Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

There is a scene that Nien Cheng describes in her memoir Life and Death in Shanghai where she is put on show trial during the Cultural Revolution, listening to accusations of spying for the West. At one point the silliness got to her and she started laughing, despite hunger  and sleep deprivation. Immediately the courtroom was evacuated and she was hurried back to solitary confinement. The demagogues could not handle her laughter. I've been thinking a lot about that now that the Democrats have (justly) started calling Trumpism weird and how much it hurts Trump and his supporters to be ridiculed this way.

Imperfect as I am, I regularly fail at tasks. Some I just moved on from; my ability to shoot a basketball was never good in any way and I just never felt the pay-off of trying to improve. I do love to cook and I used to attempted meatballs regularly. I am not a fan of meatballs on pasta but do enjoy a good meatball sandwich, Swedish meatballs, etc. I had a run in the 90's and 00's of never being able to make meatballs; inevitably they fell apart and I ended up with a meat sauce. There are reasons why my technique was faulty but those were busy years for me and I never invested the time in improving, just decided that with all my other recipes I could do without. This past year I saw a recipe that was appealing for Italian meatballs and I decided to get back up on that horse. They came out really well. I've done Swedish meatballs since then and this morning assembled some Teriyaki meatballs. The specifics (use a crockpot with a good sauce and let them cook slowly and gently)...

I think it's a generational thing; my kids were very anxious for Biden to withdraw his candidacy as a strategic necessity in keeping Trump from seizing power and undoing our constitutional form of government. I hated the thought of rewarding an incredibly good term  (addressing climate change in policy in a meaningful way alone means my kids have a hopeful future) with an invitation to exit. I will say the Democrats rallying to Harris have given me new hope for November and that is a good thing. As important as Obama was to me for breaking that color barrier it has been eight years since Hillary Clinton tried to break that glass ceiling. It's way past time.

I had cause yesterday to reach out to members of math departments at five universities that have been active in the regional professional association that I have been a part of for 35 years (the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America). The contact was to describe a planned national initiative and seek (probably younger) faculty who might be interested. Over the decades I have worked with a number of folk on such things and so I approached the task as I have done in the past:  1) Find someone who I have worked with more than a little at the university and describe the initiative. 2) Give them a chance to let me know if they are interested while acknowledging that they are very busy. 3) Ask for contacts in their department who might be a good match.  I think this was the first time that I have done this that I became aware of how many of my contacts have retired. This time there was only one such person in each department. Sufficient but not what I expec...

Blessed with good and diverse friends over the years I have closely followed the ups and downs in our country for same sex marriage. My first gay wedding that I attended was during the first brief four-plus month period in CA when it was legal before Prop. 8 banned them. James Inhofe, the retired senator who passed away yesterday, was at the forefront of conservative opposition to any kind of civil rights for non-heteros. His obituaries brought back lots of painful memories along with memories of things actually getting better. Trumpism wants to undo these freedoms, very explicitly. We will have to choose between supporting Biden who as VP pushed Obama on same-sex marriage or taking DRASTIC steps backward with Trump. MAGA: it's a spectrum of misogyny, homophobia, and pretty much any kind of hatred that helps hatemongers to acquire power. We are put on this earth to say NO to these demagogues. As Lincoln wrote to H.L.Pierce in an 1859 letter, "Those who deny freedom to others d...

This will be brief; I am too furious at SCOTUS to write constructively. A couple of simple things: 1) We have become freer when we moved from having many kinds of citizens (property-owning white males, men of color, white women, women of color) to fewer. Giving women the vote and actually enforcing the Voting Rights Act were acts of simplifying the categories of citizenship. 2) With the gutting of the Voting Rights Act the (usual suspect) southern states moved to limit who can vote. It was neither subtle nor unforeseen. 3) SCOTUS has declared that the president can break the law if the action is deemed official by some judge somewhere.  We are now back to having a division between the president who is above the law and the rest of us. 4) First the Rehnquist Court and then the Roberts court have consistently empowered the powerful and shielded them from being accountable for their actions. When I celebrate July 4th I celebrate freedom. It was a very sad July 4 this year for me.