"A diplomat should have both the mind of an internationalist and the heart of a patriot. And, when I say patriotism, I don't mean bigoted nationalism."
--Japanese diplomat Naoko Saiki

And it appears that at least a few US diplomats are practicing this principle. Or at least, exercising some enlightened self-interest:
Rice Answers Anger Over Iraq Service

Food for thought when it comes to many of today's celebrities.

"As much as you might want to ignore Mike Tyson you cannot. Nuts tend to attract your attention."
--Boxing columnist Ron Borges

I suspect the Portland Art Museum will be a bit more crowded for a while, beginning mid November, as people come to see something really special:

A Van Gogh Arrives in Portland(from the OregonLive website)

This will be the first Van Gogh in any museum in the Northwest. Luckily, I don't think I have to worry about rushing if I want to see it. The conditions of its gifting included that it be on display to the public, and that it never be sold.

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I pulled this from quirkybird's journal. There's a site out there called LibraryThing which is, as I've glanced at it, one part book catalog, one part recommendation (plus now, UNrecommendations!) and one part reader community. A place I'm going to have to check out more.

Anyway, it seems that they have a list going of top "not read" books owned by its users. For my list, I'm putting ones I've read in bold, ones I started but didn't finish in italic, ones I didn't like in strikeout, and ones I own but haven't read yet with a pair of asterisks. Plus the occasional comments.

( Here we go! )

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I'm not exactly a fan of George Will; the vast majority of the time his political views are widely divergent from mine. But you know the saying about even a broken clock being right twice a day? I think this is one of these moments.

And I can never resist sharing a good quote that strikes me as being perfectly dead-on.

Speaking of self-proclaimed "social conservatives" (aka the Religious Right), on This Week with George Stephanopolis, and quoted on the excellent Crooks and Liars:

"But there’s a vanity in this group right now. They call themselves 'values voters.' I’ve news for them: 100% of the American electorate are values voters; they vote their values … And this, this, kind of semantic imperialism that they have where they say 'we vote values'. Everyone else votes what?"

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Really, it's not what you think:

'Naked Lunch' May Be Banned in Maine (from the SFGate website)
It has absolutely nothing to do with William Burroughs, although I can't help but think he'd have been very amused by the whole idea.

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"If you dig it, do it. And if you really dig it, do it twice."
--Jim Croce

==========

Somewhere around seven years ago, give or take, I was really impressed with the idea of message boards. Several of my friends had started them and I was, well, digging it. So I decided to start one of my own.

The Starlight Teahouse has passed through a couple of different board providers over the years but has resided comfortably with an outfit called Forumer for almost exactly three years now. We have a lovely forum logo by the inimitable seian, and an easy-to-remember domain name: Starlightteahouse.com.

We have forums for discussing anything from Dubya to Doctor Who to knitting. There are also a number of forums devoted to playing a variety of different role-playing games. There's even a place to talk tea! To post messages, you will need to complete a simple registration -- it's free, and once registered, there's no advertising on the board.

The Teahouse has been very quiet of late, and I'd like to extend an invitation to anyone who hasn't been there -- or hasn't been around in a while -- to give the Teahouse another try. Maybe you'll dig it too!

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"Those that just talk are also the ones that say, 'Why don't they do this?' and 'Why don't they do that?' Well, they're they. We're all they, and we can all do a little something."
--Betty White

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A word from my boss (well, he would have been, if I had started in the job I now have just a few years earlier):

"Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful."
--Robert N. Noyce

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"I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any. After all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?"
--Philip Larkin

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"It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat."
--Richard Hofstadter

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"People defend nothing more violently than the pretenses they live by."
--Allen Drury

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Joe and I set out on what was to be the longest trip of my sabbatical -- ten days -- on Monday, June 25. We had decided to make the trip to the Bay Area in two hops each way. You can, and we have, driven from Portland to the Bay Area in one day, but it can end up being anywhere from ten to twelve hours behind the wheel, and that just gets tiresome.

We stopped for the day in Gasquet, California (just a few miles over the state line) at the Patrick Creek Lodge. The main lodge building was constructed in 1926, when Highway 199 was still a gravel road. Around 1980, my dad had a second job tending bar at the lodge, and I had always wanted to stay overnight there. Our room was small (but hardly the smallest hotel room I've ever been in), but clean, comfortable, and quiet. As it would have been back in the 20s, there was no television. No cellphone reception, no Internet. Joe and I agreed that all it would need was a desk and it would have been the perfect writing retreat.

After a little while in our room to rest and relax, we ventured outside to have a look around. The lodge sits where Patrick Creek runs into the Middle Fork of the Smith River, and there is a National Forest campground just across the highway. We followed a path along the creek, underneath the highway, to the river. We found a spot where one branch of the path ended where we could sit and take some pictures. I perched on a rock for a little while and put my feet into the water, letting the sensation take me back to my childhood, where I spent many summer days swimming in this very river -- albeit never at this particular spot.

We wandered along a series of paths built of river stone. In some places the trail had washed away, and in others, the walls were covered in thick moss. It felt a little like stepping back into Middle Earth. We found some signs later that explained that the old campground had been built in the 1920s as well, and in those days there was a footbridge across the river and even a diving board at one of the best swimming spots. Major floods in 1955 and 1964 had washed away a lot of what had been built back then. (There are a few more pictures of the old campground and the lodge in the gallery; click on either of the pictures above and you can navigate to them.)

We walked back to the lodge, enjoyed a very nice dinner, and retired to our room, where we ended up playing a session of Call of Cthulhu -- my first effort at being a Keeper of Arcane Lore, and one in which I thought I did rather well, at the risk of being immodest. It was warm, and the room didn't have air conditioning -- but we slept with the window open, hearing the rushing water of the creek and the wind in the trees. We both want to go back, and stay longer next time -- we'll just have to make sure we get a room with a desk.

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"For old actors, just remember that inside you're only 14. Acting is for kids. You poor old grown-ups, you've forgotten how to do what kids know automatically."

--Sir Ian McKellen

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Y'know, I don't think I ever actually did have to write one of those essays when I was in school. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever did, or if it was something that just got made up for sitcoms and cartoon strips.

In any case, I thought it might be fun to recount some of what happened to me over the ten week extended vacation I had this summer. I had wanted to blog about it as it happened, but it never quite seemed to work out. Ah well!


My first day away from work -- Saturday, June 23, 2007 -- I attended the Japanese Bobtail Breeders' Society annual awards banquet. It is held in a different location each year, generally alternating between the East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest. This year's meeting was held at the Multnomah Falls Lodge, about thirty miles west of Portland.

While Multnomah Falls can be seen from the highway (Interstate 84), I'd never had a chance to look at it for myself. This picture was taken from the parking lot, using the brand new digital camera I'd borrowed from Joe for the evening. (Clicking on it will take you to the LJ gallery, and from there you can navigate to a larger version of the same picture.)

The falls were the best part of the evening; the banquet itself started off a bit rough -- I'd had to try and manage a setup which the lodge management had changed on us at the last minute, and I had no idea how to rejuggle table seating. Who could be seated with who, and who had better darn well not be seated anywhere near whoever else, all that sort of thing.

But it all worked out okay in the end, and I got to head out into the sunset of one of the longest days of the year. The real vacation beckoned.

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This was too much fun to resist. Spotted on oakenguy's LJ:

Link: The If You Were A Beer Test written by gwendolynbooks on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

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In 1947, a year and a half after the Second World War ended, life in Japan was still pretty grim. Tokyo district court judge Yamaguchi Yoshitada vowed that he would eat nothing but what was provided by official rationing.

In November of that year, he starved to death.

Ted Kulongoski isn't facing starvation. But his food situation -- at least for this week -- isn't pretty.

This week, Oregon governor Kulongoski took the challenge to eat on $21 a week -- that's how much the average food stamp recipient in the state has.

In a time when the Federal Government would rather remove the very word "hunger" from its reports on the subject than admit that there are, in fact, people going hungry in the wealthiest nation in the world, Governor Kulongoski deserves a lot of kudos for stepping up and reminding people that this problem exists. And seeing for himself exactly what it feels like.

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In the light of the way my life has been going this week, I have just one thing to say ...

Synchronicity is not always your friend.

> WARNING

ayeshalan is radioactive. Wear protective clothing at all times.

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com

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I found this actually through the Timbers Army message board! If you want to try it yourself, the link is at the bottom of the image.

Here's my first try at it. Some of my choices might be a bit weak, but I was doing it quickly ... :)

From the CNN.com article with the latest updates on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force promo that went awry:

[...] In Portland, police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said officers had no plans to remove any of the signs, so long as they weren't on municipal property. Nor had officers been dispatched in any kind of bomb scare related to the devices.

"At this point we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred," Schmautz said. [...]

It appears I live in one of the saner parts of this thoroughly insane country. Thank God.