brutus, stop playing with that knife

Suomen itsenäisyysjulistus (Finnish Declaration of Independence)

To The Finnish People.

The Finnish Parliament has on 15th day of the last November, in support of Section 38 of the Constitution, declared to be the Supreme holder of the State Authority as well as set up a Government to the country, that has taken to its primary task the realization and safeguarding Finland’s independence as a state. The people of Finland have by this step taken their fate in their own hands: a step both justified and demanded by present conditions. The people of Finland feel deeply that they cannot fulfil their national duty and their universal human obligations without a complete sovereignty. The century-old desire for freedom awaits fulfilment now; The People of Finland has to step forward as an independent nation among the other nations in the world.

Achieving this goal requires mainly some measures by the Parliament. Finland’s current form of government, which is currently incompatible with the conditions, requires a complete renewal and therefore has the Government now submitted a proposition for a new Constitution to the Parliament’s council, a proposition that is based on the principle that Finland is to be a sovereign republic. Considering that, the main features of the new polity has to be carried into effect immediately, the Government has at the same time delivered a bill of acts in this matter, which mean to satisfy the most urgent renewal needs before the establishment of the new Constitution.

The same goal also calls for measures from the part of the Government. The Government will approach foreign powers to seek an international recognition of our country’s independence as a state. At the present moment this is particularly all the more necessary, when the grave situation caused by the country’s complete isolation, famine and unemployment compels the Government to establish actual relations to the foreign powers, which prompt assistance in satisfying the necessities of life and in importing the essential goods for the industry, are our only rescue from the imminent famine and industrial stagnation.

The Russian people have, after subverting the Tsarist Regime, in a number of occasions expressed its intention to favour the Finnish people the right to determine its own fate, which is based on its centuries-old cultural development. And widely over all the horrors of the war is heard a voice, that one of the goals of the present war is to be, that no nation shall be forced against its will to be dependent on another nation. The Finnish people believe that the free Russian people and its constitutive National Assembly don’t want to prevent Finland’s aspiration to enter the multitude of the free and independent nations. At the same time the People of Finland dare to hope that the other nations of the world recognizes, that with their full independence and freedom the People of Finland can do their best in fulfilment of those purposes that will win them an independent position amongst the people of the civilized world.

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Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.

It’s about a bus driver.

It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.

And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.

And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.

and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,

“Where do you need to go?”

And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.

So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.

I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.

We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.

And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.

Two, actually.

One is long, and one is brief.

The first story is about my grandfather.

He was a slave in a Krups munitions factory in a Nazi concentration camp in Częstochowa, Poland.

He was also a smuggler.  If I did not have multiple corroborating witnesses to the sheer ludicrious balls that he had, I would dismiss the stories as exaggeration.  But he was a food smuggler–he would buy some kind of sugar from the Polish day workers coming into the factory, make candy out of them, sell the candy back to the workers at a profit, and buy food with the proceeds–which he then proceeded to share with the other slaves, free of charge.  Without him, they would have starved to death, but an extra hundred calories a day made a difference enough to keep them alive.

But that’s not the story.

The story is what happened in Spring of 1945.

My grandfather could hear the guns of the Russian Army off in the distance, and he and the other captives in the camp figured that they would be liberated any day now.  

And then a truck packed full with preteen Jewish children who had just been captured comes into the work camp instead of the extermination camp up the road.  Because the Nazis were so fixated on their hatred of Jews that they diverted war resources to hunting us down even as they were losing.  

So it’s pandemonium.  They’re unloading the truck of the kids, the guards are yelling at the driver, the kids are milling about not knowing what’s going on…

And my grandfather sees one boy who looked a little older, a little more mature, and figured that this one he can save.  It’s just a few days until the Russians arrive, after all.

So he tells the boy to come with him.

And the rest… got loaded back onto the truck and off they went to the gas chambers.

But it wasn’t a couple of days.

It was six weeks.

Stalin personally ordered the Army to slow their advance and told the Polish Resistance to rise up, and that the Russians would support them with food and weapons.  

So they rose up… and were slaughtered.  Because they got nothing from the Russians.  Stalin knew that anyone who would be resisting the Nazis would be resisting him next, and it was an elegant way to weaken Poland before he took it.

Meanwhile, my grandfather is hiding a fourteen year old boy in a NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP.

The risks they took to hide him… they would hold him up over empty shoes sewn to long pants at the evening roll call so that he would look taller.  They smuggled food to him…  If they had been caught… I have nightmares of what would have been done to them.

Finally, one night, they are all locked in their barracks as the Nazis evacuated the camp and the Russians were coming in, with the Nazis using the camp for cover for their escape.

And in the chaos… 

My grandfather lost track of the boy.

Twenty-two years later, he tells this story to my father when my father is 12, and has demanded to know something, be told something concrete.

So he doesn’t know what happened to the boy.  Did he live?  Did he die?  Did he find his mother and sisters?

He doesn’t know.

Six months later, my grandmother is planning my father’s bar mitzvah.  Not as a religious obligation, but as a 200 foot tall flaming middle finger to the Third Reich.  You are gone, and WE ARE STILL HERE.

So she plugs into what my father called the “Camp Network”–the trombonist in the band was on a death march with an uncle, the florist was in a work camp with a friend, etc.  And she’s asking, “I need a photographer, who is good?”

“You want Joe Brown, up in Queens,” she’s told.

So she invites him down to talk terms at their house in Brooklyn, which is quite a haul in NYC.  

And the first question one Holocaust survivor asks another is, “Where were you?”  Because maybe you know someone, maybe you can tell what happened.

“I was in Częstochowa,” he says.

“You were in Częstochowa?  My husband Teddy was in Częstochowa!”

“I didn’t know a Teddy Baum.”

“Oh, everyone knew Teddy.”

“I didn’t know a Teddy Baum!”

“When he gets home, you’ll see.  Everyone there knew Teddy.”  Because he was smuggling in the food that kept them all alive.

So the thing is, you live in the US for 20 years, you forget that your name was not “Teddy Baum” but “Tuvyas Bumps.”

And when my grandfather got home from work…

…sitting there at his kitchen table…

…was the boy he had saved.

…

(I’m not crying…)

That’s the first story.

The second story is that of my grandfather’s brother.

It is short.

He collaborated with the Nazis to save his own skin.  He let my grandfather’s first wife and son starve to death in the ghetto and informed on people who tried to escape or resist.  My grandfather said that “Good people went up the chimney and he stayed behind.”

Two brothers. 

One saved over a hundred lives.

The other betrayed his own flesh and blood to save his own skin.  

Your choices define you.

They think I have late stage Addison’s disease.

I have more testing I have to do.

I’m without words. This is terrifying.

I can’t even let myself grieve or relax because I don’t even have enough money to be diagnosed properly OR treated.

So please, please. If you have anything to spare.. I need it now more than ever ..

I appreciate any and ALL HELP!!!

If you’d like to immediately help me my PayPal is

https://www.paypal.me/YvesOrage

I don’t want to die because I can’t afford to get treatment. I’ve come this far.. I’m desperate. I need my community now more than ever. Please don’t let me be forgotten

if you’d like to immediately help me with medical funds/survival funds you can donate here:

https://www.paypal.me/YvesOrage

This is what i get all over my body when I get flare ups from stress. It’s extremely painful and leaves open sores, which is dangerous because I have a compromised immune system

My body is shutting down, and I’m fighting my hardest to get a diagnosis to TREAT whatever this is AS SOON AS POSSIBLE because the symptoms are getting more severe by every flare up I have..

I’ve had to have 3 emergency catheters so far because my bladder keeps completely shutting down..

I’ve been rapidly losing weight and having muscle loss. I’m not able to break down protein properly for some reason.

I went from 117 to 97

These are only SOME OF THE SYMPTOMS DEALING WITH, But here it is! As humiliating as it is..here’s what it’s doing to me in full view..

I’m exhausted. I just want this to end. I want to live a normal life...

THE BEST WAY TO HELP ME IS TO DIRECTLY DONATE!!

I have two procedures I have to do this month, an appointment today and needed transportation, rent, bills, ect.

I HAVE PAYPAL, CASHAPP, & AMAZON $ CARDS HELP AS WELL

I appreciate anything

https://www.paypal.me/YvesOrage

PLEASE HELP ME‼️I now have severe inflammation and MORE tests, going to ANOTHER specialist this month and having another appointment in a week, besides my two procedures & now maybe three..

I HAVE to. Or I’ll die.

I had to have an emergency catheter put in last night and I am in so much fucking pain. I can’t keep up with any of this.. any of it. I don’t have the money, time or ENERGY! One thing after another :( please keep this going for me so I can at least be a little less stressed.. I need help rn.

Idk how tags work but here’s everyone I know, sorry for disturbing you all this looks important

In reality, technologies are frequently discovered, lost and rediscovered, often multiple times, and frequently in parallel. A Dark Age in one region may be a time of rapid technological development in another region, and it’s not uncommon to encounter evidence of ancient civlisations using technologies a thousand years out of whack with the “proper” order of discovery… where “proper” is defined in terms of the order in which those technologies were discovered in Western Europe - there’s that Eurocentrism again.

I mean, just to give you an idea of how flexible the order in which technologies are developed can be and how ultimately wrong-headed the notion of linear technological progress is, there are Central American civilisations that had indoor plumbing, central heating and hot and cold running water before inventing the wheel. Some of the First Nations in what is now Eastern Canada had sophisticated climate models and reliable weather prediction - including functioning barometers and other simple meteorological instruments - before they figured out metallurgy.

The Inca are often accused of “not knowing about wheels.”

Except, they did have wheels. They just didn’t use wheels for long distance transportation. They had a huge road system. On which everything was moved by pack animals and people. The Inca road is an incredible feat of engineering.

So, why didn’t they use wheels?

Because their land was so freaking mountainous that the road would repeatedly turn into this:

Tell me what earthly use a wheel is when your road keeps having to have steps and narrow bridges because you live on top of a mountain.

But that image shows us what they did have.

That’s a suspension bridge. Europeans didn’t invent those until centuries after the Inca did.

Because when the most efficient route through your home hits chasms, guess what?

You get real good at making bridges!

And when the best way to move goods through your desert homeland is a big river?

You get real good at making boats.

Minoan Greece was also a sea power. They had huge fleets of ships, which meant they did a lot of exploration. They also built one of the biggest trade networks in the world, reaching as far as Egypt, Cyprus, Canaan, Syria,  the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal), the Levantine coast, Anatolia and Mesopotamia (modern-day Turkey, Israel and Iraq).

A volcano eruption on a nearby island, which caused a tsunami, possibly destroyed their sea power and left them vulnerable, which is why most of their technology was lost.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse a few centuries later led to the simultaneous destruction of advanced civilisations in Greece, Egypt, the Near East, Asia Minor, North Africa, Caucasus, Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. This caused a dark age across two continents which created isolated village cultures, and is the reason most of their advancements were lost.

But on the flip side…they came up with a way to use water to basically hydroplane those giant stone blocks in their buildings across the desert. Which is a hell of a lot more useful in an unpaved sandy region.

Likewise let’s not forget the Aztecs, who came up with a farming system so efficient (chinampas) that parts of it are still used today and really ought to be revived on a wider scale as part of sustainable farming. And also Native Americans, and I’m using that term BECAUSE it’s so broad: look at tribes across the country and you’ll see something interesting. Iroquois, living in a cold, well-forested, and often icy land, built immovable longhouses—which would survive the bitter northeastern winters. Plains tribes developed the tipi/teepee—while they also faced long, even dangerous winters, they also lived in a place where travel was far easier and the worst of winter could be weathered by heading south. Or down where I live, the Sinagua (later assimilated into the Hopi) built their homes IN CLIFFS. And by that I mean “off the ground, built into the cliff face with adobe.” Aka, some of the best pre-refrigeration insulation against the heat that you could possibly hope for. We still don’t know how they did it, incidentally. “With ladders, dumbass” is an obvious answer in some of their dwellings, but in others it’s not clear how they just….hung over a sinkhole, a quarter of a mile or so above the water, and chipped out the front doors so they had a place to sit while they made the rest. Scaffolds? Very well-balanced rope ladders? Smaller cliffs they chipped off afterward to prevent enemy incursion? We don’t know, but we do know they found a way to make the extreme heat survivable and even sort of a nonissue. They never bothered with stuff like modern central AC because they found a way to let the stone and clay do the job for them.

Technology isn’t always a race. Sometimes it’s just an evolution.