Victory Day, May 9, Is Also the Day I Broke 13 of 40 Bones

May 9 is the date Russia and several former Soviet countries celebrate victory over the Nazis.  Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered very late on May 8 which was May 9 in Moscow, which is why the rest of the Allied nations celebrate VE Day (Victory in Europe) on May 8.  

Which meant May 9 was both very good--defeated Nazis are the best Nazis--and also very bad, because May 9 is the date of my two worst bicycle accidents.  

On May 9, 2007, I broke ten bones in a 50mph crash and flown to the hospital by MEDEVAC. The story is here. On May 9, 2020, I splintered my left elbow in a low-speed crash. The surgeon had to break my lower arm to fix my upper arm.  So a third of the forty bones I have broken, I broke on May 9 on a bicycle.  

I broke four other bones in four other bicycle crashes for a total of 17.  Cars, motorcycles, football, fights and missile explosions add up 23 for a total 40 broken bones in 69 years--fewer than one per year.

Before publishing this post, I had to listen to the news from Ukraine today.  I was worried I would hear about Russia marking the anniversary with some new atrocity.  Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech saying the war he started against Ukraine is to defend Russia.  

The Russians staged the annual parade in Moscow to showoff their military prowess. The big display always had a hollow ring, but this year with the string of defeats Ukraine inflicted on the Russian army, this year's parade sound like a defeated boxer saying "He didn't knock me out."

If I were a superstitious guy, I would stay home and watch movies today. But I will ride with my friends. There are only 365 days in a year, and more than 25,000 days in a life as long as mine. Dates are going to repeat.  

 

The Joy of Work: Packing Supplies for Ukraine

Taking a break for a selfie 

"Neil, we need four-inch bandages."

"Hey, Neil, we need compress bandages."

"Neil, tourniquets."

During the past two weeks I have spent several days in a warehouse in New Jersey packing emergency medical kits for people in Ukraine.  If you want to donate or volunteer visit the Razom for Ukraine website.

Yesterday, I became the guy who refills the boxes for the assembly line putting together the combat medical kits. I worked unwrapping tourniquets until one of the boxes of bandages was low. Then would take a box off of a pallet, cut it open and switch the empty for a full box.

Our assembly line

Nearly sixty years ago, when I was 12 years old, I started working summers and Saturdays at Food Center Wholesale Grocers in Charlestown, Massachusetts.  I swept floors and picked up trash in the two-acre warehouse with dozen of truck and railcar loading doors and shelves more than thirty feet tall.  I earned $1.60 per hour, paid taxes and paid into the Social Security account I have been getting checks from for more than six years.

For two decades, I worked in warehouses, loading docks and was a soldier. I liked working with my hands, but at age 32 I got a job as a writer at an ad agency and left labor for white collar work.  

Coming back to lifting boxes after all these years has been delightful. When I leave, I am sore and dirty and have the good feeling of being a part of something worthwhile.  While we pack supplies, we laugh, joke, and share the joy of doing something will truly help people who are under attack by an evil regime.  

Prisoners of Geography, Published in 2015, Relevant Right Now! Book 11 of 2022

 

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics  by Tim Marshall.

Sometimes a book title promises a lot more than it can deliver.  The 16-word title, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics  by Tim Marshall is too modest by half. Published in 2015, this book explains the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in global politics right now.   

The author, Tim Marshall, a former war correspondent for Sky News, lives in London and continues the book on his website and Facebook Page, The What and the Why. 

The ten chapters are ten maps of ten regions followed by 20-30 pages of history and current geopolitics.  The first chapter is "Russia."  The first line of the introduction is about the current President and wannabe Tsar of Russia:

"Vladimir Putin says he is a religious man, a great supporter of the Russian Orthodox church. If so, he may well go to bed each night, say his prayers, and ask God: 'Why didn't you put some mountains in Ukraine?' 

(Using this same quote, I recently wrote about bad religion that kills good people. Putin is now the Poster Boy of this sort of murder, but all the priests pandering to him will certainly share his circle of Hell.)

In the next paragraph Marshall says "As it is, Putin has no choice: he must at least attempt to control the flat lands to the west."  In the first chapter on Russia, Marshall explains the geography and history that will compel the Russian leader to get control of Ukraine.  As I write this, Putin is in the midst of a massive invasion of Ukraine with the object of taking over the free country of 44 million people.  Marshall says Moldova is also on Putin's must-conquer list, where he will use the excuse of the Russian-speaking area of Transnistria to trigger that invasion.   

When I read this chapter two weeks ago, the invasion had not yet begun, but 150,000 Russian troops surrounded the country of Ukraine to the north and east on the ground and to the south on the Black Sea and in the recently seized territory of Crimea. Marshall explains the thousand-year history of Russia that led the world to the current conflict as well as the recent history.  Putin was President during the second war in Chechnya almost twenty years ago. He reduced the Chechen capital Grozny to rubble with thermobaric bombs. They are already rumored to be in use in Ukraine.

After prescient predictions about Russia, chapter two is "China." Again, current crimes have a geopolitical imperative.  Marshall explains why the oppression of the Uighurs in northeastern China will not end until China is fully in control.  The land where the Uighurs live is critical to China's control of agriculture within the country and its domination of Tibet and Mongolia. The good news is that China has enough to do within its current borders that subjugating Taiwan is not the top of Xi's geopolitical hit list.  

The next chapter is the "United States."  After the ominous first two chapters, this one is a geographic celebration.  No question that the best place to be born and to live in the 20th and 21st Centuries is the United States.  The Russia and China chapters and every other chapter is, in part, about complex borders and tensions between bordering countries.  The United States has long, peaceful borders to the north and south and vast oceans to the east and west.  The US economy is still the strongest in the world, the climate is varied, the both coasts have lots of good harbors, and the Mississippi River is the most navigable inland waterway on the planet.  

Reading the United States chapter reminded me that the book was written before Trump and COVID-19.  Despite the plague and pandemic they brought, the United States still has the strongest economy in the world and Russia's invasion of Ukraine is even giving the US a glimmer of national unity.

"Western Europe" is the fourth chapter.  Marshall explains the geopolitical history that kept Europe in conflict every generation from the Roman Empire until 1945. The unprecedented 77 years without a land war that followed ended with the Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  But the unity in Europe that followed is a bright ray of hope.  NATO and the European Union really are united in opposing Putin.  Even to the point that Germany is re-arming and Sweden, Switzerland and Finland are ending their neutrality.  

"Africa" is the next chapter. The enormous continent of 54 countries and two billion people has few navigable rivers and is divided by deserts, mountains and jungles.  And then there are all the conflicts stemming from badly drawn colonial borders and murderous colonial policies. Geography imprisons many inhabitants of Africa in difficult circumstances. 

Swinging north and east of Africa, Marshall's next chapter is the "Middle East." If religion is part of every regional conflict, it is central to the mess that is the Middle East.  As with Africa, badly drawn borders inflame smoldering conflicts.  The Jewish state of Israel is surrounded by a dozen countries with combined populations twenty times that of Israel where children in school are taught to hate and kill Jews.  

The arid geography of most of the Middle East means there would be conflicts over water and arable land even if the states were not openly hostile.  The region was and is the site of several recent and current wars.  Geography made Iraq easy to invade, and it makes Afghanistan impossible to conquer. The American withdrawal last year follows the Russian defeat in 1989 and British defeats in the 1840s and 1880s.  Geography keeps Iran isolated and relatively safe from attack and make Lebanon a terrorist playground. 

"India and Pakistan" are locked in permanent conflict that limits the ability of both countries to grow and prosper.  While geography keeps India safely separate from invasion by China, the border with Pakistan is the scene of endless disputes. Marshall describes the complexity of Pakistan's relationship with neighboring Afghanistan and why it is mired in America's war with the Taliban.  At the writing of the book, NATO had left Afghanistan and America had a small force there.  A new phase of the border war began in August with America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

"Korea and Japan" are a chapter to themselves. As with India and Pakistan, the two countries have a centuries long history of conflict. Some of the worst of that conflict was the Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II.  Sadly, that was followed by the Korean War in 1950. Japan emerged from the war as a leading world economy and a unified nation. Korea is divided into the prosperous south and the most oppressive dictatorship in the world in the north.  The border area is among the most tense in the world.  

The ninth chapter is Latin America, from the Rio Grande Valley to Tierra del Fuego. So many aspects of geography put Latin America at a great disadvantage compared to North America.  There is bonanza of harbors in the north compared with cliffs and straight, narrow coastal areas. Africa has the same plight, thousands of miles of coast useless for shipping.  Aside from the Rio del Plata, the rivers are not navigable.  The Andes are the longest mountain chain and a barrier to all trade between the Pacific Coast and the rest of the continent. 

The final chapter is the "Arctic." It is a full circle back to Russia.  Whether he discusses trade routes, oil and gas drilling, mining, or relations among the countries bordering the arctic region, Russia is acting in bad faith and cheating on agreements.  As  the polar ice diminishes, countries around the region will have more opportunities for trade and business, and more points of conflict with Russia.  

The Conclusion is much sunnier than the book itself. Marshall sees reasons for hope.  Possibly because the book was written before the first land war in Europe in 77 years, or the plagues of Trump and COVID. In any case, the book is a fascinating look at our world as it was, is, and will be.  The real world written in the reality of land, sea and air.   

First ten books of 2022:

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

My Love-Hate Relationship with Russia and Ukraine

A Map of the Former Soviet Union. 

Ukraine is the yellow country on the far west.

The kind of person we are inside shows itself both in what we do and how we react.  I had a soul-revealing moment when I heard the news in 2014 of Russia invading Eastern Ukraine and taking Crimea. The summary of the thought that raced through my mind:  “You Go Vladimir (Putin)!”

Cheering for Russia in a military dispute with Ukraine is like cheering for the New York Yankees against a high school team.  Nevertheless I had a vivid moment, not of loving Russia, but hating Ukraine.

The face that came into my mind was my grandmother.  She and my grandfather escaped Ukraine, then part of Russia, at the turn of the 20th century when more than a million Jews were slaughtered in Ukraine in a series of attacks called pogroms. My grandparents had the double good fortune of making it all the way to America.  Many other Russian Jews fled to Eastern Europe.  Those who fled to Eastern Europe and their children were killed by the Nazis 40 years later.

The Holocaust in Ukraine

My grandparents would have described themselves as Russian Jews, not Ukrainian Jews.  For the last thousand years Ukraine has been Russia a lot more than it has been an independent country.  Mark Schauss covers the sad history of Ukraine and Russia in The Russian Rulers History Podcast, available on iTunes. 

While Russia, Poland and much of Eastern Europe has a long history of hating Jews, Ukraine is the most anti-semitic country in a very nasty region. 

Next August, when I ride across what my grandparents called Russia, my trip will begin in Odessa, Ukraine. I won’t be in Ukraine long, but I expect to have the same experience arriving in Odessa that I had when I first set foot in Germany:  “Can this beautiful place really be home to those who slaughtered so many of my people?”

I am re-reading Vassily Grossman’s “Life and Fate,” a haunting book that is “War and Peace” set in World War II, particularly in Stalingrad.  Currently I am reading the letter a Jewish mother in Ukraine is writing to her son in the Russian Army.  The Germans just took over her town.  The Jews are being rounded up, robbed and will soon be killed.  Most of the neighbors are happy and cheer the Germans on, taking the possessions and houses of the Jews.  The mother writing the letter describes women who were friendly for 50 years suddenly turning on her with venom. The neighbor thinks the Jews are getting what they deserve. 

My love-hate relationship with Ukraine and Russia extends through my whole life.  My first military job was live-fire testing of the US Air Force missile inventory, everything from the Sidewinder wing rocket to the Minuteman multi-stage nuclear missile, the main weapon delivery system in the US Cold War arsenal.  Then I was a tank commander on the East-West German Border waiting for World War III to start. 

When I went to college after the Army, the literature of Russia and the literature of Florence, Italy, became lifelong passions.  Chekov, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, Pushkin, Tolstoy and later Solzhenitsyn wrote the books I loved most, along with C.S. Lewis, Dante and Machiavelli.  Now I am studying the Russian language so I can read the authors I love most in their language.  Russia is currently home to many brilliant authors, but who knows when they will be forced underground. 

From my grandparents persecution, to my Cold War childhood and military life, through finding the beauty of Russian literature in college, to my current plans to travel across Russia and neighboring countries, I continue to intensify my love-hate relationship with Russia and all of its sad and brilliant history.  At this age, my love-hate relationship with Russia and Ukraine is a permanent part of my life.