Book Dust

Vollkorn Brot, sort of

2009-11-29T15:10:00.000-08:00

I got my copy of Healthy Bread In Five Minutes A Day a few weeks ago and have been itching to try it out. I needed to wait on an order of vital wheat gluten from King Arthur Flours, a site that inspires all sorts of baking dreams. A good, but dangerous, place to go if you need some inspiration for holiday baking. The vital wheat gluten helps whole-grain breads to rise and lighten.

Since my in-laws are on a cruise this month for their fiftieth wedding anniversary, we had our family Thanksgiving early and it was just Pavel and me for the actual T-day. He loves wild rice stuffing and I love mashed potatoes, so as on another year when we had a quiet holiday I got a turkey roast and put my effort and love into the sides. I decided to make a hearty bread to serve as basis for the stuffing, and picked the Vollkornbrot from page , a German-style whole-grain bread.

Oh. My. Word. It was lucky any of the bread made it into the stuffing. I had some English Farmhouse Cheddar in the fridge (much as I try to buy domestic, the English really is better) and the combination with the chewy, crunchy, hearty bread is amazing. If you were in the mood, a beer would round out the trifecta marvelously.

Oookaaay... well, it's not really Vollkornbrot. At least not the Vollkornbrot that I know from living in Germany. Actually, I think it's better. German Vollkornbrot is like a brick, albeit a tasty and healthy one. This, on the other hand, has some chew and softness while still being very substantial. At least, my version did. I did have to make some substitutes: I did not have any molasses so I used honey, and my whole wheat flour had been in the freezer too long so I ended up using a combination of spelt and white flour. The reason I had the spelt flour was also because of HBFMD, since the authors rave about it. (Spelt is the ancestor of our usual wheat, and whole-grain spelt flour seems milder in flavor. It is also supposed to be easier to digest.) I was worried about all the substitutes, but you can't argue with results.

The results were so good that I began to regret I had used it all in the stuffing, and decided to make another batch, one loaf being designated for my German co-worker. That's when I took the photos. Note that if you try this particular bread, you should make it 24 hours in advance to let the whole grains absorb water.

As with the original, this uses a method of stirring up a wet dough and letting it rise in a plastic container which you can then keep in the fridge up to two weeks. On baking day you just quickly shape up a loaf, let it rise (2 hours for this loaf, usually it's 30 minutes) and bake. I would say that I miss kneading, but... I don't. You still get much of the enjoyment of yeast bread baking, especially the smells of yeast rising and baking. Oh, the smells! First of many breads I hope to try from the new book, and a resounding success.

The Wall is still with us

2009-11-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I've been remembering my own experiences in Germany in 1987-88 as an exchange student and later on as an exchange teacher in the eastern part of Germany.

In fall of '87, I went with my host family to see host mother's relatives in East Berlin. At the border, we passed miles of gun towers and electrified gate posts, arriving late in the evening at the checkpoint. We had to get out while our car and luggage were searched top to bottom. As a fifteen year-old American, it made an impression. I recall the border police staring at me, comparing my face to my passport photo. They especially stared at my nose. I also recall a guard picking up the book I had left in the back seat. He searched it through methodically, back and forth, up and down, forward and back. It was a book of German fairytales. I wanted to make a smart remark at this point, about Rumpelstiltskin not being subversive or something. Thankfully I held my tongue. The mood was somber. No one smiled.

I stayed with some cousins, sleeping in the too-short bed of the couple's young son. Conversation with the family was surreal. Every innocent comment I made about my family and life at home was received through the settled opinion that Americans lived hand-to-mouth and most of us were homeless beggars or might as well be. The family didn't do this mean-spiritedly; not at all. However, it also never seemed to occur to them to verify their assumptions, even though they had a real-live American sitting at their breakfast table.

For just a weekend stay, we nevertheless had to check in with the police I got a copious amount of stamps in my passport. Police and military were everywhere. My host mother's teenage niece was my tour guide of East Berlin. She was blunt about what she didn't like about the system, and I got the impression that she was trying to show me that she realized what was behind the curtain. However, under the surface, she had the same settled assumptions as everyone else. After the Wall fell, she went to the West but I heard that she suffered some depression. It was just too hard to realize you had been lied to for so many years.

New generations of eastern Germans seem to be dealing with this by going back to the la-la land of erroneous assumptions. According to this article by the author of Stasiland, "A survey in June found the GDR to have its highest approval rating since unification: 57 per cent of people agreed with the statement that the GDR was 'more good than bad', and a majority of schoolchildren were under the illusion that it had a legitimate, democratically elected government." Funder attributes this to the fact that so many Stasi members, especially teachers, kept their jobs and remain in influential posts in German society. Loyal to the end?

In 1993 when I had returned to a now-reunified Germany and taught English in the eastern part of the country, I was walking around Leipzig one day when I stumbled on the Stasi museum. It's called the museum "in der Runden Ecke," in the round corner, because of the shape of the building which once housed the secret police's district headquarters. Like many such offices in other GDR cities, the wholesale destruction of files and evidence was stopped when protesters massed the building and took it over. Now you can walk through and see the propaganda kitsch, old surveillance equipment, and the wigs, prosthetics and fake moustaches used by agents. Reading Funder's account of the Stasi's "rehabilitation" in modern east Germany, I get the absurd image of a Stasi officer trying to disguise himself by slapping a moustache on while his party insignia is still showing. The real question is why so many people want to be fooled?

I can say that though the weekend in East Berlin circa 1987 was obviously a memorable experience, I was never so glad to be gone from a place. All weekend I had the nagging thought that I would not be allowed to leave. My host mother said it, with her usual humor: "The best view of the GDR is in the rearview mirror." Apparently some eastern Germans have painted theirs a distinctly rosy hue.

Related at The Anchoress. Perspective and lots of photos on the GDR and the fall of the Wall from other American exchange students at this PDF link.

Islamism reading list

2009-11-03T12:54:00.000-08:00

I asked my friend Jeremy, who is on his second tour in Iraq, what books he recommended as an introduction to the historical background of Islamic extremism. With his permission to post, here was his response (links added by me):

"The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. It gives good background and history. Al Quaeda's history is important because it represents (unfortunately not the only or possibly even the most potent manifestation of [Sunni]) Islamic radicalism.

Future Jihad by Walid Phares. It gives a good historical background and gets into the ideology.

Willful Blindness by Andrew McCarthy. Covers the 1993 bombing but also the beliefs and methods animating the actions.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. One of the bravest women alive today. I don't agree with her on everything, she gives unique background based on her experiences.

Inside the Jihad by Omar Nasiri. Some claim the guy made up a phony story. I think it has value in seeing the jihadi movement as jihadis see it.

The Persian Night by Amir Taheri is focused on Iran. I found it to be gratuitously insulting to Muslims (indulging in unnecessary attacks on Islamic doctrines and traditions) but it was nonetheless a good expose on the current regime."

Thanks, Jeremy. Stay safe.

Pancakery, and this dratted bug

2009-10-31T06:42:00.001-07:00

My pancake fetish continues apace, and since this week my copy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks arrived, I had to try "Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes."

If you haven't heard of The Pioneer Woman yet, by all means mosey on over to her website, which is full of beautiful photography and recipes of the luscious ranch fare she cooks. The book is more of the same, plus whimsical stories and photos of Oklahoma ranch life and of her picture-perfect family.

As for the recipes, within a couple weeks of discovering the website (H/T The Anchoress), I had already made three or four things and everything was as delicious as the photos promised. I would see something on the website and think "boy does that look good, but I can't make something that fattening." And then it would just work on me. And work on me. Until I had to make it! I think the beautiful step-by-step photography is behind this devilry. The book would be a great Christmas present for any down-home cooks on your list.

The sour cream pancakes are great, though I must admit I prefer my staple Cottage Cheese Pancakes. I don't always have cottage cheese on hand, though, so into my file Edna Mae goes for her place on the pancake rotation.

Here's another winner of a pancake recipe for you, Truck Stop Pancakes. They're the best buttermilk pancakes I've ever had. Last weekend, while I was feeling poorly, I decided to just make pancakes from a mix, which I hadn't done in a long time. This was a mix that I used to consider a winner. However, the results were so disappointing compared to homemade, I guess I'm spoiled forever. Good thing homemade pancakes are easy to whip up.
***

So, all pancakes aside, I am still feeling like the butt end of a bad day, now going on the third week. I'm pretty sure that the little souvenir I brought back from Texas is H1N1. Everything seems to fit from what I've read of it, including how hard it is to beat. I'm on my second round of antibiotics for an ear infection, and still sucking down Theraflu, gargling salt water, hacking like a chainsmoker, and generally feeling punk. Normally I am a skeptic about vaccination pushes, but I'm here to tell you, friends, if your doctor offers you an H1N1 shot, TAKE IT.

The only good thing I can say is that my husband hasn't gotten it and thus far neither has anyone at work, so it doesn't seem to be super-contagious. I did stay home from work a few days and have been staying out of public places, but had to take the risk to go back to the office since we are so few- the last of the mohicans after all the downsizing. I am pretty sure what made me vulnerable to catching it (probably at the Alamo) was the fact that I had had food poisoning earlier in the week and my immune system was working double-duty. Now is not the time to be a tourist anywhere, and even if you just have a little cold, take all due paranoid precautions to make sure it doesn't develop into anything else. Just want to do my bit to make sure no one else has to battle this.

A bulletin from the past

2009-10-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

A German co-worker was asked to translate a letter that someone found in their parents' things. I thought I'd share it (with names and place names removed) as it's an interesting first-hand historical look from a turbulent time. I'm reminded of my in-laws, six siblings from a little town in Slovakia who had a hard time finding each other again after the war. They were separated during their flight from the Red Army, but managed to find each other in Germany and emigrated together to the US.

Here's the letter:

***

April 18, 1948

I was astonished to receive a sign of life from you again. I thought you had forgotten us, or were drawn into the war and perhaps already dead. And what are you doing in America? From your letter, I see that America is now your homeland. I have thought often of you. One can really say: It's been a long way from there to here. But I enjoy the memories. We passed many happy hours. Earlier on I could still remember the singing, but I don't do that much anymore. I'm now 64 years old, after all, and should take it easy. Have been in -- since 1924. Bought a pretty large farming business. A nice farm with a beautiful view of the lake. Near the main road from -- to --. Since gasoline is again available, about 1000 cars go by in a day. It was quieter during the war, when we didn't get any gasoline in Switzerland. Food was also scarce because we could import very little. We in the country had nothing really to complain about. But in the cities, rations were very meager and also quite expensive. A liter milk costs 43-45 rappen [equivalent to cents]. 1 kilogram white flour costs 1 franc 50. 1 kilogram potatoes 30 rappen. Only vegetables and potatoes were not rationed. Now everything is free again. I'm also enclosing a photograph. Have 8 boys and 4 girls. That's okay as long as we're healthy. We're doing alright financially and health-wise. Hope it's the same with you. Much has changed in your home village, too. You would have a hard time finding your way around, but your birth house is still standing and is still the same. Will close for now and hope to hear from you again soon. In the meantime, greetings from...

A gadget for you

2009-10-27T12:53:00.001-07:00

I appreciate low-tech, low-cost things that work better than the fancy-fangled. So I decided to give Melitta's "Ready Set Joe" a try. It's a plastic mold, as you see, that sits on top of your coffee cup. Insert a Melitta #3 filter and your ground coffee, pour in boiling water, stir up the grounds a bit, and it brews a surprisingly good cup of coffee in a minute or two. You may need to pour a bit more water in if you're brewing a big cup.

A drip pot is obviously more convenient if you're making more than one cup or if you need to keep coffee hot for a while, but our work times mean that husband and I are not on the same coffee-drinking schedule. For under $10, this is a good solution for grabbing a quick cuppa joe.

You can use regular coffee filters, though those are a bit more awkward than the little cone filters Melitta makes. I do recommend stirring the grounds while it brews. Otherwise it's too weak, and weak coffee is an insult to God's creation of the coffee bean. The flavor is like French-press coffee. I actually think it is better than French press, because you have the same richness, but not the slight grit. And no risk of things going the way of French presses in my household, i.e. getting cracked in the sink. All in all it's a win for simplicity of design.

Back

2009-10-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

We are back from vacation. I finished Patrick Geary's book Myth of Nations and made a good start on Lost To The West, aided along by the sad fact that I was down with food poisoning midweek. I'm going to hold out and post about them together, however, since the two of them nicely overlap on subjects such as the Roman concept of what it meant to be Roman and how that changed as the empire absorbed, and finally was taken over by, those they considered "barbarians."

As is typical, I end up being more interested in the barbarians than the Romans. For example, Geary put a bug in my ear about the development of the Slavic identity. I didn't know that the rise of the Slavs as a group presents a mystery to historians. Who they are, where they came from, and why they asserted themselves so fully over Eastern Europe are considered puzzles. Geary states that they probably were caved out of the remnants of an empire you've likely never heard of, the Avars. Ever notice that the terms Serb and Croat don't exactly sound Slavic? That's because the words are probably Avar, and referred not to particular peoples but to a title or rank within the Avar empire's political structure. And they are not the only vanished people who once ruled whole kingdoms. There are the Goths, who once ruled Italy and northern Africa. So how did they end up being used to represent bored suburban teenagers with an overdeveloped makeup budget?

More on such things to come.

Slovak Grandma Noodles

2009-10-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Here's another recipe. This is another of Pavel's must-have comfort foods, at least my version of it. I now understand why my husband loves it. It's incredibly good. It makes your heart happy, not just your mouth. I don't know the official Slovak name, so I just think of it as Slovak Grandma Noodles, because it's the sort of thing that your grandma would make you if your grandma was from Slovakia.

I'm pretty sure that the Slovakian noodle dish shown here at Man Bites World blog is the same genre. However, Pavel's family uses cottage cheese rather than feta cheese. I happen to think that a combination is very good. You also don't need to make homemade noodles. Homemade noodles are not that difficult and are one of nature's perfect foods, but you can use dried egg noodles or fresh pasta from the deli section.

Turks also make a quick mac-and-cheese this way, by stirring butter and feta cheese into cooked pasta. So if your grandmother were Turkish, you might get this, too, though she's not going to be putting bacon into it. Which means that, if you're like me, you're hoping for a Slovakian grandmother.

Without further ado:

Homemade noodles* or thick egg noodles, cooked
1 pkg thick-cut bacon
1 lg or 2 med onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, mashed
2 tbsp butter
4 ozs feta, mashed very fine with a fork
1 16-oz container cottage cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tbsp Hungarian paprika (sweet or smoked)
cracked black pepper

Fry up bacon and drain it on paper towels. Pour off most of the bacon grease into a bowl and set that aside. Meanwhile get a big pot of salted water boiling. In the bacon pan, fry the sliced onions 8-10 minutes til browned and soft. Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Stir in the paprika- the warmth brings out the flavor- and set aside off the heat. Slice or crumble up your bacon. Meanwhile cook your noodles in the salted water and pour into a colander to drain. Put the pan back on low heat and add the butter and a little of the reserved bacon grease. When the butter is melted, add cottage cheese, finely mashed feta, sour cream, and black pepper. Stir together and stir in sauteed onion mixture. Let it all warm a bit- you just want it barely warm, not cooking. Fold in hot noodles and bacon pieces. If you want to get fancy, you could add in some chopped fresh parsley, but this is so good the lily needs no gilding. Serve immediately. An excellent side with this would be a garlicky coleslaw or bell pepper salad.

*Homemade noodles easy-to-remember ratio: 1 cup flour - 1 egg - 1 tsp salt, plus enough water to make dough come together. For this recipe I use 4 cups flour, 4 eggs etc.

To make noodles: Put flour on a board and make a well in the center. Beat egg and salt together and pour into the well. Start working the dough with your hands, adding a few splashes of water at a time until you get a good dough, not too sticky. Roll out dough thin but not too thin, maybe 1/8th an inch. Try to get it to roll into a rectangle, pulling a little with your hands here or there. When it’s rolled out, fold the long ends of the dough in on each other in a loose trifold. Slice off 1/4th-inch slices and unroll the strips. Cut into the length you want your noodles and lay out on lightly floured tea towel or board to dry at least 1 hour.

To cook homemade noodles: Separate them with your fingers and carefully drop into boiling salted water; stir once to unstick them. These cook up fairly quickly, about 3-5 minutes. They're done when they float to the top.

Vacation reading

2009-10-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

The blog has been a bit modern history-ish lately, hasn't it? What can I say. If I got paid to study history, I'd have to specialize. As it is, I'm a happy dilettante.

However, with vacation coming up, I am going back to ancient and medieval. I have picked up a couple new books that I'm very much looking forward to digging into. One is Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization. It is by Lars Brownworth, whose 12 Byzantine Rulers podcasts I enjoyed. (His new podcast project is called The Norman Centuries.)

Those of us who have an interest in the Byzantine Middle Ages- all fifty of us :) -need to support such scholars' work.

The other book I picked up is Patrick Geary's The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Now this one intrigues me. I have written and reviewed Geary's work before, and this guy and I seem to have similar interests and pet peeves. One of mine is the hold that the modern nation-state has over our thinking of ourselves. Geary's thesis, I gather, is that our modern notions of European ethnicity are based on myths that have more to do with the ideas of 18th century romanticizers than actual fact.

Will be interesting to see how he develops it. Hopefully it will not turn into a print rendition of "We Are The World" and a "celebration of diversity." The reviewers' comparisons of the book to contemporary debates about xenophobia, nationalism, etc. make me a little nervous on that score.

Another book comes to me via a German co-worker whose church supported the work of one of the Malatya martyrs, Tilmann Geske. The book is written by his widow Susanne about the experience and is called Ich Will Keine Rache ("I Want No Revenge: The Drama of Malatya"). I pick it up with a heavy heart, but the title pretty much tells you that Geske herself is one strong woman. She and her children still live in Malatya. The trial for the murderers continues. The latest report I could find was from August, when an informant from inside the Malatya gendarmerie alleged that the murders were carried out with help from the police, who appear also to be trying to hinder the court proceedings.

German Texas

2009-10-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

We are getting ready to head out on a vacation to the hill country of Texas, near San Antonio. It's not just a vacation for us, but a scope-out for a possible relocation. We would like to be in an area that's a little more family-friendly and more affordable. Given the Bay Area's cost of living and particularly of housing, the latter would be anywhere you throw a dart on the map as long as the dart doesn't land on Manhattan.

Initially we looked at Austin due to the tech companies there, but when I heard there was such a thing as a "hill country" in Texas, that drew my attention. One of the interesting things about the region is that it was settled by Germans. I'm from Pennsylvania, which I had thought pretty much ground zero for German settlement in the US, but there is a fascinating and tragic story attached to the German immigrant presence in Texas. New Braunfels, the town where we'll be staying, has a central role.

Prior to the 19th century, there was no such thing as Germany, only a patchwork of small principalities and duchies. Under pressure from Napoleon, the rulers of Austria-Hungary on the one hand and Prussia on the other began consolidating power into absolutist monarchies. This dispossessed a lot of nobles and, through ruinous taxation, took a toll on the peasant folk as well. This eventually led to the peasant revolts of the 1840's.

Out of this unrest and an overpopulation problem, a confederation of German noblemen, led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, decided to sponsor an emigration drive and purchased land in Texas. The town of New Braunfels was founded as a halfway point between the coast and an inland land grant. Prince Carl then returned to Germany to recruit colonists. Six thousand took ship and landed at the Gulf, only to find out that the nobles society had not made any provision beyond the initial sea voyage. The 6000 found themselves in open, undeveloped marsh land with no food, shelter, ill-prepared for frontier life, and with the routes inland made impassable by rains. Ravaged by starvation and disease, only one in four would make it to New Braunfels. This is a survival rate more brutal than that of the Pilgrims of New England.

That was not the end of German immigration to Texas, however. By 1900, Texas counted 157,000 citizens who had been born in Germany. You wouldn't think it, but a lot of early cowboys were wearing lederhosen. :)

Not going to be able to keep the old man out of this place!

Fall supper

2009-10-03T20:38:00.001-07:00

It finally feels like fall here, sort of, so I thought I'd pass on a recipe that both has the tastes of the season and happens to be one of my sweet husband's favorites. Of all the things I've made for him, including things much more time-consuming, if he can have anything he wants he asks for this. Go figure. Maybe it's because it originates with Nigella Lawson? Hmm.

This is adapted from a recipe in Lawson's wonderful book Feast, which gives recipes for various holiday celebrations including Jewish, Christian and Muslim holidays. This meal is sort of Thanksgiving-esque, but not really.

Sage Chicken and Sausage Supper

2 lbs boneless chicken breasts (Nigella uses 4 lbs chicken bone-in)
8 chicken-apple sausages (Nigella uses 12 sausages and probably goes for the full-fat pork)
2 tbsp shredded fresh sage leaves
kosher salt

Marinade:
1 lg or 2 small onions, chopped fine- I whir these in the food processor because I think the juiciness factor makes for a better marinade
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp English mustard
1 tbsp dried sage
pepper
juice of one lemon
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Nigella says to put the marinade in a Ziploc bag, but more than once I've had those leak so I just put it in a glass dish. Marinate the chicken overnight or up to 2 days. Preheat oven to 425 degrees and let chicken come to room temperature in marinade. Put chicken in a roasting pan (skin side up if using boned chicken) and pour marinade over. Arrange the sausages around the chicken and sprinkle kosher salt and shredded sage on top of everything. Bake about 40 minutes for boneless, 1 hr 15 mins for boned, turning sausages once.

I usually make mustard roasted potatoes to go with these, which I get in the oven about 15 minutes before the chicken goes in.

California Plants: Mesquite

2009-09-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

At our local used bookstore, Recycle Books, I picked up an interesting little volume called Early Uses of California Plants by Edward Balk. It discusses some of the native plants of California and how they were used by native Californians and early settlers.

One of the interesting plants described is mesquite. No doubt you're familiar with mesquite as a barbecue wood. I first became aware that it had other uses when Pavel's brother picked us up a bag of mesquite meal, which is a light brown powder that has a sweet, slightly nutty flavor. It is supposed to be a healthy sweetener. I admit I didn't discern much taste difference when I added it to cakes, but I didn't have much time to experiment because it had to be thrown out when it fell prey to a grain moth infestation (a bit of California fauna that was new to me!).

Photo source

Balk writes of many other uses that native Californians made of the tree. A clear resin that oozed from the trees would be boiled and rubbed into hair. When it was removed, it would leave the hair glossy, lice-free, and dyed black. One could also eat this sweet resin, a kind of native American chewing gum. The various parts of the tree were used for dark dyes and paints.

People built their homes from mesquite wood, and used it as firewood because of its long-burning, efficient heat. Balk makes no mention of it being used as a barbecue wood, but I suppose that goes without saying! Mesquite was also used to make pottery water-tight. Clay pots were baked in a mesquite fire and then a gruel of ground mesquite beans was poured into the hot clay. The gruel would make the clay non-porous.

Mesquite beans were eaten fresh or ground to use as a flour for baking. A drink was also made of either ground-up or boiled mesquite beans. A mush was made out of the ground beans and seeds, left to sit for a few hours to give a bit of fermentation which was thought to improve the taste.

Mesquite was so important to tribes who depended on it that trees were sometimes owned, being marked as private by a bunch of arrow-weed, which sort of gives lie to the romantic notions of native Americans not owning property. Obviously this is one of those super-plants which literally sustained the lives of people who lived near it.

Minnie Vautrin, The Angel of Nanking

2009-09-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Earlier I posted about the story of John Rabe, the "righteous Nazi" who led the effort to set up a safety zone for civilians before the ferocious assault of the Japanese army on the then-capital of China in 1937.

I feel it's necessary to pause and describe some of the background of the Nanking massacre. After being rudely awakened from its isolationism by American gun ships showing up in its ports in the 1850s, Japan had undertaken a determined effort to industrialize and militarize itself. Besides feeling humiliated by western powers, the tiny island nation felt its survival depended on gaining access to the agricultural lands and raw materials of its more backward (as they saw it) neighbors, Korea and China. It sounds strikingly similar to the German pretext for taking over its neighbors, Lebensraum. However, Japan's imperialist ambitions towards its neighbors had been going on since the latter 1800's.

The fall of Beijing and Shanghai were seen as great military victories, but also came with high Japanese losses. Setting their sights on Nanking, the Japanese army saw it as time to go for broke. Though this is a point hotly disputed by Japanese apologists, it appears that the chain of command more or less green-lighted and even encouraged a policy of "total war" on the populace between Shanghai and Nanking and on the capital itself. All captured prisoners were to be executed. The vicious, wholesale rape that occurred in Nanking is what prompted the Japanese army to undertake setting up army brothels, staffed with the tragically named "comfort women." I won't link or post, but if you do a Google search about the rape of Nanking, you will see photos of Chinese women who were mutilated in the most grotesque, sexually violent manner imaginable. Nor was Nanking the last, perhaps not even the most deadly, of Japan's total war attacks against Chinese civilians.

Into the midst of this horror was thrown a woman from rural Illinois, the missionary-teacher Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin. She had worked her way through college and then foregone marriage to travel to China to teach, and later to help set up Ginling Girls' College in Nanking. She was head of the college in 1937 when the Japanese invaded. You can read portions of her diaries online, for instance here.

The campus of Ginling College was inside the Safety Zone, and though it was designed for 200-300 students, Vautrin sheltered up to 10,000 girls during the massacre. She had to be on constant lookout for raids as the Japanese ran out of women to rape in the rest of the city and would break in to the college. She also had to fend off "official visits" by Japanese soldiers demanding that she turn over the prostitutes. No doubt had Vautrin allowed them, they would have found "prostitutes" among the refugees whether there were any or not.

John Rabe's diary describes some of the violence against the women and girls of Nanking which Vautrin must also have witnessed: "Groups of three to ten maurading soldiers would begin by traveling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal. They would continue by raping the women and girls and killing everything and everyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. During their misdeeds, no difference was made between adults and children. There were girls under the age of eight and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots...

You would have thought it impossible, but the raping of women even occured right in the middle of the women's camp in our zone, which held between 5,000 and 10,000 women. We few foreigners couldn't be at all places all the time in order to protect against these atrocities. One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves. They only had respect for us foreigners--but nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. We asked ourselves mutually, 'How much longer can we maintain this "bluff"?' "

It doesn't take much to imagine what witnessing such atrocities and being on the front lines of trying to prevent them would do to a compassionate woman like Vautrin. I can only imagine that she must have asked God "why did you allow this to happen?" Perhaps she never got an answer that could relieve the darkness. The despair of not having been able to do more also runs through all of the Safety Zone leaders' writings. In 1940 Vautrin suffered a nervous breakdown and had to return to the United States. In The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang writes that a friend accompanying Vautrin on the ship journey had to constantly watch her so that she would not throw herself over the rail. Back in the States, she underwent electroshock therapy and seemed to be making a recovery. She wrote her family to tell them not to visit her, that she would come to see them soon. Shortly thereafter Vautrin taped up the windows of her home and turned on the gas.

Minnie Vautrin is known in China as "the goddess of mercy." She has been called one of the last victims of the Nanking massacre, though in reality Chang notes that she was not the only survivor who later committed suicide. Others suffered in silence. It is a sad irony that Iris Chang herself, attempting to right the wrong of that silence and see that heroes like Vautrin be remembered for their deeds, succumbed to the same darkness.

The Righteous Nazi

2009-09-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am currently listening to the CD version of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking, chronicling the Japanese invasion of China prior to World War II, and the massacre, torture and wholesale rape committed by the Japanese army in the then-capital of China.

After commenting about the book to someone, I was shocked to learn that Iris Chang committed suicide in 2004 just a few miles from where we live. She was the granddaughter of Nanking survivors, but her passion to document the atrocities started after she attended a seminar here in Silicon Valley where she saw photographs of the massacre, and learned that no book had been published about it. Her own grandparents, like many Nanking sufferers, were reluctant to talk about their experiences. After publishing her book, which was met with much controversy, and documenting the oral testimony of survivors, Chang suffered depression due to the horrors of what she had heard. This and the stress of her work are thought to have provoked a psychotic episode that led her to take her own life.

One of the more hopeful aspects in this most terrible tale of Nanking's fall is the account of actions by a very few individuals who were fortunate enough to have influence over the Japanese soldiers and courageous enough to use that influence. Just a handful of German and American businessmen, missionaries, and teachers saved hundreds of thousands of lives. As the Japanese army advanced, these individuals who had decided to stay in Nanking won permission from both the Chinese and Japanese armies to set up a "safety zone" to shelter civilians without military interference. Chang surmises, based on death toll statistics and estimates of the number that fled the city before the attack, that nearly everyone in the city who survived did so because they were in the Safety Zone.

The corpses of some of the Japanese army's littlest victims in Nanking. Photo credit.

The story of one of these individuals is moving not only because of what he did, but for who he was. John Rabe was an executive for Siemens and a Nazi Party member, a convinced socialist. He lived in China for nearly 30 years before the attack and considered it his home. Rabe was instrumental in setting up the Nanking Safety Zone, and tireless in personally interceding for would-be victims' protection and survival needs. He opened his house and grounds to hundreds of refugees and secured food for them, and attempted to contact Japanese Army officials, Hitler, journalists, and anyone else who would listen to try to stop the atrocities occuring across the city. Failing in the latter, he decided that the only thing he could do was drive through the city to try to stop the rape and murder of civilians, one victim at a time. His Nazi arm badge was often the only thing that saved both himself and those he tried to help.

In 1938 he returned to Germany, carrying with him documentation in word and film of the atrocities. The film was shot by American Presbyterian minister John McGee, and smuggling it out of China put both Rabe and McGee at great risk. After his return home, Rabe seemed to drop off the face of the earth, and many of his friends in China and among the other expatriates of the Nanking Safety Zone feared that he had either run afoul of Hitler or gone deeper into the dark heart of Nazism.

As it turned out, the former was the case. At first he was celebrated in Germany as a hero and made the lecture circuit, publicizing the atrocities of Nanking in an attempt to pressure the Japanese to prevent further outrages. However, he heard nothing back from Hitler about it, and tried to bring these things to the Führer's attention again, sending him a letter and a copy of McGee's film. Shortly thereafter he was picked up by the Gestapo, held for several days and interrogated, and finally ordered to stop speaking in public about Japanese atrocities. It must have been a rude awakening for him to find his own country so callous to the suffering of innocents, though no surprise to those of us who know what Germany was itself undertaking against its victims of war.

When Hitler's regime fell, Rabe was denounced as a Nazi by the British government, in whose district of Berlin the family lived. They were reduced to poverty while they waited out the "de-nazification" process, during which he could not work. They lived by scavenging food and by selling off the Chinese art they had acquired to American soldiers. Finally, evidence of Rabe's humanitarian efforts allowed his name to be cleared, but his situation improved little. Word reached China in 1948 that the "savior of Nanking" was starving, and parcels began to arrive from grateful survivors and from the Chinese government. Rabe died in 1950 of a stroke. His tombstone was moved from Berlin to Nanking (now known as Nanjing) in 1997, and his former home in the Chinese city has been made into a museum commemorating the massacre.

Later on I'll post about the heroic efforts and sad end of another of Nanking's angels, the American missionary Minnie Vautrin.

September

2009-09-13T20:24:00.001-07:00

It is worth it to try to pick up a used copy of the out-of-print Lost Country Life by Dororthy Hartley. These seem to still be available and fairly inexpensive. The byline of the book is "How English country folk lived, worked, threshed, thatched, rolled fleece, milled corn, brewed mead..." And that ellipsis includes a lot of other things. It is, as you might guess, a historical look at the nuts and bolts of rural life in England from the medieval era up to the present.

One of the charming features of the book is that it's arranged chronologically, taking the reader through the months of the year in the lives of the rural folk of the past.

September's chapter is devoted largely to forestry and the various types of trees native to England, with their uses. In September people would beat down acorns to fatten the pigs for winter, and tar the trunks of those trees they wished to save from wild animals' bark foraging. Dead wood- sometimes made so by scoring the trunk in the spring- or wood first drained of sap was used at parties in the great halls, since it gave bright light but not much heat. Laborers were allowed to take out fallen branches or dead wood from privately owned woods for their own burning, this being whatever they could pull down "by hook or crook," literally the weeding hook of the farm laborer or crook of the shepherd.

Some of the noted trees of the British Isles:

Alder, growing near water and good for waterfast uses like shoe bottoms and kitchen utensils. Alder has grown scarce. In the north, scarlet withies on riverbanks mark where alder has been cut and not replaced.
Birch, a mountain tree and thus at the staple wood for high altitudes. That happy accident has lent the unique properties of birch barrels to Scottish whiskey and birch chips to the Scots' smoked haddies.
Boxwood, used for wood cuts. The term "engraving" (end-graving) comes from the practice of using the ends of wood blocks for wood-cut pictures.
Elm, used for sturdy, waterfast applications like piles for quays. Will sometimes drop full-leafed boughs in autumn, hence what is said of people who die in their older prime, "the hale old goes as do the ellum boughs."
Oak: The sandy soil of the coasts yielded tough wood and was famous for its shipbuilding uses. Many old English country homes show the use of strong oak. Some of these were left in almost their natural shape when put in as pillars, root end up to prevent moisture draw. Some roof beams were created by splitting the wood in two. The "splitting image" was an exact likeness, and the halved trunks would allow for symmetry in the structure. Some houses got the wood after it had already been in a ship. Hartley writes that you can still smell ship's tar in certain old English country homes during wet weather.
Walnut, prized for furniture and gun stocks. The trees yielded the toughest wood if they were beaten in spring til the sap runs.
Wild Cherry, scattered and seems to follow the Roman roads. Maybe cherries were a favorite snack of Roman soldiers?
Willow: The weeping variety is not native and is a late introduction from Asia. The native willows are mainly white or "sally willows" (Salix alba, yielding salycilic acid for tanning) or the dry-grown goat willows whose golden fronds were used as stand-ins for palms on Palm Sunday.
Yew, the wood of the famous English longbow.

My home area of Pennsylvania was known for its forestry in the 19th century, and I remember hearing stories about how our local forests were stripped not only for the domestic tanning and lumber operations but because there was an insatiable market for timber in England. Fortunately, poverty has allowed much of our forest to come back. There are even a few stands of virgin white pine in our area. Much of Europe has lost its primeval forests, probably forever. America could go the same way if our population continues to increase. It pays to appreciate what is left.

Greeting Barbara Boxer

2009-08-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

We stopped by the Tea Party protest today at a Barnes and Noble in San Jose where Barbara Boxer was holding a signing for her new novel. The novel is apparently about a heroic female liberal Senator from California. I wonder who that could be based on! The book is roundly panned here at NRO.

There were a couple hundred people lining the streets. We saw a few counter-protesters, but they were pretty lonely in the midst of the crowd, even though Organizing For America had tried to recruit people to "crash" the Tea Party. I walked all through the crowd, and saw maybe 6 or 7 counter-protesters in the whole bunch.

I was also pretty surprised at the number of cars honking support as they went by. Didn't expect to hear that here in the Bay Area.

I think this was my favorite sign: "Don't Tell Obama What Comes After Trillion." Hehe.

This guy hopes Boxer will be writing lots more crappy novels in the near future.

Ronald Reagan, back from the dead! He looks fit, don't you think?

Second favorite sign: "The Taxes of Evil," with photos of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The counter-protesters. There were also a couple people with "Green Jobs" signs. These ladies told me they were "the raging grannies." Dig the feather boas- points for creativity.

I'm generally not the protesting type, but it was inspiring. Everyone was upbeat and the conversations I heard and participated in were all friendly and respectful, even those with the counter-protesters. The burning question: Did Babs think the protesters were too well-dressed?

Plum Kuchen

2009-07-27T19:09:00.001-07:00

We recently celebrated Pavel's parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. At the party a couple of us got talking about how we wanted to gather some of the family's recipes into a book we could all have. Gulash, sour cream-bacon noodles, King Ludwig's nut torte... My mouth's already watering.

Here's a sample and something timely for the summer fruits that are so plentiful and nice right now. I've made this with plums and peaches and it works with apricots, too. I bet you wouldn't be disappointed with blackberries, blueberries or cherries. This is so good, my German co-worker actually asked for the recipe and translated it for her mom and cousins back home. So I think it's made an Atlantic round trip at this point.

Plum Kuchen
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Press-in Pastry: Mix 2 cups flour with 1/2 cup sugar. Cut in 2/3 cup butter until crumbly. Remove one cup of the crumbs for a topping. Separately, beat 1 egg yolk with 1/2 tsp vanilla. With a fork, stir egg-vanilla into the larger portion of the crumb mixture, then use your hands to press into and up the sides of a 9-inch springform pan to make a crust.

Filling:
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 tbsp flour
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 cups (about 1 1/2 lbs) small plums, halved and pitted- best with late-season dark blue prune-type plums

Combine sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour. Gently stir lemon juice with plums and then stir in flour-sugar-spice mixture. Arrange fruit, cut sides up, in prepared crust, making about two layers. Sprinkle with any sugar mixture left in the fruit bowl. Cover with reserved crumbs. Bake on lowest rack for 1 hour 15-20 minutes, until pastry is well browned and fruit is tender and bubbly.

Fun With Math

2009-07-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

Wow. And keep in mind, the administration's own numbers are usually rosy.

The Ties That Bound

2009-07-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

I have started reading this book on peasant families in medieval England, The Ties That Bound by Barbara Hanawalt of the University of Minnesota, and have found it interesting and profitable reading. Her portrait of medieval family life in rural England comes primarily from a study of coroner's and inquest reports. Historians of the medieval era can be thankful that people were often scrupulously anal about such record-keeping.

As with so many stereotypes of medieval life, notions of the lives of medieval peasants often don't stand up to the newest research. For instance, far from being hovels, peasant homes show evidence not only of scrupulous cleaning but of care taken to make them pleasant, colorful, and comfortable, even at expense.

People also were healthier than many assume. Though the restrictions in food storage technology and transportability left people vulnerable in times of famine or crop or animal disease, Hanawalt writes, "The evidence from skeletal remains indicates that peasants were fairly robust." All but the poorest had recourse to meat fairly frequently, and otherwise ate a diet that would be considered health-conscious in our day, with whole grains, moderate dairy, and legumes, rounded out by fruits and vegetables either in season or dried. The poorest and most vulnerable, such as orphans and elderly, were given certain gleaning rights, and even free harvest rights at certain times in bean and pea fields. The medieval had to use much more of their income and energy for food than we do, however.

People were taller than was earlier assumed. The average height of remains at the Wharram Percy dig (a Yorkshire village representing habitation from the 10th to the 14th centuries) was 5 feet 5 inches. Dental remains show evidence of a lower caries rate than modern England (!) though more than in the Anglo-Saxon era.

Hanawalt describes the various layouts of "toft and croft" which allowed medieval farming and trade folk to arrange their living areas and protection for the animals. The toft was the living area and yard, and croft the surrounding or adjoining land where they grew crops, fished, etc. Many dwellings were long-houses that had the family living area and a byre for animals or crafting under the same roof, separated by a wall or ditch. More prosperous villagers had human dwellings separated from the barns, often arranged in an L or square with the center courtyard being a work and pasture area. Early medieval homes were not built to last. The family might live in different parts of the croft at different times of year, and change living quarters every few years as the wattle-and-daub walls of the former residence gave out. Wattle-and-daub used a wood frame that was covered by mud and then by whitewash. In areas where stone or wood were more plentiful, these were used, though subject to cave-ins on the one hand and fire on the other. All in all, the wattle-and-daub house with thatching for the roof was a practical way for farm families to have low-cost housing.

In general the picture that emerges is of people who were sensible, industrious, and subject to the same sort of misfortunes and vicissitudes as we are, and wanted much the same things for themselves. Should this be any surprise?

Rusalka

2009-07-11T16:38:00.001-07:00

H/T to Mairs for pointing me to this beautiful paint-on-glass short by Alexander Petrov. I had never heard of him, but apparently he is one of Russia's most famous animators. You can see why. According to his Wiki, the technique of oil animation on glass has been mastered by only a few in the world. He paints with his fingertips, using large layered sheets of glass with slow-drying paint. To create an animation, he photographs the painting, then slightly modifies it for the next frame.

Without further ado:

The story seems to be loosely based on a poem of A.S. Pushkin. It's not clear to me whether the mermaid is a daughter of the jilted woman, or perhaps the woman herself returned in some form. Reading this Wiki on the mythology of the "rusalki" in Russian lore, she is probably the ghost of the woman herself.

Here is more Petrov, a film version of The Old Man and the Sea for which he won an Academy Award (20 minutes).

Famine By Design

2009-07-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

On the commute I am currently listening to the CD version of The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. It seems a ripe time for reflection on the subject, twenty years after the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe, 75-odd years after Stalin's purges.

I'll probably post a few things on the topic, but the subject of politically motivated starvation has serendipitously come up a few times in my reading of late. Gaddis describes the calculated starvation of the Ukraine, and the even more massive undertaking of Mao Tse Tung to starve his rural population into submission. An article I recently came across in the National Review urges us to "remember the Holdomor," the name given to Ukraine's mass starvation.

The subject led me to read up a bit on the Great Famine of Ireland, a subject burned into the memory of all Irish-Americans. I would like to do some more in-depth reading on the subject. Even a glance over the Wiki shows that it is on a different plane than the calculated deprivations of the communists.

Or is it? The Soviets and Maoists deplored the owning of private property, and seemed especially incensed about private citizens owning their own land. The Great Famine of Ireland seems to have largely come down to a populace who was not given the sovereignty and incentive to own and improve upon private property. Much of the land, vast tracts, were owned by people who never set foot on it but relied on managers to oversee many small tenant holdings. Small subsistence parcels were the "reward" for people's labor on the rest of the land, whose crops were sent to England for export. The small plots people had for their own subsistence were only sufficient to grow potatoes. None of the improvements you made on your little plot were considered yours, so there was no incentive to innovate. Because Ireland was a conquered nation, the customs of duty and reward that governed landlord-peasant relations in England also didn't apply.

So much of freedom circles around the opportunity to own, and keep the fruits from, one's own private property. Personal freedom is closely allied to the right to private property. Unlike in the Soviet Union, Britain did try- however lukewarmly and ineffectively- to aid the victims of its own policies. However, they also tried to exploit the crisis for the purposes of social engineering, like the goal of having fewer and bigger plots instead of the small postage-stamp ones. There are lessons here for us. Once the family and the neighborhood does not have control over its own destiny, you can expect the "aid" that comes from the large collective to hurt more often than it helps, and the fix to be worse than the disease. The sweeping dictates of social restructuring are more likely to harm than help, especially when a government is willing to exploit a crisis to enact them. One of the most important and least exercised functions of government is to protect us from itself.

Humiliation of Relics

2009-06-28T16:07:00.001-07:00

You may or- more likely- may not have noticed that I've not been blogging much of late. While this is mostly a personal blog, I do try to keep it thematically oriented towards history and medieval history in particular; and the fact is, my deeper reading and thinking has been largely about politics since the election. That is something I'd rather not write about much here, however. For one thing, I've been so appalled and angry over what has been happening, it would likely amount to little more than venting. My thoughts are also just not well developed enough to write about. So I've been stewing and reading (most recently Mark Steyn's America Alone), but decided to spare you the fruits.

On the personal front, I am sometimes surprised when I realize how prosaic my life has become when compared to the previous ten or fifteen years. Husband and I are in many respects in a holding pattern. I'm not complaining about that fact, it just leaves little to say.

It is pitiful, however, to blog about why one isn't blogging, so I'll turn to the subject I put in the title. This comes from a book called Living With The Dead in the Middle Ages by Patrick Geary. I was really looking forward to reading this book, because it's a subject I'm fascinated by and have come to look at in a much different way since becoming Orthodox. In Orthodox worship, the recognition that we are one community with the departed is front and center. Eamon Duffy writes very movingly about the practical outcome of this mindset on the life of medieval people; you can read my previous blog posts about his work here.

The book wasn't quite what I was expecting. It is a collection of lectures loosely themed around the topic, not a comprehensive presentation. However there were some interesting bits. One was on the medieval practice of the clamor and the humiliation of relics. It seems to have been popularized by that powerhouse of monasteries in France, Cluny, and spread through its network of associated monasteries.

The clamor ranged from the petitions normally said during the Mass, to a separate ceremony where monks could protest against a wrong that was done to them. This involved prostrations before the altar and the recitation of lament psalms. The saints whose relics the monastery possessed could be brought into it, as well. They were seen as part of the community, so what hurt the community, injured them. Monks would lay out hair blankets on the floor and place the relics on it, forcing the saints to join them in their humiliation.

Geary cites a couple instances where this method was used to shame and petition secular lords with whom monasteries had grievances. According to the stories he tells, it worked quite well. Monks could even go one step further and hold services where they prayed curses on the offenders, asking God to damn them rather than bless them. Few medievals would want to risk becoming such a target.

The practice was never canonically sanctioned and was banned at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. By then a system of canon law and petition was in place. As we see in the case of England, that didn't always work out. Had the Pope invoked the relics of St. George, abasing them, would Henry VIII have feared more for his soul than for his lack of progeny and given in to Rome's wishes? Doubtful.

Comments

2009-05-25T21:22:00.001-07:00

Not that I've been blogging much anyway (sorry, sometimes the well is dry), but due to a flood of spam, I'm putting the comments on moderation for now.

Garden Notes May

2009-05-11T20:33:00.001-07:00

I have some California poppies growing in my lemon tree pot. Aren't they happy flowers? They make me smile when I see them.

No opium puns intended!

Fallout 3

2009-05-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a gamer, but I have to tip my hat to Fallout 3. For a time-waster, it is an absorbing one, driven for me mostly by a good, emotional main storyline: A parent-child tale with tough ethical choices, reminding me of an Orson Scott Card book.

Some credit for the emotional impact has to go to the voice actors. These people have an amazing talent when they- along with the writer, of course- can make you care about a blob of pixels on a screen. Emil Pagliarulo is the writer and quest designer for the game, Liam Neeson heads the list of voice actors for Fallout 3. However, Wes Johnson must get applause for voicing, alongside the evil "supermutants" (humans who have been exposed to a virus that transforms them into bloodthirsty Incredible Hulks), the philosophy-spouting supermutant Fawkes who managed to rise above his limitations and become a much nobler sort.

My character Maggie and Fawkes look over part of D.C.'s ruins 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse. The Washington Monument is pictured in the distance.

The developers, of course, must also get their due, for creating a world with many absorbing, creative niches, for making it so that casual gamers like myself could be brought along while hardened gamers also are satisfied, and for some beautiful artwork. Speaking of emotionally connecting with characters, the credit for the game's dog companion must go entirely to the developers. All it took was a few whimpers and ear scratches from this particular character and I would go to any in-game length to watch his flea-bitten back:

Dogmeat is homage to Mel Gibson's dog companion in The Road Warrior, and is modeled after the Australian Blue Heeler.

Let's pause for a general homage to Australian cattle dogs, since I grew up with one at my side; in my case, a bearded collie. No doubt another reason I took to the game's Dogmeat.

If you are already a fan of Fallout 3, you know that a new downloadable extension of the original story line has just been released. I don't think that my Fallout 3 enjoyment can extend to taking on an account with Microsoft Games, but it's tempting.