This week we had All Saints' Day off (and Halloween too because heck, it falls on a Monday, and who is really going to get anything done?). It is a quiet day when families go to the cemetery to clean the headstones and place flowers and other gifts. When you pay for a burial, you are only assured to have that spot for ten years or so-after that, the bones or the ashes of your loved ones are moved to a cubby or you have to find somewhere else for them-the reason being, as far as I can understand, that people don't want to expand the cemeteries and lose arable land. Coming from what the writer Toby Young referred to as "a bloated sow of a nation," it seems excessively pragmatic to me to move people's remains, but well, it's probably smart.
There was a 10K road race called Lasarte-Oria Bai! (Lasarte-Oria Yes!) during which I got tired just watching the serious athleticism on display, including an 85-year-old man who could've creamed me. They had shorter races for children, who also could have kicked my butt. I guess the idea is to start people out in some serious physical pursuit early so they are able to navigate this area's crazy mountains. I also saw what may be my favorite public display of opinion (amon
g many), this one being about a high speed train that has been proposed to run through this area. The sheer excellence of the existing public transit system is hard to beat-I have yet to learn to drive here and have had no problems getting around-so it's hard to understand why they want to add another train. Apparently, a high-speed train would be capable of chewing up entire municipalities in its greedy maw-and among other problems-would create "garbage jobs" and would add "prisas," which means "hurries." The Spanish state is set to hold elections in a couple weeks and candidates are only allowed to campaign for 2 weeks, so this is just the beginning, I suspect. It has been pouring all weekend-I did go out for a walk and it was mass Wormicide out
there. Not sure of the species around here but they are ginormous (when I was an undergrad I poisoned a bunch of worms with lead for a project-long story-but ever since I have had a relationship ranging from ambivalent to bleccccchhhh with earthworms). If you baited a hook with the small ones you could catch a whale and the big ones-well, you could ride them to Arrakis and extract like, the Spice Melange from those things. I won't even go into what happens when cars hit them. Bleeearrrrgh. Anyway. I have an appointment in Hondarribia this week, which is a lovely coastal town that still has its original defensive walls in place, so if I have any presence of mind, next week will bring some decent pics.
This week we had All Saints' Day off (and Halloween too because heck, it falls on a Monday, and who is really going to get anything done?). It is a quiet day when families go to the cemetery to clean the headstones and place flowers and other gifts. When you pay for a burial, you are only assured to have that spot for ten years or so-after that, the bones or the ashes of your loved ones are moved to a cubby or you have to find somewhere else for them-the reason being, as far as I can understand, that people don't want to expand the cemeteries and lose arable land. Coming from what the writer Toby Young referred to as "a bloated sow of a nation," it seems excessively pragmatic to me to move people's remains, but well, it's probably smart.
There was a 10K road race called Lasarte-Oria Bai! (Lasarte-Oria Yes!) during which I got tired just watching the serious athleticism on display, including an 85-year-old man who could've creamed me. They had shorter races for children, who also could have kicked my butt. I guess the idea is to start people out in some serious physical pursuit early so they are able to navigate this area's crazy mountains. I also saw what may be my favorite public display of opinion (amon
g many), this one being about a high speed train that has been proposed to run through this area. The sheer excellence of the existing public transit system is hard to beat-I have yet to learn to drive here and have had no problems getting around-so it's hard to understand why they want to add another train. Apparently, a high-speed train would be capable of chewing up entire municipalities in its greedy maw-and among other problems-would create "garbage jobs" and would add "prisas," which means "hurries." The Spanish state is set to hold elections in a couple weeks and candidates are only allowed to campaign for 2 weeks, so this is just the beginning, I suspect. It has been pouring all weekend-I did go out for a walk and it was mass Wormicide out
there. Not sure of the species around here but they are ginormous (when I was an undergrad I poisoned a bunch of worms with lead for a project-long story-but ever since I have had a relationship ranging from ambivalent to bleccccchhhh with earthworms). If you baited a hook with the small ones you could catch a whale and the big ones-well, you could ride them to Arrakis and extract like, the Spice Melange from those things. I won't even go into what happens when cars hit them. Bleeearrrrgh. Anyway. I have an appointment in Hondarribia this week, which is a lovely coastal town that still has its original defensive walls in place, so if I have any presence of mind, next week will bring some decent pics.
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