Swedish school confiscates boy's party invitations

If a boy is inviting people to his birthday party, shouldn't he be allowed to invite his friends (subject to parental approval, of course)?

School officials in Lund, Sweden say no. They say an eight-year-old boy has to invite all his classmates, including the boys who don't get along with him.

Because, you know, otherwise it's discrimination.

We know this because when he handed out invitations, he didn't invite two boys, whereupon the school officials confiscated the invitations.

The boy's father has been reduced to filing a complaint with something called a "parliamentary ombudsman."

Uhm.

Raise your hand if you're glad you don't have a child in that school.

Raise your other hand if you're glad you don't live in Sweden.

(I thought the civil rights movement was all about encouraging people to judge other people on the basis of their character, instead of on the basis of irrelevant factors beyond their control. What in the world happened to that worthy goal? And how did mindlessness, of all things, take its place?)

Rest in peace, Irena Sendler

I did a post on World War II Polish heroine Irena Sendler back in March 2007: Suitable For Mixed Company: A tribute to a brave and caring lady.

She died last month at the age of 98. See a Glenn Beck video tribute to her here.

Still laughing, almost four centuries later

I'm a fan of Dutch Masters in general, and Rembrandt in particular, especially the paintings that are laced with humor or good cheer.

So I'm tickled by this story: Rembrandt Laughing.

How many artists today would even try to make a self-portrait this engaging? I ask you? Thank goodness Rembrandt wasn't of the 'sullen is cool' school! How much the world would have lost had he chosen to be 'more sophisticated' (so-called).

How is freedom born? A new film explores the question.

I see that Acton Media has a film coming out this month that looks like it addresses some important issues and provides some useful historical context. See The Birth of Freedom - A Documentary on the History of Freedom for more information, to view the trailer, or to arrange a screening. (Warning: the trailer includes images of torture and war dead and other nasty stuff. It's in context, but it might not be suitable for children.)

The official website also has a useful list of primary documents and websites, information on important people, and relevant court cases.

hat tip: Acton Institute

Update: The film is just shy of an hour long, if that makes any difference to you if you're hoping to set up a screening.

Book note: The Moneyman, by Thomas B. Costain

Of late, I seem to keep stumbling across books that, when read, present me with a problem: do I review them here or not? The Moneyman by Thomas B. Costain is one of that sort. For the most part, it's very good. But it's got just enough graphic or gutter-level content that I can't recommend it without at least some reservations, particularly in this forum. But, then, this is also a place where we discuss history, and this book strikes me as a good jumping off point for learning about the Middle Ages in Europe. And it's no good trying to pretend that the Middle Ages were all sweetness and light, particularly France toward the end of the Hundred Years' War.

So, here goes: For the most part it's a good read, but there are a few places where I found out more than I wanted about torture methods, and other varieties of man's inhumanity to man, and there are some earthy comments here and there (but not very many). One of the main storylines is about providing a king with a new mistress. Another storyline involves the evolution of warfare in that time period, and it's not pretty. However, compared to quite a bit of the more recent fare flung out to us from Hollywood, big publishing houses, television, and other 'cultural leaders,' this book is civil and civilized. Given the subject matter, I think Costain was admirably restrained, in fact. Putting the objections to one side, it has some rip-roaring adventure in it, plus a few good laughs, plus wit and sense and historical insight and info. Overall, a good book. I'd advise parents to read it before deciding whether a teen under their roof should get a look at it, and ladies might want to skip it (I'm kind of glad I read it, but kind of wish I hadn't), but, overall, a good book.

"The Moneyman" is Jacques Coeur, a powerful, influential, innovative man who was born around 1395, and died in 1456. He served Charles VII of France (aka Charles the Well Served), but he also amassed a considerable fortune through trade and retailing. From what I picked up in the novel, and what I've been able to dredge up on the man since, Coeur seems to have been one of those men who can be honestly credited with helping change the course of history.

Costain is kind enough to note in his introduction which of the main characters are wholly fictitious, and where else he happily invented things for the sake of telling his story. (i.e. "... I conceived the duel as necessary to point up the absurdity and the unfairness of the chivalrous practices of the day...") He also admits to fiddling with timelines some. Still, as historical novels go, it seems to be well researched and well presented.

Spoilers follow For those of you interested in military history, Costain presents Coeur as helping bring the Hundred Years' War to an end, both by paying for a renewed French offensive out of his own purse, and by championing the use of bombards (cannon). Getting France to use cannons proved rather difficult, as he tells it, since knights reportedly considered cannons and the men who manned them as beneath contempt, in fact, worthy of extermination. Spoilers end

I notice from the Wikipedia article linked above that Coeur is also credited with helping put an end to the papal schism. That part of his life wasn't mentioned in the book, that I can recall. But, there you go, more evidence the man made a difference in his day, and is worth remembering.

The book is rich with detail, on a wide variety of subjects: clothing, customs, society, university 'experts' of the day, what passed for medicine then, how 'justice' was handed out, and more. Costain even includes turns of phrase that were common in France at the time. We have a friend who is a history teacher and he's told us that Costain is often recommended for history students. I can see why.

This book came out in 1947, and the author seems (not surprisingly, given the horrors of World War II) to have identified with Coeur's vision of a world that would somehow move past war if only merchants could get well enough established, and power could be reckoned in trade instead of warfare, and if the common man had access to enough affordable goods to reach a point he felt comfortable from a material standpoint. Costain strikes me as otherwise being an astute observer of man's capacity for ingratitude, the temptations of power, etc. (And I'll happily meet him halfway on this. Improving the lot of the common man is good in and of itself. It can also reduce strife. I just don't believe widespread material benefits can cure as much as either man seemed to hope.) In fact, despite the author's rare stabs at holding up hope that the world can move beyond war, the book taken as a whole is something of a case study in man's capacity for ingratitude, deceit, doublecrosses, cruelty, pettiness, idiocy, and self-justification.

Oh, I bet that last sentence made you want to run out and grab a copy, just right quick...

Costain himself foresaw the difficulty of his task. From the introduction, "As Valerie Maret and D'Arlay and the Comte and Comtesse de Burey are fictitious characters, it follows that the train of events in which they are depicted as playing parts has been invented to supply a note of lightness and romance in what might otherwise be a grim story."

Well, yeah. The times were rough and tough, and society favored the favored, so to speak. It was not a safe time to not be in the king's good graces. For that matter, it wasn't a safe time to be in a king's good graces. Or a king. (This begs the question: Is it ever? Answer: Probably not, but some times and places certainly seem to be more corrupt and bloody than others.)

Ending on a lighter note, from page 209 in my copy, here's a turn of phrase I have added to my 'phrases I wish I had more use for' catalog (emphasis mine):

Sensing what was coming, the Comte frowned at his companion. "Do you mean," he demanded, "that the toads of doubt are hopping in your head as to the need of carrying out the plan?"

Heh. Every once in a while doubt seems very much like that, doesn't it?

On second thought, let's end with another snippet. From page 383 in my copy:

...When Olivier de Bousse had come into the enclosure, [the prisoner] had said to himself, "That great windbag!" The doctor, in his opinion, represented the least worthy element at the University. He was pedantic and opinionated and yet at the same time servile to all forms of authority; a coddler of the great ladies who came to him for medical attention, a theorist who covered up his lack of experience and judgment with a smother of learned words. The prisoner said to himself now, "It's very clear why this toady has been brought as a witness."

No, wait, I want to share this, from page 404, in answer to a young woman's confusion over why charges had been dropped, but the prisoner wasn't being released:

"The turnkey shook his head gloomily. "It's like a fork, Mademoiselle. If they don't catch him on one prong, they will on another...

In other words, if the powers that be want to get you, they'll keep finding excuses to charge you with something. Sad to say.

I could go on for quite a while like this. I have bookmarks all through the book, at favorite passages. Costain had a knack, no question.

Book note: The Good Master, by Kate Seredy

I've been having a blast dipping into some old books in the "Classics to Grow On" series put out by Keepworthy Books, a division of Parents' Magazine, New York. The latest has been The Family Treasury of Children's Stories: Fun, Fables & Adventure, compiled by Pauline Rush Evans, c. 1956. One of the selections in it is the opening chapter of The Good Master by Kate Seredy.

In short, ten-year-old Jancsi has been told that his cousin Kate from the city is coming to visit their ranch on the Hungarian plains because she has had the measles and is delicate. Jancsi has no idea what the measles are or what delicate means, but he's sure that all these unknown factors add up to something wonderful, and that she will be like one of the princesses in the fairy stories his mother has told him. Instead he winds up meeting an ordinary looking little girl the railroad guard cannot hand over fast enough, she has been so much trouble.

In the introduction to this story, the editor notes that as time goes on Kate improves under the guidance of "the good master," as Jancsi's father is called. (She has a lot of room for improvement, I might say. I don't want to say more, because I don't want to spoil the surprises.)

If this opening chapter is anything to go by, it's a good read: adventurous, humorous, with details on life in rural Hungary and sharp observations about human nature. The book was originally published in 1935, and as I understand it was based on recollections from the author's childhood. Kate is still a spoiled brat where my excerpt breaks off, but Jancsi is trying to rise to the occasion. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the book.

The author was awarded the Newbery award in 1938 for her book The White Stag.

There's a bit more (not much, but a little) on Seredy at this post at Semicolon. Sherry notes that there was a sequel to The Good Master, called The Singing Tree, which came out in 1940.

Book note: Decline and Fall, by Bruce Thornton

Peter Robinson interviews Bruce Thorton, author of Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow Motion Suicide at Uncommon Knowledge (NRO TV).

Assaults on British identity and pride

Melanie Phillips asks What's the point of citizenship classes when we've already surrendered our national identity? (Daily Mail, March 10, 2008).

Well, no, the headline writer at the newspaper probably came up with that bit. On her website, the same article is entitled Britain's broken heart.

In any case, it's worth a read. The government in the UK is discussing ways to improve a sense of belonging, but Phillips thinks some of the ministers have some of their arguments backwards.

America, Europe, Russia - and the management of danger

From an article at Economist.com:

ANYBODY who dabbles in transatlantic affairs has come across one giant stereotype: Americans admire risk-takers, whereas Europeans (at least in the rich, stable parts of the continent) are instinctively risk-averse, expecting the state to shield them from all sorts of dangers, including their own folly. Move a bit farther east to the ex-communist world, especially Russia, and you enter a place where things seem to have gone from one extreme to another: from an all-demanding, all-protective state to a free-for-all where life is full of deadly dangers, about which even the prudent can't do very much.

Like most windy generalisations, this transatlantic contrast has a grain of truth...

[snip]

In any case, by comparison with most other parts of the world, and with any other era of human history, the United States and western Europe are converging in their attitudes to danger. Most kinds of risk have been successfully removed from everyday life. Women hardly ever die in childbirth; miners generally make it back above ground; fishermen usually return to shore; and having a drink of water no longer means dicing with cholera. Of course, some people—bungee-jumpers and rock-climbers—take risks freely; but the unwanted perils that once haunted people's lives are mostly a thing of the past.

What Americans and Europeans alike are now attempting to do is squeeze out the last few drops of risk, with results that are often counter-productive, because risk is simply transferred from one place to another. That is true in an obvious sense when, for example, companies dump toxic waste or use risky technologies in countries whose regulation is relatively lax. But there are also more subtle ways in which efforts to eliminate risk can simply move the danger along. Some good instances come from behaviour on the roads, where people may act more recklessly as safety measures (their own and other people's) make them bolder.

Read the rest (especially the last paragraph, please)

hat tip: Frank Wilson

Nanny economies: two takes

neo-neocon » French sales: la difference explains why French retail stores have sales only twice a year.

Mark Steyn addresses the question: Is Canada's Economy a Model for America? (Imprimis, January 2008, abridged from a lecture delivered on the Hillsdale College campus on September 29, 2007, at the second annual Free Market Forum, sponsored by the College’s Center for the Study of Monetary Systems and Free Enterprise.) Fair warning: includes content not appropriate for children.

From the suitable for mixed company parts, reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College, some excerpts:

...a once manly nation has undergone a remarkable psychological makeover. If you go back to 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the world’s third largest surface fleet, the Royal Canadian Air Force was one of the world’s most effective air forces, and Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But in the space of two generations, a bunch of tough hombres were transformed into a thoroughly feminized culture that prioritizes all the secondary impulses of society—welfare entitlements from cradle to grave—over all the primary ones. And in that, Canada is obviously not alone. If the O’Sullivan thesis is flawed, it’s only because the lumberjack song could stand as the post-war history of almost the entire developed world.

Today, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much every party in the rest of the Western world are nearly exclusively about those secondary impulses—government health care, government day care, government this, government that. And if you have government health care, you not only annex a huge chunk of the economy, you also destroy a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher, and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans don’t always appreciate how far gone down this path the rest of the developed world is. In Canadian and Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is now a place where an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like running the health department. And if you listen to recent Democratic presidential debates, it is clear that American attitudes toward economic liberty are being Canadianized.

To some extent, these differences between the two countries were present at their creations. America’s Founders wrote of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The equivalent phrase at Canada’s founding was “peace, order and good government” —which words are not only drier and desiccated and stir the blood less, but they also presume a degree of statist torpor. Ronald Reagan famously said, “We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” In Canada it too often seems the other way around.

[...snip...]

In the province of Quebec, it’s taken more or less for granted by all political parties that collective rights outweigh individual rights. For example, if you own a store in Montreal, the French language signs inside the store are required by law to be at least twice the size of the English signs. And the government has a fairly large bureaucratic agency whose job it is to go around measuring signs and prosecuting offenders. There was even a famous case a few years ago of a pet store owner who was targeted by the Office De La Langue Française for selling English-speaking parrots. The language commissar had gone into the store and heard a bird saying, “Who’s a pretty boy, then?” and decided to take action. I keep trying to find out what happened to the parrot. Presumably it was sent to a re-education camp and emerged years later with a glassy stare saying in a monotone voice, “Qui est un joli garcon, hein?”

The point to remember about this is that it is consonant with the broader Canadian disposition. A couple of years ago it emerged that a few Quebec hospitals in the eastern townships along the Vermont border were, as a courtesy to their English-speaking patients, putting up handwritten pieces of paper in the corridor saying “Emergency Room This Way” or “Obstetrics Department Second on the Left.” But in Quebec, you’re only permitted to offer health care services in English if the English population in your town reaches a certain percentage. So these signs were deemed illegal and had to be taken down. I got a lot of mail from Canadians who were upset about this, and I responded that if you accept that the government has a right to make itself the monopoly provider of health care, it surely has the right to decide the language in which it’s prepared to provide that care. So my point isn’t just about Quebec separatism. It’s about a fundamentally different way of looking at the role of the state.

[...snip...]

I drive a lot between Quebec and New Hampshire, and you don’t really need a border post to tell you when you’ve crossed from one country into another. On one side the hourly update on the radio news lets you know that Canada’s postal workers are thinking about their traditional pre-Christmas strike—the Canadians have gotten used to getting their Christmas cards around Good Friday, and it’s part of the holiday tradition now—or that employees of the government liquor store are on strike, nurses are on strike, police are on strike, etc. Whereas you could listen for years to a New Hampshire radio station and never hear the word “strike” except for baseball play-by-play.

In a news item from last year, an Ottawa panhandler said that he may have to abandon his prime panhandling real estate on a downtown street corner because he is being shaken down by officials from the panhandlers union. Think about that. There’s a panhandlers union which exists to protect workers’ rights or—in this case—non-workers’ rights. If the union-negotiated non-work contracts aren’t honored, the unionized panhandlers will presumably walk off the job and stand around on the sidewalk. No, wait...they’ll walk off the sidewalk! Anyway, that’s Canada: Without a Thatcher or a Reagan, it remains over-unionized and with a bloated public sector.

[...snip...]

The third difference is that Canada’s economy is more subsidized. Almost every activity amounts to taking government money in some form or other. I was at the Summit of the Americas held in Canada in the summer of 2001, with President Bush and the presidents and prime ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean. And, naturally, it attracted the usual anti-globalization anarchists who wandered through town lobbing bricks at any McDonald’s or Nike outlet that hadn’t taken the precaution of boarding up its windows. At one point I was standing inside the perimeter fence sniffing tear gas and enjoying the mob chanting against the government from the other side of the wire, when a riot cop suddenly grabbed me and yanked me backwards, and a nanosecond later a chunk of concrete landed precisely where I had been standing. I bleated the usual “Oh my God, I could have been killed” for a few minutes and then I went to have a café au lait. And while reading the paper over my coffee, I learned that not only had Canadian colleges given their students time off to come to the Summit to riot, but that the Canadian government had given them $300,000 to pay for their travel and expenses. It was a government-funded anti-government riot! At that point I started bleating “Oh my God, I could have been killed at taxpayer expense.” Say what you like about the American trust-fund babies who had swarmed in to demonstrate from Boston and New York, but at least they were there on their own dime. Canada will and does subsidize anything.

[...snip...]

Yet, having criticized Canada’s economy in various features, let me say something good about it: It doesn’t have the insanely wasteful federal agricultural subsidies that America has. In fact, if a Canadian wants to get big-time agriculture subsidies, he’s more likely to get them from the U.S. government. I’m sure most people here know that very few actual farmers—that’s to say, guys in denim overalls and plaid shirts and John Deere caps with straws in the stumps of their teeth—get any benefit from U.S. agricultural subsidies. Almost three-quarters of these subsidies go to 20,000 multi-millionaire play farmers and blue chip corporations. Farm subsidies are supposed to help the farm belt. But there’s a map of where the farm subsidies go that you can find on the Internet. And judging from the beneficiaries, the farm belt runs from Park Avenue down Wall Street, out to the Hamptons, and then by yacht over to Martha’s Vineyard, which they really ought to rename Martha’s Barnyard. Among the farmers piling up the dollar bills under the mattress are Ted Turner, Sam Donaldson, the oil company Chevron, and that dirt-poor, hardscrabble sharecropper David Rockefeller. But what you may not know is that also among their number is Edgar Bronfman, Sr., who isn’t just any old billionaire, he’s the patriarch of Montreal’s wealthiest family, owner of Seagram’s Whiskey, which subsequently bought Universal Pictures. So the U.S. taxpayer, in his boundless generosity, is subsidizing the small family farms of Canadian billionaires. As a Canadian and a broken-down New Hampshire tree farmer myself, I wondered whether I could get in on the U.S. farm program, but as I understand it, it would only pay me for a helicopter pad on top of my barn and a marble bathroom in my grain silo.

Edgar Bronfman’s dependence on U.S. taxpayers is symbolic of more than just the stupidity of federal agriculture subsidies. In the end, there’s no such thing as an independent Canadian economy. It remains a branch plant for the U.S. Over 80 percent of Canadian exports come to America. From time to time, nationalist politicians pledge to change that and start shipping goods elsewhere. But they never do because they don’t have to—they’ve got the world’s greatest market right next door. So when people talk about the Canadian model as something that should be emulated, they forget that it only works because it’s next to the American model. The guy who invented the Blackberry email device is Canadian, but it’s not been a gold mine for him because he’s selling a lot of them in Labrador or Prince Edward Island. It’s been a gold mine because he’s selling a lot of them in New York and California and in between.

Canadian dependence on the United States is particularly true in health care, the most eminent Canadian idea looming in the American context. That is, public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S. ...

Read the whole thing (if a new front page has appeared, search the archives for January 2008).

Also available as a printable PDF file.

Popephobia (and its countercurrent)

Perhaps you've heard that Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at a Rome university this week, because of threats from students and faculty?

Michael Ledeen taught at that university back in the 1970s. In a post at The Corner at NRO, he provides some background, and also notes that he's not the only Jewish intellectual speaking out in support of the Pope in the wake of the incident.

hat tip: Bookworm Room

New Europe, etc. (updated)

Joseph M. Knippenberg, after years away, revisited the Europe of his youth. Only, of course, it wasn't the Europe of his youth anymore. He shares some of his observations in Rip van Knippenberg on the New Europe.

I found that article via this post at No Left Turns, wherein Peter Schramm says he'd like to have some conversations about it.

The ball's in your court...

P.S. What do you think of Knippenberg's suggestion in passing that since English is the new lingua franca, perhaps we should use the term lingua anglia? My first thought is that it might be more accurate for the present, but that I like the term lingua franca because it ties me to a world before my own time. (Several worlds, actually, since there have been, and are, several lingua francas, each with its own background and impact. But for me I always think of the founding of my country, and how if back then you wanted to be a major player internationally it really helped if you knew French.) Silly, I know. But there it is. I like words and phrases that keep history alive, or at least remind you of it.

I'm willing to be flexible, though. If lingua anglia caught on I'd use it, I think. ;)

Certainly I like it better than the clunky, if reasonably descriptive, “vehicular language," which reportedly means the same thing as lingua franca.

P.P.S. According to The Penguin English Dictionary, Second Edition, linga franca in the plural is either linga francas or linguae francae. I prefer the former, just because even folks like me can look at it and know that it's the plural form of linga franca. But, again, I'm willing to be flexible... :)

Update: Via Peter Lawler, this post by Patrick Deneen is also about impressions from a recent trip to Europe, and has generated some back and forth in the comments between Knippenberg and Deneen, among others.

Classiness, then and now, American troops edition

Peggy Noonan has a nice column on American troops then and now, and what memories they tend to leave behind them.

I think she's on to something. I have met some individuals serving in the American military who lacked class, but it always surprises me. On the whole, the ones I've met are just the sort to inspire an old man to offer a toast decades afterward.

From The Scotsman, June 7, 1944

The headline reads: INITIAL LANDINGS IN FRANCE SUCCEED

It's a bit hard to read, because it's one of those copy-of-actual-page pages, which requires some finesse at scrolling around (and a small dose of patience), but if you like to read 'first draft of history' primary sources, resources like this beat a transcript, in my book.

Interesting developments in The Netherlands

Roberto Rivera reports in The Point blog that "an explicitly Christian party" has been asked to join the governing coalition in the Netherlands. Yes, I know, that could mean just about anything.

But add that to what I linked to in the annex a few months ago (Holland's Post-Secular Future, by Joshua Livestro, Weekly Standard, Jan. 1, 2007), and it makes a person wonder if something is shifting over there in Europe. Maybe?

Time will tell, I guess.

A bit of a backlash against feminism

"Neo-housewives" are making news (and writing books) in Germany. Who knew?

So far I haven't found any indication that Eva Herman's books are available in English. Correct me if I'm wrong.

hat tip: Gudrun Schultz

Animal rights activists show where their hearts are (or aren't)

Germany has a beloved celebrity in the form of a polar bear cub, the first polar bear to be born at the Berlin Zoo in more than 30 years. But because his mother rejected him and he's been bottle-fed, some "animal rights" activists have been clamoring loudly for him to be killed. Because he's been tainted by human contact, or something like that. And therefore might not turn out to be a "real" polar bear, or so they say. Which is supposedly a fate worse than death, or so some of them insist. Spiegel Online International (English site) has the story. (And pictures of the cub.)

Why does the phrase "The perfect is the enemy of the good" come to mind?

In case anyone is wondering, I think Knut is adorable, I applaud the people who saved his life when his mother fell down on the job, and I think the radical activists should keep their nose out of the Berlin Zoo's business. And even if Knut were an ugly little bear (which he certainly isn't) or was crippled or something, I don't think we ought to condone the killing of any innocent animal just because some over-righteous busybodies are obsessed with stereotypes and flip out when confronted with something outside their preferred and rigid parameters. (Silly me, right?)

Luckily, the zoo officials and the general public adore the cub and will almost certainly be able to protect him from the crazies.

If you happen to be in Berlin, give a friendly hello to the little fellow for me, will you?

hat tip: Kill Knut? The Twisted Logic of Animal Rights Extremists, Albert Mohler blog, Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Update: The BBC has more on Knut, following his public debut. It's too bad so many people can't say "polar bear" without free associating it with 'global warming,' but if you can ignore the folks who can't enjoy a cub romping about without muddying the experience with wild-eyed predictions of doom, click over and enjoy the bear and his admirers.

A tribute to a brave and caring lady

See A well-deserved honor for a true heroine in the battle against tyranny for an introduction to Polish national heroine Irena Sendler, who helped save 2500 Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Poland's parliament and President Lech Kacyzinski recently honored Sendler and the Polish underground Council for Assisting Jews, comprised mostly of Roman Catholics risking their lives defying the Nazis. Sendler is in her 90s, and lives in Warsaw.

From a March 14, 2007, AP article by Ryan Lucas:

Sendler led about 20 helpers who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safety between 1940 and 1943, placing them in Polish families, convents or orphanages.

She wrote the children's names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in a neighbor's yard as a record that could help locate their parents after the war. The Nazis arrested her in 1943, but she refused — despite repeated torture — to reveal their names.

Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members.

[...snip...]

In 1965, Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial awarded Sendler one of its first medals given to people who saved Jews, the so-called "Righteous Among the Nations."

She was given the honor in 1983, after Poland's Communist authorities finally agreed to allow her to travel abroad.

So how does the lady herself feel about the honors being given her these days? From the Lucas article:

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in a letter ...

The Lucas article comes with a slide show. Sendler comes across as a beautiful woman from the inside out.

Journalist Holocaust hero honored

From Catholic.net, Journalists Honor Holocaust Hero:

CARPI, Italy, MARCH 20, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The Catholic journalist Odoardo Focherini saved more than 100 Jews before he died in a concentration camp during World War II, at the age of 37. The Catholic Union of the Italian Press paid tribute to Focherini on Saturday, marking the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The journalist was the administrative director of L'Avvenire d'Italia and president of the Italian segment of Catholic Action.

[...snip...]

Bishop Elio Tinti of Carpi, who opened the celebration, said: "He was a man who knew how to bring joy to the lives of many people, especially the 105 Jews he saved, but also to all those he met, offering a shining example of what it means to be a man of simplicity."

The prelate spoke of the journalist's deep love for his family, "his tender relationship with his beloved wife and his seven dear children -- deep ties that we see revealed in the marvelous letters that he wrote, but ties which did not impede him from living his life for others."

[...snip...]

Focherini organized a network to move Jews out of Italy to safety in Switzerland. He was arrested for this on March 11, 1944. After stops in several prisons, he died from an infected leg wound on Dec. 27, 1944, in the Hersbruck concentration camp in Germany.

[...snip...]

French Word-A-Day: ketchup, etc.

I've just stumbled onto a blog called French Word-A-Day. The most recent post is on, of all things, ketchup, both as a word and as a food, as it is used in France, including an account of ketchup used as a condiment for fried rice. No, really.

I've just glanced at a few entries, but the blog looks delightful from what I've seen so far. It's far more than just language lessons.

The blog hostess, American expat Kristin Espinasse, is also a book author:


Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France