The Lost World of Quintana Roo by Michel Peissel - Five Stars

 

THE LOST WORLD OF QUINTANA ROO by Michel Peissel

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

This is a true story by the young Frenchman Michel Peissel of his journey to the Mexican Caribbean before it became the Riviera Maya. It is an exciting story and a “must read” for anyone who is inquisitive about what life was like in Quintana Roo before the All-Inclusive resorts transformed the jungle into a tourist mecca.

This classic book warranted me reading it for a third time. My wife and I are very familiar with the area, published a book on it and know people who verify the author’s chronicles..

At the end of this review I have a great surprise on where you can check out a digital copy.

EXCERPTS:

Through an introduction scribbled on a small, dirty piece of paper I had met some friends who rather reluctantly, as is often the case when a foreigner crashes into the privacy of a home, had invited me on a picnic. We drove down the Paseo de la Reforma, whose modern buildings and bordering parks recalled the fact that Mexico City is not only capital of the nation but a mighty city of four million inhabitants and international fame. We then sped on through Lomas de Chapultepec, the fashionable residential district whose flowered villas shelter thousands of wealthy foreigners who seek asylum, often eitlier political or matrimonial, in Mexico. I was off to Tepoztlan, a place whose strange name was to be the first of many I was to learn while in Mexico, and which, like such names as Coatzacoalcos and Teotihuacan, suggests a strange poetical beauty hidden under a harsh and complicated Indian origin.

I had come to Mexico with no particular purpose save to spend pleasantly the six months that lay between my entering graduate school and my completion of a dreary six months as trainee in a bank on Wall Street.

The only good highway in Mexico, instead of joining major cities or industrial centers, serves Mexico's two largest luxury resorts, Cuernavaca and Acapulco.

Mexico is entirely composed of innumerable different worlds which really meet only in the green or gray smudges of international atlases. It was in Tepoztlan that I fully realized that Mexico was a country yet to be fully explored.

Gustav Regler, the writer we had come to visit in Tepoztlan. Gustav Regler, well known as a cynic and for his profane and ironical books on the sixteenth century, is also one of the men who know Mexico the most thoroughly. His book The Three Faces of Mexico has acquired world fame.

He had, through involved circumstances, been banished from his paradise and now lived beyond its gate.

The Mayan civilization, I found out, was probably the most sophisticated culture of pre-Columbian America.

Mayas were probably the greatest builders of the ancient inhabitants of Central America. They left thousands of temples and palaces spread all over what was their domain, the principal cities being Palenque, Tikal, Copan, Uxmal, and Chichen-Itza, strange places whose pyramids, towers, and palaces still stand today as silent testimonial of the great Mayan civilization.

Mayan is more widely spoken in Yucatan than Spanish, and many books are written, in modern characters, in Mayan, which is also taught in schools.

The Yucatecans take good advantage of their god-sent gift which goes well with their lazy character, and hammocks are strung up everywhere and the majority of the population sleeps all day and all night. Hammocks are found under railroad cars, between trees, and in all the houses, which have hooks on the walls of every room. This allows the Indians to live in comfort in their small huts, with more living space by day. Since mosquitoes are the plague of Quintana Roo and I presumed also of the so-called Mosquito Coast, I bought a large, fragile-looking mosquito net, a cocoon affair that could be fastened around my hammock.

The hammock, mosquito net, Antiviperine, and medical kit, plus twenty rolls of assorted film, cameras and lenses, and a pair of sandals, were all neatly thrown into a large henequen bag. Besides this, I carried a small bluish bag, a cross between a flight bag and a briefcase, for my shaving and toilet articles.

How much modern Yucatan could envy the ancient Mayas. What had once been a thriving coast, with innumerable ports such as Yochac, Puha, Puerto Chile, and Ak, was now nothing more than jungle and occasional isolated palm huts. Being curious about the lives of chicleros, men began telling of the deeds of chicleros and of their own experiences, of murders committed by their colleagues, and of the bloody orgies at the great chicle camps such as Leona Vicario (the god-forsaken corrugated-iron inferno I had passed through on my way by bus to Puerto Juarez). To my horror I was soon to realize that the worst tales told about the chicleros were true. Apparently the chicle areas of Quintana Roo, which are situated behind the coast from Tulum up to Cape Catoche, are exploited by several companies, but for the chicleros the two most important companies are two clans of chicleros who are constantly at war with each other.

Curious and want to read the book.

It is available free to borrow from Internet Archives. Follow this link:

https://archive.org/details/lostworldofquint00peis

Although the book is no longer in print, you can obtain a used copy at Amazon. com. Follow link: The Lost World of Quintana Roo.

It is also available through Abes Books. Follow link: The Lost World of Quintana Roo

Also read: Yucatan for Travelers by John M. Grimsrud

2025 Cancun, Playa del Carmen – Visitors from Norway

 

2025 Cancun, Playa del Carmen – Visitors from Norway

My two Norwegian cousins Wenche Svendsen and her sister Bjørg Bowman came to visit me, it was their second time to Mexico.

Twenty years ago they visited in Mérida. On this visit I agreed to meet them in Cancun.

An all-inclusive beach front resort in Cancun was enticing to them, especially after leaving the cold land of the midnight sun.

We were very happy to have them visit, and we began researching our accommodations and bus connections.

Our daughter Grisel lives and works in nearby Playa del Carmen, so we decided to extend our visit to be with her. Jane undertook the logistics and looked at over 200 options.

We decided to make the get-together as effortless as possible. We booked at the Hotel Plaza Caribe directly across from the ADO bus terminal in downtown Cancun where we stayed previously. Jane only had to book our bus tickets and used the company's App which she had used before.

Using the ADO App Jane filled in all of the pertinent details, paid by credit card, and surprise! Some company numskull automatically fixed it so our tickets that reserved our departure date for two weeks ahead were automatically changed for a departure in less than half an hour. Another surprise! No where on the App was there a cancellation button to click. They now had our money, and tickets that would be worthless to us.

Quick thinking Jane instantly ordered a taxi to the ADO bus terminal...we had minutes to get to the terminal before the bus departure. Jane does not need another heart attack!

OMG we made it. The man at the ticket booth canceled our tickets and issued new ones for November 14. Whew! Thank you again Jane.

Ready to Roll!

Back to our Cancun adventure at the Hotel Plaza Caribe.

Even though the hotel room had no hammock hooks, it had easy access, a great location, and a restaurant that featured a Motuleños ala Yucatecan breakfast specialty that is very sustaining, plus a lovely garden shaded by tropical trees, and a tranquil pool area.

Wenche and Bjørg wanted to buy us day passes for their all-inclusive hotel, but we being octogenarians and not able to gluttonously indulge at our age plus being under therapy for skin cancer and needing to avoid the sun, found it better for them to visit us.

Downtown Cancun is NOT wheelchair friendly and crossing the street from the bus terminal to our hotel had a raised pedestrian walkway speed bump that had a gaping hole. Several people came to my aid to help me to cross. We were amazed when the hardy Viking sisters, Bjørg and Wenche, in her wheelchair, came to that gaping hole. Unaided Wenche merely did a wheelie in her wheelchair and then powered across like this was an every day event. These were surely powerful people as we also witnessed when Bjørg pushed me in my wheelchair up an inclined ramp at a speed like a rocket ship being blasted off.

Bjørg, John, Wenche

Back to our terrific family reunion:

Wenche and Bjørg asked more questions than a thousand wise men could answer.

We were amazed at their exuberance and enthusiasm. I had compiled and written many family stories and accumulated numerous photos going back in time over two hundred years. Jane and I had built up an impressive online presentation, and it was time to pass this enormous collection on to the next generation so I sent out inquiries to all of my family members to pick up the ball and carry on what I had begun.

Here we finally found two family members, Wenche and Bjørg to take up this very important project. Jane and I will be doing whatever is necessary to assure their success.

We had a wonderful time with Wenche and Bjørg. We talked and talked and laughed a lot and even shed a few tears.

We are now awaiting their next visit. This time we expect them to come to nearby Playa del Carmen. The ADO bus service from the Cancun airport departs to Playa del Carmen every fifteen minutes, and from the bus station it is then a short walk to a nice hotel with roof top swimming pool, a terrific Caribbean Sea view, plus fresh briny breezes and a convenient location.

Next our visit at Playa del Carmen with our loving Grisel:

Departing Cancun for Playa del Carmen by bus was almost too simple because of our great location across from the ADO bus terminal. There are continuous mini bus departures costing $120.00 pesos or less than seven US dollars for the both of us. In about an hour we were let off six blocks from our hotel Sofia.

We arrived early for our hotel reservation. The desk clerk was very accommodating and gave us a pass card to enter the roof top swimming pool and lounge area. What a terrific place to relax and escape the rushing commotion of the outside world with fresh clean briny Caribbean Sea breezes topped off with an extraordinary view... easy going and relaxing.

At three that afternoon our accommodations were ready. Less than a year earlier we were booked in the same studio, and we liked it a lot. Comfortable, quiet, and with one wall of plate glass overlooking a jungle garden with towering tropical trees where we could enjoy the moon and stars by night and filtered sun shine by day. Close to the Caribbean Sea, we had no use for air-conditioning.

Our favorite pizza place and liquor store were nearly next door and a super restaurant, plus grocery and sundry shops a block away. The bus terminal was only a fifteen minute walk.

Our daughter Grisel, 42 years old, with three grown children, Diego a university graduate, made Grisel a grandmother this year with a daughter Olivia, Julian, the next youngest is a university senior, also an honor student, and her youngest a daughter, Ambar at 18 years entered a university as a medical student. They all love their Mom, and she loves them.

Grisel is now happily married to a man of her own age, but had a very hard life. She has a big heart, is a gifted artist, and became the head of the artists of Tulum when she lived there. Now she works 6 days a week at a beautiful beachfront resort in Playacar.

We had many wonderful evenings with Grisel, plus beer and pizza as is our tradition.

Another amazing Caribbean Seashore trip November 14 to 26.

Our bus trip home was uneventful, and we arrived after dark in Mérida. The overwhelming traffic was astonishing. We were extremely happy to have our ecological sanctuary jungle garden to escape to.

Thirty four years ago we purchased our home and spent two years building it into our ecological refuge. At that time there were deer and rabbits hopping around and it was peaceful. Now we have cars, and more cars, all racing somewhere. The explosive expansion of Mérida has no signs of slacking.

More photos:

Jane enjoying the balcony at our hotel.

John enjoying time among the trees in Playa del Carmen.

More information: 

For the best information on Playa del Carmen, follow TheRopeMonster on YouTube.

Playa del Carmen

For the best information on Cancun, follow William on You Tube.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945 - John M. Grimsrud

 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945

I was born in 1940.

My first remembrance of those war years is that I could see real hate in everybody’s eyes as they chanted “kill the Nazis.” The chant “kill the Nazis” became “kill the Germans” by the end of the war.

There were 13 countries overrun by the Axis powers (Fascists), Germany, Spain, Italy, and finally Japan.

The U. S. issued 13 different commemorative five cent postage flag stamps depicting all of these overrun countries.

A link to the stamps: Click here.

I obtained a three by four foot world map that I framed and made into a stamp map where I affixed and labeled the countries stamps, and so opened my education in geography and interest in world history.

In 1944 when I was four years old, I ran away from home. Getting a beating, slapped around, and having soap rubbed in my eyes got me going. Mom said that I hurt her and now she was going to hurt me.Grandma’s apartment was nine blocks away, and I was on my way.

Wartime gasoline rationing made the streets quiet, and the East End Drug where Grandma’s apartment was located I knew well. It was my best-loved sanctuary…I loved Grandma, and she loved me. She named me stakkar, and said in Norwegian that means “poor thing.” Grandma was fully aware of her daughter’s personality and her eccentric dangerous behavior.

Great aromas wafted up from Grandma’s humble little kitchen where Scandinavian cookies were always in abundance. Her dessert specialty was prunes whipped up in whipping cream, oh so good!

Grandma was also a “poor thing.” When Grandma was sixteen years old she and four of her brothers set sail for America saying a final farewell to family and friends, and returning was not going to be an option.

Grandma told me a story about when the sailors played a prank on her bringing her a banana to see what she would do with it. Her little Norwegian village was isolated amd only accessible by boat in good weather with no electric or phone where they spoke only an Old Norse dialect. She had never seen a banana.

Grandma and her brothers headed west in America and did not stop until they reached a place where they could speak Norse. North Dakota is where they settled, but it was not yet a state, and Indian raids were serious business. You could see a long way in Dakota Territory but you couldn’t see much. There wasn’t anything to obstruct your view, not even a tree for a bird to sit in…they had to hop around on the ground. The soil was fabulously rich, and farming was a dream come true, not like rock bound Norway. Land was free for the taking.

Grandma married Edwin Benson, a landed Norwegian. He and his brother weren't taught any work ethics, and after the parents died the farm was lost. The sad part was that oil was later discovered on the farm land.

Grandpa Benson took a job as a watchman on the railroad when he moved to Superior, Wisconsin, with his wife and three daughters.

When the great depression hit and the “Hoover Days” began the family took up residence in a humble shanty in the woods east of Brule, Wisconsin.

My father married my mother, Myrtle Benson, the second of the three daughters and provided her widowed mother Bertha an apartment above his East End Drug Store.

Back to my runaway story, yes it was “poor thing” Grandma.

Grandma’s apartment:

Prominently displayed on her living room wall was a large sepia photo of her younger brother in his military dress uniform. He died in 1918.

I met one of Grandma’s brothers, Ingvald, who was a cook aboard a Great Lakes ore carrier that frequently called at Duluth-Superior harbor. He would always came to visit his sister Bertha arriving by city bus. One day when I was with my father in his car in downtown Superior, I spotted Ingvald at the corner of Belknap and Tower where he would transfer to the East End bus line. My Dad stopped and picked up Ingvald and drove him to Grandma’s apartment above the East End Drug Store. Gasoline was rationed at this time. but Dad received gasoline ration stamps because his drug store did home deliveries of medicine. Dad’s blue Studebaker coupe had to out last the war, rusted out floor boards and all.

Back to Grandma’s apartment, and my runaway story:

Grandma had a still working very old desk top tube radio that we would tune into for noon time weather and news plus some favorite evening broadcasts. During the war news was especially important for us and couldn’t be missed.

Her well-worn dining room table and chairs were part of a set with a bureau of drawers filled with her few valuables.

She treasured an envelope from her family in the Old County. It had been opened and resealed with an ornate tape decorated with Nazi swastikas. Inside the envelope the letter had been meticulously blanked out to censor the message. This was my first hand look at Fascism that was spreading across Europe with lightning speed and killing thousands in its wake. From the very northern tip of Norway on the Arctic Ocean at Kirkenes all the way south to the Straits of Gibraltar in southern Spain fascism had total control of the west coast of Europe. This was frighting and resistance was imperative. The U. S. was at the same time battling fanatic Kamikaze Imperial fascist Japan in the Pacific Ocean.

I have to interject that in 1944 I was only four years old, but I have to expand on this monumental story of my family’s involvement of resistance to Hitler’s Nazi invasion of little neutral Norway with a population of 3 million.

In the predawn hours of April 10, 1940, three German battle ships flying British flags stealthy and deceptively entered the Oslo Fjord refusing to halt on demand and identify themselves. My Grandfather’s nephew then performing his military duty (national guard), took aim with his Krupp German made cannon and sent 1,600 of the deceptive invading Nazi’s to the bottom of Oslo harbor. Neutral Norway whether they wanted it or not had entering the war and would be brutally occupied. They would be just one of the thirteen invaded countries of WWII.

Grandma’s oldest daughter, Esther enlisted in the military and was off to war. Her youngest daughter Nelly Bergland married a career military man who served five years in Europe during WWII, and was later sent off to Korea.

My dad’s older brother Lawrence was inducted into the army infantry and shipped off to North Africa and then to Italy where he was involved in the bloodiest invasion battle of WWII at Anzio, Italy. That brutal experience altered him for life.

Dr. Rudy Christianson, my father’s very best friend, I called him my “Uncle Rudy” gave his life to the war effort taking amphetamines “speed” so that he could do his life saving surgery until he literary dropped. Less than three years after the war his heart quit.

My father was deferred from military service because he was vital to the efforts at home, but his father, born in 1879, was eligible to be called to service. I remember my father, born in 1908, telling me that regarding military inscription of his father, he told him,

“How could they take an old man like you?”

Back to Grandma’s apartment: I was safe with Grandma.

There came a knock on the door and Grandma had me hide in her bedroom. There was a police man inquiring about me. Grandma protected me, and she sent the policeman on his way.

In retrospect looking back on this incident I learned about poisonous personalities and how deceptive and cunning they could be. Bipolar psychopathic personalities are impossible to live with and absolutely no positive outcome can ever be expected.

What sparked my memories?

I recently listened to the audio version of the book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I highly recommend it. It is apropos to our current times.

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On the Move by Abrahm Lustgarten - Book Review-Five Stars

 

On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America by Abrahm Lustgarten

On the Move is an extraordinary and eye opening look at where our world has arrived today and a glimpse at what now awaits us all.

Hydrocarbon combustion and more water to flush have reached their finite limits. People can be sold anything...even a war.

This is a must read book to read and heed!

Excerpts:

Despite all the talk about the climate crisis, we’ve scarcely begun to consider what is expected to be one of the largest impacts: the next great human migration.

The heat waves in the United States in 2023 were hotter and longer than those of 2022 and 2021, which were in turn worse than those of 2020, and so on. Federal data shows that those heat waves, on average, have gotten successively more intense over the last decade. In some places the droughts have gotten worse, too, the reservoir levels lower and the wildfires more destructive, while in other places the rainstorms are more torrential.

According to just about every metric, the world was hitting critical warming benchmarks sooner, and with more dramatic consequences, than expected. The most dramatic changes—ice cap melting, drought, and the thawing of the frozen Arctic—appeared to be occurring faster than even the most alarmist of climate scientists thought possible.

Arctic permafrost could push the planet over a tipping point, leading to the sudden release of so much methane gas now trapped in the soil that global atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise steeply even if governments effectively curtail industrial emissions.

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Northmen: The Viking Saga, 793–1241 by John Haywood BOOK REVIEW FIVE STARS

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Northmen: The Viking Saga, 793–1241 by John Haywood

In Northmen thousands of questions are answered about this transitional period of the Viking era.

This stand alone group in Scandinavia before there were any defined borders were all considered Vikings and were under numerous tribal leaders that mostly went their separate ways.

John Hayward gives a great overview of the influence and impact that this all had.

Peaceful places have no history, and this place abounds in history.

Worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS:

The Vikings were an unprecedented phenomenon in European history, not for any technological, military or cultural innovation that they contributed to–in most respects they were really rather backward and even their shipbuilding methods were conservative–but for the vast expanse of their horizons. No previous Europeans had ever seen so much of the world as the Vikings did. From their Scandinavian homelands, Vikings sailed east down the great rivers of Russia crossing the Black Sea to Constantinople and the Caspian Sea to reach Baghdad. In the west, Vikings even penetrated the Mediterranean to attack Italy and North Africa. Other Vikings crossed the Atlantic, leaving settlements along the way in the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, to become the first Europeans known to have set foot in North America. It is these far-flung connections, and the daring spirit that created them, that give the Vikings their enduring appeal.

Medieval writers used ‘Viking’ specifically to describe someone who went í víking (plundering), that is a pirate, and not necessarily a Scandinavian one at that. The word is thought originally to have meant ‘men of the bays’, perhaps because that is where pirates lurked hoping to ambush an unwary merchant ship. Under the influence of national romanticism, however, ‘Viking’ became a synonym for ‘early medieval Scandinavian’ and the usage has stuck. It was also during this era that Vikings were equipped with their romantically barbaric, but historically inaccurate, horned helmets (the error originated in the mis-identification by early Antiquarians of Bronze Age horned helmets as Viking helmets). The helmets too have stuck in the popular imagination.

Archaeology uncovered evidence of peaceful Viking enterprise in the fields of crafts, trade, exploration and settlement, leading to a more balanced view of their lives.

It became impossible for them to find wives, they would have begun to drift away too, perhaps signing on as crew on the few ships that still came to Greenland. Only those who felt too old to start a new life would have remained and, with the young people gone, the extinction of the colony was just a matter of time. The last outpost of the Viking world may simply have died of old age.

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River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny by Jeffrey Tayler - Book Review

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny by Jeffrey Tayler

This is extraordinary trip not just trough Siberia but through more than three hundred years of brutal, inhuman, and barbarous history from the Czars to Putin. Brilliantly written and superbly edited. Fast moving without a dull moment. Worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS;

In the sixteenth century Russia was poised to shed its identity as Rus’, a European state of Eastern Slavs, and become Russia, a country that would be ruled by a majority Russian population but comprise more than one hundred ethnic groups on two continents, practicing not only Orthodox Christianity but also Judaism, Islam, Shamanism, and Buddhism. Muscovy and other north Russian principalities, most notably that of Novgorod, had already penetrated the European Arctic, taking advantage of the isolation that distance and cold afforded them from Tatar-Mongolian overlords, whose presence was strongest in the warmer and more fertile regions of the south, in what today is Ukraine.

Cossacks ventured down the Lena and its tributaries out into the Arctic and Pacific oceans, sailed through the channel dividing Asia from North America, and thereby delineated Russia’s easternmost boundaries. Cape Dezhnyov, Russia’s easternmost tip (just fifty-three miles from Alaska), bears the surname of the Cossack chieftain Semyon who in 1648 first navigated the strait, preceding by eight decades the Danish explorer Vitus Bering after which it would be (unjustly) named. It is even possible that some of Dezhnyov’s men found themselves shipwrecked on Alaska’s shores.

initiating the annexation of Siberia, Ivan the Terrible and the Cossacks facilitated Russia’s transformation from a middle-size European state into the largest country on earth, a Eurasian superpower with ports on seven seas covering, during the Soviet days, one-sixth of the planet’s land surface.

Russia still stretches some seven thousand miles east to west and almost three thousand miles north to south—enough terrain to accommodate roughly twice the territory of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. Siberia, of course, would eventually yield a trove of resources far more precious than “fish tooth” and furs, including gold, diamonds, uranium, and, crucially, now, natural gas (of which it holds one-third of the world’s supply) and oil. Beneath Siberia’s permafrost lie the bulk of Russia’s 72 billion barrels of estimated petroleum reserves (the seventh largest on earth) and fourteen of its seventeen fields of natural gas. Oil alone accounts for 45 percent of modern Russia’s export revenues—in 2003 Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia in barrels pumped—and finances 20 percent of its federal budget.

The Lena River would serve as the watery highway down which Russia would travel to superpower status.

Putin spoke often of restoring the state, but for Russians, the state, since Ivan the Terrible’s days, had always been the problem, never the answer.

Life is grief, thieves get rich, the honest stay poor.

Russia is an exacting taskmaster, a bludgeoning educator, and those who suffer under its tutelage here cannot retain their naïveté and illusions—delusions—for long and survive.

As Russia steps back to autocracy, a mode of governance that led it to disaster in the past and could offer it nothing in the future, and, as well-publicized statistical indicators portend a population decline unprecedented in peacetime (Russia, thanks to calamitous birth, mortality, and disease rates, will probably shrink demographically by a third by 2050), I was seized by a desire to find out what had gone wrong. Had I really devoted my life to a doomed land?

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1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman - Book Review

 

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman

This true story tells the tale of the end of three hundred oppressive years in Russia, and America and Russia’s entrance into a world military power struggle which neither were prepared for.

It is an era that should never be forgotten, but history lessons have a disgustingly short memory.

Political power is governed by the very best politicians that money can buy.

A very impressive and well documented book deserving of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS:

The next word they decoded gave them pause. It was “Mexico.” De Grey and Montgomery looked at each other. This was an odd country name to turn up in a wartime communication. For one thing, Mexico was neutral in this war, although its president was hardly a friend of the Allies and had good relations with Germany and Berlin. The next name they decoded was even more incongruous: “Japan.” In fact, it popped up several times in this first part of the dispatch. Japan had been on the side of the Allies since August 23, 1914—but, alarmingly, the dispatch was worded as if Tokyo were about to become Germany’s ally. Thoroughly worried, the two code breakers worked with fierce determination for the next two hours. What emerged was a secret message from Berlin to Washington in two parts. The first contained what they knew was a diplomatic bombshell: on February 1, Berlin informed its ambassador in Washington, Germany would resume its unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral shipping.

German submarines, known as U-boats, had sunk merchant ships without warning, and without picking up survivors—making no distinction between cargo ships of enemy combatants such as Britain, France, and Russia, and neutral ships such as those from Holland, Spain, and America. All those ships unloaded cargo, including industrial goods and sometimes even ammunition, in Allied ports; all were therefore fair targets, in the German view. This ruthless approach to war,

While Europeans ruthlessly fought other nations for land and treasure, Americans did not—those holding this belief conveniently forgetting that, in the nineteenth century, the United States fought for land and treasure more than once: against various Native American tribes; against Mexico in 1844; and, that same year, very nearly against Britain over the Oregon Territory.

In 1915, the year that fighting on the Western Front was bogging down in stalemate and Russia was suffering its first major setbacks, Wilson imagined a conversation among European leaders as they realized they had been wrong, and Wilson right, about the war. “Do you not think it likely that the world will some time turn to America and say, ‘You were right, and we were wrong. You kept your heads when we lost ours. Now, in your self-possession, in your coolness, in your strength, may we not turn to you for counsel and for assistance.

The American president said, a position London and Paris vehemently denied. From their perspective, the whole justification since August 1914 had been that they were the forces of civilization fighting against their opposite, while the Germans were ruthless and bloodthirsty Huns whose aggression and violations of international law knew no bounds.

January 22, 1917, also marked a milestone in American history. Wilson decided to deliver the speech before the Senate, the first time a president had done so since George Washington. Copies would be distributed to every major capital in Europe at the same time. He also did what no president had ever done, not Washington nor Jefferson nor Abraham Lincoln nor even Theodore Roosevelt: he explained why American leadership was essential to the world.

“peace without victory” an international catchphrase just as Wilson’s note of December 18 had done with “league of nations.” Editor Herbert Croly of the New Republic, the house organ of high-grade Progressiveness, was quoted as calling it the greatest event of his life. Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, told the president that “the basis of peace you propose is a new philosophy. that is, new to governments but as old as the Christian religion.” It would put Wilson, Bryan averred, “among the Immortals.”

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War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion By Jeff Guinn - Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion By Jeff Guinn

The Mexican/United States border has aggressive money/land grabbing opportunists, mostly political and corporate, on both sides each lacking human empathy. This has been ongoing through good times and bad. There might not be any good guys and the poor will always be the looser.

It has been said that it is far better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent. Also might is right.

An excellent history lesson and must read book.

Excerpts:

All of the major fighting took place on Mexican soil, and the better-equipped and -organized American forces prevailed.

Veracruz in Mexican history. In 1519, Cortez brought his invaders ashore there, launching three centuries of enslavement by Spain. Veracruz was where America landed many of its troops during a war that took half of Mexico’s territory. The French occupied Veracruz in 1864 as the first step in its Mexican conquest. The American arrival in 1914 was assumed to signal another full-fledged invasion. American military commanders in the field certainly thought so, and were surprised to receive orders to remain in Veracruz instead of next striking 230 miles west at Mexico City.

1847, Mexico was forced to negotiate a peace settlement the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, America came away with almost one million square miles of new territory that included all or part of what would become the states of California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming, plus the Nueces Strip, which remained so uninviting that General William T. Sherman subsequently suggested that “we should go to war again, to make them take it back.”

In return for about half of its nation, Mexico received $15 million, plus the cancellation of another $3.25 million in American business claims. The country’s leaders did what they could for Mexican nationals who suddenly found themselves living in the United States.

German suggestion to Mexico of reclaimed land deliberately didn’t include California. That great prize was intended to lure Japan into a German alliance. Those two nations remained in an official state of war, but it would be ideal for the Germans if, as their unrestricted warfare throttled the Allies in Britain and Europe, Japan attacked California while Mexico assaulted Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Japanese officials would be reluctant to meet with representatives of Germany, but Mexico and Japan were friendly.

Japan might be convinced to change sides, especially if the Germans dangled California as a potential reward. The Germans considered Japan’s chances of taking California far superior to Mexico’s odds of regaining any portion of the other three states, but in any event those outcomes would not be Germany’s concern. It all hinged on Carranza, and, if the United States declared war on Germany, whether his enmity for America would incline him to accept the German offer.

American diplomats in Germany routinely accepted messages, including those in code, addressed from German officials to their nation’s diplomats in Mexico.

telegrams were initially sent to the State Department in Washington; officials there passed them along to the German ambassador and his staff, who used America’s Western Union to make the final transmissions to the German embassy in Mexico City. Zimmermann’s telegram was sent through both the Swedish and U.S. transatlantic cable systems.

German leaders enjoyed the irony of the U.S. helpfully transmitting a message intended against America’s best interests.

The Germans did not know that British intelligence regularly intercepted all telegrams sent over Swedish and American cables and that Britain’s agents had cracked the German code.

The headline in the New York World was representative: “MEXICO AND JAPAN ASKED BY GERMANY TO ATTACK U.S. IF IT ENTERED THE WAR.”

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Chasing Bright Medusas by Benjamin Taylor - Book Review - Five Stars

 

Book Review - Five Stars

Chasing Bright Medusas by Benjamin Taylor

This is a biographical story of Willa Cather and her tremendous literary accomplishments that have stood the test of time. My wife and I first listened to the audio book of My Ántonia years ago. We were enthralled and listened again...it was extraordinary, and then we both read the digital story on our Kindle readers. My Ántonia is a monumental and classic book worthy of more than five stars.

Before you read Chasing Bright Medusas by Benjamin Taylor read Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. You are in for a treat.

EXCERPTS:

No one who reads My Ántonia forgets the tale of Russian Peter and Pavel, driven from town to town and finally out of Russia after saving themselves, the last of a wedding party, by throwing the bride to a pack of wolves that have swarmed the wedding sledges: “[T]he groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the sledge and “For Ántonia and me,” says Jim, “the story of the wedding party was never at an end.

As if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party had been sacrificed, to give us a painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep, I often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through a country that looked something like Nebraska and something like Virginia.” Nor does any reader forget poor traduced Ántonia delivering her own out-of-wedlock baby: “That very night, it happened. She got her cattle home, turned them into the corral, and went into the house, into her room behind the kitchen, and shut the door. There, without calling to anybody, without a groan, she lay down on the bed and bore her child.” (What a painful, peculiar pleasure the scene gives.) It is with My Ántonia, so consecrated to memory, that Cather arrives at her deepest theme. She would have understood T. S. Eliot’s remark that we live not just in the present but in the present moment of the past, past and present being the warp and weft of all experience. The lively hoard of contingent occurrences that add up to a life is infinitely to be cherished. When little Leo, one of Ántonia’s many children, plays his grandfather’s violin, Cather’s motif of the pastness of the present and presentness of the past is consummated. “In the course of twenty crowded years,” says Jim, speaking for his maker, “one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”

The book’s motto—“The best days are the soonest gone”

I missed in the country. I particularly liked the old women; they understood my homesickness and were kind to me. These old women on the farms were the first people who ever gave me the real feeling of an older world across the sea. Even when they spoke very little English, the old women somehow managed to tell me a great many stories about the old country. They talked more freely to a child than to grown people. I have never found any intellectual excitement any more intense than I used to feel when I spent a morning with one of these old women at her baking or butter-making. I used to ride home in the most unreasonable state of excitement; I always felt as if I had got inside another person’s skin.”

Willa graduated from Red Cloud High School in June 1890. She came first in a class of three and accordingly delivered the valedictory address. Her spirited theme was “Investigation versus Superstition.” She hailed the former and damned the latter.

In one as young as Willa, here only sixteen, it is unnerving: “There is another book of God than that of scriptural revelation,” she declared to her audience, “a book written in chapters of creation upon the pages of the universe bound by mystery.”

The shocking news of the fall of France in June 1940. What she’d always regarded as a second homeland had gone under. She wrote to Zoë Akins that “the heritage of all the ages is being threatened.” She followed the war with anguish, particularly the Battle of Britain that followed. Churchill was her embodiment of Periclean heroism. It was at this time that she befriended Sigrid Undset, the famed Norwegian writer and refugee from the Nazis, also a Knopf author, whose elder son, a lieutenant in the Norwegian Army, had died in the early days of the war. She liked Undset’s work and, more important, regarded her as an embodiment of the European values Nazism was laying to waste.

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