This sung (beautifully) by an Irish post grad as part of a Sunday evening concert - https://youtu.be/Y-BmOhjbQ44?t=26 A hat tip to St Patricks Day. Afterwards dinner with old friends. One - a former ambassador (ambassadress ?) says that the new UK ambassador in DC would do well to remember Machiavellis advice that the best way to criticize a prince is to praise him for virtues he doesn't have. We all agree that our new man on Massachusetts Avenue will be kept busy troweling on the praise.
Sunday and the town was full of day trippers. The restaurant we chose for dinner busy with nice American grandparents sensibly enjoying off season air fares and hotel rates. They talk to each other about the 'big storm' that's sweeping the South. The St Andrews dining experience has never recovered from the dual hit of Covid and Brexit. There was a time when the hotels and restaurants were full of eager and efficient young Europeans wanting to polish their language skills. Now visas are impossible and getting and retaining suitable staff is the bane of the local hospitality industry. You can gather from this that last nights dinner was not stellar. Angus is horrified that scoop of vanilla ice cream and an even smaller scoop of chocolate ganache ( or Chocolate Summer Heaven as the menu would have it ) costs £24.
Clever crows :https://www.audubon.org/magazine/apparently-magpies-and-crows-are-using-anti-bird-spikes-make-their-nests
Measles. I haven't been on this site since COVID but this caught my eye :https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/14/rfk-jr-measles-vaccine-death-claims-scientists-disagree/
We are snt a link to this as part of our pre-travel preparations :https://bowofodysseus.substack.com/p/snowfall-on-the-plum-blossom-bd3
5 comments:
Hari OM
I think the frame does Granma 'Font' great credit. YAM xx
The author of the piece on Japan manages to weave quite a bit of interesting history into his sightseeing. It makes me wonder what you will see in the different places you will visit. We lived in Tokyo, but my husband was a professor at Kyoto University, so we spent a lot of time there as well and it was to Kyoto that we escaped after the nuclear accident in 2011. In general I don't miss Japan very much, but the article made me nostalgic for Kyoto (although I do think the "young people wearing traditional garb" whom he saw in Gion in 2016 were almost certainly Chinese tourists wearing rental kimono). I hope you have seen the Shogun series. I was skeptical until one of your readers recommended it, and, indeed, it is very good, maybe not historically accurate but effective in capturing Japanese ways of thinking. I believe now is a very good time to visit Japan. The yen is cheap, of course, but I suspect it is also the calm before the storm that Trump will surely unleash upon them. From what we hear, the government still thinks it will be able to appease him. I really don't know how Japan will respond to betrayal.
Sorry, I'm taking up too much space this morning, but if you are reading in preparation for your trip to Japan, it occurred to me that you and the Font might enjoy "Samurai and Silk," written by Haru Matsukata Reischauer (Ambassador Reishauer's wife). Her family was remarkable - one grandfather was a leader of the Meiji Revolution and, later, Finance Minister, and the other was a silk merchant who was one of the first Japanese businessmen to visit and begin trade with the US. It's not very well-known, but the book is well-written and provides a unique perspective on the period when Japan began to open to the West. (My kids went to an international school founded by Haru Matsukata's sister - the administration building was the former Matsukata home, and the school also owns a retreat built on the site of the other grandfather's silk farm.)
Thanks for the heads up that service may be less than stellar, and price a bit high for my visit in May. Trump wants praise, but I think also believes no publicity is bad publicity. He seems to feed on making people angry.
Your photo of the tractor sowing the seeds has so much to see - the lines from the seed driller, the gold and brown earth tones ending at the sea blues, the green tractor dropping the seeds, the old stone wall, the sun shining on the land, the blue sky and the fluffy white clouds. It's so full of life yet so peaceful.
Post a Comment