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Being Raised From The Dead In Time For November

Resurrection reports from the grave are far and few between. The most celebrated occurred in ancient Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago. Not to be undone, modern biologists insist they have accomplished the same, this time going back more than 32,000 years. There just has to be a back story here….. The New York Times reports... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
today at 10:19 am
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Whatever Happened To Dating..?

The experts — they go by many names with or without credentials — are lately sounding counter-intuitive. Not that these empiricists believe very much in intuition, but they are making my barber mad. Very mad, because Ron is a 68-year-old traditionalist and proud of it. The experts are telling us the anti-big government sentiment runs... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
Tuesday at 10:34 am
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In Rome, Tighter Tummies And Perkier Breasts

British wit and raconteur Quentin Crisp wrote something which has increasingly made sense to me: “The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person.” When that person is a lover, a spouse, a teacher, a philosopher, it makes enormous good sense in our... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
Monday at 10:52 am
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Al Pacino And Me

Never met my fellow Italian-American, Al Pacino. And yet, we have much in common. So much, I feel obliged to share some of it with you. Whether you feel obliged to read it is only a delete button away. We’re both of Sicilian extraction. Both his father and mine were born in Sicily in the... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 19, 2012 at 11:21 am
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Killing Yourself To Stay Healthy Is Bad For Your Health

From Frank Sinatra to Queen Latifah they sing the great American theme song: “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die.” Only today’s Americans [circa 25 to 65] have changed it to: “I’m Gonna Live So I Never Die.” An exaggeration…? I don’t think so with 42.7 million fitness clubs, 2.3 billion annual drug orders, and a... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 18, 2012 at 9:34 am
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I Was A Prostitute For The 1%

I am a certifiable member of the 99%. And yet for years I prostituted my talents to the 1% of Fortune 500 management, corporate jet-setters, Hollywood celebrities, foreign ambassadors, and elite members of presidential Cabinets. My talents, such as they were, were not in hotel rooms, but hunched over typewriters. For 20 some years I... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 17, 2012 at 10:41 am
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Clint, I Think You Started Something

Clint Eastwood’s Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler started something whose ending is just now being written. In the various public responses to his flinty exhortation to Americans about “getting back in the fight.” Political paranoids aside, most viewers reacted something like we once did to those old B&W war movies in the Forties. You know... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 16, 2012 at 10:51 am
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Seeing You Get Undressed

Almost every morning I do the same thing. I peel a banana with which to top my breakfast cereal. Each time I undress it, I know exactly what I will find. And if there does happen to be a bruise or two, well I already knew this by looking at it from the outside. This... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 15, 2012 at 9:58 am
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Epiphany On Marshall Fields 3rd Floor

I taught in the classroom for 40 years. No argument with the classic adages “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” and “there are teachable moments.” I would simply add a third: “teachers learn in much the same ways.” It was the Fifties…it was still Norman Rockwell in much of America….I had to... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 14, 2012 at 10:47 am
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Are You In The Minority? You're Lucky!

In what we still like to call “the free world,” majority rules. No argument. But at the same time, the minorities that are left must be given their fair share of that rule. It’s always this indispensable balancing act that tests a nation’s democracy. Look at four examples: * Today’s 1% of multi-millionaires and billionaires... Read more »
By Jack Spatafora,
February 13, 2012 at 9:48 am
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