Tag: france
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On This Day in History…
In 1941, legendary North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il was born. He would have been 75. I snapped this photo back in my days with the diplomatic corps, during a three-day bender with Jong-il and a trio of Belgian prostitutes we’d picked up after a failed, clandestine meeting in Antwerp. He wanted nothing to do with…
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The Black Swallow of Death
I know, you’ve missed me–I’ve been buried in real-world work again–but I’m swimming towards the surface. In the meantime, here’s a transcript, with some additions, from a Facebook post that’s making the rounds–a story too fascinating, exciting, and (sadly) unsurprising to not share with you. Do you know who this is a photo of? Chances…
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Almost Forgot!–Congratulations, France! Let’s Do It At Our Place Next TIme
Say what you want about Freedom Fries, the French know how to take care of this 1% problem.
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So: What The Hell is Cinco De Mayo?
I grew up up rural western Pennsylvania, and I never even heard about Cinco De Mayo until I was grown up. I mean: hell, we didn’t even have tacos until the 1980s. Not in the town where I lived. Even after I first heard of Cinco De Mayo, I just assumed it was another one…
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OVERLORD! The Day That Changed The World
It can be argued that the Germans were already doomed; they just didn’t know it yet. Morally bereft, overextended, overconfident, and reaping the seeds sown by poking the Russian bear to their north and east, the “Thousand-Year Reich” would not last a decade. For millions, it could not end soon enough. Despite its losses in…
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My Favorite Olympic Moment
Most people pick USA vs. USSR Hockey or basketball. Now, my mom wasn’t even born when Jesse Owens rubbed that whole “master race” crap in Hitler’s face in Berlin, 1936, and I wasn’t quite two years old at the time of the famous “black power” salute in Mexico City, 1968. Those were big, historical moments. …
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War Poems For National Poetry Month: Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est
Panama…then Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq again, Afganistan–right or wrong, for causes both just and cynical, we’ve been in an exhausting, nearly constant state of war, however distant and vaguely defined, since I graduated from High School in the 1980’s–and that was just a few deep breaths after the war in Viet Nam/ Cambodia/ Laos that…
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Olympics Volume 2–Meryl Takes Down Downton
It was Sunday night, the sofa was soft, the down comforter warm, and the sun was shining on Downton Abbey–it’s always shining on the glacially slow BBC soap opera, you might have noticed, despite what I’ve heard about England, yet it was brighter still inside the ice arena in Sochi, Russia where the world’s finest…
Old Road Apples 