Just finished reading George Mardikian's Song of America. It brought me to tears several times. But the paragraph on p. 300 that ends with this about the Armenian DPs (displaced persons):
... what they loved the most was this: they left New York and went all the way to California, or they left New Orleans and traveled days to reach the State of Washington, and not once did men with helmets and bayonets and guns step across their path and say, "Where is your passport? Where are you going?".
was one of the saddest. That America is gone. They may not have helmets or bayonets, but the TSA, BP, and other minions of the fascist state that is now America are always stopping us and asking for ID, asking where we're going, and confiscating anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon, even sewing needles, from us at every opportunity. The America that Mardikian fell in love with has died.
Bought two 1.5L containers of wine from Grocery Outlet before we came up to the foothills: one was a Gallo "Blush Noir", and the other a plastic bag of Bluebird Pino Noir. The former tastes something like Kool-aid with alcohol added, and the latter is actually pretty good, if a bit sour. But at $3.99 and $5.99, respectively, both are OK for the price.
I've got about 4 or 5 days without Internet ahead of me, let's see if I can get some of my personal programming projects underway.
last updated 2011-07-28 22:30:39. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com