Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Sgt. Mom Stephen Vincent Benet nailed down the type, in his poem epic John Brown’s Body, in a phrase that has resonated with me ever since I read it so long ago that I don’t recall when I read it the quintessential southern belle, who propped up the South on a swansdown fan:
Mary Lou Wingate, as slightly made
And as hard to break as a rapier-blade.
Bristol’s daughter and Wingate’s bride,
Never well since the last child died
But staring at pain with courteous eyes.
Actually, no not the ruins of Athens … that’s a Beethoven piece that popped into my head the Turkish March, from The Ruins of Athens … I’d always wondered in a desultory way, what would happen to me, if I played that classic music piece without comment, when I was stationed at EBS-Hellenikon, back in the day. I was never reckless enough to do the experiment and find out, actually. The Greeks were hair-trigger temperamental about any mention of Greece, Turkey, or the EEC (the forerunner to the EU) on the perilous airways of the American Forces Radio station where I worked mostly on the swing and mid-shifts in the early 1980s. As exasperating and sometimes as deadly as the political stuff got during those years and it did get deadly, for the N-14 organization and elements of the PLO were more or less targeting Americans on a regular basis I loved Greece unreservedly.
We’ve driven past this, a number of times on our way to and from New Braunfels … ever since we discovered the scenic back-road that lets us bypass the highway …
A special treat … from a knitter with an advanced sense of humor –
… and figgy wine, whole preserved figs, dried figs and jam of figs … As you can deduce, we have a bounty of figs, at this very moment.