Monthly Archives: July 2023

07.25.23
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ANOTHER Unusual Day

I often feel I’m standing at the edge of the Universe, yelling into a tiny megaphone. My words fly out . . . no echo answers back, and it makes me wonder.

But sometimes, there is a response. 

In January 2020 I posted a piece under the heading “A Most Unusual Day.” 

(The post had no relation to the Jimmy McHigh-Harold Adamson song introduced by Jane Powell in the 1948 film A Date With Judy and later swung in a hip version by June Christy and the Stan Kenton Orchestra. I merely stole the song’s title to characterize a particular day in the life of my uncle, Edward F. Sommers, a pilot for Pan American Airways.)

On December 7, 1941, Uncle Ed was enroute to Honolulu from San Francisco, flying as first officer on Pan Am’s Anzac Clipper. That Sunday morning, radio signals made it clear Pearl Harbor was under attack. Captain Harry Lanier Turner changed course and landed at Hilo, two hundred miles away.

The Anzac Clipper. Photo from https://pan-american-clippers.fandom.com, licensed under CC-BY-SA.

My rambling January 2020 post told about Uncle Ed’s experience that day and in the days following. I also mentioned the near-simultaneous attacks on several Pan Am stations in the western Pacific.

The post drew several Facebook comments and one on-page comment at the time of its posting. Then three and a half years passed.

Mac’s Comment

Suddenly, three weeks ago, a long comment was posted on the page by Mac McMorrow, a lifelong resident of Hawaii’s Big Island. In the late 1930s, dengue fever and bubonic plague were common in the Hawaiian islands. As a result, McMorrow’s father, the first graduate of MIT’s public health engineer program, was hired to suppress the disease-prone rat population near Hilo. 

Though Mac McMorrow was a two-year-old toddler in 1941, Honoluolu Star-Advertiser columnist Bob Sigall reached out to him recently to comment on a note from one Alvin Yee. Yee had written:

The young Shah of Iran and his first wife, Queen Fawzieh, sometime between 1939 and 1945. Photo by Cecil Beaton. Public Domain.

“On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 an unscheduled Pan Am Clipper flying boat [the Anzac Clipper my Uncle Ed copiloted] landed in Hilo Bay after eluding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and [Mac McMorrow’s] father tried to go on board and inspect everyone for disease but some haughty State Department official wouldn’t allow it saying the passengers were VIPs. 

“I happen to know the passengers included the young Shah of Iran and the Premier of Burma and their travelling parties on their way back to Asia. . . . Check with Mac to see if I got this story straight.” 

McMorrow, in his reply to Sigall, stated: “I can’t confirm very much of his story based on what was passed down to me by my father. I doubt it was my father who was confronted by the State Department official. I think my father would have mentioned that kind of incident to me. My father was the senior Territorial Health Officer on Hawaii Island and he would have had the plane quarantined if the regulations were not followed.”

He then adds a tantalizing tale:

Eurasian mystery woman? Photo by Chang Liu on Unsplash.

[W]hat I remember my father telling me was that a passenger on the plane was a US diplomat. He had to return to the mainland on the Clipper. However, accompanying him was an attractive Asian/Eurasian woman who was not an American citizen. She was not allowed to return on the flight. She was left in Hilo when the Clipper took off the next day. One of our handsome family friends quickly took her under his “protection”. He escorted her around Hilo for several days until she could get to Honolulu. You can imagine the gossip little Hilo would have enjoyed, even under martial law. 

Gracious Reader, this is the first whisper of this attractive Asian/Eurasian woman to reach Your New Favorite Writer’s ears. Or eyes, actually. It’s downright titillating.

Idle Speculations

One can easily imagine a diplomat traveling sub rosa with an attractive woman to whom he was not officially attached—even in the innocent 1940s. In fact, if we were enjoying a novel or a screenplay, you could count on it. A living informant telling us he heard it as fact from his father certainly adds credibility.

Cutaway view of Boeing 314 Clipper by Kenneth W. Thompson. Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

As to Alvin Yee’s assertion that “the young Shah of Iran [Mohammed Reza Pahlavi] and the Premier of Burma” were passengers on the plane: That’s not far-fetched, since the Boeing 314 Clippers were the ultimate form of transportation at the time, a natural choice for the rich, famous, and powerful. But the only other place I have seen this specific claim was in a 2016 article by Korea Times writer Nam Sang-so. I have emailed Mr. Nam a couple of times to find out where he got his assertion, but thus far have received no response. 

This leaves me wondering whether Alvin Yee’s information came from Nam Sang-so’s article or from some other source. 

Uncle Ed’s daughter Elaine greets him with a kiss on his return. Clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle of December 10, 1941, and scanned.

Robert Daley, in An American Saga: Juan Trippe and his Pan Am Empire, says, “The Clipper [was to] be refueled here at Hilo and flown back to San Francisco as soon as possible. Passengers were welcome to ride back [or else] they could stay here and make their own way to Honolulu or Mauir or wherever they were going.” He says all the passengers opted to stay in Hawaii but makes no claim that any of them were VIPs. He mentions no Iranian royalty, Burmese politicians, or mystery women. But a lack of evidence that they existed is not necessarily evidence they did not exist, if you see what I mean.

So for now these things must remain intriguing mysteries.

Thanks, Mac

But I do thank Mac McMorrow, now evidently a very active 84-year-old, for adding to the mystery. 

Even more, I thank him for honoring one of my posts by responding. You, too, Fair Reader, are welcome to add your comments to this or any other post on my “Reflections” blog. Or you may email me with comments. My address is larryfsommers@gmail.com.

Safe and happy travels to you all—whether by flying boat, magic carpet, or pickup truck.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

07.18.23
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Interacting With Entities

Canada goose. Photo by Michael Gil, licensed under CC-BY-2.0.

I wrote a story called “Encounters With Monsters.” It was about interactions with human beings, from the viewpoint of a migratory Canada goose. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that a goose on a golf course could see people as monsters.

The literary magazines have not yet beaten down my door for the opportunity to print this story. Since many people will never see a story told by an animal as adult fare, I think I’ll change my pitch and sell it as the text of a picture book for young readers.

Meanwhile, I’ve started thinking I should write another one—definitely for adults—called “Encounters With Entities.”

Here is one such encounter:

Interpol on Speed Dial

A few years ago we went to Italy with our friends Bill and Marsha. We rented a car in Florence. My name was on the contract, but Bill did most of the driving, because—well, Bill likes to drive . . . even in Italy!

Florence, a driver’s paradise. Photo by Infrogmation, licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0.

After a splendid week driving around Tuscany, we needed to return the car to the downtown agency where we had rented it. Florence, like many medieval towns in Italy, is old and confusing. It is a Rubik’s cube of one-way streets. If you rent a car in the center of town and manage to escape to the countryside, that does not guarantee you will ever solve the puzzle of getting back to the same place. The streets are all different, like the staircases at Hogwarts.

Bill turned into a street by a large hotel. It seemed to lead the right way but turned out to be a dead end. Bystanders waved at us sternly to turn around, which we did. As we exited that cul-de-sac, I spotted a sign in English: “PRIVATE ENTRANCE. HOTEL WATSAMATTAYOU GUESTS ONLY.” 

Somehow, we reached the darkest heart of Florence, returned the car, and went on our way.

FIVE MONTHS LATER comes a letter from the European Union. Inside the officious-looking envelope there’s a traffic ticket in the amount of €93.50, for “driving in unauthorised zone.” Ransacking my brain, I remembered the dead-end street beside the hotel. We had committed not just a faux pas but an actual Eurocrime.  

They must have had a camera snapping the plate of every car in that street. They must have had a computer programmed to match each plate with those of legitimate hotel guests. Their program must have had a subroutine that traced the plate to the rental agency and found my name and home address in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. 

And here’s the kicker: When the jury of computers had weighed the evidence and found me guilty, my punishment was too important to come from Florence city hall or the local polizi or even carabinieri headquarters. 

No. The computer forwarded our case to Geneva so some obscure office of the European Union, in all its majesty, could issue my ticket. 

In those days the euro was worth a third more than the dollar. In the five months (did I mention FIVE MONTHS??) since we did the crime, the exchange rate had tanked further. So that €93.50 came to well over a hundred clams. 

We shared the joy with Bill and Marsha, our unindicted co-conspirators. We were all tempted to shred the ticket and forget it. After all, the long arms of Jean-Claude von Shakedown couldn’t reach us on U.S. territory. 

BUT . . . we might want to visit Europe in the future. Imagine being turned back at Amsterdam passport control because the One Great Eurocomputer choked on an unpaid trafic violation. 

As William Shakespeare said, though in a slightly different context, “Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

Bill and Marsha chipped in their half, we sent the required Euros to Geneva, and as a result we are still welcome in Europe. 

Valued customers, no doubt.

Dear and Gracious Reader, if it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Maybe it already has. 

Alternative History

Now picture, if you will, the same incident happening twenty years earlier—before Italy joined Europe and before computers gobbled up all continents.

Italian cop in Florence. Photo by Xeph, licensed under CC-BY-3.0.

Way back then, that same street might have already been blocked off to “unauthorised” traffic— for big hotels have ways to make their voices heard in heavily-touristed cities. But in those halcyon days, enforcement might have been on the honor system; or, more likely, it might have been entrusted to a red-faced little man in a comic opera uniform. He would have lunged into our misguided path, waving a white-gloved hand and blowing his whistle. 

He would have approached the driver’s side and addressed us in rapid Florentine. Bill and I would have shrugged, held up our hands, and chanted “No parlo italiano!” The little man in cape and shako would have then repeated the same phrases at twice the volume. We would have shrugged, gestured, and chanted operatically. He would have made obscene hand signs, which we would not have understood because they were in Italian.

We would have ended the episode by driving away unscotched. 

Case closed.

Just possibly, we might have been roused in our hotel at two a.m. by a carabinieri rifle squad. But even then (here comes my point, Reader, in case you have lost track) even then, there would have been a person—a brigadiere perhaps, or a maresciallo—whom we could have addressed. One might have pleaded or even begged. Maybe one could have paid a sort of fine on the spot—perhaps a thousand lire for each member of the squad. But there’s no way a few thousand lire would have added up to more than a sawbuck. 

Carabinieri keeping the peace. Photo by Dickelbers, licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.

The expense incurred twenty years later, doing things à la européenne, came from the cost of all those computers and all that bureaucracy. If you think Italian bureaucrats are bad, multiply them by every signatory to the Schengen accords. Translations alone must cost a fortune.

But when a total robot citation arrives from a major world government, five months after the foul deed, without the shred of a claim that any human ever witnessed the crime, or cared—what are you gonna do?

You can’t fight city hall if there’s no city hall to fight.

And that’s only one example.

It’s Everywhere! It’s Everywhere!

Thesis: Life is now more a matter of interfacing with entities, and less a matter of dealing with people.

Big Joe Williams sings the blues, 1971. Photo by Patrick Denoréaz, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Sometimes I wish I were a musician. If I were a musician, I could write and perform something like this:

Mmm . . . I got those old Interacting-with-Entities Blues,
Oh, yeah, I just got to tell you this news—
There’s no reason not to tell you,
I got those Interacting-with-Entities Blues, oh, yeah . . .

You’ll have to imagine the tune on your own, Fair Reader. I can’t be expected to do everything.

More on this subject another day.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer 

07.11.23
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Mister Catbird

Wisconsin, where I live, is known for inclement weather. Winter seems to last about six months here in Madison. 

Then there is a brief spring, followed by three months of warm, GLORIOUS SUMMER, which tapers off in a wine-and-gold two-month autumn until snowflakes fly around November 1. 

Since summer does not last forever, I spend as much time as possible in my backyard. When not mowing or weeding, I sit in a chair, reading a book and sipping something. I glance up now and then to appreciate how lovely it all is. 

One view of my backyard.

A black locust towers over our house. The tree is in the front yard, but I can see its top, over the roof, from the backyard. It’s thing of beauty and a joy forever, especially with its green leaves yellowed by the afternoon sun.

Another view of my backyard.

There is a sound track, too. My favorite part is the catbird’s call. 

Gray catbird. Photo by Hari Krishnan, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This small gray bird, Dumetella carolinensis, flits about the backyard, perching in one of our tall spruces, or sometimes briefly in our forsythia, a red cedar, or my wife’s special Montmorency cherry tree. 

“But tell me, O New Favorite Writer, how do you know your catbird’s a he? Couldn’t it be a she?” 

No, Dear Reader. He could not. Which is something I did not know until I did a bit of research. It’s surprising what you can learn by writing a blog. More on catbird vocal dimorphism below.

For now, suffice it to say that Mister Catbird is a phenomenal singer and mimic, much like his Southern cousin Br’er Mockingbird. 

And he does all his vocalizing from a kind of throne. Though our common robins, sparrows, and cardinals use the same trees and bushes, when Mister Catbird perches there, it becomes a special thing.

The Catbird Seat

It’s known as “the catbird seat.” 

The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms says, “To be in the catbird seat means ‘to be sitting pretty, to be in a favorable position.’” The book, like other sources, calls it a 19th-century Southern Americanism but admits in a roundabout way that nobody ever heard of it until 1942, when James Thurber publicized Red Barber’s use of it.

James Thurber in 1960. Photo by Ed Ford, World Telegram staff photographer. Public Domain.

James Thurber (1894-1961) was a cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist and playwright—a literary icon whose work appeared often in the New Yorker. Today he is mostly remembered for his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” but during his lifetime he published many stories, as well as humorous essays, memoirs, and cartoons. One of his stories is called “The Catbird Seat.”

I won’t give you any spoilers, in case you’d like to read this now somewhat dated, but still entertaining, story. What concerns us here is how it got its title. Its main character, a file clerk named Mr. Martin, is disturbed by a co-worker, Mrs. Bellows, who sprinkles her office repartee with a variety of odd expressions. 

It was Joey Hart, one of Mr. Martin’s two assistants, who had explained what the gibberish meant. “She must be a Dodger fan,” he had said. “Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the radio and he uses those expressions–picked ’em up down South.” Joey had gone on to explain one or two. “Tearing up the pea patch” meant going on a rampage; “sitting in the catbird seat” means sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him. 

Red Barber in 1955. Photo by Al Ravenna, World-Telegram staff photographer. Public Domain.

Red Barber (1908-1992), “the Old Redhead,” was a sports announcer who over a long career called major league baseball games for the Cincinnati Reds, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the New York Yankees. A native of Columbus, Mississippi, he spoke slowly, with a soothing southern drawl, countrified and unflappable even when describing the hottest action. 

Did Barber ever use the phrase “in the catbird seat” before reading Thurber’s 1942 story attributing it to him? That must remain one of those enigmas lost in the mists of time. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the catbird seat as “a superior or advantageous position.” I guess that’s about right. “He’s sitting in the catbird seat” means he’s got no worries—however things turn out, he’s covered. 

If you’re in the catbird seat you can sit aloof and entertain yourself with pretty songs while you wait for others to find out the bad news.

Our friend Mister Catbird perches, sometimes hidden by dense foliage, but always in a place where he can supervise the whole world. And he comments.

The Catbird’s Song

He sings one of the most complex songs of any bird. It’s a long, polysyllabic thing, a startling series of whistles, squeaks, squawks, and burbles. It lasts several seconds and is then repeated, only with its elements re-arranged. 

That’s how I know it’s a he, Dear Reader. Because the catbird I’m hearing is not singing a normal “catbird” song, which is relatively brief and simple. Nor is he chirping the single meow-like syllable that gives him his name.

The complexity of Mister Catbird’s call comes from the fact that he’s imitating a series of other birds’ calls. Ornithologists think this is simply a way for a male catbird to show off, attracting the female of the species to his rich repertory of bird sounds. It’s like a guy who gets up at a party and rattles off a series of impressions—John Wayne, Dean Martin, Jimmy Cagney (“You dirty rat!”), Cary Grant (“Judy Judy! Judy!”) and on and on. 

Only Dumetella carolinensis is actually a talented mimic, unlike our friend at the party. 

Do yourself a favor, Dear Reader, and take five minutes to watch and listen to this YouTube video sponsored by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in which Greg Budney, former audio curator of the Macauley Library, shows examples of catbird mimicry.

After hearing all the calls the catbird masters in Budney’s video, you may imagine what it sounds like when they’re all run together by Mister Catbird in my backyard.

It makes me think of a general issuing detailed orders to the troops. 

It sounds like an NFL quarterback barking a complex cadence before the ball is snapped—half of the syllables to inform his teammates about the play, the other half only to fool the opponents.

It’s the auditory equivalent of the gestures a third-base coach uncorks between pitches. You’ve seen it if you’ve ever been to a ballgame. He pats his left shoulder, rubs his elbow, taps his foot, shakes his head, doffs his cap, etc.—so his teammates will know what to do but the other guys won’t figure it out.

Even though I know Mister Catbird’s song is just an act to impress Miz Catbird, I still can’t shake the feeling that his baffling cascade of sounds must mean something. 

He is, after all, in the catbird seat.

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Gray catbird. Photo by Rhododendrites. Licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0

One could do worse than be a catbird.

But if it’s not in your power to be a catbird, the next best thing would be to recognize when you happen to find yourself in the catbird seat. 

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer 

07.04.23
by

Independence

“In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 . . .”

That was 247 years ago. 

Today is the 248th Fourth-of-July in the era of the United States of America. 

Legal Gavel by Blogtrepreneur. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

These days, gentlemen and ladies are apt to rush into battle over the Constitution, which became law thirteen years after Independence was declared. One of our three branches of government is largely absorbed by the task of discerning whether acts of government are within the Constitution or outside it. Then, once the Justices have their say, ladies and gentlemen rush to dispute the result, campaigning for either a change of heart or a change of Justices. 

So, yes, the Constitution is important.

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Yet in our darkest hour, our president, one of the great legal minds of his or any age, resorted not to the Constitution but to the Declaration of Independence, the more ancient document.

A Portrait of Mr. Lincoln at His Memorial by SavidgeMichael. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Abraham Lincoln reasoned that the Declaration preceded the Constitution. The Declaration in a sense fathered the Constitution and was superior to it—or at least more basic, more fundamental. The Constitution, he said, could not become a suicide pact for the nation; its strictest construction would not suffice for dissolving the Union. 

The Constitution of 1789 codified the structure of government in a state that existed for larger purposes, announced in 1776. Before there was a Constitution, the Declaration of Independence already said “all men are created equal.” The Constitution—in which the framers parsed fractional numbers to satisfy fragmented constituencies—could not abrogate that original guarantee.

The Declaration’s 56 signers explosively asserted that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .”

This doctrine was the necessary foundation of revolutionary acts. Inconveniently, it happened that some who signed this guarantee of freedom owned slaves, whom they had no intention of letting go.

Slaveholders and non-slaveholders endorse freedom in Philadelphia, 1776. Painting by John Trumbull  (1756–1843). Public Domain.

Thus the stage was set for the Civil War 85 years later. In the midst of that orgy of blood, the Chief Executive chose to force the republic back upon its first principles. 

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In the days when children were thought capable of learning things “by heart,” we memorized Jefferson’s stirring preamble to the Declaration easily. It came ringingly off the tongue, while the stilted phrases of the Constitution’s preamble got lost in a chorus of mumbling. To promote the general welfare is fine and dandy—but Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are the heart of our national mission.

Therefore, starting in 1777, we have always celebrated July Fourth as Independence Day.

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Seventy years ago, the young men of our family—my uncles—in the small town of Knoxville, Illinois, used to go to Gil Hebard’s gun store and buy fireworks. Not only pinwheels, fountains, and sparklers, but also skyrockets and miniature buzz bombs were legal then in the Flatlands. 

“Epic Fireworks Stars in the Sky Firework Rocket Effects for 4th of July – Epic Fireworks” by EpicFireworks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Enveloped in the sultry evening, my uncles Dick and Garrett LaFollette, Earl Chaney, and Richard Henderson fired their sky-sizzlers with great gusto, arching them above a huge elm tree that overspread Grandma’s yard. After the main event, we kids lit snakes and sparklers and shot up rolls of paper caps in our cowboy pistols. 

The Public Square across the street was littered with scraps of pastry left earlier in the day by piggish contenders who plunged their whole faces into the pie-eating contest under a hot sun. There had also been sack races, three-legged races, and giant slices of watermelon for everyone. 

A reasonable person might wonder, what had these hijinks to do with the deep principles of liberty that Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence? It’s hard to say, Dear Reader, but—something, surely. 

The hoopla was connected with our liberty. Otherwise, why did we get up to these robust exertions on July 4, but never in the more moderate weather of Constitution Day, September 17? 

Now, seven decades after the spectacles that enlivened my youth, we still make a big deal out of Independence Day. We still have picnics, speeches, fireworks, and tomfoolery. We poise our politicians over galvanized tanks and give everybody with a pitching arm the opportunity to dunk them in cold water. 

There is something republican, and also democratic, about that. 

There would not be much need to celebrate, had 56 brave souls not inked their signatures to a parchment 247 years ago and pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the twin dreams of freedom and equality. 

Happy Fourth, and be careful with those sparklers. If you don’t watch out you’ll put somebody’s eye out.

“Sparklers” by visual.dichotomy is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer