Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Blog

  • Albert Speer: Hitler’s Architect

    Spandau: The Secret DiariesSpandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Albert Speer was a very clever man; he managed to survive a death sentence at the Nuremberg trials and lived to tell his story of the Third Reich, Hitler, and himself as Minister of Armaments and War Production during WWII. Furthermore, Speer made a brilliant career of writing memoirs with many a television interview following his release from West Berlin’s Spandau prison in 1966 after having completed his 20-year sentence. This book, written between 1946 and 1966 in Spandau, is a collection of his diaries and letters to his family secretly kept against the prison regulations.

    The reason that Speer had written his diaries was to keep his mind disciplined and alert by using his mental faculties while serving his time at Spandau. He was afraid of undergoing mental and physical atrophy because the prison life to him was nothing but a repeated series of monotonous routines that would lead to mental stagnation and physical lethargy. Whether Speer had written diaries and other correspondence to his family with the thought of publishing them in mind is hardly probable because it was for the sake of his own ego arrested by a lack of social refinements and intellectual engagements during his confinements as well expressed in the diaries.

    There are many interesting anecdotes about his fellow prisoners who formed their own social cliques even inside the prison: Albert Speer and Rudolph Hess did not socialize with the other prisoners but spent most of their time alone. In fact, Speer was disliked by the other prisoners for his admission of guilt and repudiation of Hitler at the Nuremberg trials. So was Rudolf Hess for his reputed antisocial personality and conspicuous mental instability. The two former Grand Admirals, Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz stayed together. Baldur von Schirach, the German Nazi Party’s national youth leader and head of the Hitler Youth, and Walther Funk, Reich Minister for Economic Affairs, were described as “inseparable”. It was Konstantin von Neurath whom Speer seemed to have a good opinion on for his amiability and amenability to all until his release in 1954.

    The book is not a history book or a testament to Speer’s apologetic gesture of doing public penance for his involvement in the Nazi regime. As Freud once said, “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar,” this memoir is a memoir, Speer’s personal journal, encompassing his intellectual capacities to observe and analyze what he saw and read in addition to his desire of being with his family, especially the sons who seemed to feel uncomfortable with their father when visiting him in prison. Upon reading this heavy volume of memoir, I am convinced that it was his sagacity and intelligence that saved him from death and that enabled him to launch a successful writing career afterwards.

    저장

  • The Arrival of the Beaver

    Calico Times (Click here to read the article.)

    phoo

    At the outset of the new year, which is also Year of Dog, a new family lands at Littleton Airport in the vicinity of Avonlea with their new hopes and aspirations. The Calico Times, which is the one and only newspaper in Avonlea, welcomes the new family wholeheartedly as new residents of Avonlea with a heartwarming report of their arrival.

    Meet the Beaver from England: the household is headed by Paul Beaver, an able mechanic with amazing technical dexterity and a heart of gold. Brenda Beaver, his better half, is a full-time homemaker, administering the domestic affairs while her husband is working outside the home for the family. In fact, Mrs. Beaver regards housekeeping as a formidable domain of work, contrary to the received idea of the work as drudgery or menial labor degraded by women nowadays. Betty and Wille are their adorable and bright children. They have inherited the good qualities from their parents but are by no means spoiled, thanks to the child rearing balanced with loving care and discipline.

    So the new family will start their life anew in a new land with auspicious thinking and go-aheaditiveness. Also, they are happy to reunite with their good friends, the Collie from Scotland.  In fact, the Beaver will stay a week at the Collie until they find a new abode in the town. Let’s make good wishes for the Beaver!

    0682e26f337825b366e8e3e3e0003ad1--folk-disc-golf

     

  • The Arctic Cold

    Ulysses_and_Circe_12

    With his aerial winged feet,

    from the Mount of Olympus,

    The North Wind arrives

    with a terrible breath of Frost.

  • Birthday Haiku for Ma (and All whose Bday is Jan 3rd and/or of Capricorn)

    sign_37

    The Lucky Stars are met

    across the Milky Way,

    crowning you with

    the Charms of Capricorn.

  • The Romans as close as you can be

    Life in Ancient RomeLife in Ancient Rome by Lionel Casson

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    There was a time when all the roads led to Rome that lasted approximately 1,500 years ranging from the era of B.C. to that of A.D. It was from this Roman world where the art of politics was crafted and exemplified; it was also from this grandiose empire where Christianity gained ground and dispersed Christendom/Christianity to Urbi et orbi. However, what piqued me most was the key phases of life in the Roman world; what life was like in the various spectrum of society, ranging from the slave to the aristocrat? How different was the life in the Roman world from the life in our modern world? This book by the erudite historian Lionel Casson presents elegant sketches of such aspects of the Eternal City, particularly during the first and second A.D.

    Although Rome was the center of the Empire, its strength came from its provinces. For instance, the grain, wine, and oil came from Egypt, France, and Spain. The businessmen who traded such goods were largely provincials, so were the army recruits. Moreover, even slaves could achieve upward social mobility once they became freed through manumission which granted them Roman citizenship. In fact, it was this practice of incorporating into the state the communities it claimed and the populace it governed by bestowing upon them citizenship on the whole. To illustrate, Horace, the famous Roman poet, was a son of a freed slave who later became a wealthy farmer. Felix, who threw St. Paul in a jail, was himself a freed slave who rose above the planes of his melee. These nouveau citizens joined the citizen body and contributed their labor to the society.

    Most girls married between the age of twelve and fifteen, and they must possess a dowry. If her husband died, or the couple divorced, it was returned, except a portion for the raising the children by the husband and penalty in case of her misdemeanor. No dowry, no husband in this paterfamily society. Also, the common law marriage was accepted, such as in the case of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor ruling Rome from 161 A.D. to 180 A.D. After his wife died, he lived with the daughter of his wife’s business agent as concubine. An upper-class woman could have a lover of humble status, even including a slave.

    There are lots of other interesting facts that will surprise the reader with a feeling of closeness to these citizens of the Eternal City because they were not much different from the citizens of the modern world in many ways; the scenery changes, and the people change, but the human nature does not change as long as the humankind exists.

  • At the cafe on a New Year’s Day

    NEws Article about the upgraded cafe   (Click here for the cafe scenes)

    wpid-snoopy-writing

    Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography advises his reader for the New Year to resolve to perform what he ought and perform without fail what he resolves. Mrs. Lompstrompf’s bakery whose official business name is “Rilakuma Cafe” is accordingly decorated anew with a variety of new snacks at affordable prices to accommodate the little ones’ pocket money. How thoughtful and generous the proprietor is! There is seldom anyone like Mrs. Lompstrompf in these days.

    So after wishing Happy New Year to their families and friends, the little ones gather in their elbow room in Avonlea. What is better than uplifting your spirits with sweets and refreshments in a wintry afternoon?

    The little ones are busy talking about their new year’s resolutions and plans among themselves, and listening to them makes anyone smile at their innocent wishes and simple hopes for the future, which is a prerogative of the young at heart.

    img-thing

    저장