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My Occasional Pieces: Something Is Wrong With Me
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Tuesday, June 30, 2015. Something Is Wrong With Me. I'm not sure when in the sequence of events that presaged three months of unbearable heartache those words were spoken to me by my sister Donna, but it hardly matters; they will be etched in my brain forever. For three months she had complained to our mother of indigestion and mild irritation that reminded her of menstrual cramps, but it was not until February that the discomfort became too severe to ignore. The initial diagnosis was gall stones, which ...
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My Occasional Pieces: July 2014
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Sunday, July 27, 2014. Tell me about your viaje a Shanghai. Writes my friend and the father of my daughter-in-law, Julio M. Rodriguez, from his native Dominican Republic. "I was there in 2006. The food was horrible.". We're finally salivating in business class. The attack was launched initially in Taiwan in the late 1980's, and then migrated progressively to mainland China, Malaysia, and Vietnam in reaction to higher tariffs and increasing wages. And in the fierce war for the disposable dollar, why shoul...
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My Occasional Pieces: October 2014
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Sunday, October 26, 2014. I Was Obeying My Conscience. If he was not a virulent anti-Semite, he harbored typical Alsatian prejudices, disdaining Jews for their lack of social refinement. Observing Dreyfus's braids, epaulettes, and stripes hanging in tatters, he remarked to another officer, "He looks like a Jewish tailor estimating the value of the cloth." (Lewis, p. 133). On or around March 15, 1896, Lauth came to his superior with a petit bleu. It's frightening. Is there still another one? Sir, Above al...
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My Occasional Pieces: February 2014
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Saturday, February 1, 2014. Fifteen years ago I surprised my ex-wife, MHS, with the anomalous announcement that I'd like to go to Africa. Speechless for one of the few times in our marriage, she could only stare across the room at me in stunned silence, while today, looking back, I can only imagine the thoughts roiling her brain: Has he lost his mind? Or better yet, will he be coming back? Not long afterward MHS and I were lured to Italy by a friend's gracious offer of accommodations in a small town near...
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My Occasional Pieces: A House Divided
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Thursday, November 20, 2014. By February 23, 1898, three trials had evolved from the discovery that a traitor in the French Army was selling information to German diplomats; each had yielded a verdict that, backed by the full weight and influence of the General Staff, was inevitable yet problematic, as the reliability of the evidence became increasingly suspect. December 23, 1894: Thirty-five year old Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, is convicted of having composed the telltale bordereau. Began gathering s...
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My Occasional Pieces: May 2014
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Thursday, May 29, 2014. Five Towns Plus One. But you just got back," exclaimed my furniture friend, DVM, his boyish visage assuming the star-struck expression of the recipient of a double-truckload order or of the exhilarating news that his devilish Dukies had landed another blue-chip recruit. Once one has seen a picture, it's etched into the brain as indelibly as that of his first granddaughter, now ten months hold. "Isn't this where we are going? I say, directing JSG's attention toward the pastel palet...
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My Occasional Pieces: November 2013
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Monday, November 18, 2013. That public opinion had turned against the defendant - whose ethnicity, urbanity, perceived wealth, Northern roots, and employment of youthful females epitomized all that was alien to a frustrated, impoverished, formerly rural population - was manifest in the cheering and applause that, at every prosecution victory, burst from the unruly spectators who roiled the courtroom and the raucous throng which flooded the nearby streets and alleys. Marx wrote, "The feeling against the D...
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My Occasional Pieces: September 2014
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Thursday, September 25, 2014. Long Live the Army! This is a strange and convoluted tale, over one hundred years old, yet replete with familiar themes: justice gone awry; deceit and corruption permeating the highest echelons of government; obscure criminal acts precipitating a transformational political crisis. He has been in a holding cell for about an hour, and later that evening, while hoisting drinks with reporters at the Moulin Rouge, his escort, Captain Lebrun-Renault, will either misconstrue or del...
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My Occasional Pieces: August 2014
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Friday, August 29, 2014. Don't you get bored looking at those little dots? Queries JSG, rhetorically, of course, since she already knows the answer, as I slide not very surreptitiously into her computer alcove, fire up her magnificent iMac, type in my second favorite (after "My Occasional Pieces") web site: mlb.com (the acronym for Major League Baseball), and open the Gameday window for the Oakland A's vs. whomever their opponent might be. Is it conceivable that those late hours are simply a convenient j...
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