Aging

poor georgie’s almanack:

Fullmerite, the opposite of Kryptonite. 

Today Paul Fullmer’s wife Sandra informed legions of his fans that Paul is struggling with pneumonia and under hospice care.

The long time head of Selz/Seabolt, a Chicago public relations company, Paul hired me to lead the company’s Washington, DC office.

He is a gentle, but firm man, an extraordinarily thoughtful strategist, writer, and editor.  Paul is the smart affable type of boss few have the good luck to work with.

Occasionally, I flew into Chicago for meetings.  If the timing was right, Paul would invite me to lunch with a few personal friends.

Not surprisingly, because Chicago is such a big-time sports-infused kind of town, even before the waiter could take our orders, there would begin a discussion of the latest rumors about the Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls and, especially his beloved Notre Dame. 

One day new topic arose … aging.  That was the day I became a Fullmerite, a follower of Fullmer.

Kryptonite, you might remember, is an alien mineral that drains Superman of his powers.

Fullmerite is a concept that has the power of making anyone a super man.

What Paul projected was to enjoy life as much as you can, do the best you can, and most of all, be a nice person.  It can be empowering.

Paul Fullmer is a very nice man.

I love that guy.

George Kroloff



Paul and Sandra Fullmer (center) pose with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer during an annual meeting of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.  Sandra is a world class golfer. 
(Photo courtesy of Paul and Sandra Fullmer)

NEW YEAR'S PROVERB

New Year’s proverb.

 

As of heads of state going back further than the successors of Genghis Khan kept forgetting. 

 

One who measures his success by comparing it with a foreign ruler is starting off the New Year on the wrong foot.

 

 

Dark Materials

poor georgie’s almanack

His Dark Materials #1. 




A true Presidential Debate story that ends in a terrible pun.

While flying into St. Louis in 2000 to work behind the scenes at a presidential debate I read a review that said a trilogy of books written by Philip Pullman was even better fantasy than the Harry Potter.  Nineteen years later, Pullman’s trilogy is the basis for the HBO series “His Dark Materials.”

When the first day of set-up for the TV debate finally ended I set out to buy Pullman’s “The Golden Compass, and a cigar, a bottle of red wine and a big chunk of cheese.

The team working with the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates was very comfortably housed in a Ritz-Carlton hotel.  My upper floor room featured a glass paneled door with a permanently attached gauze-like curtain inside.  The door opened to reveal  a small balcony with a small round table and a small chair.   I rearranged a couple floor lamps just inside the air-conditioned room to shed just enough light through the curtain to be able to read the book on the balcony.

Then I dug into the cheese and filled the big wine glass.  A hotel towel was my placemat.  Immediately, I was enveloped by Pullman’s writing.  

At about page three, with eyes riveted on the words, I reached for the glass and inadvertently tipped it over.  The contents spilled out onto the rim of the patio.

Glass didn’t break.  Cleaned the table with the towel.  No harm done.  Refilled the goblet, and on to page four.

Maybe 15 minutes later, the book’s fantasy spell was abruptly broken by a very scary real-life rustling noise from behind the glass door.  A huge shadow appeared on the gauze curtain … it looked like a very big man, or maybe a Rottweiler standing on two legs, a top leg touching the door knob.

I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no way to yell or even breath because my wildly beating heart was exploding inside my narrowly constricting esophagus.

The door slowly swung open and a dapper giant of a man quietly asked, “Are you alright?”

It took but seconds for my heart to slither back into it’s assigned cavity and the reason for an unexpected visit from Hotel “Security.”  

Someone below had seen red drops dripping from my balcony and assumed it was vital fluids.

Thus explaining why, in fantasy cops and robbers tales, police officers often are called bloodhounds.

nazi image, disturbing fact

poor georgie’s almanack:

Disturbing thought and image. 

DNA researchers report that, through intermarriage, all native Europeans are cousins with a common ancestor born around 1000 AD. 

Thus, Nazis killed their relatives.

In my mind is the black widow spider that eats it mate.

JFK SHOT PART 1

poor georgie's almanack
I was asked a couple times this week, "Where you were when JFK was assassinated?" 

The incident in Dallas occurred 12:30 pm Central Time, Friday November 22, 1963. At that very moment my Chicago chamber of commerce co-workers were wishing me goodby at a private lunch. 

Susan and I already were packed and ready to roll to Washington, DC where I would take a job working on a Kennedy-initiated Food For Peace program concentrating on Latin America. 

The chamber of commerce staff photographer had doctored up a large fake photo showing Mr. Kennedy shaking hands with me. At about 12:45 pm, as I lifted the photo high so all could see and laugh, a waiter burst into the room and shouted, 

 "The president has been shot."

Like

Duh!

Nov 18, 2019
poor georgie’s almanack:

Today I read a blog for people who spend their spare time looking through telescopes into the dark night sky. 

Answering a question about the odds of seeing a particular event, someone wrote that the chances of observing it would be astronomical. 

photo Witch’s Broom Nebula

OLIGARCH

poor georgie’s almanack

OLIGARCH

Noun: A very rich business person with a great deal of political influence. Some, but not all, thought to be corrupt.

There is more to come

poor georgie’s almanack
Reminder: 
All your daily newspaper, online news-feed, social media and radio/TV are just the first rough draft of history. 

Ukraine: It's not just about us.

poor georgie’s almanack

Ukraine: It’s not just about us.

The date was October 4, 1993.  I was staying in a Hungarian friend’s apartment in Buda-Pest. When the Soviets ruled he had fled for his life. The scars on his psyche and his nation were fresh.

We had just heard that the Russian military was bombarding the Parliament building in Moscow to settle a political fracas.

“Aren’t you worried?” I asked. 

“No,” he answered, “we now have Ukraine between us.”

Moses is missing

poor georgie’s almanack

Fires rush down mountains as smoke plagues millions of citizens’ lungs and eyes.  A sputtering, suffering friend in the Golden State coughs out, “Where is Moses when we need him?”

(I know the theology and politics are wrong, but I am sure you get the point.)

poor georgie’s almanack

This is totally weird.  

All those old paintings of Adam and Eve reveal that they had belly buttons.  

Think about it.

 

LIFE IN A CELL COMPLIMENTS OF HOWARD HUGHES

About every two years, a Nobel Prizes is awarded to a scientist whose work is funded by HHMI ... the institute where daughter Amy works.  

Yesterday, a Nobel went to William G. Kaelin, Jr. of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and two partners whose research involved cells and oxygen.

It seems odd to some people that the HH stands for Howard Hughes.  His estate funded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  

HHMI probably is the biggest private underwriter of the most basic research into causes of bad things happening inside human bodies.

See news release at hhmi.org

poor georgie's almanack

Yesterday’s poor georgie’s almanack was my true story about an empty bottle of slivovitz, a typewriter and the New World Information Order.  

You can see it and a great silk screen print of an Underwood typewriter that hangs on my office wall, along with previous poor georgie’s almanack entries right here at “poor georgie’s almanack” 

or at georgekroloff.blogspot.com 

or

just google “poor georgie’s almanack"

Typewriters and the New World Information Order

Typewriters and the New World Information Order

Yesterday, Martha Mills asked a question about using a manual typewriter on Facebook. It prompted the following.

Oh, the stories those key-bangers told! One of my favorites involved research for a report to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee about dramatic changes in international communications. I was in Belgrade.  It was the late 1970s.

At that time, except for its news about Yugoslavia, Tanjug, the government news agency, was considered by Americans to be producing a pretty solid fact-based product, particularly its reporting on what was happening in China.

The head of the news agency wanted to have his two-cents in the report. He invited me to what I thought would be his office. It turned out to be a dreary, dark, brick walled room that felt like it's original purpose was a holding pen for anti-government protestors.

We were alone with one table, two chairs, our notepads, pens, pencils, and portable typewriters. In the middle of the table were two glasses and two full bottles of slivovitz, a wicked high-octane regional drink that dissolves the enamel of human teeth and sterilizes a drinker's plumbing system.

The journalist was a very big man. After a few drinks he seemed to be six-foot-36. Within a half hour we were best-buddies, laughing at who-knows-what because his English was raw and my knowledge of Slavic languages hadn't surfaced. Still hasn't.

My new friend’s volume (vocal and physical) grew exponentially over the next hour-and-a-half. My mind was sliding into a slippery sea of slush. My questions were getting longer, dimmer and slurrier, matching his English.

But his hands, especially his fingers, had grown up to the “gigantic” mark on a digital size-o-mometer. At that point, all I could concentrate on was one question, "How could this guy report using his standard gauge portable typewriter?” Each of his fingers would hit at least two keys.

Can't remember if I asked it.

I probably heard a lot that was relevant to The New World Information Order. At the time the elites in First, Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds (Rich countries, Commies, Poor countries and the Dirt Poor) were hot-and-bothered about the issue. Inasmuch as my notes were indecipherable and my hangover was indescribable, that meeting never made it to the report, which became as controversial worldwide as I had hoped. Although I didn't like the zingers from Africa, a couple of them really hurt.

This story may be relevant today when we are beset with dire reports about the information missing from the summary of Mr. Trump’s infamous call with his fellow TV comic, the current president of Ukraine.

If my experience is relevant (and it is not) the code word for the White House back story could be SLIVOVITZ!

++++++++++++++++

My blog and Facebook posts include many items like this. Most are much shorter. Some include names I can remember. Among them are Phyllis Diller, Judy Garland, and John W. Bubbles in Chicago, John Wayne in Panama, and FDR aboard ship with the Saudi King. The title is "poor georgie's almanack.” Just Google it.


Silk screen of Underwood by Anne Duncan

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Impeachment and the other work of Congress … some context. 

In the first two days of July, 1862, with the Civil War fully ablaze, President Abraham Lincoln signed two Acts that arguably created the most important underpinning for his nation’s long term future. 

Congress had passed legislation to create and finance a transcontinental railroad.  It would largely be paid-for by selling millions of acres of land near the railway for farming and towns. 

Those two Acts were crucial in keeping the isolated American West from creating its own country, as the South was trying to do.  A vast portion of the sales funded Land Grant Colleges in every American state.  The schools generated the “smarts” needed to power the Industrial Revolution. 

As unsavory as the 1862 Congress was, most of the members could walk and chew gum at the same time (as in, work on more than one thing at a time while looking ahead). 

Sometimes it appears the current Congress is just chewing gum.

————————————————————————
Here is more background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-the-Morrill-Act-Still/132877

The following is interesting background and culturally curious.  For instance, it doesn’t mention the thousands of Chinese who built the western part of the railroad, noting only the Irish immigrants and Civil War vets who built the eastern part.




https://www.historynet.com/transcontinental-railroad
————————————————————————

They are not political worlds apart.

poor georgie’s almanack:

Maybe you watched an hour of MSNBC yesterday AND Laura Ingraham’s show on FOX News.

Both discussed impeachment.

Actually it wasn’t like they were viewing the unfolding story from different worlds.

More like different universes.  

FOUNDING MOTHERS - AMERICA 2.0

FOUNDING MOTHERS - AMERICA 2.0

INITIAL DIAGNOSIS AND PATIENT PLAN OF CARE FOR THE FOUNDING MOTHERS
America’s lack of clear direction can be traced to the beginning.

There were no Founding Mothers.  Only Fathers.

And then a prototype emerged.  Her name was Sacagawea.

She was the bilingual Native American who accompanied the 1805-06 Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery.  It was a military expedition that traveled over the northern plains, through the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and back.

The Corps of Discovery’s 18-month journey was prompted by a big idea.  The United States had recently doubled its size with The Louisiana Purchase.  No one really knew what was in the package that the French had sold to the young nation.  Lewis & Clark were to report to President Thomas Jefferson what they discovered.

Sacagawea’s skills as a translator and her knowledge of difficult terrain were invaluable.  Probably most important was her calming presence on both the Lewis and Clark crew and the Native Americans they encountered who might otherwise have been hostile to the strangers.  Sacagawea all the while was caring for her son, born just two months before departing on the very rough excursion.  www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/sacagawea

My prescription to cure America’s current multiple personality disorder will be called Sacagawea.

It will be a plan written and overseen by a new kind of organization titled, “The Founding Mothers.”

In hi-tech terms, they will write the code and oversee the implementation.  This is not a feminist vision, it is a practical vision (see point 4 below).

BACKGROUND:  The developers of the America 1.0 were The Founding Fathers.  Their product has been tested and it more or less worked.  But, in medical terms, its body is aging.  The skeleton, or framework, is more brittle.  Communications between the brain and the heart have seriously deteriorated.  “Things” just aren’t like the good old days.  

It will take a different skill set to guide America through the turbulent terrain ahead.  There needs to be a calming and creative leadership presence.  There is an urgent need to develop partnerships with the warring tribes inside the American body and among the increasingly dangerous territories of the world.  America needs the guidance of wise and stern mothers.  The United States and the world need modern day Sacagaweas.

In medical and psychological terms, the Founding Mothers plan of care will be designed to pull the county’s head-butting tribes out of their mutual depressions.  They will be women who see the nation and the world’s problems not as single issues but tightly interwoven.  People who have vast resources and understand how to implement big ideas.  People who can focus on the future and use the best of the past.

The initial Founding Mothers board of directors will be women with immense non-governmental resources behind them, but understand the possible roles of government in an ever more complicated world.

Here is a beginning.
Find one prominent woman executive who will convince three other women with vast resources to form the precursor to The Founding Mothers. 

She may be Ursula M. Burns, Chairman and CEO of Xerox; Melinda Gates, Gates Foundation; Lynsi Snyder, In-n-Out Burger CEO; Rebecca M. Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin (or another female university CEO); Mary Barra, General Motors CEO, Condoleezza Rice, a person of general/admiral rank, or Gabriella Franco Parcella, CEO Mellon Capital.  The list of possibilities is almost endless.

Each of the three or four Founding Mothers will task their organizations to create plans for the most logical and doable programs to handle North America’s gut wrenching current and impending crises, all of which seem to be interconnected.
 
Startup funding will come from the board member’s organizations and non-political foundations.

Bring in the men as appropriate.

To be continued.

###

If you think the above has the seed of a good idea, pass it along.

If not, just pass on it.

George Kroloff, September 23, 2019

Some things you can't buy, some you can.

Went to the boundless Brookside Gardens to see the buds, bees, butterflies and bask in the beauty and breathtaking solitude.  We stopped at Dollar Tree on the way home. 

I bought some anti-itch lotion.

poor georgie's almanack

some

Duck!

poor georgie’s almanack:

This is Goofy.

When a map of the Americas is rotated 90 degrees we see a duck!

IF you don't take any medications don't read this

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Globalization alert. A new book estimates that 80% of active ingredients in your medications come from China and India.  (China RX: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine)

What if that’s fake news, what if the number is 90%?

My country doesn’t stockpile drugs.  Does yours? 

My country’s regulators don’t have enough funding to monitor all drug imports.  Does yours?

SERVICES

poor georgie’s almanack:

One obvious reason America’s health care, infrastructure, education, personal safety, etc., are way behind other modernized nations … their citizens and businesses pay more taxes, so they get much better government services.

 “Duh!”

 

The mechanics, or physics, or both of a pun

I do not understand a paradox.

I do not understand a quantum.

I do not understand cats.

I certainly do not understand physics, philosophy, electricity nor most heavy scientific stuff.

But, I do recognize a pun that deserves to be a classic.

**%#!**$#

 poor georgie’s almanack

My grandparents complained about the “dirty” vocabulary of their kids.  

My parents threatened to wash my mouth out with soap.  

Next thing I knew I was bitching at my kids’ language.  

And today, I swear, the little ones are just talking shit.  

Beauty is like Gravity

Aug. 7, 2019

poor georgie’s almanack:    

No one totally understands beauty or gravity, but both sure are attractive.  

Toast

poor georgie’s almanack: 

A savvy friend says the primary fear of white-bread voters is the browning of America … a fear that too many citizens will be born with the skin color of a Bethlehem Jewish man named Jesus. 

They have a half-baked idea that their life style will be toast.  

No Irish or Italians need apply ... send them back

poor georgie’s almanack: 

My Facebook friends of a certain age post things like “always remember what grandma told you!”  History tells us that some of their grandparents didn’t like Irish and Italians.  They wanted to send them back to where they came from.

Sad story

July 16, 2019

poor georgie’s almanack

Sad story:  

He wiped away her tears … and accidentally her eyebrow.  

picture from pinterest  

diphthong

 July 13, 2019

poor georgie’s almanack:

Two student English teachers practicing their unique approach to explaining dip-thongs. 

some things don't seem to change

poor georgie’s almanack

Lyrics being sung on stage June 10, 1878.

(In parliament) I always voted at my party's call,

And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

I thought so little, they rewarded me

By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

Don't blame Trump. Don't blame Pelosi.

poor georgie’s almanack. (About a 20 seconds to read.)

In concept, Democrats want to build up existing infrastructures and services, usually using tax money.  

Republicans, of course, want the same things (like better health, roads, etc.).  

The R’s generally want businesses to pay for them, and for the businesses to make money, which will be taxed after expenses are passed on to the users who, amazingly are the same people as the taxpayers.  

The unfortunate truth is that nothing will happen until WE, the ordinary taxpayers and voters, agree that either way WE will have pay for them.  

If we don’t agree, forget about America ever again being the shining light on the hill.  

We will just flame out. 

Morality

 poor george’s almanack:   

Morality. 

Some things do not change.

Dr. Seuss cartoon October 1, 1941.

Question #3

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Millennials question for candidates #3.  

I worry that I cannot to pay off my college loans, find reasonable housing and medical care, afford to raise a family, take care of my parents, and breathe clean air.  

What do you suggest other than an opioid?

The Hole Truth

poor georgie’s almanack:

Genealogy and Astronomy are so much alike.  

The more you investigate, the deeper you get into a black hole from which nothing escapes.