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GLAUCOMA, CATARACTS AND FONDLING
My father, the original Ezra, developed a medical condition in his eyes called glaucoma during the early 1930’s when he was about 50 years of age. From everything that can be read and from advice from ophthalmologists, glaucoma typically makes its appearance around the age of 50 years. Five children of my father survived to…
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THE PARADISE OF LARRY CRAIG
The morning newspaper in what I generally refer to as my home town was called The St. Louis Globe Democrat. The name of the paper is misleading in every respect. The Globe covered local affairs and rarely ventured into global concerns or even national concerns. Secondly, the Globe Democrat was the voice of the Bob…
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A LITTLE MORE FROM THE GRANDPA IN AMERICA
Those of you who read these essays may recall one called “Thanksgiving 2006.” That essay recorded our joy at our ability to help two hardworking immigrants from Costa Rica. The cast of characters on the Costa Rican side included the parents, an eight-year-old boy named Esteban, a six-year-old boy named Fabian, and a five-month-old daughter…
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COUNTRY SPEAK | MISSING WORDS
In a previous essay, I commented on missing people. In this case, I will try to comment on a very few missing words from our vocabularies these days. This exercise is called “Country Speak.” I call this essay “Country Speak” because the words that are missing from urban areas are found most often in the…
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RITA, MAY I INTRODUCE YOU TO ROLLAND?
…And Both of You Ought to Get to Know Frances Day A few essays back, I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes and dictated an essay about the most bitter woman I ever knew in my life. That woman was my boss’s secretary. You may recall that she is the one who told me,…
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REFLECTIONS ON A LONG WORKING CAREER
One Sunday morning recently, there was a series of reports about mosque bombings in Iraq. One sect would try to bomb out the other sect. John Warner, the senior senator from Virginia and the head of the Armed Forces Committee in the Senate, got things terribly confused. Warner, who is a mature man, confused sectarian…
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THE PES-TI-MIST
It is a matter of great regret that none of you knew George Knickerbocker, my pre-World War II St. Louis colleague at AT&T. George insisted in pronouncing every letter of every word in spoken English. For example, miscellaneous on George’s tongue came out as MIS-KEL-AN-EOUS. Old George did not stop there at all. As in…
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A BUCKET OF WARM SPIT
It is widely believed by high school English teachers and prissy editors that spit is a horrid word. Before you consider joining the cabal condemning that descriptive word, it might be well to recall that it was used most effectively by a Vice President of these United States. When he used spit in a ringing…
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THAT IS REALLY WHAT THEY SAID
There is general agreement that Floyd Abrams is the foremost lawyer in this country on the issue of free speech. Earlier this summer, the New York Times hired him to represent Judith Miller, one of its reporters who had become ensnared in the outing of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA agent. Abrams lost the Miller…
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FROM VAUDEVILLE TO MLK, JR. | Meditations 16, Anonymous Verses
Vaudeville is now largely dead having been a victim of first radio comedians and later, the comedies appearing on television. In the Catskill Mountain of New York, where many of its patrons are Jewish, there still are “tummlers” who tell Yiddish jokes and who good naturedly insult guests. My recollection of vaudeville goes back to…