Guess Where I Went!

Yeh I know. You can't tell much by this picture. Here's the thing. I don't like taking pictures where people can see me doing it and looking like a big dumb tourist. I had gotten over it a bit but I haven't taken pictures in a while so I backslid a bit. Also my camera is not very good at wide shots. Unless you're right up on something you can't really tell anything. 

So anyway I went to Dublin. It's very cool town. I had to get out of the Schengen area to get a new 90 days on my passport. It's a long story and I've told it a million times so I really don't feel like going into detail. Basically all of the EU on the Continent of Europe is like one big country as far as visas go. In the old days you could just pop over to Germany for the afternoon and get a new 90 days. Now you have to go a lot further. Hence my trip to Dublin. I really don't mind. You know it's tough but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do and go to one of the coolest cities in the world for the weekend. 

That photo is of the street where I stayed my last night. (Another long story) They've already decorated for Christmas. I think those lights say "Happy Christmas" in Irish. One cool thing. Who knew? They still speak Irish in Ireland. It's not like you hear it on the street much or anything. But all the signs are in Irish and English. I was very bad about taking pictures I'll fess up right now. I kind of felt like this was a reconnoissance trip for future times when I can get someone to go with me or meet me there.  By the way, flights on Aer Lingus are very cheap to Dublin if anyone out there would care to make a trip around, say, March 25? Nudge nudge wink wink.

I did take some photos of graffiti that I thought was awesome. 

I can't be totally for sure but I think this is a Banksy. He's a famous (in Graffiti circles anyway) artist.  I don't know if that's his tag next to the cowboy. Anyway this looks like Bansky's work and he's British so it could very well be his. I just like this sort of stuff. The city doesn't seem to mind either. He is kinda famous. I got a couple of other ones that looked like his work. Check it out. 

I don't think he did the "Vote No" part. That's about the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland voted against it even though all their politicians were for it. Czech Republic has yet to decide on it. I don't know how it will shake out. Lisbon basically would create a United States of Europe. I don't have the brainpower for that one right now. I just dig the picture of Arnold Drummond. Oh and the ribcage. I can't get enough bones for some reason. 

This last one is my favorite though.

Maybe it's not your cup o' tea. That's cool. No accounting for taste as they say. 

Insomniackin'

So I'm having trouble sleeping and I'm trying to prepare for my class tomorrow (Friday). I'll probably look a bit like this guy by then.

This class is much less talkative than my other classes so I've got to have a really big bag of tricks. I downloaded a couple podcasts with funny stories that I can play for them and pause for questions and vocabulary. I have no idea if it will work but it was great fun listening to them. 

First up was This American Life it's an NPR show and therefor a bit lefty but it's still a quality show. The latest episode has a bunch of verbal histories recorded by Studs Terkel about The Great Depression. It's fascinating to hear the old cadences and speech patterns of folks from that time. 

This got me surfing around for podcasts on iTunes. I'd rather not be a shill for Apple but there's so much cool stuff on there! I found a podcast of Hardcore History that talks about how different the world would be if things went differently in 1066 among other cool speculative stuff.
That lead me to an Ancient & Medieval History podcast with Beowulf and other super cool stuff that I can nerd out on for hours and hours. If I'm lucky I may get some use out of these for my classes but if not it's still worth it.

Elections and whatnot

OK so I'm going to indulge myself at your expense once again. It may take me a while to get to my point but please bear with me. I really do have a point to make and I'm not venting hostility or anything. 

                            Is it? I really hope so.

Obviously the elections are the big news. Here in CR they only really heard about Obama. McCain was pretty much ignored. Well it's over now so it doesn't really matter I don't guess. I might as well have full disclosure. I did not want Obama to win. I have serious doubts about what he really believes. But he's going to be the President now so I might as well get used to it. As I've been thinking more and more on this I have found some hope in the result.

For a long time now American politics have been nasty. I went to Washington in 1998 just in time for Clinton to get impeached. I voted for him but felt that he should resign for embarrassing himself and our country the way he did. I saw the way Democrats seemed to forget principals they argued strongly for simply to keep their guy in power. I was working for a Republican Congressman for whom I had and still have very high respect and admiration. I saw that these politicians were good people but any time people with differing points of view try to do anything there will be conflict. They are still people with flaws like anybody else and sometimes they screw up. This did not keep me from being as extreme and vehement in my dislike of Clinton as any of some of the worst folks though.

Then in 2000 things just got worse. With the whole recount business the tables turned. All the impotent rage we conservatives had for Clinton and the Dems was taken up by many people against Bush. I was working for a lobbying firm by that time and we could not figure out why the other side could not just acknowledge that Bush won fair and square. There was no attempt to come together from either side it seems to me now.

The term conservatives have is Bush Derangement Syndrome. In fairness those of us on the right had some Clinton Derangement Syndrome in our time as well.

But when 9/11 happened everything changed. This is obvious of course but it seemed that there were much more serious things to worry about than scoring political points. My friends in New York were forced out of their homes and were stuck with the fear that something else might happen. I remember talking on the phone with my buddy when in the middle of the call he said, "Someone said there's a bomb, gotta go" click. It was a false alarm but in the days right after that happened frequently.

I was at work in DC in our office on Pennsylvania Ave when it happened. It was so surreal that I wasn't scared or anything. It seemed like a movie or something. These things just don't happen. The office manager came around and pointed out that since we were a block from the FBI building and about 3 blocks from the Whitehouse that we would close down and go home rather than take any chances. I was more worried that our house guests hadn't left yet and that I'd get to see them before they took off. Pretty silly when I think about it now. I took the subway home. It didn't occur to me that it might not be safe. They were shut down not long after I got home.

Our house guests were a rock band from London who were supposed to play a concert in New York on Wednesday, September 12. Needless to say they did not leave. We just all sat and watched TV and tried to call our parents. No luck on that front. No cell phones could get through and even the landlines were overloaded.  Watching the towers fall on TV did not seem real. It just would not sink in. Then the news reported that one of the attorneys from our office was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. I just could not believe it. I didn't know her well but I did see her everyday. It's terrible but it never seemed to make an impression on me. She just wasn't at work anymore. That changed when we all went to her memorial service. That someone like her could be murdered like that made all those arguments we had with the "lefties," as we called them, seem petty and stupid. It looked like maybe we would come to reality and see that we were really on the same side.

Of course it didn't last. Many people now like to say they knew Iraq was a mistake from the start, that there were no WMDs etc. I'm not going to belabor that argument. But thanks to that war and the way it was prosecuted Bush Derangement Syndrome came back with a vengeance. I feel like it's unfair to Bush but what can you do? He didn't really help himself all that much either. But we seemed to be stuck with the negativity and meanness that politics had become.

So while I did not support Obama I am hopeful that we might be able to get past that. I think that since he won decisively it is clear that the country wants to move past the bitterness we've had in politics. Republicans are showing a willingness to call a truce. It's clear the country did not want what they represented. Hopefully they have gotten that message and will reform accordingly. Obama's acceptance speech is a good start. He seems to want to be magnanimous and is not looking to settle scores or punish his rivals.

If I'm going to be totally honest I do not think we would have this opportunity had McCain won. I just don't see Congressional Democrats the Moveon.org types being good losers. But we don't have to worry about how they'd have taken an Obama loss. Websites like 52 to 48 With Love are a good sign that since their guy won people on the left are willing to be friends again. I think everybody wants politics to be more civil. 

While I disagree that the USA was bad or had anything to apologize for, Obama's election is a signal to people that disliked America that we really are good people. So I may rankle a bit at the implication that we need to rehabilitate our image it's worth it if Obama is the leader he says that he is. He has the good will of everybody right now. I pray that God gives him the wisdom to say yes to his opponents in Congress when he can, to say no to his supporters when he should and that both sides will give him a fair chance to lead. And I pray both sides will come together and put away the animosity of the last 10 years. 

With the exception of the Russian President, the whole world appears to be feeling a lot better about America. Let's pray Obama can live up to those expectations. I'm cautiously optimistic that he can. Or at least I want to be.