Yountville Chronicles

The town of Yountville lays in the famous Napa Valley wine-producing region, halfway between St. Helena and the city of Napa. It’s home to many upscale eating places, including uber-celebrity chef Thomas Keller’s uber-expensive French Laundry, where the price of a meal is north of $300. (Don’t worry, you can’t get a reservation anyway.) Common folks still miss The Diner, a breakfast-lunch-dinner place with service at the counter or in booths. (The only place I’ve eaten – or even seen on a menu – spicy tapioca pudding.) The Diner closed in the early 2000s; another of Keller’s restaurants now occupies the building. Long before Yountville became a destination for disposing of disposable income, it was known for its Veterans Home.

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Where Is Richard Nixon Now That We Need Him?

Since resigning in disgrace from the Presidency in 1974, Richard Nixon has symbolized the evil in politics and the rancid Republican Party. The Current Occupant of the White House and the recent joint press conference with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin calls to mind Nixon’s early time in the spotlight.

Back in the good old Cold War days, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka Russia, took a small step in an attempt to warm diplomatic relations a bit. For a “cultural exchange,” the U.S. and U.S.S.R. each set up a national exhibition in the other’s country. Vice-President Richard Nixon traveled to Moscow for the opening of the US display in July 1959. As part of the ceremony, Richard Nixon took Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on a tour.

Nixon proudly showed off American lifestyle features like color television and automatic laundry equipment. Khrushchev sneered at the American technology and boasted Russia would soon have those gadgets. Nixon retorted that the U.S.S.R. should not be afraid of ideas, “After all, you don’t know everything.” The arguing escalated as they moved to a U.S. model home presentation. Nixon complained about Khrushchev’s constant interruptions. With rising voices and finger pointing, the two accused each other of making threats that could lead to war. Leonid Brezhnev, who succeeded Khrushchev a few years later, watched over Nixon’s shoulder.

The “Kitchen Debate” was broadcast on all three U.S. television networks. (Only edited and abridged parts of the argument reached Soviet citizens.) The confrontation raised Nixon’s profile and helped him gain the Republican nomination for president the following year. Unlike the current Russian president, Khrushchev claimed to have done everything he could to bring about Nixon’s defeat in 1960.

Richard Nixon is remembered and reviled for the Watergate scandal and general corruption in politics. He is also responsible for cognitive dissonance in liberal heads with the other part of his legacy: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Where Have You Gone D.B. Cooper?

D.B. Cooper is in the news again. New claims are being made about the identity of the man who was last seen Thanksgiving eve, 1971 aboard a Boeing 727 as it was flying over southwest Washington. He parachuted from the plane via its rear exit stairs, launching decades of debate about who he was and what was his fate.

Northwest Orient Airlines flight #305 began its itinerary in Washington D.C. on November 24, 1971. After stops in Minneapolis, Missoula, Great Falls and Spokane, the aircraft was boarding passengers in Portland for its final leg, a thirty-minute flight to Seattle.

Taking a seat near the rear was a middle-aged man conservatively dressed in a dark suit and tie under a white raincoat, carrying a black attaché case. He lit a cigarette and ordered a bourbon and soda. He had paid cash for his ticket at the Portland airport counter and, in those pre-TSA days, gave his name as Dan Cooper. Shortly after takeoff, he handed a note to a flight attendant that he had a bomb. He opened his attaché to show her red cylinders attached with wires to a battery.

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What To Do with All Those Separated Children

When… or if… the “zero tolerance” border enforcement situation is resolved, there will inevitably be hundreds, maybe thousands, of children unable to reconnect with their parents. What to do? If we look back to the previous century, we’ll see there is a simple solution: put the kids on trains and ship them off to the heartland to work on farms.

In the mid-1800s, slums in New York and other eastern cities were bursting with immigrants who had come to the U.S. seeking relief from poor harvests, famines, political unrest and revolutions in their homelands. Advertising by railroad and steamship companies extolled America as “Land of the second chance” and where “free land” was available. The reality for most was quite different. Packed into slums where lack of sanitation resulted in rampant disease and working at low-wage jobs where safety was not a consideration during an era of no worker protection, neither against injury or death, nor resultant financial loss. The streets of New York became infested with 30,000 permanently separated children.

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How Roseanne and AIG Are Alike

Remember way back in 2008, when the U.S. economy – in fact the whole world’s economy – was on the verge of irreparable meltdown as a result of ludicrously complicated  investment schemes concocted by an unregulated banking industry? With taxpayer bailouts totaling $182 billion, insurance behemoth American International Group (AIG) became the poster child of financial shenanigans. They eventually were shamed into canceling expensive conferences at luxury resorts, the St Regis in Dana Point CA and the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay CA. The canceled events were had been incentives for top sales producers.

Headline stories fueling outrage for AIG’s lavish spending didn’t inquire into how the independent agents selling AIG’s boring insurance products felt about having their rewards pulled. Compensation for the high-flying perpetrators of the investment schemes was not affected. No note was taken of the housekeepers or banquet servers or other staff of the resorts and the effect on them of  lost income from the canceled events.

Much news lately about the sudden cancellation of the “Roseanne” TV show after the star’s racist Twitter remark. The show’s namesake will be fine financially, as will the on-air cast. Most of them, presumably, have guaranteed contracts. Not so fortunate, however are the behind-the-scenes workers who lost their wages with no advance warning. Prop makers, set decorators and special effects workers and others expected at least nine more months of regular paychecks from the hit show which the ABC network had recently renewed for another season.

Roseanne Barr posted on Twitter, “I just want to* apologize to the hundreds of people and wonderful writers (all liberal) and talented actors who lost their jobs on my show due to my stupid tweet.” The next day she took the comment down from her Twitter account and blamed ABC for the lost jobs.

* Why do people “want to apologize” or “want to thank” or “want to” whatever else? If they want to, why not just do it without telling us they “want to?”