Here's the Plan
The web page has become the digital equivalent of inviting people over and tieing them down to watch home movies or slides. Here is a picture of me standing in front of a fountain somewhere in Europe. Oh, look, there's Fred pretending to push the Leaning Tower of Pizza...ha ha.
I am going to download (or upload) pictures now and then randomly selected from holiday snaps elsewhere on this computer and try to make sense of it. Call it evolution or whatever. Oh, and sometimes, if you don't know what the picture actually is, it's probably weather buoy guts - ask my husband for the technical details.
I'm hoping my skills with electronic media will improve but I am an old dog so don't expect any serious digital wizardry unless it comes in a photo shop hand-holding program.
There will also be the learning experience of editing pics to actually fit this format.
March 28
In the 19th Century, South America was on an equal footing with North America. The potential for growth and power was on par with the United States. Then something happened. That is why the liberator of a continent is a forgotten statue in a park in Paris where few people see him or even know his name.
Want to know what happened? Read history, read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorges Louis Borges, anything written by someone other than a fan of George Washington.
March 29th
One of the great joys and frustrations traveling is overhearing conversations. It's taking a snapshot of someone else's mind. Wandering around a place like the forum, palatine hill and other bits of left-overs from the early Roman times, you hear the range of myths, legends and cartoon versions of maybe what happened. My favorite rant is about Gladiators. They didn't fight to the death, usually, because they were a lot like race horses - a huge investment in training and manpower went in to making a decent Gladiator. If someone wanted a death match, they had to pretty much buy the fighters. Yeah, okay, the idea of owning another person was still there but in the case of the Gladiators, it was more like a really extreme football or hockey contract.
The people who died on a regular basis were criminals - almost always the first billing on a day at the arena. Then exotic animals and then the gladiator fights. Sometimes the gladiators were executioners and hunted the wild animals. Depended on the show and their agents.
It wasn't so much decadent as a simpler, more brutal vaudeville.
April 2nd
Not the sort of picture usually associated with Munich - home of the gigantic beerhalls, bauhaus architecture and fiberglass lions in lederhosen...but more of that later. It is also home to the politest football hooligans in the world. Chanting their fight songs and roaring over some victory as they march down the sidewalk. Stopping and waiting quietly at the corner for the light to turn to "walk"...and starting up where the chant left off.
This was once the house of a well-to-do family in the region. For a study in contrast, go from this to Dachau. Cliche, I know, but one of those unavoidable things. Once you get past the past, it is a great place. Did you know the nazi party held it's organizational meetings on the 2nd floor of the big old Haufbrauhaus where tourists hang out now to listen to oom-pah-pah bands, chug the only crappy beer in Germany and vomit in the historic bathrooms? Visitors fly thousands of miles just to puke on the geniune cobblestones of old Munich town. This is why Germans flock away from their cities: not just to lie naked on Greek beaches and unknowingly offend those locals, but to escape the North American and UK tourists who have taught the world how to be obnoxious when abroad.
April 22
Just when I thought I'd figured out how to do some simple things and maybe get into a routine, wouldn't ya know it, life happens. Could be worse. Death would be worse and that, so far this year, hasn't found a way into my daily routine. But that is another story entirely. We rush past things and sometimes opt for the famililar. In different parts of the world, the famililar takes on a variety of faces. A fast food place or a pub. Culture is everything. I'll take the guiness & kidney pie any day over sweet onion, teriyaki chicken wrap.
And We're Back
May 29
Sometimes life pops up and gets in the way of being a virtuous virtual citizen. Sometimes the best intentions get sidetracked by fat-assed lethargy - I have always accepted the fact I am a victim of inertia...it is an unrecognized affliction and strikes without warning. I'm thinking of forming a support group but can't seem to get it together; its so much easier to play dicewars.
A small digression, in the interests of putting socks on the children's feet - in the usual indirect way of first putting them in my sock drawer from whence the wee ones filch when they forgot to toss their own into their last load of laundry or have lost somewhere in the pile of the rest of the dirty clothes spilling out of their closets...these are big kids, I should point out, who are more than old enough to do their own laundry - I'm doing a little bit of experimenting on going through the "freelance from home and earn millions" sort of websites. So far they are mostly the electronic version of aluminum siding salesmen from days of yore. Sign up for free
"BUT for just $2.99 have a free 2 day trial of the super dooper really terrific membership where we give you the best secrets and all the troooly real ways to make your moneee grow and grow and grow"
If I knew how to put little stars firing out from a swirly frame all around that paragraph, it would come pretty close to the total cheese effect.
May 29
A month almost over, the sun is shining and what to do next? Rip out little weeds by their roots? Shower and get ready to bus band nerds from school to school, vacuum the carpet and clean the bird cage? Maybe just putter on this page and paste in a picture of the view from someone else's front window (but it's almost the same thing that I see except I'm about three blocks back from the beach). Them thar's the Olympic mountains, Warshin-ton U. S. , eh.
Part of the world's longest undefended border. On that side of the border there is a nuclear submarine base and some honkin big blow-em-up-good goods; a huge army with all the newest, keenest gun things; and every citizen carries at least one handgun with several on the night table by their beds. On this side of the border the newest vessel in the navy is over 15 years old--this isn't counting the 30 year old diesel electric submarines the gov't just bought from England because, well, they still aren't seaworthy--; the nearest army installation is 1,000 miles away on the other side of the Rocky Mountains and most people here have Canadian Tire money and a couple of timbits in their pockets. Maybe a swiss army knife. But all the guns are pointed at us. Like we're the threat and they have all the reasons to be afraid of what we might go charging across the border to over-run the place if they let their guard down for one second. "Surrender or we'll pelt you with day-old double-chocolate donut holes and unleash our secret weapon, a fire-hose that sprays steaming hot coffee--double/double, of course."
And only a true Canadian will get the joke there - not that it's all that funny, just something we like to think of as our own. Even if the franchise is now owned by Japanese interests.
August 17
What's more Canadian than beer. Especially in what we've allowed to be done to it without a whimper. Allowed major commercial interests to amalgamate, buy up, adulterate and dilute something we used to be pretty good at making (and self sufficient) until it doesn't resemble the original product. Then, when it's all done, because said commercial mega-corps slap a patriotic label on it and pour more money into advertising than ever they did into producing a decent, palatable product, we cheer them and take the swill to heart as if it were something we really should be proud of.
There are so many decent small breweries working in the communities producing a great product and the vast majority of Canucks are scared off by the fact that it has flavour and substance. They can start off with something lighter, if that's what they want but how the hell can these twits call themselves real men if they can't handle a beer that actually tastes like something. Maybe they feel it's because they have to be tough to willingly drink something that tastes like mammal urine. And gives them horrible headaches.
Don't understand it, which is weird because I don't really drink. But if I did, you can staple my ass with maple leafs if I'd ever willingly drink Blue or Canadian or Moosehead or Keiths. It's all the same piss made in the same vat, just comes out different taps.
