Month: June 2007

Back In the Line

At first blush, Thursday’s story in the Times Metro section that disgraced former Central Labor Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin has returned to work as a rank and file electrician has a certain poetry to it. McLaughlin is charged with stealing from the New York State legislature where he served as an Assemblyman, from his own re-election campaign, from his home local in the Electrician’s union, from the Central Labor Council and, most ignominiously, from a union sponsored little league – over two million dollars in total. The evidence is damnable. That the dapper chief could brush off years of high living and the shame of his fall from grace, and return to work alongside the union brothers he has let down, at a job that is very physically demanding when most men his age are considering retirement is almost, well, admirable. Damn his eyes. I can’t help but feel […]

Here’s To Dad

I mulled over an all-encompassing Theory of Everything as I was squeezing a lemon over my filet of flounder for dinner tonight. First I pondered why seafood and lemons go so well together. I figure it has something to do with sailors (I was in New Orleans during Fleet Week, so don’t blame that spectacle for inspiring my theory). As every schoolboy learns, when sailors of yore discovered that the terrible illness they tended to develop after long months at sea – scurvy – was, essentially, Vitamin C deficiency, they took to sucking on lemons and limes. The Brits must have been early adapters of this health regimen, since we still slur them as “limeys.” I imagine it wasn’t long before some sailors got sick of that silly “pucker” face one makes when sucking a lemon and got the bright idea of squeezing the citrus fruit over the catch of […]