Happy New Year

wishing you a new year of health and happiness

Refugi Redux - by b

I finished reading The Book Thief yesterday on our little vacation in Sonoma. It was an incredible book... terribly heartbreaking. The contrast to this little piece of heaven in northern California where we are staying is almost painful.. where there is space and warmth and food and friends and family around. The Book Thief is about an an incredible young girl outside Munich in WWII --- who loses everyone and everything except her own spirit to naziism and to war. The story is told by perhaps the most omniscient of all narrators: death.

Bombs play a big part in The Book Thief.. and it reminded me that I'd dashed off a very fast blog post a few weeks about about a tour Kristin and i took of one of barcelona's last remaining Spanish Civil War bomb shelters (Refugi 307) -- and that I'd meant to write more and hadn't had a chance. Maybe I was waiting to finish the Book Thief and didn't know it.

The shelter as seen from the street

Our guide

The guide at one point asked if anybody had been in a bomb shelter before. And nobody in the assembly of women (I was the only guy... I'd joined Kristin on a tour put on by the Barcelona Womens Network) ranging in age from 35 to maybe 55/60 raised their hand. I didn't raise my hand either... but I have. When I visited Israel a lot as a young boy that's where we kept our bikes.. the bomb shelter in the small apartment block where my grandparents lived was a bike room. I'm sure for kids of different ages the bomb shelter served other purposes as well ... i can imagine a pot-smoking room, a makeout room, some pretty nice things. But still... it was a bomb shelter. And when I was very young... during the six day war (which, of course, still continues.. the 100 year war was not 100 years and the six day war was not six days (maybe it's the new 100 years war?)) the sirens went off and my mom had to lift me from my little fold-up bath 'tub" and run me downstairs. No wonder I'm skittish sometimes and a bit of a scaredycat. For me as a baby and for my parents as young parents.. a bomb shelter was a real thing.

And for Kristin's mom too.. in WWII.. she actually was bombed as a very young child. And had to escape a burning building.

As our guide in Barcelona told us, these techniques of bombing civilians (urbacide) were tested out and perfected by the fascists in the Spanish Civil War... and they were used heavily by both axis and allies in the war that followed, WWII.

There is a plaque outside the shelter in Barcelona. The quote is in Catalan and it refers to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. The guide translated it: "Never again, anywhere / is a cry of rage / and the desire that the past should not repeat itself".     But of course, sadly, it does.

flavors by k

arel came home a couple weeks ago after soccer practice munching on sunflower seeds, or pipas as they're known here. the flavor: tijuana. it cracked me up. what would tijuana taste like? and would you use it to sell food?

Refugi 307 - by b

A little while ago Kristin invited me along to take a tour with some women of one of the few remaining Civil War bomb shelters---most are parking lots now. This shelter is called Refugi 307 (refoojee---it's Catalan). It was really excellent. The guide was a part oral historian who told us a number stories of people who come to their shelter who used to use it during the war.... or of their kids who come. Bombing civilians from the air was not done in WWI ... and the sick art was tested out in the Spanish Civil War--only to be deployed heavily in WWII. Since it was new in the civil war, people didn't really believe it at first --- that it would be possible. So they didn't support the city building shelters. Later people formed neighborhood groups to build a very large number of shelters. The level of community organizing required was intense.... and also the rules. No discussion of religion or politics in the shelter. And you had to maintain a positive attitude. Those were the rules! Our friend Eileen Kershenbaum took this photo.