Snarky newcomer opines, basely

Sweet land of liberty 

By LEAH CASNER
Posted 12/23/24

I’m rather tired of the rich and talented.

I’m sick of the double Ph.D.s plus M.D.s marrying each other in the Museum of Modern Art they’ve rented for the occasion before …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in
Snarky newcomer opines, basely

Sweet land of liberty 

Posted

I’m rather tired of the rich and talented.

I’m sick of the double Ph.D.s plus M.D.s marrying each other in the Museum of Modern Art they’ve rented for the occasion before flying the entire wedding guest list, 2,000 of the world’s most talented people, to New Zealand for a month-long skiing reception, during which they will all be filmed as extras for the latest “Lord of the Rings” re-pre-sequel, which will get them all Oscars for best and most attractive supporting crowd.

Which they will accept on their way to pick up their Nobel prizes for pioneering brain implants, between acting as cabinet members to assorted world governments, and ambassadors to others while pursuing irregular law degrees and writing humble bragging bestsellers after their sex tapes were “leaked, ” excerpted in the New Yorker and the Paris Review.  

Meanwhile they are quietly acting as negotiators helping to free hostages in the Midwest. And then a quick break to ride the Mongolian Derby and to be finalists for the National Book Awards, but glad not to win, so they can maintain their status as amateurs. 

The talented are not sitting on their couch missing their third event this week because their noses are too stuffy to be in public. They never have stuffy noses. They aren’t annoying themselves to death by the way they pull tissues out of the tissue box—why does it always take me TWO tugs? How wimpy am I that I cannot do one single, straightforward, decisive, unneurotic tug?   

I went to a school with achieving and talented people, but I suspect we weren’t hanging around with the same crowd.  I don’t recall seeing them at the Little Campus Happy Hours I frequented instead of attending the required whole-college lectures, or at the late parties where we burned Ralph’s Euclid’s “Elements,” Volume 2, Books III-IX in the fireplace when we ran out of firewood. Right. Ralph wasn’t happy with us, and I rather think he’s one of them, now.

Despite my nonaccomplishments, that college part of my past still intrudes, crowding me like that guy on the subway who accused me of sitting on him when I plunked down onto the three inches left on the two-person seat he was occupying, with the elegance of an odoriferous water buffalo. Instead of closing his manspread, he squealed, called me the C-word and darkly predicted that I would never get married, which would be news to the guy I had been married to for 40 years by then, and made me wonder confusedly how that was relevant to expecting people on the subway to be polite.  But it did demonstrate his logic was as convoluted as his etiquette.  

Last May, an offspring of a tree from that campus, a tree I had lounged under often, perhaps while recovering from a hangover, came to Honesdale. (1)

“In the years leading up to the American Revolution, large Liberty Trees  were used as symbolic meeting places for ‘the Sons of Liberty’ throughout the 13 colonies. Seedlings from the last remaining tree in Annapolis, Maryland, have produced hundreds of descendants that will be planted throughout Pennsylvania over the next several years,”  including in Central Park in Honesdale. 

The Honesdale Liberty Tree seedling died, possibly from an excess of love (2), in about a week.

I’m trying not to consider that ominous. 

(1) www.honesdaleborough.com/america250pas-liberty-tree-planting-ceremony/ 

(2) “Part of this issue was there were many different folks involved in caring for the tree, and I think, over-cared for... but we will make sure to make it the borough’s responsibility going forward.” www.tricountyindependent.com/story/news/local/2024/07/29/america250pa-replace-failed-liberty-tree-sapling-central-park-honesdale/74531093007/

SNOB

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here