Hits and Misses
In this file photo, Denny Falsetto, chairman of the Brownsville Area Military Honor Roll Committee, looks at the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall when it was on display in Brownsville in 2021. The wall, along with a 9/11 memorial wall, will be on display again at Brownsville Area High School from Sept. 8 to 12.
Tony Bennett
HIT: The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall is returning to the area this weekend and will include a 9/11 memorial wall to pay tribute to those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The exhibit will be arriving today at Brownsville Area High School and will open free to the public starting tomorrow. The Brownsville Area Military Honor Roll Committee, hosting the display, opted to time the visit to coincide with the anniversary of the terror attacks, and is planning a ceremony for 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 11. The exhibit is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. through Monday, and a closing ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The committee brought the exhibit to the same location two years ago. “We don’t know how many attended, but we had a very good turnout,” said Eadi Zetty, secretary of the honor roll committee. “The high school campus is level, there’s plenty of access and plenty of parking.”
HIT: The other day, The New York Times reported that Medicare spending has largely remained flat over the last decade, defying predictions that its cost would keep going up and up and up. Experts believe the reasons for the slowdown in spending include reduced payments to hospitals and health insurers with Medicare Advantage plans, which is not entirely good news. However, they also think the deceleration in spending is happening because older Americans are having fewer strokes and heart attacks than they once did, and are reaping the benefits of medications that lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. All told, if Medicare spending had followed spending projections over the last 10 years, the federal government would have spent an additional $3.9 trillion. The Times pointed out that is 27 times what is spent on food stamps every year, six times the annual revenue of Walmart and almost twice what was spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
MISS: “If there’s a rock and roll heaven, you know they’ve got a hell of a band,” the Righteous Brothers sang close to 50 years ago. Lately, the ranks of that celestial combo have been getting uncomfortably crowded for music fans here on Earth. Jimmy Buffett and Gary Wright died last weekend, and they are just the latest in a depressing litany of enduring figures in rock and pop music who have departed since the beginning of the year – Tony Bennett, Tina Turner, Robbie Robertson, Jeff Beck, and David Crosby are some of the more well-known names, but there have also been a number of second-tier figures who have died. All of them did live to what most of us would consider a ripe old age – Bennett was just a few years removed from 100, and it was no small feat that Crosby made it past 80, given his history of prodigious substance abuse. Still, seeing musicians who have provided the soundtrack to so many of our lives make their final curtain call is a sobering reminder that individuals who make immortal music are themselves mortal – and so are we.
MISS: Recently, officials in Mount Dora, Fla., approved a program that would allow businesses in their community to voluntarily display a rainbow decal, signaling that they are a safe and welcoming place for LGBTQ customers. But this seemingly innocuous, entirely optional initiative drove some state lawmakers into fits of apoplexy. The GOP legislators have written letters to officials, warning that they would use all “legislative, legal and executive options” to prohibit them. Why? They believe displaying the decals would be “detrimental” and “divisive” and represent “virtue signaling.” The question, though, is why lawmakers are not only sticking their nose in a local decision, but also why they are essentially directing businesses to not put them up? Given the battles Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has had with Disney, the whole idea of being hands-off on how businesses operate seems to have fallen by the wayside in the Sunshine State. Also, aren’t there other concerns lawmakers in Florida should have than … stickers?