My wife and I bicycled a few miles on the Burke Gilman Trail to the University Village. The U Village is a tony shopping center just down the viaduct from the main campus of the University of Washington.
It was a week or two before Christmas. The ornaments were up. Festive colored lights were illuminated. Shoppers were shopping. Shoplifters were shoplifting. Uniformed private guards glowered and stood sentry next to the RFID tag readers at the exit doors of the shops. Outside, old time carols played in the background from hidden speakers, soothing and reassuring.
We didn't come to the U Village to shop. We came as tourists to sight-see.
The University Village is a study in contrasts. By and large, every shopping area in the western world now has, more or less, the same trendy stores. Once, many decades ago, the University Village included a hardware store, a bookstore, a nearby office supply store, a full service pharmacy, and even a bowling alley - you know, places that you might visit to buy something useful, something necessary or someplace just to hang out.
Today, there is no hardware store. Where once there was an office supply store there are blocks of residential mid-rise apartments. When you type the word "books" on the query line for the U Village website, it returns the message: "Nothing found, please try again."
There is still a pharmacy - Bartell Drugs. But Bartell Drugs was bought out by Rite Aide and Rite Aide filed for reorganization under Chapter 11. So although there still is a pharmacy, it is in bankruptcy, its shelves are sparse and there isn't much variety or quantity.
The University Village now has three EV dealer showrooms: Tesla, Rivian and Lucid. It also has a very large Apple computer and phone store. Most of the shops at the U Village sell expensive clothing: upscale fashion-wear for men, women and children of means. There are also stores that sell upscale perfumes and jewelry for men, women and children of means. I am not sure exactly who shops here, but we did see a few people of all ages walking around toting brand name shopping bags. They are mostly women roughly aged 20-55, but also a few older men, likely from the nearby retirement communities. Many of the shoppers looked like they had "dressed up" to be seen in public, much like (long, long ago!) passengers used to dress up when they would board a plane (without having to pass through security or remove their shoes, of course) to fly somewhere, anywhere.
This shopping center is like many others. The shops are tucked into little alley-like corridors and walkable streets. The facades of the single story storefronts are clad with brick and stucco. There are iron streetlights on the sidewalks with hanging plant baskets. In the middle of the shopping center there is a large oval area covered with (artificial) grass where children play while their parents shop. Here and there are decorative fountains. There are benches. There are a few chain or boutique restaurants, juice bars and coffee shops where one can sit outside to eat or drink to recharge yourself to go out and shop some more.
The shopping center is "open" to encourage strolling (that is, after you drive here and find someplace to park your car in one of the several multi-level garages). Like so many others, this shopping center is laid out to resemble an architect's notion of a village or small town, the likes of which have been bulldozed to make space for all the shopping centers that try to resemble the villages and small towns that have been razed. Indeed, the University Village is designed to be like a shopping oasis in the desert of boarded-up department stores and for-lease signs of the Big City. It is itself surrounded by brand spanking new multiplex residences and condominiums (with many more under construction).
It's a paradox. We are being shunted into wall-to-wall tiny apartments, but we may, occasionally, escape to the fake small villages of fashionable shopping centers where we can spend money in a faux town that simulates the ambiance of a smaller, less complicated life that once was. Perhaps, we know the villages only from stories. Or, perhaps, this is like where we fantasize we would live, if only we could escape from where we are.
If we knew where we are.
My wife and I didn't enter any of the stores and we bought nothing. We bicycled home feeling somewhat out of time and out of place. It's the holidaze. We have a sense of vertigo.
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A lot has happened since my last post at this website. The events have been rapid and dizzying.
In the instant that a cease-fire was agreed in Lebanon, Israel, the United States and Turkey - Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hell - orchestrated a coup d'etat in Syria. They and their proxy terrorist fighters are now feeding on the carrion. Soon, Syria will resemble the carcass of Libya and Iraq after they, too, were dismantled by invasion. Palestine - the land with all its people - has been steamrollered. The next target is obviously Iran. Then China. Then all of us. But not necessarily in that order.
The NATO war on Russia was supposed to wind down soon. Instead, in the waning weeks of the Biden Administration, the provocations involving Ukraine are intensifying. Some in Washington D.C., London, Kiev and Brussels want to spark a Strangelovian world war of nuclear annihilation. American long-range missiles fired from Ukraine are now striking inside Russia. Americans are guiding the missiles to their targets. Just this week, Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, was assassinated in Moscow. Ukraine boasted that it was responsible for the killing. But because Ukraine cannot take a piss without permission from Washington, London and Brussels, we can surmise that Washington, London and Brussels were as responsible for the assassination of General Kirillov as Kiev.
General Kirillov was the Russian military’s top military officer monitoring the development and deployment of the West's biological, nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction. Quite possibly, General Kirillov's murder was an effort to blind the Russians as the West maneuvers to deploy precisely that type of biological, nuclear or chemical attack.
A few weeks ago, the President of South Korea declared martial law and sought to arrest everyone who opposed his policies. He claimed that his political opponents were secret henchmen of North Korea. This was a crazy coup d'etat, but it fell apart within hours. Mr. Yoon Suk Yeol has, himself, now been impeached, but he refuses to leave office. All this happened within the last few weeks in the most heavily militarized real estate on the planet: the Korean Peninsula.
It seems like someone wants to reignite the Korean War... or provoke a nuclear one... right on China's doorstep.
In the same time frame, the State Department has issued an ultimatum to Venezuela's President, Nicolás Maduro, demanding that he resign in favor of Edmundo Gonzalez who lost the last election. The U.S. claims that Mr. Gonzalez is the "legitimate president." Resign or else… blusters the U.S. State Department! Prior to Mr. Gonzalez, the U.S. recognized another loser, Juan Guaidó, as the "legitimate president" of Venezuela. The U.S. is probably readying yet another military intervention in South America and "democracy" in Venezuela will be the stated objective.
We always seem to be overthrowing governments in the name of democracy.
In Romania, southwest of Russia, the constitutional court has annulled the country’s presidential election. Apparently, the folks who currently control Romania and its tilt toward Central Europe didn't like the initial anti-EU vote results and they have ordered a do-over.
In Georgia, just south of Russia, Mr. Kavelashvili of the anti-EU Georgian Dream party has been elected President. However, the defeated President, the French born pro-EU Salome Zourabichvili, refuses to leave office. She demands that a new election be held. And again and again, presumably, until the "correct results" are achieved. Democratically, of course.
Germany's "traffic light coalition" government - the incongruous coalition of the Social Democrats, the pro-business FDP and the pro-war, pro environment Greens - has collapsed in a vote of no confidence.
In France, the government of Emmanuel Macron is teetering as both the socialist and nationalist parties - who combined constitute a majority of the National Assembly - have voted no confidence in Mr. Macron's prime minister.
In Canada, Justin Trudeau's finance minster, Chrystia Freeland, has resigned. Members of Mr. Trudeau's own party, as well as its ruling coalition partner, the New Democratic Party, have demanded that Mr. Trudeau resign and call new elections. Perhaps Canada should become the 51st U.S. state. Perhaps it already is.
And then, just this month, as the political world wobbled on its axis, Mr. Luigi Mangione (allegedly) assassinated Brian Thompson, the Chief Executive Officer of the startlingly profitable Wall Street corporation United HealthCare. It reminded me of Joe Stack who, in 2010, in an act of suicidal desperation, crashed his light plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas.
There are a lot of unsolved, probably uninvestigated, violent crimes in America; but a crime against someone of the investor class apparently warrants special attention. The investigators pulled out all the stops to speedily locate and arrest Mr. Luigi Mangione. In an instant, he became a folk hero.
On the heels of the United HealthCare CEO's assassination, mysterious drones suddenly appeared all over the country.
They could be alien spaceships about to conquer and/or eat New Jersey! There is no earthly reason why anyone would want to conquer and/or eat New Jersey, wherefore they must be space aliens! Or, they could be Russian or Iranian or Chinese surveillance drones spying on rush hour commuters on the Turnpike! Or they could be Amazon or Uber Eats drones delivering pizza!
Or it could be just manufactured hysteria intended to distract from everything else that is happening.
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Luigi Mangione.
Luigi is an Italian variant of the Anglicized name Louis, or Louie.
My maternal grandfather - my mother's father - was Louie Goodman. Or possibly it was Louie Gutman before his name was "Americanized" at Ellis Island. Or, perhaps, he wasn't any of those names. I really don't know.
I didn't really know my mother's father and I only met him a few times that I can remember. He arrived in the United States some time in the first decade of the 20th Century. He spoke and read at least three languages - Russian, Polish and Yiddish. To my knowledge, although he spoke and understood English, he never learned to read or write it. Nor did he want to. He lived in New York City and was very active in the leadership of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). The ILGWU was a major player in the American and European labor movements.
The story is that Louie, using a shortened baseball bat, cracked a few scabs' skulls when they tried to cross a strikers' picket line. Throughout his life, Louie distrusted banks, complained about politicians and got his "news" from the likes of the Yiddish Forward and similar "alternative media" of the times. He died at the age of 97 or 98, flirtatious and cantankerous to the end. Hmm. I wonder how much of this is cultural and how much is genetic?
The background of my maternal grandfather is unclear. His real name was unclear. He might not have been a Gutman or a Goodman at all. He was reputed to have been a dancer and a gambler and a bit of a hellion when he was a young man in Radom, Poland. It was a time when regions of Poland were and were not part of Tsarist Russia.
The family lore is that my grandfather Louie was also a political radical. And an assassin. A proto-Luigi Mangione, perhaps.
The story may or may not be accurate in all its details, but I've heard it enough times from enough people that I believe it is largely true. The essence of the story is that Louie was a member of the Arbiter's Bund or possibly a member of the Organizacja Bojowa Polskiej Partii Socjalistycznej (abbreviated OBPPS) translated as the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party. Or, maybe he belonged to the Związek Walki Czynnej (abbreviation: ZWC; Union of Active Struggle). Or, possibly, he belonged to the Rewolucyjni Mściciele (Polish for Revolutionary Avengers, also known as Grupa Rewolucjonistów Mścicieli, translated as "Group of Revolutionaries and Avengers").
In any event, there was revolution in the air in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It was a time of great social upheaval, labor uprisings and revolution all around the world, including not only in Eastern Europe, but also in the United States, throughout Asia and in Western Europe. Workers did not watch television or social media. There was none. Nonetheless, theirs was not a culture of passive 'watching.' In the cities, workers strove to educate, and to politicize and to organize themselves by attending evening meetings, lectures and study sessions.
A revolution against Tsarist rule broke out in Russia in 1905-1906. This revolution failed, but it was a precursor to the more successful Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917.
The 1905 revolution was also fought in Poland where it continued to sputter until 1907. A major uprising against Tsarist authority occurred in Łódź, Poland in 1905. In the ensuing years, small socialist statelets were set up, knocked down and eradicated throughout the region. Activists murdered Tsarist officials. The Tsarist officials, in retribution and collective punishment, instigated pogroms against Jewish revolutionaries and communities. Tsarist retaliation and collective punishment against Jewish revolutionaries in 1905-07 was similar to what the Israelis have done, and continue to do, to Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Lebanon.
The 1905 Polish insurrectionists robbed trains Jesse James style. Workers laid down their tools and went on strike after strike after strike. They barricaded streets and the government tore the barricades down. The Tsarist soldiers gunned down unarmed protesters. Revolutionaries were arrested, summarily tried, hanged.
The story of Louie is that he was tasked, in this uproarious time, with assassinating a particularly nasty Tsarist official. Did they choose Louie because he was clever and determined? Or did they choose him because he was a dancer and a gambler and a hellion? Perhaps the latter. Regardless whether he succeeded in his deadly mission... or died trying... it would have been a win-win wager for the local community: either they would be rid of the hated Tsarist official... or they would be rid of Louie.
Or both!
In any event, so the story goes, the revolutionary leadership gave Louie a revolver, they gave him a one-way steamship ticket to America (steerage class, of course), and they gave him a passport - probably forged or stolen. Thus, the uncertainty about who my maternal grandfather really was.
We have a photograph of Louie with his wife-to-be, Dora, taken somewhere in Poland, I believe.
This is probably Dora's family, but there is no caption or writing on the front or the back of the photograph. What is the little boy holding that looks something like a sword and scabbard? I have a hat like the one the kid is wearing. Louie is clearly the young man in the middle of the picture with the slightly rakish expression. There is a book open on the table, but I don't know what it is. Who is the young woman on Louie's left with the Mona Lisa smile and her right hand on the older woman's shoulder? Dora, my mother's mother, has placed her left hand on Louie's shoulder. Dora has a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look as, I imagine, she knows that her fiance is about to kill someone and flee the country for a strange land on the other side of the world! I do not know when the photograph was taken, but I believe it was shortly before the assassination and not after.
And, yes, according to family lore, Louie did shoot and kill the Tsarist official, board the ship and arrive around 1905-1908 in New York City. Some time later, Dora also joined him. Dora and Louie lived in the slums of the Lower East Side in a brownstone tenement apartment with iron fire escapes, pushcart vegetable vendors in the streets, trolley cars and horse drawn fish vendors, bathrooms down the hall shared with several other families, constant noise and dirt, inescapable big city smells, constant traffic, teeming crowds of immigrants shouting and shoving and trying to get by.
Louie and Dora had four children - three sons and my mother, the youngest and the princess of the family. The rest, as they say, is history.
My history, I guess.
I offer no opinion as to Luigi Mangione and the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. I note only that there are many similarities between these times and the early decades of the 20th Century when Louie, my maternal grandfather, committed a political attentat and boarded the ship to the United States.
Things are revolving, spinning quickly; perhaps spinning out of control.
Perhaps things ought to spin out of control.
I feel like I did when my wife and I bicycled home after an afternoon sight-seeing at the University Village shopping center. Like in the headpiece illustration at the top of this story, I feel like we are descending a steepening precipice. I feel a holidazed vertigo.
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