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November 3, 2025: One day before the conclusion of gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, here are my final polling time-weighted polling averages (using all polls listed on, uggh, Wikipedia conducted after the Democratic and Republican nominations became official). I break them down by pollster partisan lean because there is evidence that Republican-leaning pollsters have recently been more accurate in the aggregate than higher-quality non-partisan pollsters. The “other” percentage is calculated using only polls with that as an option.
New Jersey: Democrat Mikie Sherrill vs. Republican Jack Ciatterelli
| Poll Category | # Polls | Dem % | GOP % | Oth% | Und % | D% – R% |
| Non-partisan | 21 | 49.9% | 44.7% | 1.8% | 3.6% | 5.2% |
| Republican | 14 | 47.3% | 44.1% | 2.3% | 6.3% | 3.2% |
| Democratic | 6 | 50.9% | 41.7% | 2.0% | 5.4% | 9.2% |
| All | 41 | 49.2% | 43.9% | 1.9% | 5.0% | 5.3% |
Virginia: Democrat Abigail Spanberger vs. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears
| Poll Category | # Polls | Dem % | GOP % | Oth% | Und % | D% – R% |
| Non-partisan | 25 | 53.4% | 42.8% | 2.3% | 1.5% | 10.6% |
| Republican | 18 | 49.5% | 43.1% | 1.8% | 5.6% | 6.4% |
| Democratic | 2 | 52.5% | 43.0% | 0.0% | 4.5% | 9.5% |
| All | 45 | 51.7% | 42.9% | 2.2% | 3.2% | 8.8% |
Both Democrats are leading, even in Republican polls. In fact, Spanberger is just shy of 50% – and an assured victory – in the 18 post-nomination Republican polls conducted of the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial election. Still, she “only” leads by 6.4 percentage points (“points”) in these polls, compared to 10.6 points in the 25 non-partisan polls and 8.8 points overall. Notably, the percentage for Earle-Sears barely deviates from 43.0% in any polling configuation. It is simply that roughly 4 points of the 5.6 points still undecided in Republican polls shifts to Spanberger in the non-partisan polls. If this actually happens tomorrow, Spanberger could win by double-digits. However, recent polling history implies a margin closer to 6 or 7 points – a solid victory, but perhaps not as high as national Democrats would prefer.
The gap is not quite as large in New Jersey, where non-partisan polls show Sherrill leading by 5.2 points in the 21 non-partisan polls and 3.2 points in the 14 Republican polls. Once again, Ciatterelli’s percentage differs only slightly, while about 2.6 points of the 6.3 points undecided in the Republican polls shifts to Sherrill in the non-partisan polls. If this pattern holds, Sherrill could double the 3.1-point margin by which Democrat Phil Murphy won in 2021. Otherwise, she will likely match that margin – and a win is a win.
October 30, 2025: I just watched a high school production of Twelfth Night because our younger child helped to design the costumes and applied nearly all the makeup and wigs. They did a terrific job. This may be why theatrical metaphors are in my head.
Specifically, I envision the past as a series of stage sets that are slowly being torn down, its players vanishing. The death of legendary Philadelphia disc jockey Pierre Robert at the age of 70, coupled with the recent death of Dave Ball (see October 23 entry), has me recalling my high school years (1980-84) more than usual. Robert was an essential voice during those years, and his and Ball’s deaths remove a bit more of that set.
It was around 1981, when Robert started at WMMR 93.3 FM, that my radio listening began to shift from Top 40 to what is often called AOR, or album-oriented rock. I preferred WMMR, which played more progressive and alternative rock (or so my memory tells me) than harder-rock WYSP 94.1 FM. There was also the “softer” WIOQ 102.5 FM – their three-hour block of Progressive Rock was essential listening every Sunday night.
I learned more about rock and pop music from Robert and his fellow DJs, while absorbing their infectious enthusiasm, than from any other source. Rest in peace, Mr. Robert, and thank you.
October 23, 2025: I am deeply saddened by the death of Dave Ball, synthesizer wizard for Soft Cell. He was 66 years old. Soft Cell – essentially Ball and singer Marc Almond – was best known in the United States for “Tainted Love,” a cover of a soul single written in 1964 by Ed Cobb, which spent a then-record 43 consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, peaking at #8. “Tainted Love” was the 4th biggest single of the Second British Invasion, while its parent album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret ranked #25. Overall, Soft Cell ranked #21 among Second British Invasion artists.
More important than the chart success was the unique sound Ball crafted for Soft Cell. From the chirps and bloops of “Tainted Love” to the dark eerie drones of the instrumental bridge in “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go” and the slow-burning “Youth” to the sonic blast on songs like “Entertain Me,” “Chips on My Shoulder” and the incomparably dirty “Sex Dwarf,” nothing has ever sounded like Ball at the keyboard.
I first heard these sounds early in 1982, when Philadelphia’s WMMR (93.3 FM) played four tracks from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret late one night. They were dark, mysterious and alluring, hinting at thrilling nights in gloriously sleazy places. Being just 15 years old, I was a bit young for the real thing, so I cherished these sonic approximations.
If you have never heard Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret or such follow-up singles as “Soul Inside,” “What?” and “Torch,” do yourself a favor and track them down.
Rest in peace, Mr. Ball.
October 4, 2025: Topsy-turvy times: I turn to American politics to recover from a disappointing Philadelphia Phillies playoff game.
We are essentially at parity between the two major American parties:
September 28, 2025: Three baseball oddities, now that the regular MLB season has ended.
The last three teams to knock my Philadelphia Phillies out of the playoffs – the Houston Astros in the 2022 World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2023 National League Championship Series, and the New York Mets in the 2024 National League Division Series – were also the last three teams to be eliminated from playoff contention in 2025.
The top four National League seeds in 2025 – Milwaukee Brewers, Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs – were also the four National League teams to make the playoffs in 2008, the last time the Phillies won the World Series.
The Phillies as an offense won the National League “triple crown” – Trea Turner (.304) led the league in batting average, while Kyle Schwarber led in home runs (56) and RBI (132). As for the pitching triple crown, a Phillie placed 2nd in wins (15, Jesus Luzardo [tied with Logan Webb]; Freddy Peralta: 17), 3rd in ERA (2.50, Cristopher Sanchez; Paul Skenes: 1.97) and 2nd in strikeouts (216, Luzardo [tied with Skenes]; Webb: 224). All in all, a remarkable year for the Phightin’s, who finish 2nd in MLB with 96 wins – one behind the Brewers.
See you in Citizens Bank Park (metaphorically) on October 4!
September 26, 2025: After the 2024 elections, as I note in the September 18 entry below, I took a hiatus from political news. I thus missed the closure of the pioneering data-driven website FiveThirtyEight.com in March. Just Bear With Me was directly inspired by the innovative statistical analysis performed by Nate Silver (and, whatever you think of him personally, his book is a must-read for anyone interested in clear-eyed critical thinking) and his colleagues. I owe them an unpayable debt.
As do we all, because – whatever the political leanings of its individual contributors – the site was committed to presenting the unvarnished truth gleaned from a careful analysis of data. When the pundit class assumed Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in 2016, Silver was the only one I recall correctly saying, “Whoa, not so fast. ABSOLUTELY Trump can win.”
This is why the demise of FiveThirtyEight – a genuinely independent source of political analysis (unlike the blatanly pro-Republican RealClearPolitics) – is profoundly disquieting from a small-d democratic perspective. I freely and happily admit that I am a strong partisan liberal Democrat, but I scrupulously try to keep my personal views out of the political data analysis I publish on Just Bear With Me. If the data point to a great election for Republicans, I will write that. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer political journalists are so scrupulous, particularly when the Trump Administration openly tries to suppress anything contrary to its preferred point of view. (Welcome back, Jimmy Kimmel.)
And the answer is not a Democratic version of Fox News (sorry, MSNBC). That is simply having an elephant and a donkey constantly screaming at each other in different languages, while the rest of the menagerie covers its ears in dismay. No, the answer is the elimination of any partisan bias in news reporting – what CNN was as recently as 2004 and what FiveThirtyEight always was, even when owned by The New York Times and ABC (read: Disney).
There is a telling moment in All the President’s Men, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. While interviewing Hugh Sloan (Stephen Collins), treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) notes that he, too, is a Republican. Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) gives him a quick glance that reveals this is news to him. As it should have been, because Woodward’s political leanings – or Bernstein’s, or mine – have nothing to do with being a journalist, or the curator of a website that periodically presents analyses of political data. Woodward strove tirelessly to bring to light serious wrongdoing within his own party, because he was a journalist first and a Republican second. I will always do my best to be a data analyst first and a Democrat second.
Democracy – small-d – has many enemies: apathy, cowardice and tribalism chief among them. To defend democracy, then, we the citizenry must always remain engaged, unbowed and clear-eyed, willing to put country over party, truth over what makes us feel good.
September 23, 2025: How likely is it that Democrats net win at least three seats in the United States House of Representatives (“House”) in 2026, giving them a majority for the first time in four years – and making Hakeem Jeffries the first black Speaker of the House?
As of now, much more likely than not, despite whatever shenanigans Republicans in Texas and elsewhere attempt.
The graphic above shows the probability Democrats net at least three House seats based upon how much their margin in the total vote cast for House nationwide changes from 2024, when they lost nationally by 2.7 percentage points (“points”). These probabilities are based upon an ordinary least squares regression of seat change on vote change, using data from 1970-2024. I estimated two equations, one for all elections, and one for midterm elections only. As you can see, they barely differ.
If the Democrats simply break even in 2026, that would be a 2.7-point improvement, giving them a >90% chance of regaining the House (albeit roughly even if Texas Republicans flip five House seats).
As of late September 2005, Democrats lead the generic ballot by (at least) 3.6 points. If that were the actual margin in 2026, Democrats would improve by 6.3 points from 2024. This would make them, essentially, a 100% lock to retake the House, netting 19 seats (+/-8 with 95% confidence). Even if the Democrats ultimately need to flip a net eight seats, that is more than enough.
To be clear, this is not a prediction. It is simply a baseline expectation based upon recent electoral history.
September 20, 2025: Four teams have clinched a spot in the 2025 Major League Baseball playoffs: Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers and Philadephia Phillies. These are the same four National League teams who made the playoffs in 2008, the last time my Phillies won the World Series.
This might be the first time as many as four teams in one league clinched playoff spots before any team in the other league did. The Toronto Blue Jays have a magic number of 3, so they will clinch a playoff spot within a few days, possibly before the National League’s San Diego Padres, with a magic number of 4.
[Update: That is precisely what happened.]
September 18, 2025: As I return to analyzing electoral data after almost a year of battery-recharging, here is the updated map of state partisan lean. For each state, I show how much more less Democratic a state’s presidential vote has been over the last three presidential elections, weighted for recency (1 for 2016, 3 for 2020, 5 for 2025). You can read a fuller analysis here, but the underlying electoral geography of the United States remains remarkably stable, with Michigan (R+0.9), Pennsylvania (R+1.7) and Wisconsin (R+1.4) still the key swing states.
September 10, 2025: Night Scenes III – the third collection of photos and short videos I took at night, mostly in the Boston area – is now on YouTube.
September 6, 2025: Twenty years ago today, I walked onto the lot of Cambridge Honda, on Fresh Pond Parkway in Cambridge, MA, for the first time. My 1995 Buick Century, which I had received used when I moved to the Philadelphia area four years earlier, had died only a days after I moved back to the Boston area. A recent inheritance had me in the financial position to pay for a new car in a single installment.
Earlier that day, I had test-driven a Toyota Corolla in Arlington. I liked it well enough, but what I had read from Consumer Reports made me want to test-drive a Honda Accord as well. On the Cambridge Honda lot, I spied a black 2005 model.
It was love at first sight, and I drove it off the lot later that afternoon.
On September 6, 2015, I celebrated 10 years of ownership with these photographs. Amazingly, I crossed the 100,000 miles driven mark that day.
Now, 10 years and a bit less than 39,000 more miles driven later, my Accord still runs beautifully. Sure, it is a little more dinged up, the interior roof is coming apart, and it leaks power steering fluid. But that is just a question of some body work and minimal repair: I still take my Accord to Cambridge Honda for routine maintenance. It helps that for the last decade I primarily drive it in the summer, when my wife Nell takes her 2016 Honda Pilot to Martha’s Vineyard for a few months.
Will my beloved 2005 Honda Accord last another decade? Stay tuned.
September 4, 2025: I recently “interrogated memory” for someone other than my wife Nell and me. Turns out the woman – a close friend – is Nell’s 8th cousin, once removed. Meanwhile, Nell and I are genetic 11th cousins, twice removed. And I appear to a 41-great-grandson of the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. It is one thing, as Adam Rutherford snarkily observes, to say that the vast majority of persons of genetic northwestern European descent are linked to Charlemagne. It is another thing to show your work:April 1, 2025: I updated my 100 favorite films essay. An updated YouTube video will appear…at some point.
March 29, 2025: My second collection of night photographs – Night Scenes II – is now on YouTube.
March 27, 2025: This is the 100th month Just Bear With Me has been active. Beginning with this essay on December 19, 2016, I have published roughly three essays, averaging 2,814 words, each month. Overall, Just Bear With Me has garnered an average of just under 530 views per month.
After averaging 44 posts per year – nearly four per month – from 2017 to 2022, though, I have far more often opted for shorter “blog posts” on the Just Bear With Me home page. Since January 2023, when I launched my YouTube channel, I have published just 20 essays, or less than one per month. That said, mean essay length increased from 2,423 (2016-2020) to 3,702 words (2021-2025), while mean monthly views increased from 267 (2016-2019) to 678 (2020-2025).
Ranking Every Charlie Chan Film, with over 7,500 views, is by far the most-viewed essay I have published. Essays 2 -4 – all addressing Emerson College polling – have just over 7,000 views combined. Three other essays have also garnered at least 1,000 views: Film Noir: A Personal Journey, HIGH FIDELITY: A misognystic example of how NOT to interrogate memory and Sybil: A brief, dramatic epilogue. These latter essays exemplify how I weave together history and culture with stories from my own life to make a larger point.
I am very proud of the work I have done – and will continue to do – on this website, especially in the area of “interrogating memory.” I am grateful to every single person who has visited this website, and I hope you will continue to bear with me.
January 16, 2025: A part of me died today.
About 10 years ago, I caught a snippet of an interview Jay Leno did with David Lynch. Leno asked him if he was always, you know, DAVID LYNCH. No, he replied, adding (probably) something about being an Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana.
So, what happened? pressed Leno.
I went to Philadelphia.
My admiration for David Lynch grew exponentially in that moment, and – until a few hours ago – he was my favorite living director (that honor now passes to Christopher Nolan). I have seen all 10 of his feature films, most of his smaller films – including The Alphabet and Rabbits – and all of Twin Peaks. In fact, I watched The Return twice. I bought and read Lynch on Lynch and Room to Dream. I watched The Cinema Cartography’s outstanding 2-hour-long video essay. And then I watched it again. Along with Corn Pone Flicks’ outstanding takes on Lost Highway and Inland Empire.
So, of course, when I needed a way to introduce what I mean by “interrogating memory” in the Preface to my first book, I chose some dialogue from Lost Highway.
Early in David Lynch’s neo-noir film Lost Highway, Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) talks to two police detectives about mysterious videotapes he and his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) received in the mail. One detective asks if they own a video camera.
“No. Fred hates them,” replies Renee, to which Fred adds, “I like to remember things my own way.” Pressed, Fred elaborates: “How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.”
The remainder of the film reveals the surreal lengths Fred will go to remember things his own way, a theme Lynch later explored even more brilliantly in Mulholland Drive.
By contrast, I strive in this book to be the video camera Fred desperately wants to avoid. Spurred initially by the deceptively-simple question, “Why do you love film noir?” I began to write a straightforward account of the roots of my fandom. As I did so, though, I realized I needed to contextualize those roots through my suburban Philadelphia Jewish upbringing, the lives of my parents, and the lives of their parents, two of whom had left what was then called the Pale of Settlement as young boys to live in Philadelphia.
I also reference Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Eraserhead in Interrogating Memory. The Lynchian well runs very deep.
I always hoped I would meet David Lynch some day – perhaps talk about Philadelphia – but, sadly, no.
Rest in peace, Mr. Lynch. You made the world a vastly more interesting place with your surreal and uncompromising vision.
[Note: here is a longer essay about my love for David Lynch.]
January 15, 2025: Water inside the the flower holder had frozen, so I had to leave the flowers in front of the memorial. Has it really been 78 years?
January 11, 2025: I decry “the instinctive fictionalization of history” here. One needs to accurately relate a bit of history before turning it into a work of fiction. As a historian, I applaud the cinematic interrogations of YouTube channels like History Buffs which separat fact from fiction in “history-based” films. As a citizen of a democratic polity, I fear we are losing the ability to distinguish the two.
Thus, it may seem like the height of hypocrisy to say that I adore Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s cinematic retelling of the 90 minutes prior to the debut of Saturday Night Live – then called NBC’s Saturday Night – on October 11, 1975. This is despite its glaring inaccuracies: Dick Ebersol never told Lorne Michaels that NBC executives “want you to fail” (or, at least, not in a stairwell at 30 Rockefeller Plaza that night), Milton Berle was not in Rockefeller Plaza that night, there was no NBC program called The Rumpus Room in 1975, Don Pardo did not announce the names of the individual cast members in the first episode (though, to be fair, he could have practiced their names that night), the bricks were laid on the set by 11 pm – not with minutes to spare, cast member George Coe is nowhere to be seen, Herb Schlosser first coined the phrase “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” (not Dave Tebet), and a rerun of “The Tonight Show” was not cued up for airplay at 11:30 pm. And I suspect Johnny Carson did not telephone Lorne Michaels to tell him he was being set up to fail.
So, why aren’t I upset at this film?
To be honest, I delayed watching the film because of what I already knew was inaccurate. Then curiosity got the best of me, and Nell and I streamed it a week or so ago. We loved it. It is well-crafted, -written and -acted. The pacing is relentless – that 11:30 pm deadline looms over everything – but never rushed. The cinematography is evocated, the camera work fluid, if a bit vertigo-inducing at times. As GenX-ers, we cheered as icon after icon was introduced (even though, when the episodes originally aired, I chose to watch the Charlie Chan movie on Philadelphia’s Channel 48) – while every Easter Egg (like the Julia Child skit) fed our nostalgia.
And maybe that is it – for now, at least, I can suspend my historian’s disbelief because so much nostalgia gets joyfully packed into the film. While episodes may have been condensed – or even invented – in service of a larger narrative, the basic storyline is correct. The clock really was ticking, all those icons (other than Berle) really were there that night, and the chaos was real. Other than Finn Wolfhard’s resourceful page, there are no invented characters, and – other than George Coe and a nearly-invisible Anne Beats – every key player has his/her moment onscreen, down to writers Herb Sargent, Tom Schiller and Alan Zweibel.
In other words, Saturday Night gets vastly more correct than not. It treats the actual people and events of that 90 minutes with realistic dignity – not as “characters” and “incidents” to be repurposed into a mediocre work of fiction. Following the precepts of interrogating memory, I continue to evaluate under what specific circumstances the fictionalization of history upsets me.
January 10, 2025: If I had the chance to vote for the 2025 inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, I would select four members of the oh-so-close 2005 Philadelphia Phillies – Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Billy Wagner – plus Carlos Beltran, Mark Buehrle, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, C.C. Sabathia and Ichiro Suzuki. I could be talked into replacing Buehrle with Francisco Rodriguez.
December 8, 2024: My May 2017 essay “Film Noir: A Personal Journey” – the inspiration for my INTERROGATING MEMORY book – has now been viewed 1,000 times. To show you how much things can change, in July 2017, “Personal Journey” became the first essay on my five-months-old website to reach 100 views, but today it is the seventh to reach 1,000 views.
Thank you to every single reader!
December 6, 2024: I accepted an invitation to address the monthly meeting of the New England chapter of Mystery Writers of America in the Brookline Public Library on January 8, 2025. I am deeply humbled by this honor. The topic is the January 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short (aka The Black Dahlia). This essay is one reason I was invited. Another is my desire to remember Ms. Short as a human being, not as a grotesque caricature: twice a year, I quietly place flowers by the memorial which sits near where her childhood home on Salem Street in Medford, MA used to be.
November 6, 2024: As I process the still evolving 2024 elections, I archived my Election Dashboard and relevant Blog posts here.
September 30, 2024: Based on the elegant metric IP/Opposition OPS, Zack Wheeler (Philadelphia Phillies) was the best pitcher in the National League in 2024. Wheeler threw 200.0 innings with a 0.581 OPS against, while Chris Sale (Atlanta Braves) has thus far thrown 177.2 innings with a 0.588 OPS against; he will likely have one more start today against the New York Mets. Wheeler thus tops Sale 344.2 to 302.2. Even if Sale threw a complete game and lowered his OPS against to 0.580, he would still be well short of Wheeler at 321.8. Yes, Sale went 18-3 with a 2.38 ERA and 225 K, while Wheeler went 16-7 with a 2.56 ERA and 224 K – but this is not a meaningful enough difference to overcome Wheeler making at least two more starts and throwing at least 13.1 more innings, all with a lower OPS against.
In other words, Zack Wheeler SHOULD win the 2024 National League Cy Young Award, with Sale a strong 2nd.
September 20, 2024: Congratulations to my Philadelphia Phillies, who just clinched a spot in the 2024 playoffs! If they win either of the next two games against the New York Mets, they will win the National League East for the first time since 2011.
August 25, 2024: My latest YouTube video – Night Scenes – is an experiment. It is a series of more than 130 photographs and two short videos I took at night over the past decade or so. Other than being arranged in five groups (Wicked Local, Eateries, Elsewhere in the City, Light Up the Night, Investigations and Whatnots) and set to the music of “Duke” Ellington, there is no story – only image. I hope you enjoy it!
August 23, 2024: In July 1992, my cousin and I went to New York City to be part of the Democratic National Convention (“DNC”) festivities. Friends I had made the previous summer at the Young Democrats’ convention were also there, working as convention pages. The hotel screwed up our reservation, so my cousin and I were upgraded to a multi-room suite. It was, in fact, sweet.
That convention was a four-day celebration – both on the floor of the convention hall and in our suite. After Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech, Democrats were cautiously optimisitic they were about to end a cycle that saw that them lose five times in six elections, often by landslide margins. The very next day, though, H. Ross Perot ended his independent presidential candidacy and endorsed Clinton. My cousin and I happened to sitting in the lobby with some Perot supporters, and we all just sort of looked at each other in wonder and amazement – we could already feel a big victory brewing.
The 1992 DNC, though, pales in comparison to what I watched in Chicago the last four days. To be fair, the stakes were not nearly as high in 1992. From my perspective, at least, President George H. W. Bush had served honorably as president, flawlessly overseeing the end of the Cold War, capturing Panamian dictator Manuel Noriega, negotiating a historic budget deal with Congress (contributing to his defeat), and organizing an international coalition to repel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It was simply that Democrats wanted to pursue a very different policy agenda, and I supported that agenda.
This year, though, the Republicans have re-re-nominated former President Donald Trump, a would-be autocrat and self-serving con artist who is only running for president to avoid significant jail time after being indicted on 91 counts in four jurisidictions; he has already been convicted by a jury on 34 of them. Trump has promised to use the power of the federal government to punish his enemies while he exchanges love letters with brutal tyrants.
And he desperately wanted to face President Joe Biden.
Instead, after two of the most tumultuous months in American political history, Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris and the most unified and organized Democratic Party of my lifetime. The Dunce of Darkness is up against unbridled joy, unlimited enthusiasm, and untold numbers of what Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calls “future former Republicans.” Moreover, the DNC showcased dozens of remarkable young stars – including Buttigieg – whereas the Republican National Convention mostly showcased Trump family members.
Our lobby klatsch was correct in its feeling: Clinton beat Bush by 5.6 percentage points (“points”), winning the Electoral College 370-168. Sixteen years later, another raucous DNC nominated Illinois Senator Barack Obama to face Arizona Senator John McCain – another honorable man who lived a life of exemplary public service. Obama won by 7.3 points (365-173).
Trump is no Bush, and he is no McCain.
Does this mean Harris will win by far more than the 4.5 points and 306 electoral votes (“EV”) Biden and Harris did in 2020? Probably not, given how much smaller the electoral playing field has become. That said, just after the Iraq War, Bush had an approval rating near 90%. The idea that ANY Democrat would win 370 EV just one year later was dismissed as a pipe dream. And the first polls in late August 2008 showed a very close race between Obama and McCain.
Perhaps something similarly transformational will, in fact, happen with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. We will know in less than 11 weeks. Buckle up and eat your Wheaties, as Rachel Maddow might say.
August 12, 2024: Here are two more examples of “interrogating memory.”
For decades, I recalled that the Denny’s restaurant to which my then-girlfriend and I drove late one weekend night in the late 1990s was in New Bedford, MA. I was absolutely convinced of this. However, when I searched for its location online, I learned that the only Denny’s in the area is a relatively new one 15 miles west in Fall River and the one it replaced was also in Fall River. How do I know? Because I have a national directory printed in 1996 listing its address as 211 Milliken Boulevard, just off I-195, in Fall River; I also find no record of a Denny’s in New Bedford in newspapers of the time. I do not know why my memory placed this restaurant in New Bedford.
Meanwhile, in Chapter 10 of my Interrogating Memory book, I describe an April 1984 drive from Philadelphia into Trenton, NJ with three friends. As I drove north on US-1, we heard “Hold Me Now” by Thompson Twins on the car radio. In those days, I tracked the Billboard music charts very closely, and since then I was certain that song peaked at #4. Well, when I examined the Billboard singles charts to research the Second British Invasion, I learned the song peaked at #3. Curiously, “Hold Me Now” had just reached #4 when I drove the four of us to Pat’s Dinerl that was what stuck in my memory.
While neither example is earth-shatteringly important, each reveals the fragility of memory and the importance of independent verification using trustworthy primary sources.
July 29, 2024: Elizabeth Short would have been 100 years old today. If the name is unfamiliar, it is because history knows her as “The Black Dahlia,” victim of one of the most brutal unsolved murders of the 20th century.
As I have for the past few years, I put flowers on the memorial marker in Medford, MA, where she was raised, at midnight. This time I stayed exactly 10 minutes – one minute for each decade of potential life.
July 25, 2024: As I prepare a data-driven essay about Vice President Kamala Harris’ choices to be her running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, I encourage you to cast votes for this choice on my YouTube channel. I divided 16 possible contenders into four “buckets”: Swing-State White Men, Another Woman, Young Guns and Pennsylvania-Pennsylvania-Pennsylvania. I put a random choice from each “bucket” into a series of four matchups. The winners of these four matchups will face off in a final matchup.
June 29, 2024: I recently posted this YouTube video. It serves as a companion to this essay on the top albums of the Second British Invasion.
June 20, 2024: I recently posted this YouTube video. It serves as a companion to this essay on the top albums of the Second British Invasion.
Meanwhile, there are now 25 live votes on my YouTube channel as I playfully recast the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“MCU”) using 80s music stars. The most recent vote is for Taneleer Tivan, aka The Collector.
June 9, 2024: I just posted a YouTube video which serves as a companion to this essay on the top singles of the Second British Invasion.
June 4, 2024: If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you can participate in the just-for-fun recasting of Marvel’s Avengers using 80s music stars. There are currently eight live votes: four nominees for each of Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Nick Fury and – just posted – Loki.
I look forward to seeing your votes over there!
May 27, 2024: While I am apprehensive about the impact on human-generated creativity by expanded use of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), I do enjoy AI-generated reimagining of film franchises using performers from other eras and/or set in different times.
In that spirit, I just launched a series of polls on my YouTube channel. Their aim is to recast Marvel’s Avengers using 80s music stars. Starting with the “First Avenger” – Captain America (Steve Rogers) – I present four nominees: Jon Bon Jovi, Huey Lewis, John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.
While polls do not expire, I will report results from each poll 48 hours after they go live.
May 7, 2024: My Doctor Noir YouTube channel, which I launched in January 2023, just crossed 1,000 subscribers. I am grateful for every subscriber and for the nearly 63,000 views my 13 videos have earned. Two-thirds of those views are on my Top 100 Films Noir video, of which I am very proud.
May 6, 2024: I no longer include polls of “all adults” when I calculate my weighted-adjusted polling averages (“WAPA“). This has minimal impact, as I only removed 11 polls – nine presidential election, one generic ballot and one Florida Senate race – from my Excel workbooks.
May 5, 2024: After careful consideration, I deleted my Bluesky and Instagram accounts. Social media has become irredeemably toxic and anxiety-inducing, and I feel there are better uses of time and energy. Along those lines, I expect to have new videos on my YouTube channel within a week or so, as I continue to work on the Measuring the Unmeasurable essay series.
April 15, 2024: I recently resumed my autodidactic cinephilia by exploring the experimental short films of Maya Deren – I was mesmerized by Meshes of the Afternoon, which I have since watched half a dozen times (along with brilliant modern reconstructions) – Mary Ellen Bute, Walter Ruttmann, James Broughton, Stan Brakhage and others. From the latter, I was particularly moved by his earlier black-and-white films Interim and Reflections on Black. I also rewatched the wonderfully absurd Un Chien Andalou.
I also watched, for the first time, two Italian neorealist masterpieces – Bicycle Thieves and Rome, Open City – and three films by French artist Jean Cocteau – The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus. The two Italian films were knockouts – especially the latter – showing how much you can accomplish with very little. My only criticism of Cocteau is that when he is not dazzling us with his mastery of camera trickery and dark beauty, his films are pedestrian, almost as though the “normal” scenes bored him to film. It is a bit of a slog to get through the early scenes of BATB, for example, but once we are in The Beast’s castle, we are in an entirely different – and truly wondrous – film. While all three are very good, BOAP was the most interesting (to me) because it is entirely experimental.
April 2, 2024: I am heartbroken by the passing of American actor and writer Joe Flaherty. He died at the age of 82 on April 1, 2024.
I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the first season of the fresh and quirky Canadian sketch comedy show called SCTV around the time it aired in Canada because it was shown on WHYY, Philadelphia’s PBS station, within a year of its 1977 debut. The opening credits of the show, set to Spike Jones’ irreverent version of “Dance of the Hours,” introduced the world to the extraordinary comic talents of Flaherty, as well as John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, and “Dave Thomas as The Beaver.” The show’s setting in a television studio in the fictional American town of Melonville provided the cast – all of whom had emerged from the Second City improvisational comedy troupes of Chicago, IL and Toronto, Ontario, Canada – with an endless array of shows, movies, and commercials on which to riff. Each each cast member also created his/her own original and memorable characters. Throughout the show’s run, which later moved to NBC in 1981 for three highly successful seasons, Flaherty brought to life acerbic local news anchor Floyd Robertson (opposite Levy’s inept and dim-witted Earl Camembert), “Monster Chiller Horror Theatre” host Count Floyd, tight-fisted and unnecessarily wheelchair-bound station owner Guy Caballero, talk show host Sammy Maudlin, and Big Jim McBob, the co-host (with Candy’s Billy Sol Hurok) of “Celebrity Farm Report” – a segment where celebrities would be humorously blown up.
Following his time on SCTV, Flaherty continued to find steady work in film and television, often in smaller roles. Two of my favorites include the Western Union delivery man at the end of Back to the Future, Part 2 and as General Raymond (Curtis Armstrong’s military-obsessed father) in One Crazy Summer.
In interviews, Flaherty, who frequently portrayed exasperated characters reaching a slow boil, came across as warm, generous, and a bit shy. He cherished his time on SCTV, even as he always seemed a bit surprised by its success. Flaherty could convey more with a raised eyebrow or a bemused sneer than many performers can with an entire script. His comic delivery was all the more impressive given that he appeared more comfortable with writing than performing.
In summary, the world has lost a comedic virtuoso, and one of its genuinely good individuals – a man who was genuinely funny without ever resorting to being petty or mean-spirited. Rest in peace, Mr. Flaherty.
For anyone who has never seen SCTV, I wholeheartedly encourage you to find and watch episodes – or even just snippets – on YouTube. For my money, the cast – which later included Robin Duke, Rick Moranis, Tony Rosato and Martin Short – was the greatest comic ensemble ever assembled.
March 19, 2024: Businessman Bernie Moreno wins the Republican Senate Primary in Ohio. He will face incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown in November. Brown currently has a 64.9% chance to win reelection. Democratic Senate nominees are favored by at least that amount in every seat they are defending except West Virginia (0.0%). If this holds, and no Republican-held seats flip Democratic, the Senate would again be tied 50-50, with the newly-elected vice president breaking the tie.
March 8, 2024: Here are some updates on polling and projections for the 2024 election.
FiveThirtyEight.com has updated its pollster ratings; Rasmussen Reports no longer meets its criteria for analytic inclusion. I thus removed two presidential election polls, one Arizona Senate election poll and one generic ballot poll conducted after January 1, 2024 from my analytic dataset. The net effect is to improve slightly the prospects for President Biden and congressional Democrats, both of whom are projected to win the total national vote by about 0.4 percentage points.
The decision by U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) not to seek reelection means Democratic House Member Ruben Gallego now has a 79.0% chance to win this Senate seat over Republican former television personality Kari Lake (assuming they win their party’s nominations).
Democrat Josh Stein and Republican Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor, respectively, won their party’s nomination for governor. This race shifts to toss-up, with Stein having a 33.6% chance to win. At this stage of the election, I count as a toss-up any probability between 33.3 and 66.7%.
Democratic House Member Colin Allred will face Republican Senator Ted Cruz this November. As of now, Allred has an 11.7% chance to win.
Finally, Democratic House Member Adam Schiff will face Republican former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey for an open Senate seat in California. Schiff has as close to a 100% chance of winning as is possible to calculate.
February 22, 2024: The entry of popular former Republican Maryland governor Larry Hogan into that state’s open election for U.S. Senate has made the Democrats’ job of retaining the Senate even harder. Based on one high-quality poll (Emerson College) and one strategically-released internal poll, this election, once certain to be won by a Democrat, is now a toss-up (albeit ever so slightly leaning Democratic).
February 13, 2024: Former Detroit Chief of Police James Craig has ended his campaign for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Michigan. As a result, Democratic U.S. House Member Elissa Slotkin now has a 75% chance to retain this Senate seat – being vacated after four terms by Debbie Stabenow – for Democrats. This is a slight increase from 72%.
February 8, 2024: As I ponder making one or more “Film Noir Cinematic Universe” videos, I recall that Lloyd Nolan played FBI Inspector George A. Briggs in both The House on 92nd Street and The Street With No Name. Meaning these films take place in the same universe. (I would like to think his Lt. Donald Kendall in Somewhere in the Night and his Lt. DeGarmot in Lady in the Lake are Briggs undercover.)
Moreover, we know that Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto exist in the same universe. Why? Because Keye Luke played Lee Chan in eight Charlie Chan films (opposite Warner Oland) AND in Mr. Moto’s Gamble. Charlie Chan films are not noir, though – in my telling – the 1939-42 Fox films were a key influence on its development. So, why not put Lee and Jimmy Chan in a larger Film Noir Cinematic Universe?
January 9, 2024: I posted my first YouTube video of 2024. In it, I briefly discuss what makes a film a “guilty pleasure” then present my top 25 “guilty pleasure” films (plus three Honorable Mentions).
December 10, 2023: Please see the new “BOOK WRITING UPDATES” section on my home page to learn how I am revising Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own into one or more new books.
November 10, 2023: While I still encourage you to read and enjoy Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own, I realize now I tried to do a bit too much in a single book: tell my family stories, discuss the life of Herman Modell, explain how I learned about my legal family, present a reimagining of film noir, and describe my childhood and early adulthood from multiple perspectives. While these things are united by the theme of “investigate things you think you know thoroughly both to learn the truth and to uncover hitherto unknown stories,” it is a bit much. Highly entertaining, but a bit much.
At the same time, however, I was struck by how much folks – who began to read Interrogating Memory for the film noir pieces or the family history – enjoyed Chapters 7-11, in which I relate my history, albeit still following the structure laid out in the essay that inspired the book. One possibility is the shift in voice from third-person history to first-person narrative; for many reasons, the former is too-often considered boring, the latter exciting. Another is that, having lived these events, I can provide details lacking at times in the earlier chapters. Also, the film noir themse – almost entirely absent from Chapters 1-5 – is most apparent here, as each chapter is divided into “tales from my life” and “part x of ‘how Matt Berger became a film noir fan.'” And I tell genuinely entertaining stories.
November 8, 2023: Governor’s election polling follow-up.
In Kentucky on November 7, 2023, Democratic governor Andy Beshear won reelection over Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron 52.5% to 47.4%. This margin of 5.1 percentage points (“points”) is only 0.7 points higher than the final polling margin of 4.4 points (15 polls, B+ average rating, 10 non-partisan). The margin is fully 3.2 points higher than the average using only the five non-partisan polls.
That same day, Mississippi voters reelected Republican governor Tate Reeves 51.6% to 47.0% over Democratic Mississippi Public Service Comsission member Brandon Presley, with 1.4% going to Independent Gwendolyn Gray, who dropped out and endorsed Presley before her name could be removed from the ballot. The final polling average was 6.9 points (6 polls, B+, 2 non-partisan), meaning Reeves underperformed by 2.3 points. The two non-partisan polls – with the last conducted September 27 to October 2 – gave Reeves an 8.7-point lead, which translates to a 4.1-point underperformance.
Thus, while the overall polling averages slightly underestimated Democratic strength (mean difference 1.5 points), they were more accurate than the “non-partisan polls only” averages (3.6 points).
November 6, 2023: UPDATING 2023 governor’s election polling.
In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear has seen his lead over state Attorney General Daniel Cameron drop to 4.4 percentage points (“points;” 48.5% to 44.1%) in 15 public polls, as the overall quality of polls has dropped to B+. Only five of these polls (A-) were not conducted for a campaign, and only three have a median field data of October 1 or later. In these five polls, Beshear leads by 1.9 points (48.6% to 46.7%). The good news for Beshear is how close he remains to 50%, even as undecideds appear to be breaking hard for Cameron, meaning he is likely to win even if the reamining undecideds break 2-1 for Cameron.
Beshear remains favored to win reelection, though anything from a narrow Cameron victory to a high-single-digits win for Beshear is plausible.
In Louisiana, Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry won 51.6% of the vote in the all-candidate primary election on Saturday, October 14, meaning he won the election. Shawn Wilson, the Democratic former Secretary of the state’s Department of Transportation and Development, finished second with 25.9% of the vote. The final polling average showed all Republicans winning 52.3% and all Democrats winning 23.7%, suggesting Republicans consolidated late around Landry. Democrats combined slightly overperformed their polling average (28.5%; +4.8) though GOP overall did even better (65.5%: +13.2). This is a Republican pickup in governor’s mansions.
In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves’ lead over Democratic Mississippi Public Service Comsission member Brandon Presley dropped to 6.9 points (49.3% to 42.4%) from 9.2 points in six public polls averaging B+. Reeves is still strongly favored to win reelection despite the narrowing – with the caveat only one public poll of this election has been released since October 1, and that was conducted for the Presley campaign.
September 21, 2023: Since the November 2022 elections, I took a hiatus from polling summaries and other political analysis to work on my books. However, with the 2023 general elections just about seven weeks away, here is a brief synopsis of where the three gubernatorial elections stand:
In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear is running for reelection against Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In seven public polls released since January, Beshear leads Cameron by 5.2 percentage points (48.6% to 43.4%), using my weighted-adjusted polling average, or WAPA. While sparse, the polling is high quality, averaging A-/B+ using FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings. Despite Kentucky’s strong Republican lean, Beshear will very likely win reelection.
In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves is running for reelection against Democratic Mississippi Public Service Comsission member Brandon Presley (a second cousin of this guy). Despite scandals related to public spending, Reeves leads in four public polls (B/B+) by 9.2 percentage points (50.2% to 40.9%). Reeves could well win reelection by double digits.
In Louisiana, Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards is term-limited after eight years. The state uses a “jungle primary” system in which all candidates, regardless of political party, will appear on the Saturday, October 14 ballot. If no candidate tops 50%, the top two finishers advance to a Saturday, November 18 ballot. The only announced Democrat of note is Shawn Wilson, former Secretary of the state’s Department of Transportation and Development; in 14 public polls – averaging a mediocre B-/B – he averages 23.7%. Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry leads Republicans with 35.2%. Combined, however, all four primary Republican candidates average 52.1%. Thus, while Wilson and Landry are likely to face off on November 18, Landry has to be considered the overwhelming favorite to flip the governor’s mansion to the Republicans.
September 5, 2023: My recent “radio silence” is because I am revising Interrogating Memory (“IM”) into a mostly-new book called From Shtetl to Suburb: An Immigrant Jewish Journey Through Philadelphia. I acquired so much new information in the last year that, rather than make IM substantially longer than it already was, I chose to narrow the focus in a new book. Once it is complete (ish), I will re-query dozens of literary agents with a two-fer: Shtetl and its companion, a minimally-altered version of IM.
Also, as a proud natal Philadelphian, I am tired of NYC and Baltimore, thanks to great Barry Levinson films, getting all the “early 20th century immigrant” attention. Philadelphia’s Washington Avenue immigration station was the third largest arrival point during the 1881-1924 immigration wave (at least, until it was demolished in 1915). Thus, Philadelphia had multiple thriving Jewish communities.
These stories are woefully undertold – until now. 😉
July 24, 2023: You may now purchase a PDF containing Chapter 6 (So…What Is Film Noir, Again?), Appendix II (Annotated Film Noir Bibliography) and Appendix III (Films [Noir] Designated “Universal”) of my Interrogating Memory book through this website for just $5.
July 20, 2023: I am awed by the kindness and professionalism of some folks working at Philadelphia’s Drexel University. Revising Interrogating Memory into a better, less-expensive paperback release sent me back to what was called the Drexel Institute of Technology during the 1965-66 academic year. My genetic parents met at Drexel in the fall of 1965. According to his final resume, Grant Weldon Stivers took accounting classes that year. Alice Patricia “Pat” Dixon, who has not yet spoken to me, worked at Drexel in a yet-unknown position open to a woman just out of high school.
I first contacted the Office of the Dean of the LeBow College of Business to query where accounting students physically took classes those years. A gracous response let me to Matheson Hall, whose demolition in 2011 yielded a hidden time capsule from…1965! Then, a generous man in Drexel’s archives helped narrow my search further. Both went out of their way to help me, and I am grateful.
Along those lines, I have lately pondered opening Just Bear With Me to guest writers. About 10 years ago, a high school friend posed the idea of starting a modern literary salon. Nothing came of it, but the idea of a writer’s collaborative – a counterbalance to the zero-sum financial competition imposed by agents, outlets and publishers – stuck with me.
If this interests you, please contact me.
July 7, 2023 (2): Excepting my own Interrogating Memory book, he began cheekily, this is the best book I have read in years.
Kansas-born Louise Brooks appeared in 14 Hollywood silent films until she was lured to Berlin in 1929 by director G. W. Pabst – thankfully for film buffs – to star as Lulu in Die Buchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box). This film, and the subsequent Diary of a Lost Girl, made Brooks an international star. However, the autodidactic Brooks had a fierce intelligence and penchant for truth-telling that clashed with the Hollywood studio system, and she left Hollywood for good in 1940.
This collection of essays she wrote on film shows what could have been had Brooks found a way to write for a living. The evocative prose is clean and uncluttered, her memory is astonishing, and her even-handedness – Brooks has no scores to settle – is refreshing. And yet it is what film critic Lotte Eisner says in a quasi-Afterword called “A Witness Speaks” – albeit quoting Brooks herself – that most resonates with my own “interrogating memory” project (pg. 115):
“[Brooks] recently wrote to me on a postcard, not mincing words, ‘I shall write no more. Writing the truth for readers nourished on publicity rubbish is a useless exercise.’ We won’t contradict her. Nevertheless, what a pity that her lifelong concern for ‘truth’ is what is finally preventing her from giving to the world those truths it both needs and deserves.”
What I call “interrogating memory” has no spite, no grievance, no malice. It is merely what happens when you spend a lifetime evolving into a kind of professional skeptic, one whose skepticism is grounded in the epistemic underpinnings of epidemiology and the joy of discovering what can be learned following the obliteration of nonsensicial half-truths, legends and blatant falsehoods. Perhaps this is why I no longer enjoy reading fiction or watching historical fiction: why indulge in make-believe when there are so many far-more-compelling true stories to be learned?
Except that Eisner and Brooks intuit that many folks prefer the half-truths and myths – the “publicity rubbish” – to the truth.
Perhaps I intuited this as well. While what excites me most about IM is the explicit journey towards critical thinking, what I emphasize most about it to potential readers or in casual conversation, is the “look at all these wicked cool stories I learned and tell” aspect.
But – am I doing a patronizing disservice to these people?
That LULU IN HOLLYWOOD remains in print and still ranks relatively high on Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank is, I think, my answer.
July 7, 2023: Alas, I will not be showcasing my Interrogating Memory book at the debut NOIR CITY Philadelphia. Bob Trate, director of programming at Phoenixville’s gorgeous Colonial Theatre, has decided on a minimalist approach. I respect that decision, and I encourage everyone in the Philadelphia area to attend. I have not closed the door entirely on attending myself, though I have seen every film being screened and want to devote the summer to, among other projects, revising IM (see excerpt below). Thus, when NOIR CITY triumphantly returns to the Colonial next summer, I will have an even better book to showcase.
July 4, 2023 (2): To commemorate the day in 1776 the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed to the world (the actual signing took place on July 2), here is a new expert from Chapter 5 (Parallel Lines of Investigation Reveal My Genetic Parents) of my Interrogating Memory book. The Reuben Stivers I discuss is my genetic fifth-great-grandfather:
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began with battles in Lexington, MA and Concord, MA. That year, according to Stivers family lore, Reuben’s parents William and Elizabeth Stivers (neé King) moved south to Spotsylvania County, VA to escape Tory persecution.[i] By October, 16-year-old Reuben had enlisted in the Culpeper (VA) Minute Battalion commanded by Captain Joseph Spencer. On March 4, 1777, Reuben reenlisted as drummer and musician in Spencer’s 7th Virginia Regiment,[ii] serving in the battles of Brandywine Creek (September 11, 1777), Germantown (October 4) and Monmouth (June 28, 1778). Reuben was furloughed to Virginia from November 1777 to April 1778 and from December 1778 to June 1779, missing two winters in Valley Forge, PA, then honorably discharged in December 1779 by 7th Regiment Commander Colonel Alexander McClanahan. In 1782, he married 22-year-old Virginia-born Sarah Elizabeth Rozelle. The seventh of their eight children, Rozzelle Patrick, was born in Lexington on March 17, 1799. Eight years earlier, on November 4, 1791, Reuben Stivers had been seriously wounded during the Battle of Wabash River, limiting his ability to earn a living making drums. After applying for his American Revolution pension on June 17, 1818, he was awarded $8 a month ($161 in 2019). In the latter half of 1820, 60-year-old Sarah Stivers died in their Hart Farm home (Fayette County, KY). Reuben lived seven more years, dying at the age of 68 on November 25, 1827.
[i] Schwartz, R. A., ed., THE STIVERS FAMILY HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL JOURNAL, Issue #1, February 29, 1948. They may have first settled in Lancaster, PA in the mid-1760s.
[ii] Some records, including Reuben Stivers’ 1819 petition to receive a Revolutionary War pension, say he reenlisted in 1776, but the June 1777 Company Muster Roll for the 7th Regiment clearly states he reenlisted on March 4, 1777.
July 4, 2023: Happy Independence Day! Here is my new video in my Noir By the Numbers series – Top 25 Film Noir Actresses!
July 2, 2023: Everything connects. Everything.
Thanks to a great message I received today though my Contact page, I explored an Idaho suburb of Spokane, WA on Google Maps. Seeing Washington state, I recalled the magnificent Ella Raines – featured in my upcoming YouTube channel Top 25 Film Noir Actresses video – was born in Snoqualmie Falls, WA in 1920. Curious, I searched for the town on Google Maps. The first photograph I saw looked VERY familiar.
“Holy s**t,” I exclaimed, “those are the falls featured in the opening credits of Twin Peaks.” A little maneuvering on Google Maps brought me to The Salish Lodge and Spa, whose exterior was used for “The Great Northern Hotel;” the lodge adjoins the falls. A quick Google search told me that Snoqualmie and the neighboring towns of Fall City and North Bend were stand-ins for the mythical Twin Peaks, WA.
Which naturally led me to search for Twede’s Cafe in North Bend – the actual Double R diner owned and operated by Norma Jennings (the late great Peggy Lipton) in all three seasons.
And now I want a damn fine piece of cherry pie and a cup or three of fresh hot black coffee.
June 21, 2023: Every so often, we learn something fairly mundane that we nonetheless find very encouraging, renewing our optimism that events will proceed how we hope.
I am negotiating with Bob Trate, Director of Programming for The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, PA on how best – if at all – to highlight my Interrogating Memory book at the first-ever NOIR CITY Philadephia, which starts one month ago today.
While idly looking at area hotels on Google Maps, I clicked on the area of Ridge Pike in Limerick where the Limerick Diner used to be. Once a favorite 24-hour haunt, it permanently closed in 2020, another victim of COVID-19.
Or…so I thought.
Much to my surprise and delight, it reopened under new management in February 2023. It may not be open 24/7 anymore, but it is a step in the right direction.
June 3, 2023: I am taking a break from revising my Interrogating Memory book to immerse myself in the songs and videos of the early 1980s – essentially, my high school years/first Reagan Administration. Fun fact – I own (on my iTunes) the top 14 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 from the week I turned…14 (September 28 – October 4, 1980).
#14. “You’ll Accomp’ny Me” Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
#13. “All Over the World” Electric Light Orchestra
#12. “Fame” Irene Cara
#11. “Real Love” The Doobie Brothers
#10. “Xanadu” Olivia Newton-John/Electric Light Orchestra
#9. “Lookin’ For Love” Johnny Lee
#8. “I’m Alright” Kenny Loggins
#7. “Woman In Love” Barbara Streisand
#6. “Late In the Evening” Paul Simon
#5. “Drivin’ My Life Away” Eddie Rabbitt
#4. “Give Me the Night” George Benson
#3. “Upside Down” Diana Ross
#2. “All Out of Love” Air Supply [Oops, I thought I had this, but I do not…oh well.]
#1. “Another One Bites the Dust” Queen
Curiously, six of these songs (13, 12, 10, 9, 8, 6) are from movie soundtracks. This is also a very backward-looking list, as only Air Supply and Irene Cara are chart newcomers in 1980. For what it’s worth, I own two of the Top 10 albums that week: Panorama (The Cars) and Hold Out (Jackson Browne) – and 10 of the Top 50.
May 20, 2023: When my genetic father Grant Weldon Stivers was a junior at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, MD, he escorted a sophomore named Lucy F. Sanderson to the Sno-Ball. Ms. Sanderson was one of 10 vying to be crowned Sno-Ball Queen; she was not selected. The date was December 16, 1961. Providing “dreamy music” that evening was Lee Maxfield and his Orchestra. Curious about Mr. Maxfield, I searched Newspapers.com and learned he was a fairly popular band leader in the area.
One particular advertisement struck me, though (October 18, 1962 Montgomery County [MD] Sentinel, pg. 18):
“Dress optional,” really? What was up with the Women of the Moose? And why was I not invited…oh, right, I would not be born for another four years.
May 19, 2023: A month or two ago, for various reasons, I began to watch episodes of the 1950s-1960s panel game show What’s My Line? While Arlene Francis and Bennet Cerf were solid, I was particularly struck by how quick-witted and intelligent columnist Dorothy Kilgallen was. Only recently, though, did I learn she died in her Manhattan townouse on November 8, 1965 from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. She was only 52 years old.
And then I learned Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists are convinced she was murdered because of what Jack Ruby had told her in a private conversation in his jail cell, after his arrest for the murder of alleged Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (I write “alleged” solely because Oswald never had a trial). Or something like that, anyway.
Curious, and always on the lookout for ways to promote my notion of “interrogating memory,” I systematically searched on Newspapers.com for mentions of her starting with the announcement of her death.
What I wanted to learn was – just when and how did a tragic death morph into a murder?
Stay tuned…
[June 21, 2023 update: The answer begins with Kilgallen’s death being included on a list of “10 mysterious deaths…indirectly related to” the Kennedy assassination published in Ramparts magazine around October 25, 1966, in an article written by Penn Jones, Jr. – publisher of the Midlothian Mirror in suburban Dallas – and David Welsh. Jones, something of a gadfly, appears to have concocted this list himself. The first public suggestion Kilgallen was murdered, though, came just over one year later. After addressing about 500 students at the University of Missouri at Kansas City on the evening of November 29, 1967 about his book Rush to Judgment, a critique of the Warren Commission investigation, Mark Lane answered questions from students at a reception. One young man asked him, “Was Dorothy Kilgallen killed because of what she knew?” (There is no record of Lane’s answer.) For more see Jones, Harry, “Mark Lane Finds Friends at U.M.K.C.,” The Kansas City Times (Kansas City, MO), November 30, 1967, pg. 15A.]
May 16, 2023: Noir By the Numbers returns with a countdown of the actors most often associated with film noir. Enjoy!
May 9, 2023: The first-ever NOIR CITY Philadelphia will be held at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, PA from July 21 to July 23, 2023. I cannot think of a more perfect venue in which to showcase my book Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own. The book was not only inspired by the question “Why do you love film noir?” it is a heart-felt love letter to the city where I was born way back in 1966. I then grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and while I have lived most of my adult life in the Boston area, I still identify with the feisty underdog sensibility of the city that embraced my Jewish ancestors.
I have thus reached out to both the Film Noir Foundation, with whom I have a decade-plus long relationship, and Reads & Company, the bookstore directly across Bridge Street from the Colonial Theater. There is no better incentive for me to revise and expand Interrogating Memory into a more affordable paperback edition than the possibility of debuting it in Phoenixville that weekend.
As of now, I plan to attend NOIR CITY Philadelphia with boxes of Interrogating Memory, which I will sign and sell at a discounted price – but stay tuned to learn whether this will be an “official event.”
May 8, 2023: As I think about revising my Interrogating Memory book, I just found a woman who is my 3rd cousin in two different ways. We have great-grandfathers who are brothers and great-grandmothers who are sisters. One of the brothers married one of the sisters, one of whose younger brothers married into the same family as one of her younger sisters. To be fair, the shtetl of Shpola, in what is now Ukraine, only had about 13,000 residents in 1897, and only a bit under half were Jewish.
May 5, 2023: Noir By the Numbers returns with a countdown of the 50 films released after 1966 most often deemed film noir. Enjoy!
May 4, 2023: In the summer of 1976, when my parents controlled the car radio, I kept hearing a song that opened with the most haunting steel guitar playing I had – and still have – ever heard. The opening lyrics were equally riveting: “The legend lives on/from the Chippewa on down/Of the big lake they call/Githcie-goomie.”
What followed was the best bit of history in song I had – and still have – ever heard: a harrowing depiction of the sinking of the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald during a tremendous storm on Lake Superior on the night of November 10, 1975.
The writer and singer of this astonishing six-minute-and-30-seconds song – more than twice as long as the typical pop single – was a 37-year-old singer-songwriter from Orillia, Ontario, Canada named Gordon Lightfoot. Lightfoot had already had a string of hit songs in his native Canada, as well as three top ten singles in the United States (“If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway”) each a pop gem.
As good as these songs – and the ethereally-lovely “Pusswillows, Cat-Tails” and “Beautiful” – were, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is, to me, his absolute masterpiece. Listeners are right there with the “good ship and crew…in peril.” You can hear when the “church bells chimed, and they rang 29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The song reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, the last time Gordon Lightfoot reached the American top 10.
Despite years spent battling alcohol and drug addictions which carved themselves into his drawn, withered frame, Lightfoot continued to tour into his 80s. Finally, though, it was time to let go, and, on May 1, 2023 Gordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr., CC OOnt, died in Toronto. He was 84 years old.
I took advantage of a “10 discs for a penny” deal to purchase a CD of his greatest hits in early 2005, and I played the heck out of that thing for years, falling in love with songs from before and after his early-70s chart peak, including the lovely “Restless.” For whatever reason, I rarely pay much attention to song lyrics, hearing them as just another instrument. But Lightfoot’s lyrics forced me to sit up and listen, which is the highest compliment I can pay any songwriter.
Rest in peace, Mr. Lightfoot, you are loved and missed.
April 27, 2023: I just deleted my “I Never Wrote the Most Important Story I Ever Wrote” video from YouTube. The sheer cringiness of it finally outweighed whatever lesson I was trying to learn or convey.
April 25, 2023: Noir By the Numbers takes a break from An Adventure in Place and Time with a look at the top 25 directors of film noir.
April 21, 2023: Noir By the Numbers continues with Episode 3, Act II. This video centers on the years 1944 to 1946, when critics first began to notice something darker, more cynical and more violent in recent American crime films.
April 14, 2023: Noir By the Numbers continues with Episode 3, Act I, the first in a series of videos in which I use my film noir database to present an overview of the historical geography of film noir. This video establishes the parameters of database films, then tracks them from a 1912 D.W. Griffith short through the end of 1943.
April 6, 2023: As historic as the first indictment, arrest and arraignment of a former president of the United States is, I predict that the far more consequential political event of April 4, 2023 was the election of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Judge Protasiewicz replaces a conservative Justice, giving liberal Justices a 4-3 majority. This will give the Court an opportunity to protect reproductive rights and end what is perhaps the most egregious Republican gerrymander in the United States. While I am generally agnostic on gerrymandering, the Wisconsin maps make a mockery of both “to the victors go the spoils” and fair (i.e., one person, one vote) representation.
April 4, 2023: Noir By the Numbers continues with Episode 2, in which I use my LISTS and POINTS metrics to count down the 100 films most often cited as “film noir” by experts.
[April 13 follow-up] To my surprise and delight, this video has taken off on YouTube! After less than 10 days, it is closing in on 3,000 views. It already has 55 likes, and I have crossed the 50-subscriber mark. This may not sound like much to seasoned YouTubers, but I will gladly take it after less than three months on the platform!
[April 16 follow-up] This video is now closing in on 6,000 views, with 133 likes (and 2 dislikes). And I now have 122 subscribers. This may not last, but I am enjoying the ride while I can!
[April 25 follow-up] This video just topped 20,000 views and is nearing 400 likes. I am also closing in on 400 subscribers. I may yet become a real YouTubers.
[May 8 follow-up]: Well over 31,000 views, closing in on 700 likes. Overall, I have topped 700 subscribers and 40,000 total views across more than 3,300 hours watched.
March 31, 2023: For nearly 50 years, I thought President Gerald Ford made the correct decision to grant former President Richard Nixon a full and complete pardon in September 1974. I reasoned resigning was punishment enough for the narcissistic Nixon, and the last thing a nation reeling from more than a decade of assassinations, political upheaval, radical social change, the Vietnam War and Watergate itself needed was a highly-divisive trial of a former president.
However, the indictment of former president Donald Trump by a Manhattan grand jury, and the resulting discussion of the necessity for the rule of law to apply equally to all at all times has me rethinking my position. In Bayesian terms, I am updating my priors. I now see that rather than “saving” the nation, Ford short-circuited the legal process and effectively denied Nixon the chance to defend himself in court. He also missed a golden opportunity to show non-democracies that the phrase “rule of law” has practical meaning.
March 27, 2023: As a boy, I adored Lost In Space. I still say things like, “Oh, you wretched robot!” and “Danger, Will Robinson, danger.” But only the other day did I learn that its captivating themes (one for Seasons 1 and 2, one for Season 3) were written by some cat named “Johnny Williams.”
I wonder whatever happened to that guy…oh, right, he went on to win five Oscars, four Golden Globes, seven BAFTAs and 25 Grammies. His 52 Oscar nominations are second only to Walt Disney.
March 26, 2023: Fully embracing my Doctor Noir persona on YouTube, I just launched the “Noir by the Numbers” series with Episode 1: To LIST or not to LIST. Enjoy!
March 17, 2023: Forget “Ginger vs. Mary Anne.” When it comes to classic television, put me firmly in camp Zelda Gilroy. Sheila James Kuehl (a trailblazer in her own right) deftly portrayed Zelda as brilliant, thoughtful, strong-willed and utterly adorable. She had spirit and depth. Yes, I had a huge crush on Zelda when I discovered reruns of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in the early 80s. Thalia Menninger and the rest of the “Many Loves” could not touch her. (Nothing against the great Tuesday Weld, mind you, who gave an astonishing performance in Thief).
March 15, 2023: At the end of my most recent YouTube video I hint at an upcoming video. Betwen 1937 (Charlie Chan at the Olympics) and 1942 (Castle in the Desert), legendary cinematographer Virgil Miller (1887-1974) photographed nine of the 22 Fox Studios Charlie Chan films, including an exceptional seven-film run from Charlie Chan in Reno (released June 16, 1939) to Murder Over New York (December 30, 1940). It is no coincidence the classic era of film noir starts around this time. I argue in Interrogating Memory that these films – model “B” pictures of immense popularity – served as a necessary bridge between the flat-lit crime films of the 1930s and the high-contrast crime films of the 1940s. I also argue film noir was less an artistic movement than an economic one, as film studios needed to crank out inexpensive B pictures to fill pre-booked movie theater slots. Miller’s cinematography in these films was both transcendent and trend-setting.
Here is the funny thing, though.
I watched my first Charlie Chan film – 1941’s Dead Men Tell – on at 8 pm on Saturday, July 24, 1976, as part of a double feature with the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes film Pearl of Death. While Dead Men Tell was one of three (of 11) Fox Charlie Chan films starring Sidney Toler not photographed by Miller, he did photograph Pearl of Death.
March 12, 2023: Because this is apparently what I do now, here is my fifth YouTube video. It is a pretty solid introduction to my channel.
March 3, 2023: Upon further reflection – and an embarrassing watch with my wife and daughters – this video is a hot mess of cringiness. So much so, I wrote this comment on it on YouTube:
I am taking the unusual step of trashing my own video. 🙂
Just bear with me a moment while I explain.
I made an embarrassing rookie mistake – I let an imagined audience dictate my creativity, not my own original ideas. This video is an audio-with-random pictures version of the first in a series of essays on my Just Bear With Me website called “I Never Wrote the Most Important Story I Ever Wrote.” That is a thoughtful and carefully-researched bit of non-fiction writing – about the act of writing, the fallibility of memory, and the fickleness of love and romance – that gently unfolds over 11 parts. I am proud of it, and I invite you to read the essays for yourself, starting here.
However…
When I received a relatively high number of likes for the series – particularly Part 8 for some reason – I thought, “Oh, this would make a great video series.”
Give the people what they want, right?
But as I tried to find images to match the audio – it is not as though someone filmed these events at the time, and I could not use photos of folks whose identity I sought to protect (even though I used them for my own narrative purposes!?!) – the cringy absurdity of the task gave me serious pause. I decided to forge ahead multiple times, though, not wanting to leave a creative task unfinished. Plus, I learned some new skills in the process.
The resulting video is not awful, but it is meandering, confusing and more than a little TMI-squirmy. Images are often weirdly divorced from the narrative, sometimes telling wholly unrelated stories. The thing is, I think more like a writer than a videographer, as this comment suggests. The latter requires a skill set I do not yet have – and, wow, do I respect those who have mastered those skills. I might make an entire video about how wicked awesome THEY are.
As cringe-inducing as this video is, though, I am leaving it on YouTube with this attached commentary. It will remind me and all other creators to trust my/your creative instincts, to create for YOURSELF – and trust that a good story well told will always find its audience. Even if that is an audience of one – you.
Now, please enjoy my first three videos which are not *too* bad. I think. 🙂
And then create something you – YOU – love.
Until next time…
March 2, 2023: I just uploaded this video to my YouTube channel (Dr Noir). It is based upon this essay. Whether additional “episodes” follow depends upon how this video is received. Stay tuned. (Update: it has already been banned in Russia.)
[April 27, 2023: I finally deleted this awful video.]
February 24, 2023: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (“RRHOF”) recently announced its nominees for induction in 2023. To be honest, I have very mixed feelings about the RRHOF, primarily due to its induction criteria, which are vague to the point of absurdity. In fact, the only specific criterion is that 25 years needs to have passed since an artist released her/his/their first album. The RRHOF pointedly downplays quantitative metrics – the essence of debates over induction worthiness for, say, the Baseball Hall of Fame – such as chart positions, number of releases and total sales. A certain subjectivity is inevitable in assessing artistic merit, but denigrating any form of objective criteria is carrying a point to its logical exclusion.
That said…if/when I cast fan ballots for this year’s inductions, four artists are (to me) no-brainers: Joy Division/New Order, Kate Bush, The Spinners and Iron Maiden; MTV aired numerous different Iron Maiden videos during their first 24 hours on the air. With my fifth choice, I opt for the late Warren Zevon. Zevon, a classically-trained pianist who died of mesothelioma at the age of 56 (my current age) in 2003, combined the lyrical sophistication of Bob Dylan, the stripped-down snarl of punk and the cheeky playfulness of Elton John into a series of pop-song screeds, including the underrated “Sentimental Hygiene.” Picture the artistic love child of George Carlin and Billy Joel.
February 18, 2023: As I continue to try to make a living as a capital-W Writer, and having just rewatched Barton Fink with my wife Nell, here are my top five films about writers/writing. I exclude films in which a main character is a reporter (Foreign Correspondent, His Girl Friday, Call Northside 777, The Odd Couple, Fletch) and films in which a writer is a secondary character (Dial M For Murder, Death on the Nile), as well as The Big Clock, even though it is set in a publishing company.
Honorable mention: The World According to Garp
#5. Barton Fink
#4. Ball of Fire
#3. Manhattan
#2. Deathttrap
#1. Hammett
February 15, 2023: A key element of my “personal journey” to film noir fandom was discovering the Fox Charlie Chan films in July 1976, as I detail in Chapter 8 of my Interrogating Memory book. On a lark, as I began to research that point in my life, I collected a wide range of information about these films which I threw them into a factor analyis to create an early version of my Perceived Quality metric. I then wrote a short piece summarizing my findings called “Ranking Every Charlie Chan Film,” which I published here in August 2017. For 12 months it barely registered, garnering only 78 total views. However, something clicked in August 2018, when it received 34 views, followed by 33 the next month. And then it was 46, 55, 53, 107, etc. By now it had caught the attention of the Google algorithm, which placed it relatively high in “Charlie Chan film” searches. From May 2020 to March 2021, during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, it averaged 225 views per month, or seven per day. This may not seem like much to anyone whose website routinely gets hundreds or even thousands of views daily, but I am immensely proud of how much this essay continues to be viewed, and I am grateful for every single view. In fact, it just crossed the 6,000-view threshold. Nell thinks a YouTube video version is a “no-brainer,” but I would need to figure out how to make the math compelling.
February 13, 2023: Despite continuing to modify my “favorite film” formula, I have yet to update my list of “guilty pleasure” films. These are the 10 films I love the most, excluding Charlie Chan films, with the lowest Perceived Quality (“PQ”) scores, using difference in z-scores (minimum -0.5 PQ, 0.5 personal ranking). I am not surprised six of the 10 were released between 1980 and 1986, nor that I own five on DVD. Differences are in parentheses.
#10. Who’s Minding the Store? (2.36)
#9. Doctor Detroit (2.53)
#8. Legal Eagles (2.56)
#7. Hammett (2.63)
#6. The Cotton Club (2.80)
#5. Times Square (2.85)
#4. One Crazy Summer (2.85)
#3. The Public Eye (3.06)
#2. The Shadow (3.90)
#1. Thank God, It’s Friday (4.18)
February 12, 2023: As Valentine’s Day (my least favorite holiday by far) approaches, I revisit a series of essays I wrote last summer titled “I Never Wrote the Most Important Story I Ever Wrote.” I just edited the first essay, adding a few new details and improving its overall clarity. Thoughts of turning these essays into narrated videos on my Doctor Noir YouTube channel bump up against my desire to protect the identities of people I discuss, even under anonymous initials. Still, they already appear in written form; is narration really that much different?
February 10, 2023: Alas, my Interrogating Memory book is not one of the four finalists for the 2023 Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award. I am still humbled to have been considered for the award, however, especially considering I did not even apply for it. The Librarian found it on Amazon, deemed it worthy of consideration and bought it for their permanent collection. I only learned my book was under consideration through a chance on-line conversation with their Cataloguer. Plus, the Athenaeum recently highlighted Interrogating Memory as one of “your next great read[s].”
February 3, 2023: I am on a YouTube video roll. Here is one I just created to present my top 50 films noir. Note that no universally-agreed-upon definition of film noir exists. For ranking information, please see here.
January 30, 2023: Having devised a (mostly) objective way to rank my favorite films – I updated this essay on guilty pleasure films.
January 29, 2023: With the Philadelphia Eagles heading to the Super Bowl for only the fourth time in their history, I am reminded of the last time the Eagles played in the Super Bowl – and the time before that.
January 27, 2023: This video about my Interrogating Memory book is now the second one I ever posted to YouTube.
January 24, 2023: As a longtime Philadelphia Phillies fan, I am thrilled to learn that All-Star third baseman Scott Rolen – named National League Rookie of the Year with the Phils in 1997 – has been elected to the baseball Hall of Fame! His arrival in 1997 sparked a sense the Phillies were turning a corner, though it still took another 10 years to return to the playoffs. By that point, Rolen had already played in two World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals, winning in 2006 (and losing to my local Boston Red Sox in 2004). Nonetheless, I never stopped rooting for the 10-time Gold Glove winner, and I am happy Rolen will be inducted alongside another spectacular player and person, Fred McGriff.
January 21, 2023: My first-ever YouTube video is now banned in Russia because of copyright infringement on two of the background tracks I use. Feels a bit like a pretext for banning something American, but I am not an expert on international copyight law.
January 20, 2023: Ladies and gentlemen, and children of all ages, I thank you for your patience. Now, without further ado, I present my 100 favorite (probably) films:
[Update]: I just posted this to YouTube – my first-ever video there.
January 19, 2023. Having now ranked my 100 favorite films (probably), I finally updated my 50 favorite films noir (probably). I am also putting the final touches on the video presentation of the former list. Stay tuned…
January 17, 2023. It was 63 years ago today that David Louis “Lou” Berger married Elaine Kohn at the Greenbrier Country Club on Conshohocken State Road, barely a stone’s thrown from the dividing line between West Philadelphia and the upscale “Main Line” suburbs, City Avenue. This joyous occasion ends Chapter 3 of my Interrogating Memory book.
What could possibly go wrong?
January 15, 2023. As I create a PowerPoint presentation of my 100 favorite films, which I will then turn into a YouTube video (take that, cinelitists!), I am extremely encouraged by how much I want to rewatch each of these films. This is face validity – and maybe even construct validity – at its finest. Stay tuned…
January 7, 2023. I just learned my first new word of the year: zwischendeck, which is German for “between decks” (read: steerage). I learned this word perusing the departure-end manifest of the SS State of California, which departed Hamburg, Germany on April 12, 1893; it arrived at Ellis Island 17 days later. On board were my paternal great-grandmother Hinda Zisser (later Ceasar; nee Zinman), her three children, and two other relatives. In the first hardback edition of Interrogating Memory, I mistakenly say the ship which carried them from Denenburg (in what was then Latvia) to – ultimately – Philadelphia was the SS Augusta Victoria. This is further demonstration that the work of interrogating memory never ends.
December 30, 2022. I organized everything new I have learned about my Berger ancestry – specifically their arrival in Philadelphia in 1899 and 1900 – here. Enjoy.
December 25, 2022. I was 18 years old when “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was released in late November 1984, and it still blows me away. The collection of talent – Paul Young, George Michael, Sting, Phil Collins, Bono, Kool and the Gang, Bananarama, Paul Weller, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Jody Watley, Spandau Ballet, Status Quo, who-am-I-forgetting, plus Sir Bob Geldof and Sir Midge Ure – floored me. The song still holds up, nearly four decades later. Merry Christmas, everyone, from your favorite Jewish-raised atheist.
December 23, 2022. Updating December 11 update: “Jacob Trimmper” is a tailor named Jacob J. Trumper, Charles Rugowitz’s brother-in-law. Born in Pruzhany (modern-day Belarus) in 1858 (or August 1860), he married Hannah B. “Annie” Rugowitz (1865-1929) in 1882 (per 1900 US Federal Census). He died on October 1, 1915. On June 8, 1900, he, his wife and four sons lived at 922 S. 7th Street in Philadelphia. They had a boarder whose name looks like “Louis Boyer” in the Census record, though he is actually my paternal great-grandfather Louis Berger. Curiously, Louis is listed as single, even though he had been married for about nine years. It is likely his son Morris, my paternal grandfather, was living about four blocks north at 702 Clymer Street, with the woman I hypothsize is his first cousin once removed, Lena Berger.
December 20, 2022. My father, David Louis “Lou” Berger, would have turned 87 years old today. As I explore in some detail in Interrogating Memory, he had his flaws, but in our daughters I see his generosity, kindness and tolerance. He died more than 40 years ago, and I still miss him daily.
December 19, 2022. It has been six years since I launched this website with an essay about identity, duality and narrative. Little has changed since then, other than how much I have learned about all three of those things. And a LOT of data.
December 18, 2022. When a Jewish-raised atheist marries an Episcopalian-raised agnostic, worlds collide. Chanukah Sameach!
December 17, 2022. This very good boy named Luvey would have celebrated his 50th birthday today.
December 16, 2022. Perhaps the greatest Berger family mystery is this: who were David (no occupation), Hyman (salesman) and Max (huckster) Berger? They are listed in the 1909 Philadelphia City Directory at the same address as my great-grandfather Louis Berger and his young family, 2241 Callowhill Street. Presumably, the three men are closely related (three brothers? father and two sons?) to each other, while somehow related to my great-grandfather. While there are innumerable men with these names, I cannot find them in combination anywhere else.
December 15, 2022. A small emendation: while Charles Rugowitz, my great-grand uncle, is the first US arrival (NYC; September 14, 1886) by a definitive family member, Joseph (Shlomo Ahron) Berger was in Philadelphia as of July 1880 – the likely month he married London-born Lena Cohen. I think he is my first cousin, three times removed, but this relationship is not yet proven beyond doubt. He, Lena and three of their sons appear on a list of “Berger death dates” my father helped me compile in the late 70s or so…and Joseph and my great-grandfather Louis are not brothers (different father’s names on their headstones), so first cousins is my next guess.
December 14, 2022. I have learned much more about my Berger family ancestors, which may become an essay, but for now: if I had a 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, I would choose Bobby Abreu, Mark Buehrle, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Jeff Kent, Andy Pettitte, Scott Rolen, Jimmy Rollins, Gary Sheffield and Billy Wagner.
December 11, 2022. Mystery solved! I found my paternal great-grandfather David Louis Berger in the 1900 U.S. Census (recorded June 8). He is a boarder living at 922 S. 7th Street in Philadelphia. He is listed as single, yet this is address used by his wife Chai Miriam (Ida) on November 14 when she – with daughters Rose, Malke (Mae) and Yente (Anna) – sailed to Philadelphia from Liverpool aboard SS Belgenland. Still to be solved – where is my grandfather Morris, who (may have) arrrived on January 18, also on the Belgenland? He is likely staying with his uncle Charles Rugowitz, but no record in Census?
Update: Charles Rugowitz – recorded as “Zadig Rogowicz” and 25 years old – boarded the British steamer Eros in Hamburg, Germany on August 24, 1886. The ship sailed one day later, arriving in New York City on September 14; it may have stopped in Hull and Liverpool en route. His occupation is “kaufen,” which I believe means “shopkeeper” or “buyer.” With him is 24-year-old Jacob Trimmper, also from Pruzhany (modern-day Belarus). No record of ship named “Eros,” though NYC newspapers clearly report its arrival. No idea who “Jacob Trimmper” is. At any rate, my great-grand-uncle is thus far the first of my Jewish ancestors to immigrate to the United States. Stay tuned…
December 9, 2022. The SS Campanello manifest reveals my great-great-grandmother Chave Koslenko and her two granddaughters were initially denied entry into the United States under the “liable to become a public charge” clause of the Immigration Act of 1882. They were held on Ellis Island until 1:20 pm, April 10, 1912, receiving six meals each (two sets of breakfast/dinner/supper); the deciding official was surnamed Fitzgerald. Presumably Chave’s son Samuel vouched for them via telegram, perhaps wiring money for train tickets, though this is pure speculation.
December 8, 2022. If national Republicans genuinely want to stop Donald Trump from winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, they will change how they award delegates in their presidential primaries and caucuses. Rather than awarding all the delegates to a plurality winner, make it proportional above some threshold. This will keep Trump from winning scores of delegates with only 30-35% of the vote.
December 7, 2022. Another reason I need to revise and update Interrogating Memory: I have reason to believe my maternal great-great-grandmother Eva Koslenko, about whom I know almost nothing, arrived in the Uinted States in April 1912.
Update: Eureka!! Chave Koslenko of Shpola (in modern-day Ukraine) left Rotterdam on the SS Campanello on March 23, 1912. Two granddaughters (my first cousins twice removed) acompanied her. They arrived in NYC on April 7 then traveled to Philadelphia to live with her son Samuel – now surnamed Goldstein. She died of pulmonary tuberculosis just four years later, on September 8, 1916. My educated guess is she was 67 years old. I still do not know her surname, but her parents – my great-great-great grandparents are Abraham and Sophie. Wow.
December 6, 2022. Bold prediction as Georgia polls in 30 minutes: CNN and MSNBC devote far more coverage to the Trump Organization being found guilty on 17 counts of tax fraud than on Senator Raphael Warnock’s (D-GA) likely easy victory.
Update: Warnock’s “easy” victory – currently +2.7 points (well within my 2.2-4.2 projected range) – took until after 10:30 pm EST, so my bold prediction was incorrect. 🙂
December 5, 2022. Congratulations to Fred McGriff for his selection for the Baseball Hall of Fame! He received all 16 votes from the Baseball Hall of Fame contemporary era committee. I still do not understand why he never topped 40% of the vote during his prior 15 years of eligibility.
December 4, 2022. I recently watched and enjoyed the 2009 horror-thriller Triangle. It stars Australian-born Melissa George, who carries the film well. I did not realize until I looked up her career, however, that she appears, albeit in small-ish roles, in two of my 40 favorite films: Dark City and Mulholland Drive.
Just Bear With Me... 