It’s been a pretty eventful week, and I’m not just talking about world events this time.
Saddam’s birthday was Monday, April 28 – who knows where he was to celebrate it. One fellow suggested Saddam, Osama and Mullah Omar were holed up in a cave together over a cupcake with a single candle. Happy friggin birthday, dood.
April 29 marked Holocaust Remembrance Day – I still clearly remember us making a trip to DC while in college to see the Holocaust museum a year or so after its opening and being unable to get inside since it was Holocaust Remembrance Day – the lines were around the block. Still, wandering around the Tidal Basin with the cherry blossoms coating the ground like a pink petaled carpet wasn’t a bad way to spend the day.
Yesterday, April 30, was the 200th Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. With the stroke of a pen the size of the United States was doubled and we gained free navigation of the Mississippi as well as ownership of the entire interior of the continent. Not a half bad deal for sixteen million dollars.
And today is May Day, which used to be a hell of a big deal in the Soviet Empire just like Saddam’s birthday used to be a hell of a big deal in Iraq. All in all the past four days are a wonderful contrast – three days to remember the discarded ideologies and catastrophes of the past and one day to recall the great promise of the future.
So much for waxing poetic. I now return you to your regularly scheduled drooling.