Good for Brenda Lee! Recorded in 1958, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” took 65 years to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100! (And I featured it as my Song of the Day on December 29, 2007!) At the age of 78, Brenda finally got around to doing a video just for the occasion!
It’s been a year …
It’s been a year—since your suffering ended.
It’s been a year—and I miss you so deeply.
It’s been a year—but the gift of your love is eternal.
It’s been a year—my Bitty, and I will always love you.
Elizabeth Ann Sciabarra
September 2, 1952 – November 26, 2022
Happy Thanksgiving
At a time when so many people in this world are suffering and in the depths of despair, I count my blessings for all the love and support of family and friends that have gotten me through one of the most difficult years of my life.
My best wishes to all for a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving.
Boettke on Lavoie
The fall 2023 issue of The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy (vol. 28, no. 2), focuses attention on “Underappreciated Economists”. One essay that resonated with me is written by my friend and colleague, Peter Boettke: “Don Lavoie: The Failures of Socialist Central Planning.” Boettke is in a unique position to have authored this essay. He, along with the late Steve Horwitz, Dave Prychitko, Emily Chamlee-Wright, and Virgil Storr, were among Don’s foremost students. And in their own works, one can see how each has carried forth elements of Don’s legacy. Boettke’s essay is, in many respects, a celebration of Lavoie’s inspiring gifts as a teacher and mentor.
The essay reviews Lavoie’s two most cited works, Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered and National Economic Planning: What is Left? —both of which shed much light on the crucially important “knowledge problem” and the necessity of understanding economic and social processes dynamically, across time. But Boettke rightfully laments the fact that Don Lavoie’s untimely death at the age of 50, from pancreatic cancer, left many works unfinished. Still, this appreciation of Lavoie’s contributions to comparative economic systems, philosophy of science, and computer science, including key principles applicable to emergent AI, is a worthy read.
In contrast to prominent models of politico-economic “militarization”, Lavoie provided us with an “interpretive turn,” which integrated economic insights from Austrian theory, epistemic insights from the works of Michael Polanyi on tacit knowledge, and hermeneutical methodological precepts. Boettke argues that Lavoie viewed the ideology of power and privilege as the greatest threats to free civilization, while offering a vision for a “gentle and humane” society “grounded in our mutual respect and desire to learn from one another.”
Though much of Lavoie’s work is not readily available and only a few representative presentations exist on YouTube, including three lectures that I posted back in February 2023, Boettke touches upon Lavoie’s planned projects, including those on methodology and a book entitled “Understanding Political Economy”. Lavoie hoped to realize the key aims of critical theory through an Austrian-inspired approach. In this, as in many other areas of study, Lavoie was a theorist ahead of his time.
Don was one of my dearest friends and this is a wonderful article in tribute to the projects—and promise—of his work.
JFK 60
This essay also appears on Medium.
Sixty years ago, this week, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Since that time, there has been a never-ending debate over who was responsible for JFK’s death: Lee Harvey Oswald? The CIA? The Mafia? Cuban Exiles? All of them? None of them?
I have no intention of even attempting to resolve these controversial questions. I write neither to praise the promise of “Camelot” nor to condemn Kennedy’s “fascist New Frontier”, as Ayn Rand famously characterized it.
My focus here is a bit more personal. It’s about what it was like to be a 3-year-old kid, living in Brooklyn, New York, watching these events unfold on a vintage black-and-white television screen. And how that experience—and the experience of seeing the events of the 1960s—sparked my interest in history and politics.
My earliest childhood TV memories are of Saturday morning cartoons, as well as primetime gems like “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons“. But, for me, watching televised real-life events was even more exhilarating. I was enthralled when John Glenn orbited the earth three times on my mother’s birthday, February 20, 1962, only three days after I turned 2. Seven years later, I was ecstatic to see the first human beings step on the surface of the moon. That fascination with heroic acts of exploration and the promise of human possibility have remained with me throughout my life.
There were also quite a few unsettling news reports that I absorbed in those early years. I saw black children being blasted with high-pressure firehoses, clubbed by police, and attacked by snarling dogs because they dared to protest against the disgraceful segregationist policies in Birmingham, Alabama, in May 1963. I may have been too young to understand exactly what was going on. But I saw my mother do the sign of the cross, saying a prayer for those kids, as our family witnessed this heart-wrenching display on television.
On Friday, November 22, 1963, we watched another unfolding event of brutality that was, quite frankly, unbelievable. Though I was less than three months away from turning 4 years old, that day and the days that followed remain seared into my consciousness.
Early on that Friday morning, we received a phone call that my Yaya had fallen. My mother picked me up in her arms and held me as she walked a few blocks away to assist my aunts and uncles as they tended to my bruised grandmother. By early afternoon, things had settled down. The TV was on, and everybody was watching “As the World Turns”. A few moments into the broadcast, Walter Cronkite made his first announcements that shots had been fired at the motorcade in Dallas and that the 46-year-old President had been “seriously wounded.” Everybody in the room gasped. Within an hour or so, Cronkite confirmed that JFK was dead.
That news flash—and the horrifying reactions of my family members—rattled me. In the days that followed, my entire family was glued to nonstop television coverage. Perhaps even more unsettling was what we witnessed on November 24, 1963, as the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down on live television by Jack Ruby. The screams of family members were so intense that the whole apartment seemed to shake.
The traumatic effects of all this cannot be underestimated. Like many who bore witness to this tragedy, my family was deeply affected, even while offering us youngsters all the comfort and support we required. After all, for kids of my generation, this was our first experience not only with death but with televised violence. We saw world leaders taking part in a mournful funeral procession, played out on a global stage. Images of JFK’s own kids—including little John John saluting his father’s coffin—were replayed over and over again.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that one aunt of mine, who was quite vocal in her hatred of the Kennedys, expressed annoyance with the networks for having “robbed” kids of those Saturday morning cartoons. Nevertheless, our family was part of that 90% of the American public that embraced what author Joseph Campbell once called “a deeply significant rite of passage” over those four historic days of television coverage.
I didn’t experience a fully personal loss until the sudden death of my 55-year old father in 1972, when I was 12 years old. Still, the 1960s gave me an ever-expanding education on death and destruction. In February 1968, Walter Cronkite reported on “the bloody experience of Vietnam” that was doomed “to end in a stalemate.” Battle deaths mounted; in the end, the U.S. experienced over 58,000 fatalities, and the Vietnamese, on both sides of the conflict, suffered as many as 3 million civilian and military deaths. On March 16, Robert F. Kennedy began his presidential campaign. By March 31, Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Days later, on Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., 39 years of age, was assassinated and the suspect was a white man.
In the wake of King’s murder, the country experienced widespread riots and civil unrest. Somehow, New York City averted major violence. Mayor John Lindsay traveled to Harlem, in an outreach to black residents, while schools fostered healing. When I walked into my second-grade class, one of my friends, a black girl named Wanda, came over to me and said: “One of your kind of people killed one of my kind of people.” She looked so sad. All I could say to her was: “He was a bad person. Not everyone is like him.” And I reached out and touched her hand. It was a teachable moment as staff distributed educational pamphlets exploring King’s legacy.
Virtually two months later, in the wee hours of Wednesday, June 5, 1968, we were awakened in the middle of the night by my Aunt Georgia, who called to tell us to turn on the TV: Robert F. Kennedy had just been shot in the aftermath of the California primary. Our black-and-white TV flickered on. I could see that RFK’s head was being held above a pool of blood. As another act of violence was beamed into our home, we watched into the wee hours. The next day, RFK died at the age of 42. It was Brooklyn Day and the schools were closed.
I have often looked back on the 1960s as the worst decade in my 63 years. Before the age of 9, I had to process assassinations, war, riots, and deep polarization. And yet, I look around the world today and find myself wondering if we are headed into a period that might surpass that era in terms of sheer brutality.
Having seen so much footage of that fateful November day in 1963—including the graphic Zapruder film—it felt eerie when, years later, I finally visited Dealey Plaza for the first time and toured the Sixth Floor Museum. I relived the experiences of a three-year old in a way that brought the events to life even more vividly. (The photos here were taken by me in Dealey Plaza.)
The JFK Assassination remains a singular emblematic event. I have no doubt that this event, and the other turbulent events of the 1960s, were partially responsible for nourishing my deep interest in trying to understand the social, cultural, and political forces that shaped them. But the decade also offered kernels of promise, the possibilities for change, an enchantment with the stars. It all coalesced to fuel my passionate vision for a nobler world in which hatred, violence, and war were relegated to the dustbin of history.
Grateful Dead Bread
November 1-2 is traditionally celebrated as the “Day of the Dead“. This is not in commemoration of George Romero’s 1985 film of the same name (part of his “Night of the Living Dead” series). Rather, it’s a Mexican holiday—el Día de Muertos or el Día de los Muertos—a joyful celebration of life, not death, in which friends and family members pay their warmest respects to the memories of those who have departed.
I’m not Mexican, but I look forward to this holiday in our neighborhood every year because a local Mexican-owned restaurant, Zeppole Pizzeria—yes, yes, my Mexican neighbors make a nice pizza—features Pan de muerto throughout the week. It is made from a sweet bread recipe. I must have stopped by that establishment a half-dozen times over the last few weeks to inquire when these were going to be on the menu. And I was very grateful to purchase them when they emerged hot from the oven. A wonderful holiday—and a delicious treat!
Orson Welles and “The War of the Worlds” 85
I have long had an enormous fascination with H. G. Wells‘s 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds and its many adaptations, from board games, video games, comic books, and musicals to six different television series and four films—including my absolute favorite, the classic George Pal-produced 1953 version starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, who make a cameo appearance at the end of the more graphic 2005 Steven Spielberg version.
But it was on this date that Orson Welles provided a shocking radio adaptation whose cultural impact has only been magnified in the 85 years since it first aired. On October 30, 1938, between the hours of 8 and 9 pm (ET), the CBS Radio Network presented a Mercury Theater on the Air dramatization of this sci-fi classic, recrafting it as a real-time broadcast with news interruptions that informed the audience of an unfolding, horrifying crisis in New Jersey. Alas, some folks tuned in a little late and didn’t realize that this was not news—fake or otherwise. They had no idea that the invasion from Mars was pure fiction.
It has been said that in the depths of the Great Depression and with an ever-present memory of the high casualties and slaughter of a World War, many Americans looked on world events with both caution and concern. In March of 1938, Hitler had annexed Austria. At the beginning of October, just days after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had declared “Peace for Our Time,” Hitler moved into Sudetenland, Bohemia, and Czechoslovakia. Perhaps more than a few people were a bit ‘jumpy’ given the tenor of the times.
Still, there has been much debate as to how widespread the panic was to this broadcast. Newspapers hyped a nationwide meltdown the next day and the tale has been retold so many times that it has taken on a life of its own. It seems clear, however, that more than a few people were alarmed. The event has been immortalized as a demonstration of the power of a relatively new social medium. Today, as media has expanded exponentially from radio and television to streaming platforms and the Internet, we are more aware than ever of its power to provoke anger, frustration, and fear.
Whatever its impact, the broadcast itself—especially as it unfolds in its first 20-30 minutes—is quite a listen. Though Orson Welles’s introduction clearly states that this is a dramatization, you wouldn’t know it from the minutes that follow. As we’re enjoying the dance music of Ramón Raquello and His Orchestra from the Park Plaza Hotel’s Meridian Room, there’s an interruption from Intercontinental Radio News telling us of explosions on the planet Mars, with objects “moving toward Earth with enormous velocity”. Our program of dance music—that of Raquello and of Bobby Millet and His Orchestra at the Hotel Martinet in Brooklyn—is interrupted continuously by special news reports. Most concerning is the one coming out of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, where an odd-looking ‘meteor’ has slammed into a local farm. The horrors that unfold in the ‘eyewitness’ report of what is apparently a Martian attack have a similar tone to the live radio newscast of the May 1937 Hindenburg tragedy [YouTube link], as that craft, engulfed in flames, crashed to the grounds of Lakehurst, New Jersey. Boy, New Jersey, you’ve got all the luck, from a German dirigible disaster in 1937 and a Martian invasion in 1938 to Snooki on the Shore and the Real Housewives both crashing into our culture in 2009! Damn!
In any event, for those who have never heard this broadcast, try to suspend your twenty-first century sophistication for a little while and check out this iconic moment of Halloween-eve history [YouTube link].
The Charlton Heston Centenary
One hundred years ago, on October 4, 1923, actor Charlton Heston was born. This Wednesday, October 4, 2023, starting at 6 am (ET), Turner Classic Movies is celebrating that centenary with a full 24+ hours of Heston films, and will continue to highlight his filmography on Wednesday nights in October.
Here, my focus is not on Heston’s political journey, whether in his role as President of the Screen Actors Guild or in his commitment to Civil Rights (he was among those Hollywood stars who joined Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1963 March on Washington) or in his commitment to Gun Rights as NRA President (famously holding above his head a replica of a flintlock long rifle and declaring “From My Cold Dead Hands!”). I have long believed that while it’s always important to understand an artist’s creative work in the context of their life, it is both proper and necessary to evaluate the creation quite apart from the creator. As I have written:
It’s a hermeneutical truth, as Paul Ricoeur would have emphasized, that every creation is “detached from its author and develops consequences of its own. In so doing, it transcends its relevance to its initial situation and addresses an indefinite range of possible readers.” Every time any creation—be it a book, idea, or artwork—enters the world, it leaves the domain of the creator and begins to speak to countless individuals in myriad ways. And every time each of us, as “readers”, is exposed to that creation, our response to it remains deeply personal, profoundly entwined with our own emotions and life experiences. And that is as it should be.
In that spirit, here, my focus is on Heston’s creative output—his films—and what they have meant to me.
Heston has played a veritable Who’s Who of iconic figures, including El Cid, Michelangelo, John the Baptist, Sir Thomas More, Buffalo Bill, and Moses, as well as two appearances each as Andrew Jackson, Mark Antony, and Cardinal Richelieu. He appeared in a remarkable variety of film genres—Film noir: from “Dark City” to the Orson Welles classic, “Touch of Evil”; Adventure: from “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “The Naked Jungle” to “Secret of the Incas”, which served as the inspiration for “Raiders of the Lost Ark”; Westerns: from William Wyler’s “The Big Country” and Sam Peckinpah’s “Major Dundee” to “Will Penny”; Historical Epics, including Khartoum and 55 Days at Peking; Biblically-inspired Epics: “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben-Hur”; Sci-Fi: “The Omega Man,” “Soylent Green,” and the Rod Serling-penned “Planet of the Apes”; and Disaster films: “Skyjacked”, “Airport 1975”, and “Earthquake,” which I saw in theaters, in Sensuround! He also made his mark on television—from the 1949 anthology series, “Suspense”, to his tenure as Jason Colby on “Dynasty” and “The Colbys” in the 1980s … not to mention a stint as host of “Saturday Night Live” (after being parodied so well by Phil Hartman).
Heston was not a Method Actor. His style harked back to a more classical mode, lending itself to stoic, authoritative, and theatrical performances often perfectly suited to those “larger than life” characters for which he was noted. He had presence on the screen. Nevertheless, it has become quite fashionable to dismiss Heston as a “ham” and to label all his performances as “stiff”, “bellicose”, or “over the top”. Certainly, some of the films in which he’s appeared have themselves been marked by theatricality. “The Ten Commandments”, for example, features dialogue that is often archaic and scriptural, cast against a sprawling canvas. But once you’ve seen Chuck Heston part the Red Sea, can you really think of any other actors who could have lifted that staff and uttered those biblical lines with the same majesty? I’ve seen some fine actors portray Moses—Christian Bale, Burt Lancaster, Ben Kingsley—but, quite frankly, they all pale in comparison.
Whereas DeMille’s final film was his grandest, three years later, Heston would appear in the film that would bring him a Best Actor Oscar. Unlike the costume epics of yore, “Ben-Hur” (1959), directed by William Wyler, is often credited as the first contemporary “intimate epic”, insofar as it never sacrifices the development of its characters to the colossal backdrop against which their struggles play out. It’s my all-time favorite film, one that I’ve written about extensively over the years.
For Me, It’s Personal …
The first film I ever saw Heston in was “Planet of the Apes”, as an 8-year-old kid at the local “Highway Theater” in what is still my Brooklyn neighborhood—though the movie house is long gone. In later years, when I read critiques of Heston as having “overacted” in this film, I was puzzled. Given that the character he plays, an astronaut, Col. George Taylor, has crash-landed on a planet that is itself a “madhouse”—an upside down, inside out world populated by intelligent apes and non-speaking people, in an unfolding nightmare about the frightening paradoxes of human existence—well, I’m not quite sure how differently the role could have been played by any actor. In the closing moments of that film, when Taylor discovers a horrific sight on a deserted beach in the “Forbidden Zone”, he falls to his knees and pounds his fist into the sand, howling: “Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!” I can’t help but ask: How exactly would a Method Actor have made this scene and those lines any more chilling than the way it was rendered by Heston?
All I know is that when I saw “Planet of the Apes” in 1968, the final frame was met not by applause or even whispers; the audience was stunned into complete silence. I was so shocked by that film that in 1974, I returned to the same theater to participate in a day-long marathon presentation of all five of the franchise films presented in order (“Planet of the Apes”, “Beneath the …”, “Escape from the …”, “Conquest of the …” and “Battle for the …”)—for the price of one. They don’t show ‘em like that anymore!
The second Heston film I saw on the big screen was entirely different from that sci-fi classic. I joined my family in a trek to Manhattan to the great Palace Theater, which, with its colossal 70 mm screen, preserved the Technicolor glory and full original 2.76:1 aspect ratio of a tenth anniversary re-release of the 11 Oscar Award-winning film, “Ben-Hur”.
It was the summer of 1969, in the aftermath of the death of Judy Garland—something I remember vividly since Garland’s portrait was hanging in the lobby of the theater. The presentation was like that of a Broadway play, complete with an Overture, an Intermission, and an Entr’ Acte, a prelude to the superbly filmed, climactic chariot race (in which Chuck did most of the stunt work) and a thunderous finale staged in the shadow of Christ’s crucifixion with its miraculous symbolism. For years before, I had listened to the timeless Miklos Rozsa film score, and when I finally saw the images that matched that magnificent soundtrack, I was as overwhelmed as any 9-year-old kid could be by the spectacle. But ultimately, even as a youngster, I was moved by the depth of the story, and especially the conflicts and inner struggles of its central character and his journey toward personal redemption—all brilliantly expressed in Heston’s nuanced performance.
The following year, in 1970, Heston and his co-star Tina Chen showed up at the Highway Theater, to kick off “The Hawaiians”—and I was there in person to see him. I was only 10 years old. When he walked in, he looked like a tall granite statue with a ton of freckles. But he brought levity to his remarks before the film, which I very much enjoyed.
Five years later, now a teenager, I traveled with my family during the Christmas season of 1975, to see for the first time, “The Ten Commandments”, which, in re-release, was playing at Manhattan’s famed Ziegfeld Theatre. And like “Ben-Hur”, viewing this film on the big screen was an overwhelming cinematic experience. The wondrous, eye-popping parting of the Red Sea alone was worth the price of admission.
So yes, for me, Charlton Heston’s filmography has great personal significance. By the time of his death in 2008, after years of struggling with Alzheimer’s, Heston had appeared in over 120 film and television productions. So many of these productions provided me with a sense of cinematic grandeur at such an early age. I was entertained, for sure. Some films thrilled me with their adventure and excitement, while others challenged me to think about the human condition, evoking in me a complex range of emotions. I know that this cinematic legacy is real because, as I’ve aged, I can still watch any number of Heston’s films for the umpteenth time and be affected ever more meaningfully, even as I retain the same feelings of awe I had as a child.
Indeed, because of the ways in which his work inspired my love of film, I celebrate the centenary of Charlton Heston’s birth.
(* Collage above created by … me!)
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#911NeverForget / Song of the Day #2072
Song of the Day: Rescue Me (“C’mon C’mon”), words and music by Jason Stollsteimer, from The Von Bondies, is the theme song to this FX TV series that ran from 2004-2011. The show, starring Denis Leary, centered on the personal and professional struggles of New York City firefighters, many of whom were suffering from 9/11 PTSD. It served as an homage to those brave souls who rescued thousands of people at the World Trade Center on this date in 2001. Check out the opening credits and the full version of this garage rock television theme [YouTube links]. #911NeverForget.
(Photo taken by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, from the Staten Island Ferry, May 12, 2001)
Celebrating the Life of Guitarist Jack Wilkins
This past Wednesday, September 6, a lovely tribute to the musical legacy of the late guitarist Jack Wilkins (3 June 1944 – 5 May 2023) took place at Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan. It has been posted on YouTube. Back in May, I reflected on Jack’s life and work. My brother, guitarist Carl Barry, who was a dear friend of Jack’s, performed at the celebration (check out that performance here).
