Beyond Rivalry

This series at CNN Money, which presents more than 50 brief, first-person profiles of individuals and families struggling financially with job loss, downsizing, reduced home values, student loans, gas and food prices, etc., is enlightening and disheartening at the same time. I empathised with the stories of many folks; this one really speaks to me.

At long last.

In the Guardian: "The Lourdes of ancient Britain? Dig aims to reveal Stonehenge's purpose":  

"The first excavation for more than a generation at Stonehenge began yesterday, looking for evidence that the most famous prehistoric monument in the world was the Lourdes of the bronze age, where the sick and troubled sought healing from the supernatural power of bluestones brought from west Wales. ...

"Special permission had to be obtained from English Heritage, guardian of the stones, and the government for the first excavation since 1964. Druids were also invited to give their blessing to disrupting the long sleep of the stones." 

You can follow the dig at the BBC or at Smithsonian. And more on Stonehenge itself at the Guardian (interactive).

As long as we're on the topic, check out Eddie Izzard on Stonehenge. "Building a henge, are we? That's a fantastic idea!" (although apparently a 'henge' in itself is actually the mound and ditch, sans stones.)

Make sure to celebrate by using Google's Custom Time. (And check out their past innovations.) 

Also, How Stuff Works: How the Air Force One Hybrid Works 

Text Messages That Would Have Been Helpful by Jen Statsky at McSweeney's.

Includes:

"hey just wnted 2 give the heads up,

CC on way w 3 shps, want 2 colonize u.

dont giv n unless u think casinos r gr8.

txt me back" 

Several today:

In the NYT, an article today about people who eschew public transportation in NYC, although "80 percent of the people who drive into Manhattan during the workday already have access to mass transit that would take no more than 15 minutes longer."  Some of the reasons for driving even with cheap and reliable public transportation available: include enhanced freedom and flexibility; "the ability to avoid dealing with other people;" the car is more comfortable (plusher, wired for sound and ... video?); dislike of waiting, standing, and "the hassle" of the subway (prefering the hassle of driving, finding a place to park, having to feed the meter multiple times); a desire for a few minutes more sleep; dislike of walking; and transporting a dog.  

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In the Telegraph today, Phoebe Damrosch provides tantalising bits of her experience as a head waiter in a posh and celebrity-frequented NYC restaurant. Her book about it, Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter, was published in September.  Training for the job was a rigorous 3-month indoctrination into rules, cooking procedures and ingredients, "philosophies, uniforms, elaborate rituals and an unspoken code of honour."

Allergies were ubiquitous: "When we learnt in the pre-shift meeting that, due to a serious allergy, the host [a famous comedian] requested there be no truffles on the menu, a colleague leaned over and whispered, 'What percentage of the population even knows it's allergic to truffles?'" and "Celebrities love to be allergic to things, including any or all of the following: nuts, fish with scales, fish without scales, shellfish, all fish, wheat, dairy, sugar, chocolate, egg yolks, duck eggs, onions, garlic, pineapple, mango, peppers, fennel -- the list goes on. Either that or they are so bored by good food that they have to spice it up by asking for an all-mushroom tasting menu (as a famous newsreader did)."

More at Super Chef, The Amateur Gourmet, NYT review. 

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This one's not about NYC per se :-) but after watching a few episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City -- where there's pathetically cut-throat competition to look young, to seem hip, to have status -- I feel sure it applies. It's Michael Kinsley in The New Yorker writing about the competition among Boomers, in particular, for "longest life" and "shortest death." (Kinsley himself is 57 and has Parkinson's disease.)

"What's more, of all the gifts that life and luck can bestow -- money, good looks, love, power -- longevity is the one that people seem least reluctant to brag about. In fact, they routinely claim it as some sort of virtue -- as if living to ninety were primarily the result of hard work or prayer, rather than good genes and never getting run over by a truck. Maybe the possibility that the truck is on your agenda for later this morning makes the bragging acceptable. The longevity game is one that really isn't over till it's over."

"And even if you add a few years through your own initiative, by doing all the right things in terms of diet, exercise, sleep, vitamins, and so on, why is that to your moral credit? Extending your own life expectancy is the most selfish motive imaginable for doing anything. Do it, by all means. I do. But for heaven’s sake don’t take a bow and expect applause."

He also points out that it's not a zero-sum game; if I die young, that doesn't mean you live longer. What's odd is that it seems like a zero-sum game. Reading the obituaries can imbue the completely false belief that because these folks have died, and particularly if they are younger than I am, then I'm spared. I'm alive, they're dead, I win. Weird. Kinsley does compare the competition to live longest to a tontine, an estate-planning device well-known to Agatha Christie fans, where "the amount you got back depended on how many of your fellow-investors you outlived." In this case, outliving someone else doesn't ensure that you will be long-lived (much less happily lived) but you'll be rewarded with a warm feeling of having out-endured your friends, enemies and peers, even as you miss them and wish they were still around. 

As far as the short death goes, I must be the orderly type: "Or, if you’re the orderly type, you might prefer a brisk but not sudden slide into oblivion. Take a couple of months, pain-free but weakening in some vague nineteenth-century way." Sounds good to me. Of course, Kinsley reminds us, "The government statistics on how people die are lavish and fascinating. Let's forget for a moment that it's a catalogue you can't really shop from" (other than the suicide option).

Kinsley says, "I was around fifty when I went public about having Parkinson's, and the effect was like turning sixty." I love that sentence.

He goes on, "A person who is sixty and healthy almost surely will live many more years. But sixty is about the age when people stop being surprised if you look old or feel sick or drop dead. (It's another decade or so before they stop pretending to be surprised.)"

He says that "only in life's last chapter do the differences [in how old we feel and are perceived to be] get enormous. We are not shocked to see a seventy-one-year-old hobbling on a cane, or bedridden in a nursing home, and we are not shocked to see a seventy-one-year-old running for President. The huge variety of possible outcomes -- all of them falling within the range considered 'normal' -- makes the last boomer competition especially dramatic. So does the speed at which aging can happen. Sometimes it's even instantaneous. Fall, break your hip, and add ten years."