This is a great video. Also, I would NEVER do this.
Category: History
It’s Over For the Cartels
A great video for understanding how the Cartels work, and what is going on regarding the Drug War.
Great Aunt Helene
I was recently given the article on my Great-Aunt Helen’s death, something that was a bit of a mystery as so many who were there have long-since passed away. Such a simple thing to have taken her from us, she was too young. Grandma Rydberg and Helen were very close.
Why The Spike?
Inside the Panzer VIII Maus
Excellent video on the Maus, of which the Germans only created two of, and never took to full production. Too late in the war. By focusing on projects like this, which couldn’t cross a bridge for being too heavy, the Germans weren’t making the tanks that were actually making a difference. Obviously a good thing. Still quite an ambitious project.
The turret by itself was heavier than an entire Patton tank.
Unfortunately, the only survivor is at a museum in Russia, and not the Bovington Tank Museum in England.
Travelling to Afghanistan
He said at the end of the video that he wants to go back, because the people were just lovely… I can find plenty of lovely people close to home, without having to go to Afghanistan! He had to leave within hours, or he’d go to prison for who knows how long… but… go back because the people are lovely? Uh, no.
He did another video, and went on a train that was actually a step up from the one Bald and Bankrupt went on in India. (Backpacker Ben, a hard-core traveler, was beyond his ability to endure on that trip. If he can’t handle that train, nobody can.)
Joe Fazer was on this train for three days, having to share his bunk bed with strangers, in addition to all of the other wonderful things that Indian trains are known for.
I am going to watch his Yakutsk video, as that is slightly less insane than Afghanistan or India. Just slightly.
I like these kind of videos a lot, because they show more reality than the travel shows I used to watch so often, or the National Geographics where I’ve read about these places. People walking around with cameras, showing what life is actually like in these areas, wheras GlobeTrekker used to try really hard to make the worst places seem so much better than they actually are. (Still a great show, though.) So many of these sources don’t have incentive to show you the real negatives of going there, something apparent in the videos of a regular person with a camera.
And yes, he’s going to the most dangerous or unappealing places on the planet to get clicks, I get it. But like police body cams, people with video cameras are revealing things that were hidden from us by the likes of shows and magazines that didn’t have a good reason to show things as they really are. And still there are a lot of cultural aspects to these places that aren’t fully explored, most of these people running around with their cameras need to get along with everybody, so there isn’t much revealed about pre-teen girls being sold as brides, things like that in these walk-around videos, but they are another step in being more aware of how things work in other parts of the world, other societies and cultures where there are major differences from our own other than language, food, and fashion.
Uncle Hank • Before And After The War
My Great-Uncle Hank was a ball-turret gunner on a B-29 in the Pacific Theater. Shot down and captured, he spent time in a Japanese prison in Rangoon. What he must have gone through between when these photos were taken, we can only speculate as from what I can remember, he didn’t talk much about what happened, and I don’t blame him. Grandpa Windholz went through his own war on the other side of the planet, and he didn’t talk much about that either.
I recommend reading extensively about this war as there is no shortage of great books about it, and it is in no way a chore to do so. To understand what ball-turret gunners had to experience… it was already a nightmare to be up in those planes, much less in a glass ball underneath while being shot at by men trained and committed to killing you. And he was captured by men from a militaristic culture where you just weren’t a prisoner, you were less than human because you were captured and didn’t die in battle.
We would be better off with fewer streaming services and more time spent reading about things like this as it is the least we can do, living in such luxury and safety in comparison with what these guys experienced.
The Race to Save Parliament
Visiting Osama Bin Laden’s Compound
Mutiny On The Bounty Trilogy
I finished the 903-page Mutiny On the Bounty Trilogy late last night. I remember buying this a year or two ago and thinking how it was right up my alley. But, I would never really read it.
I am so glad I did, it was such a great book!
As the title suggests, it is three books in one, that were also published separately. (Published for the first time just a year before Hitler ascended to being the leader of Nazi Germany) The story, which is based on real events, did have three major parts, and each book was told from a different person. There was the voyage and the mutiny, then the cast-off captain and his loyalists and their torturous journey in a small boat across the Pacific ocean. And then for the third part, what happened to the mutineers.
The book had a lot of interesting aspects to it about western culture at the time, vs the cultures of other lands. How badly people treat each other, and the outcomes of such views. There were peaceful native islanders, and there were murderous ones. There were peaceful English, and selfish, murderous ones. On the value of relationships and life, how to accept new things and let go of old things, and vice-versa. It even ends on a high note, after so much suffering and brutality, with the last survivors and their offspring living a good life in a paradise, finding God and peacefully making contact with good people in the modern world (modern for 1808, that is).
Captain Bligh, even, that heartless captain with his sense of brutal oppression against lower classes of people, such as common sailors and native islanders, could also be noble and resolute in his devotion to get his men back to England in impossible circumstances. And then, Fletcher Christian, ever so realistic about their situation after having mutinied, constantly having to lead his group through not just a difficult and uncertain voyage, but establishing a new culture that was often at war with itself, all because of his emotional and split-second decision to mutiny. How that had effected so many people, it was on him, and he never didn’t feel guilty about it, and understood his responsibility to get things right for those under his command.
The characters growing and learning throughout the entire book. It was how tough times can create great people, and break others.
I also watched two of the three movies as well as some documentaries. I might watch the 1932 film with Clark Gable at some point, but I did watch the 1962 Marlon Brando epic (which had thousands of Polynesian extras for some scenes, incredible!) and re-watched 1984’s The Bounty with Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, and Liam Neeson. The 1962 Marlon Brando film skipped the second book and barely touched the events of the third, with a completely different ending. And this was based on the original book of which I just read. Apparently, Brando was difficult to work with and wanted things his way, maybe this alternate ending was part of that. The Mel Gibson movie simply ends with the first book, which is understandable as they didn’t have time to tell the entire tale.
There is a non-fiction book on the facts of the story in a book titled the same as the 1984 movie The Bounty, but I have to find that in my library annex. Glad I happened to buy that at the thrifts!
It was nice to finish this 1943 reprint, of which I had to glue repair the front cover, which was separating. And after finishing the book, I had to do the same for the back cover. The feel of a good, old book in one’s hands is very nice. Still, next time, I plan to reread it by acquiring the leather-bound, gilded Easton Press editions as this book has proven to be worth that kind of high-end expense. Same goes for the Horatio Hornblower books, which were also published at the same time, and have their own Easton Press leather editions.
So far, I’ve introduced myself to the Horatio Hornblower books, of which I have ten more to go (the eight-episode A&E television movies-miniseries is fantastic!), read one of the big books on John Paul Jones, then a 1914 copy of Mutiny of the Elsinore by Jack London, and now this. I’m thinking of reading The Count of Monte Cristo next, I have a great copy of that which previously I got a third of the way through previously. I’ll need to restart that from the beginning. The 2002 movie is one of my all-time favorite films. I have added Treasure Island and Kidnapped! by Robert Louis Stevinson and Moby Dick to my list of nautical books to read this summer.
