Extra Extra VALERIE POORE'S NEW BOOK IS OUT

The title: Watery Ways

Here it is:



And here's a description:
(the back cover)


Find it HERE

Wroclaw, Poland. First impressions

Never one to follow the guide on the well trodden tourist path, I'd feel barbaric if I totally ignored the historic city centre, so the first evening I go where the action is.
This is one of those sultry evenings that I yearn for so much in the colder seasons.

What I find around the ratusz, town hall, pleases me. The quiet murmur of tout Wroclaw and small groups of tourists from Spain, Germany and the US.



The prices in Poland are still in Zloty, and haven't crept up to euro standards, so being there is very affordable for us 'westerners', whether it's lodging, food or other products.
I find the façades really impressive and charming. This being the centre, the buildings are well maintained or in the process of restoration.
(As we'll see later, outside the centre the situation is much less favourable).

It is getting dark, and anyway I have left the camera in the hotel. Now I am just taking in the impressions. The photos here were made during the following days.

Here the centre as seen from the footbridge of the Mary Magdalene church's twin towers.


Here's another one from the centre: the Mary Magdalene church watching its reflection in a modern building's mirror façade.

Can anyone tell me what NIE PARKOWAC means?

In my book a visit to a foreign city is not complete without a seeing the railway station, so here it is (much more later).

A useful general link about Wroclaw

Here is a satellite view of Wroclaw, with its amazing maze of waterways that I found so appealing.

View larger map

About this blog - a Manifesto of sorts

This kettle is boiling over, but I'm not a banana tree. In other words, the thoughts come up and become long discourses about freedom, bullying people by way of psy-ops like 9/11 and SARS; the silent integration of Canada, US and Mexico already accomplished and nothing your representatives (can) do about it - in other words these three countries have stopped existing as such; our strong Dutch 'no' to further European integration and the way the 'constitution' has now been 'rewritten' (96% of the text has remained the same) and now a new referendum is no more needed.
Not to forget the Al Gore hoax, of course.

All the above spells 'conspiracy nut', so that ends the debate, and we can go back to our tv's and have ourselves amused to death and scared witless about subjects like terrorism and climate change, handing over our freedom in the process.

So what to do now?
Well, how about some beauty as I see it.
Val went West while I flew to Poland. After a day or four I came back with loads of impressions and over a thousand digital photographs.
A few thousand of the older work can be seen on Flickr.com, and I'd like to make this Blog a jumping board to my photos on Flickr.

Be prepared. A lot of beauty passes in front of my camera, and I capture a lot of it!

Here is an appetiser. It is in Wroclaw, Poland, where I spent so much time around August 25, 2007.


This is the sort of pictures I assemble when super wide angle is still too narrow an angle. I stitch them togerther using several wide angle images - in this case 9 of them!

Show Me The Law

With fascination I follow the developments around civil rights in the USA. As a rule people accept the erosion of their liberties, because they think it makes them safer.

That would be a great subject for a post, but there is more.

People are now sent to jail for non-compliance with IRS (income tax) regulations, although these regulations seem not to be backed up by a law.
During the court procedures the defendants ask time and time again to be shown the law on which the income tax is based. That demand is consistently overruled by the judges.
So now the weird situation is this: not the law is the basis of the jury's verdict but the opinion: 'we all pay income tax so why should they not'. On the basis of this opinion the tax lawyer Irwin Schiff (77) was sentenced to 30 years in jail.

Shall we welcome him at the prison gate when they finally release him at the age of 107?


Dave Vonkleist explains the situation in a song.

Here's a link to Ed Brown's video blog. Ed has declared that he'll rather die than go to jail.