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Unpopular Ideas

Ramblings and Digressions from out of left field, and beyond....

Name:
Location: Piedmont of Virginia, United States

All human history, and just about everything else as well, consists of a never-ending struggle against ignorance.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

My Watch and Riverbend

Something weird is happening when I try to bring up "Baghdad Burning," the weblog of Our Lady in Iraq, the mysterious Riverbend. When I use the link which is on this site here to the left, it comes up okay, with her last post being on the 5th. That link is keyed to blogspot. But when I use another link that isn't blogspot, I just get a notice saying that her domain expired on the 5th and needs to be renewed.

There is surely a simple explanation for all this, and everything will be made clear in time. But I seem to be ending this day the same way I started it -- hitting the panic button unjustifiably.

This morning my brand new $35 dollar pocket watch suddenly stopped working. I've been very pleased with this watch, and I tried not to let it bother me. But I did keep consulting it and suddenly, later in the day, it was working just fine again. All I can figure is that jostling in my pocket pulled the stem up to the position when it is normally stopped so the hands can be repositioned.

This sort of stuff has been happening with me a lot lately, and I blame it on the usual longevity thing.

I won't worry too much about Riverbend either.

Her site has been essential reading ever since the Bushers invaded her beloved land and thus opened the way for a huge mess to be made of the place and the decimation of her people. Nobody that I've seen has been better at informing us of just what it's been like to live in Iraq and specifically in the center of the maelstrom, the main city, Baghdad. Because I'm not fond of hearing bad news, there've been times when I've approached reading her with trepidation, and so I haven't kept up with her as closely as I should, but I still read her regularly enough.

Over the several years I have also worried a lot about her personal safety. Whenever I read about bombings and mass killings in that city, my first thoughts go to her, as if she is a relative or a close friend. And it doesn't help that she seems to be the feisty sort, who doesn't willingly obey the norms that are expected of her in that questionable Iraqi society, mainly her modes of dress. I know she stays close to home, but still she's in Battered Baghdad, and she has never expressed any desire to get out of there, which makes her all the more admirable, as I suspect that if she had wanted to get out of there and out of Iraq period, she could have managed it long before now.

Well, there've been other times when she's fallen silent, and she's always reappeared after a period of weeks, and she doesn't post at any definite time intervals anyway, but only when the fancy hits her and the electricity is on.

1 Comments:

Blogger Rook said...

Okay, Carl. This is off topic, but you make the first move in our game. Just email it to me at rook at rooksrant dot com

Oh, and do you want to also post the moves on your blog here? If so, let me know an email, and I'll send you pics that are reduced for posting online.

1:43 AM  

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