Up a Tree

 I've mentioned before that my maternal grandfather, William, served in the U.S. Marines. I'm still trying to find out how that happened, given that he was born in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, which was noted in his service record. His record came from the Department of the Navy, and given that I know basically nothing about military history, I assumed that at the time of his service, the Marines were a part of the U.S. Navy when he served and later were separated to be a standalone branch of the armed forces.  I was wrong. Now whoever reads this may scoff and say, "Well, of course. Everybody knows this." In that case, you may skip the rest of this post. But if, like me, you had the same misconception, allow me to tell you what I've discovered. My views, I realized, were primarily formed from my consumption of popular entertainment -- movies where members of each service ride each other about which is better, whose function is more indispensable, those sorts of thi

 If you don't understand the title, then you're not a die-hard James Bond fan. Elliot Carver was an owner of mass media with a megalomaniac, of course, bent. He ran his empire by creating the news he served up to his customers.  Watch old films and you'll see the old time newspapers portrayed as being less than scrupulous, and that reputation turns out to be somewhat deserved. The Chicago American , the paper that reported the train wreck in the first part of my last post, was a Hearst newspaper and published for the first time on July 4, 1900. It relied primarily on street sales rather than subscriptions, which meant breaking news was its bread and butter. I can see the newsies running around downtown Chicago crying out headlines for the big event of the day. It was merged and renamed numerous times in its history, finally folding in 1974. Among its employees was a night city editor (a position I once held) named Harry Romano. From Wikipedia: "Romy" a stout, ciga