TOO LONG
It has been too long since I blogged. Too much going on I guess. As I have made all too clear, quirks of time and place are very, very interesting to me. Thus, I am going back into the archives to bring forth stories for the last three weeks that impact these spatial and temporal quirks.
INDIANA TIME
My buddy F, who works in Xbtijohupo, ED (sorry, that is taking my own joke too far), provided a quality answer to my query from last month about the time in Indiana. He said something on the order of, "Indiana is in the eastern time zone, moron" and left me to stew in my own ignorance. Thankfully, upon further reflection, he did a little RESEARCH and came up with this page, which does its best to clarify an inherently ridiculous situation. The short answer is that Fort Wayne is screwed up.
NIMBY MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The Washington Post had an interesting article on October 26 about how the United Nations ended up in Manhattan instead of Greenwich, Connecticut. It seems that the UN wanted to build a sprawling campus in semi-rural Connecticut for its compound. I envisioned something like the UN in Geneva. In any case, the location they were interested in was underpopulated, but made up for it in political and economic clout. These people included, " Time publisher Henry Luce, jazz leader Benny Goodman, financier John S. Rockefeller and Wall Street banker and future U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush, father to the former president and grandfather to the current one."
Apparently Alger Hiss (yes THAT Alger Hiss) promised the UN he could get them into Connecticut. What he didn't count on was (a) Prescott Bush leaking the selection to the media, (b) opponents "hiring two men to pretend they were Syrians. Each man donned a fez and walked through downtown Greenwich with surveyor tools, chattering away in pig Latin and spooking the shopkeepers," or (c) opponents starting rumors that camels would walk down the streets if the UN came. The funny thing is, L and I live four blocks east of the neighborhood described in (b) and (c) and people are actively moving towards the neighborhood…
VIVA CAPRIVI!
The BBC carried a story about treason trials in Namibia for people accused of trying to liberate the Caprivi Strip from Namibia. The Caprivi Strip is a narrow strip of land that splits Angola from Botswana and appears to be an unnatural extension of Namibia. It also seems to be a VERY unlikely candidate for a sovereign state. Thus, this story had an element of the ridiculous to it. However, proving that good comes from where you find it, the story made me look to see why Caprivi was part of Namibia. The answer is here, but can be summed up as it is a strip that the British created to separate the Germans in German Southwest Africa (Namibia) from the Boers in Transvaal, that the British then traded for Zanzibar. Thus, it is an unnatural extension of Namibia, and is one of the most glaring examples of the senseless borders left in Africa by European colonialism.
ITALIAN CROATIA
It seems that we have come to regard Italian Fascism as a sort of benign, slightly silly phenomenon that the Germans, characteristically, took too far. However, an article in the International Herald Tribune on October 29 helps focus attention on the nasty side of the Italians in World War II. On a Croatian island (Rab), the Italians ran a concentration camp. It was mostly for Slovenes, and 10,000 children died in the elements there. In the context of World War II, this place was not that bad. Still, if the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing humanity he didn't exist, then the best trick the Italians pulled off was coming out of World War II as victims.
GERMAN BOHEMIA
The Prague Post carried a story on October 30 about a man who was fired from his position as chair of a Czech group of people imprisoned by the Nazis. He was fired because he sent a note to the leader of a German Sudenten group congratulating them on opening a Prague office and apologizing for not being at the opening.
The man he sent the letter to represents the nearly 3 million Germans who were stripped of their possessions and exiled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. This was done largely in response to both the Nazi atrocities committed against Czechoslovakia, and the Sudenten political action in the mid-1930s that did so much to undermine the trinational (German, Czech, Slovak) state that Czechoslovakia was trying to create.
Once again, when we learn history in terms of millions here, and hundreds of thousands there, we lose track of the small stories that add up to sixty year grudges in places like the German/Czech border. This is all the more true on this border, where the post-World War I peace conference gave the Sudeten Mountains to the Czechs not because any Czechs lived there, but because they were necessary for Czechoslovakia's defense. Pretty ironic.
AMERICAN PANAMA
On November 3, Panama celebrated 100 years of independence. This is a little ironic since arguably the Panamanians have only been independent since January 1, 1999, when they took over the canal. I mean, we deposed their dictator in 1989, and you don't really see that in independent countries, do you?
BRIDGING THE SCHISM
Finally, the Washington Post reported on November 10 that a coalition of "dissident priests, extreme nationalist newspapers and politicians, monarchists and an increasing number of regular Orthodox believers" wants Ivan the Terrible made a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church. This is the same group that got Nicholas II (!) canonized in the Orthodox Church. Cited reasons not to make Ivan a saint include:
• his seven marriages (the Orthodox Church allows no more than four)
• his alleged involvement in the murder of Metropolitan Filip, who denounced Ivan's terror and was eventually canonized for his sacrifice
• his reported childhood predilection for throwing animals off roofs or
• his grown-up practices such as ordering up tortures to duplicate biblical accounts of the sufferings of hell.
By the way, some of Ivan's supporters also believe that Rasputin and Stalin should be canonized. There is even a folk song that ends:
At this most perilous hour
The despoiled Christian
world
Will remember Lord's
anointed Czar Ivan
Who defended and saved our
faith.
Seems like we might be further from bridging the Great Schism than some people thought.
It has been too long since I blogged. Too much going on I guess. As I have made all too clear, quirks of time and place are very, very interesting to me. Thus, I am going back into the archives to bring forth stories for the last three weeks that impact these spatial and temporal quirks.
INDIANA TIME
My buddy F, who works in Xbtijohupo, ED (sorry, that is taking my own joke too far), provided a quality answer to my query from last month about the time in Indiana. He said something on the order of, "Indiana is in the eastern time zone, moron" and left me to stew in my own ignorance. Thankfully, upon further reflection, he did a little RESEARCH and came up with this page, which does its best to clarify an inherently ridiculous situation. The short answer is that Fort Wayne is screwed up.
NIMBY MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The Washington Post had an interesting article on October 26 about how the United Nations ended up in Manhattan instead of Greenwich, Connecticut. It seems that the UN wanted to build a sprawling campus in semi-rural Connecticut for its compound. I envisioned something like the UN in Geneva. In any case, the location they were interested in was underpopulated, but made up for it in political and economic clout. These people included, " Time publisher Henry Luce, jazz leader Benny Goodman, financier John S. Rockefeller and Wall Street banker and future U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush, father to the former president and grandfather to the current one."
Apparently Alger Hiss (yes THAT Alger Hiss) promised the UN he could get them into Connecticut. What he didn't count on was (a) Prescott Bush leaking the selection to the media, (b) opponents "hiring two men to pretend they were Syrians. Each man donned a fez and walked through downtown Greenwich with surveyor tools, chattering away in pig Latin and spooking the shopkeepers," or (c) opponents starting rumors that camels would walk down the streets if the UN came. The funny thing is, L and I live four blocks east of the neighborhood described in (b) and (c) and people are actively moving towards the neighborhood…
VIVA CAPRIVI!
The BBC carried a story about treason trials in Namibia for people accused of trying to liberate the Caprivi Strip from Namibia. The Caprivi Strip is a narrow strip of land that splits Angola from Botswana and appears to be an unnatural extension of Namibia. It also seems to be a VERY unlikely candidate for a sovereign state. Thus, this story had an element of the ridiculous to it. However, proving that good comes from where you find it, the story made me look to see why Caprivi was part of Namibia. The answer is here, but can be summed up as it is a strip that the British created to separate the Germans in German Southwest Africa (Namibia) from the Boers in Transvaal, that the British then traded for Zanzibar. Thus, it is an unnatural extension of Namibia, and is one of the most glaring examples of the senseless borders left in Africa by European colonialism.
ITALIAN CROATIA
It seems that we have come to regard Italian Fascism as a sort of benign, slightly silly phenomenon that the Germans, characteristically, took too far. However, an article in the International Herald Tribune on October 29 helps focus attention on the nasty side of the Italians in World War II. On a Croatian island (Rab), the Italians ran a concentration camp. It was mostly for Slovenes, and 10,000 children died in the elements there. In the context of World War II, this place was not that bad. Still, if the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing humanity he didn't exist, then the best trick the Italians pulled off was coming out of World War II as victims.
GERMAN BOHEMIA
The Prague Post carried a story on October 30 about a man who was fired from his position as chair of a Czech group of people imprisoned by the Nazis. He was fired because he sent a note to the leader of a German Sudenten group congratulating them on opening a Prague office and apologizing for not being at the opening.
The man he sent the letter to represents the nearly 3 million Germans who were stripped of their possessions and exiled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. This was done largely in response to both the Nazi atrocities committed against Czechoslovakia, and the Sudenten political action in the mid-1930s that did so much to undermine the trinational (German, Czech, Slovak) state that Czechoslovakia was trying to create.
Once again, when we learn history in terms of millions here, and hundreds of thousands there, we lose track of the small stories that add up to sixty year grudges in places like the German/Czech border. This is all the more true on this border, where the post-World War I peace conference gave the Sudeten Mountains to the Czechs not because any Czechs lived there, but because they were necessary for Czechoslovakia's defense. Pretty ironic.
AMERICAN PANAMA
On November 3, Panama celebrated 100 years of independence. This is a little ironic since arguably the Panamanians have only been independent since January 1, 1999, when they took over the canal. I mean, we deposed their dictator in 1989, and you don't really see that in independent countries, do you?
BRIDGING THE SCHISM
Finally, the Washington Post reported on November 10 that a coalition of "dissident priests, extreme nationalist newspapers and politicians, monarchists and an increasing number of regular Orthodox believers" wants Ivan the Terrible made a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church. This is the same group that got Nicholas II (!) canonized in the Orthodox Church. Cited reasons not to make Ivan a saint include:
• his seven marriages (the Orthodox Church allows no more than four)
• his alleged involvement in the murder of Metropolitan Filip, who denounced Ivan's terror and was eventually canonized for his sacrifice
• his reported childhood predilection for throwing animals off roofs or
• his grown-up practices such as ordering up tortures to duplicate biblical accounts of the sufferings of hell.
By the way, some of Ivan's supporters also believe that Rasputin and Stalin should be canonized. There is even a folk song that ends:
At this most perilous hour
The despoiled Christian
world
Will remember Lord's
anointed Czar Ivan
Who defended and saved our
faith.
Seems like we might be further from bridging the Great Schism than some people thought.
posted by David at 3:31 PM
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