Perhaps it is only now, towards the end of 2020, that some of us are beginning to see this year as the best one in recent memory, perhaps in our entire lives. But that’s only possible if you’ve really been reflecting on what is truly going on this year and you’ve taken the time to diligently compare perception with reality.
Two weeks ago on Saturday near my residence in coastal Georgia, I spent an uneventful early morning sitting uncomfortably in a deer stand in a fruitless endeavor to be a murderer. Undaunted, I switched to fishing and launched into the intercoastal tidal river in my kayak at low ebb to try a fishing spot where the rapid outgoing tidal flow temporarily exposes an intermittent island near a bridge.
If Martin Luther King Jr. is considered The American Hero, and the civil rights movement viewed as the ultimate expression or spring board of everything good about America…. Then it is only logical that a reexamination of people like Southerner, three-time elected Governor George Wallace is considered, and written about in a different way to counter it
Here in the Old World, there is often a lot of debate about the Electoral College anytime a US Presidential election looms, but the truth is that so few people, even in the US, really know much about it (beyond what the media tells them). Hence my European friends often ask me what the deal is and what I think about the system. The truth is that the history behind the Electoral College is pretty interesting, and gives us some insights into how America’s current form of government has traditionally tried to function.
If Black lives matter in particular, then who counts and why?
It was the Summer of 2008 when I first made my way up to Rockford, Illinois. It was a slow, languorous summer drive, with plenty of preparatory reading to do, some often crammed in during the final segment of the voyage. In many ways, this year was no different. In other ways, the long tentacles of Covid-19 (and its handlers) couldn’t help but be felt by the attendees. But perhaps the miracle is that we were able to meet at all, while most of the world huddled inside or behind masks, frightened by the government, media, and the new bands...
I arrived back in Paris the day before lockdown in March of this year. I had cut short a business/ski trip in Bulgaria under advice from friends, though by Monday night, as I arrived back into Paris with all the shops in the airport already closed, it looked like wisdom.
I’ve spent my entire life in countries with unrestricted freedom of movement. Not only did those countries let me go where I wanted, whenever I wanted, as long as I wasn’t breaking laws, the countries were indifferent to my location on a given day at a given time.
Two weekends ago the weather was particularly lovely and, while I was out for a Sunday stroll in my neighborhood, what I had already been sensing over the previous weeks became crystal clear: Many Parisians were not abiding by the draconian rules of quarantine that had been laid down in March,
Almost a lifetime ago now, it seems, I hosted a St. David’s Day meal at my home. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, and the member of our company preparing the main dishes was Welsh herself, so we not only ate well but authentically.
