Headed down to DC yesterday to meet Cliff Etheredge, the rattlesnake-hunting, poetry-writing, one-armed Texas wind magnate whom I am privileged to be assisting on a memoir he is writing. Over a very fine lunch of lalibera rib and yesom wot at the Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant on 14th Street (first time with that cuisine for either of us), we spent a very enjoyable couple of hours talking about wind and writing. Cliff is a pretty amazing guy, smart and witty, who has made this rather incredible late career move into wind energy. He was in Washington because Carbon Nation, a documentary in which he is featured, was being shown as the closing feature in the 18th annual Environmental Film Festival in Washington, and after lunch, we went to a reception where I met the director Peter Byck and his wife Christa, and producers Peggy and Henry Sharp, Craig Sieben, Karen Weigert, Artemis Joukowsky and his lovely wife Annie, and Cliff’s fellow doc star, Dan Nolan, and expert in bringing energy efficiency to the military. Being among this group of intelligent, committed, well-heeled activists made one feel like one was among a group of Abolitionists. We then went over to the beautiful Carnegie Institution for Science, where I got to see about half of the very interesting documentary before I had to zip over to Union Station to grab the last Acela back to New York. (See a preview of the film here.)

The highlight of early 2010, namely the class I taught at Marymount Manhattan College, came to an end Thursday night. Called “Writing in a New environment,” we explored blogging, tweeting, and the many changes digital technology has foisted on the word industry. I was joined by a group of students that was small but curious and insightful, and I hope to see them again: from left: Amy Shigo, David Linton, Pamela Pearce and Patrick McCarthy (where did Karen Arfi go when the camera came out?) On Thursday we were joined by Tim O’Connell (left), who is an editor at Vintage and Anchor Books in the Knopf/Doubleday Publishing Group of Random House, thanks be to God (whew!), but who was recommended to me by Gerry Howard, which is all you really need to know. Tim told us all about how publishing is changing in this age of Kindle and the iPad, and I’m happy to say that he was generally full of optimism. He did a great job. Thanks, Tim, and thanks, class, for a great time.

Most of the obituaries of Fess Parker, the actor who famously portrayed Davy Crockett on television in the fifties and who died yesterday, placed him at the center of genuine coonskin fad, part of the crazy quilt of crazes of that period that included Elvis, hula hoops, drive-ins and that made up pop culture during that decade. I prefer to think Fess as being one of the key figures in the fifties and sixties who were entertaining children and adults with stories directly taken from or based on American history.

Consider all these influences which appeared between 1955 and 1965: Parker first played Crockett, one of the first national smashes in the young days of television, and then later played frontiersman Daniel Boone on an NBC series ran for six seasons after its 1964 debut. Parker’s show, The Adventures of Davy Crockett, was produced by the Walt Disney Company, which during this period also made a film version of Esther Forbes‘ Revolutionary War novel Johnny Tremain, and created a TV programs based on the adventures of the Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, starring Leslie Nielsen, of a drummer boy who served at the battle of Shiloh, and of the 7th Cavalry’s only survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn (Commanche, a horse.) Disney wasn’t the only television producer that tried to mine history: in 1961, there was a short-lived television series called The Americans about a pair of brothers from Virginia who ended up on the opposite sides of the Civil War, and in 1963, an anthology series on CBS called The Great Adventure, also short-lived, which depicted key moments in the lives of people like Harriet Tubman, Jefferson Davis, Nathan Hale, Sam Houston, John Brown, Jean Lafitte, Boss Tweed and others (one wonders if this approach was inspired by President Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.) At the same time, Hollywood, whose longstanding interest in historical epics had ebbed, once again began pumping them out in earnest: The Alamo (Crockett again!), The Buccaneer (Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson), The Horse Soldiers (John Wayne playing a cavalry officer loosely based as a Union cavalry officer Judson Kilpatrick), The Longest Day, PT 109, The Great Escape, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, and many, many more westerns and World War II adventures (and this wouldn’t include non-American-based films like Cleopatra, Ben Hur, El Cid, Khartoum, Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Becket, The Lion in Winter, and so on, which fed an interest in history.) On the radio, country singer Johnny Horton had a hit single with “The Battle of New Orleans,” and a hit album that includes songs about the sinking of the Bismarck, Snowshoe Thompson and Jim Bridger. Our bookshelves were filled with Landmark Books, non-fiction biographies and accounts of battles, events and discoveries, and “You Are There. . . ” books, which showed us large historical events through the eyes of child participants. For a lighter read, Topps put out a line of Civil War trading cards, with grisly battle scenes drawn by Woody Gelman, who also drew Topps’ famous Mars Attacks! series. Best of all, we had toys. Toy guns, sure–flintlocks, Winchester repeaters, Colt revolvers, Lugars, .45 caliber automatics, and carbines, but all kinds of playsets full of toy soldiers and accessories that allowed us to imagine for ourselves what the Alamo, Gettysburg, Omaha Beach and the Little Big Horn must have looked like, had they been waged on the colorful linoleum tiles of my mother’s basement.

It’s not that kinds today get no history-based entertainment–American Girl dolls are an obvious example–but kids are far more steeped in fantasy and science fiction. I just think of myself as very fortunate to have been brought up during a very brief period when so much of pop culture enthusiastically communicated and reinforced the idea that the past was place that was exciting, and inspiring, and well worth getting to know.

I had an amazing reception to my recent post about my uncle, Andy Malanowski. I heard from many of my cousins, which was wonderful, notably Dave Powell, the husband of my cousin Christine Malanowski Powell. He has constructed an impressive Powell family tree which by his good grace (or maybe it’s the grace of Chris) includes a lot about the Malanowskis. Dave not only hipped me to the fact that the Marine Corps had the wrong birthdate for Andy (1915, not 1914), but he also sent me a couple of excellent photos of Andy in his dress blues wearing his sharpshooter’s medal, studio shots thought to have been taken around 1942  (certainly they were after 1940, as we see from Andy’s sergeant stripes).

I also heard from two other readers, the historians Jeffrey McMeans of Simi Valley, California, who has made a study of the battle of Guadalcanal, and from Peter Flahavin, who has visited Guadalcanal many times from his home in Australia, and who maintains an amazing website about Guadalcanal that is full of photographs from his various visits, but also many pictures dating back to the war. One of the things I found fairly mind-blowing is that the very area where Andy and the 1st marines were engaged in combat is today something of a tourist destination, with lovely hotels and a marina and a national museum. Peter sent some photos for orientation:

Above is a WW II vintage photo showing the battle area, with locations of present-day landmarks superimposed. The marines landed just east of where the Mendana Hotel is (just to the right of it.) They then moved across the open area, up the hill through the coconut grove, and onto the ridge where the King Solomon Hotel now stands, which is where the battle with the Japanese began. When teh marines retreated, they did a kind of a reverse bobby pin, and came down to the beach where the Point Cruz Yacht Club is now located. Below is a photo Peter took from an off-shore vantage. The red line drawn from the second box on the left connects to the King Solomon Hotel. “Every time I visit the Canal,” Peter writes, “I stay at the King Solomon, which is built on the side of the Hill 83 where the Battalion was trapped. A cable car goes up to the various room levels. There isn’t a trip I make that I don’t think of Malanowski and his BAR holding off the Japs  as the guys retreated to the beach.”

From the description of a clearing between the trees and the beach as the place where Andy made his stand, Peter surmises that Andy died on what is now the grounds of the Solomons National Museum. A stream runs through that area. “It could well be that a Japanese using the stream bank as cover got him,” Peter writes. “It was sort of a natural trench that both sides used in later fighting. One marine writes of finding a dead office in the stream bed in November 1942 surrounded by ten dead Japs.”

Peter shared these emails with some friends, including John Innes, is a historian who has lived on Guadalcanal since 1995, and Ewan Stevenson, a New Zealander who was born on the Canal in 1972 and has extensively dived and explored the place.  John wrote an email describing a visit he made to this area with a marine named Stan McLeod, who, like Andy, was a Platoon Sergeant that day, and who eventually became a brigadier general.  “ Stan McLeod was a Platoon Sergeant on that mission,” John writes. “He saw the bright orange mortar explosion that killed the Executive Officer.  He was walking towards him when the mortar hit. The blast knocked Stan face down facing the other way. Blood over his face from the Coral. Later, under enemy fire as he was helping a wounded officer (who had called out “each man for himself” after the mortar hit!)  back down to the beach, he passed Malanowski. Stan said to him `Are you okay, Ski?’  Malanowski said `Yes, Mac, you go on down I’ll just be a few minutes.’ Stan said he could hear Malanowski’s BAR firing as they made there way down, and then stop.” John is of the opinion that Andy was killed on the grounds of the Kitano Mendana Hotel.

In his email, Ewan Stevenson says that just last week he was speaking to a man named Gene Leslie, who is the son Dale Leslie, a marine pilot who flew over the battle site, saw the besieged battalion, saw that they were spelling out “HELP” with theit T-shirts, and radioed news of their dire circumstances to Chesty Puller. “We were talking just last week on the phone, and as often does, we talk about that day 27 Sept. I believe there is a great deal we don’t know about that day, and it’s not a glorious part of USMC history but not all history is glorious. One of the things we talked about was the absolute heroic feat of Malanowski that day. How he did his own last stand and help keep the following Japanese at bay. His actions certainly helped saved many lives, no doubt. ”

I am looking forward to Sunday’s debut of the HBO miniseries The Pacific, which focuses on the experiences of the marines who fought America’s island war against Japan. One of the early episodes will focus on the battle of Guadalcanal. It was there, relatively early in the long campaign to control of the island, that my uncle, Marine Sgt. Andy Malanowski, died a hero’s death.

I do not know much about Andy, mostly because my father was seldom given to talking about his childhood or upbringing or family. But some years ago I grew curious about Andy and his service and the circumstances of his death, and so I contacted the Marine Corps, which sent me a copy of his service record. I also published a notice in a Marine Corps Veterans’ newsletter, and a number of Andy’s comrades shared with me their recollections of him.

Anthony Peter Malanowski Jr. was born in Baltimore on January 31, 1914, the fourth, I believe, of Rosalie and Anthony Malanowski’s ten sons (one ahead of my dad), and called Andy to distinguish him from his father. He enlisted in the marines in July 1933. Obviously this was a Depression-era choice made by more than few 19 year olds, although perhaps unique in his family; although his brothers Babe, Mooney, Steve, Cliff and Joe all served in the armed forces, I believe Andy was the only one who enlisted during peace time.

Andy’s records show that he was a good marine, scoring 4.5’s on a five-point scale for Military Efficiency and 5’s for Obedience and Sobriety (the only three categories) in his regular evaluations. At various times during the 1930s he was stationed in San Diego, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From 1933 to 1935 he was part of the marine detachment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga as it conducted exercises in the Pacific and Caribbean, and he spent 1938 (and perhaps 1937 as well—the copy of his record is feint here) with the marine garrison in Peiping, China.  (A marine who met him in 1940 would refer to Andy as “an old China hand,” even though this service occured a scant two years earlier.) One can assume not as was well with that assignment; Andy, who had been promoted to corporal, was busted back to private for Intoxication, and his evaluations show a drop in his marks for Sobriety to a 3 and then to a 1. Whatever difficulties he was experiencing, however, seem to have been resolved up when he returned to the States. By 1940, his commander in Portsmouth was recommending that Andy, by now again a corporal, receive a Good Conduct Medal based on his long clean record prior to the drinking incidents. “Malanowski is an excellent man,’’ wrote H.L. Smith, “and is reenlisting.’’

H.L. Smith wasn’t the only  person who had a positive view of Andy during this period. In 1934, Joseph Seborowski, who went on to have a distinguished career in the Marine Corps, was a ten year old neighbor of the Malanowski family on Chester Street . In a private memoir he shared with me, he remembers Andy returning home on leave:

“Small events are the origin of great world history. So it is with the life of a man. For Joe, there was a singular event during that enchanted summer of boyhood in 1934, which ordained him to his journey. He looked up one day from his boyish games, and saw striding toward him down Chester Street a rare Being of blue and gold and shining brass. A United States Marine.

Marines do not simply walk. They march. They might even strut, or even swagger, but they never merely walk. This one strode in Dress Blues, coming home to the old neighborhood where he was born. Women turned their heads to see him better. Ordinary men watched with pretended disinterest, and envied him in their hearts.

Joe knew him. He was Anthony P. Malanowski Jr., who had become in the eyes of a ten year old boy, a god of battle. Maybe Joe was not entirely sure what marines did, but he resolved to someday wear that excellent uniform.’’

By the end of 1940, Andy had reenlisted, been promoted to platoon sergeant, and was transferred to the seventh regiment of the First Marine Division (1/7), which was commanded by the famous Maj. Chester `Chesty’ Puller. Andy spent 1941 and the first half of 1942 in Guantanemo Bay, Cuba, training for amphibious landings.

In a letter, Leland de Rocher of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who became Andy’s runner and tent-mate in March 1942, wrote “I can honestly say that my platoon sergeant was the finest man’s Marine I ever met during my four years in the Corps. I never heard him swear; he did not smoke or chew. He had one close friend, the company’s 1^st Sgt. Ford. They had both served together in China. Sarge was always neat in appearance, setting a fine example for us all. The best I can recall is that he was a man 180 pounds, 5’8’’, barrel-chested with very strong arms and legs, and without any facial hair on his round face, and none on his head. He always wore a cap or helmet. His carriage was that of a military man.  He was not inclined to talk unless there was a need to. While I am not sure, I think he went to mass when available.’’

De Rocher reports that the 1/7 left Cuba for Guadalcanal on Easter Sunday 1942. It was, he reports, “a great trip,’’ one that took them through the Panama Canal and eventually to British Samoa, where they spent three and a half months training. “We set up camp on the former British polo grounds,’’ wrote de Rocher. “ Pineapples and coconuts were plentiful and also fresh water to bathe in. We played baseball and were allowed two cans of beer a day. The friendly natives spoke fluent English and we got along well. They treated the marines to a luau when we were leaving the island.’’.

They were leaving for Guadalcanal, a 2,510-square mile island, about 90 miles long, part of the Solomon Island chain in the southwestern Pacific.  The Japanese landed there in May 1942 and were constructing an airfield which would have served as a base for bombing Australia and Allied shipping. Elements of the First Marine Division landed in August and entered combat almost immediately. They captured the Japanese airfield, renamed it Henderson Field, and defended it against several furious Japanese counterattacks that resulted in high casualties on both sides. The 1/7 arrived on September 18 and saw action almost immediately. Before a week had passed, on September 23, de Rocher, standing next to Andy on a patrol, was shot in the hip by a Japanese sniper. The wound became infected, and he was sent home.

On September 27, the marines launched a three-pronged offensive operation near the mouth of the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal’s northern coast. One detachment of a regiment called Edson’s Rangers was supposed to land on the coast and move inland, and join up with another detachment of Edson’s Rangers that was already in position. Meanwhile, further east, near Point Cruz, elements of the 1/7,  Andy among them, was supposed to land on the beach, move inland, and at the appropriate moment, join the two groups of Rangers in converging on a Japanese position that was supposedly lightly held by about 200 troops. But as Richard Wheeler writes in A Special Valor, his history of the marines in the Pacific, “the operation was a fiasco from beginning to end.’’

Essentially, both Ranger forces encountered heavy resistance, and neither was able to come close to meeting its objective. Meanwhile, the 500 men in the 1/7 moved up the hill from the beach, through a coconut grove, and into position on a grassy ridge, where they saw not 200 Japanese troops, but a large column advancing against them, and moving to encircle them and cut them off from the beach.

A desperate fight began. The 1/7’s commander was killed and his second-in-command wounded by a single mortar round. Radio communication was knocked out. Japanese soldiers assaulting the ridge came so close that the marines had to aim their mortars almost straight in the air so that the descending shells would hit  their targets. With the radio useless, a signalman employed semaphore flags to communicate with Puller, who was offshore in navy ship called The Ballard. Puller immediately signaled the marines to fight their way back to the beach, and he had The Ballard use its big guns to clear the enemy from the path of retreat.

Chaos prevailed: noise and smoke from the exploding shells, the marines plunging headlong down the hill, the Japanese pursuing, other Japanese who had survived the bombardment jumping out of the jungle to ambush the marines. One Japanese officer leaped from the brush and beheaded a marine with his sword. Finally the marines reached a clearing near the beach, but with the enemy closing in, Andy took a Browning Automatic Rifle from a wounded marine and set it up behind a fallen log. “You take Doc Schuster and the other wounded on down,” he said to Captain Regan Fuller, “and I’ll handle the rear. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’’

Fuller says that when he and the others reached the beach, he heard a rapid burst of gunfire, and then silence.

In a letter, Donald Dillard of Fenton, Michigan said “I was the last marine to see your uncle at Point Cruz. He was slumped across a log. I rolled him over, took what was left of his ammo, and ran for it.’’

After more desperate combat on the beach, the marines were evacuated.  Andy was one of 24 members of his unit who were killed that day; another 23 were wounded. With terrible fighting on both the island and the sea surrounding it, the battle for Guadalcanal lasted until February 1943, when the Japanese finally evacuated their forces. According to one source, 1500 Americans and 25,000 Japanese died on the island, and many more died at sea.

In Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller, Burke Davis writes the Puller recommended that Andy be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, and says that Andy received it. In A Special Valor, Richard Wheeler reports the same information. It is not clear what their source was.  In the event, Andy was awarded The Navy Cross, the navy’s highest decoration.  The citation accompanying the award, sent in a letter on December 8, 1942 by Admiral William F. Halsey, reads “For exceptional heroism in action against the enemy on September 27, 1942, near Point Cruz Guadalcanal. Sergeant Malanowski, with an automatic rifle, covered the withdrawal of his company until overrun and killed by the enemy. By his exhibition of the highest bravery, unselfish courage, and utter disregard for his own personal safety, he inflicted great loss on the enemy, greatly assisted in the withdrawal of his company, and gave his own life in the action.’’

“I was a young marine of 17 when your uncle led us,’’ wrote Louis Clabeaux of Redington Shores, Florida. “Your uncle saved the lives of our platoon.’’

Combat conditions prevented the immediate recovery of Andy’s body, and subsequent attempts to locate the body by the Graves Registration Company, including one as late as 1947, were unavailing. Donald Dillard rather trenchantly reminded me that the Japanese were known to mutilate the bodies of the enemy.

My father once told me that the military offered to put a marker in honor of Andy in Arlington National Cemetery, but that my grandmother declined, satisfied with the plaque that hangs in the vestibule of Holy Rosary Church that lists Andy’s name among the parishioners who had been killed in action. No matter; Andy’s real monument is the admiration of the men who knew him.

(Pictures: Marine Corps Identification Photo; three pages from Andy’s service record, showing all his deployments and ratings; note the final entry: “27 Sept 1942: Killed in action by enemy fire, details not known. . . .If discharged, character would have been `Excellent.”’; Chesty Puller; Marines on Guadalcanal; Map prepared by Graves Registration Company, showing the 1/7′s line of advance, line of retreat, and approximate location of Andy’s stand; the Browning Automatic Rifle; The Navy Cross; Copies of newspaper clippings from the collection of Joseph Seborowski.)

If anyone has recollections of Andy or knows stories about him, please leave them in the Comments section.

Cara and I spent Thursday and Friday visiting two colleges that she’s interested in, Morrisville State College, one of the very few SUNY schools that offers equine studies, and Cazenovia College. Cara and her mother had visited Cazenovia last summer, and when we pulled out of the driveway, it was the school that definitely headed her list (based mostly on the palatial barns in which their 70-odd horses reside.) Now I think Morrisville has moved into the top spot, based on the amount of hands-on work (that’s hands on a horse, in case you were wondering) they require. For example, they offer a course in breaking a horse in which the student spends four hours a day with horse every day. Sounds excruciating to me, but Cara’s sees the muddy barns and smells to manure and her heart races. She also liked the dorms and there’s a nearly even male-female ratio which appeals to her as well.  Cazenovia is much prettier and seemingly preppier and offers a strong business program which I, with my advanced wisdom, believe will serve her well as she makes her way through life’s torrents and eddys.  She’s not hearing any of it, at least not now; at Morrisville, we met a poised and articulate girl who had mud on her boots and straw in her hair, and Cara believes she glimpsed her future. Morrisville costs half of Cazenovia, so who am I to argue?

Happy Birthday to Cara. At top left, two days old, coming home for the first time after another big snow in the stormy winter of 1993; at bottom left, deigning to have her picture taken, but just once, and only for the requirements of posterity.

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Snow is not exactly a stranger in these parts, and even some eventful ten and twelve inch dumps that may have inspired shock and awe in other places get shrugged off like the play of a high school guard who averages a tidy sixteen points per game: nice, but we’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again. But the storm that came up the coast on Thursday was memorable indeed. It began in early afternoon, and twenty four hours later was still delivering flakes in a steady but dilatory fashion, like high school seniors wandering late into a assembly they didn’t much want to attend. In the meantime, a foot of snow had arrived, heavy stuff that got into the tall branches of the big oaks and maples and larches that are all over the county. The added weight flattened the short evergreens and naked azaleas, but worse, snapped the old branches and sent them crashing all over, blocking roads and tearing down power and cable and phone lines everywhere. We were reasonably lucky—last night (Sunday) we drove over the hills to Ossining, and there were still large swathes of dark in places where we knew to be homes, dark acres broken only by the flashing amber lights atop Con Ed trucks.

All we lost was the outside world—cable, internet and phone. It was an interesting experience: the TV I didn’t miss much, and the phone not at all, except for the nagging suspicion that somebody might be looking for us (so seldom the case that it shouldn’t have been worth the bother.) But I soon began to get itchy without the internet, and by Sunday, I was in the clutches of full withdrawal: cranky, irritable, depressed. I’m lucky I didn’t have cold sweats and hallucinations. I finally got some relief with a session on Molly’s laptop at Starbucks. Whew!

The most refreshing experience was to read the newspaper in what was otherwise a news blackout. Big headlines in the Times: Gov. Paterson Drops Bid for Reelection! An 8.2 Earthquake in Chile! What a shock! A sudden trip back to 1978: a couple of items and some scores from Chip Cippola or Donna Fiducia on WNEW-FM, and then the real news at the subway station or the deli from the barking headlines of the papers.

Drove up to my house last Friday afternoon, found a guy in a car with Virginia plates in my driveway. This isn’t exactly a vision we’ve never experienced before. We’re the first driveway off the first street off an exit of a reasonably busy road that forbods people from making a left hand turn and going on their merry way. Hence: a right turn, a left onto the first street, a left into the first driveway; reverse course, and off they go. But this guy was different; he wasn’t turning, he was sitting–gabbing on his cell phone. I hovered nearly and honked–once, twice–but got nada: no wafted fingers promising an imminent response. So I elaboately turned around (in my neighbor’s driveway), parked on the street, grabbed the two big shopping bags I had with me, and went over and rapped on his window. So absorbed in his conversation was he that he leaped in his seat, and then turned to me. “I’m just turning around!” he blurted. The blatant lie of an excuse angered me. “Bullshit!” I said. “You’re talking on my phone. Now get the fuck out of my driveway.” And he immediately did so, and drove away. So: nastier phrasing than that used by Clint Eastwood‘s cranky old man in Gran Torino (“Get off my lawn!”) and probably less provocation. But then I wasn’t brandishing a gun.

My friend Steve Lovelady died on January 15. He and I worked together at Time in 1997 and 1998, and although I didn’t have a lot of interaction with him, I found him to smart, decent, tough but low-key, enormously effective, a top-notch editor. And in fact, he was the one who sent me along to Ann Kolson, an editor at the Times who just so happened to be his wife, for whom I wrote about 40 stories. The Philadelphia Inquirer, where Steve worked for 23 years and where he edited stories that won six Pulitzer Prizes (and among the articles he midwifed at Time, two won National magazine Awards), offered him an excellent obituary, which included a sort of toast, if you will. Headlining this “The Lovelady Style”, it quoted the lead that Steve wrote for an installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning series “The Great Tax Giveaway” by then-Inquirer staff writers Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a tall, bald father of three living in a Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse and selling aluminum siding door-to-door for a living.
Imagine that you go to your congressman and ask him to insert a provision in the federal tax code that exempts tall, bald fathers of three living in Northeast Philadelphia and selling aluminum siding for a living from paying taxes on income from door-to-door sales.
Imagine further that your congressman cooperates, writes that exemption and inserts it into pending legislation. And that Congress then actually passes it into law.
Lots of luck.
The more than 80 million low- and middle-income individuals and families who pay federal taxes just don’t get that kind of personal break. Nor for that matter do most upper-middle-class and affluent Americans.
But some people do.

A terrific intro, colloquial and light, the perfect way to ease a reader into a complicated and important subject, an excellent example of the editor’s art. Here’s to you, Big Fella.