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Our Broad Stripes and Bright Stars. March 30, 2021

Posted by voolavex in American History, freedom, Golden door, guilt, Idiots in Government, lamp, loss, Random thoughts, Washington Post.
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I think we should consider flying the flag at half mast for the foreseeable future.

What Got My Goat. March 28, 2021

Posted by voolavex in Food, Foodies.
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As part of the original “Foodie” world that started in the late 70’s and continued into the 80’s and early 90’s, your list of disgusting “Baby Boomer” food is insulting and wrong.  My partner and published both LA ala Carte newsletter and then – LA ala Carte,the Food Magazine of Los Angeles in 1988.  We created the “Foodsource Hotline”, the first live food and restaurant referral service in  California – that served even the Pope. My partner and I were in the food biz in the early 80’s and I can assure that most of us were in fact, Baby Boomers. This junk may have been set before most of us in the early 50’s, but it was not “our favorite” food.   The generation of BBs that were born in 1945/46 + and still exists were the original foodies in America.  My colleagues were Colman Andrews, Ruth Reichl, the late Jonathan Gold, the late Ed La Dou, Patrick Terrail, Wolfgang Puck and the many others who taught America how to eat REAL FOOD.  Alice Waters in Berkeley, Laura Chenel in Northern California, Jonathan Waxman,  Michael McCarty and the entire cover of our Premiere Issue were the faces of the Baby Boomers who rocketed  ‘FOODIE”into everyday speech in America.  While all the nauseating food you featured in your slide show was in fact eaten by my generation as kids, it did not follow us into adulthood.  You might want to consider a slide show featuring the actual Baby Boomer foodies who balked at these creations and mention the stars who brought California Pizza, Mesclun Salad, free range chicken and the taste of sorbet into  the mouths of Americans.  I can supply you with all the information you need.  Actual facts and names. Your slide show on Daily Choices was insulting.  Actual facts and names. Your slide show on Daily Choices  (March 28, 2021) was insulting. You may want to take it down.

This is the original ‘slide show”.

ERIKA SALEN | FEBRUARY 03, 2021

Tragically Gross Foods Baby Boomers Wont Let Die

Thanks for nothing, baby boomers Thanks to baby boomers, we were able to come up with a list of the worst foods of all time. “Baby boomers” are people born in the..

The Unwinding: A Book Report March 26, 2021

Posted by voolavex in Social Issues.
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The Unwinding by George Packer

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
by George Packer
Chloe Ross‘s review Mar 26, 2021  ·  edit
it was amazingbookshelves: currently-reading

Not at all what I expected but words escape me to describe the author’s insight, brevity and the knowledge this book impart; in 2013. Before Covid-10, before #45, seven years before. It could easily have been subtitled “How It Happened While We Watched”. Every chapter describes, with accuracy and elegance, the inelegance of how this country unwound. And unwind it did and continues and yes, it is depressing and sad; but we all participated; we all played a part in this insane ‘carpe diem’. The level of hypocrisy revealed and a nation of willing accomplices point the finger at everyone of us. I am not yet finished and I don’t really want it to end. Each chapter or vignette peels another stinky, slimy layer of ugly truth that needs to be known. Disillusionment is mostly the emotion I feel at this point, about my own years of US history. And it explains a great deal of the men and women who have come after me – generations with cute names and not much else. It’s all there. How and who and why. Read it. I can’t honestly say it’s like hearing “The Last Rites”read. Perhaps more like hearing the last gasp before they are read.

When I am finished I suspect I will be satisfied to realize I knew some of was on the way, but so much more and so much, worse than even I had imagined. Read it.

Long Haul Covid March 24, 2021

Posted by voolavex in Social Issues.
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This is a story shared by my friend on FB. The story is Wendy’s. 

Wendy. Your story is the one that should be emphasized.  Not the “I feel great”.  “Covid is nothing to worry about”. stories .

WORRY.  Be very afraid and those who consider themselves above, beyond or better than Covid need to take a long look at “Long Haul Covid”.  This Covid should NOT BE KEPT SECRET.  The global body count should not be kept secret..The ‘snap-back’ and ‘carry-on’ stories may engender hope, but it is NOT all there is .  There is a stark, sad and very present reality in Wendy’s and Sandy’s messages.  One that is casually dispensed with “That can’t happen to me”.  And Wendy and all the people who have suffered as Wendy has, need to step back and realize this. 

The morons everywhere, but most recently in Miami Beach, are now super spreaders and they may be responsible for untold deaths . They have neither the sense nor the experience to even consider this. And yet they bear the reality of becoming killers.  Or dead.

I lived through years of polio.  I was fortunate not to have ever contracted it, but fear was the main reason.  Parents feared for their children. Families and strangers feared for everyone.  Parents believed IT COULD happen and therefore the did not take the risk.  The myriad ways you could become infected – true and false – were all considered possible and so we did NOT swim or go to the beach or play with others; we did not share soft drinks or ice cream cones or candy bars. We did not touch money or utensils or RISK IT!   And NOT just for one summer or one year. It took years.

When Salk created the first vaccine we lined up in droves to be immunized.  And when Sabin created yet another vaccine, we lined up again. I did for both. Neither took a sou or a shilling or penny or kopek from either discovery.  Each man GAVE it humanity. The Nobel Prize is an honor and a monetary gift and while it does endow a winner with some money and much fame – it also recognizes and compensates for struggles and time and energy to achieve such a status. And soon the iron lung began to disappear and kids were let run and play. Another kind of normal came into existence.

And now we have Covid-19. But now we are too damned arrogant and smarter than than our old, parents and grand parents, who had enough sense to be cautious and careful and patient.  We have had one short year of Covid.  Polio existed for a long time.  People died or were paralyzed (including a US president) or spent their lives in machines so they could simply breathe with the loud whoosh of a machine as the sound that never stopped? 

Isn’t there a message in any of this?  Why are we so smug. 

Thank you Sandy – as always a voice of reason and sense. And to Wendy.  I have no words  – you know them all.  My heart hurts for your suffering.

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