Remembering my father on what would be his 111th birthday

 

Today, June 14, is the 111th anniversary of the birth of my father, Claude Moreland Scales, Jr. It's also Flag Day, and the birthday of someone else who is having his celebrated with a parade. It's one day before Father's Day. Dad was born and raised on a small farm in southern Indiana. He graduated from high school in 1932, when the Depression was at its worst, and spent the next four years doing farm chores and pumping gas at a service station.

In 1936 he enlisted in the Army and was trained as an infantryman. One day his unit was on a training exercise and he was lugging a Browning Automatic Rifle in oppressive summer heat and humidity. He heard a sound overhead, looked up, and saw an airplane. He thought, "There are people in that who are having more fun than I am." When his enlistment term ended, he said he would re-enlist only if he could be assigned to the Air Corps.

He was a radio enthusiast, so he was sent to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey and trained to be a radio operator. He was on the crew of a B-18 bomber, but developed an inability to hear certain frequencies, so was put on ground duty. When the U.S. joined World War Two, he was made a recruiting sergeant. This led to his meeting my mother when his recruiting office in the federal building in Altoona, Pennsylvania was on the same floor as the office of the Bureau of Bituminous Coal, where she was a secretary. The occasion of their meeting proved tragic. Her brother had received a draft notice. He was to report to the recruiting office in a few days time and take a physical exam. If he passed he would shortly after be put on a train and taken to a fort for training. She asked to be notified if Thomas Lane passed his physical so that she, her mother and sister could come and say goodbye before he boarded the train. It proved to be a final farewell; the circumstnces of my uncle's death are told here.

After their marriage, Dad was sent to a USAAF bomber base in England. He received a wartime temporary commission, and was made the base's supply officer. He wrote a letter to Mom in which he said that one thing he missed, besides her, was Spam. She didn't get his sarcasm and sent him a case of the stuff. This no doubt got a good laugh from his mates. One of these was the actor Jimmy Stewart, who was the pilot of one of the planes stationed at his base.

Dad had the additional duty of heading the crew of the anti-aircraft gun that was the base's sole on post facility for defense. I asked him if he'd ever seen any action. He said things were quiet, as the Royal Air Force, with American and Canadian help, had taken command of the skies over Britain and the North Sea. One day the alarm sounded and he and his crew scrambled to their positions. The approaching enemy was a fast, low flying Junkers Ju-88 on a photo reconnaisance mission. It was almost overhead when the gun crew arrived. They could have spun the gun and tried to shoot the plane down as it flew away, but Dad said he was afraid that, if they succeeded, it would crash and burn the wheat field of a farmer he knew and liked, and who sometimes unofficially augmented the base's food supply. So, Dad said, "I let him get away safely."

After the war Dad reverted to his permanent rank of master sergeant and in 1948 left the Army to become part of the new Air Force. When Mom was pregnant with me, he was stationed at what is now Tallahassee International Airport. Before I was due, the military hospital there was closed, so she decided to go to her home in Pennsylvania where my birth could be supervised by a doctor she knew. During most of my first year Dad was being shuttled around among short term assignments, so I spent my babyhood with my mother in my grandmother's apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue, the main drag of Tyrone, a town that sat beside what was then the four track main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The aural landscape for my infant ears was frequently punctuated by steam whistle shrieks and diesel air horn blasts. Since this occurred during a time when I was under the constant adoring attention of Mom and Grandma, it may have been the basis of my lifetime love of trains. Later in my childhood, when Dad would join us on visits to Tyrone, he would take me to the station for train watching. He was something of a rail buff himself, could spot the different kinds of locomotives and cars, and told me that on one of his Army supply assignments he had been taught to operate a diesel switch locomotive.

When I was about halfway through my second year, Dad got a long term assignment to Miami International Airport, at the time half of which was an air force base. I have some clear memories of out time in Miami. For a while we lived in a small apartment building where I got to know my first dog; our neighbors had a sweet natured boxer named Heidi. I came to love what my parents called "modern" architecture, which I later learned was art deco, of which Miami had plenty. When I was three, Dad got transferred to Kelly AFB, just outside San Antonio. My Pennsylvania bred mother learned to buy fresh tamales wrapped on cornhusks at the local market. My fourth birthday present was a "Billy the Kid" outfit from Joske's of Texas, complete with hat, shirt, jeans, boots, belt with holster, and a cap pistol.

After some time Dad got orders to Officer Candidate School, and we lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming for several months while he completed the course. He must have done very well, because he graduated with the rank of captain. I remember his taking me to Sherman Hill, where we watched giant Union Pacific articulated steam locomotives pulling mile long freight trains across the Continental Divide. One time we saw President Truman's train, led by a bright yellow UP diesel.

After Cheyenne we returned to San Antonio. Soon after, Dad got orders to England. He was stationed at a small outpost, Chicksands, which had no family housing or school, so he went over ahead of Mom and me to find a place for us to live, and Mom and I stayed in Tyrone for several months.

When we joined Dad, we settled into half of a duplex thatched roof cottage built in 1597 that Dad had sublet from a British Army major who had been sent to Germany. The owners, who occupied the other half, were the delightful Warner family, who had a dairy herd and raised pigs and chickens. Their daughter, Peggy, was my sitter whenever my parents went out for an officers' club event at Chicksands or a theater night in London. I began my formal education in a County Council (what we call "public") school where, as I note in my brief bio in the right column, being American is likely all that saved me from having my bottom caned.

In 1954 Dad got orders to return to the U.S. That summer we got together with another American family who were also returning and who had a daughter, Doris, about my age; together we hired a tour guide who had a VW Microbus. Our guide, Jimmy, who spoke all major European languages, took us through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France. When we stopped in the Bavarian Alps, Doris and I had a snowball fight in June. When we got to Paris, I broke out with chicken pox. Jimmy took me to a pharmacy, but couldn't remember how to say "calamine lotion" in French. He showed my arm to the pharmacist, who said, "Ah! Oui," and brought out a bottle of the good stuff. Dad had an 8mm movie camera he'd bought in Germany. For years he showed movies of me standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, scratching; in the gardens at Versailles, scratching; and on the Montmarte, scratching. I forgave him.

Dad's next, and as it turned out, last, Air Force assignment was Eglin AFB, near Fort Walton Beach in Florida's Northwest Panhandle. Eglin had both on base housing and an elementary school. I was of the proper age, eight, to start third grade. Since I'd been in a British school, the school officials weren't sure what level of work I was prepared for, so they had me tested. It turned out I was capable of sixth grade work, but my parents wisely, I think, decided to keep me with my age group.

We were four years at Eglin, where Dad served as the housing supply officer, a sometimes thankless task. He was promoted to major in 1957, but in 1958 he decided that, with 22 years of service, it was time to retire. He and Mom decided on Tampa as our retirement home. They bought a house close to MacDill AFB, where we could take advantage of Dad's retiree benefits of medical care and bargains at the Commissary and Post Exchange. He used his GI Bill benefits to take courses at Tampa Business College that prepared him to pass the exam for a real estate license. Unfortunately he got into real estate during a recession, so he went to what he knew, acting as a supply guy for an appliance wholesale dealer. He held several such jobs until he finally retired in his 60s, when he could live comfortably on his Air Force retirement and Social Security.

When we moved to Tampa my maternal grandmother, who had severe osteoarthritis and needed a wheelchair, was living with us. My mother was raised a Presbyterian; Dad a Methodist. After arriving in Tampa we looked at the Presbyterian church, which had steep steps leading to the entrance. Manhattan Avenue Methodist was, at the time, all at ground level, so to assure Grandma would have access we became Methodists (in the Air Force we had attended Protestant chapel, where the chaplain could be Baptist, Lutheran, or whatever). Dad quickly became active in the church, serving as an usher and eventually as a lay leader.

How to sum him up? He was proud to have achieved what he did, but realized that he'd been fortunate in many ways. He did not look down on those who had been less fortunate. I'm proud to have been his son.

The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again (Shepperton Studios / 1978) - Happy 80th, Pete Townshend

This performance of a perhaps timely song shows Pete's guitar and vocal heroics at their most manic, with Roger Daltrey singing and doing his frenetic thing as well. John Entwistle is steady on bass. Sadly, it was drummer Keith Moon's last performance before his untimely death. I wondered who did the synth. According to Google's "AI Overview" (which seems an appropriate source for something about a synth), it was Pete himself:

"He used an EMS VCS3 Mk1 synthesizer to process the sound of a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ. The organ was played with a marimba repeat effect set to fast, and then the output was fed into the synthesizer and a LFO (Low-Frequency Oscillator) to create the arpeggiated sound. The intro to the song, including the synth part, was recorded using a backing track." 

Rock on, Pete! 

Another Finger Lakes Venture; This Time for Tea, not Wine

On Thursday, April 24 our friends Chris Bennem and Lisa Moore took Martha and me in their car from Brooklyn to Glen Hollow (photo at left), their "fairy-tale farmhouse reminiscent of a European country cottage" situated on a hillside overlooking Canandaigua Lake and in New York State's Finger Lakes winemaking region. We've made two previous visits to Glen Hollow. The first, in June of 2021, included visits to the tasting rooms of several wineries, and is described here. The second, last November, provided us with an extensive tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.

This visit, however, wasn't motivated by wine. We went because Martha offered to help Lisa, who serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Bristol Library, to prepare and present an English tea at Glen Hollow as a fund raiser for the library. Fortunately, many had responded to the invitation, so there was much work to be done. Cuts in federal funding for arts and literacy organizations like libraries made efforts like this an urgent task.

Here's one of several long tables set for the tea.

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Here's Nicola (Nikki) Lund, Secretary of the Library's Board of Trustees and a native of the Sceptered Isle, explaining the traditions of the English Tea. 

 

Here's Paytan Mann, the Library Director, enjoying her tea.

This trip may not have been about wine, but there certainly was wine to be enjoyed. In the photo are three fine examples of Finger Lakes wines that we had to complement the delicious meals Lisa and Chris provided. At the left of the photo is Boundary Breaks' 2022 Cabernet Franc; in the center is Ravines Wine Cellars' 2021 Sauvignon Blanc; and on the right is Heron Hill's 2021 Reserve Chardonnay. Heron Hill's Ingle Vineyard and tasting room are a short ride north of Glen Hollow. After our arrival on Thursday we attended Heron Hill's "Friends and Neighbors" free tasting and buffet dinner. I especially liked Heron Hill's gewurztraminer, an Alsatian varietal that does well in the Finger Lakes climate, and produces a white wine with a unique, slightly spicy flavor.

It won't be too long before there is wine with a "Glen Hollow" label. The photo at right is of the vineyard, planted with chardonnay, recently acquired by Chris and Lisa. It may not look like much now, but by fall it should produce a crop of grapes. Chris and Lisa have an agreement with Heron Hill under which those grapes will be made into wine. They have long term plans to acquire grapes from other vineyards and expand their wine offerings to include other varietals such as cabernet franc and riesling. 

Wall of Death, by Richard and Linda Thompson

This song has been going through my head for several days. I suppose it's a metaphor of the time we're living now, when everything seems precariously close to disaster. The video inspired me to look up Lillian La France. She was born Agnes Micek in Kansas in 1894, and became famous as a motorcycle stunt rider in the 1920s and '30s. She's perhaps best remembered for riding the "Wall of Death" which, as you can see from the video, is a circular track with steeply sloping walls so that, near the top, a rider and bike are horizontal to the floor, held from tumbling down only by centrifugal force. 

I first knew of Richard Thompson as guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for Fairport Convention, a band I came to love in the spring of 1970 when I was walking past the dorm room of my law school classmate John Lovett, a Kentuckian and superb banjo picker. John's door was partly open, and from inside I heard spine tingling female and male harmony on what sounded to me like Anglican chant. I knocked and asked John who was doing the song. He said it was Fairport Convention, doing their arrangement of an obscure Bob Dylan piece called "Percy's Song", on their album Unhalfbricking. I didn't rush out and buy the album; I was prepping for finals and working on my third year paper. 

When I arrived in New York in June of 1970 I began collecting Fairport albums. The group was very prolific in the years 1968-'70, recording and releasing six albums: Fairport Convention (1968); What We Did on Our Holidays (January 1969); the aforementioned Unhalfbricking (July 1969); Liege & Lief (December 1969); and Full House (July 1970). Thompson played lead guitar and sang on all of these, and co-wrote several of the songs. 

In 1971 Thompson left Fairport to begin a solo career, although since the 1980s he has performed at Fairport's Cropredy Convention (formerly the Cropredy Festival), often with present or former members of Fairport. His first solo album, Henry the Human Fly (1972) , was panned by critics and sold poorly, although a reviewer in 2004 called it "a true gem." One of his backing vocalists on the album was Linda Peters, who soon after the album was released married Richard and became Linda Thompson. They then did six albums together. The first, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, recorded in 1973 but not released until '74 because the OAPEC oil embargo made production of vinyl discs expensive, was at first "ignored by reviewers," but "later came to be highly regarded." The next four albums received less praise. 

Their last together, Shoot Out the Lights, had a title that ironically referred to their first. It also reflected the state of their marriage at the time it was recorded; they were divorced before it was released in March of 1982. After that, they traveled to The U.S. for a promotional tour during which they were onstage together but otherwise kept apart. The album received much critical praise. Robert Christgau wrote in the July 6, 1982 Village Voice, "these are powerfully double-edged metaphors for the marriage struggle." The song titles tell a tale. They are, in order: "Don't Renege on Our Love"; "Walking on a Wire"; "Just the Motion"; "Shoot Out the Lights"; "Back Street Slide"; "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?" (all songs were written by Richard, but this has lyrics by Linda); and, finally and fittingly, "Wall of Death."

I've only seen Richard Thompson in live performance once. It was in the early 1990s, when he did a free outdoor concert in Battery Park City, during which he did a splendid rendition of what is, in my estimation, one of his greatest songs, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." I've delighted in his recordings for over half of my life, and, despite its lack of his guitar fireworks, consider "Wall of Death" one of my favorites.

The Mets have the best record in the Majors. Can we stop the season now? A fan's notes and remembrances.

 Last year the Mets had a slow start, but things improved. They went on to get a wild card slot, won the wild card playoff, then beat the Eastern Division leading Phils and so advanced to the NLCS, where they fell to the Dodgers. This set up a replay of the first World Series in which I'd taken a rooting interest, 1955, Dodgers versus Yankees, when I backed the underdog Dodgers, and they won. This time I wanted the Yanks to win.

I used to hate the Yanks. For years it was because, as I first saw them in '55, they were the Big Bad Bullies. I lost interest in the Dodgers when they left Brooklyn in 1957, and for some years I didn't follow baseball closely. As best I remember, for a time I had some liking for the then Milwaukee Braves, although I was living in Florida at the time and had no family connections to Wisconsin. I remember having a dream that a girl I had a crush on in ninth grade was actually Warren Spahn's daughter. In 1960 I got a brief thrill when a traditionally hard luck team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, with whom I could identify because my mother grew up and I was born about one hundred miles east of Steeltown, beat the Yanks in the World Series. 

When the Mets arrived as an expansion team in 1962, they quickly became a laughingstock. I remember TV ads featuring their loveable old manager Casey Stengel extolling the efficacy of Rolaids as the Mets' blooper reel played in the background. They were custom made for my proclivity toward the downtrodden, but like many of my fellow Floridians I was more interested in football than in baseball. I was happy to see the Mets rise from the ashes - an apt metaphor as their home, Shea Stadium, stood on what had been the "valley of ashes" described in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - and win the 1969 Series, but I was more thrilled by the 1970 Super Bowl victory by another upstart team, the New York Jets. I was in law school at the time, and about ten of us crowded Mike Vaccaro's dorm room, he having the only TV on our floor, to watch the game. The moment the final buzzer sounded Mike jumped up and turned the TV off. Asked why, he said, "I couldn't stand to hear Howard Cosell say, 'Broadway Joe Namath, the New York Jets, AND the American Football League, all came of age today.'"

I finally got to attend an MLB game after I moved to New York in 1970. My roommate, Mario Diaz-Cruz, was an associate at the law firm White & Case, which had a box of seats at Yankee Stadium. That summer I saw the Yanks lose to the Orioles largely by virtue of Boog Powell's bat. Powell went on to be the American League MVP, and the Orioles to win the World Series. For a while, thanks to Mario and to other friends, I became a Yankees fan and attended a fair number of games. I saw them, on TV, win the Series in '77 and in '78, beating the Dodgers twice. By the early '80s, though, I was losing my enthusiasm for the Bronx Bombers. In '81 they did something they hadn't done since '55, losing the World Series to the Dodgers. After that they had several disappointing seasons. I also developed a distate for their owner, George Steinbrenner. My father had instilled in me an aversion to people with "overinflated egos," and Steinbrenner's was up to near bursting point.

Sometime during the late summer of 1985 I was in my favorite Greenwich Village pub, the Lion's Head, sitting next to Pat Carroll, a Brooklyn native who had moved to London and was back for a visit. Pat said he had two tickets to a Mets game but his mother couldn't go, so would I be interested? "Sure," I said. The Mets won, beating the Cardinals thanks to a two run homer off what was then called the "unlikely bat" of  Howard Johnson. During the game Pat said, "What you have to know is that the Mets are really the Brooklyn Dodgers continued by other means." This was an "Aha!" moment for me; I could return to my first baseball love.  (I have some friends, like Dermot McEvoy, who consider the Mets to be the New York Giants continued by other means. I'm glad for their fellow fandom.)

1985 was a propitious year to become a Mets fan. Gary Carter, whom the Mets had acquired by trade from the Expos the previous winter, led the Mets in home runs and RBI and provided solid defense behind the plate. Dwight Gooden won 24 games, with an ERA of 1.03 and 268 strikeouts. Darryl Strawberry was out with an injury from May 11 to June 28, but still managed 29 homers and 79 RBI, along with sparkling defense in right field. The Mets finished three games behind the Cards in the NL East.

My reward for Mets fandom came the following year. The 1986 Mets were a juggernaut. Deftly managed by Davey Johnson, they won 108 games; twice as many as the 54 they lost. They finished 21 and a half games ahead of the Phillies in the NL East, then beat the Astros for the league championship. The World Series though, against the Red Sox, proved to be a seven game struggle. The Sox had a three games to two lead going into game six, which I was watching on TV at home. Boston had a 5-4 lead going into the bottom of the tenth and I felt convinced they would go on to win the game and the Series, so I decided to go to a local bar where I knew my friend Bill, a Springfield, Massachusetts native and Red Sox fan, would be, and congratulate him.  On the way I heard cheering coming from an apartment window. When I got to the bar I could see lots of people smiling and clapping, and Bill looking dejected.  I asked him what had happened and he gestured at the TV, which showed a replay of Mookie Wilson's grounder skittering past Bill Buckner's glove and between his legs. Earlier in Mookie's at bat, a wild pitch by Bob Stanley had allowed the tying run to score, which probably occasioned the cheering I'd heard on the way. Buckner's error allowed the winning run and a walk-off victory for the Mets, who went on to win game seven and their second MLB championship. Buckner, who otherwise had a long and distinguished baseball career, and Wilson became friends, and appeared together at fan events.

After 1986 came a long period of frustration for Mets fans. The remainder of the 80's, through 1990, were an "often a bridesmaid" period in which the Mets regularly finished second in their division. In '88 they finished first but lost to the Dodgers in a league chamopionship series from which I have memories of Davey Lopes rounding the bases with his right thumb pointed upward. The early 1990s were dismal, with the Mets often finishing at the bottom of their division. It was in 1991 that I got married, to a Red Sox fan, and in 1993 I became a father. This cut into the time I spent at the Lion's Head, which is where I watched Mets games. I did attend several games with Charlie McCrann, an executive at Marsh & McLennan, which had a private box at Shea. Despite this, Charlie was a Yankees fan. He was also a Republican. Despite our being on opposite sides of both baseball and politics, our friendship was strong, and lasted until the morning of September 11, 2001 when Charlie was in his office at One World Trade Center, an event memorialized here.

In 2000 the Mets won the NL title, which set up a longed for "subway series" against the Yankees. Unfortunately, it would not satisfy the longings of Mets fans, as the Bombers prevailed in five games. It's a Series best (or worst) remembered for when, in game two, Mike Piazza broke his bat fouling off a pitch from Roger Clemens. A piece of the bat flew toward the mound. Clemens grabbed it and threw it to his left, where it almost hit Piazza, who was trotting toward first. This incited a bench clearing brawl. Clemens denied having intended to hit Piazza. 

The Mets returned to the World Series in 2015, and the result was no better than in 2000. The Kansas City Royals, as had the Yanks, won in five. The following year the Mets made the playoffs, but were eliminated by the Giants. In 2019 they had an 86-76 record, but failed to make the playoffs. I characterized that season here. The 2020 season was shortened by COVID and the Mets had a sickly 26-34 record, finishing fourth. Before the 2021 season Steve Cohen became the Mets' principal owner (the Wilpon family retained a five percent stake). 

Cohen's first significant move was acquiring shortstop Francisco Lindor, who continues to be a vital part of the team. The Mets started the 2021 season hot, then collapsed, finishing third in the division. In 2022 they had a 101-61 record, their best other than 1986's, and tied with the Braves for the division lead. Since the Braves had a winning season against the Mets, they were awarded the division championship, and the Mets had a wild card playoff against the Padres, which they lost 3-0. 2023 saw the Mets reverting to losing ways, finishing fourth in the East. 2024; well, we've covered that.

Now it's 2025 and the Mets are off to a blazing start. A day short of one month into the season they have a 19-8 record, the best in the majors. In their division they have a five game lead over the Phils. Turning to intracity rivalry, the Yankees' record is 15-11. MLB's Anthony DiComo thinks part of the Mets' early success stems from Tylor Megill's (photo at top) improvement of his "stuff." According to DiComo, "[t]he zip on a fastball, the snap on a slider, the tumble on a changeup -- these are all examples of stuff." It's done Megill well so far; despite a 3-2 win-loss record, he has a 1.09 ERA and thirty strikeouts. The starter in today's win over the Nationals, former Yankee Clay Holmes, showed some good stuff, allowing four hits and no runs over five innings, with two strikeouts. He could have gone seven innings but for his time on the mound having been interrupted by a rain delay. 

On the offensive side much optimism was engendered by the signing, for $765 million, the largest contract in baseball history, of the former Yankee star Juan Soto. It seemed worth it when he hit a home run in his first at bat of the season. Since then he has added only two more, and his average is a pallid .235 with twelve RBI. He also missed a catch in Friday's game that set the scene for the Nationals' ninth inning walk off victory. Mike Lupica, on MLB.com, writes of Pete Alonso, who was a free agent last year but stayed with the Mets with a lucrative two year contract, "[n]o one in the league has been more valuable so far than the Polar Bear [Alonso's nickname]." As of now he has a .333 average, with six homers and 26 RBI.

Can the Mets sustain this success? Is it 1986 again? Or will it be another 2021 in which they start flaming hot, then go freezing cold? Or perhaps another 2022, when a splendid regular season is followed by a playoff collapse? There are reasons, I believe, for optimism. Apart from Soto the core of the team has been together for a while, and the chemistry seems good. The unknown factor is how injuries may affect the team. I once speculated about why the Mets seem to suffer from this so much. Nevertheless, my hopes now are high.

I made "a fan's notes" part of the title of this post as an homage to Frederick Exley, whose first novel had that title, and with whom I once had a close encounter at the Lion's Head.

Photo: D. Benjamin Miller, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Patrick Street: The Humours Of The King Of Ballyhooley

 

It being the time of year, sure 'n' begorrah we've been listening to lots of Irish music the past few days. This delightful ditty, the last track on the album Irish Times by the group Patrick Street, has become a welcome earworm. The tale it tells is a familiar one in folk music throughout the British Isles: a stranger meets a woman who catches his eye; he asks her to marry him; she says yes; and they live happily, producing a sizeable brood of children. The singer is Andy Irvine, whom I met in 1988 when he did a solo gig at the now long gone Eagle Tavern on West 14th Street. I was there with the now sadly late Zane Berzins, a native Latvian who was fluent in Irish Gaelic. She knew Andy, and kindly introduced us. I later learned that my future wife, Martha Foley, was also there. 

 It's a rollicking song for a celebratory day. Beannechtai na feile Padraig!

Two "Tech Sisters": Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) and Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992)

There's a lot of talk about "tech bros" now, most of it not flattering. This being International Women's Day, and March being Women's History Month (so if I fail to complete this post today it will still be timely) I want to focus on two women, Ada Lovelace (portrait above; who, thanks to my daughter, is the namesake of my granddaughter) and Admiral Grace Hopper. I've called them "tech sisters" although their lifespans did not overlap, because each had a profound effect on the technology of computing. 

 Ada's father was Lord Byron, romantic poet, politician, and adventurer, who died when she was eight. Her mother, Annabella Milbanke (Lady Byron), was a proper noble Englishwoman, and an advocate for the abolition of slavery. She survived Ada, whose life was tormented by bouts of ill health, and who died at 36, the same age at which her father died. There's an extensive piece on Ada's life and her intellectual accomplishments here, written by Stephen Wolfram, "a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking" and a brilliant physicist.

Ada showed early interest in science and technology. As Wolfram notes, at age 11 she became interested in "flyology" and hoped to find a way to imitate bird flight using steam power. What determined much of the course of her adult intellectual life occurred at 17, when she was presented at court and met Charles Babbage, an astronomer, mathematician, and inventor. This began a friendship that lasted the rest of Ada's life. 

Wolfram describes how Babbage became interested in the development of logarithmic and trigonometric charts, useful in engineering, military, and navigational applications. Errors in them could have disastrous consequences, so Babbage sought to develop ways to assure the calculations used to produce them were done accurately. He invented a mechanical computing device called the "difference engine," which he showed to Ada and her mother soon after their first meeting.

For the next roughly nineteen years Ada became Babbage's off and on collaborator as he tried to develop an improved Difference Engine, then turned to a project a magnitude greater that he called the "Analytical Engine." It was never built; Wolfram observes that it would have been as large as a railway locomotive. During this time Ada married William King and through him became Countess of Lovelace. They had three children. Despite household duties and bouts of illness, Ada found time to continue working with Babbage. She translated notes written in French from a lecture Babbage had given, and added notes of her own that were much longer. Anna Siffert, a professor of mathematics at the University of Münster, noted in an article written when she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute that Ada's notes include "a step-by-step description for computation of Bernoulli numbers with Babbage's machine - basically an algorithm - which, in effect, make her the world's first computer programmer."

Wolfram sums her up thus: 

I think one can fairly say that Ada Lovelace was the first person ever to glimpse with any clarity what has become a defining phenomenon of our technology and even our civilization: the notion of universal computation.

 Our second "tech sister" is U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, also known as "Amazing Grace." She was born in New York City in 1906 and received her PhD in mathematics and mathematical physics from Yale, after which she became a professor of mathematics at Vassar. As told by Rick Spilman in the Old Salt Blog, at the outset of World War II she tried to enlist in the Navy but was rejected because she was too old (34) and too thin(!) In 1943, she was accepted by the U.S. Navy Reserve, which evidently saw a need for her skills. She was sent to Harvard to work on the Bureau of Ships Computation Project, where she worked as a programmer. Then, according to Spilman:

She would go on to develop the first compiler and to work on the first machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL and other languages. In the 1970s, she advocated for networked computing and for standardization and testing of programming languages, a standard that was adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

She retired, as required by regulations, at the age of 60, but was called back to active duty twice, was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1985, and finally retired in 1986, shortly before her 80th birthday. She died on New Year's Day, 1992, at the age of 85. Admiral Hopper is remembered in several ways. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing has, since 1994, hosted "a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront." Two buildings and a warship have been named for her: Hopper Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy, which houses the Academy's Center for Cybersecurity Studies; Grace Hopper College at Yale; and the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Hopper. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 by President Barack Obama.

Image of Ada Lovelace: detail of portrait by Margaret Sarah Carpenter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo of Grace Hopper: James S. Davis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Chief Justice Robert M. Bell, of the Maryland Court of Appeals, who made Black History twice.

In September of 1967 I arrived in Cambridge to begin my first year at Harvard Law School. I had some trepidation, thinking I was entering a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald world where most of my classmates would be prep school and Ivy League college grads from wealthy families and I, a graduate of a then little known state university in Florida with parents who never went to college, would be considered a hopeless rube. As I got to know my dorm neighbors this fear was dispelled. Most were from middle class backgrounds, and only a few sported Ivy undergraduate degrees. One whom I found particularly welcoming was Bob Bell, a second year student and thus a helpful source of information on what to expect from certain professors and other bits of local lore. As explained below, he would go on from law school to a career that culminated in what I can only call poetic justice.

Bob and I found a bond in our shared love of music. My musical taste at the time ranged from classical to country to folk to rock, but I had little exposure to contemporary jazz. One afternoon I sat in Bob's room as he played Yusef Lateef's album Psychicemotus. I was particularly taken by the track Bamboo Flute Blues because I'd long loved flute music (despite having tried and failed to learn to play flute when I was in fourth grade) and because it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I had a budding interest in blues, largely thanks to the Rolling Stones. 

In the spring of 1968 I brought to Bob's room the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's latest album, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, which I had bought at the Harvard Coop. I didn't know anything about Butterfield and his group but I was intrigued by the album's cover and title ("Pigboy Crabshaw," I've since learned, was a nickname for Elvin Bishop, who played guitar and sang in the group). I wasn't sure what Bob would think of a blues group made of mostly White guys (at the time "Resurrection" was recorded, of the eight members of the group only one, alto sax player Gene Dinwiddie, was Black) who, on this album, did covers of seven songs by Black blues or R&B artists along with two originals by Butterfield, one of them co-credited to Dinwiddie. He liked the album. I recall his especially liking the line "Big legged woman gonna carry me to my grave" from the cover of "Born Under a Bad Sign", originally recorded by Albert King.

Bob didn't mention it to me, but I learned from other students that he had a peculiar distinction: he was the only student at HLS at the time whose name appeared in our Constitutional Law casebook. This was because in July of 1960, when Bob was sixteen and president of his class at Baltimore's all Black Dunbar High School, he recruited several classmates to join with some students from Morgan State College, now Morgan State University, in a sit-in demonstration. They entered Hooper's Restaurant in downtown Baltimore, known to have a Whites-only policy, and demanded to be seated and served.* When asked to leave, twelve of them, including Bob, took seats and refused to leave. The restaurant's owner went to the nearest police station, swore out a warrant, and Bob and the others were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. They were tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City and fined ten dollars each.** 

At that time, sit-in demonstrations, inspired by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up a bus seat to a White man, were becoming popular as a way to protest racial segregation in privately owned places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, holding that segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Attorneys active in civil rights litigation believed this principle could be extended to racial discrimination by private entities, at least if the use of police and courts to enforce such discrimination met the "state action" requirement. Prominent civil rights lawyers, including Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, voluntarily represented Bob and the others in an appeal to the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. Despite their efforts, on January 9, 1962 the Court of Appeals upheld the convictions. 

An appeal from Maryland's highest court could only be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. At this stage, Bob and the others were represented by Constance Baker Motley, who later became the first Black woman to be made a federal judge, and by Jack Greenberg, who had been active in the appeal of Brown v. Board of Education and later succeeded Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund. For most kinds of cases, the Supreme Court is not obligated to take appeals. Counsel for the appellants must petition the Court to take the appeal. In the case of the Baltimore sit-in petitioners, which became known as Bell v. Maryland (Bob's name getting pride of place because it was first alphabetically), the Court took the appeal.

Greenberg, who argued for the appellants before the Supreme Court, said the Court should overturn the convictions because they violated the equal protection and due process principles of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Court's majority didn't reach that conclusion. Instead, it noted that after the appellants' convictions and after the Court of Appeals' affirmation of those convictions, 

Maryland has enacted laws that abolish the crime of which petitioners were convicted. These laws accord petitioners a right to be served in Hooper's restaurant, and make unlawful conduct like that of Hooper's president and hostess in refusing them service because of their race.***

The Court then noted that

Maryland follows the universal common law rule that, when the legislature repeals a criminal statute or otherwise removes the State's condemnation from conduct that was formerly deemed criminal, this action requires the dismissal of a pending criminal proceeding charging such conduct. The rule applies to any such proceeding which at the time of the supervening legislation, has not yet reached final disposition in the highest court authorized to review it.****

Accordingly, the Court vacated the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals and remanded the case to that court which, upon remand, held that the Baltimore and Maryland public accommodations statutes, along with the subsequently enacted federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, operated only prospectively and therefore could not invalidate the Hooper's sit-in demonstrators' convictions.***** However, this was not the end of the story. As Professor Reynolds notes at the conclusion of his previously cited article:

On December 14, 1964, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, holding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act did indeed abate all pending prosecutions of those who had been arrested for activity that the Act protected. Although Hamm readily appears controlling, the Court of Appeals waited nearly five months to issue an order on April 9, 1965, reversing the convictions and assessing costs against the State, thereby ending the historic case of Bell v. Maryland.******

Just over a year after the Court of Appeals issued its final order in Bell v. Maryland, Robert Mack Bell received the degree Bachelor of Arts in History from Morgan State College. Later that year he matriculated at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated with the degree Juris Doctor in 1969. He then returned to his home town, Baltimore, and was in private law practice for six years.

In 1975, Bell was appointed to the District Court of Maryland, District 1, in Baltimore City and served there until 1980. He was an Associate Judge, Baltimore City Circuit Court, 8th Judicial Circuit, from 1980 to 1984, when he was appointed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Seven years later he was appointed to the state's highest court and became the chief justice in 1996. He was a member of the Court of Appeals Standing Committee on Rules of practice and Procedure from 1977 to 1982; the Commission to Revise the Annotated Code of Maryland, 1980-82; and the Board of Directors, Judicial Institute of Maryland, 1982-84. In August 2006, Bell was named Chair of the National Center for State Courts' Board of Directors. At the same time, Judge Bell also was named president of the Conference of Chief Justices.*******

In 2013 he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy for Maryland judges. His career was significant for Black History in two ways. First, he helped to instigate and carry out a sit-in demonstration that led to litigation that clarified the legal status of such non-violent demonstrations. Second, he became the first Black Chief Justice of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now called the Maryland Supreme Court) and, in a delicious bit of irony, thereby became Chief Justice of the very court that had affirmed his conviction in 1962. 

In 2008 he made this observation about how he considered the significance of his case:

I think my case has given me that point of reference, and it also makes me appreciate the extent of progress that has been made. And it also made me able to gauge the extent of the progress which has yet to be made. I think, not just about that case, but about that era in that fashion. The unfortunate thing is that younger people don't remember it. They don't know what happened. And therefore you're finding a different kind of attitude and a complacency which I think is more dangerous than anything else. So our job is pretty hard.********

I believe this observation is still relevant in 2025.

__________

*For Justice Bell's own account of the events leading up to, on the day of, and after the Hooper's sit-in, see Maryland State Archives: "Robert Mack Bell, Baptism by Fire" in Irons, Peter, The Courage of Their Convictions, The Free Press (1988) at pp.141-152.

**For a thorough and insightful discussion of the factual circumstances, personnel, and legal issues involved in the litigation arising from the Hooper's sit-in demonstration, see Reynolds, William L., "Foreword: The Legal History of the Great Sit-In Case of Bell v. Maryland" (2002). Faculty Scholarship. 576.

***Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 229 (1964).

****Id. at 231, citing Keller v. State, 12 Md. 322 (1858).

*****Bell v. State, 236 Md. 356, 369 (1964).

******Reynolds, supra, at p.794 (footnotes and citations omitted).

*******Center for Civil Rights in Education

********Maryland State Archives, supra, at p.152.

Photo: 1msulax (talk) 13:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC).The original uploader was 1msulax at English Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Robert Burns' birthday, and my wife's, celebrated thanks to Repast Baroque and Anna O'Connoll

This past Saturday, January 25, was the 266th birthday of the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759-1796), and coincidentally that, of fewer digits, of my wife of almost 34 years, Martha Foley. The Burns birthday, and Martha's, were celebrated at a "Burns Supper" graciously hosted by Frances Stern at her apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her supper included salmon, roasted tomatoes, tattie scones, and delicious shortbread.

The program was provided by members of Repast Baroque, joined by harpist and soprano Anna O'Connell. In the photo Ms. O'Connell is at the left, with her Celtic harp. Repast members, left to right, are: Sarah Stone, on baroque cello; Gabe Shuford on keyboard (at Repast concerts Gabe plays harpsichord; the space here was too small to fit one); and Stephanie Corwin on bassoon. The festivities began with Ms. O'Connell's spirited reading of Burns' poem, "The Flowers of Edinburgh." This was followed by a number of Burns poems set to music by various composers, which Ms. O'Connell sang in her clarion clear and wide ranging soprano voice. She also performed several pieces by Scottish composers inspired by Burns, solely on harp.

It being Martha's birthday, I was delighted that one of the Burns poems set to music chosen for the program was "My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing." I don't know if this was inserted on Martha's behalf, but the musicians did break from the Burns performance to lead us all in "Happy Birthday," and a cake was presented. The program continued with a lively "There's Nae Luck About the Hoose," and concluded with "The Parting Kiss" and what is Burns' best known poem, "Auld Lang Syne," in which we all joined.

Repast's next concert will be on Saturday, March 15 at 3:00 PM, at the McKinney Chapel of the First Unitarian Congregational Society, 116 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, celebrating The Ides of March, at which Sarah, Gabe, and Stephanie will be re-joined by violinist and new mother Natalie Rose Kress and by guest musician Margaret Owens on oboe and recorder. The program will feature music by Handel accompanied by projections of the 1908 silent film Julius Caesar and other early silent films. The concert will be repeated the following day, Sunday, March 16, at 3:00 PM, at the Manhattan Country Day School, 150 West 85th Street.

Rest in Peace, President Carter

I can't think of words more eloquent to mark our nation's great loss than those of Robert Reich, who served in President Carter's administration, as well as in that of President Gerald Ford, and who was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. I especially like this passage from Reich's message:

"Carter believed passionately in the capacity of human beings to create civil societies that would contain the beasts in all of us. Civilization would prevail over brutality. Humanity over inhumanity.

Carter was a religious man who lived by this simple civil religion. He not only saw the good in others but he practiced the good. He was far from the best president America has had but he was one of the best and most decent people ever to serve as president."

UPDATE: Sabrina Lippman, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, offers this remembrance:

“New Yorkers and global citizens alike have lost one of our greatest advocates for affordable housing, self-help homeownership, and shelter for all. We add our voices to the chorus around the world celebrating a life well-built.   

President Carter’s leadership and commitment to decent, affordable housing was rooted in his faith, belief in family, and an unwavering dedication to the idea that we can create a better life for all by lifting each other up and working together to accomplish our shared goals.

We cannot overstate our appreciation for just how much Habitat for Humanity and the people we’ve served around the world have benefited from the support of President and Mrs. Carter, may they both rest in peace." 

Photo: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

 

Bing Crosby - Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) (Visualizer)

This isn't the same Bing Crosby rendition of Adeste Fideles my parents had on a Christmas album of his from the early 1950s, but it's close enough to evoke some cherished memories.

"I grow old ... I grow old ..."

 "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

When I was in high school and first read this couplet from T.S. Eliot's (photo) "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" I assumed that a man's having the bottoms of his trousers rolled, or cuffed, was a new fashion trend in 1915, when the poem was written, and that Eliot ascribed to the aging Mr. Prufrock a desire to appear au courant.

This morning a different reason occurred to me as I tucked, or rolled under, the bottoms of my trousers. From my teen years until now I have worn trousers with a thirty inch inseam. However, I now find that instead of the desirable "break" at shoe level, I get an unsightly sprawl. The reason became evident when a doctor measured my stature and found it was five feet seven, down from the five feet ten it had been for most of my life. I had, for some time, noticed that people, especially women, seemed on the average taller than I was used to seeing. 

This I now know, is because a loss of stature frequently occurs during aging. According to this article, by losing three inches I've lost the maximum expected amount. I hope that's true.

Perhaps, then, poor J. Alfred had lost an inch or more growing old, and that's why he needed to roll his trousers.

Photo: Thomas Stearns Eliot with his sister and his cousin by Lady Ottoline Morrell.jpg: Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938) derivative work: Octave.H, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Donnacha Dennehy's "Land of Winter: I. December" by Alarm Will Sound

Thanks to the Irish Arts Center I've become aware of the composer Donnacha Dennehy and of his suite Land of Winter, the title of which is a translation of Hibernia, the Roman name for Ireland. It "is a gorgeous orchestral exploration of the subtleties of Ireland's seasons through twelve connected sections representing the months of the year." Evidently Dennehy followed the liturgical calendar because he placed December first in the progression of months. 

The audio clip above is of "December" from Land of Winter, performed by Alarm Will Sound, which the New York Times called "as close to being a rock band as a chamber orchestra can be" (I once wrote something similar about Repast Baroque), conducted by Alan Pierson, whom the Times has called "a musical visionary." The entire suite is available on Nonesuch Records. 

Marshall Chapman sings Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" with James Burton on guitar.

James Burton, 85, has played guitar with an impressive list of country and rock stars, including Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Monkees, and Elvis Costello. In 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; his induction ceremony was presented by Keith Richards. He developed a style of playing, using a straight pick and a finger pick on his middle finger, along with re-arranging the strings on his guitar and substituting some with banjo strings, that is called "chickin' pickin'." 

He played guitar on Marshall Chapman's version of Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" (co-written by Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver) that was the final cut on Marshall's second album, Jaded Virgin (1978). At the song's close, she gives him credit (video above). I've had the pleasure of knowing Marshall for many years, and whenever possible tune in to her Saturday afternoon livestream.

A tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.

What is now New York State has produced wine since the 17th century, when Dutch and Huguenot settlers began making it in the Hudson Valley. From then until now, the bulk of that wine has been made from native American grape varietals, mostly of the species Vitis labrusca. Wines made from labrusca, both from red and white varietals, have a bold, assertive flavor that some wine drinkers like. Wine from European grapes of the species Vitis vinifera mostly have more subtle, complex flavors preferred by many others. 

For years there were unsuccessful attempts to grow vinifera vines in New York. This was blamed on the cold climate. The first to succeed was Dr. Konstantin Frank (photo above). A native of Ukraine, Dr. Frank earned his PhD in viticulture (the science of wine) with a thesis on growing vinifera grapes in cold climates. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, and in 1958 bought some land near Keuka Lake, one of the Finger Lakes, and planted Riesling, a white vinifera varietal that originated in the relatively cool climate of Germany's Rhine Valley. He made several award winning wines from this first planting, ranging in style from very sweet to dry. He went on to introduce many other vinifera varietals, both red and white, to the Finger Lakes climate and soil, and to make widely praised wines from them. After his death in 1985 his son Willy took over management of the winery, and began making sparkling wines using the French méthode champenoise. He also continued making varieties of still wine his father had been making, although he reduced the number of them from sixty to twelve. Willy died in 2006 and was succeeded by his son, Fred. Fred's daughter, Meaghan, has now assumed much of the management responsibility, so the winery and vineyards have had the attention of four generations of the Frank family.

Dr. Frank was a mentor to many other winemakers in the Finger Lakes and elsewhere. Among these are Jordan Harris of Heron Hill, Morten Hallgren of Ravines Wine Cellars, and Sébastien LeSeurre of Domaine LeSeurre, all of which Martha and I visited when we toured the Finger Lakes wine region in 2021. This year Chris Bennem and Lisa Moore invited us back to Glen Hollow for a long weekend, and arranged for us to take a tour of the Frank winery followed by a paired tasting of selected foods with Frank wines.

On our way to the winery we walked through a vineyard. Here's a close-up of the raw material of winemaking. 

Here's a view of the vineyard on a hillside overlooking Keuka Lake. These are very old vines that may date back to Dr. Frank's original planting.

On our arrival at the winery our guide, Allyn briefed us on the winemaking process and what we were about to see. The machine behind him crushes and presses the newly harvested grapes.

These tall tanks are where fermentation takes place.

The fermented wine then undergoes clarification and filtration.

The wine is then aged in casks made of French oak which, depending on the length of time the wine remains in the cask, imparts a very subtle or discernable flavor to the wine. Allyn tapped a cask containing 2023 vintage Cabernet Franc, a red Bordeaux varietal that does well in the climate and soil of the Finger Lakes (as well as, believe it or not, Cape Cod), and gave us all a taste. With at most a year's cask aging, the wine was well balanced with full varietal character of forward, cherry like fruit but with subtle undertones of citrus.

The capstone of our tour was a four course paired food and wine tasting. Left to right, the courses were as follows:

First course: wine poached pear and honeydew balls, delicata squash, lemon zest, and olive oil, paired with sparkling Blanc de Noirs 2013. The wine had more forward fruit and complexity than most sparklers. This went well with the sweetness of the fruit and the mellower flavors of the squash and olive oil.

Second course: roasted local organic carrots, curry carrot puree, carrot & orange juice, paired with 2013 Winter Solstice Gewürztraminer. This Alsatian varietal, vinified dry, has more complexity and spice than most whites, so stood up well to the carrot and curry flavor. Sips of the wine, alternated with sips of the carrot and orange juice, made an interesting serial "cocktail."

Third course: Brussels sprout leaves, pork belly lardon with red wine reduction, paired with Cabernet Sauvignon Nouveau 2023. Dr. Frank's website doesn't have an entry for the 2023 Nouveau, although it does for the aged 2021 vintage. The nouveau lacked tannin, but its lively fruit went well with the pork and sprouts, and the wine reduction added some complexity.

Dessert course: pumpkin pie, Graham cracker hill, sweet puree of spaghetti squash, whipped cream, paired with Reserve Riesling 2023. The Riesling had a good balance of sweetness and acidity that complemented the not overly sweet dessert.

Many thanks to Chris and Lisa for another delightful weekend of wine. We look forward to visiting them again soon, perhaps with a chance to taste something from their newly acquired vineyard. 

Photo of Dr. Konstantin Frank, Finger Lakes Wine Country; all others by C. Scales