PETRULIONIS

Featured Course: The US in Civil War And Reconstruction Spring 2012

2012-01-05T12:21:00.001-05:00

Hist 444 "The Civil War Era"

In retrospect, most wars are already "lost" or "won" long before the first shot ever rings out. Usually, the issues are already settled, the victorious are already superior in firepower, economic might, and political resolve. All that hangs in the balance of the actual wars themselves are the individual lives, limbs, and property of the people involved on all sides. Apparently, the carnage must be acted out on some battlefield version of an immoral stage to give ceremonial closure to the minds that must be changed and cultural conventions that must be relinquished. Too many historians have tried to narrate this ceremony, leaving the cultural, social, and intellectual causes for others to sort out.

The study of the so called "Civil War Era" in United States history has been a dreadful example of this historiographic malpractice.* Quite often, historians of this important era focus on the skirmishes, marches, charges, and strategies. Flag & saber dances of god-like generals, cavalry charges against long odds, blue and gray waves of choreographed sacrifice; and behind it all the unfortunate misnomer on both sides, "the cause." By analyzing the ceremony on the stage, too many historians have lost sight of the causes of the breach and the reasons behind the cataclysm. This "fog of war" makes it improbable that the century-long effort to repair the sectional schism of the mid-19th Century can be explained in satisfactory and coherent historical writing without much attention to the reasons for the schism in both the first and the last place.

* Yet perhaps that intentionally provocative term, "malpractice," rings too harsh here. Many esteemed scholars before us might prefer a more generous characterization, something along the order of "alternate emphasis." But because of your instructor's own biases and perspectives, the point--he would say--of any study of the "Civil War Era" should be toward a satisfactory explanation of why the various States could attempt to annihilate each other at that particular time and place. The answer to this question is certainly a sectional crisis that begins in Philadelphia in 1776 and ends in the 1960s, if it has ended at all; if not "slavery" than certainly "race." So a study of this crisis should begin in media res for reasons of coherence only, a trick of narrative that has been recognized by writers of epic poetry, yet known to only a few historians.

This seminar will afford the alert student with an opportunity to observe the sectional schism in its intellectual, religious, artistic, literary, social, economic, and ethnic contexts, and yes, beginning right in the middle of the story. No single textbook or monograph provides all of this in one handy binding. So I have provided much supplementary reading material to augment the books. Admittedly there is much here, perhaps too much mandatory reading, too many assignments for the time afforded by one short semester. And what is here is only a scant taste of what is available.

So before any of us, any of us at all, begin to think of ourselves as experts on this era, we have first a lot of reading to accomplish! This Spring, we will revisit this well trodden historical ground. But this time, the "Blue and the Grey" will take up only a quarter of the story, at most. In Hist 444, our focus will be on most of the people alive during the period from about 1850 until 1877; and we'll try to find a little time for the war too. These years might be subtitled, "from a failure to compromise to a compromise that was a failure;" and I hope you will see why as we get underway. The story we will be narrating, (and you will get your turn to help narrate), will include culture, ideology, law, literature, economics, poetry, music, and politics. It will begin with a speech by Frederick Douglass and will end with an essay by W.E.B. Du Bois. But the last word will be reserved for the person who always gets the last word, the next generation of historian, you.

Tiz the Season: Why an Angel sits atop the Christmas Tree

2011-11-28T13:39:00.001-05:00

Tiz The Season: Why an Angel sits atop the Tree
--- By Joe Petrulionis

Halloween and all through the store,
Bing Crosby's _White Christmas_ played at a roar.
There just for candy, not decorations, not gifts,
But the store needed profits and the economy a lift.
The crowds were cantankerous, the cashiers rude,
To my "Sir, Where's the candy?" the clerk said, "dunno Dude."
My temples were throbbing when I asked him the reason.
Said, "Trick-or-treat candy was gone for the season."
"Its Halloween, surely you have candy to sell."
He answered in a language I don't know very well.
Then he pointed upstairs, with his middle finger
And he growled so loudly I didn't dare linger.
Walked all around, never found the next floor
But a half box of Snickers for sale by the door
I snatched up a handful dashed to the express line
But a couple before me was having a hard time.
Their cards would not swipe, they needed a manager,
whose key would not fix it. I suggested a hammer.
The elderly wife looked sweetly in my face.
And blasted me point blank with pepper spray mace.
Then out on the lot there arose such a din
Run away shopping carts in hurricane winds.
I dodged and I dashed and I tried really hard.
But three carts broadsided my new smart car.
As I pulled into my drive and turned off my lights
three teens egged me and disappeared in the night.
As I stepped over the threshold I soon realized
That the snicker bars were still at the store in a bag.
So my mood was real bad when my wife got home
from her costume party she'd attended alone.
Dressed as a Victoria Secret Angel...wings and all
I stood there dumbfounded as she walked down the hall,
dragging a fourteen foot scotch pine, yes newly cut,
She said only, "Darling, would you mind putting the tree up?"
It won't fit, I cried, in our nine foot den,
So where do you want it, she asked with a grin.
And that's how that angel got up on the tree
all because bloody Christmas does not start on friggin Halloween!

This so called "poem" was first read at a Sigma Tau Delta (Honorary English Society) meeting at Penn State University--Altoona. Shown here are Joe and Sandy Petrulionis exhibiting their entries for the "ugly sweater" competition.

Doctor Bett Tschleppfuss

2011-10-03T23:20:00.007-04:00

--- May 15 2011
“For example, look at this page of his journal, right here. His writing is still rendered in a neat hand, still cursive in that stylish flair, sharp with these angular letters, here, and here. But even if we did not all know his handwriting, the use of imagery and metaphor is a characteristic that anyone on this project would recognize. Here’s an example of what Wyndam calls Larue’s ‘tendency to use the human condition as an analogy of natural observations.'”

The overhead projector, an old one, flashed an empty and oddly shaped rectangle of yellow light onto the screen hanging over the blackboard. The focus knob being adjusted by a graduate assistant finally brought a blur of handwriting into and out of focus while the lecturer exchanged a brief smile with the one trial member of the mock audience.

“I could put this into a power point presentation for you in a few hours; it would be no trouble,” the grad assistant was saying while the grey bands on the screen flickered again into—and out of—view.

“It’s okay, Beth. I have never seen a Power Point presentation which worked really well anyway. I spend most of my time wondering if the presenter has ever used a mouse,” the lecturer smiled around her mug of lukewarm coffee. The one member of the audience stood and stretched, hands on hips with his shoulders back and chin out.

Soon the screen was again full of a handwritten jumble of letters and words which might have been in another language, or at least in a style of penmanship long out of fashion:

Despair is just a shade more lethal than the darkness of fear. The mind fades into its mechanical, more elemental components; cells, sinew, blood, and plasmas of various hue and viscosity, relinquishing its celestial unity of reason and insight. The mind returns to flesh under the strain of survival. Down from Rumbert’s corn field this morning I walked between a doe and her fawn. The doe froze. The fawn, however, unmindful of the implicit danger of human encounters, moved slowly toward me, curious about what this new upright creature might be. Here two genetically similar creatures responded to an identical stimulus in opposite manners. Was it age, experience, or some weariness of spirit which made the mother immobile? Was it youth and inexperience which made the fawn dangerously curious? Was it sympathy or respect which caused me to turn and trek back across the cornfield, leaving the pair to their morning?

“Here, thanks Beth, we see an example of his writing from early spring, just before the hike. Note the orderly spacing. Two hundred pages, a thousand miles, and two months later we can still see the same handwriting. Shorter entries, but his writing is the same. Beth, I’ll just nod when it’s time to change the frame. Remember, your copy of the paper has the frame numbers written in red.” Beth was reading the prior selection still up on the overhead.

“Excuse me Doctor T,” Beth interrupted. “Don’t you want me to let it up there long enough for people to read the whole selection? You were done before I could even read it.”

“That’s a good idea, Beth. I will try to speak slower for the longer passages. Although, you know, at this point in my paper I think I am trying to demonstrate the handwriting and how it changed. If I had a shorter sample, people would be trying to read it, instead of following my point. Don’t you agree?” While thinking, “’let it up there longer.’ she may never get the Pennsylvania speech out of her speaking, but before she gets out of this program, she will know the difference between the words let and leave,” but saying, instead, “Do you remember how long it took us to be able to read his handwriting? It will still be illegible to almost everyone at the conference anyway.”

“Another selection, almost two hundred pages, a thousand miles and two months later, we can see the same script style. Shorter entries, yes; but his writing is the same,” she said as the corresponding selection was finally coming into focus.

---May 15, 2009

The conference table seemed the centerpiece of the whole thing, solid, graceful, and modern. Running the length of the executive conference room in a many storied office building overlooking a river flowing from the hills of New England into the broader Atlantic World, no hint of the rumble of traffic and city bustle below filtered into these Olympian heights. Art, chosen by a corporate image consultant, hung along the one wall that was not window; each piece selected for its color combination, its frame, and mostly because nothing in it could offend anyone. The expensive collection hung on invisible mono filament lines at various distances from the wall, each one spotlighted by hidden pin lights fashioned into the plaster art of the ceiling. No one could have noticed the fact that these paintings had received no comment since that day two years ago when the image consultant received his rather large payment. Including the paintings, the lighting, four chandeliers hanging above and reflected in the deep luster of the conference table, and the table itself, the consultant was paid a sum approximately four times the combined annual salary of the eight administrative staff professionals whose job it was to keep the Managing Partner on time and appropriately fitted out for his stature.

But the paintings, the chandeliers, the view of the river bending through some distant mountains, and for that matter the antique Persian rugs under the assorted furnishings around the conference room all seemed to pale next to the conference table itself. An expensive curl figure in the wood seemed to stand out from the hand planed and polished top. This exquisite pattern of waves was natural to this type of air dried, aged walnut from which the carpenter, who, working with her father in a small shop in a small town in Virginia, had fashioned by careful bookmatching, splitting, and scraping, a chevron pattern pointing toward one end of the table, the end at which usually could be found sitting the Managing Partner of the law firm. The curl of the wood and the phalanx of the pattern directed, demanded, and forced an observer's attention toward that end of the room.

This particular table, had taken the carpenter eight months to craft. But most of this time had been devoted to the application of countless layers of hand-rubbed lacquers. The day after the image consultant had held his presentation reception, complete with ribbon cutting, Champagne toasts, and speeches, the Managing Partner had all but moved his personal work space to that end of the table, forsaking although not relinquishing his plush office suite directly next door. To the temporary dismay of the Executive Assistant To The Managing Partner, the Managing Partner had refused to acknowledge any hint that he might use a coaster or desk pad and his place at the end of the table was beginning to show signs of wear. Drink rings (gin in the afternoons and coffee in the mornings) and brass button scratches from expensive sport coats were the only blemishes visible even after two years of daily use.

Where is Joe now?

2011-08-25T17:26:00.001-04:00

Speaking of romantic sentimentalism...it was about the time Andrew Jackson was getting famous for whipping Red Coats despite being vastly outnumbered. One night a young lady and her stepsister decide to run away with a Poet. The young lady in question was already pregnant with the Poet's child. And soon, if not already, the stepsister would be competing for his attentions as well.

On the night of elopement, they all met here at this grave.

For full credit, name the young lady who eloped with the Poet, name the Poet, and name the stepsister.

Hint: The young lady had a name very similar to the name of the person who was arguably England's greatest social philosopher by birth (who just happens to have been buried in this very same grave!)

Where's Joe?

2011-08-25T17:07:00.000-04:00

Behind these windows was born someone who thought that imaginary things had been used as excuses to unfairly distribute the resources of the world. So he thought, "hey, if they were imaginary in the first place, then they might be re-imagined to work for us all, right?" Sounds like a simple enough idea, but this guy had a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Jena (the best place in the world to study Philosophy at the time.) And you would not believe the number of people who thought this idea was dangerous! Ha!~

For full credit, name the town that this house still stands in. Also, name the person who had this simple idea. Then tell us where he is buried. Use the comment option to do so.

Where in the world is Joe?

2011-08-05T22:02:00.001-04:00

Give it a try! (If you were with him on this trip it would not be fair for you to guess, now would it?) But where was Joe in this photograph? Comment back the name of the town and the State for full credit. For EXTRA credit, disclose the person who owned...careful now, OWNED...this house.

Hint: The person who lived in this house was famous for having re-written the Bible.

Use the Comments below to pronounce your historical wisdom.

There is this place...

2011-06-23T12:51:00.001-04:00

From a canoe looking North.

From the same canoe looking West.

From the same canoe looking South.

From the same canoe looking East

So all around you, wildness. As far as you can see it is nature. This place...

But today was special. Oh, the fishing is always wonderful here. Even in bad weather, it is a beautiful place to just coast along in your canoe, watch the wildlife, and think about the busy school year to come. What will you do differently in your classes, which deadlines are already past?

Then you hear (true story of my trip yesterday by the way) a splash right behind you. As you turn to see if it was a fish you hear a snort and some breathing. And twenty feet off your canoe's bow a Pennsylvania Black Bear emerges from the water lilies after his (her?) swim across this lake/bog.

Because he was in the water he must not have yet heard or smelled me. A black bear's ability to smell is much more acute than his eyesight. So there is this five second period when I could fish a camera from my vest and snap a photo.

Look in the center of the water lilies. Can that be a snout?

What is making that snorting noise?

Is that a bear?

Yes it is. I didn't know they got so big! "Grandfather, Grandfather!"

I think he sees me here. At about the same time I realize that I am alone in a canoe between a 400 lb bear and his blueberry patch.

There is this place called Central Pennsylvania by people who think in short time frames of less than--say, four hundred years. It has been traumatized before and will be devastated again. As I write, some major corporations are conspiring with State elected officials to destroy large tracts of this pristine wilderness.

We are not talking about "bad people." They think they are doing the right thing. But like most of us, when profit is involved, the "right thing" is easily rationalized toward self interest.

Their idea is interesting. You take, literally, billions of gallons of surface water. Mix it with chemicals like solvents; then pump it into deep shale deposits. The explosive intrusion of this hazardous chemical into the deep underworld will release pockets of natural gas. This gas will be sold to gas companies on the cheap for several reasons. First, the drilling in Pennsylvania would be done without drilling fees and with extensive tax benefits on the revenues. Second, the lax regulations of the Commonwealth will make it nearly impossible for anyone to assign the blame for environmental damage to any one company. So the taxpayers of the Commonwealth will have to bear the burden of the clean up. Third, the energy companies are getting these gas rights at pathetically low prices. Since much of the drilling will happen in places like State Forests, School Properties, and hunting lands (in Pennsylvania we call these places, "the woods,") the auctions of the drilling rights are only interesting to energy companies. So why don't they bid the prices up to some reasonable amount? Well, we are assured, they could bid up the prices. But each company only wants to drill in a particular region. So it only bids for the drilling rights in that region. Without any collusion at all, we are assured, very few of these regional preferences overlap. So in many cases, one company is the only bidder and the price remains extremely low.

Is this a license to steal? Well, perhaps. But the point is that the gas in those underground pockets is a valuable property (once the Commonwealth sells the rights.) It is only the taxpayers who are being harmed. (If people are the only beings that count.) And the people seem not to care one way or the other. They are in the streets over gun rights or abortion rights or mosque building in Manhattan, or the war related budget deficit that everyone would prefer to chalk up to excessive spending on things like "entitlements." But anyone who seems to want these drilling rights to be sold at a fair price, with adequate regulatory oversight (paid for by use fees like drilling license fees), those few people are called "tree huggers" and easily ignored.

But what happened with the bear?

Oh, the bear. Yes, well a bear is an ethical being. And people who study ethics realize that notions such as "right" and "wrong" are just human ideas and opinions. There is no objective "right" and "wrong" that can be scientifically determined and/or proven through a logical or mathematical proof. Like a hawk and a bunny, the act of a mother hawk tenderly placing bits of bunny into the beaks of her hungry chicks, the same act can be "good" or "evil" depending on perspective.

But what about the bear, Joe?

As I was saying, a bear is an ethical creature. It does not need to kid itself that what it is doing is "good" or "bad." It is self interested, but it does not take more than it needs. And it does not look for trouble. In fact, it avoids conflict where possible. So this bear that weighed more than twice what I might muster, realized that I was in the way of its beach head. So it did what any ethical creature would do. It went around me. It did not need to stand and show me its claws and teeth. It did not make a speech about "Bring 'em on!" and it did not have to explain that I had "no place to run, no place to hide." It just went around me.

A lesson in Virtue Ethics from a bear. (Move over Alasdair MacIntyre)

As the bear disappeared over the bank, I wondered how my grandchildren would be compensated for the lack of this experience in their lives.

I am not hopeful that the effort to Frack up the Pennsylvania wilderness for a couple years worth of natural gas can be stopped. It's down there, it's valuable, and it will continue to nag the profit dreams of energy companies until it is pumped out and sold. I would bet that it will happen.

All I would hope is that we hold the companies to high standards of environmental ethical standards. Take the gas, but leave the unpolluted waters and wilderness. To do that we will have to be alert to pollution, and demand that our governmental leaders be held accountable to our grandchildren.

Because the biggest problem we face is not "capitalism" it is not "greed" or even "the profit motive." The biggest problem we face is ignorance. I could take you to this place and show you the potential costs we are prepared to pay for two years of heat. I might be able to replicate some of the wilderness experiences that are possible in such places. But until you realize the value of your common interest in wilderness, you may be confused into believing that your self interest is tied up with energy companies' profits or campaign contributions for your elected officials; until then we have an educational problem on our hands...not a political problem, nor an accounting problem, nor an energy shortage. First we have an educational problem.

Do Fish Have Rights?

2011-06-18T10:12:00.000-04:00

Next, a word from Nature.

This is "Moshe," a black bass living in local waters of Central Pennsylvania.

Moshe is on the "Catch & Release Program" so he was able to pose for this snapshot, but for only a second. Then he was returned to the pristine waters in a place that this writer will, of course, not be too specific about. (It's kind of like the human "witness protection program," but for fish.)

Human ethics seems to ignore any rights of beings like Moshe. All animals, it is argued, belong to humans, either as individuals or as a common possession. Few philosophers have attempted to explain this viewpoint, it is just accepted as a kind of founding stone of moral philosophy. But Moshe has no intrinsic rights, if you buy this line of argument. He can be eaten (and believe me, there are few meals to compare to fresh bass fillet), he can be moved to other waters by State Fisheries Officials, and he can be repeatedly "Caught & Released" as a sort of recreational activity for humans who live in packed, city conditions and need a little Nature in their lives to remind them that they are still alive.

But humans do have rights. Some of these rights are protected by law and some are so self evident that they do not even need defense. For example, what if someone were to walk into a room full of people and take possession of all of the air in the neighborhood? Air and Water can not be possessed by individuals and sold back to other persons. That would just not be right! To further protect Pennsylvanians, the Pennsylvania Constitution (Article 1 Section 27) makes clean water and air a right of all Pennsylvanians and a responsibility of the Commonwealth leaders to protect.

Since only a small percentage of Earth's water is in a form that can be used by people and Moshe, we must protect what we have. It may be worth ten minutes of your time (for your grandchildren and their grandchildren) to look into this "Hydraulic Fracking" process. We can either have a few years of cheap heating by Marcellus Shale natural gas.(To be precise, the gas company will have cheap gas to sell us at market prices.) Or perhaps Moshe's great great great grandchildren will still be around for your grandchildren, who also may need periodic reminders that they, too, are still alive.

This post was originally placed at the Blair Greens http://blairgreens.blogspot.com/

Night Stand: Kenneth Womack's _John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel_

2011-03-03T12:31:00.001-05:00

Link to the Author's Page for Purchasing Links

So I just read an intriguing retelling of "The American Dream" gone haywire. In that long chain of novels defining "the dream" as the motivation to take the opportunities granted by our chartering documents, founding fathers, and resulting liberties, thereby enabling us each to become as wealthy or as poor as we are able, Kenneth Womack's book comes along to remind us that sometimes the American Dream proves itself a nightmare.

On the 220th anniversary of the "Shot Heard 'Round The World" a truck bomb was parked under the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, a clean-cut, Bronze Star winning, honorably discharged, veteran of the First Gulf War. The detonation killed 168 people and wounded more than 400. Some 19 of them were babies and toddlers in a day care center on the second floor.

It was good of the author to remind us that not all threats to the Homeland come from outsiders.

But I enjoyed this focused retelling of the Oklahoma bombing for other reasons. First, I am professionally interested in how history works. This novel is fiction. Conversations are presented that did not occur between some characters who probably did not exist. But quite often fiction can tell more of "The Truth" than can a disciplined, historically accurate, narration of events. The problem with history is that the complexity of real events often gets in the way of any possible understanding. And "Truth" depends on understanding. Remember "Truth" and "Reality" differ in that Reality does not depend on any understanding to exist. Truth does.

Second, Womack forces the reader to learn about the events from the point of view of a central character, "John Doe 2," an accomplice who may not have even existed, or perhaps he did exist and is still "out there somewhere." This character, "JD," tells the story from the second person point of view. When he says "You," he means himself. Or does he?

An interesting way to cope with this narrative style is to take his words at face value. When JD talks about himself he is really describing the reader, i.e. "You." Taken this way, when JD describes his many adventures with Timothy McVeigh he really means me the reader. Of course, this would imply that it is the American Public that has been seduced, swindled, hoodwinked, and implicated by the mono-culturalist, gun nut, over medicated, uber patriot who will become a domestic terrorist by the end of the novel. Yes, you probably already know the end of the story.

If you read this novel and think to yourself, "JD is smarter than the long stream of bad decisions he is making," perhaps you are correct. Perhaps American Society IS much smarter than the long list of bad decisions it seems to be making. Pay close attention to what you would like to tell JD, the Quaker student turned pistol-wielding gun show clerk turned domestic terrorist. Because the advice you would like to give JD is exactly what we should be explaining to our children about the Tea Party. Better make a mental note.

Getting votes the old fashioned way!

2011-02-05T16:53:00.004-05:00

About a month ago, I read a reprint in The Nation of a short opinion piece by Alfred McCoy. If you missed it, here it is.

This was a troubling and informative read for me. I like them better when they are either less troubling or less informed. But I truly do not enjoy essays that depress AND which are founded on such reasonable evidence. So to capsulize his argument, it seems that beginning in 2003 the US entered a one way street with few exit ramps. And this street is the superhighway to economic hell.

As I read it I realized that the scenarios outlined were all reasonable given the situation. What began to trouble me is the "Parent Condition," I guess. We will be leaving this mess to a next few generations who will have to cope with it and somehow, to survive. That is what troubles me.

But as I thought about this well-written and thought-provoking article, I found a way to cope with the implications. What Mr McCoy posits is one of those economic fallacies,they call "assumptions:" assuming all other things remain unchanged. This assumption means, of course, that a turtle with a slight head start will always win a race against Achilles. Yes, the US will move into a state of dramatic inability to feed, clothe, medicate, and protect its citizens, all other things remaining unchanged.

But what gives me some shred of hope is the general stupidity of the rest of the world's politicians. I am elated to learn that we do not have a going monopoly in political stupidity! In a short line of other European leaders today and in the mid 1930's, David Cameron just pronounced state multiculturalism to be a failure. ""Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism."

And this gives me some hope for the United States. Mr McCoy, the United States is a nation of many ethnic groups, dogmatic quirks, and linguistic flavors. Yet somehow we share enough of both a tradition and a shared future to make a nation out of these many "folk." In this one way I think we ARE an "exception." Some of the biggest near term competitors for economic power in the near future have leaders who would like to redefine their nations as one "folk." I am sorry for the people who must try to live in those nations wondering, "am I one of those volk, or am I auslander? If the monoculturalists insist on skipping their history classes, then I at least will wish they would learn from their biology lessons that it is diversity that makes an organism strong. But I am hopeful that while the US is in a daily struggle to stay multicultural and diverse, many of the nations in the broader world would like to think of themselves as a monoculture, all one folk.

And THIS is the reason, Mr McCoy, that the US will not fail. Because the rest of the world will not stay the same. All other factors will not remain unchanged. Each time a nation feels threatened and succeeds at filtering its own people with some comb of religion, language, ethnicity or even pigmentation, they are chopping at their own trunks.

What we will never hear on AM radio (between the sounds of the pill popping going on between the yelling) is that it is multiculturalism itself that makes us strong. Nice little islands full of similar people rarely ever remain strong and independent for long. And when they get so big and intolerant that they start acting on their primal impulses to rid the world of people unlike themselves, the rest of the world usually comes in and fixes the problem.

So Mr McCoy, I loved your argument. But I am left with hope nonetheless.

What would you take in exchange for your soul?

2010-12-28T11:56:00.000-05:00

In some of the most ancient tales, songs, and stories, you know, the good ones involving such seemingly anachronistic notions as "right and wrong," the role of scientific knowledge, love, beauty, truth, courage and other similar concerns of people whom we would call, today, "idealistic" or "romantic," the arch-antagonist (some version of Satan) strikes a deal with a human protagonist. And we the reader/hearer usually are left wondering if the deal was not well worth the trade.

Fiddlers the world over know, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia," "he was lookin for a soul to steal. He was in a bind, fallin behind, he was ready to make a deal." The short version is "Devil cheats, Johnny Wins."

And violinists would be more likely to know the story of Niccolò Paganini, the Robert Johnson of the violin. Paganini learned to play the violin by trading his soul to the Devil. Here's Heifetz playing Paganini's "24th Caprice." Heifetz was perfect, inhumanly perfect. Here is Bell giving us a more Paganiniesque interpretation. You may be asking yourself, especially if you clicked on the last link, what is the difference between a fiddle and a violin? This is easy. A violin is in the hands of a violinist. The same instrument, the fiddle, is in the hands of a fiddler. If you are wondering about the difference between a fiddler and a violinist, this is a difficult question to answer. Fiddlers know they are not violinists. But violinists think they can play fiddle. I am neither but have hung out with both. Best I can tell you, fiddlers smile and tap their foot while playing. Violinists don't.

Robert Johnson acquired the talent to apply the guitar and the pentatonic scale to blues music. It might be correctly said that Johnson invented the 12 Bar Blues (and therefore most of what we now call "Rock and Roll.") In the same way, Paganini did amazingly new things with the violin. For Paganini and Robert Johnson, the deals were probably therefore worthwhile. As Johnson is often reported to have said, "I wasn't using it [my soul] no ways."

Bill Monroe, often cited as the "Father of Bluegrass," recorded with his brother "What would you give in exchange for your soul." And here is a recording of Bill singing it with Doc Watson. Personal Note: If I had a soul to exchange for anything, I would love to play guitar like Doc Watson. But I would certainly do the deal if I could sing, write songs, and look like Kris Kristofferson. Over here, one soul, new with tags, still in original box. Pretty please?

Fans of William Faulkner's The Hamlet will recall the episode where the unreliable narrator tries in one more way to destroy the reputation of his only real competition for "the girl." Ratliff, the traveling sewing machine salesman, sets up the story for those of us sitting on the front porch of the country store that afternoon. He tells of the day that Flem Snopes arrives back at the Devil's pawn shop to payoff his soul. The assistant devil must deliver the bad news to the Senior Satan in Chief. Sub-Beelzebub explains that Snopes showed up to redeem his soul but the soul is no longer in the safe deposit box. There is just a smoky kind of slimy smudge in the back of the box. The Pawn Agreement says the devil will safekeep the soul. And the devil has failed to perform. Satan asks, "What does he want? Give him whatever he wants!" Flem Snopes walks off, we are led to assume, with the keys to all Hell itself.

By the way, for the ability to write as well as Faulkner I would be inclined to trade all of my souls.

But I can't. And so I'll have to await something I can afford.

Where did this compelling idea come from? Who thought up the notion that there were great big beings "out there" who needed our consent on a sales invoice to take back, re-possess, or purchase these seats of consciousness that some have come to call a "soul?"

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is buried deep in prehistory,back in the days of early human evolution. But I may continue this post at some future date, when I intend to extend my list of Faustian stories to include...imagine this...Goethe, Thomas Mann, and even Marlowe. Stay tuned!

Europe 2010: Backroads of Intellectual History

2010-12-21T06:19:00.000-05:00

Jena Germany: "City of Science"

In a couple of weeks, we will be getting back on an airplane and flying to Central Pennsylvania, after (for me) a six month extended vacation in Europe. My family has been here even longer. For all of us this will be a very difficult re-entry. So our next few weeks will be a flurry of travel, packing, preparing for classes, and homeward focus. We still plan to do Christmas in Dresden and then New Years in Jena (of course!) I thought I would take a few of these last relaxed moments to commit to blog a photo montage of our last six months. Certainly it will take much longer for me to process the experience into some coherent narrative...

Click on any photo to see it in its largest version.

A tough day in the salt mines of scholarship: Joe hard at work in a chair in his beloved Saale River

A hillside (Sophienhohe) a short walk south of our apartment, overlooking Jena

"The Steps" in Meerane, Germany

More steps...these in Erfurt the capital of Thuringen

The Trail to Leuchtenburg near Kahla in Thurningen

A glimpse of the "City of Science" from a medieval castle ruin, another short walk from our apartment, this time to the North

Wild Raspberries on a hill near our apartment (I'll never tell where, of course.)

Afternoons in Nuremberg

View From the Castle at Nuremberg

Trier, Roman Gates and Philosophical Breakthroughs

Prague! I had been here in 1992. Since that time, Prague has been altogether transformed!

Of Course, Vent Austria in late summertime is unbelievable!

Then there's green, green Ireland! The land of poets and whiskey!

And break yer heart beautiful Scotland!

London, England (A cute piece of an island where they still have a Queen and speak a kind of English. The Hogwarts Express starts there and Mary Wollstonecraft is buried there.)

But the biggest surprises (to someone who thought he "knew" Europe)?

Berlin and the Thuringen Wald

The Rennsteig (A Wonderful foot trail through the heart of German History, Poetry, Wilderness, Literature, Art, Science, and Folklife.)
More description of the Rennsteig at this older post, here.

Soljanka (An East German Soup...my new favorite!)

In Berlin, "Victory" Returns. A multi-cultural, world class city. Tolerant, up-beat, in repair, and smart.

Stencil: Not Quite A Short Story

2010-12-15T15:37:00.000-05:00

Stencil: Not Quite a Short Story
by Joe Petrulionis

---1999---

She watched his face strain into an unnecessary squint as if against bright glare or some repugnant memory. Unnecessary, because here inside the dilapidated building it was dark, save for a burst of harsh sunlight through a broken and painted window and the dancing wall of dust spotlighted by the still open door behind them. As he turned toward her, his face presented a momentary expression of belligerence. But it may have been just a trick of the light.

“Unless you grew up here you’d never understand. I get confused myself, and it was my father’s building. But back then there was even a place for people like Stencil. I bet I haven’t thought about Stencil for fifteen years.”

“Who?”

“Stencil lived upstairs here. Down that hallway there, and then up. Not exactly an employee and he never paid any rent, but he lived upstairs.”

“So how old were you when it closed?”

“Twenty-four, twenty-five. I was in grad school.”

“Sad to be back?”

“No. After dad died they wanted me to get licenses and bring it up to code. It was going to cost thousands just to re-open. And I knew it never made any money. So I refused to inherit it and the city tried to sell it. I guess they just boarded it up and here it sits.”

“A fire hazard”

“Yeah, I wonder what ever happened to Stencil?”

“Lived upstairs.”

“Uh huh. Big cold attic, but these guys had their beds pulled into a circle around the door. When it was open they had heat. They could come down here to smoke, and the mens room is down there. But most of the time you never saw them.”

“Guys?”

“Yeah, several of them usually. Always Stencil. But others came and went too. Stencil would make them breakfast if they would haul the trash out and hose down the mens room.”

Now, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she begins to see the layout. Much smaller than she had expected, to her left was the bar, a corral for a bartender inside and stool seats for a few dozen patrons around the outside. Booths, or what used to be booths, lined the far walls leaving a broad open space in the middle.

“So, let me guess, here was the dance floor.”

“Hardly. For a while there were two pool tables back here. Over there, behind that wall,” he pointed now to the rear left, “was the kitchen.”
“And the men’s room was down that hall.”

She followed his arm pointing to a dark hallway off to the right.

“And the barracks upstairs,” she smiled.

“Yeah, the barracks.”

“So, hypothetically, there must have been a ladies room?”

“I don’t believe there were ever any women in here. Not long enough to need to powder their noses anyway.”

“Hoo boy. Sounds like a rocking place.”

“Did you see this floor? It’s made of beer bottles.” Raking his shoe through the dust, he raised his hands out from his sides as he spun around to indicate a wider region. She then noticed that the floor was a mosaic of tiny pieces of dark material, in what had once been a white background. A pattern of spirals within spirals, the floor reminded her of a Van Gogh sky, concocted of fingernail sized pieces of glittering green and brown.

“My God, it’s…”

“I helped make it. We busted up bottles in a trash can, back in the alley. Then we put the sharp side down into the…stuff, before it dried.”

“It’s beautiful!” She was walking toward the back of the bar inspecting the floor when someone blocked the doorway, throwing a long shadow through the room. She could tell from the silhouette that it was a police officer.

“We’re busted Jack,” She smiled but then realized that the cop could not see her yet.

“Folks, you’ll have to come out of there. This place is condemned and should have been locked up. Be careful now.”

“Its OK officer, we had the key. We are coming out. Please don’t shoot.” She could see Jack’s smile and hoped that the cop had a sense of humor.

“No sir, there will be no shooting today. But how’d you come by the key?”

As she looked around once more at the gorgeous floor, she could hear Jack explaining that he found the key in a lock box at the local bank. Knowing Jack, she expected this to be the beginning of a long explanation.

---1948---

Again, he thought he had heard shots. While he listened for more, several men on horseback--armed and alert--galloped past on the dry mud road. One of them, near the front of the group, looked over, directly at him.

The rider glanced at the farmhouse and then back to make eye contact. There was no expression on the bearded face, no threat and no greeting. But after they had disappeared into the woods the teenager realized he had been holding his breath. He found himself running across the field, toward his house. As he ran he could see his mother in the doorway, and could see from her expression that she had also seen the patrol.

“Did they see you?” She stood aside to let him enter.

He nodded but immediately mitigated, “but they seem to be in a hurry. It will be alright.”

“So what was so important that you had to be in the garden in the daylight? Potatoes? You can’t pass for thirteen any longer. What if they had seen you? Stanislas, you are …”

“Old enough to help defend the motherland. I will be sixteen in a few months …”

“Defend the Motherland?” Her voice was pitched too high. “Your Motherland? So you are a philosopher now? Defend it from whom? Which side are you on, my young genius? Do you even understand the fighting well enough to say that? What is your homeland? Can you even tell me that? I know where your home is, do you know what your homeland is? No don’t sit down! There is no time. You go find your sister. She is back at the spring. Bring her here now! No, when you find her, give her your hat and shirt, tell her to put them on quickly and meet me in the potatoes. She is going to try to convince someone that he might have seen a girl in the field. You stay in the woods. Stay hidden down there! We will find you when it’s time.”

As he was swept out of the cottage, he could feel his mother press a chunk of brown bread into his hand. Much later, he would try to remember her face at that moment, just before he dashes out of her door, forever.

His sister seemed to understand even before he told her about their mother’s instructions. Two years younger than Stanaslaus, Josephine responded to his breathless description of the riders with no evident emotion. He was not surprised. Life with these two women had conditioned him to the reality that they communicated in their own channels. Even now, he sensed that he was delivering a pre-arranged signal; the message seemed altogether unnecessary.

“So where is Mother?” She snapped the question while dropping the water pails to the ground as she ran toward Stanaslaus, accepting his long shirt and hat.

As he watched his sister bound up the hill toward the house he realized that he had not relayed all of their mother’s instructions. But he knew that she understood. In mid dash, he watched her stop and turn back to face him. She insisted, in the commanding tone of a younger sister, that he remain hidden until she came back.

That moment would replay itself thousands of times during Stanislaus’ life. It was real. It happened. But some trick of his memory caused him to recall that instant in a way that it could not have happened. He would envision her smile flashing through a swirl of loose hair as she turns again and runs. In his rational moments he realizes that Josephine’s hair must have been tightly braided behind her. And he suspects that she must have been running with one hand holding his hat on her head, and certainly not smiling. But as he struggles to reconstruct that instant, and to filter it from the chaos of the rest of his life, he never quite remembers it in exactly the way he knows that he must have experienced it.

---1999---

"Years later, Stencil would try to explain himself and his past to me. And what Dad could tell me for sure was almost nothing. He told me that Stencil came to town; worked for most of the families who hired out work such as gardening, carpentry, and masonry. One day, sometime before dad was born, Stencil moved into the old Five and Dime building and started remodeling it for my Grandfather. By the time dad had inherited it from his father, the store had become a bar, the town’s fourth most patronized establishment behind a couple churches and a school. My grandparents would not even go into the place. Stencil ran it for them. You should see the floor! There is this mosaic of inlaid glass that takes the light from the rear windows and makes the whole place into a glittering prism!"

She just listened. This was all a part of Jack's past that he rarely discussed. And today she had actually been in there. She nodded.

"Usually, in a language too cumbersome in its slippery grammars and worthless articles, Stencil would provide every possible detail of the day he ran away from home and joined the Army. We just never figured out which Army he joined. Few of us who knew him used his name; my father called him Stanley. None of our generation, the kids, none of us could be certain of his nationality. He seemed confused about his involvement in wars that we could not even find in history books. Was he in the Red Army or the White Forces? Was it World War One or Two? Was he Slavic, Scandinavian, or Germanic? Did he fight for a Prince or an ideal? We knew nothing of the personal life of the man we would learn to call 'Stencil.' That he had a sister somewhere named “Josephine” and an estranged son in Baltimore had to suffice for a biography. And in the small town of Irvingsberg, Pennsylvania, this cloudy provenance was unpardonable."

To be continued, perhaps

"Moment" Not So Radical After All!

2010-12-15T07:54:00.003-05:00

Back when I wrote this play, people told me it was "too radical" to be performed; certainly it was too radical to be considered Magical Realism, even if "Dramatic Magical Realism." They may have been right but what interests me now is why it was considered radical at all.

Back when this play was written, the US had just re-elected George W. Bush. Most of the people who voted for Bush the second time still thought that the War in Iraq had something to do with 911 and weapons of mass destruction. Most of the rest of us agreed with most of the rest of the world, that there were no nuclear or chemical weapons produced or even acquired by Iraq since the earlier First Gulf War. And I remember threatening and blithering bumper stickers "If you can't get behind the US Armed Forces, then please get out in front" posted by half-witted hum-vee drivers who were being instructed to disregard the energy shortage and climate change by shouting DJ's loaded with pills and short on facts.

Since then, of course, we have learned that the world (i.e. France, Germany, Jordan, China, and the United Nations, along with most of the people who read newspapers and history books) were correct and the US government had it wrong. News Flash! There were no nuclear or chemical weapons of mass destruction and Saddam was not involved in 911. (And the crazy idea that God Almighty needed to borrow the US Armed Forces to remove a dictator, if it was the rationale, should have been discussed with the rest of us, right?)

But back when this play was written, to even question the need for the Iraq War was considered "unpatriotic." (As if saving our country some 4000 American Lives, 65,000 battlefield injuries, and a trillion borrowed dollars could be somehow "unpatriotic.") Ya see, US Armed Forces, the protesters had your backs all along!

Now we have lost the economic superiority that enabled the US to maintain the strongest military in the world. We can't even employ our own people now. Many of the rest of those working will never afford to retire. And the money we have spent on Iraq might have fixed Social Security. But worse, we have lost the trust of the most important people out there (those who read newspapers and history books.) But STILL worse, we have lost the moral high ground, or at least the ability to, without irony, protest the illegal treatment of dissidents, make and keep treaties to protect war prisoners and civilians, and lead a world to respect the rule of law enough to cease unconstitutional espionage practices and illegal surveillance against the United Nations.

So now who would trust us? (By the way, even our most gullible now realize that using their enlistment bonuses to purchase that sexy humm-vee was not a good idea. How was the trade in value, Sarge?)

But this play, "Moment," is not really a war protest. It was intended to be a short study of how individuals' choices and actions can be, both at the same time, effective and irrelevant.

So I would like to take this break in my travel schedule, while enjoying being snowed in in one of the most beautiful towns in Germany (Jena, of course), to point readers of this blog to my play, "Moment." Please enjoy! And maybe you can tell me why it was considered so "radical," back when the actions on the World's Stage were frozen and we might have, as a nation,made better choices.)

For William Faulkner... An experiment in narration

2010-12-06T06:14:00.002-05:00

Thunder in August
By Joe Petrulionis

--- --- OCTOBER 1st --- ---
From a business card one learns that Benjamin Talon specializes in immigration problems. Since he lives in Germany you might think he specializes in German immigration; but close readers will see that this is not the case at all. Benjamin Talon is an "attorney specialist at the Berlin offices of Treavor, Jonakin, Larsh, et al." Licensed in Pennsylvania, he assists other attorneys and their clients with their American immigration needs. Attorney Talon appears to be living the dream of a successful professional working in a European capital. But Mr. Talon does not earn a salary. Unlike the "huddled masses," wealthy clients who can afford the rates charged by his firm rarely have insurmountable legal problems in gaining entry to the United States. Talon's arrangement with Treavor, Jonakin, Larsh yields him 60% of any billings, once collected, from his own cases. But since he has few cases of his own, Talon makes a living on the 30% of his billable hours devoted to his consultations on the firm's clients. He can rent a conference room on a quarter hour basis and may purchase logo stationary from the firm's Berlin office. In addition, a phone number on his business card gets answered quite professionally. In short, Benjamin Talon must scramble for his impressive stature.

Talon's work space is a coffee table in the front room of his small flat, some thirty minutes by train from his firm's offices. As he sits on his couch today, speaking into his microphone, Talon wonders if he is an imposter of sorts. His audio files will be uploaded to the internet and processed tonight by the firm's typing pool, now in Jakarta, Indonesia; where the recordings will be typed and edited while Talon sleeps. After checking the final drafts tomorrow, Talon could make changes, if needed, print the letters, or save the case files to a private hard drive sitting under his coffee table. The arrangement with his firm renders him a freelancer with all of the expected drawbacks. But most important to Benjamin Talon, he can avoid people he had known in Philadelphia, most of whom had sided with his ex wife. As long as he can pay the rent here, Talon will continue to seem like an important and successful attorney.

This morning, Talon works on a case with very little potential, except that the client is his own so his percentage would be double. As he reads from his yellow pad and fingers a hand held voice recorder, he speaks into a desk microphone, to some unknown someone in Jakarta.

"My question was simple enough, 'When and where did you first meet Elena Roshcha?'"

"His answer went something like, 'In a train station in Altenburg Germany, that would have been late August,' then he began to sound as if he were giving me a lecture, 'Randi,' here he means Dr.Rawls, 'and I were already there, seated. Lena scuffled along the station platform in high top sneakers, without laces. She walked by us, struggled out of the straps of her backpack, and sat heavily into the next bench. I think she was messing with a side pocket of her pack. Lena probably thought we were tourists.'"

"That's about what he said. Then he looked up at me as if to see if I was taking notes, I scribbled on my yellow pad, 'Met Mid August: Altenburg.' Then I asked him, 'did you talk at the time?'"

"He seemed to be in pain, but continued, 'I imagine Doctor Rawls had immediately noticed the girl; swollen ankles, the worn tights under the Guess tee shirt, the complexion, and the knitted NY Yankees hat pulled down over hair long in need of a wash. Of immediate concern to Dr Rawls was the evident insufficiency of caloric intake, probable vitamin deficiency, and possible developmental issues. This young woman's prenatal needs here in Germany would be outside of both Randi's medical specialty and licensing jurisdiction. Worse, I guess, Randi was on her first real vacation in seven years. But she took a weekend off for our honeymoon, three years ago.'"

"Subject relayed this information, just as a history professor would, no emotion, no point-of-view, and no drama. I wrote on my pad, 'LR already visibly pregnant in August.'"

"He waited for my scribbling to stop and then explained, 'I sat between them. I guess I missed much of what was going on around me, on both sides. So I should have been more aware of what was happening, but you know, I am pretty focused on what has happened. I often seem to neglect what is happening.'"

"I interrupted him. 'Historian, right? So Dr. Randi Rawls is...was...your wife?'"

"Ignoring both questions, Client continued, 'But I had just been asking Randi if she could recall the name of the wine we had in Philadelphia, on our anniversary last year. I remembered, of course, and wanted to surprise her that we were near the Saale-Unstrut wine region right then. But Randi ignored me. So I asked her again before realizing that she was not even listening. I've known her for a long time. Her face is a giveaway; Randi was in diagnostic mode and probably did not even hear my questions. And I believe that was when the backpack fell off the bench.'"

"'The backpack?' I asked while I wrote, 'Rawls and Matthews divorce finalized _________________?' I left a blank to remind me to ask again. But I never asked. Make a note to find out when the divorce was finalized, and where."

"Matthews answered me, 'Yes, as I turned to see what or who Randi was observing, a massive backpack was already in mid-fall, its owner, Lena that is, unable to reach it in time. It seems to me now that Randi must have been already on her feet, before the pack hit the platform. Because before the crash finished echoing, Randi was leaning the pack toward the bench and retrieving a rolling bottle of water, long before I could even respond myself. I may have been annoyed at my own sluggish response. For whatever reason, I snapped, in German, at Lena.'"

"I asked him, 'Snapped?'"

"Client answered: 'Well, I said, Vorsicht which is a pretty rude thing to say to someone who has just dropped her backpack.'"

"'So what happened?' I asked Matthews."

"The only way I can describe his expression at that point is pathetic. Moving his weight onto his elbows on the conference table and looking down at the photographs spread there, he took a breath and then took his time in responding, 'Well, Randi does not speak much German. And she asked me to ask Lena if Lena would do her a favor and show her how the pay toilets work there at the train station. Lena speaks pretty good English so she understood, and off they went, two minutes before the train was due.'"

"'So you missed your train,' I asked."

"'Randi missed her train,' he corrected. 'She and I had toured some of Eastern Germany for five days and Randi's flight was supposed to be early the next morning. We all took my train to Weimar and stayed at my apartment. Randi left two days later.'"

"'All at your apartment?,' I clarified.'

"'Yes, the three of us. We made sardine pizzas.'"

"'Dr Matthews,' I began, 'there are several theories by which it might be possible for Lena to gain admission to the United States. But in this case none of them are very clear cut. I can take your case, and yes, I have a lot of experience with immigration problems. But you must understand, there is no way for me to predict the outcome of our effort. My firm will require your signature on this fee schedule. '"

"'Please call me Mark,' he interrupted while he signed the paperwork presented."

"I continued, 'We could make the case that one of the parents is a US citizen if we can find him and if we can prove paternity. A longer shot, we could argue that your wife might gain admission to the US for humanitarian reasons, a refugee...we can discuss this more. But the most likely approach we should consider is that you and Lena comprise a legal and bona fide marriage, the immigration people are going to look very closely at that relationship. So I have to ask this. But would it not be better for the two of you, soon to be the three of you, to stay here in Germany a year or two longer making it more difficult to question the sincerity of your marriage? Do I understand correctly that you may continue to teach in Weimar indefinitely? Why then the rush to leave Germany?'"

--- --- --- October 6--- --- ---
"So I'm confused." Carl Pouser, the Deputy Chief of Immigration Services at the US Embassy was rocking the metal chair back onto two legs. No waiter in this swishy Berlin cafe was going to ask him to sit correctly; the whiskey in his glass was worth the replacement cost of the chair. "This guy is what, mid-fifties?"

"It's all there in the applications, Carl. My client is fifty-seven and Elena is twenty-six. And yes, she is what you would call a bombshell. You are drooling on a glossy from her photo shoot last year. And no, you can't see the rest of the photos."

Pouser rocked his chair loudly onto its three legs and emitted a rudely loud whistle that drew expressions of exasperation from nearby guests. Pouser ignored them and boomed, "You are serious, aren't you. This is not F---ing April 1st? So if I understand your request, this guy meets some stripper at the train station. They fall in love, but she's already knocked up and wants to go have her baby in America. Ben, this sounds like a no brainer, where do I sign?"

"Carl that's twenty year old scotch you are drinking. If it were an uncomplicated case, you'd be drinking a blend." Benjamin Talon really hated what his practice had become. He had chosen the law because he did not enjoy small talk with buffoons of this jerk's caliber. But here in Germany, this buffoon was an important hurdle and would remain so for the indeterminate future. Carl Pouser could not exactly say "yes" or "no" to an application, there had to be reasons and justifications. But Talon knows that when the Deputy Chief hands a file to a case officer, usually a subordinate, with the recommendation that the file be given a close read, log jams can be broken. Alternately, Pouser might also decide not to get involved; and Benjamin Talon understands the best way to get his clients their best possible hearing; a process that usually includes two hours of catch up with his old friend, the Deputy Chief.

"What's the rush? Bring the whole damn family over once the child gets out of diapers." Pouser was showing his empty glass to the busy waiter, who was not quite in eye contact.

"Carl, it is all in the file. But the rush is that Germany does not want this child to be born in Germany, the mother's three months tourist status was up on October 1st. Any day now, she is likely to be on a train heading out to someplace like Central Romania, where she is not from either, by the way. But it's the most recent non-German stamp in her passport, so that's where she will be headed. And her new husband, the History professor from Alabama, wants the baby to be born in America. We both know that if she gets on that train to Romania, there is damn little chance that my client will ever see his family again. And who the hell knows how she is going to winter over with no resources and a new baby in some place where she does not even speak the language. There's more, Carl...let me finish."

The waiter retrieved the empty glass, leaving a bubble in the conversation. This break enabled Benjamin Talon to continue. "There are some complications. First, the baby's father is an American, a special agent with the FBI, and as it turns out, Senator Judson Vineact's son. That part is not in the file. Yet."

"Yet?" The expression of the Deputy Chief was now all business.

"Yet. Carl, I figure my client has a tough choice to make. If he can get his new family to the United States, where they will all live happily ever after on the small salary of a history professor, then I don't have to spend all of this time and energy in proving the paternity of this child; do I? But let's say we can't get Elena to the US before the baby is born. Then we will have to prove that this is an American's child and not a Romanian citizen. And believe me, with the phone and travel logs, the photographs, the emails, and night club scenes that Joey Vineact and Lena Roshcha left in their wake last summer, fall, and winter, proving the need for DNA tests will be quite easy."

"And if Judson Vineact wins the early primaries next year you think this story might make interesting reading material for the Democrats?"

"Carl, you are way WAY out ahead of me now. I am exploring my client's options, that's all. I just think it would be better for everyone, you, me, Judson Vineact, Joey Vineact, Joey's wife and two daughters, the baby, Lena...everyone benefits if this child is born in Alabama, the son or daughter of a History professor. Next year, if it comes to that, we would be trying to bring in two immigrants from central Europe. And God knows what we would have to prove and what would have to be in the file at that point."

"The greatest good for the greatest number, huh?" Pouser's voice was lower now and his expression was much more serious as he swirled the last of his whiskey into his mouth and began making for a standing posture.

"Jeezus Carl! I am not asking for anything outside of any legal procedure. I am simply asking that you read the file and tell me if you think it is complete enough, as it is, to get this baby to Huntsville Alabama before it needs a visa of its own. "

Prouser was already zipping his jacket. "I'll make you a counter offer, Ben. What if I were to dip deep into my own pockets and purchase a one way train ticket for this stripper, back to where ever the hell she came from. She can name the kid Carl, and we'll call it even. Her mom and dad will raise the baby while Olga does tricks at the local dance hall. And everything will be put right."

"Carl, Elena Roshcha is Chechen. You will see it all in the file. If she goes back to Chechnya she is dead. That part of the story is all documented and explains the possible humanitarian procedure requesting the US to recognize her refugee status." Benjamin Talon was standing up to shake hands. But Pouser had already turned his back and was walking away.

Without turning his head, Prouser complained, in much too loud English, "Sh_t! Talon. You tell me you have an immigration case to discuss. Turns out we need the State Department to call a meeting with the Senate Foreign Affairs committee. How about the United Nations? Want me to get them to assemble too?"

"Carl, you realize, of course, that Vineact chairs that committee?" Talon noticed and was relieved that Prouser had the file under one arm. The other arm was raised to support the middle fingered gesture of departure that one might expect from a twelve year old. The Deputy Chief of Immigration at the US Embassy to Germany had left the cafe.

--August 27--
"God d__n it, Mark!" She whispered, "This is not about a ritual or the MEANING of anything! This girl is not getting the nutrition nor the care she needs to have this baby. This is about a baby, a real live human. It's the right thing to do." Dr. Randi Rawls sat on the side of the bed. Professor Mark Matthews, pretending to be asleep, lay on his belly with his head turned away, face buried in his crossed arms. All of the pillows in the apartment were stuffed between and around the appendages of an exhausted woman, sleeping on the couch, right outside the closed bedroom door.

Matthews was not talking. "If its insurance you are worried about, get her to Alabama and I will see that she gets treatment. What is it, the plane ticket?"

Mark did not move. Randi Rawls stood up, walked around the bed and knelt with her face directly to his face. "I am not asking you to sleep with her. You don't have to adopt the baby. I am simply asking you to tell me about alternative scenarios. Work with me here, Mark. What happens if this girl gets deported?"

"She goes back to her home town where there is a credible expectation that she can find family and friends to help her. In Alabama..."

"In Alabama she will get doctors to help deliver this baby. She will be sleeping indoors there. They can have that entire upstairs. Your mom will love the company. Elena and the baby will eat regular meals, take baths, get ongoing pediatric care. In a year or so, you can both decide that this marriage was a mistake and you can get a divorce. The pre-nuptial agreement will acknowledge that she brings no assets and that the baby is not yours, if you like. Don't you see, nothing else matters. The baby will still be a US citizen if it is born there. In the meantime, Elena will find a way to make something of a living and the baby will get an education. Who knows, that child may grow up to be a great historian. But, Mark, give me alternative scenarios. What is the 'or else?'"

"Randi, you are not listening to the 'or else.' She needs to go back to where she is from and inform her mother and father that they are soon to be grandparents. People have been having babies in Russia or Serbia or wherever she is from for hundreds of thousands of years. Don't you think your radical intervention disregards the grandparents perspective? I am not getting any more involved than you have already gotten me. Tomorrow we can buy her a train ticket home, get her some vitamins, and tell her to make an appointment with her local doctor. My answer is no. If you think it is the right thing to do, to pretend being married so she can squeeze through a loophole, then marry her yourself!"

-----November 12 -------------------
The conference table was solid, graceful, and modern. The centerpiece of the executive conference room in a many-storied office building overlooking a river, other smaller buildings, some insignificant streets and no hint of the rumble of traffic noise and city bustle below, this perch made one feel like an Olympian God. On the walls, art--chosen by a consultant--, had been selected for size, for the frame, and for the accidental clash with the wall paper. But each piece was specifically approved because of the impossibility that anything in its content would offend.
To be continued, perhaps...

My Favorite 911 Memorial

2010-11-04T12:10:00.001-04:00

Happy Veterans Day!

Walking around a bend of the Rennsteig (see my last post for a description of this wonderful foot trail in Germany), I came upon a stone memorial to a military battle that occurred there in 1944.

This Memorial stands beside the Rennsteig Trail.

The world being full of these stone and iron reminders of the valor and bravery of "our side" in some past struggle between right and wrong, I usually just walk past them. Its not that I do not appreciate the sacrifices made by people who have come before me. It is just that I often think we memorialize the wrong things. Worse, these memorials sometimes preserve in the minds of yet another generation the idea that there were only two sides in any war, our side and "evil." Twice worse, evil would have prevailed had it not been for the military prowess of our side. War was the answer and the solution. It often seems "God Almighty" needed to borrow the United States Military for a few years because evil was getting a little too much for him to handle.

The "Other Side" as seen through propaganda posters. (Click on them to see them in more detail.)

Thrice worse, there is evidently some psychological need to dehumanize our enemy. In order to justify to ourselves the great wrongs we think we must accomplish to "win" a war, our enemy must not be imagined to be people. They have to be monsters, devils, animals...but not people. Else, how could we ever use nuclear weapons on cities, chemical weapons on agricultural efforts, "shock and awe" theatrics against civilian populations, torture against their soldiers whom we capture in battle. No, we must first think of the other side as somehow less than human. Then we can live with our actions, no matter how inhuman these actions may become.

Nuremberg 1945

Camp x-Ray, Guantanamo, Cuba 2002

Dachau Concentration Camp, Bavaria 1945

Bataan Philippeans 1942

Chemical Warfare against Agricultural Lands in Mekong Delta in 1970

Largely Civilian City, Nagasaki Japan in Fall and Summer of 1945

Mai Lai Vietnam in 1968

Resiting the urge to think of my own side as "right" and the other side as "evil," I normally just walk on by war monuments.

But this time I stopped and translated. I don't know why, perhaps I was tired and in need of a short break from hiking. But I stopped and translated.

The original monument explained simply, "In memory of the fallen American and German pilots in an air battle over the Thuringen Forest on September 11, 1944."

I thought to myself, "How interesting, how civilized, to include the attacking enemy flying over your homes in the memorial."

Then I read the explanatory sign positioned several meters away.

"On September 11, 1944, roaring through the sky of the Thuringen Forest, an air battle between the German troops and the Allies was underway. This battle involved 84 young men, six German ME 109 and two American P51 Mustang aircraft. The result was 5 deaths on the German side and 2 deaths on the American side. This memorial should remind us of this air battle so war does not ever repeat."

"The result was..." Now that was a nice touch!

This little battle was not amplified to have been the most important turning point between the progress of the forces of light over the forces of darkness. It was not reinterpreted as a strategic victory. The benefits, if any, gained by the loss of life are not listed. And the actions taken by the various pilots are not spun into heroic ballads. In fact, we do not even learn about the reasons the battle was fought. The result was seven dead young men.

Can we ever control that all too human need to conveniently de-humanize our enemies? I look forward to the day in the future when we will be far enough removed from current struggles "between good and evil." Perhaps we will even count the dead humans on all sides of our current wars when we sing the songs of triumph and claim to have "won" anything at all in return for their "sacrifices."

"Nur wo du zu Fuss warst"

2010-10-22T09:05:00.000-04:00

Like all true stories, were I to begin telling this one at the very beginning you would not believe me and you would probably not understand it, either. This is because history, unlike the past itself, does not come at us in chronological order. It (history) happens in the present as we reflect on the past. So the best place to begin this true story is right in the middle: several days ago at about 4pm on October 18, 2010. At about that time, in the cold and fog after a full day's walk, we crested a hill and saw the small village of Schlegel. At that very moment, I just knew that it was the right place.

My wife, Sandy, and I were backpacking the Rennsteig Trail, an ancient and famous foot path through two forests in Central Germany. We were on the last leg of the trail, heading southeast and within twelve kilometers from the end of our nine-day walk.

This 170 kilometer footpath connects two important river systems and has formed the boundaries for three or four kingdoms, principalities, and regions since the early 1200s CE. As such, the Rennsteig, which means "race way," is mentioned in the memoirs of traveling theologians such as Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) and Martin Luther (1483-1546), but has been very significant geography for writers including Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), The Brothers Grimm (1785-1863), Thomas Mann (1875-1955) and, very likely, Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), although I doubt if she covered any of it by foot. Also, this was the route taken by two of Napoleon's three columns on the way to his 1806 victory in Jena, a battle that a philosophy professor then at the University in Jena would call, "The End of History." But, codslaver, Doctor Hegel, History was only just getting started! During the last half of the 20th Century, the southern part of this trail would form one of the most important boundaries between the so called "Free World," and "Communist Block." Depending on the sources you choose to believe, around 1000 people were killed as they tried to escape East Germany by crossing these militarized borderlands. So the burden of history weighs heavier than a rucksack when we walk this trail, especially when we consider how this epic struggle between empires affected the people living nearby.

Small parts of this trail had been important to my own personal history as well. During the Cold War, the southern leg of the Rennsteig had been deemed "off limits" because that part of the trail formed the border between East and West Germany. The East Germans, under the direction of the occupying Soviet Forces, had fortified their side of the border and declared it closed. In response to this military "threat," West Germany, under the direction of its occupiers (the United States, France, and the United Kingdom), constructed elaborate border monitoring devices and moved tens of thousands of NATO soldiers into place, creating a defensive barrier from the North Sea to the Czechoslovakian border. Both sides told their people that the other side was preparing for an imminent invasion.
Such was the situation when I was first sent to Germany in the early 1980's in the capacity of an intelligence analyst with the US Army. I was stationed in Nuremberg with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, a unit tasked to monitor a small part of this vast borderlands.

One very cold afternoon during the Winter of 1984/85, I was ordered to perform a long weekend of what was known then as "border duty." This was a very rare opportunity for me, because most "border duty" was handled by our subordinate units who were stationed very near the border. The explanation given was that our Regimental Commander had decided that all intelligence personnel should all have some border experience. I was excited.

We quickly packed our cold weather gear. Then several of us from the Regimental Headquarters who had been ordered to weekend duty convoyed our jeeps along beautiful forested roads. Crawling north, we arrived at the Border Operations Center ("BOC") sometime after dark.

In the Army you get used to the cold and the dark. You also learn to follow any orders you are given. So we locked our duffel bags to our assigned bunks; we were handed our evening dinner (a bagged meal that could fit in our uniform pockets), and we reported to the safety briefing in the "BOC," another nearby tent surrounded with three coils of razor wire. At the briefing we were informed that we would be spending our three days there working four hour rotating shifts; four hours of sleep, four hours of observation duty, four hours of BOC duty, and back to sleep for four hours. This would insure that we each would each have five or six daylight and nighttime shifts in both the observation post and the BOC.

Sometime later that night I was awakened and told to report to the observation post for my four hour shift. Forbidden the use of flashlights in tactical situations, I followed the razor wire to the observation post about 500 meters up the nearby hill. The walk through the dark was uneventful. The observation post turned out to be a wooden platform surrounded by dirt mounds scooped out from the top of the hill. A field desk under a tarp in the center of the platform held a telephone, a log book, and a thermos pot. The soldier I was to replace gave me the binoculars and a very brief introduction to my duty for the night.

"Nothing moving down there tonight. Each hour, just write down everything that happens, here in the log. If nothing happens, just write 'nothing to report,'" he said as he signed the log book by the light of his wristwatch.

"If anything does happen, call the BOC on this field phone and tell them. Stay here, and stay on your feet." Then he was gone.

He was right; nothing did happen. The thermos turned out to be empty. No enemy tanks appeared on the horizon and I could happily write, four times, that there was "nothing to report." The observation platform overlooked farmland, mostly. On my left, a hint of the dark outline of a forested hillside; on my right was a tiny village with two dim streetlights burning over the gravel town center. Directly below the observation post and between me and the little town was a grassy strip that I had to assume to be the international border, the notional edge of the "free world." After what seemed like ten hours, my replacement showed up. I gave him the same briefing and went back down the hill to the BOC for my second shift.

In the BOC my job was to monitor the field phone connected to the observation post. If it were to ring, I was supposed to answer it and decide if the situation was urgent enough to wake the duty officer, who was asleep in the covered jeep out front. The duty officer had a radio and the authority to make any decision necessary.

"Don't wake that Captain up for anything insignificant. He's on 24 hour duty. If you have to go up to the Observation Post, get somebody else to sit in here," then, as before, he was gone.

Again, nothing happened. I wrote four times in the BOC log, "nothing to report." As I stepped out of the dark tent into the morning winter fog, I realized that I had just completed my first full shift of border duty.

My next shift, the following afternoon and evening, was not so monotonous. First, I could see more of the beautiful German countryside and even watch some of the people in the little town move, once or twice, between some of the buildings. More important, our regimental commander had decided to fly some of his staff to the border that afternoon to inspect the operations there. For me that meant the observation post got a full thermos of coffee, (not to drink, but to have on hand in case he asked about it.) We were told to touch up our uniforms, do a good police call around the area, clean the latrine, and "square away" the bunk tent. Some of the first helicopters arrived just as I was being relieved at the observation post. So I was standing by the phone at the BOC when the Colonel arrived for his "situation report."

During my evening shift at the BOC, several more of our helicopters arrived and departed. Also, an "intercept" squad set up several large antennae and additional tents near the observation post to listen to the radio traffic sent back and forth on the other side of the border. Understandably, all of the activity on our side of the border had attracted the attention of East German border military units on the other side. By the time my BOC shift was completed, I could report in the log book that there were three mobile personnel vehicles and a dozen or more East German border military personnel moving in or around the town. My shift completed, I went to the bunk tent and fell quickly to sleep.

Awakened just before my shift was to begin, I quickly took my place back at the observation post. Things there had changed. Our Colonel and his staff had all flown their helicopters away during the evening. But the little village below me was in an uproar. Through the binoculars I had a clear view between several houses into the little gravel town square. Every street and alley leading toward the square now contained a vehicle with its headlights on and beaming toward the square. The East German border military had assembled the entire village, perhaps eighty to a hundred people, in the small square. In the center of the square, on top of a van like vehicle, stood a uniformed man with a megaphone, lecturing the crowd.

I did my best to describe the situation in the logbook. As I now recall, the lecture continued for more than an hour as the people of the town stood in the cold, after-midnight air of mid-January. I could not hear what was being said, but only the man in uniform seemed to be speaking. I remember some of the faces: grandmothers in scarves, grandfathers in bib overalls, moms, dads, teenagers, children, babies, all standing or being held for more than an hour while some uniformed bully gave a mandatory talk on what I imagined to be the merits of Marxism and the corruption of Capitalism. The faces told the real story. Somber, expressionless, and patient, these people were used to being pushed around by uniformed representatives of "the State." Even the teenagers appeared to stand and listen, to offer no hint of aggravation. Finally, when the megaphone wielder tired of talking, he climbed down from the back of the van, got inside, and the vehicle moved forward as the crowd parted. Then the crowds went home and lights went out. It was probably 2am.

When your paradigm shifts it is not always evident to you at the time. As I stood there on the observation post, trying to make sense enough of what I had witnessed to write a short synopsis for the log book, I knew I felt angry. But what was not apparent to me then was the extent to which this indignation had changed me, changed the fundamental way I think about things. Since that night on the observation post, I have distrusted most ideology. From that point forward, the political spectra we now call "the left" had become as distasteful to me as the "the right." I had witnessed, all too firsthand, that Marxist socialism could become tyranny as easily as National Socialism or unbridled capitalism. After my night on the observation post, I would measure any government's value by the extent to which its people--especially the minorities among them--could live their lives in peace and quiet. Those places where teenagers feel safe to thumb their noses at a police officer, where grandfathers might decide to sit at home playing poker rather than to attend a political rally, and where babies get to sleep the night through without disturbance, these were to me the signs of a healthy governing system. Graffiti, skateboards, punk rock music, diversity of opinion, and protest marches all became, for me, the markers of an empowered population, a situation that only seems to exist where the government is under the control of its people and where the people are under the control of a just body of law.

Perhaps a thousand times since, I have told the story of that winter night. My wife and daughter have too often heard me describe the people's faces as I have used their situation to explain my feelings about any government that uses force to control its own people. So a few days ago, at about 4pm on October 18, as Sandy and I were walking along the Rennsteig, she understood exactly what I meant when I pointed to a nearby hill on our right and said,

"There was the observation post! If we come to a little town, just over this hill, right there, then this is exactly the place!" was about all I could say.

A few steps later and the slated roofs of a small village began to appear, exactly where they should be. It had been twenty-five years. I had changed; the town had changed. But we were walking into the very same place that had meant so much to me; now, I learned from my map, it was the village of Schlegel.

The Town Square: Now With A Garden

As we entered the town from the west, the Rennsteig brought us into the little square in which I had witnessed the winter assembly, so long ago. Much of the square has been turned into a little garden, as if to prevent its future use in such ways. But the streetlight still stands in the center.

We walked through town to find a room for the night, stopping first at the guesthouse. A very nice gentleman there told us that he had no rooms ready, but that he could prepare dinner for us later. He sent us further into the village looking for a family nearby who could rent out a sleeping room in their home for the night. As we walked back and forth through the village, asking directions and inquiring about a place to sleep, we realized that these people had not encountered many Americans, despite the Rennsteig running directly through the town. The people were all very curious, helpful, and extremely friendly. One family interrupted their own dinner to show us, specifically, which home on the next street had two rooms for rent.

We Found a Room Here!

We found a beautiful room, took our showers and then returned to the guesthouse for a late dinner. As promised, and despite the fact that the guesthouse was closed, the owner very nicely prepared a hot meal for us as we sampled the local beer.

The Guesthouse in Schlegel

Perhaps the best part of the evening occurred when the owner joined us at our table while we ate. He seemed surprised to learn that we were Americans. When I asked him about the mid-1980's and what it was like to live on the border, he excitedly told us about a time (perhaps it had happened several times) when the Americans came with their helicopters, tanks, and big antennae. He described the whirlwind of excitement caused by these American shows of military force and reiterated how concerned his people were that the Americans were preparing to invade. For the very first time I was forced to consider the emotional ramifications of having "the enemy" arrive with a half dozen helicopters, tracked vehicles, mysterious electronic devices and lots of uniformed soldiers and parking it all on a hill overlooking a small village.

On the way out of town the next morning, I could barely speak. My own recollection of that night in 1985 had been proven to have been horribly one sided. The historical "Truth" of that night, I now realize, does not exist. Instead, the guy behind the binoculars at the observation post, the only witness to all of the events that night, had missed the most important question, "How had the American show of force, modern equipment, and helicopter mobility encouraged the tough guy response by the East German Border Police?" In some ways, I admitted, we were all partly responsible for that cold winter assembly twenty-five years ago.

But as we turned to take some final photographs of the village of Schlegel before completing the Rennsteig, I realized that my lingering memory would be that the town today is quiet, prosperous, friendly, and safe. Somewhere on the way out of town, on the Rennsteig, is another sign, a wooden trail marker. In German, this one says simply, "Only when you have gone there by foot, have you ever really been to a place."

Joe finds religion

2010-08-28T07:25:00.000-04:00

My students will be shocked. My friends will not believe this. My family will move all of my belongings out into the street. But it's true. The philosophy teacher most akin to the ideas of David Hume, has finally found religion. And I don't even have the excuse of the rabid "fisher wives of Edinburgh."

What's most surprising is that I was not even looking for spiritual fulfillment, just fulfillment. I had been reading about the 12th Century. And the importance of something called the "grail" had been weighing heavily on my thoughts. It was lunchtime, and my empty belly was weighing even heavier.

And I must explain a bit. Scholars of the medieval world are not sure what this "Grail" even was. They tell us that it was important as a symbol for the undertaking of a major war fought by the western part of Europe against much of the eastern part, something akin to WMD's only the grail was really supposed to have existed. (We all knew WMD's were imaginary, didn't we.) We think this grail thingy symbolized in some way the blood of Christ. Christian scholars (traditionally not too interested in evidence) tell us, without a lot of evidence from the time, that the grail was a dish or a plate or a cup. They have been pretty vague about this distinction, even the ones who were certain of what it was made, (i.e. engraved silver, or rubies studded with pearls, or carved from one giant pearl, or cut from a single diamond, etc.)

For most believers, the grail was the saucer into which someone caught the precious blood of the crucified messiah as he was being taken down from the cross during the fourth decade a.d. This was an amazing coincidence, because that very same dish was the one in which Jesus served either wine or bread to his boys during the "Last Supper." We are not quite clear on how it got from that table into the hands of one of the people taking the body off the cross. Nor do we know why someone would catch the blood from the corpse. But no matter, let's just assume one of the apostles brought home a doggy plate from the last supper. What is difficult to understand is how that very same dish was at the indictment hearing with the Roman, Pontius Pilate. Pontius rinsed his hands in that dish after recuse-ing himself from the case due to a jurisdictional technicality. But these mysterious coincidences are just the way that the "Lord God Almighty," may his name be forever glorified, works. Forgive me the "Church Latin" but we might call it his Modus Operandi. And once you realize the workings of the Lord do not have to follow the same logical processes as our own tribulations, the little matter of the disappearance of the grail fades as well. The grail was lost by the crusaders, it popped back up at King Arthur's round table in England, and it was lost again.

So imagine me walking along the streets of Jena Germany with a good dictionary in one hand and the other hand rubbing my empty stomach when, EUREKA!, you would never believe what I saw in a shop window on Karl Liebkenecht Strasse in Jena Germany!

Don't get ahead of yerself here, Joe.

I was walking along, minding my own business, looking up the English word "Grail." Some folk think the word came from an early Latin word meaning a flat dish for the serving of fish. Others thought it came from an Anglo-Saxon word for wine bowl and bed pan. But my research led me to conclude it was from an early Greek word that meant only "dish."

We use words from a similar root when we say, "gruel," "grain," "groceries," and "grill." The Germans have a closer meaning with their word "Jauser" which means a small meal, a dish.

And yet, it would have been a dish, cup, plate or bowl owned by an apprentice carpenter, according to my Christian friends. To me, this means the grail was probably not carved from a single diamond.

As I walked along I looked through the window of a small shop and saw it. It was glowing, just like the stories of old said it should be. Its smell was every bit as heavenly. Let me explain.

In Europe, we can get a Jauser that the Turkish people call Dooner (rhymes with the black powder you add to your printer cartridges, "toner.") Let me tell you about the Turkish dooner!

Roast some steaks over a wood fire. While it cooks, baste it with garlic, parsley, olive oil, and a kind of curry that is not available in the United States. After all of the steaks are done, pack them onto a spit about 3ft long. Next time use Veal, the time after that use lamb, then use turkey, then back to beef(and you will never get tired of dooner!) Put the spit near some charcoal and turn it slowly. Shave the meat into thin slivers, pack it into large pita breads, and add thinly sliced cabbages, onions, sheep cheese, lettuce, maybe some tomato slices and put a white garlic sauce with another kind of curry that is not available in the United States over top.

I am going to miss many many things about German life and culture when I have to go home to Pennsylvania. But when it comes to eating, there is nothing I will miss more than Turkish dooner.

And despite the obvious lack of evidence (linguistic, historic, or otherwise) I am sure that the holy grail was a dish. Perhaps it is this lack of evidence that makes dooner an article of faith. But the grail was a dish made of a pocket of unleavened bread and stuffed just the way a hungry carpenter's apprentice would want it stuffed: roast lamb, sheeps cheese, spiced sauces, and cabbages. This dish could incite a major clash of civilizations known as the Crusades, it could motivate disciples to quit fishing, and it has given me the most spiritual feeling I have ever achieved. And if you get it with the strong garlic sauce (the white sauce) it can even cure leprosy.

I have found the holy grail and it is in a German dooner shop run by a very nice family from Turkey! We are in discussions over franchise rights for dooner restaurants in the United States; we think we are going to call it "Prestor John's Dooners, they are cross bearing good!"

Summer Reading

2010-08-15T11:05:00.000-04:00

If there are any readers of this blog...(I like to cherish the crazy notion that there might be one or two), then let me please explain my slow posting for the next few months.

I will be in the Alps for much of September. Hiking, exploring the discovery site of Otzi the Iceman, , seeing what glaciers look like before they go extinct forever, and doing my best to climb all of the peaks within range of the small town of Vent, in short I hope to be too busy to post anything to my blog.

But then in October...

Umberto Eco's most recent book, enticingly entitled something like _The Cemetery of Prague_ is supposed to be released in October. There are many of us awaiting this release and I happen to be among the luckiest of these. A vast VAST majority of Eco's base of most devoted readers are probably tied up in teaching during October. By October, I myself am usually twisted firmly around the axle, trying to get the lectures in two or three courses caught up to where they should be according to the lesson plan. In most years a new Eco book would sit on my dresser for a long spell.

But THIS October, I am on leave from teaching. I will attempt to find the book in English as soon as it has been released. Then I intend to take it with me on a nice long train ride, somewhere really cool, like the Czech Republic or Poland, or Turkey. And I hope to get a window seat.

Wow! What a terrific Fall! Thanks Penn State Altoona! Now for all of the other Eco fans out there who won't be reading the book right away...let me commiserate. Perhaps I can give you a plot summary or something...

Sometimes I worry...

2010-08-10T08:18:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I worry about my country.

I love the idea of the United States. Mostly, I love the fact that many kinds of people can come together and build an interconnected future for ourselves and our children. I love the liberty that we have, including our rights and obligations to complain when the country does not live up to its potential. And what makes this whole thing possible is that we live under the rule of law. The rule of law means that even the worst of our criminals have rights to fair trials and that no king or elected official, nor any majority of voters for that matter, can ever take away an individual's right to a trial. The important thing to remember is that the "rule of law" is not there for the convenience of the government, nor is it there to protect the rights of criminals. "The law" is there to enable us to live together with all of our various opinions, traditions, and life ways. By protecting our rights to be different, and our rights to things like fair trials by juries, freedom of expression, privacy, and speech, we preserve all our American way of life.

You see, the United States IS an exception. We are an exception to the rule that each nation must be made up of only one "folk," one ethnic group, one religion, and one language. We, in the US, ARE one folk, unified by our history and our institutions. But we are comprised of ethnic and genetic materials from all of humanity. And as any biologist can explain, that diversity makes us stronger. It is the rule of law that enables the diversity and our lasting strength. To me, that place where the "rule of law" is supreme, where no majority can deprive an individual's most basic rights, and where it all seems to work BECAUSE we respect (or at least acknowledge the Others' legal rights to their differences)...that place is a geographic rendering of the idea of the United States.

Right now, we have in custody in Gitmo a young man, Omar Khadr.

Either Khadr is a prisoner of war or he is not. (No matter what the Obama Administration would like for you to believe. Khadr is either a POW or he is not. That much is beyond dispute.)

If Khadr is a prisoner of war, then he has been captured and is being held in a safe place, without trial, until after the war is over. Because this is exactly what the United States (and 194 countries) have agreed and promised to do with its POWs.
Here is a good outline of the Third Geneva Convention as it relates to POWs. As with any convention, treaty, law, or policy, you will--of course--find cheaters who want to use tricky interpretations to get out of the agreement. But the intent of the Geneva Convention is clear to any educated reader.

Evidently, the US does not consider Khadr a prisoner of war because he is being tried by a military tribunal and has been denied his POW status under the Geneva Convention. (He is alleged to have thrown a hand grenade that killed an American Soldier. If he is a POW, then killing enemy soldiers was his job. If he is a criminal, then killing that soldier was a crime.)

So if Khadr is not a prisoner of war, he is a criminal charged with killing a US soldier on a battlefield. As a civilian, he should have been turned over to the civil authorities and tried for his crime. The prosecution should produce the evidence and a legal trial should determine his guilt. The basis for my claim here is the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Again, there are cheaters. But this is essentially the most important statement of a human being's legal rights. Any law which conflicts with this statement is unjust and therefore not a law. Please review Articles 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, and 30.

Instead, Khadr is being tried by a military tribunal made up of US Military Officers as judges, prosecutors, and jury members.

Khadr was a fifteen year old at the time of his capture or arrest (depending on his status of a POW or a murderer.) He is a Canadian citizen.

We risk blurring the line between a criminal and a POW. "So what?"

Well, the difference between "the conduct of legal war" and "murder" hangs in this balance. As a veteran of the US Army, I am very concerned for our soldiers. If tossing a hand grenade at the enemy is murder, then we are spending hundreds of billions a year at grooming a horde of murderers. I prefer to think of our Soldiers as performing a legal and just protective function for our society. So if Khadr is a murderer because he is a civilian, then the military trial is a breach of our rule of law. He should be tried as a criminal. If he is a murderer because he killed a US soldier, then so is every US soldier who has killed an enemy soldier...even in self defense, if the death happened outside of US territory. If Khadr is a POW, then the Obama Administration is enabling a war crime itself by allowing him to be tried and punished.

United States, I am on your side. And yes, our country is not the only perpetrator of flagrant violations of the "Geneva Conventions" and the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." But imagine how that defense would work in a real courtroom. "Your honor, I admit I was driving drunk. But I am not the only person who was intoxicated on the road that night." The fact that others are breaking the law (or cheating the interpretation of our most basic human rights) does not excuse us from our own responsibility to uphold the rule of law where we can control such things.

The uncanny continuity of policy among the past three presidential administrations, along with their reliance on cheater interpretations and utter disregard of international conventions are worse than embarrassing. They are downright "Un-American."

Real Places and Imaginary Places

2010-07-20T05:16:00.000-04:00

Supposedly, I heard an interesting bit of historical narrative today. No, really!

English is such a difficult language in some ways, one of which is the expression of certain forms of non-committal ideas. Some languages incorporate tentative or speculative ideas by changing a few vowels...in English we must flag our facetious intentions with an awkward phrase such as, "Supposedly," "Once Upon a Time," "Highly Reliable Sources at the White House assure us that," or even, "It has been proven beyond a shadow of doubt that..." This list could go on for volumes; but there are many ways of deflecting the burdens of proof and/or reality from the speaker to some other authority about whom this tale about to be told is not.

So, as I was saying, supposedly, I heard an interesting bit of local history today. Really.

It happened a few years ago in a small town downstream from Jena. That way...

Readers (if any) unfamiliar with the lay of the land should realize that in this part of the world, "downstream" usually means, ultimately, a general direction toward the North Sea. Downstream means Northwest. Perhaps a short introduction to the terrain of this story would help at this point.

Here is a map of the Elbe River System:

[ Need a bigger map? You could click here... ]

So a drop of rain in any of the white territory in this map will end up in the North Sea; unless it gets itself into a bottle of exported wine or beer. Just look at the familiar town names in the white territory and you can see why this is a realistic possibility: (For example, Pilsen, Budweiss).

The first thing some of my readers (if any are left) might notice is that none of the place names on this map seem to trigger any recognition. And that is easy to explain. You see, place names are all imaginary; rivers, mountains, cities, oceans,and towns do not have "real" names. They only have names that have been given them by observers. And those observers name them things for reasons that are called "historical considerations" by geographers; (who seem to credit "history" with anything that can not be measured in arbitrary and imaginary units of measure like kilometers.) Still, these place names are continually negotiated conventions. Some people may call a river by one name, others may call the identical river by another name. Donau, Danube is a good example. What a miraculous coincidence that the title of the Strauss tune, "Der Blau Donau" rhymes almost as well as its translated version "The Blue Danube."

In order to understand my story today, it is not necessary for you to understand that the Elbe flows from the Czech Republic to the North Sea. You do not need to know the names of the Elbe's tributaries. But you should understand that one of these tributaries, the Saale, joins the Elbe River at a swampy wetlands near Barbi Germany, somewhere downstream of Jena. If you understand that much, you should also realize that somewhere between here (Jena) and Barbi is a small town called "Kaisersaschern on the Saale." You won't find it on any map because maps do not tell the truth, they (like dictionaries, teachers, and historians) only relay the labels arrived at through dubious and temporary conventions. The truth resides at the sub-lingual level. The reality of the Saale is another matter entirely. That THING that one can point toward, drink, splash through, and kayak in a general direction towards Barbi is what I mean when I discuss the river we call, around here, right now, the Saale. And if you can not find Kaisersaschen on the Saale on your Google Map, then if I were you, hypothetically, before I made any claim to knowledge about Kaisersaschen, I would jump in a kayak, float downstream, have a beer at the "Under the Linden" Guesthouse in Kaisersaschen (owned and managed these days by the Family Zeitblom.) And if this trip does not convince you, I can only refer you to Thomas Mann for a credible source in a form more commonly used to prove an author's statements these days: hearsay and name dropping.

So as I was saying, it all happened a few years ago in a small town, Kaisersaschern, just north of Jena Germany. A small town boy, Adrian (17) meets a girl, Esmeralda (22), fresh from the city. And the walls came tumbling down. But let me start back in the middle of things where all true stories begin; on that day in 1993 when Adrian had finally saved enough money that he could finally afford his first electric guitar. It was an Aria Pro copy of a Les Paul, dual humbuckers, wicked action, lots of figure in the maple, all done up in a blaze of red. This is what Adrian had always wanted. But his parents were troubled. How had this kid come up with enough of the new money to afford this thing?

TO BE CONTINUED...

Influence, Origination, Innovation

2010-07-18T04:54:00.000-04:00

Feet soaking in the Saale, Joe is hard at work here, reviewing secondary sources on the "Thirty Years War."

Historians like to have something to write; and it seems the idea is "the more the better." So their "historical method," is intended to help keep these busy people from blundering into conclusions with really obvious logical fallacies. For example, we have already treated the idea of "origins" in my last blog entry. To recap: Historians who try to make gold from straw by determining the first of anything are usually setting themselves up for ridicule. Since there were almost always earlier examples of almost everything, when you think you have determined the one true original, quite often you have just reached the beginning of your own "expertise." You have only found the first example that you know about; and it shows, especially to scholars working on earlier times. Those historians focused on the earliest of historical times realize (hopefully) that their "firsts" are only the first examples of the evidence available today; that, chances are, in time a new dig will find a log cabin that predates the one you claimed to have been the "original log cabin." In a similar way, we must be careful with the idea of "influence."

The confusion of "influence" with "Migration" is a similar problem. I remember reading books where competent historians detected the spread of a culture across a continent. The evidence for this spread? A building technique, or a kind of pottery, or even the shape of an arrow point. To these authors, the spread of a particular kind of dwelling indicated that an ethnic group had migrated across that continent. This fallacy also emerges in histories using evidence of religious/burial practices, family roles, revolutionary ideas, linguistic innovations, and even certain observations about "historiography itself." To protect the perpetrators, let me give you one unrelated example: the skateboard.

"Skateboards found in archeological digs from the 2nd millennium CE, demonstrate a rapid rise of the Eastern Pacific Skateboarding Culture ("EPSC") possibly relating to changing climate patterns, imperial dominance competitions, and the mobility of trained artisan/practitioners."
--- no author really wrote this, it's just an example

Skateboards probably originated among (who would have guessed?) California kids in the early 1950's who had received roller skates (like, what a drag, man!) for Christmas presents from their well meaning but woefully prehistoric parents. What these kids apparently wanted were surf boards so they could do really cool tricks and break bones that had only recently been identified by their parents' physicians' new diagnostic methodologies. Well, any of us who still remember these old strap on roller skates realize why the kids would find ways to modify them into little roadster surfboards. These skates were supposed to adhere to your shoes so you could skate in your favorite pair of Red Wing boots. You would open the skate up, put it on your boot, tighten it back up with a skate key and off you would go. But the marketing geniuses of the day did not coordinate with the people in charge of shoe fashion. Worse, who could keep up with the skate key except the same kids who always remembered to bring "two sharpened number 2 pencils" to each class? So kids in Keds and Converse, i.e. "play shoes," would try for weeks to learn to skate in their new sneakers. But the skates would never clamp securely to the rubber toes. And who could look cool in dad's hand me down wing tips, apparently the only shoe constructed with a stiff enough sole to work with skates?

So after the clamp on skates had fallen off the rubber soled Keds two attempts in a row, kids do what kids have done forever...they turned the skates into something useful. (In Dad's words, "destroyed yer brand new skates!") Take a short piece of 2x4 open the skate all the way, nail one half on the front and one half on the back of the board. Presto, a new invention of a billion dollar industry! Now you don't have to put on skates and take them off. In tennis shoes or even barefoot, you can jump on the skateboard and do your best to annoy the neighbors by having too much fun in a restricted fun zone (your own neighborhood.)

As the years went on, and a next generation of skateboarders devised new ways to torment their parents with the threat of emergency room bills, some smart young genius learned to make his skateboard with two sets of front wheels, and to not put the wheels on the ends of the board, but, instead, to leave a few inches of overhang. He/She could then lift the front of the board by shifting weight to the back of the board. New ways of turning, climbing, and dismounting led to new innovations until the first major schism of sorts in the early 1970's. "Old School" skaters loved the sound of the metal skates rolling down the street. A gang of buddies boarding together could wake the neighbors' babies for a block, maybe more. But in the early 1970's someone learned to make wheels for skateboards from long lasting urethane composites. Bigger, faster, thinner wheels; better adhesion, and the skateboard was liberated from the sidewalk. Good boarders could skate down steps, down stair railings and over traffic barriers. Unfortunately, the urethane wheels were also much quieter, but the additional speed and mobility made possible the skateboarder's ultimate dream, outrunning a police officer in an urban setting, "dude!"

By the 1990's the revolution had spread. Communities in the US had become medieval-esque walled compounds (with walls of "No Skateboarding" signs and pudgy police officers on bike patrols trying to protect the "decent folk" from the menace.) Elsewhere, in the aftermath of the fall of the "Iron Curtain," some communities in what had been East Germany strove to channel these revolutionary energies by building parks with spaces reserved for such subversive activities as skateboarding.

The Skateboard Park in one of the public recreation zones in Jena Germany.

Bigger cities had experimented with "Red Light Districts," with much the same result. The skateboard parks attracted bikers, novice skateboarders, and parents. But where was the insurgency? Where were those hardened 14, 15, and 16 year old boarders with their monster skateboards, vile tee shirts, long hair, and punk music playing through one earphone (the other ear free to listen for approaching foot patrols of a faster generation of police officer, more prone to wear combat boots or sneakers than the older cop in western boots.)

What nobody seemed to "get" was that the label "Perpetrator" was half the fun!

These outlaws, the extremist boarders, were still there, developing moves and strategies, lurking on the edge of bank parking lots, even after the new world order spread the culture of the "Backstreet Boys" into what had once been Eastern Europe.

Below is a clip of some of these hardened boarders enjoying a summer Saturday afternoon in Chemnitz Germany, another Eastern German city striving to become Los Angeles. (Chemnitz used to be called "Karl Marx Stadt.")

I would like to devote this video to that generation of early "Baby Boomers" who helped to ensure the success of skateboarding through their emphatic reactionary warnings, city ordinances, and untiring nagging. Without you, skateboarding would have been a passing phase, perhaps another GI Joe.

But for your warnings and lectures, I can still hear them, "Skateboarding and philosophy are for losers. Get your MBA. Son, which Philosophers and skateboard punks have ever changed the world?"

Without this kind of sage advice, where would we be today? Thanks Pop!

'Thar She Blows!'

2010-06-22T07:17:00.000-04:00

My welcome post card intended for anyone reading this blog. "Nuremberg on the Pegnitz River with the Synagogue in the Skyline," photo taken from an old post card, circa 1919. ~gulp~

Call me Joe.

From time to time I need to see the more distant sides of the world. Call it "wanderlust" or "itchy heels," or just a low tolerance for sameness...there are times when I must make a break for it. And lucky for me, when this happens I can usually find some way to accommodate my escape. This time, as always, I got lucky. My wife accepted a Fulbright Senior Lecturer opportunity. When asked to nominate the German University where we would choose to spend the semester, we looked at each other and almost together said, "Jena. Is the Uni at Jena available?"

There is much back-story to that choice. Perhaps it should be a whole future blog entry. The short version goes like this: back during a part of the cold war, my wife and I lived in Nuremberg, a town in Franken (northern Bavaria). We fell in love with Nuremberg. When we talk about "Europe" what we mean is Nuremberg.

Nuremberg on the Pegnitz River

Back then, I was in Military Intelligence in a unit that focused its collection and analysis efforts on the region directly to the North of the border between what was then the DDR (East Germany) and BRD (West Germany.) My, how we all have changed!

My particular professional focus, back then, was on the region which could be demarcated as a border zone beginning roughly in Saalfeld and running along the border to about Plauen. (Roughly the purple line on this map.)

Because my unit was tasked with being aware of what was going on for the first hundred kilometers deep, my zone of interest went all the way back to Halle, Leipzig, Grimma, and Karl Marx Stadt. Of course, there were many smaller cities within this zone of interest, as well. Little did I suspect how important some of them were!

Later, as I studied philosophy and history in grad school, I would discover how little the military and intelligence establishment understood the important causes of historical conditions. While memorizing rail routes, highways, industrial output, and information about "opposing" military units and their equipment, I had overlooked the more important insight that the cultural center of European Intellectual History was located in a small part of my small area of responsibility: Weimar and Jena. My evidence for such an outlandish statement will follow in due course, in future blog entries. In fact, I expect this journal to have two major themes. First that intellectual traditions are much more important to historical understanding than are military or political events. Second, the height of a so called "standard of living," depends on who we consider important as a culture. That consideration is a big part of the discussion underway here in Jena today. But Jena was certainly the capital city of German Idealism, as well as its historical cure, Scientific Materialism. Likewise, Weimar is certainly the hearth stone of German Romanticism. So these two small cities, about fifteen minutes apart on a local train ride costing 3.6 Euros, were extremely important geographies in intellectual history. And in many ways they had been out of bounds for American G.I.s when I had been one.

So now here we are in Jena.

And if that has not been enough evidence for my claim to Jena as the center of the world, here is a more scientific claim. First, there appear to be the same number of degrees of longitude to the east of Jena as there are to the west of Jena. I checked. More seriously, we learn from the essentialists of German Idealism that I am the intersection of all of my past and present impressions. So what my third grade teacher, "Mrs. Hill" has in common with the Jensig mountain and my desk in the Sheetz building back at Penn State University in Altoona, is me. All of my present impressions and memories intersect right here in Jena. Hence, Jena is the center of my phenomenal experience. And any student of Astro-Physics understands that the so called "knowable universe" is defined as that part of the universe that is close enough to us that light and energy might have traveled this far since the last big bang event. Anything one foot farther away is outside of our knowable universe. Defined in that way, of course, it is obvious that the knowable universe for me might be different from the knowable universe for someone else. Hence, Jena is the center of the knowable universe.

I have spent my first week getting to know the area again. This time, I want to know the important stuff. I have walked through some of the city, visiting stores and eating the heavenly foods found here. All this must await future blog entries, because soon I want to talk about place names. Very soon, I would love to explain why Karl Liebknict Strasse, the street, named after the martyr of socialism and the founder of a modern political party, which connects my neighborhood to the bridge crossing the Saale River into Jena proper is here in Jena at all. Next, I would love to retell the story of earlier poets and writers turned revolutionaries who have streets here named for them. Georg Buchner, Heinrich Heine, Frederich Engles Then I can spend some time tracing the similar streets, schools, parks and buildings named for Ernst Haeckel, Franz Liszt, and, of course, the brothers Humbolt. And of course we will have to talk about all of the places named for the non-revolutionary artists, scientists, writers, poets, and thinkers. We find here, in other words, an easy walk from Karl Leibknicht Strasse to Thomas Mann Strasse, shopping malls named for Goethe and very nice neighborhoods named for Schiller. By far, the Romantic Poets seem universally embraced by almost all Jenauers, who usually do not suspect their far reaching influence into distant places such as Boston and Concord, South Africa, and India. Just a deliberative stroll around the neighborhood here can be a tour through intellectual history!

But I would like for my travel log to be more than a collection of place names with photographs. Instead, I would like to use the places as excuses to discuss ideas in their historical and cultural contexts. Most likely, no one will be reading these entries anyway. But it will make a convenient location for my thoughts and sightings. And like everything else about contemporary intellectual history, this travel log will start and end in Jena.

We are very fortunate to live in the "Humboldt House," a wonderful group of apartments surrounding a courtyard, a complex owned by the University. I do not yet know which Humboldt this place is named for, but either could have interesting narrative consequences. And is that not what the human brain is for: interesting narrative consequences? Wilhelm would appreciate the linguistic and diplomatic functions of the place. Neighbors from Iraq, Ethiopia, Holland, Brazil, Pakistan, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Turkey, France, Egypt and Iran share the common facilities like the courtyard, the playground, the laundry room and the hallways. And my wife, daughter, and I share a typical German "flat" in one part of this complex.

Some future blog entry must be devoted to the goings on at the playground here. Since the playground is about one acre of manicured garden surrounded by the apartments, parents can watch (and hear) what happens on the playground from their desks in their own flats. What an amazing place to raise children! Alexander Humboldt would be interested in the collection of plants in the gardens and would speculate on the origins of the various ethnic groups consolidating their cultures in the children playground. He might observe with astonishment the ease with which preschoolers communicate in the Humboldt House gardens, thriving in the shade of ancient rose trees with stalks as big as my wrist growing twenty feet in the air with hundreds of large pink blossoms. This is also a good place to think about "the ideal."

The kids are learning to speak German in school; for those too young to go to public school there are special classes to teach them enough German to enter school with their age group. But the playground seems to be one of the best language labs around. Children who hear Arabic, Dutch, French, English, Swahili, and Japanese in their apartments have found it most convenient to communicate on the playground in German. Here they have the German language in common so they use it. Philosophers of the linguistic bent would be well advised to observe the social construction of meaning underway here.

Before I get too carried away with my own location, let me backtrack a bit.
Good historians have been trained to avoid the notion of "firsts," "earliest," and "origin." We try to look for more important meanings and causal explanation (we like to think.) Every river has multiple sources. The designation of one spring as the source of the Nile River depends on assumptions that are relative to the hopes and whims of a particular explorer, more than any objective situation of geography. To understand a river is to know its system of springs and brooks which feed the deeper currents. To stake a claim to one source is to misunderstand the magnitude of the river system; and these kinds of claims usually arise from national pride or other forms of ethnocentric competition.

And human intellectual history works the same way.

So beginning my story of human resistance to tyranny in one spot, even Jena Germany, is in many ways like declaring that I have discovered the source of the Atlantic Ocean, a small trickle of melted glacier on the top of Geladaindong, Golmud, Haixi, China in Central Asia. Allow me to illustrate.

The Atlantic Ocean is fed by many rivers and it is connected to other oceans. Were we to try to determine its one true "source," by scientific measurement, the volume of water slipping to the west around the southern coast of Africa (the "Thermohaline Circulation") would be the largest inflow. Hence, the source of the Atlantic Ocean must be somewhere in a tributary flowing into the Pacific Ocean. With this first assumption, we have tossed out the normal cast of candidates: the Amazon, Nile, Mississippi, etc., since these rivers flow into the Atlantic basin and together represent only a fraction of the water flowing west around Cape Town. So other than the Atlantic and seas connected to the Atlantic, which is the largest volume flow of water into the Pacific?

A geologist would quickly correct me here, arguing that a river's source is a convention determined both through volume of water measurements and what would be called "historical considerations." I would have no disagreement; and, in fact, I think this underlines my essential point. Even the scientific effort to determine sources and origins rests on assumptions that have little basis in objective "Truth."

But as we sit at the top of a mountain in Northwestern China, congratulating ourselves on having discovered the source of the Atlantic Ocean, let us imagine an event that is not far from the seasonal reality. Imagine that a blast of cool air re-freezes the melting surface of the glacier. Shut off the source of any flow and we might expect that flow to cease. But even without the source of the Yangzi River, the river flows on and the Pacific continues to fill the Atlantic. Even during those times when the Yangzi River itself dried up, salt waters continue to wash the beaches of North Carolina's Dare County, and seagulls rested on the base of the monument at Liberty Island in New York. Our reliance on systems, definitions, and assumptions must always be interrogated in all fields: scientific, literary, and artistic. Because we are all, in every academic discipline, chasing white whales that may or may not exist. Through microscopes, binoculars, telescopes, on blackboards, and in test tubes our conclusions are tentative and based on perspectives, assumptions, and human choices. In the end, what we have left are interesting coincidences, ironies, stories and explanations. And meanings we make up as we go along.

But before we go along, we must start someplace. Since I, the narrator of this blog, am here in Jena Germany, it is the very best place to start.

A True Story about my Top Secret Mission

2010-02-11T14:59:00.000-05:00

Holes: A True Story About My One Top Secret Mission
by Joe Petrulionis

As I understood what we had been told about the international agreement, Soviet Russian and US Armed Forces had submitted to limitations on the number of their own soldiers permitted within ten kilometers of the international border between the BRD and the DDR. But what did I know; I was only an enlisted pawn, playing my part in the big, international drama we all called "The Cold War?" As an additional precaution, intelligence personnel had even tighter restrictions and limits. This meant, we were told, that whenever we were near the border we were to call ourselves "Cavalry," not "M.I." All of our uniforms and vehicles would bear the proud nomenclature, "2ACR," which anyone in uniform north of the border would recognize as the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The Sergeant Major of the Cavalry regiment would literally scowl each time he had to encounter one of us. While we wore the Cavalry patches, we quickly learned not to hang out at the NCO club and to avoid regimental functions. We were Cavalry to the East Germans, but to the "Cav" we were just fodder for clean up details, and extra duty assignments.

The Staff Security Officer, a Captain, who was in charge of the "Secure Communications and Intelligence Facility," allowed me to hang out there when I was not down in the motor pool doing my unending preventative maintenance checks on the track vehicles, oiling the generators, and pampering my cherished Army jeep, Machiavelli. Like a medieval church, the Secure Facility was like a sanctuary to those of us in "Military Intelligence." Most of the NCOs and Officers in the Cavalry did not have a high enough version of "Top Secret Clearance" to enter and send us back into the motor pool. So we hid out there, doing homework, gossiping, and explaining what we were going to do when we finally got our tickets home.

One day, while sitting at a desk in the Secure Facility, I turned to see our Captain enter the room smiling. I think he liked me because I could speak enough German to order him a beer and a sandwich wherever we might stop for lunch, I could read AND write, and there were only five literate Americans attached to the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment, with me being the only one who could read a map. He would assign me to drive him and a platoon sergeant up to the border. It was mid July, the weather was wonderful, and it was an opportunity to escape the almost constant fear of the next duty roster. We were to take some photos of a bridge over a river at the international border. Then we would be back to Nuremberg by nightfall. All I could be told was that there was, "a situation."

During the drive to the border, I got to ride through some of the most beautiful woodlands in Europe. While I drove, the Captain relayed the details of the "situation" to the Platoon Sergeant. The bridge crossed a river separating the DDR from the BRD (the good side from the bad side.) American engineers had, on numerous occasions, drilled holes in this bridge. Though these holes were on the BRD side of the bridge, some Communist sympathizers had filled the holes with asphalt. The holes had been re-drilled. But again, the reds had filled the holes.

Normally, this would not have been an "international incident" at all, just good highway maintenance. But in this case, the cylindrical holes were a part of a strategic plan, called "static defensive response protocols." The holes had been drilled there so that when the "balloon goes up" and the Communist forces started heading south toward Nuremberg and then on to Madrid, our plans were to "blow" the bridge and "deny the enemy access along that corridor of approach." I just loved the Army way with words!

After touring the area, we got to the bridge; I parked Machiavelli in the shade nearby. The Captain--with a curt, "stay here, Petrulionis, we'll be right back"-- walked out toward the center of the two lane highway. There was further evidence of counter defensive operations perpetrated by some unknown element. Together with the Platoon Sergeant, the Captain spent thirty minutes making photographs of the evidence. Once again, all of the holes had been filled with asphalt!

Knowing the serious nature of the offense, I maintained my composure. Stifling out loud laughter had become a talent that got plenty of practice in the Army. Still, I found the idea the United States pre-drilling dynamite holes to make it easier to blow a bridge that was owned by Germany quite comical. Worse, some "Communist sympathizer's countermeasure," simply filling the holes with asphalt, seemed even funnier to me. I made a mental note to myself to try to avoid the duty of lugging boxes of dynamite past the onrushing forces of the evil empire. There were not many places for a lone G.I. to hide on a two lane bridge over a river with two oncoming lanes of T-72 battle tanks rumbling towards the Free World.

A few days afterwards, when the twenty-five color photographs were finally developed, we ran into another difficulty, rather a crisis. Most of the photographs looked like close ups of rulers lying on black asphalt. Because the sun's angle had made an unfortunate reflection, the holes could not be seen in the photographs. The ruler was there to give a size comparison to the viewer of the photograph. Unfortunately, we ended up with twenty-five shots of rulers lying on black backgrounds. The Defense Intelligence Agency was waiting for the photographic evidence. Yet, the "intelligence" did not show the perpetration. The Captain's career was on the line now. It was becoming seriously important for me to keep a straight face.

Luckily, the Platoon Sergeant was an old war horse. He had been there when the 82nd Airborne killed Che in Bolivia, he loved to tell us. "What Bolivian Special Forces?", he would bellow. Now he was an E-7 with a drinking problem and little patience for minor photographic equipment failures.

Somewhere in the evidence archives of the Defense Intelligence Agency are a dozen photographs taken of an Asphalt walkway which connected the barracks with the Motor pool at Merrill Barracks in Nuremberg Germany. In several of these photographs, a yellow ruler and a chalk mark surrounding a hole could now be clearly seen. Each hole (all three of them that had been photographed to show the dozen or more notional holes) was four inches deep and had been made with a pry bar and a sledge hammer. I know how they had been made because I was given the detail to make them, and then to fill them up again afterwards.

When fighting evil, you can dissemble and cheat. Because anything opposed to evil is good. Right? In any event, I was only following orders.

Roundtable on Andrew Hartman's _Education and the Cold War_

2008-08-06T09:10:00.001-04:00

Joe had the opportunity to participate in an interesting venue for discussing new scholarly books. Several reviewers offered their various perspectives and the Author responded.

The book reviewed was Andrew Hartman's Education and the Cold War: the Battle for the American School. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. The roundtable included Joe's review, you can read it here. You can visit the entire roundtable here. But most important, you can not read the book here. I recommend that you skip the reviews altogether; get the book; and read the book.

Joe

Fair and Balanced

2008-02-04T12:24:00.000-05:00

Hi there anyone...

I caught some side channel back blast over some of my public support for political sanity. The argument goes like this in almost all cases:

"Joe, you are teacher. The young people you teach are at impressionable ages. You should not take a public position on any political issue. That kind of thing is just using your podium for a bully pulpit. Now stop it or we are going to recommend you be sent to GITMO for a healthy round of waterboarding!"

Since I do not know the correct spelling for the onimonipeiac sound of air being released from a beach ball, I will have to try to handle these objections in English. Besides, I have it on the highest authority in the land that we do not torture people at GITMO. And if we do, we do not keep records. And if we do, we would never destroy the evidence. And if we do, it is only to protect the officers involved in such torture...

The implication with this "advice" I am receiving is that everyone is welcome to smear their political opinions anywhere they please...all except for the teachers and professors. We should be quietly hiding in our ivory towers calculating the correct number of angels... I am constantly reminded how little our training in history, geography, political theory, ethics, and international relations must seem to qualifies any moderate academic to have an opinion. The same objections are rarely ever leveled at those representatives of the arch-right or arch-left. They can even become Secretary of State! It is, as always, we who are in the middle of the compromise position who are the target for everyone else.

But perhaps I was too harsh in siding with the "Historians Against the War." Perhaps I was being one sided.
Although none of my opinions about the unjustifiable, costly, ill-conceived, and illegal crime against humanity that we nickname the "War in Iraq" ever end up in the classroom, perhaps I still should be more balanced in my private public discourse.

And so, now that I have gone and amplified one side in this issue, we should ensure that we announce any conference or academic organization that is convened to celebrate the social, political, fiscal, humanitarian, and moral benefits this war in Iraq has yielded. How about it? Are there scholars out there who want to spearhead a committee to determine what GOOD has come from the expenditure of 3,900 American lives, 15,000+ major American injuries, 35,000+ dead civilians who did not have weapons of mass destruction after all? Too many negative results of this war have already been expressed by the so called “liberal academic community” and other informed writers. Let's hear from the "pro" side, if there is one.

Certainly there are also some good results of the war? For example, the initiation of regime changes in Baghdad, London, and in Washington D.C. I would volunteer to moderate the panel that gauges the political and administrative progress being made in these three places. Another panel might analyze the national deficit against the monetary costs of this war while enumerating examples of people and enterprises that have been enriched. And we must not forget the achievement of our national, if unspoken, recognition of the risks inherent in one party control over both intelligence AND war declaration powers. I think this could be an engaging conference. If one of these Historians for Shock and Awe (HFSA) conferences ever develops, let us please be sure to give its organizing committee equal (and balanced) exposure.

Onward Christian Soldiers...

Upon reading of the expulsion of students for protesting the Iraq War (Take Me Too!)

2007-11-15T16:57:00.000-05:00

Protest is the only thing we have in our arsenal to protect individual liberties. It only works when it is disruptive, inconvenient, and inappropriate. Properly scheduled protest, held at convenient times and locations do not trouble anyone. Inappropriate protest is a big part of what won us all our constitutional rights in the first place. We should all be in jail over this Iraqi War and the way this so called “Patriot Act” was put into force. People died so we would have the constitutional rights that have been taken away under the guise of "terrorists behind every bush." We should all be protesting. This war is destroying our country, our economy, and our notions of right and wrong. Is torture an ok interrogation method? Why should we follow the Geneva Conventions? Can we take away the Bill of Rights for Americans who we claim—without trial—are somehow aiding terrorists, terrorists who our government spends trillions to find the never ending succession of “number three men?” My goodness! We need some protests; The more disruptive, inconvenient, and inappropriate, the better!So where is the best place for teens to protest? In their schools! But protest in the schools is against the rules. And the students might get punished. They should happily accept the expulsion, suspension, and extra after school detentions. And they would be smart to turn those punishments into extra opportunities for protest. Then the students who do end up with a smudge on their academic “permanent record” should make that smudge the centerpiece of their college application. If I ever serve on a college level admissions committee, any student who received a suspension or expulsion for protesting the Iraq War will move to the top of the pile, above the Scholastic Achievement winners, the straight A students, and the civic leadership award winners. Is the school the "best" place to protest? If you are a teenager it is probably the safest. This school lost a teaching opportunity here. They should have called a big meeting of the student body and talked it through. Hold meetings, give the protesters and counter-protesters a chance to say their piece. In my own classes, we make sure to talk controversies through. I do not squelch opinion, but we do a lot of looking things up to see if we have grounds for our opinions.There are still many people out there who think Iraq had something to do with 911 and who still believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Even now that the Bush Administration has stopped looking for those weapons, and after Colin Powell admitted in his last, official "Meet the Press" meeting that the evidence for the war had been "deliberately deceptive" there are still people out there who believe that the Iraq war was just. These same people are now willing to “get over” the deception and support the idea that the US can move the war front into Iran. And there are some people who think protesters are not patriotic. Remember patriotism means love of your country. The USA is an idea, not a geographic exception. My idea of our country is a civilized notion, it is place where people can express their opinions without being threatened with ostracism, where people of all types can live and let live. The US is the country that tries to enforce international agreements to restrict the damaging effects of war, improve the humane treatment of prisoners, and restrain the use of unilateral military expression. I am a patriot. And I am a protester, because I love my country...what is left of it. Let these kids be punished if we must. But then give them medals for their patriotic valor, and let them know that they should be very proud of their resume enhancing subversive activities.

Joe Petrulionis teaching a course in a tour bus! What's next?

2007-09-27T12:25:00.000-04:00

Joe Petrulionis will be teaching a very interesting course this Spring at Penn State Altoona.

Hist 200 "500 Years around Here: A look at National and Global Events through Local Eyes."

Students will get Penn State history credit or they can take a non-credit option.

The bus will leave on Saturday mornings, visit historical sites, and return in the evening. Some of the fieldwork being planned includes:

A 16,000 year old campsite (because Joe just can't stay within the bounds of any course.)
Several Colonial Era battlefields,
A POW camp where the "Hessians" were kept after Trenton
A day devoted to canal boats going over mountains
A night on the "underground railroad"
We will raid Harpers Ferry
and more...

The course is being capped at the seating on a tour bus and registration starts soon. So get registered quickly.

This will be a fun course!

More information is here http://www.personal.psu.edu/jmp479/Featured_upcoming_classes.htm

Moment a play by Joe Petrulionis

2007-04-19T12:40:00.000-04:00

Read an excerpt from Joe's play, "Moment."

It has never been produced, nor has it been read aloud by actors. Joe is keen to hear it done. If you have any interest, please contact me. Part of the play can be read at http://petrulionis.net/Moment.htm

Thanks.

Joe Petrulionis

Visit Sandy Petrulionis Academic Web Site

2007-02-27T22:54:00.000-05:00

Visit Sandy's Academic Web Site by going here: http://www.personal.psu.edu/shp2/index.htm

Send an Email Message to Sandy by going here: mailto:shp2@psu.edu

Note for Students: If possible, please use the PSU Angel System message system to contact me. Messages sent through the Angel system are less likely to get misdirected. Thanks!

Visit Joe Petrulionis' Academic Web Site

2007-02-27T22:48:00.000-05:00

To visit Joe's Academic Web Site, you can go to http://www.petrulionis.net/joe.htm

To send an email to Joe, click here: mailto:textcontext@msn.com

Note for Students: Please use the course email on the PSU Angel System if possible. There is less of a chance of my missing your message if it is sent through Angel. Thanks.

Welcome Petrulionis Family Blog

2007-02-26T13:19:00.000-05:00

We are the Petrulionis Family. Granger, Laurel, Sandy, and Joe Petrulionis.

Please visit our web sites at http://www.petrulionis.net/

Once you are through that door, your choices should be self evident.

Thanks for visiting,

The Petrulionises