“It’s difficult, I think, for people who have never lived in an un-free society to appreciate exactly how galling are the countless petty injusticies that the inhabitants of those places must face on a daily basis.”

That’s why I think it’s so important that amidst all the talk this week about the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall, the meaning of the Cold War’s end, and the progress (or lack thereof) towards global liberty over the last two decades, we should remember exactly what that day meant for millions of people: not the End of History, not universal emancipation, and not the permanent demise of tyranny, but real, genuine freedom for people who had suffered its absence for so long.

Gulliver at Inkspots. Read the whole thing, as they say….

Veterans Day: Project Valour-IT

Project Valour-IT helps provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries.

Please consider donating to Project Valour-IT here!

(cross-posted at chicagoboyz)

brimful is ruminative….

And it’s an odd thing to write because I don’t really feel like I have a home. It reminds me of the home that I rarely write about, because it’s so much in the past, so long gone. It doesn’t even exist. Really, it’s gone- the broseph and I used to race into the forest behind our house after school or every day of the summer. All the other kids from the neighborhood did the same, and we would spend our days and afternoons there, building forts, digging up salamanders, venturing deeper into the woods until our childhood internal alarms warned us we had gone too far. It was our own little world and we lived in it every day until dusk, when our neighbor Michael’s mother would ring a loud cow bell, and all of us scattered back home to our very, very different lives. And that place is not just gone because I’m no longer a child, or because I no longer live in EBF, or because times have changed such that a bunch of 5 to 7-year olds wandering around the woods is no longer kosher. The forest was cut down years ago so that a new housing development could be built instead. Trees no longer hold any mystery; you can see the house behind them clearly now. brimful

Ah, brimful, I’ve got memories like that, and feelings like that, and I think, it’s all a part of getting older (and, dare I say it: of aging?) The feeling that no home that you make for yourself has the same solidity or permanency of the childhood home, even as time damages the illusion of permanence. And, those of us that feel that way have a lot to thank our parents for, don’t we? Not everyone feels that way or starts out life with such riches.

“His watercolor sketches of city scenes, particularly those of row homes or industrial and commercial structures, are wonderful in their contrasts of texture light and shadow.”

I found these Butch Belair watercolors at the wonderful linesandcolors blog.

“There is little I could say more intelligently or eloquently than what has already been expressed by those whose opinions I value more than my own. I wish swift recovery to those wounded, and peace for those families who have lost someone.”

Karakapend

“But the Democrats have a policy response: they are about to vote on hundreds of billions in new taxes, a regimen of new fines and mandates for businesses, and a takeover of the health-care industry.”

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary on the newest unemployment figures and the health care bill.

An unwieldy bill – of truly gargantuan proportions – hastily and stealthily voted on, in the cover of night, er, I mean, on Saturday or Sunday. Sounds prudent. The very picture of competence. The height of clear thinking, modesty and servant-of-the-people servanting! Why worry? What could possibly go wrong?

(cross-posted at chicagoboyz)

Update: HEALTHCARE BILL PASSES HOUSE, 220-215. Elections matter. Well, yeah, kinda. Also, please do read Michael Kennedy’s comment in the comments section, below. (OPS: the comment is posted at chicagoboyz….)

Busy at work….

…and busy at home, so, not really in the mood to blog, lately. I dunno. I don’t have anything to say. How exhausting to always have to say things, to have opinions. Wait, does this post count as an actual opinion? Whatever.

A fairly accurate description of local politics.

Today was an election day in my locale. There were several referendum questions. They were a mix of questions that were legitimate attempts to rein in an out of control legislature and others that were just pet issues of various busybodies. The vote also included some local races; a random batch of scoundrels looking to gain access to the public coffers. Schmedlap

Quite a dry sense of humor, too.

“Santa Cruz,” Erin McKeown

Update: Jill Sobule and Erin McKeown will be at the Old Town School of Folk Music (Chicago), November 8.

“I can’t stop watching the film clip of Anne Frank.”

“Ten seconds into the film, the camera pans up from the newlyweds and the street to a girl sticking her head out a second floor window. Watching the 20-second clip, there’s no reason to notice this girl. Except that the girl is Anne Frank. And so, knowing that you will see her, and then seeing her, you cannot concentrate on anything else in the film.” 

Ghost Story: On Anne Frank and windows, Stephany Anne Golberg (The Smart Set, via)