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ted to be considered as capital a art and in the middle this spindly guy with buddy holly glasses a skinny tie cuffed jeans looking like a slightly malevolent praying mantis whatever it was i bought the album and hurried back to our apartment on forest street and listened the sound matched the diy feel of the cover the first song was a snarl at the working week all of your family had to kill to survive and they re still waitin for their big day to arrive but if they knew how i felt they d bury me alive which was pretty much exactly how i felt about school and i was hooked flip the album over though and side 2 started with the song that really made me understand that costello knew even though i was too young to know what knowing was angels wanna wear my red shoes opens with a snaky snarky guitar line and lyrics that told me at last here was my rock n roll yossarian my groucho my bugs bunny my hero oh i used to be disgusted and now i try to be amused but since their wings have got rusted you know the angels wanna wear my red shoes but when they told me bout their side of the bargain that s when i knew that i could not refuse and i won t get any older now the angels wanna wear my red shoes i became an evangelist carrying the album to school and back to try and get friends to listen to it for most it was too outré believe it or not the name the look some wouldn t listen because of that some did and those that did got it my mom became a fan she loved the lyrics although got tired of me playing it over and over and went and bought me my first ever pair of headphones over the next six years he put out four more great albums this year s model armed forces get happy imperial bedroom and three very good ones trust almost blue punch the clock and since then nothing has lived up to that first mad rush of brilliance doesn t matter i ve been a fanboy since 1977 and i ll be one until both of us have shuffled off this mighty mortal coil share this share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading posted in bugs bunny catch 22 elvis elvis costello elvis presley elvist costello rock and roll tagged bugs bunny elvis costello music my aim is true randy newman rock and roll rock n roll yossarian leave a comment reflections on the american german military cemeteries in normandy posted on june 6 2015 by constantine von hoffman wars leave behind memories which erode quickly and memorials which do not hindsight age and revisionism can change memories but the memorials are fixed they are guides to how a nation wished to remember a war deeply political testaments to why nations fought and what they think came out of it there are 28 military cemeteries in normandy sixteen for british commonwealth troops two american two canadian one polish six german and one french probably the best known is the american cemetery and memorial at omaha beach in colleville sur mer featured in the opening and closing scenes of saving private ryan it is located just yards from omaha beach one of three american landing areas in the d day invasion the battle there particularly fierce and accounted for close to half of the nearly 6 000 americans killed wounded missing or captured that day american cemetery and memorial at omaha beach today it is difficult to imagine a battle here the german fortifications have been removed and the craters filled in it is now home to a tranquil respectful tribute to the battle and the americans who died in the war the 172 acres of the site hold a museum a large memorial and the graves of 9 387 american men and women most of who died during d day the museum tells the story of some of the people who died there and why the battle and the war were fought with the expected respectful tone while some special attention is given to gen eisenhower who commanded the invasion the troops are the primary focus the museum provides a database to look up the names of people buried here and where their graves are located from the museum you follow a walkway which runs along the top of bluffs and overlooks a wide beautiful beach it is a serene view with dense green shrubbery running down the bluffs and ending at a wide sandy shore this is where the bulk of fighting took place two paved paths offer an easy way to get quickly from the heights to the beach nothing about it suggests men trying to climb those bluffs as other men fired down on them continue past this vista and you come to what has been formally designated as the memorial it consists of a semicircular colonnade with open structures loggias at either end the colonnade is a cenotaph inscribed with the names of 1 557 americans military personnel whose remains have never been found the loggias hold maps and narratives of the military operations the maps with their large red arrows showing the movement of troops seem out of place as does much of the memorial s other adornment the narratives are almost boiler plate descriptions of large unit actions at the center is a bronze statue entitled spirit of american youth done in can only be described as the heroic wpa socialist realist style all of it is superfluous look west from the memorial and you see why across a reflecting pool are row upon row upon row of headstones the graves marked by crosses and the occasional star of david are perfectly aligned as if still in military formation kneel directly in front of one and the gravestones seem to continue into infinity like the view when two mirrors are held up to each other the layout of the cemetery emphasizes number of dead more than the person each marker stands for the sheer number of people killed in war poses a problem for anyone wanting to design a memorial one death is a tragedy a million is a statistic said stalin who used this fact to obscure his own acts that horrible math holds true here among thousands of graves the individual s death is subsumed into the anonymity of the group it is easy to be awed by the number of dead without feeling the grief which comes from the loss of one person you actually know despite 9 000 headstones death feels at a remove perhaps this is why it is such a popular destination for families when i visited mid week in august in 2009 hundreds of people were there many pushing baby carriages and very few old enough to have been alive during the war some of the younger children behaved as children should running among the headstones or calling out loudly their parents tried to quiet the kids and call them back with about as much success as most parents of children presented with a place that is if you are under the age of 8 or so perfect to play in the parent s reaction was understandable but the children leavened the atmosphere with a sense of hope that might otherwise have been missing while many adults in the crowd seemed blasé to what they were seeing i saw only one person crying they were fittingly quiet and subdued during the hour or so i was there i didn t hear or even see a single cell phone in addition to holding the remains of these soldiers the american memorial also holds a message that this sacrifice was worth it a judgment that is always easier for the living to make inscribed on the inner face of the colonnade this embattled shore portal of freedom is forever hallowed by the ideals the valor and the sacrifices of our fellow countrymen this same sentiment is clearly echoed in the buildings landscaping and layout of memorial the subtext is clear one these people died for a great cause what happened here mattered be aware and grateful in other wars the defeated sometimes make the same assertion but not in the losers of world war ii the german cemetery a few miles away in the town of la cambe has out of necessity a much different feel because of crimes committed by the nazis it is not even vaguely possible to celebrate either the cause or the sacrifice as a result the people who built and maintain the privately funded german cemetery had a freedom denied to the victors questioning the very reason for all these deaths the victors must please family members and comrades of the dead but in this case the defeated had no such obligation so the two cemeteries follow voltaire s dictum to the living we owe respect to the dead we owe only the truth it is a muted and hidden place sitting close to a highway but screened by a high wall few signs direct attention to it unlike the american cemetery which has signs all over normandy near the screening wall is a stone marker erected by the french the german cemetery at la cambe in the same soil of france until 1947 this was an american cemetery the remains were exhumed and shipped to the united states it has been german since 1948 and contains over 21 000 graves with its melancholy rigour it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight they too have found rest in our soil of france the wall that camouflages the cemetery abuts a small parking lot and has a single door only large enough for one person to walk through the first thing you notice upon passing through the wall is how few headstones there are although la cambe contains more than twice as many bodies as the cemetery at omaha beach it seems to have far fewer stone markers this is in part because the tombstones lie flat on the ground and in part because many graves contain the remains of more than one soldier of the more than 21 000 bodies buried here some 13 000 are unidentified at omaha the number is 307 so the first thing you see when you look out at the burial grounds are groups of five dark crosses placed far from each other around the grounds this gives the cemetery a solitary isolated feel those crosses bring to mind small groups of people separated from each other by vast distances it speaks of the loneliness and terror of combat small numbers of soldiers clinging to each other with no sense of being part of greater effort the gravestones themselves fill the areas between the crosses so if you walk off the cemetery s one path it seems as though you are on an ocean of the dead wreaths from allied nations in the german cemetery at the center of the graveyard a large stone cross sits atop a circular mound the figures of a man and a woman with their heads bowed stand beneath the arms of the cross the mound serves as a memorial to some 300 unknown soldiers buried beneath it a stairway at the back makes it clear people are welcome to go up to the cross and look out at the foot of the mound are a number of wreaths many of them donated by former foes if our iraq and afghanistan wars ever do end and thus are able to have monuments what will they say share this share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading posted in marketing tagged omaha beach 4 comments stories my mother told me the march on selma posted on february 13 2015 by constantine von hoffman ann c byrne talks about going to the march on selma fyi mike mike royko share this share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading posted in marketing 2 comments for alice p posted on december 3 2014 by constantine von hoffman in memory of george sykes so they decided to number the days god gave you lined them up and out to a finite end give or take the consequential few days that could have swum by at close to the speed of terror but gauging the accuracy of science and capricious life you paid no attention death is no failure no surprise hope is an irritating thing doubt and desire gnawing at the cluttered parts of your mind you did not succumb to it you just lived i originally wrote this for my uncle george but in keeping with the times i am re purposing it no same purpose just another time in memory of george sykes by constantine von hoffman is licensed under a creative commons attribution noncommercial noderivatives 4 0 international license share this share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading posted in a moment of silence for one of the greats death poetry tagged death poetry leave a comment richard hofstadter explains the difference between the tea party and actual conservatives posted on december 1 2014 by constantine von hoffman unlike most of the liberal dissent of the past the new dissent not only has no respect for non conformism but it based upon a relentless demand for conformity it can most accurately be called pseudo conservatism because its exponents although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism show signs of serious and restless dissatisfaction with american life traditions and institutions they have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word richard hofstadter the pseudo conservative revolt 1954 published in his essay collection the paranoid style in american politics share this share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading posted in politics tagged conservatives tea party leave a comment c vann woodward explains ferguson to white people posted on november 30 2014 by constantine von hoffman the president s advisory commission on civil disorders concluded that while no riot was typical in all respects most of them shared certain traits while racial in character they were not inter racial they took place within negro districts and typically attacked not white persons so much as symbols of white authority especially policemen firemen and national guardsmen and white property the most common grievance was abusive police practices and the recurrent complaint was discrimination and a sense of powerlessness the typical rioter was somewhat better off than the typical bla...