Tue Feb 02, 2010
Why Is This Guy On A Stamp?
Prez recently received some pharmacy continuing ed thing in the mail and I noticed it had a 61 cent stamp on it featuring Richard Wright. Stamps and coins and that sort of thing say a lot about how we think about ourselves (Mr. Jefferson wanted our coinage to feature Anglo-Saxon gods, for example). Wright was a communist (although he later fell out with the movement) and at the least a racialist, but what is most striking to me is that he lived the last 14 years or so of his life as an expat. I would think people on our stamps represent unifying figures. I understand that Wright's documentation of the very-real racism of his era was very important. But this is a man who chose to live away from here for a very long time. And that is fine. But why is he on an American stamp?
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Sun Nov 01, 2009
Food And Dachau
Today I was sitting next to Mr. Tzoumbas at the Cultural Center's OXI Day program and I noticed he didn't eat his potato or carrots. I decided to have some fun and told him to eat his vegetables. Mr. Tzoumbas laughed and said he no longer ate the two things because when he was in the infamous Nazi concentration camp (for 22 months) he and other prisoners would sometimes steal carrots and potatoes. He demonstrated how they would wipe the carrots on their pant legs and eat them - there was no way to wash them. I asked him what the daily diet for prisoners was and he broke it down for me: a cup of coffee at 9am, a piece of bread for lunch and then soup for supper - and of course slave labor all day long. That was pretty much it.
[33] comments (340 views)
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Wed Oct 28, 2009
...And The Priest Wore A Kippah
Last Monday our sexton Sam and I went to Congregation Beth Israel to a booksigning and talk with Ariel Sabar. Check out his website here. His dad was the last Jewish boy to have a bar mitzvah in the village of Zakho in Assyria/Kurdistan/northern Iraq before everyone had to flee. The book is fabulous and is as much about Ariel's relationship with his dad as it is the history and rediscovery of roots. There were about 200 or so people there, and as elsewhere on his tour Ariel met others of Kurdistani Jewish descent at the function.
As for the kippah? Well, Sam and I entered the foyer and noticed a man putting on a kippah from a basket full of them. I asked someone if we should wear them too and the person said "that would be nice" or something of that sort. It seems the practice there is that men wear them anywhere in the building, not just in the religious areas. So Sam (a sub-cleric) and I (a cleric) put them on, and you had the peculiar scene of a priest with a collar wearing a Jewish skullcap. Later on someone from the congregation thanked us for honoring them by respecting their tradition. It was great meeting Ariel, and I highly recommend his book.
[39] comments (861 views)
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Thu Oct 15, 2009
Afghanistan Myths?
Interesting article here from Amir Taheri. For more on the history here I recommend all of Peter Hopkirk's books on The Great Game. Setting The East Ablaze, in particular, reads like an action novel but is real history filled with incredbily interesting characters.
[10] comments (188 views)
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Fri Aug 28, 2009
leʻalam ulʻalme ʻalmaya
Hyman Bloom has passed away. Mr. Bloom was one of the great American artists of the 20th century. He was close friends with Hovhaness and di Giovanno - what I would not give to have been there with them back in the day as they listened to Indian music and talked about all sorts of things and inspired each other to greater mystical heights. Our prayers and thoughts are with Stella, his widow and a dear family friend. May his memory be eternal. More on Hyman Bloom here.
[16] comments (171 views)
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Thu Aug 20, 2009
Don't Mess With Atomic Annie
I met a man recently who was wearing a Korean War Vet hat. I told him my dad served in the Second Marine Air Wing (is that right, dad?) and he told me about his service. He was part of an atomic cannon crew. This was some kind of weapon. He said they exclusively fired conventional shells but it was capable of shooting atomic ones. The Wiki article has some cool pictures of the Grable test as well as a link to the video on youtube.
[20] comments (133 views)
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Mon Jul 20, 2009
Space And Germans
There is an excellent Tom Wolfe (one of my favorite writers) article here on NASA and the moon landing. He mentions Wernher von Braun a few times but not a quote that I have never been able to confirm. Supposedly when everyone here in the US was freaking out about Sputnik von Braun said something like "don't worry, our Germans are better than their (the USSR's) Germans". I have also seen it flipped around - Sputnik happened because "their Germans were better than ours". Did he really say something like this?
[20] comments (162 views)
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Sat May 23, 2009
War Dogs And Memorial Day
Memorial Day weekend is definitely not vacation time if you are a priest - we have three different services at Hope Cemetery this weekend as well as a special outdoors service by the Espas marker outside the Cathedral after church Sunday. I also was invited to give the invocation and benediction at the Memorial Day program at Sullivan Middle School on Friday morning. The theme of this year's service was the 65th anniversary of the Guam Cemetery's War Dog Memorial dedication. The program featured several speakers, including Mayor Lukes and featured guest Dominique Stovall, LCPL U.S.M.C. For Lance Corporal Stovall it was a moving return to her former middle school. She is an inspiration to all the students who were blessed to hear her speak (indeed, to all of us).
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[41] comments (207 views)
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Mon Apr 13, 2009
Mogadiscio?
Next to our desk here at the home office stands my old globe. It was a gift from my 'rents when I was a young child, and it has always fascinated me. Even when I first got it - probably the early '80s - it was out of date - it has N. and S. Vietnam, for example :(. I tend to spin it a quarter turn every so often so that when I am lost in thought I can check out a different part. Somalia has been much in the news, and with it the capital (if you can call it that at this point) of Mogadishu. Well, my globe says Mogadiscio. This is clearly an Italian spelling, and there was at one time a huge Italian presence in the Horn of Africa. Mussolini famously said "we (meaning the Italians) are prolific and intend to remain so", and the Horn was to be lebensraum for the prolific, at that time, Italians.
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Mon Apr 06, 2009
First MiG In The West
I know I said I was tired in my last post and off to bed, but this write-up for whatever reason triggered a memory of a story the late, great Judge Tremblay once told me. The judge, or Colonel in this context, was stationed in Japan at some point in the Cold War, and a Soviet pilot defected to his base. This was the first time Westerners could get their hands on a MiG - I wish I remembered the year. Judge Tremblay told me about how they hustled the pilot off to be debriefed and then spent the next 24 hours in a frenzy of taking apart the plane, photographing everything, and then putting it back together. Very soon a Soviet plane arrived, dropped off a pilot, and flew the MiG back home. I had no idea that the ground rules on defection say that the country gets to keep the defector but has to give up his vehicle, but apparently that is how it worked. And that is how we got our first true insight into the MiG.
[11] comments (110 views)
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