Luckily, this wasn’t a real person. He was Captain Queeg, a character in a novel, The Caine Mutiny, set during the Second World War.

The Caine Mutiny was written by Herman Wouk and published in 1951. It was enormously successful, acclaimed by the public and critics. It was a huge bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1952. The 1954 movie version (with Humphrey Bogart playing Queeg) was a hit too, second that year in domestic box office. It garnered seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (but won none).

The 1951 novel by Herman Wouk, a WW2 veteran, was critical and popular success

In the story set in the South Pacific theatre in late 1944, Queeg becomes captain of the U.S.S. Caine, a Navy destroyer minesweeper. He runs a tight ship, unlike his predecessor, and that tough discipline at first impresses the officers on board, which includes Executive Officer Steve Maryk and the book’s protagonist, a young ensign named Willie Keith. That initial impression wears off soon enough. Queeg is actually a martinet. He is fastidious to the point of obsession, abusive to the point of cruelty, and just maybe crazy.

Late in the tale, Captain Queeg discovers that the remains of a quart of strawberries are missing from the officers’ mess. He is outraged and is convinced that the strawberries were purloined by a crew member who somehow duplicated the key to the ice box in the officers’ wardroom. There’s no evidence that was what happened, but that means nothing to Queeg. He believes it.

At one point Maryk tells Queeg, “We don’t know there’s a key -”

Queeg angrily cuts him off.

“Let me interrupt you right there,” he says. “I say there is, therefore for your purposes there is.”

Promotional poster for the 1954 movie version of The Caine Mutiny. Photo credit: newhousedesign

The captain has what he believes is an ingenious idea. Every member of the crew, which would have numbered around 150, is forced to submit to a strip search and turn in every single key they have, which will then be tested on the icebox lock to see if it fits. Maryk suggests that, if there were a duplicate key (which he doesn’t believe), the guilty person would simply get rid of it. Queeg refuses to believe that. When the strip search and test of thousands of keys fail to find the duplicate, Queeg orders that the entire ship be searched.

Eventually, Queeg learns privately from a ship’s yeoman that the ship’s mess stewards secretly ate the strawberries. Someone saw them. He swears the yeoman to secrecy and tells no one. The search goes on from stem to stern - no duplicate key is found because there is none - until ultimately a larger event intervenes, a typhoon that almost sinks the Caine and leads Maryk to take control of the ship when Queeg is paralyzed by fear.

I’ve read The Caine Mutiny many times over the years. It’s a very good book (despite the unsettling references to the few Black stewards as boys). And Queeg is one of those unforgettable literary characters, not unlike Captain Ahab. But I hadn’t read it in at least 10 years. It only came surging back came to me a few weeks ago when the U.S Attorney in the Washington, D.C. district abruptly dropped charges against four people accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool in the capital, enraging President Trump. In an instant, I recognized Captain Queeg.

File photo of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Photo credit: multisanti

Last spring, President Trump announced that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall would be repaired and renovated. Ever since it opened in 1922, it had been prone to leakage and contamination. Algae blooms regularly turned the water a disgusting, polluted greenish hue. It would be a rush job to complete it in time for the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4. At Trump’s behest, the pool was to be painted “American flag blue.” The president would keep a keen eye on the project.

“I’m very good at building things and constructing things,” he declared.


Two firms were hired for the job without competitive bidding. Both were owned by people with political or business connections to the president. Atlantic Industrial Coating was paid $14.7 million, including an unusual 20 percent profit mark up, to spread the blue sealant across the pool’s leaky concrete slabs. Greenwater Services was awarded a $1.7 million contract to install an ozone nano bubble system to kill algae.

The job was finished in early June. Just days later, things began to go awry. The water began to turn a sickening shade of green because of an algae bloom. Attempts to treat it failed. It got greener and more putrid. Cracks and peeling were detected in the caulking. There were cuts in sections of foam.

On June 9, the U.S. Park Police described the cuts in the blue foaming as “razor blade slashes.” Soon after chunks of the sealant that was applied fractured and pieces began to float to the surface.

On June 19, David Carter Hearn, 67, a former Olympic canoeist, was on a bike ride when he stopped by the Reflecting Pool. He maintained that he merely reached in and touched the lining that appeared to be flaking. He was arrested and charged with destruction of property valued at $1,000 or more. He was arrested and taken away in handcuffs. Three other people who put their hands in the water were charged with misdemeanors

On June 20, in a Truth Social post, Trump erupted:

It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night.

A few days later, the president also blamed the algae problem on vandals who, he said, poured fertilizer in the water to promote bacterial growth.

It was a vivid and dramatic scenario of wanton criminality that the president described. The problem was there was no evidence to support any of it.

President Trump continues to insist the damage to the Reflecting Pool was done by vandals. Photo credit: The White House

Trump was undeterred and, in fact, was inspired to further embellishment. On June 24 he said that the pool lining had a “350-foot slash made with a very sharp knife or razors.” The malefactors, he said, should be sentenced to many years in prison. U.S. Department of Interior officials and the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host and longtime Trump loyalist, backed his account. It was definitely the work of vandals. Hearn, she said, was seen “forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands.”

Then on July 31, everything changed. Charges against all of the defendants were dropped. The peeling was caused not by vandals but was the result of “hasty and botched” work by the contractors in their hurry to finish the job quickly.

“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism,” Pirro said in the court filing dropping the charges.

The president was not happy.

On Truth Social, he wrote: “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro. I don’t know what she was thinking. To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS.”

A few days later, he accused Pirro of “folding like an umbrella” and “choking.”

“Mr. Trump raged against Ms. Pirro in private,” the New York Times reported. “Then he raged a little to reporters. Rumors she would be fired bubbled through the West Wing. Then he raged a little more before hosting a high-drama face-to-face meeting with Pirro at the White House [on August 3]. The whole episode had a vaguely comic air (why would the leader of the free world, juggling war and a wobbly economy, fixate on a pool liner?)”

Visitors next to piece of dislodged lining at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Photo credit: Jack Gruber, USA Today

It was kind of funny. Except the more you thought about it, it wasn’t. The president was obstinately, angrily, adamantly refusing to face facts and, even more, insisting that his version was the real one. He even claimed that there was video or, as he put it, “moving cameras” that captured the villains in the act. No such video has ever been produced.

“The Reflecting Pool mess is different from other Trump obsessions because it reveals how immune to evidence and logic his beliefs have become, even when a trusted lieutenant wheels an entire box of supporting evidence into the Oval Office,” wrote Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. “Trump has now passed from being a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian. Political scientists since World War II have studied the problem of ‘irrational’ leaders, people in positions of power who seem unable to accept any version of reality that conflicts with their assumptions.”

It seemed at first like the Reflecting Pool drama was over. Pirro did not back down despite Trump’s vitriolic outbursts. The charges against the accused were dismissed. But the matter was apparently not settled. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House has “asked” the Department of Justice to consider a renewed prosecution of Hearn.

“After White House outreach, Justice Department officials are exploring whether another type of case - likely based on misdemeanor allegations - is even possible,” the newspaper said, attributing it to people familiar with the discussions.

In The Caine Mutiny, Steve Maryk is court martialed and stands trial for mutiny. At first, the proceedings are going badly for him. It looks like he’s sure to be convicted. But then Queeg takes the stand. He is provoked by defense counsel’s sharp questions into a rambling, paranoid, self-defensive soliloquy that reveals just how erratic and unbalanced he is. In the movie version of The Caine Mutiny (in a line that is not in the book), Bogart as Queeg says with delighted excitement, “Ah, but the strawberries, that’s where I had them!”

Maryk is acquitted. But, of course, that story was fiction.

The tasting room is an elegant, cozy space with large windows that overlook the town of Sonoma’s pleasant tree-shaded main square. My friend’s wines are produced in the area and, even to my unrefined palate, are excellent. His vineyard is one of very few Black-owned wineries in California or, for that matter, the country.

My friend and I sat down to catch up. His employee, Carter, poured me a chilled white wine, then went off to serve two middle-aged women who had come for a wine tasting.

“How’s business?” I asked.

He said said, “Okay.” His tone was hard to read, but I detected a hint of caution.

“Very okay? Or just okay?” I asked.

He replied, “Just okay.”

I asked him if there were any particular reasons for that. Lloyd cited fewer young adults drinking wine or any alcohol, for that matter. I’d heard about this for a few years and wrote about it in early 2024, Still I was surprised to hear this. This was one of America’s premier wine regions.

Carter passed by to retrieve more wine for the tasting customers. He’s in his early 20s and a recent college graduate, so I stopped him and asked if he’s seeing among his peers what he was saying. Carter agreed. He said many of his friends don’t drink and those who do drink moderately. I thought to myself, things really do change.

Photo credit: CarbonNYC

When I was 15, my friend, Brent, who was a year older and could drive, and I went to a ramshackle liquor store on Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles. Outside the store we spotted a person who, in that less empathic era, was called a bum. He was an old, grizzled guy who may or may not have been drunk. We asked him if he would buy us a six-pack of Ripple, a cheap flavored, fortified wine. The old guy readily agreed. We pressed cash into his hand and told him to keep a couple of bucks for himself. He shuffled toward the entrance but not fast enough for me and Brent. We were anxious about the whole escapade and urged our benefactor to make haste.

He stopped, turned to us, and said, “We’ve got all the time in the world, boys.”

Brent and I split the six pack and went to our respective homes, determined to achieve intoxication. I drank one bottle of the Pagan Pink Ripple (the brand name should have been a fair warning what I was getting into or, rather, what I was putting into me). It tasted awful. I called Brent. He’d finished one bottle too.

“You feel anything?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “What about you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Brent said, “Let’s keep drinking. This has to work.”

Somehow I forced down two more bottles of the disgusting liquid. That did the trick. Soon I was on my knees, crawling around aimlessly while the world became a spinning kaleidoscope. Finally I managed to get myself into to bed.

I woke up several hours later, still dazed. It was dark. Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame me. I sat up and promptly vomited onto my chest and lap. It was a rough ride, but I now belonged to the club. I was a drinker.

Photo credit: Sam Howzit

In those days, the late 1960s and for many years prior, drinking alcohol was an integral piece of American social culture. Drinking was cool and fun, a symbol of adult maturity and sophistication. James Bond drank vodka martinis “shaken, not stirred.” Dean Martin pretended to be an inveterate boozer (his omnipresent glass of amber-colored alcohol was often just tea, but he had an image to uphold). In popular entertainment, being drunk was sometimes played for laughs. Humphrey Bogart famously said, “The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.”

Soon, medical research began to proclaim that, yes, consuming liquor in excess is problematic, but in moderation it was not just innocuous but could actually be good for you.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of states lowered the legal drinking age to 18,* expanding legal access to the wonderful world of booze. If you could vote at 18, marry, sign a legal contract and serve in the military, it made sense you should be able to also drink alcohol. That was the thinking.

When I entered college, I was just 17. But that was no problem. My college held mixers where beer was served without regard to the drinking age. An off-campus package store delivered to freshmen housing, no questions asked.

In my freshman housing, there was a guy, Chris, who lived on my floor who consumed prodigious quantities of Budweiser. For some reason, he decided to stack the empty cans on the mantle over the fireplace in the triple room until the collection, now in the hundreds, reached the ceiling. It was funny.

Chris would get stinking drunk, but only after finishing his homework. I realize now he was probably an alcoholic, but I didn’t know that at the time. When he was inebriated, he would start sweating profusely, strands of his ark hair plastered to his damp, glistening forehead. His eyes would turn glassy, and he would become scathing and nasty to pretty much everyone, including me. I was perplexed by this and even a little frightened by this transformation. Nice guy turned vicious. I’d never met a mean drunk before. Still, the ugly metamorphosis that it caused in Chris didn’t deter me. In college, I developed an affinity and capacity for beer that would over the years later expand to hard liquor and, eventually, to wine. I didn’t drink excessively. I rarely got drunk. But I drank regularly.

In recent years, an increasing body of medical research has reappraised the effects of alcohol and concluded that alcohol consumption in any amount is harmful. Many people, but especially younger Americans, took notice.

In 2025 Gallup surveyed Americans about their drinking habits. The resulting poll found that the percentage of Americans who drink alcohol was 54 percent, the lowest in 87 years that Gallup has been polled on the subject. Just two years earlier, the figure was 62 percent. Leading the way were young adults. The poll reported that 50 percent of adults aged 18- to 34-year-olds drink any alcohol, down from 59 percent in 2023 and 72 percent in 2001-03. The Gallup survey also found that Americans of all ages are drinking less and less often.

“We’re seeing a major cultural shift in the U.S,” Johannes Thrul, professor of mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Young people are drinking much less, and less frequently than previous generations, and social pressures to drink are weakening.”

Photo credit: Sam Howzit

The reported decline in alcohol consumption coincides with a profound change in attitudes about alcohol. For the first time, a majority - 53 percent - said they believe any alcohol consumption is harmful. But two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds hold that view.

“Today’s younger generations are just less interested in alcohol and are more likely than older generations to see it as risky for their health,” said George Knob of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

But a July 2026 report by the beverage analytic group, ISWR, which looked at global alcohol consumption, found that drinking by Americans under 28 has gone up over the last two years, from 68 percent to 71 percent.

“The narrative that Gen Z is the generation of moderation is now conclusively debunked,” said ISWR president Marten Lodewijks. “The evidence demonstrates that Gen Z consumers enjoy drinking at roughly the same levels as the rest of society.”

Celine (not her real name) is 23 years old and grew up in Oakland, California in a family that didn’t drink (like mine) but who were not anti-alcohol (like mine). She told me she only drinks when she is on vacation or at a party, and, even then, resolutely in moderation.

“I’ve never been a big drinker, even in college,” Celine said. “I wanted to explore it, but it wasn’t for me. It never made me feel good the day after. I always felt unhealthy and very slow. Now that I am 23, I decided I’m only going to drink at some celebratory event. Not hard drinks. Only champagne and wine. Down the line, I probably won’t drink at all.”

Celine cited the health consequences for her decision, but also financial considerations. Alcohol is expensive, especially in bars and restaurants.

“I’d rather go shipping or drink coffee or spend money on dinner,” she said.

Ann, a 26-year-old attorney in Atlanta, said she only drinks socially, which usually means weekends. She almost never drinks during the week, she said, and never alone. Her parents, by contrast, had “a healthy relationship with alcohol - they drink a lot,” she told me.

“I definitely drink less than my parents,” Ann said. “I’ll have a bad day and my dad will say, ‘Why don’t you get a margarita?’ That doesn’t sound like that will help.”

Ann’s brother, who is 25, also eschews alcohol during the week and so do many of Ann’s friends, although that’s because some of them prefer marijuana or even mushrooms, and don’t want to mix the two.

Sales of non-alcoholic beer was up 23% last year. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Among people of all ages who drink alcoholic beverages, beer is the most popular alcohol among men, especially younger adults, and wine among women. But consumption of both is falling nationwide. In 2015, beer sales were down 3 percent (while the sale of non-alcoholic beer grew by 23 percent). Wine sales slumped 6 percent in 2024 from the previous year, and decreased 22% from 2021 to 2024.

When I visited my friend’s wine tasting room in Sonoma, I asked him if he thinks young people turning away from alcohol is a trend or just a temporary fad.

“That’s the question,” he said.

The answer to that question will have major implications for the entire domestic alcohol business, which is valued at more than $300 billion a year.

*The 1984 Uniform Drinking Act cut off federal highway funds to states that did not have a legal drinking age of 21. By 1988, all 50 states were in compliance.

Buried in the ground

Crosby Stills and Nash song

Doris Miller. Public domain photo.

The weather on Oahu, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 was close to perfect. It had rained a little overnight but that ended around 5:45 a.m. As 7 a.m. approached, the clouds had mostly lifted and the temperature eased into the low 70s. It was a little humid - this was the tropics - but it was tempered by light trade winds out of the northeast. It was turning into a beautiful day.

At 6 a.m., Mess Attendant, Third Class Doris “Dorie” Miller was aboard the USS West Virginia, working. As a mess man, he was below deck gathering laundry to be cleaned. Miller, 22, was Black and, as such, he was performing one of the few jobs Black sailors were allowed to do on a United States Navy ship.

Miller was named Doris because his mother had been expecting a girl and kept the name. He grew up poor on his family’s farm outside Waco, Texas. After graduating A.J. Moore High School, Waco’s segregated Black school where he was a star athlete, he enlisted in the Navy in 1939. He wanted to see the world and make some money to help his family. His parents tried but failed to dissuade him.

In the early to mid 19th century, the Navy had been integrated, but that changed after the Civil War when it was segregated. Then, from 1919 to 1932, Blacks were banned altogether (although those who were already in the service were allowed to stay). When the ban ended, Blacks were permitted to join the Navy but only as stewards or mess men - primarily serving food, doing laundry and cleaning - on ships, or as artillery loaders, a very dangerous job, on land. There were no Black sailors, no Black officers.

Miller trained at a naval station in Norfolk, Virginia, then was assigned to an ammunition ship, the USS Pyro. He was transferred to the West Virginia, affectionately known as the Wee Vee, in January 1940. He left it later that year for temporary duty aboard the USS Nevada, then returned to the West Virginia in August.

That Sunday morning in Hawaii, the West Virginia was anchored next to Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor. It was outboard of the USS Tennessee, astern the USS Oklahoma, and in front of a small repair ship, the USS Vestal. The Vestal was moored outboard of another battleship, the USS Arizona. That area of Pearl Harbor was known as Battleship Row.

A Sunday during peacetime would have been as close to a day off as there is aboard a Navy warship. I’m imagining it was quiet aboard the West Virginia as Miller went about his work below deck. A few sailors went about the small tasks of cleaning and swabbing decks, but there would have been little of the normal bustle of activity of the crew of 1,541. On all of the ships in Pearl Harbor, a handful of sailors would have been preparing morning colors, the ceremonial daily raising the ensign - the American flag - that Navy regulations require be performed at exactly 8 a.m..

At 7:55 a.m., the first Japanese planes appeared in the tranquil sky. In thundering waves, they unleashed a furious, coordinated attack with torpedoes and bombs. The Japanese aerial assault was focused on the big ships parked along Battleship Row, the backbone of American naval might.

Aboard the USS West Virginia, the call to general quarters sounded. The crew may have been startled at first, but not for long. They had trained and trained for this. Every crew member knew almost instinctively where to go and what to do.

The West Virginia was hit again and again by torpedoes and raked by strafing bullets. It must have been a deafening scene of chaos. Men were wounded. Men were dying. Men were fighting back as best they could with anti-aircraft weapons. Miller raced to his battle station, an anti-aircraft battery magazine amidship, but it was a twisted heap of metal from a Japanese airstrike. Amid the frenzy, Miller was ordered to help move wounded men to safety. They found the ship’s captain, Mervyn Bennion, badly wounded. He had been hit by shrapnel from the nearby USS Tennessee when it was bombed and exploded.

Accounts differ whether Miller’s team pulled their injured captain to a safer place, or whether Bennion refused aid. In either case, the mortally wounded ship’s captain continued to give orders as he pressed a hand over his gaping wound.

Miller saw that a 50-caliber Browning anti-aircraft machine gun was unmanned. He raced to it. The Browning is a notoriously hard weapon to operate and handle and, as a mess man, Miller had no training with it. But he had seen white sailors practice firing it and he had paid attention. He swung into action, firing at Japanese planes as they streaked low toward the crippled battleship. Miller is believed to have shot down at least one attacking plane, but he may have downed as many as six. No one knows for sure.

The sunken USS West Virginia. Photo credit: pingnews.

The West Virginia was in bad shape. It had been hit by two bombs and eight torpedoes, ripping open its port side. Its rudder was blown off. OIl fires from the badly stricken Arizona floated over to the West Virginia. The battleship began to list to the port side. The crew was able to employ counter-flooding measures to prevent it from capsizing, but it was taking on water. One of Captain Bennion’s final orders was to abandon ship. Then he died. Hundreds of sailors, including Miller, scrambled to flee the disabled vessel. The West Virginia slowly sank upright into the shallow waters of the harbor. Officially, 106 crew members were killed or presumed dead.

The second wave of the Japanese attack ended a little after 9 a.m. It lasted only a little more than one hour. More than 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,178 wounded. Twenty-one ships were damaged or destroyed, including eight battleships.

USS Arizona lost 1,177 officers and crewmen. Public domain photo.

Within a week, Dorie Miller was reassigned to a new ship, the U.S. Indianapolis. Initial reports of his heroism attributed it to “an unnamed Negro” crew member. It was weeks before the anonymous hero was identified as Miller.


The Black press hailed Miller for his exploits, and argued that he deserved the Medal of Honor. Captain Bennion was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. The story goes that Navy Secretary Frank Knox, an opponent of integrating the Navy, did not want to confer the nation’s highest military honor on a Black mess man. Instead, Miller was awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy’s highest honor. At a ceremony on May 27, 1942 aboard the USS Enterprise carrier, Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific fleet, personally pinned the medal on him.

“This marks the first time in this conflict that such a high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race and I’m sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts,” Nimitz said.

The Navy Cross citation noted Miller’s “exceptional courage, presence of mind, and devotion to duty and disregard for personal safety” in aiding Bennion and firing the machine gun at enemy aircraft.

Miller was quoted saying of his actions, “It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those planes. They were diving pretty close to us.”

Miller being awarded the Navy Cross in May 1942. Photo credit: Marion Doss

Miller was now recognized as a hero even by the white press back home. He was brought back to the States for a recruiting tour and was promoted to Ship’s Cook Third Class, then he shipped out again aboard a newly commissioned escort carrier, the USS Liscome Bay.

On November 24, 1943, the Liscome Bay was hit by a single torpedo from a Japanese submarine during the American assault on Makin and Tarawa Atolls in the Gilbert Islands. The torpedo struck the ship’s aircraft bomb magazine and it exploded, killing 646 men, including Miller. His body was never found. Miller was 24 years old. He died for his country that had not afforded him all the same rights and opportunities as its white citizens.

Today, there are streets, schools, parks and buildings named for Miller, but the man himself and what he did that day in Pearl Harbor are little known. But the Navy remembers. In 1973, a Ford-class frigate was named in his honor, and a new aircraft carrier has been designated to bear his name. As we celebrate the 250th birthday of America, let’s remember Dorie Miller too.

Photo credit: WacoHistory.org

Leaving Carson City, Nevada. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

When I was a school kid I lived for the weekend. But Sundays were always a little oppressive. I had to go school the next day so I couldn’t fully enjoy the day’s freedom and fun. I was never unaware that it would be over soon. That’s how I felt on the final leg of my journey on Highway 50.

In Carson City, Nevada, I collected the last stamp in my Highway 50 Survival Guide passport. If I mail it in, I can get some kind of certificate signed by the governor. The guy at the Carson City Visitors Bureau where I got it done was from L.A., like I am and like the guy I met at the museum in Austin, Nevada the day before. I had always thought of L.A. as a place people moved to, not fled.

It was a short drive - half an hour - on Highway 50 to Lake Tahoe, another serpentine ascent to nearly 8,000 feet, then down as I caught my first peek of the crystal blue of the lake hiding behind thick stands of pine trees. I have been to Tahoe many times over many years, but the first glimpse of its shimmering surface set against the jagged Sierra mountains is always a joy. It’s one of my favorite places on this planet.

I rolled into Stateline, Nevada where a casino canyon of casinos pressed against the Nevada-California border. I soon found myself ensnared in traffic - traffic! - as I entered South Lake Tahoe, California. I lurched forward on Lake Tahoe Boulevard, which was lined with motels, souvenir shops and the usual variety of commercial ventures targeting visitors. I stopped at half a dozen stoplights which seemed to take forever to turn green. This was still Highway 50, but not a Highway 50 that resembled anything I had experienced the previous 1,000 miles.

Lake Tahoe. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I peeled off the main road and drove down to the lakefront. As always, it was beautiful. A few people lounged on the sandy beach. The Sierras were etched against a brilliant blue sky. It was almost one year ago exactly, June 21, a day had begun just like this one, cool and clear. That day a ferocious, freak storm came suddenly roaring out of the north pelted the lake with rain, hail and snow. Winds whipped up waves as high as 10 feet. A leisure boat with ten people aboard capsized. Eight people, including the boat operator, died. None was wearing a life vest. Two people survived.

Scorched tree along Highway 50. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I left Tahoe via a twisting route with sheer drops that made me proceed with extra caution. The road flattened as it passed acres of bare, fire-scorched trees on the mountain slopes on either side of the road. This was where the Caldor Fire burned a quarter of millions acres and destroyed more than a 1,000 structures in late 2021. It took two months to extinguish the fire. Authorities concluded the blaze was caused by a father and son firing a machine gun in the woods. They were arrested but arson charges against them were later dropped.

As Highway 50 descended, it ran beside a roaring river. I was tempted to stop, but now I was feeling urgency to get to the end.

At Placerville, a small town that once flourished during the mid 19th century gold rush (it was nicknamed Hangtown because so many suspected criminals were lynched by vigilantes), Highway 50 widened to four lanes. I had to jockey among ever thickening traffic. This was new.

The highway leveled out as it passed through sun-bleached yellow fields, and more and more shopping plazas. I thought, this isn’t my Highway 50 anymore. It’s just another road where everyone is trying to get where they’re going as fast as they can..

Sacramento, California. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I passed Sacramento, a city of 300,000 that now seemed like a metropolis. I knew the terminus of Highway 50 was somewhere in West Sacramento, a separate town from the state capital, but I didn’t know where. I wondered if the end of the highway, more than 3,000 miles from its eastern end in Ocean City, Maryland, would be marked in some way. It wasn’t. There were road signs overhead saying Highway 50/I-80 San Francisco, and then suddenly I was on 1-80 in heavy traffic. Highway 50 didn’t exist anymore. It was back-to-school Monday, only without the school to be back to. My journey was over.

The end of Highway 50 in California. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Leaving Ely, Nevada. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The story goes that when Life magazine called Highway 50 in Nevada “the loneliest highway in America” in 1986 it meant desolate, forbidding and boring. The Auto Club said there were “no points of interest” on the route and warned drivers to not take it through Nevada unless they were proficient in survival skills.

Instead of complaining about these depictions, Nevada tourism officials had a clever idea. They would embrace them as a way to market the route as exotic adventure, a way to lure visitors to the small towns along the route that had fallen on hard times. Loneliest road in America would not be its epitaph; it would be its brand.

Souvenirs for sale at the Austin Museum. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Today, there are road signs on Highway 50 proudly proclaiming its, well, loneliness. Hotels, casinos, gas stations and museums sell all kinds of souvenirs — pins, patches, postcards, tee shirts, sweatshirts and caps emblazoned with the phrase. You can even get a free Highway 50 Survival Guide with sightseeing tips and a map of the route which you could get stamped at each stop (I got my guide in Baker the day before).

It may have helped, but Highway 50 is still the road less traveled.

I left Ely, Nevada Sunday morning, heading west on Highway 50 to Carson City, the state capital, 318 miles away. I had expected the desert to be featureless, arid a little grim. It was none of those things. It was spectacular.

Highway 50. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

As you leave Ely (population: 4,000), Highway 50 zigzags quickly to over 7,000 feet, an altitude where, I was startled to see, there was a thick pine forest. For miles, there was thick vegetation almost everywhere, even in the desert at lower elevation. Much of it was sagebrush and scrub, but it was verdant.

The road to Carson City crosses a dozen or so mountain ranges. Only California has more than Nevada (which has more than Alaska). After you cross the summit, you descend in a series of turns and come out into a wide valley, the highway now as straight as pin. Each valley was dazzling. For as far as you can see - and you can see very far - the mountains sweep up gently from flat valley floors, then rise sharply to as high as 10,000 feet. Their jagged gray-brown facades have been sculpted by time and the elements. It is the harsh, magical splendor of unspoiled nature.

Eureka, Nevada. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The first town I came to was Eureka (population 300), about 75 miles west of Ely. It was Sunday and the town was deathly quiet. One of its main attractions - really the only one - is the 1880 opera house, but it was closed. Driving down the empty main street, I saw a badly decayed building with the words General Store etched beneath its arched brick facade. There were newer signs affixed to two pillars advertising hot sandwiches, pizza, chili, beer, pop and ice. In one window was a faded sign: Trump/Low Prices. Harris/High Prices.

As I rolled down the main commercial street, it appeared there was nothing open except for one gas station. This town wasn’t sleepy; it was comatose. As I left, I saw another service station and a new supermarket just outside town. I bought a pre-made sandwich at the grocery deli and hoped it had been made recently. I took it with me in case it was my last chance to get lunch. It would be.

After a brief stop to look at some ancient petroglyphs that turned out to look like not much more than random scars cut into some boulders, I drove on to the next town, Austin. Once again, Highway 50 carried me through a range of amazing, varied scenery. Forests at high altitude, desert below. I arrived in Austin via a windy, steep passage through a high summit pass between the Toquima Range and the Simpson Park Mountains. I was surprised to see that a low squat building with a museum sign outside had another sign saying Open in its window. Maybe I could get my Survival Book stamped there.

Gary at the Austin Museum. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The building turned out to be Austin Museum. The man in charge looked to be in his 70s, maybe 80s. His name was Gary. He had a bushy beard and an easy smile. I immediately liked him. He happily stamped my booklet and somehow had a Eureka stamp, so that was taken care of, too. We chatted.

Gary was originally from California and said he had moved to Austin seven years ago to join his brother-in-law who relocated there from Vegas. He said the current population was around 165 but no one knew for sure.

How did he like it?

“I love it,” he said with a big smile. “It’s great. It’s different. It’s so different. It’s 120 miles to town (Fallon) to get groceries and stuff. That’s a little big difference than what I’m used to.”

He added, “I’m happy. I’m old. I’m not going to be here that long.”

I pretended like I didn’t know what he meant

“Where you going?” I asked,

He smiled again and pointed up.

We both laughed

“I’ll meet you there, brother,” I said.

Motorists can collect stamps at the towns along Highway 50 to authenticate their journey. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

It took me two hours to reach Fallon. As I got closer, there was more traffic on Highway 50 in both directions. We were approaching “civilization,” which was a little dismaying. The longest road was getting less lonely and I didn’t like it.

There are only about 10,000 residents of Fallon but it looked and felt like a big city compared to where I had been. There were casinos - lots of casinos - banks, gas stations, schools, restaurants, billboards, even a hint of traffic.

It was still another 65 miles to Carson City but everything I passed between Fallon and there looked and felt more like a suburb than the backcountry I’d spent the last three days riding through. Already I was starting to miss that feeling of astonishment when I emerged from a high mountain pass and saw spread before me a new valley running almost to the edge of the horizon, and a new mountain range hulking in the distance beneath the vast blue sky. In that long, stretching moment, I felt exquisitely and peacefully alive.

One of the many mountain ranges in Nevada that Highway 50 crosses. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

In Carson City, I treated myself to a big dinner at a steak restaurant, then turned in early. Having driven close to 1,000 miles in four days, I was tired. There was still one more leg to go.

Read more

I thought: that was weird. I stood there trying to figure it out, as if that were possible.

I finished loading my car, locked the doors and started toward the office to return the key. I was halfway there when I saw the pickup truck racing into the gas station again, skidding to a stop.

The cowboy got out, walked around his vehicle, stood glaring at the four spilled objects, then shouted, “Fuck!”

After a long minute, he picked up two of them, tossed them into the truck bed, then he stood looking at the two still on the ground.

“Fuck!” he shouted again. He stood there, hesitated, then collected the cubes, closed the tailgate, got behind the wheel and once again ripped a turn that sent the rear end into a fishtail. Then he sped away.

I needed coffee.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The entrance to Great Basin National Park was only a few miles away, a blessedly short drive. The range of mountains rise hulking and majestic over the tiny hamlet of Baker. The tallest peak, Wheeler Peak, rises 13,063 above sea level. Looking at it from the park visitor center in town I could see streaks of snow in crevices near the summit.

At the visitor center, a pleasant fresh-faced young ranger gave me a guide to the park, a trail map and offered a couple recommendations where to hike. I was on my way.

The road into the park runs straight and flat for five miles, then turns right and ascends. It twists and turns and it wraps around the mountain’s facade, offering stunning views of neighboring mountains and the brown flat desert floor. It is steep, narrow and scary.

I pulled off at the Mather Lookout at 9,000 feet. When I got out of the car, I was hit by a blast of cold wind that literally ripped my cap from my head and sent it into a thicket of dry brush. The temperature was in the 60s but the wind chill made it feel much colder. Expecting it to be much warmer, I’d worn short pants and just a polo shirt. That was a mistake. I threw on a sweatshirt and light rain jacket.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The view of Wheeler Peak from Mather Lookout was stunning. The mountain soared before me. It was thick with trees until they began to thin at I guessed was around 10,000 feet. Only the hardiest tree could survive above there but some managed to. The last few thousand feet were too inhospitable for anything. The mountain was bare save for the snow tucked thick and white in the deep crevices.

I drove on to the Summit Trail parking lot, parked and started up the trail, marked on the trail guide as “strenuous.” I soon realized I’d made two mistakes. First, I wore a pair of Skechers, which were not much better than going barefoot on the rocky path. My second error was not preparing for high altitude trekking. The trail wasn’t steep but within 100 yards I was gasping for air. This was not going to work. In shame, I retreated to my car. I changed into heavy hiking boots and then drove on to the parking lot by a trail that the ranger had told me was moderate.

I started up a trail which led to two alpine lakes, Stella and Teresa. It would be three miles, round trip. The elevation would rise about 450 feet to just under 10,500 feet, about two miles high. I wasn’t sure I could make it. I would try.

Once again, I was quickly winded. In a matter of minutes I guzzled water, which helps fight altitude effects, even as I knew I should have started hydrating long before then.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I pressed on, following the path past a rushing stream through towering stands of Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir (according to my park guide), along a very pretty meadow. I was becoming lightheaded, or maybe just imagined I was. I wasn’t sure. I drank water. I stopped and sat on the trunk of a felled tree. I drank more water. There was no one else on the trail. I continued even as I questioned the wisdom of it. What was I trying to prove? That I’m not old? Yes, I had to admit that was part of it.

I marched, or rather staggered on, my lungs gasping for air. I had begun to feel nauseated, another symptom of altitude sickness. I stopped again to reconsider. In a sunlit meadow, I watched three wild turkeys feasting on the grass.

A couple was approaching, coming down the trail. I asked them if the lakes were much farther.

“One of them is right up there,” the woman said. I looked up. I didn’t see anything. I had to trust her assurance … or not. I kept going.

A few hundred yards later, behind a thin grove of trees, I reached Stella Lake. I’d made it. I sat down on smooth gray rock.

The lake was tiny, really just a pond. Strong gusts sent miniature waves skittering across its surface and spraying me with mist. Along its shore, chipmunks scampered, running then diving for cover behind the rocks.

Stella Lake. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Now that I wasn’t moving, it was quite cold. I zipped up my jacket. I sat there for quite a while. Just take it in, I told myself. I looked. I saw. The lake, shallow and crystalline. The brown folds in the mountain slope in the distance. The tentacles of snow, one of them just across the lake. The trees rustled by the wind. I listened to the silence. It was impossible to gauge how long I sat there. It didn’t matter. After a while, I decided it was time to go. The hike down was fast and easy.

Highway 50 on the road to Ely. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I left Basin National Park, rejoined with Highway 50 and headed to Ely, about an hour away. The highway took me through a magnificent wide, green valley that extended as far as I could see, then weaved its way through the mountains and over a 7,700-foot pass. The highway descended, turning again and again, then straightening in another valley all the way to Ely, which was the closest thing to a city in hundreds of miles. I would stop here and stay the night. Tomorrow, I will tackle the stretch of highway that earned the nickname, the loneliest road in America.

Ely, Nevada. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I didn’t want to go to Arches National Park in Utah. I planned to spend the day driving directly the 362 miles from Fruita, just west of Grand Junction, Colorado to Baker, Nevada on the Nevada-Utah state line, stopping to take in whatever interesting sights I discovered along the way. Going to Arches would mean a 60-mile detour round trip. I had heard that the park, which is hugely popular, is so crowded in the summer there is usually a long wait just to enter, if you can even get in. It just didn’t seem worth the detour. Except my friend, Josh, had texted me a couple of days ago, asking if I was going to Arches or Canyonlands national parks. “They’re spectacular,” he said.

So I went to Arches. There was no wait to get in. It wasn’t crowded. And it was spectacular. The rock formations, plateaus and buttes sculpted and polished smooth by the elements over millennia were astonishing. They were dramatic but, even more, inspired almost a spiritual awe. Taking it in, you can begin to understand and even sense the slow, long, relentless work of nature and evolution and time, and to contemplate how brief and finite and, in a humbling sense, how insignificant our own presence on this planet is.

I spent over two hours in the park and took many photos, but none of them - not one — truly captures what you see or how the experience touches you.

Arches National Park, Utah. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Leaving Colorado, I’d been forced to take Interstate 70 because there was no Highway 50. Highway 50, along with U.S. 6, were merged with the interstate.

I doubled back on U.S. 191 from Arches to I-70 in search of food. The opportunities were limited to one. There was a fried chicken place inside the gas station at the juncture where 191 and 70 meet. Inside, I asked the cashier if the food was any good. I glanced over. The chicken on display had an unusual dark brown color.

“Oh, it’s great!” she said.

Her colleague standing behind her was even more enthusiastic.

“It’s not Friday unless I have some chicken tenders.” she said somewhat enigmatically.

“It’s Friday,” I said. I was convinced.

After lunch - and, no, it was not good - I wandered over to an odd-looking place across the dirt road garishly painted green and purple. It appeared to be a gas station. On the awning above two gas pumps the words were painted, Twilight Zone. A car was parked underneath with what appeared to be the dummy of am alien propped behind the wheel. In large lettering above the glass door entrance to the store it read: Jackass Joe’s, and below that, The Largest Slice of Jerky. On the facade were cartoon images of space aliens. The building had no windows. Intrigued. I went in.

The store was large, much larger than your usual gas station store. On display were the usual paraphernalia for sale, candy, snacks, gum, batteries, beer, soda, caps with trucker logos, etc.. Above some of the displays were handwritten signs on green cardboard. Eat My Turtle. Don’t Forget Your Bigfoot Bait. One room was bathed in fluorescent lavender light and appeared to be devoted to UFO’s and aliens. I peeked. There were two full-sized astronaut or maybe Stars Wars stormtroopers mannequins standing sentry among various aliens, one of which was lying on a gurney. It was very weird. I did not go in.

There was plenty of jerky for sale. Garlic jerky. Onion jerky. Rabbit jerky. Salmon jerky. Swordfish jerky. Alligator jerky. Camel jerky. Goose jerky. Lamb jerky. There was a rack for cow’s balls jerky, but there was nothing there. To my shock, business seemed quite robust. A steady flow of customers entered in just the few minutes. One bemused couple wandering the aisles gawking as they chattered - their voices low as if afraid to be overheard - in an unrecognizable but Slavic-sounding language. Welcome to America, I thought.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne


I was back on the road, heading west through the arid Utah landscape, gobbling up miles and taking in scenery that seemed to change every few minutes. Mountains. Canyons. Buttes that resembled the ones in Arches, though less dramatic serpentine rivers with lush trees sprouting from their banks but in the middle of expanse of parched desert. Near a river, I saw an assortment of metallic junk, seemingly auto or farm equipment debris, strewn across an area the size of a football field.

The highway rose to a 7,200-foot pass, then dropped steeply into a valley. Ahead was an odd sight, what looked like a tight clot of clouds or haze. The road was headed straight into it. I wondered if it was a dust storm, maybe even a rare haboob, an intense sandstorm that can reduce visibility to zero in seconds.

A few minutes later, I drove into the gloom. Suddenly, everything was tinted a strange brownish hue. I turned off the air conditioning and lowered the front windows. In an instant, I knew what it was. It was smoke. Something was on fire, maybe many miles away, maybe closer. When I got off the interstate in the town of Salina where Highway 50 resumed, I stopped for gas and to buy a coffee. I had gotten into a habit of filling up whenever the tank got to three-quarters. The attendant told me there were wildfires in the areas but, as far as he knew, no road closures.

The smoky haze from wildfires. Photo Credit: Ron Claiborne

I took 50 through Salina’s Main Street and then out of town. Soon I was on a straight two-lane road passing through a wild and very pretty valley where the scrub was so dense it made it seem almost lush. Ten miles later, Highway 50 left the valley, briefly joined Interstate 15, then branched off, heading west straight toward the sun, gauzy in the pale white haze. I passed what looked like agricultural land, then came to the town of Delta, yet another flat, featureless settlement with a commercial artery of small businesses and gas stations, but no people on its streets. Where was everyone at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon?

Highway 50 left Delta and straight into a desert landscape that seemed almost lunar. It was now in the 90s and it was very humid. I was tiring. As the miles rolled by, I noticed that I was seeing fewer and fewer cars traveling in either direction. I looked at my GPS app. It said I had 80 miles to go to reach my destination, Baker, the first town in Nevada and gateway to Great Basin National Park which I planned to explore the next day.

The desolate road to Baker, Nevada. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

As the miles passed painfully slowly, I started to wonder what I would do if I broke down. Cell service was spotty, then I lost it altogether. With 30 miles to go, there were now no other cars on the road. As the saying goes about the prospect of being hanged the next morning, driving alone through a desert tends to focus the mind. I discovered I was gripping the steering wheel tightly. I wasn’t exactly nervous. But I was focused.

I made it to Baker, where I was booked at the Border Inn Casino. It wasn’t what I expected. It was a gas station with four gas pumps. A general store. The “casino” turned out to be half a dozen slot machines in a dimly lighted, smoky bar. The inn was basically a motel consisting of four separate buildings.

I went in to register. I asked the woman behind the counter about dining options. She said there was one, their restaurant.

“How’s the food?” I asked. You can tell a lot by the level of enthusiasm in the reply.

“We have great burgers,” she said. “Local beef.”

I said, “Local beef? I haven’t seen a cow anywhere near here.”

The woman chose not to answer.

That night, I dined in the restaurant. I had the burger. It wasn’t bad.

Baker, Nevada. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Highway 50 west of Monarch Pass. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

This past Thursday morning, I flew from New York to Denver, picked up a rental car at the airport and headed south on interstate highways toward Pueblo. At first, the weather was not good. Thick leaden clouds hung low over Denver, occasionally spritzing a light drizzle. Just north of Colorado Springs, I drove into a downpour that was so blinding I almost got off the road to wait it out. But once I got past that storm, it was beautiful. The vast sky was a blue canvas with brushstrokes of thin wispy clouds. It was hot - in the 80s - but I drove with the windows down.

I was headed to Pueblo, about 110 miles south of Denver, to join Highway 50 there. My plan was to take 50 west from Pueblo as it cuts through the middle of Colorado, then on through Utah, Nevada to Northern California, where it terminates in West Sacramento. The fastest way to go from Denver to Sacramento via interstate highways. Highway 50 would be longer, slower, circuitous, a little dangerous perhaps, and run through the main streets of the small towns along the route. That was the point.

Highway 50 goes from Ocean City, Maryland to West Sacramento, California (or vice versa), spanning 3,019 miles, and traversing a dozen states as it bisects the continental United States. Once it was a major transcontinental highway. Before that, some of its western segments were a path for miners and settlers on horseback or covered wagons. At one point, roughly the same route was used by the Pony Express of Western lore. But in the late 1950s, construction of the Eisenhower Interstate System began and a decade later Highway 50, like the much better known Route 66, had become dinosaurs. Some sections of both were absorbed by interstate highways. What wasn’t became backwaters, mostly two-lane roads that nobody bothered taking, at least no one in a hurry and that’s most people driving long distances. Many of the small towns that had developed and prospered serving motorists and truckers on the old highways shriveled up and died. Some hung on but fell into decline and disrepair. People stopped moving to these towns. Why would you? Many of the people who lived there left. They were the victims of progress.

Interstates are a marvel. They are smooth, mostly straight, have multiple lanes and allow you to cruise safely at high speeds. They’re also boring. And instead of taking you through the main streets of charming American towns, they bypass them. The old Route 66 still holds a special, almost mythical place in the American imagination. This year, its centennial, it is deservedly getting a lot of attention. Still, if you are driving from, say, Albuquerque to L.A., you’re probably not going to take Route 66 just for nostalgia.

Today, Highway 50, despite arguably featuring far more dramatic scenery than Route 66, is mostly forgotten, even though it too turns 100 years old this year. For me, that was a big part of its appeal. It is, as the poet Robert Frost put it, quite literally the road less traveled.

In the 1980s, Life magazine wrote about the road’s 408-mile Nevada segment which runs through mountains and desert desolation with few towns or even gas stations along the way. The article dubbed it The Loneliest Road in America. The name stuck.

Estela’s Mill Stop Cafe. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I stopped in Pueblo for a late lunch at Estela’s Mill Stop Cafe. I had read that this family-run Mexican restaurant served some of the best green chile cuisine in a town known for its fiery hot green chiles.

Estela’s was in an empty part of town, next to a windowless bar and not far from a massive steel mill that is still in business. I walked inside and it was like walking into a time capsule from the 1950s. There was a counter and stools on the left, about half a dozen tables - all occupied - and a few booths on the right. It was bustling. The vibe was loose and friendly. A man with the proprietary manner of the owner was constantly in motion, in the kitchen, working the counter, greeting customers familiarly. When one woman got up to leave, the presumptive owner addressed her by name and rushed to open the door for her. When the two of male servers passed me, each asked, “How you doing, my friend?”


My waitress recommended the green chile with rice, beans and fried potato with flour tortillas on the side. It turned out to be a very large plate of rice and pinto beans that were so whipped they were practically liquid, all of this suffused with tiny bits of green chiles and a few chunks of pork. Floating atop this concoction were several discs of deep-fried potatoes. It was not delicious.

Afterward, I got back on I-25 and took it a few miles to where it intersects with Highway 50. At the end of the exit ramp, a haggard woman of indeterminable age - she could have been 20 or 40 - stood holding a sign that read Need Dog Food & Water. A tired, white mutt lay splayed in the shade of the overpass.


At first, this section of Highway 50 in Pueblo looked like any other four-lane road cut through a bleak zone of strip malls and gas stations. But it changed quite suddenly. I passed a massive Walmart, and then all around me were wide open spaces as far as you could see. I passed several signs indicating they were the entrances to ranches, but I saw nothing recognizable to me as a ranch anywhere in sight. It was dirt and scrub.

The highway pointed straight at looming Rocky Mountains. In the dazzling light and with the infinite horizons, it was impossible to tell if they were close or far. They were close.

The road made a gentle ascent, twisting and turning as it rose. I passed through Cañon City, an unremarkable place, and then the road rose more and twisted more before straightening as it ran beside the Arkansas River. I saw people rafting the bubbling currents. There were few other cars on the road and no trucks. Commercial trucks don’t go this way.

Highway 50 along the Arkansas River. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

For the next three hours, I drove deep and high into the natural splendor of the Colorado Rockies. The highway went through just one town, Salida, then carried me up to Monarch Mountain, a winter ski destination now closed and empty. There’s something sad about a ski area in summer.

A mile or so later, I crested Monarch pass at 11,312 feet, according to a roadside sign. Through the open windows of my car, the air was now cool and refreshing. From the summit, I began the descent, a 6% grade that’s so steep that signs repeatedly warned truckers to use their lowest gear. There are few guardrails there because they impede snow clearance in winter. It is not for the faint of heart.

The western slope of the mountains was a rugged blanket of dark green. There must have been thousands, maybe even millions of trees. As the elevation lowered, the hues added patches of brown as the trees gave way to scrubbier vegetation. The hills were gentle and rolling. Sharp jagged rock formations jutted up all around. In the distance, there were high plateaus and the occasional butte. This was where the desert from farther west began to mix with alpine forest.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

For hours, I had limited to no cell phone service. I listen to jazz and then an old Bruce Springsteen album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, which I used to hate but have learned lately come to appreciate. In the song the album is named for, he sings:

Well, the highway is alive tonight

But nobody’s kidding nobody about where it goes

Sometimes I just drove in silence.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I reached the town of Gunnison. It looked and felt empty. Leaving Gunnison, I came upon a huge lake. It was the Blue Mesa Reservoir, the state’s largest body of water. Standing beside it, it was still, silent, not even the sound of birds. An informational plaque explained that in the late 19th century the Gunnison River had run through this valley and there were three small towns, even a few resorts to serve people who came to hunt in the mountains and fish trout in the river. But with the advent of automobiles, the railroad declined, then, later, the interstate came along further north and the traffic along Highway 50 declined too. The three towns died, and the river was dammed to make the reservoir. The remnants of those towns are still there, somewhere beneath the placid surface of the water.

Blue Mesa Reservoir. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

I reached Montrose, the largest populated settlement I had seen since Salida. In the distance was the long, high, flat silhouette of the Uncompahgre Plateau. To the south rose the jagged peaks of San Juan Mountains, They were still speckled with snow.

I stopped for dinner, a pork chop thicker than my hand, then I pressed on. It was getting dark fast now. By the time I got to Grand Junction, a real city spread beside the Colorado River, it was dark. I crossed over the dreaded Interstate - cars and trucks were racing in both directions -but stayed off it until I had no choice but to take it five miles to reach my hotel in Fruita, a town just west of Grand Junction. It felt just a little like a betrayal.

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Mission San Gabriel in Los Angeles. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

There are 21 Spanish missions in California, from San Diego, the first, to Sonoma, the last. Besides Mission San Gabriel, I have visited five others in recent years: Mission San Luis Obispo, San Francisco de Assisi, Mission San Juan Bautista (where the climactic final scene in the Hitchcock movie classic, Vertigo, takes place), Mission San Jose (which is in Fremont, not the city of San Jose), and Mission Solano in Sonoma.

The missions were established between 1769 and 1823, the first in what is now San Diego, the last in Sonoma. The first missions were crude and temporary, not much more than huts and a cross. The large solid structures that exist today were built later. Most are made of white-washed adobe brick and red tile roofs in the Spanish revival style that is quintessentially California. Mission San Gabriel is an exception. It was built in Moorish architecture of the grand church in Cordoba, Spain, the hometown of its architect. Some of today’s missions are original, or parts of them anyway. A few are replicas that replaced older buildings that were razed, burned down or destroyed by earthquakes. At each of the missions I visited, there were impressive exhibits and displays of religious vestments, diaries and paintings - mementos from imperial Spanish rule - but also excellent examples of Native artifacts: weapons, clothing, and ceremonial crafts. There are lots of paintings showing life in the early missions, though no doubt some of the images are fanciful or idealized. You can follow the histories of each mission in pamphlets, instructive placards and short documentary movies. The California missions are solemn places. They are also haunted.

Mission San Francisco Dolores. Photo credit: Ron Claibiorne

From the late 18th century until well into the 19th, tens of thousands of Native people were brought to, or invited or joined the missions. There, they were instructed in Catholic doctrine, baptized, and converted to Christianity, or at least went along with the indoctrination. Once ensconced, they were pressed into labor, raising animals, cultivating crops and building new structures. As part of their education, the indigenous people were also taught that their old customs - their beliefs, their traditions, how they dressed, how they married and raised children, even how they hunted and gathered food - were wrong. There’s a better way to live, the Spanish told them, our way.

At the missions, an effort is made to face up to some of the unpleasant facts associated with colonial rule while celebrating its benefits. It is sometimes a tough balancing act. At Mission San Gabriel, I read a plaque that said: “In their words, the missionaries expressed great love for the Natives, but when baptized Natives resisted some aspects of this unfamiliar way of living, the Franciscans resorted to corporal punishment, a practice typical of that time, to compel Natives to live as the Franciscans believed they should.

Native people at Mission San Francisco Dolores. Photo credit: Mission San Francisco Dolores

Perhaps the greatest benefit offered by the missions was the protection from the legions of Spanish soldiers who were busy with the business of building an empire, fighting and killing recalcitrant Natives, seizing their land, pillaging their villages and establishing military and commercial outposts. As long as they stayed in the custody of the missionaries, they were pretty much left alone, but they were ousted from land where their people had lived for thousands of years.

“The result of Spanish colonization of the American Southwest is a version of what happened in every square inch of North America,” said Robert Senkowicz, an historian at the University of Santa Clara. “Indians were forcibly removed from land they had inhabited for generations.”

Not only did they lose their land, most would lose their lives. They would die not so much from warfare with the Spanish but from the new diseases brought by the Europeans for which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. Worse for them, living in the close quarters they were consigned to in the missions helped accelerate the contagion. When the first Spanish colonists arrived, there were an estimated 300,000 indigenous people in California. By 1850, there were 50,000.

“The California missions [had] formed a shaky bridge between the world of their ancestors and that of the Spaniards,” wrote Steven Hackel, a historian at the University of California at Riverside. “For many Indians, this bridge led to a graveyard.”

To some, Spanish colonial rule was an enormous human tragedy. To others, the missions were the vanguard of the progress that would one day make California what it is today: the most populous state in the country with an economy that would rank 4th in the world, just ahead of Japan. Maybe both are true. However you look at it, the remarkable transformation of California was largely influenced by one man, an 18th century Spanish priest named Junípero Serra.

Painting of Junipero Serra at Mission San Jose. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Serra was born in 1713 to a poor family on the Spanish island of Mallorca. He became a priest while still in his late teens. In the island’s capital, Palma, he became a highly-respected professor of philosophy and theology. But, as a Franciscan, he longed to travel to the new Spanish dominions in the Americas so he could convert the natives to Catholicism. He believed fervently that this was his religious duty and life’s purpose.

In 1749, Serra finally got his wish. He embarked from Cadiz, Spain on the rigorous, months-long journey by ship to Mexico. He arrived in the Caribbean port city of Veracruz and from there traveled on to Mexico City, the capital of New Spain.

“As a general rule Franciscans were supposed to travel on foot, so as to avoid any appearance of luxury and pride and to better emulate the life of Jesus Christ and his humble follower Saint Francis,” wrote Hackel in his biography Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father. “The rigors of the transatlantic crossing and the unfamiliarity of the roads between Veracruz and Mexico City, however, made it acceptable for the padres to ride horses or mules.”

Serra chose to walk the 250 miles from Veracruz to Mexico City.

He would spend 20 years in Mexico, evangelizing and baptizing indigenous people, and working in missions in the rugged Baja California peninsula, before finally heading north to the wild, untamed land known as Alta, or Upper California, which had been claimed by Spain but barely explored.

Serra established the first mission in what would one day be the state of California on July 16, 1769. He named it Mission San Diego de Alcala. The next year, he traveled north to a coastal site south of Monterey Bay where he founded a second mission. This one he called Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. Today, it is the site of the city of Carmel.

Serra would go on to establish the first nine missions in California. At each one, local native people were invited to join - or enticed by offerings of food and gifts. Once they were recruited, they were inculcated with heavy doses of Catholic theology, baptized and converted. Newly converted natives, referred to as “neophytes,” were given Spanish names. Whether they realized it or not initially, the Spanish missionaries considered their entry to be a one-way ticket. If they left - and many did - they were often captured and forcibly returned. Natives who joined the missions had their lives reduced to rigorous religious instruction and long hours of physical toil. Their traditional customs were mostly banned. Transgressions of mission rules were met with beatings and floggings, an alien concept to the California tribes. Rebellion was not tolerated.

Mission San Luis Obispo. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

By all accounts, Serra was passionate, devoted and zealous about his work. He was a tough little man - just over five feet tall - and endowed with tremendous physical stamina. For many years, he worked and traveled tirelessly despite a painful ulcerated wound in one leg. But he was also autocratic, quarrelsome and dogmatic. He had a big heart and a closed mind.

When four Natives who fled Mission San Carlos were captured by Spanish soldiers, Serra recommended to the colonial commander that they locked them up and administered “two or three whippings on separate days” as discipline, for their “spiritual benefit” and as a lesson to others.

“If your Lordship does not have shackles,” Serra offered helpfully, “with your permission, they may be sent from here.”

Still Serra professed to love the Native people of California and believed they were grateful for his efforts to civilize them. On one visit to Mission San Gabriel, Serra remarked how delighted the mission’s Natives and even others outside the mission seemed.

“The Natives were most happy to see us arrive,” he wrote.

Serra appears to have been unaware that this didn’t necessarily mean everyone truly welcomed the intruders or the strange new customs that strangers were imposing on them.

“Serra did not just bring us Christianity,” says Deborah Miranda, an American literature professor at Washington and Lee University and member of the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation. “He imposed it, giving us no choice in the matter. He did incalculable damage to a whole culture.”

Senkowicz says that, as rigid as it was, the Spanish mission system was still more inclusive than those of other foreign colonizers in the eastern part of the North American continent or for that matter than the new Americans who succeeded them professing to believe that all men are created equal.

“The (Spanish) missionaries tried to make the people more like Spaniards, give them a place in the Spanish Empire,” Senkowicz told me. “It was an inferior, lowly place. Nonetheless, [it] distinguishes the Spanish version of dealing with the indigenous people from the British and American way, which was just to get rid of them.”

During his time in California, Serra personally baptized more than 6,000 Native people. To him, it was a source of enormous pride. To him, they were souls he had saved, not lives he had upended.

Serra died in 1784 at Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, his favorite. He was 70 years old. His work was done. But forces he had helped set into action were only beginning.

The mission system that Serra initiated did not last long. In 1821, Mexico, which included Upper California, won its independence from Spain, and in the 1830s secularized the missions. The 21 missions were confiscated from the Church and their control by Franciscan missionaries formally ended, though priests would continue to run them. For the Native people of California, the damage was done. Their numbers had been seriously depleted, and their communities and old ways of life essentially destroyed. Many of them and their descendants would end up adrift and impoverished.

Statue of Father Serra, Mission San Jose. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

In July 2015, Pope Francis traveled to Bolivia. There he issued an extraordinary apology for the mistreatment of Native people by Spanish missionaries and colonizers in the Americas.

“I say to you with regret, many grave sins were committed against the Native people of America in the name of God,” the Pope declared. “I humbly ask forgiveness.”

Five months later, the Pope made Serra a saint.

photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Today’s interstate highways are a marvel. They make it possible for goods and humans to travel in comfort and safety vast distances at high speed on excellent roads. They are America’s leisure and economic circulatory system. But it came at a cost. With the advent of the interstate highway system in the 1950’s, many of the nation’s old highways were turned into backroads and the small towns that had developed and prospered along their paths became backwaters. Some of those towns withered. Some of them died.

I took Highway 95 south from Las Vegas, then west onto Highway 66, better known as Route 66, near the California-Nevada state line. The two-lane highway undulated almost rhythmically but was otherwise fine. I came to the town of Goffs, or so the sign said. All I saw was a small farm strewn with dilapidated equipment and a few houses, some of which looked uninhabited or uninhabitable. I saw no people. I saw no evidence of people.

Fenner, California

From Goffs, I continued another ten miles until I came to a Chevron station in the town of Fenner. Except Fenner isn’t a town. Not anymore. It’s just the gas station and a dirt yard surrounded by a chain-link fence containing a few metal carcasses of vehicles. Inside the fence, there was a pole about 20 feet high with a sign at the top with the old shield logo U.S. Highway 101 sign. On the other side of the gas station and yard was Interstate 40 where cars and trucks whizzed by. Fifty years ago, I-40 replaced Route 66. Some of the old highway became interstate. In other places, the new interstate detoured around it.

According to my Auto Club map, Route 66 ran west from Fenner through a succession of small towns. Essex. Chambless. Amboy. Bagdad. Siberia. Klondike. But when I tried to continue, the road was blocked by a barrier with a sign saying it was closed. Only later would I learn that it had been closed since 2017. Disappointed but undaunted, I got on I-40 and drove 45 miles to reach a road that cut south and connected to Route 66

An hour later, I was back on Route 66 heading west toward Amboy. To my left for as far as I could see there was a huge desert plain that tilted down for many miles and then rose again toward the base of a mountain range almost the length of the horizon. In the near distance, a long chain of boxcars moved lazily eastward on a rail line. The sun beat down mercilessly.

“66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and he black center mountains hang unbearably in the distance,” wrote John Steinbeck about this patch of the Mojave Desert in The Grapes of Wrath in which the Joad family made the long trek west on Route 66 to escape Dust Bowl Oklahoma.

I reached Amboy. It consisted in its entirety of Roy’s service station, the adjoining cafe, a motel (closed) and a small post office (permanently closed). An ancient sedan sat in front of the motel. A man stood on the edge of the highway taking a photo of the service station. A handful of cars were parked in the shade next to the cafe.

Many of the visitors to Amboy are European tourists

I parked, got out, and was immediately blasted by the furnace-like heat. It was 109 degrees. Inside the cafe, it was air conditioned to a blissful chill. I looked around. All kinds of Route 66 trinkets, decals, postcards and souvenirs were on display. A long counter ran almost the length of the room in back. I approached the woman behind the counter.

“Do you serve lunch?” I asked. I hadn’t eaten all day.

She smiled apologetically. “Not in about three decades,” she said.

Amboy was once a thriving little town. Roy Crowl opened the gas station, adjoining cafe and motel in the 1920’s. In the heyday of Route 66 after the Second World War, Amboy had a population of a few hundred. But then Interstate 40 bypassed it and Amboy and all the little towns along this slice of Route 66 went into steep decline.

Roy’s, which is 100 years old, still sells gasoline, souvenirs and snacks

The woman behind the counter gave her name only as Ms. Nicole. She said she was assistant manager. I bought a souvenir postcard. We talked. Ms. Nicole said she lived in Twenty-nine Palms and had been the assistant manager for the past three years. She said they get a steady flow of visitors, many of them Europeans who’d heard about Route 66 and wanted to see it for themselves. She said the owners of Roy’s were renovating the motel next door. The old motel lobby was already finished and furnished to look like it did in the 1950s. The motel and cabins are slated for renovation, with a target date of 2026 for occupancy.

Roy’s motel lobby

“We get people calling all the time asking how much are the rooms,” Ms. Nicole said.

I said, “But what would they do? No offense.”

Ms. Nicole said the area was great for stargazing because it’s so dark at night. There is also an extinct volcano, Amboy Crater, that people can hike to, and Joshua Tree National Park was just an hour south.

I asked what the deal was with the towns to the east on the closed road.

“There’s what used to be towns,” she said. “No people.”

In fact, the population of Amboy is 0. But it lives on as Roy’s. It’s owned by a man named Kyle Okura who inherited it from his father. His father bought the entire town about 20 years ago from the family of its original owners. hoping to revive it as a tourist attraction. His father, Albert Okura, died last year.

“When Amboy came along, he [his father] kept telling himself, ‘It is my destiny,’” Kyle Okura told the Los Angeles Times. “So I do believe that now, moving forward, it’s part of my destiny to honor that.”

Ludlow, California

I left Amboy and continued west past where Bagdad, Klondike and Siberia were marked on my map. I saw nothing. It was as if they had been erased from the landscape.

Finally, I reached Ludlow where Route 66 merges with I-40. There was a scattering of derelict buildings, but a short distance away was a modern service station, a restaurant and a hotel. They existed to service travelers on the interstate. Ludlow had survived, barely.

Route 66 (it was officially decommissioned in 1984 and is now the National Trails Highway)

That’s not the end of Route 66 (officially, it’s now called the National Trails Highway). It reappears about 40 miles west of Ludlow and continues intermittently to the Pacific Ocean. It’s mostly just a lonely road now pointing toward Los Angeles and the setting sun. Its real destination is one you can’t reach. The irretrievable past.

This was the New York City that I first knew when I moved there in the 1970s: The subway cost 50 cents, not all the lines had air conditioning and you knew to avoid the last car because you only had one way out if there was trouble. Checker cabs that cost $1 plus 10 cents every 1/9th of a mile. Reggie Jackson and the New York Yankees winning back-to-back championships while “the Bronx is burning.” The 1977 Blackout and Studio 54 (I never got past the rope line, a demeaning fate) and the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, terrorizing a city of 8 million until he got caught because of a parking ticket. Checker cabs and guys with squeegees cleaning your windshield at stoplights whether you liked it or not. Irish bars with steam plates and glasses of beer that cost 50 cents. The Tad’s Steaks, where a steak and a baked potato cost three bucks. The last of the Horn and Hardart automats where you chose your food item from behind a little window. The shrieking Crazy Eddie’s electronic store TV commercials, and skeletons of stolen cars stripped and abandoned on roadsides, even in city parks. Thousands of people on blankets with picnics for the free Philharmonic concerts in Central Park. The guy who climbed one of the World Trade Center towers. Another guy who walked a tightrope between the twin towers which no one really appreciated until they were gone. Thousands of boarded up or burned out shells of apartment buildings, many just abandoned by their owners. Hustlers selling loose joints and nickel ($5) bags of weed in Washington Square Park. Times Square, dodgy and dangerous, with most of its grand old movie palaces shuttered or showing porn. Prostitutes hanging out, well, anywhere. The Meatpacking District when meat was still packed there. The mysterious new virus killing gay men and intravenous needle users. Bernie Goetz shooting four young Black men he said threatened him on the subway. Hero to some, villain to other, he served eight months for weapons possession. A murder rate that started to rise in the 1970s and would peak at 2,245 in 1990 (last year, there were 303.) Jazz clubs like Fat Tuesday’s and Mikell’s, and punk rock clubs Mudd Club and CBGB’s. The counterculture newspapers, the Village Voice and SoHo weekly news. The newspaper strike of 1978 that shut down the three dailies for over two months. The municipal financial crisis that brought New York City to its knees and led to draconian cuts in city services. More than half a million city workers, including teachers and cops, lost their jobs between 1969 and 1977. The famous Daily News headline, Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The radical Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army pulling off an audacious $1.6 million Brinks truck heist outside the city that left two officers and security guard dead. Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo. The mysterious graffiti tagged SAMO that turned out to be work of the brilliant artist Jean-Michel Basquiat whose paintings would later fetch millions. He would die of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

That was the city I first knew. Gaudy and gritty, dark and thrilling, awful and electric, frightening and fun. That city is gone now, lost forever.

And then one day, a few weeks ago, I saw it again.

I was killing time on the West Side and decided to cut through the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a bleak place nowadays but once practically a chamber of urban horrors.

As I crossed the mezzanine level, I noticed a large, brightly lit glass enclosure within which the walls were covered with colorful photos. A sign said it was an exhibit of photos of New York in the 80s. I peered inside. At first, it appeared empty. Then I saw a guy inside looking at me looking at him. I went in. We spoke.

The guy inside turned out to be the man who took the photos. His name was Alan Battman

“Just call me Battman,” he said as we shook hands.

He looked to be in his 60s or 70s. A full head of mostly grey hair and bushy mustache. He had a warm, genial manner and the accent of his native Brooklyn. He was warm and genial. We talked as I wandered taking in images that carried me back to that lost New York. A close up of subway tokens (long gone). A homeless man (not gone). A lone figure with a red umbrella in a snowstorm near the Flatiron Building. A cigar store in the West Village (now a coffee shop). A stream of taxis passing Radio City Music Hall. A woman waving as she emerges from a cab. Three ladies laughing outside a burlesque theater. Bethesda Fountain in Central Park under a confectionery coating of snow. A cop on a horse as it reared up, putting on a show. All of them were new to me yet felt as familiar as a memory.

Battman was able to get this unused space for free because, well, he knew a guy who knew a guy who made it happen.

Next, Battman culled his archives for his favorite images and then affixed them to the space’s three walls. Eighty in all. From a distance, it looks almost like a mosaic. He added a table onto which he placed a rotary dial phone and a typewriter - artifacts of a bygone age that would probably puzzle or amuse someone under 30. But not a lot of people stopped by.

“The only people who come in are people who are early for their bus,” he said.

Battman is 78. He readily admits that he has a terrible memory - “I went to a shrink,” he told me. “He said that’s a good thing. You don’t remember the bad stuff.” - so there were some gaps in his life story that he recounted to me. Still, I pieced it together.

Fresh out of high school, Battman went to work in his father’s clothing business, making sweaters. He hated it. Next he worked in an auto body shop, sanding cars. He hated that too. He moved to Los Angeles where he talked his way into a sales rep with Mattel. He liked it. He was good at it. Very good. While living in Manhattan Beach in L.A. he bought a Minolta camera and would wander around snapping photos of things that caught his eye. He remembers taking a photo of a surfer leaving the water.

“They had this wall with cement blocks with holes in them,” he said. “I got him in the middle of the hole. Evidently I was creative and didn’t know it.”

A year into the Mattel job, his corporate bosses decided to standardize the reps’ pitches. So he quit, figuring he’d get another sales job easily enough. He didn’t. Instead, he moved back to New York after three years in California.

Back in New York, he landed a gig selling Playboy merchandise (“anything with a bunny on it”) to retail stores ), then greeting cards which led to own greeting card business hawking every manner of card with photos he’d take of familiar New York scenes to tourists.

“But how many times can you take a picture of the Empire State Building?” Battman said. “I started taking pictures of street scenes. I carried my camera and I capture stuff.”

Once he came across a Con Ed utility worker head down in a manhole with only his feet sticking out. From that he made a card that read: “I looked all over for a greeting card for you.”

For 20 years, Battman roamed the city clicking away, along the way doing everything from lying prone in traffic on a busy street to scaling the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge to get the shot. Some of them he took for cards that he sold; some he took just because it interested him. He said he never used filters, long lenses or shot film or digital in black-and-white. He says he doesn’t even know much about photography or other photographers’ work. He insists he didn’t even take many photos, only enough to get what he needed.

“I never was prolific,” he said. “I never took a lot of pictures. I cannot hold a conversation with another photographer for ten minutes. I don’t know anything about photography. But most of my pictures are good.”

The internet ended up killing his card business, he said, and the city changed and no longer interests him as a subject to capture in photos.

“It’s lost its charm,” he lamented. “Neighborhoods aren’t neighborhoods. It’s lost its character. Not worth taking pictures of.”

I asked Battman what he was looking for when he aimed his lens at this amazing, heartbreaking boiling pot of a city all those years ago.

“It’s catching the moment,” he said. “Most of these, it’s catching the moment.”

And he did.

Battman has a book collection of photos, Takin’ To The Streets, that is coming on in June. I will update with info how to buy it. The exhibit at Port Authority Bus Terminal has closed.

Alan Battman. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Some time later, his wife was giving birth and Dr. Stephens was at her bedside as she went into labor. Each time her contractions became painful, she unleashed a stream of obscenities in front of her obstetrics team. When the contractions subsided, she was embarrassed by what she had said and apologized. But when they started again, once again the curse words came rushing out.

Now Stephens was really curious. This time, he wondered: Why do people swear when they’re in pain?

In 2009, Stephens and two colleagues set out to investigate a possible relationship between cursing and pain tolerance. Was it helpful? Or was it actually harmful by “catastrophizing” the pain, that is, making it feel even worse?

With their university’s consent (not something Stephens could have assumed. The Nuremburg Code of medical research ethics that was adopted in 1947 in response to Nazi medical horrors says experiments on humans should not cause them “unnecessary physical and mental pain and suffering.”), they recruited 67 undergraduate volunteers as test subjects. Each person put one hand in a bucket of ice cold water. The first time they were told to utter a swear word of their choosing over and over again while their hand was immersed until they could no longer tolerate it. The second time, they were instructed to cry out a made-up un-profane word during the immersion. What they found surprised Dr. Stephens and his team.

“People withstood moderately to strongly painful stimuli for significantly longer if they repeated swear words rather than a non-swear word. Swearing also lowered pain perception,” the researchers reported. There’s even a word for it: lalochezia.*

Stephens remarked later, “I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear.”

Photo credit: Christopher Dale

It turns out there is a considerable body of academic study of the effects of cursing, and that research points to a host of benefits from an outburst of profanity. But let me first be clear about what I mean by profanity. I’m referring to expletives, such as the F-word, damn, shit, etc. and not racial, ethnic, religious, sexuality or gender slurs, which are never acceptable.

Focusing solely on common cursing, researchers have found a variety of benefits to cursing.

“The use of profanity can help us withstand pain, diffuse stress [and] bond with our colleagues,” wrote Emma Byrne in her book, Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language. “For all its shock value, swearing is surprisingly subtle. Deployed skillfully, swearing can be cheeky, funny, outrageous or downright offensive.”

Stephens would go on to conduct experiments that found that cursing while exercising improved physical strength while riding a stationary exercise bike, gripping and during chair push ups (rising from a chair using your arms as leverage).

“In many situations, people hold themselves back - consciously or unconsciously - from using their full strength,” Stephens said. “Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and ‘go for it’ a little more.”

The actor, Samuel L. Jackson, who has gained a cult following for saying m***********r in many movies, says he first used the word as a way to overcome severe stuttering.

“The word gave me something to focus on and released the pressure, and it really helped me get the rest of the sentence out,” he said.

Cursing helped actor Samuel L. Jackson overcome childhood stuttering. Photo credit: Thierry Caro

There are two different types of cursing. First, there is the spontaneous expletive that pops out when we’re in pain, angry, frustrated or surprised. This is called non-propositional swearing, and it’s believed to originate in the right side of the brain, the automatic or emotional side. Vulgar outbursts that come from this cerebral hemisphere - the “f***” or “damn” when you hit your thumb with a hammer, for instance, release adrenaline with a resulting hormonal blast that is at first agitating - you’re upset and your heart races - but soon it becomes soothing. The pain diminishes. You calm down. All is well, assuming you haven’t actually mutilated your thumb.

The second kind are intentional invocations of salty language. This kind of cursing is called propositional swearing. It’s profanity with a purpose. This kind of cursing is believed to originate in the left side of the brain from which we conjure what we want to say and the words or expressions to best say it. Propositional profanity are the words we wield for effect. When deployed cleverly and situationally, swear words can help command attention, emphasize your point, make people laugh (it’s become a staple of standup comedy), and even charm others. It’s even been shown to promote team building within groups.

“Research shows that swearing can help build teams in the workplace,” Byrne wrote. “From the factory floor to the operating room, scientists have shown that teams who use vulgar lexicon tend to work more effectively together, feel closer and be more productive than teams who don’t.”

In fact, swearing may come across as being refreshingly candid and genuine. Lately, politicians have seemed to catch onto that. Many, including and especially President Trump, nowadays have few qualms about using profanity on social media and speaking in public.

“President Trump has been both hailed for authenticity and criticized for moral bankruptcy,” wrote Katie Brown in an article on the website psychology.com. She did not note the possibility that both could be true of the president.

Still, swearing publicly is a risky proposition. Wielded injudiciously, it might easily be interpreted as evidence that one is socially deviant, dangerous, coarse, uneducated, and/or out of control. None of which is the image most people would want to project to friends, associates and work colleagues. A boss who screams invective at subordinates is more likely to be seen as an abusive asshole than someone being refreshingly frank and genuine.

One curious finding in the research on profanity is that swearing at someone is believed to actually prevent the swearer from acting out violently toward the swearee. The idea is that by lashing out verbally at the target of one’s ire, that person doesn’t assault the person. That said, there are also plenty of instances in which violent language was the precursor to physical action.

It’s widely believed that women now swear just as much as men (one book on swearing cited a study claiming that women use the F word 546 times per million words vs. 540 times per million for men), something that would have been almost inconceivable a century ago when it would have been considered not just “unladylike,” but repellent or even evidence of depravity. In the workplace now, a woman swearing in front of male colleagues can help them fit in, though some researchers contend women use profanity (the propositional variation) differently than men do.

“Men tend to feel comfortable swearing in a jokey way, as well as using it as a tool,” wrote Robert O’Neil, a professor at Louisiana State University. “But for women, swearing is much more likely to be instrumental, to be used very carefully for effect.”

But a 2001 study done by O’Neil found that, even today, swearing by women is less tolerated than it is when done by men. When test subjects were shown transcripts of people using swear words, they were more likely to consider the language offensive when they were told it was a woman who was speaking.

In 1939, the producers of Gone With The Wind had to fight to include the expression “I don’t give a damn.” Characters in the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross used the F-word 138 times.

Grammatically, curse words are often anomalies. If you call someone a f***ing idiot, the F-word is obviously an adjective. But what about an expression like “what the hell are you doing?” The words “the hell” are kind of a useless appendage, though its meaning and disapproving tone would be clear to almost any native English speaker. Then there’s the ever popular “f*** you!” Grammatically, it makes no sense. In fact, a lot of profanity stands in almost proud defiance of proper grammatical construction.

As a practitioner of both propositional and non-propositional profanity, my own view is that, dangerous and incendiary as it can be, it is a valuable way for dealing with stress, ameliorating pain, promoting social cohesion, and for verbal emphasis. It serves many purposes. Language - what we say and the words we choose to say it - communicates our feelings, ideas, thoughts, emotions. Profanity helps us express ourselves more clearly, for better or worse.

In her book, Holy Sh*t, Melissa Mohr wrote, “In the thousands of years we’ve surveyed, we’ve seen people use many different swear words to express the same things - aggression, insult, one-upmanship, and denigration, certainly, but also love, friendship, and the surprisingness or awesomeness of our experiences. Swear words were the best words we have to communicate extremes of emotions, both negative and positive.”

Sometimes le mot juste really is le mot F.

*From the Greek words for “speech” and “to defecate,” it means cursing to manage stress or mitigate physical pain.

Mark Salter with John McCain at the GOP convention, 2008.

RC: Domestically, politically, do you think the depredations of ICE are just too much for the American people, that this is going to backfire?

MS: I think it has, yes. What happened in Minneapolis, it was one of those rare moments in politics where you cannot spin this. There’s video. People can see what happened. With both of them, Renee Good and Anthony Pretti, but more so with him because you couldn’t really see did she run over his foot or brush him or something? You couldn’t really tell. But whatever happened, nothing justified shooting her three times in the face. But with Pretti it was just so obvious they were concocting an alibi.

RC: They grabbed him for intervening trying to help the woman they threw to the ground. You can see it.

MS: I know. It was plainly evident. They couldn’t do what they normally do, which is just throw a bunch of, what did Ross Perot used to call it? A bunch of gorilla dust or something?

RC: But if Trump’s political standing is eroding, wouldn’t that encourage Republicans in Congress to at least begin to push back? Have they?

MS: Not to the extent that they should be. There are signs of life, like crocuses who come up too early and are subject to die at the next frost. I’m happy about the six House Republican votes on tariffs. But it’s just six. I doubt there are six people in the House Republican caucus that really think tariffs are a good idea. But only six of them would vote against it. I think the disgusting video he put up of Obama. That got some Republicans squawking. I guess there are some signs of life. [But] who’s going after him for the corruption?*

RC: No one.

MS: People broke ranks on Epstein. People break ranks a little bit on tariffs, on some of the worst stuff they did in Minneapolis. So, that’s encouraging. But you’ve got just naked graft, in front of your eyes. Which Republican is going after that, saying something about it? What Republican member of Congress has gone after the - it’s just insane.

Photo credit: Gage Sizemore

RC: Have the federal courts been an effective counter to a lot of what the Trump administration is doing or trying to do?

MS: On some things. But more often than not it’s the Supreme Court, they stopped countering. I think the Supreme Court is going to rule against him on tariffs [it did]. He’ll find another way other than an emergency declaration to figure out. HIe’ll attempt to impose tariffs by fiat somehow or some way [he did] So I don’t know if it will be a permanent stop to him or not.

RC: A lot of people think the president spends his days eating and watching and posting on Truth Social, and that (Special White House adviser] Stephen Miller and [director of the Office of Management and Budget] Russ Vought are the real powers behind the throne moving policy. And I guess Rubio in foreign policy.

RC: Do you think there’s some credence to that?

MS: I don’t know about Rubio. You know he used to be, his world view was not MAGA’s world view.

RC: Well, it is now.

MS: I don’t know if it’s genuinely his, if he’s done a 180 on some of his beliefs. When he first got to the Senate [2011] he wanted to be a statesman. He would go on CODEL’s [an official trip abroad or domestically by a congressional delegation] with McCain, go on, go to Munich [Security Conference]. He had very conventional sort of neocon views. Nothing radical, and I think (he) really aspired to be a statesman. So I don’t know if he really believes this stuff or he’s trying to do his best to keep it from blowing everything up. Do I think Miller and Vought have enormous influence over domestic policy? Yes, absolutely. And Trump is the kind of guy that believes pressuring someone to give you their Nobel Peace Prize is just as good as winning it. He thinks his place in history in putting buildings and things can bear my name? I’m gonna build an Arc de Triomphe. I’m going to build a new ballpark. Put my name on everything. The Trump ballroom. The Trump class battleship. He’s never going to build those battleships. It’s never going to happen. [Trump has had his name plut on U.S. currency, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace]. Trump would say, I’ve got all these things that are going to bear my name, that’s how history will remember me. No, they’re going to remember you for what you are, the damage, the destruction you did and the foolishness of your world view. All the stuff that bears your name, as soon as a Democrat is president, it’s all coming down.

With McCain at a book signing. They co-authored seven books. Photo credit: ursusdave

RC: Will there be, do you think - no one has a crystal ball - but do you think the midterms will be free and fair, and uninfluenced by malign forces?

MS: They’ll try some stuff. I don’t think they’re going to dispatch the Border Patrol to election sites. I think that would be a bridge too far for most conservatives. But I don’t think they’ll succeed in nationalizing what exists, but they’ll pull some stuff.

RC: He’s already preparing the public that the elections, wherever the Republicans lose, are fraudulent, that there’s been massive fraud and the results must be overturned and maybe seize ballot boxes and try to influence, ‘m guessing here, state legislatures where Republicans control the states to overturn results.

MS: For all his persistence in proclaiming that 2020 was a fraudulent election, that he had been cheated and robbed or something, he never convinced anyone except the hardcore MAGA voter, not once in 5 years. That would be very hard for him to get Congress not to seat incoming elected members of the House and Senate .... This should be a [Democratic] wave. Waves aren’t as big as they used to be because all of the long hanging fruit is already gone. The margins should stay closer, but if you had asked me six months if there was a chance the Democrats could take the Senate, I would have said none. But now, I don’t think the odds are in their favor, but it’s do-able.

RC: If the Democrats regain the majority in just the House, can they - controlling just one chamber - offer meaningful resistance to or cause trouble for the Trump administration?

MS: Yeah. Just the oversight, all the corruption - yeah, it looks pretty bad but nobody does anything about it or says anything about it. Just going after that stuff, they can do that.

RC: If the Democrats only have a majority in the House, do you think it would be a mistake politically to try to impeach yet again because obviously the Senate is not going to convict him [that requires 67 votes in the Sente to convict]?

MS: Certainly not immediately. With Trump you never know - something so outrageous he might do that you couldn’t sleep with yourself if you didn’t file a motion to impeach him. But I wouldn’t rush to it. I would start by doing real oversight and hear all about these deals.

RC: When he talked last February [2025], you said, “if Trump is left to run amok, he’s going to do strange, crazy shit. He’s going to get Americans killed.” He’s done strange, crazy shit. Americans have been killed.

MS: I’d like to say I’m clairvoyant but that wasn’t a difficult prediction. He’s not right in his head. In my lifetime, he’s the worst character to occupy that office and I’m 71, so I’ve been around since Eisenhower was president. He is a malignant narcissistic who cannot control his insecurities and his appetites and he’s somehow intimidated every elected office holder in the Republican Party or 99.99 percent [who] fear for their positions and help him be unaccountable for all he does. I thought this guy has had more sway, more room to maneuver than any other president in our lifetime. Press is no longer as effective. I don’t know if it’s entirely the press’s fault. People don’t pay attention to them. So, institutionally all the resistance to a hyperactive executive has been weakened over time. And you combine that with a guy who has no shame, who’s not bound by any sort of morality, or even that he might be disparaged in history or his departed mother might scorn what he had done. He has no ethics of any kind. To him, there’s no difference between honesty and dishonesty. It’s just the same thing. If a lie works to serve me, I’ll tell the lie. If the truth serves me, I’ll tell the truth. It doesn’t matter. He’s annihilated truth. He’s annihilated a sense of honor. None of that stuff matters anymore in his character, in his personality. So you combine that guy who’s unfettered by any sort of sense of decency or regard for the opinion of others in a situation in which one political party has been totally cowed and the other political party is kind of freaked out about how we let this guy to get elected again, we got be careful out of this, and institutions have been weakened so they don’t put up any natural defense, and a big chunk of the judiciary is inclined to rule that the president as much power as any president who has ever claimed. It was pretty easy to figure out that this was gonna be a disaster.

RC: Well, Mark, you’ve been a student of history for a long time. Looking retrospectively, would you have imagined that American democracy or commitment to democratic ideals and principles would appear so fragile, certainly more fragile than I assumed?

MS: Not before these times. Nobody would have imagined it... I didn’t live with an appreciation for how fragile democracies can be. Because I’d never lived in a fragile democracy. I’d lived in a strong one. No one who had ever plainly lost a presidential election in this country had ever denied reality and said, No, I won, I was cheated, and then sent a mob up to ransack the Congress over it. Nobody had ever done that in my lifetime until then. [Laughs] I guess I sound like the old man that I am. I blame the lack of civics in high school. We’re not teaching our kids lots of this stuff.

RC: I’ll ask you the same question I asked a year ago. If Senator McCain were still in the Senate, where would he be other than isolated within his own conference?

MS: He always led the delegation to the Munich Security Conference for decades. The last speech he ever gave in Munich a few months before he was diagnosed with cancer was his sort of (saying), hold fast to the West, recognizing the challenge that Trump posed to it. Go back and look that up** [Feb 2017]. He said, I’m a man of the West. We must trust each other. We must. So he would be fighting with every fiber of his being to preserve what Trump is undermining, but also telling the Europeans we can hold this off long enough. He would tell us it’s going to be a difficult three years, but we’re fighting for a better world and to keep fighting.

Photo credit: McCain Institute

* Since returning to office, President Trump has added approximately $3 billion to his net worth. Two-thirds of that increase came from the explosion of his cryptocurrency ventures, while hundreds of millions more came from the resurgence of Trump-branded international real estate deals. The scale of these profits and the way Trump has monetized the White House to generate them are unique. Few if any of his financial entanglements are illegal on their face, because the president - like members of Congress and the Supreme Court - is exempt from ethics rules that bind most other federal officials, But by erasing the distinction between public office and private business and systematically weaving personal profit into public policy, Trump has enriched himself financially on a scale that dwarfs even the most infamous scandals in American history ...

Open Secrets.org, February 2026

** That’s why we come to Munich, year in and year out - to revitalize our common moral purpose, our belief that our values are worth fighting for. Because in the final analysis, the survival of the West is not just a material struggle; it is now, and it’s always been a moral struggle. Now more than ever we must not forget this.

During one of the darkest days of the early Cold War, the great American novelist, William Faulkner, delivered a short speech in Stockholm upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. “I decline to accept the end of man,” Faulkner said. “I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal. not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Even now, when the temptation to despair is greatest, I refuse to accept the end of the West.

I refuse to accept the demise of our world order. I refuse to accept that our greatest triumphs cannot once again spring from our moments of greatest peril, as they have so many times before. I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries.

I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West. I believe we must always, always stand up for it. For if we do not, who will?

John McCain, February 17, 2017

Springsteen at the Target Center, Minneapolis. Photo credit: Jesse Roberson, Rolling Stone

This past Tuesday (March 31st), Springsteen and the E Street Band opened their 18-city national tour in Minneapolis as a tribute to that city’s courageous defiance of the thousands of ICE agents who were sent there in December to track down illegal immigrants, an occupation that resulted in the shocking cold-blooded murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. After their deaths, Springsteen hurriedly arranged the Hope and Dreams tour.

“Brothers and sisters, fans, friends and good folks from coast to coast, we are living through dark, disturbing and dangerous times,” Springsteen announced on Instagram. “But do not despair, the cavalry is coming.”

Target Arena was close to full - it holds 18,000 - when the cavalry arrived and took the stage at 7:30 p.m., right on schedule. Springsteen strode to the center of the stage, microphone in hand.

“Tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division and peace over war.” When he said the last word - war - the band broke into the old Edwin Starr hit song of that name.

The next three hours of music was a tour de force that included some of Springsteen’s most political songs and other songs that didn’t used to seem political but now in these turbulent times seem to. Then, five or six songs in, he spoke, as the organ played softly in the background.

“This past winter, federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis,” he said, his voice now solemn. “Well, they picked the wrong town.” The crowd roared.

He continued, “The power, the solidarity of the people of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, was an inspiration to the whole country. Your strength and your commitment told us this is still America and this will not stand. Minnesota you gave us hope. You gave us courage. And for those who gave their lives - Renee Good, mother of three brutally murdered and Alex Pretti, VA nurse executed by ICE, shot in the back and left to to die in the street without even the decency of our lawless government investigating their deaths - their bravery, their sacrifice and their names will not be forgotten. This is The Streets of Minneapolis.”

In his spare, rough voice, Springsteen began to sing the tribute to Minneapolis that he penned in the aftermath of the deaths of Good and Pretti. It was haunting, beautiful, emotionally powerful.

Oh, Minneapolis, I hear your voice

Singing through the bloody mist

We’ll stake our stand for this land

And the stranger in our midst

The site where Renee Good was killed. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

That morning, I drove to Portland Avenue in the Central neighborhood. The day was gray and chilly, the last stubborn vestiges of a Minnesota winter. I parked between 33rd and 34th Streets. This stretch of Portland Avenue is a one-way street lined with two-story houses that had seen better days, and not recently. Strangely, on the front lawn of one home was a huge T Rex dinosaur atop of a crushed automobile. A sculpture? On the other side of the street, there was a cluster of flowers, signs, placards, handwritten notes and stuffed animals. This is where an ICE agent fired the shots that killed Renee Good on January 7th. This is where Good died for no reason. I walked over to study the makeshift memorial. I felt a heaviness in my chest and a sadness in my soul.

The street where Alex Pretti was slain was not far away. I parked my rental car in a small lot across the street on Nicollet Street.. Plastered to the side of a German restaurant were large posters of Good and Pretti bearing the caption Murdered By ICE. The memorial here was smaller and tidier than Good’s. It was clustered on the sidewalk in the spot where ICE agents wrestled Pretti to the ground and one of them pumped three shots into his back as he was prone. A large black banner blocked the facade of a store. It read Rest In Power Alex. Any Righteous Person Would Have Done the Same, a reference to what we see in a video of the last minutes of his life: Pretti helping up a woman who an ICE agent had thrown to the snow-covered pavement, an act that seemingly enraged the agent who then grabbed him and hauled him away to his fate.

On a storefront window, there were two large sheets of construction paper covered with post-its with messages.

“Gracias to all my MN Brothers and Sisters. Oscar from Mexico,” read one.

Another read, “We are all neighbors and will stick together.”

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

In December, 3,000 ICE agents were deployed to Minneapolis to track down and detain undocumented people in the Twin Cities. Almost all of those people were Latinos or Somalis. When ICE came, Minnesotans responded. They protested, yes, but they did more. They came to the aid of the people who were being targeted by ICE and Border Patrol agents. Volunteers drove people to their jobs in case the workers’ license plates were on an ICE list. They took their children to school. They patronized immigrant businesses who regular customers were too afraid to patronize. They donated money to those too afraid to work. A group of women even provided breast milk that went to mothers who were so frightened they couldn’t produce their own.

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a Minnesotan, called it “a spontaneous uprising of civic activism propelled by a single idea - I am my neighbor’s keeper, however he or she got here. It was one of the most courageous battles ever fought by American women and men not in uniform.”

In the end, the Trump Administration blinked. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would lose her job. Border Czar Tom Homan would be dispatched to Minneapolis to refocus the enforcement effort on actual criminals. On February 12th, Homan declared Operation Metro Surge over and ICE’s heavy presence pulled back. ICE isn’t entirely gone. Agents there are still detaining people, but the aggressive mass sweeps have been tempered. The army of heavily-armed, masked federal agents vastly reduced. The people of Minneapolis and St. Paul resisted and they won.

Anti-ICE protest in downtown Minneapolis. Photo credit: Minneapolis Star Tribune

I met my friend, Michele Gran, at a taqueria inside a mini-mall called Plaza Mexico, a collection of snack stands, mini-groceries and shops. She chose it, she said, because she wanted to help “our immigrant community.”

Michele, who has lived in the Minneapolis area her whole life, and her husband started and run Global Volunteers, a non-profit that sends volunteer service projects all around the world. I first met her when I did a service in Tanzania in 2018. I asked her about the response to ICE roundups and the killings of Good and Pretti.

“It’s kind of like, you can’t do that here,” she said, her voice rising in renewed outrage. “That was my feeling. What are you talking about? No, you can’t come here and do that. You can’t mess with our people. You can’t come from New Mexico or wherever you got trained, or Washington, D.C., and come here and mess with us? No. We believe in democracy for God’s sake.”

One of the songs that Springsteen and his band performed was The Ghost of Tom Joad. Joad was one of the protagonists of John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, about a family of Okies who migrated to California during the Dust Bowl years in the 1930s, looking for work. The song cites what Joad tells his mother before he has to go into hiding for killing a man in self-defense, but Springsteen adds own lyrics.

Now Tom said, Mom, where there’s a cop beating a guy

Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries

Wherever there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air

Look for me, Mom, I’ll be there

ICE stop a man and check his ID in Minneapolis. Photo credit: Nichole Neri, Minnesota Reformer

In America today, there is blood and hatred in the air. People - American citizens - killed by agents of their own government. Thousands of people, many with no criminal record, arrested, jailed or deported. The people of Minneapolis-St. Paul and, this week, the aging rock star and his band took a stand. They said: No, this is not America. You can’t do that.

They picked the wrong town.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, entry in a personal notebook

When I read the news about César Chávez being accused of sexual assault, it was both unbelievable and very believable. Unbelievable in the sense that it just did not comport with the public image - my image and that of millions — of the selfless, brilliant, charismatic leader of California farm workers fighting for their rights and dignity. For millions of Americans, Chávez was a hero and more. He was a moral exemplar.

Yet it was very believable in the sense that we have seen this before, and we keep seeing it again and again. Powerful men with supercharged egos and twisted illusions of masculinity exploiting women and sometimes young girls.

The New York Times reported that two women, now in their 60s, said Chávez had sexual contact with them in their teens in the 1970’s. When the Times contacted Dolores Huerta, now 95, who was Chávez’s less celebrated partner in the United Farm Workers struggle, she revealed that he had raped and impregnated her.

“I never talked about it to anybody and the reason I didn’t is because I just didn’t want to hurt the movement,” Huerta told the Times.

César Chávez. photo credit: Joel Levine

When I expressed my shock to my friend, Robin Dembroff, a philosophy professor at Yale and author of a new book, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality. Robin replied that they actually weren’t shocked.

“I am not surprised,” Robin wrote. “I don’t think many men comprehend the extent to which they are trained to see women as lesser beings. It’s sad, but I’m never surprised to learn of powerful men harming women. In my experience, the absence of misogyny is — even today — much harder to find among them.”

I recently received a text message from one of my late brother’s closest friends, Jesus Jiminez, a lawyer in Los Angeles.

Jesus was upset and bewildered by the accusations. He was also angry. The allegations against Chávez, who died in 1993, are stunning and painful to anyone who admired the man. They are especially hurtful to the many Latinos who revered and loved Chávez, both the man and the image. For Jesus, who is Mexican-American, the pain has been searing. He met and knew Chávez when he was a child growing up in a farm worker family in Delano, California, the epicenter of the farm workers struggle.

For days, Jesus grappled with this until finally he poured out his thoughts and his heart into an essay about it. After I read it, I asked if I could post it on my Substack page. Jesus consented. Here it is.

Jesus Jiminez

Every city in California has something that bears his name. A boulevard, a school, a mural. César Chávez’s face watches over neighborhoods, his arms folded, his expression saintly and solemn. For many, that image is symbolic. For me, it was personal.

I grew up in Delano in the 60’s and 70’s, alongside the children of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. We played together in my neighborhood. My parents were in the [United Farm Workers] union, so I grew up in the shadow of the movement - and I believed deeply in what it stood for: dignity, sacrifice, and the idea that brown people could fight back and win. That belief still lives in me. What doesn’t survive this week is the man.

The New York Time has now reported what many inside the United Farm Workers long knew: Chavez sexually abused women and girls for decades, including Dolores Huerta, his co-founder, who carried that secret for nearly 60 years to protect the movement.

Dolores Huerta. Photo credit: Eric Guo

Let that settle. The most influential woman in Latino history bore that alone so the cause could survive. And we are only hearing about it now.

Two other women - daughters of UFW organizers , who were 12 and 13 when the abuse began - have also come forward. More than 60 interviews. International union documents. This is not rumor. This is record.

Jesus Jiminez as a child. He’s the kid in the background on the left looking toward the camera,

The question isn’t whether to mourn. It’s whether we are ready to mourn the right people.

The UFW has already said, “We do not condone the actions of César Chávez.” For an institution that he built from nothing, that sentence is seismic. Across social media, Latinos are calling for murals of Chávez to be replaced and streets and schools bearing his name to be renamed.

That part of the conversation matters. But renaming a street is easy. The harder work is asking how we built an entire political identity around a single, flawless man - and then protected that image at the direct cost of the women around him.

Historians like Geraldo Cadava have tried for years to complicate the myth - not to destroy the farm worker movement, but to give it a more honest foundation.

Mural of César Chávez at a public school in California

The movement was real. The grape boycott was real. The victories were real. None of that required Chávez to be innocent. And none of it disappears now that we know he wasn’t.

The farmworker movement was never one man’s. Larry Itliong and the Filipino Agricultural Workers launched the Delano grape strike before Chávez joined it. Dolores Huerta co-founded the UFW, negotiated contracts and sustained the movement through its hardest years. Helen Chávez, César’s wife, managed the union’s finances. These are names that belong on buildings. Their erasure is part of the same problem. A hero built on silence will always collapse. What we build afterward can be stronger, broader and true.

But I want to say something harder now, directly to my community. This is not the first time that we have protected a powerful Latino man by requiring the women around him to stay silent. It is a pattern. Huerta says she kept Chávez’s secret because she feared what the truth would do to the cause. The two other women stayed quiet for decades out of the same fear. They were silenced not by strangers but by the very movement they believed in. We do this. Our culture does this. We teach our daughters to protect the family name, the church, the movement, the man - and, in doing so, we ask them to absorb the damage alone. We call it loyalty. Sacrifice. Cultura. What it actually is is a system that makes women and girls pay the price for men’s power.

I want to say their names clearly. Dolores Huerta. Virginia Murguía. Gloria Rojas. They are not footnotes. They are the story. Their courage in coming forward after decades - often at great personal cost, as the UFW itself acknowledged - is what the movement’s values look like in practice. We should treat it that way.

I know this moment feels like the ground is shifting. It does for me too. The image of a man I was taught to revere - a man whose children I played with, whose movement shaped my childhood - has changed permanently. The grief is real. But our community does not need protection from the truth. It needs to be trusted with it. Sí se puede. But first we must be honest about what made it possible.

So, yes, let’s rename the boulevard. Put the farmworkers’ names on it. Let the movement outlast the man. And this time, let’s build it around something that can actually not - not a perfect hero, but the imperfect, honest, collective work of people who refused to give up. We are strong enough for this reckoning. We have survived harder things.

Jesus Jiminez, executive director of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Latino Children’s Fund (LCF)

Central Connecticut Blue Devils (in white) battle the Chicago State Cougars

I was there on a cold Saturday afternoon in New Britain, Connecticut to see Central Conn take on the visiting Chicago State Cougars. I was there because I wanted to see how a winless team, at the time No. 362 out 363 teams in Division I NCAA ranking of women’s basketball teams, would play. I was there to bear witness to what losing - epic losing - does to you. Would the Blue Devil players step up? Would they give up, even if subconsciously? And more. Does failure and adversity push you to dig deeper and fight harder? Certainly it can. Or does it break your spirit and crush your soul? It can do that too.

People tend to have conflicted views of winning and losing, about success and failure. We like to say and believe that losing teaches us valuable, even noble life lessons. Overcoming adversity. Resilience. Determination. Perseverance. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” But is that really true? Even if so, isn’t it true too that what doesn’t kill you sometimes just leave you wounded and broken. And, in reality, losing - especially frequent losing - is more likely to inspire scorn and derision than admiration. Our vernacular says as much. To be called a “loser” is an especially vicious and categorical slur. In the 1969 movie, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, one character - the emcee of the marathon dancing competition during the Depression (Gig Young, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the role) - tells one desperate contestant (played by Jane Fonda), “I may not know a winner when I see one, but I sure as hell can spot a loser.”

But to be a winner… there’s the glory. Winning is respected. Revered. Envied.

Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, famously said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” That was considered a golden nugget of wisdom, testimony to a commitment to excellence and success. It was not derided for being preposterous. Winning is the only thing? Who can meet that absurd standard? And if winning is the only thing, losing is what? Nothing?

In perhaps his most famous poem, If, Rudyard Kipling called success and failure imposters - “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same” - and I think that comes closer to the complicated truth.

Everyone loses sometimes. Even Tom Brady. But there are the standard vicissitudes of life - you win some; you lose some - and then there are epic losing streaks that can shake the confidence and resilience of even the stoutest of us.

Columbia University football teams lost 44 straight games from 1984 to 1988. It was an NCAA record until it was surpassed by Prairie View A&M’s 80-game losing streak spanning 1989 to 1998.

Columbia football team ends record 44-game losing streak on Oct. 11, 1988. Photo credit: Columbia Spectator

In pro football, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers entered the NFL in 1976 and lost their first 26 games over two seasons.

After one loss, Tampa’s coach, John McKay, was asked after one loss what he thought of his team’s execution.

“I’m in favor of it,” McKay replied.

The Bucs’ losing streak was not even the longest in pro football history. That honor goes to the Chicago Cardinals which dropped 29 straight games in the early 1940s.

In modern baseball, the 2024 Chicago White Sox went 41-121, a modern record.

But perhaps in the annals of sports quite matches the Cal Tech’s basketball team which once endured a 310-game losing streak in conference play* that spread over 26 years.

After Cal Tech beat Occidental College, 46-45, their coach, Oliver Eslinger, said, “We know what it’s like to lose. There’s the philosophy, ‘Oh, you can learn a lot from losing.’ I don’t want to learn anything more from losing. I want to start winning.”

Cal Tech coach Oliver Eslinger celebrates the end of the 310-game conference losing streak. Photo credit: Sports Illustrated

Losing, of course, is hardly confined to sports. It happens throughout life. In fact, it’s an integral part of life.

But then there’s the story of Harold Stassen.

Harold Stassen ran for president 10 times. Photo credit: Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University

In 1938, Stassen, a moderate Republican, was elected governor of Minnesota in 1938. He was 31. His future seemed bright. His future was bright. He gained national recognition as “boy wonder” of American politics. He served three consecutive terms as Minnesota’s governor, resigning in 1943 to serve in the Navy as chief of staff to Admiral William (Bull) Halsey. While serving in the military, he made a brief run for president in 1944. It would turn out to be just a prelude.

In 1948, Stassen ran for president again and was considered the front runner for the Republican nomination. For a while, things looked promising. He won four primaries. But he lost the crucial Oregon primary, and New York’s Governor, Thomas Dewey, went on to win the nomination at the GOP convention. Dewey ultimately lost to Harry Truman.

Stassen went on to become president of the University of Pennsylvania for four years but ran again in 1952. He lost then joined the Eisenhower cabinet. But he had imbibed from the fountain of presidential ambition and he must have liked the taste. He ran again for president in 1956. Again, it went nowhere. But he was only getting started.

Two years later, he ran for governor of Pennsylvania; in 1959, for mayor of Philadelphia; for president in 1960 and 1964; for Pennsylvania governor in 1966; for president in 1968, 1972 and 1976, then for U.S. Senate back in Minnesota in 1978. The result was same every time.

By the 1960s, Stassen was a very successful private attorney, but he didn’t or couldn’t stop trying to win high public office. He ran for president in 1988 and 1992. He had one last hurrah, or whimper, in 1994 when he ran for the Senate again. He lost. It was an epic losing streak. The former boy wonder was now nicknamed “The Grand Old Party’s grand old loser.”

In 1978, the Washington Post ran a profile of Stassen as he prepared for his ill-fated 1980 presidential quest.

“Like an old vaudevillian, Harold Stassen kept on,” wrote Paul Hendrickson. “He would have to be blind and mute to be unaware of the ridicule. He is neither. Ridicule isn’t important, Harold Stassen says. Playing a part ‘in the process’ is. Working to get your chance.”

His favorite poem, the article said, was Kipling’s If. Stassen died in 2001 at the age of 93.

Central Conn takes the lead in the second half. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The Central Connecticut Blue Devils came out playing fiercely, but they kept making mistakes. An easy shot missed. An errant pass flying over the intended receiver’s head. Horrifying defensive lapses. Senseless turnovers. They fell behind early. I watched closely for signs of dismay as Chicago State opened up a six-point lead, but I saw none. They played hard and with determination. I watched Central’s coach, Kristin Caruso, pacing nervously in front of the home bench. Her movements were tense and jerky. I had looked up her bio a few days earlier. Caruso had played for the University of Connecticut in the 1980s just as it was becoming a national powerhouse in women’s basketball (UConn won its 12th NCAA championship last year.) Losing streaks were just not part of her basketball life experience.

Late in the first half, Central battled back and at halftime, they trailed Chicago State by just one point. They raced to the locker room in high spirits.

In the second half, something very strange happened. The Blue Devils started playing well, really well. Their defense toughened. Their offense started to click. Their shots were falling. The crowd, sparse as it was, was fired up. A large man in Central gear across the aisle from where I sat shouted instructions as if he were the coach. Each time Central scored, he leaped to his feet and loudly slapped the back of the (empty) seat in front of him. The cheerleaders cheered. The dancers danced. The band played on.

Central Connecticut wins! Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

Central Connecticut opened up a lead late in the game, and then it was over. The Blue Devils had prevailed, 86-75. The players seemed almost dazed for a moment, then jubilant. They hopped and danced across the court. They embraced each other in a tight sororal knot. Even Coach Caruso broke character and smiled. They finally had exorcised the demons of defeat. Enough with the character building. This was fun. This felt good. Really good. Maybe, just maybe, all that losing was the price that was demanded for this. The sweetness of victory long denied.

Coach Kristin Caruso and player embrace after the game. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

*Cal Tech did win a handful of non-conference games during that streak

Then you suffer

Superstition ain’t the way

Superstition (1972)

Stevie Wonder

It can be embarrassing to have to reveal one’s superstition. A few years ago, I was playing golf at a public course just north of New York City. The golf cart attendant retrieved a cart and pulled up beside me. I loaded on bag onto the back, walked around and looked at the number of the cart. It was 13.

I said to the attendant, a tough-looking older guy with a surly manner, “Can I get another cart?”

He eyed me without expression.

“What’s the matter with this one?” he finally snarled.

“This one is number 13,” I said lamely. “I’m superstitious.”

He stared at me, then said in a thick New York accent laden with anger, “You’re f****** kidding me, right?”

I said I was serious. He glared at me, then got in the cart, drove it away, and returned with another. He hopped out and walked away without looking at me.

I will admit it. I deserved the disdain. But such is life when you have friggatriskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, or

paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is fear of Friday the 13th. Your rational brain may tell you it’s ridiculous. But the insistent irrational part says, “Yeah, but I still don’t like it.”

Below in an article I wrote in January 2022 about superstitions that I repurpose here in honor of today, February 13, 2026. Good luck!

.

When he was running for president in 2008, John McCain was known to carry a lucky compass, lucky feather, wear lucky shoes and keep in his pocket a lucky penny and, for good measure, the lucky nickel he’d found when he first ran for president eight years earlier.

The superstitious behavior that year was bi-partisan. Barack Obama shot hoops for good luck on election days.

Basketball great Bill Russell would intentionally throw up before a game. A less legendary NBA player drank exactly half of a 2-gallon bottle of Mountain Dew before tip-off. Wade Boggs, the baseball Hall of a Fame third baseman, devoured chicken before every game. He played in 2,432 major league games. That’s a lot of chicken.

I’m almost ashamed to confess that I am just as much a hostage to superstition, if not more so. I will not walk under a ladder. I will turn around if a black cat crosses my path. I dislike the number 13. Friday the 13th gives me the heebie-jeebies. (There’s even a name for that. Triskaidekaphobia.)

Various polls suggest that one-third and slightly more than half of Americans consider themselves “superstitious.” Belief in specific popular superstitions range from 7% who think it’s unlucky to step on a crack (”break your mother’s back”) to 33% who subscribe to the notion that finding a penny is lucky. As for 13 being unlucky, 13% agreed, a coincidence I found more than a little weird.

Photo credit: Fernando

For this article, I asked via Facebook for people to send in their personal superstitions. Here’s a sampling of what I heard back:

When you are walking with someone, you don’t ever walk on the opposite side of a pole because it’s bad luck. If you do walk on opposite sides, you have to say “bread and butter,” so you won’t have bad luck.

Deanne Foster Culp

New Year’s Day, always eat collard greens and black eyed peas. Greens represent green money and peas, coins. Also, bad luck to wash clothes on New Years.

Roderick L. Granger

We were told as kids, be careful playing outside at night. A bat could lay eggs in your hair and you would go crazy.

Kandy Savage

Paying homage to my Gullah Geechee roots in Charleston, S.C., 1. pass the baby over the coffin so the deceased’s spirit won’t return to haunt the baby. 2. Hags are bad spirits that “ride” you at night. Most Charleston homes paint the ceiling of the porch light blue... Spirits (are) confused by the blue and won’t enter the home.

Cathy Jo Haynes Bell

As a teenager, I always had to chew Bazooka bubble gum for Bruins games. I can’t remember how or why it started. I think my persistence contributed to their Stanley Cup wins in 1970 and 1972.

Chris Ann

When passing the salt at the table, never hand it to the person. Set it down on the table near him or her. This avoids passing on any bad luck.

Ann Cruz

When I turn up the volume on my TV, it’s either 12 or 14. Never 13 which is the perfect volume. Nope. Just can’t do it.

Michele Engel

Right hand itching, you will get a pay out! Left hand itching, you will pay out!

Angela Jones Cannon

I always say Rabbit Rabbit right when I wake up on the first day of each month.

Hillary Yates DeMello

Broken mirror. Photo credit: Rokesh Ashok

Now I was really curious. So, to try to get a better understanding of this phenomenon, I spoke to Stuart Vyse, (www.stuartvyse.com) a retired psychology professor who literally “wrote the book” -- several books, in fact -- on the history and psychology of superstition.

Vyse says people who believe in superstitions -- omens, lucky charms, rituals, jinxes, good and bad luck -- tend to be anxious, stressed and/or people seeking control over the vagaries of life. People who believe they can shape their own destinies tend not to be superstitious. People who believe they are largely at the whims of fate tend to be superstitious. Personality traits of those (us!) skew toward “depression, pessimism, neuroticism and fear of death,” according to Vyse.

“We love control,” he told me by phone last week. “We want control over things that we do in life and that’s what superstition does. It gives you the illusion of some kind of additional control over whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish.”

Stuart Vyse

Vyse says there is an important distinction between positive and negative superstitions. A positive superstition is Boggs eating chicken before baseball games or me wearing the same cap to Yankees games for as long as they kept winning.

A negative superstition is based on fear of something you see or do causing or risking misfortune, such as walking under a ladder or putting a hat on a bed. The former are generally harmless and may even be beneficial to the believers’ performance by relaxing them. The latter tend to be anxiety-inducing and for good reason. They portend bad consequences.

“People feel better doing something to increase their luck,” he said. “Good luck ones can be applied instrumentally in that you have got something coming up, you’re going to perform on the baseball field or you’re going to do something and employing a superstition at that time is likely to have a calming effect on you.

“The bad luck ones come of their own making. For the most part, they are a bad omen and you encounter them when they occur. Those bad luck superstitions, if you believe in them, they bring their own anxiety, which you then have to either face or do something.”

Many superstitions, especially fear-based negative ones, date back centuries, even thousands of years. In ancient Egypt, opening an umbrella indoors was considered offensive to Ra, the God of Sun, who might strike you down for doing so. In Medieval times, black cats were associated with imminent death. It was also thought that witches could disguise themselves by turning into black cats.

In the Middle Ages, a ladder leaning against a wall formed a triangle which represented the trinity. Walking under it was considered blasphemous.

And the dreaded numeral, 13? The 13 guests at the Last Supper. Some say Judas was the 13th. The Friday, according to Yves, probably came from Friday being the day when prisoners were hanged in Europe. When the 13th falls on a Friday, it became “a double whammy.”

Typically, we learn our superstitions from our parents, handed down like family heirlooms.

Professor Vyse, an avowed non-believer, says the paradox is that so many people still cling to these beliefs in the face of science and a popular notion that superstitions are, well, ridiculous.

“There are people who are superstitious and are non-believers,” he said. “A group of people who will say, ‘I know this doesn’t make sense. I know this is silly, but I will feel better if it do this.’”

Superstitions are also supported by the very human proclivity for confirmation bias. Simply put, when we adhere to a superstition and it seems to work, we remember it and chalk it up to the omen. When it fails, we forget about it. I once wore my “lucky” Brooklyn Nets winter scarf to 14 straight games that they won. I was still wearing that heavy scarf to games in 70 degree weather in April. When they finally lost, I put it away. The next season, I resumed wearing it with poor results, yet still couldn’t quite dismiss the possibility the scarf had helped win those 14 games. And I like to think I’m a rational person.

An intriguing variation on superstition is the jinx, the belief that doing something rash or presumptuous will backfire.

I heard from a few people on Facebook who said police officers, and doctors and nurses in hospitals refuse to ever say things are quiet.

When it appears a pitcher in baseball is hurling a no-hitter, his teammates won’t say it, sometimes won’t talk to him at all, or sit near him in the dugout.

Vyse cites a study that found that people tended to believe that wearing the tee-shirt of a college to which you had applied would make it less likely the school will accept you.

The jinx is a warning not to tempt fate.

I asked Professor Vyse what was the wackiest superstition he ever heard of in his nearly 30 years studying the subject.

It was a friend and classmate in graduate school who collected the fingernail clippings of his family members, as well as his own, and ate them.

“His view was that someone might do harm to his family (by getting them),” he said. “There is a contagious idea that if something was once connected to or in contact with a person can have a magical influence on them. It’s a basic principle of sympathetic magic.”

It’s enough to make you want to give up superstitions. Well, almost.

Over the last two months, I took photos all around Manhattan of people and scenes in this frozen city. From that collection, I have chosen a dozen images that I think depict the look and feel of this hard winter in this hard city. All of the photos were taken on an I-phone 15 and were originally in color. I converted them to black-and-white images because I think that better captures the harshness and, on occasion, stark beauty of this autumn and winter of 2025-26 in New York.

Riverside Park, Manhattan. Dec. 14, 2025

West Harlem. December 17, 2025

Harlem. January 1, 2026.

Times Square subway station. February 2, 2026.

Snow mountain. Upper West Side of Manhattan. February 8, 2026.

East Harlem. February 12, 2026.

East Harlem, February 12, 2026

Central Park. February 12, 2026.

Washington Square Park. February 10, 2026.

Jefferson public swimming pool. East Harlem. February 12, 202

Nannies seeking refugee from the cold in a public library. West Village. February, 10, 2026.

Strangely wearing shorts in sub-freezing weather became a fad (for some). Upper West Side. February 12, 2026.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Thing fall apart; the center will not hold

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

They gathered in groups at street corners hard-packed with dirty snow along Boulevard René-Lévesques. They were boisterous and loud but jovial as they jostled and chattered excitedly in French and, less often, English. Almost everyone was dressed only in a red Montreal Canadiens jersey in cheerful defiance of the subfreezing temperature as they made their way toward the Bell Centre to see their beloved hockey team play the Calgary Flames. I was going there, too.

In December, I had decided I needed to leave America, if only for a few days. I wanted to get away from the friction and stress, from the daily cacophony of lies and lunacy. I wanted to escape. I thought: Canada is close. It isn’t crazy in Canada. I could breathe in Canada. So I bought an airline ticket to fly to Montreal and spend three days there in early January. Next I bought a ticket to the Canadiens game. I know next to nothing about hockey, but I am a sports fan, and I know enough to know the Canadiens are the most iconic team in hockey with some of the most passionate fans in any sport in the world.

McGill University, Montreal. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The first time I went to Canada was in the summer of 1967 when I was teenager. My parents sent my brother and me east to spend a few weeks with the family of a college friend of my mother who lived outside New York City. While we were there, the family we were staying with decided to drive up to Montreal for the World Exposition - Expo 67 - celebrating the centennial of the Canadian Federation.

Since then, I have visited Canada many times, several times on assignment when I was a correspondent for ABC News, but mostly I’ve gone on my own. I have always liked Canada. It has its problems. Every country does. But, as a visitor from America, Canada feels much calmer, less volatile and less angry than my native land, especially now.

I’ve seen quite a lot of Canada. I’ve been to Victoria, the quaint British-like city, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island in the West. I’ve driven to and around the Maritime provinces in the East and, last summer, I visited remote Newfoundland. I’ve been to the dynamic big cities of Vancouver, Halifax, Quebec City, Toronto and Montreal. I’ve skied at Mont Tremblant in Quebec and Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia. I hiked along spectacular Lake Louise and traveled by train through the majestic Canadian Rockies. For a few years, I owned a condo apartment in Montreal, fantasizing that I might want to move there one day (I didn’t. I rented it instead, then sold it a few years ago). Over the years, I have met and known many Canadians, both in Canada and in the U.S. (In those days, ABC News had so many Canadians employees, including the longtime anchor Peter Jennings, that a cameraman from Vancouver once joked that ABC stood for Another Break for Canadians).

Quite a few years ago, I was in a bar in New York City, and overheard two people talking. One guy who appeared to be drunk asked the other where he was from. The second guy said he was from Toronto. The first guy, an American, replied, “Oh, the fifty-first state.” He meant it as a compliment, like it was a great honor to be accepted as an ersatz American. The Canadian, who was not drunk, did not respond.

Like many Americans, when I first traveled to Canada, I thought it was just like America except they were on the metric system. It was an easy mistake to make, or maybe just a lazy one. Yes, in Canada, you do see a lot of the same retail stores and fast-food joints, and, outside of Quebec, almost everyone speaks English. Over time, I would learn and appreciate that Canada is not “just like” the United States and it doesn’t want to be.

Earlier this year, President Trump was beating the drum about how he wanted Canada to merge with the U.S. and become the “cherished fifty-first state.” At first, a lot of people laughed it off. But it began to occur to me that he might actually be serious. The harangues continued and they began to sound more like threats than an invitation. Like the drunk guy in the bar, Trump imagined it was an honor rather than an insult. He was wrong.

Last summer, the Pew Research Institute published a poll in which Canadians were asked how they saw the United States. The survey found that 64 percent of Canadians had an unfavorable opinion of the U.S., compared to 34 percent favorable. Three years earlier, it was almost exactly the opposite: 63 percent, favorable and 34 percent, unfavorable. Quite the volte-face.

While I was in Montreal, I wandered the campus of McGill University across the street from my hotel. I dined at an outstanding restaurant whose menu featured only food from eastern Canada. I visited the McCord Stewart Museum where there was an exhibition on Montreal cuisine and another on African couture. I had a delicious smoked meat sandwich at a Jewish deli in the gritty Snowdon neighborhood. And, as I wandered the treacherously icy sidewalks, I marveled yet again at the ethnic diversity of the people and restaurants.

The morning of the Canadiens game, I took the Metro (subway) a few stops west to Atwater, historically a predominantly Anglophone neighborhood. The exit led into the bowels of a frenetic shopping mall. With some difficulty, I found a way outside. The cold was bracing at first, but then numbing. It started to snow. I noticed Cabot Square at the corner and headed there. At first I was disoriented. I stood beside the statue of the explorer John Cabot, who first landed on the east coast of what’s now Canada in 1497 and claimed it for England.

I finally found what I was looking for on the other side of Rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest. It was dismaying. The building was a bleak, windowless monstrosity of a shopping center. I went inside. There was a gym on the ground floor level that was filled with people pumping or riding workout machines. But when I stepped in further to the atrium, there wasn’t much of anything. There was a sign for a multiplex cinema but I saw no theater. I saw no evidence of any retail businesses and the place was eerily quiet. Other than an ancient, forlorn security guard, the only people were on the second floor and several appeared to be homeless, garbed in heavy coats and sprawled listlessly on chairs.

Cabot Square. The site of the former Montreal Forum, now an indoor shopping mall and cinema, is in the background. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

In a corner of the second level, I finally saw what I was looking for: something, anything commemorating this as the former site of the Montreal Forum, the original home of the Montreal Canadiens for 70 years. In a small alcove I saw Canadiens pennants hanging from the ceiling. I studied the framed team photos, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia that covered the walls.

A young Black man was seated in a chair, absorbed in his iPhone. He looked up and saw me studying at the mementos.

“C’est beau,” he said. It’s pretty.

“Oui,” I said. “C’est beau.”

Canadiens exhibit at the former Montreal Forum. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

From 1926 to 1996, the Forum was the home of Les Habs (the nickname derives from the French word habitants, which is what the first French settlers in the area were called). It was here that one of the greatest hockey players of all time, Maurice “Rocket” Richard, skated to glory. It was the home ice during the Habs’ amazing run of five consecutive Stanley Cup titles from 1956 to 1960. This was sacred ground.

The Canadiens haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1993, but they have a very good team this year, judging by the current standings. When I arrived at the Bell Centre - an antiseptic, unremarkable modern arena - the plaza out front was awash in red. I doubt I have ever seen so many fans in team gear as that night. I even wore an old Canadiens beanie that I’d bought years ago but never worn.

The hockey game - just the third NHL game I’ve ever been to - turned out to be a rout. Even I could tell early on that Montreal was the better team. Although the finer points of the game were lost on me, I enjoyed the excitement and energy of the sell-out crowd, the spontaneous chants in English of “Let’s go Habs!,” and the volcanic eruptions each time the Canadiens scored. The Canadiens won, 4-1.

Canadiens-Flames game, Jan. 7, 2026. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne

The next morning, as I packed to leave, I looked at my phone and saw a flood of emailed news alerts from American news outlets. I had intentionally not looked for two days and, without thinking, I decided to catch up. What I saw shocked me. While I was wandering Montreal the day before a woman named Renee Good was shot dead in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. There was video of it and it was horrible. I read that U.S. federal officials were calling Good a “domestic terrorist,” and claiming almost immediately that she had tried to run over the agent who shot her. The American president insisted she did run over the ICE agent and said he was lucky to be alive. I read that federal law enforcement officials were taking control of the investigation, squeezing out local and state police, and prosecutors. It was dizzying and awful.

I thought: this is not America.

“The administration makes these statements before there’s any investigation before they’ve even had an opportunity to review all the publicly available evidence, including cell phone video.” wrote the New York Times columnist David French. “The Trump administration lies with such regularity and brazenness that one should presume that it’s been dishonest until we can see with our own eyes the evidence that supports its account.”

Just today [January 29], a federal judge in Minnesota - a conservative jurist appointed by George W. Bush - castigated ICE for what he said were 96 violations of court orders over the agency’s operations in that state, including denying bond hearings for detained undocumented immigrants.

“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some agencies have violated in theor entire existence,” said U.S. Chief District Judge Patrick Schilitz.

Vigil in Minneapolis for Renee Good the night she was fatally shot by an ICE agent. Photo credit: Aaron Lavinksy, Minneapolis Star Tribune

A week later, I was back in New York City when I read about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s extraordinary speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

Carney, who took office early last year, essentially declared that the post-Second World War global order is over. He spoke of a new world order in which the great powers push around and exploit everyone else to enhance their own power and interests.

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said. “There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope compliance will buy safety. Well, it won’t.”

Middle nations, as he called them, like Canada, will have to build new relationships with other nations, economic partnerships and military alliances to survive, Carney asserted.

He didn’t name names. He didn’t have to.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (2013). Photo credit: Bank of England

The next day, in a rambling address at Davos that was, in turns, threatening, boastful and nonsensical, the American president complained about Carney.

“He wasn’t so grateful,” Trump said. “They should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

The following day, I read a story in the Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, that was astonishing, It said that the Canadian military has modeled how to respond to a hypothetical invasion by the United States. According to the report, Canada conceded that the Americans would quickly “overcome Canada’s strategic positions on land and sea.” But the Canadians would fight on, it said.

“The military envisions unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare or hit-and-run tactics,” the article said.

I read this and wondered, has it really come to this? Canada is now war-gaming the possibility, however remote, that it could be invaded by the United States? I realized, yes, it has come to this.

That morning, I flew back home, back to a country that is increasingly unrecognizable to me.