Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, March 9, 2019

B3

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, March 9, 2019 

TOM PURCELL

Mountain Views

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Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton


WHY ‘SPRINGING FORWARD’ TAKES 
MY DAD WEEKS

Nobody dreads daylight saving time more than my father.

He has his work cut out for him this coming weekend, when 
we “spring forward” by setting clocks ahead by an hour before 
going to bed Saturday night. You see, my mother loves 
clocks - so much that he has 14 clocks to reset.

There are clocks in both guest bedrooms. That way, my 
mother argues, friends and family members who stay over 
always know the time and can set alarms to wake early.

My father finally figured out how to change the microwave’s clock, but the stove is 
brand-new and its clock is causing him grief.

“For godssakes, Betty,” he complains to my mother, “I’ll never figure this daggone 
thing out.”

He particularly dislikes the clock in the basement family room. Everyone in our 
family thinks this framed “picture clock,” which displays a mill on a river, is ugly. 
But my mother loves it because 40 years ago, I used my meager high-school savings 
to buy it for her as a birthday gift.

My father especially hates it because he needs a stepladder to reset it. 

“Why don’t you take it back?” he pleads with me often.

“I don’t want that ugly thing in my house,” I say.

There also are clocks in my parents’ bedroom, laundry room and car, and on their 
back patio. My father has to contend with two or three wristwatches, too. But the 
three clocks that trouble him most all have chimes - and getting those chimes to 
ring simultaneously takes him weeks.

One is a beautiful, hand-crafted, delightful-sounding wall clock that my Uncle Jimmy 
got for my parents when he served in the Army in Germany nearly 50 years ago.

On an antique table in the dining room there’s another chime clock that Verizon - 
we called it “the phone company” - gave my father to mark his 25th year working 
there.

When he retired after nearly 40 years of service, Verizon gave him a magnificent, 
chiming grandfather clock. It sits in the living room. 

“For godssakes, Betty, I’ll never get these chimes to ring at the same time!” he complains 
at the top of every hour - and his lungs! - for weeks after we spring forward 
or fall back. 

Daylight saving time, which aims to squeeze an extra hour of daylight out of a typical 
day, didn’t become uniform across the United States until passage of the Uniform 
Time Act of 1966. Over the years, there have been some changes in how long 
daylight saving time lasts. Today, it runs from March into November. 

Proponents say daylight saving time gives us more daylight in spring and summer, 
getting us out of the house and making us happier.

Opponents say it makes spring and summer mornings darker, making us less productive 
at work and causing us to consume more energy.

All I know is that nobody dreads daylight saving time more than my father. Just as 
he finally get his clocks to chime in concert, it’s time to spring forward or fall back 
again, which means his misery starts all over again. 

He has but one thing to say to that. 

“For godssakes, Betty, if I’d known these daggone chiming clocks would cause me 
so much grief, I would’ve asked the phone company for gold watches instead!”

Tom Purcell, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

JOHN L. MICEK

WHAT TWO REPUBLICANS 
TELL US ABOUT TODAY’S 
GOP

HAIL HAMILTON


MY SUDDEN, IF ONLY TEMPORARY, 
CHANGE OF HEART

The experience of two Republican lawmakers from 
Pennsylvania - a state that President Donald Trump won in 
2016, and one that remains critical to his reelection chances - 
tells us a lot about the state of the GOP in 2019.

First up, there’s Pat Toomey, the Keystone State’s junior 
senator. If Pennsylvania voters know one thing about 
Toomey, it’s that he frequently plays it cagey, waiting until 
the last moment until he goes public on a big issue.

That’s what happened in 2016, when Toomey refused to say whether he’d vote for 
then-candidate Trump.

Locked in a tight re-election race, Toomey made disapproving noises in the 
direction of the Republican nominee, feeling like a “no,” only to announce, at the 
final second, that he’d voted for Trump anyway.

The outrage over that bait-and-switch was huge. Toomey had positioned himself 
as an independent thinker, only to fall in line and do something so predictably 
Republican that it dinged his credibility at home.

Toomey finds himself at a similar point again this week, now that the majority-
Democrat House, with some Republican support, has approved a resolution 
nullifying Trump’s executive end run around Congress on the border wall.

As in 2016, Toomey has been publicly indecisive, saying that while he “continues 
to believe that the president’s $5.7 billion border wall funding request was 
reasonable ... [he] hoped this dispute would have been resolved through the 
legislative process. I am concerned about the president’s emergency declaration, 
and am still considering how I will vote on a resolution of disapproval.”

You can forgive some Pennsylvania voters for being skeptical about Toomey’s 
sincerity. The chances are good that he’ll probably end up voting with his fellow 
Republicans here.

Which brings us to the case of Toomey’s fellow Pennsylvanian, Rep. Brian 
Fitzpatrick, who represents one of those classically moderate suburban 
Philadelphia districts you’ve heard so much about.

Fitzpatrick, who was reelected in 2018 in a part of the state where Democrats 
cleaned up, has emerged as a principled voice of opposition to the Trump White 
House.

He voted with Democrats this week on the nullification resolution and a bill that 
would require universal background checks on all gun purchases.

He also joined with Democratic members of the state’s Congressional delegation 
and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey to ask the Pentagon to fully explain how money 
being diverted to the wall would affect about $200 million in military construction 
projects back home.

As the House geared up for that nullification vote, Fitzpatrick uttered perhaps 
some of the most consequential words by a Republican in this young Congress.

Explaining his looming “no” vote, Fitzpatrick said his action was “much bigger 
than any one issue, and any one president. This is about the Constitution, the 
separation of powers, and about setting precedents that apply equally to all future 
Congresses and all future presidents.”

Fitzpatrick is a former FBI agent. He’s a straight-shooter. And that’s about as 
clear-eyed a statement of principle that you’re going to find in the Washington 
swamp.

It’s also a roadmap for Toomey and other Republicans who might be on the fence 
about voting against the president on his likely unconstitutional power grab.

After two years of slumber, many members of Congress have admirably woken 
up and remembered that not only are they members of a co-equal branch of 
government, they’re members of a superior branch of government, and reclaimed 
the powers and prerogatives that go along with that.

Toomey, who can be thoughtful and deliberative when the occasion arises, also 
likes to fancy himself a creature of the Senate and a defender of the institution.

He could decide that the Constitution and precedent win out over the White 
House not getting its way on what, really, is a simple budget vote.

A lot of eyes will be on Toomey in the coming days as the Senate gets ready for 
its mandatory nullification vote. If he’s smart, Toomey will have one eye on 
Fitzpatrick, who’s providing smart Republicans with a way forward.

Even if they don’t regain the House in 2020, more Fitzpatrick-style Republicans 
could help the GOP reclaim something even more important. Its soul.

 
The other day I was fell asleep pursuing a peculiar hobby of 
mine, trying to solve famous L.A. unsolved murders. When I 
feel asleep, I was reading a photocopy of the January 16, 1947 
article from the Herald’s-Express’s archives at UCLA. The 
Herald’s headline story written by Angie Underwood, one of 
the first to arrive at the scene, just after the body was discovered 
the previous morning at about 10 a.m. by a woman out strolling 
with her three-year-old daughter.

 Later the victim was identified as Elizabeth Short, 22 , a waitress and wannabe 
movie actress, later nicknamed by the local press as the “Black Dahlia.” Apparently Ms. 
Short’s half-naked body was found severed into two pieces at the waist, entirely drained 
of blood, and with a grotesque smile carved on her face. 

 Not disappoint you all, I haven’t solved the oldest murder mystery in L.A. history; 
nor am I starting a publisher’s tour to promote my new book finally solving a seventy-
two-year-old L.A. murder mystery, “Who killed the Black Dahlia?” Sorry folks, this is 
nothing so tantalizing. This is merely an introductory explanation about a dream I had 
while trying to escape “The Age of Trump.”

 Anyhow, when I awoke I wasn’t certain I was really awake—When I caught myself 
still crazily laughing out loud, I was sure I was still in Dreamland. Belly laughing 
audibly loud and in stitches in your sleep isn’t normal. I was scared but probably not 
the way you think.

 I was frightened because not just because I couldn’t stop laughing, and I was afraid 
that if my wife—who I could see was still sound asleep beside me—suddenly awoke, she 
would immediately freak out and have me immediately admitted to a local psych ward.

 Then, all of a sudden, my bedroom widescreen TV turns itself on and Donald 
“Friggin” Trump pops up. I kid you not. Pink hair, pink face, complete with the white 
zinc oxide he applies under his eyes. He looked right at me in my eyes and said one 
thing: “You’re invited to the White House on such and such date to participate as part 
of a screen test of my new TV show, Donald’s World.” 

 Unlike The Apprentice, Trump’s told me his new show was a “reality” comedy/
drama series. I was stunned. President Donald Trump had personally FaceTimed me to 
personally invite me to participate as a test screening of montage of his new TV show, 
Donald’s World. I was so excited. The President of the United States just invited me to 
to a private screening at the White House to watch the first season’s ten episodes of his 
new TV show Donald’s World. WOW! 

 I was equally excited by the President’s spiel of how the show would dramatize 
and make funny Trump’s presidency for the next 21 months until Inauguration Day 
and the Inaugural Ball in the evening afterwards, intercutting between celebrities and 
the actors playing them. I didn’t ask about his possible impeachment, honestly, because 
I didn’t want to uninvited.

 Afterwards, still dreaming, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head of sitting next 
to The First Lady, me in a black tuxedo and her wearing a shimmering gown, together 
sharing a Coke and a box of popcorn.

 I’m sorry to report, Donald’s World, was a disappointment. What killed the show 
the most was the artificial ending. I’m certain the former president is as much to blame 
as Producer, Sean Hannity and Director, Bill O’Reilly (who was forgiven and rehired 
to direct). The facts of history can’t be changed just to give a story a happy ending—a 
convicted serial felon and a remorseless habitual liar being sent to prison perhaps for 
the rest of his life is not a happy ending. I don’t care how it’s spun.

 One thing I think needs mention is the clever editing of the series. The editor, 
who wishes to remain anonymous for professional reasons, worked tirelessly with the 
show’s scriptwriters, to maintain as true as possible a sense of real time. As a result, 
the parts of many characters had to be truncated, drastically shortened or eliminated 
altogether, because so many high-level White House staffers and cabinet members were 
fired or “forced to resign.” during the late administration. 

 It was at this point that I suddenly woke up. Startled and disoriented, I was mostly 
sad—I really had wanted to see more, especially the former-president’s adjustment to 
his new life in prison.

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