4751 Foundations

 If you listen to public radio, you hear an awful lot of commercials for foundations. And many of these foundations are not supporting much. The foundation is left. The building is gone.

First, let's clear up something in the first sentence with which you may disagree. You might say "There are no commercials on public radio, just announcements of who contributed the money for the particular program." And you'd be wrong. The networks and the individual stations often have full scale sales departments, with people who go out to businesses and foundations and sell time. Except they don't call it the sales department. They call it development. Development is academy speak for begging and selling.

Now, as for those foundations. Notice that many of them were started by or named for people whose companies were sunk. Take the "William T. Grant Foundation," a frequent contributor to NPR. W.T. Grant was kind of an upscale Woolworth's with delusions of Wal-Mart. It went belly up in 1976, and was at the time, one of the biggest bankruptcies in US history. The foundation, started the same year as the first Grant store, 1906, goes on. It has money. The former stockholders have, well, souvenir stock certificates. The foundation’s investors did better than investors in the business. There's nothing wrong with the remaining foundation, and nothing unusual about a foundation outliving its founders. But it just seems kind of funny to see in the imagination a Grant store with a huge "CLOSED" sign in the window, while the surviving entity has a spiffy website and offers some decent opportunities.

Then, there's the John S. and James L. Knight foundation. The Knights had lost control of their newspaper empire long before the company was sold to McClatchy in 2006. Which is what often happens when institutional investors are "guiding" (some might say manipulating) a business about which they know nothing. To the foundation's credit, there is one Knight left on its board of trustees. And she probably knows her stuff, as most in that family did -- or at least seemed to.

Knight also is a big sponsor on NPR.

This posting was made possible by a grant from the Wessays Foundation, bringing nonsense into homes since um.. well, for a few years now, anyway. On the web at wessays.blogspot.com.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any questions? Wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2022

4750 Stop Nagging

 So comes a letter from a new credit card company which has taken over a long running account.  It says “Why Wait? You Owe Us Money. Send Now and get it over with.”  Oh?

Well, OK, I’ll send you a few bucks now and then a few more later when the Social Security check lands in my bank account -- assuming it will.  

C’mon guys, I know you’re there. You’ve never stopped reminding me since taking over the account maybe nine or ten months ago.

I’ll pay you when I always pay you.

And I won’t leave you hanging with a partial payment, either.  You get the whole thing at once. Of course, that’ll deprive you of some interest.  But that’s the price of doing business with me.

Let’s get one thing straight between us: You always get … something. Don’t rush me. I’ve been dealing with your predecessor for years. I’ll deal with you the same way. Once a month.  Second Wednesday. Same as always. If you want to change that, we can talk about it. But be warned: I don’t need you.  

Of course, you don’t need me, either. But you agreed to take over the business, so for now, you’re stuck with me.

I’m not as hard to deal with as some of your new customers.  I really DO pay you regularly and usually eight or ten days before the deadline.  But I don’t have to be that way.  I can stall. I can pay at the last possible second. You know-- all the stuff that people do to credit card companies.  I can overpay you which makes everything bolix up at your end. I can underpay you by a penny or two and that confuses your systems.  

So let’s get this business straight right at the start of our “new” relationship.

I look forward to many years of having to deal with you. But at this point, who knows?  We’re here one day, gone the next. And be aware that I can mess around with your system any time I want.  

Consider this your once-only warning.  I’ll be watching you just as you’ll be watching me. And I’m a tough guy to deal with when you get my back up.  Oh, and please remove me from your “pay up now” list. I don’t need reminders.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2022

We'll be back Monday, 1 17 22

 See you then.

MINI 038 DIY

 Here’s your chance to build your own Wessay ® along with suggested keywords and phrases to help you with your final thoughts of 2021 and your hopes, dreams and plans for 2022.

--Happy

--New

--Year

--My hope 

--The hope

--For

--About

--Wish

--(Additional reporting by ______ _____ ) (replace the dashes with your name.)

--Health

--Wealth

--Love

--Peace

--Times Square

--Prosperity

--Good News

--Sickness

--Health

--Freedom

--World Series

--Superbowl

--_____ Primary (designate party and jurisdiction.)

--Biden

--Harris

--trump

--court

--jail

--prison

--Amazon.com

--SCOTUS

--Self driving car

--Passenger drone

--Dick Clark

--Local

--Locale (location not included)

--Academy Award for (insert category)

With minimal thought and effort, you can be the proud owner and author of your very own post. Maybe even a podcast! Good luck and Happy New Year from all of us here at W’s World Headquarters in Beautiful Downtown NewRoses, Pennsylvania.

I’m wesrichards@gmail.com

My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ® ©WR 2022

4748 Hopes for the New Year

 There it is.  The whole year ahead. A blank slate.  Now how are we going to fill it?  Of course, it isn’t entirely up to us. But we can all do our parts.  Some hopes from this corner:

 --The people who want freedom from protection against the Pandemic will hold a mass gathering at which they will be free to infect one another but not the rest of us.

--The people who want to soak the poor will hold their own gathering.  If the first stadium is full, a second will have about the same crowd.

--Sane people who drink will drink sanely at home.

--People who want to soak the rich will learn what compromise means, its place in this country’s history and how to use it.

--The people who are afraid of socialism will learn its definition and maybe reduce some of its fears.

--The insane drug cartels will allow sharecropping.

--The insane war on drugs will splinter into the organizational version of sharecropping and stop throwing federal tax dollars away, maybe use some of that money to freed bucks to fix a highway or extend food stamp benefits.

--Prosecutors who steadfastly refuse to allow parole or clemency or pardons for the known wrongly convicted will find a stadium of their own.

--The country’s beleaguered newspapers will earn enough from web subscriptions to hire a reporter to make telephone calls to update outdated stories that remain on their page instead of just letting them remain on their page.

--Someone will write a murder mystery without stealing the material from their files as former prosecutors or homicide cops or postal cops or railroad cops and then stop lying about any resemblance to a true story will be a coincidental.

--Megamart will wait until after Labor Day to start playing Christmas songs on their public address systems and will open the customer service desks before mid-morning.

--Science will discover a way to reduce the mosquito population without killing the whole eco system.

--No one will shoot Bambi’s dad and then not even cook and eat the carcass.

--Pigeons will learn to use public restrooms.

--No major league baseball pitcher will throw a spitball.

--No major league football player will deflate a football.

--No major sports commentator will pretend to be Mel Allen or Howard Cosell. 

--People who idolize mountain lions will come to realize they don’t roar, they “meow” although it’s a deep, loud but completely recognizable outcry.

--The Confederate States of America and its occupied territories in the mountain and desert west will stop pretending they won the War of Southern Aggression.

--And finally… Thanks to the fakely retired WestraDamus for coming out of his fake retirement to contribute his bs to this post.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4747 Talk talk talk

 

Want a decent conversation? Start talking to strangers.

Not chat room strangers, real ones. Strangers on the street. On the subway. In the diner.

 

We’ve been told that the art of conversation is dead. Not even close. The art of conversation is alive and well. It’s just that your friends are boring, and your relatives have ulterior motives.

 

Let’s rewind that for a moment. Your friends aren’t necessarily boring. But you know their raps and they know yours. It’s like having the same conversation over and over again.

 

And your relatives -- well, maybe they DON’T have ulterior motives. But you know that there are certain things you can’t discuss with them, lest you raise points that’ll never be solved and that will just cause everyone grief.

 

So do this New York thing: horn in on a convo. If you’re REALLY not welcome, you’ll find out soon enough. The conversers whose territory you’ll be invading will give you the Dark Glare Of Death. Or they’ll just tell you to shove off.

Most people are too polite for that.

 

Plus, we humans are social beings, even most of the sociopaths among us, and thus are willing to talk with anyone about anything.

 

Just don’t be like the Oysters in “Alice in Wonderland.” They tried to stop a fight between the Walrus and the Carpenter and ended up becoming dinner after the combatants resumed rationality.

 

Other than that, there’s all kinds of fun and interesting stuff that can happen among people who don’t know each other and assume they will never again meet.

 

The other day at a restaurant, Iron Grey Joe was waxing poetic about a politician. In the midst of his poetic endorsement, he said something outrageously untrue. So, he got corrected.

 

The conversation then doubled to include two tables of diners instead of one.

It would have been nice to continue. But Iron Grey Joe and his poetic wax suffered a seizure or stroke or heart palpitation, and attention was turned suddenly and permanently to getting the cops and the ambulance on site and Joe to the hospital.

 

This is not a typical end to one of these horn-in-on-the-conversation conversations. Usually, you end up learning something and teaching something.

 

The opportunities for good talk, good learning and good teaching are endless, especially if there’s no ulterior motive.

 

If one of these happens at a pick up bar, it will be less spontaneous and more stilted than if it happens while waiting for the light to turn green.

 

We, remember, are as boring and same-subject as our friends and as touchy as our relatives. The way to have a fresh start every day is to … well, start fresh every day. Or every other day. Or even every week.

 

The art of conversation is not dead. It’s just sick and lacks health insurance.

 

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™  Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com (C) WR 2021

4746 No Payoff Here for Sure

 They used to say if you were out hunting with this guy, the safest place to stay was directly in front of him and close. In other facts of the day, there is absolutely, positively, definitely no truth to the murmurings that he ever had his hand out to either give or to take. Absolutely none. Ever. Guy’s as pure as the driven snow of, you know, West Virginia.

Ah, yes, West Virginia with the sixth highest poverty rate in the country.  And the fifth greatest rate of people moving out and heading for more generous states.

West Virginia, population of around the same number as Phoenix or Philadelphia. 

That’s nothing near big by world standards. When you say “big,” think Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Cairo. But it still is a relatively large number of people who could use the Build Back Better bill, would not abuse it and is being prevented by one guy whose job it is to represent their interests.

 

Biden learned a lot from Obama.  One of the things he learned but shouldn’t have was leaving his spine back home when he moved into the White House.  It took eight years for Obama to relocate and reinstall. Biden doesn’t have that much time.

 

SHRAPNEL:

--Anyone taking bets on what will happen to Fox’s Jesse Waters who mentioned Fauci and “kill shot” in the same sentence? Fauci says he should be fired on the spot. Waters says he was quoted out of context.

--That whole “out of context” thing should be revisited. It’s too much like the wording of consent degrees. Those usually say “I didn’t do it and I’ll never do it again.”

--Context? Takes too much thinking and work to report. Everything is taken out of context.

 

GRAPESHOT: 

-Everything is too long to bother with these days, so we’re planning to cut these posts down from 500 to between 300 and 400 words so you can get through them faster.

-A respect-worthy newsman once called this site “hellishly productive,” which was true then but less so with the newly installed word count deficit.

-Next step may be putting keywords in UPPER CASE to make things go even faster because there’s so much else to read about or hear or view in so many other places.

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021