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IN LAVISH PRAISE OF SCALLIONS
There are dilettantes who dine on snails, caviar and champagne who will contend that eating a scallion is beneath their stature in life. They will contend that it is nothing other than a peasant food. Your old essayist holds a contrary view. In his estimation, the enjoyment of any meal except breakfast is increased by…
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YOU KNOW OR IS IT YOU NO?
I have always been interested in the patterns of speech used by my fellow Americans. The election season of the past two years have been a bonanza of sorts. During daylight hours, it has become the custom of cable programs to ask a speaker to kill a full hour whether he has anything to say…
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MENTAL DWARFISM AT A TIME OF GREAT NATIONAL CRISIS
As I dictate this essay on February 11, 2009, there is a grave national crisis surrounding the American people. From my view, it is a crisis of the same proportions as World War II and the great Hoover depression of 1929. There are a good number of brains at work on the crisis for which…
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GI SPEAK
This humble and modest little essay has to do with language. Specifically it has to do with the language spoken by enlisted men, always called GIs, in the American Army in the era of World War II. This is the language spoken among enlisted men, and it has very little to do with the lofty…
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“BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE THE MONEY ISN’T”
Mr. William Sutton was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1901. There were five children in the Sutton family. As soon as Mr. Sutton completed the eighth grade, he quit school and that was the last of his academic career. We find that the records show that William Sutton departed this vale of tears in…
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A LITTLE BIT OF THISA AND A LITTLE BIT OF THATA
About the only advantage in being raised during the Herbert Hoover Depression of 1929 was that the radio carried intelligent music. The lyrics had a story line and there were harmony and melody to the music. There were dozens of bands that toured the country at a time when almost every major hotel offered a…
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IN MEMORIAM ROSEMARY ROCHE DADY 1928 – 2008
Robert Browning, the English poet, once wrote these lines: Grow old along with me The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made. Poets are dreamers. They are not pragmatists. The last of life for aged people involves loss of hearing, reduced visual acuity, arthritis, and…
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THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
American government at the federal level is capable of great generosity as witnessed by the Marshall Plan, with which we rebuilt Europe after World War II. At the state level the governments are capable of idiotic lunacy. Witness the drives against all forms of homosexuality. Witness the promotion of tobacco planting. And finally observe that…
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ONCE AGAIN, THE ICEMAN COMETH (With Apologies to Eugene O’Neill)
Behind my kitchen chair sits a gorgeous behemoth that is basically silent. Its color is an iridescent white and it possesses two polished chrome handles. Among the upper crust, it goes by the name of a refrigerator. It has always seemed to me that “frigerator” would get the message across but this device insists upon…
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THEY NEVER BETRAYED ME
This is intended as a long overdue tribute to my friends, the Italian people. Specifically, it has to do with the United States Depression starting in 1929 and secondly, it also has to do with the War in Italy which involved United States forces from 1942 to 1945. In my mind, there is a clear…