Nevada, Missouri · Sunday, November 8, 2009
[SeMissourian.com] Fair ~ 59°F  
High: 77°F ~ Low: 56°F
What is this thing called retirement, huh? (10/03/09)
I retired from teaching English down here at Cottey College on Sunday, May 18, 2003. I started thinking about retirement some time last year. Sometimes I think I'm not yet ready for it. Other times I think I am, plenty. Frankly, I wouldn't even have begun toying with the idea if my health hadn't taken a great big hit (heart attack and its consequences) at the turn of the century, and left me a different person than I was before I lost my right leg below the knee. ...
To: the world's would-be sheriff, pt. 1 (09/26/09)
Dear Mr. Barack Obama, It's been a very long time (1960, to be exact) since I've felt the slightest temptation to write the president at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because, for one thing, I'm sure a burly, heavily armored, personal secretary, probably named Troy, with an advanced academic degree in bomb dismemberment, will now, first thing in the morning, open each envelope addressed to you, to make sure it doesn't contain a little dab of plastic explosive -- you know, just enough to obliterate the West Wing.. ...
What ever happened to common courtesy? (09/19/09)
Every once in a pretty long while, on the TV evening news, say, and simultaneously in "The Kansas City Star" and the current "Time," magazine, I suddenly notice a sizeable gathering (well, two or more) of brief news stories on the always-interesting subject of human boorishness. You know, so-called civilized adults behaving, for a moment or more, as if they'd somehow been exempt from the laws of human evolution?...
Rabble rousers past and present (09/12/09)
Back in the 1930s, when radio was still something of a novelty, an event took place that rocked the American listening public back on its heels as no other before or since has -- quite. Young Orson Welles, whose movie "Citizen Kane" would later cause a ruckus with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hurst because Welles had modeled his protagonist so closely after Hurst, decided to produce H.G. Wells's (no relation) "War of the Worlds" for his "Mercury Theater of the Air."...
Farewell to Ted for Marjorie H. Goss (09/05/09)
Together with the rest of the country, I guess, I switched off my adoration of the Kennedy name the moment I learned that little brother Ted had left his date Mary Jo Kopechne to drown at Chappaquidick, while he, drunk as a skunk, clamored for the shore all by his lonesome, to phone the police -- eight hours later...
John Huston's bathtub (07/25/09)
I always enjoy Carolyn Gray Thornton's articles in the Daily Mail, and especially the little tribute to movie actor/director John Huston, in the recent Friday, July 17, issue. Like many other "legends in their own time," it seems, the story of Huston's life is seasoned with a few questionable, or at least ambiguous, events...
Twentieth Century (07/24/09)
Like most of you, I mourned the death last week of the American journalism legend, Walter Cronkite. Countless shows and articles are paying tribute to this wonderful public figure. His life was a microcosm of what the American Dream was all about. As I mentioned in another article a few weeks back, I was not a regular nightly news viewer of Walter. ...
The farmer's husband in the garden of earthly delights (07/18/09)
Ever notice how our perception of reality changes with time and circumstances? Shoot, no, I don't expect you to jump from your easy chair and cry, to no one in particular, "Yes! I was thinking that very thought this morning at the breakfast table!!" But give it a quick think, and I suspect you'll agree. We're all rational folks who read this rag, no?...
The farmer's husband -- part one (05/30/09)
Catch the title? Yeah, that's me, the farmer's husband. For you see, I've suddenly changed roles. Since my own retirement, a few years ago, I'm no longer the immaculately bathed and nattily dressed professor with a great vat of expertise in writing and understanding of American literature that I'm aching to impart, in amounts ranging from thimblefuls to washtubsful, to my students. ...
My tough old aunt elda (05/09/09)
I started teaching English at Cottey College in 1973, when "tests and studies" began telling all who'd listen that American women had since time immemorial been traveling along life's highway with the extra-heavy burden of low self-esteem. (You know, the old Christian hang-up about Eve's shameful role in the Garden, a myth that, in a pesky, insidious way, is with us still.)...
Inscription (04/25/09)
Every Christmas morning, when I invariably receive a few books, a couple from Ginny, Jessica, my sister Beverly, and maybe a writer-friend from New York, I carefully and decorously unpeel the wrapping, and turn immediately to the title page. Then, because the other members of my small tribe are seated with me around the tree and want to get on with the show, I swallow my mild disappointment and hand the next present to its eager recipient...
" . . . to the shores of Tripoli" (04/18/09)
It's not real Christian, I know, but Wow!, did my heart leap up when I beheld that the small handful of marksmen on board the warship U.S.S. Bainbridge, acting on their own and putting to use all that training they must've received to counteract the fiercely rolling waves and the movement of their human targets, blew away the Kalashnikov-bearing teenage Somali pirates -- they of perfect teeth and rippling arm muscles...
More news of Marryin' Marion (03/28/09)
Shortly after my own article on Nevada-born Metropolitan Opera flash-in-the-pan Marion Talley ("Talley-Ho!") appeared here, Mr. Pat Brophy, my fellow-columnist, was kind enough to send me a copy of his own article, "Marion Talley, Nevada-Born Enigma," of May 11, 2006. Mr. Brophy is a lot more knowledgeable about this woman than I am, and I want to thank him for his kindness. From what little I've dug up, I do believe he's surely correct in calling her an "enigma."...
Nothing lasts forever (03/14/09)
I've got to hand it to my father. He used to tell me that when he was a child growing up in the tiny hamlet of Cherry Grove, just north of Cincinnati, Ohio, his fun-loving Uncle Aden used to warn him that every time he walked to the local grade school, he'd have to pass the little wooden Catholic church, the home of Father O'Brien -- the Devil incarnate! He warned my Dad to run as fast as he could past that church, because if he dawdled, Father O'Brien would surely rush out, catch him by the throat, and he knew what that meant. ...
Talley, Ho! (02/21/09)
Shortly after we moved from Minneapolis to Nevada, I began hearing that a famous opera singer had been born here. Nobody could tell me which one or when, but it intrigued me. In America, a famous person could've been born in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but the nourishing aura of Possibility. ...
Ya gotta be an Optimist at 7 a.m.! (02/14/09)
One evening in late 1973, maybe it was my first day teaching classes at Cottey, while I sat listening to 33-rpm records (remember them?) on our living room floor, utterly thrilled at how well my students had reacted to their new, 33-year-old New York hippie-teacher, Jack Tyler paid me a visit. Ginny, our 1-year-old daughter Jessica, and I had already met Jack and his wife Paula, and their grey cat Barney, just, I think it was, the day before...
A tale of four kitties (02/07/09)
Morning! And thanks for taking a quick gander at my new column -- even though it is printed here under the same old title and writer's name. Chuck Nash has been writing the "At Random" column for about 32 years now. (Whew!) And during that time, he wrote a series of columns about Stumble and Bumble's (his own and wife Ginny's) amateur efforts to spruce up some tumble-down local houses, including their own (although, truth to tell, he never quite decided who was Stumble and who was Bumble)...
"We are, I guess, what we are, y'know?" (01/10/09)
I don't know when the basic personality of the average human-being stops developing from its putty-like infantile malleability to finally become hard as concrete. Whatever the age, I suspect that at 68+, my own is about as set as 3-year-old Jello. The ancient Greek who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living" sure got it right, I think. ...
Charles Nash out of touch with rural Missourians (12/09/08)
Dear Editor: I seek to counter some of the views and remarks by Mr. Charles C. Nash in his "ELECTION DAY 2008" article in the Nov. 15, issue of the Paper. "My eyes filled with tears" is an amazing response by Mr. Nash to the election of one who may be a Bolshevik or leans greatly in that direction. ...
Getting ready for Christmas -- again (12/06/08)
For the last two or three years, Christmas Day has kind of snuck up on me. Ever since retiring early, at age 62, because of severe and abiding health problems, I've avoided all long-range projects and activities that need to get finished by a certain date. ...
Are we lurching backward -- again? (11/29/08)
A serious historian has written that every soul who wants to be head of a government must be literally crazy. George W., Hitler, Mussolini? Maybe. But what about Churchill, Lincoln, Truman? I try to determine, from reading about modern leaders in Time and Newsweek magazines, as well as in full-length biographies, how much lunacy lurks behind the smiling facade I call up from memory or watch on the TV screen...
Most Vernon County voters disagree with Nash column (11/20/08)
Dear Editor: Thanks for the opportunity to share my opinion in response to the "Election Day 2008" opinion authored by Charles C. Nash that appeared in the Herald-Tribune this past Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008. When I read the Nash article I thought for a moment I was reading from the New York Times and not a rural newspaper in Southwest Missouri. ...
Election Day 2008! (11/15/08)
This past Tuesday was a day to remember, wasn't it? Election Day, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008. I could empathize with the black mothers who brought their little kids to Manhattan, or to downtown Chicago, so their offspring could be there when history was made, when the black candidate, Barack Obama, became the first of his race to become president of the United States, our fabled "Land of Opportunity," at last and utterly redeeming herself...
Schmoozing Over Great Depression (Part II) (11/08/08)
Uh-huh, Carolyn Thornton's recent column, "This is the Season for Giving," suddenly reminded me that, more than the season for "getting," as most of us materialistic North American fogies quickly learned to characterize the month of December, for the first 67 years of our lives, December should indeed be the season when we should all at least consider and then re-consider "giving," before the IRS steps in and decides for us...
They Come in Clusters (11/01/08)
There's a minor, incidental character in one of Tennessee Williams's early plays who each day pays particular attention to the obituaries in all the New York City newspapers. By scanning the daily death notices, he hopes he'll someday soon discover the name of a person in his neighborhood who's suddenly conked out, in a "rent-controlled" apartment building. ...
Life in a Small Town (Part LXXIX) (10/04/08)
A few months ago, Mel Glenn, my professional writer friend from Brooklyn, N.Y., the "best man," some 47 years ago, at Ginny's and my wedding, had just determined to write his next novel -- an addition to the "adolescent literature" category he's been specializing in -- on the topic of "life in a small town." Many years ago, he'd come out to visit us for a week, as part of a longer trip he was making to take part in an "adolescent literature festival" at a branch of the University of Kansas. ...
"HEY, SLOW DOWN, WILL YA?" (09/20/08)
Ordinarily, I get my daily world news, my sense of living in a "real world" (those two words my Cottey students used to denote that fabled place to which they were headed from this monastery, after graduation), by skimming through this almost-daily newspaper, reading selected articles in Time and Newsweek, and watching the "NBC Nightly News, with Brian Williams."...
Now You See It ???????? (09/12/08)
Most of you can finish the line from the title of this story. "Now you see it, now you don't." It is an old magician's statement as he completes a "slight of hand" magic trick. One moment you see the object, the next moment it is gone. Somebody out there has been doing some "slight of hand" with our 401K's lately!...
"Way to go, Gramps!" (09/06/08)
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, teetering around age 72, is a tough cookie. We all know he survived his long and torture-laden captivity by the North Vietnamese enemy with true grace and courage and unflinching dignity. Besides, I simply like the guy's calming, authoritative, can't-free voice; it's such a soothing salve for anyone suffering from prolonged exposure to George W's irksome aural bull. ...
What's it like . . . ? (08/23/08)
My good friend Mel Glenn (best man at my wedding) is a retired high school English teacher in Brooklyn who has also been a published writer of "adolescent literature" for many, many years. In a fairly recent letter, he asked me what it's like to live in a small town, because he was about to start writing a novel set in a midwestern burg, and it suddenly dawned on him that, aside from visiting us in Nevada, Mo., for a week one summer, and a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, he'd lived his whole life in Brooklyn. ...
Out of Fashion, or Just Plain Goofy (08/16/08)
When the library of the late Ken Postlethwaite, former columnist for this newspaper, came up for sale a few years ago, I bought, among several other of his books, a volume entitled "The World of George Jean Nathan." When I was a teenager (back in the 1950s), I fell under the sway of H.L. ...
'Aw, c'mon, have a heart!' (08/02/08)
Like a lot of other folks, when I don't have anything immediately pressing that calls for my attention (like an Irish setter whimpering to go out and relieve himself), I sometimes sit down at our computer, in my study, and fool around with the Internet. ...
Stepping in with both feet (07/19/08)
Early afternoon a few days ago, as I was slogging past the half-way mark in the 500-page 1939 novel, "Verdun, " by the French writer Jules Romains, I stopped and asked myself, "Why am I reading this book?" Well, for one thing, I thought, I remembered seeing it in my parents' living room bookcases, so they must've thought it worth keeping. ...
Through whose eyes? (07/12/08)
A story can be told from any of a number of different points of view. The omniscient author/narrator, for example, can choose to divulge to his readers any portion of what goes on inside his characters' minds and hearts. Or he can, like Hemingway, who thought such authorial all -- knowingness untrue to nature, tell his story much as a mechanical recording device would do it, without any emotional or mental interpretation...
Notes on a Novel (07/05/08)
Last week, the big circular wood table on Charlie Rose's PBS late-night talk show was occupied, as it often is, by writers: Vanity Fair's chief editor Graydon Carter, the two head honchos of the once hip Rolling Stone, and a handful of other popular wordsmiths...
Member of the Family (06/06/08)
I wonder if you saw the small story of 5-year-old Molly, the chocolate Lab retriever whose serious need for medical attention recently brought a Missouri community together in a common cause. Molly is carefully and expensively trained in "cadaver retrieval," and if that doesn't sound like the kind of pup you'd like to get down on your knees and throw your arms around, her owners Allen and Alicia Brown and their little daughter Allison would disagree, vociferously...
Lawyers Seldom Unemployed; or, Sweet Sue (05/24/08)
Ever wondered where the cryptically insulting word "trollop" (meaning prostitute,slovenly woman, slattern, wanton) comes from? Well, I'd say probably Cincinnati. Because Cincinnatians were the folks whom Frances Trollope, mother of prolific English novelist Anthony Trollope, visited in the mid-19th century, for what reason I can't remember. ...
Where are we going, America? (04/26/08)
One of the topics of national interest that I miss hearing from the various current candidates for President, both Republican and Democratic, is the matter of national purpose and direction. Call it "mission statement," if you will. For the last decade or so, no United States institution worth its salt fails to have its carefully thought-out and articulated statement of purpose on the tip of its tongue...
The Demon in my computer (04/05/08)
I don't know about you folks, but sometimes I suspect I've got a devious and slightly malevolent critter inside my computer. Oh, nothing terribly life-threatening. I'm not talking about a hellish creature, as in "The Exorcist," which makes your eyeballs spin like a top, and tries to separate you from your soul. No, indeed, nothing half that serious...
Where is our outrage? (03/22/08)
When I was young enough to be taking courses in American history, from high school to graduate school, one of the unquestioned truths I absorbed about our governance system was that "no matter how brainless or dishonest the man we elect President, it doesn't really matter, because the American political system is strong enough to keep on ticking regardless, on automatic pilot, as it were, until a competent fellow comes along." The cases in point were usually Presidents Ulysses S. ...
No Pooch for Old Men (03/15/08)
In truth, these days, nothing makes me feel less like a man than feeding, playing with, or cleaning up after, one of our three stray cats. Because no cat ever treats you like a buddy or playmate, only as a source of food and shelter from the elements. I never met a cat who would condescend to treat me as an equal...
The New England frame of mind, God love it (03/08/08)
I heard it on the NBC Evening News late last week: Warren Buffett, one of the top three richest Americans, claimed we are now, unofficially, in a Recession. And I must say I'd rather trust a self-made billionaire like Buffett, than a careless spender of our money like George W., whose sole achievements as our two-term President have been largely negative. ...
There are no tomorrows (03/01/08)
Everybody reacts to retirement differently, I believe, some with great joy, immensely happy to at last be able to throw off the harness and indulge in the activities--whether it be spelunking or reading War and Peace a second time--that make them really happy. ...
'Hey, No Problem' and other bad habits (02/23/08)
Hearing a clerk the other day respond to a customer's thanks for carrying a heavy box from the store to her car with the simple phrase, "Hey, no problem," I couldn't help reacting with the same mixed feelings I've been reacting to it since they first started polluting the air around the time Bush and Cheney began inhabiting the White House...
Books on the floor, books on the stove, books . . . (02/17/08)
Since roughly age 11, I've had an incorrigible attraction to books. My father's Heritage Club selections; my mother's hardback Harper mysteries. In my teenage years, the first thing I bought with my first paycheck, for running various errands around New York City on my first big-time summer job, for American Oil Company, in 1957, was, of course, a book: The Wapshot Chronicle, the recently-published, award-winning novel by The New Yorker magazine's John Cheever. ...
Bush still at bat--but barely (01/27/08)
On the NBC Evening News of Jan. 24, there was a short film clip of our President slightly slumped against his fancy chair, visibly snoozing while a high-up dignitary was delivering a sermon last Sunday. NBC wasn't the only venue where this notable gaff could be seen; all you had to do was consult any newspaper in the U.S. ...
Growing into your falls (01/19/08)
Funny! Some short time before I opened our front door to pick up Wednesday's "Nevada Daily Mail" off the porch, I slipped on one of our cats' fiendishly clever little Christmas gifts -- a cigarette butt-sized fabric mouse which, when you budge it, sets up a tiger-size yowling -- and barely missed falling on the hardwood floor of our living room. ...
Persons of Interest (01/12/08)
The above term, I gather from soaking up the last 16 years worth of TV's "Law and Order," is now used, instead of "suspect," to identify those poor souls whom the police suspect of having committed some crime or other, but about whom, I guess, the law doesn't yet have enough hard evidence to yank them off the street and toss them in the slammer...
Tricky Intergenerational moments (01/05/08)
Daughter Jessica came home a couple of weeks ago, just in time to help us set up the live, or, rather, freshly cut Christmas tree she'd demanded as one of the conditions she'd imposed (jokingly, we hoped) for spending the holidays with her parents, instead of some Washington, D.C., ecologically careless soul who sported a live, or, rather, recently live tree...
Looking for Capt. Super-Pooch, Part II (11/17/07)
Our daughter Jessica sent me word of an article on CCN.com. "Ten dogs that changed the world," which at first glance I mistook for the title of John Reed's famous 1920's reporting classic, "Ten Days that Shook the World," and thus interesting to me, turned out to be, instead, a listing of famous dogs in world history, by Canadian professor of Psychology Dr. Stanley Coren. Part 1, or those who ranked 10-6, in reverse order appeared last week. Here's the rest of the list:...
Looking for Capt. Super-Pooch (11/10/07)
Our daughter Jessica sent me word of an article on CCN.com a few days ago that she thought I'd enjoy. She was correct: "Ten dogs that changed the world," which at first glance I mistook for the title of John Reed's famous 1920's reporting classic, "Ten Days that Shook the World," and thus interesting to me, turned out to be, instead, a listing of famous dogs in world history, by Canadian professor of Psychology Dr. ...
War on Film (10/20/07)
“The war,” wrote Walt Whitman in 1867, referring to the recent American blood bath, “will never get in the books.” Whatever else he may have had in mind, the writer of “Drum Taps,” who also served as a male nurse baptized in the bloody Washington, D.C. ...
A Stumble and Bumble update (07/21/07)
Let me bring my first-time "At Random" readers, if any, up to date on the category "Stumble and Bumble," which I haven't written about recently. When Ginny and I (and let's not forget 6-year-old Jessica Cathrine [Yes, I know her middle name is sort of unusually spelled, but that's the way she liked it. ...
Treasures of the Bottom Drawer (07/07/07)
You know how some people use the expression "top drawer" to denote quality or real distinction? Examples: "His new Brooks Brothers jacket is sure top drawer," or "Check out that tall blond crossing the street. Is she top drawer or what?" No, you probably wouldn't hear either one near Cottey, but where I grew up, pre-feminist era, you heard the expression all the time. And I plan to challenge its legitimacy. There's nothing special about "top drawer."...
A Gathering of the Clan (05/20/07)
Note: As some of you older readers might remember, my wife Ginny and I used to own a highly literate Irish setter named Molly Bloom. Molly did all the things normal Irish setters do -- break through the bathroom window to chase a squirrel on the lawn outside; chew up a leather wallet the writer's Mom had given him for his birthday; ate five chocolate eclairs Ginny had baked for a Saturday night party and the pet cat Bojangles had swept from the kitchen counter onto the kitchen floor. ...
Dangerously dim (04/22/07)
When last I took a course in American History, in the late 1960s at the University of Minnesota, one of the timeless truths that had been passed unrevised from generation to generation of students was this: thanks to the genius of the American system of government, it can survive even the most dangerously dim and corrupt fool or demon elected to the White House...
Vernon County Sheriff's Office (04/01/07)
The bright white, two-story building at 230 West Cherry, in Nevada, is still pretty impressive -- on the outside. It was built, in the early 20th century, when Nevada's old U.S. Post Office found itself swamped by the suddenly overwhelming correspondence between the newly-world-famous Weltmer Clinic, a couple of blocks away, and the physically afflicted but hopeful souls suffering all over the country...
Lessons in Growing Up (03/25/07)
This past week, I received from Daedalus, my favorite discount book dealer, a volume entitled "Growing Up: A Classic American Childhood" and subtitled "What Kids should Know Before they Leave Home." Neither of my New York parents drew up lists of what my little sister Beverly and I ought to know before leaving the confines of "The Empire State." In retrospect, I think it would've been a very good idea, not only drawing up such a list but actually showing six-year-younger sister Bev and me such intricate techniques as balancing my new check book; taking my dirty clothes into town and stuffing them all into the nearest washing machine; (this was long before each and every home had its own washing machine plugged into a wall in the basement); elementary manners when escorting a young woman to a restaurant and a movie, then back to her dorm. ...
Minnesota Soul-Mate (02/11/07)
It's been so long since I've read any lively social and political commentary by an intelligent and unapologetic American "liberal" (besides Twain, that is) that I found myself silently weeping, last week, most of the way through Garrison Keillor's 2004 collection of essays on the state of the nation, called "Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America." Indeed, I felt as if Keillor had suddenly unlocked the cage in which, several years ago, the country's "conservatives" had locked me, with a gag in my mouth.. ...
Broadway Joe and Beechmont Chuck (02/04/07)
As a 12-year-old kid, I thought I'd turned out to be a pretty good softball/baseball player. True, I'd recently had my two front teeth snapped off while wrestling with Jimmy Egan, the older son of one of my father's lawyer-friends (and, incidentally, a Yankee fan), and the dentist who'd fitted me with porcelain caps had warned me seriously against playing any sport that would jeopardize them...
A middle-age Christmas, at last (12/24/06)
Some Christmases stand out above the rest, don't you think? When I was two years old, for instance, and my recently transplanted southern Ohio parents and I lived in Pelham Manor, a pleasant wartime New York suburb, I got on Christmas morning a black cocker spaniel puppy named Tony...
Super-liberal reaches the end of the road . . . or does he? (10/29/06)
Back in the 1970s, a pair of polar opposites hit the American scene. One, the super-conservative, was William F. Buckley, the owner and publisher of the National Review, the country's first conservative magazine, who had written a book, "God and Man at Yale," shortly after he'd graduated from that college. ...
Could it Happen Here in Nevada? (10/15/06)
I remember hearing about Columbine when I'd just been sprung from a Kansas City hospital for getting over one of the number of countless physical miseries that were driving me to early retirement. Late that week, I read the TIME article about the debacle and about the two high school kids who had perpetrated it. ...
September With dem Bums (Part Two) (10/01/06)
One of the main reasons my father, a naturally bookish man who hated the prospect of a TV wrecking conversation in our house, allowed his family to buy a TV set in the early1950s was so my mother and I, in the baseball season, could watch Uncle Branch Rickey's Dodgers play in Ebbets Field...
September with dem Bums (09/24/06)
"Could I please have your autograph, Mr. Impellitteri?" "Sure, kid!" the swarthy and impeccably dressed man in the seat in front of mine, turned around and croaked pleasantly, as he smilingly accepted my new, blank red-and -black autograph book and dark green Waterman fountain pen. "What's your name, kid?"...
My Annual Optimistic, Republican-Leaning Column (08/20/06)
Shortly after my nearly fatal heart attack of 1992, from which I was saved by quintuple by-pass surgery, I experienced, as part of the one-two punch, a devastating depression that nearly sank me. Oh, I had no inclination to rise up from my bed and slit my own throat, but life looked bleaker than it had any right to look, given all the blessings that had been showered on my head from birth. ...
At Random (10/03/04)
Whatever happened to air-pockets? A few days ago, coming out of the local Burger King, I noticed a twenty-something young man wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. "How long you been a Yankee fan?" I asked. "Oh, my dad was a Yankee fan before me. I go back to Ricky Henderson."...
At Random (09/26/04)
Back in 1950 More than half a century ago? Wow! I was 10 years old back then, and living with my parents and new baby sister Beverly in the outskirts of New York City. The Second World War was over, and I think I can still remember neighbors honking their auto horns to celebrate VJ Day. For the next five years, a practically palpable feeling of self-congratulation and contentment (neither of which I could then put into words) settled over the land like a warm bath,...
At Random (09/20/04)
George W. Bush: a Brag Sheet About a month ago, I received the following resume of George W. Bush; yes, the other son of the former U.S. President George Bush, over the Internet from a friend. After reading the following document, I would say this: If a baboon were the only alternative to George W. Bush, come November, I would cast my vote for the baboon...
At Random (09/08/04)
Diabetes: It won't go away (part two) Reading Leonard Ernsbarger's very fine article, in this past Wednesday's Daily Mail, on the scourge of diabetes, I wondered if any readers might profit from my 35-year tussle with it. (diabetes, not Leonard's article)...

At Random
Charles C. Nash