Enotes

So how many Christmas cards did you get this year? Are they adorning the wall? Do you have so many that they outline the closet door frame? Or are they stuffed in a holder on the coffee table, bursting? No? Not at our house, either. The Christmas card is a dinosaur---like drive-in movies and transistor radios. Nobody sends Christmas cards anymore. It's another example of how Americans today just don't like to slap a stamp on anything and ship it via the United States Postal Service. Sending Christmas cards was a feeling of accomplishment but not of gratification. I mean, you were never there to see the recipient open yours. But getting Christmas cards? Now that was some fun. They would start to come, slowly at first, usually the week after Thanksgiving. Those cards were sent by the early bird folks. But as the month of December moved along, the Christmas cards moved along with it, filling the mailbox more voluminously as the days ticked down toward December 25...

Today's Miss Americas serve their term and then they're never heard from again. Or so it seems. There's no prerequisite, of course, that the winner of arguably the most famous beauty contest of all time needs to stay in the limelight when she hands the crown over to her successor. But there was a time when Miss America was often the springboard to bigger and better (or, at least, more profitable) things. Mary Ann Mobley was one of those Miss Americas who stuck around in our consciousness long after she sashayed down the runway. Mobley, 77, passed away the other day after a battle with breast cancer . She was the first Mississippian to win the legendary contest, and she parlayed that distinction into a pretty decent stage and film career as an actress. Like so many other women of her era, Mobley was able to star opposite Elvis Presley on screen, and like her brethren, she out-acted him. Mobley had a smile that went from ear-to-ear and her dark beauty was a star...

My bar-hopping days are long gone, so maybe I know not of what I type. So call me naive, but do we need bars to be open until 4 a.m.? A hurried-through bill by the Michigan State Legislature would allow some bars to stay open until 4 in the morning on weekends. According to the bill's sponsors, it's a matter of competition. Senator Virgil Smith (D-Detroit), the bill's sponsor, says the measure is needed so Detroit can compete with other big cities, like New York. Come again? We are going after the lush crowd? Tourists will decide their destination based on bars being open further into the wee hours? Another legislator said that the bill merely gives businesses that serve alcohol the option to stay open later. "Who are we to tell bars how late they can stay open?" was the quote. OK. That seems to be a shocking display of being short-sighted. I mean, we are talking about alcohol consumption here. There figures to be some degree of consequence to ...