16 March 05

Requiem For This Land

So in one day that fine body of scalawags known as the U.S. Senate voted to a) allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and b) defund Amtrak. The only motivation to this is that Bush’s friends, cronies and sycophants will get even richer than they already are — you can only lose one’s soul once, I suppose. Oh, and gas will be 5 cents cheaper for about two years. The one marginally satisfying thing about the ANWR vote is that seven Republicans voted for the amendment to disallow drilling. Alas there were three Democrat turncoats — just see if I plan to go to Hawaii again!

We wrote compositions this evening in Spanish class, about vacations actual and dreamed-of. I do long for northern latitudes, and for the latter I thus mentioned Iceland. Here’s an amazing photograph from that northern land of fire.

Posted by at 09:21 PM in Politics | Link |
  1. Mary and I will be spending two weeks in Iceland in April. People ask Mary “Why are you going to ICE-land?” She has been telling them “It’s a Tom thing.” But she’s thinking about telling them “It was a typographical error; we really wanted to go to IRE-land….” Heh-heh. Ireland will be the next trip. This trip, fire & ice. I can hardly wait.


    — Tom Montag    17. March 2005, 07:52    Link
  2. Hey, a couple of days ago I posted a poem by Venezuelan poet Eugenio Montejo called “Iceland” – it’s there in both English and Spanish:
    http://3rdhouseparty.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/distances.html

    I think Iceland would be fascinating to see. But I’m heading south – desperate for warmth and color.

    — leslee    17. March 2005, 11:42    Link
  3. Scuttlebutt is that Frist promised Akaka some help getting His Hawai’ian Federal Recognition Bill passed in exchange for the ANWR vote. Easy to promise: No one thinks the Akaka bill will pass anyway.

    — Chris Clarke    18. March 2005, 08:51    Link
  4. Ethan and I went to Iceland on our honeymoon, almost seven years ago, and ever since we’ve been yearning to return. (It’s truly an amazing place, Tom—you’ll have a wonderful time.)

    — Rachel    18. March 2005, 10:11    Link

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