Survival

I think the Turks on the other side of the island are giggling

In the Pearl of the Middle Sea banks have reopened at last. For what  little good that does you if you're out of oats and your donkey is hungry. The Cypriot politicians get to decide how much of your money you can reclaim from their Russian Mafia Laundromat.

But the Cypriot man on the street is less than panicked, and leave it to England's Fleet Street to live-blog the stiff upper lip:

Cypriots are not only taking their money out of the banks, they are also depositing it.

Kyriakos Vourghouri, owner of a minimarket, waved a deposit slip showing an amount of €678 euros as he emerged from the bank.

"I didn't withdraw any money. I deposited money," he told AFP. "The problem is not in Cyprus, it is in Europe, which has become gangrenous."

I doubt I'd have used the word "gangrenous." I think "monetarily diarrheatic " might be closer.

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Can't happen here, of course, what with our commitment to free enterprise and sound money.

Into the wild blue yonder

My youngest and her man are soon to be airborne, off for a few days of frivolous Walloonery in the zone of the Napoleonic Code where habeus corpus is a somewhat iffier proposition than it is here -- or was, anyway, when their native land was operating under a Constitution.

I don't worry about it too greatly. They're not the kind of kids to get into much trouble. Oh, maybe a snide or otherwise disrespectful comment about governments here and there. A lamentable attraction to foreign food, heavily sauced due to late adoption of a technology called "refrigeration" in those parts.  Nothing, however, really, that should get them gaoled.

The lady identifies "Dinant" as the adventurous element of the trip. I don't know what she means by that and and am afraid to ask.  Wiki informs me that the place held Celts in Neolithic times, so perhaps she just means adventurous communing with our ancestral spirits.

They have also worked a jaunt to the Ardennes into the schedule and promise faithfully that in Bastogne they will turn to face whatever enemy is most obvious and state firmly, "The answer is still "Nuts'."

Quote of the Day (Clear Thinking in the 50 Words or Fewer Category)

Very tasty free ice cream  this morning from the potential  Empress of the Universe (and I've heard worse ideas). The subject is pedestrian -- shoveling your walks -- but she elevates it to a sizable segment of a world view and prompts a comment which ought to be chipped  into the marble front of every court house in  the land:


"... There are things you should do in order to live in a cultured society, and things you should be punished for if you don't. They are not necessarily the same set of things. Being unable to distinguish between the two is guaranteed to get you a police state."