Ezra's Essays

Category: 2003

  • SHOCKING NEWS FROM LONDON

    Christmas Eve news reports from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Associated Press brings us horrid, horrid developments about the British Royal Family of our Mother England. BBC gave this sad report precedence over reports of four American soldiers being killed in Iraq and the cancellation of as many as six Air France flights…

  • WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IN IRAQ

    OR: THERE AIN’T NO JUSTICE  IN MILITARY JUSTICE Early in December, 2003, news reports and network television broadcasts quoted Lt. Colonel Nathan Sassaman of the United States Army as delivering these pungent remarks after the American Army had shot up some Iraqi villages. Col. Sassaman said, “With a heavy dose of fear and violence and…

  • A THOUGHT ABOUT WAR AND A LITTLE PHILOSOPHY ABOUT HATRED

    From time to time, my thoughts turn to the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. As a World War II soldier, may you be assured that war is not a pleasant pastime. It is repugnant. Combat soldiers see bodies blown apart and maimed. The soldier you were pals with yesterday, may be a maimed cripple…

  • EATING HEELS

    This is a story about eating. Specifically, it has to do with eating in old fashioned saloons. The eating I refer to took place in St. Louis which used to offer perhaps a dozen breweries and hundreds of saloons. It has nothing to do with heels on shoes or boots, although St. Louis was also…

  • AN OVER-ABUNDANCE OF DIURETICS

    This short essay started out to be named Mini-Seizures, TIA’s or Other Cardiac Related Disturbances. Later in the day after the overabundance of diuretics, prescribed and applied by myself, had tended to pass, this more civilized title now applies. The burden of what I am trying to say in this essay, is that if patients…

  • HOMEBODIES

    In Iraq, over the years, Saddam Hussein has angered his neighbors and his fellow Iraqi’s. The Syrians condemned him to hell sometime in the 1970’s. The Iranians have no use for him because of his war in the 1980’s against them. The Kuwaitis have his invasion of 1991 fresh in their minds. Turkey has never…

  • CHARLIE BROWN

    Charlie Brown died this week. Death came Charlie’s way on November 12, 2003. He was 82 years of age. In proper terms, Charlie was Charles Lee Brown, the former Chairman of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Charlie worked for AT&T and its Bell System companies from 1946 until his retirement in 1986, a forty…

  • AR-THUR-I-TIS

    What passes for a brain in my head has not been wired for introspective examination. If introspection has to do with examining one’s own mind or its contents reflectively, I am here to tell you, that’s not how my mind works. Professors and hand wringers who write op-ed pieces in newspapers and publish articles in…

  • FLAGS, FLAGS – EVERYWHERE FLAGS

    In November, 1945 Winter was making its frigid appearance felt in the Mississippi Valley in the general vicinity of St. Louis. Daytime temperatures had trouble in breaking the freezing point. Night time temperatures were somewhat colder. Cold in this region of the Mississippi Valley is made somewhat worse by the presence of high humidity. So…

  • BITS AND PIECES | AUTOMOBILES AND MEN’S SHOES

    During my formative years, it was necessary to work. This was in the Great Depression which lasted from 1929 until war broke out in December, 1941. During that time, the place where one went to buy gas or to have a car lubricated was called a filling station. Later when wordsmiths took a leading role…