A Merry Christmas to all. My gift to you is a short story by a famous writer. William Sidney Porter was a famous short story writer who wrote under the pen name O. Henry. One of his famous stories was "The Gift of the Magi," a Christmas story. I'm sure you have read it sometime in the past, but I think you will enjoy it again. Porter was born in 1862 in North Carolina. He worked at the First National Bank of Austin. In 1894 he was accused by…
NICK PETRISH 1937 – 12/19/2011 Nick Petrish died in Anacortes on December 19, 2011. We had a long friendship. We went from grade school through high school together.We worked together from 1977 until his illness in 2011. He was a friend and a good man. I’ve written about him previously: https://paulluverajournalonline.com/weblog/2012/12/nicholas-petrish-dec-19-2011.html.html PHYLLIS FLIPPA LUVERA 1870 – 1946 My dad’s mother died December 20, 1946 in Anacortes. She was an Italian grandmother who looked and sounded like what an Italian grandmother should. she spoke…
In November of 2009 I published a short post in this blog about the death of Sam Kinison, the comedian, entitled “The Strange Death of Sam Kinison” https://paulluverajournalonline.com/weblog/2009/11/the-strange-death-of-sam-kinison.html For reasons I do not understand that post five years ago has produced more comment than any other thing I have written about. Not only that, there is controversy in the comments from readers with strong views in his favor and others very critical of him as well. He was controversial in…
By now everyone knows a New York state grand jury decided there was not enough evidence to file any criminal charges against the white police officer applying a neck hold and the other police involved in the arrest of a black man that resulted in his death. While the media has spent it's time focused on talking about the grand jury's failure to indict and the "guilt or innocence" of the white police officer or officers, it is more complicated than that. Everyone has a…
