2023: DC’s Deadliest Year Since 1997
The nation’s capital recorded more homicides in 2023 than in any year since 1997, giving the District the fifth-highest murder rate among the nation’s biggest cities.
The 274 confirmed victims ranged from infants to octogenarians. They were killed in homes, in Metro stations and in motor vehicles; they were killed in alleys, in school zones and in public parks. They were slain on streets by acquaintances and strangers and in the crossfire of warring neighborhood crews, in double shootings and triple shootings. They died in the dark and the dawn and under the midday sun in all parts of Washington, from its poorest precincts to its busiest commercial and nightlife areas.
Making and Keeping Friends Takes Time and Effort
Clare Ansberry writes about making and keeping friends for The Wall Street Journal:
- People can generally maintain three to five close friendships.
- We need between 40 and 60 hours together for an acquaintance to become a casual friend.
- To move from casual friends to close friends, you need to spend an additional 140 to 160 hours together for a total of about 200 hours.
- However, deeper interactions can accelerate that timeline. You can form a close bond in less than 200 hours with meaningful conversations and a willingness to be vulnerable.
- Sharing things about yourself can lead to close friendships.
- It’s important to maintain close friendships, especially in person.
Paradise is Where You Stand
Pico Iyer writing in The New York Times:
As a constant traveler for 49 years now, I sometimes feel I’ve been zigzagging from one “paradise” to the next. From Tahiti to Tibet, from the Seychelles to Antarctica, I’ve found tourist posters conspiring with travelers’ hopes to present every place as a kind of Eden. Yet often it’s our very notions of paradise that intensify divisions. In Sri Lanka I’d realized that the island has so often been taken to be Arcadia — Arabs saw it as “contiguous with the Garden of Eden,” and an Italian papal legate announced that the waters of paradise could be there — that the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and millions of us tourists have all scrambled to grab a piece of it.
Besides, if I really did come upon a calm and self-contained Eden, what would it have to gain from me? I, like any visitor, could only be the serpent in the garden.
All our paradise, our only hopes, had to be uncovered here, in the midst of real life and in the face of death.
Netanyahu on Israel’s Expansion of Diplomatic Relations in 2020
In its first seventy-two years, Israel made peace with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan. In the span of four months, Israel had made peace with four more.
Netanyahu, Benjamin. Bibi: My Story (p. 634). Threshold Editions. Kindle Edition.
Israel’s established diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on September 11, 2020 under the aegis of the Abraham Accords.
This marked the first instance of Arab–Israeli normalization since 1994, when the Israel–Jordan peace treaty came into effect.
In December 2020, Morocco joined the accords and normalized relations with Israel. Then, in January 2021, Sudan joined the Abraham Accords and normalized relations with Israel.
What will happen next is an open question after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The October 7 attack was the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel since the state’s establishment in 1948, and the scale of the death toll was unprecedented in Israeli history.
Blogging for the Joy of Sharing
Simon Reynolds writing in The Guardian explains that he started blogging in 2002 and he will never stop blogging, even if if it’s an outdated format. It’s even ok with him if nobody reads his blog:
I’ve resisted the idea of going the Substack or newsletter route. If I were to become conscious of having a subscriber base, I’d start trying to please them. And blogging should be the opposite of work. But if it’s not compelled, blogging is compulsive: an itch I have to scratch. And for every post published, there are five that never get beyond notepad scrawls or fumes in the back of my mind.
Blogging Platforms
Jason Velazquez recently shared a handy list of blogging platforms, many of which are unfamiliar to me.
Photography: Sharing Moments
I have always said that at the core of the photographic act is the verb “to share“ and that photography is all about sharing a moment I frame and want to hold on to for now, and for all time, and to be shared with myself and others.
Switzerland and Dachau
Germany’s National Socialist (Nazi) government and Switzerland had substantial ties. Switzerland’s contribution to the construction of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich is not well known.
Before WWII, Extroc, SA, a Swiss state-subsidized timber company built the Dachau concentration camp, under a contract for 13 million Swiss francs. The contract was negotiated by Colonel Henri Guisan, the son of the later Swiss Commander-in-Chief Henri Guisan (1874–1960) and a Swiss national hero. The Swiss Colonel was in turn connected to Hans Wilhelm Eggen, an SS captain who bought timber in Switzerland for the Waffen SS. This was the wood used to construct Dachau. Dachau was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazi government.1
According to a now declassified CIA report, Eggen often went to “Switzerland under cover of a delivery agent for wooden barracks.” Eggen was a friend of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS. In Nazi Germany, the SS controlled the German police forces and the concentration camp system.
See, Roberts, Andrew, The Storm of War (p. 113). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition; Goñi, Uki, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina (p. 170). Granta Books. Kindle Edition.
‘We need to be heard’
Annie Mueller writing on Substack:
It’s so important to be heard, and to know you’re heard. Not just when there’s a crisis, or a wound, or a big change. We need to be heard. It’s a core need. It’s why we sing songs, make music, write stories, tell jokes, make art, design products. Sometimes it’s also why we lash out, get aggressive, get mean — because we forget, or don’t know, how to make ourselves heard in a better way.
We need to be heard because to be heard is to be recognized and valued.
The Joy of Photography
Ferdy Christant, in a superb piece about Flickr, suggests that people who photograph for the joy of it should focus less on external validation such as likes or faves and more on what brings them joy:
For amateurs and enthusiasts, . . . first and foremost . . . enjoy your hobby. Enjoy photography itself as well as your topics, be they a landscape, a model or a freaky insect. Or even a Snowy Owl. This is your hobby and you should learn to enjoy it even if not a single other human being notices. Start with this. Your joy and self worth should not depend on others.
I’m serious. Look at people having other hobbies. Reading, hiking, tennis, wood crafts, brewing beer, collecting stamps, watching movies or playing Tetris…none of these people spend hours per day seeking validation as to whether their hobby is worthwhile or has meaning. It has meaning because it is your time and you enjoy doing it. None of them determine meaning based on others as if they are monitoring a stock market of self worth.
You can learn more about Ferdy in this 2015 interview.
Photography ‘Takes Me to Another World’
Patrik Seiler is a talented Swiss photographer who mainly makes photographs of landscapes and cities:
Every time I pick up my camera, I forget the time and everyday life. The camera and the pictures take me to another world. I concentrate on the moment and try to get the best out of that very moment, the conditions, the subject, the location, the light and so on.
You can follow Patrik on Instagram or Flickr. His photos are also featured here.
’Why Nostalgia?’
Jeanne Moreau (1928 – 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite:
My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It’s like climbing a staircase. I’m on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That’s where I was. We’re here right now. Tomorrow, we’ll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?
Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place.
Blog About Whatever You Want to Share
Ben Werdmuller on what you should write about on your blog:
Whatever you want to share. That’s the long answer and the short answer.
What you shouldn’t worry about is whether what you’re sharing is valuable. If you want to share it, it’s inherently valuable: a reflection of who you are and how you think about the world.
If you want to use it to build a business, then do that. If you want to share more about yourself, then do that. There are no wrong answers.
‘Blog your heart out!’
Robin Rendle explains why he thinks it’s worth blogging:
Ignore the analytics and the retweets though. There will be lonely, barren years of no one looking at your work. There will be blog posts that you adore that no one reads and there’ll be blog posts you spit out in ten minutes that take the internet by storm. How do you get started though? Well, screw the research! A blog post can anything, a half-thought like this one or a grandiose essay with a million footnotes. It can look like anything, too: you can have a simple HTML-only website or you can spend a month on the typography, getting every letter-spaced part of it just right.
There are no rules to blogging except this one: always self-host your website because your URL, your own private domain, is the most valuable thing you can own. Your career will thank you for it later and no-one can take it away. But don’t wait up for success to come, it’s going to be a slog—there will be years before you see any benefit. But slowly, with enough momentum behind it, your blog will show you the world: there will be distant new friends, new enemies, whole continents might open up and welcome themselves to you.
Or maybe they won’t. But you’ll never know unless you write that half-assed thing that’s in your head right now.
Starting Small
Sophia Efthimiatou, head of writer relations at Substack, explains that it’s ok to start writing with a small audience:
You would think known writers with large audiences have it easy here, but the pressure to succeed is felt more among them. The stakes are low if you are not at all known. There is no audience to lose, only one to gain. And gain you will. Perhaps when you start your only subscribers will be your best friend, your lonely neighbor, and your aunt–who can’t even read English. And then, one day, a fourth subscriber will roll in, a total stranger. That person will be there just to read you.
World War II - Total Civilian and Military Deaths in Millions
| Country | Military Deaths in Millions |
|---|---|
| Soviet Union | 24 |
| China | 20 |
| Germany | 6.6 to 6.8 |
| Poland | 5.6 |
| Japan | 2.6 to 3.1 |
| India | 1.5 to 2.5 |
| France | 0.6 |
| UK | 0.45 |
| US | 0.42 |
On the Importance of Ukraine in 1991
With roughly 52 million inhabitants at the time, Ukraine was, in population terms, both the second-largest Soviet republic and the size of a major European state; the British and French populations were 57 and 58 million, respectively. 135 Ukraine’s history as an East Slavic and predominantly Orthodox state had long been deeply intertwined with Russia’s. There were millions of ethnic Russians living among, and married to, Ukrainians. If Ukraine decided in its referendum of December 1, 1991 to become fully independent, it would at once commence a painful economic and political divorce from its fellow Slavs and also become a greater nuclear power than either Britain or France. Ukraine’s choices would clearly have such far-reaching effects. From Moscow, [U.S.] Ambassador [Robert S.] Strauss advised Washington that “the most revolutionary event of 1991 for Russia may not be the collapse of Communism, but the loss of something Russians of all political stripes think of as part of their own body politic, and near to the heart at that: Ukraine.”
Sarotte, M. E.. Not One Inch (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series) (pp. 126-127). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition (footnotes omitted).
Discovering Great European Television
The Euro TV Place is an excellent source of recommendations for great European television. Linda Jew, the founder of the site, regularly publishes detailed reviews.
I enjoy French television because it helps me keep up and improve my French. Modern television lets you hear the way people speak in everyday life, which often is different from what is taught in foreign language classes.
I’ve enjoyed great television I learned about at The Euro TV Place including:
- Le bureau des légendes, a great spy series (one of the best pieces I’ve ever watched)
- Call My Agent, a very funny French TV series about a top rung Parisian talent agency on Netflix
- No Second Chance which is in French but written by Harlan Coben, a famous American writer, also on Netflix
- Deutschland 83, a funny German spy story
- Engrenages (Spiral in English), a wonderful series now in its eighth series
If you’re interested in exploring new television, The Euro TV Place is a great resource. The blog discusses many new shows each month.
Helen Reddy (1941-2020)
Singer Helen Reddy, who was born in Australia in 1941, died in Los Angeles on September 29, 2020 at the age of 78.
I loved her music. Her first hit was a 1971 cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from the award-winning stage show “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Her trademark song — “I Am Woman,” — came a year later. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1972. Reddy was the first Australian-born artist to win a Grammy and the first to make the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Reddy did not have an easy life. She had a kidney removed at 17 and lived with Addison’s disease.