Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The Treatise of Versailles

A quickie on the way to quiz night: Have you ever seen "Safe Men" with Sam Rockwell? I saw it last night and cannot believe I had never seen it before. Very funny in a mellow, interesting way. A real tonic for the Wedding Crashers/40 Year Old Virgin/Will Farrel overdosed.

Back at the Broad Street job today. Saw the kids and yes, they are junior high or late elementary level. The amount of money, the millions and millions of dollars being spent on the underground pool, the medallioned marble lobby floor, etc. for these kids, it's nearly obscene. Maybe it is. You think "rich people" and you think BMW's, Mercedes, second homes... It is so far beyond that. So very far beyond that.
I've had a couple jobs parking cars over the years; as a doorman in a private Boston building I used to park this guy's Jaguar. I always tell people the experience of driving his Jaguar was wholly different than what I thought of as "driving." Driving that and driving a regular car were two similar but clearly different things. A Clydesdale and a zebra.

It is becoming that way here with our lives. My boss is expecting a baby next month. His child will arguably share no more common ground with these children in the school he is building than the sons and daughters of the masons who built Versailles had with the children who grew up within it.

Is this what anybody, ever, had in mind for this country?

No comments:

Post a Comment