Trieste, by Daša Drndić / Confronting the masters of racism, poverty and war

This performance was in 1994 in the UK.

Jun 17, 1994:   Former president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn have responded to an invitation to visit North Korea. Press reports today, following Carter's meeting with Kim Il-sung, describe astonishment by the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency at Kim's agreement to stop his nuclear research program.

Nov 8, 1994:   In the US, elections give Republicans control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. Republicans gained, and the Democrats lost, 54 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate. It is to be called the Republican Revolution. Analysts describe the Republican success as the result of perceptions that House leadership has been corrupt, dislike for President Clinton's support for health care reform and gun control measures and homosexuals in the military. Some Republicans consider Rush Limbaugh, popular radio talk show host, as instrumental in the Republican landslide.

Finishing reading Daša Drndić's book, Trieste, in the last few days when separation of children from their parents is being confronted has heightened my visceral awareness of the three evils of racism, poverty and war that were spoken of by Martin Luther King, Jr.  It was at this time last year that I read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and experienced human brutality and human resilience viscerally.

This is the summer to be reading Trieste, which is a novel in the form of a collage of brutal visceral experiences that surround and are inside the story of a woman who waited for sixty-two years to be reunited with her son who, as a small child, was stolen from her by the Nazis as part of Himmler's lebensborn project.  

I am still absorbing all I have learned by reading this novel that was brought to my attention by a blog friend in Scotland.  Something that stood out for me toward the end of the novel were these words by Werner Dubois while on trial for war crimes in World War II:

"The camp was only a chain of command and if one link had failed, the whole system would have collapsed ... We did not have the courage to disobey."

As I read this, 

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2018/0618/Family-separation-Evangelicals-add-their-voices-to-opposition

I wondered if this could be where the collapse of the Republican Party system begins?

In  Trieste, Croatian writer Daša Drndić goes to great lengths to give testimonies of those once anonymous and largely uneducated pawns like Werner Dubois who made their meager living working for Hitler and his followers.  Who are the anonymous people now who are being paid to do the work that assures that children are kept apart from their parents and that families are detained indefinitely?

Here is another review of Trieste.  

The questions are never-ending.  There are no easy answers.  No action too small.

Here's one more blogging voice you may not have heard before in response to the children separated from their parents.

Birds singing at 4 a.m. / Blue sky alternating with dark clouds

When I read Sabine's recent post about blog housekeeping, I didn't realize that I was no longer receiving an email each time someone commented on my blog.  Finally I realized that there was a backlog of comments that were awaiting my moderation.  Thank you for your comments.  I am sustained by our conversations through our comments.   

This time of year brings frequent changes in the weather in the coastal Pacific Northwest.  It's been cold enough at night that I am sleeping as well as I do in the winter, with all my winter covers on my bed and all my windows wide open.  I'm enjoying watching my porch garden bloom.  I've been seeing an osprey flying above the portion of Lake Whatcom that is just beyond Scudder Pond as well as Great Blue Herons.  There is still some cottonwood fluff in the air.  I've seen more Swallowtails than I can ever remember seeing.

Morelle at Rivertrain brought Daša Drndić's life and death to my attention with a link to the interview titled "There Are No Small Fascisms." Our public library has a copy of Trieste, and I've put it on hold.  From what I've read about the book, it is as difficult and challenging to read as The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, and as important to read in these times.