Ezra's Essays

Category: Uncategorized

  • NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 9 – NEW YORK AIN’T MISSISSIPPI OR ALABAMA

    For readers who have stayed with me through the first eight parts of the New York series, I hope I haven’t worn you out. New York is a very big town and most observers would say that I am very fond of it. I know when a snowstorm hits the city or when a train…

  • BITS AND PIECES // WOMEN’S CLOTHING AND DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

    If my memory serves me correctly, the churches that my parents forced me to attend before my 14th birthday, were all pretty much united on the subject of women’s clothing. These were fundamentalist churches who had no concept of modern living or fashions. All such churches said that their preaching was Bible based without the…

  • YASSER’S LOVE LIFE

    Preamble I offer you this three part preamble to set the record straight and to prepare you for my thoughts on Yasser Arafat’s love life. Writing about this subject comes naturally. My first name is Ezra who is generally described as the scribe of Jerusalem in what the Christians call the Old Testament. (See the…

  • NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 11 – MOSCOW, MANHATTAN AND THE FBI

    Readers of these essays may recall a story I wrote about Howard Pappert, Dave Dietz and myself setting out to visit some countries behind what Winston Churchill called “The Iron Curtain.” Visiting communist countries in the 1970’s and 1980’s was not a pleasant task for those of us at AT&T who had the responsibility for…

  • “…AND THEY DID NOT BURY THE DEAD”

    If you will lend me your eyes for a few moments, I will try to give you a nickel’s worth about aphasia and several dollars’ worth about the realities of being a soldier. My thoughts about the realities of being a soldier have been rolling around in my mind and have been keeping me awake…

  • Obituary: Ezra Edgar Carr passed away on June 11, 2014

    Ezra Edgar Carr passed away at his home on Wednesday, June 11, 2014. Ed was born in Clayton, Mo., in 1922; he was the youngest of eight children, five of whom survived childhood. As a child, he was so shy he was once sent to the Missouri School for the Deaf under the mistaken impression…

  • THE HOT STOVE LEAGUE BLUES

    Hundreds of years before I became an essayist, there was a grand summit meeting held on the grounds of what would eventually become the Buckingham Palace in London. It was attended by all of the reigning gods, kings, archangels, head rabbis and prophets, as well as by the leading preachers and politicians of the day.…

  • “WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO CLASS?”

    The title of this essay is lifted from the lyrics of a duet sung by Chita Rivera (Thelma) and Mary McCarty (Matron Mamma) in the original 1975 Broadway production of Kandor and Ebb’s musical, “Chicago.” (See attached lyrics.) It ran on Broadway for 936 performances. After an absence of perhaps twenty years, it was revived…

  • WHY DO WOMEN DO IT?

    Simply put, I expect to be denounced and excoriated for the essay that is to follow.  I am at a loss to tell you if being denounced is a greater penalty than being excoriated.  But I can guarantee you that neither one is pleasant.  As long as I am not castigated, I believe I can…

  • RIGHT AWAY – LOOKING FORWARD

    Like most Americans, I have followed events in Washington, which are a form of theater.  Granted that it is a deadly theater, it is theater nonetheless.  When members of this Democratic administration try to explain what is being done, they overwork the words “looking forward.”  A few weeks earlier, they overworked the word “transparency.”  Robert…