Do you ever wonder – as you carry your dishes from your restaurant table across the room to the bus tubs, after eating a meal that you ordered and paid for at the counter, and went back to the counter when your name was called to pick up your food and carry it yourself to the table – why you dropped money into the tip jar on the counter before you even saw a glimpse of your food?
Category: Persons
People who interest me
For Your Reading Enjoyment
The Write Launch is a monthly on-line literary magazine. It publishes a wide spectrum of essays, poetry and short fiction. The August issue includes a short story from me, about one person’s journey from Kansas City to Sonoma.
The Curse of Matt Duffy
The San Francisco Giants were World Series winners in 2010, 2012 and 2014. At the All-Star break, just past the 2016 season midpoint, the Giants were on their way to another even-numbered year championship. They led their division by ten games over the second-place Dodgers, with a record of 57 wins and 33 losses.
Then they traded away third baseman Matt Duffy. After trading Duffy, the Giants compiled a record of 30 and 42, clinching a wild-card playoff spot on the last day of the season. Coincidence? I think not.
The Matt Duffy curse continues in 2017. The Giants are battling the Philadelphia Phillies for the worst team in Major League Baseball. Their record since the 2016 All-Star game through the end of July is 70 wins, 109 losses. Giants pitcher from another century, Hall-of-Famer Christy Mathewson, once said, “You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.” The Giants are amassing a huge storehouse of knowledge.
Driving While Black… with Green
It’s vacation season. Millions of us are hitting the highways, to visit relatives, or Disney World or exploring the two-lane roads. The automobile is an American icon, a symbol of our freedom. From Duncan Hines to the A.A.A., travel guides have helped vacationers and business travelers on their journeys. For some Americans, though, mainstream publications were not very helpful.
African-Americans on the road found challenges in finding a bed for the night or a decent meal or a rest room. Jim Crow was enforced by law or by custom in many areas. Some cities had Sunset Laws, prohibiting non-whites from being in town after dark.
Victor Hugo Green first published his travel guide in 1936. The Negro Motorist Green Book listed businesses that welcomed black patrons. Green, a veteran of World War I, a New York City mail carrier and later a travel agent, published his book “to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable.” Green’s book initially 
focused on the New York area. Subsequent editions, with the help of correspondents and readers, expanded the territory, eventually covering the U.S. and parts of Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation and discrimination in public accommodations and lessened the need for the “Green Book.” It ceased 
publishing in 1967.
You can view a pdf version of the 1949 edition of The Negro Motorist Green Book here.
The Short Life and Death of Disco
If you’ve had your fill of slavering or revisionist fifty-year-anniversary reviews of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then advance a decade and reminisce about the seventies. “Saturday Night Fever” hit the movie theatres nearly forty 
years ago, in late 1977. Produced for an estimated $3 million, within a year it grossed more than $125 million. (These days, John Travolta commands a salary estimated at $20 million per movie.) The soundtrack album, featuring the Australian Gibb brothers – The Bee Gees – sold 25 million copies.
The movie was based on what may or may not have been a factual article in New York magazine, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night.” Travolta’s character, Tony Manero, had ambitions to move beyond the narrow confines of a working-class Brooklyn dance hall and move across the East River for a richer life in Manhattan. Ironically, millions of moviegoers wanted to be like the Brooklyn Tony.
Disco music, which had been bubbling under the surface of mainstream pop music but gaining fans, suddenly became huge, the predominate genre on AM radio. Although big names ranging from Diana Ross to Blondie to the Rolling Stones released disco-styled songs, a backlash came from rock ‘n’ roll purists as well as those who identified the dance music with gays and blacks.
Disco music officially died at Comiskey Park on July 12, 1979. A double-header between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers was promoted as “Disco Demolition Night.” Between games, a box of disco records contributed by fans was blown up on the field. The promotion filled the stadium and ended in a riot. Flying vinyl discs filled the air, fans ran on to the field and the White Sox forfeited the game.
Amazon Effect – Part 2
Jeff Bezos and Paul Allen are competing to see who can make the heart of Seattle into his own vision. Microsoft co-founder and Seahawks owner Allen’s football stadium south of downtown and his Lake Union redevelopment Experience Music Center to the north are changing the face of the city.
Meanwhile, Amazon now occupies more than 25% of Seattle’s total office space. The all-things-for-sale behemoth filled 70% of new office space last year and is on track for the same in 2017. Of course, this keeps rents high for other tenants in the downtown area. People who are prone to worry have expressed concern that with one entity so entrenched in the city’s core, a downturn in Amazon’s fortunes could have a deleterious effect on Seattle. But that’s silly. Big companies are immune to that sort of adversity.
