Alms for the rich, Alms for the rich—that's money talking

I wrote this article last Thursday after reading the morning paper. It seems that there were several articles and columns that, although not intentionally, appeared to be related. I tied them all together and sent it off to the paper. Then I checked my email and learned they wished to publish “Here comes the sun, let’s use it,” which I had sent in several weeks earlier

Now I can understand why everyone likes a good dinosaur story. They're so cuddly as little plastic play toys. And if you can tie dinosaurs into global warming, they are almost irresistible.  

The problem is that this piece, because it refers to specific articles in the paper, has a shelf life of about three days. I'm posting the story on the blog because I firmly believe this story has to go somewhere, and there just aren't that many options for this one. The links should take the reader to the original articles.

 

The American Revolution is what you get when intelligent men and women are willing to risk everything they have to be free.

The French Revolution is what you get when the rich and powerful become so arrogant that the poor and weak are willing to risk everything just to get even.

There was no middle road in the days leading up to the French Revolution because there was no middle class. Too bad because a middle road, a road of compromise, could have prevented the revolution from happening and maybe saved some heads in the long run. But you need a middle class to have a middle road.

Middle class gives revolution a bad name. Its people are comfortable, have enough money to eat, dress and live well, and enough education to recognize how well off they are. They have enough morals to treat one another fairly and enough drive to try and get the better of one another. The last thing they want is a revolution. A long, hard fought revolution can knock someone right out of the middle class and into the bread lines.

While it’s hard to have a revolution with a strong middle class it’s pretty easy to have one without a middle class. In fact, the absence of a middle class is what usually causes a revolution, although no one wants to look too deeply into this fact.

Thursday Pilot contained a wealth of information about what’s going wrong in our country. Americans don’t like to hear about class warfare because it sounds so un-American, as well as something only the poor would promote. But class warfare is universal and as old as the Appalachians. Americans would do well to understand this. The same people who don't want to hear about class warfare probably don't want to hear about the French Revolution.

Amelia Earhart Luggage

I never really did understand the reasoning that went into naming Amelia Earhart Luggage. I mean, what was the point? Seriously?

 

About seven years before her plane crashed in the Pacific or possibly was stolen in mid-flight by aliens, she crashed another plane on this day, September 25, 1930 at the Hampton Roads Naval Air Station.

 

Later that night at a dinner party she made light of the accident saying, “It was just one of those little things.”—Like a bump in the road, perhaps.

 

If Mitt Romney had been alive then and running for—I don’t know—maybe pilot-in-chief, he might have been heard to exclaim, “Just a little thing! Just a little thing! My God, her plane flipped over and she calls it just a little thing. How out of touch can one person be?”

 

Anyway, when I realized that today was the anniversary of that crash I went looking into my archives—a box labeled “Rejected Stuff.” This was a letter written to the Virginian-Pilot on May 8, 1979, just a few months after we had moved to Virginia Beach.

 

Editor, Virginian-Pilot:

This month’s giveaway at a local bank is a beautiful matching set of Amelia Earhart luggage—“Something to hold your dreams.” It’s good to know someone has a sense of humor although the last people I would have suspected would be the banks.

The possibilities for Amelia Earhart luggage are endless:

 

Say your mother-in-law came over for dinner one night and never left; and that was six months ago! Give her a beautiful matching set of Amelia Earhart luggage for Mother’s Day and kiss her goodbye forever.

 

Say you borrowed $500 from a friend and now he’s beginning to threaten you. Don’t fret. Borrow another thousand and send him on an all-expense paid trip to Pago Pago with his brand new matching set of Amelia Earhart luggage. Watch your money problems fly out the window.

 

Say the 9 to 5 rat race has you beat and you want to get away from it all. Buy yourself a beautiful set of Amelia Earhart luggage and say goodbye to your workday blues.

And say, it you feel your mother-in-law or friend might get bored on their upcoming excursions, why not pack a handsome surprise in their brand new Amelia Earhart Luggage? How about a copy of Wiley Post's Come Fly With Me?

 

Tijuana Bull Fights/Republican Presidential Debates

I’ve spent the last three or four months totally engrossed by the continuing Republican Presidential Debates. Now that they seem to be over, at least for the time being, I find myself reminiscing for some unexplained reason about the Tijuana Bull Fight I attended over 40 years ago.

The debates have gotten pretty mundane of late. Each candidate has staked out his own territory and is now dancing with the girl he brought to the dance.

I don’t know why I keep watching them except to say it’s just so much fun. Bless their hearts the candidates are doing everything in their power to put on a good show, which is why, I think, they remind me so much of the trip I took to Tijuana to watch the bullfights back when I was stationed in San Pedro.