do real men knit?

I thought this story was very cute: a Nuyorican guy knitting on the subway is spotted by singer Frenchie Davis who puts his picture on her Facebook page. Suddenly, he's famous.

Yes, some men knit. Some men crochet. Most men and women can't do either. I can do some very bad and rudimentary stitches. Knitting is not a skill like riding a bicycle.

Robin Williams knitted. Kurt Cobain crocheted. Ashton Kutcher knits. So does George Lucas, David Arquette, Keifer Sutherland, and Russell Crowe.

The guy in the picture has a younger Luis Guzmán thing going for him. The heavage unzip with his extra knitting needle tucked inside is the perfect touch. Nobody could call this guy effeminate. He looks like the kind of man who couldn't give a shit if you did.

I regularly rode the subway when I lived in New York. I saw women knitting and crocheting but never a man. I did see a man, however, with an incredible long beard braiding it very neatly and precisely.

political wire

I'm amazed I've never posted here about the website I probably visit more often than any other on the internet. It's usually the site I read first when I sign on to the computer for the day and often the last site I check before powering down at night.

Political Wire is an excellent, human-curated page that includes the most important election and elected news of the day and is updated as events break. It's not comprehensive of all topics, but it does include most of the cream from the top.

While primarily focused on American political news, the site does also cover important political news from leading nations, too. The entries always receive scads of readers comments, and those can be snarky and fun.

Check it out. Most of the page is free. I don't pay for the subscription portion as that appears to be primarily analysis and, besides, I'm a cheapskate.

wolves on the highway

My cousin sent this link to me the other day. It was filmed earlier this year by a woman in Canada's Northwest Territories, above Yellowknife.

Those are not dogs running on the highway. They are wolves. I wonder if, in their canine minds, they think they're running on a frozen river.

Filmed more artfully, this could be a scene from a supernatural movie, where the protagonist realizes she has crossed into some alternative realm.

laptop disaster

A few days before Christmas, I accidentally spilled almost an entire and large cup of coffee on my laptop. It was a total waterfall -- all over the keyboard and around the machine itself.

I reacted quickly but suspected the machine was a total loss. I figured maybe some professional could save the hard drive for me.

Nevertheless, I immediately turned it off and set it on a thick, absorbent towel. I wiped off any liquid on the machine that I could but knew some had gotten inside.

I let the machine sit for a few days. It was sticky after it dried, so I carefully cleaned that off with some computer wipes.

Then I turned it on, expecting it wouldn't boot up or I'd get weird shit on the screen.

That didn't happen. It seemed fine. Zero problems. The touchpad actually worked again, for the first time in months.

I've been using it regularly ever since. It still smells like coffee, but otherwise, it's like it never happened.

I apparently had more karma in my life account than I realized.

the puritan war on christmas

Last night I finished reading the King Charles I biography mentioned here recently. Toward the end, I was amazed to learn that the notorious Puritans in both Britain and America were vociferously anti-Christmas and anti-Easter.

The thinking went in part, because the holidays of Christmas and Easter were not mentioned in the Bible, they were heretical and verbotten. In Puritan colonies in America, and when the Puritans controlled Britain, anyone caught celebrating Christmas was punished.

They had a particular enmity for Christmas because the date, December 25, had originally been celebrated as the sun god Mithra's birthday. The early Catholic church had co-opted that date so that newly converted Christians would celebrate what they thought of as a Christian holiday.

One can't help but wonder what the Puritans would think about Christmas celebrations today in the Western World and, in particular, the bogus "War on Christmas" in the United States.

the lazarus toothbrush

I've used an electric toothbrush nearly as long as I can remember, not because I'm lazy, but because it does a better job than the manual variety.

About a year ago, the toothbrush seemed to stop charging and the power ultimately ran down. The recharge light eventually stopped flashing and went out.

I figured I needed a new battery but had no idea about where to get one. I use a Sonicare that I originally brought from the United States, but the brush heads and other parts are obscenely expensive here and made a mental note to ask my brother to send me a new battery.

A week or so went by, and I noticed the recharge light was flashing again. It had come back from the dead. After a few days, the light stayed on, indicating it was fully charged.

So I went back to using it again with incident for a while. Then about three months later, it started to die again, refusing to hold a charge and eventually went into a coma.

Then, once again, a week or so later, it started recharging itself again. This death and rebirth thing has now happened four times with exactly the same pattern.

I thought perhaps it was the plug outlet or the current converter I use, but I switched both of those and still the same weird Lazarus behavior.

I'm thinking now it's the electronics in the thing. It's reading the battery charge data wrong. Or something.

Or maybe the thing is haunted.

merry christmas!

Happy Christmas to readers everywhere! I hope your holiday is filled with family, friends, and fun. We'll be spending the day with my brother-in-law and family.

It's also my ninth anniversary, too. Some days it seems like I've been married my whole life, but other days it seems like yesterday. I honestly don't know if the husband is planning any anniversary celebration. What do you celebrate a ninth anniversary with? Tin? Aluminum? Chromium?

Happy holidays!

sappy or sad or sinister?

This YouTube video has been viewed more than thirty-eight million times. Given that many people are homeless because of substance abuse and/or mental health issues, one might surmise one or the other explains the gentleman seen here.

I'm of two minds about making videos like this and sharing them. On the positive side, it humanizes homeless people and might encourage others to think about ways of helping them.

But on the negative side, the video seems exploitative. Was this posted to genuinely start a conversation or simply for total hits?

the dead pigeon cure

I am currently reading a nonfiction book about the life of Charles I, the king who so pissed off Parliament that the conflict caused the English Civil War and a nine-year abolishment of the monarchy.

One of the early chapters mentions the death of Charles's older brother Henry, who contracted typhoid and was treated by doctors employing the usual cure of the time: tying a dead pigeon to the sick patient's head.

What?

The purpose of this bizarre "treatment" was the supposed belief that it would draw out the "noisome humours." Humorism dominated medical practice from the fifth century BC until the beginning of the nineteenth century and was founded in the belief that the four humors -- black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.

This, of course, is absolute malarkey with no basis in fact. It's no wonder doctors of yesteryear killed far more people than they helped, but humorism so dominated medicine for more than twenty centuries that few ever questioned its tenets.

But a dead pigeon? The practice required a freshly killed bird that was still warm. Some doctors, and I use that word loosely, also rested a freshly killed and warm rooster against the patient's bare feet.

So why did it have to be a pigeon and a rooster? Why not a crow or a duck? Why even a bird -- wouldn't a rabbit do as well? After all, pigeons are not sponges, alive or dead.

With bizarre practices like this, we should be thankful we live in a modern time where doctors have some idea about what they're doing.

In previous centuries, if you cut yourself or broke a bone, chances are a doctor could bind you up and Mother Nature would pull you through, but if a doctor attempted to "cure" an illness, there's a good chance not only would he not be able to identify the disease but also a good chance he would kill you with his "treatment."

new mouse

My ancient mouse finally died a few days ago. It predated my current laptop and the one before that. I think I bought the now deceased mouse before I even moved to Vegas, so that means it was at least eleven years old.

The new one is fantastic, much lighter and cordless of course, unlike the last one. It's taking me some time, however, to get used to handling it. If I'm not careful, it zips over the screen like a lizard on a hot griddle. Then, I have to hunt to find it.

I've adjusted the sensitivity via Windows way down but it still is a little slippery. I never realized how personal a mouse is, how much you can be used to a particular one. It becomes a companion

On an unrelated note, this picture gets my motor purring because it looks like she's doing it with my husband. I still have the fantasy of watching him screwing other women, but I know it will never happen

fart nuts

I've loved Grape Nuts since I was a little girl. One of the things I don't like about Australia, however, is that Grape Nuts are not sold here, nor are any generic knockoffs.

You can buy them through speciality websites here Down Under, but the price is obscene -- $25 Australian for a four-pound box, which is about $19 American.

I've tried making them with various recipes I've found on the net, but they don't taste right and the consistency is off. Plus, if you don't watch them like a hawk while they bake, they'll easily burn.

So I was beyond thrilled when my brother sent me a case of Grape Nuts from the United States. He shipped them the cheapest rate in September and they arrived last week. The case weighs almost a hundred pounds.

After nine years here, I can finally eat Grape Nuts again. But I will have to be sparing in my consumption, because I made a sad discovery: if I eat them two or more days in a row, I get terrible gas.

I last ate them as a 23-year-old woman, but apparently a 32-year-old's digestion can't quite process Grape Nuts like before.

My husband had never eaten them when he was in the United States. He tried some the other morning but was not impressed.

"They taste like sugared driveway gravel," he said.

I was not disappointed. His loss, my gain. That means I can eat them all, but slowly.

overslept

I overslept yesterday morning for the first time since before I had Joey more than four years ago. My husband almost always gets up before I do because he doesn't need an alarm clock, then after he's been up for a while, he wakes me.

(The exception to this is morning sex, when he wakes me, we both pee and brush, and then head back to bed.)

So yesterday, he woke me as usual. I vaguely remember him rousing me but was apparently not sufficiently awake and fell back asleep again.

He said later he checked on me a few minutes after that, but I was sound asleep, so he let me alone. An hour passed and he came back to wake me finally, telling me he had gotten the kids up and dressed and was feeding them breakfast.

When I saw the time, I blasted out of bed, into the shower for three minutes, dressed in record time, and hurried into the kitchen. The children were sitting at the table, calmly eating.

They said nothing but gave me the oddest looks, a mixture of mild disapproval and slight confusion, as if to say, "you better have a pretty good excuse." They never said anything, not then, not later, but I felt guilty, of course.

So this morning I bought a cheap alarm clock at the dollar store to put on my side of the bed. This will be a "just in case" alarm that I'll set for ten minutes after when my husband wakes me up.

Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.

loch ness

The husband and I watched the first season of the British/Scottish series Loch Ness over the last several nights (released in some countries as The Loch). We both liked it quite a lot, but with some reservations.

The story involves a very complex plot about several apparently unrelated murders that occur in a small Scottish village on the shores of the legendary Loch Ness. The scenary is outstanding as are the performances by many of the actors, in particular Siobhan Finneran, probably best known to Americans for playing the wickedly devious Miss O'Brien in Downton Abbey.

In Loch she's equally prickly with a real burr on her personality, but here she's a good person obsessively driven in her job. She nicely steamrollers her sniveling superior and completely emasculates him every time he attempts to block her.

Our reservations about the series are because of the excessive number of characters and subplots and red herrings. In a six-hour story, the first season seemed to have ten hours of plot. That tended to crowd out valuable character time for the several leads, particularly with the main character, a local female detective in awe of Finneran's success.

Loch Ness is definitely worth a watch, but see it when you can really pay attention to a complex story. It's not the sort of fare you'll want if you need to just veg out.

involuntary rehab

I read this article about how some American states are considering involuntary commitment to rehab over a few days for people rushed to the emergency room with an overdose.

Right now, someone can overdose, be treated for a few hours in a hospital, be released or simply split, and then get high again in the same day. When this happens to some people, they overdose a second time and die.

IMHO, I think this idea of a short-term involuntary hold over a few days for rehab sounds like a good idea.

Now I know there are two competing issues here. You don't want a government empowered to seize people off the street and plunk them into involuntary confinement.

At the same time, laws now exist where authorities can commit someone for a short period if he or she poses a grave danger to himself or others. These are broadly called a "involuntary psychiatric holds," so if you're holding a knife to your throat in a shopping mall and threatening to cut your throat, you can be held against your will for evaluation.

The involuntary rehab idea sounds like it balances both concerns. The Massachusetts example allows for a three-day involuntary rehab.

How would this be any different than holding someone for threatening suicide? In both cases, there's a great danger of the person gravely harming him or herself.

february 30th

My sister-in-law and I were talking about family event planning for early next year.

SIL: Does February have 29 days next year?

ME: It has 28. Leap year only falls on years divisible by four, except years ending in two zeroes, and there is no leap year.

SIL: How on earth do you know these things? I never understood leap year anyway.

ME: The earth rotates around the sun every 365.24 days. To keep the seasons from going out of whack, leap year is needed but, since it takes slightly less than 365 and a quarter days for the earth to circle the sun, it must be adjusted once every century.

SIL: So does this have anything to do with why February only has 28 days?

ME: No.

SIL: So why does February have 28 days anyway?

ME: I have no clue.

So I looked it up. Turns out the calendar used to be really weird. It made sense to nobody. Leap month? Who came up with that profoundly dumb idea?

I've never understood, however, why nobody ever snitched a day from January, say, and a day from July or August and made February 30 days. Then you'd have much more calendar consistency.

does your underwear sag?

I have another one of my hopefully helpful household hints today. If you wear briefs or panties, to they sag after you've owned them a while? (This will not apply if you wear boxers.)

If the answer is "yes," then this hint is for you.

I have "sexy underwear" I wear at times for good reason, but on most days, I wear ladies size small 100 percent cotton panties. My husband always wears either 100 cotton briefs or boxer briefs.

Both of us have found that, with time, underwear can become saggy and with gappy leg holes after repeated wears and washings. So I thought I would try a little experiment.

I took a pair of my clean panties soon to be retired to the rag bag and put them in a small bucket. Then I heated a pot of water on the stove to near but not actual boiling.

I poured the water into the bucket with the panties and let them sit in very hot water until it cooled completely overnight on the kitchen counter. I then line dried the panties and tossed them in with the other dirty laundry.

Next day, I wore the clean panties that had been hot-water soaked. They fit like they'd never been worn, nice and snug with no sagging or gappy legs. Since then, I have done this with both my husband and my underwear when it becomes too stretched with wear. It's always worked.

The concept is simple: very hot water can shrink clothes when it is entirely or mostly cotton. With time and wear, your body stretches the cotton fibers from their original form. So a hot water immersion snaps the fibers back to their original state.

So try this sometime. The underwear you save may be your own.

rapunzel unwinds

I don't know who this woman is, but I would kill for hair this luxuriant (enlargement). I wouldn't want that color because it would look wrong with my skin tone, but I want the richness and gorgeous sheen.

She should be doing shampoo commercials instead of softcore porn. Get this woman an agent who knows how to exploit her talent. She could make a bloody fortune.

the coolest photo

I originally saw this photo on The Guardian website (enlargement) and thought it was a magnified image of some animal's skin. It turns out it's an aerial view of Ethiopian salt miners guiding camels and donkeys through desert salt flats.

The Mirror is a trashy newspaper, but they actually have the best enlargement of that shot and many other travel photo award-winning images. Some of the other pictures are equally amazing, so I recommend you have a look.

Just imagine: if you were an angel, this is the sort of thing you'd see on your commute to work every day.

brocasting

I've written here before about how I've been listening to more American podcasts. I suspect the reason why is because it helps me feel more connected to "back home."

I've sampled a lot of different podcasts, particularly ones about history, books, politics, crime, and current events. I have about sixty podcasts on my feed but rarely listen to more than one or two a day, unless they're really short.

With my varied listening, I've noticed something of a podcast genre that I'm calling brocasting. These typically are hosted by two younger males who have been longtime friends and they explore crime or historical subjects.

In broad terms, the ad-libbed brocast is two or three times as long as the content should allow. The extra time is taken up with lame jokes, off-topic chatter, and laughing.

These podcasters are often not widely read in their broader subject area. Most of their references are pop culture familiars.

The hosts are obviously intelligent and curious, but they badly need directing and some semblance of a script. Forcing themselves to stick to a strict length would help, too.

Some brocasts are massively popular. I'm guessing the audiences are primarily young men. So maybe I'm not their target audience at all. Or maybe you just need to be stoned to enjoy them.

adventures in stupidity

Jimmy Swingler from Britain makes strange-but-true videos with his friends and posts them on YouTube. This can be a money-making thing, because the more hits you receive, the more ad revenue you can earn.

Swingler has done a wide variety of wacky things, like cementing himself and a friend inside a tub, taking a bath in fake tan, setting himself in a vat of jello overnight, and more.

His most recent stunt, however, came close to killing himself. He had the brilliant idea to cement his head inside a microwave. But then he almost smothered to death.

Five firefighters spent an hour trying to free Swingler before they succeeded.

Swingler seems determined to usher himself into Darwin Award immortality, where virtually every prize is given posthumously. Given his penchent for sticking himself inside things, it may only be a matter of time.

polygamist doomsday cult

I originally heard about these two profoundly disturbed men on a radio program here in Australia. No wonder people internationally think Americans are messed up people.

The two men in question clearly are troubled individuals. But they should have the right to practice whatever wacky religion they can think up, as long as innocent people or animals are not disturbed.

As you can see from reading the link, however, that was not the case here. They allowed their children to suffer wretched conditions.

I think if they're found guilty, the men should never be allowed to have custody of children for the rest of their lives. The fact that they put their own fucked-up ideology ahead of their own kids' safety and well being demonstrates they lack the understanding of what good parenting involves.

While this is not sexual abuse, it is abuse of a different nature with potentially lifelong trauma for the children, even decades later as adults. How people can mistreat their own children like this is unfathomable.

I've actually been in the remote part of Utah where this incident happened. If you've ever driven from Los Angeles or Las Vegas to Denver, you likely passed through it, too. It's profoundly beautiful and wild country, but it's also populated by some very odd people.

ping pong perfect

This was the third-most popular video posted on YouTube last year and has racked up nearly 95 million views to date. These guys are annoying in a cute sort of way, but a little of this could go a long way.

They do have corporate sponsors so I don't know if this is a full-time gig or not. It's obviously a labor of love whatever the answer.

I want to know if they're this hyper all the time. I've known men who are like this constantly and I am definitely not compatable with them.

Still, this is an impressive video, if not an entirely productive investment of time to make, unless it provides full-time remuneration. I could see how a physics student might find this of particular interest.

PDAs versus love

Several entertainment publications have run articles in the last week contrasting Prince Harry and fiancee Meghan's numerous public displays of affection in comparison to the lack of those seen by Prince William and Kate Middleton.

I think this is much ado about nothing. William and/or Kate might be nervous or awkward in person around people they don't know. I've noticed that Kate is often clutching her purse tightly when they're out and about, and that suggests to me she's not entirely at ease with the public bubble.

As well, some couples are just more comfortable with public displays of affection. My husband and I can't keep our hands off each other, but other publicly reserved couples we know are still very much in love.

If Kate and Will were childless and showed no public affection, then it might be cause for concern. Given that they've been married six years and are expecting their third child soon, they don't seem to lack for romance.

One of the biggest explanations might be that Kate and Will have known each other for sixteen years whereas Harry and Meghan have known each other for about sixteen months. Established couples arguably are more confident with their emotions about each other and behave differently in public.

But if the royal family is worried about quashing all of this comparison talk, maybe they could just stage a situation where paparazzi catch Will and Kate half undressed and dry humping.

digital avalanche

You probably heard that Time magazine has named "The Silence Breakers" as the collective Person of the Year for 2017. These are the women, along with some men, who suddenly began to speak out publicly about men in positions of importance and power who had sexually harassed and assaulted them.

This movement erupted after both The New York Times and The New Yorker published articles about women accusing powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment. That set off an digital avalanche of accusation against at least eighty important men in the entertainment industry, journalism, and Washington, with no end in sight.

In the last few days, for instance, three members of Congress have resigned after women came forward and accused them of inappropriate behavior and worse.

This movement was fueled in great part by the digital world, where women and some men shared hashtags and stories of their experiences.

What I find particularly interesting, and I'm sure others have as well, is how this particular point in time has caused this groundswell of outraged and activism. Why now?

Why didn't it happen after the dozens of women came forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault and worse?

Whatever the answer, I expect we'll see more spontaneous citizen movements like this in the future. Generations of the past took to the streets, but today, people have a more instantaneous means to express their outrage in public.

This will be a fascinating development to watch.

capitalism vs. socialism

The binary thinking in the first three paragraphs of this op-ed piece started me on some wool gathering. Americans and other first world citizens so often become trapped in "either/or" analysis when it's obvious, to me, this is the wrong approach.

Yes, modern capitalism has problems. It's become far too unequal, plutocratic, and oligarchical. But that's not a good reason to toss it on the bonfire completely and embrace socialism, which is rife with problems of its own.

In the United States, the likelihood of a wholesale swap of capitalism for socialism would be close to nonexistent. While I'm no lawyer, I believe were the government to nationalize an industry, per the Constitution, owners of that industry would have to be compensated for their lost businesses.

Right there, nationalizing one industry alone would explode the federal budget and debt, making the latter immediately less attractive on the bond market. Massive inflation could result, leading to a currency collapse.

Or do advocates of socialism in America see a constitutional amendment allowing government to seize industries without compensation? Well good luck with that ever passing in the current political climate.

Rather than devoting brain real estate to thinking up ways to bring socialism to the United States, why not find ways to make capitalism more equitable for all, not just the wealthiest? While that likely would never happen in the current Congress and with the present White House occupant, that could happen after the next election or the one thereafter.

Capitalism is hurting and retooling is needed. Socialism, however, is neither a viable or attractive replacement. So, unlike the plurality of millenials identified in the linked column, I vote thumbs down on the Marx alternative.

the queen's filthy habit

I was listening to a radio show in the car about anti-smoking programs yesterday while running errands. One panelist mentioned how the Danish queen is a chain smoker and is often blamed for a higher rate of cigarette addiction among women in her country.

The queen has been on the throne since the early 1970s and is widely loved in Denmark. Until recently, she openly puffed in public, and because she's long smoked at least three packs a day, photographing her with a cancer stick in her hand or mouth was easy.

It wasn't until ten years ago that she officially stopped smoking in public, but current pictures of her puffing away still find their way into the press. Apparently, "public" in her view is anyplace where she's out in the streets, but she has been photographed at palace and invitational events with a lit cig in her claw.

The dangers of smoking have long been known and widely publicized when she was crowned, yet that didn't stop her from puffing away for everyone to see. This revelation made me quite annoyed. It also has annoyed any number of Danish and European public health professionals.

It's her business if she wants to engage in this filthy habit, but she should never have done it in public. By 1972 when she was crowned, the dangers of smoking were thoroughly proven.

Any public figure or celebrity should know that how he or she acts will influence ordinary people, particularly when they're young. Well known actors are known to smoke, as do well known politicians and members of royal families, but they do it privately.

The Danish queen is currently 77 and has still not curtailed her heavy smoking. She may soon find she regrets her life-long habit. Many heavy smokers never make it to her age, or if they do, they're so disabled by their tobacco use and in poor health.

She would be a fantastic role model for older people if she publicly quit and denounced her filthy habit.

a bombshell with brains

The New Yorker is running a short item about a new documentary on Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood moviestar of the 1930s and 40s who had a little-known hobby as an inventor.

Some of her inventions included an improved traffic light, an instant carbonated beverage, and a radio coding device that could be called a grandparent of GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi technology.

The linked article describes Lamarr as "a brilliant woman undone by the world’s fixation on her famous face." The piece never details exactly what is meant by that, but one could extrapolate a meaning based on her life.

Lamarr first became known because of her striking, exotiv beauty. But when she tried to interest defense officials in her radio coding invention, they told her she should be doing things like selling war bonds. She was probably frustrated about this, but it didn't stop her inventing habit.

In a way, though, this makes sense. If the public knows you as a brainless bimbo with big boobs, it's hard to shake that impression and start a second career. Had she started out as an inventor, then perhaps she could have had a career, but then she'd have to hide her looks behind clunky glasses and a sensible hairstyle.

I've always thought Lamarr would make an interesting heroine in a female-driven wartime Indiana Jones type story. In many ways, her private life was larger than life, so she would certainly be an interesting, complex character to work with.

amongst women

Every other week or so, I will borrow an Irish DVD from our library system. My husband and I decided at one point that we wanted to know more about the place from which most of our ancestors emigrated.

Last week, I checked out a four-part drama called Amongst Women from about twenty years ago, which was filmed in County Roscommon. We both found it really well done with strong acting.

The limited series depicts life over two decades for the Moran family as the five children grow into adulthood. The father is a tyranical autocrat, against whom the sons rebel but the daughters capitulate.

It's a timeless story that could be told about almost any dysfunctional family. The program very succinctly shows how one person can warp an entire family for generations to come.

Amongst Women is probably not an easy DVD to find, but it is well worth the search.

beautiful?

This possibly means a lot to her, but many of us recoil in horror (enlargement). Was this requested at a moment of serious inebriation?

Fifty years from now, when she's comatose in a care home, an attendant will drop the sponge in the middle of a bath when she's turned over to wash her back. "Gladys, you got to come here and take a look at this."

You paid how much for that?

collaborate or resist?

I just finished reading this book about Nazi Germany's occupation of Paris from 1940 to 1944. The work is partly social history about how ordinary French people survived during this period.

At one point in the book, the author discusses how many people today think they would have sided with the resistance during the occupation, but the reality is that a choice like that wasn't easy nor possible for many people.

If I was a woman in her early twenties when Paris fell to the Germans, and if I had something of the same life that I actually had in modern times, I probably would have worked in some louche club where bare skin was amply displayed. Places like that were heavily frequented by the occupiers, and most of the best ones were closed to Frenchmen once the Germans arrived.

So if I continued to work there, I could be considered a collaborater, required to flirt with and be friendly to the Nazis in attendance. I could quit the job, but then what would I do, considering unemployment skyrocketed once the Germans arrived?

If I was a woman my age when Paris fell, with a husband and two small children, I would not be working, so I'd at least avoid the danger of appearing to be some kind of collaborator. But in all honesty, I don't see that I would be trying to help the resistance, out of fear for my husband and my children's safety. If caught, I could be shot, too.

I do know I'd be worried as hell about my husband. He might be a French soldier in a German POW camp or, if he was not in the service, he could be rounded up at any time and sent to Germany as part of a forced labor contingent.

I think I might want to try and flee Paris with my family, but where to go? The Germans occupied the whole north and west of France, so we could face the same kinds of dangers there. And, as time would prove, those were the parts of the country that later saw heavy fighting.

One could flee south to the unoccupied zone, and many did, but the Vichy government was collaborationist and instituted many of the same policies as the occupied areas. Later in the war, Germany also invaded this part of the country, which then saw some heavy fighting.

Leaving the country would be attractive, but that would be better said than done. Some managed to slip into neutral Spain and neutral Switzerland, but far more were turned back at the borders and sometimes arrested once they tried to re-enter France.

So no matter what you tried to do, you had a choice of some really lousy options. So that's why people who blythely assume they would have been part of the resistance probably don't think through the mental exercise.

The picture below is an original early 1940s color photograph from the occupation period in Paris (enlargement).

tea with slobodan

After convicted war criminal Slobodan Praljak lost his appeal on Wednesday, he protested the court's ruling by drinking a mystery substance. It was apparently poisonous and he died a few hours later.

The incident occurred at the international criminal tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. Dutch police are investigating to determine how Praljak obtained the lethal substance while in custody.

Praljak was not sentenced to death nor life imprisonment but instead to a twenty-year term. He has been in custody since 2004, and would receive credit for time served, so he was due to be released in about seven years.

So this was not a Hermann Göring situation. If you know twentieth century history, you'll know Göring committed suicide on the eve of his execution after being sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trials.

While Praljak's action was certainly dramatic, I would submit that it was ultimately pointless. You can't really spite someone else by killing yourself. Suicide certainly doesn't disprove a guilty verdict.

If you truly believe you are innocent, then I think defiantly serving your term while continuing to maintain you are not guilty is the only way to truly throw a cloud over your sentence. Rather than proving his innocence, I would suggest, Praljak's dramatic action proved his guilt.