Year: 2013

Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

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Time is running out and I haven’t told you the half of it: of cruising the Packard Proving Grounds at 140 in Bill’s E-type (ka-pow! went one of his Atlas Bucrons; we stopped to find a fist-sized hole in the tread), or in his retrofitted stick-overdrive Packard Caribbean; touring the bars and dives of the Florida panhandle, in search of some old automotive duffer; entertaining Austin Clark at the Dearborn Inn; Bill driving Brooks Stevens’ Excaliburs at Indy; meandering Hershey looking for Nash dealer signs….

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health care
WSC in 1940 (photo by Walter Stoneman, U.S. Library of Conbgress)
Churchill and Health Care (2): An Ongoing Discussion

Churchill and Health Care (2): An Ongoing Discussion

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"A question Churchill had to face in his time was: if you are for the social safety net, includ­ing health care, how do you pre­vent that from build­ing a soci­ety of "drones" (his word), ulti­mately dom­i­nated by a bureau­cratic elite? Churchill answered that ques­tion in many ways: the social safety net is sim­ple jus­tice, he said; with­out it the 'peo­ple will set their faces like flint against the money power'  A con­sti­tu­tion should pro­tect the peo­ple against this ten­dency."

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Churchill-Syria Analogies: A “Syrious” Situation

Churchill-Syria Analogies: A “Syrious” Situation

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Inter­est­ing Churchill-Syr­ia hits on Google Alerts for Sep­tem­ber 8th:

 Will Durst, in “Pied Piper of the Potomac” (Sum­mit Daily):

Every­one pre­tends not to be knee-deep in the icky, tricky, sticky Syr­ia sit­u­a­tion. You might say Wash­ing­ton is in a Semi-Syri­ous mode right now. And a Semi-Not-So-Syri­ous mode. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Because this whole affair is rid­dled with enig­mas and mys­ter­ies enough to make Win­ston Churchill spin his conun­drums right off. And rumor has it, he har­bored huge conundrums.

He has that right. I don’t know if Will Durst is a Churchillian, but he cer­tain­ly has Churchill’s knack for coin­ing words.…

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The Browning of Detroit

The Browning of Detroit

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Detroit, 2013— A cor­re­spon­dent sends “25 Facts about the Fall of Detroit That Will Leave You Shak­ing Your Head,” by Michael Sny­der of the Eco­nom­ic Col­lapse Blog:

Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teem­ing metrop­o­lis of 1.8 mil­lion peo­ple and it had the high­est per capi­ta income in the Unit­ed States.  Now it is a rot­ting, decay­ing hell­hole of about 700,000 peo­ple that the rest of the world makes jokes about.

When in July 2013 Detroit announced that it would  file for Chap­ter 9 bank­rupt­cy, the move was stopped at least tem­porar­i­ly by an Ing­ham Coun­ty judge:

She ruled that Detroit’s bank­rupt­cy fil­ing vio­lates the Michi­gan Con­sti­tu­tion because it would result in reduced pen­sion pay­ments for retired work­ers [and that] bank­rupt­cy fil­ing was “also not hon­or­ing the pres­i­dent, who took [Detroit’s auto com­pa­nies] out of bankruptcy”….How…

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Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (3)

Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (3)

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Con­clud­ed from Part 2…

Staniel Cay is an active stopover for sail­ing yachts with an affa­ble yacht club for lunch. We spent an hour mean­der­ing its wind­ing lanes and admir­ing the col­or­ful cot­tages. On the way back we stopped at Com­pass Cay to “swim with the sharks”—big, friend­ly nurse sharks which behave like aquat­ic dogs, nos­ing up to a water-lev­el dock to be fed bits of conch and allow­ing their sand­pa­per backs to be scratched.

These nurs­es are quite dif­fer­ent from your image from “Jaws” (and as vet­er­an Bahami­an divers know, we have noth­ing that threat­en­ing in local waters any­way).…

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Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (2)

Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (2)

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Con­tin­ued from Part 1…

Once reached, the gem­stone islets of Exu­ma invite you to mean­der at a delib­er­ate pace in placid, gin-clear waters. There were sail­boats and cruis­ing lots galore along the islets, and you can see why. Sail­ing from one to anoth­er, drop­ping anchor by whim or fan­cy, is an expe­ri­ence that will wash the world away.

Every islet is dif­fer­ent and has its own attrac­tions. At Ward­er­ick Wells Cay is the Exu­ma Cays Nation­al Land and Sea Park—a good first stop after cross­ing over from Eleuthera. A marine fish­ery and native plant pre­serve, it occu­pies 176 acres.…

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Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (1)

Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (1)

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EXUMA, BAHAMAS, FEBRUARY 5TH— Get­ting from our home island of Eleuthera to oth­er Bahami­an Fam­i­ly islands is com­pli­cat­ed, usu­al­ly requir­ing air trav­el via Nas­sau. But the near­est of the Exu­ma Cays is only about 40 miles from Cape Eleuthera, or 65 miles from Governor’s Har­bour, and you can do that in under two hours in a fast boat. So off we went from Cupid’s Cay aboard Capt. Paul Petty’s immac­u­late Mar­lin 35 skiff, Mar­ti­nis & Bikinis.

The date was our anniver­sary, so it couldn’t have been bet­ter timed. Paul and his affa­ble mate Dwayne had six pas­sen­gers, includ­ing three res­i­dents of Rain­bow Bay and three Cana­di­an ladies, one of whom orga­nized the expe­di­tion.…

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drift
“I didn’t say that. I wish I had.” —WSC in old age. Above: Drifting into Trinidad, March 1961. Churchill, 87, visits the Governor’s residence, Port of Spain, during a cruise aboard the Onassis yacht Christina. Lower right: Dr. Eric Williams, who in August 1962 became the first prime minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: How Quotations are Invented

Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: How Quotations are Invented

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Drift it is….

Churchillian Drift is just the tick­et. I have been look­ing for a term to describe the numer­ous pot­ted, inac­cu­rate Churchill quotes. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its trousers on.” That is big right now on Twit­ter. “Suc­cess is not final, fail­ure is not fatal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.” Every­body uses that one repeatedly.

“If you’e going through hell, keep going.” No one knows who said that, but it wasn’t Churchill. Then there is: “If I were your hus­band, I’d drink it.”…

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