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Happy Haloween to beloved cats everywhere!
Hodge, Samuel Johnson’s beloved cat, surveys London’s Gough Square, looking toward the home of his master, who would go to the market to buy oysters for him. Johnson, greatest wit of 18th century London, wrote the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language in this now restored house, which we visited a couple years ago when researching “Samuel Johnson and His Clubbable Friends” for my essay presented to the Chicago Literary Club (www.chilit.org). 
I have a home near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin — surrounded by farm country — and traveling back and forth frequently to Chicago, I pass by many fields where scattered cattle contentedly graze. But more and more often I also pass the growing number of factory farms, where I see these long open-sided barns with the rear ends of hundreds of cattle, tails wagging in tiny pens under bright lights 24 hours a day.
I guess they are being fattened up for market. But I find the sight of these cattle, being treated as so much walking meat instead of proud animals enjoying some vestige of normal life, depressing and upsetting. Yes, I once worked for a prominent fast food company, and I know that burger places want to keep their prices low by buying less expensive meat. So do homemakers. But I’d willingly pay the extra few cents to know that cattle are treated humanely while they live.
When I was a boy, my father had an “ooo-ga” horn installed on his car, and when we went on country drives, he would pull up to a field fence and sound it, and cows and steers would sidle up to the fence and “moo” back. I guess those days are gone, but I still like to see cattle in the field, contentedly grazing with their young ones. That’s worth something to me.
I always look to CBS’s “Sunday Morning” program to add brightness to my spirit over coffee, before the later news shows bring it back down. What a crying shame that the geniuses at CBS chose to preempt the wonderful “Sunday Morning” today for some lousy football game!
Bring back “Sunday Morning,” one of the last scraps of American culture on television. My knee is down on CBS until they wake up and smell that coffee again. “Sunday Morning” is a weekly “Super Bowl” of uplifting, educational and meaningful entertainment. Shame on CBS!!!!!
I don’t often weigh in on Trump online, because, where does one start? However today, I’m motivated, because in addition to smiling through the assassination of a Washington Post journalist, Trump has lashed out at his former treasured personal lawyer Michael Cohen as nothing but a “PR person who did small legal work.”
Then, of course, he decided to crunch down on the porn star that he had Michael Cohen buy off after he had an affair with her while he was married by decrying her as a “horseface.”
My only comment is that the President of the United States is a very small person; too small to waste any time on, if he hadn’t been raised to such an exalted position by people who are amused by such revelations.
As an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America, and someone who is proud of my lifetime of work building communications bridges between organizations and the public, I am offended by this very small person who is temporarily cluttering up office space in the People’s House.
Apple Pressings 