This Blogger has an emotional and familial connection to Columbia University, in New York City. As Readers of this Blog know; this Blogger is a very late child. When he was born, he had two brothers, a generation older than he. One fought  the Nazis in Italy and Southern France; one fought the Imperial Japanese on Saipan. In fact the inside family joke was that this Blogger was conceived; in case one of his brothers did not come back from the  war. Very Sparta. The Saipan brother came home, and used his G.I. Bill to obtain his Bachelors and Masters from Columbia University. One of his proudest memorabilia was his diplomas, signed by the then President of the university, General Dwight David Eisenhower. In was through my brother’s good graces, that this Blogger got to meet Kerensky, the  revolutionary head of the democratic Provisional government of pre-Bolshevik  Russia; who had Lenin in his power and yet did not execute him, dooming millions to horrific fates...

This Blogger met Ronald Reagan once; in an anteroom of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church. This Blogger was surprised at how big he was, thick; not fat, not muscle bound like gym freaks but working man thick, stoker thick. They chatted, about a man they mutually admired, Eric Hoffer, the Stevedore Intellectual. Reagan's political enemy, Michael Dukakis, once said he had never met nor seen a man more comfortable in his own skin that Ronald Reagan. And why not? As a life guard, he had pulled 77 people from the water, many of them lovely young ladies. And while at Warner Brothers Movie Studios, as a contract player; he had received more fan letters than Errol Flynn. As the chat wound down, he asked this Blogger one question:  "What did the Soviets make of him?   This Blogger told him the truth; they thought he was an idiot savant, sent by God to destroy them.   This Blogger    was alive when the Soviet Union collapsed, without the need of a cataclysmic World War III. ...

As Readers of this Blog know, this Blogger’s Father was a Union Organizer, a Trotskyite. As Readers of this Blog know; there is a strike in the Entertainment Industry, writers have been on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, since May 2, 2023. The Alliance represents studios, film companies, television producers and streamers that produce entertainment. Actors have been on strike since July 14, 2023. As this Blog is being written, economists are estimating the strikes will cost the American economy, in excess of 5 Billion Dollars. As this Blog is being written, Drew Barrymore has turned scab. The strike has been rancorous; with the strikers thinking they are Red Neck West Virginia miners on the way to the Battle of Blair Mountain; and the Alliance    chiefs thinking they are the mine owners, ordering the slaughter of miners during the Colorado Coalfield War, the Ludlow Massacre. The Alliance has openly wished that the actors and writers woul...