He Enabled a Monster, Now What?

Donald Trump enabled a monster, which reared its ugly head on January 6 in the Capitol, and he’s powerless to undo the damage. His so-called base, which includes conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, is turning on him, as evidenced in his recent public appearances with fired Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.

When Trump told audiences he received the COVID-19 booster shot, many of them booed him. Maybe they felt betrayed because he followed the science when it was in his own best interest, despite all of the disinformation he’s been spewing for years. The worm, it would appear, is turning.

Another Fox commentator, Jesse Watters, told the audience at Turning Point USA’s recent AmericaFest conference to “ambush” Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the foremost infectious disease experts in the world, with questions about the National Institutes of Health allegedly funding research at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Watters took his comments to the next level when he urged the audience, “Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming.” Once again, we are left to ask ourselves, in what alternate universe is this type of incendiary language acceptable?

No doubt Watters and the usual apologists will characterize the comment as rhetorical. Just like the comments made by Rep. Mo Brooks preceding the January 6 assault on the Capitol. “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Brooks bellowed. Or Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who told the same audience to engage in “trial by combat,” a comment he later said was a reference to Game of Thrones.

But there are far too many people who are easily manipulated, and who might take Watters’ comments literally. As it is, Dr. Fauci, a man of science, had already found it necessary to have the protection of personal body guards. Now Watters is encouraging people to “go in for the kill shot.” Hyperbole or not, Watters is irresponsible at best, and a ratings whore and hate monger at worst.

Trump, for his part, compressed four years of lies and disinformation into one speech on January 6. If you haven’t read the full text, it reinforces just how fanatical and determined he was about violating the US Constitution by attempting to overturn the results of a lawful election. An election that has been validated and upheld time and again by one court and elections board after another.

His remarks to the assembled crowd illustrate how he enabled a monster over a four-year period by continuing his practice of banging away at absolute falsehoods. For the record, early in his remarks Trump did say, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

But then he and his allies proceeded to whip the audience into a frenzy with all the usual dog whistles, warning them they were losing their country, their children were being indoctrinated and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell. And if we don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump warned them.

Now, with COVID deaths in the US surpassing 800,000 and rising, Trump decided to tell his base he got the booster, as if that would bring them to their senses. What he doesn’t understand is that the monster he’s nurtured these last five years is more powerful than anything he imagined. He has let an ominous genie out of the bottle, and the genie shows no sign that it plans to go back inside.

Just ask Jesse Watters.

She’s a petite, seemingly demure young woman, but when Carly Moffa takes the stage in her funky hat, fireworks fly. The Nashville-based singer-song writer and poet was back in her home state of New Jersey this past weekend where she performed at Hawk Haven Winery. It was my first time seeing her perform and she was electric.

The American Idol (AI) finalist is classically trained and it shows in the range of her voice, which celebrity AI judge Katy Perry described as “a big, beautiful folky Florence Welch-type voice, which commands a room.” And command the room she did, at Hawk Haven, with a mix of her own songs and covers of everything from Blues to Motown.

Her own songs like “Sweat It Out” and “I Let the Lion Out” come from a well spring of the creative psyche where Moffa says she “free writes” or “makes stuff up on the spot.” When she free writes, Moffa says, “I’ll play chords, mumble, mess around on instruments and midi sounds without an agenda or plan for a song.”  

On stage she moves, jumps and twirls while playing and singing with a distinctive style and unbridled exuberance. There is a soulfulness and a kind of wistfulness that permeates her performance. Moffa is an authentic, quirky performer with no ceiling to her potential.

The music business isn’t for the faint of heart, but when I spoke with her in between sets about her music, I could tell Moffa has the heart of a lioness with a seemingly unwavering belief in herself and her music.

She is also blessed with a loving and supportive family. Moffa calls her mom, Betsy, who was in the audience at Hawk Haven and who has battled multiple sclerosis since Moffa was in middle school, “my person” and a “force of nature.” She speaks about her father Chris with affection, sharing one of his favorite lines with the audience, “I’m just one man.”

When we chatted, Moffa asked me if I had a request. I asked who her favorite artist was. Her response, “different musicians for different reasons.” When she mentioned Marvin Gaye, I requested “Let’s Get It On.” Moffa looked at me with incredulity and said, “I can’t play that. My father’s in the audience!”

Aside from her voice and song writing, there is a profound aspect of her perspective that is uncommon in one so young and that is sometimes characterized as an old soul. In her website Moffa writes, “I think we all have a calling, and the way we get about the business of doing what we were created to do starts by being who we were created to be – just as we are. I think we were all born to live in that sweet spot of who we uniquely are.”

Carly Moffa is just one woman, and this woman is one amazing performer who thrives in that sweet spot of who she uniquely is.  

A Reminder of Our Past and of All That’s Good and That Can Be Good Again

They strode out of a corn field in the heartland of America on a warm August night. The New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox players were about to play a baseball game just a fly ball away from the movie set where “Field of Dreams” was shot 30 years earlier in Dyersville, Iowa.

Throughout the game, in which the first place White Sox prevailed, clips from the movie were interspersed. Who can forget the voice of James Earl Jones proclaiming, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”

I still have a front page from the Herald Tribune dating back more than 75 years. The headlines sound the alarm, “Hitler advances across Europe.” Yet, despite the dire news, the same front page contained the scores from the previous day’s World Series game. “The one constant…,” indeed.

Today we live in equally challenging times, faced with new existential threats and polarized by politics and ideology, so much so that we debate the wisdom of lifesaving vaccines, even as people lie dying in hospitals from COVID-19, and the need to bring global warming to a halt before it’s too late.

“This game,” Jones reminds us in the movie, “this field is a reminder of our past and of all that’s good and that can be good again.” If only we could collectively remember, regardless of our differences, “…all that’s good and that can be good again.”

It would be an oversimplification to suggest the answer to the current social malaise that ails us is baseball. And yet of all the major sports, baseball requires something we seem to be sorely lacking in the digital age: p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e. Swing the bat too soon and you’re way out in front of the pitch. Swing too late and the result isn’t any better.

As a kid I used to wait for my father to get home from work. I’d waylay him before he could set foot in the house, baseball gloves and ball in hand. After a long day, he’d take one of the gloves and we’d have a catch, neither of us speaking because the sound and feel of the ball as it smacked into the leather glove transcended a need to talk.

There is something important that is shared in the simple act of having a catch or in kicking a soccer ball, tossing a football or hitting tennis balls. Baseball may not be “the one constant,” but it’s what baseball represents.

There are certain connectors, often the simplest of things, that help potentiate our humanness. Without them, we sometimes lose our way and close the door to basic truths about who we are and what matters most.

Baseball isn’t the only constant and there are many paths. If only we’re patient and take the time to remember “…all that’s good and that can be good again.”

An Eclectic Online Community of Investors Dares to Believe

We are a unique group of retail investors who bonded over a little-known business spun out of the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Lab.

Some of us are tech geeks, others are investors with varying degrees of experience in the market, and some are newbies dipping their toes in the water for the first time. For the most part, we share an unwavering, almost fanatical belief in the technologies that MicroVision, Inc. (MVIS), which was originally established to commercialize patents for virtual retina display (VRD), has been developing for more than 20 years.

We denizens of the MVIS subreddit engage in daily play-by-play and technical analysis of the day’s trading action, freely sharing our knowledge of the market and MVIS technology, which is comprised of several tech verticals. The civility and comradery with which the members of our online community treat each other creates a down to earth vibe as we greet each other in the morning, wish our fellow investors happy birthdays, offer congratulations on the birth of a child or an engagement, and post daily encouragement, “GLTAL!” (good luck to all longtime longs).

One of the subreddit moderators shares a daily market analysis including pivot points, volume and availability. The same moderator encourages those who are trading to “look for opportunities to jump on dips and sell at your specific target goals,” and to “always trade or invest intelligently and responsibly.”

On days when MVIS is on an afternoon uptick, members of our community urge the stock on with calls for a “fourteen dolla holla” or “sixteen dolla holla.” When the MVIS price per share (PPS) is up, we cheer each other on with posts like “boomski to the moonski.” And we commiserate and encourage each other when the stock is down. Still, most of us seem to maintain a sense of humor. As one investor wryly commented, “who’s up for some volatility today?” Another posted, “the market goes up, we go down. The market goes down and we still go down.”

Why, then, do MVIS zealots continue to believe? For one thing, there was the revelation provided last year by one of the more tech savvy members of the community who, on a strong hunch, purchased Microsoft’s Hololens 2 mixed reality smart glasses and did a teardown, providing proof positive that MVIS’s VRD technology is integrated in Hololens 2. Yet Microsoft continues to enforce a non-disclosure agreement preventing MVIS from publicizing this material information and helping keep its PPS down.

The longs, who have been invested in the company for years because of their fervent belief in its VRD technology, have yet another reason to believe. They are now just as enthusiastic and committed to its more recent sensor technology, or Lidar (light detection and range), for self-driving cars, robots and drones, which may prove to be a market disruptor. Naïve as it may sound to the hardened Wall Street mentality, many of us on the subreddit view our shares of MVIS not just as an investment, but as a way of making the world a better place through technology.

As we share the roller coaster ride that has seen MVIS’ price per share bottom out a year ago at 15 cents, and shoot to a recent high of $29.43, the longs continue to encourage and support each other. We hold the shorts, who spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in an effort to keep the price of the stock down, in low regard, and continually encourage each other not to panic sell, but to hold and buy the dips when possible. We follow the volumes, price action and availability religiously. And we have learned that patience is a virtue. No small feat, when the true value of the company appears to be masked by huge volumes of shorting.

Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money on CNBC, is a case in point. In the face of recent single-day gains of 20%, he said on his program that there are “better fish to fry” and “MVIS is too risky with its high volume of short positions.” When Cramer was a hedge fund manager, he once explained how he would go about manipulating the markets through the media. They would reach out to news sources feeding misleading information then watch the price drop as a result so they could cover their short positions. So much for a level playing field, market manipulation and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) seeming inability to do anything about it.

Market manipulation and references by FUDsters to MVIS as a “corporate corn husk” and a “battleground stock” notwithstanding, the MVIS faithful have yet another reason to believe. Another of the company’s technology verticals, Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), is an augmented reality goggle based on Microsoft’s HoloLens, which is poised to redefine close combat force capabilities, and has undergone cold weather testing at the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command’s Cold Regions Test Center at Fort Greely, Alaska. Recently it was announced that Microsoft has been awarded a $22 billion contract with the Army for the night vision device.

As the prospect of a buyout of MVIS or strategic alliance with a major player such as Google, Microsoft, Apple or Ford, or a consortium thereof grows, speculation about the resulting share price is as high as $100 and above. Is it pie in the sky wishful thinking by hopelessly optimistic believers in MVIS? Perhaps. Then again, maybe MVIS has been 20 years ahead of its time, and industry is finally catching up.

Perhaps, as another MVIS subreddit member opined, it’s not unlike when the Internet was born. “No one was really ready for that tech. They didn’t have the software, hardware, know-how, etc. Eventually companies, people, and industries caught on. MVIS is a pioneer with 20 plus years of R&D and way ahead of the competition. Microsoft couldn’t do Hololens on their own, they needed MVIS hardware.”

No matter what lies ahead for the company, the comradery and bond shared by retail investors on the MVIS subreddit is unique. It may be naïve, but the members of this online community seem to genuinely care about and appreciate each other, as evidenced in the following recent post.

“I look forward to the next run when everyone is celebrating and bragging about their percent gain, number of shares or average cost per share. I look forward to more dreams being realized: early retirement, paid off mortgages, financial freedom, children’s futures so bright, and legacies being created.”

Shutterbugs Take Over Cove Beach

Photo by Barbara Florentz

There were a dozen or so photographers with their tripods and cameras set and ready to catch the setting sun over the Cape May Lighthouse tonight. As the sun dipped, they scrambled for the right angle from which to shoot, looking to get that perfect shot.

In the meantime, I’d set down my beach chair with my ever faithful, toilet paper-eating golden doodle, Sadie, at my side, in clear view of the setting sun. We watch sunsets as a kind of meditation, if you will, neither of us speaking during the process.

But, in their frenzy to get that perfect photo, several photographers moved their tripods right in front of us. Now, it’s a spacious beach. but there they were, positioned right between Sadie and me and sunset. Yes, I experienced a moment of vexation as they chattered amongst themselves.

Yet, nothing, not even shutterbugs running wild, could diminish the moment, as the day bowed to the night, and a quiet calm settled over Cove Beach.

Ferlinghetti’s Marvelous Intoxicating Liquor

When asked whether poetry still matters today, poet, publisher, activist and cofounder of City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, told an interviewer that, hell yes, it matters.

Poetry, Ferlinghetti said, is “all the disparate elements of the new civilization, the new culture of the 21^st century. One of these days,” he continued, “the brew is going to coalesce into a marvelous new intoxicating liquor.”

Intoxicating indeed. For poetry has always been about evolution and revolution, whether of society or of the spirit. And as Ferlinghetti, who passed away yesterday at age 101 noted, it has always been, and will likely always be, the youth in society who take up the torch and carry it forward.

Ferlinghetti knew of whence he spoke, having nurtured generations of poets and writers including, in the early years, counterculture creatives such as Allen Ginsberg, Neil Cassady and Jack Kerouac among others.

The articulation of a new ecological and spiritual consciousness, Ferlinghetti observed, came out of the youth rebellion. And for decades they came to his bookstore and literary meeting place on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, Beats, then Hippies, and generations that followed.

He participated in and helped foment a revolution in consciousness, publishing Allen Ginsberg’s, “Howl, one of the 20^th Century’s most famous poems, which led to Ferlinghetti’s arrest for “willfully and lewdly” publishing “indecent writings”.

In Ferlinghetti’s view, poetry was insurgent art, as described in his 2007 work by the same name.

“Poetry as Insurgent Art”

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic

times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna

St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American

or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words….

These last few years, Ferlinghetti’s words seem especially prescient. “Civilization self-destructs,” and, “Nemesis is knocking at the door.” So, we look to those who would be poets, capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times. We need them to reconcile the disparate elements of the new civilization and “conquer the conquerors with words….”

Rush Limbaugh: For Whom the Bell Tolled

Whether you loved the man or couldn’t stand him, Rush Limbaugh was a showman who used the airwaves brilliantly, and he hurt a lot of people in the process. For decades he got away with the same shtick, masquerading as a conservative and ridiculing anyone and everyone who didn’t agree with him.

From scientists studying global warming to Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, no one was safe from his vitriolic barbs. He slandered Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” on-air because she advocated for health insurance to cover women’s contraception. And he said former Philadelphia Eagle Donovan McNabb, who led his team to three NFC championship games and a Super Bowl, was overrated because the media wanted to see a Black quarterback succeed.

Limbaugh deserved an Oscar for turning in a convincing performance as an angry white man who was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. But if his listeners, 72 percent of whom were men, thought about it, they might have wondered what someone who makes $50 million a year has to be so angry about? Or how he pretended to occupy the high moral ground and feign righteous indignation for so many years, considering he was married four times and was a longtime abuser of oxycodone, despite publicly condemning drug abuse.

Colleagues who knew Limbaugh back in the day remembered a young man who bounced from job to job. One former co-worker from his early days in radio said when Limbaugh had little or no following and was struggling for ratings, he made an off-the-cuff inflammatory comment on the air and just like that, the lights on the station switchboard lit up. Being a cagey fellow, Limbaugh quickly connected the dots. Controversy sold, and the more outrageous his comments, the higher his ratings climbed.

His main appeal was fear, which has always been a big seller, especially with people who are most comfortable with simplistic explanations. Limbaugh clearly understood that, and he made it okay for his listeners to cling to their personal biases. When his mouth got him into trouble, he shrugged it off with, “that’s not what I meant,” a familiar refrain, these last four years in particular.

He never did apologize or retract his statements about McNabb or Fluke, who he said wanted the government to “pay for her to have sex.” Limbaugh dug in his heels, despite a backlash of public opinion and advertisers bailing on his show, and subsequently said of Fluke, “She’s having so much sex she can’t pay for it, and we should.”

At the time, Georgetown University president, Dr. John DeGioia, responded to Limbaugh with a quote by St. Augustine, which is as true today as ever. St. Augustine’s words, DeGioia said, “captured the sense of what is required in civil discourse: ‘Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed.’”

Limbaugh wasn’t interested in civil discourse, laying aside arrogance or seeking truth. He was emblematic of a society that has become increasingly hostile and divided. This week, when the bell tolled for Rush Limbaugh, his ratings no longer mattered and his considerable wealth could not insulate him from the fate we all eventually face. He was called to answer to a Higher Power, one that asks us to do to others as we would have them do to us.

Pumpkin Soup

I’ve been down this road before, but this year has been like none other. Still, we did our best to keep to some of our traditions, bringing home pumpkins from a local farm and placing them on the front porch to mark the fall harvest.

They lasted through Thanksgiving. When we saw one beginning to deteriorate, I moved it into the woods for our wildlife neighbors. The other pumpkin was holding its own, and my wife brought it inside and made a wonderful soup with many different seasonings.

Sometimes I find myself looking for underlying connectors between myself and the natural world. As I finish the last of the pumpkin soup, I’m aware of those occasional moments of clarity when, as John Prine sang in his last recorded song, “I remember everything.”

Every tree and every blade of grass are committed to my memory, every joy and every sadness. The joys and sadness, it seems to me, tie us together in our humanness. Even a perfect storm of pandemic and politics run amuck could never change that.

My experience is not unique. I remember first kisses, sledding on a moonlit night with my young son, the generosity of strangers, the mystery of snow-capped mountains in the distance, and the eternal sound of breakers crashing on the shore. Happily, the joys outweigh the sadness.

The connectors, it turns out, are everywhere to be found when I see with my heart, taking care not to “let my past go sneaking up on me.” In my mind’s eye, I remember every tree, every single blade of grass, and every soup my brown-eyed girl has made for me.

Blameless

Morning light seeps into the woods behind our house.

Woods that were home to indigenous peoples long before

our history was writ large, superimposed on the land

and the people who lived here. It is my home, now.

And while I struggle with the brutal legacy of Manifest Destiny,

which our European ancestors used to justify genocide,

I am blameless. Instead, I see subtle colors teased from

each tree and plant by early morning light. When day is done,

a different mood descends on these woods. A quiet,

peaceful transition from day to night unfolds. The sounds of

geese and other creatures who make these woods their home

pierce the silence. Their sounds, and the distinctive quality

of fading light, soothe me. Still, there is a vague discomfort,

as if I am an interloper, albeit a blameless one.

Good night, Mr. Bojangles

Jerry Jeff Walker’s music came into my life fortuitously, albeit years after his career had waxed and waned. Admittedly, I’m a lukewarm fan of most country and western music.

But the summer before my brother Ward died, we passed through Luckenbach in the Texas Hill Country with our wives on a chautauqua of sorts. Luckenbach is not so much a place as a state of mind, and it captured the imagination of this hopeless romantic.

There was live music scheduled that night at the old dance hall, but we were headed to Austin and wanted to keep to our schedule. Later I learned that Jerry Jeff had recorded ’Viva Terlingua!’ with his Lost Gonzo Band some 40 years earlier at the dance hall.

A year or more after Ward’s passing, I was in Farley’s, an independent bookstore in New Hope, PA, where I was living at the time. I spotted a CD on the sale rack, ’Viva Teralingua!’, casually scanned the cover, saw a reference to Luckenbach, and bought it. ’Viva Teralingua!’, it turned out, spoke to me, at first because of my brother and his Texas roots, but a couple years later for another reason.

That afternoon in Farley’s, as I perused the rack of CDs, I didn’t know that my cancer would recur, and that I’d need 39 radiation treatments five days a week requiring me to drink enough water beforehand to fill my bladder to near overflow, and lie under the radiation dish for 30 minutes with an anal probe inserted in me.

After each treatment, I’d pull out of the Doylestown Hospital parking lot on my way to work with Jerry Jeff Walker’s music cranked up. It made me feel better and helped me get my head together for the workday ahead. No why, or wherefore. Music and art are like that, it either grabs you or it doesn’t. I was “Gettin’ By” with a little help from Jerry Jeff.

Ironically, until today I didn’t know “Mr. Bojangles,” recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, was written by Jerry Jeff and considered his greatest hit. It just goes to show you can love an artist’s work and not even scrape the surface.

So, thank you for your music, Jerry Jeff Walker. It made a difficult time a little less difficult. And it connected me to the summer when I passed through Luckenbach with my brother on a chautauqua of sorts.

Good night, Mr. Bojangles, and Godspeed.