Seeing the way Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump treats people when there’s a crowd around reminds me of a school bully.
(And thanks, in part, to TV news networks, that’s always the case now. Never has the news media covered a candidate so closely and given a campaign so much free publicity. When this foolishness started, remember, Trump had to hire unemployed actors to fill the room when he announced his candidacy.)
The great thing about sports is you can root for any team you want, no matter where you live. There are no rules saying you have to pull for the local favorites. And yes, I have rooted for the Razorbacks all my life, but it was much more fun when I was living in Texas. That same “wild frontier” with no laws also means you can “hate” whoever you want. For me, a baseball lover, it’s an easy choice: the New York Yankees. They’ve won more than anyone else, and with the enactment of free agency and the free-spending ways of owner George Steinbrenner, it was a natural choice to root against the Yankees. It has nothing to do with the people of New York, though Yankees fans are known for being quite nasty when visiting fans try to deal with them at Yankee Stadium. It has more to do with rooting against the favorites, the perennial winners.
Our family didn’t have much money when my brother Pat and I were small, but Mom and Dad made sure we had wonderful Christmases. They weren’t much different from that holiday depicted in “A Christmas Story,” the wonderful 1982 film written by Jean Shepherd, based on his novel “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.” It starred Peter Billingsley as “Ralphie” and featured Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon as his parents.
Our family has spent much of 2015 handling medical issues.
I was hospitalized for six days in March, and my bride served two stints at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock this summer. In Nancy’s case, a midsummer surgery has required outpatient treatments in recent weeks.
As we’ve lived these experiences, we’ve been wonderfully supported by many family members and friends (some even belong to both groups). Some of these supporters have asked to be notified whenever certain appointments, doctor visits, surgeries or other procedures have been completed.
Parents sometimes overdo it when they decide to be creative with their choice of a given name for their child. Some work, as far as being clever, but that doesn’t always translate into an enjoyable time for the offspring, who spends the rest of his life explaining the offbeat name or the cutesy spelling of a traditional name.
A more severe future might face a child being named for a celebrity by a parent who is an overzealous fan of a singer who might be talented (Todd Rundgren or Stefani Germanotta) but chose a publicity-inducing stage name in the early days. I’m betting it’s hard to get by the bullies at school when your name is Grunt or Gaga and you CAN’T sing. Or worse, what if Mom or Dad was a fan of a “15 minutes of fame” celebrity such as Milli Vanilli or Vanilla Ice.
Joe Henning, my good friend of the past 10 years, died last week. He was 62.
That likely means the demise of Sand Hill Media, the all-but-fictitious umbrella company started in our heads to handle all of the creative joint projects that were supposed to flow from my laptop and his pencil or typewriter. Joe occasionally answered his phone, “Sand Hill Media,” but that’s as far as the company got.
