What a lovely occasion: Alice Munro celebrated in Trinity College Dublin (my alma mater of course... and the Queen Dad's.... and Gypsy's now too) for winning a prize awarded to her by a panel chaired by Jane Smiley, who was interviewed by Colm Toibin about that choice.
If I wasn't so delighted about the choice, I'd have Da Envee...
You can read about it here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0626/1224249575138.html
Friday, June 26, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Cabbages and cherries and things that go slime in the night.
Despite being at the tail end of sick in our house - Himself was the sicker and was taking killer antibiotics - we managed to have a nice weekend and get lots of yard work done.
I suppose I get to do the flower beds because I am a girl. And girls like flowers.
I am not one of those girls particularly.
I mean I like a nice herbaceous border as much as the next person, but you can't eat one nor can you donate it to Feed Nova Scotia come harvest-time.
Having said that, someone who used to live here put a lot of thought into the flower beds in front of the house. So I feel like I should resurrect them.
Currently they are buried in buttercups (hundreds of stringy roots with nothing to pull onto), dandelions (we all know about those bastards and the way they snap off and grow back), and some feathery weed thingy that has a root system comprised of interlocking elastic bands with a plant popping up every three centimetres along the elastic.
Really.
It has me stumped. I've never seen it before.
So I weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and eventually cleared most of the weeds from one bed and saved about six plants, a hosta, some silver lace and a couple of gladioli that sat shivering in the cold tundra that was the newly weed-free zone.
Which meant of course that I had to go to the garden centre and buy fill-ins. I got a tray of Creeping Jenny and Allysium and some foxgloves (I am determined to have hummingbirds this summer) and hopefully they'll cover the bare ground before the buttercups rebound.
Mmmm, planting bedding is sooo much funnn.... not.
Himself and Justin who was over for a visit were playing with power tools nearby, in order to avoid weeding.
PZWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..... 36 volts, man... that's a nice piece of iron, dude ... PZWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.................... listen to that, man.... hey, let's 'fix' the deck......
Prob'ly shoulda dug the bed out, said Justin, in between drilling holes in the deck.
Prob'ly.
The second bed is so much worse than the first one I don't know how I am going to even start.
Prob'ly should dig the bed out...
Goddamn, I hate giving into weeds.
As well as the beds in front of the house, we have four big deep beds alongside the driveway, made of old railway sleepers, which are quite nice but are painted a disastrous shade of rust.
To hell with flowers I thought. Just got in and dug the dandelions out and we planted veggies there.
Himself put the fully loaded 36 volt drill down and made himself available to supervise this, as veggies are much more interesting than flowers.
So I/ we/ us planted cabbage, broccoli, beets, chives and parsley.
Ho hum, a couple of hours passed and I was passed out in exhaustion on the couch with a nice glass of pinot noir when Himself went out to check them for the umpteenth time and realised that crumbly old sleepers are where SLUGS live.
So now we are on slug patrol.
Apparently, in a rare episode of garden alignment, slug genocide was taking place in Ireland at the same time.
Poor slugs.... there's nowhere for them to go.
Firstly, we cooked a big pot of mussels and ate them on the deck and then we smushed the shells up and sprinkled them round the cabbages.
Didn't work.
Not enough mussels.
Last night, we were out at 10.30pm with a torch killing them with a kitchen knife.
Thirty eight.
If you're interested.
This evening we found two, so we have put beer in jar lids and are hoping that the slugs will die happy rather than at the hands of Himself the Slugvader.
Of course, none of this healthy constructive positive gardening activity can call itself the real action of the weekend, which was the official planting of the cherry trees.
While I was deciding between the yellow bedding or the blue, Himself found some CHERRY TREES.
To go with the tomatoes, no doubt.
So we've planted our first trees here. A nice little milestone.
Saturday night, we tested our fire pit (built for Polly's visit in August). First impressions are pretty good - nice draught, not too much smoke, hopefully we'll have a wind-free week and we can have a couple of nice evenings in the yard.
I suppose I get to do the flower beds because I am a girl. And girls like flowers.
I am not one of those girls particularly.
I mean I like a nice herbaceous border as much as the next person, but you can't eat one nor can you donate it to Feed Nova Scotia come harvest-time.
Having said that, someone who used to live here put a lot of thought into the flower beds in front of the house. So I feel like I should resurrect them.
Currently they are buried in buttercups (hundreds of stringy roots with nothing to pull onto), dandelions (we all know about those bastards and the way they snap off and grow back), and some feathery weed thingy that has a root system comprised of interlocking elastic bands with a plant popping up every three centimetres along the elastic.
Really.
It has me stumped. I've never seen it before.
So I weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and eventually cleared most of the weeds from one bed and saved about six plants, a hosta, some silver lace and a couple of gladioli that sat shivering in the cold tundra that was the newly weed-free zone.
Which meant of course that I had to go to the garden centre and buy fill-ins. I got a tray of Creeping Jenny and Allysium and some foxgloves (I am determined to have hummingbirds this summer) and hopefully they'll cover the bare ground before the buttercups rebound.
Mmmm, planting bedding is sooo much funnn.... not.
Himself and Justin who was over for a visit were playing with power tools nearby, in order to avoid weeding.
PZWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..... 36 volts, man... that's a nice piece of iron, dude ... PZWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.................... listen to that, man.... hey, let's 'fix' the deck......
Prob'ly shoulda dug the bed out, said Justin, in between drilling holes in the deck.
Prob'ly.
The second bed is so much worse than the first one I don't know how I am going to even start.
Prob'ly should dig the bed out...
Goddamn, I hate giving into weeds.
As well as the beds in front of the house, we have four big deep beds alongside the driveway, made of old railway sleepers, which are quite nice but are painted a disastrous shade of rust.
To hell with flowers I thought. Just got in and dug the dandelions out and we planted veggies there.
Himself put the fully loaded 36 volt drill down and made himself available to supervise this, as veggies are much more interesting than flowers.
So I/ we/ us planted cabbage, broccoli, beets, chives and parsley.
Ho hum, a couple of hours passed and I was passed out in exhaustion on the couch with a nice glass of pinot noir when Himself went out to check them for the umpteenth time and realised that crumbly old sleepers are where SLUGS live.
So now we are on slug patrol.
Apparently, in a rare episode of garden alignment, slug genocide was taking place in Ireland at the same time.
Poor slugs.... there's nowhere for them to go.
Firstly, we cooked a big pot of mussels and ate them on the deck and then we smushed the shells up and sprinkled them round the cabbages.
Didn't work.
Not enough mussels.
Last night, we were out at 10.30pm with a torch killing them with a kitchen knife.
Thirty eight.
If you're interested.
This evening we found two, so we have put beer in jar lids and are hoping that the slugs will die happy rather than at the hands of Himself the Slugvader.
Of course, none of this healthy constructive positive gardening activity can call itself the real action of the weekend, which was the official planting of the cherry trees.
While I was deciding between the yellow bedding or the blue, Himself found some CHERRY TREES.
To go with the tomatoes, no doubt.
So we've planted our first trees here. A nice little milestone.
Saturday night, we tested our fire pit (built for Polly's visit in August). First impressions are pretty good - nice draught, not too much smoke, hopefully we'll have a wind-free week and we can have a couple of nice evenings in the yard.
Friday, June 12, 2009
JD the squirrel finds a new world order
The feud between Himself and the squirrel living in his building ramped up a notch last weekend.
For those of you not in the know, the nature of the feud is based in the concept of 'his'.
Which one of them is the 'his' that the building belongs to.
The squirrel, having spent the previous Fall and winter living rent-free in the building, thinks it's his building.
Himself, having paid for the building, is pretty sure that it is in fact his building.
The noisy chatter that he gets from the squirrel every time he walks into the building to pick up a tool (in order to do some work) PISSES HIM OFF.
What does that goddamn squirrel do but eat corn all day?
But my man is nothing if not slow to anger.
A veritable leviathan progressing through the Bay of Fundy when it comes to rage.
But even the calmest leviathan will swallow a Jonah, if he won't shut the hell up!!
That is why last weekend, despite my best efforts at averting revolution by cleaning up evidence of grand theft corn, Himself went into the shed to do something and realised that the squirrel had gotten back into the carefully wrapped-up sack of cracked corn (which I had carefully placed in the thick plastic bin) and there was cracked corn all over the building.
ALL OVER THE GODDAMN BUILDIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MY GODDAMN BUILDIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The squirrel had managed to eat through the plastic this time. As well as the sack.
GODDAMN SQUIRREL, BATHIN' IN CRACKED CORN HE IS!!!!!!!! LYIN' BACK JUSTA SWIMMIN' AROUND IN IT!!! THINKS IT'S HIS EFFIN' CORN!!!!!!!!!!
I could hear the roaring from the house.
I'LL SHOW HIM!!!
Retribution was swift and brutal.
Every kernel of cracked corn (and when it was all found, it was a substantial amount of corn) got swept out of every crevice in the building, and the whole lot was put out in the yard in a big pile.
NOW!!
HE'LL HAVE TO SHARE!!
SERVE HIM RIGHT FOR BEING GREEDY.
Suddenly the rabbits, crows, wood pigeon, robins, jays, chickadees and other critters who had spent months getting by on just a tincture of cracked corn, provided to help them stay above the critter poverty line (with not even an increase to help with recent rampant corn inflation) .... they are all in carbohydrate heaven right now.
PARTYTIME!!!!
All the daily foraging routines have been disrupted in order to partake of the sudden corn largesse.
I have no doubt that this summer will see abnormally big baby critters emerging from dens all over the yard.
The babies will no doubt turn into a me-me-me Critter Generation Y and will break our door down in January demanding carb-rich three course meals, $120,000 jobs, and/or better EI (I mean corn) payments if this largesse doesn't continue.
Last night according to Himself, we even had Bob Rae the big old silver raccoon who pretends he's not living in our yard, come along last night for a bit of chow.
Seeing as it was goin' a beggin'.
If I was the squirrel, I would take my beating and my sudden eviction from the squirrel Versailles that is our buildin' like a man squirrel, and go find a new place to live.
Because the squeaking of tumbrils is quietly, but definitely discernible above the rhythm of the waves that is the soundtrack to our yard.
If I were JD the Little Red Squirrel, I would seclude myself, reflect on my loss and return in a few years... when the corn is gone... refreshed, with a new, superficially sustainable way of keeping everyone fed.
But no. He hasn't the wit to do it.
He is camped out on the pile of cracked corn, fighting everyone off.
As if he can.
He has been there all day according to Himself, who is home with a chest infection.
Instinct has kicked in and he's an aggressive little bastard.
JD the Little Red Squirrel ... not Himself.
Why wouldn't he be?
He's used to having most of the corn to himself.
He's used to being the only critter who knew where the corn was kept.
He's used to having unlimited access to the corn, to people turning a blind eye to grand theft cracked corn, to squirreling away some extra corn for the winter.
He's fighting for his political life as they say.
All the fat he's put on over the last couple of weeks is worn off him.
Our crows - we have three of them who are inseparable and who have that brilliant dark sense of humour that crows sometimes have - our crows have him driven demented.
It's so simple it's beautiful.
Desmoulins, Danton and Robespierre take turns to run at him, wings spread, until he panics and runs away under the building.
While he's cowering under the building, they pick slowly and desultorily at the corn, with their backs to him of course.
After a while he can't help himself and he chatters at them like an Albanian matriarch with four fields to plough and every son in a tower.
That's when they leave the pile to have a big lawerly convocation on top of the old pine tree, or to stare intently at something moving over by the lake. (Probably the mo-fo eagle nesting on the island).
Ahaa.... JD thinks!! The Fools!!!
Back he goes for a moment, and every time a swarm of starlings swoop down from absolutely nowhere, kick his skinny red ass again and grab their piece of the action while the crows stare into the middle distance and nod knowingly at each other.
JD has to retire defeated from the bombardment that is those locusts of the birdworld.
JD the Little Red Squirrel has learned two simple, irrefutable facts.
The buildin' does in fact belong to whomever pays for it.
And Himself, who paid for it, is a force to be reckoned with when his ire is raised ....
....
... We had an election in Nova Scotia this week.
It was quite the game-changer.
The forthcoming redistribution of the provincial corn will no doubt be just as entertaining to watch as the antics on Eagle.
Me... I'm rooting for the crows.
And scanning the horizon for starlings.
For those of you not in the know, the nature of the feud is based in the concept of 'his'.
Which one of them is the 'his' that the building belongs to.
The squirrel, having spent the previous Fall and winter living rent-free in the building, thinks it's his building.
Himself, having paid for the building, is pretty sure that it is in fact his building.
The noisy chatter that he gets from the squirrel every time he walks into the building to pick up a tool (in order to do some work) PISSES HIM OFF.
What does that goddamn squirrel do but eat corn all day?
But my man is nothing if not slow to anger.
A veritable leviathan progressing through the Bay of Fundy when it comes to rage.
But even the calmest leviathan will swallow a Jonah, if he won't shut the hell up!!
That is why last weekend, despite my best efforts at averting revolution by cleaning up evidence of grand theft corn, Himself went into the shed to do something and realised that the squirrel had gotten back into the carefully wrapped-up sack of cracked corn (which I had carefully placed in the thick plastic bin) and there was cracked corn all over the building.
ALL OVER THE GODDAMN BUILDIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MY GODDAMN BUILDIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The squirrel had managed to eat through the plastic this time. As well as the sack.
GODDAMN SQUIRREL, BATHIN' IN CRACKED CORN HE IS!!!!!!!! LYIN' BACK JUSTA SWIMMIN' AROUND IN IT!!! THINKS IT'S HIS EFFIN' CORN!!!!!!!!!!
I could hear the roaring from the house.
I'LL SHOW HIM!!!
Retribution was swift and brutal.
Every kernel of cracked corn (and when it was all found, it was a substantial amount of corn) got swept out of every crevice in the building, and the whole lot was put out in the yard in a big pile.
NOW!!
HE'LL HAVE TO SHARE!!
SERVE HIM RIGHT FOR BEING GREEDY.
Suddenly the rabbits, crows, wood pigeon, robins, jays, chickadees and other critters who had spent months getting by on just a tincture of cracked corn, provided to help them stay above the critter poverty line (with not even an increase to help with recent rampant corn inflation) .... they are all in carbohydrate heaven right now.
PARTYTIME!!!!
All the daily foraging routines have been disrupted in order to partake of the sudden corn largesse.
I have no doubt that this summer will see abnormally big baby critters emerging from dens all over the yard.
The babies will no doubt turn into a me-me-me Critter Generation Y and will break our door down in January demanding carb-rich three course meals, $120,000 jobs, and/or better EI (I mean corn) payments if this largesse doesn't continue.
Last night according to Himself, we even had Bob Rae the big old silver raccoon who pretends he's not living in our yard, come along last night for a bit of chow.
Seeing as it was goin' a beggin'.
If I was the squirrel, I would take my beating and my sudden eviction from the squirrel Versailles that is our buildin' like a man squirrel, and go find a new place to live.
Because the squeaking of tumbrils is quietly, but definitely discernible above the rhythm of the waves that is the soundtrack to our yard.
If I were JD the Little Red Squirrel, I would seclude myself, reflect on my loss and return in a few years... when the corn is gone... refreshed, with a new, superficially sustainable way of keeping everyone fed.
But no. He hasn't the wit to do it.
He is camped out on the pile of cracked corn, fighting everyone off.
As if he can.
He has been there all day according to Himself, who is home with a chest infection.
Instinct has kicked in and he's an aggressive little bastard.
JD the Little Red Squirrel ... not Himself.
Why wouldn't he be?
He's used to having most of the corn to himself.
He's used to being the only critter who knew where the corn was kept.
He's used to having unlimited access to the corn, to people turning a blind eye to grand theft cracked corn, to squirreling away some extra corn for the winter.
He's fighting for his political life as they say.
All the fat he's put on over the last couple of weeks is worn off him.
Our crows - we have three of them who are inseparable and who have that brilliant dark sense of humour that crows sometimes have - our crows have him driven demented.
It's so simple it's beautiful.
Desmoulins, Danton and Robespierre take turns to run at him, wings spread, until he panics and runs away under the building.
While he's cowering under the building, they pick slowly and desultorily at the corn, with their backs to him of course.
After a while he can't help himself and he chatters at them like an Albanian matriarch with four fields to plough and every son in a tower.
That's when they leave the pile to have a big lawerly convocation on top of the old pine tree, or to stare intently at something moving over by the lake. (Probably the mo-fo eagle nesting on the island).
Ahaa.... JD thinks!! The Fools!!!
Back he goes for a moment, and every time a swarm of starlings swoop down from absolutely nowhere, kick his skinny red ass again and grab their piece of the action while the crows stare into the middle distance and nod knowingly at each other.
JD has to retire defeated from the bombardment that is those locusts of the birdworld.
JD the Little Red Squirrel has learned two simple, irrefutable facts.
The buildin' does in fact belong to whomever pays for it.
And Himself, who paid for it, is a force to be reckoned with when his ire is raised ....
....
... We had an election in Nova Scotia this week.
It was quite the game-changer.
The forthcoming redistribution of the provincial corn will no doubt be just as entertaining to watch as the antics on Eagle.
Me... I'm rooting for the crows.
And scanning the horizon for starlings.
A Neck like a Jockey's B****x
As they would say at home.
GM has I mean.
General Motors, I'm talking about.
Or Government Motors as they call it now.
Here's their ad about the fact that they had to get a multi-billion dollar bailout from the taxpayers of the USA and Canada. I'm posting this mainly for the European readership - we have this advertisement inflicted on us approximately every twelve minutes if we are sad enough to be watching cable television.
The similarities with the all-American Budweiser beer commercials are obvious - they even have the thundering hooves of the American Mustang (which is a competing brand, no??) ... I wonder do they know they shoot mustangs nowadays.
Nice to see they're spending my money on getting down to business.... We're not going out of business, we're getting down to business.
Oh you are, are you? WTF were you doing up to now?
See, see, we have a photo of a solar panel in our ad, that means our cars don't use gas.
They just sold the Hummer brand to a Chinese company.
Roll on the resource wars...
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/02/new-gm-ad-breaks-online/
This ad makes me so mad I could spit. And its ubiquitousness means that it is being hard-wired into people who make their cultural decisions from televisual images..... which appears to be most people these days.
Terrifying manipulation of the people using their own money.
Can't we ban this stuff?
I mean, we ban drugs?
This is worse.
GM has I mean.
General Motors, I'm talking about.
Or Government Motors as they call it now.
Here's their ad about the fact that they had to get a multi-billion dollar bailout from the taxpayers of the USA and Canada. I'm posting this mainly for the European readership - we have this advertisement inflicted on us approximately every twelve minutes if we are sad enough to be watching cable television.
The similarities with the all-American Budweiser beer commercials are obvious - they even have the thundering hooves of the American Mustang (which is a competing brand, no??) ... I wonder do they know they shoot mustangs nowadays.
Nice to see they're spending my money on getting down to business.... We're not going out of business, we're getting down to business.
Oh you are, are you? WTF were you doing up to now?
See, see, we have a photo of a solar panel in our ad, that means our cars don't use gas.
They just sold the Hummer brand to a Chinese company.
Roll on the resource wars...
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/02/new-gm-ad-breaks-online/
This ad makes me so mad I could spit. And its ubiquitousness means that it is being hard-wired into people who make their cultural decisions from televisual images..... which appears to be most people these days.
Terrifying manipulation of the people using their own money.
Can't we ban this stuff?
I mean, we ban drugs?
This is worse.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
Hope is giving me a headache
I've had a headache for two weeks now. The back of my neck is being squeezed by an unrelenting vice grip. And my stomach is in knots. Churning, burning knots that end when I sleep and start when I wake up.
This morning I thought, okay, it can't be the cold I've had. It must be stress-related. So I went through all the things that are going on in my life to identify the stressor.
I don't really have any stressful goings on in my life right now though.
Not compared to what's happened in the last couple of years.
Himself and I have reached a plateau of calm right now.
Of course, when I eventually figured it out, it's so blindingly obvious I can't understand why I didn't realise it.
It's election stress!!
Not that I'm involved in electioneering. For the first time in my life, I have a job which forbids me to be involved in the democratic process.
I am closely following two sets of elections, which are being fought by all the people I have worked with and cared for and fought with and yelled at and laughed with for the past twenty years.
And ironically (or maybe I am just the biggest election Jonah in the world), for the first time in my life, my friends and colleagues and comrades and fellow adventurers are poised to win both sets of elections.
No wonder I am weeping with the stress of the hope of it all.
Thank goodness I am not involved this time.
I would be a basket case.
Speaking of hope, this morning, I watched some of Obama's Cairo speech.
Into history he walked, loping onto the stage in that incredibly rangy relaxed way he has. Speaking in front of 3,000 people who must be so relieved to see a man who is supposed to be their enemy but who looks just like them. Quoting their holy book back to them so eloquently. Speaking about duty, the way their Muslim faith does.
I am not alone in my hope.
I listened to Michael Moore on the radio this week. He was being interviewed about GM. He was in no mood to forgive them their Flint sins. The interviewer asked him whether he was hopeful. He said he was full of hope for the future, because his new President was sly as a fox, and he reckoned if anyone could steer America back on track it was him.
Was this how my parents felt in 1961?
Himself was born 92 days after Kennedy was assassinated, the world was probably still grieving. I came along six years later, among the last of the Gen-Xers. With a few small fillips, we have only experienced a paucity of vision and leadership in our lives.
We have lived through the 73 Oil Crisis, the Northern Ireland conflict, the Quebec question, Reaganomics, Mulroney and NAFTA, Thatcherism, US meddling in Central and South American democracy, the hunger strikes, the ozone layer, the fall of Communism, continuous conflict in the supposedly civilized Mediterranean region (Basque separatism, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Israel-Palestine, Algeria, Libya), Bush I, Monica Lewinsky, Bush II, 9-11+ other bombings, two wars over oil, the failure of the New Labour dream, the destruction of democracy in Haiti, Tianamen Square, the continual rearrangment of the rubble that is Afghanistan, the rape of the continent of Africa by disease and colonialism, and the gradual disintegration of trust in all of the political and public institutions we were (well I was, Himself is a total anarchist at heart) taught to believe in - politics, religion, public services, charitable organizations, educational institutions and most of all, the benign shadow of the Land of the Free.
Now we are nearly middle-aged, as well as the beginnings of chronic back/leg/joint-ache and the growing finality of the realisation that we will never ever be rich/idle/debt-free, we are facing into global warming and peak oil and the dismantling of the welfare state model round about the exact time we will be needing a nursing home bed.
No wonder I have a headache.
I have had my hopes dashed so many times...
Today though, I am only going to think about the fact that this time next week, the wheel may have turned a little bit towards my way of thinking.
This morning I thought, okay, it can't be the cold I've had. It must be stress-related. So I went through all the things that are going on in my life to identify the stressor.
I don't really have any stressful goings on in my life right now though.
Not compared to what's happened in the last couple of years.
Himself and I have reached a plateau of calm right now.
Of course, when I eventually figured it out, it's so blindingly obvious I can't understand why I didn't realise it.
It's election stress!!
Not that I'm involved in electioneering. For the first time in my life, I have a job which forbids me to be involved in the democratic process.
I am closely following two sets of elections, which are being fought by all the people I have worked with and cared for and fought with and yelled at and laughed with for the past twenty years.
And ironically (or maybe I am just the biggest election Jonah in the world), for the first time in my life, my friends and colleagues and comrades and fellow adventurers are poised to win both sets of elections.
No wonder I am weeping with the stress of the hope of it all.
Thank goodness I am not involved this time.
I would be a basket case.
Speaking of hope, this morning, I watched some of Obama's Cairo speech.
Into history he walked, loping onto the stage in that incredibly rangy relaxed way he has. Speaking in front of 3,000 people who must be so relieved to see a man who is supposed to be their enemy but who looks just like them. Quoting their holy book back to them so eloquently. Speaking about duty, the way their Muslim faith does.
I am not alone in my hope.
I listened to Michael Moore on the radio this week. He was being interviewed about GM. He was in no mood to forgive them their Flint sins. The interviewer asked him whether he was hopeful. He said he was full of hope for the future, because his new President was sly as a fox, and he reckoned if anyone could steer America back on track it was him.
Was this how my parents felt in 1961?
Himself was born 92 days after Kennedy was assassinated, the world was probably still grieving. I came along six years later, among the last of the Gen-Xers. With a few small fillips, we have only experienced a paucity of vision and leadership in our lives.
We have lived through the 73 Oil Crisis, the Northern Ireland conflict, the Quebec question, Reaganomics, Mulroney and NAFTA, Thatcherism, US meddling in Central and South American democracy, the hunger strikes, the ozone layer, the fall of Communism, continuous conflict in the supposedly civilized Mediterranean region (Basque separatism, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Israel-Palestine, Algeria, Libya), Bush I, Monica Lewinsky, Bush II, 9-11+ other bombings, two wars over oil, the failure of the New Labour dream, the destruction of democracy in Haiti, Tianamen Square, the continual rearrangment of the rubble that is Afghanistan, the rape of the continent of Africa by disease and colonialism, and the gradual disintegration of trust in all of the political and public institutions we were (well I was, Himself is a total anarchist at heart) taught to believe in - politics, religion, public services, charitable organizations, educational institutions and most of all, the benign shadow of the Land of the Free.
Now we are nearly middle-aged, as well as the beginnings of chronic back/leg/joint-ache and the growing finality of the realisation that we will never ever be rich/idle/debt-free, we are facing into global warming and peak oil and the dismantling of the welfare state model round about the exact time we will be needing a nursing home bed.
No wonder I have a headache.
I have had my hopes dashed so many times...
Today though, I am only going to think about the fact that this time next week, the wheel may have turned a little bit towards my way of thinking.
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