Places of Petr Ginz: A Child's Prague Diary, WWII
Vet the reality of history. Some say the holocaust never happened. If you can't go to Europe and see the concentration and labor camps and camp sites first hand, or the abandoned, wrecked Jewish Quarters, many now artists' colonies, very Yuppie, you can read a small book from the library: a diary, by a 12-year old at the time, Petr Ginz, WWII, in Prague. His father was Jewish and was killed; his mother was Christian, and lived. So did his sister. Petr's transport to Theresienstadt and his later death at Auschwitz were delayed because he was a Mischling. Half-blood. A small reprieve for a small while.
See the places in Prague and elsewhere that this boy Petr Ginz references in his diary. Contemporary photographs.
Bogomilia, Site for the Unsung
Look at the famous, the infamous and the forgotten. What ideas did they have, that were undervalued at the time, and should be reexamined for a positive use now. Are there surprising aspects of someone's life and thinking, that want out and outing. What value is there in a human life that left little trace, but someone else kept a trinket anyway. That someone valued that other human life. Salute and pass it on. Look at the big happenings: heretics, crusades to kill nonconformists, other belief systems. What legacy does the West pass on. Dare we look.
Hatpins Collection Tour: Voices of History
Fashion and necessity and remembrance trinkets intersect with the Great Hatpin Era, the Edwardian Big Hat that needed to be secured by piercing the hair bun piled on the head, that had the Big Hat plunked over it, or at a rakish angle; by the lethally sharp hat pin. Find history in the toppings. Some pins in this collection, and this collection is long dispersed -- no sales going on -- were 18" long, enough for them to be banned from the New York transit systems of the day. One parson even died of blood poisoning after a flirty eligible lady poked him in his teasing concealed shin.
Gypsies, Roma, Romani. Cultural Diaspora
A Cultural Diaspora. Meet one of the world's most exploited, harassed, downtrodden, scattered groups: Roma. Gypsies. Travelers. Romani. How did the various Roma cultures develop out of
1) conditions of slavery, as in Romania where they were brought in as slaves in times gone by; and, as here, the stigma remains; or
2) a preference as a group for moving on, staying on the road, caravans, migratory but without any necessarily firm geographical objective; or
3) poverty, generation after generation; and
4) enforced ignorance, lack of literacy, with outsiders keeping the children out of regular schools, shunting them aside as though mentally deficient, as we do with some of our own migratory people or people of tint.
How were these people, that we think are unlike us, shaped by us, and how do they shape themselves. Why can't the rest of the world leave them alone, provide for places to stay, allow the movement. What negatives in behavior, as seen by those the outside hiding their chickens, stem from the Roma's own need for sustenance; how to reframe the men's culture of rejecting employment by others? Can pride of self-autonomy be rechanneled, away from the self-destructive and abusive; and what of Roma culture stems from norms that the outside itself fosters. Chicken and egg. Where are the origins, why the language uniqueness, is there room. Yes. Move over.
