This YouTube channel was a new discovery for me, and so far I have watched only this video. And whilst it might not be the most detailed and rigorous ones out there (there are some big omissions in the content), it is still informative and well done, so watching it is not time wasted.
These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.
I do not actually remember how much I was informed about these issues as a child before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but what I do remember is that my first encounter was not with an actual (known) homosexual person, but with a homophobic slur. The sad reality is, that Czechs were and to great extent still are very homophobic, or at least “I am not a homophobe, but…”, which is a distinction without difference.
However from legal standpoint Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was actually relatively progressive, or at least not less progressive than many western countries. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1962, 5 years before the United Kingdom. And gender reassignment therapy and surgery, although with more than a few bureaucratic hurdles to jump through, were (and are) available and paid for from state health insurance.
Nevertheless, despite gay rights being on the left side of the political spectrum in current USA and most of western world, it was not so behind the Iron Curtain. As avid reader and a very curious child, I have read behind my parents’ back magazines for adults (as opposed to magazines for children), which even in the puritanical culture did contain some information about sex and sexuality. And on one such occasion I came across an article that mentioned a peculiar fact – whilst homosexual acts between consenting adults were decriminalized in ČSSR, this was not the case everywhere in the Eastern Bloc. In USSR, male homosexuality was still illegal and punishable by imprisonment. The rationale mentioned in the article was homophobic, patriarchal and misogynistic all at once, and I remember recognizing it as such even at the time, although of course I did not know those fancy words back then: “A woman’s weakness can be forgiven, but a soldier must control his urges.”
After the fall of the iron curtain this discrepancy between the two countries sadly progressed. Whilst Czech Republic slowly but steadily progresses towards more and more legal rights for LGBTQ people along with public opinion progressing as well, in Russian Federation the trend actually reversed after a brief period of attempted progress.
So to me this, together with before mentioned environmentalism, is another one of the issues that actually is not left or right and it is just a coincidence that it is considered so in current political climate in the west. But lets not forget that political left can be just as adept at finding rationalizations for the homophobia of their power base as political right currently is. Hate of the other can, unfortunately, be quite the unifying issue in all kinds of political context.
From Lofty, the story of the man behind Australia’s famous Ruston’s Roses.
This is a statue of David Ruston in a park in Renmark, a tribute to the man and his contribution.
… Ruston’s Roses in Renmark, once Australia’s biggest rose garden. David Ruston began working here at 18, and developed a life long passion for roses. He became world renowned, and was for a time President of the World Federation of Rose Societies. He built his father’s original collection of 500 rose bushes in to over 50,000 bushes. But he didn’t just grow roses, he was also an expert floral arranger.
Sadly, his health declined, as did the gardens, although they are still open to the public and with new ownership I hope the garden will return to its previous splendor and supply roses to the world once again. The garden currently has a contract to supply rose petals to the Nineteenth Street Distillery in Renmark for use in their Gin.
David had a fall a year ago, and although he was present for the opening of the Renmark Rose Festival he was unable to participate.
I like the use of hard steel to display a man of flowers.
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
I am not sure how much, if at all, I will be able to post this week. I am doing long shifts at work and Saturda-Sunday I am traveling.
So today I am just going to point you towards an article written by Matt Easton of Schola Gladiatoria “A SPECIAL WILKINSON SWORD FOR AN OFFICER OF THE GURKHA RIFLES“. I found the article informative and moving.
These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.
The cold war was not called war for nothing – military has played a significant role in it. There was mandatory draft – one year for university students and two years for everyone else – and it could only be avoided for medical reasons. Sometimes not even for that (more on that later). No conscientious objections either.
Behind the iron curtain the role of military composed of several things. First was propaganda. In the school we were regularly shown propaganda videos showing how technically superior is the Soviet bloc military to USA. And how depraved USA military is, how comparable to Nazis – Vietnam war has provided very nice and even true examples for such propaganda. And we were constantly reminded how important is army for our country, and how honorably is serving in it. There was even a moderately popular propagandist TV series “Chlapci a chlapi” (Boys and Men) that was entirely about how wonderful life in the army is. I do not remember much from the TV series and I do not ever want to watch it again.
As a child living right in the shade of the barbed wire curtains, my experience with military was sometimes more up close and personal – with its second function, border patrol. In our little town were military barracks, my mothers first husband was an officer of the border patrol, and later on father of one of my schoolmates was a captain of the border patrol. Seeing a couple of soldiers in uniform was nothing uncommon for me, because my mother was boss at local grocery shop and the barracks were buying some of their supplies there.
The border patrol guys had relatively miserable life, which I only learned later on. Suicides or suicide attempts were not uncommon. Due to the common practice of sending soldiers as far away from their home as possible, many of them were from as far as Slovakia near the Hungarian border. Not only was it quite depressing being torn away from your family and loved ones and sent across the whole country away with dismal chance at a leave maybe once or twice for a few days (which has led to many breakups), the border patrol had another problem – the prospect of having to really shoot at people. Only it was not a prospect of shooting enemies, but civilians. Because as I learned fairly early on, although the implications took quite a few years to sink in, the real purpose of the iron curtain was not to keep enemies out, it was to prevent people from escaping.
I have avoided draft – I was not of age before the Iron Curtain fell, and although we kept compulsory draft untill 2004, well after I have finished university, the regulations were slightly relaxed at the time so I have managed to convince the draft physician that my atopic dermatitis is severe enough for me to be deemed ineligible.
I am glad I did. My older brother was not that lucky. He got drafted despite much worse atopic dermatitis than I ever had, and he served in military in its third prominent function – cheap labor. He was ordered to sweep dusty factory hall, to which he of course objected for health reasons. However his objections were ignored and as a result, his dermatitis worsened significantly and he has spent few months sick with hands bandaged up to the armpits – but that did not matter to the green brains too much, orders must be obeyed! Afterward he was given to sign a declaration that he is completely healed, which he declined to sign on advice of a family friend. I do not actually know a lot about his experience in the army, because we never talked about it much. From my perspective it is a two-year hole in my childhood where he was absent. What I know for sure that it instilled in him neither love for the military, nor for the country – quite the opposite. When he heard the leading song of the Boys and Men TV series, which contains a line ♪ it is a two years vacation, nothing more ♪ he actually screamed at the TV in rage.
It was not all bad, allegedly. The miliary offered free education in some skills that were difficult to obtain otherwise – like truck/bus driving licenses. Some relationships started that way because sending people across the country has led to of course meeting new people. Some of the working units got actually paid, but the money was not given to them until after the service, so they had a decent starting money after that. But there are people, even some of my friends, who decry the abandonment of compulsory draft because “it teaches young men discipline” and I do not buy that. Maybe it did sometimes break their spirit. But the way I see it, mostly the result for any given individual was two years of life lost without adequate recompense.
And there is no need to guard a fence around half of the country anymore. For now.
Matt Easton muses about how the change of sword shapes over time was not driven only by function, but also by technology.
I have two posts for the town of Bauska – the castle of Bauska (you’ve seen the grand tree out front), actually: Old Bauska and New Bauska. Well, “New” Bauska, since the new castle still dates back to the 17th century, I think. Old Bauska is from the 15th century or so. Since WWII, when it was destroyed with the German retreat, both parts lay in ruins – reconstruction was begun in 2008, and as always, is done mostly by serious and seriously dedicated hobbyists. Strategically located on a peninsula between two rivers, it was geographically convenient for both defense and trade, and is now a wonderful place to spend an afternoon with overactive children, since the territory is perfect for some educational wandering, followed by rambunctious running around in the former park-slash-dendrarium.
We visited at the end of summer, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the tourist-friendly reconstruction – and even more, I was impressed by the craftsmanship that has gone into creating a historically informative experience.
But I think what stays in my memory the most is the amount of light these rooms get – a lot of movies with castles portray them as dark and smoky, with little natural light. Granted, this was summer, full sunlight, and nary a smoky torch to be found. In any case, have a look and bask in the light and craftsmanship of the new Bauska castle:
Courtyard, angle 1 – the brick towers in the background are the remnants of the old castle, saving that for part 2.
©rq, all rights reserved.
These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.
I have mentioned comedy in particular, but today I would like to talk a bit about visual arts – painting and sculpting.
The regime did recognize that art is an important communicating medium, and there was great use of art for propaganda. The statues to Lenin and Stalin were everywhere, although statues of Stalin were again all removed at my time of life with the regime pretending it never happened.
But putting that aside, was there another art, of the non-propaganda kind? Was there art the artists created themselves? There was, to a degree.
What was considered an acceptable art by the regime was somewhat constrained. In fact, the regime had one thing in common with fascists – a great dislike of abstract art. so the artists were encouraged to pursue a style of “socialist realism” which constrained the expression to depictions of real objects as realistically and precisely as given medium allows. So any artist who wanted to get paid for their work – that is, who wanted to get commissions from the state – had to at least do some of their work in this style. And as a consequence most of the art presented to people was in this style.
This fact does to this day warp the perceptions of many people here, me included. I used to be passably good at drawing and sculpting, but I have always struggled with achieving the nearly photograph-like precision we were told is a sign of a good artist. I think it might be a contributing factor to me never developing my own style and being so lousy at making abstractions and simplifications of human and animal forms. And to this day a lot of abstract art simply does not speak to me, because I was only exposed to most it fairly late in my life. What saved me somewhat was early exposure to cave art from Altamira, which has taught me that not everything has to be pin-point precise for a picture to be pretty and recognizable.
Perhaps art appreciation is in this regard like language – it is best and easiest taught as a child, the later you come to it, the more difficult it becomes.
But do not think that the constraints prevented artists from making great art – they did not. There were great pieces of art produced, some of the war memorials for example are very expressive and convey their meaning pretty well. But in retrospect I think that one of the worst things a regime can do to its populace is to try to regulate artist’s expressions, because that inevitably leads to blinkered and short-sighted populace.
I found this fossilized tooth in my yard several years ago and I’ve been curious about just what kind of tooth it is ever since. It’s big, about 4 cm x 2.5 cm x 2 cm and it looks to be a tearing or biting tooth. If it were human I’d say it looks like an eye tooth. The bottom edge has been worn down to the dentin and the top end has no attached bone. It’s possible that it was buried in my yard, but it’s more likely that it arrived with a load of rock gravel that we ordered in. I have no idea where that rock originated so I can offer no real clues about its provenance. I know it’s difficult with only a few photographs, but I’m hoping someone out there can tell me a bit more about it.
Mystery fossil side view, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Mystery fossil root end, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Mystery Fossil biting end. ©voyager, all rights reserved
Shad of the YouTube channel Shadiversity is a bit peculiar fellow. His performance is a bit over the top, but that is his selling point and it has an entertainment value. He has some old-fashioned notions about gender, but that is sadly to be expected, because not only is he male, he is also a practicing mormon. Thus being another proof of the to me totally baffling fact that evidently intelligent and well-educated people can believe the most ridiculous, silly and multiple-times over falsified notions if those notions are under the guise of “religion”.
However his videos on medieval castles are very informative, educational and fun to watch, so I can recommend those with clear conscience.
* I wonder if I should apologize for once again bringing up the rather weighty topic of death – late autumn and early winter seems to be a pensive time, and the dark nights and misty mornings are ideal for darkly wandering thoughts. Also, this season, until the solstice, is traditionally known as veļu laiks – “the time of spirits”, where the souls of dead ancestors are, for a while, released back into the world, to tread through the fog on familiar paths, and be welcomed into the household. In olden times, extra place settings would be set out, and foods left by the door to feed the hungry ghosts. This is not to say that there are no celebrations – there is at least one more harvest festival coming up soon, and the dark season is also rife with mummers and random visits in costume to one’s nearest neighbours. But one must also be wary out on the roads, especially after nightfall, so be kind to your ancestors and remember them well (the ones who deserve it, at least). In any case, the point of this ramble is that I feel affected and the lack of sunlight is very conducive to not only depressing thoughts, but also existential themes. Not everyone has to follow me, though. I promise I won’t haunt you about it.
I could not decide between multiple videos, as usual, and last-minute decision fell on this one. It is a nice piece of engineering and the video is reasonably short and packed with interesting information.
It might also be Halloween appropriate? I have no clue, since I originate from and live in a country with no Halloween tradition whatsoever and honestly I do not understand what Halloween is supposed to be about at all. But I read something about murderers and monsters the other day, so maybe an (alleged) assasin’s weapon might fit in.
I have a day off and I planned to do some knife-work, but I have to pass on that since I am still not well.
Since the talk recently was about the “human-knife interface” I think this video is fitting. Matt Easton talks a bit about the handles of Japanese swords.