I have been putting off the writing of this page for the last few months. Macy’s West was a big and important client, but my memories of most of the people and the projects that we did for them are hazy. To make matters worse, I have found very few notes about the installation and no photos whatsoever.
Macy’s flagship store and Union Square.
Macy’s was acquired by Federated in 1994 shortly after both companies emerged from bankruptcy. TSI had been pitching Macy’s West, the division that was administered in San Francisco, about purchasing an installation of the AdDept system for some time.
I am pretty sure that the original inquiry from Macy’s West came from Gary Beberman, who had been our liaison for the very first AdDept systems at Macy’s East in New York City (described here) and who had also consulted on the installation at Neiman Marcus (described here). He and his wife, who also worked at Macy’s, had moved to the Bay Area, and Gary had taken a job at Macy’s West. The advertising department was looking for a system, and Gary recommended that AdDept be considered. He told them what we had accomplished in Manhattan and probably also mentioned things that could have been done but weren’t.
I vaguely remember doing a demo in San Francisco, and I think that Doug Pease might have come with me. I have a vague recollection that someone from the I. Magnin stores, by then managed by Macy’s West, was in attendance. It may very well be that the Macy’s West advertising department was able to use an AS/400 that had formerly been used (probably for accounting) by I. Magnin.
In the first few years most of our dealings were with Gary. I did quite a bit of consulting on my trips to San Francisco, but he did most of the training of the users in San Francisco. Since they used hardware they already owned, we were not involved in quite a few aspects of the installation that we often were.
That arrangement was positive in that it allowed me and the rest of the people at TSI to spend more time on more productive activities. The down side, however, was that none of us at TSI had a good feel for how well the installation was going. Macy’s West seldom called for support and used AdDept for fifteen years. Our association stopped only when the corporate bigwigs brought all of the administrative functions to the Big Apple.
My visits to Macy’s: I made a half dozen or so trips to Macy’s West over the years. I flew to San Francisco on whatever airline had the best rates at the time. It might have been United, Delta, or American. The flight back was always on a red-eye.
The advertising department at Macy’s was located in a building that was a few blocks from the huge store in Union Square. It might have been on Fremont St. I stayed at a Holiday Inn that was on either Mission St. or Market St. I don’t think that the hotel is still there. It may have been sold to another chain.
I did not rent a car; I took BART from and to the airport, and I walked from the hotel to Macy’s headquarters. I may have taken a taxi once or twice. I only remember one meal that I ate in San Francisco. Gary Beberman and I walked to one of his favorite restaurants that was, I think, in Chinatown. I remember no further details. My meals on other occasions were probably grabbed in passing from fast food places.
I am pretty sure that on one occasion I took the cable car from the turnaround on Powell Street up to the top of the hill. I did not visit the Cable Car Museum. It was in my price range. So, either I did not know about it, or I might have been pressed for time.
The people: I only have notes and memories of two people whom I worked with in the first twelve or thirteen years. Emily White was the Senior VP of the advertising department from May 1996 to October 1998. Doug knew her from their time together at G. Fox in Hartford. I later worked more closely with her at Meier & Frank in Portland.
Around the turn of the century there was a major upheaval in the department. This is what I wrote in 2000:
They have recently undergone wholesale personnel changes. We have done a lot of work for them designing interfaces. We have designed very few reports. They must use a number of queries to create reports. The original training was done by Gary Beberman, who lives in San Francisco, and was our first liaison at Macy’s East.
I do not have a good feel for what they are doing at Macy’s West. I imagine that they could benefit a great deal from a few days of our time.
Dan Stackhouse was our liaison in later years. He was in charge of the local network used in the department. He did not really know much about either the AS/400 or the AdDept system, but he was able to gather specs for new projects for us and address connectivity issues.
I remember that Dan was fired by Macy’s, and he sued them over this action. He asked me to submit an affidavit explaining our relationship. I did what he asked, but I doubt that it helped his cause much. I searched the Internet for references to his lawsuit. I did not find much.
AxN: Because of Gary’s close involvement with the project, almost all of the work that we did for Macy’s West was in the establishment of interfaces with their corporate accounting systems. We customized very few reports for them.
One very unusual project was the coding and installation a menu that could be used by people in the merchandise departments to look at information about their ads. They set up user IDs for each department or group that were restricted to the programs and queries available from this menu.
The only other project that I remember in much detail was involved with AxN, TSI’s system for sending and managing insertion orders for newspaper advertising space. Unlike Macy’s East1, the people in San Francisco were very enthusiastic about delivering insertion orders via the Internet.
TSI’s initial contact with the newspapers that would hopefully be subscribing to the service was a letter written by me and signed by someone at the advertising department. I remember vividly that the woman whom we asked to sign it had no additions or changes to the letter, and she definitely wanted us to send it. However, she did not want to take the time to sign the letters herself. She said, “You can just sign them.” So, for the first and only time in my career I added the role of forger to the long list of activities that I did for the company.
The AxN installation at Macy’s West provided TSI with a few far-flung clients. Macy’s purchased Liberty House, the chain of department stores and resort-wear stores based in Hawaii, in 2001. One of those stores was in Guam, and the Pacific Daily News subscribed for several years.
The last trip: My last trip to Macy’s West was for two days at the end of July 2007. I learned that Sheila Field was the Senior VP of marketing. She had in fact been there for several years and before that at Foley’s in Houston, where I spent a lot of time in the mid-nineties. I never had met her, and she was also not available on this occasion. I did meet with many other people. I did not do a great job of learning names. Here is the unedited list from my notes:
Sheila Field.
Sheila Field2 is the Senior VP. She is from Foley’s. I almost certainly know her, but I did not get to see her on this trip. Kedar Stanbury3 is in finance, which means planning at Macy’s West. So is Von Jones4. Their boss is Chuck Allen5. The business office manager is Gary Veran6. His assistant is Diane _______. Laurie Hamilton7 is the print media director. Jennifer Hung8, Kelly ____, and Terry _____ work for Laurie.
They reported quite a few anomalies that they had been living with. I made it clear that they should report these to TSI. We always fixed things promptly. They gave me a list of areas that they were interested in using AdDept for:
Contracts.
Work group limitations for purchase orders. Does this even work? They want to make sure that the direct mail people create nothing but direct mail purchase orders. Do we have a way to do this?
The plan was for me to return in “a few weeks”. I cannot overstate how psyched they were for using AdDept more productively. My notes stated that I thought that they would approve whatever programming was needed for every item on the list.
Alas, the plan never was carried out. In February of 2009 management of all advertising for all Macy’s divisions was consolidated in New York. Within a few years none of the people mentioned above were still working for Macy’s. I don’t think that any of them made the transition to New York.
This consolidation was a major blow to TSI. I knew that there was little or no chance of persuading the consolidated Macy’s to use AdDept. Macy’s West was a big client for both AdDept and AxN.
1. For some reason Macy’s East never used AdDept for insertion orders. They did not even use it to print copies. Instead they called each paper and described each ad that they wanted to run to the newspaper’s rep. It baffled me that they could not appreciate how much faster and easier it would be to use AdDept, which had all of the information on the order, to send orders to all papers at once. Everyone who used AxN—both newspapers and advertising departments—were very happy with it.
2. Sheila Field’s LinkedIn page can be found here.
I am not sure when the Billion Dollar Idea began to coalesce in my brain. After the first few years of the twenty-first century it was becoming obvious to me that the rapid consolidation of the number of large retailers … Continue reading →
I am not sure when the Billion Dollar Idea began to coalesce in my brain. After the first few years of the twenty-first century it was becoming obvious to me that the rapid consolidation of the number of large retailers had drastically diminished the prospect for sales of the AdDept system. So, I was constantly on the lookout for ways to apply TSI’s assets in a potentially profitable manner.
Here is a list of what I thought that the company’s most valuable assets were:
The ability to deliver high-quality custom programming expeditiously.
The proven ability to design functional databases.
A good understanding of all forms of advertising except for Internet advertising, which was still experimental and rapidly evolving.
A good understanding of retail concepts.
A growing understanding of U.S. newspapers.
The market that I had long coveted was the development of a universal database for storing medical histories. Because of the complexities involved in such a task, most software developers would shrink from it. However, even then I could see that there must be many billions of dollars at stake. Maybe TSI could claim at least a small share, which would, of course, not seem small to us. However, in order to make any sensible plans, the company would need some sort of entrée into the market. That is, we would need client #1 first, and I could not imagine how that might come about.
So, I tried to think about where we might use our knowledge of advertising and newspapers. At this point I should explain the sources of profit for newspapers. The revenue from subscriptions and single-issue sales never came close to covering the costs of newspapers. Newspapers have always relied strongly on income from advertising, which mainly came from three sources:
Sunday newspapers were jammed with inserts.
Display ads within the text of the newspaper were called “ROP”1, which stood for “run of press”. These ads were billed by the amount of space used, either in pages (or fractions thereof) or in column-inches. Advertisers might pay extra for color or for prime positions, such as in the sports section or the back page of the main section.
Classified advertising included help wanted and personal ads.
The preprinted flyers that were stuffed into some issues of the paper were called “inserts”. They were billed by the size (number of pages or weight) and the quantity, and the distribution in thousands of copies. Some large papers allowed for selection of distribution by zip code or some other method.
Later, as their circulation numbers dropped, a third option called “polybags” was embraced by many newspapers . These were plastic bags that served as flimsy raincoats for inserts that were delivered willy-nilly to people without subscriptions.Sometimes the inserts were enclosed within an abbreviated edition of the paper that often contained news of mostly local interest.
TSI’s department store clients were almost always the largest purchaser of ROP ads in each of their newspapers. The AdDept installations had required us to learn how to handle the most complicated contracts and ROP strategies. Inserts seemed relatively simple to us. We knew almost nothing about classifieds.
One aspect of inserts struck me. They had nothing to do with the contents of the newspaper. Whereas the ROP ads had to be fitted into the spaces not taken up by news and other articles,2 the inserts were totally independent of the paper’s content and of one another. Therefore, the inserts could just as easily be delivered by any other organization with the infrastructure to do so.
The newspaper’s advantages was that it was contracted by the readers’ subscriptions to deliver the papers anyway, and so the papers incurred only minimal additional costs. The printing was done elsewhere. The inserts were just stuffed into the middle of each copy of the newspaper. For the newspaper they were almost pure profit.
On the other hand, many advertisers ran exactly same insert in a very large number of newspapers. ROP ads could be sent electronically to the papers, but the inserts needed to be physically delivered. That process must necessarily be both expensive and subject to errors.
It seemed to me that any organization that had a large number trucks and drivers in every market could potentially compete with the newspapers for the insert business provided that:
The trucks and drivers were available every Sunday, the day that inserts were ordinarily delivered.
The inserts could be packaged in an attractive manner so that they were bound to be opened and read.
By minimizing the number of locations to which the advertiser must deliver, shipping costs for them could be held to a minimum.
Key advertisers could be persuaded that they would receive both lower shipping costs and more targeted marketing for the same cost.
A foolproof system could be devised for online ordering that would automatically do billing or Electronic Funds Transfer. To my knowledge TSI was the only company that had developed a sophisticated system for ordering of newspaper advertising.
It seemed to me that three organizations could surely meet the first four criteria: Federal Express3, United Parcel Service, and the U.S. Postal Service. Adjustments would be necessary, but all of the requirements are close to their core business. I was pretty sure that, with the proper hardware, TSI could handle the fifth item. At least I was willing to consider making such a commitment.
I thought a lot about how such a project could come into being. I would need to set up a meeting with a high-level executive at one or more of the organizations. This was a big stumbling block. Over the years I had dealt with a large number of influential people. Most of those relationships were quite good, but none of them, at least to my knowledge, had much to do with any of those organizations or any other group with a large number of trucks. I could put a letter in the mail, but when no one responded, then what?
I fantasized about getting a meeting with Fred Smith, the founder and CEO of FedEx. I had heard that as a young man he had had a difficult time persuading people of the practicality of his concept of a central hub in Memphis for deliveries all over the country. It was based on a paper that he wrote for an economics class at Yale.4 My idea—of advertisers bringing their inserts to the nearest FedEx office instead of bringing them to every newspaper—was no more off-the-wall than his had been, and he was now worth billions.
I could envision workers wearing red and blue delivering “FedExtra” packages all around the country on Sunday mornings. People would tear open the packages like Christmas presents.
If I did manage to get someone to take a meeting, I would need to make a compelling presentation. It was hard for me to figure out how I would do it. I would need to downplay the difficulty of implementing a delivery system and emphasize (1) the large amount of revenue that was potentially at stake and (2) the importance of a customized ordering system (which we had sort of developed with AxN).
I just could not visualize how I could make this work. I was confident of my abilities to assess whether a system that a potential client described could be feasibly implemented by TSI. However, in this case I had to convince the prospective client that it had the wherewithal to implement part of the system but not a critical aspect of it. If I were in their shoes, I would either dismiss the idea out of hand, or I would ask for more time and then call my IT department to see if they could handle the fifth step.
I was not even sure that I could convince anyone of the feasibility of the project. None of the groups that might be able to pull this off were accustomed to dealing with advertisers who used print media. They would need to locate the people who buy the service from the papers and convince them one at a time of the superiority of the new approach.
Someone would need to provide the capital. I certainly did not have it. I did not even have knowledge sufficient to indicate that $X of capital would be required, and it could likely be made back in Y years. That is what people generally want to hear at the first meeting.
I had a strong suspicion that the companies that distributed flyers that contained lots of manufacturers’ coupons would be key. The other companies would probably want their flyers to be in that package because that was the one that frugal buyers would seek out. We might need to give the coupon distributors a discount.
UPS workers were Teamsters. Gulp.
I could anticipate other difficulties as well. Both the USPS and UPS were heavily unionized. Making deliveries on Sunday would probably be a very big deal. FedEx was not as heavily unionized, but its pilots were, and this project would likely affect them a lot. I could foresee that it would provide the shipping company with a lot of business, but it might complicate its relationship with its labor force. We could be of no help in that regard.
One good aspect was that the project could be rolled out market by market. There was no need for a national launch. When the second market was launched, presumably the national advertisers from the first market would be happy to participate. Only the local advertisers would need to be recruited.
So, I put a lot of thought into this idea but no effort beyond a little research. I still think that the project could probably have been done. I needed to find a partner who had worked at a large newspaper and was familiar with both the difficulties of working with the advertisers and the difficulties involved in obtaining the flyers and assembling them. Together we might be able to construct a presentable business plan. Unfortunately, I never met such an individual and for several years I had my hands full with AxN and AdDept.
A big concern for me at the time was that, if the project succeeded in wresting the insert business away from the newspapers, many of them would go out of business, and the country would lose its major source of investigative journalism. In retrospect it seems risible that I would suppose that turning trees into pulp would always be the principal source of information for people.
When I started thinking about the project I was in my late fifties. A few years later my penchant for finding new worlds to conquer abated.
1. Although ROP is a true acronym and the periods were almost never included when it was written, I never heard anyone pronounce it as a one-syllable word. It was always called “are oh pee”.
2. On a visit to the Springfield Union News/Republican I learned that actually the papers were often laid out the other way—the ads were placed first, and the text was placed in the empty spaces that remained. The editor told me that they once had held a space open for an missing Filene’s ad that right up until the very last minute before press time.
3. I was able to locate no reliable information (both advertisers and newspapers were vague) as to how much money was spent annually on inserts. $20 billion per year was my best estimate.
4. Smith’s paper received a C. The concept must have seemed outrageous in the mid-sixties.
Deciding how to approach this subject was very difficult. Just listing the events of early January of 2021 would be one possibility, but the period was so bizarre and such a unique moment in American history that it seemed necessary to supply a good deal of context. At the center was, of course, Donald J. Trump. Almost half of the country considered him a great president, if not the second coming of Christ. The rest of us looked at his very well-documented history and recognized a spoiled rotten, lying, cheating, cowardly, philandering, racist, misogynistic, selfish, godless, bullying criminal whose only association with any government should be in the confines of the penal system.
The first group was apparently convinced (or let themselves believe) that the election had been rigged or stolen or some combination of both. How did they come to this conclusion? I don’t know. All of their lawsuits (save one) were dismissed out of hand even by judges that Trump had appointed. Perhaps they were prompted by Trump’s continued insistence over the preceding few months that the only way that he could lose was if the election was rigged. Some were probably swept away by the enthusiastic reception he got at his carefully staged rallies. Some may have been persuaded by Fox “News” and other media outlets that served as megaphones and echo chambers for his claims. Some may have been persuaded by their pastors that the preservation of the (white) Christian religion required that this psychopathic narcissist be elected.
Trump himself set the stage for this. He has always called himself a winner. He started his business with his nine-figure inheritance, but his whole “empire” was on the verge of bankruptcy. Many of his companies ended in abject failure. His TV show won a few Emmys, but they lost in the last few years to The Great Race because, according to him, the elections were rigged.
Hilary Clinton got three million more votes than he did in 2016. He never accepted this fact even though his hand-picked people could find no evidence whatever to support his oft-repeated repeated lie that he had somehow won the popular vote. To the best of my knowledge he has never admitted that he made a mistake or even a questionable decision. Everything that he does is as “perfect” as the phone call that he made to Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019.1
To me he was a dangerous and evil person. Fortunately he was not very smart, and he was stunningly ignorant.
Loeffler and Warnock.
Georgia: Most eyes were on the runoff election on January 5 for the two U.S. Senate Seats. Rev. Raphael Warnock was challenging the incumbent Republican, Kelly Loeffler (who had been appointed by the governor), and Jon Ossoff faced off against the incumbent Republican David Perdue. The polls showed indicated that both races would be too close to call.
Ossoff and Perdue.
Trump traveled to Georgia and held a few rallies, but he did not really promote either Republican candidate or even attack the Democrats. Instead he insisted without any evidence that he had been cheated, both in Georgia and in the other “swing” states. The people that he mostly attacked were two Republicans, Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He also called on both of them to resign.
Trump had telephoned Raffensperger on January 2. He urged him to use any means he could to overturn the election in Georgia. Raffensperger recorded the call. Trump’s exact words were “What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than [the 11,779 vote margin of defeat] we have, because we won the state.” He also phoned officials in at least two other states to urge them commit election fraud and overturn the authenticated results.
The two attorneys who had crafted and presented many of Trump’s losing lawsuits, Sidney Powell (a woman) and Lin Wood (a man) held a rally in Alpharetta, GA, in which they encouraged Republicans not to vote in the runoff election! Perhaps some Republicans were persuaded. In any rate both Warnock and Ossoff were elected on January 5. So, after the two winners took their oaths of office, Congress contained fifty senators from each party.
January 6: While most Democrats were celebrating the victories in Georgia and fashioning their legislative agenda, Trump and his minions focused their attention on a ceremony that always occurred for the Capitol. A joint session of the Congress was scheduled for 1 o’clock on January 6 to receive the electoral counts from the states. The President of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence would then presumably utter the words that made the election official: “The announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States.” This ritual had been performed after each election. When it was implemented in the eighteenth century it took days to get from some states, where the votes had been counted and the electors chosen, to arrive at the capital. As long as one candidate had a majority of the electors, there had never been any controversy of note.
Trump and/or his minions had long ago targeted this day as the final step2 in preventing Biden’s inauguration. Their primary hope was to pressure Mike Pence into refusing to validate the results. The secondary hope was to pressure the states, some of which were controlled by Republicans, to submit an alternate slate of electors who had supported Trump.
Trump had tweeted at 1:42 in the morning on December 19, making reference to an analysis by Peter Navarro3: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
National Public Radio posted a timeline of the events of January 6 in and out of Washington. It can be viewed here. It is stunning to read because it makes it very clear that this was an organized and coordinated attempt to thwart the wishes of the people—Trump lost by eight million votes!—and violate the spirit and letter of the law through the deployment of a bunch of deluded fascistic vigilantes.
A rally was scheduled to take place on the Ellipse just south of the White House. Trump addressed the crowd,a large percentage of which were outfitted in camos and military gear, in person. He stood in front of a line of American flags. The White House was visible behind him. He spoke for an hour, which was rather short for him. He emphasized that the election had been stolen from him and that it was up to patriots like those assembled in front of him to fight—a word that he used in one form or another twenty times in the speech—for a just resolution of this outrage.
He concluded his speech just as the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was convening the joint session. His last words were “We’re going to the Capitol. We’re going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
Too far for ‘Ol Bonespurs to walk.
Needless to say, Ol’ Bonespurs had no intention of personally leading his ragamuffin army to the Capitol. Instead he returned to the White House and tweeted. His twenty-five tweets for that day have been archived here.
The plan did not work, but it was almost a disaster. The attack on the Capitol was not repulsed until after 6PM. After many interruptions by right-wing congressmen Pence finally uttered the magic phrase at 3:43 on the morning of January 7. Because of the outlandish lies and the dog-whistle calls for violence Facebook and Twitter both suspended Trump’s accounts.
The articles of impeachment.
On January 11 a single article of impeachment charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” against the U.S. government and “lawless action at the Capitol” was introduced to the House of Representatives. It was passed two days later with ten Republicans and all the Democrats voting in favor.
Although almost every senator—even Lindsey Graham—had denounced Trump’s attempted coup, the vote in the Senate for conviction on February 13 was 57-43, far short of the 67 votes needed for conviction. Most Republicans argued that even the process of impeachment would do more harm than good and/or that it was not legal to impeach a former president. Few, if any, had much to say about the criminality of Trump’s actions.
Over the next two years almost one thousand people were charged with crimes related to the attempted coup. Hundreds pleaded guilty or were convicted. At least one hundred have been sentenced to prison. Two leaders of the Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Trump has several times promised to consider pardoning everyone involved in the attempted coup if he is elected president in 2024..
1. The first impeachment of President Trump is described here.
Proud Boys.
2. I had feared that Trump would just not leave. I hypothesized that he would gather together the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and others of their ilk and order them to protect him. He might even order members of the armed forces and/or the Secret Service to join him in a coup. I was not a bit sure that the military could be counted on to defend the orderly transition of power after the president, their Commander in Chief, had been calling the election “rigged” (by a party not in power!) for at least six months.
3. Navarro’s training and experience are in economics, not statistics. However, he was never shy about voicing radical opinions beyond his expertise. He was also one of the most vocal advocates of the worthless drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 and disparaged actions endorsed by the public health community.
The year 2020 began with the two major parties facing contrasting challenges:
Zelensky and his principal phone.
The Republicans had only one serious candidate, President Trump, who had just been impeached by the House of Representatives because his telephone call with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, clearly indicated that he was holding up military aid passed by Congress in hope that Zelensky would do him a political favor first. At that point the Russians had already seized Crimea and had covertly invaded eastern provinces. The party held a few early primaries but called off most of them for lack of interest.
The Democrats, on the other hand, had a large number of candidate, probably too many. The front-runner was Bernie Sanders, the liberal senator from Vermont who was not afraid of being labeled a socialist. The party had eleven so-called debates among the candidates! It also had a large number of heavily contested primaries.
Republicans were expected to toe the line.
The impeachment trial occurred in the Senate from January 22-February 5. The Democrats asked for the ability to call witnesses. 51 Republicans voted this request down. In the end all of the Republican senators voted against the charge of contempt of Congress. Mitt Romney was the only senator to vote in favor of the charge of abuse of power.
On January 14 a “debate” was held among six Democratic contenders in Des Moines, IA. Senators Sanders, Klobuchar, and Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend, IN, and someone else participated. I did not watch. I have always found these events too embarrassing to watch.
Popular in Iowa and New Hampshire.
During the impeachment trial the senators all needed to stop campaigning in order to attend. The Iowa caucus on February 3 was a gigantic mess for the Democrats. They tried to use an app, but it malfunctioned. Later they recanvassed and determined that it was a virtual tie between Sanders and Buttigieg.
The New Hampshire primary was on February 11. Sanders and Buttigieg split the eighteen delegates evenly. This was bitter news for Warren, who expected to do well in a neighboring state.
Biden and Clyburn.
For some reason the media decided that the most important primary was in South Carolina, a state in which no Democrat could possibly win at any point in the foreseeable future, on February 29. It turned on the endorsement of Jim Clyburn, the most powerful Democrat in South Carolina, allegedly because Biden promised to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court if elected. After Biden’s victory in South Carolina, Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Bloomberg did poorly in the debate.
On March 3, Super Tuesday, Biden won ten states, Sanders won four, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg won American Samoa. Warren and Bloomberg dropped out, leaving only Biden and Sanders as serious candidates. I was astounded and quite disappointed that the best that the party could come up with were two guys who were even older than Trump! He could even claim to be the youthful candidate.
A week later Biden won four fairly large states, and Sanders prevailed only in North Dakota.
Most of the remaining primaries were postponed or, in New York’s case, canceled because of the rapid spread of COVID-19. All of the center-left candidates gave their support to Biden. Not even Senator Warren1 endorsed Sanders.
On June 15 Louis DeJoy became postmaster general. He immediately implemented cost-saving methods including banning overtime and the removal of mail sorting machines. Because of COVID-19 many states began to expand or even require mail-in balloting. On July the Postal Service announce that it would not be able to meet some state deadlines. On August 18 in response to lawsuits from several states DeJoy rolled back his cost-cutting measures, but most of the sorting machines targeted for removal were already gone. On August 21 and 24 DeJoy testifies before the Senate and House that the USPS will do its job. On September a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting DeJoy’s changes because they were “politically motivated”.
This guy probably survived the Tulsa rally.
On June 20 Trump held his first rally in Tulsa, OK. Attendance was far short of Trump’s prediction of almost a million. The actual attendance was probably less than ten thousand. Herman Cain was there without a mask. He got COVID-19 there or somewhere else and died on July 31. Despite the rising death count due to the pandemic, Trump continued to hold rallies both indoors and outdoors throughout the summer and fall. God only knows how many of his own followers died because of his election strategy.
Bernie campaigned hard everywhere.
The last primary in the nation was in Connecticut on August 11, the same day that Biden announced that his running mate would be Kamala Harris. Because I had voted by mail a week or so earlier, that did not affect my choice. The options were Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Uncommitted. I voted for Uncommitted. Biden got nearly 85 percent of the vote. My candidate got 2.26 percent, which was more than Tulsi Gabbard received. This may have been the least important vote in the history of elections.
The convention started six days later. The Republican show began on August 24. Because of the fact that the results were predetermined and COVID-19 was still rampant, the parties did not really convene. Instead, they both took advantage of the free TV time to put on shows promoting their ideas and people. Of course, the Republicans only had one idea (more of the same) and one exalted person.
I did not watch any portion of either convention. I saw a few clips on Twitter.
On September 1, more than two months before the election, an article on the news website Axios stated that if more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail—as seemed very likely—any results from election night might falsely skew toward a landslide victory by Trump.
It is hard to believe in retrospect, but much of the media attention during the summer was on Black Lives Matter protests concerning police violence and the response from right-wingers. They had better optics than Trump’s ceaseless rallies and Biden’s masked drop-in visits.
On September 18 Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at age 87. She was a remarkable woman, but her refusal to retire during the Obama administration was, to me, unforgivably arrogant. It has exacted a huge cost.
On September 26 Trump nominated federal circuit judge Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. At least eight attendees at the nomination ceremony subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.
The New York Times on September 27 published summaries of Trump’s tax returns for fifteen years, in ten of which he paid no income tax. Trump, of course, dismissed the article as “fake news”.
On September 29 the first extremely chaotic presidential debate took place. At least eleven people involved in it got COVID-19. I did not watch, and I did not get COVID-19.
Both Trump and his wife tested positive two days later. The following day Pence and his wife tested positive. Trump was taken to Walter Reed Medical Center where he was treated with dexamethosone and remdesvir, which were not generally available at the time. While still in the hospital he took an unmasked victory lap in his limo. He was released after three days and pronounced himself “immune”, but he was still experiencing coughing fits on October 8.
The second debate was canceled because Trump refused to participate unless it was face-to-face.
Trump began making personal appearances on October 10, and shortly thereafter he started to appear at rallies throughout the country. Biden’s campaign was much more low-key, and Biden almost always wore a mask.
On October 26, a week and a day before the election, the senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett. One Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, and all Democrats vote against her.
On October 27 the White House science office released a memo that said that “Ending the COVID pandemic” was the greatest accomplishment of Trump’s career. Someone in the White House staff had apparently read a newspaper or listened to the news at some point in the last few months. The statement was quickly withdrawn.
Throughout the summer and the fall Republicans filed lawsuits in many state courts in an attempt to throw out various kinds of ballots or extensions of time periods for voting. This strategy was understandable. For the last three decades whenever the turnout was high, the Republicans had lost, and the demographics had worsened for them considerably. A primary element of their strategy had been to restrict voting in every possible way. On November 1 and 2 a Republican suit to dismiss 127,000 drive-through votes in Harris County, TX, was rejected by the the Texas Supreme Court and a federal judge.
On November 1 and 2 Trump attended ten different rallies in swing states! Since he seldom spoke for less than an hour, I wonder how his handlers got him to all of those places. Pence and the Democrats campaigned a lot less.
On election day, November 3, the voting and counting went smoothly almost everywhere. However, the USPS previously claimed that 300,000 ballots that it had received had not been scanned as delivered. It then disobeyed a court order to search for them.
At 11:20 p,m. Fox News named Biden the winner in Arizona, the first state to flip from the 2016 results. Trump and the Republicans were furious at the network for doing so. They had been painting a picture of a Trump landslide from early returns from early returns that mostly did not count mail-in ballots. This was exactly what the Axios article predicted.
At 2:30 a.m. on November 4 Trump claimed “Frankly, we did win the election.” It was lie #30,001 of his presidency, perhaps the biggest one of all. At 6 p.m. the Associated Press awarded Wisconsin and Michigan to Biden. He therefore needed to win only one of the four remaining states: Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
On November 5 a bevy of ludicrous lawsuits by Trump supporters in those states were dismissed while the counting continued.
Rudy Giuliani at the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping).
On November 7 all the major networks reported that Biden won Pennsylvania and therefore the election. The Republican litigation machine, however, was just getting warmed up. It filed more than sixty lawsuits challenging the methods or the results. All but one was rejected; it was a ruling that extended the deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania for three days. The effect was negligible.
When all was said2 and done, the election was not a close one. Biden received more than seven million votes than Trump, and the margin in the Electoral College was 84. Of the last four states only North Carolina went into Trump’s column.
So, then President Trump graciously conceded defeat and, like all of his predecessors, participated whole-heartedly in a smooth and seamless transfer of power and responsibility.
Uh, not exactly. Trump, who had also claimed that he had been cheated by a rigged Emmy award system3 and that he had actually won the popular vote in 2016, never conceded defeat. Instead, he insisted that he had been the victim of what he called “The Big Steal”. Several aides later claimed that they heard him say that he would never leave the White House.
He was still there at the end of 2020. A description of the electoral brouhaha of 2021 can be found here.
The other races: The Democrats lost some seats in the House of Representatives, but they still maintained a majority.
The Republicans had controlled the Senate, but the Democrats picked up a few seats, which brought their number up to 48 from 45. The two seats in the state of Georgia remained to be decided in a special runoff election to be held on January 5, 2021. Rev. Raphael Warnock challenged Kelly Loeffler, who had been appointed senator by Governor Brian Kemp in January of 2020. Jon Ossoff vied for the seat that had been held by David Perdue for six years. Since Biden had carried Georgia, it was considered plausible that the Democrats might unseat one or both incumbents. However, Biden’s victory margin was only 17,000 votes.
What a contrast between the two candidates! Loeffler and Perdue were both CEO’s who were accused of using insider information when they both unloaded large quantities of stock just before the market crashed. Warnock was a black pastor, and Ossoff was a Jewish documentary film producer and investigative journalist. No black man had ever been elected to the Senate from a former Confederate state. Both Perdue and Loeffler loudly proclaimed that they had actually won in November, and they called for the resignation of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. He told them (and later, Trump) to go pound sand.
The key would be turnout. Republicans did everything they could to suppress the turnout. I joined many others in supporting Stacy Abrams’s Fair Fight campaign to get out the vote. I sent them $100. It worked. Both Warnock and Ossoff won. Warnock defeated Loeffler by more than two percentage points. Ossoff’s margin was smaller, but it exceeded Biden’s margin over Trump.
So, the Senate would consist of fifty Republicans and fifty Democrats. Ties would be broken by the President of the Senate, who was the newly elected Vice-President, Kamala Harris. No one foresaw this outcome.
1. I was hoping that I might at least get a chance to vote for Warren in the primary. She seemed like the only candidate with specific ideas. The other reasons that I liked her were enumerated here.
2. Well, actually a lot more was said and done in the fantasy land of Trump supporters.
3. During the last debate with Hilary Clinton Trump claimed that the presidential election was probably rigged. Clinton replied that he had made the same charge against the Emmy awards. Trump’s “reality” show, The Apprentice, was nominated for four Emmy awards and lost to The Great Race each time. I never saw either show, and for all I know, the results may have been rigged. It certainly would not surprise me if most of the voters hated Trump. Practically everyone who ever dealt with him despised him.
I kept pretty good records of what my activities during 2021. I decided to arrange this entry in chronological order with separate entries for a few startling or momentous events.
January: 2020 was widely considered the worst year ever or at least in my lifetime, but it appeared that 2021 might wrest that crown away. It had the usual 365 days, but it felt like the longest year of all time. I had rather enjoyed the tranquility of the isolation in 2020, but by January of 2021 I really wanted to play bridge and see all of my friends again on a regular basis.
During the first few days of the new year no one talked about anything besides the election. I had become convinced early in the election campaign that Trump would try to start a coup if he lost. I was right. That story has been told here.
On the Pandemic front the big news in late 2020 was that three different vaccines would soon be available, but the schedule had not been published. The priority would be given to health care workers and then to those over 65.
We sufferers from trypanophobia were relentlessly subjected to photos of people with their sleeves rolled up as someone near them administered the shot (or “jab” as they called it in England).
On January 1 I played bridge online with Ken Leopold. We scored over 65 percent, one of my best scores ever. I still did not enjoy it.
Senators Manchin and Sinema.
On January 4, my sister’s 65th birthday, both of the Democrats were declared winners in Georgia. The Democrats seemed to be in control of both houses of Congress, but two of them, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, were not reliable votes. The former was in bed with Big Coal and conservative for even a Blue Dog, and the latter was just a narcissist.
On January 6 I played bridge with Ken again. This time we did horribly. When I get nervous playing online (sometimes because I am not yet used to the BBO interface), my left hand begins to shake.
Almost none of the rioters that stormed the Capitol wore masks. Deaths from Covid-19 were still averaging 4,000 per year. So, on top of everything else the insurrection was also probably a super-spreader event.
Ken and I had another awful game on January 8. This time I had an excuse. While we were playing, Sue was in the other end of the house and had a heart attack. She called 911, and an ambulance took her to the emergency room of St. Francis hospital. The doctors put in a stent. In January of 2021 hospitals were a very dangerous place. I was quite worried. I had long known that a day like this might come. Sue was quite overweight, and she knew that she had a mild case of diabetes for a long time. She never exercised, and her eating and sleeping habits were deplorable.
Almost all my horror stories involved Unite.
Expedia sent me an email that said that I had a credit with United Airlines. I had absolutely no idea what caused this. I looked at the header for the email; it seemed legitimate. At that point it seemed pretty unlikely that I would ever fly on United again. Unfortunately, the email got lost when I cleaned out my Outlook folders before moving to the Asus computer (details here) in 2023. So, I probably will never know any more about this.
I drove Sue home from the hospital on January 11. For the rest of her life she was required to administer insulin shots to herself and to take several types of heart medicine and a few other drugs for other chronic issues. She was on a fairly strict diet aimed at getting her weight down and her blood-sugar level under control. She could walk without assistance, but she had no stamina. She seemed worse a couple of days later.
She made an appointment with her primary care physician. The appointment with the doctor seemed to go OK. There might have been an adjustment to her drugs. I was required to wake her up every morning at 9 a.m. and to remind her when it was 6 p.m. After a while she figured out how to give herself reminders on her phone, but I still needed to awaken her every morning.
On January 20 Joe Biden was sworn in peacefully. At this point some right-wingers were claiming (with no evidence whatever) that the rioters (or at least the instigators) were actually from Antifa or Black Lives Matter or even the FBI. The FBI had begun searching for participants. There was an unbelievable abundance of video. Evidently for a lot of these bozos this was the culmination of a great deal of training and effort, and they wanted to make sure that they had mementos. Many of them would come to regret that decision.
On the 23rd I wrote in my notes that Sue seemed a little better, but she was still quite weak. She said that she could cook some, but she requested that I do the dishes. I agreed, of course, and there were several delicious but easy meals that I was comfortable preparing and cooking. I shopped for them, and she learned how to order groceries online.
February: On February 5 I played on BBO with Eric Vogel. We scored better than 54 percent.
Sue has rehabilitation therapy scheduled for the 8th, but she canceled it. She did that a lot when she had her knee replacement surgery a few years earlier. For a little while she tried to walk around on Hamilton Court. I joined her for a few of these jaunts. The cold air bothered her breathing for some reason. When it got warmer she went on little walks by herself, but she eventually stopped doing them. That was just the way she was. It would have done no good to nag her to exercise.
On the next day I played with Eric again. This time we scored better than 57 percent. I was starting to feel more relaxed playing online, but I still hated it. It was also the day that Trump’s trial in the Senate began. The first vote was on whether the process was constitutional. That passed 56-44 with six Republicans voting in favor. However, 67 votes will be required for conviction, and so it appears that he will walk again.
On the 10th Sue went back to her heart doctor. He put her back on Lasix to reduce the buildup of fluids. This seemed to help her a lot, but it made her go to the bathroom. It took her a bit of time to learn how to control this situation.
On the same day I went downstairs to walk a few miles on the treadmill1. It made a horrible sound, and I had to unplug it. After I thought about it, I became pretty sure that this was caused by the cats, Giacomo and Bob. They both took naps on the treadmill after visiting the litter box, which was also in the basement. A bit of litter might have stuck to their paws, then fell into the treadmill’s mechanism, and somehow made it jam up. In any case fixing or replacing it was not a job to be undertaken when all of society was under lockdown.
I always watched an opera or a streamed TV show or movie on my laptop situated on the ping pong table.
On the very next day I spent 100 minutes on the rowing machine that Sue had bought for me many years earlier. It gave me a sore tailbone. I brought down a small pillow and strapped it on top of the seat. I also brought down a pair of grey sneakers and permanently tied them into the footrest. It had bothered me that my feet slipped while I was rowing. This solved the problem.
Sue at some point in February had an anxiety attack. This was really the worst symptom yet. She had difficulty breathing for several minutes. This development meant that I had to keep bottled up my feelings about everything (including but not limited to my disdain for the pigsty in which we lived) or risk killing my wife. She got a prescription for this from one of her doctors. It seemed to work.
Over the next few days I spent some time doing our income taxes. I filed them electronically using “Free File Fillable Forms” and almost immediately received a refund from Connecticut. The federal refund did not arrive for several months. I can’t complain too much; the IRS did send a “stimulus” check of $2800.
At some point I dropped my Pixel 2 cellphone and cracked the screen. It still seemed to function correctly. This device, which I came to hate, continued to function until May of 2022. Its demise occurred somewhere in Germany and was described in detail here.
March: The 2nd was Sue’s 70th birthday. She was planning on throwing a big party, but she was definitely not up to it, and not many people would have been able to come anyway.
On March 15 Sue and I drove to a huge parking lot on Runway Rd. in East Hartford. There we received our initial Pfizer mRNA-based vaccine. It was a very quick and well-organized process overseen by members of the National Guard. The vaccine was reportedly more than 90 percent effective, which was incredibly high for a vaccine of any time. The number of new cases was already dropping in response to its availability.
A meeting of the District 25 Executive Committee (EC) was held via Zoom. Not much was decided. The big issue was whether the district would follow the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), the locality, or nobody with regards to requirements for vaccination and/or masks.
On March 16 the weather was nice enough to walk five miles outside. However this was the last time in March that I was able to achieve that distance. Subsequent walks were cut short by pain in my right foot that seemed somehow to be related to the chronic tendinitis that I had in the IT band that ran from my knee to my hip (described here). This was quite upsetting to me.
On March 21 I posted the pre-registration form and deposit for our team for the Grand National Teams (GNT) qualifying tournament: Felix Springer, Trevor Reeves, Ken, and me. The qualifying games would definitely be held online on BBO. The national finals were scheduled for the summer NABC. Because that tournament had been canceled, the GNT finals would be held online.
On March 22 the Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) for District 25 (D25) met on Zoom. The plan was to hold the Ocean State Regional in Warwick on the week before Labor Day, if possible. The ACBL was planning to make a decision about sanctioning tournaments on May 22.
On the last day of March I made a long overdue appointment with my dentist, Dr. Coombs in Suffield. I later canceled the appointment because of fear of Covid-19.
April: No April fool jokes on April 1: The last blossom on the Christmas cactus appeared. The most remarkable story of the year concerned the mysterious injury to Sue’s cat, Bob. The details have been posted here.
April 5: I sent out an email composed by Sue Miguel to promote the online GNT qualifying tournaments that will be held at various times.
April 7: Bob seems nearly fully recovered.
April 13: Frances Schneider, the outgoing president of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA) asks me to take over her job at the end of her term. I declined because I was still doing a great deal of work for the district, and no one seemed to be taking seriously that I planned to resign those duties at the end of the year, and a great deal of effort would be required to replace me.
April 15: Sue and I drove back to East Hartford to be given the second Pfizer shot. I was once again amazed at how easy it was. I have always absolutely hated even the idea of shots, but this was not a bad experience. A fairly sizeable percentage of the population, however, has bought into the idea that the vaccines are some kind of plot generated by the Big State.
No screens online.
April 17-18: The GNT qualifier was held over a weekend online on BBO. In the first round on Saturday our foursome played in a four-way, which was necessary because there was no way to do a three-way on BBO. Because it was so easy to cheat on BBO, we were supposed to provide our own way of communicating visually (via Zoom or some other device). There were no instructions as to how this should or could be done. It was left up to the players, each of whom was paired up with an opponent in the way that is done in matches that used screens. .
The Meyerson team. Bernie is on the right.
In the first half of the first round we met Steve Meyerson’s team for a twelve-board match. I was supposed to set up some kind of communication with Bernie Bendiksen. I had played against Bernie a few times at tournaments, but I did not know him well. He didn’t know how to do it, and neither did I. So, we just played. I think that the other six people figured out a way to do it.
We won easily. The margin was 30 victory points. That meant that we did not need to play in the second half of the first round. We did not need to come back until after lunch.
Meyerson’s team won the second half of the morning. So, they got to play in the second round after the lunch break
Stay away, Fluffy.
In the afternoon we had another four-way. In the first twelve-board match our opponents were the team captained by Dana Rossi, who was also the person with whom I was supposed to establish verbal communication. Dana was from southwest Connecticut; I had played against him quite a few times at sectionals, but I had never been friendly with him. He provided me with a link to a Zoom feed that he was controlling. I signed in on Yoga, my convertible laptop. I played the match online on my desktop computer. I was uncomfortable listening to Dana Russo talking to a little girl, presumably his daughter. He told her that they take dead animals to the incinerator to burn them.
Not in Flight B.
We won again, this time by 35 victory points. So, we qualified to play in the quarterfinals on Sunday. We were matched up against Brad Mampe’s team. I was paired with his long-time partner Steve Willner. I had played against them once or twice, but I had not conversed with either of them. They seemed to play very little except in this event. Steve ran the Zoom feed. They had previously played a version of the Polish Club (as, in fact, so had Dan and his partner, Adam Lally). In this match they played a fairly standard version of 2/1.
This was a twenty-four board match. We lost the first half by 11 victory points. Steve was not around when the second half began, but he showed up a few minutes later. Ken and I had some chances in the second hand, but we each misplayed one hand. We lost the second half by 24.
Eric and Victor Xiao in 2019.
The Mampe team defeated the team captained by Dan Jablonski in the semifinals. Their opponents in the final match would be the Xiao team, whose captain was Victor. They would play a 48-board match for first place at some later date, but they were both guaranteed to qualify for the GNT.
On April 19 I sent out another email on MailChimp for Sue Miguel. When I attempted to remove everyone from the audience that I was using so that I could replace them with C players, Donna Cone’s record did not move. In an online “chat” someone from MailChimp told me it was because her record had been “cleaned”, which meant that the email address was no longer valid. I had obtained this address from the Rhode Island Bridge Association (RIBA) several years earlier.
After I sent out the email I undertook to print a coupon for $3 off of a box of cat litter. Thus began the great encounter with the Geek Squad that has been recounted in detail here.
On April 24 I walked 2.5 miles, but I had to quit at that point because of the pain in my right foot. The pain persisted throughout the evening.
The next day I sent out another email for Sue Miguel.
On April 26 I listened to a very disturbing podcast on This American Life about how right-wingers are sabotaging the effort to get the nation to a state of “herd immunity”, in which enough people have immunity that new infections cannot find new hosts. It has been posted here.
May: On May 2 I sent the following email to my friend, Bob Sagor (introduced here), the captain of the team that finished third: “The Xiaos won C. They can’t play in both flights. You may get to play in the NABC!”
On Thursday, May 6, I mowed the lawn for the first time in 2024. As usual, the Honda lawnmower started on the first or second pull. I needed to stop after completing the parts of the yard that face Hamilton Court or North Street. I sat, stretched the IT band on my right leg, and rested a bit. I then mowed the rest of the lawn.
The flowers on the daffodils and tulips in the neighborhood were withering. New Englanders said that the plants were “going by.” I had never heard this expression before coming to Connecticut, and I have never seen it in print.
Bob Sagor.
On May 8 Brad Mampe’s team beat Victor Xiao’s team in the final match of the Flight B qualifying tournament by 50 Victory Points! The third-place match was won by the team thrown together at the last minute by my friend and occasional partner, Bob Sagor. In fact, Bob’s team did attend the tournament, which was held online. They added Felix to their roster.
On May 11 Sue somehow hurt her left foot. I gave her the ankle brace that I had used a couple of times when I had sprained my ankle. Also, her ears were stopped up. Neither of these conditions lasted very long, but they made her even more miserable.
On May 13 I walked five miles with only two stretch breaks in 70 degree weather. I considered that a big improvement! Giacomo was having trouble getting up the steps from the basement to the house. I hated to do it, but I was going to need to bring the litter box upstairs.
The was the day that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) eliminated the mask guidelines “for most”. This was strictly a political move. Hundreds were still dying every day, but an incredibly large number of people resented being told to wear them. Good masks were an effective means of reducing the spread of the virus. The CDC had fumbled the ball when they said that any sort of face covering would do. Only later did their spokesmen indicate that the N95 masks were many times more effective than ordinary cotton ones.
Yoga and Big Bubba.
On Wednesday, May 26, I had placed my convertible computer, Yoga, on the floor next to the nightstand in the bedroom just before I took a nap. I then set my Big Bubba mug on the nightstand. It fell on the computer. Even though Yoga was closed, the impact cracked the screen. It was no longer functional.
Two days later I ordered a Microsoft Surface Go laptop from Best Buy. Before the Pandemic there was a Best Buy store in Enfield, but it had been closed. I had to drive to Manchester, CT, to pick it up. I did not give it a name.
On May 31 the Hartford Bridge Club reopened. Eight pairs played in a Howell. Masks were required (thank goodness!) because of the policy of West Hartford.
June: On the first day of the new month my new laptop would not operate. The screen was all black or dark grey. I could see the cursor, but i could not get it to operate. I made an appointment and drove to Best Buy in Manchester. The guy at the Geek squad desk was sanguine. He told me that “It uploads changes every Tuesday; something must have happened so that it could not reboot.” I asked him if I should make an appointment now for the following Wednesday. He advised me to hold the power key, which was the second one from the right on the top row, down for ten seconds.
On June 3 the TSC had a Zoom meeting. The district will try to hold a tournament in the week before Labor Day in Warwick, RI. This was exciting news. I sent out three big emails about Warwick.
That evening I found Bob in the basement. I deduced that he was able to climb up and down the stairs. I moved the litter box back to the basement.
Sohail Hasan, a partner from a tournament in 2019, sent me an email that asked me to play with him in Warwick.
On June 5 Chen’s team beat Mampe’s in a close match in the Flight A final of the GNT qualifier. That would really have been something if Mampe’s team had won both A and B.
The internal modem on my desktop computer stopped working, but I got the Belkin external modem to function. 52 people unsubscribed to my emails. That was a very high number. It was 94 degrees outside that day. I found that I could no longer tolerate long walks in temperatures above 90. When I was in my fifties I had no problems running in 100+ temperatures. It was still very hot the next day.
Sue told me that she has seen a white circle in the middle of her field of vision twice. This could be very bad. I certainly hoped that it didn’t happen again.
On June 8 I committed to play on July 1 with Felix Springer at the Hartford Bridge Club. I needed to avoid getting too many masterpoints because my total was very close to 2500, which was the cutoff for the GNT in 2022. I needed to be under that total for the roster that was published on August 6, 2021.
While researching for the blog entry about the Mark Twain writing contest (posted here), I discovered that Dorothy Clark was one of the judges. I played against her many times in Simsbury, and I was also her partner one evening, as described here.
Me, Felix, Eric, and Trevor.
June 12th was my third straight day of pain-free five mile hikes. I committed to play on 6/21 with Eric Vogel in club qualifying game for the North American Pairs (NAP).
The next day I committed to play at the HBC with Trevor Reeves on June 29. That game got canceled later.
On June 14 I discovered that Sue’s cat, Bob, was able to use the ramp that led from the basement to the cat door and thence to the back yard. So, he evidently no longer needed the litter box.
I played with Eric online on June 21. We were horrible.
I learned on June 27 that I did not need to report for jury duty. In 2023 I would be 75, which would allow me to avoid jury duty forever. I never served on a jury. I came close once. I was selected as an alternate for a civil case about an automobile accident. It was scheduled for two days, but one of those was canceled because of a bomb threat. I was unable to attend on the rescheduling date, and so I was excused.
6/29 Bob Bertoni (introduced here) died at 5:45 AM. This was very hard to take. Bridge in New England will have a very difficult time recovering without him. Over the subsequent years I have thought of him very often. His obituary was posted here.
John Willoughby.
Sue played bridge at the HBC with John Willoughby. After the temperature topped out at 97 degrees, a front came through with a thunderstorm.
6/30 I played with Felix at club. There were nine tables. We won with 62+%, and I earned my Q for the NAP qualifier.
July: A lot happened in July. On the first Sue and I drove to Bradford, MA, for Bob Bertoni’s wake. I had to let Sue off and park several blocks away. I saw Peter, Lois DeBlois, Carolyn Weiser, and Paula Najarian, who, to my great surprise, had white hair. A lot of the bridge players from the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA) were also there. I introduced myself to Beth Bertoni and told her that I did not know what we were going to do without Bob. I really meant it, and in the ensuing months and years I learned that my concern was justified.
Sad news: O’Connor’s closed for good at the end of 2022.
On the way back to Enfield we stopped for supper at O’Connor’s Irish restaurant in Worcester. I had to let Sue off again before I found a parking sport a good way from the door. This was our first night out in over fifteen months. We wore masks until the food came. Most of the other diners acted as if the Pandemic had never happened.
Mrs. Brown’s giant chicken and vegetable pot pie.
I had the chicken pot pie and a Guiness. It was good, but not a lot better than what could be purchased at the grocery store and reheated. It was nice, however, to be in public and see people who were having a good time.
It was raining lightly when I walked out to retrieve the car. By the time that we reached the Mass Pike there were torrents of rain. I drove almost all thee way home with the windshield wipers on at the highest speed. Most of the time I had great difficulty seeing the lane indicators. This was the worst occasion for summertime driving that I ever experienced.
It continued to rain very hard on the next day. Enfield seemed to get more rain than nearby locations. The back yard was flooded, and a few puddles were evident in the basement. Never in the more than thirty years that we had lived in Enfield had water seeped into the basement. I struggled to understand where it came from. Evidently concrete is slightly porous, and when the soil is very wet the water finds its own level.
Sue borrowed (or otherwise procured) a Sears Wet/Dry Vacuum and showed me how to use it. The puddles were eliminated rather quickly.
Stuart Whittle and Saul Agranoff.
On July 9 Saul Agranoff asked me if I could help with the EMBA website. It had been designed and supported by Bob Bertoni. I supplied him with the email address of the contact person at Bob’s company, Megahertz Computer. I also explained that I had never worked on the EMBA website, had no credentials for it, and was pretty certain that it was significantly different from NEBridge.org.
On July 10 I received emails from District 25 officials who were concerned about new ACBL rules for tournaments. They evidently required masks on all players and a distance of nine feet between tables.
My notes said that on the next day the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA) announced a sectional in Stamford. I could find no details about when this was scheduled to occur. This struck me as very peculiar because I was a member of the board in 2021 (and the previous eight years). To my knowledge we had no meetings whatever during the Pandemic.
My notes also indicated that on the next day that I sent email to my steady partners. Because a large number of emails were deleted when I converted to the Asus box in the fall of 2023 (described here), I cannot locate a copy of this email, but my recollection is that I wanted to set up a regular schedule for online play at the HBC on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
On July 13 I played bridge at the H
I kept a couple of these masks to use while mowing my lawn in allergy season.
BC with Felix. Quite a few players had difficulties with the masks. The most common complaint was that they caused glasses to fog up. I had bought ten masks for $10 at Shoprite. They were sold by Hanes and made of cotton and were washable. They probably stopped not even one infected particulate, but they did not bother me even a little.
Ben and Ginny Bishop provided decorated masks for members of the HBC. Sue ordered one. I don’t know what happened to it.
On July 15 I renamed the blog entries that chronicled the story of my life as The 1948 Project. It was a takeoff on the somewhat controversial 1619 Project that was sponsored by the New York Times in 2019 concerning the role of slavery in the development of the United states.
On the same day a $63.75 charge from Slice appeared on my American Express card. This was for three pizzas that the cellphone that was in my pocket apparently ordered while I was on one of my five-mile walks. The pizzas were delivered, but I had refused them because I did not place or confirm the order.
In an open pairs game at the HBC on July 20 Donna Lyons (introduced here) and I scored 62%. It was Maria Van der Ree’s 90th birthday.
On July 22 I played at the HBC with Joan Brault (introduced here). There were a lot of wild hands. Joan and I did not deal with them very well.
On July 24 Sue and I attended Maria’s birthday party. We found the event somewhat scary. No one was wearing masks. People had had enough of Covid-19, but the threat was a very long way from over.
Ken Leopold’s teenage son Sam had died at some point in July. I never learned the details. Sue and I attended the burial service in Avon. It was the first Jewish burial service that I had attended. A few people from the HBC were there: Ronit Shoham, Geof Brod, Y.L. Shiue, Marie Abate, and Felix Springer and his wife Helene. Ken gave a very touching speech about his son’s baseball heroics.
The virus had been raising its ugly head. On July 30 the ACBL responded by canceling all tournaments scheduled for August, which included the tournament that D25 hoped to old in Warwick. I immediately sent out an email with the same selection criteria as the on that I had previously sent to announce the cancellation of the tournament.
August: On August 2 I received an email from Viking (the cruise line) moving the departure date for our Grand European Tour to October 23. That would preclude attendance at the scheduled tournament in Mansfield, MA. I began investigating the alternatives.
My notes for August 5 say “Stood up by Joan. Had to drive back to pick up Sue Rudd.” I do not remember either of those events or what caused them. American Express reinstated the charges for the pizzas. I called, and they reopened the dispute. In the end I had to pay for one pizza. It was not worth it to fight this any more, but I deleted the Slice app from the Pixel 2. I have told this story many times, and I have yet to meet anyone else whose phone ordered anything for them.
After a Zoom call in the evening with Mark Aquino, who, after Bob Bertoni’s death, had decided to run for Regional Director, I felt very depressed about the future of bridge in New England and elsewhere.
On August 6 I rebooked the Viking tour to depart on October 11.
Brenda Montague.
On the next day on behalf of Brenda Montague, the chair of the Nominating Committee, I sent out a set of emails to bridge players in New England soliciting volunteers for the job of vice-president. Trevor Reeves later talked with me about the possibility of applying. I don’t think that he went through with it.
On August 11 I attended the Zoom call with the three Regional Director candidates, David Moss, Mark Aquino, and Allan Graves. David was the District 24 Director from New York City. Allan Graves lived in St. Johnsbury, VT, but for years had only participated in NABC’s and international events. No one mentioned the word tournament. Allan argued that we should concentrate our efforts on trying to get people to play rubber bridge. I found the whole event very depressing.
After the bridge game on my 73rd birthday a bunch of people who had played in the game joined Sue and me for lunch at Effie’s Place. In attendance were Lea Selig, Susan Seckinger, Lois McOmber, Jeanne Striefler, Maria Van der Ree, and Fred Gagnon. We ate outside. I think that I had a Reuben sandwich. It was nice to have any kind of a social occasion.
The next day a “war room” Zoom meeting of D25 officials was held. Carole Weinstein, Carolyn Weiser, Jack Mahoney, Peter Marcus, Sue Miguel, Joe Brouillard, and Sally Kirtley atttended. Peter wanted D25 to cancel all tournaments for 2021 and 2022! Nobody took that suggestion seriously. The qualification tournaments for the NAP would be held online. Carole called the decision a “no-brainer”. I thought that it was a bad idea to decide that anything would be played online if an alternative was possible.
On August 19 I reluctantly voted for Mark Aquino for Regional Director. He won.
I learned on August 20 that airline reservations had been made by Viking for the trip in October. I started doing some serious research about the ports of call on the cruise, which would start in Amsterdam and end in Budapest.
SBC games were played at Eno Hall, the Simsbury Senior Center.
On August 21 I sent an email to players in the vicinity of Simsbury to determine whether they would be interested in resuming the games of the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC). It is posted here. I received a lot of positive responses.
The next day Hurricane Henri passed through Connecticut. Enfield received only a little bit of rain, but floods were reported in Vernon and Manchester.
On August 24 I learned that the SBC will have been turned over to Sally Kirtley as of September 15. Ken did not want to direct the games. I asked her to verify the schedule with Eno Hall before I announced it.
On August 25 I sent an email to SBC subscribers that we would not be allowed to validate vaccinations on site. I definitely did not want to play bridge with anyone who had not been vaccinated.
Med Colket.
On August 30 Med Colket came up with a work-around. We could change SBC games to invitational instead of open so that I could validate vaccinations that were sent to me through emails. I could also automatically register players whom I had seen play at the HBC.
Aaaaargh! The U.S. has been removed from the white list by the European Union because of the recent uptick in the number of Covid-19 cases here. I began to wonder whether the cruise would be called off and, if not, whether we would be quarantined before boarding the ship.
September: On the first day of the month tropical depression Ida arrived in CT late at night. The rest of this heroic story has been told here.
On September 3 three European countries (Norway, Sweden, and Italy) began requiring tourists from the U.S. to quarantine. The problem was the new Delta variant was nearly twice as transmissible as the original strain, which had spread at an incredible rate before the vaccinations began. .
On September 5 the leaders of D25 were considering—via an exchange of emails—whether to cancel the tournament in Mansfield in November. Most people seem to be leaning in that direction.
On the following day Tom Corcoran, Sue and I decided to postpone the cruise until the spring because of the threat of quarantining in Europe. This would also allow Tom to spend his 70th birthday with his family in Vermont.
On August 8 the cruise was changed to begin on May 5 and end on May 22. Sue made the arrangements while I was playing bridge at the HBC. This period was chosen because no bridge tournaments were scheduled then. The new cruise started in Budapest and ended in Amsterdam. The other ports were the same or nearly so. This was not the last change in our plans, but I actually did go on the cruise on those dates. The bizarre details have been posted here.
On September 10 the HBC restarted the Saturday afternoon game. Peter Katz, my long-time Saturday partner, agreed to play with me.
On September 10 Sue and I went to the picnic for the Locke cousins. I sat by myself because I heard that some of the attendees had refused to get vaccinated, and no one in attendance wore a mask.
On September 14 for the first time ever my Honda lawnmower would not start. I later learn that there was gas or oil in the air filter. On the next day it started, and Sue hired a local guy to pick it up, change the oil, and check it out.
The inaugural Friday afternoon open game at HBC on September 17 drew only six pairs. I played with Trevor.
On the next day the first Saturday afternoon game at the reopened HBC was held. Both Mike and Susan Smith and Ken and Lori Leopold attended. There were five tables.
On September 20 I learned that changing the date of the trip had cost Tom $3K. I did not understand why, but there was not much I could do about it.
Giacomo surprised me by climbing back up on the couch. In his younger days he nonchalantly walked up onto the couch. He also executed a very tentative “mighty leap”2.
On September 21 the mechanic delivered the lawnmower and only charged $125. It ran very well. It was (and still is in 2024) the best lawnmower by far that I ever bought.
I realized on September 23 that I officially had exceeded my life expectancy at birth (73.1 years). I told people this at the HBC. No one seemed interested at all.
The cats had been acting weird for the last week or two. They no longer associated with each other. Bob stayed outside all day and night. He only came in only for meals or storms. Giacomo has returned to his throne on the back of the couch. He has taken to biting at his back legs and spine area. Who knows why?
On the same day the EC voted 9-3-1 to cancel Mansfield. I was the 1.
On September 24 the forecast on WTIC radio at 4:30 AM predicted a low of 75 and a high of 69.
The next day I discovered a sensitive spot on Giacomo’s back. For the first time ever he bit me.
Me and Ann.
On September 26 I was on the winning team of the first Swiss event at the reopened HBC. I played with Ann Hudson. Our teammates were Trevor, and Felix. We won by four victory points with a blitz in the last round against weak competition. I made made three bidding errors, but none of them cost us, and one helped us. 1♣-1♠-1NT-2♣–♥-2NT made 3; 2♣ by Ann was a relay to 2D (XYZ)3.Ann wanted to sign off in diamonds.
On September 27 I walked five miles without stopping for first time in months in perfect weather.
On September 30 I changed dentists because Dr. Peter Coombs did not take ConnectiCare. My new dentist was Dr. Bill Cummiskey.
October: On October 11 I canceled Chewy.com order of Advantage II, but it was delivered four days later. The charge was refunded on October 18.
On October 13 I saw Boris Godunov (an opera by Modest Mussorgsky recorded live in HD at the Met) at Cinemark4 at Enfield Square. Only one other person attended. Since that person was at least thirty feet away from me I took off my mask. I also saw two employees and one other person who was there to see a movie.
On October 15 I sent out the invitations for the first Simsbury game to 72 vaccinated people.
The next day Linda Starr helped me make boards at the HBC for the first game at Simsbury. Peter Katz and I finished first. There were only five other pairs, but it was a strong field. So far 4.5 tables are committed for the first game at the SBC.
On October 19 I got the points that I needed to finally make Gold Life Master even though I played poorly with John Calderbank.
Sally Kirtley set me an email that Eno “cannot accommodate SBC” on October 20. I had to postpone the first game, for which we had five tables.This was hard to take.
On October 20 I checked to make sure that everyone saw my email about the cancellation. Felix and Trevor agreed to play with Ken and me in the GNT qualifier next spring. HBC announced that it will drop mask requirement as of Friday. I had absolutely no intention of abandoning my mask.
On October 22 I discovered that Bob had a bump on his right shoulder that he did not like being touched. Sue was convinced that it was a bite. It did not feel like that to me.
I played with Sally Kirtley and learned that Eno Hall canceled our game because it did not have a janitor scheduled for October 20. Eight pairs had so far agreed to play on October 27.
On October 24 the HBC held its annual meeting on Zoom. Trevor had asked me to serve as a trustee, and I had agreed to a three-year commitment.
Donna Feir.
On October 27 Donna Feir let us use the boards that were made for the Tuesday night that was canceled because not enough people registered. It was Tom Corcoran’s birthday. Sue and I talked with him and his kids on Zoom. I copied the wrong .pbn5 file onto my thumb drive to give to Sally. I was ten minutes late at Simsbury because of Sue Rudd. Ken and I tied for first (out of eleven pairs) with Felix and Trevor.
On October 29 I discovered that Bob had one or two ticks.
November: We assigned November 1 as the birth date for two of our cats, Giacomo, and Woodrow. So, we celebrated Giacomo’s eighteenth birthday on 11/01/21. This was a big one. Both Woodrow and Rocky had made it to 18, but each died shortly thereafter. So, from now on Giacomo was playing with the house’s money.
In other cat news: Bob would not come into the house. Sue put food and water in bowls outside for him and made up a bed for him among all of her junk piled up outside of the blue door to the kitchen. Maybe he was afraid of Giacomo. Maybe he was afraid of me. Maybe he was just crazy.
On Tuesday, November 2. I drove into the HBC before the morning game and used the HBC’s dealing machine to make boards for the SBC game the next evening. John Calderbank and I then had a 59 percent game, a real coup for us.
I somehow managed to pull a huge tick off of Bob’s right shoulder. Sue claimed that he still had a smaller one on the left side of hs neck, but I had not seen it.
On Wednesday evening we had 3 1/2 tables at the evening game at the SBC. I had used the correct pbn file this time.
On November 6 the grey cat that sometimes roamed our neighborhood appeared. Bob stayed inside.
On November 7 an astounding sixteen teams played in the Swiss at the HBC! Food was provided, and the players were definitely ready to party.
I picked a second tick off of Bob’s right shoulder. I could not find anything on his left shoulder. This might have been the best day of the year at the Wavada household.
On November 12 Bob returned to the family. He got up on Sue’s chair without help while she was sitting on it. Sue was absolutely delighted.
On November 23 the first meeting of the new HBC Planning Committee was held on Zoom. John Willoughby, the new vice-president, ran the meeting. I learned that there would be a “rainbow” event for clubs in January. Gold, silver, red, and black points would be awarded 6
Sue has taken to sleeping on my chair in the living room because Bob would not leave her chair. Why, you may ask, does she sleep prefer to sleep on a chair rather than a bed?
On November 24 I sent a long email to the people on the EC to explain what I had been doing in my role as webmaster, database manager, and other things before the Pandemic. The rest of my frustrating but ultimately successful attempt to resign from these responsibilities has been described here in excruciating detail.
November 27 was another great day. U-M defeated Ohio State 42-27. Michigan had no takeaways and only punted twice. They had seven drives that ended in touchdowns. Needless to say, I did not watch the game, but I wished that I had. I feasted on lots of replays of the many highlights. Michigan finished the regular season 11-1 and would meet Iowa on December 4 for the conference championship.
11/29 For some stupid reason the TSC announced that it would meet on Zoom on December 15, a Wednesday evening. My protests that this was the ONLY time all week that Sally and I could not attend fell on deaf ears. I don’t know if Sally emphasized this, but I certainly did. was really upset about this.
December: Sue and I got our booster shots for the Pfizer vaccine at the local CVS.
12/3 I had a minor pain in my shoulder and neck; the only reason to mention it was because I had no known injuries there. The passport that I planned to use on the October trip would expire before I needed it for the rescheduled one in May. I had researched what was required. I took a photo of myself in the size and format required. I mailed it with all the other materials, including my old passport. The State Department did not accept the photo and sent the package back to me.
On the next day Michigan beat Iowa 42-3. The Wolverines were champions of the Big 10 for the first time since they started the championship game.
On December 6 the new stove that Sue purchased arrived and was installed. The burners are, in my opinion, much too hot, but I didn’t know what we could do about it. My neck felt much better.
12/7 I went to Walgreen’s and bought a new passport photo. They guaranteed that it would be accepted. Evidently there was a website that examined the image and validated it. I could not find my old passport.
The next day I found the old passport under my chair in living room. It had apparently dropped through the cushions. I mailed the forms back in.
Ken and I scored more than 72 percent at the SBC bridge game. That might have been the best score that I had ever recorded up to that point.
The space to the right of the Gold LM certificate will probably always be empty.
On December 10 I received Gold LM certificate from the ACBL and attached it to the east wall in my office below the other ones. I don’t expect to win any more
On the next Tuesday Donna Feir needed me to make boards for the morning open pairs game while she got the room set up. I did so. I only had time to make 5 boards for the Wednesday night game at the SBC. I made the rest of boards by hand. Unfortunately, when I did so I made boards #21 and 22 the same. Ken directed and Margie Garilli kept score on the BridgeMate.
On December 16 the EC voted on Zoom to move the Royal STaC to April of 2022, to cancel the Presidential Regional ordinarily held in February, and to hold two four-day regionals in May. One would be a free tournament structured along the lines of the Gold Mine held in 20197. The other would be open.
On December 17 President Biden postponed closing U.S airports to people from countries that were infected by the Omicron virus.
On December 22 I could not get dealing machine to work. At the SBC game we played using an old deck that had been given to me years earlier. The players did not like this much.
Discontinued but not forgotten.
In the little shelf on the north wall of my office I found a package of McCormick’s Meat Marinade. On Christmas day I used it to marinate a spoon roast that Sue and I feasted on. I put Bob up on my lap both in the office and the living room. He really liked the former when I petted him with both hands, but I was not able to get much work done when I did so.
By December 26 Omicron accounted for 71 percent of the cases of Covid-19 in the US. The number of new cases eclipsed 200,000 per day. The holiday season turned into a super-spreader event.
I realized that I must be allergic to Bob—sneezing and blowing nose all day. I bought ten N95 masks at Home Depot for $23. The CDC finally admitted that simple face coverings were better than nothing, but the N95 masks were tremendously more effect
I encountered no problems whatever in making thee boards for the SBC game. I played with Felix in the open pairs game at the HBC. We almost won; one different decision against Tom Joyce would have done it.
On December 29 I had a 64 percent game in the open pairs at the HBC with Eric. In the last game of the year at the SBC 3 tables, Ken and I scored 65%.
On December 30 at an emergency meeting of the HBC Board of Trustees (BoT) on Zoom. Carole Amaio was a riot: “Can you hear me? I broke my wine glass. Shit!” We decided to require masks starting on Monday.
On December 31 over 500,000 new cases were reported, the most of entire Pandemic. The only good sign was the fact that hospitalizations and deaths were not as prevalent as with the original virus. However, both vaccinated people and those who had already had Covid-19 were susceptible to Omicron.
U-M lost to Georgia 38-11. The football team had a great year, but they were not (yet) in Georgia’s class. Four bowl games were canceled in 2021.
1. This treadmill was given to me by Tom Corcoran. My first treadmill was purchased second-hand from someone who had never used it. I found them on Craig’s List. The belt on that one broke after I had used it regularly in the winter and foul weather for several years. Tom brought the second one from his house in Wethersfield. His wife Patti had used it for a while. He somehow arranged for removal of the old one and installation of this much better one. Incidentally, I claim to be the only person who has ever broken two treadmills. Prove me wrong.
2. Giacomo was the only cat that we ever had who attempted to make the “mighty leap” from the couch on which he tended to spend his days to my easy chair where he liked to sit on my lap while I was watching television. When in September 2021 he executed the “tentative” version of the leap, I realized that his legs and body were so long that he could actually reach the armrest that he landed on by just stretching out to his full length.
3. XYZ is a kind of new-minor forcing. After any three bids 2♣ is a relay to 2♦, usually to show invitational values. A ♦ rebid is an artificial game-force.
4. In December of 2023 the twelve-theater Cinemark complex in Enfield Square closed for good. At that point it became a twenty-minute drive to see a movie or, in my case,an HD opera.
5. Files with the extension “.pbn” (portable bridge notation) can be read by the Dealer4 software that runs the dealing machine at the HBC. At first I had Linda make some of these files for me using software on the HBC’s computer. In 2023 I discovered free software available for download that allowed me to make them on my computer. In both cases the files generated were completely random.
6. I am pretty sure that the “rainbow” event was later called a Royal STaC.
7. The free Gold Mine never happened. I do not remember why.
