So I walk with my Mum to check out the Dartmouth Christmas Tree the first Sunday evening after Christmas and….WTF….it’s all dark! Not a single light on!!! Our society normally leaves the lights on at least until Jan. 1st. After a massive ceremony to light it with a great turn out, what’s the problem? —Not So Dark Side
This article appears in Dec 26, 2013 – Jan 1, 2014.
Tree lights=electricity=copper wires=crack money
It’s science.
Have you seen the cost of electricity lately?
Very nice SpuriousGiles. Best comment of the year in my books.
DARTMOUTH IN THE DARK WITH MUM
“So I walk with my Mum to check out the Dartmouth Christmas Tree the first Sunday evening after Christmas and … WTF … it’s all dark!” (Not so dark side)
You must not walk out in Dartmouth in the dark with Mum.
People will talk.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
(New Avatar Alert!)
the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact was signed in 1939, not 1938. MM. It allowed Stalin to swallow up a third of Poland. Combined with his purges and ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine it meant that up until that point in history the Soviets had actually murdered more Poles than the Nazis. It was conveniently ignored by all the Allies after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. It seems that nobody had the guts to point out to Stalin when he was crying for a Second Front, just how much one might have been appreciated in 1939/40.
To say nothing of poor Poland, who had to fight on two.
RSVP
: Col. Ivan Sonofabitch (01/03, 10:39AM)
Regarding that 1938 date for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: I should have checked the sources but I suppose the temptation to link it with the date on the five ruble note was too powerful. Anyway, Poland was certainly caught in the middle between Stalin and Hitler but the former’s mass starvation policy in the Western Ukraine – if that’s what you’re referring to – was earlier, about 1933 if I recall correctly. Of course, things were not exactly cordial during the war either when Ukrainian death squads fought alongside the Nazis in Russia. Come to that, the Soviets themselves didn’t do too badly purging their own deviationists in the USSR itself in the run-up to the War. However, I don’t think it was just a case of the British not having enough “guts” to open a second front in 1939/40. By May France was out of it, the US was not yet in it, and the conservative policy-makers at Whitehall saw the very attractive possibility of the Nazis and and Communists wiping each other out which would have resolved the whole issue wonderfully.
Anyway, thanks for the comment. Had you seen the five ruble note before? I have a number of other Russian notes, both before and after 1917, as well as Nazi paper both before and after 1933. I’m following the sequence, more or less, that I post on my Facebook page on the same day as Bitch which, however, deals with a number of other categories than “Historically Interesting Paper Money” (“The Memorial Brasses at Stoke d’Abernon” for example) but if you’d like to see some other Russian or German notes, let me know.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
I’ve never seen any paper rubles from that period before – the stalwart aviator embodies the best of so-called Socialist Realism.
And, no I wasn’t referring to Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine of the early 30’s. One of the offshoots of the Great Terror was a concerted effort to eliminate “enemy aliens” from strategic border areas. In an area where borders frequently advanced and retreated, that left large numbers of ethnic Poles living under Soviet control. Check out “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder for new perspective on how some 14 million people in the geographic area between Moscow and Berlin were murdered by Stalin and Hitler.
RSVP
: Ivan Sonofabitch (01/03, 5:52PM)
Thanks for the Snyder reference. The title resonates in my subconsciousness but, since I haven’t read it, I’ll check it out.
Although I recently read Richard J. Evans’ “The Third Reich at War” (2009) I tend to prefer first-hand accounts as opposed to sweeping historical narratives. In the past year as leisure reading I note that I’ve read Peter Duffy’s “The Bialski Brothers” (2003), Jan Kamienski’s “Hidden in Plain Sight” (2008) and, while not directly on the topic, it happens that I’ve just finished Elena Kozhina’s “Through the Burning Steppe” (2000). It seems that things were tense between Leningraders who were evacuated during the siege into the rural areas of Russia and the native inhabitants of the Cossack villages who hated the Communists and, by extension, the Leningraders themselves.
Yes, there was an enormous slaughter by Hitler and Stalin of ethnic Poles living in the shifting borderlands between Nazi Germany and the USSR but it was the former, rather than the latter, which engaged in an explicit industrial program to eliminate Polish Jews. Of course, rabid anti-Semitism was widespread in Eastern Europe including Poland itself but, in the case of many Ukrainians and Lithuanians (neither of whom, understandably, had any love for Russia) it resulted in their being willing, obedient auxiliaries to the SS killing squads of both Jews and, for that matter, any gentile partisans who came to hand.
Contrary to my former post I note that the five ruble note from 1938 was the only Russian currency I have after 1917 so what you see is what you get. I’ll be posting more “Historically Interesting Paper Money” in due course but right now I’ve got to post my short sword collection. There are two photos on the Facebook version – one a detail of one of the swords – but since the Bitch avatar photos are limited to only one, I’ll post the collection of the three I have.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!.
New Avatar Alert!
In this, our reading habits are similar. I too, prefer first-hand accounts but I do leaven them with historical works that extensively cover a particular subject, period, campaign, etc. (Richard Evans Third Reich trilogy was very good, indeed) The fall of the Soviet Union and the opening up of hitherto sealed Soviet records have provided much new insight on already well-trodden ground. Antony Beevor’s books “Stalingrad” and “The Battle of Berlin” are well worth the time. Alas, if the stack of volumes on my nightstand is any-indicator, time enough is just not sufficient)
The swords are quite magnificent. Have you decided what is to be done with your collection when you shuffle off this mortal coil. Museum donation, auction house or bequeathed to your favorite Bitcher *Major sarcasm alert on that last option* >; )
Sorry – a quick glance at one of my bookcases reveals that Beevor’s book is titled “The Fall of Berlin” 1945.
Also, I am fully aware of the fact the GoodDogMolly is your favorite Bitcher so, no need to remind me.
Fucking douchebag assholes, they should get to spend a night chained outside.
http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/spca-investigat…
i heard my name! hahahaha ivan, no, mm refers to me as a prude, i doubt i am in his will for anything except a case of KY.
hugo, with an ice pick. let’s use the fucking ice pick on them.
RSVPS
: Colonel Ivan Sonofabitch (01/04, 10:39AM)
Well yes, I agree entirely that first person accounts should be leavened by historical works covering the same events (or is it the other way around?) but once one is familiar with the general facts of the case I think the personal accounts add a dimension which general histories by their nature cannot match. Yes, I agree that Antony Beevor is a great writer who might prove the exception to the rule.
The short swords are a part of a larger collection – you can see the tips of others in the photo all hanging over my fireplace – all of which I have grandly entitled “My Collection of Antique Weapons” on my Facebook page. The short swords are the second in the rotation on the antique arms, the first being the flintlock pistol as you might recall. However, I have never thought about what happens after I “shuffle off this mortal coil” as you put it. I wonder if Hugo Phurst would be interested in having them.
: Good dog Molly (1:13PM)
I think Good dog might be in a snit because some time ago I had to decline an improper proposition from her. A case of “KY”? Would that be upmarket “KD”?
(1:14PM)
You mean the same way that Stalin’s goons dispatched Trotsky in Mexico City in 1941? Ice pick in the skull and all that? Not nice Good dog, not nice. You must attempt to get over my declining your very questionable proposition. Time heals all wounds.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
god luv ya, perferrser, the icepick comment was for hugo’s link.
Anyone who tethers or chains a dog outside in this weather should be dragged from their house, in front of their family, stripped naked, hosed down with icy cold water and shackled outside all night long.
I don’t think anything will happen regarding the frozen dog issue as it happened in North Preston.