Ralph Yarl is a sixteen year old Black teenager who was going to pickup his younger twin brothers at a friend’s house in Kansas City. He mistakenly went to the wrong house. Instead of going to Northeast 115th Terrace, he went to Northeast 115th Street. An understandable mistake. It would change his life. Yarl rang the bell or knocked, it’s unclear which. Two gunshots came through the glass door hitting Yarl in the forehead and the right arm. No words were exchanged. The shot to his arm may have been fired when he was on the ground. Eighty-four year old Andrew Lester, who is white, was taken into custody. He was held for twenty four hours and released without charges. After neighborhood protests, an arrest warrant was issued. Lester was charged with first degree assault and armed criminal action. The prosecutor said there was a “racial component” to the shooting.

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The weight can be enormous. It’s New York. It’s the Yankees. It’s the position played by one of the all time greats and Hall of Famer. The Captain. There have been a few players who’ve played the position since Derek Jeter retired in 2014. But not with the promise of Anthony Volpe, a twenty-one year old from New Jersey who’s now living the dream. Volpe, the son of two doctors, gave up going to Vanderbilt, when the Yankees offered him $2.7 million dollars to sign with them. This spring he was given the chance to take the starting shortshop job. He was competing against Oswald Peraza who had been called up to the majors at the end of last season and played well. Volpe has never played in the Major Leagues. Even Jeter had been called up at the end of 1995 before he got the starting job in 1996.

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Three years ago sixteen young people from across Montana took the first step down a path that could lead to a safer cleaner world and change our lives and the lives of generations to come. They filed what might be the first serious constitutional climate lawsuit, Held v. The State of Montana. It claims the state’s support of the fossil fuel energy system is contributing to climate change violating their constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment. And, yes it’s in their state constitution. In 1972, the Montana constitution was amended to guarantee citizens “the right to a clean and healthful environment”. The original document, drafted in 1889 was heavily influenced by the powerful copper and coal industries. Basically, allowing them to do what they wanted. Despite the change, Montana is the fifth largest coal producing state and the twelfth largest oil producer. State energy policy says it can’t consider climate change when issuing new permits for fossil fuel projects. Well, the kids want to change all this.

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“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”-Kennedy Inaugural Address, Jan.20, 1961

”With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see right, let us strive, on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds…”-Lincoln Second Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1865.

Two of the most famous and important speeches in American history given at a critical turning point. The two presidents use of language to rally the country to see the way forward are the finest examples of the power of writing for the spoken word. That doesn’t mean long and wordy. Quite the opposite. Lincoln’s speech was 701 words and took about six or seven minutes. Kennedy’s was 1,366 words and ran 14 minutes. To put them in context, Washington’s second inaugural address was 135 words. He just acknowledged his re-election. The longest in history was William Henry Harrison’s 8,445 words. The most forgotten president. He died a month after giving that speech.

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It was a network news story about the late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar’s collection of exotic animals he had imported to his ranch in Columbia the 1980’s. Among the animals were three female hippos and one male. The government is trying to move them now that the Escobar ranch has been abandoned. Well, the four hippos became very friendly and there are now estimated to be between 130 and 160 hippos. The government plans to fly the “cocaine hippos” to India and Mexico because they are a threat to the ecosystem in Columbia. While this is a bizarre and interesting story, the correspondent couldn’t help himself. Instead of saying four hippos grew to be well over a hundred, he called the original hippos “a handful of hippos”. While using the word “handful” to describe a small amount, is vague and inexact, using it to describe hippos is lazy and absurd.

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March is a big birthday month in our family. I will turn seventy-two at the end of the week. Two of our granddaughters also have birthdays this month. Cecily turned nine years old last week and Emily will be ten later this month. We are going to have a joint March birthday celebration. As we get older, birthdays are an opportunity to look back on our lives. For nine and ten year olds, it’s cake and presents. As they get older, these childhood birthdays will fade into misty happy memories. Kids get excited about their birthdays and look forward to being a year older. We older folks are just happy to get to the next birthday and regret getting older. The girls and I are looking at life from opposite ends. I treasure every year I get to celebrate with them.

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We have grown numb to gun crime in America. A couple of days ago it was three students killed and eight wounded by a gunman on the Michigan State University campus. Just this morning, we awoke to another shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas. One killed. It was not far from a mass shooting at a Walmart not too long ago. Mass shootings are part of our everyday life. Add this to the barrage of gun violence in cities like Philadelphia. Local television and radio news here is just a litany of street shootings. You have to assume that people you encounter on the street, in a store, in a movie theater, in a park, just about anywhere could be carrying a gun legally or illegally. As much as we are outraged and offering thoughts and prayers to shattered families, American society continues to tolerate it, and in some places it’s just getting worse.

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Former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley has announced she is running for president. She is the first Republican to challenge Donald Trump for the nomination. Until now, all potential candidates have been afraid to step up and challenge Trump. They all supported or worked for him in the past, and now they want us all to forget about that and help them finally get rid of Trump. Haley wants us to forget her twisted history with him. When Trump ran in 2016, Haley supported Senator Marco Rubio who Trump dismissively called “Little Marco”. Haley ripped Trump as a racist. She said, “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K. That is not part of our party. This is not who we want as president.”

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It snuck in last week, but it had been lurcking for almost three years. My wife Maureen started sneezing. She thought it was allergies. A slight sore throat would come and go. But she was falling asleep watching TV by nine o’clock and sleeping later in the morning. No other symptoms. Then last Friday, I started feeling slight chills and a monster headache started to build Friday night. I fought with the monster all night. No sleep. Saturday morning we decided I needed to take a test. The dreaded two lines popped up on the test strip also immediately. COVID finally got me after almost three years. I was now a statistic. Maureen, the nurse, suggested we go to an Urgent Care to get a confirming test and the medication Paxlovid, which if taken in the first few days, can greatly reduce symptoms.

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On the second anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, we are watching the Capitol destroying itself. As I write this, we are less than an hour away from the House of Representatives reconvening to continue the humiliation of Kevin McCarthy. His desperately trying to get at least sixteen of the twenty radical conservative Republicans to vote for him and get him to the 218 votes he needs to be elected Speaker. He’s failed eleven times so far. If he somehow succeeds, he will be the weakest Speaker in history and may have done permanent damage to one of the most powerful positions in the United States. McCarthy’s Republican supporters have said dealing with the twenty Freedom Caucus radicals is like negotiating with terrorists which our own government’s policy says we will never do. They been called Taliban 20. Until a Speaker is elected, the House of Representatives, “The People’s House” is powerless. Nothing gets done. Our government is in crisis.

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