2014: The whole damned thing

In addition to the many deaths of giants in the arts, 2014 produced a plethora of events that just cried out for commentary, both serious and silly. And I did my best to oblige.

Have you forgotten already? Well, let me refresh your memory.

In February the Winter Olympic Games were held in Sochi, Russia. Because NBC-Comcast’s coverage of these events is so consistently crappy, I never really got beyond fast-forwarding through the opening ceremonies. I was a little disappointed that Putin didn’t show up topless in a little pink skating skirt, but as far as I’m concerned most of the entertainment took place before the dignitaries showed up. Because there was world-class competitive tweeting going on from all the reporters who found the facilities less than, uh, bronze medal quality.

“C’mon, guyz…”

Almost immediately after the closing ceremonies, Russia upped its international bullying game, so discovering that several European countries were unable to, uh, get it up in the air space violation defense arena was, well, eye-opening. Yes, children, apparently air force ground crews and pilots get overtime, and even Switzerland thinks twice about that time-and-a-half expenditure.

All this might have been rendered moot if the Viking Armageddon had shown up on schedule. But no, noooo—Ragnarök came and went, with no ripping of the celestial fabric or Norse gods rumbling like Jets and Sharks. I was so disappointed—I actually got my Absolut together and then had no place to go.

This has definitely put me off Armageddon—not one of the apocalyptic predictions seems able to pull it off, so you guys have lost me as a customer forever.

It wasn’t all whacky; 2014 was the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the Battle of the Bulge, seminal events in tightening the noose around Hitler’s empire from the west. The ranks of men who slogged onto the Normandy beaches in June and stood their ground in the frozen Ardennes in December have thinned to just a very few now, so it’s good that we continue to render them the respect due. This time around we saw some amazing then-and-now photos of D-Day, and revisited the announcement Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower had prepared in the event that the landings failed. It was unlike anything we’ve seen in the past 40 years of political, military and corporate “leaders” weaseling out of high crimes and misdemeanors.

We observed the 70^th anniversary of the July Conspiracy—the attempt by principled Wehrmacht officers to overthrow the Nazis and establish a rational government that could negotiate with the Allies. For some reason this event didn’t make a big splash in the news media; I can’t recall what was going on, maybe the birth of the Kardashian-West baby.

We also commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the start of that other global conflagration of the first half of the 20^th Century. Since World War I is the focus of my historical studies, I’ve had a few things to say about it, and that’ll continue for the next four years.

Europeans marked the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo, which led to a cascade of political maneuvers by the major powers of Europe, and set the stage for more than four years of industrialized slaughter. When you read about it all now, your first inclination is to wonder what the hell those leaders were all smoking; but then you look at congresses and parliaments around the world today and you just shrug.

(Case in point: in June Serbians unveiled a statue to the Bosnian Serb assassin, who is still revered as a national hero. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey pretty much took a pass on this; and Russia was too busy reliving the Stalin years in the Crimea to bring up WWI.)

And last week we commemorated that strange and unique occurrence on the Western Front of 100 years ago: the Christmas Truce. As ephemeral as a flash mob without mobile phones, the events of the 24^th and 25^th of December 1914 flicker down to us, like the light of a single candle in a room engulfed in darkness.

Some of the remembrances have been powerfully evocative. Two in particular came out of the United Kingdom: the Lights Out campaign on 4 August, and the “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” installation at the Tower of London.

Britain and France declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, and the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey commented, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” So on 4 August this year, private homes, corporations and public buildings went dark throughout the United Kingdom, with only a few candles or lanterns providing light. It was an extraordinary depiction of the darkness that engulfed civilization one hundred years ago. (Sadly, it’s not clear to me at all that we’ve ever quite emerged from that black place.)

The art installation, “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” was an equally powerful image—nearly 900,000 ceramic poppies planted on and around the Tower of London, each unique crimson flower representing the life of a British or Commonwealth soldier lost in the First World War, swelling in their masses to an ocean of blood. Individual sorrow, national catastrophe.

And British losses were on the smallish side, when compared with those of France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. If you planted a poppy for every one of the lives in all those armies that were torn away between 1914 and 1918, you’d take over all of London and probably half the Home Counties.

(As a side note, I posted a photo of the installation and one of the people I know on Facebook—a mathematics professor, who apparently isn’t much interested in anything not involving a digit—archly inquired if it was all about Rapunzel. No.)

This was the 50^th anniversary of the release of Zulu, the picture that gave us an impossibly young and posh Michael Caine, as well as possibly the best battle sequence ever filmed. The occasion was marked by releasing a digitally remastered, wide-screen version, attended by (among others), Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi was a long-time colleague of Nelson Mandela in the fight against Apartheid, as well as the great-grandson of the Zulu leader Cetshwayo, whom he portrayed in the movie.

And if you have still not seen it, I once again urge you to do so immediately.

The UK did have its, oh, alternative moments, though. It seems that the House of Windsor is getting close to overdraft and economies need to be made. Or else the British taxpayer needs to pony up to bail HM out. I did propose a solution to this fine mess, but no one’s had the courtesy to reply. So far.

Then there was that whole tempest in a tartan—Scotland’s attempt to bugger off from the rest of the component parts of the United Kingdom. There were substantial amounts of bloviation on both sides, but in the end the Scots (down to age 16—special voting privileges for this election, because we all know what rational decisions teenagers make) voted to remain in the dysfunctional but still nominally United Kingdom of greater or lesser Britain and the six northern counties of Ireland.

After spending many months examining the remains of Richard III, which were found a couple of years ago under a parking lot in Leicester, British scientists this year finally announced that the last Yorkist king indeed “died brutally during battle.” Apparently it was the 11 wounds by knife, sword and battle axe that provided the clues.

However, HM still won’t let Richard be buried in Westminster Abbey (dunno if it’s anything to do with those budget woes or just bloody-mindedness), so he’s going on display in Leicester, to the great delight of the local pols and Chamber of Commerce.

Britain does not have a lock on folly, of course. Although they certainly are playing in the major leagues. Why, right here in the USA, we had an unelected Senator outed as being a plagiarist (having cribbed most of his 14-page thesis/paper that won him a Master of Strategic Studies degree from the Army War College), and trying to spin the story every which way but up. Apparently John Walsh and his spinpersons didn’t have any secondary resources to plagiarize in aid of this effort; the degree has since been revoked and Walsh did not run for actual election in Montana last month.

This episode certainly makes me wonder what other military and political leaders got their degrees in international or strategic studies via the academic equivalent of a Cracker Jack box, but perhaps I’m trying to overthink this.

Then there was the whole “some of my best friends are female” thing, epitomized by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attempting verbal suicide at a women-in-tech gathering, and the UN planning a conference on gender equality…without any women being invited. Nadella was a keynote speaker at the Grace Hopper Conference—pretty much the premiere event for women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)—when he confidently assured the hundreds of women in the audience that they didn’t need to bother asking for raises or promotions because “that’s good karma.”

It’s like the guy didn’t know that Twitter exists.

At that same conference, several tech company CEOs were engaging in a panel discussion about being “male allies” to women in tech. At which they decreed there should be no Q&A session.

It’s like these guys didn’t know that Twitter exists.

(They did circle the wagons and set up an impromptu Q&A session later on. But still.)

The animal kingdom also had its share of notable events this year. On the dark side, administrators at the Copenhagen Zoo shot a bolt through the head of a healthy four-year-old giraffe named Marius, and then dismembered his corpse and fed it to the lions in front of an audience of children as a teaching moment. Marius’ genetic structure was of no interest to the zoo, so it was off with his head.

Only, just five weeks later, the same zoo put down four of the aforementioned lions because it was determined that they, too, were surplus to requirements. No word on whether the four big cats were used as chow for some other creatures. Someone please remind me who’s the superior being in this equation?

Then there was possibly my favorite story of the entire year—about Fedya the performing crocodile and the Russian circus accountant. This was a world-class story if for no other reason than the original report ran, “a dangerous reptile sustained injuries after being squashed by a portly circus accountant.” This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, folks.

Plus—I got to Ask the Questions. I love to Ask the Questions.

This year we also found out about a category of working cats that doesn’t involve badly spelled Internet memes. Yes, give it up for Distillery Cats, who give their all so that the rest of us can drink the water of life.

Although evidently some of us are falling down on the job and letting our respective nation(s) down. Because France and Uruguay are out-drinking the US in several categories of spirits. And the UK, which seems just wrong.

C’mon, guyz…

Well, as I mentioned way up about 2,000 words ago, it’s been quite the blog-year this time around. There was the big organic manure hoo-ha, while back in the UK they swung between Dull Men and shopping chaos on Black Friday. I still don’t know what the hell they were thinking when they imported that.

But the posts closest to my heart this year were about my friend Dick—his Excellent European Adventure, his safe return to Virginia without need of an extraction operation, his uncovering of a true saint for our times, and his solo turn at the Washington Christmas Revels (the production was about the Irish and Irish Americans, but he sang “Deck the Halls” in Welsh, so I’m a little confused).

And my fond hope is that 2015 will be the year I receive a draft of his memoirs, because this was just one single year in a fascinating life, and I do not want to wait around while some publisher squirrels around.

If I do, I’ll certainly let you know.