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Religion and greed – Alaska’s new motto
In 1987, the movie Wall Street introduced us to the phrase, so memorably uttered by Michael Douglas, “Greed is good”. I find myself wondering if that phrase was first heard by the screenwriter in Alaska because Alaska sure seems to have greed down pat.
We currently have a university that is barely hanging on, a school system that struggles to stay open every day, an economy so old and stagnant that young people can think of nothing they want more than to leave, and a bunch of old timers wondering what happened to the Alaska they first found when they Continue reading →
City Hall corruption
I grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Just about every mayor of that city went directly from City Hall to jail, do not pass Go and do not collect $200. The current crop of mayors seems to be following in those footsteps. Google Atlantic City mayors who went to jail. It’s eye opening.
The mayor’s office in that city was like a feeder line to prison. Most didn’t have time to even grab a change of clothes.
Atlantic City had a lot graft and corruption based on simple greed. No one denied it. And Continue reading →
Old and Bored
OK, I now have a podcast called Old and Bored. It should be available by tomorrow – or next year. I’m not really good yet at how it all works. But I’m old and I’m going to use that as my excuse for the stumbles you will see until I figure this all out.
So check out my podcast. Whether anyone listens or not, I’m going to keep doing it because – let’s face it – I spend a lot of time alone and talking to myself anyway. I might as well do it into a microphone Continue reading →
Obesity and me
I spent a good deal of my life overweight. It started in childhood and didn’t really end until I had bariatric surgery. Reading the recent article in the paper about childhood and teenage obesity brought tears to my eyes. I had spent those years feeling as though I was a failure – a fat failure. Everyone and everything around me made it clear I simply had no self-control, I overate, I didn’t get enough exercise and I wasn’t really trying. By the time I got to college, I wouldn’t go to dances because I was so sure that the minute Continue reading →
Bacala and pretty clothes
I was raised Italian Catholic. If you are Italian Catholic, there are very specific foods to be cooked for very specific occasions depending on where in Italy you are from. You may serve a five, seven or twelve fish dinner on Christmas Eve depending on your tradition but it is always a seafood only night.
My nona continued the tradition of soaking bacala for days on end until all the salt was gone and then she made bacalao salad. My mother wouldn’t eat it. Neither would us kids. In fact, my mother barely wanted it on her holiday table. But Continue reading →
Fear
I went to the same school from pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. I spent more time than I can calculate hiding under my desk from a nuclear attack. Of course, if that didn’t work for nuclear war protection, there was also going out to the hallway and facing the wall while holding our hands over our heads. Either way, according to Sisters Angelina, Beatrice, Gaetano and all the rest of the Salesian nuns that taught me, we were safe. And if they said we were safe, we were.
I think if I were a child today, there would not be Continue reading →