Zorn: Give Biden the hook

Democrats need a relief candidate to stave off an epic defeat in November if the wobbly octogenarian continues to head the ticket

7-18-2024 (issue No. 150)

This week:

• Last week’s winning quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• Mary Schmich — On Chicago thunderstorms

• What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week — A discussion of Brandon Pope’s moment of virality and much more

• Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

• Quips — The winning visual joke and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — The No-No Sox at the All-Star break

• Tune of the Week — “Memories that Bless and Burn” by the Dry Branch Fire Squad, nominated by Chuck Berman

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk

News reports that Elon Musk will be “supporting (Republican Donald) Trump’s presidential campaign by committing $45 million a month to a new super PAC backing the former president,” along with Musk’s tweet over the weekend in which he “fully” endorsed Trump, prompts me to announce that I am re-branding my venerable, beloved Tweet of the Week feature.

I don’t pay to belong to the social media platform that Musk purchased and has rebranded as “X,” a term I have refused to use. But I figure each mention of it signifies an endorsement of Musk’s naive, toxic, contemptible politics along with the way he has allowed Twitter to become a cesspool of hate and ignorance in the name of “free speech.”

I will continue to use the site, as it remains the best platform for breaking news, compelling links and comedy. However, I will branch out to curate Threads and BlueSky as well as Facebook as I look for material for my weekly contests here, which will henceforth be “Quip of the Week” and “Visual Joke of the Week.”

Not great names, I admit. Might workshop them. And I acknowledge that this is the tiniest of gestures. But I’m going to avoid using the T-word going forward and hope you will, too.

Democrats must make a call to the ‘pen

The other night, MSNBC host Chris Hayes compared Democratic President Joe Biden to an ace starting pitcher who has given up a couple of hits in the seventh inning after having already thrown more than 100 pitches.

The manager comes to the mound. “It’s time,” he tells the pitcher, because the new conventional wisdom is that pitchers lose their effectiveness and risk damaging their arms if they throw many more than 100 pitches in a game.

The pitcher is furious, in Hayes’ analogy. He has the confidence and outsized self-regard of most successful professional athletes. He holds his glove over his mouth and curses loudly as the manager ritually takes the ball out of his hand and signals to the bullpen for a relief pitcher — a fresh arm.

To flesh out this scenario, I imagine the pitcher protesting to the manager, “But I struck out the side in the fifth inning!” and “I got their cleanup hitter to ground into a double play in the sixth inning!”

I can even imagine the pitcher echoing Biden’s determined cry, “I want to finish the job!”

And I imagine the manager replying, “You did your job, ace. And thank you. But this is no longer about the fifth inning or the sixth inning. It’s about the seventh inning and beyond. It’s about winning the game, not your precious ego.”

I hate to keep revisiting this topic, but the fierce and fervent unity of the Republican Party on display this week at Trumpapalooza in Milwaukee compared with the discouraged and divided spirit of the Democratic Party as it deals with the fallout from Biden’s addled debate performance last month is ominous. Also ominous have been Biden’s unimpressive, unpersuasive efforts to show voters that, at age 81, he’s still got what it takes to do the toughest job in the world for four and a half more years.

These battleground-state polls at Real Clear Politics offer no comfort to Democrats.

Trump’s average lead in these key states is 4.3 percentage points. In contrast, Biden was up by an average of 5.3 percentage points in polling in a slightly different group of battleground states four years ago and, as you remember, he barely eked out the win.

Nervous Normans and Biden loyalists have been telling us for weeks that pulling Biden for a relief candidate would split the party and pave the way for defeat.

I have news for them.

The party is deeply split right now between those who think the Democrats can just keep saying, “He’s fine!” and those who want no part of the futile effort to gaslight the public into believing that Biden is the best the party has to offer.

Some Dems are taking comfort in FiveThirtyEight’s forecast that Biden still has a 54% chance of winning the election. And yes, sure, he might win, just like our metaphorical starting pitcher might hang on to close out the game. Starting Major League Baseball pitchers threw 35 complete games in 2023 — once in every 139 starts.

This time four years ago, FiveThirtyEight’s forecast model gave Biden a 74% chance of victory. And this time eight years ago, this same model gave Hillary Clinton a 64% chance of beating Trump, and you may remember how that turned out.

Trump is so confident of victory that he didn’t feel the need to balance out his ticket with a woman and/or minority running mate, a running mate with a more moderate presentation or a vice-presidential nominee from a swing state. Instead, he chose Ohio freshman Sen. JD Vance*, a conservative populist white male unlikely to attract many moderate or swing voters.

Whether or not voters buy the notion that Trump surviving a graze wound to the ear Saturday is a sign of strength or that Biden being diagnosed with COVID-19 Wednesday is a sign of weakness, that superficial gloss on the campaign seems set.

(Joke going around: Biden is so old he got COVID-1919)

If you hear Republicans saying they’re praying for Biden’s speedy recovery, make no mistake: They are very sincere. MAGA is salivating at the chance to run against a candidate who continues to show in unscripted moments why about three-quarters of the public thinks he’s too old to run for reelection.

Biden, like the recalcitrant hurler in the above metaphor, doesn’t seem to realize that he’s lost his fastball. He appears unwilling to recognize that it’s not just about him, it’s about the team. And that many of his teammates — fellow Democratic elected officials — have expressed fear that if he stays in the game, the losses will be catastrophic.

Along those lines, a reportedly growing faction of Democrats is revolting against the plan to hold a virtual roll call of delegates to nominate Biden in advance of the party’s mid-August convention, which suggests a desire for more time to talk the president into gracefully leaving the mound.

I refer the stay-the-course Democrats to Joe Wellman’s satirical post at McSweeneys:

All this concern about Biden’s mental fitness is just needless bedwetting coming from pretty much everyone in the country. Sure, we’ve seen some losses in the “people paying the slightest bit of attention to current events” demographic. But rest assured, this flock of alarmists only represents the entire voting constituency. …

It’s time for all you pundits, pollsters, podcasters, interns, car salespersons, guidance counselors, Uber drivers, 401(k) managers, hairdressers, librarians, college students, small business owners, Subway sandwich artists, and stay-at-home parents out there to apologize to the American people. You have undermined the president and opened up a lane for Trump to return to power, and he will do nothing but lie, conceal, and make hugely important decisions based on ego—something the Biden-Harris campaign would never, ever do.

The applause as Biden walks into the dugout of a graceful retirement will be deafening.

*Like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Vance does not use periods in his name.

---

I wrote about “Hypocrisy, God and the attempt on Donald’s Trump’s life” in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus. I included a rundown of Trump’s enthusiasm for political violence and the contemptible theology behind assertions that God spared Trump from the would-be assassin’s bullet.

Last week’s winning quip

If humanity is so smart, how come it took 6,000 years after the wheel was invented for someone to put them on a suitcase? — @nikalamity

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

News & Views

News: The case against the teens who attacked a couple in Streeterville May 31 has been dismissed because the couple are declining to press charges.

View: This is a demoralizing development. The male victim, 40, and his wife, 32, were surrounded by teens at around 9 p.m. at Grand Avenue and McClurg Court," according to news reports. Then they were "kicked, stomped on, and punched repeatedly. ... the teens pepper-sprayed (the female victim) and kicked her stomach. She was two weeks pregnant and said she found out after the attack that she had lost the baby."  

The attack made headlines and prompted Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, to call for an 8 p.m. curfew in the city’s central business district for minors unaccompanied by an adult.

Police arrested two of the alleged attackers and filed misdemeanor charges against them. Their report suggests that the attack was much less prolonged and serious than how the woman described it to reporters. But before the case could come to the prosecution’s felony-review division, the couple decided to let the matter drop, according to Eugenia Orr, a spox* for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

I’m sure the urge to put such a beating behind them was strong and the prospect of numerous court appearances daunting and even perhaps frightening. But the result is that these young alleged predators will experience no consequences for what police say they did.

Illinois law says simple battery is a misdemeanor so long as the person battered does not suffer “great bodily harm or permanent disability or disfigurement,” but it can be upgraded to a felony if “the person battered is on or about a public way.” Apparently the duration of the beating and the resultant loss of a pregnancy doesn’t upgrade the offense, which strikes me as obtuse.

*OK, come at me, but “spox” has long been common newsroom shorthand and crisper than “spokeswoman,” “spokesperson” or, for those untroubled by masculine suffixes to describe a woman’s job title, “spokesman.”

News: The Illinois attorney general’s office is pursuing felony charges against a man accused of drenching Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx with a soft drink during an altercation on June 21.

View: Yes, it happened on “the public way,” but c’mon. As the Sun-Times reported Tuesday:

Foxx told investigators that she gave (William) Swetz the finger after he yelled at her to get out of the roadway as she was walking, records show. She said Swetz then hit the brakes and reversed toward her, forcing her to move out of the roadway.

Foxx repeatedly told police “that it was her belief that she was going to be struck by the offender’s pickup truck had she not moved out of the roadway as he abruptly reversed towards her,” records show. Foxx said … she had flipped him off as they argued, and he eventually threw liquid at her from a cup and drove off.

A witness who watched the incident unfold said she was alarmed, but didn’t consider that Swetz had tried to hit Foxx with the pickup. “That did not come to mind,” the witness told an investigator.

That the law apparently makes no distinction between tossing a soda at someone and punching and kicking them repeatedly — indeed here takes the soda splash more seriously — is bizarre. The AG’s office did not offer any further clarification on the charging decision.

Note that Foxx’s office is not involved in either case.

Land of Linkin’

• In “With latest Bally's Casino plan, city risks doubling down on a bad bet,” Ald. Anthony A. Beale, 9th, persuasively lays out the case for alarm about the proposed Bally’s casino in the River West neighborhood. “Bally’s underperforming temporary casino, predatory marketing, bait-and-switch on the permanent casino, huge lease payments and weak corporate balance sheet all raise serious questions about the casino’s future,” he writes. “The people of Chicago deserve better. This is too important to get wrong. It’s time for us to stop chasing our losses.”

• Tribune investigative reporter and former City Hall reporter Gregory Royal Prat offers “Lessons for Joe Biden’s campaign from Lori Lightfoot’s failed mayoral bid.” He writes, “What’s clear to me after five years reporting on Lightfoot for the Tribune and writing a book on her is that she would’ve been better off not running for a second term. She could’ve bowed out and declared victory: ‘I led us through hell. It’s time for someone else to carry the city.’ Some people would’ve mocked her for skipping out, but in the end, she would’ve been remembered more fondly.”

• “Ambitious reimagining” indeed: Entertainment Weekly offers a detailed analysis of Monday night’s star-spangled train wreck by an admittedly intoxicated country music star in “Ingrid Andress performs memorable new spin on the national anthem at MLB Home Run Derby.” “The singer’s heartfelt spin on ‘bombs bursting in air’ and ‘gave proof’ suggest she may be in some sort of physical pain at this point in the performance. If so, though, she immediately rallies for a second wind, opting for an ambitious reimagining of ‘that our flag was still there’ that kicks the performance up to the next gear.” Andress subsequently posted that she is checking into rehab for alcoholism, which still leaves open the question why MLB allowed her to perform.

• Justin Kaufmann at Axios explores the idea that we are in a uniquely terrible time for Chicago’s pro sports teams.

• LateNighter “covers the world of late-night television from the inside out. We report on breaking news, programming moves, personnel changes, ratings wins, and more, providing informed perspective on what’s happening across this dynamic daypart.” The site also offers a robust rundown of the best jokes from the late-night monologues.

• ProPublica: “School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget.” “Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children. … As it turns out, the parents most likely to apply for these vouchers are the ones who were already sending their kids to private school or homeschooling. They use the dollars to subsidize what they were already paying for.”

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ In “Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion,” Jeff Tiedrich offers an assessment of MSNBC’s decision to pull “Morning Joe” off the air Monday morning: “Pure sniveling cowardice.”

■ Poynter’s Kristen Hare: “Obituaries remind us of what we have in common.”

■ Costco price hike. For the first time since 2017, the company’s increasing membership fees.

■ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “In or out of office, Trump has encouraged violence as his go-to solution.”

■  Chicago magazine’s out with its listing of the Best of Chicago for shopping, eating, drinking and more.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Mary Schmich: Chicago thunderstorms

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering:

With wisdom from Tom Skilling, E.L. Doctorow and my mother, who taught me thunder was the sound of the angels bowling:

On one of those thunderous Chicago nights not long ago, when the wind was so wild it set hundred-year-old brick three-flats to swaying like trees and threatened to send hundred-year-old trees flat to the sidewalk, I woke up, switched on a lamp and picked up the New Yorker to read a story about Chicago a century or so ago. It was by E. L. Doctorow and was called “A House on the Plains.”

Reading in the dim light, while the windows whistled and the night sky flashed, I came across this passage:

“Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. … I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn’t hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built — a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from.”

You know how sometimes you stumble upon a sentence in a book, or a scene in a movie, that clarifies for you who you are, how you think, what you want or where you live? How until you’ve read or seen it, until this vision or notion exists in someone else’s words or pictures, it doesn’t quite exist?

This short passage had that effect. In the middle of that stormy night, I saw Chicago’s thunderstorms through history, saw their emotional effects, recognized how fundamental thunderstorms are to the identity of this place.

And later, brimming with the rapture of discovery, I assaulted a longtime Chicagoan with my thoughts on thunderstorms. He shrugged.

“You grow up here, you don’t think about ’em.”

But you should, because thunderstorms are as essential and startling a part of Chicago life as the skyscrapers, the lake and the relentlessly flat land. They are a measure, in Doctorow’s inspired phrase, of this city’s “magnitude of defiance.”

I grew up with thunderstorms in the South, but forgot their power and pleasure during years in California. Only when I moved to Chicago did I realize how much I’d been subconsciously yearning for those old storms, for the heart-rattling comfort of the rowdy angels bowling.

And Chicago has delivered, especially at night, with all the theater a lover of thunderstorms could wish for, with shows that are even more thrilling because these are big-city storms. In Chicago, thunderclouds dwarf skyscrapers and bring both into relief. Lightning does what starlight rarely can, which is to pierce the city’s electric glare.

Thunderstorms bring the prairie to the city, reminding us we’re not so far removed, in either place or time, from nature and raw land. When city and storm meet, we can see each of them differently.

“In the Midwest, we get a unique breed of thunderstorm because you’ve got a jet stream nearby and there are imbedded disturbances in the jet stream that draw the air aloft with even more intensity than in the South,” confirmed Tom Skilling, the passionate weathercaster, when I called searching for some scientific heft for these ramblings. “It makes for a particularly vigorous breed of thunderstorm.”

For the sake of those of us who think jet streams are RVs, Skilling added: “I look at these things in something less than poetic terms.”

But poetry has a place for numbers, and he supplied a few on Chicago thunderstorms:

Annual thunderstorm days: 37.9

Average in June, July, August: 6, 6, 6

Height of a Chicago thunderstorm cloud: 10 to 12 miles.

Annual thunderstorm days in Honolulu: 6.7

It’s easy to dismiss thunderstorms as inconvenience. They ruin your cookout, cancel your flight, flood your basement, shut your power down. But the next time one blows through, remember that they’re also part of the soul of where we live, defiantly if a little wet.

This column originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 22, 2001.

Minced Words

We had a big panel to discuss a big week of news on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Host John Williams welcomed Cate Plys, Marj Halperin, Austin Berg, Brandon Pope and me to discuss Pope’s newfound fame after his post about “pasta flights” served at a Milwaukee restaurant went viral (see the above video), the presidential race, fussin’ and fightin’ at City Hall, the veneration of deeply imperfect people in history and much more.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.

Quotables

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately.

I didn’t think we would go from “Bring Chicago Home” to “Hide Chicago’s Homeless.” But here we are. — Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, on removing homeless encampments that might be seen by attendees of the Democratic National Convention next month

We thank you for sparing Donald Trump from the almost certain death on Saturday. Surely, you sent an angel to gently touch his face to move it so ever slightly to avoid the fatal shot from the assassin's bullet. This is just your most recent blessing of this man of ultimate courage and resilience, who was injured and prevailed over his enemies who have sought to destroy him. — Illinois National Committeewoman Demetra DeMonte offering a prayer at a delegate breakfast Monday

“This is not who we are, America” just doesn’t ring true to me. My father was assassinated in this nation, gunned down on a motel balcony in Memphis, where he was engaged as a nonviolent warrior for nondiscriminatory, humane wages. He was killed for working to end racism, poverty, and militarism, which he called the Triple Evils, and which are all still perpetuated both in policy and practice by the United States of America. This is not who we should be. With that honest statement about our culture of violence, political and otherwise, we can rise up to eradicate injustice and violence, and reform our rhetoric. — Bernice King

White supremacy is real, y’all. I’m gonna say that one more time. Because in case the city of Chicago don't know, you got a Black mayor with a Black wife, Black children, on the West Side of Chicago. In all of these other administrations that shut down our schools, that shut down public housing, that raided the pensions, that sold off the parking meters, that sold off the Skyway, those people ran this city to the ground. And now they expect a brother to fix it in a year. Well guess what? We're off to a great start and I look forward to fixing their mess, building up our communities, for the next 23 freaking years — Mayor Brandon Johnson

We don’t yet know the background of the shooter, which probably means the shooter is a card-carrying leftist. — Illinois Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt, before we learned the shooter was a registered Republican.

It’s not a hoax. If Republicans were going to stage this, the shooter would be a Black trans immigrant who competed in women’s sports. — @OhNoSheTwitnt

Many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump, privately dread him. They know what a disaster he's been — and will continue to be — for our party. They are just too afraid to say it out loud. Well I'm not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring. — Nikki Haley, five months ago, before she kissed the ring Tuesday night.

Trump picked JD Vance for VP not despite the fact he's criticized Trump before but because he has. Trump likes people who have been humbled and have learned to be obedient to him. Vance's complete reversal on Trump shows he has no principles, which is perfect for Trump. — Cenk Uygur

Universal day care is class war against normal people. — JD Vance

We need a De-Ba’athification program — a de-wokeificaion program — in the U.S. ... We should seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire all of the people ... fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. … And then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say. “The Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.” — JD Vance

It’s unbelievable that the nation is spending so much time on the question of Biden’s verbal acuity, when the greatest concern ought to be that his challenger is a self-aggrandizing felon and twice-impeached election-denier. Trump fomented the Jan. 6 insurrection, shows contempt for the rule of law and shamelessly lies in pursuit of more power. He’s an authoritarian who admires murderous despots, wants to jail his political enemies and has publicly flirted with declaring himself a dictator on his first day back in office. — The Los Angeles Time Editorial Board

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite jokes from social media that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• When you’re dressed all in black and someone asks, “Whose funeral is it?” looking around and saying, “I haven’t decided yet” is typically a good response. — @woofknight

• If I say, "Wow! Sounds great, pencil me in," you'd better have an eraser. — @RunOldMan

• You can just start calling yourself an Olympic hopeful. You don't have to fill out a form or anything. — @simoncholland

• If you loved "Friends", you're going to love the new sitcom "Acquaintances." It’s about people who know each other, but hide when they see one another at the store. — @Brock_Teee

• Yes, I'm into resistance training. I've been resisting going to the gym for years. — @GraniteDhuine

• I just bought four pounds of cherries like I’m in some fucking math problem.  — @hammlittle

• If Canada geese could talk it would be strictly swearing and bumming smokes. — @BrickMahoney

• When my husband says he'll “just be a minute,” I know I have enough time to watch an entire television series, paint the house or go on a quest. — @allholls

• Tornadoes are the most relaxing things in the news. — @FrozenSighs

• My ideal beach body is when I can lie out near the shore and people don’t gather up to try to push me back into the water. — @AmishSuperModel

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Good Sports

The No-No Sox

As long as the race remains close, I will offer you comparison standings of the 2024 White Sox with the 2003 Detroit Tigers and the 1962 New York Mets, teams that have defined futility for more than 80 years, and the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, the worst team in baseball’s modern era (20th century on).

After 98 games:

We are now at the All-Star break. Several news accounts have somewhat breathlessly reported that the Sox have more losses at the break than any team in MLB history. This is true only because the break took place after 95 games this year. It took place after 92 games in 2003, when the Tigers were 25-67 (.272), and it took place after just 82 games in 1962, when the Mets were 23-59 (.280).

There was no All Star game in 1916, as the tradition didn’t begin until 1933, when it was initiated by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward.

The 1916 Philadelphia A’s played a 153-game season and finished 36-117. Out to another decimal place, that’s a winning percentage of .2353. The Sox play in a 162-game era. If they go 38-124, that will be a winning percentage of .2346. So the magic number of victories needed for the Sox to end up with 39 wins and a better winning percentage than the 1916 A’s is now just 12 over their last 67 games (12-55 is a .179 winning percentage, which is unlikely).

The previous worst White Sox team ever was the 1932 club, which went 49-102 for a winning percentage of .325. The worst White Sox team in the era of the 162-game season was the 1970 club, which went 56-106 for a .346 winning percentage. To beat that, the Sox will have to finish the season 30-37 (.448), which also strikes me as unlikely. The team leads the majors with 23 blown saves and 34 losses after leading at some point in the game.

If and when the Sox have at least a three-game lead over this ignominious field, I’ll discontinue this weekly feature.

Tune of the Week

I’ve been opening up Tune of the Week nominations in an effort to bring some newer sounds to the mix. I’m asking readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers or to email me to leave nominations (post-2000 releases, please!) along with YouTube links and at least a few sentences explaining why the nominated song is meaningful or delightful to you. The following nomination is from former Tribune photographer and my close friend Chuck Berman, so I am allowing his nomination, even though it’s from 1999:

This funereal folk song by Suzanne Thomas takes its haunting title from the 1898 Robert Cameron Rogers poem “The Rosary” that the website All Poetry describes as “a nostalgic and introspective examination of lost love.”

From the song:

And now to God I will return
I know my time is drawing near
Let memories that bless and burn
Heal your hearts with tears

Mistakes were made

When I become aware of errors in the Picayune Sentinel, I quickly correct them in the online version, but since many of you read just the email version, which I can’t correct after the fact, I will use this space periodically to alert you to meaningful mistakes I’ve made. (Not typos, in other words.)

• I gave the wrong state for U.S. Sen Josh Hawley last week. He represents Missouri.

• “Be My Baby” was the only top 10 hit for the Ronettes; I confused it last week with “Baby I Love You.”

• My reference to White Sox pitcher Michael Kopech setting down the Minnesota Twins in the 9th with nine pitches, all strikes, in a game on July 10 should have been to an “immaculate inning.”

• I had the year wrong when I noted Kamala Harris’ dismal performance in the Democratic presidential primary. It was 2020.

The Picayune Sentinel is a reader-supported publication. Browse and search back issues here. Simply subscribe to receive new posts each Thursday. To support my work, receive bonus issues on Tuesdays and join the zesty commenting community, become a paid subscriber. Thanks for reading

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