But recently, we have been going to the Farmer’s Market at Place Guillaume. The market is open on Saturday mornings and we love getting some fresh produce, delicious apple juice for Will and cut flowers for me.

The prices are so reasonable, I’ve been going…. well… a little flower crazy.

Hence last week’s purchases:

This was taken five days post-purchase, so they aren’t at their very best. But aren’t they beautiful? Beautiful…. but deadly!

Our advancing ages have made both of us susceptible to the pollen from the lovely flowers. Apparently, our allergies cannot handle the continued, unrelenting exposure and even the various antihistamines we consume daily haven’t kept us from sneezing and headaches. Will was convinced for a couple days that I had a nefarious and complex plan to off him, except I was suffering as much (or more) than he.

I was forced to accept that four different kinds of cut flower at once is too much to have in our home. So this week, I had to do with only daffodils (or jonquils as they are known at the grocery store) and hyacinths.

While we are still running at a high pollen count, the level is tolerable. The joy and pleasure I get from the flowers easily offsets the small price to pay. As a Midwesterner, I’m thrilled to have spring flowers available… in March! I think we can say that Spring is just around the corner for Luxembourg.

Especially when the crocuses are popping up everywhere:

Morocco’s unofficial second language is French. (Arabic is the first language, and the Berber family of languages are second, officially.)

Anita says that it is like Florida for France, with all the French retirees in campervans for long vacations, and in the resorts for slightly shorter trips. That certainly appeared to be true in Agadir, a city rebuilt for the purpose of foreign tourism.

My first diagnosis was from a supervisor at one of the resort’s restaurants; she simply assumed I was German.

The next evening, a bartender started counting the ice cubes in my pastis in German. He was beaming with pride that he’d switched to my native language on his own. I chuckled, and that must have given me away.

“You’re German, yes?” he asked in English. When I said that I was American, he erupted with joy. “All my time working here, you’re the first American!”

He was a little unclear on the details (“Chicago is close to Boston, yes?”) but his next words were invaluable. “You speak French like a German you know.”

I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s good to know but I’m racked with curiosity. Is it my pronunciation? The rhythm of my sentences? Can I blame Luxembourg? Or my American Midwest French teachers?

The last full day of our time in Agadir, I stopped to chat with the security guard on the boardwalk. He said, “Too cold for the beach?” and I replied that it was much warmer than I was accustomed to.

“You are German? Germans never mind the cold,” he laughed. I couldn’t help but correct him, especially when he didn’t recognize the name of Chicago. (That was a first for me.) Then I went back to my chaise next to Anita at the pool. I closed my eyes and couldn’t help contemplating how I pronounced the ten words I’d spoken before his guess.

On the day of our departure, Anita introduced me to a Parisian couple that she’d befriended the day before. I attempted to verify my Germanic accent and maybe get a few details.

I can’t say that I was surprised when I received a Gallic shrug in response. A pair of shrugs, actually, and just as William Gibson described them: “that complexly French way that seemed to require a slightly different skeletal structure.”

Three full days in Morocco, each day a similar diagnosis of my French pronunciation. Good to know, but I’m feeling a bit self-conscious now that I’m home.

For those who haven’t been counting, we have lived in Luxembourg for just over a year and a half. In the last 20 months, we’ve created a home that we love and enjoy.

Except for the pantry.

Our pantry had, over the last several months, morphed into a nightmare. Returning from our US holiday, I knew that I could not just throw the new food in there — the whole thing needed to be cleaned and reorganized. Hello Ikea!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a shot of the pantry before some items were removed. This is with about 30% pulled out already.

Like most organizing projects – it must get worse before it can get better.

Of course, we had to buy new stuff — from Ikea!

And we had to sort through every piece that was in there. Which was an excellent exercise, even it if did make us both want to cry.

We had an “Us Against the Pantry” attitude, so there was much less bickering than you’d expect.

In the end, we have an organized, clean and pretty pantry. It took nearly two days, but it was worth it.

Living in Luxembourg can’t be all wine and wonderful. Sometimes, you just have to be normal people… although I’m sure some of you would challenge me on just what “normal” means!

Can’t get enough pantry pics? There’s a little Flickr set for you!

But feeling safe and actually being safe are two different things. So, in the interest of learning as much as possible, I checked my usual online newspapers on Monday. The most prominent piece was in the Wall Street Journal. The article was reasonable in its tone, but the photo and video captions made be laugh. Not a “ha-ha” laugh: I was laughing at you, American newsmedia. You amuse me.

A screen grab of the article:

The first video caption reads “With armed soldiers patrolling under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, tourists seemed undeterred by the warning…..” Of course the tourists are undeterred — those soldiers are there EVERY DAY, all the time! I think their primary job is running off guys that are peddling the cheap Eiffel Tower statues. In fairness, the Journal did capture that aspect of the situation.

Still, to me, the picture with the Eiffel Tower statues is entirely unrealistic. First, the guy pushing the vacation tchotchkes memories would have scooped them up and gone running before the soldiers arrived. That shot was totally set up by the photographer.

For a more realistic view, here are our photos around the Eiffel Tower from September 2009. (Please keep in mind that we weren’t trying to capture soldiers in the original photos. They were so common that they were just included in the frame of some of the photos we took last year.) Click on the photos for full-size versions.

Soldier on patrol underneath the Eiffel Tower; Champs de Mars in the background

Peddlers underneath the Eiffel Tower

Why are they running?

I mean “soldier” in the broadest sense. There are many different police forces in France, almost all with militarized components.

Peddlers relax at “home base” just across the street from the Tower — on this day, it really looked like a half-hearted game of tag.

But wait! There’s more! The Eiffel Tower isn’t the only Paris landmark that the Journal dug up.

To anyone that spends time in Paris, the caption is totally misleading: “French soldiers patrol around the Louvre museum in Paris, Sunday.” Guess what, WSJ? The soldiers patrol around the Louvre EVERY DAY. We were just in Paris in September and we were at the Louvre a bunch. And we saw those guys all the time. Those soldiers may be patrolling on Sunday, but not due to any new alert from the US.

Voilà: our photos from early September of this year. Pretty much the same patrol.

But the part about the whole thing that I really appreciate is the fact that the State Department is warning travelers. Tuesday’s WSJ:

The knowledge that, on average, some 100,000 Americans are traveling in Europe at any one time also factored into U.S. decision-making, said the counterterrorism official.

What about those of us living here? Are we not a concern? At least the Canadians care about us:

I mean, there are only 1.2 million of us over here. Perhaps we should focus on that, along with the 100,000 that are traveling? However, not one article that I have read in our beloved American press has thought to point that little nugget.

I suppose the American press is focusing on those who are reading their newspapers and watching their television shows. That would make perfect sense — except I pulled all the WSJ information above from the European edition. Thanks for caring, my English-language “local” press.

Culture consists, in part, of the customs that you take for granted. So we know that we’re adapting to European culture (or Western European or French-inflected or whatever) when we’re surprised by how things are done in the good ole USA. Some more examples: You know you’ve settled into a European state of mind when…

• You find it unspeakably rude when, at a restaurant, your server brings you the check before you ask for it.
• “Of course it’s a topless beach. Why not?”
• You are uncomfortable when someone takes your credit card out of your sight.
• You get frustrated at having to sign a bill for small purchases with your credit card.
• You are excited to find a parking space within a quarter-mile of your destination.

We think of these little differences several times a week, and we’ll post more in the future. Guests of the B&B, what seemed alien to you about daily life in Ireland and Luxembourg?

I came to Luxembourg with a dim memory of taking advanced French in high-school, and a few hours of practice during trips to Paris and Nice. It wasn’t long before I was reading signs and speaking easily with shopkeepers. (Lest I forget: There were a few incidents where I asked Anita to ask a question in English due to my fear of stumbling through a conversation in French.)

Now, when I want to express myself in French, I can find most of the words I need without effort. I don’t compose a sentence in English in my mind and then translate it into French. Occasionally, I struggle to find the word I want, especially for abstract ideas. According to most metrics, I’m an independent speaker (with working proficiency, i.e. probably B1 per CEFR).

And I’m not counting unusual or technical terms, even ones that French children would know. For example, I recently went looking to buy a coat-stand. So, I looked up the word before I set out. As it turned out, the stores don’t use the term I learned: they were labeled portemanteau rather than cintre. (Fans of English etymology should find that pretty funny.)

I don’t know the precise words for animals, types of trucks, or other things that a young child would probably learn from picture-books.

Here’s the challenge at hand: I make grammatical errors frequently. When I want to speak French well, it feels like there are dozens of rules to keep straight. Those rules seem like obstacles to expressing myself.

Here’s where golf comes in. In terms of how it feels, it is very close to the way that I feel when I stand before a golf ball when playing with in a foursome much better than myself. I need to do so many things right — and remind myself to do them right — in order to hit the ball well.

• keep your wrists straight
• swing smoothly
• don’t reach with your hands
• don’t lift your head
• and so on

And when I swing, I fail to do one or two of those things. That’s the nature of the game.

Right now, speaking French feels like swinging a golf club. In each sentence (of some complexity), there are so many little rules (and exceptions) that may or may not apply. I know those rules and exceptions pretty well. When writing French (slowly), I can apply them with few errors.

But when I’m just trying to tell a story, those rules are like good advice for my golf swing: they don’t come all together and I make a mistake. A mistake that, strictly speaking, I “know better” than to make.

There are several techniques for getting over this hump in learning French. It won’t be easy.

What’s tempting is to adopt my attitude to golf. Years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to spend the time and money to become a golf enthusiast. I could see the pleasure in swinging the club well more frequently, but I could also see how much effort it would take to get to that point.

So I stopped at a different level: the point at which I could strike the ball — with irons but not woods — well enough to keep from being an annoying companion to better golfers.

In general, I hit the ball straight, so there’s rarely a need to search for my ball in the rough. In general, I hit the ball a distance which is unimpressive but not pitiful. (Well, nearly pitiful, given my frame.) As long as I don’t touch my woods, I don’t get too frustrated. (With the usual exception of one or two nightmarish holes per eighteen — I am human, after all.)

I feel like I am at the analogous point in my knowledge of French at this point. I can tell a story in French, and get the point across. I commit many grammatical errors that make me sound a bit stupid. Occasionally, I make errors that render a sentence unclear to the listener. My interlocutor needs to speak slowly for me. I ask for clarification from time to time, when a fluent person would not need to.

It’s tempting to declare victory and quit the field. I don’t think I will, because this is a great opportunity since, unlike golf, I have the time and resources to do it right. But it is tempting to move on to something new — something fascinating and probably easier.

Our apartment in Luxembourg, on the other hand, is a houseplant’s dream: lots of sun, space to grow and fresh breezes off the balcony.

During our first few weeks here, nearly every time we left the house we came home with a new plant (or two). We had to get outdoor plants for the balcony in addition to the basic houseplant requirements for the apartment. One early trip, I saw a cute little African violet and decided to be adventuresome — you see, I haven’t had the best luck with African violets in years past. But it was a small investment and the deep purple flowers called out to me. I do believe that I have a weakness for that color.

I’m proud to report that over the last three months the violet has exploded in both size and flowers. She was blooming when we got her, but right now her second bloom is happening and it is, for lack of a better term, impressive. In fact, she is so impressive that I decided to share her with you!

From above:
The blooms are a tight cluster surrounded by the green leaves.

From the side:
This shot allows you to see how the flowers are rising up out of the leaves.

The flowers, up close and personal:
I think this photo begins to do justice to the color of the blooms.

I am enamored with how well things are growing here. Stayed turned for further adventures in horticulture — we’ve got a Zebrina pendula that practically runs the place!

1. Anita’s shoulders

2. Anita’s ankles

Folks, it hit 80 degrees here today. It was practically a proper summer.

Friday, 26 June 2009

This morning, the Bakker Bugle completed one of the last phases of its ambitious plan to move its internet sourcing scheme to Luxembourg City. By partnering with local providers-of-excellence, the Bakker Bugle leveraged the expertise of its premium content-builders. In other words, the Bugle has moved your cheese and polished off its competitors’ milkshakes.

The Bugle Blog staff are especially incented to ramp up this disruptive innovation. “We’re the boots on the 800-pound gorilla, so we need to get granular ASAP,” said innovaTeam associate Masal Bugduv, during an early-morning telepresence session with selected, leading industry journalists.

Some members of the old media had speculated that the Bugle’s nearly three-week internet outage would push the envelope of customer expectations. That irresponsible conjecture has now been revealed as a symptom of “Web 1.5″ thinking — prevalent among those who are struggling to survive in the current environment of “shaking out” weak players.

The Bakker Bugle is proud of its record and will expand its operations in the near-term and long-term. Its new internet access approach is a strategic element of that plan.

On the way, we passed an IKEA near the border with Belgium. IKEA would come to dominate the remainder of our weekend. Almost as soon as we arrived at our new apartment, we dropped our airborne burden and drove to Belgium (15 minutes away) to seek a bed for our unfurnished apartment. If we failed, we would need to spend the night in a hotel and try again the next day.

We found a big, comfortable bed and mattress. A very big mattress, for a relatively small car. Unlike everything else at IKEA, the mattresses don’t come in flat-packs. Our Skoda did a great job — except when we exceeded 50 kph, when our new mattress threatened to take wing and make its own way home. We took the back roads, which were gorgeous on that warm and sunny day.

We got some wise but discouraging advice from a neighbor, in French, about the likelihood of getting our mattress up the spiral staircase to our 3rd floor apartment (4th floor, the way Americans count). We pushed and shoved and by the time Will exhausted every curse he knew in French, we made it all the way up.

By that night, we had a partially-assembled bed and a mattress in the middle of our bare, unlit living room. We had two days before the movers arrived — but that’s a story for the next post.

Today, we completed a task 18 months in the making: we bought a lovely painting from one of the regular exhibitors on Sundays at Merrion Square. We’ve strolled around the park at midday on dozens of Sundays, knowing that we would leave Ireland with a souvenir someday.

Anita and I waited until the last possible Sunday, and it was the best time, too. The park was packed with the Dublin Soul Festival, and we met Blanaid Lynam, whose “Sunset (Dusk) Sandycove” will grace our future homes. We were glad to have met her, and we are very happy to have found (and most importantly, agreed upon) an ideal representation of our fondness for Dublin.

I have a mile-long list of potential post topics about Ireland and Dublin. In a perfect world, I’d have time to work through them over the next three weeks. Alas, I must warn you: the posts may be sporadic in the month of June.

I’ll keep making short remarks on the Bugle Tumblr, which is on the right sidebar (and you can follow it on its own webpage too). I’ll keep reading comments, and publish at least one post each week. But more than that? Anita and I can’t make any promises.

A women approached me to beg for spare change. I’d seen her around the area quite a bit. She didn’t recognise me, but that was no surprise.

I thought I had a few coins in my pocket. Generally, I give spare charge to people on the streets. I reached into my pocket to find that I’d left my change as a tip at the cafe.

After I said, “I honestly don’t have any change. I thought I did,” she sat down and gave her spiel. I insisted that I had no change to give her. Finally, I said, “Come back in 10 minutes. I will have change then.”

I bought a second coffee and had change to give when she returned, less than 10 minutes later. (The few times I’ve made such a proposal, the person didn’t return, and I respect that. Beggars’ time is valuable too.)

She accepted the money and immediately began to explain that she needed more for her bills at the hostel and for her four babies. We talked for a little while, mostly her explaining why she needed 20 euros today. Her explanations fit well with the accounts I’ve read of asylum-seekers and refugees living in Dublin. (I read avidly on that topic, partly due to professional interest.)

Eventually, our conversation devolved into me repeating, “No, I cannot give you more today. I kept my promise, and I cannot give more.”

She left, disappointed but with good will. I wonder whether she will approach me when she sees me again.

-

I am committed to treating strangers as individual people, talking with them when they want, and speaking as honestly as possible. I prepare to meet that commitment by making myself secure — I keep my valuables beside me, I know the signs of some street scams, and I do not fear that giving my attention to someone will leave me vulnerable.

An aside: As far as honesty is concerned, passing someone on the streets is a different context than the one from Wednesday. In my opinion, it’s okay to say, “Sorry” or “I don’t have any,” to keep moving as a pedestrian, but also acknowledge someone’s presence. If I were working on an article at the cafe table, I would have adopted a more dismissive attitude. I’ve noticed that when I am absorbed in my work, beggars rarely interrupt me. I take that as (possibly) a sign of respect.

Another aside: I know that my open stance sometimes encourages an activity known as “aggressive begging.” I acknowledge that my commitment may be counter-productive, since aggressive begging tends to give a mandate to intolerant policies towards people on the street. Indeed, I admit that after an interaction like Wednesday’s, I feel a little bit of resentment towards other beggars; I want to respond, “Look, I just spent ten minutes with someone like you. I’m not just another callous passer-by.”

Now I’ll get back to the point, however flimsy it is. When the woman said, “You have nice things, you can buy two coffees,” she is correct.

When I said, “I cannot give more, to you, today,” I was also correct. (By “I cannot,” I meant, as most people do, “I ought not,” as a practical matter and as an ethical conclusion.)

I rarely try to resolve the conflict between these points of view. To be honest, I’m conserving emotional energy, since the conversations themselves are so draining. The talking itself is difficult, from the language barriers to the mismatch between her urgency and my (leisurely) devotion to saying things right.

Add to that my reasonable, background fear of being a “mark” (as it’s said in Midwestern American), that her words are just a sales pitch — and these conversations are almost not viable at all. We talked, we even touched, but the separation between us seems to keep me from knowing whether my own words and actions are right, let alone hers.

I’m not sure why I’m offering this to you, in such a public way. Maybe I recently formed a new opinion — that keeping it to myself isn’t working.

My work will take us from Dublin to Luxembourg City later this year. We will take the Bakker Bugle with us, and our beloved readers, of course. We’re excited about the move and, in the next month or two, we’ll find out more about where and when we’ll take up residence.

Will and I will be learning a new city and new languages. You’ll read about our adventures at our new home and all over Europe. Plus, the BBB&B will be open and accepting reservations as soon as possible.

This change is no fault of Ireland, of course. We have a long list of things we love about this island and its inhabitants, and an even longer list of things we’d like to do before we go. It is simply time to take new opportunities elsewhere. Thank you, Ireland, for your hospitality, for your good graces, and for letting us be part of this exciting place.

And thank you, dear friends, for being our patient audience for the past two years. Your support means the world to us. We are so glad that we can take you with us!

So tonight should be the last night that I must grill in the dark. Now, readers in the northern US may say that I should be glad to be grilling in March at all. They underestimate one factor: rain.

It wasn’t raining when I decided to grill a chicken breast for Anita’s dinner. But this is Ireland, and a gentle but chilly precipitation began drifting around the sky by the time I started. It was a typical Irish rainfall. The drops are so tiny that they dance around like snowflakes. Rather than falling to the ground, they collect on every surface, whether horizontal or vertical. It doesn’t rain harder or softer — it’s more like the rain is more dense or less dense.

It’s not an unpleasant kind of drizzle, barring windy or cold conditions. Our little garden is very well sheltered. And throughout the year, it will rain about every second time I decide to work outside.

I don’t mind the rain. But I will be very glad to grill in sunlight for the next several months. Our only outside light comes from a motion-triggered floodlight. The motion-detector senses my presence only when I move to a spot that is exactly 10cm beyond my reach with a grill tool while standing near the grill. So I either grill in the dark (and mistreat the food), or I leap back and forth and brandish my spatula. Depends on my mood.

Our neighbours must puzzle over the combination of flashing floodlights and American-style curses emanating from our garden.

Fun fact (Well, it’s fun for some.) : In the US, each time zone changes when it reaches 2am — in series, rather than all at the same time. In the EU, every time zone changes at once, at 0100 UTC.

That is, until Saturday…..

Let me tell you about Saturday. Will and I had gotten sandwiches at the local deli. I had chosen my favorite sandwich – a baguette with chicken, cheese, tomato and cucumber. The baguettes are often crispy and chewy, as one would like a baguette. We were eating along and I was nearly finished with my sandwich when I felt something odd on my teeth. I thought perhaps something had gotten stuck there, but it didn’t feel quite like that.

So I did what any normal person would do. I turned to Will and said, “Is there something on my tooth?”

Will looked up and quickly said “It’s gone!”

I replied “Okay then,” and continued chewing my bite.

Will quickly countered with “No, your tooth — it’s GONE!”

My tooth, one off to the right from center, had fallen clean out of my mouth. (That’s the #7 tooth to budding students of dentistry.)

Now, you might ask how this is possible. Well, a combination of a generally weaker root system for that particular tooth, a root canal some 14 years ago, a full crown and a tough sandwich all conspired to just snap the little guy right off and out of my mouth.

I’ll admit it – I panicked. God love Dr. Z, who had given me his mobile number in the US. I looked at the time and calculated that it was 7am CST. I talked myself into believing that Dr. Z is an early riser, and I called him straight away.

It took a few minutes, but Dr. Z got me calm, organized and sorted on what needed to be done. I saved the broken off tooth with its crown — so it could be used again. I was all set for a “post and core” procedure and a “re-cement of the crown.” I wouldn’t need a root canal, since one had already been done. The previous root canal also meant that I shouldn’t have any pain. My challenge now was to find a dentist in Dublin that I could trust.

Luckily, a good friend at work, who is a native Dubliner, found me a recommended dentist not far from our house. I called Dr. O’B on Saturday, but I didn’t expect to hear from her office until Monday. I spent the weekend hiding in the house, or keeping my mouth shut the few times I had to leave. Given that Will gave an honest shudder the first time he got a good look at me, I didn’t want to expose too many to my visage. (After that first shudder, he would titter or giggle a little almost every time I smiled.)

Monday morning, I called Dr. O’B and I was able to schedule a consultation. Will walked me to Grafton Street for my 9:45 appointment. Dr. O’B did exactly what Dr. Z said she would. She cleaned out the crown, fitted a post into the crown and into my upper jaw. Some cement later, my tooth was right back where it belonged. By 10:30 I was back in business.

It was quite the adventure, but in the end, I was pretty lucky. I had no pain at all and it was a quick and easy fix at the dentist. It could have been much, much worse.

Over the weekend, Will and I considered how difficult it might be to deal with such a crisis in a country where English is not commonly spoken. Or where we didn’t trust the dental professionals. Ireland can be an alien culture to us from time to time, but in a pinch, we feel pretty comfortable here.

(Thanks to Sketchory and monstro for their Creative Commons contributions, which made the illustrations possible.)

Dubliners use water to remove frost from the windshields of their cars.

WATER!

A fellow employee was making casual conversation when she mentioned that she took water to her car this morning to clean off her windscreen. I stopped to confirm what I’d just heard.

“Sure, that’s right,” she said, and continued with her story.

I reeled. My world shook to its foundations. Water to remove ice?

It’s ludicrous. Wait, no, it’s not. It just might work. It would work, come to think of it.

In Chicago, it would never work, of course. I know this because our rental car this December had no antifreeze in its windscreen washer fluid and Will kept forgetting that and then our windscreen was crusted over at, like, 1000 mph.

But here, where 26 degrees Fahrenheit is “bitter cold,” water is perfect.

Oh my lord.

All week, I wondered why everyone’s windscreens were beautiful while I peered through a scraped-off patch.

“These people can’t all have garages,” I thought.

Oh lord, the people who saw me scraping my windscreen must think I’m a complete idiot.

But I’m not an idiot, just a displaced north-midwestern-American.

It’s no surprise that Ireland’s news-media pays more attention to world events than the big media of the USA. What occasionally surprises Anita and me is how much attention Irish news outlets pay specifically to US political news. For example:this spring, during the debate regarding the delegates from Michigan’s Democratic primary, the standard three-minute news update on an Irish pop radio station included a detailed explanation of how the primary system worked (and didn’t work in this case).

Illinois Governor Blagojevich wasn’t mentioned by name at first (and who could blame the announcers). Neither was Patrick Fitzgerald: we simply heard that the Governor of the State of Illinois was arrested by federal authorities. The newspapers went into more detail, and later radio reports did too. I haven’t yet noticed any analysis or editorial comments (beyond inane radio-personality chatter).

So here’s my request regarding Blagojevich: Can you help me find the right word to describe what I feel?

About six years ago, I embarked on a search for a word that described the attitude of politicians that engage in a certain style of corruption, blithe ignorance, and conceit. I arrived at “gall”, a word closely related to “temerity” and “effrontery”. (The built-in MacOS dictionary application — which appears to be the New American Oxford Dictionary — has a nice discussion of this family of words. Here’s a page that appears to be lifted from that application.)

When one hasn’t paid attention to a corrupt politician, one can be surprised by that politician’s gall. One may, thus, react with disgust or disillusionment. (If one has some temerity oneself, one may react with self-righteousness or superciliousness.)

But what about when you know that such a politician is corrupt, ignorant, and/or conceited? Sometimes, the only surprising thing about a federal case is the depth of the politician’s gall.

Here’s what I have in mind. Everyone who (a) talked with me, and (b) took any interesting in state-level politics — everyone knew that Blagojevich had plenty of insolence and temerity. So I wasn’t quite surprised by the news of his arrest. But I was still amazed by just how reckless and flagrant his actions were.

Well, not quite amazed. Not exactly astonished, either. There is an element of disgust or contempt that isn’t conveyed by those words. “Flabbergasted” and “astounded” make it sound like I was incapacitated in some way, and that’s not true. “Boggled” is just silly.

I’m looking a word to describe the reaction that I feel when confronted (but not surprised) by another person’s gall. It’s something that I feel with increasing frequency, alas, and I believe that others feel the same way. I believe that I’ve had conversations where everyone struggled to articulate a common feeling.

So, help me out here. Surely there’s a good word — or maybe an apt phrase. Maybe I need to borrow a word from another language — as with schadenfreude or agitprop. I’d be delighted to discuss all of this with y’all in the comments. Do you ever feel this way yourself?

I could deal with a big block of butter if only there were measurements on the wrapping.

The wonder that is American butter comes in a package of four sticks to a pound, with tablespoons and other measurements clearly marked on the wrapping. Irish butter, by contrast, arrives unadorned. It comes in the same kind of waxed-paper wrapping as American butter, but no useful scales or handy particulars mar its gleaming gold packaging.

A poor cook is left to either (1) guess or (2) calmly force the butter into a measuring cup, making sure that all the air pockets are gone.

You may have noticed, by my tone, that this drives me crazy. As many of you know, I love to bake. But between the tiny oven and the butter, I’ve been driven to distraction.

So, for all those American cooks out there, preparing for their Thanksgiving feast, please take a moment to appreciate the lowly American stick of butter. Pause for a moment and reflect that if you need six tablespoons, it is easy as can be. Take heart that American ingenuity has again triumphed over old-world “complacency”. Love your butter and give thanks for its genius – it’s the best there is.

Well… American butter’s taste may not be that great, but it’s darn easy to measure!

From: North American Tourist Authority
To: US and Canadian Citizens bound for Europe
Date: [redacted]

Dear US and/or Canadian citizens bound for Europe,

Tourists from North America have always been drawn together by the sound of their non-British accents. For decades, the Standard Greeting among these travelers was, “Where are you from?” or “Where ya from?” or some variation thereof.

As of [redacted], 2008, the new Standard Greeting is “So, what about this election, huh?” Please use this Greeting when encountering any person with a non-British accents in Foreign Countries.

An image of the letter, as received by the Bugle in response to our FOIA request, is available in PDF form.

The Bugle already sent a letter to the President of NATA with the following message:

We respectfully request that American expatriates receive timely notice of any future changes in the Standard Greeting. NATA should be aware that expatriates with American accents may be disoriented when visiting tourist sites around Europe without having prepared a Suitable Response to a new Greeting.

That is all.