Hitler, Rohingya, Derek Walcott, Fire, Motherhood
Hitler At Home
Despina Stratigakos | Places | 1st September 2015
How Nazi propagandists packaged Adolf Hitler to attract the uncommitted voter. “Associating Hitler with Alpine scenery made him seem vibrant and tapped into the popularity of nature sports in Germany. Moreover such a stance seemed to be safely removed from his controversial ideological platform. While many voters found Hitler’s racism distasteful, it was difficult to be against hiking or nature. Likewise, photographs of Hitler with his dogs conveyed a love of animals” (8,600 words)
The Lost Genocide
Doug Bock Clark | Longreads | 16th November 2017
The life and death of Rohingya in Myanmar. A genocide in all but name; but calling it genocide would oblige UN governments to act, which few want to do. “One survivor described watching an attack on the town’s elderly religious leader as he was being carried from the flaming village on his son’s back. Soldiers knocked the son down, and then four of them grabbed the imam by his limb. They rocked back and forth to start the old man swinging and then hurled him into the inferno” (6,800 words)
Hanging Out With Derek Walcott
Sven Birkerts | Literary Hub | 22nd November 2017
And with Joseph Brodsky, and with Seamus Heaney, when all three were teaching in Boston. “There were parties all the time. Long tables, open bottles, and smoke. God, how people smoked in 1981. If the reader now expects accounts of high literary seriousness she will be disappointed. These gatherings were about play. They were exercises in comic brinksmanship. Three of our greatest poets, at the height of their powers, urging each other on. Imagine the inspiration of that” (2,800 words)
The Grenfell Tower Story
Tom Lamont | GQ | 28th November 2017
Reconstruction of the tower-block fire that killed seventy and shamed Britain. “Residents leaving the building had spoken of seeing fire on the fifth floor, even on the sixth floor. To an experienced city firefighter, this would not have made sense. A fourth-floor fire should remain a fourth-floor fire. Badillo later told people that his elevator had gotten to the 14th or 15th floor when it stopped and the doors juddered open. Immediately a black, blinding, silent smoke rushed in around him” (6,870 words)
My Son Should Never Have Been Born
Jen Gann | The Cut | 26th November 2017
A mother sues her hospital for not warning her, after a genetic test early in her pregnancy, that her baby would be born with cystic fibrosis. “In what’s called a wrongful-birth case, plaintiffs sue a medical practitioner for the failure to diagnose or inform them of a disease or disability possible to detect in utero. The money awarded goes toward the cost — astronomically high — of the child’s medical care. A mother desperate to help her child declares that she would not have had that child” (4,850 words)
Video of the day The Art Of Flying
What to expect:
Murmurations of starlings pause in their southward migration across the Netherlands, filmed by Jan van IJken (2’00”)
Thought for the day
I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about
William Hazlitt
Podcast of the day Theodore Roosevelt | Washington Post
David McCullough and Michelle Krowl discuss the administration, the legacy, and the “exuberance” of Teddy Roosevelt
(43'39")