Student loan disaster; 77-year-old cake; Ms. Pac-Man celebrates; obit observation
Locally, we’ve been covered up with election news this week. So it goes.
Nationally, a massive story is the possibility that President Joe Biden is thinking about spending billions in tax dollars to pick up the tab for student loan debt.
Wish I could say I was surprised.
But know this: This type of spending — I would call it malfeasance — in a time of skyrocketing inflation is how Trump happens.
Where can I send all of my canceled checks that prove I paid off our family’s student loans? And now that I think about it: How about car loan forgiveness? Mortgage forgiveness? Asking for several million of us who take out loans and, you know, pay them back.
SPECIAL CAKE
So late last month Meri Mion celebrated her 90th birthday. Part of the party was a cake from the U.S. Army, a past-due pastry 77 years in the making.
You see, Mion was about to celebrate her 13th birthday on April 29, 1945, in her family home in northeastern Italy when American soldiers who were fighting German forces near her home ate the cake Mion’s mother had made for her and left on a window sill to cool.
The replacement cake had chocolate and white frosting with fresh fruit and candy pieces and read “Buon 90 compleanno” (Happy 90th birthday).
SPEAKING OF LATE
OK, it was good news that Ms. Pac-Man finally got her due and was voted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. (No, I did not know there was a World Video Game Hall of Fame before now either, but if there’s any justice, it’s 25 cents to get in and they have one of those boxy change-maker machines in the lobby.)
The World Video Game Hall of Fame opened almost seven years ago in Rochester, New York.
And while the younger generations are super-advanced in terms of tech and gaming, and the older generations guffaw at the time wasted on such nonsense, my generation spent a fair amount of time in arcades growing up.
Which brings us back to why it took Ms. Pac-Man this long to get the hall call.
The initial class included Pac-Man as well as Doom, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris and World of Warcraft.
And to make matters worse, Ms. Pac-Man had to wait behind Centipede (2020 inductee) as well as Animal Crossing (2021).
Again, better late than never, I suppose.
OBIT OBSERVATION
The stories of amazing people in the paper’s obits are just that. Amazing.
Among those this week was the news of Virginia Jo Gilman’s death. A lifelong Chattanoogan who attended GPS and the University of Chattanooga, she was a dedicated member of the Junior League and Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church.
She will be missed by those who knew her. Think about the way she made the most of a life that could have gone a completely different way.
According to the obit, Virginia Jo was a “media sensation” after she was kidnapped at the age of 2 in 1927. Her father, acting Mayor Fred Frazier, paid $3,333.33 ransom and she was returned.
Wow. And thank God.