A City Within a City Within a Country Within A Country!

In honor of the start of the London Olympics, enjoy this short video on the history of the City of London.

Lovely Paris Photographer

Carla Loves Photography and Italy and Paris and Life.  And I love her.

The wonderful talent, Natasha Lakos, who will be doing my visual identity for my new business venture launching early next year also did Carla's.

Since discovering Carla I have spent a lot of time on her site and even ordered her book - Italian Joy - which is really a joy!

I also love the before and after shots here.

And I also love that she told me about this exhibit here in DC on Amelia Earhart at the National Portrait Gallery.  Very cool.

I've not been to Paris since 1988, but next time I am there I am going to try and have Carla do a Paris photo shoot with me.

She's an Aussie too, always a good sign in my book!   They are the best.

Check out her site.

BBC History Magazine Posts Antique Maps

So cool!

Here.

Great Podcasts to Enjoy

Here's a list of top 10 podcasts.   I'm already fan of the top two - Bloggingheads.tv and Slate's Political Gabfest as well as the Economist's on this list.   I'm interested in checking out some of the others.

I also like BBC 4 In Our Time - which covers history, philosophy, culture, religion and science.

BBC History Magazine
"BBC History Magazine’s podcast comes out each month, featuring interviews with notable historians talking about topics ranging from crusading knights, Tudor swimming, or the D-Day landings."  It's so British.  And really cool.  

and Sounds True Insight's at the Edge Interviews with leading spiritual teachers and writers about their latest challenges—the "leading edge" of their work.  I always learn a lot and her questions are good.  


A friend told me the Monocle podcasts are also good.  Any one try them?

Medieval Knights, Violence and PTSD

The SAXO Unit at the University of Copenhagen is studying the subject of knights and violence which I find fascinating.  As reported at ScienceNordic.com in a piece entitled Violent Knights Feared Post-traumatic Stress, violence was not as glorified as we have been lead to believe.  

They discuss a book written by a knight who fought in the 100 Years War, which is really cool.  Check out the whole thing over at the original link, but here's a taste:

In his book, de Charny advises knights on how to relate to the fact that they must kill people when they are at war. He also mentions some of the hardships knights face: poor sleep, hunger, and a feeling that even nature is going against them.

It also notes that sometimes the justice system failed to provide justice so men took retribution into their own hands and that was considered acceptable, acknowledging the limits of society issuing justice.

Hitchens on Jackie O

My mom never liked her, and I never really understood why.   In Vanity Fair Christopher Hitchens comments on the release of her interview tapes with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.:  Widow of Opportunity

I suspect it had something to do with this:

when examined carefully and in context, the pouting refusal to have any ideas except those supplied by her lord and master turns out not to be evidence of winsome innocence but a soft cover for a specific sort of knowingness and calculation.

And this: 

hey certainly make it difficult if not impossible to accept her at her own paradoxical valuation, as merely a self-effacing hostess and decorator.

Regarding Camelot:

Now consider: The nation has just buried a president whose books were replete with the language of valor and grandeur—fit rhetoric forProfiles in Courage. Arlington cemetery has been garlanded as never in the century. The bugle calls can still be heard wafting on the air. And then: Oh, mercy me, why do I worry my pretty little head?—why, all I can call to mind is some plonking ditty from Lerner and Loewe that even the Broadway critics found a tad paltry.

My mother could not abide fakery of any sort, but especially female self-effacing.  I feel proud of her insight.

HBO to Make Wolf Hall Mini-Series!

My mom LOVED Hilary Mantel.  She was one of her favorite authors and especially loved A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel about the French Revolution.

Well, now the news that HBO is going to be filming the Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall: A Novel .  I was so excited I scream aloud!  Gee, I wish mom had lived to read that book and to enjoy what HBO will do with it.

I learned of this from the culture blog Alyssa at Think Progress, which is worth checking out on a regular basis.

Here is what Alyssa wrote:

It’s a marvelous novel of friendship, whether it’s Cromwell and Wolsey or Cromwell and Imperial diplomat Eustace Chapuys. I don’t really know how a miniseries will capture the Cabinet of Wonders-like effect of the novel, which is one of the most effective evocations of a historic worldview I’ve ever read. But I’m glad it’s not getting reduced to a movie, and that some serious writerly fire-power will be behind it. HBO’s movie team has been wildly on their game lately, so I can’t wait to see what they do with this.

Me neither!

Byzantine's Bad Rap

I love Slate's Explainer column.  Today's edition is on how Byzantine came to mean "deviously convoluted"

Here's the crux:

Was the Byzantine system of government especially complex?Only compared to those of medieval Europe. 

Read more here.  

And related, I LOVED LOVED LOVED these free podcasts - 12 Byzantine Rulers by Lars Brownsworth.  The podcasts are also available on iTunes.  Very lively, very political and very interesting history.  Also a good bit of church history.   Many of these great stories not commonly known or taught in US schools.   His book Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization alludes to that (and is very readable too).

The Ardnamurchan Viking - An Amazing Find

Like myself, my mom loved books set in Britain in the past.  

So this news caught my eye at BBC News -

The UK mainland's first fully intact Viking boat burial site has been uncovered in the west Highlands, archaeologists have said.  The site, at Ardnamurchan, is thought to be more than 1,000 years old.

It's really really cool.

Items from Ireland and Norway in the site too.  Amazing.  

Read more here and there's is also a great graphic and a very good short video, less than two minutes at the link.  

Waxing Poetic About Abbotabad

I too had seen Christopher Hitchen's piece which captured a bit of the history of Abbotabad, named after James Abbot, while writing in his admirable pointed way:

The colonial British—like Maj. James Abbott, who gave his name to this one—called them "hill stations," designed for the rest and recreation of commissioned officers. The charming idea, like the location itself, survives among the Pakistani officer corps. If you tell me that you are staying in a rather nice walled compound in Abbottabad, I can tell you in return that you are the honored guest of a military establishment that annually consumes several billion dollars of American aid. It's the sheer blatancy of it that catches the breath.

But then the Boston Globe noted that James Abbot wrote a poem about Abbotabad which is in Lady Garden Square in the city. The opening lines:

I remember the day when I first came here
And smelt the sweet Abbottabad air

The trees and ground covered with snow
Gave us indeed a brilliant show

To me the place seemed like a dream
And far ran a lonesome stream

The wind hissed as if welcoming us
The pine swayed creating a lot of fuss

Josh Rothman concludes: "It looks like a pretty nice place to hide from the largest manhunt in the history of the world."

Indeed! And then there is my friend Michael Oberman who quipped:

Since the US found and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan, it seems logical that the second in command of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri is hiding in Costellobad, Pakistan.

Sen. John Kerry On Pakistan

Melissa Block of NPR interviews John Kerry about Pakistan and the killing of Bin Laden. Hard not to contemplate the what ifs if Ohio had gone the other way

Click here to listen.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead - Scenes & Sounds from the White House

I was in the bathtub when the news broke that the president would have an important national security announcement at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night.  

I wasn't expecting this news.  My Turkish friend, Tulin, who is a journalist asked if I wanted to go down to the White House with her.  I did.  

The feeling on the streets was unlike anything I'd ever experienced.  Honking and smiles.   I was celebrating those in the White House who had worked so hard to get justice.  The lights were still on in both the White House and the Old Executive Office Building.  We were there to support them, the military, the Navy Seals that did this.  Occasionally and rarely there were some tasteless utterances, racist or jingoistic, but the rest of the crowd looked askance at that and them.   In my experience, that kind of thing was rare.

More broadly - I, we, were there to feel good about our government not being feckless and ineffectually.  Not being a victim.  I just felt happy about that.  There lots of happy tears.

And then a young man in a spiderman costume climbed a tree along the fence to the White House.  The crowd laughed and cheered and cried.  All with joy.

I am glad I was there.  

Here are my photos of that night, at the White House, between the White House and Lafayette Park. 

Some videos first.  The videos are dark and hard to see, but the sounds...the sound reveal what it was like too.  

Here are some photos, brightened up.

World War I Officially Ends Today

Very intriguing bit of history - of the past and, as it turns out, the present.  Today Germany makes the last of reparations as set forth in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. 

Check out the full implications of the first World War.  Pretty remarkable when seen in summary like this. 

Science Fiction Predictions That Came True

h/t The Daily Dish.  Here are 11 sci-fi predictions that have seem to come true.  Not surprisingly HG Wells and Arthur C. Clarke have the most...they are fun to read and contemplate, which you can do here.

Ignorance about History, Religion and the Constitution

I find the discovery from Pew that anesthetists know more about Christianity than Christians do - not all surprising, unfortunately.  Even Catholics, nearly a majority, don't understand the doctrine of transubstantiation. 

Here the Atlantic Wire gathers up the various accounts for why this may be. 

It's very disturbing yet mirrors the ignorance of history and the writing of the US Constitution as recounted by Bradford Plumer in The New Republic's story The Revisionaries - The Tea Party's Goofy Fetish for Amending the Constitution. 

Ignorance is not a badge of honor.  

Up the Mayan Sun Temple

This site is in Belize, where I travelled for the wedding of a very dear friend who is a native. I spent a day alone with a guide exploring Mayan ruins. And took a few videos, of which this is one.

Ukrainian Artist Interprets '41-'45 Occupation

A friend who always sends me the most amazing things forwarded this video to me while I was away. Germany was the occupier.

Here are the notes:
Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who recently won the "Ukraine's Got Talent" competition. She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret the invasion and occupation of her country from 1941-1945.

View of Caesar Augustus' Home

My mom loved Steven Saylor's mysteries set in ancient Rome. And it was her favorite city to visit. As a lover of history she'd appreciated this report from the BBC (h/t The Washington Note):



This BBC news video, from March 2008, offers a tour of four restored rooms in Emperor Caesar Augustus' first home on the Palatine Hill. Pretty amazing.

My Mother's Family

Here is an op-ed that I would have discussed with my mother.   Her Italian family was from that region of Italy, Reggio di Calabria.  Plus she and my dad were married on the Feast of Holy Innocents (December 28th). 

This bit of personal family history about a catastrophic tidal wave that hit southern Italy on that date, this past Sunday - A Deadly Wave, a Lucky Star.

Quite a story.

The Irony (& Lesson) of The Best And The Brightest

Frank Rich is always good and even better here citing Halberstam (whose writing I love). Rich reminds us that "The Best and The Brightest" title ironically captured the narrative that unfolded - how Kennedy's bright advisers led us into Vietnam. It's a great book. And Rich does a service reminding us here in his column: The Brightest Are Not Always the Best.

And he's not so worried about Obama's security team, but rather the economic, reminding us that these guys pushed along bankign deregulation under Clinton. (They did the same in my field - telecommunications - I remember being incredulous and arguing a lot with my friends in the field).

He finishes with Rubin - and doesn't even mention the worse. But he says enough and in the end says that Rubin absence now may show Obama to be bright and wise.

Don't miss story of what Sam Rayburn said to Johnson. For history buffs, it's a great book.