While Stone won’t say that the memo is his handiwork, he’s awfully knowledgeable about the contents. And there is something else he will not say—bad things about Trump, in stark contrast to his willingness to trash talk the rest of the field. Instead, he has emerged on television as Trump’s biggest cheerleader.
I later hail a cab wondering whether his departure from Trump is all just part of the plan.
AFTERWORD
Roger Stone publicly parted company with Donald Trump early on in the 2016 campaign while the calendar still said 2015. Stone claimed he quit Trump after the candidate went after Megyn Kelly from Fox News. Trump said he’d fired Stone. Trying to figure out what really happened between them is harder than deciphering the meaning of Stonehenge. My hunch is that they mutually agreed to separate because it suited both of their interests.
All I know for sure is that, at my invitation, Stone soon became a regular guest of mine on CNN talking about the campaign. He was a great guest. Insightful. Colorful. Always well dressed. But then he crossed some folks with his active Twitter fingers and became persona non grata at the network. Some time passed before I could have him back, and no sooner did I, than he was again on the outs, for reasons that had nothing to do with anything he said on my show. Nevertheless, he seemed to blame me for his exile, though I was the one responsible for his initial invitations.
As the campaign progressed, his e-mails to me became increasingly antagonistic, and finally, he wrote to say that he would soon refer to me with the “Cword” on the Internet television program of Alex Jones (a conspiratorial broadcaster with some twisted ideas about what happened at Sandy Hook, among other things), whom Stone told me had “4xs” the viewership of my own network. I downloaded an app and tuned in to Jones’s show, only to hear Stone say that I’d once been fired by HUD Secretary Jack Kemp.
I quickly informed him by e-mail that, to the contrary, I was actually the only HUD political appointee who was held over from the Bush/Kemp to the Clinton/Cisneros administration, after Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell (among others) told the Clinton administration that I was doing a valuable job and that they should keep me—which they did. I also noted that I could have stayed much longer, but after staying for the agreed-upon short term, I then went to practice law—trial law—including defamation law, an area in which I am an expert. He got the picture.
Stone then went back on Alex Jones’s show and corrected the record, being careful to make sure I was aware of the retraction.
At the end of 2016, he apologized for the way he’d treated me, which he attributed to “getting caught up in electing a president.” I can’t imagine that there are too many of us to whom Roger has apologized. I doubt Roy Cohn or Mr. Trump would approve, but I appreciate it. And, where he has picked up the mantle from the deceased Mr. Blackwell, I again made Stone’s 2016 Best and Worst Dressed List. The former, not the latter.
FAMILY FARMER WHOSE
LABORS NEVER END
Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, September 6, 2015
THE 9 O’CLOCK BELLS from nearby Forest Grove Presbyterian are chiming as I climb into Fred Slack Jr.’s Chevy Trailblazer. He’s wearing boots, jeans, an orange T-shirt, and a baseball cap. Already the sun feels hot, and the forecast calls for a week of 90-degree days. He’s been up and working since 5 A.M. despite watching an Eagles game on TV with a friend the night before.
“That was only the second night I’ve been out all summer,” he tells me.
I’m not surprised. Fred’s days run 14 to 16 hours this time of year. I know because every time I drive by his farm I see him working.
As an aficionado of his legendary Bucks County–grown tomatoes, I’ve long wanted to see the patch where he grows what the locals call “Freddie’s.” Slowly we wind down his gravel drive, past a farmhouse that is the centerpiece of a property that has grown crops for three generations of Slacks. In the rearview mirror is the open garage with a picnic table full of freshly picked tomatoes and a sign reading “$2.50 per pound.” The honor box will have to cover until we return.
The tomatoes are named for Fred Sr., who passed almost two years ago at age 90 (mother Evelyn passed in 2012). Continuation of the family farming tradition is now solely in Fred Jr.’s 53-year-old hands, although in the backseat is 23-year-old Fred III, a student at Delaware Valley University. (Daughter Deanna is a student at West Chester University.) Today, Fred maintains 250 acres, approximately 60 of which are his. In the mid-1990s, Buckingham Township bought its first farmland conservation easement, protecting the Slack farm from development.
“I grew up grain farming,” he says as he begins my tutorial. “Corn, soybean, wheat, and hay were the basics.” He tells me he almost went under years ago. “I’m getting the same $5 for a bundle of hay that I was getting 30 years ago,” he says. Pumpkins saved him.
“I was always infatuated with pumpkins,” he tells me. “One year I grew 12 plants and got about 20 giants, for which people paid $100 to $200 apiece. Some of them ended up in New York City restaurants. The next year, I planted 40 acres of pumpkins. They took me out of debt.”
While Fred has had a good run with sweet corn and strawberries, and is always experimenting with different crops, tomatoes are his constant: four types and certain experimental hybrids. It’s been that way since his father and uncle grew them for Campbell Soup for two decades until Campbell’s stopped canning in Camden.
Fred Slack Jr. in his tomato patch in Forrest Grove, Pennsylvania, summer 2015.
We drive through a property dotted with farm equipment, some operational, some otherwise. He explains that he staggers his tomatoes into three plantings to maximize the selling season. Currently he has three two-acre tomato patches, each with about 4,000 plants.
Perhaps the best barometer of just how special they taste can be found 2.8 miles down the road at the Pineville Tavern, where they are dressed up with blue cheese and onions, doused with oil and vinegar, and sold as an $8 appetizer ($9 with mozzarella, $12 with chicken). This time of year, the sign in front of the tavern, established in 1742, touts the sale of “Freddie’s.”
“They’re a tough crop to grow,” he tells me as we drive into the first patch. Fred’s process begins in February, when his “special” seeds are planted in greenhouses. In early May they are transferred to his soil. His first pick usually falls on his birthday, July 28. This year, depending on the frost, he thinks he’ll have tomatoes into early October. When I tell him I see no irrigation, he says he’s “relying entirely on Mother Nature. And right now, we’re in a drought.” Earlier in the summer he wanted water—now he worries that a heavy rain could damage his crop.
“All summer I’ve watched thunderstorms pass me by,” he says. “This is the driest part of Bucks County.”
The Chevy stops after a short distance, and there they are—giant, red, ripe tomatoes, many with diameters in the five- to six-inch range. One of Fred’s long, lean arms reaches under the green leaves. “That’s a box filler; there’s some real meat on that,” he proudly tells Fred III and me. Fred shares that these are a new variety with which he’s been experimenting. They’ll next be picked and hand wiped before being sold fresh to wholesale and retail customers who come from miles. Clutching his produce, he scoffs at grocery store competitors that “sell the fakes from California,” which, he says, get pumped with gas to look red when they aren’t really ripe.
“Picking a tomato, red, right off the vine, and presenting it to the public, that’s what I do,” he says. “But before that happens, there are 1,001 things that can go wrong. Labor. Fungus. Splitting from a heavy rain. Weasels. Mice. I have to watch the plants every single day. Knowing your soil, that’s the secret.”
Fred feels the encroachment of major developers who are building nearby. Development has driven the deer to his land, where they eat his blossoms. (“They can devastate a pumpkin patch in minutes,” he says.) He can’t afford the fencing that would be required to keep them out. Nor does he have crop insurance. (“The
book work is phenomenal,” he says. “The businessman has all that done for him. Not me.”) His reflections don’t sound remorseful. Fred’s a hard worker with no regrets.
“I love what I do. I can’t see doing anything else,” he tells me. “I’m my own boss. I’m outside in the elements. I love the dirt. I see beautiful moons. And even when I come home dead-ass tired, I like it.”
We circle back to his garage just in the nick of time. “You can tell church has let out,” he says. I see four cars pull off Forest Grove Road and fill his driveway. It’s time for Fred to take over for the honor box.
AFTERWORD
Several months after I wrote this column, I dropped by Fred’s farm in the spring just as he’d taken possession of his season’s tomato plants, which had been grown off-site from seed. I cajoled him into giving me a few of them for my modest backyard garden. Then I went to Home Depot and bought a few of their tomato plants and put them in a bed next to Freddie’s. Late that summer, we had a family taste test. There was no doubt. The plants he’d given me produced better-tasting tomatoes than the yield from the Home Depot plants. But as I continued to buy tomatoes from the man himself, I had to admit that the best of mine were no match for any of his. My conclusion is that what Fred Slack Jr. has going in Forest Grove can be imitated but not replicated. And while I’ll continue to try to match his bounty in my own backyard, I don’t intend to stop driving to his farm to buy the best.
A SUBJECT’S PORTRAIT
OF THE ARTIST
Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, September 13, 2015
NELSON SHANKS treated me like royalty. For nearly three hours in front of a rapt crowd of several hundred people, the man who painted Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, Luciano Pavarotti, Antonin Scalia, and arguably his favorite subject, Diana, Princess of Wales, made me the focus of his canvas. We were both miked so I could interview him for the benefit of a paid crowd while he painted me.
As soon as he began, I said I wondered if he ever granted himself a mulligan and started over?
“Sure, a lot,” he said. “Or sometimes I just throw things and the sitter gets the idea. I’m just joking. I’m only looking for the best that I can get.”
The event was a fund-raiser for Studio Incamminati, the Philadelphia art school he founded in 2002 with wife, Leona. A camera trained on his easel enabled the audience to chart his progress. (In the last five years, a time-lapsed version of his night’s work has been viewed nearly 60,000 times on YouTube.) Shanks began by sketching on canvas with a neutral color, but, within minutes, it was completely gone, covered with other paint. He told me he was careful not to draw with too much detail. (“That would be a disaster because then I’d try to fill in the drawing; I would rather build up to that drawing at a later stage.”)
Shanks, who passed recently from prostate cancer at age 77, stood while he painted, wearing a purple shirt and tie with dark slacks. His concentration was not mitigated by the presence of the audience in the ballroom at the Union League, or my questions. Was painting work or fun? I asked.
He replied:
It’s obligatory, it’s habit, it’s endless curiosity to try to get it right. It’s, I guess it’s a kind of plague that gives me a lot of pleasure. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s very difficult for me to not paint or not get out to the studio even before it’s light and get to work. So there’s just so much to do and so much time, so I don’t want to waste it.
For his commissioned portraits, he told me his job began long before he lifted a brush.
I’ve been through some pretty intriguing closets, including Diana’s, which was about the size of a small football field, but I was a little disappointed because most of the clothes looked like prototypes for the Des Moines, Iowa, senior prom.
I called her one day and asked her if she had any white blouses and she said, “No, but come tomorrow at 1.” And I came tomorrow at 1 and there was a rack of 18 of them that she had gotten from London designers. They had run them over, panting, I’m sure.
Shanks was good company and possessed a quick wit. He told me that when he asked Diana whether she had anything green—“maybe a choker?”—the princess replied, “Well, would Queen Mary’s emeralds do?” His reply: “Oh, everyone asks me that.” No wonder the painter from Andalusia, Bucks County, quickly became a confidant of the Princess of Wales, who was then in the depth of her despair. He said:
As far as I know, I became one of her best friends for a long time, so that was, for me, a great privilege, obviously, and I just got lucky. But, of course, it was a very sad time for her in many ways. But we had a lot of good laughs; we had a lot of good times.
Being painted by Nelson Shanks in front of a live audience at the Union League of Philadelphia while raising funds for Studio Incamminati on March 24, 2010. Photo courtesy of Walter Kosch. Photographed by Mark Garvin.
Shanks painted Diana at his flat in London, a “beautiful studio.” He said Diana sought refuge there from her existence at Kensington Palace. In his portrait of her, there is a doorway visible. Shanks said he put it there deliberately, adding:
I didn’t have to, and it’s slightly open, and the idea was that metaphorically she’s going to a different place. She went a little further than I had in mind eventually, but at any rate it was slightly prophetic, I suppose.
At the same time he painted Diana, he was also painting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (“We had a great time. I spent a lot of time with her and [her husband,] Denis, dinners and things, so that was pretty special. It was an amazing time in my life to be around two of the most famous women in the world.”)
Shanks told the story of how, one day, Thatcher brought to his studio a beautiful silver-framed portrait photograph of herself, signed with “Great respect to Nelson and Leona.” Then Diana saw it. Shanks recalls:
Well, the following day, Diana comes in with a royal framed photograph of herself, signed, “With much love from your dear friend, blah, blah.” So there was a certain competition there. It was pretty funny.
I wondered if he had good days and bad days. He said:
I have good days and better days. Usually I don’t blow it, unless I don’t like the light. If it’s a hideous light and it gets really dark for a half an hour, and then the light comes out and bounces all over the place and one thing and another, I go look for the vodka.
The hour drew late. Before the crowd in Center City dispersed, I’m glad I said this to him:
I want you to know that for me to sit here for a couple of hours and ask you questions and watch you work is a tremendous honor, and I appreciate you having invited me to do it, and I’m grateful to the audience as well. What makes me feel wonderful is to see how many people wanted to be here and watch you work, which I think speaks so well of you and of Studio Incamminati, so allow me to thank you on behalf of the audience to watch as you work. It’s really great.
The audience five years ago stood and applauded Nelson Shanks.
Last week, the Shanks family issued a statement saying it is “dedicated to keeping the flame of Nelson’s vision alive by continuing to share his knowledge with future generations through Studio Incamminati.”
AFTERWORD
To fully appreciate Nelson Shanks’s gift, please take 56 seconds to watch a time-lapsed video of Shanks painting me. As of this writing, it has been viewed more than 64,000 times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBBZ8ZlPzHo.
I’d written about Shanks once before, about a year and a half earlier, when I consulted with him to critique the work of an aspiring artist: former president George W. Bush. President Bush had taken up painting as a pastime, and I thought Shanks would have an opinion. True to form, he obliged:
I’d give him an A for effort. He certainly could use some training because his things, at this point, are what I would call kind of thin and quite cartoonish, and certainly lacking sophistication in many senses. But, on the other hand, they are interesting. I would say, remarkably, they have a certain similarity t
o David Hockney. . . . Hockney has very little more ability to produce realism in a classic way than Mr. Bush. So I’d say that the ex-president is doing beautifully.
Shanks told me that portraits, the area for which he was best known, are the most challenging for a painter. He said:
It’s very interesting that a painter can paint a hundred still lifes, 10,000 landscapes, and various other things, and 10 portraits and he’d be known as a portrait painter. So calling me a portrait painter is both flattering and demeaning. . . . I’m very sensitive to being called a portrait painter, because there are so many bad ones that it kind of has a bad connotation.
Which is why Shanks refers to himself simply as a “painter,” adding, “But, of course, people then ask, ‘Do you do interior or exterior?’”
That wit reminds me of a lingering regret. I wish that Shanks had taken my advice and written a book about his interactions with subjects to append to a coffee-table version of his famous works of art. As I relate in this column, he had so many stories about the remarkable people he painted. Imagine him painting Princess Diana and Baroness Thatcher at the same time! The walls couldn’t talk, but maybe Shanks could have. I can’t help wondering whether his failure to publish such a book was attributable to the fact that he regarded his relationship with his subjects as akin to penitent and preacher, doctor and patient, or lawyer and client. Having had the experience of his painting me—although in front of a large crowd—I quickly came to realize how one could grow comfortable in his company and reveal things one would do to no stranger. Perhaps that also explains the ease with which he seems to have separated so many female subjects from their clothing!
TAKE NOTE, CANDIDATES,
OF REAGAN’S WORDS
Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, September 20, 2015
DONALD TRUMP should have toured the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library before he debated at the Simi Valley venue Wednesday. Perhaps he’d have seen the permanent exhibit showcasing index cards on which the Great Communicator handwrote his favorite one-liners.
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right Page 34