Milestones

This past weekend marked a milestone birthday for my wife, Ann.  It was also another milestone; after 19 months of relative isolation, we were able to see our son Jonathan and his wife Tracie, and two weekends before our other son, Chris and his significant other, Megan, celebrated Mother’s Day with us.  All of this was feasible because of the effectiveness of the vaccination.  If only we could pull together as a nation and truly make COVID a plague of the past.

We drove Chris and Megan up to The Dive Bar for their famous lobster rolls their first full day and afterwards we walked along the Juno Beach boardwalk, enjoying a beautiful sunny Florida day while watching all the fishermen casting their lines.  A lot of swimming and sunbathing ensued by the sun starved Bostonians and on Sunday, we all loved a sumptuous Mother’s Day brunch.  Unfortunately, it was only a long weekend visit and they had to return before Ann’s birthday.

Jon flew in a few days before her big day and finally on Friday, Tracie joined us.  As a treat to our daughter in law, we made reservations for a High Tea Luncheon at Teacups and Treasures, an experience Ann particularly wanted to share with her.  Obediently, as Ann made it an unconditional invitation, Jonathan and I accompanied them although we noted we were the only men in the entire restaurant!

It turned out that half the restaurant was dedicated to little girl birthday parties, one very large group gathered together behind some clever screening.  All were in their most fancy party dresses.  Even their squealing and giggling wasn’t the least annoying.  Luckily we were at the entire other end of the room and had our own little corner to enjoy our incredibly delicious meal.  I never knew having a freshly brewed pot of tea, a delectable soup and scones, small tea sandwiches and delicious miniaturized desserts could be so much fun!  Seeing how delighted Tracie and Ann were made it all the more worthwhile.

The following day --  Ann’s big birthday celebration -- found us driving up the exquisitely manicured entryway to The Breakers Hotel, for their Sunday Brunch, ridiculously priced, all patrons unmasked, even when getting up to the buffet (after all, this is Florida), but it was an experience to mark a very special occasion.

A word about Ann, who I love dearly.  What times we have shared during our long 51 year marriage.  She and I remarked that indeed, life is but a dream, we are hardly aware of the day to day details, only the major memories lingering, and suddenly we are here, now acutely aware of our days.  Our son, Chris after visiting two weeks ago, wrote a moving tribute to her upon his return home, and I take the liberty of quoting part as it is a great character study, capturing Ann:

When I arrived home and began my work-from-home life, I realized there was a sadness, one that had taken root since my departure. I missed my mother. I missed her stories she shared with us, her frenetic energies and breadth of conversation. I missed how she charmed hostesses and waiters and her spontaneous laugh, a laugh that said “I’m here and love it, dammit!” She loved my father through thick and thin and put up with my brother and my own oddities. She kept a flock of life-long girlfriends near her chest, loyal and loving.  Literature transmuted their essence to her: she read everything from Jane Fonda to Jane Austin. She traveled and played and cruised across oceans, still short by fifty countries compared to my brother, she joked.

It was a lovely couple of weeks, seeing our “kids” at long last.  May it be only one such incident on the path to “normal,” if that is still feasible in this country. 

 

Baseball and a Sense of Normalcy

 

Beautiful.  The field.  The playing of the National Anthem.  The stuff we took for granted, not knowing what its absence would mean.  A year lost.

Minor league baseball has resumed.  I feel for the young players, their own dreams put on hold.  A year is an eternity to these kids.  They play the game with heart and professionalism.  One of the plays in Thursday night’s Class A ball game between the Jupiter Hammerheads and the Palm Beach Cardinals involved Jupiter starting pitcher Chris Mokma unleashing a wild pitch with a man on third, his rushing to home to cover it while the catcher caught the ball on a rebound from the backstop, firing it to Mokma, the ball arriving just as the Jupiter player slid into home.  It’s one thing for a catcher with his protective gear to tag out a runner from third but the pitcher is naked.  Mokma fearlessly dove at the runner for the out.  It just demonstrates heart playing the game.

Mokma gave up three runs quickly but then took command on the mound.

I like to “scout” watching minor league ball – which players might make it all the way to the majors and in a big way.  I’ve watched several in this ballpark mature and correctly called their future success, including Giancarlo Stanton (then Mike Stanton).  Perhaps I’ve witnessed another Stanton in the making , the Cardinal’s 6’5” third baseman Jordan Walker (only 18 years old!), hitting for power in his first few professional games and a .400 average.  He has quick hands at third, a strong arm, and went over the railing for a foul ball (showing heart!) and he will move on to the next level.  At 18, the Cards will probably hold him back for a couple of years.  But #37 reminds me of a young Stanton.

The “sleeper pick” is the Card’s starting pitcher, John Beller.  He was an undrafted free agent out of USC.  Just shows what a good scout can uncover.  I’m biased when it comes to Beller as he is a lefty (as am I ), and a crafty one.  Watching him feeds my old baseball fantasies.  He doesn’t have the overpowering fast ball, but his breaking stuff, makes his high 80’s fastball effective.  In his nearly 7 innings the other night he threw a 3 hit, 0 run game and with 12 strikeouts, demonstrating the effectiveness of his mixing his fastball with curves, changeups and a slider.  At “only” 5’11” he is smaller than most major league pitchers but so was lefty Bobby Schantz at 5’6” from my boyhood years, a pitcher who had great success because of similar tools as Beller.  Would be nice to see him go all the way, perhaps a Cinderella story in the making.

The final score (5-3 Cards) was meaningless to me.  Just to be out there again, under the canopy of a Florida night, watching the field of dreams of some future major leaguers, meant everything.

Baseball.  Another step towards normalcy.  Breathe.

Hall of Mirrors

 

When the Internet is used as an instrument of “affirmation, repetition, and contagion,” it is deadly to promote an alternate reality in its hall of mirrors. 

 After Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump’s culpability seemed abundantly clear.  During momentary “weakness” even political insiders who had publicly supported Trump such as Mitch McConnell expressed that view.  But that was then.  Since, the pro-Trump propaganda machine has kept its shoulder to the wheel and behold, today most Republicans still believe the election was “stolen,” and at least half believe that Trump bears no responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Also since then Republican State legislators have gone to work, to “make elections fair” and to “stop voter fraud.”  Indeed, this disenfranchises minorities which would seem to be the major issue.    As important, it gives subliminal credence to the unfounded claim of voter fraud and a kind of legitimacy to Jan. 6, at least in the minds of the True Believers,

How can this be when our very own eyes and all evidence refute both points? 

I have referenced before the pioneering work of Gustave Le Bon and his 1895 classic The Crowd; A Study of the Popular Mind.  I read this in college and never forgot it. I still have my old paperback edition, with all my original notes and underlinings; strange to look through it some sixty years later in an effort to understand today.

This was written even before radio.  I can only imagine what Le Bon would say about the Internet, other that it merely magnifies the ease in which an obvious falsehood can seize the popular mind, an alternate reality taking on the trappings of the truth.  Read the words of this man talking to us from 1895 and decide for yourself how these beliefs can possibly be. 

This is an excerpt from Le Bon’s work with some passages truncated just to get to the heart of the matter:

When…it is proposed to imbue the mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs…the leaders have recourse to different expedients. The principal of them are three in number and clearly defined--affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Their action is somewhat slow, but its effects, once produced, are very lasting.

Affirmation pure and simple, kept free of all reasoning and all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds. The conciser an affirmation is, the more destitute of every appearance of proof and demonstration, the more weight it carries….

Affirmation, however, has no real influence unless it be constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same terms. It was Napoleon, I believe, who said that there is only one figure in rhetoric of serious importance, namely, repetition. The thing affirmed comes by repetition to fix itself in the mind in such a way that it is accepted in the end as a demonstrated truth.

The influence of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the power is seen which it exercises on the most enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged. At the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it….

When an affirmation has been sufficiently repeated and there is unanimity in this repetition...what is called a current of opinion is formed and the powerful mechanism of contagion intervenes. Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes….Contagion is so powerful that it forces upon individuals not only certain opinions, but certain modes of feeling as well….The opinions and beliefs of crowds are specially propagated by contagion, but never by reasoning...