Month: May 2015

But first . . .

ABOUT THAT WELL-REGULATED MILITIA . . .

Jim Burt:  “[With respect to yesterday’s post], the Second Amendment has been interpreted by our right-wing (not ‘conservative’) Supreme Court to provide for an individual right to gun ownership independent of membership in ‘a well-regulated militia.’ But I don’t believe there has been any regulatory effort concerning firearms which has tested that 2008 ruling by taking the Amendment to its logical conclusion:  Make gun ownership a form of ‘implied consent’ – as with breathalyzers for drivers – to membership in a ‘well-regulated militia,’ a sort of extended National Guard.  Subject to that, make gun owners subject to call-up, muster formations, and inspections.  Given my own military experience, I am confident most gun owners would not want the hassle.  On the other hand, it would be hard to argue that such a scheme would be inconsistent with the terms and spirit of the Constitution.  There’s nothing in that document suggesting that the ‘real’ purpose of the Second Amendment is to arm vigilantes so that they can overthrow the constitutional government if they disagree with it, as many of the extremist radicals, such as Ted Cruz, have suggested.”

☞ And what a good moment to plug Michael Waldman’s The Second Amendment: A Biography, just out in paperback . . .

. . . prime the pump with this relevant little nugget from the introduction:

The Constitution was drafted in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army, and who feared the consequences of a weak central authority.  They produced a charter that shifted power to a national government. “Anti-Federalists” opposed the Constitution. They worried, among other things, that the new government would try to disarm the thirteen state militias.  Critically, those militias were a product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was required to own – and bring – a musket or other military weapon.

Did you know this? I didn’t!

Valuable context, as one tries to divine the intent of the Framers when they wrote — in the Amendment’s entirety — “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Those 27 words are why we can’t have universal background checks when some nutjob goes to buy a dozen assault weapons at a gun show?  Really?

LIGHTING YOUR HUT

The long-term solution is a planet where everyone gets along, sustainably, and enjoys the basics required for a decent, healthy life.  It seems to me we already have the resources and technology to do that; we just haven’t figured out how to organize ourselves, as a species, to achieve it.

(Killing and oppressing each other in various ways around the world and spending a fortune to blow things up doesn’t help.  Neither, I’d argue, does having 17 children — or even, on average, more than 2.)

A tiny piece of the short-term solution may be this African-assembled, gravity-powered electric light.  Just how it will stand up to real world use I have no idea, but I love the ingenuity.

Have a great weekend!

I’m not suggesting you contribute to this snappy Indiegogo crowd-raiser, just that you take three minutes to watch.  It’s really crazy how so many toddlers are shooting people — and how so many parents seem to be raising their pre-teens to embrace handguns.  Whether “Bullets Over Preschool” will ever be produced, or be any good, or do any good, I cannot say.  But the video tells quite a tale.

And it’s nuts.

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So it was timely to receive this from Senator Chris Murphy today:

Sixteen years ago today, shortly after the tragic mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre testified in front of Congress about background checks:

“We think it’s reasonable to provide mandatory instant background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere, for anyone.” — NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre on May 27, 1999

That shows just how far the NRA has strayed from mainstream American thought over the past decade and a half.

But it’s not just background checks — the NRA also used to work with state legislatures on bills to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.

But last year, when Democratic Senators introduced a bill to prohibit stalkers and domestic abusers from obtaining guns, the NRA said Congress had no role in “disputes between family members and social acquaintances.”

Thankfully, the Senate is set to try again, and I’m asking you to stand with us.

Sign my petition urging the Senate to pass legislation protecting victims of stalking and domestic abuse from gun violence.

When, oh when, will a sensible alternative to the NRA gain traction?  Someplace for the 74% of NRA members who favor universal background checks to send their annual membership dues?

IRISH

Next to the clip about there’s no one as Irish as Barack O’bama, this is the best Irish YouTube ever.  Hats off to a country that voted 62.1% to 37.9% for love and kindness and mutual respect.

The first clip is three minutes . . . joyful . . . and — fair warning — you won’t be able to get it out of your head.

The second clip is two minutes . . . joyful . . . and — fair warning — you just might get a wee bit choked oop.

JEWISH

Did you watch or read the President speaking about Jewish American History Month?

In tiny part:

. . . Earlier this year, when we marked the 50th anniversary of the march in Selma, we remembered the iconic images of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Dr. King, praying with his feet.  To some, it must have seemed strange that a rabbi from Warsaw would take such great risks to stand with a Baptist preacher from Atlanta.  But Heschel explained that their cause was one and the same.  In his essay, “No Religion is an Island,” he wrote, “We must choose between interfaith and inter-nihilism.”  Between a shared hope that says together we can shape a brighter future, or a shared cynicism that says our world is simply beyond repair. . .

Read or watch it all!

It’s so clear that the Irish thing (Irish need not apply) — and the gay thing (“married Sunday, fired Monday”) — and the Jewish thing (a timeline of persecution) — and the black thing (strange fruit) — and all the other “things” (misogyny!) — are pretty much the same thing humanity’s been struggling with forever.

In which struggle, it should be noted with some pride — at least in most of the First World these last few decades — we’ve made great, albeit incomplete, progress.

A friend sent an email: “I’ve been saying ‘parmesan’ wrong my whole life.”  Did you get it, too?  It included this link to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online and the instruction, “hit the speaker button.”  Which then intoned the following pronunciation for parmesan (as best I can render it): “penn-sil-VAYN-ya.”

I had so much fun with this and thought you might, too — but — oh, no! — it’s been fixed.  I tried gruyere and camembert, hoping for “bul-GAR-ee-ah” and “ka-lee-FORN-ya,” but no luck.  Roquefort, unaccountably, is not even in the Cambridge Dictionaries Online, so who knows how it would be pronounced.  It suggested I try “resort” or “henceforth” instead.

But enough of that.

However parmesan is pronounced, partisanship has become decidedly more pronounced.  Which is troubling, to say the least.

In “America’s New Cycle of Partisan Hatred,” the Washington Post reports a study showing “the level of partisan animus in the American public exceeds racial hostility.”

This is nuts, especially when, on the actual issues, except perhaps for abortion, people’s views tend not to be nearly so deeply or passionately divided.

(Kentucky Republicans like kynect but hate Obamacare.  Because the two are just different words for the same thing, you can see the contrast:  The policy they’re okay with.  But once it’s identified as a Democratic creation — which is ironic, of course, because it was born of Mitt Romney and a Republican think tank — they hate it.)

Nuts or not, it’s true:  The parties have become more and more polarized.

And the key point, as I’ve argued before, is that it’s not symmetrical.  Here’s why – in three parts:

Part One: Quite a few moderate Republicans have been voted out of office in primaries for being too moderate and willing to compromise. Replaced by people very far to the right. The equivalent is not true on the left. Democrats haven’t been kicking our moderates out for not being liberal enough.

Part Two: A great many Republican incumbents, while they have not yet been voted out in primaries, are afraid they will be, so THEY, too, have become far less likely to compromise. Again, the equivalent is simply not true on the Democratic side. Very few if any Democratic senators or representatives live in fear of being ‘primaried.’ That could change; but it may not — because:

Part Three: Billionaires on the right stand ready to fund these primary battles — which, win or lose, really get the attention of any remaining Republican moderates. The equivalent is simply not true on the Democratic side. Yes, we have our billionaires. But few if any are ‘far left’ in their policy positions — no billionaire Karl Marx Democrats to balance the billionaire Republican followers of Ayn Rand.

As I’ve also argued, the whole political landscape has shifted dramatically to the right:

Democrats these days govern from “the sensible center,” or maybe a click to the left.

(That’s why Obama put hundreds of billions of tax cuts into the stimulus bill and why he chose a Republican-designed model for health-care reform instead of the better, single-payer model he knew they would reject.  That’s why he was fine signing onto their bill for a bipartisan deficit commission — that, tellingly, once he did, they killed.  Their own bill.)

Republicans used to govern from about the same sensible center, just a click or two to the right.

(Remember moderate Republicans?  Dwight Eisenhower?  Richard Nixon?  Nelson Rockefeller?  Teddy Roosevelt?  Abe Lincoln?  Who represents moderate Republican voters now?  Republican candidates are practically all vying to show how conservative they are.)

Barney Frank, speaking of the partisan divide, says (sorry to repeat this, but it bears repeating), “we’re not perfect, but they’re nuts” . . . denying science, refusing compromise, shutting down the government, threatening default on debts that they themselves racked up — and this is not really where Republicans used to be.

President Obama clearly hoped to change the toxic atmosphere in Washington.  It was a central theme of his candidacy.

Mitch McConnell clearly hoped otherwise: he made clear from the get-go that his number-one priority was to see the President fail.  And at least as recently as last August, in prepared remarks, he declared victory. “By any standard,” he told an audience — ignoring virtually every standard — “Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.”

(If you doubt these were their respective hopes, click those two links.)

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I know you just came here because the paremsan cheese reference caught your eye (“penn-sil-VAYN-ya”).  But if, unaccountably, you’ve read this far and still have interest, I offer some — partisan — thoughts from our estimable Jim Burt.

JIM BURT ON ‘CONSERVATIVES’

“I want to encourage you to help shift the political vocabulary a bit when it comes to today’s right wing.  Specifically, they’re not ‘conservative.’  That’s a word they use to cover their pot pourri of radical, extremist, and reactionary policy proposals.

“Commentators like George Will, at least before he sold his birthright to Fox, used to pay homage to Edmund Burke’s brand of conservatism and to the idea that conservatism was actually intended to, you know, conserve stuff.  That is, conservatism traditionally promoted stability, order, and predictability of justice, among other attractive values.  The only thing modern movement ‘conservatism’ tries to ‘conserve’ is the fortunes of the 0.1% and, to the extent not inconsistent with doing that, the fantasies of some fringe religionists about the role of their preferred religion in American history and life.

“So, please, unless a given politician, pundit, or proposal actually promotes conservation of traditional values and societal benefits, describe them as ‘radical’ and/or ‘extremist’ and encourage other commentators to do likewise.

“Here in Texas, the legislature is in its semi-annual session, once again depriving towns and villages across the state of their drunks and idiots, as the late Molly Ivins was wont to say.  It has a super-majority of Republicans, and they’re busy with a lot of bills to prohibit medically necessary abortions, prohibit law enforcement officers from asking gun-toting persons if they have a license (no kidding!), force municipalities and even colleges to permit open carrying of firearms, and prevent voters from being able, by referendum, to stop fracking in their local communities, among other matters.  With respect to the last point, one of our local newspapers applied the term ‘big government Republicans’ to these ham-handed efforts in favor of the oil and gas folks to prevent local home rule.  So along with ‘radical’ and ‘extremist,’ ‘big government Republicans’ should be part of our lexicon for as long as that party wants to meddle in our bedrooms and towns.

“The Republican idea of ‘small government’ appears to apply only to government’s regulation of Big Business. Republicans only oppose regulations that inhibit Big Business and only oppose taxes that affect the very richest Americans, while they only disfavor spending that helps poor and middle class people.  This last point is important:  The middle class has always been caught in the middle, but the Republicans of today, unlike the Republicans of, say, the 1950s, have been doing everything they can to pinch the middle for the benefit of the top 0.1%.  Their idea of ‘middle class values’ appears to be to put a low value on the middle class.

“The other thing I would call them is ‘deadbeat Republicans,’ because they run up big bills for wars and tax-cuts-for-the-rich without paying for them.”

I just tried the link again.  Sorry to report it’s still fixed.  But those of us who got the email in time will always remember: penn-sil-VAYN-ya.

Memorial Day we remember the brave men — and now women — who’ve given their lives for our country.  By that standard, Private Wojtek — neither a man nor a woman, and technically a private in the Polish army — does not qualify.  (He was a bear.)

But it’s a great story.  Short form, with photos, here; more details, including his retirement and ultimate demise, here.

I never met Private Wojtek.  But then again I never met my uncle Previn Landau, either. He was shot down over the Pacific in that same war a few years before I was born.  I just came to know I had been named after him and that my mom had been devastated by the loss — her favorite big brother.  She apparently cried so long . . . so frequently . . . so heart-breakingly, endlessly re-reading the letters Previn had written home . . . that my dad — who loved her as deeply as Westley loved Buttercup — couldn’t stand it anymore. He burned the letters.

I’m still trying to process that, even though I hadn’t been born at the time.  (Was he afraid all that crying could complicate the pregnancy?  Did I inherit the happy gene despite all that grief?)

By the time I became aware of any of this, and asked why my mom and her mom, whom we were visiting, wouldn’t come with us to see “The Bridge On The River Kwai,” or some other WWII movie of the time, the hushed tones in which none of this was discussed pretty much made the point.

So many losses.  So much sacrifice.  Such a debt we owe those who came before us — and such a responsibility to those who will follow.

And yet don’t we also have a responsibility to revel in our good fortune?  To smile at the thought of the guys pouring beers and lighting smokes for Private Wojtek?  (He probably died of lung cancer, so pour the Flower Power but skip the Marlboros.)

Have a great weekend!

Last month I offered “What You Should Know About TPP.”

I got some good reader feedback, not least because so many terrific progressives have decided — wrongly, I think — that the TransPacific Partnership is a very bad idea.

Maybe take a minute to re-read that prior post?

Then consider two examples of the criticism:

I. ROBERT REICH

One of you sent me this two-minute video by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich.  She asks: “Well, which of you is right?”

I admire him greatly, but think this is not Professor Reich at his most thoughtful best.  There’s a lot in the clip that strikes me as misleading, but let me focus on just one theme:  that corporate lobbyists and the big banks are all involved in shaping this secret deal, but not the American public.

Yes!  [Sarcasm ON]

If only the PEOPLE, not just the corporate lobbyists, had a seat at the table as this deal gets negotiated!

Indeed, I’d demand that a representative of the people – maybe a former community organizer, maybe someone Ted Kennedy would have endorsed – that kind of guy – were not just ONE of the voices at the table – I’d demand he be in charge of orchestrating the whole damn thing!

(Oh wait: he is.)

(And the rest of his team, like Labor Secretary Tom Perez, are pretty progressive, too.)

II. A HUGE NEW CUT TO MEDICARE

Another friend asked if I knew about the $700 million cut to Medicare the Republicans have added to the trade bill.

And as it happens, I had just gotten an urgent email from a liberal group I support and admire — I won’t embarrass it by saying which one — that began . . . “Andrew — Have you heard the terrible news? . . . [T]here is a huge new cut to Medicare in the Fast Track bill for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

That was their bold-facing, not mine — a huge new cut to Medicare.  Alarming news indeed.  Like you, I oppose any cuts to Medicare, unless they come via gains in efficiency or tougher negotiations with health care providers.

But guess what?  Google tells me that, wherever this “huge new cut” would come from, it would “slash” Medicare by a quarter of one percent.  (“Slash” was another word from the email, urging me to action.)  Which is to say a cut of $25 for each $10,000 in Medicare benefits I would otherwise get.

I’m not pooh-poohing $25 — if I had a daughter, I’d name her Frugality (and wouldn’t she grow up loving me for that?) — but remember that this is also the President who’s surtaxed wealthy investors 3.8% to do things like close Medicare’s donut hole by 2020, saving many seniors not $25 a year but $1,000! or $2,000!

So even if that $25 on each $10,000 would come directly from seniors and not from efficiencies or big hospital chains — and even if this Republican provision had to be accepted as part of TPP (which it may not be) — how does this become “terrible news”?

If a quarter of one percent is “a huge cut,” what would half a percent be?  Catastrophic?  And a full one percent?  Apocalyptic?  (If I had two daughters, I’d name the second, Hysteria.)

My point is simply that — with best of intentions that I entirely share — some of our progressive allies have lost perspective.

If in the greater scheme of things we have a President who saves seniors $2,000 a year on drugs by taxing the rich, but accepts a possible $25 a year cut (and I’m not saying he would!) to boost American economic competitiveness in the world, boost jobs, improve worker and environmental standards around the world (see my earlier post) — well does that really rise to the level of “terrible news?”

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If the TransPacific Partnership is concluded and accepted by Congress, it will not be perfect and it will not be without costs.

If (for the sake of discussion) it would be 80% good for everyday and struggling Americans and others around the world — but 20% bad — we can easily agree it would be FAR preferable to have it be 99% or 100% good and only 1% or 0% bad.

But if that’s not possible, then getting approval for 80% good / 20% bad would seem to be (A) very difficult, because opponents will, understandably, focus passionately on the 20%; yet (B) desirable.

Those working to reduce the 20% (or whatever number you assign it) are to be commended.  And I hope to post further as I learn more about some of the specifics.

But I just don’t accept the notion that the President and his team have suddenly turned stupid on us.  Or suddenly become stooges of big business.  And that the TPP they will present Congress would be 80% bad — with “huge new cuts to Medicare” to boot.

Our side seems to be saying, at a very high decibel level – MAINTAIN THE AWFUL STATUS QUO!  (See my earlier post.)  And to be appending — WE DON’T TRUST OBAMA!

I have more faith in our community-organizer-in-chief.  I do trust him.

(I saw the same thing on the LGBT front.  Many of activists quickly decided he had somehow become the enemy . . . that his “long game” was not, in fact, real.  And yet, somehow, we got hate crimes signed and DA/DT repealed, and marriage evolved – with progressive Justices confirmed to vote our way – and transgender inclusion, and just tons and tons of stuff that’s improved millions of LGBT lives.  Not perfect, or finished; but pretty good, considering.)

My own sense is that the worst a thoughtful progressive should think about the TPP effort is, “It will be an improvement over the status quo, as we and China vie to write the rules of world trade.  I just hope the President’s team drive the hardest possible bargain with respect to labor and environmental provisions, because the world badly needs a race to the top, not the bottom – as the President appears to understand very, very well.”

Here‘s the schedule of all 2015 Major League Baseball games.  If history’s any guide, I won’t be at any of them.*

I’m not a fan.  Arguably, it was the intense shame of swinging at and missing the 3-2 pitch with bases loaded in Color War — with Timmy Morse, on the opposing team, shouting, “Choke, batta, choke!” — that turned me gay . . . though I’m pretty sure (given my 14-year-old fantasies about Timmy) the die had been long since cast.

OK, I’m terrified of baseball . . . which is why I find my friend Billy Bean’s story all the more compelling.  He was secretly gay, too.  But he went on to play for the Dodgers.  And he was recently named Major League Baseball’s Ambassador for Inclusion . . . and even more recently invited to play on Orel Hershiser’s team in Dodger stadium, the three-inning “old-timers game” saluting the 50th anniversary of their 1965 World Series championship.

And he got a base hit off Fernando Valenzuela’s fastball on a 2-0 pitch, one of his team’s only three hits.

He writes about the experience, wonderfully, here.  In very short part:

. . . The camaraderie was amazing, the stories and memories vivid, though there was a hint of sadness knowing our best days were behind us. But it was still wonderful. . . . When the game was over, Lasorda yelled at me to come over by him. My old teammate — and one of baseball’s great personalities — Mickey Hatcher, walked up with me. Tommy put his arm around me, and he began to tell Mickey about my first day as a Dodger when he mistakenly thought I was a batboy.

I guess things are beginning to change.

Here’s a photo Billy sent me.  I didn’t know who the other guy was:

“Andy,” Billy chided — “that’s Sandy Koufax!”  The youngest player ever inducted into the Hall of Fame.  And Jewish!  (He chose not to pitch Game 1 of their 1965 championship World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur — in interesting contrast to Billy’s having to play the day after his partner died and not let anyone know, lest his shameful secret be revealed, as recounted in his memoir, Going the Other Way.)

Yes, even in Major League Baseball things are beginning to change.

Is this a great country, or what?

*I have been to two:  a Brooklyn Dodgers game my Uncle Lou took me to when I was 9 and a Red Sox game where Bobby Orr — who even I knew was no baseball player — poured us plastic cups of white wine to boost Boston’s bid for the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

Yesterday: helping the Amazon Conservation Team save millions of acres of rain forest, not least by hooking shamans up with Google Earth and GPS.

Today: curtailing the slaughter of elephants and rhinos with drones flown by the Air Shepherd Inititaive.  Such a cool idea:  the drones fly silently at night, spotting elephants — and poachers — via infra-red.  Where the latter are spotted in the vicinity of the former, rangers are dispatched to intervene.  With super-computers predicing poachers’ most likely patterns.  It’s fascinating . . . citizen-supported . . . and, according to their website, working! How cool is that?

Tomorrow: go see It Shoulda Been You, about a Jewish wedding (more or less) written by my friend Brian Hargrove and directed by his husband David Hyde Pierce (four Emmy’s for Dr. Niles Crane on “Frasier,” and much else).

Well really — after all that forest saving and slaughter curtailing, don’t you deserve a good time?

The show was great fun the first time I saw it . . . and then I read the New York Times review.  Apparently, if the audience had any brains we’d not have enjoyed it, as it was inspired by “a sappy little [1920s] comedy called “Abie’s Irish Rose” [that] became a runaway hit over the strenuous objections of the New York critics.”  Ah, the New York critics.

So I saw it again, hoping to be more sophisticated and disdainful — but fell for it again, along with the rest of the audience . . . perhaps more in tune with USA Today (“The freshest, funniest musical of the season”) and the Hollywood Reporter (“100 minutes of comic gold”).

You might like it, too.

He’s done amazing work, these past few decades, and deserves a nice 60th birthday present:

In December of 1982, an American graduate student fleeing a South American civil war paid a bush pilot to drop him on the most remote airstrip in the rainforests of the northeast Amazon. There, Mark Plotkin was met by the Trio Indians, none of whom he knew and whose language he did not speak. . . .

More than three decades later, Dr. Mark Plotkin is considered one of the most innovative and effective conservationists in the world today. And his partnership with the Trio people has endured and flourished, in conjunction with Mark’s organization, the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT).

. . . Together, Mark, ACT and the Trio tribe pioneered an approach to rainforest mapping that spread to 30 other tribes and resulted in the improved management and protection of more than 70 million acres of ancestral rainforest. (See more about this in an interview with Harvard Magazine.)

Today, Mark and ACT focus much of their efforts on protecting the last of the uncontacted tribes and their rainforest. (You can learn more about this in Mark’s superb TED Talk.)

It’s Dr. Mark Plotkin’s 60th Birthday! Help us raise $60,000 to create the first Shaman’s Encyclopedia in the Amazon. This document will become a template for tribal peoples throughout the Amazon, providing a tangible way to save oral shamanic wisdom in all of lowland South America.

Lend Mark a hand?

DRIVING A 1920 DODGE

Get a load of this, if you like old cars — and mud.  (Two minutes.)  Thanks, Mel!

1. You may have seen that this lovely Picasso sold at auction for $179 million, up more than five-fold in the 18 years since it last traded hands.  (Actually, it sold for $179,3650,000, but what’s $365,000 these days to a plutocrat or oligarch?  You can really just drop it in the “take a penny, leave a penny” dish by the cash register.)  I’d argue this is yet another sign the world’s rich and powerful have gotten a little too far ahead of the rest of us . . . perhaps the best solution to income inequality is not to cut the top estate tax rate from 45% (already down from 55%) to zero percent, as our Republican friends consistently propose . . . but, as usual, I digress.

2. Separately, you may know that perhaps the wisest, classiest financial writer living today (and certainly the tallest) is James Grant, whose newsletter, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, almost none of us can afford — “Non-subscribers may search the archives and download past issues at the cost of $115 per issue” — but whose books, at as little as a penny each, may be enjoyed on any budget.

3. Separately separately, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink recently called contemporary art one of the world’s greatest stores of wealth.  How can you wrong buying it?

Where these three items converge is in report on the state of today’s art market by my friend Zac Bissonnette that appears in the current issue of Grant’s . . . which you can download for free, here.  It seems that before Picasso — let alone Yayoi Kusama or Robert Ryman or Maurizio Cattelan — there was Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier. Never heard of him?  Ah.  Well, that’s the point.

4. Separately, separately, separately, as I have recounted in this space from time to time, I collect “historical documents,” which can be had — an Einstein letter or a Thomas Jefferson letter or an Isaac Newton — for a tiny teensy fraction of what you’d pay for a Yayoi Kusama, of whom I had never heard before reading Zac’s report, and of whom no one will ever have heard 1,000 years from now, when Einstein, Jefferson, and Newton — should our species survive — will likely remain top tier.

Check out, for example, this auction catalogue (just click to flip through it), which I highlight for the most venal of reasons: after decades of collecting, I actually have a few pieces in it.  June 11, I find out which, if any, sold, and at what I-hope-crazy price.

I can’t say for sure whether a handwritten letter from Thomas Edison to his son is overvalued or undervalued at the $6,000-$8,000 estimate listed on page 41 . . . likewise the Thomas Jefferson writing of Napoleon at $15,000-$20,000 on page 84 — neither of them mine, by the way — and I don’t know what to make of a Mother Teresa letter on page 132 estimated at $300-$500 (and who is this “George Washington” whose March 27, 1798 letter to the Secretary of War on page 164 warning of a “diabolical Drama” is estimated at $15,000 to $20,000?).  But I do know that you could purchase all these items and 20 more for that $365,000 we dropped in the Picasso take-a-penny-leave-a-penny dish.

So either (in my view) the art market is too dear or the document market too cheap — or both.  Either way, it’s fun to look at all this stuff.  Have a great weekend!