Between Saudi Arabia And Senegal

Tomorrow as I understand it, the people of Scotland (the northern part of the island of Great Britain; the formal name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) get to vote on whether they want to continue a three-century-old union with England and Wales or get out. You would think Israel the nation-state would learn from this, give the people who call themselves Palestinians in Gaza the chance to vote to stay in Israel or get out. (And let them stay out, but I digress.) In my hemisphere we have similar issues which crop up every decade or so; the two that come to mind are Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec which made a big push for independence in the late 70s if I remember right which failed, and the United States' own Texas any time a decision's made in Washington it seems ... right now it seems public opinion on secession is down the middle. Ah, but Texans aren't voting on whether or not to leave the country tomorrow!

The methods they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has not yet come to an end.

Van Loon's The Story of Mankind again. I didn't think "common brotherhood of the twenty-first century" would make sense so I left the sentence as it's written. Politely, I would think the persecution of the people of Scotland by the English ("The trouble with Scotland is that it's full of Scots!" -- King Edward I from the movie) has gone down significantly since the age that the movie Braveheart is supposed to portray, roughly late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It all comes down to the one person, one vote system whether we will be looking at newly defined political maps come spring. Not quite how you expected me to start out, is it? Oh well, I ask that at least I not be perceived as the villain that I thought the person in the MPL parking lot smoking and parked twenty-five degrees right in a defined parking space was after I'd pulled next to her between the lines! She said she thought I came too close, so I was nice, I just moved to be many spaces far enough away!

I was nice to her, but in my mind I was boiling her in oil. I finished Peter Moore's newest young adult novel V Is For Villain (ISBN 9781423157496) last night, and what first comes across as Sky High told from a villain -- technically, "superhero" and "supervillain" are jointly held copyrights by Marvel and DC, but again I digress -- viewpoint becomes more of a tale of two brothers. The main character/narrator Brad Baron becomes the villain after the powers he has (if he has any) are just not that demonstrative or physical enough to keep pace with the student body, most of whom have no tolerance for the Regulars (normal humans) that they're supposedly training to save. Brad gets relegated to an alternate class track and starts to come under the radar of his big brother Blake, the Superman-like Artillery of the Justice Force. Perhaps Brad and his new friends in the A-class are finding out more than's good for them, and allying with the villains may be the only way ...

I got home from the office last night and after finishing off the lasagna we had started the previous night (it was big and it was filling, ok?) we caught up on the kids' spelling practice and reading time for the day. Jeffrey finished Disney's Aladdin with me and then we read through the second chapter of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which starts with that in-book book's entry on alcohol and ends with Arthur and Ford leaving the Horse and Groom. Amazing what you notice when you read the book slower, which with all the words in it new to my son I can understand. But his pronunciation is really getting better when he focuses on it. Then when he was tested on his spelling words, he got them all right! (We have the kids write out the words now as well as spell them after a Friday spelling test came back with one of the kids that was a river of red ink.) That, and picture day is tomorrow as I write this, and I know Jeffrey and Sarah and all their compadres will do great!

So are Martha and I, no matter what Scotland decides.

David