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msb-0335 Urbane Urbanism

Page history last edited by Charles-A. Rovira 15 years, 8 months ago

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msb-0335 Urbane Urbanism

Direct Link to episode -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/msb-0335_Urbane_Urbanism.m4a

James Howard Kunstler's TED Presentation:

Intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

Survey

FeedBack comes first, so...

I am appalled, appalled at the level of ignorance and the level of fear about MS out there; as much in the general population as, and this is unforgivable, in the medical community.

What should be a very minor disease, a "no biggie" disease, on the level with leprosy, controllable with a simple therapy, anti-viral in the case of leprosy, immuno-suppresant in the case of MS, is blown up to all kinds of levels, demonized and 'buggabooed" into some great unfathomable threat because of perceived mystery.

Believe me, I feel for your daughter.

She submitted to back surgery, back surgery, twice, at the hands of some quack, some ignorant imbecile, some orthopedic butcher, partly because she couldn't face the diagnosis from the neurologists.

I don't know which is more to blame, the neurologists who scared the crap out of her, the orthopedic surgeon who was just making things worse (and I am sure pocketed the money, but who doesn't have to live with the results,) or herself whos' stuck with the compounding effect.

This should be a nothing diagnosis, a non-event of a disease.

Its the mystery the fear of the unknown, that permits all of this crap to happen.

---- "Roadless Traveler" by: "Anduze" http://myspace.com/anduzemusic

FeedForward

---- "Eternal Traveler" by: "Dave Percell" http://www.myspace.com/davepercell

FeedMe

---- "The Road Less Traveled" by: "Sweet Crystal" http://www.sweetcrystal.com/

Thesis:

I grew up in a suburb on the island of Montréal called Ville Lasalle.

It was near, like walking distance near, to where my father worked for the Seagram's distillery.

It was not that bad as far as childhoods go.

Then my dad changed jobs, started to work selling drugs (sorry, pharmaceuticals,) for "Merck, Sharpe and Dohme", and moved us all out to "Valleyfield" aka "Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec," which was really way the hell out there out there, in the depth of suburbia. (I still remember the address that I had to memorise out there "193 Cossette". It sorta sucked 'cause it was really farm land and had a huge field acrosss the street and a huge "Bell Northern" plant out there. [I just Googled it and its now been paved over and filled with track style housing. {I'm actually of two minds about that. (Yeah it sucked but the field was actually nice and grew some great little wild strawberries. [Nope, you "can't" go home again.])}])

I am "older" than the crap we now wade through back and forth between house, work and the malls.

Okay, it was in Québec, which was a banch plant economy of Canada's branch plant economy and was getting developped third-hand by the "powers that be."

But it still predates the mauling of America. I was not living in ranch-style type tract housing until we'd been to the hinterlands if Valleyfield, come back to Ville Lasalle and lived there a while in various rental housing accomodations. (I still remember the pink "Princess" phone that my father, who must have been feeling paticularly flush at the time, got installed in our secods floor appartment by Bell. [This was back before you had "any" choice. "CNCP Telecommunications" was for businesses and Telex and stuff like that.])

---- "Soul Travelling" by: "Stingray" http://www.stingrayonline.com/

Synthesis:

So why am I traveling this way down memory lane; burning precious brain cells, and cheap podcast time, to bring you along?

I am a late-boomer, who is now in his mid-fifties and I can "remember" a world before the suburbs.

What was it about the 'burbs that we found so appealing?

What was it about the 'burbs that we found made it worth the trek back and forth; from nothing to nowhere? from oblivion to obligation?

What was it about the 'burbs that infected us with wanderlust [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderlust ] equal to our rebellious hearts.

Don't tell me that any kids growing up in the desolate 'burbs weren't rebellious.

We were the definition of rebellion.

As "Grace Slick" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Slick ] put it so eloquently "We have become the people our parents warned us about."

Were we struck by the same wanderlust that afflicted the British at the height of the English Romantic period, as exemplified by Percy Bysshe Shelley [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley ].

Back before the beginning of the "Age of Steam" [ http://www.railcentre.co.uk/ ] and the pseudo-democratization by Americans of the "Grand Tour" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour ] which rose to prominence at the end of the second world war.

I remember being at some English hotel, in "Rye" I think [ http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&q=Mermaid+inn&near=Rye,+East+Sussex,+UK&fb=1&cid=0,0,11417480990147446513&sa=X&oi=local_result&resnum=1&ct=image ], listening to some well heeled Americans advising their daughter about what she should do with her trust funds ("Muffy, darling, you can do what ever you want, so long as you don't touch the capital,") when we were interrupted but the loud banging of some unseen critter on the other side of the wall declaiming loudly in some flat mid-western accent that he wondered "Why they couldn't put the paneling in straight!" (When it had clearly been put in straight ... three hundred years ago ... when the wall was "new.")

Coming from Québec as I did, I "grokked" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok ] the pain on both sides of the paneling.

I am forever destined to be a "Stranger In A Strange Land" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_In_A_Strange_Land ].

---- "dream traveler" by: "kcsaito" http://homepage.mac.com/kcsaito1963/PhotoAlbum8.html

Conclusion:

Yes, I grew up in a suburb on the island of Montréal called Ville Lasalle.

It was not that bad as far as childhoods go.

But its is at the root of my restlessness; that which drove me, (heck, with cheap oil, I could even afford to drive myself,) to see parts of the world that my ancestors couldn't even ever dream of, but are now only an internet connection away.

You don't have to go there to get there.

We now have riches that people in the past couldn't imagine.

As long as you can afford to share an internet connection, culture can be yours beyond what royalty in the past could have aspired to.

---- "Traveling beyond Time" by: "Ruddha" http://www.ruddha.com/

Outro

----

Theme and 'incidental music' from:

"msb_theme",

by: "Guy David",

http://www.guydavid.com/

no album,

via personal contract