Mark Knows It All

I have only heard The Prairie Home Companion radio show a few times over the years. I would be away from home, driving around and surfing the radio dial trying to find something to which to listen. It is an odd sounding program, so it always gave me pause. Then I usually started to laugh, and I was hooked. The bluegrass/country music wasn’t bad either. For those of you not familiar with the program, it is a live radio show produced by PBS and broadcast on NPR, the subject of which is every day life in a small Minnesota town. Garrison Keillor is its originator and host. Because my wife is from a small town (Shiloh, OH, pop: 800), I have observed small town life first hand. It IS different than what many of us are used to. Sitting in the American Legion next to the train tracks, with all the doors and windows open on a sultry August night drinking 50 cent beers, one learns what it means to come from a “red” state. At my wife’s 20th year high school class reunion, I learned how to talk a...

I have written before about the diminishing role of males in today’s society. My comments included: 1) the treatment of men as buffoons on television sitcoms; 2) the violence exhibited against men on sitcoms and Lifetime Network television; 3) societal assumption of the feminist view that men and women are “the same”, where science has clearly shown that is not the case; 4) the wholesale adaptation of the “feminized” method of teaching in the schools, the result being a marked drop in male achievement scores, college admissions, and degree completion; 5) the legal system’s unequal and unconstitutional treatment of men in alleged sex abuse and rape cases as well as the inequality of sentencing for female sexual predators. But most disturbing, the importance of the role of fathers has all but been eliminated in today’s society. Modern television shows like Sex in the City , Friends , Roseanne , Queer as Folk and Will and Grace clearly take the position that men are not needed to raise...

My son and I were watching an umpteenth rerun of Mama’s Family very early in the morning the other day. The story line had Mama and her friends dressing up as the Andrews Sisters singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy at a high school dance, and saving the day when the scheduled punk band didn’t show up. Given that punk when out with the “hair” bands of the late eighties and early nineties, the morning was just chock full of dated references. My son is a fan of rat pack chic, and therefore at least knew who the Andrews Sisters were. I started to play some mind games. I have an incompetent 89 year old client who is confined to a nursing home. Going through his personal effects, I found his father’s discharge papers from the army dated 1899, along with a medal for serving in the Spanish American War. His father was 25 when he joined the army in 1887, which means my client’s father was born during the Civil War. That puts me within 2 degrees of separation from the Civil War, and 1 degree of se...

From time to time, we all make a faux pas. For those of you who don’t know the definition, it is a French word the literal translation of which is “mistake”. In our society, however, it has taken on an aura of a social misstep resulting in a high degree of public embarrassment and humiliation. I often say that humiliation is my friend as I faux pas my way through life. My family just rolls their eyes. One of my more blatant faux pas occurred when a church I once attended made a concerted effort to bring more minorities into its congregation. A minority family found its way into our lily white establishment, and I hoped to make a valiant effort in making this very lovely family feel comfortable. As a church dinner approached, I asked our then minister the last name of the new family. His reply: “Oh! You mean the Buppies”. At the church dinner, I proceeded to introduce the family as the “Buppies”. I came to find out that it was a slang word for a black yuppie, a term with which I was unf...

I generally watch Fox News. Fox has gotten a bad rap of being the “Bush” television network, and/or conservative to a fault. By definition to some, that makes it evil. It isn’t. It portrays divergent points of view, including the conservative point of view which through my personal observation gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop on the broadcast networks. It certainly is the antithesis of Dan Rather. The same can be said for Fox and Friends, the Fox morning show, versus the Today Show. That being said, on the weekends, I tend to watch either CNN or the MSNBC for different perspectives of the news, plus the fact I don’t really care for the Fox weekend teams which tend to be smarmy. Today is Memorial Day. When I woke up, I turned on CNN at 7:30 to see if the world blew up last night. The first story I saw had to do with the American atrocities that allegedly occurred in Iraq sometime ago. It was portrayed something akin to the Holocaust. The next story concerned itself with the war protes...

Everybody has to have a guy. Seinfeld did an entire episode based on knowing a “guy” that could get or fix anything. Having a guy makes life livable. It brings it down to a human scale and builds a community of people around you that you can count on when in a jam. My family has several “guys”, and we use them regularly. Here are some of them. There is Ronald and Robert, our car guys. They help keep my son’s 1993 Cadillac operational at a reasonable price. We see them often, and they tell me time to get rid of that bomb as often as I see them. They are two brothers who started a mechanics business behind their Lube Stop franchise. They have a big ole dog named Avalanche, who sleeps in the middle of everything. If you are lucky, or not depending on your point of view, your car will be getting a brake job while Avalanche is getting a haircut, especially if he has rolled over on this back showing his altogether!!!!!! There is Tom, our tile guy. Tom’s regular job is being a cop. It is goo...

Whether by design or default, and while you were looking the other way, George Bush has given the United States the biggest change in our national thinking since Franklin Roosevelt. During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt increased the role of the Federal Government, and it came to be looked upon as the ultimate problem solver for the national ills. That idea continued over the next 60 years as the Federal spending and bureaucracy continued to grow. Yes, it even grew through the years of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, both ostensibly conservative Republicans who talked a good game, but paid more lip service than action in limiting the size of the Federal Government. George W. Bush, on the other hand, doesn't say much. But his actions, or inactions, speak plenty. For many years, I viewed his behavior as a total lack of leadership. But then a series of events began to happen which individually don't mean much, but taken together, show a major shift in power from the Fed...

One of my pet peeves is the marginalization of the white male in modern America. The extent of the disdain for the white American male finally hit home with me in a community organization to which I belonged. It was a leadership type of organization whose raison d’etre was to provide leadership training among young adults in our community and provide pathways for community growth. At my own expense, I put together a breakfast for what few influential people I know, and we proceeded to outline some alternatives. I presented our work to the director of my organization, who was a single, black working woman. Rather than the work, what she most interested in was the makeup of the group that I had invited. Her words were “They look mighty male and mighty white”. Not only did this effort die on the vine, but a contingent group of 20 extremely community minded individuals looking to help this community was crushed out of existence because they were “business oriented” rather than politically ...

On Saturday, I took my wife on our semi-annual shopping trip to Chico’s located in the beautiful, but let’s remodel it anyway, Beachwood Mall in Cleveland. For those folks not familiar with Chico’s, it is a ladies clothing store with an innovative concept. It sells clothes that fit. One of the fastest growing clothing store chains in the United States, the management realizes that most women don’t look like Brittany Spears, and really don’t want to show their belly buttons and as much skin surrounding said buttons from Poughkeepsie down below to the Twin Cities up above. The result has made Chico’s stock one of the darlings of Wall Street. Other times we have done this, we traveled to Cleveland during the week. But yesterday was such a beautiful day, and we had some other shopping to do, we thought we could handle Saturday in our stride. WRONG. Chico’s was a mad house. The women had just gotten their “cents off” coupons, and they were grabbing and pushing and tripping, and well, it was...

We got a new kitchen range this week. Our house is 34 years old, but the range was at least 10 years older than that. We bought our house from my aunt and uncle who were in their late 70’s when the built it. They brought the range from their previous house, and they had lived there for many years before. The old range was a “modern” wonder. It was a Frigidaire Flair range. It sat on top of built in cabinets. The top part had two ovens whose doors opened up rather than out. And the bottom part of the range was a drawer in which the cook top was located. You pushed a button and pulled it out from under the ovens. I guess you would call it a cook under. It dominated our kitchen’s decor, and we received many comments on this marvel of 1950’s kitsch. But Frigidaire, in its wisdom, decided to stop making the Flair in the early 1980’s, and soon thereafter stopped making replacement parts. For those of us lucky to have these things, the net result of the company’s business acumen was we couldn...

Friday night we treated my visiting mother-in-law to dinner at the Cafe Capri, a local long-time Italian restaurant recently moved to a brand new, sophisticated location. The food is outstanding, and it has turned into a local see and be seen hangout. We pointed out to my mother-in-law some of the notable people in the place. We also commented on some of the no goodniks that often frequent many of the local dining establishments. She looked out the window and pointed to two men walking in the parking lot and said, "There are a couple of shady looking characters right there". We all looked out, and there in all of his tanned, Palm Beach halfway house glory, was Mickey Monus. As he walked into the restaurant and then into the bar, the minions flocked around him as if he was the Messiah himself. I have observed the slow but steady return of these celebrity thugs to the area. There is an Italian phrase for people like this. Roughly translated it means "They put on the face...

Those of us from Mahoning County know about corruption. The entire area has always had a bad reputation as a mob connected area. Saturday Evening Post called us “Bombtown, USA”. Sometimes I will take visitors on “The Mob Tour” to show various landmarks of nefarious repute including gathering places, business fronts, locations of the various car bombings and shootings ranging from the late Calla Mar restaurant to the corn field where one of the syndicate leaders was murdered a few years back. The degree of this dirty business could not have happened without a complete corruption of the area's legal and political system. As a lawyer, I can tell you that it was difficult to make a living in a system where justice was governed by fee drawers, kickbacks, fee couches, and judicial and prosecutorial payoffs. It wasn’t that the system was corrupt. It was how deep the corruption went, including such innocuous entities as the local water and sanitary district, school boards, and local dentis...

Chicago, the vocal group, not the city, released a song back around 1970 the first line of which goes “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” In my household, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding “NO”! This morning, while getting ready for church services, I looked at grandfather clock in the hallway and it said 9:45. The clock in the family room said 10:20. The clock in the kitchen said 10:05. I looked at my watch, and it said 5:08. The battery stopped. And the clock on the coffee maker simply blinked as the power had gone out for a few minutes yesterday. The clock in my car said 9:00 as I had yet to change it from standard time to daylight savings time. So using my extraordinary powers of deduction, I concluded that it was 10:00. The clock in the family room runs fast, and is now 20 minutes ahead of where it should be. We keep it that way so we don’t dally over our morning coffee as we start to get ready for work at 6:00 in the morning. ...

The United States is once again experiencing unprecedented growth with low inflation. While General Motors and Delphi are making the headlines, other businesses have been prospering. US Steel, for example, is making historically high profits. The restaurants are packed. Travel is up. Unemployment is at historic lows. Americans truly have much for which to be grateful. Maybe that is why we have our heads in the sand. Since the end of World War II, the United States has enjoyed 60 years of peace and prosperity. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been hot wars re: Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm. But large scale conflicts of world proportions have not been experienced by successive generations. Not in any of the above three conflicts have Americans at home been asked to sacrifice anything: not fuel; not sugar; not rubber; not nylon; only American lives in such statistically low numbers that the loss on the general population was barely felt at all. Are 45,000 dead Americans in Vietnam ...

We usually keep our flashlight in the cabinet under the television. We do that to make it handy in case the electricity goes out. For those of you who don’t live in the Mahoning Valley, our electric company is First Energy. Remember the northeast United States and Canadian blackout 2 years ago? That was First Energy. It started 40 miles from here in Akron. Of course, that is the one time OUR electricity did NOT go out. Go figure. But on any given seventy degree’d sunny day, you can bet we will be setting our digital clocks and resetting our surge protectors as the power pops on and off. For reasons known only to First Energy, several weeks ago my side of my street experienced such a power pop off. The houses in back of my yard had power, and the houses across the street had power. We did not have power, and I had paid the bill and everything. It happened at 2:00AM, a dreadful event for an insomniac like me. I franticly looked for the flashlight under the television in the dark. It was...

The white flag is flying and I signed the surrender documents in the form of a cell phone service contract. After years of being the only lawyer in Mahoning County without one, I now proudly carry my own cell phone in my shirt pocket along with my pens, credit card receipts and laundry claim tickets. And if I set it just right to “manner mode”, instead of ringing, it shakes and shimmies right in my pocket and gives me a little thrill at no extra charge. Who knew? I have heard that crack cocaine is instantly addicting, but nothing can compare how dependent I have become on this little flip top thing in a single week. I have called everybody, and at all hours of the day. And I also found out that when I call them, my number is permanently implanted into their little flip top thing and they know how to call me back. My little screen that does everything but blow my nose said I had 6 voice mail messages waiting. Who knew? So then I had to spend an hour last night trying to set the voice ma...

In its history, The United States of America has only been invaded by foreign countries three times: the British in 1812, the Japanese in 1941 and by the Afghanistan/Taliban sponsored Al Qaeda in 2001. Whether or not one agrees with American policy in Iraq, I don’t think there exists any debate on the propriety of the subsequent American led Afghan invasion. The Taliban represented one of the most, if not the most, repressive regimes in modern history. Music was banned. There were mass executions in soccer stadiums for the most trivial of offenses. Women represented a slave class subject to complete control of their spouses. If they disobeyed their spouses, they could be executed. Female circumcision was widely practiced. The country was ruled by a group of Islamic clerics implementing the "Islamic" laws of the "religion of peace". NATO joined in the effort in Afghanistan, and is currently in charge of Afghan operations. NATO and the United States propped up Hamid K...

When I was younger, my wife and I made it a point to see all movies nominated for Best Picture of the Year prior to the Academy Award's television show. As I got older, I switched to seeing selective winners. After paying to see American Beauty , an Academy Award winner which in my humble opinion was one of the worst movies ever made, I simply stopped going to the movies on a regular basis opting instead to buy the DVD’s of movies on the level of Porky’s 1, 2 (my favorite), and 3 , and Clueless . This year’s nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture looked particularly bleak, making me think that Hollywood needed a good dose of Prozac. Brokeback Mountain got the headlines. It isn’t that I am homophobic, but I can see that sort of thing for free at home on Will and Grace , Six Feet Under , Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: and going really hard core, Queer as Folk on Showtime. Oh my!!!!!!!! I was also familiar with the topics of Munich, Good Night and Good Luck , and Capote ...

My neighbor grows cabbages in her front yard. I don't mean close to her house. She grows 'em right smack dab in the middle of the lawn, complete with a fence to discourage those wascally wabbits. Not only cabbages, but also various asundry other vegetables. My neighborhood certainly isn't the most luxe in my area, but it can hold its own. It is an older neighborhood with big wooded lots and towering old growth trees. It borders the country club, but the newer houses on the other side of the golf course are larger and much more expensive. Yet visually it is certainly among the most attractive areas in the county. So I suppose I should be angry with the constant gardener. But I'm not. Alice is one of the many people in my community who enrich my life. She is a sweet elderly lady, a widow. When we moved here, she was the first to welcome us. She is always there to greet you with a smile and a big hello. She still works part time selling ladies cosmetics. She plays bridge w...

If I were a geneological expert, I would do a linealogy on the breakup of AT&T. The United States had spawned, through the miracle of capitalism, one of the most successful and enviable communication networks in the world. Ma Bell, in addition to making our phone system dependable and sure, was also the quintessential widows and orphans stock on which many a financial plan was built. Then along came MCI and Sprint, who decided they wanted a piece of the long distance action, and wanted to use AT&T's infrastructure to do it. The courts agreed, and in a monopoly busting frenzy, midwived the birth of Ameritech, Nynex, BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, and US West taking away "Telephone's" local service. AT&T kept the long distance business, while being forced to allow Sprint and MCI to use its telephone wires for their cut rate service. In addition, big, bad AT&T was subject to continual governmental supervision, while its new ...