“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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You have to grab their attention. It was the first rule of what we called “tease” writing in the television news. You give the viewer a taste of the story, but you tease them with an element that peaks their interest and makes them keep watching. The same applies to the first line of any written piece whether it be a novel, a short story, or even a newspaper or magazine story. Attention spans are shorter than ever. Competition for eyeballs is intense. Always lead with your best shot. A writer wants to draw the reader in and that first line has to set the hook and make the reader want to know more. It can be action. It can be obscure or even puzzling. But it has to get them in the door.

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The US Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a case that could effect many businesses and customers. It’s called 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado wants to expand her business to include wedding websites. Smith is a devout Christian and doesn’t want to do business with LGBTQ customers who engage in same sex marriage. Colorado law prohibits most businesses from discriminating against that community. Smith claims forcing her to do business with these customers violates her right to free speech. Liberal Justice Sonya Sotomayor argued that a ruling in favor of Smith would be the first time the Supreme Court had ruled that “commercial businesses could refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.” Chief Justice John Roberts said the court has never approved efforts to compel speech contrary to the speaker’s belief. The five conservatives on the court gave impression they were leaning toward ruling for Smith. Not a surprise.

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The World Cup is the rest of world’s Super Bowl every four years. The passion and excitement generated by soccer in the rest of the world, where it’s more accurately called football, is part of people’s national identity. We have our own football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, which I think we stole from Canada. So we can spread our commitments around. Many other countries only have soccer. But the World Cup does bring out millions of American fans. Thousand have travelled to Qatar which may be one of the worst places on earth to hold such an event or any event. More on that latter. Faced painted and flag wearing fans here at home are jamming into sports bars in the middle of a weekday. I guess they’re working from home. Team USA has made it into the round of 16, the knock out bracket, lose and go home, for the first time in years. They play The Netherlands on Saturday at 10am. Sports bars will be opening early.

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