Bill Murray's Blog, page 100

Yikes! Just Driving Along and…

It’s the Army Training Estate, Salisbury Plain, England.

Weather That’s Bigger Than You

As noted two years ago, on 3 July, 2014: For a few years the hurricane season never turned up. A tropical depression far out west of Cape Verde, a storm drenching Guatemala or Cancun in the Gulf basin, but nothing here in America.

This year, as Americans repaired to their Independence Day barbecue grills, a crazy early storm formed off Florida’s east coast. Only North Carolina and its outer banks are evacuated so besides overwrought news TV, most of the country remains sanguine.

Here in our mountains the effects are profound and lovely.

Once in a while there is a hurricane nearby but not close enough to storm on us. Its signal effect is to draw all the moisture out of the air and toward the storm, leaving us, a thousand miles west of the storm, with tree-ruffling breezes and shiny, concentrated, brilliant skies.

Our beautiful mountains.

Trees sway and sweep up with the breeze so patches of the hillside turn pale with the lighter green of the leaves’ undersides. The smile of a moon darts between clouds along with planes too far up in the sky to hear. We watch as they cross in front of us so they can land pointing east in Atlanta, two and a half hours away by road.

If we want to stay outside past dark tonight, Thursday, July 3rd, we’ll need long pants and footwear against the chill. This is why we love our mountains. On July 3rd, way down south in Georgia.

Chilly June in Northern Newfoundland, Canada

This is how it looks in summer on Quirpon Island, off the northern tip of Newfoundland in the Strait of Belle Isle that separates Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The north wind blows icebergs down from Greenland, like the one in the background, in a trip that lasts two years, and that wind will rip right through you.

Gullfoss, Iceland

Continuing with photos most days from a June trip to maritime Canada, St. Pierre et Miquelon, Iceland and England, here is Gullfoss, Gold Falls, in Iceland. For scale check out the people on the rock, center.

St. Pierre Harbor HDR

I’ll be posting a new photo most days for the next month or so from our June trip to maritime Canada, the French overseas territory of St. Pierre et Miquelon, Iceland and England. We start with the tiny harbor on tiny St. Pierre island, just off the southern tip of Newfoundland.

Upper Lips Stiff as Ever

On the streets of London today, sang froid prevails at the prospect of the coming end of the EU in the UK, to borrow an EU partner’s phrase. Aside, that is, from the media scrum outside number 10.

Brexit Shock in London on the Morning After

Friends and others I talked with here felt gently optimistic about the prospects for Remain this time yesterday. Even as British TV coverage started up at 10:00 last night, BBC1 entered the fray with a wink and a nudge, ‘we think we’ve got this remain thing in the bag’ kind of undertone.

The Brexit vote saw the highest UK-wide turnout of the past two decades and the people we know told us just about all their friends and most of the people they know favored Remain, convincing them that the Leave camp was, as was the popular view, made up mostly of older people who remembered a ‘good old days’ that never existed.

The solid Leave result reinforces a couple of ideas.

First, it adds weight to the emerging consensus that in today’s atomized, web-driven information seeking, we really do get information that tends to reinforce our beliefs. It was obvious to my entire cadre that the only correct-thinking way to vote was Remain, but we only turned up with 48 per cent of the vote.

Second, this is a real and tenacious revolution against the establishment that may well spread across west. Just yesterday we were joking that with a leave vote the U.K. could have the honor of kicking off Donald Tusk’s ‘end of western civilization,’ which could then be followed by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen in France, the end of the EU and shortly after surely the apocalypse. Yesterday, that was a joke.

Will the EU or the UK be the first to pull apart? As to the UK, politicians were staking out their positions before the last votes were counted. Here is Nicola Sturgeon on the Scottish vote: “Scotland has delivered a strong, unequivocal vote to remain in the EU, and I welcome that endorsement of our European status.”

And from Wales, Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood: “With Scotland voting to remain and a second independence referendum now on the cards, it is clear that the UK cannot continue in its current form. Wales, its economy and its communities will soon be at the full mercy of the Westminster elite and robust action must be taken to mitigate the impact of this.”

The centrifuge spins within the parties too. Labour’s leader is widely derided and it was the Tories’ slow motion disintegration kicked the whole thing off in the first place. The Prime Minister has resigned, not so much the honorable choice as the only one after driving the bus over the cliff. 

It’s the 10:00 hour on the morning after and London has awoken to market shock, reassurances from the central bank and, as from one of my friends, “I despair! I really fear for the future of my children and their generation.”

Let’s hold that thought for now. I’m going to wander down to Westminster and see what I can see.

Whale!

Outstanding moment. Minke whale very close to shore, among first of the season at northern tip of  Newfoundland. On your map, find Quirpon Island.

Photo Tour of Saint-Pierre, France d’Outre Mer

St. Pierre is a French territory near Newfoundland, Canada. Here are several relatively low-res photos from a short visit. Will post higher quality photos later on EarthPhotos.com.

“Salines,” old cod drying and salting sheds, now for boat storage.

The 1971 wreck of the Transpacific on the Ile aux Marins, “Fishermen’s Island,” yielded looting of “hundreds of lawn mowers, juke boxes, engines, food, beverage… and part of the ship’s equipment : tableware, furniture, compass, wheel and bell.”

France outre mer, France overseas.

Ils aux Marins. That’s Newfoundland in the distance.

Working on a summer house on Ile aux Marins.

Wind beaten architecture, Saint-Pierre.

Panorama from above Saint-Pierre.

Rooftops, Saint-Pierre.

Tiny little Saint-Pierre harbour. HDR.

Flying in the mail, Air St. Pierre flight from Halifax.

Buoys.

Saint-Pierre lighthouse.

Above Saint-Pierre.

France Télévisions / Saint-Pierre et Miquelon 1ère studio. Merci to our great host, journalist Frederic Dotte.

Show Biz St. Pierre

France Télévisions / Saint-Pierre et Miquelon 1ère studio. Merci to our great host today Fred Dotte.