15% Off...

15% Off...

This morning I drove over to the Chalet Party Shop - the one on CR 17 that has the best wine selection - and found that all Chilean wines were 15% off. In my wallet I carry a short list of wines that I like. Most of them recommendations from Leonard. I was planning to buy a Concho y Toro Cab Sav. I found it, plus a couple others including a Casa La Joya Carmenere that rang up at about $7.50 a bottle. JR and I played squash, went out to dinner at the SSSS, and then came back to my place to try the Carmenere. It was excellent. I was surprised how much mellowed the longer it sat in the open air.

I've been reading "In Our Image - America's Empire in the Philippines."

First impression: This is a piece of American History that Ruby Wilken never bothered to tell us about.

Did you know the US fought a war for three years against the Filippino people, suppressing their drive for autonomy? I didn't. It was our first quagmire in SE Asia - actually our first foray into nation building outside the US. By the time we arrive in 1898 there was a native provisional government with a constitution. We squashed it. They were the 'insurgents'. ('In our Image' was written in the late 1980s - long before our current effort to squash the insurgents in another part of the world.) The war in the Philippines was a triggered by a war of choice (The Spanish American war) by people who misrepresented the situation. (The battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor killing hundreds. The blame for this was laid on the Spanish, even thought it was probably a mechanical accident.)

Reading this book now points out the distant echoes to our current situation. Today seems much more complicated and the stakes seem higher. But the core elements - especially the types of people and the values - were all present 110 years ago. Why didn't we study this and learn from it?