Don't Whistle Past This Graveyard

A Memorial for Veterans Day

This Veterans Day feels a little like a memorial day. We’re paying tribute to those who served in the US Armed Forces, but we’re also experiencing a political and cultural transition that sees America relinquishing its role as defenders of the freedom and democracy so many vets fought for; and even adopting some of the leadership characteristics of regimes we once risked all to keep from spreading. Part of this is a matter of timing. There are fewer and fewer people around who experienced WWII and know fascism when they see it. Part of it is a matter of our current leadership and its America First ideals that echo those of the America First Committee that sought to keep the US from being drawn into WWII. Jonathan Darman takes us to a cemetery in Margraten, the Netherlands to provide some reminders about America. “Margraten and the other cemeteries serve as reminders of the sacrifices that Americans made to free Europe. And, at a time when many Americans want to retreat from our responsibilities to the rest of the world, they offer us a warning.” NYT (Gift Article): If Only More Americans Could See This Place. “Walking through these rows of graves, you feel the sorrow the war visited on every corner of American society. A service member from Oregon lies next to one from Pennsylvania who lies next to one from Arkansas. Dumas is next to Ulander, next to Giudice, next to Smith. But in their beauty, ambition and scale, the cemeteries have also always sent a message to Europeans, a reminder of the costs Americans were willing to pay to ensure the cause of liberty in the world. These cemeteries would be permanent and so too, they seemed to suggest, would be America’s interest in Europe’s affairs. It is a message that many Europeans took to heart. At the visitors’ center at the Margraten, I was told that the large crowd in the cemetery that day was typical. The vast majority of visitors are Europeans. When I flipped through the guest book, I saw most of the entries were people from the Netherlands, Belgium and other Northern European countries. Many had written the same message: ‘Thanks, U.S.A.’”

+ “If Burford had not driven 115 miles to the cemetery, a recording would have been played instead from a speaker that fits into the bell of a bugle. The device allows taps to be played at every funeral with military honors, as is legally required, but it has also stirred a resistance. Burford is one of at least 2,500 volunteers who travel to play taps at military funerals, many distressed by the idea of a recording performing the duties. They are tweens and nonagenarians, civilians and veterans. Some are seasoned musicians with an in-demand skill. Others are lapsed players who felt compelled to restart.” The Volunteer Buglers Giving 24-Note Salutes.

2

Food For Thought

After weeks watching an administration use food as a political weapon, you may be asking yourself, “Where is the decency?” It turns out it’s still in a lot of places. Let’s start with a bookstore in Lincoln, Nebraska. “With federal funding for food stamps threatened, employees at a bookstore in Lincoln, Neb., went to their boss with an idea: If people were going hungry, maybe they could help. Workers at the store, Sower Books, soon set up a food collection bin near the front door. Customers and neighbors brought in bags and boxes of groceries; others came to browse for books, saw the bin and returned later with their own donations. Within a week, the storage room was stuffed with close to 2,000 pounds of food. Nearly out of storage space, the bookstore put out a call for drivers on social media, and earlier this month, customers volunteered their cars and pickup trucks to ferry boxed and canned goods to a food pantry across town. The store’s back room has since filled up again with donations. On Monday, staff members made another run to the pantry, delivering more than 830 pounds of food — enough for roughly 1,700 meals.” NYT (Gift Article): To Help SNAP Recipients, Bookstores Set Up as Food Banks. Knowledge for the curious and food for the hungry under one roof. It’s a miracle Trump hasn’t tried to shut this place down...

3

Return to the Fold

“This is how the government shutdown was always going to end. For the past 30 years, the party that has forced federal agencies to close their doors in a funding fight has never actually achieved the policy outcome it was demanding. Republicans did not successfully pressure then-President Barack Obama to defund his signature health-care law when they shut down the government in 2013. President Donald Trump, during his first term, failed to persuade Senate Democrats to authorize his border wall in 2019.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Why the Democrats Finally Folded.

+ I shared my take on the decision to fold yesterday, when I tried to defy the adage and make chicken cacciatore out of chicken shit. Dem the Torpedoes.

4

Specs and the City

After already earning the highly coveted honor of appearing in NextDraft’s Weekend Whats section, David Szalay’s novel Fleshhas been awarded the Booker Prize. You may not know that Sarah Jessica Parker was among the the five judges who chose this year’s winner. “Winning the Booker Prize is a life-changing experience for an author. Sales blow up. Demands for interviews pour in. But Parker, who oversees a literary imprint at Zando, said that being a judge was just as life-changing.” Powering through 153 books will do that. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Year of Judging the Booker Prize. Now that it’s over, the reviewers can get back to some semblance of their normal lives. But, the five judges have formed a book group so they can keep reading together...

5

Extra, Extra

This Doesn’t Float Their Boat: “The United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal.” CNN: UK suspends some intelligence sharing with US over boat strike concerns in major break.

+ Stock Answer: “Americans with large investment portfolios feel markedly better about the economy than those who don’t own stocks, according to the University of Michigan sentiment index. Sentiment among people who don’t own stocks is at the lowest level on a three-month moving average since the university began tracking it in 1998.” WSJ (Gift Article): Feeling Great About the Economy? You Must Own Stocks.

+ It Takes a Village: “Health officials have been calling for a radical overhaul of the nation’s system of elder care and one of the boldest ideas to emerge is the ‘dementia village.’ The model, which fosters social inclusion, was pioneered abroad but remains rare in the United States because of its cost. Still, advocates have been pushing to replicate it in the District — and they have been gaining traction.” WaPo (Gift Article): Why a dementia village in the Netherlands is fueling hope in DC. “Forty percent of DC’s seniors live alone, according to city data — a reality that advocates say makes community-based solutions especially urgent.”

+ We Should Be Green With Envy: “Countries like Brazil, India, and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant. Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years. Key to this shift is the world’s new renewable energy superpower: China.” (Even if you are a climate change denier, why would you want to leave all this money on the table?) NYT (Gift Article): A Flood of Green Tech From China Is Upending Global Climate Politics.

+ They Can’t Keep Their Pause Off You: Advertisers and streamers have figured out a new way to get commercials in front of viewers who are trying to avoid them. They appear when you hit the pause button.

+ Don’t Let Your Math Write a Check Your Ass Can’t Cash: “The paper also cited the Fibonacci sequence, a progression of numbers wherein each successive number beginning with the second 1 is the sum of the previous two. It goes like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 . . . And, beginning with 5 and 3, if you divide two successive numbers instead of adding them—21 over 13, say, or 13 over 8—you will always get, ta-da, the divine proportion: 1.6.” That’s just a little review of the arithmetic of the ass. Wired: The Mysterious Math Behind the Brazilian Butt Lift. “For years, plastic surgeons thought the proportions of a beautiful buttocks should follow the Fibonacci sequence. Now, people are looking for a more Kardashian shape.”

6

Bottom of the News

“The crescendoing racket from an estimated 70,000 pickleball courts across the United States has generated bitter municipal fights, litigation, vandalism, acoustical mitigation contracts, equipment redesigns. So I’ve come here, to one of the sport’s most contested locales, to experience why the sound of pickleball is so annoying. And to see if there are solutions to help our brains move past it.” WaPo (Gift Article): We set out to find the real reason pickleball noise is so annoying. (The article suggests “This story is best with sound.” That might be fake news.)