Sure enough... Dala Floda, Sweden

But she's probably in Amsterdam by now

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Anybody recognise these people?

(paging Mrs Bath)

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Tomorrow, the model railway exhibition, the Hamburg museum and, possibly, a pub or ten.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Of course, I looked at any mention of politics. For the most part, I can only read between the lines: references to Hitler, the Nazis or their actions are mostly recounted without any attempt at expressing own opinion. In a May 1941 commentary, he feels the need to name of the company whose shoe factory was hit that day, and the fact that its Jewish owners had to leave the country. But it's not until June 1943 that he dared to scribe down his opinion that Hitler now has the trust of only 20%. But even in February 1945, he is very circumspect in the way he mentions witnessing SS units regularly beating forced labourers to push them on. He becomes more critical once the front is nearing, and starts to curse the Nazis once under American occupation, mentioning concentration camps for the first time.

The man's opinion of the war also develops, but it starts out less reserved: he clearly roots for the "home side" in the first years, even after revealing a sense that the "home side" is losing in early 1943. His elder son disappears in Stalingrad (it's not revealed whether the father learnt the son's fate); later, a month after D-Day, his younger son is captured on the Western Front unharmed. He comments this capture saying that if a soldier "did his duty and was coward, he can go into captivity with peace of conscience". This naive patriotism is unbroken by the near-total destruction of his home city and continues until the front closes in on Cologne, when he joins the Volksstürmer (the ad-hoc militia of not properly trained old and young people formed at the end of the war). His views transform only then, when he sees for himself that the war is already lost. At the same time his language moves from "the enemy" to "the Americans". He decides to desert by staying put (not moving East as ordered).

The man's observations of the early occupation are also interesting. He perceives the Americans as cold and distant (notes their lack of greetings) and surmises that they were ordered to. But the soldiers regularly plunder and start shooting on the streets when drunk. Because the Americans are much better supplied in most goods than the locals, the plunder is focused on alcohol and some practical goods – the man's radio is taken away at gunpoint, though when he complains he gets another radio from an ashamed public relations officer. He repeatedly comments this plunder saying that this is what soldiers do, on one occasion adding that "ours surely weren't any better", not even against compatriots, and he refers back to a September 1944 log in the diary when he described peasants angry at army requisition.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

PARIS (Reuters) - Traditionally Catholic Ireland has registered almost the steepest drop worldwide in people calling themselves religious in a new survey tracking international trends in faith and atheism in recent years.

Only 47 percent of Irish polled said they were religious people, a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in the last similar poll in 2005, according to the WIN-Gallup International network of opinion pollsters.

Average religiosity in the 57 countries included in the poll was 59 percent, a decline of 9 points since 2005, it said.

Jeffery Goldmacher is running for the Osceola County Commission on familiar issues such as cutting government red tape and boosting the local economy. But a less conventional issue -- his nudist lifestyle -- is taking center stage.

A mailer that purports to show a nude, snorkeling Goldmacher has raised the Republican candidate's ire. He said he has been forthright about living at the Cypress Cove Nudist Resort & Spa near Poinciana but insists that the photo is not of him and that the mailer is full of untruths.

"I come right out and tell people that I live in a clothing-optional resort, not a nudist colony," Goldmacher said. "Only lepers and ants live in colonies."

My tomatoes have survived the heat and I can now hope for fresh blooms and fresh fruit sets. I just brought in about two dozen ~2" dia. red tomatoes from my Early Girl plants and have a bunch more ready to pick from my Better Boy, Roma and Rutgers plants. Plus there are still lots of green tomatoes of various sizes on the vines. My best crop yet.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

A Lincolnshire animal sanctuary has welcomed an extra large new arrival.

Miss Ellie, an 8ft (2.4m) American Mammoth Jackstock imported from the US in 2010, towers over other breeds at the Radcliffe Donkey Sanctuary near Sutton-on-Sea.

The super-sized animal was taken in by the centre after its owners were no longer able to look after her.

Only in America: It turns out that we're the sole country on the planet where a majority of people (62%) are sunnily in favor of sending drones across the globe (and across the borders of other countries) to take out terrorists.  According to Pew Research's latest polling, that includes 74% of Republicans, 60% of independents, and 58% of Democrats.  Nowhere else is such sentiment to be found.  In France, 63% disapprove; in Mexico, 73%; in Turkey, 81%; in Egypt, 89%; and in Pakistan, where drone strikes are a constant, 97% of those who know about them are opposed.  Whatever the world may think -- and in the U.S., there are liberals ready to argue vigorously for the "morality" of drones -- the Air Force (and the CIA) are plunging ahead training pilots and expanding their drone fleets.  In fact, the Air Force is already training more drone pilots than bomber and fighter pilots combined.

Thus far the focus has been on France's neighbor Britain, whose Prime Minister David Cameron irked Hollande by boasting that London would "roll out the red carpet" to French entrepreneurs seeking shelter for their income.

But a new offer came Wednesday from a more unlikely quarter: Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, a southern US state that was in part founded by French settlers on territory at one point controlled by the French empire.

"My name is an old French Huguenot name and my great-great-great-great grandfather Louis LeFleur, a Frenchman, founded a trading post around 1800 that developed into Mississippi's capital, Jackson," Barbour said.

"I wonder if we Barbour boys ought to set up a business to attract wealthy Frenchmen and successful businesses from France to Mississippi," he mused, in an article for the website of the US magazine Foreign Policy.

The fact that Republicans have declared a War on Women makes me think women must have oil.