"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not so sure about the universe." — Albert Einstein
In that spirit, Sarah Palin suggested (on Fox News, of course) a few days ago:
"I don’t know why the question isn’t asked by the mainstream media and by others if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration.”
Apparently Palin believes that her viewers are as careless about examining such claims as she is about making them. Fortunately there are a few who pay close attention, usually with a dropped jaw:
"According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Republicans receive far more campaign money from the oil and gas industry than do Democrats. So far in 2010, the oil and gas industries have contributed $12.8 million to all candidates, with 71% of that money going to Republicans. During the 2008 election cycle, 77% of the industry’s $35.6 million in contributions went to Republicans, and in the 2008 presidential contest, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain received more than twice as much money from the oil and gas industries as Obama: McCain collected $2.4 million; Obama, $898,000.
"This is a decades-long trend, the center says: Since 1990, oil and gas companies have donated $238.7 million to candidates and parties, with 75% of the money going to Republicans."
Frank Herbert of the NY Times has been doing some exceptionally good writing, even by his standards, on the BP oil spill. In his most recent column, he notes that corporate influence on both parties is pervasive:
"The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.
"President Obama spoke critically a couple of weeks ago about the “cozy relationship” between the oil companies and the federal government. It’s not just a cozy relationship. It’s an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself."
The leak, and the catastrophe that caused it, was neither an "accident" or (as BP claimed) a "natural disaster." It was the result of a poorly-conceived experiment that, much like the war in Iraq and the financial meltdown, was undertaken with little or no planning for failure. Like its corporate brethren all across the global economy, BP's exclusive focus was on short-term gain and the compulsion to deliver quarterly dividends for shareholders — no matter the social or environmental costs.
Stay tuned as BP gears up for another (and even more desperate) option. By the time it's ready to go, the gusher will inject another 4,000,000+ gallons of crude into the Gulf.
[Poet Carol Ellis returns with a new poem, "In the rooms of childhood," which won the second prize in the hotly-contested "Free Verse" category -- 173 entries --- of this year's Oregon State Poetry Association competition. Carol has been invited to read her poem at the OSPA conference in Eugene later this month. It will also be published in the Verseweaver anthology later this year.]
In the rooms of childhood
there are tall ceilings, dark furniture
looms above me, the radio speaks
into pervasive silence.
I’m sitting close to father, quiet,
involved in the radio story.
He leans back, shirt collar open, one arm
resting on the couch, cigarette in hand.
I like to watch his face, deep blue eyes,
small mustache, thin mouth with a grimace
of smile. When the Lone Ranger rides into night
a drumbeat of hooves fills the living room.
Other girls have loud fathers, who sometimes curse
and sit in their kitchens in white t-shirts.
They like to lift the girls high up to shoulders
and carry them, laughing, to bed.
For me there is quiet and the radio story,
outside there may be snow.
[Note the green line at the far right representing the present.] Source: National Academy of Science.
The data reflected in the chart, from ice-core samples, covers the last 425,000 years of atmospheric changes in Antarctica. It's consistent with massive databases developed from thousands of other ice-core samples, tree rings, coral samples and historical records.
[This is the first in a series of postings on the bombing of Dresden in 1945 and its long-term moral and legal implications. The series begins with a mostly-factual account of the three-wave Allied attack and its effects.]
"I shall go on writing. That is my heroism. I will bear witness, precise witness!"
— The diary of Victor Klemperer, survivor of the Holocaust and the bombing of Dresden
Exactly 65 years ago last weekend, on 13-14 February 1945, 244 Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force arrived on schedule over Dresden, the Saxon cultural and communications center that had barely been touched by the war to date. The first bombs fell at 10:14 p.m. on the Altstadt ("Old City"), the designated target at the very center of Dresden. The target, in the shape of a wedge, was more than 1.5 square miles/4 square km. in extent and included few structures of military significance. The aiming point was a sports stadium occupied by refugees from the intense fighting on the eastern front, which was by then just 60 miles/100 km away. The Altstadt, for the most part, contained dense residential districts and cultural landmarks that were renowned throughout Germany and the world. It included only a handful of military installations and no industry, although nearby suburbs contained factories that were vital to the Nazi war effort.
As the Lancasters arrived over Dresden and emptied their bomb racks, a second and even larger wave of 550 RAF bombers was already en route from English airfields, arriving at 1:21 a.m. to drop thousands more incendiary and high-explosive (HE) bombs on an even broader target, which turned out to be most of the city. Once again the factories and military installations in the suburbs, including an army barracks, were untouched.
The following afternoon (February 14th), 316 B-17 bombers of the 8th U.S. Army Air Force lumbered toward Dresden in deteriorating weather for a third attack that produced mixed results, militarily speaking. By the time the third raid was complete, a total of 2,600 tons (2,360 metric tons) of bombs had destroyed 13 square miles (34 square km.) within the urban area, considered a "virgin" target because it had been almost immune from prior attack. The damage could have been even worse: the leading formation of B-17's flew past the cloud-covered city and bombed Prague, mistaking it for Dresden.
Since most of the Dresden was already destroyed, and clouds prevented an full assessment of the damage caused by the B-17's, the third attack was considered less "successful." But the RAF's two earlier raids started a firestorm that achieved the Allies' goal: 95% of the target, the central districts of Dresden, was obliterated in about twelve hours.
Why such total devastation?
First, conditions were ideal: Dresden was undefended and the weather was perfectly clear, as predicted, for the two RAF attacks. None of the three waves of bombers met any serious resistance. Antiaircraft units had been relocated to meet more pressing needs elsewhere as the massive Allied invasion of Germany proceeded on two fronts. A Luftwaffe fighter squadron briefly scrambled but returned to base without mounting any attacks on the bombers or their P-51 fighter escorts. Allied losses were negligible.
Second, conditions on the ground were ideal for the "perfect firestorm." Most of the buildings in the central area of Dresden were made of masonry, but their structural elements were timber. The western Allies, after five years of bombing German cities, had perfected the technical means of maximizing damage and creating catastrophic fires in residential areas. In the jargon of the time, this was known as "area bombing," as opposed to "precision" bombing of pinpoint targets — like a defensive position on a battlefield, an airbase, a factory, an oil refinery — in a relatively small area. Area bombing (also called "carpet bombing") was not unique to the Allies — it was practiced by all sides — but they perfected its techniques over Germany and, soon, Japan.
The RAF Bomber Command's heavy reliance on area bombing was, in many respects, an admission of defeat. Precision bombing is most effective at low altitudes during daylight, when bombers are also most vulnerable to antiaircraft fire and fighter attack. The RAF's daylight raids earlier in the war resulted in unsustainable losses of bombers and crews, forcing an "area bombing" strategy from high altitudes during the nighttime. The growing squadrons of the USAAF could endure heavy losses far better than the RAF, so the burden of "precision" daylight bombing fell on the crews of its B-17's and B-24's. To reduce losses, the USAAF eventually adopted the RAF's high-altitude strategy but continued its daytime raids. To compensate for highly inaccurate bombing from such heights, the Allied "bomber stream" often included over a thousand bombers flying in columns of 100 miles/160 km or more.
"Area bombing" typically began with a rain of HE bombs that destroyed the roofs of dwellings and caused many to collapse into the narrow streets, blocking escape and preventing fire trucks from putting out blazes. The HE bombs also left deep craters in the streets and severed water mains, further disrupting attempts to limit the spread of the fires. The concussion from the explosions blew out windows and doors, allowing strong drafts to penetrate the buildings that remained standing and fuel the fires.
Once the vulnerable (and volatile) interiors of dwellings were opened up to the sky, thousands of 4-pound incendiary bombs fell inside and ignited small fires. These separate blazes quickly combined into a conflagration that could produce hurricane-force winds and consume an entire city. Large trees were completely uprooted and firefighters were swept off their feet. When fully developed, a firestorm sucked the oxygen right out of the air, leading to the suffocation of thousands of Dresdeners who were huddled in inadequate shelters and cellars from which they could not escape. Thousands of civilians died from oxygen deprivation or carbon-monoxide poisoning.
By the end of the third attack, an estimated 12,000 dwellings had been immolated in central Dresden, along with 11 churches, 39 schools, a zoo and 19 hospitals.
By any standard, the human cost of the bombing was enormous. Postwar estimates of 100,000 to as many as 250,000 deaths have, however, been greatly reduced since the records of the former East Germany became available following German reunification twenty years ago. Until recently, the consensus of historians, German and non-German alike, was that 24,000 to 40,000 people were killed by the bombs and the inferno that followed. In 2006, the city council of Dresden commissioned a study by a panel of German historians that produced an estimate of 18,000 to 25,000 deaths. The exact number will never be known because thousands of refugees were streaming through the city, though the regime did everything possible to keep them moving quickly west to avoid creating bottlenecks in the transport system.
Only about 100 of the bombing victims were members of the German military. The large Wehrmacht (army) barracks 2 miles/3.2 km. north of central Dresden was not targeted and remained intact. Still, the raid by B-17's on February 14th accomplished one of the principal objectives of the attack: the destruction of railroad marshaling yards along the Elbe river that were vital to the supply and reinforcement of German troops on the eastern front. Three days later, however, trains were running again on a very limited schedule.
[USAAF photo of Dresden on February 15, 1945]
Why was Dresden bombed so late in the war? The city finally became an important target, more than five years after the war began, as Allied troops closed the noose around the Nazi regime. The city was in a vital location for the movement of troops and supplies by rail and road, both from west to east and north to south. It was on the main rail line from Berlin to Prague and Vienna. On average, 29 trainloads of troops and arms passed through Dresden each day. Its war industries were substantial, with over a hundred medium to large factories and workshops devoted to military production, including the massive Zeiss-Ikon plant. Some 50,000 civilians were employed in war-related industry, including many women and slave laborers like the "armaments Jews" who were allowed to live because there was a desperate shortage of industrial workers in Germany. Despite the military and economic significance of these suburban facilities, they were not targeted and, except for the railways, suffered little damage.
The immolation of Dresden was quickly and widely condemned. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, immediately saw an opportunity to turn opinion against the Allies in neutral countries like Sweden. It was among his last, and most successful, propaganda campaigns. Dresden was falsely depicted, both during and after the war, as an "open city" — a strictly cultural center of no military importance that was swollen with hundreds of thousands of refugees. The war was nearly over anyway, according to this view, and the destruction of Dresden contributed nothing to the Allied cause.
The Goebbels spin had traction. Since 1945, the attack has been routinely condemned as an act of cultural desecration, retribution and terror bombing for its own sake. Neo-Nazis in Germany and elsewhere continue to insist that the Allied destruction of Dresden, with an alleged death toll of up to 375,000, was the moral equivalent of the Holocaust: "Auschwitz + Dresden = 0" remains a favorite slogan.
Even as the ruins were still smoking, the Dresden raids received negative reviews in the neutral and Allied press alike, causing a major political flap in Britain. Prime Minister Winston Churchill soon felt it necessary to distance himself from his own Bomber Command. In a confidential memo written at the end of March, and quickly withdrawn, Churchill insisted that Bomber Command should focus its efforts on "military objectives" rather than "mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive." Dresden was seen as a "raid too far" and the fallout destroyed the reputation of Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the chief proponent of area bombing in residential districts. Revulsion over Dresden likely led U.S. war planners to remove Kyoto, another "virgin" cultural landmark in Japan, from the list of possible targets for the atomic bomb.
After 65 years, a more nuanced and complex view of the Dresden raids and their purpose has emerged.
Was the true intent of the attack to inflict "terror and wanton destruction," as the Churchill memo suggested? And there's a related question: if Dresden contained factories and military installations that were so vital to the Nazi war effort, why were most of those targets ignored by planners? An RAF memo, distributed to pilots before the bombing, explained: "The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front ... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do." This language suggests that the purpose of the raids was interdiction, broadly defined: the disruption of economic activities and German supply lines to the eastern front, exactly as Stalin had demanded at the Yalta conference earlier in February. (Some U.S. pilots were not convinced by this rationale: they could plainly see that the target was essentially civilian and a few bombardiers deliberately released their bombs prematurely in open country outside Dresden.)
If interdiction was the objective, why didn't the attack focus narrowly on highways, bridges, railroads and similar facilities? In fact, the major goal of area bombing was to create as much chaos as possible in the streets and communications facilities, blocking transportation routes and disrupting war production. In that sense, the raid was ultimately successful: with thousands of factory workers and their families dead or homeless, even the lightly-damaged factories suffered sharp and lasting declines in production — often for the rest of the European war, which ended in German surrender three months later. With the transportation system demolished, even workers with intact dwellings were unable to get to their jobs through the bomb craters and vast piles of rubble. With a focus on day-to-day survival for themselves and their families, workers stopped going to work and absenteeism soared.
Dresden's communications system was so disrupted that it was impossible to coordinate the movement of troops and war material through the city even as the railroads were repaired. The raids effectively knocked Dresden out of the war, leaving it unable to contribute to Germany's defense. Even if the bombing was effective in that sense, the moral question, under the theory of "just war," remains unresolved: were the benefits realized by the attack proportional to the amount of suffering inflicted on the civilian residents of Dresden, who at that time were mainly women, children and the elderly? [This will be the topic of a future posting.]
Whatever the rationale for the bombing and its military consequences, the results on the ground, in the Altstadt and neighboring districts, were horrific. Hundreds of eyewitness accounts of the Dresden bombing and its aftermath have been compiled and published. Here in the U.S., the city is best remembered through the work of Kurt Vonnegut, who was a prisoner of war at the time of the firestorm. Slaughterhouse Fiveincludes a fictionalized account of what he witnessed. (As Vonnegut explained later: "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true." However, Vonnegut's claim of 135,000 civilian deaths relied on the bogus "research" of "historian" and Holocaust-denier David Irving.)
Despite its terrible consequences, the raid provided immediate, if unintended, benefits to a few residents of the city. A small remnant of Dresden's Jewish community survived even as late as February 1945. Many, like journalist Victor Klemperer, had been temporarily exempted from deportation to the Nazi death camps because they were married to Aryans. Another 300 slave laborers worked twelve hours each day as "armaments Jews" ("Rüstungsjuden") in war production.
In its final months, however, the Nazi regime dedicated itself even more ferociously to the total annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe. Just hours before the bombing began, deportation notices had been issued to many of the remaining Jewish residents of Dresden. They were ordered to report to the railroad station just three days later. As Klemperer wrote in his diary:
"...on the evening of this 13 February the catastrophe overtook Dresden: the bombs fell, the houses collapsed, the phosphorus flowed, the burning beams crashed on to the heads of Aryans and non-Aryans alike and Jew and Christian met death in the same firestorm; whoever of the [Jews] was spared by this night was delivered, for in the general chaos he could escape the Gestapo."
With the destruction of the Gestapo headquarters in the bombing, the files on Dresden's surviving Jews were destroyed. Klemperer and other survivors of the bombing could safely remove the yellow stars from their clothing and blend into the stream of refugees flowing west into territory occupied by the U.S. Army. Victor and Eva Klemperer survived the war.
[Above: Architect Daniel Libeskind's design for the Dresden War History Museum, formerly the city's armory. It's scheduled for opening this year. The glass wedge, in the shape of the targeted Altstadt district, points toward central Dresden.]
Since reunification two decades ago, as mentioned above, the archives of the former East Germany have been open to historians for the first time, resulting in a more complete understanding of what happened in Dresden — and why. Recent examples includethe excellentDresden by British historian Frederick Taylor, probably the definitive history in English (and the source of much of the information related here). Anticipating the 65th anniversary of the raids, the February 1st edition of the New Yorker published an account (abstract) of the attacks and the subsequent restoration of Dresden, especially after reunification. (The article, by George Packer, is revealingly titled, "Will Dresden Ever Confront Its Past?") Area bombing in Europe and, especially, Japan is the subject of another New Yorker article by Roger Angell in the February 15-22 issue.
Whatever the source, it's obvious that the destruction of Dresden continues to be viewed through ideological filters more than sixty years later.
PHOTOS show Dresden during or in the aftermath of the bombing (Wikimedia). The British newsreel below shows the bombing from the air. For views on the ground, sometimes graphic, see this short documentary.
[Pashupatinath is an ancient Hindu temple complex in Kathmandu, Nepal. Bhaktapur is a nearby town that was once a separate kingdom.]
At Pashupatinath
monkeys steal the sacrifice. Grains and oranges laid out at shrines honor the dead burned over centuries, ashes upon ashes tossed on water.
Crowds scatter marigolds and rice from black plastic bags. Sellers of bags and beads crowd bridges above the Bagmati river where bright orange flowers mingle with ash.
Marigold garlands drift downstream, banana leaves, plastic bags, the body of a dog long dead. Every ghat is occupied. Bodies laid out, covered in flowers, burn before the gathered families.
Smoke of cremation rises in stagnant air. Old temples are made new, lingams rubbed red, daily offerings placed for Shiva and Ganesh.
A body burned here will step off the wheel of life, enter Nirvana, stop the cycle of birth and death. Ashes drift to India to fertilize the wide gangetic plain.
Today, cows snuffle gently at offerings and monkeys groom each other in temple windows. This ground holy for three thousand years.
________________________
The Kumari
As if in dream a four year old is taken from family to be a living goddess. She’s the one who never bleeds, who walks alone through a dark room and touches the severed heads of buffalo without crying.
She has her own temple. She appears at the latticed window dressed in silk robes, eyes marked in kohl, and waves to tourists like a homecoming queen. On holidays they take her out to ride in processions, garlanded in marigold.
A child’s life transformed, she learns only ritual and public adulation, a model of purity and grace, until at twelve or thirteen she bleeds and becomes the unthinkable, a woman, who will now be cast from divinity, sent home to live a human life.
A once blessed child, she is cursed with biology, inhabited
by the moon, lost to sunlight and marigold.
________________________
In Bhaktapur
The chicken sacrificed to a local god will be taken home and plucked and eaten, meat to accompany rice and dhal.
The blood fades slowly to brown in the small shrine where women go to pray for lost things.
The god, rubbed red with powder, garlanded in marigold, washed in blood, sits waiting like a watchful cat.
These classic Chinese poems seem like a suitable way to note our departure for a monthlong trek in the region of Chomolungma (Mt. Everest), Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal:
Kline writes: "Han-shan, the Master of Cold Mountain, and his friend Shi-te, lived in the late-eighth to early-ninth century AD, in the sacred Tien-tai Mountains of Chekiang Province, south of the bay of Hangchow. The two laughing friends, holding hands, come and go, but mostly go, dashing into the wild, careless of others' reality, secure in their own. As Han-shan himself says, his Zen is not in the poems. Zen is in the mind."
Paintings: Li-Ch'eng (919-967), "A Solitary Temple Amid Clearing Peaks" (top); Han-Shan and Shih-te (bottom).
In the spirit of Monday's posting on the Big Flag, I add the following excerpt from "The Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) by Portland author Ursula K. LeGuin:
"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one musn't make a virtue of it, or a profession. ... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."
Note to our vast audience in Finland: there's a Finnish version called Pimeyden vasen käsi.
For decades, our civilized and tolerant small town has enjoyed the distinction of being the home of the world's largest barber pole (left). Not content with its renown in the specialized field of tall poles, the city recently constructed a huge flagpole smack in the center of the main entry to its downtown. It supports one of the most disproportionately massive U.S. flags (30' x 60') ever. The "Big Flag" represents, to me, a kind of superpatriotism run amok — a phenomenon that a psychotherapist might describe as "overcompensated doubt." Further speculation on the topic of pole fixations and outsized flags is best left to professionals.
Proponents of the flag have expressed shock and disgust that the decision was criticized in some quarters, though they haven't yet accused anyone of being a communist — not publicly, at least. Critics joke that the flag is not only visible from a neighboring town, but "possibly from space." (When it's not at half-staff, at least, which in a country waging two wars is much of the time.) It's plainly visible from our house, more than two miles away.
My gifts for satire are way too modest for further exploration of this ripe subject. Let me instead refer the reader to two masters, starting with Stephen Colbert's hilarious riff on Sean Hannity's brand of more-patriotic-than-thou fanaticism. Be sure to watch the last 10 seconds (I tried to embed it but it didn't work).
"But of course I do," exclaimed the old man cheerfully. "The Germans are being driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country, and that's what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying anymore. But American and German officers are. I call that doing extremely well. Yes, I am certain that Italy will survive this war and still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed."
Nately could scarcely believe his ears. He had never heard such shocking blasphemies before, and he wondered with instinctive logic why the G-men did not appear to lock the traitorous old man up. "America is not going to be destroyed!" he shouted passionately.
"Never?" prodded the old man softly.
"Well..." Nately faltered.
The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. "Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so."
Nately squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, forever is a long time, I guess."
"A million years?" persisted the old man with keen, sadistic zest. "A half million? The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is the highest in the world, will last as long as the... frog?"
Nately wanted to smash his leering face. He looked about imploringly for help in defending his county's future against the obnoxious calumnies of this sly and sinful assailant. He was disappointed. [...]
"How old are you?" Nately asked, growing intrigued and charmed with the old man in spite of himself.
"A hundred and seven." The old man chuckled heartily at Nately's look of chagrin. "I see you don't believe that either."
"I don't believe anything you tell me," Nately replied with a bashful, mitigating smile. "The only thing I do believe is that America is going to win this war."
"You put so much stock in winning wars," the grubby iniquitous old man scoffed. "The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we've done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crises. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn't a chance of wining. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we certainly will come up on top again if we succeed in being defeated."
Nately gaped at him in undisguised befuddlement. "Now I really don't understand what you're saying. You talk like a madman."
"But I live like a sane one. I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American. I can assure you, my outraged young friend" - the old man's knowing, disdainful eyes shone even more effervescently as Nately's stuttering dismay increased - "that you and your country will have no more loyal partisan in Italy than me - but only as long as you remain in Italy."
"But," Nately cried out in disbelief, "you're a turncoat! A time-server! A shameful, unscrupulous opportunist!"
"I am a hundred and seven years old," the old man reminded him suavely.
"Don't you have any principles?"
"Of course not."
"No morality?"
"Oh, I am a very moral man," the villainous old man assured him with satiric seriousness [...]
"I can't believe it," Nately remarked grudgingly [...] "I simply can't believe it.
"But it's all perfectly true. When the Germans marched into the city, I danced in the streets like a youthful ballerina and shouted 'Heil Hitler' until my lungs were hoarse. I even waved a small Nazi flag that I had snatched away from a beautiful little girl while her mother was looking the other way. When the Germans left the city, I rushed out to welcome the Americans with a bottle of excellent brandy and a basket of flowers. The brandy was for myself, of course, and the flowers were to sprinkle upon our liberators. There was a very stiff and stuffy old major riding in the first car, and I hit him squarely in the eye with a red rose. A marvelous shot! You should have seen him wince."
While I'm reluctant to add to all the hype over Woodstock's 40th anniversary, I remembered (from the movie) this high-energy performance by Sly and the Family Stone — one of the highlights of the event.
Then I came across two more that shouldn't be overlooked. So I'm including all three (though many more also deserve another look).
On a personal note, I passed on Woodstock even though I could've easily gotten there. I was living a few hours away in Boston at the time, but I heard that parking was a serious problem. Unwilling to walk five miles, especially in the predicted rain, I passed. Foolishly, as it turns out.
And here's Carlos Santana & Co. with "Soul Sacrifice" (including a fine drum solo by 20-year-old Michael Shrieve starting around 3:15) and some PG-rated footage of the crowd:
Finally, no short collection from Woodstock is complete without Hendrix. While the band really starts cooking at around 6:00, this isn't my favorite version of the classic. But still...
"What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title."
—Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1594)
Researching a possible trek in Nepal this fall, I was reminded that the penultimate point on the planet, rising 8,849 meters or 29,031 feet above sea level, is now known by four different names from four different cultures. (Note: the altitude can vary with the snow depth on the summit ridge.)
The first, and most universal for now, is "Everest." In 1865, it was named, against his wishes, for British mapmaker Sir George Everest (1790-1866), who as Surveyor-General of India directed the Great Trigonometric Survey (GTS) of the Himalayas for the East India Company. The survey took decades, made its officials (including Everest) quite wealthy and measured the altitudes of Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga, and many other monster peaks of the Himalayas.
The Survey was amazingly accurate: Everest was assigned an altitude of 29,002 feet in 1856, only 29 feet lower than the current estimate based on advanced technologies. (The Survey actually determined the altitude of Everest to be an even 29,000 feet, but added 2 feet on the theory that such a round number would look too much like an estimate.)
Major geographic features have often been named after famous westerners, including Alaska's McKinley, the highest summit in North America, named in honor of one of the most contemptible U.S. presidents. This selection was a purely politicalmaneuver by a prominent gold miner who supported McKinley's drive to retain the gold standard in the face of a serious challenge by rival William Jennings Bryan.
Nowadays, most climbers, and many Alaskans, prefer the original Athabaskan name: Denali, or "the great one." It's only a matter of time before Congress approves a bill formally renaming the massive peak, which from base to summit (altitude 6,194 meters or 20,320 feet) qualifies as the world's tallest mountain.
"Everest" seems unassailable for now despite the far more imaginative names given to the peak by the Nepalis and Tibetans, the actual inhabitants of the region whose countries share the summit:
To Nepalis, Everest is Sagarmatha, which has been gloriously translated as either the "Forehead of the Sky" or (based on the Sanskrit root) the "Churning Stick of the Ocean of Existence." [Chew on that for a while, Sir George.]
To Tibetans, Everest is Chomolungma, "Goddess of the Wind" (sometimes translated as "Goddess Mother of the World").[1]
Qomolangma, while very similar to the Tibetan name, is the transliteration preferred by the Chinese rulers of Tibet. The Chinese version of the name can be traced back to Chinese imperial surveys of the region beginning in 1717.
Sagarmatha National Park includes the whole Khumbu region of Nepal and now appears on maps everywhere, so perhaps that venerable name will eventually be accepted more widely. The park still offers the most accessible routes to the mountain for trekkers and climbers.
The Tibetan Chomolungma is equally entitled to recognition. It has ancient origins and the Tibetan approach is of great importance in the history of Himalayan mountaineering. The first major attempts on the peak were mounted from the north via the Rongbuk glacier and North Ridge. This route frustrated all attempts[2] until a Chinese expedition reached the summit, without using bottled oxygen, in 1960 — seven years after the first ascent up the somewhat less difficult South Col route from Nepal by Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa, and Sir Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander.
Meanwhile, the Chinese have been aggressively demanding the formal adoption of Qomolangmasince 2002: "Until today the world is still persistently humiliating Mt. Qomolangma with English-language hegemonism." The Chinese position completely overlooks the Nepali claim and insists on the Chinese transliteration for a landform that has a (presumably) much older Tibetan spelling. "Hegemonism," indeed.
The Pacific Northwest is no stranger to these conflicts, as evidenced by the fact that not a single major stratovolcano retains the name it was given by the indigenous people of the region. All these great summits — Rainier, Shasta, Adams, Hood, Baker, St. Helens, Glacier, Jefferson, the Three Sisters, McLoughlin, Lassen — retain the names given them by European explorers and settlers.
While I don't have any particular grudge against John Adams (whose name is shared by seven other mountains in the U.S.), either Klickitat or Pahto seems like a more suitable name for the third highest mountain in the Cascades.
So what'll it be? Everest, Sagarmatha, Chomolungma or Qomolangma? As often happens, the naming of geographic features has become hopelessly entangled with politics, national pride and the history of imperialism. These delicate questions will have to be resolved at a later date by, ironically enough, legislators and mapmakers like Sir George Everest. NOTES:
[1] Trekking in Nepal by Stephen Bezruchka (2000).
[2] Recent investigations failed to determine whether George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, members of a British expedition in 1924, reached the summit before disappearing. Mallory's body was recovered high on the mountain (at 8,159 meters or 26,768 ft) in 1999.
PHOTO: The "Mountain Formerly Known As Everest?" A view from Kala Pattar showing the summit from the west, the South Col (the high pass on the right horizon), the Khumbu glacier icefall (lower left) and the west flank (right) of Nuptse. [Wikimedia Commons]
AFTERTHOUGHT: Many major peaks retain aboriginal names even in countries that were European colonies. In fairness, I'll list a few: Kilimanjaro (Kenya/Tanzania), Aconcagua (Chile/Argentina), Kanchenjunga (India/Nepal), Popocatapetl (Mexico), Fuji (Japan, never a colony). K2 is in such a remote corner of the Karakoram (thus the "K") Himalaya that it may not have had a local name. Finally, it should be noted that the GTS had a policy — flexible, as it turned out in the case of Sagarmatha — to use local geographic names wherever possible. Most Himalayan place names follow suit, with relatively few exceptions.
Michael Desfeyes, in his interesting compilation on the origin of mountain names, doesn't bother to include "patronymic names like Mt. Hood, McKinley, Everest, etc."
UPDATE (9/5/09): The editors of EverestNews.com, a comprehensive blog about Himalayan mountaineering, have put together a convincing and well-researched theory that George Mallory succeeded in reaching the summit of Mt. Everest in 1924 and died during the descent. Sandy Irvine, his climbing partner, also died during the descent but his body has never been found. According to this hypothesis, Mallory and Irvine agreed to separate so that Mallory could push on to the summit alone. This theory may never be proven (or disproven), but Mallory and Irvine at least came very close to the top of Everest 29 years before the first documented ascent.
Zakir Hussain again demonstrates his interest in musical collaboration across cultures, this time with an unidentified taiko performer. After a meditative start, things really get rolling at about 2:20. Zakir's fingers and hands are capable of registering 20 distinct beats per second.
This short YouTube video was featured on "Runes" a couple years ago, but it mysteriously disappeared. I'm pleased to offer it again.
"Zakir and His Friends," the outstanding 1998 world tour of percussion musicians, isn't available online, on DVD or in most video stores — but it should be.
If you've got the time (an hour and 40 minutes), I also recommend the excellent Millennium Concert Gateway video of a 2000 performance in Mumbai with more of Zakir and an outstanding ensemble of Indian percussionists and other musicians. If you don't have time for anything else, be sure to skip ahead (to 1:04:48) for a dazzling six-minute ghattam (clay pot) solo by U. Selvaganesh. The last 10 minutes of "dialog" among the performers, building to a final crescendo, are also worth a listen. These are world-class musicians who obviously enjoy performing together.
A very fine, high-resolution video of today's launch of the Endeavor space shuttle, with a crew of seven, at Cape Canaveral. After Friday's docking with the International Space Station, there will be a total of 13 astronauts on board. Endeavor is carrying materials to construct a platform for Japanese science experiments.
At 1:59, you can glimpse a couple pieces of debris falling off Endeavor. NASA will check for any damage before the shuttle's scheduled return on July 31st.
UPDATE (July 17th): NASA's examination of the Shuttle revealed no damage from the debris shown in the video.
Entries on Runes this year have morphed from the mostly political into the exclusively cultural, with an emphasis on literature, blues and, lately, African and Indian music.
This shift is partly due to the fact that a major focus in the past, the torture regime under the Bush/Cheney administration, has finally emerged as a national controversy that might yet lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor and eventual legal action. Various bloggers and columnists have pursued this goal for years without getting much attention, but the recent Red Cross Torture Report and a related article (and here) by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books helped to belatedly expand public awareness of the issue.
While I'm certainly not saying that work by progressives in this area has been completed, the issue has developed a momentum of its own — for now. The tension between the ethical obligation to prosecute war crimes and the desire to move on might yet be resolved in favor of the latter. The scope of the planned investigation already seems too narrow, since it seems to accept as legitimate any "interrogation techniques" condoned by the torture memos of Jay Bybee, John Yoo and the White House Office of Legal Counsel.
Meanwhile, Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, one of my favorite bloggers, is retiring. As she explains it:
"The main reason I started blogging, besides the fact that I thought it would be fun, was that starting sometime in 2002, I thought that my country had gone insane. It wasn't just the insane policies, although that was part of it. It was the sheer level of invective: the way that people who held what seemed to me to be perfectly reasonable views, e.g. that invading Iraq might not be such a smart move, were routinely being described as al Qaeda sympathizers who hated America and all it stood for and wanted us all to die.
"I thought: we've gone mad. And I have to do something -- not because I thought that I personally could have any appreciable effect on this, but because it felt like what Katherine called an all hands on deck moment."
All this rings true for me, too. Hilzoy will be missed, though I'm not quite ready to follow her (and Sarah Palin's) lead by shutting down this forum. In keeping with the eclectic nature of Runes, more entries on political topics seem inevitable. For now, though, it's great fun sifting through my bookshelves, photo collection and YouTube for items that might otherwise be overlooked. If nothing else, Runes can always function as a kind of personal archive, journal and storage locker.
PHOTO: From a men's room at Goldman Sachs, which just reported record profits of $3.44 billion. GS is the largest remaining investment bank on Wall Street.
Rahul Sharma is joined by his father, Shivkumar Sharma, in an intricate santoor jugalbandhi (or duet), with Anindo Chatterjee on the tabla and an unidentified accompanist (Paris, 2001). The closest western equivalent to the santoor (originally an Iranian instrument) is probably the hammer dulcimer. They perform a vachaspati, or raga, in the Carnatic scale of southern Indian classical music.
In the following clip, two western instruments are seamlessly adapted to Indian classical styles: the incredible Uppalapu Srinivas performs on the mandolin and the equally masterful D. Bhattacharya on guitar, with B. Harikumar on the mridangam (drum). The tabla player isn't identified. They performed in Paris in May 2007. Unfortunately, the music is interrupted twice by interviews which, though interesting in themselves, should've been grouped together so that the music could be continuous. (You can easily skip ahead to the next musical segment. The interaction between the musicians in the last minute is both amazing and amusing.)
Finally, here's a keervani raga with Srinivas on mandolin, the phenomenal Zakir Hussain on tabla and Sultan Khan on the sarangi (Indian violin). The sound reproduction and video quality aren't exactly optimal, but it's still worth a listen.
"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works." —James Joyce
This slideshow, accompanied by Toumani Diabaté on the solo kora, is Runes' tribute to James Joyce on the 105th anniversary of Bloomsday.
Observed annually on June 16th in Dublin and elsewhere, Bloomsday celebrates the life of the Irish writer and his novel Ulysses, whose events occurred over a single day and night in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist (some would say "antihero") of Ulysses.The same day in 1904 was also the occasion of Joyce's first romantic encounter with his future spouse, Nora Barnacle, on the beach near the village of Ringsend, outside Dublin.
"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives." —James Joyce
The following excerpt, from Finnegans Wake, is recited by the master himself:
