I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.—Umberto Eco
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Another Change of Plan
Quebec City
Originally, Martine and I planned to take our Fall vacation in the American South, but then two things happened to make us change our minds:
- News kept hammering on a massive drought and heat wave throughout the entire area, with temperatures above 100° Fahrenheit almost every day. We didn’t like the idea of vacationing in a disaster area.
- Los Angeles was hit with a three-week heat wave (which, thankfully, has abated somewhat).
Then, Martine thought it would be nice to see her old friend Angéla Piquéras in Paris while she was still alive, but she was dismayed by the cost of doing so. (That was a pity, because I would have loved visiting France again.)
It was then that I suggested the Maritime Provinces of Canada. We had been in Nova Scotia briefly in 2008 and really enjoyed it. This time, we would, in addition to Nova Scotia, see parts of New Brunswick, Quebec, and Northern New England. We fly to Manchester, New Hampshire, rent a car there; see a couple of places in Vermont that we love; have breakfast at Polly’s Pancake Parlor in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire (the best breakfasts in all of Christendom); pay a short visit to Quebec City; take the St. John River Drive in New Brunswick and see the tides of the Bay of Fundy; visit Cap Breton National Park in Nova Scotia; swing south to Annapolis Royal; and return to Manchester via Acadia National Park in Maine.
Despite all the long miles, it would be a good trip—and it would be in an area where the weather would not scorch our hides. On the other hand, we are bound to have a few days of rain, but for Southern Californians like us, that would be a welcome novelty. We would make it a point to stay in as many French-Canadian-owned places as possible, so that Martine could keep up her French (she was born in Paris).
If you’re interested in seeing the 740-odd pictures from our last trip to Eastern Canada, you can click here and select the slideshow option on Yahoo! Flickr. You can even display my captions. By the way, here’s a picture of Polly’s Pancake Parlor from seven years ago:
(It’s really that good!)
Because I am an impossible bookworm, I am thinking of reading Francis Parkman’s great study of the French and Indian War, Montcalm and Wolfe, from my Kindle as I travel. Canadian history is interesting in that the United States is one of the great villains: We invaded Canada twice, during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Both times, we were beaten back by the British. You may be interested in this website about Sir Isaac Brock, the always outnumbered, always outgunned British colonel who nonetheless frustrated two American invasions.
Another Theory …
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.—Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Vicc
And look where it got him!
Vicc is the Hungarian word for joke, pronounced VEETZ with the vowel sound slightly shorter. I don’t have much time today to write something serious, but I thought I would aim for a snicker or two.
Just to show what kind of snicker I am looking for, here is a short video:
* * * * *
That reminds me of my favorite story regarding Zimbabwe:
After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus-stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.
Well, that’s all for now, folks!
No Heaven…
Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.—Hunter S. Thompson
The Phantom Lands of Eastern Europe
Map of Galicia
If you’ve read any of the literature of Eastern Europe, you will see names of provinces and whole countries that you have difficulty in locating on a map. Names like Galicia (not to be confused with the Galicia region of Northwest Spain), Bukovina, Volhynia, Moldavia, Moldova (this one’s currently a country in its own right), Wallachia, and Silesia—just to name a few.
Most are pawns in the endless historical struggles between Russia, Poland, Germany, the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Balkans. Most of the time, they were absorbed into an adjoining larger country (such as Wallachia into Romania), or split between countries (such as Galicia going to Poland, Russia, Austria, or the Ukraine). Only Moldova, the former Moldovan SSR ( Soviet Socialist Republic), is an independent nation today—at least for the time being.
Much of the problem is in the shifting borders affected by the partitions of Poland and the vagaries of fortune of the Ukraine, which was in recent history a political football between Poland, Germany, and Russia.
When one thinks about it, there are only a relatively few countries in the area that have maintained their independence, albeit with constantly shifting borders and political affiliations, over the centuries. Germany and Russia are two examples of relative stability, with just about everyone else being stretched, shrunk, or absorbed multiple times.
Much of the Eastern European emigration to the United States, Canada, and other Western countries is a result of this constant instability. It would be difficult for me to walk down certain streets in Los Angeles without encountering the children of immigrants from these phantom lands of Eastern Europe.
Ages of Faith…
Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.—Richard Feynman
Jesus Is Not Your Good Buddy
Whenever I think about it, I get disturbed by my country, which I love, being destroyed by people who really think that Jesus cares for their sorry asses. Generally, these are “Left Behind” people—not in the sense of the Left Behind novels of evangelical wordhacks Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, but people who are isolated by the winds of demographic and economic change and need something to hug.
If your children have moved out because they can’t stand your old-fashioned ways, and if the job you’ve held since the end of WW2 has moved to Asia or Mexico, you’ll want to pray to someone who really cares for you. That is the story in large swaths of the rural South and Midwest. It just happens to be breaking our country apart because these Glorioso Jesusites all vote: They have nothing else to do.
No, I am not an atheist. (In fact, I don’t think very much of people who profess to be atheists.) I just don’t think that we know anything about God. When He has spoken in various sacred works, they pretty much contradict each other or urge followers to do things which now look pretty loony. To be used at all, one has to cherry pick what look like universal truths and omit all the crazy stuff, like for instance various parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (Check out Deuteronomy 13:12-15 for a divine command that I’ll bet you haven’t followed lately.) That carries over into Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. So while many Americans rant against Sharia law, they are blissfully unaware that Christianity has its own equivalent in the Mosaic books of the Old Testament.
You can probably guess (and guess rightly) that I’m not a churchgoer. Although I have a certain nostalgia for the Roman Catholic Church, and a leaning toward some of the more enlightened teachings of the Asian religions, there isn’t any “comprehensive package” that I endorse from soup to nuts. My belief is that God wants us to keep asking questions, not necessarily expecting any answers from on high. We need to recognize that we know nothing. Perhaps, if God is watching us at all, He wants to see how we behave in a moral vacuum.
People who pretend to have all the answers are just trying to control you. If Jesus is the answer, you are probably not asking the right questions.
Words, Words, Words!
Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.—Aldous Huxley
The Outrage Machine
The members of Pussy Riot behind bars
I am tired of writing blog postings about my outrage at the misdeeds of others, most particularly the political Right in America. So today, instead of the usual fulmination over the misdeeds of ignorant Confederate Yahoos, I want to bring to your attention three brave and beautiful young women who form a punk rock group in Russia who calls itself Pussy Riot. They are, from left to right in the above photo, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Maria Alyokhina.
Their own particular outrage is against Vladimir Putin, particularly his hypocritical attempt to suck up to the Russian Orthodox Church.
On February 21 of this year, Pussy Riot staged a performance in front of the iconostasis of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow a few blocks away from the Kremlin. The concert was stopped by church security guards. When videos of the event were circulated the following month, the girls were promptly arrested and charged for hooliganism, a sort of ill-defined catch-all crime in Russia. As of last week, they have been sentenced to two years in prison, despite pleas for clemency from the Orthodox clergy.
If you’re interested, below is the video of their performance on YouTube:
There is a CC button at the bottom which allows you to select English subtitles of the lyrics the group is singing. While some Rightist-leaning media in this country have come out against Pussy Riot, I personally am for them. Organized religion and its sometimes dubious ties to the regime need to be exposed. The group did this with humor, artistry, and some slight blasphemous language which is pardonable under the circumstances.
There are dangers in the group’s course of action: I keep thinking of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot to death in the elevator to her apartment for daring to expose the utter corruption of Putin’s government, particularly in its policy toward Chechnya. There was a big show trial with some obvious fall guys, but nothing much came of it.
So, rock on, girls! I hope you can beat the rap.
Tarnmoor 
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