Looking for Useful Stuff in Free Brochures and Newspapers

I retired at the end of November last year, but I still get my union's newsletters in the mail, as if I am somehow still listed somewhere as a member.  Let's see...this one is titled "Florida Postal Worker", representing the American Postal Workers Union of Florida.  Good enough, let's open it up and see what's inside. Headline item: Ratification Happens...the new collective bargaining agreement has been overwhelmingly ratified by the rank and file.  On turning the page, there is an article on how to avoid scams, an anti-Trump piece titled "No Kings in America", and an urging for members to contact their elected representatives with their opinions. Then there's list of 30 reasons to thank unions, a section listing general guidelines for emergency preparedness, an article about the APWU Auxiliary, and a few other trailing articles. Overall I found this issue to be informative and potentially helpful, assuming I come back to it and refer to it.  I think this idea of picking up a piece of literature like a brochure or newsletter and determining whether or not it contains anything of value is constructive...future such blog articles are in the works for other publications...

Start of 2025 Hurricane Season

Yesterday the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season officially began, and the two main weather channels (The Weather Channel and FoxWeather) devoted much of their time to discussing this year's prospects regarding tropical storm systems and the damage that storms like Helene and Milton caused in 2024.  I remember as a kid in the 1960s getting a free hurricane plotting map that many stores...including Publix...offered.  Then I would eagerly wait for each day's newspaper (we got the Miami News)  to examine its (usually front-page) article about the status of ongoing tropical systems, usually with the accompanying maximum sustained winds and that all-important figure, its coordinates.  I'd duly plot out the new location and connect it to my previous plotting, making a gradual pathway that it was taking...I did this for years.  Nowadays, though, since you can pretty much check up on the different tropical storms online or on TV on a 24/7 basis, this painstaking plotting out of a hurricane's progress just isn't practiced anymore.  The last season I did this intentionally was in 1985 after Elena caused a scare in my Gainesville area after it abruptly shifted its path overnight to hover just off the coast at Cedar Key.  Now, of course, I can go back on Wikipedia and get a synopsis of each past season, along with a map showing the different named storms' trajectories.  For 2025, there will be no plotting in my house, but I'll keep in touch with the weather... 

Old July, 1965 Newspaper Articles Revealing about Vietnam War

The other day I got on my Newspapers.com site to see...through the Fort Lauderdale News, which was my home Broward County's main newspaper back in the 1960s when I was growing up there...whether any mention was made of the new Nova elementary school that was to open in August of 1965.  I switched from Boulevard Heights to Nova that year when I entered the fourth grade...my sister Anita was already going to Nova Junior High, situated right across the field from the new elementary school in Davie on the site of a converted airfield (along with Broward Junior College).  I began by putting on my screen the front page of the paper's July 1, 1965 Main Edition, on which most of the stories were about the escalating Vietnam War with the U.S. increasing its presence in that troubled southeastern Asia country with armed soldiers on the ground increasing from around three thousand in March of '65 to two hundred thousand by year's end.  On July 1 the paper was reporting Viet Cong attacks against the American base in Da Nang, opposition in Congress to President Johnson's war policies, and  there was a piece describing how the Viet Cong operate in guerilla warfare.  In the Senate, Senator Wayne Morse, of the President's own Democratic Party but one of the two voting against his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution the previous August that authorized troop buildup in Vietnam, urged Johnson to end the war and instead go to the United Nations and build up collaborative relationships with other countries to bring about peace.  On the Republican side in the House, their leader, future president Gerald Ford, proposed that the President remove the ground troops and restrict the fighting there to heavy aerial bombardment in strategic locations...needless to say Lyndon Johnson passed on both of these, precipitating one of the most traumatic, divisive periods in our nation's history.  Malcolm W. Browne's article about Viet Cong guerilla warfare was haunting in its prescience as he describes one such warrior, stationed within an echo chamber in a hole in the ground, enabling him to detect distant helicopter sounds before any others: "The man, wriggling through a short tunnel to the surface, can yell an alarm.  Instantly, shadowy men lounging or cooking at the bases of the tall trees are on their feet and moving fast.  The heavy equipment from last night's battle has been stowed for future use in deep, camouflaged holes.  The bodies have been buried.  The men move rapidly, scattering in many directions in twos and threes.  This is their base area, and they know every feature of the dense jungle in the area...the hidden trails, the camouflaged bunkers and tunnels, the gun emplacements, the mines and booby traps."  You can easily see the wisdom from hindsight in reading this article and others and think of what might have been if information in plain sight, as well as alternative options, were taken more seriously by those with the power and authority to properly understand and use them...think of all the lives that could have been spared.  But hindsight it is, and in 1965 the American public was strongly behind Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam escalation policy...I wonder what information today, also in plain view as was the material in July of 1965, is warning us about where we're going...but of course nowadays we have to sift through all the false crap floating around.  As for my then-new little Nova school, I'm continuing to search for any reference to it...

Just Saying...From a January 1970 Newspaper Report

 

TRYING TO PREVENT INFLUENZA is the title to a caption appearing in the January 1st, 1970 edition of the Hollywood Sun-Tattler, distributed by United Press International.  The picture displays four London, England office workers at their typewriter stations, all wearing masks to prevent the spread of influenza during a serious epidemic at that time.  I've yet to come across any reports of mass uprisings of indignant citizens opposing masks in the name of their "liberty": I'll let you know if I do, but I doubt it...folks back then understood their RESPONSIBILITY to each other in the midst of a public health crisis. No, I don't know whether there were mask mandates imposed then, but maybe they didn't need to be if the populace had enough common sense to wear them in the first place...

Here is the text of the caption: "TRYING TO PREVENT INFLUENZA--London office workers wear masks in an effort to evade the current influenza epidemic that hit Britain and most of Europe.  Emergency influenza cases in London rose to their highest level in seven years.  Volunteer nurses stepped in to fill gaps in hospital staffs throughout the country as the number of cases climbed and doctors and nurses were among victims of the outbreak.".

Game of the Week: Ice Hockey

 

Ice hockey is not only a game I've never played...I've never even ice-skated: heck, I've never roller-skated to any degree, for that matter.  This shouldn't be surprising in that I've been a Florida resident since before I was one and water tends not to freeze outdoors in this neck of the woods, so unlike with other sports we never played ice hockey in school or as a "sandlot" sport.  And there's obviously no ice hockey presence in Florida athletics, either...but in the National Hockey League we have the defending champs Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers for the Miami area. Over the decades I have kept up with hockey, both in the newspaper by keeping up with the National Hockey League standings and on television by occasionally watching games...especially during the Stanley Cup championship playoffs as they are currently taking place. And now it's down to the final series between defending champs Tampa Bay and the resurgent Montreal Canadiens to determine this year's league title. Hockey has always been difficult for me to follow...I think I have a better grasp on the sport, though, now that I understand its off-side rule where the attacking team has to have the remaining players behind the blue line on its offensive side before they can advance the puck.  I'm still unsure about icing, though, which sometimes seems to be more of a judgment call of the officials.  It's also amazing that any goals ever get scored, what with the goalie sitting there covering the net with all his protective gear ballooning out...I wonder if there's a size limit on goalies, otherwise you could just hire a pro wrestler of Man Mountain Mike's girth and get shutouts every game...I think I remember an insurance commercial where a bear played the goalie! I also think it's funny about the numerous fights that take place during the course of a game...and how, unlike in basketball, football, or baseball, the participants...faces often bloodied...usually don't seem too emotionally involved in it all, as if it's just a regular part of the sport.  No, there are many aspects of hockey that confuse me, but most of all my problem is keeping up with where the puck is at any given moment... 

Trying to Obtain Use from Basically Useless Resources

Like squeezing water from a rock, some of the media resources surrounding me offer little hope of positive, constructive use...yet in almost all of them there can be opportunities for enlightenment and application if I just apply myself and face the challenge of plowing through mostly meaningless...and often downright dishonest...drivel.  Take conservative talk radio, for example.  Shows like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Michael Savage depend on listeners plugging their brains into them for two to three hours daily and putting their own independent thinking to sleep as they voluntarily submit themselves to the hosts' brainwashing...but I don't have to go down that path: I can be a discerning listener, noticing when the host is being demagogic or dishonest and when he or she is expressing a reasonable opinion worth considering.  In almost every opinion show on radio or TV, be they from a conservative or liberal perspective, there is something worthwhile...even if it only is to figure out why certain individuals around me are believing the weird things they believe.  Still, with this I wouldn't rely on any of them as my primary source for news. As for other areas, I am regularly receiving company and union periodicals in the mail...I survey each of them and quickly dispose of them: maybe a little more intensive examination might reveal a useful tidbit of information I could use.  As for politicians, it's always a useful intellect and character-building exercise to take the ones I support and look for things to criticize while taking those I oppose and looking for something to praise.  Such an exercise doesn't create uncertainty within me, but rather strengthens my arguments pro and con about the issues and those espousing their positions on them.  In browsing through old newspapers online from years gone by, I have noticed that not only do editorial page columns provide insights into the time period being investigated, but also how regular articles are written, as well as advice columns, advertisements, the classifieds, entertainment section...and even the comic strips.  In a world in which the different political and self-identification factions of the population are bubbling themselves off into insulated spheres of feedback loops, each with their own "alternative facts" and subjective realities, I think it would be healthy for each of us to take at least one day every week or two (or month) and just immerse ourselves...as honestly and empathetically as possible...in the "opposition" bubble.  And also try to find some educational or useful experience in everything we encounter, even if it's generally regarded as junk... 

Newspaper Archives a Fun Portal into History

With my ability now to research old newspapers at different times in recent history, I am afforded the opportunity to investigate how different ongoing events were being reported.  I'm compiling a list of some interesting times that I'm looking into during the next few weeks:

--Sunday newspaper opinion pages just preceding each presidential election

--The summer of 1914 after Austrian Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Bosnia, with subsequent events leading to the outbreak of World War I.

--Stories about Japanese-American relations in the weeks before Pearl Harbor.

--The early weeks in the Korean War, 1950.

--Civil rights stories in the 1950s and 1960s.

--The American reaction to the Soviets' Sputnik launch in October 1957.

--The Cuban revolution under Castro and early events of his regime in 1959.

--The Cuban Missile Crisis of  October 1962.

--Lyndon Johnson's statements about Vietnam as president in 1964, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

--The Democratic Party presidential race in 1968 up to the California primary and Robert Kennedy's assassination.

--George Romney's candidacy for president in 1968 and his disastrous "brainwashing" comment.

--Stories about the breakup of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s.

--Any articles with "experts" predicting the future.

--Retroactively politically incorrect articles deemed acceptable in the times they were published.

Well, that's just a few of what I'm looking at...besides old comic strips, advertisements, and puzzles, that is.  Since I was a history major in college, this archival exploration is pure joy for me...must have been kind of like how old Gandalf felt in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring when he paid a visit to Minas Tirith's old library archives to read up about "magic rings" from the ancient past....

The United States Presidents Who Owned Slaves

As I've mentioned in a few of my recent blog articles, I now enjoy an Internet service that allows me to rummage through old newspapers online...I've been focusing on October, 1956...the month of my birth...using the Miami News as my source.  Beginning September 27th of that year, they had a daily feature focusing on the American presidents, starting with George Washington and ending with the then-current one, Dwight D. Eisenhower just before the presidential election.  The insets...the above one is of Andrew Jackson...summarized each succeeding president and not only informed me of their respective lives and administrations, but also of the prevailing social and political climate of 1956.  For example, in none of the articles was it mentioned that a president owned slaves...yet with the first 18 presidents, 12...or two thirds...were indeed slave owners at one time or another, not to mention 10 of the first 12.  Here's the list of presidents who in at least one point of their lives owned slaves, as it appeared in Wikipedia:

GEORGE WASHINGTON

THOMAS JEFFERSON

JAMES MADISON

JAMES MONROE

ANDREW JACKSON

MARTIN VAN BUREN

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON

JOHN TYLER

JAMES KNOX POLK

ZACHARY TAYLOR

ANDREW JOHNSON

ULYSSES S. GRANT  

Of the above, Jackson, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk were the most unapologetically pro-slavery.  Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, while hypocritically benefitting materially from their slaves, either allowed for their freedom following their own deaths or wrote and spoke in opposition to this onerous institution that violated every principle of freedom and justice that they proclaimed as Founding Fathers...and to his discredit Jefferson actually fathered children with one of his slaves.  Others had a more marginal connection with slave ownership, some supporting slavery's expansion into US territories and new states while others pushed restraint.  I'm not writing this to condemn these men...they lived in a different era when values that decent and reasonable people today abhor were more accepted in society.  But it does bear noting that in none of the 1956 articles I read did slave ownership among some presidents seem worth mentioning...and that does bother me a lot.  It also bothers me that "originalist" conservatives who are always trying to return to the Founding Fathers' thoughts when arguing their constitutional priorities gloss over their slaveholding while trying to depict the simple wearing of a mask for the public's safety in the midst of this dangerous pandemic as some kind of violation of their high and holy rights...oh, please...

Some Interesting Newspaper Articles from October, 1956

Here are four articles that caught my attention as I was skimming through the archives of The Miami News, a mainline, established newspaper, covering the dates October 4th through 6th, 1956...64 years ago.  It's interesting to see how people saw the future back then, as well as being treated to many assumptions they made about the ways society should be structured.  With each article I first wrote the main point of interest to me, followed by my own commentary.  Yes, these were real articles...

ENSLAVEMENT OF MEN AS ROBOTS PREDICTED...JUST PLUG 'EM IN (10/4/56)

In the article: Curtiss R. Schafer, project engineer for the Norden-Ketay Corp., of Milford Conn., said research in the science of "biocontrol" has shown that the conversion of human beings into electronically-controlled robots is possible.

Yes, I believe Schafer's revelation that "whole nations might be enslaved by tiny radios implanted into the brains of infants to prevent them from thinking as individuals" is feasible: I saw, with my own eyes, the archvillain Plankton do this sort of thing in the first SpongeBob SquarePants movie!  But seriously, aren't a lot of people in our own day and age voluntarily allowing themselves to be enslaved by their own smartphones and social media? This was a United Press article...

RADICAL CARS STILL FAR IN FUTURE...STEERING LEVERS AND ATOMIC ENGINES COMING (10/4/56)

In the article: According to F. C. Reith, vice-president of the Ford Motor Co. and general manager of the Mercury division, "Gas turbine engines are 5 to 10 years away, while atom-powered cars are at least 15 to 20 years in the future."

Although gas turbine technology has been extensively used with other forms of transportation, it hasn't yet taken a strong hold with passenger cars...although lately research and development is going on concerning its use with hybrid electric cars.  As for atomic cars...ha, ha, ha...this shows the overly rosy assessment folks were giving this energy source at the time: after all, the first running nuclear reactor began operations just the previous year.  Mike Davis, Miami News staff, wrote the article...

DUMB GUYS HELD BETTER AS DRIVERS (10/5/56)

In the article: Quoting Arthur L. Berlin, chairman of the driver education program in San Leandro's (California) schools: "The man who drives while thinking of his business is a poor driver, while the man with low mental ability won't be thinking about much of anything."

This is the kind of silly article I would have expected from a rag like the National Enquirer, not a reputable, serious newspaper like the Miami News...yet it was released under the auspices of the Associated Press. The article's premise is asinine: just because someone's thought processes function at a "lower" level than another's doesn't mean that they can't be just as distracted by their own less-significant thoughts while driving...

STOP THE SHOUTS FOR EQUAL RIGHTS...A WOMAN'S VOICE (10/6/56)

In the article: From Dorothy Roe's syndicated women's advice column, agreeing with Florence Anderson, a Chicago mechanical design engineer: For instance, if you want a raise...don't start complaining about how you can't afford a new pair of nylons, have to go without lunches and haven't had your hair done in three weeks...Instead tell [the boss] how fortunate you are to have such a brilliant and understanding employer, who understands the necessity of keeping up appearances in the business world. Tell him how you'd hate to work for an old fogy who didn't appreciate the importance of such things as hairdos and nylons.  

From today's more enlightened vantage point about equal rights for women, this article seems overly patriarchal and patronizing.  But it was serious advice when it was written and would have been uncontroversial within the accepted norms of the time.  I expect to see more articles like this one from the old newspapers... 

Well, I guess it's time for me to go back to the archives for some more treasures...

Unintentionally Funny '56 Newspaper Column about Henry Wallace, "The Prophet"

When I was a kid growing up in South Florida our daily newspaper was the Miami News, since my father worked down in Dade County (we lived in southern Broward) and felt more connected there.  Unfortunately, I would have preferred our own city paper, the Hollywood Sun-Tattler...but little kids often get no say in what they want.  Now I have this feature whereby I can read old newspapers off my computer screen...and since the Sun-Tattler isn't available I decided to make my father's preferred brand my own.  I went back to the day of my birth...October 3rd, 1956...to see what was going on in the world and in people's minds back then, as reflected on the pages of the Miami News Main Edition.  The World Series had just begun between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees, the Cold War was going on strong, and Dwight Eisenhower was in a heated electoral campaign against Democrat Adlai Stevenson for a second term.  In the News' opinion section for that day I read a column by Ralph McGill that led off calling former Franklin Roosevelt's vice-president and 1948 independent presidential candidate Henry Wallace "The Prophet".  Why, it seems that the American economy, which dominated the world in that era, was flying high in early fall of '56 with record employment and only brighter prospects to come.  McGill then made a point of agreeing with Wallace's prediction of a four-day work week in the (then) near future, citing the fact that even Vice-President Nixon was on board with it...and then emphasized that one of the crucial tasks for the future was to educate the people as to how best spend all the oodles of leisure time they were going to be getting.  At this I just laughed and laughed and laughed some more...

There's a lot of irony here, some of it personal.  For one, I remember that in my early childhood my dad had a six-day work week as a letter carrier, not five as the 1956 McGill article claimed for the ongoing national standard.  Secondly, a few years ago my own employer posted jobs involving a four-day work week...but the shifts were ten hours long with the cumulative weekly total still at 40 hours.  I've heard over the years that in Europe conditions have generally improved for workers and that in many countries they have a lot more leisure time than us here in the USA.  Nowadays though, instead of one spouse being able to support the family on a single forty-hour, five-days-a-week job as used to be the case for middle class households, for many both spouses are not only working full time to keep things afloat but also often have extended hours, either through overtime or working at home.  Ralph McGill claimed back then that the wheel of time had turned, but oftentimes people get so stuck in their present situation that they cannot reasonably envision a future that departs in significant ways from it.  But it all makes interesting...and unintentionally funny...reading for me.  Now on to the next hilarious article from the past...

Online Newspaper Archives a Source of Interesting Material

In Stephen King's fantastic 2011 time travel novel 11/22/63 protagonist Jake Epping repeatedly finds himself investigating newspaper archives on the Internet...I'm familiar with that because I used to do the same at the University of Florida Library West microfilm room back in the 1980s, years before it became possible to access old newspapers online.  A couple of weeks ago I subscribed to such a service being provided by a genealogy company and have been exploring them once again...guess I don't need to go back to UF anytime soon after all.  With archived newspapers you get a great glimpse at the ongoing news and sports stories...as well as the opinions and assumptions that people entertained back then.  Often it's the editorial page and the regular columns that provide the greatest insight, but sometimes you can get a lot by simply reading advertisements and comics.  And speaking of comics, delving back into the past is a definite trip down memory lane for me as I reexperience the old strips like L'il Abner, Nancy, Calvin & Hobbes, Herman, Henry, Pogo, Miss Peach, They'll Do It Every Time, Zippy, The Far Side, Bloom County, Cathy, and so on.  And it's also very easy to clip and print various puzzles I see, to do later and elsewhere at my own convenience. Unfortunately, the particular service I'm using isn't up to date with my local Gainesville Sun, although it does feature several papers...including my favorite Miami Herald going back to 1911...and Ft. Lauderdale is covered by its own paper throughout my school years in south Florida.  As for the Gainesville Sun, Google has its own free archive service providing coverage from 1981 to 2007. From time to time on this blog I may be discussing some finds I make as I browse through the past.  Seeing how we are approaching yet another presidential election, I'm thinking of looking back at some from the past and how the papers with their editorial pages assessed them just before they took place...

Quote of the Week...from President Trump

Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.      ---President Donald Trump

To this quote I'd like to add two pro-gun clichés and two New York Times headlines:

The Clichés:
1) If guns were outlawed only outlaws would have guns.
------and------
2) Guns don't kill people, people do.

The NY Times Headlines (August 6, early and late editions):
1) Trump Urges Unity Vs Racism
------and------
2) Assailing Hate But Not Guns

The Times headlines and article came after President Donald Trump spoke to the nation following the mass shooting murders in El Paso and Dayton this past weekend. There was so much criticism coming at the newspaper for its first headline...which critics claimed failed to capture the essence of Trump's address...that they changed it between editions.  The President did speak out against racism and for national unity...but he also gave a variation on the second of my two cited clichés with the above quote, claiming that the gun doesn't pull its own trigger.  No kidding, sir, yet I've heard this kind of foolish argument before by gun advocates, implying that since guns don't shoot people by themselves, then they're somehow okay and shouldn't be part of any discussion...and tagging the mentally ill with blame for gun violence doesn't correspond to the facts as I know them. No, it's the wrong guns (military-style weapons with multiple rounds increased by high-capacity magazines) in the wrong hands (only the military and law enforcement should have them, in my opinion) that is causing the problem with these evil mass shooters using them to pick off multitudes of innocent people in stores, places of worship, schools, concerts, festivals, workplaces...or any other locale where people gather in numbers.  So although it's commendable that Trump spoke out against racism and hate, he has yet to explain why it's quite all right for civilians to be able to legally acquire semi-automatic rifles that can be used to inflict massive carnage quickly on large numbers of people, as preferred as they may legitimately be by some sportsmen with their game hunting.  Still, from where I stand the public's security far outweighs the enhancement of some people's hunting experiences. It's true that many more murders are caused through the abuse of handguns...and to be sure, by other means than through firearms. Restricting these higher-powered weapons will not thwart evil people from trying to murder others...and sometimes tragically succeeding.  But you would not be looking at these horrendous casualty figures had the mass shooters been more limited in their choice of murder weapon.  Regarding that first cliché above, it sadly has much truth to it.  Localities and states that greatly restrict legal gun ownership put their law-abiding citizens in a helpless situation against the criminal elements operating there who can easily bring in their weapons from outside.  And even if the nation as a whole enacted stricter laws against these military-level guns, we would still be overrun with them for years...and no doubt a thriving black market would develop as well.  As for more stringent background checks for gun buyers, I wonder how many of the mass shooters over the past several years would have been caught and prevented from building up their arsenals if the laws now being pushed had already been in place...probably not that many, I'm guessing.  Doesn't sound like I'm very optimistic about where this is all going, does it?  Well, give me something positive to latch onto, then, while I reflect on the somber conclusion that we live in a culture that idolizes and glorifies violence, inviting evil into our midst while refusing to acknowledge it for what it is...

Wordscapes and Word Stacks Apps: Pretty Fun

For years I've enjoyed doing the Jumble word-scramble puzzle in the daily newspaper.  Each puzzle features four five-letter scrambled words and two with six letters (the Sunday edition features all six words with six letters).  Unscramble each word and take the circled letters to form a scrambled daily phrase, for which the inset picture provides a clever clue.  My local newspaper has become so worthless that the only thing left in it with any use for me is its Jumble puzzle...so instead of blowing my money on that I have switched to a phone app called Wordscapes, another work-scramble puzzle.  It was Melissa who introduced me to it...she had it on her phone and sometimes would ask me to help her when she got stumped.  Well, every weekend from Friday evening through Sunday evening Wordscapes holds its own tournament, something that I got hooked on a couple of months ago.  For the last few weeks I had consistently finished in the top three, actually winning the thing once.  But this past Friday evening, for some reason everybody else decided to become a Wordscapes tourney champion and the scores went through the roof.  Let's see, with only about six hours to go I'm in 38th place...think I'll pass up on the rest of this week's tournament...

This fun type of activity reminded me of the fledgling years on the Internet when we had an AOL account and would play in their various trivia games...those were the days, you know, when getting online meant undergoing eardrum-piercing, torturous sounds from the modem.  Wordscapes has an associated game app called Word Stacks, which is a much more complicated version of the word search puzzle...the letters shift positions as you find the words, pretty challenging at times!  I haven't seen any tournaments for Word Stacks yet, but maybe it's just a matter of time...

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Starbucks, Howard Schultz, Gators Hoops

Today, after entering my nearest Starbucks and they refused to sell today's Sunday Gainesville Sun newspaper to me at the clearly-stated price of $2, insisting on ripping me off for $3 instead...after which I most diplomatically replied that they could "keep" it, I'm sitting in the same place...possibly for the last time, here with my overpriced iced coffee, which the McDonalds down the road makes tastier and much more cheaply.  No, trying to rip off customers at 50% above stated retail price for something that they didn't even produce may well be the final straw between me and this company that should be nominated for Most Overrated Business of the Universe.  It takes a certain mixture of smug arrogance and outright gall to pull that kind of stunt with their loyal customers, whom Starbucks obviously takes for granted...

Well, now that I've got that little peeve out of my system, on to another one.  It saddens me that a potential centrist presidential candidate like Starbuck's former CEO Howard Schultz, who appeals to me as generally responsible and ideologically a centrist, feels that neither of the two major political parties that run our political system in this country offers a place for him, his views, and his candidacy.  Actually, though, I feel that Schultz might be more welcomed by the Democrats than he imagines, at least by Democratic voters...I certainly would be more receptive to his ideas for America's future.  But he's stated that if he runs, it will be as an independent, and as such will more likely syphon away votes from a Democratic nominee than from Trump in the November 2020 presidential election.  Sure, by running as an independent candidate Schultz will be able to escape the grueling party primary campaigning that has already begun so early, a year and a half before the election.  But were he to run as a Democrat, he would exert a more moderating pull on that party's discussions of the ongoing issues...now it seems the candidates are tripping over each other trying to see how radically leftist they can sound.  I could vote for Howard Schultz as a Democrat...even as a Republican...but never as an independent.  Like it or not, on the presidential election level we have a two-party system: it's binary, stupid!

Unless I and all of the sports pundits I've heard are somehow tragically mistaken, it looks as if the 2018-19 University of Florida men's basketball team will manage to make the 68-school field of the NCAA major college tournament, the brackets for which will be revealed in a few hours.  After a very tough out-of-conference schedule and a very competitive Southeastern Conference regular season, the Gators were 17-14 entering the conference tournament.  They made the semifinal round, winning two games before bowing to Auburn in a 65-62 defeat marred by a controversial officiating "non-call" blunder when the Florida player at the end, while taking a three-point shot to tie the score and send the game into overtime, was clearly fouled as three Auburn players converged on him...reminds me of that "non-call" at the end of the Rams-Saints NFL playoff game a few weeks ago...

The upshot of all this is that I want Starbucks to repent of their arrogance, Schultz to wise up and run as a Democrat, and for the Gators to go all the way to the championship...fat chance of any of that happening, though....

********
Later...Starbucks got back to me about the newspaper, stating that marking up the price wasn't their company's policy and wanting to make amends...I accept...still, it's kind of humiliating to be confronted in public at the counter like that and they deserve some rebuke for their arrogance...

Quote of the Week...from Marilyn vos Savant

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.
                                                               ---Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant is probably most known for her weekly quiz/advice column in Parade magazine, inserted in numerous Sunday newspapers.  She's credited as having an extremely high IQ, for what that's worth, and doesn't mince words about her opinions on a wide range of subjects...some of these I'm not terribly in agreement with, to put it diplomatically.  Yet she does have a lot of wise quotes, and I picked the one above because it goes counter to popular sentiment today.  Whether it's politics, reality TV, social media, school, the workplace, or any other venue, people tend to vent negatively about others in their lives or the news without couching their criticisms with some praise and understanding.  Trying to see things from the other guy's viewpoint...which is empathy...is crucial to maintaining a balanced view of others, especially those we dislike.  We're all mixed bags with good and bad...Marilyn's advice rings true to me: instead of harping on how bad someone else is, why not put your time to better use and see them for their positive traits?  Some folks in my life are disagreeable because they don't like me either, and can probably list all sorts of reasons for this.  I can't make everyone like me, and I don't want to anyway.  And I can't always like others, either.  But everyone's got something to appreciate and recognizing that fact can potentially point to improved relationships between us...

Remembering Old UF Economics Profs Denslow & Rush

I was browsing through my Sunday morning Gainesville Sun newspaper, looking for any interesting articles, when I came upon David Denslow's column.  Denslow is a retired University of Florida economics professor who has recently taken up speaking out on the issues of the day.  Today's article was about Brexit, a.k.a. Britain's vote to exit the European Community...which Denslow says is going to be bad for them.  Well, I don't have to be an economics professor to discern that, but it also helps to have some strong statistics to back up your argument.  And the good professor has always been on top of his facts...although his presentation of them can seem a bit dry and hurried...

Back in the year 2000, when I was in the middle of finishing up my Bachelor's program at the University of Florida after a hiatus of about twenty years, I was taking two summer introductory economics courses to fulfill my basic course distribution requirements for the degree.  They were Macroeconomics and Microeconomics and were "TV" courses that were broadcast over a local public service channel.  The lectures were also available over the Internet, about which I was then rather challenged (and still am to a degree), so I kept to the televised lessons.  Our aforementioned Dr. David Denslow taught the macroeconomics class and Dr. Mark Rush taught microeconomics.  Both topics were interesting to me, but in the end it seemed that I got lost and confused on the "macro" level while attaining a reasonable degree of understanding on the "micro".  That might have been due to the nature of the material itself...or it might have been the result of the professors and how they taught their courses...

For the most part, I liked both professors' classes...hey, I got "A" in both of them!  But whereas Denslow went a mile a minute with his teaching, Rush paced his lectures with humorous breaks that helped us poor unenlightened students to catch up with him.  One of his devices was to use the show's "Director" as a fall guy, and they were forever trading barbs with one another.  Another was Rush's use of his frequent trips to Leonardo's Pizza on University Avenue to illustrate microeconomic principles.  Maybe poor Denslow just couldn't compete with that approach and unfairly suffered by comparison.  Besides, had I been teaching introductory college economics classes, I probably would have resembled Dave more than Mark...although certainly I would have fared badly in comparison to either of them...they both were very competent, good teachers who sparked interest in their respective subjects...

One sidelight to all this: I used to go out to a coffee shop and study there before my tests in these classes, which basically consisted of mid-terms and finals.  And just which coffee shop was this? Why, the old Magnolia Parke Starbucks, where I am sitting right now writing this article.  Except that, back then in mid-2000, it had just opened its doors for the first time.  Since then, over the years, I've seen Dr. Rush as a customer here.  Were I to make a list of my favorite school teachers, from elementary school all the way to the end of college, he would be right up there on it. As far as I know, he is still teaching microeconomics at UF.  And, of course, we now know where to find Dr. Denslow on a Sunday morning...