Tag Archives: real life

My Bit for Genealogy

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typewriter, writing

photo: Steve Depolo, creative commons license

What makes a set of records helpful to people researching their families? Having it digitized for search. And, how does that happen? Not easily. We forget that up until about the 1960s many public records were hand-written.  Before the typewriter was invented (1860), all records were written completely by hand. As a mystery writer, I find these historic documents—and their tantalizing glimpses of the-story-behind-the-story—fascinating!

Believe it or not, early county clerks were not selected based on the legibility of their handwriting. Add to that possible errors and idiosyncrasies in spelling, particularly of names, where parental creativity sometimes trumps convention (note the sly RNC reference; Freud at work). These make deciphering documents a challenge requiring Sherlock Holmes’s extra-large magnifier.

A 72-hour Challenge

To get some help with the massive task of digitizing, FamilySearch.com sponsored a three-day event last weekend, in which volunteers from around the world examined original records and entered data into pre-designed forms. In fact, some 116,475 people indexed over 10 million records in those three days!

I entered data extracted from hundreds of handwritten Kentucky marriage records from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as some from the 1880s—before the clerks used forms. Also English probate records for loads of people, last name Cox. Also 1920 census pages for Montreal.

Here’s what I learned:

  • Mothers of couples married in the 1930s and 40s in Kentucky were very likely to be named Eula, Lula, Effie, Bessie, or Elsie. There were many Hatties and Hesters, Mabels, Myrtles, and a Flossie (not married to a Freddie, which will disappoint you if you grew up reading The Bobbsey Twins series). Great ideas for naming characters born in that period.
  • I liked the sense of humor of the parents who named their son Pearley Bates. There was a second man named Pearl, too. And a woman.
  • This data entry volunteer was left to wonder why some marriage records had written at the top “Please Do Not Publish.”
  • On one day, Ray O. Schomberg divested himself of two daughters, ages 17 and 19, to men of the U.S. Air Force from exciting California and not-so-exciting Ohio.
  • Many couples came from Ohio to be married in the border counties of Kentucky. If memory serves, there was no waiting period from license to ceremony in Kentucky. Some of these were church marriages nevertheless, some by Justices of the Peace, and some in “police court.” Eyebrows raised.
  • Most couples were of legal age to marry without parental consent (established how?) —21 in those days.
  • A few brides were only 16 and one was 15—the groom another Air Force man, age 24—and the clerk of court noted that the witnesses were “John Smith (the bride’s father) and James Smith” (holding the shotgun, probably). Without question her father would be there, and the shotgun too, if not in fact, in the groom’s imagination.
  • In the 1880 records, many men signed their marriage licenses with an x (“his mark”); by 1950, I saw only one record where the groom could not write his name.
  • The English probate records documented the other end of the continuum of family relationships. One told how Arnold Cox, dentist, left his estate of £54 to Maude Cox, spinster (his sister?). To spend your life as a village dentist and die with only £54 to show for it seems more than a little sad.
  • I was intrigued by the number of Coxes from northern England who left bequests to Archie Cox, chemist. In England a chemist is a pharmacist, and I just wondered whether our Archie might have helped some of his ancient and ailing relatives along, just a bit.

This project provided the chance to indulge in speculation about the lives of previous generations, as revealed through their documentary trail. And I was glad to know that if any of the descendants of the perhaps a thousand people whose stories I helped record are interested in those lives, I’ve made their job a little easier.

Family Search.com is a free alternative to Ancestry.com. Both are maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and each has strengths and weaknesses. I’ve found considerable information about family members using both.

P.S. — See that photo by Steve Depolo? If he has family from Kentucky, their marriage records may be online now. I happen to know!

Zero Days

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Zero Days, Iran, nuclear

Former Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspecting centrifuges at Natanz.

This two-hour documentary released Friday, July 8, and playing in selected theaters and streaming online, traces the history and consequences of Stuxnet, a sophisticated piece of malware unleashed on the world in 2010 (trailer & theater list).

Before you yawn and click away, there’s an important feature of the Stuxnet worm and others like it that makes this story of vital interest to you. Stuxnet was not designed to invade your home or office computer, but to attack the industrial control systems (specifically, programmable logic controllers) that manage critical infrastructure. These systems make sure trains and airplanes don’t crash, control car and truck traffic, maintain oil and gas production, manage industrial automation, ensure you have water to brush your teeth with and electricity to run the coffee maker, keep life-saving medical technology operating, and, of course, give you access to the internet. Cyber-attacks on these systems cause real-world, physical destruction, even widespread death.

Behind the Computer Screen

The Stuxnet story—still highly classified, but revealed over time—began with an effort by the United States and Israel to thwart Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons by destroying centrifuges at the country’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The software was diabolically clever, virtually undetectable, and essentially untraceable. In theory.

The fact that it was a Zero Day exploit (that is, that the attack would begin before the software problem was discovered and attempts made to fix it or shut it down) and that the Stuxnet code contained not one, but four zero day features, was remarkable. Once it was inside, it worked autonomously; even the attacker could not call it back.

The Israelis, apparently, were impatient. They assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, and they changed the Stuxnet code, and it spread. It ended up infecting computers worldwide, at which point it was no longer secret, people were looking for it, and the Russians and others found it. “Israel blew the [malware’s] cover and it could have led to war,” the film says.

Another consequence is that the day when something similar can be unleashed on us grows ever closer. It will come from one of three sources:

  • Cybercriminals, in it for the money
  • Activists, intent on making a political point or
  • Nation-states seeking intelligence or opportunities for sabotage.

U.S. security agencies are not complacent. While they talk publicly about our cyber-defenses, in fact, there is a large (unexamined) effort to develop offensive cyber-weapons. There are reports of an even more draconian cyber-weapon embedded throughout Iranian institutions. Warding off its activation is believed a primary reason the Iranians finally struck a nuclear agreement. Certainly it prompted the rapid development surge in Iran’s cyberarmy.

In putting this story together, writer and director Alex Gibney interviewed former high-ranking U.S. and Israeli security officials, analysts from Symantec who teased the code apart, personnel from Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, and many others, including CIA/NSA/DoD officials unable to speak on camera.

“Fear Does Not Protect Us”

The documentary makes a persuasive case for who holds the smoking Stuxnet gun, but it also suggests that finding fault is not the primary issue. The climate of international secrecy around Stuxnet—and the inevitable clones that will follow—makes an open discussion about them impossible. Nor does it allow development of rational strategies for managing the risks, regardless of how urgently needed those strategies are. Cyber-risk management will never be easy, but as one of the film’s experts points out, “it will never happen unless you start.”

The subject is “hideously overclassified,” says Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and CIA. (The climate of secrecy is so extreme that even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security cyber team was unaware that Stuxnet originated across town and spent countless resources trying to track it down.) We, of all nations, need this debate, because there is no more vulnerable country in the world, when it comes to systems’ connectedness.

“Evil and good live side by side,” says an anonymous agent of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Keeping secrets is a good way to prevent being able to tell one from the other.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 87%; audiences 69%.

Crime Prevention: Burglary

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Burglar Alarm

photo: vistavision, creative commons license

Yesterday’s local “newspaper” used most of the front page to list the 25 New Jersey towns with the most burglaries, an overall number that’s been dropping. Whatever the community-wide data reveal, having your own home burglarized is 100%. So, how to prevent it? Can you? Geoff Manaugh, author of the new book, A Burglar’s Guide to the City (promoted as “you’ll never see the city the same way again”), presents a frustratingly balanced article on this topic in the May issue of Metropolis.

Criminologists and beat cops agree that certain home features may affect the likelihood it will be burglarized, yet it seems there’s always an “on the other hand. . . .” Decreasing the likelihood of a break-in involves a series of trade-offs that we mostly don’t think about much.

Something we probably ignored when selecting our house (and can’t fix, anyway), is its position on the street. Manaugh says a house on a corner is more likely to be broken into. Conversely, a house on a cul-de-sac or in a neighborhood with curving streets and dead ends is less attractive to would-be thieves. Ease of escape is the issue here. On the other hand, such neighborhoods tend to have fewer police patrols.

If your house is set back from the street or ringed with tall shrubbery, it may be harder to notice. On the other hand, it gives a burglar “the same privacy it gives you.” Clear visibility into and out of your home discourages thieves. For the same reason, a rainy night is burglars’ most-favored time for a break-in; people aren’t out on the streets, and it’s hard for the neighbors to notice that ladder up to your second-floor (unalarmed) window. You know, the ladder you told the painters or the arborists or the . . . , “Sure, just leave it out there for the night. You’ll be back tomorrow.”

Pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods are safer, unless the pedestrians are there because a house is close to a subway station or train depot. Neighborhoods near schools receive more patrols and a closer watch from parents. Those near woodlands provide an opportunity for escape.

A burglar sees your house as a set of entry and exit points–back doors, side windows, porch roofs, and sliders. Are they protected? Is your alarm system a preventive, or does it suggest you have something worth stealing? A friend lives on a block where every house has been broken into except hers. The other difference between her and her neighbors? She has a dog.

Finally, Manaugh asks one simple question applying to all of us: “Do you really know where all your extra sets of house keys have gone?”

Related articles

The Pennsylvania Dutch Experience

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Landis Valley tinshop

Landis Valley tinshop (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

How often have I passed the signs for Landis Valley Village and paid them no mind? Recently, with kids in tow, a group of us finally made a visit. The Village was a little gem, perfect for a two-hour stopover in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We had cheese, nuts, and fruit with us, and with water from the LVV gift shop, we put one of their picnic tables to good use too.

In the heart of Amish country, the Village (and Museum, which we did not visit) focuses instead on the Pennsylvania Dutch heritage of the region and began. It started with a farm owned by two brothers and their collection of Pennsylvania Dutch artifacts, gradually adding other historical buildings. These include a schoolhouse, blacksmith’s forge, tin shop, tavern (natch!), among others, many of which are arranged around a shady central square. It was perfect for strolling and letting the kids run off some energy, even on the 90-degree day we were there. Horse-drawn wagons are another option for touring the acreage. Snow-white horses are in the field, chickens in their coops.

Depending on the day, costumed interpreters are available to describe how a particular building was used. The day we were there, we talked to a tavern-keeper, a blacksmith who was full of stories and working at his forge in front of us, a tinsmith who had a terrific backstory, and a young man supervising a private home. The kids loved it!

One of the activities of the Village and farm museum is a Heirloom Seed Project, which has been under way for three decades. Find out more about the seeds available, the many special events and exhibits at LVV, and other details at www.LandisValleyMuseum.org.

Landis Valley, horse-drawn wagon

photo: Vicki Weisfeld

Your Travel Circles

I provide this information to help you make the most of your trips to “destination cities” by also seeing attractions in a reasonable driving distance. I’ve had too many business trips when I never got out of the meeting hotel!

  • If you’re visiting Harrisburg, Lancaster County is less than an hour (45 miles) away.
  • If you’re visiting Philadelphia, Lancaster County is only 90 minutes (64 miles) away.

JFK’s Birthplace

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JFK, bassinet

The Kennedy family bassinet in the boys’ room (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

In the middle of the block in a dense Brookline neighborhood of sturdy clapboard houses from 130 years ago—big porches, leaded windows, occasional turrets—is the home where John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. President, was born.

The house at 83 Beals Street was built in 1909, and Joseph and Rose Kennedy moved there in 1914. Three years later, John was born in the master bedroom, their third child. But the house had only three bedrooms, and in 1920 the growing family moved to a larger home nearby (still privately owned). The new house had a huge wraparound porch, which Rose wanted, because she firmly believed children should play outside every day.

After the President’s assassination, the Kennedy family repurchased the house, and Rose restored it to how she remembered it to be in 1917, the year of Jack’s birth. She then donated the house to the National Park Service. Rangers are on hand for tours, and there’s a small gift shop in the basement. The tour is enhanced by recordings of Rose describing the family’s life.

The house was close to many neighborhood features important to the family. There were good schools, Saint Aidan’s Catholic Church (now converted to condominiums), playgrounds, and the trolley line to Boston, where, at age 25, the elder Kennedy was president of the Columbia Trust Bank. The Park Service brochure offers a walking tour of the neighborhood that includes the Kennedy family church, school, and other sites. Click here for more information and event schedules.

You may recall that Jack was a sickly child, suffering numerous childhood illnesses, including scarlet fever. Rose read to him for hours as he recuperated, and among his favorite books was the story of King Arthur and Camelot.

*****Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story

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war damage, bomb

photo: Feyrouz at English Wikipedia, creative commons license

During the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in the late 1980s and 1990s, the army gave its outposts botanical names, which led to an otherwise undistinguished hill’s being called “Pumpkin.” In military radio traffic, a dead soldier was an “oleander” and an injured soldier merely a “flower,” species undefined.

Pumpkinflowers, then, refers not to a bucolic late-summer farm field, but rather to the soldiers physically and sometimes mentally wounded by service in a hostile land, where their presence became increasingly indefensible. Matti Friedman tells the stories of these young men and their challenges feelingly and at close hand, as he was one of them.

Friedman is a journalist born in Canada, who lamented the lack of writing about that occupation and its impact on the young Israeli men who served there, most of them fresh out of high school. So he set about telling their story himself, believing today’s Middle East situation had some of its seeds in this unnamed and largely ignored security zone conflict.

Initially, as so often happens in military history, the generals were fighting the last war. They thought the enemy comprised somewhat ragtag Palestinian guerrillas, but before long, the occupiers faced local Shiites, who called themselves the Party of God, Hezbollah. This group was generously funded by Iran and Syria and able to call on a seemingly endless supply of would-be suicide bombers. Hezbollah also soon seized the lead in the propaganda war.

That the TV images were the real weapons, that the Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers had been turned into actors in an attack staged for the camera—these weren’t things anyone understood yet. . . . Within a few years elements of the security zone war would, in turn, appear elsewhere and become familiar . . . : Muslim guerrillas operating in a failed and chaotic state; small clashes in which the key actor is not the general but the lieutenant or private; the use of a democracy’s sensitivities, public opinion, and free press as weapons against it.

(The Body of an American, a prize-winning play reviewed here, makes a similar point.)

Hezbollah was not interested in a negotiated withdrawal of Israeli troops or achievement of some limited goal: “It is a vision and an approach, not only a military reaction,” one of its leaders has written. Subsequent actions continue to demonstrate this larger view, which suggests limits on a strictly military response.

Through discussion of the Four Mothers movement, which supported withdrawal from Lebanon, Friedman explores the political conflict between the leftists of the dwindling kibbutz movement who in the 1990s believed in compromise and thought peace was possible and the rightists who believed peace was a dangerous illusion and who currently dominate Israeli politics.

The last section of the book describes Friedman’s return to Lebanon (using his Canadian passport) and his rediscovery of the remains of the Pumpkin, a place as tangible to him today, in its continued importance, as it ever was when he served there.

Not a long book at 225 pages, it’s insightful and well written, condensing both human interest and political analysis into the story of a single lost outpost. Author Lucette Lagnado says Friedman’s prose “manages to be lyrical, graceful, and deeply evocative even when tackling the harshest subjects imaginable,” and I certainly found it so.

 

SFMOMA Redo a Hit!

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SFMOMA

SFMOMA main stair (photo: Tom Ervin, used with permission)

After visiting the magnificent new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), you may be tempted to hum “I Found My Art in San Francisco.” According to an article in Marin, SFMoMA was the first museum in the West dedicated to displaying 20th century art. Jackson Pollock’s inaugural exhibition was held here, for example.

The 10-story museum addition, which reopened May 14 after a three-year, $305 million makeover, is across from the Yerba Buena Gardens in SOMA (the downtown area south of Market Street) near the Embarcadero.

“In many ways, the unveiling of the new SFMOMA caps a period of transformation that speaks to forces at play in many U.S. cities — the rehabilitation of what had once been dilapidated urban cores. But the museum is also indicative of the role that high culture can play in that process. With its very presence, a museum can help shift the dynamics of a neighborhood,” says Carolina A. Miranda in the LA Times.
The 145,000-sq.ft. added exhibit space displays some 32,000 works—including large installations by Carl Andre and Donald Judd. Most of the inaugural exhibition works have not been seen before, including the impressive 1,000-piece Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, and numerous donated works by contemporary artists, including a gallery of works by color field painter Ellsworth Kelly, who died in 2015. The museum also includes a permanent center of photography and a temporary exhibit on the history of typography in graphic design.

Experience it Online

The eye-popping exterior redesign by Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta includes an oculus—an eye-like opening—and what the New York Times described as a “crinkly” façade of fiberglass-reinforced polymer skin that mimics the bobbing waves of San Francisco Bay. Other critics say the exterior resembles a beached cruise ship or a glacial form. An interactive article by Rene Chun in Wired highlights the museum’s many innovative architectural features.

The first floor is open to the public and includes exhibition space, a well-curated museum store and, soon, a public restaurant featuring culinary contributions from Bay Area chef luminaries such as Alice Waters. You scale a grand staircase flooded with natural light from the oculus to access the gallery floors. Once inside the galleries, a variety of well-executed architectural and artistic elements reveal themselves.

The higher floors have expansive windows running alongside the galleries, and wraparound terraces from which glimpses of the cityscape engage the eye and bring natural light in. A third floor gallery of huge Alexander Calder mobiles opens onto a larger terrace flanked by a three-story wall of native plants from nearby Mount Tamalpais that enhance the green building theme.

SFMOMA art

Author Jodi Goalstone at SFMOMA (photo: Tom Ervin, used with permission)

To minimize crowding and noise, hidden, one-way only stairs take visitors up or down along with easily accessible elevators. Another clever design element is found, oddly enough, in gallery restrooms. Higher floors’ facilities have a different, bold color scheme. The one I visited had deep purple walls and magenta stalls with soft, subtle lighting.

Because this is a modern art museum, new media is imbedded in the experience. Visitors can explore the museum with an audio tour that provides a personal docent—with a twist. One example: see the museum guided by Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Jon Miller and San Francisco Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti.

More to Come

Coming soon is an app for virtual visits at https://www.sfmoma.org/app/. “SFMOMA’s chief content officer, Chad Coerver, calls the app ‘a cross between This American Life and the movie Her,’” according to another Chun article.

For more information on tickets, hours and directions, visit https://www.sfmoma.org/.

This guest post is by Tucson-based Jodi Goalstone, who writes the highly entertaining blog Going Yard, Offbeat Baseball Musings.

Information vs. Confession: New Police Interrogators

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Punch & Judy, police

photo: Dan Dickinson, creative commons license

Mystery and crime fiction readers (and writers!) may soon encounter a new approach to police interrogation that may be more effective at producing solid information and valid confessions. Until the mid-1930s, suspected criminals were subjected to the “third degree,” which often included bodily harm or at least the threat of it—like dangling a suspect out of a window (!).

Currently, police mostly use confrontational techniques “a rusty, stalwart invention that’s been around since the days of JFK,” says reporter Robert Kolker in the current issue of Wired.

These supposedly more scientific techniques are based on psychological manipulation, in which police attempt to persuade their suspect that confession is their only reasonable choice. Hallmarks of the technique are the claustrophobic interview room in which detectives appear absolutely convinced of a suspect’s guilt and present a damning version of facts (and even made up “facts”) that paint the suspect as the culprit. (If you want to see a memorable demonstration of this technique, check out this terrific YouTube clip from The Wire.)

The developers of confrontational interrogation justified the use of false information and other tricks because they—and many cops trained in their methods as well as judges and prosecutors—were convinced an innocent person simply would not confess to a crime he did not commit. This post demonstrates what a tragically wrongful conviction that was. Evidence against its reliability started piling up when DNA analysis became available and a large number of convictions were thrown out, even though the accused at some point “confessed.” Further, and contrary to expectation, Kolker says, “The more confident police officers are about their judgments, the more likely they are to be wrong.”

Now a growing number of police departments, starting with the LAPD, recognizes the shaky science behind these methods and are moving to an “investigative” approach more similar to that long used in England and Canada. As a joint effort of the FBI, CIA and Pentagon, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) studied interrogation techniques around the world, with an eye to producing valid confessions and avoiding false ones among terrorists. Bottom line: “If you want accurate information, be as non-accusatorial as possible.” Now they are trying to spread the word throughout domestic police departments.

I can see changes in fiction—plots where one officer is trained in the HIG techniques, but the partner resists; repeat criminals unnerved by the change in police attitude; and the expansion of information police have to work with when their questioning causes suspects to simply clam up. Of course, in both fiction and real life, many skilled interviewers have used these techniques for years, without official sanction. (Fictional detective Lt. Colombo comes immediately to mind as a possible, possibly extreme example.) Any attempt to change the culture of policing is ripe for drama.

Think the Truth Protects You?

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Texas, guns

(photo: C. Holmes, CC license)

Douglas Starr in the December 9, 2013,  New Yorker, describes how the most commonly used confrontational interrogation technique used in the United States leads to false confessions. The method relies on detectives’ observing non-verbal behavior, looking for (or creating) anxiety, never giving the suspect a chance to voice a denial, minimizing the crime and trying every trick to make it easier for the suspect to admit it, even claiming to have evidence they don’t have, with their right to lie to suspects in many circumstances protected by a 1969 Supreme Court decision. The goal is simply to get a confession.

Psychologists became suspicious about the issue of false confessions several decades ago and began studies on it. And experienced detectives have begun to doubt it, as they’ve seen suspects mold their statements to fit the information the detectives have fed them.

In Britain, police don’t try for confessions, they go for information. They focus on the content of what is said, not nonverbal behavior or anxiety (proved to be not correlated with lying). Instead, they look for inconsistencies: “For the suspect, lying creates a cognitive load—it takes energy to juggle the details of a fake story.” It’s hard to keep it up. Nor are the police allowed to lie about what evidence they have.

In the United States, out of 311 people exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing, more than a quarter had given false confessions—perhaps most notoriously, the Central Park Five. (Ken and Sarah Burns film on the case). Why do they confess? Worn down by the interrogation, an innocent suspect “fabricates a story to satisfy his questioners.”  This is most likely what led to the false statement made by Amanda Knox, which, although she recanted, has been used against her ever since.

This post originally appeared February 3, 2014.

The Winner’s Circle

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horse racing

At Belmont, 2013 (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Horses, horse people, jockeys, trainers, and touts. Watching the Kentucky Derby—“the most exciting two minutes in sports”—last Saturday made me think of some of the great books about horses and the quirky, obsessive people who surround them.

The horses are huge, but run on the most fragile of ankles. The jockeys are small, but mostly heart. Racing is a quick way to burn money. No wonder storytellers have capitalized on its dramatic potential.

Horse Heaven – by Jane Smiley. Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for A Thousand Acres, yet I found this novel way more satisfying. She’s developed a stableful of engaging characters as you follow the fates of several horses bred for racing, a risky proposition in the best of times. As much about people and their passions and predilections as about horses, of course.

Lords of Misrule – by Jaimy Gordon. Winner of the 2010 National Book Award, this novel is set in the lower echelons of horse-racing, among people for whom the twin spires of Churchill Downs are a distant dream. She has an almost miraculous way of capturing the way horse people think and talk.

The Horse God Built – by Lawrence Scanlan. This one I haven’t read, but it was too tempting to include a book about Secretariat—“the horse God built.” Secretariat won racing’s Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes) in 1973, with track-blistering performances. This nonfiction book is Secretariat as seen through the eyes of his groom and a story of friendship. This is one of six great nonfiction books about racing compiled by Amy Sachs for BookBub.

Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand, was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Toby Maguire, Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, and real-life jockey Gary Stevens. A heartwarming story, this production includes footage shot from the midst of a race—an unforgettable view of why this sport is so dangerous. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 77%, audiences 76%.

Luck – HBO. For the full immersion experience, try this nine-episode series, developed by David Milch. It’s all-star cast includes Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Farina, John Ortiz, Richard Kind, Nick Nolte, Michael Gambon and, again, jockey Gary Stevens (who raced in the 2016 Kentucky Derby at age 53). The three touts, convinced they’re on track for riches, are priceless. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 87%; audiences 78%