I wanted to go out for cocktails with two Single pals, but both Single pals are busy, so we're going tomorrow.
What to do, what to do...?
What are you doing?
***
Incidentally, here's a political thought as I don't have a political blog at the moment and I am bursting with indignation. I was a great lecture yesterday by a war correspondent. The war correspondent and his crew were kidnapped in former Yugoslavia in 1993 by some foreign combatants. These combatants belonged to the "Seventh Muslim Brigade", and nobody knew what to make of them--at the time. They weren't Bosnians. They were darker skinned than any Bosnian Muslims.
Such foreign Muslim combatants killed Croatians, and they told the Muslim Bosnians that they weren't Muslim enough. They smashed Bosnian music shops, killed the pigs and burned them, and made the local women cover their hair and faces. Their religious practices were certainly not according to ways local Muslims observed.
Now we know that these foreign Muslims had links to Al-Qaeda. They might have been Al-Qaeda. And they did a lot of damage. In one story the war reporter related, a whole Croatian Catholic village took refuge from them in an abandoned Franciscan monastery and after protracted fighting, in which a number of village men were killed, were led down the mountains by the British Army. The village had been Catholic and Croatian for a thousand years.
At the question period, a British man, Scottish, I think, with the slightly reedy, slightly agonized voice of the aging Sixty-Eighter, stood up and said something like, "As the atrocities in former Yugoslavia showed how barbaric Europeans are, shouldn't we be grateful to these foreign Muslims for wanting to sort things out?"
And I, Seraphic, who spent 9-11-01 weeping until my eyes were red, wanted to slap him. But at the same time I felt very good about my forthcoming novel, which slaps the living daylights out of
Update: Today is the Dianaversary (anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, which has been unofficially marked in Britain every year since 1997). I publish this phrase so I can be recognzied as its inventrix.
7 comments:
Dianaversary... very clever phrase!
On an unrelated note, I wanted to share with you and readers about a very interesting (and seemingly seraphic) single of days gone by. I was quite impressed when reading up about Ima Hogg on wikipedia the other day after a discussion in which a colleague had mentioned Ima's untenable name.
As to plans, I'm off to celebrate Labor Day weekend with my godmother and her lovely family! This will entail at least one trip to the beach and quite possibly babysitting the two young sons who are a lesson in male psychology (and tons of fun).
It upsets me so much when people can be so offensive. Yes, it's politics, but it's also personal, those people, minus geographics, are just like us!
I just threw beef in the slow cooker, with onions and garlic and wine and all the yummy things I could think of. Tonight my boyfriend and I will eat it, and then take some measurements in our (somewhat new) apartments. Then commences a mad home decorating spree in which we buy curtains, furniture, rugs, and I don't know, candles!, to make our places more homey.
Thank you for sharing the history of what happened. We often take our freedom for granted. Looking forward to your next book!
May an eavesdropper of good will comment on a post of politics and history?
I'm all curious now about how your war correspondent replied to this reedy-voiced... er... ned?
(O 'Nony: "history of what happened"? Odd phrase... I suppose there might also be a history of what didn't happen, only there's so much more of that as to nearly not be worth while.)
You knpw, I simply can't remember! I think he must have responded to something else this guy said.
The history of what happened is actually rather apt, as what happened, eye-witness account and history are not the same things.
Fair enough, that! This often-faceless, usually toneless world has made me very suspicious of the terser expressions, especially those that look very new.
Well, you should suggest to that fine man to move to some of these Al-Qaeda villages.
Croatians in Bosnia-Herzegovina are third-rate citizens, and international politics endorses it.
And British government was always anti-Croatian. Check out Waugh's "Officers and Gentlemen".
Naive
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