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1916: Events and Inventions

Sep26

January, 1915. Austro-Hungarian forces overrun and take the small country of Montenegro.

February 21, 1916. German guns fire on the French positions near the fort of Verdun in the beginning of a major assault on the French line. The French, who have concentrated their armies elsewhere along the front, retreat before the German onslaught.

March, 1916. The Austrian War Dog Institute and the German Association for Serving Dogs begin training dogs as guides for the blind.

'Villa, Raoul Madero (LOC)' photo (c) 1914, The Library of Congress - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/March 15, 1916. 4000 U.S. troops under the command of General John Pershing cross the border into Mexico in pursuit of Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa. Villa and his Villistas have been raiding towns along the border in Arizona and New Mexico. Some say he is purposely trying to draw the Americans into the continued civil war in Mexico. The picture on the right is Pancho Villa and some of his men in 1914.

April 24, 1916. The Easter Rising. Irish nationalists in Dublin stage an uprising against British rule on the Monday after Easter Sunday. The Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein, two nationalist organizations, lead the rebellion and attempt to declare Ireland to be an independent republic. The British government sends reinforcements to the army in Dublin to fight and capture the rebels.

May 31, 1916. British and German Dreadnoughts clash at Jutland off the coast of Denmark. Called the battle of Jutland, the fight ends in a German retreat but greater losses of men and ships for the British.

July 1, 1916. The Allies launch an attack on the German lines near the Somme River in northern France. Over 57,000 Allied soldiers and 800 Germans die in the first day of the offensive. The Battle of the Somme will end in November after more than a million deaths on both sides.

August, 1916. Romania, neutral until now, joins the Allies and invades Austria-Hungary.

September 15, 1916. Great Britain’s army reveals its new secret weapon: the tank. 32 tanks are deployed on the Somme, and German machine gunners scatter in their path. 2000 Germans are taken prisoner.

December, 1916. Cutex, the first liquid nail polish, is introduced in the U.S. by Northam Warren.

December, 1916. The ‘turnip winter’ in Germany and Austria sees food shortages caused by the Allied naval blockade and a high mortality rate among the civilian population.

The Five Love Languages of Teenagers by Gary Chapman

Sep26

I have a low tolerance for psycho-babble. Although I don’t think this book is complete psycho-babble, there is an (un)healthy portion of it that just reads like psychological speculation and filler. I’ve read about the “five love languages” before, and there is a core of useful information there. I just think it can be explained in a simple way and in far fewer words than are in the several books that have been written and published on the subject.

So, the five love languages are:
1) words of affirmation
2) quality time
3) touch/physical expression of affection
4) gifts
5) acts of service

It is Mr. Chapman’s contention that everyone uses one of these five love languages as his or her primary way to express and receive love. The point of knowing your own primary love language and the primary love language of significant others in your life is to be able to express your love to them in a way that most plainly communicates love to that person. For example, if my primary love language is quality time, I will feel most loved by my husband, by my friends, and by my family when they decide to spend quality time with me. I will also tend to assume that that’s how they feel most loved by me. However, each of those people may have a different primary love language, and my husband or my teenage son may feel more loved and affirmed if I simply give them a a hug or a sincere compliment or a small gift or if I do something for them.

That’s it in a nutshell. The book takes a lot more words to say not much more than the preceding paragraph. If you want the concepts fleshed out with stories and lots of explanation and a few disclaimers and qualifications, read the book. Otherwise, just try to figure out how the people around you most readily receive and give love, and then try learning to give your affection to each one in a way that suits that person’s personality and “love language.” Not a bad idea at all, just too many words.

Note-blogging Forbidden by Tosca Lee and Ted Dekker

Sep24

I’ve never read anything by Tosca Lee or by Ted Dekker, although my nephew says Ted Dekker is his favorite author. Maybe reading this book for Faith ‘n Fiction Roundtable is a good way for me to get a taste of Mr. Dekker’s writing and see if my nephew and I are on the same page.

Chapters 1-5: Forbidden posits a weird dystopian world in which people have no emotions except for fear. I’m not sure why they kept fear. But some people are drinking some bloody magic potion/poison and regaining emotions—maybe only the bad stuff like jealousy, rage, greed and ambition. There should be a violence warning on the front of the book since two people get murdered in the first two chapters, and lots of blood and gore ensue.

Chapters 6-10: For some reason, this book is reminding me of the Dune books by Frank Herbert. Lots of violence. Some kind of strange hierarchical government. People who act as if they’re on drugs. Maybe they are on drugs. I do think it’s difficult, if not impossible to write about people have no emotions. For instance, Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series was supposedly without emotions, purely logical. However, Spock had emotions, and eventually they had to say that he was only half Vulcan and so had to battle his emotions to some extent. The people n this book are also not completely without emotions (other than fear); they show some sense of pleasure and loyalty and even anger or at least annoyance.

Chapters 11-end : Now this is getting too interesting for me to stop and blog.

So I started out blogging as I read, but I became absorbed in the story and forgot to blog. I suppose that’s a recommendation in itself. Some of the other F’nF roundtable readers found this book to be way too reminiscent of Mr. Dekker’s very popular Circle trilogy, but since I’ve never read anything else by either of the co-authors, it was all new to me. I did think that the central idea of the book was hammered a little to obviously and a lot too often. Some explanation like the following was repeated several times in the last half of the book:

“Yes. I drank some ancient blood and it changed me. If I’m right . . . If the vellum is right, the world is dead. Everyone! But I was brought back to life by the blood.”

The theme is that the lack of emotions and the pervasive fear in this future dystopia are a type of living death, and only a special potion made of blood and then, later, a saviour whose blood is pure and untainted, can reverse the death that pervades the planet and bring new life and feeling to the inhabitants of earth.

It’s a series, so the usual non-ending ending warning is applicable. The series is called The Books of Mortals. Forbidden is available now in bookstores. The second book in the series, Mortal, is promised for September 2012, and the third one, Sovereign, will be available in September 2013.

You can visit the blogs of other Faith ‘N Fiction roundtable members to find out more about Forbidden:

Book Addiction | Book Hooked Blog | Book Journey | Books and Movies | Crazy for Books | Ignorant Historian | Linus’ Blanket | My Friend Amy | My Random Thoughts | The 3 R’s | Tina’s Book Reviews | Wordlily

World War I: The Poems

Sep23

Sonnet V: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. Brooke died in 1915 of blood poisoning due to a small wound, left unattended.
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.”

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
“If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

As the war dragged on, men became disillusioned, and the poetry became darker and more pessimistic.

Dulce et Decorum by Wilfred Owen. Listen to this poem by a British soldier who was killed in action in 1918 a week before the war ended.
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.”

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

American Alan Seeger foretold his own death in the poem, Rendezvous.
“I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade . . .”

This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong by Edward Thomas.
“I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.”

World War I: What They Said

Sep22

Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher.

As I looked through this book and the websites to which it referred, some of the words of soldiers and civilians jumped out at me. It truly makes the time period and the Great War itself take on new meaning when you experience it through the eyes of those who were there.

Borijove Jetvic, fellow terrorist of Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife: “Princip made an appeal to the prison governor: ‘There is no need to carry me to another prison. My life is already ebbing away. I suggest that you nail me to a cross and burn me alive. My flaming body will be a torch to light my people on their way to freedom.'” SE: He thought he was a hero and had no idea of the horror that he had unleashed.

French lieutenant: “Humanity . . . must be mad to do what it is doing. What scenes of horror and carnage! . . . Hell cannot be so terrible.” SE: Yet, hell is worse, and we go there willingly and stupidly, just as men went to war thinking it would be an adventure.

American survivor of the sinking of the Lusitania, Charles Jeffrey: “There was a thunderous roar, as of the collapse of a great building on fire. Then the Lusitania disappeared, dragging hundreds of fellow creatures into the vortex. Many never rose to the surface, but the sea rapidly grew black with the figures of struggling men, women and children.”

American poet Alan Seeger who volunteered to fight with the British before America entered the war: “”If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege. . . . If you are in this thing at all it is best to be in to the limit. And this is the supreme experience.” SE: Is there such a thing as a noble death, or is Death always and forever the enemy, to be endured perhaps stoically and even nobly, but always the enemy of the resurrection life that God has for his children? The ‘supreme experience” is not death, but rather Life.

Teddy Roosevelt in 1917 after the torpedoing of two American ships by the Germans: “There is no question about going to war! Germany is already at war with us.”

Joyce Lewis, American soldier wounded in the Battle of Belleau Wood: “The surgeons came out, finally, and seeing me, exclaimed, ‘What, ain’t you dead yet?’ Then they took me to the hospital, fixt me up as best they could, and sent me to Paris in an automobile ambulance.”

Private William Bishop, Jr.: “Pleasure around here isn’t much except reading your shirt, which means to look it over for cooties. An as for rats, they are the size of a five year old tomcat. You can’t scare them. They crawl all over your bunks, and if you knock them down they just come right back again.”

Colonel Thomas Gowenlock on the Armistice and the end of the war: “All over the world on November 11, 1918, people were celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking champagne, hailing the armistice that meant the end of the war. But at the front there was no celebration. . . . All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers. . . . What was to come next? They did not know and hardly cared. Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace.”

To read more about the Great War the book suggests the following website:

PBS: THe Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.

Reading about World War I

Sep20

Nonfiction for children and young adults:
Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy. World War I and the Christmas Eve, 1914 spontaneous cease-fire. Reviewed by Betsy at Fuse #8.
The War to End All Wars: World War I by Russell Freedman. Reviewed at Bookish Blather.
Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher. From a series on various American wars published by MyReportLinks.com (Enslow Publishers).
Remember the Lusitania! by Diana Preston. A children’s/young adult version of the adult nonfiction title by the same author. The books includes lots of personal anecdotes about individuals who survived the sinking of the Lusitania and stories of some of the people who did not. It’s a solid, brief (89 pages with pictures) introduction to the subject, but it felt a little rushed. I hardly had time to get to know the characters that the author spotlighted before the entire episode was over and done with.
Unraveling Freedom: The Battle for Democracy on the Home Front During World War I by Ann Bausum. Reviewed by Betsy at Fuse #8.

Adult nonfiction:
The Proud Tower: A portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman. I’m working on this one–about halfway through. The author spent about 200 pages on the Dreyfus affair in France, and if nothing else, I feel as if I know a lot more about French modern history than I did before. Reviewed at Resolute Reader.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. I started this book once but didn’t finish. I think after I get through with The Proud Tower, I’ll be ready for guns. The Guns of August won Ms. Tuchman a Pulitzer Prize for history. Reviewed at Resolute Reader.
The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by Robert K. Massie. I read this classic biography/tragedy back when I was in high school or college, and I remember it as fascinating. It’s since been updated with new discoveries made about the bodies that were found and from information found in Soviet archives.
Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie.
Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie.
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. Semicolon review here.
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson. Semicolon review here.
Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy by Diana Preston.

Children’s and young adult fiction:
Fly, Cher Ami, Fly!: The Pigeon Who Saved the Lost Battalion by Robert Burleigh. Based on a true story about carrier pigeons used by the U.S. Army during World War I.
War Game: Village Green to No-Man’s Land by Michael Foreman. A longer picture book story of a soccer game during the Christmas truce of 1914.
Winnie’s War by Jenny Moss. Semicolon review here.
The Best Bad Luck I Ever had by Kristin Levine. Semicolon review here.
When Christmas Comes Again: The World War I Diary of Simone Spencer, New York City to the Western Front, 1917 by Beth Seidel Levine.
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M Montgomery.
Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy travels through Europe instead of going immediately to college after high school, and she sees the arms build-up and the beginning of World War I. Reviewed at Library Hospital.
Betsy’s Wedding by Maud Hart Lovelace. Reviewed at Reading on a Rainy Day.
Kipling’s Choice by Geert Spillebeen. I read this book a couple of years ago, but never got around to reviewing it. It’s a fictional account of the death of John Kipling, son of Rudyard Kipling, near Loos, France in 1915. Here it is reviewed at Chasing Ray.
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. Joey, the farm horse, is sold to the army and sent to the Western front. Reviewed at Another Cookie Crumbles.
Without Warning: Ellen’s Story, 1914-1918 by Dennis Hamley. Ellen Wilkins becomes a nurse to follow her brother to war.
A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town.
Eyes Like Willy’s by Juanita Havill. A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war.
After the Dancing Days by Margaret Rostkowski. We read this YA novel for my English/History class at homeschool co-op last year. Annie is a thirteen year old girl living in a small town in Kansas at the end of World War I. As she begins to visit the returning soldiers at the veterans’ hospital where her father works as a doctor, Annie is at first repulsed and frightened by the severely injured men. However, she comes to be friends with them, one in particular, even though her mother is opposed to Annie’s hospital visits and wants her to forget about the war and its consequences.
My Brother’s Shadow by Monica Schroder. This YA novel is brand new, published in September by Farrar Straus Giroux, and I got an ARC from the publisher. It’s about a German boy, Moritz, towards the end of the war in 1918 and how he comes to see the war and its results differently as he grows up in its aftermath. Moritz’s brother comes home severely wounded from the front, and Moritz must choose between his loyalty to his brother and his mother’s new socialist way of seeing politics and the world. I thought the story was good, but the fact that entire books is written in present tense distracted me. I suppose the intent is a “you are there” feel, but I would have preferred the distance and objectivity of past tense.

Adult fiction:
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara.
No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry is the first in her World War I mystery/suspense series. I don’t like her writing in these books as much as I did the Victorian Charlotte Pitt mysteries, but if you’re interested in the time period, they’re worth a try.

Of course, there are many, many more books about and set during World War I, but these are the ones with which I have some familiarity.

1915: Books and Literature

Sep20

Trench Literature: Reading in Word War I by Richard Davies, Udo Goellmann & Sara Melendre. What were the doughboys reading? Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, John Buchan, Nat Gould, W.W. Jacobs, Captain R.. Campbell, and anything else they could get their hands on to alleviate the boredom of the trenches.

This writer thinks that the Most Influential Poem of the Twentieth Century was published in 1915. Can you guess the poem, or at least the poet, before you look?
HINT: “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

John Buchan’s spy novel The Thirty-nine Steps was published in 1915. Here it is reviewed by Woman of the House. There’s a Hitchcock movie version of this adventure story, and also a Masterpiece Theater movie adaptation that has been recommended. Has anyone here seen either one?

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the eponymous soldier, and his seemingly perfect marriage.

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was first published in 1915. The original German title was Die Verwandlung. We read this classic horror novella for our 20th century class, and Brown Bear Daughter called it the “cockroach book.” She refused to look at the cover which had a picture of a giant bug on it. I don’t blame her. Herr Kafka would have not liked the picture either since he told his publisher in a letter: “The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance.” I looked at Amazon, and most of the covers do have a picture of some kind of bug. This one is one of the few that I found that Kafka might have approved.

Also in 1915, W. Somerset Maugham published his most famous book, Of Human Bondage. I’ve heard of the book all my (reading) life, but I’ve not read it. Recommended or not?

Miscellaneous Links and Thinks for Sunday Salon

Sep18

The Sunday Salon.com

I suppose I could “tweet” all of these links or put them on Facebook or even Google+ them, but I sort of like gathering them together here at the old blog. Tweet or facebook or + as you like.

Water lilies in my hometown, San Angelo, Texas. I like stories about self-educated hobbyists who pursue a subject with passion and become experts.

Cindy at Ordo Amoris does Shakespeare with the family. “I always tell new students of the bard that if they do not like Shakespeare that is fine but it is the height of ignorance to conclude that it is the Bard’s fault rather than something lacking within themselves.”

All of the back issues of John Holt’s Growing Without Schooling newsletter (1977-2001) are now available to read online. I have many of the early issues of this pioneering newsletter. I probably subscribed in about 1980 or 81. And the newsletter was inspiring. Before I even had children, I knew that there were all these crazy people out there —leftover hippies, religious types, farm families, suburbanites, and city-dwellers– who were teaching their children at home. Or maybe “letting them learn” at home is a more appropriate designation. Although we ended up with a more structured homeschooling experience than many of the original GWS contributors and readers, I learned a lot from the newsletter about educational possibilities and creative thinking in relation to the way children and adults learn. Along with Melissa, I’m welcoming the appearance of Growing Without Schooling, free, on the web. Thank you to all those who made this gift possible.

Seuss, Sendak, and Silverstein: Children’s Authors Who Broke the Rules. I must admit that all three of these authors are favorites of mine, Seuss and Silverstein more than Sendak, but all three to some extent. I never got the appeal of some of Sendak’s books (In the NIght Kitchen, Outside Over There), but Max the Wild Thing is a classic character and his story is worth sharing with kids.

The Thinking Mother shares a Dystopian Literature reading list that she developed for her fourteen year old boy. Good resource for teen boys who are interested in dystopia and science fiction.

Hollywood Republican: 12 Essential Films for the Moral Formation of Boys. I would add Chariots of Fire, Gettysburg, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

1914: The Arts and Entertainment

Sep18

'Charlie Chaplin' photo (c) 2007, Fr. Dougal McGuire - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/'Mary Pickford' photo (c) 2008, bunky's pickle - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/British-born comedian Charlie Chaplin and Canadian Mary Pickford are the stars of Hollywood’s silent pictures. Charlie Chaplin makes his first appearance as The Tramp in 1914’s Kid Auto Races at Venice.

In December 1914, cartoonist Johnny Gruelle paints a face on his daughter’s faceless rag doll and invents the Raggedy Ann doll. You can read Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle here at Project Gutenberg.