Ward on Words

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day filled with symbols of our great American mythology. Our founders, the European settlers, yearned for a new life free from the restrictions of Europe, so they got on those rickety boats and crossed an ocean to reach an unknown land. The Pilgrims, in their quest for religious freedom, sought Nirvana far from home. The place they landed on was harsh, unforgiving, a landscape that required skill and knowledge in order to survive. And instrumental to their survival, according to the American mythology, were the inhabitants of the "New World." As we all know, the Pilgrims shared a harvest feast with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The modern American Thanksgiving dinner not only gives us the opportunity to give thanks for our blessings, but commemorates the cooperation between Native Americans and foreign born visitors who sought new life in a new world. Of course, cooperation turned into warfare not long after. Another component of America...

In a year that has seen unemployment spike to its highest levels in decades and government debt reach record levels, Goldman Sachs is on track to pay out its highest employee bonuses ever in the firm's history. All part of "God's work," Lloyd Blankfein suggested in a recent interview with the London Times. Here's the intro from that story: "Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private. They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really. There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there. There’s a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 ...

Yes I quibble with Eliot, whose most famous poem, The Wasteland , began with the most famous disparagement of the month of April. November is the cruelest month in the calendar, bringing with it dead skies, the hint of winter and two of the most vivid memorials to our war dead... Veterans Day and the anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg address. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the day we now know as Veteran's Day, we honor those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the greater ideal of honor, courage and country. And on November 19th, 1863, Abraham Lincoln uttered less than 300 words in one of the most famous speeches ever given to honor those who died for their country. Let us always remember that neither Veteran's Day nor Lincoln's famous speech would have happened were it not for the incredible sacrifices of our soldiers. I will show you fear in a handful of dust... said Eliot in The Wasteland, a poem both famous and obscure of me...

Schmuck! That's if you're like most Americans and have seen the value of your retirement fund dip alarmingly with the collapse of the economy. Shoulda been a "top executive!" According to the WSJ , their pensions have risen an average of 19 percent in 2009 - with more than 200 excecs seeing a 50 percent increase in their pension... Also news in the WSJ, the private sector shed more than 200,000 jobs in October and big bonuses are back for Wall Street bankers ... The yin and yang of life in America.

Ayn Rand is all the rage these days (and unbeknownst to me, has apparently been all the rage in certain circles since her career as an author began), with current interest jacked up thanks to the publication of Anne Heller's biography of Rand . In catching up with my reading this weekend, I noticed Newsweek had a review of Rand cleverly called "Atlas Hugged." As I read it, I found myself irritated by some of the thoughts of the reviewer, who found The Fountainhead "a stunning evocation of the individual and what he can achieve when unhindered by government or society." The reviewer pulls a quote from The Fountainhead to support the assertion, a claim by Roark: "I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need... I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to ...

Walmart is getting into the death market. As in caskets and urns used for cremains. When planning a funeral, I suppose it's good to know that there are bargains to be had... Here's a link to the AP story , if you want more details. It's got a great lead: "The world's largest retailer wants to keep its customers even after they die."

…Cannot stand. Thus spoke Abraham Lincoln in an address to Illinois Republicans that he gave in 1858, two years prior to his assumption to the presidency. In his mind, the nation could no longer live half-slave, half-free. Shortly after Lincoln became president, the Civil War began, a terrible and bloody war waged to determine whether we’d live all slave or all free. We know the outcome of that war. Slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, this American house is again extremely divided... between the over-leveraged and the over-compensated. On the one hand, much of our house exists in chaos. Highest unemployment in decades (a rate that doesn't even include those who've given up the search for a job.) Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost each month. Consumer side of the financial system in a shambles. Still loaded with toxic assets. Still crumbling from the weight of consumer loans that consumers can no longer afford. Because as we’ve seen this y...

Richard J. Daley, the father, was known as "the kingmaker." As mayor and as head of Cook County Democratic Central Committee, he controlled the votes of one of the largest block of Democratic votes. Thus, back in the old days, when powerful Kennedys were plentiful, all Democrats seeking the highest political office in the land came to see Chicago's mayor, Richard J. Daley, the man from Bridgeport, hizzoner, the boss. The men who would be president would come to see to see this man who rose to prominence from very humble beginnings. Richard M. Daley, the son, is not a kingmaker. There's no one in America who thinks Daley is the reason Obama was elected president last year. The vast blocks of city voters have been chopped up, segmented into smaller chunks, often powered-up by single issues like abortion. In the third largest city in America, Daley is instead the king, ruling virtually unopposed in all areas. He came to power after a turbulent decade of non-...

He came to the swamplands of the Potomac swathed in a cloud of scandal. He's been ignored since the day he arrived at his new job. And today, my senator, Roland Burris, has me humming a little Janis Joplin right now (lyrics by the talented Kris Kristofferson)... "Freedom's just another word, for nothing left to lose And nothing's all that [Roddy] left me, yah." Yes, Roland Burris rolled into Washington with a a whole lotta nothing in his back pocket. He'd been handed the senate seat by a man charged with trying to sell it, Rod Blagojevich, the Kipling-quoting ex-gov of Illinois – and allegedly a future "Celebrity Apprentice" contestant. (Can one be The Donald's apprentice from behind bars? Because the ex-gov's someday going to stand trial on corruption charges and sometimes such things end up with a jail term....) So Roland Burris came to DC as a lame duck senator, with just two years left in the term Obama left when he became ...

What a strange world we live in. Rare film footage of the young girl whose diary became one of the most moving pieces of Holocaust literature has gone "viral." I find myself undeniably moved by the fact that the brief glimpse we have of Anne Frank in motion was shot to memorialize the wedding of a neighbor. Love and life amid the gathering storm clouds. The world depicted in that video seems unbearably normal. And yet all hell was about to break loose. Some links: NY Times story on the clip The Anne Frank Museum (If you ever have a chance to climb the steep stairs up to the secret annex, it's an experience I highly recommend.) From Anne's diary: "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."