Nixon's The One?

Dick Nixon may not have followed through on his campaign slogan of being 'The One,' (which perhaps puts him in good company with the sitting POTUS, or 'That One,' as he was indelicately described by John McCain in 2008) , and that whole issue of JFK Harvard envy was just sad. However, if this photo is any evidence, working on his campaign trail was at least half as fun as breaking into the Watergate. Even if this photo predated Deep-Throat. Still, we'll defer to the venerable Hunter S. Thompson whose epitaph for Dick Nixon was both uncharitable and probably spot on: http://www.counterpunch.org/thompson02212005.html . Choice line: "Nixon was so crooked that he needed his servants to help him screw his pants on in the morning. Even his funeral was illegal. His body should have been burned in a trash can."

Sabrina 1945: Yes We Have No Bananas

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ate6yjFW-hk&feature=related ) A classic Great Depression song 'Yes We Have No Banana's' from 1945's Sabrina starring Humphrey Bogart (Expelled from Andover 1918 after being caught clutching his trademark cigarette.)

Off The Rails: Alfred Brush Ford & Elisabeth Reuther Dickman

In 1923 former chief engineer at Ford Motor Company, Edward Gray began the construction of his lifelong ambition of a private community for Yachtsmen. He called the neighborhood Graystone and soon had enlisted members of the Fisher (Fisher Body), Koerber (Koerber Brewing) and Gar Wood (Gar Wood Boats) as early landowners in the gated complex.

Amid the pre-Depression euphoria several of these families built lavish mansions
replete with amenities ranging from wet and dry-docks to small golf courses and even a berth for the Gar Wood Seaplane. The largest mansion was built by the Fisher family on 46 lots or 40 acres of the 67 acre subdivision. Serial Bachelor Lawrence Fisher spent $1.5 million in 1928 for what would become a folly to rival Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose.



By 1929's Black Friday, very few, even among the vastly rich, were interested in buying lavish real estate no matter how demonstrable the quality of neighbors they could afford. And because Graystone did not officially open until 1931 it was doomed before it began. As with the rest of Detroit, Graystone and the Fisher Mansion began a slow, painful, and seemingly inexorable path towards decline.

Born in 1950, Alfred Brush Ford, heir to the Fisher Brother's Body-works, an early supplier to General Motors, as well as a member of the august Ford family, is thought to have gone off the rails sometime in the mid-1970's when he donated a substantial amount of his inheritance, as well as his ancestral Fisher Mansion to the Hare Krishna sect. ABF also changed his name to Ambarish Das. while his wife (nee' Elisabeth Reuther Dickman - daughter of UAW president Walter Reuther ) changed hers to Lekhasranvanti Dasi. Had AFB merely donated his property to the Krishna's he might have been hailed as a genius for getting a tax write-off on distressed real-estate. But sadly that was not the case.

Shortly therafter, The Hare Krishna's began to renovate the Fisher Mansion , and redidicated in in 1983 as the Bhaktevdanta Cultural Center for International Society of Krishna Conciousness.

Apparently the Krishna's have proven to be good neighbors in what has become a bad neighborhood, although I doubt that would mollify many Fords or Fishers.

Snowpocalypse 2010?

Its 3:35pm in the Northeast Mid-Atlantic , it was supposed to start snowing at 2:00pm, it was 40 degrees (f) at lunchtime, and I still haven't seen a single flake of snow. Could all the hype be a vast conspiracy between the Dorrances (Campbell's) and the Woods (WaWa) ? Stay tuned!

Schnell !

Just don't try it in the Snow!