T. Buckingham Thomas

From 1912 to 1959, our nation happily consisted of a compact group of 48 contiguous states. But then the far-flung territories of Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union. Now we were 50.

Six years later, politicians couldn't leave well enough alone. A member of Congress — a Florida man — proposed creating yet another state by pasting together four widely scattered American territories. Very widely scattered. Guam is 14 hours ahead of the Virgin Islands. For my senior English class in high school, I wrote an op-ed ridiculing this absurdity.

It was during my first year on this planet when, World War II being over, the United States government dissolved the 158-year-old War Department. It was replaced by the Department of Defense.

As I grew up the change in nomenclature, from warring to defending, sounded right to me.

I myself avoid fights. I don't believe America should be in the business of assailing other nations and killing their people. Rather, we should be focused on defending the peace. We should maintain order like the police. We can build bombs to dissuade hostile nations from bombing us, but our armaments ought to be held back for use in self-defense, never in aggression.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy envisioned “the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children. Not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

So it was that when a new Secretary of Defense was appointed in 2025, his bloodthirsty language appalled me. “We will focus on lethality,” Pete Hegseth proclaimed, “to remain the strongest and most lethal fighting force the world has ever known.”

Lethal means “intended to cause the destruction of life.” The new Secretary wanted to Make America Lethal Again, and the 47th President proudly announced the F-47, “the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built. ...They won't know what the hell hit them.”

But not everyone agrees with this vicious bellicosity nor thinks it must apply to every Department employee. Some are truck drivers or office workers. Kevin M. Kruse recently posted a parody:

“In this Administration we value warfighters who warfight the enemy. If you're not warfighting the enemy to DEATH, we don't want you in the Department of Warfighting.

“Take your ‘logistics’ and ‘intelligence’ somewhere else! This place is for warfighting warfighters who warfight. GRRR!”

PZ Myers, who has a son in the Army, writes: “I’d rather see the military as a stabilizing force, less about fighting and acting more as resilient response to threats, and also as a practical investment in a region that would be squandered if they were actually fighting.”

A century ago, as I described here, a spelunker named Floyd Collins got trapped in a Kentucky cave only 14 miles from the home of my future father and his family.

“The unsuccessful efforts to rescue him became a media sensation, with print and radio reporters breathlessly tracking the endeavor,” writes Michael Paulson of the New York Times. “Now a musical about the tragedy is heading to Broadway, three decades after it was first performed.”

After four weeks of previews, a revival of Floyd Collins officially opens tonight in the 1,080-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater at New York City's Lincoln Center.

The musical stars Jeremy Jordan in the title role. It features an Obie Award-winning bluegrass score by Adam Guettel and a book by Tina Landau, who's directing the production.

On one occasion when our Pittsburgh sports television crew visited another city, the engineer in charge of the remote truck asked how many audio outputs they needed to hook up for us. Did we have a second-language broadcast?

No, we didn't. Broadcasters from some parts of the United States might hire a second pair of announcers to describe the action in Spanish, while broadcasters from Montreal might have both English and French announcing teams. But neither Spanish nor French is commonly spoken in Pittsburgh.

If we did provide a second language, I wondered what it would be. Maybe Italian or Polish. Older Pittsburghers from immigrant families sometimes still used their native tongues.

National statistics show that 20% of Americans speak something other than English at home, for example Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog (from the Philippines), Vietnamese, and Arabic.

However, MAGA voters are fearful and insecure. They distrust perceived outsiders and their suspected terrorist plotting. They want a reason to discriminate against those foreigners and their jibber-jabber. Therefore, our President recently decreed that English is now the official language of the United States.

There's no surprise about that particular choice of language, because an overwhelming majority of Americans do speak English. On the surface, the executive order seemed about as groundbreaking as the 2004 resolution designating the oak as the national tree.

But in the process, it rescinded an earlier mandate requiring federal agencies to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.

This new order, writes columnist Philip Bump, “will make the process of assimilation slower — and potentially more dangerous, as the official-language designation is used as a cudgel to shame or silence those who are just starting on their paths to becoming American citizens."

“Imagine," writes John McWhorter, “a native Mandarin speaker who is new or newish to English. Let's say she can get by just fine while navigating a menu or engaging in brief exchanges. Grand. But if she were taking a citizenship test, voting, being admitted to a hospital, or doing anything else involving detail or urgency, she would want to be able to use her native language.

“To deny her that is pointless and unfeeling. But that is precisely what Trump's executive order will do. In all those settings where ordinary people interact with government functions, nonnative speakers will be forced to muddle through in English alone, regardless of whether that produces any clarity for them — or for the government branch in question. The English language is under not the slightest threat in America, and providing services in other languages is kindness, not disloyalty.”

APRIL 16, 2015
MY SECOND CHILDHOOD

I never much liked the look of suspenders, especially when worn over a T-shirt. Nevertheless, I did occasionally dress that way in my younger days.

And now, in my older days, I’ve had to start using suspenders again.

You see, as an adult I’ve always held up my pants with a belt. The theory is that the belt goes around the narrowest part of one’s torso, the waist (X). It won’t slide down over the hips because the hips are wider.

However, sad to say, the narrowest part of my torso is no longer my waist. It's now my chest (Y). I can’t pull my pants up that high. The top of my pants only reaches the widest part of my torso (Z). If my belt is located there, I have to struggle to pull it very tight and compress my flab as much as possible. Otherwise, the pants will slide right off (green arrow).

I finally got tired of tightening my belt and went back to suspending my pants from straps over my shoulders. That’s easier than trying to reduce the flab, a goal which I’ve been unable to achieve anyway.

APRIL 14, 2025 ICE AHEAD!

On this night 113 years ago — that would be April 14, 1912 — an ocean liner hurrying to cross from England to America in only six days was steaming at 22 knots through iceberg-infested waters off the coast of Newfoundland. As you may have heard, she struck a berg and sank with the loss of 1,517 lives.

The hazard was not unknown. It had been recognized for more than a quarter of a century. I've quoted an 1885 letter that sounded a warning about A Titanic Danger.

When children don't get their own way, they pity themselves and pout “It's so unfair!” When they aren't treated like others, they petulantly protest “That's cheating!” Our unsophisticated President feels the same way when our nation imports $3 trillion worth of goods and exports only $2 trillion worth of products. The numbers aren't even, but are they fair?

Lori Falce of Pittsburgh, the TribLive community engagement editor, writes that it's all in how you look at it. “For instance, Pennsylvania jurors receive $9 per day in compensation. That's even. Everyone gets the same. But is it fair for someone who is retired and getting a $9 bonus for participation versus a self-employed plumber who is losing hundreds of dollars in business for the same trial?

“Looking at trade as a deficit or surplus makes it a competition instead of a partnership and therefore sets nations up to be enemy combatants. If we are getting what we want for a price we want and selling what we must, no one is being ripped off.

“I spend money at the pizza place around the corner from my house on a regular basis. The owners have never bought anything from me.

“That doesn't mean I have been cheated. It means I like the product, I like the price, and we both get what we want from the relationship. It isn't even, but it is fair.”

APRIL 10, 2025 GREAT FIRE OF PITTSBURGH

Burned into our civilization's memory are giant fires that destroyed parts of great cities. Today is the 180th anniversary of the disaster that struck Pittsburgh on April 10, 1845.

An editor of the Daily Morning Post described it for the next morning's edition. “At 6 o'clock, P.M., Thursday evening, we sit down to our desk with a sad heart, to record the most fearful calamity ... one of the most terrible fires that ever devastated any city on this continent. A great portion of our busy and populous town is in ruins.

“While we now write, an awful fire is raging, constituting the fairest portion of our city, and no human being can tell where it will stay its ravages. It has now been burning for six hours, and confusion reigns extreme.”

Virginia Montañéz described the event in a recent Pittsburgh Magazine article, excerpted below.

The blaze that would become the Great Fire of 1845 began around noon on Thursday, April 10, near Second and Ferry streets (about where Boulevard of the Allies intersects Stanwix today). It was claimed that it originated on property owned by Capt. William Diehl, "where a woman had carelessly kindled an open fire to heat water to wash."

Weeks of dry weather and a gusty wind encouraged the first sparks to become a roaring monster of flame that jumped across streets, gathering strength and fuel for a relentless march toward the center of the city.

A few hours after the first clang of the fire bell, streets became choked with frantic people, horses, carts and wagons loaded with possessions and wares being moved out of the path of approaching destruction.

By early evening, close to 60 acres were burning or in smoldering ruin. Gone, along with close to 1,000 structures, were Western University of Pennsylvania — today's University of Pittsburgh — and the new Monongahela Bridge, which burnt up in a matter of minutes, not hours.

Personal and property losses stood in the tens of millions, leaving 2,000 families homeless. Relief came from locals lucky enough to see their livelihoods escape the flames and from dozens of American cities and as far away as Europe.

As for the survivors themselves, despair and anguish were quickly replaced by self-determination and energy. Within four months, hardworking Pittsburghers and a new influx of laborers had nearly 500 buildings up or in progress. Thus, Pittsburgh's Great Fire gave way to a great rebuilding that erased the final remnants of a frontier town to lay a more well-planned and stronger foundation — up from which a true center of industrial might could rise.

Our federal income tax is not a simple flat tax. It's progressive. Wealth concentrates at the top, and higher-income individuals pay a larger percentage of their income — presumably because they can afford it — while low- and middle-income taxpayers are allowed to pay a smaller percentage.

I'm not an accountant, but I think I understand how marginal income tax rates work. Many folks don't.

A recent poll suggested a scenario in which an extra dollar of income pushed a taxpayer into a higher bracket. “Suppose that your income put you at the very top of the 28% tax bracket and you earned one dollar more, such that you were now in the 33% tax bracket. How much would your tax bill go up?” Two thirds of Republicans said “substantially!”

However, two thirds of Democrats said “only a small amount,” and I think they're right. Ignoring deductions and such, the small amount would be 33 cents. Most of your income would still be taxed at 28%, while only the new dollar would be in the higher bracket and taxed at 33%.

Meanwhile, here in Pennsylvania we don't have income tax brackets. Since 1874, the state constitution has required taxes to be “uniform,” the same rate for everybody. We're taxed at a flat percentage regardless of income, which unfortunately burdens the poor more than the rich. Since 2005, that rate has been the round number of 3.07%. Obviously.

Before the NCAA basketball tournaments began, the 64 teams were divided among four regions. In each region, each team was assigned a seed between #1 and #16 based on its likelihood of winning. Then play began, eliminating all but one team per region — the Final Four.

This afternoon's championship game in the women's tournament features #1 seed South Carolina, the winners of Birmingham Regional 2, against UConn, the winners of Spokane Regional 4. UConn is seeded only #2 this year, but they're 11-time national champions who won their semifinal game by an 85-51 score over #1 UCLA. Then tomorrow night, the championship in the men's tournament features a pair of #1 seeds, Florida and Houston. There are no unlikely #15 Cinderella teams left.

People are asking whether these are the chalkiest tournaments ever. I'm asking, what is this “chalkiest”? Is that a synonym for “most predictable”?

Back when I was preparing graphics for WPIAL high school football tournament telecasts, I made mental notes about the favorites in each matchup.

For example, in 2011 there were four enrollment classifications. Each had a bracket with teams seeded from #1 to #8. After two elimination rounds, the championship games lined up like this:

#1

Clairton

vs

#2

Sto-Rox

#3

Knoch

vs

#5

Montour

#1

Aliquippa

vs

#2

Jeannette

#1

North Allegheny

vs

#3

Upper St. Clair

I assumed the #1 seeds would be more likely to win. But it was not until this year that I heard pundits describing those favorites-on-paper, over and over again, as “chalk.”

Blame betting. Columnist Ben Zimmer mentions a 1937 Damon Runyon short story which “defined a chalk eater as ‘a character who always plays the short-priced favorites.’ The gambler in question was dubbed Nicely-Nicely, who would later appear as a character in the musical Guys and Dolls.”

Zimmer cites mentions of “chalk” in newspaper articles from 1903 and 1907 and 1926. He explains, “The history dates back to the old days of horse-racing, when bookmakers would set the odds for each horse by writing them on a chalkboard at on-track gambling stations. The odds would change during the pre-race betting period depending on the amount wagered on each horse, so the bookies would often need to erase the posted odds and ‘chalk up’ new ones before the beginning of the race.”

The seasons of winter sports (like basketball and hockey) begin in one calendar year and end in the next. We customarily label a season like that by mentioning both years, separated by a hyphen. For example, suppose that during the current season of 2014-2015, Current Phenom is closing in on 200 blocked shots. TV graphics might prepare a table like this.

To improve the graphic, I wish we were allowed to reduce the clutter by listing only the second year. After all, the date of the championship tournament is -2015, not 2014-2015. We could retain the hyphen to indicate that we’re citing the deciding year. And while we’re at it, we could save more space by dropping the digits that indicate the century; it’s not like we’re risking another Y2K meltdown. Wouldn’t this be easier to read?

APRIL 1, 2025
THE DESECRATION OF A LIONESS

The Sphinx was a character in ancient Greek mythology, a woman with the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle. Only Oedipus was able to solve its riddle.

The amcient Egyptians revered a similar composite creature but without the wings. According to Wikipedia, “Many pharaohs had their heads carved atop the guardian statues for their tombs to show their close relationship with the powerful deity. ...The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples.”

For many years a sculpture of Mehit, a giant lioness, reclined in front of the Pyramids. Then artisans were asked to perform additional chiseling to turn her into an actual sphinx, with a head resembling Khafre, their current king.

The result was somewhat weird. For one thing, it had very large “hands” and other unnatural proportions.

I've dreamed up a story called The Antiportional Pussycat.