[Chuck] This is not about Radio!
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9th - On vacation, the world stops. No phones or TV. The only contact is a radio on the alarm clock and the newspapers at the gas station past the Cut River Bridge and the county airport.
Sure, news creeps into your life, but it's usually 36 hours late. I remember Elvis and Groucho dying and the Tigers losing 19 in a row.
But basically, all you have access to is day-old wire stories. This time of year, the Detroit papers will be focused on their city's pathetic Dream Cruise wherein they re-enact the white flight out of Detroit in the fanciest of cars. They start at the border, drive north, come back south, hit the border again and flee - again.
There will likely be an article or two about either how the city or car industry is coming back or how Americans sold out Detroit by not buying their product. Of course, one of the most important causes of that demise was and continues to be globalization. But, too often, and particularly by Americans, this term at the heart of the global political debate is misunderstood or not understood at all.
There will be overheard conversations waxing nostalgic for the two lakefront towns as they were before outside retailers took over. The diatribes will echo in the gigantic Wal-Mart parking lot before the same people march in to buy cans of light beer for 15 cents cheaper a thirty pack ... still complaining about the lack of consumer loyalty in the US of A.
They've come up every summer for a week, or two, or three, some even had their own weekend cabins. My sister lived here year-round for a few. She called them all 'trunk slammers.' And after all these years, some sixty post-war vacation paradise years, these suburban exiles who drive as fast as they can to 'get away' and 'go up north' have successfully 'cleared brush' as presidents are so want to do ... and created out of the wilderness ... suburbia.
We have to choose not to have TV or phones. There's one up on the hill in the owner's home. But phoneless, TV-less, that's what the area was like when my father first started coming here after World War Two. That's the area he fell in love with for two weeks out of the factory every summer. And the resort we go to is largely the same, unchanged since the late 50s.
That faux log cabin, thin walled, creaky, sand powdered linoleum floored, screen door slamming, unwinterized, filled with furniture that has matriculated from someone's 50's home, to 60's breezeway to 70's basement to 80's cabin feel.
Even trying to pass off free gifts from fast food joints as glassware.
The world stops in those cabins. What you learn of what's happening in the outside world trickles in. With the outside missing, you turn inside. In the complete darkness of the streetlampless night, at the end of the dock, hearing the row boats bounce off torn tire bumpers, you can think to yourself.
And in the daylight, with your family, without the outside world infringing, you can actually share time.
I need to unplug.
delicious
diggThe 9/15/07 four hour This is Hell, hosted by past PRTQ contender Chuck Mertz is now available in the TiH archives (http://www.thisishell.net/rss.xml)
or you can go straight to the podcast (http://www.wnur.org/thisishell/archive/pods/20070915.mp3)
This week's guests were:
Trita Parsi, author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States" (Yale Press). Trita's recent writing also includes this week's Op-Ed in The Hill, "Fund Bridges, not Failed Policy."
Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council (http://www.niacouncil.org).
Stan Cox returns to This is Hell to tell us about his latest article, "Big Houses Are Not Green: America's McMansion Problem." Stan worked in the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA in Manhattan, Kansas, as a wheat geneticist 1984-1996. He then went on to teach high school in Hyderabad, India, from 1996 til 2000 when he joined the Land Institute (http://www.landinstitute.org) as a senior research scientist. He is currently a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas.
John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies (http://web.mit.edu/CIS/). . He is co-editor and co-author of "Multilateralism Under Challenge? Power, International Order, and Structural Change" (United Nations University Press). He wrote this week's article, "Is the Foreign Policy Process Working?"
Paul Craig Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and is now a regular contributor to Counterpunch with his latest piece being, "Who Are the Fanatics?"
Harper's contributing editor McKenzie Funk will tell us about his cover article in the September issue, "Cold Rush: The coming fight for the melting North" from the top deck of the Healy icebreaker somewhere off the coast of Alaska.
Brian Beutler is the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium (http://www.consortiumnews.com). His most recent articles include, "Crocker's Fuzzy Economics" and "The Coming Battle Over FISA."
Our irregular correspondents include:
Jeff Dorchen will deliver a Moment of Truth.
Elvis DeMorrow will tell you why the Konspiracy Korner's tinfoil hat has been on fire of late.
Saturday, September 15th, beginning at 9 AM (central), on WNUR 89.3 FM Evanston/Chicago, Chuck Mertz will host a live four hour This is Hell (http://www.thisishell.net/). This is Hell also broadcasts live online via WNUR's web site (http://www.wnur.org) under the heading, "Listen Online." and the show will be available for your convenience in the This is Hell archives.
This week's guests include:
* Trita Parsi, author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States" (Yale Press, http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300120578)
* Paul Craig Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and is now a regular contributor to Counterpunch with his latest piece being, "Who Are the Fanatics?" (http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09052007.html)
* Harper's contributing editor McKenzie Funk will tell us about his cover article in the September issue, "Cold Rush: The coming fight for the melting North" from the top deck of the Healy icebreaker somewhere off the coast of Alaska
This week's irregular correspondents include:
* Jeff Dorchen (http://www.mejeffdorchen.oblivio.com/) with a 'Moment of Truth'
* Elvis DeMorrow (http://www.nodoctors.com/) will tell you why the Konspiracy Korner's tinfoil hat has been on fire of late
Good for you for stepping off the planet. But how the hell did I miss my chance to buy you a Stroh's? I'm in Salt Lake City again, throwing back Polygamy Porters. See ya on the flip side....
Agreed that "globalization" is often misunderstood, or conflated with Westernization, privitization, or other "izations" or "isms."
I find the waxing nostalgic that people do to be strange as well; I think many women, visible minorities, or LGBTTQ people would rather not see things return to the way they were a decade (or two or three decades) ago.
Recent comments
39 weeks 3 days ago
2 years 11 weeks ago
2 years 21 weeks ago
2 years 27 weeks ago
2 years 32 weeks ago