Old folks get to ride, too
On Wheeling Island in West Virginia there was a rooming house
we spotted a few years ago on a walk across the ancient suspension bridge
spanning the Ohio River.
From the looks of the house's exterior, the elderly hosteled there
were treated to cleanliness, mirth and merriment.
The residents probably got to ride plenty of
fully -connected merry go round horses in their day.
Fancy should run the full gamut in life.
It looks like Wheeling Islanders know how to put their old folks
out to pasture, in style.
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Of interest today:
1. From RSN
Christopher
Hitchens: Reason in Revolt
Hitch is dead. Not, obviously, his brilliant body of work, or the stunning examples of a grand and unfettered intellect that will forever survive him, as will the indelible record of his immense wit and passion. But, sadly, a life force that I had assumed as an indissoluble part of our political and literary landscape, as well as my own close circle of friends, has ended, and with it an indispensable element of our collective moral code.
Christopher Hitchens could be wrong; we had harsh public debates about the Iraq War, but I never doubted that, even then, he was coming from a good place of humane concern. In that instance, he allowed his great compassion for the Kurds and his justifiable loathing of Saddam Hussein to overwhelm a lifetime of opposition to the arrogant assumptions of
That was his driving force, a seeker of truth to the end, and a deservedly legendary witness against the hypocrisy of the ever-sanctimonious establishment. What zeal this man had to eviscerate the conceits of the powerful, whether their authority derived from wealth, the state or a claim to the ear of the divine.
Hitch was the opposite of the opportunistic pundits who competed with him for public space. He took immense risks, not the least in offering himself for waterboarding before concluding it was unmistakably torture, or challenging the greatness of God, knowing full well that he was exposing himself as an object of wildly irrational hate.
So it ever was with the Hitch I knew for decades, going back to the young ex-Trotskyite challenging ex-Communist and fellow Brit writer Jessica (Decca) Mitford through nights of lively debate about everything, and then joining that equally grand and kindred spirit in several drunken and rousingly heartfelt renditions of “The Internationale.” Much like Mitford, Hitchens became world famous and well rewarded and, like her, Hitch was to the end singing that worker’s anthem on behalf of the deluded and abused masses with whom, for all of his personal success, he most profoundly identified.
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He was a great man, perfect in his intellectual courage, but
I am reminded more of the writer, profoundly dedicated to his craft and
committed, for all of his sparkle and bouts of excess, to a prodigious workaday
effort at making this a better world. In his memory I offer these lyrics from
“The Internationale,” as I recall his somewhat inebriated and ever bemused, but
no less heartfelt, rendering of these verses:
Arise ye workers from your slumbersArise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
That was him. A slayer of superstitions, thundering reason in revolt.
Lift a glass to comrade Hitch.
2. From today's NYTimes:
Panning Salon
The
record $52.4 billion spree shoppers went on from Black Friday through Cyber
Monday was really just for show. Beneath the holiday spending, consumers are
grouchy. You can sense their mood just by scanning the posts at consumer-review
sites like Trip Advisor and Yelp.
“Produce59”
at Trip Advisor had this to say about a room at the Comfort Inn & Suites in
Fredericksburg , Va.
Viaggio
Ristorante and Lounge in Chicago
“The
salad was passable ... The orecchiette was ... a little less than a-ok.
Serviceable, perhaps... I enjoyed the white beans but there was no heat to the
dish ... This was bland. I added red pepper flakes to the dish in search of
some sort of seasoning. At the end of the meal, I was left feeling confused.”
Who are
these people? I’m not sure, but they are more exacting than professional
critics.
If you’re
staying at, say, the Econo Lodge in Cave
City , Ky. Kentucky
If the
consumer-review Web sites are any indication, the American consumer has become
a pain in the neck. Maybe we were spoiled in the blinged-out 1990s and early
’00s and have yet to adjust to hard times. Take “Lisa C.,” of Millbrae , Calif.
“the
barista ... looked at me confused when i said ‘grande hot apple chai’ as if he
didn’t know what it was ... then he said ‘apple juice infused into chai tea?’ i
responded, ‘yeah...’ my bf usually gets that ‘ice vanilla latte with restretto
(sp?)’ and they stared at him too ... my drink didn’t taste that well ...
something was off balance and i ended up tossing it...”
We used
to understand that convenience comes at a price. The food you get at McDonald’s
or Burger King is not meant to be a major culinary event. But now the chains,
perhaps in response to customers hopped up on Food Network shows, have gone
upscale. McDonald’s plans a $1 billion, Starbucks-like makeover of its
restaurants, and Burger King has Whopper Bar restaurants. With the new frills
come new expectations. After visiting a McDonald’s in San Diego
“The
Gelato was some of the worst I have ever had in my entire life. The
‘Watermelon’ looks like pink colored wall putty and had no discernible flavor
of fruit of any kind. No one in our group was able to stomach it. I actually
threw it away.”
She went
on to say that she was no fan of the restrooms. Not because they were dirty.
Because of their “faux marble and faux flowers.”
You can’t
help wondering whether a full-fledged depression might be the only real cure
for what ails us.
Jim Windolf is a
contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
A version
of this op-ed appeared in print on December 18, 2011, on page SR3 of the New York
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After Dec. 31, the Raccoon News will be working on its fifth year of existence. The first post was made on that date in 2007.
The random blog-diary was set up for us by then UW-Madison college student son Leland who perhaps unknowingly gave us something we've loved to do.
We are nothing if not survivors so far.
And many said it would not last.
