Years
Jonathon M. Trugman and Kyle Smith accentuated the positive in their respective columns in today’s NY Post. Here’s a synopsis: a record 159 million Americans were employed in 2019. Average hourly wages increased 3%. The major stocks indices were up 20%. Worldwide, extreme poverty has been cut in half since 2008 and is below 10% for the first time ever. AIDS related deaths are down 56% since their peak in 2004. Cases of malaria in Africa are down 60%. Kudos to these gentlemen for pointing out that despite the efforts of politicians and criminals things are not all bad.
Last night the CUNY channel, 25–3 on over the air antennas in NYC, ran Luchino Visconti’s powerful Rocco and His Brothers (1960), starring French matinee idol Alain Delon in the title role, rated 8.3 on a scale of ten at IMDb. Set in Milan, it is a portrait of a family’s ups and downs, often over the top in emotion. Greek icon Katina Paxinou played Mamma. There’s a wonderful bit of trivia concerning the film. Renato Salvatori’s character is obsessed with Annie Giradot’s. He rapes her, and later stabs her to death. The two, who met for the first time on the set, married and had a daughter. He passed away at 55 in 1988. She passed away at 79 in 2011. Here they are in character:
Sign of the times in this foxnews.com headline: “Florida deputies nab fugitive carjacking suspect as he’s live-streaming on Instagram.”
Also from FN: “Farmers to feed cows seaweed to cut down on gas emissions.” It’s an experiment. One-quarter of emissions come from cows.
And another amusing FN headline, at least to everyone but the parents: “Texas boy sets front yard on fire after getting magnifying glass for Christmas.”
I’ve advanced to the next step in the self-publication of what will probably be my last book. I finished reading the proof copy last night, made the necessary corrections to the Word file, uploaded it to Amazon, and ordered a second and, hopefully, final proof. There was an oddity. The word gettin’, which appears at least eight times in the manuscript, often read as getting’. I suspect some sort of auto-correct was involved, although I have no idea why it didn’t apply to all the other instances in which I dropped a g.
Sprinkles put the kibosh on the floating book shop about an hour into the endeavor. All was not lost, however. I picked up an awesome cache of books from Bay 37th alum Lorraine, who’s cleaning out the apartment of one of her exes. My thanks.
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