New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Colin McEnroe: On vacation, stray thoughts and smoked meat
You see, this is why we go on vacation.
I’m in Montreal right now, and, frankly, Connecticut, I don’t give a damn about all the things a good newspaper columnist should be worrying about.
I’m mainly concerned with what I’m going to have for lunch. Montreal is famous for a long list of things, and one of them is smoked meat, and if you come back not having eaten any, certain people look at you funny. The Groton-based food writer Lee White is already yanking my chain about this via email.
It’s a problem. Unlike many problems I will mention in this column, it’s a problem I can solve. By eating smoked meat.
OK, the UTC-Raytheon merger. If there were betting markets weighing the question of which American corporate entity is most likely to create a weapons system that becomes self-aware and subsequently sees its interests as being in conflict with those of humankind, the new Raytheon would have become, overnight, the prohibitive favorite.
Am I saying the most enduring bounty from the merger will be, a la Skynet and Terminator, a race of machine overlords that will pursue with fire and fury the extirpation of humanity? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
And when you look at it that way, it doesn’t make much sense to worry about tolls. Better to enjoy the sunshine and the fruit of the vine, as Orpheus sings in “Hadestown.”
Stray thought: Now that “Game of Thrones” has, in several ways, come up empty, Elizabeth Warren, formerly its adoring fan, should instead investigate the above-cited, Tony-winning musical, which does a far better job of articulating the questions embedded into the 2020 campaign, right down to a King of the Underworld who sings “Why We Build the Wall,” a song written years before the rise of Trump. “We build the wall to keep us free,” croaks Hades. Meanwhile, topside, Orpheus intones a simple, perfect statement of democratic socialism: “And if no one takes too much, there will always be enough.”
Sorry about that. Stray thoughts are a baked-in hazard of travel.
Why are the UTC-Raytheon executives — mere placeholders for life-draining robot overlords, I remind you — moving to Boston? For roughly the same reason Aetna executives tried to move to New York City. (Let’s not forget that CVS, when it swallowed Aetna like a big fat unreimbursed prescription pill, put a 10-year kibosh on that idea. How’s that for a paradox. CVS, the relentless, remorseless homogenizer of the American landscape and despoiler of your local drug store with its beloved soda fountain, saved part of Hartford’s unique — if somewhat boring — terroir.)
Corporate satraps seek prestigious environments, and the Silicon Valley monster has persuaded them that innovation happens when clever people rub elbows while consuming lattes or jostling for position at a craft beer pub. So, Boston.
Connecticut is full of suburbs, which are full of people who dislike and avoid Connecticut’s cities. This is unlikely to result in the kind of dynamism that lures corporate headquarters.
Montreal is having a construction boom so big and so persistent that Montrealers — who like to fret — are worrying about everything from rising rents to labor shortages to the destruction of neighborhoods.
The skyline has more cranes than an origami convention. The last time I saw such a thing was in 2017 in Belfast, where 22 new major buildings, including eight hotels, were rising up simultaneously.
The two cities are quite similar, especially in the sense of having very tenuously patched up differences that will never entirely recede. Although Belfast began to boom as part of the so-called “peace dividend,” you don’t have to spend much time there to understand that the “Troubles” have not vanished so much as been converted (mostly) from criminal to civil jousting.
And in Quebec, the air has leaked out of the French separatist balloon, but that doesn’t stop its National Assembly from repeatedly passing unintentionally hilarious, non-binding resolutions commanding shopkeepers and barkeeps to greet all customers in French instead of the ambiguous “Bonjour-hi!” which is exactly how I was greeted an hour ago at a coffee shop down the street. I’m not naming names. I’m no rat.
What should one conclude? I think: that love and hate are often suspended, side by side, in the spinal fluid of a place. And, if held in the right balance, they create energy. If you love a place enough to fight over it, maybe you can be taught to love constructively.
And harmless feuds are good. Montrealers argue about bagels: St-Viateur vs. Fairmount, the way New Havenites fight about pizza (Sallys vs. Pepe’s vs. Modern). There are also smokedmeat battles. It was a big deal when Justin Trudeau ate at The Main instead of Schwartz’s, right across the street.
I’m getting hungry. I leave it to you to decide whether this column is full of profound truths or stray thoughts. Or whether that distinction matters.
I leave it to you to decide whether this column is full of profound truths or stray thoughts.