Terminated (or: You Can't Fire Me, I Quit)

Sometime over the Christmas holidays, the authorities of Graz, a classically pretty Austrian town, took down the sign that for the past seven years has identified the local 15,000-seat sports arena as the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium... [Schwarzenegger] was educated in Graz and has always readily identified it as his native place.

But when Schwarzenegger, now governor of California, declined to commute the death sentence for Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Los Angeles gang leader who was executed in California two weeks ago, the reaction in Graz, where the death penalty is seen as a medieval atrocity, was swift and angry.

"I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen," Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party said in an interview in Graz's stately City Hall, describing the first step in the chain of events that led to the renaming of the stadium. "The petition was accepted by a majority on the Council."

But before a formal vote was taken on the petition, Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town's conservative mayor, informing him that he was withdrawing Graz's right to use his name in association with the stadium.

There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, Schwarzenegger wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of the City of Graz further concern.

Uh huh.

Calling all "A Wind from the South" e-readers...

Since there are no online reviews available as yet, I'd welcome your comments -- they'll make it easier for readers-to-be to decide whether they want to shell out their $5.99 for the book.

You can comment over here.

Thanks!

Another couple collaborates

And it's fun to hear about.

We also spent a lot of time looking at one another in flat-out amazement. "I've known you for almost 20 years," I'd say to The Wife on reading some sex scene she'd come up with, "and only now do I learn that you have this kind of thing on your mind? Hussy." "Dude," The Wife would say on reading a sex passage I'd written, "where'd that come from? Pervert." Then we'd crack up.

(A tip of the hat to 2blowhards.com for the posting.)