Iraq and Memorial Day

By Victor Davis Hanson
(Courtesy of National Review Online)

I can't write like this so I thought some of you, and you know who "you" are, would like to read this excellent piece by a very gifted writer. If you want to read more by him, you can visit www.nationalreview.com.

There may be a lot to regret about the past policy of the United States in the Middle East, but the removal of Saddam Hussein and the effort to birth democracy in his place is surely not one of them. And we should remember that this Memorial Day.

Whatever our righteous anger at Khomeinist Iran, it was wrong, well aside from the arms-for-hostages scandal, to provide even a modicum of aid to Saddam Hussein, the great butcher of his own, during the Iran-Iraq war. Inviting the fascist Baathist government of Syria into the allied coalition of the first Gulf War meant that we more or less legitimized the Assad regime’s take-over of Lebanon, with disastrous results for its people.

It may have been strategically in error not to have taken out Saddam in 1991, but it was morally wrong to have then encouraged Shiites and Kurds to rise up—while watching idly as Saddam’s reprieved planes and helicopters slaughtered them in the thousands.

A decade of appeasement of Islamic terrorism, with retaliations after the serial attacks—from the first World Trade Center bombing to Khobar Towers and the USS Cole—never exceeding the occasional cruise missile or stern televised lecture, made September 11 inevitable. A decade was wasted in subsidizing Yasser Arafat on the pretense that he was something other than a mendacious thug.

I cite these few examples of the now nostalgic past, because it is common to see Iraq written off by the architects of these past failures as the “worst” policy decision in our history, a “quagmire” and a “disaster.” Realists, more worried about Iran and the ongoing cost in our blood and treasure in Iraq, insist that toppling Saddam was a terrible waste of resources. Leftists see the Iraq war as part of an amoral imperialism; often their talking points weirdly end up rehashed in bin Laden’s communiqués and Dr. Zawahiri’s rants.

But what did 2,400 brave and now deceased Americans really sacrifice for in Iraq, along with thousands more who were wounded? And what were billions in treasure spent on? And what about the hundreds of collective years of service offered by our soldiers? What exactly did intrepid officers in the news like a Gen. Petreus, or Col. McMaster, or Lt. Col Kurilla fight for?

First, there is no longer a mass murderer atop one of the oil-richest states in the world. Imagine what Iraq would now look like with $70 a barrel oil, a $50 billion unchecked and ongoing Oil-for-Food U.N. scandal, the 15th year of no-fly zones, a punitative U.N. embargo on the Iraqi people—all perverted by Russian arms sales, European oil concessions, and frenzied Chinese efforts to get energy contracts from Saddam.

The Kurds would remain in perpetual danger. The Shiites would simply be harvested yearly, in quiet, by Saddam’s police state. The Marsh Arabs would by now have been forgotten in their toxic dust-blown desert. Perhaps Saddam would have upped his cash pay-outs for homicide bombers on the West Bank.

Muammar Khaddafi would be starting up his centrifuges and adding to his chemical weapons depots. Syria would still be in Lebanon. Washington would probably have ceased pressuring Egypt and the Gulf States to enact reform. Dr. Khan’s nuclear mail-order house would be in high gear. We would still be hearing of a “militant wing” of Hamas, rather than watching a democratically elected terrorist clique reveal its true creed to the world.

But just as importantly, what did these rare Americans not fight for? Oil, for one thing. The price skyrocketed after they went in. The secret deals with Russia and France ended. The U.N. petroleum perfidy stopped. The Iraqis, and the Iraqis alone—not Saddam, the French, the Russians, or the U.N.—now adjudicate how much of their natural resources they will sell, and to whom.

Our soldiers fought for the chance of a democracy; that fact is uncontestable. Before they came to Iraq, there was a fascist dictatorship. Now, after three elections, there is an indigenous democratic government for the first time in the history of the Middle East. True, thousands of Iraqis have died publicly in the resulting sectarian mess; but thousands were dying silently each year under Saddam—with no hope that their sacrifice would ever result in the first steps that we have already long passed.Our soldiers also removed a great threat to the United States.

Again, the crisis brewing over Iran reminds us of what Iraq would have reemerged as. Like Iran, Saddam reaped petroprofits, sponsored terror, and sought weapons of mass destruction. But unlike Iran, he had already attacked four of his neighbors, gassed thousands of his own, and violated every agreement he had ever signed. There would have been no nascent new democracy in Iran that might some day have undermined Saddam, and, again unlike Iran, no internal dissident movement that might have come to power through a revolution or peaceful evolution. No, Saddam’s police state was wounded, but would have recovered, given high oil prices, Chinese and Russian perfidy, and Western exhaustion with enforcement of U.N. sanctions. Moreover, the American military took the war against radical Islam right to its heart in the ancient caliphate. It has not only killed thousands of jihadists, but dismantled the hierarchy of al Qaeda and its networks, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Critics say that we “took our eye off the ball” by going to Iraq and purportedly leaving bin Laden alone in the Hindu Kush. But more likely, al Qaeda took its eye off the American homeland as the promised theater of operations once American ground troops began dealing with Islamic terrorists in Iraq.

As we near five years after September 11, note how less common becomes the expression “not if, but when” concerning the next anticipated terror attack in the U.S. Some believe that the odyssey of jihadists to Iraq means we created terrorists, but again, it is far more likely, as al Qaeda communiqués attest, that we drew those with such propensities into Iraq. Once there, they have finally shown the world that they hate democracy, but love to kill and behead—and that has brought a great deal of moral clarity to the struggle. After Iraq, the reputation of bin Laden and radical Islam has not been enhanced as alleged, but has plummeted. For all the propaganda on al Jazeera, the chattering classes in the Arab coffeehouses still watch Americans fighting to give Arabs the vote, and radical Islamists in turn beheading men and women to stop it.

If many in the Middle East once thought it was cute that 19 killers could burn a 20-acre hole in Manhattan, I am not sure what they think of Americans now in their backyard not living to die, but willing to die so that other Arabs might live freely. All of our achievements are hard to see right now. The Iraqis are torn by sectarianism, and are not yet willing to show gratitude to America for saving them from Saddam and pledging its youth and billions to give them something better. We are nearing the third national election of the war, and Iraq has become so politicized that our efforts are now beyond caricature. An archivist is needed to remind the American people of the record of all the loud politicians and the national pundits who once were on record in support of the war.

Europeans have demonized our efforts—but not so much lately, as pacifist Europe sits on its simmering volcano of Islamic fundamentalism and unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Our own Left has tossed out “no blood for oil”—that is, until the sky-rocketing prices, the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, and a new autonomous Iraqi oil ministry cooled that rhetoric. Halliburton is also now not so commonly alleged as the real casus belli, when few contractors of any sort wish to rush into Iraq to profit.

“Bush lied, thousands died” grows stale when the WMD threat was reiterated by Arabs, the U.N., and the Europeans. The “too few troops” debate is not the sort that characterizes imperialism, especially when no American proconsul argues that we must permanently stay in large numbers in Iraq. The new Iraqi-elected president, not Donald Rumsfeld, is more likely to be seen on television, insisting that Americans remain longer. A geography more uninviting for our soldiers than Iraq cannot be imagined—7,000 miles away, surrounded by Baathist Syria, Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, and theocratic Iran. The harsh landscape rivals the worst of past battlefields—blazing temperatures, wind, and dust. The host culture that our soldiers faced was Orwellian—a society terrorized by a mass murderer for 30 years, who ruled by alternately promising Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish collaborationists that cooperation meant only that fewer of their own would die. The timing was equally awful—in an era of easy anti-Americanism in Europe, and endemic ingratitude in the Muslim world that asks nothing of itself, everything of us, and blissfully forgets the thousands of Muslims saved by Americans in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, and the billions more lavished on Jordanians, Palestinians, and Egyptians.

And here at home? There are few Ernie Pyles in Iraq to record the heroism of our soldiers; no John Fords to film their valor—but legions to write ad nauseam of Abu Ghraib, and to make up stories of flushed Korans and Americans terrorizing Iraqi women and children.

Yet here we are with an elected government in place, an Iraqi security force growing, and an autocratic Middle East dealing with the aftershocks of the democratic concussion unleashed by American soldiers in Iraq. Reading about Gettysburg, Okinawa, Choisun, Hue, and Mogadishu is often to wonder how such soldiers did what they did. Yet never has America asked its youth to fight under such a cultural, political, and tactical paradox as in Iraq, as bizarre a mission as it is lethal. And never has the American military—especially the U.S. Army and Marines—in this, the supposedly most cynical and affluent age of our nation, performed so well. We should remember the achievement this Memorial Day of those in the field who alone crushed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, stayed on to offer a new alternative other than autocracy and theocracy, and kept a targeted United States safe from attack for over four years.

A Blessed Day

On Friday, May 19, my daughter walked in her graduation ceremony. The date is worth noting in another way as it was also my mother’s birthday, and if ever there were two souls tied together and separated by a generation, it was the two of them.

My mother would have easily understood Emily’s determination in making it to this moment and understood even more how easy it would have been for her to give up on several occasions. But like my mother, she pushed past every hurdle, never gave in to the short-term, simple path and gave herself a better long-term future. It wasn’t easy for her, but nothing worth the kind of effort it takes to graduate from college is supposed to be easy.

So this makes three college graduates in my family with me the odd man out. Not making our family four-for-four in graduates will pain me for life, but I take great solace in the fact that the Missus and I always made it a priority for both of our children to get the most out of life and the most out of what their native intellect required them to do. We pushed them since kindergarten so they always believed college was not only an option but something they owed themselves to complete. Yesterday was the proof in the pudding that our strategy worked. Or should I say mostly the strategy of Mrs. Laz as my contribution was generally to act as the example of what happens when you don’t graduate (an often overlooked value, I might add).

We were all very proud yesterday and we know all of the grandparents would have been ecstatic to have borne witness to a second grandchild dressed in a cap and gown.

Because some of you couldn’t make it, I thought it might be useful to give a running diary of events with apolgies to the Sports Guy. For those who think graduations are boring, then you either haven’t been to one recently and really paid attention, or haven’t been to one with Nick.

11:45 a.m. – We leave, just 15 minutes behind schedule. I take second car and park at a Denny’s so Em can go to Arco Arena after to accept her championship ring from the Sacramento Monarchs. Predictably, I take six cell phone calls. Good thing it’s a Friday or it could have been worse.

12:10 p.m. – Mrs. Laz and the Graduate arrive at Denny’s which is adjacent to a really nice Motel 6. Mrs. Laz is accosted by someone hoping to purchase a Grand Slam Breakfast and asks for funds toward that endeavor. Didn’t know the Grand Slam came with that kind of Coke. Mrs. Laz hands over $5 and dives in my car for safety and we drive the extra mile to limited on-campus parking. Seems we should have a permanent parking place on campus by now as we paid more than $1,000 in parking tickets.

12:11 p.m. – First crisis of the day as Emily receives a call from the friend she will be sitting next to during the ceremony. Friend is in tears and saying something about a former boyfriend and his new girlfriend and how she’s come to graduation. Did I mention this was college graduation?

12:13 p.m. – Emily is united with friend. They run off to solve the problem and get in line while we look for a spot to park. Make bad judgment and go straight instead of veering left and find ourselves in a mile-long reverse holding pattern. A quick and illegal maneuver puts us back on path to find a spot that only requires a one-mile walk to the ceremony.

12:21 p.m. – We meet up with Laz Jr. and the lovely Princess Ber of the Principality of Berfunkia. Ber’s mom is also with her. I’m sent to find a program to make sure Emily’s name is there, which I would rather do than sit in the hot sun and listen to the college band tune up. Well, maybe they weren’t tuning up, just terribly out of tune.

12:22 p.m. – See Nick with blond Mohawk and colorfully painted toenails heading up the stairs at Hornet Stadium. I tell him we’re on the 22-yard-line and we exchange rude remarks.

12:29 p.m. – The ceremony is close to starting and the air of excitement is palpable. We’re offered chocolate chip cookies from Nick who brought snacks. He graduates college in June. No kidding. Laz Jr. finds Emily’s name in the program and remarks, “Huh, I guess she wasn’t lying, she really is graduating.”

12:30 p.m. – The first be-gowned students work their way down the track. The crowd is on their feet and roaring. It may be the first time there was a roar of excitement in Hornet Stadium all season.

12:31 p.m. – We are all on our feet hoping to get a look at our graduate candidates. They have to say “candidate” because not all the grades have come out yet. Finger’s crossed the “candidate” part will shortly be removed.

12:33 p.m. – The students are walking down the track and filing into a seated area in the middle of the stadium. For some reason, some of the kids have more cords and sashes around their necks than Emily. I guess we should have bought Emily some of the extra stuff but didn’t see any for sale at the stadium entrance.

12:36 p.m. – Still no Emily in sight but I come up with an idea that Nick likes for his graduation attire: due to bad eyesight, I think one of the students is wearing an airline life jacket. Nick decides a life jacket is the perfect accessory for his graduation gown and further decides that water wings will add to the ensemble. He also decides to cut a hole in the top of his cap so his Mohawk will stand out better.

12:41 p.m. – Finally! We see our graduate candidate in a group of the final 25 or so students. We wonder how they were able to assemble the students by order of grade point average so quickly.

12:48 p.m. – The students have all been seated and now it’s time for all the official blowhards to take up a lot of time explaining how this day is about the students and not about them. If true, then how about just saying, “Good job kids, come get your graduate candidate certificate and go find your parents for the required photos?”

12:49 p.m. – First sign of political correctness as the truly awful band plays the Star Spangled Banner while a woman Signs for the crowd. It would have been good to be deaf in a certain sense as the singer and the band can’t keep the same rhythm. The Signer is so far away, those with a hearing impairment should have been reminded to bring binoculars to really know what was being said.

12:51 p.m. – The President of the College of Arts and Letter and the Alphabet starts his speech about this being about the kids. He speaks for 10 minutes about this. The hearing impaired can close their eyes.

1:01 p.m. – A host of people follow to explain how this day is about the kids. However, there was one good speech by the Alumni Director and a graduate of the school. She reads through her speech like George Bush on Haldol, mumbling in slow motion. I don’t see many people rushing to join the Alumni Association but do spot a few people in the stands stealthily covering up their alumni shirts. One speaker tells the students that what they have just accomplished is only the start. I am sure there was more than one graduate candidate who asked, “Weren’t we told that in high school too?”

1:12 p.m. – There is either a second politically correct moment or just an indication of how easy it must be to get a PhD from Harvard. The College President decides to quote Shakespeare – out of context, one might add – and says “What a piece of work is a man…” Either he decided to say “a man” so as not to offend “a woman” when defining “Man” as “Mankind” or he slipped the “a man” in there because he really didn’t know the quote. I flunked English because I couldn’t quote Shakespeare accurately and even I knew he had it wrong. Give me a PhD from Harvard, I say.

1:14 p.m. – The President announces the President’s Award to some girl who majored in Harpsichord and Latin. Do they still beat up kids like this in college? She has a short speech to the kids that went something like, “Ummm, this is really neat, I, ummm, am so happy to have this really, ummm, cool award. There are so many other students, ummm, who could have won this, but, ummm, I got it instead. I guess I’m just smarter than you all. Knib High Football rules!”

1:16 p.m. – The kids are ready to file past the various school leaders, have their names read, and get their fake diplomas. The crowd is instructed to wait until the final names have been announced before leaving the stadium. This turns out to be more of a suggestion than a rule, or there were more hearing impaired in the crowd than one would suspect.

1:17 p.m. – The students start to come forward and their names are announced. The students getting their Master’s Degrees go first. This takes a lot longer than one would hope. The sun is already burning my rapidly expanding forehead and there are about 400 kids ahead of Emily who is sitting in the last row. Now I know why I didn’t graduate college. Who wants to go through this?

1:25 p.m. – I’m looking for Nick to offer some entertainment but he actually looks intrigued. A student is given a Masters for Sanskrit. Didn’t that language die out 1,000 years ago?

1:38 p.m. – Yadda, yadda, yadda. The people in the crowd begin to file out after their student’s name is called, in total breech of school policy. Although it does thin out the parking lot a bit.

1:48 p.m. – Nick has a few more cookies and starts to shout for students he doesn’t know. Laz Jr. is beginning to remember why he didn’t walk for graduation.

1:51 p.m. – Big action moment: Emily gets up from her row and walks over to a table to get a glass of water. She drinks it and returns to her seat. I get several photos of this. Only wish I had a telephoto lens on my disposable camera.

1:58 p.m. – Finally, Emily’s row gets to stand up and get in line. It’s a long line but I get the camera ready anyway.

2:06 p.m. – Emily turns the corner and is ready to take her final steps as a student and become a graduate candidate. Soon, someone will say “plastics” to her.

2:09 p.m. – We hear the woman with the hoarse voice read Emily’s name. Emily raises her hands triumphantly and we suddenly realize what we’ve waited all this time for. There is nothing fake about her hands being raised. She feels triumphant and perhaps for the first time realizes what a remarkable achievement it has been to get to this moment. She gets her fake diploma and walks back to her seat with her hands raised in the air for a bit longer. This is the picture of contentment. Even Laz Jr. begins to wonder if it would have felt this good to go through his ceremony. We’re all beaming but not as much as Emily.

2:14: p.m. – The last name is read. This kid gets the biggest cheer because now we can get to our students and get the photo op done.

2:16 p.m. – We’re told this is about the students again and told they will file out of the stadium in an orderly fashion meaning Emily will be the last to leave.

2:27 p.m. – We catch up with Emily and suggest photographs with an appropriate background. We ask her what her favorite spot on campus is. She says it’s off-campus, take the damn pictures.

2:37 p.m. – We’re in our car and out-smarting others by finding a back exit. That’s the kind of thing you can do when you have a good education.

Congratulations Emily, from all of us. We are so very proud! Special thanks to Tom for the great photos as we got nothing like this on the disposable camera.

Memories of Betts

The events in my family fit awkwardly between bookends. One day we’re up and the next day we’re down. And so it is on May 12, one day following my birthday, that Mrs. Laz’s mother took her final breath. It also happened to be Mother’s Day that May 12 and Mrs. Laz was only hours from making the trip to San Diego to be with her mother when we got the call. Her death was not a total surprise but it’s always a kick in the stomach when it happens. Such is the finality my family has had to learn to live with.

My mother-in-law had called me to give me birthday well-wishes late in the day. I could tell she was struggling to speak and was very weak. I asked if she wanted to talk to her daughter but she said she was too tired. Mrs. Laz never got the chance to talk to her mother again, a point of frustration that lives with her still.

Mrs. Laz has taken to wondering aloud about the fairness of her mother passing away before she was able to say her final good-bye. I have always reasoned that her mother was so close to her that it would have been far too sad for her to say her final farewells. She was far too classy to put the two of them through a Terms Of Endearment moment. They really had nothing to settle between them and each had so much love and general fondness for the other that it almost seemed at times they were big sisters, not mother and daughter.

The boy and I were speaking today about the losses of his grandparents. He remembers less about my parents and Mrs. Laz’s father because he was only 12 when they died. But he was 20 when his grandmother died and they had one of those long, final conversations. She was definitely wanting a fix on what life held in store for him and asked him many questions about his future. According to him, she reveled in his plans and his hopes and dreams and she could actually feel comfort knowing he would be OK. I think that’s all parents and grandparents want to know before they pass. They want to know they have done everything within their power to ensure happy and productive lives for their loved ones.

It was also easy to see that she loved having a granddaughter that she could mold and bring up as she had her daughter. Mrs. Laz and Lazette even shared the same nickname of “Missy.” Lazette didn’t always follow the same path of her mother, but I know her grandmother had great plans for her, including the rather sumptuous irony that Lazette’s initials were E.R.A, a point that was often mentioned with glee.

She was one wonderful lady who endured many trials in her life with total dignity and elegance. She accepted my nutty ideas when she learned I was going to be joining the family and even tolerated my political views – at least those she could stomach. I was raised in La Jolla – a character flaw in her book and a source of teasing in mine – while she grew up on the rougher side of Chicago without much of a father around. She even accepted me arriving at her house for dinner with Alka Seltzer tablets in hand (yes, I really did that and she still let me marry her daughter).

Mrs. Laz’s bedroom was downstairs and her mother’s upstairs. When Mrs. Laz and I were first dating, and even in our first years of marriage, we would be engaged in a hot, passionate game of checkers or something. Her mom was quite curious about the lack of noise coming out of the downstairs bedroom so she would investigate from time to time. Since Mrs. Laz’s bedroom was directly below the stairwell, we could hear every step as her mother walked down. To avoid detection, her mother took each step with about five minutes wait in between to throw us off. It never worked as she never caught us playing “checkers.” My bet is she spent plenty of time devising the next method of catching us off guard. She was obviously just worried that her daughter would fall prey to this fast-talking kid who had his head in the sky and a box of gastro tablets in his pants pocket.

She battled cancer with every last remaining bit of strength and she died with the dignity that surrounded her life. She is our only parent that fought death into the 10th round hoping for a decision in her favor. But it’s difficult to beat the champ in a title fight and I think she knew when her time was coming. I think she knew when she didn’t speak to Mrs. Laz on the phone because, what do you tell your daughter and best friend at a time like that? I think she spared both of them a tragic scene at the end and left Mrs. Laz with the memories she will always preserve. I know Mrs. Laz has a giant hole in her heart where her mother used to reside. Hopefully she can fill it with the love her mother passed through her when she made her final stops before entering her lasting peace. In my mind, that’s a better gift than a difficult good-bye. Bettelu, may you rest in peace and be in our hearts forever.

The Big 5-0

So it's my 50th birthday. Bug wup. Now if this post was about someone other than me, I would write about memories, accomplishments, stories, etc. But if I wrote about me, then it would seem a trifle vain. And perhaps quite boring.

So I leave it up to you, dear fan(s), to post a comment about me. It doesn’t even have to be a nice memory or thought and it matters not if you have only a trivial story. I’m not begging for compliments, just a place to share stories of all the stupid things I did in my life. In the end we’ll add all the thoughts up and decide if it was worth having me around for the past 50 years. Of course my one remaining family member is the only one who has known me for this long and he doesn’t even know about the blog. Oh well.

Mrs. Laz, in case you’re tempted to write about that little mishap when you were in the hospital those three times and I decided to be elsewhere, there is no need as such stories may be judged as mean by the readers. Ditto the stuff on a few other capers I’ve pulled. Remember, this is a family blog….

For a Gentle Warrior

Bill would have turned 48 years old today. Forty-eight really doesn’t sound all that old but, as fate would have it, he never lived to celebrate this day with his family and friends.

My early foray into studying the meaning of birth, death and what lies in between was pretty much occupied with chasing Rebecca Springer around the room at Sunday school class in the middle Sixties. So I can’t come up with a good answer as to why Bill was taken so young, and it’s not for a lack of time spent pondering, either. Maybe it’s just as the Bible and the Byrds pointed out in different mediums: “To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Something tells me the answer isn’t as simple as a Biblical passage or Pete Seeger lyrics.

I know Bill thought often about his mortality after our parents died at a younger than average age. As a result he was reconciled with most everything and everyone in his life and was able to pack nearly a full life in a little more than 47 years. I have also recently given in to quietly sneaking up on my own mortality and being careful not to wake it. It brings up fairly weird thoughts, most notably how long it would take for my own family to begin to lose touch with seemingly unimportant memories. This happened with my parents and grandparents and after awhile you look around to find someone who might remember a small event and you realize there is nobody left for the answer.

I don’t want time and distance to fade away some of my own memories of Bill so I will recount a few in this space and hope like hell that Blogger doesn’t go out of business in my lifetime.

I was almost two years old when Bill was born. Peter and I were just 11 months apart and, although I have no conscious memory of this, it has been noted that that the two of us felt we had a pretty good thing going and that three was a crowd. Frankly we didn’t much care for the competition for attention. There are some old photographs that indicate Peter and I were fascinated by our younger brother but I am sure we hatched a few elaborate pleas to convince our mother to leave him behind at the grocery store.

Being the third wheel in anything is tough to live with, especially when it’s with your brothers. Being the middle kid it was a constant pull to want to follow my older brother and be protective of my younger brother. Of course this was all before he grew to be several inches taller than both of us when he was 11 years old.

My earliest memory of Bill is when I was about four and the three brothers were horsing around at the top of the stairs at our house on Pinecrest. I think Peter remembers he was the one who gave Bill the nudge that evening but it seems it may have been me (there goes that “no one to ask” problem again). Nevertheless he rolled down the entire flight of stairs, tumbling out at the bottom and hitting his head at the corner of a wall. I remember two things: my dad appearing just in time to witness the final summersault into the wall, and all the blood that pours out from a head split open. I don’t remember Bill crying but I may have been more concerned about my own complicity in the crime and the coming punishment than the particulars. Well-thought-out alibis are particularly difficult for a two-year-old but I seem to remember Peter got the blame.

I’m not sure if he even mentioned this to you Sue, but Bill and I shared a bedroom together for about three or four years just after we moved to our house on Lake Drive in East Grand Rapids. I doubt there would have been any comparisons made to the world’s great minds, but I know we talked about a lot of things and, just like all men of thought, made a lot of fake bodily function noises. We weren’t short of friends but Bill and I made up imaginary friends in that room – although there was a distinct lack of imagination as my friend was a ceiling light (aptly named “Lightly”) while Bill’s friend was the beam of light from the hallway that the two of us insisted stay on lest we be gobbled up by evil monsters.

The hallway light became a bone of contention at various points between the three brothers as at least one of us wanted it off while the others fought hard for the protection it offered. I remember a few late night battles while one of us would turn off the light from a switch at one end of the hallway while one of the other of us would just as quickly turn it back on from a switch at the other end. On and on it would go. It’s quite amazing how long little kids can stand at a light switch gripped in a never-ending battle for hallway light supremacy. But when the stakes are very real monsters one has to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice – usually being yelled at by my dad who was wondering why there was a light show going on down the bedroom hallway.

When Bill was about four, I sort of poisoned him. It wasn’t intentional, I was just a curious six-year-old involved in a science experiment and Bill was part of my Control Group. I made a potion of various bathroom liquids, including perfume, for Bill to drink. It says a lot about his willingness to trust to even think of drinking the concoction. The fact is, he put a little on his lips and spilled a bit more on his neck and shirt.

Eventually our mother came around to see what we were up to and I proudly told her I had made a magic potion and Bill drank it. She smelled the perfume on Bill and immediately drove her three boys to the hospital to have Bill’s stomach pumped out. During the entire trip to the hospital, Bill insisted he never drank the magic potion, but my mom was not one to take chances or fail to make a point – forcing me to watch Bill have a rubber tube stuffed down his throat. It’s not something that is easy to forget and was probably even more difficult for Bill to forget, although I have no memory of him being angry at me for what happened.

In fact, I remember only one altercation that Bill and I got into in the 47-plus years we knew each other. He was 11 and I was 13 and I was probably feeling threatened that he was now bigger than me. We were eating hot dogs and beans for lunch and Bill told me I had a done a poor job of cooking and he wasn’t going to finish eating the lunch I had slaved over. Fueled by teen lunacy, I told Bill I had ways of making him finish his meal. Likely the rest of the exchange went something like “no you don’t,” “yes I do,” “no you don’t,” “yes I do,” (this is beginning to be reminiscent of the light-switch affair noted above). Usually a “yes you do, no you don’t” standoff ends with someone having to step up and actually do something so I grabbed a handful of cold beans and attempted to stuff them in Bill’s mouth. He resisted. While I don’t remember any punches thrown, I do remember a lot of wrestling around and a lot of beans on the floor. I think we were angry with each other for a few days but I’ll bet it looked pretty hilarious if you weren’t a party to the Big Bean Battle of 1969.

There are other stories best off going to his grave, like his first Steinberg and Sternbach sleepover on the cliffs overlooking Blacks Beach, his bachelor’s liar above the garage at the Shores, his shoplifting caper with Fred Hopper when he was 10, the knife stuck in the refrigerator that was aimed just a bit left of Peter, and how Peter and I had to barricade ourselves in my bedroom for about an hour after we had teased him into a rage (it took the two of us all of our strength to keep him out and from likely murdering us – deservedly so).

These are a lot of things I remember about Bill that would probably surprise a lot of people. Bill had an uncanny ability to meet people where they were. He befriended just about everyone he came in contact with and overlooked personality and dress issues that would turn off most. As a result, there is no simple way to describe him. To the uninitiated he was large and loud. True he was big in stature and his voice could boom, but the largest thing about him was his capacity to love his family and enjoy life.

As big and loud as he was, he was also one of the most gentle and sensitive people you would ever meet. There were countless times he would be loudly setting an employee or sub-contractor straight and a few minutes later he was joking around with them. He was always available to hear the challenges of his friends and colleagues and he helped literally dozens of people get through very tough times. This included me, his kids, the friends of his kids, co-workers, and even people he didn’t know that well. He was generous with his advice whether solicited or not and he was often right in what he had to say.

Among the many hobbies that interested him, he finally found one that must have seen like going home. Most of his life he talked about being a warrior of sorts and living the life that comes with it. When he was introduced to Japanese Sword he approached it with the enthusiasm of a young Samurai. He became very good at the art and was in Japan to compete when he died. I heard he told a friend that his life was complete after arriving at the scenic Japanese setting that was hosting the competition. I don’t know about the others, but I am warmed by the thought he was at such peace when he passed. Just the same, I never thought I would be writing about him missing this birthday and all the others I expected to share with him. There are so many other things that I have come to realize I miss about him, which begs the question: Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?

Bill, in case you’re around and for some reason you have the inclination to read a Blog while you’re convening with angels, Happy Birthday!

I Don't Know What Happened

How did my links and other Blogging things end up on the bottom? I need Super Blogger to walk me through this.

A Song For You

Normally, the following words are included in a HallMike Card© and aren’t so, well, public. But today, April 29, I am 2,500 miles away from the recipient of this love note and sometimes you have to improvise. Besides, I don’t mind telling the world – or at least my weird little world – how much I love Mrs. Laz on this, her birthday.

I first met Mrs. Laz in a swimming pool at Mesa Community College Institute of Technology. Technically I first saw her in my Astrology class (or Astronomy, I never know the difference), but I didn’t get to know her until I made the connection between the class and the pool.

Now if I am being really honest, I likely first saw her in 1973 at a swim meet while she lived near L.A. and I lived in San Diego. After we were married, I came across an old program I had saved from a swim meet in Chula Vista that her team had traveled to when she was 16 and I was 17. When looking at the program a decade later, I discovered her name, and, as it turned out, she swam in the same lane as me the heat before. This means I would have watched her climb out of the water as I was likely doing something goofy (like putting a rubber ducky on my starting block). Who could have known back then that I was within inches of my future wife and that she would end up marrying someone who had a rubber ducky?

Back at the Big U in '75, Mesa Tech had a first-year swim team and had yet to form a women’s team. So the regents, janitors, or the whim of the times demanded that women have the opportunity to swim with the men’s team. This was good news for the men on the men’s team – although we had a good deal more boy in us than man.

I think it can be said without fear of contradiction that Mrs. Laz was the prettiest girl on the Mesa team (although that doesn’t sound quite as poetic as the Prettiest Girl at Penn as Candace Bergen was known). Nevertheless, when boys are being boys, we’re competing for the prettiest girl and despite already being promised to be promised to another girl, I joined in the competition with enthusiasm, hubris and the desire to make her mine irregardless of previous promises. I turned on the charm and whit and before long I was in the running. I was torn by my promises and the twinkle in the young eye of Mrs. Laz. She was my Anne Boleyn but I didn’t possess a King’s decree to axe (metaphorically speaking) the other woman. But the other girl did axe me shortly thereafter, allowing me to court Mrs. Laz.

Skipping past the fact that Mrs. Laz had a boyfriend named Gomez and decided to spend the summer of 1976 in LA with him, I pined for her return back to the Big U in the fall. My memory may be failing me about this but after about two years of being played off Gomez, she could no longer resist my stalking and agreed to become my girlfriend and, later, my wife.

From that point, Mrs. Laz deserves some kind of medal; most likely a Purple Heart. She’s endured my countless bad jokes told multiple times, endless teasing, too many dreams of greener grass, political diatribes, marrying into a family that defines the notion that only the good die young, having to hide the chocolates, several addictions to computer games, musical instruments, and other oddball hobbies, and now, going on my fourth Seven Year Itch. I’ve only had to endure being loved for all these faults.

Essentially we grew up together and learned how to become young lovers, young parents and young orphans. We realized early that money, or lack thereof, can be a cancer that can metastasize in all areas of your relationship if you’re not careful and committed to each other and that when all is said an done, once we were within the walls of our home, we were safe from all the negativity of bad jobs, bad bosses, bill collectors, and democrats.

We raised two wonderful kids who turned out so well that we must have done something right. We beam pride at nearly everything they do and the odd things is, I thing they’re proud of nearly everything we do. You can’t get much more fortunate than that.

It may seem as though this narrative has drifted from honoring Mrs. Laz on the anniversary of her birth. It’s really not, though. Her life has been defined by her relationships; from her deep symbiotic connection to her mother, her endless love for me all the while rescuing me from a life of lost hope, her devotion to her children, and even a soft heart for a number of tough-to-love pets.

She’s like the Magic Johnson of relationships; her presence makes the lives of those around her better. When things seem out of sync she’s able to fit life back in a neat package. She can be counted on to shed bittersweet tears from a heartfelt connection to schlocky TV shows that shamelessly pull at but a few heartstrings. She has more adventure in her than she would ever let on, but she’d rather be curled up in front of a fireplace. She’s a sucker for what she calls “trashy” novels but is an avid and quiet reader of fine literature.

I’m lucky enough to be one of the few who know these little things about her and even luckier to wake up next to her nearly every morning, just not this particular morning. Waking up in spirit is not the same and I think she’d agree.

Mrs. Laz, April 29 some number of years ago was the day an angel was born and all of us in your life are lucky you were sent to us – especially me.

If I could, I would write you one heck of a love song. But that’s a tricky bit of wordsmith and requires a certain amount of talent and an ear for poetry. With the excuse that it’s getting late on the East Coast, I’ll borrow these lines from Leon Russell to let you know how I feel:

I've been so many places in my life and time
I've sung a lot of songs I've made some bad rhyme
I've acted out my love in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you

I know your image of me is what I hope to be
I've treated you unkindly but darlin' can't you see
There's no one more important to me
Darlin' can't you please see through me
Cause we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you

You taught me precious secrets of the truth witholding nothing
You came out in front and I was hiding
But now I'm so much better and if my words don't come together
Listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding

I love you in a place where there's no space or time
I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine
And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song for you

Not All News Is Fit To Print

Is the Pulitzer Prize becoming the journalistic version of the Nobel Peace Prize? To win either honor, you must do two things: embarrass a republican administration, and be the approximate cause of trouble in the world.

How else can you explain the two Pulitzer Prize winning journalists potentially facing an investigation by the Justice Department for printing leaked classified information? One reporter for the Washington Post wrote about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and another for the New York Times reported on the government listening in on suspected terrorists’ conversations without warrants. Both stories were leaked to the reporters by government officials who had their own personal reasons for doing so. The reasons may have been valid, but each leak is still damaging to the U.S. and each is illegal.

The reporters and editors may have their own reasons or personal bias for printing the leaks, but they have a slightly different legal -- and ethical -- standard than the leakers. Before deciding to go to print, they had to weigh national interest, the potential to be criminally liable for printing the leaks, and their own self-interest to report a juicy story. The juicy story won out in both cases.

But the fan occasionally hits something that doesn’t smell all that good and consequences have to be paid. One suspected leaker has just been fired from the CIA after failing a polygraph test about contact with a Washington Post reporter named Dana Priest. Mary McCarthy, the now fired CIA employee, once worked for Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (he of leaking things out his Jockey shorts fame) and is an admitted Kerry supporter. It's only worth mentioning her affiliations because it's important to know that not everyone working at the CIA is friendly with the Administration. McCarthy allegedly told Priest about the existence and general location of secret CIA interrogation prisons in Eastern Europe. In doing so, she violated an oath she signed the day she began working for the CIA that forbids her to pass along classified information. Her alleged loose lips carry a stiff penalty for failing to uphold that oath.

Priest and her editors decided to run the story, presumably without regard to potential costs (even if they didn’t care about their own country, they could have spiked the story out of concern for the countries terrorists might have targeted for housing the prisons), won a Pulitzer Prize and now McCarthy is looking at a likely jail sentence.

The facts of the story are true, I have been assured by my former drunk Irish partner who is heading up the European Union investigation, but was the printing of the story necessary? Are we really better off knowing the President made an attempt to shelter prisons where interrogations may lead to saving American lives but at the cost for the report are damaged relationships with our allies?

Compare the statements of CIA Director Porter Goss and that of the Washington Post story reporting on the firing of the employee. Goss said, "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission.” The Post, after acknowledging that “the story caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies,” still felt compelled to quote its editor Leonard Downie, "The reporting that Dana did was very important accountability reporting about how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government have been conducting the war on terror," Downie said. "Whether or not the actions of the CIA or other agencies have interfered with anyone's civil liberties is important information for Americans to know and is an important part of our jobs."

Really. It must be comforting for some to know the Post has made itself the arbiter of what’s really, really important to print and that they care so much about the civil rights of others, including terrorists who are plotting to kill their subscriber base. I suppose if the truth is the all-important factor in the job of a journalist, why didn’t the Post force Priest to subject herself to an interview to the general press or even her own newspaper? Has the cat got her tongue all of a sudden?

Leaking to the press is as old as leaky faucets and an integral part of ensuring that government officials are behaving as they should. But the recent leaks of classified information are a new paradigm in reporting and journalists need to apply some form of restraint. Can you imagine the consequences of a reporter running a story on the plans for the Normandy invasion in 1944 or plastered the drawings for the first Atomic Bomb on the front pages of the New York Times? It’s not that far of a slippery slope to get there from where we are now.

Journalists like to hide behind the false curtain of the right to protect their sources. However, the right doesn’t exist and the protection is fantasy. Oh, journalists will howl as they did in the Valerie Plame case, but it’s a safe bet they will have to reveal their sources or face a jail sentence. Since I believe there is an applicable movie quote for every story, I will include this line spoken by Wilford Brimley in the movie Absence of Malice: “We can't have people go around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain't legal. And worse than that, by God it ain't right.” Sooner or later the reporters and editors will learn that it just ain’t right.

New Lazlo Service

Off to the right, under "LINKS," you will note I have provided clickable links to go to other Blogs that you may find interesting. I read these Blogs from time to time to get a different viewpoint than reading news columnists or listening to talk radio. I even put a lefty in there to amuse my right-wing friends and to have a place for my leftist friends to feel more at home.

Naturally I got hooked on KiwiBlog while I was in New Zealand so, while it may be interesting to me, it may not be for you. The other international Blogs I read just to keep up with what other people around the world are thinking (although the authors are decidedly right of center -- or is it centre?).

The Sport's Guy link is obviously there for people who enjoy sports and the way Sport's Guy interlaces current culture into sports stories.

If there are other areas that interest people, I am happy to provide the links to Blogs on different subjects so it's easier for people to read things that suit their fancy. I have an ulterior motive for this, which is to make my site something of a portal and increase my readership. But having to read my rants is the price you'll have to pay for the convenience provided.

El Fin del Sueño Americano

I read the other day there was a movement to counter the Latino’s Day Without a Mexican, scheduled with unintentional irony on May Day. The plan is to have a similar day to demonstrate the power wielded by another special interest group, in this case a forgotten special interest group, and have A Day Without an American. I have an inkling the consequences of the latter would reverberate a bit more. That is if we could get the average American to believe taking a day off work to demonstrate had a real value.

And what is an American? Aren’t most of the Latinos demonstrating either American or people seeking to become American? With the exception of Native Americans and the occasional Viking, we’re all from someplace else, but we’ve melted into a weird and homogenized nation better than any other country on the planet so it’s difficult to notice national origins now. Why is it too much for anyone who wants to find a better life in America to be asked to share in this miracle of assimilation?

The Europeans are struggling with a huge surge in immigration, principally from Muslims, and are facing chaos as a result. The reason isn’t so much the surge as the fact that there is no desire of the immigrants to mix so much as a thimble full of European culture into the culture they have brought with them. For the most part, the immigrants live in segregated enclaves in the poorest sections of Europe’s major cities with no opportunity to find work and no desire to learn anything about their host country. The U.S. will face a similar reality if it doesn’t continue an organized route to citizenship.

The immigrants knocking on our door may be seeking an orderly process or maybe just a free-for-all at Ellis Island. It’s far from clear what the demonstrators want. Is it blanket amnesty and then have the door closed behind them? This was done in 1986 when we gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants with the proviso that there would be no more free passes to enter the country illegally. On the surface, it appears the demand is for the 10 million or more people in the country illegally to bypass the due process faced by all other immigrants, including criminal background checks, and be given citizenship. This is akin to someone breaking into your house and taking up residence in your basement and then telling you there is a good chance that 10 other members of his family will be joining him.

We also hear a lot of noise about this being the next civil rights crusade. This should be an insult of the highest degree to blacks who fought for simple acceptance on the basic principle of the founding of the nation that all men were created equal. They sought the right to vote, the right to enter our schools, basic equal treatment and to no longer be forced into segregation. But there stood Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, forever shameless racial ambulance chasers, equating the two struggles.

Latinos would do better by learning how to articulate and frame their goals. Americans instinctively know the difference between these two civil rights crusades. Blacks were owed. For centuries they had been the victims of a historic national crime. The principal crime involved in the immigrant crusade is the violation of immigration laws by the illegals themselves.

Just to make this mess even messier, politicians have decided to wade into this to shore up votes from all the proposed incoming voters. Nothing snaps a politician into action faster than an opportunity to appeal to millions of newly registered voters. This occurs to Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal. She is the granddaughter of immigrants, and writes movingly and with touching sentiment about the bravery and courage of desperate men and women who leave their homeland in search of a good life. Nevertheless, she says, "I think open-borders proponents are, simply, wrong. I think those who call good people like members of the voluntary border patrols 'yahoos' are snobs. I think those whose primary concern is preserving the Hispanic vote for the Democratic Party, or not losing the Hispanic vote for the Republican Party, are being cynical, selfish, and stupid, too. It's not at all about who gets what vote, it's about continuing a system of laws that has allowed America to become, among many other things, a place immigrants want to come to. And it's about admitting immigrants in a coherent, orderly, legal manner, with an eye first to what America needs. That's how you continue a good thing, which is what we've had." I couldn’t have said this better myself.

If things continue down this negative path, I might just have to apply for immigrant status in New Zealand. In 10 years, after proving my value to the country, I just may get there. And, if you need a humorous take on this, read the Sladed Blog for a laugh at http://sladed.blogspot.com/.

Iran, The No Win Scenario

There is an eerie familiarity coming from current Western rhetoric on a certain Middle Eastern country intent on developing weapons of mass destruction. The Europeans, Japan, China, Russia, most of the U.N. membership and the vast majority of the U.S. leadership are united in the belief that this particular country is building a nuclear weapons arsenal and possesses the will and means to use it.

But we’re not talking about Iraq, we’ve switched gears to Iran and the clutter of noise seems to be the same: we must stop them; the Iranians must end their quest to go nuclear or face serious consequences, etc. Of course, agreeing on the meaning of “serious consequences” in this matter is the rub.

Just a short while ago, all sophisticated intelligence agencies had what they thought was hard evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and were just months away from development of a nuclear weapon with which they intended to menace the region, particularly Israel.

There was a general outcry that Iraq, in violation of 14 U.N. resolutions, could not be reasoned with diplomatically and a vote within the U.N. and the U.S. Congress authorized all means necessary to force the errant Baathist leadership to comply or face those very same serious consequences. This included the use of military action.

A military solution was a long way off. For months following the two votes, there were several attempts to resolve the crisis diplomatically by Middle Eastern leaders, Russia, and several European countries; countries we now know were involved in making huge profits in the oil for food scam. There were even several attempts to decide the matter by brokering a deal that would allow Saddam to keep his billions and live the rest of his life in quiet seclusion. He rejected them all, including one arranged by the United Arab Emirates the day before the U.S. launched its first strike.

Having left the “serious consequences” for Iraq to the U.S., a number of thoughtful countries have turned their hollow saber rattling toward Iran. Threats have been made to send Iran to the U.N. Security Council woodshed and even French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy recently said the following undiplomatic words, "No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. It is a clandestine military nuclear program. Now it's up to the Security Council to say what it will do, what means it will use to stop, to manage, to halt this terrible crisis of nuclear proliferation caused by Iran."

There are three reasons it’s unlikely anyone in Iran is quivering over this useless taunt. First, who could be frightened by anyone named Philippe Douste-Blazy. Second, Iranians have televisions and could watch the entire French government shut down and then cave to mob rule on a change in the country’s labor laws. And, third, it is now obvious to everyone paying attention that the French are all talk and no action when it comes to backing up anything they say – it’s just too easy to compare their tough talk prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and what was said in the days following.

Even Congress, now running from their own vote to authorize military action in Iraq, just voted 404-4 to approve a non-binding resolution expressing support for efforts to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, an act that Iran says will cause what is now the great fungible expression of our times, “serious consequences.”

There is a problem in Iran, to be sure, but is it any of our business? Is anyone asking us to police the world? Do we get any credit when we attempt to do so?

We have a terrible relationship with Iran and an even worse history there than we had in Iraq. In 1952, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was forced from elected office by a CIA-led coup (directed by Archie Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s son) and replaced by the Shah who was supported by the U.S. until he was overthrown in 1979. Most, if not all of this was about oil. We don’t remember those actions, but the Iranians do.

It’s a slippery slope for the U.S. to think in military terms regarding Iran and its stated desire to go nuclear. With the exception of Israel, the U.S. will get no support from any other country and we will be even more reviled by the rest of the world if that’s possible. Iran will someday be capable of launching a nuclear strike regionally, but it may be a generation away from being able to build or buy a missile that will be able to reach the U.S. Sure, a nuclear capable Iran will be able to back up a blockade of the Straits of Hormuz and cause oil prices to surge over $100 per barrel, but that will affect the genetically timid in Europe more than it will in the U.S. Besides, hasn’t the rallying cry of America’s brainless left been “no blood for oil?”

What is happening in Iran is seemingly the result of two colossal failures - the feeble international supervision, and the illusion that is being torn to shreds that the theoretical creature known as the international community can dictate a global anti-nuclear policy. We should step aside and let the tough talk come from those who talked tough but carried no stick prior to the military action in Iraq. It’s their turn to stand up to despotic leaders, not our turn.

Thinking this through, it’s easy to be reminded of the ending of the movie War Games. While trying to disarm the computer-controlled nuclear launch codes, the screen in the War Room was lit up with numerous first-strike launch scenarios. The computer was treating the simulation as a game and eventually reported, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” With Iran, I think the U.S. leadership should take the same view and let others play the game, if they want. Otherwise, it’s difficult to see any value for the U.S. in playing a game of brinkmanship with Iran.

Sorry, Rick

There was a moment late in the game against the Clippers last week that really crystallized this thought: Kings’ coach Rick Adelman, much-maligned this year in the press, on talk shows, and even in this blog, deserves some recognition as Coach of the Year.

The Kings were up by four and came out of a timeout in a rare zone defense. It threw the Clippers off, they turned the ball over, and the Kings scored quickly on the other end. Now all teams have a zone defense they use, some more than others, so it’s no sensation the Kings have one too. The fact is, all the other teams had pre-season to work on their zone defense while Adelman has had to piece his together on the fly. Because of injuries and mid-season trades, this current team has had no practice time, no ability to drill over and over the defensive shifts of a zone.

If you look back in the history of sports, mid-season blockbuster trades rarely help either team right away. There may be a burst of quick wins as there were in Indiana this year, but ultimately the team’s chemistry is so thrown off with unfamiliar faces, that they eventually look like strangers on the court and the losses pile up. This hasn’t been the case in Sacramento this year. Who would have thought taking a gamble on the mercurial Ron Artest could be managed so well, especially at mid-season?

Artest has been given a lot of the credit for the resurgence of the Kings, and deservedly so. Each player has stepped up their defensive play to such a level that even Mike Bibby is bragging about his defense. The Kings have always been a leaderless team and either Artest is leading by words and example or the players are afraid of what Artest might do to them should they miss a defensive assignment.

Giving Artest his share of the due is appropriate, but you don’t hear much credit going to Adelman. Despite the fact his team has had the mid-season makeover, battled through countless injuries, and said good-bye to very popular teammates, the Kings are 23-10 since they were at a season-low eight games under .500. Over the same 33-game span, only the San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks have a better record in the West.

We can certainly say Artest was the catalyst for the turnaround, but it is also true that Adelman has been able to gradually get his players to coalesce into a system that fits this particular team. The Kings are no longer the pretty team with behind-the-back passing and quick-shooting three-point specialists. They defend tough, they rebound with enthusiasm despite undersized starters at center and power forward, and they’re economical with their shots. Or as Bibby best describes the new Kings, “we’re four power forwards and a point guard.”

Somebody had to stage manage this progression and someone had to work hard to develop ways to exploit the match-ups that most coaches would view as a headache. And this person had to do it without the luxury of practice time and without a contract for next season. He sits on the end of the Kings bench and never demands the respect he has earned over the past 16 years in which he has won 753 games – or an average of 47 wins each year. To Rick Adelman, my apologies for suggesting your firing and I hope the League, your team, and especially your owners realize what an impossible coaching job you have done this year.

Now, if you somehow slip up and don’t make the playoff, or the Kings are an early exit in the playoffs, please be ready to hear more talk show callers asking for you to be fired and replaced by …. That’s always been the rub, hasn’t it Rick, whose better than you not named Pop, Sloan, Larry, or Zenmaster?

Cows!

DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

SOCIALIST:
You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

COMMUNIST:
You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an
IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up. Ken Lay is happy.

FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce 20 times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately, they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

POLISH CORPORATION:
You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

Time Oddity

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.That won't ever happen again in our lifetime. You may now return to your (normal?) life.

April 3

Two life-changing events happened on this day; one very, very good, and the other, not so good. Twenty-four years ago today, Laz Junior was born in a small hospital in Lewisville, Texas. The bad part was, I ruined his 20th birthday by ending up in the emergency room with what was called a TIA (transient ischemic attack -- or a mild stroke). More on this later. By no means am I trying to compare the importance of both events or even try to steal a little of the Boy's thunder on his Day. I'm just being an economical blogger.

On this day in 1982, Mrs. Laz was driving me to work to the Lewisville Daily Leader where I was a big time sports writer covering high school football and important bowling leagues. Mrs. Laz and I owned a very unreliable Pontiac J2000 that was in the shop for the 30th time so we were in the more reliable, ancient Oldsmobuick that was held together by San Diego Charger bumper stickers. It was about the time Mrs. Laz was due to give birth and we had spent the previous weekend taking our doctor's advice by walking and coaxing the baby out. So when she dropped me off at work that day, I had the uneasy feeling that I would have no way to go home and get her if she went into labor (it hadn't yet occurred to us that Mrs. Laz having the only car made it difficult to get her to the hospital if she went into labor and that driving in labor is about as simple as driving and doing your taxes).

I also had an uneasy feeling about the weather. We'd had a number of tornados in the area and the weather looked a bit foreboding that morning. When I arrived at work, we had the police scanner on and it was whirling and full of activity. We could here various law enforcement personnel out on their beat following funnel clouds and tornados. Of course the scanner picked up traffic all over the region so we were careful to listen to when a tornado was spotted near us and not 50 miles away.

Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. Laz was monitoring a radio station on her way home and they were literally screaming for people to take immediate shelter as there was a tornado headed down main street after picking up the usual mobile homes and tossing them about. What Mrs. Laz didn't know is that I had set the Oldsmobuick to my eclectic taste in music and that she was listening to a station in Paris, Texas, about 50 miles north of Lewisville and 6,000 miles from France. She thought it was a local station. Well, the news was quite frightening and so she wasn't sure if she should return to home or come back to the newspaper. The thought of a tornado taking her off to Oz scared her enough that she also began to go into labor. So she did return to the newspaper only to find us completely calm in the face of the onslaught of horrific weather (we newsmen are like that in the face of danger, you know). It didn't take long for us to calm her down and tell her the tornados were well north -- although it destroyed 25 percent of Paris and killed I think about 25 people, so it was a nasty storm.

All the calming down didn't stop the labor so I dropped her off at the hospital, drove to our apartment to pick up our pre-prepared, check-listed "what happens when the baby comes" items. We went through the entire night in the hospital and, after 14 hours of labor, about nine a.m., Laz Junior came into the world. He scored well on his Apgar test (he'd been studying) and mom and baby were healthy. I was a bit injured, however, as Mrs. Laz ripped my thumb out of its joint every time she felt a labor pain. Lamaze classes say to grab hold of your partner’s hand to ease the labor pain but say nothing about breaking the thumb. It’s strange how little sympathy I got and I did a lot of complaining, too. It seems people only care about the mommy and the baby, and how are they, and are they doing well, and look how cute the baby is, blah, blah, blah. What about me? What about my needs?

Twenty years later, we all weren't healthy as I was slumping in my chair at the office. My sister-in-law noticed I looked more detached from society than normal and tried to get me to go to the hospital. I instead suggested she call Mrs. Laz and have her come get me and take me to the doctor. The doctor did a few tests and suggested I go to the hospital. I really didn't want to go because I knew that I would wait for three hours, they would tell me nothing was wrong, and I would ruin Laz Junior’s birthday.

But they didn't have me wait at all. After asking a few questions and taking my blood pressure, they put me in a wheel chair and hauled me off to the emergency room, ahead of a roomful of illegal immigrants, no less. That's when I got worried. I figured if they were breaking the sacred code of citizenship over triage need, I must be in real trouble. Suddenly I didn't feel so well.

The point of this, other than showing up Laz Junior on his birthday again, is to mention a few warning signs of stroke victims. If you see someone behaving a bit more stoically than normal, do the following three things: 1. Ask the individual to smile. 2. Ask him or her to raise both arms. 3. Ask the person to speak a simple sentence (Coherently), i.e... “It is sunny out today.” If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. If it's your son's birthday, try to do it quickly so it doesn't interfere with the cake and presents.

(Editor’s note: I am sure I will hear from the Girl how I wrote about the Boy on his birthday but made no mention of her on her birthday. She will note the historical context of November 9, 1983, and I’m not talking about the fact that her sixth birthday landed on the same day the Berlin Wall came down. Her historical context will be one to measure the date as it relates to the birth of HER and how schoolchildren in the future will have to memorize it as they do the date of the Magna Carta and the day Columbus stumbled into the Americas. I think you’ll all feel better getting advance warning on this.)

No More I Love Yous

Alone and melancholy at 35,000 feet can bring out the emotion. Most of the time I can deal with being by myself – an all too familiar trend – but being lonely is where I struggle. Stuck on an airplane, with hours of solitary confinement and too much time to think, seems to stir up memories of recent and long ago losses. It’s difficult not to acknowledge there’s been too many.

I nearly always think about my mom and dad along with Betts and Fred and even my grandma, whose death didn’t sink in until I was on an airplane. I’ve had to learn to set aside the frustration that comes with facing things you have no control over and I am thankful for all the memories from them that stick with me still. I wish the journey with them could have lasted longer but I have no complaints about the ride. Just the same, I’d give anything just to see them all again and tell them I love them one more time.

Tonight is a bit different, though. I can’t shake two strong feelings, try as I might. One is a flood of feelings about Bill brought on, perhaps, by hearing a song I connect to him, the Wind Beneath My Wings sung by the sweet-voiced Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole who himself died young with far too much life left to offer.

I really shouldn’t be this bad off when I’m thinking about Bill because I had more time with him than probably anyone in his life except for Sue. Cass and Janee lost so much by his early death but I know they feel fortunate they had such a close relationship with their father. Of course that’s the point of this particular tragedy: because he gave so much is the reason he is so missed

Curiosity and nosiness makes it nearly impossible not to occasionally visit Cass and Janee’s My Space sites to see what they’re up to. Both have their father listed as their hero and a goofy picture of him as goofy is how he will end up being most remembered. I can’t tell you how it pains me to see a comment written by Janee on how much she misses her father. I wish I could reach through to the other end of the computer and hug the little Creep. I know she’d tell me it’s OK, but it’s damn sure far from being OK.

Thinking about the weaker moments for Sue and their kids’ nearly breaks the heart because I know about my weaker moments. No word has yet been invented to explain in proper terms what should be said about the shock of Bill’s passing so I’ll borrow a line from one of our favorite movies said in the spirit of utter contradiction, “He will not be missed.” One day the tears will dry up.

The other depressing and common agenda item I can’t get away from tonight is ruminating about the number of my friends who are no longer much a part of my life. Some have been lost out of our mutual laziness, some have moved, some have moved on, and still others have passed away. Some friendships proved to be more fragile than should be the case and others’ bodies proved to be more fragile as well, no matter how much they were abused.

Even my kids have had to endure loss beyond their grandparents and uncle. One lost a crying shoulder and the other the promise of a harbor in a tempest. Losing people shouldn’t be such a big part of their young lives but I suspect they have become stronger people and have so much of their life ahead of them, including learning to love again.

And I guess that’s the lesson here – we’re supposed to gain strength from loss and grow closer together. I think we have, too. Mrs. Laz and I have never been closer; longing for the river to skate away on as we reach the empty-nested part of our relationship. The Boy works with me and we’ve found we have shared ideals of business and life and are actually more open to each other’s political views then we’d ever admit. And the Girl and I have become so close we’ve developed our own language patched together from all the great movie classics such as Zoolander and Anchorman – much to the chagrin of Mrs. Laz who wasn’t given the secret decoder ring. I’m actually happy she didn’t get the apartment she wanted because it gives us two more months of watching AI and AI, two things we’ll always remember, I suspect.

As for friends, I actually told Mr. Sladed I loved him just in case he’d lost sight of that, because I sure haven’t. And that goes for the Wop too; what a pleasure it is to finally be working together. I’m even fortunate to have old and new friends to work with, a stroke of luck that can’t be ignored.

It’s difficult not to notice there is a plan or a certain serendipity developing here. As we lose people, our hearts are opened to allow more room for others. The spark that Bill left in all he touched, and the friends who passed our way have given us all the ability to love better and love more, even if they only stayed for a short visit. I’m even slightly cheered up by this discovery, although that will about do it for long plane rides for a while.

My Least Favorite Places

In all the words I spent writing about my favorite places (including too much time spent complaining about places I didn’t like), I thought it would be worthwhile to have a larger discussion of my least favorite places. There are more than a few.

Surprisingly I just returned from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a war-torn area that still struggles with ethnic and border disputes, and they don’t make the list. I’ve been to worse places, to be sure.

One of them is Kiev in 2005, a much worse city than Kiev was 15 years before. The new Kiev has the feel of a corrupt, lawless city of too many people who have nothing to do except scam the weak and unprotected. There are roughly three million people who live in the city and I think they were all at the airport in black leather jackets offering to take my bags to their car and to god knows where. There could be no trusting this wretched bunch. Orange Revolution notwithstanding, there is no short-term hope for the place. And if they want to continue to complain about how cold they are because Russia won’t sell them natural gas at one-third the market price, they can put on their orange scarves to keep warm.

There are some who say Paris is for lovers by I say Paris is for lovers of garbage. There are few filthier cities. When there was a garbage strike a few years ago it was difficult to notice the difference. Paris is a xenophobe’s paradise because huge numbers of immigrants and refuges have recently made it their home. This melting pot of millions has never melted and instead have all settled in their own homogenous neighborhoods. You drive through one section populated by northern Africans followed by a shanty area of central Africans until you run into a variety of disparate and unforgiving Middle Easterners. Occasionally you bump into a Parisian – or, better, their car bumps into you – but they never stick around long enough to exchange pleasantries as they’re trying to navigate the quickest way to the French enclave of the city. Seriously, look at a photo of the Mona Lisa, watch a Truffaut movie, and spend all your money on French perfume at the local mall and you’ll have no real reason to go to Paris.

Athens is another place to stay clear of. I know, it has all this great, ancient history covered in great and ancient dirt. Granted we were there in 2000 as the city was totally under construction awaiting a throng of soon-to-be unhappy tourists and athletes for the Olympics. Of course unhappy is the only way to describe the residents of Greece. Unless you’re on an over-crowded ferry heading for one of the nearby islands, there is not much in Athens to make you happy. The traffic is horrendous with irritated driver’s hands placed firmly on their horns as if this mélange of noise could possibly move the traffic one inch. As another qualifier (and to avoid an angry letter from Mari, Ari and Celeste) it should be noted that we were there shortly after our peace-loving President Clinton had just finished bombing the crap out of the Balkans, causing literally millions of Macedonians and other refuges to join the crowd in Athens and lend their hand to the important ongoing honking. This made Americans very unwanted, a point brought close to home during a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of a taxi trip to a Hard Rock Café. There was one pleasant moment at our hotel – and not the one the kids are thinking about – when we had a wonderful dinner on the roof of our hotel with our Parisian friend Jean (okay, there’s one reason to go to Paris, but even he eventually moved out of town). The weather was perfect and we had an unobstructed view of the light show at the Parthenon. The food wasn’t that bad, either. Of course this was the same hotel where a British diplomat had been gunned down a few months earlier, diminishing the perks of topless sunbathers at the pool (so I heard).

Sonsanate and San Salvador, with apologies to my partner Max, were no garden spots. Sonsanate makes the list if for no other reason than its hopeless poverty. I know there are more impoverished places and giving in to the fact that the people who lived there didn’t seem to realize they were impoverished, it still broke your heart to see. Perhaps more troubling was the knowledge that it wouldn’t take more than a week’s worth of automatic teller charges in the U.S. to make a year's difference in Sonsanate. I was more bothered by San Salvador because there was a lot of poverty and some huge wealth and the people there know the difference. Crime is rampant and it’s difficult to feel safe anywhere. The wealthy have razor wire over the walls that surround their home, much of it left over from the civil war that nearly wrecked the country a decade ago. The middle class, such as it is, pool their resources to pay for heavily armed security 24/7, which only serves to drive the bandits to the neighboring streets whose residents can’t afford the security.

I know there is a certain segment out there who loves Amsterdam. I just don’t like the city or that particular segment who loves it. Sure, there are cultural amenities to Amsterdam such as the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums, and plenty of good, classical concerts. It’s just that they’re all overridden by the graffiti on the outside of the museums and the local permissiveness that attracts people who crave permissiveness. With low cost airlines targeting Amsterdam, it has become the Tijuana of Europe for badly-behaved bachelor parties, inebriated miscreants and serious drug users (although the Harold and Kumar types who still giggle that they can get some legal pot, man, can be charming). Because of the beer flowing out of all sides of the drinkers, the city was forced to install outdoor and very public urinals to better organize the public urination off the walls of businesses and restaurants and out in the open where, I suppose, they believe it belongs. Where else can the ladies get an outside glimpse of the inside of a men’s room but in Amsterdam? And then there are the rows of “cabins” where Eastern European, Russian and African women show what they have to sell. Okay, it’s fun to see it once, but after awhile it gets sort of boring. It’s not like you’d want to do anything other than walk down the alleys and avoid direct eye contact, unless spending 300 euro to get 10 minutes of detached sex with a stranger is attractive to you. Not that I know it costs 300 euro; it’s just a guess. I know there are lovely sides of Amsterdam – the canals, the history, the work ethic. I suppose the people who live there learn to put up with the section of the city that is a monument to tolerance and progressive thought. It’s just not for me.

There are a number of other cities that are pretty disgusting, but they have some overriding charm to make up for the deficiencies elsewhere. St. Petersburg, Russia is a frightful place for the most part, but there are areas that are unbelievably rich in culture and history. Bucharest, with its attempt to mix huge numbers of gypsies with gypsy-haters and which holds the world’s worst architecture by the world’s worst dictator/architect still has sections of the city untouched by crazy communist leaders where you can enjoy a coffee and snack at a number of outdoor cafes. Romanians like to call their capital the “Little Paris” and fortunately they modeled much of it on the old Paris just in time before people will start to call Paris the “Little Bucharest.” Tirana is a dusty dump (see below) and there is no excuse for the place. The Albanian capital has been made all the more distasteful by a new government (that we help get elected) trying to outdo the corruption of the last corrupt government; a difficult task indeed.

The U.S. has its ugly cities too. Drive around any city or town in Texas, save for Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, and there is no place you’d less rather be. Midland/Odessa is downright scary it’s so ugly, El Paso makes Juarez livable, and East Texas is something out of To Kill a Mockingbird. Large sections of Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago will make any reasonable person long for the natural beauty of Tirana. And don’t get me started on New Orleans. What a dump that place is, and that was before the hurricane.

Understanding I just insulted millions of people (although I suspect the people of Tirana would wholeheartedly agree with me); I also recognize there every place has something of redeemable value. It may be more difficult to find it, but I’m sure it’s there.

Laz Logic

Mrs. Laz and I were having an intellectual debate that was fascinating. Well, fascinating to me that I am alive and able to write about it. One could say I was being a bit controversial or “having fuzzy logic,” but I prefer to believe I was thinking outside the box, engaging in intellectual discourse or perhaps breaking down barriers of all thought. And still I am fascinated that my fingers are free to type and free of hairline fractures that usually occur following such intellectual wanderings that begin with, “Dear, I was thinking …”

I can’t lay claim to the general thesis of the theory I presented to Mrs. Laz; that belongs to someone else. However, I took the premise to a more practical use by attempting to put it in motion – as all pioneers feel the urge to do. And it was the very same “urge” part that drew a bare-knuckled beat-down by the Mrs. And in the sanctity of my home own too!

In the interest of science I will present my research to you, dear readers, and hopefully this will help Mankind (or at least one man).

We begin with two key facts:

Fact No. 1: The definition of marriage is a union of two people, a man and a woman.

Fact No 2: Gay, Lesbian and Transgender activists don’t like the part of Fact. No. 1 that limits their options regarding the two sexes. And so they rallied and rumbled and bullied cowering politicians (not a difficult task, mind you), went to court, yelled a little more, stomped their feet, held their breath, and had a number of jurisdictions agree with them: marriage should not be so exclusive as to be just between men and women. What’s wrong with two men, or two women, or two sexually confused humans, they asked? In fact I believe the final demands of Gays, Lesbians and Transgender people were to define marriage as just between two mammals -- and I think they’re pretty flexible on that point, too.

And so they largely got their way by declaring their definition of marriage to be a right. I still like Kinky Friedman’s comment that gays should be able to marry so they can have the same right to be as miserable as the rest of us. But that was before I was spraying Bactine on the heavy cuts about my head and neck as I was, apparently, taking this theorem to its next logical conclusion. Naturally all men of Science and High Thought have had to suffer for being ahead of their time and I am no different. Unfortunately for Newton and Socrates Bactine wasn’t invented, as Newton may have needed it to salve a bump on his head and Socrates, well, actually, Socrates may have had to drink it. I’m glad I had Bactine at the ready, but it still stings!

Which leads us to Fact No. 3: If marriage is no longer defined as that between a man and a woman, we should no longer be bound by the union of “two people” either. If we’re breaking down half the equation and have gotten over the “man and women” thing, then we should have no problem declaring the random number of two as no longer “operative.” (Ohhhhh, funny story about that. When President Clinton’s first press secretary Dee Dee Myers was asked about a statement she had made a day earlier regarding Hillary’s cattle future’s problem that had proven to be a lie, Dee Dee was questioned about it by the press. She simply said the answer she had given the day before “was no longer operative.” That’s much better than saying it was a lie, don’t you think?).

OK, keep your focus fellow scientists. We’re back to the Multiple Party Marriages or MPM as I like to now call them. Aside from the ungrateful swipe by my hostile bookkeeper that I couldn’t “handle” more than one woman (first we kill all the accountants!), you can’t debate the logic that one breakdown of the marriage equations leads to a breakdown of the other. Well, to be fair, you can only debate this theory if you’re wearing protective head gear and a padded jock strap.

I have come to find that men, in general, are out front of women in accepting this new paradigm. Men have supported my radical thinking while women have cast scorn on the idea and, I might add, cast more than a few household items at me. But all such shifts in great thinking begin this way: with a few believers before the other, slower people come around.

The only part of my theory that isn’t working out is the part about women not being too keen on the whole more than one spouse part. Why, what would happen if my logic is sound but no women were willing to participate? I don’t think I calculated this divergence of opinion when I ran my chaos theories, at least in the context of behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems (e.g. women). It’s the Butterfly Effect all over again. I guess it’s back to the drawing board and my studies. I’ll need books and tools and volunteers for study, but where do I find them?

My Favorite Places

Lately, a lot of people have been asking me about places I’ve been and, particularly, which places and countries I like the best.

It should first be noted that I go to a lot of the same places a lot of the time and therefore haven’t picked up any special worldly knowledge. I haven’t been to Africa or the Middle East and my travels to Asia are a bit suspect (I had a bewildered taxi driver take me a few feet into the Asian section of Istanbul so I could rightly say I’d been to Asia). I have been to nearly 50 countries and there were a lot of dull ones among them like Luxembourg, Albania, and Canada.

I don’t know which country or countries I prefer. I suppose I like certain things about all of them just as I like certain things about the U.S. New Zealand and Scotland have by far the friendliest people. France has the snootiest people but make up for it with good wine, warm baguettes and croissants, and the best drivers driving in reverse on the planet.

The Germans have surprisingly good food and very unfriendly people, especially if you don’t take the time to learn their language (and why would you want to take the time to use words twice as long in German as in English?).

I have a couple of good memories in Munich; one at a Kriskrendlemart (sp.), a holiday craft show where someone scooped a cup into a big bucket of simmering wine and spices and gave me something called Glühwein. It will cure what ails you, especially on a cold winter day. The other memory is of a solitary violinist playing a Handel piece in an alley off the main shopping road. It was beautiful as the music bounced off the ancient walls of the shops above him. It all came to an abrupt end when a group of inebriated soccer hooligans came charging through the alley, knocking the violinist and his music to the ground as sort of an instant critical review of the concert. Apparently Glühwein and Handel don’t mix well.

Speaking of inebriation, Ireland is the country with the most drunks, although Sweden comes in a close second. Walking near any bar or restaurant in any town or city in Ireland requires the walker to be sober and have a nimble gait less he step in the many puddles of vomit along the sidewalk. And what keeps the average Irish drinker on the sidewalk, you ask? The clever Irish have placed side rails along the busier roads to keep the drinkers and socializers from stumbling into oncoming traffic (or French vacationers driving in reverse).

As for the Swedes, it has come to the attention of the Swedish Government’s Alcoholic Consumption and Warnings Your Mother Gave You but You Ignored Department that Swedes drink too much. They actually have a government agency that tracks the amount of alcohol each Swede consumes. You drink too much and you get a visit and a stern letter from an agency busybody. The Swedish solution? Denmark is only a short drive or ferry away and no such busybodyness exists in Denmark so they take the quick jaunt and drink it up, crashing cars and breaking curios and such. It should be noted the Danes have disliked the Swedes outside of their public drunkeness. Apparently, I was told, the Swedish King said something unpolite to the Danish Queen in 1206 and things haven’t been right between the two neighbors since. What has followed is a bunch of loud Swedes and annoyed Danes; entertainment you can’t get at home at any price.

I have gotten to know some places better than others by either living there for a while or because the host government was foolish enough to give me a multiple-entry visa. The foolishness went both ways as I chose to spend a great deal of time in Russia and its nearby republics, now countries that had the good sense to leave Russia when the same good sense escaped me. Nobody had a gun to my head when I domiciled in Romania for six months either. The two countries share this much: they make you appreciate capitalism and some semblance of Democracy a great deal more. Kissing the passport control floor at LAX is not uncommon for returning travelers to these countries.

The biggest mistake we all made about Russia was in thinking they just wanted to be like us. They didn’t. They wanted to be like the Swedes (except for the strict alcohol consumption codes) because they had bought into the whole “cradle to grave” society. They didn’t want to have to work or give up potatoes and Vodka, they simply wanted to be able to get their cranky government off their back and travel whenever they wanted just to reinforce the world view of Russians.

I once asked the obvious question to a woman about why the Soviet Union fell. We were standing near the entry of the “Hammer Center,” a hotel and restaurant complex that was a shrine to free marketers but off limits to the average Russian. She talked about how frustrating it was to see all the goodies the West had to offer through the window of the Hammer Center but no right to take part in spending $400 for a pair of shoes. So the Russians had a revolution to buy uncomfortable footwear and a $60 steak. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, you could buy a pizza at a place called Pizza Hat. I guess there was a revolution just because some entrepreneur needed to buy a vowel.

Since Romania and Russia were Communists countries, they had a few things in common: an overabundance of moles, poor dental care and astonishingly ugly sofas. I have no inside information on the moles but the high degree of tooth decay and gingivitis comes from a rational fear of the dentist. Since the trademark of all Communist countries is for all workers in the Worker’s Paradise to be employed by the State, there was no need to be a better, more caring dentist than the next. Imagine dental care by the Department of Motor Vehicles and you have imagined a Soviet dentist. The offshoot is that Novocain costs the State money and is therefore superfluous. Without the Novocain, surprisingly few people filled out those silly tooth-shaped postcards to remind them of their next dental appointment, which was good for the State since the lack of repeat business further lowered costs so there was more money to keep Lenin looking green in his tomb.

I also can’t explain the prevalence of the astonishingly ugly sofa. It seems the ideal sofa in former Communist countries has a tree-full of carving and gilt and is upholstered in plush, petit point, plaid, and paisley as if Donald Trump, Madame Pompadour, Queen Victoria and the Doors had gotten together to start a decorating firm. You see the astonishingly ugly sofa everywhere. In the homes of the well-off and otherwise; hotel lobbies; office reception areas; furniture-store windows (of course) and, most spectacularly, on local sitcoms. One actor sits down and makes an exasperated face while the other actors gesticulate comically. I couldn’t understand what was going on in these sitcoms, but I could tell it was a lot more charming than Oprah.

Bad driving on bad and very wide roads also seems to be a consistent theme in formerly Communist countries. Whether in Moscow, Warsaw, Bucharest or Kiev, crossing a major intersection alive takes bravery and guile, or blindness, since the only way I was willing to act as a pedestrian is with my eyes closed. The traffic is too scary otherwise. I was taught in high school that it was good to be an aggressive driver. I think drivers in Eastern Europe and Russia are taught to drive angry. If you try to cross a major street in Russia or Romania, you will note quite quickly that drivers, without expression, speed up and aim for you. A simple street crossing reminds one of that old video game “Frogger.” Except you get across the street more often on the computer.

Not all is bad in these countries. Moscow has become as fashionable and trendy as any city in the world. Housing prices have skyrocketed and the rich have been buying up apartment buildings and huge houses with astonishingly ugly sofas like hotcakes. And they buy it all in cash; which has the upside of cutting down on receiving 30 letters each day explaining how they’re paying too much for their mortgage. I once asked someone, “who can afford these places,” and I was told, “Officials and prostitutes.” “Aren’t they one and the same?” I asked.

I was in Kiev during the start of the so-called Orange Revolution. The Revolution’s spontaneity couldn’t have been better planned. Before the results of the elections were announced, there suddenly appeared 200,000 people with orange scarves and the secret code to show up at the right time in Independence Square. Also, someone just happened to have a couple of Jumbo Trons in their trunk so angry speechmakers could make angry speeches. The best part is that the rubes in the world press bought the spontaneity angle so the newly anointed Ukrainian government decided it needed to keep the joke going and tried to run a government. Governments are difficult enough to run but when your whole plan revolves around calling the former government all sorts of bad names, trouble is on the horizon. The new government was able to get the “Own a Black Mercedes and BMWs on $400-Per-Month-Scheme” in place before the country tanked, so they had that going for them.

Albania may be the sorriest of a lot of sorry former Communist states. If wealth was measured in dust, Albania would be the Beverly Hills of the world. I don’t know where the dust comes from or where it settles, but it is constantly coming from somewhere and apparently never settling. Albania is the only country that decided to exit a Communist economy and dip its toe in capitalism by creating a massive, country-wide pyramid scheme. When it predictably collapsed, the entire country went on a looting spree, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down including the astonishingly ugly sofas (fortunately for future generations of Albanians, dust can’t be nailed down). After a while, the looting came to an end. When asked why the people stopped, one Albanian man simply said, “We were done.”

On the other side of the world, I was able to spend 10 delightful weeks in New Zealand. New Zealand is the Bigfoot of countries; hiding behind rocks and trees in fear of being discovered. Kiwis (as people from New Zealand are known) live in this tormented contradiction of enjoying their isolation but, at the same time, wondering if the world knows they’re still alive. When I mentioned I enjoyed the movie The Whale Rider, the Kiwis couldn’t believe I had seen it. They still can’t believe they are interesting enough for a busy American to take the time to notice.

Kellen and I were working on the elections in New Zealand. Besides the obvious side show that is politics, we were amused by the dire predictions of a country headed to hell by the opposition government (our client and still in opposition). If Americans only had to worry about the minor annoyances of the kind of government that angers the Kiwis, all the fun would go out of politics. Since there are only 2.8 million voters in New Zealand, the government is run like one large condo association with the same amount of general goofiness consistent with a Landscape Committee. But it still runs better than Congress

All the same, I found the mix of unrivaled natural beauty, every season available within a one-hour plane ride, friendly natives, and the availability of all the creature comforts of home in New Zealand to be the perfect blend to the best place to live or visit. Scotland comes in a close second with summer in Sweden not far behind. All of which is to say I spent a lot of time writing about places not to go and far too little time discussing nice places to visit.

However, I have come to believe that “nice” isn’t always the best reason to travel somewhere. I prefer interesting places with long histories where the locals feel the need to do something extra to keep you from going to Euro Disney. I also tend to like smaller cities. With that in mind, my favorite places are:

Krakow, Poland
Bruges, Belgium
San Sebastian, Spain
Wellington, New Zealand
Sibiu, Romania
Koblenz, Germany
Galway, Ireland
Avallon/Vezaly, France

But there is no place like home.