About a year ago my local high school changed its school nickname from a politically-incorrect Civil War reference to the more generic “Captains.”
This week my local NFL team changed its politically-incorrect nickname (well, the one they had before they had no nickname) to the generic “Commanders.”
I’m pretty sure the local community college will be renamed something like the Chief Petty Officers any day now.
A palindrome is not a palindrome.
Let the record show that despite alternate decisions being made by some of my musical colleagues I have decided to continue selling my music on Spotify and other streaming services.
Working five days in a row?
Whoa.
It’s been a while, but somehow I ended up doing it this week.
In a word, it ain’t easy.
And twelve degrees outside ain’t helping.
The second-worst month of the year is the 30 days following Christmas.
We’ve made it through.
Unfortunately the worst month of the year is the 30 days after that.
Shoot.
Was this the greatest weekend of pro football of all time or what?
Wow.
Four games decided by a total of 15 points.
I was happy with the results of all of them… until the Buffalo game went into overtime. But damn what a game.
And this is why the NFL owns the country.
Hey, remember when they closed the schools with zero snow on the ground?
(Pause for effect.)
And then made the same mistake two days later!
The town I grew up in, Binghamton, New York, is one of three municipalities collectively known as “the Triple Cities.” The other two? The villages of Johnson City and Endicott. If those names sound familiar to you it may be because you bought a pair of shoes a hundred years ago. From the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company.
Weighty books and lengthy blogposts have been written about the history of “E-J” and its successes and failures. The Square Deal, the public monuments, and yeah, literally the names of two whole towns. (The shoe company name predated the village names.)
Those are topics for future posts.
At issue here is the timing of the empire’s decline. From a highwater mark in the 1920s, when European immigrants came to these shores knowing only the following English (“which way, E-J?”), to a sort of resurgence during the Second World War, the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company slowed its production significantly during the post-war years and into the, well, for lack of a better term, “cheap manufacturing abroad” age. Outside management (that would be people not named Endicott or Johnson) was brought in starting in 1957, a move serving only to quicken the company’s decline.
This was the story I’d heard growing up. By the ’60s the party was over.
Imagine my surprise, last night, while leafing through an old periodical, dated March 1964.
In the pages of none other than Playboy magazine–known for not only discriminating taste when selecting its advertisers but for charging confiscatory rates–a full-page advertisement for the Johnsonian, “a quality product of Endicott Johnson, Endicott, New York, featured at the 1964/1965 World’s Fair.”
I can’t even start with how amazing a single sentence can be.
And I’ve gained a whole new respect for my much-maligned hometown.
You know the old Econ 101 story? T-shirts versus haircuts? Haircuts get relatively more expensive compared to t-shirts because our capacity to produce t-shirts has increased dramatically through the years while getting a haircut… is the same haircut received by medieval serfs.
Sadly for me I’m bucking the trend, somehow receiving faster haircuts as time goes on.
Less hair helps.
Tragic, actually, but it does help the bottom line.
In 2007 I wrote a book called The Other Side of the Coin, a free-market response to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. Over the past 15 years I’ve largely forgotten about it, but listening to Math and Musings today has got me thinking about that adventure once again.
You too can tune in and reminisce, wherever podcasts are sold.