Imagine Lucille, a single parent with nine dependents as a school bus driver. In St. Paul, Minnesota, she earns $32,394 a year. She gets up at 4 am. Daycares don’t start until 6 a.m., so she wakes her two toddlers up and lugs them with her on her route. They good-naturedly sit silently as the bus picks up other people’s children.
If Lucille got a part-time job between her routes, she would have to put her toddlers in daycare which would cost more than she could make at the second job.
— by WILLIAM STERR — “It was a dark and stormy night …” Well, it didn’t start out that way. In this, Kenneth Branagh’s third outing into the world of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot following “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile” – we meet a very different Hercule Poirot in a […][...]
— by BEV QUESTAD — Forever made famous as bushy browed, disgruntled Lou Grant on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” beloved actor Ed Asner went on to many other roles in features, documentaries, voice-overs and political issues. Despite his death in 2021, his last starring feature was released this year. It was his crowning achievement. […][...]
— by WILLIAM STERR — Ah, the long gone glory of transoceanic travel! Promenading on the deck while enjoying the bracing North Atlantic air. Then dressing for dinner, served in the sumptuous surrounding of the first class dining room. High on one wall, a mural of the ocean, with Europe on the right and North […][...]
— by WILLIAM STERR — What’s it like to be a child prodigy? Few of us know, and that’s probably a good thing. “American: An Odyssey To 1947,” the latest documentary from Danny Wu (“Square One: Michael Jackson”), begins with a detailed biography of Orson Welles, the “enfant terrible” who took first New York theater, […][...]
— by WILLIAM STERR — Most people are familiar with the story of “Dracula,” written by Irish novelist and theater Bram Stoker in 1897. Stoker was a successful theater manager in London, writing on the side. He produced a number of novels and short stories in the melodramatic or “thriller” vein, although they are antiquated […][...]
— by WILLIAM STERR — J. Robert Oppenheimer, considered the father of the atomic bomb, was a major figure, first in theoretical physics and then in popular imagination, during the first half of the 20th century. Many people today have heard of Oppenheimer, but as the leader of the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic […][...]
— by WILLIAM STERR — Have you ever wondered what goes on in the meetings of a home owners’ association? If you live in a condominium, a gated community, a co-op, or similar arrangement where there are rules that govern what owners can do, or where there are common spaces/resources that need to be overseen […][...]