Armistice Day & Entangling Alliances

The United States of America elected Barack Obama for President. You may have heard.

Even though the “elect” part of our work is done, we now must turn our attention to the “ending torture” part – and there’s plenty to be done. Now that you no longer have a historic election to follow in agonizing microscopic detail, you may wish to direct your attention to our blog.

Next Tuesday is Armistice Day, as I like to call Veterans Day, because I am a dork and luddite. And because Mr. Hines, my 11th grade history teacher, made me fall in love with the long term causes of WWI. What a long fuse! Remember Otto von Bismarck? Avoid entangling alliances, he always said but didn’t do. 11/11/2008 (at 11:00 a.m.) is the 90th Anniversary of the armistice between the Germans and Allies at the ‘end’ of WWI. Just don’t call it that in front of the Ottoman Empire or the Russians.

Don’t miss the 19th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this Sunday, November 9. I remember watching the wall being torn down as a seven-year-old on our small kitchen TV and beholding it with an uncomprehending sense of wonder and hope, not unfamiliar this week as far as shared watershed moments go. No false historical analogy is implied, just feelings. You may wish to start a lively discussion with your family this weekend about the complexities of German Unification (or is it RE-unification? discuss), the symbolic power of walls, the legacy of the “Mauer im Kopf” (wall in the head), and for fun, the failure of the Weimar Republic, which was founded also on November 9.

Autumn Songs: It’s supposed to be 67 degrees today, which is only unsettling if you think about it. Personally, it’s kind of nice to be wearing a t-shirt outside in November. Anyway, like most kinds of weather, this is perfect for listening to FM. Maybe something a little upbeat, like I Don’t Want to Know. And its grammatical counterpart, I know I’m Not Wrong. Willful ignorance and utter self confidence together as usual.