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I Saw the Figure Five in Gold
I Saw the Figure Five in Gold This birthday week I like to recall the number of times my worst case scenario has ever actually happened. Perpetual worry is the mental equivalent of moving a pile of...
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Stand With Ricky Walsh?
Tell Me More My friend Scott Brines upbraided me over a recent post regarding candidates to succeed the ousted IAFF 7th district vice-president Ricky Walsh. He said, in part, “Bravo to Brothers Womack...
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The Bundy Bunch: Citizens for Constitutional Freedom
Rancher Welfare Ammon Bundy/NBC News The Bundy family is back, once again hiding behind a fake constitutional argument that because they raise cattle the US owes them a living by allowing free grazing....
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DCFEMS Does it Again
Cardiac Arrest News sources are reporting that once again the District of Columbia Fire and EMS Department (DCFEMS) failed to provide services after being notified of an emergency. This time, units...
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Best of 2015: Banner Year for Turnout
Thank You, Readers Thanks to all of you for having a look during 2015. The stats are amazing: 56,519 individual readers viewing 175,000 pages. Perhaps best of all, the percentage of new readers was...
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Just Don’t Bed The Young White Chicks
Mandingo Invasion LePage The state of Maine is in the thrall of a serious opiate epidemic. In a state with less population than the borough of Manhattan they are experiencing an average of five...
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Around the World in 30 Days
Sri Lanka and Thailand, Mostly I’m off to attend the wedding of a good friend in Thailand, what better place to be in the middle of winter? I’ve always had a hankering to see Sri Lanka, formerly...
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Monks and Monkeys
Anuradhapura Buddha Roughly around the time of the Roman Empire (50 BC) there was a thriving and mature Buddhist kingdom in this part of Sri Lanka. Today, the ruins of the huge monasteries are called...
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The Road to Jaffna
Sri Lanka and Civil War Sri Lanka was raked by a bloody military insurgency for about 26 years from 1983 till 2009. Sinhalese Sri Lankans in the south are primarily Buddhist and the Tamils in the north...
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Jaffna: A Port With a Fort
Early Map of Jaffna Fort Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, was on the “spice route” and therefore a likely place for Europeans to haul up in search of cinnamon, as well as the opportunity to provision ships....
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Jaffna Fire Brigade, Sort Of
Few and Far Between The Northern Province of Sri Lanka, about 3,400 square miles in area, has but a single fire station. So much for response times. Jaffna is the main city in the province with a...
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Sri Lanka: We Have Seen the Elephants
And They Are Us My guide/driver suggested a late afternoon elephant “safari” and I said, “why not.” A safari is a jeep ride of any duration over a surface loosely termed a road in search of wildlife,...
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Mind the Mines
A Legacy of War The 26-year Sri Lankan civil war ended in 2009 after bitter fighting and many suicide attacks. During the conflict both sides laid thousands of landmines mostly in the north and east of...
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Kandy, Sri Lanka Fire Brigade
Former Sri Lankan and Then British Capitol Kandy is Sri Lanka’s second largest city, located in the country’s hilly interior at an altitude of 1,600 feet. Don’t let the elevation fool you, it is still...
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A Kandy Train
Sri Lankan Railways The railway system is a vestige of British occupation dating from 1864. credit: Wiki The Brits introduced tea to the country, grown in the uplands, and the railway was needed to...
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Driving Me Mad
On the Road in Sri Lanka I’ve been to Nepal and India four times but have never travelled extensively on busy highways in this part of the world. Virtually all of Sri Lanka is two lane roads, even...
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Sri Lanka This and That
Some Parting Images While it’s time to move onto Thailand I realized I still had some images I wanted to share. A stack of brooms used to clean around the Jaya Sri Maha Bodi, the oldest human-planted...
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Some Bangkok Fire/Rescue
Bangkok Bangkok has its version of the same old story of occupation by various European powers, the French, British, etc. Today, it is a gigantic city and growing larger by the day. There are...
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Getting There: Tuk-Tuks, Trains and Boats
Part of the adventure of travel is experimenting with getting around to see how other folks do it. This trip has had a fair amount of that. When heading for the airport in Chiang Mai, the hotel staff...
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Fire and Race: “That Nigger Funeral Home”
“You Know I’m Not a Racist.” Carolina Trace News services report that a North Carolina volunteer fire chief, Todd McNeill, who also works as a career firefighter in a nearby department, was ousted this...
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