Putting the People You Love in Hell: Dante and Ser Brunetto

 

In Canto 15 of Inferno Dante speaks with his former mentor Ser Brunetto Latini.  His sin is not named, but it is sodomy.  He is in Hell for eternity for being homosexual.

Dante is respectful as he speaks and the conversation only ends when Latini must return to his torments. As I re-read Inferno this time, I am more aware of Dante as the author.  He chose to map his eternity on the science and theology current in the late 13th Century. But even with an orthodox eternity this is a world Dante creates.  

Every person he puts in Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven is up to him.  Dante had no way of knowing that the poem he wrote would be written about and read more than any other book except the Bible, but he could assume a very wide readership among Florentines and other Italians.  His is the first epic written in vernacular Italian, so his readership could be much wider than for books written in Latin.  

And all who read his book would know that Latini was homosexual.  Dante had to know many people who were homosexual, so why does he choose his mentor for the spokesperson of this level of Hell?  He shows respect in his imagined conversation, but how respectful is it to single out one you claim to love for eternal condemnation?

I went to a folk concert a long time ago. A woman came to the stage and said her first song would be about the guy who just broke up with her.  The song was very funny, and very clear about the man's faults; her use of shortcomings was brilliant.  She said before she sang "If you hurt a woman with an audience, everyone will know your name."  I heard Taylor Swift has sold millions in that genre.  

I understand better why Dante condemns his enemies, but Canto 15 makes me wonder why he chose his mentor for Hell.

Putting My Books in Alphabetical Order

 

A month ago, after looking for a book, I decided to re-shelve of my physical books in alphabetical order by author.  In the process, I removed three boxes of books which are now on a table in the living room. After a couple of friends get a look at them, I will donate the remaining books.

This year I am turning 70, so just as at 65, I am giving away any book I do not think I will re-read or use as a reference in the next decade. The exception is the authors I am or have been obsessed with. If I have a complete collection of their works, I keep them all.  Dante Aligheri, Hannah Arendt,  Vasily Grossman, Mark Helprin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bernard-Henri Levy, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, and Timothy Snyder.  

I think I had 800 books a decade ago. I am below 400 now. I have many ebooks, but storage for them is invisible, so no problem with wall space.  In five years, maybe I will try something else.   

The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall

 

Earlier this year I wrote about my seven favorite books from the fifty I read last year. Tied for second place was Tim Marshall's book The Prisoners of Geography.

This year I read read his newer book, The Power of Geography.  It was fascinating in some places, but had too much detail in others.  The section of Saudi Arabia, for instance, went way to much into the sordid history of the Saudi royal family. The endpoint is a murderous, duplicitous dictator. The path was--murder and lies.

Part of the problem with the book is the thesis: it is a hope for the future book. the Prisoners of Geography tells us why geography is destiny, mostly cruel destiny. It's a better story line than "Here are the hopeful bits."

For those obsessed with geography, the book is useful and very interesting in parts: Spain and the United Kingdom especially.  But read Prisoners first.  

Reporting from the Front Lines of the War in Ukraine: Kristaps Andrejsons

Kristaps Andrejsons, Host and Creator of The Easter Border podcast

Since 2017 I have been listening to a podcast from Latvia, The Eastern Border. I began listening because I had been reading Russian novels for several years and learning Russian. The podcast alternated between current Russian politics and Soviet history--and how they seemed to be coming together.

In 2019 I was in the Riga for a few days. I contacted Kristaps and visited him in his hometown of Ludza, the easternmost town in the European Union in continental Europe. (Reunion Island is in the EU and further east.) Ludza is just a few miles from the Russian border, so Eastern Border is a good name for the podcast. I wrote about the 2019 visit here. 

Then on 24 February 2022, the format of the Eastern Border podcast changed. In the past twelve months Kristaps has traveled to Poland and Ukraine many times. He went from history podcaster to war reporter. I listened to Ukraine War Episode 136 just tow days ago.  

Kristaps has been to Kyiv, Kherson and within a few kilometers of the front line of the war.  Last week he was talking to Russian journalists who fled their country when the war started and are in Latvia.  He has talked with combat troops, journalists and leaders in Ukraine and with refugees in countries throughout Eastern Europe.

He knows soldiers from many countries, including the US, who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine. He told me about a guy who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and came to Ukraine to fight in a war where the good side and evil side were very clear--and he is on the good side. 

Although his plans are always guarded, he may be returning to Ukraine soon with a major German publication as a translator, guide, and expert on the war.  

If you want a ground-level view of the war, Kristaps is a great reporter.  He also has deep knowledge of Russia and sources within Russia so he can decode and interpret Russian propaganda.  

 

Catching Up with a Great Science Writer and Bicyclist I Haven't Seen For More Than 15 Years.

 

Katharine Sanderson and I on the 

north side of the Millennium Bridge

In 2004 Katharine Sanderson flew from the offices of "Chemistry World" magazine in Cambridge, UK, to Philadelphia to write about a collection of historic science books. The museum and library I worked for the time, Science History Institute, had just acquired a collection of 6,000 science books dating back almost to the invention of printing.  The article is here.

In February of the following year, I saw Katharine again and the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  At the meeting, which was in St. Louis that year, Katharine introduced me to Marc Abrahams, the creator and impresario of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony held the second Thursday of September in Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University--in the other Cambridge. I eventually became a volunteer at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

Marc Abrahams at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, assisted by a human flashlight

In 2005 Katharine was back to Science History Institute to write about the 40th Anniversary Moore's Law.  Gordon Moore is a co-founder of Intel Corporation and known the law of increasing complexity of microprocessor chips that bears his name. But he considers himself a chemist and held the ceremony to celebrate Moore's Law at the Science History Institute, not in Silicon Valley.

Katharine and I met at another meeting a couple of years later. During that visit we ran to Camden, New Jersey, and back across the Ben Franklin Bridge.  We have kept in touch. I followed her writing at "Chemistry World" and later at "Nature" magazine.

A decade ago she started a family and became a more avid bicyclist.  She also moved to one of the top places for the cycling in the world: the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France. 

Now she lives in Cornwall on the southwest coast of England. A good place for riding, but not the Pyrenees! We finally got together for a long walk and coffee after more than a decade and a half.  We also walked along the Thames with Katharine's friend Elaine who lives in the Pyrenees. Her husband Peter Cossins wrote "A Cyclist's Guide to the Pyrenees." Now we have a tentative plan that if I make one last ride of the Tour de France climbs, I will ride the Pyrenees instead of the Alps and Katharine will visit and ride the big climbs.

Since she is about half my age, I will watch her disappear into the clouds.

Philosophy Discussions on the Way to NYC Shopping

From 2002 until the pandemic, several of my kids and I would go to New York the day after Christmas to shop along Broadway. Usually we drove to either Trenton or Secaucus from Lancaster, parked the car, and took New Jersey Transit trains to NYC.  

We would talk about almost anything on the drives up and back. On one of the drives when my younger daughter Lisa was in grad school, so 2013 or after, it was just Nigel, Lisa and I in the car. Nigel fell asleep in the back seat. 

Lisa and I started what became a two-hour plus discussion of free will--does it it exist? 

At the time, Lisa had come to believe in Determinism. That school of thought says free will is an illusion. We act as nature and nurture has programmed us. The appearance of free will can always be explained by brain activity and environment.  

I believe that all people have free will, but most people choose to use it rarely or never. Many wish they did not have free will and want someone else to make the tough decisions in their lives.  

Last week, I was in the English section of a Swiss bookstore and saw Sam Harris' book "Free Will." I meant to read this after Lisa and I discussed Determinism. (Was the decade delay a free will choice on my part, or because I had a job and kids living at home at the time, simply something I forgot--determined by my environment?)

Even though it is a decade later and Lisa has a different view of free will now, I  decided to buy the book and read it on the flight from Geneva to Riga, Latvia.   The book is well written and I am unconvinced. Another book titled "Free Will" takes the position that we have free will but use it rarely. That is my position. I wrote about that book here. It's very good on parsing Fate, Chance, Free Will and Determinism. 

I may choose to re-read Mark Balguer's book "Free Will" later this year. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.  As for Sam Harris' book on the same topic, I will leave it in an airport or train station for someone else. It is very well written. And that makes me reject the premise all the more. 

Every sentence I write involves choosing the right words in the right order. Sometimes I surprise myself with a choice of words that seems perfect for expressing and idea. Sometimes I re-read something I wrote and think I should never attempt to write again. Most of writing is determined by decades of experience and training and intuition. But once in a while I have to choose among very different possibilities and in that moment, I have Free Will.

Zanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia: Honoring a Man Who Hid Jews from the Nazis

Zanis Lipke during World War II

Since 2017, I have visited ten death camps and many Holocaust memorials across Europe and in Israel. Before those visits I read three books by Timothy Snyder on the Holocaust and tyranny.  One of those books, "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" came back to me today on a visit to the Zanis Lipke Memorial.  

Snyder says the Holocaust was the worst, by number of killed of the entire population, in the countries conquered by both the Soviets and the Nazis.  Of the approximately 70,000 Jews who lived in Latvia in the summer of 1941, fewer than a thousand survived the war. Just 200 Jews survived the war in Latvia, the rest were concentration camp survivors. One-fifth of those were the Jews who were hidden in several different places by Zanis Lipke.  

Zanis Lipke Memorial, completed in 2014. Designed by architect Zaiga Gaile to have the appearance of an (inverted) ark--a refuge from Nazi murder.

Lipke witnessed the terrible treatment of the Jews in Riga beginning on 1 July 1941 when the Nazis entered the city. The Nazis conquered and completely occupied Latvia by 8 July 1941.  Later in the year, he decided he must rescue Jews. He got a job in a Luftwaffe warehouse in Riga and used his position to smuggle Jews out of the ghetto. 

According to Museum Researcher and Curator of Pedagogical Programs Maija Meiere-Osa, who gave me a tour of the Memorial, Lipke created a network of hiding places for small groups of Jews around the city. 

Maija Meiere-Ost, Museum Researcher and 

Curator of Pedagogical Programs, Zanis Lipke Memorial

Meiere-Osa said Lipke was the only one who knew where all the Jews were hidden and who was caring for them in hiding. Lipke was a veteran of the Latvian Army and had done some smuggling while working on the shipping docks in Riga, so he was able to create an intricate plan and keep it secret.

"He was the spider," she said. "Only he knew the entire extent of the web he created."

The entrance to the museum. The entire museum is dark and close 

and has the feeling of an underground shelter.

By the winter, hiding Jews in houses became more difficult, so Lipke began digging a bunker under a shed on his property.  Despite the frozen ground, they completed the underground shelter. His wife Johanna cared for eight Jews in that bunker. 

Many people who hid Jews offered shelter for weeks, some for more than a year, but Lipke and his wife agreed they would shelter the Jews for a decade if needed. 

Zanis Lipke was honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations on 28 June 1966. The Soviet government would not allow Lipke to travel to Jerusalem, but the wily smuggler was able to get to Australia to visit his son several years later and was himself smuggled into Israel to visit Yad Vashem and was able to visit in 1977.

The Soviet government decided they could live with the award, redefining it as an award for "saving Soviet citizens from fascist enemies."