Danish Ferry Crewman Who Worked in Thule Greenland and Served with Elite British Regiment

 

On Wednesday, I waited on the dock in Elsinor, Denmark, to board a ferry to Sweden.  A member of the crew walked up and asked if I was just waiting or boarding the ferry that was leaving in two minutes.  I said I was waiting for the next one to meet up with my friend who was a foot passenger.  I told him I was going to Sweden just to ride my bike. 

We started talking about travel. Then about the military. He was in the Danish Army in the 90s and served with the elite British Army cavalry reconnaissance unit known as the Life Guards.  He had seen my armor tattoo and showed me the Life Guards tattoo on his shoulder.

Then he said he worked for a year on the American Air Base in Thule, Greenland. He still had the THULE identification tag on his key ring.  He was there between 2008 and 2009, about the time I left for Iraq. We made a couple of jokes about differences in climate between the two bases.  I told him I have an uncle who was assigned to Thule in 1972, around the same time I first enlisted. Martin said with a huge smile, "I wasn't even a dirty thought back then!"   

Martin said his job on the ferry didn't pay much, but he really liked his co-workers and the work. I told him that was my goal in work, to be with great co-workers and do a job I liked.  We talked about how different travel is now compared to before the 9-11 attacks. But for both of us travel is worth whatever hassles come with it.  We both prefer trains, ships and cars to flying.  

After we talked, Martin continued went to work loading the ferry. I was delighted to find it was the ferry "Hamlet" within sight of Elsinor Castle.  

Laundromats Have Tourists Again!

 

Amy, Lee, Jane and John

American tourists are back in laundromats in Europe

Five years ago, I started making trips across Europe and Israel with just a backpack. Carrying just a few pieces of clothing has many advantages, but it also meant weekly trips to laundromats.  I like doing laundry, but the laundromats turned out to be much more fun than I expected. 

Other tourists from all over the world use laundromats in big cities so I met some very interesting people while resupplying myself with clean clothes.  But COVID changed laundromats just as it changed so many other things.  This current trip I am on is my fifth trip to Europe since July of last year.  

Until last week, I did not see any tourists in laundromats from France to Poland. At the beginning of this trip, I washed clothes in Rome in an empty laundromat.  But last Thursday, I went to a laundromat near the Pantheon and met three sisters traveling together in France. Actually, there are four sisters, one was off doing something else.  

Amy, Lee and Jane are currently living in Chicago, DC and Detroit.  We talked for a while about where they had already been--the Louvre, Versailles, and many other Paris destinations. The next day they were going on a tour of the Normandy coast.  They have another week in Paris then back to America.  

A few minutes before the laundry was dry, Jane's husband John joined us.  He saw my armor tattoo. He had an uncle who was a tank commander in World War II.  

Next week I am staying in a monastic guest house which has its own washer-dryer so I won't need a laundromat.  

In the same laundromat in which I met Amy, Lee and Jane, I met a couple from Australia and a bike racer from California. That was in 2017. The story is here.   

My favorite laundromat story was from 2019 in Jerusalem. That is here. 

Matthew Adamson on Academic Career Paths and the Interplay of Maps and Reality

 

At a conference on the history of science and diplomacy in Paris, Matthew Adamson talked about the history of uranium exploration and mining in the nuclear age. He had a mercator map of the world with all known uranium deposits as part his presentation.  

At a break, we had a chance to talk about the interplay between resource maps and the people who use them.  As the maps become more detailed and more reliable, they exert influence on those who use them.  When I worked for a global chemical company, the map of actual and potential raw material became a big part of business growth meetings.  Each potential source of uranium can be a source of peaceful power or weapons.  Adamson's map has business, regulatory and threat dimensions. 

At lunch we talked about he came to be Director of Academic and Student Affairs at McDaniel College's campus in Budapest, Hungary, as well as External Researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest advising on the history and institutional context of use of radioisotopes.

Adamson studied French and French literature at James Madison University, graduating in 1996, then began a PhD program at Indiana University in the history and philosophy of science and technology. He completed the program in 2005. But in 2001 he had moved to France as part of his doctoral studies and met his future wife, who was from Budapest.  

She got a job in Budapest in 2005. Matthew followed and found a post at an McDaniel College Budapest and has been there ever since.  

I hope to see Matthew at a future conference, or possibly if my future travels take me through Budapest. 

The conference was organized by the Science History Institute at La Maison de la Chimie.

Deutsche Panzer Museum--World War II Tanks

Panzer I, the little tank with no cannon and two machine guns that was the majority of the tanks used in the invasion of Poland and France.

On Saturday, June 18, after we left the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, I saw a sign for the Deutsche PanzerMuseum. We stopped and tour the large facility for a couple of hours.  The museum has tanks from World War I to the recent years.  The tanks on display are painted and restored and in very good condition. There are so many tanks on display I decided to break them up into categories. This post is World War II main battle tanks.  

The museum did not have a Panzer II, but they had a turret. The Panzer II has the same chassis used later on the Marder self-propelled gun. 

The Panzer II has a 20mm cannon and a machine gun in the turret.

The Panzer 38(t) was developed in 1935. It has a 37mm gun, like the Panzer  II. It was a very reliable tank used early in the war.

Panzer III with a 50mm main gun.

Panzer IV, with a 75mm gun, the main tank of the Wehrmacht on every front from the beginning of the war to the end.

Panzer V, "Panther" with a long-barrel 75mm gun.

Used from 1942 to the end of the war on all fronts.

The Panzer VI "Tiger" tank is the most famous German tank of World War II. It was used in service from 1942 to the end of the war. It was armed with an 88mm gun and had heavy armor. It had reliability problems early. Production ended in 1944 in favor of the Tiger II "King Tiger".

 

The Tiger II "King Tiger" was a larger more heavily armored version of the Tiger I produced only in the last year year of the war in limited numbers.

Where Does Politics End? On Earth? How Far Into Space?

Gloria Maritza Gomez Revuelta, 

a PhD candidate at El Colegio de Mexico

At the conference on science diplomacy since World War II, one fascinating presentation was on a group of equatorial countries who in 1976 decided to claim the territory directly above their countries in space. These countries in South America, Africa and Asia were among the many non-aligned states who did not take the side of either the western democracies or the communist world.  

Pointing to a mercator map with the countries proposing the pact highlighted, Gloria Maritza Gomez Revuelta, a PhD candidate at El Colegio de Mexico, said the United States and Russia were both launching satellites into geosynchronous orbits for communication and surveillance.  The satellites travelled in space at the same speed as the earth's orbit so they remained in position until they fell from orbit.  As this band of space filled with satellites, the countries with land underneath the satellites wanted to control the space above their land.

The pact never became reality. In the discussion after the talk, several people discussed the issue of what a country can claim as sovereign territory. Where does space begin? At the limits of the atmosphere? Higher?  Gomez Revuelta said Hannah Arendt said politics is part of life on earth. 

Arendt opens her book The Human Condition by saying it was an event “second in importance to no other.”  Sputnik meant that human beings had taken a real step toward actualizing a long-wished-for goal: to escape the earth. In Arendt’s telling of the story, earth alienation is part and parcel of the all-too-human dream of freeing ourselves from our humanity. Sputnik’s launch thus signified not simply the lowering of humanity’s stature, but humanity's destruction of humanity itself. (from the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College)

The discussion continued raising serious issues, and also the issue of how far into space could an equatorial country claim territory? The solar system? The Milky Way?  The entire universe? 

The discussion continued at lunch about Hannah Arendt and space and the Cold War and world politics today.                                

#RazomforUkraine Volunteer Sergiy Blednov

 

Sergiy Blednov restocking 

the combat medical kit assembly line

Sergiy Blednov was one of the first people I met at #RazomforUkraine when I started volunteering in March.  I noticed him right away because he was carrying heavy boxes of supplies to refill the assembly line where we made combat medical kits for soldiers and larger backpacks for medics. 

During the first days I volunteered I was part of a group that was unwrapping thousands of tourniquets for the assembly line. 

The assembly line at #RazomforUkraine. 

To the right in the foreground is Olena Blyednova, Sergiy's wife.

On the third Saturday I worked, there were more than 20 volunteers and the boxes on the three assembly lines emptied fast. I had learned where most things were stored over the previous two weeks. When Sergiy went to another part of the warehouse, I started refilling boxes.  When Sergiy came back, he saw me filling a box and said, "You are taking my job."

I said, "No, I am Sergiy two. Ya Sergiy Dva!"

He caught the joke right tossed it back, "Sergiy two, or Sergiy too?"  

"Takosh i dva!" I said getting near the limits of my ability to speak Ukrainian, "too and two."

From then on Sergiy and I both filled boxes.  And made many jokes.   

Sergiy and his wife and daughter emigrated to America in 2016.  His son followed in 2019. Before coming to America Sergiy worked in aircraft manufacturing in Kharkiv.  He later worked in software and programming. He now works for a software company based in Arizona which allows him to volunteer with Razom in the morning then go to work in the afternoon when the day begins in California.  

In three weeks I hope to return to volunteering with Razom. Sadly, it seems volunteers will still be needed to make medical kits for Ukraine. 

Many Dimensions of Parenting in a Podcast and in my Life

One of my sons is in a rehab program in Minneapolis. The arrangements were made by one of my daughters who has been caring for him since last August.  Before that another daughter was taking him in at her house sometimes for weeks at a time trying to help him find work and to live independently.

Having six kids, three adopted and three the other way, is complicated.  I began the journey of parenting confident that nature and nurture were about 50/50 influences in a child's life. Over the past 30 years, I came to believe children pop out about 90 percent who they are. Parents, siblings, environment and passing comets are the other 10 percent.  

In a recent episode of her podcast "Honestly," soon-to-be-first-time-parent Bari Weiss assembled a panel of authors who recently published very different books on parenting.  I did not agree with everything they said, but I did not disagree with everything they said--which is my default setting with modern parenting experts.  Here is the panel:

I especially liked Doucleff and the whole idea of a village raising kids. It's a great discussion.  Here's a link or you can subscribe to Honestly wherever you get podcasts. 

Unlike many parents I know, I went into parenting knowing I would get a lot wrong. But the compensation for the over-confidence I started with has been how much the six kids who call me Dad have helped each other (and helped me) through difficult periods of life.  

Okay. Maybe the nature/nurture split is 80/20.