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PATTING ONE’S BACKS
From time to time there comes a moment when we can make someone else’s life a little bit more enjoyable. Two Costa Rican immigrants have made several appearances in these essays. They are Jenny M and Ronald H. They are married, but in conformance with Costa Rican custom, Jenny retains her maiden name.There are three…
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PLAISIR D’AMOUR
Today is a cold winter’s Sunday which happens also to be Valentine’s Day. On occasions such as this, men and women declare their love for each other and, if things work out, the course may be set for their eventual marriage. Of course, this could be men and men or women and women. In my…
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THE ONE-HOLER JUBILEE
In the summer of 1969, I was working as a lobbyist for the AT&T Corporation in Washington. Ordinarily such work is limited to three years and I had been there on the order of three and a half years. So I was not surprised when the instructions from New York were that I should return…
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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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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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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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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,…