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Imagine this scenario–by December of 1945, the Nazi forces have rallied strongly enough to drive back the Allied advance. A strong push on England results in the demoralizing loss of London, and soon, the whole of Europe has succumbed to Nazi rule, with the United States forced to make a reluctant peace when popular opinion turns sour back home.

What would the world be like now if Nazi Germany had won the war? Over sixty years later, would the Reich have continued to expand into other nations? Would it have continued to engage in ethnic cleansing, or would saner voices prevail over time? How would technology be different today–would we have no Internet, but more advanced heavy machinery and weaponry? What functions would computers serve in this hypothetical Reich, assuming that their development continued after World War II? Could the Nazi Empire have survived insurgency movements from within by liberalizing? Or would it stay true to its savage roots, even in 2007? Tell it to me.

I would read a book called "The Children’s War". It starts with the premise that Germany invaded and conquered England and fought the Soviets to a stalemate on the Eastern front. I think it does a good job in predicting the evolution of Nazi society while telling an intriguing story.

As for my opinion of this scenario, I think Germany would have evolved into an effective society. The biggest challenge facing post war Germany would have been the death of Hitler and the transfer of power. This probably would have resulted in a power struggle. If a Hitler-esque man assumed control of the German Empire, 5 years of civil and economic unrest would have occurred, followed by a coup conducted by moderate minded men.
Either way the conquered countries would integrate into the Pan-German mindset, with Germany being the official language and other languages gradually falling into disuse. America would resume trade relations with Germany to help contain Soviet expansion into the Middle East and Africa. With the lack of trade barriers the standard of living would rise, and as it rose insurgency movements would lose the power to recruit and raise supplies. Through the 1930’s and into the beginning of the War Years, Hitler and the Nazi’s made serious efforts to improve the lot of the common German and respected the environment (as much as any nation at the time). This would have continued.

The level of technology would be at a comparable level. Even under the repressive Nazi regime, German scientists achieved great breakthroughs. Innovation was a corner stone of Nazi success, and I believe it would have continued to fund research into technological advancements.

Restrictions on the press would have continued, and development in the arts would have lagged in Germany. Influences from America would have affect Germany artists, but there would be no Nena and no 99 Luftballons.

For the naysayers who believe this scenario to be impossible, I say Germany could have won the war. Had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 the US would not have entered the war in earnest for until after November 1942 at the earliest, more probably November 1944 (think about national elections). The US would have continued aid to England, but would have been significantly less than the massive amounts of armorment, food, fuel, and other supplies that began arriving in England in early 1942. The German U-boats would have been effective for a longer time, and might have closed the Atlantic. Without the supplies the counter offensives of 1943 wouldn’t have happened and Germany would have had the time and resources to bleed the Soviets dry.

I was told that only officers carry sidearms, however I believe this not to be true. So my question isabout how many soldiers(a lot very few etc) in the US military carry sidearms or what types of soldiers carry them? Does almost every soldier carry a sidearm?

Many service members carry them, not just officers. Machine gunners, radio operators, corpsmen, armorers, pilots, and air crew to name just a few.

I am looking for a really well written novel that has medieval battles for research for a book I am preparing to write. Does any one have any good books or other material that would be useful?
It will be a fiction book and I do not really need history of REAL battles, I just need some one that has a well written type of battle that I am able to learn how they did it.

Georgette Heyer has some good medieval novels like The Conqueror and Simon the Cold Heart. Both have some battles and war.

You might also read Beowulf.

I do have a book called The Crusades: The Flame of Islam by Harold Lamb. You might consider some other non-fiction books that talk about various battles and/or people. Some writers make them read like fiction. Here are some titles I’ve found that get high customer ratings (and might be helpful): Condottiere 1300-1500: Infamous Medieval Mercenaries by David Murphy; Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England by Juliet Barker; The Battle of Hastings by Jim Bradbury or Alfred the Great: The Man Who Made England by Justin Pollard.

The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology by Kevin Crossley-Holland is a book that might interest you. It’s not particularly concerning war, but it’s translations of actual medieval tales/poems. It might give you more insight into the times.

Addition: There are some contemporary romance writers who have stories set in medieval times and incorporate war and warriors. You may be interested in…
-Dark Champion by Jo Beverley
-The Wild Hunt by Elizabeth Chadwick
-Chandra; Firesong; Earthsong and Secret Song by Catherine Coulter
-Lord of Hawkfell Island; Lord of Raven’s Peak and Lord of Falcon Ridge by Catherine Coulter
-Rosehaven by Catherine Coulter
-The Black Lyon by Jude Deveraux
-The Conquest by Jude Deveraux
-The Velvet Series by Jude Deveraux (The Velvet Promise; Highland Velvet; Velvet Song and Velvet Angel)
-Elizabeth Lowell has a series that includes Untamed; Forbidden and Enchanted.
-Ellis Peters has a series of Brother Cadfael mysteries set in the Middle Ages like A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury A Morbid Taste for Bones.
-Jean Plaidy (also Victoria Holt) wrote some historical fiction set in the Middle Ages like Lilith and a series about King Henry VIII’s wives.
-Uncommon Vows by Mary Jo Putney
Both Johanna Lindsey and Julie Garwood have some titles, too. Of course, there’s William Shakespeare’s plays like Hamlet; Henry IV; King Henry the Fifth; King Lear; MacBeth.
Mary Stewart has a series set around Merlin and Arthur and that time: The Crystal Cave; The Hollow Hills; The Last Enchantment; The Wicked Day.
Shelly Thacker has a Medieval/Time Travel series..Falcon on the Wind; Forever His; His Forbidden Touch.

United States government debt, also referred to as the national debt or United States total public debt, is the amount of money owed by United States federal government to holders of U.S. debt instruments.

The total Public debt includes state and federal debts which is owed to corporations, individuals and foreign governments. But, this debt excludes all social security debts and intra-governmental obligations.

Some of the federal securities held by the public include Bonds, Treasury Bills, United States Savings Bonds, Notes, TIPS and State and Local Government Series securities.

External debt includes debts which both the public and private sectors owe to foreign people and organizations. Foreign ownership of public debt is a substantial part of the total national debt.

When U.S. federal debt passed the $10 trillion mark on 30th September 2008, public debt stood at $5.3 trillion.

Further debts included Social Security obligations, Medicare, Medicaid and others.

A division of United States Department of the Treasury, the Bureau of the Public Debt, calculates the amount of money owed by the government daily.

Budgeted and non-budgeted spending has pushed total debts upward by around $500 billion each year since 2003. The budget deficit fell from $318 billion in 2005 to $162 billion in 2007, but moved sharply up again to $455 billion in 2008.

There have been regular warnings from the U.S. Treasury Department, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that debt levels are sure to increase dramatically due to social programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and interest owed on outstanding debts.

There are estimates that benefits under entitlement programs could exceed government income by more than $40 trillion in the next half century.

If the changes which they propose are not done, some experts claim that federal expenditures could surpass federal tax revenues by sizable margins in a shorter period than that.

The Beginning of Federal Debts

Public debts have been a part of its existence since the United States of America came into being.

The first reported value of public debt was $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. This was a combination of debts that were incurred during the American Revolutionary War and the creation and implementation of the Articles of Confederation.

Debt continued to increase over the next half-century.

It was brought down to zero for a short period in early January, 1835.

After that, the debts just kept increasing.

The Civil War in America was responsible for a huge surge where debts rose from $65 million in 1860 to more than $1 billion in 1863.

The following year, it stood at $2.7 billion.

There were a few fluctuations during the rest of the century. But, strong economic growth was recorded through most of the period from 1800 to 1912.

Then, debts started increasing again. It was around $22 billion during the 1920s, the World War I period.

History repeated itself and debts grew to an alarming $260 billion by the end of World War II from a figure around $51 billion in 1940.

Public debt and inflation soared in tandem during the nineteen-eighties. The nineties saw the debts increase by about two hundred percent within a decade.

Better results were achieved towards the close of the century.

But, debts then started climbing quickly again.

Public debt stood at about $7.9 trillion at the end of 2005. This was about 8.7 times the level of public debt in 1980.

For the greater part of the last half-century, America had enforced a debt ceiling. The Treasury could issue as much debt as the government required as long as it was within the specified ceiling.

Over time, the United States Congress passed new laws which caused fairly regular increases in the level of the ceiling.

Congress increased the debt limit to $9.815 trillion in September 2007.

In July 2008, the ceiling was again raised to $10.6 trillion with the passing of new laws to accommodate the bailout of mortgage giants, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Congress used to approve legislation for each debt issuance. It was decided that this was no longer possible because of the growth of fiscal operations in the twentieth century.

As debt is spiraling out of control you can take action and survive, and create your own personal financial security.

Categorization of Public Debts

Public debts are of two main types:

1. Marketable and Non-marketable securities held by the public

2. Securities held by government accounts

Ownership

Public debt holders cover a huge group of people that owning bills, notes and bonds.

The U.S. Treasury regularly publishes data providing information about the holders.

The foreign and international holders of the debt are also put together from the notes, bills, and bonds sections.

More than half of the total national debt is owed to the Federal Reserve and intergovernmental holdings.

According to reported figures of the US government in September 2008, it has supported its obligations to bailout home mortgage companies of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae through the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

The balance sheet obligations of these two companies are over $5 trillion. The Government does not account for these obligations in its current balance sheet.

The U.S. Treasury contracted to receive US$ 1 billion dollars in senior preferred shares and a warrant for 79.9% of common shares from each of these Government Sponsored Enterprises or GSEs.

This was done to maintain adequate capital ratios in the enterprises and ensure essential solvency. This is, effectively, nationalization of the companies.

Some people claim that some of these US governmental actions place taxpayers’ funds at some risk. The effects of the takeovers may not be predictable immediately. The overall picture will probably only come into focus later.

At the time of the takeover, more than 98% of Fannie’s loans were being repaid in a timely manner.

Both these companies are claimed to have had a positive net worth where their assets were valued much higher than their liabilities.

The Congressional Budget Office has directed incorporation of the assets and liabilities of these two companies into the federal budget. This shows the extent of governmental control over these entities.

Foreign Ownership

Presently, foreign governments are said to have about 25% holding of total US debt.

This figure was about 13% in 1988.

US Treasury statistics indicate foreigner organizations and individuals held 44% of federal debt held by the public in 2006. Two-thirds of this was held by central banks of countries like China and Japan.

Although there was a fall in such investments in 2007 due to the depreciating value of the US dollar at the time, but foreign investors continued investing in US-dollar–denominated instruments.

This exposure is claimed by some to pose a threat of some scale to the US economy.

If the foreign investors start selling Treasury securities or stop purchasing them, some people claim that it might cause significant losses.

It seems that such losses may be a very unlikely situation but the possible effects from such a theoretical situation becoming reality must be considered when decisions are being made.

Central banks of Sweden, Russia, Italy and the United Arab Emirates reduced their dollar holdings marginally in 2006.

Kuwait and Syria discontinued pegging their currency exclusively to the dollar in 2007.

These occurrences may not be pointers to what could happen in the future.

As you can see from this information the recession ahead could be long lasting and it is everyone’s responsibility to take action to survive the current crisis. You can find out how to protect yourself and your family, and come out of the current crisis in a stronger situation with this new ebook Surviving the Debt Crisis.

Craig Maugham
http://www.articlesbase.com/personal-finance-articles/united-states-government-debt-is-increasing-rapidly-701156.html

Congratulations Mr Tsipra (SYN)!! Congratulations Mr. Alavanos (Sy.RI.ZA)!!

You managed very well your civil war organisation. Probably your masked army was not only Greek University students and School joung teens pupils but also foreigners with special barbar disposition to distroy the Greek cities. Because I do not think that Greek joung people can hate so much their own cities to make them ashes. Indeed between them were recognised joung teens and foreigners.

Do you know what did you managed?

1. To distroy the Greek and Goverment reputation over all the world (this was your aim);

2. Distroy the Democratic sysmbol of Greece internationally;

3. A joung teen Alexis be killed accidentally;

4. 100s families whose shops are distroyed now remain more poor than before in this crisis periods;

5. You intensified the economical crisis in the country seen that European Central Banks because of luck of trust to the goverment they increased the interest rated to govermental credits needed to save our economy.

How things are really happen? What is the truth? Here are in short:

1. First the pacific demonstrator of SY.RI.ZA in Omonoia place Athens

at the end of the long file of people you could already recognise some masked people following.

2. Some hours later started the riots on the street from masked extreme anarchics and vandalisms simultaneously in various Greek cities (Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Volos, Larisaa, etc..). Among them you could recognise (as later made known by the police from arrested extremists) foreigners, some pupils and university students. Later from the 176 people arrested 100 were foreigners with agressive and violations insticts and 76 Greeks.

3. Lot of Albanians and other emmigrants with no job started stealing the distroyed shops following behind the masked anarchists.

4. A child Alexis has been kild; On purpose or accidentally his death was a justice case. SY.RI.ZA profited from this and using flying papers distributed at schools try to engage pupils to go into the streets and demonstrate against the police and goverment with stones and what ever they could find in memorial of Alexis murder as they say (not yet defined if was a murder or an accident). Pupils has no right to take the law in their hands and demonstrate in the streets.

5. Tsipras comes back from Mytilini where there started new riots on the streets during his presence there.

6. Commerciants took the law in their hands to protect their properties from the vandals fighting aagainst them and pushing them far from their properties.

So, we have three waves of psople acting these days: The masked anarchic vandals, the unmasked pupils, and the commerciants.

 

Where have you been Mr. Tsipras all these days during the events? Mr. Tsipras was dissapeared. Because he was first somewere in the Polytechnic school in his head quarter to play the war captain (Alavanos was the war general) and guide strategically his barbar amy to make chaos and distroy the Greek cities. And he just also moved to Mytilini to move the joung people there as 2 days ago just started same anarchic events in Mytilini. And today Mr. Tsipras comes back, when now things are calmed down, to speak in the camera and support SYRIXA against the accuses received from LAOS and KKE that Mr. Alavanos “caresses the ears of the masked anarchic” (means that he supports these movements).

In all your speaches you both try to move joung people and now even students (as Mr. Alavanos did at the TV press) agasinst the goverment. And your wish was done. Today 1000s joung pupils of 15 years old stopped their lessons and make invasion in their schools and the Greek police offices. Are you outttt of yourrrrr mindddddd Mr. Alavanos and Tsipras!!!!!!!!! You are both monsters. Dangerous monsters for the Great Greek Democracy.

And you chose the good periods! Just after the Vatopedi scandal. To exterminate the Greek goverment, and create conditions for new elections. Certainly not for you. You are too small for that. Certainly to support PASOK for Mr. Papandreou. Is the only partei which did not react against you as did LAOS and Communists KKE.

And this barbar distructions and extreme anarchic behaviour is not the first time hapenned. Some years ago same hapenned but still the goverment is in its place. Last year you and PASOK asked your people to fire the whole Greece (Peloponese fires, etc..) in order to accuse, as you did, the Govemerment that can not do its job. Now you do the same.

World must know that Greek Democrasy is not easy to break. People like you try to distroy your own country for private benefits for your pockets. You must stop it.

I accuse you and Greek Press to be so stupid to transmit your wills and war messages to joung people. The death of Alexis Grigooropoulos is not due to a policeman. You are the moral responsible of this. The child was death from a broken trajectroy bullet and was God’s will or was pre-written to die. Came his moment. Pitty for the child. You must be in the place of the accused policeman.

And the Press talking against the police, every body was telling his short and his long (Greek expression) accusing the police that they were barbars. Against whom?? Against the barbars?? When the police had a pathetic attitude (just watching) all the time you accused them that they do nothing to save the properties of innocent commerciants. But when they did something (shutting on the air, throughing gas capsules, shuting at the air, etc) you accused them as barbar. Have you the sense of logic?? What must polish then do? Some others said “Police should not be weapenned or not use chemical weapens (gas)”. How then, according to you, they should arrest the barbars?? You expect that they should ask them gently “Please enter in the police truck to be arrested!!”? You created a unsecure situation for the whole Greek people who was watching news. They didn’t know what ‘to consider as correct and what not.

Why press is so negative against police? Why they call the vandals and anarchists simply demonstrators (diadilwtes) instead extreme anarchic vandals? They accuse continuesly barbar behaviour of the police against the demonstrators who are burning shops, throw molotof bombs and stones against them, breaking banks, distroying everything they can and have in front of them. Are you out of your mind Greek Press and TV? And what hapenned when a police guardian was fired entirely from a bomb molotof in Athens and another wounded from a stone thrown by a teen? Nothing hapenned. Police didn’t react violently as pupils and student stupidly did. (Kounia pou sas kounagie esas kai tis rimades ideologies). You know why press behave as that? To make more readers of their press or have more audity of their TV programs. Some of them even support vanddalism as they telephonically interviewed in their TV program (yellow Press) Mr. Ksiros (a dangerous extremist who is actually in gail for several accuses) and also telephonically invited in interview a vandalist and caresse him with sympathy. Are you out of your mind Yellow Press? What money does. No morality. They need everything to make more vewbility of their program even if they confuse and make angry the Greek people with these their actions. They exagerated in everything.

 

All demonstrations now against police offices in all abroad countries are due to your stupidities said in your transmitions. That’s why International Press gave so negative reports about Greece,the Greek events and the Greek Democracy. They say what you put in their mouths. Congratulations Greek Press!!! You have inconsciently contributed in succeeding the goals of these two gentlemen “the monsters generals of the anarchic autonoms” in our country.

This must be done known to all International Press.

Is not the uncapability of the Greek Goverment and of the Police to stop the anarchy. It was too much sudden and unexpected for everybody. Press managed to stop the police in doing their job (feared to be accused as barbars against the anarchists).

Now all Political Parties ask the Goverment to go. Yes this was their goal. Karamanlis and N.D must not go. Only the dangerous elements of our anti-politics must go and even dissapear from the political scene.

Scandal about Vatopedi does not exist in this sense. It was a theme which is going to be closed and it started during the PASOK govermental period. PASOK are the initiators. Siemens scandal is also started during PASOK goverment and discovered during Karamanlis N.D goverment. Some from goverment were accused but they are innocent in the Vatopedi “question”. They only accepted to sign an exhange between gound and a lake for the eremites of Athos manastry as they convinced the ministers that they need the ground to build buldings to help and give spiritual support to Greek people. I do not accuse the ministers for that (see my blog about this subject http://www.gooblogg.com/index.php/2008/11/28/holy-mountain-at-athos-monastery-vatopedi-scandal-in-greece/).

Mr. Karamanlis didn’t sale the Greek Telecom to Germans (who simply invested money under secure for Greece conditions) or didn’t sale the Pereus port to China (who is ony rended with a good year income for the Greek people), or didn’t sale Olympic Airways to foreigners as Olymic was a negative business and money loss for the goverment and needed external support as many other European Air companies (Air France, Italian Airway company etc..).

CONSEQUENTLY, all these so called by the anti-politics scandals in detriment of Mr. Karamanlis and his goverment ARE NOT SCANDALS. These are accuses of the un-moral politics who instead to collaborate positively with the giovernent to bring the country out of the economical crisis they create instead conditions in detriment of the welbeing of the Greek people in order to satisfy their political goals and their personal benefits.

BBC wrote that Greece has a easy-broken democracy. What about the UK police who killed an innocent Brasilian men during the anti-terror attacks? What about the scandal of strictly confidential data which has been difused out last year? And what about the political crisis in Italy and Mafia? What about the terror Basques in Spain killing inncovet people? What about the French vandalstic demonstrations of joung people last year? Are those stable democracies?

We can not speak therefore for an easy-broken Greek Democracy.

The morality is that so long goverments in Europe accept to have emmigrants in their countries without being able to offer them job and food, Europe will affront always this kind of riots and aggressions in the local national societies. A strong measure against this emmigrants invasion must be taken before is for Europe too late.

This report is destinate to the International Press and TV stations to know the truth.

<a href=”http://www.gooblogg.com/” target=”0″>See more relative reports at my blog </a>

zissis diamantidis
http://www.articlesbase.com/journalism-articles/the-greek-riots-and-who-is-to-blame-681403.html

I as many who have read my articles may gather am a tremendous opera fan though in all sincerity I can not claim to be an equal devotee of the ballet, however this should not be interpreted that I do not take joy from it. Perhaps it is because my tastes lean more to the passion of the singers and the drama in the opera rather then the grace of the ballet dancer. What ever the reason I must claim to be a bigger opera fan then ballet fan but in all truth I am a lover of the ballet however I did not become one till I in Santiago, Chile met the members of the Bolshoi ballet. This was a time I will never forget as it made me see all the grace of the ballet however before this encounter with the Bolshoi I had seen them perform in Moscow and perhaps it is there that I was introduced to the ballet. My decision to visit the Soviet Union came during the fall of 1988. It was the time of perestroika, glasnosts and Michael Gorbachov, the new leader of the Soviet Union who many Americans had taken a liking to as they could see a certain honesty in him. I for my part can not claim that my desires to visit the Soviet Union were influenced in any way by Gorbachov as the real reason for my trip was based on my wanting to travel the world, in search of all those cities and places I had read about in my extensive readings of history. Of course this was also at a time in my life when I was entertaining dreams of becoming a professional photographer and had it in mind to take photographs of Leningrad (previously called Petrograd, presently Saint Petersburg) and Moscow. These cities seemed ideal for this purpose, both having architecture that was so diverse from New York and the feeling of history would be enormous. After all these were two cities that had been almost in the center of World War II and the Russian revolutions of 1917. The first of which overthrew Nicholas II while the second in October (though the Russian Orthodox calendar marks this day as having been in November) put the Bolsheviks in power. I had even wanted to visit the Soviet Union before but the matter had not been so simple as I would have wanted it. First off all because the Soviet Union was a closed society I needed a visa; not that this was an inconvenience as I had already visited many other communist countries such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the DDR, and Yugoslavia. These countries also requiring me as an American to have a visa. I can even add how there was a time in 1987 in which I as an American was required to have a visa in to order to enter France as opposed to being given one automatically upon entrance as was the case with most European countries. The Soviet Union however was different, even from other communist countries which only required me to go to their embassy or consulate, naturally with my passport, two photographs and the money to pay for the visa. The Soviet Union not only required me to have the already mentioned but a prepaid hotel where I would be staying, which basically meant that I would either have to reserve a hotel in the cities I wanted to go to before departing New York or go on what is commonly referred to as a “guided tour”. I not so much by my own choice took the second option of going on the guided tour even if in all truth I would have preferred to go alone. It was with the intension of spending Christmas and New Year’s day in the Soviet Union that I in early November booked myself on a tour that would include Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad, in that order. It was while visiting these cities in the Soviet Union that I observed many things, some of which were even strange or at least in my opinion for a communist country (me having already visited several) for instance, in the Soviet Union there were stores which only accepted hard currency (this meaning any currency which could be converted outside its country of origin) and were off limits to Soviet citizens. Yes, passports were checked upon entrance in to the stores. It was not that stores like this did not exist in Poland or other communist countries I had visited but contrary to the Soviet Union in those countries anybody could buy what they wished so long as they had the right kind of currency, in the Soviet Union it was a case of Soviets not even being allowed to enter the stores, let alone make purchases of any kind. Naturally just as there were stores in which only foreigners such as myself could enter, there were also stores in which foreigners were banned from as only Soviets could enter and again passports or documents were checked. I even recall how on one occasion, somebody I met asked me to buy him something in the store for foreigners only. The Soviet Union also had other factors which made it different from any of the Communist countries I had already visited for instance again only guests of hotels were allowed to enter as a control was set up at the entrance where one was obliged to show one’s card from the hotel. This however did not present so much of a problem for me nor for many Soviets (I refer to them as such as I can not in all honesty claim to have known who was Russian or from one of the many republics that made up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) who managed to get in to the hotel in spite of not being a guest of the hotel. Where the card required to enter the hotel was not a problem the fact that I was required to pay everything in hard currency was however more then slightly annoying as this made prices higher then they would have been had I been allowed to buy drinks or other such niceties in Rubbles, which I could get a lot more of on the black market. This however was not to be as hotels wanted hard currency not only for the cost of the room but even for what one purchased in them, this being in contrast to Polish hotels were one was only required to pay for the room in hard currency. It was in Moscow that I stayed in a hotel called “Cosmos” which I might add was the most exclusive at the time, though in all truth its standards were lower then those which I had known in the west. I arrived at the hotel on the 24th of December and on my second day of being in Moscow after having spent the first two sightseeing; I had what could be called my first experience in the Soviet Union. Two young men who must have been about my age at time (me being 21) knocked on the hotel room which I was sharing with one of the members of my tour group. It was in the company of another member of my tour that these two young men came asking if my roommate and I cared to barter trade. At first neither my roommate nor I knew what these two men had in mind and being in a country we knew not to be democracy; my American roommate, whose name completely escapes me and I were slightly apprehensive. It was one of these two young men who asked us if we had any blue jeans or anything we cared to trade such as American cigarettes or basically anything. I for my part felt I had nothing that would be worth their while as all I had was my cameras (which I was not ready to trade for anything), a couple of packs of cigarettes (me being a smoker at the time), the clothes I had brought with me (which included a pair of grey blue jeans that frankly speaking I was even slightly ashamed to even show given the condition they were in) and my cassettes which included some pop music. It did not take long with these two men and all those from my tour group who had come over to pick up a bargain; for the room I was sharing with a history teacher from Phoenix to become an national or international black market. Blue jeans were being exchanged for Russian fur hats, caviar (this being a French word as the Russian word is “ikra”) and other Russian goodies. It was inspired by the way these two Russians or so I think they were apparently willing to take just about any and everything we had that I decided to show them the old grey jeans I had bought over a year ago in London. Much to my near shock they accepted to take them for a black fur hat though given they were old they did ask me to throw in something extra which I did in the form of a pack of Marlboro which they accepted but however my having guilty feelings over the old jeans compelled me to add a tape by the British band known as “Led Zeppelin”. During these transactions; I noticed how people from two different countries and ways of life could trade and do business and though the English spoken by these two gentlemen was not exactly perfect it was understandable, making me think how even in a communist system it was always possible to find entrepreneurs. I even recall how one of the members of my group wanted to get something in exchange for a Jimmy Hendrix tape only to find out that neither of these two men (who had brought so much stuff with them as to make one believe they had a whole store with them) had the slightest idea who he was. Naturally we explained that Jimmy Hendrix had been a guitar player and they did take the tape though I do not recall what they gave for it. Of course it should be understood that these young men were not getting these things for themselves but to sell to others. One thing did strike my roommate at the time as being curious which prompted him to ask if they were staying in the hotel to which he was told by one of these two young men that they were not. It was then that I asked how they managed to get in the hotel, me having been told that only hotel guests who showed a card from the hotel were allowed in. It was then that they told us that because their English was not bad and in fact it was not and they dressed like westerns they could get in and obviously they had. Later on I would meet two other young men in the hotel who were also trying to do what ever business they could and it was from them that I really learnt a lot about how people in the Soviet Union felt toward not only Americans but many things. It might seem strange to some how I do not even remember the names of these two young men or even what they looked like but I remember almost everything that transpired between the three of us. First I went with them to Red Square instead of going with my group; after all if I had wanted to associate with other Americans, one can imagine where I would have stayed. Many things had I seen through out my travels in many countries, from the Coliseum in Rome (now one of the world’s seven new wonders) to the Eiffel Tower but neither of these two monuments or any other which I had seen for that matter could surpass the grandness of “Red Square”. The place as I observed it on that frozen day in the month of December seemed so overwhelming that I honestly was at a loss for words. It was not that the Kremlin or any of the buildings surrounding it; such as the one being hailed as the world’s biggest toy store or even Saint Basel’s cathedral were that large but the composition created by all that was Red Square had such a strong initial impact on me that I will never forget. It was mesmerizing to see this place and all its features that for a moment gave me the impression of being in a city above the clouds. The ornaments on the buildings being such that they almost seemed unreal. I naturally after having recovered slightly from my near shock took out my trusty Minolta to photograph this place and all it included; which in all honesty even looked like a small town rather then a large monument. It was in the process of photographing this place that I started with a wide angle lens; as to capture it all in one shot and then moved on to a zoom to get Saint Basil’s cathedral; the beauty of which in my opinion is most underrated. Needless to say my camera captured all of Red Square’s points of interest but none fascinated me as much as Saint Basil’s which to my mind was the typical Russian cathedral. Naturally in all that was Red Square one could not ignore the presence of the mausoleum dedicated to Lenin; which was visited by the thousands who would bare the cold and heat just to see the body of a dead man. As for myself personally I had neither the time or the inclination to stand on a line; even a short one as was the one for foreigners (as opposed to the other one for Soviet citizens) just to see a man in what in my opinion was an act of idolatry. Unsurprisingly by then the Soviet Union having long gone through a process of change had removed the remains of Joseph Stalin from Lenin’s presence, not that this made any difference to me at the time or even now for that matter. After their acting as my personal tour guide, they took me to a small neighborhood restaurant in Moscow, sort of like a bistro (this French word having its roots in a Russian word meaning fast) where we had some sausage and tea. It was there as opposed to the hotel that I discovered how cheap life could be in Moscow for someone who had US dollars or any other kind of western currency, so much so that I wanted to treat my tour guides to what they had consumed only to discover it was them who wanted to do likewise for me. At first I did not really know what to say and asked if I could pay at least for myself but was told it would be a good idea not to offend them by refusing their invitation. This I did agree to. It was during our time together that we discovered many things about each other’s countries, for instance they discovered that New York was not as dangerous a place to live in as they had been lead to believe by American television and their own media while I was also not excluded from finding find out many interesting things. First off all that Soviets, at least the people were not as anti-American as I had thought they would be and what really surprised me was that despite his popularity in America, specially after his last trip which had taken place a few weeks before; Gorbachov was not really liked in the Soviet Union by the average citizen, specially those who were not in the party. This at first seemed almost hard to believe as during his last trip to America (which had taken place on the 8th of December) people had literally lined the streets by the thousands in spite of the cold just to get a glimpse of him, in scenes reminiscent of “Beatlemania” at its peak. I for my account had even gone to where I knew his car would be passing in the hope of getting a photograph. Mine however was done more out of wanting to be a photographer then adoration, this in part motivated by the success I had had the same year in London when on Queen Elizabeth’s birthday of the 10th of June I managed to get a great shot head shot as she was coming down “The Mall” in her open carriage. Gorbachov however was a different matter all together as he was being driven in a closed limo, which made it impossible for me to be able to get any kind of photograph other then one of his car. I even remembered hearing on the news, how he while being driven through Broadway had actually gotten out of his car (much to my regret for not being there to capture on film this historic moment) on a day of extreme cold to shake the hands of some of the thousands who were lining the streets just to get a glimpse of him. This naturally caused joy to a lot while panic to his security guards who were as surprised as those who found themselves shaking hands with Gorbachov. It had been a case that Gorbachov had not informed his security of what he would do beforehand and due to this many of the security cars had driven on only to discover after a few seconds that Gorbachov’s car had stopped and that Gorvachov now found himself in the middle of a mob shaking hands with all those who were running up to him. As expected his security had to backtrack themselves to get to him in fear that something might happen which of course did not but I can imagine what anxiety they might have been going through at the time. Among these people there were also protestors from some of the Soviet republics such as Armenia; who even claimed that they felt for the first time that there was a man who at least was willing to hear what they had to say. After hearing that Gorbachov for the most part was not liked I asked what was it about him that most people did not like and to this question I encountered an answer that I did not really understand at the time and that was that most people did not like Gorvachov simply because his personal standard of living was a lot higher then their own. It was not because of political reasons or ideology or anything of the sort but the luxury he had surround himself in. They mentioned how he flew around the world and they could not, how he had a fur coats, a credit card by American Express (given to him I imagine mostly as publicity), expensive clothes while they did not. I at that point did not see anything strange or unusual in this as in America most Americans did not live as well as our president (Ronald Reagan at the time) and if some did not like him; it definitely was not for that reason. There might have been other reasons such as the “Iran Contra scandal” but that was another matter but not because he made more money then they did as this was and still is the case in most countries. This however was a case of what most people had come to accept in most countries that it did not matter that their leaders were financially better off then they were so long as their own standard was acceptable to them. However here in the Soviet Union people did not even want to know that their leaders had more then they did even if it was the top leader. This perhaps was the explanation why Soviet citizens were not allowed to enter certain stores, restaurants or hotels, as they would be exposed to what they could not afford anyway and perhaps that their system of financial equality was not really working all that well. I for my own did not comment on what I had heard; preferring to say nothing since I had not really understood the mentality behind the words and rather then get in to a quarrel with those who had treated me to this humble but pleasant lunch I asked what they thought of American films. This they told me they had seen some but several were being banned such as had been the case with “Red Heat” staring Arnold Schwarzenegger due to a scene in which the character played by Arnold (a Soviet policeman) trades a 10 dollar watch for a 1,000 dollar watch with an American policeman, played by Jim Belushi. I was curious how these two young men even knew about this scene, if they had not seen the film but this I did not ask. It was after having a nice meal (which was no worse then what I was getting in the hotel) in this friendly neighborhood place that I took a chance and went to the apartment of one of these two young men to get what they had promised me which was a Soviet military winter coat and a Jersey of the national football team. I having not much of anything to trade offered them American dollars which they did not refuse however we would have to go back to my hotel to get as I did not have them on me. It was when going back to the hotel that I rode the Moscow subway for the first time and was amazed at how often the trains came and how deep it was, a factor which I knew had not been undesirable during World War II given the bombing this city had been submitted to by the German air force. Upon return to the hotel I paid them the money I had promised them plus a pack of “Life Savers” in a gesture after theirs which had been to pay for my sausage and tea. Once concluded, the business of trade by barter with the hour being not far from an evening one I decided to shower and get ready for a night at the ballet. The bolshoi; it would be as if it could be any other being in Moscow, naturally at the Bolshoi (this word meaning great in Russian) theatre. With this in mind I put on my suit, the only one I had brought with me, a nice Cardin (him still being fashionable at the time) on top of which I put on my newly acquired military coat courtesy of the Soviet Union however; it was on the advise of our tour guide that I chose to wear another one. Him telling me that we were in a country were civilians specially foreigners were not allowed to wear Soviet military attire; meaning that it would be wise if I were to put on another coat which I did. The Bolshoi, I must say was something amazing, not so much the theatre which granted was large but not really impressive or at least not as much as the performance given by this magnificent group of dancers whom both my father and grandfather had always told me so much about. Tchaikovsky’s “The Nut Cracker” was what those in my group as well I were privileged enough to see that evening and though I was already familiar with the wonderful music; I was not so much with the dancing that went with it and as I watched, it seemed that this was the most radiant of all the performing arts in regards to its visual aspect. After the ballet, it was back to Hotel Cosmos for a night cap which I took at the bar; shots of Vodka accompanied by caviar which in America was so expensive but in the Soviet Union was literally cheaper then peanuts. The hotel had several bars, and it was in each that there were women, some I could imagine were there to exchange other then just souvenirs for money, while others went in groups looking for any westerner to buy them a drink. By “them” I mean all of them as they came in groups though this did not interest me other then just to see that women in the Soviet Union wore what I would call an excessive amount of make up; despite most of them being much more attractive then the average American woman. The following day came and off to Kiev it was on a plane by Aeroflot. It was something I will never forget; being on the runway and dozing off in my seat during the long wait which was required before take off, when suddenly I was awaken by the feeling of my ears getting blocked by the pressure. I remember being slightly upset; thinking that we had probably spent all that time on the ground and only then was the plane going to take off when the reality was that it was already going to land. Such a smooth take off and flight it was that not only had it not awaken me, I had not even noticed it or it could have been the fact that my cold was making my very drowsy along with my lack of sleep from the night before. Kiev was an interesting city though perhaps not as much as Moscow; but on that particular visit the only thing I recall was being far away from my hotel; me always the one to wonder from the rest and asking a Soviet policeman if he could find me a cab which much to my surprise he did. It being on one that was taking several passengers; in a sort of improvised transportation like I had known in countries like Argentina and Peru. As for the policeman, he told me in broken English how he was from Armenia, a place that had suffered from the effects of an earthquake the previous month, which made me tell him how I had in fact donated 20 USD to a relief organization. I do not know if this man really understood me but when saying goodbye in gratitude for his having found me this means of transportation I handed him one of my packs of cigarettes; which made him give me a small pen knife (which did not even open) in the shape of a fish as he said the word “souvenir” and went off. With Kiev being smaller then both Leningrad and Moscow, our stay was planed to last only one night after which we would be departing for Leningrad. I really can not say what it was in me that night which I was to stay in Kiev that made me do what I eventually did. This being to get what could be classified as extremely drunk. Vodka did I consume and plenty of it; perhaps to show that Italian Americans like their Soviet counter parts could also hold their liquor but what ever it was I did get sauced. In this elbow bending I do seem to recall a Soviet who also engaged in the same as I did after which we started a conversation in trying to solve who were more daft? Me claiming that it was Americans (me referring to those in my tour group) while he made the case for Russians; only to settle the issue by proclaiming a draw between Americans and Russians as to who were the more dippy. In this night that would go down with a certain degree of perhaps over joy my Soviet comrade and I also entertained ourselves by smashing our vodka glasses on the ground, which only managed to draw the attention of some policemen. Police however were called Militia at the time in the Soviet Union and two of them did approach us and when I could not understand what they were saying one of them, caught my off guard with a punch to the stomach. That by all accounts should have knocked the wind out of me. This probably would have been the effect during other circumstances but on that day after half a bottle of Vodka, I did not feel the blow which showed on my face as I did not even bend over in pain. This my reaction which almost sent this policeman in to shock as was clear on his face before I tried to strike at him with my camera, after all he was much bigger then me who only stands at 5’6”. Fortunately nothing became of the incident as the receptionist informed these policemen that I was a guest at the hotel and not some peddler (as they figured) who had come in to trade dollars, which of course was illegal at the time. Leningrad and the last stop on our Soviet trip before our return to the states. Leningrad I must say was more interesting at least from my point of view then Moscow. The city itself was different; after all this had been the capital of the country during the revolutions though that was the past even then as at that time the Winter Palace was the Hermitage. With the Hermitage being one of the world’s largest museums I could not help but spend one whole afternoon there out of the three I had; though one would really require more time to fully appreciate the entire museum. In Leningrad, I was fortunate enough to be given a hotel room which unlike the one in Moscow and Kiev I did not have to share with any of the members from my group. This factor would prove advantageous as I would go on to meet two very lovely young ladies from Kiev by the names of Victoria Ibanchenko and Svetlana. It was with these two friends that I would spend three very lustful evenings (two with Victoria, One with Svetlana), thanks to which I would draw inspiration for “Svetlana Ibanchenko”. Svetlana Ibanchenko being a fictional Russian soprano in my book “New York’s Opera Society”. There was something so romantic yet beautiful in these two that their dreams and ambitions took over me as I was creating this small but important character in my first book. Tragedy would also fill my stay in Leningrad as it was there that I found out that an American airplane (Pan Am) had been the victim of a bomb along with all of the passengers while flying over Scotland. At that moment there was little for me to do but be grateful that it was not I who had been on that flight and continue with the good time I was having; which is precisely what I did. The last night I would spend in Leningrad as I would be leaving the following evening was one I which will stay with me forever. My group and I went to see the Kirov ballet and what an experience it was. The Kirov was no less grand then the Bolshoi though different. My father had told me when I asked him that the difference was that the Kirov was more artistic while the Bolshoi was more dynamic and this I could see as I witnessed their performance of another Tchaikovsky piece; this time “Swan Lake” and what a show it was. They seemed to float in the air; almost as if they could fly and had an energy about them which let them to do as they wished with their bodies with such grace that it was almost like watching angels. Regarding my last two nights; these two were spent with Victoria and who knows what would have become of our relationship had it not been for the “Iron Curtain” which made it almost impossible for her to come live with me in America. I naturally tried to send her an invitation but even this was difficult given the closed system her country had at the time and though I did not have problems regarding money when it came to inviting Victoria over to the States still the matter was more complicated then I would have ever considered possible. It is hard for me to say what would have happened perhaps Victoria and I would have gone on to get married and have children but then my life would have been another, though also interesting. I for my part wish Victoria Ibanchenko from Kiev all the best in what ever she decided to do with her life. Upon my return to New York I naturally dedicated a lot of my time and money to trying to bring Victoria over to America; who in retrospective I can say I had fallen in love with and though my attempts ended in failure, I can in all sincerity say that I did make every effort to have her be with me in America. Once in New York; I also with the inspiration of having been in the Soviet Union still in me, went to see the world famous “Mosayeb” (Russian folk dance company) who just happened to be performing at “Radio City”. This too like the Bolshoi and Kirov was a performance that left me mesmerized as it combined grace and music in a way that also expressed so much though perhaps in a more modern fashion which was no less impressive. As a strange coincidence I will add that on that evening I bumped in to the man who had been our tour guide in the Soviet Union. Actually so much was my desire to have Victoria come to America and interest in what I had seen in the Soviet Union that I even started taking private lessons in Russian, which would come in very useful many years later in 1992 in Chile. A country I would have never imagined would require me to speak Russian. It was there in Santiago that one day after having taken photographs for one of the newspapers I was in contact with saw a poster advertising an upcoming performance by the Bolshoi. By then I was working as a freelance photographer and was not really planning on seeing the Bolshoi; believing it would be expensive but I was glad to see that they were in town. This being something to practically cheer about as there had been a time in Chile, not long before during the reign of Pinochet in which the Bolshoi and all other things from the Soviet Union were banned. It was on the same day after seeing the poster that I walked in to a shoe store where stood a couple; a woman whose slim body gave away that she must have been a ballerina with a man who had what I would classify as an athletic though not muscular build. In all frankness neither caught my attention till I heard them speaking Russian and it was at that moment that my mind put two and two together. The Bolshoi were in town, this woman was very slim and spoke Russian so it was at that moment that I decided to introduce myself; which I did so using the Russian I had learnt in Poland as well as my private lessons. I managed to get their names; hers being Nina Semizorowa (whom I would later find out was one of the Bolshoi’s biggest stars and their top attraction on that particular tour) and his being one which I have forgotten though he was Nina’s husband. Naturally, my being a photographer at the time made it that I had my camera which I used to get a snap shot of the two. I being ignorant about the ballet at the time did not realize that Nina was such a huge star of the Bolshoi and it was not her humble personality that gave her away either as her husband and her were among the most unassuming people I had ever met. This in spite of or maybe because both of them were stars of the Bolshoi; arguably the best ballet company in the world, where only the best are allowed. The Bolshoi being to ballet what the NBA is to basketball or the “Serie A” is to football, basically a collection of the world’s top talent. As a footnote I might add that an English actress named Joyce Frankenberg (later known as Jane Seymour or “Doctor Quinn” on the TV serial with the same name) was once accepted in to the Bolshoi in which she due to injury was only able to give one performance as a prima ballerina. After having chatted to Nina Semizorowa and her husband I quickly got the photo developed and took it over to the hotel where I knew they were staying and it was there where I got to meet the remaining members of the Bolshoi; who had made the trip to Chile. There was something about them that I must confess made them among the most interesting people not only to watch dance but to talk to and as I spoke to them one of their managers invited me over for the following day to not only watch them practice but to take photographs as well. It was that following day that I became a ballet fan, maybe it was knowing them and being able to ask them questions along with seeing the dedication they put in to what they did that made me appreciate the ballet all the more. I took many a photograph which would end up in a couple of Chile’s newspapers though in all truth I do not recall which but what mostly stuck out in my mind was the friendships I made with the members of the Bolshoi ballet specially with a very young dancer of twenty years of age by the name of Anna Petrova. It was through one of the member’s of their entourage that she asked if I cared to take her photograph and mail it to her which I naturally agreed to do. Anna was a shy young girl from Leningrad who spoke English well enough to at least hold a conversation which is what we did and what a delight it was as I not only took photographs (using a whole role of film on her) but getting to know her. She being one who could not have exceeded the 5 foot mark by much and whose weight could not have been that much over 100 pounds but in this body held the strength of one who could perform moves of incredible grace as the ballet requires. As far as our conversations were concerned, at least during our first encounter; they mostly centered around ballet with me asking her many question which ranged from what she felt was the difference between the Bolshoi and the Kirov with her telling me that it was difficult to put in to words however it was then that I wanted to try out my father’s theory which she admitted to there being some truth in. I also asked Anna what she felt about the Mosayeb which she claimed to be good but not as good as it had once been 20 years before. Many things were said between Anna and myself that day in a conversation that I found most fascinating but the one answer she gave me which distinguished itself in my mind the most was when I asked her what she thought of American Ballet. It was my question which yielded her reply and it I will never forget as I quote “American, French and British ballet are very strong and good but we’re the best”. A statement which would be hard to dispute prompted my comeback “as is the “dream team” in basketball”. My comment being made as that was the year in which Jordan, Bird, Magic Johnson, Carl Malone and many others showed their incredible talent during the Barcelona Olympic games as the now legendary “dream team”. On that day at the auditorium which had been designated to the Bolshoi; I also got to talk to other members of the Bolshoi; one of them being a friend of Anna’s who told me that he had received several offers from American ballet companies of more money but feared making the move given that he had heard perhaps rightly or wrongly that many American ballet companies went bankrupt. He however was considering the offer made to him by the Geoffrey Ballet but was not sure yet. Other things which this young ballet dancer told me included that he really did not have to watch his diet so much as some of the female dancers and that he felt that there were some dancers in the Bolshoi who had made it not so much because of their dancing abilities but their connections in the party. I of course could not say anything regarding this comment; me not knowing anything with regards but I was surprised at his comment, not so much at what he had stated but that he had at all as I could imagine there was a time, not that long before where one could have been in deep trouble for saying less. The day had been grand but the night would not be less as I was going to be seeing the Bolshoi ballet in action performing scenes from many ballets that included “Swan Lake”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky along with others such as “Giselle” by Adams. I particularly remember this last one given that it was the one that featured my new friend (whom unfortunately I have lost contact with) Anna Petrova in the lead role and what a performance she gave. In saying this however I must confess not to be a connoisseur of the ballet as I am other things such as football or singing or acting; which makes it difficult for me to give an impartial view of her performance that evening but to my eyes she was wonderful in the role she played. She danced like a bubble from a bath, bouncing not even on the stage but in the air as she delighted all those present, one of them being the president of Chile at the time; Patricio Aylwin. To me not only Anna but all the members of the Bolshoi danced not as if they were dancing to the music which was playing for them but as if their dancing was creating the music, such was the coordination between music and the moves that it seemed that they were one in the same. As if they were an image that was being created by the music and how grand it was that night as I got to see something that will last with me till the end of my days and all not only due to the spectacle I witnessed but the bond of friendship that had been created. The following day I went to the Holiday Inn to see off the members of the Bolshoi and specially my friend Anna Petrova; whom I had agreed to meet at a certain hour only to find out that she and the rest of the members of the Bolshoi, were not back from an extended interview they were giving to the Chilean press which lasted over two hours. I however did not mind waiting as it was while I was doing so that I met a man from Chile who had been one of the people responsible for bringing the Bolshoi to Chile. We as one can expect talked about the Bolshoi (in Spanish) and how they had been allowed to come to Chile now that Pinochet was no longer president. Freedom of speech however had not come completely as the government, influenced by the Catholic church had banned the British heavy metal group “Iron Maiden” from playing in Santiago on their 1992 tour of South America. Once my friend Anna returned to the hotel our time was limited to say good bye given her late arrival (which she apologized for) and the fact that she and the rest of the Bolshoi had little time to get to their flight on time. Anna and I went for a walk around the hotel which must have lasted about 15 minutes in which we did not talk about the ballet but our lives and taste in music; her claiming to like Elvis Presley apart from Tchaikovsky and me claiming to be found of Iron Maiden apart from opera and classical music. Unfortunately time was not on our side as I would have liked to take her to a nice place for lunch given, not so much due to my physical attraction toward her but my desire to enjoy her company, however this was not to be as we had to limit ourselves to exchanging addresses, so I could send her the photos I had taken of her. I for my part bought her a flower from a street vendor as a token of the short but friendly time we spent together. I would go on to send her the photographs though in all honesty I am not sure she ever received them as I got no reply from her but this does not matter so much as I was truly enchanted by not only me encounter with the Bolshoi but with Anna Petrova.

Gianni Truvianni
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/an-encounter-with-the-bolshoi-ballet-593137.html

I have been in contact with USAF and US Navy recruiters for the past couple of months, I would like to go into special operations. I am torn between the two, I just dont know how to make up my mind. I want to enlist but also would like to finish college and get my degree, is there anyway to get the best of both worlds, be in the military yet still obtain my college degree, excluding ROTC programs? Please advise, thanks.

If you don’t mind being at sea a lot, join the Navy. Otherwise, join the Air Force.

I just finished the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and was wondering if anyone can recommend some books like those or a novel or history/non-fiction book about the War of the Titans.
Also if you know any good novel books on Perseus or Hercules or any other famous demigods that would be great.

Thanks.

Troy by Adèle Geras
Ithaka by Adèle Geras
Goddess of Yesterday by Caroline B Cooney
Inside the Walls of Troy: A Novel of the Women Who Lived the Trojan War by Clemence McLaren
Quicksilver by Stephanie Spinner
Quiver by Stephanie Spinner
The Shadow Thieves (Cronus Chronicles) by Anne Ursu
The Siren Song (Cronus Chronicles) by Anne Ursu
The Immortal Fire (Cronus Chronicles) by Neil Swaab
Lost in the Labyrinth by Patrice Kindl
The Thieves of Ostia (The Roman Mysteries) by Caroline Lawrence (entire series of books)
Gods of Manhattan by Scott Mebus
Iris, Messenger by Sarah Deming
Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Lynn Childs (series)
Pandora Gets Jealous by Carolyn Hennesy

Everyone I know says I am spaced out.

My wife tells me I’m distracted and self-absorbed. She says I have no sense of time, lose things constantly, and cannot be trusted with small appliances. She says these things are evidence of my dysfunction.According to her, I fade in and out of reality all the time… but she doesn’t know the half of it.

My friends think I’m a pie-in-the-sky dreamer too, a guy who spends most of his time in La La Land. They’re too nice to say it, but half the time they think I act like I’m from another planet. That’s because when they see me, half the time I have just come back from another planet. I’ve been hiding this for a long time, but the truth is…I am a REAL space ranger and I have traveled all over the galaxy!

I try to tell my buddies what I have discovered about the inner workings of the universe, but their eyes just roll back in their heads like the reels in a slot machine. It happens so often I have taken to cupping my hands under their mouths on the hopes I will hit the jackpot. So far the only payoff I’ve gotten is a spray of spittle when they burst into laughter.

I know I am hoist on my own petard. It’s my own fault that people question my credibility. Part of my problem comes from publishing a newspaper in which fact is indistinguishable from fiction. In the past, I must admit I have written a few things that stretch the truth. Many people doubt my in-depth interviews with Santa Claus and Bigfoot.

I understand that some folks question whether the Register is really locked in a vicious print war with the New York Times; that our columnist is really over two hundred years old; or that Round Top’s Town Marshall is really 6’9” tall and rides tornadoes.

These are reasonable doubts, and I cannot deny that I might have played loose with the facts a time or two for the sake of art.

But in all fairness, anyone who studies physics will find what most of us think of as “the real world” doesn’t exist. One of the founders of quantum physics, Erwin Schrödinger, points out that at the atomic level, all matter performs in a “completely disorderly heat motion, which opposes itself to their orderly behavior and does not allow the events that happen between a small number of atoms to enroll themselves according to any recognizable physical laws.”

That means if you look closely at the building blocks of the universe from which everything is made – your car, your kids, your dinner, your new pair of shoes – you won’t find anything that looks like facts or reality.

Reality is just a story humans tell one another so we won’t be utterly overwhelmed by the incredible complexity of the world in which we live. The universe is incomprehensibly vast. Life is unfathomably complex. Few of us have the slightest idea what is going on around us, and for the most part, we don’t want to know.

Accepting the truth about our insignificance in the grand scheme of things is a real blow to the ego, so who wants to do it.

The fact that everyone makes up their own reality is just one of the basic truths that even the most backward of the galaxy’s species takes for granted, but here on the old home planet we are still having a hard time getting the message.

People on our planet often think there is some “real and objective” world that is the same for everyone. This kind of provincialism is very embarrassing for a space ranger like myself.

Put yourself in my shoes. You are at a cocktail party at a penthouse in an upscale tourist colony orbiting a gas giant in the Betelgeuse system, and your host, who looks a lot like a six foot tall oyster with chrome hood ornaments suddenly shouts “Humans believe what?” and the whole party breaks up in riotous laughter.

This kind of thing makes it very hard to act cool. Belonging to what many interstellar beings consider “one of the goofiest-looking species in the universe” is hard enough, but being an intellectual laughing stock just adds insult to injury.

That is one of the reasons I have decided to come clean about my secret life and try to explain what is really going on in the universe to the rest of humanity.

Salt Crystals on a String

My strange situation began a long time ago when I first became a space cadet. It began innocently enough. I had a big imagination as a child and was fascinated with the workings of the world – why salt crystals appeared on a string suspended in salt water; why the program in your hand shivers and quakes in a concert hall when the strings crescendo at certain notes; why snowflakes are all unique and other amazing mysteries of science.

When I was a kid, the world was a source of wonder for me, and that wondering set me to wandering in my mind…and the next thing you know I was a space cadet.

It all started when I met Tom Corbette and the Space Rangers.

Tom was as all-American boy, tried and true, and a fellow cadet at the Interplanetary Space Academy. He and I teamed up with two other young cadets. Roger, who was real wise guy but a crack navigator was the first, and Astro, our massive but good-natured engineer was the other. The four of us rocketed all over the solar system before I was out of the sixth grade.

In the summer after I graduated from elementary school, I discovered a book called Glory Road, and found myself hopping from one dimension to the next.

That was where all the trouble started. It was fun, flitting from one alternate universe to another battling impossible odds, but there are serious consequences when you defy the laws of physics, and before long I was paying the piper.

I first began to notice strange things happening when I was in the seventh grade. That school year I lost three watches and four coats. My mother assumed I was simply careless, but as far as I could tell those personal items just disappeared. Right away I knew they had slipped into another time/space continuum but it was hard to prove to my mom.

Sadly, a little known effect of such quantum phenomena is that there is a corresponding perturbation in the electro-chemical energies passing through the synapses of the brain when they occur…which means you can’t actually remember the alternate universe events when they happen to you.

I knew those watches – including the one with Roy Rogers and Trigger on the dial – must lie half buried beneath the purple sands of a distant world. They were probably being crushed under the twelve armored feet of a methane-breathing three-headed desert beast rather than lost in my school locker. But no matter how articulate my argument, I couldn’t convince my unimaginative mother. When I came home from school without my coat for the third time, she grounded me.

That’s when I realized my life as starfarer was better kept a secret.

Now all these years later, I realize that I am not alone. There are other people like me out there in the world, lonely and lost, never seeming to fit in, observing a universe that their friends and neighbors can’t perceive. They seem like normal people except for a few unusual quirks.

They tend to lose anything not chained to their belts. They are constantly looking for their keys, their cell phones, their screw drivers and wallets. Important papers vaporize on their desks at work. They have no sense of time. They have a hard time remembering names and phone numbers and never read directions. They leave lights on all over the house and can’t be trusted with toaster ovens.

They spend a lot of time lost in thought, staring off into space with wistful expressions on their faces. Sometimes they become fixated watching a cloud, or a crawling bug, or the reflection of light on water, and you have to shake them to get their attention.

In other words, they have the attention span of a four-year-old.

If there is anyone in your life like this, I ask you to be patient and forgiving. They may be annoying and hard to live with, but they’re behavior is an unfortunate side effect of an important mission.

They’re secretly defending the earth against invasion by the forces of galactic evil, so give them a break. It easy to get a little distracted when you’re standing alone against the death rays of the machine-beings from the Crab Nebula.

Facing such responsibility, anyone could forget a birthday or two. These people deserve your respect because they are performing a valuable public service. Defending the planet earth from total annihilation is a thankless job, but someone’s got to do it.

To my clients, friends and neighbors, I am a regular guy who happens to be a little eccentric. They assume that I lose things and can’t remember people’s names because I simply don’t pay attention, or because my brain was damaged in the 1960’s by recreational drugs.

Actually, I am constantly cycling from one dimension of space to another. I’ll be in Round Top talking on the cell phone or sitting at the drafting board trying to design someone’s country house…and then all of a sudden I’m taking four G’s as my spacecraft leaves the atmosphere of the fifth planet out from Alpha Centauri in pursuit of insectoid aliens bent on galactic domination.

Needless to say, these circumstances make it difficult for me to maintain my professional composure at my architecture firm. It’s hard to explain what is really going on, so I find it necessary to preserve the charade that I am simply a garden variety ditz.

This guise has long worked to my advantage. You learn a few things about the behavior of sentient life forms when you hang out with aliens from all over the galaxy. I’ve seen it over and over in fifty different star systems. When some species find out you are different – and Homo Sapiens are among them – it makes them afraid, and organisms that are afraid have a tendency to get nasty.

It’s long been my opinion that it’s better to take a little lip, than to have your lip busted. As a result, I have lived a double life. But now I am throwing caution to the wind. I’m going to tell everybody what I have found out in my travels about what is really going on here on the planet earth.

I have to run to the house because I forgot to turn off the coffee percolator and the Queen is afraid I am going to burn the house down. I’ll clue you in as soon as I get back.

The Ultimate Truths of Life on Earth

Whew! That was close. The bottom of the coffee pot was starting to look like a black hole. Now back to the facts about life on earth. There are a many such truths of course, more than I can tell you now, so I am going to focus on the top seven.

1. The Aliens are getting restless.

For the last million years or so, most of galactic society has ignored human beings. I mean, there have been a few good sitcoms based on human beings, mostly comedies sort of like Bedtime for Bonzo, but for the most part no one really cared. Human beings were just funny monkeys scratching themselves. They felt safe from the various types of crazy violent madness we are so good at cooking up because we were stuck on our own planet.

But then Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and that changed everything. Those of us who were alive when that happened experienced a very rare event. Life on earth is roughly 3.8 billion years old. Each of us lives an average about 70 years. That means the odds that any individual organism would be alive when a representative of life on earth actually set foot on another world is 5,428,5714 to one.

It’s not just the Beatles that make us a unique generation and this fact is not lost on folks who live in neighboring star systems, especially because things are happening pretty fast. Our seed is spreading. Voyager I is now about 8.7 billion miles from earth and moving towards them at 46,000 miles an hour. They watch the History Channel. They know what maniacs we are and it is making them nervous.

Now what you need to understand is that most of our neighbors in the galaxy are pretty nice folks. They tend to be forgive and forget types. But there are races out there that view us the same way we view a venereal disease, and if they decide we need a dose of antibiotics, we are toast.

That’s the main reason I have decided to speak up. We need to get our act together in the next couple of generations, or our communal butts are going to be in a sling.

The second thing you need to know I already talked about above. It’s important truth number two.

2. You live in your own little world.

Each of us makes up our individual reality. I mean really. I’m not saying the material world doesn’t exist. There is a world out there, but each of us perceives it differently in significant ways.

Throughout the galaxy, every different organism has its own “real world.” Highly social species like us can coordinate our behavior by talking and mimicking each other, and by building a common living space to channel our actions, but those are just tricks our brains have evolved so we can get more food and make more babies than the other animals we compete with for survival.

Bottom line, you have to guess about what the other guy is thinking. After millions of years of evolution, our brains have gotten very good at guessing. But really…you don’t have the slightest idea what is going on in the minds of your wife, your husband, or your kids….let alone behind the fevered brows of Osama Bin Laden or Tom Delay.

There is no point in worrying about what other people think. There is no point in talking to other people about what they think other people think. There is no point to watching television shows or reading books about what other people think. You’ll never really know.

So just relax and pay attention, because the only way you are ever going to get any idea what a person thinks is by listening to them and watching their behavior.

On advanced worlds, listening and observing are competitive sports. You can get a Ph.D. in them. In many societies, talking is seen as an unpleasant but necessary metabolic process, something like urination or defecation. The smartest people never say a darn thing!

2. You are never alone. You just think you are.

You are really just a cell in a bigger organism. Every advanced society understands this. I know you think paying your own bills and having your own body makes you all grown up and independent, but the truth is that you and every other living thing is just a piece of the living earth.

All the incredibly diverse species that cover our planet are just specialized cells like those in your body. Some are liver cells. Some are stomach lining. Some are neurons.

I know this is a blow to your ego, but it is time to grown up and face the music. You aren’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things. Even humanity as a whole is not all that big a deal. Our living planet was growing and evolving just fine for billions of years before anyone invented a BMW. It may seem like the American Idol results show is the center of the universe, but it really isn’t.

The reason you think you are an individual is because all living systems are built of small pieces that must be distinct from one another if they are to work. Identity is necessary for their functioning, just as an individual cell is important to the functioning of your pancreas. What a liver cell thinks about the liver makes no difference. All that matters is whether it oozes bile.

The same is true for you. I know this is hard to swallow, but time is running out so I can’t afford to break it to you gently.

3. Everything in the universe is always running down.

Human scientists call this fact the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy. Most physicists consider it the most general law of nature.

When the energy in any system – a star or a living organism – runs down to the point that it becomes a dead, inert lump of matter, it reaches a state that a physicist calls thermodynamic equilibrium, or maximum entropy. It can also be described as “greater order” as significant change in its form stops for all practical purposes.

Most substances degrade relatively rapidly from the relative disorder caused by heat to a more “stable order” as they cool to absolute zero, but the march towards maximum entropy exhibits itself in many other ways. When two solutions are mixed – for instance a jar of sugar water and a jar of plain water – the sugar has a “goal” of becoming equally distributed throughout the liquid water. When it reaches that state, maximum entropy is achieved.

Such effects occur throughout nature. For instance, Americans degrade the complex organisms we refer to as cattle at a mind-boggling rate. In the year 2000, somewhere around thirty-eight million of those highly organized and brilliantly functional organic systems, each capable of independently maintaining its energy level for a considerable number of years, were “degraded” to the more stable state we refer to as sewage by the process of our consumption.

That sewage is then consumed and degraded by specialized microorganisms even closer to thermodynamic equilibrium.

In that same year, each American converted an average of 195 pounds of red meat, poultry and fish into simpler forms. Every year of our lives, we convert more than our weight of other “higher life forms” into energy and protein which we use to battle the relentless march of entropy.

Each individual organism on earth is an efficient processing plant that is remarkably effective at making other organisms in the world around them – and even inorganic compounds – more “stable.”

Eating and finding food are so basic to the function of living things that in almost all organisms the brain is located near the entrance to the gut. There are several families of genes that govern both brain and gut development, which reflects the ancient relationship between the gut and the brain.

It is humbling to consider while pushing our carts through the grocery store that we may be utilizing the first and foremost purpose of our minds, but those are the facts. Like every other animal, our primary business in life is to find food that can be converted to energy to support the functioning of our bodies. What we do not use, we excrete as feces, urine, and perspiration.

Combined, the amount of waste generated by living things, both in life and in death, has altered a significant portion of the earth’s crust. Soil and limestone deposits, both results of millions of years of processing by living things, cover our planet.

All life is knee deep in birth and death, two extremes of a powerful entropic process. This universal contest is present not only in the grand scheme of nature, but also in the daily existence of everything in creation.

Our sun is a powerful generator of energy, but like all sources of energy, that energy is slowly suffering the attrition of entropy. The powerful heat and pressures within the core of our planet create complex mineral deposits, which emerge through volcanic activity and other geological phenomena to create mountains and other grand features, which are in turn worn down by wind, rain, glaciers and other natural forces, and turned into sand and soil.

Our bodies face entropy each day. Millions of years of evolution have built a grand engine in the human physique. Each human body has incredible abilities to persist in the face of entropy’s relentless march – but in the end – every individual living organism, every mountain, every energy source…wears down.

So the bottom line is that your decline is inevitable. No matter how much you work out and how well you eat, you are still on the way out. All you are ever going to do is eat, poop and die. I know that sounds like bad news, but every cloud has a silver lining.

Entropy means that there will always be plenty of work for doctors, remodeling contractors, cosmetics sales people and washing machine repairmen.

4. You only exist as a relationship.

Now this might be hard to understand, so I will use a metaphor that makes it easier. First, I have to tell you that you are what is called a “dissipative structure.” Such a structure accelerates the pace of entropy by taking energy from the world around it and hastening it towards thermodynamic equilibrium.

Dissipative structures are easily observable in nature. Whirlpools and tornadoes are two common examples, but galaxies and eco-systems also qualify.

When barometric pressure rises in a storm front, a regular form with a recognizable structure emerges. We call it a tornado. A tornado allows the high barometric pressure to dissipate more effectively in exchange for maintaining its structure. It has to have a thermodynamic imbalance to exist. When the build up of pressure is equalized, the tornado disappears.

In the early 1990’s, earth scientists performed a thermal analysis while flying over several varied ecosystems and discovered that the more developed the eco-system, the colder its surface temperature. They discovered what the rest of the galaxy already knows, that complex living systems dissipate the sun’s energy more effectively than those that are less diverse. The more complex the living system, the more effective dissipater it is.

Your body is a complex living system too, just like a jungle. The city you live in is also complex living system. Both you and the city are dissipative structures. You take energy out of the world around you like a tornado, and use that energy to avoid the impact of entropy. As pointed out above, you are very effective at turning cows into poop. You do this so you can continue being yourself. The cow is sacrificed to maintain your structure.

A tornado’s identity is a relationship between a high pressure storm system and a low pressure layer of air. A tornado is an identifiable thing, but though it has a structure you can see and it can blow a piece of straw through a fence post, all its parts are parts of other things. It has no distinct content. Its behavior is the only thing unique about it, and that behavior is completely determined by its environment.

So is yours. You are merely a relationship between your physical and cultural environment, and the genes you inherited from your family. The only thing that is “you” is how you act, and how you act is almost entirely determined by your instincts and your environment.

Sorry. I know it’s hard to feel like the most important thing in the universe when someone is trying to say you make decisions like a termite, but…well…you do.

5. Your brain is not designed to make you happy.

Have you ever noticed that it is incredibly difficult to get happy and stay that way?

We have been evolving for several million years. The amazingly brilliant brains in our skulls make us smart enough to get to the moon. Since almost all of us want to be happy, you would think natural selection would have done a better job of getting us that way.

The problem is that natural selection doesn’t care if you are happy unless your happiness makes your genes more likely to make it to the next generation. Genes are very selfish. They have their own agenda, and don’t care a whit about your happiness.

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker makes this point as follows: “People don’t selfishly spread their genes; genes selfishly spread themselves. They do it by the way they build our brains. By making us enjoy life, health, sex, friends, and children, the genes buy a lottery ticket for representation in the next generation.”

So you see, your brain isn’t designed to make you happy. It is designed to give you grandchildren, and if they make you happy, that is because your genes want you to throw yourself in front of a lion so they can have grandchildren.

After they are born, you see, you are expendable. The reason for this is perhaps the most important truth of all for human beings.

6. All that really matters is sex.

There are plenty of galactic races that don’t have sex. They reproduce with spores, or through binary fission like a paramecium, or are manufactured in a factory. I met an alien one time that reproduced using a Xerox machine. There are many different ways to do it.

But in the long run for human beings, sex is all that matters. Ultimately, every man is a sperm, wiggling his little tail while racing all the other little men up the birth canal for a one-in-a-million chance of getting laid. Every woman is an egg, waiting for first few suitors to arrive, and then being picky about which one she lets penetrate her cell membrane.

That’s about it. Sex is the point of all human existence. Money, power, beauty, kindness, love, morality, success, and all our other cherished ideals are merely various strategies for making babies and helping them survive so they can make more babies.

There are currently about 6,451,058,790 human beings on earth. One year ago there were 6,376,863,118. That’s 74,195,672 more in a year. In 1950, the global population was 2,556,517,137. That’s more than a 250% increase in only 55 years. At that rate, in 110 years there will be about forty billion of us.

You can see why our galactic neighbors are so worried about what will happen if we move into their neighborhoods.

Christopher K. Travis
http://www.articlesbase.com/humor-articles/spaced-out-my-life-as-a-space-ranger-696400.html