Audrey in the War

I've learned about World War II in the past, and read The Diary of Anne Frank, though it's been a while, but somehow the brutality of it all never ceases to catch me off guard. It was the same way with reading about Audrey Hepburn's war experiences.

It's been a while since I looked at the sequence of events, so I pulled up a WWII timeline site and added a few dates to my Book of Centuries. It's been a long while since I added anything, and it feels good to be putting another couple dates in there.

Here's a sampling:

OK, so if I continue to wait for time to put this in I'll never get my thoughts posted. I was going to post a cool WWII/Audrey mix timeline, but I'm sure you girls can imagine it.

Anyway.

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"That autumn and winter, many people saw not much cause for concern, despite the situations in Czechoslovakia and Poland, which had already dome under Nazi hegemony. War had been declared, but it was called a phony war. Thus, at the beginning of 1940 very few Dutch people feared for their future -- until the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9." (Page 19)

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The author goes on to talk about how everyone is sort of in denial; Audrey and her family attended the ballet that evening. This makes me wonder if there is something about human nature that makes it hard to accept that something bad is happening. I wonder how often this sort of thing happens, and what kind of strategic advantage it gave to the Nazis then, and other aggressors in other places if it really is a human nature thing. The calm before the storm. Of course, the storm didn't wait long to really break.

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Nazi troops and artillery then tore through Arnhem, exploiting local facilities and despoiling where they could to support the German war machine. "I saw German trucks coming in, and in five days Holland fell," Audrey remembered. "The occupation -- that's such a small word to cover the eternity of every day after the Germans came to our country, looted it, and stayed on to make slaves of us." (page 20)

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Normal life soon becomes a thing of the past, and the Dutch citizens become slaves to the Nazi regime. But it's not all darkness. Though they were caught unprepared and their situation is dismal on the good days,

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"The Dutch have a gift of shrewd perspicacity which no propaganda can obliterate, [and] outward resignation should not be taken for inward submission..."

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I have to applaud the Baroness's ability to find bits of normal to give her daughter - an invaluable gift under this sort of circumstances. And with the ballet lessons came opportunities to help the Dutch Resistance. With the Germans rounding up all sorts of people on a variety of pretexts, or for no reason at all, this must have taken some courage!

I recently came across this, from other reading I was doing, and I think for the Baroness and her family it was much more than an academic thought:

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"The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind." -New Hampshire Bill of Rights.

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2000 Girls & Chinese Diplomacy

2000 Girls

Geez, no wonder the harems are places of politics and intrigue! 2000 women, cooped up with (at least according to popular depictions) nothing to do, but if they can attract his attention they can have the ear of the Emperor. Or they can have nothing. Yikes. Talk about catty!(pg 50)

History Repeats

I'm neither a student of economics or of Chinese history, but it seems to me that history is beginning to repeat itself:

Rulers paid tribute to China in return for trading privileges and protection against their enemies, but China always gave its trading partners a greater value of goods -- silks and porcelain at discounted prices, often funded by soft loans -- than was received from them. They were thus in perpetual debt to China. (page 52, emphasis added)

The Chinese preferred to pursue their aims by trade, influence and bribery rather than by open conflict and direct colonization. (page 60)

We keep hearing about how China has become a major purchaser of American national debt. Looks like this preference for having other nations in debt to them is a well-established policy. And why not? Any country that we owe money to has that to hold over our heads! "Do what we want or we'll make you pay up." No wonder the dollar is weak. Surely there is a lesson here to be learned: PAY OUR DEBTS!

Halley's Comet

So, my first question is that since the Chinese have been tracking this comet since before Christ (page 55), why in the world is it named after a 17th Century Englishman?? In any case, the information in Wikipedia about Halley's Comet is pretty interesting. I remember its visit in 1986. But I don't know that I should plan on making it as long as 2061 to see the next visit. And this comet is a "short period" comet!

Refresher Course

Mr. Menzies keeps talking about all these explorers, and it's been quite some time since I studied them in school. Therefore, I am taking all the European explorers that he mentions in the introduction and putting them in chronological order, with the stuff that they "discovered."

1488 - Bartolomeu Dias (page 33) rounds the Cape of Good Hope (southern Africa)

1498 - Vasco da Gama (page 33) becomes first European to reach India by sea.

1492 - Christopher Columbus (page 33) arrives in the Bahamas. (The Encarta link is a pretty long bio on Columbus & has some fun information. It says that there was a reward for sighting land, nearly a year's pay, & that Columbus dishonestly pocketed it himself. This fits with Mr. Menzie's depiction of Columbus & his brother as crooks.)


OK, I'll be back to add more explorers later, as they come up.

Interesting Tidbits

So, this second time through I'm planning to take the time to look up all the odd little bits that last time I wasn't sure what exactly what going on, but I wanted to know the story, so I just pressed on past it. Places I can't point to on the map, people and explorers that I'm unfamiliar with, that sort of thing. So here goes.

The first one is this cartographer, Zuane Pizzigano. So I googled him. The very first hit was this odd Mysteriuos World site that I'm not entirely sure that I trust. But they did say that his map is available for folks to go look at at the University where Mr. Menzies originally found it. It's not terribly far from here, maybe the next time Andy gets sent there for business I'll tag along and see if I can't see the map. But this site seems a bit ... off ... to me.

Here's an actual copy of the 1424 map, found on the 1421 website. That's pretty interesting, although it's a little small.

Here's an interesting (if a little long) article about the 1424 map. Looks like it was written well before our book, but one of the things that they mention at the end of the article is that you'd have to outline what voyage made landfall on "Antilia." But apparently Portuguese children are taught a different story of the discovery of the Americas.

Oh, hey, this is interesting. I looks like notes from a presentation that Mr. Menzie did at some point. Mr. Menzie & his buddies think the Chinese were a major factor in kicking off the Renaissance. Not that they say it in so many words, but the contributions they're crediting to the Chinese are things that contributed significantly to the flowering of knowledge and technology that became the Renaissance. Things like movable type and calculating latitude. Makes me wish that I could go to some of the sessions that he's talking about these other men presenting.

Here's another one, that starts out quite hostile to Mr. Menzies right from the get-go. It's a 39 page .pdf, so bring some hot chocolate and some cookies. However, be warned that the author of the paper is rather unfriendly to Mr. Menzies, preferring an Aribic-Islamic theory of the discovery of the world. It's not a pleasant read at all, but it does answer one question I had about Mr. Menzies's theory: he seems to discount the Arabs pretty early on as incapable, but I'd always thought that they were the folks that gifted us with the concept of "zero" among other important things, and it seemed odd that they should be so casually brushed aside. So it's somewhat comforting to discover that there are other theories out there. It also further muddies the water. I have come to the conclusion that we basically have No Idea who got to the Americas "first."

Anyway, back to 1421. (Although I still know little to nothing about this Zuane Pizzigano guy.)

I Finished the Book!

I did it this afternoon while my baby was sleeping: I finished the book. I kept wanting to turn the pages, and pretty soon the spot where I was reading was a very long ways away from where I had been studying the many many interesting things that this book has to offer. I now plan to go back to the beginning with my notebook and my Book of Centuries in hand and probably look at a lot more maps... there's a LOT in this book, and I don't know enough about geography or Chinese history or even European history to follow everything that's in there. I'm also planning to make some visits to his 1421 website to see what I can see there. This stuff is fascinating!

It does raise the question: what do I teach my children about the discoveries of the various places in the world when it comes time to do that? If this book is right, and with all the evidence he has including diaries from the European explorers it sure is convincing, then all of the history textbooks need to re-written in a spectacular fashion.

Pondering

So, I'm just thinking out loud here, so don't go getting crazy on me or anything, but here's what I'm pondering tonight:

Sunday School this week covers the rest of Nephi's Vision, including the discovery of the Americas. Go read this.

Now, in light of the information in this book, I have to wonder, was Christopher Columbus perhaps included in the "other Gentiles" rather than being the man the spirit "wrought upon?" I haven't looked too treribly closely at what our book says about Columbus, but the author seems pretty adamantly clear that the European explorers knew to one degree or another that someone had already been where they were trying to go.

Something to ponder.

"Doing History"

I ran across this interesting article today about what it is to "do history." As our book is a history book, I thought it relevant enough to mention here.

To study history is to do history. And the only way we can do history is to examine the available records from the past and then write about them. So, doing history means writing history.

I like his reasons! He gives a number of reasons why writing should be an important part of the study of history: it helps you understand & remember it better, and gives you the chance to put your own opinion out there. Sounds a lot like joining the "great Conversation" that Susan Bauer talks about in her two "Educated Mind" books. It makes sense to me. I think when this book is all done I'm going to write a bit about it. I always did like doing papers anyway. This will give me the chance to control the length, content, the whole kit and caboodle. Sounds like fun to me! Anyone care to join me?

Book of Centuries

I mentioned to MissKate that I plan to use my Book of Centuries while we read 1421 (since there doesn't seem to be any objections), and she wanted to know what it is. So I was telling her about it, and it seems to me that maybe Emma & FifeMOM would like to build one too if we're going to read very many history books. I learned about Books of Centuries from some homeschooling stuff. Here's an explanation and a link to a place where you can print out some prefab pages. I did some things a little differently than the file they offer on this site: I started moving by 50 years at a time starting in 1500, since starting about then there's more recorded history and events start happening closer together. But it's basically the same thing. It's pretty fun to be able to see things like the traditional date of the founding of the Japanese empire (660BC) is on the same page as Lehi leaving Jerusalem (600BC) because they happened very close to the same time. Could make for some very interesting speculations. Anyway.

A Book of Centuries is like a timeline in a notebook. As its name suggests, each two-page spread in the book is devoted to one hundred years — a century — of history. Each student creates his or her own book, recording historical events and names of importance, along with pictures, poems, quotes, and anything else that makes the book individual. You can also add written narrations, illustrations from the Internet, or titles of books you’ve read that are set in that time period.

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