Sunny | FBI Khadijah | Tribal Lawsuit | Mendo Poppies | Indian Casinos | Finnish Mural | Duets Concerts | Lemon Flower | Gully Stuffing | Johnson Art | Circus Show | Yesterday's Catch | Legal Process | President Chaos | Whale Problems | Alcatraz Escapes | Giants Lose | Sinclair Lewis | Lead Stories | Best 100 | Boundaries | You're Fired | Gaza Escalation | Girls Night | Brainwashing | Out There | Trumpland | Round Back | Satchel Paige | Moreau Lake
SUNNY skies and warm inland temperatures are expected again today. Winds will be lighter this afternoon, especially along the coast. Tonight and Wednesday coastal and valley clouds are expected to increase along with cooler temperatures near the coast. Thursday through Saturday warmer temperatures are expected again. Late Sunday into Monday there is a chance of rain across the area. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 44F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. Cooling temps into Wednesday as an approaching front from the northwest will enhance the fog to our south & bring us cloud cover & cooling. Temps will warm after that into what is looking like a lovely weekend, no really.
Reward: The FBI is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the subject(s) related to the disappearance of Khadijah Rose Britton.
Details: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department in California are seeking any information from the public that may help to locate Khadijah Rose Britton. She was last seen at a residence in Covelo, California, on Friday, February 8, 2018, while being forced into a car at gunpoint by her ex-boyfriend.
Submit a Tip: Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office at (707)234-2100 or the FBI San Francisco Division at (415) 553-7400. Tips can be anonymous. You may also contact your local FBI office, the nearest American Embassy or Consulate, or submit tips online at tips.fbi.gov.
Field Office: San Francisco
Submit an anonymous Tip online
MENDOCINO SHERIFF WARNS LOCAL TRIBE COULD BE CREATING 'A NARCO STATE' IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
The cannabis raids were conducted on California tribal land last summer
by Lester Black
A Native Northern California tribe sued Mendocino County, its sheriff and the California Highway Patrol last week, accusing them of conducting illegal raids on cannabis farms that “terrorized” the tribal community last year, including tearing up an 86-year-old’s vegetable garden.
The Round Valley Indian Tribes and three individual plaintiffs are suing for unspecified monetary damages and a court injunction stopping the Mendocino County Sheriff’s department from conducting illegal raids on their land. The lawsuit’s named co-defendants include Humboldt County, its sheriff, and the commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.
Lester Marston, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told Law360.com that the July 2024 raids were part of Mendocino County Sheriff Matthew Kendall’s “good old boy” system of uneven enforcement of laws.
“If he likes you, he cuts you slack,” Marston told Law360. “But if he doesn’t like you, or your face is brown, then he sends his goon squad up, knocks on the door and when the 87-year-old woman responds, the AK-47s come up, and it’s ‘get down on the ground!’”
Kendall forcefully pushed back on this characterization in an interview with SFGate, saying that he grew up in the Round Valley area of Mendocino County and did not personally decide which properties were raided.
“This good ole boy thing where I don’t like people with brown faces, I’m sorry, my daughter is Native, my brother’s children are Native, that is a load of bullsh—t,” Kendall said.
The legal dispute centers on how much authority state and county law enforcement have on tribal land. The lawsuit alleges that the officers had no authority to enforce cannabis law on the tribal land, areas that are governed by tribal law. The lawsuit also alleges that officers failed to show warrants for some of the raids and, when they did, the warrants did not disclose that the farms were on tribal land.
Kendall told SFGate that law enforcement was targeting farms run by non-tribal people and that the raids were not conducted illegally. He said that his office receives numerous pleas from tribal members asking for help fighting illegal cannabis farms.
“We have to go deal with it or we’re not dealing with our duties, but as soon as we do deal with this now there’s a lawsuit and we’re called a racist,” Kendall said. “No, not enforcing the law for the tribes would be racist.”
Kendall said it was “strange” that the tribe itself is suing his office. The Round Valley Indian Tribes did not return an SFGate request for comment, and David Dehnert, one of the attorneys on the lawsuit, told SFGate in an email that the tribal leadership would not provide comment on the litigation.
Tribal members have previously sparred with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Gary Cordova, a Round Valley tribal member, sued the county in 2023 alleging that a 2022 raid by sheriff's deputies was illegal and destroyed $100,000 worth of cannabis. A federal district court judge ruled against Cordova in February of 2024, deciding that his farm was not legal under the state’s medical laws.
Kendall said the area around Round Valley, a fertile piece of flat land surrounded by the rugged coastal range mountains, has become a hotbed of illicit cannabis activity with cartel activity and murders. He warned that the tribe’s permissive attitude is “going to create a Narco state on that tribal land.”
Marston told SFGate that cartels are a problem in the area, but alleged Kendall is declining to go after the illicit farms and is instead investigating “based on his own personal likes and dislikes.”
“Why wasn’t he putting that type of task force to go after the cartel, which everybody knows is up in that area? What’s wrong with Kendall, is he afraid?,” Marston said.
Kendall said that was untrue, and that his raids have consistently gone after “the grow sites that are the biggest and the baddest.”
(SFGate.com)
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
The joke is that a lot of drug dealing goes on at our local casinos. They know, and turn a blind eye to the small time deals. What to do? It’s a giant hassle to confront the deals. Besides, a lot of the deals go down in the wee hours of the night. When hardly anybody gambling is there. This is a fact. Sometimes I wish the Indian Casinos had not taken root here in our community. Gambling is a potential addiction to lots of people for many reasons. And it is designed to be that way. There is no “Gamblers Anonymous” program here. And with three casinos in an impoverished area. The casinos would despise that because for every person that quits, is significant bucks to them. Back to drug dealing in the casinos and the wretched people are there to score.
FINNISH MURAL
Come learn about my mural “From Finland to Fort Bragg” this Wednesday May 7 10-11am. Find out about the people, the sauna, a commune and all those cool buildings! I’ll be completing the mural by painting portraits of the Nelson brothers on the door situated in that wall.
Arvid and Enoch Nelson were sons of Finnish immigrants and like many Finns and Finnish-Americans, they valued labor, community and equality. After the Russian Revolution, Enoch was one of thousands of Finns who went to the Soviet state of Karelia to create a workers’ paradise. Enoch and Arvid wrote letters to each other during the 1920s, but in 1933 the correspondence from Russia stopped.
For decades the Nelsons knew nothing about their son/brother/uncle. It took 60 years and the fall of the Soviet Union for Enoch’s Russian grandson to find his American relatives and to know the truth about his grandfather’s fate: Enoch had been murdered in 1938 during Stalin’s purges, and his body lies in the mass graves of Sandarmokh forest.
There is so much more to this story, told in the book by Arvid’s son Allen Nelson and local historians Russell and Sylvia Bartley (available at the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast Historical Society and the Fort Bragg - Mendocino County Library). A special part of Wednesday’s presentation: you will meet Sergei Nelson, who returned to his grandfather’s hometown and lives here now. To see more about the mural: https://historymural.com/finn/
Part of the very successful Art for Alleyways project!
--> Wednesday 5/7/25 at 10am come to the short alley on the west side of the 300 block of N. Franklin, across the street from Racine’s art supply.
DUETS’ CONCERT FOR MOTHER’S DAY AT WILLITS CENTER FOR THE ARTS - MAY 11, 2025
Don’t know what to do for Mom on Mother’s Day? Looking for that one-of-a-kind experience? Look no further! Treat her this Sunday to a musical world tour at The Willits Center for the Arts presenting ‘Duets’ , a musical adventure featuring four different ‘duets’ from the region’s finest musicians. Spencer Brewer and friends return to the Willits Center for the Arts (WCA) for this unique musical journey. It’s sure to be an amazing concert as well-known area musicians’ pair up on WCA's grand piano, violin, saxophone, vocals, and traditional Chinese instruments. Performers include classical masters Ben Rueb & Margie Rice, jazz greats Barney McClure & Roseanne Wetzel, original compositions with Spencer Brewer & Wenbo Yin and Classical Chinese featuring Katrina Hu, Lita Li & Hannah Cheng.
Well known Ukiah musician and producer Spencer Brewer finds great satisfaction in putting unique musical events together. “Finding the right artists across a myriad of styles and matching them with a great venue allows for wondrous moments to happen,” Spencer remarks, adding that the DUETS concept showcases musician's talents in new ways. “When a duet or small ensemble come together, each player brings to their sound, their life experience, and their voice to the table. An ensemble allows for moments of brilliance between the players.” He continues, “Coming up with the concept for a Mother's Day concert composed of different styles with a variety of artists and instrumentation was a blast! This fun afternoon of exceptional classical music, jazz, funky boogie, soulful renditions and original compositions will leave listeners enriched.”
Enjoy this musical afternoon with friends, neighbors, and good cheer, all to benefit the Willits Center for the Arts. Charcuterie and special pastries from Willits’ own Crafthouse Baking and the Cheesecakery will be served, along with sparkling wine and other beverages.
Presale tickets are $25 online at willitscenterforthearts.org and at the gallery desk, and $30 at the door the day of the concert. Doors open at 3:30 on Sunday May 11, and music begins at 4pm in the Great Room at the Willits Center for the Arts, 71 East Commercial St. in Willits. For more information call 707-459-1726.
EEL RIVER RECOVERY PROJECT WILL HOST A FREE GULLY STUFFING WORKSHOP AT LOWER TENMILE CREEK IN LAYTONVILLE ON MAY 18TH
What: Gully Stuffing Workshop - A free, hands-on land restoration event focused on using forest health slash (woody biomass) to stabilize erosion gullies and improve watershed health. Attendees will learn how to slow and spread water, capture sediment, and regenerate gullies.
When: Sunday, May 18, 2025 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM (Lunch included)
Where: Lower Ten Mile, North of Laytonville, CA (Directions provided upon RSVP)
Who Should Attend: Landowners, conservation professionals, forestry workers, restoration volunteers, and anyone interested in watershed management and ecological restoration.
Why: To teach practical techniques for reducing erosion, improving water quality, sequestering carbon, and restoring habitat using organic forest material.
RSVP Required: Please contact CheyenneatErrpoutreach@gmail.com to confirm attendance and receive event directions.
For more information about Gully Stuffing, check out this video produced by our friends at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, who are using forest thinning debris to heal extensive damage to the hydrology on their property in Sonoma County.
PINOT WEEKEND AND MEMORIAL WEEKEND A UNIQUE PAIRING
Earthy notes of turned earth, forest, and field — these flavors combine to create the taste of this remarkable place.
Barns, Color, and the Flavor of Place Art rooted in landscape
I’m delighted to invite you to experience my newest work at Domaine Anderson Tasting Room in Anderson Valley.
“Barns, Color, and the Flavor of Place” opens during the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival (May 16-18) and will remain on view throughout the summer.
Just as terroir imparts a distinct sense of place to wine, I respond to the environment around me — breathing in the land’s textures, colors, and histories. In this dialogue between land and maker, I create art that carries the spirit and alchemy of Anderson Valley.
In addition to the tasting room show, my Studio & Sculpture Garden will also be open for two special weekends:
Saturday-Sunday, May 17-18 and Saturday-Sunday, May 24-25, from 11 AM to 5 PM each day. And open by appointment
You’re warmly invited to stop by, experience the work in person, and stroll through the Sculpture Garden.
Visiting the studio is taking a moment to slow down, have a conversation, make a connection. Whether you come to look, to talk, buy or simply to enjoy the quiet beauty of the surroundings, I welcome you.
A toast to art and spirit.
Cheers,
Rebecca Johnson
Visit Details:
Domaine Anderson Tasting Room
9201 Highway 128, Philo, CA 95466
Open Thursday-Monday, 11 AM - 5 PM
(On view May 16-18 and throughout summer)
Rebecca's Studio & Sculpture Garden
1200 Highway 128, mile marker 15.08, Navarro, CA 95463
Open Saturday-Sunday, May 17-18 and May 24-25
11 AM - 5 PM
FLYNN CREEK CIRCUS PRESENTS ‘THE BRIDGE’: A Daring, Original Fairytale with Acrobats, Comedy, and Myth
Mendocino, CA — June 27-July 6 – This 2025 season, Flynn Creek Circus invites audiences to ‘The Bridge’ — a spellbinding new show inspired by a wolf, Nordic legend, and the kinetic architecture of connection.
Narrated through the voice of the silly Goat and his stubborn Shadow, The Bridge takes viewers on a journey with massive acrobatic stunts, irreverent comedy, and masterful showmanship. Meet the troubled Troll, the empty headed Emperor and the Red Countess as they encounter the realm of the wolf. The Ferryman and the Star enchant with feats of elegant skill. True to Flynn Creek Circus’ signature style, the performance is visually stunning and truly authentic.
The Bridge is a modern, unforgettable, child pleasing circus to inspire audiences of all ages.
In addition to the family friendly showings, and the interactive children's camp program held under the circus big top, Flynn Creek Circus also presents the wildly popular 'Adults Only Show' boasting outrageous acts, dark comedy, and an infamous party atmosphere. Check the website for select adults only showtimes as well as special discount nights.
Spectators for all showings are invited to the tent to experience the magic up to 30 minutes before each show. The event will offer beer, wine, and light concession for purchase and include a 15 minute intermission during the two hour show.
Limited free parking is available on-site for attendees.
Tickets for Flynn Creek Circus are now available for purchase online at flynncreekcircus.com. Individual ticket prices start at $23 or, for table reservations, options start at $81 for two attendees.
Find showtimes and more details on the camp programs at flynncreekcircus.com
Early booking is encouraged for this highly anticipated event.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, May 5, 2025
DAVID BROWN, 29, Ukiah. Shoplifting, petty theft with two more priors, stolen property.
JAMES CAIN, 27, Cathedral City/Ukiah. Marijuana sales.
JONATHAN CISNEROS, 35, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
ALICIA JOAQUIN, 31, Covelo. DUI, paraphernalia, child endangerment, failure to appear.
JOSHUA WINN, 40, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery/battery with serious injury, false report of crime.
THE REST IS NOISE
Editor:
It’s time to stop all the narrative about the man deported wrongly to El Salvador. It doesn’t matter if he’s the father of the year or a serial killer. It’s not about him, it’s about us as a country. We either abide by our own laws or we don’t. It’s just that simple. We are supposed to be a nation of laws. If the government starts deciding which laws it will or won’t obey, then we are no longer anything close to what the founders intended. Kilmar Abrego Garcia needs to be brought back to finish the legal process. That’s all there is to it; the rest is all noise.
Stuart Campbell
Cotati
MIKE GENIELLA:
President Chaos orders Alcatraz to be reopened. Perhaps the moron should read the government's own background on a prison that hasn't been stacked with prisoners since 1963.
Trump and the crowd (including DOGE) might learn that Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other federal prison. The significant expense was caused by the island's physical isolation, meaning food, supplies, water, and fuel had to be brought to Alcatraz by boat. For example, prison records show the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week. The federal government closed Alcatraz because building a new institution was more cost-effective than keeping it open.
Musk, the whiz-bang spending guru, should look into the Trump pronouncement, given the tens of millions of dollars it would take to turn Alcatraz back into a prison facility.
More lunacy.
TRUMP SAID ‘NOBODY’S EVER ESCAPED FROM ALCATRAZ.’ OH REALLY?
by Annie Vainshtein
President Trump said Monday that “Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz” — a key reason he wants to reopen the legendary prison that’s been shuttered for 62 years.
It seems he may have forgotten about a handful of people.
Theodore Cole. Ralph Roe. Frank Lee Morris. John and Clarence Anglin. Each were convicts who got off the island. As far as federal officials are concerned, all are presumed to have drowned. But no one can say for sure.
Trump made his declaration Monday after a reporter — during a press conference announcing Washington D.C. as the 2027 NFL Draft host — asked the president how he decided to reopen Alcatraz, which bade farewell to its last prisoner in 1963. Trump described the prison as representing something that was “both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.”
“It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting,” he said. But he brushed off that anyone had ever escaped, saying only that “one person almost got there but as you know … they found his clothing rather badly ripped up.” There were a “lot of shark bites,” he said. “A lot of problems.”
John Martini, a historian who has studied Alcatraz extensively for over a half-century, said he had never heard of a person’s clothing that was ripped up by shark bites. For decades, the lore surrounding the prison has been that “man-eating” sharks” in the San Francisco Bay would have made it impossible for an inmate to survive a swim from the island.
In reality, the sharks that live in the bay are not great whites and are not known to attack people, even swimmers at Aquatic Park.
“It’s not like (the sharks) are circling the island, waiting to eat convicts,” Martini said. “Man-eaters? No, that’s a mythology that grew up during the penitentiary era and from what I’ve gathered, the correctional officers did nothing to dissuade the convicts from believing it.”
At least one intrepid convict in 1962, 35-year-old John Paul Scott, proved that a person could swim from Alcatraz to the mainland and survive with almost no injuries, or detection.
“You might just say that he’s damn cold,” said a military hospital staff member of Scott, who teenagers found clinging to the rocks off Fort Point on December 17, 1962. Scott had made “water wings” by stuffing inflated rubber surgical gloves inside the sleeves of his denim shirt, which he tied around his waist.
Scott and another man, Darl Lee Parker, sawed through window bars using household cleaner; Parker was found not far from the island, clinging to a cluster of rocks 100 yards away. Both were taken back to Alcatraz.
Historians and the Bureau of Prisons own officials have debated what a truly “successful” escape from Alcatraz looks like: whether it’s getting out of one’s cell, climbing into the water, making it to land, or making it to land and never getting caught.
The first pair of the five unaccounted-for men, Theodore Cole, 25, and Ralph Roe, 32, escaped from Alcatraz on December 16, 1937. Officials said the convicted kidnapper and bank robber had planned their escape for months by gradually sawing through iron bars in the prison’s mat shop.
They reportedly made their escape with two large air-tight oil cans that they strapped together as a raft. Civilian clothes — for changing into when they reached land — were reportedly sealed into one of the cans, according to the Chronicle.
Four years after their escape, a Chronicle story reported the fugitives were living “comfortably” in South American hideouts. In the years since their escape, they had reportedly been spotted in various places around the Bay Area, Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma, the Chronicle reported, before they allegedly were smuggled out of the country by a friend.
However, “the simplest answer is that all the evidence that was recovered in the bay points to them drowning,” said Martini.
Contrary to the reported sightings, federal officials believe the men perished in the rough waters of the bay. However, they maintained that the hunt for the men would go on until they are found “dead or alive.”
On June 11, 1962 — six months before Scott and Parker’s escape attempts — three bank robbers, Frank Lee Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, made their way out of Alcatraz. Over the course of months, they painstakingly used spoons honed to a point that allowed them to chip their way out of concrete cell blocks.
The trio had also managed to secretly climb to the tops of their cell blocks over those months to loosen the rivets on a 5-foot section of a ventilator they would eventually squeeze through.
On the night of their dramatic escape, they pushed themselves through apertures in the utility alleway between cell blocks, climbed up drain pipes, slid down 50-foot kitchen vents and scaled two 12-foot fences topped by barbed wire, all while slipping past a host of guards in the darkness. The men apparently made “water wings” from materials they stole from the prison’s stores.
The guards realized they were missing the next morning, when instead of sleeping bodies they found heads fashioned out of plaster with painted faces and brush bristles resembling hair. Pillows under the blankets mimicked the form of their bodies.
Officials maintain that they drowned. But their bodies were never found.
Over his years of studying Alcatraz, Martini said, he asked numerous convicts about what they made of the fate of the men who escaped in 1962. Many of them said that by their standards, the men had escaped — even if they had drowned.
“To them, it was getting out of the prison, getting off the island. That was freedom,” said Martini. “It didn’t matter how long it lasted or if they died in the attempt. They were free men for that period.”
(SFChronicle)
GIANTS GET SLOPPY ON DEFENSE and go quiet on offense in loss to Cubs
by Susan Slusser
CHICAGO — With the Cubs already leading the majors in runs, the San Francisco Giants didn’t need to give them a hand or two, three or four Monday night.
Preposterously poor defense, the exact opposite of the Giants’ plan to make their mark this season, handed Chicago a 9-2 victory in the first game of a three-game series at Wrigley Field. The left side of the infield, as talented as any in the league, made four errors — two each by third baseman Matt Chapman and shortstop Willy Adames — leading to six unearned runs.
Not since May 15, 1948, had the Giants had a third baseman and shortstop each make multiple errors in the same game. This year’s club, playing in the stacked NL West, is built to win with pitching and defense, and Adames has made seven errors, tied with Elly De La Cruz for most in the majors. He’s at minus-6 Defensive Runs Saved. Chapman, a five-time Gold Glove winner and two-time Platinum Glove winner, has made four in the past five games.
“Obviously, I do take a lot of pride in my defense,” Chapman said, “That is is the best thing that I can do to help the team, and it’s just frustrating, it’s been a few games in a row here where we haven’t been able to make some plays.”
“We’re better than that,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Defensively, just an off night.”
The game was tied 2-2 in the fourth when the flubs afield began. With Giants starter Landen Roupp trying to get a shutdown inning and striking out the first two hitters, things went south fast. Chapman couldn’t come up with a tapper behind the mound by Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Nico Hoerner moved Crow-Armstrong to third with a single and stole second, too easily, another whoopsie. Both hurt when Dansby Swanson singled the runners in.
Chapman said he should have tried to run through the play on the 27.2 mph spinner by Crow-Armstrong but he’d tried to play it with two hands; even then he might not have gotten the speedy Crow-Armstrong. He expects to make that play, though, he said.
“We scored two runs to tie the game up, and then we could potentially get the shutdown inning, and be tied 2-2 with some momentum going back in the dugout, and we gave a team that has a great offense extra outs,” he said. “They scored two and that kind of changed the momentum, and they were able to capitalize more and more.”
“Chappy’s going to make that play nine out of 10 times,” Roupp said. “I’m definitely not worried about that. You’ve got to move on from those things.”
Roupp didn’t walk a batter and struck out four in his five innings and said he felt the best he has all season with his command, especially his cutter and changeup, important for a curveball-heavy pitcher who can become a bit predictable without his other stuff working.
Hayden Birdsong supplanted Roupp in the sixth and gave up a leadoff homer to Carson Kelly. Crow-Armstrong then singled and Adames and Chapman made back-to-back errors to load the bases. Birdsong walked in a run, Ian Happ hit a sacrifice fly and so on.
“I’m going to think about those tonight,” Chapman said. “It really makes me mad, because I want to set the tone and it’s contagious, just like hitting is contagious, when you’re not taking care of the baseball. Guys put pressure on themselves, we just gave them an extra out, now we need to make another play. I don’t want to be the guy that does that. But it’s baseball, it’s a long season, and sometimes things come in bunches.”
Offensively, the Giants didn’t do enough either. Luis Matos smacked a two-run homer off Matthew Boyd in the fourth to tie it after Ian Happ had hit his own two-run shot the inning earlier. It was Matos’ second homer in three games, but did not prevent San Francisco’s record in games started by opposing left-handers dropping to 2-9. They’re 20-5 in games started by righties.
“It’s probably one of those things that will even out over the course of the year,” Chapman said. “We have a lot of righties in the lineup. We have a lot of guys that I think hit lefties well. … We’ll make some adjustments and be able to capitalize on some of those lefties.”
The Cubs and Giants are now both 22-14. But Chicago, playing in the less-oppressive NL Central, is in first place, while San Francisco is in third in the NL West, 2 1/2 games behind the division-leading Dodgers.
The Giants have lost six of their past seven games at Wrigley Field.
(sfchronicle.com)
SINCLAIR LEWIS (1885–1951) was a groundbreaking American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. He became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1930 for his vigorous and satirical depiction of American life and culture.
Key Facts About Sinclair Lewis:
- Full Name: Harry Sinclair Lewis
- Birth: February 7, 1885, in Sauk Center, Minnesota
- Death: January 10, 1951, in Rome, Italy
Major Works:
- Main Street (1920): A critique of small-town life and conformity.
- Babbitt (1922): Satirizes middle-class American values and materialism.
- Arrowsmith (1925): Focuses on scientific integrity vs. commercialism; won the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined.
- Elmer Gantry (1927): Exposes hypocrisy in evangelical religion.
- It Can’t Happen Here (1935): A political novel warning against the rise of fascism in America.
Style and Legacy:
Lewis is known for his sharp satire, keen observation, and critique of American society—especially its complacency, consumerism, and conformity. His characters often struggle against social norms or become complicit in the very systems they despise.
Lewis had a complicated relationship with fame, often battling personal issues, including alcoholism. Nevertheless, his literary contributions remain vital to understanding American culture in the early 20th century.
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
Netanyahu Warns of ‘Intensive’ Escalation in Gaza Campaign
Canada’s Carney Is on a High-Stakes Visit to the White House
Trump Administration Asks Court to Dismiss Abortion Pill Case
Trump Offers to Pay Immigrants Who Deport Themselves
Controllers Briefly Lost Contact With Planes at Newark Last Week, Union Official Says
The Real ID Deadline Is Days Away. Are You Ready to Fly?
THERE WILL BE BOUNDARIES
by James Kunstler
"Fascism is when Dad says 'no'" —Aimee Terese on "X"
It’s vain and futile to suppose that the disordered minds of Western Civ’s entrenched Wokester Jacobins might ever be subject to polite persuasion about anything they believe. They believe only in the power of pushing their fellow citizens around, and so, alas, the only persuasion that might conceivably work to stop their infantile assaults on liberty, truth, and decency is to push back harder until they suffer and break.
This is something that most parents with young children instinctively understand. You don’t negotiate with two-year-olds. You tell them how things are and what sort of behavior is required of them, as plainly and simply as possible. Mr. Trump, having been the father of many two-year-olds over time, appears to get this. It has been apparent for years that Mr. Trump’s symbolic role as a father figure is the most deeply resented feature of his role in US politics.
It also appears that many men in this country likewise get this, perhaps because nature conditions them early on to understand that some day they might have to play the role of father, meaning they will have to push back hard against emotional disorder, hysteria, illogic, and untruth, and violence.
Hence, you might see the peril of living in a land with so many fatherless households. This lamentable state of things defines the Democratic Party, where raging, inchoate, resent-driven Jacobinism dwells, a party now with no leader, a household with no father, no one to regulate its frenzied, power-seeking behavior. This also tells you how the Democratic Party has become the party run by women, and of particular types of women — women who have traded the management of children and households for bureaucratic careerism, women too lacking in feminine appeal to attract mates, women attempting to become the men missing in their lives — and men wishing to become women, or pretending to be women.
And so you see how these disorders play out in the ongoing melodrama of men in women’s sports, a proposition so obviously insane that no healthy society has ever abided it for a moment until the American Jacobins ran with it as a cardinal political irritant to vex their opponents (and really for no other reason). The state of Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, clashed openly with Mr. Trump over his executive order to desist from allowing biological men in women’s sports. The matter is currently making its way through the courts.
This week, a “trans” athlete named Soren Stark-Chessa, beat the field of females in a Maine track-meet by a country mile in the 800-meter and 1600-meter runs. No one, except the political leadership of Maine, was fooled about the fairness of this, of course. Fairness is not the point. Intransigent defiance of reality was the point. It is always the point for Jacobin politicians.
What is most obviously insane in matters like this, is that the female governor is so eager to punish and humiliate her younger fellow females in order to merely press a political point — that she is the boss of Maine, and nobody can tell her what to do, even if she deranges the cultures of schooling and sports. This illustrates, by the way, a principal difference in the way men’s and women’s brains work. Men typically understand boundaries, where things begin and end. It is a necessary cognitive device for regulating behavior in the household and for acting in the face of danger when required.
Sports is just a microcosm of our politics. The whole gestalt of Woke-Jacobin politics is driven by the wish to dissolve boundaries. That is, it is driven by female minds, and what the Woke-Jacobins might call female-adjacent minds. That is why the open border fiasco was another point-of-principle for the Democratic Party — and why “Joe Biden” the phantom president (actually the shadowy figures behind him) pretended that nothing could be done about it.
Mr. Trump demonstrated that was a lie in a New York minute. The damage from four years of a wide-open border is immense, much worse than men running in girls’ races. The motive for it is also obvious: to jam as many illegal aliens as possible into the country so as 1) to disorder the next census count in swing states to keep congressional districts safe, and 2) to install a base of new “voters” — qualified to vote or not — who will be eternally grateful to the Democratic Party for letting them flood into the country and gifting them with housing, social services, transportation, free meals, and walking-around-money.
And now, a Woke-Jacobin judiciary, assisted by an infrastructure of Lawfare ninjas, led by the outlaw Norm Eisen, and financed by George Soros, and what remains of Soros-adjacent NGOs, is using the courts to keep all those illegally-admitted aliens in place here at all costs. So, you see, they are attempting to dissolve a boundary crucial to the Republic’s survival: who is a citizen and who is not a citizen, and what are the privileges entailed? The objective is to keep this dispute alive in the courts long enough to affect the 2026 midterm elections in the hopes of winning Congress back.
You can also see how this will oblige Mr. Trump to marshal the most aggressive legal force possible to crush this seditious legal insurrection. He has executive powers and perquisites in reserve that he has not used yet, or even revealed. He will defeat these monsters in the end just as he is methodically disassembling their scaffold of psychopathic ideology and their pipelines of funding. It will really be something to see.
“YOU’RE FIRED!” MILLIONS REJECT TRUMP
by Ralph Nader
Of all the epithets seething from the foul mouth of King Donald I (his preferred title) – “deranged,” “wacko,” “lunatic,” “crazy,” “crooked,” “loser,” “criminal,” “corrupt,” the most timely, functional one is his favorite: “YOU’RE FIRED.”
Launched from his TV program, “The Apprentice,” while a failed businessman, Trump, using the poisonous tusks of Elon Musk, has conveyed that exit phrase to hundreds of thousands of innocent public servants, performing crucial tasks, and their contractors since January 20, 2025.
Given his wreckage of lives, livelihoods, health, safety and freedom of speech here and abroad in just 100 days, Trump invites daily the unifying command arising out of his declaration of war against the American people – red state and blue state – “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Trump, a corporation masquerading as a Human must be unmasked by the following bill of particulars:
Because you’re first ‘presentation of self’ on January 20th was to declare that you are the law and that no constitution, statute or regulation was going to stop your issuance of scores of illegal Executive Order Dictates, “YOU’RE FIRED!” The Constitution does NOT provide for either a Monarch or a Dictator!
Because on and after January 20, 2025, you launched a major PURGE of lawfully acting civil servants, including 17 Inspector Generals mandated to root out criminal and fraudulent activities, and top officials in the Pentagon, Intelligence and Regulatory agencies without reason and notice, replacing them with sycophants, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because you are daily CENSORING and IMPERILLING people, protected by our First Amendment, with police state kidnappings, illegal imprisonment in foreign and domestic jails, threats, harassment, bigotry and outright criminal extortions for unlawful demands, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because you have repeatedly violated Congressional mandates, including the power of the purse and health/safety standards, and because you have illegally seized basic congressional authority under the Constitution, having defied over 125 Congressional subpoenas in your first term, destroying our federal checks and balances, “YOU’RE FIRED!” (See, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” by Mark Green and me, published in 2020).
Because you are rampantly and unlawfully dismantling or closing down virtually all the long-established regulatory and scientific research, protections of the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people, families and children, within the areas of consumer, worker, environmental and community necessities – many life-saving, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because you favor even greater power of large corporations to receive bloated contracts, subsidies, giveaways and with impunity defraud the government, as with Medicare and Medicaid and military contracts, take over more of the public lands, and see scores of existing federal enforcement cases against them halted or dismissed, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because you have destroyed more of the working civil service than all previous presidents combined, you have left the American people more defenseless against pandemics, climate violence, air and water pollution, hunger, infectious diseases and corporate crimes, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because you are demanding Congress pass more tax cuts and tax escapes for the very under-taxed super-wealthy, like you and your family members, and giant corporations, and because you have turned the White House into a self-enrichment business for you and your cronies, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because you have extended your cruel and vicious destructions against innocents abroad receiving life-saving medicine, food and medical supplies from the U.S. Agency for International Development that you unlawfully have closed down, millions of poor people are in jeopardy and many thousands already dying and starving. You are told about these tragedies you have caused but could care less. Your zigzagging on massive tariffs destabilizing U.S. businesses and their workers is leading more of your supporters to question your competence and wrongheaded policies. Because regarding the Israeli genocide/slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and casualties mounting in the West Bank, you have backed your master Netanyahu even more than Bibi-Biden, greenlighting breaking the truce, resuming mass murder/starvation, pushing for expulsion of the entire surviving population and approving annexation of the West Bank, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because every day you lie, and make false statements as a routine deceptive practice (over 35,000 lies and false statements listed by the Washington Post during your first term), you are creating harmful, false scenarios. Together with Musk enriching his corporate positions in Washington, you lie about each day’s realities such as the price of eggs being down 85 percent, our country now having a trade surplus, and your approval rating in polls “in the 60s and 70s,” “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Because your erratic, wild and no-holds-barred fascist dictatorial corporate state “first” behavior proceeds from a dangerously unstable personality, driven by your insatiable vengeance as a megalomaniacal power freak, ignorant of or oblivious to circumstances and consequences, your continued wreckage in all directions is certain to worsen and shatter our Republic and its constitutional processes, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Expanding numbers of Americans from all backgrounds who see the deadly months ahead of Dangerous Donald need to sum up their demands in the siren call “YOU’RE FIRED!” Just as was done to President Richard Nixon for far less serious transgressions in 1974.
NETANYAHU WARNS OF ‘INTENSIVE’ ESCALATION IN GAZA CAMPAIGN
by Michael D. Shear, Aaron Boxerman & Adam Rasgon
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a new plan calls for a “forceful entry” into the territory and would involve Palestinians relocating to the south.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared on Monday that his country is “on the eve of a forceful entry to Gaza” after his security cabinet approved a new plan for tens of thousands of additional soldiers to seize and hold territory in the embattled enclave and relocate Palestinians to the south.
In video posted to social media as military reservists across Israel began receiving notices of their call-up, Mr. Netanyahu said that the country’s top military officials had recommended what he called an “intensive” escalation of the 18-month war.
“It’s time to launch the concluding moves,” Mr. Netanyahu said the military officials told him, adding that the new campaign would help bring home the hostages still being held in Gaza. The prime minister said he believes “we are not done. We are before the finish line.”
The escalation followed more than two months in which Israel continued to blockade and bombard the Gaza Strip as cease-fire talks to free the remaining hostages ground to a near standstill. Israel has barred any humanitarian aid to Gaza in an effort to press Hamas to surrender, leading aid groups to denounce mounting deprivation among Palestinians there.
— NYT
DIRTY MINDS
by Nikhil Krishnan
The earliest appearances of the concept “brainwashing,” Lemov writes, occurred in the mid-20th century, in the files of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA. The term came to prominence owing in large part to the writings of an American journalist named Edward Hunter. He claimed that it was a rendering of a Chinese phrase, but it may have been, as he elsewhere claimed, a coinage of his own to describe Chinese persuasion techniques.
These techniques were most famously applied during the Korean War. As a prisoner of war, Morris R. Wills faced a gamut of privations — he was left malnourished and consigned to filthy conditions amid the ever-present threat of execution. Horror alternated with boredom. Conditions improved when Wills was transferred to what was called Camp One. The food got better, letters could be sent home, and there were even volleyball games.
That was, it seems, an early stage of a procedure known as re-education. Wills was identified as a member of the exploited classes, a promising target for the method. Reflecting on his experiences many years later, he said, “Brainwashing is not done with electrodes stuck to your head.” It was, rather, “a long, horrible process by which a man slowly-step by step, idea by idea becomes totally convinced, as I was, that the Chinese Communists have unlocked the secret to man’s happiness and that the United States is run by rich bankers, McCarthy types, and ‘imperialist aggressors’.”
The theory behind this method, as articulated by Chairman Mao, didn’t sound so bad. People could not be forced to become Marxists, Mao wrote. He recommended, instead, “democratic” methods of “discussion, criticism, persuasion, and education.” An important stage of the process was called “speaking bitterness.” American GIs, like the Chinese peasants on whom the method had first been tried, had a great deal of bitterness to speak: of racism and poverty back home, and of discrimination within the armed forces. Wills was made to introspect, to write an autobiography. He and other POWs were subjected to hours of lectures on Marxist theory.
Faced with the demand to justify “the American system,” Wills — unable to articulate what that even was — found himself moving in what his captors called a Progressive (as opposed to Reactionary) direction. American society was rotting, he came to believe; the Chinese way was the future. He chose not to be repatriated. But, where other prisoners who made the same decision were sent to work on farms and in paper mills, he was sent to the People’s University in Beijing.
The brainwashing process was never complete. Ostentatious acts of “repentance” were repeatedly demanded — Wills had already had to participate in “self-criticism” seminars. He was now taught more about Marxism and the history of China. He even witnessed a public execution. But he ended up staying in China for twelve years.
Wills’s retrospective accounts of his experience, once he was back in the United States and in a position to reflect on what had been done to him, are illuminating. It is plain that his Chinese captors had succeeded, at least for a time, in producing a genuine change of mind. He was, as he himself put it, “totally convinced.”
(New York Review of Books)
TRUMPLAND
The corporate coup d'état and collapse of American democracy began long before Trump. He is simply snuffing out what remains.
by Chris Hedges
The Christian fascists and oligarchs gleefully handing Donald Trump his sharpie and executive orders are not making war on the deep state, the radical left or to protect us from “antisemites.” They are making war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.
All of these pillars of an open society, as I detail in my book “Death of the Liberal Class,” were degraded long before Trump. The press, including public broadcasting, academia, the Democratic Party, a corporatized and banal culture, a judiciary that serves the billionaire class and a Congress bought by lobbyists, have been disemboweled. They are easily picked off. Few want to rise up to defend them. They sold us out. Let them die.
“The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic demagogues,” I wrote in “Death of the Liberal Class” in 2010. “It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.”
Fascism is birthed by a bankrupt liberalism that has surrendered its traditional role in a capitalist democracy. It no longer ameliorates the worst excesses of the ruling class and the empire by instituting incremental and piecemeal reforms. It scolds and moralizes the disenfranchised workers it betrayed.
Media outlets prioritize access to the powerful more than truth. They amplified lies and propaganda to propel us into a war on Iraq. They lionized Wall Street and assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Life savings were gutted. They fed us the lies of Russiagate. They slavishly cater to the Israel lobby, distorting coverage of the genocide and university protests to demonize Palestinians, Muslims and student protestors. They dance to the tune of their corporate advertisers and sponsors. They render whole sections of the population, whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism, invisible.
Universities have transformed into corporations. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated with salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with prized coaches and college presidents earning in the millions.
A little more than 10 percent of faculty positions are now tenure-track. Nearly 45 percent are contingent part-time employees or adjuncts. One in five are full-time, non-tenure-track positions. Universities, by radically reducing tenure-track and adequately paid positions, have become extensions of the gig economy. Adjunct professors and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid, take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa.
A poorly paid faculty that lacks job security does not raise issues that challenge the dominant narrative, whether about social inequality, predatory corporations, the crimes of empire, Israeli genocide or our state of permanent war. If they do, they are dismissed. Senior university administrators, meanwhile, are awarded bonuses for “reducing expenses,” by raising tuition and fees, cutting staff and suppressing wages. This instability assures wealthy donors that the neoliberal ideology that is ravaging the country, along with enabling the genocide in Gaza, will not be questioned by academics fearful of losing their positions. The rich and the powerful are lauded. The working poor, including those employed by the university, are forgotten.
As Irving Howe pointed out in his 1954 essay “This Age of Conformity,” the “idea of the intellectual vocation —the idea of a life dedicated to values that cannot possibly be realized by a commercial civilization — has gradually lost its allure. And it is this, rather than the abandonment of a particular program, which constitutes our rout.” The belief that capitalism is the unassailable engine of human progress, Howe writes, “is trumpeted through every medium of communication: official propaganda, institutional advertising, and scholarly writings of people who, until a few years ago, were its major opponents.”
“The truly powerless people are those intellectuals — the new realists — who attach themselves to the seats of power, where they surrender their freedom of expression without gaining any significance as political figures,” Howe noted. “For it is crucial to the history of the American intellectuals in the past few decades — as well as to the relationship between ‘wealth’ and ‘intellect’ — that whenever they become absorbed into the accredited institutions of society they not only lose their traditional rebelliousness but to one extent or another they cease to function as intellectuals.”
The two ruling parties sold the con of neoliberalism to deindustrialize the country, impose punishing austerity, eradicate the freedoms to organize and gut regulations to protect the public from exploitation. They empowered corporations to pillage and consolidate their wealth and power, giving rise to monopoly capitalism and some of the greatest levels of income inequality and wealth inequality in American history. The banks, communications, oil, weapons, agricultural and food industries guarantee profits by fixing prices, skirting or even abolishing financial, health and environmental protections, and abusing their workers. This assault on New Deal regulations, soon to be entirely obliterated under Trump, disenfranchised the working class that in desperation voted in a demagogue to save them.
As funding for the arts dried up, artists, like public broadcasting which was designed to give a voice to those not tethered to corporate interests, were left searching for grants and corporate sponsors. The result was a withering away of artistic and journalistic integrity.
Friedrich Nietzsche in “Beyond Good and Evil” holds that only a few people have the fortitude to look into what he calls the molten pit of human reality. Most studiously ignore the pit. Artists and philosophers, for Nietzsche, are consumed, however, by an insatiable curiosity, a quest for truth and desire for meaning. They venture down into the bowels of the molten pit. They get as close as they can before the flames and heat drive them back. This intellectual and moral honesty, Nietzsche wrote, comes with a cost. Those singed by the fire of reality become “burnt children,” he wrote, eternal orphans.
Culture in a functioning democracy is radical and transformative. It expresses what lies deep within us. It gives words to our reality. It makes us feel as well as see. It allows us to empathize with those who are different or oppressed. It reveals what is happening around us. It honors mystery.
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest,” James Baldwin wrote, “so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
The war on independent intellectual inquiry, art and culture is done to prevent us from looking into the pit, from making the world a more “human dwelling place.” The “burnt people” have been silenced or marginalized. Some 16,000 books were banned in schools and libraries before Trump took office, bans that are accelerating as more books are purged. Culture in authoritarian states celebrates an idealized past that never existed and a present that is self-delusional.
Mass culture feeds the human thirst for illusion, excitement, happiness and hope. It peddles a blind patriotism and the myth of eternal material progress. It urges us to build images of celebrities or ourselves to worship, especially on social media. The result has been a cultural decay whose apotheosis will be Trump’s Garden of Heroes and the lavish Christmas pageant being planned this winter at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Politicians from the two ruling parties are funded by the dark money provided by billionaires and corporations. These politicians, in our system of legalized bribery, do the bidding of their owners in Congress. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called this form of government “inverted totalitarianism.” Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control. It uses the international legal system to plunder resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance. It prioritizes profit over justice. It weakens labor laws and eviscerates workers’ protections and rights.
The dynamiting by the Trump administration of these decayed and corrupt institutions will mark the end of the American experiment and the shift from inverted totalitarianism to dictatorship. It will usher in a corporate dystopia, which will resemble, albeit in a much crueler form, China’s totalitarian capitalism with its pervasive state surveillance, draconian censorship, unelected and unaccountable ruling class and the crushing of popular movements including labor unions. We will descend into the world of magical thinking that is the hallmark of all despotisms, one where the language we use to describe ourselves and our society bears no relationship to reality.
It is imperative to the authoritarian project that all independent institutions, no matter how weakened or decayed, be neutered. Trump, Axios reports, has been “lashing out” at “fake polls” showing his sinking approval ratings and calling for the news outlets that publish them to be “investigated for election fraud.” This is the sentiment of all dictators. Ban inconvenient facts. Once these institutions are silenced or captured, the cracks in the old edifice that allowed a muted dissent will be sealed. Fear will be the glue of social cohesion. Tepid criticism will be criminalized. Internal security, immigration enforcement and the military will be lavishly funded, creating Trump’s own version of an unaccountable deep state, while social programs will be defunded or shuttered.
Central to this project will be the great leader cult. The abject servility towards the great leader was on display at Trump’s celebration of his first 100 days with his cabinet, all of whom had navy blue and red baseball caps in front of them bearing the message “Gulf of America.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a typical display of sycophancy at the meeting, gushed: “Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever. [I’ve] never seen anything like it, thank you.”
Trump will get his birthday military parade, his two 100-foot high flag poles on the White House lawns, and perhaps, if the proposed bills in Congress pass, his face carved on Mount Rushmore, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. He will see his birthday become a federal holiday, his face on new $250 bills and Washington’s Dulles International Airport renamed Donald J. Trump International Airport. He will build his National Garden of American Heroes. And of course, he will get the overturning of the 22nd Amendment to allow him to serve a third term. President-for-life.
“Children will be taught to love America,” the Svengali-like Stephen Miller intoned. “Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding. So as we close the Department of Education and provide funding to states, we’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.”
Trump’s vipers are snuffing out what is left of our open society, putting the finishing touches on the dirty work begun by billionaires and corporations. This is the end of a process. Not the start. Trump had a lot of help.
There is a word for those who did this to us.
Traitors.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
A LAWYER, a stockbroker and a musician die and go to the Pearly Gates.
The lawyer says to St. Peter, “I was a lawyer and I made a lot of money, but I didn't keep it all for myself. I set up trust funds for my wife and kids to make sure they're okay."
St. Peter says, “Go through those Pearly Gates.”
The stockbroker says “I was a stockbroker and I made a lot of money, but I didn`t keep it all for myself. I gave $4 million to charity.
St. Peter says, “Go through those Pearly Gates.”
The musician says “I was a musician and I only made $10,000 in my entire life.”
St. Peter says, “What instrument did you play?”
The musician says, “I was a guitarist.”
St. Peter says, “Go round the back through the kitchen and up the stairs.”
LEROY "SATCHEL" PAIGE was the most sensational pitcher ever to throw a baseball. During his years in the Negro Leagues he fine-tuned a pitch so scorching that catchers tried to soften the sting by cushioning their gloves with beefsteaks. His career stats — 2,000 wins, 250 shutouts, three victories on the same day — are so eye-popping they seem like misprints. But bigotry kept big league teams from signing him until he was forty-two, at which point he helped propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. Over a career that spanned four decades, Satchel pitched more baseballs, for more fans, in more ballparks, for more teams, than any player in history.
In Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye untangles myth from truth about this flawed yet majestic man. Tye shows us Satchel as a self-promoter who selflessly fought to guarantee his teammates richer paydays. He was a Casanova with outsized appetites — and a devoted father who towered over baseball with his skill as well as his shrewdness.
This new book also rewrites our history of the integration of baseball, with Satchel Paige in a starring role. While many dismissed him as a Stepin Fetchit, Satchel was something else entirely: a quiet subversive. He pitched so spectacularly that he drew the spotlight first to himself, then to his all-black Kansas City Monarchs, and inevitably to the Monarchs' rookie second baseman Jackie Robinson. In the process, Satchel, even more than Jackie, opened the door for African Americans to the national pastime and forever changed his sport and this nation.
In an August 25, 2009 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician contributor Paul Hallaman, Tye talks about this story that speaks to fans of sports history and American culture.
PH Satchel Paige’s childhood was spent in Mobile, Alabama.
LT Yes, Satchel Paige came into the world at a moment when Mobile was being transformed from one of the more tolerant deep south cities, into a bastion of Jim Crow Alabama. Under Jim Crow, it became a world of legally prescribed segregation, where blacks and whites were banished to separate quarters, whether it be the schools they went to, the parks they played in, the libraries they took books out of, the public transportation they rode, or the baseball fields they played on. And, during the very year of Satchel’s birth, 1906, there were a number of lynching’s in Mobile, so he came to the world at a very difficult time to be black in Alabama. It was even more difficult for Satchel, since he was only one of a family of 12 kids, raised by a mother whose income came from work as a washer woman, and by a father who was an occasionally employed gardener.
PH One of the ways Satchel tried to help his parents make ends meet was by fishing.
LT He contributed in a lot of ways. He would go fishing and bring back a fish for the family, or he would go out into the alley and collect old Coke bottles and turn them in for a penny or a nickel. Importantly, he would go down to the local L&N train station, where he would carry people’s bags — the way an old red cap would have done in those days — for a dime a bag. Satchel learned to set up a system of ropes and pulley’s that allowed him to carry three or four bags at once, which meant he could earn three or four dimes at once. He did that to a point where his friends would say that he looked like a walking suitcase tree, or a walking satchel tree, and the name “Satchel” stuck. He kept that with him for the rest of his life.
PH As a young man, he got into trouble and was sent away to reform school.
LT That’s right. He got into a couple kinds of trouble. One was that he spent so much time out fishing and out working at the train station that he was seldom in school. So, he was on a list for truancy. Also, when he worked at the train station, he would occasionally go beyond just moving a suitcase to actually stealing it. At times he would also steal trinkets from a five-and-dime store. He eventually got caught one time too many, and he got sent to court, where they sentenced him to five years at the nearby reformatory, a place that was segregated like all of the institutions were at the time. It was known as the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Negro Lawbreakers. Satchel spent five years there.
PH This school was significantly influenced by the principles of Booker T. Washington, wasn’t it?
LT Yes. It was set up by Booker T. Washington, and populated with kids that Washington and the local “colored women’s clubs” of the era recommended. The idea of a reform school sounds Draconian, but they were set up with Washington’s ideals of self-help — that every black child, like every black adult, should figure out what they do well, and to do it so well that even in an unfair Jim Crow world, you could succeed. And, in this reform school, Satchel learned that he could pitch a baseball better than just about anybody. So, he was a poster child for Booker T. Washington’ s notion that you have to do something and to do it the best that you can. Satchel said that he traded five years of his freedom to learn how to pitch a baseball.
PH Shortly after he came out of reform school, he was discovered by a man named Alex Herman from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he became a professional baseball player…
LT Yes, that was in 1926. When Satchel Paige was about to pitch his first game, he showed up in Chattanooga with everything he owned — one pair of pants, a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, and one extra shirt. He rented a room at the rate of two dollars a week, which was more than he ever spent on anything. He didn’t store anything in the closet of that room for the first two months, because everything he owned could fit into a paper sack.
When he showed up to the ball field to pitch, his feet were so large that they didn’t have regulation cleats to fit him — he had to wear a pair of street shoes with spikes nailed to the bottom. He turned up on the baseball field with his hat tilted to the right, which was the way he wore his baseball hat, and he was all arms and all legs. In those days he could pitch a ball as fast as anybody, but he was also as wild as anybody. Alex Herman was from Mobile, and he managed and owned the Chattanooga White Sox. He brought Paige to town and had him out there every day before the game, setting up three Coke bottles 60 feet, six inches from where he threw, practicing his pitching by knocking over the bottles. He also practiced every day, before and after the game, throwing a baseball into a knot into a fence about the size of a grapefruit, where the ball barely fit into that hole. He got so he could throw nine out of 10 baseballs through that hole. He took his natural-born skills of throwing fast and hard, and refined that by throwing accurately, so by the time he left Chattanooga two years later, he was as good as they got in the Negro Leagues. And, if he had the chance, he could have shown that he was as good as they got in professional baseball of any color, at any level.
PH After a few years pitching for the Birmingham Black Barons, he wound up in 1931 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pitching for the Pittsburgh Crawfords, which was run by a character right out of Damon Runyan — if Runyan had written about people of color — named Gus Greenlee, who was the numbers baron of the Hill District in Pittsburgh. Paige was in the center of a cultural renaissance going on in Pittsburgh at this time, wasn’t he?
LT He was, and it was really quite extraordinary. In those days, the Hill District of Pittsburgh was one of the centers of black culture in America, and it was definitely the center of the black sports world. Pittsburgh was the only city that had two Negro League teams — the Pittsburgh Crawfords, a team Satchel played on that was owned by a numbers runner named Gus Greenlee, and their ultimate opponents the Homestead Grays, a team owned by Cumberland Posey which was made up primarily of workers at Andrew Carnegie’s Pittsburgh Steel. It was an extraordinary time, because there were ongoing battles between these two great cross-town rivals. If you were a black American living in Pittsburgh during that time, the coolest thing that you could do was eat at Greenlee’s Crawford Grill, and then go out and watch a ballgame with Satchel Paige pitching against the Homestead Grays and the great Josh Gibson. You could watch a pitcher throw a baseball 100-miles-per-hour to a batter who could hit a home run farther than Babe Ruth. Pittsburgh was a center of incredible action and activity, and Satchel was in the center of it all, the way he always was.
PH Shortly thereafter, Satchel — always searching for a new experience and a bigger paycheck — was recruited by an auto dealer in Bismarck, North Dakota, to play ball out there. This broke a couple of barriers, didn’t it?
LT Yes, it did. The first barrier it broke was having great baseball played in place like North Dakota, where we don’t expect to see great baseball. They were playing semi-pro baseball there at a higher level than anywhere in America. The other barrier it broke, of course, was having an amazing black ballplayer like Satchel Paige play there, where only a handful of blacks actually lived. And, the idea of bringing in the greatest African American ballplayers to play in Bismarck was quite extraordinary.
In addition to the ball that they were playing out there, they went to national tournaments where black and white ballplayers not only competed against one another on the same field in the middle of the Great Plains, but they actually played on the same team. This was simply unheard of — and it was a generation before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier! The fact that this happened and that the sky didn’t fall from it set the tone for what would happen a generation later in the major leagues. It was really quite brilliant, and again, Satchel was at the center of the action.
PH Your book is rich in description and your research is very meticulous. You write about his barnstorming years in the California Winter League, and his duels with Dizzy Dean, among so many other great stories and times in his life. But, in the interest of time, I want to jump ahead to 1934, when he was recruited by Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic…
LT Trujillo basically controlled everything that went on in the country, including baseball. He had formed his own team in the capital city he named after himself, Ciudad Trujillo, which is now known as Santo Domingo, and was determined to beat the other two leading teams in the Dominican Republic. It was a year before he was due to run for re-election, and he understood that even if he didn’t care much about baseball, the Dominicans did, and that winning a tournament could do a lot to boost his image. In order to do this, he brought in the best ballplayers “for rent” from around the world — who happened to be black Americans, including the great Satchel Paige. He went on that year to lead Trujillo’s team to a narrow victory over their arch opponents. Satchel made the whole thing seem like it was a question of life or death, that if he didn’t win, he might be put in front of a firing squad. It was never that dramatic, but it made for a great story, and the truth was that Satchel did win.
PH There is so much contradictory information concerning Satchel Paige “the man” versus Satchel Paige “the legend.” How were you able to sort all of this out?
LT I was a reporter for 20 years, and this was my fifth book, and I have to say that this was the toughest one in terms of trying to separate fact from legend. I was able to do it in a couple of ways. One was assembling everything that every journalist had written about Satchel over the years — and not just when he played in the Negro leagues, but also when he pitched in small towns, barnstorming across America. I pieced together all the written records in every magazine or book that ever talked about him, but more importantly, I interviewed over 200 aging major leaguers and Negro Leaguers who played with or against him, using their memories to fill in the gaps of the written record. So, while it was one of the toughest jobs I have ever taken on, it was also one of the most enjoyable reporting jobs I have ever taken on.
In the end, what I concluded was that about 80 percent of his extraordinary claims were true, which of course raises the question of why did he embellish the other 20 percent? My “pop psychology” theory is that he understood that the great white players of his era — Babe Ruth and Joe Dimaggio, for example — had journalists following their every move, fanning their legends. Satchel understood that he had to fan his own legend. He was a terrific story teller, and at times, when he was telling the same story for the fifteenth time, he couldn’t resist tweaking it and embellishing it to the point that the story turned out differently in his own two memoirs. They were written 15 years apart, and by the time he got around to writing the second, it was as if he never bothered to check what he said the first time. The essentials were always there, but, at the edges, there could also be exaggeration.
PH You called some of what Satchel “the legend” accomplished “super-sized feats.” For instance, calling in the outfield while he pitched, the 10 penny nail act, and throwing strikes over gum wrappers. All of this was part of the showmanship that was essentially required by Negro League baseball to bring people into the park, wasn’t it?
LT That’s right. I would like to tell your readers about some of the things that he did. He was so confident about his ability to strike batters out, at times — sometimes against lousy teams, and sometimes against good teams — he would actually call his outfielders into the infield and tell them to sit down and talk, play cards, or do whatever they wanted to do. He was essentially daring the batter to hit the ball out of the infield, and if they did, it would be an automatic home run. He was telling his opponents that he was so confident in his pitching, he was convinced that he could strike the batter out. And, most of the time he would either strike out the batter or they wouldn’t hit it out of the infield. At times he was so confident that he not only called in his outfielders, he called in his infielders too, leaving just himself and his catcher.
The 10 penny nail act you mentioned involved him sticking a series of nails in a 2″ x 4″ that he set up behind home plate. The nails were barely sticking into the board. He would then throw the ball so accurately and so hard from the pitcher’s mound that the nails would be driven straight into the board.
He did these things for two reasons, one of which was, as you said, to attract fans. He would set these tricks up before the game because he knew people would come early to see him, giving them a brilliant show before the game even started. He showed the fans how good he was and gave them extraordinary entertainment even beyond what they paid to watch the baseball game. The other reason he did this was because he knew that his opponents would be out there, warming up early, and when they saw him do these things, he knew it would intimidate the heck out of them. These kinds of things insured that the stadium was always full when Satchel pitched.
PH In fact, he was such a great gate attraction that even after his arm went dead in Mexico in the late 1930’s, J.L. Wilkinson, the white owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, brought him over to pitch for what was called the “B” team — or the Baby Monarchs. So, even though his arm was damaged to the point where he could only pitch an inning or two, he was still so popular that people would come to see him play.
LT He was so good that, as you say, he could fill a stadium even when he wasn’t pitching. People would show up just to watch him, and for the rest of Satchel’s career, Wilkinson had faith that even if he didn’t make it back as a player he would still draw big crowds as a member of the team. Well, Satchel did make it back. After a season of playing with the Baby Monarchs, Wilkinson brought him to Kansas City to pitch for the real Monarchs, and Satchel, despite pitching with what today would likely be diagnosed as a partially separated shoulder, pitched brilliant baseball for years for Wilkinson. Wilkinson, even more than Gus Greenlee, turned out to be a father figure and a guy Satchel could count on for big paychecks, great advice, and for generally caring about him.
PH And it is ironic that he was a father figure because his partner, Tom Baird, was allegedly a member of the Ku Klux Klan, correct?
LT That’s right, but that is just one of the many horrible contradictions and ironies of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation.
PH This would be a good time to bring up Branch Rickey’s decision to choose Jackie Robinson to break baseball’s color line. The question, of course, is why didn’t Rickey choose Satchel Paige?
LT There are a number of answers. In fairness to Rickey, in 1945, the year Rickey first signed Robinson, Satchel was 39 years old, was not having a great season, and it was easy to conclude that he was washed up. More importantly, Rickey was looking for a straight-laced guy who lived as conservative a lifestyle as he did. He favored prohibition, didn’t drink, and in Robinson, Rickey saw a young, college-educated young man who seemed like the kind of guy who would keep his mouth shut and do just what Rickey wanted him to do in the early years of integrated baseball. Satchel Paige, on the other hand, was not about to keep his mouth shut, and he was not about to go and spend two years away, as Robinson did, playing in Montreal in the minor leagues before being called up to the Dodgers. He was just not Rickey’s kind of guy.
PH What was Satchel’s reaction to the signing of Robinson?
LT His first reaction was the perfect, politically correct one — he said Rickey couldn’t have picked a better guy. But he must have had heartburn when he said that, because he didn’t believe it. He believed, for understandable reasons, that he, Satchel Paige, was the one who had drawn the attention of the white press, of white fans, and of white owners like Rickey to the Negro Leagues. It was he, Satchel Paige, who had brought the spotlight to the all black Kansas City Monarchs, and it was only because of him, Satchel Paige, that Branch Rickey or anybody else knew about Robinson, who started that season in 1945 as a second string second baseman on the Monarchs.
PH You said that Satchel wasn’t Branch Rickey’s type of guy, but he was Cleveland Indians’ owner Bill Veeck’s kind of guy. Tell us about Bill Veeck and his choosing Larry Doby and Satchel Paige to break the color line in the American League?
LT Let’s travel back to the summer of 1948, to what may have been the tightest pennant race in the history of baseball going on in the American League. It was the Cleveland Indians, owned by Bill Veeck, facing off against the Yankees and the Red Sox. Veeck loved to poke his finger into the eye of his fellow owners. He was a huge showman and was willing to do whatever it took to fill a stadium. He had a very novel idea on how he could break away from the Yankees and the Red Sox in that pennant race, and it was, to bring in for a tryout, this aging pitcher named Satchel Paige. He brought him in one morning to an empty Memorial Stadium in Cleveland that, when filled, would seat 78,000 fans, but on that morning, it had three people in it — Bill Veeck, Satchel Paige, and the player-manager of the Indians, Lou Boudreau. When Boudreau saw Satchel Paige, and realized he had been brought down early that morning for a tryout for this aging African-American pitcher, he thought it was a joke. Veeck told him that he wanted him to stand in the batter’s box and take some swings against him. Boudreau was competing with Ted Williams for that year’s batting title — he was an extraordinary hitter. He stood in and took about 30 pitches from Satchel, and he didn’t come close to getting a hit off him. At the end of that little tryout, the only thing he said to Veeck was, “Sign him, Bill.” So the next day, July 7, 1948, on Satchel’s 42nd birthday, he was signed to his first major league contract, and he never let Veeck down. He never let any owner who had faith in him down. He went on to a 6 – 1 record that season, had the league’s second lowest earned run average, and, most impressively for me, when the Associated Press writers voted for Rookie of the Year, Paige garnered 12 votes, which he was quite delighted by, but he said that he “wasn’t sure what year the gentlemen had in mind.”
PH Veeck liked Satchel so much that he brought him back with the St. Louis Browns in the early 1950’s, where he pitched pretty well for a time.
LT Yes, he pitched well for a while. Veeck always had faith in him, and Satchel never let him down. Satchel also grew really close to his teammates while with St. Louis. Veeck came to Satchel’s rescue three different times. The first, as we talked about, was in Cleveland, the second was in St. Louis, and the third was in the late 1950’s, when Veeck was involved with the management of the Miami Marlins, which at the time was a minor league club. Each time Satchel came back at a later age, each time he defied Mother Nature and logic and pitched well, and each time he stayed only as long as Veeck stayed, and was then let go.
PH Another baseball person that enjoyed putting his finger in the eye of the baseball establishment, Charlie Finley, brought Satchel Paige back at the age of 59 in Kansas City.
BS That was extraordinary. Finley owned the Kansas City A’s, who were having a very difficult time bringing fans to the ballpark. In September, as the season was winding down, Finley realized that he could fill up the stadium for one night if he brought the ancient Satchel Paige in to pitch. So, he offered him a tidy sum of money, which Satchel could use, and brought him to the club with the intention of using him for three innings, not really caring how effective Satchel pitched. Finley set Satchel up near the bullpen in a big rocking chair that he brought in for the occasion, with a nurse in a white uniform next to him, rubbing something on his arm. He also had his own personal water boy. Finley was as good a choreographer as Veeck was, and it created this great scene. Then he brought in Satchel to pitch, and that night against the Boston Red Sox, Satchel pitched three shutout innings — the only guy to get a hit off of him was the young slugger Carl Yazstremski, who, after the game, gave Satchel an enormous bear hug. That bear hug was because a full generation before, Yaz’s dad had batted against Satchel in a semi-pro game on Long Island. Satchel was the only guy who stuck around long enough in baseball that he could face off against fathers and sons, and even grandsons. That night, at age 59 years, two months and eight days, Satchel set a record for being the oldest player ever in baseball, and it is a record that will never be broken. When we think of, in this era, Roger Clemens or John Smoltz coming back, in Clemens’ case at 45 and in Smoltz’s case 42, we think they are ancient. Satchel Paige came back and pitched three great innings at age 59, which has got to be a medical miracle.
PH Satchel is also remembered for his rules for staying young. Would you talk a little about those rules, and how they were spun out over the years?
LT Sure. Depending on when he told the story, there were five or six rules for staying young, and they involved everything from not eating fried foods, to not going out and wildly partying. All of these wonderful rules were interesting, especially so since they contradicted the way he lived. His most famous rule, and the one that made it into Bartlett’s Book of Famous Quotations was, “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.” I think what he meant was that he was living in a world of fierce segregation, where it was very difficult for a black man like him to make a living — not to mention staying alive — and rather than looking at his situation as being tragic, he was perpetually looking ahead. His rules really reflected his wishes for how he would live if not always his ability to live up to them. The provenance for the rules is really quite interesting. They are all things that he might have said, some of them are things that he did say, and some of them are things that a reporter for Collier’s magazine may have heard Satchel say, or may have made up himself. It is clear that Satchel liked the way the reporter wrote up his rules for the magazine story since he adopted them as his forever.
PH But, as you mentioned, his behavior contradicted his rules. For example, he talked about fried foods, saying that they tend to “angry up your stomach,” yet he was quite fond of fried foods.
LT He loved them, and he knew he shouldn’t eat them. He also knew that he shouldn’t drink, and that he shouldn’t smoke, but he did both. In part I respect what he did with his rules because he was trying to set an example for his kids and for other kids, but he didn’t feel that he needed to live up to that example.
PH He was married three times. The first time to Janet Howard, a waitress at the Crawford Grill; the second marriage was in Puerto Rico to Lucy Figueroa, although he disputed its validity; and finally, later in life, he married Lahoma Brown. Satchel Paige seemed to be ahead of the curve as a modern athlete in his playboy role.
LT He was indeed. He was ahead of the curve in loads of ways, starting off with the fact that he was a free agent well before we ever had anything like free agency. He was making and breaking contracts when it suited him, and when he could get more money. He was also out there doing some outrageous things in terms of his personal behavior. Yet he was a guy who had grown up in Jim Crow America, where rules were so carefully proscribed about what you can do, and more importantly, what you can’t do, and I think he decided, when he became a big enough star, that instead of listening to society’s rules, he was going to do what he wanted to do. If that meant at times he would have two wives, or carousing, or breaking contracts, he was going to do that. Society had made him live according to some tough standards, and when he became a big enough deal, he chose to live by his own standards.
PH He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, and Ted Williams deserves some of the credit for this. When he was inducted in 1966, Williams acknowledged some of the Negro League greats and said that they are worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame. And of course, since Satchel’s induction, plenty of other Negro Leaguers, Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson among them, have been inducted. But the last years of his life — following his induction — were not good years…
LT Satchel lived his whole life according to his theory of not looking back, but when he got emphysema, and when he was confined to a wheel chair at the end of his life, he did more looking back in the way lots of older people do. And, when he did look back, for the first time in his life he started talking about some of the bad things that happened to him, and thought that people were forgetting about him. This made him very sad. Satchel Paige died in 1982, and I like to remember him for the first 75 years of his life, and not for the last year, when he grew to be a bit embittered. He was enough of a credit to the sport of baseball and to the American way of life that we owe it to him to cut him some slack. He was a man who didn’t start to have kids until his 40’s — he had seven of them — and continued to pitch into his 60’s so he could support these kids, because the only way he knew how to make a living was to pitch. It looked like he would pitch forever. He was an extraordinary guy whose second memoir was titled “Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever,” and, he really almost did.
(jerryjazzmusician.com)
What kind of soft attorney is this Lester marston, accusing the sheriff of being racist? If anything the tribe is getting a pass and if you’re white you have to play by a different set of rules.
Mr. Marston is Native American. He lived, practiced Law, and was City Attorney in Willits years ago. As I recall, he was well-liked, but moved on a while ago. He now practices law in Ukiah.
Ask around,
Laz
It’s irrelevant that he is Native American. He said what he said
“He said what he said”
pb
That’s obviously true. However, he has specialized in Native American issues for decades.
Mr. Marston is a member of the Cahuilla Tribe. It is what it is…
Be well,
Laz
Dear Crazy Postmodern America,
I haven’t gotten my SSI money yet…I haven’t gotten senior housing yet…I want to leave Washington, D.C. as soon as possible because I have finished being supportive of the William R. Thomas Memorial Anti-Nuclear Vigil for the sixteenth…and because I want to go somewhere and just enjoy being there! What can I get from you, and how soon can I get it?
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Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
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Washington, D.C. 20018
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Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
May 6, 2025 Anno Domini
As the world descends into more madness…
Kunstler today–I never read this guy, but today made an exception. He has gone down deeper into the madness of it all. His last paragraph is a sheer horror, using the term “psychopathic” against others, but he is the true psychopath.
Gaza–the photo today says it all. This is what Israel–with America’s ongoing support and generous supply of bombs and other munitions–has done to a largely civilian population. And now comes a further escalation of the war against this population. Called now a “forceful entry,” but no, it’s called war–more bombs and missiles, death and destruction, by a country that should know better, but has lost its soul.