Whitcomb: Carson and Rest of Us Actors; Hospitals Into Housing; Witch Doctor; Canadian Fish Story

Whitcomb: Carson and Rest of Us Actors; Hospitals Into Housing; Witch Doctor; Canadian Fish Story

 

“When people say they miss me,

I think how much I miss me too,

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Me, the old me, the great me…’’

— From “Days of Me,’’ by Stuart Dischell (born 1954), American poet

Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

 

“A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn’t go.’’

—Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943), American critic, playwright and radio personality

 

 

 

“Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.’’

—Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990), American singer, actor, comedian and dancer

 

 

 

“It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”

-- Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), American moderate-conservative philosopher, essayist and longshoreman

(Something to think about after the last election.)

 

 

 

Every once in a while, there’s a luminousness in the now open and often breezy woods. And up to a few days ago, you could spot such examples of the persistence of life as a yarrow wildflower still in bloom, albeit barely. Of course, the blooms will be back.

 

Welcome to meteorological winter – the next three months. You’ll start really noticing the days getting longer again by late January, a few weeks after the winter solstice, on Dec. 21. Many people hate February, but the increasing light then raises my spirits. The trick is to get through dark and and too-frantic December and early January, surviving the holidays.

 

The Juncos are moving faster now, and the crows gaze more intensely for signs of dead squirrels and other carrion on the roads. The last of the Halloween lawn decorations have finally been removed. (I was surprised to see Thanksgiving decorations – huge air-filled turkeys, etc. Did we really need to eat so many of those tortured birds last week?)

 

Hug a turkey:

 

Now we enter the hyper-holiday season, far more pagan and commercial than Christian (whatever “Christian’’ means), and much of whose tone in America was established by Jewish people. Hey, why not? After all, Christianity is a Jewish sect.

 

 

 

“Here’s {the real} Johnny!’’

The much-lauded new biography of the enigmatic late-night TV host, comedian, and writer Johnny Carson, Carson the Magnificent, by Bill Zehme (now dead) with Mike Thomas, reminded me of the mysteries around so many people we might think we know but never will. That’s because most of us to varying degrees put on a show for public consumption, even for family and friends, that may not reflect our real thoughts and emotions. It’s a social-survival act and can be a business decision, too. (Some people drop the masks with a few drinks; others layer on new masks.)

 

Consider Carson (1925-2005). He presented himself as charming,  funny, relaxed and open in a Middle American way as he performed year after year to tens of millions each night when he hosted The Tonight Show, on NBC, in 1962-1992. That there were only three big TV networks – NBC, CBS, and ABC -- in those days before cable became so important magnified his fame. He came across as urbane but never arrogant.  The great movie director Billy Wilder called Carson “the cream of middle-class elegance.’’

 

(I missed most of  the shows because of various time conflicts, such as having to work into the small hours and being out of the country, but I was impressed by his fast wit and apparent sangfroid.)

 

The private Carson, however, was shy, often irascible, suspicious and impatient. He was so good on TV that many viewers might have ignored the signs of anxiety as reflected in his twitchiness and heavy on-the-air smoking; he died from the effects of emphysema. When he started being famous, an estimated 40 percent or more of Americans smoked.

 

As a young man, he wanted to be a magician and did magic tricks throughout his career. Perhaps his greatest magic act was creating a hugely successful public persona at a considerable distance from his core persona. But again, most of us put on such acts, with varying success, perhaps most intensely during the all-too-social holiday season.

 

 

Treating Housing Woes

Local real-estate mogul and former Providence Mayor Joseph A. Paolino Jr. is putting up for sale the closed St. Joseph’s Hospital in the city. He’s quite right to express the hope that the hospital will, at least in part, be turned into housing.

 

Closed hospitals are more adaptable for housing than are some big buildings that have been eyed for conversion to rental apartments or condos to address our “affordable’’ housing’’ shortage, such as shut department stores and factories. Consider all those hospital rooms, many of them with plumbing, some of which could be fairly easily combined into housing units of several rooms each. And nurses’ stations could be turned into common rooms for residents with particularly small apartments/condos.

 

With more and more hospitals medically redundant because of the accelerating move to outpatient treatment for all but the most serious illnesses and injuries, and with possible federal health-care funding cutbacks by the  Orange Caudillo’s incoming regime, there will  probably be many more hospitals closing, and so many more opportunities for conversion to much-needed housing.

 

Of course addressing the aging of the population will require a big increase in health-care facilities – the older you are the sicker you’ll get --  but that will mean building more nursing homes and expanding home health care.

 

Few closed hospitals will reopen as hospitals.

 

 

Dr. Kennedy Will Cure You

“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face.’’

-- The character U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack D. Ripper, who launches nuclear war in the 1964 nightmare comedy film Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

 

 

Impressively unstable  (ask his family!)  the crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr., if he actually becomes health and human services secretary, in all his conspiracy-addled, anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation and pro-raw-milk-glory, will do the most damage among the many poorer and less-educated Americans in the MAGA universe.  I wonder how many of his true believers could end up dying as a result of preventable epidemics, etc., under his watch.  (Get ready for bird flu!)

 

Most prosperous and so better-educated people will generally stick with science-based, time-proven preventatives and treatments. None are perfect and all have to be adjusted over time as research proceeds, but they have been shown to be effective with the big majority of the population.

 

But a bright spot! By seeking to ban fluoridation of public water supplies Dr. RFK Jr. can increase the profits of dental groups, as the incidence of cavities rises. Invest now! (Fluoridation of public water is done at such low levels as to prevent damage to health. This has been heavily studied for years.)

 

Also to thrive would be companies and con men peddling assorted “natural cures”  and what we used to call patent medicines, whose ingredients are incompletely disclosed.  Owners of these companies will include MAGA regime insiders.

 

Not all of Kennedy’s ideas are crazy --  e.g., Americans eat far too much unhealthy processed food partly because of the economic and political power of agribusiness, and the pharmaceutical industry often engages in grossly irresponsible marketing; look at their TV ads. But he is basically anti-science. If he becomes HHS secretary, that fact could sicken and kill many Americans.

 

This witch doctor is highly qualified for a high post in the incoming regime by at least one criterion – he’s rich.

 

 

xxx

 

 

I love how many Americans keep boosting their spending, much of it for such discretionary items as entertainment and Starbucks coffee, even as they complain about inflation. Much of the inflation is caused by companies’ record opportunistic profiteering,  aided by such factors as domestic and international supply-chain snags, which can be delightful for those holding stock in these companies.

 

As we enter tariff times next year, look for supply-chain excitement to intensify.

 

Cod Comeback Wishful Thinking?

Against the advice of scientists, Canada this year lifted a moratorium on cod fishing that was imposed back in 1994 after cod stocks plummeted off the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There’s been a bit of revival in the past few years, but the stocks remain far below what they were for hundreds of years following European colonization. (The proximity of vast stocks of cod, which, importantly, could be easily salted and preserved, was part of what made New England and, to a lesser extent, the Maritime provinces, prosperous starting in the 18th Century. Indeed, what became known as Boston Brahmins also used to be called “The Codfish Aristocracy.’’)

 

The moratorium was lifted at least in part for political reasons. Newfoundland/Labrador suffered mightily and angrily from the fishing ban, which forced many “Newfies’’ to leave.  Politics,  public opinion and science often don’t happily co-exist. Look at America’s COVID experience.

 

In any case, Canada might now be jumping the gun, leading to another crash in cod stocks.

 

Meanwhile, warming water and changes in currents associated with climate change mean that the mix of fish species off of New England and the Maritimes will continue to change in predictable and unpredictable ways over the next few years.

 

(I’m a Halibut fan myself. I had some last week at a business dinner in a New York restaurant that was so dark that I asked for a flashlight to read the menu and the alarming bill; I can’t afford Gotham anymore.)

 

 

 

Totalitarian Temptations

He probably won’t win the final election, set for Dec. 8, but far-right Romanian politician Calin Georgescu, who is anti-NATO, anti-Ukraine and pro-Russian, was the top voter in the country’s first election stage, on Nov. 24, when he won about 23 percent of the vote. But he’s still troubling for all those who treasure democracy.

He's an admirer of the country’s virulently anti-semitic fascist dictator and Hitler ally Ion Antonescu (1882-1946), who was executed for war crimes. He reflects the authoritarian/totalitarian temptation – a belief that a “strong leader’’ can end a nation’s frustrations. And for those uncooperative citizens not lusting for dictatorship to fix all their national woes? The sort of extreme Orwellian surveillance strategies being perfected by Xi Jinping’s tyranny in China can keep them well under control.

 

We may be heading in China’s direction ourselves.

 

Does anyone remember having had the opportunity to vote for this oligarch?

 

xxx

In times of severe political stress, such as now, it’s healthy to read history, with its reminder that nothing human lasts.