Catch-Up Post!

If you are a fan of the Daily Show, then you will love this podcast I recently discovered. It's called, The Bugle - Audio Newspaper for a Visual World. Here's the description from their iTunes page:

Based respectively in a penthouse turret in metropolitan New York and a small lair in South London, John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, with their combined height of 3.59 meters, will together canoe through the murky swamp of big stories, small stories and assorted hogwash that inundates our daily world. Comprising news, sport, comment, analysis, other stuff, and our unique audio crossword, The Bugle is the newspaper of the future, before the future actually happens.

Here's the link to the most recent episode (episodes come out once a week).

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I hope Hillary looses both Indiana and North Carolina tonight, AND that Jason Castro gets booted off American Idol. Politics and pop culture all on a Tuesday night! I happen to be partial to MSNBC (Tim Russert is the best analyst on TV). Will you watch the primary results tonight or are you lame or I mean busy.

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Saw this incredible headline (sorry no t-shirt available):
Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

My jaw dropped when I read that. According to the WHO the suicides per 100,000 males are 17.1 (source). According the article 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. If suicide rates were consistent with national rates for those 1.6 million soldiers then approximately 273 males would be likely to commit suicide.

There have been 4,560 soldiers killed in combat since 2001. If soldiers and veteran suicides do in fact outpace the death total from these two wars that would represent a 1,670% increase over the standard national suicide rate. Here's the damning part. A big part of the reason why there are so many suicides is because money isn't being spent to make sure the 53% of returning combat veterans who have PTSD get the help they need.

This from a country that spends over 700 billion every year on it's defense department (China is upping their spending to 53 billion). This injustice is sickening. We ask our young people to go to war for us, and then leave them hanging out to dry once they have done our dirty work for us. This will have ramifications for years and shows how insincere our Commander in Chief and congress is about supporting our troops.

London in Full

We left Spain on Saturday May 12 and headed for a three day adventure in London to finish out our trip. We were fortunate enough to get to stay with our friend Mary in her apartment located in the Hackney neighborhood of London. Her apartment was in a converted school house and was super cool.

Levi was so happy to get to be with his friend Joseph having been mainly around adults for the previous nine days. The two boys played while we strategized on how to take on London. Seeing as how we only had a limited amount of time we decided to take a double decker bus tour of London in hopes of at least seeing all the major sites the city has to offer.

We had great summertime like weather in Spain, however London did not reciprocate. For the entire time we were there it rained and was cold, except of course when we would call it a day and go back to Mary's. Our city bus tour tickets included a boat ride down the Thames river which we had 24 hours to take advantage of. So Monday we did the bus, and on Tuesday we went on the river, the kids loved it. Despite the cold and rain we all sat up in the front of the uncovered boat and looked for pirate ships all the way down the river!

We only got to tour two things in London, Westminster Abby and the West India Docks. Everything else in London was only given a cursory visit.

Despite our inability go inside many of London's famous places, we were able to get a babysitter one evening and go out on the town with Mary. We went to an area called Brick Lane and had incredible Indian food. We then tried to go to a pub near our restaurant but the moment we walked in, everyone looked at us like, "ohhh whose parents just showed up to bust someone?" So we settled for a Gastropub near Mary's house which was excellent. I asked the server for the quintessential London beverage and he got me a Pimm's which was delicious. Then the next night Mary stayed home with the kids and we got to meet our friends Katherine and her husband Alex at a Pub that was a little more fitting for our age and station in life. Then we ate some great food at a little fushion place near the London Bridge.

We had such a great time in London and we definitely need to go back. There is so much fascinating history there that is really worth exploring and taking in. Special shout out to Mary, Katherine, and Alex for being great hosts while we were in London.

Some Pics:

1. Big Ben, The Eye, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abby, and Her Majesty's Fountain.
2. First ride on a double decker bus!
3. Joseph and Levi looking a little too sinister outside the Tower of London.
4. Bond...James Bond.
5. Strolling on Canary Wharf.
6. Can you tell we are getting towards the end of our family posing picture limit?
7. Storming the palace gates!
8. Despite the instructions, midway through crossing the street I would revert to looking for cars on the street in the opposite direction I was supposed to. If I lived in London I would be hit by a car in about three weeks.
9. This establishment was pointed out to us by our tour guide. It's across from the American Embassy and a park with Roosevelt and Eisenhower statues in it.
10. London phone booth.
11. Last trip on the Underground, it's time to go home.

So that's it, that's our trip to Europe. I definitely feel that my world view has been expanded since I went on this excursion. I have learned that I have no hope of keeping up with the eating habits of the Spaniards, and that New York pales in expense compared with London. I have also become acutely aware of what a new kid on the block America is. When you can walk in structures built seven hundred years before Plymouth Rock, it takes you down a notch. As I wrote in my last post, I am so thankful to have had this opportunity for our whole family to take this trip. Thanks Mom for all your generosity in helping make it happen and your incredible hospitality. Also thanks again to our friends in London for their generosity as well. And thank you for vicariously coming along on our trip with us.

The J-Wild blog will now resume its typical nonsense on Monday, hopefully with a new template. So if you stop by over the weekend and see something a little weird, don't be alarmed I am just trying to work out a new look in the new Blogger.