history

From West Baden to Baden-Baden

/ chrismoorman13 / Leave a comment

Baden Baden, Germany 10.5.24

Guten morgen from the famed springs of Baden Baden in the misty hills of the Black Forest. Being a sucker for UNESCO World Heritage sites and natural hot springs, when I needed a place to escape the city for the weekend before re-entering the working world, I immediately thought, “Boy wouldn’t Baden-Baden be amazing?” Turns out it is not only amazing, but remarkably cost effective (author’s note: this is all on a curve and this is still the EU, not 2014 Vietnam)

As Kit and I walked, slightly struggling from a few too many beers at Oktoberfest the night before, through the Residenz Museum in Munich there were a few random intellectual pursuits in my life that came neatly together. The incredible former seat of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the Residenz satisfied the peaceable goal of castle builders, to show in stone and gilt the immense power of a dynasty. Walking past the Bavarian equivalent of the Field of Mars in Ancient Rome, there was a feeling of comprehension when I felt like I’d seen it before. I had, festooned in Nazi paraphernalia from the black and white newsreels of Hitler’s rise.

Whether the Marshall Plan or the destruction wrought by two World Wars or just the petering out of the genetic predisposition, today’s Germans would be considered total impostors to the legacy of the Germanic tribes that were the terror of the Romans:

To quote our old friend Tacitus:

“Statim arma capiunt; non ante deponunt quam senectus. Nulli domus aut ager aut aliqua cura; sola regum liberi libertique armati agunt. Idque proprium et perpetuum signum est libertatis, arma ferre.”

“Arms are taken up at once and never laid aside; no one can go about unarmed. To carry arms is to show you are free.”

“Tamquam mollia et infirmi ingenii corpora labore quaerere quod possis sanguine parare.”

“They actually think it tame and spiritless to accumulate by the sweat of toil what they can gain by their blood.”

Today’s Germans are remarkably domesticated by comparison. A report that came out last week said that in the event of a real war for survival against Russia, the German military would have only two days worth of ammunition. To see that change in the lifetime of my “Grandmother” Mickey is one of modernity’s remarkable transformations.

Now after that digression, back to the point I was trying to make. The Residenz had a hall filled with the busts of Roman emperors and their consorts. It was nearly a full football field long, filled with all those old friends and monsters from Mike Duncan’s incredible podcast, The History of Rome. 

There was Augustus as both a young Octavian and the elder statesman who consolidated chaos into the peak of human civilization that would not again be seen for a millennia and a half. There was Vespasian, that humble soldier who merely laughed as courtiers brought him a family tree tracing his lineage to the gods. There was Marcus Aurelias, the last of the five good emperors, next to his grand mistake and heir, Commodus.

There was Septimius Severus, the first African to be hailed Emperator, and my personal favorite, the black sheep of the Julio-Claudian dynasty Claudius, who attempted to hide in a curtain assuming he’d be killed in the aftermath of Caligula’s assassination, only to be hailed as Caesar and arguably ruled as well as anyone not named Augustus.

To try to piece together the Latin names into the men whom I’ve read and listened to so much about was its own joy, but to see the importance that nearly modern rulers gave to the legacy of Rome nearly two millennia later made me think quite a bit about modernity’s proud disdain for the lessons of history.

From that grand hall to the hills of the Black Forest, Rome is never far away in Germany. There were no shortage of attempts to conquer the Germans. Marius, Augustus, Germanicus, Aurelias all had their run-ins with those warlike giants from the North, but somehow Germany was never fully Latinized. The spot where I sit today had the first Roman baths built in the time of Caracalla, one of the true monsters of the Caesars. The Romans were very serious about their baths, and seemed to set about building them just about as soon as the fighting stopped. This particular spot had no shortage of hot springs at over 150 degrees out of the ground, so it was a bit easier engineering feat than building a central boiler system as they did in other places.

Baden Baden was THE spa town for the European elite for centuries. I’m always a bit hesitant to describe healing properties to waters, but after five hours in one of the complexes yesterday, I can say that I haven’t felt quite this balanced in years.

It becomes ironic that this spot, with its millennia of history, happens to have a corollary with my upbringing in the hills of Southern Indiana. The sulfur waters of French Lick and West Baden brought the wealthy to what could have just as easily been a blank spot on a map. Grand dreams of the Carlsbad of America were hatched by businessmen (circus owners) in the late 1800s. The waters that had been used by Native Americans for healing purposes were commercialized and sold as America’s equivalent to Baden-Baden. Lee Sinclair built the world’s largest freestanding dome, which, at least anecdotally, had to be the tallest structure for 100s of miles. He filled it with neo-classical statues made from local limestone, mosaics to imitate the Italians, and brought plenty of Germans in to ply their ancestral trades as POWs from WW1. His creation brought characters as diverse as Joe Lewis, FDR and Al Capone.

Unfortunately it didn’t have nearly the staying power of Baden-Baden and fell into complete disrepair by the time I was a child.

While Americans don’t have nobility, we do have plenty of homegrown wealth, and in a fit of truly magnificent noblesse oblige, Bill Cook funded the restoration of the resort and dome to preserve these Hoosier architectural marvels in the late 1990s.

To be sitting almost 5000 miles away in the original is a really special experience.

But now its time to figure out how in shape my legs are. There are plenty of wineries in these hills, and I’m about to hire a pushbike to go see a few.

At least I’ll get to have some healing waters when I return.

The 4th in Foreign Lands

/ chrismoorman13 / 4 Comments

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The New Colossus

Happy Birthday America!

238 years old. Quite a respectable age.

You’ve managed to stay intact through a Civil War which nearly ripped you in half.

You fought on behalf of liberty in two World Wars which enveloped you from across the globe, and even in victory, you magnanimously invited the vanquished back into the global community with open arms.

You’ve welcomed, albeit occasionally with gritted teeth, the “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse” of immigrants unwanted in their native lands and assimilated them into a society which has grown to be the richest in the world.

You faced down the threat of nuclear annihilation and the dehumanizing spectre of Communism largely with soft power instead of the destruction that total war brings.

For nearly two and a half centuries, you’ve held true to those most sacrosanct of ideals espoused by your Founding Fathers, “who brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and in doing so have been a source of hope for freedom loving people everywhere.

This isn’t to say that you’ve been blameless. No institution, no matter how grand its codified ideals can stay blameless forever. The stain of slavery, the dehumanization of those we found on this continent prior to European discovery, and the wars of choice fought over the past 60 years have fallen short of your commitment to those high minded ideals in favor of “realpolitik.”

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I should quit saying “you.” This isn’t a professional sports team I’ll never play for, this is America. This is the institution which has from my first breath, blessed me with the freedom, safety and mobility to be whomever I choose to be.

I cannot pick those attributes of America with which I agree a la carte, leaving the less desirable remainders for others to choke down. I cannot look at my neighbor and say, “Oh no, this is YOUR President. I didn’t vote for him.”

Men and women who came before me gave their blood, sweat, tears and lives to vouchsafe my ability to make this MY America, one where each voice, no matter its wealth, social status, or color of skin has an equal part to play in maintaining the greatest engine of human freedom and prosperity that the world has ever seen.

But today, another 4th of July abroad, I find myself tired.

I am tired of trying to explaining away the past 14 years of leadership so comically unenlightened that our political system has devolved into a shouting match incapable of legislating.

I’m tired of trying to explain to the Europeans, Vietnamese and everyone else who doesn’t share my passport cover that the policies of my government do not reflect Americans as individuals.

I’m tired of seeing my government encroaching further and further into the lives of its citizenry, of spying on even our allies, and systematically limiting the rights of the individual.

I’m tired of being called “brainwashed” because I believe in the fundamental American right to bear arms, even as another mass shooting occurs.

I’m tired of seeing my fellow Americans try to pass themselves off as Canadians to attempt to shirk a history that while imperfect, is still as proud or prouder than any nation the world has ever seen.

For all the chest beating talk of “American Exceptionalism” I hear at home, I am tired of being in a room of foreigners and seen as the idiot because I am not “properly embarrassed” of my homeland.

I am an American, and God help me if even for a fleeting moment that I deny that enviable truth.

I stand here today embracing the fact that the problems of the nation which has given me so much are inseparable from my own.

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I look to the members of the so called “Greatest Generation,” who sacrificed lives by the millions against a tyrannical force as twisted and corrupt as any seen in the course of human history, for guidance.

They fought with a single mind against an enemy armed with weapons engineered to make the slaughter of innocents magnitudes more efficient than ever before. They had the same right to vote that I do.

They did not shirk from their duty, or try to hide behind their broken political system. They stood and took the mantle of liberty upon their own shoulders and said, “Liberty will prevail, and America will ensure it.”

What happened to that America?

Why is my generation different from that of my grandparents? Has our democratic right to vote been taken away? Has our voice been silenced by statute or dictat? Do we find men with guns at our doors waiting to silence opposition?

No. The answer is much more humiliating.

We’ve merely disengaged. We’ve taken the spoils that our forebears won for us and squandered our inheritance on iPhones and TVs. On houses that would’ve made even the richest in generations past blush with the embarrassment.

We’ve taken “conspicuous consumption,” once a behavior to be avoided at all costs, and made it into a virtue.

We excoriate politicians for the slightest misspoken word, while giving our hours and eyeballs to such enlightened television as “Teen Mom,” “Honey Boo-Boo,” and the brand Kardashian.

We’ve taken capitalism, an engine of growth designed to reward the hardest working and most creative among us, and corrupted it into a rigged game of three card monte through cronyism and financialization.

Americans have inherited a system which requires constant maintenance, and we’ve left it on autopilot. The adverse results were completely predictable.

Our education system, once envied as the best in the world, now languishes along side such countries as Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, and Russian.

Our middle class has been systematically gutted, our rural communities left to wither on the vine both economically and socially, and our political class has partitioned themselves away from the people whom they are elected to represent, happy to bicker from their DC perches rather than associate with the lower classes in anything more meaningful than a photo-op.

The America that we live in and the freedoms we enjoy are not ours by divine right. It is, and will continue to be an ever evolving experiment, the results of which are determined daily by the diligent effort of those citizens who continue to maintain it through their individual efforts.

It is the sacred duty of each of us to ensure that that inheritance is worth receiving.

America I haven’t given up on you. Your struggles have galvanized my belief in that responsibility George Washington entrusted to Americans 227 years ago.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair

Generations of great men and women have both raised and maintained that standard, handing it to their sons and daughters in turn. It is the hallowed responsibility of mine to repair it to its former glory.

Happy Birthday America.

We’ve got work to do tomorrow.

Unlikeliest of Friends

/ chrismoorman13 / 1 Comment

In the last 6 weeks on the road, I’ve made more than my fair share of friends. One friendship that I will truly treasure as highly as any will be with Man from Hoi An.

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A university student, studying of all things, Banking and Finance, Man was our tour guide with Hoi An Kids, a group which puts Western tourists with local university students to develop student’s English and foster a positive tourism experience within Vietnam.

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Man took us to a local island where we got to see and participate in a variety of traditional local activities, from rice noodle making, boat making, mat weaving and an understanding of a local family temple.

Boat builders in Com Kim

Boat builders in Com Kim

After spending 5 hours sweating and smiling along with us, Man suggested hitting up a bahn mi spot in Hoi An, which to my delighted surprise was once visited by Anthony Bourdain on No Reservations.

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The sandwich really was a symphony on a baguette, with beef, chili, fresh cucumber, fried egg, chili sauce and a host of other lightly pickled vegetables that almost made me cry knowing I’d probably never have another again. He dropped us into another local coffee shop where we talked about the economics of his family’s farm and his ambitions after finishing university.

I asked him if he had any suggestions on how best to get up to Hill 55, a place where my Uncle Denis had fought during the Vietnam War.

Normally, I would’ve been a touch nervous about bringing the war up, but Vietnam is a place that is largely at peace with its past. One of the youngest populations in the world, Vietnam doesn’t bother with the problem of trying to explain away its history. The Vietnamese ethos is firmly in the present, with a solid lean forward.

There is something to be learned from that, both as a nation and as an individual.

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Man said that he’d be more than happy to take me up to Hill 55, and that he’d see me bright and early in the morning. 8 AM rolled around and he was at the gate, smiling as I choked through a cup of delicious Vietnamese coffee.

We took off on his moped, to go grab one for me. We pulled into an alley off the main drag, (ironically only a few doors down from Cafe 43, where we’ve been taking our cooking classes) and he smiled and said, ‘There’s yours.” I jumped on my bike and away we went, about 20 miles outside of Hoi An to the site.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Vietnamese traffic, let me tell you, this was an adventure. I’m pretty well fearless where motor vehicles are concerned (thank you again Uncle Andrew) but this was just insane.

Imagine an Indianapolis 500 with 200 cars in the field, except with mopeds, cars, touring buses, and bikes. All vehicles go approximately the same speed, no two horns sound alike (though all are constantly being used) and no one has a rear view mirror.

The only rule is to not kill another driver.

I still have yet to see a stop sign since we left Hanoi, and I’ve only seen a handful of stop lights, all of which were treated as flippant suggestions more than the law. There is no such thing as a Vietnamese traffic cop, other than the guy with a scoop shovel who cleans up the inevitable accidents.

I was excited, but my ass still hurts from the constant clenching as I weaved in and out of mopeds carrying families, 16 foot long PVC pipes, 5 100 lb bags of rice, and a massive pile of rice sheaves reminiscent of a certain Monet series.

Then there were the middle of the road cattle drives.

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But we got there, and that’s what’s important.

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Once we got there, Man showed me the still flattened remnants of the old American Marine Bases, while showing me the panoramic geography of the area. Even to a total military novice like myself, it was very obvious to see the military value of such a hill, which is why it has been fought over between the Vietnamese and their various foreign invaders for the past 1100 years.

Once we got to the top of the hill, Man and I talked about his thoughts on the wars. We talked about the long history of Vietnamese occupation. His reverence for “Uncle Ho” was obvious, but so too was his understanding that the past does not dictate the present.

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Only in the past 39 years has Vietnam been a country allowed to operate on its own.

I want to be clear that I’m not about to embark on an American apology tour, a la President Obama 2008. Nor am I about to engage in re-fighting a war which cost both sides entirely too many fathers, brothers and sons.

There is a lesson to be learned from all things if one is willing to stop trying to justify the actions taken, and look at a situation holistically. Too often, we constantly try to paint history to put ourselves in a better light, at the cost of real growth.

The Vietnam War was an absolute tragedy. Americans have for 40 years tried their hardest to ignore it, and in doing so we have failed to learn the lessons it offered.

In 12 years of school, I never once was taught anything about the Vietnam War aside from the fact that it happened. A war that cost nearly 60,000 American lives wasn’t considered important enough to teach to our students from 1993-2005.

That is absolutely criminal. Having lived half of my life in a world shaped by the post 9/11 wars, I find it absolutely asinine that we aren’t teaching our students about a war that so brutally divided a country we still haven’t completely healed.

How can we ask the next generation of leaders to be better than the last if they aren’t expected to consider the historical situations that got us to where we are today?

The lessons offered by the Vietnam War were paid for with the blood of 58,220 men. It is a callous offense to their memories if we don’t learn from it.

Since landing in this country, I have tried to educate myself on the ins and outs of Vietnamese history. Desire for self governance remains the prevailing theme regardless of what I read.

A day many thought would never come

A day many thought would never come

An excerpt of this unanswered letter, from Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman in 1946 was particularly powerful to me.

“These security and freedom can only be guaranteed by our independence from any colonial power, and our free cooperation with all other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the United Sates (sic) as guardians and champions of World Justice to take a decisive step in support of our independence.

What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and cooperation profitable to the whole world.”

As Man and I stood on that hillside, opposing heirs to a legacy of bloodshed, he looked at me and said.

“I do not hate America, I don’t understand why they fought my people, but that is in the past. The duplicitous Chinese are the enemy of the future, and Vietnam must stand with America against them.”

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As we spoke, there has been diplomatic saber rattling about China’s encroachment upon Vietnam’s maritime rights. I hope that America lives up to its once sterling reputation as “guardians and champions of world justice.”

For all of our diplomatic blunders, we are still the preeminent guarantors of freedom against those nations which would look to subjugate their neighbors.

I hope that we realize the responsibility of that preeminence. The world depends on it.

One Ocean Remains

/ chrismoorman13 / Leave a comment

Finally a decent weather day in Perth. It got up to about 25 today (around 77 degrees) so we got some errands run and headed to the beach.

Benny Chilling

And yes, there will be pictures finally. Sorry for the delay. I know that it all anyone wants to see.

Benny is in the process of replacing a lost passport, and seeing the hoops he’s got to jump through to do that makes me realize that incompetent, layered bureaucracy is not strictly an American phenomenon. There was some waiting in line at the post office, a few button mashing incidents to get to talk to a real person on the phone, and then a drive up to have an old friend guarantee that the passport photo was in fact Ben Harrison. Dealing with Australian government bureaucrats seemed quite familiar to the American.

These puppies are approximately $4k each.

These puppies are approximately $4k each.

After dealing with those issues though, we headed down to Scarborough Beach to knock around in the waves a bit. Upon arriving at the beach, we realized that we’d just stumbled into the biggest Surf Life Saving event that I’d ever seen.

Surf Life Saving is best described as the Olympifiying of life guard skills. There are swim competitions, surf ski races, direct rescue races and more. Clubs from all over Western Australia were in attendance and it had the feel of AAU Basketball nationals with a trade show attached. The groupings were by year, U19 to U16, and there were multiple events going on at all times while we were there.

Comfortingly, I didn’t feel like it was at all possible to drown with 2,000 teenage lifeguards running around. On a Wednesday no less.

Beyond the events, I had a great time knocking about in the surf while Benny continued to deal with passport issues. Scarborough Beach was particularly blue, with sand that was white and quite soft. The tide was going out while I was there, so the waves were pretty limited to some soft rolling shore dumpers, but I’m sure that a decent swell at that beach would be pretty wicked. I haven’t gotten on a surfboard yet this trip, but that will be fixed by the weekend.

After leaving, I really got to thinking about the significance of being in the Indian Ocean. (Caution: Hackneyed history lesson ahead.) This was, for most of European history the very end of the earth. James Cook voyaged down into the South Seas in 1770 looking for the mythical Terra Australis, a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere. Terra Australis had been hypothesized since the times of Aristotle and Ptolemy to be a huge landmass which counterbalanced all the discovered world north of the Equator. Cook ventured forth looking for this mythical landmass en route to finding what we now call Australia.

This was literally as far as things went. There was still Antarctica, but the Crown didn’t send explorers out to find chunks of ice, regardless of size. (Cook actually did spot islands off the Antarctic Mainland on the same voyage.) Cook had discovered the end of the inhabitable earth, and here I was, laughing like a fool as far away from home as one could possibly get.

Scarborough Beach North

Thankfully I didn’t have to risk life and limb for 20 months to get here on a wooden sailing vessel, but my first swim in a third ocean did feel impactful. Now I guess I’ve got to make my way to the Arctic Ocean to cross off all 4. Who’s up for Iceland?

Look at that spinnaker

Look at that spinnaker