line just above it. That's the 49th Parallel and it extends out to the water, but then makes a sharp downward drop. Why?

Well, when you've got the whole area map in front you, you see that the 49th Parallel gets bent and goes around large Vancouver Island. If this were an electoral map, this would be Gerrymandering.

The article and the photos are a gem, best enjoyed online because you can see more photos. It seems since President Trump started throwing tariff talk around and calling Canada the 51st state, there are many Canadians who are pissed at all that.

Canadians own 70 of the Point Roberts land and for years have been crossing the border to the U.S. to get cheaper gas and groceries. It's as if  Point Roberts were a PX.

The president's outbursts have made Canadians so inflamed that they are boycotting American goods.  The stores in Point Roberts do not have to stock as much inventory because the Canadians are not crossing the border.

Imagine having to go through customs to go in and out of a 5 square mile peninsula. It's would ne like needing to show a passport to go to Coney Island, the Rockaways, or Fire Island.

Point Roberts, Washington can remind you of Derby Line, Vermont and the library that literally straddles the border. Some of the books are in Canada; some are in the U.S. 

There have been a few stories about Derby Line through the years. My wife and I were once there  there visiting a friend, but not the library. We crossed the border into Canada to go a hockey game my friend played in, and returned. In those days, you didn't need a passport to go in or out of Canada.

Now, to use the library you do need to have a passport. It was built in 1901, and the wealthy widow who endowed the money wanted the building to be used by people on both sides of the border. So, the building is on both sides of the border.

To use a word I hear often used by screenwriters in various shows these days: It's complicated.

http://www.onoffranp.blogspot.com