An offer of public service

 When I was a reporter, a poultry magnate from East Texas came to the Capitol in Austin and started handing out $10,000 donations to state senators. I was in a knot of reporters interviewing one of the senators when Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim of Pilgrim’s Pride stopped by.

That was near the end of the session in 1989, and the Capitol was packed with reporters, advocates and lobbyists. It didn’t occur to Pilgrim that people would question the actions of any fellow who had cash and wanted some consideration in return. That was just business.

A lot of people saw it that way, and you’d be wrong if you thought that the prudes of the press were the only people who were offended. The people who were enraged were the lobbyists who had offered lesser sums and saw the threat of inflation.

I got to thinking about the Good Old Days when I read The New York Times story about the contractor building Trump’s new ballroom. The Times reported that the company got a secret, no-bid contract from the National Park Service to repair two ornamental fountains. The Biden Administration estimated the cost  at $3.3 million in 2022. 

The Times said the company doing the work for Trump would get $11.9 million for the job. Project creep would bring the total to $17.4 million.

The secret contract without bids was justified on the grounds of urgency. Those old decorative fountains are almost a matter of national security.

The story reminded me why a 20-something version of me wanted to be a reporter. I’m too old to do that  work, but I would like to offer my services to any organization that is interested in clarifying the rights of taxpayers.

I would like to withhold a tiny portion of my taxes, just so the courts could clarify our rights. I’m willing to pay taxes to repair the ornamental fountains. What I want to know is whether I have a right to decline to pay taxes on things that are defined as illegal — graft and corruption, for example.

Because I grew up in Texas, I understand the form of government we’re now under as a nation. I think I’d be a good representative litigant.

I’m interested in the accounting. I know that the difference between $17.4 million and $3.3 million is not all questionable. I’m just interested in what’s legal — that is, what I’m legally and morally responsible for. Is that not also a religious question, protected under the First Amendment?

The case would not be significant in terms of money. But it might set a precedent. If the organization won this case, other taxpayers might challenge other deals. Alert taxpayers might file so many suits that it might take the profit motive out of this form of government.

I don’t think we’ll get anywhere talking about the difference between democracy and kleptocracy. But if you cut certain sources of revenue by 20 percent, you might get a different kind of people in government.

You might get the hogs out of the trough.

 • Source: David A. Fahrenthold, Luke Broadwater and Andrea Fuller, “Firm Building Trump’s Ballroom Got a Secret No-Bid Contract for a Nearby Job”; The New York Times, April 25, 2026. It’s here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/us/politics/lafayette-park-fountains-trump-contract.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eFA.08-k.Cc-LE9q8ffbX&smid=nytcore-ios-share

A hole in my knowledge

 When a tree falls in the forest, I suppose I should wonder whether it made a sound. But my mind doesn’t work that way. I wonder about the woodpecker hole.

The oak had fallen recently, and I hoped to find clues that might suggest what kind of bird or critter had been using the cavity.

If you made a list of the most common birds at our backyard feeders, you’d start with titmice, chickadees, nuthatches and wrens. All those birds nest in old woodpecker holes. I’m just now appreciating the role that woodpeckers play in providing housing opportunities in the Geogia Piedmont.

I looked for the hole until I found it. But I found nothing that would help identify the last tenant.

Much of what I see in the woods remains a mystery.

When truth dies first

 Palamedes, wisest of the Greeks, came to a bad end. He was executed for treason during the Trojan War. He’s famous for mourning truth, which he said died before he did.

During the first nine years of the Trojan War, the Greeks raided Troy’s allies, hoping to cut off supplies. Achilles and Ajax came back to camp with loot and captives. Odysseus returned from Thrace empty handed. Palamedes, suspecting a lack of initiative and possibly a lack of courage, let Odysseus hear about it.

Odysseus, at least in the early legends, was the kind of man who always got even.

Odysseus convinced Agamemnon, the supreme commander, that the gods had warned that the Greeks must move their camp for just one night. The army moved out, and that night Odysseus buried some gold at Palamedes’s campsite. Odysseus forced a Phrygian prisoner to forge a letter, allegedly from King Priam of Troy, saying that the money was the agreed price for betraying the Greeks. When the prisoner finished the letter, Odysseus killed him on the spot.

The next day, the army moved back to its original campsite. Somebody found the body and then found the letter.

When Palamedes protested his innocence, Odysseus helpfully suggested that the Greeks search his campsite.

The ancient Greeks constantly worked on their legends and myths. This one was older than Homer, who saw Odysseus in better light.

One of the traditional readings of the tale is that wise people don’t last long in places where truth isn’t valued. It’s a lesson Socrates might have appreciated.

But I like the aftermath, which suggests a problem with abandoning truth.

Palamedes’s father, Nauplius, heard of his son’s murder and sailed to Troy to demand justice. He appealed to Agamemnon, the army commander, who turned the old man away.

Nauplius could do nothing against the powerful block that had gained control of Greece. But on the way back home, he stopped at the palaces of almost all the murderers. He told the wife of each murderer that her husband was bringing a captured princess home as his new queen.

Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, was one of several women who took the story badly.

• Source: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 299-300.

Norman Maclean's stories

 The New York Times tells us that A River Runs Through It is 50 years old. The Times points out that the percentage of American males that read fiction is declining. Norman Maclean’s novella was barely published 50 years ago. Could it be published today?

The book, as opposed to the novella, is A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. One of those stories, “Logging and Pimping and ‘Your Pal, Jim,’” is about a lumberjack that the narrator hated. The narrator sounds like Maclean.

Jim was the best sawyer in the crew. The narrator worked as his partner, needing the money for graduate school. Jim was bigger and stronger. Manning a crosscut saw with him was an ordeal.

The story includes long passages on the importance of good boots and on the psychological games men play when they have to work with someone they hate. It also includes this:

 

It was getting hot and I was half-sick when I came back to camp at the end of the day. I would dig into my duffel back and get clean underwear and clean white socks and a bar of soap and go to the creek. Afterwards, I would sit on the bank until I was dry. Then I would feel better. It was a rule I had learned my first year working in the Forest Service — when exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself, at least change socks.

 

I’m one of those American males who read fewer works of fiction than I used to. The newer books that I tried and gave up on had conflicts that didn’t hold my attention.

I read Maclean’s story with wonder. If he were alive and writing today, I’d read more fiction.

• Sources: Monte Burke, “Could ‘A River Runs Through It’ Have Been a Hit Today?” The New York Times, April 20, 2026. It’s here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/books/could-a-river-runs-through-it-have-been-a-hit-today.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d1A.KnEH.XeCTgpqEXfHV&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories; New York: Pocket Books, 1992, p. 122.

The list of freedoms

 The most startling passage in Stefan Zweig’s book on Montaigne is a list of freedoms.

Montaigne was a seeker, and he sought to understand the things that stood in his way, slowed him down, kept him from being the person he wanted to be. “One might be tempted to draw up a list,” Zweig says, and he does. The list is in the form of “freedom from” or “to be free of.” It reads like a UN document.

I was not surprised to see freedom from pride at the top of the list, and freedom from presumption, ambition and greed nearby.

But I began to wonder when I got to freedom from fear and hope, belief and superstition. I can see what Zweig is saying: Montaigne doubted everything. But he also was a believer.

I was surprised when I got to freedom from family and familial surroundings. Montaigne liked his privacy and spent time alone in his tower. But he strikes me as a person who was part of a place. His homestead — and the many people in it — were part of him.

The most interesting item is freedom from custom. Custom — the countless small agreements we make when we live in a community — holds societies together. Montaigne was, in a way, a traditionalist. But Zweig is right. Montaigne was brutally frank about the costs. Here’s the opening of his essay “On the custom of wearing clothing”:

 

Whichever way I want to go I find myself obliged to break through some barrier of custom, so thoroughly has she blocked all our approaches.”

 

He argued that we must find the difference between natural laws and rules we contrive. He picks up the same in “On ancient customs”: 

 

I am prepared to forgive our own people for having no other model or rule of perfection but their own manners and behavior, for it is a common failing not only of the mob but of virtually all men to set their sights within the limitations of the customs into which we were born.

 

• Sources: Stefan Zweig, Montaigne, translated by Will Stone; London: Pushkin Press, 2015. The list of freedoms is on pp. 112-13.

Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, translated by M.A. Screech; London: Penguin Books, 1993. The quotations are on pp. 253 and 331.

What April is like

 In the garden, the tender plants came up.

Then came an explosion of insects — all kinds, but I noticed the caterpillars, which were dining on the plants.

Then came a hatch of paper wasps, reddish brown with gold trim, and the air was full of dive bombers, killing caterpillars and other bugs.

Finally, the flycatchers lined the fence rail, waiting for any wasp that dared to fly across the garden.

All these sights can be seen by an idler who leans on his shovel, goofing off when he should be digging.

Wars and stories of war

 Herodotus told the story of many men who fought at Platea. I’ve been thinking of three.

Aristodamus of Sparta somehow survived Thermopylae and was so shamed that he tried to make up for it with insane bravery at Platea. He was awarded no honors. His comrades knew he wanted to die.

Sophanes of Athens was an eccentric who, in one telling, carried an anchor around the battlefield. He dropped it whenever the enemy charged. It’s one way to eliminate even the thought of running away.

Herodotus also tells of a nameless Persian who shared a couch with Thersander of Orchomenus at a Theban-Persian banquet before the battle. The Persian drank too much because grief had brought him to tears. He could see, clearly, the folly of a stupid war instigated by an arrogant tyrant. He could see the folly but could do nothing about it.

I find myself thinking about the drunk Persian these days.

• Source: Herodotus, The Histories, translated by Robin Waterfield; Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 570 (Aristodamas), p. 571 (Sophanes), and pp. 546-7 (the unnamed Persian).