Posts Tagged ‘john ruberry’

13 great songs about getting old

Posted: March 3, 2024 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment
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By John Ruberry

You’ve heard it before and probably not from me. No one ever got younger. 

Getting old is natural as youth, but our culture of course is focused on the latter–music especially.

Yet, I’ve managed to discover some great songs about aging. 

13) “A Lady of a Certain Age,” the Divine Comedy. Neil Hannon, who is essentially the one and only member of this baroque pop act from Northern Ireland, is a first-rate storyteller, along the lines of the Kinks’ Ray Davies. We’ll hear from Davies later. As for that lady of a certain age, Hannon, leaves it up to you whether to like her or not.

12) “Something about England,” the Clash. The self-styled “Only Band that Matters” often went too far with their pedantic politicking, and this song, about a young man (Mick Jones) encountering an old homeless man (Joe Strummer), gets off to a bad start with a condemnation of anti-immigrant sentiment, which has nothing to do with the rest of its poignant lyrics.

“You really think it’s all new
You really think about it too,”
The old man scoffed as he spoke to me,
“I’ll tell you a thing or two.”

Jones’ character learns that he has much in common with Strummer’s old man, just as another old man we’ll encounter later. This track is probably the best matchup of the contrasting vocals styles of Jones and Strummer in the Clash’s catalog.

11) “When I’m Sixty-Four,” the Beatles. You’ve certainly heard this one before. Paul McCartney, who sings lead here, sadly didn’t find out if his first wife, Linda, would love him at 64, she passed away from cancer when he was 55. Linda by all accounts still loved Paul until the end.

10) “Glory Days,” Bruce Springsteen. Lost love is a common topic in songs, here’s one about lost youth. “Glory days, yeah, they’ll pass you by, glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye,” is part of this song’s chorus.

9) “Minutes to Memory,” John Mellencamp. Two Hoosiers, Mellencamp and a 70-year-old retired steelworker from Gary, are sitting next to each other on a Greyhound bus, probably heading back to Indiana. The elderly man gives Mellencamp advice, which, years later, he finally sees as sagacious.

The old man had a vision but it was hard for me to follow,
“I do things my way and I pay a high price,”
When I think back on the old man and the bus ride
Now that I’m older I can see he was right.

Another hot one out on Highway 11
“This is my life, it’s what I’ve chosen to do
There’s no free rides, no one said it’d be easy,”
The old man told me this, my son, I’m telling it to you.

8) “Old Man,” Neil Young. Another song you are probably familiar with. The opening line says it all, “Old man, look at my life, I’m a lot like you were.”

7) “Where Have All the Good Times Gone,” the Kinks. Astonishingly, the Kinks principal songwriter, Ray Davies was only 21 when this song was released in 1965. The Kinks have a very loyal support base, but this song, similar in sentiment to Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” was a sleeper fan favorite, not becoming a staple of the Kinks’ live set until a decade later. Davies developed the idea for this song by listening older men reminisce and regret in pubs.

6) “Veronica,” Elvis Costello. Paul McCartney, the co-writer of course of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” penned this tune with Costello. While “Veronica” has a bouncy, British Invasion-type melody, in typical Costello fashion, it’s paired with downcast lyrics. “Veronica,” which was Costello’s highest-charting single, was written about his paternal grandmother, Molly McManus, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. While Mellencamp’s steelworker character in “Minutes to Memories” is filled with memories, tragically Veronica’s have faded away.

5) “100 Years,” Five for Fighting. A solo act in all but name, like Neil Hannon’s the Divine Comedy, Five for Fighting is the work of John Ondrasik. “100 Years” takes the listener from the main character’s teen years deep into old age. It’s a lesson about how seemingly short even the longest lives are.

4) “Father and Son,” Cat Stevens. His birthname was Steven Demetre Georgio–now he’s known as Yusuf Islam–but as Cat Stevens, he movingly wrote about a father who says, “I am old, but I’m happy.” But is he? And while this father has wisdom, he still doesn’t understand his son. Sometimes relationships aren’t destined to be blissful ones, however hard we try.

3) “The Lion This Time,” Van Morrison. Unless you know a lot about Van the Man’s storied career, this song doesn’t seem to belong here. So let me provide the background. Rare for a pop tune as it was written in the 6/8 time signature, “The Lion This Time” is a sequel of sorts of sorts to “Listen to the Lion,” an 11-minute long Morrison masterpiece recorded over 30 years prior. “The Lion This Time” is a standout of his Magic Time album, Morrison’s best collection from the 21st century. Van the Man turned 60 a few months after the release of Magic Time. In a contemporary review for Paste, Andy Whitman wrote of both this song and the album, “You expect to encounter a tired legend, a once-mighty king becalmed and tamed by the miles and years. You find instead an echo of a full-throated roar hanging in the air, the telltale signs of a bloody struggle, and an empty cage. The lion in winter is on the loose.”

And the Belfast Lion is still on the prowl. Last autumn he released his 45th studio album.

2) “Martha,” Tom Waits. Closing Time, Tom Waits debut album, didn’t gather much attention–or sales. But the Eagles noticed, and they recorded “Ol’ 55” from that album for their “On the Border” collection. But an even better song is “Martha.” Waits’ character, Tom Frost, calls an old flame, “Martha,” after forty years apart. They married others, but Frost can’t let go.

I guess that our being together
Was never meant to be
And Martha, Martha
I love you, can’t you see?

Not surprisingly, “Martha” is one of Waits’ most covered compositions.

1) “Hello in There,” John Prine. I’ll let Prine, who as a teen delivered newspapers, tell the story behind this gem. “I delivered to a Baptist old people’s home where we’d have to go room-to-room,” Prine said, “and some of the patients would kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that had come to visit, instead of the guy delivering papers. That always stuck in my head.”

The chorus is haunting yet beautiful.

You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.”

This song is so good it could be used to recruit volunteers for assisted living homes.

Amazingly, all of the lead singers of the songs in this assemblage are still with us, except for Prine, who, after years of poor health, was taken by COVID in 2020.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago’s southern suburbs are the sewer of corrupt Illinois

Posted: February 25, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Blogger pictured in 2016

By John Ruberry

Illinois is a corrupt state. Rankings of the 50 states usually place in Illinois within the top five in the union in regard to public crookedness. 

Surprisingly, as bad as Chicago is, the city’s inner southern suburbs, are even worse in regard to political corruption. It’s the sewer of Illinois.

Sharp-eyed readers will recall I wrote a similar post here at Da Tech Guy several years ago, but the WordPress wormhole seems to have swallowed that entry up. 

So here I am again documenting south suburban Chicago sleaze, mainly because of the antics of Tiffany Henyard, the mayor of Dolton (rhymes with “Walton”), who has been accused of widespread corruption by her own village council. 

But you’ll find graft in nearby communities. More on them later.

Henyard is a double-dipper, a time-dishonored ILL-inois scam. The self-described “Super Mayor” collects $224,000 as a Thornton Township supervisor. But last year, the township’s board passed an ordinance that if voters remove her from office, her successor will earn just $25,000. 

As I wrote recently at DTG, township government in Illinois–a sinecure haven–should be abolished. 

Henyard’s salary as mayor of Dolton is $46,000. The village has 21,000 residents. As for her haul as a township supervisor, 49 of America’s 50 governors have a lower salary than hers.

Henyard, a Democrat, is accused of wasting village money on expensive trips to Atlanta and New York with village staff, wasting money on billboards with her picture. There is even her image in front of Dolton’s village hall. Yep. And I don’t care if you call me racist, it sounds a Third World-like cult of personality. I don’t care–because I’m not racist. Not surprisingly, Henyard is not above using the race card to deflect well-earned criticism. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves because you all are black. You all are black,” Super Mayor said recently in a livestreamed meeting. “And you all [are] sitting up here beating and attacking a black woman that’s in power.”

Henyard has only been mayor of Dolton for three years. She was defeated in a recall election in 2022, but a Cook County judge invalidated the results.

Meanwhile, finances in Dolton are a disaster. A lender is threatening to repossess 13 vehicles, including police cars. It could be at least $5 million in debt. Business owners are accusing Super Mayor of strong-arming them into making political donations to her campaign. Super Mayor is accused of shutting down businesses that didn’t cough up cash.

Speaking of donations, the Illinois attorney general’s office has ordered Henyard’s charity to stop collecting contributions, citing a lack of transparency and more.

Last month Super Mayor visited the White House and met President Joe Biden.

Is that all in regard to Henyard? No, but the FBI is investigating her.

Back to those other south suburbs.

In the 1990s, nearby Dixmoor’s Park District, which at the time had only one tiny tot lot under its jurisdiction, employed 80 people as police officers. Harvey, a poverty-stricken town has a long tradition of graft. While he has not been accused of wrongdoing, Eric Kellogg, who as mayor of Harvey until being voted out in 2019, Kellogg allegedly accepted kickbacks from a strip club that was offering prostitution. His brother was convicted for his role in that scheme. In Calumet City, which borders Dolton on the east, has recent sleaze to answer for. Its mayor is Thaddeus Jones. His wife, Saprina, collects $92,000 in a job working with state grants involved with Cal City. And the mayor’s son, Thaddeus Jr, collects $32,000 from the suburb.

Whose responsible for this debacle? Voters are. Yes, in the invalidated election Dolton voters chose to recall Henyard, but there were many red flags that should have been a sufficient warning to vote otherwise.

As the cliché goes, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Barack Obama famously said, “Elections have consequences.” Indeed they do.

Finally, there is speculation that if Joe Biden backs out of the 2024 presidential election, Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, will jump into the race. On X, Pritzker, who of course earns less in public money than Henyard, regularly rails about the evils of “MAGA Republicans.” But Pritzker is silent about Super Mayor.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Norovirus and my cruise ship trip

Posted: February 18, 2024 by John Ruberry in business, medicine
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By John Ruberry

Okay, let me get say this before I get into the details of our ten-day cruise. Yes, barely, we can afford a cruise. So I’m not bragging about our wealth. Because we have nothing to brag about.

To celebrate an anniversary birthday for Mrs. Marathon Pundit–I’m not going to reveal the year–we departed on a Caribbean cruise earlier this month which concluded last Friday where it began, Fort Lauderdale.

Which cruise line? Let’s just call it Joyful Cruises.

This post is designed to start an honest conversation about cruise ships, one that you will be less likely to find in dinosaur corporate media, largely because cruise ships are major advertisers with them. 

I have no such restraints. Oh, I am not a doctor or any sort of health professional.

On the upside, a cruise makes affordable–barely again, for us–visits to remote places such as Carribean islands. I can drive from my home near Chicago and reach Key West, Florida in a couple of days. I can make it a week-long trip with extended stops. I cannot drive from Key West to the Bahamas. 

The highlight of the cruise for us were the excursions in Charlotte Amalie, US Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, Martinque, and Antigua. Issues with high waves cancelled plan stops at “Joyful Cay” in the Bahamas and Dominica. I understand, snowstorms and hurricanes force highway closures and baseball games are rained out. But according to a cruise Facebook group, those stops were also cancelled on that same Joyful cruise ship, which departed the same day our cruise ended. 

To compensate for the missed stops, our already paid for excursion was refunded and we each receivedc a $75 on-ship credit.

Fewer stops means more time on the ship–more time to interact with other passengers–and more time to become ill.

And people get sick–not just motion sickness–on cruise ships. Norovirus, commonly but mistakenly referred to as “stomach flu,” is a big problem on cruises.

From Today.com last year:

Outbreaks of the stomach bug have surged on cruise ships this year, reaching the highest levels seen in 10 years. Since January 2023, there have been 13 confirmed norovirus outbreaks [My note–there were just 12, one of those was salmonella and E. coli] on cruise ships under U.S. jurisdiction — that’s more outbreaks in six months than there have been during any full year since 2012, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More…

Most recently, a norovirus outbreak in June on the Viking Neptune sickened 110 passengers (over 13% of the ship’s guests) and nine crew members with vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramps, according to the CDC. The CDC has tracked outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness on cruise ships through its Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) since 1994. 

Several weeks prior, a Celebrity Summit cruise ship reported an outbreak of norovirus that sickened more than 150 passengers and 25 crew members, per the CDC. It was the third norovirus outbreak on a Celebrity Cruises vessel this year. Another popular cruise line, Royal Caribbean International, has reported four outbreaks since January.

Late on the eighth day of our Joyful Cruise, Mrs. Marathon Pundit became quite ill, and her symptoms were fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. I visited the medical center of the ship on her behalf, the medical staffer explained that my wife would need to be confined to our stateroom–really, it was a tiny cabin—for 24 hours. Or longer if her symptoms continued. Notably, he didn’t say “quarantine.” Per CDC protocol, my wife was required to complete a form about her illness and conditions. He provided her with anti-diarrheal medication, the charge for it was $14. 

A day later it was my turn to get sick. How sick? 

While sitting on the toilet doing, well, you know, I took advantage of the compact bathroom in our stateroom, which allowed me to simultaneously and painfully vomit into the sink. A two-for-one cruise ship special! And four days later the soreness remains. The lower back muscular pain from the unnatural vomit-induced contortions severely challenged my fit body.

I didn’t bother to visit the medical center–I already knew what was wrong with me. And I didn’t need fill out a report. As we disembarked our ship in Fort Lauderdale, I overheard a few other passengers complain about “stomach flu,” and there was a mention of it on the unofficial cruise Facebook page organized by another passenger.

Getting sick with norovirus on a cruise is surprisingly common. Last year, the Miami Herald reported, “Some people know it as the ‘cruise ship virus’ because it’s often the cause of over 90% of diarrhea outbreaks on cruise ships, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Neither Mrs. Marathon Pundit nor I were officially diagnosed with norovirus. But that 90 percent CDC statistic works for me. 

Yes, norovirus on cruise ships is also an official thing, a federal thing. The CDC even has a Facts About Noroviruses on Cruise Ships page on its website.

So far in the seven weeks of 2024, the CDC has reported official illness outbreaks on two cruise ships, one was confirmed as norovirus.

On the flipside, norovirus is not a cruise ship-exclusive bug, it’s far more common in schools and nursing homes, according to the CDC. 

The CDC reports on norovirus cruise ships outbreaks are incomplete, because they don’t include people like me who silently suffered in their staterooms, or passengers who didn’t exhibit symptoms until after disembarking. 

Still, not everyone gets sick on cruise ships. Most don’t. And of the folks we mingled with on our Joyful cruise, most said, even after over a dozen cruises, that they’ve never gotten sick.

Where did we go wrong? Out of convenience, we ate all but one of our cruise meals–three of them most days–in the crowded “hot bunk” style set up in the buffet dining hall, even though our cheapskate package allowed us, with a reservation and paying an eighteen percent “cover charge,” to dine in some of the restaurants. Mrs. Marathon Pundit, who you’ll remember got sick first, spent a lot of time in the ship’s spa.

Our cruise ship boasts that it can hold over 3,600 passengers–our trip was sold out–and it has a crew of over 1,300. Most of the crew sleep in compact steerage rooms in bunk beds. Perhaps that’s too many people in too small of a space for too long of a time.

Our two port cancellations increased the odds of illness. You’re more likely to get sick with any bug on a massive cruise ship as opposed to a beach or a rain forest. 

I’m not a germophobe. During the COVID pandemic, I was against the lockdowns and mask mandates. While I don’t have any specific suggestions, I believe cruise lines can do better, even if that means simply informing passengers that they face a norovirus risk. COVID warnings, many that have turned out to be exaggerated, have desensitized us to health advisories, so it’s no surprise that the handwashing stations outside the buffet halls were little used. Washing hands of course is a good thing.

My guess was that the median age of the passengers on our cruise was 65–and most were overweight. That meets my definition of a vulnerable population. 

When I returned home, I entered “norovirus” into the Joyful Cruises website search box. I received just two matches.

Do better.

Will we go on a cruise again? Perhaps on a smaller ship. And not for ten days. Supposedly a norovirus vaccine is in the works. If it’s available and we decide to head to sea again, I’m taking that jab.

I’m going out for a run now, despite that back-muscle pain from the puking.

And once again, Happy Birthday Mrs. Marathon Pundit!

John Ruberry, pictured on that cruise, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Journalism’s “extinction event” will lead to new and better choices for news

Posted: February 4, 2024 by John Ruberry in blogs, business, culture, internet/free speech, media, News/opinion, opinion/news
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By John Ruberry

Big News is having a bad time of it. Paul Farhi, who accepted a buyout from the Washington Post, asked in the Atlantic–a magazine that is propped up by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs–“Is American Journalism Headed Toward an ‘Extinction-Level Event?'”

With massive layoffs not only at the Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, but also the Los Angeles Times–and with Sports Illustrated being probably as dead as the Detroit Lions’ Super Bowl dreams–the answer may be a loud “Yes.” 

Meanwhile, in Democrat-controlled Illinois, the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, created by legislation in 2021, is betting on the dinosaurs, that is, traditional media. Last week, the task force issued its recommendations for journalism in the Prairie State.

“Its proposals are mostly about getting taxpayers to pony up and putting government in control,” Mark Glennon says in Wirepoints, “[with] no mention of journalism’s own failures.”

Indeed, there are many failures. The glaringly obvious one–unless you work in mainstream media–is that journalists are pushing a narrative to score love from the 20 percent of the population who are far-leftists. Even in Illinois, a blue state, there are not many ultra lefties–they might make up 25 percent of the populace here.

Among the recommendations from the tax force include a whole slew of tax credits for local news sources, including for subscriptions, businesses who advertise with them, as well as for local news providers hiring reporters.

Every one of the recommendations from the task force are wretched ideas that I could eviscerate easily one by one, but to save time, I’ll move on. But not yet. Besides these tax credits, the task force recommends exempting local news sources from Illinois’ corporate income tax. 

Some states have no corporate income tax.

News should be a mass market product, not a niche offering, but the liberals in charge have turned it into that. Again, I’ll be brief. Most Americans–and yes, most Illinoisans–believe there are only two genders, and most had doubts about the COVID propaganda of 2020-21. And most of them are fed up with the lamestream media minimizing the ongoing crisis with rampant crime.

Yeah, I get it, the internet has hurt local news providers. But they didn’t adapt. The same with Big News.

Let’s talk about extinction events. Real ones. Extinction is usually portrayed as mass death, yet it’s also a mass life event. 

Following the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, the lystrosaurus, a runt buck-toothed freak reptile, thrived, along with many other emergent species. Soon, geologically speaking that is, came the dinosaurs. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, different small animals, mammals and birds among them–as well as fungus–prospered.

There’s never been more media–or more information–than there is now. Print newspapers are sometimes called dinosaur media.  I believe they should always be named as such. Among the new media are of course blogs such as this one, YouTube and Rumble video channels, streaming services, podcasts, and so much more. A consumer of information is now faced with a daunting challenge. Because finding enough time to sift through all of the choices–let alone absorb all of them–is impossible. 

Last Thursday, Chicago Tribune reporters held a one-day strike against its owner, Alden Capital, a hedge fund firm. “We often say, ‘Newspapers are not dying, they’re being killed,'” Gregory Pratt, a committed left-wing Trib journalist, told WGN-TV. 

Wrong, Pratt. Newspapers are being killed because journalists are emitting an unpopular product and looking down on their customers.

Let’s return to the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force. 

In its rancid report there is a map of Illinois. Counties with few media choices are marked in that map in different shades of red. One of those is McHenry, which is northwest of Chicago. I know of two great news sites reporting about McHenry County: Cal Skinner’s McHenry County Blog and the Lake and McHenry County Scanner–a suburban answer to the phenomenally successful CWB Chicago. I’m certain that the task force didn’t include these sites in their elitist media tally. 

Another fabulous Illinois news source is the aforementioned Wirepoints.

Big creatures usually don’t survive natural mass extinction events. Small ones, nimble animals, find opportunities in an altered world.

Remember, lystrosaurus made way for larger and grander beasts, such as the Tyrannosaurus rex. Today’s blog may become tomorrow’s News Corp–the parent company of Fox News, Dow Jones, HarperCollins, and so many more.

Humans will always crave information–it’s in our DNA–it is just a matter of how it’s delivered to us. We’ve come a very long away from when the evening news was a caveman squatting in front of a bonfire telling whoever was sitting in front of him how that day’s hunt went. If that prehistoric anchorman delivered fake news–“I killed six mammoths today with my bare hands!”–his audience simply walked away. Kind of like what consumers of Big News are doing now.

The dinosaur media–and the Illinois Journalism Task Force–doesn’t get it.

John Ruberry blogs regularly from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

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