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FLIVVER
Henry Ford, the auto magnate, was also a peace activist. Prior to the hostilities that marked the First World War, Mr. Ford chartered a ship on which he loaded several important American personages to go to the capitals of Europe to ask them to avoid the coming war. To the American press, this was known…
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TURNING THE VIRGINITY ODOMETER BACK TO ZERO
This essay is going to attempt to perform an impossible literary marriage in that it involves the virginity of Muslim women and an apt poem by A. E. Housman, an English poet who could foresee miracles of the future. Whether this marriage will last is a reasonable subject for discussion, but I believe that it…
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VITO’S CHUTZPAH
Since 1928 when Al Smith was defeated by Herbert Hoover, I have been an interested observer of the political scene in American politics. During the better part of four years, at the conclusion of the 1960s, I had the privilege of being a lobbyist in Washington where the scene played out, if you will, nearly…
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THE MANLY THING
This essay is not about my usual subjects such as politics or religion or the failures of mankind; it is about crying. Specifically, it is about the crying of men who have passed the age of puberty. This past week has been a difficult week for me. On Tuesday, April 27, Jim Livermore called to…
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IN DEFENSE OF BUTTONS
It is possible but unlikely that there are men and women around the world whose memory is so long that they can remember a time when the existence of zippers was completely unknown. Zippers today appear in a multiplicity of places. They are on our clothes as well as on some of our plastic bags…
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ANOTHER DOSE OF THEM RANDOM THOUGHTS
All things considered, my mother spoke less than perfect English. Her rural background often seeped through in her manner of speaking. While she may have made grammatical mistakes and mispronunciations, the burden of her message was always clear. If she were alive today, there is some doubt that she would read my essays. But perhaps…
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A FEW MORE COMPLETELY RANDOM THOUGHTS
Perhaps I should stay out of my water closet because random thoughts often occur to me there. As the lawyers would say, in the instant case these thoughts include such diverse characters as George Steinbrenner and the Roman Catholic Pope who visited here recently. These are not monumentally important thoughts, but they will not go…
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CHICKENS AND CATS
My soul, such as it is, was tormented by the thought of giving a title to this essay. Originally I had planned to call this essay “The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost.” Then it dawned on me that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright had used that comment recently, and the results were far from rosy.…
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SOME CATS PURR; THIS KATZ COLLECTS LOVERS
This may come as a shock to many of my readers, but in this essay, I will be dealing with a subject that I know a little bit about. From 1946 through the summer of 1951, I was an official of the Communications Workers of America. Then in 1951 the management of AT&T offered me…