Working on my Peg Lynch column for the paper; frustrating. Not enough space. Ninety-seven years and 825 words: please. Should be a feature, but they passed.

Yes. I know.

Well, I hope to talk to a Big Time Documentary-Type person next week, and if there’s interest, it’s back to Massachusetts with a real cameraperson. Anyway, this is a good place to note that Peg’s daughter has put up a Facebook page, which hints at the delightful archives to come - I’d seen the 1958 ad in which she’s wearing the hat (from Pierre’s, according to the story) - but I had no idea who shot the photo.

Richard Avedon.

Lovely day; warm and green. I mentioned in the work blog the other day that we’d still consider this summer if Labor Day was in the middle of the month, but there’s no chance of dynamiting that holiday out of its socket, is there? No. So summer has to END regardless of whether the world agrees. Something about the calendar makes the mind divide the seasons into neat equal portions, when there’s really only two. Perhaps we should go for eight seasons, with each of the classic chunks split in twain. Winter, winring, spring, sprum, summer, summal, fall, finter.

Great idea, lad. That’ll catch on.

At least I know it’s stupid. If I tried to do something about it, though, and it was 1952, and I made enough noise and sent out many letters, there might possibly be a photo in Life magazine of one man and his quixotic quest, because they used to love eccentrics who devoted their lives to changing something no one else thought needed changing. There was usually some utopian reasoning behind it: if we go to a 20-hour clock / ten-day week, mankind will no longer groan under the tyranny of the eight-hour work day, but be freed for a life of contemplation and artistic fulfillment! They always assumed people would do high-minded things once the old ways were blown aside, and everyone was speaking Esperanto in high-rises where the clock struck 13. Then people would sit down and stare at abstract painting and contemplate the psychic toll of materialism.

No, they’d go bowling.

Anyway, I have things stacked up a mile high, so it’s just this, some other stuff below, and a small batch of Restaurant Postcard Exteriors. Sorry. If you missed yesterday, it was huge. Maybe go back and read that one.

Odds and Ends today: ties. The ties of 1951. Garish as hell and fun, too; a fellow could make his mark in the office with one of these. Except that the boss might call you in and say “turn it down a little, the girls in the steno pool are starting to point.”

They're from Cutter . . .

. . . and those guys were wild.

I don't know what to add, except that ugly ties changed in the 60s, and became something that would be condemned by all subsequent generations. The ugly ties of hte 50s were spectacular.

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And now, because Events Demand It:

Another ridiculously presumptuous and bossy headline, this time in the Washington Post: “9 Questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask.” It never stops. Well, let me pose 9 of my own.

1. Do you support striking Syria? Yes.

2 Why? It poses no threat to the United States. Directly, no. Neither Bosnia or Grenada or any number of zesty fracases in which we’ve been involved. It’s an important consideration but not the other one.

3. If this is about saving the president’s reputation because he talked about a red line, is that a sufficient reason to go to war? That’s irrelevant to the merits of what can be accomplished, and the most obvious reason for a strike, which is the use of chemical weapons.

4. That really isn’t irrelevant, is it? Well, no, it’s not. Even if one does not support the current president, there’s the notion that politics stops at the water’s edge. Note: that notion was pushed off the pier and drowned a few years ago.) Partisan considerations should not enter into the calculations about the action planned - i.e., this will help my guy or I’m opposed because it will help their guy. However attractive it may seem at the time it will be turned against you.

5. Why start another war, then? I don’t want to. I do not support throwing fancy missiles at military targets, which can be replaced, despite the talk of “degrading” their “assets” with “surgical” strike.

I support bombing the Presidential Palace into rubble, along with every other house he has. (Ask the Israelis for GPS coordinates.) Punish him personally for using chemical weapons.

6. What’s worse about those? Over a hundred thousand people have been killed. Does it matter how? It does. Chemical weapons occupy a particular niche of abhorrent tools, capable of mass death; it’s a tempting tool for monsters. The point of blowing up his houses and the trappings of rule is to punish, and let it be known that such punishment falls anyone who uses them. Unless you want these things to become normal. They’re not normal now. They will be.

7. What if it empowers Al-Qaeda? I am more concerned about Iran.

There. You’re not an imperialistif you agree or an isolationist if you don’t. You have a different view of the nation’s responsibilities and strategic objections, one that can also be argued without resorting to mischaracterizing your opposition.

8. Really? Really, it’s still possible.

9. Is there a ninth question? No.

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There. That's that. The usual usuals here and there around the web, I hope. and new Restaurants! Have a grand day.