Random Thinking

We finally got a web cam. Because of all the reviews I write for them, Amazon is sending me lots of cool gifts and one of them was a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000. Beth, of course, immediately claimed it but since she is at a concert I went to her room to check it out. Not only can you use it to do web cam stuff, but you can also take pictures and make videos with it. I’ll write a detailed review later after I play with it more, but I thought I would put up a couple of pictures showing some of the video effects you can use.

Now if only I knew someone else who has a web cam…

It’s time to go pick up Beth and I have this headache so I’ll leave it here for now.

Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968
by Heda Margolius Kovaly

As good as this book is, it could have been much better. Kovaly has a fascinating story to tell but too much of her story tells how this happened and then that happened without enough analysis or explanation. Kovaly lived through Hitler and Stalin and she has an amazing story to tell.

The book starts with the deportation of the Jews from Prague, where Kovaly lived, to the ghetto of Lodz in Poland. She describes the horrors and the death she encountered there. She then skips ahead to the last concentration/slave labor camp she was in before the war ended. She describes how she tells the German man who runs the factory about the extermination camps, a topic with which he seems to be utterly unfamiliar. And although the part she tells us is fascinating, she leaves out much of the story that she tells him. Finally she tells us of her escape as she is being marched away from the advancing Russian armies, her return to Prague, and her rejection by all the friends she had left behind. By far this is the best part of the book.

But this part ends sixty pages into the book and she has much more to tell us. After the war, Kovaly marries the man she always loved and he becomes a member of the Czech communist party and eventually a minister in the government. With the failures of communism, a scapegoat is needed by the government and her husband is arrested and executed as a traitor as part of the Slansky trials. As the widow of a traitor, her life in Prague is hell but she spends her every effort to care for her child and to rehabilitate her husband. Finally, in the early 1960’s, reforms in Czechoslovakia led to her husband and all the others having their convictions overturned. The reforms continue until the Prague Spring of 1968 leading to the Russian invasion and the crushing of the new freedoms. At this point Kovaly flees for the West to join her son who is living in London.

The book is short at less than 200 pages and many things happen so the story moves quickly. But too much of the story tells us what happened as a way for Kovaly to avoid talking about herself. For example, by starting with the deportations, we learn nothing about Kovaly’s life before the Nazis. Kovaly doesn’t even tell us how old she was or what she was doing when she was rounded up. With all Kovaly has been through she has had to have built a wall to protect herself and she only shows us glimpses through that wall. But the book still remains an amazing story of the holocaust and the early communist years in Czechoslovakia. Her glimpses into how communism must always fail by its very nature from someone who was on the inside are worth reading to help us understand the 20th century. Kovaly leaves out the happy ending she finally achieved. It is a happy ending she deserves.

Tags: book reviews, communism, holocaust, Czechoslovakia

Fidel Castro’s hat has suddenly become popular among young Cubans and Cuban tourists. But they are also popular in our house. Michel and Beth bought the plain green one for me since the one with the little red star is hard to find. But I decorated it with a little Che Guevera button that I bought at Utopia. Michel happens to be reading a book on Che; a 700 page book which I think is a lot more than I ever wanted to know about Che. I also put a Dead Kennedys and a Ramones button on the hat just to balance things a bit.

Meanwhile I found a cool site to get Commie t-shirts which are fun because they really annoy members of the GOP. And since the GOP seems to be quite content in destroying America I figure annoying them is the least I can do. And my efforts to convert Beth into the future Communist dictator of America are continuing. Wha-ha-ha-ha!

When the houses in our neighborhood were built in 1950, the builder planted a small maple tree in the front lawn of each house. Over the years the maple trees have become huge and the ones that remain tower over the houses. The trees themselves are pretty but they release pollen in the spring and cover the lawns with leaves in the fall. Since our wires run through the trees, we worry that we will lose power with every storm. Many of the trees have been removed over the years (including the one in front of our house) and yesterday my neighbor joined the trend and had her maple cut down.

From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island although it was busiest in the period from 1892 until about 1924. The Ellis Island website is an interesting site to research any family members who came through Ellis Island when they came to the US. Searching on the site is amazingly quick and easy.

My grandmother, Pauline Benes, came to the US from the village of Petrovice in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). She was only 13 years old when she sailed from Bremen, Germany aboard the Frankfurt (pictured above) bound for the US. Her mother, Anna Jursikova, had died 7 years before. Her father sent her to join her brother Willie who owned a bakery in Astoria, NY. She arrived at Ellis Island on April 11, 1901, exactly 96 years to the day before her great-grandson, Mikey, was born.

Beth has been home from school since Monday. She was feeling dizzy at school and was sent home. We thought maybe it was inner ear thing. She still wasn’t feeling better when I came home from work on Tuesday so we decided she needed to see a doctor. There is an evening hours pediatric center near our house so we took her over there. They gave her a good look but the doctor didn’t like what she saw on the EKG so we had to bring Beth to the cardiologist. The cardiologist decided that Beth has a heart block like I did and put her on a 24 hour monitor. We won’t get the results until next week. Meanwhile it looks like Beth inherited my heart condition.

Once you relinquish your freedom for the sake of “understood necessity”… you cede your claim to the truth. Slowly, drop by drop, your life begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists; you have voluntarily condemned yourself to helplessness.

Heda Margolius Kovaly - writing about the rise of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1948.

Petain: How the Hero of France Became a Convicted Traitor and Changed the Course of History
by Charles Williams

After reading this book, I certainly know more about the sex life of Henri-Philippe Petain then I ever expected I would. But then when an author is writing about a man who sleeps with every woman he can, including the widows of the officers that died under his command, it is a hard subject to avoid. Petain was a hero to all of France after World War I and a traitor after World War II. We can easily think of many men who died too young, John Kennedy, Will Rogers, Buddy Holly. DeGaulle suggested that Petain died too old.

If Petain had died in 1920 he would be remembered as one of the greatest heroes of France, having saved the French army at Verdun in 1916, ended the mutiny of 1917, and stopped the German spring offensive of 1918. Already in his sixties when the war ended (he had been prepared to retire when the war started), Petain lived for 33 more years giving him time to become attracted to the idea of a dictatorship. He was fascinated by Francisco Franco and believed that the only thing that could save France was a single person in power, with himself as that person, of course. When France fell in 1940, Petain signed the Armistice to end the fighting and took up the dictatorship of Vichy France. While there, he let the Jews be deported, let the Nazis take French citizens as slave labor, he fought to stop the Resistance, and created a secret police to control his citizens.

Which leads to my major complaint with the book, that it is much to sympathetic to Petain. The author frequently falls back on Petain’s age as being a factor or that Petain thought that he was needed to rescue France from the occupation. The one word that the author fails to use that describes Petain best is narcissist. No one could have possibly had a higher opinion of Petain than Petain. His mistakes were the faults of others. His triumphs were all his alone. Only he could save France. Resigning in the face of Nazi atrocities would destroy France. At the same time he was easily swayed by the last argument he heard on an issue. So it wasn’t his policies that mattered to him since he really had none that he held intensely.

I have other complaints as well. The book could have used some maps. Describing the pitch and flow of battles running across the French countryside without having a good idea of where this river or this town is located makes it hard to follow the story. The pictures included were insufficient as they are almost exclusively of Petain. The author describes a picture of Nini (Petain’s wife), but does not include the picture. The many people moving in and out of the story could have used brief biographies. It is hard to keep track of a person mentioned on one page who disappears for thirty pages but then is an important part of the continuing story. The final chapters of Petain’s trial for treason and his imprisonment are simply too long. I really didn’t need to know that at 90, Petain was having issues with incontinence. More detail about why the French government felt unable to move Petain to a military hospital would have been more helpful than gossip about Petain’s final days.

Overall, the book is a readable biography of Petain. It certainly isn’t a great book and had too many failings to make me truly enjoy it. I know more about Petain than when I started the book but I still feel that Petain himself is in the mist.

Tags: Henri Philippe Petain, book reviews, hero, traitor

As it turns out, teenagers showing off their underwear offends people in Lousiana (as well as a few other states). A recent law in Lousiana makes it illegal to show off your undergarments. Apparently, the oversized sagging pants that some teenage boys wear is the problem but I wonder if the law also includes those old men who go out to get their newspaper in their boxers. As this snarky article in the LA Times says, teenagers have been trying to offend their elders by what they wear for pretty much forever.

Whether or not those who wear sagging pants are celebrating crime and headed for trouble, one thing is certain: American teenagers love to bug their elders, and clothing has long been a great way to do that.

Tags: underwear, teenagers, old men in boxers

I am so into The Pretenders lately but one particular song I really love. I told Beth that the lyrics are exactly what I want to say to her.

By the way, compare Chrissie Hynde’s hair in the video to Beth’s in her back-to-school photo. Notice anything similar? That’s right… they are both vegetarians!

And on a final note, even if she is 7 years older than me, if Chrissie Hynde shows up at the front door looking for a new boy friend, Michel better put up a spirited defense!