Meanderings, 5 August 2023

Kris and I greet you out of a wondrous week in northern Michigan. We visited Saugatuck, Petoskey, and Traverse City. We made stops in Empire, Glen Haven, Glen Harbor, Leland, and Sutton’s Bay. Some walks in Sleeping Bear Dunes with Merlin revealed the presence of some birds, including American Redstarts, and Kris matched many flowers with some pictures of wildflowers we had. I bought a Hemingway book, The Nick Adams Stories, in Petoskey. He summered up here until his early twenties. We ate at one of his hangouts, and saw the chair where, so they claim, he sat to write. Here is a photo from Kris:

An age called “adorable”:

Last month a young woman I know called me “adorable,” and I knew at that moment I was old. No man wants a young woman to think of him as “adorable.”

I had been bracing myself for this for some time. A hair stylist not long ago told me that I “have nice hair.” And then, after a pause, she said, “for a man your age.” This wasn’t quite in the “adorable” range, but I knew then that I was getting close. And now here I am.

When I told my primary care physician at my annual physical last month that I was training to run a 5K for my 70^th birthday, he suddenly became concerned, as though I had just told him that I was having serious chest pains. I tried to assure him that I have run a few marathons over the years and have maintained a high level of cardio fitness throughout my life. I thought my vital signs that day revealed as much. Still, he gave me more feedback about my training plan than anything else we discussed during my visit.

Which brings me to the point of this column.

I wish Mitch McConnell would retire. I don’t know if a young woman ever thought of him as “adorable” (it’s hard to imagine), but that stage came and went for him a long time ago. Seeing him freeze at a microphone for 20 frightening seconds not long ago was a sign – to me, if to no one else – that maybe it was time for someone else to be doing his job. To be clear, I had concern for him, but that was soon followed by concern for our country. …

And what about Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the 46^th president of the United States? He is 80 years old and would be 86 at the end of a second term, if he happens to win the next election. If you have read this far, you will not be surprised to know that I wish he too would retire. We’ll thank him for his service.

Biden, in my opinion, demonstrates a fairly high level of cognitive ability at times – such as during the last State of the Union address. Not many people, even experienced public speakers, are able to do what did he that night. It’s one thing to read from a teleprompter; it’s another to respond to hecklers. But at other times Biden has clearly demonstrated that he might not be what he once was. Beyond the cognitive issues, he now regularly uses the shorter set of stairs to board Air Force One. Aides have circulated photos to show that his predecessors also used those same stairs, but the impression remains that he doesn’t exactly jog to the door of his plane.

Donald J. Trump has passed the “adorable” stage of a man’s life too. Trump is 77 now and would be 82, if he were to complete a second term. Let’s just say I worry about the combination of his age, weight, and lifelong unhealthy eating habits. I wish he too would not run. It’s time for a new generation of leadership.

My 5K is in October. It won’t be pretty, but it might be adorable.

Flies:

An invasive fly species has prompted the quarantine of an upscale Southern California neighborhood, the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

The Tau fruit fly is native to Asia and is a “serious pest for agriculture and natural resources,” according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

The flies can be typically found on a variety of fruits and vegetables along with a “select range of native plants in California,” officials said.

After the detection of more than 20 Tau flies in the Stevenson Ranch area of the Santa Clarita Valley, a quarantine was placed on residents.

The quarantine area spans about 79 square miles, bordered on the north by Castaic Junction, on the south by Oat Mountain, on the west by Del Valle, and on the east by Honby Avenue.

Stevenson Ranch is an upscale neighborhood with a median home price of $1.15 million dollars according to Redfin.

Incomprehensible! (Or is it?)

Last week I wrote about the president of Bluefield State University in West Virginia and how he publicly complained about a group of his faculty. That kind of antagonism from someone so far outside academia seems to be a trend.

If that weren’t bad enough, Monday we were treated to the opinion of former Purdue President Mitch Daniels. Prior to Purdue he’d served as governor of Indiana and Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Daniel’s point: students are entitled, only qualified in social media use, and unwilling to work before 10:30. His source material? A 2017 TicToc parody video. …

As a proud three-degreed Boilermaker, I’m embarrassed to have such a piece written by our former president. Not simply because it’s trite and filled with conservative shibboleths. Not only because it lacks anything approaching a cogent argument.

I’m upset because he’s demeaning the education of each of the more than 50,000 students who attend Purdue.

I suppose that Mitch Daniels thinks that all college students are trust-fund babies who don’t understand the value of work. In reality, most students are working regular jobs to pay for their schooling.

When they take jobs after graduation, they are adjusting to many new realities: living on their own, managing bills, building a social network, and taking on their responsibilities in their workplace.

I just came off an accreditation visit to a school that prides itself in wrap-around services to support its students. Knowing that many are first generation and/or Pell recipients, there are systems to develop key skills in students throughout their time at the university. This includes a focus on career preparation and internships to aide in current and future employability.

So what is Daniels arguing? Why is it necessary to demonize today’s students as if they are not worthy of comparison to students from prior eras? Why feed into the never ending “is college really worth it” tripe by suggesting universities are failing their students and their communities?

I wonder if Daniels is positioning himself for future political opportunities. Having been a hard-line conservative in his prior life who then became a university president, maybe its required to badmouth higher education given the low regard in which it is held by so many conservative Republicans.

Malcolm Foley on Emmett Till.

This past week, President Joe Biden signed a proclamation establishing the new Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Monument, a symbolic move that one can only hope is indicative of further action. Moments like this are often bittersweet in my mind. I am deeply thankful that the memorial exists. Yet monuments best express aspirational pursuits: often, a monument portrays through an imposing physical presence the person/people that you want to be. This monument has the potential to communicate the opposite: instead it portrays us as we are and it will hopefully keep us from forgetting that fact. This did present me with a profound opportunity though. How does a US president in 2023 refer to the history of lynching in America, especially with an eye toward what we can learn from it?

For those unaware, the White House outlined the context of Till’s murder rather well. 14 year old Emmett was brutally tortured and murdered by the husband and brother-in-law of Carolyn Bryant, a woman whose testimony ultimately killed him. Frustratingly, we don’t really know what transpired and we may never know, as Bryant died a few months ago. Emmett Till’s story is especially tragic as well as emblematic of the regime of lynching. All of the elements of the story remind the learner of the terroristic elements of racialized lynching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: the fact that the age of the accused has no effect on the brutality visited upon him, the weaponization of white womanhood, the trumping up of sexual charges in order to foment violence, the ways in which violence is necessary to enforce an unjust status quo…the themes are legion. So then in American memory, what place does this event hold?

Bringing Nero back to life (all over again).

ROME (AP) — Rome’s next luxury hotel has some very good bones: Archaeologists said Wednesday that the ruins of Nero’s Theater, an imperial theater referred to in ancient Roman texts but never found, have been discovered under the garden of a future Four Seasons Hotel steps from the Vatican.

Archaeologists have excavated deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere since 2020 as part of planned renovations on the frescoed Renaissance building. The palazzo, which takes up a city block along the broad Via della Conciliazione leading to St. Peter’s Square, is home to an ancient Vatican chivalric order that leases the space to a hotel to raise money for Christians in the Holy Land.

The governor general of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, Leonardo Visconti di Modrone, confirmed during a news conference announcing the archaeological discovery that the incoming hotel chain was the Four Seasons. News reports have said the hotel is expected to be open in time for the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, when an estimated 30 million people and pilgrims are expected to flock to Rome.