47 entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of September 09:
1585 Cardinal A Jean de Plessicide de Richelieu Louis XIIIs chief minister,cat lover par excellence, founder of the French Academy,and he said in any sentence written by a man he could find the most diverse reasons to send him to jail or the gallows, atta boy !
1828 Leo Tolstoy Russia, novelist (War & Peace, Anna Karenina), a very enlightened man 1850 Harishchandra India, poet/dramatist/father of modern Hindi, one of the greatest in Asia
Deaths which occurred on September 09:
1087 William I The Conqueror, King of England, & Duke of Normandy, dies and goes on to make a postmortem ridicule when someone tried to fit him into a too small coffin and his rotting corpse exploded,sorry folks,barely the truth even though he was my ancestor,sorry sweet Willie
1976 Mao Tse-Tung Chinese communist party chairman (1949-76), dies at 82,after having delighted several years before, a handful of diplomats by showing them his smooth pink butt
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of September 10:
1487 Julius III Counter-Reformation pope (1550-55)poor chap he really had no choice
Deaths which occurred on September 10:
1419 John the Fearless Burgundy France, warrior, murdered at 48
1898 Empress Elisabeth “Sissi” is murdered in Switzerland by an anarchist
1991 Yves Montand actor (Lets Make Love, Z), dies at 70,he refused to leave his wife Simone Signoret to marry his mistress Marylin Monroe
Events
1349 Jews who survived a massacre in Constance Germany are burned to death
Oh kismet,when born a pig,the knife falls from the sky
1846 Elias Howe patents the sewing machine, great help for women finally
1960 Running barefoot, Ethiopian Imperial Guard Abebe Bikila wins Rome Olympic marathon, showing us the natural superiority of the black race
Once Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez said that journalism was the loveliest occupation in the world. If history didn`t exist I would agree with him, having a daughter who decided to shun timelines in order to study journalism. Due to the fact that most journalists in Nicaragua tend to be boozies and floozies who never read,boast a lot about their militant ignorance and tend to be the clowns of the three ring circus which is my country,when Elizabeth told me she would study journalism, I almost told her that I would get a red bulb and plug it outside our home, because for me most journalists here in my country would feel at home in a brothel. Well, someday I hope she will realize that history is the sexy stepmother of journalism,and that if I wouldn`t have been a historian, I would probably not even exist biologically speaking. Today,still jubilant after having had a lot of time in your company,dearest reader, I ask myself what twists and turns of lady history`s ballerina feet could have been changed for the better or the worst. These days are so full of events,births,deaths.We say in Nicaragua that September is the month of our homeland,forgetting that we cannot truly be patriots if we only pluck one month per year and then forget about the other 11 to be total knaves against our country.
I spray rose attar on my broken,reconstructed and awkwardly thin wrists and Elisabeth of Wittelsbach, better known as empress Sissi by her marriage to Franz Josef of the Habsburgs,slips into my mind. She loved an adoptive country that wasn`t her own of course, Hungary. Did she learn to love it in bed with hr lover Gyula Andrassy, or by going there incognito?The reality was that the Hungarians loved her right back,asking her to be their queen. She always felt half Magyar in Hungary.Too bad that final episode of the sharpened file stabbed deeply into her breast,ending her life with tragedy.
History. I knew I was going to be a historian since I was 5 years old.When tucking me into bed, covering me with those wonderful eiderdowns, my dad spoke not of Perrault nor Grimm brothers nor anything else as a bedtime story. He used his own epic participation in Operation Overlord, the famous D Day during Worl War II, so he could finally put the wee devil I was into the arms of Morpheus. Like the best soap operas, his tale would come to an exciting climax and leave me hanging there until the following night, when my Bernard would become a green-eyed Schehèrazade of real life, and spin the magic of what happened after he got caught with his pants down by the Germans…and how he managed to survive the war,the capture,the time he spent at Auschwitz, until he realized he was more committed to staying alive than most others were. So is it small wonder why I decided to become a historian?I never needed fairy tales, and I still don`t believe in them. My dad took care of that, giving me the toasted seeds of pragmatism, along with his sense of humour,so I could digest life as it came.
In history I found people like me, who would wilt in exile but flourish at home,declaring steadfastly that I am not exportable in any sense. I found my daily inspiration in the Vercingetorix, Tecumseh and Lautaro figures of all times, fell passionately in love with kings like Henri IV of France or emperor Pacchacuti of the Inca empire, and managed to feel an enormous gratitude and tenderness for the spiritual mother of the pill which liberated me from sexual servitude,Margaret Sanger. The chocolate core of my heart that no one has dared to say they saw was melted to the quick by Guillaume D`Aquitaine,Khalil Gibran and Yukio Mishima, and I secretly cried over Oda Nobunaga`s death burned alive in the temple and when Edith Piaf lost her lover Marcel Cerdan. I still dream of meeting Antonio Vivaldi and taking off his soutane slowly before I braid his long red hair, and I have not found my own Genghis Khan to leave my incredible incredulity blood-splotched and quivering on the steppe of my everlasting disbelief. Where is the Simon Bar Kochba that my grandmother Mercedes de la Rosa promised me while we sipped a hot toddy in a cool December evening,sitting under our porch each one with a cat nestled on her lap? What happened to the rebellious Trung sisters of Vietnam who lived under my elbow, or the strong queen Kaahumanu of Hawaii that was supposed to dance upon my pulse?
History has made my life possible,although I have to admit that knowing the mistakes which others made hasn`t prevented me from making my own and perhaps in worse dimensions. I have laughed with queen Nzingha of Ndongo and Matamba playing with her war elephant Diat, experimented a demolishing crush over the great Elephant Shaka Zulu and his three cat colonels, and felt a great solidarity for Manuela Sàenz, Bolìvar`s lover although I can`t quite understand how such a superior female could see anything sexy in him.
I have wanted to kick George Armstrong Custer in the balls, or bitten Theodore Roosevelt`s burly biceps. I have felt the heartbreak of Sha Jehan losing his Mumtaz Mahal in her fourteenth childbirth even when love has always skirted my path and stayed at a safe distance so I cannot smooch its face with kisses. Emperor Marcus Aurelius of Rome`s cat Luna has tiptoed into my dreams as I lay in bed in the few hours of sleep I allow myself, but Marcus`teachings that he put into his Meditations have been like a continuous lesson for me.
History.I couldn`t live without all the kings,empresses and whores of history. Never could forget the birthdates of so many scientists, criminals,gays and war horses. It continues to be the only thing to which I have been faithful other than my own integrity. I wonder, so beloved reader, if you can understand. Maybe,now that you are written into my history with the same attar of roses that brings Sissi to me as soon as I close my eyes and step into the thin,gossamer butterfly wing that gravitates beneath my eyelids.
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of September 09:
1585 Cardinal A Jean de Plessicide de Richelieu Louis XIIIs chief minister,cat lover par excellence, founder of the French Academy,and he said in any sentence written by a man he could find the most diverse reasons to send him to jail or the gallows, atta boy !
1828 Leo Tolstoy Russia, novelist (War & Peace, Anna Karenina), a very enlightened man 1850 Harishchandra India, poet/dramatist/father of modern Hindi, one of the greatest in Asia
Deaths which occurred on September 09:
1087 William I The Conqueror, King of England, & Duke of Normandy, dies and goes on to make a postmortem ridicule when someone tried to fit him into a too small coffin and his rotting corpse exploded,sorry folks,barely the truth even though he was my ancestor,sorry sweet Willie
1976 Mao Tse-Tung Chinese communist party chairman (1949-76), dies at 82,after having delighted several years before, a handful of diplomats by showing them his smooth pink butt
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of September 10:
1487 Julius III Counter-Reformation pope (1550-55)poor chap he really had no choice
Deaths which occurred on September 10:
1419 John the Fearless Burgundy France, warrior, murdered at 48
1898 Empress Elisabeth “Sissi” is murdered in Switzerland by an anarchist
1991 Yves Montand actor (Lets Make Love, Z), dies at 70,he refused to leave his wife Simone Signoret to marry his mistress Marylin Monroe
Events
1349 Jews who survived a massacre in Constance Germany are burned to death
Oh kismet,when born a pig,the knife falls from the sky
1846 Elias Howe patents the sewing machine, great help for women finally
1960 Running barefoot, Ethiopian Imperial Guard Abebe Bikila wins Rome Olympic marathon, showing us the natural superiority of the black race
Once Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez said that journalism was the loveliest occupation in the world. If history didn`t exist I would agree with him, having a daughter who decided to shun timelines in order to study journalism. Due to the fact that most journalists in Nicaragua tend to be boozies and floozies who never read,boast a lot about their militant ignorance and tend to be the clowns of the three ring circus which is my country,when Elizabeth told me she would study journalism, I almost told her that I would get a red bulb and plug it outside our home, because for me most journalists here in my country would feel at home in a brothel. Well, someday I hope she will realize that history is the sexy stepmother of journalism,and that if I wouldn`t have been a historian, I would probably not even exist biologically speaking. Today,still jubilant after having had a lot of time in your company,dearest reader, I ask myself what twists and turns of lady history`s ballerina feet could have been changed for the better or the worst. These days are so full of events,births,deaths.We say in Nicaragua that September is the month of our homeland,forgetting that we cannot truly be patriots if we only pluck one month per year and then forget about the other 11 to be total knaves against our country.
I spray rose attar on my broken,reconstructed and awkwardly thin wrists and Elisabeth of Wittelsbach, better known as empress Sissi by her marriage to Franz Josef of the Habsburgs,slips into my mind. She loved an adoptive country that wasn`t her own of course, Hungary. Did she learn to love it in bed with hr lover Gyula Andrassy, or by going there incognito?The reality was that the Hungarians loved her right back,asking her to be their queen. She always felt half Magyar in Hungary.Too bad that final episode of the sharpened file stabbed deeply into her breast,ending her life with tragedy.
History. I knew I was going to be a historian since I was 5 years old.When tucking me into bed, covering me with those wonderful eiderdowns, my dad spoke not of Perrault nor Grimm brothers nor anything else as a bedtime story. He used his own epic participation in Operation Overlord, the famous D Day during Worl War II, so he could finally put the wee devil I was into the arms of Morpheus. Like the best soap operas, his tale would come to an exciting climax and leave me hanging there until the following night, when my Bernard would become a green-eyed Schehèrazade of real life, and spin the magic of what happened after he got caught with his pants down by the Germans…and how he managed to survive the war,the capture,the time he spent at Auschwitz, until he realized he was more committed to staying alive than most others were. So is it small wonder why I decided to become a historian?I never needed fairy tales, and I still don`t believe in them. My dad took care of that, giving me the toasted seeds of pragmatism, along with his sense of humour,so I could digest life as it came.
In history I found people like me, who would wilt in exile but flourish at home,declaring steadfastly that I am not exportable in any sense. I found my daily inspiration in the Vercingetorix, Tecumseh and Lautaro figures of all times, fell passionately in love with kings like Henri IV of France or emperor Pacchacuti of the Inca empire, and managed to feel an enormous gratitude and tenderness for the spiritual mother of the pill which liberated me from sexual servitude,Margaret Sanger. The chocolate core of my heart that no one has dared to say they saw was melted to the quick by Guillaume D`Aquitaine,Khalil Gibran and Yukio Mishima, and I secretly cried over Oda Nobunaga`s death burned alive in the temple and when Edith Piaf lost her lover Marcel Cerdan. I still dream of meeting Antonio Vivaldi and taking off his soutane slowly before I braid his long red hair, and I have not found my own Genghis Khan to leave my incredible incredulity blood-splotched and quivering on the steppe of my everlasting disbelief. Where is the Simon Bar Kochba that my grandmother Mercedes de la Rosa promised me while we sipped a hot toddy in a cool December evening,sitting under our porch each one with a cat nestled on her lap? What happened to the rebellious Trung sisters of Vietnam who lived under my elbow, or the strong queen Kaahumanu of Hawaii that was supposed to dance upon my pulse?
History has made my life possible,although I have to admit that knowing the mistakes which others made hasn`t prevented me from making my own and perhaps in worse dimensions. I have laughed with queen Nzingha of Ndongo and Matamba playing with her war elephant Diat, experimented a demolishing crush over the great Elephant Shaka Zulu and his three cat colonels, and felt a great solidarity for Manuela Sàenz, Bolìvar`s lover although I can`t quite understand how such a superior female could see anything sexy in him.
I have wanted to kick George Armstrong Custer in the balls, or bitten Theodore Roosevelt`s burly biceps. I have felt the heartbreak of Sha Jehan losing his Mumtaz Mahal in her fourteenth childbirth even when love has always skirted my path and stayed at a safe distance so I cannot smooch its face with kisses. Emperor Marcus Aurelius of Rome`s cat Luna has tiptoed into my dreams as I lay in bed in the few hours of sleep I allow myself, but Marcus`teachings that he put into his Meditations have been like a continuous lesson for me.
History.I couldn`t live without all the kings,empresses and whores of history. Never could forget the birthdates of so many scientists, criminals,gays and war horses. It continues to be the only thing to which I have been faithful other than my own integrity. I wonder, so beloved reader, if you can understand. Maybe,now that you are written into my history with the same attar of roses that brings Sissi to me as soon as I close my eyes and step into the thin,gossamer butterfly wing that gravitates beneath my eyelids.
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