Nobody There

 On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.

But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. When they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were perplexed about this, behold two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing. The women were terrified,  bowing their faces to the ground.

The men said to them, "Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here, but he is risen. Remember . . . how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men to be crucified . . . and on the third day rise again!

And this, my friends, was the greatest event in all of history. There is no other human accomplishment that can compare with it. 

Believe and live forever with the one and only person to be executed as a criminal, to the point of death . . . and then live to tell about it!

Traveler's Rest

the Beastly Archetype

 About 2600 years ago, a very wise man, Daniel, was living in the empire known as Babylon. A Hebrew youth, he had been taken captive by the Babylonian army when the emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, conquered the kingdom of Judah.

Daniel was a seer; he had an uncanny knack for seeing events accurately in historical context. But even beyond that special awareness, he was able to see clearly where history was headed.

He was prescient.

In the book that was written about this man, it is written that the emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, recognizes the young prophet’s gifting. So the emperor leans on Daniel for advice about upcoming events.

And so, later, a book was written about Daniel; it makes a written record of what this extraordinarily wise man said while he was alive on this earth.

In the 11th chapter of the book of Daniel, for instance, we find a curiously prescient  description of a certain history-making leader:

“Then shall arise . . . a raiser of taxes in the glory of the kingdom; but within a few days he shall be destroyed . . . 

“And in his place shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom, but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. . .

“And after the league made with him, he shall work deceitfully; for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.”

 

In 20th-century history, we find a disturbing parallel.

The last Kaiser of Germany was deposed at the conclusion of World War I. 

The name of that royal family was “Hohenzollern,” which, translated, means Raiser of Taxes.

 The reign of their last regent,  Kaiser Wilhelm II,  came to a world-war end when his authority in Germany was cancelled at the conclusion of World War I and then replaced by a a modern governmental arrangement called "republic." In this case it was named the  Weimar Republic, after the name of the city where the plans and documents were officiated.

But the Weimar Republic did not last. It was severely unstable during the 1920’s and ’30’s. By 1930’s, a dictatorial madmen, Adolf Hitler, had manipulated the desperate discontent of his German countrymen, a rage drummed up because of to their post-WWI dire economic circumstances, on which Hitler blamed the Allies, France and Britain etc. But that vile person's evil genius played advantageously upon their rage. Ultimately Adolf Hitler, by flattery of the German people’s defeated  prideful identity, crafted their discontent into an accession to power for his National Socialist (Nazi) party.

So we notice in this 20th century turn of events, an historical parallel. . .

In parallel to certain ancient historical events in Babylon foretold by Daniel, a “raiser of taxes” is replaced by a “vile person.”

In  Daniel’s prescient report of events long ago we notice his identification of the historical beastly archetype, now recurring twice in modern times:

“And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper until the indignation be accomplished . . . 

“Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor what women want, nor regard any god; for he shall magnify himself above all.

“But instead, he shall honor the god of forces.”

Now, in the 21st-century Ukrainians are forced to suffer the manipulations of a contemporary manifestation of that  beastly archetype, identified long ago by the prophet Daniel: a lawless dictator who does as he pleases without regard for God nor Man:

In both cases, Hitler's and Putin's, their excuse for war desecration is claimed upon rescuing their favored ethnic population from isolation in an adjoining country. For Hitler, the excuse was for Sudeten ethnic Germans in Czech lands; for Putin the fake justification is the Russians in Ukraine/Donbas.

It's forceful excuse for beastly murderous destruction. . . with no legitimately moral justification, but honoring instead the "god of forces," as identified long ago by the ancient prophet, not the God of Justice and Mercy.

We must not let Vlad the MAD get away with this. Eighty-four years ago, Hitler got away with his taking of Czechoslovakia, and look how long it took to fix that problem. . . a whole damned world war!

Smoke

Justice Jackson's Odyssey

 There they were, unseen

Two old white guys

sounding the sirens of q-slime politics

trump-contorted to the core

steeped in lifelong privilege

pickled in juice of the Confederacy

unable to detect the winds of change

unwilling to catch a ride on

the winds of liberty.

There they were,

immune to correction

too bent out of shape to admit defeat

there they were unseen, hiding,

cowering in a cloak room 

unwilling to show their faces

refusing to show respect 

for a a black lady with glasses

a judge who had outsmarted 47 old white guys,

out-maneuvered them with her integrity.

The Judge, by her expertise, maintaining

professional demeanor, steering

skilfully through straits

of false accusation, navigating

judiciously o’er currents 

of curated confusion

past confederate collusion

and priileged illusion.

There she was, even

advocating Antonin originalism.

Jackson stood her ground 

like an old hickory

planted by the water

doing what she oughter

to hold high

the scales of Justice

at the highest level.

King of Soul

Between Kabul and Doha

In summer of 2021, my daughter Katie and her husband, Dom, told us us that Dom would soon be suspending his Air Force Reserve duty to reactivate for the Kabul evacuation.

As a C17 pilot, Dom would be returning to active duty to fly transport jets in our US evacuation from Afghanistan. 

I was enthusiastic about Dom’s acceptance of that mission. I encouraged him with the assurance that it would be a job— long time coming— that needed to be done.

In August, 2021 Major Dom and his USAirForce crew delivered 116 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne and its leadership to Kabul airport, to defend the air field during the evacuation. Hours later, he and copilot Lt. Kyle Anderson piloted our first evacuation flight out of Kabul airport. That fateful day was August 15, 2021.

But there was a problem. 

Upon landing at Kabul on the previous night, the crew discovered that the runway had been breeched. There were unexpected, unauthorized people out there. Their presence was an unwelcomed threat. In their surprise, our crew had no way of knowing if the trespassers were armed and/or dangerous. Nor did the two pilots know if they could effectively perform a takeoff without danger to their own crew, the aircraft, and the trespassers themselves. 

As our crew learned later, those people were desperate to escape the Taliban. They had been congregating in darkness  along the runway, hoping to get a place on a big jet to fly out of Afghanistan.

In spite of efforts by our ground personnel to contain them, some of those unauthorized evacuees managed to sneak out  there onto the runway that night and continued to do so the next day. 

This was no small problem for a big transport jet mounting up speed on a runway. With takeoff speed mounting, that dangerous “breech”—people— on the runway suddenly required manuevers that the pilots had never before performed, feats of aircraft control that Dom had not thought possible. But that day’s sudden security breech— real, live, people— demanded that sudden, improvised extraordinary feats be performed with the controls of that a big C-17.

Even so, intensely thorough Air Force training had prepared pilot and crew to make the best of the situation, as they strove, skilfully, to get airborne into the wild blue yonder. 

But, praise God, flight Commander Dom and his crew managed to get airborne with 153 passengers who were delivered safely to Qatar three hours later. They thus completed not only the mission they had been given - but much more beyond. It was the first non-combatant evacuation flight of what would become a two-week endeavor by the US military to evacuate as many people as possible from Afghanistan.

By late afternoon, EST of 16 Aug—insofar as my wife can recall dates and times— our daughter Katie had reported in a phone conversation that Dom had said something about “the most difficult day of his life.”

At Travis Air Force base, April 1, 2022, Lt. Colonel Dominic Calderon, my son-in-law, received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Also receiving the award were his crew. Pictured here, Dom is standing on the right. Behind him is Copilot, 1st Lieutenant Kyle Anderson. Standing with them next to the C17 picture is Staff Sergeant Dennis J. Gonzalez-Furman of 437th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, who served as Crew Chief, performing aircraft maintainence tasks. On the left side, standing next to the picture is loadmaster Master Sergeant Silva J. Foster, with loadmaster Senior Airman Michael Alan Geller on the far left.

The Distinguished Flying Cross Medal is awarded to any officer or enlisted person for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.

The award was authorized by an Act of Congress in 1926.

In receiving the award, these airmen joined the ranks of nine other historic aviators, including Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post and the Wright brothers.

Together with the the crews of more than 200 later evacuating flights, they performed the mission that had been assigned to them.

They got the job done: a flying in the dark, no walk in the park. 

Smoke 

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