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LITTLE PEOPLE
I deplore the name “little people,” but it was bequeathed to us by Leona Helmsley, the wealthy woman who, at the end of her life, controlled the predominant interest in the Helmsley hotel chain and real estate. Throughout her life, Leona made other people as uncomfortable as possible. Upon her death, rather than giving money…
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IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF JESUS
In the fall of 1997, Shirley Morganstein was the Director of Speech Therapy at the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in West Orange, New Jersey. In November of that year, I had a stroke that had spared my limbs but had left me with a galloping case of aphasia, which is why I consulted Shirley Morganstein. Thirteen…
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MUST WE ALWAYS BE ENTERTAINED?
I hope that I do not have to establish my bona fides with respect to music. I was raised in the suburban area of a musical town where there were symphonies, operettas, a grand opera, and recitals of all kinds. The name of the town was, of course, St. Louis. It may not rank with…
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A NEW DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT
In the last week of July, Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, made a trip through Southeast Asia, winding up in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. All of this was done before she came home to attend the wedding of her daughter. While Mrs. Clinton was in Islamabad, it is reported that she gave the…
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PEPSI COLA HITS THE SPOT
The cast of characters in this essay is humungous. I have no idea what humungous means, but youngsters use that term and it is a lot better than some of their other expressions. Now on to the characters. First there were my playmates, Billy Seyfried, Timoteo Marcellan, and Charlie Baldridge. Beyond those playmates, there is…
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“I AM NOT A PERFECT MAN”
“I AM NOT A PERFECT MAN” BISHOP EDDIE LONG PASTOR OF THE NEW BIRTH MEGA-CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA SEPTEMBER 26, 2010 I do not pretend to be a historian of the relationship between the Church and the affairs of man. But in my lifetime there have been three or four occasions when the proclivity…
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MAKING PROGRESS
Let us assume that I am an historian and that the date is in the year of 2510. If my arithmetic is correct, that would be about 500 years from now. I believe it would be fair to say that such an historian might conclude that the times in which we are currently living were…
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LEVI AND K-ROD
The dramatis personae of the following essay will cause historians to rate it as a tour de force or as a complete omnibus essay. The dramatis personae include Levi Johnston, the Wasilla, Alaska stud who impregnated Sarah Palin’s daughter, and Sarah Palin’s husband who claims Eskimo ancestry in his parentage. Moving in a southward direction,…
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JUST LIKE ME
Article VI of the United States Constitution provides that there shall be no religious test required of anyone aspiring to work for the United States government. This applies to any office from local dog catcher to the presidency. For example, in 1942, I sought a position as a private in the United States Army. There…
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LAYAWAY PLANS
One of my faithful readers has been Thelma DuPont. Thelma and I worked in the overseas department of the AT&T Company before both of us retired, which seems like in the last century. Thelma and I grew up nearly 1,000 miles apart yet, judging from her letters to me, we had similar experiences. For example,…