Annapolis, MD -- Another State Capital/ol!
I'll have to count how many State Houses I've been to in the last year at some point, but I'm sure it's a lot.
The Maryland State House, built in the 1780s and the oldest still in use, is a pretty attractive building, in a nice European-looking port city that really looks more like a small town.
Maryland State HouseUnfortunately, this one wasn't much fun because it was the most tourist-oriented of all of the State Houses I've been to. It's mostly museum, and all of the offices were cordoned off.
The only people I met were the two security guards, African-American men in their early fifties who grilled me on several subjects, including the first U.S. capital city (Annapolis -- who knew?), what I did for a living, whether Judaism is a people or a religion, whether I'd been to Israel, where the Jewish people came from, and what George W. Bush's grades were like in college (they weren't Bush fans). Nice guys, if not a bit strange.
One curiosity here -- unlike in the State Houses in the South, which focused on the Civil War, this one was all about the Revolution. George Washington is the central figure, and he's depicted in many different ways. We don't know exactly what he looked like, because we have no photos, but one thing I can say is that he probably doesn't look like his image on the dollar bill. Out of all of the depictions of him here in Annapolis, the only one that looks like him is the one that was done the longest after he died. The one that's probably the closest was done in about 1830, but was based on a 1785 bust that was done of him.
Wanted to do Dover and Trenton on this trip, but I've gotta be at Mom's for Shabbos dinner at 6:30. Can't win 'em all.
Gaithersburg, MD -- Ahmadfdrfuiwerfofsdsfvrsdvgsdfjad's Blog
Cheers to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has
started a blog.
His first post, as I'm sure most of the rest of his posts will be, is an anti-American rant. A lot of it does sound fairly rational though, more than we'd give him credit for; he does feel that his anger towards the U.S. is based on a legitimate beef:
My father used to buy newspaper all the time. I remember one day, when I was in first grade, by looking through a newspaper - with the help of the adults in our house - I read the news of the capitulation passage by the shah's so called "parliament." Even though I did not understand the meaning of that issue at that time, but due to the protests and the objections of the religious schools of thoughts with the leadership of Imam Khomeini - Almighty God bless his soul - and the relentless reaction of the extinct shah, I realized that Mohammad Reza attempted to add another page to his vicious case history which was the humiliation and indignity of the Iranian people versus Americans. That was the year that the extinct shah slaughtered many followers of Imam Khomeini.Jeers to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for
keeping other Iranians from blogging (thanks,
Jewschool):
Iranian authorities are stepping up arrests and pressure on popular bloggers as part of a wider Internet clampdown launched after hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president last year, ending years of freewheeling Web access that once made Iran among the most vibrant online locales in the Middle East.
The Internet censors are busy. Their targets include sexual content, international politics, local grumbling, chat rooms and anything else that makes the Islamic leadership uneasy. Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a prominent human rights lawyer, estimates at least 50 bloggers have been detained since last year.
Albany, NY -- No, YOU'RE the Cause of the Violence in the Middle East
My sister has been dating a non-Jewish guy, as usual, and my mother doesn't approve. This led to an unbelievable phone exchange, which culminated with my sister telling my mom: "People like you are the reason why there's a conflict going on in the Middle East!"
After laughing my ass off for a minute, it occurred to me that she may have a point...
