I made the mistake of getting online tonite when I was hungry. In such a state I was not in a charitable mood, and it was probably not the right time to read Robert Fisk:

[Fisk/The Indepdendent]: Iraqis are right to ask why the Americans don't search for this information, just as they are right to demand to know why the entire Saddam cabinet -- every man jack of them -- got away. The capture by the Americans of Saddam's half-brother and the ageing Palestinian gunman Abu Abbas, whose last violent act was 18 years ago, is pathetic compensation for this.

[...] catastrophe usually waits for optimists in the Middle East, especially for false optimists who invade oil-rich nations with ideological excuses and high-flown moral claims and accusations [...] America's war of "liberation" is over. Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is about to begin. In other words, the real and frightening story starts now.

11:27:41 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Take It Somewhere Else

It was spring. The sun was warm. The sky was blue. The leaves on the trees were a new light-green. The wind in the woods was fragrant and full of the hope that a midwest springtime brings. The ground was warm enough to sit upon.

A boy and a girl took off from school. The year almost done, they drove north to the Pines in a caravan of friends, and there in the park in the sun on the grass, the kids gathered and ate and talked and reveled in spring.

In the sun, on the grass, the boy and the girl held hands and kissed. Intoxicated with each other. In the sun. On the grass. They kissed.

Clean up your act, Chico!

A man in a brown shirt with a badge and a broad leather belt with a holster scowled at them and looked the boy in the eyes.

The boy sat up. The girl was embarrassed.

Take it somewhere else.

Clearly spring affected this man differently from the way it affected the kids.

---
White Pines State Park, Illinois, spring 1976

9:18:06 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []