Dog Down

In the last three months, Remi has:

1) Eaten a wasp, which stung her (several times) in the throat.

2) Gotten involved with a prickly hedgehog while being cared for by someone else (who didn't notice the exact problem, only that she appeared to be in pain).

3) Dislocated her knee. Which is what we have now.

The patient is resting on the sofa. 

The Upside to Crazy

Sunday's election showed that Austrians have tilted wayyyy right, which seems to be where they're most comfortable most of the time.

There is an upside in this for me. Anytime someone here comes to me beseeching, questioning, pleading, begging to know how Americans could vote in someone like George W., I can pull out my ever-growing list of nut-job politicians that come to power here. 

Welfare For Rich People

Wanda Sykes' take on the bailout (which includes opening up the bailed out CEOs' private swimming pools to the public).

Hey. You. Get Off This Street.

Apparently, I have special driving privileges that no one else in the country has. I proved it on Saturday by driving down the Hauptallee in the Prater, (Prater: think The Third Man). I felt quite powerful, my little car putzing along a huge, empty boulevard. 

Empty, at first. And then I saw a few runners. A few bicyclers. No roller bladers but a few little kids on skates and parents pushing strollers.

And then a huffy puffy runner does a "tsk, tsk, no, no" at me with his finger. 

Then I see some flashing red lights in my rear view mirror. Oh, no. Nein. Nicht jetzt. Bitte.

A police car? Is it? Is that what I see?

No, no, just a slow-moving ambulance who toddled on past me. Breathe, breathe.

I continued my little sightseeing tour until I found a real road to turn onto. It was a very long and fretful mile away, since the truth is, no one is permitted to drive an automobile on the Hauptallee in the Prater. Not even me.

The flashing lights did bring back some driving, uh, mishaps, that happened when I lived in good ole Washington DC: The time I managed a police escort to a gas station (I was wayyy low on gas... and in a baaad neighborhood); the time I accidentally interrupted a presidential motorcade. Ah, yes, and the time I forgot where I parked my car and had to circle around in a taxi til I found it. 

It's really a wonder I'm allowed to drive at all.

The Smell of Bacon

I had bizness to tend to recently, which had me at a village police station asking for some documents.

It was Keystone Kops in Europe. Four cops trying to figure out how to call up a file, some of them whacking each other on the shoulders to demonstrate to me how smart they were and how stupid this other guy was. I'm sure if I'd stuck around long enough, Chevy Chase would have popped into the room. Or out from under a bed or something.

So when I was informed this morning (can't confirm) that an entire concert stage (worth half a million dollars)  had disappeared from a nearby town; and no one could figure out how it happened, where it went or who did it, I was absolutely sure that my four kops were on the case.

Where Were You That Day?

I was in a newsroom in Montenegro working with a local journalist named Ratko. Except for us and two other reporters, the newsroom was empty.

Ratko got a call on his cell from a friend, who told him, "tell the American you're working with that there's been a plane crash in NY." He called back less than a minute later: "tell her there's been another one."

We tried to get online but all the news sites were jammed. I called one of my brothers on my cell but the phone lines were jammed. Just then I got a call from my sister in England. She was crying so hard I couldn't understand what she was trying to say.

She held her phone up to the television so I could hear the BBC anchorman. That's how I found out. 

Where were you?

An Urgent Call for Help

I'm sitting here about 5,000 miles away, deeply worried about someone I've never met.

I never heard much about her until a few days ago, when a request rang out on a rather closeknit writers' forums I'm active on.

One of our own is in trouble, the post read. She is desperately ill with ALS, has a very young son and is days away from losing her house to foreclosure.

Lore Hall Steele is a fabulous writer. To know what I'm talking about, read this
Washington Post essay she wrote.
Ironically, this article was written long before she knew she was ill, but was only published for the first time this summer.

There is a blogathon set up to help Lori, and provides the following summary of her condition:

Lori, a gifted freelance writer ... mysteriously lost the ability to move her feet in September 2007. The paralysis later spread to her legs and arms. She eventually moved to a wheelchair and had only limited use of her hands for typing. Her inability to use her hands meant she was no longer able to continue her work as a freelance writer, which had been her sole means of supporting her and her seven-year old son, Jackson. Her mom, Shannon, moved up from Florida in February to care for both of them. Lori is now confined to a hospital bed and is dependent upon a Bi-Pap breathing machine. Doctors confirmed a diagnosis of Lyme Disease in April, but have since named ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) as a prime suspect.


A summary of Lori's work:

Based in Michigan, she has published more than 3,000 articles for local, regional and national publications. She copy-editedMichael Moore’s book (Michigan's most controversial son) "Dude, Where’s My Country?" and helped launch his Traverse City Film Festival.

Another equally helpful site, Save Lori's House. also provides more information on Lori, her work, her young son and her situation. She needs you. Five or ten dollars can make a difference.

Panoramic Corfe Castle

It's hard to do it justice, but here's a quick look at the village of Corfe, England, in Dorset.

Roll Out the Piano

Copenhagen City Center, put to music.

Who We Are

My friend Rick was upset with my posts about Palin--didn't like that I was, as he saw it, perpetuating rumors. My initial response to him was that I had only presented the facts. But then on reflection, I realized I had done more than that--I had outright questioned the maternity of Palin's infant son.

Sometimes I cross the line and I think this was one of those times.

Rick and I went on to discuss the extremes of both sides of the political spectrum. 

This got me to thinking why we, as a nation, feel so deeply personal about our politics. Whether it's Jimmy Carter or JFK, Roosevelt or Reagan, we have powerfully strong feelings, one way or the other, about our Commanders in Chief.  The only time I can remember the country ever feeling "eh" about anyone (in my lifetime, of course), was Gerald Ford, and we didn't elect him.

It's hard to imagine the citizens of European countries always, at each and every national election, having such heartfelt emotion. And this, in countries where, in my experience, the politics has an immediate and significant personal impact on daily lives (relatively speaking, it seems U.S. politics takes longer to trickle into everyday life).

The only way I can account for it is passion. If nothing else, we are a passionate people. You can give the French their romance, the Brits their steely reserve, but dammit, I think we've cornered the market on passion.

This irritates the Brits to no end (they find our constant displays of it both naively nationalistic and patronizing--and are all too often at the mercy of Americans giving them lessons in patriotism). And the passion just puzzles a lot of Europeans--what's the big deal, they say. Empires rise, and empires fall, so what?

I don't know what I make of it. Only that I'm American, and like the 300 million other Americans, I feel passionately about the direction of the country. I feel something can be done--and for the first time in a long time, I feel hope instead of despair. 

It's a mixed blessing, this trait of passion. On one hand, we need rationale, reason and balance -- that's what mature democracies are comprised of, right? Mature democracies weigh and measure, form coalitions, and weigh and measure some more, seeking a balance.

 But here we are rocking the boat all over the place, for on the other hand, we are a nation of heart. We have heart. We have pioneer blood.  The passion and hope for a better future is in our DNA, and no amount of checks and balances will override blind passion. For better or for worse, it's who we are.