Two Families

I can’t believe that in over 400 blog posts I haven’t once mentioned Anton Chekhov, to my mind one of the three best playwrights of all time.* Because of his early death, his oeuvre is unfortunately limited. The Cherry Orchard, his last play, is fittingly his masterpiece. Uncle Vanya, although I love the play, I could never teach because it always moved me to tears. Today, it is The Three Sisters, his next-to-last play that I wish to direct your attention to.

Olga, Masha, and Irina, the title characters, together with their brother, Andrey, are members of a gentle family left behind in a provincial Russian city after their father, an army general, died a year before the play begins.

During the course of the play Andrey marries Natasha, a jumped-up peasant, who eventually dominates the household. We join the play in Act III [translated by Gerard R. Ledger].

ANFISA. (Exhausted.) Dear Olya, my dearest one, don't get rid of me, please don't get rid of me!

OLGA. What nonsense you are talking, nanny. Nobody is going to get rid of you.

ANFISA. (Puts her head on Olga's breast.) My dear child, my darling one, I toil away, I keep working… But I'm getting weak, and everyone is saying 'She should go'! But where would I go to? Where? I'm eighty years old. I'm in my eighty second year.

OLGA. Sit down nanny. You're tired, you poor thing. (Makes her sit down.) Rest awhile, nanny dear. How pale you are!

(Natasha enters.)

. . . 

(Coldly, addressing Anfisa.) How dare you sit down when I am here! Stand up! Leave this room!

(Anfisa leaves. A pause.)

I don't know why you keep that old bag. I just don't understand.

OLGA. (Horrified.) Pardon me, but I also do not understand…

NATASHA. She's absolutely no use here. She's a peasant and she ought to go and live back in the country. Why all this . . . cosseting? I like to see order in the house. . . . 

[S]he could easily live at home in the country.

OLGA. She's been with us for thirty years.

NATASHA. But look, now she's incapable of work! Either I do not understand you, or you deliberately choose not to understand me. She's not fit to do any work, she only sleeps and sits around the place.

OLGA. Then let her sit.

*

Can there have been a more humane line in literature than “Then let her sit”? Contrast this with Natasha’s response:

NATASHA. (In astonishment.) What do you mean 'Let her sit'? She is after all a servant. (Tearfully.) I do not understand you, dear Olga. I already have a nanny, there is a wet nurse, we have maidservants, we have a cook… Why should we need this old woman? Why? Why?

Transactional Natasha considers only her “need.” Anfisa is old and redundant; thus, she should go. 

***

A new biography of William Buckley, Jr. has unfortunately brought his face back before the public. I wrote about him previously here: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2018/10/charming-billy-consciences-and.html

Buckley acknowledged that he benefited from a pampered life:

It simply happens to be the case that I have never in my entire life been without servants, maids, and chauffeurs.**

Growing up, Buckley and his nine siblings lived on an estate populated with “tutors, workmen, groomsmen for the horses, a French mademoiselle, and Mexican nanas.” ***

Visitors to the household remarked on the relaxed atmosphere of the Buckley estate: It was 

alive with pranks, schemes, hilarity, and strife. . . . Buckley’s prep school roommate described “a vast gaggle of smiling, brilliant children, all chattering—in several languages—at once, playing the piano, but, above all, laughing with each other … the whole place rang with music and laughter.”

But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. 

One night in 1937, four of Bill’s older siblings burned a cross outside a Jewish resort in Amenia, New York. Bill was upset that he hadn’t been included.**

Years later, his sisters defaced a nearby Episcopal church.***

In 1954, Julia Child 

received a letter from Aloise Buckley Heath, a fellow Smith College alumna and the sister of William F. Buckley, Jr., the prominent conservative author and proponent of McCarthyism. Heath had written to Child, and to other Smith graduates, urging them to withhold donations to the institution until the college had sacked five professors suspected of being Communists. An enraged Child replied, “In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and our freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.”****

So what are we left with? Charming Billy and his smiling, chattering siblings were at bottom a bigoted, anti-democratic clan. Louis Menand summed up Buckley, Jr. as follows:

Since democracy is pretty much the essence of the American experiment, it seems fair to say that Buckley was, at bottom, anti-American.

This is often the case with people who make a big show of patriotism. We can “make America great again”—if we only get rid of due process, or judicial review, or the separation of powers, or birthright citizenship, or the freedom of the press. We might be great if we got rid of some or all of those things. But we would no longer be America.** 

***

* Shakespeare and Sophocles are the other two.

** https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/02/buckley-sam-tanenhaus-book-review

*** https://newrepublic.com/article/195954/buckley-conservative-intellectual-laid-groundwork-trump

****https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-passionate-progressive-politics-of-julia-child?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_SundayArchive_Free_060825&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9e28e3f92a40469f7ada2&cndid=52968002&hasha=4610757384ecaf1ad328813857abb8ad&hashb=8bdf3de145843e1362a258a3e93c74dacad1e748&hashc=14e046c1e18a50fd0321258d2762b948a226611f7a6f74ee556142b582bf4a85&esrc=&mbid=mbid%3DCRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_SundayArchive_NonPaidSubs 

The American Dream

Here are three articles from the May 27 edition of The New York Times:

(1)

Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html?searchResultPosition=2

Now a lesson in logic. The post hoc fallacy occurs when one assumes that because event “A” preceded event “B” that event “A” caused event “B.” You know the argument: “Ever since man landed on the moon, we’ve had crazy hurricanes and tornadoes.”

So while we can’t say for a fact that greasing Trump’s palm moved him to pardon a fellow felon, it would take an ostrich hiding its head in the sand to deny the real possibility of that being the case in Trump’s transactional universe.*

(2)

She Sacrificed Everything to Reach the U.S. Under Trump, She Decided to Leave.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/world/americas/mother-self-deportation-trump.html

This is the story of Yessica Rojas, a Venezuelan mother, who, with her two small children, made the perilous journey from her South American homeland to seek a life of freedom in the United States. She eventually found a home in Branson, MO, where she worked two jobs to support her family. She was not a drug dealer or a member of a notorious gang and thus in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. Just a mother with kids.

It was as a mother with kids that Yessica decided to leave the United States, the country to which she had bravely ventured to seek refuge.

[T]he choice was clear. After less than two years in Missouri, she and her two children had to leave.

The reason, she said, were stories about Venezuelan mothers like her that had gone viral on social media. Ms. Rojas heard they had been deported to Venezuela while the American authorities held on to their children.

(3)

A Vermont Start-Up Was Close to Becoming Profitable. Then the Tariffs Hit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/business/trumps-china-tariffs-small-businesses.html

Carina Hamel and Robby Ringer are not Venezuelans and do not have small children who might be seized by the government, but are American citizens who are pursuing the American dream of running their own business. The couple designed a special water bottle and nozzle for serious bicyclists and put their house up as collateral to finance their company. The bottles were manufactured in China to the company’s specifications, and the product was catching on. The company was nearing profitability. But as the headline says, “Then the Tariffs Hit.”

Whether Trump is a liar or just plain stupid (you decide), his claim that foreign businesses pay the tariffs is bonkers. The cost is passed down the line to the American importers and then on to the consumer (the tariffs effectively acting as a sales tax).

For a small company like Bivo (the name of the water bottle company), having to put up the cost of the tariffs without the ability to raise their retail prices to recompense them is likely to force them out of business.

*

As interesting as Bivo’s story is, the comments of some readers is worth noting (the vast majority of which were favorable to Hamel and Ringer). But then there were the bigots and racists who spouted that the products, because they were made in China, were manufactured using slave and/or child labor. Of course, those morons gave no proof to support their wild claims. Just rants for rants’ sake.

Then there were the Economics Class Dropouts. They latched on to the fact that “Bivo pays roughly $8 per bottle, before tariffs, and sells them to wholesalers for around $20.” The cost to the consumer is $34 to $54.

“My God,” the ECDs exclaim, “Bivo is ripping everybody off! Charging $20 for an $8 product!” To these people, the material is all; apparently, the work of invention and design has no monetary value. Neither, also, is the need to compensate for transportation of the goods and their storage and workers’ wages. And much less, a bit left over as profit, so that the business can grow.**

*

I am reminded here of the time when, deep into photography, I took a picture of a fellow faculty member, which he loved so much that he entreated me to make some 8x10s for him. Which I did. He offered to pay me for my materials—the paper and the chemicals cost bupkis—as if that was what producing photographs was all about. Besides the other fixed costs—the enlarger, the trays, tongs, rubber gloves—there were the more important intangible qualities that went into the production of the photo—the esthetic sense, the talented eye, the judgment of when to press the shutter button, and so on. And the years of experience. Were they of no value?

***

* Trump has issued many other pardons and commutations recently. Can you find a common thread here?

“a supporter of Mr. Trump’s”

“In recent years, he has gone on television to defend Mr. Trump.”

“He endorsed Mr. Trump in October.”

“Mr. Zuberi donated more than $1.1 million to committees associated with Mr. Trump and the Republican Party”

And here are some of the things those spared by Trump were found guilty of:

“defraud[ing] investors of more than $28 million.”

“violating lobbying, campaign finance and tax laws, and obstructing an investigation into Mr. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee.”

“help[ing] the chief executive of an Ohio-based lighting company manipulate the corporation’s stock value, make coordinated trades and defraud investors.”

“bribery and attempted extortion by a government official.”

“public corruption, including obstructing justice, conspiracy, falsifying documents relied on by federal regulators and other violations of campaign finance laws.”

“tax fraud and accepting bribes.”

“fail[ing] to report nearly $1 million in gross receipts and hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee wages from a Manhattan restaurant he had owned.”

“evading taxes and defrauding banks of more than $30 million to support their luxurious lifestyle.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/politics/trump-pardons-hoover-grimm-chrisley.html?searchResultPosition=5

** How do consumer goods get priced? On this youtube video, Mike, the presenter, deals with the question: “Are luxury watches overpriced?” 

While none of us may be in the market for a Rolex or a Cartier watch, the same pricing logic applies downstream as well. It’s worth a watch (no pun intended).

 

Welcome/Not Welcome

Welcome

In 1938, Germany welcomed the world. As the travel advert below advises us, “Here you will find 20th Century progress” (perhaps signaled by the swastikas flapping in the background). 

Passengers were welcomed aboard Hapag German ships to England, France, and Germany. Among the ships was the Bremen, which, interestingly enough, served kosher food to Jewish passengers. Officials of the steamship line said that

there are usually thirty or forty Jews aboard on a trip and that about a dozen of these want kosher meals. On a recent westward crossing, the Bremen carried two rabbis.

The officials of the German line are by no means astonished at the extent of their Jewish trade. "There are a lot of American Jews who are regular customers," Mr. Weickum told us.

"And Jews sailing from Germany probably feel that they ought to take a German ship.” (1)

Another of the Hapag ships was the St. Louis, which offered a round trip to England or Ireland in Third Class for a mere $136.

Not Welcome 

Less than a year later, the same MS St. Louis was involved in one of the most outrageous episodes of the pre-war years:

In May 1939, the German liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to Havana, Cuba. The 937 passengers were almost all Jewish refugees. Cuba's government refused to allow the ship to land. The United States and Canada were unwilling to admit the passengers. The St. Louis passengers were finally permitted to land in western European countries rather than return to Nazi Germany. Ultimately, 254 St. Louis passengers were killed in the Holocaust. (2)

Welcome

 The year 1938 saw the introduction of the Kindertransport program, which transferred Jewish children from Germany and elsewhere in Europe to safety in Great Britain. Here’s The New Yorker’s take on it:

(3)

Not Welcome

While Jews were (allegedly) enjoying kosher cuisine aboard German ships and welcomed aboard German railroad trains which would later serve to transport their fellow religionists to the death camps in Eastern Europe, there were places in the United States where one could not conceivably obtain a knish or a piece of matzo. Here are just a few resorts in the Northeastern United States advising in their advertisements in The New Yorker in 1938 that they catered to a “restricted clientele,” a coded term for "no Yids allowed":

Welcome  

Headline in The Guardian:

White Afrikaner brought to US by Trump administration has history of antisemitic posts

Charl Kleinhaus posted on X in 2023 that “Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group.” In another post last fall, he shared a rightwing, nationalist YouTube video that was later removed, titled: “‘We’ll shoot ILLEGAL Immigrants!’ – Poland’s Illegal Islamic immigrant solution,” with clapping emojis. (4)

Not Welcome

Over the past several months, Mr. Trump has revoked the legal status afforded to some Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion and Afghan citizens who helped the American war effort in their country. He has also canceled the protected status of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who fled instability and political violence back home — potentially leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

Perhaps most prominent has been Mr. Trump’s targeting of nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to stay under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. (5)

*

To sum up the year 1938:

*

It’s too early to sum up the year 2025—and it’s only going to get worse. 

***

Coda

Morris Cohen decided to retire from the schmatte trade. 

"What are you going to do with yourself?" his friend Irving inquired. 

"I'm going to join the New York Athletic Club," Morris replied.

"But they don't admit Jews."

"However, I'm going to become a member!" Morris was emphatic.

For the next two years he worked on his project. He had his name legally changed. He moved from the Bronx to Fairfield, Connecticut. He took elocution lessons to sound like a lockjawed Yankee. And he got a new wardrobe from Brooks Brothers.

On the day of his appointment for an interview at the NYAC, he was dressed in a blue blazer, white button-down shirt, striped tie, gray slacks, and penny loafers.

"Thank you, for coming in, Mr. Maurice Cabot," said the club manager. "I see that your application is all filled out. You reside in Fairfield and are retired. May I ask what business you were in before retiring?"

"I was an entrepreneur in women's couture."

"It says here that you are married . . ."

"With one daughter--Muffy--who attends Bryn Mawr."

"Very good school. What sport are you interested in?"

"I thought I'd take a swing at squash racquets, if you don't mind a pun." 

"You would be very welcome. Now, you must excuse me, but I must ask a personal question. What is your family's religious affiliation?"

"Goyim."

***

 (1)  The New Yorker, May 14, 1938

(2)  https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis

  Also, see my blog: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2018/06/spirits-of-st-louis.html 

(3)  December 10, 1938.

(4)  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/south-african-refugee-antisemitic-posts

(5)  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/trump-deportation-protections-venezuelans-refugees.html?searchResultPosition=2