1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick - Book Review

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS 

1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick

1969 was my 29th year, I was there, and this incredibly well-written and well-edited book took me back to a place I nearly missed in my action packed fast moving life. I especially loved the book for its rapid fire factual delivery of the real history. The book is worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS

The FBI declared war on the Black Panther Party, and the Weathermen declared war on America. The Stonewall Riots inspired the birth of the Gay Rights movement, and the Indians of All Tribes’ seizure of Alcatraz Island began the Red Power movement. The Santa Barbara Oil Slick, the Cuyahoga River fire, and People’s Park gave impetus to the Ecology movement. It was the year when the Revolution came to the suburbs, and when they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. In a single year, America saw the peaks and valleys of an entire decade—the death of the old and the birth of the

There had been a darker side to him. Classmates remembered Nixon as a loner with streaks of meanness, even paranoia. Hailing from a modest, middle-class, Quaker family, he would carry a lifelong suspicion of those with privileged backgrounds.

During the inaugural parade, the new president encountered the extremes that would mark much of his term. A float from the group “Up with People” sent good vibes to the onlookers lined up in their winter coats. Cheering crowds greeted him for the first few blocks as the presidential motorcade proceeded on its way from the Capitol building to Nixon’s new home on Pennsylvania Avenue. But as the parade reached 13th Street, a double line of police struggled to keep back a group of war protesters, who threw sticks, stones, cans, and bottles at the presidential limousine while chanting, “Four more years of death!” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win.” One protester brandished a sign that mocked Nixon’s ’68 campaign slogan: NIXON’S THE ONE—THE NO. 1 WAR CRIMINAL. Some demonstrators spit at the police. Others took the small American flags that had been distributed by local Boy Scouts and burned them. It was the first time in the nation’s history that an inauguration parade had been so marred.

Onto 15th Street, the atmosphere changed. Onlookers assembled in front of the Washington Hotel and the Treasury Building applauded the new chief executive. Nixon ordered the sunroof opened so that he could stand and wave to the people—his people.

John Grimsrud's author's page

Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution by Emma Griffin' Book Review

BOOK REVIEW -FIVE STARS

Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution by Emma Griffin

A look at the Industrial Revolution, its beginning, how it got started and the first fifty years.

This book is based on a collection of diaries of the working poor and their struggles to organize, better their lives, and guarantee some kind of economic rewards.

This book is a factual look into one of the most monumental achievements of the human condition and continues to unfold to this day.

EXCERPTS:

German visitor. The young Friedrich Engels spent two years in Manchester in the early 1840s.

His father had organised the stay to give his son a chance to complete his training in his own line of business – the cotton industry. But Friedrich, already deeply involved in the German Radical movement, seized upon the trip as an opportunity to conduct a first-hand study of the lives of the workers the factory employed.

The result, The Condition of the Working Class in England, shone a bright light on the most unsavoury consequences of England’s industrial transformation.

The industrial revolution was undoubtedly a time of economic opportunity, but the weight of existing social structures and cultural expectations kept women firmly shut out.

John Grimsrud's author's page

Doings of Dudley Doolittle 8th Edition Persistence Pays...Or Dudley did it Again

Doings of Dudley Doolittle: This is the name I use in the sometimes hilarious, outrageous, or cynical short stories posted monthly.

A fictitious name will be used in most of the stories. It is there to protect the identity of the guilty.

These true stories are over half a century old or more.

PERSISTENCE PAYS…OR DUDLEY DID IT AGAIN!

Back in the nineteen sixties my friend Dudley took a truck driving job at the Superior Fiber Board plant in Superior, Wisconsin, while he was awaiting his two year stint in the navy to begin. The job wasn’t too complicated, it consisted of driving a dump truck filled with trimmings of fiberboard from the factory to the dump some five miles away, tipping up the box, dumping it as close to the fire as possible, and returning with the empty truck.

As Dudley was making one of his routine trips to the dump one day, he went through his usual procedure, but the fiberboard refused to slide out. Being the clever chap that he was he merely pulled ahead, then backed up and slammed on the brakes to dislodge the cargo…whoops! The load didn’t come out…the front of the truck instead began to raise high in the air, higher and higher, and finally back into the fire it all went…yes it all burned up and Dudley was off to the Navy.

The story doesn’t end here, in fact the plot thickens.

Yes, two years later Dudley was back at the Fiberboard plant and demanding his old job. They refused and Dudley, being a persistent Irishman that knew his rights, went to the proper government agency to put the pressure on management.

Reinstated on his job Dudley made his first trip to the dump. Did his usual routine, and lo and behold his cargo stuck again…Dudley knew exactly what to do, and he did it…yes the unthinkable.

Link to INDEX of Dudley Doolittle Stories

John Grimsrud's Author's Page

My Favorite German Authors

 

My Favorite German Authors

Magic Yucatan, A Journey Remembered by Lilo Linke

Magic Yucatan was written just two years after WWII when the world was still licking its war wounds. The author was a young lady with exceptional literary talents coupled with extraordinary easy-going but inquisitive social-minded insight.

EXCERPT ABRIDGED:

CHAPTER ONE CARNIVAL

I fell in love with Yucatan the moment I set foot in Mérida, its capital. For three months I had been traveling through the interior of Mexico, pushing east all the time. It was an enchanting journey, and in more than one place I felt tempted to stay. But there was always the thought of Yucatan driving me on.

I had intended to travel the last lap by sea in one of the small steamers that ply the Gulf of Mexico. But someone said, "You will be late then for the Mérida carnival."

I had never heard of it, but it now seemed imperative that I should not miss it. I took the next 'plane, and in little over an hour I was in Mérida.

The carnival overflowed the airport. Children in fancy costumes —devils, angels, bullfighters, pierots—or some regional Mexican dress were scurrying about under the very noses of the 'planes. From the terrace groups of society girls waved to us, their faces modeled by Hollywood, their dress a sleek version of the Yucatan costume. A band played, or were there two? Flowers were everywhere, in the girls^’ hair, in barrel-like vases on the floor, or flying through the air, aimed at no one in particular. And if more color was needed, the large mural in the waiting-hall lusciously supplied it.

It was all laid on a background of white—the white of the walls, of the airport building, the dresses, the clouded sky, the flat dusty land. A breeze blew in from the not-too-distant sea, enough to make the flags flap at their poles and let the girls^’ shift-like dresses cling to their bodies trembling with laughter and gentle agitation. The tropics for once had a May morning freshness, at least at this early hour.

For a while all this confused me pleasantly. Then the porter, a young half-breed, raised my small suitcase stiffly to shoulder height, and asked, "Where to?"

"I don't know," I said foolishly. "I forgot to inquire."

He plopped the case down and I stiffened to meet his rebuff. But he merely pushed back his cap the better to be able to scratch his head.

"Well," he said, "well . . ." His smooth face suddenly twisted into the folds of paternal worry.

He motioned me to sit down and wait. In a few minutes he returned. "Okay,^” he said, with the relish of all Mexicans using American slang. It was a joke they shared with their visitors. The few taxis had left by now.

"Carnival. Everything upside down"; the porter shouted to make himself heard above the din of the brass band.

He pushed me and my bag into a station wagon and slammed the door behind me without leaving me time to tip him. A gardenia was lying at his feet. He picked it up, stuck it behind his ear, and grinned at me in farewell, a little cocky and entirely at ease.

He had given instructions to the driver, who took me to a luxurious villa and in turn departed without waiting for tip or fare. A blonde, elegant woman addressed me in fluent English with the grace of a hostess welcoming an expected guest. We climbed a broad flight of stairs, and she showed me a room with damask-covered furniture, adjoined by an American-styled bathroom. Did I want an iced lemonade? I could have a shower or bath any time of the day or night. Lunch would be ready at noon.

I stepped out to the balcony overhanging the garden. Palm trees rustled overhead, imitating the steady swish of rain; through it cut excitedly the clatter of a windmill. Its peculiar noise was to become the leitmotiv of my stay in Mérida. A metal wheel on a grid, the Yucatan windmill has none of the comeliness of the old Dutch mills. They are the symbol of abundance, while the Yucatan mills suggest the dry rattle of a parched throat, "Water, water, give me water!"

That morning, however, I was too happy to listen to it for long. I had arrived in fairyland. And not the least of its wonders was that no one had to carry buckets if I wanted a bath; that the turning of a tap would bring me hot or cold water from an apparently unlimited supply. After the primitive weeks on horseback such sudden ease was magic.

At twelve a bell tinkled and I went downstairs. A large table was laid with old-fashioned silver and delicate china. Orange blossoms looked cool in a glass bowl, ice-cubes floated on the lemonade in the crystal Jug, and fruit piled up on a plate, oranges, bananas, mangos, grapes, a blaze of gold.

My hostess seemed to be the only person in the house. She set dish after dish before me; tomato soup, a steak, mixed salad, ice cream and fruit. When she brought the coffee, she apologized for the simplicity of the arrangements, the poverty of the meal. Both the servants were gone to see the carnival procession in the center of the town, and the three children had also stolen away. Her husband was out on business, but would be back in the afternoon. He would be at my service, if I needed help or advice.

Mérida and the carnival were not what they used to be, she complained, as she walked to and fro. It was now an affair of the common crowd, not, as in the old times, a magnificent show put up by the rich, the decent people. Most of the wealth had been senselessly destroyed in the revolutions. She twisted her mouth in a grimace of contempt and walked out.

Thus I was brought down to earth again. Before long I discovered that Yucatan was like this: enchantment and grim reality always side by side, often even intermingled. It was this contrast which gave its unique, its unforgettable flavor to the entire journey.

Dreaming in German by Claudia Poser

This is the best book I have read in years. It is a memoir of the author's experiences from Communistic East Germany, West Germany, and America as they evolved into the 21^st century from post WWII. This life story is seamlessly interconnected in a style and method that makes you lament the end of the book.

Excerpts from Dreaming in German:

“The stories about war did nothing to make me feel confident that I could handle such a catastrophe. They left me certain that you needed luck to survive. But luck I already had. I was alive now, after the war, in a time when the world had just learned a lesson it could never forget. Nationalism had been exposed as a curse. Everyone had learned war brought no glory, only misery. I hoped that would be enough.”

“I tried to turn back, but I no longer fit and the home I longed for had vanished along with the child I had been.”

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf

Alexander von Humboldt was an exceptionally brilliant, insightful man. He was painstakingly thorough in his research, and he delivered his monumental message two centuries ago. This one of a kind scientist pioneered his research with an original approach. He saw the need for an ecological balance between nature and mans ever encroaching plunder of new frontiers.

I loved the book’s aspects of discovery, enlightenment, and consciousness. Andrea Wulf delivered Humboldt’s message which the world desperately needs to heed now. This huge volume captivated my attention all the way through and I was sad to see it come to an end...it is memorable! 

Author Andrea Wulf writes of Alexander Humboldt:

"During much of his long life, he was the nexus of the scientific world, writing some 50,000 letters and receiving at least double that number. Knowledge, Humboldt believed, had to be shared, exchanged, and made available to everybody. Humboldt ‘read’ plants as others did books – and to him they revealed a global force behind nature, the movements of civilizations as well as of landmass. No one had ever approached botany in this way."

"Humboldt talked of ‘mankind’s mischief … which disturbs nature’s order’. There were moments in his life when he was so pessimistic that he painted a bleak future of humankind’s eventual expansion into space, when humans would spread their lethal mix of vice, greed, violence and ignorance across other planets. The human species could turn even those distant stars ‘barren’ and leave them ‘ravaged’, Humboldt wrote as early as 1801, just as they were already doing with earth."

Gustav Regler was an exuberant activist with exceptional intellect and a brilliant mind. He was a compassionate humanitarian, politically just and publicly empathetic.

Many events impacted this man’s life beginning with his mother introducing the Bible into her bed-time stories. He wanted to trust and came away with memories of his foolish heroism in WWI. He wished he could talk to one of the dead and was conscious of the utter finality of their end. He was imprisoned because he would no longer endure the war.

Hitler’s fascism of the 1930s which he found frighteningly lethal drove him and his social conscience to communism.

Joe Stalin’s twisted and oppressive degradation of the Soviet people drove him away from communism to fight Franco’s fascism in Spain, and ultimately he was imprisoned in a concentration camp in France for being anti-fascist.

He and a shipload of anti-fascist refugees from the camps in France were shipped off to the U.S. and refused entry…Mexico took them in.

The following are quotes from The Owl of Minerva.

Regler to his wife: “We could each think our own thoughts, and we would not let this mad, merciless century drive us apart.”

Regler about his wife:

“It is the only temple that has any link with the cosmos." She loved the Mexican pyramids because they were not graves but altars speaking to Heaven.”

Regler relates how the Russian Communists went to absurd extremes to destroy Regler, his wife, and their adopted home in Mexico.

This is a powerful book of an extraordinary man’s struggle through the tribulations of the 20^th century. I have read it twice.

Gustav Regler wrote many books. Another of my favorites by him is A Land Bewitched: Mexico in the Shadow of the Centuries. I recommend that you read the Owl of Minerva first.

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

This is a novel originally published in 1927 it is a stand alone classic...memorable and unforgettable. One of my favorite lines: “Not for everybody.”

Photo credit: By Unknown author - [1] [2] Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANEFO), 1945-1989, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20450793

Erich Fromm, a prolific twentieth century author with and immense collection of profound essays and books too long to list here...a pleasure to read and ponder.

One of my favorite quotes: “Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them. He would wander around open-mouthed in this heaven of gadgets and commodities, provided only that there were ever more and newer things to buy, and perhaps that his neighbors were just a little less privileged than he.”

The World As I See It and other essays by Albert Einstein

Physically the book is relatively small, but intellectually it is a giant. I positively loved this compilation of essays with accompanying commentary that give insight into one of the world's most profound thinkers.

All of mankind needs to listen up and be aware of Einstein's scholarly advise.

This book is one of my favorites and the messages within are intense.

I recommend “The World As I See It” only to those who are interested in a harmonious world of peaceful coexistence.

In the introduction to this collection Neil Berger, Associate Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Chicago wrote in August of 2010:

Einstein characterized himself as a supporter of cultural and social Zionism, but not political Zionism, thus attempting to stay true to his distrust of nationalism. He wanted the Jews to “solve the problem of living side by side with our brother the Arab in an open, generous and worthy manner.”

Einstein did not have the unquestioned support of the Jewish community in America, and his backing of the Zionist movement was criticized by many who felt that Jews should assimilate to society in America.

The economic and social essays of Einstein reflect his almost wholesale adoption of the current socialist and anti-capitalist views of the 1930s. They were based primarily on his notion of “surplus value of labor.” These views are currently out of favor with the pro-market, capitalist economists of today.

Quote from Albert Einstein:

“This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.”

John Grimsrud's author's page

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

 Book Review - Five Stars

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World relates history that impacted the lives of most all civilizations. The book is well-written, excellently edited, and magnificently researched.

I was immediately attracted to the book about Genghis Khan and the Tartars.

In 2002 my wife and I were in Europe for our yearly bicycle tours. We went to the public library in Eibergen, Netherlands, for internet access, and there at the library we met and befriended many of the refugees from a nearby camp. They were all a captive audience. The government had confiscated their identity credentials and issued them temporary identity cards. Among this group was a young man from Uzbekistan who happened to have a passport stamped as “Tartar.” He was a brilliant multilingual tour guide, but his wife got in trouble with the government, and they fled for their lives. This intriguing story is too big to present here. We have kept in contact.

EXCERPTS:

Genghis Khan’s innovative fighting techniques made the heavily armored knights of medieval Europe obsolete, replacing them with disciplined cavalry moving in coordinated units. Rather than relying on defensive fortifications, he made brilliant use of speed and surprise on the battlefield, as well as perfecting siege warfare to such a degree that he ended the era of walled cities. Genghis Khan taught his people not only to fight across incredible distances but to sustain their campaign over years, decades, and, eventually, more than three generations of constant fighting. In twenty-five years, the Mongol army subjugated more lands and people than the Romans had conquered in four hundred years. Genghis Khan, together with his sons and grandsons, conquered the most densely populated civilizations of the thirteenth century.

Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history. The hooves of the Mongol warriors’ horses splashed in the waters of every river and lake from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.

The majority of people today live in countries conquered by the Mongols; on the modern map, Genghis Khan’s conquests include thirty countries with well over 3 billion people. The most astonishing aspect of this achievement is that the entire Mongol tribe under him numbered around a million, smaller than the workforce of some modern corporations. From this million, he recruited his army, which was comprised of no more than one hundred thousand warriors—a group that could comfortably fit into the larger sports stadiums of the modern era. In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade zone that stretched across the continents. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination and taxed the resources of scholarly explanation.

John Grimsrud's author's page

Doings of Dudley Doolittle 7th Edition - Strength of Hercules

Doings of Dudley Doolittle: This is the name I use in the sometimes hilarious, outrageous, or cynical short stories posted monthly.

A fictitious name will be used in most of the stories. It is there to protect the identity of the guilty.

These true stories are over half a century old or more.

Doings of Dudley Doolittle 7th edition 

This interesting story wouldn’t have happened without the love of my life, wife Jane. She is so much fun to be with and lightens and brightens my life with her cynical and witty Swedish humor. She even laughs at my jokes and loves me. As I say: “I am not the one who married the Norwegian.”

By 1972 with our five year plan completed, Jane and I were a team of two revved up by youthful exuberance, the sky was the limit with no dull moments.

We disposed of all unnecessary belongings, sold our houses, cars, and business. We sailed away on our just launched 46-foot sailing yacht Dursmirg. Our destination was just south, where the wind blew us, when the spirit moved us, and the price was right.

Long story short: Living aboard Dursmirg in the 1970s during the Arab oil embargo years made us into genuine sailors. Our sailing rowing dingy became an essential element in our procurement of fresh seafood, free for the taking. We lived out of the sea. Onshore excursions for shopping and recreation were by bicycle. Our new lives were people powered, going with the tide, not against it.

1978 Jane and John, Flamingo Apts.

We purchased a handyman special apartment in St. Augustine, Florida, the most economically depressed place in America at the time.

Again long story short: One day while working at our apartments renovation project a plumber wanted the building water shut off. The building was 190 feet long, three stories tall, and had 26 units plus a duplex. The shut off was a two-inch ball valve. I got the shutoff key and handled it to the plumber, then pointed out the valve. He took the 6 foot “T” handled key and gave it all the effort he had. Then he exclaimed: “It won’t budge.” My wife Jane took the key from him, and without strain turned the valve.

A fringe benefit of our new life style...we were physically fit, and it really felt good. We were happy.

A leap ahead: After two plus years of pandemic restrictions, Jane and I made our first venture out of town to visit our daughter Grisel, now 38 years old, and her husband. They live and work in Playa del Carmen on the Caribbean coast. Grisel and her husband both work in tourist related jobs. Grisel took every opportunity to increase her knowledge base becoming certificated in therapeutic treatments from health and beauty to massage. Her husband Juan is a multilingual licensed chauffer and tour guide.

During our visit Grisel insisted on giving us full body massages. I was impressed with our little girl’s physical strength. Grisel was not just strong, she was “wonder woman” powerful! No one is going to push her around.

Reflecting on these experiences of strength led me to another memory from back in the 1950s when I ran into a high school classmate in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin.

Paul Siciliano and I were always friendly with each other. He was easygoing and unpretentious. I asked if he would like to go for a boat ride and he said: “Sure.” We zipped across the lake powered by a 60 hp, three-cylinder Scott Atwater, the fastest boat on Lake Nebagamon at the time.

We docked at my parents cabin. I had just purchased a York barbell set. It was sitting out on the patio. Paul was interested, and I asked if he would like to try it. He said “Yes.” I put 170 pounds on it. Paul pressed it over his head with ease. I was amazed and asked if I should increase the weight. He said “Yes.” Next I increased the weight to 190 pounds. This was a challenge for him but straining the bar went up and perceptively bowed under the strain. Incredible!

I didn’t want to cause him bodily injury. That was enough.

Paul casually mentioned his relative Angelo Siciliano, who changed his name to Charles Atlas and became famous with his body building programs. His advertisements beginning in the 1930s appeared in 10 cent comic books.

To refresh my memory of Charles Atlas I read about him in Wikipedia. Reading of Charles Atlas brought back not only fond memories of Paul but recollections of reading those comic books

Link to INDEX of Dudley Doolittle Stories

John Grimsrud's author’s page.

The Tyranny of Public Discourse: Abraham Lincoln's Six-Element Antidote for Meaningful and Persuasive Writing by David Hirsch - Book Review

Book Review - Five Stars 

The Tyranny of Public Discourse: Abraham Lincoln's Six-Element Antidote for Meaningful and Persuasive Writing by David Hirsch

This short intensely intellectually powerful tome evolved out of the great minds of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln who wrote and edited America’s bedrock founding documents. I loved the book’s focused mindset that strictly applied the extraordinary rigid guidance essential to the presentation of these great communications.

EXCERPTS:

Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln light a road to the persuasive structure of the six elements of a proposition. Lincoln put the goal succinctly: “I do not seek applause, nor to amuse the people, I want to convince them.”2 Abraham Lincoln used the logical structure of a six-element proposition to draft the Gettysburg Address.3 Thomas Jefferson used the same structure to draft the American Declaration of Independence.4 The elements are 1) Enunciation (contains a given and a sought); 2) Exposition; 3) Specification; 4) Construction; 5) Proof; and 6) Conclusion. Each element is a structural concept with a one-sentence definition. Proclus preserved the six one-sentence definitions.

Thomas Jefferson was among America’s best educated individuals.8 Abraham Lincoln’s “defective” formal education was less than one year.

September 18, 1858, Lincoln responded to the Douglas personal attack on Trumbull: Why, sir, there is not a word in Trumbull’s speech that depends on Trumbull’s veracity at all. He has only arrayed the evidence [the Construction] and told you what follows as a matter of reasoning [the Proof]. There is not a statement in the whole speech that depends on Trumbull’s word. If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?

John Grimsrud's author's page

Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, MD.

 Book Review - Five Stars

Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, MD: A compendium of healthful guidelines that treat your body and mind to natural solutions for a better life.

I loved the book’s direct to the point delivery, and useful and meaningful solutions.

The book is a great reference text.

EXCERPTS:

How much metal dissolves out of pipes and connecters depends on how corrosive the water is that flows through them, how hot it is, and how long it stays in contact with the plumbing. The corrosivity of water depends on its chemistry—how acid or alkaline it is and how many dissolved minerals are in it. The fewer minerals are in the water, the more it can take up, hence the more corrosive it is. Ironically, some kinds of purified water are more corrosive to metal piping than impure water just because they can hold more dissolved metals. This is an argument against attaching a purifier at the point where water enters the house; it’s better to put it at the end of the piping, near the tap.

In the twenty-first century our livers are sorely taxed. Not only do they have to deal with all the naturally occurring toxins, but they now have to face a staggering array of man-made compounds: medical and recreational drugs, food additives, pollutants and contaminants of air and water, and the dangerous chemicals people are exposed to on the job and in the home. The sum of all this chemical stress may, over the years, contribute to decreasing immune system defenses against cancer.

Minimize exposure to pesticides, herbicides, and other poisons. This is a highly dangerous group of chemicals.

John's Author's Page

Dad's Story in the Doings of Dudley Doolittle

 

The time is right to put this story up. This month is my dad's birthday.  John A. Grimsud was born June 29, 1908. I miss him.

This is a story about Peoples Drug Store in the Roaring Twenties told to me by my dad when I was a child.

Dad was sixteen years old in 1924 while America was riding the speculative economical rollercoaster fueled by post WWI industrial expansion.

Prohibition had the country swilling clandestine bootleg booze in gangster controlled speakeasies

Hyperactive 138 pound Dad was self-motivated at an early age. He had three newspaper delivery routes at the same time employing a helper. He mopped floors and did janitor work mornings before school at Peoples Drug and repaired bicycles in his spare time.

Early one morning as dad was slipping his key into the door at Peoples Drug Store to begin his janitor job, a big long car screeched up to the curb, stopped and three machine-gun wielding men scrambled out.

Dad was pushed inside and forcefully ordered to open the safe at gunpoint. He nervously told the menacing gangsters his only duty was to mop the floors and carry out the trash 

These Al Capone type gangsters were in a big hurry and luckily only locked Dad in the basement coal room instead of blasting him to bits.

In the pitch-blackness of the coal room dad’s thoughts quickly turned to the idea of escape. He felt his way around in the blackness and found the coal shoot leading up to the small street-side door.

This would be his escape route. 

Dad then stealthily crept his way up the coal shoot and carefully pried open its little door. As he cautiously peered out he was terrified to be looking down the barrel of a machine gun. Dad thought that his heart would explode as he gingerly lowered the little door with a trembling hand.

The gangsters grabbed what they could quickly picking up items, breaking into the narcotics drawer, and then sped away with little more than a sack full of Parker fountain pens and lots of drugs.

Dad said that the incident didn’t bother him for about a week and then suddenly flashbacks would startle him out of a sound sleep with sweaty terrifying anxiety.

Dad went on to get his pharmacist license and eventually became the owner of the Peoples Drug Store by the early 1940’s buying it from O. B. Olson, the original owner.

Postscripts:

Those gangsters were apprehended a few weeks later and one of the things that helped convict them were all of those expensive Parker fountain pens.

Five cents: Nowadays five cents doesn’t seem like a lot of money but when I was a kid ten years old back in 1950 it would buy you a newspaper, five U. S. postcards, three second class postage stamps, soft drink, candy bar, ice cream cone, refillable cup of coffee or a bowl of rice at the Chinese restaurant. 

Peoples Drug Store had an ornate soda fountain/lunch counter featuring hamburgers that were greased to kill. My favorite soda fountain beverage at the lunch counter was the 5¢ Coca Cola that came in several flavors all made from extracts known as phosphates, the charged water was added. Cherry flavor with a dash of chocolate was sensational. 

I started working at Peoples Drug Store when I was fourteen cleaning shelves, washing bottles, washing windows, shoveling/sweeping the sidewalk, and burning garbage. 

At sixteen years old I started waiting on customers, stocking shelves, and doing the inventory. When I got my drivers license I did deliveries and got to know a lot of people in the five years I worked there.

The store had three full time pharmacists, Bob Cleary, Bud Dice, and my dad.At the time there were fourteen drug stores in Superior, and none were chain operated. 

There you have some of my Peoples Drug  recollections.

The 1950s: The 1950s opened with witch hunting McCarthyism and Eisenhower's team headed by Richard Nixon and Earl Butts that set out to undo all of Franklin Roosevelt's social justice programs. 

Community oriented mom and pop businesses along with family farming, labor unions, and Indigenous rights vanished. Murdered by capitalism.

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Guckin: A True Story, is the fifth short story in the series Doings of Dudley Doolittle

 Guckin: A True Story, is the fifth short story in the series Doings of Dudley Doolittle

In this edition the character Dudley has the nickname of Guckin

It is true, my friend’s nick name was Guckin and he went on to do some great things in life even though he wasn’t good-looking or well built.

This story is about a time in his youth when he was working his way through college by instructing at a summer camp.

Now Guckin didn’t have a very easy time getting dates with the girls so when he connected with the town beauty he took great pride and pleasure in showing her off as he would drive her about town in his car.

Well it turns out that one night Guckin’s good looking roommate wanted to borrow Guckin’s car for a special date…Guckin just couldn’t refuse and turned over the keys.

Horror of horrors, it turned out that the roommate had taken not only Guckin’s car but he had also taken out Guckin’s girl…Guckin was crushed!

Not one to take these things lightly, Guckin knew he had to take action, and so the plan was hatched.

One thing that Guckin observed was that his roommate was not only good-looking but he was excessively vain and would spend hours primping and combing his wavy thick hair in front of the mirror.

Guckin had it, he was off to the pharmacy to purchase some hair removal cream which he mixed with his roommate's hair cream…the results were like magic and large clumps of his roommate's hair fell out.

The roommate asked Guckin what to do and Guckin told him that he probably wasn’t using enough hair cream.

It worked perfectly well and Guckin was back with his girl friend in no time. Well, the girl friend asked Guckin one day what had happened to the roommate and Guckin told her that he had contracted some unmentionable disease and his hair was falling out so he didn’t want to be seen in public.

The moral of the story is this: You shouldn’t be muckin with Guckin!

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