The Passing of The Year

My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
With much of blame, with little praise.

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
And face your audience again.

That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
What hath the Old Year meant to you?

And you, O neighbour on my right
So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope? O Optimist!
What read you in that withered face?

And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
What see you in the dying year?

And so from face to face I flit,
The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough! Oh, ring the curtain down!
Old weary year! it's time to go.

My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
For we've been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!

Robert Service

Enter: The Reductionist Movement

Circa: now.

It is said, when populations of mice and rats form rapidly, the hungry and stressed survivors tend to kill and devour the weaker.

In the case of Lions; When new adult lions take over a pride, they often kill the young and thus eliminate the chance of any rivalry against offspring he later fathers. Successful males that takeover a pride have about 2 years before another younger, stronger coalition replace them.

One of the main reasons for adults killing competitors is due to males taking over leadership of a group.

All of these mechanisms may seem cruel, but many of the strategies have a logical basis, as they are geared towards survival of animal [read: political] groups.

Danton, celebrated/hated/loved French revolutionary leader, himself executed after coming to power, said; "The revolution...devours its own children." Danton as a man “devoid of honor, principles, and morality”, who only found excitement and a chance for distinction. He was merely "a statesman of materialism".

The old revolution, not unlike Goya's 'Saturn devours its own children', was a common saying during the French Revolution (1789) and that it was most famously uttered by Danton during his trial.

By the period Danton fell out of favor with the Committee of Public Safety and Robespierre, the revolution had become so suspicious of loyalism and foreign intervention, it set up kangaroo courts throughout the country to purge society of counterrevolutionaries.

In the end, the people of Paris took virtual control of the National Assembly and the committee of Public Safety.

Successive waves of radicalization, quickly made conservatives out of yesterday's radicals.

Are you seeing what I'm getting at?

Fortunately this is not a revolution.....good god, this is Canada!! We don't do anything here.

I'm just sayin'...


"...by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned"
Georges Jacques Danton October 26, 1759 – April 5, 1794

Golly GG

Nice to see our Governor General takes dictation well....*....



This was a lose-lose-lose-lose-faeces situation.

None of this is democratic.

None of this attends to the larger questions, or fills the dire lack that Canada faces.

None of this was or is good, but will plague us henceforth.

None of this prepares, ready's or steady's Canada as we head into 2009.

And still no one, is capable of leading our country.

But our trembling little barking mad chihuahua PM has effectively defended [whizzed on] his dog house.

Coal for Christmas

eeegahds.....

This slow motion face-down-kiddie-gravel-slide just gets worse.

There's gonna be scarring for sure.

Incredibly (though what else can one expect from non-credible individuals?!) Harper has managed to harpoon himself in the foot. Just like that NY Giants sports guy at a dance bar.


But you know what molocule I am most proud of about our country?

....we don't use bullets or car bombs.

In other countries, people get killed for trying to do this.

Fortunately, we're not as organized as the proverbial third world we belong to.

((yet))

Otherwise, we're not unlike any other destablablized, weak, power mongering, inept, unfit, irrational, incapable corrupt Government.

And, as the old saying goes, if you aren't wise.....you're otherwise.


We are, officially, other-than-wise at this point.


So much has already been put on record of this riveting turtle race, for anyone to peruse and view 24/7, I will not rehash it all without real hash here.

But will say this:


I believe there will be dirty coal doled out for Christmas this year.


...which we all know is a pollutant, and not a sustainable, or viable solution.

Oh Canada....*.....

Oh Canada.....*.....

OK! So we've got a rugby scrum charging at, and wanting to bring down Stephen Harper in a humbling rumble.

I have no problem with that. Personally, I hope the microphones get in close so we can hear the crunching of broken bones.

What I do have a problem with is the crummy team doing the charging and scrumming.

So let's hypothetically say, Stephen Harper isn't able to suspend-and-or-dance-his-way-out-of-a-delay-by-immaturely-calling-a-
great-big-time-out, and let's just say the Governor General, who was always, up until now, purely a per functionary car hood ornament actually grants the scrum to take place.....and let's just say the potential coalition Gov't form, & win their vote-of-no confidence and take him down....assuming all that gets lined up in the crosshairs....

WTF?

Sadly. They are all the same politickers we've always had playing Pollyanna politics. No one is up for the job in this current economic global crises climate. Which is particularly clear in Canada when our adolescent-elects start doing that punch-each-other-in-the-back-seat-of-the-car-thing-that-is-Canada

...not bothering that no one is driving the thing that is Canada...and we're about to careen over a cliff, only this isn't as cathartically symbolic as that Thelma and Louise car careening scene.

So fast forward this twilight zone compendium of in incapabilities scenario to solutions.....

What's say, we alllllllllll agree, c'mon now, EVERYBODY, just hop on a plane (or just this one freakin' band wagon in your life), now's your chance, I say, if this infantile power struggle takes place, and we end up with Dion / Rae / Layton & Duceppe ((shudder))...I say we ALL - head in droves to Pearson Int'l Airport, from every corner of this once upon a time ( pre 1400's in my eyes ) great land of ours....and, let's all arrive at Pearson in our very own Thai-inspired anti-government "co-abolishing-political-cleanse' from our system.

THAT would trump the unprecedented. What's say WE wrest control of our country and write history together.

Especially given how unutterably Canadian we all are. Which has always been accept-and-complain tactics.

How 'bout we show some strength?

I think we, as a nation could take advantage of the upcoming busy flying holiday season down at Pearson Int'l Airport and just sit in to show our determination to have a capable, functioning Government at a time we kinda need one..we could oust each of our existing nonsensical, incapable governing 'leaders" if we stopped whining and did something.

Admittedly not something citizens want to do....but when you're stuck with these juvenile sandbox kiddies, c'mon man....some disciplinary action demands to be taken. WE are equally responsible....or else these little horrors actually grow old because (a) they were allowed to and (b) they forgot what the hell their post, position, duties and responsibilities were originally all about at one point (see waaay back in some history book for an example of a real leader, as none pops to mind as I type).

I think this is a great opportunity to step up and be as peaceful (however painfully-annoying) as the Thai population were in ousting their corrupt government. It works! ...not that we'll ever know that first hand.

In lieu of that, I say bring Casey our of retirement - that squeaky voiced, blonde little hand puppet from Mr. Dressup and stick him the seat of power (and Finnigan can be our new GG) until we find someone better. Casey may be our best Prime Minister we've ever had.

(or was Casey buried with Mr. Dressup? ...cremated you say?!?!)

AUGH!

See you at Pearson this holiday season people!

the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...

Excerpt from "Welcome to Flanders Fields - The Great Canadian Battle of the Great War : Ypres, 1915", by Daniel G. Dancocks, McClelland and Stewart (Toronto, Canada), 1988

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime. As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it1:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook2.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave." When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read3:

" The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both.
The word blow was not used in the first line though it was used later when the poem later appeared in Punch. But it was used in the second last line. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene. "

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer -- either Lt.-Col. Edward Morrison, the former Ottawa newspaper editor who commanded the 1st Brigade of artillery4, or Lt.-Col. J.M. Elder5, depending on which source is consulted -- retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. "The Spectator," in London, rejected it, but "Punch" published it on 8 December 1915.

McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, saw dawn, felt sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up your quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Doctor Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade wrote this poem on May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres. The poem was later published in "Punch", December 8, 1915.

1 Bassett, John. page 44, "John McCrae." Markham:Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1984.
2 Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada, MG30 E209, biographical note by Gertrude Hickmore.
3 Mathieson, William D. page 264. "My Grandfather's War." Toronto:Macmillan, 1981.
4 Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada, MG30 EI33, volume 4, "Origin of `In Flanders Fields.'"
5 "Canadian Daily Record," 5/3/19.

Barack Obama

Justice

Just yes.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is one of Robert Frost's most famous poems.

Written in 1923, this poem was published in The Yale Review in October of that year.

Some say the poem helped Frost to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Only eight lines long, this poem is still considered one of Frost's best.

I've been negligent in blogging....not that anyone cares, but this evening's walk brought with it
the first snow from the north, covering Autumns beauty with the dusk's twilight white.

It is the first snow of the new season. Packing snow under foot, and wet.

So we begin a new chapter in our collective reflectiveness...

World Meet Pat

Pat Tanzola is one of the good guys, fighting the good fight,
running the good race, jumping the good hoops, spinning the good wheels,
twirlin' the good baton leading us on....

and he's winning!

To our dismay, today Pat leaves our pokey old icefloe to make a splash over at UofT.

All I can say is: Damn you Pat.

How could you leave us?

But also want to say thank you Pat, for being one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of working with,
thank you for thinking my natterings were worthy of a weblog and got me all set up online...I feel I have failed you.
.

But congratulations on your new job, your new house, your upcoming nuptials, and on coping admirably while on that rediculous cleanse ...good lord*+;...at least I know you got real food in you today.

To read a few words from the man himself, may I direct you to the following link:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2006/09/30/arrivederci/


You will be missed Mr. Tanzola.

Take care and keep in touch.

Crossing the Blue

A novel by Holly Jean Buck

I had some down time when I was without Internet, and a functional computer, but I was given this book...

If you ever have so much as a weekend...so much as an inkling, curiosity, fascination as to what we might all experience in the future...

the future...post-petrol

the future...post-American-empire

The future... post-infrastructure

I highly recommend you take the Kerouac-road-trip of the future now....while there's still infrastructure enough to send you a copy by post, and while you can enjoy a bevvy or two, to try and distance yourself from the impending, most likely, reality generations after us face...without such luxury.

All that said and done...

Crossing the Blue is one of the most beautifully written books, despite subject matter...I have encountered in a long time.

It is us.

It is the future.

It is both unreal and real...

There is hope, there is love and connection, there is life as it happens when one travels...

...but most of all...

there is a sense of realness.

The characters are as real as anyone you know.

The images of the future is as real as there is likely to be.

The situations continues to be as surreal-but-real, as life tends to be.

The reality is as honest as we see...

...despite the horrors that will bring.

Should you be inclined, and might be looking for an interesting 'read'

may I highly recommend that you pick up 'Crossing the Blue' by Holly Jean Buck

It is a wondrous insight into what can, might, and will most likely be.....our future.


for more information go to: http://www.lulu.com/content/3327469

Labourious Diem

I think I'm back therefore I blog!

I have missed letting my nonsense ooz out in text form.

I have missed railing at what on earth I might come up with to blog.

I have missed all TECHNOLOGY and all the modern inconveniences they serve!

I have laboured, fussed and fumed and - as ever - discovered it is always the last thing one could imagine or think of that was causing the bain of my existence....I believe after much trouble, and shooting...dust bunnies had gnawed
through actual cables ....though I managed to get this montage of madness working, it remains riddled through and through with other ailments....but who cares about that?! I have typed-text at my finger tips once again!!

So much water under the bridge....so much life, and time has passed I cannot go back...

....so I will commence by going forth.

Welcome to September folks.

This is the slippery slope seasonal time that finds us deposited with a thump on the doorstep of Christmas before we even knew what has happened so be sure to drag your butt and dig in your heels to enjoy every single day as it needs to be enjoyed.

Slowly.

Peaceably.

...with grace.

Enjoy enjoy enjoy

Carpe diem

!#@*&%#

Adding umbrage to my computer carnage, is my service provider not providing service.

Please stay tuned.

Management

Continued computer issues*+;.

I am laptopless at the mo', but will try an old 486.

Thanking you for your patience.

Management

Everyday Thoughts

Walking into Budapest's train station, and through the gate to my train that was already sitting patiently there to take me, without complaint, to Romania...I decided to walk along it's unrelenting length to have a look at it, and get my last walk in for the next sedentary 12 hours. When I finally decided to step aboard it's antiquity, I then found myself walking most of the length back again, along the narrow windowed corridor looking in, and for a compartment that I felt I would like to spend my journey in. Having found the least crowded compartment, containing one man, I stepped in and plunked my bag, and myself down. Once on the move, when asked for my ticket, my eyes literally bugged out when I saw THE very numbered compartment, and THE very numbered seat that I - on an oblivious whim - decided to plunk down in on, was the very compartment and seat assigned to me back in Toronto! I couldn't get my head around that could be the case for an entire mile.

I mention that because, that is, in essence, how I travel. Blindly, by feel. But the things you find are astonishing.
Somehow, I find myself precisely where I need, or am, supposed to be.

This intuiting nature baffles even me. But I love it.

The man sitting across from me is a mystery. We never spoke one word for the duration of his portion of the journey.

But from that man, sitting directly across from me, I could tell...
He looked older than he likely was.
He has known hard labour.
He has known a hard life.
He was likely going back to where he once belonged.
He was leaving either where he worked or where he tried to find work.
He himself was hard....but still so very deeply human.
He was not a broken man, just knows the brink.

From him the follow thought came crashing through to me.....though cliched it may be!

We have, in our grasp, for those with the capacity to stop and really take notice...

Our decisions of yesterday are what brought us here today.
Every brand new day brings with it - literally - a new start. A clean slate. A second chance. Another try.

A cliché, to be sure, but so true all the same.

Every day is a new opportunity for it - life - to be different, not the way it was or has been, or all we know or have been shown, but how it could, might still possibly, or ought to be.

It's always just up to us to 'make it so'.

But so few see or feel this, or brush off this tired and worn out cliche and never try their hand with that experiment, so every day goes wholly unused, unchanged and unnoticed.

Everyday brings us people and places we cannot have imagined or considered.
Everyday shows us something we were just about to forget altogether, or hadn't quite fully known before.
Everyday finds us either closer to, or further away from who we could / ought to be, or were.
Everyday is as individual, and as unique and as taken for granted, as every heartbeat we're allowed, and every breath we breathe.

That's is how much we don't realise we have throughout our journey whether it is just at the beginning of a brand new day, or long on the road in life.

With each person is a real, alive, deep, sentient, thinking, knowing, feeling. living, worrying, wishing, breathing just as yourself being that we may never fully discover. But exist is all does.

Stop and hone in and think and contemplate and consider, and let thoughts and feelings and noticings swirl around you more freely. All I suggest here is you let all that enter into you and your mind, your heart and your soul, and more of life will be yours to enjoy on your own journey, even if you're just going to work.

We came to a stop in Szolnok, Hungary. This was his stop. Many passengers left, fewer got on. But my silent travel companion stopped, after grabbing his luggage, turned and nodded his silent farewell to me, as he took his leave and stepped off.

This is what a lot of life is about.

Communication, comprehension and compassion in silence.

This is what transcends boundaries.

Orchid In The Weeds

With a little help from a friend, I blog before you using a lovely laptop on loan !!

I vaguely recall mumbling something about striving for quality over quantity.

In all that time I had no means or method to type anything....
I discovered..quality time does not beget quality blog content.


So!

I would like to retract that striving for quality statement.

In looking waaaaaay waaaaaay up at that bar I had so oafishly set, the only thought that occurred to me was....


Perhaps I should strive for quality-within-whack-loads-of-quantity instead.

So that is what I propose to do.

It will be for you, dear reader, to find what you perceive as quality amidst the quantity I will blog. All the while, despite clear and evident failure to achieve such, I will nevertheless strive.

Failure to do even that, I will hope.


It's not about attaining anything....it's the act of caring.


Here's hoping we actually find an orchid [striving] thriving in the weeds.

Weird how I've suddenly got Joe Cocker lyrics of Try With A Little Help From My Friends etc. etc. running through my head now.

Is it in yours now too?!

so much for quality!

(orchids are quiet things)

Kaput computer

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Sadly and regrettably, my computer has officially gone kaput.

I have tried to coax it back to its general irritating and aggravating self - but it refuses to budge or oblige.

Whosoever sits at home devising and unleashing brand spanking new computer viruses for fun....

your parents would not be proud.

Compounding my computer kaput-ed-ness...it comes at a time I cannot afford to ~do~ anything about it.

The reason I mention of my computer calamities is it is directly affecting my access to blog.

I can only do so from an outside computer...but once I'm outside, blogging is the last thing on my mind.

So instead of my promissory note to be regular....I will instead strive for quality over quantity.

This is neither quality or quantity.

I said I will strive.


Patience and thank you.

Management

Toronto Neighbourhood Evacuated Sunday

Toronto police ordered the evacuation of neighbourhoods within 1.6 kilometres of Sunrise Propane.

Thousands of people living between Keele Street, Dufferin Street, Sheppard Street and Wilson Avenue were ordered to leave their homes and are not expected to be allowed to return for approx. 72 hours.

The place is still not secured, at the time of this post, 15 hours after the occurrence.

Census figures for the area suggest that more than 12,000 people live in the affected zone.

Many of the evacuees are being housed at York University, where they can sleep in beds set up in the school gymnasium. The Red Cross is supplying food and water to evacuees, while the Humane Society is providing food and water to pets.

The first explosion, which could be heard seven kilometres away, shook nearby homes and buildings, waking residents at 3:50 AM. Hundreds of smaller explosions would go off at the rate of four every 10 seconds.

A veteran firefighter of 25 years of service, died trying to extinguish a massive fire at a propane depot A no-fly zone was ordered over the area, as emergency workers feared that propane tankers parked on the site might spark further explosions, although those fears were diminishing by about 11:30 a.m. ET.

Natural gas and hydro were shut off to the area as a precaution.

Ignition Temperature in Air for propane to combust - 920-1020°F
Maximum Flame Temperature 3595°F

People reported either seeing, hearing or feeling the explosions from Niagara-On-The-Lake, Aurora, and Mississauga.

Astonishing so few were hurt.

Lovely Karlovy Vary

Karlovy Vary is a spa town situated in western Bohemia of the Czech Republic.

In Germany it is known as Karlsbad. In other parts it is known as Carlsbad.

Karlovy Vary was named after the King of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370.

It is historically famous for its hot springs, of which there are 13 main springs, and about 300 smaller springs, along with the warm-water Teplá River.

On August 14th, 1370 - Charles IV, gave Karlovy Vary city privileges to the place that subsequently was named after him, according to legend after he had acclaimed the healing power of the hot springs. However, earlier settlements could be found in the outskirts of today's city.

I took this photo while there in July.

638 years later it is still a cool hot spot to see.

Vienna National Library

I took this photo in Vienna's National Library because it reminded me of Carl Spitzweg's 'The Book Worm'

Carl Spitzweg, who painted The Bookworm in 1850 (similar to the photo only from a different angle and far better lighting ; ) was a German romanticist painter and poet, and is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the Biedermeier era.

Trained as a Pharmacist. He attained his qualification from the University of Munich, but while recovering from an illness he also took up painting.

Spitzweg was self-taught as an artist.

In Central Europe, Biedermeier refers to work in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design in the period between the years 1815 (Vienna Congress), the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1848, the year of the European Revolutions and contrasts with the Romantic era which preceded it.

Biedermeier can be identified with two trends in early nineteenth-century German history.

The first trend is growing urbanization and industrialization leading to a new urban middle class, and with it a new kind of audience. The early Lieder of Schubert, which could be performed at the piano without substantial musical training, illustrate the broadened reach of art in this period. Further, Biedermeier writers were themselves mainly middle-class, as opposed to the Romantics, who were mainly drawn from the nobility.

The second trend is the growing political oppression following the end of the Napoleonic Wars prompting people to concentrate on the domestic and (at least in public) the non-political. Due to the strict publication rules and censorship, writers primarily concerned themselves with non-political subjects, like historical fiction and country life. Political discussion was usually confined to the home, in the presence of close friends.


Carl Spitzweg's 1850 'The Book Worm'

Experiencing Techical Difficulties

Please Stand by

Do not adjust your set

My computer got nailed with a virus that is frying my computer, along with my brain and won't let me pretty much touch a button or key without freezing and ceasing and threatening to die right in my hands, so I am rendered unable to upload what I had all lined up (in my mind), and as I didn't expect this to occur...I don't have the time or energy to pull a bunny out of a hat for you right now...so please stay tuned, and I'll try again from another computer tomorrow.

With apologies
Management

My Turn To Return

6 countries, 2 time zones, crossed the continental divide, 4 airports, 2 boats, 5 buses, 2 trains, 4 taxi's and 5000 miles later....

I have returned from one wholly remarkable journey.

Of which I won't bore you with, but will say this...

Had I known the journey, and all the people I was to have the privilege of meeting...
Had I known all the conversations that were in store to be had...
Had I known all the goodness that lay ahead of me, and for me, to simply step into and know directly...
Had I known so much was going to be shared, and given to me...
Had I known what was supposed to be just-a-holiday was going to be filled with so many good souls...

Had I known any of this prior to setting out, it is my belief, any such 'knowing' would have prevented the purity each moment contained within it.

Every encounter, individual, chance meeting, unplanned lunch and dinner companion, every conversation that was had with someone every day, every time, in every city, town, rest stop, train station and compartment, sidewalk cafe, airport and in flight, every hike, park bench, taxi, historic site, shop and restaurant along the way was real in every sense of the word.

Somehow, for some reason, only the real was being shared and conveyed.

The joy and honour for me, was in experiencing how quick people were to open up, and be honest and caring and interested and at the ready to speak of real things on a deep level and connect.

Had I known my journey was going to be so warm, inviting and inclusive, so fascinating and awe inspiring, so compassionate and loving...

Had I known or imagined any of this before setting out, I doubt I would have felt all that I was shown, in quite the same way.

When setting out anywhere, be it your job or a journey, intuit everything around you, and have faith people are more like you - than not. Then reach into it directly.

What you will find is worth more than anything imaginably tangible...you will find the intangible wealth of a soul.

I return from a remarkable journey - renewed and filled with love and remembering.

But promise not to yak on about it. Just marking my return with a blog entry.

to Restaurace Lamberty's - perfect introduction to Prague!
to Hart with the biggest and best heart of them all - you and Carol Ann are a joy (I'm open to adoption ; )
to T.L. Tsim - a drizzeling conversation I won't soon forget either
to Candice and Bob - say hello to Wade for me ; )
to Andy....I will listen and report back...thank you for listening to me yammer on! You have the patience of a saint!
to Petrix, be kind to Lori !!
to Alex...no more motorcycle accidents!
to Josef & my fellow plum Czech hiking train journey friends...please make your website with an English option button
(I have no access to it from here as it currently is)
to Lucian...it falls to you to mark the events - to right the wrongs and write it right.
to Daniela...I kissed your land and sky for you...it was so beautiful to wake up each day, it was natural to do so.
to Antar, stay focused and fun, and keep plodding on and you too could be working your butt off in Canada...it's the same everywhere.
to Reuben who once travelled with a water bottle bearing my name, thank you for that conversation and your kind written words.


to all others...thank you for your conversation, for crossing my path, and entering my heart and soul.

Hiatus Byeatus

On holiday until August 1st.

Hope you tune back in for some steamin' fresh faeces.
(I hereby swear and promise not to accost any of you with travel stories)

tot ziens!

Henry David Thoreau Born July 12th 1817

Thoreau's Cove, Walden Pond, Concord Massachusetts between 1900 - 1910

Henry David Thoreau


Writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, in Concord, Massachusetts.
Associated with the Concord-based literary movement called New England Transcendentalism, he embraced the Transcendentalist belief in the universality of creation and the primacy of personal insight and experience. Thoreau's advocacy of simple, principled living remains compelling, while his writings on the relationship between people and the environment helped define the nature essay.


After graduating from Harvard in 1837, Thoreau held a series of odd jobs. Encouraged by Concord neighbour and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, he started publishing essays, poems, and reviews in the transcendentalist magazine The Dial.


His essay "Natural History of Massachusetts" (1842) revealed his talent for writing about nature.


From 1845 to 1847, Thoreau lived in a cabin on the edge of Walden Pond, a small glacial lake near Concord.


Guided by the maxim "Simplify, simplify," he strictly limited his expenditures, his possessions, and his contact with others. His goal: "To live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach."



"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it…"
Henry David Thoreau,"Where I Lived, and What I Lived for" from Walden: or, Life in the Woods.


Walden: or, Life in the Woods chronicles his experiment in self-sufficiency. In a series of loosely-connected essays, Thoreau takes American individualism to new heights, while offering a biting critique of society's increasingly materialistic value system.


During his time at Walden, Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax.


He withheld the tax to protest the existence of slavery and what he saw as an imperialistic war on Mexico. Released after a relative paid the tax, he wrote "Civeil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government") to explain why private conscience can constitute a higher law than civil authority. "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly," he argued, "the true place for a just man is also a prison." Thoreau continued to be a vocal and active opponent of slavery. In addition to aiding runaway slaves, in 1859 he staunchly and publicly defended abolitionist John Brown.

When his writing failed to win money or acclaim, he became a surveyor to support himself. As a result, Thoreau's later years increasingly were spent outdoors, observing and writing about nature. His seminal essay, "Succession of Forest Trees," describes the vital ecology of the woodlands, highlighting the role of birds and animals in seed dispersal. Republished posthumously in Excursions

, Thoreau's essay makes the forward-looking suggestion that forest management systems mirror existing woodland ecology.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions," Thoreau reminds us, "perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Considered something of a failure by the small town merchants and farmers of Concord, Thoreau died at home on May 6, 1862. His place in American letters is secure, however, as many continue to find inspiration in his work and his example.

Bavaria attempt to cream Hitler on this day

Photo: Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria

Hitler is paid a visit by his would-be assassin on this day in 1944.

Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer.
As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler's behest grew, a growing numbers of Germans-within the military and without-began conspiring to assassinate their leader. As the masses were unlikely to turn on the man in whose hands they had hitherto placed their lives and future, it was up to men close to Hitler, German officers, to dispatch him. Leadership of the plot fell to Claus von Stauffenberg, newly promoted to colonel and chief of staff to the commander of the army reserve, which gave him access to Hitler's headquarters at Berchtesgaden and Rastenburg.

Stauffenberg traveled to Berchtesgaden on July 3 and received at the hands of a fellow army officer, Major-General Helmuth Stieff, a bomb with a silent fuse that was small enough to be hidden in a briefcase.

On July 11, Stauffenberg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to report to Hitler on the current military situation. The plan was to use the bomb on July 15, but at the last minute, Hitler was called away to his headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia.

Stauffenberg was asked to follow him there. On July 16, a meeting took place between Stauffenberg and Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Hofacker informed Stauffenberg that German defenses had collapsed at Normandy, and the tide had turned against them in the West.

The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20, at Rastsenburg.

Anticipating the inevitable defeat and blaming the Fuher for the German reversals in Russia a team of top Nazi generals that included the famous Field Marshal Edwin Rommel conspired to kill Hitler. The plot codenamed as Operation Valkyrie meant to assassinate the Furher and, simultaneously, to seize the General Headquarters in Berlin.The plotters hoped that without Hitler they would be able to negotiate peace and avoid complete destruction of the German state. On July 20th 1944 Count Claus von Stauffenburg, a Colonel, planted a satchel carrying a bomb in a meeting room in an ill fated assassination attempt on Hitler at the dictator's Wolf's Lair retreat.

The bomb went off killing and wounding several people. Much to the plotter's dismay Adolf Hitler survived the blast getting away with just a few scratches. In a crackdown that immediately insued, an estimated 7,000 people were arrested and dozens were tortured and executed, among them one Field Marshal and 20 Generals. 49 Generals committed suicide to avoid execution. The families of the executed plotters also paid a heavy price for being close to those who dared try and kill Hitler.

July 10th Berne Convention

Berne Convention signatory countries represented in blue

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement about copyright, which was first adopted in Berne, Switzerland July 10th, 1886.

The Berne Convention was developed at the instigation of Victor Hugo as the Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale. Thus it was influenced by the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur), which contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon concept of "copyright" which only dealt with economic concerns.

Before the Berne Convention, national copyright laws usually only applied for works created within each country. Consequently, a work published in United Kingdom (UK) by a British national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in France; likewise, a work published in France by a French national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in the UK.
The Berne Convention followed in the footsteps of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property 1883, which in the same way had created a framework for international integration of the other kinds of intellectual property: patents, trademarks and industrial designs.

Like the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention set up a bureau to handle administrative tasks. In 1893, these two small bureaus merged and became the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (best known by its French acronym BIRPI), situated in Berne. In 1960, BIRPI moved to Geneva, to be closer to the United Nations and other international organizations in that city. In 1967 it became the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and in 1974 became an organization within the United Nations.

Since almost all nations are members of the world Trade Organization, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights requires non-members to accept almost all of the conditions of the Berne Convention.

As of April 2007, there are 163 countries that are parties to the Berne Convention.

The Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be copyrighted for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection. For photography, the Berne Convention sets a minimum term of 25 years from the year the photograph was created, and for cinematography the minimum is 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after creation if it hasn't been shown within 50 years after the creation. Countries under the older revisions of the treaty may choose to provide their own protection terms, and certain types of works (such as phonorecords and motion pictures) may be provided shorter terms.

Argentina Celebrates it's 192nd year Independent of Spanish Rule

The Independence of Argentina was declared on July 9th 1816 by the Congress of Tucuman.

One of the places that tourists visit the most is the North of Argentina.

This sector consists of the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Tucuman, Catamarca, Salta and Jujuy.Each one of them has its own geopraphical stamp with big contrasts: mountains, valleys and canyons, exuberant jungles, wild terrains and the astounding puna, that awes the visitor looking for an encounter with nature and authentic lands.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca, or Humahuaca canyon, is a treasure in Jujuy declared Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003, in the Cultural Landscape category.

This is a culture that dates back more than ten thousand years, with different native ethnics that make up the ancestry of those who nowadays maintain the thousands of years old languages and customs.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca is 15 kms long, going from north to south along the Rio Grande basin, flanked by the vast puna to the west, and to the east, by exceptionally beautiful landscapes in which colors invade your senses amid this wonderful atmosphere of silence and changing tones, with a scattering of typical little villages with shy but warm hosts that offer services to their visitors.

Photo: Humahuaca Canyon

Paris Celebrated it's 2,000th Birthday in 1951

July 8, 1951
Paris celebrates it's 2,000th birthday
On this day in 1951, Paris, the capital city of France, celebrates turning 2,000 years old. In fact, a few more candles would've technically been required on the birthday cake, as the City of Lights was most likely founded around 250 B.C.
The history of Paris can be traced back to a Gallic tribe known as the Parisii, who sometime around 250 B.C. settled an island (known today as Ile de la Cite) in the Seine River, which runs through present-day Paris. By 52 B.C., Julius Caesar and the Romans had taken over the area, which eventually became Christianized and known as Lutetia, Latin for "midwater dwelling." The settlement later spread to both the left and right banks of the Seine and the name Lutetia was replaced with "Paris." In 987 A.D., Paris became the capital of France. As the city grew, the Left Bank earned a reputation as the intellectual district while the Right Bank became known for business.
During the French Renaissance period, from the late 15th century to the early 17th century, Paris became a center of art, architecture and science. In the mid-1800s, Napoleon III hired civic planner Georges-Eugene Hausmann to modernize Paris. Hausmann's designs gave the city wide, tree-lined boulevards, large public parks, a new sewer system and other public works projects. The city continued to develop as an important hub for the arts and culture. In the 1860s, an artistic movement known as French Impression emerged, featuring the work of a group of Paris-based artists that included Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Gustav Mahler, Bohemian composer born on July 7th 1860 - 1911

Gustav Mahler was born into a German-speaking, Jewish family in Kalischt, Bohemia, then the Austrian Empire, today the Czech Republic, the second of fourteen children, of whom only six survived infancy. His parents soon moved to Jjilhava in German Iglau, Moravia, today the Czech Republic

In Mahler's day Vienna was one of the world’s biggest cities and the capital of a great empire in Central Europe. It was home to a lively artistic and intellectual scene. It was home to famous painters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

Mahler knew many of these intellectuals and artists.

In 1897, Mahler, then thirty-seven, was offered the directorship of the Vienna Opera, the most prestigious musical position in the Austria Empire. This was an 'Imperial' post, and under Austro-Hungarian law, no such posts could be occupied by Jews. Mahler, who was never a devout or practising Jew, had, in preparation, converted to Roman Catholicism.

Mahler's own music aroused considerable opposition from music critics, who tended to hear his symphonies as 'potpourris' in which themes from "disparate" periods and traditions were indiscriminately mingled. Mahler's juxtaposition of material from both "high" and "low" cultures, as well as his mixing of different ethnic traditions, outraged conservative critics at a time when workers' mass organizations were growing rapidly, and clashes between Germans, Czechs, Hungarians and Jews in Austro-Hungary were creating anxiety and instability.

The final impetus for Mahler's departure from the Vienna Opera was a generous offer from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Having signed a contract to conduct the long-established New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler and his family travelled to America. At this time, he completed his Das Lied con der Erde (The Song of the Earth), and his Symphony No. 9, which would be his last completed work. I

n February 1911, during a long and demanding concert season in New York, Mahler fell seriously ill with a streptococcal blood infection, and conducted his last concert in a fever (the programme included the world premiere of Ferruccio Busoni's (Berceuse élégiaque). Returning to Europe, he was taken to Paris, where a new serum had recently been developed. He did not respond, however, and was taken back to Vienna at his request. He died there from his infection on May 18th 1911 at the age of 50, leaving his Symphony No. 10 unfinished.
The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

"A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything". Gustav Mahler

Photo: Mahler conducting the Beethoven 9th

Historic Amnesia

July 6th 1609 - Bohemia is granted Freedom of Religion.

Bohemia enjoyed religious freedom between 1436 and 1620, and became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period of time. In 1609, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II who made Prague again the capital of the Empire at the time, himself a Roman Catholic, was moved by the Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of 1575.

Freedom of Religion is the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It is generally recognized to also include the freedom to change religion or to not follow any religion. Freedom of religion is considered by many in many nations and people to be a fundamental human right.

In 1558 the Transylvanian Diet of Turda declared free practice of both the Catholic and Lutheran religions, but prohibited Calvanism. Ten years later, in 1568, the Diet extended the freedom to all religions, declaring that "It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expelling for his religion". The Edict of Turda is considered by mostly Hungarian historians as the first legal guarantee of religious freedom in the Christian Europe.

The first full religious freedom law (which wasn't just a tolerance as in other countries) what had "act rank" created by Edict of Turda in Transylvania, and accepted by Hungarian Székely and saxon part of the diet.


July 6th 1939 - The Holocaust: The last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed.

July 6th 1942 - Frank, Anne(lies Marie) (1929–1945) Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family take refuge from the Nazis by hiding in the "secret Annexe" attic above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

During the German occupation of Amsterdam in World War II, they and two other families remained in a sealed off room, protected by Dutch sympathizers 1942–1944, when betrayal resulted in their deportation and Anne's death in Belsen concentration camp. Her diary of her time in hiding was published in 1947. Previously suppressed portions of her diary were published in 1989. The house in which the family took refuge is preserved as a museum. Her diary has sold 20 million copies in more than 50 languages and has been made into a play and a film publicizing the fate of millions.