Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Memoir. As much as can be mocked of the genre — (1) Was the life of “X,” no matter his or her accomplishments, so fascinating that we’d want the least of details? Often no, and (2) Memory even corrected by research distorts both the facts and the truth — I […]
Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Commodity. I didn’t know that was a bad word. During the early years when I covered business while reporting a lot of subjects, I learned that one invested in commodities. It is an article of trade or commerce, especially a product that can be processed and resold, such as in […]
Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Last Monday, the 7th, newspaper publisher Walter E. Hussman, Jr. had an op-ed piece published in The Wall Street Journal. The essay already had been distributed to employees. The Journal apparently cut his first graf, a soft intro. It read fine this way. As usual the hyperlink won’t be provided […]
Here I am, a James Lileks fan, and I can’t think of a thing to say that hasn’t already been written about his predicament. Maybe I shouldn’t have read all of the articles and a number of the blogs on his, er, transfer. “Transfer.” Lileks has been a humor columnist for the Star Tribune of […]
A pair of problems seem as different as their solutions in huggable Fayetteville, but they’re not, really. It’s all about power, after all. The scary power play is how the local electric company, Southwestern Energy Power Co. (called Swepco everywhere but the phone book when you need to report an outage, where it’s AEP, or […]
I’m trying to kill my library. Not the Fayetteville Public Library, my own stash. They sag shelves in the living room, dining room, sunporch, office, two bedrooms and the laundry room of our manse, Shady Hill. We’ve lived here eight years, and it’s time for painting the walls, even behind the books. A gallon or […]