Europe Today: Inept, Embarrassing, Pathetic

By Eric Le Roy

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   When I was a young lad long ago in the bland, faceless, smugly prosperous America of the 1950s, I had an itch to be somewhere else. As I heard the expression put first on the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, I would indulge myself regularly in a game called “Anywhere but Here.” The Germans have a beautiful word for it: Wanderlust.

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But … Read the rest

Cossack Odyssey: Echoes Through Time

Content 6+ Lately, my curiosity about my ancestral roots has been growing stronger—a fascination that seems to blossom with age and the realization of how political decisions can shape the lives of ordinary people, often against their will.

The inklings of my family’s origins had always hinted at a land farther east than my own birthplace. It wasn’t until a DNA test confirmed this suspicion that I truly began to … Read the rest

Among School Children

Content 18 + (published as is, blog owner may have different opinion from the author; author expresses his philosophical opinion on the subject and has no intention on insulting anyone) As I was sitting around one early morning slurping down my second transfusion of coffee and draped by the still unfurled curtains of my ‘brown study’ — the birdsong of the Bulgarian village chattering away beyond my balcony — I … Read the rest

DONNY and VLAD: Post Mortems of Helsinki

Content advisory 18+ The off-the-charts hullabaloo after Helsinki (Donny and Vlad) has gotten so ridiculous that I once more feel compelled to seize my figurative pen and get to work. The problem is that the folks who most need to read what I have to say here simply won’t — because the kind of American trolls who soil cyberspace with their dim-witted posts don’t know how to absorb much beyond … Read the rest

World Cup: Great Party (but some unwanted guests)

Content advisory 18+ Although the 2018 World Cup can now be placed in the file of Yesterday’s News (and what is deader than the headlines of the day before the day before ?), it is worth a brief look back simply as a way of saying goodbye-to-all-that.

And no matter what your take on sports in general might be– and regardless of your politics — I think that only the … Read the rest