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Word
Worth Volume III, 2003, Issues are available by clicking on the name of
the month below.
Adobe Reader is needed to access them. A free copy is available
here: |
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Editorials
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Arts
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Columns
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You
Do What You Have to Do
Marien Helz
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January |
A
Good Place to Work
Susan Johnson
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...Pat mentioned that her son’s friends were shocked that the
Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski’s, family were the ones who had turned
him in.
“My mother would turn me in,”
her son had told them.
“Darned right I would,”
she had responded. |
Armin W. Helz
|
There are almost as many business models as there are CEOs available to
head them. Centralized,
decentralized, and matrix are just a few types that fade in and out of
popularity, inhabiting the corporate-speak of their respective eras.
The best business model, the “good place to work” (GPTW)
model is rarely mentioned and difficult to find. |
|
The
Saddest Words
M H Perry |
February |
Same
River, Separate Kayaks
Susan Johnson |
In a poem about a child’s game, about the woods and New England, about
his weltanschauung, Robert Frost wrote:
I’d like
to get away from earth awhile
...then come back to it again and
begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand
me
...half grant what I wish and
snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right
place for love: |
Renee Oubre |
In a recent study designed to predict which marriages would succeed and
which would fail, researchers say they found that if both partners in a
couple liked the same television shows and the same foods, that
seventy-five percent of the time they could be counted on to stay
together.
...Is that what we’ve come to—the
McDonaldization of Western matrimony? |
|
The
Assassination
of...
Marien Helz |
March |
Edible
Art
Susan Johnson |
|
I hardly ever watch trash TV and since more and more of it is becoming
trash, I rarely watch any television. In addition, I have never been a
fan of Michael Jackson—I might be able to guess correctly the name of
one of his songs if forced to do so, but that’s all, and the primary
reason I know that song is because of a parody of it when it was
popular. Nonetheless, I got snagged ... |
Cake
Art
by Carolyn Scott Panzica |
Art can be as permanent as a bronze sculpture or as ephemeral as a
dancer in mid-arabesque... Does it matter to Baryshnikov that his
art lasts only as long as he is on stage? No. He is as driven to express
himself with plies as Rodin was driven to express himself in paint and
metal ... So it is for Carolyn Scott Panzica who has come to
express herself through sugar and glycerin, creating esoteric works... |
|
Academic
Integrity
Marien Helz |
April |
Luxury
of
Slowness
Susan Johnson |
|
A small college in Western New York recently made national news because
the college president and basketball couch brought an academically
unqualified player into the college in order to improve the team. The
College happened to be a church related college, and upon the discovery
of the deception and dishonesty, there were appalled statements ...
Franciscan values, however, are absolutely irrelevant. |
Photography
By Renee Oubre |
I was born with the need for speed. Loved going straight down the hill
on my skis, as fast as possible, and there wasn't a car built with a
speedometer high enough for me. I did the dishes against a stopwatch and
took my showers that way too. But lately, speed has lost its allure.
... kayaking down the Colorado River...I bobbed
gently in the sun, a pair of Mallards swam up to me and, for the first
time ever, I noticed ... |
|
The
Changing Face of Pacifism Marien
Helz |
May |
Meditations
on Tagore
K Srinivasan |
|
In the 1600’s George Fox formed a religion the primary tenet of which
has been pacifism. In the intervening centuries, both the nature of war
and the nature of pacifism have changed....
Just as those claiming to be pacifists have changed, so has war within
the last century. |
Rediscovering
Rabindranath
Tagore
|
Rabindranath
Tagore
b. May 7, 1861, d. August 7, 1941
Nobel Prize for Literature 1913
Is it such a coincidence that our modern Mother’s Day and Mothering
Sunday fall in the month of May? This was the month dedicated by the
ancient Romans to Maia, goddess of spring growth, and adopted by the
Catholic Church of Rome for honoring Mary, the mother of Jesus. |
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Agape
Marien Helz
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June |
Re-Wrighting
a Disaster Susan
Johnson
|
When a student of poet Theodore Roethke’s died after being thrown from
a horse, he wrote an elegy for her. The poems ends:
Over this damp grave I speak
the words of my love:
I with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.
These lines suggest a connection
that we often don’t recognize existing between people. |
Frank
Lloyd Wright
Architecture |
Along the western bluffs of Lake Erie, just south of Buffalo, New York
are a number of properties that were once fine summer estates built by
wealthy families around the turn of the last century. Precious few
remain occupied by heirs of their original owners; most are gone or
relegated to secondary uses.
Some of the homes are now shabby,
their once beautiful stone walls crumbling... |
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Changing
of the
Guard
M H Perry |
July |
Billsburg
Charles Miess |
|
Two and a half months ago, Susan Johnson informed us that she would be
leaving, or taking a "hiatus," from Word Worth. She is
in the corporate offices of an international air and space company....
One can easily understand why her company would seek ever increasing
amounts of her time and why she would continue to rise in position.
Johnson has a remarkable ability to focus with microscopic attention to
detail without ever losing sight of the larger picture. |
Ron
Colgrove
 |
1968—South Dakota is really beautiful, but boy is it desolate—it’s
mostly rolling prairie as far as you can see. We crossed the Missouri
River this morning, so we’re about halfway across the state and more
than halfway across the whole United States by now. Our bicycles are
holding up well; but can you believe that I’ve worn out two rear tires
already. Dad, you can quit worrying about the traffic—we have the road
to ourselves, with only one car going by every few hours. |
| The
Etiquettely Challenged
Marien Helz |
August |
 A
Journey Into Darkness
Charles Miess |
|
The telephone was invented in the 1870’s, and extended to nearly every
American home and business by the 1950’s with enhancements such as
caller id and voice mail as prevalent today as the phone itself was in
the 50’s. In spite of its prevalence, however, the appropriate use of
the phone and its extensions eludes many people. Telephone etiquette
involves such basic common sense that it is dumbfounding as to why .... |
Renee
Oubre
 |
I had once heard that the darkness in a coal mine is as close to the
grave as you can get. I turned off my cap light to test that assertion.
A blanket of absolute blackness enveloped me with a dead silence to go
with it. I thought about the report of an accident in another mine where
a machine had cut into a large underground reservoir of water. Only one
person was rescued, and that was after he spent five days .... |
| Either
Pass or Pull Over
Marien Helz |
September |
The
Other McCarthy Era—I
Aurelia Carter |
|
At one time or another, we’ve all been stuck driving behind someone in
the passing lane on a thruway who tooled along, oblivious to the line of
cars forming behind while they neither passed nor pulled back into the
right hand lane. It seems that in driving, as in life in general, a good
rule to get people to follow is either pass or pull over.
When stuck behind someone dawdling along, we’d like them to either get
it done or give it up. |
A
Rose for Allyson
By Charles Miess |
There is a moment frozen in time (via candid photograph) from the 1939
Academy Awards banquet in which the young singer and actress Deanna
Durbin sits across the table from ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Durbin,
18, was to receive a special Oscar that night for her work as a child
star in movies, and Bergen had been chosen to present it to her. In the
photograph they’re at dinner, talking: soup has just been served
though neither of them has touched it yet... |
| Autumn
Ritual
Charles Miess |
October |
The
Other McCarthy Era—II
Aurelia Carter |
|
But my experience of autumn is more than just passion and beauty. I
always feel a dash of melancholy in my heart this time of year. Partly
so, because autumn reminds me of my own mortality, and partly because
the precious days of summer are rapidly becoming no more than a misty
memory. Oh, I’m sure I’ll be here to enjoy them again next year, yet
it won’t be quite the same. Mixed with this bit of melancholy is a
subtle apprehension—a hint of foreboding for the cold weather that is
sure to come. |
Ron
Colgrove
 |
In addition to the enticement of Bergen’s abilities, there was the
hopelessly impertinent character of Charlie McCarthy: an uninhibited
adolescent who dressed in the manner of a high-society roller and talked
like a pugilistic sailor. He was...quick with words, flirtatious,
iconoclastic, carefree, clear-eyed, and supremely self-confident—with
a voracious appetite for feminine company, the possibilities of wealth,
and ice cream sodas. Charlie did not suffer fools—period—and he
found them everywhere. |
| The
Maladaptation of Adaptation
M H Perry |
November |
The
Other McCarthy Era—III
Aurelia Carter |
|
It’s easy to make murders, car chases, and battles seem exciting. They
don’t happen that often in real life, and what is quite different
seems exciting at first. The abnormal, the abrasive, the offensive grab
our attention. The problem is that those things are like a cotton candy
of the intellect. They stick on our thoughts just as cotton candy sticks
on our hands, and they decay our rationality and creativity just as
cotton candy rots our teeth. |
 |
...a
scene between Mae West and Charlie McCarthy in which McCarthy had
left his house keys on West’s bedroom dresser when he’d gone up to
see her etchings (what was Bergen thinking?) put the show
over the top. ... the studio was deluged by ...angry correspondence,...
NBC...banned West and mention of her name, ...."The network
apologized, Chase and Sanborn apologized, and I went and hid for a
week," Bergen recalled. "Our ratings went up..." |
| Rediscovering
Melville
M H Perry |
December |
God
Wasn't
Listening...
Charles Miess |
A century and a half ago, Herman Melville penned a short story that has
frustrated college students and stymied critics from that time on. Bartleby,
the Scrivener is an elusive work because the behavior and motivation
of the characters are not only unusual but inexplicable.
The story takes place in a law office at a time when there
were not only no computers, but essentially no typewriters as well. |
Bartleby the Scrivener
Herman Melville |
It’s not that I don’t like cats. Why, to me there’s no greater
pleasure than to sit in a comfortable chair in front of a cozy fireplace
with a glass of Chablis, a John Steinbeck novel, and a cat purring
contentedly on my lap. I like cats—really—but when I’m eating, I
prefer not to have them around.
It’s not that I’m squeamish either. I can do the
dirtiest job in the world and go straight to a good meal. |
