The Era -- Day By Day

[LizzieMaine]

And in the Daily News...

Sure, why not?

New York's Picture Newspaper.

"Well, sure, after you pay your membership dues."

"April? April who?"

You'll never see each other again.

Sure, it'll look good on your resume.

"Besides, we can hear them better upstairs."

Just like every executive I ever worked for in radio.

Awwwwwwww

"They pay him THAT much??"

 

[LizzieMaine]

Oh and...

Oh, not these two again. THAT UNIFORM IS NOT REGULATION.

 

[Fading Fast]

("I tell ya, Sal," chuckles Alice as they settle into their seats on the H&M, "ya coulda knawked me oveh wit' a soup spoon. He had it awl laid out -- table awl set, napkins, plates, t'whole t'ing. Who woulda t'ought Siddy knows how t'set up a candle light dinneh! T'en he brawt out t'bag f'm Silvehman's deli! Oh, Sal, I wawna tell yeh, cawrn beef neveh tasted so sweet. What a night." Other than a deep sigh, however, Sally offered no reply. "Hey," interjects Alice, slapping her companion's knee. "Why so glum, chum? It's a be-you-ti-ful woil." "Ahhhh," exhales Sally, "I still ain' oveh missin' Leonoreh's boitday pawrty. I shoulda been'neah. I shoulda been right t'eh." "Ya made a swell cake, t'ough," reminds Alice. "An' judgin' f'm how much of it she had onneh when we wen' oveh t'pick 'eh up, it wen' oveh big." "Yeh," nods Sally. "I s'pose. But it ain'a same. Ya kid on'y toins two oncet, y'know." "Yeh," sighs Alice, "I s'pose ya right at t'at." They sit in silence as the train rumbles thru the Downtown Tube. "Hey," begins Alice, breaking the lull in the conversation. "Y'spose it's too late f'me t't'ink about havin' a kid? Is t'oity sev'n too old?" Sally shoots her a look and shrugs. "Maybe it is," she offers. "Maybe it ain'. Anyt'ing c'n happ'n." "Yeh," exhales Alice. "T'at's what I'm afraid of...")
...

The postal worker who lost his family in the train wreck and then came home and took his life is beyond sad. One understands it, but can't help wishing someone had been with him to help get him through this time.

Note to the editor: no one, anywhere, wants to hear a single intimate detail about Alice and Sidney's (and I shudder to use the following two words) sex life. Just noting, as subscriptions can be cancelled.

...

Argentina today faced the prospect of being forced after the war to continue in its self-imposed isolation from other Western Hemisphere nations. That implication was contained in a letter from Secretary of State Cordell Hull to Argentenian Foreign Minister Segundo Storni, in which Hull blatantly rejected the South American country's appeal for airplanes and other munitions on grounds that Argentina has refused to contribute her share to defense of the hemisphere, has failed to live up to her inter-American commitments, and has in many ways given aid and comfort to enemies of the United Nations. Hull's letter responding to Storni's argument that his country's neutrality was "misunderstood" was seen as the most severe rebuke given by the United States to a Latin American government in many years.
...

And Hull doesn't even know yet about all the Nazi who will find sanctuary in Argentina via the "rat line" after the war.

...

(Annie in twenty years.)
...

A version of this scene with big blonde Beverly Michaels playing opposite Van Heflin takes place in the 1949 movie "East Side, West Side."

(The fight starts at 3:49 mark)

...

(Honestly, though, would Cary Grant be caught dead wearing that dumb cap?)
...

"I think I look quite good in one, so there, Lizzie." - Cary Grant

...

"Well, sure, after you pay your membership dues."
...

I don't blame the kid, it's not like the farmer isn't getting paid for the potatoes they dig up.

...

"April? April who?"
...

With April, it would have been two newbies fumbling in the dark. The kid's real mistake was not letting Hu Shee initiate him.

"I would have been very gentle with the yellow-haired one."

Oh and...

Oh, not these two again. THAT UNIFORM IS NOT REGULATION.

It's a regulation uniform all right, just for a different type of drill.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Mr Borden's tragic then the Houston fire and the mother who perished.
And the train wreck disaster with all the dead remove heartache. Tough hard times reading today sure.

I nearly missed Cooper and Bergman in Bell advert, yet I wonder if today would Cooper be considered too old,
or Bergman too mature for casting such roles. Hollywood's emphasis on youth and frankly overall vapidity.
One might dig deeper inside the probability that a book would provide actual film basis instead of agenda.
Drawing a line thru Harrison Ford and Indy. Pray tell he owned the franchise.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meanwhile, leafing thru a copy of Time for August 30, 1943, this item of note jumps out --

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Press: Moppet in Politics

Little Orphan Annie is an ugly but likable little carrottop who in her 19-year comic-strip existence has adventured into and out of many a paper-&-ink jam. Last week she was in a real one. The Roosevelt loyalists of the Louisville Courier-Journal management tossed her bodily out of their paper. Angrily but regretfully they had concluded that popular Annie had been made into a vehicle of Republican propaganda.

Recently Annie arrived in Gooneyville to stay awhile with Spike Spangle, an old friend of her foster father, Daddy Warbucks. There she found that Fred Flask, village ration official, had taken away the Spangles' "A" book because they had used their car to make a 20-mile sick call.

ANNIE: "But that wasn't pleasure driving!"

SPANGLE: "Well, Fred Flask said (we) could have waited till the next afternoon and taken the bus."

Later, when Annie noticed a sporty car, she was told: "Oh, that's Mr. Flask. He's on official business, of course. He has to drive."

ANNIE: "I thought his car was a sedan."

MRS. SPANGLE: "Oh, the sedan belongs to Mrs. Flask. . . . Why, the Flasks have three (cars). Their son has to get to and from school ... 50 miles."

In subsequent strips Spangle, a retail storekeeper, has to bother with special price-ceiling inventories and Government questionnaires (in triplicate).

His suspicions roused by continuity like this, Courier-Journal Publisher Mark Ethridge peeked at advance Annie proofs, found his suspicion justified. Promptly he took Annie out of the Journal's roster of funnies.

Explained Publisher Ethridge: ". . . The turn taken by the Orphan Annie strip was representative of the Chicago Tribune policy. . . . (We do) not mind presenting opinions contrary to our own, (but) we have to insist that opinion of whatever kind be duly labeled as such and not smuggled into comic strips in the guise of entertainment."

The man who draws Little Orphan Annie is balding, cigar-smoking Harold Lincoln Gray. Despite the fact that the New Deal-hating Chicago Tribune has been hitting relentlessly at gas-ration "muddling," bureaucracy and Government interference with private enterprise, Artist Gray has been-repeatedly warned by the Tribune-News Syndicate to keep controversial issues out of his strips. He ignored the orders because 1) he is publicity-wise, knows the value of having his strip talked about; 2) he is an all-out, old-line conservative Republican himself; 3) he finds it difficult to keep Annie "in tune with the times" and simultaneously untouched "by the pressures of social and political changes."

Illinois-born (49 years ago), Harold Gray was a farm boy until he graduated from Purdue University in 1917, then became a $15-a-week reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Soon he was art-department handyman. In the early 1920s he helped Artist Sidney Smith (The Gumps), finally created a strip of his own, Little Orphan Annie, which is circulated in 345 papers and, with a circulation of approximately 16,000,000 daily and 20,000,000 Sunday, nets Artist Gray a six-figure annual income, enables him to live and work in an expansive home in Green Farms, Conn. There last week he concluded he had made a mistake in letting little Annie lug his private political banner. Said he: "The Syndicate has a hard & fast rule against editorializing. I shouldn't have done it."

To repair the damage, as many of the propagandistic Annie strips as possible will be recalled, killed. Artist Gray is already at work on new ones.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well poo. I was looking forward to seeing that story play out. Digging a bit deeper, it turns out that there was in a certain Connecticut town an OPA official named Fred FLACK, who denied Mr. Gray's request for a B card. Mr. Flack did not find his sudden appearance in the strip under the name of "Flask" at all flattering. Nor did Mr. Flack's attorney. Nor did attorneys for the News-Tribune Syndicate. So it appears that Mr. Flask of the Gooneyville Ration Board will meet a fate not unlike that of Nick Gatt, expiring off camera with great suddenness. My my my.

 

[Fading Fast]

Meanwhile, leafing thru a copy of Time for August 30, 1943, this item of note jumps out --

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Press: Moppet in Politics

Little Orphan Annie is an ugly but likable little carrottop who in her 19-year comic-strip existence has adventured into and out of many a paper-&-ink jam. Last week she was in a real one. The Roosevelt loyalists of the Louisville Courier-Journal management tossed her bodily out of their paper. Angrily but regretfully they had concluded that popular Annie had been made into a vehicle of Republican propaganda.

Recently Annie arrived in Gooneyville to stay awhile with Spike Spangle, an old friend of her foster father, Daddy Warbucks. There she found that Fred Flask, village ration official, had taken away the Spangles' "A" book because they had used their car to make a 20-mile sick call.

ANNIE: "But that wasn't pleasure driving!"

SPANGLE: "Well, Fred Flask said (we) could have waited till the next afternoon and taken the bus."

Later, when Annie noticed a sporty car, she was told: "Oh, that's Mr. Flask. He's on official business, of course. He has to drive."

ANNIE: "I thought his car was a sedan."

MRS. SPANGLE: "Oh, the sedan belongs to Mrs. Flask. . . . Why, the Flasks have three (cars). Their son has to get to and from school ... 50 miles."

In subsequent strips Spangle, a retail storekeeper, has to bother with special price-ceiling inventories and Government questionnaires (in triplicate).

His suspicions roused by continuity like this, Courier-Journal Publisher Mark Ethridge peeked at advance Annie proofs, found his suspicion justified. Promptly he took Annie out of the Journal's roster of funnies.

Explained Publisher Ethridge: ". . . The turn taken by the Orphan Annie strip was representative of the Chicago Tribune policy. . . . (We do) not mind presenting opinions contrary to our own, (but) we have to insist that opinion of whatever kind be duly labeled as such and not smuggled into comic strips in the guise of entertainment."

The man who draws Little Orphan Annie is balding, cigar-smoking Harold Lincoln Gray. Despite the fact that the New Deal-hating Chicago Tribune has been hitting relentlessly at gas-ration "muddling," bureaucracy and Government interference with private enterprise, Artist Gray has been-repeatedly warned by the Tribune-News Syndicate to keep controversial issues out of his strips. He ignored the orders because 1) he is publicity-wise, knows the value of having his strip talked about; 2) he is an all-out, old-line conservative Republican himself; 3) he finds it difficult to keep Annie "in tune with the times" and simultaneously untouched "by the pressures of social and political changes."

Illinois-born (49 years ago), Harold Gray was a farm boy until he graduated from Purdue University in 1917, then became a $15-a-week reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Soon he was art-department handyman. In the early 1920s he helped Artist Sidney Smith (The Gumps), finally created a strip of his own, Little Orphan Annie, which is circulated in 345 papers and, with a circulation of approximately 16,000,000 daily and 20,000,000 Sunday, nets Artist Gray a six-figure annual income, enables him to live and work in an expansive home in Green Farms, Conn. There last week he concluded he had made a mistake in letting little Annie lug his private political banner. Said he: "The Syndicate has a hard & fast rule against editorializing. I shouldn't have done it."

To repair the damage, as many of the propagandistic Annie strips as possible will be recalled, killed. Artist Gray is already at work on new ones.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well poo. I was looking forward to seeing that story play out. Digging a bit deeper, it turns out that there was in a certain Connecticut town an OPA official named Fred FLACK, who denied Mr. Gray's request for a B card. Mr. Flack did not find his sudden appearance in the strip under the name of "Flask" at all flattering. Nor did Mr. Flack's attorney. Nor did attorneys for the News-Tribune Syndicate. So it appears that Mr. Flask of the Gooneyville Ration Board will meet a fate not unlike that of Nick Gatt, expiring off camera with great suddenness. My my my.

That's fantastic color that helps explain a lot. Gray has never struck me as a hard-core 1940s Republican. Like you, Lizzie, I was looking forward to where the story was going. The loss of Nick Gatt was a shame as he was one of cartoon land's most-real and most-interesting 1940s characters.

One day, both sides of our political divide will grow up and embrace light being shined on the corruption and crimes committed by some businessmen, by some government officials and by some union leaders. No side is free of the human condition.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Meanwhile, leafing thru a copy of Time for August 30, 1943, this item of note jumps out --

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Press: Moppet in Politics

Little Orphan Annie is an ugly but likable little carrottop who in her 19-year comic-strip existence has adventured into and out of many a paper-&-ink jam. Last week she was in a real one. The Roosevelt loyalists of the Louisville Courier-Journal management tossed her bodily out of their paper. Angrily but regretfully they had concluded that popular Annie had been made into a vehicle of Republican propaganda.



Explained Publisher Ethridge: ". . . The turn taken by the Orphan Annie strip was representative of the Chicago Tribune policy. . . . (We do) not mind presenting opinions contrary to our own, (but) we have to insist that opinion of whatever kind be duly labeled as such and not smuggled into comic strips in the guise of entertainment."

The man who draws... finds it difficult to keep Annie "in tune with the times" and simultaneously untouched "by the pressures of social and political changes."

The intolerance of left wing Labour apparatchiks, fellow travelers, and American New Wheeler Dealers.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

One day, both sides of our political divide will grow up and embrace light being shined on the corruption and crimes committed by some businessmen, by some government officials and by some union leaders. No side is free of the human condition.

The Tories have much to answer, Britain is definitely emersed recession and corruption a spreading cancer.
Fleet Street is all abuzz Hunter Biden, his dad, Nancy prancy insider stock swindle, and the president's criminal
impeachment with Kamala's impending coronation. And, all aflame Obama. Unbelievable. And the American
press avoidance of Labour trevail deafening.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Harold Gray workng on "The Gumps" also explains a lot. I imagine, especially Bim's well-established tendency to long moralistic speeches first emerged from Mr. Gray's pen.

All of the News-Tribune cartoonists were chummy, with Harold Gray, Sid Smith, Frank King, and Carl Ed forming a regular clique when they were all working out of the Tribune Tower. It also explains the common tone and storytelling style their strips have tended to have over the years. Milton Caniff was never a part of this gang, spending all his time in the New York area, and you can see why his strip has always stood out as an outlier. He's had his own trouble with censors over the years, as we saw in the days of "The Invader," but he's always tended to be more grown-up than Mr. Gray in how he's dealt with it.

 

[Fading Fast]

Considering that it took me five minutes to get to this page, click one like and (estimating) post this brief comment, it looks like Fedora Lounge's tech problem that was better this morning has not been solved for good.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Milton Caniff was never a part of this gang, spending all his time in the New York area, and you can see why his strip has always stood out as an outlier. He's had his own trouble with censors over the years, as we saw in the days of "The Invader," but he's always tended to be more grown-up than Mr. Gray in how he's dealt with it.

Speak of the deviltry, but Terrence lad is a bit goof all in all to almost kissing a propeller after a wing embrace
with Taffy, sweet lass of silhouette sensuality. Clever man, Caniff. He knows how to leash a dog.

 

[LizzieMaine]

("S'funny," muses Joe. "T'ree yeehs ago, we was jus' get'n by. I'm woikin' in a pick'l fact'ry, Sal's woikin' inna five an' ten, an' we'eh jus' gett'n by, right? An' now I'm makin' good money at Sperry's, Sal's makin' good money at t' phone comp'ny, an' we got awlese wawr bonds pilin' up. Y'know what I feel? I feel guilty, t'at's what I feel. T'ez a wawr on, Mickey's in a prison camp someplace, Solly got shot, an' we'eh sit'n pretty. It don' seem right." "Ahhh, ye say it yaaarself, Joseph," reminds Ma. "We don't make the waaarld, we just live in it." "Still don' feel right," sighs Joe. "If t'eh gonna draft me, I wish t'ey'd jus' go ahead an' do it, get it oveh wit'. It's t'not knowin' t'at kills ya." "Think of aaafter the waar, Joseph," urges Ma. "Alll that mooney ye'll have saved oop." "Yeh," shrugs Joe. "Sal waants we should buy a house afteh t' wawr." "Oi think thaat's a fine ideear," nods Ma. "She wants we should buy a house right heeh," continues Joe. "In Pig-- in Eas' Flatbush. One'a t'em houses down on Midwood Street, fr'zample. Awr on Maple. Awr on Rutlan', or awn Fenimoeh, y'know? Right inna neighbehood heeh. We c'd be aroun' heeh awla time. Magine'at." "Ah," ahs Ma. "Oi -- don't thinkt thaat would be sooch a good idear, Joseph. This neighbarhood, it's in -- decloine. You don't live here aal the toime as I do. You donn't see what goos aahn aaafter daark. There's many a -- daaangerous character aboot. Nooo, this is nooo place to raise a choild, no indeed." "I wouln' min' movin' backta Williamsboig," shrugs Joe. "That's a FOINE IDEAAR," enthuses Ma. "A VERY FOINE ideear." "Hiya Ma," interrupts Hops Gaffney, the screen door banging behind him. He tosses his canvas pouch on the counter, sneers at Joe, and struts out. "Yeh," sighs Joe. "Dangehrous charactehs...")

The United States today is preparing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the relief and rehabilitation of war-ravaged Italy and her 45,000,000 war-sick inhabitants. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill were reliably reported to have discussed those plans at their conferences this week. Military and civilian machinery has already been set up for that purpose, and a civilian mission to be headed by C.B. Baldwin as Director of Economic Operations for Italy will leave the US in a few weeks. Immediate emphasis will be placed on feeding the hungry, clothing the ragged, and tending to the sick. Once military stabilization has been achieved, emphasis will be placed on returning Italian farms and factories to productivity and the country returned to participation in world trade.

Red Army forces, having reconquered the industrially-vital Donets Basin, are now pursuing the fleeing Germans who have abandoned the city of Stalino, and 300 miles to the northwest, Soviet forces have cut a key rail line supplying Nazi forces occupying Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. A communique elaborating Marshal Stalin's order of the day announcing the liberation of Stalino and the Donets Basin indicated that Soviet troops have seized large stores of military booty left behind by the retreating Nazis.

(Until 1942, Miss Porter's columns for the Post were signed "S. F. Porter," because no one at the paper believed readers would accept financial advice from a woman. THERE'S A NEW WORLD COMING!)

A witness who will soon testify before the grand jury investigating conditions in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section today accused police of direct interference in that investigation. Witness Joseph L. Reina today charged that he was threatened by a patrolman on Fulton Street, who searched him, brandished a billy club in his face, and warned him to "keep his nose clean." Reina, the president of the Good Neighbors Civic League of Brooklyn, stated that the attempt at intimidation happened as he and Fulton Street candy store operator Benjamin Blatter, a director of the League, were canvassing shops in the neighborhood to reassure merchants that they had nothing to fear in cooperating with the grand jury probe. Police officials have not responded to his charge.

Limits on the sale of fluid milk in New York City will take effect on October 1st as a way of increasing supplies of milk products including butter and cheese. As of the first of next month, the amount of fluid milk available for retail sale will be limited to quantities sold "in recent months," under the authority of the War Food Administration. Under the new regulations, all nursing mothers, mothers-to-be, and hospitals will be entitled to priorities in the purchase of fluid milk, and home consumption will take priority over sales to restaurants.

The Borden family will be buried together today at Beth David Cemetery. Postal worker and World War I veteran Morris Borden of 527 Kingston Avenue in East Flatbush took his own life by asphyxiation after his wife Grace and two children, Irma and Stephen, were killed in the wreck of the Congressional Limited on Monday. In a note found by Mr. Borden's body, the bereaved father stated that "all I want is to be together with my loved ones."

Two little girls who frightened their parents by disappearing from their home in Canarsie were found safe today, playing house in a vacant bungalow in Freeport, Long Island. 12 year old Dorothy Anderson and her 8 year old sister Helen went off on a bicycle ride three days ago, and set out for Freeport, where their family had lived until three years ago. The girl had entered the locked house thru a window, and helped themselves to bacon and eggs, "living like Robinson Crusoe" until the Missing Persons Bureau tracked them down.

(Mr. Parrott has never written a baseball novel. Much the pity.)

("And the worst of it is, I used to work for the post office!")

An Irish Setter belonging to a little girl from East Flatbush is back home tonight after jumping out of a moving truck as his owners were moving from Atlantic City to Brooklyn. Dukie the dog was spotted by a New Jersey State Police trooper on Route 9 in Howell Township, looking ragged, weary, and in need of a good meal. After Dukie was identified by his license tag, New Jersey troopers tracked down his owner, 11-year-old Miss Joan McAllister, and teletyped Brooklyn police to advise that he was safe and sound and on his way to his new home.

("Heh," hehs Alice as the BMT rumbles toward 18th Street. "A gal coachin' football. T'at's f'me -- y'know, when I was lit'l goil, I played a lotta football. Not in school, t'sistehs would neveh lemme, but afteh I got outta t'at place, I runarouna neighbehoood, y'know, out'n Bushwick, an' wheneveh'd I see a buncha boys playin' football in a lot, why, I'd go oveh an' say 'lemme in onnis, awr I'll tack'l evr'y one'a yez! See, I was awreddy biggeh'n any of'em, an'ney knew betteh t'mess wit' me. Hey Sal, you eveh play football?" "Neh," shrugs Sally. "Potsy was my game. Potsy champion a' P. S. 92 f' 1922, right heeh." "Hmph," snorts Alice. "Potsy's f'lit'l goils. I was a goil, but I was neveh lit'l." "I guess not," sighs Sally, resting back on her seat with her eyes closed." "I was showin' Siddy some'a my tack'ls t'utteh night," continues Alice. "AWR STOP COMIN' UP," interjects Sally, her eyes snapping open. "AWL OUT!")

Frenchy Bordagaray, hit in the head by a pitched ball in Monday's game against the Braves, was released today from Caledonian Hospital. He watched yesterday's game from the stands and told fans seated around him that he feels no ill effects from the beaning.

(That's what you get for putting hydrogen in the balloons.)

("The poor man! He'll require extensive plastic surgery!")

("Sorry, Burma -- we don't have the budget for hand lotion.")

(I was kissed once by a calf, just like this, and I had the good sense to just slowly walk away.)

(Actually, the delusional old boy has never been to sea in his life. He lost his leg hitching on a trolley.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

And in case you missed it...

America's Biggest Small Town in Action.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And in the Daily News...

One down, two to go.

All right, so much for the preliminaries. Bring on the main event.

"Impressive, Captain. Tell me, with whiskers like that, how do you get such a close shave?"

"You better keep your nose clean, Gray!"

"And within two hours, at least one of us will be floating face down in this pool!"

"Dunno where we're goin', but we're on our way!"

Mildred Kelly is advancing in the organization.

Gus Edson reads "Captain America" CONFIRMED.

When you think about it, a door to door salesman must see a lot that nobody else does.

See what happens when you don't balance your checkbook?

 

[LizzieMaine]

And just to savor the moment a little longer...

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Italy surrenders great news!
Pius occupies the papal office; and Gina Lollabrigida and Sophia Loren are liberated.

Gina's appearance in Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is truly inspirational.

 

[Fading Fast]

Italy surrenders great news!
Pius occupies the papal office; and Gina Lollabrigida and Sophia Loren are liberated.

Gina's appearance in Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is truly inspirational.

Touching on your point, Ms Loren starred in "Two Women," an intense movie about the end of the war in Italy. Comments here: #30,675

Ms. Lollabrigida also starred in a movie that touched on the end of WWII, but her picture is a much lighter affair, "Bouna Sera, Mrs. Campbell," comments here: #30,665

This is the first window I had today where, for more than a second, Fedora wasn't crawling. Whatever the tech issue is, it's a doozy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Everything was per norma for mel until 10 AM, and then it was like somebody threw a switch. Lag-a-rama since then. Whatever it is, it's on a time clock. I've called the situation to the attention of the management, so I guess just see what happens.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Both ladies are classic icons who made indelible impression in my adolescence.

London is at 17.30 or so now, and while the Lounge runs slow, it's fine this time.

 

[Fading Fast]

Everything was per norma for mel until 10 AM, and then it was like somebody threw a switch. Lag-a-rama since then. Whatever it is, it's on a time clock. I've called the situation to the attention of the management, so I guess just see what happens.

To be fair and to correct the error I made in my prior post, it was working okay earlier in the morning. Then, as I was reading your Day-by-Day posts and tried to respond (which was after 10am), it just kept freezing up on me, so I gave up. Yesterday was a bit slow, but I was able to respond.

Then, when I tried to respond to Foxtrot twenty or so minutes ago, it worked okay (fast, slow, fast, fast...).

I'm sure they are trying to fix it.