Category Archives: history

Academia Confirms: Martin Luther Loved Poop

Fo’ shizzle.

Danielle Mead Skjelver wants to tell you all about it. You can find an entire paper authored by her on Luther’s scatological expressions at German Hercules: The Impact of Scatology on the Definition of Martin Luther as a Man 1483-1546.

Apparently in medieval and Reformation Germany, poop jokes made you more manly.

Introduction: The writings of Martin Luther are among the most studied in the world. With words sublime, he gave the Christian God back to the common man, and yet Luther also spoke with shocking cruelty and vulgarity. Martin Luther’s employment of vulgarity, and specifically scatological vulgarity, in his writings and speech has drawn criticism, embarrassment, and accusations of psychological instability. But there was power in coarse language, for Martin Luther’s combative use of scatology defined him as a virile male in sixteenth century Germany. Brash and full of bravado, the scatology of Martin Luther lent him the appearance of fearlessness. Scatology in many societies is associated with the beer hall and the military, two bastions of masculinity (analogous to today’s ‘locker-room talk’). Even among elites in the Europe of Luther’s day, scatology was not unusual. This was particularly true in German speaking lands. In a time of strong proto-nationalism, his combative and demeaning brand of scatology, which was leveled against not only a spiritual but also a foreign enemy in the Papacy, secured for him the definition of virile German male. In spite of his emaciated condition from years of fasting, and later in life in spite of corpulence, and even in spite of his public proclamations that he proudly helped his wife wash diapers, Luther was ever the man in the eyes of both allies and enemies. His virility was largely the product of his aggressive use of scatological language, for in demeaning his enemies, Luther diminished their virility. His adversaries, however, vilified his character in such a way that their attacks emphasized Luther’s masculinity.

Eighth Air Force

Eighth Air Force by Randall Jarrell

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!–shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it’s done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die–
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.

Losses

Losses

It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes — and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like ants or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)

In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores –
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn’t different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make).
We read our mail and counted up our missions –
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school –
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, “Our casualties were low.”

They said, “Here are the maps”; we burned the cities.

It was not dying — no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: “Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?”

 

Randall Jarrell

A Pilot From The Carrier

A Pilot from the Carrier

Strapped at the center of the blazing wheel,
His flesh ice-white against the shattered mask,
He tears at the easy clasp, his sobbing breaths
Misting the fresh blood lightening to flame,
Darkening to smoke; trapped there in pain
And fire and breathlessness, he struggles free
Into the sunlight of the upper sky –
And falls, a quiet bundle in the sky,
The miles to warmth, to air, to waking:
To the great flowering of his life, the hemisphere
That holds his dangling years. In its long slow sway
The world steadies and is almost still. . . .
He is alone; and hangs in knowledge
Slight, separate, estranged: a lonely eye
Reading a child’s first scrawl, the carrier’s wake –
The travelling milk-like circle of a miss
Beside the plant-like genius of the smoke
That shades, on the little deck, the little blaze
Toy-like as the glitter of the wing-guns,
Shining as the fragile sun-marked plane
That grows to him, rubbed silver tipped with flame.

Randall Jarrell

Twelve Demons Rediscovered

Twelve small sculptures of demons dating to the early 15th century have been “rediscovered” at a church in Norfolk, England. Find the story here.

The most interesting part of the story is that the demons, each matched to an apostle, appear to be triumphing over the apostles. This is confounding scholars, who have come up with admittedly weak-sauce explanations for glee and dominant physical poses of the demons.

Truth is, probably just an artist who was angry, cynical, incompetent, or all three. And now we have to find a scholarly explanation for it!

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

“A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose.” — Jarrell’s note.

A Strange Gentlemen’s Reunion

As the thirty-year anniversary of the Falklands War approaches, a retired Royal Marine finds the Argentinian soldier whose camera he plundered at the top of Two Sisters in the Falklands.

You can read the fascinating story at the Daily Mail.

This is a one of the photos the Marine, Nick Taylor, found. The Argentinian officer’s name, he later managed to discover, is Marcelo Llambias Pravas. He was awarded a medal for gallantry for being the last Argentinian soldier to abandon Two Sisters.

Please read the story, including descriptions of the campaign and fighting at Two Sisters, at the newspaper. Meanwhile here are some excerpts that emphasize the collegial and chivalric sentiments the men have for each other.

As we walk, Marcelo says: ‘I am surprised and deeply touched by Nick’s search for me. It’s not a common thing to do – as soon as I heard from him I realised he was a good man. He didn’t have to do this:  30 years have passed. He is such a gentleman.

‘Yes, we were enemies. But I think on my side –  and I assume Nick is the same – we never hated each other. This was something between Margaret Thatcher and General Galtieri: generally speaking, no Argentinian during the war hated any British  soldier. We were soldiers, we were doing our job, both sides, we were fighting for our country.

‘The Malvinas or Falklands War was very different compared to other wars where civilians or children are involved or crimes are committed. You don’t feel the same as you would if you were fighting a terrorist. It’s good to fight enemies when this enemy has the same code, the same values.

From our side there was some kind of admiration for the British forces, so, even during the combat, there was no hatred.’

Nick agrees: ‘I don’t feel any animosity towards Marcelo or the Argentine forces. At the time of the war we were young men fighting for our country and each other, both sides with similar values. It was an old-fashioned war with old-fashioned rules.’

The Wearing of The Blue: St. Paddy’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated by Anglicans (including the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutherans. And oh, yeah, the Catholic Church.

I love Irish music. The Pogues and The Dubliners are in constant rotation at the ol’ Giant Manse. I love the songs about whiskey, and lost love, and hangings, and whiskey, and shipwrecks, and immigration, and evil landlords, and whiskey. I don’t love so much the nationalistic songs. Don’t get me wrong; I like the tunes that bemoan the enmity between green and orange; I like some of the war songs, but not the ones that reek of 19th century nationalism.

The history of the conflict for Ireland is complicated and ugly. But as ugly as war and rebellion and empire can be, it was not ethnicity or religion that made women and children fair game during the 20th century. It was Republicanism. It was nationalism.

The Rebellion of 1798 was an Irish attempt to replicate the French Revolution, a godless ruthless thing if ever there was one. In fact, it was supported financially and militarily by the French Republic (this was before Napoleon). Those are the roots of Irish nationalism. And those are the roots of wearing green!

As a Reformed Christian, I know dudes who wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day. Their thinking is, Green for papists, Orange for Presbyterians. I’m Presbyterian, so I’ll wear orange.

I certainly won’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. I enjoy opposing dead and nearly-dead political movements, and Irish Republicanism is something I don’t mind saying I oppose (even though I know it will seem to some that I’m choosing to side with the bully in a playground fight). St. Patrick’s Day is a religious feast day. It ought to be celebrated as such. And as it happens, the wearing of the green has nothing to do with St. Patrick.

St. Patrick’s color used to be blue. For 1500 years it was blue. When the Republicans co-opted Irish patriotism and religion, Saint Paddy started being depicted wearing green instead of blue.

I’m not going to wear green on St. Paddy’s Day. Pinch me if you dare, little man. As much as I love my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, I’m not willing to identify with such a deeply fallen and troubled church. Or, more importantly and as mentioned above, with what the Roman church has syncretized with in Ireland: political 19th-century style nationalism.

I’m not going to wear orange. I’ve done it a couple of times, just to not wear green, and because I do trace my ecclesiastical and blood roots back to the Orange of Presbyterianism. But I also don’t want to be an ass. I am a bit of a provocateur, but I recognize that sometimes it’s too much. Wearing orange can make it seem like you’re saying, “Sure wish the fighting in Ireland were back on, and that the Protestants were kicking some papist butt.” Which is not a good thing to say.

Consider wearing blue this St. Paddy’s Day, as I am. How irenic of us it will be! There’s a shade of blue actually known as St. Patrick’s Blue. On this day you can with sartorial ease state your desire that the Western churches reunite one day in sweet peace and harmony.

And you’ll also be taking a stand against green beer. Which is no bad thing.

The Problem With An Impersonal Justice System

The American staff sergeant who slaughtered sixteen Afghan civilians in the middle of the night, including women and children, then turned himself in and confessed, “could get the death penalty”.

Could get the death penalty? Are you kidding?

I’ve written elsewhere about the message of justice within the context of the fighting in Afghanistan. As with that post, the emphasis here is not what sort of message is sent to the Afghan government, or the Taliban, or Muslim extremists, or the American people. Well, actually, it is, but only secondarily.

I’m not here concerned with

Relations between the United States and Afghanistan, which had spiraled into violence after the unintentional burning of Korans by American forces and other perceived insults, had begun to show small signs of healing.

But all that’s in jeopardy now.

The massacre cannot, must not, be allowed to overshadow that legacy. More than 2.2 million Americans have served in these wars. (link)

What does that have to do with justice?

The most important thing that is at risk right now is that justice will not be served at all. Forget all the groups that are watching this with interest. The machinery of American justice has begun to grind, and given that it is just that, machinery, it will fail to fulfill its primary function: doing justice. Not “dispensing” justice, as if it were a machine.Doingjustice.

I’m not talking about the death penalty here. I think it’s safe to assume that the military will execute this soldier. And that is right. I don’t expect the miscarriage of justice to come in the verdict or sentence. I expect it to come in the manner of the trial and judgment. The U.S. may execute the man, but it’s not going to be personal.

And it ought to be.

It’s personal for 60-year-old Abdul Samad. Eleven of his family were killed by this man.

Again, this is not about the war in Afghanistan. But the differences in culture and worldview make our views of justice stand out just a bit more. Understand that I would want what I’m about to propose for some family in Ohio if they were victimized in a similar way.

Justice may certainly be impartial, but it can never be impersonal or disinterested.

Justice ought to be about vindication and revenge. Yes, I said revenge.

The whole point of a justice system is to take vengeance out of the hand of the private citizen. It’s to put vengeance in a context of punishment and weregild; once those are dealt out, the matter is over. Clans don’t spend generations battling clans because of one crime. The justice system does not exist to “keep order”. It exists to protect. To vindicate. To, insofar as is possible, to redeem. All much more personal concepts that “order”. Order dehumanizes. Protection and vindication humanize.

Unfortunately we think justice ought to be impersonal. We killed Osama bin Laden and hid his body, as if we were ashamed. We should have put his head on a pike. But all we think about is maintaining order; people would have freaked out!

I have absolutely no problem with the U.S. military resisting Afghan claims to hold this trial themselves. But to hold the trial in the United States, as if it had nothing to do with Mr. Samad?

Here is what justice would be. Pay out the weregild, as has been our custom throughout this war. Try the murderer at his base. Publicly. When he’s found guilty, execute him publicly. Maybe even, not as a concession to Islam, but as a nod to our Anglo-Saxon legal origins, put his head on a pike for all to see.

Because this is personal. For a lot of people.