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WE’LL KEEP A WELCOME
A TRIBUTE TO THE LIFE OF JEAN MC FARLAND LIVERMORE AND A COMMEMORATION OF MORE THAN 50 YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP WITH HARRY A. LIVERMORE “We’ll Keep a Welcome” is a Welsh song that personifies Jean McFarland Livermore’s life and to some extent, Grinnell College in Iowa which she attended. “We’ll Keep a Welcome” goes back…
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STUD DUCKERY
This little story has to do with Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and other world figures and a small, young orange and white tabby cat who is now walking on my writing paper and is trying to catch my pen. It also has much to do with one of my soldier friends from Indiana.…
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BITS AND PIECES – PART 3: TONY BLAH – ED CAH – AND WAH: AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE REDUX
Being born in the American Mid-west, my native tongue is English spoken in broad, flat tones without regional accents. My English is not of the hard Boston variety, nor does it reflect the softer tones of Southern speech. Thus, the title of this essay in Mid-western speech would read, Tony Blair, Ed Carr and War,…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 8 – GEORGE FEYER – ONE OF THE GREAT ONES
In the international telephone business in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it was a delight to visit correspondents in Montreal, London, Paris, Rome and even Johannesburg. Those were the easy ones with good airline connections, good hotels and food to please any palate. Among the tough ones were countries in Africa and the eastern European states…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 7 – “A PICTURE ON THE WALL AND MUSIC IN THE HOUSE”
When I was in New York City for union bargaining in 1949, 1950, and 1951, I found myself being drawn to Greenwich Village. In many cases, food and drinks were cheaper there than in midtown. The place had a small town feel to it. If you ate at a restaurant two of three times, chances…
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BITS AND PIECES – PART I
If a writer is going to write essays, which I try to do sometimes, ideas are needed. In the beginning, these ideas usually take the form of short notes for my files. Later I may turn some of these short notes into essays. On the other hand, many of these notes will not ever become…
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BITS AND PIECES — I’M EVERYBODY, AND MUSIC – AS BAD AS…
Perhaps it is fair to say that every essay writer – or the writer of any commentary – will encounter items not long enough for an essay, but which are still appropriate for some recognition and some observations. Some of these left over thoughts may be a remark or it may be a slightly longer…
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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…
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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…