President Garfield- a footnote to a footnote in history

   Last year many  Americans were recalling the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. An article in the Providence Journal by Tom Mooney had this sad heading : " JFK's presidency loses relevance with younger generations " ( Nov. 20 , 2013 ) The last melancholy sentence read : " After all, who remembers much about James A. Garfield or William McKinley? "   A  newspaper column written by some obscure scholar pointed out that Garfield had a brilliant mind.  Spotting the very high school Plane Geometry text  I had in 1963  at the URI library in downtown Providence, I had a Proustian memory not of Kennedy but of Garfield.  Quickly I found the very page:  here was an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem presented by none other than  President James A. Garfield. A quite elegant proof !

           The significance of the Pythagorean Theorem was  made clear by a famous scene in " The Wizard Oz ".   Upon receiving the wizard' s diploma , Scarecrow got it all wrong : " The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side ".  Garfield would have immediately smelled a charlatan wizard. And  Scarecrow, of course, was just as stupid with the Oz diploma.

             But old Euclid is not a footnote to history. He inspired both Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln in sound principles of logic and reasoning.  How many of our leaders in Congress today ever find instruction and amusement in a plane geometry textbook ?

Talking politics with Marie B. Badessa of Cranston

  I just read Marie B. Badessa's letter ( Aug.28 )  giving her weighty senior citizen endorsement of Cranston Mayor Fung for governor. We senior citizens are still formidable in the voting booth. I  was a captive audience  for Marie 's politics a few years ago while doing laundry in our laundry room. I myself voted for Fung as mayor for the simple-perhaps simple minded reason - that nobody at a spaghetti dinner here had anything bad to say about him.

          But be warned Marie is- even if she cannot vote for him- a big fan of Mayor Cianci.  She was considering leaving his biography ( was it " Pizza and Politics " ? ) at my door .  I  do believe in the power of redemption . And so I can only wish Cianci   a moral victory rather late in life.

               Marie recently lectured me on using the right garbage bin here.  No flies on her !

" Johnny Friendly " unions support Gina Raimondo ? ( Underground message )

    Any Rhode Island voter old enough to remember the Academy Award winning movie " On the Waterfront " will know what a " Johnny Friendly " union is like. No such thing as union democracy.  The union boss is absolute dictator. He makes any deal which serves his own " business " interests and to hell with any dissenting workers. So when I read about the business manager  for local 51, representing plumbers and pipe fitters in Rhode Island, Timothy Byrne, supporting Gina Raimondo for governor , I smelled a " Johnny Friendly " deal . Just how democratic is local 51, Mr. Byrne ?

       Can any Wall St. game player have a clue about the real needs of working people - apart from a nice cold beer after work ? In contrast to Gina Raimondo, liberal Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren , is furious about all these pension betrayals - even in the public sector. Let the ONE PERCENT  pay for THEIR firefighters and police officers.  Gina Raimondo is BRILLIANT only in betraying the working class.

Found, " Mr. Irate Taxpayer " = Susan Berg

 I recently challenged  the editor to find and interview  " Mr. Irate Taxpayer ". Well you did the next best thing: You published Susan Berg's nth letter ( Aug. 26 ) on the topic of the boogey man Tax Collector.  OK, she is an excellent writer. But  can Burrillville, Rhode Island be another planet ? I recommend she move to Knightsville , Cranston for a more plebian perspective on economic oppression.  So the ONE PERCENT is moving out of America just to survive ?  Has Susan ever understood a word of that rascal Karl Marx ? Or does even Pope Francis resonate with her in quaint Burrillville ? Is she too an Ayn Rand fan ?