I love the ’30s.
It was, in so many ways a terrible time. The rise of fascism and National Socialism, Stalin’s purges, the Great Depression. W.H. Auden called it a “low, dishonest decade” and there’s no arguing with that. So what’s to love?
Man, they had had style.
Men dressed — including the omnipresent fedora. None of this going out to dinner in a tank top and flip flops. Women went for whatever glamour they could afford and their style has never been matched.
Has there ever been a meaner piece of machinery than a Thompson submachine-gun? And the pistol hit the extent of its necessary development with the Colt 1911 .45 automatic — it’s all decadence from there.
A big American car in basic black — what else could you possibly desire?
People traveled on trains and there are no more romantic words than “the night train to...”
American music was going through one of its periods of massive creativity, with the jazz age effortlessly moving into the age of swing, and the movies were entering a golden era. Hemingway was at the peak of his powers, with no signs of his decline into a drunken parody of himself.
Michael Mann’s vision of the 1930s comes alive on the screen in “Public Enemies.” Maybe it’s weird to feel nostalgic for times long gone before your own, but it’s not an uncommon malady among history geeks.
All I know is that I sat in front of the Sisters Movie House screen last night and wished I could crawl right through it and straight into 1933, hard times and all.
See a review of "Public Enemies" at http://www.nuggetnews.com/main.asp?SectionID=65&SubSectionID=105&ArticleID=16034&TM=65500.79.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Defiance
Every once in a while I see a movie that really sticks with me. I think this one is worth passing on.
Defiance (out on DVD) is the story of the Bielski Partisans, a group of Jews who escaped into the forests of what is now Belarus during WW II.
I remember visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC about 15 years ago and being overwhelmed by a sense of frustration at the passivity of the Jews in the face of destruction. Why didn’t they fight back — die on their feet instead of on their knees?
Looking at it rationally, there’s a lot of reasons it went down as it did. The bald fact is that not many were in any position to fight back — and many thought that if they could just survive and buy time, they cold weather this great pogrom as they had weathered them for centuries.
They could not yet understand the ferocity of the Nazi’s intent: extermination. It’s still almost incomprehensible today.
But some did fight, escaping from ghettos and camps to the forests to join partisan bands, many of them Soviets who had been cut off in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
The Bielski Brothers founded their own partisan band. Their focus, at elder brother Tuvia’s insistence, was on saving Jews rather than fighting the Germans, but fight they did, and effectively.
Watching the movie led me to read a history of the partisans titled The Bielski Brothers, available at the Deschutes Public Library.
It’s a story worth knowing. The movie is well-done, with a fine character study of the brothers and the strains of leadership. Choices were often brutal.
There’s plenty of action, but it is markedly different from the usual Hollywood fare. The violence is not exhilarating; it is frightening and nerve-wracking.
Through their determination to live like human beings, even if it was only for a short time, the Bielskis saved 1,200 Jews. After the war, the brothers faded into obscurity.
They deserve to be remembered and Defiance does them justice.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
Defiance (out on DVD) is the story of the Bielski Partisans, a group of Jews who escaped into the forests of what is now Belarus during WW II.
I remember visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC about 15 years ago and being overwhelmed by a sense of frustration at the passivity of the Jews in the face of destruction. Why didn’t they fight back — die on their feet instead of on their knees?
Looking at it rationally, there’s a lot of reasons it went down as it did. The bald fact is that not many were in any position to fight back — and many thought that if they could just survive and buy time, they cold weather this great pogrom as they had weathered them for centuries.
They could not yet understand the ferocity of the Nazi’s intent: extermination. It’s still almost incomprehensible today.
But some did fight, escaping from ghettos and camps to the forests to join partisan bands, many of them Soviets who had been cut off in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
The Bielski Brothers founded their own partisan band. Their focus, at elder brother Tuvia’s insistence, was on saving Jews rather than fighting the Germans, but fight they did, and effectively.
Watching the movie led me to read a history of the partisans titled The Bielski Brothers, available at the Deschutes Public Library.
It’s a story worth knowing. The movie is well-done, with a fine character study of the brothers and the strains of leadership. Choices were often brutal.
There’s plenty of action, but it is markedly different from the usual Hollywood fare. The violence is not exhilarating; it is frightening and nerve-wracking.
Through their determination to live like human beings, even if it was only for a short time, the Bielskis saved 1,200 Jews. After the war, the brothers faded into obscurity.
They deserve to be remembered and Defiance does them justice.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Why I hate ATVs
Let me start right off by saying that I’m not advocating banning ATVs. I don’t like the things, at least as recreational vehicles, but I’m not big on advocating bans for things I don’t like.
But they damned sure need to be taken seriously as a dangerous toy.
My brother wrecked an ATV back when I was a sophomore in high school and he was a wild man of 26. Rode it off a 15 foot cliff one night. He managed to push the machine off of himself before he landed with it on top of him and by luck he landed between a couple of boulders that would have broken him like a match stick.
He could well have been killed or massively injured. As it was, he got away with wrenching his knee, biting a hole through his tongue and turning into a full-body bruise. A couple of days in bed and he was back up and at ’em.
Not everybody is so lucky.
And it’s not just the ATV riders themselves at risk. They come up on horses and spook them, putting horsemen in the dangerous position of dealing with a spooked horse and fast-moving machines.
That’s saying nothing of the damage they do to trails.
An ATV is a great farm and ranch tool, useful to hunters packing out their game and, I’m sure, a blast to ride fast and free in the woods. All those things have their place.
I’m not opposed to risky activities — far from it. But I know that you don’t just climb on a hot horse and ride with no training. It’s too easy to climb on an ATV and go, quickly exceeding your capabilities and the machine’s and get yourself into deadly trouble, like my brother did years ago.
His wreck and a few close encounters in the woods have built a visceral dislike of those machines in me. I don’t want to knock anybody else’s fun, but I don’t want them anywhere around me — and I hope anybody who climbs on one takes the time to learn how to handle it — and to learn the courtesy to stay away from the horses.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
But they damned sure need to be taken seriously as a dangerous toy.
My brother wrecked an ATV back when I was a sophomore in high school and he was a wild man of 26. Rode it off a 15 foot cliff one night. He managed to push the machine off of himself before he landed with it on top of him and by luck he landed between a couple of boulders that would have broken him like a match stick.
He could well have been killed or massively injured. As it was, he got away with wrenching his knee, biting a hole through his tongue and turning into a full-body bruise. A couple of days in bed and he was back up and at ’em.
Not everybody is so lucky.
And it’s not just the ATV riders themselves at risk. They come up on horses and spook them, putting horsemen in the dangerous position of dealing with a spooked horse and fast-moving machines.
That’s saying nothing of the damage they do to trails.
An ATV is a great farm and ranch tool, useful to hunters packing out their game and, I’m sure, a blast to ride fast and free in the woods. All those things have their place.
I’m not opposed to risky activities — far from it. But I know that you don’t just climb on a hot horse and ride with no training. It’s too easy to climb on an ATV and go, quickly exceeding your capabilities and the machine’s and get yourself into deadly trouble, like my brother did years ago.
His wreck and a few close encounters in the woods have built a visceral dislike of those machines in me. I don’t want to knock anybody else’s fun, but I don’t want them anywhere around me — and I hope anybody who climbs on one takes the time to learn how to handle it — and to learn the courtesy to stay away from the horses.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
The Persian whirlwind
In 1989, the world watched as students and others protested their lack of freedom in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The protest left an iconic image seared into the collective consciousness of the world: a lone unarmed youth, facing down a column of tanks.
We are seeing something similar happening in Iran. The iconic image from this convulsion is the Youtube video of a beautiful young woman dying on the street in Teheran, shot through the chest.
The Chinese Communist regime did not fall as a result of Tiananmen, but it was forced to change. China is not free, but it much more free than it was in 1989, and it is much more prosperous. It is part of the community of nations.
The Iranian regime may not fall because of the protests sparked by the election controversy, but there is no way it can escape change. A bell has been rung that the mullahs cannot unring. The legitimacy of the regime has been fatally undermined by its own actions.
We are witnessing a historic whirlwind and it is exhilarating. Salute the courage of the protesters in Tehran; they are putting their lives on the line for freedom.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
We are seeing something similar happening in Iran. The iconic image from this convulsion is the Youtube video of a beautiful young woman dying on the street in Teheran, shot through the chest.
The Chinese Communist regime did not fall as a result of Tiananmen, but it was forced to change. China is not free, but it much more free than it was in 1989, and it is much more prosperous. It is part of the community of nations.
The Iranian regime may not fall because of the protests sparked by the election controversy, but there is no way it can escape change. A bell has been rung that the mullahs cannot unring. The legitimacy of the regime has been fatally undermined by its own actions.
We are witnessing a historic whirlwind and it is exhilarating. Salute the courage of the protesters in Tehran; they are putting their lives on the line for freedom.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
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