A National Book Award finalist in 2020, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, by Claudio Saunt, is a deeply researched look into the priorities and policies that led to the state-sponsored expulsion of U.S. Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River to the west of the same.

In his forward, the author lays out three key points he will attempt to qualify:

First [the book] argues that the state administered mass expulsion of indigenous people was unprecedented. [snip] The U.S.-sponsored expulsion of the 1830s became something of a model for colonial empires around the world.

The second and related point made by this book is that the state-sponsored expulsion of the 1830s was a turning point for indigenous people and for the United States.

The expulsion of the indigenous people was far from inevitable [snip] It is not difficult to imagine alternative history. Congressmen who were opposed to federal spending, against the expansion of slavery, dedicated to Christianizing native peoples, hostile to Andrew Jackson, or simply reluctant to overturn current policy might have found common ground to join together temporarily to block the expulsion of Native Americans.

The first point, to me, is the most curious. As long as there have been invaders, these interlopers – to the US or elsewhere – have long pushed aside the native inhabitants – by deceit, force or by a show of (potential) cooperation. This happened with Indians in Maine, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

But in the south – where most of the mass expulsion took place – it took official government policy to remove the great number of Native Americans from that area. Not just some redneck with a musket. Official policy.

That was different. And not in a good way.

The book was not what I was expecting – I wanted to know more about why Indian reservations are sovereign nations and so on. Didn’t get much of this here.

And the book is so well researched that it was a difficult read. Most histories will say something about what the good or bad guys did, and then give an example.

Saunt will lay out a dozen examples. Great research and reference, but too dense for what I wanted, which is more of a 10,000 foot view.

Glad I read the book, but it was a tough read.

And I still need to read a “Native Americans for Dummies” book so I can get answers to questions I have, but that’s another day.

It seems like forever since we last heard from Mrs. Maisel and the gang. And, in streaming (Amazon Prime) times, it certainly has been forever.

All of Season 3 dropped 12/9/2019; the first two episodes of Season 4 finally landed 2/18/2022 (each following Friday unveiled two additional episodes, the last two of eight on 3/11/2022).

In between there was COVID – which was a challenge for all shows/movies. But remember the first episode of Season 3? The USO show in an airplane hanger with multiple performances and a thousand or so extras (the soldiers in the audience)?

Just can’t do that in the age of COVID.

So they retooled and welcome to Season 4!

In many ways, this is – to me – the weakest, most disjointed season yet. Still, the show is of such high quality – acting. writing, visuals (still in 1960) – that the stumbles are forgiven.

The last two episodes – especially the last – tie together so many of the earlier loose threads that it makes going back to re-watch the first six shows. And we end with a big dose of Lenny Bruce, which is always a good thing – his chemistry with Midge – going back to the pilot – has been amazing. Of course he wants to sleep with her, but he sees in her a kindred spirit: He respects what she’s trying to do and intimates that he truly believes she will succeed.

Some thoughts on Season 4 (spoilers abound!):

• When is Midge going to get over her privilege? She gets fired, has no prospects, and she lands to two foci: 1) Keeping her swanky apartment and upscale lifestyle, and 2) No more opening acts – she needs to be the headliner. Huh?
• Tony Shalhoub is not used well here. While Shalhoub excels in any scene he is in, he’s put into weird situations. Would the Abe Weissman of the early seasons enjoy wearing a cape or watching TV shows while eating dinner off TV trays?? No… And would the nebbish, mathematical genius of early seasons be a … theater critic? Again, no…..
• Susie with an office/home overlooking Times Square? Yeah, there’s a foreshadowing explanation, but still.
• The magician client Susie takes on early in this season…makes no sense. But Episode 7 is the very unexpected payoff. Great scene for Rose Weissman. So unexpected, so hilarious. And so revealing to Midge in many ways.
• Joel is still a dick, but he’s been supportive of Midge the whole time in a way that doesn’t jibe with the times – 1960-ish. Everything points to Joel and Midge reconciling, but what’s the deal with Joel & Mei? This season offered up a deep twist on the whole relationship (Joel/Mei) in several different ways (professional, relations with family and with Midge). Interesting how the showrunners extricated all the characters from this morass.
• While Jane Lynch is her usual brilliant in the season (Sophie Lennon). I was glad not to see her in the last two episodes. Let’s focus on Susie and Midge – that’s the heart of the show.
• Still unclear what Susie wants in life (beyond not being in debt), but she does demonstrate a flair for finding talent (like Midge). She catches a black stand-up that she signs – like an early Richard Pryor. Expect to see more from him in Season 5.
• We see the beginnings of Lenny Bruce using morphine (he died in 1966 of an accidental morphine overdose). Will Season 5 go out to 1966, or will he just kind of circle the drain and it’ll hit Midge what the inevitable end to this story will be?

Finally, the last episode gives all sorts of hints, plot lines for the next (final) season. Some dark, some potentially dangerous, but all point to Midge ending up Season Five playing Carnegie Hall.

You read it here first.

While rummaging around Amazon Prime looking for something to watch, I ran across the TV series Loudermilk, and it turned out to be pretty good. Not great, but a good watch with some excellent writing.

The titular character – played with slacker energy (low) by Office Space’s Ron Livingston – is a recovering alcoholic who leads a substance abuse group. He’s also somewhat of an asshole.

The group – primarily men – are all recovering/lapsed addicts of some sort, so it’s pretty much a circle of losers. Which, of course, can lead to some chaotic situations (and lots of profanity – stay away if at all put off by profanity or sexual talk).

It leans a little too heavily – for me – on “you have to understand that your sobriety is tied to everything you do so keep doing the work!” Reminds me a people who obsess over church or therapy; it often seems forced, as it is what you think you should do instead of what you want to do. But that’s the backbone of the show, and it’s not too preachy.

It ran for three seasons (2017-2020; 30 episodes) on some network that got gobbled up when HBO became HBO Max. A season 4 had been planned (and there were plotlines that could have been mined) but never happened due to the merger.

It’s a good watch – no car chase, few rom-com plot points, just a lot of dialogue and weird little twists that are done well. Not great like Fleabag, but I’d watch it again sometime, skipping this or that episode/scene. Low key and watchable – and very human.

A documentary of a previously little known, self-described “queer Negro woman” whose life is getting more and more traction as the years go by, and – especially – as Supreme Court Justice Breyer has announced his imminent retirement (Jan. 2022) and President Biden has reaffirmed his commitment to putting a Black woman on the court.

Murray was a lawyer, activist, priest and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who was interviewed on-camera for the documentary) and Thurgood Marshall, among many others.

Murray – born in 1910 – was remarkably ahead of the times: She denounced segregation, embraced LGBT+ rights, decried gender inequality (“Jane Crow,” in her words) and, in 1977, became the first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.

Her entire bio is a list of “firsts”;: Sole female at Howard Law School (first in her class), first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School; co-founder of NOW (National Organization for Women). She’s one of the most famous women you’ve never heard of – but that seems to be changing.

The documentary (2021) is well done, with most of the narration either by Murray or in her own words. It reminded me of a Ken Burns documentary, with a remarkable amount of archival material – photos, film and audio clips.

Well worth checking out. One of the things that stuck with me were the old pictures – probably from just before or after I was born (1959) with “Whites only” signs on buses, white/black entrance signs.
What was/is wrong with us?

Well here’s a federal program (free Covid tests) that actually worked.

Ordered 1/18, day before the site went officially live. Got email confirmation.

Tuesday 1/25 got email saying would have free tests by the end of the week.

Later same day got email saying tests out for delivery and would arrive by 8:15pm.

Arrived at 7:15pm.

You can argue about why this didn’t happen under Trump or why it took a year for Biden to pick up the dropped baton, but it’s here now and working well.

Update: March 2022 – Another round of free tests were announced; I signed up for same on a Tuesday, and by Thursday night they had been delivered.

Sometime over the past few weeks, I was noodling around on the internet and I stumbled upon – from what site I can’t recall – a link to an article with an intriguing yet click-baitish title: “Reminder: the most famous short story in American literature was written in one day.” (Took some google, biut here’s the article link.)

For most people, I guess the article would be interesting in seeing how “they pounded it out so quickly?” Short stories are a difficult genre and each word matters. One can get sloppy in a novel – witness William Faulkner’s pages-long paragraphs. Can’t do that in short story – just don’t have the pages to burn.

But for me the question was: What is the most famous short story in American literature?

Before I clicked through, I made a few guesses:

• “Hills Like White Elephants” – Ernest Hemingway
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” – Edgar Allan Poe
• “To Build a Fire” – Jack London
• “A Rose for Emily” – William Faulkner

And so on.

The winner – according to the article’s author: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”

OK, I know the story and it is a classic, but I would have never thought of it. As good a story as any I came up with before clicking through, and better than some (but not all) that I have considered since.

But not the “most famous American short story.”

I don’t think you can select a most famous American short story, any more than you can pick a most famous American novel. (And let’s not even get into the issue of the “best” short story or novel!)

Other American short stories to consider:

• “Big Blonde” – Dorothy Parker (though I prefer “The Waltz” – delightful).
• “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – Flannery O’Connor. Southern neo-gothic
• “A & P” – John Updike. The last line echoes – but in a far different way – the last line of Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of the Nation.”
• “The Country Husband” – John Cheever
• “Why I Live at the P.O.” – Eudora Welty
• “A Lovely Day for Bananafish” – J.D. Salinger
• “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” – Stephen Crane. Worth reading just so you can occasionally pick up the story and re-read the last few paragraphs.
• “Bartleby the Scrivener” – Herman Melville
• “A River Runs Though It” – Norman Maclean. Again, read so you can more fully appreciate the final three paragraphs. Poetry even if you didn’t read the story; magic if you did.
• “Battle Royal” – Ralph Ellison. A brutal story which became the first chapter of Ellison’s seismic Invisible Man.

One final note: It’ll never be on a list of most famous short stories (American or otherwise) – but Tillie Olson’s “Tell Me a Riddle” is as well-written and devastating as anything I’ve read. Forty or so pages; I read it in one swallow in college knowing nothing about it.

My first – and possibly final – 2022 prediction:

There is about a zero percent chance I’ll make it ’til midnight.

You have been warned…

Update 1/1/2022 – I was quite right…

Well, it was yesterday – December 28 – that we got our first measurable snowfall (must be at least 0.1 inches).

We had a couple of snow flurries earlier in the fall/winter, but not even enough to collect on cold cars.

Yesterday, we got about an inch of wet, heavy snow.

Forecasters said the snow wouldn’t stick to roads or sidewalks (it did – it’s how I know the snow was heavy: I shoveled).

Forecasters said rain overnight would get rid if the snow. No rain; still snowy.

Today we had temps just above freezing and a little sun (very little), so pavement is clear, but the grass is half clear, half snow.

Weird to get our first snow this late – a few years ago, we had snow on Halloween!

From CDC.gov

It’s a long story, but it took me until this past Friday (11/10) to get a COVID booster shot (Pfizer, like the first two).

First jab, no side effects at all. Not even a sore injection point.

The second, however, knocked me on my ass. Night sweats, fever, aches. Cleared up after a day or so, but kind of a surprise given the absence of effects from the first.

The booster was somewhere in between: aches, fever, very brief night sweat (singular). Today, I’m pretty much back to normal.

The weather didn’t help, either – we had a couple of extreme fronts come through, and the change in pressure made my sinuses feel like my head was going to explode.

But booster – well worth it.

Get it.

I mention this because I ran across a strange ecommerce issue not once, but twice in the past week.

Basically, I was not really able to get a price for what I ordered/wanted to see price for.

1: Network Solutions

I had a domain that needed renewal (it has been at Network Solutions for its entire lifetime, pre-2000).

I extended the registration via my NS account and it was $40/year for five years. Yikes! But whatever. I paid and am now good until 2026.

But I wondered what kind of discount – if any – I got for extending five years instead of one or three.

So, I went to Network Solutions to check it out.

There’s no pricing information, anywhere.

Finally, I “searched” for a domain (adfadfdafdfadfa.com or whatever); it was available. But no pricing. I needed to set up an account (or log into an existing account) to, I’d guess, see the pricing options.

So, before I even decide to buy, I have to create an account, surrender an email etc.

That’s bullshit.

I still don’t know the cost for a dot-com for one year.

Shady.

2: Checks Unlimited (dot com)

Remember checks? Those paper thingees that you sorta use as money??

I ordered my last set of checks from Checks Unlimited decades ago and am currently down to a book of checks. One more reorder, probably my last check order ever (I write very few checks, 1-3 per month).

The site had prices, but no volume. Sure, one box $18.99, two boxes for $29.99 (discount!), but how many checks in a box? Ten? 100? Not specified.

I had to google it, and each box of checks is 100 checks.

So I ordered, but that’s kind of lame.

And I ordered a register book, because they promoted it, so it seemed like the checks didn’t come with a register book. Odd…but it is what it is.

Checks came, and one “box” is 100 checks: two 50-check pads. And no box. And the “box” of checks did come with a (flimsy) register book.

I put these new checks in an old box I had from my years-ago Checks Unlimited order, and the “two boxes” of checks (4 pads x 50 checks) fit into one box of years ago.

Now I realize the price of things – domains, checks – are going to keep going up, but the frustrating part is really not knowing what you’re getting until 1) You have to pony up for it (domain name) or 2) It arrives in the mail (checks).

I hope this is just a blip and I hit two outliers in one week, but it’s concerning.

I shop online a lot, and usually the experience is much clearer and cleaner than this.