Armando Iannucci: 'The Death of Stalin' (2017)

Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin (2017) swirls around the crisis of leadership in the Soviet Union following the sudden death of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). Count yourself lucky if you live in a time and place where there are institutional checks and balances set up to combat such abuses of power as Stalin committed.  

With comic touches, The Death of Stalin is even more chilling than straight drama. The ensemble cast is excellent, including Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev and Jason Isaacs as the colorful Georgy Zhukov. 

To independent courts, a free press and protocols that help guide us through times of crisis! And to President George H. W. Bush 41, RIP. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Evald Schorm: 'Návrat ztraceného syna' / 'Return of the Prodigal Son' (1967)

Evald Schorm's Návrat ztraceného syna / Return of the Prodigal Son (1967). Stars Jana Brejchová (who played Princess Bianca in Karel Zeman's Baron Prášil / The Fabulous Baron Munchausen / The Outrageous Baron Munchausen, 1962) and Jan Kacer.

Jan, a sensitive engineer (and architect?), has tried to commit suicide. The film explores the aftermath of his suicide attempt and its impact at his psychiatric facility and on hearth and home. All of the main characters are restless. Jan's wife Jana retains Jiří (Jiří Menzel, director of Academy Award-winning Closely Watched Trains / Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966) as a paramour in plain sight, while the therapist's wife has a sweet tooth for Jan. 

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." ~ Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). 

Still from Evald Schorm's Návrat ztraceného syna / Return of the Prodigal Son (1967)

A case of mistaken identity forces Jan to run for his life. This scene reminds me of ones taking place when the tables have been turned, and the oppressors are hunted down by the formerly oppressed. However, Jan is mostly depressed, and now he's come alive -- if only out of a primal response to being pursued by several women with pitchforks. 

The Good Doctor and the Good Wife -- more or less. Kafka meets Jaroslav Hašek. Prague Spring is just around the corner, to be followed by a violent crackdown. 

RIP, Kate Spade (December 24, 1962-June 5, 2018) and Anthony Bourdain (June 25, 1956-June 8, 2018). 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Pat Conroy, 'My Exaggerated Life.' As Told to Katherine Clark (2018)

Pat Conroy, My Exaggerated Life. As Told to Katherine Clark. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2018.

I found this highly valuable for its insight into the writer's craft as well as highly entertaining for its sheer cattiness. 

Conroy (1945-2016) wasn't one to sugarcoat what he thought about other people or various things. He holds a good Irish grudge for all time, maybe even beyond death, although in the end, all good Catholics go home to rest, I suppose.  

Most importantly of all, Conroy is adamant in his advocacy for unfettered writing: ". . . I don't like readers who point and say you cannot go there; you are not allowed to go there; you're not free to go there; that is off limits. . . . Your service is to your art, and nothing else makes any difference in the world, not your love of your mother, not your love of your children. It simply doesn't. . . . you are at service to art. And if you're not, do something else . . . There is no room for timid souls on our high dive. My writing life would be worthless if I did not write about the things I wasn't supposed to." (Page 161).

Amen to that.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Russell Martin: 'Picasso's War' (2002)

Russell Martin, Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece That Changed the World. New York: Dutton, 2002.

The way it's organized:
Prologue
The Spanish Dead
Remembering the Bullring
Images Spilling from Fingers
Save Spain!
A Wearable Pair of Boots
Exiles
The Last Refugee
Guernica in Gernika
Epilogue

Highly absorbing book, providing background, context, a detailed account of artistic creation, setting, display, impact, rescue, and ongoing installation.

We see why Picasso was moved to perform his artistic duties on behalf of the Spanish Republic, then under attack by Nazi and fascist-backed brutes from 1936 until 1939. Martin shows how Picasso's response to the German-Italian air assault against Guernica on April 26, 1937 led to the creation of his Guernica masterpiece.  

A vivid account of the bombing, how word of it spread (and was also denied by the usual suspects), and how Picasso's work was displayed at the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Expo, the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that ran later in 1937. At this utterly surreal expo, giant German Nazi architecture ranged against Soviet symbols, even as German and Italian military forces and equipment faced off against Soviet equipment and advisers in the ongoing Spanish Civil War. 

Most of Europe would be engulfed in the Second World War before the decade of the 1930s was out, but only after Spain was left to burn to the ground.     

Picasso's War includes still-current debates over modern Spanish life, identity and policy. The aspirations of people in the Basque region and Catalonia are notably included. 

Since 1992, Madrid has been hosting Guernica in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; but not without a fight and the creation of a proposed alternate venue at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Basque country. 

I've seen the original Guernica at the Reina Sofía in Madrid and the huge tapestry copy at United Nations headquarters in New York City.  Now I'd like to visit Balboa and, of course, sacred Guernica (Gernika), both in Euskadi, Basque country. 

Here is the author's tribute to his teacher-friend and mentor Angel Vilalta: "Angel continually demonstrated that the best kinds of men were inquisitive and energetic, courageous yet compassionate, attuned to the breadth of the world's worries and pleasures but also equally focused on family and friends." (page 187). 

Today's Rune: Growth. 

Anna Politkovskaya: 'A Small Corner of HELL: Dispatches from CHECHNYA' (2003)

Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of HELL: Dispatches from CHECHNYA, translated by Alexander Burry and Tatiana Tulchinsky, with an introduction by Georgi Derluguian. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Prerss, 2003).

I've carried this book around for more than a decade and finally took the plunge. I knew it was going to be grim, made grimmer by the fact that Anna Politkovskaya, the book's astute author who had borne persistent witness to the Chechnyan wars, was shot (four times) and killed in a Moscow elevator on Vladimir Putin's 54th birthday -- October 7, 2006.  

Because of Anna's work, and the work of others, the devastation wrought in Chechnya is known; as are its atrocities. In reading A Small Corner of Hell, in trying to promote it, I catch the glimpse of an understanding from Anna's words: "Our fate was to look for people who were similar to us in the world, who knew something about life that most people would never experience. Perhaps we would like to share this secret with them, but they didn't want to know and didn't care." (HELL, page 200).

The bottom line: A Small Corner of Hell looks at war mostly from the perspective of people trapped inside it, poor people, civilians, Chechnyans and Russians, ground down and pulverized in dire situations from which they cannot escape. 

This is journalism at its best, literature really, a mix of memoir, chronicle, dream and nightmare. Knowing now that the author of year 2003 will be gunned down in year 2006, too, adds another layer of immediacy and poignancy to each page. 

Putin treats journalists as "enemies of the people;" given this charge, it's not surprising that many have been killed inside Russia since he came to power in 2000. Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006) is one of more than thirty so eliminated. 

Hence also the chill from Donald Trump's adoration of Putin, and Trump's labeling of American journalists "the enemy of the people." See, for example, David Jackson, "Trump again calls media 'enemy of the people.'  USA Today, February 24, 2017. Link here.

Once you lose freedom of speech and the fair rule of law, you're in constant danger of death and destruction, without much recourse. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.  

Molière's 'Tartuffe, or The Imposter' and the Texas Constitution

Banned Books and religious tests. The First Amendment. Molière's Tartuffe and the Texas Constitution. What the hell is all that about?

In 1664 in France, Molière wrote the play Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur / Tartuffe, or The Imposter; it was staged once, then banned from the public eye for fear of disturbing the peace (that is to say, for questioning certain widely accepted practices among the ruling classes). In other words, it's a perfect topic of discussion during Banned Books Week.

Here's what one of Molière's powerful critics wrote about the playwright in 1664 (via this handy English translation extracted from the original French by Virginia Scott). 

According to this critic, Molière was: "A man, or rather a Demon clothed in flesh and dressed like a man . . . the most notable and impious freethinker who has ever lived, has had the wickedness and abomination to bring from his diabolical mind a play ready to be shown on the public stage to the derision of the Church . . . with the intention of rendering it ridiculous, contemptible, and odious. He would deserve, as a result of this sacrilegious and impious attack, to be tortured publicly as an example, and to be burned at the stake, in advance of the fires of Hell . . ."

~Pierre Roullé, curé de la paroisse Saint-Barthélémy, quoted in "The Quarrel of Tartuffe," Molière, Tartuffe (W. W. Norton Criticial Edition, 2009), page 66. 

(For an American context, the Salem Witch Trials began in 1692 -- 28 years later).

Tartuffe centers around the title character, a flim-flam man who exploits religious sentiments for his own gain as he plots to swindle his supporters out of their homes. In the 21st century, he's a cross between a megachurch televangelist and Big Donnie Trump. 

Thanks to Molière's satire (which by today's standards is very mild) and works like it -- right through Voltaire and the philosophes and the Constitution of the United States of America -- freedom of expression and the right to dissent are considered essential rights, not luxuries, let alone something to be tortured publicly and burned at the stake for.

Which brings me to something in the Texas Constitution that needs to be revised in this 21st century. The way it now stands both the wording and meaning is self-contradictory and completely illogical. The way it stands now, any lyin' Tartuffe can be elected to state office in Texas, but not so a single freethinking adult who admits that she or he does not necessarily believe in a Supreme Being.

Article I, Section 4 of the Texas Constitution (in place from 1876 to 2016+):

RELIGIOUS TESTS. No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.  

Did you catch the contradiction?  "No religious test shall be required . . . provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being." Having to "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being" IS a religious test, and a very restrictive one.

To prove that Texas does perpetuate a restrictive religious test, all we have to do is find one non-religious belief or one religious belief system that does not acknowledge or require a Supreme Being in order to function.

Let's suggest some:

Secular humanism
Agnosticism
Atheism
Animism
Taoism
Unitarianism
Universalism
Society of Friends/Quakers (specifically the Humanistic Society of Friends)
"Ground of being" (Paul Tillich)
Hinduism
Buddhism
Shintoism
Freethinking
Pantheism
Skepticism
Confucianism

Several of the above may believe in being, but not in "a [single] Supreme Being."

The United States Constitution dealt with this issue nearly one hundred years before the Lone Star's adoption of the 1876 Texas Constitution.

Article 6, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution: "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Hence, even a casual reading of Tartuffe will help one realize that the Texas Constitution does require one's passing through a religious test in order to operate in any official capacity and that any hypocrite who pretends to believe in a Supreme Being simply by saying he/she does will be eligible for such offices, while a single reading of the US Constitution shows that the Texas Constitution is unsustainable as it now stands.

The core of Article I, Section 4 of the Texas Constitution should and must be changed to: "No religious test shall be required." Period. 

End of story.  Happy Banned Books Week. Viva Freedom of Expression and the right to dissent!

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Bille August: Night Train to Lisbon (2013)

Bille August's Night Train to Lisbon (2013) takes on the difficult task of translating Pascal Mercier's densely packed novel Nachtzug nach Lissabon into a 111-minute movie. The result is good, if not great: good enough for me, at any rate. From this film, I learned something about modern Portuguese history, particularly about the effects of the Estado Novo, or de facto dictatorship under António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) and Marcello José das Neves Alves Caetano (1906-1980), an oppressive status quo that was dismantled by the Revolução dos Cravos or Carnation Revolution beginning on April 25, 1974 (Freedom Day in Portugal).

The catalyst for the film's plot arrives quickly when a woman looks about to jump from a bridge in Switzerland; soon the Jeremy Irons character, who "saves" her, walks out of the middle of a class he's teaching and, before you know it, takes the night train to Lisbon. An exhilarating idea for many people, no doubt -- in that way, not unlike John Updike's 1960 novel Rabbit, Run.  

The strong international cast of Night Train to Lisbon ranges from Jeremy Irons as a sort of Mr. Chips professor to Christopher Lee as a hoary priest; from Mélanie Laurent as a tough resistance coordinator to Charlotte Rampling as Amadeu do Prado's slightly barmy sister; from Jack Huston as Dr. Amadeu do Prado to Bruno Ganz as his grizzled friend looking back; from Martina Gedeck as a sharply observant and sympatico eye doctor to Lena Olin as Estefânia in the present. Flashback is utilized as a connecting thread, so many characters have double actors playing them.

Finally, Lisbon provides a colorful, light-suffused backdrop for much of the film. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.

A Crazy Little Thing Called News

I remember how excited I was as a kid seeing raw news coming off the wires, tick tick tick, well before the internet took hold. The Associated Press (AP) or United Press International (UPI) cabled eclectic updates, sending news items by telegraph, telephone, radio, courier . . . using technology, combined with rail and auto, that had created sports as we know it, ups and downs of stock markets, currency exchange rates and stylized formats for presenting the news that we still recognize and rely on. 

Back then, I often looked at 3D globes and paper maps. From the perspective of the East Coast of the USA, I sometimes wondered what was happening in places like Zanzibar, Inner Mongolia, Bolivia or Ghana. Now -- and for the past two decades, really -- with the internet, it's much easier to find out for oneself -- and fast. 

Multiple language filters are less of a challenge, too, thanks to instant (if still a little clunky) electronic translations served up with the click of a mouse. (They were called "machine translations" when I worked in Public Documents & Maps).

In this so-called 21st century, with even basic curiosity and imagination, anyone with high speed access to the internet and rudimentary information literacy can customize their own approach to "the news." 

What is "the news?"  Even the word "News" is slangish, when you think about it.  That which is new? But not all news is new -- in fact, much of it's old hat. (Usage of  the word "news" is nothing new, either: it goes back more than six hundred years). 

Consider this approach to the news from nearly three hundred years ago. The "tag-line" for The Pennsylvania Gazette pictured above: "Containing the freshest Advices Foreign and Domestic" (spelling modernized -- it's from the year 1729 after all).  This was the first incarnation of The Pennsylvania Gazette as published by Benjamin Franklin.

In the right-hand column, the "editorial" asserts: 

There are many who have long desired to see a good News-Paper in Pennsylvania; and we hope those Gentlemen who are able, will contribute towards making This such. We ask Assistance, because we are fully sensible, that to publish a good News-Paper is not so easy an Undertaking as many People imagine it to be. The Author of a Gazette (in the Opinion of the Learned) ought to be qualified with an extensive Acquaintance with Languages, a great Easiness and Command of Writing and Related Things clearly and intelligibly, and in few Words; he should be able to Speak of War both Land and Sea; be well acquainted with Geography; with the History of the Time . . . and so on. 

"Breaking" news is another strange concept when you think about it. What is it breaking against -- time? Tranquility? Complacency? Boredom? 

In future, I'd like to spend a little more time considering language differences in concepts and names regarding "the news." 

Isn't it funny how many quirky names there are for various "news" publications?  Like the names of ships, storms and sports teams, naming conventions are bizarrely universal.

How do you gather or receive "news?" Have you changed your approach through time?   

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Tomlinson Hill: Take II

Closeup of map from the US Census of 1860. 

Tomlinson Hill (2013), directed by Lisa Kaselak, who is also executive producer along with Chris Tomlinson; the latter's book of the same name will be published in July 2014.

Historical context: Just before the American Civil War of 1861-1865, most of the population of Texas lived in the eastern half of the state. Most Comanche, Kiowa, Caddo and other "First Nations" (Canadian term) had been driven or "removed" to the North (now Oklahoma) and West by 1860. At the same time, black slave labor had been moved or was being moved into Texas by white slave owners from the "Old Southwest" (Alabama, for instance) and other slaveholding states, as well as illegally via the Atlantic. Slave laborers were concentrated from the Red River line to just above Indianola, and being pushed westward beyond Fort Worth, often having to create and then work cotton fields wherever it was considered feasible. In 1860, about 30% of the population of Texas-- according to the US census count -- consisted of "black" and "mulatto" slaves. As is pointed out in Tomlinson Hill, tens of thousands more slaves were relocated from other parts of the South to Texas in response to Union victories elsewhere in the Confederacy, their owners fleeing -- and forcing them, their slaves, to come along -- from war zones threatened with active emancipation.

Many slaves living in Texas, mostly illiterate by design of their owners, must still have known at least generally about the Emancipation Proclamation by word of mouth, well before Juneteenth -- June 19th, 1865 -- when Union Major General Gordon Granger, who had landed in Galveston backed with troops and ships, announced the facts: slavery was formally ended in the South, even in Texas.* 

For the second half of 1865, some 50,000 Union troops occupied parts of Texas, mostly south of Tomlinson Hill and Marlin, particularly in and around Austin, Indianola, Victoria, San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Brownsville. These troops were a show of force against both Texas Confederates and French imperial claims in Mexico. (Full disclosure: Samuel France, my great great grandfather, was a member of the Union occupying force, serving in the 31st Indiana Veteran Volunteers until he was mustered out in Victoria, Texas, on December 8, 1865, with the rest of his regiment).

Now, with regards to Marlin and Tomlinson Hill, Texas, significant populations of slave laborers were moved into place from Alabama by their white owners in the latter 1850s, before the war: 240, 68 and 24 people respectively among three families. After effective emancipation, many of the freedmen formerly owned by the Tomlinsons adopted the Tomlinson family name. The "black" and "white" Tomlinsons became "like distant cousins," but as Chris Tomlinson also points out, at one count before emancipation, "eight child slaves were mulatto and had been born since the move from Alabama." Meaning, of course, that at least some black and white Tomlinsons were -- and are -- genetically related, too, of "blended" or "biracial" background, and actual blood relatives.

Elsewhere in Tomlinson Hill, Fred L. McGhee, maritime archaeologist and historical anthropologist, points out that Texas [mostly from what now we would call East Texas, out to about Weatherford, situated near what was, by the end of the American Civil War, the crumpled Western frontier of the Confederacy] "is a Southern state. The economic, cultural and social basis of 19th century Texas is slavery. Its basis was plantation agriculture. It was . . . 'an Empire for Slavery.'"

So, how did the freedmen in Texas fare after Juneteenth 1865? And how did the "powers that be" fare in the ensuing 150 years?  Clue: take a look at Texas politics today, from the governor to the state legislature to the US Senate. What do you observe?  

Finally for now, I want to also delve into the growing Hispanic population of Texas in general, and Marlin specifically, at some point. 

[To be continued in a future post].

*Slavery was not ended in the Choctaw Nation, in Oklahoma, until 1866.

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

The Secret Life of Sleep

Just finished Kat Duff's The Secret Life of Sleep (Atria Books, Beyond Words, 2014). I will read it again. Lots of interesting things to ponder regarding sleep, dreams, waking, nodding off and everything in between.

This mysterious phenomenon called sleep "colors our perceptions, regulates our moods, alters our interactions, and determines our health to such an extent that we barely know ourselves apart from its influence. Sleep lifts and carries our days like water holding lily pads afloat. . ." (page 204).

Cool book that looks around the world, combing through time. It muses about various altered states of consciousness from many different perspectives. An inherently fascinating subject and approach. 

Makes me think of the evolution of my sleep preferences. Ideally, I would stay up late and then, after some perfectly calibrated cycle of deep dreamless sleep followed by cycles of REM dream states, I would get up naturally, no alarm clocks. Sleep with style: cotton linens, multiple thin pillows. Fan whirling to cover random night noises. At a stretch, seven to nine hours of sleep would be nice. But of course: preferences are one thing, realities another. 

How about you?

Today's Rune: The Self.

Freedom Riders

Stanley Nelson, Jr.'s Freedom Riders (2010) does excellent work bringing the Freedom Rides of 1961 -- and the harsh resistance to them -- into perspective and full, open view. Drawing from the work of Raymond Arsnenault and others, Freedom Riders weaves throughout the tales of several key players -- Freedom Riders, other civil rights leaders, politicians and officials with different perspectives, witnesses and Good Samaritans. Like the Freedom Rides themselves, Nelson's documentary starts out smoothly and then picks up momentum, driving right into the brutal resistance of white segregationists in Alabama and Mississippi. 

At about two hours, Freedom Riders (PBS, American Experience) takes us on a mesmerizing and sometimes horrific journey through fresh, still resonant American history.

The music is gripping, too. I was delighted to hear in the background (near the end of the film) Detroit-born Barbara Dane's version of "I'm On My Way," which is a very cool one, indeed, as are various other interpretations of this great traditional gospel song, usually referred to in full as "I'm On My Way (and I Won't Turn Back)." Check out, for instance, recorded performances by Odetta, The Carter Family,* Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Mavis Staples.

Full disclosure: I'll be co-discussing Freedom Riders at a local college next week. Glad I watched the film ahead of time, certainly. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.

*"I'm On My Way To Canaan's Land," by Alvin "A. P." Carter.

Salsa : Latin Music of New York and Puerto Rico

This was originally released as Salsa : Latin Music of New York and Puerto Rico (1979). Part of Jeremy Marre's fantastic Beats of the Heart documentary series, it can now be found in the USA as a DVD on Netflix, Amazon, and elsewhere as Salsa: Latin Pop Music in the Cities. 

As with all of the Beats of the Heart documentaries that I've seen so far, Salsa is fascinating and absorbing. We see and hear vibrant music and musicians set within a wider cultural context. 

Salsa focuses mostly on the Puerto Rican scene. The film's importance has only gained steam since its first release. Consider that as of this post, there are -- according to a plethora of recent census reports and estimates -- about five million souls of Puerto Rican descent living on the mainland US, and another 3.6 million on the US island "commonwealth" of Puerto Rico proper. In other words, in the continental US alone, the Puerto Rican population in 2014 equals that of the entire USA in the year 1800. 

Lest anyone forget, Puerto Rico was seized by the USA as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898; Puerto Ricans were formally “granted” US citizenship in 1917. The idea of Puerto Rico’s independence, though, has been around since the beginning. Indeed, there is a brief segment in Salsa about the failed pro-independence plot to assassinate US President Harry S Truman in 1950.

Some of the key musicians included in Salsa are: Tito Puente (1923-2000), Charlie Palmieri (1927-1988), Celia Cruz – whose majestic name in full was Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso de la Santísima Trinidad (1925-2003), Rubén Blades (b. in Panama, 1948), Ray Barretto (1929-2006) and Willie Colón (b. 1950), plus Felipe Luciano (b. 1947) of The Last Poets and The Young Lords.

We also get to see and hear in action special Puerto Rican guitars like the cuatro (I could have sworn they mentioned an “ocho” eight string guitar, too) and syncretized religious themes, particularly Yoruba and Spanish Catholic, i.e. Santería.

Today's Rune: Growth. 

Whatever *That* Was

Social expressions are so funny we almost forgot to laugh. Seriously. I still hear, from time to time, little interactions like these ones I heard among kids and adults growing up. Home schooled children may be missing out on some of these rich proclamations.

Such as:

Give it back!
You take that back!
Say you don't mean it!
Mine!

And older kids/adults:

Get out of my face!
Get off my back!
Get out of my hair!
That's none of your business!
Get out of my business!
Give me a [modified -ing] break!
He [or she] is being a real a pain in the [X, Y or Z].
Do you hear me?
You heard me.

All of these make me chuckle -- as an observer.

Some people just can't fathom [or phantom or famine] such social interactions. How about you?

Today's Rune:  The Mystery Rune. 

The Dance of Created Lights: A Sufi Tale

Digging the descriptive texture of Jay Bremyer's The Dance of Created Lights: A Sufi Tale (1996). The weird thing is: where did I pick this up? When? Why? Furthermore: did I? Must have been serendipity. Synchronicity. Kismet. A dream made real. 

Set in Córdoba, the novel gives a tantalizing glimpse into another world, a shimmering one so intimate and present yet also distant. 

As Bremyer notes in his preface: "Here the kingdom of al-Andalus had become, by the tenth century [A.D. or C.E.], one of the greatest kingdoms in the world, strong enough to host and protect scholars, musicians, poets, physicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, and heretics of all persuasions. . ." (page 9). Amen to that. 

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

Córdoba

Around 1000 years ago, Córdoba was -- in what is now southern Spain --one of the most populated cities in the world. It was a diverse place, a tolerant learning center, at the time home to the largest functioning library in the world. It was a main focal point of Al-Andalus, the land of the Iberian Moors, center of the Caliphate of Córdoba. Jews, Christians and different Muslim sects lived in fair tolerance and abundance. 

Obviously, harmony was subject to change. Relatively few even remember or know of such sparkling diversity now. But while its tolerant era lasted, it must have been truly something. 

Even now we can see spectacular architectural gifts bequeathed down the centuries -- the great mosque, modified into a Catholic cathedral (the mosque itself had been modified and greatly expanded from earlier Christian church grounds). The great Roman bridge remains, too. Can you dig?

Today's Rune: Joy.