It seems to me this night that I could be mistaken. It could be only my impression. When I came to Bosnia people spoke of a language called Serbo-Croatian.
In 1995, Serbians spoke Serbian; Croatians spoke Croatian. Perhaps this is only a semantic argument in English. Most people there called it our language. It was only the strangers that needed clarification. My friends heard where their friends were from and if they needed more clarification they had the license plate.
You can’t tell where people’s cars are from in Bosnia anymore. That was a reform that seemed a no brainer. In retrospect all their reforms were. Language and music have been reformed by the west to their separate corners. Not a sinister plan just a typical master plan of the un-checked market. In the mountains of Bosnia music and language where something closer; nuance carries its own information and the exchange always efficient.
In 1996, Civil Service International conference pages looked at people’s badges before asking if they wanted a copy in Serbian or Croatian. When they got to the Bosnians they didn’t ask, but understood. Everybody who needed the our language copy got one.
No idealization is involved on my part. On that point there is no mistake. There are many types of Bosnians, Americans, Liberians and Iraqis. When a country has nothing to hide strangers can see how it is possible that people lived that way. Especially the living stand testament. The secret that is difficult to share is that place I love is that I love it is that it is loved. I was never alone in Bosnia, but there are always shady characters around. If you were driving a car in 1995, not an unproforac, not in the army, I am sorry to say my friend you are not the Bosnian I write about. And you’re shady by the way. And in my own defense I never sold anything for a profit in Bosnia.
Idealization is involved on my part. Sometimes you come to key moments in your life. Those special times when you notice that not every one lives like you do. No one really talks about it, but it is the easiest of thing to occur. The process of living your life involves a specific context a certain perspective. If you have no sense of what I mean then I must confess a greater ignorance of life. In any case it would only be a slight shift in this my universe. Relative. One example of a word that shows this language has soul.
In 1997, I left Bosnia. Many humanitarian organizations began selling anything for a profit. IMG started working there a company from Cleveland came to rebuild water systems. Much of the US funds for social service programs for youth came from the Bosnian market, with middle men in Iowa. Monetization sounds so positive. Here is how it worked: the US bought commodities on the market at home. They inflated the price to farmers, their voters. Those goods were sold at a loss on the Market in Bosnia. They figured it wasn’t too much and not too little, but just right; in any case they monetized the excess commodities into money. Americans always know how much money they need. We were doing them a favor. It was for their good and our good. The difference for me was that I had come to Bosnia from Euclid, Ohio. There are many areas of my city that didn’t have as nice a youth center as I worked. How could Americans solve anybodies problem. Now we were stealing money because we thought we knew better.
In 1997, I watched well educated Bosnian Refugees and Serbian activist spend fifteen minutes on the construction of one sentence. It wasn’t debate as much as a craftsmanship. I was pretty sure that was why they called it our language: meaning was nuanced and direct. In Serbia there were no normal Americans. No one told them how to behave. The organization I joined was about a time and place. Tobacco may have when to the front from Nis, but what returned was the entire former Yugoslavia
When I found my Bosnian friends after the war spoke Bosnian I certainly wasn’t surprised. There was a guitar player I knew in Zenica. He sang mostly Macedonian songs. After work wasting time or staying late to perform the music spoke to me. In not understanding words I placed importance of every one. My process of living my life grab the music and gave grave importance just in the way things were.
That guitar player also told me a story about the tunnel to Sarajevo. I have seen one side. He told me his. He had been drafted recently from his job as an UMCOR music teacher. Our local male staff’s adieu was, “see you on the front lines.”
That guitar player was in supply. He carried Drina cigarettes through the tunnel to Sarajevo. He spoke of the water and all the details so many other people have written betterer. He spoke of what he observed. His friends never had a thought of religion before the war. As he traveled with some through the tunnel he saw what it was that picked them up. It was their faith and religion was irrelevant to what he was telling me.
That was the end of the story essentially. That was all he really told me. I thought I ran into him in Serbia one time. I felt myself splash down in cold water. It was the premerie of White cat black cat in Nis. A few seconds I thought he stood up with the director. In the Balkans I know that would be possible. He survived the end I did see him once in Sarajevo. Only time I saw him with a few generations of his family in the center. The first time I ever saw him without a care in the world. That guy was going places. Religion didn’t come up in the discussion we had. But we spoke to each other of a simple faith: videmo se.
My concert promoter friend in Gronji Vakuf used to tell me the thing about music is the lyrics. For him it was all music. We had hundreds of concerts on the former front line of G.V. Together in that project a band of teens came together form both sides. When I first came to G.V. they used different kinds of money depending on which door you took out the office.
Every city had its own war. Mostar and Vukovar speak to me of cause. G.V. was per capita the place not to be in Bosnia. A friend told me that he had a bike and rode 18 km to bugojno all the time. When I translated the story for a stranger they didn’t understand the joy. He had a bike. A difficult thought to express on English: he had his choice of girlfriend. Very few had bike. He was the man.
There are so many stories of that city. Why did they fight over the name? The name Vakuf is what the Bosnian culture developed in those mountains. There was only one way out of town and one way in all over Bosnia. Geography is never factored into any analysis of anything. It is the route catalyst of kaos and joy.
A Vakuf was a humanitarian organization. They called the man in charge I have, so I was told. That was where people went when they needed help from their society. Nothing was really ever muslim, catholic or orthodox in those mountains. That guitar player didn’t need to explain that to me.
The year I left people started to return to a joint market place on one side of the line. No one had an explanation for why they had been apart for so long. No one seemed to ask for one. Many people see a bleak future for the Balkans. In all the process of Bosnia in those dark years. There remains for no reason a Gornji and Dornji Vakuf. Not that Bosnia wouldn’t have survived, but that is how it survived.
Bugojno was supposed to be the capital of HerceBosna. Instead it became a front line for so many years. The artillery had to cool off. People went about their business by the new schedule. The Army Tito created was about defense. There are probably a few Islands in the world with submarines under them forgotten in the death of Yugoslavia. He was about nothing if he wasn’t about staying in power. Say whatever you like about him. I just know many still idealize him.
In Olovo the tanks were on the cliffs outside town. Nothing about that war made sense if you forget to factor the influence of the past. Not the unknowable past but the simple past written and recorded for all.
There is story that I saw today that helps explain this American semantic argument. Looks like after 9/11 the CIA was actually very good at torture. They asked the guys who ran the military survival school how to do it. The school gave them techniques based on methods believed to be employed by the KGB. First of all the CIA doesn’t know how to torture. What did they do to JFK in the bay of pigs. It was a slam dunk.
Is there nuance there? Everyone now generally agrees it was a bad idea. Now everyone is talking about a very effective WWII system that was in place. Anybody got a line on info about that? Anybody got a library card? Just there on the shelves. Sometimes books are blown up.
All we have are other libraries which remain. What do you say to someone who witnessed death all around. Things are sometimes lost and something more difficult to preserve.
Every religion has such interesting stories. So much hatred of Jewish culture in my culture. If enough libraries are blown up Henry Ford seems like a blessing. Anybody read about the brave new world. Wouldn’t certain information be lost in that case. We leave history alone on the shelf waiting to be blown up. Western Europe wouldn’t let people of Jewish faith own land so their community remained liquid and prepared to dash. You never knew which town would start killing them today. It was good to have family in other places.
In Sarajevo that was different. There is no agreed upon impact of the Ottoman Empire, but I think most would agree the Jewish faith was better respected. Sarajevo. The deepest routes of families I came across in Sarajevo, more than one person I find impossible to describe nor believe were from that faith.
You remember no one else has the reasons you do. Even when I can’t define them this fact doesn’t change. I traveled to other places and listened. The bartender in Split in response to a story of Bosnia, “Everyone has there own,” she said as we all started looking to the floor. But for half a second in that coffee bar everyone understood that life did not make sense from this particular perspective. And I turned and walked out into the old city. Shalom in the air. I will never forget what I heard and that sun over the Adriatic upon those mountains to Bosnia which I would soon drive. Vozdra
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Paris Coffee Shop
Paris and the music returns in new forms. Words remain word I know. There is more communication. The swirl of life. London of the end. Amsterdam and the temple. Bait shop Kopenhagen. All the ways spelled Stockholm to Paris. Not finishing everything but never lost yes yes ja ja da da isms through prisons lost in a sea of structures. The music comes in certain intensities. Moments known. Now through here. All the answers so many questions not asked. Do you really care? School children taught adults learned what is the question not straining. Sought and found. The universe here as the party breaks. When enough forget and a few remember. The dance of wilderness. A biosphere for shoes. A perfect adaptation for selling shoes? The world is a perfect place. A big enough universe. Are worry and anxiety our gifts? Technology biology and the world knows the temperature everywhere. Measurements seeking clearer definition striving further. When do we answer this question. ? What is enough how is clear? I've no personal concern for the world. Neighborhoods we remember lives we lead. How we see the generations. We all have our answer to give. Is the universe wrong? How do I want my children to live? How did my parents want me to live? And the generations that mingle. Do I write in Paris to you again? I'm here and going there I know where I've been how the fields change. Society. I am free. What you re looking for is what you see. How you listen is what you hear. I am nowhere, but here and here stays as I wonder out in to the struggles. To have lived my life to have been here. Where do I find responsibility? In who I am? You paint chairs she sells shoes strolls dogs. We are enough and we change the wondering tracks we've laid for purpose unsure and we find ourselves spies or home. Share your home. Start the flow of a true economy. A false economy made real. Don't create your need live what you want. The world is a menu. A restaurant under management from below. Who we were not what we are and the generations cycle through. Where do we go. Culture follows art. Be creative in your want conservative in your need. Defining yourself in what you want to be yourself and walk out certain doors and know where you can return. Huddle in the doorways begging for change. Roaming the world begging for votes. Told what you want to hear. And that's changed. And that's good. Extended family extended reality. Understand your home. Understand their home. We are who we are. My generation X I am found. We have children and look for ourselves in them. And release love from our vocabulary and place it in our experience where it belongs. We talk less. We do more that is us. They did more that was them. Poverty is an intellectual exercise we don't play. Listen to the words. All the answers upon the shelf to one small question. And I find in her eyes these policies of division and I know what I am writing as I know where I am in this sentence. A modern jail to protect me to protect them. Evolution of this dark matter that fills us all. We accept the unknown as the unknowable. We live the universe as one. Where is the prize in purpose? Where do we not belong? This is not the end of the world. Revolution lives children learn to crawl and humans learn to fly past words and we know which words to forget and who to be. Belgrade protests. Proud to be Serb? Human? No trucking strikes in France no problem. Continues in a phase that looks for familiar places. Every place is familiar. Everyone son. Everyone daughter. This is our world now and we have one moment to define it. Or do you live in their world? How do you see? What more are you looking for to define? And in London the circus continues. In Liverpool the Taxis wait. On the Isle of Mann it's cold and they wait for summer. Amsterdam and not everyone is high. Paris traffic on Tuesday. Oklahoma Copenhagen and Philadelphia meet together to discuss Cambodia. CNN International and your span of attention. Seeking to be not do. Pay attention. One check we walk out on and we're never free. One that never comes or is noticed. Once paid once free. Freedom found in who we are. Watch for the right recognize the left. Two sided and a part. Life simplified by complication. Walk out on your mind and find home. See the pavement waves of love and say yes I saw I see and return. Can't solve the problems of the world? Solve the problem of you. A big enough universe and all it's resources to tilt reality at new angles together. And see the one movement that drives the world: peace. Not the process of Hebron. Six billion creatures all looking for their own personal peace. No more war in me. I see no contradictions. I've accepted this reason as the basis for every detail of humanity .Yes an assumption yet one I'm more than willing to stand on. Who wants anything else? Not me. Interrail Global. Well not exactly a whole continent. What is finished? What language do you speak? All theory is fact in one peace. Are we evolving peace or extinction? Chaos. Entropy. Change the definitions. Big Bang evolution. Big Crunch extinction? The building blocks of a generations world builds new worlds and the children build their own. Economic opportunity on grandparent's backs and we found human opportunity as our children's gift. Our children will not be generation x. There is anew generation coming. Generation Y and I for one shall attempt to answer their questions of planet x. And tell them of my world and my love and how love is simply giving away the world. And our children shall know our parents not as we do, but understand they will know. Why? Because we Love.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Final Report
Era of Relief Ends in Bosnia and Herzegovina
NEW YORK, NY, March 31, 2006-The era of United Methodist relief in Bosnia and Herzegovina has ended and the era of self-sufficiency has begun as United Methodist Committee on Relief withdraws after a 13-year project. UMCOR is a unit of the church's global mission agency.
Some 100,000 people benefited from UMCOR's presence in country. Programs costing $133 million-funded by the church and government donors-affected life there from main streets to individual households. "The closing of the Bosnia and Herzegovina office marks the end of an era in UMCOR's history," said the Rev. Paul Dirdak, UMCOR's Deputy General Secretary. "It was one of UMCOR's earliest field offices and set the standard for our continuing excellence in transitional development."
Notable were installation of lighting and apartment buildings along Mostar's main road in the south, once the front line in the deadly war among Serbs, Muslims, and Croats; returning thousands to their home villages and new housing across the country after displacement; construction of a footbridge in Mostar to reconnect halves of the city on either side of the Neretva River; and development of economic opportunity for vulnerable households. In all UMCOR staff designed and managed 140 different programs.
"The country is completely different today from that encountered by UMCOR staff members in 1993 during a time of war and suffering," wrote John Farquharson, the head of mission who oversaw the close out. He has served with UMCOR for five years. "It seems fair to say that the development in the quality of projects and the capacity of the program was exponential," he said in an email. "This was the result of an unquantifiable amount of human effort by many staff."
Continuing in mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the youth houses that play a role in continuing peace building and reconciliation among people still in uneasy proximity. Gifts to support the youth houses, UMCOR Advance #333640, may be mailed to UMCOR, PO Box 9068, New York, NY 10087. Donors wishing to use a major credit card may call toll free, 800-554-8583, or donate online.
NEW YORK, NY, March 31, 2006-The era of United Methodist relief in Bosnia and Herzegovina has ended and the era of self-sufficiency has begun as United Methodist Committee on Relief withdraws after a 13-year project. UMCOR is a unit of the church's global mission agency.
Some 100,000 people benefited from UMCOR's presence in country. Programs costing $133 million-funded by the church and government donors-affected life there from main streets to individual households. "The closing of the Bosnia and Herzegovina office marks the end of an era in UMCOR's history," said the Rev. Paul Dirdak, UMCOR's Deputy General Secretary. "It was one of UMCOR's earliest field offices and set the standard for our continuing excellence in transitional development."
Notable were installation of lighting and apartment buildings along Mostar's main road in the south, once the front line in the deadly war among Serbs, Muslims, and Croats; returning thousands to their home villages and new housing across the country after displacement; construction of a footbridge in Mostar to reconnect halves of the city on either side of the Neretva River; and development of economic opportunity for vulnerable households. In all UMCOR staff designed and managed 140 different programs.
"The country is completely different today from that encountered by UMCOR staff members in 1993 during a time of war and suffering," wrote John Farquharson, the head of mission who oversaw the close out. He has served with UMCOR for five years. "It seems fair to say that the development in the quality of projects and the capacity of the program was exponential," he said in an email. "This was the result of an unquantifiable amount of human effort by many staff."
Continuing in mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the youth houses that play a role in continuing peace building and reconciliation among people still in uneasy proximity. Gifts to support the youth houses, UMCOR Advance #333640, may be mailed to UMCOR, PO Box 9068, New York, NY 10087. Donors wishing to use a major credit card may call toll free, 800-554-8583, or donate online.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
UST301 Critical Reaction
In reading James C. Scott’s book “Seeing Like a State” the author seems to have created some very effective imagery to understand the point of view of the state. However, I find it difficult to completely accept his personification of the state. From a postmodern perspective, the actions of the state seem to arise from interpersonal conflicts for political power. The sedentarization process described in the introduction is a valuable concept, but I remain uncomfortable accepting that any state can truly define its own goals beyond transitory political maneuverings.
Mr. Scott needs to create abstract representations of very complex systems in order to demonstrate the importance of his ideas. The relevance of local knowledge is perhaps the best example. He talks to possible critics who might say he has come to believe that tradition and custom are naturally superior to a rational governmental policy. The point he makes is that there needs to be more interaction to take the best from both sides. In this process, the local knowledge becomes a gray area. Some traditions are vital as others constrict and the final arbitrator advocated seems to be trail and error.
While I agree with his assessment of local knowledge being vital to the success of a state’s policy, he seems too often to give the state the benefit of the doubt. This can be seen in a statement from the introduction, “it is harder to grasp why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.” (4) It would be harder to find an example of a policy that has succeeded as intended. The majority of state policies seem to have more unintended consequences, for good and bad, then any originally imaged by government officials.
Welfare reform is a strong case for this idea. In Wisconsin, studies have shown that before welfare reform a majority of recipients worked illegally to supplement their incomes. The ironic fact is that the new system has discouraged the participation of these individuals who can now legally work and receive welfare. The poor in essence have assumed this new program was more hassle than it was worth. The welfare roles are far below any projections due in most part to apathy inherent in the system’s employees. The people the poor seem to have decided to avoid. In fairness, the civil society is stable; there was not revolution, but welfare reform was structured to address the concerns of the citizen tax-payers not necessarily the poor.
I can accept a majority of the ideas presented, but the process of abstraction seems sloppy in a few places. The introduction has a throwaway statement about Eastern Europe, which peaked my interest and led me to the chapter on collectivization. Mr. Scott states he is not a Russian expert and proceeds to demonstrate the fact, “collective farms failed to deliver on any of the social goals envisioned by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and most Bolsheviks.” What he fails to mention is that Trotsky and Stalin developed into mortal enemies. The accepted view is that Stalin paid for the contract murder of Trotsky in Central America. They shared few common ideas.
Stalin came to power simply because no one understood the importance of the party post of general secretary. He took a job no one else wanted. Stalin controlled who got what job in the lower structure of the party. How can he be seen as a person interested in the improvement of the human condition? His pact with Hitler to divide Poland if nothing else seems to demonstrate his desire for personal power; the cult of Stalin, not communism is what ruled Russia after Lenin’s death. Stalin was not seen as the heir apparent; his position of secretary gave him his power in the party.
Aside from this support, Stalin also had Lenin’s party rule against factions. This rule was designed to give the early party the unity to stabilize a government. This was a temporary rule that Stalin made eternal to his advantage. No one would be allowed to dissent in the party. Mr. Scott describes only in passing “the struggle with the ‘right’ opposition led by Burkharin.” This process is certainly more important to the Russian experience than any sense of improving the human condition. First Stalin sided with Lenin and Burkharin in favoring New Economic Plan (small scale privatization). At this point Lenin has already became incapacitated and soon died, not before writing a secret letter questioning Stalin’s motives (this was disclosed under Krushev’s policy of de-Stalinization). Stalin used the rule against factionalism to purge the old guard supporters of collectivization. Then he switched to the side of collectivization and used the same rule to purge the NEP supporters like Bukharin. What was left was a completely hand pick upper level party administration indebted to Stalin.
The social experimentation under Lenin was gone. Trotsky was in exile to be executed in later years. Communism was replaced with the cult of Stalin. Marx never imagined Russia as the place for revolution. Lenin hoped in jump starting a revolution in Russia, a revolution in Germany would follow (Marx wasn’t talking about Germany). Stalin deported entire nations of people from their historical land; he killed millions in work camps. The Russia experiment was not an attempt to improve the condition of man kind, from 1924 to 1953 it was an attempt to increase the power of the cult of Stalin. There was no state vision in this context.
The ideas presented in this book are too strong to be muddled with spurious assumptions about Russian communism. The personification of the state hopefully will become a more useful model in the future, but the further we go in the past the more illogical these personifications become. In the majority of concepts presented, Mr. Scott has presented precise images of the state and local level interacting, but over well-trodden ground (i.e. Russian collectivization), he seems to be lost in simplification.
Mr. Scott needs to create abstract representations of very complex systems in order to demonstrate the importance of his ideas. The relevance of local knowledge is perhaps the best example. He talks to possible critics who might say he has come to believe that tradition and custom are naturally superior to a rational governmental policy. The point he makes is that there needs to be more interaction to take the best from both sides. In this process, the local knowledge becomes a gray area. Some traditions are vital as others constrict and the final arbitrator advocated seems to be trail and error.
While I agree with his assessment of local knowledge being vital to the success of a state’s policy, he seems too often to give the state the benefit of the doubt. This can be seen in a statement from the introduction, “it is harder to grasp why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.” (4) It would be harder to find an example of a policy that has succeeded as intended. The majority of state policies seem to have more unintended consequences, for good and bad, then any originally imaged by government officials.
Welfare reform is a strong case for this idea. In Wisconsin, studies have shown that before welfare reform a majority of recipients worked illegally to supplement their incomes. The ironic fact is that the new system has discouraged the participation of these individuals who can now legally work and receive welfare. The poor in essence have assumed this new program was more hassle than it was worth. The welfare roles are far below any projections due in most part to apathy inherent in the system’s employees. The people the poor seem to have decided to avoid. In fairness, the civil society is stable; there was not revolution, but welfare reform was structured to address the concerns of the citizen tax-payers not necessarily the poor.
I can accept a majority of the ideas presented, but the process of abstraction seems sloppy in a few places. The introduction has a throwaway statement about Eastern Europe, which peaked my interest and led me to the chapter on collectivization. Mr. Scott states he is not a Russian expert and proceeds to demonstrate the fact, “collective farms failed to deliver on any of the social goals envisioned by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and most Bolsheviks.” What he fails to mention is that Trotsky and Stalin developed into mortal enemies. The accepted view is that Stalin paid for the contract murder of Trotsky in Central America. They shared few common ideas.
Stalin came to power simply because no one understood the importance of the party post of general secretary. He took a job no one else wanted. Stalin controlled who got what job in the lower structure of the party. How can he be seen as a person interested in the improvement of the human condition? His pact with Hitler to divide Poland if nothing else seems to demonstrate his desire for personal power; the cult of Stalin, not communism is what ruled Russia after Lenin’s death. Stalin was not seen as the heir apparent; his position of secretary gave him his power in the party.
Aside from this support, Stalin also had Lenin’s party rule against factions. This rule was designed to give the early party the unity to stabilize a government. This was a temporary rule that Stalin made eternal to his advantage. No one would be allowed to dissent in the party. Mr. Scott describes only in passing “the struggle with the ‘right’ opposition led by Burkharin.” This process is certainly more important to the Russian experience than any sense of improving the human condition. First Stalin sided with Lenin and Burkharin in favoring New Economic Plan (small scale privatization). At this point Lenin has already became incapacitated and soon died, not before writing a secret letter questioning Stalin’s motives (this was disclosed under Krushev’s policy of de-Stalinization). Stalin used the rule against factionalism to purge the old guard supporters of collectivization. Then he switched to the side of collectivization and used the same rule to purge the NEP supporters like Bukharin. What was left was a completely hand pick upper level party administration indebted to Stalin.
The social experimentation under Lenin was gone. Trotsky was in exile to be executed in later years. Communism was replaced with the cult of Stalin. Marx never imagined Russia as the place for revolution. Lenin hoped in jump starting a revolution in Russia, a revolution in Germany would follow (Marx wasn’t talking about Germany). Stalin deported entire nations of people from their historical land; he killed millions in work camps. The Russia experiment was not an attempt to improve the condition of man kind, from 1924 to 1953 it was an attempt to increase the power of the cult of Stalin. There was no state vision in this context.
The ideas presented in this book are too strong to be muddled with spurious assumptions about Russian communism. The personification of the state hopefully will become a more useful model in the future, but the further we go in the past the more illogical these personifications become. In the majority of concepts presented, Mr. Scott has presented precise images of the state and local level interacting, but over well-trodden ground (i.e. Russian collectivization), he seems to be lost in simplification.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Milosz
“I’ll bet on this horse. He’s good. He’ll carry me far”
The historical context of any region in transition is by nature unique. The native son understood Eastern Europe as the final we, apart from which was to be exiled. In Stalinism a chilling orthodoxy was accepted and seemed eternal in 1951. Milosz documented for his generation how something so clumsy could become so vogue. This is the story of the spread of Russian communism to Poland and how it all seemed so inevitable to each in their own turn.
“A curious book appeared in Warsaw in 1932.” From the first page of the captive mind we begin a journey down the corridors and back alleys of a generation. We are confronted by an “internal longing for harmony that lies deeper then ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” The power of these deeper emotions presented in the Pill of Murti-Bing fuel by their nature historical transitions. The greatest fires burn in the “alienated intellectual who responded to the call of the new faith to be useful and to belong to the masses.” Each class met its own seduction, but it was the intelligentsia that created myths and presented ritual initiation to the citizens of the Imperium. Milosz describes them in his area of Eastern Europe: “the impoverished nobility the lower middle class.” This definition is problematic for westerners given the lack of a national middle class.
“Are Americans really stupid?” Milosz describes that question relative to the historical fatalism of the region. A sense of loss is present, in case they truly are stupid, and an overriding hope comes through in the chance they are not. In Eastern Europe the people had lost any sense of a natural occurring life. The theme of exile developed throughout the book supports the concept that regardless of historical realities, to leave a Polish speaking land was to exist in deficit for the intelligentsia. The importance of this truth can not be underestimated.
Milosz qualifies his statements almost without exception from his opening inscription. America is the “awkward raft on which everyone paddles in a different direction,” yet sails past the totalitarian ship on the rocks. One thing is clear, “the ‘stupidity’ which produced a technology immeasurably superior to that of Europe is not entirely a source of weakness.”
Central to the personalities in the Captive mind, is the concept of Ketman. The idea that “he who is in possession of truth must not expose his person, his relatives or his reputation to the blindness, the folly, the perversity of those whom it has pleased God to place and maintain in error. As a student I practice Ketman in my daily rituals. Presenting strong liberal beliefs to a conservative professor is clearly a matter of degree. Ketman’s focus is upon the future and creating a better tomorrow. In this aspect the idea of social realism may even have a found kindred spirit.
The quasi conversion of the citizens is supported by the various styles of Ketman described. Milosz holds real questions about the future and the impact of two-way televisions. The influence of Orwell’s 1984 on the time of publication is clear. A certain naiveté is clear from 2001 even as fears for our future continue. This is the true force of the Captive Mind in how complete victory seemed for the new faith. Milosz even mused about the eventual introduction of modern art to the Imperium by 2000. Under skeptical Ketmen he repeats a important theme, “ but is it not impossible that Russia will manage to impose her insanity upon the whole world and that the return to reason will occur only after two or three hundred years.” If any attraction can be understood for Eastern Europe to communism, it must be accepted first that it was a system imposed. The decisions once made by the intelligentsia seemed eternal or the equivalent feeling produced by three hundred years. Could it be that “the new faith is an indispensable purgatory; perhaps God’s purpose is being accomplished through the barbarian, i.e. the center, who are forcing the masses to awaken out of their lethargy.”
Milosz points out that the language and ideas of his contemporary Europe clearly lacked the possibility of capturing the mystery. Each member of the intelligentsia sought his life and dedicated himself to the future.
Alpha , The Moralist
“The History of the last decades in Central and Eastern Europe bounds in situations in regard to which all epithets and theoretical considerations lose meaning. A man’s effort to match up to these situations decides his fate. The solution each accepts differs according to those impalpable factors which constitute his individuality.” Alpha first finds solution in the Catholic Church. This religion with an almost Stalinist slant declares itself the one true religion. Life from this one decision turns. Alpha was the great catholic writer before the war, but in the transition only the deeper feelings remained.
“The Communist program offered more realistic arguments than did the program of the London-directed ‘underground state’: the country, it was fairly clear, was going to be liberated by the red army; with its aid one should start a peoples revolution.” There is common American understanding that possession is 9/10th of the law. Possession of the individual gave Stalinism the momentum in Eastern Europe.
The intellectual had “tended to become a radical in an effort to establish a tie with the masses.” Independently and in support of each other, numerous members of the intelligentsia had realized they were isolated from the masses and blamed the state. Alpha, the real person chose the new faith as he had the old: to leave his hat on a communal rack and catch his breathe.
“He crushed the fly only to be crushed in his turn by the second, patient giant.” The end of the London inspired uprising against Germany is no children’s story. This is a tale of man in all his splendor. “Blind loyalty encounters the necessities of History.” Perhaps the clearest settlement of a question in history. Add the death of a revolutionary generation and the attraction to the New Faith for the masses of Poland essentially exists in a vacuum. Inevitable perhaps as the sunrise of a new era the intelligentsia followed.
Any passion for truth that survived in the Polish Intelligentsia became less common by the hour. Alpha’s old weaknesses helped him in the new faith. Much like current weaknesses helped him in the old faith. “One compromise leads to a second and a third until at last, though everything one says may be perfectly logical, it no longer has anything in common with the flesh and blood of living people.”
Beta, The Disappointed Lover
“His attention is fixed not on man -man is simply an animal that wants to live- but on ‘concentration society’.” The brutal facts of class warfare are basic to life for a certain population throughout history. He stumbles through the worst of history well fed and dressed. His ability to function in extreme conditions is based on a societal hierarchy of beliefs. With no personal hierarchy, he was able to adapt better than most. Beta would become a force in any transition of Poland..
“Beta had no faith, religious or other, and he had the courage to admit it in his poems.” His declaration, “they were merely countering German nationalism with Polish nationalism,” about the confused early nationalists in Poland reflected his rejection of “a battle for battle’s sake.”
The communist quickly understood the value of his equations: “Christianity equals Capitalism equals Hitlerism.” From his experience Beta held a “rare and precious treasure: True hatred. What a relief for Beta who could conceive of no belief that was eternal. Useful hatred, hatred put to the service of society!” The communists needed transitional figures and offered steady work. Beta had returned to Poland to avoid the position of the exile, such a common choice. “Where, outside his own country, could he find readers of books written in his native tongue.”
Beta was valuable to the Imperium in explaining “man’s impotence against the laws of history: even people with the best of intentions had fallen into the machine of Nazi terror and been converted into frightened cave man.” Circumstance, not design, was the key to success. For the short-term after the war Beta’s prospects were bright. Mature social realism would arrive in Poland eventually. Beta would become more concerned about the “Mayakovski case.” Others similar to Beta accepted their losses, ensuring the transition to mature Stalinism and their strengths to weakness.
Beta believed in the idea of a new era, “when he put down his pen he felt he had accomplished something.” As he saw himself receding too far from a bright new day, he killed himself. Beta lost all hope in the horse he bet on. “His talent, intelligence and ardor drove him to action while ordinary people temporized and rendered unto an unloved Caesar only so much as was absolutely necessary.”
Gamma, the Slave of History
This story brings first to light a small but significant influence. Gamma’s mixed Russian-Polish heritage is not unique. Ethnic groups throughout Europe were making myths and legends of their history. Poland, allowed to exist only at the whim of the great powers, developed a sense of dread in the necessities of history. Each state was developing what Herder called volksgeist, their national spirit. The mixed minority population lacked their own stories. Perhaps they are naturally inclined to staunchly support whatever system is in power against the unknown.
Gamma was not alone in his uncertainty and his heritage was not the dominant force in even his life. The entire intelligentsia was in revolt. Milosz argues that the majority of “revolt against one’s environment is usually shame of one’s environment. The social status of all was undefined.” They saw there own class as a relic of the past. “It was oriented to the past rather than the future.”
Gamma had vaguely defined national revolution for himself as had his generation. “In practice, this meant a hostile attitude towards their Jewish comrades, who as future lawyers and doctors would be their professional competitors.” Gamma’s family is killed by the Russians and he manages to prosper under their new faith. He couldn’t have saved them, but the fact that he was able to make a rational choice is shocking somehow to western sensibilities. There would be “reward for those who knew how to think correctly, who understood the logic of History, who did not surrender to senseless sentimentality!” Poland was liberated and a new government was to be formed. Gamma could handle the dirty work and he would last the long term for “this was what came of betting on a good horse.”
“We must remember that five and a half years of Nazi rule had obliterated all respect for private property.” Every favorable circumstance was needed to ensure victory of the new faith. “The entire state was gripped by a single emotion: hatred. Peasants, receiving land, hated; workers and office employees, joining the party, hated; socialists, participating nominally in the government, hated; writers endeavoring to get their manuscript publish, hated.” Gamma believed he signed a pact with the devil in being a servant of History. “He knew too much to retain any illusions and despised those naïve enough to nourish them.”
If Gamma “considered himself a servant of the devil that ruled,” is he not by definition evil. Certainly each government has attracted, for lack of a better term, an evil element of society. A bad cop in Los Angeles and a censor of Poland, are there certain theoretical considerations in common? Could it be “the devil to whom men sell their souls owes his might to men themselves, and that the determinism of History is a creation of human brains.”
Delta, The Troubadour
This drunkard, poet and word gypsy had always needed a patron. As a respected voice of his generation he “always distributed his mockery evenly over all the groups.” A surprising conversion to nationalism demonstrated ultimately “in order to live he needed a patron, a person who would force him to write, fight his drunkenness and, in short, control and care for him.”
The new faith needed to win the right and left. Delta’s connection to the right made him very attractive to the calculating and efficient party members. Having rallied them for Polish nationalism, he could present the new faith as the next logical step. The Imperium gained through association. Delta’s ability to sing praises about gloomy Moscow made his intention unclear for “it was impossible to tell if he was lying or telling the truth … because he constantly used exaggeration as his artistic tool, his opponents could prove nothing against him.” Eventually they would.
Delta is a personality perhaps lost in time, the old bard. “ In order to exist as a poet he needed a genial, amused seigneur who believed that neither government nor anything in heaven or on earth deserves to be taken too seriously, that song – half serious, half scoffing – matters more.” Doomed to the first half of the twentieth century, Delta’s existence was provided by the Imperium; a wild card that those in control could bring to the cultural table at whim. To exploit, disown and most likely reform again for another task. Cultural Stalinism defined.
Man , This enemy
The intelligentsia faced an oppressive confusion about their place in society. The former nobility in Poland was never able to stabilize under the earlier Nationalist period. A historical fatalism gripped Milosz’s generation leaving Russian domination the only feasible outcome.
Let us not forget that the connection between the New Faith and Marx is rather superficial…the workers are the only class capable of organized action – that Marxist principle has never been forgotten. No action, however, is possible without its leaders. If the leaders reason correctly, that is, if they understand the necessities of the historic process, then the workers as a mass will be unable to protest.
Milosz becomes the exile that his generation fears more than all. And he could only watch with the west: “crimes in the name of the new and radiant man; crimes committed to the sound of orchestras and choruses, to the blare of loudspeakers and the recitation of optimistic poems.” Milosz explains that the west finds great pleasure in finding fault in the new faith, but rarely offers any new alternatives. America prizes only individuality and lacks the final we historical fatalism has granted Eastern Europe. How could Russian domination have been avoided? It seems all those who could have opposed her found more immediate problems to solve. After all worse case scenario 300 year of domination plus or minus.
The historical context of any region in transition is by nature unique. The native son understood Eastern Europe as the final we, apart from which was to be exiled. In Stalinism a chilling orthodoxy was accepted and seemed eternal in 1951. Milosz documented for his generation how something so clumsy could become so vogue. This is the story of the spread of Russian communism to Poland and how it all seemed so inevitable to each in their own turn.
“A curious book appeared in Warsaw in 1932.” From the first page of the captive mind we begin a journey down the corridors and back alleys of a generation. We are confronted by an “internal longing for harmony that lies deeper then ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” The power of these deeper emotions presented in the Pill of Murti-Bing fuel by their nature historical transitions. The greatest fires burn in the “alienated intellectual who responded to the call of the new faith to be useful and to belong to the masses.” Each class met its own seduction, but it was the intelligentsia that created myths and presented ritual initiation to the citizens of the Imperium. Milosz describes them in his area of Eastern Europe: “the impoverished nobility the lower middle class.” This definition is problematic for westerners given the lack of a national middle class.
“Are Americans really stupid?” Milosz describes that question relative to the historical fatalism of the region. A sense of loss is present, in case they truly are stupid, and an overriding hope comes through in the chance they are not. In Eastern Europe the people had lost any sense of a natural occurring life. The theme of exile developed throughout the book supports the concept that regardless of historical realities, to leave a Polish speaking land was to exist in deficit for the intelligentsia. The importance of this truth can not be underestimated.
Milosz qualifies his statements almost without exception from his opening inscription. America is the “awkward raft on which everyone paddles in a different direction,” yet sails past the totalitarian ship on the rocks. One thing is clear, “the ‘stupidity’ which produced a technology immeasurably superior to that of Europe is not entirely a source of weakness.”
Central to the personalities in the Captive mind, is the concept of Ketman. The idea that “he who is in possession of truth must not expose his person, his relatives or his reputation to the blindness, the folly, the perversity of those whom it has pleased God to place and maintain in error. As a student I practice Ketman in my daily rituals. Presenting strong liberal beliefs to a conservative professor is clearly a matter of degree. Ketman’s focus is upon the future and creating a better tomorrow. In this aspect the idea of social realism may even have a found kindred spirit.
The quasi conversion of the citizens is supported by the various styles of Ketman described. Milosz holds real questions about the future and the impact of two-way televisions. The influence of Orwell’s 1984 on the time of publication is clear. A certain naiveté is clear from 2001 even as fears for our future continue. This is the true force of the Captive Mind in how complete victory seemed for the new faith. Milosz even mused about the eventual introduction of modern art to the Imperium by 2000. Under skeptical Ketmen he repeats a important theme, “ but is it not impossible that Russia will manage to impose her insanity upon the whole world and that the return to reason will occur only after two or three hundred years.” If any attraction can be understood for Eastern Europe to communism, it must be accepted first that it was a system imposed. The decisions once made by the intelligentsia seemed eternal or the equivalent feeling produced by three hundred years. Could it be that “the new faith is an indispensable purgatory; perhaps God’s purpose is being accomplished through the barbarian, i.e. the center, who are forcing the masses to awaken out of their lethargy.”
Milosz points out that the language and ideas of his contemporary Europe clearly lacked the possibility of capturing the mystery. Each member of the intelligentsia sought his life and dedicated himself to the future.
Alpha , The Moralist
“The History of the last decades in Central and Eastern Europe bounds in situations in regard to which all epithets and theoretical considerations lose meaning. A man’s effort to match up to these situations decides his fate. The solution each accepts differs according to those impalpable factors which constitute his individuality.” Alpha first finds solution in the Catholic Church. This religion with an almost Stalinist slant declares itself the one true religion. Life from this one decision turns. Alpha was the great catholic writer before the war, but in the transition only the deeper feelings remained.
“The Communist program offered more realistic arguments than did the program of the London-directed ‘underground state’: the country, it was fairly clear, was going to be liberated by the red army; with its aid one should start a peoples revolution.” There is common American understanding that possession is 9/10th of the law. Possession of the individual gave Stalinism the momentum in Eastern Europe.
The intellectual had “tended to become a radical in an effort to establish a tie with the masses.” Independently and in support of each other, numerous members of the intelligentsia had realized they were isolated from the masses and blamed the state. Alpha, the real person chose the new faith as he had the old: to leave his hat on a communal rack and catch his breathe.
“He crushed the fly only to be crushed in his turn by the second, patient giant.” The end of the London inspired uprising against Germany is no children’s story. This is a tale of man in all his splendor. “Blind loyalty encounters the necessities of History.” Perhaps the clearest settlement of a question in history. Add the death of a revolutionary generation and the attraction to the New Faith for the masses of Poland essentially exists in a vacuum. Inevitable perhaps as the sunrise of a new era the intelligentsia followed.
Any passion for truth that survived in the Polish Intelligentsia became less common by the hour. Alpha’s old weaknesses helped him in the new faith. Much like current weaknesses helped him in the old faith. “One compromise leads to a second and a third until at last, though everything one says may be perfectly logical, it no longer has anything in common with the flesh and blood of living people.”
Beta, The Disappointed Lover
“His attention is fixed not on man -man is simply an animal that wants to live- but on ‘concentration society’.” The brutal facts of class warfare are basic to life for a certain population throughout history. He stumbles through the worst of history well fed and dressed. His ability to function in extreme conditions is based on a societal hierarchy of beliefs. With no personal hierarchy, he was able to adapt better than most. Beta would become a force in any transition of Poland..
“Beta had no faith, religious or other, and he had the courage to admit it in his poems.” His declaration, “they were merely countering German nationalism with Polish nationalism,” about the confused early nationalists in Poland reflected his rejection of “a battle for battle’s sake.”
The communist quickly understood the value of his equations: “Christianity equals Capitalism equals Hitlerism.” From his experience Beta held a “rare and precious treasure: True hatred. What a relief for Beta who could conceive of no belief that was eternal. Useful hatred, hatred put to the service of society!” The communists needed transitional figures and offered steady work. Beta had returned to Poland to avoid the position of the exile, such a common choice. “Where, outside his own country, could he find readers of books written in his native tongue.”
Beta was valuable to the Imperium in explaining “man’s impotence against the laws of history: even people with the best of intentions had fallen into the machine of Nazi terror and been converted into frightened cave man.” Circumstance, not design, was the key to success. For the short-term after the war Beta’s prospects were bright. Mature social realism would arrive in Poland eventually. Beta would become more concerned about the “Mayakovski case.” Others similar to Beta accepted their losses, ensuring the transition to mature Stalinism and their strengths to weakness.
Beta believed in the idea of a new era, “when he put down his pen he felt he had accomplished something.” As he saw himself receding too far from a bright new day, he killed himself. Beta lost all hope in the horse he bet on. “His talent, intelligence and ardor drove him to action while ordinary people temporized and rendered unto an unloved Caesar only so much as was absolutely necessary.”
Gamma, the Slave of History
This story brings first to light a small but significant influence. Gamma’s mixed Russian-Polish heritage is not unique. Ethnic groups throughout Europe were making myths and legends of their history. Poland, allowed to exist only at the whim of the great powers, developed a sense of dread in the necessities of history. Each state was developing what Herder called volksgeist, their national spirit. The mixed minority population lacked their own stories. Perhaps they are naturally inclined to staunchly support whatever system is in power against the unknown.
Gamma was not alone in his uncertainty and his heritage was not the dominant force in even his life. The entire intelligentsia was in revolt. Milosz argues that the majority of “revolt against one’s environment is usually shame of one’s environment. The social status of all was undefined.” They saw there own class as a relic of the past. “It was oriented to the past rather than the future.”
Gamma had vaguely defined national revolution for himself as had his generation. “In practice, this meant a hostile attitude towards their Jewish comrades, who as future lawyers and doctors would be their professional competitors.” Gamma’s family is killed by the Russians and he manages to prosper under their new faith. He couldn’t have saved them, but the fact that he was able to make a rational choice is shocking somehow to western sensibilities. There would be “reward for those who knew how to think correctly, who understood the logic of History, who did not surrender to senseless sentimentality!” Poland was liberated and a new government was to be formed. Gamma could handle the dirty work and he would last the long term for “this was what came of betting on a good horse.”
“We must remember that five and a half years of Nazi rule had obliterated all respect for private property.” Every favorable circumstance was needed to ensure victory of the new faith. “The entire state was gripped by a single emotion: hatred. Peasants, receiving land, hated; workers and office employees, joining the party, hated; socialists, participating nominally in the government, hated; writers endeavoring to get their manuscript publish, hated.” Gamma believed he signed a pact with the devil in being a servant of History. “He knew too much to retain any illusions and despised those naïve enough to nourish them.”
If Gamma “considered himself a servant of the devil that ruled,” is he not by definition evil. Certainly each government has attracted, for lack of a better term, an evil element of society. A bad cop in Los Angeles and a censor of Poland, are there certain theoretical considerations in common? Could it be “the devil to whom men sell their souls owes his might to men themselves, and that the determinism of History is a creation of human brains.”
Delta, The Troubadour
This drunkard, poet and word gypsy had always needed a patron. As a respected voice of his generation he “always distributed his mockery evenly over all the groups.” A surprising conversion to nationalism demonstrated ultimately “in order to live he needed a patron, a person who would force him to write, fight his drunkenness and, in short, control and care for him.”
The new faith needed to win the right and left. Delta’s connection to the right made him very attractive to the calculating and efficient party members. Having rallied them for Polish nationalism, he could present the new faith as the next logical step. The Imperium gained through association. Delta’s ability to sing praises about gloomy Moscow made his intention unclear for “it was impossible to tell if he was lying or telling the truth … because he constantly used exaggeration as his artistic tool, his opponents could prove nothing against him.” Eventually they would.
Delta is a personality perhaps lost in time, the old bard. “ In order to exist as a poet he needed a genial, amused seigneur who believed that neither government nor anything in heaven or on earth deserves to be taken too seriously, that song – half serious, half scoffing – matters more.” Doomed to the first half of the twentieth century, Delta’s existence was provided by the Imperium; a wild card that those in control could bring to the cultural table at whim. To exploit, disown and most likely reform again for another task. Cultural Stalinism defined.
Man , This enemy
The intelligentsia faced an oppressive confusion about their place in society. The former nobility in Poland was never able to stabilize under the earlier Nationalist period. A historical fatalism gripped Milosz’s generation leaving Russian domination the only feasible outcome.
Let us not forget that the connection between the New Faith and Marx is rather superficial…the workers are the only class capable of organized action – that Marxist principle has never been forgotten. No action, however, is possible without its leaders. If the leaders reason correctly, that is, if they understand the necessities of the historic process, then the workers as a mass will be unable to protest.
Milosz becomes the exile that his generation fears more than all. And he could only watch with the west: “crimes in the name of the new and radiant man; crimes committed to the sound of orchestras and choruses, to the blare of loudspeakers and the recitation of optimistic poems.” Milosz explains that the west finds great pleasure in finding fault in the new faith, but rarely offers any new alternatives. America prizes only individuality and lacks the final we historical fatalism has granted Eastern Europe. How could Russian domination have been avoided? It seems all those who could have opposed her found more immediate problems to solve. After all worse case scenario 300 year of domination plus or minus.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Man
There used to be a crisis in my post-modern psyche until I addressed the fact that there is none. All of my life and all of my generation has come to believe a few core facts. The Definition of our times and ramparts. History has been fuelled; the question is our source of energy.
Evolution has been co-opted. What other source of energy a child but their parents. Arguments of creation and creationism are much similar than each side would care to believe. We know how, kinda got some idears. Either we are unique in our understanding or there is a greater knowing.
History has not ended. Just because a New Yorker said it, does not make something true. From lower Manhattan the world is very far away. The horizon is cyber and more entertaining. The summit on sustainable development brought live in living color. There are great injustices raging the world over.
Where is our Renaissance? There was a time when one person could actually comprehend
Evolution has been co-opted. What other source of energy a child but their parents. Arguments of creation and creationism are much similar than each side would care to believe. We know how, kinda got some idears. Either we are unique in our understanding or there is a greater knowing.
History has not ended. Just because a New Yorker said it, does not make something true. From lower Manhattan the world is very far away. The horizon is cyber and more entertaining. The summit on sustainable development brought live in living color. There are great injustices raging the world over.
Where is our Renaissance? There was a time when one person could actually comprehend
Northwest
My family has a connection with the Northwest Territory dating back to the early 1700’s. The historical record of my fathers side of the family has been exhaustively documented by my great-aunt Barbara. The majority of the information I have comes from an eighty nine page document “Ancestors of Ellen Loretta Lucas,” (my grandmother). This document has over one thousand references documenting seven generation of my family’s history.
A large number on both sides of my family served in the revolutionary war. Luckily for me I also have a great-aunt on my mothers side with a keen interest in family history as well. In March 1779, John and Sarah Lowry consummated the first marriage in the Northwest Territory in which both persons were white, although married according to Indian ritual. It seems they spent an extended period of captivity with Mingo and Delaware Indians. Apparently they were hidden and not returned when one Col. Bouquet retrieved captives in 1764 after Pontiac’s war. Another relative, Anna Hite was the first woman MD graduated in Ohio. My family is a fairly mixed group, the earliest connection with the new world apparently being French Huguenots driven from France.
However, it was the latest arrival that firmly set my roots in Cleveland. James and Ellen Crellin (my great-great grandparents) came to south Collinwood from the Isle of Man sometime between 1904 and 1906. Very proud people, they were known simply as Mom and Dad for several generations of my family.
I traveled to the Isle of Man in 1998 and for myself satisfied the question of why they left. There is a display in the Museum in Douglas that presents the options faced by native Manx at the end of the 1800’s. At the time these options were limited to working in mines dealing with terrible conditions or trying subsistence farming dealing with long difficult winters on the windy isle. I traveled there in January and can attest to that harsh season. It wasn’t until the modern tourism industry bloomed that fortunes changed for the island natives. At the end of the display a choice was presented as it was faced; I certainly knew which choice I would make.
Christain Boyd's probate petition to Her Majesty's High Court of Justice of the Isle of Man, dated 28 March 1896, includes the Last Will and Testament of John Boyde (Ellen Crellin’s father). An Executor's Bond in the amount of 100 pounds is signed by James Crellin of the town of Douglas, laborer. They had moved from Ballaugh to Douglas were my great-grandmother Katie was born in 1899. Ellen worked as a servant in Ballaugh and James with the railway. If they were not planning to leave for America when they came to Douglas, they would be in the minority as this time represents a mass emigration from the Isle of Man.
My great-grandmother was baptized in September 1904 in Douglas. My great-aunt Elizabeth (Fairy) was born in Cleveland in January 1906. Emigration took place sometime between these dates. The next record of my family is from the Directory of Cleveland, 1915. James Crellin is listed as a green grocer at 15916 St. Clair Ave just up the street from five points in South Collinwood. Down the street my family began a relationship that continues today with Nottingham United Methodist Church. Unfortunately, all records of the 150 year old church were lost in a fire. My great-grandmother was the head cook during the peak of the railroad yards in Collinwood.
James and Ellen spent a brief stint in California during the depression working a chicken farm, but by that time my family had established itself on east 187th due to the earlier boom of the area. In the attached appendix there is a map of the area from 1903 before the south side of St. Clair (up from five points) was parceled. By 1912 most of the major landmarks of the neighborhood are present including South High School. A sizeable portion of land being owned by the Rockefellers suggests the level of interest in the area at the end of the 19th century.
Several Manx traditions are still present in my family. Probably due to the harsh winters, the Manx have taken great pride in the interior of their residence. A key to this being the mantle piece. After my trip to the Isle of Man, my grandmothers traditions took on a new significance to me. My great-grandfather Lucas arrived from Pennsylvania in Cleveland about five years after the Crellins and also settled in Nottingham Village working for the railroad.
My family developed a very close knit association around “Mom and Dad,” with several more houses around East 187th. My father, at age seven, actually believed he killed Grandpa Crellin after dropping a board on his foot. He died coincidentally in 1948 shortly after and the custom was not to talk specifics of death with children. The language was never passed down in the family as they certainly were interested in a break with the past and fully realizing their American Dream.
My grandparents moved out to Euclid after WWII and my grandfather worked with one company until retirement as mechanical engineer. At the time the area near East 250th was completely undeveloped. My father graduated from CSU in 1964 and worked in computers for thirty years and nursing for years; my mother would arrive in Cleveland in the early sixties. She met my father and recently built a house in Nottingham Village. She did eventually make it all the way to Japan, but Cleveland was enough of that world tour.
A large number on both sides of my family served in the revolutionary war. Luckily for me I also have a great-aunt on my mothers side with a keen interest in family history as well. In March 1779, John and Sarah Lowry consummated the first marriage in the Northwest Territory in which both persons were white, although married according to Indian ritual. It seems they spent an extended period of captivity with Mingo and Delaware Indians. Apparently they were hidden and not returned when one Col. Bouquet retrieved captives in 1764 after Pontiac’s war. Another relative, Anna Hite was the first woman MD graduated in Ohio. My family is a fairly mixed group, the earliest connection with the new world apparently being French Huguenots driven from France.
However, it was the latest arrival that firmly set my roots in Cleveland. James and Ellen Crellin (my great-great grandparents) came to south Collinwood from the Isle of Man sometime between 1904 and 1906. Very proud people, they were known simply as Mom and Dad for several generations of my family.
I traveled to the Isle of Man in 1998 and for myself satisfied the question of why they left. There is a display in the Museum in Douglas that presents the options faced by native Manx at the end of the 1800’s. At the time these options were limited to working in mines dealing with terrible conditions or trying subsistence farming dealing with long difficult winters on the windy isle. I traveled there in January and can attest to that harsh season. It wasn’t until the modern tourism industry bloomed that fortunes changed for the island natives. At the end of the display a choice was presented as it was faced; I certainly knew which choice I would make.
Christain Boyd's probate petition to Her Majesty's High Court of Justice of the Isle of Man, dated 28 March 1896, includes the Last Will and Testament of John Boyde (Ellen Crellin’s father). An Executor's Bond in the amount of 100 pounds is signed by James Crellin of the town of Douglas, laborer. They had moved from Ballaugh to Douglas were my great-grandmother Katie was born in 1899. Ellen worked as a servant in Ballaugh and James with the railway. If they were not planning to leave for America when they came to Douglas, they would be in the minority as this time represents a mass emigration from the Isle of Man.
My great-grandmother was baptized in September 1904 in Douglas. My great-aunt Elizabeth (Fairy) was born in Cleveland in January 1906. Emigration took place sometime between these dates. The next record of my family is from the Directory of Cleveland, 1915. James Crellin is listed as a green grocer at 15916 St. Clair Ave just up the street from five points in South Collinwood. Down the street my family began a relationship that continues today with Nottingham United Methodist Church. Unfortunately, all records of the 150 year old church were lost in a fire. My great-grandmother was the head cook during the peak of the railroad yards in Collinwood.
James and Ellen spent a brief stint in California during the depression working a chicken farm, but by that time my family had established itself on east 187th due to the earlier boom of the area. In the attached appendix there is a map of the area from 1903 before the south side of St. Clair (up from five points) was parceled. By 1912 most of the major landmarks of the neighborhood are present including South High School. A sizeable portion of land being owned by the Rockefellers suggests the level of interest in the area at the end of the 19th century.
Several Manx traditions are still present in my family. Probably due to the harsh winters, the Manx have taken great pride in the interior of their residence. A key to this being the mantle piece. After my trip to the Isle of Man, my grandmothers traditions took on a new significance to me. My great-grandfather Lucas arrived from Pennsylvania in Cleveland about five years after the Crellins and also settled in Nottingham Village working for the railroad.
My family developed a very close knit association around “Mom and Dad,” with several more houses around East 187th. My father, at age seven, actually believed he killed Grandpa Crellin after dropping a board on his foot. He died coincidentally in 1948 shortly after and the custom was not to talk specifics of death with children. The language was never passed down in the family as they certainly were interested in a break with the past and fully realizing their American Dream.
My grandparents moved out to Euclid after WWII and my grandfather worked with one company until retirement as mechanical engineer. At the time the area near East 250th was completely undeveloped. My father graduated from CSU in 1964 and worked in computers for thirty years and nursing for years; my mother would arrive in Cleveland in the early sixties. She met my father and recently built a house in Nottingham Village. She did eventually make it all the way to Japan, but Cleveland was enough of that world tour.
Monday, April 13, 2009
College of Urban Affairs
Abstract
INTERGRATION OF WAR AFFECTED PEOPLE
IN AN URBAN SETTING
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina left an urban core populous with unique experience from dealing with international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and living in a society at war. The third sector in the former and current Yugoslavia lacks sustainable practice and management. International organizations were more anxious to fund local initiatives than to identify relevant information about the needs on the ground. New unsustainable yet well financed initiatives were created, which removed human resources from competing and more sustainable initiatives, and created a social welfare loss in the third sector. We will discuss three organizations working in urban settings:
Youth House Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina working with youth aged 5-18.
Youth Club 96, Gornji Vakuf, Bosnia and Herzegovina working with former soldiers 18-30.
Center for Nonviolent Conflict Resolution Nis, Yugoslavia dealing with a mixed group of member’s aged 16-35.
INTERGRATION OF WAR AFFECTED PEOPLE
IN AN URBAN SETTING
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina left an urban core populous with unique experience from dealing with international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and living in a society at war. The third sector in the former and current Yugoslavia lacks sustainable practice and management. International organizations were more anxious to fund local initiatives than to identify relevant information about the needs on the ground. New unsustainable yet well financed initiatives were created, which removed human resources from competing and more sustainable initiatives, and created a social welfare loss in the third sector. We will discuss three organizations working in urban settings:
Youth House Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina working with youth aged 5-18.
Youth Club 96, Gornji Vakuf, Bosnia and Herzegovina working with former soldiers 18-30.
Center for Nonviolent Conflict Resolution Nis, Yugoslavia dealing with a mixed group of member’s aged 16-35.
UMCOR-FY’s 1999 proposal to monetize 35,000 metric tons of wheat and 4750 of oil (a total of 39,750 MT) has been approved by USDA and the contract is currently being negotiated. Estimated proceeds from commodity sales on the local market total approximately 8.5 million dollars. These proceeds will then be disbursed to six NGOs’ participating in a consortium, with UMCOR-FY as the lead agency, for programming in agricultural assistance, community development and other sectors. Participating organizations are:
Era of Relief Ends in Bosnia and Herzegovina
NEW YORK, NY, March 31, 2006-The era of United Methodist relief in Bosnia and Herzegovina has ended and the era of self-sufficiency has begun as United Methodist Committee on Relief withdraws after a 13-year project. UMCOR is a unit of the church's global mission agency.
Some 100,000 people benefited from UMCOR's presence in country. Programs costing $133 million-funded by the church and government donors-affected life there from main streets to individual households. "The closing of the Bosnia and Herzegovina office marks the end of an era in UMCOR's history," said the Rev. Paul Dirdak, UMCOR's Deputy General Secretary. "It was one of UMCOR's earliest field offices and set the standard for our continuing excellence in transitional development."
Notable were installation of lighting and apartment buildings along Mostar's main road in the south, once the front line in the deadly war among Serbs, Muslims, and Croats; returning thousands to their home villages and new housing across the country after displacement; construction of a footbridge in Mostar to reconnect halves of the city on either side of the Neretva River; and development of economic opportunity for vulnerable households. In all UMCOR staff designed and managed 140 different programs.
"The country is completely different today from that encountered by UMCOR staff members in 1993 during a time of war and suffering," wrote John Farquharson, the head of mission who oversaw the close out. He has served with UMCOR for five years. "It seems fair to say that the development in the quality of projects and the capacity of the program was exponential," he said in an email. "This was the result of an unquantifiable amount of human effort by many staff."
Continuing in mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the youth houses that play a role in continuing peace building and reconciliation among people still in uneasy proximity. Gifts to support the youth houses, UMCOR Advance #333640, may be mailed to UMCOR, PO Box 9068, New York, NY 10087. Donors wishing to use a major credit card may call toll free, 800-554-8583, or donate online.
Era of Relief Ends in Bosnia and Herzegovina
NEW YORK, NY, March 31, 2006-The era of United Methodist relief in Bosnia and Herzegovina has ended and the era of self-sufficiency has begun as United Methodist Committee on Relief withdraws after a 13-year project. UMCOR is a unit of the church's global mission agency.
Some 100,000 people benefited from UMCOR's presence in country. Programs costing $133 million-funded by the church and government donors-affected life there from main streets to individual households. "The closing of the Bosnia and Herzegovina office marks the end of an era in UMCOR's history," said the Rev. Paul Dirdak, UMCOR's Deputy General Secretary. "It was one of UMCOR's earliest field offices and set the standard for our continuing excellence in transitional development."
Notable were installation of lighting and apartment buildings along Mostar's main road in the south, once the front line in the deadly war among Serbs, Muslims, and Croats; returning thousands to their home villages and new housing across the country after displacement; construction of a footbridge in Mostar to reconnect halves of the city on either side of the Neretva River; and development of economic opportunity for vulnerable households. In all UMCOR staff designed and managed 140 different programs.
"The country is completely different today from that encountered by UMCOR staff members in 1993 during a time of war and suffering," wrote John Farquharson, the head of mission who oversaw the close out. He has served with UMCOR for five years. "It seems fair to say that the development in the quality of projects and the capacity of the program was exponential," he said in an email. "This was the result of an unquantifiable amount of human effort by many staff."
Continuing in mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the youth houses that play a role in continuing peace building and reconciliation among people still in uneasy proximity. Gifts to support the youth houses, UMCOR Advance #333640, may be mailed to UMCOR, PO Box 9068, New York, NY 10087. Donors wishing to use a major credit card may call toll free, 800-554-8583, or donate online.
I had a video group in Zenica once.
I had a video group in Zenica once. When I first walked that road from Dalmatia I was still inside myself, but somehow right outside me was war. Where I had come from was as complex a story as you would like to hear. Obviously conceivable as anyone or others story. What did I feel? I was walking in on my own dream. One of those fatal dreams; you can never remember the end. I knew the plane from my youth and those steps on the tarmac.
Final Report
Youth Club 96
In 1996 the implementing partner of UMCOR in the Gornji Vakuf (GV) Youth House project was the United Nations Office in Vienna Volunteer Project (UNOV). This group of volunteers was based on a model the group coordinator developed in Pakrac, Croatia. These volunteers worked directly in the community. Project goals were very broad and included putting grassroots peace building on the agenda of the United Nations. The idealism of the volunteer can be compared with the distortion to the long-term policies of the international NGOs and their failure to designs exit strategies. UMCOR had a municipal rehabilitation project in GV sponsored by USAid, which insisted on spending money only on joint use buildings. The project was in crisis as the project manager Julia Demichaelis described, “We are forbidden to install proper heating systems and effect other repairs because, at the moment, neither community feels emotionally prepared to share public housing. And quite frankly, I don't blame them.” UMCOR decided to bring their new idea of a sustainable youth house projects to GV. UNOV had been interested in working with UMCOR as they also were looking for ways to expand their funding base. The project was created on the dividing line between Moslems and Croatians. The boarder of the Republic of Bosnia ran right through the middle of town. This project like the one in Zenica was designed for youth between 5 and 18. In all the youth house projects there was a larger number of younger children participating. GV is a very small city with a pre-war population of 20,000. There is a definite delineation of the urban field as it is so small. Within the older urban youth population there was a growing resentment to the youth house. A very visible project, the youth house, was bringing computers into town for the first time, but only for those under 19. It must be understood that GV had a relatively low percentage of displaced persons other than those displaced within the community itself. GV was also per capita the hardest hit location in Bosnia. This conflict within a conflict developed into a civil war within a city exacerbated by outside influences. One young man 19 years old, who was displaced from his family’s apartment on the current dividing line, made a direct challenge to the UNOV coordinator on behalf of his generation. UNOV had programs for children through the youth house, projects for the elderly including visits and woodcutting, and projects for woman including the newly formed income generating sewing project, but there was no specific programs for the 18-30 age group. The UNOV coordinator negotiated directly with the community and as to this question he had no response. Immediately an excess in the budget was found to support an exploratory project. The design of the UNOV project was to encourage initiatives from the community. In the case of the UMCOR youth house project there was no specific initiative it simply seemed reasonable. It allowed the UMCOR rehabilitation project to begin to start spending money on direct support of the community and a joint use facility. Youth Club 96 was different and began with a gathering of old friends who had lived together on the current dividing line. On each side of this line different currencies were used, such was the extent of the division. The club developed into a music, media and video project. The Club thrived in 1997 after a grant of 15,000 DEM from the Hailey Foundation based in Great Britain. Cooperation was developed in Mostar through the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The club made a documentary of their youth festival including dozens of youth organizations from the similarly divided Mostar. A mixed musical group of Moslem and Croatians was formed and later performed throughout the youth house system. Funding was later received from the IRC Umbrella grant (supported by OTI Office for Transitional Initiative a special branch of USAid) to cover the cost of the space being used. This 20’ x 30’ space cost $800 a month due to its prime location on the dividing line. Prices for these properties inflated immediately after the arrival of international NGOs and their concentration along that line. Key assurances of continued funding was given by OTI in the fall of 1997. However, the coordinator of the project who had originally formed the project and was the unifying force in the club relocated to Belgium. He relocated to avoid serving in a nonintegrated military. A second fact conspired to seal the fate of Youth Club 96 when the US government interpreted the Bosnian elections. Funding priorities where shifted from the Republic of Bosnia to Herzegovina (the southern Croatian dominated area of Bosnia) and the Serbian controlled parts of Bosnia. These areas were considered more radical and in greater need of local NGO creation, which was certainly a valid position. The problem was the break-neck speed at which the money followed with the decision. GV was located approximately 15 mile from the delineating line of the US government and OTI. Despite the clubs strong connection with Mostar, the largest city in Herzegovina, funding for the club was terminated. The members of the club who expected to have a longer transition period to a new funding source, found themselves ill prepared without their founding member. The Club is currently a rug store. The Youth Club represents the idea that a local NGO can be created and funded like an international NGO. Basically a NGO in general receives money to do humanitarian missions. There are no income activities as described above. The only sustainable future for any international NGO is a steady flow of money from donors of all types, including foundations, governments, the United Nations and other sources. This was the same reality for the Youth Club. Unfortunately IRC had to work by OTI rules in order to administrate the well-financed umbrella grant. The dialogical momentum of the income generation theory of local NGO sustainability had greatly influenced OTI’s decision-making process. The youth club had no real results in this area aside from generating income for participating member in various innovative ways. The mixed musical groups formed in the club did go on to work in the community. The club simply failed to gain critical mass in its funding and failed as most NGOs created do. This example is the exception to the rule in Bosnia. The majority of the local NGOs created followed a model similar to the Youth House Zenica.
The three initiative created in the former Yugoslavia followed the following models:
Direct creation and support by international NGO’s
A local initiative creating a NGO with cooperation of an international organization.
A local initiative independently creating a local NGO without initial international support.
These three models represent the majority of NGO creating activity since the destruction of Tito’s Yugoslavia in the 1990’s. The practices outlined above created a third sector that is competitive where it should be cooperative; uncertainty and confusion have created a dialogical division between the international NGO and the local NGO. The myth that there is a fundamental difference between a multi-million dollar NGO and a new local initiative meeting for the first time was created by the international work force in the former Yugoslavia. The third sector is but a mirror of the international community that is prone to shatter, as have the recent hopes for Kosovo. Examples of the first two models were described above. We will now leave the international community for a while and focus on an example of the third type of NGO creating activity.
In 1996 the implementing partner of UMCOR in the Gornji Vakuf (GV) Youth House project was the United Nations Office in Vienna Volunteer Project (UNOV). This group of volunteers was based on a model the group coordinator developed in Pakrac, Croatia. These volunteers worked directly in the community. Project goals were very broad and included putting grassroots peace building on the agenda of the United Nations. The idealism of the volunteer can be compared with the distortion to the long-term policies of the international NGOs and their failure to designs exit strategies. UMCOR had a municipal rehabilitation project in GV sponsored by USAid, which insisted on spending money only on joint use buildings. The project was in crisis as the project manager Julia Demichaelis described, “We are forbidden to install proper heating systems and effect other repairs because, at the moment, neither community feels emotionally prepared to share public housing. And quite frankly, I don't blame them.” UMCOR decided to bring their new idea of a sustainable youth house projects to GV. UNOV had been interested in working with UMCOR as they also were looking for ways to expand their funding base. The project was created on the dividing line between Moslems and Croatians. The boarder of the Republic of Bosnia ran right through the middle of town. This project like the one in Zenica was designed for youth between 5 and 18. In all the youth house projects there was a larger number of younger children participating. GV is a very small city with a pre-war population of 20,000. There is a definite delineation of the urban field as it is so small. Within the older urban youth population there was a growing resentment to the youth house. A very visible project, the youth house, was bringing computers into town for the first time, but only for those under 19. It must be understood that GV had a relatively low percentage of displaced persons other than those displaced within the community itself. GV was also per capita the hardest hit location in Bosnia. This conflict within a conflict developed into a civil war within a city exacerbated by outside influences. One young man 19 years old, who was displaced from his family’s apartment on the current dividing line, made a direct challenge to the UNOV coordinator on behalf of his generation. UNOV had programs for children through the youth house, projects for the elderly including visits and woodcutting, and projects for woman including the newly formed income generating sewing project, but there was no specific programs for the 18-30 age group. The UNOV coordinator negotiated directly with the community and as to this question he had no response. Immediately an excess in the budget was found to support an exploratory project. The design of the UNOV project was to encourage initiatives from the community. In the case of the UMCOR youth house project there was no specific initiative it simply seemed reasonable. It allowed the UMCOR rehabilitation project to begin to start spending money on direct support of the community and a joint use facility. Youth Club 96 was different and began with a gathering of old friends who had lived together on the current dividing line. On each side of this line different currencies were used, such was the extent of the division. The club developed into a music, media and video project. The Club thrived in 1997 after a grant of 15,000 DEM from the Hailey Foundation based in Great Britain. Cooperation was developed in Mostar through the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The club made a documentary of their youth festival including dozens of youth organizations from the similarly divided Mostar. A mixed musical group of Moslem and Croatians was formed and later performed throughout the youth house system. Funding was later received from the IRC Umbrella grant (supported by OTI Office for Transitional Initiative a special branch of USAid) to cover the cost of the space being used. This 20’ x 30’ space cost $800 a month due to its prime location on the dividing line. Prices for these properties inflated immediately after the arrival of international NGOs and their concentration along that line. Key assurances of continued funding was given by OTI in the fall of 1997. However, the coordinator of the project who had originally formed the project and was the unifying force in the club relocated to Belgium. He relocated to avoid serving in a nonintegrated military. A second fact conspired to seal the fate of Youth Club 96 when the US government interpreted the Bosnian elections. Funding priorities where shifted from the Republic of Bosnia to Herzegovina (the southern Croatian dominated area of Bosnia) and the Serbian controlled parts of Bosnia. These areas were considered more radical and in greater need of local NGO creation, which was certainly a valid position. The problem was the break-neck speed at which the money followed with the decision. GV was located approximately 15 mile from the delineating line of the US government and OTI. Despite the clubs strong connection with Mostar, the largest city in Herzegovina, funding for the club was terminated. The members of the club who expected to have a longer transition period to a new funding source, found themselves ill prepared without their founding member. The Club is currently a rug store. The Youth Club represents the idea that a local NGO can be created and funded like an international NGO. Basically a NGO in general receives money to do humanitarian missions. There are no income activities as described above. The only sustainable future for any international NGO is a steady flow of money from donors of all types, including foundations, governments, the United Nations and other sources. This was the same reality for the Youth Club. Unfortunately IRC had to work by OTI rules in order to administrate the well-financed umbrella grant. The dialogical momentum of the income generation theory of local NGO sustainability had greatly influenced OTI’s decision-making process. The youth club had no real results in this area aside from generating income for participating member in various innovative ways. The mixed musical groups formed in the club did go on to work in the community. The club simply failed to gain critical mass in its funding and failed as most NGOs created do. This example is the exception to the rule in Bosnia. The majority of the local NGOs created followed a model similar to the Youth House Zenica.
The three initiative created in the former Yugoslavia followed the following models:
Direct creation and support by international NGO’s
A local initiative creating a NGO with cooperation of an international organization.
A local initiative independently creating a local NGO without initial international support.
These three models represent the majority of NGO creating activity since the destruction of Tito’s Yugoslavia in the 1990’s. The practices outlined above created a third sector that is competitive where it should be cooperative; uncertainty and confusion have created a dialogical division between the international NGO and the local NGO. The myth that there is a fundamental difference between a multi-million dollar NGO and a new local initiative meeting for the first time was created by the international work force in the former Yugoslavia. The third sector is but a mirror of the international community that is prone to shatter, as have the recent hopes for Kosovo. Examples of the first two models were described above. We will now leave the international community for a while and focus on an example of the third type of NGO creating activity.
Friday, April 10, 2009
BOOK FOUR
STORIES FROM BOSNIA
“If only one tenth of what he said would be worth believing.”
Reality is not contradiction, but requires diligent testing, probing and in the final value remembering. There is either a reason or there is no point. We in all cases must try to make one; I am if nothing else and the stories.
Where to begin when your at the end. Test your reality and remember what was before. The stories of Bosna I know all intermingle in the thread that is my essence. All from my very personal perspective; American research has found that coming to terms with death lengthens your life on average and generally speaking it alters you. Those who survived I met and remember. They for the most part remember miraculous people that did not survive. Stories of their glories remain in hearts torn across the Balkana and are shared at the simple cost of attention. Around coffee and other stimulating environments; having arrived to tell the tale to the new arrival the only not heard it.
The roads to Gornji Vakuf I traveled; diamond was far the best one named. Along the makedan. Left right. Right left. Up round; down left in our old land rover, golf or the best 4x4xfar. ™ Bon Bon corner: it is the tightest turn where the convoys are at their lowest speed. The people I know mostly know these things, but those around me now know more the polar ice caps of mars. Not really anybodies fault but what is mostly on the news. Have you put it together has it occurred to anyone. Children all around bon bon corner: the Bosnian candy store. Sure they sold cigarettes for profits. That was the extent of their mandate.
The corner was also a border; where land changed with an entirely new ecology. You shot down in the valley round these most amazing corners. Ahead there were you closest allies with radios telling you all was clear. Or perhaps you were on the cutting edge reporting their strategy. Either way you were going too fast. Unless of course a convoy was in front of you, perhaps a German ambulance or the awkward humvee; you were going too slow, but saw was around you. Down below there is a whole in the road I only once forgot about. My empty combi bus was air born. Was you learned was not to panic for it would serve no purpose. You land and you break so slight. Left Right. Right left. Up round; down left into the ideal position of your road. Recovered and relieved close calls only come once in a while. Nothing more to worry about here.
Diamond is just one story that would take more time than I have to tell. From the Dalmatian coast I first arrive in Gornji Vakuf in 1995 to only pass through that I some how would returned. The place my train finally came. Poetically is the farthest from my attempt at meaning. Nato hauled trains through GV on tractor trailers. One starry night I told a friend that I had come there to wait for my train. Reasons I had so few it was me and I would most likely continue doing something. Surviving to find reason. The next night NATO drove by my train and I was gone down the track left the empty bottle behind. The real truth is that peace keepers never help anyone. They do not know how. From countries with chronic problems impossible to solve they come to solve problems of which they have little comprehension. Nobody really is at fault. What else would you do?
War is a matter of scale. It is lost in the translation. Anybody could understand but sometimes there are no English words for it. Izvolite, for example on English would mean about twelve different things that we do not really say in English. Welcome to my home take what you like comes somewhat close, but who would ever say that. I learned my own language. There was this bombed out village I visited once during a Bosnian holiday. A deserted Serb village now filled with refugee women from around Srebrenica. You take from everyone; to not receive the greatest of sins.
If I could comprehend what I was witness to I would write it here. Yet these are my echoes that need to rebound and go back to their old ways. There are few whole stories and little to be understood of chronology. There is much a quality in quantity, but quantity seems to be the point.
Humor seems the most logical place to start. The peninsula’s view of it, how they share, where and why. In Serbia when NATO put the lights out we all were around talking about when there would be lights again and what all we would cook. People end up next to each other. Life starts. In all honesty no one can live like that, but others seem to each of to live through worse. On the news if no where else; organized or not murder is right up there with concerns. Death sometimes just drops out of the sky and snatches you away. Time like that really leaves a mess.
One afternoon walking home from my new born daughter and wife in the hospital, I found the morgue in Nis. Through my mind new pathway were built.
STORIES FROM BOSNIA
“If only one tenth of what he said would be worth believing.”
Reality is not contradiction, but requires diligent testing, probing and in the final value remembering. There is either a reason or there is no point. We in all cases must try to make one; I am if nothing else and the stories.
Where to begin when your at the end. Test your reality and remember what was before. The stories of Bosna I know all intermingle in the thread that is my essence. All from my very personal perspective; American research has found that coming to terms with death lengthens your life on average and generally speaking it alters you. Those who survived I met and remember. They for the most part remember miraculous people that did not survive. Stories of their glories remain in hearts torn across the Balkana and are shared at the simple cost of attention. Around coffee and other stimulating environments; having arrived to tell the tale to the new arrival the only not heard it.
The roads to Gornji Vakuf I traveled; diamond was far the best one named. Along the makedan. Left right. Right left. Up round; down left in our old land rover, golf or the best 4x4xfar. ™ Bon Bon corner: it is the tightest turn where the convoys are at their lowest speed. The people I know mostly know these things, but those around me now know more the polar ice caps of mars. Not really anybodies fault but what is mostly on the news. Have you put it together has it occurred to anyone. Children all around bon bon corner: the Bosnian candy store. Sure they sold cigarettes for profits. That was the extent of their mandate.
The corner was also a border; where land changed with an entirely new ecology. You shot down in the valley round these most amazing corners. Ahead there were you closest allies with radios telling you all was clear. Or perhaps you were on the cutting edge reporting their strategy. Either way you were going too fast. Unless of course a convoy was in front of you, perhaps a German ambulance or the awkward humvee; you were going too slow, but saw was around you. Down below there is a whole in the road I only once forgot about. My empty combi bus was air born. Was you learned was not to panic for it would serve no purpose. You land and you break so slight. Left Right. Right left. Up round; down left into the ideal position of your road. Recovered and relieved close calls only come once in a while. Nothing more to worry about here.
Diamond is just one story that would take more time than I have to tell. From the Dalmatian coast I first arrive in Gornji Vakuf in 1995 to only pass through that I some how would returned. The place my train finally came. Poetically is the farthest from my attempt at meaning. Nato hauled trains through GV on tractor trailers. One starry night I told a friend that I had come there to wait for my train. Reasons I had so few it was me and I would most likely continue doing something. Surviving to find reason. The next night NATO drove by my train and I was gone down the track left the empty bottle behind. The real truth is that peace keepers never help anyone. They do not know how. From countries with chronic problems impossible to solve they come to solve problems of which they have little comprehension. Nobody really is at fault. What else would you do?
War is a matter of scale. It is lost in the translation. Anybody could understand but sometimes there are no English words for it. Izvolite, for example on English would mean about twelve different things that we do not really say in English. Welcome to my home take what you like comes somewhat close, but who would ever say that. I learned my own language. There was this bombed out village I visited once during a Bosnian holiday. A deserted Serb village now filled with refugee women from around Srebrenica. You take from everyone; to not receive the greatest of sins.
If I could comprehend what I was witness to I would write it here. Yet these are my echoes that need to rebound and go back to their old ways. There are few whole stories and little to be understood of chronology. There is much a quality in quantity, but quantity seems to be the point.
Humor seems the most logical place to start. The peninsula’s view of it, how they share, where and why. In Serbia when NATO put the lights out we all were around talking about when there would be lights again and what all we would cook. People end up next to each other. Life starts. In all honesty no one can live like that, but others seem to each of to live through worse. On the news if no where else; organized or not murder is right up there with concerns. Death sometimes just drops out of the sky and snatches you away. Time like that really leaves a mess.
One afternoon walking home from my new born daughter and wife in the hospital, I found the morgue in Nis. Through my mind new pathway were built.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Sping 2004
Welcome to Sarajevo
If someone wrote a book about your life...would anyone want to read it? That was an army commercial like more in one year than you in your whole life. Remembering Bosnia I know what they did for the first elections; the war ended because most were exhausted and now that the Americans had finally arrived some one would keep score.
Sometimes faith has real practical uses. There were many people in Bosnia before the American army arrived. Internationals were accepted as witnesses blinded by sorrow. Spotting someone who has stole more than his fair share was real easy. UN troops sold cigarettes at black market prices so everyone was in the game; the real growth industry is honesty and transparency there is a reason the dollar is so weak and the euro so strong
There is a simple lesson to learn from the corruption of the term civil society. Under the eastern bloc governance made little sense; not for the reasons you would think. Basically over there was an agrarian reality. Marx never preached to the farmer. Civil society developed in this idyllic eastern Jeffersonian context. The majority of citizenry were left the majority of time alone to their own devices. History is written in the city.
That is where their forces remained deployed; specifically locked away on their bases. Where would you spend the night? They didn’t speak the language nor drink the water. Brown and Root bought it from Kuwaitis and had it all trucked over land through Turkey.
On the other side of the iron curtain developed civil society; the terminology does not apply to your grant proposal. The buzz words decapitate ideals; Haiti bleeds their ancient school. Realism, two camps and the Himalayas; certain words have undeniable persistence.
Soldiers never really fit in in uniforms…peace brother.
If someone wrote a book about your life...would anyone want to read it? That was an army commercial like more in one year than you in your whole life. Remembering Bosnia I know what they did for the first elections; the war ended because most were exhausted and now that the Americans had finally arrived some one would keep score.
Sometimes faith has real practical uses. There were many people in Bosnia before the American army arrived. Internationals were accepted as witnesses blinded by sorrow. Spotting someone who has stole more than his fair share was real easy. UN troops sold cigarettes at black market prices so everyone was in the game; the real growth industry is honesty and transparency there is a reason the dollar is so weak and the euro so strong
There is a simple lesson to learn from the corruption of the term civil society. Under the eastern bloc governance made little sense; not for the reasons you would think. Basically over there was an agrarian reality. Marx never preached to the farmer. Civil society developed in this idyllic eastern Jeffersonian context. The majority of citizenry were left the majority of time alone to their own devices. History is written in the city.
That is where their forces remained deployed; specifically locked away on their bases. Where would you spend the night? They didn’t speak the language nor drink the water. Brown and Root bought it from Kuwaitis and had it all trucked over land through Turkey.
On the other side of the iron curtain developed civil society; the terminology does not apply to your grant proposal. The buzz words decapitate ideals; Haiti bleeds their ancient school. Realism, two camps and the Himalayas; certain words have undeniable persistence.
Soldiers never really fit in in uniforms…peace brother.
Elections in Serbia
Don’t remember what year it was that I started following the elections in Serbia. I do remember that it was a week in Gornji Vakuf. No one went anywhere. Not just us expats holed up in our wall. The city was open you just had to knock hard. Low levels of cooked wine eventually would send someone out. We started watching the protests in Serbia. To this day I believe if it wasn’t below well that old van wasn’t starting anyways. Lucky for us it wasn’t a full blown revolution. It was good to hear anything from that mysterious continent.
I went the first time to Serbia in 1997 contrary to every plan I had ever made; I really chopped my first firewood there. Sometimes the universe speaks to us. Sometimes we see what something is being said. Does it really matter what it means. Something not nothing we see. The stars spoke to my people of order that was impossible in their daily lives. The night sky not the internet blazed across their cyber reality.
For my people, the Celts; yes my Serbian people I am from their. My people lived their before there were your people in the area. We come from the Danube you see. That is our work that even Microsoft knows how to spell check. Our cemeteries are older. All pointed one direction down the sea. For us it was very simple. There must be two worlds. This one now and this one other. This chaos and this order.
People have a toughness that is constrained by how we perceive this one now. We saw no sense and the only answer another life. There was no other possibility. The universe we see could not have been created for this one now. My people charged in to battle under every flag and no flag. From chaos purpose. From fear certainty. How was this our simple revolution so lost.
You got to understand where I am coming from. I talking Serbian politics so I will not leave first unanswered the mantra you would have to call it…you don’t understand, you aren’t from here. In point of fact my people were in Belgrade long before there ever was one. They didn’t write anything down. That’s the funny thing about my people. We had this crazy idea that you should have people to powerful…wealth brought family problems. We were democratic basically. So many tribes working for many crazy power hungry men. My people got wiped of the Balkan and many other places. We can still be found here or there. Mainly now the Irish, Manx and Scot which I am all three.
Our oral tradition was not a weakness. The bards of my line spent 20 years learning their trade. Those spooky druids just about everything else. We had the first hospitals the victors distorted the truth and for the most part my people forgot their stories. Manx is hardly spoken, but when you throw one there you will find him standing. The cyber reality super highway of information only scraps and inklings remain of the power. The weakness was that it could be shared equally. My people were mostly volumes of books that took 5000 generations to write and they were mostly burned. There was many scraps lost in Alexandria. Our power was to the people and that clashed with what calls it self-western democratic tradition. Actually quite literally with Athens itself. We were Rome’s bogyman. You ask me we just made the wrong call not wiping them out in BC several occasions.
So my people are your countries native Serbians. Indian Serbians would be way to confusing. You have to face basic facts and so does my current country. There is really too many most of the time too many and good enough is good enough. Society needs priorities. Countries and people need to work for one motive. Mostly we never do. If there are 10 million Serbians or 8 million Serbians is a false comparison. If you build them they will not come. It can’t be the focus.
6-10 Lunar Eclipse
Sometimes the universe gives you signs and clear indications. Sometimes we stop and we realize and pay attention. Leaving Serbia, as parts of the world began to recognize Kosovo as some new part of Europe, there was this lunar eclipse I watched as I drove to the airport in Belgrade. Down the road from Nis. Leading due north I followed the eclipse of the moon. Arrive 5 am Belgrade? Just now the bit through the city up to the airport. The speed limit reduced. Out through new Belgrade I slept over one bridge. Five lives in my hand moments from my destination. This sign and conversation and indication to me of the road ahead was not an end. Awake in the parking lot keys in someone else’s pocket this was easy to believe.
I have been down many roads. All my life is borrowed time. Dangers come not everywhere and not every time. Perhaps the universe has less sense than I Believe. However, we flew out of Belgrade by 7am or so; they didn’t set the Embassy on fire till well in the afternoon. The Serbian government closed the schools that day and offered every one free train tickets to the capital city. They just live on borrowed time.
My interest in the Balkans is a longing in part of me to understand another geology. The watersheds of another’s existence; the actual pathways of our runoff. When I first saw the river Bosna I saw the waters flow to the same place. There where pieces of me alive in ways they had never been. The river Nisava now trickling its way down the road between east and west. It wasn’t special. It was something real.
My own people had trek these lands. Don’t know exactly which and certainly not all, but many a love on the Balkana I owe for my life. As I do most paths out of mother Africa. It is funny to me when Balkan political spinners tell me I couldn't understand because I am not from there. There are few places I am not from.
I meet strangers who find it hard to believe that I have come to comprehend anything of the Balkana; I ponder those watching the birds so closely as to see they have lost sink with their environment. Where and when they go is not the same. So many whispers of the reality of climate change. I ponder the bounty we and perhaps no other human may ever see.
Don’t remember what year it was that I started following the elections in Serbia. I do remember that it was a week in Gornji Vakuf. No one went anywhere. Not just us expats holed up in our wall. The city was open you just had to knock hard. Low levels of cooked wine eventually would send someone out. We started watching the protests in Serbia. To this day I believe if it wasn’t below well that old van wasn’t starting anyways. Lucky for us it wasn’t a full blown revolution. It was good to hear anything from that mysterious continent.
I went the first time to Serbia in 1997 contrary to every plan I had ever made; I really chopped my first firewood there. Sometimes the universe speaks to us. Sometimes we see what something is being said. Does it really matter what it means. Something not nothing we see. The stars spoke to my people of order that was impossible in their daily lives. The night sky not the internet blazed across their cyber reality.
For my people, the Celts; yes my Serbian people I am from their. My people lived their before there were your people in the area. We come from the Danube you see. That is our work that even Microsoft knows how to spell check. Our cemeteries are older. All pointed one direction down the sea. For us it was very simple. There must be two worlds. This one now and this one other. This chaos and this order.
People have a toughness that is constrained by how we perceive this one now. We saw no sense and the only answer another life. There was no other possibility. The universe we see could not have been created for this one now. My people charged in to battle under every flag and no flag. From chaos purpose. From fear certainty. How was this our simple revolution so lost.
You got to understand where I am coming from. I talking Serbian politics so I will not leave first unanswered the mantra you would have to call it…you don’t understand, you aren’t from here. In point of fact my people were in Belgrade long before there ever was one. They didn’t write anything down. That’s the funny thing about my people. We had this crazy idea that you should have people to powerful…wealth brought family problems. We were democratic basically. So many tribes working for many crazy power hungry men. My people got wiped of the Balkan and many other places. We can still be found here or there. Mainly now the Irish, Manx and Scot which I am all three.
Our oral tradition was not a weakness. The bards of my line spent 20 years learning their trade. Those spooky druids just about everything else. We had the first hospitals the victors distorted the truth and for the most part my people forgot their stories. Manx is hardly spoken, but when you throw one there you will find him standing. The cyber reality super highway of information only scraps and inklings remain of the power. The weakness was that it could be shared equally. My people were mostly volumes of books that took 5000 generations to write and they were mostly burned. There was many scraps lost in Alexandria. Our power was to the people and that clashed with what calls it self-western democratic tradition. Actually quite literally with Athens itself. We were Rome’s bogyman. You ask me we just made the wrong call not wiping them out in BC several occasions.
So my people are your countries native Serbians. Indian Serbians would be way to confusing. You have to face basic facts and so does my current country. There is really too many most of the time too many and good enough is good enough. Society needs priorities. Countries and people need to work for one motive. Mostly we never do. If there are 10 million Serbians or 8 million Serbians is a false comparison. If you build them they will not come. It can’t be the focus.
6-10 Lunar Eclipse
Sometimes the universe gives you signs and clear indications. Sometimes we stop and we realize and pay attention. Leaving Serbia, as parts of the world began to recognize Kosovo as some new part of Europe, there was this lunar eclipse I watched as I drove to the airport in Belgrade. Down the road from Nis. Leading due north I followed the eclipse of the moon. Arrive 5 am Belgrade? Just now the bit through the city up to the airport. The speed limit reduced. Out through new Belgrade I slept over one bridge. Five lives in my hand moments from my destination. This sign and conversation and indication to me of the road ahead was not an end. Awake in the parking lot keys in someone else’s pocket this was easy to believe.
I have been down many roads. All my life is borrowed time. Dangers come not everywhere and not every time. Perhaps the universe has less sense than I Believe. However, we flew out of Belgrade by 7am or so; they didn’t set the Embassy on fire till well in the afternoon. The Serbian government closed the schools that day and offered every one free train tickets to the capital city. They just live on borrowed time.
My interest in the Balkans is a longing in part of me to understand another geology. The watersheds of another’s existence; the actual pathways of our runoff. When I first saw the river Bosna I saw the waters flow to the same place. There where pieces of me alive in ways they had never been. The river Nisava now trickling its way down the road between east and west. It wasn’t special. It was something real.
My own people had trek these lands. Don’t know exactly which and certainly not all, but many a love on the Balkana I owe for my life. As I do most paths out of mother Africa. It is funny to me when Balkan political spinners tell me I couldn't understand because I am not from there. There are few places I am not from.
I meet strangers who find it hard to believe that I have come to comprehend anything of the Balkana; I ponder those watching the birds so closely as to see they have lost sink with their environment. Where and when they go is not the same. So many whispers of the reality of climate change. I ponder the bounty we and perhaps no other human may ever see.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Vakuf
I lived in the Balkans six or seven years. The Balkans have lived in me for thirteen years now. We only have begun down this path together. Many things have changed. An American who married perhaps a month earlier for a visa; they wouldn’t let me stay in
An UNPROFORAC who understands the answers were not as complex as they seemed. The West is easy to blame for everything, but there are simple truths. People will tell you the world is not black and white, but it is in important ways. The plan made sense on paper. Let us rebuild the houses and put people back in their places. The answer to ethnic cleansing is not democracy I am afraid. The OSCE mission reported the conditions where not good for elections. They were told to be more positive. This is no news flash nor anything anyone would care to discuss. It is a real fact. After all those Bosnian people left, for other countries and other plains of existence: Elections by default left to those still standing everything.
Would you invite people back to your town to vote against you? The UN wanted names and transparency. They got nothing. The houses where rebuilt in great number for those standing both the cleansed and the cleaners. Call it genocide or call it civil war. It brought us ethnic cleansing in a modern European form. Democracy was not the answer. To this day I write, the west has the final say over this Bosnian Democracy. They have no real faith in their own prescription.
There is no concern for my Balkans. So many have gone. So many have come. It is about place. Given time the center is where people find peace. Just that in
In Bosna they lost something even more precious, but it will be ok. So many have gone. So many ways. So many have come to take the same place. It is about place. When you never have to worry about losing your job based on the vote you cast, things will work I believe how they always have on the Balkans. Better than average when you take the long view and have faith.
Those absent from us through no fault of their own are our strength. The Angels of our waking attentions. Have you seen them? Are you still looking for them? They are calling to us to make things better.
Has reason left us? Do you hear them answer, “It just departed, the world is not fair, everyone has their own, but do not fear we are still in this together.”
There are many ways to describe it, but my closest friends in
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