Nancy (Mullen) Benco Oswald (1928 - 2018)

On Saturday morning, February 18, 2018, , Nancy (Mullen) Benco Oswald died at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, PA. She was one month shy of her 90th birthday. Nancy was the daughter of Patrick Mullen (born in Ballina, County Mayo) and Bridget McHugh (born in Glangevlin, County Cavan). She lived her entire life in the Philadelphia and Allentown areas and is predeceased by two husbands, Joseph P. Benco and Walter T. Oswald.

Although her health had been failing over the past couple of years, Nancy was determined to attend the wedding of her granddaughter, Laura, last May. A few months after attending that wedding, she set her sights on another goal: attending the annual Mullen Christmas Party this past January. She accomplished that goal, participating in a rousing Irish sing-a-long lead by her son, Joe.

She died peacefully in her sleep surrounded by all of her children. Below is her official obituary, along with a few photos of her throughout the years.

 Nancy T. (Mullen) Benco Oswald, 89, of Allentown, died Saturday, February 17, 2018 at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest. She was the beloved wife of the late Joseph P. Benco, Sr. to whom she has now rejoined in Heaven. Born in Philadelphia, March 13, 1928, Nancy was the daughter of the late Patrick J. and Bridget Agnes (McHugh) Mullen. She was employed as a unit clerk at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest for 17 years before retiring. Nancy was a member of St. Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic Church, Orefield serving as Lector, Eucharistic Minister and sang with the funeral choir. She volunteer as a religious counselor at the Lehigh County Prison. Survivors: Loving and devoted mother of Maureen T. Benco of Allentown, Elaine P. Benco Hersh and her husband, Frederick of Emmaus, Janet A. Benco McShane and partner, Robert S. Lavin of Macungie, Joseph P. Benco, Jr. and his wife, Mary of Hampton, NJ, James Patrick Benco of Allentown; brother, Joseph Mullen of Wayne; sister, Patricia Sears of Willow Grove; grandchildren, William, Laura, Christopher, Andrew, Julie, Joseph III, Jessica; predeceased by siblings, Jack, Mary, Thomas, James.

Service: A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 10:30 am. Friday, February 23, 2018 at St. Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic Church, 1879 Applewood Drive, Orefield. The Rev. Joseph P. Becker will be the celebrant. Family and friends may pay their respects from 6 - 8:00 pm. Thursday and 9 - 9:45 am. Friday in the Heintzelman Funeral Home, Inc., 4906 Route 309, Schnecksville. Interment will take place at 2:00 pm. Saturday, February 24, 2018 at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Philadelphia. Online expressions of sympathy may be recorded at www.heintzelmancares.com. Contributions: In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to St. Joseph the Worker Angel Fund c/o the funeral home, P.O. Box # 196, Schnecksville, PA 18078-0196.

Nancy at the wedding of my parents in 1948

With her husband, Joseph Benco, at the same wedding

At the 2005 Mullen Christmas Party

Reviewing passenger ship manifests at the 2006 Mullen Christmas Party

A better photo of Nancy at the 2006 Mullen Christmas Party

Checking in at the 2008 Mullen Reunion in Ballina

At the "family farm" in Ballina in 2008

With her son, Jim, in Puerto de Cádiz in 2014

At her birthday party in March, 2017

At her granddaughter's wedding in May, 2017

Kathleen Duffy (1923-2017)

It is with sadness that I report the death of Kathleen Duffy on October 26, 2017, from complications caused by pneumonia.  Although she lived to the age of 94, her sudden sickness and death still caught me by surprise.  When I spoke with her on her birthday last August she still sounded strong and clear of mind. Her obituary, written by her nephews Patrick Mills (standing, center, in the photo above) and  Brian Fowler (standing, upper right) can be found here.  

From a genealogical perspective, Kathleen Duffy was my third cousin once removed, but from every other perspective she was much closer than that.  I first "met" Kathleen back in 2005 after my first visit to Ireland.  During that visit my interest in genealogy was fueled by a meeting in Ballina with Vince Duffy who showed me a large family tree that had been put together by his late father (Sean Duffy) and his father's cousin (Madge Messenger).  When I returned to the States, I sent a packet of information to Madge describing my interest in genealogy and asking for her help. A few months later, though, that packet was returned to me unopened with a note stating that it had never been claimed.  I decided to send the packet to Madge's sister, Kathleen Duffy, who called me at my home a week or so later.  She informed me that Madge's health had deteriorated to the point that she could no longer participate in detailed genealogical discussions, but that she would help me if she could.  This phone call initiated a friendship between us that would last until Kathleen's unexpected death. 

Letter to Aunt Mary

In early 2006 I began to organize a reunion of the extended Mullen Family in Ballina. Kathleen was overjoyed when she heard of this.  She stated that she was battling a number of physical ailments but that she would try her best to be there. I told her that I completely understood if she could not attend and mentioned that my Aunt Mary (a year older than Kathleen) was facing a similar dilemma.  A day or two later I received an email from Kathleen.  Embedded within was a note that Kathleen asked me to forward to Aunt Mary, a woman that Kathleen had never even met!  Click on the image on the right and take a minute or two to read this note.  It will provide you with a small inkling of Kathleen's unique personality and her ability to connect with others.  Ultimately, Aunt Mary's illness prevented her from attending the Reunion and meeting Kathleen.  Still, Kathleen would often ask me about Aunt Mary in her emails. 

At the 2008 Reunion

Kathleen and I finally met face-to-face at the Mullen Reunion in Ballina in 2008. While that event was, in many ways, a tremendous success, I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked with Kathleen.  Thankfully, my extended family had a chance to talk with her at length, and she made a deep and lasting impression on them -- and vice-versa.  This was epitomized on the morning after the Reunion as the U.S. contingent was climbing on a bus for a tour of western Ireland.  Kathleen, of course, had insisted on being there to see us off.  As the bus pulled away from the Downhill House Hotel, the last thing we all saw was Kathleen waving goodbye to us with her handkerchief.  I didn't capture that moment in a photo but I can still see it in my mind's eye as I type these words.  

In the years which followed, we continued to stay in touch, but it was mostly by email (Kathleen was very good with email into her 90's!)  She would often ask when Marilynn and I would return for another visit.  Sadly, we only managed to get back to England twice -- once during a week long vacation in 2009 (when the photo at the top of the post was taken) and again in 2015 when we attended Maire Davies' 70th birthday party.  It was during the 2015 visit that we had the pleasure of meeting Bridie Simkins, a woman whom Kathleen called "my best friend".  Marilynn and I had brought some gin and tonic with us as Bridie had told us that it was Kathleen's favorite drink.  We spent a lovely evening with Kathleen at Bridie and Ernie's house but, somehow, forgot to drink a gin and tonic!  After we returned to the States, Bridie sent us a short video of Kathleen.  I think it's fitting to end this memorial to Kathleen by clicking on the link below and hearing a few words from Kathleen herself -- sitting around with her best friend while enjoying a gin and tonic.

Kathleen and Bridie enjoying a G&T:  November 2015

My Day of Living Dangerously

A couple of days ago I inadvertently sliced my finger while unwrapping an Oster blender / food processor that I got for my birthday.  (Damn!  I should have looked at that YouTube unboxing video first!)   It wasn't a huge slice but it was bleeding like a sonovabitch, so I hustled to the medicine cabinet for a BAND-AID® (registered trademark of Johnson & Johnson) and some kind of ointment.  Sadly, the cabinet contained only a box of minimally sticky CVS bandages and no antiseptic ointment of any kind. With no real option, I decided to use a CVS bandage sans ointment.  Then I spotted a little bottle hiding in the corner of the cabinet containing a substance that I had almost forgotten about, something that -- if you're under 30 -- you've probably never heard of.  Its chemical name is "merbromin" but it was mass-marketed in the United States for the better part of a century under a different name: Mercurochrome. 

Opening the Oster blender box without assistance took courage, but what happened next was truly living dangerously.  I unscrewed the top off of the bottle, removed the glass applicator and placed a daub of Mercurochrome on my cut finger.  And there you have it.  I have just admitted to self-medicating myself with a drug that has been banned in the United States of America.  #politicalcareerover.

 

Click to enlarge

At this point you're probably wondering why Mercurochrome is a banned substance. Well, there's a short answer and a long answer.  The short answer is that it contains mercury, a substance identified by the EPA as a neurotoxin which, in sufficient quantities, is detrimental to your health.  The long answer is much more interesting.

The Long Answer

After extensive research via that fake-news pipeline known as the Internet, I learned that, in 1889, a John Hopkins professor named Ira Remsen created a substance called phenolsulfonphthalein (as difficult to pronounce as it looks).  In 1919, Hugh H. Young, another John Hopkins professor, built on that discovery to create merbromin, a related compound containing a trace amount of mercury. Finally, a third guy named Dr. H.A.B. Dunning developed a two percent solution of merbromin that would become known as Mercurochrome.  While initially used as a urinary antiseptic, Mercurochrome was soon sold to the public as an all-purpose antiseptic for small cuts and scratches.  Its trace amount of mercury acted as a disinfectant, disrupting the metabolism of microorganisms that could infect an exposed wound.

Mercurochrome quickly became a staple of every first aid kit in America. The FDA, which in those days didn't have the power or the resources to effectively regulate every drug, classified it as "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS).  Things stayed that way until 1978 when the FDA began a twenty year review of all over-the-counter antiseptics. While it found no evidence that Mercurochrome caused mercury poisoning, the FDA removed it from the GRAS list in 1998 anyway.  It also reclassified it as a "new drug.  This meant that a company wishing to continue producing Mercurochrome had to go through the FDA's onerous (and expensive!) approval process.  Unsurprisingly, no company elected to go through this process since:

• There were already many other non-mercury based antiseptics available to consumers.
• The patent on Mercurochrome had expired.  If a company chose to invest the time and money and managed to persuade the FDA to approve Mercurochrome, any other  company would then be able to produce a generic version. 
• Mercurochrome was a very inexpensive drug to make with a very low profit margin.
• The public had become wary of anything that contained even a trace amount of mercury.

Is it Safe?

According to this publication on a website called ISPUB (Internet Science Publications), Mercurochrome is as safe as bath water:

"Generally speaking, methylmercury is the poisonous form which is not the form of mercury found in Mercurochrome, thermometers, dental fillings, electrical switches, or vaccines. Mercurochrome contains mercury in a disodium salt form which is considered to be perfectly safe."

Despite it's impressively sounding name, ISPUB has all of the earmarks of a fake news site or, at bare minimum, a site without the proper amount of scientific oversight.  I resorted to quoting from it because, after 4 hours of searching the web, it was the only site I could find that even attempted to address the safety question.  Every other site avoided the issue with variants of "If the FDA banned it, it must be dangerous!" or "Better safe than sorry!".  While I understand those sentiments, there still should be some objective scientific evidence as to whether Mercurochrome is safe or not, especially since it is still being produced and used by other countries.   But as far as I've been able to determine, the effect of Mercurochrome on humans has never been rigorously tested and documented.

Since there appears to be no medical proof for the relative safety of Mercurochrome, let me leave you with the following logical proof:

• References to Mercurochrome describe it as a 2% aqueous solution of merbromin containing a "trace amount of mercury".
• Per FDA documents, a "trace amount" of mercury must be less than 1 part per million.
• The FDA has also set the maximum permissible safe level of mercury in seafood at 1 part per million.  
• A drop of Mercurochrom (which is mostly water) weighs approximately 0.050 grams.
• A recommended serving size of swordfish is approximately 100 grams.
• Therefore, eating a meal consisting of a recommended serving size of swordfish will expose your body to 2,000 times the amount of mercury that is contained in a drop of Mercurochrome. 
• Stated another way, you can put 2,000 drops of Mercurochrome on your body before it becomes a mercury health-hazard greater than a single FDA-approved swordfish dinner.

  Q.E.D.                             

PS:  Mercurochrome remains banned in the United States, France, Germany and Switzerland.

William J. Behrens and the Man of Steel

About four years ago, I joined a genealogical research site called Ancestry and began investigating the Hugues branch of my mother's family tree.  In a relatively short period of time, that tree has grown to over 1,100 verified names.  That may sound like a lot of names but, in genealogical terms, it's not that impressive.

Think of it this way:  Assume that you want to build a comprehensive family tree that extends from the present day back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776).  That's a span of 241 years or approximately 10 generations.  Let's also assume that, as you progress down through the generations, three children from each family marry and have (on average) three children of their own who marry,  and so on, down through the generations.  The chart on the left shows how quickly a family tree based on these simple assumptions can explode into almost 200,000 names!  All of this is a roundabout way of saying that there are quite a few names on my Hugues Family Tree that have not been fully explored.  One such name belongs to a man named William J. Behrens.

William J. Behrens was my mother's second cousin.  He was the son of Henry Behrens and Martha Mehan and was born in San Francisco, CA, on September 12, 1921.  Per Ancestry's California Marriage Index, William married a woman named Noel Heill in Los Angeles, CA, on August 27, 1953.  He died in Los Angeles on February 12, 2011, at the age of 89.  That, in a nutshell, was everything I could find out about William J. Behrens.  Ancestry contained no other information about his wife and no leads at all regarding children.  After a while, I marked William Behrens as a "cold case" and moved on to other names. 

Who called him "Papa"?

Last week, though, a colleague on Ancestry (and also my third cousin) posted a photo of the gravestone of William J. Behrens.  I already had this photo but I clicked on it anyway, just for the hell of it. Surprisingly, I saw something I hadn't noticed before.  Above his name was the word "Papa".  To me, this was a strong indicator that he had, indeed, fathered at least one child.  The game was once again afoot!  I dusted off my Ancestry research skills and dove in. 

Pay dirt!

It had been quite a while since I'd done any research on this guy so I was hoping to find a fresh, new lead.  That hope was quickly dashed.  After about an hour of searching I hadn't turned up anything meaningful on him or his wife, Noel Heill.  In fact, other than that reference in the California Marriage Index, I had absolutely nothing on his wife, not even a date of birth!  I decided to bring up a scanned image of that marriage index to see if it contained anything else of use ... and did it ever!  William's wife was not named Noel Heill.  Her name was Noel Neill!  If that name means nothing to you, it's probably because you weren't born before 1960 and didn't watch the Superman TV show on channel 11, WPIX, starring George Reeves as the Man of Steel.  Noel Neill was the name of the actress that played Lois Lane!

All this seemed a little too good to be true.  Before I could announce this monumental discovery, I needed ironclad proof.  Now that I had Noel's correct name, this turned out to be pretty simple: 

1. The California Birth Index confirmed that William J. Behrens, with a mother whose maiden name was Mehan, was born on September 12, 1921.
2. The Minnesota, Birth Index confirmed that Noel Darleen Neill was born on November 25, 1920.
3. The California Marriage Index (above) confirmed that William Behrens (age 31) and Noel Neill (age 32) were married on August 27, 1953.  Both ages correspond exactly to the information contained in their birth index records.

On top of that, there's this excerpt from a Wikipedia entry on Noel Neill:

Personal life
In 1943, Neill married makeup artist Harold Lierley in Hollywood, California. The marriage was annulled shortly afterward. Neill then married William Behrens in 1953 in Santa Monica, California; the marriage ended in divorce in 1962. While still married to Behrens, the Superman television program was cancelled. 

That sealed the deal for me.  In the TV series, Lois Lane never married Superman.  But in real life, William J. Behrens was her Man of Steel! 

George Reeves and Noel Neill in the 1950's

Noel Neill died last year. In her obituary, the New York Times failed to mention any children, noting only that she had "no surviving family members".  Since Behrens was in his 40's at the time of their divorce, it's probably a safe bet that he, too, died without children.  Maybe the word "Papa" on his gravestone was simply his nickname:  "Papa Behrens", a play on "Papa Bear".  Whatever.  It's time to close this case again and move on to a new name.  

---

Postscript:

Here we go again.  While writing this story, I couldn't resist the urge to continue researching.  When the Ancestry well ran dry I switched to a second genealogical site called Family Search.  I created a search using everything I now knew about Noel Neill and William Behrens and hit ENTER.  Unbelievably, my results included a copy of their actual marriage certificate from a database called "California, County Marriages, 1850-1952":

Mind blown ... again!

This document confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that William John Behrens, my mother's second cousin and the son of Martha Mehan and Henry Behrens, married Noel Darleen Neill in 1953.  But it also raises a brand new issue:  Before marrying Noel Neill, William Behrens had been married twice before!  So maybe he does have descendants after all!

The game is afoot!

Thoughts on Inauguration Eve

I have no intention of watching any of this weekend’s Inauguration festivities for the 45th President of the United States.  But I also have no intention of participating in any of the protest marches taking place around the nation.   At this point, Trump hasn't done anything as President of the United States to warrant such an action.  It is true, though, that he continues to do things that border on the ridiculous and the petulant, as though he’s deliberately thumbing his nose at his detractors.   Here are a few of his highlights since Election Day: 

Rex Tillerson:  Amid fears that Russia possessed comprising information on him, and despite proof that Russia successfully hacked the email accounts of Democratic party leaders during the election and attempted to hack into the U.S. electrical grid, Trump nominated Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State.  Mr. Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil until last month and is a multi-millionaire with deep ties with Russia dating back to the 1990’s.   He is also strongly opposed to the 2014 sanctions that were imposed on Russia by the EU and the US in response to Russia’s military intervention in the Ukraine.  Those sanctions have already cost ExxonMobil an estimated $1 billion.  Not exactly an appointment that “drains the swamp.” 

Ben Carson: Following his November victory, Trump nominated Ben Carson for Surgeon General, a position for which Dr. Carson could actually be qualified.  Surprisingly, he declined the position because, as stated by his business manager:  “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency.  The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”  At that moment on that day, I had new-found respect for Dr. Carson.  But it didn’t last long.  A few weeks later, Trump nominated him again, this time to head up the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  You’d think that Dr. Carson would once again decline, but you’d be wrong.  He quickly accepted the nomination, stating as one of his qualifications, “I grew up in the inner city … and have dealt with a lot of patients from that area”. 

Betsy DeVos:  Ms. Devos is a Michigan billionaire nominated by Trump to head the Department of Education despite the fact that she has been a longtime foe of public education.  She’s an advocate of the voucher system and the use of public funding to pay for private and religious schools.  The National Education Association (NEA) calls her “dangerously unqualified”, stating that she has “spent decades working to dismantle public education and privatize public schools”.  The ACLU denounced her attempts to “create a voucher system that would divert public money to private and religious schools and erode the bedrock value of separation of church and state.” And then there’s her support for guns in schools, citing grizzly bears in Wyoming as a compelling reason. 

Rick Perry:  While this sounds like a Saturday Night Live bit, it’s true:  Donald Trump nominated Rick Perry to head up the Department of Energy, the very department that Perry said should be eliminated back in 2012.  While being a scientist isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for the position, it's worth noting that the current DOE head is a nuclear physicist and the guy before him won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics.  Rick Perry graduated from Texas A&M with a D+ average in his science courses and supports the teaching of Creationism in public schools.  On the positive side, though, he has appeared on Dancing With the Stars.  That has to count for something.

Twitter Response to John Lewis:  Trump continues to use Twitter as his main method of communication, retribution and revisionism.  After Congressman John Lewis criticized Trump in a television interview, Trump tweeted, “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad!”  He tweeted this despite the fact that Lewis’s district is fairly affluent and his life has been committed to public service and activism, particularly in the cause of Civil Rights. 

There are more examples (Monica Crowley, Stephen Bannon, Mike Pompeo, etc.) but I think we’ve both had enough. I just want it to be clear that I’m aware of  Trump’s recent actions before you read the next paragraph. 

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I fervently hope that four years from now, on the eve of the 2021 Inauguration, my candidate, Donald J. Trump, is preparing to embark on his second term as President of the United States.  This has happened because he, once again, has confounded the "lamestream media" and become one of the best and most effective presidents in the history of the United States.  How could he possibly do this?  Well, here’s a scenario:

• Ruling by caustic tweets that rewrite history, all of Congress – Democrats and Republicans – live in fear of crossing Trump.  In contrast to the last 8 years of a do-nothing Congress, the next four years are marked by a blizzard of new legislation.
• Since Trump purposely surrounded himself with puppets like Rick Perry and Ben Carson, there is no discord or opposition within his Cabinet or inner circle.
• Trump appoints two Supreme Court justices in his first term, creating a solid majority that rules in favor of virtually any legislation that he supports. 
• With all of this power, Trump feels completely unfettered by any promises that he made in the past.  As such, his first term is marked by legislation, social programs and foreign policy that is long overdue and beneficial for the country and the world. 

That last bullet might be a tad far-fetched, I agree.  But something just that stupefying would have to occur before I could ever vote for Trump.  In the meantime, let's all be very wary of any movement, no matter how faint, to repeal the 22nd Amendment.

The Trump Presidency and a Glimmer of Hope

When I realized that Trump had been elected as the 45th President of the United States, I fell into a deep despair.  I wasn't ashamed of being an American, but I was angry, sad and frightened for America. Our ignorance is appalling, and I'm not saying this simply because my candidate lost. Trump won this election because the majority of the electorate believed all of his lies, despite the abundance of unbiased fact-checking that was available to them. They just didn't care enough to read.

What happens next?  Pundits like Bill Maher believe that this is just the beginning of a "slow right-wing coup" in which Trump, once he gains control, will not give it up.  A year ago such a statement would have been laughable.  After last night, though, anything is possible.  At this point you're probably wondering "Where the hell is that glimmer of hope?" Read on.

There are two characteristics that epitomize Donald Trump: his huge ego and his skill at lying.  He is such a good liar that he received over 80% of the white evangelical vote, despite the fact that he has been married three times, has admitted to committing adultery, has been caught on audiotape making incredibly misogynistic statements, and has been accused of sexual assault by at least 12 women, one of whom has accused him of raping her in 1994 when she was 13.  Why "in God's name" would evangelicals support this man?  Because he promised that, if elected, he would appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.  That's it.  That's all it took to lock up the white evangelical vote.  But will Trump actually follow through on this promise?  This video from 1999 would suggest otherwise.  In it, Trump characterizes himself as "pro-choice in every respect" and states that he is not even in favor of banning partial birth abortions.  It's impossible to know what Trump truly believes but the "glimmer of hope" is that he will not follow through on most of the promises he made in order to win the election. No wall, no Muslim ban, no repeal of Obamacare, no repeal of Roe v. Wade.

And then there's the Trump ego.  Everything with Trump has to be the best. The best steaks.  The best University.  The best hotel.  The second "glimmer of hope" is that he truly wants to go down in history as the best President of the United States.  If that's the case, he can't preside over a 4-year train wreck and then leave saying "I was the greatest President ever!" Trump may be the master at controlling our malleable media but he can't control history.  Even he knows that.  So for Trump to truly be the greatest President he is going to have to do a complete about face, work harder than he ever has in his life and lead this country to the "greatness" he has promised.  And, to be honest, with Republican majorities in the both the Senate and the House and with a favorable Supreme Court in the near future, Trump will be in a much better position to do this than Hillary would have been had she been elected last night.

As I said, though, this is only a glimmer of hope, one that will keep me functioning for the next few days.  If Trump appoints Chris Christie as his Attorney General, Rudy Giuliani as head of the FBI, and Sara Palin for Secretary of the Interior, then all is lost. 

Why I'm Special

Everybody's special, right?  Isn't that what your Mom always told you?  Finding out what makes you special, though, isn't always easy.  I'm proud to say that I finally figured it out.  

Today is my birthday, June 22.  (Thanks for the card!)  As a kid I always equated my birthday with the first day of summer, otherwise known as the summer solstice.  Whenever I mentioned this to other people, though, I was almost always told, "No way kid, the summer solstice is on June 21st", and that would be the end of that.  I didn't care enough to dig into it further. 

A couple of days ago, though, I read that this year's summer solstice (in the northern hemisphere) was on June 20th.  That was two days ago!  How could I have been that wrong as a kid?  There's no way I was off by two full days.  It was time to go down the Internet rat-hole and investigate.  

It was a quick investigation.  My first stop was, of course, Wikipedia, which authoritatively stated that, "depending on the shift of the calendar, the summer solstice occurs some time between June 20 and June 22 in the northern hemisphere".  It also displayed the table shown on the right which provided the dates of the summer solstice between 2010 and 2020. If you click on that graphic, though, you'll notice that June 22 does not appear anywhere.  What gives?  At this point, Wikipedia does a fairly poor job of explaining, citing simply the "leap shifting in the Gregorian Calendar" as the cause.  In a nutshell this refers to the fact that the Gregorian Calendar is slightly out of sync with the Astronomical Calendar, requiring corrective measures like leap-days and leap-seconds.  There's undoubtedly a much more academic discussion of this phenomenon somewhere on the web but I'm not interested in searching for it and you sure as hell aren't interested in reading it.

But here is something that is interesting and what makes me so special.  This website contains a table showing the exact date of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere from the years 1600 to 2400.  In that 800 year span, it occurs on June 22 exactly 87 times.  And -- you guessed it -- one of those times was in 1955, the year I was born.  Yes!!  I win the game!!   I was born on the summer solstice!!!  

One other thing.  Since my birth, the summer solstice has occurred on June 22 only five times, the most recent being in 1975.  Amazingly, it won't happen again until the year 2203!  So from a slightly skewed viewpoint, I'm not 61 today.  From a Gregorian/Astronomical Congruence viewpoint, I'm only 5, and I won't be 6 for a very, very long time.  Naturally, birthday cards and presents will be graciously accepted on a Gregorian basis.  

"Alright boys, let's get two!"

Just when I was pretty much convinced that Facebook was nothing more than collection of pet pictures, baby photos and fabricated news, a guy that I barely knew posted a photo of my 1967 Little League team, Western Printing.  I'm the little kid with the huge baseball glove in the bottom row, second from the left.  This simple photo has caused me more introspection than I would have thought possible.

Why do I have absolutely no recollection of this photo?  According to the guy who posted it on Facebook, it was taken after Western Printing had just won the 1967 Poughkeepsie Little League Championship!  If so, this photo almost certainly would have found its way into the sports section of the Poughkeepsie Journal.  My mother would have clipped it out and preserved it somewhere.  As a 12-year old kid who loved watching the Yankees, this should have been a huge moment for me, but I have nothing but a blank slate.

While many of the faces in the picture look vaguely familiar most of their names have been lost to the fog of time, with one notable exception.  The big kid with glasses standing behind me was named Sam Forman.  His father, also named Sam Forman, was our manager.  He's the guy standing in the back.  Sam Jr. was one of our pitchers (I think) and our first baseman.  He wasn't much of an athlete at the time and slow as hell, but the ball would go a long way whenever he made contact.  I wonder how he turned out?  A 12-year old kid can change a lot.

Sam Sr. was a nice, easy going man who was generous with his time.  He was probably one of those guys who watched a lot of baseball but never really played it.  During practice, his big thing was to hit grounders to us while saying, "Alright, boys, let's get two!".  For anyone not familiar with that phrase, it means to scoop up the grounder and throw the ball to the guy covering second who would then relay it to first for an imaginary double play.  It didn't matter that I was a right fielder, he always wanted me to "get two".

Why do I have such a big smile on my face in that photo?  I hated playing Little League.  I was a tiny kid, probably about 4'8" and 75 pounds at the time.  There are kids smaller than me in this photo but they were probably 9 or 10 years old.  I was 12 years old, the oldest you could possibly be and still play Little League.  I was a pretty fast runner but I couldn't hit worth a damn, probably because I was deathly afraid of the ball.  Pitchers like Scotty Coleman and Skippy Allen could throw a baseball at least 80 mph.  Scotty inspired much more fear than Skippy, though, because he had much less control of where his pitches were going (think Nuke LaLoosh in "Bull Durham").  Every time I stepped into the batter's box I had visions of getting hit in the head and ending up like poor Tony Conigliaro of the 1967 Boston Red Sox. As I recall I got about 3 or 4 hits all season with about 30 strikeouts. 

So, based on all of this, why is it that I still have that old baseball glove?  As an adult, I played in softball leagues every now and then, but I never used that glove.  My kids played T-Ball and baseball, but they never used that glove.  My grandkids will probably never use that glove. My daughter is a pack rat and I'm always trying to get her to throw stuff away, but as I sit here typing this blog I know that I'll never throw away that glove.  Why am I so attached to it?

Although I hated playing Little League, I loved going up the street to Putnam Park and shagging fly balls with my brother, Tom.  It has to be one of my best childhood memories.  One of us would stand in the batter's box, toss a ball in the air and hit it as far as he could.  The other would play the outfield and try to catch the ball before it hit the ground.  After 10-15 fly balls, we'd switch places and continue hitting fly balls until it was time to go home.  I suppose I could say that I'm hanging onto the glove in memory of my brother, but that wouldn't be true.  I had already been hanging onto it for over 25 years when Tom died in 1993, so I must be hanging onto it because of the memory of shagging those fly balls.  I've forgotten a lot of my childhood (and my adult life, for that matter) but the memory of tracking down a fly ball while running full speed up that hill in left-center field is still as clear as a bell.

Putnam Park, now Bartlett Park

"Tree Falling"

After almost 40 years of research I now have definitive proof that a Supreme Being exists, that it communicates with its creations in a purely random manner, and that it has an excellent sense of humor.  All was revealed to me a few weeks ago when I finally began to convert my old home movies from VHS to digital.

It's a project that has been gnawing at me ever since I retired in 2012.  According to the experts, VHS tapes can degrade by as much as 20% within 10 years due to magnetic decay alone – and that's if they are stored properly.  Improperly stored tapes can become brittle and totally unusable within 20 years.  My VHS tapes were inexpensive Scotch T-120's, over 30 years old, and haphazardly stored in a dusty bookcase.  Lord knew what condition they were in, and since He wasn't talking to me (yet), I decided to find out on my own.

I began by purchasing a VHS capture and conversion product from Amazon called Diamond One-Touch.  It promised "easy to use capture by the touch of one button" and Windows 10 support. Neither claim was true.  Fortunately (or was it Divine Providence?) I still had an old Windows 7 computer that had been gathering dust for the last 10 months.  I cleaned it off and powered it up, making damn sure to keep it off the Internet.  After installing the conversion software and hooking up my 1990's-era Zenith VHS player to my computer (using the cable shown above) I managed to figure out how to capture a video despite the valiant effort of the instruction manual to prevent me.  Certain religions would no doubt claim that getting this far was a full-fledged Miracle, but much more definitive proof of the Divine Hand was awaiting. 

After testing everything out with a videocassette containing nothing of significance, I bit the bullet and tested the conversion process on one of my precious home movies.  Before beginning, though, I fast-forwarded the tape for a few minutes to make sure that there were no mechanical problems and that the tape moved freely within the VCR.  I then stopped the tape and captured this video.  I'll give you a few minutes to look at it.

From a production standpoint, it's a pretty horrible video.  It's grainy and shaky and there are instances where the audio is almost unintelligible.  But, by sheer luck, it captured an iconic phrase that is a Mullen Family touchstone, the origin of which I had completely forgotten.  While I knew that Dave (while under a bit of stress) had randomly called something "tree falling", I had no idea that it was his bike and that we had the event on film.  While this incredibly chance discovery caused chills to run down my back, it still didn't smack of Divine Intervention.  What happened next, though, rolled the stone away from the tomb.

Like any responsible parent in this day and age, I uploaded this video to YouTube.  As part of the upload process, YouTube selected a random frame from the video and assigned it as the video's thumbnail photo. The frame that was "randomly" selected is shown at the top of this post. Yep.  It's Dave at the exact nanosecond that he begins to say "Tree Falling"!  Since the video is 2 minutes and 39 seconds long and was captured at 30 frames per second, the odds of that particular frame being selected by chance are astronomical.*  

There is only one reasonable explanation.  The Supreme Being saw this video, rolled on the clouds laughing (ROCL), and felt compelled to give it a stamp of celestial approval.  The seemingly "random" thumbnail photo that He assigned to this video is as clear to me as that burning bush was to Moses. 

*  Well, maybe not astronomical; more like one chance out of five thousand.

Powerball: Your Patriotic Duty!

I’ve always detested the lottery.  So after last week's national frenzy over the $1.4 billion Powerball drawing, I decided to write a scathing exposé of the lottery system: how it's a hidden tax on the poor, an incredibly inefficient way of funding important social programs and a source of false hope to millions.  I expected this blog post to write itself.  After all, I'm "that guy", the person that never joins office lottery pools.  I always decline saying, "No thanks. When you guys win, I'll be that guy, the guy featured in the news who could have been a millionaire but refused to join the office pool".  Sometimes I’d explain why I thought the lottery was a national disgrace but, for the most part, I let them have their fun.  I ended up getting a T-shirt in the bargain.

After a week of trying to write this post, though, it was clear that I was getting nowhere.  Try as I might, I couldn't put together a convincing argument for why the lottery is a national disgrace.  

It’s Gambling!
 

"Ya got trouble ... right here in River City! 
With a capital 'T' that rhymes with 'G' that stands for Gambling!"

I've known for some time that I was born with a less than full complement of the male genetic code.  I rarely spit, try not to swear, can't grow a decent beard, don't smoke cigars, enjoy reading "Pride and Prejudice", and hate every movie written or directed by Seth Rogan.  I also dislike gambling, but I'm hardly an anti-gambling crusader.  In fact, I've done a bit of social gambling myself; things like “50-50” raffles,  Super Bowl pools, the March Madness bracket, and duck-racing on Cranbury Day.  I always admired my brother's skill at taking other people’s money (legally) while playing poker, and my own mother used to play bingo at the church on Friday nights!  The fact that the lottery is a form of gambling hardly qualifies it as a national disgrace.

 
It's a sucker's bet!

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are approximately 1 in 292 million, which translates into 0.0000003%. You can improve your odds by buying more tickets, but even if you bought 3 million tickets your chances of winning would still be under 1%.

At a casino, the odds are with the house regardless of the game.  Craps, a game played by simply rolling a pair of dice, gives you one of the best chances to win.  One way to win is to roll a natural (a 7 or an 11) on your first roll.  The odds of doing that are 8 out of 36 (22%).  The odds of doing that twice in a row are (8/36 x 8/36) or about 5%.  The odds of doing that ten times in a row is equal to about 0.00003%, or about 1 chance out of 3.4 million.  Probably no one in the history of casino gambling has ever done this, but it is still almost 100 times easier to do than win the Powerball jackpot.

For Powerball to be a sucker's bet, though, the astronomical odds against winning would have to be hidden (or at least non-evident), and that's not the case.  Last October the lottery system openly publicized the fact that they were making the Powerball jackpot even harder to win by increasing the number of balls from 59 to 69, thereby decreasing the odds of winning the jackpot from 1 in 175,223,510 to 1 in 292,201,338. As expected, the media had a field day with this, announcing that it is more likely to be struck by lightning twice while drowning than to win the Powerball jackpot.  It should be clear to everyone that the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are pretty stupendous.

It’s an inefficient way to raise money!

It’s difficult if not impossible to defend lotteries as an efficient way of raising funds.  As shown in the chart below, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that, in 2011, state lotteries generated over $18 billion in profits.  That sounds pretty good until you realize that it required $54 billion of ticket sales to do it.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Here’s how NBC News broke down state lottery sales in 2012: 

"About 72 cents of every state lottery dollar goes somewhere else. About 60 cents goes to the winner. Some goes to run the lottery. A piece of it goes to a private, Italian-based conglomerate that operates lotteries and slot machines in 50 countries around the world.  Depending on what state you live in, that leaves as little as 11 cents left to pay for the government services these games were created to help."  

And in September of 2015, NorthJersey.com recently reported the following statistics regarding New Jersey lottery ticket sales: 

“Ticket sales have topped $3 billion for the first time, but New Jersey’s lottery expects to send only $930 million back to the state to help fund social service programs — the lowest rate of return in nearly four decades.”

While these statistics are true, they don't pack that big of a punch.  The lotteries may be an inefficient method of raising money but, without them, important social programs throughout the nation would have had $18 billion less funding in 2011.

It's a tax on the poor!

Whenever I have railed against the lottery, this has been my go-to argument: 

"Rather than raise everyone’s taxes to pay for needed social and infrastructure projects, the federal and state governments have opted instead for lotteries in which participation by the poor is much higher than the rich.  This has the effect of making the lottery a de facto tax on the poor."

For years, that was the conclusion by almost every study on lotteries.  Below are three representative examples:

While these analyses were undeniably true at the time, a landmark study in 2004 by Emily Oster of Harvard University examined the "regressivity" of the lotteries; that is, whether they place a heavier tax burden on the poor than on the wealthy. Her conclusion [with a phrase emphasized by me] indicated that, while lotteries were definitely regressive, the situation could change:

"The regressivity of lotteries has become an increasingly important issue in the U.S. as the number of state-run lotteries has increased. Despite this, we still know relatively little about the nature of lottery regressivity.  I use a new dataset on Powerball lotto sales to analyze how regressivity varies with jackpot size within a single lotto game.  I find that these large-stakes games are significantly less regressive at higher jackpot sizes.  An out-of-sample extrapolation of these results suggests that the lottery becomes progressive at a jackpot around $806 million. This suggests that concerns about regressivity might be allayed by concentrating lotto games to produce higher average jackpots."

At the time of this study, a jackpot of $806 million was almost unthinkable.  But thanks to the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), jackpots of this size or larger will almost certainly become the new norm.  MUSL was created to manage national lottery games like Powerball and Mega Millions.  It was MUSL that, probably unwittingly, followed Emily Oster’s advice by decreasing the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot, thereby causing jackpot sizes to increase.  Make no mistake about it: MUSL was not motivated by concern for the poor!  They were motivated by pure capitalism, as reported in the USA Today on July 6, 2015:   

"Robert Williams, executive director of the [New York] state Gaming Commission, said the new odds are scheduled to launch nationwide on Oct. 4 for the Oct. 7 Powerball drawing.  "The proposed rule is intended to increase the odds of winning any prize while decreasing the odds to win the jackpot," Williams said.  The move is aimed at boosting jackpots as sales have slumped since 2013, the last huge payout.  Powerball sales declined nationally by 19% last year because there was no huge jackpot."

The impact of this change was everything that MUSL could have hoped for, and then some.  The chart below shows Powerball ticket sales going through the roof as the recent Powerball jackpot grew in size, culminating in record ticket purchases immediately prior to the drawing on January 13. 

Source: www.lottoreport.com

With this many tickets being sold it is clear that an incredibly high percentage of Americans are now buying Powerball tickets.  If Emily Oster's model is correct, Powerball is no longer a regressive tax on the poor.  It could even be progressive.   

So what does this all mean?

I still dislike gambling and I still think lotteries are an incredibly inefficient way of raising money for social programs. The state and federal governments should be using their taxation power rather than the lottery system to raise any money needed to support their programs.  All that being said, I have to recognize the following truths:

1. People love the lotteries.  Actually, most people simply love to gamble.  For some, it's the thrill of taking a risk; for others, it's a social event like Friday night poker or playing fantasy football; for still others it's the desire to escape poverty.  Whatever the reason, lotteries are ingrained in our society and won't be going away in my lifetime.
2. Lotteries are simply another form of taxation.  Since our elected officials are deathly afraid of raising taxes, the lottery system is a godsend for them.  It allows federal and state governments to generate the necessary funding for social programs by simply convincing their constituents to play a game, albeit a losing one.  
3. Without lotteries, billions of dollars needed for social programs would be lost. The federal and state governments currently depend upon the lottery to fund programs for parks, education,  elderly care, emergency responders, veterans and more.  If the lottery system was shut down, these programs would have to be cut back (probably) or taxes raised (not bloody likely).
4.  Everyone must play the lottery!  If only the poor play and lose, the lottery is nothing more than a regressive tax.  For it to be a fair method of taxation, everyone must play and lose.  

Based on the graph below created by CNN Money, Americans spent $70.15 billion on lottery tickets in 2014, more than they spent on music, movies, books, video games and sports tickets combined! Based on the estimated population of the U.S. in 2014 (320 million), that comes to about $220 per person.  

Graphic:  CNN Money

So, in order to perform my civic and patriotic duty as a tax-paying citizen of the United States of America, I must buy $220 worth of Powerball tickets each year. That equates to approximately one $2 ticket for each of the twice-weekly drawings.  I cannot fulfill my patriotic duty by simply donating an extra $220 each year to my favorite charity. Until it becomes outlawed, I must support Powerball so that it remains a non-regressive tax.  

Yes, black has become white and up has become down.

"We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."

B.-Pengő!

Back in the 70's as a freshman in college, I signed up for a course in macroeconomics.  It must have been a mandatory class.  There are few things in life that I find more boring than economics, so a course in macroeconomics could only be one thing: macro-boring.  And it was.  Deadly boring. 

Flash forward 40 years.  As a retiree with time on my hands, I often find myself "going down a rat hole" on the Internet and spending an inordinate amount of time on a random topic that has struck my fancy.  Imagine my surprise last week when that random topic was inflation!  I can't even recall what prompted this particular descent. The last thing I remember was reading an article containing a reference to hyperinflation in Hungary during World War II.  Mildly interested, I clicked on that link and the rest of my day vanished.   

Dissolution of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire

A Little History

Prior to World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (a multi-national state) was the second largest country in Europe and one of the world's great powers.  Unfortunately it was allied with Germany and found itself on the wrong side of the Great War. At the war's conclusion, the Empire was dissolved into a number of independent sovereign states.  Hungary lost two-thirds of its population, over two-thirds of its territory, and was turned into a landlocked country.  The currency of the Empire, the Austro-Hungarian krone, was replaced in Hungary with the korona.  Due to the consequences of the war, the korona suffered a high rate of inflation until, with the assistance of the League of Nations, it was replaced in 1927 with the pengő.   In 1941, the pengő was worth about $0.20 USD.  Remember that exchange rate.  It will change a bit in the five years that follow.

World War I was disastrous to Hungary but World War II was even worse.  Once again, Hungary found itself allied with Germany.  For a few years, though, it managed to avoid the worst of the war's destruction.  This good fortune would not last. 

July 1941:  Pressured by Germany, the Hungarian army participates in the invasion of the Soviet Union, advancing deep into the Soviet Ukraine.

February, 1943:  The Soviet Union retaliates, crushing the Hungarian army in the Battle of Stalingrad.  The Hungarian army suffers more than 100,000 casualties and is effectively eliminated as a fighting force.

March, 1944: Suspecting that the Hungarian Prime Minister is negotiating an independent armistice with the Allies, Hitler orders the occupation of Hungary.

September, 1944:  The Soviet Union invades Hungary and the entire country becomes a battlefield until the end of the war. 

December, 1944:  The remnants of the Hungarian army are destroyed by Soviet troops in the Siege of Budapest.

February, 1946:  The Kingdom of Hungary is abolished and becomes the Second Republic of Hungary, a communist satellite state under the control of the Soviet Union. 

At war's end, Hungary was left in tatters. Almost half of it's national wealth was gone, a quarter of its industrial capacity had been lost, and most of its transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges, railways) had been destroyed.  Reconstruction was also hampered by the fact that Hungary had to pay reparations to the Soviet Union for its participation in the war.  

Hyperinflation Strikes

If I actually understood economics, I might be tempted to explain the concept of inflation at this point.  But I don't so I won't.  Suffice it to say that inflation refers to the decreased purchasing power of a nation's currency over time.  A certain degree of inflation is not necessarily a bad thing.  In the case of the United States, the goods and services that could have been purchased for $100 in 1920 would cost a little over $1,200 today.  That works out to an average annual inflation rate of 2.69% which isn't bad, especially since the average per capita income in the United States in 1920 was about $750 (it's now about $30,000).

Let's compare this to what happened in Hungary.  In 1941, its currency (the pengő) was worth approximately $0.19 USD.  By June of 1944 it was worth about $0.03 USD.  That means that it took over 6 times as many pengős in 1944 to purchase the same amount of goods that could be purchased in 1941.  That's not good but, as shown in the chart below, it got infinitely worse: 

Yep.  You're reading the chart correctly.  On July 31, 1946, $1 USD was equivalent to approximately 460,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengős!  The Hungarian currency was experiencing hyperinflation the likes of which the world had never seen before and has not seen since.  In response, the Hungarian government started printing out banknotes of higher and higher denominations. 

One Thousand Pengő Note:  Issued July of 1945

One Million Pengő Note: Issued February of 1946

One Billion Pengő Note: Issued May of 1946

As inflation continued to skyrocket, the Hungarian government created a new term -- the milpengő, equal to 1 million pengős -- and issued the following banknotes in quick succession:

Ten Thousand Milpengő Note: Issued May of 1946

Ten Million Milpengő Note: Issued June of 1946

One Billion Milpengő Note: Issued June of 1946

Let's take a moment to examine that last banknote.  One billion milpengős is equal to one billion million pengős or 1 x 10¹⁵ pengős.  At the time it was issued, $1 USD was trading for 4.2 x 10¹⁶ pengős, meaning that it still required 42 of these notes to equal $1 USD!  

Sadly for the Hungarian people, the devaluation of the pengő continued at an even faster pace, resulting in another new term: the b.-pengő (pronounced bilpengo).  Now, you might think that a b.-pengő was equal to a billion pengős, but you'd be wrong.  It's actually equal to a trillion (1 x 10¹²) pengős!  And so it was that in July of 1946 -- within the span of a single week -- the Hungarian Treasury responded to this crushing inflation rate by cranking out its final pengő banknotes:

One Million B.-Pengő Note

One Hundred Million B.-Pengő Note

One Billion B.-Pengő Note

That last banknote is the highest denomination note that mankind has ever printed, equal to a billion trillion (1 x 10²¹) pengős.  Since $1 USD was trading for approximately 4.6 x 10²⁹ pengős at that time, it required 4.6 x 10⁸ or 460 million of these notes to equal $1 USD!  

There is an ironic footnote to this story.  The one billion b.-pengő banknote was printed but never issued to the public.  As a result, it has become a collector's item of sorts for numismatists.  It was worth only $0.000000002 when it was printed, but it's now auctioned on eBay for over $500!

 Now that would make a fascinating Economics class!

Sweeping up worthless pengő banknotes

Postscript

In August of 1946, a new regime was installed in Hungary. A new currency, the forint, was introduced and backed by the return of Hungary's gold supply which had been taken by the Nazis during the war.  Hungary's infrastructure -- in particular, its railroads -- were restored and its economy returned quickly to its pre-war level.