Friday

America’s divide is manifested perfectly in the NYC case of the ex-Marine, honorably discharged after four years of service, who applied a chokehold to a ranting mental patient on a NYC subway train. According to an article at foxnews.com by Rebecca Rosenberg & Marta Dhanis, the deceased, 30, was on the city’s “Top 50” list — an internal roster kept by the Department of Homeless Services of people most in need of help. He had been arrested more than three dozen times. In 2021 he punched a 67-year-old woman in the face, breaking her nose and orbital bone. In 2019 he allegedly sucker-punched two men in the face on different subway platforms one month apart, breaking one victim’s nose. The Marine is accused of second-degree manslaughter and faces 5–15 years in prison if convicted. A campaign on Christian crowdfunding website GiveSendGo has so far raised more than $383,000 to finance his defense. The people who should be on trial are those who allowed the deceased free reign to terrorize people.

Last night Movies!, channel 5–2 on OTA in NYC, ran Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951), a heavy-handed appeal for prison reform. Set circa 1940, conditions were so deplorable, the warden so sadistic that no reasonable person would argue to the contrary, at least these days. In researching the film at IMDb, I discovered the impressive career of writer/director Crane Wilbur, who has 38 credits as a director, 81 as a writer and 89 as an actor, in a screen career that spanned 1919-’62. In 1903 he made his Broadway debut in a trilogy by renowned poet William Butler Yeats. Between 1920-’34 he had seven plays presented on the Great White Way. He also acted in several, including Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra. Among his movie scripts, the chilling He Walked by Night (1948), starring Richard Basehart as a coldblooded murderer; the entertaining House of Wax (1953), co-written with Charler Belden; the rousing Monkey on My Back (1957), a bio of war hero/boxer Barney Ross, co-written with Anthony Veiller & Paul Dudley; and the fun Mysterious Island (1961), co-written with John Prebble & Daniel B. Ullman. Although he married five times, he had no children. His fifth marriage lasted from 1936 until his death at 86 in 1973. Awesome, Sir.

Headline from nypost.com: “Migrant bus arrives at Kamala Harris’ doorstep hours before end of Title 42.” Still rather they go to Delaware.

Maybe everything has now been studied, headline from newsmax.com: “NHL Players Who Fight More on Ice Have Shorter Lives.”

The incoming outweighed the outgoing today at the floating book shop, despite brisk sales. My thanks to the donors and buyers. Here’s what sold: Double Cross by James Patterson, The King of Torts by John Grisham; a Reader’s Digest compilation of four abridged novels; Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939–1941
by Lynne Olson; Israel through My Lens: Sixty Years As a Photojournalist
by David Rubinger, Shimon Peres, et al.; How to Clean Everything by Consumer Reports; East of Eden by John Steinbeck; two editions of Word Search; another volume of Laughter Is the Best Medicine from Reader’s Digest; a paperback on Meditation; Wizards and Glass: Dark Tower IV by Stephen King; Drifting South by Charles Davis.

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