…it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. Bobby Kennedy in a speech to a large group of African-Americans on April 4th, 1968, breaking the news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated by a white man.

Michele and I saw the Kronos Quartet last Wednesday, April 4th. It was a tribute to Martin Luther King with arrangements by a variety of contemporary Chamber Music – for lack of a better descriptor – composers. It started with the Star-Spangled Banner, their version, inspired by Jimi Hendricks, but it was their version of Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit that most moved me. It was a funeral dirge that was both intimate and universal. It seemed to be for our poor country as much as MLK, the sad music sort of reached out and encompassed all of us. Sitting in Bing Concert Hall, about 24 hours after the Debate, listening and feeling the sadness engulf me was…well, sad. I felt deeply sad and trying to write about the Debate, I still do.

By Debate, I mean the January Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate. The subtext of which is really a fight over our country’s soul, who we want to be as a country. I know what I want us to be and I think I know what most of my friends want but it seems to me that what we want is not universal. It was not universal even on that stage with the most liberal group of candidates we’ve seen in the last forty years. The debaters came in two flavors, just like most of us listeners, those that think that Trump is the problem and, with a little fine-tuning, everything will be fine, and those that believe that Trump is the result symptom of the problem. To be clear, I think Trump is the result of a political class, on both sides of the aisle, that has not walked its talk. I am aware that belief colors my view of the different candidates, I am also aware that the Democratic Establishment falls into the everything is basically fine group – although they frame it as “what we have is the best we can get” – and that conviction colors their view of the different candidates.

Joe Biden is probably the most extreme Trump is the problem candidate and his campaign has a sort of restoration of virtue vibe about it. To my ear, that sounds like “Let’s go back to business as usual” and although I don’t see Biden getting the nomination, he has a lot of money and, seemingly, a big part of the Democratic Party Establishment backing him. I say that because the questions at the debate had a distinctly pro-Biden, anti-Sanders cast as the screenshot at the top illustrates. The question was to Biden BTW and it stayed on the screen after Biden, smiling, agreed that Bernie did owe us an explanation. However, Trump is most surely running on the economy and, although Biden was instrumental in the economy Trump ran against, Biden seems to think he can beat him there. Ironically, Biden is taking the same tactic that Trump used when he ran against the Obama Economy, “Don’t believe the numbers. That’s Wall Street BS; how are you doing? Believe your own eyes”. I like that tactic but not Biden. He doesn’t speak about the oncoming Climate Disaster with much conviction and I hate his take on international relations, supposedly his big area of expertise. He is a big Kissinger fan, which says it all, Biden says, “Kissinger doesn’t have a rival for the depth of his knowledge & strategic thinking. He’s always been my reality check. I’ve sought his counsel and he’s a friend.” Lastly, he is really too old, really really and his age is showing; watching Biden stumble around mid-sentence on some semi-memorized bit, it’s hard not to laugh, he gets so befuddled.

Pete Buttigieg is almost the polar opposite and he is running on change. But, like Obama who also ran on change, Buttigieg is the change rather than new policies being the change. He is the best looking and most charming candidate on the stage and, I suspect, he is the most intelligent also, but he did nothing to enlist me, partially because Climate Change seems to be so low on his agenda. On his website, Rising to the Climate Challenge is eighteenth on his list of Latest Plans, below the fold, and behind Indian Country: Achieving Autonomy for Tribal Nations & Enhancing Opportunities for Native People to Thrive. Clicking through to Rising to the Climate Challenge brings us to a series of moderate proposals that don’t mention fossil fuels.

Amy Klobuchar, on the other hand, has Climate Change as her third issue on her website, behind Healthcare For All and Shared Prosperity and Economic Justice. Klobuchar’s basic pitch is “I’m from the sensible Midwest.” It’s not my shtick but I would much rather have her than either Biden or Buttigieg. And, apparently, so does the NYT. I think it is becoming obvious to people who like the status quo, the rich, the powerful, the influential, that Biden is not going to be able to carry the flag and Klobuchar is a conservative down-to-earth midwesterner with enough of a populist streak to maybe satisfy the proles.

Of everyone on the debate stage, Bernie Sanders’s answers most match mine. He’s too old and yells too much – like he doesn’t quite trust that the mike is hot which I’m beginning to think might be a sensible attitude – and I can come up with a dozen more reasons not to vote for him but his what he wants for the country match my hopes almost perfectly. I liked Governor Inslee and gave him money because I loved that his priority was the Climate Crisis and I thought he had a chance to get nominated because he’s white and male and not too radical; then he dropped out, after going nowhere. I liked Yang – still like him, partially because of his age and his out of the box thinking but he didn’t qualify for this debate and, I suspect, that will hurt, if not end, his slim chances at getting the nomination. I don’t think Bernie will get the nomination either, the Democratic Establishment is almost entirely against him and they are doing everything they can to ensure the Democratic ticket remains Sanders-free. I say remains because what is happening seems to be following the patterns set in 2016. However, I’m coming to the conclusion that I should follow my own advice and vote and contribute to Bernie Sanders, whom I agree with, rather than somebody who I think, obviously wrongly, has a good chance at the nomination.

Speaking of chances, I’m not even sure how Tom Steyer met the requirements to get on stage, but he did. Steyer says Climate is his biggest issue and I’m starting to believe him and so does CNN, he was shut down when he tried to weave Climate Change into an answer. We were told “We’ll get to that later” and they did, for less time than they spent trying to gin up controversy over Bernie supposedly saying a woman can’t win the presidency. I’m starting to warm to Steyer which, given my track record, might mean he is going to drop out.

I’ve been an Elizabeth Warren fan and I especially like her core issue, corruption in government – huh? I like the issue, not the corruption – but her revelation attack on Bernie has soured me. I don’t understand it and trying to understand the unanswered quote that Time featured this week, I thought a woman could win. He disagreed, just makes me mad. According to both Warren and Sanders, Bernie deferred his running for president to Warren’s possible running in 2016. I find that hard to believe that three years after deferring to Warren, he told her that a woman couldn’t win. The meeting, reportedly to form a nonaggression pact, took place in December 2018, and, now, thirteen months later, Warren’s interpretation that Bernie said a woman couldn’t win has become the official storyline. On the debate stage, Bernie wasn’t asked what he said, he was accused: “Senator Warren confirmed in a statement that in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Why? not did you? According to CNN, the description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people which seems to give the Warren interpretation authority, but that makes it sound like four people were there and they all agree independently but the four people part just isn’t true. Again, according to CNN, two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting. That’s actually one person, Elizabeth Warren. Maybe the whole thing is just a misunderstanding but I find that, also, hard to believe.

For the first time this election cycle, listening to the candidates debate has left me more discouraged rather than encouraged.

For Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a strong response is essential.  Susan E. Rice, National Security Adviser under President Obama, shortly before Khamenei’s conciliatory response.

“Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.” Harry Callahan in Dead Pool.

I hate being in a position of defending Trump, I dislike the man – not that I have actually met him, but I dislike the image I’m constantly fed – I dislike his casual nastiness and his constant thin-skinned self-promotion. He is a kiss-up, punch down kind of guy. But he is not always wrong and taking out Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was the right thing to do despite the knee jerk condemnation of experts from other regimes.

OK, to back up, it was a bad idea to walk out on the nuclear treaty with Iran partially because it shows we can’t be trusted to keep an agreement and partially because we also walked out on the other signers; the UK, France, Germany, and the European Union as well as Russia and China. It makes us seem feckless and weakens us on the global stage. But given that we are there – and it seems all these experts think we should be there – what is our plan? If it is to win whatever we want to call it – war seems too grand, maybe struggle would fit – and they attacked us, which they did on Dec. 27 when they fired several rockets into a base in Northeast Iraq that killed an American mercenary and wounded four U.S. military people then wouldn’t attacking their command and control structure – in this case, their top general – be a good idea? That’s what we tried to do when both Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger attacked Iraq.

People talk about a measured response, why? That just prolongs the conflict (I like conflict). It seems to me that Trump did two things with this targetted assassination: he said: “Don’t mess with me; I’m not going to play the usual games, if you slap at me, I’ll beat the shit out of you.” and “We know where you are, we are watching.” I think it will be a lot longer before Iran hits back directly because of Trump’s killing their top terrorist rather than the measured response of killing a couple of Privates and a Sargeant guarding a supply dump. It is almost as if the Political Establishment – especially the Corporate Democrats – doesn’t want to end these conflicts. I guess they are good for business.

Michele and I saw Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker the other night, more out of obligation than anything else. Spoiler Alert…Michele and I have seen the first eight and I thought VIII was a turn away from the force being about elitist royalty with Rey being a nobody and the broom kid at the end but, what I didn’t know was that VIII was an anomaly (because, I keep reading, too many fans complained). It turns out that Rey is a Palentine and the whole saga is just a squabble between a couple of powerful groups, sort of the Capulets and Montagues of space.

It reminded me how right-wing – for lack of a better word, I don’t want to say fascist although that may be more accurate – most Science Fiction is with the heroes being royalty or the richest men in the Universe. They are always engaged in a climactic battle with the other side which is unadulterated evil. There do not seem to be any Rosencrantzs or Guildensterns – or nuance, for that matter – in space as far as Science Fiction is concerned although, strangely enough, the opposite is usually true in the subset of Alternate Histories.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker has all the proper Star Wars tropes and I think how much somebody likes it depends on much they want to see a “greatest hit” movie as opposed to new material. The craftsmanship of the film is spectacular, however, and I’m glad we saw it on the big screen.

Merry Everything is my favorite greeting that I’ve seen this year, twenty percent into the Twenty-First Century. I’m shocked by the number of “best lists” that reference that as a Milestone. Then I think back twenty years to the turn of the century and how different the world seemed then. Then it was possible to imagine that the American Century would go on for another hundred years, that the world was becoming more peaceful with war a relic of the past, and that racism and antisemitism were on the wane along with Nationalism; but all the signs of today’s world were there. Still, the American economy outpaced the rest of the world – except China – during the last ten years and Trump is actually cutting back on our wars, so, Happy New Year and Merry Everything.

In 1983, or thereabouts, I read an article in Sports Illustrated on the best zoos in the United States. I believe they were, in no particular order, the Bronx Zoo, The National Zoo in Washington, and the San Diego Zoo. What I remembered for sure was that they said the best zoo was the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. I had just discovered the San Diego Zoo and thought it was the best zoo in the world, without, almost, any evidence and I wanted to see any zoo that was supposed to be even better. I did see it soon after and I was unimpressed (and a little dumbfounded). I’ve been wanting to see it again but, during the interim, I began to wonder if I had misremembered the whole thing. I tried looking it up on the internet a couple of times but couldn’t find anything.

The strange thing about the internet, however, is that, as time goes by, more old stuff rather than less old stuff ends up there. I couldn’t find the Sports Illustrated article but Google did lead me to an article in the January-February 1977 issue of American Education that discussed the Sports Illustrated article. Whenever I get a chance, I complain about local museums wanting to have a second or third class Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg rather than first-class local artists. Ironically, I didn’t appreciate that this nature museum is doing exactly that. It’s sort of embarrassing and it makes me wonder how many other times I’ve missed the point. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum has no elephants or howler monkeys, it only has animals and plants that live near Tucson.

The site of the Museum is spectacular, even the drive to it is spectacular – once you leave the extended suburbs of Tucson – with the road winding over a low pass through a saguaro forest. Once we are at the Museum, the landscape seems to be in a natural environment and one of my first thoughts was that this area has a much richer – richer as in more plants and animals- environment than at home. But that is an illusion, this is really a distilled version of the local environment that is made breathtaking by the backdrop of the Avra Valley basin.

One of the downsides to civilization and its accouterments is that it covers up the natural environment. Travel to a city as small as Memphis or an even smaller city, like Chatanooga, and you don’t see the landscape. Even if you go to a local park, it is hard to get an idea of what the land was like before it was covered with our “improvements”. Tucson is different and every place should have a similar Natural Museum. In addition to the great site and lots of local plants and animals, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum has a terrific Birds of Prey show. The day we were there, they had three different kinds of raptors demonstrating three different hunting styles; Peregrine Falcons which cruise the area at ultra-high speeds, Barn Owls which quietly hunt alone, and Harris’s Hawks which hunt as a group. All of them were untethered – except for the golden handcuff of free meals – and they were captivating.

If the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum were all that Tucson had to offer, that would be enough but it also has the stunning Mission San Xavier del Bac and a vibrant art scene. The Mission was founded in 1692 but, the current building – in a sort of primitive, baroque style – wasn’t built until 1740. The only art gallery we had time to see, before hotting the road, was the Etherton Gallery, a suburb photography gallery but we plan on coming back (soon, I hope).