Moving on to the pithy observations:
I can understand naturally-occurring potholes. But I’m having trouble dealing with some man-made potholes in Jefferson City. A couple of years ago I had an expensive encounter with a pothole on I-70. We don’t have anything such as that in town but we do have some that give pretty big jolts.
The resurfacing of some of our streets has left some manhole covers below the street surface. Readers in Jefferson City might be intimately familiar with a real suspension banger for cars turning right from Jefferson Street onto East Capitol Avenue. For example.
It has taken me too long to decide on an alternate way to church. That’s not the only man-made pothole in our street system but it’s the worst I’ve encountered so far.
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Nancy and I are college graduates. I even went to graduate school until I discovered her, at which point I got a real job so we could get married (This is only partly true but I’m not sure which part). We, as educated people, have trouble accepting how awful the commercials are for the income tax elimination proposal on the August ballot. In the case I’m about to cite, they are so intellectually silly that the point they want to make is lost, assuming they make a point.
Here’s the script for one that is a total turn-off in our household;
Some uninvited guests have been eating at your table for years. Property taxes and income taxes, helping themselves to money that belongs to your family. Amendment 5 shows them the door: it cuts property taxes, phases out the income tax, and shifts the burden to the big corporations that have been getting a free meal. This is your table. It’s time you had room at it. Vote YES on Amendment 5. August 4.
The shifting of the tax burden to big corporations is exactly the opposite of what we have understood the proposal to be about and the ad’s targeting of them is pretty bewildering. As we understand the rational explanations of Amendment 5, the shift of the tax burden would be from the wealthy and the big corporations to the little guy.
Further, aren’t “big corporations” supposed to flock to Missouri because we’re cutting the taxes? Not according to this awful commercial that says we need to “show them the door,” presumably the door out, not in.
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The famous archaeologist Dr. Alan Grant died a few days ago. We will always remember him for one of the most magical sequences in movie history—the day Dr. Grant saw his first living dinosaur—and when we saw it with him—and then the first dinosaur herd.
We know Dr. Grant, of course, by his real name—Sam Neill
Remember, he and the rest of the cast were not seeing what we saw on the screen, which made the acting that carried the impact of the scene so extraordinary. We were as emotionally awed as Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) were.
Everything about the Jurassic Park movie franchise seemed formulaic after this. But these first few moments are pure magic—and we saw them with the eyes of Alan and Ellie.
Off the top of our head we can think of few other movie scenes with the visual scope and emotional impact of those few minutes.
Perhaps our first view of the slowly revolving space station in 2001 (with perfectly chosen music making it even better). Maybe the great pull-back scene in Gone With the Wind that showed all of the casualties of the Battle of Atlanta. Maybe the intensity of Pickett’s Charge in Ted Turner’s “Gettysburg” series.
You might have comparable scenes in your memory. Share them, if you like, in the box below.
(picture credits: Instagram)