Police & Thieves

ICE sics dog on man in Washington.

No Shame

Supreme Court justices like to pretend that they are non partisan. There is nothing farther from the truth. They are anything but. This particular MAGA Supreme Court is very much in favor of the Unitary Executive, granting the President powers to fire Congressional appointees, thwart the legislatures and lower courts, and put their oversized thumbs on the judicial scales, unless of course, the President happens to be a Democrat.

They like to say that their decision making is not for Trump but for all Presidents. Balderdash. They blocked Biden at every opportunity.

During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden experienced a sustained series of defeats at the U.S. Supreme Court, whose ascendant conservative majority blew holes in his agenda and dashed precedents long cherished by American liberals.

Despite the Biden administration's efforts to preserve it, the court - which has six conservative justices and three liberals - in 2022 overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had recognized a constitutional right to abortion. The court in 2023 rejected race-conscious admissions policies defended by his administration that long had been used by colleges and universities to increase their numbers of Black, Hispanic and other minority students. In 2022, it expanded gun rights, rejecting his administration's position, and similarly in 2024 it invalidated a federal ban on "bump stock" devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.

The justices blocked Biden's $430 billion student loan relief plan in 2023. They also limited the Environmental Protection Agency's reach as part of a series of rulings curbing the power federal regulatory agencies.During Biden's term, the court formalized a conservative legal principle, called the major questions doctrine, that gives judges broad discretion to invalidate executive agency actions of "vast economic and political significance" unless it is deemed that Congress clearly authorized them.

The court invoked this doctrine to block the student debt relief plan that Biden had promised as a candidate in 2020 and to roll back the EPA's authority to regulate carbon pollution from power plants.

"The environmental law and student loan cases show how disdainful the court is of Democratic executive action, precisely because the lack of congressional movement means that executive action remains the only avenue for any kind of policy progress in the U.S.," Cornell Law School professor Gautam Hans said.

In another blow to federal regulatory power, the court in 2024 overturned a landmark 1984 precedent that had given deference to U.S. agencies in interpreting laws they administer, again ruling against Biden's administration. This doctrine, known as "Chevron deference," had been long opposed by conservatives and business interests.

One of the ways the court gets to show their bias is through the Emergency or shadow docket.

This article by the New York Times Adam Liptak, now two months old, illustrates the phenomenon in spades.

In the 17 cases in which the Biden administration sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court over four years, for instance, Justice Kavanaugh voted in its favor 41 percent of the time, according to an analysis prepared for The New York Times by Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, both of Washington University in St. Louis, and Michael J. Nelson of Penn State.

By contrast, in the 19 cases in which the court has ruled on applications from the second Trump administration, Justice Kavanaugh voted for the administration 89 percent of the time. That amounted to a 48-percentage-point gap in favor of President Trump.

Not just Kavanaugh of course. Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito are even worse.

On the far right side of the court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. voted with the Trump administration 95 percent of the time and the Biden administration just 18, for a gap of 77 percentage points.

Hell of a way to run a country. No wonder faith in the law and the Supreme Court is at an all time low.  And so obviously is intellectual integrity.

Less than four in ten Americans has any faith in the court. Only 20% think the court is politically neutral. Not hard to see why. The Federalist Society really knows how to game the system, don't they? Cookie cutter justices delivering again and again for the home team.

Now the Court has ruled that Texas can use extreme gerrymandered districts that marginalize minority voting power even though the lower courts found ample evidence that race was the determining factor in creating them.

Their ruling was laughable:

...the court’s conservative majority allowed Texas to use voting maps made to disadvantage Democrats in the 2026 election, without a hint of constitutional difficulty. To the contrary, the majority chastised a lower court for not taking the state at its word that politics, not race, motivated the maps. The court, it said, had “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.”

Take the state at its word? We are talking about Texas.

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Trump has wasted little down putting his cheesy, bougie gilded imprimatur on every landmark and once noble institution he can get a hold of. 

From demolishing the East Wing to create a glitzy low class ballroom that almost doubles the White House, to changing the name of the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center, or worse, to trying to put his own orange visage on a coin, to ridding the Park Service of a free pass on MLK Day and substituting his own birthday, his tawdry angling for a Nobel prize, he has absolutely no shame. 

And I don't know about you but the poor guys on boats off Venezuela, has anybody yet seen evidence of any drugs on the boat? I haven't. You think we can take our government at its word? I've got an orange bridge to sell you.

I wouldn't be surprised if the murdered men were out for a mere pleasure cruise.

Your 2025 submissions (so far)

 

Grandsons at the beach - Jeff Nichols

Cold water bay jump fundraiser - Brian Vaughn

Bonsall Bridge in fog - Jon Harwood

Licking her lips - Mike Reardon

Stax Volt Tour 1967 feat. Otis Redding, Booker T. & The MGs, Sam & Dave

The world will miss the great Steve Cropper.

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 | Claudio Abbado & the Orchestra Mozart

John's father, my stepfather, was a genius who designed airplanes and missiles, including the XV5A, the Aerobee and the Firebee drone. He would often drink himself into oblivion while doing his mathematical computations. This was one of the things I recall him listening to in my childhood.

Looking for your submissions

Every year I do a "send me your favorite picture of the year" routine. Could be a drawing, a photo, whatever... Pretty, ugly, sad or happy, what would you like to share this year?

You know the drill...

This has been such an odd year for me, I might as well include an odd picture. 

I got word that my younger brother was found dead in his apartment in Pittsburgh in late June. 

Two days later, I was on the plane to clean out his belongings and try to make sense of everything. It was hot and muggy. His body had been on the floor, that stain that you see, for about a month before it was found. The stain of his two dogs' bodies was not far away.

I will spare you the worst details but there were a lot of tears.

My task was to send what I could to his four kids and ex wife, sort of a curated snapshot of his life as I couldn't grab everything.

We weren't sure what happened. Was it suicide or an overdose perhaps? He was suffering from mental health issues but he was an incredibly brilliant man.

Two weeks ago the autopsy report came back. My sixty year old brother died from natural causes, heart failure.

It was a huge relief.

I was three days boxing up that apartment. This is the image that probably best defines this very strange year.

Love you, Johnny.

Phyllis Hyman

I was listening to a Pharaoh Sanders cut I had never heard before when I first encountered this enchanting voice.

How could I have never heard this brilliant singer before? Just who is this Phyllis Hyman?

Then I started digging and found out that in reality she was one of the most beloved singers of her era and still missed dearly by many. An incomparable set of pipes. Not sure how I missed her.

Read her bio. Incredibly sad read, she was bi-polar, addicted to blow, and finally she takes her own life at the age of 45.  It is a sad fact that many of our most brilliant artists live so close to the emotional edge and leave the rest of us far too soon.

Tales of Japan

As some of you know I was quite involved in martial arts when I was younger. Started in an Okinowan school, Uechi ryu, then Kempo and finally Hung Gar and Wing Chun Kung Fu. I miss it a lot but my knees gave out and I knew I was done.

All it took was one sweep.

Anyway I still like watching martial arts and wanted to share one of my guilty pleasures, a certain variety of Japanese martial arts movies whose genre may not even have a name.

These movies were produced in the 1960's through the 1980's and I want to talk about three series specifically. They had a penchant for cartoon style violence that was often extreme and an open depiction of sexual behavior that doesn't even have a corollary in Western cinema.

All of these movies were made by or featured actors from basically one family.

We don't watch television but we do stream and these can be often found in the Criterion collection on TCM or HBO Max.

I am not recommending that you watch them because those with less prurient tastes might be horrified. But I find them highly interesting and entertaining.

The three series are Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, Lone Wolf and Cub and Hanzo the Razor.

Zatoichi, or more properly Ichi, is a blind masseur from the late edo period who is continually having to fight his way out of squabbles, often against enormous odds. 

Carrying swords openly was taboo for non samurai during that time but he keeps a sword in his cane, which is permissible.

Zatoichi has a love of gambling and women. Over 100 episodes were filmed. 

He was portrayed by several actors but Shintaro Katsu was the man, in my opinion.

Like many of our movies of the old west, Zatoichi was a force for good and always wanted to help the downtrodden.

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Lone Wolf and Cub is a bit more bizarre that Zatoichi. 

It started as a Japanese manga magazine series written by Kazuo Koike and illustrated by Goseki Kojima in 1970.

It is the story of the Shogun's executioner, Ogami Ittō, who is falsely accused by the Yagyu clan and is forced to become an assassin with his young son, the three year old Daigorō, after his wife is murdered. 

They decide to live a life at the gates of hell.

This is a very violent story and not for the squeamish. You have to like this sort of thing. I do, but I consider these series to be like cartoons whose actors are human.

The principal actor is Tomisaburo Wakayama. He is also the brother of Shintaro Katsu. Here is a portion of his biography from Wikipedia:

Wakayama (his stage name) was born on September 1, 1929, in Fukagawa, a district in Tokyo, Japan.His father was Minoru Okumura (奥村 実), a noted kabuki performer and nagauta singer who went by the stage name Katsutōji Kineya (杵屋 勝東治), and the family as a whole were kabuki performers. He and his younger brother, Shintaro Katsu, followed their father in the theater. Wakayama tired of this; at the age of 13, he began to study judo, eventually achieving the rank of 4th dan black belt in the art.

In 1952, as part of the Azuma Kabuki troupe, Wakayama toured the United States of America for nine months. He gave up theater performance completely after his two-year term with the troupe was over.Wakayama taught judo until Toho recruited him as a new martial arts star in their jidaigeki movies,originally using the stage name "Jō Kenzaburō". He prepared for these movies by practicing other disciplines, including kenpō, iaidō, kendo, and bōjutsu.All this helped him for roles (now using the stage name "Wakayama Tomisaburō") in the television series The Mute Samurai,the 1975 television series Shokin Kasegi (The Bounty Hunter), and his most famous film role: Ogami Ittō, the Lone Wolf.

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Shintaro Katsu returns in a starring role in the third series I am sharing, Hanzo the Razor. This one is a trilogy and certainly not for the faint hearted. For more on Katsu, from Wikipedia:

Born Toshio Okumura (奥村 利夫 Okumura Toshio) on 29 November 1931. He was the son of Minoru Okumura (奥村 実), a noted kabuki performer who went by the stage name Katsutōji Kineya (杵屋 勝東治) and who was renowned for his nagauta and shamisen skills. He was the younger brother of actor Tomisaburo Wakayama.

Shintaro Katsu began his career in entertainment as a shamisen player. He switched to acting because he noticed it was better paid. In the 1960s he starred simultaneously in three long-running series of films, the Akumyo series, the Hoodlum Soldier series, and the Zatoichi series. In 1972, Katsu Productions released the initial chanbara film in a trilogy with the Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice based on a gekiga by Koike Kazuo. Hanzo the Razor: The Snare would be released in 1973, and Hanzo the Razor: Who's Got the Gold? in 1974.

Katsu had a troubled personal life. A heavy drinker, Katsu had several brushes with the law over drug use as well, including marijuana, opium and cocaine with arrests in 1978, 1990 and 1992.

He had also developed a reputation as a troublemaker on set. When director Akira Kurosawa cast him for the lead role in Kagemusha (1980), Katsu left before the first day of shooting was over. Though accounts differ as to the incident, the most consistent one details Katsu's clash with Kurosawa regarding bringing his own film crew to the set (to film Kurosawa in action for later exhibition to his own acting students).Kurosawa is reputed to have taken great offense at this, resulting in Katsu's termination (he was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai). In her book, Waiting on the Weather, about her experiences with director Kurosawa, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami chalks the differences between Katsu and Kurosawa up to a personality clash that had unfortunate artistic results.

Hanzo is another character who is a law enforcer during the Edo period. He is aided by two hapless ex criminals that he has saved and who now owe their lives to him. It is also very violent but what makes it extraordinary, at least for me, is that the protagonist has an enormous penis, which he often uses to get women to spill the beans with after a vigorous lovemaking session.

He is forced to put his gigantic manhood through a withering series of self abuse in order to tame his sexual urges and sometimes engages in outright acts of rape.

This is something we don't see in Western Cinema, and we rarely see this level of female nakedness or open sexuality in our period movies. 

It is almost like a shunga cartoon, which often depicted acts of sexuality perpetrated by similarly endowed characters.

Japanese culture seems somewhat less hung up on matters of sexuality than we are in the west.

Give any one of these three series a shot and see what you think.

And if you find them horrifying, you have a remote. 

Please don't blame me.

Bald eagle soaring

 

Here Without You

Jubea

I don't give a lot of thought to living a long time. Frankly, I am amazed that I have made it this long. I have several older friends who have recently had serious medical calamities of some sort, so the end ain't ever exactly pretty, unless of course, everything stays hunky dory and you manage to go in your sleep.

In any case, I do have at least one reason for wanting to extend my lifespan, my jubea chilensis.

The jubea, or Chilean Wine Palm, is in my opinion, the prettiest palm in the world. It certainly has the widest trunk of any palm in the world. A massive palm.

It is a notorious slow grower. 

Mine is about fifteen years old now.  

These are the cold hardiest palms in the world, they grow in the snow in their native land.

Many have been killed by those tapping them for the sap in their trunk which is fermented for palm wine.

I estimate mine has about four foot of trunk right now and a trunk diameter of about 42". 

Very stout.

They get wide before they get tall.

It is about 16' to the top of its highest frond.

It's growing but just not fast enough for me. 

Although it looks great now, it will look totally amazing once mature in my garden.

Something I will most likely never see.

You can see its dark green foliage behind the other plants in this picture, to the right of the cactus spires.

Has a very deep color, which is nicely accented by the brahea armata or Mexican blue in the front right of it.

Another slow grower.

I want to see the jubea in its regal magnificence, like the jubeas in Mission Bay near the Bahia, or in front of the DeYoung Museum or the Santa Barbara Courthouse.

If only I should live that long.

Tommy Emmanuel and Nora Germain

December 29, 2025

My father, Amos Sommers, would have been ninety nine today. He died in April of 2015 after a long bout with Alzheimers. He was a very successful man and a very tough man. "How the hell can you make a living selling art and antiques?" he would ask me.

Great question, pops. Like anything else, you survive as best as you can. It's up and down.

Here is a snapshot of my dad in the Alzheimer's home in Clovis, a tender moment kissing his sweet wife Shela's hand.

He became more tender as he aged.

They had a wonderful marriage.

I miss him. He was absent near the beginning but always there for me in the end.

Happy birthday, dad.

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Leslie and I decided to blow off the traditional thanksgiving and have dim sum instead.

Like an early Christmas.

We went down to Jasmine. It was very good, shumai and duck and shrimp and scallops and all sorts of good things.

She said no pictures so you get this.

To the left was a wonderful pork belly with a crispy chicharrone type top.

I put some of the leftover pork in my scrambled eggs this morning. Delicious.

Tonight we make the traditional bird and stuffing, still thankful.

Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

More this and that

 

This is one of our native scrub jays. Such a boring name for such a lovely bird. Much like the house finch, it suffers from an unduly modest sobriquet. If you were a traveler from a distant land and came up on its gorgeous plumage for the first time you would think to call it a blue paragon of gorgeousness or something similarly suitable. 

But no, it was destined for ignominy by some forgotten taxonomist with zero vision and/or literary skill. 

We (mostly Leslie) feed them peanuts in the morning. We have quite a scrub jay troupe around here.

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A CIA linked Afghani refugee shot two people back east, a tragedy. I would like to mention that this wretch was one guy. I have known quite a few afghans in my time, many of them translators for our troops overseas and the great majority I have met are wonderful people.

They helped us do whatever the hell we were doing over there, much like the Montagnards did in Vietnam. It is senseless to send them back over one misguided man's actions. These people helped us immensely and would be sitting ducks back with the Taliban.

A deluded Christian named Scott Roeder murdered the abortion doctor George Tiller. Eric Rudolph, responsible for several bombings, was an anti abortion Catholic. Are we going to blame the whole religion for the horrible behavior of a few? Where shall we deport them?

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I got a call from my cousin Linda Forman's sister Francey (also a cousin) that Linda had passed. She loved the blog, was a frequent commenter,  the eighty year old went by the name honky tonk angel. More about her here.

Linda lived in Western Massachusetts, started out in my family's stateside birthplace, Providence. 

Here is a picture of her, she is on the left, Francey on the right.

Both look a lot like my mother, their first cousin. But nicer.

Here is a picture she sent of a building that once held the Roberts Paper Box Company, our longtime family business.

Linda and I were two peas in a pod. 

She loved Dylan and Nanci Griffith, Zevon, Guy Clark. Libby Cotton. John Hartford. Was longtime friends with Sam Bush. 

All that weird music I like, she liked it too. Must be genetic. 

We had similar artistic tastes too, she owned a Werner Drewes and a Lozowick  and a Peggy Bacon.

She was married to a pretty famous bluegrass musician once upon a time and sent me all her old Sing Out magazines last year.

She filled in a lot of family history for me. I did what I could in return.

We also had near identical political leanings.

She liked to piss off the people in her gym, wearing shirts like this:

She was a liberal beatnik and owned an original Woodstock poster.

She would occasionally quote Ram Dass.

It was such a pleasure making friends with each other so late in our respective lives and I will miss her letters and support dearly.

Never met her in the flesh but it doesn't really matter. We were family through and through.

Sitting In Limbo

Mose Allison

Van Rat

I am back from a very successful trip to Santa Barbara. Pretty beat, everything hurts. I sold well, in many different areas, but the booth basically continued the Texas, southwest theme because I still had a lot of that material in the van.

We had a lot of rain in the days before I left. My roof at my store is pretty patched together and I worry about its integrity, especially near the skylights.

I bit the bullet and hired a crew to go back up and patch and seal before the big rain. Spent some money. Glad I did.

Let's see, what do I remember?  

A two day pack in, lights and paper up the first day, all the material brought into the booth. 

Laid it out in my brain and got a wall or two set up.

The show opened Friday, quite brisk sales, will definitely miss some of my prized material. 

I brought this double sided Dean Cornwell illustration, didn't sell it but I like it a lot.

Another big booth.

Anyway the setup looked something like this.

I bought from two estates when I was up there, purchased these great Albert Paley Millennium candlesticks from 1998 and this Tiffany bronze harp lamp base.

Now I just have to find a shade.

Had one really nice dinner with Alyssa and James and friends of theirs at Lure.

Basically ate at my old haunts. Garrets for breakfast, Presto Pasta, Chucks, Esaus...

Sold well but turned down a lot of offers that were almost, we will ultimately see if that was wise or not.

My van ran well but it smelled a little mousey the whole time.

I had the feeling that something was living in it.

One morning I opened my door and there was a ball of lint on the door sill. 

I picked it up and it turned out to be two baby mice.

I deposited them in a shrub but have to wonder where mom is and what is still inhabiting my van?

Rather than coming home exhausted Sunday night I stayed over. Had a brutal interaction with a hotel clerk.

I helped a client hang a painting Monday and saw my friend Carol and picked up some beautiful Mucha prints. Drove home yesterday, leg and foot on fire. I unloaded 90% of the van today, will continue Thursday and try to have a mellow day tomorrow and rest a bit if I remember how?

Good to be home.

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Two of my favorite musical artists have passed, Jimmy Cliff and Donna Jean Godchaux. Jimmy Cliff was a wonderful performer and a lyricist on a very exalted perch, on the level of Prine, Dylan and Hunter.

 I got to meet Jimmy once and will tell you a little story about the encounter.

I had a childhood friend who was a film and movie carpenter from New York, Greg Criscuola. Greg had a friend who was a major television lead, Debra somebody or other and he flew out to Los Angeles and invited me to a filming. 

He was staying at the Sunset Marquis. This is back in 1978.

We were in the hot tub at the Marquis smoking a joint when these two rasta guys showed up and jumped in. We had a puff with them and they were in Cliff's band.  They liked psychedelics and we may have shared some with them.

They invited us to a show at the Roxy that night. It was an amazing performance, Reebop from Traffic was the percussionist. we were invited to a party after the show in their room.

We walk down there and there is a cop at the door. "Shit," we thought. "They are getting busted." We walk up to the cop and he says, "Get in their sons, they are smoking some gnarly reefer."

We walked in to the coolest party. I thought I was a stoner, these jamaicans were smoking foot long corn husk spliffs and left me in the dust like a baby. Smoked me under the table. White dudes in hawaiian shirts were singing scat and doing free verse while other people were jamming in their respective corners with guitars.

Greg ends up playing guitar with Jimmy Cliff. It was just the most righteous, fun, incredible party, will never forget it as long as I live. Neither will Greg, I am sure.

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Donna and Phil at the Cow Palace, my first show
after moving back to California in 74.

Donna Jean was the dead's female vocalist. She and her husband Keith were the only two members of the band I actually never talked to. But I loved them both, think she added something very special to the gestalt. Yes, she screamed a bit and was out of tune frequently but not Yoko awful and the good far outweighed the bad. 

Her time with the band was the best they ever played in my opinion and piano playing husband was an incredible and very natural musician. 

Far better than what came next, which was often unlistenable to me. 

I think it was nice to have a female voice in the mix and she was a major component of some of the greatest shows I ever saw in my life, 1976 through 78.

So thank you Jimmy and Donna, bless you both.

Grant Geissman

Rockin' crossword

I created another rock and roll crossword puzzle. I don't think many of you, if any, can solve this one. Surprise me.

Santa Barbara Antique Show

 

Reeling in the years

We met our friends Fay and Kevin at La Especial Norte in Encinitas yesterday for soup. 

It is an old standby.

The chicken soup is still outstanding but the large bowls have shrunk considerably. 

Way of the world I guess. 

You get about twice as much soup here in Fallbrook at Rosas.

Afterwards we drove down the coast towards the Belly Up to see Steely Jazz.

When my wife says no pictures, she means no pictures.

There were two shows, a five o'clock show for the Can't buy a thrill through Royal Scam period and then an eight o' clock set for Gaucho and Aja. Definitely wanted to do the early show, the latter a bit too overproduced and blah for me, can hardly listen to it anymore.

The band is pretty cool. Tom Scott from the L.A. Express, Keith Carlock, Steely Dan's amazing regular drummer, Steely Dan co-founder and guitar player Denny Dias, original vocalist Royce Jones, Freddie Washington on bass, Drew Zingg and the great Grant Geissman (ex Chuck Mangione) on more guitars, Yaron Gershovsky keyboards, a trumpeter and three more vocalists.

The vocals started out a bit rough but about three songs in it started to groove. One of the female vocalists was a powerhouse. What a neat show! I saw Steely Dan with Fagan last year and this sounded way better to me. Course the hall was way more intimate than the forum and the sound was much better too.

Carlock is a monster, reminds me of Frosty. Geissman played the flying V like a demon, great player. Good song selection, would have liked to hear more from Royal Scam and Pretzel Logic but you can't always get what you want.

We had reserved seats upstairs. Bought Thrifty ice cream on the way home. Leslie was wearing it by the time we hit our driveway, like a little kid. 

So cute.

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Not much else, been getting a lot of cool new inventory, have workers up patching the roof, just in case. 

Went to the art opening at the library on Saturday, a little uncomfortable for me because I wasn't entirely happy with my piece.

Oh well, such is life.

Next time.