Art Presenting Communism Truthfully

I came across one episode of a popular series, Northern Exposure, that ran in the 1990-1995. Highly popular then, it received many accolades, and the main actors were nominated for and received several awards for their excellent performance.

The streaming episode in question, number 25, entitled Zarya, aired during season five. For me, it was shocking because the entire show advocated for capitalism and against communism. There was even a brief plug for the crowd pushing global warming caused by CO2.

I was accustomed to Hollywood supporting all socialist and communist causes, praising the tyranny that had killed one hundred million innocent people around the world, including my own dad.

I knew that public school students and college students only received a cursory introduction to the evils, misery, famine, torture, and death that all communist societies inflicted on their citizens with the Communist Party at the helm.

The communist ideology, adopted by socialist republics in lock step with the Soviet Union, originally stemmed from Karl Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. All these countries were socialist republics run by the Communist Party under the guidance and advice of the Soviet Politburo apparatchiks.

The episode presented an imaginary and secret visit by a Soviet delegation led by Lenin to Alaska post the tumultuous times when the Soviets deposed the Romanovs in Russia.

As truth has become a victim of the lies spewed by politicians, the mass media, academia, and the government, it is important to describe what some of the characters said during this highly interesting episode of Northern Exposure.

One of the Russian characters, Mikhail Borisovich, a medical doctor who accompanies the group, refuses to go back to Russia with Lenin, not because he had lost faith in the Bolshevik Revolution, but because, as a scientist, he was no longer sure that “life can be reduced to class struggle, to dialectical materialism, or any set of formulas. Life is spontaneous and it is unpredictable,” he said to the fictional Lenin.

The show ended with the fictional narrative that, “after his return from Alaska, Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy which allowed for limited private enterprise. The policy revived the Soviet economy but was scorned by hardline party members. After Lenin’s death, Stalin abolished Lenin’s reforms and returned the Soviet Union to ‘Pure Socialism.’”

The loose connection to the show’s location, the fictional Cicely, Alaska, was brought about by the fact that Tsar Alexander II had ceded Alaska, his country’s last remaining foothold in North America, to the United States for $7.2 million.

The real Lenin did propose a New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 where a mixed economy with a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control while operating on a “profit basis.” The economy was mixed when the Soviets revoked partially the complete nationalization of industry and allowed a mixed economy to exist for a short while.

The show’s storyline reveals what Lenin’s communist-controlled society wrought: confiscation of private property, total control by the state, politically and economically, hunger, starvation, and the lack of basic goods and freedoms.

A very hungry Comrade Borisovich is plied with the abundance of decent food in capitalism, and he eats the offerings on the capitalist table like the starved and hungry socialist that he was – a doctor working for Soviet Polyclinic number 6. His female interlocutor reminds him that on Nevsky Prospekt, he could not buy a new pair of socks nor needle and thread to darn the ones he has.

The fictional Lenin visits the local shop to buy bunion shields. He explains to the elderly shop owner that, “unfortunately, for all the triumphs of our Revolution, the quality of shoes has declined.” The well-informed shop owner tells Lenin that she has read about his Soviet Union. “If you remove the profit incentive, you get shoddy merchandise.”

Lenin counters that “the middlemen, brokers, like the owner of this shop, are economic parasites.” She tells him proudly that she is the owner of the shop. “You mean your husband,” he replies. “I mean me. Why would you presume otherwise?” Lenin replies, “given the subservient position of women in capitalist society.”

“You utopian social engineers are all alike,” she replied to Lenin. “If Karl Marx had made some capital instead of writing about capital, things would have been much better.” Lenin was shocked that such a “well-adjusted woman could live in a bourgeois society.”  He was accustomed to Soviet political commissars controlling everything and everybody.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it does not deny the existence of the soul, of God, of the inventive minds of people who are unique individuals with God-given rights to explore all possibilities and opportunities to become the best that they can be, not hobbled by the communist police state.

It is surprising that Hollywood produced this episode in 1993, so soon after the “fall” of the Soviet Union in 1990. It would be ideal if public schools in the 21^st century America would teach students in detail how socialism and communism had enslaved and terrorized millions around the globe. This education would dispel any positive opinions young people have about communism.

A Hard-Cheated Pyrrhic Victory and a Mute Wedding

As I watched millions of well-fed, educated Americans dancing in the streets, cheering, and gloating over their hard-cheated pyrrhic presidential win to install the much-desired socialism, touted in the press and academia, all I could think about was the 100 millions of people who had lived and died under a socialist dictatorship ruled by the Communist Party and other millions who risked their lives to flee such a socialist society. And I was numb that people can be so naïve and easily swayed by clever rhetoric, just like people were enchanted a century ago by the Bolsheviks. I never once met an American who fled to Cuba or North Korea unless they were criminals sought by the law. But I sure met a lot of defectors and refugees from tyrannical regimes who sought shelter in America.

While a student in the 1980s at a southern university, I met dozens of people from Iron Curtain countries, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Soviet Union, East Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, who had left everything behind in order to escape to the freedom of the west.

We formed a union of sorts, sharing food from our respective cultures, learning about our new country, loving and respecting America who took us in, and speaking against the oppressive regimes we had fled from with just the clothes on our backs in some cases.

Now it is entirely different. Americans have been convinced that socialism is great, and they must have it at all costs, including a pyrrhic election victory. What is a pyrrhic victory? It is a victory won at such a damaging toll to the victor that it looks more like a defeat because it will destroy any long-term progress.

Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek king who opposed the expansion of early Rome, often compared to Alexander the Great in his tactical war efforts. But some of his victories were won at such a great loss to his troops and kingdom that history remembers him as having won battles with such unacceptable losses that the term “pyrrhic victory” was coined in his name.

Which brings me to the presidential election – a pyrrhic victory won at all costs, losing the soul, honor, integrity, and Constitution of a nation in order to achieve the promised socialist utopia of a globalist cabal who stopped at nothing to fundamentally alter its foundations and Constitution through technology, hacking, deceit, mass media indoctrination, unethical activist judges, utterly corrupt politicians, and fraud.

While America’s young generations are dancing in the streets with joy that a man with incipient dementia and a Marxist have won the White House, I see pictures flashing through my mind of people escaping from tyrannical socialist societies through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, cutting through barbed wire, dodging bullets, flying low in makeshift aircraft, stealing a train and braking through a barrier, digging tunnels, swimming across the Danube and other treacherous rivers, floating in makeshift boats, a dingy, fighting sharks across 120 miles of ocean from Cuba, stowaways on ships, on plane cargo holds, fitted inside the seats of cars, or too close to the engine compartment, all to flee to the freedom of the west.

I see a young woman holding her breath while the airport checkpoint officer discovers that she has not signed her legal passport. Instead of being turned away, the guard demands a carton of Kent cigarettes to allow her to sign the passport in front of him. And she complies – the $20 carton of cigarettes at the time was a cheap escape from imprisonment within socialist borders.

I see another woman being stripped of her jewelry because the socialist law does not allow anybody to leave the country with any gold and silver except a tiny wedding band.

I see people’s homes, personal belongings, savings, and land being confiscated by socialists and distributed to their Communist Party activists for their personal use. I see people being hauled to jail for non-compliance, protesting their incarceration until the prison door is slammed shut.

I see people standing in line to find food, toilet paper, paper towels, and sanitizing products, just like the recent lines we had to stand in at our local grocery store for months after Covid-19 lockdown. People were irritated and impatient, herded like cattle behind yellow lines, set arbitrarily six feet apart. Shelves were bare for a while but imagine doing this every day to get food?

Imagine the online ordering and curbside pickup going away if there is no adequate production planning, manufacturing, and delivery because the government is run by inefficient socialists in the same vein as Venezuela?

Starry-eyed people who get mad because their latest XBOX supply runs out before they can hit the order key on their computers, will discover a new reality, a reality of shortages of essentials.

A good friend, who read my first book, Echoes of Communism, was skeptical and could not understand how the entire population was so deprived in their daily lives by a small percentage of activists who belonged to and were loyal to the Communist Party who indoctrinated everyone initially into the “wonders” of socialism.

The day his wife called him in a panic that the shelves of their local grocery store in Virginia were bare because of the first Covid-19 lockdown, disruption of production and delivery in March 2020, subsequent hoarding of essentials, and when their refrigerator was nearly empty, he understood. They felt for a few days what we felt every day for 49 years of oppressive socialism. Once installed, the socialist republic rule of the Communist Party did not go away, the suffocating control grew like kudzu, one foot per day.

The Silent Wedding, a movie made in 2008, artistically wove the alleged “real” story of a couple’s wedding from an isolated village in Romania. The ceremony and the reception that followed, held in March 5, 1953 (a Thursday), was allegedly interrupted by a communist activist from the city and a Soviet officer who brought the news that the USSR tyrant Joseph V. Stalin had died and thus seven days of international mourning were decreed in which public celebrations of any kind were prohibited. The celebrants held a mute wedding.

Likely a fictional event, this artistic story brings to mind the fact that Americans are not allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving this year in their homes with more than six people as guests, a breaking of familial tradition disrupted and imposed by state governments around the country.  Neighbors are encouraged to snitch, [and they did already in New York] if such draconian executive orders are violated.

Ten months since the first Covid-19 lockdown, healthy people are still forced to wear masks for the good of the collective, not for their own protection, since masks are not really effective as it is stated on the manufacturer’s packaging.

This is America, of course, shortages of food and necessities cannot happen here, we have an abundant economy, optimists and the naïve repeat ad nauseum. What will happen to this horn of abundance when the socialists just elected will enforce their New Green Deal, and solar energy and wind power will not even begin to supply our country’s huge energy needs? How will cars run? How will truckers deliver food? How will products be manufactured and hauled? Joe Biden’s fairy dust?

When Joe Biden’s rhetorical pixie dust, which blinded many to choose socialism, will lift, they will be left with very little to go on and will be begging the omnipotent government to feed them and house them. Computers, technology, social media, politicians, and the mass media produce nothing of consequence that sustains life, they manufacture hot air, advertising, socialist indoctrination, and are quite good at spending trillions of other people’s money.

 

 

 

Teaching is an Art, Teachers Are Not Made

“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.”                   – Friedrich Hayek, The Pretence of Knowledge

The week of June 11, 2016 issue of The Economist published a one page editorial on “How to make a good teacher.” It makes a very weak case that teachers can be trained. There is obviously no stated government mold for such a teacher. There is teacher licensing set by the Department of Education which requires teachers to be graduates of the College of Education and mandates that teaching methodology courses and student teaching are part of the College of Education curriculum for future teachers.

Unfortunately, the requirements for subject matter study are very weak and, generally, because teacher pay is low compared to the private sector, the College of Education tends to accept the weaker students who have a hard time passing core requirements classes such as mathematics and science.

Here is why teachers cannot be trained. Good teachers are born, not made. You cannot use a cookie cutter and presto, you have good teachers. What you do get are drones following a set curriculum such as the collectivist Common Core from which they cannot diverge.

You can learn to emulate a famous and successful teacher, but you cannot copy their temperament, disposition, knowledge, rich vocabulary, linguistic articulation, voice, unique delivery, creativity, talent, and love of what they do.

Teaching is an art. You cannot teach art. You are either talented or you are not. Secondly, in order to teach, you must have a strong knowledge of your subject matter. Thirdly, you must like children and love what you do for less remuneration.

You must be patient and able to handle criticism from administrators with an agenda who think they are the solution to everybody’s problem; you must be able to handle criticism from lazy students who complain in order to excuse their lack of effort; you must smile upon hearing criticism from parents who expect teachers to become de facto parents, in absentia parents, and do not care if Johnny learns; they want Johnny to have straight As, a diploma, and many awards he didn’t deserve or has not earned; and you must overlook criticism from the general public who sees the teaching profession not worthy of respect and as a walk in the park. How could you not handle the darling brats guilty parents raise in the 21^st century? Last but not least, teaching involves mandated standardized tests that do nothing to reflect what a student has actually learned or knows. Standardized tests just regurgitate memorized facts and dates that are soon forgotten.

Mass government education is just mass indoctrination into a program mandated by the federal government across all fifty states. More recently that was called Common Core, an attempt to raise busy little technical support workers who believe in global warming, communism, and worship Islam, not Christianity.

Government has dumbed down education through the Educational Leadership and Teacher Education curriculum in order to socially promote every student as painlessly as possible through twelfth grade and possibly through a worthless but expensive social studies education.

Insane school discipline procedures or lack thereof for children coming from broken homes, irresponsible parents who don’t read to their children, don’t care if they do their homework or study, dealing with less than mediocre teachers who cannot get employment elsewhere but cannot be easily fired, dealing with teachers who don’t try to teach well because the pay is low, neglected children in households where both parents work and have no time to devote to being involved in their children’s education, high income households who can afford and often do hire nannies and delegate parenting to them, are some of the problems.

Then there is the problem of inveterate socialist teachers who continue the tradition by indoctrinating their own students. It becomes easier as most teaching materials are written and published by die-hard progressives with an agenda to sell books and propagandize as many generations of students into their Marxist philosophical beliefs, turning students against their parents, against Christianity, against their own country, against patriotism, and shaping them into atheistic anti-Americans who are taught revisionist history using Howard Zinn’s progressive interpretation of American history, rewriting historical facts.

Teachers control students’ minds on the average of 6 hours per day. Some students go home to dysfunctional, broken homes, to parents who are unengaged, have their own issues to deal with, and who may or may not care about their children’s education or education in general. No schooling in world and no teacher training can fix that.

More money, computers, books, supplies, will ever improve a child’s education until their parents are involved in their child’s education, and until they stress to their progeny how important, useful, and fun learning for a lifetime can be.

No “eco-pedagogy” or “conscientization” or whatever the newest educational fads the progressive indoctrinators have adopted will actually help students learn. They are just means of brainwashing children into the Gaia environmental movement which promotes non-existent global warming in order to redistribute the middle class wealth around the world in the “social justice” vision of progressivism.

Some poor countries teach children in a dirt hut with no technology, just a blackboard and chalk, relying on an old encyclopedia and a good math book.  No brainwashing, just common sense, and correct history, and their students are exceptional. Many poor schools don’t have laboratories yet students outperform western students in both science and math, even though they don’t have calculators. And the school day is four hours.

Finland successfully tried the no-technology-allowed in the classroom approach as well while the U.S. is now relying heavily on technology. The more technology we develop and provide to students, the less and less they actually know.

No matter how well trained a teacher may be, a child coming from a broken home with drugs, alcohol, and other issues, has a severely affected ability to learn. It helps when teacher to student ratio is manageable. Class size is important in interacting with each and every student as often as possible. Students will share their problems if the teachers really care and take time to listen.

Many schools are run by administrators and superintendents who are marginal or poor administrators, pathetic leaders who lack the skills, philosophy, and temperament to develop a strong learning atmosphere in their schools.

Selection committees who are tasked with hiring principals and superintendents do not have the necessary knowledge to select the proper school leaders or are hampered by their own political correctness, misconceived ideas, and socialist agendas.

Often exceptional teachers get in trouble with dictatorial administrators who impose their curricular ideas that may or may not work in a specific classroom or a specific group of students. Such excellent teachers are sometimes at odds with their lazier and non-creative colleagues who are licensed and unionized, secure in their jobs, but expend the minimum effort necessary to keep their jobs; they cover their walls with “I love myself plaques” given to them by peers at conferences sponsored by various teacher associations.

Thomas Sowell, exceptional teacher and economist, said, “The great promise of socialism is something for nothing. It is one of the signs of today's dumbed-down education that so many college students seem to think that the cost of their education should -- and will -- be paid by raising taxes on ‘the rich.’"

 
Apparently, the ‘rich’ have rigged the system so much that nobody can succeed, they were told. But the rich create jobs and lose money and wealth every day. If they have rigged the system and continue to do so, they sure did a lousy job of rigging it.

“None of this is rocket science. But you do have to stop and think -- and that is what too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach their students to do.” http://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/thomas-sowell-socialism-for-the-uninformed/

 

 

 

 

The Washington National Cathedral, Not an Ordinary Place of Worship

Photo courtesy of the web

On the highest point of Washington, D.C., Mount Saint Alban, a fourteen-century English Gothic style cathedral stands out – the Washington National Cathedral – with its centerpiece of the high altar, “The Majestus,” designed by sculptor Walker Hancock and carved in stone by Roger Morigi.

Also known as the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the Cathedral’s construction began in 1907 and was finished and consecrated on September 29, 1990, eighty-three years after the initial laying of the foundation stone.

Designed by architects George Frederick Bodley and Henry Vaughn, and completed by architect Philip Herbert Frohman over his fifty year tenure, the cathedral was built and carved by hundreds of stone cutters, wood cutters, metal and glass artists, and other workers who built the great towers, the flying buttresses, the crypt, carved gargoyles, grotesques, pinnacles, finials, angels, and thousands of decorative details.

Some stone cutters and carvers hailed from the same part of Italy, with its rich limestone, a material used by Italian builders for their cities, cathedrals, palazzos, monuments, villas, and tombstones. The stone carvers of the National Cathedral came from small towns in Italy as early as 1890. And they all went to Barre, Vermont.

Roger Morigi, who studied at the Academia di Belle Arte di Brera in Milan, arrived in New York harbor from Genoa in 1927. After years of apprenticeship in Milan, Morigi became Master Carver at the Washington National Cathedral in 1956 where he labored for twenty-three years until his retirement. The last sculpture he carved was Adam. His major pieces are Majestus (the centerpiece of the altar), the statue of the Good Shepherd, and Adam of the west portal.

After Morigi’s retirement, Vincent Palumbo became Master Carver in 1978. Vincent started as the youngest and most inexperienced member of the crew, working with his father, Paul Palumbo. He worked at the Cathedral for “thirty-eight years since he immigrated to the United States from southern Italy in 1961.” (p. 77)

Vincent worked on the figures of Saint Paul and Saint Peter on the Cathedral’s west façade. He spent two years with three other carvers working on scaffolding above the Cathedral’s west entrance carving the Creation tympanum.

Frederick E. Hart created the famous base relief sculpture Ex Nihilo (Out of Nothing) that adorns the tympanum over the main entrance of the cathedral. It depicts “creation of humanity out of the torrential void.” Four life-size males and four females with closed eyes are “emerging from the primordial cloud,” a birth revealing the “majesty of the Divine Will.”

Paul Palumbo carved the keystone of Christ on the Cross, an unusual depiction of a very muscular Christ with oversized arms. Paul Palumbo also carved sculptor Granville Carter’s Archangel Michael statue, located in a niche in the south transept of the Cathedral.

Frank Zic and Roger Morigi worked for almost five years carving forty-four voussoir angels in the south portal and ten years above the south portal carving angels, canopies, and other sculptures.

Unfortunately, the stone carvers’ workshop, stone yard, and studio no longer exist on the Cathedral’s grounds; they have been demolished long time ago.  According to Marjorie Hunt, a folklorist with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the workshop was a veritable “League of Nations,” with carvers from all over Italy, Greece, England, Germany, and the United States.

I met Marjorie Hunt ten years ago at Georgetown University. She had co-produced and co-directed The Stone Carvers, an Oscar-winning documentary about the stone carvers she described in her 1999 book with the same title.

I toured the Cathedral with Marjorie Hunt as a guide but I saw this jewel of architecture through my own eyes. While I understood and admired the carving beauty built for posterity, the intricately sewn needlepoint pillows in the pews, bearing the names of powerful men in Congress and the Supreme Court, struck a strange chord with me.

What is so fascinating and unusual about this Cathedral is the fact that the carvers had complete freedom in choosing pinnacles, corbels, capitals, gargoyles, and grotesques.  The grotesques decorate buttresses supporting the nave.

According to Marjorie Hunt, carvings such as gargoyles, angels, columns, pinnacles, and grotesques intertwine “the world of work” with hilarious moments in time, pranks, jokes, stories, memorable characters, quirks of various carvers, their habits and unusual traits of character, and the carvers’ imagination, using the world around them as inspiration:

-          a scholarly owl , a wild cat, a winged creature, flowers, fish, pumpkins, sunflowers, carvers’ faces, the foreman, the laborer, the engineer, the boss, a golfer’s grip

-          an image of Roger Morigi with his mallet and chisels, with a mushroom cloud above his head and a devil’s tail and horn, signifying his fiery temperament, and a set of golf clubs above his head, a symbol of his extra-curricular passion

-          a pinnacle carving of Roger Morigi with his “beloved golf clubs and the master carver’s eagle eye”

-          Vincent Palumbo, holding an air hammer,  with exaggerated curly hair and moustache

-          one carver on the scaffolding whistles at the passing girls while the next carving depicts the former dean of the Cathedral, Francis B. Sayre Jr., with a horrified expression of shock and disapproval

-          Frank Zic carved himself “dreaming of deer hunting and winning the Maryland lottery,” with a wishbone on his left side and a deer antler on his right” (The Stone Carvers, p. 151)

-          Frank Zic carved Gino Bresciani, the trice retiree, who was preparing for his fourth retirement with “a bag of money over his shoulder and his suitcase in his left hand (p. 152)

-          Malcolm Harlow carved his family on the base of a pinnacle

-          He also carved the caricatures of construction laborers Allen Goodwin and Henry Thomas  – Goodwin with a chain hoist and dolly, Thomas with a cup of coffee, a doughnut, hot dog, and piece of pie

-          Malcolm carved a tribute to all secretaries in a grotesque, with telephone, typewriter, and file cabinet (a grotesque is a gargoyle without a water spout)

-          A pinnacle with columns and Ionic capitals honors the Cathedral sculptor Constantine Seferlis, a Greek

-          Richard Feller, the canon clerk, is depicted with his drafting tools and the mountains from his native West Virginia

-          Ludwig Malisky, a carpenter, is portrayed with his hammer and saw

-          Walter Fleming, the foreman of all Cathedral laborers, is holding a whip wrapped around his head

-          There is even an angel holding an Oscar, honoring  Marjorie and the documentary The Stone Carvers that won an Academy Award in 1985

-          Seferlis carved a hippie, an elephant, a donkey, a lawyer, a television producer, an angry cat ready to pounce, a man riding a stolen pig with a chicken in one hand, and a boy with a broken halo and his hand in a cookie jar

-          Vincent Palumbo carved a good boy with a halo – the two boys were carved at the special request of a Cathedral donor

-          A gargoyle was carved for a dentist, depicting him working on the cavity of a walrus

-          John Guarante carved a lion roaring in anger and pain because his tail was tied in a knot; his ninety-six angels with overlapping wings and praying hands holding a dice with 7 encircle the central tower  (pp. 156-157)

A memorial to Joseph Ratti, who died falling from scaffolding, was designed by sculptor Heinz Warneke and carved by Roger Morigi. There are two uncarved blocks of stone on the north wall of the Cathedral, in the spot where Ratti fell to his death. The statue depicts a stone carver working on an unfinished gargoyle, a tribute to Joseph Ratti, but also a reminder of the dangerous work involved in building the Cathedral.

The keystone of Mary Magdalene and Christ, located on the nave’s vaulted ceiling, is the last carving that Vincent Palumbo and his father worked on together before Paul Palumbo’s death.

The Washington National Cathedral is not just a symbol of Christianity and the house of God; it is a “compendium of life and work experiences, … a collection of texts that bear the imprint of the carvers’ hearts, hands, and minds.” (Marjorie Hunt, The Stone Carvers, p. 163)

It is sad that the Cathedral that bears the name of George Washington and represents our Judeo-Christian nation has been desecrated.  What would the stone carvers, devout Christians - Catholics, Lutherans, and Orthodox – think and feel if they knew that their place of worship they spent almost a century to build with blood, sweat, and tears, has been changed, even for a short moment in history, into a mosque?

 

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014

 

Tattoos, Artistic Expression, Fashion Statement, or Self-Mutilation

Tattoos used to represent gang affiliation, prison time, or brotherhood in the military. Hollywood’s narcissistic behavior has changed that; imitation has become a misguided form of flattery.

Tattoos are a billion dollar industry. Considered now a form of self-expression, my body is my canvass, tats are not cheap. Tats are so desired that unemployed and partly-employed youth go into debt to pay for tattoos.

Tattoos and body piercings are considered a rite of passage in primitive cultures, and are more painful and more expensive to remove in western cultures. Some Christians object to tattooing because it defaces the perfect body that God has created.
On any given day, it is hard to scan any crowd without finding more and more people of all ages with visible and huge tattoos, body piercings, hooks, horns, chains, facial holes, gauged piercings, and other forms of body enhancement. There has been an explosion of young people covering their arms, their legs, their backs, necks, faces, and hands with colorful tattoos and body piercings in painful places.

A few tats are beautiful, masterfully done by skilled artists, some are ugly caricatures or stretched blotches of black ink, others picture words in foreign scripts the wearer does not understand, some represent kinship or brotherhood with an organization, a few make delicate or indelicate fashion statements, some are obscene, others represent prison time, the number of people murdered and gang affiliation, and others pay homage to a place, a person, a special date, a life-altering event, or a decision made while inebriated. No matter what the reason, tattoos become an indelible part of how that person is perceived for a lifetime regardless of their good, imperfect, or bad character.

Pirates had only one ear pierced because they believed it improved their visual acuity.

Holocaust victims at Auschwitz had numbers tattooed on their forearms by their jailers and torturers, a vivid expression of the utter brutality of Nazism and its attempt to dehumanize Jewish people.

When I first saw Otzi, the Iceman, the well-preserved mummy of a man who lived about 3300 B.C., in Bolzano, Italy, I focused on many details besides his belongings. Discovered in 1991 on the Austrian-Italian border between Bolzano and Innsbruck, Otzi had 57 tattoos. Scientists revealed that some tats were located near modern acupuncture points and they may have treated his degenerative arthritis. If that is indeed true, tattooing for medicinal purposes, a form of rudimentary acupuncture, occurred way before acupuncture was known to be in use in China around 1000 B.C.

“Otzi had several carbon tattoos including groups of short, parallel, vertical lines to both sides of the lumbar spine, a cruciform mark behind the right knee, and various marks around both ankles.” http://www.crystalinks.com/otzi.html

Two mummies, a man and his wife, from 2,500 years ago remained frozen in Pazyryk on the Altai steppes near the Mongolian border and western Siberia until it was found by Russian archeologist Sergei Rudenko in 1948. The man’s body was covered with tattoos, his arms, legs, and trunk – “monsters with wings and cats’ tails, lion-griffins with snakelike bodies, deer with huge antlers and eagles’ beaks.”

The Scyths (Scythians), Iranian equestrian tribes, who lived in central Asia from 7th to 3rd century B.C., were famous for their tattoos. The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) wrote, “the whole mass of the Scyths, as many as are nomads, cauterize their shoulders, arms, and hands, chests, thighs, and loins, for no other purpose than to avoid weakness and flabbiness and to become energetic.”

Tattooing then was a painful status symbol for Scythians. Skilled tattooists punctured deeply into the flesh of their customers elaborate designs of real and imaginary creatures and then “filled the holes with a black liquid.”

Another Pazyryk people discovery was made in 1993 in Novosibirsk, a 25 year old blond princess preserved in the Siberian permafrost. The Ukok Princess had perfectly preserved 2,500 year old tattoos on both arms. Dr. Polosmak postulated that tattoos were a means of personal identification, status and position in society, as well as the ability for the people of the same clan to find each other in the afterlife. “The more tattoos were on the body, the longer it meant the person lived, and the higher was his position.”

Other bodies found in 1929 in the Siberian permafrost, such as that of a man, exhibit animal tattoos from head to toe:  mountain sheep called argali, griffons with vulture beaks, winged snow leopards, and fish.

(Photo: The Siberian Times reporter, August 14, 2012)

 

 

This is the photograph reconstructing a warrior’s tattoos, warrior found on the same plateau as the Ukok Princess. The drawing of tattoos was made by Elena Shumakova of the Institute of Archeologyand Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science.

The princess’ tattoos were highly intricate and artistic, representing mythological animals and fantastical creatures: “a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers. The antlers are decorated with the heads of griffons. And the same griffon’s head is shown on the back of the animal. The mouth of a spotted panther with a long tail is seen at the legs of the sheep. She also has a deer’s head on her wrist, with big antlers. There is a drawing on the animal’s body on the thumb on her left hand.” http://siberiantimes.com/culture/others/features/siberian-princess-reveals-her-2500-year-old-tattoos/

Tattoos are as old as our civilization and, for whatever complicated reasons humans seek and get tattoos today, they appear to be an outer expression of the inner self screaming to be noticed.

 

Art Imitates Painful Life

Radu Mihaileanu’s 1999 award winning movie, “Train of Life,” is a metaphor for the resilience of the human spirit and the desire to be free with a decidedly anti-communist and anti-Nazi message.

Art imitates life in a series of comedic one-liners describing a very serious topic, the deportation of the Jews to the concentration camps during World War II. But it is a fairy tale with a twist. An entire shtetl (village) in Eastern Europe is self-deporting to the Promised Land, Eretz, Israel, via Ukraine  - Russia – Palestine, in the year 5701 (1941) on the advice of the “crazy” village fool, Shlomo Rothschild.

The Nazis (National Socialists) have arrived beyond the mountains, deporting Jews, “God knows where,” entire villages are never heard of again and the Rabbi must save his own flock by any means necessary even though it is “a sin to dress up like a Nazi.”

The unnecessary cruelty of man against man is evident in the naïve and innocent question, why would anyone want to kill us, we are nice people and some Germans are nice people. Why don’t they stop them?

“Let the Germans deport us! Let them sweat! Why make it easy for them?” But the Wise Men decide to buy a fake train, supplies, fake documents, tailor German uniforms, and train 30 Jews to be German soldiers and 5 to be officers.

Mordechai Schwarts, the wood merchant, who speaks German and understands German culture, is chosen to be the commander of the train. The locomotive with the 8 wagons has seen better days but, with love, paint, and major repairs, the train is ready to chug along once they find an engineer. Yenkele, the accountant, objects vociferously to the purchase price of 10,000 and the leather seats in the commander’s wagon.

Israel Schmecht, the local writer, teaches the fake Nazi soldiers how to speak German in a precise, dry, and humorless manner. The Rabbi jokes that maybe that’s the reason the world is at war with the Germans, “we make fun of their language.”

A wise woman, unhappy with the idea of leaving their village and homes behind, and with her fellow Jews dressed as shameful Nazis who carry guns, laments on the wisdom of God who lets “men run the world, with a fool to lead them.”

The non-Jewish neighbors are worried that “their Jews” are leaving and they will lose their businesses. The real Germans are burning down their village, their homes and possessions.

The local beauty, Esther, is pursued by many, including Sammy, Mordechai’s rich son, which she prefers, Shlomo, who confesses his love for her, and Yoselle (Yossi), the commune’s young communist agitator. The Rabbi advises everyone to avoid the wayward Yossi because his craziness is contagious. All he talks about is the communist slogan, “Men and women of the world, unite!”

Preaching communism, Yossi, who has shaven his traditional beard, talks about the New Man, enchanting his hapless and rapt audience with the secret Messiah who has arrived and is going to make all men equal and workers, but nobody knows yet who the illusory Messiah is, “it is a code name so he does not get arrested.” But we are not workers, says one, we are Jews.

We revolutionaries stay undercover, said Yossi, we “lurk in the shadows, confronting danger, we’re incognito, stowaways, clandestine, utopians, adventurers.” The Rabbi had had enough and challenges his ridiculous description calling him a “proletarian good for nothing,” rabble rouser.

Finally a train engineer is found -  the shoeless Shtrul Goitzl who works at the Archives, has never driven a train before, but is able to find a manual, “How to Drive a Locomotive.” The locomotive is an absolute piece of junk held together by rust, presented as good as new - once it’s painted red, it will go around the world. The accountant with an ulcer faints.

And so they embark on the train of survival in the middle of the night, each taking with them their most precious possessions. The village fool Shlomo wraps two pebbles carefully in a white handkerchief, symbolizing love for his ancient village, his deep roots, and the hardship ahead.

Past midnight, the children of Abraham and Moses pray one last time and, with fear, joy, anticipation, and faith in their hearts, climb aboard. With a shrill whistle of the engine, the train moves into the night, into the scary and shadowy darkness.

The chugging train has eight cars (wagons), six of which are cattle cars like those that took Jews, gypsies, and other innocents to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Dachau.

The next morning, the mail man arrives with accountant Yenkele’s loan approval but the village is empty, papers flying in the wind in the deserted streets. The mailman is assured that they will come back - Jews are family people, they will “return to their roots.”

Yossi the Marxist, continues his indoctrination on the train. “The poor should be rich and the rich should be poor because it is not their fault that the poor are born poor.” But is it not their fault that they stayed poor?

One young man tells Yossi that he will become a communist when he can keep his side-locks and his faith. That is of course, not permitted, the New Man has to be different than the Old Man. As he continues offering empty promises, Yossi names Sammy their Soviet ideologist.  Sammy declines on account that he has not read Marx but Yossi confesses that neither had he.  

The first station they pass identifies them as a ghost train; the underground resistance plans to blow up the tracks, mistaking them for a real Nazi train, taking Jews to the gas chambers. Without a timetable, it is almost certain they will not be able to pass the next station unless they detour. Eli Grossman, the chess champion, suggests a route detour to avoid detection.

The engineer, full of sweat and oil, wipes his brow of a stray underground resistance flyer that hit his face in the wind – he now has a large black ink Nazi emblem emblazoned squarely on his forehead.

They barely avoid a collision with an oncoming train, the resistance is not sure if they should blow them up or not, while the Germans are loading up troops to search and destroy the abandoned village.

Yossi the Marxist is stirring up trouble, demanding better accommodations for his followers. They want Mordechai’s car and bed. A fascist Nazi should not sleep in better quarters than communists, he says. When the Rabbi defuses the tension by promising everyone beds in Palestine, Yossi laments in typical projective psychology, “Beware of empty promises. The bells of a new era are tolling.”

The resistance fighters decide to let them go unharmed. The train struggles into the night like a sick patient taking a labored and rhythmic breath, trying to stay alive.

A Grandmother soothes her grandchild with stories of “Palestine, an earthly Paradise, with gardens, brooks, animals, birds, and treasures underneath the sand.” In reality, she is holding the fairy tale book, “Little Red Riding Hood.” The symbolism is ever present. The child wonders, “We’ll never make it <alive>, will we?”

When the train stops for Shabbat, Yossi, the communist, advises his flock not to pray, “We are not doing Shabbat, we are Marxist-Leninist materialists now! The Messiah has come! God doesn’t exist!”

A fight ensues as Mordechai, the fake German officer, attacks Yossi, the commie materialist traitor. “Come pray and let the others pray too! You’ll corrupt the children! Dirty communist!”

Shlomo, the “fool,” gets in the middle and embarks on a philosophical monologue on God, man, and creation, concluding with the question “whether we exist.” Shabbat shalom! Did you understand that? One elder responds in total confusion, “God is not sure whether man exists!” To which the Rabbi answers with aplomb, “What am I, a monkey?”

After a series of comedy of errors, the movie ends on the Eastern front with bombs flying around the train in both directions. Shlomo narrates, “Once in the Soviet Union, everyone espoused the communist cause; some went to Palestine, mostly the gypsies, others went to India, mostly the Jews. Shtrul went to China where he became stationmaster. Beautiful Esther went to America and had lots of beautiful children. That’s the true story of my shtetl. Well, almost true.”

As the camera pans out, Shlomo is behind the wired fence of a concentration camp. Was it all true? The story kept him alive, the folly of the train of life.