Howard’s Blog

I hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Year – I did
Now I’m ever so slightly sunburned, and jet lagged… I took a few pics…. here they are …

Bolivia is a wonderful place, with wonderful people… and now I can say I’ve chewed coca leaves and eaten BBQ’d cow intestines
I will be back.. no question..

yes they can.

haven’t posted in a long while – I’ve been keeping busy with flag-football and…
learning Italian

I know, it’s tomorrow…but I’m not going to post tomorrow, so there.
To me, St. Patrick personifies religion – he is given credit for having drivin all of the snakes out of Ireland, when in fact there never were any snakes in Ireland(at least not after the glaciers)…this makes me a candidate for sainthood…having driven all of the blue whales out of Austria…and if my middle name wasn’t Patrick I’m sure I would have been granted sainthood by now…that damned Irish bastard stole the show…(My mother’s an O’Toole, for those that think I may be anti-Irish)
anyway…have a good one, and drink a Guiness – it’s good for you.

One of my all-time favorite traditional Irish songs:

Kent is an incredible group from Sweden – here’s one of my favorite tunes from their English CD – Isola
747

10 years ago today one of Austria’s all-time great musicians died. An incredible talent.
Falco.

Spent last weekend in Graz, and managed to take a few pics before the hurricane came…and they’re here

Well it’s the 19 of December, and I doubt if I’ll get a post in before Christmas, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish everyone a Frohe Weihnachten, Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noël, or whatever name you may use to describe the Winter Solstice.
Sometimes I wonder what a celebration it must have been in the times when short, cold, dark days brought death and starvation, and the day after the shortest brought promise. Hardly surprising that the solstice has been celebrated by just about every northern culture for thousands and thousands of years.
For those of you who have won in 2007, share the success. To those who have lost, take heart in the knowledge that for every day that the burden doesn’t crush you, it strengthens you.
Thanks to everyone who made my 2007 full.
Howard

The amazing Rye has added meteorologist to his already fairly lengthy, and multi-faceted list of expertise – and warns of a nor’easter nor’easter approaching the hallowed ground of the east coast on the weekend.

I just post the video.

This entry is due in no small part to contributing editor, chief international correspondent, and water rat extraordinaire Ryan, who was kind enough to remember me of the events on December 6, 1917, when a French cargo ship, fully loaded with explosives, collided with a Norwegian ship in the Halifax harbour , and the resulting explosion killed about 2000 people, and injured another 9000. The entire story can be found here, and although there were almost certainly heroes to go around on that day, for me the most poignant story is the story of Vince Coleman, a Railway Dispatcher in Halifax. He and a co-worker had already heard about the burning ship and were on there way to safety when Coleman remembered that a passenger train was due in the station, went back to the station to send an urgent telegraph message:
“ Stop trains. Munitions ship on fire. Approaching Pier 6. Goodbye. ”
He saved the lives of at least 300 people that day, and payed for it with his own.
The next day, with thousands of people wounded and/or homeless, Halifax received 40 cm of snow.

And since we’re on the subject of Nova Scotia, here is a song from a Nova Scotian about Nova Scotia