Year of the Rat

I read blogs daily but developing my own has been turtle paced at best. But it's a new year. New prospects. New beginnings. My wife and I rounded out the end of 2007 with an 18 day trip to Europe; some quality time with her Grandmother in Bielefeld Germany, visiting friends in Hamburg and finishing up with four days in Amsterdam for New Year's celebrations.

Europe has it going on. Their cultures are older, wiser.

The US is a bully right now on the world stage. Our reputation is a mess. Foreigners love our people and our creativity, but to a person everyone I know outside of this country thinks our government is full of malcontent. Corrupted by power and huge sums of money. Eisenhower's warning of the coming military industrial complex has been realized. Our's is a country of news entertainment where the newscasters don't provide journalistic presentations. They provide bias, spin, speculation and celebrity nonsense. They tow the mother company's line generating stories and ratings. Hype. Fear. Orwellian newspeak. They continue to feature pundits and experts who consistently inflame situations with off the mark analysis draped in opinion. How many times does someone get to be wrong before they are taken off the air? They yell louder and appeal to base constituencies doing nothing to progress or inform mankind. War! And mostly from men and women who have never donned a uniform... I digress.

I get my news now from the web. I can control what I read. I can quickly fact check a story. I get hope from this.

We've returned to the states and our humble home refreshed and ready for the new. And today, January 20, marks the one year anniversary pre-dating the removal from office of the Bush Administration. I'm not religious, but amen.

The photo up top is a shot of a canal in Amsterdam on the evening of Jan 1, 2008.

The shot below is of Margaret in Amsterdam at 12:20 am on the same day. A smokey, foggy and rainy night. Amsterdam blows itself up for New Years, reminiscent of the near complete burning of the entire city in 1452. We rode our bikes around the the steets and alleys until 2 am. I've never seen anything like it...