Greetings!
The usual disclaimers apply. This is a community open thread diary. It's being posted to the Street Prophets group but we've no membership requirements in the comments. All are welcome to join in, relax, have a cookie. You don't have to react to my blithering; it's an open thread. You can decorate the comments in your own style.
I think all
my blithering about Czech politics managed to scare off a few people last week. It's been a busy week for me so there will be some smallish photos to share and yes, a bit of an update on the Czech political situation because I just can't help myself.
Politics is the monkey on my back.
First, I hope everyone had a grand Halloween. We'll be having a little party with some of our friends and their kiddies on Sunday. Our Jack O' Lantern didn't survive long enough to join in the festivities. We got together with some friends last Sunday and carved our squash.
It was a very windy evening. Driving home was rather spooky-- there were already small branches down all over the roads.
On Monday I worked at sawing a dead branch off our largest ash tree. The tree had been struck by lightning a year ago and the top has been drying up and dying off. A large section of the bark on the trunk had been blasted off, limbs were cracked and I decided that cutting the largest limb above the damaged bark would help the tree to heal. With the dead branch gone I hoped to be able to drop the large limb into the yard and not damage the nearby barn roof. So, there I was, standing on tip-toe at the top of a 20ish foot, wooden ladder, grasping the end of an 8 foot long pole saw. It was slow work with accompanying knee wobbles.
Didn't finish cutting. Wobbly werelynxes on wobbly ladders with wobbly knees need lots of wobbly breaks-- and preferably not breaks to any internal bodily bits. I took a hoe to my asparagus patch and chopped up all the weeds. Then we had lunch to eat and more socializing to do.
Friends of ours in a town nearby that is famous for its sculpting school had invited us to join them on a walk through the Czech countryside. Most years the sculpting school hosts an international symposium of sculptors in a nearby sandstone quarry. The resulting works of art are displayed in the grand sculpture park-- which we walked through on our way to the quarry-- but I was too distracted by all the sculptures to take any photos-- until we got to the quarry where the sculptors and locals have decorated the cliff faces over the years.
Sadly, there wasn't enough in the coffers this year for the symposium. Turns out that big blocks of sandstone are expensive.
Anyway, we had a delightful walk in the crunchy oak leaves.
Well, Tuesday I managed to get that dead branch lopped off. It managed to swing clear around on its way down and brush against my hand. No damage, just an extra adrenaline rush. Once it was cut into firewood and cleared away I got back up a somewhat shorter ladder with the chainsaw. And whether by skill or luck I managed to drop that big limb precisely where I wanted it. Didn't bend a branch on the evergreen bush or smaller ash tree under it and proved that if I'd left the dead branch up it would've done some damage to the roof of the barn on the way down. After some of the rough log cutting was done the rest of the family came out to help chop up the smaller stuff. By the time there was only the main log left I'd had enough.
Dinner that night was creamy garlic soup and Czech bramborák a potato pancake packed with garlic and marjoram.
Oof, the atmosphere was pretty thick that night.
Wednesday I cut the log into firewood length sections and splitting green ash is so easy that I actually lost the job to my teenage lads.
Thursday I drove those same lads across town to visit their dentist for a perfect check-up. #1 Son then left for school and #2 Son and I drove over to the family grave plot for a bit of autumnal cleaning and decorating. #2 Son had the whole week off from school so he was drug around on the errands that day. This weekend the graveyards in the Czech Republic will be well visited by folks caring for the family plots. It's an interesting bit of tradition that I didn't grow up with. My grandparents lived near enough old family graves to visit, tend and decorate them. I was separated by distance from those rituals.
Today I mostly spent working on a website design. As a self-employed artist and designer it's a constant struggle to get my work noticed. People in the advertising business, where I do much of my work, seem to have the memory limitations of flatworms. They always seem amazed to learn that I'm still alive. But I posted a well-received batch of pictures to my most recent online portfolio site on Thursday. It's been entertaining to watch the "views" and (paltry few) "appreciations" accumulate; a slow trickle but much more action than anything I'd posted before. I drop a link to whatever I post there in the main Facebook group for advertising professionals in this part of Europe. A couple of "likes" and a lone comment offering praise but it seems to have been noticed. Someone even requested my price list for storyboarding services so I feel like I've managed a bit of proper self-promotion this week.
And I'm keeping half an eye on the post-election circus in the Czech Republic. So much ugly politics it makes an old political junkie like me absolutely giddy. President Zeman's old party ČSSD had a slim win. Their current party leader crossed sabres with Zeman back in 2003 and a few old friends of Zeman still in ČSSD got together after a meeting with the President himself to demand that Sobotka resign as party leader over the poor showing of ČSSD. Hilarity ensues. The party is now split into factions. Their hopes of pulling together a parliamentary majority coalition fade as the whole party becomes political poison. And Zeman, who had lent his name and face to a new political party that garnered a mere 1.5% of the vote, is finding his role in the mess is managing to drag popular opinion of him even further down. Word is that unless ČSSD cleans house of these bothersome Zeman supporters quickly the party may be too damaged to remain a leading force in Czech politics.
Remind you of anybody in the United States?