Well, let's see, Rambi. I would not fret about the rumors of an upcoming nuclear war with Russia yet. There were writings all over the web about a defector who admitted that one was being planned, but I saw it only on very conservative sites like Newsmax. I didn't see anything about it in the mainstream press. It is hard to sort out the motives of the conservative right on this issue--obviously they support a very much beefed up military. But would they make the story up? Now that I know you are one of those lucky people who does not feel compelled to read the news, I will not mention the scary stuff to you, however.
The child at my daughter's school was apprehended, and the official story is that the nasty threatening email was a test message to see if he could send a missive to another laptop on the school system, and that it was creepy but was not intended to be serious. There are only a hundred students in the school, and the teachers are confident they know all the children very well, and that it is indeed safe there. I don't really think the whole IDEA of high school is such a good one, though, and believe it is one of the factors in the shootings that needs to be seriously examined.
Ireland? It is changing so rapidly that is it hard to know whether it is a good place to move to, or not. Dublin is full of young yuppies and Silicon Bog (yes, that is what they call their high tech area) types, creating such demand that the housing prices now approach those in San Francisco. There is such a demand for workers that all the young women with babies are in the work force (they cannot afford a mortgage without two incomes), and yet the state provides no real maternal leave allowances or childcare help of any kind, unlike the other EC countries. The roads are just swamped with cars to the extent that the commute is about like ours here, and the beautiful glens south of Dublin are being destroyed in building wider roads. The Irish punt is worth about $1.50, and food costs about the same, so it is about 1.5 times more expensive there. Except for wine and eating out, both of which are extremely expensive ventures. A nice restaurant is about 20-25 punts for an entree, and almost everything is served a la carte, and you pay dearly for all the other stuff as well. Catholicism is definitely falling by the wayside, and new age stuff like aromatherapy is a big trend, as is a Celtic revival in general. In the same way that the largest growing religion in England is pagan, the Irish are casting away the old, but I wonder if the new will be satisfying. My husband believes they are losing their values.
One of the reasons we were attracted to Ireland is the slower pace of life that my husband enjoyed as a child. It is not like that anymore, and I noticed when he came back to San Francisco after our vacation that he was more relaxed about the traffic, because he had stopped comparing his everyday existence here to that of a remembered society which no longer exists. We all really loved many things about Ireland--the daffodils blooming wild everywhere, the coastline, all of the products like sodas and cough drops and and juice that are made out of black currants, the wonderful brown bread. But the light in San Francisco is just wonderful, brighter than Irish light. And we missed the huge variety of ethnic foods here, and the hills that provide such stunning vistas everywhere I go, doing mundane tasks like driving my daughter to school. Coming around a bend and seeing the ocean glistening through a forest of eucalyptus in the early evening with all the colors of pink and orange still takes my breath away. I think that if the equation were still that Ireland was a slower, more relaxed way of life, we would be cleaning out our garage and getting ready to go. But it is not, and so we are now sort of confused. My daughter loves it there, and would go tomorrow, but she really likes the countryside the best, and it would be hard to support ourselves there. We are a little old to learn all about farming or fishing for a living! Most of the jobs are in Dublin, not much EC money really trickled out into the countryside, and there is still a lot of poverty in some areas. I guess my ideal compromise would to own property in Ireland but to work here a few more years and end up there very gradually. San Francisco really stimulates me, and I might miss that (now that I appreciate it so much more than before I went on vacation). The lack of handguns there is very appealing, and there has not been even one school massacre. On the other hand, in the old country towns the streets are very narrow, and are filled with cars, trucks, pedestrians, horses and carts, and dogs all competing with each other as they go down the road. I do not know how the dogs survive--they seem much smarter than the dogs we have here. They are putting themselves right out there, and I spent much of my time holding my breath waiting for a horrendous end to at least one of them, and yet nothing happened.
Too bad about Stanford! It is a very beautiful place to go to college. The competition for good colleges has gotten so absurd that I think it must be very damaging for teenagers to go through this process. We are gently starting to look ourselves, at least doing research, but my daughter is not very competitive, and so the criteria are things like whether it snows there (she loves snow). I don't really think she is going to be ready emotionally to live away from home in three years, though, anyway, so we are not in a big hurry.
Scared and miserable, volatile emotions? Do you still own IPIC? My stocks are really down so far that it looks like up to me, or whatever! I did buy a bit of Global Crossing, though, so I am confident I will be very rich one day. So many rites of passage are happening for you, I'm sure it's going to be very hard. I cannot imagine a child actually getting in the car and going off to college--how do the parents ever stop crying? I still remember how I felt at my daughter's eighth grade graduation, when I envisioned all the spirits of childhood floating over the school and blowing away in the wind. I'm still haunted by it. I guess stuff like that makes life rich, but it is sure intense in its poignancy. |
