Milestones

9 October 2011

About twenty years ago, I spent a month in Argentina, visiting a high-school friend, practicing my Spanish, and getting a socially inept gringo’s view of Buenos Aires. If I want to remember exactly which year I was there, I look up a biography of Rudolf Hess, the Nazi who had been second in line to succeed Hitler. Why? Because the month I spent in Argentina was the month in which Hess died in prison, and one of my memories from that trip was the photocopied, anonymous fliers posted all over the city, with his picture and the caption:

HESS
ha muerto
Ya es libre

Only one of these flyers had the added graffito “en el infierno”.

• Later: In defense of the debt-ceiling deal
• Earlier: Not exactly a resolution, but