SST Blog

11/13/17 I woke up this morning to read of the passing of gossip columnist, Liz Smith. Full disclosure: I have never read her column. I never read gossip columns, watch those shows on TV, or read or watch that stuff on Facebook, but I felt sad when I heard of Ms. Smith’s death. Maybe it’s a sign of the times—we don’t need her kind anymore.   I’ll be honest; I’ve always liked her. I’ve seen her many times on TV, either on news shows or being interviewed. Unlike all her competitors, she liked and admired the people she reported on,...

11/8/17   When Joe Temperley would complain about the music business, he had two favorite expressions: “Art for art’s sake, but money for Christ’s sake,” and “Music by the yard.” Joe was a true artist. He was who he was. He never pretended to be anyone else. When he played, he bared his soul. He was a virtuoso and an original. You only need to hear him play one note, and you know it’s him. He died at the age of 88 a year and a half ago, and played almost to the end. His music was always immediate and...

11/5/17   When I was growing up, my parents would take us to the Catskills (also known as The Mountains or the Jewish Alps) or other places where after gorging ourselves on the most unhealthy, cholesterol-laden food on the planet, we would be entertained by jugglers, magicians, singers and a Latin band. What was it with Jews back then and Latin music—everybody dancing to cha chas, merengues, mambos? You’d think we were related to Ricky Ricardo. But the best part of the show was the comic.   They were always men of my parents’ generation or older. There were famous...

10/25/17   That’s how it starts; “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” The Constitution—the greatest political document ever written. I realize that it is flawed. The 3/5 Compromise got corrected when we supposedly ended slavery. I say supposedly, because although slavery was outlawed and voting rights were guaranteed by amendments to the Constitution, people of color have been denied many of their rights and have been and still are treated as second class citizens. We are a nation that espouses high ideals, but doesn’t live up to them.   I’m not...

10/23/17   Honor thy father and mother.  It sounds simple.  These people brought you into the world and taught you how everything works.  They are not perfect.  Deal with it.    We spend a lot of time blaming our societal problems on the breakdown of the nuclear family and our inability to transition from traditional primitive societal structure to the modern post-industrial world.  This is not a new problem.  When Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere, they saw themselves and their culture as being superior to the hunter/gatherer Native Americans.  They then set out to push these inhabitants off their...