The Pilgrim's Dream (really)

America is my home.

I am proud to be an American.

Some day however, I, like so many others before me, may find myself captive or simply captivated by another land or place upon this great earth in further pursuit of becoming a "one-worlder"  -- or perhaps I'll follow my boyhood dream and become an offworlder.

"Choose your weapons (or means) of peaceful capitulation!"

Hamilton-Burr Duel

But not right now.

As of this moment, I remain, quintessentially and to the core, American.

That brings me to the meaning of not just "Thanksgiving," but my take or view of America itself.

Michael Medved writes somewhat perceptively on the subject "Real Pilgrims" (?) this week in USA Today:

"Most children learn that the Mayflower settlers came to the New World to escape persecution and to establish religious freedom. But the early colonists actually pursued purity, not tolerance and sought to build fervent, faith-based utopias, not secular regimes that consigned religion to a secondary role. The distinctive circumstances that allowed these fiery believers of varied denominations to cooperate in the founding of a new nation help to explain America’s contradictory religious traditions – as simultaneously the most devoutly Christian society in the western world, and the country most accommodating to every shade of exotic belief and practice." 

Supporting that with:

"The Pilgrims and their spiritual descendants never had to retreat from religious fervor or Biblical demands to join the new Republic, thanks to the continued existence of more or less autonomous, localized refuges and enclaves. No one can suggest that our Founders embraced secularism or relativism, but they did come to accept the notion of separate faith communities following their own distinctive rules while managing to live side-by-side and to cooperate where necessary . . .  The limitless boundaries and vast empty land of the fresh continent, plus the challenges of a long Revolutionary struggle, gave the faith-filled fanatics of the founding the chance for a freedom more profound than mere religious tolerance: the right, in their own communities, to be left alone."

In other words, he concludes, America is a land where we have earned the right to be "left alone" (in the pursuit of "happiness," no doubt).

That conclusion however rings only partly true today, in my opinion, based upon not only a spiritual side of the law of diminishing returns, but the increasingly blatant realities of global interdependence.

Further, John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute reminds us in piercingly clear words this week (here) that America and God (and the world) are again at a crossroads, invoking the words of that deceased "pilgrim," and recently oft noted, former Russian exile:

Increasingly, we are headed toward a spiritually dead-end society as our schools and universities, reluctant to teach values, avoid religion as if it were a plague. As a result, in the words of Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "men have forgotten God." He knew of what he spoke. For a short time, Solzhenitsyn was exiled in the United States where he observed Western culture first hand. As a result, Solzhenitsyn tended to reject the Western emphasis on materialism based largely upon his belief in Christian values.

Have we forgotten God?

Perhaps, that can be stated in a way more palatable even for the most agnostic or atheistic, too.

Have we lost that desire of the pilgrim forefathers, that fervor or dream for purity and freedom and along with that; that most basic of all human rights, the right to be "left alone"?

 Flat Earth

Have we reached the end of the earth?

Are the frontiers - even of space - no longer all that appealing or beckoning?

Perhaps, some answers (and questions) really do remain, too often unspoken, within the human soul.

"The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live." ~Victor Hugo

And then you have this:

In the name of God, Amen.
We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.

The shores of America have continued to attract (and occasionally repel) pilgrims of all stripes, shapes and agendas.

Shall it remain so?

Cape Cod, where first landfall occurred,  forms a continuous archipelagic region with a thin line of islands stretching toward New York, historically known by naturalists as the Outer Lands.

"East of America, there stands in the open Atlantic the last fragment of an ancient and vanished land. Worn by the breakers and the rains, and disintegrated by the wind, it still stands bold." - Henry Beston.

Heirs of The Gulag

Recently, my belief that human beings are so "complexed" that sometimes (perhaps often) they retain a certain god complex, was confirmed once more.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!"

It is after all, a new, designer age where vicariousness and even occasional viciousness sparks curiosity and possibilities as never known or imagined before.  Who cares about the world, family or real neighbors anymore when one has such outlets (or inlets), such . . . dreams?

This morning after a devotional reading wherein the following sentence spoke to me, in particular, "In the end, reconciliation and peace will come about through lineage," I quickly grabbed my yellowing copy of Victor Herman's book, Coming Out of the Ice, off the shelf and read:

"I heard an unbelievable scream. It was the first time I had heard anything like it. It was the kind of scream you imagine a woman makes in childbirth. It was a scream like that, not hysterical, but a more stupendous howl of exquisite agony with relief mixed into it. I looked up. The guard said, "Head down." I waited. I tried to decide where that scream had come from. What had made it - man or woman? It was that kind of scream - beyond gender - but a perfectly human sound . . ."

And finally:

"I was never again to hear anything like this - that one transfigured scream - and on either side of it silence, a perfect silence."

Munche's "The Scream" - Heirs afoot?

The etymology for the word heirs, the subject of this reflection, is interesting.

According to the Merriam -Webster dictionary online:
"akin to Greek chēros bereaved

Date: 13th century"

In the 21st century, it seems that screams of the transfiguring sort are just about everywhere one willingly (or forcibly) travels "on either side of [the] silence."

Gulags, yet abound.
They belong to us all.

Later . . .

Sexual Slavery - Update

Story First Posted Here Friday, September 25, 2009

A new book on this subject by Pulitzer Prize winning husband and wife team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn speaks out passionately against the oppression (including the sexual slavery) of women and girls worldwide.

The authors in a September interview with WNYC Radio:


HALF THE SKY: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, 2009) is already in its 9th printing.

As reviewer Bill Williams of The Boston Globe writes about it:

"They [the authors] estimate that 3 million women and girls are held as sex slaves. Human traffickers kidnap peasant girls as young as 7 and sell them to brothels. After girls are raped, they frequently remain prostitutes until they die, often from AIDS. During his research, Kristof purchased two teenage sex slaves in India for $150 and $203 and set them free. Within a week, one returned to her captors because she had become addicted to methamphetamines supplied by the brothel.

The authors cite another case in India in which pimps forced prostitutes to watch while they stripped a rebellious sex slave and then beat and stabbed her, leaving her to bleed to death. I often had to stop reading because the atrocities were too much to absorb."

Continuing:

"Just as America confronted slavery, the world today must face up to the issue of “women locked in brothels and teenage girls with fistulas curled up on the floor of isolated huts.’’

The authors are careful not to blame men alone. Oppression of women often is deeply embedded in local cultures, and is accepted by men and women alike.

Some nations, including China, are finally empowering women after centuries of oppression. Last year Rwanda became the first nation with a majority of female legislators."

Read Bill William's full review here.

"HALF THE SKY" has developed or is becoming (it is hoped) a global movement as well.

Get involved here or even here (America has a "sexual slavery" problem, too).

“Women hold up half the sky." ~Chinese Proverb

Cuban Bloggers Widen the Crack

The Socialist Republic of Cuba never did exactly become a Soviet satellite, but a disturbing (perhaps insignificant to some) report Friday indicates that after over 50 years now it is still not the Castro Paradise of Uncle Joe's dreams.

Writes Janine Mendes-Franco about el acontecimiento (the incident) on Global Voices:

"Perhaps it was only a matter of time, but Yoaní Sánchez, Cuba's most famous blogger, who has received countless international awards for her activism, was detained briefly and beaten by Cuban authorities on November 6, along with fellow bloggers, Claudia Cadelo (a Global Voices contributor) and Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo. The three were on their way to an anti-violence march in the Cuban capital, Havana."

Here:

Yoani Sánchez herself shares this (now translated) account from her own blog:

Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. “Yoani, get in the car,” one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence. The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same “aggressors” called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.


I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, “Help, these men want to kidnap us,” but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, “Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.” In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, “What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.”

After enduring and somehow surviving the horrific ordeal Ms. Sánchez concludes:

"I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered."

Party Over?

Notes The Miami Herald in its own Friday edition, quoting another blog Penultimos Días:

"These are new people, with stunning ingenuity," [ ] add[ing] that the organizers had carried out a prior event in the Dimitrov Park that included "group fraternizing exercises . . . and group theater."
The march, which [ ] drew some 200 participants, was the second demonstration in Havana in the past three weeks to bring together young Cubans generally critical of the island's communist system.
On Oct. 20, a dozen Cuban bloggers and more than 100 Internet sites around the world joined in a "virtual protest," using Tweets, text messages and blog posts to send out messages like "Freedom" and demanding the release of all political prisoners.

 Could something this seemingly small be the final spur toward freedom and something truly better for the people of Cuba?

Gulag Collection: There's More

Story First Posted Here Wednesday, September 30, 2009

As Sarah Young notes on her blog (mentioned here previously), Nikolai Getman’s "Gulag Collection" is not the only visual record of the Gulag.
She notes that:

"The website of Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya’s extraordinary and evocative illustrations of her twelve years in the Gulag allows the pictures to speak for themselves."

And further, as "only the introductory section of the website so far [has] been translated into English" it is certainly of some interest that the Kersnovskaya Foundation has graciously made a few images available under Creative Commons License via Wikipedia.

"Killing Her Baby"

Someone is Praying for You, Hard!

In my opinion, overall, they are even more stirring and powerful than those left behind by Getman (1917-2004), but you can decide for yourself.

Kersnovskaya (1908-1994), who spent 12 years in Gulag camps, wrote her memoirs in 12 notebooks with most yet to be translated into English (some works have been translated into German and French, however).

Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya

More of this important collection can be viewed here.

The Getman "Gulag Collection" can be viewed online here.

Iran's Quasi-Gulag on Trial - Update

Story First Posted Here: Monday, August 31, 2009

The trial of 7 Baha'i leaders had originally been postponed until October 18th, but now it is indefinite according to the Baha'i News Service:

"Although the trial of seven Baha'i leaders imprisoned in Iran for more than 17 months was scheduled for today, when attorneys and families arrived at the court offices in Tehran they were told it would not take place. No new trial date was given.

"The time has come for these seven innocent people to be immediately released on bail," said Diane Ala'i, the Baha'i International Community's representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

"The seven, whose only 'crime' is their religious belief, are once again in legal limbo, held with no idea of the legal process ahead of them. The whole charade cries out for an end to their unlawful detention," she said.

The seven are Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm.

Official Iranian news accounts have said the seven are to be accused of "espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic republic." They have also been charged with "spreading corruption on earth."

Last week, it appeared likely that the trial would indeed be postponed again, since attorneys for the seven had not yet received the proper writ of notification.

"The fact that their attorneys did not receive proper notification and that there is no new date for the trial is just one among many gross violations of Iran's own legal procedures, not to mention the violations of due process recognized by international law, that have marked this case from the beginning," said Ms. Ala'i."

The Baha'i International Community categorically rejects all charges against the seven, stating that they are held solely because of religious persecution.

The Bahá'í Faith is the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran, with over 300,000 adherents.

God and Gulags shall continue following this and other stories with updates as they become available (and/or are made known).

Walls Apart and Within

As the 20th Anniversary of (most) of the Berlin Wall's destruction approaches, who remembers why it was even built? Was it for protection or imprisonment?

Ask your children (if you have any) and see how much they know.
You may be surprised (or not, hopefully).

But walls are part of life, too. There are cell and arterial walls and the infamous blood brain barrier. Each works in its own sure, yet mysterious way to keep us alive.

Cell physiology

There are also the "walls" of separation of powers and between church and state (and sometimes, it seems, these, in particular, have very little meaning or reality).

There is finally, the wall between Man and God.

Solzhenitsyn wrote about that, too, though less overtly than some, since he was after all is said about him "of the intelligentsia," albeit a prisoner of conscience, too.

In Prussian Nights, his droning epic poem (not one of his best), he touches briefly upon the subject in an obtuse reference to Chavarka (or Cārvāka), which, unknown to most was/is a sophisticated, mostly defunct movement or line of thought within Indian philosophy that assumed "various forms of philosophical skepticism and religious indifference."

Also referred to (by others) as lokayata, in brief, it was a materialistic and atheistic school of thought.

"In ancient India, there were broadly three schools of philosophical thought -- Vedanta, Sankhya and Lokayata. Vedanta is theistic & spiritual, Sankhya and Lokayata are atheistic & materialistic."

And supposedly, according to Indian sources (e.g., this irritating ad-infested one), "what little we know today about the latter two schools are mostly from derogatory and dismissive references to these in the Vedanta literature."

That itself is surely debatable as "defunct" is still defunct.

Newsweek, not my favorite publication, seems to be looking at The Berlin Wall, too, as posted yesterday ( on the web) in an upcoming issue noting:

"The collapse of the 3.7-meter-tall monster in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989, did bring about—or, more accurately, complete—a momentous transformation of the Old Continent. For the past 2,000 years, Europe had been the source of the best and the worst in human history. It invented practically everything that matters: from Greek philosophy to Roman law, from the Renaissance to the fax machine, from Brunelleschi to Bauhaus. But this was also where the world's deadliest wars erupted, killing tens of millions. It was in Europe that the most murderous ideologies were invented: communism, fascism, and Nazism, complete with the Gulag, the Gestapo, and Auschwitz."

While elsewhere, in La La Land (Los Angeles, of course)the Irony Curtain is being constructed or re-constructed (depending on your view of irony, iron and/or curtains).

And walls.
So many and so high (often) are the walls.

Lord, help deliver us from our less desirable, less iron, and even less ironic walls . . .

Stalin's Belly Button

A story in the Los Angeles Times by Megan Stack today seems to be a late Halloween follow-up to a story covered in September both here and by reporter Miriam Elder at The Global Post here.

Well, seeing the Times photo of this Stalin impersonator riding up a subway tunnel escalator surely makes it seem that way, anyway.

Writes Ms. Stack:

"[T]he visceral attachment to the icons [such as Stalin] is [ ] the consequence of a country that never quite shook off the shadow of the Soviet system. The world may regard Russia as a place utterly distinct from the Soviet Union, but here in Russia, where government buildings are still festooned with hammers and sickles, there is an abiding sense of continuum.

"The same doctors, teachers, builders and steelworkers continue to live and work in the same country, and everything in our midst was built by the hands of people in the Soviet Union," said Russian author Mikhail Veller. "The state changes, but the country remains the same."

Where's the Rest of Me?

Documentaries, from the West, of course, abound on Stalin, the Diabolical:

But (once more) what about within Russia itself today?

As noted on this blog and elsewhere last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has indeed (publicly) lamented the revisionism taking place while decrying the deaths of millions of citizens killed "as a result of terror and false accusations."

Continues Ms. Stack:

"It was a striking departure from the general drift of the country, which takes a nuanced, if not positive, view of longtime Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. But Medvedev, who has often provided a rhetorical softening to the ruling elite's hard-line stances, is regarded as politically weaker than Putin, and so far his more liberal statements have done little to change the Russian status quo."

Vladimir Putin, of course, continues to play maestro supremo or chess master (or Tsar?) behind the scenes of Russia's re-emergence as Superpower.

So what will his next move be?

One must continue to wonder how he really felt (or feels) about Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for instance.

End Meanings?

Such polar opposites, their relationship began and ended (or begins and ends) with questions yet remaining.

Solzhenitsyn, the heroic (jailed) contrarian and, Putin, the strong-armed (jailer) nationalist; somehow, they really did grow over those few brief years and across generations (and even gulags) to respect and ultimately "embrace" each other (on the surface, at least).

Yes, Mr. Putin had the former Bolshaya Kommunistecheskaya Ulitsa (Big Communist Street) in Moscow named after his "friend" shortly after his death, but residents there may have torn down the sign again.

Is President Medvedev still in Putin's pocket (or merely the lint in his belly button)?

And does anyone in Russia even remember this man anymore?