The 1963 Royal Variety Performance was a remarkable one (especially for me, for a very biased reason).  It’s best-known for featuring the Beatles in an 11-minute set – and I’ll get to posting that later – but for me it’s a special treat for including some of my personal faves.  That includes Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, whose work I love – most notably their West End and Broadway revues, At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat.  This was a particular treat for me since Flanders didn’t particularly like performing on television, so there’s very little video of him.  I’ve posted as much of it as I can find, so it was a joy to not only find this footage…but learn that they were on the same bill as the Beatles!  I’ll get to that video later, too – which includes another major performer, Marlene Dietrich.
 
But it was something else that most-pleased me, which I’ll get to here.  The video of the full event is posted online, but it’s broken into segments.  So, that was a big hurdle, and I didn’t know how much of the show I’d be able to track down.
 
This came about when I was searching for a song from the British musical Half a Sixpence to use in my article about tariffs, a song called “All in the Cause of Economy.”  The show starred Tommy Steele, who was a truly major rock star at the time in the U.K., often with songs written by Lionel Bart, who later went on to write Oliver!  But Steele has said that he always wanted to be in musicals, and a vehicle was written for him, based on the novel Kipps – by of all people, H.G. Wells – with a score by David Heneker.  It was a massive hit, and later come to Broadway with Steele, where it was again a massive it.  And made into a movie, that Steele starred in.  (It was not a massive hit, but did fair.)  My folks saw the musical on a trip to London and brought back the cast album, that I thought was terrific, which was my introduction as a young kid to Tommy Steele.
 
It was actually a notable trip for musicals that my folks took that year.  Because they also saw the musical Pickwick starring Harry Secombe – who readers of these pages know I have long been a major fan of (and even got to meet him backstage of another musical he was in about five years later, The Four Musketeers), which led me to discovering The Goon Show – that he starred on the radio with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, which the members of Monty Python all said they grew up on --  and am a huge lover of the musical, based on Dickens’ novel, with a score by Cyril Ornadel and Leslie Bricusse.  I’ve posted several videos here of Sir Harry, but only one of Pickwick, when the show was on Broadway and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, since I’ve been unable to find any other footage of it.  (A BBC/Time-Life video was made of a trimmed version of the show which aired a few times on local NBC stations around the country, and though I finally tracked down a copy, no videos from it exist online.)
 
Anyway, when searching for that “Economy” song, I came across a video of Tommy Steele and the cast of Half a Sixpence at that 1963 Royal Variety Performance.  I’d seen it before, and even posted it on the site several years back.  But I didn’t see it in full context, and this new video I found had the introduction to the number – in which the emcee mentioned that they had the casts of Half a Sixpence…and Pickwick! 
 
As you might imagine, boy, did that catch my attention.  The problem was that the video was short, and further it was only identified by Half a Sixpence.  When the number ended, though, the sequence from Pickwick began.  I watched anxiously, but with heart-sinking, since there wasn’t much time left in the video, and it was only the “Hell of an Election” chorus number that leads into Harry Secombe’s major hit, “If I Ruled the World.”  (So huge that Tony Bennett had a hit with it in the U.S., and even – among many others --James Brown recorded it, which I’ve posted.)  And as I expected, the video ended after only about 30 seconds of the chorus number.  It was a treat to see – but not the prize.  And a touch wistfully disappointing
 
And so, the search began.  I found a number of standalone videos from the Royal Variety Performance, but none of this.  There was also no single, full video of the event.  There was an edited-down version of the entire evening – I believe for TV -- but it didn’t include anything from Pickwick.  Though it did have Harry Secombe as the host of the broadcast at the beginning.  But the full evening was broken down into separate videos.  The problem was that I didn’t know how many segments there were – or in which one Half a Sixpence and Pickwick might appear. 
 
After a while, though, it became a bit disheartening.  Though at least there was that half-a-minute of the one chorus number, which – when you’ve been looking for any material for decades, is no small thing.  That said, not shockingly to most anyone here, I didn’t give up.  And kept searching.  It eventually became clear that there were four segments.  And I’d found three.  And it stayed at just three.  Until finally…finally…I found all four!  And there among the performances were Half a Sixpence and two songs from Pickwick!  Including Harry Secombe singing “If I Ruled the World.”
 
I believe the phrase is, “O joy!”
 
And here is that Part 4.  (As I said, I’ll get to the Beatles, Flanders & Swann and Marlene Dietrich later.  But for me, this was the treasured find.  And so it gets first position.)  Furthermore, as it happens, these two musicals finished the evening, and lead into the curtain call by the entire cast.  You also don’t have to search for the musicals – the video starts with Tommy Steele and Half a Sixpence.  (The introduction to it is, unfortunately, at the end of the Part 3 video – and in that stand-alone video I’d initially found.)  But stick around to the end for that curtain call, which tops off the find – that’s because, not only is it fun to see everyone return to the stage (the Beatles come on about halfway through), but Harry Secombe serves as sort of a spokesman and makes a nice speech at the end…but what leaps out is an impromptu joke he makes that involves the Beatles, and you can see them laughing at it.
 
So, here then, finally (!) is Tommy Steele and the original cast of Half a Sixpence singing “Flash, Bang Wallop!” in a wedding scene near the end of the musical – followed by Harry Secombe and the original cast of Pickwick singing “Hell of an Election” after which Mr. Pickwick is mistaken for one of the candidates, and pushed to make a speech -- which is "If I Ruled the World.”
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While driving around yesterday, I had the news on the radio and heard reports of several recent and egregious pardons that Trump has made recently:
 
The reality TV Chrisleys, convicted of fraud and tax evasion – Trump pardon.
 
The Virginia sheriff caught on take taking bribes, and convicted of taking over $70,000 in bribes, about to be sent to prison the next day – Trump pardon.
 
Trump getting $1 million dollar donation at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser from the mother of a nursing home executive who plead guilty of stealing more than $10 million from employee paychecks to buy a yacht and other luxury items – Trump pardon.  And now no longer has to pay $4.4 million in restitution to the victims.
 
The founder of electric vehicle company Nikola, convicted for fraud and required to pay $680 million in restitution – Trump pardon, nullifying the payment of any restitution.
 
And what occurred to me as I drove was – oh, okay, I get it.  Trump supporters, especially wealthy ones, know that they can commit pretty much whatever crimes they want, aware that if their support of Trump is important enough to Trump (whether financially or politically), they’ll get pardoned.
 
And this isn’t hyperbole.  After all, add to the list Trump pardoning 1,500 convicts in prison for trying to overthrow the government during the Jan. 6 Insurrection.
 
Oddly enough, I wasn’t going to write about this today, since I had a different issue that had caught my eye.  But as it happened, that “other issue” was related to pardons and others in the Trump administration committing crimes with likely no ramifications. 
 
The first was reading about how when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired senior advisor Dan Caldwell a few weeks back -- it turns out that the information his investigator got came from an illegal wiretap!!!  And I commented online, “Pretty much nothing from the unqualified Hegseth's office or from Trump is even remotely surprising. Especially crimes.
 
But far worse to me what the other story.  This time, it was that the Department of Justice (and what an oxymoron that is in the Trump administration…) is actually, literally, really, honestly considering a pardon for the two men convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.   Yes, really.  Actually.  Literally.  Honestly.
 
About which I commented online, “Nothing is surprising in the Trump administration.”
 
But the story is even worse – which one couldn’t think possible.  It’s that the DOJ attorney in charge of pardons has caused these convicted felons, who planned to kidnap a governor, the real “victims."  Yes, actually, literally, really, honestly.  Apparently, the extreme-right conspiracy theory is that they were manipulated to plan the kidnapping by government agents.  Mind you, when tried in court, the evidence convinced the jury that they were both guilty, guilty, guilty.
 
But the story is even more – and yes, it’s possible.
 
That’s because the person who is in charge of all these pardons in the DOJ is none other than disgraced would-be U.S. Attorney nominee Ed Martin.  The man who didn’t see a Trump conspiracy he didn’t like.  The man who was forced to drop out from his nomination to be a U.S. Attorney when his close ties were revealed to a convicted Jan. 6 Capitol well-known for his racist and antisemitic speeches and even dressing up to look like Hitler. 
 
Yes, that Ed Martin.  The person Trump put in charge of pardons for the “Department of Justice”. (sic)
 
But then, in the end – pretty much nothing is surprising in the Trump administration.  Where crime not only pays, it’s required.

I’ve written about how at the start of Amy Poehler’s career, did she improv with two Chicago groups, Second City and the Upright Citizens Brigade – during which time she got hired to play a recuring character on Conan O’Brien’s 12:30 AM show on NBC.  She played ‘Stacy,’ the teenage sister of Conan’s sidekick Andy Richter and has a major crush on Conan.  Here’s another one, this time when Stacy has brought birthday gifts for Conan.

Last Friday, Steven Pinker, who is a professor of psychology at Harvard University, wrote a long – very long – opinion article for the New York Times, about the attacks by the Trump administration on the school.  He looked at the issue, in part, from the perspective of a psychologist, calling the attacks related to a “Harvard Derangement Syndrome,” and noted, as well, “Psychologists have identified a symptom called ‘splitting,’ a form of black-and-white thinking in which patients cannot conceive of a person in their lives other than as either an exalted angel or an odious evildoer.”
 
To show his fairness on the subject, Prof. Pinker opened his analysis by presenting his bona fides criticizing his school, providing a laundry list of articles he’s written that have taken Harvard to task.  So, he has, indeed, been very fair-minded. 
 
He is also, in this article, monumentally misguided.  And just utterly horrible at his sense of timing.
 
In his effort to be seen as fair, Dr. Pinker offsets his defense of Harvard by sprinkling throughout his long (very long) article such comments as “Yet some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned.”  And “Another area in which Harvard’s shortcomings are genuine, but seeing it as all bad does not help in the long run…”  And “Though Harvard indisputably would profit from more political and intellectual diversity…”
 
Steven Pinker is described on his Wikipedia page as “a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.”  Dr. Pinker is a very bright man, who writes here in scholarly detail and at great length about Harvard strengths and just as pointedly about its flaws.  I hesitate to say “thoughtfully,” though, because (while it attempts to be that and succeeds on the surface) it totally misses the forest for the handful of flowers.
 
What he misses is that none of the attacks against Harvard by Trump and those echoing him are about whether Harvard would profit from more political and intellectual diversity.  Or whether Harvard’s shortcomings are genuine.  Or how much of the enmity against Harvard has been earned.  The attacks are because Trump and MAGOPs hate Harvard.  Because it’s Harvard.  If Harvard had no flaws, they would hate Harvard.
 
Trump is presenting himself in his attacks against Harvard as a Great Defender of Jews Against Anti-Semitism.  The very last thing anyone needs is Trump as a defender against Anti-Semitism.  Trump is arguably (bordering on inarguably) the most Anti-Semitic president the United States has had since the start of the 20th Century.  Perhaps ever, but my awareness doesn’t stretch back that far, so I won't make the claim.  The only time that we know of Trump ever defending anything Jewish is when he stated that he only wanted Jews doing his financial books, because he has an anti-Semitic stereotype they’re all good with money.  And for his MAGOP acolytes and enablers to also huddle close to him in their own supposed defense of Jews against anti-Semitism transcends pathetic and repugnant, since they and much of the Republican Party for well-over the past half-century has been in the forefront of promoting anti-Semitism.  Consider:
 
When the base of your party is Christian evangelicals, and when the reason that base supports Israel fervently is because of the Rapture – the epochal event when all believers in Jesus as the Savior will be brought to Israel and rise up in the air to be with Jesus, and non-believers (which, of course, includes all Jews, unless they convert) will be engulfed in flames to burn and cleanse the old world, marking the End Times – then trying to present yourself and your party as being the great defenders of Jews against anti-Semitism is a combination of mass self-delusion, soulless hypocrisy, and running an eternal flim-flammery con game.
 
Keep in mind that when Trump's words and actions signaled to his MAGOP base that it was okay to smear and attack minorities, all such attacks went up, and anti-Semitic attacks against Jews went up significantly.
 
Keep in mind that Trump – while trying to position himself as wanting to protect Jews from anti-Semitism – is the same venal anti-Semite who for the past eight years has relentlessly and publicly tried to define to Jews who Jews are, and that if they didn’t support him, then they weren’t real Jews.
 
The last thing anyone Jewish  --  or anyone who has even simply heard of Jews, or for that matter, has just seen a bagel -- needs is Trump telling them anything (anything!!) about being Jewish.  Then and now and ever in the future.  I’m not sure if an exorcism would even be able to redeem Trump from his anti-Semitism.  It may be too ingrained in him.  
 
And Trump is trying to scam the public into thinking that he is trying to destroy Harvard all and only because he wants to defend and protect Jews!!!

By the way, if Trump himself truly believed what he is trying to say about how actual anti-Semitism is disqualifying, then he would resign from office.
 
Trump doesn’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews.  His Attorney General and DHS Secretary pushing his efforts don’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews.  His spokespeople don’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews. His loyalists don’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews.
 
Trump hates Harvard.  Because it’s Harvard.  And anyone who even just tries to figure out Trump’s "thinking" of why is on a fool’s errand that risks getting them sucked deep into Trump’s void.
 
And meanwhile, Dr. Steven Pinker writes a long (monumentally long – so massively long it makes my own articles seem like paragraphs) detailed article of dialectics and “splitting” and earned enmity of Harvard and Harvard shortcomings and how Harvard would profit from more political and intellectual diversity – as if that’s what this is about.
 
Consider:
 
To supposedly defend Jews against anti-Semitism, Trump wants to freeze $2 billion to Harvard meant for medical research and for funding teaching hospitals like Mass General and Boston Children's Hospital, and wants to ban all foreign students, 27% of the student body, from attending Harvard.  Issues that Steven Pinker himself notes.  (And worse, this is before the news just this morning that Trump has issued a new statement that he wants to cut all federal contracts with Harvard and cut an additional $3 billion in funding -- though without explaining where such money would be coming from, since federal contracts with Harvard don't come close to that amount).  Yet while Dr. Pinker bends over backwards so far that he can touch his chin on the ground behind him and while getting himself and his readers lost in the interminable length of his explanations of Harvard’s "earned enmity" and good deeds and all his analysis, he totally misses that Trump and the MAGOPs attack on Harvard is about absolutely none of that.
 
Nor are Trump's assaults against all the other universities he’s attacked and frozen billions of dollars medical research funding from.  Nor is his effort to close the  Department of Education.
 
That’s what this is about.  Trump hates Harvard.  Trump hates elite universities.  Trump hates education.  This is not hyperbole. You need only look at his words and actions.

Further, you need only remember, too, that Harvard is a private university.  This isn't Trump individually trying to control the federal government.  This is Trump wanting to impose his rule, enabled by the acquiescent MAGOPs in Congress, on all institutions, public and private.
 
And Dr. Pinker – in what he thought would be an erudite, well-developed presentation of how we must not conflate some flaws into meaning all flaws and on and on and on and on and on (and on and on) about enmity and splitting and psychological analysis – merely serves to give ammunition to those who hate everything he himself does and stands for by him pointing out all the things Harvard has not done perfectly, just exactly like all humans have not done perfectly, which allows Trump and his MAGOP enablers to justify their hatred and justify their efforts to crush medical research that benefits all mankind and tear apart international outreach for education.

None of which has anything to do with anti-Semitism or protecting Jews.  In fact, what such punitive actions actually hurt most is the government itself and ultimately society, since the billions of frozen research grants for things like heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's is money the federal government not only wants outside facilities to spend, but needs them to because the government doesn't have the ability to do all the research.  So, that the United States can stay the world leader in such development, rather than cede such leadership to other countries, most notably China.
 
At some point in time, a long (very long) article by Prof. Pinker on the strengths and weaknesses about Harvard might be very apt and even valuable.  Unfortunately, this is not that point in time. 
 
Because at this point in time, he totally missed the point.
 
And in missing it, he did himself and his issue a huge disservice.  And harm.

I came across this video totally by accident.  E.A. Hanks is a journalist who was on the staff of Vanity Fair and has contributed to such publications as Time, the Guardian, and the New York Times.  She is also the daughter of Tom Hanks.  She’s just written a book, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road which is about (well, I’m going to simplify it here a lot) a journey she took driving her minivan from California to Florida (on U.S. 10), to make sense of her upbringing in Sacramento with an incredibly difficult, deeply troubled mother.  She follows the same route she took on a trip with her mother when she was 10, and uses her mother’s diaries as a sort of guide.  What makes this stand out is that she’s interviewed at the 92nd Street Y by her father.
 
(In other interviews – and in the book – she notes that her father was aware of the problems in Sacramento, but her mother had custody.  However, around when she was 12, she was able to get out of the situation and moved down to Los Angeles.  She also gives much praise to her older brother Colin.)
 
The conversation is fascinating – ranging between riveting, matter-of-fact, amusing, dark, upbeat, unexpected, charming, open, offbeat and thoughtful.  Tom Hanks largely keeps himself and his perspective out of it all, putting all the focus (properly) on his daughter whose book and life story this is, despite one of the focal personalities being his first wife, and the other being, of course, his daughter.  But he’s able to occasionally bring his knowledge of events into some of his questions – though, again, keeping the focus on the author.  The conversation runs for 53 minutes.

In many areas of life, arguably most, people tend to feel helpless to make a difference in major areas that face society.  The environment is one of those areas.  Sort of, “Why in the world should I recycle my trash?  What possible difference could that make in solving pollution?  Why should I unplug my toaster when not in use.  I’m going to save energy to help the world with that??”
 
Consider, too, that since 1990, the amount of forestland that’s been lost from deforestation is the size of Africa.  And of course, it hasn't stopped there.  Every year an area is lost from deforestation that's the size of Panama.  Among the many problematic results of this is that 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions comes from deforestation.    And it’s not that this loss is a significant cause of pollution, but it also is a critical issue to destroying natural habitats for plants and animals.
 
So, seriously, it's beyond understandable when individuals feel helpless against such world forces.  International measures, like the Paris Accord, are one thing -- though even they have their limits -- but, in truth, what can one person possibly do when churning inside at the forceful tide of civilization causing such devastation?
 
Well, imagine instead if the question was not “one person” but…two.
 
Because that brings us to two people.  Award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado.
 
Back in the 1990s, after traveling the world and spending years photographing the Rwandan genocide, emotionally devastated he returned home to Brazil, where he found the once-lush rainforest was now barren of forest trees and wildlife.

“The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed,” Salgado said in 2015. “Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees. Then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn – this was the most important moment.”
 
Not long after returning from Rwanda, the couple founded Instituto Terra in 1998.  And in the intervening years, the small organization has planted 4 million saplings “Perhaps we have a solution,” Salgado said in that 2015 interview. “There is a single being which can transform CO2 into oxygen, which is the tree. We need to start tree planting on a massive scale. You need forest with native trees, and you need to gather the seeds in the same region you plant them or the serpents, and the termites won’t come.”

Of course, reality has its say in such matters, no matter how noble the cause.  And so, how did this two-person, David vs. Goliath dream work out?

After all, this is the area around when they started their uphill effort in 2001.

And here it is today, 24 years later.​

I believe that the appropriate response is, indeed, "Oh.  My.  God."

If you want to see more photos documenting the work, and read a bit more about the actions started by just these two people, you can read about it here.

The article includes many social media posts from people who read about the reforestation effort.  My favorite among them was this:

"Reminds me of an old Chinese proverb -- 'The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today.''
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