By Gilbert B. Elwyn
Family issues have kept me away from this pleasant pastime. I have missed writing columns for this magazine and I have missed this one in particular. In this one particular venue I can engage in what I like to call a “stream of unconsciousness”, going wherever the mind will take me and sometimes coming out in the Mighty Mississippi and sometimes dwindling down to a dried out creek bed. Some who have read Ink Blots will assert that the water – or possibly the writer …

By Gilbert B. Elwyn
I had every intention to celebrate my return to MOBILELIFE Today’s pages with advice for our new President- Elect or, perhaps a moving tribute to Veterans, or a scathing condemnation of our elected officials and/or big business for the financial crisis that came about on their “watch”. “Watch” is one of their favorite terms. Let’s just hope their watch is like Timex’s old slogan: “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking”.

By Gilbert B. Elwyn
When we write these “wig bubbles” as Lord Buckley might have called them, we use the “editorial we”. This is done for a few reasons: 1) we have read other columnists who use it and we are very imitative, 2) we don’t like seeing I repeated in our columns as we think it makes us appear egotistic. (We actually ARE egotistic; we just don’t wish to appear so), 3) we enjoy the fact that, if you don’t enjoy or agree with one of our …

We recently made a telephone call in response to an e-mail we had received. A company was interested in hiring us for an upcoming event. We were away when the e-mail arrived, so the call was made upon our return a few hours later. The young lady who answered had not expected to hear from us so soon. We know this to be fact because she said, “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

By Gilbert B. Elwyn
Spring is probably our favorite time of the year. The fresh scent of nature’s rebirth in the air is exhilarating. As far as we can see, Spring has only one drawback : Spring Cleaning.
We shall be among the first to admit that the house should be vacuumed at least once a year whether it needs or not and that the pile of January 2007 magazines should be recycled, no matter how intriguing those articles were which we never got around to reading.

By Gilbert B. Elwyn
In the mid 1950s our family owned a 1949 Ford. Our brother, obnoxiously precocious lad that he was, named this automobile Uncle Fudd. To the best of our knowledge it was named for the title character of a popular song. Uncle Fudd was a cheerful and incorrigible procrastinator who just kept puttering along at his own pace, letting nothing bother him. Somehow he “never had the time to spare.” The last verse describes his encounter at long last with St. Peter, telling him “I’m …

By Gilbert B. Elwyn
January 6th is the 67th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech. If you are not familiar with the actual speech, you are possibly aware of Norman Rockwell’s four-painting representation. Rockwell’s picture of a family gathered around the dinner table is particularly popular during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
President Roosevelt’s speech was addressed to the 77th Congress and warned of European aggression, the dangers of isolationism, and being unprepared militarily. It was not until page 8 of his 9-page speech that the President mentioned looking “forward …

By Gilbert B. Elwyn
I’ll state the obvious: it is December…the month when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus and when merchants celebrate their biggest month, if they’re fortunate. December is a month that, for many of us, is filled with stress, obligations, and bills. It is also the twelfth month of the year, the month when, during the exhausted haze of the Twelve Days of Christmas, sometimes we contemplate our lives and make plans and resolutions for the New Year.