Problem With No Ending...

Vashingtonoo nenravitsa politka Mosvkee, ee Moskvyeh nenravitsa politika Vashingtona. Fsyegda boodyet tak.

Funny Moments In Tallinn #457

..continuing a theme started on my facebook page, I think it's better tucked away here since not all of my FB friends even know where/what Tallinn is..

Upon going into the local Comarket, a very salubrious and high end food emporium, grocer and provider of requisites here, I saw an oldish man checking out those (usually minging) salads you get in plastic tubs. You know the type (the man I mean) woolly hat, dirt-ingrained hands, and the kind of complexion that can only arise from many, many rivers of vodka having coursed through the system down the years.

Anyway, upon understandably deciding the salad (or whatever it was) wasn't for him, he actually put it down, but at the same time gave that kind of dismissive wave of the hand, tub of salad-wards, that men of that generation do when indicating that as per usual they couldn't give a fuck of the winged variety when they've just nearly mown a pedestrian down on a zebra crossing.. But I mean it's not a sentient being, it's a tub of salad!! I'm not sure I didn't hear a disdainful grunt at the same time!!  The salad said nothing...

Funny Moments In Tallinn # 243

..continuing a theme which I began on my facebook page..

The Reformierakond  party 2011 Calendar, detailed with cartoons for each month, with the theme of various old women in the country, wearing headscarves. Nothing out of the ordinary there you might say but one or two of the months really did stand out, in particular:

- Flatulent cows, with the old women collecting the bi-product in bags (August).
- Kids running naked, fucking in the bushes (May).
- Old women taking a mud bath (April).
- Slightly un-PC on subathing on the beach and picking up a chocolate complexion, and thus needing to eat lots of bananas (July of course).

Just trying to imagine one of the main UK parties having such motifs on their calendars, rather than the soft focus pics of party leaders meeting old people and children, or whatever other rubbish they have. But I can't.

...oh, I forgot the funniest entry, February depicts the snow almost melted!

Busy-ness ≠ Business - Seth's Blog

Great post from my big brother, and I have to say offering a certain degree of reassurance; that feeling of sanctimoniousness that seems to arise when one is busy (especially in feeling superior to those who are lazing around) is in fact misplaced, and has little or no bearing on productivity. This had occured to me before, but this gives it at least some degree of veritas..

If You Thought Khruschev's Shoe Banging Was Crude, Wait Till You Hear Lyndon Johnson's Sartorial Requirements...

If we can enjoy listening to conversations like this then the Soviets no doubt were doing so at the time, in which case I think they could be forgiven for thinking that they were winning the cold war..

On This Day 342 Years Ago..

...London diarist..

Wednesday 12th December, 1668

 I hear this day that there is fallen down a new house not quite finished in Lumbard-Street, and that there have been several so, they making use of bad mortar and bricks; but no hurt yet, as God hath ordered it. This day was brought home my pair of black coach-horses the first I ever was master of, a fine pair.

...it's snakes and ladders then!

Inflation Rate Is Above The Maastricht Criteria - Adopt The Euro Before Anyone Notices!

Just in time for joining the Euro zone, at arguably the worst time ever to have joined (I personally trust that things will be fine in the end, however) Estonia has an inflation rate somewhat in excess of that which was required by the Maastricht criteria for membership.

The current rate is 4.5% - joining the Euro in itself is an inflationary pressure, as people will be rounding up prices rather than charging 27 Euros and 49.5 Cents for things, and there has certainly been something of a rise in activity in the real estate market, though again this is probably trying to get in ahead of the Euro adoption. Compare this with the Maastricht criteria of 3 point something per cent.

This must grate in Lithuania in particular, rejected a few years ago, ostensibly for having a rate that was a couple of fractions of a per cent higher than it should have been or something miniscule (in fact there may have been more to the story - maybe being a part of the 'new' Europe that had backed the 'wrong' side during the 2003 Iraq invasion and needing bringing to heel).

Nevertheless we're in, or nearly in, the Euro, and in these days of turmoil I don't think a 4.5 per cent rate of inflation is anything to be reprimanded for; I am sure that many of the other countries missed some of the criteria in one way or another.

Furthermore, a little inflation can be a good thing (remember it was running at nearly 12 per cent in Estonia in 2008!), for instance as a sign of recovery.

There's a little discussion on this, more or less saying the same thing, on Edward Hugh's Facebook page which I won't post a link to, you can go and find it yourself if you're interested, but in any event here's a chart (which is from the Eurostat site) charting inflation in Estonia over recent years...

Thoughts For The Day No. 48 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Imagination rules the world.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

Albert Einstein

Imagination Imagination Imagination! Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imaginatiooooooooooon! 

Song from 'South Park', season 11, episode 10.

Another Crap Lesson - Tim Flowers

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others. He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the glitterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night. He likes beer.

..well that was a wasted lesson I have to say. Amongst the top 10 (or so) wasted lessons I've ever taught. They just simply weren't getting it. I hardly got a chance to get any reading in, only about 25 pages of the Social Contract by Rousseau which I've been holding up in the trolleybus so people can see the cover these past days, and the thickos already started having problems with dependent prepoisitions. You'd have thought that by elementary level that would have sunk in by now, particularly as I gave a 25 minute explanation on the topic, and was even good enough to intersperse this with my views on the US political landscape, all for nothing.

Since the previous lesson, when I just decided to rest my eyes for a couple of minutes whilst said group were working through a badly photocopied set of exercises I'd taken from a book I randomly grabbed 5 minutes before the class, I'm sure they have all decided to be dead set against me. It's because they're evil capitalists, I can see it now. One of them, some 20 something blonde whose daddy works in a bank or something unforgiveable like that, had the gall to suggest I was anything other than a resounding success for renting at an overpriced rate off of an old lady in Kopli. What does she know? I remember watching the Tiananmen square massacre (on a black and white TV in a bedsit in Lewisham) probably a bit before some of these people were born.

Then when we went into my special quick fire period of asking questions, somebody didn't laugh at my witticism about Stalin sounding a bit like 'starling'. And to cap it off, somebody's mobile went off despite the fact that I vaguely gestured towards the 'switch mobiles off' sign, three months ago at the beginning of the course.

Now I hear one of them is off to Thailand. I'm sure they won't give it the respect it's due, merely coming back with talk of temples and lady boys instead of the real Thailand, that I saw, on the inside of a police cell having had the strength of character to have got drunk on Guiness.

Oh well, it's nearly the Christmas break soon, when I won't have to interrupt my day of sitting on wikipedia and facebook and cutting out bits of paper to attend to these sheep. Happy days are coming.

The Economist On Estonia

Estonia has made it on to the home page of the Economist no less, albeit in an obscure way (they could just as easily have made it a Latvian/Lithuanian/Finnish/Russian exchange student) and not particularly flattering either, but we take everything we can in this part of the world!

Don't Be Too Quiet - The Pete Best Story

Something that's occured to me a lot living here is that, whilst there is a lot to be said for modesty and reserve in all things (and am I missing London gob-shitedness?, er no, not one little bit!) it can be eminently possible to go too far the other way, in other words to miss out on what is rightfully yours and let some other, lesser person take it instead. Indeed there are foreign nationals here in Tallinn who have cut out little niches for themselves doing just that, exploiting the local taciturnity and finding a way to be a middling sized fish in a puddle. Can't say I blame them.

But for a real life example of how keeping one's mouth shut can get one, if not into trouble, then away from success, you could do worse than to look at the Beatles' original drummer, Pete Best. As this TV spot shows, some sort of 'what's my job' panel game in the States, he was even prepared to be flown halfway across the globe to speak in monosyllables, and 20 years later it was no better, as this pitiful early (I presume) Letterman interview demonstrates. True to his local roots, Pete looks more like he'd be more at home playing football at Anfield rather than the drums at Shea Stadium.

Now, there is a valid argument held by many that it was in fact Pete's drumming style, or lack of it, which kept him out of the group, and a quick listen to parts of the notorious Decca audition can confirm this, even to someone like myself, who thinks of the drums as a kind of asylum for failed musicians. However, there is such a thing as practice, it was a pop group not a modern jazz quartet, if he'd really wanted to nail it, he could have. No, he just didn't say anything interesting - even Ringo managed to do that.

I don't feel sorry for Pete; he brought it all on himself and no doubt has managed to make a reasonable living on the 'I used to be in the Beatles you know' circuit. But as a salutary lesson in under-fulfilling one's potential I think there are few paralells, in the public eye anyway.

By the way I'm not for a moment saying that Ringo shouldn't have been the drummer for the band, he absolutely should, but ultimately benefitted from someone else's misplaced meekness. They shall not inherit the earth..

Thought For The Day No. 47 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than excellent work.

Thomas Watson, founder of IBM

The Real Asian Tiger

Excellent and thoroughly convincing article on the Seeking Alpha news site...

...if you thought China was, if not the snake (or dragon) in the grass at least the heir apparent to the world no. 1 spot, then think again, Ed Dolan, the contributor argues.

It was India all along. The primary reason in short is demographics. Whereas the fully 'developed' countries such as the US and Japan have a high dependency ratio (i.e. a large number of non-working people who depend on the working population) due to their ageing populations, and the developing countries also have a high dependency ration, but at the other end of the age spectrum (i.e. a large number of children) India is in the 'goldilocks' period in between, and enjoys a lower dependency ratio. I haven't fathomed out yet why ths period is named after the famous children's nursery story, but in any event this is crucial, Dolan argues, to becoming a major economy in the new, G20 world. China on the other hand is already leaving this goldilocks period to join the ranks of the ageing population countries.

Large populations aren't always a good thing of course, they need to be managed properly, but then again neither are rapid changes in fertility rates and here India scores highly over its northern/eastern neighbour again, since China's drop in fertility rate was very rapid (in no small part due to the famous one child policy introduced in the 1970s) whereas India's was much more gradual, and it still has a higher rate than China. Thus the demographic chart is likely to look a lot smoother in India's case.

There are other factors too of course - India is a democracy, more or less, China is not. The fact that English is widely spoken there (as opposed to Engrish) presumably also holds in its favour and, yes, I'm afraid I'm going to have to say it now, as an ex-pat (never would have dreamt of such a thing when I was at home) India was under British rule, whereas only one small part of China (er,...the best part) was, for any length of time anyway.

Don't take my word for it, check out the article here.

Thought ForThe Day No. 46 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

It has been usual for men to think and to say, "Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor." Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment, and to say, "One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves." The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor. A perfect Love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither. A perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed.

He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.

A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.

Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. He may not, in order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness, by any means; but a portion of it must, at least, be sacrificed. A man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically. He could not find and develop his latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. Not having commenced manfully to control his thoughts, he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. He is not fit to act independently and stand alone, but he is limited only by the thoughts which he chooses.

There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice. A man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self reliance. And the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly, upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success, the more blessed an enduring will be his achievements.

James Allen

Thought For The Day No. 45 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychiatrist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Do not search for pleasures; rather, be prepared to find pleasure in all that you do.

John Ruskin

Separated At Birth Part 2...

..inquiring minds want to know

.... Father Ted Crilly (below, right), sometime padre of Craggy Island
parochial house and Radovan Karadzic (above, left), Bosnian Serb mass murderer...

...P.S. part one was only available to those of you who have the dubious honour of being Facebook buddies with me!!...

Big Train

...a very funny sketch show from the UK from about, ooh, more than 10 years ago I think; still very funny in places...

A New Take On Laziness - Seth's Blog..

...Seth Godin's little brother Sethie Godiney writes..

Great post about laziness...time was when it simply meant shirking physical duties, which meant that it was fairly obvious who was being lazy and when, much to the chagrin and disgust of those who had their noses to the grindstone. However, since most of us don't work in the fields any more, the new way of being lazy is very different and not so much of a no-brainer. It consists of 'emotional laziness' - that is, being too lazy to make that cold call (or any type of call), to disagree with someone superior to you or to innovate. The good news is you don't need to get sweating to rectify the situation if you fall into it..

On This Day 350 Years Ago..

...London diarist..

Monday, 5th November 1660...

At the office at night, to make up an account of what the debts of nineteen of the twenty-five ships that should have been paid off, is increased since the adjournment of the Parliament, they being to sit again to-morrow. This 5th day of November is observed exceeding well in the City; and at night great bonfires and fireworks.

...evidently the ghastly and triumphalist tradition had already set in a little over 50 years after the events...

History Of Estonia 101: Part Eight

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

..the previous part is here..

Of poets, writers and youngsters..

As we have seen, Tsarist rule did bring about some positive changes (or rather some positive changes happened to take place under Tsarist rule at any rate) and the 'Tsar Liberator' for Estonia was not Alexander II as was the case in Russia itself, but Alexander I, since the peasantry were freed from bondage to the land under his rule, in 1816 in the case of Southern Estonia, i.e. the Livonian part. North Estonia, roughly corresponding to the old Danish Estonia, had to wait another three years to enjoy the same emancipation.

Whither the 'Estonian' Estonians now, in relation to the Baltic German nobility, now under Russian rule but who certainly hadn't gone away? Whilst many of the latter no doubt regarded their future as simply being a fusion with the teutonic part of the country, a development which no doubt did take place at least partly in any case, there was an intriguing group of people known as the 'Estophiles' emerging at around this time. No doubt a small part of the romanticism sweeping Europe at the time, as their name suggests, these people felt drawn to all things Estonian, particularly the country's distant past and its accompanying folklore, and followed in the wake of ideas propagated by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder of nation and culture (don't forget that Germany itself wasn't a single, cohesive nation yet in the way that Britain and France were, either). These people were Germans, but Estonia/Livonia was their home. An important home-grown Baltic German was Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850) who, as a Livonian, had as much, or more, influence on the concomitant Latvian national awakening as the Estonian one.

The single most important development in this period may well be the compilation of the Kalevipoeg, the epic poem taken to be the country's principal repository of national folk identity in the same way the Kalevala is for the country's northern neighbour, which was gradually compiled over time, started by  Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798-1850), and completed by another Friedrich, Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882). Despite their Germanic sounding names, both men were Estonian to their boots. The initial version of the epic was completed in 1853 but due to censorship in Tsarist Russia could not immediately be published; it was later published in full, serialised, between 1857 and 1861 by the Learned Estonian Society at Tartu. Later a slightly abridged version, which became the 'popular' version of the poem, was published at Kuopio in Finland, itself part of the Russian Empire at the time. This was published jointly in Estonian and German.

The floodgates of the move towards nationhood were well and truly opened by this stage, with such luminaries as the barely-out-of-short-trousers Kristjan Jaak Petersen (1801-1822), Carl Robert Jakobsen (1841-1882), Jakob Hurt (1839-1907) and Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819-1890) all blazing the trail. The latter was in fact the father of perhaps the best-known Estonian poet, Lydia Emilie Florentine Jannsen (1843-1886), known popularly by her nom de plume of Lydia Koidula, a surname deriving from the Estonian word for 'dawn'. Jannsen senior penned the words of the modern day national anthem and junior, the words to the unofficial national anthem, 'mu isamaa on minu arm' ('my country is my love' - sounds much better in the original language). We are into the era of the people who grace the bank note denominations of the Estonian Kroon (though not for much longer).

Finally one of the signature events of Estonian-ness, the 'Laulupidu' ('song festival'), belongs to our period, the first one having taken place at Tartu in the summer of 1869, a tradition which has continued down to the present day.


So much for the writing and singing, but what did the Estonian Englightenment Period/National Awakening, call it what you will, actually tangibly achieve? Notwithstanding censorships and the like, the attitude towards the occupying nation was for the most part much more positive than was later to be the case, and unsurprisingly so. One of the highest rates of literacy within the Russian Empire (for what that's worth) a growth in and industrialization of the strategically-placed capital, Tallinn, and that ever-present herald of burgeoning nationalism the world over, the appearance of the first regular daily newspaper in the vernacular, Postimees ('postman') meant that Estonia seemed a relatively progressive and pleasant part of an albeit decaying and autocratic empire.  To what extent this was cause, and to what extent symptom, of the beginnings of the modern day nation state is debatable. However it became clear that Estonia's future did not lie with the Germanic component of its populace - even many of the Germans realised that - and working within the Tsarist system, for example in 1881 in requesting the establishment of a Zemstvo, a type of local government which facilitated an equal footing for national minorities within the Empire, seemed the best bet.

However all was not wine and roses; under the third and last Tsar to be called Alexander, the odd one out in being reactionary and repressive (even Russians in St Petersburg referred to him as an 'idiot' albeit tacitly) a period of intense Russification took place, including in areas such as Finland which had enjoyed huge advances in its status under the previous Alexander. Estonia was to suffer in the same way. But of course, once you've built a well for somebody, blocking it up again is never going to solve anything...

From top, and in descending order of value, Carl Robert Jakobsen, Lydia Koidula and Jakob Hurt (500, 100 and a measly 10 EEK each).

Thought For The Day No. 44 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Today I am more convinced then ever that what each of us really wants, deep down, is more life. Happiness, success, peace of mind, or whatever your own conception of supreme good may be, is experienced in its essence as more life. When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life. And to the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our God-given talents and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self condemnation and self-hate, we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our back upon the gift which our creator has made. To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.

Maxwell Maltz

60 Years Of The PMC: A New Contributor

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s). 

January 1982 saw the arrival of a new contributor to the PMC. Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as he immediately became known, was a budding motoring journalist who had risen from the humble beginnings of Stowe public school and an old Austin Healey Sprite that his stockbroker father had bought him for his twelfth birthday, to become motoring correspondent here. He also worked for Motorsport magazine, and in fact was known for  merely scaling down his offerings there somewhat and simply posting them here.. as if any serious journalist would do such a thing. 
An early excerpt from his work, the then-never-popular 'BFK's week', shows us that the young BFK was no slouch when  it came to painting a vivid picture of his glamorous lifestyle without ever resorting to cliche..

First published on 1 July 1982..

Hi all - BFK here. I've just  been driving the new version of the XJS from Jaguar. It's got a lot more kick to it now, with a 5.3 V12 high efficiency engine which has squeezed out nearly a hundred more bhp than the old version, and you certainly feel it, as I did winding my way through the leafy lanes surrounding Great Missenden in my native Bucks. It was a cabriolet I was driving, and the moody looking clouds that were gathering over High Wycombe direction initially provoked a little bit of concern, before pulling over to close the automatic cloth top, which worked like a dream. Forunately I'd donned my best black roll neck Simon Templar jersey and was closing the window just as a hot looking brunette drew parallel with me, in a gold cabriolet Golf Gti. She fluttered her eyelids at me whilst I managed to half raise my eyebrow (using my finger to help). I was about to suggest coffee at a little hostelry I know nearby, before she let out a terrible estuary 'see ya, graaandad'..my goodness, it was none other than Lorraine Chase! I was tempted to give chase myself but decided to play it cool, easy enough to do when you're driving by far the smoothest thing to come out of Coventry, not that that is saying much. 
I was getting a bit peckish so pulled over in the next village to buy a Cadbury's finger of fudge and the latest issue of the 'classical composers partwork'. It was Shostakovich this time. Must remember to leave the LP and accompanying booklet on my glass coffee table, just in case Lorraine should pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. It'll make me look as sophisticated as Christopher Cazenove, almost.
I soon got stuck behind some old biddies in a Morris Minor, and it wasn't going to be easy to get round them on a single track lane in the Chilterns. I just chilled out, slapped on the latest Police album on the cassette player (which has an auto-reverse function and Dolby reduced hiss!) and let it all wash over me.
Back at the ranch, I ran a sponge-mop and some Flash over the black and white tiled hallway floor, which was designed for me by Terence Conran no less, before settling down to catch what little of Wimbledon the rain hadn't spoiled.
Plugging into my Acorn Electron and losing off a fax to New York, in which I propsed to run a few ideas up the flagpole with our American co-publishers, I felt a wave of satisfaction come over me. This is 1982 and anything is possible, especially with your truly involved, and I pushed my red rimmed specs up my nose with an air of smugness I'd seen on a recent episode of 'Triangle'.

Thought For The Day No. 43 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his/her spiritual being..[and] inner self. Whether or not he/she is actually present, whether or not he/she is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out...but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, of my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as satisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death'.

Viktor Frankl

Transparent If Slightly Misted Estonia

Notwithstanding yesterday's post about the economic situation, I read some encouraging news today, or rather figures, concerning the Transparency International figures on corruption. As posted before, corruption is one of those buzz words which we hear a lot about, but in any case I think it's good to know that Estonia is as high as 26 (out of 178) just behind France and the US and ahead of Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary and any baltic state beginning with 'L'.

Stick With The Winners On Our Side Of The Atlantic - Walt Gleeson

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Winfrey... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. Starting as a rust repairer on a sewage trawler in international waters, on one cent fifty per month, Walt soon rose to control the entire US fleet, and he never even graduated from High School. His career has spanned over half a decade, during which he has acted as advisor to such alumni as Richard Nixon, Oliver North and Mike Tyson, and he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You, My Lai Was Just a Blip and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.

Walt has just returned from a trip to Europe..

Hello all, Walt here, I'm so glad to be back in the land of the free following my trip to the old country - Europe. The whole thing was a mixed bag of experiences I have to say.
First of all, the sheer poverty of the place. It's just everywhere. From the moment I got off the plane at Helsinki Vantaa airport, I could tell I'd arrived, if not in the third world then the second and a half world at the very least, from the tiny little cars to the  puny, emaciated kids, to the safe houses for Islamists to the criminal income tax rates and 'free' healthcare.

Struggling to find a McDonalds at the airport, all I had to make do with was something called 'Hessburger', which my wife Betty pointed out to me, sounds more like 'horseburger'! So I had to make do with an inferior European burger, not for the first time. Sure, the Europeans are big on their street cafes, at least in the southern part of the country, but many of these are just one offs, they're not part of a syndicated chain nor do they have any desire to be. Losers. The ingredients are these so called 'natural' products, made by, no doubt unwashed, hands, over an unacceptably long period of time, and it was difficult to find anything which contained corn syrup.

Many of the folks just don't seem to want to smile at you or wish you a nice day, either. I was treated with great rudeness at one of the hotels I stayed in in either Germany or Ireland, I don't remember which - they're so similar, and was asked curtly to 'please fill your name and address here and the porter will take your bags to your room'. Not a meaningless platitude or toothsome soft focus smile in sight


Then we get on to the legendary European cowardice. From the French resistance museum to the memorial to the landing of the British paratroopers at Arnhem, all one big mess of retreat and counter retreat until, thankfully, we came in and single handedly restored the Europe of our forefathers (I'm of Welsh-Sorbian heritage and my wife comes from an old Icelandic-Algerian family).

Once, whilst we were announcing to the entire restaurant that we were from the USA, we encountered an example of the legendary European stinginess, ordering a 'family size' plate of authentic European buffalo wings, it came on a plate, with a knife and fork, and not a bucket and spade!

I'm not saying that Europe doesn't have its good points - it does: the antique churches, domestic animals runing free in the streets, the beautiful girls, just waiting and praying for an American GI with a poorer command of the English language than they have to come and whisk them off to Little Cliff, West Dakota, it's a place with real potential some day to produce something really valuable and long lasting instead of the motley crue of composers, philosophers, writers, inventors, scientists, musicians, actors and sportspeople they've been churning out down the years...but I know where I hang my hat, and it'll always be here...stick with the winners!

Walt.

Thought For The Day No. 42 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

'That old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind'.

Martin Luther-King

Travel Clichés

Some time ago I went on a writing course with a noted travel writer, who provided us with, amongst other things, a list of no-no clichés (see previous posts too)...

...so here are some of the most cringeworthy that you mind find in trave 'literature' - some of it might not even be directly taken from the canon of the Lonely Planet, Rough, and In Your Pocket guides and similar, but not much..

'snow-capped mountains'
'Majestic mountains'
'Lunar landscape'
'Narrow/winding cobbled streets'
'Perched on the hill/nestling in the valley'
'Like opening an oven door'
'Best kept secret'
'A land of contrasts'
'Where east meets west'
'The Athens of the North/Venice of the South'
'The real Borneo/Acapulco/Ulam Bator'
'In a time warp'
'Washed down with a glass of the local wine'

'Those wearisome adjectives of magnitude - big, great, vast, huge, tremendous, enormous, gigantic - which are nothing but emotive noises inviting the readers to do all the work. They are the plague of most travel books...'

...so there you go, I know some of our three  readers are budding travel writers and so hopefully this will have been 'food for thought' to coin another one..

New Flight Links To Tallinn

You will soon be able to get to (or escape from) Tallinn easier than ever; Ryanair are at long last hooking themselves up to the land of Kalev and, since the country is so small anyway, there is none of the usual landing at a disused world war one aerodrome a five hour journey away from the billed destination. They hope to shift 300,000 passengers per year through Tallinn airport, which will amount to a huge proportion of total throughput (for example in 2009, post downturn, a little over 1.3 million people, or rather 1.3 million passengers - some of whom could presumably be the same person travelling multiple times - went through Tallinn, curiously approximately the population of the whole country).

Thanks to the blue- and yellow-winged harp, Tallinn is going to be linked to Dublin, 'London' (acutally 'Luton aaiiirrrpawwt'), Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Milan, Stockholm and Oslo, if any of those places grab you. Services start on 14th December (Dublin) though you're too late to have grabbed any special offers celebrating the event.

As if that were not enough, Sleazyjet are also upping their connections here, flying three times a week to and  from the laughably-named John Lennon airport in Liverpool, to join the existing Stansted service.

So now there's no excuse for the olds to not come and visit me...oh hang on, they're already coming next month...

With thanks to George Francis for drawing our attention to the news, via the Tallinn Property facebook page.

Remembering George Dawes

...he's not dead, was just reminiscing about shooting stars, here, and here.

Thought For The Day No. 41 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Robert Heinlein

Can You Be Pro-Business And Still Be 'Alright'? - Seth's Blog

It's official - it's ok to be pro-business and yet not a heartless, polluting, labour-exploiting, cigar-chooing, call-girl patronizing shit, at least nowadays.

Check out this excellent post by my big brother Seth Godin. You see, paradigms have changed. Whilst minimum wages, environmental laws and the like USED to be something of a hindrance to business (when businesses were largely factory-based) this is no longer the case. This is because business needs people, first and foremost, and more to the point healthy, cooperative people, not downtrodden drones.

So unless you're in Russia or something, you can sleep easy whilst you vote for a business-friendly party (like IRL, in Estonia, for example) - they're not the enemy any more and you have an excuse to do the decent thing and chuck the Pete Seeger records at last!

History Of Estonia 101: Part Seven

Continuing from the last post...'

Of Palaces and Emancipation


So, from 1721 for sure, Estonia was a part of Peter the Great's Russian Empire, and continued to be so long after Peter. It was during this time that the Kadriorg Palace was built outside (then) Tallinn; named after his wife, Catherine I, it was not quite on the same scale as St Petersburg but employed an architect, Zemtsov, who'd been involved in the construction of the new city on the Neva. After Peter died in 1725 his wife showed little interest in visiting her summer home (which was still unfinished) and the palace we have today in fact dates from about a hundred years later, when Tsar Nicholas I ordered a drastic renovation in 1827. The palace gives its name to the surrounding district today.

Though the good old Swedish times were definitely over, many aspects of life continued as they had been. The two Duchies (Estonia and Livonia) enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy, in the same way that the Duchy of Finland to the North (a Russian acquisition after the Napoleonic wars) also did. A relatively progressive part of the empire, a trend that was to continue in the twentieth century, Estonia saw the abolition of serfdom in 1819, far earlier than in Russia proper, enabling the former peasants to own their own land or move to Tallinn or the other cities.

Nevertheless it was not all rosy. A disastrous series of crop failures in the early 1840s saw famine and epidemic (curiously almost concurrent with the Irish potato famine). Russian rule also brought a new religious denomination, Orthodoxy. There had long been orthodox people of Russian descent living in Estonia, most notably old believers descended from refugees who had refused to accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon in 1666-1667. Now native Estonians could convert to Orthodoxy following the establishment of a bishopric at Riga. In a manner which only really resonates if you know anything of the Estonian character, mass conversions started in part due to the fact that the Orthodox church taxes were lower than the Lutheran ones, and upon the (no doubt intentionally spread) rumours that converts would be rewarded lands in return. Many disappointed peasants re-converted to Lutheranism when it became clear that this benefit was not to materialize! In this respect it could be argued that there was more freedom in Estonia at the time than there was in Sweden, surprisingly enough, where it was illegal for a citizen to convert to any denomination other than the state Lutheran church until 1860.

Unfortunately for Estonia's occupying powers, however, in a pattern which was to be repeated later on in Estonia (and in many places around the world) granting greater freedoms, far from placating demands for freedom, often has the reverse effect, and leads to more and more demands...

Kadriorg Palace in winter, believe it or not.

History of Estonia 101: Part Six

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...


Part Six: End of Swedish Rule, Beginning of Russian

As seen in the previous post, Estonia came under the aegis of the Swedish empire, starting in the sixteenth century and being consolidated through the seventeenth at the high water mark of Swedish power. This was later to be viewed as something of a golden age and so was not set to last forever, as golden ages generally don't.

By 1700 some of the other European powers had had enough of this and an alliance of Russia, Denmark and Saxony attacked. The war went well for Sweden to begin with. The Danes were soon dissuaded from being a part of the squabble by their co-nordic enemies, who, together with the Dutch and British navies (the British later switched sides in this war, something to bear in mind when English people point the finger at Italy for doing the same in WW2) landed to the North of Copenhagen in August. The Danes were to reenter the war later on however. In November a Russian force besieged Narva, a town which has had far more than its fair share of destruction down the years, and this was defeated by a Swedish force somewhat smaller than it.  Incidentally Swedish hegemony extended to the east of Estonia itself, to include Ingria, a region surrounding present-day St Petersburg (which was about to be founded) where a language related to Estonian was spoken.

Charles XII, the Swedish King, turned his attention to his enemies to the south, notably Augustus the Strong who ruled over a vast territory incorporating Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, defeating him  twice, most decisvely at Fraustadt in 1706, but in so doing he left the back door open for Peter the Great (for it is he) of Russia to re-take parts of Ingria and found his eponymous polis. This was too much for Charles XII who, in a move that was eerily echoed in later invasions of Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, led and ill-fated invasion of Russia via the Ukraine, with Moscow as his ulitmate aim. A series of setbacks culminating in the famous Battle of Poltava saw the end of his ambitions in that respect, though not the end of Swedish rule just yet.

Back to Estonia, Charles XII continued to maintain a navy in the Baltic and so remained a thorn in Peter's side, leading to the latter's eventual capture of Tallinn (and Riga) in 1710. Thus for the first time in its history, Tallinn came under Russian rule and an unhappy precedent was set. The Swedes took a long time to accept their loss of Tallinn and Estonia in general, continuing to launch harrassing raids on the country, and the Russian occupation did not become a de jure matter until the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. Finland remained a Swedish possession for much, much longer, happily for them.

The first century of Russian rule did not see a radical change in the Estonian way of life, however, with the Lutheran church remaining predominant and the ruling classes remaining largely German speaking. Modern day Estonia was split, as it had been for many centuries, between the Governate (Guberniya) of Estonia and the Governate of Livonia. The latter was centred around Riga, and incorporated much of South Estonia including Tartu. The Governate of Estonia enjoyed a very illustrious roster of governors down the years, including Price Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov (1711-1719, a personal friend of Peter, also Duke of Ingria and even de facto ruler of Russia for two years during the reign of Catherine I),  Gustav Otto Douglas (1738-1740, actually a Swedish turncoat who had been captured by the Russians and was now in their service) and Peter August Friedrich von Holstein-Beck (1743-1753, two beer brands in the one name). Estonia was no doubt a prestigious acquisition for the Russians, as indeed it has been for all of its occupiers.

This rather garish map depicts Russian gains (the dark green hatching) at Sweden's expense (yellow) following the 1721 Treaty of Nystad. Interestingly enough the Russians took the north shore of lake Ladoga from Finland, as they were to do once again in WW2. The territory gained includes all of modern day Estonia, the northern part of Latvia (which together with south Estonia made up the Livonian lands) and Ingria, the region to the East of the Narva River, and bits of Karelia.

Fair one?...

Seems America is pretty polarized about the ground zero mosque saga. I know we've been critical of Islam on this blog before, but this in no way, shape or form takes on a bigoted and irrational hue (or it's not meant to anyway) but rather we think that Islam should stand up and give an account for its beliefs and precepts the same as everything else does, and not merely be dismissed in an 'all muslims are terrorists' / 'british muslims should be proud to be british and muslim' soundbite, depending on which side of the fence you are on.

So we're definitely not favouriting anything like this!!!

Thought For The Day No, 40 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.

George MacDonald

What Strangers Lurk On Facebook

Just to reassure people in the light of recent posts that I haven't completely lost it, and in the interest of balance, I'd like to relate something interesting that happened to me not long ago, at least I thought it was interesting..

As posted long ago, I'd suggested the wisdom of buying silver or, if you can afford it, gold, as a hedge against inflation, currency devaluations or general mismanagement of economies by governments that don't really know what they're doing. I still stand by that (indeed, I opened an online account at goldmoney.com, with just a relatively small amount of money, though it's a start) although I'm also prepared to stand by the fact that I don't have a crystal ball and that this movement might prove to be pie in the sky as so many other have.

Be that as it may I signed up to one or two Facebook groups of enthusiasts (who were generally much more enthusiastic than I am) of gold and silver and related issues, many of whom are based in the States. One day I got a friend invite from someone whose name was Joseph and who'd evidently thought we'd be of a like mind, and who'd tracked me down via one of those groups. Seemed like an interesting character, had been in the US military and served, by the looks of it, in Iraq. He liked the San Diego Chargers but I was prepared to forgive that.

Before I knew it, I was in for a whole load of invites, recommendations and postings which were, well, they were very political, and not really related to G& S. Things like survivalism (hiding out in the desert in a sealed impregnable box with enough supplies to last though the streams of people of colour coming out of the cities, until the latter devoured each other and it was safe to come out) and 'I support Israel's right to defend itself'.

Now, I don't know about the Israeli situation, maybe the government there is as brutal and heavy handed as they say it is, but the fact remains, I was only interested in my little gold and silver enquiries and hadn't realised I'd had to sign up to a whole agenda of other stuff ... talk about getting out of my depth.

This is something that seems to happen more and more, especially in the States, this kind of agenda-ism. It seems that, you can't think for yourself on various issues and come to your own conclusions, but rather, have to sign up for a whole smorgasbord of accompaniments that you frankly don't want. So, you think that guns are a bad thing? Well, better understand that you're also pro-abortion and same sex marriage and like to talk about how the christian religion was solely set up as an exercise in mind control. Want less government interference in certain areas? Not without an M16, paid up support for the Israeli government and irrational screaming outbursts against Canada and Europe you don't.

Why can we not pick and choose for ourselves? I realise that certain beliefs tend to go together but these hodge-podges of conflicting and contradicting shibboleths and stereotypes that are forced upon us are as obvious as a beach ball in the snow, do not help anyone, and hinder progress.

Some time later Joseph disappeared from my Fabcebook list of friends- Maybe I'd  posted something that wasn't from the same hymn sheet as he wields, said something cynical (or rather, true) about American 'friendly fire' incidents on British troops and others in Iraq or Afghanistan, or maybe he'd even found his way to this blog and read one of my, er,..Walt's posts - who knows. But in hounour of this oddest of social networking dalliances, I'd like to remind Joseph and others like him, be they right or left or centre, that there is still relative freedom of speech and availability of information in much of the western world, and for as long as there is, and as long as people keep thinking and don't just blindly swallow everything that someone with a microphone and and imposing voice feeds them, like so much candy floss, people can choose for themselves what they think on various issues, and don't have to 'join your club'. Grow up!

Remembering The Dead

..much as I dislike the hippy ideal I can always make an exception, everything is not so black and white after all...

Thought For The Day No. 39 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

When proper respect towards the dead is shown at the end and continued after they are far away, the moral force (tê) of a people has reached its highest point

Ancient Chinese, Analects.

...so the Lithuanians do have the right idea then!

History of Estonia 101: Part Five

This is part five in a series which we hadn't updated for a good couple of weeks but, since nothing much has happened here in Estonia since then, we'll continue where we left off...

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...


Part Five: of Gustavus Adolphus, Ivan the Terrible and Martin Luther

The very title of this piece indicates the nature of Estonia's bridging North, East and West, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw influence from all three directions (plus the South if you include the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth).

As seen in the previous post, the Livonian confederation, which corresponded to modern day Latvia and Estonia and was made up of a patchwork quilt of bishoprics, medieval fiefdoms and the two most northerly Hanseatic ports of Riga and Reval (Tallinn) was shaky at best. The sixteenth century saw the cracks turn into gaping holes when in the 1550s, the disintegration led to the ever-opportunistic Russia moving in to fill the power vacuum, with a military invasion under Tsar Ivan IV (yes, the terrible) in 1558. Incidentally this was the same year that Elizabeth I ascended to the throne of England. She had nothing to do with the Russian invasion. Dorpat (Tartu - which as we have seen had beeb a Russian city in its foundation) and Narva, unsurprisingly, were taken and Reval was besieged. The Reval city council, then as now never slow on the uptake, appealed to the Swedish King Eric XIV for military assistance, which he duly obliged, presumably sensing easy pickings. From an Estonian perspective it would seem that it was a case of the lesser of two evils (or even the least of several); the country's northern and linguistic neighbour, Finland, had gradually come under Swedish domination through the course of the later middle ages and in any case Sweden had become something of a regional power by now. Traces of this period can even be seen on Estonia's coat of arms, which features three blue lions on a gold background (or 'Or, three lions passant guardant azure', if you want the proper heraldic description) which of course remain the colours on the Swedish flag to this day.

After the defeat of the Russians Sweden divided the country into two, the northern part constituing the 'Duchy of Estonia' (as had been the case in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, only this time Denmark had been the colonial power until its hasty selling off of its territory to the Teutonic knights) was secured after the Battle of Wenden in 1578; the southern half 'Swedish Livonia' covered roughly the same territory as the old Livonian confedaration (ie most of Northern Latvia) though this was not secured until much later, due to another regional power, the recently formed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, having taken some Estonian lands. Many Estonians are unaware of this occupation, which was comparatively short lived, from the 1580s until Sweden's defeat of Poland-Lithuania in 1629.

Swedish rule under Gustavus II (Adolphus) saw an improvement in conditions for many people, with greater autonomy being granted to the peasantry in 1631 and the establishment of a printing press, a relatively new invention, at Tartu the following year. Not for nothing were these times (retrospectively) referred to as 'the good old Swedish times'. But they were not to last forever..

Denmark for its part did not give up without a fight this time (if you remember it had re-taken some Estonian territory in the form of the Bisopric of Ösel-Wiek (Saaremaa and Läänemaa) in the 1560s, but the baltic was clearly not big enough for two Scandinavian powers and the territory was ceded to Sweden. Since the Kingdom of Denmark included Norway, via a union of crowns, it could be said that the era represented a pan-Scandinavian intervention in the region, something that would not have gone amiss much later on in history...

In the meantime, the ruling classes would still have spoken 'low' German, i.e. the form spoken in much of northern Germany, and indeed been ethnic Germans, whilst the bulk of the populace spoke Estonian of course. The north German connection meant that it was only a matter of time after Martin Luther issued his '95 Theses' in 1517 for Lutheran ideas to percolate through; indeed the (Danish) Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek was Lutheran from the outset. Since the religious changeover was likely to have been carried through by the ruling classes, with presumably little protest from the ordinary folk one way or another, and the state by this time was becoming more and more stable under the new occupier, Estonia escaped the horrors of the religious wars of Western Europe. No counter-reformations, divorces, burnings or rival translations here. Either that or Lutheranism happened to sit well with Estonian's methodical and no nonsense way of doing things. Or alternatively that then as now they were not particularly pious people. Or all of the above...

Incidentally the first extant book to have been printed in the Estonian language (though printed at Wittenberg in Germany) dates from this period, a Lutheran catechism from 1535.

                          Albrecht Dürer's 'Three Mighty Ladies From Livonia' (1521)

Retrospective map (top) of medieval Livonia from the time of contemporary Swedish Estonia/Livonia, whose borders it roughly shared and below, less pretty but more cartographically rigorous map of Swedish Estonia /Livonia and environs.

Walt Gleeson With The Story Of Tragic Dwight, 2

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Winfrey... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. Starting as a rust repairer on a sewage trawler in international waters, on one cent fifty per month, Walt soon rose to control the entire US fleet, and he never even graduated from High School. His career has spanned over half a decade, during which he has acted as advisor to such alumni as Richard Nixon, Oliver North and Mike Tyson, and he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You, My Lai Was Just a Blip and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.


Hi Walt here, with an urgent message for you...


Here everything has to go in soft focus, with some slow, mournful reflective, twangy guitar music of the type you got on that movie about the gay cowboys who were much better looking than more or less everybody...

"Ok now we've  got that in place, I'd like to tell you about Dwight....Dwight was born in an ordinary small town, in an ordinary state in middle america. Dad was a cop, mom stayed at home looking after Dwight and his two older sisters. But Dwight was different..."


Cue zinging sound that they make by sliding a piece of metal along the steel strings of an electric guitar

"Early on, when he was just short of his second birthday however, his parents noticed that he couldn't throw a baseball overarm all the way from the outfield, but rather just lamely tossed it in a kind of uncoordinated spasm worthy of on English gayman. Horrified at this affliction, Dwight's parents Brandylene-Jo and Seth, took him to all the doctors in the area and even went as far as New York City to find a cure, just to make Dwight a normal little boy".

Cut to Dwight's grandparents who explain that Dwight is a bubbly boy and full of beans, just to differentiate him from all other people of his age, and that all this means that he probably won't be a starter for the Kansas City Royals, though they'll probably be dead by then and not have to face the shame in the street; all this interlaced with a few finger-picked minor 7th chords..

Show Walt arriving at Dwight's home  in his cadillac and waving to the small child through closed window whilst puffing on a big cigar..

Cut to Dwight surrounded by older kids, playing a game a running round just to underline the fact that he is a normal little kid just like you or I and not some kind of freak as such.

"We ask you to help Dwight, and others like him, but especially Dwight (some of the other ones are black, for example) by sending a donation, as much as you can (but not less than 99.99 USD) to waltgleeson.com and make a little boy and his parents very happy by helping him to not still be throwing like a girl on his third birthday".

Music fades out and cheesy, soft focus family pic of everyone's plastic looking faces appears..

Help Me - I Wanna Be Un-PC For A Day...

Here at the PMC we're in a bit of a quandry, namely, we can't decide which side we back in the American Civil War of 1861-65 we should back.

Now, on the surface, this should be a no brainer, right? The North, obviously, since they were abolitionists. On the other hand, the South had a cooler flag (latterly, I think the saltire-based design came in towards the end of the war), more balls, and the Dukes of Hazard (and Lynryd Skynryd) onside...

...anyway, since the war was resolved (on the side of the righteous) one hundred and forty five years ago now, it's fairly academic, but we're still wondering if any of our readers are faced with the same, "it's-obvious-whose-side-I-should-back-but-in-any -case-I-fancy-the-other-side" dilemma. Perhaps you secretly back the nazis, hoping their far cooler Stuka dive bombers, Tiger tanks and Nebelwerfer rocket launchers would put pay to those pesky Americans, Brits and Russians once and for all. Or maybe you really take pleasure from the British government forces' crushing of the Jacobites at Culloden. Or alternatively you revel in the Conquistadores atrocities, or think that Sadam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and the marsh Arabs were right to hold sway, whatever it is, we'd like to know..

...mark your entries 'The Side That I Secretly Back In a War That Has Long Since Been Resolved, Even Though I Know They Were The Baddies' and there might even be a prize in the offing, for the best entry, who knows...

Thought For The Day No. 38 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.

Viktor Frankl

NFL v 'Soccer' part two

This is part two of a post which began over a week ago and which we hadn't got round to completing, distracted as we were by the opening volumes of Churchill's volumes of Estonian history, but since then we've had a renewed interest, not least since Pittsburgh have gone three and oh (meaning they've won all of their first three games of the season, one of only two teams to do so), so let's pick up where we left off...

Scorelines
This relates somewhat to the variety aspect outlined last time, i.e. that American Football has a lot more of it. There is always a scoreline in the NFL. No doubt at more amateur levels, results might be either exceptionally low or exceptionally high-scoring, but in any event a draw/tie is so rare that it's worth commenting on (there has been a grand total of 17 in the NFL in the last 36 years and the last one came in November 2008 when the Philadelphia Eagles and the Cincinatti Bengals tied 13-13).
Compare that with some of the 0-0 thrillers that you get in soccer and have you losing yet another 90 minutes or so of your life...
Admittedly the scoring system makes a difference, there are several different ways to score in Amercian Football and most of them carry more than one point for a team's efforts, but that's just the point, don't make the method of scoring such a rare event that the world's population will have changed markedly in the time elapsing between each episode..

Supporters
I once went to a pre season game between the Washington Redskins and the Pittsburgh Steelers, drank copious amounts of beer, shouted 'Pittsburgh dogs' numerous times (this was before I liked them) and the worst thing that happened was that someone looked at me. Compare that to mass crushings, burning stadiums and police cavalry charges, all for the sake of a little game...the English football fans are animals, make no mistake. Even since the 90s when the premiership went all middle class with people like David Baddiel pretending to like it, it still brings out the worst in human tribal instincts, as anyone who has been anywhere near England during their biannual summer embarassements in international competitions.
OK, football is played elsewhere, better, and not necessarily accompanied by the same degree of aggro, but England is it's home turf surely, and sets the scene as a kind of style barometer even as it fails to produce the goods on the field.

Commentators
The American game tends to have more than one (usually two) commentators (or announcers) covering the game itself. Not only this but they're often real experts, and former players of the game. Contrast this with the monotonous drone of Jon Motson or some other non-former-playing non-entity as he proceeds to mis-pronounce every foreign-named player one by one and regale us with a succession of utterly meaningless 'interesting coincidences' and facts, that England haven't won on  the second Wednesday of any November, whenever the manager has an 'r' in his surname etc.

Glamour
Let's face it, Americans are better than the rest of us. They are, as a whole. Yes, I expect you can find pretty sorry instances of humanity, and not just in the much-maligned trailer parks, but even the crap cities like Detroit could manage to be a fairly convincing backdrop for a police series, movie etc (or just compare Birmingham, Alabama with Birmingham, West Mids). Compare the broad, expansive nature of the people there with the little, little folk of  the Thames estuary or wherever - they even pronounce our place names in a less farty way when they're transplanted to sunnier and/or leafier climes (so it's War - sester, not Wooster). And without being unkind, a brief look at the Cheerleader roster of any NFL team that has them (they don't all, I assume the 49ers don't anyway) and compare it with the Sky girls...the difference is just pitiful.


There are other areas we could mention - the absurd payscales in the upper reaches of the English premiership, compared with the lower leagues (a player for second division Wycombe Wanderers had to make do with my one bedroom flat in the crap end of town that even I wouldn't live in, compare and contrast with 'Beckingham Palace'), the educationally subnormal level of the majority of Association Football players and their inane pundits that prevent them for making the connection between subject, verb and object, the list goes on....

...but we'll cut it short there, because it's not that important really, just some ideas now that we have time to actually have them, away from the dreariness of the round ball game..

Don't Rush To Place A Youtube Comment..

The dangers of getting something out of context - or of getting the full story - brought home to me in these two clips:

the  first, an acerbic Australian comic who gets heckled for being a racist and makes mincemeat of the heckler(s) causing them in the full glare of the scorn in the audience..

the second, an acerbic Australian comic who plants a couple of people in the audience for a wind up.

I saw the first some time before the second. Always get the full story..

Thought For The Day No. 37 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

One should never strike a woman, not even with a flower.

Hindu saying

Estonia v. Lithuania

Having lived in both countries, people sometimes ask me what the difference between Estonia and Lithuania is.
I tell them "Latvia"...

History Of Estonia 101: Part Four

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part four: Of Bishops, Knights, Castles and Kings

After those pesky christians started arriving in large numbers and spoiling everyone's fun,  from the early thirteenth centrury, things started to get particularly hard, not least for the hapless blogger who simply wanted a nice resume of Estonian history and now regrets this series of posts which seem to have taken on a life of their own and which noone's going to read anyway.

The country lay divided loosely between the Danish north and the German south, via the crusades of the Livonian, or Sword Brothers, order for most of the thirteenth, and the first half of the fourteenth, centuries. It would be misleading at this point to think in terms of the modern day Estonian state or that the nation's occupiers were trying to construct the modern day country of Estonia (and exactly the same would apply to contemporaneous France, Germany and most of the rest of Europe). This is medieval Europe. Lands were held as fiefdoms which could cut across linguistic and other boundaries. People didn't even have maps in the modern sense and the whole of the Baltic region was an area which had been up for grabs in effect since Pope Celestine III declared a free for all in 1193. You can read any motives into it that you like, and draw your own conclusions from the fact that the Third Crusade to the Holy Land which had ended only the previous year had failed in its objective to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims. Lands covering all of the modern day Baltics, the Kaliningrad exclave and parts of Northeastern Poland were all affected.

The 'Duchy of Estonia' comprised the Danish, northern half, which was comparatively short lived so we'll deal with that first. Despite a series of Danish raids on the islands off the west of Estonia going back to the twelfth century, these were not a component of the Duchy.

Lyndanisse (modern day Tallinn) came to be known as 'Reval' and a bishopric was established here by the Danish King, Valdemar II in 1240. Most of the lands were in fact held by German vassals, with Danes and even a few Estonians making up a small minority. The Danes did have some ambitions in expanding eastward against the Votians, once a regional power and closely related to the Estonians, after going to war with the Novgorod state but this came to naught.

As is so often the case with foreign occupations, it was turmoil at home which led to the ulitmate downfall. The death of Christain II of Denmark led to divisions in the Duchy between the pro-Danish and pro-German factions (the latter held much of south Estonia, remember). The Estonians were not slow on the uptake, and in July 1343 the St George's Night Uprising saw wholesale massacre of German settlers, churchmen and the like, and an equally brutal suppression by the German Teutonic order, a far more professional unit than the Livonian order, who effectively took on the Danes' bad debt in the form of the Duchy of Estonia. Actually the Teutonic order were confusingly renamed the Livonian order after absorbing the remnants of the Livonian 'Sword Brothers' following their annihilation far to the south at the battle of Saule, in modern day Lithuania, but we'll stick with the Teutonic appellation for simplicity's sake. One of the last battles on mainland Estonia happened in a location in present day Lasnamäe, which will raise a wry smile to the face of anyone who knows Tallinn.

The last stand was in fact made on Ösel (Saaremaa) which after much to-ing and fro-ing, fell to the Germans in the winter of 1345. The Danes were in fact recompensed by the Germans, some 19 000 Köln marks for the mainland territories, however much that was, it sounds like a lot, although they had to apologise to the Pope for giving up so easily on a territory which had effectively been gifted them by one of his predecessors and which they'd promised never to relinquish.

In fact that wasn't the last of it; Ösel/Saaremaa came back into Danish possession over two hundred years later, in 1572, having been purchased from a German Prince, until 1645 when it was ceded to Sweden. More on that in a later post...

Meanwhile, South Estonia came to be a part of the state of 'Livonia', named after the order of knights (see above) after the papal legate William of Modena said so. This state incorporated most of modern day Latvia as well, and coexisted with several bishoprics, including that of Dorpat (modern day Tartu) and the sprawling Archbishopric of Riga, though not always peaceably, with civil wars blighting most of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, along with the troubles arising from the vacuum left by the departing Danes. As noted, with the obtaining of the Danish lands to the north, two important Hanseatic towns (Riga and Tallinn) came into German possession.

Ultimately, the Teutonic Order went the same way as the Livonian Sword brothers, again at the hands of the Lithuanians, at least in part, following their crushing defeat at the battle of Grünewald by the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in 1410. The Livonian Landtag was formed in 1419 to resolve the continued bickering and sat at the modern day town of Valga/Valka, then as now on the boundary between Latvian and Estonian ethnic lands. This remained the status quo for the next few decades, until the next chapter in our story and the arrival of a new regional power or two..

Part three is here...

History Of Estonia 101: Part Three

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part Three: Of Germans, Danes and Swedes

The word 'crusade' has almost become a swear word in modern times; the rallying cry of muslim and athiest alike, it's come to be synonymous with hordes of land-hungry medieval knights, committing rape and pillage throughout the near east, absolved and abetted by equally dastardly men of the cloth. Whilst there's no doubt some truth in that image, it is, it need hardly be told, something of an oversimplification. The crusades spanned a vast period of time, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and, it could be said, found a natural successor in the voyages and conquests in the new world from the sixteenth century onwards. There was much that was corrupt no doubt, but there was much idealism and honour too. And the holy land was not the only recipient; southern France experienced the Albigensian crusade of the thirteenth century, and concurrent with that was the northern crusade, announced by Pope Celestine III in 1193.

The first focus was on the Livs and Latgalians of modern day Latvia, indeed the crusade came to be known initially as the 'Livonian crusade', and a (somewhat iffy, in comparison with the outstandingly excellent Teutonic Knights) order of Knights was named after this. Important settlements along the Daugava river in Latvia were established, and the hub of operations, Riga, became an Archbishopric. From 1208 raids began into Estonian territory, and a long period of foreign occupations and invasions commenced, with little sign of abatement for the next eight centuries.

South Estonia naturally endured the brunt of these intial attacks, from the aforementioned Livonian order, or 'sword brethren', and Sakala leader Lembitu (still a popular male name) was slaughtered at the Battle of St. Matthew's day on 21 September 1217, near modern day Viljandi.

However the north of the country was not to escape these predations.Weighing in on the action, regional power Denmark became an increasingly apparent presence, with maritime raids on the country in 1170, 1194 and 1197 culminating in seizure of Oesel (Saaremaa) in 1206 and Lyndanisse (later Reval and ultimately Tallinn, a name which simply means 'Danish town') in 1219, when the Danish flag, the 'Dannebrog' reputedly fell from the sky on to a delighted King Valdemar II. Northern Estonia (roughly corresponding to the present counties of Harjumaa and East and West Virumaa) remained in Danish hands until the uprising of 1343.

Finally a third national group, perhaps the least offensive of all of Estonia's foreign lodgers, came in the form of the coastal Swedes, or 'Rannarootslased' (Rootsi/Ruotsi being the Estonian and Finnish name for Sweden) who apparently first started appearing in 1294 in the western town of Haapsalu and settled most notably many of the islands, in particular Vormsi, Hiiumaa, Ruhnu and others. This culture survived right down until the Soviet occupations of the mid-twentieth century when the bulk of the populace (though one or two stayed behind) fled, mostly to Sweden itself. Saaremaa apparently continued to give its Danish occupiers a headache, and it was finally surpressed by the sword brethren in 1227.

Thus distinctions which had already emerged between north, south and west (see the last post) were further heightened by the differing pattern of foreign occupation in each region, and the process of christianization, something which, it could be argued was never really fully carried through (no doubt because it came at the point of a sword) began...

To be continued...

Part two is here..

History Of Estonia 101: Part Two

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part Two: Of Iron, mythology and the first documented mention of Estonia

One particularly cataclysmic event in Estonian history took place towards the end of the Bronze Age (see previous post) in around 660 BC (give or take 85 years on way or the other) and for once it wasn't caused by human beings. A meteorite struck the island of Saaremaa (literally 'island land') with an impact comparable with the Hiroshima atom bomb and quite probably a comparable amount of destruction. There are various theories as to the impact's influencing the folklore and mythology of the area (e.g. the making of a new sun, ordered by the god Ukko, in the Finnish Kalevala, a spark from which was in fact the meteor(ite) and even a theory that Saaremaa was the location of the Thule of Greek legend, the name deriving from the Finno-Ugric word for fire ('tuli')).

Whatever else happened, the meteorite left a big crater (in fact 9 craters of varying size) which no doubt held mystical and religious significance. During the Iron Age (see below) the largest crater, the 'Kaali crater' was apparently enclosed by a 2 metre high, 2.5 metre thick stone wall. In fact it was only in the twentieth century that the origins of the crater were found to be meteroritic; it had previously been thought to have been of volcanic origin.

After 1000 years or so the Bronze Age in Estonia gave way to the 'Pre-Roman' Iron Age, around 500 BC as it did in much of Northern Europe. Actually this was of course the only Iron Age that occured here, the Romans never venturing anywhere near this part of the world, but the period after c 50AD is termed the Roman Iron Age for convenience sake - Roman expansion into parts of Northwestern Europe around this time, reaching a peak under Trajan in the early 2nd Century, meant that Roman influence, if nothing else, arrived in the form of trade; small quantities of Roman coins and other artefacts have been found. Smelting techniques were developed from iron ore found locally from around the first century BC.

We can speak of regional differences emerging during this period too; South Estonia had more contact with areas to the south via land, whereas seafaring tended to predominate in northern and western areas. Correspondingly it has been hypothesized that three broad dialects of 'Estonian', namely northern, southern and western (including the islands) existed by this time, distinctions which continue down to the present.

This Iron Age lasted for an incredibly long time; convention holds the end date to be around the year 1200 AD, shortly after which the Baltic Crusades began, and Estonian indepedence began to be eroded, not to be recovered again until the twentieth century. The first tantalizing possibility of documented recording of the existence of Estonia came from the Roman writer Tacitus in the 1st Century AD, who referred to a tribe known as 'Aestii'. Howver, it seems likely that these Aestii were in fact Baltic tribes living somewhat to the south, in modern day Žemaitija, Lithuania, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In the following century Ptolemy, the Greek speaking Roman citizen from Egypt, mentions the 'Osilians' as dwelling in the Baltic. These were most likely the inhabitants of Saaremaa (the Germanic name for the island was 'Oesel'). The Osilians became quite notorious sea warriors, and a battle between them and Icelandic vikings off the coast of Saaremaa in 972 AD is recounted in the Icelandic Njal's Saga. They were nevertheless apparently defeated on the land, by a Norwegian invading force led by Olaf the Holy in 1008. The first proper reference to Estonia came in the writings of the Roman Cassiodorus, who was in the service of the Ostrogoths since the Western Roman Empire had already capitulated, in the sixth century AD.


Estonia did not remain a quiet corner of Europe, however, and even seems to have become quite wealthy. Various hoards of coins including Dirham coins from the Islamic world have been found over northern Estonia, including those at Maidla, Kumna and Kose, and a large proportion of the coins found were of Anglo-Saxon origin. Estonia of course remained a pagan land throughout this period (one wonders that, with the Dirham hoard, it didn't become Islamic after the 7th century AD) and were reputedly experts in wind magic. The national epic the Kalevipoeg presumably looks back to this period, though it wasn't compiled until the 19th Century. The folk were polytheistic, and then some, with gods including the aforementioned Ukko (also known as the 'Vanaisa', or grandfather) and a sky god called 'Jumal', the modern Estonian word for 'God'. Mythical motifs often appearing in runic songs included a girl finding a fish and asking her brother to kill it; on doing so a woman was found inside the fish, and a lake travelling to another location after desecration by an incestuous couple...Former president the late Lennart Meri spent a great part of his life researching the shamanistic religious cults of Finno-Ugric groups in what is now northern Russia in an attempt to shed more light on the religious practices of his own forebears.


As the Estonians were coming more and more into contact with their western neighbours, the same can also be said of the neighbours to the east, who were in the process of becoming Christianized. The monk Nestor wrote that in 1030 Yaroslav the Wise invaded the country of the 'Chudes' (which derives either from a Russian word meaning 'strange', or an entirely different term meaning 'wonderful' or 'attractive' - take your pick!) founding the town of Yuriev, modern-day Tartu. These developments however weren't necessarily all one way; it is plausible that the 'Chudes' were one of the founding tribes of Kievan Rus', the first Russian state as such.


Political and administrative developments continued apace during this time as well. The county (Maakond) and parish (Kihelkond) developed during these centuries, and a notable circular rampart fortress was built at Varbola. By the end of our period, on the eve of the Baltic crusades, the counties (in their modern terminology) included Saaremaa, Revala, Sakala, Virumaa and Ugandi. Incidentally the Finnish and Lativan names for Estonia, Viro and Igaunija respectively, seem to derive from these last two places.


But none of this was going to last forever...

Part one is here..