Colonel´s entry for December 21st 2008
1117 Thomas Becket archbishop of Canterbury ,poor fellow,does being canonized by the Catholic Church erase the fact that you were hacked to ieces just because 4 courtiers wanted to brown-nose King Henry II?1537 Johan III king of Sweden (1569-92),despite having two wives he was Magnum when producing bastards with his mistress Karin HansDotter
1874 Juan Bautista Sacasa President of Nicaragua (1932-36) still not quite considered a good politician1879 Joseph Stalin [Dzoegashvili] Russian dictator; murdered 11,000,000, provoked his second wife´s suicide
Deaths which occurred on December 21:
0918 Conrad I Duke of Franconia/German King (911-918), dies after leaving his throne to King Henry the Fowler1375 Giovanni Boccaccio Italian poet (Vita di Dante, Decameron), dies after scanalizing prudes with his Decameron1429 Jacquemart de Bléharies Tournay "heretic", burned to death, when the church still battled ideas with cruelty
1945 George S Patton US general (Sicily/Normandy), dies in very suspicious car accident in Heidelberg at 60 , maybe it was the government who had no use for a hero1948 Seishiro Itagaki Japanese general/Minister of War, hanged for crimes of war…but isn’t all war itself a crime?
Events
1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock,shaking from a beer hangover(it was the only thing they could down on board during the trip)
1866 Cheyennes, Arapaho's, Sioux, Fetterman Massacre, as usual whites massacring Indians
1898 Scientists Pierre & Marie Curie discover radium, and both would get Nobel award but it was Marie who did the kitchen work
THE PERFECT MAN
Incredible though it may sound, he did exist. Perhaps because he was perfect he accomplished the huge task of raising me. He was born in 1920 in Rouen , Normandie, in northern France, on a day like today. It is hard to remember him without missing him, for he has been physically dead since 1989. Unlike cats or deafs or boors, he always answered when called upon. Never left you talking to the hand nor picked up messages, dearest be.The magic of his presence was always his knack of being there, at the right spot on the right day at the right time. I honestly don´t understand how I have been able to live on without him since that fateful morning when the radio announced that the TAN SAHSA plane going from Managua to Miami had crashed into Cerro del Hule in Honduras. My mother and my dad were gone in one single stroke. The inevitable had happened. But it was precisely this strength he gave me that enabled me to continue my own path through life alone, and it is the band of fireflies emanating from his teachings what guides me and makes anything or anyone else completely superfluous to me. Yes, I can have company along life, but that is an accessory. Like Coco Chanel, also French, would say, ”The dress is the basic thing. Accesories come a lowly last second.” My father dressed me with his courage and invincibility. He is still the provider of my coat of mail, the sword of the samurai who secretly lives in me although many don´t even know the Code of Bushido exists. He was the Julius Caesar who has helped me cross the Rubicon of all the vicissitudes in my life, from broken bones to silence, from indifference to injustice, or whatever may have come along. “Nothing is worth your vexation, minou” was his favorite expression, and how right he was. Now, as the luminous shadow behind every single letter I write, from articles to fiction or this self same book, the real author and muse of my Dionysiac literary fertility is my father. I am the monster my father created in a Frankenstenian effort to make something out of the ordinary. “Pumpkin head,” he would say when he saw me studying late into the night, always avid to acquire more knowledge. That strange blob of pragmatism, atheism and laughter that I am is Bernard-made. From a trip to France that he made only taking my mom, he brought back a small statue made of see-through plexiglass. His hero, Vercingétorix, more beloved in France than the dumb Joan of Arc, because that guy being a teenager almost defeated the legions led by Julius Caesar. He put it on my night table. When I entered the military, he taught me to insert a candle inside it so it was lit from within. I knew he was an atheist, and I told him that lighting a candle with a saint substitute was like a syncretism of what the papists did.” No”, he said” .I believe in Vercingetorix as I also believe in you, and while the light is on, you will return safely from the green beyond.” As soon as I would leave on mission, he would rush to light the candle inside the hero. Somehow I always came back, in one piece, although I may be shot or broken. He would never pry for details, just waited until my mom had gone into the kitchen or early to bed, and the two war veterans we were could talk, man to man as one of my friends would say. All the traumas would come out, roll around dying gracefully inside a cup of tea, and evaporate like ghosts who desert us when the dawn comes in dancing. That was something only my dad could do. I fell in love with history through him, when he would not read stupidities like Cinderella or Snow White or any fairy tale princess yarns in which girlies marry princes only to live impossibly happy ever after. How he would laugh at sweet girl stories, saying that real life began with a wedding, not ended with one. He would only mention all he went through in his experiences in World War II. Nothing was left out, not even the sordid details. Perhaps that was the root for the habit of calling things by their real name, something that so irks bosses and men who unsuccessfully try to gain a hold over my heart or my hand or my bank account which I don´t have. I became the perfect candidate for historian because I was the daughter of living history.
No wonder all men still pale like faltering bad specters next to my dad´s figure. As the Italian singer Eros Ramazzotti gargled in one of his songs,”No puede haber, desgracia semejante, donde la encontraré”.There cannot be, so disgrace be, where will I find someone like you. I have given up long time ago. There can be nobody like Bernard. He was all the great men I have admired in history all crunched together into his former weightlifting frame, and by having had him as father I am convinced that god cannot exist because if he had been created by a god, the deity would have envied him too much. Imagine Oda Nobunaga and Patton,Vivaldi and Tipoo Sultan,Lautaro and Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, Ataturk and Jose Eca Maria de Queiroz , plus a dash of Lincoln and Osceola and Benito Juarez and King Henri IV all packed into a figure with red hair, freckles and green eyes? Too much competition for any mortal male, but that was him. No wonder I even gave up the search for any shadowy imitation of him, being realistic enough to know I will never find even a pale photocopy of him anywhere.”I know I ask perfection in a quite imperfect world, and I´m fool enough to think that ´s what I´ll find!” sang Karen carpenter in one of her hits. My mother was lucky enough to find him. That could be the story of my life until I realized that the perfect man would only be my dad.
I´m aware that my dad was a real titan, having to become a lion trainer in order to raise me properly. It was the only way out, and he coined the phrase “iron grip in a silken glove.” It worked. I am the living testimony of how much this worked, Frederick II of Prussia´s doctrine melded with Guillaume D´Aquitaine´s poetry. How did I get so lucky for kismet to give him to me as father, as the author of what I am now?
I was aware how loved my dad was not only by me when he died and his body was brought back to Managua from Honduras. The workers he had so benefited at the building materials factory where he had been a general manager cried as if their own mother had died. I still find people who worked for him that get cloudy eyes when they remember him. The respect and affection he got from his people would have made him a true statesman, but he chose to do his own in his own way without ever aspiring to anything else. His example still guides many, and his funny remarks still make him a most popularly quoted wit here in Nicaragua. It is the same man who decided to homage his newly born little brother Silvio in 1930 by parading his prize winning science project(a dreadful live cockroach farm) in front of his mom while she was breastfeeding wee Silvio. Years later it would be the same man who risked everything by smuggling the nazi officer Hans out of Auschwitz as a deaf mute until they reached Rouen, a way of thanking the German for having saved his life during his imprisonment. That is my Uncle Hans Schneider.Levallois who still lives in Paris and who almost had a heart attack when he heard my parents had died in the plane crash.
Bernard. Cachimba, Venancio. Who ripped away the door from his office when he became general manager so any worker could pass directly into his bureau and talk to him without formalities. The founder of the company store with permanent discounts, the workingmen´s league, and the leftist union in his factory. The man who played catcher in his baseball team made of workers, and the fan of the Boer Team in the national baseball league, the man who cried in public when his team lost while I nearly shat in my pants from shame at what he was doing. The chap who during a grand opening speech of General Anastasio Somoza, the dictator who owned Canal Cement Company(the parent company of the factory where my dad worked), let nature have his way and farted shamelessly while everybody laughed, excusing himself by saying that when Tsarina Catherine the Great had accused her dead husband of having died from a stick fart nobody had raised an eyebrow.
I mention him and he looms humongously like the Himalayas over India, casting his cool and comforting shadow over my life. I bask in the shade of his eternal protection, knowing that he is the deity other people say I should have. He was there when I learned to walk again, and he is there, everywhere, like his favorite singer Edith Piaf sand in her hit Tu Est Partout(You are everywhere).The fact that it is what would have been his 88th birthday is only an excuse to show him off to the world as only magnificent pride and unique love can do. Public words to convey a simple idea of the god I had living in my house, for the private Bernard only I had.
1117 Thomas Becket archbishop of Canterbury ,poor fellow,does being canonized by the Catholic Church erase the fact that you were hacked to ieces just because 4 courtiers wanted to brown-nose King Henry II?1537 Johan III king of Sweden (1569-92),despite having two wives he was Magnum when producing bastards with his mistress Karin HansDotter
1874 Juan Bautista Sacasa President of Nicaragua (1932-36) still not quite considered a good politician1879 Joseph Stalin [Dzoegashvili] Russian dictator; murdered 11,000,000, provoked his second wife´s suicide
Deaths which occurred on December 21:
0918 Conrad I Duke of Franconia/German King (911-918), dies after leaving his throne to King Henry the Fowler1375 Giovanni Boccaccio Italian poet (Vita di Dante, Decameron), dies after scanalizing prudes with his Decameron1429 Jacquemart de Bléharies Tournay "heretic", burned to death, when the church still battled ideas with cruelty
1945 George S Patton US general (Sicily/Normandy), dies in very suspicious car accident in Heidelberg at 60 , maybe it was the government who had no use for a hero1948 Seishiro Itagaki Japanese general/Minister of War, hanged for crimes of war…but isn’t all war itself a crime?
Events
1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock,shaking from a beer hangover(it was the only thing they could down on board during the trip)
1866 Cheyennes, Arapaho's, Sioux, Fetterman Massacre, as usual whites massacring Indians
1898 Scientists Pierre & Marie Curie discover radium, and both would get Nobel award but it was Marie who did the kitchen work
THE PERFECT MAN
Incredible though it may sound, he did exist. Perhaps because he was perfect he accomplished the huge task of raising me. He was born in 1920 in Rouen , Normandie, in northern France, on a day like today. It is hard to remember him without missing him, for he has been physically dead since 1989. Unlike cats or deafs or boors, he always answered when called upon. Never left you talking to the hand nor picked up messages, dearest be.The magic of his presence was always his knack of being there, at the right spot on the right day at the right time. I honestly don´t understand how I have been able to live on without him since that fateful morning when the radio announced that the TAN SAHSA plane going from Managua to Miami had crashed into Cerro del Hule in Honduras. My mother and my dad were gone in one single stroke. The inevitable had happened. But it was precisely this strength he gave me that enabled me to continue my own path through life alone, and it is the band of fireflies emanating from his teachings what guides me and makes anything or anyone else completely superfluous to me. Yes, I can have company along life, but that is an accessory. Like Coco Chanel, also French, would say, ”The dress is the basic thing. Accesories come a lowly last second.” My father dressed me with his courage and invincibility. He is still the provider of my coat of mail, the sword of the samurai who secretly lives in me although many don´t even know the Code of Bushido exists. He was the Julius Caesar who has helped me cross the Rubicon of all the vicissitudes in my life, from broken bones to silence, from indifference to injustice, or whatever may have come along. “Nothing is worth your vexation, minou” was his favorite expression, and how right he was. Now, as the luminous shadow behind every single letter I write, from articles to fiction or this self same book, the real author and muse of my Dionysiac literary fertility is my father. I am the monster my father created in a Frankenstenian effort to make something out of the ordinary. “Pumpkin head,” he would say when he saw me studying late into the night, always avid to acquire more knowledge. That strange blob of pragmatism, atheism and laughter that I am is Bernard-made. From a trip to France that he made only taking my mom, he brought back a small statue made of see-through plexiglass. His hero, Vercingétorix, more beloved in France than the dumb Joan of Arc, because that guy being a teenager almost defeated the legions led by Julius Caesar. He put it on my night table. When I entered the military, he taught me to insert a candle inside it so it was lit from within. I knew he was an atheist, and I told him that lighting a candle with a saint substitute was like a syncretism of what the papists did.” No”, he said” .I believe in Vercingetorix as I also believe in you, and while the light is on, you will return safely from the green beyond.” As soon as I would leave on mission, he would rush to light the candle inside the hero. Somehow I always came back, in one piece, although I may be shot or broken. He would never pry for details, just waited until my mom had gone into the kitchen or early to bed, and the two war veterans we were could talk, man to man as one of my friends would say. All the traumas would come out, roll around dying gracefully inside a cup of tea, and evaporate like ghosts who desert us when the dawn comes in dancing. That was something only my dad could do. I fell in love with history through him, when he would not read stupidities like Cinderella or Snow White or any fairy tale princess yarns in which girlies marry princes only to live impossibly happy ever after. How he would laugh at sweet girl stories, saying that real life began with a wedding, not ended with one. He would only mention all he went through in his experiences in World War II. Nothing was left out, not even the sordid details. Perhaps that was the root for the habit of calling things by their real name, something that so irks bosses and men who unsuccessfully try to gain a hold over my heart or my hand or my bank account which I don´t have. I became the perfect candidate for historian because I was the daughter of living history.
No wonder all men still pale like faltering bad specters next to my dad´s figure. As the Italian singer Eros Ramazzotti gargled in one of his songs,”No puede haber, desgracia semejante, donde la encontraré”.There cannot be, so disgrace be, where will I find someone like you. I have given up long time ago. There can be nobody like Bernard. He was all the great men I have admired in history all crunched together into his former weightlifting frame, and by having had him as father I am convinced that god cannot exist because if he had been created by a god, the deity would have envied him too much. Imagine Oda Nobunaga and Patton,Vivaldi and Tipoo Sultan,Lautaro and Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, Ataturk and Jose Eca Maria de Queiroz , plus a dash of Lincoln and Osceola and Benito Juarez and King Henri IV all packed into a figure with red hair, freckles and green eyes? Too much competition for any mortal male, but that was him. No wonder I even gave up the search for any shadowy imitation of him, being realistic enough to know I will never find even a pale photocopy of him anywhere.”I know I ask perfection in a quite imperfect world, and I´m fool enough to think that ´s what I´ll find!” sang Karen carpenter in one of her hits. My mother was lucky enough to find him. That could be the story of my life until I realized that the perfect man would only be my dad.
I´m aware that my dad was a real titan, having to become a lion trainer in order to raise me properly. It was the only way out, and he coined the phrase “iron grip in a silken glove.” It worked. I am the living testimony of how much this worked, Frederick II of Prussia´s doctrine melded with Guillaume D´Aquitaine´s poetry. How did I get so lucky for kismet to give him to me as father, as the author of what I am now?
I was aware how loved my dad was not only by me when he died and his body was brought back to Managua from Honduras. The workers he had so benefited at the building materials factory where he had been a general manager cried as if their own mother had died. I still find people who worked for him that get cloudy eyes when they remember him. The respect and affection he got from his people would have made him a true statesman, but he chose to do his own in his own way without ever aspiring to anything else. His example still guides many, and his funny remarks still make him a most popularly quoted wit here in Nicaragua. It is the same man who decided to homage his newly born little brother Silvio in 1930 by parading his prize winning science project(a dreadful live cockroach farm) in front of his mom while she was breastfeeding wee Silvio. Years later it would be the same man who risked everything by smuggling the nazi officer Hans out of Auschwitz as a deaf mute until they reached Rouen, a way of thanking the German for having saved his life during his imprisonment. That is my Uncle Hans Schneider.Levallois who still lives in Paris and who almost had a heart attack when he heard my parents had died in the plane crash.
Bernard. Cachimba, Venancio. Who ripped away the door from his office when he became general manager so any worker could pass directly into his bureau and talk to him without formalities. The founder of the company store with permanent discounts, the workingmen´s league, and the leftist union in his factory. The man who played catcher in his baseball team made of workers, and the fan of the Boer Team in the national baseball league, the man who cried in public when his team lost while I nearly shat in my pants from shame at what he was doing. The chap who during a grand opening speech of General Anastasio Somoza, the dictator who owned Canal Cement Company(the parent company of the factory where my dad worked), let nature have his way and farted shamelessly while everybody laughed, excusing himself by saying that when Tsarina Catherine the Great had accused her dead husband of having died from a stick fart nobody had raised an eyebrow.
I mention him and he looms humongously like the Himalayas over India, casting his cool and comforting shadow over my life. I bask in the shade of his eternal protection, knowing that he is the deity other people say I should have. He was there when I learned to walk again, and he is there, everywhere, like his favorite singer Edith Piaf sand in her hit Tu Est Partout(You are everywhere).The fact that it is what would have been his 88th birthday is only an excuse to show him off to the world as only magnificent pride and unique love can do. Public words to convey a simple idea of the god I had living in my house, for the private Bernard only I had.
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