For call waiting there’s a ripping and chewing sound. Hammacher Schlemmer now offers an $80 Tyrannosaurus rex telephone (keypad under a rock, receiver in the dinosaur’s back). According to the summer catalog, “‘Rex’ even announces incoming calls with a roar instead of a ring.”
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“If a bit shoddy, [popular religious] belief at least has the strength of vulgarity–like a plaster statue of the Little Flower or a phosphorescent crucifix,” writes Paul Q. Beeching in the Chicago-based Critic (Spring). “It may be shallow; for that very reason, it is rarely shaken. Compared to it, today’s theology looks very overdone indeed, and not necessarily more profound….There isn’t a chance in hell that we will live as Jesus lived; the whole idea is blasphemous.”
“There is not enough money in America, public or private, to pay for all the care this informal safety net once provided,” writes Jonathan Rowe in the Progressive Review (April). “Decades ago, for example, if a mother had to be away for the afternoon, she would just call a neighbor and send the kids over. Next time, it would work the other way around….Caregiver exchanges are simply networks of mutual care. I help a neighbor and get a chit in exchange. Then, when I need help, someone in the community helps me. In Brooklyn, for example, an HMO for seniors called Elderplan has become, in effect, one big caregiver exchange….People have a desire to help and a need to be needed that has nothing to do with money. Economists don’t understand this, but it is true.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Carl Kock.
