the next Bobby Fischer?

 

A chess prodigy, at age 13 Bobby Fischer won a game which was dubbed "The Game of the Century". At age 14 he became the youngest ever U.S. Chess Champion, and at 15 he became both the youngest grandmaster (GM) up to that time and the youngest candidate for the World Championship.

 

At age 20, Fischer won the 1963/64 US Championship with 11 wins in 11 games, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. He won the 1970 Interzonal Tournament by a record 3½-point margin and won 20 consecutive games in the last seven rounds of the Interzonal and in the Candidates Matches, the latter including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps. When the first official FIDE rating list was published in July 1971, Fischer was the highest-rated player by a wide margin.

Fischer won the World Chess Championship in 1972, defeating Boris Spassky of the USSR, in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, it attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.

 

In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, chess's international governing body, over one of the conditions for the match. Under FIDE rules, this resulted in Soviet GM Anatoly Karpov, who had won the qualifying Candidates' cycle, being named the new world champion by default. 

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

 I was just a few years out of college when Fischer became the World Chess Championship. Inspired by his success, I bought his book, and learned how to play chess. As of today, I have not played chess in years, and my chess board and pieces disappeared YEARS ago.

Could anyone possibly be better than Bobby Fischer? The answer is yes, and the individual involved may surprise you.

Once upon a time a 7-year-old refugee living in a homeless shelter sat down at a chess board in school and learned how to play. His school then agreed to his mom’s plea to waive fees for him to join the chess club.

The boy wasn’t any good at first. His initial chess rating was 105, barely above the lowest possible rating, 100.

But the boy, Tanitoluwa Adewumi — better known as Tani — enjoyed chess as an escape from the chaos of the homeless shelter, and his skills progressed in stunning fashion. After little more than a year, at age 8, he won the New York State chess championship for his age group, beating well-coached children from rich private schools.

This month, as a fifth grader, Tani cruised through an in-person tournament in Connecticut open to advanced players of all ages and won every game. He emerged with a chess rating of 2223, making him a national master.

At 10 years 7 months and 28 days, Tani became the 28th-youngest person ever to become a chess master in the United States, according to John Hartmann of U.S. Chess. Tani had one of the fastest rises, for he began playing chess only at the relatively late age of 7. And he’s aiming higher.

“I want to be the youngest grandmaster,” he told me. “I want to have it when I’m 11 or 12.” The youngest person ever to become a grandmaster, Sergey Karjakin, achieved that honor at 12 years 7 months.

Tani has watched the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” about an orphan girl and outsider who proves a chess prodigy. “I definitely did see myself in it,” he said.

He may see himself more directly on the screen. A book Tani and his parents wrote about their journey has been optioned for a feature film by Paramount Pictures. The script is being written by Steven Conrad, who wrote “The Pursuit of Happyness,” and Trevor Noah is to produce.

The family fled Nigeria because of fears of Boko Haram, the terrorist group, according to his father, Kayode Adewumi, who now is a real estate agent with Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

When Tani won the state championship, several private schools offered him places, but the family decided to keep him in the public school that had nurtured him. The Adewumis also used the $250,000 contributed by readers to start a foundation that helps other homeless people and refugees.

The larger lesson of Tani’s story is simple: Talent is universal, while opportunity is not. In Tani’s case, everything came together. His homeless shelter was in a school district that had a chess club, the school waived fees, he had devoted parents who took him to every practice, he won the state tournament (by a hair) and readers responded with extraordinary generosity.

But opportunity shouldn’t require a perfect alignment of the stars. Winning state chess tournaments is not a scalable solution to child homelessness.

 We need to support all children — including those who aren’t chess prodigies. That requires policy as well as philanthropy, so let me note: President Biden’s proposed investments in children, such as child tax credits and universal pre-K, would revolutionize opportunity for all struggling children.

Maybe we can be inspired by the wisdom of America’s newest chess master. When asked how he feels when he loses, Tani said “when you lose, you have made a mistake, and that can help you learn,” he told me. “I never lose. I learn.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/sunday/homeless-chess-champion-tani-adewumi.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

the scent of a woman

Scent of a Woman is a 1992 American drama film produced and directed by Martin Brest that tells the story of a preparatory school student who takes a job as an assistant to an irritable, blind, medically retired Army lieutenant colonel.

The film is a remake of Dino Risi's 1974 Italian film Profumo di donna, adapted by Bo Goldman from the novel Il buio e il miele  (Italian: Darkness and Honey) by Giovanni Arpino and from the 1974 screenplay by Ruggero Maccari and Dino Risi. The film stars Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell, with James Rebhorn, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Gabrielle Anwar.

Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance and the film was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published. The film won three major awards at the Golden Globe Awards: Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Motion Picture – Drama.

The film was shot primarily around New York state, and also on location at Princeton University, at the Emma Willard School, an all-girls school in Troy, New York, and at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_of_a_Woman_(1992_film)

 Pacino’s closing comment is a classic!

 one of the most stirring speech -- scent of a woman - YouTube 

Long before the movie was released in 1992, “the scent of a woman’ was born in France.

On May 5, 1921, a date of symbolic importance to its iconic creator, the perfume Chanel No. 5 officially debuts in Coco Chanel’s boutique on the Rue Cambon in Paris. The new fragrance immediately revolutionized the perfume industry and remained popular for a century.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was the daughter of a clothing peddler and a laundrywoman. She learned to sew in the convent where her father sent his three daughters after the death of their mother when Coco was only 11. From these humble beginnings, she quickly established herself on the fashion scene when her lover, a wealthy textile magnate named Étienne Balsan, helped her set up her first boutique. By 1921, Chanel was a celebrated clothing designer and socialite, known both for wildly popular, groundbreaking clothing designs and for her high-profile romances and larger-than-life public image.

 It was one such romance that led to the creation of Chanel No. 5—while vacationing in the South of France with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, an exiled Russian nobleman who had taken part in the killing of Grigori Rasputin, Chanel met the perfumer Ernest Beaux. She began to work with him on a fragrance that would bear her name, allegedly challenging him to create a scent that would “smell like a woman, not like a rose.”

According to legend, Beaux or his assistant accidentally added an “overdose” of aldehydes—chemicals that helped a scent last longer but which were used sparingly by perfumers of the time, who preferred natural ingredients and fruity scents—to one of the samples he prepared for Chanel. A number of reasons have been posited as to why Chanel settled on this scent: many argue that the aldehydes reminded her of soap, a scent that took her back to her mother’s laundry, while others hold that she picked the fifth sample of a batch that Beaux offered because of her lifelong obsession with the number five. Chanel later said the concoction “was what I was waiting for…a woman’s perfume, with the scent of a woman"

The fragrance would officially debut, along with her new collection, on the fifth day of the fifth day of fifth month of 1921.

 .

                                                 

Even before it debuted, Chanel No. 5 caused a stir. Chanel hosted a party for some of her most fashionable friends, sprayed the perfume around the table, and, according to legend, was asked about the scent by every woman who passed by. The fragrance was an immediate hit, considered to be “cleaner” than many of the most common perfumes but also more “mature” and adult, in keeping with Chanel’s public image. Now considered by many to be the first modern perfume, Chanel No. 5 is as recognizable and enduring as Chanel’s most famous clothing designs, and the designer herself.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/chanel-no-5-perfume-launches

You can still buy Chanel #5 today at several high-end department stores. Macy’s offers it in several sizes, starting at $82.00 for a 1.5-ounce bottle. A 6.8-ounce bottle will set you back $220.

You can also buy it at Walmart – but Macy’s is actually cheaper.

In between the introduction of Chanel #5 in 1921, and the release of “A scent of a women” in 1992, the song “love potion #9 was released by the Clovers in 1959, but it reached even higher popularity when the Searchers released their own version in 1964. It hit #3 on the U.S. Billboard hot 100.

Let’s take another trip down memory lane:

Love potion number 9, The Searchers - YouTube

 Love potion #9 smells like turpentine and looks like India ink.

If you’re looking for “the scent of woman, you’re not going to find it here!

The Weight

 

The 1960’s were a time of good music in America. Early on, Bob Dylan started the movement, and was quickly followed by the Beatles, Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson  Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Carlos Santana ,the Doors, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and many others.

The culmination of the decade, of course, was Woodstock, which occurred in August of 1969. Most of the people that I mentioned above performed there, and the music from at least one of the groups eventually became part of a sound track for a movie.

One of those groups was named The Band, and its lead performer was a guy named Levon Helm, who died on April 19. 2012, exactly 9 years ago today. In addition to his musical talents, Helm was also an accomplished actor, appearing in Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Right Stuff, Shooter, and The Electric Mist. Ultimately, he won 3 Grammy awards for his music, in 2008, 2009, and 2011.

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

The movie, “Easy Rider”, was released on July 14, 1969. Produced for a budget of $360,000, it was a box office hit, and made Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper very rich men. Box office receipts for the movie exceeded $60,000,000.

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

A large part of the appeal of the movie was the music. Although you can easily listen to the soundtrack for the entire movie, the song that really stands out is “The Weight”, which featured the drumming of Levon Helm.

Levon continued to play this song long after the movie was released, and he always seemed to have a lot of fun while performing it.

 Levon Helm The Weight - YouTube

 The magic of the 1960’s can never be replicated. Although Woodstock was a seminal event, the 40^th anniversary version was much tamer, and the 50^th anniversary event never happened, although anniversary albums were released on the 10^th, 20^th, 25^th, thirtieth, fortieth, and fiftieth anniversaries.

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

Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison both passed 8 years after the end of Woodstock, at the age of 27. In addition, both Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper managed to survive their wild lifestyles, and lived to be 79 and 74, respectively.

Take a moment to reflect on the passing of a great musician – and take o load off your mind.

 

the land of sky-blue waters

 

The word Minnesota comes from the Dakota name for the Minnesota River, which got its name from one of two words in Dakota: "mní sóta", which means "clear blue water"or "Mníssota", which means "cloudy water". Dakota people demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mní sóta.^[Many places in the state have similar Dakota names, such as Minnehaha Falls ("curling water" or waterfall), Minneiska ("white water"), Minneota ("much water"), Minnetonka ("big water"), Minnetrista ("crooked water"), and Minneapolis, a hybrid word combining Dakota mní ("water") and -polis (Greek for "city").

Hamm’s beer adopted the slogan “sky-blue waters” for its delightful beer commercials in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

I was born in Minnesota in 1947, and lived there until 1981, when I was transferred to Wisconsin. We made frequent trips back to the state from both Wisconsin and Illinois (which we moved to in 1986), but the trips largely ceased after 1998, when mom passed.

In the last 11 years, we have only been back to the state on two occasions, both of which were funerals that were held in January, the coldest month of the year.

Minnesota has two significant drawbacks:

If is the one of the coldest states in the nation, and the 10,000 lakes within its borders providing nesting for enough mosquitoes that the mosquito might as well be called the state bird. (Officially, the state bird is the loon, which helps to explain Michelle Bachmann, who is definitely loony)

In spite of that, though, Minnesota generally ranks high on most lists of “most desirable places to live.”

 

1)    Minnesota is considered to be one of the best managed states in the country. Officially, it is number 4 on the list, which you can view at the link below.

 

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2021/02/12/best-and-worst-run-states-in-america-a-survey-of-all-50-3/11/

 

2)   Minnesota is one the best educated states in the country. On the list posted in the link below, Minnesota is ranked #9.

 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-educated-states

 

3)   Minnesota is ranked as one of the healthiest states in the country. It’s #7 on the list posted below

 

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-healthiest-states-in-the-us

 

4)   Minnesota also has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. It is the 6^th best in the country.

 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state

 

 

5)   Minnesota has one of the lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. Its official rank is #5.

 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/teen-pregnancy-rates-by-state

 

Although English is the most common language spoken in Minnesota, there are numerous other languages spoken in the state. Among them are Spanish, Hmong, Danish, Norwegian, Sami, Swedish, and Finnish.

For non-natives, though, the most difficult language is one called “Minnesotan”. None of the schools in the state teach the language, but there ARE books that can help you communicate better:

 

One of the best-known cities in the state is Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. You won’t find it on a map, but that’s OK. It still makes Minnesota a fun state to live in.

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

 

https://en.wikipedi

double dipping

 

 

“Double dipping” refers to a perfectly legal practice that allows public employees to collect multiple pensions after they retire. To a minor degree, I also benefit from this system since I am collecting a small pension from my years at Fireman’s Fund (funded, ironically, by MetLife, who I also worked for) in addition to my Social Security checks. On top of that, additional Social Security taxes are taken from my payroll checks from the Tucson Unified School District, which will further augment my Social Security checks over a period of time.

Double dipping can also work for corporations.

Here’s a couple of examples of how that works:

1)    Since the early 1950’s, the first studies linking cigarette smoking were released. Marlboro capitalized on those studies, not by claiming that their filter cigarettes were a safer product, but because their product was “more manly”.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-marketing-genius-of-marlboro.html

Since tobacco sales have been sliding for a while, the executives of Marlboro will soon be expanding into the sale of marijuana cigarettes, since that product is gradually being legalized in a number of states throughout the country.

Nicorette was first developed in Sweden in the 1970’s. The brand consists of a number of products for nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). The company is currently owned by GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson and Johnson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicorette#:~:text=The%20Nicorette%20Patch%20was%20introduced%20to%20the%20market,1996%20and%20Nicorette%20Microtab%20%28sublingual%20tablets%29%20in%201999.

Now, imagine if Nicorette was owned by a tobacco company instead of the companies listed above. 

That would be sheer genius.

Tobacco companies would profit from the initial sale of their product, but they would also profit from products that DISCOURAGE people from buying cigarettes.

 Sound farfetched?

Consider this.

2)   As well all get older, we tend to put on pounds. There is no shortage of companies that will help us take off those pounds, including Weight Watchers, SlimFast, Jenny Craig, and Atkins Nutritionals.

The people that run food companies are not dumb. Beginning in the late 1970s, they started buying a slew of popular diet companies, allowing them to profit off our attempts to lose the weight we gained from eating their products. Heinz, the processed food giant, bought Weight Watchers in 1978 for $72 million. Unilever, which sells Klondike bars and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, paid $2.3 billion for SlimFast in 2000. Nestle, which makes chocolate bars and Hot Pockets, purchased Jenny Craig in 2006 for $600 million, and in 2010 the private equity firm that owns Cinnabon and Carvel ice cream purchased Atkins Nutritionals, the company that sells low-carb bars, shakes and snacks. Most of these diet brands were later sold to other parent companies.

A new book, “Hooked”, by Michael  Moss, goes into a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon, but he discovered that some food products can be more addictive than alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.

No addictive drug can fire up the reward circuitry in our brains as rapidly as our favorite foods, Mr. Moss writes. “The smoke from cigarettes takes 10 seconds to stir the brain, but a touch of sugar on the tongue will do so in a little more than a half second, or six hundred milliseconds, to be precise,” he writes. “That’s nearly 20 times faster than cigarettes.”

This puts the term “fast food” in a new light. “Measured in milliseconds, and the power to addict, nothing is faster than processed food in rousing the brain,” he added.

Not surprisingly, tobacco company executives took note of the addictive power of processed foods.

In the 1980s, Philip Morris acquired Kraft and General Foods, making it the largest manufacturer of processed foods in the country, with products like Kool-Aid, Cocoa Pebbles, Capri Sun and Oreo cookies. But the company’s former general counsel and vice president, Steven C. Parrish, confided that he found it troubling that it was easier for him to quit the company’s cigarettes than its chocolate cookies. “I’m dangerous around a bag of chips or Doritos or Oreos,” he told Mr. Moss. “I’d avoid even opening a bag of Oreos because instead of eating one or two, I would eat half the bag.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/well/eat/hooked-junk-food.html?referringSource=articleShare

You are absolutely free to walk into a Baskin Robbins and order two scoops of your favorite ice cream, but just be aware that the term “double dipped” is not a term that it easily understood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lost in the Fifties Tonight

 

 

In the 1950’s, all of us were still in grade school, and really were not aware of what was happening in the world around us. There were some ugly things happening back then (Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, letters from a Birmingham jail etc.) but today we remember only the good parts of that era, and the video below will remind us of “the good old days”.

Ronnie Milsap - Lost in the Fifties Tonight (In the Still of the Night) - YouTube

 So far, only Marty McFly has been able to travel back in time, but the recent presidential election is rapidly transporting us back in time to the Eisenhower years – and that’s a good thing.

While Donald Trump claimed he wanted to “Make America Great Again,” President Biden is attempting to actually do it. The former president’s slogan got Americans thinking nostalgically about the 1950s and early ’60s, when the United States dominated the world and its economy produced rising wages for workers and executives alike. A defining feature of those years was federal investment in infrastructure, scientific research and education. (Think interstate highways, NASA and the massive expansion of public universities.) By contrast, Washington in recent years has mostly spent money to fund private consumption by giving people tax cuts or transfer payments. 

 Biden’s infrastructure plan is the first major fiscal program in five decades that would focus once again on investment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-bidens-new-deal-can-really-make-america-great-again/2021/04/01/667af1e0-9321-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html

The United States used to spend as much as 3 percent of its gross domestic product on transportation and water infrastructure; that number is now closer to 2 percent. The United States used to be the world’s unquestioned leader in basic science and technology. China is now almost on par with it.

Biden’s plan harks back to the New Deal. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built or improved almost 1,000 airports, creating the backbone of the modern airline industry. The president’s proposal will help create a modern electric vehicle system by funding a network of 500,000 chargers. The 1936 Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to rural areas. Biden proposes doing the same with high-speed Internet, which he argues is the equivalent in today’s economy. The New Deal was bigger (relative to the size of the economy at the time), but it is the only valid comparison with what the Biden administration is proposing.

In 1956, the highest incremental tax rate for wealthy individuals was 91%, and the highest corporate tax rate was 52%.

Today, the highest individual tax rate is 37%, and the corporate tax rate is 21%. As recently as 2017, the top corporate tax rate was 35%.

During the 2020 coronavirus epidemic, the U.S. economy shrank by 3.5%, and was worst than that prior to the 4^th quarter, when it grew 4%. During the same time period, some companies reported huge profits.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/01/898099559/some-companies-report-huge-profits-despite-economic-decline-due-to-covid-19

https://apnews.com/article/us-economy-shrink-in-2020-b59f9be06dcf1da924f64afde2ce094c

Even since the Reagan years, some of our politicians have been under the impression that tax cuts are good for the economy.

They aren’t.

Taken to their logical extreme, they can result in disastrous outcomes, as evidenced by the economy of Kansas under Sam Brownback.

Politics is always a dangerous sport, and can often be depressing. Fortunately, there IS a way us old guys to remember the 1950’s in a good way, and the solution is shown below:

When I stopped to buy gas a couple of weeks ago, an older gentleman with a 1956 Chevrolet pulled up to the pump next to mine. The car was originally purchased new by his grandfather in 1956, and had been in the family ever since. He spent 10 years doing a “frame off” restoration, and the finished result is stunning. Although the body is still strictly stock (including the color), it has been upgraded with modern running gear and upholstery. If I had a place to garage it, and a little extra money, I would LOVE to own a car like this. For now, though, it will remain nothing more than a reminder of the good times from the 1950’s.

 

Dr. Spock

 

In the 1989 movie, “Field of Dreams”, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Kostner) hears a little voice in his head that said, “If you build it, they will come”.  He sees a vision of a baseball diamond in the cornfield and the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) standing in the middle. Ray believes if he builds a baseball field, Shoeless Joe, whom his father idolized, can play baseball again. Annie is skeptical but agrees to him plowing under part of their corn crop to build a baseball field, knowing the financial hardship it will bring.

As Ray builds the field, he tells Karin about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Several months pass, and just as Ray is beginning to doubt himself, a ball player appears one night, whom Ray recognizes as Shoeless Joe. Joe asks if others can play and returns with the seven additional Black Sox players. Annie's brother, Mark (Timothy Busfield), unable to see the players, warns that Ray is going bankrupt and offers to buy the farm for its valuable land. Meanwhile, the voice urges Ray to "ease his pain".

“Field of Dreams” was a great movie. In addition to being nominated for 3 Academy Awards, it was also a commercial success, earning over $84,000,000 at the box office, on a budget of $15,000,000. The field is located in Dyersville, Iowa, and our family stopped there on the way back to Illinois (from Minnesota) sometime in the 90’s.

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

This morning, I heard a little voice in my head. The voice didn’t even speak an entire sentence. It just said, “Dr. Spock”.

What?

Both of our kids are well into their adult years, so we no longer need any advice on hos to raise them, but the little voice in my head made me curious, so I researched Dr. Spock, and learned that he was a very interesting man.

Benjamin McLane Spock (May 2, 1903 – March 15, 1998) was an American pediatrician whose book The Common Sense Baby and Child Care (1946) was VERY popular. 500,000 copies were sold in the six months after its introduction, and 50,000 copies were sold by the time of Spock’s death in 1998. The book has been translated into 39 languages. The book's premise to mothers is that "you know more than you think you do”.

Both of Spock’s parents were educated people. His father attended Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, and his son followed in his footsteps.

After graduating from Yale University, Spock attended Yale School of Medicine, but graduated from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he graduated first in his class.

In addition to his intelligence, he was also a very accomplished athlete. While at Yale University, he was on the rowing team that won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics.

Two years before graduating from Columbia, he married Jane Cheney, who later assisted him in the research and writing of his book. After nearly 40 years of marriage, they divorced in 1976. Later that same year, he married Mary Morgan, who was 40 years younger than he was at the time.

Both of Dr. Spock’s wives were very liberal, and politically active. His first wife was active in Americans for Democratic Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

His second wife, Mary, was arrested numerous times for civil disobedience - and so was he. She introduced him to massage, yoga, a macrobiotic diet, and meditation. 

Doctor Spock always loved the water. He and his wife lived on boats for more than 20 years. During the winter months, they lived on “Carapace” in the British Virgin Islands, and in the summer, they lived on “Turtle”, which was moored in Maine. Amazingly, he won 3^rd place in a rowing contest at the age of 84, so the lifestyle encouraged by his wife kept him a very young man.

Starting in 1968, he began protesting the Vietnam War, and he also became active in other political causes as well. He ran for public office in 1972 and 1976, but never got elected. Although I haven’t been as politically active as he was, I’d readily admit that he and I are “on the same wave length” on a number of topics.

Since I was an insurance underwriter for a lot of years, and a teacher (full and part time) for close to 20, I long ago developed an ability (and an interest) in doing research – which is why I decided to dig a little deeper into Dr. Spock. One fact that I found especially interesting was that he died on March 15, 1998, exactly 4 days before my mom died.

When I was a college professor in China, I often told the classes that they could stop learning when they reached the age of 88, and I still believe that today. To do that, sometimes you just have to listen to that little voice in your head.

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