Happy Year of the Rat -- another wild one. To the above, add 1984, 1996, and 2008. Today is also the first day of Tet / Tết Nguyên Đán, Vietnamese New Year: we are already well into the fortieth anniversary of the Tet Offensive.
Year of the Rat, 1972 -- a bloody year in Vietnam and the second Nixon-Agnew election win. Before everything unraveled. Like it or not, the Vietnam War continues to haunt -- with a former POW running for President.
In 2008, the Euro is starting to be accepted as payment in New York City. The Canadian dollar is at parity with the US dollar.
Don't forget to buckle up . . .
Today's Rune: The Warrior. Yesterday's: Partnership.
7 comments:
While 2000 was not a rat year it sure was good year for rats.
I always buckle up, buckle down and have a hard time getting unbuckled.
The Viet Nam war is over and the Tet offensive (one of three major incursions into S. Viet Nam by the NVA and the Viet Cong that year) is relegated to history now.
I think collectively the American conscience has pretty much laid that war to rest. Unfortunately it seems that in doing so the lessons that should have been learned about war were laid to rest as well.
Peace Erik
mark
It almost seems like whichever country I move to, the dollar tanks. Sorry, Amerika!
I have to say, though, when the Iraq war started, the exchange rate between the US & CND plummeted 20%. That's an unheard of amount, considering it'd only fluctuated .01 or .02% now & again for over a decade before that.
A few years back, when I was still married to ex-wife Cynthia, we allowed a woman who helped us out a lot in running our flamenco studio to have a meeting of people who were interested in trips to Cuba. They generally travelled through Canada, taking advantage, as they said jokingly, of the "Canadian Peso." How times have changed.
I'm right there with Walking Man-- we don't seem to have learned from the Vietnam War-- that a determined insurgent force can't be defeated militarily.
I watched Viet Nam War coverage as a child but didn't fully understand Tet until years later when ABC ran a documentary called 1968: A Crack in Time. Interesting show that touched, of course, on much more than Tet. I was born in '62, the Black Water Tiger year apparently.
Thanks all for the feedback, much appreciated . . .
WM (Mark): I don't think it'll be laid to rest ever, but I also do think people like McCain have drawn very damaging conlusions, indeed ("stab in the back" etc.).
Lana/Johnny, haha. True enough. Not as much fun going to Canada these days, at least as far as spending money goes. Mr. Bush's elective war . . . I still want to visit Cuba -- and Vietnam.
Sidney, same here, though I was born in the Year of the Rat about a month after JFK's election.
Cheers, all!
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