Saturday

Asheville. Surrounded by mountains. Clean, friendly hotel. Ah, this is already a better.

Katie spotted a restaurant advertising Greek and Italian food, while we're driving around waiting for the room to be ready. Pomodoros Greek & Italian Cafe. They may serve both kinds of food, but they're Greeks. I had a Mythos. Not great beer, but I have a sentimental attachment as I drank it all across Greece in 2005. I had souvlaki and tabouleh and Katie had hummus and tabouleh. It was excellent. On Easter, they serve traditional soup after midnight Mass and on Sunday, they serve roasted whole lamb and easter bread with the red dyed hard boiled eggs, just like my dad used to make.

Update:

We took the Brews Cruse.

• A busload of people.
• Very quiet on the way to the first brewery.
• Everybody singing, dancing, or laughing on the way to the third.
• Guy in kilt
• John
• Shauna
• first couple
• lesbians
• "the kid"
• earnest new brewers

Decided against heading downtown to Bele Chere.

Friday

Drive day. Moved out of the condo by ten. Ferry over to Hatteras. I could ride the ferry back and forth all day; love a boat ride.

Lunch (last of our seafood dinners) in Nags Head. Cooked dinner on the camp stove at a rest stop. On to Asheville tomorrow.

Update: Dirty Super 8, in Statesville. Katie's vote for our worst ever motel/hotel. I don't think so, but she insists right behind the one in D.C., in 1987, where we slept in the sleeping bags on top of the sheets. Now on to Asheville.

Thursday

Calmer water. Much less wind. Hot. So hot the sand burned my feet. Long time on the beach.

Biked around more of the village. Back to Zilley's for IPAs on a very hot day.

Pictures of the lighthouse. Jolly Rogers for sunset. Willis ? was singing there (same guy from Smack Nalley's). Had the crowd going and singing along. He introduced National Geographic crew who were there doing a story on Ocracoke. They were taking pictures and having a good time.

We got some Spanish Mackeral from the fish house and made ourselves another excellent dinner.

Wednesday

Wednesday. Best beach day yet. Water wasn't so rough in the morning and we spent a lot of time in it. Got the kite up in the air, but it crashed 500 feet away, beyond the dunes. That sent me for a hike to retrieve. Then one of the rings got away and I chased it the same distance or more. How do they roll on their edge that far?

Had leftovers for lunch. That meal we fixed last night was the best seafood dinner on the island.

Took a nap and then biked back to the beach to feed the seagulls. Saw two guys kite surfing. They go amazingly fast and were pulled up four or five feet in the air, at times. We watched, fascinated, until they were out of site, miles down the beach.

Dinner at Howard's Pub, which looks much like it did a dozen years ago, but without the rocking chairs. Turns out it is just two doors down from the bed and breakfast we stayed at 18 years ago. We like this place.

Cats, Ducks and Fish

Saturday we ate lunch as soon as we unpacked. Wandered into Dajio's and had beers and sandwiches. The waitress had an accent and we asked. She's from Bulgaria on the same exchange program as the waitresses at Howard's Pub we met a dozen years ago.

Sunday was windy. That can't be overstated on the Outer Banks. It was our first beach day and we didn't take the kite or umbrella. Good thing; we'd have never seen either again. Rough water. Wind so strong that the sand stung. Still, it's the ocean and there are no hotels and if you want, no people.

Monday, we decided to get in the water. That lasted five minutes. Got knocked down repeatedly and headed back to our chairs. Long walk. Found shells. Once we were sandy (and it's impossible not to be with that wind), hot and hungary, we headed into town. Beers (Yuengling!) and fish sandwiches at the bar at Smack Nally's, outside and on the water. Katie very happy.

I was too until I started trying to work. Limited internet access and trying to do a task that is hard enough in the office. Worked on it off and on all day and finished after midnight. Never take your laptop on vacation!

We saw two old ladies and a guy with a pick up truck setting traps and trying to catch some cats that were hanging out across the street. We later met one of the ladies, who runs the gift shop across the street, and she told us they were trying to catch them to be spayed an neutered. The island has feral cats and a vet has voluteered to fix all the ones they can catch.

Speaking of things running around the neighborhood: there are about 30 ducks that wander back and forth across the street. The look on people's faces is great.

We got in the water right away this morning (Tuesday) and had a good time. Best beach day yet. Third day at the beach and neither of us has remotely burned. We're getting this down after 25 years!

We bought shrimp and scallops at the local fish market and made a great dinner, which, as usual, we ate out on the screened in porch overlooking the harbor and main street. It was great.

Still no sunset. It was overcast the first two days, but last night and tonight was clear until the western horizon clouded over.

After dinner, we got on our bikes and rode out of town in the dark and went to the beach. Had a half moon and some lightening. It was great. No light pollution at all. No hotels. No buildings and nothing at all for 14 miles to Hatteras Inlet. I could set a cot out there and sleep next to the ocean and listen to it forever.

Battered, Bruised and Beached

Made it past Knoxville and stopped at a KOA, Thursday night. Got the creeps and couldn't do it. Drove on and stopped at Big Creek in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Only has twelve sites and we got the next to last. Beautiful area with wide, rocky, loud creek right next to the campground. We went to sleep to the sound of water.

Friday, got up and decided to go on a hike before driving across North Carolina. A trailhead to a spur off the Appalachian Trail was near our camp site. Two miles to the Trail. Turned out it was straight up a mountain. We couldn't believe two miles could be that far. Beautiful trail but exhausting and seemingly never ending, but, we made it!

Ten minutes later, on the way down, I had a.... hiking accident. The trail was rough, with lots of roots and big rocks. I fell and, since it was such a steep grade, flew straight down onto my nose, then shoulder, then hands. We've spent the last couple days trying to document my black and blue nose (and the two potential black eyes) with the camera. Eyes are OK. Nose still black and blue. We're still not sure it's not broken.

Katie was a champ and got us all the way across the state to Rocky Mount where we ate a full meal and had a shower and bed. Saturday we drove to Hatteras. I hate bridges but crossed three or four of them without a mental breakdown. Perfect timing to Hatteras. The ferry actually got us going early. We were the last car on.

Got to Ocracoke and into our condo. That's not what it is really like. It is right on the marina of Silver Lake (the harbor that Ocracoke village is on). We have two floors over a store. It is palatial on the inside. Screened porch, on the top floor, where we can eat, play cards, drink beer and watch the boats come and go and the people on the street. Endlessly entertaining.

Into the sand and surf, this morning. Very windy and rough water, but still great to be on the beach. Took a bike ride around the village this afternoon and discovered some really old cemetary's. Also discovered Zilley's and sampled several from their amazingly large beer selection. Not a bad way to spend Sunday afternoon.

Surf and Turf

This would never happen here

Today the British Prime minister, David Cameron, admitted that the British Army shot and killed civilians, without provocation. He then apologized for it. No mush mouth. No weasel words.

Cameron's announcement accompanied the release of the Saville Report, the culmination of a 12 year investigation into the Bloody Sunday killings in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972. It is unthinkable that Barack Obama would speak, or act, as boldly as the British Conservative PM did today.

The announcement was cheered by thousands in Guildhall Square, Londonderry. The crowd included survivors and relatives of the shootings. My wife attended the hearings in Guildhall, in 2002, and I've stood in the square and later on Derry's walls, looking down into Bogside, imagining those events, three decades ago.

We never got closure for Kent State. We never got impeachment for Iran/Contra or for torture or for illegal wire tapping. We won't get any justice for the pollution of the Gulf Coast either. However, for one day, we can see and hear victims vindicated, even if it's in another land.

This made me smile and clap

Jimmy does Dallas

Man on Wire

Go rent the DVD. Trust me. Yeah, it's a documentary, but it kept the wife and I sitting straight up throughout. For those of you not as old as I, Philippe Petit performed a series of illegal high wire acts, across the world, in the early 1970s. Man on Wire mostly tells the story of his secretively securing a cable between the top of the two towers of the NY World Trade Center in 1974. He then proceeded to spend 45 minutes pacing back and forth between the two towers (as well as dancing and laying down).

The movie is beautiful. Katie kept saying, "he is beautiful". I never talk during movies, TV etc. We kept up a constant babble of half formed sentences. The rest of the time I motioned at the TV screen as my mouth hung open.

It was beautiful. It was scary. It was sprittual. I felt like I'd been to church.

This guy has broken all his promises

Obama is batting about 1.000. He finally won over skeptics, like me, in the primaries, by promising to restore the Constitution, impose the rule of law and abolish torture. He ranted about wiretapping. He ridiculed Cheney. Government would be transparent. He'd end those practices that rewarded companies for shipping American jobs overseas.

Well, look what another day brings. He's fought every measure to restore civil liberties. He's prevented any prosecutions of high level Bush administration criminals. He claims to be ending torture but moves the operation from Gitmo to Baghram. He threatens to withhold information that could protect British citizens from terror attacks if their court releases the truth about the torture of a petitioner. He claims 'state secrets' if our courts want to give the day in court to torture victims. He continues wiretapping. He meets with energy and pharmaceutical companies in private. He IS Cheney.

He filled his administration with the Wall Street masterminds of the financial collapse and they have saved the perpetrators from the moral hazard of their actions. Now he shelves his campaign promise to stop giving tax breaks to companies who ship jobs overseas.

All of you who are hot for universal healthcare, who thinks he really supports even a watered down public option, ask yourself this: When did it become health care reform. Remember when it was 'health care for all'? Ah, but now he has a Nobel Prize and nobody can touch him.

Is this a good idea?

Is this a good idea? They're bombing the moon!

Obama needs to get pushed

These were CRIMES. How is this difficult? Obama needs to be forced down that path he doesn't want to take. The small fry, the "few bad apples" went to prison. I have no problem with that. We were brought up to believe that "ve ver under orders" was no excuse.

But, how can Obama allow Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Yoo, Beybe, Rice and Gonzalez to escape prosecution? If they violated treaties prohibiting torture, they have committed crimes. Article VI of the Constitution states, "...all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land... " Barack Obama took an oath to the best of his ability "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This is the beginning of the proof of what we've suspected about the Democrats' motives

Why would a liberal member of Congress, from San Francisco pledge to take the rule of law (impeachment) off the table, as she reaches the pinacle of power? Why would a professor of constitutional law pledge to prosecute no law breakers, even for crimes as vile as torture and of wirtapping Americans, as he reaches the pinacle of power? Because Pelosi and Obama know that their party was complicit in all of it.

Harmon knew. Pelosi knew. Rockefeller knew. Reid knew. Hoyer knew. Durban and Obama went along.

Why did we elect these people in 2006? They conspired with the people they were supposed to protect us against. Why did we elect Obama? He was supposed to restore the Constitution. Damn! They took an oath!

What happened: No, I did not get a promotion.

Yeah, this is one of those stories that would require us to be perched on bar stools with plenty of time. I was on a high wire act for two or three years. I'd finally gotten down off the thing and then they came after me. I have a big screw sticking out of my back.

The very short version is that I told all the powers what needed to happen to keep the wheels from coming off. They blew me off for two years and then, seven months too late, they came through with human resources. Everybody got the long knives out and needed a head to cut off. Mine apparently got offered up.

So, the public spin is that I've been reassigned because they need my expertise in data analysis and research, given my institutional memory. Most of campus knows something happened. People are scared (god, if they could do that to somebody like him), confused (don't know what to say to me), and angry (I have a friend who, without my input, declared my entire former staff persona non grata and deleted people from his distribution lists and disinvited them to events "I'm in Jim's column."). Me, I'm stuck in a closet and swing from depression to anger to relief.

My boss says she needs me ("I promise you are not being fired.") because "you know where the bodies are buried". It's ugly.

I'm back

I haven't posted since June. It's been a rough, weird several months. I was obsessed with two things: work and the election. I was doing four people's jobs at work. My spare time (when I should have been sleeping) was spent thinking about the election. I was no fan of Obama, but voted for him. I got caught up in his speeches, like everyone, and then betrayed by his actions, like the FISA vote. However, he brings something positive out of the citizenry, expecially young people.

My daughter was an Obama volunteer at her college. On election night they spilled into the streets. She called me. She was ecstatic. I couldn't even understand her on the phone.

I was at some friends' in Carbondale. After Obama's victory speech, we had to drive through Carbondale. The Strip was filling up and was about to close. I drove toward campus and students were running from all directions. I've never seen such spontaneous joy. No anger. No fights. Happy people. Black and white.

The concert the Sunday before inauguration was inpirational. Pete Seeger leading the crowd in all the verses to 'This Land is Your Land'. What must he have thought? He outlived the rednecks that tried to kill Paul Robeson and him. He outlived the congressmen that tried to jail him. ... Then the following Tuesday and all the black folks that came on busses for the swearing in.

...Ah, but now it's March. State secrets, corporate welfare... same as it ever was. ...I'm back.

Pics from Bruges, Belgium

Some pictures from our trip to Bruges Belgium are here. More later that Katie took with the good camera. Also, still, have some more from Amsterdam and a lot from Paris. We have some pics with us and the girls in them but will just send them to a few of you, later.

Bruges (or Brugge) is beautiful. It had been a big deal and then the harbor silted in. Ghost town until the 1800s when tourists rediscovered it. The landlady at the bed and breakfast we stayed at said Hitler deliberately didn't bomb it because of how old and beautiful it was. (He apparently had no such qualms about the rest of the country.)

Jimmy goes to the Netherlands

This windmill was a few blocks from our hotel in Haarlem. We drank beer with the girls, ate Italian the first night and Greek the next. The partying and street noise kept me up all Saturday night. We shopped and bought bread and cheese in the market square. Toured St. Bavo's church.

Hillary didn't even vote "present"

I have the perfect answer for Obama the next time Hillary starts talking about "voting present". Today, the Senate voted down, with 18 Democrats joining the Republicans, an amendment to remove telecom immunity from the FISA bill. Chris Dodd stayed up all night speaking on the Senate floor. This afternoon, I watched, live on C-span, while he made one of the most moving speeches I've ever seen in Congress.

Obama voted with the good guys. Hillary didn't vote.

On September 12, 2008, when the U.S. Senate voted away the rule of law, Senator Clinton was absent. She has failed one oath of office; she must never be allowed to take another.