"Valkyrie" (part 2)

But what of the cast of characters in Valkyrie? These men who had taken arms to defend Germany's honor and pride, and now found themselves fighting a war they could not win for causes they had stopped believing in? Five of the cast of Valkyrie have appeared in other notable World War II movies - two in Der Untergang and three in 2001's Conspiracy (which provided some base of influence for Valkyrie). The one notable exception (who, to the best of my knowledge, has not appeared in a WWII movie) is Tom Cruise. And maybe, somehow, he suffers from this relative inexperience. 

Cruise's acting is so stoic that it's hard to get invested in his von Stauffenberg. While the real von Stauffenberg was passionate in his disdain for Nazi policies and his desire to liberate Germany from Hitler, Cruise's square-jawed performance fails to inspire on a lot of levels. It's only in von Tresckow's desperation, Olbricht's fear, Beck's (Terence Stamp) "thinking of earlier times" and the adrenaline of von Quirnheim (Christian Berkel) that we can get caught up in the characters of the story, and we live and die with them. We want to believe that in the heartland of the greatest evil known to humanity, there are still decent human beings willing to sacrifice everything to make a stand. And watching Brannagh, Nighy, Stamp and Berkel, we can believe it.  But when it's Cruise, we have to take his word for it. With one single question ("Do you recognize my voice?"), even Bamber's Adolf Hitler, with only a handful of lines, evokes more emotion than Cruise's von Stauffenberg does with a starring role. That's more a shame for the portrayal of von Stauffenberg than it is a criticism of Cruise's acting talent. It would be unfair to say that the strength and the success of the movie depends on one man's performance, but with Cruise as the cornerstone of Valkyrie, his comparatively by-the-numbers delivery of Claus von Stauffenberg is a letdown.

John Ottman, longtime collaborator with Bryan Singer, returns to score Valkyrie, and does a brilliant job of it. His work runs the range from the beautifully haunting "They'll Remember You" to the more typical, Wagnerian (heh) "March 13th Attempt". At times, it does seem a bit Hollywood-esque - jackbooted Nazis marching down polished marble corridors with thunderous timpanis hammering away in the background. It's rarely overdone, and complements the aesthetics and Singer's eye for detail quite well. 

The German media lauded Valkyrie for bringing attention to a chapter of their country's history that had been relegated to history books and memorial plaques. Detractors and controversy aside, the movie faithfully honors the men who tried to make a stand against Adolf Hitler, and does so without becoming bogged down by history or technical details. Being a robust dramatization of the 20 July plot, Valkyrie might not appeal to viewers who don't know a great deal about Nazi Germany (or who aren't generally interested in history), but Singer and crew tell the tale well enough that it's easy to get caught up in the intrigue, the drama and the action. And if Valkyrie sheds a little light on a dark time, the men who tried to stop Hitler have their tale told well, and what they did was certainly not forgotten. 



Irish Rant in Honor of Saint Patrick

Every year at this time

in the U.S. I have to prepare myself for an onslaught of Irish pop-culture that, while it's pop-culture, is more American than Irish. For instance, until recently, when St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Ireland have begun to garner American tourist dollars, St. Patrick's day was a day for Catholics to go to Mass and have a dinner at home with their families. But thanks to American popular culture, and the Internet, we've ended up with a lot of assumptions about what it means to be Irish in America on the 17th of March.

To Wit:

  • Corned beef; it's not Irish as much as Irish American. A nice piece of bacon, cooked with cabbage and praties (potatoes) would be more traditional, or Irish bacon with Colcannon.
  • Shamrocks are not four-leaved clovers. They are in fact one of two varieties of a three-leafed old white clover. Traditionally, and in the medieval context, the Shamrock was a member of the the clover species Trifolium repens (in Irish seamair bhán). In more recent times, the shamrock is often a member of the Trifolium dubium species (in Irish: seamair bhuí). The shamrock became a symbol of Ireland because (according to eighteenth century folklore) St. Patrick used a shamrock to explain the nature of the Christian trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to the Pre-Christian Irish. Shamrock is an Anglicization of Irish seamróg, a medieval Irish diminutive form of the word for clover, seamair bhán.
  • Green beer is a violation of all that sacred in beer. If you want something Irish, have a pint or three of Guinness. If you get it on tap, for heaven's sake, make sure the barkeep knows how to pour Guinness properly. I note that St. Patrick's Day usually falls during Lent, when in Medieval Ireland, brewers made a "small beer" from malted barley. There is, by the way, good reason to associate St. Patrick's feast day with beer consumption, since we are told in the compilation of laws that St. Patrick ordered, the Seanchus Mor, that he himself had a personal brewer on his staff.
  • The Leprechaun, or Irish leipreachán, is a creature from medieval Irish mythology texts, where they are known as luchrupán in Middle Irish, derived from Old Irish luchorpán, itself a compound of lú (small) and corp (body), a Latin loan-word. In medieval Irish, luchorpán are small but mighty warriors living underwater, with strong associations with fertility, and known for their sexual capacity (yes, the stories are very bawdy), rather than their avarice.

The Truth about Corned Beef

Every year around St. Patrick's

day in the U.S. the grocery stores start putting corned beef brisket on sale and on display, and restaurants and pubs add corned beef and cabbage to their menus as the Irish entree. Unfortunately, corned beef and cabbage, even when accompanied by potatoes, is more American (or Germanic) than Irish; we'd do better to celebrate Irish cuisine with salmon or colcannon, a dish of potatoes and cabbage (that's even better made with kale).

As much as I like corned beef, I'm here to tell you that it's not really very Irish, though it is very American. Historically, the Irish raised pigs for meat, and beef for milk. If you butchered a cow, you did it in later October or early November, at Samain, and by March that meat, even if you cured it by corning it, was gone. Pork was a staple of the Irish diet, particularly bacon. When Irish immigrants arrived in Boston and New York, their beloved Irish bacon was not available; what was available was corned beef, thanks to Jewish delis and butchers in New York, and the New England Boiled Dinner popularized by German immigrants to Massachusetts and other New England states. The corn in the phrase corned beef refers to salt-curing, or brining. The corn refers to the large grains of salt used in curing the beef. The meat was placed in a crock and liberally covered with large grains (or corns) of salt. Etymologically, corn comes from the Germanic root kurnam, used to refer to small seeds or kernals, cognate with kernal and with Latin grain. Corned beef, traditionally made with a brisket of beef in Eastern European and Jewish traditions, is fairly simple to do at home.

The Irish immigrants, unable to locate or in some cases afford the distinctively different Irish bacon,

traditionally served with cabbage and potatoes, possibly with carrots or other vegetables turned to corned beef. Traditionally, beef in Ireland was a luxury; in the middle ages, cows were prized for their milk. Dairy products were so important in medieval Irish diets that cheeses and similar milk products were called "white meats." In the eleventh century medieval Irish satire Aislinge Meic Con Glinne/The Vision of MacConglinne, MacConglinne attempts to entice a "demon of gluttony" to exit an abbot by preparing a magnificent feast that includes "And he called for juicy old bacon, and tender corned-beef, and full-fleshed wether, and honey in the comb, and English salt on a beautiful polished dish of white silver, along with four perfectly straight white hazel spits to support the joints." This is very clearly an over-the-top outrageous feast, and the use of corned beef in the feast points up that it was considered extravagant.

Pork was by far the more common meat, even after the English conquest, since what beef there was was exported to England (especially during the Napoleanic wars), leaving potatoes, fish, pork and cabbage for the native Irish. You'll find Irish families and restaurants even now having gammon, or a roast joint of pork, as a family dinner. The Irish kept emigrating to America, bringing Irish cuisine and traditions with them but of necessity modifying them to suit the new land.

The very first St. Patricks Day parade was held in Boston in 1737; what was until very recently a solemn day of church attendance in Ireland, followed by a Sunday dinner with the family, very quickly became an opportunity to celebrate ethnic pride as St. Patrick's Day parades took place a few years later in New York, and quickly became an annual tradition all over America. At the same time, in part because of tourism from descendants of Irish emigrants returning to Ireland, St. Patrick's day is becoming more of a secular tradition in Ireland. Though I suspect the inclusion of corned beef on St. Patrick's Day menus there is a nod towards their American guests; Irish cuisine today, freed from the burden of export, features local and fresh ingredients, and while pork and potato are still important ingredients, so are the amazing local mackerel, prawns, lobster and salmon, and beef as well as Irish cheeses, and incredible locally grown produce, and of course, the lamb that's so much a part of Irish Stew.

WASPs Finally Recognized for WW II service

During World War II, over a thousand women in the U. S. joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) as civilian pilots. The Army Air Force created what they called the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squad in September of 1942. They paid for their flight lessons and pilot training and tested and ferried aircraft, freeing men for combat flying. Two years later, the program ended and the women were sent home. Their con

tributions to the war effort were mostly ignored and forgotten, so much so that in 1976 the U. S. Air Force announced that for the first time, female pilots would be flying jets—completely ignoring the WASPs. This encouraged the WASPs to start talking about their experience in World War II. You can see a short documentary about WASP Vi Cowden here. Vi flew 19 different types of "Pursuit Planes", including the P-51, logging thousands and thousands of flight miles. Like the other WASPs, Vi Cowden was expected to follow military discipline, without holding military rank or receiving benefits like insurance. In 1977 Congress finally responded to significant lobbying and awarded the women who served in WASP with military active duty status for their service.

On March 10, President Obama awarded these civilian WASPs the Congressional Gold Medal. You can see a gallery of pictures here. You can read more about the WASPs here.

Image credit: U. S. Airforce WASP pilot Helen W. Snapp flying her SB2C Helldiver aircraft over Washington, DC, United States, Jun 1944.

Missed Opportunity

In 1934, rightwingers, Republicans and fascists railed  against Franklin Roosevelt when he took over the White House, hurled slanderous charges, accused him of bringing socialism, communism and ruin to the Republic. Why? Because he thought that the average American needed a "New Deal". The Wall Street boys and other speculators had pushed America into a Great Depression. Roosevelt programs to stop America from financial bleeding and to get America moving were called socialism. His closing of the banks to halt bank runs was called a dictatorial  taking over of the banks. He shut down the bankrupted banks and reopened the solvent ones under government regulation and with insurance for depositors. This was called the acts of a communist. His creating public service jobs, providing benefits for the unemployed,  and his establishment of a social security system, were called a dangerous scheme to  redistribute wealth. In 1934, a fascist plot led by Wall Street and British bankers, under the direction of City of London, England, investment firms was only foiled because the general, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who the bankers chose to be the front man for the plot, proved to be a patriot and informed on the plotters, (The Business Plot). The Republicans in Congress did everything that they could to stop the New Deal programs. Most of the newspapers in the country were owned by conservatives who railed against Roosevelt and the New Deal. What did Roosevelt do? Did he allow the Republican propaganda machine to destroy him and his Administration, and his work to rescue America from the Great Depression? No. He went to the American people and he told them that he had come to Washington to change things, to give the average working American a break, to pull America free from the reckless excessive dealings of the banking and financial industries. He put the onus on where the blame belonged for preventing change, on the Republican opposition. He told the American people that if they wanted change, they would  have to send to the Congress more Democrats, which they did.

The  leaked Republican National Committee 72-page memo, that makes it clear, even to the blind that the Republicans have no interest in bipartisanship, the  Senator Bunning incident  showing how one stubborn old man can stop a bill that majority supports, is more than enough evidence that there will be no change until the Democrats have more Democrats in the Congress.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats must seize the opportunity, and do what Franklin Roosevelt did, to tell the truth on the Republicans. Make it clear even to the hard of hearing, that the Republicans have been voting in a block against change, and to defeat anything President Obama and the Democrats have proposed. The Republicans voted against a bill that cut taxes for the middle class and for small business. They voted against jobs for the unemployed. They voted against a bill that will hold to account the people who got us into this mess, the bankers. Instead of weakening Democratic proposals for change, as was done in the awful Senate health care bill, which must be defeated, the Democrats should  stay on course, pass what they can get passed now, that will truly improve the lives of Americans, and point out that they are not able to get what needs to be passed now, because there are too many obstinate Republicans, who are opposed to change, and the American people  should return a Congress that is ready to make the change that is needed, a Congress with fewer Republicans.


Links:
 

Business Plot, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot).

RNC Infamous Meno, (http://www.politico.com/static/PPM136_100303_rnc_finance_leadership.html)

Bunning Incident, (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gettowork/detail?entry_id=58253)

Mary 80 Years Ago

In the early 1930s a little girl named Mary

was filmed by her parents. The family films show Mary playing, eating sand on a beach, sitting in her chair, throwing a stick for a dog, and riding a poney. Mary's present-day London neighbor was able to digitize those early shots, and added a sound track of Harry Nilsson's "Remember" as a special present for Mary's 80th birthday. As you watch this charming vignette, watch for something rather special at about 1:30.

History in Images

The image above is a public domain image from the Library of Congress collection. The photographer is Dorothea Lange. The woman in the 1936 photo is a 32-year old migrant pea-picker named Florence Thompson, shown with three of her seven children. It's part of a series of photos Lange took of migrant mothers. In an article some 24 years later Lange said that

She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

We are increasingly preserving these fragile paper and glass and tin images to digital format, where they stand a better chance of long term survival, and a much greater audience. These images serve as historic primary sources that allow us, sometimes centuries later, to remember that history is something that happened to real people with real lives.

In the late 1880s an Italian photographer named Adolfo Farsari was atypically allowed access to Japan beyond the carefully controlled acces to ports and cities and officials to which Europeans were more often restricted. These photographs were then carefully and painstakingly hand-colored. You can read more about these fascinating images, and see them for yourself here.

There's been a number of such archival image collections lately that digital technology and the Web have made it possible for the collections to be shared. I've written here about how French filmmaker Claude Friese-Greene used a special color film process to capture films of London in 1927. A Russian photography name Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii created a special process of using three images of the same subject, each taken with a color filter, and then combing them the create a color image, in much the same way three color strip films were made. Prokudin-Gorskii traveled throughout Russian taking photographs and developing them in his specially appointed railroad car. The images capture a way of life that even Prokudin_Groskii was aware was almost gone You can see and read about his images here.

There are also a number of public archives online, though many of them do restrict the use of the images, you can browse freely. The Smithsonian has a public archive here. Image sharing service Flickr, a Yahoo subsidiary, has a Flickr Commons area for public archives. Participating institutions include the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, many universities, and state and national libraries from Australia, Scotland, Wales, France and elsewhere. The restrictions on the images are all clearly posted, if there are any. These collections are fascinating and should be more utilized and known than they are.

Remembering Auschwitz, Part 2

How will we remember the Holocaust when the last of the survivors dies? The Nazis unwittingly helped preserve some of the memories, by meticulously documenting and accounting their genocide - never has murder been so well catalogued. There will, of course, be the plethora of books and movies and articles and poems and plays. But what will the Holocaust mean, when its voices speak only from recordings and recitations? Will things change? What will the world look like thirty-five years from now, in 2045, and what will the Holocaust look like to that world? Ancient history? Boring history? Irrelevant history?

The world of 2045 will be largely unrecognizable to the world of 2010; technological advancements will (hopefully) advance the comfort of living; medical breakthroughs will (hopefully) advance the human race; and socio-geo-political changes will (probably) re-write the map. One hundred years after the liberation of Auschwitz, one hundred years after the guns of World War II fell silent, the scars of the Shoah may exist only in memory and in the hearts and minds of people whose lives were indirectly touched - but the memorials and the graves will be there.  With time, Schindler's List and The Diary of Anne Frank might lose their iconic status in popular culture, but the "Arbeit macht frei" sign and that long, long railroad track will still be there.

The world will change, but the memory of the Holocaust never will. Behind every Nazi cliché and every Hitler parody and joke, there are nine million reasons why Auschwitz will scar the human psyche - for better and for worse - for a long time to come. 

 

Remembering Auschwitz

Earlier this week, the world commemorated the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Holocaust survivors, relatives of those who survived and those who perished, politicians, historians and tourists alike all made the trek up to cold, snowy Polish town to remember, reflect and move on.

The wealth of material and media on the Holocaust is astounding. Everything from Schindler's List to The Diary of a Young Girl, from Life is Beautiful to The Pianist, from Carrion Comfort to multitudes of scholarly articles and poems on the Shoah has been read, disseminated, criticized, honored, parodied, enshrined and immortalized. Such is the legacy of the Holocaust - that sixty-five years after its liberation, Auschwitz still commands an unshakeable grasp on the human psyche.

Broadly speaking, nearly nine million people were killed in the Holocaust (Jews, ethnic Poles, Slavs, Russians, the disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Freemasons); almost two million of those deaths were at Auschwitz. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of stories have been recorded; stories from those who worked in the camps, survived the camps, those who escaped, and from those who died within its fences. The accounts have been dramatized into movies, books, poems and plays that have entered the collective human conscious almost as much as concepts like "Auschwitz" and "the Holocaust" themselves have done.

It makes me wonder how we'll remember Auschwitz and the Holocaust, say, ten years from now, for the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation. Or thirty-five years from now, in 2045, one hundred years after the camp was liberated. By that time, and most (if not all) survivors of the Shoah would have passed on. The museums, the books, the pictures, the articles, and the movies will still exist. The long railroad track leading to the camp's main gate will probably be there; so will the "Arbeit macht frei"sign. 

And in 2045, when the last of the survivors have passed on, and "Auschwitz" and "the Holocaust" recede further into history, how will we commemorate Auschwitz then? I imagine there will still be ceremonies and speeches; heads of state pledging to never let the lessons go unlearned; wreaths will be placed and tears will be shed. But of those speeches, none will be from old men and women with a tattoo on their forearm. Recordings of their words will be played, and maybe a child, or a grandchild, will read what they once said. But when we lose that link - when the last Holocaust survivor passes away - we lose a piece of history.

How will we remember the Holocaust when the last survivors die? I'll be discussing that in Part 2.

Pompeii Ruins Via Google Street View

Pompeii was a fairly wealthy

Roman city; the sort of place you might have a summer villa, until the eruption of the volcano on Mount Vesuvius on the 24th of August in 79 C.E. poured lava and ash on the city, burying the city, and the fleeing inhabitants, until it was rediscovered in 1738, and sort of excavated (really, exploited) in the nineteenth century. Recently, the government has been forced to close large sections of the ruins to tourists, and there is insufficient funding to maintain the current excavations, never mind engaging in more.

A fair number of artifacts and frescos, from Pompeii are currently in the Naples National Archaeological museum. The Pompeii exhibit includes plaster casts of those killed as they attempted to flee. Three villas in particular have been excavated, and documented: The House of the Faun, the House of the Vettii, and the Villa of the Mysteries, all of them primarily famous for their frescos.

Pompeii is, like Herculaneum, finally getting a little respect from the Italian government after years of dedicated, formal neglect. Google has included the ruins in their Google Street View; it's pretty nifty. You have a 360 degree view, and get to "walk around" virtually. Check it out here:


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