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Thank Heaven...for Little Girls

It's so tiring to keep up with all the amazing developments in the Middle East. I need to come up for air and find something light. This winter I am putting the cold dry air to good use by walking to downtown more than in the past. It takes about 40 minutes, the back way, which is mostly dirt single-track. How nice it is to have a trail in town. Walking in town, away from traffic, is more interesting than an artificial hike in a boring forest. First we hung out at the coffee shop, where Coffee Girl (my kelpie dog) charmed the socks off 90% of the customers. (And I tend to think there is something wrong with the remaining 10%.) Then we headed over to the food co-op (blush) where I bought all of one thing. Today I decided to wait, since there were a dozen kids' bicycles outside; they were all inside, stocking up on something. They all came out at once. Immediately a half dozen girls, 8-10 years old, were cooing and giggling and fawning over Coffee Girl, and oh (!) how she glo

A Nation of Non-Wussies

The punditry and politicians in Western democracies are offering advice to Egyptians, as fast as they can type or talk. It is sheer presumptuousness.  They offer noble-sounding platitudes about "orderly change" and "stability" and "dialogue." Who do they think the Egyptians are rebelling against: high-minded English of the Victorian Age? You don't get rid of a dictator by gradual reforms. The fact that Western advice takes the form of meaningless platitudes shows that Western pundits and politicians are in denial -- no pun intended -- about the kind of government we have been sending billions of dollars to, over the last thirty years. It also covers their own crimes.   Listen to their sanctimonious advice about keeping demonstrations peaceful. Did America use a non-violent approach to throwing off oppression in 1776? What country did? What gives Westerners the right to pass judgment on the Arabs' revolution? The only merit that Westerners can c

The Romance of Revolution

The excitement in the Middle East has forked up that mouldering compost heap of half-forgotten quotes that is this old man's mind. First I thought back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 or 1980. A feminist from the USA went over to Iran -- why, I don't know. Did she really think that mullahs and ayatollahs believed in "You've come a long way, baby!", and that she would help craft a new society? Maybe she thought she would at least get enough publicity to lead to a career as a professional feminist; after all, fellow travelers in the Media were eagerly hoping for a modern day version of Emma Goldman in the heady days of the Bolshevik Revolution. If memory serves, the American feminist was told to get out of Iran.   Other famous revolutions started coming to mind. What was that quote from the poet Wordsworth about the intoxication of hope in the early days of the French Revolution, and something about being young? I tried BrainyQuotes dotcom. What a worthless webs

Echo of Gdansk?

The Iron Curtain was lifted about 20 years ago. If you are old enough to remember it at all, do you remember how unexpected, sudden, and easy it seemed? It didn't seem real. Why hadn't the possibility of Communism suddenly unraveling been predicted by the Media, presidential candidates, foreign policy experts, or learned professors? Things are happening fast in the greater Middle East these days. Is it crazy to expect something really big to happen, despite the rather modest events so far? Remember how the protests in the Gdansk Poland shipyard started off modestly around 1981? I don't think anyone should get carried away and expect Islamic countries in that part of the world to suddenly become "normal." People in the West might start reading wildly hopeful reports about no-more-torture, democracy, women's rights, legalized wine in restaurants, and scientifically-designed playgrounds for children, but recall that most revolutions end up under the thumb of s

A Thousand Words

The other day I wrote about our financial problems in light of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If nothing else it was fun to consider the irony, considering who the current president is. But the other day I saw a word applied to our financial problems that I've never seen before: pensioners are cannibalizing the young. (Sorry, I forgot the source; it might have been myBudget360.com.) A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words. This was a case in which one word was worth a thousand words. This has never happened before to me, as a reader. American Baby Boomers inherited the mightiest industry in the world; we bequeath a hollowed-out wreck. We frolicked in the freedom of the 1960s and 1970s; we leave the youngsters a militarized-security-police state. Our parents showed us what a stable nuclear family was like; we raised the young in a bombed-out divorce culture. Just think how cheap it was to go to college or buy a house when Baby Boomers were young; now look

Chilly Bicycle Ride

Ice sheet, bicycle shorts, and jersey drying out in the morning.

Four Paws Four Wheeling

  When I first saw this machine invading my sacred grassland I was disgusted. But I only saw the machine, not the dogs. When I finally saw them and how much fun they were having, I walked over and had a long and friendly conversation with the fellow.  Is there any form of transportation that dogs don't love, as long as they can share it with their man? His machine was quiet and he was using the land respectfully.

Finch in Winter?

Recall that it's all I can do to maintain this blog's infallibility on sex, politics, and religion. So my bird identifications are prone to occasional error. The twigs and chilly finch made me think of all the brisk, dry, and sunny days we've been having this winter. My favorite winter.

The Politics of Pigskin

Suspense is building in the sports world, now that we're down to four teams in the football playoffs; except of course for a few soul-less philistines, anti-American Europhiles who prefer their version of "football", and millions of wives who prefer ice dancing at the Olympics to the NFL playoffs. But the drama of athletic competition can be appreciated on another level: sometimes a sports championship captures the zeitgeist , the spirit of the Age. There was a classic and famous photograph of the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series circa 1984, as Detroit and the automobile industry were making a comeback from the most brutal recession in decades. More recently the New Orleans Saints starting playing well in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of that city. Besides being a battle between Good and Evil, the upcoming contest between the Green Bay Packers (the Good) and the Chicago Bears (the... well, you guess) symbolizes the contest between two polit

North Africa

The world seems to have been caught by surprise by the revolution in Tunisia. For Netflix customers it was an excellent time to rewatch the movie, Battle of Algiers , made in the mid-1960s in Italy and Algiers. It is a remarkable movie that seems so timely today. Of course anything is an improvement over the American media's treatment of the "War on Terror." It's been a long time since I gave any thought to North Africa. It hasn't exactly been insignificant throughout history: the Desert Fox in World War II, the Moors invading Spain in the Middle Ages, Carthage destroying Italian small farmers and then finally the Roman Republic in classical times. Now we watch to see how pervasive revolution in Arab countries becomes. Israel must be the most nervous country about all this. It would be prefer to be surrounded by American client states. America likes to pretend it's pushing democracy in the Mideast, but real democracy would produce Islamic governments that we