#about a WW march and lost my mind.

[cyarskj1899]

Goddam Black Women just wanna be left alone 👁️👁️

LET IT BE KNOWN

And heavy on the word F*** on those bracelets!

[parkers-gal]

i was watching justice league yesterday and just thought how amazing it would be to see ww! reader... maybe she helping the avengers in a scene like the one in london or save some of them with the shield or the lasso of truth or something like that, they are soooo impressed and peter falls in love instantly, but is insecure because doesn’t feel enough for a goddess (idk if you write for DC characters, but I would love to see you write something like this)

how did i not realize this was in my inbox??? hello this is so cute pls. 

okay major fun fact about me, tho: i used to be a REALLY big DC fan before i got into marvel… my flash obsession bye (but i got into marvel bc of DC so ty<3)

let’s pretend all the avengers were in this first movie <3 also forgive me bc i haven’t seen WW84 (also didnt watch the link until after i wrote this so sorry :( but it still works i hope??)

wc | 1.4k (sorry)

—

When you first came to London, it was just for a small case regarding spilled secrets between private spies and assassins. Now, though, you’re quite aware of the fact that the Avengers have another fight to finish.

You get the notification that something is going wrong at the art museum a few blocks away. Suiting up, you make your way over to the scene, but soon discover that the man from the news headlines — Loki, god of mischief — is currently fighting Captain American and IronMan.

You curse under your breath but try to find a way to enter the situation without making your arrival too public. You circle around a few times, observing the way Loki works and fights. You realize he’s duplicating just to try and keep a few hostages for publicity.

Spider-man and Black Widow are both helping citizens escape, allowing the other two Avengers to do all the heavy work. Tony uses some blasters from the suit to momentarily slow Loki, but he ends up getting angrier and throwing in a couple hits and blasts. Tony is thrown back, giving Cap the opportunity to throw in his own punches.

From your peripheral vision, you can see Clint, who’s flying the quinjet, telling Vision and Wanda to step out and help Spider-man.

Your attention is drawn back to Loki when Captain America throws the shield at him. Tony is on the floor, and Loki easily bounces the shield in another direction, unattainable to Cap.

Without hesitation, you catch the shield, the noise announcing your arrival. All eyes turn to you, powerful and ready to fight.

With all your might, you throw the vibranium weapon back to Captain America, who catches it in shock. You’re running towards Loki while doing this all, throwing in a couple punches before you're thrown backward. You flip, landing in an impressive position.

Weighing the possibilities, you decide to whip out the lasso. Nobody seems to be assisting you, so you decide to do your worst. Loki is taken by surprise; you’re slinging your rope until the lasso curls around his body and traps him against himself, forcing him to drop the scepter and answer any question thrown at him. The rope glows a golden hue, attracting the eyes of several other superheroes. They’re curious, and as you speak to them, they begin to understand.

You see movement stop as the scepter hits the floor with a clink. Loki struggles, rasping out a few staggered breaths and grunts. You need to gain leverage, so you wrap it around him once more before tightening your drip on the rope.

“Did she just-” “Kid, go get the scepter,” Stark shuts up Spider-man, giving orders. Hesitantly, he makes his way over to Loki, who’s surrounded by the golden glow of your lasso. He snatches the scepter, and Loki grunts, straining against the rope while Spider-man brings the weapon over to Tony.

“Do you know who that is?” Steve whispers to Tony and he shakes his head.

“I thought she was yours,” he whispers back. “Didn’t she fight in the war with you?”

“Not with me, but she fought… I think?”

“Who sent you?” You tighten the rope against him when he attempts to smile coily.

“Who wants to know?”

“Stand down,” Tony tells him, hand still pointed out.

“I have,” he smirks.

“Then why’re you still fighting my lasso?” You hold back a chuckle at his response, knowing he’s going to blurt some form of the truth.

“Because I need more time for a diversion.”

“Diversion? Tony, what’s he talking about?” Cap walks forward nervously.

Your grip on the rope tightens again and Loki’s face grows increasingly frustrated.

“New York,” he spits out. “What are you doing to me?!” He yells at you, and all at once, he yanks on the rope, pulling your forward and forcing you on to the floor. You’ve lost grip on the rope, and as you stand up, Loki is marching towards you with ready fists.

You bring your wrists together, in a haste to stop him. It’s so fast that nobody reacts, just merely watching you in your nature. The power from your wrists blasts Loki backwards, sending him flying towards the cement and eventually knocking him out.

You exhale, walking over to your rope, picking it up and reattaching it back to your waist. Wanda and Vision work on handcuffing the unconscious god, carrying him to the quinjet. The rest of the Avengers make their way over to you.

“Who are you?” Cap speaks first.

“Wonder Woman,” You state plainly, glancing from him to Tony to the boy in red spandex and then to Wanda, who’s approaching with Vision.

“Woah, so that’s the lasso…”

“Of truth,” you finish, smiling at the boy who knows of you. “Yeah.”

“Spider-man,” he introduces with a timid wave. “You were really great tonight.”

“Yeah, you were,” Tony agrees. “Would you mind coming with us to New York?”

“Is this about the PI assassin in east London?” You ask, uncuffing the metal from your wrists while stepping into the jet.

“You can just take that off?” Peter gasps.

“No, but you can tell me about that mission later,” Tony agrees. He unsuits, as do the rest of them. Cap removes his mask and places his shield in its rightful place. Tony loses the metal armor, and you watch as Spider-man removes the spandex mask (with Tony’s permission), revealing a messy mop of brown curls and a shy, boyish smile.

“I’m Peter,” he offers a handshake this time.

“Y/N,” you reply, shaking his hand. “Are you new here?”

He ponders the question, “Mr. Stark recruited me six months ago. I’m still in high school.”

You nod, “Me too.”

His eyes go wide, “You’re still in high school? And you get to do all this superhero work?”

“I have enhanced abilities so learning is kinda… easy?”

He nods in understanding. “I’m sure Mr. Stark will love that.”

“Kid, leave the girl alone.”

“Actually, i’m not a girl,” you assure him. “I’m from Themyscira, an island of the Amazon, home to the goddess warriors. I’m a descendent of the royal and the gods.” You pause to chuckle at the bewildered faces of the Avengers. “I’m a demigod, and a princess.”

Clint laughs, smacking Peter’s back shoulder. “Good luck getting that one, kid.”

Peter rolls his eyes but takes a seat as the quinjet takes off. He receives a few more teasing remarks, but you try to pay no mind to them. You notice, though, he’s chosen the seat that offers no opening for you, so you take a seat in the corner beside Wanda, striking up a conversation with the telekinesis.

You land in New York in less than an hour, and as you follow the group into the building, you run up to Peter.

“Hey, y’know, just because I’m a demigod doesn’t mean I’m not normal.”

“Yeah, but you’re…” There’s a hopeful glint in his eyes despite his tone being a little disappointed. “A princess.”

“And you’re Spider-man.”

“And you’re Wonder Woman, who’s a princess and a demigod.”

You chuckle, “Yeah, but you’re pretty cute.”

He goes beat red at the compliment, and the two of you continue the conversation into the facility.

Tony calls for you, and you realize you’ll have to leave Peter for a little while. Before you run off, though, you whisper something only he can hear.

“You’d be a prince, y’know.”

He goes red again, scratching his neck while he watches you run off in Tony’s direction.

[angesaurus]

Weight loss stuff so keep on scrolling if this is not your cup of tea!

I didn’t talk about it but I’ve been doing ww since March and it was working really well and I lost 10lbs but I’ve been stuck on the same 2lb range for a month now. I have also continued with yoga everyday and I use the treadmill and this week I did start using my lil baby dumbbells. I know my body needs to get used to that lil but of strength training too. I really wanted to get to my pre-Cecilia weight by our trip but I don’t know if that will happen considering it’s less than a month away now. I’m disappointed. I really have been trying since March. I haven’t been perfect but I have been consistent (which is why I finally saw real weight loss of 10 lbs). It got me to consistently start eating fruits again (which I missed, what a sad life to not eat fruit) and add more veggies. But it feels soooooo restricting.

We try to do taco night once a week. We took a break but got back into it last week. I was trying to be “good” and stick to my plan! And I did! I only used 1/2 of an avocado and two low carb wraps. I measure out all my portions, even counted the chips. But I was HUNGRY after. And it made me feel hungry the next day. So last night I tried not to think about points. I ate a whole avocado, used tacos from the kit (and had 3 - they were pretty small! But I used ground turkey instead of beef (which Gavin HATED 😂 nothing gets past that kid), plus chips. I felt great after? Not hungry. It used up 80000 points bc ww hates avocados. But mentally it made such a difference. And I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t feel a need to snack. We ate popcorn bc we watched a movie and that was it (and is normal).

Ugh. I have been consistent for 3 months. Drinking water, exercising, being so mindful of portions and eating my fruits and veggies. And it’s like, what more do I need to do? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Anyway yeah, that’s where I’m at. I am considering cutting off the ww and maybe just counting calories? Should I stay with ww? Can I cut off a limb? That might help (kidding 😂)

[jarienn972]

I don't usually post a lot of personal stuff but tonight, I felt as though I needed to share a little bit, if for nothing else than my own sanity. I'm still actively working on both of my WIP stories and I still plan on posting my story for the CS Movie Marathon, even though the stresses of the past few weeks caused me to miss my posting date. I've had so much on my mind that has been overwhelming me that I let myself get withdrawn into depression and I'm not proud of that.

For a little bit of background, two years ago today, my mom passed away after a short battle with brain cancer. She'd entered the hospital for a biopsy a week after her 73rd birthday (which also happened to be 2 days before my birthday). She spent the next few weeks bouncing between the hospital and rehab centers until she deteriorated so far that my brother and I moved her to hospice. She passed 2 days later.

Fast forward to this shit show of a year. My husband lost his job on March 19th and I was furloughed from mine on April 18th. I haven't been unemployed this long since I voluntarily took a few years away from the workforce when my kids were little so I've had way too much time to dwell on all of the negativity. And as what would have been my mom's 75th birthday approached, I found the depression and negative emotions getting stronger and I couldn't force myself to do anything I enjoyed. I didn't want to read or write. I just sat and watched hours of endless cartoons with my kids or reruns of cops shows trying to drown out the emptiness.

Two weeks ago, we drove out to Texas where my brother thought he might be able to help my husband find a job. The job didn't pan out but while we were there, we all went to visit the National Museum of the Pacific War and Admiral Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg, TX. I wasn't sure how my 11 year old daughter would react to the museum. She loves Japanese culture, food, music and especially Anime so seeing the Japanese in the scope of war was a little jarring, especially since she hasn't yet studied much about WW II.

She surprised me in how invested she was, learning about the ripple effects of a decision and how sometimes just pure, dumb luck can effect an outcome. She saw me tear up a few times but the most emotional moment came when we reached the last display area where there was a US flag that had been pieced together by POWs. My daughter was amazed at how they'd kept it hidden until they were liberated nearly a month after the surrender but she didn't catch the tiny detail I had seen on the caption. The POW camp was liberated on 9/7/1945 - the day my mom was born.

Such a tiny, insignificant detail to nearly every other visitor (although I know my brother caught it too) but it brought back that raw sense of loss - which brings us back to today. As we remember her, we have another looming cloud hovering over us as our job future looks bleak. I was lucky enough not to be one of the tens of thousands of people laid off but an indefinite furlough doesn't help. More negativity descending and I'm trying my best to fight through all of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing this to garner anyone's pity and I may end up deleting it later. I needed to do this for me - to put the explanation in words for myself and maybe to let others who don't always write about their feelings know they're not alone. I will eventually get my head together as I get past the spectre of today's unfortunate anniversary and I will finish the fics I've started.

Thanks for listening to my personal Ted talk here. 💚

[tidustargaryen]

Honestly, do you think Jon was right to kill Thorne, Olly? Jon's fans will answer yes, and that's perfectly normal. They kill your favorite character, for reasons that make no sense to you being given that Jon did the right thing. Yes he was right to save the Freefolk, because we know what's behind the wall, we know what happens when the Night King kills Freefolk'people.

The question is: Do Thorne and Co. know it? Most do not believe in the WW, and it's totally normal, if I come to tell you that I saw the Night King in my garden will you believe me? Others know that there are of course strange things beyond the wall, others know that the WW exist but are not totally convinced of the threat until they see it in front of them, like Dany, like the Starks during the battle of Winterfell.

For them, Jon let pass savages, who will kill, plundering and rape the people of Westeros. The women of their families, the children, like Olly who saw his family being killed and then devouring.

You think Olly was wrong to kill Jon? After what he saw? After he witnessed the horrors made by Freefolk without knowing the threat or believing the existence of the WW?

For these traitors, because yes, they still betrayed their commanders, but they had circumstances to do so, but for them, Jon allowed the main enemy, against whom Night's Watch was created, according to what they believe, to pass the wall, to enter the lands of the kingdom to perpetuate the murders, the rapes and the pillages and they are right to believe it, being given that when Tormund and Ygritte have to pass the wall, they have destroyed at least one village.

It's the same for Jaime, he's killing the Mad King, he betrayed his oath, his king, but for good reason, because the Mad King was going to explode the city. He is still an Oathbreaker, but he did what was right for him, for us too. But not for others, for others, he was a Kingslayer, a man without honor.

Jon did what was right for him, for us, just as Thorne and Co. did what was right in their eyes.

It's the same for Mirri Maz Duur, I hate what she's actually doing because she did it against my favorite character, because of her, Dany is cursed, she lost her husband and child.

But, I know that she has also done what is right for her, her people have always suffered Dothraki violence, murder, looting, rape, slavery. She just wanted to save her people, they are very faithful, and the stallion who mount the world was a great danger to them.

I'm still pro Dany but I still know that Mirri had her reasons, reasons that make no sense for Dany, but Mirri did what was right for her people.

Dany, in burning her, did what is right for her betrayal, her husband and child'deaths.

As GRRM said, not everything is white or black, and what seems right to you may not be in someone else's eyes.

And it's the same for Jon and Dany.

That's why i write this. You say: The fans of Dany / Jonerys show their true colors, they do not like Jon but I return you this sentence ...

Jon / Jonerys fans, do you really like Dany? Or is she just a beautiful woman that Jon needs to empty his balls?

It's the same problem, from your point of view you're right, you think it's just what Jon did, I think it's not.

Jon did to Dany what Thorne and Co. did to him. He hated what his brothers did to him... but he did that to a woman he pretend to love ? (Yeah fuck you D&D or George if he make the same ending for Jonerys)

As I explained: Thorne and co did what they did because from their point of view, Jon had betrayed Night's Watch, they wanted to punish him and then I guess they would have done what was necessary to the Freefolk goes back beyond the wall.

Jon betrayed Dany because he wanted to save his family, yes he does not approve what she did to KL, but that's when Tyrion raised the threat against his sisters (especially Sansa because she revealing Jon's kinship, which led to Varys' assassination attempt on Dany) that Jon reconsidered the murder.

Was it fair? It's up to everyone. I'm sure for Dany, including her followers, it's Jon the traitor, Jon is wrong. For those who are on the side of Jon, he made the right choice.

Should he kill her? I think not. Do you seriously think he was not able to stop her without killing her? He could imprison her, he made the worst choice. It was not only his queen, it was his aunt, it was his lover. You tell me seriously that he had only one choice, and that was to kill her?

Jon made the wrong choice, the worst choice. And that's why people who love Dany, even if Dany is not necessarily their favorite character, can love Dany and favor Jon or another character, defending her. The people that Dany kill, those are the same people who died all along the show. Extras, people without names. I have never seen anyone complain about lost innocent lives. Do you think that the soldiers who died during the Battle of Blackwater with the Wildfire, Tyrion's plan, deserve it? 

They were soldiers, certainly, but some, or a lot, have no choice, they have to fight for their Lords, otherwise they are executed. They were innocent just like the people of KL. But I do not see anyone insulting Tyrion.

And this is one of many examples, it is always Dany who is wrongly accusing for her choices. You honestly think that if Tywin, Stannis, Cersei and even Jon, if they had dragons, you think they would not use them? Jon would certainly use them to take over Winterfell. And no one would be sorry. Everyone would have been happy. Because it was revenge. It was good to kill the Boltons, the Lannisters, the Freys.

But not the slavers? You think that's what slavers do is good ? They crucified 163 children .... children .... and people cry because these same slavers found themselves in turn crucify?

When Arya makes cooking recipes with humans, is that right?

That a father, despite all the horrors he has been able to do, deserves to eat his own children?

Yes ? So slavers also deserve to be crucified as they crucified the children.

But Dany was always blaming for the justice she has done. Why ? Because she is a woman? Because she's not a Stark? And that she is the daughter of the Mad King? Because a woman should not have so much power?

Daenerys did not deserve to die, otherwise, almost all the characters in the show deserve it.

She did not deserve to die from the hands of the man she loves, during a kiss, after promising her help to the North, she made the right choice, but she did not have to help .... If she had refused to help Jon, she would have been criticizing for being selfish, thinking only of the Iron Throne. But she was also criticizing for helping, no matter what she did, during that season she was losing.

I hate this season because the authors did everything to make people hate Daenerys, they wanted to force the viewer's mind by completely forgetting the logic of their story. The only goal, to make believe that Daenerys is crazy and evil.

I am proud to say that, for my part, they have not succeeded. They will not have succeeded in forcing my mind to think that Daenerys deserved this fate, after the crappy life she had, after the flight to the free cities, the famine, the violence of her brother, the rape, the slavery, the scorn of men, and all that she had to endure, she did not deserve to be killed by the man she loves.

Yes I am angry against Jon, and it is a human reaction, to kill this woman for a kiss while he had no choice! He did what Thorne and Co. did to him, he hated being betrayed for passing the Freefolk south of the wall, he hated the betrayal of his brothers, and he did the same thing to Dany?

But Dany deserves it for what she did?

I don’t care, I don’t care about the people of KL, the same people who applauded the death of Ned Stark, who licked the feet of the Lannisters, who spit on Yara, applauded Euron, who have, for all the trouble she did, spit and insult Cersei during the march of shame, she made bad choices to protect her family, but I think no one deserves to be humiliated in public as she was. Nobody.

Yes, of course, from my personal point of view, I will love that Dany does not kill innocent people, but she did not suffer enough? The rejection of people when she comes to help the North, she lost a dragon to help Jon, if she had let him die beyond the wall, you'd be happy? No. If she had let him die during the battle at Winterfell would you be happy? No. Dany save Jon, and what did he do? He rejected her, because she’s his aunt ? The incest in medieval times shocked anyone ... except between parents / children, brothers / sisters (Except in Targaryens family), and among the Targaryens and even among the Starks it is common, the grandparents of Jon were cousins ​​and on the side of the Targs, brothers and sisters .... Moreover, he slept with Dany while he knew that she was descended from a family where they were almost all incestuous, her parents are brother and sister. Sorry but I do not sleep with a guy whose whole family tree is incestuous, it repels me, because incest is wrong and disgusting in modern time, but not in medieval era. Jon did not mind, because in medieval times, for people it was normal. As normal as it is abnormal for us now. But once he knows that Dany is his aunt he is disgusted? It does not make sense.

But hey, let's say it's normal to be disgusted ...

This does not prevent him from going to see Dany, to comfort her, to defend her against the ingratitude of the Starks and the North, to console her, to tell her that he is sorry for the death of Missandei, Rhaegal, the dragon he was riding ... To be simply a support for her, not just a loyal subject who behaves like a robot ... He could have stopped her before she does that when she says "Let it be fear" ... It's still a big clue to what she's going to do: reign in fear. So do bad things, and he does not do anything to stop her? While later he does not hesitate to kill her?

It's not just the murder of Dany, it's all this series of events, all this bashing on her character that is disgusting, and while we were waiting for comfort in the scenes of Jonerys, we have that ? Jon rejected her? Jon killed her? 

We have the right to be angry, angry towards D & D, towards Varys, Tyrion, Sansa, the North the Starks and Jon.

But you do not understand that. Jon live north of the wall, time will heal his wounds, he may find another woman, will have children, since the bastard does not count with Freefolk, he will finally be happy, with friends, Ghost. Yes he is not King, so what? You think that's what he wanted? ShowJon? No, he would have been unhappy.

I loved Jonerys, I love Jon's story, he's a hero, I'm proud of what he did for Freefolk, because fuck xenophobia, but I can not forgive what he did to Dany. She is my favorite character, far ahead of everyone else, and I hate all those who have hurt her during this season, almost everyone except the dead on her side, even Drogon did not avenge her mother, even the Dothraki, while it is their customs to avenge their Khal / Khaleesi, even the Unsullied don’t. They jailed Jon, why Jon did not imprison Dany, why he did not give her a more dignified death than kill her during a kiss, by surprise, seriously, Jon show more respect during the execution of Thorne and Co., allowing them the last words, he gives them more honor than he gives to Dany ...

It is unfair !

But frankly, what if it was Jon? Frankly, if Jon had lost his family, Ghost, if his lover had rejected him, if he had lost everything, if he was totally alone, if this whole season was not a bashing of Dany but Jon and that Dany ended up killing him coldly during a kiss, would not you hate Dany?

[architectuul]

Three Hours of Kiev’s Modernism

With only three hours to spare, Evan Panagopoulos rushed through Kiev’s complex Socialist Modernist architecture and 20th century history last winter. This is the account of his brief emotional journey in the Ukrainian capital.    

The former Institute of Scientific, Technical and Economic Information in Kiev.

As the chilling wind numbed my face on that cold February morning, I accepted that Kiev was no small town by any measure. I found it to be a gritty and often overwhelming modern metropolis that would keep challenging me. There’s nothing more attractive than a city full of opportunities to push boundaries and ask questions.

The ghostly ferris wheel in Pripyat.

Dwellers abandoned the buildings in Pripyat.

It made perfect sense to invest most of my winter’s daylight inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, that was the plan. The overarching purpose of my trip to the Ukraine was to experience the abandoned magnificence of Pripyat. My visit to the irradiated ghost town was a humbling experience: it’s a testament to man’s occasional failure to command nature.

The abandoned coach station in Pripyat.

But Kiev, which I’d mostly seen through fogged car windows and the sine-qua-non short stroll down the nearest pub, hadn’t ceased beckoning to me from the background. I thought that I’d never forgive myself if I’d miss out on an opportunity to record its extraordinary architecture, and perhaps get a cursory glimpse of its complex past and present along the way.

A vacant apartment block in Pripyat.

I have neither time nor energy left at the point where I commit to rush through Kiev. I’d already spent an incredible 4 days in the Exclusion Zone, ploughing through deep, knee high snow and dodging radiation hot spots. I’d endured freezing temperatures, scaled rusty Soviet radars, and explored crumbling factories and high rises. My body had been screaming for a rest on the long way back to Kiev, but I wasn’t prepared to make an excuse yet: despite having to catch an early afternoon flight next day, I remained determined to see as much of Kiev as I could squeeze into what little time I had left.

It’s 06.30 in the morning as I venture outside. The fog is thick, the temperature is sub-zero, my body is aching, and as the cold wind hits me, I’m questioning my sanity. A few nights before, I found myself trapped for over an hour inside a cab, stuck in one of Kiev’s frequent gridlocks: a contingent of angry young men in military fatigues, brandishing torches and black flags had blocked the entire downtown, marching the streets in protest. Helplessly stuck in traffic, I had plenty of time to ponder the many complexities of Kiev: An entire city unable to commute. An entire nation unable to move on. Stuck in a post-Soviet impasse, the enduring clash between Ukraine’s European aspirations and its many dependencies with Russia has had the country grinding to a halt. Caught in the political crossfire of a simmering state of war, many Ukrainians choose to escape via the obvious side streets: call it ultra-nationalism, call it even worse. But who but the luckiest ever got home faster by venturing into the side streets in a standstill? One of us decides to get out of the taxi and walk. He’ll probably make it home before the rest of us. The smart, decisive minority – it’s always there. I’m hoping there’s one for Ukraine too. 

The hotel Salyut was built in 1984 by the late Avram Miletsky, the most celebrated son of Kyiv when it comes to Socialist Modernist architecture.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to see everything I wanted, so starting location matters. I was lucky to have been repairing at the Hotel Salyut the night before, since it is an agreeable Socialist Modernist marvel, and a well-regarded landmark. It was built in 1984 by the late Avram Miletsky, the most celebrated son of Kyiv when it comes to Socialist Modernist architecture, and it’s incredibly easy to scratch that itch by simply staying the night there. I am standing outside it now, the streets are empty, and it’s dark, foggy and bitterly cold. But it’s definitely worth it: there’s not a living soul around, and here I am, enjoying an exclusive, unobstructed view of Salyut’s modernist majesty as my reward. As it is often the case with visionary architecture, the original, unrealized design was supposed to be a sky scraping three times taller, but funding problems and political bickering meant that the resulting building eventually fell short of Miletsky’s original ambition.

The outdoor terrace of the Palace of Pioneers was destroyed in 2000. | Photo via © Edvard Bilsky

Next to the hotel, Avram Miletsky created together with Edward Bilsky the Palace of Pioneers, another Socialist Modernist gem. The Palace was a place for learning and creative pastime, and consequently also a center for the indoctrination of Soviet youth to communist ideals. These ideals had been transliterated to its internal and external architectural language, through Socialist Realist murals, and Futurist spaces and flourishes.

Today, the Palace is retaining this educational character as Kiev’s Palace of Children and Youth. But despite the sensibility of utilizing the space according to its original function, an unfortunate clash with Ukraine’s new character persists. I’ve heard that the government is determined to further alter its utilization, and is seeking to turn it into a business or conference center. This kind of forcible interrupt with the past is a common manifestation of the post-Soviet conundrum of Eastern European democracies. Buildings perceived as carrying a stigma are being alienated, rather than given a chance to assimilate. Could they ever commit to enhance architectural function and memory in a constructive way, rather than seeking to disrupt it?

I have to make the hard choice to move on and postpone the Palace visit for another time, not least because its daybreak, and it’ll be another 2 hours before it even opens. But just across the road from Salyut and the former Palace of Pioneers, one can find the entrance to the Memorial Park of Eternal Glory, dedicated to the victory over the Nazis and built during the late 1950’s, although a memorial space existed here since 1894. Its imposing 26 m obelisk is approached through a path lined with the graves of 34 Heroes of the Soviet Union. The Eternal Flame honoring the Unknown Soldier at the base of the obelisk was reportedly lit at its inauguration in 1957 with light brought in from the Eternal Flame at the Mamaev Kurgan Monument in Stalingrad.

Commanding attention : The Memorial of Eternal Glory

The adoptive Soviet narrative of the monument has so far eluded the effects of Ukraine’s strict decommunization laws, since all WW II related monuments fall short of its scope. It is after all, a monument commemorating the struggle of Ukrainians against invaders, but it’s also very much a Red Army memorial. Therefore, it’s a space that divides public opinion in Kiev. But it's also a monument that commands attention, and perhaps can be received in a less politicized way: military monuments can be about how men die, and not necessarily about why.

The Memorial Park has been expanded beyond the Eternal Glory obelisk to include the Monument to the Great Famine known as the Holodomor. It is a result of misguided Soviet economic policies of the time. It resulted to a catastrophic loss of life: millions of Ukrainians starved to death, marking one of the darkest pages in the history of the country. It is a desperate, haunting space, heavy with symbolism.

The Candle of Memory at the Holodomor Monument

This is an overwhelming location. This is where I feel compelled to ask why. For me, memorials to men, women and children as victims of ideology evoke the most powerful of emotions. I see these as spaces enabling us to pass judgement, and I find it meaningful to erect this counter-memorial to those who suffered as a result of Soviet callousness, so close to another seen to exalt Soviet military prowess. It is such contrast that stimulates thought and provides us with critical responses to events through a visual narrative. In my mind this approach is superior to re-purposing monuments, and definitely better than destroying these while attempting to relate a historic account.

But the clock is ticking, and I have to keep pushing on towards the prize asset: it’s the astonishing Motherland monument. This is surely the pièce de résistance when it comes to monumental architecture in Kiev. But between the Holodomor monument and the Mother, one encounters the sprawling religious complex of Pechersk Lavra, with its golden domed cathedrals and monasteries. An important piece of advice here: if you’re aiming to get straight to the Motherland Monument, don’t go through the Lavra. Trying to reach her as the crow flies is just the wrong way to go, as I had already found on my first day in Kiev.

And speaking of crows, there are literally thousands of them perching on the trees surrounding the Lavra. Their sight is mesmerising, although I should have listened to their ominous cawing and changed direction earlier. Instead, I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to grind my way through the monasteries without result. The many nooks and crannies, steep slopes and dead ends had me hopelessly lost, stuck in a cemetery next to its wall without a visible through exit to the Mother. 

I was better prepared on that Sunday morning, and quickly powered my way past the churches, toward the entrance to the War Museum. Immediately past the Lavra, the open spaces on either side of the grand pathway toward its main entrance are lined with all sorts of equipment: tanks, warplanes, artillery, even a mobile ICBM launcher. It hurts me to have to rush past this uniquely interesting collection of materiel in a hurry, but I have to stick to my commitment, I am now aware that over an hour has already flown by.

Tanks in the courtyard of the War Museum

But the curse of the crows had not worn out yet. Kiev can become extremely foggy, especially in the early hours of the morning. It makes for intense atmosphere and great photography, but it also means that visibility is extremely low. You might have guessed it already: despite my best efforts, I found the Mother of Ukraine shrouded in thick fog. So thick, that not even the base of the statue was visible from the entrance of the museum she’s standing atop. All I could make was the blurry outline of her monumental proportions as she remained obscured into the cold, milky atmosphere. Taking into account my previous failed attempt, this was the second time we have been prevented from acquaintance. It’s was exasperating.

Despite my disappointment over this part-failed interaction, not everything is lost. The cavernous main entrance to the War Museum is a satisfying combination of well poured concrete and Socialist Realist reliefs portraying the Red Army in combat. The piece closest to the museum stands out: an evocative statue of troops crossing the Dnieper to liberate Kiev in 1943. The lingering fog adds volumes to the heroic character of this ensemble, bringing it to life: there’s already an inherent fluidity in the sculpture, and looking at it through the blur, the bodies, limbs and firearms of the soldiers appear to be in motion, rendered in epic proportion. It is a visceral scene, engaging the viewer at a primal level. It’s so alive, to the point it emanates presence, and therefore its very existence elicits disapproval among locals. The daily encounter with powerful Soviet art still stimulates a fight or flight response to the trauma, or danger it can be considered to represent for Ukrainians today.

Crossing the Dnieper; an evocative socialist realist monument.

My thoughts are arrested as I am gripped by frost, and time is running out. I hop on a taxi to rush towards my next stop. I find it hard to explain where I want to go to the taxi driver: He’s not aware of an Institute of Scientific and Technical Information, a flying saucer. It is a sign of the changing times: an impressively Modernist cultural centre overshadowed by a non-descript temple of consumerism in the collective short term memory of those who claim the knowledge of the city.

It was conceived by Florian Yuryev, a controversial painter, composer and architect. In the mid 1950’s he developed a new art theory revolving around the phenomenon of Synesthesia, in particular about the sensory perception of sound through colors. To that end, he created an experimental light and music orchestra, and imagined a suitable auditorium equipped with a system of light and sound transmission for the realisation of his art project. 

Kyiv’s Flying Saucer was an experimental space. | Photo © Alex Moore

I am not certain as to the point when the ensemble was named The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information, but rumour has it that the KGB sponsored its construction, allowing Yuryev to deploy his futuristic design. Could they see a potential military or intelligence application in his art project? It’s difficult to tell, although I like this theory. It is known that the auditorium was eventually used as the Institute’s cinema and lecture hall, which means that the original Synesthesia project might have expired, or maybe axed by the powers that be at some point. As the cranes of yet another shopping mall rise ominously behind it, the now boarded up Institute awaits its new fate. It said that it may be turned into one of the malls entrances, even demolished. It would be a harrowing fate for the site of such an ambitious and futuristic project.

A stream of early Sunday shoppers are crowding the mall already. They appear somewhat indifferent to the Flying Saucer, and more intent to the discount shopping opportunities on offer. I hardly have one hour left, and I feel like lamenting this impending loss. I hop on another taxi and make my way to the nearby Memory Park, inside Kiev’s main cemetery. It is yet another complex space, and the result of a precarious balance between the architect Avram Miletsky, and the artists Ada Rybachuk and Vladimir Melnichenko. Although Miletsky is usually credited with the photogenic Crematorium masterpiece atop the Balkova Hill, it was Rybachuk and Melnichenko who were involved in conceptualising the space as a landscaped Memory Park, including features like the Wall of Memory, a now defunct relief aiming to soothe mourners through the use of a visual art narrative. The Wall of Memory took almost 10 years to accomplish, but was concreted over in 1982 at the orders of the Communist Party leadership. I am not aware of the reasons, but can’t help thinking that this is a great excuse for today’s government to do their utmost to uncover it. I notice the massive head of a statue protruding through the concrete shroud: I’ve never hoped for cement to be so brittle as in the case of the Wall of Memory.

Death is only the beginning at the crematorium.

Cremation as a funerary solution was not a popular concept in post-war Ukraine. With memories of the horrific massacres at nearby Babi Yar still vivid, public opinion had been apprehensive towards the idea of creating a place for the ceremonial incineration of bodies in Kyiv. This must have been an emotional journey for Avram Miletsky too, a man of Jewish heritage. I can witness a tidal wave of this emotion in the flowing shapes of his Crematorium, built in the mid 70’s. It is a poignant building designed to provide visual succour, and I discover it to almost be like a gateway to another, better world. When seen contextually within the greater Memory Park and Wall of Memory concept, the entire ensemble functions as a space for healing and contemplation, something like a departure station to a mystical final destination. This reminds me that Miletsky, Rybachuk and Melnichenko were actually involved in the building of another modernist departure terminal before: the Kyiv Central Bus Station which is very close to the cemetery.

Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky at Sophia Square.

But it is with regret that I realise that I have ran out of time and I won’t be able to visit the Central Bus Terminal. My last stop is Kiev’s central Sophia Square, dominated by the historic Cathedral of Saint Sophia, and the statue of the Cossack Hetman (Chief) Bohdan Khmelnitsky from 1888. I take a few moments to think about the important context of this space. It is one of the oldest parts of Kiev, with significant connections to Ukrainian heritage and independence, not least the monument of Khmelnitsky, the creator of the first independent Ukrainian Cossack state, and for many the founding father of Ukraine. 

Despite its direct links with Ukrainian national identity, this is a statue whose existence had once been encouraged by the Czar of Russia, funded by Russian public subscription, and cast at a foundry in St.Petersburg. And despite its nationalist character, the statue seems to have survived Soviet times: Khmelnitsky had sponsored the eventual union of his Hetmanate with Imperial Russia, so that might have been an excuse for its preservation. Can similar excuses still be made in the course of preserving Kiev’s significant ex-Soviet heritage? I think there is space for that, and even offered some perspective on how this might happen. The fog becomes Kiev, but I have great expectations for much clearer skies next time I visit.

---

Text and photos (unless stated otherwise) by Evan Panagopoulos

Evan Panagopoulos is the urban storyteller behind the alternative travel site explorabilia and the Abandoned Sector blog. He’s an avid fan of brutalist and mid-century architecture, a knowledgeable WW2 and Victorian era enthusiast, and likes engaging with abandoned spaces and obscure history. He has a knack for rediscovering forgotten and unseen spaces hiding in plain sight, and expresses what he’s passionate about through writing, photography and interviewing people with a fascinating story to share.

[creideamhgradochas]

Thanks to the lovely @green-eyeddragonfanfiction for taking the time to answer these! Get to know more about her, go give her a follow and then show her some love!

These questions are from this list. You should check it out, there’s 50 questions all together and they’d be great to ask your favorite fic writer!

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fan-fiction?

Around 20, I think.

2) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

Reader inserts, definitely. I don’t mind throwing OC’s in there if I need to, though. I really like reading reader inserts. I think it’s really fun and engaging to imagine yourself in a story.

3) What is your favorite genre to write for?

Super Heroes! Although I really adore fantasy. If I were to write a book, it would be fantasy.

4) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

I’m… not sure. I s'pose it’d have to be One Mistake, simply because I think it’s worst piece.

5) When is your preferred time to write?

Whenever I actually find the motivation to write, which usually ends up being around 1-4 am. Aka I’m a Mess: Part 1

6) Where do you take your inspiration from?

Have you seen this man?

I suppose I also draw inspiration from comics, movies, TV shows, and video games where applicable.

7) In your Winter’s War Series, what’s your favorite scene that you wrote?

Out of the entire trilogy? Dang, that’s tough. Maybe in Ghosts of War when Bucky, Reader, and Nat are sitting together, sort of like some messed up little family? If not that, then it’s probably in Winter’s War when Reader, Steve, and Bucky reunite after the Azzano goes up in flames.

8) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

I don’t think I’ve ever received “criticism.” I’ve received very polite corrections of some of the German in WW from some native speakers, but that’s about it (I haven’t corrected any of it yet because I’m a lazy pos).

9) Who is your favorite character to write for? Why?

Bucky Barnes. Because he’s Bucky Barnes.

10) Who is your least favorite character to write for? Why?

I don’t really write characters that I don’t like. Even villains are fun to write, even if I hate them. If I had to choose, I guess it’d be Ashley Williams, from the Mass Effect series. I’ve only written her once, but she’s a damned space racist and I hate her, even if I didn’t hate writing her.

11) How did you come up with the title for the Winter’s War Series?

Winter’s War was named with the final scene of the first book in mind, as well as what reader and Bucky would be turned into for the second book; Winter Soldier(s), and the war that led them to being created. And because they “die” in the snow and ice. Ghosts of War because that’s what Reader and Bucky are in the second book. Ghosts. Shells of themselves. War torn and weary. Weapons. War of Attrition because, in the third book, they fight tooth and nail for every scrap of memory, personality, humanity, and they don’t always win. They’re going to hit a lot of roadblocks, mostly in the form of other humans, their past and their guilt, and sometimes each other.

12) How did you come up with the idea for Winter’s War Series?

I always liked the thought of a Bucky x Reader series where they both ended up as Winter Soldiers. Everything kind of grew from that. It follows very closely to the canon, so everything was trying to figure out the most believable way to weave a reader character into the existing story.

13) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

“Abandoned” is a strong word…. *stares guiltily at The Way I Do and Two of a Kind.* I just haven’t found the inspiration to write them recently, but I do plan on finishing them… eventually.

14) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

I plan on doing a second part for A Night to Remember when October rolls around. I also plan on adding more monster!Bucky’s to The Monster Series. My other series are complete or in progress and I don’t plan to add more to them (except to finish them in the case of the WIPs).

15) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

I don’t think so, no.

16) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

@angryschnauzer​ writes absolutely divine smut. I absolutely hate writing smut, so I wish I had her skills. There are others, but she’s the first one that came to mind. If I listed out every single author on here that I admire and why I admire them, we’d be here for another ten paragraphs!

17) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

I only started writing back in August. Anything written before that’s been lost to the Great Laptop Death of 2017. So, luckily, most of my writing is relatively recent and cringe-free.

18) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

I prefer listening to music (I love loud music and hate silence), but it’s distracting. My brain sometimes can’t process correctly so it tries to write the words I’m hearing instead of what I actually want to write. RIP me and my stupid brain. Aka I’m a Hot Mess: Part 2.

19) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Haha. No. I’m dead inside. I very rarely (if ever) cry when reading, too.

20) Which part of your Winter’s War Series was the hardest to write?

Oh god the entire Agents of SHIELD part of War of Attrition. That show is so dense and woven so intricately into the MCU that it was difficult as hell to figure out where to put the reader so that it’d be relevant and set up for the next parts of the story. I love that show, but it was so hard *sobbing*.

21) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

I almost never make outlines. WoA has been the exception because, as stated above, the content was way denser and I needed a clear path to be able to write them from point A to point B. That being said, I’ve only gotten as far as just after AoU. I haven’t decided what to do with Civil War or Infinity War yet.

22) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fan-fiction?

A) How Tumblr worked and B) that it’s a terrible, terrible site with horrible coding that, if it were a person, I would shoot as a mercy. Other than that, I read a lot of fics on here before I started posting some myself, which meant I had a pretty good idea of how to format it to be reader-friendly. Still had to google a lot of stuff, though.

23) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

Hmmm. I’m lucky in that I think I have a lot of readers/followers who leave lots of likes/comments/reblogs, but if I had to choose one? I think it’d be my recent Steve x Reader fic, Promise.

24) In contrast to 23 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

Oh god. Again, I’m grateful for every like, comment, and reblog I get, but By Chance. It’s by far my most popular one shot at a staggering 1,925 notes. I like the a/b/o verse, but I posted it pretty early on in my writing career and it skyrocketed which completely blindsided me. The same thing kinda happened with Dumped, Drunk, and Angry. I wrote a one shot in a day or two because inspiration hit me like a freight train, and somehow they’re both over a thousand notes now.

25) Are any of your characters based on real people?

I s'pose Reader is always based off of me, just a little bit? Every other character (except the rare OC) has an established personality, but if I made reader a completely faceless, bland being it wouldn’t be that fun to read, would it? So even though I’m always careful to never describe reader too much physically, s/he always ends up with at least some of my personality.

26) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

Oh goodness, I don’t know. My readers are amazingly kind people. I get a lot of asks and comments saying very, very nice things all the time. I don’t think I could choose just one if I tried..

27) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

I was told very politely I spelled some German words wrong/used the wrong German words.

28) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

I word vomit on my real life friend sometimes if I’m really stuck. It’s not always super useful because she doesn’t follow/watch any MCU stuff. Mostly, ideas just bounce around in my head until one sticks.

29) Do people know you write fan-fiction?

Yeah, most of my real life friends know. The friend I mentioned above writes fanfic, just not for the MCU. The rest are big nerds, too, so they don’t judge me.

30) What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

I loved writing Ran Shen and Mila Hitzvig for The Bitter March arc in Ghosts of War. As far as OC’s go, Dean from my series Time is probably my favorite.

31) What spurs you on during the writing process?

Interest in the source material has a lot to do with it. For example, I was writing easily 4k+ words a day when I was writing about the events of Captain America: the Winter Soldier. Other than that, I wait for the urge to hit me… which sometimes means I don’t write for a few days and sometimes a week depending on what’s happening in real life.

32) What’s your favorite trope to write?

So far? Soulmate. A/B/O was also fun and I’ll probably write it again at some point.

33) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

Oh jesus, no. I have the worst memory ever. I’m lucky if I can remember things a week ago, much less years ago.

34) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Uhh… Not smut, I know that much. But I have this bad habit where I can’t write fluff without some angst and vice versa? I don’t think I could deal with writing cotton candy fluff for the rest of my life, though. So…. angst, I guess? But I wouldn’t be happy about it.

[pengwenpoems]

Sock drawer

I remember now

After all that waking practice will allow

Not in the one beside my bed

Not in a place inside my head

Not In the dreams I had last night

I won’t remember much

I don’t remember much

I went to sleep just after the sun blew a kiss

I winked at nothing and took a piss

Feeling better about the same day

I keep having it no matter what I try to say

I remember now

After all that waking practice will

Allow

Not in the one beside my bed

Not in a place inside my head

Not in the dreams I had last night

I won’t remember much

I don’t remember much

Doctor says these should help me sleep

Keep the ghost away and slow my weep

Don’t know why the sun’s not up

I check the drawer before I fill a cup

Not in the one beside my bed

All the empty ones are there instead

I fly upstairs to wake sleeping heads

I ask them if they’ve seen my meds

Bothered bland and bleary eyed

Typical mom fail cause they’ve never lied

Not about that anyway

They don’t get mad anymore

I don’t know what to say

Back downstairs to tear the room apart

I don’t want one now

it’s just about the art

The paintings in my mind

The brushstrokes of a crucial kind

I need to remember or I’ll go blind

Where did they go

have I lost my mind

This is a sign a bright beacon of an oath

Clear the body free the spirit for us both

The dreams won’t stop

but I won’t remember them

The vine will break and the lights will dim

Doctor says these should help me sleep

She doesn’t know the fortune I keep

Not in the one beside my bed

Not in a place inside my head

Not in the dreams I had last night

I won’t remember much

I don’t remember much

Write it down, write it down in a book

Look again, crowned a crook

Stupid pill makes me forget

Where I put the tic tac regret

Thought it clever like a fox

So I remembered it’s with my socks

Moved them when I went to bed

Lesson learned as I did dread

Not in the one beside my bed

Not in a place inside my head

Not in the dreams I had last night

I won’t remember much

I don’t remember much

Trade you in and break the locks

I found you in my drawer of socks

ww. March 6, 2021

[theshadowofme]

Remembrance Day And Family History

Greetings all, I was planning on getting this out for Remembrance Day but was unable to as the internet is currently pooched in Antigua. It may have something to do with the 9 inches of rain that fell in the past 24 hours that was accompanied by some fantastic thunder and lightening. I decided however to delay till today until posting it.

Almost every year that I was in service, I marched in the Remembrance Day parades. I missed a few due to family and personal reasons, but it was important to me to pay homage to those that helped create our country and protect its freedom. I try to honour veterans all the time, but it seems in Canada, it is a losing battle to try and have the public recognize those that keep them safe and allow them to have the right to protest and do the things that they want.

Enough of the soapbox for now. What I really want to talk about today is the realization that PTSD has a bit of family history for me on both sides of the family. My grandfather on my dad’s side, Theodore “Ted” Crack, served in the New Zealand Second Expeditionary Force in World War 2. He was one of a very few Canadians to have fought in Africa.

The other family member that I can think of is Montague Moore, my great grandfather on my Mom’s side. Unfortunately I do not know much about him, as he was never really spoken of by my Grandpa other than to say, “The Major was a real bastard.” This was always somewhat shocking to me as I never really knew my Grandpa to carry that level of anger for anyone. From some of the stories that I heard from others, the Major was a real bastard and ran his house as if it was a military unit.

Where am I going with all of this. Well, I will start with Ted first. Ted at the age of 18 had the grand idea that he was going to run away from the family farm and go and see the world. He boarded a train and went to Vancouver, where he hopped on a ship and eventually ended up in New Zealand. At this point, WW II broke out and he was no longer able to continue on his journey as private citizens were not allowed to travel on ships anymore.

Ted worked a couple of jobs in New Zealand and eventually joined up with the military. Ted was shipped out to Africa and was captured in battle there. The Germans flew the POW’s to Italy and placed them in a camp in Northern Italy. At some point, the guards did not show up for shift change, and Ted made his escape, joining up with the Italian resistance. After Italy was repatriated, Ted made his way back to Canada and lived out his days in Chilliwack.

In stories from my father, Ted threw away all of his guns when he got home. Ted never hunted and my father had to teach himself all about hunting. The Ted that I remember was a very quiet and reserved man. When my brother and I were visiting, Ted would always go for a nap in the afternoon and us boys were always told that we had to be quiet around him as he didn’t like loud noises. Also, our favourite toys were not really allowed in the house. Of course, being boys, what were our favourite toys? GI Joe figures and all the wonderful accessories of guns, tanks, and other paraphernalia of war.

As a kid, being told to be quiet and to keep your favourite toys in a room and out of sight of Grandfather was a very weird and hard to understand thing. As an adult with PTSD, I can finally and horrifically understand why those were the rules in the house. On a lot of days with my own kids, when they are too loud or rambunctious, it sets me on edge and brings out hyper vigilance and cranks up the fight or flight responses.

As a parent with PTSD, it is hard to relate in a socially acceptable manner with your own kids. Some days, it is difficult or even impossible to muster the appropriate emotional responses to their successes and failures. To cheer them on when all you feel is numbness. To give them the attention they deserve when you are in the absolute pit of depression and anxiety.

As a child watching a parent go through this, I can not imagine what that is like. I can understand the confusion and unhappiness that child feels as I felt it with my Grandfather. The not being able to understand what is happening with your dad and why he has to be left alone today, when all the child wants is praise and a hug.

As for the Major, I don’t know if he ever went to war, but with him being a Major around the time of WW I, I can only assume that he did. This could have contributed to his ways of dealing with his kids, but I can only assume.

So in closing, I’ll state that with age and experience, I feel that I have a bit of an understanding as to why my grandfather was the way that he was. I can only hope that my own children will never have to experience this and can at some point gain their own understanding of why they were only ever able to experience the shadow of me and not who I was.

As always, a song. This is always a tough one for me to choose between as I have two favourite Remembrance Day songs if that was such a thing. My first has always been a good Canadian band, The Trews, with “Highway of Heros”, a song about Canadian casualties in the war in Afghanistan. However, that one has become very mainstream these days. So instead, I think I will go with “A Pittance of Time” by Terry Kelly. Terry decided to pen this song after watching a customer in a store insist that a cashier ring him through as the cashier was observing a minute of silence on Remembrance Day.

In respect of those who lost their lives fighting battles overseas, those that lost their lives fighting the battles at home, and last but not least, those that have lost themselves in the battle of their own mind, Lest We Forget.

[pommesdestroyer]

Lately, I think I’ve lost my footing.

This year is shit. Like no explanation needed. Shit.

I mean, COVID-19, the fires, WW III threats... the personal things. University disappeared from my life in one giant swoop. Like it was there on 13th of March. Then on 14th of March, I was going home.

The next time I was able to meet one of my friends, was on 10th of August. That’s nearly 5 months.

I lost the job I liked. I found another. But it’s boring. I’m now only working because the others are kind and it would look good in my CV. And I want a bit of pocket money so to burden my parents a bit less.

My confidence hit rock bottom. I had toxic thoughts, and I was slowly going insane from quarantine.

And she left. After 7 months of battle with her own system. She left.

Yesterday, we found out what’s happening with others. It’s disgusting. Cheating is disgusting. And pathetic.

And now... when yesterday I told my dad that I think this year is fucking ridiculous and a shipwreck, he agreed.

At least my parents are here. My auntie is the best. My dog is sleeping next to me right now. I’m practicing the languages I want to learn. We definitely keep in touch with my friends. I got to know some new people. I will keep on visiting her. And music is healing. Even BTS is good influence and makes a huge impact on my life.

I’m slowly improving my life. I’ve changed to a fully vegetarian diet. I’ve tried including sports more in my life. I’ve started slowly, but very consciously and healthily loosing weight. And it’s rocky, but it’s a start. Productivity is fleeting, but my dreams keep fueling my motivation.

For this year, I have some goals. - I want to be able to do the splits - I want to reach my weight goal - I want to learn how to cook some vegetarian dishes - I want to continue journaling, practice manifestation and be more aware of my environment and the people living within it - I want to bring back my German to the former level and keep it up - I want to improve my French, do B2 DELF - I want to learn Korean to A1 / A2 - I want to save up some money for my travel list next year - I want to be a little more self-aware, self-loved, and independent - I want to look at the positive side of things, because it literally makes no sense to be negative about life.

And even if I wrote “I want”, I would rather use the “I will”. Because it’s possible. Our minds are fucking powerful, if we believe, we do and if we did, we will.

And this post is a fucking mess, but now, it’s a bit easier to breath. Take it as you will. This is not a study post. This is fucking personal and I know. But I needed this.

[clifi-journal-blog]

I’m With the Bears

(selected *interesting* passages; for ALL annotations--> see Book)

Introduction, Bill McKibben

“The truth is larger than usually makes for good fiction” (1) – truth/fiction interrelation, what we have now is larger in scale to what is usually covered in fiction

“The fossil fuel industry has won every single battle…doing anything about climate change will cause short-term economic pain” (3)—economics vs. environment debate, “community to replace consumption”, how do we go back, how do we fight against capitalistic tendencies

The Siskiyou, July 1989, T.C. Boyle

TL;DR: group of people try to stop the loggers from cutting down the forest, protest/march

“…wouldn’t call it a road. He’d call it a scar, a gash, an open wound in the body corporal of the forest” (7)-aligning language of military warfare to climate catastrophe, we’re at war with the environment or to save the environment?

“knows the woods are being raped and the world stripped right on down to the last twig” (12)—again, violence, elicits violation (nature as typically gendered, female entity)

“this man…is not the enemy. He’s just earning his paycheck…His bosses are.” (26) individual who works for corporation isn’t necessarily evil; it’s those who stand for, who establish, and command these corporations that are the root of all eco evil.

“This is one sick game” (31) pitting humans against each other, livelihood vs. beliefs

“For all they went through…there wasn’t a single reporter on hand to bear witness…If a protest falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” (33) –importance of communication, of witnessing and storytelling in transmitting messages of outcries, we must “bear witness” to struggles for it to make an impact to count; see CC, WSOG

Zoogoing, Lydie Millet

TL;DR: just wanna be one with the animals and chill at the zoo™

“Every so often a bear was found dead atop a power pole…You’re throwing garbage at a bear? For a picture” (36)—illustrates adverse effects of trying to contain, to domesticate, to make entertainment nature’s wildlife.

“Mind your business.” “It is my business” (37)—nature is everywhere; nature vs. zoo not 2 different things; what you do to one specie affects the survival and/or state of another

“The wildness [the zoo] contained…But he knew their position as he knew his own: they were at the forefront of aloneness” (39)—aligning himself with the animals; counterintuitive to what he’s saying about not domesticating the animals since he’s anthromorphizing

“Animals were self-contained and people seemed to hold this against them—possibly because most of them come to believe that animals should be like servants or children” (42)—see ^, domesticating

“He had wanted the old wolf…As though other animals should not only submit to people but behave like them, comport themselves with civility” (43)—realized he’s being a hypocrite; he, just like everyone else, wanted to command the animals (not necessarily equals. DUDE. Everyone has a separate niche; stop being so extra!)

“The animals were very busy with dying” (44) – pondering on extinction. Survival of the fittest question.

“The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed” (44)—gotta throw a Bible reference in there!

“Waiting is a position of dependency” (52)—waiting to act and climate change, we’re being dependent on other people—creates series of dependencies vs. taking initiative

“And yet a particular way of existence is gone, a whole volume in the library of being” (53)—see LUTW and preservation of creatures for archival purposes rather than respect

Sacred Space, Kim Stanley Robinson

TL;DR: Group hike, look at all this beauty. Look at all that you’ll lose, this sacred space. And it’s already beginning to be lost.

“Mountain time; slow down. Pay attention to the rock.”  (69)—experience the sublime, lowkey flaneur

“Place so sublime…as if re-entering a miracle. Every time it felt this way, it was the California that could never be taken away. Except it could.” (74)—see CC, advertising OHHHH look at all this nice nature, look at what YOU’LL LOSE. Care for it more!!!

“It was dead…every plant on this south-facing slope had died…One of the loveliest landscapes on the planet, dead before their eyes…It had never occurred to Charlie that any of it could ever go away. And yet here it was, dead.” (88-9)—reality check, everything isn’t as okay as we’d like to think it is.

“A dead meadow—image of a black crisp on a bed” (89)—meadow like son, gotta save.

Hermie, Nathaniel Rich

TL;DR: talking hermit crab from past haunts him on his bathroom break to giving important scientific climate speech

“What about the rest of the old gang?” “They’re dead. Long dead. Every last one of them. Clammy and all her daughters too.” (96)—it’s like WW soldiers, last of his kind, veteran to the Turtle Beach poisoning by humans. More kiddie, but has the same pull @ the heartstrings

[drkenmcgill]

“Take it easy, pray for each other and look after your neighbor; when you live a long life, you learn to keep it simple” – John Gould, 94-year old Marine when asked if he worries about the Coronavirus (Dallas Morning News, March 15, 2020)

Let me be clear about this from the outset. The life and death issues connected to the Covid-19 disease that’s grimly impacting the citizens of Earth is serious and far more sobering than the temporary suspensions or abrupt cancellations of the sports leagues, but equally, in times of catastrophe, it has been these very same sports leagues that we are drawn to and have looked forward to watching because they have brought inspiration, unity and hope to mankind all over the Earth when calamity has unexpectedly visited us.

In fact, the world of sports has played a significant role in helping people in countries around the globe deal with the horrific atrocities that came to its very doorstep. In my lifetime alone I’m reminded of the devastating massacres that occurred prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City (Tlatelolco) and during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Closer to home (in the city in which I dwell) it was the Dallas Cowboys who traveled to Cleveland to play the Browns in an NFL game the weekend after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and more recently, it was the MLB Texas Rangers who helped lift up and inspire people around the DFW Metroplex after five police officers were killed in a massacre in 2016. I’m sure in your town or city when tragedy has come close to home, it’s the athletes and our sports teams that have rallied around us to help us get through the worst of our problems and the dire situations that have beset us.

So it saddens me that today, during moments where we would normally turn to our favorite teams for encouragement or relief, or to inspire us to look inward, upward or to reach out toward each other, that they too have been sidelined. But this time, it’s more than athletes with disrupted seasons who are impacted; this matters, and there are probably no words to describe the anguish they feel for having their season if not career end in this manner, whether they perform at the Jr. High, High School, College or Professional level.

But in addition to the athletes, we have college students whose lives are disrupted because they’re hurriedly leaving dorms, traveling home and having to finish their academic year online. It’s citizens in airports around the world desperately trying to get home to their family. Or it’s and it’s parents working out care plans for their children, while some wonder if they’ll have a job to support them, or even worse, how they’ll care for a family member who is recently hospitalized or has succumbed to this deadly disease. These life issues hurt, they hurt us all and they hurt us deeply, sports fan or not.

So I’m reminded of Mr. Gould’s sage and simple advice. Take it easy. Pray to your Higher Power. Pray for each other. Look after your neighbor. Keep it simple. He’s right. This almost centenarian, who has survived WW II and then some, encourages athletes and private citizens, students and parents, old and young alike, closer to home and around the world to remember to engage in simple, caring and doable behaviors when the ominous occurs.  And so I’m going to “hitchhike” on his simple message and do the same, and encourage you to pass it on or pay it forward too. At a time like this, when I have more opportunity to use my time, I can’t think of a better way to use my energy.

So what follows are a few bits of advice that I fall back on as a Psychotherapist (but more so as a human being) to help in some way when tragedy hits, and hurts, again. This info spells out the acrostic “Help Others.”

H: Help yourself by connecting with others, versus being alone and isolated. If you’re feeling down, blue, lonely, hopeless or suicidal, then call, text, email or reach out and connect with someone who can help you in this time of need. If you can’t reach someone then try to relax your mind by meditation or reflection, reading inspiring literature or if you have access to media, then listen to your favorite music playlist or watch an inspiring or entertaining movie.

E: Encourage someone else! Empathy begins when you “project yourself into what you observe,” which means if you observe and sense someone needs help, then if possible, lend a helping hand, a smile, or offer a kind word of encouragement or reassurance; your gesture makes a difference! Remember, you’re here on this Earth for a purpose and there’s nothing like volunteering and assisting others. Know that the seemingly insignificant act of service really is significant!

L: Live out your faith in humanity by being humane. There’s nothing like tragedy or ordeals to bring out the best in us, especially in the days in which we currently live.  No matter what country you’re in, I encourage you to display compassion, calmness, collaboration, creativity and above all care to your fellow man, woman or child!

P: Mr. Gould did encourage us to pray for others. There’s nothing quite like prayer or praying for others to change your opinion of how you see or will eventually treat another person. No matter your faith tradition, I encourage you to go to your God and intercede on behalf of others regarding the plight they may be enduring. I pray that you’re led by your God to do something that is good, helpful and above all supportive to others, and allow yourself to take in their gratitude when they convey their thanks to you!

  O: To start or generate these acts of kindness, I encourage you to open up and access the best of your creativity by exercising and bio-balancing your body. I’m serious. There’s nothing like taking a walk or run at a park (remember social distancing!) or on a treadmill to burn the adrenalin in your body, decrease your distress and to stimulate bilateral functioning between your logical left and creative right hemispheres in your brain. I’m not surprised that the ideas for this post were developed when I was exercising! I wonder what intuitive, creative and detail-oriented solutions will come to your mind when you’re out there helping yourself!

T:  I do encourage you to be a “Therapist,” which is a lot like being a Healer. No, you don’t need a degree to do this, and it’s easier than you think! The classical Greek word for Healing is Therapeia, and it is comprised of the following “ingredients”: Demonstrating the appropriate Care, Attention, Help, Service, Ministering to Others while you Minister to Yourself. Think you could be on the lookout for moments and opportunities to demonstrate these characteristics? When you do then consider yourself a Therapist!

H: What comes to mind when you think about helping others or observing the help they may need? Athletes (and Team Owners) are using their resources and influence to help employees who are going without paychecks by donating funds, raising funds through their participation in “sandlot” activities or donating their time and energy to others (as my son and his teammates are currently doing in Cuba; pray for their safe return!). How about you? Don’t sell yourself short on what you can do to alleviate the suffering of others. Every action helps and it counts. Take some time, think about what you can do, consider your situation and ability, then do it.

E: Equally, don’t sell yourself short on your ability to Encourage, Empower, Empathize or Esteem others, but remember, you’ll also want to take good care of yourself. Years ago I wrote a series of posts (“The Killer D’s and the Empowering E’s”) and one of the “E” words that I wish to call to your attention to is Endurance. I define Endurance as “the act or power of enduring or bearing pain, hardships and demonstrating the ability or strength to continue or last, despite fatigue, stress or other adverse conditions.”

The classical Greek definition of Endurance describes a person who is patient toward things or circumstances and refuses to be defeated, beaten, conquered, or worn out. In order to Endure, I encourage you to access activities or experiences that help you to rest and replenish versus become overwhelmed and resigned. By all means, as you help others to Endure their circumstances, make sure you find ways to refresh and renew yourself!

R: It goes without saying to (w)rap your arms around someone today because healthy physical touch is healthy, and everyone loves (and may desperately need) hugs, kisses or a pat on the back to let you know you’re there with and for them. Psychotherapist Virginia Satir said “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.” No matter how young or old, I hope you receive your 24+ moments of connection with others!

S: So in ending this post on helping others, I’m going to remind you to access your support system. I hope there are people close to you in the form of Pastors, Rabbis, Priests, Spiritual Guides, Therapists, Psychiatrists or just good friends that you could turn to for support, assistance, understanding, compassion, and love. If you’re shut in, remember you can access them via FaceTime, TeleHealth or TeleMedicine. Something tells me that we’re going to need a lot of support and love from others before things get better.

That’s why watching or being involved in sports activities is so important; it brings us together to connect with our support system and when we connect with them, we usually have a lot of fun with them, and boy could we use some connections like this now!

Sadly, we’re seeing that many people have had their lives disrupted not only because of the cessation of sports activities, but many of those same people might have lost their support system (not to mention their income) when their ability to connect via sports was interrupted. Should I keep the importance of sports in perspective? Absolutely. Sports and the people who engage in it, whether as an athlete or as an observer, will always have and share a symbiotic, and hopefully empowering relationship, and I can’t wait until it is resumed!

Until then, I hope this short piece has provoked a few ideas about how you can constructively use your energy to help others now, and when the season restarts, and beyond it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and as time permits, please visit the other blogs written by Dr. Ken McGill: Daily Bread for Life and “3 – 2 – 5 – 4 – 24″ for additional information that could be helpful.

I welcome your comments below or via email and your favorites, your retweets and your “+1’s” if you have a brief moment and find the information helpful.

So what do we do now? How about Helping Others! "Take it easy, pray for each other and look after your neighbor; when you live a long life, you learn to keep it simple" - …

[swipestream]

Wargame Wednesday: The Nafziger Collection

During my war gaming career Nafziger was always on the outskirts of my awareness. I never read his books but his name constantly popped up when reading gaming magazines and he could always be found as a reference or in the footnotes.  As my involvement in the hobby deepened into scenario design I began to seek out his work.  When digging around for an obscure campaign I serendipitously found a repository of OOBs compiled by Nafziger over the course of his career in publishing military history.

The discovery of what has to be thousands of OOB files was worth a WW post in its own right but I was fortunate enough to make contact with George Nafziger and he was gracious enough to submit to an interview.

Both Nafziger’s career and the sheer amount of his published content is amazing.  Visit his web based bookstore to gain an idea of the diversity of his work. I own two of his organizational booklets and can favorably compare them with Osprey House offerings.  Osprey is your go to for illustrations, maps and historical narrative but the organizational booklets are the go to resources for OOBs, especially, for example, if you are looking for the Bulgarian Order of Battle during WW2. Other works include translations of French military histories and a multitude of other topics but I’ll keep the intro short as we’ll cover a lot in the interview on the next page.

If the interview isn’t enough and you have a question to ask George in person make sure you attend one of the following 2019 events:

Fall In, Lancaster, PA, 9-11 November 2018; Cincy Con, Cincinnati, OH, March 2019; Cold Wars, Lancaster, PA, date TBD; Little Wars, Chicago, IL,  25-28 April; Historicon, Lancaster, PA, in July; Nashcon,  Nashville, 24-25 August.

Scott Cole: You have served in the Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer, worked as an internal auditor (both finance and production), a property manager and a quality control engineer, amongst other jobs. Did any of that influence or lead you into your parallel career as an author and publisher of military history?

George Nafziger: My interest in military history dates back to early childhood when my family moved to France for 2 years. That was a huge step toward my “career” as an author/publisher. Among other things, I learned to speak French. Anyway, while in Europe I visited numerous battlefields, castles, and other historical sites. For that matter, prior to that trip my father had taken us, while on vacation, to many Civil War battlefields, so perhaps my interest arose from his and his father’s interest in military history.

You need to realize that I was a child right after WWII and almost every adult male I met was a veteran of WWII or Korea. There were a lot of memoirs and other books being published at that time, there was little literature for young people, and TV was limited to 3 channels. So I read those military works.

That said, in 1974 I met Ray Johnson, and started playing “Frappe!” a set of Napoleonic miniatures rules, bought my own army, then armies, and started reading about Napoleon. I found the English literature very unsatisfactory, so I took a vacation to Europe and spent it visiting bookstores buying books on the Napoleonic Wars. By the time I also spoke German and Spanish to varying degrees.

The one-sided nature of English literature on those wars provoked me directly into writing my 1812 campaign study, and the rest is history.

  SC: David Hamilton-Williams’ Waterloo New Perspectives argues that one of the main influences for the modern understanding of the Battle of Waterloo is Captain William Siborne and his research conducted while building a topographical model of the battle field, all heavily influenced by interviews with British veterans while neglecting the role of minor Allies and, of course, the Prussians.

GN: When you get around to interviewing David remind him he owes me for the orders of battle he never paid for plus there are a few others I know still waiting for a check. Must have slipped his mind……as for his work on Waterloo, I never read it for several reasons, but beyond my personal issues with him, I believe there were also issues with his references in that book and, most importantly, I suffer from Waterloo ennui – utter boredom when it comes to that battle. You’ll notice that I stopped my writing of Napoleon’s campaigns with 1814.

One thing about published authors – Just because you find it in print doesn’t mean it’s correct. I found a book on Leipzig where the author gave an OB for Leipzig that had the 1st & 2nd Westphalian Hussars present at Leipzig, but both had deserted the French army in late August or early September 1813. This author simply assumed. He also listed Vandamme’s I Corps as still existing, but it was destroyed after the battle of Dresden at Teblitze

When I said that I found English literature on the Napoleonic wars unsatisfying, it was because English speakers are notoriously monoglots – reading only English and only repeat the mantra of “The English won the Napoleonic Wars because they were wonderful.” Let me ask you a rhetorical question: “How many English works go into any detail on Austrian, Russian, or Prussian actions on the battlefield?” I knew of very few.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. English reading authors cite only English sources and you get the same stuff over and over again. When I buy a book on the Napoleonic era I look at the bibliography. If 50% or more is English, I figure the non-English citations are purely filler to flesh out the bibliography and it is purely a rehash of the same old Anglo-myopic stuff.

As for Siborne, he was an Englishman whose natural pro-English biases were accentuated by his desire to get subscriptions for his model, so he amplified the actions of those rich nobles he was soliciting for money. That said, he provides valuable information concerning the British (which must be evaluated for overstatement) and scanty details on the French. As for the Allies, they weren’t making donations to his model project, so they got left out.

  SC: Do you have examples of common misconceptions amongst the English reading public?

GN: Yes, the idea that Wellington invented the two rank line. In fact, in the Dundas infantry regulation you will find it mandated WHEN the battalion did not have sufficient men to fill out the three rank formation. I did an analysis, which can be found in Imperial Bayonets, where the British Army in the peninsula was so under strength that it had no choice, but to be in two ranks as prescribed by the Dundas regulation.

  SC: Going back to your miniature gaming days, what was your favorite army to collect and paint?

GN: Oh my, I’ve painted most of the armies of the Napoleonic period, ancient Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Persians, civil war ironclads, a thousand plus WWII tanks, vehicles, and artillery pieces, plus twice that in WWII infantry, all of which have been sold as I downsize or lost interest. I guess I liked WWII tanks and detailing them best.

  SC: Since you are a miniature enthusiast here’s a link I discovered from someone that has inherited Donald Featherstone’s (Peace Be Upon Him) miniature collection: https://ift.tt/2Qoh6qf

GN: I met Donald Featherstone a couple of times at HMGS East conventions. He was a wonderful guy. Apparently he was a tanker in the 8th Army, but I don’t remember much of a discussion about his wartime activities.

  SC: I have your Bulgarian and Romanian Order of Battle World War II booklets so I have a couple of questions on your OOBs. The Bulgarian and Romanian armies must have been difficult to research, especially for when searching for English language references. Roughly how long did it take to research then draft your OOB booklets?

GN: The US Archives has microfilm of the German documents captured at the end of WWII. One of them was intelligence on foreign armies. I bought that microfilm and set about translating. It really didn’t take very long, a few weeks at most after the microfilm arrived. I think I had a book or two on the Romanians.

You need to understand that I collected data that was interesting to me and when I got a critical mass I set to work on writing something up. It was very serendipitous finding things, so setting out to write a book and then starting to gather the information can prove a hopeless task without end. I broadly gathered data until I found I had enough on a subject and set to work. Now, however, with the internet and on-line libraries, I suppose one can simply decide to look for whatever is on-line and get that critical mass much more quickly.

  SC: I came across a stash of your OOB files at Alternatewars (I’ve given up trying to access them on the Army’s web page) and downloaded all the zip files. I can’t figure out your filing system. Take, for example, one of your 17th century OOB files: 625NXAA which is the file for The Royal Navy in the Reign of Charles I.

625 stands for the year 1625, easy enough.

Guessing N is for navy though X has me stumped and AA, unless one of the A’s stand for Anglo I can’t figure out.

Do you have a reference file for your filing system of OOBs?

GN: The three numbers were the year; the letters – “N” meant navy, “X” meant no date. If there were three letters and the first was A-L, A was January, L December, etc. The last two were simply random letters to allow different codes.

So, 625 – year; N – Navy; X – no date; fist digit A-L – January through December, and the last two digits are to establish a distinct filing number.

  SC: You were a professional wargamer playing OPFOR at the Battle Command Training Center in Fort Leavenworth. Could you describe the similarities and the differences between the war games employed in the Battle Command Training Program (BTCP) and any commercial wargames you have played?

GN: Dissimilarity – the Army actually knew something about war, where I have often found that wargamers frequently have no practical or personal experience in it. Though I was never in the Army, 25 years commissioned service in the Navy counts for something. In addition, I have experience in naval gunfire support off the coast of Vietnam. I also wear the combat action ribbon, for having been in combat, i.e. exchanging fire with the enemy. Similarities – The Generals frequently have ideas and facts can be an annoyance to those fixed ideas. By this I do not intend to sound like I’m a know it all and some of what I know is classified so I cannot discuss it, but let me relate one story. After the invasion of Iraq, I was writing scenarios for brigade level exercises. I wrote one where I had the terrorists seize a water works and release the chlorine gas. The “generals” threw my scenario out saying that the terrorists would never do that. Within a year the terrorists were putting cylinders of chlorine with their IEDs. I rest my case. There is one major difference between the BCTP games and any type of hobbyist wargame, and that is that the BCTP game had no “eye candy.” Visually it was very sterile. Commercial games have a necessity to make their games visually appealing.

  SC: For those unfamiliar with naval gunfire support (NGFS) please describe your two tours off of Vietnam.

GN:

We did purely NGFS as we had 3 5″/54s and 2 3″/50s. We were sent over in 1972 shortly after the NVA overran the DMZ. A month transit on both sides of the tour, and 5 months in the Far East. Mostly on I Corps just south of the DMZ. We fired 20,000 5″ rounds that tour. Also did operations in Freedom Train and Linebacker were we went north of the DMZ and operated off N. Vietnamese harbors doing more shore bombardment. NVA had no sense of humor and shot back. We also watched a mined-in CHICOM freighter off the mouth of the Red River for a few weeks. They would send small boats out the river mouth to the freighter and we would shoot ’em up as they ran loaded back to the river. The second tour, in 1973, was mostly steaming around and we didn’t see any action, as the war was winding down in peace negotiations. I never set foot ashore in Vietnam.

    SC: I know that many Marines and Army combat vets will scoff but life at sea was probably not a piece of cake, especially in wartime conditions. I remember during the march on Baghdad there was picture going around with grunts half buried in sand trying to catch some sleep in a foxhole while juxtaposed with it was a photoshop of Navy pilots relaxing with drinks in an inflatable pool on a carrier’s flight deck.

GN:

Of course, life was significantly more comfortable and safer at sea than somewhere in the jungle. I could write a book just on this subject but on station, we had a significant lack of sleep due to our regular watch rotation (3 watch sections, starting with the Midwatch at 0000. The messenger would wake you up about 2300 so you could get dressed and maybe eat some midrats (midnight rations). The watch lasted four hours, except for the 1600-1800 and the 1800-2000 watch sections, which broke the watch to allow you to eat dinner and to rotate the watches.

In a relaxed combat situation there were port and starboard watches, i.e. 2 sections, not 3. You were six on and six off, and still put in your 8 hour work day, so sleep was scarce and a long time on this cycle was very fatiguing. General Quarters had no watch sections, everyone was at their battle station as long as necessary, time and work be damned.

We had a series of radio nets and one of them was allocated to naval gunfire support (NGFS). A forward observer (FO), either on ground or in the air, would call a target in to us. As the JOOD my first task was to immediately begin determining our position using visual means. The CIC used its radar to do the same thing. (WE did not always agree where we were by a few hundred yards.) CIC and the JOOD then sent their estimation of our position to the Main Battery Plot, who punched the data into the fire control computer and the location of the target, as specified by the FO. Then they fired the guns when the OOD said it was OK.

Sometimes they’d give us a square mile and tell us to squeeze off 5-10 rounds of Harassment and Interdiction fire. We could get reports of secondary explosions, etc., but usually it was “Excellent area coverage” meaning we’d blown up some trees.

The mission done, we’d return to boring holes in the water as we steamed in circles to maintain ourselves on station. Combat is definitely hours of boredom, followed by seconds of frenetic activity.

Life was pretty much the same when we went north of the DMZ on Linebacker and Freedom Train operations, but we only went into action at night. Three or four ships would steam at our target area in line abreast, then wheel right or left to form a line. We’d start firing the assigned number of rounds at the designated target areas, during the usual plotting and exchange of data with Main Battery Plot. However, we tended to not steam a straight line once we started shooting, because to do so would make us an easy target for the shore batteries. Yes, the NVA had no sense of humor and shot back. We were never hit, but the XO once said he saw a round fly about a foot over our gunfire director. There were frequently rounds crashing in our wake.

Well, one more story. Back on the gunline off I Corps (south of the DMZ), we frequently saw Arclight strikes coming in and blowing the crap out of the countryside. Three B-52s would fly in a wedge at 20,000 feet and drop 90,000 lbs of bombs. I timed it once. The bombs exploded for 60 seconds and a square mile was obliterated. Oh, and we would be 5 miles out to sea and the overpressure from the bombs would pop open the door between the bridge and CIC (not a water tight hatch, but a standard door).

Well, unlike the troops on shore, we slept in air conditioned quarters, had 3 hot meals a day, and a shower every day. I chose the Navy for my service because I figured this was better than crawling in the mud, swatting mosquitoes, and seeing the guy who was trying to kill me. I wasn’t disappointed.

Oh, and after 2-3 weeks on the gun line we’d steam off to some exotic port, Subic Bay, Philippines; Sasebo, Japan; Hong Kong, etc.

  SC: Your list of original publications and translated works is quite extensive. I note you have participated in training programs supporting many African armies. A two-part question: much of your work, especially your translated work covers campaigns and armies of the 19th Century and earlier. Has the knowledge you gained for studying past military history affected the way you provided training and for both your time in Africa and at the BTCP and are there lessons we are always doomed to relearn, over and over again?

GN: The answer here is short – No. In Africa I taught basic logistics and on occasion, intelligence. Oh, all of this was in French, which is why I got the gig teaching Army stuff to Africans. Anyway, the logistics was, in the words of my boss, “What is obvious to you is marvelous to them.” I once had a 40-year old Gabonese intelligence officer on the floor with me crawling over a map explaining to him that the blue lines were rivers. The level of education in Africa is overall, pathetic, but there were a few bright spots.

As for BCTP, I was stunned how often the US team would repeat the same action over and over again. In one exercise the Striker Brigade made it first appearance. It came down a river road twice where my tank battalion stopped it. It broke away and then came back, but the third time it came I was ready for it. My tank battalion hadn’t moved, but I’d moved up another tank battalion, an anti-tank company and a mech infantry bn. When the strikers appeared and engaged my stationary tank battalion, I pulled the second tank battalion and the AT company out of cover and engaged them, while the mech infantry bn swept on the far side of a ridge and struck them in the rear. Needless to say the Striker Brigade was destroyed. Two or 3 weeks later I called my employer and was talking about something else with a friend when she mentioned that the Army was furious that the Striker Brigade had been wiped out. I asked if they knew it was a Navy Reserve Captain that did it to them. She said, “Oh God no, don’t tell them that!” :-))))) I have many stories about how poorly the USA did in these games.

  SC: Any good stories from your time in Africa?

GN:

Stories in Africa….. I suppose, but I’ll go political here. 80% of Africans live on $2 or less a day. Anyone who thinks the US is a crappy place to live should live in Africa, outside of the major cities, then reconsider what is so bad about the US.

I was in Senegal, Mali, Burkino Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Gabon, and Benin. The people were good and decent. Only encountered one problem in Ethiopia, where a guy tried to pick my pocket. He failed. That said, when I asked for a shoe shine in Ethiopia from a street shoe shine boy he said $1. Two people suddenly said, “No, it’s only $0.25.” I still gave him a buck.

Well, ok, now that I think about it, another story. In Mali a friend had a US magazine and was talking with a Malian officer about life in the US. He showed the officer a photo in the magazine of a poor fat woman sitting in front of her house. The Malian officer said, “No, poor people aren’t fat.” In Mali a fat wife is a status symbol, because you are rich and can afford to overeat. In most of Africa poor people starve. I have the photos to prove it. Indeed, I have photos of dead bodies lying in the streets with people stepping over them.

Speaking of Mali, I was teaching the intelligence module there. One officer just sat there and did nothing. I always tried to get everyone involved, so I asked the Intel Officer why he wasn’t involved. He said this guy was a Tuareg and didn’t speak any French. Mali had had a revolt in the north, where the Tuaregs (Muslims) were trying to break away from Christian southern Mali at the instigation of Libya’s Ghadaffi. There had been a political reconciliation and the rebels were integrated into the Malian Army. Many, however, only spoke Arabic, while the Army worked in French. The Brigade CO was a Tuareg who spoke some French, but so poorly that we actually bought him a French-Arabic dictionary so he could speak with his troops.

  SC: For a Naval officer your interest in military history seems focused on the land campaigns. Is that a symptom of not wanting to think about work on your free time?

GN:

It probably comes from my interest in WWII panzer warfare, but surely comes from the eye candy of a fully painted miniature army of Napoleonic lead soldiers. I joined the Navy because when I graduated from college the Vietnam war was still going on and the Navy was a better option than the Army. That said, the only lottery I ever won was the draft lottery. I was going no matter what – #108. Oh, and I took 2nd prize – two all-expenses paid luxury cruises off of Vietnam!

  SC: I decided to order Islam at War: A History and hopefully there will be some good data in it for war gaming. I went by the Amazon listing and a couple of commentators seemed displeased that you and Mark Walton didn’t write a warning against jihad.

GN: Islam at War. There is a video by an Englishman, I think, on U-Tube, where he praises it. I’ve not seen snide remarks anywhere and as I told you, both pro- and anti-Muslim groups have pirated it and posted the PDF on-line. It is a broad, general history, and since most of it is about wars pre-dating Gutenberg, details are scarce, so it is not very useful for wargamers. It’s more a broad brush of how they acted when they fought than how they fought. Nothing about weapons or tactics. It was not aimed at the wargaming market, but the general public who, when Bush invaded Iraq, might want to understand something of their military history.

  SC: Is it fair to say that your published works concentrate on obscure facets of military history?

GN: Obscure stuff?? OMG, I’ve often called my business “Obscure R Us!” Oh, I hit all the big stuff, Seven Years War, 30 Years War, War of the Austrian and Spanish Successions, Korea, WWI and WWII, but I’ve several books on obscure Balkan wars; stuff on the Middle East — it gets hard to get more obscure than the war between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in 1831 or the Egyptian invasion of Dongola and Sennaar (basically Sudan) in 1820 — then there is the English invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1866, the French conquest of Dahomey (Benin); the English conquest of Java in 1811; the Russo-Swedish War of 1808; or the ever popular Prussian Conquest of Holland in 1787 (when I found this book I actually thought it was a joke, because I’d never heard of it and it is such a (relatively speaking) recent war. That is only the “modern” stuff. If you go back into the 17th century it gets more obscure. I could go on for another 10 minutes listing obscure wars and battles. You really need to see my catalog or go to my website and explore. So, it is really hard to pick the most obscure war, but the Cossack war with Poland in 1648 would probably be the winner, followed closely by my translation of two Venetian wars against the Turks in 1645 and 1686.

  SC: What are you working on now?

GN: I am working on expanding the scope of the works that I publish and sell shamelessly on-line. I have found on-line libraries wonderful sources of material that is out of copyright, particularly the French Bibliotheque nationale’s website. I download PDFs of out of copyright works and translate them. So far I have translated works on subjects from the 945 AD Moorish invasion of Spain to the 1940 German invasion of Belgium.

Right now I’m working on the apparently “official” French account of their participation in the Boxer Rebellion. It’s a 500+ page book and will take about a month to translate. Others are short and the language is simple and I can knock them off in a short hurry. It also depends on how much of life interferes.

The most interesting and most difficult translation was the Histoire de la guerre des Cosaques contre la Pologne, which I retitled to The Cossack War Against Poland 1648-1651. This work was something special as it was published in 1667, quite before spelling, grammar, and meanings of French words were standardized. The translation was anything but easy. It is also probably one of the oldest published works on the history of the Ukraine, and, as a result, provoked considerable excitement in the Ukrainian diaspora in the US. It was a bit of their history that was unknown to them. If you’ve seen the movie Taras Bulba, with Yule Brenner, it’s basically that war.

Otherwise, I’m busily translating whatever looks interesting at the moment. This year I’ve done something between 15 and 20 translations.

  SC: When translating older French documents do you have to contend with different French dialects? Peter Turchin’s War & Peace & War mentions the Breton’s resisted assimilation by the French, so much so that the 19th Century French government mandated severe punishment for students speaking Breton in schools.

GN:

To answer this begs a linguistic essay, so I’ll be very brief. Anything published after about 1700 is not a particular problem. Oh, there are authors who try to impress with their literary skill and prowess, or odd grammatical issues where to emphasize something they say the opposite of what they mean, but those are trivial.

The problem comes with pre-1700 when spellings frequently vary and you have to sound out the word and listen to it with a “French” ear to understand it. I have encountered spellings that were so unusual that I never figured out exactly what they meant, but I understood the rest of the paragraph, so I could work around that little problem. And then there are occasional provincial idiomatic expressions that take some figuring out. I’ll spare you that discussion.

  SC: A game and scenario designer I know asks: “Will he revisit some of his older work (20th century) for revisions as more information has been released since his older works?

GN:

In general, I do not revisit works, but some revisions and more data were added to my work on the German panzer arm. I added details on the Tiger tank battalions. Otherwise, the various army studies were as complete as I could make them with the data at hand and 20th century works are hard to expand when the sources I used were original documents and I am no longer buying or bought all the microfilms that the US Archives had on the subject, nor am I going to travel to archives any more.

  SC: With all that work do you have time for other interests?

GN:

Yes, goose hunting in the fall and shooting in the summer when the outdoor range I belong to is warm enough to shoot.

  SC: It was great talking with you. I hope you don’t mind at one point we do this again.

GN:

Well, your interest in me and my work was most flattering, so I was happy to (figuratively) sit down with you.

    Wargame Wednesday: The Nafziger Collection published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[sciwriteblog-blog]

                                     CHRISTMAS 2016 LETTER

I just read over last year’s Christmas missive, the letter at least one of you didn’t receive in the mail until March.  When I first got word that some of you hadn’t gotten your letter, I walked to the Berkeley Post Office, one of the few U.S. Postal Service offices with a permanent street-person encampment reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street camp ins of 2011.  The so encamped were protesting the planned closure of the Central Berkeley Post Office even though most of the protesters have no permanent address so don’t the don’t get mail and can’t afford a post office box either.  

Once I got past the encampment and into the lobby, I talked to a certified U.S. Postal Service clerk, who said he and his fellow staff have one billion mail pieces to deliver before Christmas and can’t be expected to get all of them right.  I considered switching my voter registration to Republican, but held off.

Think of it, there are 324 million souls in the U.S.  That’s only three pieces of mail for every man, woman, and child in the country. Surely, the Postal Service can do better than that; with 617,254 employees in 2015 according to Wikipedia, that’s 1,620 pieces of mail per employee.  Seems like a lot, but machines do some of the work, is the post office forbidden from using labor-saving devices?

So this letter is something of a crap shoot.  Might get there might not.

In 2015, after wasting most of a year writing a proposal for which the data in hand would not support the envisioned analyses, I decided to try my hand at writing.  I had already written about drought in the West, and 40,000 words of a memoir mostly about my epic medical problems.  Publishers limit a first memoir to 80,000-90,000 words, and I was going to exceed that.  But I didn’t really like what I had written and didn’t like writing it.  Maybe some day, but not now, and done much differently. I was looking over the courses UC Berkeley Extension offered in Spring last year and ran across Science Writing, mostly by accident.  I signed up. Like most UC extension courses, it was a lot of work, but worth it.  Jennifer Huber, a physics Ph.D, taught the course.  She had worked at UCSF in imaging; probably living in the soft money world of grant-to-grant funding where I worked for 18 years.  She has been writing for 10 or more years now and has it all up on a web site.  She was a tough grader and superb editor.  I had to shed my technical writing style for something more compelling to the educated lay reader.

 She liked my final project, “Climate Change, Climate Cycles and the Syrian Civil War,” and suggesting “pitching” it to a publisher.  That was in the first week of June.  I thought I needed to establish that climate is in fact related to civil war before writing about a single example of climate actually causing civil strife.  That was a big mistake.  Six months later, I’m still polishing the article, having stumbled into an academic controversy that got into the press.  Does climate cause civil war?  Not climate change, though the topic has obvious relevance for that inevitability, but just normal variation, which can at times be extreme; think of the 1930s Dust Bowl.  A group of UC, Berkeley economists says, “yes;” a group of European political scientists says, “no.” I’m still undecided despite plowing through many journal articles.

I’ve spent more time on this than on any writing task since my dissertation, often going far astray into topics like Bayesian statistics.  Lesson: Keep it simple.  It’s already complicated enough and the average intelligent reader isn’t interested in esoterica.  Most science articles for the non-specialist are about one journal article; I’ve read scores plus additional textbook material for this article, enough to write a book, though I never intended to do that.  I have one set of notes that’s 76 single-spaced pages long, mostly copy and paste material from various articles, but also my “ideas.”  I never looked at it again after building the thing up.  There are other sets of notes not so epically long.  Didn’t look at those either.  Regardless of the notes, at some point, I’ll try to market what I have. Selling is not my strong suit.  Tune in again next year.

A little more substantively, let’s see if I can discuss this earth-shattering election without stepping on toes.  

Almost every pollster, forecaster, and pundit got it wrong.  Probably no one was more surprised by this than Donald Trump.  Maureen Dowd in the Times had it right:  Trump never really wanted to be president.  At one point Trump seemed more interested in a media enterprise involving himself, Steve Bannon of Breitbart News, and Roger Ailes, late of Fox News until scandalized from his lofty perch there.  Hilary was a professional politician: first lady, senator, 2008 presidential candidate, Secretary of State, no media ambitions.  

I often thought last summer, this lady can’t give us one good reason why she wants to be president other than to just have the job.  In the California primary, I voted for Sanders to register a protest.  If Joe Biden didn’t have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, and wasn’t 76 years old, I think he would have won because he had blue collar appeal.  How good at handling the presidency, I don’t know.

Maureen Dowd, a Times columnist, had the following to say about Hilary and her flaws as a candidate:

“Hillary’s campaign message boiled down to “’It’s my turn, dammit.’”

“Hillary should have spent less time collecting money on Wall Street and more time collecting votes in Wisconsin.”

“As she cuddled up to Wall Street, Hillary forgot about the forgotten man — and woman.”

FDR coined the phrase the “forgotten man” in the 30s, championed their cause, and made them loyal Democrats.  Nixon stole them from the Democrats, largely over race and campus protest, and called them the “Silent Majority.”  Under Reagan, the media called them “Reagan Democrats.”  In elections going back to Reagan, the forgotten man voted against their own working class interests by supporting Republicans who then enacted policies favoring the upper classes every time despite their base of solid blue-collar support; think “trickle down,” that is, tax cuts for those who need the money least, the rich.

The Democrats either forgot about the forgotten man or ignored him.  Bill Clinton told his wife to campaign for working class white voters, but she wasn’t interested in “The Deplorables.”  Hilary blames her loss on Putin’s meddling and FBI Director Comey’s pseudo-revelations about her private server two weeks before election day.  This is small ball and misses the larger point of the Brexit vote and Trump’s win: Many people have been hurt by globalization, they are just out of sight to the rich and powerful beneficiaries of the global economy.  These are mostly big city dwellers on either coast, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, etc., and includes the Wall Street bankers Dowd notes above and whom Hilary charged a quarter million per speech to hear about the glowing future the global economy has in store for them.  The forgotten man was forgotten until November 8th.

But it should be kept in mind amidst all the talk of white backlash, populism, the Alt-Right, etc., that only once since WW II have voters stayed with one party for three terms. That was the first Bush (G. H. W. Bush) who served Reagan’s third term; Bill Clinton turned him out after a single term.  People want a change after eight years of one party rule, and if you’ve lost your high-wage manufacturing job under the Democrats, you’re going to vote Republican even if the corporation that off-shored your job to China or Mexico is run by Republicans.  

Given that automation took most of those jobs, or as Thomas Friedman put it, “You didn’t lose your job to a Mexican, but to a micro-chip,” Trump can’t deliver on his promise to bring back manufacturing jobs, the Carrier deal notwithstanding.  But he might deliver on infrastructure, and this would be a good thing if done right. The country’s roads, bridges, ports and grid are in bad shape.

The nation needs to spend at least $3.6 trillion according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.  Rebuilding America would bring back jobs to some, but not all.  Tax cuts of any kind will be more fiscal stimulus; no wonder the stock market has reversed its view on Trump and set off the recent upward spike. With the stimulus will come inflation, higher interest rates, and eventually some sort of crash or cool down. But it might get Trump re-elected if he doesn’t blow up the world in a Twitter-feed temper tantrum.  

Stay tuned.  It promises to be a wild ride.

Happy New Year,

Fred

 One thing you must know: There will be a total eclipse of the sun on August 21.  Here is a website with many maps for all to consider:

 http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/maps.htm

 For those of you in Washington and Oregon, the arc of totality will cross I-5 just south of Salem, Oregon. For those in Idaho, Idaho Falls is near the center of the band of totality, which then clips the southern bulge of Grand Teton National Park.   If I lived nearer, I wouldn’t miss it, but my present state doesn’t permit getting much closer than downtown Berkeley.