This is the first time in ages I’ve felt like writing about the Bears, and the first time in even more ages I’ve actually written about the Bears.

Last week’s nightmare against the Browns almost left me as hopeless as when Trestman was coaching. Almost. Idiot coach? Check. Horrible performance? Check. Losing the locker room? Perhaps. There was a shot of Nick Foles on the sideline clearly saying that Nagy’s offense wasn’t working, and there were other hints–body language, effort, postgame tweets– of the team starting to give up.

But this week, Nagy had the good sense to let Bill Lazor call the plays. Either that, or someone in the front office had the good sense to force Nagy to do it. We now have statistical proof that Lazor runs the offense ~8 times better than Nagy (47 yards on offense last week), and the passing game 185 times better than Nagy (…one net passing yard last week). Fields had great run support, had enough time to throw some midrange and long dimes, didn’t screw up on short passes a la Trubisky, and didn’t spend half the game getting slammed into the ground. This week, a crumb of hope appeared at the bottom of Pandora’s box. Granted, it was against the Lions, but there’s hope nonetheless.

And yet, Nagy must go. The Bears cannot afford to take the chance that he’ll start calling plays again. It’s happened before; last year he gave the play-calling duties to Lazor, but took them back during the offseason. That cannot be allowed to happen again. Let Lazor, or Desai, or even Pettine take over.

Maybe you let him keep his job if they win the Super Bowl this year. I was going to say “if they win a playoff game,” but given the expanded playoffs, that’s not enough progress and too great a risk of keeping him for my taste.

Today was the first day of classes, and the first day with all the kids back in the building. It seems strange to have to point out that those are separate things. Last year, almost all of my classes were a mix of brick-and-mortar students and on-line students. I couldn’t find a headset that sounded clear enough to the students or in the recordings, so I was anchored to my desk in front of my laptop. This arrangement was functional: the on-liners could hear me lecture, and I could interact with the live chat if necessary. But the constant view and angle were mind-numbing.

But this year, there are no on-liners. It was strange to not have to rush to set up new on-line meetings between classes, or to record every class, or to wonder whether someone was actually present. It was strange to see so many actual reactions on actual faces. Even the ones that were still masked. Even if the reactions were eye rolls, or exasperation, or simple expressions of boredom.

And sometime during my second class of the day, it clicked that I could pace up and down the central aisle, like in the Before Times. And I did for a bit. I could even teach from the other end of my classroom. And I did for a bit. It was liberating.

I even thought about putting the beat-up old lectern back in the spot it inhabited for nearly a decade prior to the lockdown, in the northeastern corner of the room, and leaning over it to yell at the kids for emphasis, and rapping the front with the Waking Stick to demand and win everyone’s rapt attention. Like in the Before Times. I didn’t stop class to set it up today, but it will be set up by the first bell tomorrow.

It’s going to be a good year.

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The poor kids were stuck in their seats for an hour-and-a-half, but that’s beside the point.

Happy 245th birthday to the United States, and happy 149th birthday to Calvin Coolidge! I just realized I typed in the wrong number for Cal’s last two birthdays… but he wouldn’t have said anything about it anyways.

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This year’s post is brief: my photo of Henry Hudson Kitson’s Minuteman statue, which stands on the Lexington Battle Green, where the war began in 1775.

The statue has come to symbolize one Captain John Parker. It’s not actually him, partly because there are no known paintings of him and partly because he was a member of the non-minuteman majority of the Massachusetts militia. But the locals say it may as well be Parker, reputed to have ordered: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” It began there.

Roughly once out of every seven years, my grandmother’s birthday falls on Mothers’ Day. This year sees such an instance, so after the 2pm Mothers’ Day dinner, we sang “Happy Birthday” and had cake. It was good. Here’s Gram celebrating a birthday, presumably her birthday, at my late aunt’s house in the late ’90s or early double-aughts:

Can’t quite nail down the date because a] I don’t remember the year she finally let her hair go white, which looked sharp on her; and b] if it was her birthday, counting the candles wouldn’t help because after a certain point, you just use a whole buncha candles.

Anyhow, happy 111th birthday and happy 86th Mothers’ Day to “the Old Girl”!

Every year I post a digital birthday card for my grandfather– even if I apparently post nothing else the entire year–so here comes this year’s edition. This is Grampa as a young man of presently-unknown age.

Looks like it would be a high school graduation photo, but he graduated from high school at 22 and I think he was a bit younger than that here.

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A few weeks ago, I was talking to my niece about our ancestors, and trying to put in perspective how long ago Grampa was born, how long he lived, and how much had changed in the meantime. That was a fun conversation. Was he alive for this president, or that war, or this assassination? Were there “wall phones”? Had this been discovered? Was that person alive? How many states were there? And so on.

This got me thinking about the simplest way to explain the most drastic change in his lifetime. The best I could come up with was that when he was born, there were no planes, and taking photographs using “dust” (flash powder) was expensive enough that we have very few pictures of him before age 10. By the time he died, we had close-up photos of Neptune.

Grampa would’ve turned 121 today if he hadn’t died stopping the salt vampires from stealing our oceans.

Merry Christmas to all! May your hearts be warmed, your masks be comfy, and your sanitizer be soothing!

This year I should’ve asked Santa for the motivation to actually actually post more often. That, and to not have a pandemic.

Sir Sean Connery, who won an Oscar for playing Irish beat cop Jim Malone in The Untouchables and portrayed Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez in Highlander, Captain Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October, and Michael MacBride in Darby O’Gill and the Little People, died today at the age of 90.

Connery’s career spanned seven decades, including turns as Dr. Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Zed in Zardoz, Robin Hood in Robin and Marian, and SAS officer John Patrick Mason in The Rock. He was a strong supporter of the Scottish film industry, breathing life into Scotland’s first computer-animated film, Sir Billi, in 2012. Connery was also Peter Jackson’s first choice to play Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, and was approached to play Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

A former bodybuilder and Royal Navy gunner, Connery was voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1989 and Sexiest Man of the Century in 1999. He was knighted in 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II, largely for his early roles as a British mid-level civil servant.

Connery also championed Scottish independence and supported Rangers FC of the Scottish Premiership. R.I.P.

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Media may direct further inquiries to Universal Exports Ltd of London.

Flashback to the 2016 primary season:

That said, last week I was presented with a scenario in which I could see myself voting for Trump. Here goes:

Obama strings along the feds’ investigation into Hillary Clinton to weaken her as much as feasibly possible. When it becomes apparent that she’s going to beat Sanders, Obama springs the trap. Hillary gets indicted and has to drop out. The DNC simply won’t let Sanders be the candidate, and so they throw Joe Biden’s hat in the ring. Uncle Joe will “reluctantly” take on the burden of being handed the nomination, campaign on taking up the Obama mantle, brag about forcing Obama’s hand on gay marriage, and remind us of his family tragedy at every possible opportunity, germane or not.

If that happens, then I swear to you and God Almighty that I will do whatever I must to make Trump the Republican nominee, thereby ensuring the best damn Presidential debates ever. Those two hair-plugged, brain-addled gasbags bloviating at each other would make for the most glorious spectacle in televised political history.

And Lo! it has come to pass, at long last, that we shall witness said spectacle!

Tomorrow night, President Trump and Vice President Biden are scheduled to meet in rhetorical battle, if “rhetorical” is even remotely appropriate to describe what drops from their maws. I expect the rationality of a goldfish on social media, the intellectual heft of a pile of gypsum, and the eloquence of a braying hyena, with dignity to match.

But that’s if it even happens. Turns out that a] Biden recently visited Governor Northam of Virginia, who tested positive for coronavirus, and b] the campaign has been putting early “lids” on Joe’s appearances this month, and we can’t tell if it’s to prepare for the debates or if he’s just not lucid on those days.

My guess is that Biden will do better than expected in the debate. He usually does; he’s spent nearly 50 years getting people to expect very little of him. If he’s lucid for the first 15-20 minutes of his own speaking time, I think he’ll be the “winner” by conventional wisdom. If his handlers know he’s not going to have a good night, I think he should use his opening statement to say something along the lines of, “I’m walking off in protest of Trump,” walk off, then let the press and his fans (BIRM) applaud the move. I think Biden needs to remain invisible for as much of the next six weeks as possible; the more people see of him, especially in unmanaged environments, the more likely he loses.

I still say that Trump would win relatively easily if he locked himself into a Captain Pike-style apparatus that would only permit him to answer “yes” or “no.” It would be less entertaining, but he’d save himself a good 90% of the trouble he gets into.

Either way, popcorn tomorrow night. Well, not actually popcorn, probably some air-fried chopped cauliflower with gobs of salt and butter, but you get the idea.

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For the record, “The DNC simply won’t let Sanders be the candidate” was not a brilliant prediction, it was already happening in 2016 and there was every reason to think it would happen again this time. And… it did.

Happy 244th birthday to the United States, and happy 147th birthday to Calvin Coolidge!

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As Independence Day drew near this year, I saw more mentions than usual of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” This is unsurprising given the national mood, especially in the wake of Juneteenth receiving more attention than ever before. It is a masterpiece of righteous indignation, worth studying in its entirety.

The Better Douglas/s of that age gave this speech in 1852. It was… harsh. Here’s the short version: “The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie.”

He blasted those who favored slavery and those who weren’t doing enough to end it. He excoriated pro-slavers for ignoring the “all men are created equal” part of the Declaration. He called those who argued that the Constitution protected slavery “imposters.”* The preachers who defended slavery were so wretched that “I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines!” He goes on in this strident vein for about an hour, according to the timestamp on the online full reading.

And yet, he closes on a note of great hope in the moral progress of our nation and the world. He’ll explain it better than I can, so here’s Douglass in closing, followed by William Lloyd Garrison’s “The Triumph of Freedom.”

God speed the year of jubilee
⁠⁠The wide world o′er!
⁠When from their galling chains set free,
⁠Th′ oppress′d shall vilely bend the knee,
⁠And wear the yoke of tyranny
⁠⁠Like brutes no more.
⁠That year will come, and freedom′s reign,
⁠To man his plundered rights again
⁠⁠Restore.

⁠God speed the day when human blood
⁠⁠Shall cease to flow!
⁠In every clime be understood,
⁠The claims of human brotherhood,
⁠And each return for evil, good,
⁠⁠Not blow for blow;
⁠That day will come all feuds to end
⁠And change into a faithful friend
⁠⁠Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
⁠⁠When none on earth
⁠Shall exercise a lordly power,
⁠Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
⁠But all to manhood′s stature tower,
⁠⁠By equal birth!
⁠That hour will come, to each, to all,
⁠And from his prison-house, the thrall
⁠⁠Go forth.

⁠Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
⁠With head, and heart, and hand I′ll strive,
⁠To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
⁠The spoiler of his prey deprive—
⁠⁠So witness Heaven!
⁠And never from my chosen post,
⁠Whate′er the peril or the cost,
⁠⁠Be driven.

*Douglass called the Constitution “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT,” but acknowledged he was in the minority of abolitionist sentiment on that matter, and that “There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length.”

There are a few days on the calendar which might serve as an optimal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. If we proceed chronologically through the events themselves rather than the calendar:

There’s September 22nd, which would mark the day in 1862 that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Emancipation went into effect on January 1st, 1863.

The Civil War essentially ended on April 9th, 1865 with Lee’s surrender, and officially ended exactly one month later when President Johnson declared the rebellion to be over.

June 19th, 1865 is of course Juneteenth, which marks the day that the Emancipation took effect in Texas due to the arrival of a northern occupation army that would announce it and could enforce it…

…and full abolition was achieved on December 6th, 1865, with ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

June 19th is the obvious candidate for a full-fledged federal holiday, given that it was celebrated in Texas as early as 1866 and has grown in national awareness. There’s bipartisan support for making it a federal holiday, and little doubt that it will be one by this time next year. It is altogether fitting and proper that it should be so.

But something quite relevant gets left out of most narratives I’ve seen of late regarding the Emancipation, and Juneteenth, and the Abolition. For something like a year, year-and-a-half after the war ended, emancipation was enforced only where there was a northern army nearby to enforce it. There are records of many slaves being freed by northern troops, only to be re-enslaved as the Yankees marched to another area. Silly old yarnspinner Bailey’s American Pageant refers to a North Carolinian man who was freed, re-enslaved, re-freed, and so on, a dozen times by his estimate. The lesson, I think, is that no matter what laws are written in the books, you have to be vigilant in guarding liberty– your own, and that of others who can’t guard it themselves.

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In addition to going on the record in support of a federal Juneteenth holiday, I’d also like to register my irritation at seeing so many former students on social media lament that they were never taught about this, or never taught about that. I would like to tell my extremely diligent and conscientious former students that there’s an awful lot of stuff that you may not have learned, but you definitely were taught.