So there we were, lying around the office when...



Dr. Kurt Lisso, Leipzig's City Treasurer, his wife and daughter after taking poison to avoid surrender to U.S. troops, Leipzig 1945.  Detail.  [courtesy www.masters-of-photography.com]

When I realized Margaret and Nathan [see yesterday's post] had the same dates, I began rummaging for her photographs, and given my tendency to fetishize everything including this blog, I've come up with all these rules about the sorts of images I'm allowed to use and how they have to be cropped and resized (and how they have to relate to the title which has to relate to the previous post but also be a link to a specific association with the year 1904, as well as pertain to current events, and I have to do all of this within an allotted time frame... and you get the idea) -- but this one could stand on its own.  I did crop it, of course, but in case you were wondering, the original would take your breath away.

I don't know why, but I see Margaret as an American version of a Muriel Spark heroine (think The Girls of Slender Means, or A Far Cry From Kensington) -- that petite but plucky gal with pink cheeks who survived the War and knows a thing or two about getting around in Life, confident in her Catholic faith but not one to rub your nose in it -- and so Margaret arrives in Leipzig with the troops and says to that soldier leaning in the doorway having a smoke, "Hey Joe, get me a ladder, will ya?" and then giving a "don't-even-think-about-it-buster" look to the boys because she's wearing a skirt as she climbs up to frame her shot -- see, you can tell the camera's elevated in order to take in the whole room and its occupants.  Talk about making a crime scene look beautiful. 

I also had in mind the news today that according to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI will be recruiting thousands of covert informants in the U.S. [emphasis added] "to boost its intelligence capabilities."

Now, I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but in the current climate, and given everything else that's going on (unless you're only interested in Lindsay or who's taking Bob Barker's place on the Price is Right, in which case, God help you), I found this latest bit of news ... disconcerting.  Call me crazy, but just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean the world isn't out to get me.  I mean, I'm not some Nazi sympathizer, obvs, but I look at that picture above and I can almost -- almost begin to imagine a time when you might actually say to yourself, gee, maybe there's a faster and easier alternative to what's coming down the street.

Of course, that's ridiculous and not to worry, it's not a case of suicide infection, given the events of the past week (see previous posts).  But a world in which your friends and neighbors are being enlisted to spy on each other, being offered bribes and rewards and stuff to inform -- that doesn't make you even a little nervous?  I'm not referring to you or me of course -- I mean, hello, when you think about what, as kids, we were willing to do for a candy bar and a coke ...

No, I'm wondering about the young folks today.   Do you think they'll sell us all down the river?  Or will they resist?  Will they fight back? 

It's not a simple question.  I lived in Ohio.  I remember Kent State.  I knew kids who were ROTC and I knew boys who signed up for the National Guard.  And then there were the rest of us.  And I remember that day came and we looked at each other and said, "Dear God, they're shooting at us."  I remember that sickening realization, that awful clarity, even then, that this is what we'd been headed for, this is where the bright noble dreams of the 60s had been leading to, all along. 

Call me silly, or naive, but as M. says, looking back, you realize there are moments when History breaks your heart.