Friday, October 27, 2017

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN LESS THAN 700 WORDS


Well, they said it couldn’t be done: The Russian Revolution of 1917 in under 900 words, 900 words being the limit of what would constitute a good anniversary article for our community magazine. Well, of course it can’t. It can’t be that short and go into any detail at all, at all. But, answering the challenge from the wags at the magazine, I came up with the following piece in under 700 words. Adding more words would have just been gilding the lily. It may bore you, but it is, I think, a good “nutshell article,” designed to give you just the basics. Will you remember it? Probably not, but what the heck!

                                                             
Russia - This map was a good one to pick because it appealed to me on several levels: right size for the blog, nice colors, shows the time zones, shows some of the territory gained over the years, and shows Persia.  

Russia is the largest country on earth, over six million six hundred square miles, and covers eleven time zones of the twenty-four time zones. The population is approximately 150 million, roughly half that of the United States. Its history and statistics are remarkable and impressive.

For over 900 years, since the establishment of the first cohesive territorial state, the people we now call the Russians, an amalgam or groups that included the Huns, Vikings and Varangians, Slavs, Khazars from Turkey, and traders and raiders from places like Greece, have been warring and acquiring more territory. Many have tried to conquer the Russians, but none succeeded. Many of those who tried were just absorbed into the populace and their lands added to the expanse of the conquerors’.

For all of those over 900 years, the general populace, those not of the ruling or merchant classes, were serfs. It was the social norm for the times up until serfdom began to decline in the late Middle Ages. The revolutions that began with the French Revolution were uprisings against the excesses of the upper classes and the privation of the masses: millions spent on palaces and playthings, little spent to improve the lives of the lesser mortals. The Russian Revolution was much the same.

The trigger for revolution was Russia’s engagement in the Russo-Japanese War that began in 1904. Having to do with rivalry and claims on both sides, the old adversaries had been belligerents for many years past. Over much of the same period, the late 1800’s, the Socialist movement had begun in Russia. There was unrest and uprisings, and in 1881, Tsar Alexander II was killed by revolutionaries. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, various reform measures had been introduced in answer to the uprisings, but none were very effective because few promises were kept. The astounding monetary losses in the Russo-Japanese War, as Tsar Nicholas II kept on pouring funds into the losing effort, resulted in further general privation. Again, there were reforms promised made, and some were kept, but they were too little, too late, and often revoked. The revolution that had been simmering began to build up steam.

In those later decades of the eighteenth century, Russia, its royalty closely related to the European monarchs, entered into mutual aid alliances with several countries. Though, given the impoverished state of the country, it should have remained neutral, those alliances obliged Russia to enter into the First World War. It plunged in with depleted and misappropriated funds, poor equipment, high casualties, and misguided strategy. It won a battle or two, and the allies won the war that ended in November 1918, but it was a loss as far as Russia’s people were concerned.

In late 1917, the losses provided the final momentum for the Marxists to push toward the major uprising: the October Revolution. The Tsar had abdicated earlier in the year, and an unsuccessful provisional government was formed. The Russian Revolution immediately led to the five-year Russian Civil War begun in November 1917. That war was between the anti-communist White Army, the monarchists and capitalists who were destined to be completely ousted, and the Red Army. You’d need a PhD, a score card, and a great deal of time to unravel and understand the intertwining strands of the Marxist groups, subgroups, and factions of the era.

For a blink of time in early 2018, Russia was declared a democratic federal republic. It couldn’t last. In January 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was formed. The majority were Bolsheviks, followed by the Social Revolutionaries. In essence, it was the beginning of the stand of Marxist-Leninist communism. Were the “serfs” better off then? Are they now?

Skipping over a lot of the dates and details, the Russian Revolution can be reduced to under 700 words, but this nutshell merely skims the surface. Those who do really have the time and the interest in this interesting milestone in our world’s history, can begin on line, looking up The Russian Revolution. That simple search will lead to all the little tributaries that met in the river that became the Russian Revolution and flowed on from there for decades after.


(Article word count: 698)

Friday, October 20, 2017

TROLLOPS...



…Anthony Trollope and otherwise. I woke up the other morning, having just had a dream about working in a shipping office. I made a saucy remark to one of the clerks, and he smiled and fondly quipped “trollop.” I woke up wondering if the word trollop had anything to do with the writer. I know his name, but I’ve read little more than excerpts of his work.

Checking the handy-dandy Wikipedia, I realized that the author’s name is customarily spelled with an added ‘e’, though the Norse origins of the name allow for varied spellings. Trollope comes from trolls. Trollop derives, in its last permutations of another type of troll, then to trull, or lady of the evening. All of which is either very interesting to you, or will bore you to tears.

All this is by way of explaining to you how I come up with some of my essay subjects. 



Friday, October 13, 2017

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH - AGAIN




Heads up all you friggatriskaidekaphobia and paraskevidekatriaphobics: it's Friday the Thirteenth, and this is an article I did up for a community magazine article and for a blog in 2012. Researching the number 13 was an interesting job. At the time I did the research I didn't recognize that there was a movie Friday the Thirteenth, made in 1980. Who knew? 


Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13.  It is from the Greek: tris means 3, kai means ‘and’, deka means 10, and phobia means ‘fear’. The word was coined 100 years ago in 1911.  Frigga was the Norse goddess for whom Friday was named, so add her name to the front and it becomes fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I won’t begin to decipher the meaning of that second word; it suffices to say it means the same thing. 

In western culture, the number 13 is widely associated with bad luck. No one wants to live on 13th Avenue, or have an apartment on the 13th floor.  Hotels also eliminate the 13th floor, but the floor is really there, isn’t it?  It’s just been renumbered.  Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. For ages the number thirteen was just one of many and had no special significance.

The superstition surrounding 13 seems to have arisen in in medieval times.  It is said that folks became aware that there were thirteen at the Last Supper, and thereafter tried to avoid thirteen - not only at a table but everywhere else.  Norsemen may tell you that when the mischievous Loki crashed the party at Valhalla to which Odin had invited eleven of his closest friends, all Niflheim (that’s Norse for hell) broke loose, resulting in the death of the beloved Baldur. Another case of thirteen at the table.
   



Fear of Friday the Thirteenth, that paraskevidekatriaphobia, is a newer, just as irrational fear.  Some point to the fact the Jacques de Molay and many of his fellow Knights Templar were arrested for heresy on Friday, October 13, 1307, but many other significant events, good or bad, could have taken place on other Fridays the Thirteenth.  It really seems to be a combination of fear of 13 and the fact that many people wouldn’t care to start anything on Friday.  Actually, neither would I. Not that it really matters, but starting a job on a Friday seems strange: Monday, with the whole work week ahead, seems more logical.  Folks don’t usually want to get married, start a business venture, move, start a trip, or even give birth on a Friday.  “Friday’s child is full of woe.” 


There are probably a baker’s dozen of reasons to admire the number thirteen: a baker’s dozen cookies, or loaves or biscuits, fits nicely on a baking tray.  Thirteen is a prime number, divisible only by 1 and itself.  It is also a Wilson prime and a Fibonacci number, but that’s more mathematics than we need to know right now.  There were thirteen original colonies in our United States, and thirteen stars and stripes on the flag. We’ve added a star as each state was admitted to the union, but we’d be down to pinstripes if we hadn’t kept just the original six white and seven red.



There are thirteen players on a rugby team and thirteen cards in a suit. At thirteen you become a teenager and can watch all those PG-13 movies.  Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, and Dan Marino wore number 13. Alex Rodriguez, A-Rod, wore it for the Yankees. Well, that’s not quite a baker’s dozen reasons, but you get the idea.

And by the way, it might come in handy to know that for some obscure reason the first Friday the Thirteenth of the year is also observed as Blame Someone Else Day.
     Don’t look at me: I didn’t think of it.





P.S. In searching the net for pictures to go with my essay, I came upon this electronic version of an old American Express ad I cut from a magazine and stored in one of my scrap books years ago. Something about it just struck a chord in me, and I thought I'd add it here for you to see too.

That's the jockey Willie Shoemaker, 4 feet 11.5 inches tall, leaning on our No.13, Wilt the Stilt, at 7 feet, 1 inch. 


Friday, October 6, 2017

BEDTIME TALES



I am in the midst of writing a piece on Charles Perrault for an upcoming issue of our community magazine. It will commemorate the anniversary of Perrault’s birth. (I’ll post the finished piece to this blog on January 12, 2018, his 390th birthday.) In telling the story of this Father of the Fairy Tale, I wrote the following:

“Parents no longer tell fairy tales to entertain and enlighten their children. In this age of almost universal literacy, we’ve books and electronic devices to provide the lessons. We read to our little ones, rather than make up stories.”


That reminded me that I was a lucky child, in that I had a father who did tell me stories at bedtime. I don’t remember them exactly. There were quite a number of them, but I’ve always remembered that they were about the adventures of two children whose names were Inge and Christopher. Is it any wonder that those two names have always been special to me? I picture him sitting beside me on my bed - my earliest childhood memory. I couldn’t have a better one.