Tag Archives: books

February 26, 2021 · 02:22

Unexpected Additions on an Already Busy Day: Introducing Sunny Dae, Our New Furry Child

Sunny Dae, Our Latest Unexpected Addition

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today looked like it would be a busy, eventful and productive day. It was that and more. But first an announcement I will keep this site for blogging but will soon have another site to help promote and sell my book which is not possible on this site using links to book sellers, my publisher, and well, even payments directly to myself through PayPal should you want me to write something for you or even worse. Sorry, I’ve been binge watching the Blacklist again, I do love Raymond Reddington, as he said “Like deep fried butter I am unhealthy yet irresistible.” That website is yet unnamed but will have the domain:

http://padre-steve.com

It will take some time before I have much on it, but at least bookmark the URL. I will have a link to it on this site, and some materials and articles from this site related to “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era” and my other books I am working on currently and what I might write about in the future. I will also include information regarding military history staff rides, civil rights tours, and Holocaust site visits, classes and lectures that I will be available for when I form my LLC to make them works right and be fully legal where I am able to teach, write, and travel. I do this so people who want to know the truth and walk sacred lands and visit sacred sites in order to have a physical connection to those places and people that one cannot just get from reading unless one is incredibly imaginative and sensory.

I experienced that when I led a Reformation tour to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis which began the Protestant Reformation in 1517. That was in 1996 and the internet was still in its infancy so all I knew was from excellent church history professors and much reading. Judy actually faxed materials I had in the United States to me to help prepare. I had a number of people ask how many times I had been to Wittenberg, and I told them that this was my first. They asked how I knew the town and events so well, and I said, I read, I study, and before I ever came here I could see it all in my minds eye. that is something I have always tried to emphasize to my students or those who have made such tours with me.

Speaking of irresistible we became the unexpected rescue parents of a 7 year old Papillon, who was one of the abandoned Puerto Rican Beach Dogs rescued after Hurricane Maria. She has medical problem that her owner, an elderly woman of a very low fixed income could not afford, and took her to our vet, thinking of euthanasia because she didn’t know what else to do, not on the internet not knowing of other resources. However our vet offered to find her the perfect parents so she was not euthanized. The vet’s office called Judy, Judy called me and texted me a picture and I knew we had to be her new family.

Her name is Sunny Dae, we added the middle name because that’s just what we do. She has a very large stone in her bladder which is very painful and untreated would be fatal, but the surgery should go well and we expect a complete recovery.

I got word at 3:00 PM and by 4:30 she was signed over to us. The vet is sucking up $1000 of the $2000 surgery and post surgery costs. The timing is not good as I am looking for a job, we are trying to get our home prepared to sell, and I am still working with the publisher and agent for my book on technical issues. Knowing this the vet’s office posted this message on Facebook to help raise funds paid directly into Sunny’s account to defray our costs.

“Today, a sweet papillon named Sunny Dae was rescued from euthanasia by a couple with an enormous heart. Abbey Animal Hospital is donating $1000 worth of time and supplies to save this sweet dog a bladder stone that is as big as the poor pup’s bladder itself. Unfortunately, the surgery is still very expensive. Any donations would be greatly appreciated to help save this sweet girls life. Please call Abbey Animal Hospital 757-471-1003 to make a donation directly on Sunny Dae’s account. Thank you all so much!!!! Please share and spread the word. — with Judy Keiser Dundas and Steven Dundas.”

I guess it helps when you are known for how much you love, care for, and treat your furry babies. We’ve been with them since 2003. They have rejoiced with us and grieved with us over the years. Here is what they posted. If you would like to donate to help please call Abbey Animal Hospital in Virginia Beach. This girl is worth it. She is sweet, appreciative, and has already bonded with us. Our other three, Izzy Bella, Pierre, and Maddy Lyn have been slowly warming up to her and gentle with her. They know that she doesn’t feel well. We cannot wait for Sunny to get her surgery because we know that she is going to be a blessing to all of us, and we thank God for her first rescue mommy who decided to listen to our vet. We have chatted a couple of times and she too his overjoyed for us rescuing her baby when she didn’t know what to do or have the resources to help the dog she loved.

So until tomorrow, love life, appreciate others, and care for who you can be they human beings of God’s furry blessings.

Peace

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under books, books and literature, dogs, History, life, papillons, the blacklist

Tagged as abbey animal hospital, book publishing, books, history tours, holocaust remembrance, military history staff rides, mine eyes have seen the glory, papillions, raymond reddington, rescue dogs, the blacklist

May 11, 2019 · 23:40

“So It Goes” Reading, Writing, and MRI Results

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: ““I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”

I kind of do that, except ever since I hurt my knees, instead of my pocket I carry them in a replica German WWII medical aid bag. It was either do that or get a Murse, had to hold a bunch of stuff in one hand when walking with a crutch because of bad knees. I got the MRI results back on my right knee today. I had the MRI done late last Monday night. It took almost nine months since I hurt it to get the MRI. Instead I received a round of physical therapy, followed by referral to Sports Medicine for various forms of injection therapy. Cortisone shots, Platelet Rich Plasma, and Gel injections, before the Sports Medicine Doctor said that all my treatments were basically for arthritis and had failed, admitting that something else was going on. “So it goes.”

Since last August I told every doctor that examined me that I knew that I had arthritis in the knee but it had never interfered with my life until I had my fall down the stairs last August. I knee then that I had injured it. The MRI showed much more damage than the arthritis, which was bad, basically forming bone spurs in a knee that had no cartilage left, with other damage. The surgeon who ordered it was the one who did my arthroscopic surgery on my left knee. He explained that about the only surgical option was knee replacement. I kind of figured that months ago. “So it goes.”

So Monday I go back to my aquatic physical therapy and I am doing to start going the local recreation center which has an indoor heated pool with a track in it in order to strengthen myself before any surgery. I see the bone and joint surgeon after physical therapy Monday morning. Hopefully I will get the surgery scheduled to replace the knee. “So it goes.”

But all that is a lead up to my May Reading Rainbow.

Like Robert Louis Stevenson I always carry at least one book to read, and one to write in. The only thing the one I write in is my iPad. I kind of have to, I can barely read my own writing so this is the better option. But as far as my reading has gone I have been reading up a storm over the past month, and am continuing to do more. Over the past couple of months I have read Justice Michael Musmanno’s The Eichmann Kommandos which was about the Einsatzgruppen Trials; John Meacham’s The Soul Of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels; Doris Kearns Godwin’s Leadership In Turbulent Times; Anthony Beevor’s The Battle Of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation Of World War II; My Old Professor Helmut Haeussler’s book General Wilhelm Groener and the Imperial German Army; Terrance Petty’s Enemy of the People: The Untold Story Of the Journalists who Opposed Hitler; and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. “So it goes.”

I also re-read Raul Hilberg’s Perpetraters, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, and Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. I am currently reading Christopher Browning’s Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp, and Joshua Greene’s Justice at Dachau: The Trials Of an American Prosecutor.

I keep books in my aid bag to read during the waiting times at doctors appointments, waiting in military pharmacies and anywhere else I can find a moment to read, and of course the iPad is there for when the muse strikes. Samuel Johnson noted:

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve

1 Comment

Filed under books, books and literature, life, Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as Anthony Beevor, books, christopher browning, doris kearns goodwin, helmut haeussler, John Meacham, Joshua Greene, knee replacement, knee surgery, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Musmanno, MRI, Raul Hilberg, reading, reading rainbow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Slaughterhouse Five, So it goes, Terrance Petty, timothy snyder, writing

March 2, 2019 · 23:33

Truth and the Twilight Zone in the Age Of Trump: “Logic is an Enemy, and the Truth is a Menace”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Judy and I have been binge watching the classic television series The Twilight Zone. The show, written by Rod Sterling first aired before either of us was born. If you have never watched it, suppose you were born too late, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to take some time to do.

But I should preface this with the words of the great historian, Barbara Tuchman:

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

There are a lot of truths buried in the various episodes, truths about reality and fantasy; religion and ethics; science and technology; human nature and yes, government too. The Twilight Zone is a strange place, you never know when you might end up there, in fact in Trump’s America every day feels like an experience in the Twilight Zone, in this case Season Two, episode 29, The Obsolete Man. In the episode the state determines who is obsolete and therefore condemned to death.

In the episode, Burgess Meredith plays a character named Romney Wordsworth, a librarian who has been declared obsolete by the state. Books have been banned as well as belief in a God that is not the no-God of the state. He is brought before the Chancellor, played by Fritz Weaver, and condemned to a death of his choosing.

The opening narration, spoken by Sterling sets the stage for the story:

You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone

I won’t play the spoiler but I will end this brief article with the warning spoken by Sterling at the end of the episode. The episode can be found on Netflix. But, actually, this is unedited ending of that episode.

The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under “M” for “Mankind” – in The Twilight Zone.

So consider this a warning, especially for the followers of the authoritarians, fascists, and real or would be dictators, including the American President and his cult like supporters; a warning from the Twilight Zone.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under culture, enteratinment, ethics, faith, film, Loose thoughts and musings, News and current events, Political Commentary, televsion

Tagged as barbara tuchman, books, burgess meredith, Fritz Weaver, librarians, president donald trump, Rod Sterling, the Obsolete Man, the twilight zone

January 18, 2019 · 01:25

Reading and Reflecting amid the Maladies of Age

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Mickey Mantle once quipped: “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”

But 50 plus years of athletics and military service have take their toll. Not long ago I was walking and running 5 to 12 miles a day. Today on the way out of my subdivision to see one of my orthopedic, sports medicine surgeons I saw a man running, I was jealous, and I mused upon the signal sent by the elderly HMS Rodney sent to new HMS King George V during the chase for the German Battleship Bismarck: “I think your 22 knots is faster than mine.”

But, there are blessings as well. While today was a day of doctors appointments and waiting in pharmacies, I got a chance to read. Days like this allow me to energize my reading. Of course I followed the news of the day, but I was able to finish historian Eric Foner’s collection of essays; Battles for Freedom: the Use and Abuse Of American History, as well as re-read in its entirety the late Eric Hoffer’s Classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature Of Mass Movements.

I have read many of Foner’s books dealing with American Slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement in my own studies. He is one of the best at dealing with those subjects and if you are a serious student of that period, you need to read his works.

Likewise, Hoffer’s book is a classic and sadly people often quote him out of context, knowing nothing of him, his times, or his life. The True Believer is often quoted in order to justify hatreds against others, be they foreigners, the establishment, racial or religious minorities, or simply whatever political order they despise. This can be from the Left or the Right. Hoffer understood it well, he had lived through the World Wars and the Cold War. He had seen dictatorships arise from different points of the political spectrum, but each shared common characteristics.

The True Believer is an uncomfortable read for those who are not simply trying to find quotes to support their ideology. I think that I was much more uncomfortable with it today than I ever was in the past.

When I first read the book I was trying to understand religious fanaticism, hatred, and terrorism. It was quite good for that purpose but I did not go back and look at how I could in Hoffer’s book. That came to me today as I read it with a different eye in a different time. So I wrote a review of it on Amazon and Goodreads and my takeaway is that any of us can become A True Believer.

Last week I finished reading Peter Hart’s book on the Somme Campaign of 1916. It is a massive book that in addition to explaining the strategy and tactics behind this brutal and bloody battle, contains many first hand accounts of the soldiers who fought in it. If you have been to war, if you have seen its devastation, the vivid written accounts of these soldiers, who describe carnage that few, if any modern soldiers have ever experienced are terrifying. If you haven’t been to war, just read it and think about the battle scenes in movies like Saving Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers, Gallipoli, Stalingrad (the German Version), or series like Band Of Brothers or The Pacific; the more graphic the better. Unfortunately, you won’t experience the olfactory ambiance of death, or experience any discomforts of heat, cold, mud, swarms of flies, and physical and mental exhaustion,which complete the experience. The Alsatian German Guy Sager wrote in his book The Forgotten Soldier:

“Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.

One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.

One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems!”

But I digress…

I have not done nearly as much interaction on social media over the past couple of days. I find reading or watching films or series that make me think or laugh, or maybe both, or discussing the matters with Judy or my dogs. Minnie is quite the conversationalist, and Pierre is becoming one too. Izzy, remains the incredibly sweet but somewhat serious security officer. For her it’s just the facts.

Anyway, my life will be filled with various medical appointments, surgical procedures, physical therapy, sleep management, orthopedic and dermatology consults or follow ups. It’s kind of like the old children’s song Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Eyes and Ears, and Mouth and Nose; except that my teeth and toes are fine, all the rest has gone to shit. Besides waiting on two knee procedures, hip and shoulder evaluations, having to walk with a cane, carrying my wallet, phone, iPad, and keys in my old replica German Medical bag, which is kind of a man purse. All the while I am recovering from a treatment to burn off pre-cancerous cells off of my scalp and face which have left me looking like the rusted wreck of the USS Utah at Pearl Harbor, but apart from that I am just fine.

Now I will get through this, unless one of my physically active dreams or nightmares results in another injury. My veteran readers know that I have had two emergency room visits when I crashed into my nightstand breaking my nose, or the floor, as like happened last week when I landed on the kneecap of the knee that I am to have platelet rich plasma treatments two weeks from now. Thankfully, I didn’t fracture it, or at least I assume that I didn’t because the surgeon hasn’t called me about it.

So, I persevere with the ear worms of the theme from Rocky III, The Eye Of the Tiger, and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive blending into the constant ringing of my Tinnitus ravaged ears while walking like Dr. House, without the Vicodin.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

A New Year Resolution: Read, Read, and When You Can’t Read Anymore, Read Some More

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Welcome to 2019. I know, we’re all still a bit hung over from last night, but welcome to the New Year. Admittedly it doesn’t yet feel a lot different than 2018, but I really expect that 2019 will mark an epochal change in our history. Since I wrote about that yesterday I won’t go back for more.

That being said there is one resolution that I think that all people, the great and the small, should do, and that is not to cry boo who, but read like our lives depended on it, which in a sense they do. By reading, I don’t mean just the news, commentary, or opinion sections of print or online news services, but get real books, especially works of history, biography, philosophy, and the classics.

Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

Likewise, the French philosopher Voltaire hit the nail on the head when he said:

“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”

That my friends is fact. If you want to be able to better distinguish fact from fake, read.

Last year I committed to read more, even as I stayed current on the news, analysis of it, and commentary, even as I continued to write. My office at work is crammed with books, as is much of our home. I think that we follow well the advice of Dr. Seuss who wrote:

“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.”

So I read, and I read, until my eyes they turned red. I read with those eyes that had turned red, in bed and even in the head.

I read as I eat, and eat as I read, because somewhere in my soul I have this great need, which I ever did cede I would be a great deal poorer indeed.

The pages they turned and as my eyes burned I knew I could never be through so long as my fingers don’t turn blue. I read and read with voices sounding through my head I, but I will not stress even though I digress…

But really, I read a lot last year and will continue to do so in the coming year. I cannot remember who said it, but someone that oI respect recently said that we should all read at least thirty books a year. That comes out to a bit over half a book a week.

I write about reading rainbow quite frequently, so today after a little extra inspiration last night I decided to look back at what I actually read this year. Here is the list which includes printed books and those that I read on my Amazon Kindle reader in no particular order:

The War that Ended Peace by Margaret McMillan

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert Massie

Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division through France, June 1944 by Max Hastings

The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940 by William Shirer.

Silent Night: The Story Of the World War One Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub

The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman

The Proud Tower: A Portrait Of Europe Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara Tuchman

1913: The Year Before the Storm by Florian Illies

The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution by Christopher Browning

The Nazis: A Warning from History by Laurence Rees

The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah Lipstadt

Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor

The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Anthony Beevor

Hitler by Joachim Fest

Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich by David Clay Large

The Trial Of the Germans by Eugene Davidson

Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN by Andrew Wiest

The Anatomy Of the Nuremberg Trials by Telford Taylor

Incredible Victory by Walter Lord

Telling Lies about Hitler: History, the Holocaust, and the Trial Of David Irving by Richard Evans

The Eichmann Trial by Deborah Lipstadt

A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan

Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Vietnam by Bernard Fall

After Tet: the Bloodiest Year in Vietnam by Ronald Spector

Waterloo: The Story Of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell

Grant by Ron Chernow

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

Landscape Turned Red by Stephen W. Sears

Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning

Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power by Henry Ashby Turner

The Night of the Long Knives by Max Gallo

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Goering, Dr. Douglas M. Kelly, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII by Jack El- Hai

Hitler’s Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg by Valerie Hebert

Buchenwald : ostracism and violence 1937 to 1945 : guide to the permanent exhibition at the Buchenwald Memorial edited by Volkhard Knigge in collaboration with Michael Löffelsender, Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau and Harry Stein on behalf of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation ; translation: Judith Rosenthal

The Participants: The Men Of the Wannsee Conference by Hans-Christian Jasch

The Good Years: 1900 to the First World War by Walter Lord

Munich Playground by Ernest Pope

The Fall of the Dynasties: 1905-1922 by Edmond Taylor

Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941 by Stanley Weintraub

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life Of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangeth

Enemy of the People: The Untold Story Of the Journalists Who Opposed Hitler by Terrance Petty

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band Of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Tracked Down the Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb

The Eichmann Kommandos by Justice Michael Musmanno

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder

Perpetrators: The World Of the Holocaust Killers by Gunther Lewy

Thinking the Twentieth Century by Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder

The Butcher Of Poland: Hitler’s Lawyer, Hans Frank by Garry O’Connor

Third Reich in History and Memory by Richard Evans

The First Salute: a View Of the American Revolution by Barbara Tuchman

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

Dereliction Of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam by H. R. McMaster

Dispatches by Michael Herr

The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan

Everything Trump Touches Dies by Rick Wilson

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstadt

The Final Hours: The Luftwaffe Plot Against Goering by Johannes Steinhoff

Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew

The Somme by Peter Hart

July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin

Hitler Ascent: 1889-1939 by Volker Ulrich

What Have We Done: the Moral Injuries of Americas Longest Wars by David Wood

QB VII by Leon Uris

Russian Roulette by Michael Isikopf and Davis Corn, Operation Eichmann: The Inside Story Of History’s Most Notorious Manhunt Told by its Chief Investigator by Zivi Aharoni and Wilhelm Dietl

The Road not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot

Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden

Why Don’t We Learn From History by B. H. Liddell-Hart

Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command Of the Army Potomac by Stephen Sears

The Collapse of the Third Republic: an Inquiry Into the Fall of France 1940 by William Shirer

The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality by Wolfram Wette

War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 by Geoffrey Megargee

Sherman’s March by Burke Davis

Antietam by Bruce Catton

The Culture Of Defeat: on National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery by Wolfgang Shivelsbusch

The Nanking Massacre: History Of China, Japan, and the Events Surrounding the Nanking Massacre by Mukuro Mori

The Miracle Of Dunkirk by Walter Lord

Note that very few books that I read this year deal with current events. I have always been that way. For the most part books on current events tend not to have stood the test of time.

I also read quite a few of the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trial, and still have many more to go. It kind of do those in between, and since each volume is the size of a book, they should count as books, but I don’t count them as books, although maybe I should.

Not counting the Nuremberg transcripts I read about 78 books this year, that’s about a book and a half a week, and I am not a speed reader. Yet it is not only about quantity, it is about content. Likewise, if one is to read one must understand and learn the lessons of the the past and the men and women have already learned and passed down. As Will Rogers notes:

“There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

Reading is the key to not falling for what the vulgar hoard is both eager and content to devour. That includes the average 15 lies, falsifications, and distortions of truth that the American President tweets or speaks every day. So I close with the words of Dr. Seuss:

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under books and literature, History, Loose thoughts and musings, philosophy

Tagged as barbara tuchman, books, dr seuss, reading, Voltaire, will rogers

November 15, 2018 · 23:59

I Will Live a Thousand Times Before I Die: Reading as a Way of Life

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

George R.R. Martin wrote in his book A Dance With Dragons: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

I constantly read and because I try to imagine what I am reading so that in a way I live it. I have been to places that have never traveled to before and on entering them I know exactly where everything is and what happened there. I remember leading a group from my Army chapel in Wurzburg Germany to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. As I led the group through the town a couple of people asked me how many times I had been there. I told them, “physically, never until today, but I have been here a thousand times before because of books. I saw Wittenberg in my minds eye before I ever saw the city.” They were surprised and both said that it seemed like I had been there many times.

I have had the same thing happen other places that I have visited, and again, it is because I read, and as I read, I imagine and occasionally dream.

I have a huge number of my books in my office most dealing with the history, especially the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the World Wars, and the insurgencies and counter-insurgency wars of the past seventy or so years. I have a lot of biographies, books on American history, military theory, sociology, philosophy, psychology related to war and PTSD, and a few theological works, though most of my theology books are at home because I don’t have room for them in the office.

Coupled with mementos of my military career, other militaria, artwork, and baseball memorabilia the sight and smell can be both overwhelming and comforting at the same time. I hear that a lot from my visitors, including those who come in for counseling, consolation, or just to know someone cares. They tell my visitors volumes about me without them ever asking a question or me telling them, and occasionally someone will ask to borrow a book, and most of the time I will lend them the book, or if I have multiple copies even give it to them.

In a sense my books are kind of a window to my soul, the topics, and even how I have them organized, and they are not for decoration. Many times while I am reflecting on a topic, a conversation, or something that I read in the news I peruse my books and pull one or more out to help me better understand it, or relate it to history. sometimes when in conversation something will come up and I can pull out a book. One of my Chaplains said that he should “apply for graduate credit” for what he learns in our often off the cuff talks. But, for me that is because I read so much and absorb it.

Likewise my memorabilia is there to remind me of all the people in my past who I have served with. I don’t have all my medals, honors, and diplomas up for everyone to see, instead I have pictures and collages, many signed by people who made a difference in my life. When I see the signatures and often all too kind words on them I am humbled, and in some cases a tear will come to my eye, but I digress…

I always try to read a decent amount everyday. I in the past couple of weeks I have finished reading a number of very good books dealing with different historical dramas. Since my trip to Germany at the end of September I have read, or re-read a number of books. One that I read for the first time was Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich by David Clay Large. I read it while during the week that we spent in Munich and it was very a very enlightening look at a complex and often contradictory city that has seen a number of cultural and political shifts since the Eighteenth Century, including its place as the spiritual home of the Nazi movement.

I re-read British military historian, Max Hastings book Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944. It focuses on the leadership, and culture of the Waffen SS Division, and on the war crimes committed by its units and personnel it moved from Southern France to Normandy during the week following the Allied invasion of France. The book deals with especially the extermination of the population of the town of Oradour Sur Glane. For those who mythologize the Waffen-SS as an elite military formation, it should be required reading.

Also on my reading list in Germany and after were Anthony Beevor’s The Fall,of Berlin 1945. I read it in order to refresh my memorial on the Battle of Berlin, and the locations that we would visit while in the city. I finally decided to read Robert Massie’s Castle’s of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, which I have had on my bookshelf for years, and re-read Cornelius Ryan’s The Last Battle, also about the Battle for Berlin. I first read that book as a teenager.

One of the most troubling books that I read while in Germany was Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine, by Christian Ingrao. Believe and Destroy is particularly troubling because it shows that racism, anti-Semitism, and the planning and execution of genocide is not just the work of poorly educated thugs.

I read Barbara Tuchman’s The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution; and The Butcher of Poland: Hitler’s Lawyer Hans Frank, by Garry O’Connor. To change things up I read Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House, Rick Wilson’s Everything Trump Touches Dies, and the late Tony Judt’s I’ll Fares the Land.

I love complex characters, people who may be heroes and at the same time scoundrels. I like the contradictions and the feet of clay of people, because I am filled with my own, and truthfully saints are pretty boring. Unfortunately I haven’t read any biographies of late, although most of my reading deals a lot with biography as the characters weave their way through history.

Since we just observed the Centenary of the end of World Aar One, I have started re-reading Edmond Taylor’s The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order, 1905-1922 and Richard Watt’s The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany: Versailles and the German Revolution. Both of these are very important reads which should help us to reflect reflect on what is happening in our world today. There are many similarities and reading them causes me to wonder if world leaders will allow hubris, arrogance, greed, and pride to drag the world into another catastrophic war. Sadly President Trump, doesn’t read, and doesn’t learn from history. Unfortunately, his ignorance is very much a reflection of our twenty-first century media culture.

But to me, books are important, far more important than anything that is shouted at me on television. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his little but profound book, On Tyranny:

“Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon a mental armory that we have developed somewhere else. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this—but we still can.”

Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

But anyway, I am late getting this out. So have a great day and a better tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under books, books and literature, History, Loose thoughts and musings, philosophy, Political Commentary, Teaching and education

Tagged as Anthony Beevor, barbara tuchman, berlin, bob woodward, books, Christian Ingrao, cornelius ryan, David Large, Edmond Taylor, Everything Trump Touches Dies, max hastings, Munich, president donald trump, reading, Richard Watt, rick wilson, Robert Massie, timothy snyder, Tony Judt

September 10, 2018 · 00:00

If You Don’t Have Time to Read You don’t Have the Time or Tools to Lead

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

During the first week of March I took about a week off of regular writing and commended a new campaign of reading. This was not because I don’t read, I am always reading, but sometimes I don’t read enough, so that week I began to catch up on some reading. Since then I have read, and read, even as I began to write again, not that I ever really stopped. I fully subscribe to the words of American satirist Will Rogers who noted: “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

Honestly I prefer to learn by reading or observing, and reading has been part of my life since I was a child and I cannot imagine trying to write a single sentence without reading, as Stephen King noted: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” I would extend King’s observation to say that if you don’t have time to read you don’t have time or the tools to lead. Sadly the American President and many of his most devoted followers never challenge themselves by reading.

So tonight I wanted to take a few minutes and catch you up on the newest additions to my reading rainbow. I finished reading German historian Paul Carrel’s Unternehmen Barbarossa im Bild (Operation Barbarossa in Pictures) in which the text is in German and Max Boot’s The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale an the American Tragedy in Vietnam.

I took on Carrel’s book because I had read many of his histories of the German Army in the Second World War in English and I wanted to use this large German volume to improve my German vocabulary. It’s an excellent volume first published in 1976 but unless you have a moderate familiarity of German it I don’t recommend it despite the vast number of photos that I have not seen elsewhere and his honest commentary and reflections on the moral, social, and political disaster that was Operation Barbarossa.

I also finished Max Boot’s outstanding volume of the life of General Edward Lansdale. This is really a good account of U.S. involvement in the Philippines and Vietnam from 1945 until 1975. Lansdale was deeply involved in one of the few successful counter-insurgencies of the 20th Century, that against the Communist supported Huks in the Philippines by Lansdale who worked closely with political reformers and sought to understand and win over insurgents without engaging in massive military sweeps. However successful he was he was distrusted by much of the CIA and military establishment and his efforts in Vietnam were undercut by them. Boot treats Lansdale’s story well without attempting to hide his many flaws. Lansdale has been referred to as an American T. E. Lawrence and Boot gives an excellent account of his life in the context of the CIA, American actions in Indochina, and American politics in the from the mid 1950s until the early 1970s. The book is well worth the read.

On the Vietnam front I read the late Michael Herr’s Dispatches, his classic account of his time serving as a war correspondent in Vietnam at Hue, Khe San, and other battles over the course of 18 months. Having been to war I highly recommend it.

On the more contemporary American political situation I read conservative and former Bush Administration advisor, David Frum’s book on the Trump Era, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. It is well worth the read for anyone but I highly recommend that conservatives read it. I don’t always agree with some of Frum’s political positions, but his take on the corrosive effects of Donald Trump on the United States and how Republicans have aided and abetted him.

Continuing down that road I read Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s masterpiece of investigative journalism Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Trump loyalists will hate this book because their work continues to be verified by every new discovery about the Russians and their role in the 2016 elections. It gives the reader a superb understanding of the key players in this drama and help the reader to put in context the daily revelations of the investigation being conducted by Special Prosecutor Robert Muller and the actions of the President’s words, actions, and policies toward Russia and Putin as well as when he melts down on Twitter. In time it might be ranked with All the President’s Men.

As a matter of contextualizing the present I read the late historian Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land which was written following the collapse of 2008. Judt discusses how we have not learned the lessons of the Twentieth Century and the problems related to the failures of both the right and left to learn those lessons. It is well worth the read but it is not a book designed or written to comfort partisans on any side of the political spectrum.

Going back to look at history I took the time to read Walter Lord’s sequel to his classic book on the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember by reading his book The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories and Secrets of the “Unsinkable” Ship – Titanic. The second volume was published some three decades after Lord’s first volume which I think is the best account of the event ever written. To follow it up I ordered and watched the film A Night To Remember which was also well worth watching. While not as technically accurate nor filled with “A list” stars the film captures the the tragedy of the ship in a way I don’t think that James Cameron’s masterpiece Titanic really gets.

I re-read Lord’s book on the integration of Ol’e Miss The Past that Would Not Die which though it recounts events of 1962 seems amazingly relevant in the present day. The account of the admission of Air Force veteran James Howard Meredith in the face of the political opposition of Mississippi’s Governor and Legislature, armed White Supremacists against Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and civil rights activists. The event was a crisis that brought to the present the memories and ideology of secession and revolt against the Federal Government and Constitution in the name of preserving a history of white supremacism. Likewise I also re-read British historian and military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart’s little book Why Don’t We Learn from History?

I took up Jason Stanley’s excellent How Propaganda Works. This is an excellent book for academics but I do not recommend it for the casual reader because it presupposes a knowledge of political philosophy and history that most people don’t have. It was a long and tiring read for me and I liked it. It provides a lot of insights into the mechanics of propaganda. For me it gave me a different level of understanding of the propaganda being used by the Russians agains the United States and the machinations of the American President to discredit opponents through both official government pronouncements and the official unofficial White House propaganda network, Fox News.

I am currently reading a number of books. I am about a quarter of the way through John Dower’s The Bloody American Century, about a third of the way through Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, and have just started Tony Judt’s Thinking the Twentieth Century and Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

So anyway. Have a great night and see you tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

So Many Books, So Little Time

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Frank Zappa one noted; “So many books, so little time”, and truthfully I have to share in his thoughts.

The past month has been very busy with travel as well as work but at the same time I have continued to read at a rather brisk pace and I want to let you know what I have been reading so you can see what has been provoking so many of my thoughts. In fact since we went to Germany I have spent less time on social media, less time diving deep into the current news of the day, and more time reading as well as walking and contemplating what I have read.

Over the past month I have read Walter Lord’s Miracle at Dunkirk, Amy S. Greenberg’s A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, Geoffrey Megargee’s War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941, Deborah Lipstadt’s The Eichmann Trial, while I am in some way involved with working my way through Richard Evans’ Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, William Craig’s The Fall of Japan: The Final Weeks of WWII in the Pacific, Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers:How Europe Went to War in 1914.

All of these books are important. Dunkirk which Lord wrote decades ago is very useful in interpreting the film of the same name that came out last summer. I actually think it is one of the best because of his focus on the individuals involved. Greenberg’s A Wicked War deals with the major personalities involved in the U.S. invasion of Mexico and the precedent that the actions of President James K. Polk in launching an unprovoked, immoral, and criminal war of aggression on a weaker neighbor. It is very pertinent reading in our present day and the portrayals of both Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln remind us that it is not unpatriotic to oppose a President when he acts against the ideals of the country and lies to get his agenda passed. Megargee’s War of Annihilation is important because it helps to crush the myth embraced by many military history buffs that the German Wehrmacht had clean hands in the conduct of the war and that it was only the SS which executed the crimes of the Nazis. The evidence that Megargee presents of the complicity of the senior leaders of the Wehrmacht in the crimes against the Poles and during Operation Barbarossa against the Russians, as well as their assistance to the killing squads of the Einsatzgruppen is a needed tonic against the myth. Finally, Lipstadt’s The Eichmann Trial is an excellent presentation of the case which is able to correct some of the myths about Eichmann and the trial, including a fair critique of Hannah Arendt’s treatment of the trial.

In addition to the books I am currently reading I have more waiting in the wings including Michael Burleigh’s Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II, Alistair Horne’s The Age of Napoleon, George Annas and Michael Grodin’s The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation, Vivien Spitz’s Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans, Laurence Rees’s The Nazis, a Waring from History, and Megargee’s Inside Hitler’s High Command.

Books are important and if we don’t read we fail to understand life itself. Reading helps put life in context, even things that seem unjust or unfair, or the disappointments of life, as James Baldwin wrote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under books and literature, History, Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as books, Frank Zappa, james baldwin, reading, reading list

September 14, 2017 · 20:18

Padre Steve’s Reading Rainbow: Some of the Most Important Books in my Life

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I think that it important to read, and read, and did I say read?

Barbara Tuchman wrote:

But today I want to share some of the books that I think are important for anyone seeking to understand our world. In a sense, this is my Reading Rainbow moment.

Most of my picks deal with history, military, diplomacy, civil rights, politics, as well as baseball. Despite the fact that I am a priest I don’t have many books on theology, religion, or faith on my list, but then the fact is that I don’t see a lot, including many of the so called classics that hold up over time. So today just some of my reading rainbow.

Here they are in no particular order:

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall

A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

The Nanking Massacre by Iris Chang

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

Hero: A Life of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda

Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen

A Soldier Once… and Always by Hal Moore

To Kill an Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The Centurions by Jean Larteguy

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

The Past that Would Not Die by Walter Lord

The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer

The Summer of ’49 by David Halberstam

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George Will

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Why Don’t We Learn from History? By B.H. Liddell-Hart

They Thought they Were Free by Milton Mayer

Once an Eagle by Anton Meyer

Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts

The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Boenhoffer

Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder

This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Forever Free: the Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph Perisco

In the Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore

On Being a Christian by Hans Kung

The Crucified God by Juergen Moltmann

The Mystery of the Cross by Alister McGrath

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow

War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W.P. Kinsella

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious American Civil,War General, Daniel Sickles by Thomas Keneally

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 by Raul Hilberg

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac by Stephen Sears

The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton

Have a great day and as always,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under History, Loose thoughts and musings, philosophy

Tagged as books, hannah arendt, History, Holocaust, james mcpherson, philosophy, reading, stephen sears, t e lawrence, timothy snyder

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So Many Books, So Little Time

Padre Steve’s Reading Rainbow: Some of the Most Important Books in my Life

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