“I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even when they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the joys and sorrows of my relatives bore me to my soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think.” — Franz Kafka, from his diary, 1918

Apparently U.S. government lawyers and private sector consultants who provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Official said, helped this decision by the Oil Ministry along according to Monday’s Star Tribune.

Remember the most recent war, at least the one we know of in Iraq that has taken over 4,000 American lives? Now we are told the death counts are down, at least deaths of Americans. Now more American soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Is this something that should make us feel better? Do you remember the speculations of many that our involvement in Iraq was really about oil? Remember early in the Bush Administration when Vice President Cheney met secretly out west with the oil barrens? Then I guess it’s no surprise that the “no-bid contracts” were expected to be awarded to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, total, Chevron and several smaller companies.

The Tribune reported Iraq is particularly attractive “because in addition to its vast reserves, it also has the potential to bring new sources of oil onto the market relatively cheaply.”

“We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation; yet we keep confirming that it is,” said Fredrick Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.”

Has this been the plan all along? Is it worth 4,000 plus deaths and God knows how many Iraqi’s, Iraqi’s of all ages on a daily basis?

Last week we spent a few days in Duluth and there heard about a former Iraqi soldiers death. The ex-soldier crossed a neighborhood fence hoping to join a party, a party with other intruders. Some fisticuffs were exchanged and it ended with the former soldier being shot and killed perhaps with his own gun. How does a parent live with that?

Aside from that Duluth was what I like it to be. I didn’t borrow a bike this time in an attempt to ride down to the event I attempted to get to last year, getting there and deciding it was too late. Peddling back crashing into some wood beams planted into the ground to keep a softball field from caving in.

The first night I walked the shoreline across from the lift bridge with Skyler where a new younger crowd hangs out. I don’t think they were a tough crowd but they were not the ordinary crowd; a mixed crowd. They made me think back to our days in school when guys wore their pants way down. Dave Edwards took the lead on that. This put and end to wearing levies for a spell at Austin High. Two guys hanging out by the wall had four-fifth of their boxers showing stapled I guessed to their pants. They would have made Dave’s pants look like high risers. I’m not sure these guys went to school. They were having fun.

The next day on the same beach I found the prize piece of driftwood washed up on the shore. I could hardly carry it back to the hotel. I also found a nice piece of rust and an orphan brick and now they’re strategically placed in the side yard with all the other rust and pieces of wood gathered over time. I like the piece of Lake Superior wood almost as much as the Czech piece of driftwood I swiped from the Vltava River a few yards from the Franz Kafka Museum. If I return to Prague someday I will remember to take the Lake Superior piece back over there so it will be an exchange program of sorts.

I am anticipating the Vilt/Plevka reunion coming up in August at the Bohemian Hall and have the opportunity to share recollections and pictures that were taken last September.

I’d like to wish you all a safe, happy Fourth of July and close with another quotation. This one from Albert Einstein who said, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”