Moon Dimple, my back-home pal, recently called me. When I answered, he asked, “How’s it goin,’ sexy?”
What comes to mind when hearing or reading the words “afternoon tea?” Is it crisp, white tablecloths and delicate, bone china dishes, scones and jams and pinkies sticking out just so? Is it something more casual, perhaps? Just cups of hot brew with a little cream, shared at a table to help keep your eyes open mid-day? Or maybe it’s fancier still, with tiny triangles of cucumber sandwiches and Coronation Chicken, trifles of Battenberg cakes and macaroons all set upon three tiers of perfectly assembled wonder.
In December 2017, President Trump and his republican-held Congress passed a sweeping corporate tax reform bill lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to just 21%*. This is a permanent decrease of corporate taxation that will remain in place until both houses of Congress pass a bill to increase it. They also cut income taxes on individuals in all tax brackets. This is good news in the short term, as we get to keep more of the money we earn and spend it on things we want. Taxes that were decreased on individuals, though, are scheduled to go back up, as those cuts have a “Sunset Provision” in 2026 and revert to the way they were, unless Congress acts to make them permanent.
As the movie season at the Flint Institute of Arts winds down (and it does every spring), it takes time to catch up on some of the Academy Award-nominated work that you might have missed in commercial theaters or via streaming services.
They used to be called “selected short subjects” on theater marquees. Now, unless you’re a regular watcher of those vintage comedies, variety acts and travelogues that air between full-length movies on TCM – or if you seek out those new, eight-minute-or-so cartoons shown before certain first-run animated features – there aren’t many theatrical short pictures out there. But not every movie has to run an hour and a half.
