annoyed reaction of a layman regarding the government issues

This post is just an insight..an opinion of one of the common sovereign Filipino people who can't seem to find tranquility amidst the noise and echoes of what's currently happening around us.I mean everywhere, everyday and no matter what we do there isn't any place where the issues weren't splashed out.It is very tiring and exasperating to hear, much more to see these things...same old,same old and still no changes, only issues mounting up and entangling over each other to provide a more confusing and disgusting picture.One could clearly see them so obviously, even the ones i saw on TV earlier..an ordinary old man, very common and primitive and also a layman..yet he could simply figure out the gray side and the bland side of the story so easily...Weren't we all? How much more are those intellectuals involved?They we're far more trained to see the complications of situations..and if so this is the case?why are some of 'em getting all dirtied and laundered up their way into it?I just dont know what's happening to our politics nowadays...It is becoming more freaky and cluttered with persons unfit to be there in the first place. But how are we to know?it seems that people are becoming more greedy about money and power and everything that it could give..they have forgotten what's the consequence and then still what strucks me is that they can even have the nerve to turn something upsidedown and evade the truth no matter what and no matter how...If people are gonna be like this and even if we consider changign the leader of the regiment..would it still matter now?there seems to be so little time for the next leader to lead.and without such great time, how can that possible next leader change what has been disintegrated by the would be previous leader?The next leader, no matter how good and how honest and persevering that would be...the point is that person wouldn't have enough time to fix things and then by the time the next election came...that person would be the next to be grilled on the hot seat,for not accomplishing those that the people are expecting to accomplish...in so little time and in an unfair judgement to the person leading our whole Filipino flock.I don't think that those overpowering persons and those supper intellectual persons understand what could a simple layman solve easily by just using enough humanity respect and humility in accepting what has to be changed or what has to be given up without so much ado..without so much hype and fussing about...i just can't understand these powerful and rich people, why they seem to be greedier than all those who have nothing at all and was expected logically to get the pang of greed on their veins all pumped up than 'em fattened and pampered luxuriously.I mean, come on...we are Filipinos and we are supposed to be one. Anyway, sometimes i wish i could have been somebody else, some other person in another race and ethnicity..who doesn't have a government and a culture as corrupted as ours..but what can i do, part of our culture that i cannot quite accept is the 'using others to get more - crab metality' to put it this way.

even me, i have a friend who uses friendship and humanity and even my concern and siblingly-affection for that person, as the key to get more than that person was entitled to.Hey who wouldn't get annoyed when after you gave that person a favor free as that person thought it should, yet that person would even get much than (that person had the right to do so)that person oughtta have...it dawned on me, isn't that greed also?one did a favor for the other and then that other one usd the person to get more than the other was supposed to rightfully have,it isn't funny - getting something which isn't actually for you if you would think and act fairly and along with your own initiative regardless of all the time, effort, fatigue and sleeplessness of the person,regardless of the time corrupted from the person by the other who only practiced intellectual masturbation...pretending that you have done something which really wasn't your accomplishment afterall... fake... moneyfaced and respectless on the word camaraderie... oh i dunno, i'm bitter and tired and hurt that is all i am i guess...enough of this rants, enough of this blabber, i've gotta go and finish few more theses..about 3 of 'em in less than a week...i'll be posting again when i'm done...

a COOL article ABOUT my FAVE author ERMA BOMBECK

Before we had Oprah there was Erma.

Essay: Are we not housewives? by Sophie Butcher

Erma Bombeck is still the most relevant and hilarious voice in the wilderness of motherhood

Jan. 10, 2002 I picked up a copy of "Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession" in a thrift store the other day. The title made me laugh, as it must have made millions of other book buyers laugh many, many years ago. As a British ex-pat, I failed to recognize the name Erma Bombeck. And it was only after I began to rave about her books that I learned that poor Erma, despite her bestselling past, is now considered by many to be a relic, an out-of-date purveyor of politically incorrect advice on mothering and housekeeping. While she may have been amusing for a decade or so, Erma Bombeck, I now know, is no longer an appropriate humorist for today's mothers. She is instead a caricature of women as they should not be.
But approached with an untainted mind, Erma Bombeck's writing is honest, timeless and wickedly humorous. What woman with both a sense of humor and children could possibly reject titles like "I Lost Everything in the Postnatal Depression" and "The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank"? What mother could reject without a pang of empathy or relief Bombeck's frequent admissions of being an imperfect and slovenly mum? And for the dwindling but proud regiment of less-than-perfect mothers, she is something of a voice in the wilderness -- a patron saint, if you will.
It is true that in some ways, life has changed dramatically since Erma was bemoaning the housewife's lot. But interestingly, in many ways it has not changed at all. Recognizable in the Erma Bombeck profile of American moms is the low esteem in which a housewife's role is regarded by society; recognizable too is the low esteem in which housewives hold themselves. Unrecognizable is the way women in the '50s seemed consigned and resigned to the narrow drudgery of domestic life. Unrecognizable is the way that women of that era could not see a way out.
Today's stay-at-home moms (never "housewives") are more than likely to indicate that they choose to "work in the home" voluntarily. Sometimes this is to announce to the world that the family is prosperous enough to live off one income; sometimes it owes itself to pressure from the more reactionary factions of our society who wish to return to the perceived delights of family life in 1950s suburbia. But once they are at home -- for whatever reason -- mothers often find the scene to be not so vastly different than the one of Bombeck's description.
Sure, the role has been repackaged and reworked, but many -- dare I suggest, most? -- stay-at-home moms of the moment can relate to Erma Bombeck when she writes: "If someone was to run an ad in the New York Times which read: WANTED: Household drudge, 140 hour week, no retirement, no sick leave, no room of own, no Sundays off. Must be good with animals, kids and hamburger. Must share bath, would 42 million women still apply?"
It certainly is not hard to understand why Bombeck once soared to popularity. In her heyday, most women were housewives straining to emulate June Cleaver only to find themselves empty and exhausted. Sadly, many women are still attempting the same feat, but because they have theoretically chosen this calling, they are prohibited to complain.
Erma Bombeck was utterly honest about the highs and lows of family life: Not for her the smug lecturing about a mother's crucial role in child development or the cheerful updates on new heights in household cleanliness. Not for her the relentless accounts of jolly banter between herself and the exhausted, but deserving paterfamilias. Nor is there evidence in her writing of cute and insightful words from the mouths of (her) babes. She does not mention -- once, that I'm aware of -- the requisite rules of quality time.
The Bombeck family was real to readers: The children goofed off at school; Erma could never find Scotch tape; she hated housework and was a disaster in the kitchen. You could believe that her children, like mine, would casually walk up to her, wipe their nose on her skirt and walk on without batting an eyelid -- and that this was the basis of legitimate grumbling.
Erma Bombeck also courageously explored the competition between mothers -- a tradition very much in evidence, beneath tolerant smiles and muttering, today. She had the guts to publicly regret moving to a "bad neighborhood" where "thin, talented, organized mothers who are also athletic" prowl the suburban streets and aim to make all mothers in their path feel inferior.
Those mothers still exist; we meet them on a daily basis. They still irritate the hell out of us. We still feel occasionally substandard when we use muffin mix or go a couple of weeks without a linen change. But in the old days, Erma was there to make slipshod mothers feel better: At one point she insists that a child would rather play poker with his mother than have her serve on every committee and provide homemade nutritious snacks in a perfectly coordinated, spotless home.
At bottom, Erma Bombeck, who died in 1996 after a kidney transplant, has a lot more to offer than a mere chronicle of housewifery before "women's liberation." Her books are a wake-up call. They remind us that our lives as housewives are not much different today -- despite the fact that we have supposedly "come a long way, baby."
Many feminists derided and dismissed Erma for being too traditional and unenlightened. Those detractors who later had their first children in their 30s and 40s are probably finding themselves just as overwhelmed, frustrated and undervalued as mothers were before feminism -- the only difference is that they have forbidden themselves to have a sense of humor about it. Do they now have a more evolved spin on the world of motherhood than Erma Bombeck? Not really, unless you count the fact that these days we must also feel guilty for being mothers if we do not mother in a contemporary fashion. And if we fall short, we will be criticized first and fiercely by our peers.
The effort of raising a family and the antics involved in the struggle between parents and children will always provide material for hilarious (often slapstick) comedic farce -- in the right hands. Bombeck was a master, a writer who spun the details of our difficult and largely invisible toil into high comedy. She exposed the rigors of motherhood and in the process made mothers proud. Her talent was in creating a world in which (normal) mums could breathe a hefty sigh of relief, thankful that they could be their imperfect selves. More importantly, Erma Bombeck may have humbled those who tried to disrespect those in the "second oldest profession."
It is hard not to feel a kinship with Bombeck and to wave her books under the raised noses of perfect mothers who desperately need the naughty pleasure of honesty and humor. Erma is from the generation who couldn't believe how nightmarish their teenagers were. We are those recovering nightmarish teenagers who now can't believe we are parents. We also can't believe how hard it is, how unsung, messy, imperfect and glorious it is to be mothers -- or how nightmarish our teenagers are. We need Erma like our foremothers needed Erma: now more than ever.
Let us pray that our own children, once blessed with children of their own, do not need Erma quite like we need Erma, but will honor her -- and us -- nonetheless.

About the writerSophie Butcher is a writer, acupuncturist and mother of three in Ojai, Ca.

I CAN DEFINITELY RELATE TO WHAT SHE WANTED US TO KNOW...2 THUMBS UP!! - PEACHES1215

Erma Bombeck and her List of Books

Erma Louise (Harris) Bombeck (February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996), born Erma Fiste, was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for a newspaper column that depicted suburban home life in the second half of the 20th century.

Life and career

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Bombeck graduated from the University of Dayton in 1949 with a degree in English. She started her career in 1949 as a reporter for the Dayton Journal Herald, but after marrying school administrator Bill Bombeck, a college friend, she left the job and raised three children.As the children grew she started writing At Wit's End, telling self-deprecating tales about the life of a housewife. It debuted in the Kettering-Oakwood Times in 1964. She was paid $3 per column.Growing popularity led At Wit's End to be nationally syndicated in 1965, and eventually it ran three times a week in more than 700 newspapers. The column was collected in many best-selling books, and her fame was such that a television sitcom was based on her. The series, Maggie, ran for eight shows in 1982 before being cancelled.In 1971, the Bombecks moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona.Bombeck had autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, a common genetic disorder shared by playwright Neil Simon and by fashion commentator Steven Cojocaru. In 1996 worsening health forced her to have a kidney transplant, and she died of complications that year. She is interred in the Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio.

Books

• The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank - i have it already
• At Wit's End - i have it already
• If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?- i have it already
• I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression - i have it already
• Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession - i have it already

Books that I need to have:

• When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home
• Just Wait Until You Have Children of Your Own (written with Bil Keane) - i already read this
• Family - The Ties that Bind... and Gag!
• Aunt Erma's Cope Book
• A Marriage Made in Heaven or Too Tired for an Affair
• Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist
• I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer
• All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann's Dressing Room

Erma Bombeck's Witty Quotes

Quotes from Erma Bombeck



Spend at least one Mother's Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him.
My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity.
There's a territorial ritual to an aerobics class. I entered a class for the first time a few years ago and ended up where no one wanted to be...in the front row next to the mirror. It was three years before I could work my way to the back row.
How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
I have never gone to the bathroom in my life that a small voice on the other side of the door hasn't whined, "Are you saving the bananas for anything?"
Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-rearing, they are unemployed.
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer SAYS you're out of it.
Why is it when you want a nice souvenir, you find a great shell in a gift shop, but some yo-yo has affixed a ten-cent thermometer to it?
Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the Tv set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn't teasing the dog and who had to wear girls boots the last time it snowed.
Who, in their infinite wisdom, decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.
No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies and the sand out of our belongings.
Mother's words of wisdom: "Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!"
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.
Most children's first words are "Mama" or "Daddy." Mine were, "Do I have to use my own money?"
Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.
I remember buying a set of black plastic dishes once, after I saw an ad on television where they actually put a blowtorch to them and they emerged unscathed. Exactly one week after I bought them, one of the kids brought a dinner plate to me with a large crack in it. When I asked what happened to it, he said it hit a tree. I don't want to talk about it.
My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch on fire or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one cares. Why should you?
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on."
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?"
I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.
The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you a re served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, "Could I get you your check?" and we answered, "How about the menu first?"
Mothers have to remember what food each child likes or dislikes, which one is allergic to penicillin and hamster fur, who gets carsick and who isn't kidding when he stands outside the bathroom door and tells you what's going to happen if he doesn't get in right away. It's tough. If they all have the same hair color they tend to run together.
When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there's a wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they're not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They're upset because they've gone from supervisor of a child's life to a spectator. It's like being the vice president of the United States.


Christmas Shopping: Wouldn't it be wonderful to find one gift that you didn't have to dust, that had to be used right away, that was practical, fit everyone, was personal and would be remembered for a long time? I penciled in "Gift certificate for a flu shot."



"Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids."
"My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first one being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint."
"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."
"If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead."
"The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear heavy breathing again."
"Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage."
"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'"
"In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV."
"When humor goes, there goes civilization."
"Seize the moment. Think of all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart."

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with the outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
A friend doesn't go on a diet because you're fat.
A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend; and he's a priest.
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.
Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Big deal! I'm used to dust.
Erma Bombeck's requested epitaph
Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.
God created man, but I could do better.
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.
I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair.
If a man watches three football games in a row he should be declared legally dead.
If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.
I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.
It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.
It's nothing short of a miracle that for years women have worked together side by side in the kitchens of America. I would have been willing to bet in an atmosphere of blunt instruments and sharp cutlery, not one of them would have been left alive.
I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.
In two decades I've lost 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?
Never accept a drink from a urologist.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
No self respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna.
One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.
Sexually active coat hangers are at their peak when they are in a small closet. We once lived in an apartment with a closet so small it couldn't support a rod… just two nails. Within a week (the shortest gestation in the history of coat hangers) we had thirty-seven of those little suckers.
Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.
What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and says he's doing nothing, but the dog is barking, call 911.
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me".
When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.
When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
Youngsters of the age of two or three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.

Erma Bombeck Biography

Early Childhood
Erma Louise Fiste was born on February 21,1927. With her parents and half-sister Thelma, Erma lived on Hedges Street in a Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood filled with hardworking, lower middle class families. Her dad, a crane operator for the city of Dayton, couldn't offer the family many extras, but Erma never remembered feeling poor. There was always food on the table, serviceable clothing, and enough money squeezed out each month to pay for tap dancing lessons.

Even when they weren't dancing, Erma and Thelma were a team. Erma idolized her sister, who was seven years older. On weekends when Thelma visited her natural mother, Erma would sit, chin in hands, on the front steps of the house for hours, peering up and down the street, eagerly awaiting her big sister's return.
At the age of five, Erma ached to attend school. With Thelma away all day, Erma was bored. Although children generally did not begin first grade until they were six, Erma's eagerness along with her mother's certainty that she was ready, convinced the principal to admit her. She couldn't yet read, but Erma had already fallen in love with books. She raced around the house, collecting all the volumes she could find and toted them off to school.
Erma was an eager student and, at least until difficulties surfaced in college, an excellent one. Reading opened up life to her and helped her cope with the world of adults in which she found herself. When the school day ended, she would rush home, grab a book and scramble to her special spot under the eaves where it was cool. She would read out loud taking all the parts as though she were in a play. At Christmas, while her friends begged for dolls and bikes, she pleaded for books.
Erma wanted to make up stories and write for the school newspaper. English became the only subject she cared about. Every other period in the school day became just another hour to get through. She longed to travel and experience life beyond Dayton. And even at the age of 10, she wanted to write about it.

Growing Up
At school, Erma played the bookworm. Class clown? Definitely not. But if anyone had cared to search beneath the surface, they would have discovered a child fascinated by humor. Erma practically inhaled the works of popular humorists including Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and H. Allen Smith. So it's not surprising that when given the opportunity to write for the school newspaper, she produced a humor column.
View Exhibits
The staff of Emerson Junior High allowed the newspaper, The Owl, to carry Erma's work even though it was biting and sometimes even cruel. With those first columns, Erma discovered the power of words. Praise from teachers and students fueled her desire to poke fun at the world.
When she moved on to Patterson Vocational High School, Erma crammed school, social and academic news into her own column. It was basically serious stuff, but she always managed to fit in at least one amusing tidbit like this: "In sociology class, it is discovered that there is no teacher worse than your fellow students. The sisters [teaching nuns] have given over the class to the students...Results: If you have a blank look on your face, you're a dead ringer to be called upon."
One day when she was fifteen, Erma walked into the office of the managing editor of the Dayton Herald, the city's afternoon newspaper and said, "I want to work for your paper." The editor explained that only a full-time position was available.
"That's okay, I can work two weeks and get you another girl to work the two weeks I'm in school. While she's in school, I'll work. That's how our school operates. It'll be just like having a full-time person," Erma ended triumphantly. She was hired.
She proudly wore the title "copygirl," but Erma wrote for the newspaper only once during high school. Shirley Temple came to Dayton for the premiere of her latest movie, Since You Went Away. Erma interviewed her as one sixteen-year-old to another and the story was published on the feature page. Erma received the newspaper staff award for feature of the week -- $10 and a spot on the bulletin board. That day, she assured herself, marked the beginning of a great career.
Bill Bombeck worked for the city's morning paper, the Dayton Journal. When copygirl met copyboy, sparks flew, at least for Erma. Erma thought he was gorgeous. She didn't care if he couldn't put two words together and come up with a sentence. She eyed him for two or three years before they got together. Then, after only a couple of dates, he left for the Army and Korea.

The College Years
Graduating from high school in 1944 and determined to build a college fund, Erma assumed two full-time jobs. After three years as a copygirl, the Dayton Journal-Herald (the two papers had merged) hired her as a full-time writer. The job relieved her of the menial labor she had been performing, but there was little opportunity to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. She spent most of the stint writing obituaries.
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After a year of working night and day, her savings account held enough to launch her college career. Although she could have stayed in Dayton, she chose instead to begin experiencing life on her own at Ohio University in Athens, 137 miles from home.
Although Erma had more real-world working experience than most people her age, the first semester of college proved a disaster. In high school, her writing had been praised. She had been told she could write, yet she barely passed first semester freshman composition at the university. Hoping to work for the school newspaper, which enjoyed an excellent reputation, she submitted several articles that were all rejected.
Erma wondered, "If I can't write, what am I going to do with my life?" She felt defeated. For the first time in her life, her naturally sunny nature took a vacation. For most students, college marks the best years of their lives. For Erma, it meant little but struggle.
Fueled by an intense desire to prove herself, Erma enrolled at the University of Dayton, a private, medium-sized four-year Catholic college. She continued to struggle financially, but found a writing outlet when she tackled a job with Rike's department store, where she joked about clearance sales, the lunch menu and even shoplifting in their employee newsletter.
During her sophomore year at Dayton, Erma finally found someone who believed in her talent and restored some of her shattered self-confidence. Brother Tom Price had read some articles she had produced for the school newspaper and asked her to write for the university's magazine, The Exponent. At night, when she returned from work, she'd sit at the typewriter and crank out the copy. Psychology and philosophy courses expanded her understanding of the people she observed and gave her writing more depth and sensitivity.
One day, after reading one of her articles, Brother Tom Price turned to Erma and said the three words that would sustain her for the rest of her career. "You can write," he said, "you can write."
Erma graduated from the University of Dayton in 1949.

A Typical Fifties Housewife
More educated now than any previous member of her family had ever been, Erma willingly abandoned academic life and dove back into the newspaper business. The Dayton Journal-Herald welcomed her home. She was assigned to the women's section.
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Women's departments were a bit of a joke and no one was more aware of it than the women themselves. While there were a few women on the city side, for the most part, female reporters' stories rarely made the front page. The unfair treatment frustrated Erma, but she rarely complained.
She hoped some day to be promoted to the city side, but there was no rush. If she gave her best to every assignment, no matter how dull or silly she found the subject, she assumed that eventually she'd earn a move across the hall.
While her work turned out to have some negatives, her love life had taken a decided turn for the better. After Bill Bombeck left for Korea during the final stages of World War II, the two corresponded. Erma's letters impressed Bill. When he returned to Dayton, they began dating seriously. Erma and Bill, both age twenty-two, were married at the Church of the Resurrection on an overcast morning in August.
Erma returned to writing humor in 1952. At first her columns, which ran under the title "Operation Dustrag," offered household hints and new product evaluations. Then newlywed Erma discovered housework. Household absurdities quickly found their way into the column.
The newspapers' editors viewed her work skeptically. No one was certain that purposefully amusing writing belonged in the paper. Besides, in those days, no one attacked homemaking in the newspaper or anywhere else. A clean home and cleaner children gave a woman status.
At the same time, World War II had created a profound change for American women. With their men at war, millions of women flooded the workplace -- 75 percent of them were married and one-third had children under the age of 14. Erma's first columns struck a nerve with these women.
For two years, Erma and Bill tried to have a baby. Their doctor confirmed that chances of Erma's conceiving were small and they decided to adopt. After filling out boxes full of forms, they waited. Finally, Erma received a call from a Catholic Services social worker. She was about to become a mother. When Betsy came into her life, Erma said goodbye to her career and the people she had grown up with at the newspaper without the slightest doubt that she was doing the right thing.
The demands of motherhood amazed Erma. Exhaustion stalked her constantly. There weren't enough hours in the day. She never had time for herself and sagged under a kind of loneliness she had never known. Since no one discussed these feelings in public, Erma thought something was wrong with her, that she was the only woman in the world experiencing them. She thought she should be able to handle her life, but she wasn't doing a very good job and no one seemed to understand.
Her solution was to bury herself in typical fifties housewifely pursuits. She crocheted Santa Claus doorknob covers, stuck contact paper on everything that didn't move and decorated Bill's dinners with miniature roses sculpted from zucchini. It didn't help.

Birth of A Career
For a year after Betsy was born, Erma played doting mother and science teacher's wife. She had no plans to return to newspaper work but when she was offered the opportunity to edit the Dayton Shopping News, she grabbed the chance. The little paper contained mostly ads, but once again, Erma vented her timely wit in a personal column. Motherhood filled one void, she realized, her writing another.
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Although the doctor had claimed Erma would never conceive a child, she twice proved him wrong. In 1955, Andrew was born, followed by Matthew three years later.
In 1955, the Bombecks moved to Centerville, the city where Bill taught, and settled on a street bustling with growing families. Phil Donahue, his wife and five children lived across the street. For the first time, she met other women who were as frustrated as she was and who admitted it.
One day in 1964, Erma walked into the office of Ron Ginger, the editor of the local paper, the Kettering-Oakwood Times. "I'd like to do a column for you," she said. Simple honesty won the day. The editor fell for her charming intro and offered three dollars a week, and with a handshake -- although neither she nor Ron Ginger realized it at the time -- Erma Bombeck took a giant step on the road to fame and fortune.
From the beginning, professionalism marked Erma's work. She instinctively knew what good column writing entailed. Hook 'em with the lead. Hold 'em with laughter. Exit with a quip they won't forget. She turned out her columns in a cramped bedroom, the typewriter balanced on a plank suspended between a couple of cinder blocks.
Erma's column had run for some time in the Kettering-Oakwood Times when Glenn Thompson, the Dayton Journal-Herald editor, spotted her work. Thompson offered to up her pay and her workload -- $50 a week for two columns to run under her byline, if she would return to her old stomping ground. Erma could not imagine anything she wanted to do more.
Thompson sent a few of her columns to the Newsday Newspaper Syndicate and suggested they might be interested in syndicating Erma nationally. They were. Three weeks after her first column appeared in the Dayton Journal-Herald, Erma signed a short-term contract with Newsday. Thirty-eight papers were buying her 400-500 word columns by the end of the first year. Five years later "At Wit's End" was a staple in 500.
In 1988, Erma moved her column to Universal Press Syndicate. Over the years, she was with a number of others. "It's like deciding where to shop," Erma said. "A lot of stores offer the same merchandise, but some display the items better or will take returns without a receipt. Syndicates vary in the number of features they take on; the number of new features launched each year; the size and quality of their sales staff and the degree of aggressiveness with which they merchandise their contributors." Universal Press Syndicate distributed Erma's column at the time of her death.
As more newspapers signed her on, though, Erma was asked to lecture in the new cities. The thousands of women (and a surprising number of men) who turned out to hear her speak, applauding her every poke at their lives, thrilled and overwhelmed her. Their laughter rolled in great waves through the auditorium and confirmed that at long last they had found someone who understood them.
At first, Erma delighted in the trips, in meeting her fans who affirmed her life and work. Later, she grew tired of the endless series of hotel rooms and of being away from her family. She eventually left the speakers' circuit. But in 1966, it was new and exciting and she enjoyed every minute.

Erma's Fame Grows
As the number of newspapers that carried Erma's column grew, new opportunities opened up for her. Doubleday suggested publishing a compilation of a number of her columns. Erma, like most first-time authors, assumed the book's publication meant riches and fame. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.
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"Success," said Erma firmly, "is outliving your failures." She planned to do just that. In fact, the book, released in 1967, sold moderately well, about as expected for a first-time author just beginning to gain recognition through her tri-weekly humorous commentaries.
As Doubleday sales representative Aaron Priest toured the stores in his territory, he began to hear the same story from bookstore owners. He'd ask them how the company's "big book" (the most "important" or highly prized author's new release) was doing, and they would demand more copies of At Wit's End. Priest contacted the publishing company in New York and urged them to push the book. They ignored his advice. The company evidently didn't share Priest's excitement or belief in Erma.
Aaron Priest remained with Doubleday as Erma published two more books. One day she received a card from him. He had left Doubleday. He mentioned that if she ever had an idea for a book and needed an agent or someone to bounce her thoughts off, just give him a call. Maybe she'd like him to act as her agent.
For her first three books, Erma handled the details herself, but when she came up with the idea for the fourth, she tapped Aaron Priest. The idea Erma shared with Aaron in a phone call revolved around paralleling the settlement of the suburbs with the settlement of the American West. He asked her to send him an outline or a few pages of the book. He called her two weeks later and said, "My God, Erma, this has got to be worth six figures." She snapped back, "Don't tell my husband!" Two weeks after receiving the outline, Aaron Priest sold The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank to McGraw-Hill.
Erma found a comfortable if sometimes frantic pattern evolving as she continued to turn out newspaper columns and books. In 1969, she was asked to provide a monthly column -- "Up the Wall" -- for Good Housekeeping magazine, a service she continued for six years. Periodically she wrote for other magazines, including Reader's Digest, Family Circle, Redbook, McCall's and even Teen. In 1971, her second book. Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own, coauthored by Bil Keane, originator of the popular "Family Circus" cartoons, hit the bookstores.
Erma traveled around the country from her Ohio home base until one day she gave a speech in Phoenix. The midwestern native fell hard for the desert -- the stunning sunsets, the craggy mountains and the oddly twisted cactus dotting the landscape. Besides, the audience that night fell in love with her. That sealed it. Not long afterwards, the Bombeck family moved to Arizona.
I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression, Erma's next book, released in 1974, helped endear the writer to thousands of new mothers across the country. The book took a hard look at the thankless tasks of new motherhood, the same ones Erma had cried over some years before. She hoped with this book to ease the burden of new moms by helping them to spot the humor in their situations.
While Erma loved writing and enjoyed her growing popularity with readers, each new book, article, or trip to some faraway city to speak made her feel more isolated. Success was forcing her to abandon a normal life. Finally, she took a hard look and decided something had to go. The something was lecturing, which, although it enabled her to interact with her fans, demanded a heavy price. The balancing act between the two top priorities in her life -- work and family -- had begun to tilt too far to the former.

Political Involvement
In 1978, Erma was appointed to the President's National Advisory Committee for Women. The committee had originally been launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who sought input from women representing every aspect of American political, ethnic and religious life. He asked this group to act as his eyes and ears in the country, relaying to him women's thoughts and ideas as they might impact American life.
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Although Erma appreciated being asked to join the commission, she never considered herself a political activist. In fact, she'd never been particularly interested in politics. But one issue forced her into the political arena. It was the Equal Rights Amendment.
In 1972, Congress approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women. According to the Constitution, amendments, once approved by Congress, must be ratified by three-fourths of the states within seven years before becoming law. Within a year of its Senate approval, the ERA was ratified by thirty states. Polls showed that Americans favored the amendment by a large majority, but after the first burst of enthusiastic support, the ERA suddenly became the most divisive issue of the time.
It surprised a lot of people when Erma Bombeck, voice of the American housewife, came out in support of the ERA. But Erma saw no conflict. Discrimination of any kind had always angered her.
Her staunch support of the amendment did not, however, include its feminist leaders, whom she felt were on the wrong track. She sensed they were waging a war using housewives as the battleground. Erma believed in true equality, that no matter how you spend your life, you deserve recognition and acceptance and that the contribution you make to society by caring for your family should be considered equal to that made by anyone working at a job with regulated hours and pay.
Erma began an odyssey across the country under the auspices of ERA America, an organization whose only goal was to get the ERA passed. She traveled to almost every state where the battle for the ERA raged, but her political views never crept into her writing. By this time she had published six books of humor. In 1978, the paperback rights to If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? had sold for $1 million. Aunt Erma's Cope Book had received a near-record advance printing of 700,000 hardcover copies. Her column had spread to 900 newspapers and millions of people recognized her face.
Erma's fans were not disappointed in her. In fact, they rallied behind her and she took credit for changing some opinions. Women called her a "voice of sanity." When they heard that Erma was behind the amendment, they asked why. Once they understood, many joined her.
When asked by a reporter why she poured so much time and effort into the ERA, Erma replied, "I'm doing it for my kids. It will be important to them. It's also a great feeling to be a part of history. I wish that they could put this on my tombstone: She got Missouri for the ERA." Unfortunately, despite an extension of three years, time ran out and the ERA failed. It was one of the biggest disappointments of Erma Bombeck's life.

Good Morning America
Soon after The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank hit the best-seller lists, Erma received a call from producer Bob Shanks, who was putting together a new television show for ABC. NBC's Today Show had been sounding the public's wake-up call since 1952, but according to critics of the time, it had grown predictable and dull. Yet with no programming to challenge it, Today continued to pull a sizable audience.
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Bob Shanks took up the challenge. With Good Morning America, he hoped to create a program that informed and entertained at the same time, one that provided women with advice and ideas on how to run their homes.
Before talking to Erma, Shanks had already assembled a large and impressive cast, including David Hartman (who had starred in a TV western called The Virginian), Nancy Dussault (a television actress). Jack Anderson (a syndicated political newspaper columnist), Rona Barrett (her beat was Hollywood), Jonathan Winters (a roly-poly comedian), and Geraldo Rivera. Erma's response? "I can't imagine all those people in the same country let alone on the same show. I think you're out of your mind."
While Shanks seemed to agree with Erma's assessment regarding his state of mind, he was convinced that the concept would work, and he wanted her to be a part of it. He asked her to do two- or three-minute humorous "bits" and promised that her portions of the program would be filmed in Phoenix. She said, "Yes." Erma's decision proved a good one. Good Morning America hit the air in 1975 with easygoing David Hartman heading up the odd mix of characters Bob Shanks had harnessed.
Erma's stint on Good Morning America lasted eleven years. What began as two or three minutes of her zany twist on life evolved into longer interviews with celebrities, including Zsa Zsa Gabor (whom she interviewed in Zsa Zsa's king-size bed) and comedienne Phyllis Diller.
But regardless of how famous or important her interviewee, Erma never played the interrogator. Talking with her was like chatting with a friend. She employed a down-home, relaxed style.
Erma thrived with the supportive crew and loosely styled Good Morning America interviews. But eventually she grew tired of the travel, which carved ten days from each month. She decided to quit. It was hard to give up the show because she prized the job and adored the people she worked with. But she was exhausted. For more than a decade, in addition to two Good Morning America pieces a week, she had continued her column, "At Wit's End," written more books, produced a television show and, with Bill, managed to raise her children.

A Movie and a Sitcom
With the success of Erma's spots on Good Morning America, all kinds of offers poured in. One was to adapt The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank for a television movie, which, if successful, might lead to a permanent sitcom slot. On October 25, 1978, the TV movie starring Carol Burnett and Charles Grodin aired on CBS. Critics hated it.
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A year later, ABC, not in the least deterred by Grass's dismal showing, gave Erma a licensing fee to develop a situation comedy. She thought up a concept and pitched it to Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner (who produced a number of television hits including The Cosby Show). They liked it. Erma had never written a script and knew nothing about creating a television series, but she agreed to do some of the writing.
Erma drew the television family from her own life. The show looked at an ordinary, though slightly manic family from -- guess where? -- Dayton, Ohio. Erma fought to make the mother of the family, Maggie, believable. She didn't want Maggie outfitted in the latest fashion, sporting a hairstyle that only the Queen of England could afford. Maggie and her family (including a son who was never seen since he'd entered the bathroom when he hit puberty), as Erma envisioned them, were down-to-earth, no-frills types who struggled with everyday problems and often lost.
Everyone who needed to loved the pilot for Maggie, and the team received the go-ahead to produce a number of episodes. Erma was promoted to executive producer, something she knew even less about than writing television scripts.
Erma rented an apartment in Los Angeles. Awakening at 5 a.m., she'd dash off a column before climbing into a rented Toyota, race to Studio City by 9 a.m., work on scripts, oversee run-throughs, dress rehearsals, and editing until 9 p.m., fall into bed, wake up, and do it all again. On Friday nights, she would turn in the car at the Burbank airport and fly home to Bill and the kids, then boomerang back to L.A. again. She followed this routine for four months.
The network ordered 13 episodes. She hired writers but wrote five of the first eight scripts herself. The show, starring Miriam Flynn in the title role, hung on for eight weeks before it was canceled. Much to Erma's amazement, although the show died, the studio directors had no complaints. They asked her to develop another series. Erma turned them down flat. There was no way she could have kept up the crazy schedule any longer.
For Erma, the experience was far from a total loss. She'd made new friends and enjoyed working with the people who had developed the project and brought it to life. Like most of the other bumps in the road of Erma's life, the demise of Maggie proved a sad but not personally devastating experience. When it was over, she turned in her rental car and headed happily back to the desert for good.

I Want to Go to Boise
Erma had branched out from writing by producing a television series, stumping for the ERA and even recording a comedy album (The Family That Plays Together... Gets on Each Other's Nerves). But never had she leaned further out on a limb than when she wrote I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise. The book addressed a topic that was anything but funny -- children with cancer. Erma seemed an unlikely candidate to write a book on such a serious topic. People wondered how she would handle the subject.
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At first, Erma couldn't imagine writing anything humorous about cancer. Then Ann Wheat, assistant director of Arizona Childhood Cancer Services and director of Camp Sunrise (a camp for children with cancer) in northern Arizona, convinced Erma to visit Camp Sunrise, meet the children and then decide.
Erma heard laughter. She talked to some campers and discovered they were normal kids entirely free of self-pity. While battling the disease with fierce determination, they accepted the situation with a maturity that most adults found astonishing. They viewed cancer as an unwelcome visitor in their lives. It wasn't who they were. What cut deeper than the physical pain was the way healthy people treated them -- as though, once touched by cancer, they were transformed, too fragile for fun.
For almost three years, Erma walked and talked and lived the life of families with cancer. She learned that with or without a serious illness, kids love to have fun. They want to be treated the same as everyone else, and they thrive on pranks, silliness and practical jokes. A healthy child might thread rolls of toilet paper through the trees on her best friend's property. A child with cancer will twist the foot on his artificial leg so it faces the guy sitting behind him on the ski lift.
Time and again Erma saw that kids with cancer need to laugh. "If it hadn't been for my sense of humor," she heard over and over, "I wouldn't have survived this." She had to live their pain before she could understand their laughter.
It turned out that I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise (the title was suggested by a boy's three wishes) was not so different from books Erma had written before. Parts of it tickled the funny bone and parts made readers cry.
While not a mega hit, the book made a great deal of money. Erma assigned all American profits from the book to the American Cancer Society. Profits from foreign editions went to Eleanor Roosevelt International Cancer Research Fellowships, which brought foreign cancer specialists to America to study cancer patients and treatments.

Remembering Erma
The following article appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the University of Dayton Quarterly.
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The University joined the nation in mourning the death of Erma Fiste Bombeck '49, its most famous graduate and the country's top chronicler of family life.
Bombeck, 69, died April 22 at a hospital in San Francisco after earlier undergoing a kidney transplant. For three decades she chronicled life's absurdities in a syndicated column carried by hundreds of newspapers. "She was twice as funny in conversation as in her columns and books," said Brother Raymond L. Fitz, S.M., president and a personal friend since the early 1980s. "Her humor always made us, in some sense, realize the frailty of our human life. At the same time, she could raise criticisms of institutions (in society). She had a good sense of social justice and the role of women in society."
In a 1991 interview with the University of Dayton Quarterly, Bombeck spoke of the encouragement Brother Tom Price, S.M., gave her. Price was the faculty adviser to The Exponent, the college literary magazine. "He said to me, 'Why don't you contribute some humor to this?' That was like a breath of fresh air," she recalled. "No one wanted to write humor at that time...It was tricky for one thing. To make fun of someone or something takes a pretty thick skin. I started to write humor for The Exponent, and one day he said to me three magic words: 'You can write.' It's all I needed as an impetus to keep going, and it sustained me for a long time. "Here's a man who reads Jane Eyre, who knows all these things. This man knows what he's talking about. I believed him. You need someone whom you respect to tell you something like that."
As a UD student, she converted to Catholicism. She gave back to UD in numerous ways, through both time and financial contributions. She served on the board of trustees from 1984 to 1987; co-chaired with her husband the National Alumni Challenge Campaign during the University's capital campaign in the 1980s; spoke at events on campus, including a writers workshop; and participated in advertising and direct-mail campaigns to help broaden the University's image and recruit students. In 1981, she received an honorary doctoral degree from UD. She was named an honorary trustee in 1988.
Friends at UD remember her as a witty, funny person who was serious about her studies. "Everybody knew everybody on campus, but Erma didn't run around much with the crowd because she was more serious about school. It's unusual to think about her being serious, but she was serious about school," recalled Ellie Kurtz '47, former director of the Kennedy Union. "She came back to campus in 1982 to speak at our writers workshop. We had a dinner with her after her talk, and she was a laugh a minute. The students just loved it."
Edwin (Sandy) King '49, professor emeritus, jokingly said that a sarcastic barb from Bombeck helped him rethink his career. "We had classes together and were on the newspaper together," he said. "I used to kid her about the fact that she changed my journalistic career into being a teacher. I wrote a column on veterans' affairs that was so boring, she thought it was a riot. 'Sandy, you are really a great writer,' she said."
Bette Rogge Morse '44, an adjunct communication professor and former local television personality, called Bombeck "the greatest humorist of our time." She remembered Bombeck's delight when she sent her a box of Esther Price chocolates, a reminder of her days as a Dayton housewife in the 1960s when she began writing a humor column about life in the suburbs. Bombeck told her, "I savored every bite and ate the whole box." Bombeck's death "is such a shock, I can't believe it," Morse said. "She'll be missed. She was a dear, dear person."
--Teri Rizvi

A Prayer for Erma
A prayer for Erma. A prayer for us.
The following prayer was read by Brother Raymond L. Fitz, S.M., University of Dayton president, at the funeral of Erma Bombeck '49.
Our response to these intercessions is Lord, hear our prayer.
For Erma who in baptism was given the pledge of eternal life, that she now be admitted to the company of the servants, we pray to the Lord.
For Erma who ate the body of Christ, the bread of life, that she may be raised up on the last day, we pray to the Lord.
For Erma's family. Bill, Betsy, Matt, Andy and Erma 's mother, and all us who are Erma 's friends, may we be consoled in our grief by the Lord who wept at the death of his friend Lazarus, we pray to the Lord.
Erma deeply loved her faith and her Church, and she had a wonderful gift of bringing together all God's people. May we continue to bring the gift of acceptance, reconciliation and love to one another, we pray to the Lord.
Erma taught us to understand the pain of a child -- the abused or those suffering the pain of serious illness. May we grow in our appreciation of the gift of children and pledge to build families and communities that care for children, we pray to the Lord.
Erma taught us to appreciate the vocation of motherhood, to appreciate our own mothers and to be better mothers. May the Lord strengthen mothers with love and good humor as they have their vocation, we pray to the Lord.
Erma helped us to understand the plight of women in our society and she gave her energy to change this situation. May God bless all who work for justice -- give them strength and courage, and Erma's humor, we pray to the Lord.
Erma's love and acceptance gave her insight on all of life's situations -- the profound and simple - affairs of the heart and the dressing room at Loehmann's. May all of us, especially those who suffer, find comfort in the medicine of laughter, we pray to the Lord.
Let us now take a moment of silence to lift up our own prayer from within our heart. We pray to the Lord.