The big news this week is that I have finally entered the 21st Century and am now the proud sponsor (or whatever one calls it) of my very own blog site. If you travel to: http://theoppenheimerreport.blogsite.com/ on the Information Traffic Jam, you will find a better alternative to the emails I have been sending so far. There are photographs on the site, and text will be, perhaps for the first time, properly formatted. Unfortunately, the site is somewhat unorganized at present. Right now, there is no rhyme or reason to the order of the posts. I have included some of my favorite reports from the past fourteen years for your perusal and/or comments. I will also be able to archive past reports, which is a big plus. Most important, it is much easier for me to post now, and I hope all of you will continue to read my musings when I no longer spam you with them. In any event, you will no longer need to delete me from your email box after this report. This is a long way from the post cards I used to type up when I first began to write this weekly report to my “twelve loyal readers” back in 1992. In my first report, then President George H. Bush vomited all over some important Japanese guy. Who knew his son would be a bigger bozo?
Shauna, Jasper, and I are back in the big city for a week or so, and we will head back up to the cottage this week to sew up some loose ends. Permission to build our new driveway should be granted as soon as the town superintendent of roads returns from his hunting trip, and hopefully work will begin on that later this week. So begins Phase One. The plans for the house have been all but finalized, environmental authorities have given the project the green light, land severances should be finalized early next year, window sizes and locations have been determined, electrical and lighting locations are under consideration (log homes present a challenge in that wiring must run through log walls, and decisions tend to be final once construction drawings are completed), etc. etc. There are a lot of etceteras! The dilemma at present is whether or not to level the existing cottage. Shauna feels that all or part of it can be moved to the side while the new place is being built, thus providing us with a living space during construction, a storage facility, as well as buying us some time to salvage the paneling and other (debatably) useful building materials for use in the new place. She then anticipates using part of the old cottage as our storage shed. While I sympathize with her desire to remember the old cottage, I say, “out with the bad air”. If you go to the blog site, you will see some pictures of our property in Katrine, as well as some photos from our various mountain trips. Once I get things organized properly, new posts will appear at the top of the page.
Finally, as for the political bloodbath which recently took place in the States, I’m not at all surprised. Though I am a registered Republican (easy now), Bush and his ultra right wing conservatives lost me a long time ago. In his crusade to finish what his father started, or whatever myopic vision was his motivation for invading Iraq, he has squandered any goodwill America once had around the world. His Neanderthal views about science and right to life are crippling medical progress. How do the ethicists justify “saving” an embryo, but not a mother of three dying of cancer? The “architect” of the Bush administration, Karl Rove, has pushed the party to the far right and he has alienated moderate Republicans like me. One of my more conservative friends wrote me the other day in response to “Blue Tuesday” and he basically said “throw the Republican bums out”. Does anybody in politics ever admit they were wrong? How about that evangelical religious leader recently accused of fornicating with a gay male prostitute, AND purchasing drugs from the guy? Oops. Preach what you practice! One of the great things about democracy is that the system can and does self correct. For a couple of years, we may have a Congress that leans too far to the left, but then the pendulum will swing back. I hope.
Goodbye to 60 Minutes journalist Ed Bradley, who died last week of Leukemia. I wonder if a stem cell breakthrough might have saved his life. And thanks to our friend Zura for finally setting me up on a blog site!
-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No comments:
Post a Comment