Access to Bainbridge

South Street Will Be a Happier Place

The foot of the South street bridge.

Recently the City reversed the direction of LeCount street between South street and Bainbridge. This block of LeCount is a little, narrow street; it is just one block from the foot of the South street bridge. 

The flow on this block of LeCount had been southbound, and the traffic had become increasingly problematic: Motorists who had just come off the bridge were looking for a way to flee the traffic congestion on South street and were turning abruptly right from South onto LeCount, endangering, in their recklessness, the bicyclists and scooter riders in the bike lane there and also the pedestrians in the crosswalk. 

Both the bike lane and the sidewalks here are heavily utilized, particularly at the morning and evening rush hours. I infer, from the number of people in scrubs and others with their ID tags around their necks, that the core of this traffic is going to and from the medical city that lies on the other side of the bridge.

So the flow on the block of LeCount between South and Bainbridge now runs from south to north, and there are no motorists making abrupt right-hand turns from South onto LeCount. (Who am I kidding? This is Philadelphia.)

However, I do think there is a danger that we have not made this problem go away,  but have simply moved it two blocks east to Bambrey. I'm very hopeful that the city will soon reverse the course of Bambrey street, which lies just the other side of 26th street and currently runs north to south; 26th street here has been running south to north for a long time.

When I first heard that drivers on South street had decided to turn LeCount street into a lane in a bowling alley, I was surprised. There's an easier and less dangerous way to get to Bainbridge, and it gets you off South street a block earlier than LeCount. And it's simple: at the foot of the bridge, turn right. I know it's a hairpin turn, but be calm: It takes you to Schuylkill avenue, headed south. Go one block on Schuylkill, turn left, and you are on Bainbridge, quite possibly all by yourself. The rest of the crowd is still over on South.

That, of course, is the attraction of Bainbridge: It is a seriously underutilized street.  

Why aren't more motorists doing this? Well, let's slip behind the wheel of a small, reasonably maneuverable sedan and spend of few bewildering, hair-raising moments navigating down the slope at the east end of the South street bridge.

IMAGINE that you are a motorist who has just fled the Schuylkill expressway at 5:30 pm on a hot summer weekday. You're tired, a bit distracted, maybe a bit sweaty, possibly still frightened by the behavior of a particularly deranged motorist who lunged across several lanes of traffic to get to the Vare avenue exit. 

By the way, I'm describing myself here. I commuted to Claymont, Delaware, for five years during the middle oughts. 

But let's say that you are not me. Instead, you're coming from out of town to visit friends who have recently moved to Philadelphia, and you have never been on the South Street bridge before. As you come down the long slope that leads to the foot of the bridge at 27th street, you are confronted with the scene in the picture at the beginning of this story.

Here's another view, a little higher up on the hill.

Aside from the pedestrians and the bicyclists, is there anything in this picture that a red-blooded American motorist from the suburbs might find unusual? Take a closer look at the signs.

I think these signs tell motorists a lot about what they can't do, but tell them very little about how to get where they want to go. There is a sign that says Schuylkill avenue, and there is an arrow. But there is no indication of the existence of something called Bainbridge street, let alone any guidance as to how to get there.

Why aren't more people going to Bainbridge by way of Schuylkill avenue? I think it may be because they have no idea this option exists. Certainly the signage at the foot of the bridge isn't telling them.

I think we should have a sign that gives the motorists their options. I was thinking about what that sign should look like. I happened to be on the New Jersey turnpike while I was doing this thinking. For some strange reason, I had an inspiration. Why don't we design something like the signs we see on the interstate?

A sketch for the sign.

I'd actually make two of these signs. I'd put one at the foot of the bridge, and then I'd back up and put the second sign at the spot where a ramp and stairs connect to the Schuylkill river trail. This sign would give the motorist some advance notice of what he is about to confront. There is also a one-legged gantry here for the traffic lights. You could hang the sign on the arm that holds the traffic lights.

You'll notice in the picture that there is another set of traffic lights further down the hill. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.) Why not put the sign there? It's too close to the spot where a motorist must make a series of decisions very quickly. The two motor-vehicle lanes are about to split. The first thing that happens is the big sign painted on the surface of the right-hand lane, saying that the right-hand lane has just become a right-turn only lane. 

And then the bike lane suddenly jumps away from the right-hand curb and snuggles itself between the two motor-vehicle lanes. So if you are a driver in the right-hand lane, and you suddenly figure out that the lane you are in will not take you to South street, and you wanted to go to South street, you panic and you may very well muscle your way across the bike lane and into the left-hand motor-vehicle lane.

You could, of course, stay in the right-hand lane and go to Bainbridge. But you don't know you can do that. Nobody has told you.

Here's another view of the bike lane that you have to muscle through to get back to the left-hand lane.

Adding a few signs here would, I think, greatly improve life for motorists, but it would not solve all the problems on this section of the bridge. I personally think that the downhill bike lane should stay at the curb. And I think there should be only one downhill motor-vehicle lane. This would, among other things, make more space for the uphill side of the bridge, where large vehicles frequently have trouble making the turn from 27th street, causing them to enter the uphill bike lane at the corner and occasionally even jump the curb onto the sidewalk.

As currently constituted, this space at the foot of the bridge, created by humans, just keeps throwing curve balls at the motorist, the cyclist, and the pedestrian.

I personally don't think any of these proposed changes to the layout of the lanes here will ever happen. But I do think the signs we've been talking about here would be a meaningful improvement, and not just on the bridge.

I also think that the basic issues we're talking about here go well beyond the redesign of one intersection. We have a group of pleasant residential neighborhoods living in the shadow of the bridge, and we need to balance the needs of those neighborhoods - for safety, and also for peace and quiet - with the need to move large numbers of motor vehicles through a key part of the city's street system. For this we need a camera with a wide-angle lens, as well as a microscope. 

I'd suggest a comprehensive look at South street and the surrounding areas, running from the foot of the bridge at 27th street down to 21st street. What you do on Bainbridge street at Schuylkill avenue will have an effect when Bainbridge enters the intersection with 23rd, 24th, and Grays Ferry avenue. This, too, is a very interesting intersection. It pulls together four streets instead of the usual two. Even at the foot of the bridge, there are only three streets that you need to tangle and untangle.

I've been showing you a lot of photographs of boring black asphalt. As a palate cleanser, let me offer you an orange - or at least an orange garage. It's on Schuylkill avenue. You can just make out where the letters for Tint Shop used to be. The owner would tint your car windows, for a price. Why this space doesn't sport a new million-dollar home, I do not know. I remember the shop well, and also behind me, where the Children's Hospital buildings now stand, there was an enormous Quonset hut where people sold beer. The roof leaked. A lot. It was another time.

See also Civilizing the South Street Bridge, No Turn on Red, Put Traffic Lights on the Schuylkill Expressway, Morning on Lombard Street, Something Good Happened, Is It a Curve or Is It a Turn?

Move Fast and Break Things

Uh, Maybe Not

Aldine Press logo.

Mark Zuckerberg adopted the phrase above during the early days of Facebook, and the idea now seems to be part of Silicon Valley's DNA. Elon Musk's DOGE venture, or his Mission to Mars, or pretty much anything he does, including trying to populate the world with little Elons, all resonate with impulsive recklessness. 

I greatly prefer a much older epigram: Make haste slowly. It was a favorite saying of the very first Roman emperor, Augustus (r. 27 BC - 14 AD). I've traced the idea as far back as Plato, who, in his Republic (7:528d), drops the following comment: "... for in my haste to be done I was making less speed." 

The Latin phrase is festina lente. I originally associated it with the Roman orator and teacher of rhetoric Quintilian (ca. 35 AD - ca. 100 AD); it appears he never actually used the phrase, but he did something bigger: he embodied it. 

Over the years I've read a bit of classical rhetoric in translation - Demosthenes and Cicero, and Aristotle's Rhetoric. Quintilian, I knew, was out there, challenging me. He came after the golden age and wrote the big book that summarizes everything. His Institutio Oratoria is five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library, and I'd reconciled myself to the thought that Quintilian was one mountain I would not climb. Then one day I stumbled across a curious little book called Quintilian as Educator (Frederic M. Wheelock, ed., 1974.) The Free Library was kind enough to lend me a copy and also let me hold onto it for quite a while.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a schoolmaster as well as a masterful orator. We don't actually know a whole lot about him. He was born around 35 AD in Hispania, the area now occupied by Spain and Portugal (and Andorra). He went to Rome to pursue his studies, moved back to Hispania to teach rhetoric; moved back to Rome in 68 AD at the behest of Galba, who had been governor in Hispania and who became emperor after Nero committed suicide. Assassins were soon to dispatch Galba (this was the year that Rome had four emperors), and at some point during this chaos Quintilian set up his own school. For about twenty years, under the calming influence of the emperor Vespasian and his successors, he both taught his students and pleaded in the courts, retiring around the year 90; in his retirement he wrote the Institutio Oratoria. He tells us he had a wife and two sons, all of whom died young. We seem to know less about when he died than we do about when he was born, but there is a general feeling that he left us sometime around 100 AD. 

Professor Wheelock's little book performs a very useful task. It extracts the parts of the larger book that deal with childhood education, and we find ourselves looking at a surprisingly modern approach. Quintilian thinks that a child's education begins at birth - "a child's mind should not be allowed to lie fallow for a moment." (I.i.16) 

He sees the child's nurse as the first teacher, and he desires that the nurse should be of good character and speak well. He feels the same way about parents, childhood playmates, and someone called a paedagogus, a member of the household whose job was to follow the child around and keep him out of trouble. (I.i.4-11.) 

Just to back up for a minute, Quintilian was talking about education for children of the upper crust in a country that was largely ruled by an emperor, although relics of the former republic continued to exist. However, I think his discussion is applicable to a democratic society, where we need an education that prepares every child to participate intelligently in government. Today, I think this would include exposure to the variety of the American people - a multiracial, multilingual, and multiclass society. The widespread desire to associate only with people just like you leads to the trap that we are currently in.

Okay. Quintilian also strongly favors bilingual education in Latin and Greek. (I.i.12-14.) Greek was important in ancient Rome because many of the ideas in its intellectual world came written in Greek, and many of the people in the Roman empire spoke Greek as a first language, quite likely including your doctor. Today, I think a bilingual child will have an advantage in a world that is increasingly multilingual. For many years, Americans have assumed that others will learn English. As our status in the world declines, we are going to need to be able to speak to others in their own language. I suggest Spanish, which will be useful both domestically and in much of the rest of the world. 

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Three Epigrams

That brings us to to my search for epigrams. I had originally thought that Quintilian was the source of festina lente, but I soon learned I was wrong. Not only that, but he appears never to have used the phrase. (No, I didn't break down and read all five volumes. I went to the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University and searched Quintilian and festina lente. No results.) 

There was another favorite that I had attributed to him: "First we entertain, then we educate." I can't find that one either, but again, the idea permeates his teaching. 

Here's one that was new to me, and that he actually wrote: "... write quickly and you will never write well, write well and you will soon write quickly." (X.iii.10.)  

Quintilian's Afterlife

The Institutio Oratoria was clearly well received in its time and in the following centuries. Professor Wheelock notes that "Quintilian appears as one of St. Jerome's favorite pagan authors" (p. 18). St. Jerome, who died in 420 AD, is best known for translating the Bible into Latin. 

As the Roman world entered the early middle ages, sometimes called the dark ages, mentions of Quintilian (and a lot of other things) declined. That doesn't necessarily mean that he was forgotten. In the ninth century a monk and well-known scholar named Lupus Servatus (the wolf that was saved) "wrote to the Pope asking for a copy of the full twelve books of the Institutio Oratoria, saying that he had only incomplete copies of the work" (p. 18). 

The Lupus Servatus story leads me to guess that a lot of people were doing what Professor Wheelock did - excerpting from a very long book the parts they found most interesting. My further guess is that interest in Quintilian, however fractured, continued through the middle ages and into the renaissance, when something wonderful happened in 1416: A manuscript hunter and official of the papal court named Poggio Bracciolini found a complete copy of the Institutio Oratoria in the monastery of St. Gall in what is now Switzerland. (During his time at St. Gall he also found a copy of the De Architectura by Vitruvius.) 

And so we come to the age of the modern printed book and particularly the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius, whose logo appears at the beginning of this story. The dolphin winding around the anchor is a visual representation of the classical epigram "Make haste slowly," or festina lente. The dolphin is the rabbit, and the anchor is the turtle. 

It was a time of new beginnings, and Aldus was one of the prime innovators in his field. And yet he was also a stickler for detail, proofreading himself and even bringing Desiderius Erasmus into the printshop in what has been described as "a now almost incredible mixture of the sweatshop, the boarding-house and the research institute.” 

So, an innovator with a great logo (apparently adapted from an old Roman coin) who had the patience to be thorough with the boring bits. I think I'll take him over Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk any day. 

Convention Hall, Asbury Park, 1928-1930.

During my research I stumbled across an interesting law review article; it suggests that today's law schools might benefit from incorporating a number of Quintilian's ideas into their curriculum. To see it, click here.

See also Sandy's Book.

Politics on a Very Hot Day

And still they came. And stayed.

On the sidelines, Philadelphia City Hall.

The John Lewis rally in Philadelphia started at 6 pm on Thursday, 7/17/2025. The temp was 92 at 6, with a feels like of 104.

I found myself thinking of the battle of Monmouth, 6/28/1778. That, too, was a very hot day, but it appears nobody had a thermometer.

It's said that Molly Pitcher brought water for the troops and, when her husband collapsed from the heat, took his place serving a cannon. (There are many versions of this story.)

Molly has a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike named after her.

As we now strive to fight for rights that we thought were inalienable, and as we strive to do so peacefully, I think it's important to recognize that you don't have to tote a gun to earn the thanks of a grateful nation.

See also What a Cold Civil War Feels Like, Politics in the Rain.

Bookends: Making Good Trouble

Guest essay by Lois West

It was 90+ degrees with over 90% humidity. My husband and I decided to break up the mile walk to the John Lewis Make Good Trouble Rally at Philadelphia’s City Hall on July 17 by stopping for an early supper at Pizzeria Vetri at the half-mile point.

The couple sitting next to us, about our age (old!), asked us if we had eaten there before. They then explained that they were Iowans visiting Philadelphia – one of the destinations on their bucket list. We had a lovely conversation with them – about, to us, the strangely enormous interest in college wrestling in the Midwest, about Civil War battlefields (also on their bucket list), and about baseball (the wife adores Kyle Schwarber, especially after his three homers in the All-Star Game). They commented on the sign I was taking to the rally – “My Dad Liberated Dachau. He’s Rolling in His Grave.” The husband said, “He must have had lots of stories to tell.” I replied, “No. He wouldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t.”

We recommended some of our favorite Philly restaurants and historic sites to them, we shook hands, and said good-bye.

At the rally my sign evoked two reactions. One was a grim, knowing nod. The other was a look of confusion and the question “What is Dachau?” – usually mispronounced as Daitchaw. The question was most often asked by 20-somethings.

As we left the rally, a woman approached me and asked me what my sign meant. As I began to explain what Dachau was, she interrupted me and said, “I know it was a concentration camp. I’m Jewish like you.” (She had noticed my star of David.) She continued, “But are you saying that ICE is like the Gestapo? If you are, don’t you feel like you are dishonoring Jews killed during the Holocaust? ICE is not killing anybody.”

I was taken aback. I replied, “ICE is like the Gestapo, like the East German Stasi, and like the French police who rounded up Jews in Paris on July 17 – 83 years ago today. And, you know, it never starts with a gas chamber.”

She shook her head, turned her back on me, and walked away. I have to say that my pre-rally conversation with friendly tourists from Iowa was much more productive and uplifting than my post-rally encounter with a member of my own tribe. Go, Hawkeyes!

See also We Will Not Let Them Down.

This Does Happen

In Case You Had Doubts

Will wonders never cease?

Wednesday, July 16, 2025, 10:07 am. 1700 block of Pine. 

In the end, the moving van was not towed; instead it moved from the bike lane to one of the new loading zones. 

See also Sweeping the Bike Lane, Loading Zones Are the Key Thanks to All.

Somotomo

The Persistent Desire to Be Free

Plaza outside Franz Kafka Museum. Prague 2013.

My name does not matter. I have practiced law for many years in the capital city of my home country, which shall remain nameless. The name that matters is Somotomo. Anton Somotomo.

Somotomo lives quietly in one of the capital city's older suburbs, quite close to the city center, where I live and work. It is about a twenty minute tram ride for me, when I visit him. The street in front of his house is paved with bluestone and lined with trees. There are bicycles and children.

Somotomo was, and I suppose is, the leader of the country's political opposition. In his day he was quite a firebrand and had a large following, but the government persistently whittled away at the movement. Many people left the country, others went to jail - Somotomo himself spent a great deal of time in jail, although I always managed eventually to get him out. Others fell silent, and not a few simply disappeared.

The ruling clique eventually established very strong control throughout the country, although they were thoughtful enough to allow people like me to continue working, albeit in a much diminished capacity. I think they found it useful to maintain a charade of law, even though their only true interest was order. And power. And wealth. And women.

And, for quite a few years, it appeared that their control was complete.

Then, one morning, something happened. The country's president, whose authority was absolute, had sex with his wife. This was a somewhat unusual occurrence, because the president normally had sex with women other than his wife. Even at his advanced age, he continued, with the help of modern medicine, to have sex with two or three different women a day. He had several long-term mistresses, but one of the main tasks of his secret service was to scour the countryside for pretty young women. They managed to produce a new one every two or three days, and the president particularly enjoyed them. 

At any rate, having sex with his wife had become an increasingly rare occurrence. On this particular morning, when he had finished, and was walking to the bathroom, his wife noticed something. Written in black ink on the president's buttocks were a series of letters. She put on her glasses and squinted a bit. Then she thought things over. When her husband reappeared and started to dress, she said, "Dear, it appears that something is written on your buttocks."

Her husband looked at her with his usual mild contempt. He said, "What are you talking about?" 

She got out of bed and picked up a hand mirror. "Here. Take this. Go stand with your back to the tall mirror on the wall, and use this mirror to look at your backside."

The president did as he was told, fumbling a bit. He needed to find his glasses, and then he had trouble using the hand mirror, but eventually he got there. He exploded with rage. He was quite good at exploding with rage - he usually managed several tantrums a day, sometimes about picayune things, just to keep in practice.

"How did that man's name get on my backside?" The letters on his buttocks were S-o-m-o-t-o-m-o.

"How would I know, dear?" Then his wife made a mistake. She said, "Perhaps one of your girlfriends put them there."

The president walked to his bedside table, picked up his phone, and called the head of the secret police. The head of the secret police picked up instantly. He had been amusing himself by listening to the president have sex with his wife, but he didn't have video of the presidential bedroom, so he wasn't quite sure what was going on.

"Good morning, sir. What can I do for you?"

"One of your wenches has written the name of Somotomo across my buttocks!"

The police chief thought for a brief moment, then said, "Have you tried washing it off?"

"That's not the point, you idiot! Someone was bold enough to do this. You must find that person immediately and inflict great punishment!"

"Yessir. If soap and water doesn't work, you might want to try a solvent for ink or paint. Be careful, though. You don't want to hurt yourself. Perhaps call your doctor."

"Shut up and go do your job, idiot! I expect a report this evening."

And so the entire secret police department dropped everything and started trying to find the girlfriend who had desecrated the president's buttocks. (All other possibilities were ignored.) Files were pulled for the previous six months, case officers were mobilized. (Each of the president's girlfriends had a case officer whose case load was generally in three figures.) Women were summoned to headquarters. Those who didn't respond soon had a knock on the door and a free ride downtown.

And the president tried to wash off the offending letters with soap and water, without effect. His wife suspected an indelible marker, but kept her mouth shut. A doctor was called. He diagnosed a very persistent indelible ink and suggested a tincture of time. The natural exfoliation of the skin would eliminate the problem - unlike a tattoo. 

As it turned out, the marks on the president's buttocks acted more like a tattoo than anything else. But the National Forensic Laboratory was never able to figure out what kind of marker was used. When the current regime had come in, virtually all of the scientists capable of dealing with these questions had left the country. The regime installed as head of the National Forensic Laboratory a distant relative of the president who had previously pursued a career as a dairy farmer until his unpasteurized milk sickened several hundred people (most of whom lived).

The interrogations of the president's many girlfriends were not terribly productive. Most of them said they had seen nothing. A few admitted seeing something - several suspected that the president was not very good at cleaning himself - but none recalled what the writing had actually said. And certainly none of them confessed to writing on the president's rear end. Many confessed, however, that they certainly had had the opportunity.  

The president, not a young man, often fell into a deep sleep, with snoring, shortly after he consummated his act. Sometimes he would fall asleep on top of his partner. His regular mistresses were accustomed to this, and had discovered they could maneuver themselves out of his embrace without awakening him and get on with their day. The young conscripts from the countryside often found themselves lying underneath the president for extended periods, and only escaped his embrace when he awoke and grumpily told them to go away.

The secret police chief was in a quandary. He had many suspects, virtually all of them had open opportunity. But what about motive? What about means? 

As he often did with a difficult case - one that had the possibility of causing his career to come to a sudden end - he found himself chatting with his wife. He explained the case to her, hoping she might, as she had in the past, provide him with the spark of an idea. 

His wife listened patiently and then said, "Dear, I gather you don't know this, but you also have Somotomo's name on your rear end."

It eventually turned out that the top three layers of the country's nomenklatura, including the president of the national bank and the presidents of the country's three national oil companies, were all sporting the Somotomo, in indelible ink, on their buttocks. This was a total of 1,837 men - there were no women in these ranks of the nomenklatura.

There were variations in the rendering of Somotomo. Sometimes it was written backwards, sometimes as a mirror image, sometimes as two eyebrows, one on top of each buttock. Sometimes it was SomotomO. And so forth. None of this information seemed to advance the investigation.

While he was making these discoveries, the secret police chief continued to try to find out which of the president's girlfriends was the culprit. Women were recalled for more intensive interrogations, which continued to be unproductive. The president was not happy with the progress of the investigation, and eventually the head of the secret police authorized torture.

The torture was also unproductive. Several suspects freely confessed to basically anything their interrogators suggested to them. A few were more committed to the truth and suffered greatly. One of them actually died.

It turned out that the girl who died was illiterate - a peasant girl from a poor agricultural district. She was unable even to write her own name, and so was an unlikely suspect for the crime of writing Somotomo on the president's derriere. As she was dying, and her chief torturer was leaning over her to hear her last gasping words, she did manage to spit him in the eye.

I had been hearing many rumors about all this - my contacts with the government were extensive, and the rumor mill was having a field day with the president's rear end. I had a mild concern that the government might decide to throw my client - Anton Somotomo - back into jail for some specious reason, or no reason at all, but this did not happen.

Instead, one morning I got a call from the country's chief prosecutor. He was more than usually polite, and our introductory pleasantries lasted longer than usual, but eventually he did get to the point. He was hopeful that I would be willing to talk with Anton Somotomo and to determine what, if anything, he knew about the Somotomo derrieres. And, if possible, to ask if there was some discreet way for Somotomo to convince the women with the indelible markers to stop. The chief prosecutor emphasized that he was not interested in receiving reports, or getting lists of suspects, or anything like that. He was just hoping that Somotomo would be able to get them to stop. 

Both Somotomo and I were already under virtually continuous surveillance, so I knew that anything we said or did would soon wind up on the desks of the secret police chief and the chief prosecutor, with any good bits extracted from the raw reports and forwarded to the president.

I thought there was a significant downside to noncompliance - the regime could always toss both of us in jail for an indeterminate period, with no charges. The regime had actually been quite fond of throwing lawyers in jail, until it became apparent that the lawyers were organizing little law schools in jail, teaching the other prisoners how to annoy their persecutors. I myself had been lucky, and only had to visit jails, not live in them.

On the other hand, there didn't seem to be any great downside to doing what was asked. If Somotomo had any contact with what appeared to be an underground organization, the authorities would already know about it and be in the process of torturing his various contacts. I was pretty certain that I was being asked to drill a dry well, one which the chief prosecutor and the head of the secret police also knew to be a dry well. But it would allow them to report to the president that they had indeed possessed the imagination to pursue the matter without the president having to tell them to do it.

So I agreed. I telephoned Somotomo to ask for a meeting, and that afternoon found myself on a tram heading to his house in the suburbs.

I hadn't seen Somotomo for some time. When he opened his door, though, he seemed just the same, and was smiling his wry smile. We chatted in his living room, aware that everything we said was being recorded and transcribed. In addition to being a politician, Anton was a very literate man. He mentioned the old Greek play Lysistrata, suggesting that the victims of the current plot were getting off easy. We both could easily imagine the recorders and transcribers frantically searching the internet for a clue of what we were talking about.

I came to the point and asked Anton if there were any way he could help in making this problem go away. He smiled again.

"Briefly," he said, "no. I'm afraid that I'm so thoroughly surveilled that any dissident would have to be insane even to say hello to me in the street." He thought for a minute. "I do, however, know our people very well. Much better than our masters, who think they know the people but have never actually spoken with them."

That remark would surely not make it to the president's desk. Anton continued. "The people have a code of silence. It is how they have survived the last thousand years of brutal monarchs, sadistic inquisitors, rapacious invaders, and vicious but clueless dictators."

I could almost hear the fellow reviewing the transcript hit the delete button.

"I am certain that the code of silence will cause every investigation to end at a brick wall."

That one would definitely make it through to the president. It clearly served the interests of the chief prosecutor and the secret police chief, who were obviously desperate for this case to go away. I smiled and inconspicuously raised my thumb. Anton smiled back and continued.

"I don't know why I'm offering advice to the evil munchkins, but they need to deep-six this. Make sure the affected men don't drop their trousers in public. And nobody, nobody should talk about it. They know how to do this. They've done it before. 

"Actually," he continued, "the last thing they want is to find a perpetrator and hold a show trial. That would make the whole story immortal."

Our conversation turned to books we had been reading. Anton offered me tea and some lovely pastries. And then we parted. It turned out to be the last time I saw him.

The president, the chief prosector, and the secret service chief all did their best to follow the orders that Somotomo had given them. It didn't work. The secret police had followed their training in crime scene investigation and made the mistake of photographing the adorned buttocks of all 1,837 members of the senior nomenklatura - they were not so foolhardy as to broach the subject with the president, but it later turned out that his wife had taken a picture with her phone. Pretty soon all 1,838 photographs were on the internet, where they dominated the world of electrons for the next six months. A famous artist selected fifty of the most interesting photographs and created a collage. The collage and the original photos, with identifying information, became a show at a London gallery and then traveled the world for five years. 

And that was only the tip of the iceberg. The pictures were everywhere. A member of the senior nomenklatura would go out for dinner at a three-star restaurant, and when he unfolded his napkin, there would be a small picture of his butt saying Somotomo. It went on for years. 

During this time I died, but since this is a story I will tell you a few more chapters. There is no ending.

It would be nice if all this ridicule had caused a revolution, but it didn't. The president lived on, becoming increasingly senile. As the government, lacking its center, slowly ground to a halt, a neighboring country invaded, annexed all the territory, and killed the president and the entire 1,837 members of the top three ranks of the nomenklatura.

Somotomo lived on for a few more years and then passed away peacefully. There was a moderately large private funeral, attended mainly by women. The new owners of the country didn't understand Somotomo's role in the former state, so they did not perceive the funeral as a threat, and they ignored the continuous flowers on Somotomo's grave.

After a while, an event in a far-away place had a dramatic effect on the land of Somotomo. The emperor of the conquering army, who was very old, died. He had three sons, and each one wanted to be the new emperor. This disagreement quickly turned into what historians call a war for the succession, which we might call a three-way civil war.

One morning, the residents of the land of Somotomo awoke to a surprise. During the night, all the foreigners had quietly departed. One of the soldiers left a note for his girlfriend, explaining that they had all been called back to the empire's capital city, to help out with the civil war.

Over breakfast, and then in the streets, the people all gathered to discuss this strange turn of events. People had a great deal of difficulty dealing with the idea that, after so many years, they were no longer under the yoke of tyranny.

In the late morning, something else happened. The Underground surfaced. A leader with the nom de guerre of Camilla - the women of this country had always been allowed to go to school, and many of them were well grounded in the classics - came to the city's main square, accompanied by several hundred other women, who called themselves the Amazons. Camilla had brought with her a six-foot folding ladder, carried by her chief of operations, who had taken the more modern name of Xena. 

Camilla climbed the ladder and addressed the crowd, which became quiet and followed her words carefully. 

She declared a provisional government, with herself as the head. She announced elections in three months, with all adult citizens allowed to vote. This new constituent assembly would write a constitution, to be ratified by a vote of all the people. After that vote, the provisional government would hand power to the new constitutional government.

It all sounded a little complicated and boring. The people loved it. Instead of going home for lunch, they decided to stay in the square. Enterprising restaurateurs soon set up trestle tables and produced massive quantities of the people's favorite foods. 

The party lasted three days, and then the people got to work.

I will end my story here, but obviously the story does not end here.

Oh, one last thing. The country got a new name: Somotomo.

Who needs elevators? Prague 2013.

See also Elon Musk Is a Martian, The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office, And So the Worm Turned, Little Karl.

A Personal Note on the Relevance of History

In my opinion, American exceptionalism has been a double-barreled weapon: It has distorted our own history, and it has led us, as a people, to neglect the relevant history of other countries. This has allowed American fascists to deny that they are about to do what they have long planned to do. 

The historical record is plain, which is why the fascists do everything they can to divert you from reading the relevant books. I encourage you, especially if you work for a newspaper or a television station, to do your homework. And yes, this means reading books. Steal back one hour a day from your rather intense dalliance with social media, and read a book. You especially need to do this because your bosses are incorrigible. Either they think they will do well in fascism - they can point to Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat - or they will be happily gulled every time. The naivete of the bosses never ceases to amaze me. If you are properly armed, you may be able to divert them away from following their worst instincts, at least in some cases. - wkw

86 47

We Are Ruled by Evil Pygmies

Blue Marble, 1972.

I remember the first time I heard the term 86. I was on a small boat with my friend Greg Cukor, in a little bay next to the terra firma of Long Island. We were perhaps fourteen years old, and for our expedition some kindly adult had packed a lunch of sandwiches and several glass bottles of Coca-Cola. It was a beautiful, sunny day with a light breeze. After I finished a Coke, I asked Greg what I should do with the bottle, and he said, "86 it." 

I didn't know what that meant, so he showed me. Apparently it was bad form just to toss a Coke bottle over the side into the water, because it might float and thereby spoil everybody's view of the pristine bay. Instead, he took my bottle and held it under water until it filled, and then released it. He explained that the bottle would then sink to the sandy bottom, where Mother Nature would eventually turn it into sand and seaglass. This was well before the first Earth Day in 1970, so throwing trash into the water sounded quite reasonable to me.

I have fond memories of that day, and I am unwilling to let the Trumpies steal one bit of that day from me. 86 means to discard a Coke bottle in what appeared at the time to be an appropriate manner.

Recently James Comey was on a beach; he took a picture of some seashells arranged to spell out 86 47 and posted the picture online. The Trumposphere went bananas, saying 86 meant "assassinate." These people are idiots - powerful and evil, but idiots nonetheless.

I personally think that disposing of Donald Trump in an appropriate and timely manner is a very good idea. I propose that we swim around underwater for a bit and rediscover Atlantis. I'm sure it's down there somewhere. Dust things off, clean the bilge, make sure the air purifiers are working, and send Trump to Atlantis. ASAP.

Oh - and make sure there is a large supply of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I'm thinking no cheeseburgers; he needs to watch his cholesterol. And we should see to it that he receives regular visits from SpongeBob SquarePants. They can amuse themselves by arguing about the size of their audiences.

See also The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office, Little Karl, Message for the Mad King.