A General Electric (GE) television commercial from 1999 promoting terrible, awful home cooking and equally terrible and awful family congregations at dinner table-two of the things that absolutely drive me nuts.

Heaven forbid that people comprehend that time is better well spent at a restaurant than the awful ritual of congregating, socializing, and eating together at a dinner table at home.

This is exactly why I write about how congenial both my mother’s family and Jim’s family are around each other in “Early Life And Continuous Livelihood” because together, they perform the very activities that this General Electric commercial promotes; whilst totally separated, my paternal grandmother, my parents, I, Marie “Mimi”, Mary Ann and their family, Joe, Martha, Margaret, Ralph, Ann, Paul; and their 2 daughters are at home celebrating the holidays independently and also eating together at a restaurant.

This General Electric television commercial was commissioned by the marketing department of General Electric and produced by the time the company had ridded itself of its broadcasting division-such as its cornerstone stations WGY-AM, WRVE-FM, and WRGB-TV, for instance; had transferred control of its shortwave transmitters that were located on the same site in Schenectady, New York to the Federal Government on behalf of the Voice Of America per an agreement that Crosley, CBS, NBC; and General Electric each had with the Federal Government over the private Shortwave Radio stations transmitting VOA programming that these companies had owned and operated, had spun off its Radio and Television Transmitter business to Thomson Electronics in the late 1980’s; and had also spun off their consumer electronics division to French-based Thomson Electronics in the late 1980’s.