Jonas Salk, H.B. Reese

I was reflecting the other day about one of Gheorghe: The Blog's posts from earlier this summer. The Jonas Salk part of that story made me think very, very deeply -- and, as those who know me well will tell you, I am surely wont to do.

Our parents' generation saw the debilitating disease polio go from a tragically common occurrence to a thing of the past, so much so that we -- merely a generation later -- can't really relate to their fear of it. It's one among many things we take for granted, but it's a significant one by any standard.

Eerily similarly, however, our generation now breathes a quiet sigh of relief knowing that the rampant, inevitable, and often violent collisions involving persons carrying chocolate bars and other persons carrying open jars of peanut butter have been curbed almost entirely out of existence. It's a wee bit disappointing to think that the kids today cannot truly appreciate this eradication, but the magic of YouTube can demonstrate just the tip of the iceberg on a crisis that was spiraling out of control . . .

* * * *
Oh, and one more thing to file under "Things I Learned from Television in the 1970's":
Italian-Americans with surnames ending in "elli" or "ello" are instantly made thoroughly more endearing people if you simply call them by the surname's first syllable (Fonz, Ponch, etc.). It really softens an otherwise potentially hard-edged citizen. Try this with neighbors, colleagues, etc. -- it works.

Exception: in college I had a female professor for The Study of Language whose last name was Scancarelli. (Both c's are hard, but not as hard as she was.) IT DID NOT WORK. I failed the class, which was a large reason why the English Department disowned me soon thereafter.