The Life of a Russian Monk and Holy Fool in the late 1400s: Laurus

 

In 2016, the ESL Book Group I am part of began when four of us kept asking each other, "Did you read this book? What do you think about it?"

The first of many books we would read was Laurus, a book about a Russian Monk and Holy Fool set in the late 1,400s.  Sarah Gingrich loved this book and convinced Andrea Bailey and I to read it. 

I just finished re-reading it yesterday. At my age, much of it was new again five years later.  This Sunday afternoon our book group will discuss Laurus and for the first time a monk will be part of our discussion.  My best friend Cliff became Bruder Timotheus after both of us left the military in 1979.  He stayed in Germany at a monastery in Darmstadt.  Here is an introduction to Cliff.

I am very much looking forward to discussing this strange and wonderful book.  Here is what I wrote about my first reading.

Celebrating a Million Views; Almost 2,000 Posts; Top Posts are Cold War, Iraq War and WWII

 

A Million Views

When I started this blog it was to record my deployment to Iraq in 2009-10. I landed at Camp Adder on my 56th birthday and thought it would be worth keeping a record of life for an Old Cold War Soldier in a 21st Century War.

When I returned from Iraq, I did not know how long I would stay. I kept writing blog posts about my part-time service in the National Guard. Over time and after I left the Guard, I wrote more about my service in the Cold War, then about books I was reading, and about soldiers I served with.  

I plan to keep writing about soldiers I served with. I will be going to a reunion of my Cold War tank unit later this year.  Once most of the world is vaccinated, I plan to visit more Cold War landmarks in Europe, Vietnam and Israel.  The wars in Korea, Israel, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Grenada and other places between 1946 and 1991 are also part of the Cold War legacy.  I hope to visit as many as I can and write about it.

All of life follows the exponential curve and my blog posts are no exception.  The top ten of more than 1,900 posts have almost 100,000 views, or one-tenth of all the views of my posts. Five of the top ten are about the Cold War, four from the Iraq War and one about a veteran of World War II.  

The top posts in order of number of views: 

A friend from the Iraq War promoted to Colonel:    https://armynow.blogspot.com/2017/12/who-fights-our-wars-sons-of-veterans.html

A World War II bomber pilot who flew with the author of Catch-22:    https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/08/reality-catches-up-with-fiction-70.html

My first military haircut, February 1, 1972:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/02/my-first-military-haircut-february-1.html

The best top sergeant I ever served with:    https://armynow.blogspot.com/2016/02/who-fights-our-wars-command-sgt-major.html

The smell of diesel takes me back to the Cold War Army:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2009/10/diesel.html

One of the most dramatic moments I experienced, watching a half dozen B-52 Stratofortress bombers scramble on Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in 1974:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/09/unforgettable-moment-b-52s-scramble.html

Outside Lowry Air Force Base in 1972 was the Topless Shoeshine Parlor:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-topless-shoeshine-parlor-draft-era.html

The saddest story on my blog about a World War II veteran and Cold War scientist:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/01/boris-libman-terrible-life-of-soviet.html

A Blackhawk helicopter pilot from my Iraq tour in 2009-10:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/02/who-fights-our-wars-doc-dreher.html

My Home Sweet Trailer Home in Iraq:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2009/05/home-sweet-trailer-home.html

And a few more of my favorites:  

Tanks from the inside and outside:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/06/tanks-from-inside-tanks-from-outside.html

C-Rations vs. MREs:   https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/01/mre-vs-c-rations-for-me-21st-century.html

Post-Cold-War Hero:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2017/11/cold-war-hero-who-served-after-1991.html

 

Democrats Must Claim Patriotism, Family Values

At my Synagogue, our Monday Book Discussion Group is reading Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.  

As we finish the book, it is clear to me that in our divided country, the definition of patriotism is taking a severe beating.  If the Common Good has a chance of being restored in America, then the Democrats must define patriotism in public.  We must define what it means to be an American, or the anti-democratic party on the right will redefine America as a dictatorship.  

Since 2015, in every way possible, the right wing of American politics and culture has turned its back on democracy and grabbed for power to the point of celebrating immorality.  The attack on the Capitol on January 6 was promoted and orchestrated and blessed by the former President and his minions in Congress.  They celebrate the murder of police officers. They want more.

He is out of office, but his traitors continue to hold office in our democratic government.  That is wrong. Everyone who voted for the insurrection should be stripped of office.  The worst of them: Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the lawmakers who brought the terrorists into the Capitol should be jailed for their crimes.  

The Evangelical Church in America takes the words of Jesus and pisses on them. How could anyone who has ever read the Sermon on the Mount think the former President is sent by or chosen by God?  He is a bully, a coward, and brags about breaking commandments.  The preachers who promote him are worse because they know better.  

Democrats are the only leaders who voted to help poor and needy Americans with relief. The recent rescue bill passed the Congress with the votes of those who care about Americans who lost their jobs, their health, their health insurance, and family members during the pandemic.  

Democrats care about and promote Voting Rights, Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and LGBTQ Rights. President Joseph Biden is fighting the pandemic and working to undo the damage done by the former occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

We fight for families, 

we fight for kids, 

we fight for the poor, 

we fight for jobs with a living wage, 

we fight for the free exercise of religion, 

the other side spews hate and fights only for donors.

Democrats want liberty and justice for all. We are the patriots. The party of Qanon and hate is not America.  

Field Guide to Domestic Terrorists: Qanon

On January 6 when domestic terrorists invaded the U.S. Capitol Building, killed and maimed cops and sought to kill lawmakers, the Qanon conspiracy was at the center of the loathesome gang. 

Qanon is a dark cave full bat shit in which beliefs, like mushrooms, grow and flourish in dark and gloom.  The source of these believes is Q himself (herself?), someone inside the "Deep State" who knows everything and leaks secret information to the true believers.  

The New York Times published a deep dive into Qanon beliefs, which I recommend. 

Now Q has representatives in congress in the person of Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert and more to come.  They are anti-democratic authoritarian loons that should not hold congressional seats.  

From the Anti Defamation League:

• QAnon is a wide-reaching conspiracy theory popular among a range of right-wing extremists and even some public supporters of President Trump.
• QAnon, surfaced in 2017 on 4chan, is first and foremost an online trolling and disinformation movement. While it is difficult to gauge the size of the movement, it is likely that QAnon adherents number in the tens of thousands.
• Adherents follow the anonymous Q, and believe world governments are being controlled by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles (who will eventually be brought to justice by President Trump).
• The QAnon theory is scattershot and sprawling with anti-government elements; adherents actively sow distrust in democratic institutions.
• While the ADL does not believe that all QAnon adherents are inherently extremists, this is a dangerous theory that has inspired violent acts.

Books 2021: Red Sea Spies by Raffi Berg

 

In the late 1970s and early 80s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews escaped from their own country, through Sudan, another state that was an enemy of Israel.  The story of that escape and the Israeli Mossad agents who got the Ethiopian Jews to Israel is the subject of the book Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad's Fake Diving Resort by Raffi Berg. The dramatic events inspired a movie on Netflix also. 

Berg tells this amazing story with enough detail to show just how difficult and precarious the entire operation was from beginning to end, yet at a page-turner pace.  The two men at the center of the story, Dani the agent who organized the operation and kept it going, and Ferede Aklum, the Ethiopian Jew who worked from beginning to end to get his people to Israel, begin with getting a few Jews out with fake documents to the buying and running a diving resort on the Red Sea. The resort allows Jews to be taken out by sea and later is a base that allows hundreds to be flown out at a time on Israeli C-130 Hercules transport planes.  

It is a great story from beginning to end.  I knew so little about Ethiopian Jews and their exodus from remote areas of the country where they lived for more than a millennium.  Now I feel like a witness to a land, sea and air miracle in the late 20th Century.  

Enjoy! 

Field Guide to Domestic Terrorists: The Oath Keepers

Oath Keepers charge up the steps of the Capitol on January 6

 The Oath Keepers, a white supremacist terrorist group, had a big role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. A New York Times report names many of the conspirators and shows how many are military veterans.  

One of the moments in the coverage in which my heart sank on January 6 was seeing men in battle gear.  In the following days I realized how close we were to an overthrow of the government when I saw a video of the scene above when men in battle gear, Oath Keepers, charged up the Capitol steps. If they had found Mike Pence or other leaders, they would have killed them.  

In September of 2008 before I went to Iraq, I went to a Live Fire Shoot House. It was a week-long course with live ammo on how to storm and secure a building.  We went into the buildings we attacked in a line just like that used by the Oath Keepers.  The men in that line had military or police training or both. All of them should be tried for treason. 

This is how the Anti-Defamation League, ADL, describes the Oath Keepers: 

The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of anti‐government extremists who are part of the broader anti‐government “Patriot” movement, which includes militia and “three percenter” groups, sovereign citizens, and tax protesters, [Boogaloo Boys] among others. What differentiates the Oath Keepers from other anti‐ government extremist groups is that the Oath Keepers explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military members, police officers and firefighters (although they accept anyone as members). 

The ideology of the Oath Keepers most closely resembles that of the militia movement, whose adherents believe that the United States is collaborating with a one‐world tyrannical conspiracy called the New World Order to strip Americans of their rights—starting with their right to keep and bear arms. Once Americans are rendered defenseless, the theory goes, they too will be enslaved by the New World Order. 

The Oath Keepers aim much of their propaganda at military and police, reminding them that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic” and asking them to pledge to disobey unconstitutional orders they might get from superiors—orders that explicitly or implicitly refer to various militia‐related conspiracy theories, such as mass gun confiscation or rounding up Americans to put them in concentration camps. 

Each theory relates to the notion that the United States government is falling under global governance and will at some point use police and military members to enforce the New World Order’s dominance. The Oath Keepers urge military and law enforcement personnel to step up to stop the conspirators.

Being Wrong: A Normal Part of Life We Fight and Cover Up

 

I just finished the delightful book "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error" by Kathryn Schulz. The book is full of wonderful examples of how we are wrong, why we are wrong and the good side of our errors.  The book begins telling us why we are so delighted to be right and so defensive about being wrong.  We insist we are right about everything from loading the dishwasher to the origins of the universe and twist ourselves in knots to prove just how correct we are.  

My favorite passage in the book connects perception, the history of science and the universe that is the Model behind Dante's Divine Comedy. Schulz shows how thoroughly wrong we can be when all of our senses tell us we are right. 

"Step outside...in someplace truly dark: the Himalayas, say, or Patagonia, or the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If you look up in such a place, you will observe the sky above you is vast and vaulted, its darkness pulled taut from horizon to horizon and perforated by innumerable stars.  Stand there long enough and you'll see this whole vault turning overhead, like the slowest of the tumblers in the most mysterious of locks. Stand there even longer and it will dawn on you that your own position in the spectacle is curiously central. The apex of the heavens is directly above you. And the land you are standing on--land that unlike the firmament is quite flat, and unlike the stars is quite stationary--stretches out in all directions from a midpoint that is you. 

"It is, of course, an illusion: almost everything we see and feel out there on our imaginary Patagonia porch is misleading.  The sky is neither vaulted nor revolving around us, the land is neither flat nor stationary, and, sad to say, we ourselves are not the center of the cosmos. Not only are these things wrong, they are canonically wrong. They are to the intellect what the Titanic is to the ego: a permanent puncture wound, a reminder of the sheer scope at which we can err. What is strange, and not a little disconcerting, is that we can commit such fundamental mistakes by simply stepping outside and looking up."

Schulz surveys the history of being wrong quoting many of the great thinkers of history from Augustine to Groucho Marx, so everyone who has ever been wrong should find something to connect with in this delightful book.