Theater review by Frank C. Siraguso Directed by Mark Robbins with a great cast, the Kansas City Actors Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is timeless yet modern, dark with foreboding undercurrents of…
Mint manifesto
I like mint. I like chocolate. I don’t especially like the two together. After some pondering, I think the reason is that mint has a cool taste and chocolate has a warm…
Nixon resigns – 40 years ago today
I remember exactly where I was Thursday, August 8, 1974, the night Richard Nixon announced his impending resignation I and a friend were glued to the radio in his car, parked outside…
The Burglary – book report
The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI by Frank C. Siraguso July 22, 2014 On the night of Monday, March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali challenged Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight…
Don’t Get Sick in America – book report
“It may go on for years—efforts to put bandaids on the present system, with cost-control decrees and new arrangements for the poor, while the campaign for national health insurance gathers force. But…
Why you and I might not retire
When I was around 10 years old, my vision of retirement was to work until 65 and then “fish my life away.” Role models included my maternal grandfather, who retired from the…
Finding the Ghost in the Machine
“Management researchers . . . dig deeper and deeper into the human psyche in their search for the ‘ghost in the machine’ – that elusive spirit that inspired enthusiastic human action and…
Smoking Typewriters – book report
The Sixties Underground Press and the rise of Alternative Media in America “As that old journalistic hound dog, A. J. Liebling put it, ‘Freedom of the press belongs to those who own…
New era takes off in Red skies as another goes down the drain
One can’t have read Arlie Hochschild’s The Managed Heart and continue thinking about any working stiff, woman or man, in the same way. Ever. It affects me especially when I’m at a…
Macrobiotic french fries
Kansas City has always been a meat-lover’s town. Early vegetarian restaurants’ lousy cooking years ago may have kept it that way longer than it should have. Maybe it was the post-Thanksgiving repast…