If I had landed at Plymouth, I would have kept on going!

Posted on 29 March 2014 by boryssnorc

Ah, nothing like having the prettiest room in the house with the largest, most magnificent bed… and the soggiest soft mattress you have ever encountered in your entire life. The direct result of this was being awake off and on from about 0230 and definitely being awake enough to watch the dawn peep through the curtains. We are off to Plymouth today, via a town called Mystic, which is renown for its beautiful seaport and being the place where the a replica of the Amistad slave ship resides. Unfortunately, being a moving target, the Amistad was not in residence at the Mystic Seaport Museum and Shipyard today – probably had the good sense to seek warmer climes – so we decided the $USD50 for us to go into the remainder of the museum was a bit on the steep side.Instead, we had a look around the port area and the funkiest nautical themed gift shop ever. *curses American Airlines yet again for their luggage capacity rules!*
After staying outdoors as long as we dared, we took a bit of a drive around Mystic to check out the houses (did I mention how much I love the property market up this way?), and to try and find the Mystic Pizza shop. 🙂 Yes, I know it’s an old movie and I am pretty sure I saw it at some point, but stuffed if I can remember anything but it!
Ta da!
Then it was back on the road again and heading for Plymouth. We wanted to take the scenic route and stay by the coastline, but that was altogether too much for Sondra (our GPS) and she ended up taking us via the highways all the way there, which was quicker, but I dare say, not as pretty. Eventually we get to Plymouth Bay and discover that the town of Plymouth is pretty much NOT open for business yet… maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, but it seems like most of them are kinda holding out for better weather. Now the upsides of this is that we were able to find a park no problem (heaps of beach side parking here!), and no need to view this seemingly sacred but actually kinda ordinary rock surrounded by tonnes of screaming 8th Graders, but the downsides were – it’s still freezing, and hardly any of the shops or bars and restaurants in the area were open! So Plymouth felt rather… inhospitable on the whole.Naturally, there is also in the area some little National Park bookshops full of books on the history of Plymouth and the Pilgrims, and trinkets made by local artist and not so local artists (you’d be surprised how many ‘souvenirs’ you turn over and find out they are stamped ‘Made In China’).
Nearby is a commemorative memorial recognizing the contributions of the Women of the Mayflower voyage, donated by the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) on the 300th anniversary of the historic landing in 1920.If you have a look at the ‘not yet cleaned up for tourist season’ pond around this statue, you will see it’s partially frozen even though it faces due East and probably gets plenty of sun!! Nearby is a replica of the Mayflower itself, and I have to say, it is a LOT smaller than I was expecting. Having traversed a few seas by modern cruise ship, I’m not so sure I’d have the intestinal fortitude to get on a dinky little ship like this and cross the North Atlantic, no doubt the crossing was less than pleasant for many on board.
Yet again, we found ourselves driven indoors by the absolutely brutal weather on the coast. It wasn’t quite as bad as previously at East Haven, but the strong winds made it exceedingly enticing to seek refuge where ever possible. I haven’t done my research, but something tells me the pilgrims did NOT land on Plymouth Rock in winter, else they would have kept on sailing until they hit some more agreeable weather for certain! Luckily, we did find one establishment that was keeping its doors open in spite of the weather – The Office Bistro, where we were forced to order the Kentucky Bourbon boneless short ribs, and the local Scallops wrapped in bacon, all served with delicious fresh veggies. It’s a hard life, but someone has to do it.

Arlington

Posted on 16 March 2014 by boryssnorc

We took a train out to Arlington Cemetery today to see the famous rows of headstones marking fallen American soldiers. I have visited many cemeteries and burial sites over the years – the Gallipoli Penninsula, the Catacombs under Paris, the crypts under St Paul’s in London and St Peter’s in Rome, the ossuaries in Meteora, the Jewish cemeteries in Prague, the unmarked graves outside Dachau… but there is something about this place that has really gotten to me.

Arlington is a cemetery which revels and praises and celebrates the American military tradition. It starts with the voice-over on the tour bus, which takes you through seemingly endless lines of headstones standing to attention in rows of military precision, and gives you get a sense of ‘America. How fucking awesome are we?’ in this place which ostensibly exists to honour those fallen in combat. This is a place of recognition of the ‘supreme sacrifice’ these servicemen and women made for their country, but it is somehow glorified in a manner that is quite unseemly.

We were dropped off at John F Kennedy’s final resting space and found his plaque, modest and well kept, beside that of his wife, Jaqueline Onassis Kennedy. Sadly they are accompanied with plaques for their two children as well; burning beside an eternal flame lit by Jacqueline herself. The bus driver having explained very matter of factly that ‘the other assassinated Kennedy was over thatta way’ was nonchalant about the tragedy that is a political assassination – it seems part of the American imagination, just another reality of American political life. It is almost unthinkable to an Australian that we would see a politician assassinated – we are far more likely to throw an egg at them, print something horrid about them in a newspaper or yell at them in public… but kill them for what they do, and what they believe in, and what they are attempting to achieve? It just does not exist in our national vocabulary. Thankfully.

We saw the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and waited around to see the Changing of the Guard. Dress Marines looking snappy, moving economically and with such utmost precision all of which gave tell of their practice and dedication. The Sargent marched out slow time and addressed us, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. The ceremony you are about to see has been carried out to honor those soldier who are known, but to God…’ but what he might have more accurately said would be ‘The show you are about to see has been carried out to remind you why America is what it is…’ for it felt the entire ritual is designed as part of a longstanding and far reaching nationalistic propaganda campaign. It is the first and probably will be the last time I will see so many Americans all in one space and remaining silent after having been told to be so. All those who witnessed the Changing of the Guard, stood with caps in hand and/or hand on heart, and solemnly contemplating the lost men and women from the various campaigns who are there represented in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.

As the ritual progressed, we could not help but gain the impression that America revels and celebrates its military history – and in a costly twist of fate, has somehow failed to learn anything from the same; for they continue to embroil themselves in wars, military conflicts and engagements around the world, causing the deaths of yet more young service men and women.

Yesterday, we walked through the hallowed halls of so many monuments built to so many great men whose ideologies is engraved deep in granite and bronze for the world to see. And it seems to us as visitors that America was formed on fine ideals, ideals that were as relevant at the formation of their country as they are now, and ideals which every American appears to hold dear (some of them a little too dear), but they have become ideals which are no longer apparently in their political system, they legal system, or their collective American conscious. They are ideals to which lip service is paid, but none appear to aspire to anymore.

Franklin D. Roosevelt –
“The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.”

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”

“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country”

Thomas Jefferson –
“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”

“We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.”

Abraham Lincoln –
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

These, and other fine sentiments from some of the greatest minds of their generations appear to be at the core of what Americans hold dear, but from a foreigners point of view, it is just that – an appearance. For here, it feels like not enough people care for their neighbours, not enough people care if there is quality education for all, not enough people care if everyone is able to access equal and affordable health care, not enough people care if every man gets paid a decent wage… they have developed the theory, taught the theory, bought the theory and think they are living the theory, yet they have all but failed in putting the theory into practice. Maybe it was working in Roosevelt’s time or Lincoln’s time, but it sure isn’t working anymore.

The American political system is broken, and the people here seem either not invested enough, or not educated enough, to attempt to fix it. They’ve drunk the Kool Aid and they think it tastes fine, but it’s slowly poisoning them and they don’t realise it yet, but they have have set a course that will see their own demise. This modern version of America does not govern for its people, it is not a government that serves its citizens. And what became really apparent at Arlington today is that the military might that America wields as the self proclaimed ‘Leaders of the Free World’ is complicit in oppressing the American people as much they think it is protecting them. The tour guide tells us proudly that they have a whole new Section 60 worked out for the already killed and the veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars… THE VAST NUMBER OF DEAD SOLDIERS RESULTANT FROM A DECLARATION OF WAR BASED ON MISINFORMATION AND LIES IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF! Somewhere along the line, America has gone off the rails… and one day ‘we the people’ will discover that America is not all it is cracked up to be, and I for one don’t really want to be around when the ensuing ego driven tantrum thrown by the world’s formerly largest, nuclear superpower goes down.

Når du er i Danmark

Posted on 20 February 2014 by boryssnorc

What on earth is going on in Denmark? They’ve been making the news for all the wrong reasons. The other week it was an unwanted/surplus giraffe that was purportedly offered a new home in several different international locations, but ended up being ‘culled’ and fed to lions in front of tourists and small children!

This week, Denmark is banning the halal and kosher slaughter of animals saying that animal rights take precedence over religious traditions. Well, that sounds kind of fair enough to me. As it stands, Denmark requires animals to be stunned before slaughter, but there has been a long standing loophole (very likely a similar loophole exists in many countries), where animals can be slaughtered while conscious, if religious traditions dictates it be so. Animal activists have been lobbying for a long time to stop the Islamic, halal, and Jewish, kosher, methods of slaughtering conscious animals, and it seems they have finally gotten a foothold. However, it seems many commenters are saying these laws are less about animal welfare and are largely being introduced to be deliberately anti-Muslim and anti-Semite to interfere with the religious freedom of those minority groups. Personally, I think… yes, many of us eat animals and they are an integral part of the food chain, but there is no need for them dying in fear and panic because your 2500 year old Torah, or your 1600 year old Koran, say they should… it’s the post-modern/technological era we are living in, and it’s about time everyone got used to that.

ON THE OTHER HAND… I think where the hell does Denmark get off saying they are all interested in animal welfare and don’t want to see animals slaughtered by inhumane means when animal brothels are legal in Denmark! That’s right, the law in Denmark is fairly lenient and open when it comes to interspecies intercourse and it is LEGAL to profit from pimping your pets to paying punters. I mean, the rights of animals maybe come before religious freedoms, but they should definitely come before unusual lifestyle choices, shouldn’t they?! So screwed up. Generally speaking, I think most of us feel that bestiality is not all that okay, and especially not in a situation where animals (incapable of giving informed consent), may be restrained and repeatedly abused for financial gain!

For the record, animal brothels are also legal in Norway and Germany… where oddly it is illegal to own animal pornography, but quite okay to roger Black Beauty so long as you meet the owner’s set fees! Apparently it’s turning into quite an international sex tourism industry, as people from countries with more stringent animal welfare controls decide to visit Germany and Denmark and avail themselves of these animal bordellos. It turns out that many proponents of the animal brothels feel that ‘mere concepts of morality have no business being law’. But if that is the case, and morality has no place in law, then should murder be taken off the books too… seeing the only reason it’s illegal to kill another human being is because society (very early on) deemed it immoral to do so. I’m gobsmacked.

Denmark – clean up your act. It’s well and truly time you instituted safe and regulated employment conditions and access to healthcare for your animal sex workers, before you bother legislating against kosher and halal slaughter!!! O_o

Australia Day – things we can not change.

Posted on 27 January 2014 by boryssnorc

I’m not exactly the poster child for acceptance and resignation. The idea of accepting things we can’t change is somewhat alien to someone like myself, who has spent their life pushing shit uphill with a shovel to try and achieve the things I desperately want to achieve. So I kinda get the whole ‘just can’t let go’ thing. For once though, I am not sitting here writing about infertility or chronic pain or arsehole uni supervisors. What I was thinking about is Australia Day and the socio-political nightmare that it has become.

I don’t really remember Australia Day figuring largely in my childhood. In fact, I can’t really remember celebrating it in any special way at all. This could be because we were often off camping at Stradbroke (or similar) at this time of year, or more likely that Australia Day barbecues with friends and family have all melded together with the other general myriad of reasons why we would get together and indulge in the same things – barbecues, beer, swimming, sun, sand and all the rest of it. I don’t recall wearing or waving little Australian flags in my youth… in fact, I think you would have been hard pressed to find Aussie Day paraphernalia when I was a kid.

I’m not sure who first decided that non-Indigenous Australians needed to feel bad about celebrating the fact that we love living in Australia, by re-labelling Australia Day as ‘Invasion Day’, but I don’t honestly think it has done anyone any favours. Contention and divisiveness of this nature will never help bring communities together. On the one hand, you have indigenous Australians dwelling on the various horrors early European settlers committed upon first coming to this land over 200 years ago – and subsequently fostering a discontent and animosity in their communities and, very sadly, in their youth. Much of this history is being read between the lines as indigenous Australians did not have a tradition of written history prior to the arrival of the Europeans. And I sometimes wonder how much of that ‘reading the unwritten’ is potentially selective, designed to push various political agendas… Yes, there were many, many truly heinous mistakes made… but can Bruce from down the street do anything to really fix it? Nope. Not a damn thing.

And on the other hand, you have the Australians of European descent feeling confused and variously affronted at being made to feel guilty over something that 1) we did not actually do personally, and 2) we literally had, and still have, absolutely no control over. Yes, there are many elements of our shared history that are remnants of a less enlightened time, which I am sure every one of us would change if we were given an opportunity to do so – but no matter how much reconciliation and public acknowledgement of the tragedies of our collective past, there are just so many things that we, the modern citizens of Australia, can not change.

None of us can change our history… it’s simply not possible. No one is denying that unimaginably horrid things that occurred in the past that are completely acceptable to us now. We acknowledge and accept that these things happened to real people – but we are all at a complete loss as to how to rectify the situation. All that can be done now, is to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite that shared history to shift focus onto the dreadful atrocities committed by these long dead white men. But this seems a futile or even an empty gesture; attempting to appease people who are somehow stuck or trapped living with this past, unable to forgive or forget it. It seems too, that people wilfully hanging onto the crimes against their fore bearers also strangely want the rest of us to be continually confronted and even defined by it as well. The figure of our shared history looms too large for indigenous Australians to forget it, while at the same time white Australians are completely impotent to adequately alter it.

Being Australian and wanting to celebrate Australia Day does not mean we are not mindful of the mixed emotions some people have towards this shared history, nor does it mean we have forgotten it. Sure, there is always going to be that yobbo who thinks that ‘Straya Day (Fuck, I hate hearing that term – to me, it’s a huge flashing neon sign saying we are not investing enough in education) is about boozing up, and fat slabs of steak, and getting sunburnt playing backyard cricket, who puts little to no thought into the politically delicate minefield that Australia Day has become, and who thinks that Indigenous Australians ‘have just gotta get over it, mate’. And, you know, sometimes I despair that that yobbo is in the majority, largely due to over representation in the media – the same media which appears to be working it’s best to make us feel bad about being proud to be Australian on Australia Day. We are not all that yobbo, but you gotta wonder if he has a point.

There is currently a vocal movement lobbying to move Australia’s national day of celebration from it’s current position on the calendar to a different date. January 26th… the date chosen to celebrate the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove in 1788. January 26th is not exactly the ‘Invasion Day’ date these lobbyists make it out to be. It is not the date Australia was first ‘discovered’ by Europeans. It is not the date of any of the documented horrific massacres of indigenous Australians. Nor is it even the actual arrival date of the First Fleet – the First Fleet fleet turned up in Botany Bay somewhere between the 18-20th of January and if memory serves, weather prevented all ships from landing safely in the Cove until the 26th, though some were thereon the 24th or thereabouts. So it was an arbitrarily chosen date to celebrate an anniversary on from the get-go. And while I applaud the ideology behind attempting to make all Australians happier about our shared history and heritage, I wonder – would choosing another arbitrary date to celebrate being Australian make any real and/or tangible difference to those who currently feel disenfranchised by celebrating on January 26th? At the end of the day, I don’t think so.

Because I keep coming back to this one inalienable fact: We could change the date – but we can’t change the history. We can not undo the wrongs that have been done in the past – no matter how much we might wish to, or how many dates we arbitrarily move around on the calendar. It’s becoming glaringly obvious that token gestures, apologies and official speeches of reconciliation are not sufficient to alleviate the damage that has been done to the collective imagination of Australia’s indigenous people… So we can change as many dates as may be, but somehow I strongly doubt it would make a lick of difference in the hearts of the people who find offence where none was intended.

Australia’s biggest dumbass.

Posted on 24 October 2013 by boryssnorc

Well, he gets to be Australia’s biggest Dumbass today… tomorrow, of course, is another opportunity for an even bigger dumbass to come along and grab the public’s imagination.

The Honourable *scoff* Greg Hunt MP, Minister for the Environment was quoted in the news media as having ‘researched on Wikipedia’ that there is no connection between the bush fires currently ravaging parts of New South Wales, and the conditions currently experienced as a result of global warming (though in truth, I don’t think he stated his opinions quite that concisely or eloquently). Naturally, he has been lambasted across the press and various social media platforms for being a complete asshat.

What’s got me, is that this joker is a Law graduate, with Honours, of Melbourne University, did his postgrad Masters degree at the prestigious Yale University, and was even supposedly a Fullbright Scholar… and yet here he is talking to the national media about important issues like global climate change and using WIKIPEDIA as a source to back up his argument!!!

What a complete tool… anyone with half a brain would have seen the fallout coming as soon as the words came out of his addlepated brain. Needless to say, the Twittersphere has been having a field day, and rightly so.

Someone even took the liberty of making some alterations to Mr Hunt’s own Wikipedia page to demonstrate how factual Wikipedia really is on a moment to moment basis. This of course was duly altered back to reflect the good minister’s preferred version quick smart.

Fortunately, for those of you who missed it… I have a screen grab 🙂

Well, what can we say… If someone is going to go around quoting Wikipedia as a definitive source in a national debate on climate change – then getting your page hacked couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Yale grad and Fullbright Scholar, my arse!