Bill Murray's Blog, page 34
June 21, 2019
Happy Summer Solstice
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A midsummer ceremony at Stonehenge.
“The summer solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer, or 23.5 degrees north latitude. This will occur at exactly 11:54 am Eastern on Friday the 21st.”
Here is more from Vox.
Here is a live feed from Stonehenge.
June 16, 2019
New Header Image
Where you’ll find us for the next several weeks. Come see us.
Holiday
Mostly on holiday now at our little cabin on the lake in Finland. High summer here, the run-up to Juhannus next week, the main holiday of the year. Daylight round the clock and the forecast is good, not always a sure thing here.
Water temperature at 17C now, not too cold to jump in – briefly. Will be enjoying a quiet week at the lake with our new Finnish friends. The magic number this year is five – baby ducks and swans.
Collected photos from this so far two month long, slow trip around the world post here.
June 10, 2019
Optimism
Having just returned from a couple days in Russia, it’s interesting to see the headline In Russian Cities, Mock Gravestones Are Sounding Putin’s Death Knell. Add that to this, and go ahead, take a moment to be an optimist.
There are a lot of people at this protest, aimed against a proposed law allowing extradition of Hong Kong citizens to Beijing.
Protesters are filling up streets. Multiple subway exits closed down. Queue for ferry accumulates
The scale of this #NoExtraditionToChina protest is comparable to the Umbrella Revolution or the July 1 protest back in 2003 (500k protesters)
photo credit: @appledaily_hk pic.twitter.com/1ivTzk2uBj
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 9, 2019
Chinese media blamed “collusion with the West”.
June 8, 2019
Quotes: Good Government ≠ Guys, Necessarily
Photo from four minutes ago, 20:08 Finnish time:
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It’s a privilege to spend the best weather months on a lake in Finland. And there’s this:
HELSINKI — Finland’s new center-left coalition government has been sworn in, with the country’s first Social Democratic prime minister in 16 years assuming office along with a climate issue-focused Cabinet where women are in the majority.
The 19-member Cabinet of Prime Minister Antti Rinne — a former finance minister and trade union leader — was approved Thursday in the 200-seat Eduskunta legislature, after which President Sauli Niinisto appointed it.
Eleven of the Cabinet members are female, reflecting Nordic gender equality in the nation’s politics.
Dash from Finland over to Russia
A lightning-fast trip to Vyborg, Russian Karelia (Viipuri to Finns) over the last couple of days. More on the way but for now:
Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral
Newspaper for public display in the old Soviet style.
Old man in old town.
Collected photos from this slow trip around the world post here.
May 30, 2019
1900 Eclipse
Apparently, the first moving images of a total solar eclipse, from 1900. Besides the wobbly camera, it looks about like they do today.
May 29, 2019
Banner Day for British Letters
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A British Brexiteer, a man named Jacob Rees-Mogg, the MP from North East Somerset, has been known to campaign with his nanny in tow:
(“Rees-Mogg later clarified he had been driving his mother’s Mercedes Benz during canvassing – and not the Bentley that soon made him a source of public ridicule.
“The nanny bit is right,” Rees-Mogg confirmed in 2013.”)
He has written a book about his Victorian heroes. In its first week it sold 734 copies. Including the chains such as Waterstones, there are well over 1,000 bookstores in the United Kingdom.
This warms my heart, that with the publishing and promotional heft of Penguin Books, there must have been shops whose discerning readers declined to buy a single copy of the book from a politician with a voting record like this:
Photo A Day, Around the World Slowly. Helsinki
After a little more than a month in boiling Southeast Asia we’ve come north to enjoy the rare weeks when Nordic cities empty out into summer cottages and saunas around the lakes.
As we’re a few weeks ahead of the great migration to the summer cottages and saunas all along the lakeshores, we stopped in Helsinki and enjoyed a spectacular spring day in the unpredictable month of May. We’re already on our way to Lake Saimaa where a little cabin awaits us. We’ll leave you with these:
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A view back toward town from the Skywheel Helsinki, a newish waterfront attraction.
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And from the same vantage point, the Uspenski Cathedral, the largest orthodox church in Western Europe, completed in 1868.
Collected photos from this slow trip around the world post here.
