This probably will date me, but Leonard Diecidue’s advice in the letter “Try trickle-up economy,” (BDN, Dec. 4), which is right but sounds wrong, used to be more naturally catchy. I remember when the late Hubert Humphrey contrasted Richard Nixon’s version of “Trickle Down” with his own “Perk Up” prescription in ’68. That made sense.

But in those days, most stoves in America held a percolator for making coffee, where the water went in the bottom half and boiled up to reach the grounds. It still does of course, but once Mr. Coffee came along, the “physics” went dark and with it, it seems, much of the hands-on know-how that constitutes common sense. Could it be that that’s what’s wrong with our world: too many nested “Black Boxes”?

Michael A. Roberts

Steuben