So unless you’re here for the wine festival, Winningen isn’t itself a tourist destination (though you can hike in the surrounding hills), but is a great home base, and lovely for walking around in the evening or getting rolls at the bakery in the morning (until you get tired of it and just want some American cereal and scrambled eggs again). It’s one fault: there’s no Eisdiele. Read more
Really. Enough with the nonsense of “not voting for Trump is as bad as voting for Clinton” or “not voting for Clinton is as bad as voting for Trump.” I cannot, in good conscience, vote for either of these two candidates. Maybe I’ll vote for Johnson. Most likely, I’ll just vote in the down-ballot races. Here’s an analogy which is, admittedly, incomplete: consider the pacifist. It’s always been hard for me to accept the idea of pacifism. Sure, a pacifist... Read more
More pictures! And another destination courtesy our longer stay in London: Camden Market, a funky (and very large) shopping area, with shops catering to the goth/steampunk crowd as well as second-hand shops, followed by a ride on a canal boat. As described in my original blog post, we took the canal waterbus from Camden Market to Little Venice, only to discover that Little Venice doesn’t have much to say for itself, just one stretch where you can walk along the... Read more
Here’s a shopping district that we stumbled upon looking for somewhere to eat after the Imperial War Museum shut down due to a power outage: the Lower Marsh area of the Waterloo district. They’ve even got their own website. It would have been nice to explore the area more, but, well, three tween through teenage boys wouldn’t have been willing to put up with it for too long. Here’s the streetscape — though what this picture doesn’t show is the... Read more
Dear Mr. Trump* After many years of success in the real estate business, you have stepped up to lead the nation out of its current economic woes. You’ve recognized that illegal immigrants are a huge problem — they drain our finances and have committed crimes against American citizens, and the federal government under Barack Obama won’t solve the problem. Trade with China is killing American workers. And the Obama/Clinton foreign policy has worsened, rather than reduced, our terrorism risk, and... Read more
Readers will know I’m a mom of three boys. None of them are “typical” boys — none are testosterone-fueled sport-crazy jocks, that is. But they all have their challenges which are, in some ways, “typical boy” challenges, and I worry about their future in an era in which men’s traditional strengths are de-valued and women’s strengths are prized, in which it’s not enough to pull good grades, but you also have to have the right social skills, and where, let’s face... Read more
OK, so all the wishful thinking about the Libertarians getting enough votes to play spoiler in the election is just that, wishful thinking. But — I’m feeling inspired by The Onion, which parodically reported that Trump cried into his pillow, “Why can I never seem to say the right thing?” All that it takes for those of us who find neither Trump and Clinton worthy of receiving our votes, even at the bare minimum threshold of tolerability, to have an alternative... Read more
Last Friday, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law the Orwellianly-named Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which in fact strips away conscience rights with respect to abortion. You wouldn’t know it from the Chicago Tribune, though, or any other Chicago news outlet, because it’s apparently not newsworthy. I only saw it in a facebook item from a pro-life group, and had to hunt around for details. The law itself? Its supporters painted it as wholly reasonable because it doesn’t... Read more
A must-see: the Government Bunkers. Well, except for the fact that English-language tours are only available for groups, by prearrangement. My original description of the site is here; the short version is that this is the location that was the “secure location” at which top German government officials, and 3,000 people altogether, were to be protected in the case of an actual or threatened nuclear attack, for up to 30 days. This site ought to be the premier site for... Read more
Just for fun, I’ve been playing against my husband with the username Janetheactuary, and we’re reasonably evenly matched, but I thought it might be fun to have some competition from my readers. The app is of the free-with-ads variety but the ads aren’t too much of a nuisance, and the questions are decently constructed. If you’re interested, just look for my username and invite me to a game! Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In