Some random happy stories or tributes, after-the-jump ….
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HAIL and FAREWELL to the late Arthur Frommer— who changed the world of budget travel from the US to Europe — who has died at the age of 95. Beginning with “Europe on $5/day” (to $95, in 2007) he advised Americas to avoid luxury, 5-star travel (where you’d only encounter other Anglophones) and was an inspiration to a future travel writer Rick Steves. Frommer had other talented contemporaries (Eugene Fodor and Steve Birnbaum come to mind) yet his work not only spoke to me … it made foreign travel seem achievable, and seven European trips later: I salute him.
I still remember his quote from one of his guidebooks from the early 1980’s:
“This is a book for American tourists who a) own no oil wells in Texas, b) are unrelated to the Aga Khan, c) have never struck it rich in Las Vegas and who still want to enjoy a wonderful European vacation.”
CHEERS to a heartwarming story of fear turning into joy, a true expression of the human condition.
Unsure if you can read this due to a paywall (or not)— if not, the right-wing Daily Mail has a good summary version— this past Sunday’s Boston Globe magazine section had an essay by Linda Matchan about a sixty-eight year-old woman who was a law partner (who represented labor and employment cases) who needed a stem cell transplant to combat an aggressive form of leukemia.
In 2017, Betsy Ehrenberg learned that there was a match found and (due to rules set-up) she would not be able to learn who it was for over a year. She wondered (as a Massachusetts Jewish liberal married to another woman) how her donor might react.
It turned out to be a then twenty-three year old Christian ex-Marine living in northern California named Tyler Delaney, suffering from PTSD, an unsatisfying civilian job and alcoholism. Then he got the phone call (as he had volunteered to be a donor while in the service) — and described it as a turning point in his life. When he learned that the transplant had gone well, he was ecstatic.
They eventually shared letters and spoke about their commonalities (dogs among them). Finally, when he married a high school classmate this past June in northern California, he invited Betsy and her wife — and the two bonded as if they were family. Betsy realized that her concerns about how he might react to her politics, religion and same-sex marriage were unfounded. “By the end of the night, I felt ashamed that I’d felt so nervous”.
Not only did his generosity save her life, Tyler Delaney concluded:
“Doing this for her closed a very dark chapter of my life … and opened up a very bright one”.
Finally, just last month a board game was released to the public nearly sixty-eight years after it was created … a war game created by an unapologetic dove, the late author Kurt Vonnegut.
In 1956 he was a struggling writer (with his most famous works yet to be written) so he tried his luck at creating a board game. It was not his only commercial failure: he owned a Saab dealership on Cape Cod that failed months later. Whatever the merits of the game he created (GHQ, short for General Headquarters), he may have been ahead-of-his-time. Board games such as Risk as well as Diplomacy had not yet developed, and so he found no interest from game companies. Fortunately, his literary career took off, and the board game was forgotten.
Then at the time of his death in 2007, Indiana University had a library exhibit about this native Hoosier, which mentioned his board game. And given the subsequent success of his 1969 best-selling novel Slaughterhouse Five (named after his WW-II experience as a POW during the firebombing of Dresden, Germany in Schlachthof Fünf , an underground meat locker) this added a level of interest into his experiences in war.
In time, game designer Geoff Engelstein obtained the rights from Vonnegut’s estate, and after numerous iterations — trying to re-work the original rules to make it accessible to the many — the game went on-sale for $35. Interestingly, it can only be purchased at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum & Library (in his native Indianapolis) — and at Barnes & Noble bookstores (and online).
A reporter who attended the product’s launch party a few months ago adds:
The box not only contains the board, playing pieces, and rule-book, but also a booklet with the history of the game, including the original designs and Vonnegut’s pitch letter (boasting) that it could “become the third popular checkerboard game.”
Even if not … wotta find, after all these years.
Let’s close with my favorite solo piano song of all time, Duke Ellington’s Single Petal of a Rose. (OK, there is a double bass that comes in later).
Now, on to Top Comments:
Nothing came in from the field this evening
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the diary by jamess about the danger that Tulsi Gabbard represents — Things Come Undone suggests we be prepared for the use of the Patriot Act against us.
An ode to the Picture Quilt — a top photo from today by annieli:
And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
8) Yup. Can’t reason with a cult. by IndieGuy +12921) Liberty by Denise Oliver Velez +8428) Joe and Mika … by Denise Oliver Velez +8030) Cabinet picks by exlrrp +74