The island nation of Samoa just entered the history books by throwing our December 30, 2011. It never happened there. They’re now preparing for New Year’s Eve, thanks to their jumping over the International Date Line. Happy New Year to our Samoan friends!
MSNBC has more on the date jump here.
It’s been a tradition of mine to give my friends a Christmas blessing on the blog, or via e-mail, and this year will be no exception. The benediction will be short, however, as I have to be honest and say that my heart isn’t fully in the Christmas spirit this year. The year was a bad one, and I’ve had a string of them, but I think we all have, in some form or another, and we’re expected to survive them. It is my hope that you, who had a wonderful year, be thankful and appreciative of what you were blessed with. For those who didn’t, it’s understandable. Too many problems, too many wounds to deal with. But we continue on. We always will. If you believe in today, then it’s a day of hope and rejuvination. In the end, hope is all we have, even if it is sometimes misplaced. All prayers will be answered with time. If I believe in nothing else, I’ll maintain belief in that, and I hope you will, too.
On that note, I’ll leave you with some wonderful Christmas music, courtesy of the legendary Swedish tenor, Jussi Björling:
Sleep in heavenly peace… sleep in heavenly peace.
Unfortunately, Argentina has a long history with fascism, and an act like this should be called for what it is. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President (and, one would presume, wanna-be dictator of the country), doesn’t like Clarín, a newspaper who has rightfully criticized her shoddy leadership. Her husband, the late Néstor Kirchner, was marginally better as a leader, and didn’t have the audacity to pull a stunt like seizing Clarin in a naked display of governmental abuse. It seems Peronism never really went away.
I travel a lot, and will probably spend the rest of my life doing so, barring some lovely woman saddling me down with children and whatnot. During most of December of this year, I spent a good deal of time in airports, visiting as many as three a day. On December 5, I had a rather strange, but remarkably pleasant event occur.
I had just left Naples, Italy, after a week-long vacation visiting my good friend, Paolo. The trip was bittersweet for me, as, though I love the city of Naples, it has a rather painful history for me as well. I wasn’t in the best of moods when I went from Naples to Munich, knowing that I would have to wait seven hours to fly to Bulgaria and then spend 16 hours waiting for yet another flight, this time to London, on the way back to the United States to visit my family before moving back to Europe again early next year. Though I had eaten well, had a wonderful sendoff thanks to Paolo’s family, and was excited to go home, the nagging emotional pains didn’t quite go away.
About three hours into my trip, I saw a man walking around with what looked like a skullcap worn by Sinti gypsies. After taking a good glance, I noticed that the man’s cap had Orthodox Christian crosses on it in a style that reminded me of Georgian Orthodox patterns. The man asked if he minded if he took a nap, and I said, “No.” He rested for a few minutes, and he must have noticed my flightiness because he started chatting with me. As it turns out, the man was from Georgia, and was working in Italy as a boat operator.
With my interest piqued, he introduced himself as Sergo. We ended up talking about everything from Orthodoxy to Hamlet Gonashvili, perhaps the finest singer to ever come out of that country. This is one of the few times I will toot my own horn, as I take pride in being able to share the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years easily with fellow travelers!
When all was said and done, we said our goodbyes, and I was left with the feeling that I had made a friend for life (at least by Sergo’s words).
Meeting new people while traveling is a wonderful thing.
There are not too many playwrights who become influential politicians in their later years, but in the case of Václav Havel, he proved to be a very competent one. Even fewer could count among his friends Ronald Reagan and Frank Zappa. Havel passed away on December 18th, 2011. His leadership and his pen will both be missed.
Rest in peace.
This is Christianity done right. These prayers offered to a man who had a massive difference with Blessed Mother Teresa are a testimony to love of everyone, not just those who agree with you. It is the core of the Christian faith, whether one be Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, that should be kept in our minds at all times. It is something we all fall short of, but to strive for this is the worthiest of all struggles.
Though the mighty Hitch may have said some evil things, he was, by no means, an evil man. He was a damaged soul, as most of us are. May he rest comfortably in peace, and may be finally have a chance to discuss polemics with Blessed Mother Teresa in Heaven.
It is with sadness, though not an unexpected one, to report that one of the greatest polemicists of our day, the ever controversial, every-annoying, utterly brilliant Christopher Hitchens has died.
I came into contact with Hitchens’ writing about ten years ago, a bit after 9/11. Before then, I had dismissed him offhand as just another pathetic atheist after his utterly repugnant comments regarding Blessed Mother Teresa (irony of ironies, the next post ties the two together one last time). The horribly acidic taste of his grotesque atheism never really left my mind until the root causes of his disposition were exposed by the man himself in candid interviews and his autobiography, Hitch-22, a book truly worth reading. That topic is for another day.
It was his political discourses that interested me more, as he had started his political life as a Trotskyite who finally grew up by the time 9/11 occurred. His former cronies never quite forgave him for such a change of heart. Delusional liars rarely do accept it when one of their own wakes up to reality. There will be many comments, many articles, many news bites and obituaries you will find on the great Hitch today. Read them, but read ALL of them, not just by the writers you like. He was a multi-faceted writer, and probably one of the most interesting commentators of the last thirty years.
May you rest well, Hitch, and because so many of us prayed for your benefit, may God hear our prayers and show you mercy.
