It is June. Can somebody slow down the spinning of the earth as time is moving much too quickly. And if you can do that, leave it at June where the days are long and the weather is warm but not too much so. Anyway, lots happening this month so let’s get to it.
I want to start with a miss. I have long railed against the practice of single members of popular bands keeping the “group” alive when most of the original members have left. There have been various iterations of this going around. I mean, the Four Topps, the Temptations, Deep Purple, Lynyrd Skynyrd all have only one member left. Are these bands legends or tribute bands? Sure, if the one guy left in the band is say Carlos Santana or even Ian Anderson, you’re getting a bit of the real thing but if it’s the bass player, not so much. Marshall Tucker is one such band. When it started it was comprised of Toy and Tommy Caldwell, George McCorkle, Paul Riddle, Jerry Eubanks (he played the flute on “Can’t You See”) and the singer Doug Grey. Note the Marshall tucker band never included a Marshall Tucker. Tommy Caldwell died in 1890 and Toy in 93. McCorkle left us in 2007 and Riddle and Eubanks left the band in 1983 and 1996 respectively, although not the earth. That left Doug Grey, who frankly I thought was dead, fronting a band that is decidedly not made up of the members as we knew them. I loved that band when it came out. Toy Caldwell played largely with his thumb without a pick and wrote many of the songs. I saw them in Central Park and they refused to stop playing so the promoter turned the power off on them. Great show. But now they are a tribute band and when you pay your money to see them, the songs are there but it’s really a bar band with a damned good sound system and Grey. Not sure that is worth the rather inflated cost of tickets we are forced to pay as bands no longer see a revenue stream from record sales and make their money from live performances which used to be simply ways to showcase the record. Forget about the ticket price, they might not be worth the $47.50 service fee Ticketmaster is charging lately but that’s for another day. Well even if it hasn’t before, the band ought to close up shop now because its namesake, Marshall Tucker, who was in fact a blind piano tuner, died at 99. When the band first started it was nameless and practicing in a space in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Lacking a name, and soon to be opening for the Allman Brothers, they found a key in the space stamped Marshall Tucker and decided that would be the name of the band. They apparently did check with Tucker who had no problem with them using his name. Tucker was born blind but had great musical sense and tuned pianos for a living. He was self-sufficient all his life, married, had kids, mastered computers, worshipped at church and helped the blind. A rather full life. And his name was and still is on the tongues of every southern rock aficionado worldwide. I don’t think they had him in mind when they wrote their biggest hit and you’d have to be blind to think the band today is the one I loved in my youth.
Sticking with music, we lost one half of one of the great songwriting teams when Cynthia Weil died at 82. Along with her husband, Barry Mann, they pumped out such hits as “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “We Gotta Get Out of this Place,” “On Broadway,” “Blame it on the Bossa Nova,” “Here You Come Again” (Dolly Parton for you non-Country music folks), “Only In America,” “Walkin’ In the Rain,” (You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” “Don’t Know Much,” and many others. Ms. Weill was the primary lyricist. Phil Spector, the producer of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and also got writing credit on the tune but in those days, producers often strong-armed their way into such things for the royalty payments. That said, Weill/Mann never complained about Spector’s role claiming that he did play a part in the song’s birth. Ms. Weill, who toiled at the famed Brill building alone, asked Don Kirschner to find her a songwriting partner. She hoped it would be Mr. Mann because she knew about him and “thought he was hot.” Mr. Kirschner had other plans and tried to pair her with Carol King, but Ms. Weil wasn’t biting. She and Mann eventually got together and married while Ms. King met David Goffen who she also married (although not so successfully) and together the four were great friends even while competing for hits. The Weill/Mann team wrote their hits two blocks away from the Brill building. Both were inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and received pretty much every songwriting accolade available. They were a great pair who had “a love, a love you don’t find every day.”
Okay, who hasn’t secretly wished they had a chia pet. Come on now; don’t lie. It’s easy to care for, won’t mess on the carpet and you can leave it alone when you go on vacation. Nothing beats it. Well, the guy who brought the chia pet to our shores, Joseph Pedott, sprouted his last chia plant at 92. Pedott was an advertising exec checking out the wares at the home housewares trade expo in his hometown of Chicago. He ran into a local retailer and asked him about the hottest selling thing he had and was told it was this ridiculous terra cotta figure that grew vegetation from chia seeds. The retailer couldn’t understand its allure, but Pedott did. He quickly secured the rights to it and advertised the heck out of it and it became the novelty gift to beat most novelty gifts. He literally made a fortune off the things. For a mere $20.00 you can get the Donald Trump chia pet https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwiXt-L1w-z_AhXG-sgKHT4vCTMYABADGgJxdQ&ase=2&sig=AOD64_2gjz9SamJaCsUUr6AUDpqnLZghTw&ctype=5&nis=5&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjY4NX1w-z_AhXdEFkFHTU7Af8Qvhd6BAgBEEQ. Or the Joe Biden or Barack Obama models. The Richard Simmons chia pet is a big seller. All I can say is ch-ch-ch-chia.
Two thieves of secrets died this month, Robert Hanssen died at 72 and Daniel Ellsberg at 92. The secrets they stole were vastly different, the people to whom they provided the information were vastly different (even though some view the New York Times to be a bunch of Bolsheviks) as well. Heck, even their treatment was wildly different and not without just cause. In truth I don’t think their actions can be equated but there are those who would differ with me. In 1994 Aldrich Ames (still with us and still incarcerated at 82) a CIA counterintelligence agent was arrested and charged with espionage, leaving that agency demoralized. However, with the arrest of Robert Hanssen, the spy spotlight shifted to the FBI whose internal controls as a check on the ability to access top secret information was abysmal. That lax environment permitted Mr. Hanssen, over a period of more than 20 years, to obtain and sell secrets to the Russians that imperiled the lives of individuals and the security of the United States. He informed the Russians that the U.S. had dug a tunnel under the Russian embassy in Washington in order to eavesdrop and provided the names of Russians who were spying for the U.S., assuring harsh treatment of them and their families. Indeed, two were put to death in Russia. Some spies are driven by ideology and others by money. Hanssen however was an enigma. A man of religion and a member of Opus Dei, he permitted his friend to observe him having sex with his wife, visited strip clubs and had a relationship with an exotic dancer that he claimed was non-sexual which is more perplexing than if he was schtupping her. He appeared to be a family man and not ideologically opposed to the U.S., yet he sold secrets to the enemy. He never let on as to why he did what he did. The ultimate go figure.
Daniel Ellsberg, who as I said, died at 92, was absolutely clear on why he did what he did. He was staunchly opposed to the war in Vietnam after himself serving in it as a Marine and working as an advisor to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He became dismayed after realizing that our leaders knew there was no way of winning the war and we were literally sacrificing American lives for a lost cause. While an employee at Rand, with a top-secret clearance, he and a co-worker, Anthony Russo (whom he met while serving in Vietnam) took a 47 volume Pentagon study which consisted of 7,000 pages of what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. According to his New York Times obituary, these papers chronicled “damning revelations about deceptions by successive presidents who exceeded their authority, bypassed Congress and misled the American people.” Ellsberg first tried to play by the rules, showing excerpts of the documents to legislative leaders who paid no attention. Exasperated, he made a deal with a New York Times reporter that the reporter could merely look at the documents, take notes, and not photocopy them. He then gave the reporter, Neil Sheehan, the key to the apartment where the documents were kept and left town. Sheehan, upon viewing the documents, decided they were too explosive to keep in the apartment and he took them to his bosses at the Times who decided to publish them in nine installments. After installment one, all hell broke loose. Not quite the hell that was going on in Southeast Asia but let’s just say an uproar. DOJ threatened everyone involved with espionage charges and after the third installment of the papers was published, they got an injunction stopping the paper from publishing further installments. That involved first amendment litigation and important issues of what is known as prior restraint. While I won’t go into the legal nuts and bolts, anyone who follows the law can get all they want about it by reading the excellent blog by David Lat, Judicial Notice, on this same Substack platform or Mitch Epner’s musings on the law, also on Substack, here, as well as other outlets. Okay, the shoutouts are done. Back to the story. Suffice it to say it was a legal firestorm which wound up in the Supreme Court which basically said roll the presses and the full story came out. Let’s remember however that this was the era of Nixon so this matter wouldn’t stop there. To try and discredit Ellsberg, a Harvard educated (Ph.D.) and legitimate champion of the people, John Ehrlichman’s plumbers” broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office where they found no damaging records but back then merely going to a psychiatrist had its own stigma. Ellsberg and his co-worker at Rand were charged with espionage and went to trial facing 115 years in jail. If convicted, he would have suffered the same fate as Mr. Hanssen. However, Judge William Byrne threw out the charges before the case went to the jury for outrageous government conduct which included the break-in of the psychiatrist’s office, illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg’s phone by the government and the fact that Ehrlichman offered him (Byrne) the directorship of the FBI during the trial. There are many heroes in this story but to me Byrne perhaps stands at the top of the heap. This was a sad time in American history but enough courageous people such as Mr. Ellsberg stood up to power and we got through it. Hopefully in the coming months, people of that character will step up in the way Mr. Ellsberg did. Cue the Christie campaign donation music.
And no, I don’t want to write about the Unabomber; or Berlusconi for that matter.
The Mets of 2023 are playing pretty much like the inaugural 62 team, but they are lacking Roger Craig, one of the original group, who died at 93. Craig started the final game that the Dodgers played in Brooklyn before defecting to Los Angeles but more importantly (my Uncle Ed would disagree) he made the first pitch for the new Met’s organization on April 11, 1962. Craig only lasted three innings and surrendered five earned runs in the loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. Craig’s time with the Mets did not really go up from there. He lost 23 more games in that inaugural season and 23 the following year including 18 in a row. Stepping back from the Met’s, his career was pretty successful. He pitched in four World Series (three for the Dodgers, 55, 56 and 59 and one for St. Louis in 64) and managed the San Francisco Giants to the World Series where they lost to the Oakland A’s. Craig was an evangelist for the split fingered fastball that many pitchers use effectively today. He taught it to Mike Scott who used it to win the Cy Young Award in 1986. Of winning the award, Scott was heard to say, “God bless Roger Craig.” An incredible career.
While I’m bemoaning my ill-fated sports teams, let’s move onto the Jets whose last moment of glory was the 1969 Super Bowl where Jim Turner, the kicker for the team, was the largest scorer in that incredible game with three field goals and a point-after. He died this month at 82. During his sixteen year career with the Jets and the Denver Broncos he played in 288 games, never missing one. In retirement, he hosted a talk-radio show in Denver. He started playing for the Jets in 1963 and that year met a girl at a swimming pool in his hometown of Crocket, California. He proposed to her ten days later and she survives him. Now that’s a run to be proud of.
On to weightier matters. Last month we lost Superstar Billy Graham and this month, the Iron Sheik (Khosrow Vaziri) has succumbed to the Number nine Bobby lock and left us at either 81 (according to his Passport) or 80 (according to him). Either way, a long match given what he did for a living. Not that the WWE is on the ropes but these guys are wrestling wroyalty. The Sheik, born in a town outside of Tehran, always played the role of the bad guy, backing Russia and during the Iranian Hostage crisis coming out against America. Everyone loves a good villain, so his career flourished. He often fought Sgt. Slaughter who stood for truth, justice and the American way making for good story lines which hey, that’s what wrestling is about. While Superstar Billy Graham lost his belt to Bob Backlund, The Sheik won the belt from Backlund only to lose it quickly to the Hulkster. In the 80’s, like so many of his colleagues, he succumbed to drug and alcohol abuse and his body was ravaged by the constant pounding those guys take. The outcome is preordained but getting there is tough on the body. In 2005 he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame which apparently lacks some of the rules of say the Baseball Hall of Fame. To those of us who, as kids, would watch wrestling, he gave us something to root against.
Pat Robertson who built religion into a business juggernaut died at 93 and if his preachings are to be believed, he is in a far better place. Roberston, a Baptist minister, and skilled politician (he once campaigned for President) and shrewd businessman, galvanized the religious right with a Trumpian hold. He could be charming or excessively harsh depending upon his objective. He once intimated that the 911 attacks were brought about by the sins of Americans, that liberal protestants embodied the antichrist, and the Haitian earthquakes were divine retribution. Doesn’t make God seem all that appealing to me but to his people, Robertson was the man. Aligning with Trump he proclaimed the 2020 election a fraud and claimed that God would intervene. I suspect God has better things to do. Robertson, perhaps sensing I was right, and that divine intervention was not forthcoming, reversed his position. In his early life, before the onset of religion, he seemed to have some fun. He graduated from Yale Law School but never passed a bar exam. He lived for a time in Staten Island and by his own admission frequented nightclubs and gambled. Franky what else is there to do if you live in Staten Island? He married his wife ten weeks before she gave birth, a fact that he tried to keep quiet. He entered the New York Theological Seminary and turned his life to religion – the lucrative type. He bought a small UHF television station and built it into an evangelistic empire. In the beginning he asked for 700 people to pledge $10 per month. When that came to fruition the 700 Club was born (Immaculately) which remains a mainstay of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Robertson used that network as a platform for his politics and religion which were often inextricably intertwined. If nothing else, he made religion a force and a business. Not sure the 700 club is transmitted to heaven, so I wonder what he is doing with his free time?
The Titanic is the gift that keeps taking. Having already taken some 1,500 lives down to Davey Jones’ locker when it sunk in April of 1912, it claimed another five this month. Whether you view them as intrepid explorers or risk-taking lunatics who set forth on a voyage in a vessel even Gilligan would have had reservations about, they are victims of the Titanic if not their own foolhardy audacity. I would never have gotten into the thing because I am claustrophobic but even were I not, I would not pay $250,000 to get into a vessel that locks me in from the outside and is navigated with a $25.00 game controller. For that kind of money, something on the control panel has to say Rolls Royce. Short of torture, I can think of no worse way to die than to be trapped inside that tomb for days knowing that eventually air was going to run out. When I die, I truly hope that I have less than a nano-second to contemplate my demise. The thought that I would be in a tuna can at the bottom of the ocean with days to think about my death seems to me to be the worst way to go. Therefore, I was somewhat heartened (as much as you can be by tragic deaths) to learn that the thing imploded soon into their voyage and that when it did, they had less than the nano-second I crave. Makes me almost want to take a ride someday.
When I was going to a review course to prepare for the bar exam, there was an instructor who taught the criminal law block of the program. I believe his name was Rossi and he told a story about him and his mother talking after the reported death of Ernesto Miranda, the man for whom Miranda warnings were named based on the landmark case of Miranda v. Arizona. Mrs. Rossi knew nothing of the law but knew from watching plenty of crime shows on TV how important Miranda warnings were. About his death, Mrs. Rossi told her son, a criminal law professor, how sad she was to hear about the death of such a great man who gave us such important rights. Her son had to inform her that Mr. Miranda was not really a hero but rather someone who kidnapped and raped an 18 year old woman. Mrs. Rossi was not different than most Americans who did not know the story behind our so called “Miranda” rights. The detective who investigated the case, and because there was no requirement to do so, did not give Mr. Miranda any notice of his legal rights, Carroll Cooley, died at 87. After being brought to the police station by then Detective Cooley, the victim identified Miranda as her assailant and he wrote out a confession. On appeal of his conviction, he argued that he should have been told by the detective of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer and that had he been so informed, he would not have confessed to Cooley. The left-leaning Supreme Court (yes the Court, which now leans right changes from time-to-time) under the Chief Earl Warren, found that to be violative of Mr. Miranda’s rights and forever emblazoned those warnings into the criminal justice system. To this day, many a criminal defendant claims violations of his Miranda rights. The Supreme Court ruling (5-4 by the way) did not end the matter, it merely sent Mr. Miranda back to a new trial where the confession would not be able to be used against him because it was given in violation of the rights which have now been named for him. The result, however, did not change and Miranda was again convicted and sentenced to 20-30 years in jail. He was released in 1972 and he regularly sold Miranda warning cards that he signed for $1.50. He was in and out of jail after his release and in 1976 was stabbed to death in a barroom fight. I don’t believe his attacker gave him any warnings before the stabbing and the true, perhaps fitting irony of it all was that Miranda’s alleged attacker invoked his rights not to speak with the police and was never charged with the crime. As I believe that Tommy John surgery should have actually been named for the surgeon who performed the novel procedure at the time, Dr. Frank Jobe, rather than for a guy who got injured and was the beneficiary of Dr. Jobe’s work, so too I believe that the rights that are given to those detained for questioning by the police should be called Cooley rights. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
I am not much of a movie guy (that’s an understatement), but I will acknowledge the death of Alan Arkin at 89. He played every kind of role, but I will remember him for “The Russians are Coming.” Everyone to get from street.
While I am on short notices, Richard Ravitch died at 89. Was a big fan. He was never elected to office (he ran for Mayor once) but spent a lot of his life serving the public. He was the Lieutenant Governor under David Patterson but he was appointed to the position which had been Patterson’s until Eliot Spitzer has some fun tumbling around with prostitutes while wearing his socks. Anyway, Ravitch was a builder and developer who helped bail New York City out of its financial crisis in 1975 and again came in and rescued the MTA in the 80’s. A graduate of Yale Law School, he inherited the family construction business which built projects such as the Whitney Museum and the Citicorp building. He was one of those renaissance guys who did it all.
If you read this blog with any regularity, you know how enamored I am of Holocaust survivors. They are, quite literally, a dying breed, as are WWII vets. Both are a loss to the world. This month we lost Thomas Buergenthal at 89. He was sent to Auschwitz when he was 10 but survived and went on to become one of the most influential human rights lawyers in the world. Originally from Germany, his family fled to Poland with the hope of emigrating to the U.S. but were trapped, arrested, and sent to Auschwitz where Buergenthal, then 10, escaped death by boldly announcing in German that he was fit for work. With the allies bearing down, he survived a forced walk to Sachsenhausen; believed to be the youngest person to do so. His father and grandfather were killed but he was reunited with his mother in Germany. When he was 17 his mother sent him to live with an aunt and uncle in, of all places, New Jersey. He attended high school in Paterson (the Silk City) and to his own surprise, received a scholarship to Bethany University in West Virginia. His surprise was because Bethany was a Catholic institution. He became a Rhodes Scholar, studied law at NYU and received a Masters in Law from Harvard. His work in the area of human rights earned him a nomination by Venezuela as a judge on the Inter-American Court on Human Rights where he investigated military juntas responsible for untold thousands of civilian deaths. He also represented the United States on the International Court of Justice at the Hague. He served on the United Nations Truth Commission on El Salvador. He wrote books, served as a professor at various institutions and received a slew of Honorary degrees for his great work. In “A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy,” he wrote that his childhood travails made him “a better human rights lawyer, if only because I understood, not only intellectually but also emotionally, what it is to be a victim of human rights violations.” For his feelings toward the German people, he said that his “abstract hatred became transformed into the fact they’re human beings.” Not sure I would have that capacity to forgive.
In local news, Judge H. Lee Sarokin, a federal Judge in New Jersey died at 94. He was a jurist of superior quality. His bent was very liberal but his opinions were always backed up by persuasive legal precedent and even though I may have disagreed with him on occasion, it was always with the utmost respect and admiration for his intellect and judicial comportment. John Paige, an FBI agent and then a detective with the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness died at 72. John was a gentle soul who never sought the spotlight and always backed his people. John cultivated relationships with the many and varied ethnic and religious communities in the state and in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, John leveraged those relationships to reach out to the Muslim community to build bridges. His work in that area was wholly unheralded and incredibly important in making New Jersey a leader in outreach and understanding. The world is diminished by his death.
That wraps it up for June. Have a great 4th of July and do what you can to slow the summer down.
Thank you for the kind words.
I loved Alan Arkin ever since I saw him in The In-Laws with Peter Falk.
Excellent write-up as always, Charlie! Thanks for the shoutout, as well as for flagging the deaths of Ravitch and Buergenthal, which I had missed. Happy Fourth!