An LNP article reports the death of Charlie Smithgall, Lancaster’s long time pharmacist, former mayor, and a unique and unforgettable individual. I only got to know Charlie during his two attempts for re-election at which time I was a significant funder and a would be political adviser. Upon my arrival at his house, he would […]
Category: Memoirs
REF speaks: Is the “Atlantic” the “Fox News” of the left?
By Robert Field, Publisher Some weeks ago I discontinued my subscription to the “Atlantic”. This morning I heard Jeffrey Goldberg, its Editor in Chief, two times refer to Trump supports as “rabble”. I hardly consider almost half of the nation as “rabble”, defined at Google “as ordinary people, often regarded as socially inferior […]
Great news for NewsLanc and the history of Lancaster
Spread over the next few months, we will be adding to our NewsLanc web site the recently discovered articles that predated June, 2009 that were lost during the change over to the Word Press format . For any student or historian interested in Lancaster history, the early years of reporting on NewsLanc will be especially […]
Is the bar for proficiency now too high to encourage learning a musical instrument?
A couple of hundred years ago, only those living in major cities could hear professional performances of classical music. It was common for families and friends to gather in parlors to listen to amateurs perform music as best they could. The beauty of what they were playing transcended occasional mistakes, corrections, and misinterpretations. But in […]
Learning from just waiting
by Robert Field Perhaps the most important business lesson of my life came when I was thirteen years old. During the summer, my father assigned me to work at his satellite furniture store on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia, which was about thirty feet horizontally and fifty feet vertically from the Frankfort Elevator, at that location […]
On the Evolution of African-Americans
By Robert Field Post-Darwinism insinuations that African-Americans were inherently inferior to Caucasians were clearly refuted by the brilliance and careers of such luminaries as Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, later Paul Robeson and thousands of others that were referred to as the “Ten Percent.” Nevertheless over my long life (84 […]
REF: When Fascism came to Lancaster County
I recently encountered professor Timothy Snyder of Yale on MSNBC and ordered his very short book “On Tyranny”. For over sixty years I have tried to learn the meaning of “fascism”. I now understand my difficulties since it is more like a creeping cancer than an alternative form of government and, as we saw with […]
Boston Found a Scapegoat After 9/11
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/virginia-buckingham-boston-911.html by Robert Field I underestimated and questioned the hysteria following 9/11 and made the expensive mistake of so underestimating its effect that I blew $50,000 in launching the hitherto successful “Diamond Men” movie in over twenty theaters in the NYC region a few weeks later. When I sought to promote the movie by handing […]
A “gap” in my research for Professor Cipolla
After a gap year working in construction management between my freshman year at Oberlin, in the late 1950s I attended Cal Berkeley for my junior and senior year (although half of the senior year was spent at the Mexican National University in Mexico City.) For some reason that remains obscure to me, I was […]
REF speaks: I remain fearful at what may occur in the not distant future.
By Robert Field The visceral direction of the Right is a call to return to the USA of 1850, a nation of total white supremacy. Today we have a very different nation comprised of a citizenry and norms that were unimaginable back then. (And for white elders, it is hard to recognize and emotionally […]
REF: The fall of the Roman Republic, deja vu?
It started with the Gracchi brothers in 133 BC who disregarded the governmental norms of the day that called for Roman senators and representatives to treat each other with decorum, courtesy, and respect . What incrementally progressed over the next century was a trashing of civility, starting with insults, then mob action, assaults, assassinations and ultimately civil […]
Trump’s end game – Hardcore supporters have the rifles
By Robert E. Field, Publisher President Donald Trump gave up hope of winning re-election in a traditional manner at least half a year ago. He appears to be following a different path to achieve a second term through devious mechanisms and ultimately blood in the streets. His diabolical scheme: To cast such doubt on the integrity […]
“We don’t get to choose…”
From the cover of Oberlin College’s Spring/Summer 2020 Alumnae Magazine, written in white on black background: “We don’t get to choose when we were born. We don’t choose what natural disasters, epidemiological emergencies, stock market crashes, tyrannical regimes, or wars our generations face. We only get to choose how we react.” Oberlin Professor Wendy […]
“Demographic Gap”
An article appearing in today’s New York Time entitled “End of Babies” describes the world wide drop in birth rates. With simply a rudimentary understanding of the “demographic gap”, which is what the authors are describing , they would know that children in an agrarian society were profitable as workers and essential for securing support in […]