Finished reading Victoria Amelina, Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary (St. Martin’s Press, 2025). The author was killed before she could complete it, but it is still an important little book. It provides insights into Ukrainian cultural and psychological responses to the war, links between past and present generations of Ukrainian cultural producers, and efforts to record war crimes for future accountability. It offers ruminations not only on legal accountability but also on the relationship among memory, narrative, and justice. In this way, her thoughts are about Ukraine, but also about people more generally.

“The First Time America Tried Mass Deportation It Was a Disaster. Why Would We Consider Trying It Again?" by Claudio Saunt, Politico, October 25, 2015.

Interesting German–Italian story of World War Two resistance and memory on ARTE: “Bella ciao! German Soldiers in the Italian Resistance” (53 min).

Photo of chalk drawings on pavement: a snowman, a sun, an arrow, and a flower. The pavement also has its own drawings in black tar, the sealant added to the cracks this past spring.

Evidence of children playing in the neighborhood

“The Wipers Times” (Trademark Films, 2014) is a movie about a satirical trench newspaper put out by British sappers in Belgium and France during the First World War. I enjoyed it on its own merits and because it was good to see this type of publication featured in film.

I watched a timely, if now bittersweet political movie this evening: “All the Way” (HBO Films, 2016). It stars Bryan Cranston as Lyndon B. Johnson during his eventful first year in office, which saw passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I highly recommend it.

The response to truth is often even more truth; that is why regimes fear even small bits of it.

– Victoria Amelina, Looking at Women Looking at War (St. Martin’s Press, 2025), Part I (“Among the Guiding Stars—Oleksandra Matviichuk I”).

Lecture – Timothy Snyder on Belarus: Revisiting a Central European History, Wien Museum, June 27, 2025, youtu.be….

The United States is not a forgotten Elysian island. Our two oceans connect us with the rest of the world; they do not separate us. They are carrying, at this moment, machine tools, automobiles, raw materials, and all manner of manufactured goods to the whole world and they are bringing here other materials, such as rubber, tungsten, and tin, that are absolutely essential to the continuance of production at even its present level. They protect us, still, from armed attack upon our soil, but they do not protect us from assaults upon our economy or upon the public mind. They in no way relieve us of the responsibility of doing everything that a great nation can do to maintain a world order in which the interests of its people, and the values that they cherish, can survive and improve.

– Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939), p. 9.

Disability pride colors of red, yellow (or gold), white, blue, and green. Follow a link for a description of the design and its meaning.

July is Disability Pride Month.

To learn more, see Lola Méndez, "What Do the Colors on the Disability Pride Flag Mean?," Good Housekeeping, February 17, 2025.

Placing will above reason; the ideal over reality; appealing, unremittingly, to totem and taboo; elevating tribal fetishes; subjugating and destroying the common sense that grows out of human experience; of an oceanic boundlessness, Naziism … is the enemy of whatever is sunny, reasonable, pragmatic, common-sense, freedom-loving, life-affirming, form-seeking, and conscious of tradition.

– Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939), p. 3.

Will Rogers, the great American entertainer and social commentator of his time, saw Adolf Hitler in 1933 as a familiar figure: “Papers all state that Hitler is trying to copy Mussolini. Looks to me it’s the KKK he’s copying.”

– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap 6.

If you understand Russian singing or can read German subtitles, have a listen to “Mama, this is Ukraine” (youtu.be…). It is a forbidden Russian soldier’s song that pulls no punches.

The Limited Efficacy of Strategic Bombing

The question that has dominated strategic warfare since it emerged a century ago remains the central question today: Does strategic warfare work? For the moment, the answer seems to be no; at the very least, it cannot on its own win wars or … induce an adversary to change its posture.

– Raphael S. Cohen, “The False Promise of Strategic Bombing,” Foreign Affairs, February 18, 2025, archive.ph….

I know the U.S. blundering into an attack on Iran is the big story of the moment, but these weird examples of MAGA idolatry caught my eye: bills to rename WMATA to WMAGA, to make their leader’s birthday a national holiday, and to print $250 bills with said leader on them (Washington Post, archive.ph…). Extreme self-parody, I guess. Would also mean more opportunities for ridiculing the has-been reality TV star turned worst president.

Disgusting:

I’ve said it before, Russians and Ukrainians are one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. There’s an old rule that wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that’s ours.…

– Vladimir Putin, June 20, 2025.

Via Meduza and The Kyiv Independent.

I never thought I’d be living in a country whose government and law-enforcement officials are actively hostile to the populace and the rule of law.

Latest example: Federal Agents Arrest NYC Comptroller & Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander At Immigration Court.

Grey, wet sky with wild green field framed by a tree on each side and filled with trees in the background. The colors are all dampened by the light rain.

Seen behind the firehouse in Conway Village this morning during a drizzly walk.

Book cover for Silvie by Jennifer Sattler. Silvie, the protagonist, is a pink flamingo.

Here's the latest book in my rotation of things I read to my granddaughter via FaceTime: Jennifer Sattler, Silvie (Random House, 2009). She adores the imaginative story and the lovely, friendly art.

Yikes! I just heard a report from the German broadcaster ARD that Iran doesn’t have any air-raid shelters for its civilians. The report was about Tehran, but I don’t imagine it’s better anywhere else in that country.

Lots of people turned out for the protest in Conway today—big and little, young and old, two-legged and four-legged… 🇺🇸

Fortify yourself with this timely IMY2 cover of an old favorite: “For What It’s Worth” (Buffalo Springfield) youtu.be….