Redlining & Candide’s Political Shuttle of the Absurd, Philly Edition

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments
A federal Homeowners Loan Corporation 1936 security map of Philadelphia showing redlining of lower income neighborhoods. Households and businesses in the red zones could not get mortgages or business loans.

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (March 28, 2017) — While preparing to fly home from Philadelphia last week, I briefly made the acquaintance of someone on a rental-car shuttle bus. I never got his name. He was sitting up front, in the passenger seat, a huge, broad-shouldered white dude of middle age in a blue blazer and buzz cut. The poor sap had a flight leaving in less than an hour, whereas I had plenty of time, so we commiserated over this inequity before eventually getting to the obligatory, “You headed out or headed home?” He, too, was headed home, to Cincinnati, after attending a “military justice convention” in southern New Jersey. Unbidden, he indicated that he couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

I asked him what he meant. With Clara in school at Penn, Sharon and I are spending our first-ever, legitimate leisure time in Philly and we’re frankly a sucker for its many charms. “It’s just so dirty here,” this guy said, adding that while Cincinnati has its own problems, “there are just so many homeless people here. It doesn’t feel safe.”

Doesn’t feel safe? “Like you feel when you’re on the south side of Chicago,” he added.

Well, this was all the code language I cared to exchange with this fellow — a 265-pound military justice professional who presumably has an understanding of actual war zones, but nevertheless is made uneasy by urban surroundings. More likely? The sensation of minority status, in a country one believes to be a “white” one, unsettles him.

This is where we are today, people. Rhetoric matters.

Redlining the American Mind

How does one avoid tying this guy’s attitude directly to a political candidate, and now a president, who talks incessantly about the “carnage” of American urban life? When he’s not talking about the bodily fear we should feel in the presence of brown people, be they Hispanic or Arab? For more than three years now he’s been trotting out this fear-mongering (as opposed to solutions) from a place of high visibility and authority. Seems to me it has colored the way a whole lot of white people view urban areas, people of color, homeless people, even the global universality that is urban grit and grime.

More likely, they’ve long felt this way all along and now feel emboldened to verbalize it.

The south side of Chicago reference was the kicker: Straight from Steve Bannon’s white nationalist gob to this guy’s ear, via Twitter and Fox News.

There are plenty of Philly folk who learn my daughter is an undergraduate at Penn and raise their eyebrows, as in “That’s not a great part of town… ” True enough and so much the better for it. You wanna live the entirety of your existence in some gentrified green zone, or perhaps a gated community in a lily-white suburb, or maybe some pastoral exurb where gangs of dangerous immigrants or urban toughs can’t find you?

Or do you want to get a decent cheese steak around the corner, or check out the Phillies at Citizens Park, or maybe hop on the SEPTA and go clubbing?

For me, and for Clara apparently, that’s an easy decision. Less so for large portions of Americans.

What’s the Root of White Fear?

There is no getting around the fact that Philly, like so many American cities, is largely segregated by race. We could get into the reasons why. Let’s start with redlining, the discriminatory and completely purposeful practice of fencing off areas where banks would avoid investments based on community demographics. It seems beyond churlish to further isolate black folks — and reflexively stereotype black life as hyper violent — when it’s exactly the predations of white power and race fear that ghettoized/marginalized this “demographic” in the first place.

It’s pretty obvious why 19th Century white southerners so feared violence and sexual predation from black folk: Those particular white folk recognized their own participation in the centuries-long perpetration of violence and sexual predation against black populations, before and after Emancipation. On some level, white Southerners were frightened of the payback they recognized was due them.

Seems to me a whole lotta white folk today are particularly frightened. They buy into Trump’s rhetoric all the more quickly, in part because they recognize — deep down in their historically rational subconscious — that their own white privilege/supremacy has been central to or complicit in a similar 21st century dynamic.

Too much of white America today (including our friend on the rental car bus) has developed a knee-jerk fear of all black males, most of it completely unwarranted. Then again, when you’ve been holding down or otherwise screwing a group of fellow citizens this long, this systematically — based on nothing but the color of their skin — it’s only rational to expect those people to retaliate in kind.

No Exemptions

No white person in America today is exempt from this phenomenon. The outgrowths of these cultural prejudices are inescapable. When I drove south on this trip, from the northern Philly suburbs to grab Clara one evening for dinner, one of my local friends advised that I avoid the famously traffic-choked I-76 corridor. So I took the surface roads, which took me right through the solidly African-American enclave of West Philly.

I got nothing of the menacing vibe my Cincinnati rental-bus friend got. It was nearly spring there in the Mid-Atlantic; folks were outside, porch-sitting, gossiping, working on their cars. As a Maine resident, I felt nothing but the thrill of warm weather. I drove through 20-25 blocks of this area with my windows down, doors unlocked, and never felt the least bit unsafe.

And yet… Because I don’t know my way around Philly particularly well, I knew that eventually I would pass over Market Street. When I did so, I‘d know where to go — vis a vis the Penn campus. At some point, headed south on 42nd Street, I saw a white guy with a backpack walking north. I’ll admit it: I thought to myself, “Okay. I must be getting close to Penn.” Sure enough, Market was two lights away.

No one is immune.

I’ve saved the best irony for last: When our military justice conventioneer was painting this sorry picture of Philadelphia, I couldn’t help but notice the shuttle driver, a black dude, nodding his head. Where I said nothing, our driver chimed right in: “Mmm-hmm. This place sure ain’t what it used to be…”

USMNT 2017: Mr. Federation Man — Just how bare is thy cupboard?

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
USMNT manager Bruce Arena in lighter times — with former L.A. Galaxy charge, David Beckham.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (March 22, 2017) — Sixty minutes into what remained of the March 15 match here in the Costa Rican capital, BeIN color commentator Thomas Rongen festered aloud at the visiting Americans’ inability to go forward. He rightly identified the problem in the center of midfield, where 29-year-old Michael Bradley dropped ever deeper and 35-year-old Jermaine Jones drifted even further into irrelevance. Rongen suggested that 2017 USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann needed to make a change — that inserting Sacha Kljestan was the best option to link up, in attacking fashion, with the troika of Bobby Wood, Jozy Altidore and Christian Pulisic.

Right then, I recognized the U.S. was doomed this night and Klinsi would soon be looking for work.

The USMNT went on to lose the match, 1-0. Rongen’s analysis had been spot on. But if Sacha Kljestan is your best midfield attacking option off the bench, one can reasonably argue the cupboard is more or less bare.

As it happened, the Federation relieved Klinsmann of his U.S Men‘s National Team duties the following Tuesday morning. L.A. Galaxy skipper Bruce Arena took his place.  And so, pointless and facing a win-at-all-costs game at home vs. Honduras this Friday night, March 24, U.S. Soccer finds itself at an unfamiliar crossroads.

Yeah, sure: the U.S. has once or twice stumbled or started slowly in Hexagonals past. But the U.S. finds itself in an altogether different situation in 2017.

Prior to 1990, the U.S. had never qualified for a modern World Cup. That signal success, after 40 years of utter failure, ushered in a new era of American soccer, one where qualification was a given. The challenge lay in determining a) how U.S. teams would inevitably ascend to the next echelon, to truly compete toe-to-toe with the best 12-15 teams on the planet; and b) who would lead them to this new place of relevance.

USMNT 2017: Fork in the Road

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to relevance.

For the first time ever, the USMNT lost the first two games of a Hexagonal qualifier. Not since 1990 — when another Euro, Lothar Osiander, gave way to another Yank, Bob Gansler — had the U.S. changed coaches in the middle of a qualification campaign. Yes, FIFA has pretty much guaranteed the U.S a spot at the World Cup Finals every four years, thanks to FIFA’s awarding 3.5 spots to just six Hex participants (thanks, Sepp!). 

Today we’ll need every last one of those 3.5 spots. In the meantime, we pick over the entrails of Klinsmann’s tenure. The German was in charge of the U-23s, too. Their failure to qualify for the last two Olympic tournaments is another blot on his resume. However, in looking for clues, explanations, blame and hope, let us not be coy.

The nations comprising The Hex have never been stronger. More important and relevant, this crop of senior U.S. players Klinsmann had to work with was neither young nor particularly talented. As such, we can’t honestly call their performance the last two summers and during the nascent 2018 CONCACAF Qualification Hexagonal “under achievement”.

I haven’t heard anyone suggest, in retrospect, that Klinsmann had, in pushing for European club experience or courting Euro talent with American bloodlines, ignored or failed to develop a pool of talented, USMNT-worthy domestic players. Frankly, I don’t think those players exist. That’s what makes this qualification such an anomalous throwback.

Since Arena’s hire, his familiarity with the domestic league has been mentioned with metronomic frequency. But I watch Major League Soccer. You watch MLS. We can agree there are no glaring omissions for which Klinsi must answer — or rather, which Arena can now run out as remedy… You think Dax McCarty was the answer and Klinsi just ignored him? You would perhaps prefer to have seen Darlington Nagby running the show in Costa Rica?

Klinsmann Was Never the Problem

The German may have “lost the locker room” in wake of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, but I don’t think we should go forward under any illusion that Klinsmann was the problem here. I have a stronger feeling that he was merely doing the best he could with a pool of players whose core is aging, whose younger options are largely not up to snuff, and whose successors — that oft-invoked golden generation of 20 year olds poised to assert themselves — simply isn’t in the offing.

That is the crossroads at which American soccer finds itself today.

And here’s another sobering point on the eve of these two crucial Hex matches (a loss in either one would make outright qualification a tall order indeed): The Americans Klinsmann fielded, and Arena will field, are only as good as they are on account of half the starting XI being wooed away from Germany by Klinsmann himself, which begs the question of whether that clearly rich Teutonic vein can be tapped going forward by just anyone.

Klinsi’ perfectly reasonable expectation that U.S. players seek regular gigs in the world’s best leagues has also come under major scrutiny since his firing, which is unfortunate because it’s a big, red, bulbous herring. Look around and scrutinize the attitudes of national team coaches serving all but the elite soccer nations. Klinsmann’s was not and is not a controversial position. Players become world class only by competing with the elite, day in and day out. We know this. Every national team coach outside Europe knows this.

And I’ve got news for you: Bradley, Jones, Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard and Altidore aren’t playing in MLS today because they want to be closer to their families, or they have some romantic responsibility to bolster the fortunes of our domestic league. Klinsmann had the misfortune of steering the U.S. ship at a time when all five of these core figures lost their value in Europe — because they were no longer good enough to command dollars or playing time there. If they could make the same money playing in France or the Netherlands, they’d be doing it.

What we saw in Costa Rica (and, to a lesser extent, in Columbus vs. Mexico in the Hexagonal opener) is demonstrable evidence that the old guard needs changing. I’m still fairly sanguine re. Arena’s ability to get this team to Russia, by hook or by crook. FIF has done all it can to make this happen. But that does not mitigate the larger issue — that the pool of international caliber U.S. players does not seem to be growing, here or abroad, in the manner we might expect from a world-top-15 footballing nation.

Hell, the current choices, save Mr. Pulisic, point to a discernable, troubling regression.

Few Birthrights in International Futbol

Bruce Arena was a far younger man in 2002, when he led the U.S. to its only World Cup quarterfinal, a 1-0 loss to Germany where only the unseen hand of Thorsten Frings separated our boys from overtime, penalty kicks and perhaps a place in the semifinal. Arena was 51 in 2002, just 6 years removed from the head coaching position at the University of Virginia (where he started out as a lacrosse assistant). Thereafter, on the strength of this idiosyncratic coaching background, his D.C. United teams proved the class of Major League Soccer — indeed, that’s why this former lax long-stick and soccer goalkeeper at Cornell came to be tapped as U.S. Men’s National Team coach, succeeding Steve Sampson after the debacle at France ’98.

Though it was a crushing quarterfinal defeat in South Korea, a mighty opportunity lost, 2002 made us forget about 1998. The showing in South Korea was surely yet another in a succession of high-water marks we had come to expect from American soccer. The Yanks had qualified for its first World Cup only 12 years before — a moment that surely marked the slow and steady brightening of American fortunes in the decades to come.

Today, the U.S. performance in 2002 is looking more and more like an anomaly, not another step forward non an inexorable rise.

U.S. soccer fans should perhaps start coming to grips with this — with what most of the footballing world has already come to know and accept: There are very few birthrights at the international level.

Look at Sweden. Every 20 years or so, the Swedes produce a generation that can compete for a place at the title-seeking table. In between they are also-rans and struggle to qualify for big tournaments.  Here is a country that has produced semifinalists and finalists, several world-class players by any measure, even coaches who are hired to lead the teams of other nations.

Can any of this be said of U.S. Soccer, 14 years after South Korea?

Generation Zero: One Cohort in a Long Game

I’m now researching/writing a book called Generation Zero: The Class of 1990 and the Birth of Modern American Soccer. It was indeed this cohort of young players — Harkes, Balboa, Meola, Ramos and Vermes, to name just a few — whose qualification for Italia ’90 changed the game here in America, forever. It paved the way for this new era of U.S. soccer we now enjoy, one where participation in the World Cup is routine, where the domestic league not only exists but builds new soccer-specific stadia to keep up with demand, where, in theory, our best young players are courted, vetted and bettered by clubs in top European leagues, where American plutocrats own iconic clubs like Liverpool FC and Manchester United, where three major networks fight over the rights to televise European, South American and major tournament games to a U.S. soccer audience.

I’m a member of Generation Zero myself. Bruce Murray once billeted in my house, and I in his. Take it from someone who remembers the wasteland that was American soccer in the post-NASL ‘80s: None of the above existed prior to 1990. It wasn’t even a part of our wildest dreams, frankly. The players who first qualified America for the World Cup made all this possible, then formed the core of the team that hosted the 1994 World Cup (something else, I’ve learned, that might not have taken place were it not for the Class of 1990).

But this cohort of pioneering U.S. players in Generation Zero created something else, something that does appear to be rising inexorably: a foundational fan base, upon which all of American soccer support now rests.

Again, with the 3.5 World Cup allotted to CONCACAF each quadrennial, FIFA has done its best to more or less guaranteed the U.S. will compete in every World Cup going forward. It’s highly likely that Arena will indeed get the job done. That is my most fervent hope, in fact.

But it’s high time we American soccer fans, in our every expanding numbers, get real about where we truly are as a footballing nation and what sort of exercise we’re engaged in here. It’s high time we dispensed with this “Will America win a World Cup by 2022, 2026 or 2030?” banter. Competing on the world stage is what we call “the long game”. Settle in, America. In world football, national team programs don’t compete for world titles merely because they set their minds to this goal and/or throw resources at it.

Only the Germans, Italians, Spanish and Argentinians can honestly enter each World Cup cycle believing they have a legitimate shot to win the whole ball of wax. Brazil, currently in crisis following the disaster of 2014, would make it five. France and the Netherlands are capable of winning a big tournament. Apparently Portugal is, too… Everyone else, the U.S. included, is hoping to build and/or luck into a golden generation of talent — then catch lightening in a bottle.

Generation Zero produced the first American cohort of talent good enough to qualify for a World Cup. It took 40 years to get that done, and it was “golden” only relative to all those previous generations of Americans who’d tried and failed. Right now, the 2002 USMNT roster may be closest thing to a truly Golden Generation this country has yet produced.

Klinsmann had promised to change all that, and we wanted to believe him. He offered grand plans to transform the way Americans played soccer on the international stage — by the sheer force of belief, and by influencing the way Americans played at all the various developmental levels. The plan was ambitious and almost credible. He did, after all,  have a hand in transforming an entrenched system in no less a world soccer power than Germany, from 2002-2006. And yet for all his efforts, we remain essentially the same soccer nation we were before he took the wheel, albeit with a few more German-Americans in the fold. We even have the same coach we had in 2006, one who knows how difficult it is to coach two consecutive World Cup cycles).Welcome to the big leagues, America. Adjust your sights as events warrant. Football on the world stage is hard.

Whither the Jelly Bean? The Perennial Easter Meditation

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
A Jar of Jelly Beans

NEW GLOUCESTER (March 14, 2017) — It was the best of times. It was the worst of times… This is how confection historians will judge the prevailing American jelly bean situation early in the 21st century.

When I was kid in the 1970s, jelly beans proved a particular obsession. Commercial confectioners didn’t pay this segment a whole lot of attention back then, but neither was it hard to find them on store shelves, all year long. As the millennium turned, candy makers/marketers resolved to treat them as seasonal items, available in bounty only the 6 weeks ahead of Easter (i.e., right now). When they do arrive on shelves today, they come thicker and faster, in an ever-expanding range of flavors, many inspired by tried-and-true candy genres never before associated with the jelly bean.

Easter seems as good a time as any to parse the jelly bean’s curious evolution. Like so many things through time (a handful of jelly beans, for example), such change has proved something of a mixed bag. Twenty years into the Internet Era, on the dual continua of bean innovation and availability, many would argue we have entered a golden age.

My mother and maternal grandfather were both jelly bean enthusiasts and, to the extent availability allowed, connoisseurs. I love all candy, but I embraced this legacy from a young age. Indeed, there was an inside joke my mother and I shared on this subject, though it wasn’t so much a joke as a cover for snobbery. Basically, we derided anything but first-class jelly beans as “inferior” and, more often than not, only pectin-style bean made the grade. If we might be gifted a bag, or I might bring some home — if they weren’t up to snuff in some way — we’d look at each other very gravely and pronounce them “inferior”.

Then we’d devour them all the same.

Pectin: The Key to Superior Jelly Beans

What makes a superior, pectin jelly bean? Canners and preppers commonly used as a natural thickening agent in jams and jellies. The first pectin available for purchase was derived from apples, which are naturally rich in this complex carbohydrate also found in the cell walls of plants. It keeps them rigid and helps to regulate the flow of water between cells. You’ll note that some plants, off the vine, begin to lose part of this complex carbohydrate as they age; apples left out too long get soft and mushy, as their pectin content diminishes. When apples are perfectly ripe, they have a firm and crisp texture, mainly due to the presence of pectin.

Chemically, I couldn’t detail what the addition of pectin does or is meant to achieve in the jelly bean-making process. I can only tell you what distinguishes the finished product. The inside of a pectin jelly bean is more taut than inferior beans —the kind purveyed by Brach’s all these years, for example. The candied shell of a pectin bean is also shinier and boasts more integrity than a regular/inferior jelly bean.

Many folks are familiar with jelly beans made by Brach’s. They’ve been around forever and can still be found, year round, in places like CVS and Walgreen’s. These are not pectin-style beans. Their insides are a bit mushy. Their coatings are dull and when you press two Brach’s jelly beans together, nose to nose, each sort of smushes into the other.

Russell Stover has made a quality pectin jelly bean for decades. When you press two Russell Stover beans together, nose to nose, one will inevitably prove stronger and simply burrow into the other. The weaker coating will crack and splinter into small but identifiable shards as the pectin coating gives way. This is no idle observation, by the way. I performed this critical testing for many years, as a youth. So the world might some day better distinguish one jelly bean genre from another.

The upshot: Pectin jelly beans provides a crisper, cleaner binging experience, in line with the role it plays in ripe apples and other natural fruits. In other words, it’s the mushiness of a non-pectin jelly bean, inside and outside your mouth, that renders it inferior.

Citrus Flavors Play Well Together

Flavor is another distinguishing factor, of course. Pectin jelly beans are traditionally and primarily citrus in nature, i.e. lemon (yellow), lime (green), cherry (red), grape (purple) and orange. Russell Stover threw in pineapple (white) and grapefruit (pink), to great effect — but not all pectin bean purveyors go for these options.

Some of these pectin assortments include licorice (black) and some do not. Russell Stover never went there, for example. Licorice jelly beans are divisive. Some people love the anise flavoring in this form, others hate it. Some like them it enough but don’t want to eat licorice jelly beans with any OTHER jelly beans, as they argue licorice or anise-flavored anything doesn’t really go well with anything else. I reside in this camp.

Back in the 1970s there were dozens of independent jelly bean makers, pectin and otherwise. Some of these subtly varied products appeared in stores ready-packaged in cellophane; some were offered in bulk, to be scooped out, weighed, priced and dropped into small paper bags. These various and sundry assortments all tasted a bit different. There was no uniformity, adding nuance to the “inferior/superior” judgment.

But I think this much can be said without fear of reprisal: The primary draw of pectin jelly beans isn’t necessarily the coating, but rather that all those citrus flavors go well together. You can grab a handful and not worry about one flavor not “working” with another —save the licorice issue, which is subject to taste. Think about Skittles: Would they work if one was obliged to pluck out the black ones, or grab only those flavors that complemented each other? Not hardly. Think about any proper trail mix: It’s the ensemble of tastes that makes every handful work.

The Availability Quotient

Back in the day, Russell Stover jelly beans were solid pectin entries boasting the added allure of being available broadly. However, I remember the very best jelly beans being the diverse pectin varieties one found in simple, cellophane packets at specialty candy emporia, places like Haven’s today — Maine-owner confectioner that does a pretty darned good pectin jelly bean, licorice included. Then there was Bailey’s, an upscale ice cream and confection shop in Wellesley, Mass., where I grew up.

Bailey’s was quite a place, a proper candy shop and ice cream parlor with small, marble table tops and wrought iron chairs — the stuff of nostalgic confection fantasy. It’s long gone now but the ice cream was top notch (never soft-serve) and the candy first-rate, featured as it was behind a giant, glass-faced display case that ran the entire width of the store. It was one of those places where you stepped up into the establishment from the street, which added to its class somehow, along with the small, marble-top tables served by rounded, wrought-iron chairs. When you had a bit of cash, this was the place to get superior jelly beans, in addition to fine chocolates, traditional ice cream sodas and sundaes.

The other end of the spectrum was a plastic bag of Brach’s jelly beans, which you could find just about anywhere, despite their inherent inferiority. Somewhere in between were the bulk beans we bought at the Dandy Lion in downtown Wellesley Hills, or candy shop located in the Wellesley College student union, The Schneider Center. This place was only a 5-minute bike ride from my house and many a confection run was made to campus for jelly beans in particular — scooped from a large jar, weighed out and poured into a small paper bag.

There were other jelly bean-like products out there on the market at this time: Mike & Ike, essentially elongated, low-grade, often-stale pectin jelly beans that came in a box; Good ‘n Plenty, the all-licorice cousins to Mike & Ike; Brach’s offered a “spiced” version of its jelly beans (never a favorite of mine); and then there were Skittles, which debuted in the U.S. in 1979. These were and remain undoubtedly jelly bean-esque but their shape, thicker pectin shells and chewier insides set them apart. I’m not sure anyone dislikes Skittles, but it’d be a stretch to call them “jelly beans”.

Enter the Jelly Belly

The late 1970s brought radical change to the jelly bean universe, not necessarily  for the better. Jelly Bellies debuted in 1976, but I wasn’t aware of them until I went off to college in 1982.

Like Skittles, Jelly Bellies were, without a doubt, an innovation. These were small, quality pectin specimens whose manufacturers pioneered the selling of beans in a wide array of fantastical flavors. At first the novelty of a buttered popcorn- or peppermint stick-flavored jelly bean might have seemed inviting and fun. Some varieties really worked (watermelon) while others most assuredly did not (bubble gum). However, it’s difficult not to applaud the creativity of this completely new take on the milieu. If I’m not mistaken, Jelly Bellies also pioneered the flavoring of both the candy coating and the jelly within (a technique borrowed from Skittles perhaps). This provided a very strong taste the likes of which one needed, presumably, to pull off something like a Dr. Pepper jelly bean. One cannot hope to do such a thing, convincingly, via a flavored coating alone.

The problem came, it says here, when one tried to eat a sour green apple Jelly Belly as part of a handful that includes others flavored of buttered popcorn, margarita, strawberry cheesecake, chili mango and Dr. Pepper. As we were prone to intone during the 1980s, “Gag me.” No spoon was required. In specialty stores one could scoop out and buy a bag of entirely one flavor, or one could buy/mix them according to personal taste — for lemon drop and raspberry surely do go well together.

Alas and all too often, Jelly Bellies were purchased —and continue to be packaged for broad commercial sale— in pre-packaged bags where a dozen different flavors are represented. Sorry, but that’s just too many disparate flavors to be consumed by the handful, the way one is meant to eat jelly beans — by grabbing a bunch and popping 2-3 at time, confident that no matter which 2-3 you randomly pop, they will work together on a flavor-compatibility level.

Sadly, because they so often don’t work together on this level, one is obliged to eat Jelly Bellies individually, savoring those tastes Jelly Belly does well and cursing the rest. Jelly beans, in my view, were not meant to be consumed in this anal-retentive fashion. It’s just not practical.

I must be alone in this, or part of a distinct minority, for Jelly Bellies proved so popular that nearly all the independently manufactured pectin varieties disappeared over the next two decades. Russell Stover has hung in there, but for years starting in the mid-1980s, I would go into candy shops and scan the dozens of clear-plastic, bulk-Jelly Belly receptacles seeking a citrus-only mix of pectin varieties — or the independently produced cellophane packets of yore. No dice. They weren’t there, either on account of low demand or competitive pressures from Jelly Belly, whose corporate overlords might well have leveraged their popularity to insist that stores only carry its product.

A Millennial Change in Marketing

I’m not exactly sure when the game changed, once again. Methinks it was on or around the millennium, as candy makers began to leverage their various brands (and tastes) by putting them to work in divergent confectionary contexts. I can’t prove it, but I think Reese’s Pieces pioneered this dynamic — deftly rendering the taste of a peanut butter cup in M&M form. Yes, this approach is derivative, but in many cases — the Snickers Ice Cream Bar, for example — it really works.

A further, related development took hold in the early 21st century: Candy purveyors began to prioritize limited-edition sales — a strategy I recognize but don’t completely understand. Suffice to say, in many cases candy mongers today don’t strive to sell us a particular candy all year long, forever. Much of this dynamic is seasonally driven. For example, Corporate Candy is content to distribute jelly beans only on or around Easter, once the Valentine’s Day season has conclude. Surely you’ve recognized other examples of genre-twisting and specialty packaging that come and go in concert with Christmas, Fourth of July, Halloween, etc.

Other limited-edition offerings would appear to arrive in stores and disappear quite randomly: the dark chocolate Kit Kat and the Pina Colada Almond Joy, for example. Some of these innovations must test or sell particularly well, because they remain consistently available (the dark chocolate Milky Way is frankly a huge improvement on the original; following its limited-edition introduction, it’s now available 7/24/365). Others show up in some special-offer bin for a time, only to disappear a week later without a trace.

As confounded as I am by the inner workings of this phenomenon — and loath to extoll the virtues of a St. Patrick’s Day-inspired mint Three Musketeers — I’m here to tell you the jelly bean segment has greatly benefited from this confluence of candy marketing initiatives. We may not see all these new entries on store shelves but for a few weeks each year, as winter segues to spring. But they are welcome additions to a genre too long starved of innovation and hamstrung by the misguided Jelly Belly Syndrome. To wit:

New jelly bean innovation

Starburst Jelly Beans — A prime example of a distinct candy taste brilliantly adapted to the jelly bean genre. Like Jelly Bellies, Starburst beans use both a flavored center and flavored shell to maximize taste. Tart and admirably pectin in composition, they trade on the winning Starburst flavor spectrum while providing the ability to eat by the handful — every flavor goes with the others. Indeed, this is a step up from Starburst chews, whose squares are rarely eaten together. There’s too much unwrapping and chewy mass for that exercise. One might not have realized that all the Starburst flavors work so well together, but they do. Oh they do.

Jolly Rancher Jelly Beans — There’s nothing quite like the taste of a Jolly Rancher, though it’s hard to describe precisely what distinguishes its essence from other hard candies. There was something distinctive about Hawaiian Punch that is similarly hard to pin down. Whatever it is, this distillate has been successfully rendered in jelly bean form, and an appreciative public applauds. JR’s signature green apple and watermelon tastes perform exceedingly well according to the handful test.

Lifesaver Jelly Beans — A let down, but this should come as no surprise. Lifesavers were considered a banal, has-been candy choice as far back as 1975. Even 35 years ago, they were seen as something one’s grandparents might prefer. Nostalgia is surely another arrow in the candy- and snack-marketing quiver these days, but I’d bet that Lifesavers are simply too far gone, their fans too many deceased, to save the brand and its jelly bean incarnation.

Sweet Tart Jelly Beans — Here was an entry that really got me thinking about how sophisticated and nostalgia-driven these cross-over jelly beans had lately become. Everyone loves a Sweet Tart, and coating a jelly bean with its essence has proved a master stroke. These are definitely not pectin style beans; the coating is more cakey/chalky, as a Sweet Tart should be. But they pass the handful test and taste like no other jelly bean out there.

I’m surely missing some of the new beans on shelves this Easter season, though I’ve personally seen entries from Laffy Taffy, Black Forest (organic), Welch’s, Just Born, Gimbals (real fruit juice!), Unicorn Poop, Mike & Ike (who have very much upped their game since 1974), SourPatch, Swedish Fish and Nerds. A recent version of the Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, inspired by the Harry Potter series, features flavors described as “earwax, dirt, pepper, and vomit.” As polarizing as it’s been within the larger jelly bean culture, Jelly Belly also continues to innovate: On Amazon, I see new offerings ranging from the sublime, SunKist Citrus Mix, to the ridiculous — Krispy Kreme, pancakes & maple syrup, and “Sport Beans” loaded with “energizers”. Even Brach’s has been obliged to modernize and expand its product line with pectin offerings; they insist on calling these and all their products in this category Jelly Bird Eggs.

I’m not sure when the jelly bean universe has ever been so wide, and I’m intrigued by some of the larger questions begged by this bounty. For example, what distinguishes a Mike & Ike from a Mike & Ike jelly bean exactly? Shape? Some canny young GenZer is probably working up his/her/their doctoral dissertation on this subject right now. Here’s hoping that marketers/manufacturers continue to plumb these depths, as well, trading on different aspects of the candy culture, and the culture at large, to better devise and sell product.

Jelly Beans on Demand

For a time, none of this innovation, academic or commercial, worked effectively toward solving the seasonal-availability issue. It remained damned difficult to find even Russell Stover jelly beans on store shelves after April 15 or prior to February 15.

The key phrase here, as we dash headlong into the confectionary future, is “on store shelves”. Who needs shelves in the Internet Age?

A few years back I got the strong urge for some proper jelly beans, off season. Having been foiled, again, by several Russell Stover store displays that featured nothing but chocolates and such, I went online. Turns out one can easily order Russell Stover beans direct from the factory. So I ordered a few bags and enjoyed them 2-3 blissful weeks. Just be sure not to schedule these binges within 2-3 of a blood draw, lest you hazard the Type II Diabetes lecture. True story: I moved my annual physical and its associated blood-sugar tests to July, from April, so Easter would not skew such results.

Suffice to say, if you want any sort of jelly bean on the market today, odds are good you can procure them online, direct from the manufacturer or via mass retailers like Amazon. This is dangerous for those, like me, who love jelly beans and do combat low-grade blood-sugar issues. But this development has effectively solved the seasonal-availability issue — for those who manage a serious jelly bean jones.

Internet retail has changed the way we shop for most everything, decimating brick-and-mortar storefronts and retail employment rolls worldwide. One hesitates to hold up jelly bean availability as any sort of silver lining. However, high-quality beans, in expanding varieties, essentially on demand, delivered straight to my door? How do we not call that progress?

Postscript, June 2026

In the weeks leading up to Easter 2024, I read somewhere that Russell Stover would no longer produce its pectin jelly bean product. This, as you might imagine, landed like physical blow. Upon investigation, I learned that the Vermont Country Store had purchased the entire existing stock of jelly beans from the derelict manufacturer. An immediate mail order was placed. Two bags arrived 3-5 days later.

By March 2025, when I checked back, the VCS stock had been exhausted apparently. They were hawking their own jelly beans and I couldn’t go there — not until a suitable period of mourning had elapsed. In confirming the timing of these post-Russell Stover developments, I noticed a Facebook post bemoaning the pending loss of these standard-bearing beans. One woman assured the thread that See’s Candy makes a good jelly bean. Ten minutes later (at this writing), three bags are on their way…

The Only Way to Fly: Playing Golf in Scotland, by Rail
The estimable Balgownie Course at Royal Aberdeen GC

The Only Way to Fly: Playing Golf in Scotland, by Rail

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
St. Andrews poster
This piece was published in LINKS Magazine in fall of 2005. I returned to Aberdeen by train, by way of Dornoch, as recently as 2025. It remains the only way to fly…

WHEN GOLF was first conceived, participants arrived at the course by foot or on horseback, or, if the company was honourable enough, by carriage. For this reason, the game remained for centuries a parochial, largely Scottish pursuit. In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, all of British culture was transformed by an industrial capacity that among other things launched a transportation revolution. Golf in Scotland was forever changed.

In particular, completion of the Forth Rail Bridge, in 1890, widely exposed the bounty of Scottish links courses for the first time — to the rest of newly mobile Britain and ultimately the world, which still marvels. The advent of train travel did something else truly marvelous: It spurred the development of “new” Scottish links built specifically to accommodate the rail-enabled.

Golf may not have been formulated with trains in mind but the idea and practice of “golf by rail” shaped and grew the game during the late 19th century, its first true boom period, an age we now drape with garlands like “golden”, “timeless” and “classic”. The railway made the game what it was, what it remains today in the minds of many modern golf travelers. Without this transformation, the romantic images we so idealize — the ones we still travel to Scotland to find — might never have materialized.

Indeed, the very idea of golf travel was born in this Victorian Era. By 1890, the railways had cozied up to several superb, existing links in the Scottish lowlands. This happy coincidence also made sense: Rail connected population centers, which lay mainly along the coast, close to sea level where terrain was flattest and bed construction easiest. Just a short walk from these new “centre city” train stations lay the common lands, the linksland where, for example, East Lothian,clubs like North Berwick, Muirfield and Gullane already resided. Today they remain as practical to play by train as they did in the 19th century — which is to say, perfectly practical for golfers with a sense of history and adventure.

Golf in Scotland: Feeding the Faithful

The passage of time has obscured the vital role trains played in golf’s growth and mythology. The Forth Rail Bridge, the world’s first steel span over a major British riverway, made this travel scenario a practical reality in Fife, revealing the birthplace of golf to the game’s myriad new zealots. “As the train neared St. Andrews and I noted the gradually increasing numbers of the faithful,” wrote A.W. Tillinghast on his first trip to “that Mecca for golfers”, in 1895. “I marveled that the popularity of the ancient game had continued, unabated throughout the centuries.”

The new line Tillinghast had taken north out of Edinburgh served those adherents. It’s likely that he traveled north along Fife’s coastal route, which connected the links of Leven, Lundin, Elie, Crail and St. Andrews like pearls along a double-railed chain, to borrow and adapt a phrase. This development may appear divinely inspired, but it was merely a logical-but-happy byproduct of the new transportation revolution — a phenomenon that, in Fife, proved all too fleeting.

Soon after Tilly’s visit, the Firth of Tay separating St. Andrews from the Tayside and Grampian regions had its own rail bridge and even more trains sped north — past Scotscraig, Monifieth and Montrose to the superb links at Royal Aberdeen and neighboring Murcar.

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Bowie’s Impact & Departure Still Sinking In

Bowie’s Impact & Departure Still Sinking In

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
Alladin Sane redux

AUBURN, Maine (Feb. 15, 2017) — David Bowie was introduced to me via my older sister. Janet brought home Hunky Dory at some point late in the Nixon Administration and when she wasn’t playing it to death, I played it to death. In truth I hardly ever bothered with Side 2 because that’s how my barely juvenile musical mind operated at the time. Side 1 had everything I thought I needed: the radio song, “Changes”; a screamer that Janet and I used to goof on together during car trips (“Oh, You Pretty Things”); and my favorite track, the always haunting and beautiful “Life on Mars”. Once I got to college and lived in close quarters with a more fully developed Bowie enthusiast/savant, Dennis Carboni, I would learn that Side 2 wasn’t just superb (“Song for Bob Dylan”, “Andy Warhol”) but indicative of Bowie’s genre-busting album and persona to come (“Queen Bitch”).

[I wouldn’t dream of posting anything regarding Bowie without Dennis’ input. His annotative comments appear below, bolded and bracketed.]

It’s been more than a year since Dennis and I spoke of this and many other things the Tuesday following Bowie’s death, in January 2016. He confirmed what I remember us discussing all those years ago, in the wee hours, confined only by the sterile cinderblock walls of our codependent dorm lives. Bowie wasn’t just consistently 2-3 years ahead of every other rock ‘n’ roll artist in terms of musical direction and fashion sense. He typically hinted at his next departure on the back end (Side 2) of his previous album.

[I like how you wrote, “Dennis and I spoke of this and many other things,” which recalls the lyric, We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when — from “The Man Who Sold The World.”]

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Bowie’s career didn’t begin with Space Oddity in 1969. He’d been around since 1965, when this shot was taken. A reminder that icons we associate with a particular decade didn’t arrive fully formed from the brow of Zeus.

On the generally ethereal Hunky Dory, that clue was, of course, the propulsive and utterly sublime “Queen Bitch”, which heralded the coming of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, one of the great, pure rock (and proto-punk) albums of the decade. To say that Ziggy himself was one of the great “roles” played by any rocker of the period is not necessary, for no one else even attempted this sort of serial shape-shifting back then. Bowie turned this trick 4-5 times throughout the decade — hippie folkster to Ziggy to glam rocker to blue-eyed soul man to Thin White Duke — and competed in this regard only with himself.

[I’ve been reading the blog, “Pushing Ahead of the Dame.” You may know it, but check it out if you don’t. It’s fascinating. Yes, “Queen Bitch” is perfect because it starts with the acoustic guitar C-G-F progression à la Hunky Dory, then switches right to an electric C-G-F à la Ziggy.]

My sister didn’t own the Ziggy album. Indeed, while I knew several cuts well (from FM radio play) I wouldn’t fully absorb it until the early 1980s. She did, however, possess one more Bowie LP: David Live, Bowie’s first official concert release where, once again, he shows us a transition in the making: from the hard-edged glam of Diamond Dogs to the Philly soul of Young Americans. I am not ashamed to admit that I love this particular Bowie period, this dalliance in what he later, somewhat ambivalently referred to as “plastic soul”.

It does shame me to admit, however, that until I was 12-13 years old, I thought this dude’s name was David Live. Indeed, he looked and sounded so different from the Hunky Dory-era Bowie, I thought they were two different guys.

David Bowie as Cultural Touchstone

Dennis Carboni, better known by our particular cohort simply as The Bone, arrived at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., with several well developed musical obsessions. We didn’t bond over them all. I was as confounded/repulsed by The Human League as he was by Neil Young. But we did find common ground in ELO and Steely Dan — and it was through him that I learned to love and appreciate Bowie, and Prince. Part of the reason I was so drawn to these artists was indeed The Bone’s singular, boundless and utterly guileless enthusiasm & advocacy. It wasn’t enough for Dennis to know every song on every album, to know who played each instrument on each track. This was the level of his relatively casual Steely Dan obsession, for example.

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“Thin White Duke” Bowie, an image taken from the same session that produced the cover for the ubiquitous ChangesOne album.

The Bone took it up several notches for Bowie, more or less patterning his own persona, physical presentation and style on the Thin White Duke and Berlin Bowies of the late 1970s — the David Bowie of Station to Station, Low, Lodger and Scary Monsters. These albums, these personae had inspired Dennis to his hair like Bowie did during his famous 1979 Saturday Night Live appearance, wherein he performed “Boys Keep Swinging”, “TVC15”, “The Man Who Sold the World”. It meant selling his stereo to buy a sewing machine, so he might properly peg his jeans — often installing zippers to turn this trick. It meant shaving his legs, an act that mystified fellow jocks on the track and football teams at staid Orville H. Platt High School in Meriden, Conn. Such acts stood out even at notoriously boho Wesleyan.

It goes without saying that Dennis owned every last bit of vinyl produced by Bowie through 1982, when we all showed up in Middletown as freshmen. And, for the record, he was free to sell his stereo because his roommate had a better one.

Through Dennis I came to know each Bowie album intimately. For example, over a period of weeks our freshman year, Dennis chaperoned my close listening of Pin Ups, Bowie’s beguiling album of ‘60s covers, issued in 1973 (we loved it; Rolling Stone hated it). Much has been written these past few weeks about the generosity of Bowie’s artistic spirit and he did collaborate with, write songs for, and serve as commercial and artistic patron to so many: Mott the Hoople, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed… And so it made sense that Bowie, on Pin Ups, would shout out to the Yardbirds, Them, early Pink Floyd and several more influences from his ‘60s evolution — when Bowie was not some callow teen but leader of his own folky band.

Yet even so: Who takes time between the triumphs of Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs to put out an entire album of covers? With Twiggy on the cover alongside him?

The coolest thing about Pin Ups, however — or so I learned from The Bone — was Bowie’s cover of The Who’s “I Can’t Explain”. This was the age of turntables, of course, and Dennis revealed to me that this track could be played as a dirge, at the standard 33 rpm, or as a piece of pristine proto-punk when one simply toggled the turntable to 45 rpm. That blew my mind: Best secret vinyl ruse since the Paul is Dead “campaign”.

[I gave all my Bowie vinyl to my sister. I’m an idiot. I know. Without the vinyl, I wasn’t able to re-hear the amazing 33@45 “I Can’t Explain”, so I just installed the 45rpm app and listened to it on iPhone. Memories came back strong!]

Or Heroic Nights and Ubiquitous Compilations

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Come the following academic year, 1983-84, I had moved off campus, to 114 High St., while Dennis and perennial roommate/stereo sugar daddy Dave Rose made house in a different double somewhere in the miasma of late-60s, brutalist dorm architecture that was (and remains) Butterfield C. It was here one night, sometime during our sophomore year, that I popped over unannounced — that’s what people did back in the pre-mobile age —only to find the lights down and “Heroes”, the single, playing on the stereo.

Rose was operating a baby spot, wherein The Bone — effectively bathed but darkly clad in coat and tie ­— could be seen mimicking Bowie’s expressions and hand-gestures from the Heroes album cover. This went on for some time; such was the power of the kooky, spot-on spectacle. No photographic record exist. Such was the age we occupied at the time. Today we’d havde captured everthing video and, by now, achieved the rank of Internet Sensation.

[I’m glad you have these memories; it feels so good to hear these things that happened… I know it was me, but I just didn’t store the memories well enough. They come back when you trigger them. Funnily, for me it’s easier to remember things like eating pancakes (or Tex-Mex stuff?) and listening to Hall & Oates’ H2O down at your place on High Street.]

Having spent the better part of my freshman year boning up, as it were, on the complete Bowie catalogue, I was in a position to turn up my nose at a few things: The first was Changes One, a compilation, Bowie’s first, released in 1976. At Wesleyan, I’d estimate this album was a mainstay in 75 percent of the record collections I happened upon. As ever, however, the “best of” route proved a dangerous step on the path toward self-administered down-dumbing. Because Changes One merely scratched the surface of Bowie’s enormous appeal. I took to evangelizing my peers to hit the Princeton Record Exchange — a traveling music flea market that showed up on campus twice a year selling perfectly good used vinyl for 10-25 cents a pop — to properly fill out their Bowie collections.

A Recession from Popular Influence

In time, I’d also turn up my nose at what many consider Bowie’s last “influential” album. Let’s Dance hit in the spring of 1983. It featured some good quasi-pop songs, including a few (the title track, “China Girl”, “Modern Love”) that garnered serious “radio play,” a term that had recently been expanded to include “video” play on the nascent MTV.

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The ’80s were tough on everyone. See here the blown-dry, bleached-blond, Let’s Dance-era Bowie.

Bowie toured in support of the album and I had the pleasure of seeing him at Schaefer Stadium along with 60,000 others in the fall of 1983 — my very first stadium show. David live would prove magnificent in a pale-yellow, double-breasted linen suit. Studio Master? Not only. He held the audience in his palm by dint of a prowling, feline stage persona, these new hits, and two dozen further samplings from that massive catalogue of his.

Yet his previous decade of prolific hit-making, risk-taking and trail-blazing would ultimately prove the rub when it came to Let’s Dance, not to mention the dozen or so albums Bowie issued thereafter: They didn’t measure up. In the immediate sense, Let’s Dance followed a run of albums that was nothing short of spectacular: Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger and Scary Monsters are masterpieces all, each utterly unique and 2-3 years ahead of would-be tastes. Thanks to Bowie’s seamless transition to the video format, Let’s Dance sold well and kept the dream alive, as it were. But artistically, it was nothing terribly special — indeed, it veered dangerously close to pop, something Bowie always hovered above.

In the longer term, for most all of us (including professional tastemakers these last 30 years), Let’s Dance would prove Bowie’s last true hurrah. He continued to issue a diverse collection of albums. I particularly liked the IDEA of his simply being part of a band (Tin Machine, 1988-92) though he three albums it produced (two studio, one live) didn’t moved me much.

[Nothing to add here apart from the fact that I love Let’s Dance, even though I know the “rock” critics do not. I do think Bowie has been somewhat relevant of late, in both 2013 and 2016. But that may be, sadly, because first he returned after a decade away (issuing Next Day, a powerful album) and then released the greatest final statement (Blackstar) in the history of rock.]

Bowie Ruled the post-Beatles World

Many of the retrospectives and obituaries I’ve read since Bowie’s January passing hint at this last point of contention: that while he assiduously avoided repeating himself — and the cynical formulas that would have sold out once-a-decade nostalgia tours, à la The Rolling Stones — Bowie’s cultural relevance tapered off markedly following Let’s Dance.

While this observation is undeniably true, it does gloss over the fact that from 1971 to 1983, Bowie ruled the post-Beatles world. And no one in the rock ‘n’ roll era, not even the Fab Four, was ever so consistently mode-shattering and commercially popular, over such a long period of time. We can throw straight out the window any further comparisons to the Stones, Zep, REM or any other “bands” — for these were collections of talents, while Bowie was just one man. He proved an individual who assembled bands, looks, sounds and trends pretty much on his own. No individual can claim such an artistically varied, unfailingly daring but still popular run of form.

Dylan? Yeah, he went electric and did a country album. But he shifted shape hardly at all in terms of persona. The only individual who has even attempted this sort of long-term trick is Prince, who managed 6-7 years of arguably comparable output — and sexual non-conformity — before eventually bowing under the pressure.

[Do Michael Jackson or Madonna merit mention?]

Only a fleeting one, you Bone. MJ was a child star, then a full-blown pop icon on the strength of two albums (Off the Wall, Thriller) before riding out his days as a physical, commercial and emotional oddity — not an artist or even a reliable popsmith. Madonna had the shape-shifting down but not 1/10th Bowie’s talent or vision. Lady Gaga works in this space but managed just 2-3 years of relevance. Now she’s singing the national anthem at Super Bowls.

Bowie turned this very difficult trick for 12 years, all the while fostering the work of others, all the while pushing the popular envelope, not just in music but in film and fashion. Indeed, no one in the history of rock ‘n’ roll was so “mainstream” successful while simultaneously inhabiting the avant-garde.

[Are critics afraid to speak of this? Do they think they are belittling all the other artists if they mention the concept you discuss? It’s a perfect closing.]

heroic bowie
Heroes-era Bowie

The Man Understood Exits

We’re not quite done: In the 2-3 weeks following Bowie’s death, the music and fan communities issued a sustained outpouring of affection for the man, his music, that enduring commitment to the avant-garde, and his basic humanity. Amazinglly, the latter quality never did get lost amid the trying-on of so many on-stage, public personae. To me, a pair of paeans stood out.

The first was an 18-minute podcast segment produced by The New Yorker, wherein reporter Sarah Larson sat with a fellow from the techno-jazz ensemble that backed Bowie on his last album, Blackstar, issued just weeks before his death. The story of their meeting up is interesting enough on its own: Apparently Bowie wanted to do a jazz-inspired album and anonymously scouted these guys at a couple gotham clubs. He floated the idea of this project via email. Utterly gobsmacked, the band agreed. Bowie then collaborated on the recording without the slightest trace of ego — never mentioning to his new mates that he was terminally ill, for example.

Near the end of the pod segment, Larson asked the saxophonist, Donny McCaslin, whether he’d listened to Blackstar since Bowie’s passing. Twenty seconds of dead air ensued, as the poor bastard tried to gather himself. No, not yet.

The second was a BBC documentary that aired in 2019 on PBS called “Five Years”, where the filmmakers detail these astounding musical and theatrical transitions Bowie authored at the peak of his powers. I can’t recommend these 90 minutes highly enough, as they encapsulates and confirm much of what I describe above, in far greater detail. They also deploy Bowie’s own words, those of his various collaborators, and an amazing collection of period images, sound and video — 75 percent of which I had never before seen or heard.

Bowie himself makes the pivotal point: He really didn’t see himself as a rock ‘n roll star, more an actor who takes on a role, immerses himself therein, then discards it for the next one.

That sentiment seemed to me spot on, though we’ve barely touched on the man’s film work, which also fits neatly into this continuum. Still, fixating on this idea too rigidly does risk our diminishing the incredible body of musical work that grew out of this role-playing — a catalogue that never felt derivative of itself, that was often popular but only rarely veered into “pop”. King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, a featured guitarist on Heroes and Scary Monsters, had some really cogent things to say in Five Years about the making of those two albums, and Bowie’s music in general. He greatly appreciated the freedom he was granted to spin his twisting, screeching guitar riffs, adding what he considered elements of “danger” to otherwise straightforward melodies. Listen to a track from Scary Monsters like Fashion or It’s No Game. You’ll understand what Fripp means.

This documentary was the first time I’d ever seen Fripp speak on camera. He comes off like an avuncular but highly mischievous university semiotics professor, one who just happens to be an aging guitar god/visionary. He points out that Bowie had a genius for using scatalogical things like a Fripp guitar lead — or broadly provocative themes like androgyny, race-mixing, fascism and drug use — to purposely unsettle the listener.

In the doc, Fripp amplifies the point, explaining that it’s precisely this element of menace that separates mere pop from “rock ‘n roll”. The Brit allows that idea to hang there for a moment before sitting up a bit straighter in his chair and adjusting his gaze to look more or less straight into the camera. Lifting an eyebrow ever so slightly, Fripp explains what that danger truly means to the listener: “It means, you might get fucked.”

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Baronets & Collieries: Exploring Beau Desert, Fowler’s Unsung Heathland Gem

Baronets & Collieries: Exploring Beau Desert, Fowler’s Unsung Heathland Gem

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments
Herbert Fowler heathland
This story appeared in the February 2002 issue of LINKS Magazine. A shorter version posted in 2011 can be found here. I stumbled upon Beau Desert on assignment for GOLF Magazine — researching one of those “where to play when attending a nearby tournament” stories — in this case, Birmingham, when attending the 2002 Ryder Cup at the Belfry. I arranged a game at swank Little Aston but everyone in the know, on the ground, told me Beau Desert was way better. They were right.

HAZEL SLADE, Staffordshire (Sept. 13, 2001) — Herbert Fowler is one of those architects whose name, curiously, isn’t readily attached to the many great golf courses he laid out and/or substantially retooled. Cruden Bay? That’s a Fowler. Royal North Devon? Fowler’s fingerprints are all over this west country antique. Indeed, his renovation of the Old Tom Morris original (a.k.a. Westward Ho!) fairly well accounts for the course we know today.

This lack of name recognition begins to explain why a venue like Beau Desert Golf Club, which Fowler designed nearly 100 years ago in the Staffordshire hamlet of Hazel Slade for the Sixth Marquess of Anglesey, rings few bells. Yet a better heathland course golfers are unlikely to come across, as indeed many have not.

For his own part, The Marquess (née Charles Henry Alexander Paget) recognized immediately that Fowler had created something extraordinary on his Beaudesert estate. Upon the layout’s completion in 1913, Paget whisked Fowler off to the family’s “other” ancestral estate at Plas Newydd on the Welsh island of Anglesey. There the architect laid out a second course for the Marquess, Bull Bay GC, another sterling Fowler product you’ve probably never heard of.

The majority of Fowler’s brilliant work resides in his native England, but he did get around. Fowler was the man who transformed a ho-hum par-4 at Pebble Beach into one of golf’s most heroic, par-5 finishing holes. His Cape Cod design at Eastward Ho! — whose peculiar moniker now makes perfect, book-ending sense — is an old-world delight. Fowler also refurbished the ancient Welsh links at Aberdovey where venerated golf writer Bernard Darwin learned the game and played all his life.

Fowler Beau Desert
Herbert Fowler

Darwin would complete the Fowler circle by eventually visiting Beau Desert’s 160 acres of elevated, exposed ground some 25 miles north of Birmingham. Afterward he asserted that, “Here might be one of the very best of courses, for the turf is excellent and there is a flavour of Gleneagles about it. It stands high and is pleasanter in hot weather than cold, for the wind can blow there with penetrating shrewdness.”

The Ryder Cup may have been contested nearby, at The Belfry; Little Aston may be the region’s most fashionable golfing address. But the finest course in this part of England is Beau Desert. And yes, Herbert Fowler designed it.

Beau Desert: “Beautiful Wild Place”

If you believe folks too often misapply the term “links” (and they do), “heathland” has proved the source of even greater misunderstanding. To grasp the qualities of heathland golf, think links. The soil is similarly sandy — only inland, upland and very much bared to the elements. Walton Heath is a celebrated prototype (Fowler did that one, too) and Beau Desert (www.bdgc.co.uk) is a worthy sister, laid out on the once treeless heath known as Cannock Chase.

It’s not treeless any longer, of course. Many heathland tracks, even the very best ones, haven’t survived to the present day unchanged. Not by a long shot. After decades of tree growth, most heathland designs don’t look anything like they did immediately post construction. What’s more, many tree-infested heathland courses not only look but play very differently, as they’ve become veritable parkland hybrids.

But some still play as a heathland course should and Beau Desert is one of these. Its trees are numerous but, in the main, they merely frame the broad, menacing rough areas that, in turn frame generous fairways. If one could reach them, the trees that loosely border the magnificently blind, Himalayan 15th would prove preferable to the rough. This mindset, this value system is another sure sign you’re playing a heathland layout.

The Old Course at Walton Heath was Fowler’s very first design job, one he secured only because his brother-in-law was an investor. Yet Fowler proved a quick study. A world-class cricketer, he was 35, for example, when he first took up the game of golf; within two years he played off scratch. Walton Heath was his first foray into golf course architecture and he nevertheless produced one of the world’s great layouts; the New Course, also Fowler’s work, is no slouch either.

Why Fowler’s name doesn’t roll off the tongue alongside that of Morris, Mackenzie or even Colt is a mystery. He was certainly in their class. After all, this was the man who would go on to design both 18s at Saunton and another pair of superb courses at The Berkshire. This was the fellow entrusted with the sweeping and well regarded redesigns of Royal Lytham and Ganton, homes to Open Championships and Walker Cups by turn.

Beau Desert may not ring many bells but it, too, belongs in this rank. It’s perhaps best heathland course you’ve never heard of, much less not played.

Baron-owned, Commoner-administered

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The miniscule, make-or-break target at Beau Desert’s driveable par-4 9th.

When he commissioned design of Beau Desert some 100 years ago, the Marquess of Anglesey lived in the ancient Hall at Beaudesert, a splendid country manor dating back to 1289, when it was occupied by the noble Trumwyns of Cannock. Known in 13th century Latin deeds as Bellum Desertum, “beautiful wild place,” the estate later housed all manner of British peerage. Indeed, the place is cited by name in Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem, “The Lady of the Lake.” The Pagets didn’t come into the Hall and its attendant properties until 1549, when they acquired the estate from a family friend: King Henry VIII, who threw in a baronet for good measure.

The ninth Baron Paget of Beaudesert, Henry, was the son of Caroline Paget and Sir Nicholas Bayley of Anglesey. Henry’s son, Henry William, the First Marquess of Anglesey, earned his title in appreciation of his services at Waterloo, where, thanks to French mortar fire, he parted with a leg. [Legend has it that upon receiving this not-insignificant wound, the future Marquess exclaimed to Wellington, “My God! I’ve lost my leg!” His Lordship dryly acknowledged this fact by remarking, “My God. So you have,” and promptly returned to his spyglass.]

The historical serendipities attached to this land and its aristocratic governors would fill several chapters of a book. Indeed they already have; “Beau Desert: The Marquess of Anglesey’s Course” was published in 1992 (and reissued in 2013, to mark the club’s centennial).

Yet for all but six years of its existence, Beau Desert GC has been a local club, played and administered by local commoners.

From the beginning, the Sixth Marquess extended play to a favored group of area businessmen, most of whom worked for nearby mining concerns. “Permit Holders,” these unlanded folks were called. When Paget abandon his estate in 1919 — when many British peers did the same, due to heavy tax burdens assessed following World War I — he first leased the course to this group of proto-members. Then, in 1932, he sold it to them.

Gloriously Underexposed

Beau Desert 18
The finishing hole at Beau Desert. Its massive green takes a full hour to mow.

Unlike the Pagets’ great Hall — demolished for scrap during the Depression — the clubhouse at Beau Desert has always been a modest affair, befitting its middle-class membership (that’s British middle class, mind you). This remains a very low-key place. Its “common” sensibility, its distance from Greater London begin to explain why few Americans have heard of the place, much less played it.

There is another distinctly working-class legacy at Beau Desert, a peculiar one having to do with the fluid, physical characteristics of the golf course itself. Fowler laid out these 18 atop an abandoned network of coal mines. As such, the ground at Beau Desert GC literally buckles and shifts with regularity, as ancient, subterranean shafts slowly deteriorate and collapse. The folks at Beau Desert refer to this phenomenon rather clinically as “subsidence”.

Some of these transformations are subtle. Others are fairly dramatic, such as the lengthy 4-foot depression that abruptly positioned itself in the 2nd fairway a few years back. This “ditch” was eventually filled in for safety reasons by the National Coal Board, “whose staff,” according to the club history, “are regular visitors, repairing subsidence damage as required by the terms of the Deed of Sale.”

Big or small, these changes tend to occur quite suddenly in the context of 100 years’ time. “The hills and hollows on the greens seem to change from one year to the next,” the club history reports. “Hardly a year has gone by without plans being made to level at least one.”

Some have been leveled, though these patches aren’t easily identified. As a group, the 18 putting surfaces at Beau Desert remain most flamboyant. They are, in short, some of the wildest, most interesting greens in the Midlands. In 1974, the club consulted with British architect Fred Hawtree about “leveling” a few. To the members he wrote, “There are a great many eccentric contours on greens which lead to approaches and putts which go beyond a spirit of adventure.”

Ultimately, the club implemented but a few of Hawtree’s proposed changes, suggesting the membership here smartly adheres to Goldwater’s golfing corollary: that extremism in defense of high adventure is no vice.

It’s very much in vogue today to develop golf courses in and around abandoned quarries or gravel pits. Beau Desert was a forebear in this regard, as Fowler routed his 18 holes amid and directly atop centuries-old coal-mining operations, the last of which ceased activity only in 1993. Indeed, the opening drive here plays across a derelict collier works, dead uphill to an inventively canted punchbowl green. Check out the club’s online photo gallery featuring this and the other 17 holes here.

Fowler particularly liked his cross-bunkers and cross-mounding: Beau Desert is replete with these perpendicular hazards. At the 2nd — a titanic par-4 that plays 458 yards along the crest of Cannock Chase — he coyly positioned one well short of the putting surface. It juts in from the left and appears to closely guard the green. This is the illusory gambit Fowler creates here for A) those unfamiliar with the course; or B) those with short memories.

The bunkering at Beau Desert is uniformly strategic and comely. Deep and rugged-looking, the greenside hazards complement well the hugely pitched, severely undulating putting surfaces, which come in all shapes and sizes. The 9th for example is situated at the business end of a 263-yard par-4; it’s drivable, in theory. But the volcano green is so small and severely tilted right-to-left that approaching it with a sand-wedge is harrowing enough.

At nearly 10,000 square feet, the 18th green is one of the largest in England and chock full of cunning movement. It has more pin placements than you’ve had hot dinners (!). Cutting this behemoth with an old 14-inch greens mower required the operator to walk some 6,300 yards, Beau Desert’s full yardage from the back tees.

Fowler also indulged in a bit of elephant-interment here — in some unlikely places, such as along the perimeters of putting surfaces. The humps at nos. 4 and 5, for example, are most disconcerting as they obscure portions of their respective greens from the landing areas. They also make putting anywhere in their general vicinity a stern test (read: complete nightmare).

The one-shot holes at Beau Desert are all strong, yet the best one (the 167-yard 7th) is also the longest. Some might find fault with four par-3s all measuring between 142 and 167, and this begins to explain why the par-70 course measures just 6,310 yards from the tips. Yet length has little do with the challenge here. The trick is negotiating the greens and keeping the ball out of the ubiquitous rough areas, a roiling sea of hillocks and hollows covered with heather, bracken and knee-high native grasses — no small task in Beau Desert’s ever-present wind, as Darwin made clear.

The R&A held final British Open qualifying here for 17 consecutive years, ending in 2000. Former Club Secretary John Bradbury noted that many players preferred Beau Desert as a qualifying site “because they knew good golf would be rewarded. In other words, it was possible to qualify and still be over par.”

International Olympic Committee Learning the Hard Truths of PGA Tour Incentives

International Olympic Committee Learning the Hard Truths of PGA Tour Incentives

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (May 8, 2016) — The life of an elite professional golfer is one of great privilege, born of great skill. This spring, the International Olympic Committee has learned what organizers of PGA Tour events have known for some time: Getting elite players to schedule your event is like trying to lure multi-millionaires to time-share presentations. When it comes to PGA Tour incentives, piles of money aren’t what they used to be.

The news that Adam Scott won’t be competing in Rio broke just as the Tour’s traveling road show stops this week in Charlotte for the Wells Fargo Championship, a top-tier event not just on account of its huge purse and quality golf course (Quail Hollow GC), but for the way it has traditionally pampered competitors. This aspect of tour life is seldom discussed outside the most wonky, Tour-obsessed websites and cable channels. However, the last decade has witnessed a startling arms race of perks and incentives, all bestowed with an eye toward delivering “name” players to individual PGA Tour events.

It’s a hard trick to turn, making elite players show up. As the IOC is now learning, top-shelf professionals have no real incentive to show up anywhere outside the Majors and World Golf Championship events, as they set their own schedules and money no longer motivates them. Olympic glory? Representing your country? Cementing golf as an Olympic sport after a 112-year hiatus? A familiar 72-hole stroke-play format (as opposed to the team formats first advanced by Olympic organizers)? Today, all these prospects, conceived to excite and allure, are likely to be met with indifferent yawns.

And why wouldn’t they yawn? Top players are so well compensated, the incentive to play 25-30 events per year — thus spreading around to many events the Tour’s considerable star power — has largely been removed. The fallback position for event organizers: lavishing\ perks and niceties on players and their families.

At The Players Championship, conducted over Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass course each May, a purpose-built 77,000-square-foot clubhouse sports a cavernous locker room, a separate champions locker room, and a full-on spa that, during the tournament, dispenses free services — not just massage but manicures, pedicures and hot shaves — to players and their family members. The gourmet vittles served here are considered the best on Tour.

PGA Tour Incentives: It’s about the Experience

There was a time when tour events burnished reputations by serving really good milk shakes and providing courtesy cars. The latter are today de rigeuer for all players, at every tour stop, but Charlotte takes it up a notch. Each golfer there is provided a silver Mercedes-Benz S-300 or S-500 for the week. They are also entitled to police escorts if they happen to encounter something unseemly, like traffic congestion. Free valet parking at Quail Hollow? Of course — even the caddies get that!

Event organizers here have recognized that cosseting players (and caddies) is good, but indulging their wives and girlfriends is equally vital. During past Wells Fargo events, Tour WAGS have been flown by private jet to visit the Biltmore Estate, the enormous Vanderbilt mansion in Asheville, where the movie Being There was filmed. Players themselves have, in the past, been ferried by helicopter to the Loews Motor Speedway, where they get behind the wheels of NASCAR rigs.

This is just a sampling of what has, in the past, been done for players and their families. I’m not exactly sure what goodies and jet-set diversions were supplied to them in Charlotte this week. The Tour has wisely stopped publicizing this stuff, as it can appear out of touch or unseemly. But there remains the very real expectation that tour-event organizers must continually up the ante in this regard, or else “name” players simply won’t schedule you. The purse — $1,134,000 to the winner in Charlotte this year — is almost an afterthought.

This is what the IOC is up against in Brazil. Forget the romance of lodging alongside triple jumpers in the Olympic village. These guys are used to the availability of private homes. Throw in the Zika virus, plus the sheer distance, and I think we can all see what’s coming. Olympic rosters for the 60-player men’s and women’s fields will be finalized July 11. Between then and now, expect a parade of polite declinations, citing the need to spend more time with family, the safety of those families, and perhaps the quality of milk shakes in Rio.

Pre-Pitch Clock Flashback: Three Rules to Shorten MLB Games
This short essay was posted in 2015, eight years before MLB instituted its fabulously successful pitch clock. This measure was dispatched below as impossible to enforce. This is why I'm not and never have been considered Commissioner Material.

Pre-Pitch Clock Flashback: Three Rules to Shorten MLB Games

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
long baseball games
This short essay was posted in 2015, eight years before MLB instituted its fabulously successful pitch clock. This measure was dispatched below as impossible to enforce. This is why I’m not and never have been considered Commissioner Material.

NEW GLOUCESTER, Maine (Aug. 19, 2015) — See here three simple rules for the betterment of baseball and the country whose pastime it remains, to the extent that anyone can sit through an entire 9-inning game these days without the aid of a DVR.

• First, give the ball to the pitcher and oblige the batter to be ready when the ball is delivered. This sounds simple, and it is. Honestly, it’s more or less the way baseball was prosecuted until 1980. We are simply codifying a throwback policy, whereby, once a batter strides to the plate from the on-deck circle and establishes himself in the batter’s box — two things he can do with levels of speed and alacrity entirely of his own choosing — there are no more batter-initiated timeout

The batter is not a prisoner there. He can step out. He can wave to his mother in the stands or adjust his balls. He can tug on each batting glove strap as often as he likes, or, to be more accurate, dares. But he clearly won’t overindulge in any of this behavior because he knows the pitcher, once in possession of the ball, can deliver it to the plate whenever he chooses.

Base hit, foul ball or stolen base? The process resets, meaning he can step out and tug on those batting gloves before re-entering the box.

Some have called for the umpire to be more diligent in calling batters back into the box. That won’t work. It’s arbitrary and frankly not the umpire’s charge. Should the batter be inclined to see some pitches — something our Moneyball Era has emphasized — superfluous batter routinization between pitches will disappear almost instantly, and completely organically.

There is no penalty for stepping out of the box – only that you might not be in the hitting position when the ball arrives at/near the plate. There is no need to make special accommodation for the delivery of signs from the third-base coach. They can be delivered to/received by the batter at any time, though it seems prudent to get this done prior to said batter entering the box.

The umpire is free to call time at his discretion — for example, when a player is knocked down or back by an inside pitch. Resetting is a simple matter, as the umpire already holds the game balls on his person. By not handing a new ball to the catcher, or not winging it out to the mound himself, he has called time and allowed the batter to regroup without ever calling time.

I’m not sure whether the baseball rulebook even acknowledges a batter’s right to call timeout. If so, this would be the only rule-change required. Otherwise, it’s a seamless move back to the way batting was prosecuted over the game’s first 150 years.

Pre-Pitch Clock Mound Measure

• Second, as a companion rule, pitchers in possession of the game ball may no longer leave the mound during an at-bat, and excessive time-wasting, as judged by the home-plate umpire, will result in one ball being added to the count.

Here again, simplicity reigns: When the pitcher accepts the ball from his catcher, another member of his team in the field, or the umpire, and said pitcher enters the mound area, he cannot leave said mound area until the ball is next put into play, i.e. pitched and hit, or the batter is retired, or a base is stolen.

However, if, in his opinion, the umpire determines the pitcher to be standing around on the mound purposely wasting time, the pitcher will be warned. Only one warning will be issued per team, per game. A second infringement will automatically affect the count, to the tune of an added ball.

Here again, pitching habits will change rapidly but organically. There is no need for a delivery clock, as some have proposed — for there are too many variables during a baseball inning to make that stick. Think about a speedy runner at first; all those throws over there; all that stepping off the rubber… yes, it can be tedious, but it’s a vital part of the game and all of it can be conducted without the pitcher leaving the mound area.

Indeed this proposed rule will change the art of pitching only subtly. The pitcher will remain free to leave the mound following those three designated reset moments: base hit, foul ball or stolen base. Time-honored activities such as conferring with fielders, rubbing the ball while wandering around the infield, or adjusting his scrotum while staring blankly off into right field will remain protected under the new rules. However, once he steps onto the mound, the man cannot leave until the ball has been pitched, or the ball has been hit, or a base has been stolen or the at-bat has been concluded. What’s more, under this rubric, time-wasting, as determined by the umpire — a third party who certainly knows deliberate slow-downs when he sees them — is appropriately punished.

While pitchers and batters are more or less equally responsible for the glacial pace of 21st century baseball, these new rules are not meted out equally. Batters will clearly be obliged to make the bigger adjustments. But that’s as it should be. The pitcher has always been in charge of this game. He has always determined the pace of “play”, from at-bat to at-bat.

These new rules would restore an equilibrium that prevailed for a century, a fact furthered by the umpire’s ability to meaningfully penalize pitchers who don’t hold up of their end of the bargain.

No more complaints from TV people

• Finally, a third rule: No one associated with the for-profit broadcast of Major League Baseball games is allowed to complain about how slow baseball games have become, whether these new rules ever get adopted or not. Because let’s get real: The main reason for 3.5- to 4-hour MLB games is the fact that every single one is televised.

Yes, batters step out too often, and pitchers are too deliberate pitch to pitch. But we all know the real culprits are all those commercials between innings. These intrusions have, of course, been a fact of baseball life for decades now. And yet the intervals devoted to this interstitial advertising continue to grow in duration — despite the wide acknowledgement that “something should be done” to get back to 2.5-hour games.

I don’t expect or propose that we regulate the amount of time devoted to between-inning advertisements, though a solid cap would be welcome. Baseball is, in a perverse way, the ideal TV product because of these organic breaks between innings. But it drives me crazy to hear TV people — especially ESPN analysts — bemoan the length of baseball games without acknowledging their central, integral role in extending them.

I Pledge Allegiance to The SoPo Three, and to the Republic for which They Stand…

I Pledge Allegiance to The SoPo Three, and to the Republic for which They Stand…

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment
Students_pledging_allegiance_to_the_American_flag_with_the_Bellamy_salute
This is how American kids pledged allegiance to the flag pre-WWII. Honest.

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (Feb. 24, 2015 ) — The sad truth is, kids are easy targets when it comes to ideological inculcation outside the home. The time-honored strategy of ‘getting them while they’re young’ may have first been written down in Proverbs 22:6 (“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”), but it’s a coercive gambit that is surely much older than that. And so I was heartened to read of the South Portland, Maine students who recently put their feet down re. the U.S. pledge of allegiance, which, I understand, is something SoPo kids — and most American high schoolers — are still expected to recite each and every morning.

Each morning over the public address system, students at South Portland High School still hear the same sort of thing we all grew up hearing: At this time, would you please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance…

In late January, however, class president, Lily SanGiovanni, made the decision to start adding what proved to be a controversial 4-word tagline … if you’d like to.

Naturally, in a country so volubly dedicated to liberty and free speech, people freaked out. Love of country was questioned. Ingratitude to fallen soldiers was charged. Educational bureaucrats wavered, then caved. The four words were eliminated.

What a steaming pile of crapola.

It’s probably been a while since most adults have taken a close look at the U.S. pledge of allegiance, or given it much thought. Revealingly, our culture does not ask adults to say these words, every morning, at their places of employment. Only our children are required to do that — if they go to public, taxpayer-funded schools.

We old folks can still recite the words by heart: I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. There. I did that from memory (!). See how impressionable young minds are over the long term?

But seriously folks, it’s instructive to examine this pledge in 2015, to understand what it asks and where it came from — in the same way SanGiovanni and two of her classmates have done. The Sopo Three were uncomfortable with the invocation of a Christian God, every day, as part of a public statement that students enrolled in government schools are obliged/encouraged to recite every day. They have a point, but that’s not the half of it.

Pledge of Allegiance: In a Democracy?

Let’s start with the name. Exactly what sort of authorities, in a democratic republic, would suggest that adult citizens make such a pledge? In my view, it’s not something free peoples should ever be asked to do — especially kids. Their feelings on these matters should formed by parents, not the state. This practice strikes me as something illegitimate or otherwise authoritarian “regimes” would insist upon. Maybe the Czech government in 1967, or the Khmer Rouge circa 1975, or Josef Stalin any ol’ time.

In fact, see here the Oath of Allegiance Grandpa Joe did require of the Soviet people, starting in 1939:

I, a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, joining the ranks of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, do hereby take the oath of allegiance and do solemnly vow to be an honest, brave, disciplined and vigilant fighter, to guard strictly all military and State secrets, to obey implicitly all Army regulations and orders of my commanders, commissars and superiors. I vow to study the duties of a soldier conscientiously, to safeguard Army and National property in every way possible and to be true to my People, my Soviet Motherland, and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to my last breath. I am always prepared at the order of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to come to the defense of my Motherland — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — and, as a fighter of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, I vow to defend her courageously, skillfully, creditably and honorably, without sparing my blood and my very life to achieve complete victory over the enemy. And if through evil intent I break this solemn oath, then let the stern punishment of the Soviet law, and the universal hatred and contempt of the working people, fall upon me.

Joe’s one-time running mate, Adolph Hitler, cooked up one of these pledges, too. I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, I shall render unconditional obedience and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath.

Clearly, the wording in each of these examples is more martial and paranoid than the American pledge. The sentiments may differ, too, though only by matters of degree. But let’s stick to the idea of a nation instituting and maintaining any sort of pledge. This strikes me as a cultural tradition totally at odds with free speech in democratic republic that has no state-sponsored religion. In America, we don’t brook regimes or people or symbols or religious creeds to which/whom allegiance must be sworn, right?

It’s not wrong to use a symbol, such as the flag, to represent things like the current government, past governments, founding governments, fallen soldiers, the collectivity of our “nation”, God, our indivisibility, or laudable-but-still-abstract concepts like liberty and justice. But swearing allegiance to that flag? Which may or may not — depending on context or who is suggesting the pledging — be symbolic of all these things? We should leave that to authoritarian states where power is not derived from the consent of the governed.

We can agree these are outsized, complicated ideas about which reasonable adults might differ. I don’t think America is a nation under God, for example; others believe that steadfastly. Indivisible? We had a civil war in the 19th century, and today the country is politically divided to a mind-bending degree. Some would argue our political system is by nature and design adversarial.

The point is, we don’t ask adult Americans to make this pledge. Yet we ask it every day of school children. I find this unsettling, and so do The SoPo Three.

The One and Only Francis Bellamy

We tend to think that cultural ornaments like the pledge, or the national anthem, as having always been in place. Not the case. Somehow, America got along for more than a century without any such thing as a pledge of allegiance. It was penned by one Francis Bellamy, in 1892 [a factoid questioned in April 2022]. American civic life up to that point was no bed of roses. Citizens endured a war of independence, a foreign invasion (1812) and a civil war; they controversially replaced a loose confederation with a federal, constitutional government. Somehow, despite a state’s rights debate that raged throughout (and still rages), republican life during this long period did not require a pledge of allegiance apparently.

Bellamy, a magazine writer with overt socialist sympathies, had intended the pledge to serve children of all nations, not just those living in America. Again, see here the insidious idea that it’s most important that patriotic or otherwise political messaging be delivered to children. To be clear, these are our most impressionable citizens, those with the least power to object, those with the least context or understanding of what living in a republic actually means or should mean. Our brave friends in South Portland notwithstanding, most kids don’t have a complete understanding of the inalienable rights. Nor do they realize when those rights — to freedom of thought, speech and religion — are being stomped upon.

In any case, the U.S. pledge did, upon its introduction, become wildly popular. History shows us that cultural insecurity, real and imagined, is what foments the call for such unity pledges. Notice how these various oaths nearly always get adopted and enforced in conjunction with war, or coming war. I suppose that in 1939, Stalin needed to know exactly who could be trusted. Ditto for our pal The Fuhrer.

I ask zealous supporters of the U.S. pledge, Is this something we Americans need to know about each other? Is it something we have a right to know? In peacetime? How about ever?

American Loyalty Tests

Thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent were infamously and forcibly interned at the outbreak of World War II. In 1943, all internees over the age of 17 were given a loyalty “test”. They were asked two questions: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered? (Women were asked if they were willing to volunteer for the Army Nurse Corps or Women’s Army Corps.) And, Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?

Many Japanese took this oath and did serve the country accordingly. But they did so only after languishing in the camps for two years — a strong incentive to take the pledge and get out of there. One further wonders what they thought, after the war, when their kids were obliged to recite the pledge of allegiance. Probably rang a little hollow.

Here’s another fun fact that sheds light on the arbitrary nature of the American pledge phenomenon. Originally, the “salute” that accompanied the pledge was remarkably similar to that of the Hitler’s. Awkward! We solved this uncomfortable coincidence, in 1942, by insisting the right hand instead be placed over one’s heart. Phew!

Not until three years later did Congress formally adopt and name the pledge. Prior to WWII, it had been known, widely, as Bellamy’s Salute. So, officially, The United States of America went 169 years without a pledge of allegiance. In 1954, the phrase under God was added, as we were then locked in a Cold War with godless heathen — the sort of regime that, one assumes, a socialist like Bellamy would have supported on some level.

Now that Communism has been defeated and debunked, maybe that last phrase should be removed? Or, now that we’re in a long-term struggle with Islamic Jihadism, perhaps it should be strengthened to read under the Christian God?

One thing’s clear: Over the course of more than 120 years, the pledge has been shown to be an absurd, makeshift and overtly political phenomenon. So again, hats off to this trio of SoPo students who publicly and with righteousness called “bullshit”.

The Public Speaks on SoPo Flap

Any ambivalence I may have had toward the pledge is made that much more acute by its enthusiastic, cave-dwelling supporters. Not surprisingly, the SoPo flap inspired some classic reactionary claptrap from these quarters.

“So much for the All American city,” wrote Rob Soucy, in a letter to the Portland Press-Herald this month. “Standing for the Pledge of Allegiance is OPTIONAL for students at South Portland High School. So, let me get this straight, we just spent $47 million of taxpayer money on a Taj Mahal school renovation and the kids (of families that probably don’t have to pay taxes to begin with) can’t be forced to stand for 30 freaking seconds to honor the symbol of the country they live in and off! Are you kidding me?”

Note the troglodytic assumption that these kids — the ones who added the if you’d like to tagline — were somehow un-American or, even worse, poor! Or maybe he meant to imply they were recent immigrants who, despite the fact that our country is entirely peopled by immigrants, don’t count or should not enjoy the rights we longstanding Americans have — rights that cost the taxpayer nothing, I might add. Another fool commenter drove home the alien angle: “I say (send) them back where (they) came from – they must like war better than freedom.”

Freedom to do what? Speak their minds?

It seems to me the by-rote recitation of anything, especially something that purports to be meaningful, effectively saps that meaning. It also seems to me that declarations of fealty, or love, or anything meaningful should not be something that someone else wrote for you. Christian prayer used to be mandatory and pervasive in public schools. We got rid of that — such things should be done in the home, or a church of one’s choosing, or not at all.

Maybe that’s where the pledge should be made — at home, every day before getting on the bus. Or every morning at Rob Soucy’s house.

A judicial work in progress

To be fair, the appropriate and lawful place of the pledge in American society is, like the pledge itself, a judicial work in progress. As the Press-Herald reported on Feb. 24, 2015, California school officials apologized last fall after a student, an atheist, reported that a teacher compelled him to recite the pledge. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled last spring that reciting the words “under God” in the pledge doesn’t discriminate against non-religious students who hear it — the implication being, it would be discriminatory to require students to say it. Under a Maine law passed in 2011, public schools must allow every student “the opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at some point during a school day in which students are required to attend,” but they cannot require students to speak the pledge.

Prior to 1892, Americans surely bickered about many things, but how and when kids are compelled to pledge fealty to the nation, or not, was not among them. One hundred and thirty years on and we’re still working this out.

Yet a 1985 Maine law reveals the unvarnished, modern motivation behind the pledge. It stipulates that educators shall “impress upon the youth by suitable references and observances the significance of the flag, to teach them the cost, the object and principles of our government, the inestimable sacrifices made by the founders of our nation, the important contribution made by all who have served in the armed services of our country since its inception, and to teach them to love, honor and respect the flag of our country that costs so much and is so dear to every true American citizen.”

Wow. That last bit is, again, something we might expect from some totalitarian regime looking to prop up its base of support in light of a dubious claim on power. That is not how I view the U.S. government [Note: This piece was published a full year before Donald Trump was first inaugurated]. I guess I’m more of a We The People guy.

Further, it seems to me The SoPo Three have, through their actions, done a superb job in impressing upon classmates one very important “object and principle” of our government — the right to speak and think as they please.

I have to say, too, that I was especially struck by the leader of this pack down in South Portland. SanGiovanni is the class valedictorian and president, two positions that earned her the right to address her fellow students each morning, apparently. She’s headed off to Wesleyan University in the fall, where I matriculated and where many a deep-seated suspicion of ritualized government propaganda has been burnished. Hey Lily: You’re gonna fit right in.

Chinese Central Gov’t Moves to Enforce 2004 Golf Course Ban, Retroactively

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
china course ban
[Ed. This story below ran in the March 2015 edition of GCM China, a quarterly magazine published by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America from 2012-2016, in Chinese, for golf industry professionals working in the PRC. The New York Times weighed in this matter in April 2015.]

By Hal Phillips
BEIJING, PRC (Feb. 14, 2015) — The overriding mood of the Chinese golf industry in 2015 remains one of uncertainty. While the central government has not altered its official stance toward golf since 2004 — when course development was specifically banned — close to 500 new golf course projects have opened or been formally undertaken during this 10-year period. Clearly, there is uncertainty within the central government as to how, when and where to enforce the ban, and how to deal with courses built in spite of it.

Course developers and owners — those who have witnessed first-hand the creation development of so many projects, since 2004 — have, at the same time, witnessed many projects suspended by the same government since summer 2014, when the 10-year-old ban was enforced anew. Such course closures have increased into the winter months with a selective frequency.

Finally, there remains a wealth of anxiety on the part of Chinese golf industry observers — international vendors, native course personnel and golfers themselves — who possess a range of opinions re. where things are headed but dare not speak publicly, for fear of endangering their business interests, employment and club membership values. GCM China spoke to a dozen different sources for this story, in an attempt to shed light on the situation. None wished to be identified.

We chose to quote them here anonymously, because the subject matter is so important to our readers across the Chinese golf industry. Their opinions, taken together, reflect widest, most fulsome perspective on where exactly the golf industry stands today, and where it is headed.

There was broad agreement among those interviewed that signs of change in government policy actually took hold in late 2013.

“We began to see and hear of more and more reports on policy enforcement and the tearing up of courses across the country,” said one golf course architect with design experience in China stretching back prior to 2004. “This began largely with the halting of new construction but soon began to migrate into the shutting down and tearing up of existing courses, even those with active memberships. This crackdown, I believe, was tied largely to the 2012 change of the Politburo and the very public crackdown on government corruption. Government officials across the country, upwards of some 20,000 in 2014, were arrested and jailed, some quite prominent.”

It’s important to distinguish here between local and central governments in China, something GCM readers understand better than anyone. When the golf course ban was instituted in 2004, that was a central government directive. However, in spite of the ban, local governments at the provincial and city levels, viewed golf development as a way to build local economies and employ local citizens. These local governments were the entities that “approved” golf projects. There is today no protocol for central government consideration of golf projects.

As a result, hundreds of golf development projects essentially flew, in various degrees of disguise, under the central government radar thanks to implicit local government cooperation — and a desire on the part of developers not to flout the central government’s official anti-golf stance. In order to avoid central government detection, many projects were classified by local government documentation not as golf courses or country clubs but sports facilities, parks and forested landscapes.

In June 2014, the central government created four classifications for all existing golf courses: those slated for shutdown, those slated for major renovation, those slated for more minor “rectification”, and those simply under “review”, which is seen as the safest of the four groupings.

There was broad agreement among sources that, since the beginning of 2014, the central government has been busy visiting and assessing all the golf facilities in the country — those in operation, in addition to those still in development. It is assumed that all courses will eventually receive one of the four designations, though subsequent actions, according to this classification, have not been made clear.

The situation is that much more murky because some courses have indeed been shut down summarily. Others have been informed that portions of the landscape must be modified, moved away from water resources, or returned to agrarian use; still more have been informed that some unspecified rectification will be required.

But the majority of courses have not been notified of anything. Not yet.

The first courses to be affected by the government crackdown were, not surprisingly, those closest to Beijing, the seat of central government power in China. Initially, there were rumors of pending taxation on water use on those golf courses — a legitimately pressing issue due to longstanding drought conditions in the north. But this was simply a preliminary indication of serious government intervention in all things golf. According to a golf journalist based in Beijing, golf course water usage and other environmental factors were and continue to be a mere pretext for singling out golf developments that flouted the 2004 ban — meaning the vast majority of golf courses in China today.

“I have heard that some courses are being proactive and looking into recycled-water alternatives — and the so-called new government water-use fees seem to be very sporadic in their implementation and how much the local government will charge,” said one Beijing-based course superintendent.  “I’ve also heard there could be new land-use fines. I don’t know how clubs can be viable if they have to keep paying the government money — but still don’t receive official papers or permits for the club [in return]. More clubs just shut down over the last month, so the industry is just crawling along.”

Another superintendent explained why his club was shutdown, before it even opened for play. “The main reason why my course was suspended is the protection of a nearby water source — because the media and public and government misunderstand the pollution caused by golf courses. So in recent times, courses close to water resources, such as lakes, rivers, streams and natural parks, were all inspected and forced to reevaluate the environmental effects. Other courses that are taking over farmland, or once took over farmland, are definitely not permitted right now. Existing courses are all being evaluated by the government now.”

Some Chinese golf courses that have not been the subject of review have been busy filling in bunkers and planting trees — on greens — in an effort to avoid detection, as a “golf course”, by roving government inspectors.

According to the golf journalist, “Some courses had already planned to use recycled water, but it’s just planned. After all, there is still no a clear law about hiking the water tax on the golf industry. But ‘no clear law’ always means a bigger problem. In China, nowadays, the most severe crisis in golf is the ‘Cleaning Up’ movement, not the water matters. Since chairman Xi Jinping took office, the government has tried to clean up the sport of golf. During last six months, they have already removed several courses (even when they are about to open!) in Beijing, then Shanghai, and now Guangdong.

“It is no exaggeration to say, the golf course industry is in one of the most severe recessions in 30 years of Chinese golf history.”

Most observers agree that the central government’s new interest in golf’s environmental impact is simply an excuse to make a larger, political point — namely, that too many golf courses were built illegally following the 2004 ban.

One business development executive for a course design firm fleshed out this perspective — and reinforced that a golf crackdown was related to a broader government-corruption crackdown — by detailing golf-related restrictions placed upon current government employees.

“Here is the latest official red tape from the Guangdong provincial government,” he said. “No government staff shall own or acquire golf membership certificates of any kind. No government staff shall take any positions in golf clubs or golf organizations including honorary positions. No government staff shall use public funds on golf membership cards, VIP cards, other cards with favorable terms, or golf equipment — no government staff shall take any of these above mentioned items from enterprises or individuals. No government officials shall play golf during business hours or play golf with public funds. No government officials shall play golf with those who are within their service objective or those who are under their management. No one shall pay for the expenses of golf for any government staff or his relatives. No government staff shall attend any golf activities or tournaments organized by private enterprise. No government staff shall be involved in any form of golf gambling.”

The larger point here is well taken: Placing these hardline restrictions on government staff is a likely prelude to penalizing courses built during the ban.

“With regard to golf course closure I have heard two rumors,” the business development executive said, echoing sentiments related by others interviewed for this story. “One is, 80 courses all over China will be shut down eventually, before the 30 June 2015 deadline. The other is, Guangdong province alone will have to close down 100 courses (including 15 in Shenzhen). Shanghai will close down 27, and Hubei province 14.”

These official anti-golf stances (which remain mere rumors) are highly ironic — creating further uncertainty within the industry — because, in other demonstrable ways, golf is a growing sport that Chinese clearly enjoy playing, as individuals but also as part of teams officially representing China.

“The Olympics will be a big push,” said one course architect, noting that China has a national golf team that will certainly compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Most Olympic-designated sports receive de facto support from the central government. “More and more Chinese are traveling outside of China to play golf. The Presidents Cup in Korea [8-11 October 2015] is something else that will bring huge awareness to the sport in China. The Chinese have always been very supportive of national sport and culture. In the future, I see changes. Maybe some of these bodies will come out with a mandate that says, if you do develop golf, here are the standards. But right now, development standards are seen as too much of an endorsement. “

Another architect was less positive when it comes to the fate of future development: “The central government is in the process of documenting all the courses in the country. Following this documentation, a report will be distributed. I believe this report will surface sometime in 2015, but most likely not until the summer, maybe even later. Many people believe this report will establish a policy to deal with existing and new course development with strict guidelines. I do not agree. I believe it will deal largely with the elephant in the room: all the existing illegal courses. I do not believe new construction will be dealt with at this time.

“This report (possibly a policy) will name courses to de demolished, courses that can stay, and courses that will need remedial work to be done over a 1-year period — to become compliant with the standards necessary to remain. These issues will include the avoidance of certified farmland, villager relocation and compensation, avoidance of forest preserve, water supply, and water runoff.”

One veteran of the China golf industry, whose firm supplies golf courses with various course-related supplies, said the central government is not necessarily equipped to assess the environmental aspects of course development. This will clearly affect its ability to assess golf courses as part of this report, and to monitor their environmental impact going forward.

“The real interesting cases will be courses that have permits and are least nominally legal, in the manner they were developed, but sit on or near drinking-water reservoirs,” this vendor said, noting that permits in these cases were issued by local, provincial governments, not the central government. “They are just cloaking this crackdown in environmental terms. The question will be, how do they do the monitoring? We’ve worked with their official labs. They are not up to the task.”

The business development source was more optimistic: “I personally think it is good for the industry in the long run. I am hoping the central government will issue the official regulations for getting permits and constructions of new golf courses early in 2015, before the Beijing Golf Show [scheduled for 13-15 March 2015]… My general feeling is that the tension on golf is going to loosen up toward the second half of the year, 2015, and the regulations will be released very quickly in the near future.”

A course construction professional is less convinced. He may have put it best (meaning, with the appropriate tone of uncertainty), when he said, “The Chinese government has always been difficult to predict, no matter what the case, and the same goes with the current state of the China golf industry. We’ve all heard the same rumors for months now, but to be honest, nobody knows! It’s all guesswork at this stage and anyone who tells you different is just relaying another rumor.”