Our Baltic Cruise: Helsinki, Finland

Wow ... after yesterday's gigantic post about our visit to St Petersburg, you actually came back! Thanks! I promise that the next few posts will be shorter, if only because St Petersburg was such a hard act to follow. Today, we visit the capital of Finland, Helsinki ...

The Regal Princess arrived in Helsinki early in the morning of Wednesday, June 22nd, and after the frantic pace and early show times of our last two days of tours, we enjoyed a relatively genteel reporting time of 8:40 AM for our tour, "Helsinki by Land and Sea."

The morning was chilly and overcast when we set out for the first part of our tour - the "sea" part. We boarded our bus, met our guide, Chris (she assured us her real name in Finnish was unpronounceable), and set out for the brief drive to another of the three harbors of Helsinki (north, south, and west) to meet our harbor tour. Along the way, Chris kept up the usual commentary on the sights we were seeing, which included a statue known locally as "The Bad, Bad Boy" -

Yes, he's peeing.

According to Chris, the statue was one of several that had been commissioned for the grounds of various government buildings. It originally stood in front of the Presidential Palace, but it didn't take long for people to suspect it may not have set the right tone of gravitas, and so it was relocated to its current location near the cruise ship terminal*.

We soon arrived at the berth of our harbor cruise ship, the Victoria, and set forth for a tour of about an hour and a half. The weather at the start was overcast, breezy, and chilly; Agnes opted to sit inside, while I took a seat on the open upper deck for better pictures. 

Helsinki is surrounded by about 350 islands of various size, many of them under military control and many others privately owned. One of the largest of the islands is Soomenlimna, the site of the nation's Naval College (the large yellow building in the picture below) - 

It can be a bit disconcerting to see something like this while you're cruising past ...

The treaties that ended World War II allowed Finland (at one time allied with Germany) to keep an army, navy, and air force, but do not allow it to operate submarines. The colorful sub below is a pre-war vessel on display at one of the military facilities.

There are a great many very beautiful and scenic structures along the miles of shorelines; I particularly liked this building ...

We went past the summer anchorage of the icebreaker fleet ... an important group of vessels for a city whose harbor is shallow and tends to freeze over in winter ...

As we came back into a different part of the harbor to begin the "land" part of the tour, we were treated to this view of a line of picturesque government buildings with the harbor market square in the foreground and the Helsinki Cathedral in the background. 

We docked and walked a few blocks through the bustling market square to where our bus was parked, then had a fairly short driving tour of the city before being deposited at Senate Square (directly in front of the cathedral in the picture above) for a brief half-hour of free time to explore on our own. 

Agnes had been anxious to sample some real local food at everyplace we'd visited, so we hustled from Senate Square back down to the market square, where we found this tent shop that offered "Lapland Food" ...

After briefly checking the menu, which also included such delicacies as elk sausage, Agnes decided on the grilled salmon, while I went for the grilled goat cheese. Both were absolutely excellent, and we managed to get back to the bus in plenty of time ...

Our bus was parked at the foot of the hill on Senate Square, which is dominated (as I noted above), by Helsinki Cathedral. According to Chris the guide, when the cathedral was built, the great central dome was intended to house the cathedral's bells ... however, the already-constructed tower was unable to support the weight of the bells, which resulted in the addition of the flanking towers to accommodate them. I don't know if that's a true story or not, but it sounds good.

The final stop on our brief tour of Helsinki was the monument to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, situated in a beautiful wooded park. We found the monument to be interesting, beautiful, and dramatic, but according to our guide the composer's family did not. I don't know much about the music of Sibelius, but he evidently composed mainly for strings and piano, and the family objected to the monument which, they said, looked like an organ ...

And so it was that the sculptor went back to the drawing board and later added a somewhat modernistic bust of Sibelius to the park. You can't see it in these two pictures, but in the photo above, the bust would be off to the right, and sitting at a right angle to the main sculpture.

Sadly, that was all we had the time to see and experience in Helsinki before being bused back to the ship for our departure on the last leg of the cruise. Before I close up, here are a few random observations about the city:

- Finland has two official languages: Finnish (related, oddly enough, to Hungarian) and Swedish. All street signs in the city use both languages, with Finnish on top and Swedish underneath.

- The population of Finland is about 5.6 million, and they are served by an estimated 3.5 million saunas. Almost every home has one, and there are public saunas everywhere.

- Helsinki was the first city we'd visited on this cruise where we noted beggars on the streets.

- We were warned - repeatedly - about pickpockets, which seem to be a serious problem everywhere.

- We sailed from Helsinki shortly after 4:00 PM in brilliant sunshine ... but within minutes the ship was engulfed in a dense fog that lasted for the next several hours!

- Finally, the day we visited Helsinki - June 22nd - was the day of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Sunrise was at 3:54 AM and sunset at 10:50 PM. At 10:38 PM, I was sitting on the balcony outside our cabin on the ship, and was able to read comfortably without extra light.

And that's it for Helsinki. Tomorrow, we'll take a break from the travelogue and have July's first set of Great Moments in Editing and Signage. Be here. We'll pick up with the tale of our visit to Stockholm, Sweden, on Tuesday.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Which may, of course, send a message to a different audience.

Our Baltic Cruise: St Petersburg, Russia

Yesterday in this space I told you of our visit to the beautiful city of Tallinn, Estonia. Today I'll try to summarize our two-day visit to a fabulous city that I can now happily strike off my bucket list: St Petersburg, Russia. Be warned: this will be a very long post ... you may want to read it in sections!

The Regal Princess docked in the harbor at St Petersburg at about 6:45 AM on Monday, June 20th. We had signed up for a two-day tour package that required us to report to our assembly location by 6:15 (!), so as to be ready to navigate the Russian immigration bureaucracy as soon as the authority to disembark was given.

Unlike everyplace else we visited, our travel documents and cruise cards were checked each time we left the ship and each time we returned to it - a total of six times over two days. The first time, we were checked by a young policeman who was bound and determined to be the very serious and totally official protector of the nation - no smiles, no chit-chat, just careful and very detailed examination of our docs and the usual flurry of typing and stamping before handing everything back to us without a word. All the other times, we were checked through by smiling young lady police officers who at least grinned (okay, grimaced) when I greeted them with my very best college Russian*.

We boarded our bus at about 7:15 and met our guide for the next two days, Natasha, whose regular job was as an history teacher ... she spoke marvelous English with an adorable Russian accent, and was very knowledgable and very patient with all of us, the great majority of whom had never been in Russia before.

The tour packed a great deal of sightseeing and experiences into two very full days, which began when the bus deposited us on a large open square in front of a building belonging to the Russian Defense Ministry! It was quite a novel experience for me as a retired Air Force officer to be wandering around an area crisscrossed by large numbers of uniformed Russian troops ... who pretty much ignored us! No, I did not try to take pictures of any of them.

From the square we walked a few short blocks to a landing on one of the city's canals and boarded a low-slung sightseeing boat for our tour of the city from the water. One of the first things we saw was this sign, warning of the low bridges along the route and foot-stomped frequently by Natasha and by the ship's captain:

The tour on the water lasted a bit more than an hour and a half under gloriously clear skies and bright sunshine (a real treat after the miserable weather at our previous stops). We were each presented with a "glass" (actually a soft plastic cup) of champagne to sip as we cruised along the Neva River and the network of canals that run through the city and give it the nickname "Venice of the North." Here are a few pictures taken from the boat ...

In this picture, check the upper right-hand corner ... partially hidden behind the light-colored square is a young man who ran alongside our boat the entire way, except when we left the canals and entered the open Neva River. Each time we passed under a bridge, he would be at the midpoint, happily waving, and he'd then pace us to the next bridge to do the same thing, occasionally turning cartwheels or doing other little tricks. Of course, he was waiting at the top of the landing when the trip was over, looking for tips ...

This picture shows the shore of the Neva River outside the St Peter and Paul Fortress, the site of an annual sand-sculpting competition which was in progress ...

In this picture, we're nearing the end of the boat ride, and on the horizon are the gorgeous domes of the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, more about which later ...

After the boat ride, we walked back to the bus for a short ride to the world-renowned museum of The State Hermitage Museum, where we were able to enter for a group tour at 9:00 AM, well before the usual opening hour of 10:30.

Amazingly enough, we were allowed to take as many photographs as we wanted, although the use of a flash was forbidden, as it was in most (but not all) places we visited. One feature of every palace and museum we visited was the presence in each room of a stern-faced middle-aged-to-elderly woman whose function was to glare at us and practice her English vocabulary, which consisted mainly of "no touch!" "no flash!" or "no photo!", depending on the location. Agnes and I took dozens of photos, but few if any of them capture the total magnificence of the vast museum. I'll just show you this representative one, which is of one of the interior staircases. As I remarked several times, I didn't know there was this much gold leaf in the whole world ...

From the Hermitage, we got back on the bus for the trip to our next stop - the aforementioned Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood. But en route, we passed by this building, "Dom Knigi," the "House of Books," the oldest and largest bookstore in St Petersburg. However, if you look closely at the inscription above the door, you'll see that it reads, "Kompaniya Zinger'" - it was originally built in 1902 to be the local headquarters of the Singer Sewing Machine Company ... a fact I found fascinating, as I come from a family with a long association with Singer.

We soon arrived - along with about 397,000 other tourists, at the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, a beautiful church built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. The church was beautiful almost beyond description, both inside and out. None of the pictures I took inside can begin to do justice to its baroque opulence ...

After that visit, the bus delivered us to a restaurant where we had lunch (featuring, as always, shots of vodka and a folk music and dance show), and then it was back on the bus for a visit to the Yusupov Palace, the scene of the murder in 1916 of the "Mad Monk" Grigori Rasputin. We visited the cellar where the actual murder took place, which features this waxwork display showing Prince Yusupov and Rasputin ...

I can tell you that the rest of the cellar is very creepy, with low ceilings and eerie brickwork. If I'd been Rasputin, there's no way I'd have gone into that cellar.

From the Yusupov Palace we went back to the Regal Princess to change clothes for the evening part of the program, which was a tour to Tsarskoye Selo, Empress Catherine the Great's palace in the town of Pushkin, north of St Petersburg. The bus ride took about an hour and a half, and we first stopped for a brief visit to the Imperial Carriage Museum (meh) before being dropped off before the majestic gilded gates of the palace ...

When we went in through the gates, tables had been set up along the pathway to the palace's main entrance with glasses of champagne and vodka and platters of canapes. The palace was closed to general visitation, and was open by special arrangement for the tour groups from the Regal Princess. After having some caviar crackers and a glass of champagne, we took a few pictures of the facade of the palace, which was too large for my camera to handle without a wide-angle lens ... this picture shows about a third of the frontage ...

As we approached the main entrance, a band in Tsarist imperial uniforms was playing ...

Inside, we donned the usual booties over our shoes to protect the floors, and proceeded to the upper floors to tour the inside of the palace. We took lots of pictures, but frankly, after a while there's only so much gold leaf and baroque decor you can handle. I'll just share this picture with you - the highlight of the tour - the reconstructed Amber Room of the palace.

The legendary original Amber Room vanished during World War II, when it was removed and carted away by the Nazis and never found. When the palace was reconstructed after the war, the room was painstakingly recreated by teams of Russian artisans. It's beauty is beyond anything I can describe ... where most of the palace is a blaze of light and gold leaf, the Amber Room literally glows with warm light. The picture doesn't even begin to do it justice ... it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

At the end of the tour, we removed our booties and were herded into the palace's grand ballroom, where a string orchestra was performing a concert. We each had a glass of champagne and were seated to listen to the concert, and after a few minutes the music stopped and one of the uniformed guards appeared in the doorway and blew a trumpet fanfare - and in walked "Catherine the Great" and her escort, followed by an interpreter.

The "Empress" gave a short welcoming speech which was duly translated, and then she and her escort sat down to enjoy the rest of the concert, which also included a young couple in period costumes dancing a complex minuet. It was an amazing experience - one could almost believe it was the actual imperial court of the 1700's.

After the concert we gradually filtered out and headed to our buses, but found the uniformed imperial band still out on the grounds playing away. While we stopped to watch and listen, a horse-drawn carriage rumbled up and a man and woman emerged, and proceeded to dance a Viennese waltz to the band's music. If their waltz was not quite in time to the music, we were willing to forgive them ... they were, after all, dancing on sand and gravel!

After that, it was back on the bus and on to dinner and yet another folk music and dance show at a rustic restaurant in the forest not far from the palace. The food was authentically Russian (and, of course, included borscht and vodka), but Agnes wasn't impressed with the main course of stuffed cabbage rolls ... her comment was "I didn't like them when my aunt made them, and I don't like them now!"

While we were at dinner, the beautiful weather we'd been enjoying all day took it's leave ... when we came out of the restaurant it was raining lightly, and by the time we arrived back at the ship - at half past midnight! - it was pouring. Not an auspicious omen for the start of our second day, just a few hours off!

The show time for the second day was a somewhat more genteel 7:00 AM on the bus. Agnes was exhausted from the pace of the previous day and the late return, and decided to remain on the ship, while I went on the rest of the tour. 

The day began with a two-hour bus ride out to yet another palace, Peter the Great's vast tarpaper shack known as Peterhof. It had the usual understated architecture and endless procession of gilded halls, all of which I duly observed and noted in my journal, as photography was not allowed inside Peterhof (it was at one time, but without flash, as Natasha explained, but so many people kept using flashes anyhow that photography ended up being banned altogether). We still had to wear the booties on our shoes, though, and pass by the eagle eyes of the scowling protective matrons in each room.

This picture inadequately shows part of the Grand Cascade of the fabulous fountains behind Peterhof ...

And this view looks back toward that cascade from about 2/3 of a mile away, down the long canal that stretches out to the Tsar's dock on the Gulf of Finland ... a walk I made twice (in pouring rain) to kill time before the fountain show. I was standing on a bridge over the canal to take this picture, and while I was doing so, a young woman in worker's overalls was gamely marching back and forth across the bridge with a push-broom in an endless (and futile) attempt to sweep away the steadily-accumulating sand, mud, and water. In this she was involuntarily assisted by a pair of elderly oriental tourists who were shuffling along, still wearing the protective booties they'd forgotten to take off when leaving the palace.

The fountains at Peterhof are gravity operated (no mechanical pumps) and only run once a day - a show of about 10 minutes at 11:00 AM, to recorded symphonic music. It's difficult to describe the scene, with fountains and cascades and armies of tourists jockeying for position in the rain ... but it's beautiful.

After seeing the fountain show, we returned to our bus (past a group of tip-seeking musicians energetically playing hits like "God Bless America" and "Anchors Aweigh") and returned to St Petersburg for lunch at an upscale restaurant called "Troika." Yes, they served vodka with lunch, along with the usual folk music show.

After lunch, it was back onto the bus for the ride to the last two stops of the day. First was at St Isaac's Cathedral, another in a series of vast, magnificent cathedrals that dot the city. There isn't much to say about this one that doesn't apply to every other staggeringly gilded, baroque cathedral in Russia, but here's an interesting note: in the picture below, shot straight up to the summit of the central dome, you can see a tiny white dove of peace. The actual wingspan of that dove is three meters, which gives you a concept of the enormous size of the cathedral ...

One fascinating interior display showed models of the four versions of the cathedral that have existed through the years. The first model showed a much smaller St Isaac's that - literally - sank into the swamp on which St Petersburg is built. Today, the famous statue of Peter the Great stands on that site.

The final, and largest, model was the most interesting - it showed the cathedral as it exists today, and was carved from a single block of wood.

The final stop of the day was at - yes - another cathedral, the appropriately-named Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, located in the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul. The main factor of interest in this cathedral is that it is the final resting place of nearly all the Russian imperial rulers since Peter the Great. As such, it has at least as much baroque gold decor as any other cathedral, as you can see in this representative photo -

The interior area of the cathedral is dotted with side rooms and enclosures which house the tombs of the various rulers and members of the Romanov family. This picture shows the tomb of Empress Catherine II (Catherine the Great) on the left, with those of Tsar Peter III and Empress Anna. The marble tombs you see are not the actual burial places - the bodies are interred beneath the cathedral floor, and the solid marble tombs sit atop the actual graves.

It was all very impressive and moving.

We spent about a half hour in the cathedral, and then headed back to the bus for our final trip back to the ship. We were running quite late because of delays caused by the horrendous St Petersburg traffic, but happily the ship waited for us ... and for the many other busloads of passengers still mired in traffic behind us (the designated "all aboard" time was 4:30 PM, we didn't get back until 5:15, and the last buses straggled in shortly after 6:00).

That's the story of our visit to St Petersburg. At the risk of boring you still further, here are a few random observations in closing about the city and our time there:

- The old, imperial parts of the city are fabulously beautiful. The Soviet-era and more "modern" parts of the city, not so much.

- Traffic is almost indescribably hideous and parking is chaotic. Our tour bus at one point spent about 20 minutes going inch-by-inch down a short street so parked-in that the driver had at most two inches of clearance on either side.

- Natasha was a wonderful guide and did a superb job of keeping us well-informed and on schedule (as much as she could given traffic delays). She was open and frank about the good and bad points of Russian history (didn't try to gloss anything over), but I did wonder about her true political leanings - she frequently referred to a specific point in history as "The Great October Socialist Revolution," but I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not ... and didn't want to ask.

- The endless parade of vast palaces and huge cathedrals and the overwhelming magnificence of The Hermitage can leave you jaded as they all start to run together. Had I not kept up my travel journal each day to anchor the photos we took, I'd be hard-pressed to remember what we saw and what it all meant. It's sad when you visit a breathtakingly beautiful church and think to yourself, "Again?"

- With the exception of the grouchy old ladies frowning over the rooms of the various palaces and The Hermitage (and the passport checker on the first day), every person we met was pleasant and friendly. It's easy and appealing to generalize, but the average Russian is probably pretty much like you or I.

And now you've probably had enough travelogue for one day. Tomorrow we'll move ahead to our visit to Helsinki, Finland ... and the post will not be nearly this long. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* My Russian teacher told me one time that although my grammar was ... deficient, I had one of the best commands of the Russian accent she'd ever heard in an American. Her comment was, "You speak a perfect accent without a trace of Russian!"

Our Baltic Cruise: Tallinn, Estonia

I assume that everyone survived the holiday weekend, that your hearing is slowly recovering from the thunderous din of massive fireworks displays (those not rained out, anyhow), and that you are ready to hear the latest installment of our vacation travelogue. Well, even if you aren't, it's coming ... today we visit the city of Tallinn, Estonia.

Continuing the unfortunate meteorological conditions we'd encountered in Oslo and Berlin, the day in Tallinn was heavily overcast, with rain fluctuating between drizzle and downpour. Nevertheless, we'd never been in Tallinn before and were determined to make the best of it.

The Old City of Tallinn has an upper and a lower part; we began on Toompea Hill, where the bus dropped us in front of the old fortress - now used in part as the meeting place of the Estonian legislature - and adjacent to the beautiful Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Because of the size of the crowds, we did not try to visit the inside of the cathedral, although those of our group who did marveled at it's beauty ...

We continued walking down the narrow, scenic streets and eventually came to a stop at a scenic overlook which allowed beautiful views of the lower part of the city. By the merest chance, that scenic overlook just happened to be lined with souvenir shops and snack bars, although the most popular item that day appeared to be the free restrooms.

Here's an example of one of the streets of the old town. The figure in the red rain jacket is Agnes, taking advantage of one of the rare opportunities to take a photograph without a thousand tourists in it.

At the end of the walking tour we had about a half-hour to explore on our own, and so we spent a few Euros to visit the covered walkway along the top of the old city wall, which offered some beautiful views ...

and a small museum dedicated to the defense of the city throughout history ...

There are lots of great restaurants in Tallinn; we had lunch at a very picturesque place called "Peppersack," and were also intrigued by this establishment we passed on the tour. I'm sure the offerings were delicious, if not especially conducive to a date night ...

The city is ringed by the remaining portions of the old city wall, and by a series of tower fortifications which have been given nicknames by the local population. This one, the last we saw on the tour, is known as "Fat Margaret." According to our guide, no one is sure who "Margaret" actually was, so everyone has their favorite story ...

We enjoyed the visit to Tallinn, despite the miserable weather. Here are a few other notes from my travel journal to round out the story of our brief stop ...

- Estonians are fiercely proud of their independence, despite the presence of a large Russian minority population dating to the time when Estonia was shotgun-wedded to the Soviet Union. Although that's a generalization, I will note that our guide never passed up an opportunity to take a verbal swipe at Russia. At one point, she stopped our tour group in front of the Russian embassy to give us a brief lesson in the Estonian language ... she told us that the name of the country in Estonian is "Eesti," and encouraged us all to say it loudly several times, such that we were a group of about 30 people standing in front of the Russian embassy chanting "Eesti, Eesti, Eesti!!*"

- The country is proud of its status as a leader in high-technology. We were reminded many times that the popular electronic communication system "Skype" was invented in and is administered from Estonia. The country also has an "e-residency" program ... you can actually become a digital resident (although not a citizen) of Estonia, should you wish to do so. You can find out more about that here. 

- The beauty of much of the old city was marred by endless construction ... most streets are of cobblestones, and it seemed as if every ten meters or so the streets were dug up and the cobblestones piled everywhere amid seas of mud (thanks to the near-steady rain).

And that was our visit to the beautiful, if wet, city of Tallinn, Estonia. There was far more to see and experience than we could possibly have squeezed into a visit of only a few hours and so, as with everyplace else we visited on this cruise, we'd love to go back again and spend more time. Preferably in better weather.

The Regal Princess pulled away from the dock shortly before 5:00 PM and set course for the next port of call, St Petersburg, Russia ... which we will visit in this space tomorrow.

Have a good day. More thoughts (and pictures) coming.

Bilbo

* I was looking nervously around for security cameras ... after all, our next stop on the cruise would be in Russia.

Independence Day, 2016

Yes, I know that today is supposed to be Musical Monday. But today is a special day, and so Musical Monday will not appear this week, but will return one week from today in this space. You'll survive.

Today is Monday, July 4th - the American holiday of Independence Day. It celebrates the day in 1776 on which the Declaration of Independence (from Great Britain) was formally adopted by the Continental Congress. The draft of the declaration had actually already been approved by the delegates on July 2nd, but the formal adoption came two days later. This, perhaps, marks the start of the longstanding tradition of Congress putting off doing the right thing.

The Fourth of July is the traditional high point of summer, roughly midway between Memorial Day at the end of May and Labor Day at the beginning of September. It's a day for parades, speeches, fireworks, picnics, historical recreations, and a general good time as we celebrate the birth of the United States as an independent nation.

This year, I think our celebration of Independence Day ought to be a bit more reflective. We're in a presidential election year, after all, and our ability to be governed by an elected president rather than a hereditary king was one of the reasons we chose to declare our independence from the mother country. Our first President was, of course, George Washington, often called "The Indispensable Man" or "The Father of His Country." With courage, dignity, and foresight, Washington established the parameters and initial traditions of the office that has since been held by such other towering figures as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. And by lesser figures who have diminished it*.

This year, 240 years after the Declaration of Independence and 227 years after George Washington assumed office as our first President, we face a probable election choice between two candidates who share the distinction of having the lowest public approval ratings of any candidates in our history. You'd think that out of a population of 320 million people, we could do better.

But I digress.

One of the traditional themes of Independence Day celebrations is freedom. This is a word we Americans love, but for which we have many shades of understanding. When I was in grade school**, we were required to take Civics classes to learn about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. One of the lessons drummed into us back then was the difference between freedom and license, a difference that is pretty much ignored today. Here are the relevant definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Freedom: (1) The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint; (2) Absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government.

License: (1) Formal or official permission to do something; (2) Freedom to behave as one wishes, especially in a way that results in excessive or unacceptable behavior.

It seems to me that what many of today's Americans, both on the political right and left, demand is not freedom, but license. Consider the following examples:

- Many on the Christian Right define religious freedom as the right not only to live according to their own beliefs, but to impose those beliefs on others or deny others the freedom to live according to the tenets of different religions.

- Many on the Left call for the legalization of drugs, ignoring their catastrophic impact on society.

- Many on the conservative Right reject even the discussion of any limits on the possession and sale of firearms of all types and on the right to carry them openly or concealed everywhere, ignoring the carnage on our streets and in our homes that's a result of the ready availability of weapons vastly more powerful than those imagined by the authors of the Second Amendment.

- Many on the Left demand a vaguely-defined wage equality, ignoring the fact that some jobs are more responsible or more technical than others, and consequently deserve a higher rate of pay***.

On this Independence Day, 240 years after the declaration of our independence, Americans around the world celebrate not the love of freedom, but the lust for license, draped in patriotic red, white, and blue bunting and paraded to the lively tune of fifes and drums.

I think we need to bring back old-style Civics classes ... but I also think they'd be treated as an anachronism by Americans besotted with the idea that freedom should know no bounds, including those of common sense and decency.

Have a good day. Enjoy your freedoms, and let the rest of us enjoy ours as well.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Yes, W, I'm talking about you. And Millard Fillmore. And James Buchanan.

** Shortly after the dinosaurs died out.

*** A "living wage" is not the same thing, and is worth supporting.

Poetry Sunday

There's nothing like a nice hug ... especially when it comes from a beautiful lady ...

Hug 

by Ron Padgett 

The older I get, the more I like hugging. When I was little the
people hugging me were much larger. In their grasp I was a rag
doll. In adolescence, my body was too tense to relax for a hug.
Later, after the loss of virginity—which was anything but a
loss—the extreme proximity of the other person, the smell of
hair, the warmth of the skin, the sound of breathing in the
dark—these were mysterious and delectable. This hug had
two primary components: the anticipation of sex and the plea-
sure of intimacy, which itself is a combination of trust and
affection. It was this latter combination that came to character-
ize the hugging I have experienced only in recent years, a hug-
ging that knows no distinctions of gender or age. When this
kind of hug is mutual, for a moment the world is perfect the
way it is, and the tears we shed for it are perfect too. I guess it
is an embrace.


Hugs, not drugs.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we celebrate the Fourth of July.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

The world has gone crazy. Film at eleven.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi this week released the 800-page report of its investigation, which took two years and seven million dollars and revealed exactly nothing not already revealed by the seven previous investigations; at least 44 people were murdered and dozens injured when terrorists linked to the so-called Islamic State attacked the airport at Istanbul, Turkey; the badly-divided GOP is limping toward its upcoming convention in Cleveland with presumptive candidate Donald Trump excoriating his former rivals who have gone back on their pledge to support the party's candidate - a pledge originally aimed at convincing Trump supporters to back the GOP candidate on the assumption that Trump himself couldn't win the nomination; the so-called Islamic state has claimed responsibility for yet another terror attack, this one in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which at least 20 people were murdered; and China has dropped its poker face, pitching a major hissy fit over a meeting between the Dalai Lama and - of all people - Lady Gaga.

Every week, I think the world can't get any crazier, and every week it does. We really need the cartoons to help us get by. This week, let's just look at a series of random cartoons that accumulated during the time I was away ...

Perhaps it's just me, but I think anyone wearing a cowboy hat who's not actually riding the range for a living looks silly ...

It's all part of being the party of the 1% ... and those who believe against experience that it will get them there ...

I should have seen this one coming ...

Me, too ...

If you can explain the arcane mysteries of airline ticket pricing ... and prescription drugs ... please let the rest of us know ... 

Truer now than ever ...

It's good to be the king. Better than being the messenger, anyhow ...

Another one I should have seen coming, especially nowadays ...

Especially in this election year, when a heart seems to serve no useful purpose ... 

Let me hear you say, "Oy!" ...

And that's it for the first edition of Cartoon Saturday for July. Can you believe 2016 is half over? I can't. And we still have to survive four months of useless electoral twaddle and a do-nothing Congress filled with blathering buffoons until the election. I think I need a drink.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo

The Right Cheek Ass Clown for July, 2016

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, not only is today the dawn of a new month, it's time to name our

Right Cheek Ass Clown for July, 2016!

This time, there's no controversy and no question about the winner - this is one of the easiest choices I've ever had to make. Without a doubt, the Right Cheek award for July goes to

Representative Trey Gowdy (R, SC)

and

The House Select Committee on Benghazi

After spending two years and seven million dollars of taxpayer money on an investigation that even Republicans admitted was intended only to torpedo Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes, Representative Gowdy this past week released an 800-page report that revealed nothing that had not already been uncovered by seven previous Congressional investigations and a separate investigation conducted by the Obama administration. You can read the whole report here, and an executive summary of the separate report issued by the Democratic members of the panel here.

The shamelessly partisan focus of this boondoggle has been on public display from its first day, and reflects the very worst of Congressional insistence on doing anything but its job. At a time when the country is facing real problems that need to be addressed, this unconscionable waste of time and money should make every American red with shame and furious at the despicable antics of their elected representatives.

For their shameful and ludicrous waste of resources on a needless investigation designed only to affect the presidential campaign, Representative Trey Gowdy and his House Select Committee on Benghazi are named the Right Cheek Ass Clown for July.

One hopes that voters will remember at election time.

Have a good day. See you tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo