JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· November 10, 2020

She Lived Her Dream…

Night before last, in the uncanny way of the unconscious, I woke up thinking about a woman I hadn’t seen in 50 years. In the morning, I Googled her name and was directed to her obituary. It wasn’t that she was a great beauty or broke my heart, but the news is haunting me. We knew each other for a short time when we were starting to grow into the people we would become. Then, we went our separate ways.

Judith Devereux Fayard and I met in Manhattan in 1967. We were both new to the city. She transferred from a Time/Life job in Los Angeles to one in New York, and I left a law firm in LA to be a Pan Am pilot at JFK. I knew her as Judy then, but prefer to think of her now as Judith, the whip smart Catholic-school girl from Mobile who became a Parisian journalist/editor celebrated for her no-nonsense editorial chops and chic fashion sense.

My girlfriend knew her first, but soon the three of us and a few of Judith’s colleagues at Life were hanging out in what Kurt Vonnegut would have called a karass, a network of like-minded people. In those days there were only two ways to live in New York. one was to be rich and the other to live like a student. We lived like students – busses and subways, shared apartments, free plays, concerts in Central Park, chamber music at The Cloisters, and Ladies Night at bars with no cover charge.

Judith shared her geography with two other originals – she and Truman Capote were both born in New Orleans but grew up in Alabama and, like Jimmy Buffett, her high school years were lived in Mobile. She was whip smart and ambitious – a National Merit Scholar in high school and Phi Beta Kappa in college – and took the job with Time/Life in LA as a first step in her pursuit of a serious career in journalism.

I lost the connection around 1970, about the same time she wangled a temporary assignment in Paris. She stayed there as bureau chief until Life closed its door in 1990. She followed up as a freelancer until she was landed the job of Editor in Chief at Women’s Wear Daily. Later gigs followed with European Travel and Life, Where Magazine, France Today and as an arts contributor to the Wall Street Journal.

In New York we spent hours talking books, art, and how much we both loved Paris. She knew she wanted to live there and made it happen. Shortly after her move to Paris I moved to Berlin, but when I tried to find her Paris address I ran into a series of blind alleys. Pre-Google it wasn’t that easy, but I wish I had tried harder. It would have been fun to compare notes.

I don’t think she ever married though I know men found her very attractive – always au courant and stylish. I picture her as one of those women who get better looking as they grow older. She had the bones and good skin that are a prerequisite. There is an online picture of her as a contestant on The Dating Game from the time I knew her. She’s cute but hadn’t yet grown into her looks. A mutual friend in Paris is looking for a picture of the older Judith. I hope she finds it. It might help close the circle.

She died of lung cancer a year ago in August after a six-year battle with the disease. During those years she assisted French cancer researchers and worked with immuno-therapists in clinical trials for small cell lung cancer. She wasn’t one to give up easily.

She and I were never involved romantically, just good friends, but I can’t seem to shake off the news of her passing. This morning I heard a Leonard Cohen song that pinged for me. Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye was written in 1967, the year Judith and I met, and it sums up how I feel about not having had a chance to say goodbye. Writing this helps, but it also makes me wish we had reconnected. She was a woman who actually got to live her dream.

RIP Judith Fayard. RIP.

Paris photo courtesy of Judith’s friend Harriet Welty Rochefort

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Categories : Art, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Friendship, Music, Personal/Family, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure, Writing, Writing

Posted by jdbernard743

· November 2, 2020

· 3 Comments

“High Hopes…”

Last night I watched an interview with David Michaelis, whose new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt is #8 on the Amazon best seller list and #1 on both the Women in History and Women’s Biography lists. It seems remarkable for a book about a woman who died 58 years ago and who described herself as a “homemaker.” But, from 1948 through 1959 she was voted the most respected woman in the world in an annual Gallup Poll.

But, this morning my Velcro brain woke up thinking about the lyrics of an inspirational novelty song she “sang” in 1959, when she appeared on a Frank Sinatra special. The song, High Hopes, which Sinatra also sang in the movie A Hole in the Head, is about how an inspired ant can do big things with the right motivation. It feels just right and a worthy subject for my last pre-election post.

And , speaking of high hopes, Michelle Obama, another First Lady voted “most admired woman in the world” (2020) has implored us all to have high hopes by saying “When they go low, we go high.”

So, on that note and “high-hoping” to end this murderous election cycle on a positive note I implore you to think positive thoughts as you listen to Sinatra sing the song and then hear him interview with Mrs. Roosevelt where she recites the lyrics to High Hopes aka “the Rubber Tree Song.”

Here’s the Sinatra version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S94Bh3Qez9o

Then, Frank and Mrs. Roosevelt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0-IaIWwHCk

Footnote: There are two recent biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt. Both are well researched and readable.

David Michealis’ Eleanor published in October 2020. Here’s the 2020 Book TV interview with the author: https://www.c-span.org/video/?477033-1/eleanor

Blanche Wiesen Cooke’s Eleanor Roosevelt, (Volume 3, 1939 – 1962 The War Years and After) published in 2016. Here’s a link to her 2016 Book TV interview; https://www.c-span.org/video/?417600-1/blanche-wiesen-cook-discusses-eleanor-roosevelt-volume-3

Next time you’re found
With your chin on the ground
There a lot to be learned
So look around

Just what makes that little old ant
Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can’t
Move a rubber tree plant,

But he’s got high hopes
He’s got high hopes
He’s got high apple pie
In the sky hopes

So any time your gettin’ low
‘Stead of lettin’ go
Just remember that ant
Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant
Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant
Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

Oops! There goes another rubber tree plant…

Categories : Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· October 29, 2020

· 1 Comment

Public Art and the Homeless…

This is public art (and science). Like all good art it’s unique and thought provoking. It sits in one of the less visited corners of Magnuson Park (the old Sand Point Naval Air Station) in Seattle.

Briefly… the artist, Perri Lynch, crafted 12 limestone pillars along a 1- kilometer line called the Sand Point Calibration Baseline where surveyors’ measure, test, and calibrate their equipment. There are about a dozen such baselines in the State of Washington, but some local surveyors worried that this one would be destroyed by unknowing visitors. They lobbied for public art monument to raise awareness and prevent its accidental destruction.

The Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs and Seattle Public Utilities commissioned the work in 2007 with $40,000 from SPU’s One Percent for Art fund. A surveyors association and a private survey-equipment company also contributed.

Its nickname is Linehenge; a 10-foot-wide, kilometer-long swath straight through Magnuson Park from south to north, it goes unnoticed by thousands of people every day. The accuracy of the Sand Point line is said to be within half a millimeter. Lynch also played with perspective, doubling the distance between one pillar to the next in the line with each one having a small peep hole sighted along the line.

M and I discovered it on a walk through the park earlier this week and wanted to know more. It has its own Wikipedia page with information about the art and artist – but it doesn’t mention that several of the pillars have been defaced with graffiti “tags.” It pisses me off. I don’t get it but it’s only the latest example of the rant/rage response I feel when I see graffiti on the side of monuments, buildings, homes, and road signs. I’m probably making more of it than I should, but it seems disrespectful and a symptom of something bigger. Probably a more complicated social problem – one that may reveal a something about me I’d rather not look closely at.

That problem, as I see it, is the way Seattle parks, playgrounds, and city sidewalks are being taken over by the homeless.

My heart goes out to Seattle’s ever-growing homeless population. I know it’s not their choice to live in squalor without running water and proper sanitation. On the other hand, I hate the idea that parent’s can’t feel safe taking their children to a playground filled with homeless tents and vagrant-looking men? On Thursday around noon, M and I watched a man urinate in the center of a circle of tents at Albert Davis Park in Lake City.

For two weeks, we’ve been driving around to see various encampments. Over the last 3-5 years we’ve watched them grow along the sides of I-5, as garbage and litter spread along the hillsides, and tents appeared under the freeway at James Street and along Alaskan Way. Now their tents are taking over city parks and rundown RV’s, are parked in clusters near Fred Meyer in Ballard and the stadiums in SODO. The police have given up enforcing the health and safety ordinances. It’s the Wild West again.

I came of age as a student in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, but the Seattle City Council makes Berkeley look like a bunch of rubes – defunding the police, forcing the resignation of Chief Carmen Best, dismantling a specially trained Navigation Team, composed of outreach workers paired with Seattle Police Department (SPD) personnel that connected unsheltered people to housing and critical resources, and bitching at the mayor.

What does the Sand Point Calibration Baseline have to do with the homeless problem? Very little, but I see its defacing graffiti as a symptom of the bigger problem. Our roads and bridges are falling apart, roadsides and median strips are untended, garbage covers I-5 sidehills, and the homeless are urinating and defecating in city parks. Government has let us down and we no longer trust that it will be there for us.

Income inequality is tearing at the social fabric. No one wants to pay taxes; the poor can’t afford to, the rich don’t have to, and those who control the public purse are hiding behind the rubric of “fiscal responsibility.” Now they’re blaming the pandemic for their inaction and our plight. City, county, and state coffers are drained and Seattle looks more and more like Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic cities with roving nihilistic provocateurs providing fodder for the Trump law and order campaign.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had Bill and Melinda’s resources? They almost conquered smallpox, but even they can’t do what we need government writ large to do. They’re doing their part though QAnon is even throwing shade their way – another example of lack of respect and trust.

M and I would have been great philanthropists. We know it. We talk about it. We fantasize. But, we will do what we can within the system. We’ll vote. We’ll express our opinion. We’ll make charitable contributions. We’ll exhort our friends to participate, and we’ll write blogs and letters.

After looking at a dozen homeless camps, I had this thought; at the height of New York’s Covid-19 spike in April, a 68-bed field hospital was erected in Central Park. and here in Seattle a 250-bed non-Covid field hospital was established at Century Link Field. Ohers were established in El Paso and other locations across the country. And, they were erected in a matter of days – not months.

Yes, they were an emergency solution to overstressed hospital facilities, but couldn’t they also be deployed to temporarily house the homeless? Wouldn’t it help if we provided them shelter through the winter? Wouldn’t safer, sanitary housing be better than a trashy tarp covered hovel on the sidewalk? Providing shelter doesn’t address the larger problems of mental health, drug dependence, health care, and other social services but it would be a place to start. Shelter first and then work on the rest. We need to look out for each other.

“Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm”

Bob Dylan (Shelter from the Storm)

It’s worth thinking about.

Epilogue: I wrote the blog post ten days ago. Yesterday this article appeared in the Seattle Times. Apparently, the idea was not so far fetched.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-king-county-open-large-congregate-shelter-with-salvation-army

Categories : Art, Ethics, News and Media, Personal/Family, Politics, Quarantine Time, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· October 21, 2020

· 3 Comments

True Believers…

In 1951 Eric Hoffer, a San Francisco longshoreman, wrote The True Believer, one of the seminal works of 20^th century political philosophy. In 1964, he left the docks to become a “research” professor at UC Berkeley. I was there, and by then he and the book were legendary.

The book analyzes historical mass movements, including Christianity, Communism, and National Socialism–their causes, how they arise, who joins, and the social psychology of their challenge to the status quo.

This morning I thought of Hoffer and The True Believer as I watched a CBS reporter interview Pennsylvanians waiting to cast their vote for Donald Trump.

One of the mysteries surrounding the Trump “army” is their support for a candidate who by all measures has done nothing to maintain or improve their quality of life–healthcare, employment opportunities, wages, or standard of living in his four years in office.

Their responses made no sense to me, until I imposed The True Believer template. Hoffer lays out the elements of a mass movement, whether it’s Mussolini’s fascism, Lenin’s Bolshevism, Hitler’s National Socialism, or Jim Jones’ Jonestown as follows:

It needs a leader who capitalizes on frustration
It is grievance based
It is rooted in a feeling of rejection
It blames others for the problem
It needs a common enemy
It is intolerant because hate unifies.
Its followers are fanatical and enthusiastic
Followers adopt slogans
Followers need faith, a holy cause
Followers are fearful of free choice
Followers are often willing to die for the cause

For four years, I tried to understand the Trump follower. I wanted to believe Americans would see through the Trump façade, to see the emperor without his clothes. The fault was mine. I failed to see the true mass movement connection. I couldn’t believe an ignorant hollow grifter had what it takes to inspire a mass movement. I was wrong and I wasted a lot of time thinking the minds of his followers could be changed. The Trump “movement” is a minority movement, but it is fanatical and enthusiastic, and it will show up at the polls.

Eric Hoffer points out that “It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men “have ‘something worth fighting for’ they do not feel like fighting. People who live full worth-while lives are usually not ready to die for their own interests, nor for their country…” but the presidential election of 2020 not normal. Your worth-while lives are in danger. I’m not asking you to die but I am asking you to go an extra mile in order to vote. The Biden-Harris voters need to generate the same enthusiasm as the Trump movement. It’s too important. We can’t be complacent.

On Sunday I received two remarkable publications that address the Trump phenomenon and the mass movement it spawned. The first publication was the Sunday New York Times including a special Opinion section entitled End Our National Crisis: The Case Against Donald Trump. The second, a collection of essays published in The Atlantic magazine called The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover. Together, they distill the chaos of the last four years under Donald J. Trump’s presidency and make the case for his defeat on November 3^rd.

If we survive, and I believe we will, it will take generations to repair the damage caused by the Trump phenomenon. In 2020 alone, 215,000 Americans have died from the deadly virus he failed to manage and protect them from.

As the 2020 election approaches, the virus spreads, vigilantes and militias proliferate, Antifa-squads pillage and burn, voters line-up, unemployment grows, renters are evicted, homeless campsites fill public parks, city streets and the sides of freeways, the Senate rushes a Supreme Court nominee through the confirmation process while Congress dithers over an aid package. It’s Mad Max meets The Apprentice.

Immigrants have been banned. Families separated. Children as young as 5 taken from their mothers. Others caged. Residents deported. Green card issuance has been halted; so have H-1B visas for skilled technology workers, H-4 visas for their spouses, H-2B visas for seasonal workers, L-1 visas for transferred managers/executives, and J-1 visas for interns and work study visas. Educational visas are limited. Thousands of asylum seekers remain stranded in Mexico. Yesterday, it was revealed that 545 children are still separated from their families and Trump’s government has been unable to trace and reunite them with their parents.

To this American, two things are clear: this is not the country I thought it was and there is a clear and present danger if Donald Trump is re-elected President of the United States. Four years ago, I tried to support the American dream but woke up hallucinating.

The carnage and incompetence of the Trump presidency is unacceptable. I don’t understand it. It’s an aberration. It’s some kind of herniated kink in the body politic. The question is will we turn him out? Don’t be among those people Eric Hoffer noted were living such a “worth-while life” that they let a mass movement take over the country. Get off your butt and vote. It’s your responsibility. Don’t take it for granted. Vote!!!!

Categories : Books, Ethics, News and Media, Politics

Posted by jdbernard743

· October 13, 2020

· No Comments

The New Stress-Test…

Stress has various meanings. Some are personal, some material. The personal involves a feeling of emotional or physical tension. Material stress refers to external or internal forces on an object. We all feel the personal kind at times—even normal times—but these are not normal times. Stress is overwhelming us now. Pandemic stress. Racial stress. Economic stress. Healthcare stress. Education stress. Upcoming election stress.

Back in 2008, following the collapse of the US economy we were introduced to a new application of the material kind of stress. Combined with test it morphed from noun to compound verb, and rather than denoting a condition of personal health or material pressure it became checklist of steps used by regulators to measure the stability of banks. The Federal Reserve, US Treasurer, regulators, bankers, and Congress needed a new vocabulary to cope with the financial devastation and prevent a repeat of the crisis. “Stress test” became the nomenclature used to measure the safety of our banking institutions. In July of 2010 Congress enacted the bipartisan Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to prevent a reoccurrence.

The mechanics of stress-testing the banks is not relevant here. Capital reserves were increased, commercial and investment banking activities separated, and other protective measures instituted. Since then Dodd-Frank has been tested, tweaked, and reworked. So far, so good. I bring it up to suggest the concept might be useful in discussing the state of our democracy today, because there are similarities

James Madison articulated and defended the new nation’s system of checks and balances in Federalist Paper 51 as incorporated in the US Constitution. The founders gave great thought to the balance of the new government’s institutions. The language is comprehensive but not granular. It includes checks on executive power but never anticipated an Attorney General intent on making the executive branch dominant in the institutional triad. Nor did they foresee a greedy, corrupt and ignorant executive. It presumed he or she would be an educated leader with a good faith commitment to Constitutional principles and the welfare of the nation’s citizens.

Just as relaxation of banking regulations destabilized those institutions through corrupt and abusive practices, the Trump administration’s corruption, abrogation of treaties, embrace of dictators, attacks on Congress and the judiciary, abuse of the pardon power, and attacks on the electoral process has raised questions about the stability of our own government institutions.

For the past four years, American democracy has undergone an ad hoc stress-test. Mr. Trump has bypassed the legislative branch to rule by Executive Order – banning Muslims, closing the border to amnesty seekers, separating children from their parents, rescinding the designation of protected lands, stealing funds from the Defense budget to build his Wall, and opening wilderness areas to oil and gas drilling.

Republicans told us in 1999 that banking regulations were burdensome and unnecessary. The banks, they claimed, were capable of regulating themselves. It wasn’t true but Congress bought it, repealed Glass-Steagall and let the gypsies into the palace. The rhetoric hasn’t changed—only the subject has changed–we have many examples of the need for regulation. Voting rights. Environmental regulation. Immigration. Consumer protection. Gun regulation. Carbon emissions. These areas are the responsibility of the legislative branch, but the majority leader of the Senate has deferred to the executive branch and blocked legislation in these areas.

The three co-equal branches of government are no longer co-equal. The executive is now “dominant” (to use one of Mr. Trump’s favorite words.) Congress is stalled and hunkered down in its respective camps, while we await Senate confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. If confirmed, the lopsided conservative majority will likely become a “handmaiden” to the executive branch.

November 3, 2020 is Election Day.

President Trump has told us he will not accept the results if he is not reelected and will not commit to a peaceful transfer of power if results show Joe Biden is the winner. This is unprecedented but not unexpected given his past rhetoric about election fraud. It’s impossible to predict how this will play out. Will he refuse to leave the White House? Will federal marshals be dispatched to enforce the results and perp walk the 45^th president from the residence? Will the “Trump Army” the ragtag assembly of right-wing militias take up arms to defend him? It’s crazy to even mention scenarios like this, but as he says, “It is what it is.”

As with almost everything in the past four years, we are in uncharted waters. It is likely that when this “stress-test” is over, coordination between the branches will resume, albeit in a altered state. We may see an effort to reform the Electoral College. We may get legislation to deal with foreign interference in our elections. We might see election security reform at the state level including some uniformity in mail-in balloting procedures. We may also see an effort to set protocols that establish when the President’s is unfit to continue his duties under the mandates of the 25^thAmendment.

The Trump presidency has shown us how much the functioning of the American “experiment” depends on its participants abiding by the rules i.e. understanding the system and acting in good faith for the benefit of all Americans. Donald Trump did neither and the consequence is a stress-test of our institutions and norms. I pray it holds together.