Recommended Reading

There is, of course, compelling front page news this week – enough to bring to mind the supposedly Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.” But down here on the ground, us little folk have to keep on living, earning money to provide Exxon its $10 billion third quarter profit. And so I give you links to a few things I’ve noticed this week:

Figures Reveal Dynamics of Disaster Giving by Stephanie Strom in NYTimes

If You Don’t Eat or Drive, Inflation’s No Problem by Daniel Gross in NYTimes

Pharmacies’ Choice Removes Women’s Options at I See Invisible People

Frankfurt Is Still Publishing’s Main Event by Edward Wyatt in NYTimes

Bumper sticker seen on a Lincoln Navigator: “Don’t let the car fool you, my real treasure is in heaven.”

AND one more thing I’ve been meaning to highlight for some time. Over at Have Coffee Will Write, Jeff Hess is suggesting a toothpaste-specific boycott of Wal-Mart for those of us who have no choice but to shop there but would neverthelss like to make a statement about their policies.

He calls it the Little Wal-Mart Toothpaste Buycott and it’s based on the assumption that everybody can afford to buy toothpaste somewhere else. [Art by Tony Montana.]

And finally, some needed advice in this quote that a reader sent me a while back:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “WOW! What a ride!

[Late addition: A Word to the Wise in which Lance Mannion discusses meanness in the Bush administration. This mean spirit, the ruling humour of the Bushes, is often winked at as playing the game. But I fail to see how anything positive is built on such negative foundations.]