....Have you ever thought of going through your closet to see if you could possibly find any clothing where the label indicates that it has been made in the USA? No, I don't suppose you have. Well, you don't have to; I've done it for you. These are the countries that I saw on the labels of my shirts--golf shirts and dress shirts; short sleeves; size XL.
China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Madagascar, Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, Viet Nam, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Thailand. Nothing made in the USA, and I only got through about a third of my clothing. Several shirts still left, and then the pants. I don't know if I've got the stomach to go through the pants. It's also too difficult to get at the labels. I don't suspect it would be any different in your clothing closets, so don't bother. When Barack Obama says his stimulus plan will create a million or more jobs, I'm left to wonder where these jobs are going to be. And it's been a very long time since I've heard or read anything about the unions. This doling out jobs to every country you can think of never used to be this way. I remember walking through Woolworth's Five & Ten Cent Store many moons ago and seeing cheap Japanese toys being sold. The thought of having a foreign country manufacture our clothing or cars or radios or anything else was anathema.
....I was going to say cell phones and computers--but never heard of them. Don't know how we got along without them. E-mail? Forget it. Just write a letter, stick it in an envelope and put a 3 cent stamp on it. Telephones? Who had them? Only the swells on the Grand Concourse. Back then the "5 & 10" was our mall. I guess that beats out the dollar stores. But if I understand the system correctly, the companies that have their products produced in another part of the world are raking in the money and sending it to a tax free place in Switzerland or to some other tax loop to avoid paying taxes to our Treasury. But, of course, what do I know. And that's not a question--it has the force of a statement.
.....I remember that we did have a sort of a car back in the 30s. It had two seats in the front and a rumble seat in the back. The motor housing in the front was entirely in chrome and when the sun reflected on it, it shone like a fiery comet. It was called an "Essex." In order to start the motor you had to use a crank to crank it up from the front. It usually took a rather muscular person to get it started after about five cranks. I often wondered why the back was called a "rumble seat." Of course, it was open to the elements and I suppose that's where people rumbled. However, I never witnessed a rumble, except perhaps in "West Side Story.."
.....On a more mundane level, I got a surprise from my publisher yesterday--a royalty check for $46! Who woulda thunk it? Well, my first royalty check was about $25 so I imagine sales are creeping up to the Time's top ten list. I don't know whether or not creeping is slower than crawling. And that's not a statement--it has the force of a question.
......Yesterday, too, I received a call from my Law Firm's doctor and made an appointment with him to examine my back (injured at WalMart). The other wounds that occurred are healing very slowly. Rho has been like a nurse--she is very adept at dressing wounds. Why not? We have tons of bandages, band aids, and anti-biotic creams in our medicine cabinets. Our bathrooms are like a pharmacy. I almost have to injure myself periodically so that our equipment will not go to waste.
No comments:
Post a Comment