That is great news! We are glad he got away as soon as he could! I’m quite surprised the Russian authorities didn’t bag him. Maybe he heard from the neighbors they were trying to do just that.
It’s great news that he’s not in jail and his daughters are not in a state-run Russian group home [shudder], but not great news that he’s left behind his home and his small-business auto-mechanic shop and his extended family.
I’d call it a draw!
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Ah, the dilemma of figuring out when to leave. Here in the US I sometimes think about if I would have to flee because of my criticism of our right wing government and that I’m gay. It seems ludicrous to compare the USA with a brutal dictatorship like Putin’s or Xi’s. But I’m a student of how fast Germany turned from relatively progressive Republic to murderous Nazi regime. So it’s not unprecedented. If I can’t trust my fellow Americans to wear a mask and get a vaccine, I can’t trust my fellow Americans.
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We had that dilemma post Brexit vote, didn’t take us long to decide to go.
I took even less time deciding when to leave Istanbul post attempted coup in 2016, if measured, it would likely have been nano seconds 
JF
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Bitcoin for Oloroso?
Hahaha, sure. Postage, packaging and customs duty would sadly make it not very economic to send.
However, I’m sure this lot have a store near you:
Ok, I pay €3.60 per litre, but $17 for a 70cl seems not a bad price.
JF
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I’ve had that thought a lot. First worlders in a democracy tend to be complacent and assume that sure, there are scary things going on, but that could never actually happen to us.
Yes, it could. And it’s already happening- state laws against LGBTQ, abortion, book burnings, selective history lessons, no-permit gun ownership, tough guys strutting around in camo and AK47s.
At what point do people wake up and smell the coffee? People who get out of a place when they can see what’s going down can usually get out with somewhat intact lives- selling their home, packing up their possessions and resettling somewhere else. Those who prefer to wait and see can find themselves losing everything and making a mad dash to safety with nothing but a suitcase.
A lot of Jews got themselves out of Europe before Hitler started rounding them up. They could read the room. That’s the only reason I exist- my grandparents immigrated between the first and second world wars. The families they left behind perished at Auschwitz.
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usually have a lot of resources.
They had a lot of experience since they were run out of one place, then another, persecuted, outlawed, killed, converted. For them it wasn’t a matter of something they’ve never seen before.
And I guess I repeat myself but it’s not unheard of here. Slavery, indirect genocide (natives, Africans) outlawing groups (Chinese Exclusion Act), internment (Japanese), experimentation (Blacks, mentally ill and incompetent), eugenics, massacres (natives, blacks), unjust and illegal wars, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some. So I’m under no illusions about being protected.
Luckily since I have no dependents and virtually no family I have a lot more freedom. And I’ve often said that if I can’t flee they won’t take me alive.
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We just delude ourselves that we are unassailable up here with our gate below, cliffs surroundings and tough neighbors. No one is safe, truly, but I prefer to choose no paranoia and peaceful relations with all for as long as possible.
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Luekins is on the way to the airport, so not nearby. Would this do?
Not here! But I asked my former neighbor, who works for a local wholesaler called Specialty Imports, hoping that he’ll be able to find it. They have unfortunately been out of that very nice Aurora oloroso for almost 6 months!
Just another reason I’m downsizing and moving to a boat that doesn’t require fuel to go places. 
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I have sometimes been gently laughed for the last twenty years or so because I had no desire to follow the then-current fashion of having a tattoo.
When asked why, I would say that I didn’t want any identifying marks, just in case. Maybe the people who found that amusing see it as being rather sensible now.
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I began to make some noise about having a tattoo to my mom when I was in my late 20s. She said the standard mom thing “don’t get a tattoo, you’ll regret it when you are 40.”
So I waited until I was 40 to get my first one.
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Love that, KKC.
I figure I made it pretty hard on my kids since they didn’t have much to rebel against. It’s not like they could shock me or get in trouble for smoking pot or drinking when they were underage, or making out with their boyfriend in the living room. If they’d told me they were gay, I would have said, “Okay. Thanks for sharing that. What shall we have for dinner?”
When my 14 year old came up to me one day while I was reading and said "Mom, I want to get a nose ring ", I said something a mother should never say to their daughter- it just slipped out. Without even looking up from my book, I said nonchalantly, “Why would you want to draw attention to your least attractive feature?”
(To give some context, she was always complaining about how she didn’t like her nose and was gonna get a nose job some day.)
She got the nose ring that week. Never did get a nose job.
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It’s not gone out of fashion, it’s more than a trend, it’s a very long tradition. They go back to at least 3300 BC. They found a mummified man who died about that time with tattoos, more than 50 of them and many were on his face.
That’s funny. I thought the opposite, that I’d like to be easily identified, but I’m not sure why.
My mom went with me to get my first tattoo on my 20th birthday. It’s not as cool as it sounds. The spot I chose was right on the ankle bone so it was unusually painful. And my mom kept pointing at the “No Crybabies” sign
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My first one is fairly large, it’s a lizard on my foot and the tail goes around my ankle. It strangely wasn’t that painful getting it but the healing was difficult. My foot was swollen and I couldn’t wear a normal shoe. I had to wear a sock and birkenstock or slipper. The socks kept sticking to it. I got it over xmas break but was still limping when we went back to school in January. I was asked repeatedly what I did to injure myself.
The least pleasant in terms of pain is on my back between my shoulders. It took 3 hours and when done I walked straight down to the Irish bar and had two shots of whisky with Guinness chasers.
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Major needle phobe here. You’d have to drag me kicking and screaming to get a tattoo. And I’m in no danger of ever becoming a junkie. 
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