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RITA, ARE YOU STILL WAITING?
The Rita referred to in the title is merely an offspeed pitch intended to set you up for an essay about the perception of smoking that has emerged in the last fifty years or so. This story starts in lower Manhattan on a cold blustery day in early March of 1956. I had just returned…
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CRI DE COEUR
The title of this piece is French, of course. It means “cry of the heart” in English. It must be assumed that the cry of the heart arises from anguish and distress which causes one to cry out. In this essay, I am going to attempt the impossible. It is to place this French thought…
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EUPHEMISMS
In the last four years of my career with AT&T, I was a Director of Correspondent Relations. The word “correspondent” is an anachronism. It goes back to the days when people wrote to each other and before the use of the telephone. Nonetheless this job required that I should visit other telephone companies around the…
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ONAN AND THE GENTLEMAN FROM CHRISTOPHER STREET, NYC
Larry Craig, the simply superb and sweet-smelling Senior Senator from the great state of Idaho, has been in the news recently and has caused me to rethink my thoughts about homosexuals. As many of you know, I did not attend an Ivy League college. In point of fact, I didn’t attend any college. I spent…
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SCORN NOT THEIR GAYNESS
Readers of the Carr essays know that the author maintains no religious affiliation. He is not a Catholic, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Hindu. And certainly he is not the Protestant that his World War II dog tags proclaim him to be. And finally, his Irish ancestry bars him from membership in…
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DEBORAH JEAN’S ACE IN THE HOLE
The United States government has its hands full in dealing with the war in Iraq. There is also the problem of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gasoline prices going through the ceiling, the bust in real estate prices, and the failure of the Attorney General and his chief assistant to answer questions put to…
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ON LONESOMENESS
Some years ago, Frank Mullin and Pat Downey found themselves in the lobby of a plush hotel in Kuwait City on a Thursday evening. Frank Mullin was an old hand in dealing with Arab nations. This was Pat Downey’s first trip with Frank as his assistant. Those who travel in the Middle East know that…
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EATING OUR OWN SEED CORN
Informed citizens such as myself believe that the earth is completely flat. We also have an unshakeable belief that Joshua did in fact stop the sun. If that were untrue, why did he write about it in the Bible? Please see Joshua, Chapter 10, Verses 12 and 13. The flat earth doctrine and Joshua stopping…
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A TRIPARTITE PRESIDENCY
To the readers of the Carr essays, I am pleased to announce that Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank, and your old essayist have declared their intention to run for the first Tripartite Presidency in American history. A tripartite presidency would work like this. Let us say that Barney Frank starts off as President with Charlie Rangel…
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PROSE AND POETRY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
During all the years of my long life, the English language has informed and entertained me endlessly. It must be a good language in that it has now become the lingua franca of the world. Perhaps one of the reasons for it becoming spoken so widely is that it is a living language. In this…