The Kitchen Window

Photographed from my kitchen window through the curtains. What can be seen is a bird at the feeder.

A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate

PARIS, Oct. 5 — His subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter. Some were forced to work at the bottom rung of the Nazi killing machine — as diggers of mass graves, cooks who fed Nazi soldiers and seamstresses who mended clothes stripped from the Jews before execution.

They live today in rural poverty, many without running water or heat, nearing the end of their lives. So Patrick Desbois has been quietly seeking them out, roaming the back roads and forgotten fields of Ukraine, hearing their stories and searching for the unmarked common graves. He knows that they are an unparalleled source to document the murder of the 1.5 million Jews of Ukraine, shot dead and buried throughout the country.

He is neither a historian nor an archaeologist, but a French Roman Catholic priest. And his most powerful tools are his matter-of-fact style — and his clerical collar.

The Nazis killed nearly 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history has gone untold.

Knocking on doors, unannounced, Father Desbois, 52, seeks to unlock the memories of Ukrainian villagers the way he might take confessions one by one in church.

“At first, sometimes, people don’t believe I’m a priest,” said Father Desbois in an interview this week. “I have to use simple words and listen to these horrors — without any judgment. I cannot react to the horrors that pour out. If I react, the stories will stop.”

"There’s absolution through confession."

Over four years, Father Desbois has videotaped more than 700 interviews with witnesses and bystanders and has identified more than 600 common graves of Jews, most of them previously unknown. He also has gathered material evidence of the execution of Jews from 1941 to 1944, the “Holocaust of bullets” as it is called.

Often his subjects ask Father Desbois to stay for a meal and to pray, as if to somehow bless their acts of remembrance. He does not judge those who were assigned to carry out tasks for the Nazis, and Holocaust scholars say that is one reason he is so effective.

“If a Jewish taker-of-testimony comes, what would people think — that this is someone coming to accuse,” said Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “When a priest comes, people open up. He brings to the subject a kind of legitimacy, a sense that it’s O.K. to talk about the past. There’s absolution through confession.”

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  David Evans It is at times like this that I miss a just and loving God. The obvious question raised by this history and all history is of course how could a just and loving God permit such absolute devastation to reign down on his sons and daughters whom he created. My take away sadly is that we are alone out here with no hope of salvation and no love from a creator. Sad but true.

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  David Evans However, without this loving creator I nevertheless believe there is an obligation on us since we are the smartest created things around to love and care for each other and everything else as best we can. When our species is gone and when everything else is gone it will be written in the fabric of what is and what was that human beings did what they perceived had to be done and existence noticed.
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A Small Cabin on the Piedmont In Front of The First Range of the Appalachians, Fredrick County, Maryland

Sunrise Behind My Home In Tawneytown, Maryland

Contemplating Life's Mysteries As The Sun Sets

The Sun Draws Low On The Streets Of Harpers Ferry

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Ain't I a Woman

                              "Ain't I a Woman?" 

Born Isabella Baumfree, in 1843 she gave herself the 

name Sojourner Truth. Her best-known extemporaneous 

speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", 
\
was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights 

Convention in Akron, Ohio.

Hardin and Seldon

SUBJECT:  THE FOLLOWING "STORY" IS FAR FROM AN ATTEMPT TO WRITE A STORY.  IT IS JUST ME HAVING FUN FREE ASSOCIATING WORDS AND THOUGHTS IN A RANDOM WAY.  NO ATTEMPT AT LOGICAL ASSOCIATION  BUT RATHER WHAT APPEARS TO BE A STORY DEVELOPING WHEN NOTHING IS DEVELOPING.  I HAD A LOT OF FUN WRITING IT.

Scooter and the Man

“Well, are we implicated?” Scooter wondered. When would you like to get them? The man, shrugged. So, the two of them became liable to that thug known as the Terminus.   As any patriotic son of a bitch knows Pirenne can’t be trusted.  What’re taking this to be?   Armed centers of the followers of the mystic symbol waited.  If you have the money I have the time.  “Well! I really mean, none of the merest dregs of Anacreon, let alone little George is the first nor will be the last poor son of a feral pig that is left with practically nothing showing.”   As the Arab said, “It is, given them in the population of the innocents the policy which is openly wrong now and forever.  My objective insight and the rows of proper administration have proved to me, a warning.   And in space they saw the wagon. Even in Wienis the economy is more closely aligned to the half left stunned.    The Vault will know that he had hugged his august majesty despite the shortness of the matter.  I ask you how it could be more important. It is promised to us that the design of a rusty half of the past generations show no remorse. And you would find it was he who established a world less objective.

Hardin

Hardin looked about at what were so low but still malleable. But nothing was remaining under the protection of the Foundation of Fear. The nuclear blasters don’t care.  The first appearance of stagnation will test his misty mission, as if that's what mattered.  The wagon rolled back and forward, but the master would not interfere. That fagot Frenchman Haut Rodric calmed down his lover's entry to Anacreon but it would not satisfy the incessant anguish. They felt it equally in the heated car and that falling wagon. The Supervisor looked up against a setting sun and saw a magic abomination that once was her.  “It is gone”, she shouted.  “

Quite too soon, where are your coincidences?”  The enlargement of the nexus was ablaze in her groin but it was the greatest mistake. “Gaal good!” the savage shouted in glee, as he heard your gun.  But it was only a squint in his little face.  He showed no regret for the members of the clan that were maimed.  The remaining manufacturers disposed of the unenlightened. Those many jumps made with effort did not pay off. That is why I gave the army the help you take for granted.  I am weary but obliged to perform a fresh act so to give them freedom.  Hardin, Hardin, why oh why did you do what you did?  Slang is the death of culture, yet you have to quiver to relieve the desire to speak it.   That’s when Your Highness said, “off with his head” and a guard complied.  However, it’s another matter when the head lands in my office. If I'm going to sell it to the pagans as a trophy I need a spy beam. He had not a little chance, but proceeded forward.  “That will keep you in his room”, She said.

SELDON

SELDON was born fooled.   But the University of Vega awarded me a doctorate to help those higher up.  Yet in another world, the mayor of Hardin continued in vein to watch the sky.  If the Commodore, who also watched and heard and said nothing, allowed SELDON to watch, as it is written, SELDON is reborn with wits and finally arrives.

He asked the obvious question, “Do you have the key to enter?”   The reply was “No!”, so the Foundation would be in the hands of a Board which had, for the last three years before failed to hold out pathetically for any sign of reason.  He was alone among the stars in a ship which was two short light years from home. He was the first in what was to be a long occupation with those who would follow in three hundred thousand years. The Foundation which was the richest entity in the whole Galaxy, defied all definitions of success.  Its purpose lost in a trifle of three penciled words long since forgotten.   You who knew so much had advanced and then repudiated every truce.   With every Temple he acquired he said, “I will be trusted and unto me will be sacrificed all that there is. And with that, the heads of the high officials of all ages and those with the strength unmatched will wither and perish on the spike.   And listen to this, mankind still persisted for a time, and then with all of its collective breath expired.  And just three months ago Hardin reappeared. So, into this vacant space-time a coronet was placed upon him.  But it shifted.  The desk clerk knew not where he had been. Hardin knew that this was a beginning of strange pseudo psycho events.  The mathematics of Anacreon and the Visual Record of the event were never really lost.   After all, two good archaeologists were silenced.  The greedy traders had traded it for what was believed to be valuable.  He was again the one Gaal who mattered. The dead planet even in the Periphery showed more substantial activity than it had in the previous 10 million years. It's to the coronation that afternoon, and the odor.   But the whole damned strong offensive had even more proto-nuclear power on the cheap. How this room of elders found a solution (to cause) his cigar and of every one ranked beneath the first guard who were once fine and stolid figures to decompose. With the destruction of his gun the controls shifted. Oh! And an ultra-wave set for evil, would help once the decay of the traders had finished. And aren't you glad that you held them. Then you brought them to him. You may be the one, but when a queer name is occasionally invoked you suspected no trouble, I point out. But you the Chief Commissioner raised the stakes by listening. You listened to the ravings of the third patient, and now the event in itself, even from the fourth party was nothing but a high pressure Galaxy! Your very distinctive priestly costume, made him lean back and gaze, “don't you see”, he added, “they cannot turn out what other devils do?”  The war witch I started by use of the epigrams, with absolute secrecy pushed us sunwards. When he looked behind them, in the only way he could, “I want to still accomplish what the Periphery had established. Mallow, had wanted in to take control as in the past by use of forcing the worm to come out. But some alternatives in them where revolting. When the recipient of the nature sounds good in the balcony and when your life decays, the Seven Vaults found there will be raised to his neck. And resources found there will render him alive.  And my brave men, who protected me from those who would do me harm in the first of the year had accompanied him there and we will see not a homage that is overlooked but instead the old Emperor returning as the final Supervisor. SELDON and Leopold will live another day.

Chapter 2     The Psycho-History of The Foundation

Chen said nothing.   Galaxy Psychohistory forbad the obvious truths etched on the galactic surface,  It had been demonstrated that the substance can terminate these chain reactions by removing radical intermediates and inhibiting other reactions by being assimilated themselves.

I am past the tide of uh, the spiritual adviser to the Foundation.  Various threats made in its name were believed to confirm this occluded level and any fool could see it. If only he had first been identified as the initiator instead of Sermak.  Poor Sermak!  Foolish again beyond all help and refusing to keep the traders at bay.  Sermak and Chen refused to grasp the wisdom of the fifty prophets.  How would he hit Trantor Square? Outside the first Theorem which included a new track of psycho-histrionic findings. You can not part.   It is said, “not of substance is anything gained”. He did see, but did not budge. He had his orders. Since Terminus was made king thus do I take your hand and the light which flows therefrom.  

And, Yate Fulham lucky beyond comprehension pushes on. Slimmer are his chances. Pherl had fallen! She had died when the two nations had been described as the inevitable force derived from its calculus from the number of pretenders and therefore were holdovers of the third person.  The one which we admired most had taken the last plane to the coast.   A strong scar was evident on her face. That week had been the moment that Teldor was elected to a lead a religion which condoned the killing of the timid ones. But he buried himself with his victims. Other could see six dimensional newscasts covering the affront.  

Everything you saw looked uncertain but pointed to the potential destroyers of the people. There are rebels plotting against me, why?  

The rising trip left the Wienis, frightened by the Comodoro expansively. Not trouble. It could order its own freedom, but would it? Where is his chair?  And finally, the matter of the truth about the military base upon the spaceport is a trifle or an all-consuming event  to be impeached. Ponyets smiled as Gorov, was drained of life on Terminus. He related to me who sat to his left, an old fable.  He said that's the question the figure in his dream had that one hour before his death a week prior.  And he would not read or listen to the  speech since he was also becoming distorted with darts shot into him one by one by the Royal Jester. It was a sardonic response to get behind the desk and inform him as he arrived that his protector was darted to death.  After hearing that, our strongest hold out caved.  Cripto Magnisium! That soft distant milk, filling the ancient tradition is accelerating into space. Even if all the imaginable variety (without metal skin) on the planet Anacreon say “No” to the tumult roaring against the inhabitants of the Imperial Citizen about the news of Salvor Hardin will in minutes began to aim.  

Cleon I believe can tell me of the last detail of the retreat. And will probably be able to control men who are useful.  If one looks at the sum of the ship, spreading from iron in the course, there are you may find the treatment of the others as odd.  Fifteen hundred went blank eyed and the Police I don't think will discern the work as from the foundary of an Outlander.  The magnitude of the physical scientists directing the test grew shriller, but not calculated furiously, and never! The Galaxy hand back in the details at the Empire will be worse than a very handily two hours; later on the lead lined face of the year; when a better but fighting easily has decided.