Introducing: Mr. Doodle

I want to introduce you to someone I’ve been following lately.

Sam Cox is only 23, but he’s fast becoming the new Keith Haring among contemporary art collectors in England. That’s in part because of his distinctive doodle-styled illustrations, but it’s also because of the self-deprecating persona he employs to promote his work.

Over the years, Cox has built an A-List of corporate clients, including MTV, Adidas, and Cass Art.

He’s not breaking new ground. He comes from a line of graffiti and street-art creators. And there’s no denying that he steals a lot from the legendary Haring, who died, at age 31, in 1990.

Like Haring, Cox’s illustrations are hieroglyphics comprised of personal symbols – repeated patterns that include shapes and squiggles, numbers and letters, forms and scribbling, and cartoons. His art draws from a social consciousness, but it is not dogmatic. The bulk of it is a lighthearted take on popular images, like this one:

Some is innocent, even juvenile or downright puerile, like this self-portrait:

But I have to say, my favorites have an edgy, ominous quality, with what seems to be a bit of social messaging, like this one:

I also like his doodle interpretations of iconic works of art, like this:

And this:

Cox began his career very recently, in 2017, by posting his doodles online. His rise to fame since then has been meteoric, as have the prices of some of his work. (One of his pieces, a large one, sold for $1.02 million at the Tokyo Chuo Auction.)

His installations are designed to give the viewer the feeling of walking into a shop and being assaulted by a thousand products lined up from floor to ceiling. He says he doesn’t care if people take his work seriously, since much of it isn’t serious, or even understand it. “I just want people to spend time looking at it,” he says.

You can watch him at work here.

It’s been a frantic week for K and me at Rancho Santana.

With 45 family members here to enjoy all this wonderful resort community has to offer, we’ve been busy day and night managing and participating in all the activities. Besides visiting the five beaches and 2,700 acres of walking, biking, and horseback riding trails, we’ve eaten in a different restaurant every night, held a family Olympics, and displayed our questionable dramatic and artistic talents at a karaoke competition.

Tomorrow morning, most will be leaving, back to their homes in Florida, California, New York, Paris, and Rome. This evening, we had a farewell party that included traditional folkloric dancing, a piñata for the kids, and fireworks.

If you are thinking about a destination for a wedding, business trip, or family reunion, you have to check out Rancho Santana. For more information, go HERE.

Despite the challenge of getting here via Liberia, Costa Rica, the 45 Cousin Camp attendees were graciously welcomed by the staff at Rancho Santana, quickly helped into their beautiful rooms and suites overlooking the ocean, and then treated to a fantastic, family-styled dinner masterminded by Brian Block and Erik Wetz. Thanks in large part to Brian and Erik, Rancho Santana competes with the best resorts in the world in terms of guest experience. (Travel & Leisure consistently rates us in the top 100. Last time I checked, we were 38.)

There are four places to eat at Rancho Santana: La Finca y el Mar, a full-service restaurant attached to the hotel; La Boquita, a tapas restaurant at the edge of a beautiful cove; La Taqueria, a taco and tequila eatery on Playa Los Perros, one of our five beaches – the one where some of our party will be taking surfing lessons throughout the week – and El Café for a quick bite.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain

Making Sense of Recent News Stories 

GOOD: Illinois Bans Lying to Juveniles During Interrogations 

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill prohibiting police from using deception during interrogations of minors, the first law of its kind in the US. The new law bans commonly used deceptive interrogation tactics, including making false promises of leniency and false claims about the existence of incriminating evidence. According to The Innocence Project, such tactics have long been used to induce false confessions, which have played a role in about 30% of all wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence.

 Click here.

BAD: Killings Continue in Chicago 

Despite Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s insistence that crime is going down in the Windy City, shootings and killings continue to soar – especially on weekends and almost exclusively in Black neighborhoods.

She’s blaming the mayhem on weak gun control regulations, and promising that things will get better soon. So far, things are only getting worse. For example:

Mass shooting on the west side…

Click here.

This mother is fed up and leaving…

Click here.

Two mass killings in the same neighborhood…

Click here.

DISTURBING: The UN’s Idea of Sex Education for Children 

It’s Perfectly Normal, a US government-funded, UN-produced sex-education curriculum for grammar school children, contains “graphic depictions of children engaging in masturbation and various sexual acts,” according to Sharon Slater, co-founder and president of advocacy group Family Watch International.

For slightly older children, ages 12 to 14, the curriculum encourages children to “share their sexual feelings” through activities including oral and anal sex, masturbation, or touching each other’s genitals while saying “I like you.”

In addition, the curriculum encourages children to label themselves with sexual identities and needs. Example: I am a “polyamorous queer teen who needs to know how to have safe sex and relationships with multiple partners.”

“We’re seeing it in almost all the schools,” Slater said. “And now under President Biden, they’ve even increased the budget to $130 million.”

 Click here.

GOOD: Teenage Americans Are Having Less Sex 

Notwithstanding the above, American high schoolers are having less sex today than they’ve been having since the early 1990s.

According to the most recent (2019) biannual edition of Youth Risk Behavior Survey, administered by the CDC, 38.4% of high schoolers reported having had intercourse. This is down from 46% in 2009 and 54% in 1991.

What’s perhaps most encouraging is the decline in Black teens having sex. It’s down to 42.3% from 81.5% in 1991.

BAD: Twitter Is At It Again… 

Twitter recently suspended several accounts dedicated to reporting on 2020 election audits.

One, the Audit War Room, had 40,000 followers. Another, the Maricopa County Audit, had 100,000.

Twitter’s actions came just a week after Ken Bennett, the liaison and a former Republican Arizona Secretary of State, announced that he had been blocked from entering the audit.

Want to know more about Twitter’s campaign against news and views it disagrees with? Click here.

Or here.

Or here.

IRONIC: Violence Prevention Chief Gets Robbed 

And it happens on air!

Click here.

GOOD: Michigan Legislature Repeals Governor’s Emergency Powers Act 

Michigan has repealed the Emergency Powers Act used by Governor Whitmer to implement COVID-19 restrictions in the state. (The governor had agreed to end the lockdown several times early last year, but reneged, citing her authority under the Act.)

The Senate vote came two days after the state Board of Canvassers certified that Unlock Michigan, a coalition of state residents, had obtained more than the required 340,000 valid signatures to put a repeal proposition before the voters at the next general election.

Click here.

BAD: Cop Tasers Kid in Girlfriend’s Yard 

This Florida Highway patrolman tases a kid in the backyard of his girlfriend’s house because he “looked suspicious.” As the commentator says, teenage boys have been at the backdoors of their paramours since Romeo and Juliet. What made this particular kid look suspicious? Could it be that he was biracial?

You decide. Click here.

HYPOCRITICAL: Defund-the-Police Advocate Cori Bush Spends Campaign Funds for Personal Security 

Here’s the story.

And here she is defending herself.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain Making Sense of Recent News Stories

GOOD: Federal Judge Issues Injunction Against Biden’s Race-Based Loan Forgiveness Program 

US District Judge S. Thomas Anderson issued an injunction against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), halting the distribution of federal loan-forgiveness funds under the Biden-sponsored American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The ruling was in favor of Robert Holman, a Tennessee farmer who argued that the “whites-only” provision of the program is unconstitutional.

The injunction will be in place until the case is fully resolved. However, the judge noted that Holman “has shown a substantial likelihood that he will prevail on his claim.”

Is the American Rescue Plan racist? Click here.

BAD: Crime Surges in San Francisco After Passage of a New Law 

I’ve been writing about the violence in Chicago, but Chicago is not alone. San Francisco is having a different kind of crime wave. Ever since they passed Proposition 47, amazingly called “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” theft has been on the rise. Organized gangs have taken advantage of it by hiring kids to ransack stores, knowing that so long as each hired thief keeps his score to less than $950, the worst that will happen to him – if he’s caught – is a ticket and a misdemeanor.

There have been dozens of videos of this, but the one that went viral was of about a dozen men rushing out of Nieman Marcus with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of designer handbags, before jumping into three getaway cars: an Infiniti, a Mercedes, and a Lexus..

Click here to see the video.

And click here for a clip of locals reacting.

UNCERTAIN: European Union’s COVID-19 Vaccine Passport Goes Live

The European Union is taking the lead in creating vaccination certificates, an idea that horrifies proponents of medical privacy and individual liberty, but pleases proponents of Big Government.

“In March, we promised… free and safe travel within the EU by the summer,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We can now confirm… the system is up and running!”

One hopeful note: “Member States must refrain from imposing additional travel restrictions on holders… unless they are necessary and proportionate to safeguard public health.”

How does the EU’s Vaccine Passport work? Click here.

GOOD: FTC to Investigate Non-Compete Contracts 

As part of a broad executive order, President Biden called on the FTC to “ban or limit” non-compete clauses in employment contracts. IMHO, that’s generally a good thing, because it gives employees more freedom to change jobs. About 32% of US companies use such clauses in their employment contracts, according to PayScale Inc. Currently, these sorts of employment issues are handled at the state level, but getting the FTC involved would bring jurisdiction to a federal level, which is, of course, what the government wants.

BAD: FTC to Investigate Non-Compete Contracts 

The problem with banning non-compete clauses is that it would create a serious risk for companies – that their employees would feel free to share trade secrets and other proprietary information with their new employers. And that could set in motion a policy of poaching key employees from one’s competitors simply for that purpose.

UNCERTAIN: FTC to Investigate Non-Compete Contracts 

As an employer, I’ve never required non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Nor do I worry too much about them. If they are very restrictive, they are legally unenforceable (or so I’ve been told). And when it comes to trade secrets, most of them aren’t secrets at all. Just imagined secrets that everyone else is already doing.

On the other hand, if I were in a business whose success depended on developing new technology, I would worry about having that “stolen.”

I have to believe there is a rule that falls in the midground that protects true trade secrets – but only true trade secrets. And even then only within reasonable boundaries.

GOOD: Zaila Avant-garde Becomes the 1st African-American National Spelling Bee Champ 

Eighth-grader Zaila Avant-garde won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee – the first African-American to do so in the competition’s history.

One year after the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of the annual tournament and two years after eight contestants were named co-champions, the Louisiana native correctly spelled the word “murraya” – a type of tree – to claim this year’s title and the $50,000 prize.

(And spelling isn’t her only skill. She’s pretty good at basketball, too.)

Click here.

BAD: Biden’s Not Worried About Inflation 

Joe Biden’s handlers brought him out on in public recently (at a so-called town hall meeting) where he was pitched softballs by CNN’s Don Lemon.

One particularly spongy one was on the subject of inflation – whether Biden felt that it was an emerging problem.

“First of all, our experts” predicted it,” he said.

This is not true. The White House budget office forecast inflation of 2.1% and the Fed had it at 2.2% for 2021. But in June, the number was 5.4% – and that number is artificially low.

Then Biden said that inflation is “just a temporary phenomenon.”

This may be true. There are good arguments on both sides.

Finally, he promised to “keep inflation in check” through his $4 trillion spending plan.

That is just plain crazy. You don’t limit inflation by borrowing money you don’t have paid for by counterfeit dollars. That is, by definition, inflationary.

DISAPPOINTING: Highway Dollars Won’t Rev Up the Economy 

Infrastructure spending can create economic expansion. The government-sponsored interstate highway system of the 1950s-1970s, for example, greatly reduced the time it took to travel cross-country. As a result, businesses gained access to new suppliers and new customers. Cities were able to specialize in certain industries. And international trade opened.

But some economists are saying that the White House’s $116 billion plan won’t have the same effect. Maintaining old infrastructure or adding new roads here and there, though necessary, tends to boost GDP only in developing countries like India and China, not in industrialized ones.

Click here.

Wanting Came First; Gratitude Much Later 

I don’t remember being grateful very often when I was young. I remember wanting things – lots of things – all the time.

As a child, I wanted toy trucks and cap guns and Lionel trains and baseball mitts. I wanted toy soldiers and model planes and erector sets. I wanted everything I saw advertised for boys and everything other kids at school had, including boxed lunches and meat sandwiches instead of peanut butter and jelly in a paper bag.

As a teenager, I wanted to live in a nice house instead of the small, shabby house my seven siblings and I grew up in. And I wanted that to be in the “rich” part of town, not across the street from the municipal storage facility and the railroad tracks.

Most of my feelings were focused on wanting, not gratitude, but I was thankful for things when I got them.

I was, for example, thankful to Bruce Conger’s family for donating a box of his clothes to our family one Christmas. Bruce was the coolest dresser in 7th grade. By wearing his secondhand clothes (tight, olive-green pants with creases so sharp they could cut you; shiny black shoes with pointed tips and sky-blue cashmere socks), I felt, for the first time, what it was like to look cool. I’m still thankful to Bruce’s family for that.

I was also thankful when my godmother, Jean Kerr, gave me half of a share of one of her plays. It wasn’t one of her big hits, but it was enough to buy me a brand-new pool cue that I used at the Rockville Centre Cue Club.

In my senior year, I had already lost my faith in religion. But when, after having gotten caught in a riptide at Jones Beach and given up my life in an exhausting attempt to swim directly ashore, I was carried by the current around the jetty and back to safety, I was grateful. Very grateful.

Otherwise, as I said, I spent most of my emotional energy wanting things.

After high school, I was grateful that I wasn’t drafted into the Vietnam War. Someone from my local draft board called me and told me that I was to report for duty, but they never followed up on that call and I never heard from them again. I can only imagine that my file was lost. I still sometimes expect it to be found… and then find myself the oldest recruit in the Army.

In college and graduate school, I developed an appreciation for learning and learned to be grateful for the great teachers I had. Harriett Zinnes, who taught me something about poetry, and Lillian Feder, who taught me to love good writing, were two of the best.

In my mid-20s, I spent two years in the Peace Corps. I remember sitting on my porch in Africa, watching the rain pour down on my plaster-coated mud house and thinking, “You may get rich one day, but you’ll never live in a house that will give you more pleasure than this one.”

I was grateful for that house – for having the privilege to live in it when so many of my students lived in shacks. And I was also grateful for my gratitude. I had begun to understand how good it feels.

When I returned to the States, a married man, I remember feeling grateful each time one of my sons was born. And I remember feeling grateful when, on Sundays, we would take the children on walks up and down 16th Street in Washington, DC, to look at the stately buildings and mansions. Perhaps because of my Peace Corps experience, I was never envious of those who lived in those elegant homes. My gratitude was for the people who’d had the wealth and the taste to build them.

In 1982, we moved to South Florida and I took a job with a small newsletter publishing company. I felt lucky to have the job – running the editorial department – because it meant that I was on my way to achieving my longtime goal of becoming a writer.

But two years later, I had a change of heart. I switched my goal from writing to making money. And when I did that, I once again lost track of the feeling of being grateful.

It was an interesting experience. I was fired up about making money. And I spent all my emotional energy pursuing it. But looking back now, it’s clear to me that I was once again preoccupied with wanting things. I wanted a higher income. I wanted money in the bank. I wanted a new car. And I wanted a mortgage-free home.

I’ve written a good deal about the tricks and techniques I used to acquire a lot of money during those years. But I’ve written too little about how ungrateful I was for the things that money bought me. I felt like I deserved them. And the moment I got something I wanted, I was thinking about the next thing I wanted.

When I turned 50, I abandoned the goal of increasing my wealth. I recognized that in making wealth my number one goal, I had gained one thing of value, but had lost many others.

I am grateful now that I made that decision at 50 and that it wasn’t already too late. I remember the time I visited JSN, my first and most important mentor in building financial wealth. He was dying of pancreatic cancer. I was there to say goodbye to him. I wanted to tell him how much I loved him. He wanted to give me a list of half a dozen deals that he wanted me to finish after he died.

If I had to name four things that I’m most grateful for, I’d say the obvious:

1. I’m grateful for K and our children, their spouses and our grandkids.
2. I’m grateful that they (and I) are mentally and physically healthy.
3. I’m grateful to have so many good friends, some of whom I’ve known since grammar school.
4. I’m grateful for being able to spend most of my working hours these days writing – which was my first and most important lifetime goal.

If this sounds just too pompous and self-aggrandizing, I should admit that I am still capable of being grateful for material things. I am, for example, grateful for my 30-year-old NSX, my 14-year-old 12-cylinder BMW, and my 21-year-old Ford Ranger pickup truck. I’m grateful for my art collections. And I’m grateful for my homes in Delray Beach and in Nicaragua, each of which give me as much pleasure (in a different way) as the mud house I lived in 45 years ago in Africa.

What’s on your gratitude list?

Back Home in Florida After a Week in Paris 

It’s good to be home. Back, after an impromptu week in Paris, to our family home in Delray Beach.

Paris is as unlike Delray Beach as a dinner of steak au poivre and haricot verts is to a drive-thru, McDonald’s lunch of a cheeseburger with fries.

It is absolutely one of the most beautiful cities in the world. This is partly due to the architecture – the fact that so many of its buildings were constructed during the reign of Napoleon I (1800-1815), when neoclassical elegance and symmetry were still in vogue. But it is probably chiefly due to the city planning that was done under Napoleon III (1848-1870) by Baron Haussmann, who created the boulevards and parks.

And a nod must be given to French culture, too – conservative and sometimes priggish, and committed to preserving and maintaining Paris’s magnificent old buildings.

I’ve loved Paris since I first saw her, in 1976, en route to a two-year Peace Corps stint in Africa. K and I spent part of our honeymoon in Paris nine months later, and we’ve been back to the City of Lights at least 20 times. Every time a pleasure.

When traveling to any foreign destination, we’ve learned that two important things to consider are the weather and the length of time you will be staying.

The weather during our week in Paris this time was not very good – overcast most days with periodic showers and a temperature mostly in the 60s and low 70s. But we made the best of it by planning an indoor itinerary: a gluttony of museums. And because this was such a short trip, we did what we’ve learned to do whenever we have a limited amount of time to spend in any great city. We hit the usual suspects like the locals do.

If we have just a weekend and the city is new to us, we adhere to the “three-days-in-wherever” guides that are ubiquitous in bookstores and online. Most of their suggestions are for what are considered by some to be tourist traps. But they are tourist traps for a good reason: They are the places that you really should see!

If, for example, you are in New York for the first time and have only three days, you should visit the Met and the MOMA or the Guggenheim, walk or take a carriage ride through Central Park, check out a few galleries in SoHo, and have a hot dog in Times Square.

If you are in Paris for just a weekend, you should spend a couple of hours in the Louvre, stroll through the Tuileries, check out the Pompidou Center, and have a café noisette or a drink at the George Cinq hotel.

If you have a week to spend, as we did, you should go to most of these same spots, even if you’ve seen them before.  As I said, they are in the guidebooks for a good reason. They are worth seeing not just once, but over and over again. And if you are a veteran of the city, you will enjoy them with more focus, and still have time for the somewhat less traveled (but still touristy) “musts” like Bryant Park in New York and Place des Vosges in Paris.

If you are lucky enough to be able to spend several weeks or longer in a city – well, good for you. When you have that much time, you don’t feel pressured to pack so much into every day. You can enjoy a more leisurely pace – perhaps doing a single touristy thing each day. And the rest of the time, you can live more or less the way the city’s denizens do – working, shopping, and relaxing. Absorbing the city by osmosis rather than by injection.

After being away from Paris for nearly five years, I would have preferred to do it that way this time. Other obligations made it impossible, but we were happy to do what we could with the week we had.

Some recommendations, in case you are thinking of going…

The Louvre

The Louvre is, I think, the world’s largest art museum, as well as a historic monument. It is perhaps best known for being the home of the Mona Lisa, but it has impressive collections of a dozen periods and genres, from ancient to medieval to modern art. Its strength is its European collections, but it has great Greek and Roman art, a fair collection of African art, and a smattering of New World art, as well. A Parisian landmark, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine.

We spent three hours there, revisiting the French and Italian collections of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. That was more than enough for us to feel sated.

An interesting note about the Louvre: Before it became the most-visited art museum in the world, it was a fortress built by King Philip II in the 12th century to deter oncoming attacks. Remnants of this fort are still visible in the basement level of the building (called the “Medieval Louvre”).  The Louvre became a public museum during the French Revolution, opening its doors on August 10, 1793. Its iconic pyramid was added in 1989, and became the new main entrance.

Jardin de Tuileries (Tuileries Garden)

The Tuileries is located between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde. Created by Catherine de’ Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was opened to the public in 1667 and became a public park after the French Revolution.

You can get a good sense of the wonder of the Tuileries in an hour or two. We spent that mostly walking, but we sat down for a half-hour at one of the cafés conveniently located in the middle of the gardens to watch an air show that was taking place – a rehearsal for the official show that was to take place the following day, July 14 (Bastille Day, France’s national holiday).

Musée d’Orsay

The Musée d’Orsay is located on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, a Beaux-Arts style railway station built between 1898 and 1900. It features mostly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography.

We spent most of our time revisiting its collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces (the largest in the world), by painters including Berthe Morisot, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. We also saw an exhibition of Swiss Impressionists that I very much enjoyed. Like Latin American modernist art, the paintings were clearly influenced by the French Impressionists, but generally dated about 20 years later.

La Samaritaine

La Samaritaine is a huge department store – seven floors and two interlinking buildings. It is worthy of a visit because of its elegant Art Nouveau architecture. But it was especially fun to see it this time because it was recently remodeled from bottom to top and is now a masterpiece of interior decoration, as well as a storehouse of great haute couture fashion.

Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain

We spent one rainy morning at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (more simply, Fondation Cartier), a contemporary art museum located on a wide, tree-lined boulevard.

We were there for “Cherry Blossoms,” an exhibition of several dozen very large paintings by Damien Hirst, the artist that made himself famous for embedding dead animals in polymer, decorating ebony skulls, and painting polka dots.

As you can tell, I’m not a huge fan of his work. (But I do think he’s a brilliant marketer.)

Here he is squatting in front of one of the pieces we saw:

Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti (Giacometti House) 

I’m a huge Giacometti fan. So, when K suggested we take a tour of Giacometti House, an old apartment-building-turned-museum where he rented a studio for the last several decades of his life, I said, “Yes!” Just like that… with an exclamation point.

It is a small museum, but it is wonderful for several reasons. The Art Nouveau-inspired interior has been preserved, and the 300-square-foot, ground floor studio is staged as if Giacometti is still in residence.

Best of all, every nook and cranny displays examples of his great gift.

The theme of the museum when we visited was Giacometti’s interest in Egyptian art and artifacts, which was made abundantly clear by more than a dozen arrangements like this one:

Musée d’Art Moderne 

As a collector of modern art, I insist on spending at least a few hours in the modern art museum of every city I visit. This was the third of fourth time we’d been to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. It was well worth it.

The museum’s collections include more than 15,000 works from art movements of the 20th century. Exhibitions usually focus on European trends. The exhibitions when we were there did not interest us, but there was so much more to enjoy. Like these two treasures:

La Ville de Paris by Robert Delaunay

Portrait of a Young Woman by Amadeo Modigliani

Palais Galliera

The Palais Galliera is a museum of fashion and fashion history. That may not sound terribly exciting, but if you’re a longtime reader you know that I am captivated by the great figures of haute couture. One of the best museum shows I ever saw was that of Alexander McQueen at the Met. (It went all over the world.)

On this trip, we were able to check out the work of Coco Chanel, a true early 20th century pioneer.

The first part of the exhibition is chronological – from her little black dresses and sporty models of the Roaring Twenties to her sophisticated dresses of the 1930s. The second part of the exhibition is themed: the braided tweed suit, the two-tone pumps, the quilted bag, and the costume and fine jewelry that is still intrinsic to the Chanel look.

The Chanel show was much more limited than the McQueen, and her artistic comfort range was much narrower than his… but it was still a very exciting way to spend a late afternoon on this all-too-brief trip to this amazing city.

Looking Out the Window…

I sit in my writing studio, which has a view to Vista del Mar, which means “View of the Sea.”

And indeed, I have a view of the sea and of this road that leads to and from it. Every so often, I lift my head from my keyboard to see people walking to and from the beach.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that many of the women walking by are wearing bikinis – just bikinis and flip-flops. In my day, those halcyon days of double standards, that was something no self-respecting woman would do. A bikini was made for swimming or tanning on the beach. And only on the beach. Once on a public sidewalk, some covering garment would be donned.

I look at these mostly young women walking by, and feel sort of… What? I think I feel appalled! And no, I don’t feel the same way about bare-chested men in board shorts. But I would be appalled by a man walking by in one of those… well, male bikinis. (There is a vulgar name for them. I can’t remember it right now.)

But what is it that upsets me? Is it the display of flesh? The decline in civilization it presages? Or is it my own septuagenarian crustiness?

I wondered: How long has the bikini been around?

According to one of the history blogs I subscribe to, the bikini was introduced on July 5, 1946, at a swimming pool in Paris, France:

Created by French designer Louis Réard, the string two-piece swimsuit – made from only 30 inches of fabric with a newspaper print pattern – was an expression of freedom, and controversial from the start. Though one newspaper declared it “four triangles of nothing,” Réard was undeterred. When he could not find an established model to wear it for the photo shoot, he hired an exotic dancer who had little issue showing off her belly button.

The name “bikini” has its own interesting story. As you might remember if you are my age, the 1940s was the beginning of the atomic age. Back then, beautiful women were sometimes referred to as “bombshells.”

Again, according to the same source:

Several days before the swimsuit reveal, the US had begun testing nuclear weapons near a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean called the Bikini Atoll. Being a master marketer, Réard named his new bathing outfit after this explosive state of affairs.

Now here’s something I read that’s hard to believe: Apparently, after the bikini’s debut, the Vatican declared it a sin. Not just the wearing of it. The bikini itself.

I don’t remember seeing many bikinis when I went to the beach with my family in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. But by the time I and my coevals were old enough to hitchhike down to Long Beach and gain entry by leaping over the boardwalk, bikinis were almost de rigueur. I never complained about it then.  I probably shouldn’t complain about it now.

I should remember what Réard said when he was asked about the bikini later in his life. He said he felt that he was “putting something good into a world” still reeling from World War II. “I wanted to design something that showed life can start over and be beautiful.”

Please… Tell Us How Evil We Are! 

The Biden/Harris administration is inviting the United Nations to come to the US and study our culture to let us know just how racist we are. Apparently, they are not happy with the fact that most Americans – even most Democrats – don’t subscribe to their BLM/Antifa ideology. They figure that if they can get the UN – that bastion of free market, liberal democracies – to support their contention that we are systemically and irremediably racist, maybe we can get acceptance of Critical Race Theory into our preK-to-12 curricula, and fund those morally necessary reparations.

This is great news for academia, which has succeeded in the past 20 years in convincing college students that controlled economies are superior to free-market economies and Socialism is better than Capitalism.

The US, if you believe Harvard and The New York Times, was founded on conquest, slavery, and oppression, and continues its history of violence and genocide in order to preserve White supremacy. Meanwhile, people of color – even the likes of Oprah Winfrey and LeBron James – continue to suffer from the torments and abuses of the status quo.

July 4th, they told us, should no longer be a day of patriotism and fireworks, but a time for White people (and White men, in particular) to take a knee and reflect on how evil we’ve always been and continue to be.

In light of all that, it was refreshing to read this essay from Alex Green of The Oxford Club.