Novels, short stories, music, let's do lunch!

My Night at à la Margo

November 18, 2024

The main ballroom is a sea of irresistible blondes. Only the constant clatter of helicopters overhead reminds us that this is basically a political gathering. I am the guest of Fred Limerick. Since Palm Beach County limits the number of country club memberships to 500, I am damn lucky to know someone who got in at its founding, when memberships cost a paltry $100,000 each. After January 20, the price for one of the four available slots will be a cool million. Fred, an investment banker par excellence, could pay even that amount without blinking, but for me, it’s flat-out great getting to see the ravenous denizens of Grumpworld up close and personal.

Who knows what may come of it? Fortune favors the bold. After all, Richard “Swinging Dick” Gates has become Grump’s choice for Attorney General and his chief qualification is his fawning adulation of El Grumpo.

Because so much liberal mouthwash is written daily about the 45th / 47th president, Fred has created a second persona for yours truly. Not “writer,” God forbid, but “Kevin who owns a jet ski franchise.” Interestingly, I even find myself taking orders for jet skis! I hadn’t realized how hot the jet ski market is right now. Since Kawasaki, Yamaha and Sea-Doo are manufactured in Japan, Canada and Mexico, they can all look forward to heavy tariffs in 2025. The situation will be even more dire for Chinese jet skis whose luxury and horsepower hit above their weight. Price quotes available.

“Mah name’s Pamela. Ah’m the guest of Franklin Pierce Jenkins,” a delectable blonde dish assures me, twinkling before my eyes. Me like!

Excitedly, I confide that “I have actually hung banners from highway overpasses together with a descendant of President Franklin Pierce.” I am careful not to reveal that the banners in question were for Kabala Hrdass.

“I expect to get appointed acting principal assistant under press secretary,” Pamela assures me, smiling ferociously and rubbing up against me. She smells of jasmine.

May the force be with us! May the odds be ever in our favor!  Audentes Fortuna frivoli, in a world where Grump has nominated Tulsa Oklahoma as Director of National Intelligence, anything is possible. The president has 4,000 political appointments to review and fill, of which only 1,200 require Senate confirmation. A sordid game plan quickly forms in my head: There is an island in the Caribbean which housed a Swedish colony from 1784 to 1878 and maintains vestiges of Sweden even today. I want to be named ambassador to Saint Barthélemy!          

A paid videographer takes our picture.

“Kevin! Duty calls!” Fred declares, leading me away. Having rescued me from the cheetah, he hands me a flute of champagne. “The man in the gray suit is Sandor Granger, chief headhunter for the Grump team,” he instructs me. “For him, you are a conservative speechwriter. Sandor! Here’s the dude I mentioned to you.”

Opportunity knocks. Mr. Granger and I exchange pleasantries and just as I provide a sound bite of serious commentary— “The deportation of illegal farm workers will drive up the price of fruits and veggies”— he abruptly hands me his empty glass and napkin, excuses himself and rapidly joins some people on the other side of the room.

Laughing, Fred comes over and says “Well, that could have gone better.”

I hand the glass and napkin to a waiter who is passing with a silver tray of bite-size canapés.

Fred and I went to college together. “Seriously, Kevin,” he warns me, “everyone here is on the make, so you really need to come up with a conspiracy theory or three that sing loud enough to be heard above the background noise.”

Shit! That’s gonna be hard. Going out to the lounge, I take a seat in an overstuffed chair, pull out my phone and google “Chinese malware.” I definitely like the sound of “CryptoLocker ransomware” from 2013. My adaptation: “The FuckYou virus is programmed to overload and shut down all cell phone traffic worldwide on January 22nd. It will replace your account with an AI-generated clone, running up your monthly phone bill ten-fold.”

Reentering the ballroom, I reconnoiter my surroundings. “Hi!” I greet a cluster of happy campers in tuxedos. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help but overhear what you just said. The FuckYou virus is programmed to overload and shut down all cell phone traffic worldwide on January 22nd. It will replace your account with an AI-generated clone, running up your monthly phone bill ten-fold.”

“You’re kidding!” the ladies gasp. “Are you joking?”

“I got it direct from a source at the Pentagon and confirmed by yustyoking.com. The virus is expected to do $50 billion in damages and block Starlink until a heady ransom is paid to Black Bear, the Russkie hacker collective who have created it. If our government doesn’t pay up within 24 hours, the virus will unleash drone attacks on our infrastructure. Or so I’m told.”

“Sounds serious,” one of the men agrees, taking out a cigar and rolling it between his fingers. “We can make you National Science Advisor in charge of kinetic energy development. Now If you’ll excuse me, I’m going out on the terrace for a smoke.”

“Yeah, sure, great!” I tell him and suddenly, I am the life of the party, as more and more people come over to hear my predictions for the republic. “The Internet of Things is our future,” I instruct. “Repeat after me, I will not post personal data on TikTok.” Serving up platitudes and ever more outrageous B.S. by the second— latex space helmets, North Korean mind control, Eon Muskrat for president in 2028— I can feel the sweat droplets running down my back.

“Take me home,” a bitchy voice brays in my ear. Turning, I find it’s Pamela, guest of Franklin Pierce Jenkins. Standing next to me, she sparkles, laughing luxuriously. An easy way out of my new-found, risk-filled popularity, I ask everyone’s forbearance and march her to the hat check. “It’s a mink stole,” she exclaims, handing me her ticket. Pamela’s wedding ring is an enormous gold band encrusted with many diamonds. Impressive.

I tip the hat check girl behind the counter $20 and help Pamela into her stole. “Where duh y’all live?” she drawls, wrinkling her nose knowingly.

“I’m staying with a friend. George,” I tell her.

“Wish I had somebody named George offering me to stay over,” she replies meaningfully. “Where is this place you’re staying?”

“On the other side of the intracoastal waterway,” I tell her. Since Fred isn’t charging me room and board, I tip the parking attendant a cool $50. Taking the money, he grabs my ticket and hustles to deliver my late model rent-a-car.

“Ah’m vurry happily married!” Pamela chirps, hopping into the vehicle like a teenager.

“I’m glad to hear it,” I agree.

“Still, now that you’ve aroused my curiosity, I wanna see for myself where you’re stayin’.”

“This I can do,” I assure her, only to be stymied by the bridge which is up, stalling traffic. Brown and impenetrable, it looks as insurmountable as the Berlin Wall.

A local, Pamela isn’t surprised or annoyed. Turning in the bucket seat and draping a leg in my lap, she leans against her door and laughs, rubbing my crotch with her foot. “Take off my shoe,” she suggests.

I unstrap the shoe. Squirming, she twists her foot for maximum traction and velocity. Definitely fun AF, she has my full attention.

Eventually the bridge returns to Earth. Using the GPS, I drive us to Fred’s place and park on the street. “Why don’t you park in the driveway?” Pam asks.

“I want to avoid blocking the driveway. For when Fred gets home.”

“I thought his name is George.”

“George, Fred, interchangeable,” I suggest, making her laugh out loud.

“Show me the guest room,” she declares bossily.

For someone who looks like a Christmas tree decked in ornaments, her hair is like a Brillo pad and her skin feels hot and clammy. All this and we are not canoodling.

When Fred gets home, he finds us in the kitchen, drinking red wine. “Oh, yeah, you again,” he observes, only slightly amused. Later, when I prepare to drive her home, Fred tells Pamela “Once is plenty enough. Don’t come back.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she huffs angrily.

I cannot say the two of them like each other.

Not among the chosen for a cabinet position in the new administration, I fly home to Maryland the very next day.                                               

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humor, political satire

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Why Trump?

November 7, 2024

This election wasn’t really about Donald Trump. He was always there, a storm cloud rumbling anger and grievance, but at least everyone knew who he is and what he represents. There were few surprises. Call it the white backlash.

If you are unhappy with Trump’s election, I blame the Democrats’ inability to field a decent candidate.

Loyalty and laziness.

Out of loyalty, the Democrats kept hidden the fact that Biden should be in an Old Folks Home where he can get the care he needs.

Out of laziness, they adopted the old saw that a sitting vice president should get the chance to run for president if the incumbent withdraws from the race.

The Biden-Trump debate took place at the end of June. The Democratic Convention was held in Chicago in the middle of August. Biden insisted he would not withdraw, but I expected the party leadership to investigate alternatives and have an open convention.

The problem was finding a blemish-free candidate. All nice people and dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, each came with baggage. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is terrific, but America is not going to elect a woman president. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is a gem, but America is not going to elect a Jewish president. A dozen others lacked sufficient name recognition for such a short campaign. So everybody fell in line behind Kamala Harris.

A Hail Mary Pass, she had three strikes against her from the outset. A woman. A black. A California lib. We see that clearly because Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote by a wide margin. The voters rejected the candidacy of Kamala Harris. Period.

America is not racist, but after eight years of being under Obama’s spell, Americans were still smarting over a black president.

Bad timing, this was the wrong election for the Dems to go into the laboratory and cook up a hybrid candidate.

God have mercy on the USA!

     

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The Wasteland

October 8, 2024

There’s a pertinent backstory to the situation in Gaza. In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Fifteen years later, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. In 2000, in conjunction with negotiations brokered by the USA, the Palestinians began a lobbying effort to get Israel to relinquish control of Gaza. “Oh,” claimed the Palestinians in Gaza, “if only the yoke of Israeli oppression is lifted from our necks, we shall make of Gaza a Garden of Eden.” The Israelis left Gaza in 2005, bodily dragging protesting settlers back across the border.

Remember that the Gaza Strip lies alongside the Mediterranean Sea, a very beautiful, idyllic location for beach resorts. Members of the Palestinian diaspora in the USA envisioned creating of Gaza their very own Palestinian resort city with luxury hotels, pristine beaches, swimming pools and casinos. A splendid competitor to Monte Carlo, the gambling alone could finance the whole shebang. But these visionaries and dreamers hadn’t reckoned with their brothers and sisters on-site in Gaza.

As soon as the Israelis withdrew, the very first thing the Gazans did was to angrily dynamite the greenhouses, generators, guard barracks, police stations and any other infrastructure left behind by the Israelis. “We’ll show you!” they shouted across the border.

Next they elected a pious religious leadership who issued edicts based on the Holy Quran: Unmarried men and women cannot bathe together, so hotel swimming pools and pristine beaches are forbidden. Dancing, drinking and socializing between unmarried men and women is strictly forbidden. Gambling is a grave sin, absolutely forbidden and punishable by banishment!  

There was a family Tivoli down by the beach, with a Ferris Wheel, a Merry-Go-Round, some other rides for kids. “Certainly you cannot forbid us the pleasure of a family afternoon outing between a man, his wife and their children!” demanded less pious Gazans. With great reluctance and a lot of grumbling, the clerics agreed not to dynamite the Tivoli. They didn’t. Instead, one night, men wearing black hoods showed up with wire cutters, kerosene, dynamite and fuses. Breaking down the gate, they blew up the Tivoli.

A Palestinian-American arrived. Informed of these previous goings-on, he applied very carefully for a permit to build a water park. A simple green park with sprinklers, maybe a water slide. All very low-key. A high wall down the middle with identical facilities, including bathhouses, on both sides, one side for women, one side for men. Strict decorum. Financed by the rich, returning Palestinian out of his own pocket. So, of course, the authorities said “yes.” There was wiggle room for some baksheesh, and if this project went well, “the American” was willing to build apartment houses with financing from fellow émigrés in the diaspora. And it came to pass that he built the water park! And it was good. After several weeks, the clerics called him to their office and told him, “There are reports of unmarried men and women socializing at the entrance to the water park. Such activity is strictly forbidden by the Quran. We are retracting your permit and destroying this den of iniquity!” End of the water park.

All of this comedy took place in the first few years after emancipation.

The Israelis have a relationship with the Palestinians that has been in existence since before the State of Israel. Israeli technology and Arab labor. Whether in agriculture or industry, factory or street-cleaning, the Israelis have always been willing to hire Arabs and pay them well enough to make it worth their time and effort. This cross-border employment has been a feature of the West Bank and Gaza Strip right up until October 2023. Every morning, Palestinians with authorized employment documents traveled into border towns and agricultural collectives in Israel and put in a full day’s work, returning across the border in the evening with their pay in Israeli shekels, a strong currency with a lot of buying power.

There were still angry, frustrated Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. While the Gazans are wildly emotional in their seething hatred, it is the Palestinians of the West Bank who are most deadly, declaring a First Intifada or Uprising in December 1987 and then a Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. There were Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli towns and cities, stabbings, drive-by shootings of Israeli soldiers at bus stops and other signs of Palestinian fury. In recent years, the Gazans would arrive at the border fence every Friday afternoon and burn automobile tires, blackening the sky.

For their part, the Israelis tried to solve the Palestinian problem. They elected left-wing politician Ehud Barak as Prime Minister on a party platform that focused on peace with the Palestinians. Barak tried. The Americans tried. In the year 2000 at Camp David, they offered Yasser Arafat land for a State of Palestine, the proverbial two-state solution, brokered by the White House to show good faith. Each day began with a recitation of the previous day’s agreements, each of which Arafat saw as a stepping stone to even further concessions. “We want our land back,” he bleated endlessly and who could blame him? Nothing was ever going to be enough because, after all, Yasser was holding out for the entire State of Palestine as it was in 1946, from Nahariyya in the north to Aqaba in the south, from Tel Aviv by the Mediterranean Sea to Jerusalem and the Jordan River. “If I sign this, when I get back to Ramallah, I am a dead man,” he is reported to have said on the last day, at which point President Clinton had steam coming out of his ears.

“Fuck it!” said the Israelis when Ehud Barak came home empty-handed. Forsaking endless, worthless peace initiatives, the Israelis elected Binyamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud Party as Prime Minister and began expanding settlements into the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Gazans elected Hamas over rival political party Fatah in January 2006. They elected Hamas. Their choice. In June 2007, Hamas took control of the enclave, chasing the last Fatah officials out of Gaza. Remember that the Gazans chose Hamas, a point worth considering when 6,000 of their shock troops breached the border fence on October 7, 2023, raped, burned, beheaded, pillaged and massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 240. Not your usual political activity.    

Imagine for a moment how Gaza would look today if all the billions of dollars that Hamas has spent on tunnels and arms had instead been used to facilitate the existence of ordinary people. Decades of lament, “Boo hoo hoo, we have no bread, our children are starving, it’s the fault of the Israelis!” finally have a plausible explanation. The aid money has been used to build the 450 miles of tunnels under Gaza and stockpile the thousands of missiles and weapons in their arsenal.

The Gazans are suffering, their towns and cities flattened. Famine and disease run rampant. They brought it all upon themselves. 

    

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Wow and When

September 11, 2024

BEATLES time! When Paul and Ringo, the last two of the Fab Four, released their latest (and last?) Beatles single “Now and Then”— featuring the ghost of John Lennon on vocal— fanboys Mutte & Clive in realPfft felt inspired. Mutte composed his take on the Beatles’ music while Clive donned his bowler hat. Say wot?  

“Wow and When” follows the Liverpool lads from their early days playing the clubs and hawking their songs into the drug-fueled era of Sgt. Pepper, the yoga-influenced White Album and ending with the headaches and heartbreak during the documentary filming of the “Let It Be” album. As Paul said during the recording sessions, “It’s like ah’s. You’ll get it!”

Wow and When Lyrics

One, two, three, four

You’re listening to the World Service

The mayor is very excited to welcome the boys

They sing and they dance, fully clothed

That’s the way of it

Playing the cloob

Nyes, the boys… the band…

Fresh-faced boys playing music

Yes, that’s them. They’re clothed in suits

Stiff upper lip

They live on cheese butties and mustard bangers

Some say it’s rock & roll, others say it’s rhythm & blues

A fine line between the two

It’s dead easy, y’know. It’s like ah’s… You’ll get it

Not to worry, they’ll be toppermost of the poppermost

Sorry, ye cann go in thar, the fahr marshall says there’s 300 birds in the cloob

Hey, all!

Then they’re riding around in a Mick motorcar

Aye, ridin’ around in the van

Yes-s-s and why not?

Sorry, gulls, he’s no longer available

Yes, he’s all tied up in knots over tying the knot

Rooty tooty Judy

She says she doesn’t understand what they’re doing half the time

Swinging London

Say, wot?

Aye, Abbey Road forever!

I’ve got blisters on me fingers!

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My Broken Remix

August 28, 2024

Welcome to the world of AI-generated sights and sounds! The Suno music app at Microsoft Copilot— based on the prompt “Create a song about a broken tooth”— generated a complete track, including a British Jamaican singer, musical accompaniment and lyrics. Sweet! The boys added a mad dentist on the left and a female dental assistant on the right.

Graphic artist Kuny used Bing Image Creator DALL-E for the artwork. Prompt: “Show a handsome man and woman kissing.” AI rules!

That was in March 2024. Never satisfied, Mutte & Clive decided on a glorious meltdown of a remix, incorporating Clive’s London narrator sitting in his fave armchair reciting a limerick about a pirate on the high seas and his pet parrot Meanie. “Squawk! Pieces of eight!” Lesson learned: Never let a live parrot into a recording studio.

Not to be outdone, Kuny solarized the record cover.

Love that funky music!

Kev

My Broken Tooth (Remix)

It tasted blood on my tongue

When our lips collided, something came undone

A rush of pain, a moment’s hesitation

But I couldn’t resist the thrill of your sensation (ooh-yeah)

You left a piece of you in my broken tooth

A bittersweet reminder of our reckless youth

Every time I smile, I’m reminded of the past

But I wouldn’t change a thing, those memories last (yeah-yeah-yeah)

There once was a pirate on the high seas

Who brought world commerce to its knees

Ruthless and toothless

His gums were quite useless

Like a fool he lived on gruel

While his parrot named Meanie

Feasted on papaya and zucchini

 

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BAM! Goes America 

July 14, 2024

It’s a fact, I get zero pleasure out of an assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump. As a concept, it sucks. Totally. Ever since the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, political violence has cast a shadow over my view of America. This is a violent country with too many guns. The courts do this, the courts do that, okaying bump stocks and finding gunmen acted in self-defense, but that doesn’t change the reality on the ground: School shootings and festival massacres lurk like a backdrop to our daily lives. Even with my military background, I find that every single one of these shootings makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I don’t wish to fuel conspiracy theories, but I do want to point out that there is a pattern among the perpetrators. Why should this lone-wolf shooting be any different from the others that preceded it? I expect that we will find:

The gunman acted alone.

The neighbors found the gunman to be quiet and withdrawn, hardly making a ripple in the social life of the neighborhood.

The gunman was white.

The gunman’s parents say he had become angry and depressed.

The gunman purchased his weapon at a gun show within the last three weeks.

When the authorities check his abode, they will find notebooks filled with angry rants.

The authorities will find angry rants online which the gunman posted on dark sites, but no one noticed as a tragedy unfolded.

Right now, the gunman’s motive remains unclear. We’ll see what the investigation reveals.

A typical speculation which I am already hearing is that Trump did this to himself to garner sympathy and votes. I disagree. Watching the video, you see how shocked the former president was. Getting shot came as very unwelcome news to him. It’s a hell of a note, but the raw drama of an assassination attempt will kick the Trump campaign into high gear.

 Looking at the photos, Trump now has his “Washington Crossing the Delaware” moment. Blood on his face, surrounded by Secret Service agents, an American flag waving in the background, he defiantly shakes his fist at his enemies. It’s a classic photo.

The press will focus on the gunman, while the real story is the reaction of Trump’s supporters. At the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the crowd immediately turned their fury on the reporters and television crews, blaming their coverage for this act of political violence.

When judging the level of an armed conflict, gunfire is an inflection point, leading to clear “before” and “after” scenarios. With the first shot fired, there is no putting the evil genie back in the lamp.

Even during the melee and destruction of the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, there was no gunfire. No shots were fired outside the Capitol, among the crowd. Police explained that they purposely avoided gunfire, since they knew that the demonstrators were armed and a gunfight would lead to a bloodbath.

This craven act in Pennsylvania could be the first shot in an escalating series of politically violent occurrences, as America struggles with its Wild West heritage.                     

Naturally, Trump and his supporters are angry. You don’t poke a stick at a tiger. There is the risk of violent reprisals.

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Tanz im der Straße

June 8, 2024

If you think I am going to make a pitch for a charitable donation, surprise!!!

Fuhgeddaboudit!

It’s June, summer is here and we’re dancing in the street. Why would I put a pall on glorious summer barbecues, refreshing days at the beach, even pool parties, over something as selfish— and shellfish— as a request that you, dear reader, give up your hard-earned cash for me, your dear writer?

Not only a writer, but a friend.

As the French say, “Don’t visit France, just send your money.”

I say, keep your money, behalte dein Geld, I am making a pitch for a charitable donut. Maybe an elevator pitch for a feature film. Wassup? Two minutes of monologue to sell a concept to risk-averse film moguls. Harvey Weinstein lives! Maybe he’s a bad guy, maybe he’s a good guy, but I love his movies.  

We at the Hinterland Relief Fund (often disturbingly confused with the Hitlerland Relief Fund, of which we are NOT affiliated) have asked Sylvia de Plathelovich— the Walter Cronkite of local news— to come out of retirement and join us poolside to paw through the mail, electronic posts and legal documents to HELP SAVE THE WORLD.

Nothing less.

Tanz im der Straße in German means “dance in the street.” But why limit ourselves to German? Tanz in Urdu means a sarcastic, mocking sneer.

Nothing less!

Shades of Afghanistan.

It might seem tone-deaf to solicit contributions for downtrodden peoples in Africa, Asia and the Far East when closer to home, the Homeland of the Jews is getting pounded by Hezbollah missiles in the north and the murdering rapists of Gaza in the south. Who gives a flying banana over global warming, drought, starvation, tsunamis, political oppression and the near extinction of the armadillo when the Children of the Book are suffering ten times more? Even little climate activist Greta Thunberg has parked her Strike for School Lunch placard, donned a keffiyeh and marched in Malmö, Sweden for the eradication of Israel.

Nothing less!

Here’s the method behind my madness: Once a month, I tear open the collected solicitations from charitable organizations that come in the mail. My mom was a Certified Public Accountant who wrote tax code. When paying her taxes, she took advantage of tax deductions for charitable contributions. Giving to thirty different charities, she honed it to an art form. Now that she is no longer with us, the solicitations continue to weigh down my mailbox.

By the time I finish glancing through these appeals, I am ready to scream! Their dripping sincerity, bogus friendliness and the urgent summons made to our better nature, leave me clawing the walls.

To maintain my sanity, I end up writing a scathing blog in self-defense.

Meanwhile, the college students are marching.

I say: From the river to the sea, no Palestine for you or me!

SUPPORT ISRAEL.

Oh, see, I did end up making an appeal.

Kev     

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Space Funk

June 6, 2024

Space man, space jam, space bum, space bump, space chum, space chump, space ball, space bail, space hall, space hail, space joy, space jail, space maul, space mail. A favorite child has many names.

As a rap band, realPfft uses funk as a go-to. Busy with other musical styles, sooner or later they always return to funk. Their only album is titled “realPfft Does Jazz Funk.”

In April 2021, they released “Speed Hump.” In August 2021, it was time for “Timewarp,” one of their most popular songs. Experimenting with artificial voices in October 2022 resulted in “Sunglasses.” These dudes love that funky music.

Sometimes three or four elements in a song are ready, but the track refuses to gel. Faced with that prob while working on a remix, Mutte took a week off and created “Space Funk.”

“This is our best song yet,” insist Mutte and Clive, which is nice to hear. Our music distributor doesn’t always understand us and our radio outlet is a dry gulch, but I like to keep the boys satisfied.

  

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Flirting with the Devil

June 3, 2024

“You waved to me from the train, all blond and blue-eyed, your pale skin ruddy from the cold.” This was my grandfather Mordechai as a teenager writing to Trudi, his one great love. His devotion to her overshadowed the love he felt for my grandmother. Indeed, it overshadowed his love of anything else in life. I liken Mordechai to a radio receiver that could only receive one frequency. In his case, the other-worldly signal from Trudi’s brain, an electric motor that generated a signal strong enough to give some people actual headaches. It’s all in the love letters which she and my grandfather wrote to one another.

I emphasize the Russian side of our family, but we are also Feingolds, aus Deutschland. People who came from Germany to Sweden and, eventually, America.

Rosa, my Mutter, passed away a year and a half ago. In liquidating her estate, I have come upon a lot of greeting cards with the kind of heavy, Jewish decorative art that I learned to abhor in my youth. Arthur Szyk is a modern example of the genre. Among other things in the safe deposit box, there was this crumbling stack of letters tied in brown string. Old, from the Second World War, with German stamps and postmarks from her side and Swedish stamps and postmarks from his, the letters are in Berliner Dialekt. Written in Fraktur script, the handwriting is decipherable, but a bear to get used to. Why mom held on to her father-in-law’s youthful indiscretion, I’ll never understand, other than that she liked Mordechai.

In Berlin on business in the middle of April— Spring in the air— I took the letters with me to a philologist named Siegfried who I found online. Dare I say it? You can find anything in Berlin. I emailed Siegfried a few weeks before my trip and was amazed to receive a ready and rapid reply. He would see me. He lives on the second floor of a tan five-story apartment house on Barfusstraße in Wedding, a block from Schillerpark. Spirited, with a glint in his eye, a white beard and a gnarled face, he is in his late 80’s, one of that strange breed born prior to World War Two.

“Your parents named you Siegfried,” I blurted, shaking his hand vigorously, feeling my face go red. That was the effect he had on me. “Your name means victory and peace,” I added.

“It’s of no importance,” he assured me. “If it bothered me, I would have changed it, but it doesn’t bother me.”

“Oh, okay,” I agreed, watching him close and lock the front door before disappearing into the kitchen to make us coffee. In Germany, coffee is a must.

The walls of his study are filled with German expressionist paintings and woodcuts from the 1920’s. They must be worth their weight in gold! Serving the coffee, he read aloud from several of the letters, chuckling with amazement at their childish sentiments.

“They’re love letters by young people,” I explained lamely.

Siegfried gave me a fuller picture of Trudi’s train ride than I could piece together with my limited German. It was March of 1938. Trudi and her parents were leaving Berlin for Rostock, nearer the Baltic coast, where they spent the war.

Together with online searches, we could also deduce that Trudi’s father, Hans Schmitz, a somewhat overwrought Berliner, worked for the Reichsbahn, the state railway. So he never ended up in the Wehrmacht fighting on the Eastern Front. From his perch on the Baltic Sea, it was easy for Hans to turn a blind eye to the cattle cars loaded with Jews heading east to the concentration camps. A typical railway man, he looked upon politics as a disease and considered Hitler to be his own worst enemy. Hans turned down a promotion to Gauleiter, district chief, because it would have required him to join the Nazi Party. Trudi went to school, where they knitted socks for the troops, collected clothing for the Winter Relief and sent care packages to the front.

Quaint.

Rostock got bombed mercilessly. After the war, it became East Germany’s major seaport.

When Kristallnacht struck in November of 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, a pogrom against the Jews, the Feingolds signed over 95% of their possessions to the Nazis and decamped to Malmö in Sweden where my great-grandfather taught at the university. His expertise was ancient civilizations, which immediately put him at loggerheads with National Socialist mythology regarding swastika sun symbols and the qualities of the so-called Aryan race. The Nazis were only too happy to banish der Professor from the Reich. He was exactly the kind of intellectual Jew who made Hitler’s blood boil.  

“Den Teufel,” sighed Siegfried.

“The Devil?” I asked.

“You are American.”

“Yes, that’s right, Swedish-American. Growing up, my parents sent me to live—”

“Of course,” he barked, as if broken families were as common as dirt. “What interests me is the current state of America. Do you feel that you are flirting with a devil by allowing Trumpf to run for a second term?”

“Ah… um…” I stammered, caught off guard.

“That’s why I agreed to see you!” he harrumphed, which was okay with me, but unexpected. I took a clunk of cold coffee and gathered my thoughts.

“It’s a case of domestic politics,” I explained carefully. “There are all these politicians pooping…”

“Yes?” he asked, amused.

Thinking in a jumble of German, Swedish and English, I was having trouble expressing myself. “These politicians are screwing around. Chiefly Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the Senate, but yeah, it’s a handful of people who are oblivious to history and afraid of getting shot by Trump’s supporters. Every opportunity they have to put a stop to Trump’s candidacy, like three blind mice, they don’t do it,” I ended with an embarrassed chuckle. Why did I have to bring up mice, for God’s sake?   

“What about Biden?” Siegfried asked, making the name sound like two words.

“Megalomania,” I explained. “Egocentricity. Aware of his age, he promised in 2020 to only run for one term. He claimed he was a transitional president, a bridge to the younger generation. But when push comes to shove, his high regard for himself has convinced him that he can win reelection. A nice gramps, but really, really old and doddering,” I concluded. “It’s not that the Republicans are so strong, it’s that the Democrats are so weak.”

“I keep reading that in the German press,” Siegfried replied, taking out a meerschaum pipe and filling it with tobacco from a tin. “Do you identify as Jewish?”

“Very much so.”

“So, what do you think of the war?”

“A tragedy for all concerned, on the ground in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank,” I said, more sure of my opinion. “Hamas is playing the West for fools. First they murder the Israelis and then they stir up pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel sentiment among young people all around the world. They are winning the propaganda war, which sucks.”

“Let’s go outside. I want to smoke,” Siegfried insisted. Standing with me on the front walk, lighting his pipe with a fancy silver lighter and billowing clouds of white smoke, he asked if I had considered moving to Israel.

“I am considering it. I never expected the American public to turn on me, but I am a student of history. I see America reenacting all the same mistakes as Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.”

“I lived through one world war, I don’t want to live through another,” Siegfried declared, shaking his head. “The Russians are breathing down our necks. You Americans need to stop flirting with the Devil and get your act together.”

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essay, humor, political satire

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Trump Found Guilty

May 31, 2024

THE HVAC TECH GUY, A DEMOCRAT, CAUSED BRAIN FREEZE!!!

We Swedes know from cold. At certain low temperatures, the human brain enters the “grossly annoyed” zone, seeing everything in a negative light. A classic example of this annoyance principle was on display for all to see in the courtroom behavior of “Palsy Walsy” and the 11 other members of the jury who passed judgment on our Glorious Leader in a Manhattan courtroom this week. The courtroom was freezing! Ergo, they voted to convict.

Even Trump complained of the cold and all he had to do was sit still and shiver.

They say Trump got a “Jury of his Peers.” Takes one to know one. How could they possibly be a Jury of his Peers unless they, too, were real estate moguls or convicted felons? Blatantly inappropriate jury selection.

Palsy Walsy and his crew should be hung by their bootstraps and given 34 lashes with a wet noodle, one for each of the indictments against our Glorious Saint and One True Leader.

Guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records?! C’mon, man, why didn’t the jurors let Trump off the hook on at least one or two counts? In the name of Fair Play and Common Decency. Shame on them! They hurt President Trump’s feelings. After all, this is Donald Trump, who has used the judicial process in 4,000 legal cases as a cudgel to hammer his opponents. Real estate lawsuits. Business disputes. Unpaid bills. Suing people for defamation. We’re talking the Donald Trump who until now has had the Golden Touch and always gotten away with stuff.

Let he who has not sinned be the first to get stoned out of his gourd. Like Jesus on the Cross, the craven mob has pounded Nails of Iniquity into the flabby flesh of a former president, while the Pontius Pilot of Public Opinion has left the rest of us thirsting for Equality Under the Law.

I agree with President Biden, “It’s time for this war to end.” We should make peace with Donald J. Trump and the Trump loyalists who have tunneled their way into the bedrock of American democracy. We need a permanent cease-fire in the constant sniping with the Republicans. So their candidate for president is a convicted felon? So what?! Where do we go from here? This is America, world leader in marketing. Let us declare hydroxychloroquine the National Beverage and get on with paying taxes, voting in elections and taking out the garbage. Anything less is unAmerican. Maybe Bolivian.  

Oh, wait! Biden was referring to the war between Israel and the Palestinians. My bad.

As the DJ Trump campaign tells us, Trump is a Martyr excoriated by the salivating minions of a Lesser God. Never have so many owed a 25% gratuity to so few. TAKE HEED! More than one weighty political screed has been penned in the clammy, cloying confines of a prison cell. This is not the Beginning of the End, this is the End of the Beginning. The team of El Trumpo has not yet appealed this decision. Only time will tell, while the Air Aid Siren of Life keeps us informed of our Appointment with Destiny. As it says on the American nickel, “In God We Trust.” Fool me once, America, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

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political satire

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