They start by breaking glass

The first part of November always gives me the shivers. It’s not just that we go off Daylight Saving Time, so it seems darker all of a sudden; or even that the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every couple of years is Election Day here. It’s that this is the time we must acknowledge dark deeds that have been done within living memory of our parents and grandparents.

Today is the 80^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On 9 November 1938, in “response” to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a minor functionary in the German embassy in Paris, by a teen-aged Polish Jew, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated “spontaneous” acts of outrage on Jewish homes, shops and synagogues throughout Germany.

More than 200 synagogues and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked and torched throughout the Reich (which by then included Austria and most of Czechoslovakia), starting the night of the 9^th and continuing through the next day. Efforts by municipal fire and police services to stop the conflagrations and violence were blocked by Nazi storm troopers. More than 90 Jews were murdered and 30,000 men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Hermann Goering, Oberbefehlshaber  Luftwaffe, Prussian minister of the interior (thus head of the largest police force in Germany) and chief Nazi clothes horse, berated Goebbels for mismanaging the affair—since despite countless millions in goods looted, not a pfennig had made its way into state coffers.

By way of placating Goering, Goebbels decreed that German Jews should pay an indemnity of 1 billion Reichsmarks “for causing the damage” that now littered communities throughout the Reich.

And he collected.

“Kristallnacht” doesn’t really convey the full horror of these events. Although the Nazis had been steadily closing in the walls on Jews according to the blueprint patently evident in Mein Kampf, and had even essayed a public boycott of Jewish businesses (unsuccessful, as it happens, so not repeated) shortly after taking power in 1933, this was the first instance where widespread violence and murder were unleashed on the community.

And this time they were successful. There were no substantial protests either internally or from the fraternity of nations. The Nazis had removed their gloves and revealed their brass knuckles—and no one cared. There were a few lackluster objections from here or there, but no official recognition (much less outrage) that this was a state act of collective violence against a group of people. Likewise no one seemed to connect the dots that there could be other groups on the murder list to be lined up after the Jews were eliminated.

Some decades ago, I was following the pilgrim’s route from Paris to Santiago de Compostela. I’d checked in to the Auberge de Jeunesse in Bordeaux and was riding my bicycle around the town. At one stop light a young man on a bicycle came up beside me—he must have recognized by the panniers that I wasn’t a local—and we struck up a conversation. He was also outfitted for distance—I think he was working the vendange (I ran into a lot of kids at hostels who were following the grape harvest around the country), but at this point I can’t really recall.

Anyhow, he was German and told me that he was heading over to the “main” synagogue (the Great Synagogue). Seems he’d never in his life (of probably 20 years) seen a Jewish temple, and thought he should do so. (My first thought was, “Okay, there’s a reason you’ve never seen a synagogue on the hoof—do you know what that is?” But I didn’t bring it up and neither did he.) He’d been by earlier but was told he should return in the afternoon. He invited me along.

Well, my only diary-entry for Bordeaux was going to be the Centre Jean Moulin (museum of the Résistance), so he and I cycled over to the shul. He was such a trusting soul he didn’t even lock his bike, just leaned it up against the wall.

He rang the bell and we were buzzed in; no one came to greet us, we just went in. I have to say I felt a little on edge—didn’t know whether he was going to pull a Molotov out of his jeans and finish off one of the ones the Nazis missed 35 years earlier. But in the end we just wandered around the sanctuary, unescorted, looking at the space so different from Christian churches.

Actually, at the time this was only the second temple I’d ever been in, so I wasn’t that much further along culturally speaking that my companion.

We could hear voices in other rooms, but no one ever did come out to check on us. After a while, we let ourselves out. He went on to find a place to camp for the night (the hostel’s couple of francs was more than he wanted to spend) and I headed off to the museum. (Which, BTW, had a terrific collection of propaganda posters. Some of them are still quite vivid in my mind.)

I wonder if he’s remembering his first visit to a synagogue on this anniversary, and how he had to travel hundreds of miles out of Germany to find it?

I also wonder if we’ve progressed since 1938—no one did much about the Serbian or Rwandan versions of Kristallnacht, did they?

A few years ago I wondered if we’ve progressed since 1979—would the keepers of a synagogue anywhere today buzz in someone to have unaccompanied free rein of the sanctuary? I found out in 2009 when I retraced the French part of my pilgrimage: you can’t get close to the Great Synagogue; it’s fenced off and I couldn’t even see where you might ring to get someone’s attention. Looking at that iron fence I thought, well, I guess 1979 was that brief window of lull in the storm—between the Nazi anti-Semites and the Islamists and National Front varieties of today.

Given recent events—of the past two years, say—in my own country, I think we have reason to fear that whatever progress we’ve made in the past 80 years is being eradicated. Anti-Semitism is on the rise at an exponential rate. (Following the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh two weeks ago, the racist-in-chief famously counseled that if the shul had only had an armed guard stationed there, all would have been well. Just as Rethugs in NRA pockets advise that arming teachers—and/or students—is the way to prevent Parkland-like bloodbaths. I thought about the temple in Alexandria that my friend attends. During her bat mitzvah I noticed an armed, uniformed Fairfax County cop patrolling the entrance, and I asked her about it. She said there one there for all Shabbat services. We have already lost to the Nazis.)

We’re electing fascists to local, state and national office. Those officials are building concentration camps for asylum seekers, putting brown children in cages and adopting them out to white parents, inviting their supporters to commit acts of violence, breaking international treaties, throwing away environmental protections and engaging in corruption on a scale that would make the likes of Papa Doc and Idi Amin grow pale with envy. In short, Republicans at every level are feeling free to combine their two guiding principles of greed and cruelty into a unifying platform: making brutality a sustainable profit center. Goering and Goebbels are verklempt.

So, I still don’t know how much progress we’ve made since Kristallnacht. But perhaps it’s a start if we remember how it begins.

Light the way

Yesterday marked the first day of the Hindu festival of Diwali. Although there appear to be several legends associated with the tradition of Diwali, they mostly revolve around the triumph of righteousness over evil, of light over darkness. Thus it’s appropriate that the focus should be on lights—oil lamps, candles and (so I hear) neon lights among the nouveau riche. (Diwali marks the end of a month of prep; I’m told there’s been a lot of dancing at temples, and tonight big family meals with emphasis on Indian sweets.)

I learned about Diwali when I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon. Since I was struggling with driving back the dark, I glommed onto it like limpets on a rock. Last night I again massed candles to drive back all manner of dark things. Not only do I like the soft light that groups of candles give off, the very act of lighting them one at a time and nursing along some of the ones at the end of their life slows me down. It calms me down.

Filling a room with candle light takes time; you can’t flip a switch and move on to the next task on your to-do list. And if you’re lighting those floating jobbers, you have to be very focused on not disturbing the water, because then it dowses the flames and you have to wipe them off and start over again.

It’s like the count-breaths-to-21 methodology of meditation: if you lose count because your monkey mind is distracted, you have to begin again from one.

There are some days I never make it into double digits.

But there’s something about knowing how happy the moving lights will make me that enables me to persevere with candles. I light them, sit back and watch; and for at least a few minutes the world around me is peaceful and full of hope. Light prevails over darkness, love conquers fear, and good triumphs over evil.

Until I start sinking

Yeah, the ‘Pubs were displaying their colors yesterday—no element of fuckery was too blatant or too petty for them to omit. After reading about all the voting machines in Georgia that were non-operational (in largely African American precincts) because the guy in charge of running elections for the entire state (white Brian Kemp, who’s also the R candidate for governor and running against a Black woman—how’s that for a conflict of interest?) somehow ensured that the precincts were not issued…power cords, I just lost it.

Racist robocalls claiming to be from Oprah, illegally purging the voter rolls and dogwhistles from the Kleptocrat and his closet VP weren’t enough. Gotta just outright sabotage the polling places.

Work offered no respite, either, as we had a palace coup last Thursday and I’m still finding out who’s been purged. Because clearly the LEED-certified walls of our building would crumble if any actual communication were ever to take place.

As an aside—and combining the chicanery of voter suppression with the surrealism of my employer—on Monday the new HR director sent us an email reminding us of both our civic duty and what the company will put up with, viz:

Yes, the highlighting/bolding are hers. She’s basically telling us that even though they’re technically required to give us an hour on the clock to go vote, they’re on to our shifty ways, and they know what times the polls in the area open and close, so we’d better not try to claim that hour, or there’ll be some ‘splaining to do, Loocie. This place has the highest density of PhDs outside an R1 university, and the HR director is telling us all that we cannot be trusted to use the allowed hour for its designated purpose—we could be getting our nails done, or stopping off for a beer with that hour—and that she’s got eyes on us.

In short, mood:

Dies irae

Well, well, well—the country stands on the brink of a precipice, and I confess that I’m afraid to look over the rim. I don’t believe that mid-term elections have mattered as much as today’s; at least not during my lifetime. If Democrats don’t take back the House, the Kleptocrat gets two more years to drive democracy into the dust, cheered on by Repugnants all up and down the office-holding food chain.

And as though the actual elections weren’t enough of a cliff-hanger, we’ve got Rethugs from the Oval Office on down to state and local levels engaging in voter suppression and intimidation on a scale that old Joe Stalin would admire. Closing polling stations, removing voters from the rolls, declaring all kinds of IDs unacceptable—if these crooks have missed one opportunity to deny citizens their rights, it’s certainly not for want of trying.

These tactics are the kinds of things you find in backward countries, which we appear to be well on our way to becoming. And it scares the living daylights out of me. They’re also clearly the actions of people who’ve held power for as long as they can remember and are terrified that they might not be able to retain it if “the others” start demanding to share in it. (In this case, the others include women, people of color, LGBTQ, immigrants and many more.) The closer we others get to the seat of power, the more unhinged these people are going to get, and the greater the likelihood that their fear and rage will manifest in violence.

It’s not like we haven’t seen some of this before—the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in my lifetime were bathed in blood. Before that there were campaigns to organize labor. All of these movements took place over years or decades; in each case, the power-holders did not relinquish control with grace. And it’s clear that they just went underground with their grievances. We’re now facing decades worth of papered-over resentment gushing out like cockroaches through a gouge in the wall.

I’m trying to contain my anxiety. I’ve voted; I’ve contributed to political campaigns; it’s in the hands of the electorate…

As you know, my preferred therapy in such situations is music. I’m thinking that a Requiem is in order, so let’s have the one from Mozart.

Gratitude Monday: YouTube, baby

It’s been months—perhaps more than a year—since I last pulled out my DSLR to actually shoot. I use a pocket camera for all my on-the-fly photos—particularly the ones I take in traffic. The Canon is reasonably comfortable to use, and it fits in the pocket of my running sweats, although I really miss having a viewfinder. Having nothing but that screen means I’m guessing about what’s in the shot and what’s in focus when there’s glare.

But Autumn-Winter-Spring are prime photography seasons, and I decided I just needed to get back in practice. So I hauled out the Nikon, charged the battery and…stared at it.

Because I’ve been using what’s essentially a point-and-shoot for way too long.

So I did what everyone on the planet with connectivity and a problem would do: I consulted YouTube. And, glory be, I found all kinds of tutorials on how to use this model. I uncovered settings and functions that what Nikon is pleased to call user documentation never bothered with.

Now, look, I learned to shoot on a Nikon rangefinder (which inspired the name of this blog). No through-the-lens metering; I carried around a light meter to calculate appropriate settings. And I did not do badly with it. And for years, my Minolta SLR served me well—through-the-lens metering, but not a lot of other bells or whistles. When I decided to move into the digital age—ten years ago; I wanted to see if this whole thing had legs—I didn’t spend a lot of cycles on it. I did take one Nikon 101 class through Seattle’s Open University equivalent, but…

In my defense, I do not use the Nikon as a point-and-shoot; I typically set it either to Shutter or Aperture mode, not Don’t-Worry-Your-Pretty-Little-Head-Honey. But I’ve never pushed it.

However, YouTube had my back. In a couple of 20- to 30-minute sessions last weekend, I learned heaps—enough to head out yesterday in full Manual, and play around with a bunch of different functions.

And here’s the thing: whether it’s photography (or specific photographic equipment), cooking, home improvement, auto repair, whatever—there’s a multitude of YouTube videos to walk you through it. In the past month, I’ve checked out how to use the Instant Pot to make soup, what I need in order to mount hardware and hang curtains and how to fix a hissing toilet. Yes—as with everything on the Internet—you’ll find crackpots there, and I recommend checking out several “experts” to validate their instructions. But, man—what a resource.

So, today I’m grateful for YouTube’s how-to videos. Because of them, my first foray out into the neighborhood with the Nikon netted 100 photos, 94 of which are decent enough to keep. And I had a great time playing with the settings.

Here’s a keeper:

And here’s the one I completely overexposed—which I kind of like:

Now—maybe there are some videos for the Canon…