The Man Who Loved Dogs

This is toward the end of the novel. A group of disillusioned Russians are enjoying a dinner party and are a little tipsy and enjoying some self-disparaging humor about their country and government. They are telling jokes. What is the best way to hunt a lion?

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“It’s very easy: you grab a rabbit and begin to beat him and tell him you are going to kill his whole family … Until he confesses that he is actually a lion dressed as a rabbit.”

“I like seeing all of you like this,” Eitingon said. “Happy and relaxed … Perhaps you don’t know that these buildings are made of micro-concrete?”

“Micro-concrete?” Elena Feerchstein asked.

“Twenty percent microphones and the rest is concrete…”

-- “The Man Who Loved Dogs” by Leonardo Padura

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Sudden Storm

Now this is a true, hard rain. Funny thing is, it wasn’t even expected. Another funny thing, I was thinking seriously about mowing. In fact, the only reason I was able to get on top of this storm is that I was checking on the weather, and that was when I learned of a ‘red alert’. I was just able to go out and grab Sammy and get him inside in good time. Coco and Ash were already inside. As for the mowing, I will definitely have to take care of that when this dries out a bit.

Obama and War

"There is a piece of this president who comes from the point of view that the Iraq War was a big mistake and 'I am not going to be the president who leads us into another one of those,'" says a former administration official. "He had deep reservations about where action in Syria could lead."

-- Nina Burleigh at Rolling Stone Magazine

The article revisits Obama's strong reluctance to intervene militarily in Syria's civil war. The issue has been made sharply relevant in our current debates regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Republican hawks, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, have been arguing that Obama proved himself to be a weak commander in chief in Syria, and that it was this display of timidity that emboldened Putin to start walking across the map. Ms. Burleigh argues otherwise, that the president demonstrated true leadership by not being swept away by the clamor for war. Somewhat archly, she also says that people could have figured out Obama's inclinations if they listened to his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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"The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another – that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. . . . War itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such."

-- President Barack H. Obama at Oslo (2009)

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