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CUT OUR LOSSES NOW
One of the many delights about working in the Federal City, Washington, D.C., was to read William Raspberry in the Washington Post in the morning and then to read a column by Mary McGrory in the afternoon Washington Star. Mary died last year and we miss her. But Brother Raspberry is still at it. On…
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SO FAR, 801 AMERICAN DEAD IN WAR IN IRAQ
In this short statement or essay, it is proposed to tell the reader what the effect of death in war has on surviving soldiers now and in the years to come. The casualty lists are a poignant reminder that death most often comes to young men who have reached their 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and…
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WHAT WILL THE CHILDREN SAY?
Wars have an interesting way of stirring cynicism as time passes. The entry of the United States in the First World War was described by Woodrow Wilson, the president at the time, as the war to end wars. In other quotes, the war was termed an effort to make the world safe for democracy. It…
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TONY NAVE’S FATHER
This essay about the death of Tony Nave’s father is dedicated to George Bush and to George Nethercutt, a Representative from Washington State who made it all possible. Nearly eight months ago, there was printed in several newspapers and on the Internet, a photograph taken by Steve Perez of the Detroit News Photo Department. It…
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HALLEY’S COMET
It seems to this ancient essayist that it is his duty occasionally to present his readers with a new word – a neologism, if you will. There are politicians and preachers and television commentators who use the term “revert back” to refer to some event or condition that has happened before and is happening again.…
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A CZECH FAIRY STORY
In Prague, there lived a wicked Queen named From No To. Her lovely daughter Princess To Yes From lived in a forest outside Olomouc. In a cave in downtown Brno lived another princess, Princess Two One Third. The wicked queen sold contraceptives and 10,000 old condoms. Princess To Yes From had warm feelings toward Princess…
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IS BUSH WIRED?
Before we consider whether Bush is radioactive, there is a matter of a misspelling of a Hebrew name in a previous essay about “piling on.” And so we start this essay with an apology called: Correctimus Errata Mistakenismus The title of this apology is in Latin, of course. An apology like this has a two-fold…
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ELEPHANTS AND MORE CONUNDRUMS
Today is my birthday. Ordinarily, my birthday happens only once a year, so it has always been my intention to be as charitable as possible on this sanctified occasion. It is very difficult to be charitable this year as we were told last Sunday, August 1st, that the terrorists planned to annihilate those of us…
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ENDORSEMENT THOUGHTS
There was a time when your well worn essayist lived in Chicago. In former days when employment was accepted from AT&T, that company reserved the right to send its employees where it thought they could best serve the company. And so in the early 1950’s, this former AT&T employee was sent from St. Louis to…