Charles Lindbergh

 The Spirit of St. Louis. "Lucky" Lindbergh. First transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. These were all things Charles Lindbergh was known for, but later on in life he was disavowed as a national hero because he made a speech about the Germans and seemed to sympathize with the Nazis during WWII. A classic example of someone labeled a "hero" in American history but with a little digging and background you saw that he lived an eccentric life, was sucked up into the hero culture that American society thrives on, and died with ill reputation. Life is not all about fame and making it on TV or being known for something, but nowadays it's increasingly more important. We are conditioned from birth to celebrate heroes and ignore the common people who aren't special, but the ironic thing is that the mass majority of us will never be special, were born into obscurity and won't ever be known for anything, yet we let the lucky ones who do get all the star treatment and soak up all the good stuff, in hopes that we will somehow ourselves rise to those ranks in the future. Anyway, the story of "Lucky" Charles Lindbergh, or at least a different side of it than everyone is used to seeing, was detailed nicely in Bill Bryson's book "One Summer" about the summer of 1927, almost 100 years ago. That's the cool thing about history: the characters are different, the technology is (much ) different now that it was then, but the same human ideas and themes persist. There were movies back then, just silent movies (including the "It Girl" Clara Bow; there were war heroes (Lindberg), there was baseball already, there were presidents (Herbet Hoover and Calvin Coolidge, who were both as Bryson described at best eccentric presidents but at worst really detrimental to their country due to their pride and personal agendas), there were mobsters (Al Capone, who everyone just accepted as kind of a cool guy, part of the entertainment industry and paying off the Chicago police). It's fascinating what America was like back then. 

As the Summer of 2024 arrives and comes out in full force, the smells of people on the bus and on the street grow much more difficult to stomach; MJ warned me about them but it suddenly got really bad; there are people who just get on the bus smelling like they haven't showered in days, and it's accentuated by the excessive, simmering heat. I once worked at a law firm in New York City where one of the associates I worked with, whose dad was also a lawyer, told a partner not to take the subway in New York City because that's where the common people were (this was in September, so the worst of the heat waves in summer had passed, but now I get it). Just like in Parasite where there are 2 different societies, there's the society that takes the bus and subways and public transportation, and there's another society that takes private cars, private jets, rides first class, and stays away from the stench of the street. That's present in Korean society, in many societies around the world, but especially in America. But we continue the system in hopes that we or our children will one day (if you work hard enough!) reach the first class, living off the fat of the land. That's the dream they sell us, and for some people it does come true, if you work hard enough you can make it, but statistically not everyone is going to make it; we can't all be Charles Lindberghs and do something special.