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Word
Worth Volume VII, 2007, 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 |
Arts
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Columns |
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Hanging Saddam
Hussein—Anna
Seymour |
January |
The Boxed Identity—Rita
Banerji |
It’s a bad idea. Don’t do it.
There’s no question that Hussein gave the commands that engendered
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Nor is there
question... This
editorial was planned and written several months before Saddam
Hussein's hasty execution. While it was being posted, we discovered,
the execution was taking place on the other side of the world. We
decided to run the piece anyway. |
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Kipp's Restaurant by
Charles Miess |
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...while Eva could
treat her new nationalism with light humor, ...the process for
most people is often agonizing and disorienting. As was
recently seen in Yugoslavia, the restructuring of a nation’s
borders is frequently accompanied by bloodshed and unmitigated
violence of a manner that undermines humanity itself. Those who
survive it are left to cope with the loss of property, family,
and community. And oftentimes, even if these people have
relatively safe and brand new nations to inhabit, they still
can’t overcome an.... |
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The
Tragic Hero—M
H Perry |
February |
Wintering Over—Charles
Miess |
The ancients had it right when they looked at what
constitutes real tragedy. ... Aristotle analyzed drama in
order to determine what constitutes tragedy and why we are drawn
to it. Tragedy in its truest and deepest form probably compels
our attention because of its significance. It is life with its
greatest consequence, and we cannot ignore it...
The most intriguing of the tragic heroes, however, are not those
from the legends of yore but those from most recent history:
those living a few decades ago, those living a few fortnights
ago. |
Photography by
Beverly Roe
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The ritual was about
to begin. The temperature in the sauna was 200 degrees; outside
it was 113 below zero. Five young men and women sat silently on
slatted wood benches preparing for their ordeal by soaking up
the life-sustaining heat. Then, clothed only in courage,
determination, and a pair of boots, they plunged into the
unspeakably cold night. Cold so intense that steel becomes as
brittle as glass, and diesel oil—despite being spiked with jet
fuel—turns to jelly. They were in a race with frostbite,
hypothermia, and death ... |
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Designer Logic—Marien
Helz |
March |
Cabin Fever—Charles
Miess |
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Fashion
shows are attempting to redeem themselves by beginning to ban
models who are too thin. This occurred after the death of a
model who is thought to have had an eating disorder. One
designer demanded that they not even consider this because it
interferes with designer artistic freedom. He felt that it was
his right to design for skeletal women and require that they be
so... If there has ever been a case of trying to pull a trailer
by hitching it to the front of a car, this is it. ... they
...should be required to put their clothes on ... a motorized
dry cleaner’s rack. |
Photography by
Kevin Roe
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The Great Lakes are
Nature’s snow making machine. Cold Canadian air is warmed as it
passes over the water and picks up moisture—lots of it—a
gazillion tons of it, in fact. Then it passes over the cold land
and drops it in abundance, in the form of snow and other frozen
yuck, most of it right on my house. I had often wondered why on
earth my ancestors settled in this region. Did they have any
idea what they were getting into? Did they think about the
abysmal legacy they would leave to their progeny? Did they ever
think about me? |
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Real Designing—Marien
Helz |
April |
Four-Thirty in the Morning—Charles
Miess |
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After the Oscar Awards, fashion columnists
selected pictures of actresses and labeled them “good” and
“bad.” There was little difference between the ones they chose
as good and those they chose as bad. A column on blue jeans
maintained that it was worth paying a high price for designer
jeans. They pictured a girl who bought the high designer
product. The jeans made her legs look like two by fours and her
torso like a board. The jeans had no shape and she had no shape
when she wore them. |
Photography by
Armin W. Helz
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Crisp, clear mornings
are the best. Unlike the hot humid days of summer, the cold,
dry air is packed with energy-giving oxygen. And unlike the
summer, my body heat can be regulated for perfect comfort with
layers of modern wind-stopping, water-repellent, and insulated
clothing. I am comfortably warm, but not sweating, so I can
walk many miles without the need to carry water as long as I
“camel up” before I start....It’s Sunday morning, and I’m on an
almost deserted road several miles long leading into a quiet
valley. |
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Yet Again—Marien
Helz |
May |
The Hidden Tragedy ...—Charles
Miess |
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After the Colorado High School shootings, a
journalist wrote about the column she was writing on the
subject. The piece was getting too long, so she and her editor
agreed that it would be divided into sections, and she would use
the second part the next time. After they agreed on "the next
time," they couldn't believe they had said that—yet they and we
know that there will be a next time—and a next, and a next—until
we take control of our lives. |
Photography by
Charles Miess
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The lesson of
nine-eleven is that it is difficult to stop those who place
little value on their own lives. The lesson of Iraq and
Afghanistan is that hard-line tactics create enemies faster than
we can kill them. We live in a dangerous world. The best we
can do is control the violence without unnecessary infringement
on the rights of innocent people. ...For now, let’s explore
another aspect of this tragedy that few journalists are prepared
to discuss. |
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Irony—Anna
Seymour |
June |
Great Balls of Fire—Dave
Trageser |
Don Imus is suing CBS for firing him because he
claims that they could have turned off the microphone when he
called a girls’ basketball team “hos”—meaning whores. He thinks
he’s the victim. That’s irony number one.
Irony number two is that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton rushed to
the girls’ defense. It’s good that they did, but where have they
been all these years that rappers have been doing the same?—AND
African Americans were not the group slurred. |
Dream World
by
Charles Miess
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The year was 1957 and a type
of music that had never been heard before was sweeping the
country—relegating songs like “How Much is that Doggie in the
Window?” into the dustpan of history. The new music had
elements of the blues, gospel, country and western,
boogie-woogie, and rhythm and blues, but it was much more than
the sum of its parts.
I would listen at night, in my bedroom, to the single radio station
in Buffalo,...
Illustration by Susanne Woyciechowicz |
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Now More than Ever—Anna
Seymour |
July |
A Perfect Pair of Shoes—Charles
Miess |
Some months ago, a brief article appeared in the
newspaper about a town councilman who refused to salute or stand
during the pledge of allegiance to our flag. This was his statement against
the war and the president who rushed us into military action with faulty
information. Some people have said that they can’t stand looking
at our flag and tear up pictures of it when they see it because
they detest the war. I find this appalling and disgusting.
If there is anyone living on this earth who has never done anything
they are ashamed of, it’s because they have no shame. No one
living is perfect, and no ...country ... is perfect. |
Photography by
Kevin Roe
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Imelda Marcos had over a thousand pairs of shoes. When she and
her husband were deposed from their rule in the Philippine
Islands, the opposing forces found a virtual museum of
ridiculously expensive shoes in the presidential palace. To me,
she was the epitome of extravagance—unmitigated despicable
extravagance at a time when millions in her country suffered in
deplorable poverty. I never liked her very much.
Shoes to me have always been a necessary evil. They are necessary
in the winter to protect my feet from the cold and snow, and
necessary in the summer to help convince people I am civilized. |
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Chain Letter Spam—Marien
Helz |
August |
To Bee or Not to Bee—Charles
Miess |
The new
spam-chain letter is far more pernicious than the old because it
contains an amazing impious false piety that would make the
devil himself gleeful. It instructs you that, “There’s some
mighty fine advice in these words,…” and then follows with
the most inane platitudes conceivable, ....
The letter promises you, “This must leave your
hands in 6 MINUTES. Otherwise you will get a very unpleasant
surprise. This is true, even if you are not superstitious,
agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired.” Ignoring the egregious
grammatical error, this is wonderful in its superciliousness.
“Faith impaired”! What a fantastic ... |
August Blossoms
by Word Worth
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I
couldn’t shake an eerie feeling while walking through the field outside the
place where I work. Yet,
in most respects it was a perfectly normal summer day.
The infrequently mowed grass was alive with pink tufted
clover, brilliant yellow pea-like blooms of bird’s
foot tree foil, lavender blossoms of cow
peas, and a mixture of bright orange and pale yellow of butter
‘n’ eggs. The
sky was intensely blue with a few puffy clouds, and the sun
warmed my shoulders as I walked along.
I luxuriated in another beautiful day in this rural
section of
Western New York
. But something was
missing—something was not quite right.
It was deathly silent. |
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John T. Molloy—Again!—Marien
Helz |
September |
Chaos—Charles
Miess |
|
John Molloy became famous in the 1970’s with his
book, Dress for Success, which told men how to get ahead
in their profession. He turned the concept into a regular
newspaper column in which he gave advice to millions of men on
how to dress in the workplace to be successful. His advice was
based on extensive and solid research which let men know what to
wear and not to wear if they wanted to advance in their careers.
Some of the advice was surprising: women shouldn’t dress their
husbands—in the figurative sense, that is. Women who wanted to
chose their husbands’ clothes tended to go for fashion. In the
workplace, men... |
Readings of
Classic Poems
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Humans, with their intelligence and reason, have sought to
eliminate chaos, and in some respects, they have succeeded. In
a civilized society, people inclined to chaotic behavior
grudgingly suppress those inclinations for fear of punishment,
or they are put in jail or have been relegated to ghetto areas.
They are suppressed or separated, but not eliminated.
The chaotic byproducts from the manufacture of the goods and the
processing of foods that make life more orderly is piled high in
dumps or flushed into rivers and lakes. It is out of sight and
out of mind, but ... |
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The Treacherous Years—Marien
Helz |
October |
October Song—Charles
Miess |
Adults will often tell children that they are in
the “best time of their lives.” The only people who say that are
those with poor memories. ...
There is
a point, however, when moving from youth to adulthood that life
becomes the most dangerous. Children yearn for their “grown up”
selves to emerge from the cocoon, but there is the niggling
feeling, vague in the back of the minds, walking beside them
just behind their peripheral vision, of gloom and doom. They
will be responsible for feeding and clothing themselves, for
finding shelter, for protecting themselves from all dangers—what
if they don’t make it? |
Photography by
Harvey Kaye
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The old man’s gnarled hand gripped the wooden cane tightly while
he ambled down the supermarket isle. As he
approached, I nodded and bid him good morning. “I’m ninety-six
years old,” he proudly announced. I admired him for sure, out
shopping at his age, but why did he find it necessary to tell me
how old he was?
Then there’s a stout Irishman I know who works at the same place I
do. He’s seventy-six, but I recently heard him tell a co-worker
that he was seventy-seven. When I challenged his truthfulness,
he replied sheepishly: “Well . . . I will be
seventy-seven in January.” |
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Killing American
Education—Marien
Helz |
November |
A Sense of Home—Charles
Miess |
Discussion in a college or high school class is
generally imperative to allow students to explore a subject and
understand it fully. This is especially true of situations in
which students need to know what is going on in an evaluation
process. Increasingly, when a class is engaged in a discussion,
a student will raise his hand and ask, “Can I go to the
bathroom?”...
Another version of this is during a serious discussion involving
understanding of how students will be evaluated, one student
gets up and ambles out of the room, then another does, then
another and another. Each of them saunters back as though they
had gone off to get popcorn at a ball game. |
Photography by
Armin W. Helz
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She stood in front of the TV cameras, dry-eyed, and with an
almost cavalier attitude as she surveyed the ruins of her
seventeen million dollar castle-like home. The collector’s
house was one of the many casualties of the terrible wildfires
that swept through southern California in October of 2007. Among
her possessions were priceless artifacts, including Elvis
Presley memorabilia. In this age of growing materialism, it was
refreshing to see someone who could shrug off the loss of
“things” as if they were no more than a misplaced pencil. I
envied her.
“A house is a house,” she said. “My parents taught me not to let my
possessions possess me.” |
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The Calling of Professor—Marien
Helz |
December |
The Country—Charles
Miess |
|
I began the
career of college professor when I was twenty-two years old. I
had one and a half Master’s degrees at the time and was in a
department in which about two thirds of us were in our twenties.
At faculty meetings seated in a row, we were like a line of
young steeds. There may be no future time during which
opportunities come at such an early age as they did to my
colleagues and me. Several were PhDs and college professors at
the age of twenty-eight. Many generations before us had not seen
such opportunity. We were raised by parents who came of age
during the great depression ... |
Painting by
Nancy Palmer Miess
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My parents
grew up in the city. On a cold March day in 1943, they moved to
a remote spot in the country to fifty acres of land and an old
farmhouse on a dirt road. Why they chose that forlorn place so
far from their roots I’ll never know. Perhaps it was all they
could afford. Perhaps it was their dream. To say that the
house was in need of repair would be an understatement, but in
those difficult times, to own a piece of land was quite an
accomplishment regardless of the condition of the house. I was
eight months old when we moved there. It was the only home I
ever knew during my childhood, and to me ... |
