Black Mountain – Part 1

Straub (L) & Carney (R)

Bunker and Tower of London

By James T. Carney
Photos by Detmar Straub

For reasons that I do not understand, I have always been fascinated by the areas encompassed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the neighboring lands to the south of them. Certainly, the interest is not inspired by genealogy since I have no ancestors south of the Alps or east of the Elbe. In all events over the years I have made four trips to the area on pleasure and on business. My last trip there, in October 2015, was to Montenegro (“Black Mountain”), which country was part of Yugoslavia but was for most of its history semi-independent. Today it is a small country of perhaps 600,000 people (the population of Glasgow). It was recently the scene of a Russian plot to overthrow the government and install a pro-Russian regime.

By way of apology to the wild birds in our neighborhood

Written towards the end of May, just in case

By Moristotle

Besides missing Siegfried, who will be kenneled for the month of June, a sadness of being away from home, mostly in Paris, is the knowledge that our neighborhood’s wild birds will find no seeds in our back yard all that time. They won’t even find their favorite feeders. I took the favorite feeders down this morning to stage the photograph shown above. Though it may look inviting enough to you, I who delight in seeing & hearing birds there, find it a desolate spectacle.