Guilt

When I was attended Windsor Union Elementary School in rural Northern California—that would be back in the 50s children—we carried our own lunches to school. I brought 5 cents a day--”milk money”--to buy a carton of cold milk to have with my lunch. We weren't wealthy, but sometimes my Mom would put in a Twinkie or a chocolate cream filled frosted cupcake, or some other treat. Always made by Hostess. It was a special treat. My kids got the same treatment. But my grand-kids won’t. Hostess is liquidating due to a protracted strike by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union . Hostess is gone, as are the jobs of their 18,000-some employees, and one more piece of the American landscape. Union strikers are probably proud of themselves. The standing joke about Twinkies was that they would be one of the few food items that could withstand a nuclear blast. But they couldn't withstand the union.

I make fun of The Weather Channel often enough. It's not like I seek them out to ridicule them—they do it to themselves, like now. TWC has taken it on itself to begin naming winter storms. I'm not certain at all when TWC decided to name every flurry this winter. I became aware when a Nor'Easter came into New England after the most recent hurricane, and TWC called it “Athena”. Really? Athena? I dismissed it. After all, it was just once, and, well, those New Yorkers are pretty self-involved, so naming their most recent tragedy seems OK—These are the same people who root for the Yankees. These are the same folks who called the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center “ground zero”--9-11 was an act of war and simply awful, but wasn't really quite the same as a nuclear blast, but, well, it was New York. I understand. When I turned on TWC this morning to get my local forecast, I saw that an winter snowstorm in Utah has been named “Brutus”. Uh...