First World War Postcards #4: Bankrolling the Apocalypse
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Category: Blog
Telling World War I Postcards
. . . And What They Tell [#1]
The Big Pond This postcard, printed in Germany, is captioned, in translation, “Friend and Enemy at the Big Pond.” The image shows children representative of the nations soon to be at war at the edge of a pond on which toy boats are being sailed. The card was issued before the war broke out, but […]
History Unlearned: Revisiting
Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers”
“Civilization—To Your Health! [A Great War-Era Postcard Featuring an Image by the Dutch Artist, Louis Raemaekers] World War One—the “Great War”—certainly counts as one of the major events in modern human history. Its effects were felt for decades after the guns fell silent—and in important respects (not least, the political borders of the […]
The Whirlwind Next Time:
First World War Postcards #3
I acknowledged, in earlier posts to this site, that I have become obsessively interested in the hideous tragedy we recall as “World War I”—the “Great War.” As related in those posts, I formed a particular interest in the ways in which picture postcards of the period document both the course of the conflict […]
Rick Unterberg, Remembered
As of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of 160,000 of our friends and relations. It is a measure of the tragedy that large numbers of bits and bytes would be consumed by the mere listing of their names. Remembering even a small fraction of those dead in any meaningful way would […]
Musical Interlude
Offered here, for the delectation of readers, is a list of songs that are favorites of JudgmentsHere. An effort has been made to have the selections span a variety of genres, and to tilt toward the neglected and the obscure. There are few better feelings than stumbling on a piece of music […]
First World War Postcards #2
Propaganda Postcards and the German Invasion of Belgium “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” observed United States Senator Hiram Johnson in a 1918 speech. Coincidentally, his subject was the Great War—America’s involvement in which Johnson had opposed. “Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of […]
“The Lady Came from Baltimore”
I will not live long enough to see any particular lump of coal become a diamond. But I have lived long enough to see a love song written by one of my contemporaries mischaracterized as “traditional”—the song being thereby attributed to that prolific genius of yore, Anonymous. Such attribution cuts the song loose […]
First World War Postcards #1
The images on picture postcards sent to and from soldiers on the First World War’s western front captured, in “real time,” the passions and prejudices (etc.) of the men who fought the war, and of the societies that sent them into the trenches. The postcards were rolled off the presses quickly, to serve needs of […]
For All the Kibble
Pictured is JudgmentsHere in the middle of a Speed Scrabble match against the family dog. Such contests previously were casual and occasional; but they have become more frequent, and more heated, since the emergence of the pandemic, and the issuance of shelter-in-place recommendations. Another sign of the times, to be sure. Although formal records have […]