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Happy Oxi Day!

The title of this post is actually translated, "Anniversary of The No."  It's the annual celebration of the defiance the Greeks showed the invading Italians in 1940.  When the Italian ambassador told the Greek Prime Minister, Metaxas if Greece didn't allow Italy to occupy portions of Greece it would mean an invasion and war.  Would he allow the occupation?  He said, "No!"

This was certainly a proud day for Greece, for standing up in that moment and for backing it up with more resistance than Italy could handle.  Italy got so deep in trouble that they needed to be bailed out by Germany.

Germany found Greece no easy task either.  Hitler said, "For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks, of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death.. "

Churchill said, "Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks."

I won't quote that rat bastard Stalin.

Georgy Constantinovich Zhoucov, Marshal of the Soviet Army said, "If the Russian people managed to raise resistance at the doors of Moscow, to halt and reverse the German torrent, they owe it to the Greek People, who delayed the German divisions during the time they could bring us to our knees."

FDR said, "On the 28th of October 1940 Greece was given a deadline of three hours to decide on war or peace but even if a three day or three week or three year were given, the response would have been the same."

The Greeks resisted for 219 days against Italy and then Germany.  That's longer than Poland and France combined.  I will admit that Germany was kind of concentrating on Poland and France a bit more, but still.

Greeks should be proud of this historical day and use that pride and spirit to guide and embolden them in the future!

Altered Goals

I thought I would be posting a lot this month with an in-depth discussion about my goals for 2014.  As I've struggled to get almost anything done this moth I've realized that I need to make my goals very, very limited.

Things that are important to me include a lot of things, but I just can't do everything.  In fact, I can't really do very much since I am pretty slow in developing skills / learning and reading.  I also do not have very much time to myself.

I'm interested in (in no particular order):

• Archaeology
• Anthropology
• Sports (watching)
• Hockey
• Rugby
• Football
• Sports (participating)
• Swimming
• In-line skating
• Rugby
• Hockey (wish I could)
• Joining some sort of team
• Sailing
• Short fiction writing
• Horror
• Fantasy
• Mystery
• Sci-Fi
• Comedy
• Audio Drama
• Novel writing (same genres as my short fiction)
• Bike commuting
• Podcasting
• Old Time Radio
• Pets
• Getting another Bearded Dragon
• Getting a dog
• Pond fish
• Gardening
• Camping
• Boy Scouts, specifically Commissioning
• Girl Scouting
• Deism
• Forestry
• Staying healthy and doing things that will help me prolong my life
• Romance
• Family
• Music
• Ukulele
• Bass (wish I could play)
• Sax
• Wish I could join a band
• History
• Military in general
• WWII era
• Chicago
• Greece
• Astronomy and star gazing
• Greek and Greece
• Family vacation
• Reading

So you can see that there are a lot of things.  A lot of these things have additional expansions below them.  A lot either need a huge investment of time, money or both.  Some of these things are very personal, some are charitable and some are involved with others in a mutual nature.

Even when I start to narrow down the list or prioritize it so that I can develop goals I end up adding more and more.

Previously I listed five areas for goals:

1. Greek
2. Archaeology
3. Writing
4. New Job
5. Commissioning

I left off a health oriented goal, but two weeks ago I weighed myself and clearly I need to exercise on a regular basis.  You can see that the goals keep getting scope creep. If I want to change these six to areas of importance rather than goals it might help, but I'm not completely convinced.

I think I need to tighten this very much, man up and focus.

My will make just two goals:

1. Learn Greek
2. Get published

However I will measure everything I do against 7 priority levels:

1. Staying healthy
2. Learning Greek
3. Staying employed
4. Family support (things my family needs me to do)
5. Commissioning
6. Getting published
7. Archaeology

I'm going to talk about my priorities more on Flowers of Mundelein.  I'll track my Greek goal on Flowers and my publishing goals here.

The New Pope is an American

Pope Francis is an American in the proper sense in that he is from the Americas.

I'm very excited about the possibilities.  Being a Jesuit he has taken a vow of poverty and is dedicated to education, I'm really digging that.  It's a great start.  He took the name of Saint Francis of Assisi whose peaceful association with nature and charity I greatly admire.  He seems to be doing some things that show he is going to be a reformer with common sense and lead by service.

There are just three things that concern me.  He is old; and he is against birth control and gay marriage. 

Clearly birth control is the right thing to do in a world of over 7 billion people and not seeing that is troubling. 

The problem I have with his discrediting of gay marriage is not really about gay marriage itself.  I can certainly see where there is a very long and well established tradition of heterosexual marriage.  I am personally not opposed to gay marriage, but I wonder if someone who is against it doesn't see homosexuality as a sin.  That I have a problem with, and I think it would be detrimental to bringing the church into the modern age.

Clearly you and I were not elected Pope yesterday (unless Pope Francis is reading this and in that case I am very honored indeed Your Eminence) so my poll is somewhat moot now.  No body has voted on it anyway.

Clearly there is going to be an emphasis on where I think religion should be, charity, community responsibility and service.  There will be a de-emphasis on hierarchy.

On my poll I'm guessing we can forget about any moves to make homosexuality not a sin, I doubt priests will be allowed to get married, birth control will continue to be a sin, and fertilized human egg cells will probably still be considered humans (Pope Francis is against abortion).

Any moves to reunite the churches and ordain women is to be seen, but I doubt they are likely.  On the other hand, I'm sure there will be a zero tolerance on sex crimes. 

You can still vote on what you think the new Pope should work on, and I encourage you to in the most extreme way.

Whether you are Catholic or not, this is an important and historical event.  When 1.2 billion people have a new leader there will be changes in the world that will likely impact almost everyone in some way.

Thinking Through My History Podcast

There is a lot of work to do before I can start a podcast as I have tasked myself.  Firstly I need to understand what history is and what is its purpose.  From there I need to understand what history means to me and what I want to see in a podcast about Chicago history.  From there I need to decide what format I want to use (and what I'm capable of) and if I can actually write a couple of dozen episodes.

I've tried to do a podcast before and managed one episode.  It just didn't feel right, I had a good deal of trouble getting my thoughts together sufficiently.  The original impetus for that podcast was similar to how I feel now, but I don't think I had really thought through the details I listed above.  Also, I hadn't the experience of trying a podcast when I had started that podcast.  Now I have that experience to give me some idea.

There are several articles on-line that talk about the purpose of history.  I've also found many quotes about history.  They capture most of what I found and how I feel about studying history.

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”  ― George Orwell 

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ”  ― Michael Crichton 

“The first duty of a man is to think for himself”  ― José Martí 

I don't agree with the following two quotes:

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”  ― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Half of writing history is hiding the truth”  ― Joss Whedon

I feel this is a counter to those two arguments:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”  ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark 

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”  ― Winston S. Churchill 

"Study the past if you would define the future.”  ― Confucius 

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”  ― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Works 

These two seem to work together:

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”  ― Marcus Tullius Cicero 

"History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”  ― Howard Zinn 

“History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.”  ― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution 

“History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. ”  ― David McCullough 

“You have to know the past to understand the present.”  ― Carl Sagan 

“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

"I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility.”  ― Mercedes Lackey, The Fire Rose 

This one inspires me to teach history to those who would hike the Chicago Lincoln Avenue Trail:

“The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.”  ― Stephen E. Ambrose

“Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.”  ― Oscar Wilde 

“Never question the power of one! Throughout history it has been the actions of only one person who has in inspired the movement of change.”  ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free 

“It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts." -Bill Vaughan 

Well, I'll give you what I can figure out and you take from it what you will.

I feel that in a way history is a foreign land that I have close ties to and I can understand somewhat.  It is a fun place to visit, a flight of fancy, an escape and it helps me to put today into perspective.

So far the ideas I have for the podcast are as follows:

1. Reboot Chicagoland History Week
1. Pros
1. I already have the blog and artwork such as it is
2. Very little production needed.  
3. Less time consuming.  If I script properly I wouldn't need editing
4. No costs
5. Can have guest interviews
6. More scholarly
7. Could be outlined rather than scripted
8. Could have audience participatory games like trivia questions
2. Cons
1. It didn't work before
2. Less fun than drama
3. Ends up being more trivia oriented and less useful, historical, and much less useful as a map to the future (and all that highbrow stuff)
3. Questions
1. Should I get a cohost?
2. Should I cover the whole area or just Chicago?
3. Will the name be confusing?
4. Should I start with Lincoln Avenue?
2. Chicago Time Machine - modeled after Dr. Who and Young Indiana Jones it would be an adventure audio drama following characters as they use a time machine to explore Chicago's past
1. Pros
1. No temptation to outline, I would definitely script this
2. Drama would help keep it lively
3. A completely fresh view
4. One topic at a time would be plenty to fill the podcast
5. More like fiction and therefore helpful in exercising my writing muscles
2. Cons
1. Production time and cost would both be the highest - this may be a complete deal breaker
2. Needs actors 
3. Couldn't really have guests and interviews
4. I'd have to learn and include a good deal of minutia to include in the background to add authenticity
3. Questions
1. Could I do this strictly as a narrative and tell the story rather than act it out?
2. Could I produce CLHW as a podcast and still write this, but not produce this?
3. Chicago History Detective - following something that exists today back to it's origins.  This would be similar to the TV show "Connections." 
1. Pros
1. Less production needed, can be all narrative, but still somewhat dramatic
2. Again, a complete break form CLHW
3. A mix of the scholarly and drama
2. Cons
1. Could be too contrived
2. Difficult to find a way to include guests and interviews
3. Questions
1. Would this lead to too much researching?
2. What if I started on one topic and it ended up taking me too far?
4. My Kind of Town - same as rebooting CLHW, but with a new blog and new name
1. Pros
1. Avoids confusion and any other problems of rebooting CLHW
2. Probably most of the same pros as CLHW
3. Could allow for easy widening to more towns than just Chicago
4. I could use the first four notes of My Kind of Town like the NBC chimes.  This would eliminate any other need for music
2. Cons
1. I could run into the same problems as CLHW
2. Isn't the best way to draw in listeners who search for Chicago
3. Questions
1. Is this already being used?
2. Is this too loose a structure?  Will I lose my focus and peter out?

This is where I am with the podcast so far.  Well, there is this and I've already started gathering and studying research material.

Anyone have any answers or opinions?  Share please, I would enjoy it very much.

By the way, I don't know what happened to the font.

Happy Anniversary Apollo 7

This image of Cthulhu has nothing to do with the Apollo program, but it does remind me that I have to spin a giant web on the front of my house so I can be sure to capture entertain those little morsels children who wander around on the eve of All Hallow's Day.

Maybe we should carve a gourd to gather more children, I hear they are attracted to light.

Anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire

On this day in 1871 the City of Chicago began burning.  Some say it was Mrs. O'Leary's cow, but I have a different hypothesis.

What do you think?