God Shed His Grace on Thee

I began this day before Memorial Day attending church where my stepson goes, a little white Baptist church in rural Florida. Filled with kind and devout people, all singing "American the Beautiful" and nodding to a sermon on God's grace. We spent the rest of the warm day enjoying holiday sales and napping. Our day ended watching "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," an experience of the Holocaust seen through the eyes and slowly comprehending mind of an 8-year-old German boy, the son of a Nazi official running the nearby concentration camp. As the movie closes on the suddently quiet doors of a gas chamber, locked shut upon little Bruno and his Jewish friend, holding hands, naked and dying, I remembered visiting Dachau, watching the Germans turn their heads as they walked by, bier= drinking friends silent and grumpy at the subject. I recall Psalms 98:3 which began my sunny, spring morning and indeed I rejoice for there is hope. "He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God." I read back to Psalms 7:10, "The Lord loves those who hate evil..." I thank those who have died fighting evil and continue to give their lives in this battle. For it is Men who must win this war. The Universe won't expel evil for the labor is ours. We must fight for our God to triumph. In writing about the worldwide conflicts where thousands of innocent civilians were killed, Sebastian Junger wrote,"Only military action by Western forces — or the threat of military action — brought those conflicts to a stop.Were those military actions immoral? Were they more immoral than standing by and watching?" (the link won't work, sorry)
http://www.sebastianjunger.com/profiles/blogs/should-we-be-in-afghanistan

Bazarov is no hero

He endears himself to me less and less with each page, particularly on page 151, where he says of his parents that they are, " ... so busy, they don't worry about their own insignificance." All this as he reclines about as a summer guest breaking from indifferently training as a doctor at his father's expense. A father with a distinguished Russian Army surgeon's record who tries to please his son by off-handed bragging about his modern I-Heart-Serf farming practices to no avail. And Bazarov is no baby Bolshevik although his fawning friend, Arkady, all the while thinking that perhaps caring about nothing means equally caring about everything, finally gets a clue as Bazarov reveals his true hostility toward all humanity, really in one simple line, in which he says he views integrity as a "feeling" which thoroughly blows Arkady away. It is left unsaid, but I assume integrity to be seen by a righteous person as a basic humanistic principle inherent to survival of communities. Arkady finally has it up to here when Bazarov calls the uncle referenced in earlier posts "an idiot" and Arkady accuses him of not knowing, "what a sense of justice is" and thereby being, "in no position to pass judgement on it." (155) I cannot forsee where this is leading in a positive direction (Hello, it's RussianLit) as our protaganist has no love for any type of man. I must assume that I am being introduced to nihilism only and not the birthing Bolshevism of Gorky. I should reconsider the name of this blogsite. It is obviously not a portal to anything but merely an amateur reader's ramblings! But bear with me and certainly help out when you can. I would like recommendations for pre-serf emancipation literature.

Vel D'Hiv

This amazing book had just been recommended to me by an Amazon World Literature sale e-mail; I put it in my shopping cart but on the same day my mother-in-law loaned me a copy to read before passing it on to the other Esmerelda, my sister-in-law Down Under, Esmerelda-in-Residence (link @ bottom of page). Sarah's Key is an absolute page-turner. The narrator is searching for clues to a particular Jewish girl whose family was killed in the second French round-up up of the Jews in 1942, known as the Vel D'Hiv and commemorated by Pres Chirac in 1955. The little brother died alone hiding in a cupboard and she kept the key and the secret with her until she died. As most of it takes place in Paris, I'm already drawn in that I wish I owned an apartment in Paris or a cottage in Normandy. But the story itself is brought and slowly and painfully and beautifully to its end. It never made it out of my house to the poolside! My first Army duty station was Ludwigsgurg, Germany, in 1985. Being in a combat support hospital and thus more of a truck driver than the promised Operating Room Technician, I tended to find ways to hide and I can still see that same library section where I tried to understand what happened, how Jewish animosity was born, even delving into the Crucifixion. After developing a lifelong revulsion, anger and sympathy, I landed on an example I use in trying to evoke the same. Would you sacrifice your family for the Jewish family hiding in the attic? You don't know do you? Any more than you know what it would take to lash on a suicide belt to blow up a bus full of women and children. Pray you never have to learn.

Amazon Test

This is a test to see if the Amazon link works.(15% kickback if you buy from this link). So go buy the book already, feed the starving veteran before I show up on your street corner with a cardboard sign and a dog wearing a bandana. It's Fathers and Sons by Turgenev. The first Turgenev I've read and has its ups and downs. (Scroll down to first post for initial discussion.) It definately drags on, esp. when the protaganist, Bazarov, aka "the nihilist," is in the room. He's quite a bore actually with no redeeming qualities revealed as of yet and some of his scenes parallel the endless snooty salon dialogues by trust fund posers in 19th century English literature. Hopefully, we'll get back soon to the father's despair over the current generation. I feel that's where the heart of the story lies in spite of Bazarov's starring role as the Baby Bolshevik. "All men are similar," he says, "the slight variations are of no importance." (102). Such insights from a time period building toward the Communist Revolution make it history in disguise.

Peace Through Superior Firepower & Absolute Retaliation

Did Reagan really say no country ever got into a war because it was too strong? He did according to Edwin Meese, discussing the dusting off of the good old "peace through stength" philosophy rumored to be coming back into vogue. Certainly nations may have underestimated their own capabilities or overestimated the weakness of their enemies but Germany built up a military colossus right out in the front yard at a busy intersection, announced they were going to war, applied all aspects of warfighting (from negotiating and treaties to outright invasion), and damn near toppled most of the important parts of the world. They were strong and knew it. We ignored those glaring facts twice, writing the mess off as unavoidable cultural deficiencies caused by (as pointed out years later by P.J. O'Rourke) sitting outside drinking tiny cups of coffee instead of sitting inside drinking large glasses of whiskey. I can't imagine Reagan saying someting that naive. Maybe I missed some greater point(s)? Can anyone enlighten me? Only Stalin, stating in 1941, that war with Germany was inevitable, felt strong enough -- in spite of his ill-advised officer purges -- to face the threat head on. He may have underestimated his readiness but he nonetheless mucked things up for a good long while in the Allies favor and rightfully emerged the second strongest nation on the planet. Of course, it's only fair to note that it's 'rightful' if you overlook political negotiations such as the one which forced Patton to watch the Russians "take" the Elbe River as he fumed in a lawn chair, probably drawing bigger, sillier mustaches on pictures of Joe.

Speaking of boys in baggy shorts ...

Well at least Blink 182 has a mirror in "I'm Not Sick but I'm Not Well,": "Been around the world and found that only stupid people were breeding; the cretins cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a t.v." I think Turgenev, if he didn't have to look at them (classic boy babies jumping around), might own the CD.

Generational Germinal

As I observe with disgust the modern metrosexual man or the bouncing boy bar babies in their baggy shorts and flip flops and wonder what kind of biological survival vacuum exists in the women who sleep with them, I find it somewhat comforting to confront the same types of concern for the species in random places in history, most recently in my readings set in 19th century Russia. A time of huge upheaval, what with the freeing of the serfs and all, the tea drinking steppe-sitters of the day contemplate with equal concern the direction of the society and in particular the unsatisfactory condition of the youth, the future, the seeds from the past. Turgenev in Fathers and Sons builds his case upon minor worries, soon escalating to a virulent outburst by the uncle, severely disturbed by the self-proclaimed "nihilist" brought home by his nephew. Pavel Petrovich, an aristocratic type of pre-modern times, rants: " ... In the old days young people had to study. If they did not want to be thought ignorant they had to work hard whether they liked it or not. But now they only need say, "Everything in the world is rubbish!" - and the trick's done. The young men are simply delighted. Whereas they were only sheep's heads before, now they have suddenly blossomed out as nihilists!" (Penguin, 1973, p. 70)