Play On!

• Bill Bennett tells me on the radio that he interviewed a Yale professor and a plain “man of the street” simultaneously as to their opinions of Barack Obama’s presidency. Identical results: “Negative.”

• Sent by a reader: “New word: Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Is this, maybe, the new form of government we have today in the U.S.?” Change! Right on!

• We shun the use of certain offensive words. As a Southern boy raised in a genteel family, I never heard offensive words used in my home, and was strongly admonished against hurting the feelings of other people. The words “Georgia cracker” never applied accurately to me: My forebears never “cracked a whip” behind mules. I was raised and live in Florida and went to school here before going to a Massachusetts college. I have no special pride in being either a Georgian or Floridian, but I am eternally proud to be an American.

• “Time is the Fourth dimension, ” said Albert Einstein. For many years Dr. Lee E. and I were colleagues on the faculty of UCF. He is 17 years younger than I. We both retired recently. Now, when we go out in the evening to dine at restaurants with our wives, Dr. E. helps me in and out of the car. I would do the same for him were our ages reversed — Einstein still calls the shots!

• Life begins in a cup! I’ve never been a smoker, I don’t drink alcohol, but I learned recently — when my heart doctor made tests that denied me my morning coffee for three days — that my one cup of coffee in the morning is more than just whim. It’s a necessity! My first cup of coffee was in the Navy standing nighttime watches on a destroyer escort in the South Pacific. In the battle zones, a guy with coffee went around to all the watch stations to keep us alert when we were getting little sleep. The coffee was strong, black and terrible! But the jolt it brought to the nervous system has stuck with me ever since. I have only one cup of coffee a day in the morning, but it is an integral part of my regaining full consciousness and usefulness. I coast on that one cup, no matter how long and hard the day.

•At this time, pumpkin pie and brotherly love rest side by side on our plates.

Holiday good feelings should logically last throughout the year. Unfortunately, the giving mood is hard for the human animal to sustain.

Friends we celebrate seem to distance themselves as the calendar advances.

Here, in Central Florida, where as a young boy I canoed through our sparkling lakes, I have returned after plying the art of singing in a dozen countries.

I often feel a tugging wish for the simplicity of my boyhood on the lakes. But I doubt that a canoe and a casting rod could afford me the simple carefree times they once did.

Nappy New Year!