Tag: Soviets

All the Gold in California

…is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills, in somebody else’s name….

I always loved that song, and when I was planning on submitting a story to the Sacramento Bouchercon anthology, I was using that as the title. I don’t think I got any further than the title, the main character, and that was a “friend of” the Real Housewives. Maybe someday I’ll get around to working on it again. This, by the way, is what I am like all of the time. Yesterday was rough on me; we were busy in the clinic and I had a lot of work to catch up on. Today will be more of the same, I’m afraid, but am hoping it won’t be too bad. I did make groceries on the way home (only two insane drivers I managed to evade successfully; I swear sometimes it’s like people don’t care if they’re in an accident or not), and the traffic wasn’t too terrible. It really hasn’t been bad in quite a while, actually, even going in on the highway. Or maybe my timing has just been good lately, I don’t know for sure. But I was tired when I got home. Paul and I almost finished Stick, which I am really enjoying a lot and highly recommend, and then I had to do the dishes before going to bed. I did sleep well, and I feel more awake than I did yesterday.

I was so tired last night, y’all, it wasn’t even funny.

I have some things I need to get done today and I think we’re busy in the clinic again too. It’s a busy scheduled week, methinks, which is okay and fine. My supervisor is about to go to London for two weeks, which will make the next weeks interesting around the office. Sigh. But it’s always something, isn’t it? I have to go to Alabama for Decoration Day, and then down to Panama City Beach to visit with my aunt and Dad, at the end of the month. It’s also Paul’s birthday later this month, and I should get him something nice.

The country’s madness continues to rage, and will until it entirely burns itself out. Humanity never learns anything, does it? I don’t know what will be left when that finally does occur, and what will rise from the ashes as a phoenix. I can’t speak for anyone else, but it really does seem sometimes like civilization will never advance or progress because there’s always some completely horrible people in power somewhere. (I do think some people are beginning to understand why Iran has hated the USA for decades, which is something, one supposes.) As I was watching some of those Iranian LEGO videos the other day–they’re actually kind of entertaining, and very well done–because someone claimed we were “losing the propaganda war.” (I’d heard about them but hadn’t paid a lot of attention), which made me think about my childhood again, and how I–all of us–were essentially brainwashed by pro-American propaganda, especially when it came to history, while at the same time we studied propaganda as an evil on society. They showed us both Soviet and Nazi German propaganda, taught us that all propaganda was bad…while teaching us an idealized iteration of this country and its history, centering colonizers as heroes. (Which, I think, is yet another reason I never much cared for Westerns growing up; I could tell it was “natives bad!” propaganda, and not reflective of the west as it truly was. (Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller1, which was derided by Western purists, pretty much showed the actual reality that the west was “won” by whores, grifters and drifters.)

Likewise, Columbus was a genocidal monster who didn’t really discover the Americas; it can only be said that he opened the era of American colonization and indigenous genocide.

Not a hero, really.2

I am starting to feel awake, and I don’t feel very achy or groggy this morning. Maybe I’m adapting to getting up at six again; I really shouldn’t let myself sleep in so late on weekends because adjusting back is such a fucking bitch. But this past weekend was messed up; I’ve not had a normal weekend in several weeks, and I would really like for that to go back to normal…which it will, in time for me to take another trip out of state. Woo-hoo. I don’t mind, though, it’s always nice to spend time with Dad and my newly widowed aunt. I really need to stop drifting through my life and starting to get it back under control again; I don’t necessarily have the anxiety of not knowing what I need to be doing or what is coming up and forgetting things anymore; but it still bothers me on some levels. I know I have doctors’ appointments and an injection and labs and things that need to be done, and I need to mark up my day-to-day calendar. I do feel better this morning than I did yesterday, when I just felt a bit overwhelmed about everything. I know I can get everything done that I need to get done; I just need to consult my on-going to-do list to center myself, and come out of that coasting through life feeling.

And on that cheery note, I am going to have a bit of breakfast before I head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.

  1. Note to self: watch again. ↩︎
  2. He really was a horrible person. Most Americans never learn much about him other than the standard “discovered America, funded by Ferdinand and Isabella, his three ships were the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. But he was absolutely a monster; if you don’t believe me, look it up. ↩︎

Cross My Broken Heart

I slept well again last night, so here’s hoping that Monday night’s shitty night of sleep was an aberration. I feel very rested and well this morning, which is a lovely change from yesterday morning’s horror.

Paul was home late last evening, so I was able to finish watching Greatest Events of World War II in Colour, which I highly recommend. It’s incredibly well done, and powerfully moving. The final two episodes, “Liberation of Buchenwald” and “Hiroshima”, are the perfect pair to end the series with; in my last post I talked about how the “Dresden Firestorm” episode brought up questions of morality, both national and that of war; how absolutely fitting that “Liberation of Buchenwald” was the very next episode; so that any sympathy one might have felt for the German citizens killed during bombing raids and so forth, evaporates almost immediately. The documentary is also one of the first times I’ve ever seen anything about World War II and the Holocaust that absolutely puts the lie to the German everyday citizen’s claim, afterwards, that they didn’t know anything about the death camps. They knew, and at best, just didn’t care. At worst, cheered the mass slaughter of “undesirables”. Thank God Eisenhower brought in the press to document the horrors of the camps.

Even more horrifying is knowing that the threat of Soviet Communism was deemed so terrible that the Western nations chose not to pursue a lot of war crimes trials against horrible Nazis, and instead helped rehabilitate them into German society, deciding it was simply better to move on–the past was the past, the Nazis were defeated, and Communism was apparently worse–to our everlasting shame.

“Hiroshima” naturally deals with the development of atomic weapons and the lead-up to the decision to use them on the Japanese. The reason given at the time was that Japan would never surrender, and the conquest of the home islands would have cost many American lives; so President Truman–also wanting to finish off Japan as quickly as possible, before the Soviet juggernaut could turn east–made the decision to wipe two cities off the map–and the xenophobic racism that allowed the Americans to be more brutal with the Japanese then they ever were with the Germans; had the Germans won the Battle of the Bulge and taken Belgium back, would the Americans have dropped atomic bombs on say, Frankfurt and Munich? Highly unlikely.

I highly recommend this series. World War II changed the face of the world, and politics, forever; and almost everything that has gone on in the world ever since the war ended has been affected and colored by the war. It was the war that made minorities in the United States–who fought, bled and died for this country in a brutal and bloody war–no longer willing to accept second class status. For many closeted queers, it gave them the opportunity to meet others like themselves, and planted the seeds for the gay neighborhoods in places like San Francisco and New Orleans and New York–gay men and lesbians no longer felt isolated and alone, knew there were others like them, and tried to make community, eventually leading to the queer rights movement. Women participated in the war and stepped up to replace the fighting men in their jobs, and soon realized they could be more than wives and mothers, chafing against their once-again restricted roles after the end of the war–which of course led to the Women’s Movement…and that’s not even taking into consideration the changes wrought in the world in geopolitical terms.

Even if you aren’t interested in watching all ten episodes, I strongly encourage everyone to watch “The Liberation of Buchenwald.” The Holocaust was real, it happened, the Western nations allowed it to happen, and it must never happen again. And if you have the capacity to even consider, for one moment, the notion that it was a hoax–fuck all the way off, and I hope your death is slow, painful, and horrific.

I kind of want to revisit Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War/War and Remembrance series; such a well done fictionalization of the war, as seen through the eyes of the Henrys, a naval family. Of course the two volumes total something like three thousand pages–I’ll never in a million years ever have the time for a deep reread–but they were amazing, and I read them as a teenager.

Yesterday I taped Susan Larson’s “My Reading Life” with Jean (J. M.) Redmann, which is always a delight. Susan is smart and fun, as is Jean, and it’s all I can do to keep up with them and not come across as a drooling idiot. But it’s always lovely to talk to Susan and Jean about books and writing, and even more delightful, Susan told me she’d enjoyed Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, which was of course the crowning jewel of my month. As you know, Constant Reader, I have constant doubts about my short story writing ability, and so getting Susan’s stamp of approval meant a lot. I’ll post a link for the show when it airs.

Today is a half-day, and after tomorrow my vacation for Thanksgiving begins. I’m hoping to get a lot done–like always–and maybe I won’t; but at least I feel confident I can get a lot of reading done. I also have my blog entries about The Hunter by Richard Stark and The Ferguson Affair by Ross MacDonald to write. I also would like to catch up on all the things–little things, nothing major–that I always seem to let slide since I don’t have much time.

LSU has also managed to maintain its number one ranking, despite the abysmal showing of the defense last Saturday against Mississippi. I saw an interview with Joe Burrow after the game in which he simply shrugged and said, “You know things have changed at LSU when we score 58 points and get over 700 yards of total offense and the locker room mood is disappointment at how badly we played.” YIKES. But I tend to agree–I was enormously disappointed by the defense in both the Vanderbilt and Mississippi games; but the offense was spectacular in both games and ordinarily I’d be aglow by those high-scoring offensive performances. Maybe it’s true; maybe we do get spoiled quickly–God knows I get annoyed when the Saints don’t play well and they’ve consistently been one of the best teams in the NFL since 2006. Sigh.

But the last two games of LSU’s season are at home, against Arkansas and Texas A&M, and if they win either of those games they clinch the West division and are going to Atlanta to play Georgia for a shot at LSU’s first SEC title since 2011. Woo-hoo!

I hope to start reading Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys today; today is my half-day and so I can get home earlier, possibly do some writing, and then curl up in my easy chair while I wait for Paul to get home. I still haven’t written a damned thing recently, and I really need to get back on that.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me.

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