Working

I am now gainfully employed.  I started working at the embassy yesterday as Procurement Manager.  I'm to oversee three Albanians who constituted the procurement department before my arrival.  I'm not exactly sure what I'm supervising, since they know what they're doing and I don't have a clue.  But I have been looking the computer program used to buy stuff, and most of the purchases are fairly straightforward -- it's the computer part, knowing what code to plug into what box, that has me a little confused.

They want me to go to a training class in DC, which I think is four weeks but may be five.  It starts January 22.  I have no idea what has to happen to be approved to go.  Certainly it won't be the middle of tourist season, and hopefully all the inaugural visitors will have left, so maybe it will be a quiet winter interlude.  Here's hoping I can still learn something.

A Walk To the Grocery Store

1This is our street.  Our house is the red brick with the Mercedes in front of it.  Walking to the grocery store takes about five to ten minutes, depending on attitude.  Taylor and all her chums play in the street in front of the house.  I think just about every house in Tirana has a wall-like fence around it.
2This is the main street to our street.  I took No. 1 and No. 2 from the same spot.
3Turn right here and go down this street.  No. 3 and No. 4 are taken just a couple feet apart.
4The pavement ends three blocks from our house.  Go down this street and veer right at the end.
5Veering right means go straight down this street ahead.

 6.  This cow is going into his final resting place, at least in this form.

The next batch of pictures is a little out of order.  Go to No. 10, then 9, 8, and 7, then 6. Sorry.  

7.  Turn left and head to the end of this street.  It is a new apartment building with retail space on the first floor.

8.  Turn right at the corner and go up this street.  The eight-storey new construction was a big hole in the ground the first three months we lived here.  You can see it from the end of our street.

The morning glories are immediately on the left.  The house on the right has grapes growing over the yard.
9No. 10 is the little alley.  Morning glories are blooming on the fence on the left.
10
11

Eleven is the Conad, which is an Italian company.  I don't really like their grocery stores, but for mushrooms and mozzarella they're the closest.  I made lasagne with fresh mozzarella because it was the only cheese I could find.  It turned out pretty good.  I've only seen aged mozzarella once.

12 

This should have been before No. 11.  This is the street beside Conad, right around the corner from the cow.

13

Conad is just one store in this three or four-storey mall.  There are banks, cell phone companies, clothes, etc. 

Hope you had a nice walk.

Happy Anniversary to Us

It is 9:00 p.m. in Tirana.  Discounting time zone differences, 7 years ago today, at this hour, we were celebrating our marriage in Woody and Cherie's back yard.  We want to thank Mike Marsh, our bartender; Woody and Cherie, our gracious hosts; Emma, Ellie, Taylor and Chanelle, our lovely bridesmaids and flower girls for helping us along the road to matrimony.  And, we want to thank Kent McDaniel for officiating at the ceremony to actually get us married in the eyes of the State of Mississippi.  I would also like to thank, posthumously, Jim Higginbotham, our intrepid Irish drummer, for providing not only the wonderful ring for Cindy but also the band for the wedding and reception.  If you recall, it was Jim and Cindy who danced the Irish wedding dance due to my shortcomings in that genre.  I was however able to dance one, wonderful slow dance with my new wife without falling in Woody and Cherie's pool.  For those of you who think I can't dance, we have danced once since then at the Flora Bama before it was washed away by Hurricane Ivan.  

I have fond memories of the arbor under which we were married.  It was a vacant place in the Bond back yard when we commenced construction.  As in most of my projects, it started out as an idea and not a plan.  But with constant input from Woody and Cherie, it became, I hope, what they intended, but who knows????  They have never complained, at least to me, if their intentions were not satisfied.  Regardless, the two construction guys (Dave and Woody) had a wonderful time; the beer was good; and what can you say, as an "architect," it is still standing.  The Parthenon is still standing 2300 years later.  And I can only hope that Woody and Dave's magnificent achievement will still be around when you can buy whiskey in Rankin County.

Happy Anniversary, thank you all for coming.

P.S.  Stewart Barbour tried to get all my friends to throw William in the pool.  It is a testament to their character that he remained dry (not in the Rankin County sense of the word).

Debate

I stayed up all night last night so I could watch the final debate, which came on here at 3 a.m.  I don't remember how many debates I've watched this campaign, but I've seen several, and I'm glad they're over.  How ever many I saw, it was several too many.

I think the candidates are tired of them too -- neither of them seemed really sharp last night, but in character.  Obama stayed cool and calm, McCain agitated and angry.  

Now I'm trying to decide whether to stay up for election returns, or just get up early.  I think early is a better choice.  I have 19 days to decide.

Tirana I

The top picture is of the Lana River, looking east toward Mt. Dajtë, although I can't see it in this picture.  The river is usually contained in the concrete flue, and the city has landscaped and keeps up the banks.  After communism people built houses along the river, sqatters, of which there is only one left which you can see in the picture.  It is three storeys, unfinished on the first and third floors.  We call it the blood feud house.  According to the most reliable version I've heard, it is occupied by four women, one of whom shot and killed her husband.  So her husband's family is entitled to kill her.  And then her family would be entitled to kill whoever killed her, and so on down through the years, like the Hatfields and McCoys, or the Israelis and Palestinians, ad infinitum, because by the time the families are amenable to settling the whole dispute it's hard to remember the facts surrounding how it all got started.  This is Albanian custom, especially in the mountain north and east.  The rules for blood feuds are codified in the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, I think in the 15th or 16th century.  It is referred to as just the Kanun, and contains many other rules for hospitality, honor, etc.  It also contains guidelines and rules for settling feuds, like paying money, which were negotiated.  Blood feuds were only made illegal in Albania this year.  When the government decided to bulldoze all the squatter houses along the Lana, they had to leave this one because the family had nowhere else to go.  It is a signpost for our neighborhood -- Go down the Lana and take the first left past the blood feud house.

When Edi Rama became mayor of Tirana he disliked the drab communist era apartment buildings, and ordered they be painted.  He was an artist, and his father a sculptor.  So he ordered something a little more elaborate than "paint."  I don't know exactly how to describe the color scheme, or to what art "school" these belong.  But it does liven up the town a little.  The one green building with the yellow arrows is at the end of the divided street.  From this direction the arrows point toward the airport; from the other direction (on the opposite side of the building, not visible in the picture)  to downtown.   Good landmark for newcomers.

I kind of like the big vine at the end of one apartment building.  The uneven lines in the purple building make me dizzy.  

Athens

I'm a little tardy with a summary of my trip to Athens, but here goes.  I was there September 26-29.  Judge Barbour arrived on the 27th.   The morning of the 27th I went to the Archeological Museum, which was worth the trip.  It contains much statuary from various Greek sites.  There were a couple perfectly preserved sculptures, but most had missing noses, arms, penises, fingers -- some had obviously had a rough 2500 years.

Athens itself was settled by 8000 BC, or, according to Sarah Palin, about 4000 years before the world was created.   Its post-creation history as we know it, however, is mostly the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods, approximately 600 BCE - 250 BCE, followed by a Roman period, a Byzantine period, an Ottoman Turk period, and after World War I, the modern Greek period.  

The top picture is of Judge Barbour and me standing on Mars Hill with the Acropolis in the background.  Mars Hill is a large rock outcropping in the Agora and was used as an open air courtroom.  It is where Paul preached to the Athenian philosophers, called Aeropagus in Greek, the hill of Ares.  Ares was the Greek god of war, Mars in Roman mythology, thus Mars Hill.  So we wanted to have our picture taken in one of the world's first courtrooms, and a couple of Canadian tourists took our picture, and we reciprocated.  (I remember in London on the bridge by Parliament a tourist asked me to take his picture, which I did, and a line quickly formed and I took pictures for five or six more groups.  I fled at the first chance I got.)  

Mars hill is marble, and over 2500 years it has become fairly slick marble.  I would not go there on a rainy day.  I wonder if Socrates was "tried" there or somewhere else close by.  (I put it in quotes since by most accounts the outcome was never in doubt.  Corrupting the morals of the  youth of Athens would be a hard charge to defend.)

The second picture is on top of the Acropolis itself, with the Parthenon straight ahead and the Erecthion to the right.  Erecthion  comes from another name for Poseidon.  The Parthenon managed to survive undamaged until 1687, when the Turkish defenders of Athens (against the Venetians) had stored gunpowder inside.  An Italian cannonball went through the roof and ignited the powder, and the explosion left it pretty much in the shape it's in now.  

The middle picture is of the Agora from Mars Hill.  The long red-roofed building is the Stoa, market place.  It is a reproduction from the 1920s and houses a museum -- more statues and things.

The fourth picture is of an excavated wall.  I was struck by the construction artifacts used in the wall -- a broken Corinthian  capital right in the middle, but look closely and you'll see other things.

The last picture is right at the edge of the Greek city and the Roman city.  This column fell and the pieces came apart, but it's still lying in place.  A good way to see how a column was assembled.

Boorish Behavior

It is extremely discomfiting to witness (via video, of course) the boorish behavior of Sarah Palin and her admirers. Everyone has their own notion of what being a "Christian" means, but how is shouting out to "kill him, kill him" at a campaign rally unlike the crowd shouting out to Pilate, "Crucify him, crucify him"? I think it is dangerous incitement, and this is not something Palin should wink and nod at, even if, being unable to intelligently communicate in the English language, that's her preferred style of communication. Assuming that the "Kill him" stuff was spur-of-the-moment crowd stuff, she should have noted it and condemned it, which she still hasn't, so I'm assuming it's all right with her. Religious intolerance and bigotry is dangerous no matter who it's practiced by, and is what our founding fathers tried to protect against. Christians may have been among the founders of the United States, but the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, despite the mythical claims of the religious extremists of today. Using religion to gain power and further one's agenda is nothing new, but I must say the sheer brazeness of Palin shocks the conscience -- mine, anyway.

Busy Days

I see it has been two weeks since I posted anything! What have I been doing!

Simple. I've been busy. Chelsi West from Jackson arrived in Tirana on September 25. Cindy has written about her, our Fulbright student. I went to Athens September 26 to tour with Judge Barbour. We came back here the 29th and he left for Jackson October 3. Judge Barbour had agreed to do some work for Cindy, so we did some sightseeing in addition to his speaking to law students, judges, prosecutors, and I'm not sure who all else.

Then I found out I've been conditionally hired for the procurement manager position at the embassy, and I went to computer trainging yesterday and this morning, and will go tomorrow morning. I say conditionally because it has to be approved in DC, so other than this training, I won't go to work until they get that approval. That job should be interesting.

The weather has been great -- mostly in the low 70s or high 60s, and a rainy day interspersed with a few cool ones. It is so nice after the long summer. Tirana gets pretty dusty during the summer with no rain, and I guess a good bit of that has washed away to somewhere.

Chelsi moved into her apartment Sunday afternoon, so we're back to the three of us and one dog. Seems quiet but I miss our guests.