Lazarus's News & Word Bits
Classmate and Attorney Barry Lazarus has sent in both "good humor" for you to ponder as we think about our distant past, as well as some sobering information. The News & Bits that impress him he hopes will impress you also.
Item #11: (Sent in on April 21, 2024)
THE 19 LAWS OF LIFE
1. Law of Mechanical Repair
After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee.
2. Law of Gravity
Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe.
3. Law of Probability
The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.
4. Law of Random Numbers
If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers.
5. Variation Law
If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.
6. Law of the Bath
When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone will ring.
7. Law of Close Encounters
The probability of meeting someone you know INCREASES dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.
8. Law of the Result
When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, IT WILL!!!
9. Law of Biomechanics
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
10 . Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena
At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.
11. The Coffee Law
As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.
12. Murphy's Law of Lockers
If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.
13. Law of Physical Surfaces
The chances of an open-faced jam sandwich landing face down on a floor are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.
14. Law of Logical Argument
Anything is possible IF you don't know what you are talking about.
15. Law of Physical Appearance
If the clothes fit, they're ugly.
16. Law of Public Speaking
A CLOSED MOUTH GATHERS NO FEET!
17. Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy
As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it OR the store will stop selling it!
18. Doctors' Law
If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor; by the time you get there, you'll feel better. But don't make an appointment and you'll stay sick.
19. The Law of Television Entertainment
As soon as you find a television program that you really like, it will be cancelled.
Item #10: (Sent in April, 2024)
Maxine Nails It
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Senior citizens are constantly being criticized for every conceivable deficiency of the modern world, real or imaginary. We know we take responsibility for all we have done and do not try to blame others. HOWEVER, upon reflection, we would like to point out that it was NOT senior citizens who took: The ambition out of achievement.
And, we DO understand the meaning of
YES, I'M A SENIOR CITIZEN! I'm very good at opening childproof caps.....
I'm awake many hours before
I'm smiling all the time, I'm sure everything I can't find is I'm wrinkled, saggy, lumpy, I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Let's be happy, while we're still here.
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Item #9: (Sent in April, 2024)
GRANDMA's Apron
Remember making an apron in Home Ec? Remember Home Ec? If we have to explain "Home Ec" you may delete this. I just don't have the energy anymore. Read on.
The History of 'APRONS'
I don't think our kids know what an apron is.
The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few and because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons required less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.
It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.
And when the weather was cold, Grandma wrapped it around her arms.
Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.
From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables.
After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.
In the autumn, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.
Send this to those who would know (and love) the story about Grandma's aprons.
REMEMBER:
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.
The Government would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.
I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love.
Item #8: (Sent in December, 2020)
Pandemic Medical Testing
Urine Test for Old Men
My urologist’s office called the other day and explained that my scheduled appointment would now be done over the phone due to the coronavirus.
One hour before the scheduled teleconference, I was instructed (via email) to administer my own urine test. This was to avoid those lab tests and costly co-pays that your doctors tell you to get at their health clinic’s labs, and because they're shutdown too.
Directions for determining your urologically-related health condition:
Simply go outside and pee on the front lawn. Then look carefully:
If ants gather around your urine: YOU LIKELY HAVE DIABETES.
If you pee on your feet: YOU PROBABLY HAVE A PROSTATE PROBLEM.
If it smells like a barbecue: YOU COULD HAVE HIGH CHOLESTEROL.
If your wrist hurts when you shake it: MOST LIKELY OSTEOARTHRITIS.
If you return to your house with your penis outside of your pants:
YOU HAVE COME DOWN WITH ALZHEIMER'S.
Item #7: (Sent in December, 2020)
Could this happen to you out there in the community,
instead of occurring at one of our Class Reunions?
Item #6: (Sent in July, 2020)
A FASCINATING PIECE OF HISTORY
Very interesting piece about the surrender of the Japanese, ending WWII. I bet most people didn't know this. Of course, we were only 5 years old when this happened! I wish that there was an account of who ordered this and who drafted and approved this surrender plan. Who says that Americans do not have a sense of history and culture?
Why did the US choose a US Navy Iowa-class battleship as the location for Japan's surrender in World War 2 even though they were in Tokyo Bay and could have used a building on land? Pure symbolism. Nothing says "you're utterly defeated" than having to board the enemy's massive battleship in the waters of your own capital city. A naval vessel is considered sovereign territory for the purposes of accepting a surrender. You just don't get that if you borrow a ceremonial space from the host country. In addition, the Navy originally wanted the USS South Dakota to be the surrender site. It was President Truman who changed it to USS Missouri, Missouri being Truman's home state.
The Japanese delegation had to travel across water to the Missouri, which sat at the center of a huge US fleet. It's a bit like those movie scenes where someone enters a big-wig's office, and the big-wig sits silhouetted at the end of a long room, behind a massive desk. The appellant has to walk all the way to that desk along a featureless space, feeling small, exposed, vulnerable and comparatively worthless before the mogul enthroned in dramatic lighting before him. By the time he gets there the great speech he had prepared is reduced to a muttered sentence or two. In addition, the USS Missouri flew the flag of Commodore Perry's 19th century gun-boat diplomacy mission that opened the closeted Edo-era Japan to the world and forced upon them the Meiji restoration which ended the rule of the samurai class. The symbolism here is pretty clear - "this is how we want you to be, and remember what happens to countries that defy us." It was particularly humiliating for a proud country like Japan, and that was entirely the point.
The symbolism of the ceremony was even greater than that. The ship was anchored at the precise latitude/longitude recorded in Perry's log during his 1845 visit, symbolizing the purpose of both visits to open Japan to the West. Perry's original flag was also present, having been flown all the way from the Naval Academy for the ceremony. When the Japanese delegation came aboard, they were forced to use an accommodation way (stairs) situated just forward of turret #1. The freeboard (distance between the ship's deck and the water line) there makes the climb about twice as long as if it had been set up farther aft, where the freeboard of the ship is less.
NOTE: This was even more of an issue for the Japanese surrender party as the senior member, Foreign Affairs Minister Shigemitsu, was crippled by an assassination attempt in 1932, losing his right leg in the process. The #1 and #2 turrets had been traversed about 20 degrees to starboard. The ostensible reason for this was to get the turret overhangs out of the way to create more room for the ceremony on the starboard veranda deck, but in fact this would have only required traversing turret #2 had it been the real reason. In reality, the turret position also put the gun barrels directly over the heads of the Japanese. They were literally standing “under the gun.”
The honour guard of US sailors (side boys) were all hand-picked to be over six feet tall, a further intimidation of the short-statured Japanese. The surrender documents themselves, one copy for the Allies and one for the Japanese contained identical English-language texts, but the Allied copy was bound in good quality leather, while the Japanese copy was bound with light canvas whose stitching looked like it had been done by a drunken tailor using kite string. After the signing ceremony, the Japanese delegation was not invited for tea and cookies; they were shuffled off the ship as an Allied air armada of over 400 aircraft flew overhead as a final reminder that American forces still had the ability to continue fighting should the Japanese have second thoughts on surrender.
And now you know the rest of the story ...
Item #5: (Sent in May, 2020)
Thought you'd enjoy this! It's one you want your Children and Grandchildren to read. They won't believe this happened, but it DID.
Harry & Bess Truman
Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.
The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
When he retired from office in 1952 his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There was no Secret Service following them.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale."
Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise."
As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale.
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!
I say dig him up and clone him!
IN GOD WE TRUST...GOD BLESS AMERICA
Item #4: (Sent in August, 2019)
Quite Descriptive – Nailed it!
A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus crashed yesterday losing its entire load. Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, mixed up, surprised, awed, dumbfounded, nonplussed, flabbergasted, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless, and perplexed.
When insults had class
"He had delusions of adequacy
-Walter Kerr
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
-Clarence Darrow
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."
-Moses Hadas
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
-Mark Twain
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
-Oscar Wilde
"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one."
-George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
-Winston Churchill, in response
"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."
-Stephen Bishop
"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
-John Bright
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial. -Irvin S. Cobb
"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."
-Samuel Johnson
"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
- Paul Keating
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
-Charles, Count Talleyrand
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
-Forrest Tucker
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
-Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
-Mae West
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
-Oscar Wilde
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."
-Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
-Billy Wilder
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I'm afraid this wasn't it."
-Groucho Marx
Remember When ... Poor ? Everyone was poor during WW 2 and prior to 1950.
I grew up with this old horrific life style of inconveniences and some how survived. This message comes from my old buddy who was my next door neighbor in St. Louis Park pre-teen mostly the late 1940s.
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'Hey Dad' asked one of my kids asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up? ''We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.' I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had. Count all the ones that you remember, NOT the ones you were told about! Your ratings at the bottom.
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Item #3: (Sent in the spring of 2018)
A little history, most people will never know, of the war that raged in the time of our relative youth.
Interesting Veterans Statistics off the Vietnam Memorial Wall.
There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall, including those added in 2010.
The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 57 years since the first casualty.
The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth, Mass. Listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965.
There are three sets of fathers and sons on the Wall.
39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.
8,283 were just 19 years old.
The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old.
5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock was 15 years old.
997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam ..
1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam.
31 sets of brothers are on the Wall.
Thirty-one sets of parents lost two of their sons.
54 soldiers attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia. I wonder why so many from one school.
8 Women are on the Wall, Nursing the wounded.
244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall.
Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons.
West Virginia had the highest casualty rate per capita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.
The Marines of Morenci - They led some of the scrappiest high school football and basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town of Morenci (pop. 5,058) had ever known and cheered. They enjoyed roaring beer busts. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest. And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci's mining families, the nine graduates of Morenci High enlisted as a group in the Marine Corps. Their service began on Independence Day, 1966. Only 3 returned home.
The Buddies of Midvale - LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played ball at the adjacent sandlot ball field. And they all went to Vietnam. In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 deaths.
The most casualty deaths for a single month was May 1968 - 2,415 casualties were incurred.
For most Americans who read this they will only see the numbers that the Vietnam War created. To those of us who survived the war, and to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these numbers created. We are, until we too pass away, haunted with these numbers, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. There are no noble wars, just noble warriors.
This is a reminder for those who served during this time, a few of whom may have come from our Class of 1958, and those who care to remember the war in our time.
Item #2: (Sent in the fall of 2016)
Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word murgatroyd?
Lost Words from our childhood:
Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really! The other day a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said what the heck is a Jalopy? OMG (new) phrase! He never heard of the word jalopy!! She knew she was old but not that old...
Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle...
by Richard Lederer
About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry."
Back in the olden days we had a lot of Moxie. We'd put on our best bib and tucker to straighten up and fly right.
Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moly!
We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!
Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell?
Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers.
Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.
We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, well I'll be a monkey's uncle!, or, This is a fine kettle of fish! We discover that the words we grew up with,- the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.
Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We blink, and they're gone. Where have all those phrases gone?
Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it.
Hey! It's your nickel.
Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper.
Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers.
Don't take any wooden nickles
Heavens to Murgatroyd!
It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills.
This can be disturbing stuff !
We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times.
For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age.
We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more,except in our collective memory. It's one of the greatest advantages of aging.
See ya later, alligator!
Item #1: (Barry's Aphorisms of 2013)
First: Definition of APHORISM:
1: a concise statement of a principle, or
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under the laws they've passed.