Category: blogging

More in London

Earlier, I posted about the beginning of our trip to London. Continuing on…

sign for London slide
Why, you may ask does London have the “world’s tallest and longest tunnel slide”?

Olympic torch-slide
Answer:  Because the Olympic torch structure was very, very tall and curvy.
When we watched the 2012 London summer Olympics, we didn’t really appreciate the scale of the torch, but we certainly did standing near its base and looking up. We did not go on the slide. It was very windy, damp, and chilly the day we were there. Maybe on a future visit when it is warmer.

Parts of the Olympic Park are open for walking, biking, etc. There are gardens from the different continents, which were interesting to T, who has a master’s in conservation biology of plants, even though it was winter. The former Olympic stadium is now home to the West Ham football (soccer to US folks). Interestingly, the old West Ham stadium used to be next to L’s church. That site is now being redeveloped as housing and such.
West Ham stadium at Olympic Park

I’m sure you notice the crane and construction site in the foreground. Much of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park area is under development. (It’s good to be the queen! You get lots of things named after you.) Most of the new venues will be cultural and/or educational. In the future, there will be museum space, a theater, the London College of Fashion, the BBC music studios, and more, including a hip hop academy.

There are already many stores open near the Park. We spent quite a lot of time at Marks & Spencer, a London-based chain of stories that combines a department store, grocer, and cafe rolled into one. Here is ABC sharing her grandpa’s chocolate cake. We think she may have eaten more than he did! ABC was also rockin’ the ever-expanding dinosaur section of her wardrobe.
Ada and chocolate cake at Marks & Spencer

We also visited E’s favorite chocolate shop, Hotel Chocolat. They offer lots of yummy treats, including vegan chocolates for the lactose-intolerant segment of the family and white chocolate for me, who, sadly, can no longer eat cocoa. It was a fun place to shop for Christmas chocolates to bring home. Just in case you needed a reminder of how long it has taken me to roll out London posts…

 

SoCS: snow

It’s been an odd fall/winter season here in upstate New York. We had a lot of snow in the second half of fall and then not much since.

Until yesterday.

We were originally in a 4-7 inch band but overnight got bumped into 6-12 inches. When the snow started, it came down fast, between one and two inches an hour. (Sorry that I can’t do all the centimeter conversions in stream of consciousness, but 1 inch is about 2 and a half centimeters.)

I wanted to shovel during the storm because it can be hard to move deep snow all at once at the end of the storm. I had ambitions to keep the driveway and walk relatively clear.

Well, as it turned out, ambitions, but not enough strength.

The snow was very heavy, the kind that packs really well but is a bear to shovel because it sticks to the shovel, making it difficult to throw onto the snowbank. If ABC were still living here, we would have had fun making snow-children with the sticky, packable snow. They don’t tend to get a lot of snow in London, though. Maybe I should have made a miniature snow family and sent her a photo. When E and T were young, we used to make smaller snow figures instead of Frosty the Snowman size ones. It was easier for little hands – and very cute besides!

Because it has not been a very snowy winter here, we don’t have much snowpack to speak of. That’s not much of a problem here because we tend to get adequate precipitation throughout the year. I know that some places need to depend on the snowpack for water in the spring and summer, though, so I hope those regions are getting plenty of snow.

When I was growing up, my dad, known here at TJCM as Paco, worked for New England Power in the hydro division. They had several reservoirs and hydroelectric stations along the upper Deerfield River. I remember Paco and his crew going up into the woods to measure the snowpack and how much water it was holding so that they could predict how the spring run-off would be. They wanted to be able to fill the reservoirs and control the flow in the river so that it didn’t flood – or, at least, didn’t flood too badly. In those days, with climate change impacts not as pronounced as they are now, they were able to predict things pretty well. Paco has been retired for a long time and doesn’t live in that area anymore, but I’m sure his successors have a more challenging time assessing run-off from their snowpack measures.

Everything is so much more unpredictable nowadays.

In a lot of ways, but that would be another (several) posts…,
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “(un)pack.”  Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/02/07/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-8-2020/

SoCS: JC’s Confessions #9

A retired US armed services person – I can’t remember if it was a general or admiral – has been making the point that it’s important to make your bed first thing every morning because that will set you up for making a string of good choices for your day.

I’m not so sure.

I think many of us suffer from decision fatigue. What to do first/next, what to wear, what to eat, what to say, on and on and on. It can be mind-numbing.

I’m also afraid that some seemingly uneventful choices have deeper meaning. For me, making my bed in the morning is a reminder that I will spend a large part of my day doing things that are important to other people that aren’t really important to me.

It can make all those small, uneventful choices take on a deeper meaning – one after another after another.

It’s exhausting. Maybe that is part of the cause of decision fatigue.

In case anyone needed more evidence about my being what some would call overly-serious.

Non SoC note. I had been thinking of doing a JC’s Confession post about this topic, so when I saw Linda’s prompt, this was what came to the top of my mind. I’ve decided to list this as both an SoCS post and a JC’s Confessions post. I thought I should include my standard Confessions intro, so here it is:

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
~ JC

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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is to write about “making small, uneventful choices.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-1-2020/

political parallels?

We were in London when the United Kingdom had their election in December, so we saw some of the television coverage of it.

As we know, the Tories (Conservatives) won, Boris Johnson retains his post as prime minister, and, at midnight tonight Brussels time, the UK will officially leave the European Union, a process shorthanded as Brexit.

Right after the election, some pundits who were looking at this as possibly predictive of the upcoming United States elections later this year, posited that the lesson learned was that you can’t have a very liberal person representing the opposing political party.

That was not my takeaway from the situation. I was, instead, stuck by the parallels between UK and US politics, despite the differences in our governmental systems.

First, you have a similar urban/rural divide. In the US, the Democrats are stronger in urban areas and are represented by blue on electoral maps. The Republicans are stronger in rural areas and states and are represented by red. In the UK, the divide between Labor and Tories is similar, but the map colors are reversed.

Of course, the electoral map in the UK is much more complicated as there are more parties involved, such as the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists. There is a real danger that Scotland and Northern Ireland, who do not want to leave the European Union, may in the future vote to leave the United Kingdom. The United States is not about to break apart depending on the outcome of elections.

Another similarity is that the pivotal elections that brought us to this point were influenced by the Russians. Both the Brexit vote four years ago and the 2016 presidential election won by Trump are known to have suffered interference by Russian operatives. A number of GRU officers have been indicted in the United States for their election interference. (The GRU is the main intelligence agency in Russia.) Both the Brexit vote and the 2016 presidential election were close votes. There is no way to quantify the influence of the foreign interference, but it does call into question, in such close votes, if foreign interference tipped the scales.

Both the UK Tories and the US Republicans are historically conservative parties. They had certain principles that they held for decades. They have both turned away from those principles to follow an unconventional leader. In the US, this is sometimes referred to as a “cult of personality.” Any party member who disagrees with the leader is either badgered into falling back in the party line or leaving the party or not running for reelection.

I was also struck by how often Johnson and Trump are called out for lying. This is very distressing. In the US, it has led to some people denying facts in order to believe the lies. Some people even contend that there are no such things as facts or truth. This is dangerous, not only in politics but also in other topics. “Believing” something does not make facts disappear.

No one knows what will happen next in either nation. The UK leaves the European Union tonight, but there are no permanent plans in place for what that looks like. As I write this, I’m listening to the arguments for and against subpoenaing witnesses and documents in Trump’s impeachment trial. Even though most people think they know how the trial will turn out, no one knows what additional facts will surface and how the public will react.

Uncertainty seems the only constant.
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Today is the last day of Linda’s Just Jot It January. We hope you have enjoyed it – and joined in if you wanted! You can find out more about Just Jot It January here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/31/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-31st-2020/
Remember that Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday are ongoing. You can learn all about those on Linda’s blog, too. Thanks, Linda, for joining us all together for so much fun!

finished and unfinished

The opening statements are finished.

The presentations from the House managers (the prosecutors) and the President’s counsel (the defense) are finished.

The two days of questions from the senators and answers from the teams are almost finished.

Tomorrow, there will be votes to consider hearing from witnesses and obtaining documents from the executive branch. The vast majority of US voters want there to be witnesses and documents as part of the trial. Many of us have been called to jury duty and know that fair trials always have witnesses and documentary evidence. Unlike presidential impeachments of the twentieth century, this one was not preceded by a special or independent counsel investigation, so there were not tens of thousands of pages of documents, depositions, and testimony already assembled. In the current impeachment, this was compounded by the blanket assertion of the president that he did not have to turn over any documents or allow any testimony from anyone in his administration. This is totally unprecedented. During the impeachment investigation of Richard Nixon, he directed all of his staff and Cabinet to testify before the Congressional committee and turned over documents. Some of the staff went to prison because of their wrongdoing. When the Oval Office tapes were revealed and Nixon tried to not turn them over as evidence, the Supreme Court quickly ruled that they must be turned over to the Congress. Hiding evidence of a corrupt act is also a corrupt act.

Still it appears that the Republicans want the trial finished this week before the Super Bowl, the Iowa caucuses, and the President’s State of the Union address.

If the Republicans vote to not have witnesses called and vote to acquit, the trial will still feel unfinished. More evidence will come out in the days and weeks ahead and people will rightly ask why the evidence was not presented at the trial. They will also rightly ask if the senators upheld their oath to do “impartial justice.”

When things are left unfinished, there is a sense of unease.

I think uneasiness lies ahead for the US.
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Following prompts is not required, but I chose today to use the prompt “finished.” Find out more about Just Jot It January here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/30/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-30th-2020/

One-Liner Wednesday: dinosaurs!

“T-Rex ate meat!”
~~~ how my two-year-old granddaughter ABC greeted the choir, the priest, and random parishioners at church last Sunday
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Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday and/or Just Jot It January! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/29/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan-the-29th-2020-doggy-boo-boo/

Badge by Laura @ riddlefromthemiddle.com

vanishing likes

I joke about not looking at my blog stats very often, but there is one stat that winds up in front of me every time I post, my Top of JC’s Mind Facebook page.  Every time I look at my Facebook timeline, my page’s “like” number is in large numbers at the right. 

It’s hard to miss.

I was stuck at 99 for a looooong time.

When I finally got to 100, one of my personal Facebook friends admitted that she was tempted to unlike my blog page as a joke!

She didn’t – and I did make it up to 103 for a while, but, now, I am down to 101. Knowing that many people have left Facebook in recent months, I’m not taking it (very) personally, but I am in danger of dropping below 100 again.

Oh, well.

(Not so) easy come, easy go…
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/28/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-28th-2020/

 

Sightseeing in London

Last month, my spouse B, younger daughter T, and I made our first family trip to London to visit daughter E, her spouse L, our granddaughter ABC, and L’s family. After almost three years of waiting, E’s spousal visa finally came through and she and ABC relocated to London in October.

Yes, I am horribly late posting about the trip. I came home sick and had a hard time shaking it and there were holidays and technical issues – I am notoriously bad at dealing with photos – but I’m hoping to get out a few posts in the coming days.

We arrived in the UK on Saturday and did central London sightseeing on Sunday, after attending mass the church where Larry serves as organist and director of the adult choir. We had bought advance tickets to ride the London Eye, also known as the Millenium Wheel.
London Eye

It was nice to see some of the historic London landmarks from above. Here is the Palace of Westminster, where Parliament meets. You can see the clocktower which usually houses Big Ben shrouded in scaffolding as part of the ongoing restoration project.
Parliament

Two-and-a-half-year-old ABC was much more impressed with the boats on the Thames than the buildings!

After our ride on the Eye, we grabbed some lunch and went on a walking tour. On future trips, we may try to tour some of the buildings. We anticipate many trips to London in the future!

Because daylight hours are short in London in the winter, as we walked in the area of Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, we were able to see some of the holiday lights.
London holiday lights

In Trafalgar Square, we were drawn to the sculpture on the Fourth Plinth, part of “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist” by Michael Rakowitz, a US artist of Iraqi ancestry. It is a replica of Lamassu, a protective deity from the gates of Nineveh in 700 BCE which was destroyed by the Islamic State in 2015. This sculpture is made from 10,500 empty date cans; dates were once a major part of the economy in Iraq, but 90% of the 30 million date trees have been destroyed in the long years of war. Rakowitz is trying to recreate all the art that was stolen from the museum in Baghdad or destroyed at sites across Iraq.  The art on the Fourth Plinth changes every couple of years and this sculpture will be replaced in 2020, so we were fortunate to have seen it.
Lamassu sculpture in London

As we were walking in the Piccadilly shopping district, I was delighted to see this building with Advent calendar decorated windows. It is Fortnum & Mason, a fancy department store. We went in to browse a bit, but it was so crowded we could barely move. We are definitely not used to that!
Advent calendar F & S

It was fun to see some of London with holiday lights. While we expect to visit frequently in the coming years, I don’t know how often we will be able to go in December. Time will tell…

Photos courtesy of B
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/27/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-27th-2020/

 

 

the other side

Because I want to be informed, even when it is scary, I listened to the first day of Trump’s defense in the impeachment trial.

It was puzzling.

A lot of what the president’s team spoke about wasn’t related to the case. It seemed that they were bringing up a lot of different issues in order to distract from the evidence that the House managers had presented over the three days of their presentation.

There were also a number of instances in which the defense would quote a certain person’s testimony and say, because that person didn’t know a certain piece of information, then it must not be true, failing to note that another witness or piece of evidence did provide that information. They also complained about there not being proof of such-and-such, which would be either proven or disproven if the administration hadn’t blocked all document requests and subpoenas for testimony.

It’s also confusing when the president’s lawyers try to draw parallels between this impeachment investigation and prior ones that had had a justice department investigation prior to Congressional proceedings. Other things are just strange, such as the defense saying that Congressional committees need a vote in the House before issuing subpoenas and/or document requests. Congressional committees routinely issue document and testimony requests in their oversight investigations.

If I, a citizen with no legal training, can notice these things, how can the senators, many of whom are lawyers or who have staff with legal expertise, fail to notice these problems?

I don’t know if the president’s team will make more sense in the next two days of the trial or not, but their first day is not at all convincing.
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There are still a few days to join in with Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/26/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-26th-2020/

 

awesome

I have been watching major chunks of the impeachment proceedings against Donald John Trump, as he is officially referred to in the impeachment and trial.

The House managers, members of the House of Representatives who act a prosecutors, have been impressive in presenting their case, as well as pointing out which documents and testimony they have subpoenaed, but not received, which relates to the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress. (The first article is abuse of power, which, in this trial, is related to solicitation of Ukraine for help in the president’s election bid.)

The House managers take turns presenting evidence in a very methodical way, using video clips, emails, phone records, etc. to make their case. They are all well-prepared and well-spoken, but one is especially awesome – Representative Adam Schiff of California.

Rep. Schiff was a federal prosecutor and has comprehensive knowledge of the law. He chairs the Senate Intelligence committee, which did most of the fact-finding in the case, and was named lead House manager. As such, he has acted as the “closer” for the presentations, speaking with conviction and, at times, passion about the United States, our laws, and our futures. I found the closing of the second day of testimony to be especially powerful.

There was some talk, although not from him, that Adam Schiff might run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. I’m glad that he didn’t, because he is exactly where our country needs him the most right now, speaking up for the Constitution and laws and against corruption.

The case that he and the other House managers have made is so compelling that I am frightened when I hear that some Republican members of Congress are dismissing them totally and that the president will engage in even more corrupt behavior, knowing he will not have to suffer the consequences for his actions.

I am terrified for both the short-term and the long-term consequences for our democracy if a president is allowed to be so openly corrupt and is not removed from office. With Rep. Schiff, I believe, “Right matters and the truth matters.”
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Usually when I post on Saturdays, I follow Linda’s Stream of Consciousness prompt. This week’s involved writing about the last unsolicited business call we received, but, between caller id, do not call registry, and new spam blocking, I don’t receive those kinds of calls anymore. Instead, you are subjected to more non-stream-of-consciousness posting on the ongoing impeachment trial of Donald John Trump. I’m sure that is more painful than unsolicited business calls.

But, please visit Linda here, and join the fun for Stream of Consciousness Saturday and/or Just Jot It January.