Our New City

I found some shots of the city of Kerch, Ukraine, where we will be moving in December. Admittedly, it will not look like this when we get there, but I am excited to be there. Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the city and its history.

Kerch is an ancient city that began as a Greek colony and has been populated by a variety of people for over 2500 years. The painting above is from 1839 and shows a bustling shipping town. The high ground is Mount Mithradates topped by the harbor lighthouse.

This is a view of the harbor from the top of Mithradates. The stairs run down to the center of the old town.

This is the top of the aforementioned Mount. This is one of the nicer Soviet-era monuments to the Great Patriotic War, which we Westerners call WWII. Since the Soviet Union only spanned 3/4 of a century, they have very little to celebrate other than the victory over fascism and protection of the Fatherland (Ukrainians use the paternal form instead of Motherland like Russians).

Another shot of the monument atop Mithradates. The cannons are not reproductions. 2 of the 3 have patches on the "gunner's shield" where bullets had passed through the armor during their active use.

This is the standard, grey, depressing Soviet type of monument. Between the two carved concrete slabs lies the entrance to the catacombs that run under Kerch where 15,000 Ukrainians hid and continued the resistance to the Nazis for 6 months with virtually no food or water. Little is known about life underground as there were no survivors.

This is the beach about 1/4 mile from the gates of the camp and Speedos notwithstanding, I plan to spend a good deal of time here.

Another shot from just above "our beach" looking northeast across the channel. Through the haze you can see just a slight outline of the Russian coast in the upper right-hand corner.

This is a great example of the booths at the market across the street from the camp. All are the same color and roughly the same size. Most day-to-day items can be bought here though the "normal" food selection is limited. There is also a small grocery store just behind the market itself.

To zoom in a little closer to our new home, this is a great shot straight down the center of camp. The light spot on the concrete about halfway down is the patch that replaced a massive, yet unusable fountain that was the bane of every one's existence for the first half decade of our ownership.

Aaron's Suprise Visit and the Kop Makes Floyd "Fearless"

Today is my 30th Birthday. Outside of this being an excuse for donuts to be served at work, I really didn't think it was that big of a deal. That is, until about 9:15 this morning when my longtime friend Aaron showed up unexpectedly at my office. Now that is something to celebrate. Aaron lives in College Station, TX and apparently I am the only person in the state of Colorado that didn't know he was coming into town for my birthday. On top of that, I get to see a bunch of the Shermans and my sister and brother-in-law - all very cool people.

The real point of this post is that I was finally able to re-listen to a Pink Floyd song that Aaron had been trying to get me to hear for quite some time. I've heard the song many times (I used to have in the neighborhood of 15 Floyd albums before my entire collection of music was stolen), but it had been years since I really listened to this particular track. It is called "Fearless" and it's from one of the bands earlier, more psychedelic efforts, "Meddle." Through the magic of YouTube and Wikipedia, I was able gather the materials necessary to share with all half-dozen of you readers how cool "Fearless" is.

The title is apparently football slang for "awesome" - at least during the early 70's when the album was recorded. I know that Kacie is thinking, "crap, I thought this wasn't going to be another soccer post," but please humor me...it's my birthday. Also, at the beginning and again at the end of the song, there are haunting football chants (including "You'll Never Walk Alone") that are courtesy of the Kop, Liverpool FC's most fervent supporters.

The real curiosity is how did nice, Cambridge art school boys get sucked into the dirty scouse world of Liverpool football? Such is the power of the Reds of Anfield!

YouTube was kind enough to supply audio of the original version of the song. It's a 6 minute track but if you want to hear the chants they are about 20 seconds into the song and again for the last minute and a half. To aid in your enjoyment of the latter (the accent makes comprehension tough), I will tell you that they are singing the anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone" followed by staccato shouts of "LIVERPOOL".

Who Gets to Harass Who?

Please picture this scenario....

A group of professionals - public employees with jobs of which they are proud - being asked to join a celebration which makes them very uncomfortable. Not just as participants, but as one of the main attractions. Oh wait, they are being not asked, but rather ORDERED by their boss to parade down the street through a gauntlet of men making lewd and obscene comments and gestures; making a mockery of the career to which they have dedicated their lives. These underpaid, overworked employees do not the option sit out this indignity as their supervisor is a major supporter of this particular event.

Who are these recipients of innuendo and crass behavior? The secretaries at City Hall? Nope. Young nurses from the municipal hospital. Way off! How about the underrepresented female police officers being paraded as pieces of meat? Closer but not quite.

These victims were, in fact, the members of the San Diego Fire Department and they were all MEN.

Last month John Ghiotto, Jason Hewitt, Chad Allison and Alex Kane were ordered by their openly lesbian Chief Tracy Jarman to march in the cities gay pride parade as representatives of the SDFD where they were subjected to “obscene gestures, uttered inappropriate remarks and displayed lewd behavior that made them uncomfortable.”

I must emphasize that Chief Jarman was extremely receptive the men’s complaints of harassment, but this was after the “damage was done.” There is no way to be an active participant in most cities’ gay pride parades and not realize that most of the language, imagery and behavior demands at least an R, if not NC-17 rating. She may not have intended for her employees to be the subject of harassment, but she is could not be shocked by the behavior of her fellow activists. There is some question as to whether this is the first time that complaints have been filed with the SDFD for required participation in this parade.

The men are bringing a law suit against the department, but I must applaud them as the suit appears to ask for exactly $0 in punitive damages and only insists that participation in events such as this be explicitly voluntary.

I hate to always resort to the “double standard” argument, but there is no way to argue that a straight, male fire chief who required female firefighters to participate in an event with similar results would be fired if not sued or jailed.

I would like the record to show that I completed an entire post about gay pride and firemen without making a single Village People comment. You can now congratulate me in your comments.

Voronin's Goal Today

Premiership Week 1 recap

Update: Liverpool did indeed beat Toulouse in France today. The count was 1-0 on the strength of a goal from Ukrainian new-comer Andriy Voronin. The Reds high-caliber talent was showcased as they brought out their second string strikers (Voronin, Benayoun, Crouch) who could start for most European sides.


My first opening day as a Liverpool fan was everything I could have hoped for. Despite the Reds strong off-season signings, I was only cautiously optimistic about the game. Away against a well-respected Aston Villa side and having not won a first game since 2002, the odds were not on our side.



I wasn't able to watch the game live due my lovely niece's birthday party but I decided to follow the game via my stupid Crackberry and my trusty friend Slicky (I did finally watch the game on Sunday night). I was confused by ESPN.com's live internet coverage as the game progress counted up (in the European manner starting at 0:00 and counting to 90+ minutes depending on stoppage time) while their actual game clock counted down from some ridiculous number. At the beginning of the second half, the clock began at the illogical point of 109 minutes and counted down from there.



This frustration aside, I was able to ascertain that midway through the first half, AV gave us the gift of an "own goal" when Martin Laursen accidentally sent the ball to the roof of the goal while trying to clear it. Upon watching the game on Sunday, I think this may have been one of the better strikes of the day.



The second half began with expectations of continued pressure and time-in-possession advantage. An under the surface, in-game running scuffle developed from the rough play of Liverpool's Jermaine Pennant and subsequently distracted the Reds and gave Villa more counter attack chances. Tragedy struck in the 86th minute when a weird bounce into the hand of Jamie Carragher gave Gareth Barry a penalty kick, of which he availed himself. As I was following this via single-sentence emails from Slick, I went from growing hope of an opening victory to immense frustration.



No sooner had I started calculating where a draw placed us in the table then Slick sent a follow up saying that Steven Gerrard was awarded a free-kick just outside the penalty box in the 87th minute. After having waited for what must have been the longest period holding my breath for an email, Slick gave me the satisfaction of the following messages:

Gerrard on magical free kick from 20 yards!!!!!!

Unbelievable shot! Absolute top corner of the net!!!

Wait until you see the replay of the shot....unbelievable... 89:00 on the
clock

90:00 on clock....corner to Villa...cleared...4 min of injury time

You'll Never Walk Alone being sung loudly by the scouse supporters....Villa
throwing the kitchen sink...1 minute left in game!!!!!

Full Time whistle blows!!! 2-1
LPool!

I was understandably excited and even more so once I actually got to watch Stevie G's shot myself. It was a great game and good weekend.

Highlights:

• Man U gets drawn nil-nil at home against.....Reading (Rainbow)
• Chelsea and Arsenal get scored on but survive by shelling the keepers for Birmingham City and Fulham, respectively.
• Wigan gets off to a fantastic start in their quest for relegation by losing to (now) table leading Everton (sorry, Slick).
• The other Manchester (City) achieve an impressive victory over Westham despite their pansy blue socks

Lowlights:

• Despite feverish support from Slick's basement, Tottenham limps to a 0-2 record with a loss to Everton. There is still faith that they will turn the corner against perennial suckers Derby County leading up to their date with Man U. on August 26th. COME ON YOU SPURS!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to have to sign off as the Reds are in the midst of what should be a cakewalk against French side Toulouse (which I hope they do).