Purges in Dictatorial Russia

 In 1937, an overnight train ride from Lyon to Strasbourg, France, places our young American traveler, Philip, in a position to overhear a strange conversation between two Russians:

The big man who had just entered spoke in a low, deep voice. Philip faintly heard, though could not understood the man’s thick French, which  sounded like Russian.

       “You think you can evade me so easily, mon ami? I have not come down here for no thing. We do have some settlement that yet needs to be achieved,” said Ilya Ehrberg to his comrade. He raised his eyebrows, as if they could become a question mark to complete his inquisition.

      Philip could see only the back of the big man’s neck as he spoke, and a jowly jaw on the right side of his face. The thin man’s nervous profile was stricken with dismay. Philip watched the thin, close cropped black moustache twitch as he retrieved some impatient  answer, giving him the appearance of a smart kid who was uncomfortable with the bully’s rough intimidations. “What do you want? Why have you come here?” asked Pierre.

      “I think you know why, comrade.”

      “I know nothing.”

      Ilya laughed. He rubbed his stubby beard, stretched his neck. Maybe he was limbering up his jaws for some lengthy inquisition. “Andre has given you a copy of his pamphlet, n’est ce pas?”

      “No. Who told you that?”

      “It doesn’t matter. I have ears. You see?” Ilya grabbed his left earlobe and pulled, as if demonstrating the obvious to a simpleton. His little grin was an annoyance, the expression of an overconfident man who doesn’t know as much as he thinks he knows.  But the countenance returned abruptly to serious scowl. “He must not publish it. You know that.” It seemed that Ilya was about to display on the tabula of their dispute, what he thought to be a winning hand.

       But Pierre Geras held his poker face. He had questions of his own. “What has happened to Zinovyev and Kamenev?” Now the Frenchman’s riposte came forth, with spunk.

       “You know, comrade. Why do you ask such questions? This is for the Party to decide.”

       “Ha!” Pierre, surprised at himself, looked around. His feigned amusement was unexpectedly loud.

       Philip was napping, of course, a fly on the wall. No matter. Two men were talking three seats ahead. That’s all. Still, his ears were tuned on their frequency, for some reason he could not surmise, dialed in like the RGD radio to BBC that Nathan had shown him back in London. But he could not understand; the night was dim, and the speech was French. The rumble of the wheels beneath their feet was a hypnotic cover of gray noise, a small subterfuge rattle beneath the narrowly careening railway of a vast, disjointing Continental rift. He could not comprehend the words of the two men, but the subdued urgency of their tone was vibrant, like the air before a thunderstorm.

       “The Party—” continued Pierre. “The Party of uncle Joe? No longer the party of revolution. The party of Stalin. Where three were—now there is one!”  Pierre’s voice had morphed to a hoarse whisper.  “And  Bukharin? What of Nikolai? Where does the purging stop?”

The scene above was lifted from chapter 12 of my novel, Smoke.

Echoes of Guernica Past

 It happened on April 26, 1937:

". . . at this moment, Viscayan ruins still smoldered from the bombing raid that screaming  wehrmacht air-monsters had inflicted  three weeks ago at Guernica. Even now, the unholy cloud was  escalating to previously unknown heights of stratospheric iniquity, having been spewed from godless National Socialist bombers  as they dumped  metallic sacrilege upon the sacred Spanish earth and its people. Now the smoke spiraled high into Basque air; it drifted over the Pyrenees, defying all the better angels of modern man, and strewing blasphemous carnage beneath the warring winds of a fallen world.

      But over In Paris, a surreal bull's head was emerging from blank canvas. The unbridled  painter from Spanish Andalusia smote brushstrokes of black and white oils, revolutionary paint,  mournful black and gauzy white they were—to declare a pleading indictment soon to be slapped upon the face of clueless Europe, unveiled at the unlikely venue of a fashionable World Exposition in the French capital."

Excerpt from my historical fiction novel, Smoke, about what happened at Guernica, Spain, on April 26, 1937

Pablo Picasso's world-famous mural, Guernica, was originally unveiled at an international exposition in Paris in summer of 1937, only months after the actual bombing. Later, the mural was relocated, to be permanently displayed in  Picasso's native Spain. We saw it a few years ago at the Art Museum in Madrid.

Today. . . last week, the week before that, the week before that, the week before that, the destructive scene pictured artistically above is being reenacted in destructive reality across an entire nation, Ukraine.

But in today's version of airborne destruction, the bombers are not inflicting nationwide damage on a Guernica, Spain. Today's bombers are not launched, as they were in 1937, by Hitler's Third Reich  doing their first Wehrmacht practice run. No,

Now, the terrible droning and deadly payloads are being unloaded on Mariupol, Odesa, Kiev, Kharkiv and over many more  cities across Ukraine. They are dropped from Russian bombers, sent by their chief commander, the mad dictator Vladimir Putin.

These bombings today are real, present-day, haunting echoes of the earliest days of World War II. Let us hope and pray that we are not witnessing the start of another mad dictator's mass-murderous grudge in a multi-year--or even multi-month--reign/rain of destruction.

Smoke

Ukrainian Kinburn

The decline of the Russian Empire began in March of 1856.

An alliance of Euro/Turk nations defeated the Tsar and his Russian armies at Sevastopol, Crimea, on the Black Sea. This defeat ended the Crimean War.

As we look around the world today, it seems that in some ways not much has changed, although the current Russian dictator is having a hard time accepting his defeat.

There's been a lot that happened between then and now:

Even though the Bolsheviks took control of the Russian empire in 1917 and enslaved their people with a communist juggernaut that ran wild with gulag imprisonment and KGB paranoia until 1991 . . .

And even though a duo of heroic reformers—Gorbachev and Yeltsin—were able to wrest the Grand Gulag from the Communist Party and thereby turn Russia into (theoretically) a democratic republic . . .

And even though a former KGB wizard was able to wrest control of the awesome post-Soviet Russian military machine and redirect all that destructive power against the Ukrainian people, just to prove his illusory Russian superiority. . .

That doesn’t negate the fact that an alliance of Euro/Turk nations already ran the Russian power-mongers out of Crimea, long ago, in 1856 . . .

and will do so again in 2022!

Now the World is proclaiming, in echoes of President Reagan and assurances of President Biden, loudly and clearly: 

Mr. Putin, Stand down this War!

This morning, as I was perusing historical artifacts in the St. Andrews Museum, Scotland, I came upon a panel that informs us about one decisive battle of that 1855 Crimean War, the war in which our Alliance ran the Russians out of Ukraine, the first time:

While reading this panel, I found special interest in this historical fact:

“After news came through that a British and French force had captured the Russian fort of Kinburn at the mouth of the River Dnieper on the Black Sea, Dr. Buddo (the owner of the mansion) decided to name his house after the battle: Kinburn.

Today, that house of Kinburn is the home of the St. Andrews Museum. And today, as I entered the building to tour the museum, I noticed that the Ukrainian flies overhead. There is a good reason for that.

Everyone in the freedom-loving world agrees that Ukraine belongs to the Ukrainians.

How many more days, buildings destroyed and people killed before Vladimir Putin gets the message?

Glass half-Full 

Give the Boy the Ball

 If you’re paying attention, you may find something old, something new, everyday in the Kingdom of God.

Today as I sat in a 600-year-old church I heard a fresh, quite timely message about what is happening in the world right now.

Early on in this gathering of the Faithful, Reverend Symington began his message with an anecdote, which I will relate to you.

He said that he had recently taken a trip to the USA. While there, he attended an Atlanta Braves baseball game.  

Reminding his Scottish congregants of the basic procedures of that all-American game, he explained that the pitcher pitches the ball across a plate, to be swung at by a batter for the opposing team.

The batter, if successful in his swing, will hit the ball into the field, where it is retrieved (or not) by a fielder.

But sometimes, the reverend continued, the batter swings at the pitched ball and hits the ball only partly. If the ball glances off the upper edge of the bat, the ball will be hit foul while continuing its thrust, but glancing skyward. Sometimes it is thusly misdirected into the stands where fans are sitting.

On this particular day in Atlanta, the storyteller and his two daughters, or granddaughters, were sitting in those seats behind home plate. It just so happened that the ball came directly at them. And, lo and behold and I say unto thee, his daughter caught that foul ball! 

On the next pitch, the same thing happened. Except this time the ball went higher, over their heads and past them. Then it was caught by a boy; but he bobbled it and a man sitting near him grabbed the ball and managed to take it away.

The boy protested, but the man insisted on keeping the ball. 

While this was happening, another man nearby issued a command:

“Give the boy the ball!”

But the insensitive ball-robber refused to yield. 

The other man continued to protest, but louder now:

“Give the boy the ball!”

And again, more insistently: “Give the boy the ball!”

Other fans who were nearby began adding volume to his command:

“Give the boy the ball!”

After awhile, the commanding chorus rose louder and louder as more people joined in. After awhile it became an almost stadium-wide chorus: “Give the boy the ball!”

And guess what happened.

That ball-snatcher gave the boy his ball back!

Now the story-telling preacher, having spoken his parable, lifted the lesson up to a higher level. 

To whit: the cry of the Ukrainians ought to be taken up by all freedom-loving people everywhere and proclaimed loudly as an overwhelming chorus directed at  ball-robber Vladimir Putin:

“Give the Ukrainians their nation back!”

Perhaps, miracle of miracles, it could happen. A little faith proclaimed in a loud voice could go a long way. What say ye?

Glass half-Full

From Chernobyl to the Noble

There’s trouble in the world

for every boy and girl

in a melt-down techno garden

where despair doth daily harden.

Yeah, the ever-widening gyre

of trouble v. desire

spins a slue of evolutions

and then several revolutions

before casting off its payload power

dragging down our terror tower

of trouble by the hour

and pain by the pound

through waves of light and sound.

Just look around 

and you will discern it

as believing you do earn it:

a Faith that glides above it

past the Fate that conspides to shove it.

Yes, in believing you will earn it

as in believing you discern it:

from the Enabler who bestows it

as our enabled lives do show it

through the making and the breaking

the moving and the shaking

the ever widening gyre

of trouble v. desire 

spins a slue of evolutions

toward an ultimate solution

but you gotta believe it

in order to retrieve it.

Surprise surprise

there it was all along

hanging on a prayer and a song

the one who got nailed to a tree

rose above it all for you and me.

But you gotta believe it

to retrieve it. 

Selah.

Follow

King of Soul 

Kneejerk MAGAnians

 Now here come them MAGA trumpicians

with their blame-shifting knee-jerk renditions

not unlike their knee-jerk liberal nemeses

losing sight of who’s the real enemies.

 

Yeah, I say unto thee

even here in this land of the free

they cannot discern who’s the real enemy:

As putin assaults Ukraine unanimity!

Oh! but here come the knee-jerk trumpicians

with their pro-putin sympathetic renditions

blaming Biden for putin’s conflation

and American gas-price inflation,

‘cuz Joe put the brakes on Russian oil

while Ukrainians shed blood, sweat and toil

I mean who in the hell

is blitzing Ukrainian soil?

and murdering Ukrainian citizens

with satanic ruskie denizens!

Now just say it ain’t Joe!

Ye knee-jerk trumpians oughta say so.

Just take your gas-guzzling sass

and cram it up your MAGAnian ass

Glass half-full 

Travelin' Javelin

 Jumpin’ javelin Ukraine pride

Javelin travel on Kharkhiv ride

Travelin’ ravelin’ Kyiv reprieve

Hi-tek weapon up Kyiv sleeve.

Ukraine rainin’ on ruskie parade

Rainin’ javelins o’er putin tirade

Rainin’ javelins o’er putin shoot’n 

Trainin’ ‘Ukranians  javelin toot’n

Putin toot’n his own damn horn

Sittin’ in his dacha so damn forlorn

So damn proud bein’ ruskie born

Thinkin’ he sum kinda rus-bear born

Thinkin’ he sum kinda hi-holy orth’dox

Dreamin’ he sum kinda ruskie rus fox

But ain’t no ruskie gonna steal Ukie thunder

‘Cuz Ukraine Soul from land down under 

Undercut that ruskie bear belligerance

with Ukrainian cranium javelin resistance

Dat jumpin’ javelin Ukraine pride

Dat javelin travel on Kharkiv ride

Travelin’ javelin’ up putin  rusk-ass

Unravels putin rusk-ass sass.

Ask me no questions an’ I give you no sass

Just javelin travelin up putin’s rus ass.

Smoke

Help for Ukraine

At the end of World War II, our United States of America emerged as a worldwide standard-bearer for strength, peace and prosperity. Our soldiers came trekking back home by the thousands. When they got settled in, Stateside, it was time for most of those soldiers to resettle into civilian life.

On the heels of that war-torn 1940’s decade, the ’50’s came rolling in like a kindergardner on a Christmas tricycle. Within a few years there were babies popping out all over America.

I was one of them in 1951.

Along with the relief of no longer being bogged down in a world war, we Americans experienced a tidal wave of new technology, most notably that TV in the living room. Cars came rolling off Detroit assembly lines like gangbusters; the cotton was high and yo mama’s good lookin’.  Peace and prosperity were bustin’ out all over.  

Out in the midwest, the wheat crop was ripe for the harvest. 

Yet there was another harvest taking place, a spiritual gathering. A North Carolina preacher caught a vision of that coming revival. Billy Graham equipped a team of Christians to travel across the nation and the world presenting the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Ultimately, Billy and his team spent the rest of their lifetimes traveling our nation and the world on behalf of the only man in history who was tried and executed and then lived to tell about it. 

And then there came a day when Billy was called home.

But hey! No worries.

There were plenty of his disciples still here on earth to take up the mantle of spreading that good news of victory over death.

Franklin Graham, Billy’s son, spent some of his youth in struggling, like most young people, with his identity. It took him a few years to figure out what he was supposed to do in the wake of his father’s incredible accomplishments. He knew that the worldwide harvest of believers was a phenom that had manifested because of a special time and place—a unique appointment in an unprecedented age of expansion. He knew he could not duplicate it. That had been his dad’s mission. But what was his?

Franklin eventually figured it out, with a little help from the man upstairs. What he did was this: he “put shoe leather” on the gospel.

At least, that’s what my long-time friend/pastor, Ben, calls it. 

What that shoe leather phrase implies is this: he took his father’s life-work to the next level. Franklin did not just sit on his laurels. Nosiree.

He extended that evangelical platform from preaching to medical and disaster relief. Now it's gone worldwide antiviral. In fulfillment of Jesus' parable defining "who is my neighbor," Franklin began--and ultimately established-- Samaritan’s Purse, now a worldwide distributor of medical care, food, clothing and other essentials of human life.

Just this week, Samaritan’s Purse is sending emergency field hospitals, doctors, nurses and other helpers to Ukraine. I know this because my daughter is one member of that team. 

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/pray-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine/

Something for Everyone 

Alphabet Puzzle

 Can you solve the Alphabet puzzle phone call?

Attempted

Bribe

Crime

DonaldT

Extortion

Favor

Guiliani

Hold

Inducement

July 25 2019

Kyiv

Lawbreaking

Mulvaney

NSC

Oval office

PhoneCall

Question

Request

Sondland

Trump

Ukraine

VindmanA

VolodymyrZ

VladimirP

WestWing

XyzAffair

YuriyL

Zelensky

                  Smoke