German phoenix

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This seems encouraging: Germany’s largest synagogue—one that somehow managed to survive both WWII and the Soviet-contolled aftermath in East Berlin—was restored and reopened in a moving ceremony on Friday that featured, among the thousand people who gathered to celebrate, elderly Holocaust survivors who had worshipped there before the war. The sermon was given by “Rabbi Leo Trepp, 94, who had preached at the synagogue in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power and later fled the country.”

And the opening has occurred not a moment too soon. Wait too much longer and there wouldn’t be any survivors still surviving.

It also featured, ominously enough, “airport-style metal detectors and dozens of police officers, some armed with automatic weapons.”

Well, of course; there’s still more than enough hated to go around, although the perpetrators may be different. At least now, the police with the weapons are protecting the synagogue.

Germany, home to a growing Jewish community—120,000 strong at the moment, fed mostly by emigrants from the former Soviet Union—is trying its best to make itself a welcoming environment for the Jews who are relocating themselves to a country that, until the 1930s, was one of the best places for Jews to be on the entire earth.

The building looks lovely:

germansynagogue.jpg

[See this post I wrote recently about how Poland is dealing with its own Jewstalgia.]

Late at night in a soon-to-be-empty house

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Actually, it was early in the morning.

The night before the closing I was up till 6:30 AM doing all the last-minute clearing away of the detritus of my life, getting things ready for the walk-through at 8:30 AM. I just barely avoided the nightmare of scooting out the back door as the new owners came in the front.

What took all this time? Loading my car to the brim with clothes and other personal must-have-with-you items. Then clearing away scraps of paper, empty shoe boxes, an inordinate number of plastic bags, crooked wire hangers, old half-empty plastic spray bottles of products bought to clean soap scum or mildew or rot or rust, sticks and stacks of things to cover up scratches or stains or stinks. Rags and torn towels and an old Betamax, maple seed wings that had somehow gotten tracked throughout the entire house, color-coded stickers for a filing system I never got around to instituting, extension cords galore and…well, you get the idea. And then, a clean sweep.

A few things I’ve learned:

(1) It turns out that when you’ve put all your furniture in storage and are cleaning up afterwards, there’s no comfy place to sit or lie down when you get tired. You can always lean against a wall, but it’s not quite the same.

(2) Usually when you’re cleaning up in a hurry, there are closets to shove items into—not to mention sweeping things under the rug (not literally, of course). But when there are no rugs any more, and the idea is to empty the closets, even what looks like odds and ends when spread throughout the house becomes quite a pile when gathered together. And a small Toyota does not hold quite a pile of goods, let me tell you.

(3) In the end, everything becomes garbage. The odd objects I hadn’t been quite sure about, the Christmas cactus and the slightly underachieving toaster oven and the plastic baskets for laundry—out, out, I say! Garbage all.

But, in the end, this is also what the new owners get—a clean slate on which to write their lives (compare to photos of previous stages):

emptylivingroom.jpg

Moving day: these I can unlearn to love

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A while back I wrote about my plans to move. I put my house on the market in late spring, thinking—the current housing market being what it is (I seem to specialize in buying in a seller’s market and selling in a buyer’s market)—that it might take a year or so to sell.

But it sold almost immediately, and today is moving day. I’ll be putting most of my stuff in storage, temporarily staying with friends not too far away, and traveling around a bit while I ponder where to go next. Posting should continue relatively uninterrupted; laptops and wifi are ubiquitous enough to take care of that.

Packing up a houseful of goods makes one realize how much stuff is hidden in closets and cupboards and basements and garages. When it’s all laid out, the bulk is almost overwhelming: how could I have amassed all of this? Even after I threw about half of it out? Next time I’ll do better. Next time I’ll get rid of three-quarters of the junk. Next time…

But for now, it’s time to say goodbye. Not to friends here; I assume we’ll see each other again, although not as often as before. At least for a while, till I make a bigger move.

But to the garden. Actually, I started saying goodbye as soon as I knew the house had sold. Here’s a photo from a day or two ago:

lateaugustgarden.jpg

And this is the peegee hydrangea that was about six inches tall three years ago when I planted it, and is now about as tall as I am. I love these plants, especially in the fall when the huge flowers turn pinkish/violet/brown. But this year when that happens, they’ll belong to someone else. In fact, as of tomorrow morning, they will already belong to someone else:

hydrangeas.jpg

And, of course, goodbye to the house itself, the one I fixed up six years ago when I moved here. Here’s a photo of the living/dining room in its prime, part of a series of pinups taken for advertising when it went on the market (if you look carefully you can see some of those hydrangeas, cut and dried, near the fireplace):

livingroom3.jpg

It looks a tiny bit different today:

moving3.jpg

The task, of course, is to say goodbye and then look forward to what lies ahead. A cliché, but like so many clichés, true.

For a less-clichéd viewpoint I’ll turn to one who knew a thing or two about moving, and about change. I refer, of course, to Robert Frost:

ON THE SALE OF MY FARM

Well-away and be it so,
To the Stranger Let them go.
Even Cheerfully I yield
Pasture or chard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea, and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd: Craig and the cop

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The rather Byzantine story of Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who was arrested for lewd behavior in a Minnesota airport restroom staked out by an undercover cop in a sting operation, and who copped a plea for disorderly conduct instead, teaches those of us who are relatively (or maybe even completely) unfamiliar with men’s room etiquette that they are places where users must pay strict attention to the location of all body parts at all times.

No, I’m not talking about those body parts. I’m talking about feet; it seems that playing footsie between the stalls is a big no-no, even when the feet in question might be on the no-man’s-land of the border beneath the stall wall.

Not that I’ve ever thought of playing footsie between the stalls; the most I’ve ever done along those lines is to study the shoes next door for fashion tips, and imagine what the person who goes with those 6-inch green platforms or those Birkenstocks might look like. That’s the sort of thing we do in ladies’ rooms for fun.

Fortunately, while imagining, I don’t tap my feet. In the ladies’ room it might not even matter, but in the men’s room, it’s a signal that the festivities are about to begin.

And don’t get started on hands; in fact; don’t even think about it. That line between the stalls cannot ever be crossed, even (as Craig rather unconvincingly alleges was his motivation) to pick up a piece of paper. Continue reading →

On the Ho Chi Minh trail, then and now

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To continue with the theme of the last few days, this article that appeared in The American Prospect back in February is edifying in describing exactly how an increasingly antiwar Congress pressured Nixon back in the late 60s and early-to-mid-70s to end the Vietnam War, and what effect it had on our strategy and prosecution of that war.

It’s edifying in several ways, not the least of which is the tone of the author, who clearly approves of Congress’s actions then, and hopes that by describing them in detail now he can provide guidance to those who wish to act similarly today in pressuring Bush (or any possible hawkish successor) to withdraw from Iraq. The author considers Senators Church, Case, and Mansfield, et. al. to be heroes, Davids who stood up bravely against the Goliath Nixon (and the unbridled power of the Presidency) and felled him, even before the final self-delivered blow of Watergate.

I’m offering it mostly, though, as a summary of Congressional antiwar measures of the time, for those who are interested. I do not share the author’s assumptions that all these things were for the good, and his ignoring of the negative consequences of the antiwar movement’s actions, but I find his views representative of most liberal thought now. Certainly they were representative of majority public opinion in America at the time—including mine.

Contrast to this interview with Bui Tin, a former colonel on the general staff of North Vietnam’s army. He received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, but later defected to France after becoming disillusioned with the course Communism took after the takeover (ah, another changed mind).

Bui Tin describes the other side of the picture. From the start, the North Vietnamese read the American public well and were aware of what their strategy needed to be:

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, “We don’t need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out.”

And then there’s this:

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement.

Read the rest for an interesting take on how the enemy’s strategy followed its knowledge of the American psyche. Ho proved to have been correct then. The important question is whether his words still ring true.

[ADDENDUM: The antiwar movement’s words still have an effect.]

More about those helicopters on the Saigon roof

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I’ve got an essay up at PJ today entitled “Finessing the Surge,” about politicians staking out a position on the current situation in Iraq. In my essay, I mention that they keep referencing that tragic image of helicopters attempting to airlift South Vietnamese supporters fleeing the inevitable Northern takeover.

A view of that famous day in 1975, from eyewitness Col. Harry G. Summers, appears here, (see pages four through six). Col. Summers paints a vivid and detailed picture of the Herculean but ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the military to make sure everyone at the embassy was evacuated, as they had been promised.

One seldom-remembered fact is that the evacuation had been ongoing for several weeks, beginning with fixed-wing flights that had to be creatively managed because (in another seldom-remembered fact), the South Vietnamese government had barred its officials and its military personnel from leaving.

Even so, there was no way all those who wanted to go could be evacuated in time. But on that fateful day on the Embassy roof, Summers relates that all of those who had gathered there to be airlifted could have successfully escaped, and the majority there did. Of thousands who had already been helicoptered out from the Embassy alone on that single day and night, “only” 420 were left behind. Summers describes some of them:

America had not only fecklessly abandoned its erstwhile ally in its time of most desperate need but also had shamefully abandoned the last several hundred of those evacuees who had trusted America to the very end. Included were the local firemen who had refused earlier evacuated so as to be on hand if one of the evacuation helicopters crashed into the landing zone in the embassy courtyard; a German priest with a number of Vietnamese orphans; and members of the Republic of Korea (ROK) embassy, including several ROK Central Intelligence Agency officers who chose to remain to the end to allow civilians to be evacuated ahead of them and who would later be executed in cold blood by the North Vietnamese invaders. Continue reading →

Dead men tell no tales—but do they sign essays?

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Headline spotted in this AP article from CNN news: “Castro Signs Essay, Keeps Mum on Death Rumors.”

If he’s actually dead, of course, that might go a long way towards explaining Castro’s conversational failings. On the other hand, while it’s true that he failed to show up for his 81st birthday on Aug. 13, perhaps he’s just not found of cake. And the fact that not even a photo or video of him has surfaced since June 5 might just mean that he’s gotten vain in his old age and doesn’t like the way he looks any more (we all know how digital cameras tend to show every line).

The rumor mill in Miami considers his death a consummation devoutly to be wished. It’s been nearly fifty years, after all, that they’ve been waiting. One thing is certain, though—this particular wish is one that will some day be fulfilled.

Design in a thing so small

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Sissy Willis, she who finds beauty in unexpected places, has taken some wonderful photos of a Daddy longlegs netting a lacewing. For Sissy, whose background is in art and design, this conjures up some dance images, which she has posted side by side with her photos. Take a look.

I love those visuals, but for me her photos conjured up an association of a more literary sort: the words to Robert Frost’s “Design.” It’s one of the many poems that illustrate Frost’s complex dark side, and give the lie to his carefully honed image as an folksy avuncular Hallmark-greeting-card kind of guy.

DESIGN

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth —
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth —
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.

Lately a number of moths of the very large and almost-batlike variety have found their way into my house, only to die—but not at the hands of spiders, nor on flowers. As for lacewings, I haven’t had the honor of hosting one yet.

An entomologist might quibble with the different species involved in photos vs. poem, but an etymologist would be more interested in the evocative names “Daddy longlegs,” “lacewing,” and “heal-all.”

Crittenden’s crew

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Jules Crittenden is on vacation, lucky guy, while the rest of us sweat it out with the return of summer’s humid swelter to New England this weekend. I’m one of a host of guest bloggers cross-posting at his place in his absence. An interesting and varied bunch; please take a look.

The world according to Hirsh: what, me worry?

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Michael Hirsh has a column in Newsweek that must be read to be believed.

Channeling Alfred (“What, me worry?) E. Neuman, Hirsh takes the loooong view of history, arguing that our withdrawal from Vietnam “worked.” After all, Vietnam isn’t doing so very badly today, three decades later.

To Hirsh, the boat people and the re-education camps were just a few small speed bumps along the way. The fact that Vietnam started to rebound economically in the 90s wipes it all out in Hirsh’s eyes, and motivates him to use scare quotes when he writes, referring to Bush’s speech, “This [capitalist future] was the ‘harsh’ aftermath that George W. Bush attempted to describe this week when he warned against pulling out of Iraq as we did in Vietnam.”

Actually, Michael, no it wasn’t. This was, among other things. And Hirsh calls Bush’s remarks “an abuse of historical fact?”

Then he resorts to that surefire routine, always good for a yuk: mocking Bush’s academic credentials. According to Hirsh, Bush is “just now catching up with the Political Science 101 reading he shrugged off at Yale.” Ho, ho, ho.

It appears that Hirsh may have shrugged off some reading himself as an undergrad (well, who among us didn’t?) back at Tufts, because his next sentence shows he’s got a bit of catching up to do, as well, “Yes, a lot of Vietnamese boat people died on the high seas; but many others have returned to visit in the ensuing years.”

Hey, it’s kinda like those concentration camp survivors who returned decades later for the deluxe tours of Auschwitz and Dachau. All’s well that ends well—or, as Emily Litella would put it, “Never mind.”

I guess if you take a long enough view everything works out in the end. The Holocaust was a success for the Jews because it led to the establishment of Israel. Stalin and the twenty to forty million deaths he caused? Hey, have you seen the USSR today? Capitalists. Case closed.

Brian Baird comes out for giving the surge a chance

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Rep. Brian Baird, Democrat from Washington state, has written this extraordinary piece appearing in today’s Seattle Times.

Baird has been one of the more consistently anti-Iraq-War members of Congress. How do we know that? He voted against the invasion at the outset, and has been consistently and strongly critical of the decisions the Bush administration made in waging it.

That hasn’t changed, as you can tell by reading his column. No, Baird hasn’t become an apostate; he still thinks the war was a mistake. Continue reading →

Whose Vietnam analogy is it, anyway?

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Bush’s speech yesterday seems to have spawned a further opening of that wound that’s never really closed, the Vietnam War.

Bush’s critics are incensed: after all, Iraq/Vietnam is their analogy, always good for a negative spin on what we’re doing now in Iraq. How dare Bush—who, it goes without saying, is as ignorant of history as he is of everything else save Machiavellian grabs for power—how dare he co-opt it in the service of the surge and the continuing US presence in Iraq? Continue reading →