My first holiday in years and it can’t come soon enough. Finally I’ll be living my dream of being there. I can almost taste it now and can hear the wind howling. So come back for what I hope will be some daily blogging. If I can find my GPS receiver I’ll take that too but not to find my way around, but to track where I’ve been.
See ya’ll on the flip side!
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Well I’m still pining for the fjords. This coming Thursday the 13th I’ll be jetting over to soak my weary bones in some geothermal waters. I need the fresh air and drinkable water. Fresh fish and wind blown glaciers. More sheep than people. Organic hot dogs.
And thanks to my trixbox PBX back home and free WiFI in Niceland I can call home as if I was still there. I’ll even try a video call. And of course some blogging is in order. But I won’t be blogging while soaking in a steaming hot pool under the freezing sky.
See ya’ll then.
Still pining
Plenty has been writen about the global financial crisis and plenty is being written about an early casualty of that crisis, Iceland. All my people that hate to hear me gush about Iceland and who know very little about it are now reminding me that Iceland is in trouble. Almost as if to give me the proverbial ‘I told you so’. Most people have no clue where Iceland is much less what this crisis means to them or anyone else. Some actually have a financial clue.
But I was thinking…. The world has been investing in the wrong thing. We’ve invested in money. It doesn’t matter if it was real estate, stocks for this commodity or that pension fund; the only concern was value and what it would bring in the shortest time. We only wanted the money. The name of the investment was unimportant. We have no motivation to do what is beneficial or useful, only in how much money it represented, real or more often imagined and inflated. Last man in is the looser.
It is time to invest in things that matter. Things that bring true prosperity and a better future. The money will follow. So for Iceland I would now invest in a lot more greenhouses. And as many things that will sustain a population and be sustainable for the next generation. That idea has worked very well it seems for the Icelandic energy sector now that electricity and heat are a cheap and plentiful commodity. That didn’t happen overnight but you are way ahead of the rest of us on that. Do it again.
Bailouts and protection rackets only serve to perpetuate the same mistakes and thoughtless short term choices. The bubble has burst. The western model that only works with perpetual growth and over consumption isn’t sustainable and certainly not kind to mother earth.
