The Burning of the Books: 10 May 1933

Methodical, even in their torching, the Germans make “a bed of sand. On this bed they lay logs, criss-crossing them, stacking them with with care . . . The logs form a pyre twelve feet square and five feet high.”

This fantastic pyre is accompanied by: 1) of course torches; 2) a mad minister: Goebbels, practically chortling with glee as he presides over the bonfire of books.

Identical book burnings are staged “in thirty-four universities” across Germany.

There are a few protest posters (Trigger Warning: Language)

EVERY DECENT HUMAN BEING IS ASHAMED TO SAY THAT THIS IS THE GERMAN WAY.

ASSHOLES DO NOT BELONG IN THE UNIVERSITY, THEY BELONG IN THE SHITHOUSE.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, p. 100

The cousin of Arvin Harnack is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the most outspoken critics of Hitler’s campaign against “inferior races.” A Lutheran pastor, he even goes to America to try and arouse support for German Jews. He is swept up, like many other members of his family. Like his cousin Arvin and Arvin’s wife Mildred. Dietrich spends most of the war years in Dachau. He is hanged in April 1945, a month before the German surrender.

Today, self decided to find out if there were any memorials in Germany honoring Mildred Harnack. She found this: the German Resistance Memorial Center. Mildred Harnack is given a brief bio. The last sentence: “Mildred Harnack was murdered on February 16, 1943 . . . “ That is impressive wording.

Stay tuned.

The Diary of Brig. Arthur Varley

Arthur Varley, a commander of the 22nd Australian Infantry Brigade, was one of those unfortunates who, almost at the tail end of the war, was loaded on a prison transport ship to be taken who-knows-where, a ship that was, tragically, sunk by a US submarine (The Japanese refused to mark their prisoner transport ships)

Fortunately, he had kept a meticulous diary during his internment and his forced labor on the Burma-Siam railroad and buried it near his camp in Thanbyuzayat, its whereaouts known only to a trusted few. After the war, during the War Crimes trials of the officers who ran the POW camps in Burma, the diary was located and the words of the “welcome speeches” given by certain officers, and in particular the words and actions of a sadistic officer who headed 80-kilo, 100-kilo, 105-kilo and 114-kilo camps, Lt. Colonel Yoshitada Nagatomo, came back to haunt them. Nagatomo, was hung in the jail in Chiangi, the same jail where so many POWS had been kept in isolation and tortured, on Sept. 16, 1947.

Before & After: Stories from New York, Edited by Thomas Beller

This anthology was required reading in son’s high school English.

The front cover:

The back cover:

July #TreeSquare Challenge #4: Sunday in Golden Gate Park, Part II

For this July #TreeSquare challenge, self is sharing more pictures she took in Golden Gate Park last Sunday, the Fourth of July. It was a beautiful day: cool! What a nice respite from the heat down on the Peninsula.

The statue is a memorial to Marie Bonner. The log cabin was something self stumbled open while wandering around the picnic area:

Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.

New Challenge: Photographing Public Art

Thanks to Cee Neuner and Marsha Ingrao for co-hosting a new challenge, Photographing Public Art (PPAC).

How it works:

• We will take turns, one of us hosting every week exploring art in public places. We invite you to join in the fun of exposing public art where you find it – at home or in your travels.

For self’s first post for this challenge, self is happy to share this sculpture, standing right next to the San Luis Obispo Train Station, which she stumbled on last week:

Artist: Elizabeth MacQueen

Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.

Remembering Parkland and March For Our Lives

14 students and three teachers probably woke up that Valentine’s Day thinking of chocolates and Valentine cards. Not a single one knowing they’d never get out of that day.

And now we have a person in Congress who’s saying it never happened. And nothing happens to her, the Truth Denier. She even stalks one of the teen-age survivors. Stalks him as he’s leaving class, yells at him as he’s walking along.

An adult is yelling at a teen-ager who survived a school massacre. And gets herself ELECTED TO CONGRESS. What is wrong with this picture?

Wakanda Forever

RIP, CHADWICK BOSEMAN

Damn. Damn. Damn.

He was just 43.

What is life.

Pugad Lawin, August 1896

No one knows the exact date when the Philippine Revolution began (Because it was a secret rebellion!). But the place has never been in doubt.

At some point in the last week of August 1896, Andres Bonifacio (a self-educated warehouse clerk, she posted some of his poetry a week or so ago) gathered his followers and led them in tearing up their cedulas. A cedula is a form of identification, issued by the Spanish colonial government. It was a document that formed the basis of tax collection.

Pugad Lawin was deep woods when Andres Bonifacio and a thousand followers (which is quite a large number, for a secret society, but was no match against the Spanish, who in the city of Manila alone numbered at least 10,000) gathered there. The rough translation of pugad lawin is ‘hawk’s nest.’ Today, it has been swallowed up by Metro-Manila, and lies in one of the most densely populated cities in Asia.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965

March 7, 1965: the March on  Selma

John Lewis, in light coat, on the ground

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress

Thank you for your service, sir.

Poetry Saturday: Molly Peacock

Among Tall Buildings

from the collection Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2002)

And nothing, not even the girl you love
with the mole on her arm, will be left. Huge
trenches will be dug just beyond the stove
the whole northeast corridor will become
and the dead will be piled in each rude gouge,
even that girl whose left ear always sticks
slightly out beyond her hair. To fix
the names of who died on tape won’t be done
since they’ll dig quick to prevent disease. Nobody
likes to hear this kind of talk. I always
hated to hear it myself until I began
loving the mortar between blocks, that cruddy
pocked cement holding up buildings so a man
and a woman can embrace in the maze
of what they’ve built on the errors of their ways.

---

Molly Peacock is the author of How To Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle (1999) as well as a memoir, Paradise Piece by Piece (1998). Former President of the Poetry Society of America, she was one of the originators of Poetry in Motion, which placed poems on subways and buses. A more complete biography can be found on the Poetry Foundation website.