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Birthday Post!
July 24, 2003 My dear Spockling Churchwallop: As you can see, I began to prepare for your birthday back on February 15, 2003. Since that time, you have changed your name and it seems that an English accent has come over you. You are going to be referred to in newspapers as Churchwallop – nee…
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LETTER TO HUTCHINSON NEWS
Mr. Greg Halling, Editor Hutchinson News 300 West 2nd Avenue Hutchinson, KS 67501 Mr. Greg Halling: This letter has been delayed for more than 56 years. It could have been written in September of 1942. And it could also have been written in late January of 1943. It has troubled me for all these years…
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HOWELL RAINES LOWERS THE BOOM
Start with a reading – not from Scripture, but from the next thing to it. “One reason for more meticulous recording of full names is that many of the figures in the current news will pass from the pages of newspapers in a few years, but The New York Times remains as a permanent record…
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SING NO SAD SONGS FOR THIS OLD GEEZER
When it became obvious that my sight would be permanently impaired, Judy and I faced a small concern about how to announce it to our friends and people whom we deal with in various functions in a business sense. We had no intention of sending out cards announcing my blindness, but on the other hand,…
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ARMY SERIAL NUMBER (ASN) 17077613
If one were inclined to study a map of the United States, he would discover that in the middle Western part, there is a river that flows from the north and winds up in New Orleans. That of course is the mighty Mississippi, which was celebrated in 1927 by Jerome Kern’s production of Showboat. In…
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Re: ODE TO COMMODE
Editor’s note: This is a response (written 12/17) to my commentary on this essay. This was the commentary — A moving piece, to be sure. I wonder though — the toilet might have been the last thing Pop saw, but I wonder about some of the other absolutes. What’s the prettiest thing that he remembers…
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SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT AGAIN
Over the years, the telephone service provided by the Verizon Corporation was interrupted frequently. In one case, over the Memorial Day holiday of this year, service went out on a Sunday and we were told, according to the recorded announcement, that it would not be restored until Wednesday. I found this, as an old telephone…
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ASPECTS OF MORALITY
Earlier today I was stunned to learn that March 4th is the 83rd birthday of Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve Board. You may recall Mr. Greenspan, who often testified to Congress using sentences that could not be untangled. Andrea Mitchell, the television reporter, says that when he proposed marriage to her, she…
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SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
In a recent essay, I deplored the fact that the tags were missing from the backs of my recently purchased tee shirts. This resulted in my putting the shirts on backwards about 35 to 40% of the time. So I wrote to the president of the Nordstrom company and told him that whoever made the…
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INCIVILITY AND A FEW CASES OF CIVILITY
As a general principle, when someone greets me, I not only return their greeting but may ask about how they are feeling as well. When someone writes me a letter, I feel commanded to write a letter in return if that is what is required. But as you can see from the title about incivility,…