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Evoking Christmas in a radical era

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    December 10, 1985   I took a trip to Manhattan yesterday, ostensively to deliver my underground newspaper, although since I heard about the Rockefeller tree lighting, I figured to take a gander. What a huge part of Christmas lighting has become to me, having become a tradition simply by repetition from when my mother and her best friend, Selma, brought me there when I was very young – mostly still being carried rather than attempting the feat of walking along the crowed sidewalks. I remember confronting The Empire State Building on 34th Street on that trip, staring up at what seemed like an endless building which didn’t even stop at the sky, a brick edifice that rose higher and higher into the gray wintery gloom – not quite the Tower of Babble, but close. Not long after that in the midst of my mother’s madness we journeyed back to Manhattan to 42nd Street for the express purpose of seeing “West Side Story” on a special curved screen – an important elemen...
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Like Father; like Son

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Dec. 8, 1985   They are more similar than either would ever admit. Enemies generally are. The fact that they are father and son makes it all the worse. Enemies for some silly reason both long ago forgot. Too many reasons have popped up since to justify their hatred. Yet the more they hate each other the more they seem the same. They even resemble each other physically, a fact that must give Hank pause. Both suffered the same addictions, once Hank got that 60s silliness out of his blood - alcohol and tobacco, though Hank’s father, George, did eventually managed to quit smoking in the mid-1960s. Hank still smokes. Which begs the question as to whether Hank will follow in his father’s footsteps and get lung cancer, too. A lot of Hank’s hatred of George stems from George’s treatment of Hank’s mother, Ann – the moody bastard acting like a spoiled child, demanding things and affections that had long abandoned their relationship. Freud’s Oedipus complex plays havoc with thei...
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Hank Sterns story

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  Like Father; Like Son (12/8/1985) Main Menu email to Al Sullivan
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