May 30, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com When my double Great-Grandfather Robert Wilhelm Guenther left Appomattox and then his mustering-out as a Union soldier in June 1865, he accomplished the greatest feat of his four-year “career” — he survived. So many of his comrades did not — in the First and Second Battles […]
May 23, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com A shiny new hotel has opened in Nyack, N.Y., a Hudson River village that for decades was the work home of newspaper stiffs like me. I hope The Time Nyack enjoys success, but I wish today’s media had added color to press reports of its opening. […]
May 16, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Weiden, Germany — On a recent walk here in the centuries-old farmland of this Bavarian region while visiting family, I came upon a war memorial, a bit worn and not as cared for as when it was dedicated perhaps 20 years ago. Such remembrances often suffer […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Even if people once in our lives have left us or we them, or if circumstances — changes — took them away, there is certainty in familiar shadows, a feeling more than apparition actually, that besides you is the person long gone. You may be walking down a childhood street […]
May 1, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Americans share a “document of intent” with our British cousins. For our former royal mother country, it is the 1215 Magna Carta, which actually was reissued, modified and was more relevant to the rights of 13th century barons than those of the common man. The American […]
April 24, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com No man, no woman, no child is free as their god intended if their history, their inheritance, their rightful destiny are lassoed by another master. That was the Irish in the British occupation from the 12th century, in the 1800 Act of Union that merged the nation […]
April 18, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Having just returned from a family trip to Germany and Austria, and immediately thrown as an American into the country I cherish, the horizon has been expanded that I cannot fully come back. One half the mindset is elsewhere. I realized this even before I left […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III Ahgunther@hotmail.com MUNICH, Germany — The fifth-generation descendant of a Prussian family that had an umlaut over the “u” in Gunther has returned to a sort of fatherland. I arrived here Friday to visit my son and daughter in law, who is a U.S. Army physician in Bavaria. To get to Germany, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com All periods in history have their idiosyncrasies, stylized to the individual, the mojo of the moment, the then-current trends, the arts, the music, whether there are wars or economic difficulties or actual progress of the species. If we live long enough to take the local and the express […]
March 28, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Why is “The Donald” popular? This one sentence tells us why. When the media, and that includes some of my colleagues, enables a showman, a magician, an entertainer, then the person becomes all of that and more so. Trump, the likely Republican Party presidential candidate […]
March 21, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com They buried Risa last week, a woman of just 57 years, 30 or so homeless. A strongly independent individual, her cancer came quickly and thoroughly, but it could not easily quiet her voice. That was a fight. We at the Rockland Interfaith Breakfast Program in Spring […]
‘ROOM AT THE TABLE’ March 14, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com One good-natured joke as we approach St. Patrick’s Day is that if you want to read in Heaven, saddle up to an Irishman or woman for the titles, but if you wish to concentrate, hide behind a tree, for the wee leprechauns […]
March 7, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com In my youth, in Spring Valley, N.Y., we school kids were all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and at Christmas time, we sang songs for both the holiday and Hanukkah. But beyond these events, there was no one pointing to another and saying, “Here’s the Italian kid,” […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Each person’s creative process is suited to the individual. For example, if I write a column, I may have an idea on the spot or one a longtime before, squirreled away until it has stewed enough to be further seasoned, prepared, delivered, and, hopefully, digested. I never think […]
February 22, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Not sure how the man born on this date, Feb. 22 in 1732, would have fared in the recent tumultuous presidential primary voting or if the “father of our country” would have been elected in November 2016. Such are the dynamic shifts following the waves of […]
February 14, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com If we could count the number of valentines not sent on this day in seasons past, they might amount to many unanswered letters. For that is what a valentine is, a response. Perhaps beyond the teacher-inspired handmade cards that you were to bring home to your […]
February 8, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Any good farmer knows that if you don’t plant the best seed in cultivated soil and nurture growth against nature and other adversity, the pickings will prove slim. Simple truth, but the basics are often overlooked. There is also the true story of a prize-winning corn […]
February 1, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com The scene was a stage set of sorts, and as with all theater, the place, the people, even the time were of less relative importance than the happening. And it was that, a telling moment. I was at an elementary school concert of third-through-fifth-grade chorus and […]
January 25, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com The news clip said that New York City and its suburbs were “paralyzed” by the snowstorm, which dumped two inches per hour and which totaled more than in the famous Blizzard of 1888. OK, but the date was not Jan. 23, 2016, but Dec. 26, 1947. Life, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Literally, if you think about it, re-tying one’s shoes can pause your life just enough to alter things. It’s the same argument that if you had left the house one minute later, you might never have seen her face. Write your own story, but you see what I mean. […]
January 11, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Reaching for the 1800s front door knob at the Edward Hopper House the other day, the Nyack home of the famed American realist painter, it occurred that perhaps more than a million turns to that piece have happened in the nearly 158 years it has been […]
Early snow in Spring Valley as food program awaits guests. January 4, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com While you cannot go home again, the gods, and nature, can make you think you are in a dream of past time, place. That was my experience Tuesday last when at 2:17 a.m., I rolled […]
December 28, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com I am increasingly asked why I stay in my hometown, actually the county where I have lived my life, and my father before me, and my grandfather a bit and now one of our two sons and his family. My simple answer is this Rockland, the […]
This is my son’s annual holiday story, which he has written in this space for many seasons. By Arthur H. Gunther IV clausland@yahoo.com There was too much science. Too much math. There was too much thinking in absolutes and definitives. There were men and women with no patience, no imagination, no faith, who knew […]
December 14, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com There is comparison to be made to the fellow or gal standing in the corner of the dining room surfing a smartphone and a man/woman the same age sitting in a quite comfortable reclining chair in 1956. Both seeking information about local events, city, state, national, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com POSTED on Dec. 6 for Dec. 7 — No American can go through this day without recalling Pearl Harbor, because it is etched on our timeline. Most modern-day citizens have no recollection of the “Day of Infamy,” as President Franklin Roosevelt put it in asking for a declaration […]
November 30, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Coffee under brew can define your day, or at least open the door. Universally, whether you enjoy java or not, a whiff reminds you of mornings as a child, or the early trip to an old diner where the urns were behind the counter puffing away. […]
November 23, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com The perch that I sit on — and most of my readers, too — is in the lower part of New York State, in the geographically smallest county — Rockland — but it is close to New York City and has since its beginning as a […]
November 16, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III It had to be pre-World War I when the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, N.Y., still had no hot water, relying instead on a rubber tube connected from a gas jet in the bathroom wall to a small bunsen burner. Water for shaving, washing-up was heated in […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Increasingly, special interests can buy an election, influencing sitting officeholders and deeply directing U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Investigative media that once would have looked at such a growing web of influence has shrunk in corporate downsizing and in declining readership of a citizenry that ought to ask more questions. […]
November 2, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, not a birthday “present” this year, but it has been often enough. In earlier times at a newspaper, I worked most birthday/election events. No complaints. Liked the job. Not sure, though, if this year’s stable of candidates, and that […]
October 26, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com The brotherhood is losing its working members, and that will make orphans of all who depend on information delivery as a public trust. Newspapers are dying, shot by a lessened public appetite for reading anything longer than a Tweet and the high cost of putting out […]
Oct. 19, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Lost a good friend a few days ago who was also my first boss on a full-time job at the original Journal-News, a daily in Rockland County, N.Y. As with other kind souls who knew better to use sugar than spice, Al Witt was well-placed […]
By Arthur H Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com The date on this piece tells it all — it is Columbus Day, a national holiday in the good, old US of A, but not for everyone. As I write this shortly after 7:30 a.m. in the Northeast, the storm troops that are the landscapers everyone seems to […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com There’s a smallish village near me, and, of course, there is one by you, anywhere, that has its charm. You may have to look beyond the new, in this case the paint, restored Victorian and earlier 20th century facades and weekend tourists to find that, unless it is the […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com “Less is More” is often a clever marketing move to make you believe the downsized product you pay dearly for actually delivers as promised. The real truth may be that the deal is a three-card Monty ploy. For example, the coffee bags I pull apart in a local food […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Envelopes — legal sized or not — may be an anachronism in the digital world, in this morphing time of Tweets, Facebook posts and cell phone text shorthand, but using them can prompt memories that probably will not happen if you hit the smartphone in 20 years. For example, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com When I was 21 and had not yet set the sail of life’s direction, perhaps even adrift for a time in a dinghy in calm waters but with rapids in view, I took a part-time job as a “flyboy,” the person who catches newspapers as they come off the […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@hotmail.com EVERYWHERE, USA — How is labor supposed to rest on this noted day when there are so few middle-class jobs? The many unemployed already have nothing but downtime. How did a rich, progressive, innovative, democratic, promising nation, always one with a frontier to conquer, become stuck in high […]
ahgunther@yahoo.com Heroes of the Holocaust are not only those who died in that great inhumanity. Survivors who have gone on to endure thousands of nights in recalled nightmare have articulated against the dark side and championed what is good in humankind. In their selflessness, they have shown that the cancer that was Adolf Hitler and […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com A day or so before my brother Craig and I recently closed on our late parents’ house, I said goodbye to a place that was never my childhood home, never one of infant, toddler, pre-teen and teen yin/yang that moves one toward the whole. No, all that happened — […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com In the youth that was mine and so many others in 1950s not-yet-suburbia in Rockland County, N.Y., there would be occasional trips to New York City, about 24 miles southeast. That could be an experience. In those days, many Rocklanders had never been to Gotham and quite a few […]
Spring Valley, N.Y. — Over on Alturas Road, between Cole and Summit avenues, on the hill once called Red Brick, many deep inches of asphalt are the burial cover of a long-gone era, one that saw much less traffic on the original Nyack Turnpike, on the Alturas Road section in this once summer resort village […]
By Arthur H.Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com “Every Hero Has a Story” is the theme of this year’s Summer Reading Club in my area, part of the national Collaborative Summer Library Program. It encourages students to continue reading over school vacation, whether they choose books with that bent or not. Local libraries display related material and hope […]
July 27, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com There comes a day when you see a certain face on a relative, friend or former acquaintance, and you realize time has passed, that age has added lines, that days of happiness, difficulty, excitement, boredom and the sometime ordinariness of living have left telltale trails on […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com The painter who touches you has already made that same journey inward, for he/she takes a picture of part of the artist’s soul and renders it in form, line, color, perspective. If you get goose bumps, you get the picture. This is a gift, which like all the […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Fruit in season is like long-sought-after love that suddenly makes connection. The heavens appear, but as in many a novel and short story, consumption does you in, spoils you for the ordinary. You can love no more past this time, at least not in anticipation. Until the next season. […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III Back when, and “when” is whenever you or I hold a memory about a place or someone or thing, there was a country road in Pomona named McNamara, and though the signs still proclaim it, no longer is this a rural place. Nor is Pomona, named by apple farmer Nicholas […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com It was at the corner of Marion Street and First Avenue in an American town that the echoes of the past not only filled the ears with a delightful, peaceful sound but the fragrance of the moment catapulted me back decades. On an errand run in Nyack, N.Y., a community […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Today’s social media, like Facebook, showcases much me-ism and egotism, but it can also be telling about someone’s character. And that character, in turn, is telling about the individual’s beliefs. It brings respect, even conversion. An example: Pope Francis’ new encyclical on climate change, while providing counterpoint to naysayers of […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com When one of my sons bought his 1929 home, a smallish but well-crafted, ideally situated place, he and his wife noticed the paucity of closets, not uncommon in houses before the 1930s. Wardrobes, often stylish and beyond-utilitarian, served instead. And, of course, people had fewer clothes. The man they […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com When you are a newspaper photographer, you are like a stage or film director – you set up shots, scenes that capture, it is hoped, the essence, the nut, the who, what, when, where, why and how of an event, occurrence, etc. That surely was the way I worked […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III I am not a teacher, but I know a good argument about education. And the children are losing it. I live in New York where, as in many other states, the focus is on testing students and teachers because of claimed declining standards since at least the 1970s. The companies […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com PIERMONT, N.Y. — This Hudson River village just north of New York City is where the Normandy Day landings were staged, literally. It was from the pier here that U.S. Army soldiers and their units gathered to be taken to the large ships at New York and then across […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com NYACK, N.Y. — This village a bit north of New York City and west of the Hudson River has long been recognized as part of the famous “Underground Railroad,” the network of secret trails, safe houses and courageous people across color who helped slaves escape in the 1800s. Now, thanks […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com On a fine spring day — and we have had just a few of those in the Northeast this year since our old-fashioned, cold, snowy winter forced us into a long season of overcoats, only to shed them faster than Grant took Richmond when unusually hot periods with […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com It used to be that the smog from coal furnaces and smokestack industry defined cities, along with dark alleys and film noir scenes, but with the urban renaissance, things are now much more in vibrant color rather than black and white. There has always been the upbeat, of course, and […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com When a son loses a father, there is such a flood of emotion that it will take perhaps the rest of the younger’s life to sort things out: No father-son relationship is ever fully understood. Here you have the offshoot of the tree, which itself was an offshoot. Which […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com With the beginning of World War I just a bit more than 100 years ago, with the lessons of that first of two cataclysmic 20th century death-rendering events as unlearned as they are in all conflicts, there are words that still draw emotion, words from the once living, words […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com If you combined a well-composed, British statesman-like fellow, complete with ever-present smoking pipe, and a fan who could give “da” loudest Bronx cheer at a New York Rangers hockey game, that would be Dick Yerg, the late newspaper sports editor. Dick and I began our days at The Journal-News […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com There is, of course, a cycle to life — a beginning, an end and if the gods are with you, much in between. The beginning begets most of that fill-in-the-blanks, with so many tangents formed, much like the branches of a well-rooted tree. And the apples do not fall […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com This isn’t the time of year to discuss holiday or other occasion cards, but a recent email from an artist friend in Colorado prompts a memory. She writes, “My latest ‘adapting’ kick is reworking old ready-made cards. Remember back in grade school when we would cut up cards that […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Ride a bicycle and you never forget. Years, decades later, and you hop on as if you were still the eight year old though your joints may creak more than the bicycle chain. Not that much different when you have the coldest/snowiest February in Northeast America since 1934. You get […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com A photo of a dress from a London shop, blue and black, made its viral way around the Internet last week because some people saw it as white and gold, or hues that approached blue, gold, etc. It all has to do with how your eye accepts light exposure. […]
Completed bedroom. Note the window light. By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com 82 North Broadway, Nyack, N.Y. — When you paint in a great artist’s childhood bedroom, in space where the Hudson light seems a direct path from Heaven, off the river and straight up Second Avenue, you are humble. Humble even if you […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Here’s a story. A very human story. One that might remind you of your mom. And a cold day. And simple soup. And a complex world. We have been having old-fashioned winter in the Northeast, not as bad in New York State as in New England, but quite […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Sometimes a person comes along as if the moment were a conversation with a plane passenger whom you’ve just met and who will soon move on to her own destination. Yet, however short the time, there is a connection that cannot be forgotten, though it is also not something […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Being bored is good, kids. Skip the video game, the phone, the computer and all the scheduled activity. Take a walk, sit under a tree, in a library corner. Climb a branch (safely), go down to the river, lie on on a pier, scale a snowbank. And do any of […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com NEW YORK STATE — As this being written, a “blizzard” is clipping its way toward my section of the nation. “Blizzard” is a big word here, quite unlike in some other states. The new media loves the description because it pushes news, although if newspapers in particular had the […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com It’s all about the middle class, and it’s not a selfish thing. The people in the middle historically prove to be the rescuers of both the lower and upper classes, the lower because when you have a vibrant middle class, long-term, benefit-added professional jobs are created, and that economic […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com NYACK, N.Y. — Helen Hayes, once and for a long time the “First Lady of the American Theatre,” soon will no longer have her distinguished name on Broadway. The Helen Hayes Theatre on West 44th Street, the second to honor her since 1955, will change its marquee, the new […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Small diners in my part of the world in lower New York State a few decades back were known for tasty, homemade food served by owners and their staff who seemed like family, especially for the regular customers. They were homes away from home. Actually they could be small theater […]
Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Some of us go home again by passing the house we lived in as a child. Others visit the old neighborhood. For Elaine Freed Lindenblatt, it’s a restaurant, or at least the building that remains. Not just any eatery, but the famous Red Apple Rest between […]
For some years, my son Arthur IV, a writer too, offered a holiday story published in place of my former newspaper column. That tradition now continues on the web. – Arthur H. Gunther III By ARTHUR H. GUNTHER IV The year had passed quickly, always too quickly. And here it was December. Here it […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Just months after World War II ended in August 1945, the Nuremberg trials began with impressive agreement among four of the Allied nations that those who commit atrocities in war are to be held accountable, that “following orders” is no excuse. Pity that such unanimity against horror — war […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III In war, the human story trumps the “sturm und drang,” the storm and stress played out by the good guys vs. the bad guys. If not for the human element, each side might just as well blow up the other, for war is never the solution. It is inhumane. And […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Regrets in older life, especially when there is time on the hands that goes to the head and prompts a critical look-back at how things could have gone better, certainly can include holidays. Such as Thanksgiving. Just about all my youthful ones were spent at our grandparents — the one […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Thanksgiving — the traditional American one — and any gathering in any nation among any people at any time that seeks to express individual and community gratefulness for their bounty, however small, is affirmation that we do not live by bread alone. That we can celebrate such awareness by […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com No essays this week, just pictures and the “poetry” that seems to go with each one. SONG Woods, solitude, wind whispering as nature writes a melody in a long, wonderful breath APPLES In their season, at picking, the best first Then the ones not noticed but still worthy […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Look at the photograph above these words, and what do you see? Is it dawn or dusk? The answer might mean you are an optimist or a pessimist. Or perhaps you like endings better than beginnings. This image was taken in the morning near Dennis, Cape Cod, off […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III Many personalities and almost that number in characters passed through my Editorial Page desk at the old Journal-News in Nyack, N.Y., 1978-2006. Like a farmer pleased with a bumper crop, I was always provided with a fertile field of human emotion, accomplishment, sadness and elation for commentary. To a man, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com There were no Twitter moments in the information revolution of my youth, which was the transition from radio to television. Entertainer Milton Berle, newscaster John Cameron Swaze and funnyman Jackie Gleason came to life, literally, as most TV was live programming, replacing the on-air radio voices and […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Whether it is worry about family finances, or county government, the state of the nation or the world, the realization that we are but specks in time can put things in perspective. Quickly, the headache that comes with self-absorption is gone, and life can exist in the greater scope […]
On Aug. 18, I offered an essay, “It’s a two-way street,” which argued that policing is a super tough job, and the officers deserve respect while being trained to know the community. It also expressed concern about using military equipment and what I described as para-military clothing. Joe Badalamente, a retired New York City police […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Fall — autumn sounds better — is when you are supposed to let go of summer, even if you dread winter’s coming and want to hold onto the beach, fire pits and the light as long as possible before darkness arrives. In my part of the world where we have seasons, […]
Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com I won’t vote for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the popular New Yorker seeking re-election. Nor would I for President Obama, if he were able to run anew, though I supported him twice. And I will be pleased when Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, steps […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com HUDSON RIVER, N.Y. — This mighty waterway, not a western route to Asia through the Northwest Passage as Hendrick Hudson hoped it would be in 1609, but to the great port of Albany and so through canals, lakes and on land to the American frontier and all the greatness and […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com When you are walking with young children, in this case one 7, another 5, and you have to pass the time of day as the clock seems to run awfully slow, you have to be inventive. Kids have fertile minds, and they are not yet cast into the tight […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Police exist by the people’s command, and only by that direction, because we cannot secure ourselves. Theirs is a dangerous, usually thankless job, and the officer’s whole being is often in the sewer of humanity. So, it takes an extraordinary individual to do the work, to be invested […]
Flanders fields, before the blood (painting by author) By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com If, at the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month of each year, from 1918 on when “The War to End All Wars” was over, you would toll a bell 20 times a minute for the […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Much progress in humanity, though it is often one step ahead, two back, comes from symbolism, such as the iconic nature of photographs that pull at our conscience and tell us, “We must do better.” For decades now, the mostly black and white work of Dorothea Lange, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com I had a friend named Ginny, who was a fellow trustee at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, N.Y. A very effective communicator, she was particular about doing things right, to a standard, and she spoke her mind in polite but underscored words. Ginny was outgoing, quite […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com How do you thank a son, who at 43 this very day, July 14, is light years ahead of who you were at that time? How do you speak, father to offspring, beyond a pat on the back and saying “Happy Birthday”? Effusive emotion is a non-fitting suit […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com ANY TOWN, USA — Ironically, as Americans fatten up through fast food and lifestyle, it is also slimming down to overly thin in its public look, in its parks and on its once-shaded streets, those oak- and maple-lined boulevards that looked like “Andy Hardy’s” Hollywood set. That […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com WASHINGTON, D.C. — There are many ghosts in this town, some very good, some very, very bad, and a whole mix in between. Some do almost eternal penance for their sins against the continuing and great democratic experiment, those who lusted for personal power and in greed. Other spirits […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com SUBURBIA — The New York State of my lifelong existence ranks among the top 10 nationwide in hosting foreclosing properties — about 15,000 — some of them traced to irresponsible mortgage lending by banks that quickly flipped the notes for sure profit, others to those who […]
By Arthur H.Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com I don’t know what karma or the gods have in store for this great nation of ours, conceived in the stew that is the rights of humankind and progressed enough to have earned its mettle despite horrific mistakes. As Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com If you are fortunate, before you grow up but as you so quickly grow up, you’ll get to spend a few years with a patient, somewhat quiet, a bit odd grandfather like I did, who had a knack for fixing almost anything with a pocketknife or a […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com The average teacher’s pay amounts to about one cent per hour if you consider that for almost all humans, at least one educator proves to be our lifelong teacher, frequently remembered, still instructing us. Yet respect often does not come with the job, at least from government, from taxpayers, […]
By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com No Memorial Day, USA or elsewhere, is without heartfelt words and tribute, parades, wreaths, re-mourning. What is always missing, though, are the voices of the fallen. Would that we could hear them. What would they say? “Mom, I was as scared as you, but I could not show […]