Capitalism and Fantasies

Stay tuned soon for a report on my visit to Rochester New York, to see Cate Rubin and her boyfriend, Zack Tennies. I’d be on the trip, and the fine food my daughter and SO Zack shared with me, but sharing from phone to computer to blog post takes time. Alas, I am a mere 10 days away from my first trip to a place off this continent and its ambient islands.

I will be in London, Bath, and Oxford from May 5 through May 12. After contributing to several trips to Europe for Cate and her mom, I’m more than a wee bit excited about going myself. (Ya, ya, I know GB has started to exit

Sean Spicer: the Hitler and al-Assad Comparison

Sean Spicer doesn’t know from Godwin’s Law, more or less. (Godwin’s Law, in its truest form? The longer a discussion lasts on the Internet, the more likely it is that someone will compare someone to Adolph Hitler. Shorter version? By the time you bring up Hitler, you should have shut up already.)

Washington Post reporters Jenna Johnson and Ashley Parker wrote Spicer Apologizes after Receiving Sharp Criticism for Saying Hitler Didn’t Use Chemical Weapons on Tuesday, April 11. (Sean Spicer will rue this day for the rest of his life, one hopes.) Mr. Spicer suggested that Bashar al-Assad was somehow worse than Mr. Hitler because he—Mr. Hitler—did not use chemical weapons

My weekend, up and down.

My mom died 24 weeks ago. Since then a former law partner, hero and role model’s wife departed. (The former law partner is Lowell Rothschild. More on him below.) A great, great attorney and larger than life man, Steven Phillips—who was a landlord, mentor, and dear friend—died suddenly the day after Thanksgiving. Just before the end of the year, friends for 50 years lost their wife and mom. She was the woman who asked me and her oldest daughter, driving us home from high school one day, why the school did not teach elocution. (No answer, for I had to look up the word in my dictionary, but I’ve never forgotten the fact that Joan

We Didn’t Start the Fire (Annotated)

[We dedicate this reposting to our ahistorical POTUS. If anyone knows the man, pass this along. The ignorance should astound everyone.]

“Here at MRW we don’t routinely cite to ourselves, and I’m pretty sure we’ve never re-posted. No rule is absolute, however, and when reason dictates that we deviate, we’ll do the right thing.”

Those were our words on April 5, 2015, when we reposted We Didn’t Start the Fire (annotated). We Didn’t Start the Fire was first posted on July 13, 2014. It’s a long piece—5000 plus words—and lots of effort went into putting it together. Billy Joel, a very intelligent, serious songwriter/singer, wrote the song and chose the people