Thanks. I always enjoy your Sunday posts. My Grandfather’s parents & siblings came here from around Prague before WW1, although my Grandfather was born in Cleveland. When I was a teenager I tried to do a family tree, but my Grandfather wasn’t really able to go back very far. His parents spoke Czech & never learned English, but my Grandfather spoke both languages. It seems strange to me that my Father couldn’t speak to his Grandparents.
So since you are Czech, do you like sauerkraut & dumplings? My Dad said they had them every Sunday, even with chicken. And they drank beer, of course. My cousin & I were allowed a small glass with our meal, which seemed quite decadent to me as a child!
Let me clarify that the small glass of beer was when the families gathered together for a meal, which was only occasionally. At home I drank milk & was not allowed coke or coffee. (My parents didn’t drink beer or wine at home.)
Every blue moon my dad would let us have a few sips of beer, and we would always sip it, make a face because it tasted so weird and nasty, and pretend to like it. An acquired taste.
We were allowed a small glass of blackberry brandy on Christmas eve, supposedly to help quell the excitement of Santa's arrival and help us sleep. Thanks for stirring that memory.
Hard to find blackberry brandy now in my experience. My dad always had it on hand. And if you add a shot of it to a shot of lemon juice with a shot of vodka, it’s a Russian Tea Room drink called Uncle Vanya. The RTR in NYC is under new management tho and when I was there I had to teach them how to make it for me. I relate to cabbage rolls and depressed Swedish customs.
I think there was a big push for immigrants to fully Americanize. I am Slovak, and also a little Polish, but I'm half Italian, and my grandparents both spoke Italian and English (my grandmother much better than my grandfather with the English), but my mom and her generation don't speak much Italian beyond a few phrases here or there.
I prefer beer to wine, and always have, but I don't know the joys of the sauerkraut and dumplings. I'm more of a stuffed cabbage guy.
My late mother used to find old coins and military cap badges from the American civil war whilst playing alone amongst the dunes outside of Jacksonville between the wars.
That Seifert poem cuts deep.
‘But from the silent distance now and then
Came thunder of a future war’
Some linguists have researched the epidemiological resistance of inherited culture. Apparently it takes seven generations for embedded ancestral linguistic memory to die.
Maybe epigenetics is at play here? Trauma can be encoded, it seems, in individual DNA, in terms of biochemical switches that can turn on or turn off the expression of genes, and those encodings can be passed to the next generation.
Thus, in a sense, you can inherit trauma or, more specifically, a response to trauma. I would hesitate to speculate how alterations to gene expression in response to, say, famine, propagate up to mental states, but it is interesting.
My mom’s family — from emigrant German-Catholic farmers — has a distinctly grim and dour take on life: No matter how comfortable you are now, disaster always lurks just around the corner and, in the end, things usually turn out badly. All you can do is circle the wagons, put your head down, and keep pushing the plow. These are glass-half-empty people.
Mom’s family originated in Germany’s Saar River valley south of the city of Trier. A check of history reveals that this area was among the hardest hit during the Thirty Years’ War, with some estimates in the range of a loss of two-thirds of the population. Local church records stop at about 1650 and there’s little surviving earlier documentation. (The war ended in 1648.) Ravaged by passing armies and reduced to starvation and widespread death, this area, like much of Germany, only slowly recovered. It took 100 years.
I can’t help but wonder if my mom’s dark outlook was encoded in the family genes. Again, drawing a line from genetic expression at the molecular level to higher-order mental states is speculative. Maybe all people drawn from European peasantry have a grim outlook on life. But so far epigenetic research puts an interesting spin on the relationship between biology and the experience of trauma.
Indeed. All of which raises questions about how and why cultures are created and by whom. Creativity is born of an individual imagination negotiating the seeming material imprisoning suffering created by material rationality. The generic reductionist idea of the suffering poor artist isolated in a slum garret perhaps reflecting very badly upon our current political economic worldview and its refusal to imagine anything different.
The oil man succeeds again, giving my Sunday a great start to the week. Nothing to say about this brilliant piece other than it was brilliant. I did note that while I identified as Polish, my grandmother's heritage, her husband, my grandfather was from Czechoslovakia. I never made it to Prague, an extreme disappointment but did visit grandma's birthplace, Krakow. My last name's spelling, ending with a y says I am Jewish but everyone in the family is Catholic, perhaps a slip of the pen at Ellis Island. Family trees are fascinating, to say the least.
There is, of course, a lot of overlap with the Slavic languages, and probably more so with the ethnicities. My (Italian side) grandmother's maiden name was "Del Giudice," meaning "of the judge," but there was some speculation that the "Giu" derived from part of the family being Jewish way back when. When my mom did the 23 & Me, she was something like 98.9 percent Italian...extraordinary, really, given this melting pot we live in!
Krakow is supposed to be lovely. On my shory list for places to visit.
and did not lift a finger “, because, in reality most churches are now political organizations or social clubs. I read the your Sunday pages for my souls repair and strengthening instead of attending meaningless meetings, and thank you for it.
At work, much of Europe was my 2nd home. Never got to Prague, though. Interesting story (of course, as always). Empathy re the 5-character name that everyone mispronounces. Mine's Italian. Sounds like "ill". People go "Lila" or, most often, the Spanish "y" (I fear I should start carrying papers). I did see the name on a street sign in Malmo, though. I mistook yours as Irish, although I did wonder about the missing "'". My mom's name is Scottish, a "royal family" surname, obvious pronounciation, boring, except for maybe a certain ancestral beheading. A friend has a Slavic name. Obscure consonants, not enough vowels -- much more mysterious. I never minded my often-mis-identified surname -- until they started grabbing people off streets. Life is changing in so many fascinating ways.
Oh, I didn't know it was Italian! And ancestral beheadings are inherently interesting...although I wonder if that sort of generational trauma is inherited somehow.
On my trip to Florida, I made note of how many people I ran into -- can drivers, waiters, security guys, coin dealers -- who some enterprising ICE Nazi might give a hard time to. We are heading for dark, dark times, I fear.
Dark times for sure. Lol, generational trauma. My history-book Scottish relative, Mary, had neck problem for sure. Detachment issue. You may have a point. I do have some neck pain...
This is one of your more fascinating Sunday pieces, Greg. I fell headlong into the stories and feel like I walked the same steps with you in Prague by the time it was finished. In 2001, I had somewhat the same experience in going to London -- it called to me. I never found out why or if there was some connection to it that I didn't know about. My specific reason for going was Stonehenge, which I did get to, and spent quite a number of hours, so maybe my atman is farther in the past. Who know? My metaphysical beliefs have recently taken a backseat to the physical world, where there is far more to be concerned. I hope that someday, sooner rather than later, we have the luxury of returning to peaceful, nonconfrontational thoughts about our lives.
When my wife was in her 20s, she took a trip to Britain with her father. They went all over, and she had stayed out the night before, and when they got to Stonehenge, both of them fell asleep on the bus and missed it lol.
This was a great post, Greg, combining personal experience and history and poetry. And what a great poem “Lost Paradise" is. If Seifert wrote a lot of poems of this quality, I can see why he won the Nobel Prize.
Probably because I read this in between games of the men's final at Wimbledon, I didn't get the significance of the end: the resistance group's name "White Rose." Can someone explain to me, please?
Last comment: "I prefer Milton to Shakespeare..." Greg, you cut me to the quick! Correct me if I'm wrong, but does Milton ever demonstrate a sense of humor? Is he quoted anywhere close to Shakespeare? You don't even have to have ever read Shakespeare to know some of his greatest lines. And what stories! What characters! What poetry (in both the plays and the poems)! Come to your senses, man! :)
I did get the reference to the rose from paradise in the poem, but why a "white" rose? Just because that was the name of the resistance group, suggesting we can still work toward what remains of paradise (Hitler was defeated--only after millions of deaths, tragically).
Well, maybe I'll have to reread "Paradise Lost" sometime. Maybe it will give me a little hope about our country. It may not have been paradise (for a lot of people), but it sill embodied an ideal that we had made progress toward achieving. Now we're going in reverse at warp speed. Sad time.
Joe--this is a belated thank you for the link to this moving article (and explanation of the White Rose reference in Greg's post). Where is our White Rose today, young people speaking out against Trump's fascism?
I want to add that the story about Nazi persecution of homosexuals reminded me of a play, "Bent" by Martin Sherman (from the late 70s or early 80s) that helped in my gradual leaving behind the religious teaching of homosexuality as a sin. The first thing that caused me to question it was the revelation of "Gay Gulls" (the headline in my college newspaper about scientists discovering seagulls in homosexual relationships).
But you know what was the major shaker of my belief in homosexuality as a sin? Doing a Bible study on homosexuality. (This was during the brouhaha about homosexuality in the 80s when AIDS forced the issue into the mainstream. As a Christian, I go to the Bible--especially the New Testament--as a guide for what to believe.) I looked up all the references to homosexuality listed in the concordance, and when I eliminated verses referring to generic sexual sin ("fornication" and such) or to things definitely not about homosexuality (two Old Testament passages about bestiality--the makers of the concordance were a bit confused, it seems), I found that in the massive Christian Bible there were only 3-4 references to homosexuality in the Old Testament and 3-4 references in the New Testament, and they all were problematic for various reasons.
And the big shocker? Jesus never mentioned homosexuality in any of the four gospels. He affirmed adultery as a sin, had nothing good to say about rich people, and was most harsh about religious hypocrites, but homosexuality? Nada. If it was such a big sin why did Jesus have nothing to say about it? After that research of what the Bible said (and didn't say) about homosexuality, I could no longer agree with the Christian doctrine about it. I've heard ministers and others say the Bible is unambiguous about homosexuality, but that is simply not true. It's highly ambiguous.
Anyway, the article is good and I recommend reading "Bent" if you can find it. Very moving.
Beautiful and haunting as always, Greg. Your Sunday stories are the best…….
I would have mispronounced your name if we had met, and I am so sorry in advance for that. No more King Lear! I will remember now. Thanks for that cool part of your story today. I also have a five letter last name that is mispronounced 80+% of the time. Every person whom I have ever known, related or not, named AKINS pronounces it LONG A. Almost all people say short A as in Atkins or Adkins. Understandable of course, but still frustrating as you articulated today.
Very personal and quite touching again today, and the poem…………we are truly in unheard of and unbelievable times. And as you said in your piece the other day, no one knows or cares. The blasé attitude is everywhere, and the failure to connect to Trump……How completely stupid and clueless and frankly cruel can people be? We are in deep trouble as a country, likely terminal……
Thanks, Rick. But Claude Akins said it with the long A, no? I had no idea who Claude Akins was until I just Googled him, but I know the name.
People don't know. In Florida, in NJ where my mom lives. Some are in denial, but most have just been fed garbage information. And then some think, still, that both parties are the same, and all politicians lie, etc.
Greg, Claude Akins was for sure a semi famous “character” actor in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and even later. I was born in 1953, and saw him a lot, and he is still the most famous Akins I know. He was in lots of stuff. And long A, like all of us! His quote on his Wikipedia page about big to tough to dumb was really good.
There was later a semi famous country singer named Rhett Akins—also long A. I rest my case.
I will never, ever, ever understand how Donald Trump and what he has said and done(and now his henchmen-and women-are doing) could ever be a both sides thing, a tribal thing, an all politicians lie thing, a business as usual I don’t pay attention to politics thing, a more of the same thing. We are certifiably insane in this country and stupid to boot. One third are in a full blown cult that defies credulity, morality and humanity, one third have their hair on fire like you and me, and one third are oblivious and think nothing has changed. Trump is Mitt Romney 2.0 or something, same old same old. Really distressing and incomprehensible…………..
We’re closing in on a White Rose moment for all people of good conscience: Either keep your head down and try to fly under the radar of the MAGA thugs or stand up and tell them to fuck off. The latter could turn out to be lethal, which is what we have come to in the United States.
I’m an old dude and no hero. I wish and still hope I will not have to make a White Rose choice.
I read some more about Sophie Scholl and her brother and the others in White Rose. As a Christian myself, appalled and revolted by Trump always and truly frightened now by our own concentration camps, my admiration for White Rose’s courage and willingness to give their lives for the truth and speak against the evil is boundless. Leaflet number 4, wow…….. it cost them their heads to stand up and be counted…….
I have read a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer before, but NOT White Rose. Wow……….we are very, very close to our own White Rose moment in this country. I hope someone notices and more of us rage against the evil.
Thanks, Greg. Will have to investigate the work of Seifert — A German surname, curiously, perhaps from Prague and Bohemia’s once large German-speaking minority? There was intermarriage, including among German and Czech nobles, and, for a time, shared destinies.
I aso have an ethnic surname very few people in the U.S. get right on the first try. Even my high-school yearbook editor couldn’t get the spelling right in the senior photo section. My German great-grandfather, upon arrival in Iowa in 1882, lopped 5 letters, including the German ß, off the front of his surname, making its length more manageable, but the name still flummoxed, and flummoxes, most Americans.
Sidelight: As a kid in the late 1950s I was already aware that everyone on TV had these plain-vanilla Anglo surnames and that absolutely no one in my extended family or home town had names like those. Made 8-year-old me wonder if I was a “true American.”
I spent a week in Prague in 2015, long after the human waves of bucket-listing tourists began crashing over the historic city. I found it charming anyway, with much resonance for this near-major in central and eastern European history.
And the pivo was still great, even though the three brands I liked so much had been sucked up by the conglomerates — Staropramen (Molson Coors), Kozel (SABMiller, now Asahi), and Krušovice (Heineken). The beer tasted good — much better than American mainstream swill — so in 2015 these breweries’ corporate masters apparently still allowed local recipes and methods. I wonder how these beers taste in 2025? Unfortunately, I cannot find them at Total Wine in Phoenix, which pretty much offers only the ubiquitous Pilsner Urquell as a nod to the great Czech brewing tradition.
Staropramen, Kozel, and Krušovice were all nationalized during Communist times, and I have no idea how traditions and quality were affected by that. I do know that the long arm of capitalism is the enemy of locality and its charms, except when capitalism finds a way to monetize locality and its charms. Which eventually lapses into Disneyfication anyway. Why visit a real castle when you can have a more flamboyant fake one?
I just went to Reddit and typed in the query “Is Czech beer still good?”
Summing the discussions there: It is, but best if had on tap in Czechia. The bottled stuff loses some of the freshness and taste of draft, but the Reddit commenters pretty universally concede that it is still damn good. We can only hope Molson Coors, Asahi, and Heineken will keep hands off.
In 2015 I thought the Staropramen draft and Kozel dark were among the best beers I had ever had.
And if I may be permitted a polemical final shot: Michelob Ultra is a crime against humanity.
Thanks, Joe. I chortled at that last line, and quite agree.
Krušovice was my favorite when I was there. I remember when I got back to NYC, I was so bummed that I had to pay five bucks a pint for markedly inferior beer. The beer in Czechia was so good you could drink it in the morning.
In ULYSSES, Joyce explains that Guinness tastes not as good in the US because when it gets shipped, something about the sea air messes with it somehow. Maybe that's why? And of course a keg is way better than a bottle.
I thoroughly enjoyed your account of your trip to Prague. You briefly flirted with the idea that maybe your attraction is a past life memory. I hope you’ll give that possibility some serious thought. It’s perfectly clear to me why you’re drawn there! P.S.: Speaking of White Rose, my wife and I owned and operated The White Rose Chapel for many years in Colorado Springs. ‘White Rose’ is a positive term to me on multiple levels.
Oh, wow, Earl, that's so cool! And yes, I really do believe it's ancestral memory. It's kind of nice in the US that ancestry and lineage aren't that big of a deal most of the time, but we can't escape our heritage.
boy, your memories bring back my memories. I first visited Prague in 1963 with what must have been in retrospect an Italian Communist Party tour group. I was at school in Florence and a bunch of us, along with others, did winter break behind the Iron Curtain. We did nothing Intouristy at all--mostly met with other student groups and saw sights via bus. What I remember about Prague was a beer hall in a basement somewhere. A couple of Prague students got up and looked up and down the street, then manned the door. Others asked us to whistle The Bridge Over the River Kwai which we whistled to cheers--for them it was a NATO song.
My hangover bit was same trip, Budapest. We got there on New Years Eve and went to a dinner for foreigners in Budapest put on by the govt. We thought "puritanical govt) and well supplied ourselves with bottles of vodka to take with us. And at the table, EACH PLACE had its own liter of vodka. It was a happy New Years Eve, presumably: who remembers. Next day, bright and sunny, we went on a bus tour of Budapest. The whole group slouched in their seats, unable to look outside at the sights in the bright sun. What I remember about Budapest itself is the lower rim of a bus window.
I went back to Prague in 2010 and though a remarkable place, I found it much commercialized, not surprisingly. You could buy Infant of Prague dolls and freakin' ASHTRAYS with the Infant on the bottom. I enjoyed it but without the sense of connection you had. But the Golem yep. I've always loved the Golem. I didn't get back to Budapest. I'd planned to, but just before time to hop the train I realized I was SICK of not being able to read street signs (I'd been in Germany for several weeks). So I changed my itinerary to Italy and finally saw the Cinque Terre, which were not a big deal back in the 60s. Possibly deep down I still thought Budapest looked like the lower rim of a bus window.
I read RUR as a young teen, but didn't connect it with Prague.
Thanks for the poems I had heard of Jaroslav Seifert but never read it. And I've always thought of your name as dactylic. If you were true Irish there WOULD have been an apostrophe.
>>What I remember about Budapest itself is the lower rim of a bus window.<<
is the start or the middle of a poem, I think.
Budapest was also on my short list, not least because, in my brief career at the ad agency, I noted that every Hungarian I met, male or female, was gorgeous. And I think Bobby Fischer was there at the time? But no, Prague it had to be.
The Arthur Philips novel, PRAGUE, is set in Budapest...the early 90s characters are not cool enough to have made it to Prague, and the word takes on a new meaning.
Adding here; I was there in late 80’s and then in 2016… the city was steam cleaned up but man the people are angry. Taxi drivers not happy at all. A weird air about the city. But then, activists were young in the 80’s and in full swing around 2016.
Haunting times so eloquently written, amazing Sunday read Greg! Felt your pain with every step.
My son has been to Prague, part of his Masters program… beer and food were the memories he described. I’ve always wanted to travel to Prague, but there’s so many parts of this blue spinning cosmic stone that beckons! The daily uhtcearu, this transnational criminal syndicate brings, and the billionaire accelerationism makes a new adventure a necessity, Sla’inte!!
Thanks. I always enjoy your Sunday posts. My Grandfather’s parents & siblings came here from around Prague before WW1, although my Grandfather was born in Cleveland. When I was a teenager I tried to do a family tree, but my Grandfather wasn’t really able to go back very far. His parents spoke Czech & never learned English, but my Grandfather spoke both languages. It seems strange to me that my Father couldn’t speak to his Grandparents.
So since you are Czech, do you like sauerkraut & dumplings? My Dad said they had them every Sunday, even with chicken. And they drank beer, of course. My cousin & I were allowed a small glass with our meal, which seemed quite decadent to me as a child!
Me too, ☕️!
Let me clarify that the small glass of beer was when the families gathered together for a meal, which was only occasionally. At home I drank milk & was not allowed coke or coffee. (My parents didn’t drink beer or wine at home.)
Every blue moon my dad would let us have a few sips of beer, and we would always sip it, make a face because it tasted so weird and nasty, and pretend to like it. An acquired taste.
I agree!
We were allowed a small glass of blackberry brandy on Christmas eve, supposedly to help quell the excitement of Santa's arrival and help us sleep. Thanks for stirring that memory.
Hard to find blackberry brandy now in my experience. My dad always had it on hand. And if you add a shot of it to a shot of lemon juice with a shot of vodka, it’s a Russian Tea Room drink called Uncle Vanya. The RTR in NYC is under new management tho and when I was there I had to teach them how to make it for me. I relate to cabbage rolls and depressed Swedish customs.
Thanks, Jean.
I think there was a big push for immigrants to fully Americanize. I am Slovak, and also a little Polish, but I'm half Italian, and my grandparents both spoke Italian and English (my grandmother much better than my grandfather with the English), but my mom and her generation don't speak much Italian beyond a few phrases here or there.
I prefer beer to wine, and always have, but I don't know the joys of the sauerkraut and dumplings. I'm more of a stuffed cabbage guy.
My late mother used to find old coins and military cap badges from the American civil war whilst playing alone amongst the dunes outside of Jacksonville between the wars.
That Seifert poem cuts deep.
‘But from the silent distance now and then
Came thunder of a future war’
Some linguists have researched the epidemiological resistance of inherited culture. Apparently it takes seven generations for embedded ancestral linguistic memory to die.
Thanks, Monnina. That's fascinating about the linguistic memory! But it must be true. It really was the strangest thing.
Coins from the Civil War in the dunes! What stories those coins could tell, if only they could speak...
Maybe epigenetics is at play here? Trauma can be encoded, it seems, in individual DNA, in terms of biochemical switches that can turn on or turn off the expression of genes, and those encodings can be passed to the next generation.
Thus, in a sense, you can inherit trauma or, more specifically, a response to trauma. I would hesitate to speculate how alterations to gene expression in response to, say, famine, propagate up to mental states, but it is interesting.
My mom’s family — from emigrant German-Catholic farmers — has a distinctly grim and dour take on life: No matter how comfortable you are now, disaster always lurks just around the corner and, in the end, things usually turn out badly. All you can do is circle the wagons, put your head down, and keep pushing the plow. These are glass-half-empty people.
Mom’s family originated in Germany’s Saar River valley south of the city of Trier. A check of history reveals that this area was among the hardest hit during the Thirty Years’ War, with some estimates in the range of a loss of two-thirds of the population. Local church records stop at about 1650 and there’s little surviving earlier documentation. (The war ended in 1648.) Ravaged by passing armies and reduced to starvation and widespread death, this area, like much of Germany, only slowly recovered. It took 100 years.
I can’t help but wonder if my mom’s dark outlook was encoded in the family genes. Again, drawing a line from genetic expression at the molecular level to higher-order mental states is speculative. Maybe all people drawn from European peasantry have a grim outlook on life. But so far epigenetic research puts an interesting spin on the relationship between biology and the experience of trauma.
Indeed. All of which raises questions about how and why cultures are created and by whom. Creativity is born of an individual imagination negotiating the seeming material imprisoning suffering created by material rationality. The generic reductionist idea of the suffering poor artist isolated in a slum garret perhaps reflecting very badly upon our current political economic worldview and its refusal to imagine anything different.
The oil man succeeds again, giving my Sunday a great start to the week. Nothing to say about this brilliant piece other than it was brilliant. I did note that while I identified as Polish, my grandmother's heritage, her husband, my grandfather was from Czechoslovakia. I never made it to Prague, an extreme disappointment but did visit grandma's birthplace, Krakow. My last name's spelling, ending with a y says I am Jewish but everyone in the family is Catholic, perhaps a slip of the pen at Ellis Island. Family trees are fascinating, to say the least.
There is, of course, a lot of overlap with the Slavic languages, and probably more so with the ethnicities. My (Italian side) grandmother's maiden name was "Del Giudice," meaning "of the judge," but there was some speculation that the "Giu" derived from part of the family being Jewish way back when. When my mom did the 23 & Me, she was something like 98.9 percent Italian...extraordinary, really, given this melting pot we live in!
Krakow is supposed to be lovely. On my shory list for places to visit.
“And yet their frowning God
gazed over the barbed wire
and did not lift a finger “, because, in reality most churches are now political organizations or social clubs. I read the your Sunday pages for my souls repair and strengthening instead of attending meaningless meetings, and thank you for it.
Thank you, Teri. That poem blew me away. Every word of it.
At work, much of Europe was my 2nd home. Never got to Prague, though. Interesting story (of course, as always). Empathy re the 5-character name that everyone mispronounces. Mine's Italian. Sounds like "ill". People go "Lila" or, most often, the Spanish "y" (I fear I should start carrying papers). I did see the name on a street sign in Malmo, though. I mistook yours as Irish, although I did wonder about the missing "'". My mom's name is Scottish, a "royal family" surname, obvious pronounciation, boring, except for maybe a certain ancestral beheading. A friend has a Slavic name. Obscure consonants, not enough vowels -- much more mysterious. I never minded my often-mis-identified surname -- until they started grabbing people off streets. Life is changing in so many fascinating ways.
Oh, I didn't know it was Italian! And ancestral beheadings are inherently interesting...although I wonder if that sort of generational trauma is inherited somehow.
On my trip to Florida, I made note of how many people I ran into -- can drivers, waiters, security guys, coin dealers -- who some enterprising ICE Nazi might give a hard time to. We are heading for dark, dark times, I fear.
Dark times for sure. Lol, generational trauma. My history-book Scottish relative, Mary, had neck problem for sure. Detachment issue. You may have a point. I do have some neck pain...
This is the only safe place I could ever say politics is a pain in the neck. Hey, maybe it’s related? 😳
Greg; Beheadings, and things like politics being a “pain in the neck?” Related maybe?
I love reading your writing. There’s so much here.
Thanks, Sally!
This is one of your more fascinating Sunday pieces, Greg. I fell headlong into the stories and feel like I walked the same steps with you in Prague by the time it was finished. In 2001, I had somewhat the same experience in going to London -- it called to me. I never found out why or if there was some connection to it that I didn't know about. My specific reason for going was Stonehenge, which I did get to, and spent quite a number of hours, so maybe my atman is farther in the past. Who know? My metaphysical beliefs have recently taken a backseat to the physical world, where there is far more to be concerned. I hope that someday, sooner rather than later, we have the luxury of returning to peaceful, nonconfrontational thoughts about our lives.
Amen to that, Steve. Amen to that. And thank you.
When my wife was in her 20s, she took a trip to Britain with her father. They went all over, and she had stayed out the night before, and when they got to Stonehenge, both of them fell asleep on the bus and missed it lol.
This was a great post, Greg, combining personal experience and history and poetry. And what a great poem “Lost Paradise" is. If Seifert wrote a lot of poems of this quality, I can see why he won the Nobel Prize.
Probably because I read this in between games of the men's final at Wimbledon, I didn't get the significance of the end: the resistance group's name "White Rose." Can someone explain to me, please?
Last comment: "I prefer Milton to Shakespeare..." Greg, you cut me to the quick! Correct me if I'm wrong, but does Milton ever demonstrate a sense of humor? Is he quoted anywhere close to Shakespeare? You don't even have to have ever read Shakespeare to know some of his greatest lines. And what stories! What characters! What poetry (in both the plays and the poems)! Come to your senses, man! :)
Thanks, Lincoln.
I didn't say Milton was better, just that I prefer him to Shakespeare, which I do. He speaks more to me, for whatever reason.
I ended with "White Rose" as a call-back to the last stanza of the poem. A bit more stiltedly than I would have liked...
I did get the reference to the rose from paradise in the poem, but why a "white" rose? Just because that was the name of the resistance group, suggesting we can still work toward what remains of paradise (Hitler was defeated--only after millions of deaths, tragically).
Well, maybe I'll have to reread "Paradise Lost" sometime. Maybe it will give me a little hope about our country. It may not have been paradise (for a lot of people), but it sill embodied an ideal that we had made progress toward achieving. Now we're going in reverse at warp speed. Sad time.
Regarding the origin of the name White Rose for the resistance group, an article from the Smithsonian provides an explanation:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hans-and-sophie-scholl-were-once-hitler-youth-leaders-why-did-they-decide-to-stand-up-to-the-nazis-180981643/
Joe--this is a belated thank you for the link to this moving article (and explanation of the White Rose reference in Greg's post). Where is our White Rose today, young people speaking out against Trump's fascism?
I want to add that the story about Nazi persecution of homosexuals reminded me of a play, "Bent" by Martin Sherman (from the late 70s or early 80s) that helped in my gradual leaving behind the religious teaching of homosexuality as a sin. The first thing that caused me to question it was the revelation of "Gay Gulls" (the headline in my college newspaper about scientists discovering seagulls in homosexual relationships).
But you know what was the major shaker of my belief in homosexuality as a sin? Doing a Bible study on homosexuality. (This was during the brouhaha about homosexuality in the 80s when AIDS forced the issue into the mainstream. As a Christian, I go to the Bible--especially the New Testament--as a guide for what to believe.) I looked up all the references to homosexuality listed in the concordance, and when I eliminated verses referring to generic sexual sin ("fornication" and such) or to things definitely not about homosexuality (two Old Testament passages about bestiality--the makers of the concordance were a bit confused, it seems), I found that in the massive Christian Bible there were only 3-4 references to homosexuality in the Old Testament and 3-4 references in the New Testament, and they all were problematic for various reasons.
And the big shocker? Jesus never mentioned homosexuality in any of the four gospels. He affirmed adultery as a sin, had nothing good to say about rich people, and was most harsh about religious hypocrites, but homosexuality? Nada. If it was such a big sin why did Jesus have nothing to say about it? After that research of what the Bible said (and didn't say) about homosexuality, I could no longer agree with the Christian doctrine about it. I've heard ministers and others say the Bible is unambiguous about homosexuality, but that is simply not true. It's highly ambiguous.
Anyway, the article is good and I recommend reading "Bent" if you can find it. Very moving.
Beautiful writing and wonderful stories.
Thanks, Gina!
Beautiful and haunting as always, Greg. Your Sunday stories are the best…….
I would have mispronounced your name if we had met, and I am so sorry in advance for that. No more King Lear! I will remember now. Thanks for that cool part of your story today. I also have a five letter last name that is mispronounced 80+% of the time. Every person whom I have ever known, related or not, named AKINS pronounces it LONG A. Almost all people say short A as in Atkins or Adkins. Understandable of course, but still frustrating as you articulated today.
Very personal and quite touching again today, and the poem…………we are truly in unheard of and unbelievable times. And as you said in your piece the other day, no one knows or cares. The blasé attitude is everywhere, and the failure to connect to Trump……How completely stupid and clueless and frankly cruel can people be? We are in deep trouble as a country, likely terminal……
Thanks, Rick. But Claude Akins said it with the long A, no? I had no idea who Claude Akins was until I just Googled him, but I know the name.
People don't know. In Florida, in NJ where my mom lives. Some are in denial, but most have just been fed garbage information. And then some think, still, that both parties are the same, and all politicians lie, etc.
Greg, Claude Akins was for sure a semi famous “character” actor in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and even later. I was born in 1953, and saw him a lot, and he is still the most famous Akins I know. He was in lots of stuff. And long A, like all of us! His quote on his Wikipedia page about big to tough to dumb was really good.
There was later a semi famous country singer named Rhett Akins—also long A. I rest my case.
I will never, ever, ever understand how Donald Trump and what he has said and done(and now his henchmen-and women-are doing) could ever be a both sides thing, a tribal thing, an all politicians lie thing, a business as usual I don’t pay attention to politics thing, a more of the same thing. We are certifiably insane in this country and stupid to boot. One third are in a full blown cult that defies credulity, morality and humanity, one third have their hair on fire like you and me, and one third are oblivious and think nothing has changed. Trump is Mitt Romney 2.0 or something, same old same old. Really distressing and incomprehensible…………..
We’re closing in on a White Rose moment for all people of good conscience: Either keep your head down and try to fly under the radar of the MAGA thugs or stand up and tell them to fuck off. The latter could turn out to be lethal, which is what we have come to in the United States.
I’m an old dude and no hero. I wish and still hope I will not have to make a White Rose choice.
I read some more about Sophie Scholl and her brother and the others in White Rose. As a Christian myself, appalled and revolted by Trump always and truly frightened now by our own concentration camps, my admiration for White Rose’s courage and willingness to give their lives for the truth and speak against the evil is boundless. Leaflet number 4, wow…….. it cost them their heads to stand up and be counted…….
I have read a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer before, but NOT White Rose. Wow……….we are very, very close to our own White Rose moment in this country. I hope someone notices and more of us rage against the evil.
Sad truth Rick!!
I can't believe we have to read about this because it's relevant. I can't believe it. Every day I shake my head.
Listen, we are having several of “it’s who you know” to get things done moments…..it’s unnerving. Very.
My head is on a swivel
Thanks, Greg. Will have to investigate the work of Seifert — A German surname, curiously, perhaps from Prague and Bohemia’s once large German-speaking minority? There was intermarriage, including among German and Czech nobles, and, for a time, shared destinies.
I aso have an ethnic surname very few people in the U.S. get right on the first try. Even my high-school yearbook editor couldn’t get the spelling right in the senior photo section. My German great-grandfather, upon arrival in Iowa in 1882, lopped 5 letters, including the German ß, off the front of his surname, making its length more manageable, but the name still flummoxed, and flummoxes, most Americans.
Sidelight: As a kid in the late 1950s I was already aware that everyone on TV had these plain-vanilla Anglo surnames and that absolutely no one in my extended family or home town had names like those. Made 8-year-old me wonder if I was a “true American.”
I spent a week in Prague in 2015, long after the human waves of bucket-listing tourists began crashing over the historic city. I found it charming anyway, with much resonance for this near-major in central and eastern European history.
And the pivo was still great, even though the three brands I liked so much had been sucked up by the conglomerates — Staropramen (Molson Coors), Kozel (SABMiller, now Asahi), and Krušovice (Heineken). The beer tasted good — much better than American mainstream swill — so in 2015 these breweries’ corporate masters apparently still allowed local recipes and methods. I wonder how these beers taste in 2025? Unfortunately, I cannot find them at Total Wine in Phoenix, which pretty much offers only the ubiquitous Pilsner Urquell as a nod to the great Czech brewing tradition.
Staropramen, Kozel, and Krušovice were all nationalized during Communist times, and I have no idea how traditions and quality were affected by that. I do know that the long arm of capitalism is the enemy of locality and its charms, except when capitalism finds a way to monetize locality and its charms. Which eventually lapses into Disneyfication anyway. Why visit a real castle when you can have a more flamboyant fake one?
I just went to Reddit and typed in the query “Is Czech beer still good?”
Summing the discussions there: It is, but best if had on tap in Czechia. The bottled stuff loses some of the freshness and taste of draft, but the Reddit commenters pretty universally concede that it is still damn good. We can only hope Molson Coors, Asahi, and Heineken will keep hands off.
In 2015 I thought the Staropramen draft and Kozel dark were among the best beers I had ever had.
And if I may be permitted a polemical final shot: Michelob Ultra is a crime against humanity.
Thanks, Joe. I chortled at that last line, and quite agree.
Krušovice was my favorite when I was there. I remember when I got back to NYC, I was so bummed that I had to pay five bucks a pint for markedly inferior beer. The beer in Czechia was so good you could drink it in the morning.
In ULYSSES, Joyce explains that Guinness tastes not as good in the US because when it gets shipped, something about the sea air messes with it somehow. Maybe that's why? And of course a keg is way better than a bottle.
Pilsner was invented in Plzeň, in Czechia, so...
"Description of a Struggle "
I thoroughly enjoyed your account of your trip to Prague. You briefly flirted with the idea that maybe your attraction is a past life memory. I hope you’ll give that possibility some serious thought. It’s perfectly clear to me why you’re drawn there! P.S.: Speaking of White Rose, my wife and I owned and operated The White Rose Chapel for many years in Colorado Springs. ‘White Rose’ is a positive term to me on multiple levels.
Oh, wow, Earl, that's so cool! And yes, I really do believe it's ancestral memory. It's kind of nice in the US that ancestry and lineage aren't that big of a deal most of the time, but we can't escape our heritage.
boy, your memories bring back my memories. I first visited Prague in 1963 with what must have been in retrospect an Italian Communist Party tour group. I was at school in Florence and a bunch of us, along with others, did winter break behind the Iron Curtain. We did nothing Intouristy at all--mostly met with other student groups and saw sights via bus. What I remember about Prague was a beer hall in a basement somewhere. A couple of Prague students got up and looked up and down the street, then manned the door. Others asked us to whistle The Bridge Over the River Kwai which we whistled to cheers--for them it was a NATO song.
My hangover bit was same trip, Budapest. We got there on New Years Eve and went to a dinner for foreigners in Budapest put on by the govt. We thought "puritanical govt) and well supplied ourselves with bottles of vodka to take with us. And at the table, EACH PLACE had its own liter of vodka. It was a happy New Years Eve, presumably: who remembers. Next day, bright and sunny, we went on a bus tour of Budapest. The whole group slouched in their seats, unable to look outside at the sights in the bright sun. What I remember about Budapest itself is the lower rim of a bus window.
I went back to Prague in 2010 and though a remarkable place, I found it much commercialized, not surprisingly. You could buy Infant of Prague dolls and freakin' ASHTRAYS with the Infant on the bottom. I enjoyed it but without the sense of connection you had. But the Golem yep. I've always loved the Golem. I didn't get back to Budapest. I'd planned to, but just before time to hop the train I realized I was SICK of not being able to read street signs (I'd been in Germany for several weeks). So I changed my itinerary to Italy and finally saw the Cinque Terre, which were not a big deal back in the 60s. Possibly deep down I still thought Budapest looked like the lower rim of a bus window.
I read RUR as a young teen, but didn't connect it with Prague.
Thanks for the poems I had heard of Jaroslav Seifert but never read it. And I've always thought of your name as dactylic. If you were true Irish there WOULD have been an apostrophe.
This
>>What I remember about Budapest itself is the lower rim of a bus window.<<
is the start or the middle of a poem, I think.
Budapest was also on my short list, not least because, in my brief career at the ad agency, I noted that every Hungarian I met, male or female, was gorgeous. And I think Bobby Fischer was there at the time? But no, Prague it had to be.
The Arthur Philips novel, PRAGUE, is set in Budapest...the early 90s characters are not cool enough to have made it to Prague, and the word takes on a new meaning.
Adding here; I was there in late 80’s and then in 2016… the city was steam cleaned up but man the people are angry. Taxi drivers not happy at all. A weird air about the city. But then, activists were young in the 80’s and in full swing around 2016.
Haunting times so eloquently written, amazing Sunday read Greg! Felt your pain with every step.
My son has been to Prague, part of his Masters program… beer and food were the memories he described. I’ve always wanted to travel to Prague, but there’s so many parts of this blue spinning cosmic stone that beckons! The daily uhtcearu, this transnational criminal syndicate brings, and the billionaire accelerationism makes a new adventure a necessity, Sla’inte!!
Thanks, Patrick. As I was writing this, I thought, "Maybe this is back in my head because it's here I'm supposed to flee to."
Sigh...
These certainly aren’t the best of times, perhaps the worst Greg. However it would appear they’re all we have, sigh…