By Patrick F. Cannon

Purely on a whim – I hadn’t seen it since it came out in 1962 – the other night I watched The Music Man, starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones in the film version of Merideth Wilson’s hit Broadway musical that was recently revived with Hugh Jackman.

            Wilson grew up in Mason City, Iowa, and the movie is a nostalgic look back at early 20^th Century small town America. Preston plays “Professor” Harold Hill, a con man who comes to town to talk the locals into forming a boy’s marching band, the idea being that he collects money for instruments and uniforms and flees with the cash. Alas for Hill, he meets the local librarian played by Shirley Jones as the best-looking spinster of all time. Predictably, he is reformed. Along the way, we hear songs like “Goodnight my someone,” “Being in love,” “Till there was you,” “Gary, Indiana,” and “76 Trombones.” The cast even included an eight-year-old Ron Howard!

            It’s a fine musical if a bit long. If you’re tired of gloom and doom, you might want to give it a watch and add to your joy by watching some of my other favorites from the Golden Age of the movie musical. To me, the pinnacle is held by 1952s Singing in the Rain, starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Conner in a fond and hilarious look at Hollywood during the transition from silent to sound films. It defines the term “musical comedy.” Songs, mostly by Herb Nacio Brown, with lyrics by Arthur Freed, include “You Were Meant for Me,” “All I Do is Dream of You,” “Make ‘Em Laugh,” and of course “Singin’ in the Rain,” sung and danced by Kelly in a legendary sequence.

            Just a year earlier, Kelly again starred, this time with Leslie Caron, in the more romantic An American in Paris, with music by George Gershwin. In addition to songs like “S Wonderful,” “I Got Rhythm,” and “Our Live is Here to Stay,”  it included the “American in Paris Ballet,” which was featured in a recent program of the Chicago Symphony. The pianist Oscar Levant, who also provides comic relief as a neurotic composer, also played the third movement of Gershwins Concerto in F.  The art direction is also notable, making visual references to artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Dufy, van Gogh, and Renoir.

            The final film on my list is 1953’s The Band Wagon, starring the 54-year-old Fred Astaire and the somewhat younger and stunningly beautiful Cyd Charisse. The cast also includes Oscar Levant (again!), Nanette Fabray, and the British musical star Jack Buchanan. Fred plays a fading Hollywood actor, lured to New York to do a new musical. The film opens as he gets off the 20^th Century Limited at Grand Central Station, ignored by the press who instead flock to see the also debarking Ava Gardner.

Fred finds that the British director, played by Buchanan, conceives of the musical as a kind of Greek tragedy, moaning chorus, and all. Charisse is a ballet dancer with a Svengali-like manager. Eventually, after a lot of singing, dancing, and romantic complications, all comes right in the end, with the cast on stage singing the final Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz song, “That’s Entertainment!” And it was.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

Bear Down!

By Patrick F. Cannon

Let me throw some numbers at you Chicago Bears fans. The franchise is worth a minimum of $8.2 billion. It is also extremely popular with television audiences. Last year’s playoff game with the Los Angeles Rams drew 45.4 million viewers. Regular season games average more than 20 million viewers, among the highest in the NFL.

            Since their home games are played at Chicago’s Soldier Field with a capacity of 61,500 , it’s clear that most fans see the games in the comfort of their homes, or at the local tavern. Few will never actually attend a game. In any event, anyone who has attended a professional or major college game will have to grudgingly admit that it’s better to watch most sports on television, given the advanced technology now available. It’s a good deal cheaper too! Getting yourself a beer and dog at Soldier Field will cost about $20, as opposed to about $5 at home.

            The cheapest season ticket – for 10 games on average – will set you back about $150 per game, and you’ll probably need binoculars to clearly see the action on the field. The best seats go for about $550 per. Oh, and for most of them, you’ll have to buy a seat license up front. That can add $3,000. I won’t even mention parking, and the hassle of getting there. Oh, and leaving after the game. And, of course, it might rain and/or snow, or be really, really cold.

            The team raised ticket prices for the 2026 season by 13.5 percent. God knows what the increase will be if they ever win the Super Bowl again. But apparently all this isn’t enough for the McCaskey family. They must rent Soldier Field and share concession income! Horrors!  This when most teams own their stadiums and get to keep all the dough. How unfair! Of course, many of them paid for their stadiums, something the Bears are unwilling to do. They do say they are willing to put up $2 billion of the cost, which seems like a lot, but not when compared to the cost of the Los Angles stadium, which totaled almost $6 billion. But let’s say the Bears can get by with $4 billion. So, who pays the rest, plus the additional infrastructure costs?

            The team is trying to solve that problem by setting up a bidding war, so far between Chicago,  Arlington Heights (where they already own sufficient land), and just south of the city in a place called Indiana. Who knows if Kenosha or Racine, Wisconsin might be next?

            Here’s my opinion on this trumped-up drama – why would anyone care if they play in Chicago or Gary? The simple fact is that most of the people who attend the games in person don’t live in the city of Chicago. Neither the Dallas Cowboys nor New York Giants (and some other teams too) play in those cities. Why should we care?

            I predict that in the end the State of Illinois will produce a package of infrastructure dough and give Arlington Heights the power to make a real estate tax deal that will satisfy the greedy McCaskey’s. And they’ll still be the Chicago Bears, “Monsters of the Midway.” Extra credit if you know where that nickname came from.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

The folks who manage my condominium building advised a few days ago that one of the residents who has an outside parking space had the car’s catalytic converter stolen. As you probably know, thieves target the converters because they contain precious metals – platinum, palladium, rhodium, etc. – that can be sold for cash.

            Since 1975, the converters have been mandated in America for most gasoline-powered vehicles to remove carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides from the exhaust. Most states require regular emissions testing to ensure compliance. In Illinois, the motorist isn’t charged for the test directly, but it becomes just one more item in an already bloated budget. But now that the Clean Air Act is kaput, I have a great idea that could significantly add to the government’s coffers.

            Not requiring them in the first place would reduce the cost of a vehicle by an average of about $1,500. Manufacturers would be delighted, but so would the consumer. But that’s not even the happiest effect. Imagine what could happen if the government mandated that all catalytic converters had to be removed from existing vehicles! But not just removed but recycled to reclaim those precious metals and the cash windfall they would produce.

            How this would be done, I would leave to our always efficient Congress to pass the necessary legislation. But if I may be so bold, here are my suggestions.

            First, it should be mandatory to have the converter removed. Failure would result in a stiff fine and mandatory jail sentence. As a sweetener, however, you should receive $50 when you do. But who would do the deed? Why not the nearest dealer of the company who manufactured the vehicle in the first place? You make an appointment, they put your vehicle on the lift, remove the offending converter, and replace it with an appropriate length of exhaust pipe. What could be simpler?

            In addition to the precious metals, the regular metals and other stuff would be recycled, with the proceeds split between the car companies and the Federal government. Since there are about 285 million registered vehicles in the United States, just think of the income and jobs that would be created! Speaking of jobs, all those lads who used to steal the converters in the dead of night could use their undoubted skills instead boosting the converters legally for those car dealers!

            Add those jobs to the new jobs in our reopened coal mines and booming oil refineries, and I see a new Golden Age on the horizon. Of course, air quality may suffer a bit, but maybe we could just all get used to wearing masks. I see another new industry emerging! As I often say: “It’s an ill wind that blows no good.”

            Anyway, thank you so much for your attention to my modest proposal.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

The British painter Joseph Millard William Turner’s 1838 painting, The Fighting Temeraire, which hangs in Britains National Gallery, is widely considered a national treasure. It shows the 98-gun ship of the line, which fought with Admiral Horatio Nelson’s fleet at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, being towed by a steam tug to the breaker’s yard. It was the ship that came to the rescue of Nelson’s flagship Victory in the heat of the battle.

            When he died in 1851, Turner left the works in his possession to the nation. As a result, Tate Britain, which houses most of the gifts, holds approximately 300 oils and 30,000 works on paper. There are relatively few Turner pictures in this country. The National Gallery in Washington and the Frick Collection in New York have several; and here in Chicago the Art Institute has two significant oils – 1838s Fishing Boats with Hucksters and 1837s Valley of the Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm – and several works on paper.

            The artist was born in 1775 in London to lower middle-class parents. His father was a barber and wig maker, who would champion his talented son as long as he lived. A prodigy, Turner was accepted into the Royal Academy of Art school at age only 15 and became a full member of the Academy at the unheard-of age of 27. He made a good living, but later in life he became strangely reluctant to sell his work. For example, The Fighting Temeraire never left his studio.

            As you can see, a steam tug is towing the massive wooden hulk down the Thames to the yard where it will be broken up. It would have taken the wood from approximately 4,000 Oak trees to build the ship, and much of that wood would have been reused in a variety of ways, including furniture and other domestic items. The most obvious theme is the transition from wood and wind – gifts of nature – to iron and steam, the product of man’s inventiveness. Notice how the old ship travels from the light into the darkness – the smoke from the tug’s stack begins this transition.

Until his death in 1851, Turner became far more interested in atmosphere than accuracy.  He painted storms at sea and storms in the Alps, which became more abstract over time. He even had himself tied to a ship’s mast during a gale to personally experience its fury. These later pictures had a profound influence on Claude Monet, who studied them during his stay in London in 1870-71, where he travelled to escape the Franco-Prussian war.

I saw the Temeraire painting at the National Gallery during my first visit to London in 1992. During a later visit, I saw many more Turner paintings at Tate Britain. But what heightened my interest in him was Mike Leigh’s 2014 film biography, Mr. Turner. With the great British actor Timothy Spall as Turner, it concentrates on the final years of the very great but very eccentric artist’s life. The film puts you convincingly into the period and is visually stunning. It’s available for rental on Amazon Prime and other streaming services and is a wonderful introduction to this greatest of all British artists.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

The Game’s the Thing

Sunday’s Super Bowl was a game of American football, won by Seattle over New  England by a score of 29 to 13.  Aside from citizens of those fine areas, most people watched the game more for the commercials and half-time extravaganza than the gridiron action. It also reminded me of how much the Bears defense needs to improve before it can make it to a future Super Bowl.

            It may interest the younger fans among you that the traditional half-time in a football game is taken up with a band concert. When I played in high school, we trooped to the locker room for a pep talk while our wonderful band entertained the crowd with stirring music and choreographed marching. As far as I know, this is still the case. Ditto at college games. And I can testify to the fact that half-time at professional games often still includes a band concert from a local high school or college.

            Though most still have these concerts, the television viewer would never know because half-time is now filled with a panel of experts telling you what you’ve just seen with your own eyes and suggesting what the combatants might do in the final half. But the Super Bowl is, well, a bit different. What you get now is a really big show (as Ed Sullivan might have said). Recent . games have featured the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Usher, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce

            This year we had Bad Bunny. I had always thought that the baddest bunny was Bugs of cartoon fame, but I’m afraid he’s been supplanted. This Bunny’s real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, a singer from Puerto Rico. Since leaving the hutch, he has hopped to the heights of international stardom. Even though he raps and sings mostly in Spanish, his audience of English speakers doesn’t seem to care. It could be they’re used to not being able to understand lyrics in any language.

            I wondered how he got his stage moniker, so I looked it up. It seems he was photographed as a young lad wearing both a bunny costume and a grumpy expression. Thus “bad bunny,” and the beginning of a legendary career. The Spanish translation is “conejito malo.” One wonders what would have happened if he’d been wearing a donkey costume?

            His show was lavish, as one expects from the Super Bowl. Although I’m not entirely certain, it seemed to take place in a sugar cane field. Aside from a song by guest Lady Gaga, all the songs and raps were in Spanish. Since I don’t understand Spanish, along with perhaps 85 percent of the audience, I have no idea what was said or meant. There was much excellent dancing by scantily clad young people, which one has come to expect.

            Mr. Bunny was dressed in white and like most rap artists grabbed his crotch from time to time. I wish someone would tell me what this means, other than the obvious. As I watched the show, I couldn’t help wondering if White House aide Steven Miller was also tuned in. I thought it was more likely that he was watching the Puppy Bowl or Kid Rock. Just like most events these days, the Super Bowl has become political, or at least the show has. How silly.

            I personally think these shows would be more impressive if they focused on a single, talented performer. There are many who could hold a stage on  their own. Just give them a good backup band and a single spotlight, then let them move the audience with their talent alone. Or perhaps, because the event is so profoundly American, it could focus on great American music – jazz, Blues, and the wonderful songs of what has come to be known as “the great American songbook.”  Vain hope, I’m afraid.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

I had dinner the other night with a good friend at a fine French-themed bistro. As a starter, we shared an order of escargot. As my highly sophisticated readers will know, “escargot” is the French word for edible land snails, usually prepared with a garlic butter and parsley sauce. After you eat the snail, dipping your baguette into the sauce adds to the culinary experience.

            “Baguette” is the word for the ubiquitous long, skinny loaf of bread the French can’t live without. The typical bistro will also serve something called “steak frites,” which turns out to be small steak with French fries. Most of the menu includes common stuff elevated with French names. I wonder how many people would order “snails in garlic butter sauce,” or “small steak with fries?” What if the menu offered “skinny loaf of bread” instead of “baguette?” How popular would that be?

            Anyway, the menu was replete with French names for stuff that could just as easily be described in English. I’m not sure I would like that. Somehow, pate de foie gras sounds better than chopped goose livers; and you can’t deny that moules mariniere has a cachet that mussels steamed in wine with butter, shallots and (again) parsley lacks. As it happens, mussels are on a lengthy list of things I would never have thought of as edible in my youth.

            I’ve written about the “meat and potatoes” foundation of my mother’s cooking. The only exotic dish on her regular menu was kidney stew, the recipe for which I have provided in the past. I was also a fan of chicken gizzards. In those days, chickens were purchased at a poultry store, and you got the whole thing, innards and all. As I recall, the liver was reserved for my father. Only the heart had no takers.

            My father was born on an island off the west coast of Ireland, Innis Buffin (Isle of the White Cows in English). Now primarily a tourist destination, when my father was born in 1906 the only gainful employment was fishing and raising sheep. As a result, he liked fish. I didn’t because my mother overcooked it, just like she overcooked everything else. He also ate oysters, mainly in something called oyster stew. As I recall, to make it you heated milk and butter and dropped the oysters in when the milk was hot enough. We were not forced to eat what looked to us like boogers floating in wasted milk.

            I owe my much-expanded palate to France. The United States Army sent me there in 1961 to a charming city of the Atlantic coast called La Rochelle. Because much of the medieval port survives, and it’s full of charm, it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The restaurants naturally featured seafood. I was taken in hand by two fellow soldiers who had been there for a year or so, happily avoiding Army food by dining on the local seafood specialties. Not wishing to seem unsophisticated, I bravely ate oysters, clams, and mussels for the first time.  Oh,  and those snails. And I still eat them, although they cost much more now than those days when France was still far less expensive than the US of A.

            Of course, I know quite a few sophisticated folks who still will not eat oysters, unable to get past the way they look. Escargot likewise. That’s OK. We live in a world of abundance and people don’t have to eat everything on the menu. But I do think you might try some kidneys.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

P.S. I have decided not to write about Donald Trump for the time being. Most of the people who read these pieces don’t like him any more than I do, so it’s like preaching to the choir. Those who do support him – a steady 40 percent of the voters it seems – have their reasons which now appear unshakable, no matter what he does or says; or more to the point, what I say. Anyway, if I ever write about Donald Trump again, I hope I’ll end with these words: I told you so.

By Patrick F. Cannon

I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious the other night. Not one of his masterpieces but diverting enough. It stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, in a plot that involves leftover Nazis up to no good in post-World War II Brazil. The supporting cast is headed by the British American actor Claude Rains (1889-1967), who plays one of the Nazis who becomes besotted with Ingrid, unbeknownst to him working undercover for a CIA-like organization.

            It occurred to me while watching it that Rains had appeared in many of my favorite films, starting with 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, high on my list of all-time adventure classics. He plays the villainous King John, aided and abetted by the evil Sherif of Nottingham, played by fellow Brit Basil Rathbone, later famous as Sherlock Holmes. Interestingly, both had served together in World War I as officers in the London Scottish Regiment, whose ranks also included actors Herbert Marshall, Ronald Coleman, and Cedric Hardwicke. In 1916, Rains was injured in a gas attack, losing 90 percent of the  sight in his right eye.

            Born in London in relative poverty to a minor actor father, he naturally gravitated to the theatre. Vocal training got rid of his cockney accent, and he became a mainstay of the London stage, even becoming an instructor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. John Guilguid and Charles Laughton were two of his more notable students. He was in his mid-40s by the time he made his first movie in Hollywood, The Invisible Man, in which he only appeared intermittingly!

            In 1939, he was cast in Frank Capra’s classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, as a senator who engineers Jimmie Stewart’s (as Mr. Smith) election as the junior senator from his state, believing that the naïve Smith will be easily manipulated. If you’ve seen the film, you know things don’t quite work out as intended, and Rains’s character commits suicide rather than face disgrace. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance but didn’t win.

            He was also nominated for what became his most iconic role, as the witty, cynical, dapper, and corrupt police Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, which may be the most watched movie of all time. It starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, but Rains stood out in a cast that also included Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid, and Sidney Greenstreet.  Who can forget the final scene where he and Bogart walk arm in arm into the mist on their way to join the Free French?

            In a return to the Broadway stage in 1951, Rains won the best actor Tony for his performance as Rubashov, a victim of Stalin’s show trials of the late 1930s. Based on Arthur Koestler’s novel, it was adapted for the stage by Sidney Kingsley. In 1954, he again appeared on Broadway in T.S. Elliot’s verse play, The Confidential Clerk. Although not his last film, the last I saw him in was David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia,  in which he played Mr. Dryden, an amalgam of several British Middle Eastern diplomats and administrators. Not a leading role, but one he carried out with his usual competence.

            All the films I mentioned are readily available on one or more streaming services. If you’re one of the few people who haven’t seen Casablanca, that would be a good place to enjoy a fine actor.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon   

By Patrick F. Cannon

Many of my readers live in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. There are few communities with a modest population of about 53,000 that host so many international visitors. It is not only the birthplace of  Nobel Prize writer Ernest Hemingway, but the home and workplace of America’s most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, for the first 20 years of his storied career. A litany of other famous Oak Parkers would take up too much space, but it does include Tarzan’s creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs!

            It is also famous for resisting the “white flight” that changed many Chicago neighborhoods from all white to mostly black in the 1960s, including Oak Park’s neighbor to the east, Austin. I won’t go into all the details of how sensible integration came to Oak Park, except to mention that the real estate agents agreed not to put “For Sale” signs on their client’s properties, as one tactic to prevent panic selling. They still don’t. Currently, the racial breakdown is (approximately) 63 percent white; 20 percent black; five percent Asian, and 10 percent Hispanic.

            I love the place. Even though I now live a block west of Oak Park in Forest Park, I still spend a lot of time there. I belong to one of its clubs, donate to its museums, and volunteer weekly at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio. My favorite restaurants are in Oak Park, and I still use its fine library.

            I lived in Oak Park from 1965-67 and returned with my family in 1974. I only left in 2016 when my wife and I couldn’t find a condominium that suited our needs. That’s about 45 years. But as much as I love Oak Park, I am aware that it shares with Illinois what I would describe as too much government.

            Illinois, with a population of 12.7 million, has 6,930 units of government. New York, with a population of 20 million, has 3,450. With some of the highest real estate taxes in the Chicago area, Oak Parkers pay for the following taxing bodies: Village, Township, Oak Park Elementary School District 97, Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200, Oak Park Library, Park District, and  eight other taxing bodies related to Cook County.

            In a rational world, the 1,430 townships in Illinois would be abolished, and the 852 school districts reduced by consolidation. The schools in Oak Park and River Forest are now served by three districts, where one could easily do the job. And the Village of Oak Park should take a serious look at the staff it actually needs to serve its community.

            Although of course much smaller in population, the Village of Forest Park has the following departments: Administration, Clerk, Community Center, Fire, Police, Health, and Public Works. Like Oak Park, it also has separate Library and Park Districts. But Oak Park has these additional departments: Development Services; Finance; Human Resources; Parking; Neighborhood Services; Adjudication; Communications and Engagement; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Sustainability and Resilience; and Office of Economic Vitality. It also has more than 20 citizen boards and committees.

            Oak Park likes to style itself as a “progressive” community. It once even went as far as to declare itself a “Nuclear Free Zone.” For most of its history, it was a bastion of conservative values. In 1940, for example, it gave 80 percent of its vote to Wendall Wilkie over Franklin Roosevelt. In 2024, it gave Donald Trump just 10 percent. That’s fine with me; I didn’t vote for him either. But like so many communities, Oak Park needs to concentrate on the services and infrastructure its citizens actually require.

            Despite its simpler government, I find no lack of essential services in Forest Park. In addition to lower real estate taxes, I can get a village auto sticker for $35 instead of Oak Park’s $74. Yearly garbage costs for an average home are about $250; in Oak Park they’re $400. I could go on and on but let me finish with a true outrage. Until last year, Oak Park swept up the leaves homeowners raked into the gutter in the Fall and hauled them away. Now, owners are required to bag the leaves and place them in the parkway for pickup. The bags themselves cost about a buck, but each must have a sticker at $3.25 a pop. Both Forest Park and River Forest still sweep up the leaves.

            Here’s the thing. There were five mature trees in the parkway in front of my last Oak Park home. The trees were all planted by the Village; the homeowner has no say in what happens to them. In essence, they belong to the Village. Yet, Oak Park homeowners are now required to pay for the privilege of raking up the Village’s leaves. On the other  hand, they don’t have to worry about locally produced nuclear fallout.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

By Patrick F. Cannon

I have a humidifier in my bedroom for cold nights when the furnace works overtime. It adds enough moisture to the air to prevent those nightmares where you’re crawling across the Sahara Desert like that poor guy in the old movie, Four Feathers, and wake up screaming “water, water!”

            When I fill the reservoir, there’s a warning against adding any “essential oils.” Not having a clue what they were, I felt confident that I was in no danger of adding any. As far as I knew, the only essential oils were the kind you needed to keep your internal combustion engine from seizing up in the middle of the Illinois Tollway. And of course, there are many other machines that need oil to keep them spinning happily.

            Recently, however, a television channel I occasionally watch has been running commercials from a company that sells little bottles of what they claim are essential oils. Scenes of young women dreamingly communing with nature and sniffing the air are featured. I can’t recall  seeing any men in them. Available oils include scents of lemon grass, lilac, lavender, citrus, and peppermint, and are said to be the concentrated extracts of those plants.

            Apparently, they are used in something called “aromatherapy,” a branch of mystical medicine that is said to affect the brain’s emotion centers, theoretically reducing stress, improving sleep, and even managing pain. Like alchemy and astrology, it has proven difficult to produce scientific evidence to support these claims. But, as we know, the brain also has a substantial gullibility center, which leads to fortunes for those who know how to exploit it.

            I did a little checking and discovered that Americans spend about $10 billion a year on these odorous oils. Scented candles are also popular to the tune of about $3.5 billion a year.  Americans who love a good sniff also spend $3 billion on room fresheners; and cough up about $500 million a year to make their laundry smell like the great out of doors (not the urban version, but the one where Bambi and the hummingbirds roam).

            I confess I used Febreze fabric spray when I had dogs who took long naps on the couch. I no longer have a dog, so the only odor preventing product I now use is underarm deodorant. I confess that all the scented candles I’ve received over the  years have been regifted or consigned to Goodwill. I’m sure they found good homes.

            With all the money I’ve saved, I’ve been able to afford a better brand of bourbon and decent bottles of wine. I’ve also saved a fortune by never taking vitamins. Of course, if my doctor said I should, I would follow his advice. But he never has. Apparently, consuming a balanced diet that includes fruit and vegetables has provided all the vitamins I (and most people) need. Yet, Americans spend more than $60 billion a year on vitamins and other supplements.

            One of the more popular recently has been memory supplements. There are several brands, all of which claim to feed stuff to your brain that will improve your memory. If you look at the small print at the bottom of their ads, you’ll notice the disclaimer that their claims have not been evaluated for accuracy by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of course they haven’t. And it’s not because they forgot to  submit them for testing. Those that take them must cough up about $50 a month. Of course, the cost goes down if you forget to take them.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon

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By Patrick F. Cannon

I read an interview the other day of a reasonably famous couple – not Lucy/Desi, George/Amal, Mickey/Minnie, or Donald/Melania, but certainly familiar names in theatrical circles. He is an actor/playwright; she an actress of ability. During the interview, she said she wouldn’t bring a child into a world with the likes of Donald Trump in charge.

            She isn’t alone. One has heard many women (and men) say similar things over the years, not about Trump specifically but the state of the world generally. Our low birth rate seems to partly reflect this attitude. The rate in this country was 1.6 children per woman in 2024, the lowest in our history. Even in the depths of the Depression in the 1930s, it never went below 2.22. Can I point out that the 1.6 rate would result in reducing our population, unless we bring in sufficient immigrants to bolster the numbers?

            Our bad old world is only one of the reasons of course. Liberation from the expectation of early marriage and motherhood is surely another. Humans are unique, as far as I know, in being able to rationally decide whether to have children or not. Many young women put their career first, sometimes with the intention of having children later. Since the ages of greatest fertility are the early to mid-twenties, many are happy enough to have just one if they wait until their mid-30s or later. Of course, the reasons for the low birth rate are more complicated, so let’s just explore the reluctance to bring children into our messy world.

            I was born in March 1938, the last of three children. The unemployment rate then was about 20 percent, and Adolph Hitler was well on his way to plunging the world into the most destructive war in history. As it happens, my father had some kind of job during most of the Depression, but my parents could have been forgiven for wondering if the world  in 1938 was a fit place and time to have children. They went ahead anyway, and by the time I graduated from high school in 1956, the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent. Median family income was about $4,800 ($1.231 in 1940); life expectancy had risen to approximately 62 years; and infant mortality was 28.37 per thousand births. We had won World War II and were the world’s dominant economic and military power. People prone to nostalgia look back on the 1950s as a kind of Golden Age.

            The current unemployment rate is 4.6 percent, still historically low. Adjusted to inflation, that 1956  median family income would now be about $55,000: it’s actually $83,000. Life expectancy is now 78.4 and infant mortality is 5.2 per thousand births. The percentage of college graduates has increased from eight in 1956 to nearly 40 percent now (in 1940 it was under five percent). And to broaden the perspective, despite wars, famine, and recurring natural disasters, in 200 years the number of people living in extreme poverty had been reduced from 80 percent of the world’s population to just under 10 percent today.

            Children born today will be 18 in 2044. Who can predict what the world will be like then? Today’s convenient bogeyman, Donald Trump, won’t be around. I was born during the Depression and just before World War II. The world has had its ups and downs since then, but I’m glad I was here to see it. It makes no sense to me that people with the highest education and economic status have the fewest children. There will always be reasons not to have children, but I can tell couples from personal experience that having them can be a great consolation as they age. As is said, you always have family. Unless you don’t.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon