This Is Becoming a Habit...

Another late night, another late start…it’s almost a note-for-note replay of yesterday, except it’s after noon and I just poured my first cup! I take small comfort in the fact that I didn’t sleep past noon; 1130 still seems pretty danged decadent. So. A short post with today’s photo; and more to follow later.

Here’s a lil something I found last evening. Anne Applebaum in today’s WaPo… “Enough Apologies:”

Instead, Western politicians, writers, thinkers and speakers should stop apologizing -- and start uniting.

By this, I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

This needed to be said, particularly in the mainstream press. I’ve been looking, and I haven’t seen another editorial in the same tone. I’m sure they’re there, but I haven’t found it/them. The blogs, of course, are another story.

Today’s Pic: Street Scene in Prague, Czech Republic. Taken during the Great European Divorce Tour, June 1999. (I apologize for the quality; all pre-2001 pics were taken with a one mega pixel grab-shot camera.)