Babs and The Donald

I have never seen an episode of The View, ABC’s morning television gabber that skews heavily to a female demographic, but this afternoon it was widely reported how Barbara Walters called out Donald Trump on this morning’s broadcast.

Identifying herself as a longtime friend of Trump, and in the context of Trump’s latest bloviating about President Obama’s college and passport records, Walters said, "Donald, you're making a fool of yourself."

Did you just stumble onto that idea, Barbara? Trump has been making a fool of himself for quite sometime now, long before he became the standard-bearer for the “birther” crowd.

With his hair alone he makes a fool of himself.

How Much Junk Mail?

Like everyone, I receive what seems like waay too much junk mail. So last year (2011) I decided to conduct a little experiment.

For the calendar year, January 1 through December 31, every credit card offer I received I tossed not into the trash, but into a box. (Actually, I never toss them into the trash, I toss them into the paper shredder, for security purposes. But never mind.)

At the end of the year, the box contained 154 individual mail pieces, ranging from ordinary #10 business envelopes to custom chipboard packets.

That's one year’s worth of credit card offers, only – it does not include the similarly-plentiful mailers about switching my phone to the cable company or switching my cable to the phone company or switching my cable to the other cable company or switching my phone to the other phone company.

Nor does it includes all the other “normal” junk mail, such as supermarket fliers, local merchant coupons, driveway paving offers, roofing company mailings... you don’t need me to tell you how long the list can be.

Nor does it include my two favorites, regular mailings from two national organizations to which my wife and I have belonged for several years, inviting us to join.  How much lower might our annual membership cost be if it were not supporting repeated membership solicitations to people like us who are already members?

Anyway, back to the year’s worth of credit card offers. 154 individual mail pieces means that, on average, I received a credit card offer every 2.37 days last year. If we eliminate weekends and holidays, including only business days in 2011, then I received a credit card offer every 1.63 days.

Sadly, if was seeking to document a large volume of junk mail I may have chosen the wrong genre to collect.  I think that the phone/cable mail pieces outnumbered the credit card offers, as they frequently arrived in multiple numbers on a single day.

Earlier this year I started the process of putting all these credit card offers through the paper shredder.  Saving a year's worth doesn't seem like such a good idea any more...

A Night to Remember. Indeed.

This past weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, an event which dominated the headlines at the time of its occurrence and which has remained newsworthy for a century.

Lessons learned from the Titanic disaster are still being applied at sea today, and the larger lesson about hubris in human endeavor has remained vivid for 100 years as well.

But it was one small moment this past weekend which galvanized our attention. We sat down Saturday evening to watch the TCM broadcast of A Night to Remember, the 1958 film about the sinking. (This movie, which we had not seen previously, is vastly superior to the sappy James Cameron - Leonardo DeCaprio - Kate Winslet blockbuster of 1997 which is currently in a trendy 3D re-release.)

The 1958 filmmakers quickly moved the story from the ship’s launching to the at-sea disaster, and as part of the depiction of the launch they incorporated a few seconds of original newsreel footage of the ship’s departure from Southampton.

A chill went down our spine.

We were looking at the people on board the Titanic, waving happily. We were not looking at Hollywood actors or extras, we were looking at the actual passengers on board the doomed ship.

More than 1500 of them would perish.

And yet there they were, in grainy, scratched images, giddily waving to us, 100 years later.

It was a powerfully moving few seconds of film.

Another Special Person

The news this week is all about the death of Whitney Houston, a remarkably talented singer whose passing at a young age may be due to her battles with addiction. You can feel sympathy or you can feel that her own irresponsibility was to blame, but neither viewpoint affects the sadness of a death coming too early.

Somewhat lost in the outsized media attention being focused on Houston is the passing later in the week of Gary Carter, also at a too-young age, due to brain cancer.

With two outs in the bottom of the 10th of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Carter came to bat with no one on base and the Mets trailing the Boston Red Sox 5-3, and three games to two.

Carter hit a single that gave the Mets a ray of hope. Then Kevin Mitchell singled. Ray Knight singled to score Carter.  The Red Sox's Bob Stanley wild-pitched Mitchell across the plate to tie the score and Mookie Wilson hit his fateful roller that went through Bill Buckner’s legs.

The Mets won the game and the Mets won the series.

But Gary Carter is remembered for much more than that one amazin' game.  He was not just a skilled and talented baseball player. He was an enthusiastic participant. Fans loved him. With good reason.