Thanksgiving flight

This evening I’m flying to Atlanta to celebrate Thanksgiving with my daughter and her husband, and my son and his girlfriend.
I enjoy flying; I see it as an integral part of the trip. Whenever I fly I try to get a window seat. Then I watch the earth pass below like a cinema buff watching movie trailers. I’m infatuated with tiny [...]

Frozen turkey bowling

Overweight Americans, in a parking lot filled with SUVs, bowling with frozen turkeys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kCrizHz4c4
Wal-Mart employees, in a warehouse filled with mountains of merchandise, bowling with frozen turkeys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m0JemnTE0A&feature=related
It’s a good thing there’s no one starving in Africa, or simply short on cash for the Thanksgiving holiday in Detroit. Otherwise these actions might be viewed as wasteful or out [...]

President Obama

Notice I didn’t say “President-elect” Obama. This man won the election by such a literal and psychological margin that he has created a vacuum in Washington, and a virtual pandemic of hope, which the media has picked up on.
Two months still before his innauguration, there is more in the news about Obama – what he is doing [...]

Returning soldiers

I went to the airport to pick up my daugher, flying in from Atlanta for a visit here in Rochester. She text-messaged me that her flight was delayed so I parked and went inside to wait for her. I stood in a glass-walled waiting room, from which I could see people coming off the planes. There were about twenty of us [...]

Nothing happened; no one did anything

Recently, here in Rochester, two men got in an argument over a woman. One guy shot and killed the other. The media reported it thusly:
“Police report a man was found lying on a sidewalk just after 9 o’clock with multiple gunshot wounds. The man was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. According to neighbors, shots were [...]

Women and stores

“This came from Ann Taylor,” the waitress says, removing a pair of jeans from a bag behind the counter and holding them up for the other waitress to see. I gleen from more bits of conversation that this Ann Taylor is not running around without her jeans. Ann Taylor is apparently not an actual person, but a [...]

Arthur Shawcross sat here

Monday, November 10, 2008, Arthur Shawcross’ 250-year prison term came to a halt when he died of heart failure. He’d been serving time since 1990 for brutally murdering eleven women here in Rochester, NY. This week some local people who had been involved in the investigation – reporters and cops - recalled publicly his brutality and lack of remorse. One radio [...]

Automakers want their mommy!

Chrysler, Ford and GM are all crying “Mommy!” The executives want a bailout and the union employees want their jobs with full pay and benefits. After generations of winning, that is, reaping huge profits producing gas guzzlers, The Big Three now want their Mommy - the government, to let them win even when there is no profit to be made.
This [...]

Obama’s victory; Obama’s challenge

Political analysts have been talking about Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election. They’ve talked about such things as the role of the Religious Right, and the shift of the Black and Hispanic votes from the 2000 and 2004 elections. But I think the analysts may be missing a key point. The voting behavior and the outcome of this election seem different [...]

Local media kow-tows to wrong people

Imagine you are in the business of producing news stories. You package and present this news to readers, listeners or viewers. Because your news stories attract readers and listeners, you can sell advertising and your paper/station makes money.
You have sources from which to gather information for your stories. If you want to know what the [...]