29 October—Assuming you actually want to see the Verelst and Kaphar paintings I wrote about in yesterday’s essay, here they are, along with one by James Worsdale, of Elihu Yale with his slave, also in Yale’s Center for British Art (but not on display), contemporary with the Verelst; and another, a somewhat smaller version of the Verelst, oil on copper, by an unknown artist, not on display in the Yale University Art Gallery.

The early 18^th-century portraits aren’t to my taste. But I’m being unkind, because they’re merely of their time and probably need cleaning. The early 21^st-century iteration of the Verelst by Kaphar, on the other hand, is certainly of its time and rather more to my taste. And clearly representative of Kaphar’s views on race and politics as well as of his innovative talent.

Incidentally, Yale says the old portraits are in the public domain; and I’ll cop to fair use for reproducing the Kaphar, which isn’t a trompe l’oeil work and must have been a real bitch to hang . . .

28 October—A painting of Elihu Yale and three white guys with a little black boy (presumably a slave because he’s wearing a collar, probably silver) in the foreground and Elihu’s presumed grandchildren in the background that had been removed from public display in the Yale Center for British Art a year ago has just been put back. Bravo. For nothing. And about time. It should never have been removed.

The excuse for removing the particularly and typically dull early 18^th-century portrait, painted at Yale’s home in London, probably on the occasion of his daughter Anne’s betrothal to Lord James Cavendish, was that the experts wanted to conduct a technical analysis to identify the slave as well as to confirm the identities of the other subjects.

(It’s worth noting, but only parenthetically, that Elihu Yale was filthy rich, just like the university, but the Cavendishes—the Dukes of Devonshire—were even richer. And the family motto, “Cavendo tutus,” is a delightful pun. It means “Safety through caution.”)

Identifying the subjects of the portrait could easily have been done without removing the painting from public view. And is it mere coincidence that the non-woke 18^th-century portrait was replaced by a totally woke 2016 portrait of that same slave boy—but not wearing a collar—by Titus Kaphar, who just happens to be a black Yale alumnus?

Truth be told, there’s nothing at all wrong with Titus Kaphar’s portrait of the little boy whom he emancipated artistically. In fact, it’s brilliant: sarcastic, nasty, executed with great skill. Much better than the hack portrait by John Verelst, a Dutchman working in London. But Kaphar’s brilliant portrait should have been hung beside the Verelst hack work, not instead of it.

Maybe it will be or has been. Wait a minute. The two paintings can’t be displayed together. Because Kaphar’s isn’t British art. So how come it was displayed in the Yale Center for British Art?

Keep in mind that Yale is the university that removed John C. Calhoun’s name from a college just because he was a proponent of slavery. Not because Calhoun, from South Carolina, was a proponent of nullification (I won’t go into it here, but that’s essentially a form of federalist anarchy), and possibly a disgusting but unquestionably brilliant person. He was also a Congressman, U.S. Senator, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Vice President. Not to mention an alumnus of Yale and—are you sitting down?—Tapping Reeve’s law school right here in Litchfield. Oh, the horror!

And while I’m on the subject, since Elihu Yale was a slave owner who made his fortune in a very non-woke way, why hasn’t Yale University changed its name to something like Jackson University after Jesse, Newton University after Huey, or X University after Malcolm? Washington University after Booker T. would be good, but that’s been taken. And people might think it was named after George. And he owned slaves . . .

27 October—It was in 1973 that Tony Orlando and Dawn topped the pop-music charts internationally with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” Here’s a précis of the ditty: “I’m comin’ home, I’ve done my time. You’ll know just what to do if you still want me. Tie a yellow ribbon ’round the ole oak tree. It’s been three long years, do you still want me? If I don’t see a ribbon round the ole oak tree, I’ll stay on the bus, forget about us . . . blah, blah, and blah.”

But it wasn’t until the end of 1979 that real yellow ribbons really tied around real oak trees made the news. That’s when they were used to show support for the American hostages held by the Iranian Islamic fundamentalist buggers who had overthrown the moribund Shah, the idea of Penelope Laingen, wife of hostage Bruce Laingen. Bruce died in July 2019 at 96; Penelope died in April at 89.

Assuming Mrs. Laingen was aware of the hit song that was probably still being played on pop radio in 1979, she likely chose yellow ribbons rather than any other color because the hostages were essentially prisoners and they were coming home. Hopefully. And yellow ribbons were easy to get. On the other hand, did anyone not want any hostages to return? Probably, but we won’t go there.

To cut to this morning’s semiotic chase, here’s an alphabetized list of maladies, causes, and lobbies—in addition to troop remembrance and support, of course—that have adopted the yellow ribbon:

Adenosarcoma, Adoptive Parents, Bladder Cancer, Bone Cancer, Canadian Cancer Society, Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, Complementary/Alternative Medicine, Craniofacial Acceptance, Endometriosis, Epithelioid Sarcoma, Equality, Ewing’s Sarcoma, Hydrocephalus, Liver Cancer, Microcephaly, Missing Children, Missing Persons, Myxoid Liposarcoma, POW/MIA, Obesity, Osteosarcoma, Refugees Welcome, Remembrance, Sarcoma, Spina Bifida, Suicide Prevention, The Disappeared.

Amber ribbons, a bit darker than yellow ribbons, represent the Amber Alert, of course, as well as Appendix Cancer and Pseudomyxoma Peritonei.

Gold ribbons (presumably yellow gold rather than white or pink gold) are used by Childhood Cancer, Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma, Neuroblastoma, and Osteosarcoma.

Is that an education in medical nomenclature or what?

26 October—Yes, the memorial to Cash and Maisie has disappeared from the sidebar. I had put it up not only because I still miss them, but also as practice for using widgets, which is what WordPress calls pieces of content that can be added to specific areas of a website. The plan was for me to take down the memorial after several weeks, when I’d set Cash’s and Maisie’s grave markers.

That’s where United Parcel Service comes in. Because the local purveyors of gravestones never bothered to return my calls, I ordered my Scotties’ markers (as I discovered they’re called by the trade) from a company in Texas. That was on 12 May, a few days after Cash’s death.

Proofs and approval in a day. But I hadn’t known the particular stones I wanted had to be ordered from who knows where. So that’s at least a month right there. Anyway, at the beginning of July I received notification from the monument people that the markers were ready to be picked up by UPS and notification from UPS that the shipping label had been created.

A fortnight later, the markers were still waiting to be picked up by UPS, even though their drivers had been making regular pickups at the monument warehouse and the boss assured me my stones were in the pickup section along with all the other outgoing markers. He had no idea why they were being ignored.

So he schlepped them himself to a UPS Access Point^® (yes, believe it or not, UPS Access Point is a registered trademark) at an Advanced Auto Parts store. And the next day the markers were on their way to Litchfield.

Of course, I tracked the UPS Ground^® (it’s incredible that Access Point and UPS Ground can be trademarked!). To Colorado and California. Finally, three weeks later, to a UPS hub in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. (UPS hub evidently is not a registered trademark.)

So, next stop was Watertown. And then to Litchfield in a day or two. At long last.

But the markers never made it to Watertown. Because, depending upon which UPS excuse you believe, the parcels either went missing or were damaged. How can 140 pounds of granite go missing or get damaged? In all events, the markers were never returned to the monument people in Texas. And UPS refused to reimburse them, which, as the boss assured me, was no skin off my ass. And he had insurance anyway.

So the process started all over again. At no cost to me, of course. Just more waiting. And aggravation. And again my markers weren’t picked up by UPS until the boss schlepped them to the local Advanced Auto Parts store. That was Friday afternoon. UPS Ground^® again. But for some inexplicable reason the markers were in Watertown Monday morning and were actually delivered to The Hovel Monday afternoon. And, of course, I set them on Cash’s and Maisie’s graves without delay.

I don’t know what the hell is going on with UPS, but it seems that they’re trying very hard to be as lousy as FedEx and USPS. Our regular drivers, who are almost members of the family, are great, as are the people in Watertown. But before packages get to Watertown, you never know.

Nor do you ever know with the new crop of UPS drivers. Can they have learned their craft from FedEx? Several weeks ago, for instance, I was notified that a package from Amazon couldn’t be delivered because it had the incorrect address. So, incredulous, I phoned Watertown. Sure enough, the package had the very same correct address Amazon has been using for two decades. But further investigation revealed that the new driver couldn’t find the address in spite of his GPS and a really huge house number at the road.

What else can I say?

25 October—Most words that have been considered taboo through the ages and in all languages represent perfectly decent, even pleasant concepts—things and activities—that for one reason or another have become unmentionable in polite society. Organized religion is to blame for lots, if not most, of that nonsense.

Then there are the socially unacceptable, allegedly repellent synonyms—in English, they’re generally four-letter words—that tend to be more concise, direct ways of expressing what may in fact be talked about in polite society. Those words became dirty simply because some social arbiters, for whatever reasons, decided they’d be dirty. And part of their cachet is that they’re not supposed to be uttered in polite society. We like to keep our dirty words dirty.

So, getting past all that bullshit—a word that was used in Barry Commoner’s Citizens Party advertising in the 1980 presidential campaign (which he lost anyway)—what’s the dirtiest word in the English language today? Hint: it’s a four-letter word, and in another context not at all dirty.

Okay. Don’t bother guessing. The dirtiest word in English today is WOKE. That’s right, woke. A long, long time ago it meant weak. But now it’s simply the preterite, the past tense of wake. In the United States, it originally meant to be alert to racial prejudice. But about a decade ago it evolved to shorthand for myriad ultra-left-wing ideas like white privilege, identity politics, cancel culture, and slavery reparations. And that’s only the tip of the wokeberg.

When you look at all the woke assholes who are doing their damnedest to screw up our country, you can’t help but see why woke is now the dirtiest word in our language . . .

23 October—Thursday’s Republican-American printed the results of its unscientific poll (but probably every bit as accurate as the so-called scientific ones) that asked readers the question, “Do you think it’s OK to swear with young children nearby?” An astounding 88 percent of the respondents said no, while only 12 percent said yes.

Really? Not doubting the newspaper printed the actual results, all I can say is bullshit! And the 88 percent of the people who objected to swearing in front of the children are full of it. Most of them, anyway. And the few who aren’t must be living on life support in Never-Never-Land.

Does any adult really believe that young kids these days don’t use or don’t know what are considered dirty words? I’m reminded of an open-school day many years ago when the preschool or kindergarten teacher demonstrated her brightest pupils’ progress in phonics to eagerly attentive parents. The kids were standing patiently in line, each reciting words beginning with consonants.

First consonant was B: Words beginning with the B-B-B sound. The little angels said words like boy, box, bed. Bastard, balls, bitch. The teacher and parents were taken aback.

Next was C: Words beginning with the K-K-K sound: Cat, coin, camera, cop. Cock, cunt. Teacher and parents were gobsmacked. But the show went on.

D words: Dad, door, dog, dick, dam (or damn), douchebag. That did it. But before the teacher could stop the show, all the kids let out a well-orchestrated:

F-F-F Fuck! The kids didn’t hesitate and certainly weren’t embarrassed. As I learned after the show, they had planned and rehearsed all the dirty bits. All by themselves. And the parents loved it. Repeat: The parents loved it. And so did the teacher.

I’m also reminded of a day in January 2018 when President Donald Trump referred to immigrants from “shithole countries” during some public meeting or other. As it happens, he was right on the mark, but that’s not important here. Nor is the fact that he’s not a racist.

The point is that news readers couldn’t wait to broadcast the news that Trump had uttered that nasty word. Well, they couldn’t wait to broadcast that nasty word to receptive audiences. The readers and commentators on left-wing radio and television (a.k.a. National Public Broadcasting), for instance, took every opportunity they could come up with to say “shithole” on the air. I can see them standing in line like the clever young children and drawing straws for the pleasure. It obviously felt good to utter a no-no in public, not just among themselves.

Even the overly reserved Republican-American, which normally resorts to asterisks and other methods of overt bowdlerization to protect the innocence of its readers, ran an Associated Press story about the shithole incident and actually printed the offensive word without benefit of asterisks. Twice.

“No shit,” you must be saying to yourself.

Fuck, yeah . . .

22 October—I don’t remember exactly when Angela came to live at The Hovel, but it was a long time ago, must have been at least three decades. She was extremely good-looking. One early summer day she just showed up with no fanfare, no warning. But since she camped outside and didn’t ask for anything, she was no trouble at all, what you could call the perfect guest.

Angela stayed around for about three weeks. I saw her every day, of course, but she preferred to keep to herself. And our conversations were really monologues. I did all the talking (as usual). I expect that I bored her. But she was polite enough not to show it by asking me to shut up or simply walking away. As I said, Angela was the perfect guest.

Then, again with no notice, Angela just disappeared. She was camped out at her favorite spot in the morning but there was no sign of her at dusk. Truth be told, I was rather ticked off that she just left. And I kind of missed her.

Angela’s full name was Angela Argiope. That’s what I called her, anyway. She was an Argiope auriantia, also known as a yellow garden spider, black and yellow garden spider, golden garden spider, writing spider, zigzag spider, zipper spider, black and yellow argiope, corn spider, Steeler spider, or McKinley spider. That’s a lot of names for one spider.

The Latin name of the species means “gilded silverface.” You can see why from my picture of Angela, which she willingly posed for on a Janet Blair rhododendron leaf. Unlike children and cats, she was a very cooperative subject.

Although yellow argiopes are supposed to be pretty common around here, Angela was the first of her species I had seen. And it’s only recently that I saw her somewhat more corpulent cousin Adriana, who had made a home on another rhododendron.

Angela seems to have kept her figure by not eating, as I never saw any prey in her web. But neither did I see any prey in Adriana’s web. Go figure. And, given the time of year—early summer—it’s not likely either girl was pregnant. Male yellow argiopes, aren’t particularly handsome, by the way, but females have been known to eat them after intercourse anyway . . .

21 October—Federal District Judge Janet Bond Arterton, in a decision published 6 August, refused to allow a Waterbury cop, Nicholas Andrzejewski, to use qualified immunity as a reason to dismiss a civil suit for money damages brought against him by Basel Soukaneh. Since the incident involved a gun permit, Judge Arterton’s decision is also considered a victory for gun rights—of which there are precious few around here these days.

At about 8:30 of a November night in 2018, Soukaneh was driving through Waterbury when his iPhone GPS froze. So he stopped his car in a poorly lit street in what he didn’t know was a high-crime area to fix it. But since he kept the engine running, he just may have suspected. It was Waterbury, after all. The transcript doesn’t indicate whether the headlights were on, but, with the engine running, they probably were; and the interior light was on.

As Soukaneh was attempting to fix his phone, Officer Andrzejewski approached Basel’s vehicle, knocked on the window, and asked to see his license. Basel complied readily and also gave the officer his pistol permit, while volunteering that he had a pistol in a pocket in the driver’s door.

Thereupon, Andrzejewski forced Soukaneh out of his vehicle, cuffed him, and shoved him in the back of the cruiser. Andrzejewski then searched Soukaneh’s pockets and found drugs—nitroglycerin pills prescribed for Basel’s heart—as well as a USB drive containing family photos and $320 in cash. And then the eager cop thoroughly searched Basel’s car. I hope Basel got his money and thumb drive back. But you never know.

So Basel Soukaneh sued Officer Nicholas Andrzejewski for violating his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. And well he should have. Andrzejewski, of course, claimed that he had every reason to do what he did because Soukaneh’s disclosure that he had a firearm in the vehicle gave him probable cause to search and seize. And let’s not forget that the known presence of a gun gave Andrezejewski what his lawyer called an “objectively reasonable basis to suspect that [Basel] was dangerous.” Yeah, right.

Judge Arterton denied summary judgement for Andrzejewski—i.e., she refused to toss the case against him—and refused to immunize him because “no reasonable police officer could have believed he or she had probable cause to arrest [Soukaneh].”

So Andrzejewski copped qualified immunity on the ground that Soukaneh’s rights in the instance were not clearly established. Because when the U.S. Supreme Court created the test for qualified immunity in 1982, it held that determining whether a right is clearly established hinges on “whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.”

But Judge Arterton would have none of that: “There is no indication that [Soukaneh] was even arguably unlawfully possessing a firearm,” she wrote. It was an “uncontested fact” that Soukaneh “presented his pistol permit to [Andrzejewski] before or at the time he disclosed that he was in possession of a pistol.” Thus, “no reasonable officer could believe probable cause was present.” And since arresting Soukaneh was done “without probable cause, the search of [his] vehicle cannot be justified as a lawful search incident to arrest.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, while not particularly friendly to firearms cases, nevertheless ruled that “an officer needs more than mere presence of a weapon for which the possessor is licensed to justify searching a car during the course of a traffic stop.” And Judge Arterton observed that Soukaneh was “friendly and compliant” and freely told the officer about his gun and permit, so that “no reasonable officer could conclude that [he] posed a meaningful threat of being ‘armed and dangerous’ simply because he disclosed that he had a pistol and a license to possess it.”

“Any contrary holding,” Judge Arterton opined, “would eviscerate Fourth Amendment protections for lawfully armed individuals by presuming a license expressly permitting possession of a firearm was invalid.”

Right on, your honor!

Basel Soukaneh did get a ticket for parking in a driveway. Leave it to Waterbury fuzz to come up with some piddling crap to attempt to save face. And, since Judge Arterton threw out only the unjustified qualified immunity defense, the suit will go to trial, whenever that may be. And then it’s anybody’s guess. But it’s a great start.

And thus endeth my obiter dicta on qualified immunity. For now . . .

Editor’s note: This story appeared on Forbes.com, among other online publications. The author, Nick Sibilla, an alleged law journalist, called the judge Janet Bond Atherton throughout the story. All the other publications, even the ones that cited the Forbes story, got Judge Arterton’s name right. You wonder why Neck Sybillia didn’t. You don’t have to be a lawyer to know the redoubtable Judge Janet Bond Arterton, after all.

20 October—Last week, a federal civil jury sitting in New Haven ordered that a former Bridgeport police detective pay $350,000 to the family of a man he fatally shot in the back—that’s right, in the back—on 1 April 2013. Getting beyond justice being delayed yet again, of course, the recently retired detective, Christopher Borona, won’t have to pay a cent because the city had agreed to pay any award made against Borona on the condition it be dismissed as a defendant in the lawsuit. The aggrieved family had been asking for 20 million.

The jury took six hours to find that Detective Borona had violated the constitutional right to life of Bryan Stukes when he shot Stukes in the back. Borona had been cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a state prosecutor after an investigation by the state police. And Borona retired in 2018. But nothing foreclosed a civil suit, of course. Nothing ever forecloses civil suits if you can find an eager lawyer.

Bridgeport’s city attorney maintained that the “case involved quickly evolving circumstances requiring the detective to make split-second decisions.” No doubt about it. Borona happened to be on the scene when he evidently broke up a fight between Stukes and another man.

Stukes was no angel, to be sure. According to the incident report, Stukes was holding a rifle when Borona identified himself as a cop, drew his pistol, and ordered the corpse-in-training to drop his weapon. The report on the incident report doesn’t say whether Stukes was pointing his rifle at Borona or even if the men were facing one another, though from the context we’ll infer they weren’t.

Anyway, Stukes didn’t drop the rifle. Instead, he turned toward Borona. So Borona, according to the report, fired his piece and struck Stukes in both legs. Entirely understandable. The reports on the incident report aren’t clear as to whether Stukes had been running away before stopping to turn toward the detective. One assumes the jury knew all the details.

With bullets in both legs, Stukes ran away, around a corner, ignoring Borona’s repeated commands to stop, then tripped and fell forward on the sidewalk, losing his rifle. Stukes, though wounded, was able to regain his feet and continued to run without his rifle. Borona then rounded the corner and, apparently unaware Stukes had lost the rifle, fired the shot in the back that killed the fleeing runner.

One wonders why the uninjured detective couldn’t keep up with a runner with bullets in both legs. And did Borona actually lose sight of Stukes at any time in the chase? Is any of that even relevant?

The autopsy performed on Bryan Stukes by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that the cause of death was “multiple gunshot wounds”: one in each thigh and one in the back.

Stuke’s rifle, according to the report, was later found to be unloaded. But Borona couldn’t have been expected to know that.

Detective Borona was protected by qualified immunity, his lawyer claimed, because at the time of the incident he was acting to protect the community. Quite right. The detective was doing his duty to protect the community. And the jury must have considered that when discussing the qualified immunity defense.

But the jurors also considered that you simply do not shoot a man in the back in any circumstance. That’s the only thing Detective Borona did wrong. What a thing to do wrong! It’s a pity. But Borona’s retired and Bridgeport and/or its liability insurer can afford 350k anyway.

Tomorrow, the pièce de résistance on qualified immunity . . .

19 October—Last week, Gianni Capozziello, a young Bridgeport policeman on the job five years, was suspended for 20 days without pay for pistol-whipping a teenager in August 2019. It took two years for a short video of the incident to surface. Had the pistol-whipping not been recorded, one wonders whether Capozziello would have been suspended or otherwise penalized at all, especially since the pistol-whipped kid was really guilty of driving a stolen car and possessing drugs.

Evidently Officer Capozziello wasn’t aware that Connecticut Democrats have made adolescent car thieves untouchable by the law. And—wouldn’t you know?—the guilty juvie was later released to his mommy.

On the other hand, did Officer Capozziello really believe the youthful druggie-car thief, who was walking away from him with arms raised, was reaching for a gun? That’s why Gianni used his own pistol as what he called “an emergency impact weapon,” according to his incident report, which doesn’t quite agree with the video.

Should we believe a cop’s statement or a video recording of the actual incident? That’s certainly a tough one.

It happens that Officer Capozziello had been suspended for a whole day last month for using a stun gun on and striking another adolescent back in 2017, this kid having been accused of stealing a volleyball. Not that it appears to matter, but this miscreant’s mother sat on the Bridgeport City Council at the time of the ball bust.

Capozziello, a former Marine, had himself been arrested in 2013 in Norwalk for disorderly conduct and third-degree criminal mischief, but must have had the case dismissed or been granted accelerated rehabilitation, since there are no juicy court records to peruse. Of course, Gianni’s union is rationalizing his excessive use of force and the union president promises to file a grievance on his behalf. Excessive use of union, surely, but that’s what the union is there for.

In these two instances, was Gianni Capozziello too enthusiastic or did he merely panic? If he could learn to temper the excessive use of force he may well have learned in the Marine Corps, he’d possibly be a decent cop.

Will there be any civil litigation for excessive use of force and violation of civil rights with Gianni Capozziello, the City of Bridgeport, and others as defendants? If so, you can bet Gianni will claim qualified immunity. But it’s not unlikely the city has already settled both matters out of court, which may also account for the dilatory suspensions and resultant publicity. Sadly, we may never know how much this excessive use of force was worth.

Tomorrow, qualified immunity gets its well-deserved comeuppance . . .