Category: Access

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Munich–A City of Two Tales

This just in: A bizarre incident took place this week in Munich.  Out of the blue, a typical German teenager quit spending his money on drugs and night clubs and decided to spend his free time and surplus cash on helping elderly people in a retirement home.  No one knows what motivated this eccentric behavior.  The young man had no known connections with any political movement advocating charity or welfare.  Found in his bedroom were various non-denominational pamphlets on how to practice charity.  All that is know of him is that he was brought up in the Catholic Church and...

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One More Reason I’m Glad I’m Not a Conservative

When several people asked me what I thought of the Republican Convention in Cleveland, I had to answer truthfully that I had paid very little attention to the quadrennial shenanigans. Much of my time, this past week, was devoted to driving my broken-legged wife to medical appointments, the most serious of which was the three hour operation that took place yesterday.  The doctors are proclaiming a tactical victory, but recovery time is now being measured in terms of months rather than weeks, which puts our October program in Greece on hold. When I did have time to turn on the...

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Wednesday’s Child: Yes, Prime Minister

Britain has a new prime minister by the name of Theresa May.  In and of itself this may not be reason enough for jubilation, but last week the new leader appointed a cabinet that was considerably stronger than what many, myself included, had been expecting.  No fewer than four leaders of the Leave EU movement in parliament received ministerial portfolios, most remarkably Boris Johnson, who became Foreign Secretary; David Davis was given a new post of Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union; and a similarly novel position created in the wake of the referendum, that of Secretary of...

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Wednesday’s Child: Betting on Winners

  In a writer’s life it sometimes happens that no sooner does he put a thought in words than chance sends him fresh evidence to substantiate it, a kind of souvenir acknowledgement in tacit confirmation of what he had been thinking.  So it happened last week.  No sooner had I posted my musings on football than chance spirited me away to a place called Enna, a mountain townlet in the middle of Sicily, where, of all places, an international piano competition, with my wife among the jurors, was to take place.  Free lodging, free grub, and free air at temperatures...

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Wednesday’s Child: Betting on Losers

  Chess is the only sport I ever understood, recognized, and followed, because, unlike spectator sports, I thought it a complex yet coherent model of human conflict.  It was never clear to me what lesson one could glean from rugby or water polo, for instance, except that perseverance and endurance win over irresolution and apathy.  But this is like saying that it is better to be clever, rich, and healthy than stupid, poor, and sick – not much of a lesson there, as most people would probably agree. This week, however, I was watching football – soccer, a spectator sport...

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Wednesday’s Child (on Tuesday): Albion Shrugged

It was like something out of Plutarch.  Nature and history commingled in the chronicle of an epochal event, as torrential rains over London and much of the southwest of England began in the early hours of last Thursday. I had seen it start here in Sicily the night before, a downpour so severe we kept losing power, and I waved to the thunderstorm in benediction as it rumbled off to the north, northward and westward, Albionward.  Bad weather is always good for our side when there is a close contest, because as a rule those in the right own umbrellas...

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Brexit Wrecks It

As the days drew new for the vote on Brexit,  the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union seemed  unlikely.  It seemed too good to be true, even to Nigel Farage.  As the polls were closing, the UKIP leader was gloomily predicting a thin victory for the Remains. Later that evening, it was all over but for the whining of good old Dave Cameron in tears.  He just had to have this referendum to show that Britons were as suicidal as everyone else in the West.  “What”—as that noted political observer B. Bunny, Esq. would say, “a maroon.” The term Britons,...