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I’m going to use today’s blog to look into the future.  June 2^nd, 2020.   Sam will be 17 and still pretty interested in computers (he has over 2 million Facebook friends) and football, but more interested in girls and parties.  Isabel will be 13, and still far too young to be dating.  She will be the smartest student in her class.

In one possible future, we have bought the place in Kokovice.  The English School was enough of a success that we paid the mortgage off early.  Actually, it wasn’t so much the English school.  The fortune-telling weekends, the meditation weekends, the fitness weekends and a few music festivals here and there paid most of the bills.

The school is still going well, there are enough live-in teachers to carry the load and I can spend the day feeding the chickens and milking the goats, piddling around in the garden and writing.

All of my relatives come for visits because it’s a cheap European vacation, but they help out a lot and fit right in, too.  It’s a good life.

In another possible future, one of my books has caught the popular imagination and my website is getting millions of hits every day.  We’re raking it in on the advertising.  I travel around the world giving speeches.  With high speed trains and rocket planes, travel has become swifter and easier, and with instant, life-size, holographic communications it’s almost like never leaving home.  Except it is, and I want to get back to feeding the chickens.

In another possible future, I am working at SPUSA, we’re still living at the same place, still struggling with money but it’s all good.  We go to America for a year.  Helena gets a job as events coordinator for some huge corporation.  The kids love it.  Sam gets his driver’s license.  I finally write a decent book out of sheer boredom.

In another possible future, I am sitting on the couch in my underwear, watching my favorite Discovery Channel program “Live from Mars” and smoking joints non-stop.  That’s probably the likeliest future, but it’s one I’d like to avoid.

It was a lovely, rainy morning this morning.  Not that I spent too much time out in it, but I had an umbrella so after I dropped Sam off at school and stopped off at Mustek to buy him a monthly tram pass I decided to walk over to Namesti Republiky instead of going all the way down to the yellow line platform to take the Metro one station.

Back up to the surface and it’s amazing how every time you come out of the metro at a station like Mustek it’s a little bit of a surprise because you do kind of get turned around down there and it takes a half second to re-orient yourself.

Anyway, it’s always a lovely walk down Na Prikope, whether it’s on a blazing hot summer afternoon when crowds of tourists and curiousity seekers gather around to watch a juggler or a mime, on a dark evening just before Christmas when the lights are blazing and the store windows cast their commercial light on the pure, white snow, or in the middle of a busy, working day as all of the beautiful women who work in the shops, offices, banks and travel agencies flit here and there, as beautiful and ephemeral as fireflies in the night, or on a morning like this morning.

It was just after 8 a.m., things were opening up, the rain kept the number of people down and the sidewalk was decorated with puddles, reflecting puddles.

A couple of months ago I had a problem with my knee and this walk would have been seriously painful and it went on long enough, despite electro-massage therapy, that I was worried it was going to be permanent, but it has faded and I enjoyed the walk, and appreciated it all the more for that.

The other day, while dining at our favorite Swedish Restaurant in Prague (hint: it’s IKEA), our friend Bill dropped a bombshell.  He probably didn’t think of it as a bombshell, and my wife, I suspect, would like to defuse it, but for me, it’s big.  Just a real estate offer he saw that he thought I might be interested in.

Mind you, I still haven’t seen the place, or even pictures, but the description of it matches, in every detail, what I have long stated that I wanted for the school in the country:  Multiple buildings, houses and barns, in a U shape with a courtyard, only 50 kilometers from Prague, in a tiny village of maybe 100 residents, already being used by a theater group, live-in caretaker who wants to stay on.  We could start classes right away.  And it’s only 2 million crowns.

Now, I still haven’t seen the place but if it’s as good as it sounds, 2million crowns is a bargain price.  My wife flipped at the thought of selling our flat to buy it and I have to agree with her there.  If we were to move out of Prague on a crazy business venture, we might never be able to afford to live in Prague again.  But it’s still too good a price to pass up.  We don’t actually have it, so we would have to either find partners or take out a mortgage.  I’d hate to do that, but if it looks as good as it sounds, I would want to.

The other things is the partnership we’ve got going on with SPUSA.  I don’t see any contradiction between the two projects, and maybe even if we manage to revive SPUSA’s economic situation, they’d be a good partner, but it’s a question of time.

I want this place, but I think we’ll need to act fast and there’s too much happening at once.  Wish me luck.

Watson’s School of English is in partnership talks with another school now, and it’s looking good. We will start teaching our group courses there on July 12th. It’s a bigger location than our last school, and more centrally located. Budecska Street wasn’t bad, but this is directly in front of Namesti Republiky tram stop, a few short steps from the Metro, next door to a kebab shop, around the corner from Obecni Dum and the start of Na Prikope, and across the street from Palladium. This is the best location for an English School on the entire planet. It’s also a school with a great tradition, as it was the very first English language school established in Prague after the Velvet Revolution. So, we’re glad to be working with them and I’m really jazzed about returning to teaching, I’ve had 6 months off and accomplished none of the things I wanted to, not even organizing my teaching materials and thinking of new games. Still, there’s one thing that was worrying me a little bit. The reason for the partnership is that both schools were having financial problems. In all of the meetings we’ve had so far, nobody has wanted to bring up the subject of money. When we did, at the last meeting, the response was “let’s just get started and worry about money later.” I choose my tenses carefully. That was worrying me, but on reflection, it doesn’t at all. Their goal, and ours, is to teach English, to make this school, SPUSA/Watson’s School of English, the best school in Prague, to attract students by the thousands, students and workers, professionals and housewives, Czechs and foreigners, young and old. If we can do that together, the money will sort itself out. If we can’t, we’ll have to try something else.

Sarah Palin has built a fence around her house in Wasilla, Alaska.  It’s not a white picket fence, or a pleasant, low slung wall of brick that you could have a seat on.  No, beauty is not the point.  Like the Great Wall of China or Hadrian’s Wall, this is a huge motherfucking fence purpose designed to keep out the invading hordes of unwashed barbarians who are massed and ready to storm the kingdom.

The “invading hordes” in this case is author Joe McGillis, who is writing a book about Sarah Palin, which will undoubtedly be a gossip filled, trashy, sensationalistic exposure of the tea party temptress.  What else would anyone write about Sarah Palin?

Now, I can understand how Sarah would be upset at this.  I am also guessing she’s pretty pissed off at the neighbor who rented the guy the place, who apparently did it on purpose because Sarah owed her money and, even though she’s a total rich bitch now and could spare it, is refusing to cough up.

Still, it doesn’t particularly hurt Joe McGillis that Sarah built a house high fence around her home, shielding her, her dumbass husband, her slutty oldest daughter and the two younger ones who I won’t malign until their 18^th birthday, fair’s fair, and her retarded son (who I still suspect might be her grandson) and her grandson (who I suspect they purchased on E-bay).  In fact, it made the news, made Joe McGillis a household name, and guaranteed that his book will be a big seller.

No, like the Berlin Wall and Offa’s dyke, this fence serves to keep people IN.  Nobody forced Sarah Palin to build that fence, but now she is imprisoned inside it.

Much like American after 9/11.  In forcing people to take off their shoes at airports, in continually expanding the list of things you couldn’t take on planes, in allowing the government to spy on people whenever they wanted, arrest people without charges, hold them without a trial and beat the living crap out of them for no apparent reason, Americans have built a wall around there country and they are prisoners inside it.

Much like Sarah Palin.