Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

It was a creative day, in a few small ways.  I woke up from a dream in which I was teaching, and got an idea for a great game, emphasizing repetition of the ‘th’ sound, which all non-English speakers have trouble with, but it’s not  difficult to say, it’s just repetition that’s needed.
Then, I wrote a short poem.  It started off as as a response to a Facebook comment, somebody saying “You’re all so fake!” which I think is a real bullshit thing to say because it implies that only the commenter, out  of all the people  on  Earth, is not.  It’s like people saying “Wake up, Sheeple!”  Just shut up, you are not a damned alarm clock.
It drew a response (the poem did) which said  it was as if “Holden Caulfield had written a version of The Who’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ badly.  He may have meant that as a putdown, but I liked it.  I loved ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ is a great song.  Also, the comment showed that he understood what I  was saying, whether he thought the poem was badly  written or not.  So, success.
Then, I finally, (after years and years) figured out how to  jump back in time to  previous blogs, and was surprised to realize how long I’ve been writing this thing.  I’m in my 8th year.  Read a post about a day when Sam was 8 and Isabel 4, a spilled drink and some crying, which made me laugh.  The reason this is  a major breakthrough is it’s going to make it very  easy for me to write a ‘best of’ book.
Also took a walk downtown to go to the Post Office.  The amazing thing about Prague is that now that I’m not a tourist, and don’t necessarily  get into  the center  more than once every couple  of  weeks, whenever I do do I see something different.  A new building finished or  a new construction project started, a marketplace where no  marketplace was before (cash free which gave  it a futuristic feel, but correspondingly overpriced), a new statue, etc…
Seriously, the city changes that fast.

Once again, a major story is being practically  ignored by the MSM so, just to piss into the wind, I’m going to talk about it.  If you Google ‘Sam Ronan arrested’ you  see an article from the Dayton Daily News, which is shorter than this blog’s going to be, and things from Twitter and Yahoo.  If I wasn’t on  the Bernie grapevine, I might not have  heard about it at all.

SSam Ronan is a progressive activist who ran for the chairmanship of the DNC, but got shunted aside by Keith Ellison as the more tenable progressive choice, but Ellison lost the spot to Tom Perez, who represents everything the party  should not be about, and then he ran for congress, as a Republican, just to mess with everybody.  You might say I’m a fan.
Anyway, he got pulled over by the cops, threatened, and arrested.  The  whole thing is on video.  Here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/springboro-police-draw-tasers-arrest-191603287.html

Of course, he wasn’t murdered, as many black motorists have been (Ronan is white) and those cases are even more egregious, but this represents a dark and dangerous escalation.

The only charges brought against him have to do with resisting arrest, and the police, from everything I’ve read up to this point, had no original charge against him whatsoever.  So, my conclusion is that this was a clear cut case of political intimidation.

The basic legal principle was established in the Magna Carta in 1215, over 800 years ago.  The police can’t just arrest you for no reason at all.  Of course, in 1215 it had to do with what the king  could or couldn’t due to nobles, but, in theory at least,  we’ve evolved  a bit since then.
And yet that’s exactly what they did.  Put him in handcuffs and took him away.  For no  reason at all.

Anthony Bourdain’s death surprised me and shocked me.  Perhaps we will  find out more in  the coming days about why he killed himself.  I’ll be surprised if  we don’t.  Still, I  am surprised.

It struck me that he had the  perfect life.  He got to travel to  exotic countries, sample all the great food, and talk to interesting people.  I enjoyed his TV show.  The food was only half of it.  It worked really great as travelogue.
The thing I liked about him is that he was a celebrity chef who seemed to be a genuinely nice guy.  I  do not care for the Gordon Ramsey types, always yelling at people and insulting them.

I was a bit surprised (pleasantly so) to realize how important he was to so many people.  Everybody on  my Facebook feed is talking about it – it’s Rock Star  level – and I’m glad to see that.  A lot of people  talked about his book and how much  it inspired them.  I suppose that should go on  my reading list.

re suicide, though.  I don’t really understand, have  never been seriously tempted, but, with proper disclaimers that I feel bad for family and friends, etc., I don’t take an absolutist position. I don’t know that it’s always the wrong choice. I don’t think all  suicides are the same.

When an 18 year old kid commits suicide because they were bullied at school or their girlfriend ditched them, I see that as a tragedy.  They gave up before the race had even started, they thought they knew life and were rejecting it, but they didn’t know life at all.
When somebody over 60 commits suicide, like Bourdain, Robin Williams, Hunter S. Thompson, or Ernest Hemingway, I figure they knew what they were doing, they had their reasons.   I feel bad we lost them, but it was their choice.
So long, Anthony Bourdain.  You gave a lot of people a lot of happiness.  The contribution you made to the world was great, and you will be missed.

We had our tenth and final dance lesson this evening and, I must say, I’m glad it’s over.  It was a lovely and thoughtful gift from my wife, it gave us some moments together and plenty to talk about for a long time, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was enjoyable.

It was almost like dancing, except with all the fun parts eliminated, or even reversed.  Instead of comfortable clothing, it was dress shoes, a shirt and tie.  Instead of low lighting, it was glaring bright lighting.  Instead of the hippest, latest tunes it was stuff from like the 1950s.  Instead of just flailing around and doing whatever feels comfortable, there was a lady drill sergeant barking instructions (in fairness, she was a fairly hot lady drill sergeant).

It struck me tonight (as Helena continually tried to stop in the middle to tell me everything I was doing wrong) that maybe the Czech attitude to dance is similar, in a way, to the Czech attitude toward cooking.  They tend to feel that if you’ve followed all the rules, and done a lot of work, then it must be good, and they’re not judging by the taste at all.  Take bramborak (potato pancakes) for  example.  There are about 12 stages to the preparation of them and one is grating the damned things, which generally results in scraped and bleeding knuckles, and the result is a greasy slab of starch that is less appealing than potatoes prepared in absolutely any other way, all of which are simpler.

But, it’s over.  I’m glad we did it, we’ve had the experience and whenever anybody mentions taking a ballroom dancing course, I’ll know what they’re talking about. But, my plan is to never do it again.

We went out for coffee and cake afterwards to celebrate.

It was not a good day for progressives at all.  Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi cruised to easy wins.  That does not necessarily mean they’ll get back into congress, they could lose in the general election, but it means we won’t get a progressive in either of those seats.  In Feinstein’s race, de Leon may come in second, which would mean a race between two Democrats and, really, that eliminates any reason anybody has for voting for Feinstein, but de Leon’s not all that great, either.
It wasn’t even close.  Delaine Eastin, I think, got less than 10 percent in her bid for governor, and my favorite Senate candidate, David Hildebrand, was closer to the 1% mark.  I find that kind of hard to believe.  Sanders’ followers are issue based people, and from what I’ve been seeing on my Facebook page, people were motivated and ready to get to the polls.

Of course, there were 100,000 ‘lost’ ballots in California, and those people were given ‘provisional’ ballots which, we all know, get tossed in the trash.  I’m sure, an election is a major event, and mistakes can be made, but it seems they are being made with greater and greater frequency and every time it happens, the U.S. government and the two corporate owned parties who make it up, lose a bit of credibility.
And they don’t really have that much left to lose.