warpeace everywhere

And of course, today is when I stumble upon this article.

To sum it up:
"Mr Lavryonov, the official behind the controversial new project, said he wanted to give Russians a place where they could come and remember 1812.
  "Finding the remains will really be complicated because two hundred years have gone by. <...> But I think if we want we can find them. <...> There is now no place where people can come and bow down and lay wreathes," he said."

You know, I just got this vision of all these Russians who've been all torn up inside because they haven't anywhere to put a wreath in commemoration of the War of 1812...

C'mon guys, just re-read your favorite passages from War and Peace while listening to Overture to 1812 and snacking on some Borodinsky bread (it's quite good, I promise).

      Jokes aside, I am all for remembering history. Really. I've spent many days and nights writing unsuccessful verses about the dangers of collective amnesia, neglect of history, and misunderstanding of memory and its powers.
     But scrounging up some remains, taking them from the place they've been, however messily, buried for 200 years and moving them in an attempt to ape the French... that's not remembering history, that's making things up. Not to mention that it is also a great expense, and most of the country lives far below the poverty line.

     Borodino, the place where the incredibly long and bloody battle happened and from where the remains are to be transported, is about 75 miles from Moscow.  That is where all those soldiers fell.  That is the place that everyone should know about. You can't just decide that it's inconveniently located, and move some bones over to Moscow, so everyone can come tip their hats. I mean, one can do all that. Maybe that's the whole point: it's a yet another bout of "look what I can do," except now nobody's really looking.

*

location: Butler library, 8th floor

 

<-----  unrelated
         [also known as non sequitur picture of [unspecified amount of time]]

decelebration

 "May 1945. Zwettle, Austria.
The war is over."

       May 9th is a grand ole holiday for people like my grandmother, who fought in World War II on the Soviet side. The Russians are, doubtlessly, attempting to outdo last year's parade. To me, the spectacle gets sadder year after year because first of all, the people who survived the atrocity are becoming considerably more scarce, and secondly, somehow, it feels that celebrating peace with a gun and tank show is perhaps a bit uncouth.
      Then again, the argument could be made that it is not peace we are celebrating, but military victory, and so the tanks and the guns and the marching soldiers are a demonstration of power and a way to tell the world that Russia's still got those World War II-style chops  But the diminishing handful of frail veterans that march along, or frequently, wheelchair along, should be a reminder of utter shame; these people are poorly taken care of, especially now, and especially if they don't live in Moscow. (And here I must add that I am fully aware that Russia is far from alone in putting on such parades. Everyone does it; this is just an example that came to mind because of the date, and it is equally as unpleasant to me when any other country puts on similar shows).

Tucson, AZ. 2005-ish

       For the fiftieth anniversary of the war's "end", my grandmother got, from the government, a set of spoons that are made of such crappy aluminum that they bend with the lightest of pressures (I've even made these spoons take on lovely spiral shapes) and have cheap, bright silver glaze on them, akin to the eccentric shade of paint that covered the mandatory statue of Lenin at my childhood railway station.
       So what is it that we're celebrating, exactly? A lack of collective memory beyond the obvious demonstration of brute force and the soon-to-be-holy relics? To my grandmother, this day means more than most days. But so long as we continue to celebrate ends of wars with tools of war, the happiness and relief this day brought to people like my grandparents sixty-six years ago, is, in my mind, dampened.