T. Buckingham Thomas Archive 2024 July

JULY 31, 2024

ONLY A SCRATCH?

But Daniel was hot. He drew first and shot,
And Rocky collapsed in the corner.
But Rocky said, "Doc, it's only a scratch,
And I'll be better, I'll be better, Doc, as soon as I am able."
—Paul McCartney / John Lennon, “Rocky Raccoon”

Every day we learn a few more facts about what happened on July 13. That's when former President Trump narrowly escaped assassination during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a mere 25 miles up the road from my apartment.

Trump tells us he was shot in the side of the head. “I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear. I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet.’ ...There was blood pouring everywhere.”

To me, the injury looked like no more than a large scratch, and it seems to have healed nicely since then. In my non-expert opinion, the impact of a four-gram AR-15 bullet traveling at three times the speed of sound should have caused a great deal more damage. Was it just a glancing blow that came within a quarter of an inch of taking Trump's life, as he told the Republican National Convention six days later? Or had he been hit by only a small bullet fragment, which the latest official reports still say is a possibility?

CBS News laid out the scene like this. The gunman fired three shots between 6:11:33 and 6:11:34. One of them killed local firefighter Corey Comperatore, an attendee in the bleachers who was in the line of fire.

Did debris continue on for another 80 feet to bloody the former president?

New York Times photographer Doug Mills captured the image of an Unidentified Flying Object — a thin gray streak, circled in red above and enlarged below. It looks like the path of a bullet flying past Trump's head.

According to John Ismay of the Times, Mr. Mills was using a Sony digital camera capable of capturing images at up to 30 frames per second. He took these photos with a shutter speed of 1/8,000th of a second — extremely fast by industry standards. If it was still moving at its supersonic muzzle velocity of 2,200 miles per hour, the bullet would have traveled about five inches while the shutter was open.

Retired FBI special agent Michael Harrigan, now a consultant in the firearms industry, said that the photo “absolutely could be showing the displacement of air due to a projectile. If that's not showing the bullet's path through the air, I don't know what else it would be.”

At Mach 3, the speeding bullet would have created a shock wave, which I've depicted by adding yellow lines to the Mills image. Perhaps what bloodied the former president's ear was only a miniature sonic boom. We await further details.

Apologies to the Centenary United Methodist Church in New Bern, North Carolina, but this isn't Biblical.

The prophet Amos has brought us the word of the Lord:

“Take away from me
your noisy songs!

I don't want to hear the music of your stringed instruments.”

Amos 5:23 NET

Why do some churches have pop-rock bands? PZ Myers says one reason is Hillsong, “the rock upon which many megachurches were built. The evangelical/pentecostal church founded in Australia was immensely popular for a time, promoting a youth message for a conservative denomination of old fogies, the Assemblies of God.”

The Pittsburgh Faith & Family Channel televises sermons from various area houses of worship, most of which seem to lack traditional religious fixtures like altars and pipe organs and banners. We see no choir. The musicians have all laid down their instruments and abandoned the stage to the harangues of one rather young preacher prowling the platform with a handheld microphone.

I'm sorry, but that's not how I remember church.

Many folks look ahead to fall, when they'll drive for miles to gawk at the browning reds and yellows of the dying autumn leaves.

Personally, I prefer this time of year. Paul Simon sang about the “nice bright colors” of leaves that are still in the prime of life. “They give us the greens of summers. Makes you think all the world's a sunny day.” Visual umami.

A vocative identifies to whom an utterance is addressed. Examples: “Et tu, Brute?” “Yes, me too, Caesar.”

When I was a young man, television characters would frequently call each other by name like that. It happened in seemingly every speech. Was this a scriptwriting rule?

On Batman in 1967, we heard: “Holy hieroglyphics! How would Riddler know that, Batman?” “The mind of a criminal like Riddler is a sponge which soaks up many strange facts, Robin. Riddler is an old arch-enemy of ours, Miss Gordon, returned to try to outwit us and to bilk the good citizens of Gotham City.”

On the 1972-78 Bob Newhart Show, the lead character's entrances were always greeted with “Hi, Bob.” Syndicated reruns inspired a game in which college students would take a drink every time they heard that line.

Other characters also repeatedly identified each other by name, even when there were only two or three in a scene and it was obvious which one was being addressed. Following is a random example.

“It's not funny, Bob. I'm scared to death of dentists. I just can't go there by myself. I know l can't.” (Emily offers to help) “Howard, now, I'll take you there, I'll wait for you, you'll have your little tooth removed, and I'll take you home.” “Thank you, Emily. Bob, there's just one favor I'd like to ask of you.” “Sure. What is it, Howard?” “Uh, convince me that I shouldn't pick up that phone and call my dentist and cancel my appointment.” “You shouldn't do that, Howard.”

Real people don't talk that way, of course. Therefore, in the interest of believable dialogue, the use of the vocative has become rather rare. That's the good news. The bad news: without all the repetition, I can't always remember who the characters are.

I often watch mysteries in which the plots become more convoluted as additional characters are introduced. After 45 minutes or so, when the detective declares that he needs to question “Alice” again, I can't recall who that is. The store owner? The dead man's sister? Which one is “Alice”? That name has been mentioned only once. I think I should start using a legal pad to take notes.

Far be it from me to quibble over minor grammatical quirks, but when I'm watching NASCAR racing on television, my quibbley sense gets aroused.

One quirk: There seems to be a tendency for analysts to use the word that in place of the English language's usual definite article, the. “The leaders are heading down that backstretch, and that 20 car is gaining on that 27. He's closing in on that left rear quarter panel.” Could this be a holdover from that there Southern tradition in which good ol' boys drove them there stock cars?

Another quirk: If a driver fails to keep his car going straight ahead and it bobbles maybe five degrees to the left or the right, that's called “getting sideways.” “Oh, my! That 20 got way sideways! But he got that car straightened out again.”

In my opinion, “sideways” shouldn't be used to describe a minor deviation in direction.

It ought to be reserved for a race car that has actually yawed a full 90 degrees. Proceeding down the pavement sideways instead of frontways, it's about to wreck. Agreed?

Bill Hillgrove recently retired after 30 years as the radio play-by-play voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team conducted a nationwide search for his replacement. And this morning we got the announcement of the new announcer: a well-known local sportscaster, Rob King.

For ten years, Rob called high-school telecasts for Fox Sports Pittsburgh and its successors. He's shown here on the left; on the right is his analyst, former Steelers lineman Craig Wolfley. They were working a 2012 game for which I provided graphics.

We look forward to once again hearing the familiar voices of Kinger and Wolf when they team up in the Steelers booth, starting with the first preseason game on August 9.

JULY 17, 2024
H.O.F. BROADCASTER

This Saturday afternoon in Cooperstown, New York, a classmate whom I never knew is going into the baseball Hall of Fame! Well, he's getting a plaque, anyway. Joe Castiglione, the longtime radio voice of the Boston Red Sox, has won the 2024 Ford C. Frick Award.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum presents this honor annually for excellence in broadcasting. Joe will join Bob Costas ’74 as the only Syracuse University alumni to receive it.

Castiglione earned an undergraduate degree from Colgate University in 1968 before moving on to Syracuse and its S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. There he and I would each obtain Master's Degrees in radio and television.

It was on September 10, 1969, that I received a year-long homework assignment towards my Master's. On that Wednesday morning, for some reason, Joe didn't join me and 67 other members of “Sequence 22” in lining up to have our pictures taken. I can't say that I remember him. Maybe he was part of “Sequence 21” which had begun the previous year. Nevertheless, the university lists him as “Joe Castiglione G’70,” indicating that he received his graduate degree the same year that I did. Joe credits Syracuse and its student-run radio station WAER for helping him discover his voice as a play-by-play broadcaster.

His professional career began in Youngstown, Ohio, where he broadcast football and listened to Bob Prince (another Ford C. Frick Award winner) describing the games of the nearby Pittsburgh Pirates.

Joe's first major assignment came in Cleveland in 1979. As shown here, he called games of the Indians (now Guardians) and Cavaliers while reporting for WKYC channel 3.

Later, in 1983, he moved to Boston and joined former Indians broadcaster Ken Coleman in the booth at Fenway Park. It was a one-year agreement. But now he's now the longest-tenured broadcaster in Red Sox history, and a Hall of Famer!

How I miss that sweet lady with her old-country touch;
Miss her quaint broken English called Pennsylvania Dutch.
     I can still see her there at the station that day,
     Calling out to her baby as the train pulled away:
          "Throw mama from the train a kiss!"
     Dry mama all your tears, won't you try?
     And eat mama up all her pie.

Three decades later, Billy Crystal and Danny Devito starred in a movie called Throw Mama from the Train. Billy plays Larry, a frustrated writer. He fantasizes about arranging for his ex-wife to be fatally derailroaded.

When I watched the film recently — it's not that good, with only a 54% audience score from Rotten Tomatoes — one of the flaws I noticed was a misunderstanding of a writer's process.

Any time I try to dream up the plot of a story, I imagine various scenes. I might put the words on paper out of order, as I think of them. Later, having decided that the nighttime scene should come first, I could rearrange the elements. I might add a description of the night.

But no, Larry tries to begin his novel at the beginning. He puts a blank piece of paper in his typewriter, types “The night was,” can't decide on the next word, rips out the paper and throws it away, and then repeats the process over and over. He never gets past the first three words.

Real “writer's block” isn't like that! A book isn't written linearly, word by word from a blank page to a completed product with no revisions. Nevertheless, that's how Larry tries to work.

A year later, he proudly announces that, although he hasn't quite decided how the novel should end, he's reached the final page. “I'm half a paragraph away from finishing my book!”

Last month, Louisiana passed a law requiring every public school classroom in the state — elementary, middle, high school, college — to post on its wall an excerpt from the Koran forbidding certain actions. The excerpt was to be accompanied by three additional paragraphs explaining how all Americans are required to worship Allah.

—Whoops, wrong religion! The excerpt is actually from the Bible, and it insists that everybody has to worship the Judeo-Christian god and none other.

But is it proper for any government to make that kind of decision for us? Don't Americans have freedom of religion?

Recently, Brother Billy talked with a couple of people who were present when the Biblical decree came down. The original tablets were smashed, but the Book of Exodus quotes their contents as well as a subsequent revision, The Seven Commandments. There's also a discussion of goat stew.

This was the scene on this date in 1962, 62 years ago, when construction began for our family's new home on the east side of Richwood, Ohio. Preparation of the driveway in the foreground had already started in May, but now it was time for an excavator built by the adjoining county's Marion Power Shovel Company to start digging a hole for the far end of the basement.

In this month's 100 Moons article, I detail the design and construction of the resulting ranch-style home with its twin gables in front. I had drawn the floor plan.

Road rage? We often hear of altercations. We worry that we, as generally innocent drivers, might someday be victims.

In today's Sunday newspaper, advice columnist R. Eric Thomas (no relation) printed a letter from a woman who wrote, “My husband came from a highly dysfunctional family, which has contributed to his anger issues. When we leave the house, he turns into a road-raging fool ... honking, swerving, threatening people who do annoying or even seemingly minor things. It forced us to cut a long-awaited vacation short. This is, in my opinion, ruining our lives.”

Non-road rage? We don't always hear of those disputes. But there is a lot of anger inside private homes, and sometimes the cops have to be called. Mac Cordell of the Marysville Journal-Tribune compiled a list of recent Grand Jury indictments in Union County, Ohio, where I grew up. Four arrests took place during one week, and most of the alleged attacks were repeat offenses.

Friday, May 3: A 54-year-old man assaulted a woman, then beat her again at a gas station in front of multiple witnesses. The charge: Domestic violence, of which the man had previously been convicted twice in South Carolina.

Saturday, May 4: A 32-year-old man hit a woman in the face. The charge: Domestic violence, which is a felony because the man had been convicted of assault in West Virginia seven years before.

Monday, May 6: A 43-year-old man reportedly had been choking his girlfriend “all the time, every time they fight” for several weeks. The charges: Domestic violence, strangulation, and aggravated menacing.

Saturday, May 11: A 38-year-old woman disciplined her 15-year-old daughter for leaving home without permission. The charges: Strangulation and two counts of domestic violence, of which the woman had previously been convicted three years before.

And then Cordell reported that on Sunday evening, June 2, a 12-year-old girl called the county's 911 Dispatch Center saying that a drunk man had come to her home and threatened her mother. The mother told investigators that she had recently divorced the 43-year-old man. Now he pushed her to the ground, put a .380-caliber handgun to her head, and told her to stop moving. She believed he was going to kill her. Fortunately he didn't; he left in his truck. A deputy pulled it over and found another handgun and “numerous amounts of open alcoholic beer cans on the rear floor and under the driver's seat.”

If convicted on all counts of felonious assault, kidnapping, domestic violence, aggravated menacing, improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle, and operating a vehicle under the influence, the man could face more than 34 years in prison.

Remember the World War II general and later president Dwight D. Eisenhower? The first syllable of his surname is “Eis.” Some might think that should be pronounced ease, or maybe ice. But Americans know that the first syllable is actually eyes, derived from the German eisenhauer or “iron miner.”

There seems to be less consensus about the surname of a general from the previous war, John J. Pershing. Everyone seems to agree that it begins not with pear but with a cat-like purr. It obviously ends with ing.

But what about the sh in the middle? I always assumed it was a normal sh as in ”fishing,” until I watched a recent History Channel documentary.

Some of the expert commentators agreed with me. (So do various online apps.) However, other commentators pronounced it zh as in “Persia” — General Perzhing. And one even pronounced it z as in “Jersey“ — General Perzing.

Why has there never been a general agreement? Well, technology to disseminate a standard pronunciation didn't exist during World War I. There were no radio newscasts, no movie newsreels with sound.

Had Obama been in the news back then, few of us would have heard his name spoken. We would have only read his name in the papers. We would have assumed it was O'Bama, rhyming with Alabama.

JULY 1, 2024 STEP RIGHT UP

As an older person, I find obstacles to mobility in unexpected places.

To protect gasoline pumps from collisions, most stations barricade them atop massive concrete islands. When I approach such a pump with credit card in hand, I can't easily reach the slot; it's too far away. Therefore I have to take a giant step up onto the island. Then when it's time to remove the nozzle and carry it to my car, I must blindly step backward and downward without a handrail while struggling awkwardly with a stiff black hose that resists my every movement, threatening to topple me over.

That's why I was happy to discover a nearby station where the islands are only half as high. More importantly, the pumps are set back merely six inches from the edge, so I don't have to climb the mountain. I can remain at ground level while walking right up to the credit-card slot.

This is now my go-to gas station. (That is, until some careless driver rams a pump and forces a redesign.)