DON'T REPEAT HISTORY

          DATELINE:  EUROPE--Times are tough.  People are unemployed.  They are desperate for relief.  They need someone to blame--even if that someone has nothing to do with the situation.  Enter a loud, violent voice that makes fake promises.  The people of Europe make poor choices--and names like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin go down in infamy.

          DATELINE:  U.S.A.--Times are tough.  People are unemployed.  They are desperate for relief.  They need someone to blame--even if that someone has nothing to do with the situation.  Enter a helpful, soothing voice that makes real promises that he can and will keep.  The American people make an excellent choice--and the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt goes down as the best of our history.

          DATELINE:  HERE AND NOW:  Times are tough.  People are unemployed.  They are desperate for relief.  They need someone to blame--even if that someone has nothing to do with the situation.  Enter a loud, violent voice that makes fake promises.  Don't repeat history.  Don't make a poor choice--Don't let another evil name go down in infamy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHEN I WAS SIX

          I am not sure whether or not any of you will find this interesting, but I have always found it quite humorous--and more humorous still that I can remember this after so many years.  Here goes:  When I was 6 years old, I decided that I wanted to become a writer (and never changed my mind thereafter).  I thought it might be best to start by writing poems. (Years later, one of my college profs told me I was the "world's worst poet" but that he really liked my short stories and my first chapters of a novel.  But I digress.  When I was six, I didn't know the finer points of poetry, so I came up with the two following, and rather laughable, attempts at the art of poetry:

"He dropped his gold watch to the floor,

It mattered to him not a bit.

If that had happened to my watch,

I surely would have had a fit.

Because a watch that toils away,

Telling time both night and day,

Surely feels bad when you say,

'I'd have bought a new one anyway.'"

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"A mother and her only son

Would think it really jolly fun

To eat a thirteen-day-old bun."

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          LOL!  Yeah, I know this is kind of stupid, but I think of it as being in the same genre as that great Irish poet from "The Joyce Country" in Ireland--James Joyce--and his "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," in that I loved his first chapter when, at the age of four, he was sitting under the kitchen table and thinking to himself as a four-year-old might.  So, if you hated the poems from my "baby days" you should consider the fact that other authors have gone back to their early childhood memories in the writing of their later novels.  As my Mom used to say:  "It is what it is."

          Have a good day, my dear readers!