Will The Real Howie Klein Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up-- A Little Film By Frank Schaeffer

Frank Schaeffer got me to step away from my computer last week and this morning he sent me the little film he made about me. He's in the middle of traveling around the country filming progressive congressional candidates. He was out here in L.A. for his movie... driving around Orange County and L.A. County, speaking with Doug Applegate, Katie Hill, Laura Oatman, Kia Hamadanchy and Sam Jammal. Previously he had shot Randy Bryce in Wisconsin and Jenny Marshall in North Carolina. I think he's in Maine today with Jared Golden, the state House Majority Whip who's running to replace Trumpist Bruce Poliquin. So, tonight... instead of a post... how about the clip of Frank and I chatting in my house? And if you like it at all, think about contributing a couple of bucks to your favorite Blue America candidate(s) by clicking on the Act Blue thermometer below.

So I'm D.C.-bound -- all I have to do is catch my 3am train

The great John Russell Pope's National Archives Building (1931-35), one of the landmarks mentioned in Francis Morrone's description for tomorrow's "Monumental Washington in the 1930s and 1940s" tour for the National Civic Art Society

by Ken

As long-time DWT readers may recall, Howie is my oldest friend in terms of continuous service -- dating back to the 9th grade at the James Madison HS Annex on the top floor of a public school way the hell on the other side of Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Long-time readers will also have heard more than once from both of us about our 9th-grade English teacher, Mr. Fulmer, one of the great influences on both our lives. Mr.Fulmer was wont to say pithy things like "In a thousand years we'll all be dead, and all that will matter is our record of truth and beauty," or to point out helpfully, whenever a hapless student would say unthinkingly, "I think that . . . .," that "That's not thinking."

Now you may think, especially if you're not conversant with the math that includes our ages, that 9th-grade isn't going back all that far as friendships go. Certainly not among the kids I encountered growing up, when my family seemed to move every couple of years (if not oftener), either within cities or, a couple of times, from city to city, so that every couple of years (if not oftener) I found myself standing alone on the playground of a new school among kids who'd been going to school together their whole lives.

Still, from this vantage point of antiquity, a continuous friendship dating back to the 9th grade and Mr. Fulmer counts for something. Warning: You don't want to get him started on our 10th-grade English teacher, Miss Kliegman, who still comes up fairly regularly in our conversations. And so maybe it's not entirely beside the point that you encounter us both, all these years later, in the act of shoving words around.

Our more obvious connection, which long-time readers will also have noted, is political and worldviewish. For all our differences, I am still regularly startled by how similarly we respond to Stuff That Happens Out There in the World -- the way our attention tends to be caught by the same events and our responses tend to be so similar.

Possibly factoring into the above (or possibly not) is that Howie is the only friend I've ever had who's as geography- and map-obsessed as I am. Again, our geographical, er, styles are different. He's the one who, as he has chronicled here a number of times, set out one summer for the Pacific island kingdom of Tonga. No, he didn't get there, but for a high school kid getting across our native continent was no small deal. Not to mention that you would never in a lifetime find me doing any "setting out for" of that sort.

And again, long-time readers will have glimpsed that difference in our recorded travel adventures. Howie is the one who, with his grueling health crisis still clearly visible in the rear-view mirror, planned and executed a several-weeks' expedition to Russia with a side swing to Azerbaijan. (I wish you could have heard the hair-raising stories of just the adventures in visa-hunting he and especially his friend and frequent travel companion Roland underwent for this trip.)

Whereas my traveling is done mostly via armchair -- most happily in the happy company of Michael Palin on DVD. And, of course, the urban gadding that has become my latter-years evening and weekend preoccupation -- most always in day-trip form, and almost invariably within the geographic boundaries of NYC.

Which is a prelude to explaining why I'm not tackling one of my customary "serious" blog topics (that's right, the depredations of Next Food Network Star will have to await another occasion) today, as I prepare for a journey that will respect my "day trip" boundary but not the geographic one. 'Cause I'm busting out of the Greater NYC area -- all the way to Our Nation's Capital. And I'm doing it on a 3am train out of Penn Station. (Shudder.)

True, the impetus is local-ish. Which is to say that one of my most cherished walking-tour leaders, Francis Morrone, mentioned not long ago during a Municipal Art Society tour that he was going to be doing a tour in Washington on July 9. He didn't say any more, and I didn't ask, but after letting the thing percolate in my head awhile, I finally decided to try to track it down online, and track it down I did -- to the final event in a series, "Classical Architecture, Classical Values," offered by the National Civic Art Society:

Tour V, Saturday July 9

V. Monumental Washington in the 1930s and 1940s. Classicism in the era of Modernism.

We will explore works from the 1930s and 1940s--when the Modern Movement was in the ascendant--by such architects as Arthur Brown Jr., York and Sawyer, William Adams Delano, Milton Medary, and especially John Russell Pope (National Gallery, National Archives, Jefferson Memorial), with a big tip of the hat to the relatively unsung Otto Eggers and Daniel Higgins. Along the way we'll note other things, including, for context, later works by I.M.Pei and Partners and Pei Cobb Freed. Please note that this is an outdoor tour only. We'll leave the glorious interiors en route for another day.

The tour meets at 10 AM at the intersection of Constitution Ave. NW and 6th St. NW.

Again, it took me a bit of time to process this information, and discover that I had a conflict with a Brooklyn Brainery event I'd already registered for, "Blintzes, Malaysian Peanut Pancakes, and the Many Faces of Crepes" with Jonathan Soma (half of the great Masters of Social Gastronomy team, with Sarah Lohman; they have a slew of interesting-looking events planned for July and August), part of Soma's BB Summer of Pancakes series. However, as I'm a bit embarrassed to note, I quickly recalled that Brooklyn Brainery, in addition to offering interesting programs at eye-catchingly low prices, actually allows you to cancel events, and I did just that. (I just checked, and tomorrow's class is sold out, so maybe the Brooklyn Brainery folks aren't as naive as we might think, allowing registrants to cancel with enough advance notice. I'm delighted to see that my ruthlessly abandoned slot hasn't gone to waste! And I've still got my place on the 19th for Soma's "Going All-in on American Pancakes," which I see is also sold out. I don't plan on canceling that one.)

From there the details fell into place in rapid order. I had no trouble booking my spot for Francis's tour.(I guess the D.C. folks don't know about him. In NYC, that tour would probably have been sold out within days of being announced), for a measly 15 smackers. Of course adding in carfare hiked the total trip cost a bit: $74.80 (advance-purchase senior fare) for a train down, then a mere $23 for one of those cheap-cheap Chinatown-bassd buses back in the evening. I've taken the cheap-cheap bus before, and would have done so for the trip down if there's been a bus that would enable me to get to the tour meeting point by 10am, but there wasn't -- not even close.

And even the Amtrak scheduling was tricky. There's a 6am train that's scheduled to arrive in Union Station at 9:30am, and judging by the map, that should leave me enough time to make my tour -- that is, assuming I have such faith in Amtrak's on-time performance. Not to mention the consideration that I only theoretically know how to get from my Point A to Point B, and I would spend every second of every minute today all the way through boarding and then all the way on train obsessing over the time. So I swallowed hard and instead of booking the 6am train pulled the trigger for the 3am one, due into Union Station at 6:30am. Meaning that, once I'm on the train, nothing short of a derailment (a possibility one can't ever entirely discount) should prevent me from making the rendezvous with Francis. (Who, incidentally, has no idea that I'll be there. I've done at least one MAS tour with him since I made all these plans, and thought I would find a way to drop it into conversation, but I didn't. It should at least be interesting to note his response to seeing me amidst the tour group.

So today, in addition to planning everything around the 3am train departure, I'm occupied with finishing my research and resource planning, including printing up all sorts of Google maps, including locations of local ATMs of my bank and gym branches that my membership card should get me into. (In addition to not wanting to skip a day at the gym, I'm inclined to have some possible indoor activities in my arsenal. Not at all to my surprise, thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow.) I thought I could piggyback some serious apartment decluttering in the form of a frantic hunt for my buried D.C. street atlas and aging Time Out guide, but wouldn't you know, I found both of them almost as soon as I started looking. Of all the luck!)

So you'll see why I don't have time today to prattle on about, say, the Supreme Court, or the wide-screen version of Gilmore Girls I'm now a mere two episodes away from finishing on UP. What's more, I"ve got another crossing-state-lines day trip planned for next month, built around an event my college alumni people have planned at Connecticut's Mystic Seaport, which I've heard about much of my life but have never visited. Highlighting the festivities, one of our distinguished English professors will be offering a presentation on "The Myth and Legend of Moby Dick," so part of my adventure will be finally reading Moby-Dick. (Yes, I was supposed to have read an abridged version -- in, I think, Miss Kliegman's 10th-grade English class. But there are a lot of things I was supposed to have read that I haven't.)

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Update from Howie

by Ken

Howie hasn't authorized me to say anything, but on July 3 he did share this information about the current stage of his treatment for mantle-cell lymphoma (a rare form of lymphoma) with his Facebook fans:

I'm in the hospital getting stem cell transplants to keep the cancer in remission. I was feeling pretty low and fatigued all day. But I just put on "Friday Night" by Brutalism and, man, I'm alive, I'm alive!! I hope I don't scare the nurses.

Back then he was on (by my reckoning) Day 5 of eight consecutive days of chemo treatments in preparation for the transplant, but on the afternoon of July 7 he posted (and got, at last count, 186 comments):

Stem cell transplants starting right now. Prayers welcome

Invoking prayers doesn't sound like Howie to me, but then, this isn't your everyday medical procedure. Just to clarify, since he began treatment for the lymphoma, he's known: (a) that the stem-cell transplant lay ahead if the rest of the treatment went well (which it did), meaning that making it this far is an extremely hopeful sign, and (b) that the procedure wasn't going to be pleasant -- to put it as mildly as possible.

As regular readers know, despite the fierce toll taken by the side effects of the previous treatments (though once they were completed, he got a measure of relief from them, as he has written, when he finally threw medical marijuana at them), his doctor kept assuring him that in terms of fighting the lymphoma, his was one of the most successful cases she's had.

Going into this round of treatment, he's had every expectation that its effects would dwarf everything that came before -- and while he's undergoing treatment he's without benefit of the medical marijuana. It appears that those expectations have been realized. However, even as he rattled off the horrors he's experiencing (Friday he wrote, "I know I haven't reached bottom yet but I'm headed there"), he says his doctor "still insists I'm in the top 1% of responses!" As you've noticed, through it all he has continued blogging (and keeping up with his blogworld contacts) and tweeting.

He's had a lot of faith in his doctor (she's a specialist in mantle cell, of which there aren't a lot), and thus far she's gotten him into remission. As he noted in his Facebook post, keeping him in remission is what the transplant is about, and the process clearly isn't for the squeamish. But at the other end, the doctor has given him reason to believe in an excellent outcome.

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It takes a lot to dislodge Howie from his blogging chair -- a blast from the past

WEDNESDAY, MAY 09, 2007

LIVE GRIFFITH PARK FIRE BLOGGING AT DOWN WITH TYRANNY

the green on the upper left is all charred now

Yesterday I was so busy excoriating Chris Carney for lying to me about his position on equality when he wanted Blue America support, that I didn't pay any attention to anything else. So when my ex-roommate, Roland, called as he was driving home from school-- he teaches in Compton and, like me, lives in Los Feliz-- his news surprised me. "Get out of there," he shouted. "The fire is headed right towards your house." What fire? "What planet are you on?" he asked. "Are you sitting and working on that crazy blog of yours all day? Turn on the TV." He called about 30 minutes later and I had to admit I hadn't turned on the TV. At that point it was something like 3PM and I still didn't know there was a fire other than having heard it from him-- and he tends to get dramatic sometimes.

-- the start of Howie's DWT post at 1:36pm PT on May 9, 2007

by Melody

Yep, as Ken wrote the other day, telling us about Howie's temporary absence from his usual perch: “It takes a lot to dislodge him from his blogging chair, which is the place where he pretty much most likes to be in the whole world.” For those of you who don’t know Howie’s priors, I want to take you back to that day in May 2007, when the DWT post that began as you see above appeared at 1:39pm PT -- with the aerial photo highlighting "Howie's Pad" and text that began as you see here.

I have dug out two YouTubes from Day 1 of the Griffith Park fire -- the fire that led Roland to ask, "Are you sitting and working on that crazy blog of yours all day?” (Which of course he was!)





Bear in mind that while all of this was going on, Howie had been busy -- as he told us here -- excoriating Pennsylvania freshman Congressman Chris Carney. Chris Carney is a paticular sore point for all of us who have followed Howie’s tireless efforts for Blue America, and just to bring this report full circle, he has refused to vanish into the night. Just this past Tuesday Howie wrote a post titled "The Return Of Blue Dog Chris Carney?," which began:

In the 2006 midterms Blue America made a ghastly mistake. We allowed ourselves be be taken in my a bold-faced liar and fast-talking charlatan running for Congress in northeast Pennsylvania. Although we were warned that Carney, a former employee of Douglas Feith in the Bush White House, was untrustworthy, we endorsed him and helped him raise money and develop strategies against against Republican incumbent Don Sherwood. (We did not know at the time that he had worked as an "interrogator" at Guantanamo.) During our endorsement interview he portrayed himself as a progressive and vowed that if he were elected he would vote for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. He was elected, immediately joined the reactionary Blue Dogs and started voting with the Republicans on one crucial roll call after another. . . .

Blue America apologized to our contributors, and asked Carney to refund the money our donors have given him. He started cursing at me. We started raising money to let PA-10 voters know what a fraud Carney is and in 2010 he was one of the dozens of Blue Dogs swept out of office. Republican Tom Marino beat him 109,603 (55%) to 89,170 (45%) and we hoped we'd never have to think about him again, except as an object lesson about how to deal with dishonest candidates.

Unfortunately, Carney is rearing his ugly head again, threatening to run against Joe Sestak in the 2016 Pennsylvania Senate primary. Anti-Choice, anti-gay, he's so right-wing he could easily switch to the Republican Party. But over the weekend he said he wants to run against Republican incumbent Pat Toomey as a Democrat. . . .

I can only conclude that Chris Carney has some really bad mojo.

Chris Carney may not agree, but here's hoping that Howie's back in his beloved blogging chair ASAP.


KEN ADDS: I wish I had news to report, but as of my latest information Howie is still resting mighty uncomfortably while, presumably, those cracked ribs do some healing. Thanks to all for all the good wishes. We'll try to keep you posted.

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From the DWT Mailbag: We answer reader questions like "Where's Howie?"

Okay, we've got a little time and space here, so why don't we dig into the DWT mailbag and answer a question or two? Okay, let's go for two. Right, here are the questions readers are asking most often at the moment.

(1) So where the heck is Howie?

(2) Man, that other guy sucks!


LET'S TAKE THEM IN REVERSE ORDER

(2) Technically this isn't actually a question, and so there isn't much we can say, except that sure, the guy sucks, but what you may not know is that he's here on scholarship, and giving him the boot would mean he'd have to be sent back where he came from, and the cable-TV offerings there are even more pathetic than than they are here.

(1) As to Howie, it so happens that he cracked a couple of ribs and collapsed a lung, and has been in a fair amount of agony while waiting for some healing to happen. It takes a lot to dislodge him from his blogging chair, which is the place where he pretty much most likes to be in the whole world.

While we wait, we're happy to have the post Noah contributed earlier this evening, "Searching for Love in All the Wrong Places," and we're delighted to have Gaius Publius pitching in big-time, not least because that guy is wicked smart.

No, this isn't Howie's actual blogging chair, so
please don't ask where you can get one like his.

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Howie, Mali-bound (no, not Maui, Mali, as in Timbuktu), finds DWT banned in France!

by Ken

You're bound to notice eventually that Howie has slipped out of his blogging chair. Those of you who've been with us before and have glanced at the calendar may realize that if it's December, that means he's off on his annual Big Trip. Two years ago Tierra del Fuego, last year South Asia (India, Thailand), this year Mali. No, not Maui, where it's possible for many a sensible person to wish to go (especially in December, if the person happens to reside in a northerly clime), but Mali, as in Timbuktu.

I just heard from him from the airport in Paris, where he arrived early only to find his connecting flight to Dakar, Senegal, delayed by what is officially described as three hours. At least until he heard about the delay, he was a relatively happy camper, heartened to find an airport lounge well-equipped not just with computers but with Macs. He was plowing earnestly through 500 accumulated e-mails (and sending back some dispatches I'll be passing on in due time), when came this:

I was so happy to find free computers -- Macs no less -- in the airport lounge. But DWT is banned -- perhaps in solidarity with Myanmar.

(Yes, if you weren't with us, last year while he was posting from Myanmar, he suddenly found DWT banned.)

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HOWIE REPORTS SAFE ARRIVAL IN INDIA

Delhi's Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India

After yesterday's frenzy of writing during the stopover in London, Howie managed to send out this report:

"I'm in Delhi. The computer is so primitive I keep expecting it to ask me to crank it. No chance to post on this."