Overwhelmed by the news? Consumed with horror that someone you had previously thought to be sane is shrieking anti-Israel/antisemitic nonsense in the public square or pulling down posters of kidnapped children and stomping their feet till they get a ceasefire so that their friends at Hamas can commit October 7th over and over again (their stated desire)? I have a couple of lovely reads for you: 1) The Last Lighthouse Keeper in America, and 2) Baby Puffins in Iceland – cutely called pufflings – meet their saviours.
Monthly Archives: November 2023
Life’s Sad Moments
So we lost a family member about two weeks ago – the husband of my cousin. He was just short of his 49th birthday and left a loving wife and daughter. They are heartbroken. This tragic turn got me going through my little “quote book” – as its name suggests, a book where I write down quotes and lines of poetry that I like. I found a couple I wanted to share, both having to do with the randomness of luck and life, and always the joy and wonder of it.
From John Steinbeck:
But I do feel strange – almost unearthly. I’ll never get used to being alive. It’s a mystery. Always startled to find I’ve survived.
From Jhumpa Lahiri:
Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
Listen and Weep
They Shall Grow Not Old
For today, Remembrance Day, linking to a piece I wrote a few weeks ago at my other site.
On my Substack
More about the Middle East – outsourcing to Martin Amis and Martha Gellhorn – as well as a bit about Suzanne Somers. (Yeah, Suzanne Somers.)
Lord Guglielmo Verdirame
Ukraine
The horrors are ongoing in Israel and Gaza, as they are in Ukraine. Shortly before the pogrom of October 7th, I put aside this link. Please click and read the whole thing. But here is an important paragraph, especially for those of us who are conservative (or conservative-ish) and fear that support for Ukraine is diminishing.
As Executive Director Carrie Filipetti, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Trump administration, said, the letter was necessary because “the false narrative that conservatives do not want to provide aid to Ukraine is a dangerous misrepresentation that could lead to Putin’s belief that in the case of a conservative win in 2024, he will receive a green light for continued assault.”
Signed by key Trump administration officials such as the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie, former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, former Senators Roy Blunt and Jon Kyl, former Congressman and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mac Thornberry, multiple former Assistant Secretaries, National Security Council officials, U.S. generals, and ambassadors, the letter explains how “without a single U.S. servicemember in harm’s way, America’s material support to Ukraine is degrading the war machine of Russia, one of the United States’ principal adversaries – an aggressive power working hand in hand with China to reduce America’s prosperity and overturn America’s victory in the Cold War.”