November 2005 Archives

I don't understand it really, but every time I travel abroad, I rekindle my love of hot tea. Now, mind you, I always love hot tea, but when abroad, for some unknown reason, I drink it with cream and sugar, which I don't typically do at home. Now I'm back on my creme and sugar kick. :o)

Being the shy type, I don't enjoy conversations on planes with people I don't know. However, this trip home was the exception.

A young man sat next to me. His wife was seated back by the screaming children of another couple. When asked if I would trade with her, I politely refused. After all, I had hand-picked 1B for several reasons and was delighted to be as far away from the screaming kids as possible. The young man and his wife were celebrating their first anniversary with a 2 week vacation in Paris. Nice!

We had several things in common, including a huge interest in technology. He runs a network security company.

At any rate, this guy was a raging liberal and quite delighted to talk about it. What I found interesting was his apologizing for his beliefs as he discussed them freely. His uncle, who I will not name, is a very prominent politician in this state. But this guy was educated in England and in Germany–obviously the reason for his "insane liberal ideas."

When he learned I was a middle school principal, he assumed I was very conservative. But this assumed "fact" didn't seem to stop him. He railed against the Bush administration in every way one could possible think to be-smudge the insanity they represent. He was particularly enraged about the lack of separation of church and state and went off for some time about gay marriage. His position was, either allow marriage for everyone or for no one. Get the state out of the church's business. Get the church out of the business of the state.

He stated that he and his uncle get into weekly yelling matches about such things. I think he thought I would play the role of his uncle and argue with him. I just listened, amused to say the least. He completed his diatribe against the Republican party by giving only one concession: Ronald Reagan somehow found Alan Greenspan who has kept the nation afloat for decades.

He spoke of how wonderful Europe is with conservation, with one exception: they allow themselves enough water pressure to remove 3 layers of skin in the shower. (Yes! It's wonderful!!) He especially loved the fact that he could purchase his pills (he had his foot in a cast) over the counter for only 8€ in Paris. In the US he said he had to make a $30 co-paymnent for the same prescription medication.

So the quick-witted young man amused me greatly and made the trip less boring. I caught him off guard, toward the end of our extended conversation, we I told him that two years ago I voted for the price of ketchup to go up, not oil. He looked at me with a quizzical then wiry smile.

On my final day in Paris I had "an adventure." I took the Metro out to the Pére Lachaise Cemetery. One has not yet fully lived until one is stranded in a large unknown city in Europe in which one does not speak the language. I was happily on my way to the cemetery. The train stopped...for an unusually long period of time at the Bouse stop. A voice was heard, speaking French naturally. Absolutely everyone got up and exited the train. Well, having no idea what the conductor said, I too followed the crowd.

Everyone stood along side the train. The doors closed but no one moved away. After about 5 minutes the voice was heard yet again. Everyone made a collective groan at this point and began exiting the station. I followed. I had no idea why the train abruptly ended its trip.

Once above ground I spent the next 15 minutes trying to get oriented in the city. These streets are most convoluted, going every which way. Finally I found my bearings. Off to the main boulevard I went to walk down to the cemetery, a good 218 miles if it was a single kilometer! (OK, I lied–a little! It was only 217 miles.)

As I walked along I became aware of the fact that the Police were everywhere. Numerous streets were blocked off. Motorists were ensnarled in gridlock. People were cursing and blowing horns. Camera crews were about. I have no idea what was going on, but on my merry way I went hopeful I would not witness the torching of any cars, the burning of Paris.

Upon arriving at the cemetery, which is the largest collection dead people I have ever seen, I entered the main gates only to be greeted by a solid black cat running across the cobblestone entrance. Good heavens! At any rate, here are some pictures of well known people's tombs: (top to bottom and left to right: Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison (American rock star from The Doors), Fred Chopin, Héloïse (c. 1101 - 1164) and Abélard (1079 - 1142), and Rossini (1792 - 1868). The bottom picture was just a beautiful view.

I wished to include Héloïse (c. 1101 - 1164) and Abélard (1079 - 1142) for several reasons. They are the oldest residents in Pére Lachaise. In the age of church domination, Abélard dared say, "By questioning, we learn Truth." I think we need to presently revisit that timeless wisdom in our own nation. He is basically credited with founding what became the University of Paris. Amid scandal (the birth of their son), though married and very much in love, they lived apart in a monastery and convent for 2 decades only to be rejoined at death. Their story is fascinating and speaks to the dark sadness ignorance can infest into the world.

On Sunday I was off to the Pompidou Center (can we say ugly). I then had a wonderful walk along the river. I'm posting a picture of one of the bridge centerpieces below in the middle. The picture of the street light is at the corner of the Louvre.

The walk along the Seine was spectacular. The left-most picture below was taken from a pedestrian walk over the river. The middle picture is along the side of the Louvre, which from this direction was along the right side of the picture.

The picture below to the left was taken in the Place de la Concorde, an area more or less at the end of the Champs Elysée. The remainder of the pictures were taken on the night walk from the Île St Louis down near the Île de la Cité near Notre Dame. The City of Lights is really beautiful.

My third day was spectacular. The forecast called for snow showers--hardly. It snowed–hard! Off to Montmartre to see the Sacrè Cœur Basilica, Place du Tertre (or Bohemian Montmartre), Vincent van Gogh's house, Moulin de la Galette, and the Moulin Rogue.

Pictured below is Sacrè Cœur in the snow, inside the basilica itself, and the town around the basilica. I am particularly fond of the iron fence in the snow as well as the view through the fogged café window where I had a hot te to recover from the cold.

Unbelievably, the town square (I only am presenting a picture of the snow-covered green tree leaves in the square) was full of artists painting in the snow! Notice the hand holding the lips in the picture next to the snow-covered tree leaves.

OK, my trip to Sacre Cœur makes me ask a question: who owns God? Who owns representations of God? If in fact the representations of God are truly meant to remind us of the Almighty, then why in the name of God would people want to prevent taking pictures of such places/things? I think it's more about money than it is about faith and spirituality, but then, that's just me. I think it's a shame.

Can you tell I had to smuggle the pictures of the inside of Sacre Cœur out? The screaming "no pictures of the relics of God" police were after me, wagging finger and all.

You must go to Le Grand Méricourt for dinner. The chef, Gr´gory Merten, is the youngest chef in Paris. The food is divinity itself! The prices were very low. The atmosphere was quaint, the restaurant small.

Gastronomie française d'inspiration Méditerranéenne, 22 rue de La Folie Mericourt, 75011 Paris
Tél./Fax: 01 43 38 94 04
Métro: St. Ambroise ou Richard Lenoir

Highly recommended!

On the second day I stopped off at the following locations:
The Cathedral Notre Dame, Île St Louis (the island just north of Île De La Citè–on which Notre Dame is famously perched), Eiffel Tower, and Forum de Halles--not in that order really.

I had lunch on the Île St. Louis at Auberge De La Reine Blanche, which I highly recommend! The Île is particularly charming, like a little village in the heart of the city, full of wonderful shops and outdoor cafès. It was much too cold to eat outdoors, but the Auberge De La Reine Blanche was quaint and had excellent food.

Pictured below is a view along the River Seine, numerous pictures of Notre Dame, a flower market on Île St Louis, the Eiffel Tower, and a sculpture by Cathedral St. Eaustache at Forum de Halles.

Since it gets dark earlier here, and since I was beat from the flight over, not a lot got done on this the first day in Paris. I called mom, to wish her a happy 70th birthday. (I don't think she minds my telling everyone her age. She seems rather proud of it actually.)

After calling her I went up the Arc de Triomphe. Several heart attacks later (you must walk all the way up to the throne of God), I took some pictures as the sun set. Below is the Champs Elysèe from atop the Arc and on the bottom of the Arc showing the eternal flame.

One's mother must always have at least one birthday wish from Paris. Mine got hers today. I called her from the Champs Elysée just in front of the Arc de Triomphe at 5:00PM Paris time, 10:00AM in Pensacola.

So here's mom's birthday call on her 70th birthday!

Then a couple pictures at sunset from the top of the Arc de Triomphe:

I just stumbled across this post from: The Potion Factory Blog

Podcasting will change the world. How do I know? Hordes of bored iPod users are waiting for your content. 6.5 million iPods were sold in the last quarter. Let me put that number into perspective:

6.5 million iPods / 90 days / 24 hours / 60 minutes / 60 seconds = 0.84 iPods sold per second!

In the same amount of time, 4.4 babies are born in the world. Considering that a large portion of the world population is not wealthy enough to afford iPods, it’s no stretch to say that there is an iPod sold for every baby born in the developed nations.

Yet, a lot of people don’t even know what podcasting is. Spread the word about podcasting. Spread the word about Podcast Maker too. We live and die by word of mouth.

Podcast Maker is an excellent tool!

This evening I'm heading off to Paris (France, not Georgia) for the holiday which they do not observe. I'll take lots of pictures, so stay tuned!

This morning, as I was leaving Evans, where I frequently have breakfast, I noticed some small white poodles in the van parked next to me. Upon closer examination, I realized that there were 15 of them loose in the van! How on earth could one drive?!

New my home is a locally owned and operated delivery only pizza place. I drove by it today and noticed their sign: "The pilgrims loved pizza!"

So, poor little Dick Cheney is upset. He has had some more ugly words to say recently. Seems he is attacking the vicious Democrats and even a prominent Republican who recently voiced their disgust at the lies the Bush administration foisted onto the world to justify attacking Iraq. He stated in anger that the administration's detractors were revising history.

Good lord, how sad. Now the administration is lying about their lies. Who revised history? Just for the record: We were assured that the Iraqis had WMDs. Do you remember that? It stands for weapons of mass destruction. They had charts and pictures. They spoke of nuclear destruction and biological annihilation. We heard it over and over at every chance. The administration wanted to terrorize us into going to war.

So, did actually they find all of those bombs and bacteria and just not tell us?! Or did they lie. Hmmm....

The Republican party is yet again defining compassionate conservatism for us--not just in what they are saying to us, but what they are doing for us as well. Consider that this week alone; they:

• Continue to lie to America so over 2,000 Americans are killed in a volatile, unstable area of the world with no end to our unsustainable aggression there in site for no reason at all. (Perhaps William Bennet would suggest we are thinning out our criminal element? Is that what Bush meant when he proudly declared the mission was accomplished?)
• Cut food assistance to over 250,000 working poor, many of whom have children (What?! 25,000,000 people have to have food stamps in this country to stay alive?! Dear god! Or perhaps we starve them enough so they feel they have a better chance of staying alive by shooting at the Iraqi people in the desert?! At least we feed our troops even if we don't provide them with adequate armor.)
• Cut taxes for the most wealthy and increase the largest deficit in the nation's history by doing so. (Oh, I forgot, this will kick the economy into high gear like it did the last several times they cut taxes for the wealthy! Which is exactly why they need to do it again I guess--to keep the economy raging along at this unprecedented pace.)
• Fail to hold oil companies accountable for record profits when the highest number of Americans ever can not even afford heat this winter. (Repeat after me: "Deregulation good! Profit good!" And, might one think it unseemly that we have a Texas oil man in the White House?)
• Let people like Carl Rove rove with impunity.
• Lash out against anyone who has honest, considered disagreement with you, loudly assailing their character and patriotism in the vilest ways possible on the Congressional floor.
• With only 2 weeks notice, unexpectedly cut off the housing funding for thousands of hurricane victims who lost everything just a few short weeks ago.

Merry Christmas, America. The wealthy extremist right wing republican party loves you. I just feel so warm and fuzzy all over! Don't you, too?!

I'm sitting in the car on the way to the North Carolina mountains. Usually the trees are at their peak in October. They are turning here, but they are not at their peak yet. Mother earth has not been happy lately.

From the Rockies last weekend to the Smoky Mountains this weekend... nice.

Well, my new white video iPod had a tiny "spot" on the surface of the screen when I first opened it. I thought it was some type of goo from the plastic that ships on the face of it to protect it. The plastic sticks to the screen surface. So I thought this was just ever so tiny a drop of the adhesive "stuff" on the plastic to make it stick. I know from experience how the surface of the iPod can so easily scratch. So, I got a Kleenex and attempted to very gently clean the goo off of the iPod.

My god! It made the spot get larger and scratched the surface. I was not please. So today I returned it. I got a new one. This time out, I decided to live on the edge and get a black one. I inspected it first in the store to be sure there were no surface issues existed. I just finished uploading all of my "stuff" to it.

This has caused me to realize that I want to sync one additional thing to my iPod: my unread email. Wouldn't that be pragmatic and functional?!

"W" clearly said when the special prosecutor's office began the investigation into the intentional leaking of the CIA operative's name in retaliation for telling the truth about the administration's irresponsible lurch into war that anyone in his administration who was involved in this illegal act would summarily fired. As the facts began to point to Carl Rove, he began softening his position. Today he makes no such commitment whatsoever, and Carl Roves seems unquestionably involved. Certainly this kind of mean, evil retaliation is squarely in the Rove spirit of how to manage the machiavellian politics for which is is so renowned (renounced).

The extreme right is once again wrong.