Jill-user’s problem with the high cost of labor in decorating her home with holiday lights stems from the early 50s’ housing boom. Many theretofore city-dwellers suddenly became homeowners and met up with repair and maintenance they never had experienced. Since most were ordinary Joes and Jills they catalyzed the do-it-yourself industry—another enormous boom. Of course, not all were handy or could even muddle through tasks and had to take part-time jobs to offset the cost of tradesmen to re...
James Joyce said that since “Finnegan’s Wake” took him seventeen years to write, the reader should damn well spend at least five years reading it. If truth is beauty and beauty truth, then how does one explain Picasso? If the universe is unbegun and unending but the fourth dimension is hemmed in by finite time is it conceivable to think of eternity as unbegun, unending? What if the Democrats said the hell with FDR and his big government and de-legislated all of his projects, would...
In 1939 a rookie Yankee outfielder known as "King Kong" Keller sported # 9—yes, Maris' retired digit—and tore up the league. He was my boyhood idol, even though the "Yankee Clipper" hogged the headlines. Ah, '39, glorious, magical—never mind the open terrorism against Jews by the German people in '38, ignore France, England and the United States' cowering indifference to Hitler's power grab of Austria, Czechoslovakia and the march on Poland—for, yes, the Trylon and Perisphere were the symbol ...
Until the boredom was erased and the print took on a life of its own, before the student’s eyes were connected to reality, until the realization came that the book held in his hands was not an inanimate thing, nor even a symbol of awe, but rather a throbbing, living reality in free perspective, this neophyte turned the page to the threshold of poetry, thinking it a dead thing of the past for which archaeologists could probe with blade and spade. Aye, may poetry rest in peace, or so he thought....
IBM, the once great US corporation up to the 80s that never laid off workers, has been downsizing ever since with mass layoffs in pockets of the country and now five thousand more by replacing them with workers overseas. This is all too emblematic of the corporate world since the 80s. IBM apparently has never recovered from shell-shock for giving the green light to Microsoft in the early ‘80s. It should have given the old CPM operating system [at the time far superior] the same license for ...
Did you know that scoring system gives five points to an “Ugh” reply? — the same for an insightful reply. Moreover why is a well-written article only 15 points, equal to nothing more than a fanciful blurb? I also notice that the top users rack up points furiously with their incessant spillover at the forum. Being new to the game — and not aware of the forum for sometime — I hesitate to suggest a different, better scoring system, inasmuch as most of my blogs go by un commented, so it will ...
1) Does it matter to you that some of your friends are not religious? No, it's more like your wonderful President's relations with Putin, I look into their eyes to feel their souls. 2) After you have known someone for a while, do you care about his/her appearance? Absolutely. I want my acquaintances impeccable even though I'm a slob. 3) Are you inclined to strike a relationship with someone who usually agrees with your politics? I would be total...
Midnight Basketball After-school programs is not pork and should not be treated lightly. Every minute on the basketball court is a drug-dealers moment of frustration. Anyone who is against prevention is one who did not listen to Batman. Even the jail movies of the Thirties featured the defender of rehabilitation and usually it was the warden. Every minute after school for individual counseling is a minute away from the emptness of working couples, or fatherless homes. Every minute of re...
D-Day Plus One [excerpt from my novel] As the first squad descended the slope the next morning into an open field of picturesque rice paddies and leisurely herded together civilians who had hidden in the copses dotted along the way to the western shore, another company further ahead suffered severe casualties as one of its platoons was trapped in a deep ravine and its other two rifle platoons bravely attacked under heavy enemy fire to rescue the few remaining men. Lieutenant Lin...
When I was a kid--and an Errol Flynn fan-- the Republicans resented the New Deal because it meant institutionalizing Robin Hood — spreading the wealth around. Their philosophy was that the national and global decisions are made by the profit motive, regardless of consequences. In spite of the Crash of ‘29 or Reagan’s Black Friday, they still believe the common good is in the grubby hands of the money vendors. If that’s so, then why at the turn of the last century did the auto-industry expect...
Erin Hanafy of the AP wrote an “interesting” [?] article based on a study of fairy tales by Purdue and Western Illinois Universities sociologists of women’s studies, showing emphasis on beautiful people. The study pointed out that in Grimms’ “Cinderella” alone beauty in women was referred to 114 times and but 35 references to ugliness. Implicit in this article, of course, is that undue reference to appearance and equating the hero and heroine’s good looks to goodness and the ugly villain as ev...
Is it too much to ask of Congress to support its Head Start B.A. bill with some funds for state implementation of higher salaries above the current average of $21,000 and issuing tuition incentives to obtain the BA? Does not this low salary make a mockery of the efforts to leave no child behind? Is it too much to ask for the end of vouchers based on the age-old premise that exclusive private schools are superior to public schools when in fact the premise is based on segregation in behalf ...
However, bad news took a back seat to "I like Ike" and the sensation created by Levitt's '50 model that came equipped with a giant 12½" TV. Stalin graciously obliged this good feeling by croaking. This bustling decade of the 50s—the "police action" in Korea; McCarthyism at home and Puerto Rican extremists firing on Congress notwithstanding—was led by consumerism. Music before Elvis was the sweetest and softest ever. Such names as Hugo Winterhalter, Mantovani, June Hutton, and Andy Williams...
Wardell at one time believed that the internet was the alternative toward mainstream commentators and columnists who were not satisfactory to his way of thinking. Now he claims it is “destroying the civility of political discourse.” Only he and his small circle of friends have “ views based on a set of honest, well thought-out principles.” I wonder if his mention of internet includes JoeUser bloggers that are not suitable to his high criteria for civility and debates, which he has relegated to...
When asked what mistakes He had made, God paused and seemed dumbstruck, then replied, “Like my son George, I can’t think of any, … if I can I’ll get back to you.” How is it a miscarriage is God’s will, but a woman’s will to abort is unacceptable? No one seems to be worried that the Arctic temperature — since it’s all ocean — has been on the rise due to two hundred years of carbon dioxide; on the other hand, when industry develops carbon dioxide below the equator and the Antarctic be...