I also realized it was from Bill M____ that I learned the expression, “wie geht es,  Fräulein, is been gut?’  He told.me that if I went to Germany that was I should say to any young women I met. I never knew what it meant until years later when I decided to take the chance to use it.

I was working for a congressman in DC. I was waiting in the outer office to see him having been told a group of German dignitaries were meeting with him. As they were leaving three or four women were in front. I figured I’d impress them. I uttered my long remembered German expression on them. Their looks told me I hadn’t impressed them. Later I decided to look it up. It means as best I can tell: ‘‘how are you, miss, have you been good?”  What was wrong with that? But digging a little deeper the problem was the word Fräulein which assumes an undue familiarity as well as a young single woman.

I wrote about the Savin Hill Reunion noting it was likely to sell out the 300 tickets I had been told were available. I said it would be a 13,909 crowd. Truth be told it was like that but assume Bobby Orr was skating and it was the final game to decide who would win the Stanley Cup and figure hundreds more would have managed by hook or crook or fire escape doors to gain entrance then that is the type of crowd that appeared for the reunion.

I’m told they cut off the ticket sales at 500 but when I went looking for Billy H____ at table 48, sadly I didn’t find him, it seemed there were many more tables beyond 48. Figure with ten people at a table then you have to conclude the 500 figure was an underestimate. I’m not even counting those who gained entrance surreptitiously which would not be surprising since old habits die hard.

I arrived about a half hour late. There were no parking spots at Florian Hall or across the street. I went to a large lot kitty corner to the right as you look out and hoped for the best. It was clear the old neighborhood had turned out in force.

How bad does it get when your former campaign manager is convicted of a ton of crimes, admits to others, agrees to cooperate, and then lies to the people he is cooperating with? Now what is it Paul Manafort has been told that has made him decide to lie about his prior activities with people he was involved in?

Obviously, Manafort is not the type of guy who is going to risk going to prison if he can avoid it. You do recall that after he was charged and put on home confinement with a leg bracelet the prosecutors had that status revoked because he was trying to reach witnesses against him and attempting to influence their testimony. The prosecutors produced sufficient evidence for the court to lock him up to protect the integrity of the justice system. In prison the judge believed he could not reach out and intimidate or try to convince people it would be in their interest not to tell the truth.

Our first president was George Washington. A very brave man who led the army which fought the most powerful army in the world which was being aided by the Hessians – 30,000 troops hired by the British to fight for it in America with most of them being drawn from the German states of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau. Aside from sitting on his horse as an exposed target and being one of the last to flee New York City after the British fleet invaded there; he stood in the open outside Yorktown as the British fired at the American troops. When one cannon ball shot at his group caused all around him to hit the deck Washington stood tall. He went and picked up the ball and gave it to a doctor who was getting up off the ground and brushing himself off. He suggested he might want to keep it as a souvenir.

We were lucky as a country to have such a man as our first president. He was a model for others to follow. Between 1829 with the election of Andrew Jackson and the 1889 election of Benjamin Harrison, a period of sixty years ten presidents had been generals. A hiatus of 64 years would pass before Eisenhower took office in 1953. He would be our last general to serve as president.

According the Encyclopedia Britannica a ” Blockade, ,an act of war by which a belligerent prevents access to or departure from a defined part of the enemy’s coasts.”

The coast of Ukraine is on the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. Ukraine has ports on both of these seas. When Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine it had no land link to it. We’ve heard from some suggesting Russia had a right to seize Crimea because it had given it to Ukraine while Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union. Those people always find a reason to excuse any Russian action.

When Crimea was invaded by Russia and annexed to it the best response the Obama administration could come up with is the application of sanctions against some Russians. The EU and NATO also responded in a like manner. Emboldened by this Russia started a war in eastern Ukraine which still simmers to this day. This too is justified by Russian apologists on the ground that a majority of the people living there are of Russian descent and speak Russian. (I wonder if they’d feel the same way about Arizona or New Mexico being seized  by Mexico.)

Mary Church Terrell spoke about what it was like to be colored in Washington, D.C. in 1906. It is considered among the top 100 political speeches of the 20th century. Here are a few excerpts from it:

“As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night, a stranger in a strange land, and walk miles without finding a place to lay my head. Unless I happened to know colored people who live here or ran across a chance acquaintance who could recommend a colored boarding house to me, I should be obliged to spend the entire night wandering about. Indians, Chinamen [sic], Filipinos, Japanese and representatives of any other dark race can find hotel accommodations, if they can pay for them. The colored man alone is thrust out of the hotels of the national capital like a leper.

In the latter part of this month, the day after Thanksgiving to be precise, there will be a Savin Hill reunion. I’ve purchased my ticket a couple of weeks ago. It is number 254. There are supposed to be only 300 tickets that will be offered for sale. It seems that it may be a sell out, or as we used to say when I lived there, 13,909. That number of course needs no explanation to anyone who grew up in the Boston area back in those old days.

I’m not much for reunions but I try not to miss the Savin Hill ones which come at helter-skelter intervals about every so often when some few get it in their heads that they’d like to get together with some others. I heard about this one from my male siblings whose friends are the ones putting it on. I figure there won’t be too many more because the Savin Hill of our youth has gone with the wind.

I believe at one time our neighborhood reunion was called the St. William’s reunion. That was pretty much was another way of saying Savin Hill. So much of the life growing up in Savin Hill surrounded that church.

There was an article that suggested that North Korea has continued to build missiles and create new missile sites where they can be stored on vehicles and moved at the time decided upon by Kim Jong Un. Then there was a tweet by Trump:

“The story in the New York Times concerning North Korea developing missile bases is inaccurate. We fully know about the sites being discussed, nothing new – and nothing happening out of the normal. Just more Fake News. I will be the first to let you know if things go bad!”

Trump saying that it was fake news but that he “will be the first to let you know if things go bad!” seemed to me that the news was not fake. Add to that after calling the news “inaccurate” he says he knows all about sites. How does that make it inaccurate? He added on top of it that it was normal and nothing new. How could it be? Aren’t the North Koreans supposed to be doing away with their missile program rather than expanding it?