Daily Blague

Dinner over, dishes washed, at 9:45! How very nice. And then: reading on the sofa. Kathleen was drafting, and we stayed up later than I wanted to - I wanted to crawl in with Inspector Morse on the SDP2700. But I read Tom Goltz on Chechnya instead.... The problem with Chechens and Kurds, and even the Irish, when you think about it - my list is the opposite of exhaustive - is that their tribal outlook, their identification with clans, and their readiness to engage in small-scale violence - drain their resistance to nationalist oppressors (Russians, Turks, Iraqis, Brits) of lasting strength, and at the same time make it easy for the encroachers to disparage them as "primitive." It may be, however, that the grant of a monopoly on violence to some distant government doesn't suit the inhabitants of rugged, rebarbative terrains. Maybe they would not be "better off" if they adopted the manners of the urban West. It's interesting to note, too, the modern nation states' obsession with frontiers.... The map of Western Turkey that I ordered from Amazon arrived yesterday. When opened, it measures about three feet by four. How grand it would be to have an atlas of that size!....  There isn't a lot of snow on the rooftops and railings this morning, but it looks very cold and compact. If Kathleen is going to take that conference call in twenty minutes, perhaps she'd better have her breakfast first.... C'est mardi: jour de leçon. Hélas! Je n'ai rien à discuter. Et pour trois heures...