Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Sam was at work, and Helena and Isabel were out doing some shopping and other errands.  So, I decided to go for a walk in Prague, which is the ideal city for indulging in that most ancient and mundane of pleasures.
When I don’t feel like going far, I sometimes do what I call to myself ‘the building inspection tour’ which means walking around and looking at all the construction sites happening in the neighborhood.  There are a couple that are very near completion and one that has just begun, and it’s a bit like springtime.  You can see changes everyday, and something new is emerging.

But today I felt like a longer walk.  So, I started walking toward the center and you never go far until  you see something surprising and new.  They are doing repair work, at least, although I hope it’s a thorough renovation, on the Negrilleho Viaduct, which is the longest railroad bridge in the Czech Republic but doesn’t really look  like it.  The part of it that goes across the river doesn’t seem so  long as it crosses an island in the middle, and the part of it that adds  the  length is it’s long run through a fairly grotty neighborhood and it only winds up on level ground just before Masarykovo Nadraži.  It’s like a national monument and everything but it looks like shit.  Then, as I  carried on, I saw a man painting a mural on an obscure back wall of Florene Metro station.  It was kind of interesting, sort of semi-abstract.  A walk around Prague is often a walk around an  art museum; a big, open  air art museum.
I figured it was time to turn around  and head  home, so  I headed toward the river and I was on  the river path behind the  Hilton when I saw  a crowd of  people marching, and heard music.  Didn’t know what it was, but the  crowd was huge and I thought I could see a few marijuana leaves, so  I thought I’d go over and take a look.  It was, indeed, the Million Marijuana March, and it was a very cool thing.  There was a stage for  live music  and a lot of stands scattered around, T shirt stands, petition stands, info stands, legal cannabis product stands.   There were old people, there were families there with little kids, and there were a lot of young hippies.
I was pleased.  The 60s are still  in the world, and may well be forever.

Ah, yes, on Facebook  as in real  life, we right the wrong comment, we say the wrong thing and later the perfect phrase, that zinger we’re always looking  for, just pops into  our head, but it doesn’t  work as a 2nd response.

A post appeared on  my Facebook feed and I couldn’t figure out how it got there, surely a Bible Thumper like that was not one of my friends, and then I realized that it was a post from one of the poetry sites I’m signed up for, actually two of them, it was repeated twice because a lot of people post their messages on more than one site.  It was standard, old fashioned ‘atheists are going to burn in  hell forever’ stuff.
So, I responded “This is a poetry site.  Piss off.”
I later realized that I should have avoided vulgarity and said “I slam the cyber door in your cyber face, you lowlife cyber Jehovah’s Witness.  Begone, before I sic my cyber dogs on you.”  Would have had the same effect, though.  I went looking  for the thread later on and couldn’t find it.

Somebody else today made a great comment about religion, saying we tend to congratulate ourselves on being people of learning and science because we’re no longer as religious as we were, say, at the time of the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish inquisition, but maybe we shouldn’t be so quick  to pat our own back because we still believe in a lot of irrational concepts, like money is real and governments are infallible.

Truer words were never spoken.  Everything we’ve taken on trust needs to be examined in bright  light and under a microscope.  Let us then figure out the straightest way forward in the direction we want to go, and go.

I am a writer.  Not a successful writer.  Possibly not even a very good writer.  I don’t know, that’s up to other people to judge.  But, definitely a writer.  I belong to several different poetry groups on Facebook.  My friend’s list is as full of writers as the ocean is of plastic.

One thing they’re always doing is talking about writing, and bitching about it, but you don’t tend to see their writerly skills actually on display in their posts and comments.  They tend to use the same banal words to express the same banal thoughts as everybody else.
Another thing they’re always doing is posting memes about how great it is to own lots of books, and to always buy more books.  I saw one the other day that said “The correct number of books to own is N+1, N being the number you already own.”

And it has to be real, print books.  Kindle doesn’t count. You know, because of the smell or some such nonsense, or the feel of real paper, and it’s probably best if they’re hardbacks, because you can stack them up and use them as furniture.
They don’t talk so  much about reading these books, just about owning them.

My brother-in-law is sort of and a gun store is like Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory but for adults, and he posts pictures of guns as objects of beauty and says whenever he has spare  money he likes to spend it on guns.
It’s the same kind of thing.   They are hung up on the ownership, and have lost sight of what the  thing is actually  for.  The number of books you need to own is the one you are currently reading, and even that can be on loan from a library,  or a friend.
Books, as objects, are nothing.  It’s the ideas contained within them that you want.

So,  remember when Littlefinger’s medical report came out and everybody noticed that  he’d put his weight down as a figure that seemed low, considering how fat he looks in all his pictures, and how it raved about how he was in ‘astonishingly good health’ when we all figured that was impossible, given his indolent life style and his habit of eating garbage?
Well, now his doctor is  saying that he didn’t write the note at all, or that Trump told him what to write, or something like that, but, the  point is, the doctor has admitted that it’s a bunch of malarkey.

Why does it matter?  Not because we are particularly worried about his health.  If he were to drop dead tomorrow from a great big glob of McCholesterol blocking a main artery, we’d shift our attention to how to impeach Mike Pence, but few would be shedding any tears.
But, if he’ll lie about his health, and force his doctor to lie about his health (and his height and weight), and he’ll lie about attendance at his inauguration in spite of photographic evidence. what won’t he lie about?  Nothing.  Nothing is the answer.  There is nothing he won’t lie about.
One person on my Facebook page pointed out that Roosevelt also deceived the public about his health.  This  is bullshit.  I don’t remember any incident where Roosevelt actually forced his doctor to lie.  Also, people didn’t have any reason to believe that Roosevelt was lying about the important stuff, like the threat of Hitler, which the Republicans were minimizing, because they were doing business with Hitler.
Republicans (I’m talking about the rich Republicans, the ones that actually run the party, not the gun toting goombahs who vote Republican because they’re afraid of gun control, or afraid of gay marriage, or whatever the rich Republicans have convinced them to be afraid of for that particular election cycle) have always hated Roosevelt, and have never forgiven him.  They’ve never forgiven him for regulating the banks, they’ve never forgiven him for social security, they’ve never forgiven him for treating the poor like human beings.
And they probably never will.

Just got back from an  overnighter at the cottage, because today and yesterday were holidays here in Czechworld.  Usually I avoid going to the  cottage but it was just an overnighter, I haven’t been for a long time, it’s the  perfect season and, as much as I enjoy hanging around by myself, getting  high and watching English TV, I’ve done plenty of that  lately.
So we got there just in time for the campfire.  Sausages, steaks.  And, each of the little kids (Isabel  and her 3 cousins) had made a witch, so  we  burned them.  They burned real well, so the curse of winter is officially broken.

Today, started a book, which is one thing to do when everybody around you is speaking in Czech and you’re not interested enough to make the effort to participate.  It’s “The Economics of Good and Evil” by Tomas Sedlacek.  So far I’m underwhelmed.  It’s an interesting starting point, but he repeats himself a lot, is overly fond of $10 words, and just inserts long passages from the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh wholesale.  But, I’ve barely begun, so I may  give it a more favorable review later.
Played a couple of games of Země/Město with the kids, ate very well, washed the car, watched our niece at her riding lesson, and took a walk down by the pond enjoying the massive yellowness of spring in Česky Raj, what with the spreading fields of Canola ripening and the dandelions dotting the land like living stars, went back, ate some more,  read some more, and it was time to go.