I can understand the reason for a country’s policy to deport immigrants for committing a crime but, until now, I had never heard of anyone being deported for being overweight. A chef in New Zealand is facing deportation because he has a body mass index of 40, and immigration policy is that a person has to have a body mass index of less than 35 if he wants to remain in that country. This man has lost 66 pounds since …
We can all remember the days when a woman would go on a job interview and the first question she would be asked was, “Do you type?” It didn’t matter what position she was applying for, she was still asked whether she could type. Men were never asked if they could type when they applied for a job and, if they were, they almost always said they couldn’t. Perhaps it was an unwritten code that made men afraid to admit …
I don’t know if door-to-door salesmen exist today but in the old days they occupied a special place in the business world. They sold everything from vacuum cleaners to encyclopedia, to magazine subscriptions, to jewelry, and household items. If it could fit in the trunk of their car, they could sell it. We lived in a much gentler society and we weren’t afraid to open our doors to let strangers into our homes. And in those days, I didn’t realize …
Virginia Johnson died this week, leaving behind a legacy that changed the sex lives of women everywhere. She was a pioneering sex researcher who was part of the groundbreaking team, Masters and Johnson, that paved the way for the sexual revolution. The two of them conducted the first modern research on sexuality and the treatment of sexual dysfunction and they wrote several books on their findings. Dr. Masters was the brains behind the research and Virginia Johnson was the brains …
Many years ago, I heard an interview with actress, Cloris Leachman, who was asked how she had stayed married so long. She said that the secret of their success is that they live in separate houses. She made it sound like a romantic thing to do; when they wanted to see each other it was like going out on a date. They appreciated each other more and it kept their love alive. In those days, that was considered a radical …
In the news is the story of a daycare worker who was fired after extinguishing a fire in the building and getting the children out of the building to safety. It boggles the mind how some people are so bound up in rules that they fail to use their common sense. A daycare worker smelled smoke so she rushed out of the room to investigate it, leaving the napping children in the classroom. She found the fire was in the …
The Royal family is always in the news so it’s no surprise that Kate Middleton’s pregnancy was one of the most popular topics in 2013. Once her due date was announced, everyone started counting down the time until the little prince or princess would be born. We now know that the Royal baby is a boy and he was named George Alexander Louis, born on July 22nd at 4:24 p.m., weighing 8 lbs., 6 oz. and that Prince William was …
In the old days, if you didn’t have good credit or your new business didn’t have a credit history, you didn’t stand a prayer of a chance for being able to accept credit cards. If you were eventually able to show a high degree of creditworthiness, you were then allowed to set up a merchant account. The merchant’s problems, far from being over now that he was given the green light for accepting credit cards, particularly for catalog orders where …
My earliest memories of who influenced the political landscape in America was of the various newspapers and the power they wielded. Candidates for every office clamored for endorsements from as many newspapers as they could get. If an influential newspaper endorsed your candidacy, it was almost a sure bet that you would get elected. Before television, the newspapers controlled every aspect of our thinking. If they thought someone was guilty of a crime, they slanted their stories so that the …
When I first heard the term Helicopter Dad or Helicopter Mom, I thought it meant a parent who traveled so much that they rarely had time for their offspring. It seemed to denote a parent who flew in for a very short visit and then was gone again until the next short visit. I have since discovered it means just the opposite. In fact, it’s just a renaming of what used to be called a “stage mother” or a “stage …