Coe Circle

Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Frémiet in Coe Circle

Coe Circle is at the intersection of Cesar Chavez and Glisan on Portland's eastside. I go by it every time we visit Providence Hospital. I never noticed the statue there even though I've been by this place at least a dozen times. Of course, I'm normally preoccupied with navigating this intersection, I don't have time for sight-seeing.

This week required taking a new route and while I'm perusing Google Maps a photo of this statue comes up. Dang, that's shiny. Funny I never noticed it before. While it might be a big statue, relatively speaking, from a 100 yards away it kind of fades into the background.

The statue is made of bronze, but bronze wouldn't stay that shiny, would it? No, it's shiny because it's gilt, which I take to mean it's covered with a microscopically thin layer of gold. Supposedly Coe Circle is a park, but getting to it is a bit of a trick as there is no parking and no cross-walks.

From the Wikipedia page:

The statue was added to Coe Circle in 1925. It was one of four statues given by Henry Waldo Coe to the City of Portland. It was made from the original molds of Frémiet's statue, which Coe saw on a visit to France. Portland's statue arrived from France in 1924 and was dedicated on Memorial Day, May 30, 1925, honoring the Doughboys of World War I. Dr. Coe chose to gift a statue of Joan of Arc because she was the patron saint of the Doughboys while they fought in Europe during World War I. It is reported that the Doughboys would sing Joan of Arc, They Are Calling You as they marched into battle. Dr. Coe is quoted as saying the singing of this song, “...had much to do in reviving the drooping spirits of the French and bringing victory out of defeat” and at the unveiling ceremony of the statue the Royal Rosarian quartet sang that song.

And just who was this guy Coe? More Wikipedia:

While in the Dakota Territory, Coe met the young Theodore Roosevelt, who had gone there to regain his health. Their friendship lasted until Roosevelt's death in 1919.

He and his wife Viola (Boley) Coe, also a physician, moved to Portland, Oregon in 1890 where they focused on treating nervous and mental diseases, and where he owned and operated the Morningside Hospital. 

 

Goddess of Kannon Statue

Goddess of Kannon statue, Japan

Sendai Daikannon, officially known as the Sendai Tendou Byakue Daikannon, is a large statue located in Sendai, Japan. It portrays a woman, the bodhisattva Byakue Kannon holding the cintamani gem in her hand.

It is the tallest statue of a goddess in Japan and the tenth-tallest statue in the world, at 330 feet. The statue itself is 302 feet tall, while the pedestal brings its total height to 330 feet. At the time of its completion in 1991, it was the tallest statue in the world, but it was surpassed by Ushiku Daibutsu in 1993. - Wikipedia

Christ the Redeemer

We just finished rewatching Kleo. We pulled up Netflix the other night looking for something new to watch and we see that there is a new season of Kleo available. We remember watching it before, but not well enough to pick up where we left off, so we decided to just start watching it again from the beginning and see what happens. Maybe our memories will be jostled and we'll say 'oh yeah, I remember this'. We did remember bits and pieces of it, but not enough to get bored so and we ended up rewatching the whole thing. It's pretty great, it's a quirky little show, full of oddball characters, curious settings and bright colors.

Kleo is an East German assassin employed off-the-books by the Stasi, the East German Secret Police. She is sent to West Berlin through a tunnel to kill a man in a nightclub. She returns to East Berlin and shortly thereafter is arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison on vague charges of treason.

At the time of her arrest she is pregnant. On arrival in the prison she gets in a fight with a girl gang and gets the stuffing kicked out of her and she loses the baby. Not only does she lose the baby her organs are so damaged that she will not be able to ever have a child. Now she has another reason to seek revenge.

Just recently I realized that most women's greatest desire is to have children. This might be because this desire is similar to breathing - it's such a fundamental part of us that we don't even think about it. I know that when I was younger I didn't want to have kids. It wasn't until I was in my early 30's that this changed.

But back to our story. Kleo is in prison, it's 1989, the Berlin Wall comes down, all political prisoners are released, Kleo among them and she wants to know why she was sent to prison when, as far as she knew, she was just doing her job. So she goes looking for answers and at every step of the way the next person she encounters would rather kill her than tell her why, but she being an assassin, she kills them instead. 

Eventually she learns that the whole thing is about a secret pact East Germany made with President Ronald Reagan that would keep the East German government propped up with loads of cash. What? Why you might ask? Because the plot requires a secret that a whole bunch of people are willing to die to protect, that's why. It doesn't make any sense to me, but who knows? There has always been all kinds of skullduggery going on, so yeah, sure, why not? Whatever, we'll pretend Reagan made a secret pact with Erich Honecker. Was it really secret? Britannica has this to say:

"Under Honecker’s rule, East Germany was one of the more repressive but also one of the most prosperous of the Soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe. He allowed the growth of some trade and travel ties with West Germany in return for West German financial aid."

Eventually we find that the secret is in documents contained in a red suitcase, so for the rest of the show we are chasing this red suitcase."

Note with coordinates

A few seconds before the end of episode 7, Margot Honecker (aka The Purple Witch) hands the above slip of paper to Ramona, another secret Stasi assassin, who just happens to be nine months pregnant.

Hiding Place for the Red Suitcase
Episode 8, 27 minute mark

Episode 8 has Kleo and her sidekick Sven finding the suitcase in the base of the above statue. I asked Google Lens to identify it and while it found a bunch of very similar statues, it did not find an exact match.

Christ the Redeemer

There is a similar statue in a similar location on the Chile-Argentine border, but you can see that while there are similarities, it is not the same one. Which makes me wonder - where did they find the statue for the show?

Central Chile, South America
Blue marker is from coordinates on the note
Red marker is the location of the statue

Anyway, because I gotta be me, I plotted the locations of the coordinates from the note and the actual statue on Google Maps.  The coordinates that the Purple Witch gave to Ramona point to the middle of the Atacama desert. No statue there.

Update December 2025 corrected a couple of typos.

Statue of Unity

The Statue of Unity at Kevadia in Narmada district of Gujarat

The Statue of Unity is the world's tallest. It is fairly new, construction was completed in 2018. The statue  alone is 600 feet which is four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty. It dwarfs all the other big statues like the Spring Temple Buddha and Russia's The Motherland Calls.

Tall Statues

Looking over my old posts for big statues I only found a few, but I surprised to see how many posts I had done about more normal size statues.

P.S. Reminds me of all the giant statues / buildings we see in future London in The Peripheral:

London in The Peripheral

Pic of the Day

Giant statue of a man. Coney Island, NYC, ca 1960.

Picture showed up on the YouTube tune Mister Glenn by Little Willie John. The tune's title refers to John Glenn, the astronaut, so you might think this is a statue of an astronaut. A Google Image Search turns up several other instances of this pic, and they all refer to it as an astronaut or spaceman.

    I think it's a welder. The helmet looks like an arc welder's face mask. His arms are bare, which would be a bad thing if you were a spaceman. It's also a bad thing if you are an arc welder, but then that shirt doesn't look very substantial, so maybe he puts on a jacket when he goes to work. Baring his arms lets the girls see how strong he is. This is Coney Island after all, so entertainment is the highest priority. I don't know what the wire (or tube) running into his helmet is. Could be fresh air, arc welding produces fumes, and down in the bottom of a ship they could accumulate. Or it might be an intercom, though I find that unlikely.

   It's nice of the shoe shine boy to pose for the picture. It gives us a sense of scale. I'm thinking the statue is about 30 feet tall.

Update December 7, 2015. Debra Jane Seltzer of Roadside Architecture dot com was kind enough to reply to my inquiry:

I describe this statue at the top of this page:http://www.roadarch.com/giants/ifother2.html
While the helmet is similar to one worn by a welder, International Fiberglass did not market "Welders" in its catalog materials -- but they did list "Spacemen."

A welder's mask only covers the face, it is not a complete helmet. You can't tell from this picture, but from the pics on this page you can see it's a full helmet. Debra also has

• a page on flickr with more photos of roadside Americana. and 
• a blog where she posts some of her recent acquisitions.

P.S. Roberta X identifies it as 'Muffler Man'. Muffler men weld, so it could be 'welder man' as well as 'space man'. Just don't get to persnickety about the helmet.

Peter the Great

Peter the Great Statue, Moscow, Russia

I'm reading a story about UFOs in Russia and there is a map, but all the labels are in Russian. 

St. Petersburg Russia Ring Road

So I go to Google Maps and look at St. Petersburg and I see there are a couple of very long bridges across the bay (Gulf of Finland). So I go looking for the story about how they came to be. Not finding much, I go to B1M, where I don't find much except a video about BIM (Building Information Modeling) in Russia and a view of this statue appears. I think that's the weirdest statue I've ever seen. Also very cool. Naturally there are a bunch of ignorant fools who don't like it, but that's always the way it is whenever anybody does anything cool.

Jerrie Mock

Comrade Misfit put up a post about Jerrie Mock this morning. It didn't mean much until I followed the links and found she flew from Columbus, Ohio. That rings a bell! I was in Columbus then, and I remember there was a big fuss about Mock somebody. This happened right around the time Kennedy got shot, and that kind of overshadowed everything from that time period. Poking around, I came across this newspaper clipping:

Front page of The Columbus Dispatch, January 19, 1964, Via dispatch.com

So it wasn't just Columbus, it was Bexley, the same small suburb of Columbus where I went to junior high school.

Statue of Jerrie Mock at The Works

     More digging uncovered a statue erected at The Works in Newark, Ohio. Newark is about 40 miles East of Columbus. After we moved to the farm near Highwater, Newark became the local 'big city', i.e. where you went if you needed something more than a loaf of bread. I'm not sure why Newark got the statue.

Jerrie's flight path. Joan's flight path.

At the same time that Jerrie was making her flight, Joan Merriam Smith from California was making her own attempt.

Three Eight Charlie - Amazon has one copy of her book available for $500. Phoenix Graphics is selling paperback versions for $18. Kindle doesn't count.

P.S. I was delivering The Dispatch then. Did you see what it said on the front page? 208 pages! I don't think you could get 208 pages if you piled up an entire months worth of The Oregonian.

Djibouti Notes

Djibouti

I finally finished reading Djibouti by Elmore Leonard and now I'm finishing up my notes. 

The story is about Dara, a middle aged woman, who is in Djibouti with her assistant Xavier to film a documentary about the pirates operating out of Somalia. They meet Idris, a pirate leader, Billy, an American zillionaire, and his girlfriend Helen. Billy has a big sailboat that he sails himself. There is also Harry who is some kind of loose cannon with connections to the CIA or the military, it's never really clear. Jama is a full-blooded American terrorist. He got locked up in prison in the USA and converted to Islam and kept going.

The first 2/3 of the book are a bit of a slog. Eventually it occurred to me that Elmore may have been writing the way people talk which doesn't always translate into smooth reading. Also, in many of the scenes we have Xavier and Dara reviewing the films they have recorded that day and talking about whether what they have is good enough to be in their film.

Around about the 2/3's of the way though the book, things get lively, or rather deadly, with bodies falling left right and center. It's kind of a shock because up till then it's all cocktails, dancing and bravado.

Billy has 600 nitro express rifle. He loves to talk about it and mentions it every chance he gets. He also loves to show it off.

Cameron Mitchell shooting the .600 Nitro Express
Cam's Wild Life

LNG Tanker

While this story is meandering along, there is also a very ominous ship lurking in the background. It's a LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) tanker. Some Al-Qaeda thugs have managed to get on board and place some explosive charges that can be detonated with a call from a cell phone, all you need is the number. (And the ship has to be in range of a cell phone tower, along with a subscription that allows it to receive calls in that region of the world. Never mind this, the story never gets that far, I'm just picking nits.)

Jama has the number and is trying to decide on the best time to blow it up. His Al-Qaeda bosses have canceled this operation. This might have something to do with the gas coming from Qatar and the elite Qatarians support for terrorists. You know, if Al-Qaeda bites the hand that feeds them, they might not be getting any more doggy treats. None of that is in the story, it's just seems obvious to me. But Jama doesn't care. He likes being a terrorist and killing people.

The best place to blow up the tanker would be at an east coast port in the USA, if the gas gets delivered there. Everyone is aware of the situation, but the terrorists are no longer on the ship and no explosives have been found, so maybe there's nothing to worry about. But not finding any explosives does not mean there aren't any there, so maybe we should be worried. Billy's solution is to shoot it with his Nitro Express rifle and blow it up where it is, in the middle of the Red Sea. Multi-million dollar loss for the gas company, but not a disaster for people living around the delivery port.

While this topic is under discussion Xavier mentions the 1937 gas explosion disaster at the New London School in east Texas:

The New London School Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Fascinating Horror

While I was reading I took sporadic notes. Here are some things that get mentioned:

Page 45

USS Vella Gulf

Page 77

USS Bainbridge

Maersk Alabama Hijacking

Page 80 Aphrodite thousand foot long LNG tanker owned by bin Laden

Page 110 Remember we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third world country so they sit on this till the twins go away.

Page 199 'the Song telling us "The sweet things in life to you were just loaned. So how can you lose what you never owned?"' - Rudy Vallee

Statue de Foch
Place du Trocadero, 75016 Paris France

Page 202 We have this passage:

Cars came around to take different streets off the Place Verdun, circling past the statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 1851-1929, on a pedestal in the center of the plaza, the single word J'Attaque below his name.

Xavier said, "Ferdinand was asked what he'd do if surrounded by Germans and he said he'd attack. I believe it was at Verdun he lost somethin like eighty thousand men j'attackin." He said, "There's your man there."

So I go looking for Place Verdun and a statue of Marshal Foch in Djibouti but all I find it this poster:

Commandant Marchand - Across Africa Book Cover

Musee de L'Armee Invalides Page 34 

"In 1896, Captain Marchand was appointed to lead the Congo-Nile mission to the White Nile River, with the aim of establishing a French protectorate in southern Egypt. Marchand led a team of eight French officers and 150 Senegalese skirmishers up the Congo, Ubangi and Bahr el-Ghazal rivers, arriving in Fashoda on 10 July 1898. They built a fort and raised the French tricolour flag. In September, the Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener arrived at Fashoda. French and British colonialist ambitions came face to face at Fashoda, a standoff that ended in December 1898 when the French government ordered its troops to retreat to Djibouti."

Eventually I realized Xavier was just giving an example of a particularly bull-headed soldier to describe Buck, the soldier they were meeting. Although the French were in Africa, Marshal Foch was not.

Page 203 plant Epimedium otherwise known as horny goat weed

Page 215 Billy is talking about Medal-of-Honor winners:

• Joe Foss shot down 26 Zeke's over the Solomons in his Grumman Wildcat and later became governor of South Dakota.
• Major Bing Bang Bong flying a P-38 shot down 40 doing it during his tour and gave his life testing a jet. 
• Another Ace, Pappy Boyington, a Sioux Indian, shot down his 26th over Rabul. Later that same day some nip sent Pappy down in flames. 
• I forgot the name of the Navy pilot in a Dauntless crashing into a cruiser after he'd been hit. Another hero giving his life for his country, all Medal of Honor winners. He's probably referring to Colin Kelly who was flying a Vindicator, which is very similar to the Dauntless.

Page 216 Sterling Hayden doing Jack D Ripper in the movie Dr. Strangelove

Page 217 1 cubic foot of liquefied natural gas will make 12,400 cubic feet of flammable gas air mix

Chapter 31 

Page 230 Golfo de Tadjoura
Page 243 Big Mucha Island

Previous posts: 

• Djibouti
• Chartres House

Melilla, Spain

Model of original Melilla Fortress

Storming Spain's Razor-Wire Fence: In episode one of our series, VICE News correspondent Milène Larsson travels to the border between Morocco and Spain, where West Africans in their thousands storm the razor-wire-clad fences.  - from a blurb for a VICE video.

Cool, continental drift has accelerated into overdrive! Europe and Africa are colliding, tsunamis and earthquakes run rampant! Real-life disaster movies in the making, film at eleven.
    Uh, no, not really. Morocco and Spain are still separated by the Mediterranean Sea. The closest they ever get is the strait of Gibraltar. Gibraltar, now that's fortuitous. Seems Spain has a city on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, much like England has the rock of Gibraltar on the coast of Spain. Actually Spain has a couple of cities in Morocco. Naturally, Morocco thinks these cities should belong to them. Spain disagrees, hence the fence.
    Melilla has been there a long time, and it's been Spanish for quite a while. Thought this was curious:

General Francisco Franco used the city as one of his staging grounds for his Nationalist rebellion in 1936, starting the Spanish Civil War. A statue of him – the last statue of Franco in Spain – is still prominently featured. - Wikipedia

I've been wondering about refugees in general. Seems like if someone is tearing up your homeland you might want to try and do something about it. Standing up by yourself against thugs is a good way to get yourself killed, so I can see how exit stage left might be reasonable choice. With a little organizing and some money for weapons, you'd think the people could form a militia that could eliminate these thugs. But that doesn't happen. Why is that? Capable organizers do not exist, or they are too busy combating other organized militias to worry about a few bands of thugs. And if people leave, well that's great, gets rid of a bunch of people and saves us the trouble of killing them.
    I am beginning to see how a state religion could be a good thing.

Update August 2015. Added pictures. Added the picture of the fortress because I like models. Added the picture of Franco because there is movement afoot to get rid of all traces of Franco and I thought we should remember what evil looks like.

Theater of War

Statue of Genghis Khan at his memorial site in Mongolia. Jeremy Hainsworth AP

Good post about war as theater: 

Belmont Club: The Glamor of Evil by Richard Fernandez

Richard has appeared here before.

Wikipedia page about the statue.

Uncanny

A slate statue of Alan Turing at Bletchley Park museum.Bletchley Park Trust 

 

Popular Science has a good story about the recent Turing test "victory". It also talks about the "uncanny valley", another point on the man-machine interface.

The statue shown above is kind of cute, using slate instead of cardboard, it reminds me of 3-D sculpture puzzles. It's a crude example of a digital representation of something from the analog world. It's crude enough that you know it's only a representation, not the real thing. That is not always the case with today's digital technology. CNC milling machines can now create round objects that are indistinguishable from lathe turned objects, at least to the touch.

Via Stu and his far-flung correspondents.

John Cabot

Statue of John Cabot at Landfall Provincial Park
Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, Canada

David Warren (Essays in Idleness) got me started. He's talking about John Cabot arriving in Bonaviasta, Rumor has it there is a statue of John Cabot, the English, er Italian, explorer in Newfoundland. But is there really? Google Maps thinks there is and gives me a placemark, but this is as close as Streetview will go.

Cabot sailed across the North Atlantic to Newfoundland in 1497, five years after Columbus 'discovered' the New World.

Glacier Pilot Notes

Six years ago I was reading Glacier Pilot by Beth Day, a story about Bob Reeve, one of the pioneers of aviation in Alaska. Now I'm trying to clean out some old drafts, so here are some items that caught my eye.

Alaska
p. 25 Nunatak - A nunatak is the summit or ridge of a mountain that protrudes from an ice field or glacier that otherwise covers most of the mountain or ridge.
p. 26 Williwaw - a sudden violent squall blowing offshore from a mountainous coast.

Aviation pioneers, page 28:

• Lindbergh
• Doolittle
• Twining
• Curt Le May

Before Bob went to Alaska, he spent some time in South America. Pan American Grace airlines, aka PANAGRA, used several different airplanes when they started email service to Santiago Chile (page 38).

Loening Amphibian

Fairchild FC-2 flying over the Andes mountains

Ford Trimotor refueling in Guatemala 1933

Sikorsky S-38

The Sikorsky S-38 made an appearance in the movie The Aviator:


The Aviator (2004) - Howard and Kath Flying Scene (Spanish Subtitles)

New-to-me terms:
p. 38 sin publicadad - Spanish for 'without advertising'.
p. 41 Hegira - the journey the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers took from Mecca to Medina.
p. 43 gambling - "Ship, Captain, and Crew" is a dice game where players bet tokens (like "gold booty") and try to roll a 6 (Ship), 5 (Captain), and 4 (Crew) in that order, within three rolls, setting them aside to collect the score from the remaining two dice (Cargo) for the highest score to win the pot. It's a push-your-luck game that can be played for ante to a pot, with the winner taking all the tokens. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry makes an appearance on page 41.

Flying between Santiago Chile and Buenos Aires Argentina means flying over the Andes mountains, and since aircraft weren't pressurized, you needed to find a pass. Uspallata Pass with statue of Christ was one.

1911 Uspallata Pass

Wikipedia article. Google 3D map.

Christ the Redeemer of the Andes

The statue of Christ the Redeemer is the hiding place for the red suitcase in Kleo.

Civilization

The Stone Guest. Don Juan and Doña Ana by Ilya Repin 1885
Presumably the statue standing in the background is the 'Stone Guest'.

Civilization goes hand in hand with culture and society. I was going to say one was based on the other, but I couldn't decide which came first.
    All these Islamic Jihadist terrorist attacks are spurring some people to try and figure out what the difference is between us and them, because there is obviously a difference, but facile explanations for their actions do not seem to explain anything at all.
    Marcel points us to a post by Joseph Moore that does some good work in this vein. As a bonus, I picked up a couple of new terms:

• Stone Guest - Statue of man killed by Don Juan that takes him to hell.
• Mary Shelley - I recognized the name but didn't recall that she wrote Frankenstein until I looked her up. She hung out with a number of other famous people back in the early 19th Century. I'm not sure that blaming her for widespread misery and death is exactly fair.
• Kulak - a peasant in Russia wealthy enough to own a farm and hire labor. Emerging after the emancipation of serfs in the 19th century, the kulaks resisted Stalin's forced collectivization, but millions were arrested, exiled, or killed.

And then we have this from the comments:

Gregory of Tours (539-594): History of the Franks  PREFACE HERE BEGINS GREGORY'S FIRST PREFACE

With liberal culture on the wane, or rather perishing in the Gallic cities there were many deeds being done both good and evil: the heathen were raging fiercely; kings were growing more cruel; the church. attacked by heretics, was defended by Catholics; while the Christian faith was in general devoutly cherished, among some it was growing cold; the churches also were enriched by the faithful or plundered by traitors-and no grammarian skilled in the dialectic art could be found to describe these matters either in prose or verse; and many were lamenting and saying: "Woe to our day, since the pursuit of letters has perished from among us and no one can be found among the people who can set forth the deeds of the present on the written page." Hearing continually these complaints and others like them I [have undertaken] to commemorate the past, order that it may come to the knowledge of the future; and although my speech is rude, I have been unable to be silent as to the struggles between the wicked and the upright; and I have been especially ­ encouraged because, to my surprise, it has often been said by men of our day, that few understand the learned words of the rhetorician but many the rude language of the common people.

The comment used the term 'bookish' in place of 'liberal', which I thought a little odd. 'Bookish' seems more appropriate, but that may be because 'liberal' has become such a loaded term in these contentious times.

P.S. Technical note: The Chrome browser's find function cannot find enumerated footnotes in Wordpress web pages.

Hannah Duston

Statue of Hannah Duston - Haverhill, Mass

Bayou Renaissance Man has a post up about Hannah Duston:

Hannah Duston was the first American woman to have a statue built in her honor, in 1874. Today, what she did to deserve it might be called, by some, a monument to an atrocity. What did Hannah do? Hannah scalped the ten Indians who had attacked her farm, dragged her from her bed, and burned her house down before taking her captive and killing her six-day-old infant.

How was she able to scalp ten Indians? Well, they were dead. How did they die? Hannah killed 'em. You go, girl.

Alyosha

A graduation party is held under the statue of Aliosha. First-year students celebrate the end of the year. (Colin Delfosse)

I was impressed when I found out that the Russians built big statues out of concrete. This one is Alyosha. It is in Murmansk, a port in Northern Russia. It is about 400 miles Northwest of Arkhangelsk, another Northern Russian port city, and about a thousand miles Northeast of Bergen, Norway, my current point of reference for all things European.


View Larger Map
The statue does not show too well in this satellite view, but notice the length of its shadow.
Update March 2016. Replace missing picture, lost when Military Photos website died.

Arminius

Barbarians | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

The Barbarians is a short series (six 45 minute episodes) about the Germanic people's revolt against the Roman Empire in 9AD. (9AD! Haven't seen much about that period.) It's not a bad show. One of the advantages of telling a story from long ago and far away is that we don't have a lot of details on people's customs, so storytellers have a lot of leeway in how it's presented. Did they really dress like that? Were weddings really like that? Who knows? Bits of it have undoubtedly been tweaked for modern audiences, but the basis is real, to wit, one Arminius, leader of the pack:

Arminius (18/17 BC – 21 AD) was a Roman officer and later chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, in which three Roman legions under the command of general Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest would precipitate the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal from Magna Germania.[1] Modern historians have regarded Arminius' victory as one of Rome's greatest defeats. As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history, and a turning point in world history.

Born a prince of the Cherusci tribe, Arminius was part of the Roman friendly faction of the tribe. He learned Latin and served in the Roman military, which gained him Roman citizenship and the rank of a Roman knight. After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes. While in this capacity, Arminius secretly plotted a Germanic revolt against Roman rule, which culminated in the ambush and destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.

In the aftermath of the battle, Arminius fought retaliatory invasions by the Roman general Germanicus in the battles of Pontes Longi, Idistaviso, and the Angrivarian Wall, and deposed a rival, the Marcomanni king Maroboduus. Germanic nobles, afraid of Arminius' growing power, assassinated him in 21 AD. He was remembered in Germanic legends for generations afterwards. The Roman historian Tacitus designated Arminius as the liberator of the Germanic tribes and commended him for having fought the Roman Empire to a standstill at the peak of its power.

During the unification of Germany in the 19th century, Arminius was hailed by German nationalists as a symbol of German unity and freedom. Following World War II, however, Arminius was omitted from West German textbooks due to his association with militaristic nationalism; the 2,000th anniversary of his victory at the Teutoburg Forest was only lightly commemorated in Germany. - Wikipedia

Magna Germania in the early 2nd century AD, by Alexander George Findlay

We've only watched 5 of the six episodes and while they are leading up to the big battle, I don't think they are going to squeeze it into episode 6. I think we will probably have to wait for season 2 for that.

Thusnelda at the Triumph of Germanicus, by Karl von Piloty, 1873

Several of the main characters like Thusnelda and Segestes are historical figures, if you go by Wikipedia. Segimer is a bit dubious.

Modern statue representing Tacitus outside the Austrian Parliament Building

Most of our information about this era seems to come from Tacticus (c. AD 56 – c. 120). I wonder if this where we got our word 'tactical'. 

P. S. Apparently the word Triumph comes from the Roman Empire's victory celebrations.

P. P. S. They did squeeze the battle into episode 6. It's appropriately barbaric.

Small Business Opportunity

Cadillac Hood Ornament

Buy an old car, preferably a big old American land cruiser. You don't want to pay too much because there might be nothing left when we get done. It doesn't have to run or drive well, though it would help if you could drive it to our venue (what a stupid word. I don't think this word was part of our common vocabulary until maybe 10 or 20 years ago. What did we used to use? Theater, maybe? Stadium? Something a little more specific than venue). It would also help if the body was in decent shape. In other words, it needs to look good, but that's about all.

Now you go to your local ceramic shop and commission a hood ornament size statue of Donald (and / or Hillary, depending on your mood) and you order up a hundred or so plaster replicas. A little paint might make them more attractive. They need a hole in the base so they can be dropped down over a peg, a peg that you will stick in the hood of your car, right where the hood ornament goes.

When these preparations are complete, you drive downtown, somewhere where there a lot of people. Pick up a baseball bat along the way. Pull one of your statuettes out of the back seat and drop him on the post on the hood. Put up a sign: $10 to take a crack at the Donald and wait for your customers to queue up. I think you could probably make a fortune, possibly even enough to pay for the car, which might very well get destroyed by overenthusiastic customers.

Plaster-of-Paris might not be the best material. Whatever they use to make exploding golf balls might be better.

Africa, Religion, War

Alliance of Sahel States (AES) (Red) and ECOWAS (Gray)*

I keep hearing about largish numbers of people being killed in Africa due to terrorist attacks or tribal warfare or something. I've never heard any coherent explanation of the overall situation, so I kind of just wrote them off as just crazed third-worlders running amok. I mean, what can you expect from such backward savages?

Today I came across this piece and the author lays it out pretty clearly. Here's the first couple of paragraphs. Follow the link to read the whole thing.

Russia’s Aims in Africa by Robert Bergkvist

As the 2022 invasion of Ukraine sparked international outrage, a different picture was being drawn half a world away. Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, hosts a peculiar, life-sized statue . Honoring the defense of the city against attacking rebels in 2021, it portrays a woman and two small children, huddled together behind a line of armed defenders: Central African and Russian soldiers, holding assault rifles. Around the time that Wagner Group mercenaries were taking part in the invasion of a sovereign European state, that same group was being lauded as a protector and liberator by a crowd of Central Africans, carrying flowers and Russian flags. How did Russia’s influence in Africa grow so strong and what are its aims going forward?

One recent example is eye-catching. In the beginning of this year, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), instead forming an “Alliance of Sahel States” (AES). Having undergone coups in the 2020s, all three countries are now run by military juntas. There are massive security concerns: the trio is locked in a brutal struggle against  trans-African terrorists. Jihadist organisations to the North with al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliations conduct lethal  attacks  on military and civilian targets, leading to massive fatalities. As such, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are all on the top 10 list of countries affected by terrorism, according to the  2024 Global Terrorism Index . Burkina Faso is considered the most terrorism-affected country in the world with over 2,000 deaths, placing it above states like Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I suspect the Islamic Jihadists that are causing trouble are being funded by Iran. Russia is cozying up to Iran on account of their being neighbors and both are declared enemies of the West. They may not like each other, but they both dislike us more. It's a fine example of the old saw "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", at least until our common enemy is defeated, then you and I can fight.

Or it might be that the Jihadists are followers of some heretical version of Islam and so in Iran's eyes they are infidels and deserve to be destroyed. But if that's the case, who's funding them? Saudi Arabia? Who else could it be? It could be some rich man, but war is an expensive hobby. Far as I know the only people can afford the cash to pay for a war are places (like countries) that have a regular, sizable income, from either taxes, oil, or drugs. Might be Qatar, they have oil.

Are all wars religious wars? Or maybe religion is applied like a blanket over the crowd that is bent on going to war and somehow this makes everyone feel better? Anyway, we've got Eastern Orthodox (Russia), the Catholics (Europe), the Protestants (USA), Islam (Shia in Iran, Sunni in Saudi Arabia, who knows what in Qatar). Thank God for the Himalayas are we would have even more wars going on.

It just occurred to me after I wrote that last paragraph, that if the Catholics are really the dominate religion in Europe, it might explain the elites plan to fucking destroy the European economy by fomenting this war in the Ukraine. Pretty sure most of the elites are either Protestant or atheist. The only way you destroy the Catholic church would be if you destroyed their base, and killing their economy just might do the trick.

*Note about the map: I like the map, because it shows members of the two, regional, competing blocks. Guinea isn't technically part of AES, but the page where I found this doesn't acknowledge the existence of the AES. 

Wikipedia refers to the Alliance of Sahel States as ASS which makes sense in English, but French is the second most popular language in that region, after the native gibberish, so in French it's Alliance des États du Sahel which is how you get E instead of S.

Wikipedia page about ECOWAS