I want to tell you about my hometown.

In 2015, the Pittsburgh Business Times ranked Northern Cambria School District 378th out of 493 public schools [in the Commonwealth] ranked for academic achievement of its pupils.[8]

[Northern Cambria High School]:

In 2014... 44% of pupils eligible for a free lunch due to family poverty. Additionally, 11% of pupils received special education services, while none of pupils were identified as gifted.[9] The school employed 35 teachers. Per the PA Department of Education, 5% of the teachers were rated "Non‐Highly Qualified"...

Good morning shirtwaists

I felt she found my letters and read each one out loud
I prayed that she would finish but she just kept right on
...
She wrote as if she knew me in all my dark despair
And then she looked right through me as if I wasn't there

And she just kept on writing, writing clear and strong

Penning my pain with her fingers
Writing my life with her words
Killing me softly with her words
Killing me softly with her words
Telling my whole life with her words
Killing me softly with her words.

The following is by my new hero in life, a young woman named Ashley Kay Bach.

I want to tell you about my hometown. 

Included are bits of writing I did on the Northern Cambria in my freshman year, during my first bout of homesickness.

Northern Cambria is a place that builds character, but if you don’t get out of there soon you never will. Most of the buildings are the skeletons of dreams, the names of their owners and purpose still displayed somewhere, and it’s like those poor buildings are tombstones. It’s a town of unwanted people and things, thought my younger self…
...
Once the mines closed in the 1980s nearly everyone left. Those that remained seemed to be trapped there. I have said in the past that the hills encircling Northern Cambria are like the high walls that contain lions, tigers, and bears in zoos. They are fortifications to keep those who live there contained and the rest of the world out.

A great deal of the town’s population is composed of older people. Go to Giant Eagle at three in the afternoon and you are likely to find a convergence of haggard folks and people that perpetuate my grandmother’s statement that Pennsylvania is home to the ugliest people. You can tell a lot about a town from its people and places. Northern Cambria stays true to itself. The people are just like the places: desolate and damaged.

Northern Cambria is a lot like my father, who I used as the subject in an assignment about someone who inspires me by saying he inspires me by showing me what not to do: Northern Cambria shows me everything I do not want to live in. The back roads are lined with empty beer cans and beer bottles. Everyone listens to country. The most popular place in town is Sheetz.

My town has taught me about life. Life is ugly. Life is pain.

Ashley, you write truth and truth is beauty and truth is bliss.

Good morning longhorns

I'm leav-ing on a jet plane...

Queens Won't Pay Tax, Will Lose King Kemba

Real kick in the solar plexus, there. Michael Jordan is the owner.

The problem is some contracts the team handed out in 2016. Observes Charlotte, "A lot of bad contracts were signed around the NBA that summer." You got that right, Queen Bees! That's precisely the reason Miami is stuck in the lottery. The NBA salary cap spiked enormously in the one year from 2015 to 2016, by over $24 million per team and SOME teams just couldn't resist: Nic Batum (I swear I have never HEARD of Nic Batum), here, take $120 mil; Marvin Williams (ditto), here, take $54 million; Hassan Whiteside, here's $198 mil to tide you over; James Johnson, here's $60 million for karate lessons; Dion Weighters, here's $47 million, have an extra cruller or three on us. It has taken the next three years for the cap to increase as much as it did that one year. If a team maxed out in 2016 they are still maxed out. Charlotte, say hello to Miami.

The Miami “Heat” could pay Kevin Durant any amount of money it took to get him to sign a contract. They could sign any other player to join Durant in Miami.

The NBA salary cap is a fine or “tax” threshold it is not a law. You don’t get arrested for spending over the cap; you have to pay a fine, usually called a “tax,” to the league. The salary cap discourages spending, it does not prevent it.

The stiffest fine that can be imposed on an owner is the so-called “Repeat offender tax.” If such an owner spent in excess of $20 million over the salary cap, for each additional dollar he paid a player he would owe the league $4.75 plus $.50 per excess dollar for each $5 million increment. Let’s say Micky Arison, “Heat” owner, net worth $8 billion, went $50 million over the $20 million repeat offender line. Arison would have to pay the league $157,500,000. Arison, or any other owner in the league, who wanted to win at whatever cost it took, could do it.

good morning trombones

Good morning spare keys.

86 degrees at almost 10 pm, huh? Blow me.

Good morning spy thrillers

This simple reenactment depicts exactly how witnesses describe the South Fork Dam collapse on May 31, 1889. The witnesss descriptions are not dramatic. No “explosion” or the like. The dam “just moved away” is how they described it uniformly. And this recreation depicts the banality of a catastrophe with complete accuracy to eyewitness accounts. A beneficent God would bless Johnstown, Pennsylvania and a wrathful God would damn for eternity the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, their descendants, and nine generations of their descendants for all time. The names Carnegie, Frick, Mellon, Clark, Knox, and on and on should be banned. We should utter their names no more and their line exterminated.

But there is no such God. Not a God of protective beneficence, nor of righteous, just, punishment. We have a God who watches and who does nothing as those made in his image destroy 2,200 others, innocents, also made in his image. Or we have no God at all.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I wrote that Pitt football would not reclaim national relevance in my lifetime. Head coach Pat Narduzzi was rated something like the 12th “best” coach in the 15 school ACC. He has not recruited well. 4th-And-Five-Franklin has cleaned Duzz’ clock each recruiting season they have gone head to head.  Imagine my surprise then when yesterday I saw this as one of the lead sports stories in Google’s aggregated news.

In USA Today, too. National attention. It’s frigging JUNE okay, so I’m not having an organism but it was national news and it did zoom Pitt’s class up from the 50’s to the 20’s and ahead of Deez Nutz class. IN JUNE! But still, great news.

Good morning lug nuts

Secrets II

In 1920 Miles Ellsworth Ranck and his wife Faye Louise of Barnesboro, Pennsylvania had the last of their children, a soft-featured, fair-haired baby boy who they named

John
     W.
          Kephart
                Ranck

How in the world? I don't know. Nobody knows. It's a secret. Kephart kept his clients' secrets. To name your son after someone not a family member!...I know, I KNOW. The connection, whatever it was, manifestly was deep, but narrow. It did not span time. None of my three brothers nor I nor a cousin ever heard of lawyer John W. Kephart. Neither my parents nor my cousin's parents, nor our common grandparents, nor anybody else in the whole goddamned extended family ever said why Uncle Jack was named John W. K. Ranck.

Uncle Jack is not a forgotten member of the family either! Far from it. John W. K. Ranck is the most remembered person in the family. My dad, Miles Ellsworth, Jr. (there are three others, we're up to V) kept a framed photo of "my kid brother Jack" as he always called him over his reading chair in the bedroom.

I have a different photograph also framed, hanging on the wall just to the right of where I am now sitting. And I didn't even know him! He was killed ten years before I was born.

My mother told the story over and over of the time she, pregnant with III, sat on a hillside watching dad and his kid brother ski down a hill in Barnesboro and laughing so hard at their falls and mishaps that she thought she was going to give birth right there. Jack was by far her favorite in-law.

Mum remembered when he left for the war. As he was being driven away he looked up over his shoulder at her and waved.

She remembered, as does my brother, III, the day a couple of years later when the big black government limousine drove up--just like in Saving Private Ryan--and two officials in military uniform got out. My brother was playing on the sidewalk out front. He saw them drive up and get out but didn't pay attention until he heard mum scream.

Uncle Jack was a college graduate, the first in the family. In the war he was part of the legendary, glamorous, 10th Mountain Division, the ski division (He couldn't have done too bad on that Barnesboro hill.).

1st Lt John W. K. Ranck’s Co. B, 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment advancing in the Italian mountains in January, 1945.

Ordinary soldiers might have been daunted by the geological feature rising in front of them. But these were not ordinary soldiers. These were members of an elite outfit called the 10th Mountain Division
—the only American division specially trained for mountain and winter warfare.
...

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, had called the division a bunch of
“playboys”—and with some justification. 👏 No other infantry division had a higher collective I.Q. 
or a higher percentage of high school and college graduates in its ranks. Many of the mountain soldiers had been hotshot skiers from East Coast prep schools and Ivy League colleges. 

He was a bona fide war hero:

March 4, 1945 near Sassomolare, Italy :

1st Lt. JOHN K. RANCK of Company B led a squad to within grenade range of the Germans. Charging the position, the party killed one German, wounded one, and took four prisoners. Lt. 
RANCK continued the advance 200 yards farther, taking four more prisoners. Finally he neutralized the gun position, personally killing the gunner while his squad finished off the rest of the occupants.

April 30, 1945 near Nago:

The 1st Battalion finally occupied Nago at 1115 that morning. They had fought one of the
most discouraging and difficult actions of the entire campaign. For 14 straight hours on the 29th,
they had climbed up sheer cliffs, through ravines, and over slippery shale slopes. Finally at 1700
they had reached a high point from which they could see Nago. The only approach to the village
was through a small cut in the rocks. The Germans had a strong final protective line, a 20 mm
gun, a 37 mm ack-ack gun, one tank, and self-propelled guns...

After a 15-minute artillery barrage, Company B moved through the ravine single-file. As the
column wound its way over the rocks, a German plane dipped low and dropped eight personnel
bombs on the weapons platoon, killing nine men, including 1st Lieutenant JOHN K. RANCK.

So yeah, Uncle Jack was everybody's favorite, the fair haired boy of the entire family.

Finding no answer in my own family I began googling Kephart in 2016. After handling the whole S.F.F.H.C. business with consummate discretion Kephart became Cambria County Solicitor in 1906, then a Superior Court Judge in 1914, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice in 1919 and Chief Justice in 1936. In 1940 Kephart "retired" and went back into private practice (to earn some money) in 1940.

Ambitious! He was a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice when his namesake was born. Yet...yet, nobody in the family has a memory of Kephart. How long had this relationship with Kephart been going on and what was the relationship? I found this from the Pittsburgh Post, reprinted in the Harrisburg Daily Independent, September 19, 1913:

WHAT "AD'S." DID FOR KEPHART As an example of what newspaper advertising will accomplish 
the ease of John W. Kephart, the Cambria county attorney, is pointed to as one worthy of study by men in public life. Mr. Kephart, who is a brother of Chief Clerk Kephart, of the Senate, was unknown in the state, outside of his home territory, before he announced himself as a candidate for the nomination for Superior Court judge, but he felt he owed it to the public to make himself known. He -began a campaign of newspaper advertising, and eschewed the old methods of making personal calls on the various counties in...[text cuts off].

Whether the following is a continuation earlier in the cached Google webpage or an article from another paper I do not know:

He simply used printer's ink in the newspapers and told the, people that he wanted the nomination and why he was qualified for it, and he put that advertisement in almost every paper in Pennsylvania. The result was just what might have been expected...many voters read Kephart 's plea, took notice of a few of the others and then voted for the Cambria county man. 

Cutting Edge Kephart! He won election to the Superior Court by the novel experiment of newspaper
advertising. My grandfather, I, owned a newspaper, the Barnesboro Star. Since Kephart placed ads "in almost every paper in Pennsylvania" he must have placed one in I's paper. For that you name your son after him?

I then found this in the Johnstown Democrat, February 15, 1914. I reprint in entirety and will then explain:

Barnesboro, Feb. 15.--The Barnesboro Plain Dealer is the name of a new weekly newspaper, which made its initial bow to the public last Friday. It is a creditable looking sheet and ought to thrive if it does not succumb to the ills which seem to have beset it with almost its first breath. The new weekly is edited and managed by J. Harold Ranck, lately editor, and manager of the Barnesboro Star, published by the Star Printing Co., of Barnesboro. Mr. Ranck was served with an injunction Saturday following the first appearance of his new venture; restraining him from publishing the newspaper and also from being employed in any printing or publishing establishment in Barnesboro or its immediate vicinity, according to reports.

The Star Printing Co. was until recently an asset of John W. Kephart, now superior court judge, or at least Mr. Kephart is said to have controlled it, along with a chain of other weeklies in northern Cambria county. Prior to its incorporation the Barnesboro Star, a local weekly, was owned by John C. Miller, who is now in the west. When Mr. Kephart acquired control, a corporation was formed, known as the Star Printing Co. J. Harold Ranck was then conducting a small job printing 
establishment here and Mr. Ranck disposed of his plant to the new company and entered its employ as
 foreman of the mechanical department.

The company which absorbed his plant is said to have an agreement in which Mr. Ranck agrees not to enter again into the printing business in Barnesboro or its immediate vicinity and it is on the basis of this agreement that the injunction has been asked. The hearing in the temporary injunction will come up next Tuesday, when some interesting developments are looked for...

Interesting developments indeed, Johnstown Democrat, thank you very much. As far as I knew the Barnesboro Star was always my grandfather's, Miles I,  the father of Uncle Jack. I thought Star Printing Co. was Miles I's too. No. At least not for sometime prior to 1914. The paper and Star
Printing were "assets" of John J. Kephart, Esq., Judge Kephart in the year that article appeared. As were "a chain of other weeklies in northern Cambria county." Randolph Hearst Kephart! J. Harold, or Harold J. as it sometimes appears, Ranck was I am very sure, Miles I's brother. I was very sure of that in 2016 too but when I sent that article to my brother (the klansman, not III) he was not sure and since he is ten years older his uncertainty put doubt in my head. I am still reasonably sure. There was evidently some family upset over the bidness and Miles I got his lawyer, John W. Kephart, to enjoin Harold.

Kephart did Miles I a good turn BUT I have terrific relationships with my clients and their families and not one has ever named their child after me.

That is it. That's all I was ever able to find. It is a mighty thin reed on which to base a relationship substantial enough to warrant naming one's son but it is a reed. It is something. It was not substantial enough either to inform the other members of the family. Presumably I informed Jack. Faye. Kephart...I guess. I would presume I notified Judge Kephart. But there is no evidence, no correspondence between I and Kephart, nothing. If there is anything, it is all secret. And, there is no evidence that the relationship was substantial enough to endure. Kephart died in 1944, in an excruciating scalding accident at the Warwick, Pennsylvania hotel he was staying in when he was in private practice. His body was returned to Ebensburg for burial in Lloyd Cemetery there. You see that massive mausoleum at center left?

Did Miles I attend the funeral?

Uncle Jack was killed by the Nazi's on April 29, 1945, the day before Hitler swallowed his gun in Berlin. The war in Europe was over. Some German pilots just didn't get the memo. Uncle Jack's body was returned from Italy and he is buried in the Ranck Family Cemetery in North Barnesboro.

Secrets I

In 1901 an orphaned, soft-featured, handsome, twenty-nine year old lawyer practicing in the tiny settlement of Ebensburg, Pennsylvania got the case of a career. His clients: 

Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man in the world. 

Henry Clay Frick. 

Andrew Mellon, future Secretary of the Treasury. Both among the wealthiest men in the world. 

James Hay Reed, United States District Judge and former law partner of,

Philander Chase Knox, later Senator and Secretary of State. 

In total, eighty-four of the most powerful men in America from Pittsburgh, then among the most important cities in America. How in the world? I don't know.

Twenty-two years before, in 1879, when John William Kephart was seven years old Henry Clay Frick enlisted the others to purchase the South Fork Dam, originally the Western Reservoir, high above and about fifteen miles from Johnstown, along with the surrounding land and turn the property into an exclusive retreat for the rich and powerful from Pittsburgh. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was incorporated in Allegheny County court in that year. The dam was renamed Lake Conemaugh.

S.F.F.H.C. "improved" the property which had not been well maintained. The dam had suffered a major failure in 1862. Critically, S.F.F.H.C. lowered the dam crest by approximately two feet to accommodate carriage travel to the "cottages," mansions, built along the shore line.

Ten years after incorporation, on May 31, 1889, during biblical rainfall the swollen, weakened earthen dam "just moved away." Twenty million tons of water hurtled down the mountain and struck with the force of Niagara Falls. Lake Conemaugh became Lake Johnstown. Two thousand two hundred people were killed. John W. Kephart was seventeen years old.

Kephart began his practice of law in 1894, five years after the Johnstown Flood. In 1901, somehow, it was he who was chosen to liquidate the assets of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. The business occupied him through 1903.

It well may be that in choosing the twenty-nine year lawyer obscurity was an asset and discretion was what was valued most by the members of S.F.F.H.C. who had amongst them some of the most eminent and well known lawyers in America. The club and its members had taken a well-deserved beating in the press all across the country.

And John W. Kephart, Esq kept his clients' secrets. So complete was Kephart's discretion that his service was not known for 113 years. Popular historian David McCullough, author of The Johnstown Flood, had never heard of Kephart. Not until a box, labeled "no historical interest," with Kephart's papers was found in 2016 did his role with the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club become known.

Having dispensed with that project Kephart moved on to other, decidedly smaller, secrets.

Good morning, glories.

Was it not real?

That gilded age

Of Golden State?


The coxswain and swain

Behold the name!

The beautiful game

Splash!

Gone in a flash,

A rain of pain

And Golden State's reign

Down the drain.

I do not want to continue re-reading The Lion and the Fox and swine Books and Books not having the bio I wanted I just want to get lost in something this Saturday morning. Thus, I shall get lost in Bleak House agayne. The  good parts.“The waters are out at Chesney Wold.”

I have something to write on Pilgrim’s Way that I have meant to write for a year and done didn’t. I’ll try getting lost first but if I know the Way too well to get lost will Pilgrim back and write that thing maybe.

The Great Crack-Up of the English-Speaking Peoples

Hurricane season started June 1. I did not enjoy last season’s Cat 3. The summer season started yesterday. I do not enjoy summer in Miami. It is the Mean Season for the undersigned.

Police responded to the home of presumptive British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. A heated row with his girlfriend alarmed neighbors who called the bobbies. BoJo led Brexit for the Tories which was endorsed by CorrupTrump, who was accused by another woman of sexual assault yesterday, who also endorsed BoJo for Peem who emigrated from New York City, USA to Britain one step ahead of the Colonies’ tax collector. Taxation without representation is grabbing them by the pussy without consent.

The Brooklyn “Nets” are favorites to land Bed Bugs Irving and Achilles Durant. Long Island/New Jersey/Brooklyn haven’t had one player as good as either of those two since Dr J.

Giant Squid Attacks Unmanned American Camera South of New Orleans; Trump Weighed Attack, Backed Off

https://youtu.be/Lqim34DvCrs

“One thing you can’t teach is...”*

Height. Common basketball adage. Google it and you get a zillion entries.

Speed. Also very common. Tons of entries.  Physical attributes you can’t really teach. Oh you can knock 1/10th of a second off your hundred yard dash time or whatever. You can increase your strength but it doesn’t stick. As soon as you stop lifting you’re back to your old fat self. Genetics is a bitch. That’s what it is, you cannot teach genetics.

Effort. Google “One thing you cannot teach is effort” and one of the first search results you get is, “What do you mean you can’t teach effort?” Parents, teachers, that’s what we do. You can incentivize effort—Mow the lawn, I’ll give you $5. Don’t mow the lawn, you’re grounded. Maybe half the time we’re even successful! There is a whole motivational industry. But you cannot incentivize genetics—Grow an inch I’ll give you $100. Of course you can teach effort.

“One thing you can’t teach is motor.”

That was Alonzo Mourning last night in praise of Bam Adebayo and, in unstated, understood contrast to Hassan Whiteside. Zo is just wrong. What then was your boss, Zo, the author of the motivational tract The Winner Within, doing out there on the practice court with whip and chair with Dion Weighters and James Johnson? C’mon Zo, not even Pat Riley goes as far as you do. One of Riley’s formulations is “Hard work guarantees you nothing. But without it, you don’t stand a chance.” You can teach it, you can incentivize it, you can demand it, but even when you are successful in motivating effort winning is not guaranteed. There are the unteachables—height say--that are accounted for by implication in Riley’s formulation that are not in Alonzo Mourning’s. Hassan Whiteside is 7’0”. Bam Adebayo is 6’10”. And no matter how high Bam’s motor runs he will never be 7'0" tall and he will never lead the NBA in rebounds and in blocked shots—as Hassan has done.

That, however, is Miami “Heat” “Culture.” Hard work, high motor, uber alles. 601 Biscayne actually, really, truly, prefers Bam’s 8.9 ppg, 7.3 rpg, .8 bpg to Hassan’s 13.4, 11.4, 2.3. And that guarantees failure.

*Siri to transcribe accurately. I dictated the original of this post in the car. I didn't make any mistakes. Siri made plenty of mistakes. So, with embarrassment and exasperation, I apologize and have corrected.

Cancel That Last Post

So Miami is done for the night. SG Tyler Herro, 6’10” SF (SF?), and...Wait. What? We traded Bol Bol to Denver.

I’m done. Good night.

Bol Bol to Miami!

BOL BOL! GREAT pick here for the “Heat”. Indictable if they had passed. Bol may be a complete bust (but I doubt it) but you cannot pass on a unicorn like him so low. GREAT WORK 601 Biscayne!

With the 44th pick in the 2019 NBA draft the Miami “Heat” select...

I guess there was a trade. Washington chose 42 and took Admiral Schofield. Minnesota gets Jaylen Nowell at 43. MIAMI UP AND BOL BOL ON THE BOARD! It’s gotta be Bol.

Trade: GS acquired NO’s 39 and chose Alen Smailagic from Serbia. SAC chose Justin James at 40. GS gets Eric Paschall at 41. Philly next...

NO is on the clock at 39. I will say this: If Bol Bol lasts until 44, I’d grab him in a heartbeat were I the “Heat” which I weren’t.

I would have done what PHX did once Hachimura was gone: traded the 13, 33, 38 and 44 plus one or two of the albatross 10 ppg/ $10 mil/year flotsam (D-Wait, JJ) for cash and a warm bucket of piss to free up cap space.

Bol Bol fell completely out of the first round and through the first two picks in the second.

Miami selected  6’8” PF (Never can have too many 6’8” PF’s is the warped idiotic thinking) from Stanford with the 32 pick in the second round.

Cancel the Last and the Next to the Next Last Posts

Oh.

Excuse me for living I fell out of a hearse. Rui Hachimura was taken 9th by the “Bullets.” I didn’t see that. So he wasn’t available for Miami.

Shut up.

Herro is a shooting guard. And Miami don’t shoot too good. But Herro is a...was a freshman, he’s 19 years old. He averaged 14 ppg at Kentucky in his one year. Hachimura was a junior, 21 years old, at Gonzaga—major b-ball school Zags!—and averaged 19.7 ppg his junior year. Oy vey. Rui was better than Herro from range (but neither were hotshots)...I don’t know, I just can’t see taking a 19 year old who averaging 14 over a 21 year old averaging 19 who was better from range. Is Tyler Herro going to start next year? Is he going to replace Dwyane Wade at SG? If so, this was D-Wade’s reaction to the pick:

Ok Tyler Herro i hope you’re ready to work. It’s the @MiamiHEAT way. Let’s go!

tyler herro

And as I type the “Heat” are on the clock and Rui Hachimura IS AVAILABLE! Charlotte did Miami the HUGE favor of taking PJ Washington off the board. RILEY DO NOT FUCK THIS UP! TAKE RUI OR RUE!

Some wheeling and dealing tonight in the NBA draft! Not by Miami, of course; I think Miami has done one draft day deal in its history or in Pat Riley’s tenure. Good ol’ Riles doesn’t like the draft, which is good since he sucks at it. Riley doesn’t like rookies on affordable contracts; he wants savvy veteran rejects from other teams who make $10 million a year. That’s what Riley likes.

Whereas Phoenix tonight traded one of the aforesaid types, Solomon Hill (4.3 points, 3 rebounds per game, $12 mil per year), plus the 8, 17 and 35 picks tonight plus plus a future second round pick to ATL for the 4 and a first next year, to relieve cap space;

Whereas PHX also offloaded TJ Warren (18 ppg, though, pretty damn good; $11.75 mil/yr) and 32 tonight to Indiana for CASH;

Whereas PHX also traded Dario Saric (10.6, 5.6, 1.6, only $2.3 mil per (PHX, what are you doing?)) and the 6th tonight to MINN for the 11;

Pat Riley prefers to stand pat.

"Scouting the draft: What makes Morant the best passer in the draft? "-ESPN

he throws super accurately

Good morning small chickens.

The NBA draft is at 7:30 pm tonight. Below are the highest payrolls by team in the league. The most expensive roster is that of a lottery team. That table starkly shows the complete failure that now enters its fourth year at 601 Biscayne Blvd.

This mismanaged franchise has a chance tonight to grab a star, Rui Hachimura. NBA.com and The Athletic have Hachimura falling to Miami with the 13th pick. But the aggregate consensus of the six sites surveyed has the "Heat" just missing out and Hachimura going 12th to Charlotte. Sometimes, you deserve luck, and sometimes you don't.

Aside from Hachimura no one else heats me up. PJ Washington is the aggregate consensus pick at 13: another Winslow, Richardson, Adebayo; another positionless, non-scoring, too young, "upside" player. It has been falling for the Siren of  “upside” that has Miami on the downside. And with the highest payroll in the entire league and no cap flexibility to improve Miami's odds of winning the 2020 NBA title are in the lowest tier, 200-1, along with Charlotte, Detroit, Minnesota and Washington--longer odds than has Cleveland. No team in the NBA has as much downside as the Miami "Heat."

1.	Miami	$153,171,497
2.	Golden State	$146,291,276
3.	Oklahoma City	$144,916,427
4.	Toronto	$137,793,831
5.	Milwaukee	$130,988,604
6.	Portland	$130,256,600
7.	Detroit	$126,557,932
8.	Houston	$126,474,100
9.	Memphis	$126,107,461
10.	Boston	$125,334,993

Never heard of Mike Conley.

72 Philadelphia police officers are off street duty over racist and hateful Facebook posts(CNN)

Democrats Blast Biden For Recalling 'Civil' Relationship With Segregationists (NPR)

Born in insane bastardy this nation can never outrun its race legacy. Like a tin can tied to its tail the faster the noncomprehending mutt runs to escape it the louder behind him it rattles and bangs.

Cancel, No Modify, That Last Post

Juneteenth celebrates the abolition of slavery. Shut up, I didn’t know.

Hi. It’s Juneteenth. Happy fucking Juneteenth.

Hold, No Cancel, that last post...

The categorical exasperation out of Houston to the Yahoo! report, from Chris Paul’s “Damn! That’s news to me...” that he wants out on Instagram; to Daryl Morey’s “No. Can you convey my disdain in my ‘no? It’s so annoying at this point;”And “I distinctly remember one time they both face-timed me and I walked through 50 free agents and got their opinion on them together, if that gives you a sense of how tightly they are tied together;” to the Houston Chronicle’s reporting that “Though the Yahoo! story said Harden and Paul were not speaking through a stretch of the season, they sit next to one another on the team’s charter flights, typically play cards and were often seen interacting before practices,” the undersigned is now convinced by a substantial preponderance of the evidence that “Vincent” “Goodwill,” “author” of the Yahoo?! “report,” has Badwill, has his head up his assholes and that his “report” is untrue. Mr Badwill will please to mail his Professional Sports Pencils membership badge in to PSP headquarters ASAP.

Houston “Rockets” guard Chris Paul, multi-time all-star, president of the NBA Players Association and pain in the assholes personality has gone to Houston management and demanded a trade. CP3 and The Beard can’t get along in Cowtown.

Just last summer former owner Leslie Alexander signed Paul, then 33 years of age, to a four year contract. Paul’s contract gets traded with him and over the next three years when he is 34, 35, and 36 years young Paul will earn the following:

2019-20, $38,506,482
2020-21, $41,358,814
2021-22, $44,211,146
All of which is guaranteed against a) injury b) declining skill c) not feeling like playing with James Harden.

Which is how new “Rockets” owner Tilman Fertitta has felt ever since buying the team; and how team General Manager Daryl Morey surely feels with a player on an untradeable contract demanding a trade.

As for those cognoscenti who forecast Houston a favorite to win the NBA title in 2019/20, please mail your cognoscenti membership badges into headquarters ASAP.

Public Occurrences NBA Mock Draft

We project Zion Williamson will be the first selection, by the New Orleans “Pelicans.”

Tantalizing still of the asshole of an aged Trump supporter immediately prior to being buggered by a P.U.R.M.T.S. From our first video.

Delayed Reaction

This afternoon I saw again in my photographs on my phone a picture of a park where last Christmas my daughter and I walked her dog several times. Every time I have seen that photograph I have gotten a warm glow. It's curious. I don't know why a photograph of that experience produces very similar feelings to, say, a photo of my daughter's college graduation or the like life milestone. But it do.

And then, later on, I was looking through some papers that have accumulated on my kitchen counter (I'm messy. Yesterday in the same pile I found a postcard from six years ago :\) and saw a note that I had written myself on the three year-old murder case that I had worked on exclusively for three months. I write myself motivational notes. "If you stop, you'll be done," (so, don't stop, even to eat) is one typical one. "Start!" is another. I text myself. I put notes on the bathroom mirror, tape them to the front door, put them as screensavers on my 'puter. I have this on my desk.

"Whole Case In Head At Once!" was the note that I found today. That's my goal: to have a bird's eye view of the entire case in my head at one time. And to be able, on command, to zoom in on the details.

And seeing that note today aroused in me feelings quite different from those of seeing the photograph of the park. I felt sorrow and self pity. I worked too hard on that case. I remembered today closing down the library. I remembered doing and re-doing and re-doing and re-doing the lead detective's cross examination. Two weeks. Another cross, three weeks. Twenty three "whittled down" typewritten pages of cross on one; forty-one on the other. I remembered another lawyer's self-advice: "Everything you want to say on one sheet of paper" which I abbreviated for my own purposes to "K.I.S.S.," Keep it Simple Stupid. Well, I couldn't get everything I wanted to say, e.g. in a cross examination of a witness, on one sheet of paper. I concluded, in fact, that doing that is keeping it stupid, simpleton. It's impossible. So, I did it and re-did it. Short, long, longer, a little shorter; I did make a shortish seven page outline that would have been helpful but the mechanics of cross make having it all on one sheet of paper both a stupid and an impossible idea.

 Your voir dire examination, your opening, your closing. And that I could do! I did do that. Because you don't want to be reading to the goddamned jury. But I tried to do it with cross-examinations. I don't know if Andy's motivational note to self encompassed cross-examinations. I can't remember. I tried. I made an outline of one that was going to be useful; outline was about seven pages though, not one.

Ideally you want to get into a fast-paced rhythm on cross-examination. You want the witness to get into the rhythm too: "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Are you a lying piece of shit?" "Yes." And you can do that a lot of times, especially with cops. On general matters. Where you can anticipate beyond a reasonable doubt that he is going to answer the way you want and keep it short. You can do the mesmerizing, rhythmic call and response of the evangelical church revival some but once you get into the minutiae cross examination is more a John Cage composition than call and response for there are other matters of cross-examination that are impossible to conduct in that dramatic, rhythmic staccato manner. The witness, whether professional law enforcement or civilian, will have given subtle, nuanced answers to some questions. He or she is not going to answer, yes or no. To "impeach" a witness who has given "inconsistent" but not blatantly contradictory answers previously you have to refer to the depositions that the witness has given previously. And then you can K.I.S.S. rhythm goodbye. You ask a question in trial as closely to the one you posed to him or her in deposition. "Why do you lie?" His answers will vary, e.g. "What are you referring to counsel?" Point it out to him. He gives a weasley response, "I'm allowed to lie, it's a police technique." "Okay, well what was the purpose of the police technique of lying here?" Whatever he says. Now, you have to refer to his deposition testimony. Know how long my depo of the lead detective was in this case? Over four settings, 487 pages. At 25 lines per page and 487 pages no human being, not even David Boies (one of my lawyer heroes), can memorize where exactly on those 12,175 lines of type the witness said something contradictory to his trial testimony. You have to first refer to your notes and then pull out the goddamned transcript and read the lying piece of shit the answer he gave on Feb 8, 2017 on page 119 line 12.

Sometimes, the professional law enforcement witness short circuits your brain with a Big Brother answer: "Nine times the defendant said he wanted to leave your 'voluntary statement', why did you not let him leave?" "I didn't force him to stay." "When he said 'Can I leave now officer?' and you answered "'Not right now. Right now you are going to sit here and answer my questions, what was that?'" "He voluntarily came with us. He was there of his own volition." "In the police car when you went to his house and got him out of bed with his girlfriend and took him to the station, you mean that voluntary statement, like he called and made an appointment to come in and confess, okay, fine. I'm not going to argue with you detective. Your answers are your answers. But now, you know the law--I think!--you know that he can say, 'Know what, I changed my mind. I don't want to be here anymore,' right?" "Right." "And so when he said here, "I want to go home," when he asked, 'Can I leave now officer?, when nine time he kept repeating in almost identical words the same wish, you didn't let him leave." "He never got up and left." You can't continue to beat a dead horse. You got him. Leave it to the jury. But then in front of the jury you have to do all that and you have to refer to date, page and line. I think my typed cross examination of him was 41 pages. You can't keep all of that in your head. You can't reduce 487 pages and 12,175 lines to one page.

So, I think I did what I had to do, which is work myself to the brink of physical debilitation. I didn't think I was working that hard when I was doing it. Only now in retrospect. And when I think about how long and how hard I worked those are not good memories, those are memories of sorrow and I feel bad for myself. I hope I don't find anymore of the motivational notes I wrote to myself.

Bol Bol played nine more games of basketball in college than i did :o

NO-LAL Trade

The consensus among the cognoscenti is that it was a win-win for both teams (as somebody said).

The consensus also is that: this trade immediately puts LAL in a position to contend for the West's slot in the 2020 Finals. GSW's loss of Kevin Durant (achilles) and Klay Thompson (ACL) for a major part of, and perhaps the entire, 2019-20 season knocks them out of Western title contention. Plus, LAL will have between $23 mil and $32.5 mil depending on when the trade is finalized this summer to add a third piece and re-create a legitimate new Big Three; NO went from the Anthony Davis Team to the team Anthony Davis wanted to leave to the Zion Williamson+Ball+Ingram+Hart+#4+two additional first round draft picks team. In Nawlins the future is so bright you gotta wear shades.

The two things among the cognoscenti I disagree with are this from Tim Bontemps, my newest savant of choice wrote:

"The events of the past month have solidified Leonard as the best player in basketball."

And the consensus being that Milwaukee (2 votes), Houston (2), and LAL, (1) and Toronto (1), Toronto: the defending champions, are the favorites to win the NBA title. Bontemps punted on his forecast, he wants to wait until the rest of free agency plays out, which is com ci ca fair enough if "the best player in basketball leaves the True North--but Bontemps didn't caveat his punt with that contingency, he punted anyway. Milwaukee: the team who won the first two from Toronto and then lost the next four?! Umm, No. Houston? Houston has a problem. They don't do June in Houston, the month of June does not exist in Houston, they go from November to May and take a long summer vacation. Houston is not going to be NBA champions in June, 2020.  I would have added Philadelphia to the potential titlists; they came within a bounce-bounce-bounce-bounce-drop of forcing OT against Toronto in game 7 of their series--which they led 2-1. I would say the favorites for the 2020 NBA title are--I'm going to give myself 10 votes:

Toronto, 4 votes
Philadelphia 2 votes
Houston, 2 votes
Milwaukee 1 vote
LAL, 1 vote.

"Lakers" Trade for Anthony Davis

Well, there's something to tide me over. Nawlins gets Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and three first-round picks which includes this year's number four. That is a major coup for LAL who now have someone decent to pair with LBJ. And it appears to be that rare trade that helps both teams. "Pelicans" already have Zion Williamson with the number one pick and will likely get a very, very good player with the fourth pick. Plus, Lonzo Ball traded! He-he-he. Lavar is going to go nuts!...Okay, how long can I make this last?

Once again! Books and Books Miami Beach doesn’t have a book I want in stock. EVERY god danged time. Obscure book, now: FDR by Jean Edward Smith, the best single volume biography. Now, A Gay Man’s Guide to Goulds, they would have that. I don’t know why I even call anymore. I haven’t called in years. It gets me too riled up. I should just order from Amazon.

In re: What am I supposed to do now?

Headlines:

U.S. Open: Golf cart injured five people at Pebble Beach.

Golf carts don’t injure people; people injure people.


Looking at the most memorable final games at NFL stadiums

It was just last night that Toronto won the True North its first NBA title. I had to check, I wasn't sure. Not from the utter lack of coverage. That was just the most beautiful, captivating team I can remember who they defeated, you know? It was a HUMONGOUS upset, you know? Poof!

What am I supposed to do now? I have half of June, all of July and more than a week into August to do...what? Pull wings off flies? My murder trial pled. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Males with time on their hands...you don’t want males with time on their hands. Bad things happen when males have time on their hands.

Before I got involved in trial preparation I was cogitating on a hilarious day dream to get a group of fellows together who would ambush anally rape male Trump supporters. It would be like that Louis CK skit where he's at the ATM. "Oh, jeezus, a faggot just fucked me in the ass." "Oh my God, I was waiting for a subway and it happened again! I got to get home."

Louis had a companion skit which just set my synapses synapsing. A friend says, "What would you do if you could go back in time?" And then answers his own question, "I'd go back and kill Hitler." Snore. Louis had a much better idea. "I wouldn't kill Hitler. I'd rape him. That's all it would take! 'Mein Fuhrer, invade Poland?!" "Naw, I don't feel very good, I think I'll just take a shower."

Anyway. My idea would be a piece of cake. We, Patriotic United Rapists of Male Trump Supporters (PURMTS), would stake out one of the Low Lifes, two of us. One to hold the Low Life down, one to make love to his anoose and then wham, bam, thank you scum we would vamoose. The Low Lifes would have NO IDEA. And little inclination to report it to the gendarme. I mean, “Two men, one of them a well-endowed Negro, Oh! (sob), they, they made me their bitch.” Not many guys gonna do that. And we could make a hilarious short video, “Oooh!”, would be the only speaking part for the Scum but I GUARANTEE YOU we would get some who would be into it: “Oh yes, you brutes, do me like the piece of white trash I am!” We would then post the video on Twitter.

I think that'd be enough. We wouldn't have to kill them or even hurt them, just humiliate them. Especially, like in Louis's skit if we did a couple of them twice. Word would get around. Mother fuckers wouldn't know which way to turn. Make 'em think twice about going to the polls in 2020!

Anyway, maybe I'll go back to PURMTS, at least that would be a socially useful project. Otherwise, I don't know what to do.

Greg Vanier
@GregVanier
·
25m
This is incredible. 37 floors up and we can hear the entire city of #Toronto erupting in celebration after the
@Raptors
 won the championship. (Sound on) #WeTheNorh
https://mobile.twitter.com/GregVanier/status/1139380577373548551

It is incredible from 37 floors up. The city of Toronto is in raptures. What a sight. What sounds. It sounds like VE day.

TORONTO RAPTORS WORLD CHAMPIONS!

O Canada
Our home and native land
True Patriot’s love
In all thy son’s command.
With glorious hearts we see thee rise
The True North strong and free
From far and wide O Canada
We stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, glorious and free
We stand on guard
We stand on guard for thee
O Canada we stand on guard for THEE!

Congratulations to our neighbors, the best neighbors a country could ever have. God bless Canada!

Toronto 60 Golden State 57 HT

Toronto is 24’ away from delivering Canada its first NBA championship.

In every courtroom I have ever practiced there is a sign that hangs over the bench. The sign reads, "We who labor here seek only the truth."

That is a lie.

The adversary system of justice is just the best that the Anglo-American mind could devise to determine legal truth; it does not sound like a particularly sound idea and our legal forefathers further rigged the system. They elided over Truth and blithely ruled that process and ends collapse into one. Truth, therefore, is what the jury decided. There is no external referent. Truth simply is process. It's a cynical cop-out, perhaps the best cop out ever, but it is indeed an odd definition of truth. As long as "due process" is followed and is reasonably pristine; as long, that is, as the pipes are shiny it does not matter that occasionally, and not at all unusually, shit comes out. The ontologically not guilty get convicted with alarming frequency; the ontologically guilty get acquitted even more regularly. We don't do ontology here.

The adversary system is not even completely adversary. The defense never has to do anything. As long as we are respectful and not disruptive of the trial the defense attorney and his client could sit at counsel table and play a crossword puzzle. We don't because we are trained that we must cross-examine in labor after the truth.

A much better analogy to the Anglo-American trial process than a fierce contest between adversaries is Olympic weight-lifting. That 1,000 pound barbell on the floor is your client firmly rooted in the presumption of innocence. To remove the presumption of innocence the prosecution must shoulder the burden of that immensely heavy weight, clean and jerk lift it over their head and hold it there for a second or two without quivering or wavering to demonstrate control. The jury are the judges if the prosecution lifted the weight over their head and held it, or if they only got it to waist level or to chest level or if they quivered. If the latter then the defendant is not guilty. If the former then the Truth of guilt is proven beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt and your client spends the rest of his days in the Gray Bar Hotel. Defense counsel makes an educated prediction, wizened by experience, on whether the prosecution can shoulder that burden. He gives his best, most nuanced advice to his client, and the client decides. He is the one who has got the skin in the game.

It is a curious system, the best known to man; which speaks to the limitations of man's knowledge.

Yesterday at about 4:30 in the afternoon the defense attorney for the co-defendant on a murder case text messaged me that his client had been found guilty as charged of first degree murder and immediately sentenced to life in prison. "Oh my God" was my response. My client's case is set to begin trial on Monday. I have worked on the case exclusive to all other cases since March. I turned down another murder case so that I could devote time solely to this one.

At 5:22 pm the prosecutor called me. "Talk to your guy, tell me what he wants," he said. "I'm not out for blood." A conviction on a co-defendant usually hardens them. It didn't this guy. I did not see that coming. I had tried to talk to the prosecutor since December, 2016 about a plea. He was never interested. I was re-working my opening statement to the jury when he called. After getting off the phone I immediately drove to see my client.

When late last night I had spoken to my client, to his father, to his mother, to a family friend, and called the prosecutor back and we all had accepted a plea to manslaughter and nine years prison...What a writer writes here is, "it felt like a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders." But that is not how it felt. I have been representing my client for three years and one and one-half months. I had not realized, I should have but I did not, that I had lived the case for three years and one and one-half months. So what it felt like was that the case had been a panel built into my chest, that is the image that I had then, that it had become part of me physically, and that when we had a plea the panel, part of me, had been removed. It was neither good nor bad, it was just part of me, and when it was removed it was like tonsils, it was no longer part of me. I have never felt that before.

There were times when I thought that this case was going to break me physically, that I just did not have the stamina anymore, at age 62, 63, 64, to put in the work. But it didn’t and I did and if my client called me back tonight, right now, and said that he changed his mind and he wanted to go to trial, I would have told him rationaly, reasonably, that in my opinion, he was making a mistake but I would not have tried to talk him out of it. I would have put the panel back in my chest and be prepared to try the case Monday. For a defense attorney I had a good case and I would have hit the prosecutor like he had never been hit before. I might have won, I might have lost, but a trial is not a game of blackjack and the participants are not playing with house money, they are playing with flesh and blood and life itself.

I did not realize how tired I was. I should have, but I did not. I did not feel unusually tired last night and went to sleep at a usual time, 11:30 or so, but I slept until 12:51 pm today. It has been decades--if ever--since I slept till 1 pm. Maybe the case did come close to physically breaking me. But it did not.