Dispatches

What’s funny these days?  I have it on good authority that the French are drinking more beer.  Explanations from the French Ministry of Gastronomic Identity hold that the disgraceful movement towards the hop is merely a reflection of France’s new international culture.  Translation: there are more people inside France who hail from lowly beer drinking countries than ever before.  But of course these people are not French.  Not really.  They just live there and drink beer.  I picture these people sneaking around with their scandalous brown or green bottles hidden under baby blankets in strollers or with cans secreted under their hats.  I pity the French.  What’s next?  Tex Mex food all over the Dordogne.  I guess that would be "Le Tex Mex"?

Remember when the big controversy in France had to do with finding French ways to say "Jumbo Jet"?  They came up with "Le Jumbo Jet"–I’m not making this up.

Other funny things:

Norm Coleman, the senator from Minnesota, who was elected after the death of liberal democrat Paul Weldstone, and who was a car dealer and ran on a pro-Bush bandwangon is trying to figure out how to run against Al Franken.  Polls show him trailing the comedian.  Coleman doesn’t want to distance himself from W’s handling of the war.  That’s a difficult position to be in.  The plot behind this particular senate race resembles something you might find in a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

The other night I watched a PBS series devoted to the "baby boomer" generation.  I suffered through the lugubrious narrative about the boomer generation’s singularity and never once did I hear the word "disability" mentioned.  It was the boomers, and especially the Viet Nam veterans, who launched the national movement that lead to the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  And the boomers are about to become the most physically disabled generation in world history.  How interesting that the subject stayed completely off the self-congratulatory script of this program.

I still think of the boomers as the generation that left all the trash at Woodstock.  They’re now rolling up the largest debt in history.  Leaving dirty stuff behind is their great forte.  That’s a cheap shot of course.  Maybe I should call it "le cheap shot"?

I do wish to conclude today’s post on a positive and serious note.

I want to recommend the book "A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah.  I will write about it more thoroughly but suffice it to say that it’s a literary memoir of great distinction by a young man who survived being abducted and who was forced to fight in the civil war in Sierra Leone.  This is a rare book and I heartily urge everyone to read it.

S.K.

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto