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Created
Mon, 01/05/2023 - 22:00

I took one last look at my parked F-150 and saw my I HEART ND license plate frame glinting gold in the fading daylight. It felt like a good omen.

I wondered again how I’d landed this job as a trail guide. I was just a country boy with a give-’em-hell attitude and a Bachelor of Science from Notre Dame’s top-rated School of Architecture. Sure, I’d mastered all two of the hills back in South Bend, but was I really qualified to shepherd clients up a treacherous mountain? Only time would tell.

- - -

My client, Rita, was a knockout—long brown hair, mesmerizing jade eyes, and a nose like Knute Rockne’s.

“Sorry I’m late. I was finishing some paperwork for a large donation to my alma mater,” she said, adding with a wink, “Go Fighting Irish.”

My heart skipped. We had gone to the same college.

“I’m Jake. I went there too.”

“Well then, Vita, Dulcedo, Spes,” she purred, her voice as smooth as the turf at Notre Dame Stadium.

It would be hard to keep my mind on the trail with a dame like her for company.

Created
Mon, 01/05/2023 - 21:09

On Sunday, May 4th, 1890, a demonstration was held in Hyde Park, the like of which had never been seen. It was a demonstration in favour of the Eight Hours’ Working-Day, and by far the larger part of the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were and are in favour of obtaining the Eight Hours’ Working-Day […]

Created
Mon, 01/05/2023 - 20:46
How has Costa Rica managed to restore its natural wonders, while big, rich nations fail? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 21st April 2023 One of the world’s greatest environmental heroes doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Though he has done more to protect the living planet than almost anyone alive, his name is […]
Created
Mon, 01/05/2023 - 19:50

In 1990 Michael Ignatieff, writing about Easter in the Observer, remarked that “secular societies have never succeeded in providing alternatives to religious rituals.” He pointed out that the French Revolution “may have turned subjects into citizens, may have put liberté, égalité and fraternité on the lintel of every school and put the monasteries to the sack, but apart from the Fourteenth […]

Created
Mon, 01/05/2023 - 19:48
In my previous post “It’s not a Deficit, it’s a Fiat” (which, like this post, is open access on Patreon and Substack), I showed that the so-called “Deficit” is actually government creation of “Fiat” money. If you haven’t read that post yet, read it now and come back to this one later. In that post, … Continue reading "It’s not a debt, it’s a gift"