Library lectures

This one on Sunday about the Katz brothers who founded drug stores of that name in KC is another I probably won't attend* — I am throwing away the very decent free education offered me by my property taxes … which are slated to drop about $44, the county assessor's office's letter told me this week.

In the linked calendar announcement for this lecture, I object to the classification of the drug store chain as "the Wal-Mart of its day."

I don't see that much connection between someone's inventing a new way around a law (drug stores could stay open later that other stores per a WWI-era decree, so Isaac Katz added a pharm component to his tobacco store — kind-of funny, if you think about it in today's terms, which is how I'm thinking of Wal-Mart and why I think the analogy is strained at best) and the launching of a world-wide amoebic giant that swallows up competition such as family-owned drug stores by manufacturing suppliers that can undercut anyone who can't buy in super-bulk.

I "get it," but 90 years ago and today are so different.

*I'll be in another city visiting Father's Day.