Happy Father's Day (Part II)

My lovely wife, the mother of my children, gave me a wonderful coffee table book Paul Newman: A Life in Pictures (Chronicle Books, 2006) as one of my Father's Day presents.

Has there ever been a man who was better looking for that long? If so, I'd like to see his pictures. (Feel free to post them and send us all the link.)

While the constant comments on his looks obviously annoyed him (as he is quoted in the book, "I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown,'"), one can't help but notice how great he always looked.

Yes, he was a great actor (Hud, Butch Cassidy..., The Color of Money, etc...), a wonderful humanitarian (The Hole in the Wall Gang, the salad dressing, the tomato sauce), a fine racer, and a pretty smart businessman (yes, that salad dressing and tomato sauce again...), but, man, he was handsome!

Happy Father's Day!

My favorite t.v. dad?

No doubt: Danny Thomas in Make Room for Daddy (1953-1964)!

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's (Wooden) Door

A colleague of mine just returned from a tour of Israel with her mother. She mentioned that one of the stops along the way was in Nazareth, and it got me thinking about an industry there that is either wildly overpopulated or decidedly unrepresented: Carpentry.

Let's face it, the thing about Nazareth that's known worldwide by those who know nothing else about Nazareth is that a "carpenter's son" once hailed from there. So, if you're interested in carpentry, either you embrace the icon and open up a shop called "Joseph and Son" or "Wood from the Tree of David" and use such advertising slogans as:

"Our artisans are heavenly,"
"Your satisfaction is our cross to bear," or
"God, we're good!"

or you simply avoid the profession altogether. Right?

Oh, in case you're wondering, no, there'll be no nail jokes from me...

I want a name like Graham McNamee; now THAT'S an announcer's name!

Just finished Anthony Rudel's Hello, Everybody!: The Dawn of American Radio, a fascinating history of the rise of radio in the '20s and '30s. Rudel uses the stories of a variety of individuals (quacks, bureaucrats, entertainers, politicians, announcers, and authentic visionaries) to depict the free-for-all that early radio, in both the technological and entrepreneurial realms, really was.

The parallels of radio's rapid dominance of the American cultural scene with the more recent i-revolution are apparent throughout, but what sells the book are the stories of the likes of Rudy Vallee, Herbert Hoover, Fr. Charles Coughlin, and "Doctor" John R. Brinkley. Whatever most of us know of any of them will be deeply enriched by Rudel's clear presentation of their stories.

Well researched and plotted, this book is quite a nice read.

Ah, baloney!

I'll leave unsaid what springs immediately to mind when you first hear about something called the "Bologna Process" and how, in some way or another, many of you also fundamentally agree with the following quotation from the Chronicle of Higher Ed article about it:

"Many of the other universities had already changed to Bologna degrees," he said.

I'm looking for a hard-headed woman...

A co-worker who shall remain nameless has taken to riding -- as often as possible -- a very nice bike she calls "Myrtle." It even has a little bell. However, because she rides on the sidewalk and stays mostly in her neighborhood, she refuses to wear a helmet since, as she argues, a helmet (especially those aerodynamic ones so popular with the kids!) just "wouldn't go with Myrtle."

"Safety first," we say.

Right, Sister?

What's round at both ends but literate throughout?

The Mt. Washington Library, a branch of the Cincinnati Public Library, sits at the corner of Campus Lane and Beechmont Avenue, and at the foot of the Mt. Washington water tower. (The library is just to the right of the car in the picture at left.)

It was on my way home from Guardian Angels Elementary School, and on a hot or cold day, always a good place to get, either cool or warm, and, of course, where one went to research topics for school projects, etc, since, while the nice Collier's encyclopedia set at home was fine, nothing beats the stuff you'd find at the library. (There was also an "adult" section from which kids could not read or check out books, but, if my memory serves, it wasn't anything like the adult sections of any number of places now that just seem creepy.)

The one book that I remember enjoying immensely, and of which I would love to get a copy again, was Sir MacHinery by Tom McGowen -- the kind of book, ironically, that I roll my eyes at kids' readin' today, with wizards, etc... (Of course my reading it in the early 1970s was not heralded as the salvation of reading among American youth, as so many books seem to be considered today. And it wasn't a bloody series either; Mr McGowen clearly had more than a single set of characters that he wished to develop.)

All of this comes to mind because I was perusing the annual ranking of America's "Most Literate" Cities by the CCSU President Jack Miller and saw that, in the library category, Ohio had three cities in the top 10: Cleveland #1 (overall 13th), Cincinnati #3 (tied with Portland, OR overall for 10th), and Toledo tied at #5 with Seattle (overall 48th).

To quote Chrissie Hynde utterly out of context: "A-O, way to go, Ohio!"