Jonathan P. Baird

This is an important book for anyone concerned about preservation of the rule of law. It has not received the public attention it deserves. Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, persuasively argues the case for why both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney violated multiple federal and international laws during their tenure in office.

Holtzman explores the lies that led to the war in Iraq, the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, and the open flaunting of anti-torture laws. She shows not only that Bush and Cheney violated law but that they also took active steps to insulate themselves from liability since they knew they were way over the line.

While President Obama and Attorney General Holder have essentially given them a pass and they have wanted to move on, the danger of lack of accountability is becoming more obvious. Iraq now makes Iran possible. Even after ten years of a pointless war in Iraq, a war premised on an orchestrated campaign of untruths, we face another possibility of war based on an alleged nuclear threat from Iran.

You would think weak claims of a distant nuclear threat would be held up to a higher level of scrutiny than has been the case so far. After all, we were just snookered with the war in Iraq, a war with enormous human and economic costs. Yet we see the same hawkish saber-rattling like Iraq never happened. To his credit, President Obama did recently speak to the too cavalier attitude toward war which has been widespread.

The principle that the high and mighty should be held to the same standard of accountability as everyone else underlies Holtzman’s book. Due to some statute of limitations, Holtzman brings an urgency to the case she makes. There is a race against the clock for some of the crimes Holtzman addresses.

Let me outline some highlights from the case Holtzman makes:

Regarding the lies that led to starting a war in Iraq, Holtzman looks at fraud laws. She cites the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996 (18 USC 1001) which makes it a crime to submit false information to Congress in particular situations. Holtzman argues that Bush and Cheney manufactured a case for the invasion of Iraq that was based on complete falsehoods. The two major falsehoods were the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Holtzman also looks at 18 USC 371, a provision of the federal criminal code that makes it a federal crime to conspire to defraud the United States government through “deceit, craft, trickery or dishonest means”.

She does anticipate the likely defenses by Bush and Cheney. They might say they relied on bad intelligence or that Congress agreed with them or that some lawyers told them what they were doing was okay. Holtzman shows that Bush and Cheney had an extensive marketing plan to sell the war in Iraq. They systematically misrepresented the threat posed by Iraq’s nuclear, chemical , and biological weapons programs. Bush did this both in speeches to Congress (especially the 2003 State of the Union address) and in written submissions to Congress.

Holtzman writes:

“The predetermination of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney to embroil the country in war in Iraq and to do so under a cloak of lies and deceit is the original flaw of the Bush Administration. It led to a vicious and tangled web of secrecy, suppression of evidence, obstruction of justice, misguided policy, imperial behavior and the ravaging of people, property, privacy and our own values.” (p. 36)

The second area of constitutional concern Holtzman raises is the use of warrantless wiretaps against American citizens. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the government needs to apply for a FISA warrant if it plans to subject American citizens to electronic surveillance. There is a special FISA Court for that. The burden on the government is quite a bit less than in other typical criminal situations. The government only has to show the surveillance would serve some intelligence or counterintelligence purpose.

After 9/11, President Bush ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to wiretap solely on his say-so. According to Holtzman, Bush did this 43 times in violation of FISA law. He never bothered to get warrants. There is also evidence that the Bush warrantless surveillance involved wholesale monitoring of communication going through routers in the United States. However, Bush and Cheney blocked an inquiry into the program by the Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department. Also in 2008 Bush and Cheney promoted a FISA Amendments Act that allowed surveillance practices Bush had previously illegally authorized. They weakened existing law, confusing requirements and giving themselves cover.

While we do not know much about the data-mining operation undertaken by the Bush Administration (because they have done everything they could to hide it), we do know that the NSA was routinely examining large volumes of Americans’ email messages without any court warrant. Such random fishing is at the least constitutionally suspect.

It should be noted there is  a 5 year statute of limitation for criminal violation of FISA. The statute of limitation runs from the date of the last overt act in furtherance of illegal wiretapping. That is why I mentioned the race against the clock. Given the lack of likelihood anyone in the government will investigate, Bush and Cheney will probably be able run out the clock on violation of FISA.

The last area that Holtzman addresses is the crime of torture. She writes:

“Committing or authorizing torture is a crime. It is against the law in the United States. It is against international treaties adopted and ratified by the United States. Torture is prohibited up and down the chain of command – it cannot be authorized, condoned, or implemented; when reported, it must be investigated and prosecuted. Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment – reprehensible actions that are not as severe as torture – is also prohibited by international law. ” (p.70)

Holtzman shows how opposed the Founding Fathers were to torture. She points to both the Fifth Amendment injunction that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”  and the Eighth Amendment prohibition against the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments”. She cites both the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against Torture.

Her discussion of the intrigues and the efforts by Bush and Cheney to evade the law are fascinating. There is no doubt  Bush and Cheney are on record touting waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques” (ie torture) . They used lawyer-tools (e.g. John Yoo) to create after-the-fact justifications for torture. To this day, much remains enshrouded in secrecy. Abu Ghraib was the window but much about the tortures, renditions, black sites, disappearances, and unexplained homicides remain hidden from the public.

While waging a war on false grounds is a huge crime in itself, Bush and Cheney’s violation of torture law is probably the creepiest aspect of their time in office. They also tried to cover up here as well by their efforts to weaken the War Crimes Act in 2006. They changed key definitions of torture and they made those changes retroactive as well. They have put the United States out of compliance with the Geneva Convention.

Holtzman says that in spite of the effort to scuttle torture law, Bush and Cheney are still vulnerable under 18 USC 2340-2340A which makes it a federal crime for anyone acting in a U.S. government capacity to commit torture or to conspire to do so. The law does apply to torture committed outside the United States. The 1994 law came about in conjunction with Congress’s ratification of the International Convention Against Torture. Congress ratified this law which Holtzman writes allows for no exception in its ban against torture.

There is much damning evidence already out there. Human rights organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ACLU and many experts and journalists like Karen Greenberg, Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh and Philippe Sands have accumulated a wealth of information about the torture. Incredibly, Both Bush and Cheney have incriminated themselves by proudly and repeatedly claiming credit for waterboarding and the other enhanced techniques.

Holtzman enumerates possible ideas for achieving some accountability. She raises both the concept of a special prosecutor and also a truth commission a la South Africa with apartheid. She also suggests restoring the War Crimes Act, reclaiming protections against unchecked surveillance, abolishing statute of limitations for war crimes and torture and narrowing state secret privilege.

When talking with friends about this book, the response has invariably been the impossibility of any action being taken against a former president and vice-president. People do not argue the merits of the legal case – more often than not, they concede that. I think history shows that it often takes a long time for any type of accountability but accountability could come about in many ways. Civil litigation by victims or foreign prosecutions have already happened. Other nations, also signatories to the Convention Against Torture, might be less reticent to prosecute.

Holtzman says it took the Russian parliament 60 years to acknowledge Stalin’s guilt for the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. It took 25 years for justice to begin to catch up to the Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. There are still people pursuing remaining Nazi war criminals.

The danger in lack of accountability is the risk that history will repeat itself. Nothing gets learned. By not holding Bush and Cheney accountable for their crimes, we pave the way for future Bush and Cheneys and worse. Holtzman deserves credit for bravely and honestly looking at our history. Her book has the virtues of being a good read, legally sophisticated, and very well-argued.

Probably the most significant accomplishment of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been elevation of the issue of economic inequality in America. Economic inequality has not been on mainstream politicians’ agenda. It has been the equivalent of background furniture.
In the middle of a presidential primary season, no candidate on the Republican side has gotten close to touching this issue. It has been like kryptonite to Superman. On the Democratic side, President Obama talks about jobs, but you don’t hear too much about the 1 percent and the 99 percent.
The truth is that the image of the 1 percent and the 99 percent captures an unfortunate sociological reality. Over the past 30 years, America has gotten way more unequal. The rich have gotten fabulously richer, and the poor have gotten desperately poorer – but with a wrinkle. Many formerly middle-income people have fallen into the ranks of the poor, a category that has considerably expanded. Compared to the 1960s and 1970s, we have moved backward toward a more unequal society.
Considering these obvious changes, it is surprising that equality as a value has not received more discussion in the media and blogosphere. We mostly pay lip service to the value. To the extent we even discuss equality, talk is more about equal rights than economic equality. In New Hampshire, liberty gets far more play than equality as a defining value.
I would argue that we need to take equality far more seriously than we have.
The reason is simple: People in more equal societies live longer, healthier and happier lives. Equality benefits more than the poor – it benefits everyone. This is neither recognized nor appreciated.
Many would dispute this perspective, but there is a mountain of empirical evidence to back it up. In their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett make the case for the virtues of more equality. They show that in rich societies poor health and multiple social problems including violence, life expectancy and infant mortality, children’s educational performance, imprisonment rates and mental health all correlate to inequality. The less equal the society, the worse the outcomes.
Wilkinson’s and Pickett’s views are based on years of research studying over 20 rich countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, European countries, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries. They also look comparatively at all the states in the Unites States. The book does not focus on particular public policies as routes to achieve greater equality. They accept that there can be different routes to that goal.
Interestingly, Wilkinson and Pickett single out both New Hampshire and Vermont for some positive comment. Both are among the most equal states in the United States. This is true even though Vermont has the highest tax burden of any state and New Hampshire has the second lowest, next to Alaska.
Since 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million. At the same time, their share of the tax burden has declined by 40 percent. Billionaires pay a smaller percentage of taxes than workers who earn $25,000 a year. On the other end of the equation, we have increased human misery reflected in foreclosures, homelessness, and long-term unemployment. Poverty drenches millions in toxic stress, depression, and insecurity.
This extreme economic inequality carries political consequences. With the change in campaign finance law wrought especially by the Citizens United decision, we face the prospect that billionaires will bankroll their candidate of choice and buy elections. The United States could devolve into oligarch rule, like Russia, with billionaires’ money skewing election results especially through negative ad buys. The odds, based on past experience, that the 1 percent will look after the interests of the 99 percent could hardly be described as good.
With this context, I am at a loss to understand the relative emphasis on the value of liberty over the value of equality. I accept the merit of both values, but liberty as now defined is the value of the billionaire buying elections. It is the value of the payday lender loaning at 500 percent annual interest. It is the mortgage bubble scam. It is the billionaire sheltering his money in the Cayman Islands.
I can hear the arguments on the other side. “Inequality is not an injustice – it is a necessary component of a prosperous society.” I don’t buy it. It is an injustice, harmful to the overwhelming majority.
Lessening our extreme economic inequality should frame our political agenda. Politicians should be addressing the needs of all the people – not just the 1 percent. We seem to be stuck in old ways of looking at things. Before Occupy Wall Street, there did not seem to be political will to create greater equality. Now it is less clear. Maybe there is some resolve.
Greater equality will lead to a safer and friendlier society. Activists in Britain are looking at pay ratios between top executive and median worker compensation. They have floated a maximum wage set as a multiple of worker pay. This is a different way to look broadly at the unfairness of CEO pay relative to the average worker. American workers’ pay has stagnated for a long time, while top executive pay has been a runaway train. According to the AFL-CIO, our CEO-to-worker pay ratio is 343:1. Japan is 11:1. The U.K. is 22:1. We are in a class by ourselves.
We need to get beyond automatic dismissal of any new idea as “socialism” or “tax and spend.” The government, especially the federal government, does not deserve the demonization it has received in recent years. It is the government that has shored up capitalism during its boom-and-bust cycle. Over the past 80 years, it is the federal government, whatever its faults, that has vastly contributed to the quality of our collective lives. Think Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Veterans Affairs, civil rights, Head Start, and Legal Services, to name a few. These programs have made the Unites States a more civilized, humane society. We would be so much worse off without them.
There is no blueprint for making the changes I am suggesting. Nor am I opposed to cutting spending where it is wasteful. Still, the deeper issue of inequality persists. I think equality and fairness are values every bit as important as liberty. There is nothing more American than acting on these values.

I wanted to share a few poems. I have no excuse for this posting except that I think the poems I am sharing are great. Along with the habit of saving favorite quotes I have also written out poems that have struck me and stayed with me over the years. These are a few of them.

 “Apolitical Intellectuals” is by Otto Rene Castillo (1936-1967), a Guatemalan poet and revolutionary. After the coup in Guatemala in 1954, Castillo went into exile. He lived in El Salvador. In his short life he returned to Guatemala and he had to go into exile several times more. He was active in the Guatemala Workers Party and he also founded an experimental theater group. He was captured, interrogated, tortured, and murdered by the Guatemalan military.    I first saw this poem in Monthly Review many years ago and I have always remembered it.  I will not say much about Nikki Giovanni or Gary Snyder because they are both well known. I had a hard time picking among their poems. When I was in college in 1971, I saw Snyder read and do a rain dance. He came to a small seminar class. Even then he was talking about fossil fuels and global warming. He was way ahead of the curve. The last poem “Mortality” is by William Knox (1789-1825), a Scottish poet. The poem was a favorite of Abraham Lincoln’s. President Lincoln loved to read it both before and after he was in the White House.

Apolitical Intellectuals        by Otto Rene Castillo

      One day
 the apolitical
   intellectuals
 of my country
will be interrogated
 by the simplest
 of our people

 They will be asked
  what they did
when their nation died out
  slowly,
 like a sweet fire
 small and alone

No one will ask them
 about their dress,
 their long siestas
  after lunch,
 no one will want to know
 about their sterile combats
   with “the idea
  of the nothing”
 no one will care about
their higher financial learning

They won’t be questioned
 on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
  begins to die
 the coward’s death.

They’ll be asked nothing
 about their absurd
   justifications,
 born in the shadow of the total lie

   On that day
 The simple men will come

Those who had no place
 in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
  but daily delivered
 their bread and milk,
 their tortillas and eggs,
 those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and garden
  and worked for them,
  and they’ll ask:

What did you do when the poor
 suffered, when tenderness
  and life
 burned out of them

  Apolitical intellectuals
   of my sweet country
you will not be able to answer

A vulture of silence
 will eat your gut.

 Your own misery
will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in your shame.

__________________________________________

A Blackbird on my Knee             by Nikki Giovanni

I’m Windex without a window    Drano without the sludge
I’m wax without hardwood   Mean without a grudge
I’m a poem without rhyme    A clock without time
A rabbit on crutches    A meat-eating deer
Without you around one thing is clear

I’m horse with no kick   A bee with no sting
My hair won’t plait    My bell can’t ring
I’m guilt without filling    I take without stealing
I’m savings without interest    Stocks without bonds
My goldfish have moved to my neighbor’s ponds

       I sing to no music
       I rap to no beat
       My heart is too heavy. I need a retreat

       I’m lonely and weary    I can’t get rest
       I’m unsatisfied since I’ve had the best
       You need to come home and take care of me
       I said you need to come home and take care of me
       I’m just sitting in this vacant lot with a blackbird on my knee

__________________________________________

Four Poems for Robin       by Gary Snyder

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

I slept under    rhododendrum
All night     blossoms fell
Shivering on   a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck    in my pack
Hands deep   in my pockets
Barely  able  to  sleep.
I remembered  when we were in school
Sleeping together   in a big warm bed
We were   the youngest lovers
When we broke up   we were still nineteen.
Now our   friends are married
You teach   school back east
I don’t mind    living this way
Green hills   the long blue beach
But sometimes   sleeping in the open
I think back   when I had you

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress

An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(three times in nine years)
wild, cold and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost down. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by. I’ve always known
           where you were –
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win you back.
You still are single.

I didn’t
I thought I must make it alone. I
have done that.
Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.

And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
     karma demands.

___________________________________________

Mortality       by William Knox

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-flying meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to the rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant’s affection who proved;
The husband, that mother and infant who blessed;
Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure – her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep,
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint, who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner, who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes– like the flower or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes — even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same that our fathers have been;
We see the same sights that our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we feel the same sun,
And run the same course that our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging, they also would cling –
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.

They loved – but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned – but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved – but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed – but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died – aye, they died – we things that are now,
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
And make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

‘Tis the wink of an eye — ’tis the draught of a breath —
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

In the world of literature about Karl Marx, I would say this is a book like no other. So many books about Marx or Marxism are heavy-handed tracts designed to score political points for or against socialism. Other books focus on attacking Marx for crimes that occurred long after he died.

This book sets out to do something else altogether. In novel-like fashion, it tells the story of Marx, his wife Jenny and his wider family, including Engels. It combines the political and the personal, setting the lives of the Marx family against the drama  of 19th century European politics. The book takes on questions like:

— What early experiences pushed and inspired Marx?

— What were the everyday lives of Marx and Jenny like?

— What was it like to be a 19th century revolutionary intellectual at the birth of the socialist movement?

— How did Marx and Engels collaborate and how did Engels help Marx and his family as a friend, comrade, and financial benefactor?

— Beyond their theoretical projects, what roles did Marx and Engels play as political activists?

“Love and Capital” succeeds in giving a feel for the lives of the Marx circle including Engels. It pulls no punches but at the same time it sympathetically chronicles the family history. It avoids the snark so common in books or even book reviews about Marx. The book does a great job in showing the human hardships and tragedies that befell the Marx family. While Marx literally changed the world, an enormous achievement for any man, the price he paid was staggering.

This is not some light tale about a dreamy romantic intellectual. I think it is fair to say Marx suffered enormously for his contributions. The long-term financial impoverishment, the repeated political deportations and exiles, the trials for treason and libel, the devastating deaths of four children, the illnesses, the anxieties – this was no easy life. The European ruling class gave no pass.

Gabriel quotes from a Prussian spy’s report on the Marx household:

“Marx lives in one of the worst – therefore, one of the cheapest – quarters of London. He occupies two rooms…In the whole apartment there is not one clean and solid piece of furniture. Everything is broken down, tattered and torn, with a half inch of dust over everything and the greatest disorder everywhere. In the middle of the living room there is a large old-fashioned table covered with an oil cloth, and on it there lie his manuscripts, books and newspapers as well as the children’s toys, and rags and tatters of his wife’s sewing basket, several cups with broken rims, knives, forks, lamps, an ink pot, tumblers, Dutch clay pipes, tobacco ash – in a word, everything topsy-turvy, and all on the same table…To sit down becomes a thoroughly dangerous business. Here is a chair with only three legs, on another chair the children are playing at cooking – this chair happens to have four legs. This is the one which is offered to the visitor, but the children”’s cooking has not been wiped away and if you sit down, you risk a pair of trousers.”

Interestingly, the spy also reported that Marx led the existence of a real Bohemian intellectual. He liked to drink; he had no fixed time for sleeping and getting up. The spy said that neither Marx nor Jenny were embarrassed by their poverty. He wrote that spirited and agreeable conversation made the discomfort tolerable.

In reading this story, I have to admit that I previously had no idea about Marx’s desperate financial plight. Gabriel says financial free fall was Marx’s way of life.  Marx and his family were constantly in debt, hounded by creditors. He almost never had enough money to pay them. He practically lived in the pawnshop. Time and again, Engels was his financial savior and bailed him and his family out of numerous jams. It is amazing that Marx was able to write as voluminously and do the political work he did considering how bad his personal money situation was. However, during his lifetime, his writing, both books and journalism, barely brought in a trickle of money.

Gabriel raises some painful questions about Marx’s poverty. Marx’s delightful 8 year old son Edgar, nicknamed Musch, died of intestinal tuberculosis, a condition exacerbated by poor nutrition and unhealthy living conditions. Gabriel asks if Marx and Jenny’s life choices contributed to Musch’s death and she concludes they did. Yet, she sympathetically shows the degree of Marx and Jenny’s despair. She quotes Marx writing to Engels:

“I cannot tell you how we miss the child at every turn. I’ve already had my share of bad luck but only now do I know what real unhappiness is. I feel BROKEN DOWN. Since the funeral I have been fortunate enough to have such splitting headaches that I can neither think nor hear nor see. Amid all the fearful torments I have recently had to endure, the thought of you and your friendship has always sustained me as has the hope that there is still something sensible for us to do together in the world.”

Marx was incredibly fortunate to have a wife like Jenny and a friend like Engels. Both were undyingly loyal and both served him through thick and thin. Marx was an almost obsessively self-absorbed man although he was exceedingly cosmopolitan and witty. Jenny put up with him in spite of all the adversities including his infidelity. Jenny’s love for Marx is all the more impressive as she was born a noble and absolutely did not have to live a life of struggle and privation. Jenny helped Marx as an editor and as someone who could decipher his handwriting. She transcribed him. She was a rock.

If anyone comes off as a great guy in this story, it is Engels. Engels was a bit of a playboy, a great drinking buddy and a party animal but most importantly he was Marx’s protector, collaborator and friend. He recognized Marx’s intellectual genius and he did his all to promote Marx’s views which were his own. On an early trip to England in 1845, Marx and Engels were profoundly affected by what they found in Manchester and London. It was Marx’s first personal exposure to working class life. Gabriel describes a veritable hell on earth.

“In the workers’ residential area, low cottages consisting of two rooms, a cellar, and a garret housed an average of twenty people each, with one outdoor toilet for every 120 residents. The stench of human and animal excrement was pervasive; houses were packed so tightly the wind could not reach the courtyards to blow away the foul odor…
 In this desperate world, family life disintegrated. Mothers who had to work but had no one to care for their youngest children gave the infants opium to keep them sedated until they returned. Girls as young as twelve were “married” off to ease the family’s financial burden and boys as young as six began their lives int he street for the same reason. Fathers, who had once enjoyed the dignity of supporting their loved ones now competed against their teenage sons for work that earned them a pittance. Sickness was one more luxury the poor could not afford; death was considered preferable and more merciful than injury or disease, because a hurt or ill worker meant another burden on already broken families. Indeed, funerals for the poor, especially the Irish poor, were raucous affairs in honor of the lucky one who’d passed on…”

As Gabriel shows,  Marx and Engels were fired up by their personal experiences. Marx became obsessed with describing the awful world around him. Whatever the wrong predictions of Marx and the unrealized expectations in his writings, I think it is his analysis of capitalism and his class analysis that remains of lasting value. In the pantheon of worldviews, a class perspective strikes me as valid as any other perspective. It is holistic and relational and it can, if not vulgarly deployed, be a fine tool for explaining social reality.

Marx lived in a world where royals ruled and people looked to religion for explanation. It was radical to see humans, not supernatural forces, at the center of life. I do think Marx would be amused by 21st century politicians who complain about those who acknowledge class as fanning class struggle as if it did not already exist. Apparently acknowledging class is too much; better to pretend we are all the same in some vague amorphous middle class. Outside the United States, particularly in Europe, class analysis is more recognized as a fact of life and accepted. Americans are innocent, bordering on naive, about class. C. Wright Mills may be the last American who took on the task of applying a class analysis of the United States in an intellectually elegant way.

Marx was uncompromising in his formulations. Gabriel quotes him describing the perverse effects of money on the rich. I quote this just because I think it is so dead on.

“I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money…I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honored, and hence its possessor…I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself…Does not all my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?”

While I guess this could be seen as over-the-top, I find it hard to argue with in our era of Occupy Wall Street, the 1% and the 99%. Economic inequality has gotten far worse but we have no modern day Marx who uncompromisingly describes it. It is rare to find any brave writers who step outside narrow accepted opinion. Marx and Engels had moxie and they were fearless as far as looking deeply at their economic system.

I did not know how important a role both Marx and Engels played in the formation of the First International. Gabriel describes Marx’s political fight with Bakunin as well as his efforts to organize and educate workers all over Europe. Whatever stereotypes may exist about Marx, Gabriel shows that Marx was a realist politically. He did not favor military adventurism. He was often criticized by anarchists for opposing violence. Marx keenly followed political developments although Gabriel says that Marx had a terrible sense of timing. He almost never produced intellectual work when due. He was invariably late for publication and Gabriel wrote that this weakness greatly harmed his book sales.

Marx died at age 64 in 1883 in the aftermath of the death of his wife Jenny and his daughter Jennychen. Engels described him accurately as the “best-hated and most calumniated man of his time”. During his lifetime he never saw socialism become more than  marginal movement.

Gabriel credits Engels and Marx’s daughters for their untiring efforts to preserve Marx’s ideas. Volume II and III of Capital did not go to press until 1885 and 1894 respectively. Engels was responsible for taking text and piles of notes and turning Volume III into a finished work. “Love and Capital” carries the Marx saga through the largely sad stories of his daughters. They were strong political activists in their own right but unfortunately all married men who had great financial trouble supporting families. Eleanor Marx, known as Tussy, had a disastrous marriage to a conniving womanizer and con man, Edward Aveling.

There are many dimensions to “Love and Capital”. It is rich as biography, history, and as a great story. Because of the experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, it is not uncommon to see Marx blamed along with Lenin, Stalin etc. “Love and Capital ” is a corrective to that perspective. Blaming Marx for developments after his death is about as fair as blaming early robber barons for the depredations of capitalism in 1929 or 2008. Both social democrats and socialists owe a huge debt to Marx.

Gabriel ends with a quote from William Morris that is particularly apropos. “Men fight and lose the battle and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out to be not what they meant.” That quote is close to the truth.

My mom died about a year ago. I had seen her around two weeks before she passed away. I thought she was getting stronger. She was in a rehabilitation facility next to Lankenau Hospital. I spent three days there with her. She was successfully performing and completing physical therapy. I watched her do it and I thought she was doing better.

The prior four months had been rough. Mom had either been in the hospital or in rehab. She had only been home for a short stint. Before I left Philadelphia to return to Alaska.my brother Rob and I had a meeting with her. We pitched optimism. Even though Mom had lost Dad and Lise, we tried to persuade her and pump her up that she could have a good quality life, living independently. I did think she would be going home soon.

While the end of her life remains a mystery to me, she was gone two weeks later. I honestly do not know why she died. She had a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, a condition that seemed to be able to be treated. She had never previously had a diagnosis of diabetes but that problem appeared and she was prescribed insulin.

Her medications were constantly adjusted but the right mix was never found. In the last two weeks her condition ping ponged greatly. Among multiple other medications, she was getting Prednisone. The combination of prednisone and insulin threw her system out of whack. It is hard to know if the doctors knew what they were doing. Her doctors changed constantly. I am reminded of the Chekhov quote: “Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.” My brother had intervened to try and get better continuity of care. Mom had earlier tried to locate a treating physician who would know her case. The results were not reassuring.

I have my doubts that any doctor knew her medical history more than superficially. There was not much evidence that any medical professional knew or cared that much about what happened to an 85 year old woman. When Rob called me to tell me that Mom had had a heart attack, my heart sank. I wondered if we had intervened differently if she would still be alive.

I guess this was supposed to be high quality medical care. I was not left with a good feeling although admittedly I was at a distance. The anonymity of care, the overmedication, the sense no one really knew what was happening or cared that much – I suspect this may be more the norm for medical care.

Ironically, Mom thought that doctors had killed her mother, Molly Keiser,  by botching her medications. That was a theme I had heard my parents discuss for many years. My Nana, Molly Keiser, had trusted her treating physician who was  a long time friend. Mom was bitter because her mom’s death was both early and unexpected. Mom had an acid view of doctors, beginning with the death of my brother Richard. There were questions about Rich’s medications too.

I should note Mom’s depression which she did a good job of hiding. She was not forthcoming about her feelings. Even after Dad died , Mom did not show that much. She may have been life weary. Life without Dad, her partner of 60 years, was not life. Add the death of Lise and the prospect of further life dimmed considerably. I do wonder if Mom’s seeming positive tone when she met with Rob and me two weeks before she died was just an effort to placate us, to tell us what we wanted to hear.

Mom did have a sense of humor about death. When I visited her (and earlier when I visited both Mom and Dad) she used to rise early to read the Inquirer which was delivered to their apartment door in Wynnewood. Mom would first  turn to the obituary page. She and Dad both used to joke that they read the obituary page to make sure they were not in it. Then they would talk about who they knew who was featured that day. Invariably they always seemed to know someone and usually an interesting discussion would ensure about the person, their connection, personal history etc.

After the obits, Mom would often turn to sports. She was a big fan. She and Dad turned me into a life long Phillies and Eagles fan. Mom was more a Phillies fan than an Eagles fan but she had much to say about both teams. (I can only imagine what she would say about the Eagles this year!) She and Dad watched pretty much every Phillies game. I remember when Charlie Manuel first became the Phillies manager. Mom said. “I think he is a moron”. Charlie did seem to talk dumb along with his tobacco chewing bit.  After the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, Mom revised her view. “Charlie Manuel is a genius”.  Mom was a pretty typical Philadelphia sports fan with very high expectations almost never to be realized. She was a tougher critic than Dad.

I remember one time Mom, Dad, and I went to the Vet to see the Phillies play the Red Sox in interleague play. It was in June, five or six years ago,  shortly before the demise of the Vet. The game was almost sold out and we purchased tickets at the stadium box office. The only available seats were in the 700 section in the right field bleachers. The seats were way back and high up. When we made our way there, I have to say it was a debauched scene. Heavy drinking was going on, some fights broke out, fans were loud and rowdy. I saw people throwing beer on each other. Mom turned to me, without missing a beat, and said, “You are with your people.” That was Mom. She knew her son well. The game turned out to be very entertaining and the Phillies won in extra innings. We had a ball.

We had some very good times together watching baseball. We attended the no hitter pitched by Kevin Millwood in 2003 against the Giants. We used to stop in South Philly and get cheese steaks at Tony Luke’s or Pat’s. Sometimes we would get stuff at Carlino’s in Ardmore that was to die for. When we went to the Jersey shore in recent summers, we watched some memorable Phillies-Mets games. After all the bad years, it was a delight to have a Phillies team with the likes of Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley.

While Mom was quick with barbs, I do not want to create the wrong impression. Kindness was probably her defining quality. When I would come home, Mom cooked. She always made my favorite things, including her crumb cake, apricot noodle kugel, and her brisket. Really almost anything Mom touched in the kitchen turned to gold and that is not an exaggeration. She was gifted in the art of food preparation. She was a Mario Batalgia Food Network fan. I joked with her about liking Giada but not for her recipes. I think of Mom getting my sons Josh and Eric their “little boxes”.

When I was sworn in as a judge in Washington DC, Mom was there along with my niece Molly and my nephew Lou. She and Dad were such good, dutiful parents. They came to NH to see my NH Supreme Court arguments. They were always at any important family gathering. They were always there when it counted.

I suppose it takes longer life experience to gain more perspective on your parents. My current job has given me broader perspective on the range of parental behavior from abysmal beyond belief to the other end of the spectrum. I was an incredibly lucky kid. Mom was the best of the best. I give Mom much credit for hanging in with Dad too through some extended bad times. She cared for him and loved him through good and bad.  Since I like to end with poetry, here is a poem from David Ignatow. I miss my mom.

Kaddish    by David Ignatow

Mother of my birth, for how long were we together
     in your love and my adoration of your self?
For the shadow of a moment as I breathed your pain
     and you breathed my suffering, as we knew
of shadows in lit rooms that would swallow the light

   Your face beneath the oxygen tent was alive
but your eyes were closed. Your breathing was hoarse
  but your sleep was with death. I was alone with you
      as it was when I was young but only alone now
         and now with you. I was to be alone forever
  as I was learning, watching you become alone.

Earth is your mother as you were mine, my earth,
  my sustenance, my comfort and my strength
     and now without you I turn to your mother
   and seek from her that I may meet you again
      in rock and stone: whisper to the stone;
   I love you; whisper to the rock, I found you;
 whisper to earth, Mother, I have found my mother
        and I am safe and always have been.

For anyone looking for an accessible history of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, I would recommend Rick Geary’s book, “The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti”. It is not your standard history. Instead of a dry academic recitation of facts, Geary tells the story in cartoon form. The book is in the tradition of Art Spiegelman, R. Crumb, and Harvey Pekar, serious comic artists who have used their craft to tell a good story.

Geary artfully tells the story of the trial in relatively brief fashion. He describes the crime, the accused, the case for the defense, and the legal history. While Sacco and Vanzetti became a cause celebre, it has been many years since their execution in 1927. If you are like me, you know the names but not much about what crimes they were accused of and what case was made against them.

The book details the crimes. On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and his guard who were carrying a factory payroll were shot without warning by two men who had been hanging on the street. The crime occurred in South Braintree, Ma. The shooters pumped some additional shots into the two men who were down. A car quickly appeared; the bandits jumped in and escaped. The two men who were shot, died. There had also been an earlier failed robbery in Bridgewater Ma. in December 1919. Police initially thought the crimes were linked and the assumption was that they had been the work of professional thieves.

The crimes took place against the backdrop of the Palmer Raids and the Red Scare. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 had stirred fears among conservatives. In January 1920, more than 6000 immigrants were rounded up and put on a track toward deportation. Most of the people who were rounded up were concentrated in the Massachusetts cities of Bridgewater, Lawrence, and Lowell.

In considering what happened to Sacco and Vanzetti, it is impossible to overestimate the role of the political climate. Sacco and Vanzetti were both immigrants and anarchists. They was a hysterical atmosphere of fear similar to other periods like the McCarthy period and also more recently, the anti-Muslim hysteria post- 9/11. Sacco and Vanzetti were on trial as much for their political beliefs  as any alleged act.

Three weeks after the April 1920 robbery, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested as “suspicious characters”. Vanzetti was charged with the attempted December 1919 Bridgewater robbery. Although he had a strong alibi, he was convicted of assault with the intent to rob and murder on the strength of eyewitness testimony. When arrested, both Sacco and Vanzetti were carrying weapons. They were intensely interrogated. Both lied about a number of facts including their anarchist associations. When the police searched their homes, the police found stacks of anarchist literature.

With Judge Webster Thayer presiding, Vanzetti was found guilty of the Bridgewater robbery. A problem for Vanzetti was that his witnesses spoke Italian, with little grasp of English. Although they testified, they had little impact on the jury who did not understand them.

Another big problem was Judge Thayer. He had a reputation even before the trial of disliking immigrants and radicals. After the jury convicted, Judge Thayer sentenced Vanzetti  to 15-20 years in prison. This was an extraordinarily harsh sentence for a first offense. Vanzetti was known in the Italian community as a gentle and poetic soul. As noted, he had never been convicted of any crime and he had worked selling fish from a push cart on the streets of Plymouth.

Sacco was an equally unlikely robber. He was married, had a son and he worked at a shoe factory in Stoughton Ma. In his spare time, he tended a large flower and vegetable garden.

On September 11, 1920, less than three months after Vanzetti’s conviction for the Bridgewater attempted robbery, Sacco and Vanzetti were indicted for murder in the South Braintree robbery. The same trial judge, Judge Thayer, who heard Vanzetti’s case, asked to be assigned to the South Braintree robbery case. He got his wish and he sat on the second trial.

You have to wonder about a trial judge who looks to assign himself to a case, particularly a judge who wants to preside over the same defendant whom he has just played a role in convicting. I think it was improper for Judge Thayer to seek out the case and for the court system to have allowed it. It smells bad. There is both the appearance of partiality and impropriety. Judges should be assigned to sit on the basis of impartial rotation.

The second trial, the famous trial, occurred in the aftermath of a large explosion on Wall Street in New York City. 38 citizens were killed and 200 were wounded. It was suspected that an anarchist associate of Sacco and Vanzetti, upset at their prosecution, had set off the bomb. The trial was held in Dedham Ma. The state created a metal cage which was placed in the center of the courtroom as a place for the defendants to sit during the trial. It is hard to imagine a clearer message. Sacco and Vanzetti were scary.Meanwhile hordes of federal agents, police and state bomb squad members patrolled outside the courtroom.

While there are many aspects to the trial that deserve discussion, I wanted to focus on the behavior of the trial judge, Judge Thayer. Thayer’s reputation for bias was based on an earlier case in 1920 in which a jury had not convicted another immigrant anarchist. His behavior there was unusual in focusing on the literature of the anarchists and their lack of loyalty to the United States. At the Sacco and Vanzetti trial he sneeringly overruled every defense objection. Thayer allowed extensive irrelevant cross examination about whether the defendants loved America, about the fact they avoided military service, and about their subversive literature. He argued with defense counsel about whether the literature in the defendants’ possession was in the interest of the United States.

On July 10, while he was golfing and relaxing at Worcester Country Club, he told a friend, “I’ll get those Bolsheviki bastards good and proper. I’ll get those guys hanged. No bunch of parlor radicals can intimidate Web Thayer.”

When he charged the jury, Thayer summed up the prosecution’s case with care but he said nothing about the defense case. The jury ended up convicting.

After conviction, the defense raised five supplementary motions. Due to a peculiarity in Massachusetts law, the judge who presided over the original trial heard all appeals. On July 1, 1924, Judge Thayer denied all five supplementary motions.

In November 1925, Sacco, who was being held in Norfolk County Jail was slipped a note from another prisoner, Celestine Madieros, a convicted murderer. Madeiros confessed he was part of the gang that did the crimes for which Sacco and Vanzetti had been convicted.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld the conviction on appeal and then later denied the Madeiros defense motion. The case was remanded to Judge Thayer who not unsurprisngly sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to death by electrocution. In August 1927 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts executed Sacco and Vanzetti. Over the next three days, more than 100,000 people lined up outside Joseph Lagone’s funeral parlor on Hanover Street in the North End to pay their respects. Sacco and Vanzetti had inspired a huge international outpouring of support. Demonstrations had been held world wide in the period prior to the executions. Among others, Albert Einstein, Clarence Darrow, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Dos Passos, H.L. Mencken and George Bernard Shaw threw their support behind Sacco and Vanzetti. Thayer had denied another last minute motion before execution based on his bias.

Harvard Law Professor (and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter wrote about the case that every reasonable probability pointed away from Sacco and Vanzetti as the perpetrators. Frankfurter ripped Judge Thayer for discrepancies between what the record disclosed and what his opinion conveyed.

On August 23, 1977, Gov. Michael Dukakis proclaimed Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day. The Governor declared that any stigma and disgrace  should be forever removed from the names of Sacco and Vanzetti. He ordered an investigation into the state’s railroading and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The report found “that there are substantial, indeed compelling, grounds for believing that the Sacco and Vanzetti legal proceedings were permeated with unfairness”.

My sister Lisa educated me about Sacco and Vanzetti.  In her bedroom as a teenager, she had the Ben Shahn poster protesting their execution. I don’t know how Lisa learned about the case so early except she had unusual antenna for injustice. There have been many poems written about Sacco and Vanzetti. I wanted to close with two poems, only one of which is about the case but both seemed apropos to me.

You Felons on Trial in Courts    by Walt Whitman

You felons on trial in courts,
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d
 and handcuff’d with iron,
Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not
 chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron?

You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in
  your rooms,
Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?

O culpable! I acknowledge – I expose!
(O admirers, praise not me – compliment not me – you make
 me wince,
I see what you do not – I know what you do not.)

Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked,
Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides
 continually run,
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,
I walk with delinquents with passionate love,
I feel I am of them – I belong to those convicts and
 prostitutes myself,
And henceforth I will not deny them – for how can I deny
 myself?

Climbing Milestone Mountain               by Kenneth Rexroth
August 22, 1937

For  a month now, wandering over the Sierras,
A poem has been gathering in my mind,
Details of significance and ryhthm,
The way poems do, but still lacking a focus.
Last night I remembered the date and it all
began to grow together and take on purpose.
  We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith
And I told Marie all about Boston, how it looked
That last terrible week, how hundreds stood weeping
Impotent in the streets that last midnight.
I told her how those hours changed the lives of thousands,
How America was forever a different place
Afterward for many.
                                   In the morning
We swam in the cold transparent lake, the blue Damsel flies on all the reeds like millions
Of narrow metallic flowers, and I thought
Of you behind the grille in Dedham, Vanzetti,
saying, “Who would ever have thought we would make this
     history?”
Crossing the brilliant mile-square meadow
Illuminated with asters and cyclamen,
The pollen of the lodgepole pines drifting
With the shifting wind over it and the blue
And sulphur butterflies drifting with the wind,
I saw you in the sour prison light, saying,
“Goodbye comrade.”
                                     In the basin under the crest
Where the pines end and the Sierra primrose begins,
A party of lawyers was shooting at a whiskey bottle.
The bottle stayed on its rock, nobody could hit it.
Looking back over the peaks and canyons from the last lake,
The pattern of human beings seemed simpler
Than the diagonals of water and stone.
Climbing the chute, up the melting snow and broken rock,
I remembered what you said about Sacco,
How it slipped your mind and you demanded it be read
      into the record.
Traversing below the ragged arete,
One cheek pressed against the rock
The wind slapping the other,
I saw you both marching in an army
You with the red and black flag, Sacco with the rattlesnake
        banner.
I kicked steps up the last snow bank and came
To the indescribably blue and fragrant
Polemonium and the dead sky and the sterile
Crystalline granite and final monolith of the summit.
These are the things that will last a long time, Vanzetti,
I am glad that once on your day I have stood among them.
Some day mountains will be named after you and Sacco.
They will be here and your name with them,
“When these days are but a dim remembering of the time
When man was wolf to man.”
I think men wil be remembering you a long time
Standing on the mountains
Many men, a long time, comrade.

On Friday night, I went to see Lucinda Williams play the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord. I had not intended to write about it but the show grabbed me. Lucinda is the real deal and there is almost nothing better than live music. Lucinda is probably not for everyone but I am a hardcore fan. Judging by the crowd, she does have a substantial adult following.

I suppose Lucinda is an acquired taste. She can be pretty dark and hardbitten although a positive side is woven through. I think I once heard Imus say you might want to kill yourself after listening to too much Lucinda.  I think she is hard to categorize. She is a rocker, a country singer, a folk singer, and a blues singer. Her songs are like poetry. Her lyrics are unusually evocative.

For anyone who has not heard her, I would begin with the album Car Wheels on  a Gravel Road. That is vintage Lucinda and it won a Grammy in 1999 for best contemporary folk album. She did sing a number of songs from that album at the Concord show. She led off with Drunken Angel. Then she sang the title track. Later in the show she sang “I Lost It”. She explained that song by saying that she had lived in Houston in the late 70’s. When there, she saw many car bumperstickers that said “I Found It”. Her response was “I Lost It”. Near the end she sang “Joy” which she dedicated to Occupy Wall Street. The song has a great groove.

The words from Joy, in part, go:

I don’t want you anymore
’cause you took my joy
I don’t want you anymore
You took my joy
You took my joy
I want it back…

My wife Deb joked that the words could have been:

I don’t want you anymore
’cause you took my job
I don’t want you anymore
You took my job
You took my job
I want it back..

Either way, it did seem like an appropriate song for now. Lucinda did sing two songs from West, her 2007 album. Not unexpectedly, she sang “Unsuffer Me” and “Come On”. She rocked out on both and got pretty loud. “Unsuffer Me” is about as bleak as it gets although it includes Lucinda’s desire for bliss. “Come on” is an ultimate revenge put down song. No one can accuse Lucinda of writing sappy love songs.

To add variety, she did a Dylan and then a Greg Allman cover. She definitely showed range as a blueswoman singing Allman’s  “It’s Not My Cross to Bear”. She also did “Get Right with God” and Blessed, the title track from her newest CD. After her encore as she was leaving the stage, she said, “Peace, love and power to the people”. I seriously have not heard anyone say “power to the people” in 40 years. Occupy Wall Street is giving people hope, I guess. It is hard not to love Lucinda. Buy her CDs, check her out on youtube or better yet, go see her live. You won’t be sorry.

After 15 months of living in Anchorage, Alaska, I have returned home to beautiful North Wilmot. While I am delighted to be home, I have to say that Alaska still has allure, almost gravitational pull. There is a reason so many people harbor Alaska fantasies.
Alaska is a surprising and paradoxical place, like New Hampshire except on a much larger scale. While I did not know much about Alaska before I arrived, I have to say it did not turn out to be what I expected. A good way to discuss the real Alaska is to discuss the questions that have been put to me since I returned:
Isn’t Alaska all snow and ice?
No. Everything depends on where in Alaska you are. Watching the extensive weather forecasts on TV in Alaska, you realize there are about seven weather systems going on simultaneously in the humongous state. The weather in downtown Anchorage is probably more moderate and temperate than New Hampshire. Generally temperatures hover between 0 and 20 Fahrenheit in the winter. While Anchorage gets some snow, last winter was very light. I had to smile hearing about all the snow in New Hampshire.
Fairbanks, the largest city north of Anchorage, is another story. You can get a solid two-week run of 40 degrees below in December or occasional 60 below days. You better plug in your car at night or else.
I also spent some time in southeast Alaska, in Juneau and Ketchikan. These places feature rain 250 days a year. They do sometimes get snow but not much. The climate makes Seattle look sunny.
Does Alaska have summer?
Summers in Alaska are not what I would describe as warm, but they are a big draw. Usually, for the tourist influx, we are talking summer temperatures in the balmy 50s in Anchorage. I found the best weather from March to June, which was a positive contrast to our mud season. When I got back to New Hampshire this August, I felt beach-deprived. I made a beeline to the Seacoast. If you are looking for beaches, Alaska is not the place for you. Instead of beaches, there are mudflats with warning signs and freezing water temperatures. The mudflats are like quicksand. Every year there are rescues of misguided people who ignore warning signs and wander out on the mud.
Did you get studded snow tires?
I did not, and I must report that there were only a couple days when driving was dicey in Anchorage. I did overhear many conversations about the need for studded snow tires. Having driven in both Alaska and New Hampshire, I think New Hampshire does a much better job of snowplowing and clearing roads. I am not sure if the poor quality of snowplowing in Anchorage reflected a macho ethic or cuts in the budget. I will say it was a little spooky approaching downtown intersections in Anchorage and wondering if you would slide into traffic. Black ice is for real.
Driving in Fairbanks in the winter was a trip. There was at least an inch of ice coating big chunks of the roads. Mastering stopping and turning was an art I never picked up. The slide factor apparently did not bother people in Fairbanks. They still drove fast. I learned they considered people from Anchorage wussies.
How dark was it?
Let me put it this way: By October the sun is almost a goner. I thought the dark was harder to cope with than the cold. Maybe if you were a vampire, you would find it cool. There is a reason Alaska is a popular locale for horror films featuring zombies and other denizens of the night. In Anchorage around the winter solstice, the sun would come up at 10:30 a.m. and
it would set at 3 p.m. By October, the tourists clear out and Anchorage becomes something of a ghost town.
Of course, the other side of the coin is the light in summer. The light can be confusing – you might think it was 6 p.m. at 11 pm. You have to tell yourself to go to sleep because you cannot tell if it is late from how it looks outside.
The fireworks are better on New Years Eve than the 4th of July. On the 4th, they did not do fireworks until 12:45 a.m.
Do people live in igloos?
I did not see that in Anchorage.
Did you meet Sarah Palin?
No I did not meet Mama Grizzly, Todd, Bristol or Levi Johnston. I must say I was surprised by Palin’s unpopularity in Alaska. A co-worker who was an Aleut Native called her “the quitter queen.” A perception that she quit on the state to cash in was widespread.
Is Alaska an arch-conservative red state?
Not really. Alaska started blue and has evolved red. It is a funny mix. When Alaska first became a state in 1959, conservatives feared its liberalism.
I am old enough to remember the great senator Ernest Gruening, who was one of the first senators to oppose the war in Vietnam and who was one of only two senators to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
While Alaska has elected many conservative Republicans, I think the recent senatorial election in which Lisa Murkowski beat Joe Miller is instructive.
Though Murkowski was a long-shot write-in candidate, Miller’s Tea Party extremism deconstructed his Republican base. Miller also roused the Native Alaskan community into almost total opposition to his candidacy.
Alaska can go both ways politically although indisputably there is a strong libertarian tradition in the state.
Alaska has no professional baseball or football teams. Who do people root for?
While there is some preference toward Seattle teams, the Seahawks and the Mariners, I found Alaskans very open on sports team preferences. It is not like New Hampshire with Red Sox and Patriot dominance. The Red Sox, Steelers, Cowboys and Packers all appeared to have a following in Anchorage based on numbers of hats and jerseys. Sports bars opened early since football comes on at 9am on Sundays. One great thing about Alaska was that you could always be up for the finish of games, a benefit of the four-hour time difference.
Are you going back?
I would love to go back. Anchorage is no backwater. It is a vibrant, youthful, ethnically diverse city of 300,000. It is a fun city in its own right. It is also a great jumping off point for numerous vacation destinations. Whether you are driving down the Kenai Peninsula, heading north or south to trek on a glacier, or going to Denali, Alaska is visually spectacular. Probably there is no better place to go for a vacation.
Being away, I did realize though that life is the constellation of important relationships you have. That is not immediately transferable to a new location. New Hampshire is home for me.

On September 3, my son Josh married his girl friend Nancy in New Hope, Pa. They were married in a beautiful ceremony at a beautiful place. The Black Bass, where the ceremony took place, is located right on the Delaware River, north of Philadelphia. The weather cooperated and there could not have been a better day.

I thought the vows that Josh and Nancy exchanged were so expressive and passionate that I wanted to share them. My reason for posting this is solely to share something beautiful. In any wedding I have attended, I do not think I have ever heard such strong and direct mutual declarations of love and caring. As part of his vows, Josh sang Tupelo Honey. Just as a Van Morrison fan I loved that but Josh’s performance was right up there. I think Van himself would have approved.

I asked for permission to post this and Josh and Nancy Have graciously allowed this. Thank you Josh and Nancy! I am posting both their vows and the youtube of Josh singing Tupelo Honey.

I do wish both my parents and my sister Lisa could have been at this event. I know they would have loved it. I feel fortunate I was there.

Josh’s vows:

Never in my life have I met someone who has so naturally embraced and shared in the same ideals and
general perspective on life as I do.

The connection you and I share Nancy, is bigger that the two of us. I believe that the fruition of this
relationship is generations in the making.

If that sounds crazy to you folks, than I’m saying the right words. Crazy is the perfect adjective to
describe the amount of love, personal connection, interest, passion, and adoration I have for this
woman.

Finding you was unexpected. I could have never predicted that I’d find my partner so easily, like it was
meant to be, and it is. When I look at us from a bird’s eye view, I see the same type of love that my
grandparents shared. In my assessment, the kind of affection and care we have for one another seems
to only exist by way of a rare, kindred type of connection. My popup and nana had that connection and
while I’m sorry they can’t be here with us to see today, I knew they could sense that kind of love in us
when they met you.

I’ve always been independent and created a unique path for myself. I know you’ve been the same
way. I take what I want out of life and do my best to appreciate the world around me. I’m grateful for
the experiences I’ve had and the lessons I’ve learned. I believe every door I’ve opened, every path I’ve
chosen has brought me to this moment right now… A gradual but complete transformation.

Nancy, you are my life. I’m so incredibly fortunate to be here right now. Your love and understanding,
your thoughtfulness and care has overwhelmed by very being. I’ve grown from the me I once knew;
to the man I could have never projected but always hoped to be. I’ve done that with you and the love
you’ve brought into my life.

I want to tease on a favorite musician of mine, John Coltrane,

This IS a Love Supreme.

Beyond THAT there are no words.

My feelings for you transcend language or verse.

WE are an improvisational phrase filled with feel, rhythm, texture, substance, tension and release.

This moment is a crescendo in our lives but it is NOT the climax.

That will come every single day after today, for the rest of our lives.

As long as our energy is surging through the universe, I will be your #1. I will be your strength and
support. I’ll be there to make you happy when you’re sad. I’ll even save you from the rogue insects that
come in the house from the yard with Dobby.

I am yours baby and I love you more than I could tell you. I won’t ever be able to fully express myself

in words because, what I’m saying right now is familiar, it’s palatable, easy for you and our family to
understand.

That’s not good enough for me. Not on a day like this. I want everyone here to FEEL the way I feel
about you.

Singing has always been the best way for me to express myself and I felt like it would be the only way to
show everyone how I feel right now.

So, I wanted to play this song because I’ve heard it a million times in my life and I believe that every time
I’ve listened to it, it’s brought me closer to this moment.

I love you.

Nancy’s vows:

I can’t believe this day is here. I’m so thankful to stand with YOU, surrounded by loved
ones to merge our families and our lives. It’s a good day. One in which we are all
healthy, we’re all together. And those who are no longer with us are here in memory,
and in spirit. While I wish our lives could be filled with days like this, I breathe easy
knowing that we’ve built a foundation to weather whatever our days may bring.
Because today, I’m marrying my best friend.

When I met you, Josh I suddenly knew everything I wanted, or at least all the things I
thought I wanted became infused with meaning. Whatever riches I’d hoped to accrue,
were now for the purpose of building a home together. Whatever notoriety I wished for,
became to be respected by you. Whatever day I wake to, is now cherished as another one
I get to spend with you. Whatever truth I offer, is to be wholly honest with you, because
if I am to be truly known and understood in this life, it shall be through you.

To trust you with all the love I have to offer, and feel worthy of accepting all of yours,
has transformed my life in a way I never could have predicted. Your love has shined a
brilliant light into all the dark corners of my soul, so that I am finally awake, fully alive.
Your patience and commitment to understanding all of me, treating it not like a burden,
but appreciating it as a privilege has made me feel less complicated than I know I am.
You are my twin, the other half of me I never knew was missing, until we met, and felt
what it was like to be whole. The truth of that wholeness is now my sail through life, so
that no matter what storms may occur, I will hold tight to it and never give up on your or
us or even myself.

Today I’m entering a commitment to dedicate my whole self in a way I never have
before, with a strength I didn’t know I possessed until I met you. This dedication to us
now defines me, it is my life’s work. All good things, will come from it. And if my life is
blessed with no other good fortunes, I will forever be indebted to the world for bring me
to you, as there’s nothing else I want from this life other than to be with you, to be a good
and loving partner to you, and to deserve you each day. Our love is now my mark upon
the world. It is the validation of my life, and when we are no longer, the sky will read…
Nancy was here… because Josh loved her.

One
For eternity we have been one
But here we breathe as two
In this place where all meant things
Be exactly as they should
In perfect synchronicity
defining perfection
Revealing purpose
Here, we breathe as two
So that the love of one heart for it’s other
As a lost ship for its starlit harbor
As Heloise for Abelard
Must skim the surface of the earth
on it’s way from one to the other,
so the bees have wind
and the flowers pollen
and the world can have its harvest
and I may have you