Instead, by August, 1974, Tricky Dick was waving goodbye from the White House lawn. I sure remember that. Sitting on my grandmother's living room floor watching the President resign live on TV. My grandmother in muted shock - she'd hoped the whole thing was somehow a big misunderstanding.
Nixon is remembered for Watergate, not so much Vietnam. Why is that? Everybody now knows (or should) that he and Kissinger conspired in 1968 to convince the North Vietnamese to hold out on settling with Johnson in the Paris talks on the promise that Nixon would get them a better deal if elected.
The US eventually withdrew under the same terms on offer in 1968 - but only after 25,000 or so more US troops had been killed and many more Vietnamese. And yet we think Nixon and we think Watergate.
Planning a week or so of holiday later this month down in south Bohemia. Came across a penzion listing among its available recreations a game called "bedbinton".
Currently sore in: most muscle groups. I did some serious cycling Fri-Sun in the Tabor region and wasn't in ideal shape for it - i.e., I was out of shape. But it's the good kind of hurt. Which qualifies only as partial masochism.
Most interesting detail of the weekend: coming across an old, overgrown Jewish cemetery at the edge of a wood and a few kilometers from the nearest village. I was following a simple dirt track across a field and came across it in a clump of trees. Observe that as you lean against the wall regarding the residents of an abandoned cemetery in an abandoned corner of the woods that it can suddenly seem very, very quiet.
I went to the Sparta - APOEL Nicosia Champions League match yesterday (Sparta dudes won 2-1 and advance to the third round). I bought the cheapest ticket and ended up in one of the end sections with the rowdiest, loudest and out of control Sparta freaks in the whole stadium. It was really as if they stuck them all in one section and said, "do whatever you want, but stay here."
So I'm wondering how the nice young lady at the ticket window decided that's the one section out of the seven or eight she had in front of her where she would assign me. I have not hitherto been aware of any resemblance on my part to a rabid football fan.
There was no Sparta gear in evidence on my person. I wasn't draped in a player-autographed Sparta flag. I wasn't shouting out to nobody in particular, as indeed were many other people in line with me, "SPAR-TA, DO TO-HO!" over and over again.
I was, however, on my own. Is this suspicious? "I'll take one, please" relegates you to the freak-o section? Who knows. Maybe she detected a trace of a foreign accent when I spoke (amazing she could hear me at all with the din around there) and thought, "well, let's have some fun." Click.
[Here's another third round Champions League story of note - a little tiny Irish team whipped some Croatian ass and advanced yesterday (link via Daily Czech). Odd - what's a story like that doing getting picked up by the San Diego Union-Tribune?]
You're the Labour Party, you go on and on about education, and suddenly you realize you've been trying to push rope uphill all along. You're competing with Hollywood and MTV's marketing whizzes. You can't win. Must be discouraging....
I first came across the cows two years ago while home on a visit to Portland. There they were scattered all over downtown and popping up in the suburbs.
Imagine my surprise on returning to Prague two weeks ago to find them here. And to find those "international shame" posters all over the place in Czech and English. The cows travel through 18 cities all over the world including places like Stamford CT, Atlanta and Houston and do not attract any vandalism. Prague steps up and within a few days of the cows' arrival the first case of vandalism occurs with many more since. Welcome back.
Do you find yourself wondering what celebrities think about the extraordinary cow attacks? See here. Aňa Geislerová, for whom I have kind of a soft spot, sadly comes off sounding like an airhead.
Here I was thinking that Jiří Welsch is the only Czech currently playing pro hoops in the states. Wrong. Big, bad Kamila Vodičková of Litoměřice is pounding the boards for Seattle. And there's controversy: she's not going to the Olympics - punishment for daring to play in North America! Via the Monitor.
Via Nicmoc et al. Enquiring minds want to know the scoop on our new PM's train driving abilities.
Imagine you are a passenger on a Train a Grande Vitesse hurtling somewhere through the European countryside. Now imagine you have just found out that the driver is one Stanislav Gross. If you read stories like this one you will be reassured that he is referred to as a "former high speed train driver".
If, like Nicmoc, you happen to know that "fast train" is a slightly optimistic translation of the term rychlík, you will be less comfortable. And you will want to get off if, like me, you have just heard somebody say, "that's nonsense - everybody knows he was only a výhybkář, the guy that just pushes a button to change the tracks when a train goes through his station."
The Prague Post says he was a mechanic and driver at the Vrovice station on the outskirts of Prague. The government webpage on "JUDr." Stanislav Gross claims only a little work experience as an electro-mechanic at Vrovice. The truth will probably turn out to be that he just occasionally passed by the Vrovice station on his way to meetings of the Young Social Democrats whom he was leading in those days.
