[Update February 16, 2025:  The video featured in this post has now been deleted.  For more information, see this post here, in which I explain why I deleted it.]

Kamiura Town Beach Park next to Mountain (Kamiura Town, Oita Prefecture, Japan)

Throwback Thursday.  This is a video from my 2009 Tour of Kamiura Town.

Kamiura Playlist HERE: 

Matching Game at flippity.net

I'm late in linking to this, but several months ago a colleague of mine alerted me to https://www.flippity.net/ as a great resource for teaching online.

Unfortunately, shortly after he alerted me to it, flippity.net started having problems as a result of the Google security upgrade.  (Flippity.net relies on Google spreadsheets.)  The website owner explains all about it HERE.  (This is, I believe, the same security upgrade which changed the links to all of my Google Drive Folders.)

But although some parts of flippity.net are still having problems, the matching game seems to still be working fine.  I know this because I've used it several times in the past few months.  Very useful for studying vocabulary sets.  And much easier to work with than the Pelmanism for Google Slides game I posted last year.

New episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.87- Anarchy in Ukraine: Nestor Makhno thy time has come.  

In a previous episode (last week, if memory serves), Mike Duncan had briefly name dropped anarchist Nestor Makhno, and said something like, "Don't worry all you Nestor Makhno fanboys and fangirls, we will talk all about your boy when the time comes."  Which, I suspect, is what the subtitle to this episode, "thy time has come", is referring to.

I myself had never actually heard of Nestor Makhno before.  Which probably should be embarrassing to me considering I once set about to give a series of Youtube lectures on the history of anarchism.  (Yet another reminder that there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge, and that I need to read more and talk less.)  

But at any rate, it's fascinating to see the conflict between the Reds and the Blacks take center stage.  

...after all, the conflict between the Reds and the Blacks is how Mike Duncan originally started this whole series on the Russian Revolution.  Way back in 2019, Mike Duncan began his series on the Russian Revolution with a ten episode prologue describing the split between Marx and Bakunin and the conflict between communists and anarchists.  I got the impression from that opening that the rivalry between the communists and the anarchists would take center stage for the whole series.  But ever since then, the anarchists have been absent from the Russian Revolution.

At one point (several months ago), I looked up on Wikipedia the history of anarchists in Russia just to make sure Mike Duncan wasn't leaving anything out.  But to be fair to Mike, it looks like up until now the anarchists haven't really been paying a major role in events.  (They've been on the periphery in 1905, the February Revolution, the October Revolution, etc, but not major players.)

But now, here at last, that conflict between the Reds and the Blacks is finally back in the front of the story.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here.  I looked up Nestor Makhno on Wikipedia, and (spoiler alert), it looks like he survives the Russian Civil War and will go on to many more adventures before his death.

***********************************

Just posted Ep. 10.87--Anarchy in Ukraine. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose, it's just that history and current events are almost always basically the same thing. https://t.co/Df0sUHLTfE

— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) February 21, 2022

The original title had the definite article b/c it's obv meant as a direct reference, but in the end decided it wasn't worth people seeing it and assuming I was making an ignorant faux pas and rushing to correct/instruct me. https://t.co/NCQXciJjNr

— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) February 22, 2022

...actually as luck would have it, this last point dovetails with my grammar reading. On page 276 of The Grammar Book (which I just read a couple weeks ago) "the Ukraine" is listed as an example of a case where a region or a territory becomes a country, and thus loses the definitive article.  (The other two examples in the book were "the Sudan" and "The Gambia").

Dane's review of The Scarecrow of Oz is out now.  (We're doing the series as a buddy read).

L. Frank Baum - The Scarecrow of Oz [REVIEW/DISCUSSION]

For my own review, see HERE.

Weekly Reading Vlog #48: Herodotus p.428-450, Exodus 30-32, The Return of the King p.1106-1148, 0z

(Weekly Reading Vlog)

   

Books (116 pages this week)

The Histories by Herodotus p.428-450 (32 pages) 

The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum p.980-988 (finished) (reviewed) (from The Complete Stories of Oz) (8 pages)

Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum p.990-1012 (from The Complete Stories of Oz) (22 pages)

The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien p.1106-1148 (from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien) (42 pages)

The Book of Exodus p.94-96 (Exodus 30-32) (From The Bible) (2 pages)

The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman p.280-290 (10 pages)

Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)

Podcasts and Audiobooks: (Not mentioned in the video)

 Herodotus Histories - Book 4 Melpomene, part 2, Herodotus Histories - Book 4 Melpomene, part 3, Herodotus Histories - Book 4 Melpomene, part 4,

Revolutions Season 3: The French Revolution 2nd Listening From: 3.36- The Liquidation Process To: 3.46- The Coup of Fructidor (from Revolutions Podcast)

Revolutions Podcast (New Episodes): 10.86- The Communist Soviets: All power to the Soviets!* *The Communist Party

For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.

[Update February 16, 2025:  The video featured in this post has now been deleted.  For more information, see this post here, in which I explain why I deleted it.]

The Spas of Amagase Town (Amagase Town, Oita Prefecture, Japan)

Throwback Thursday.  This is a video from my 2009 Tour of Amagase.

Amagase Playlist HERE

A new episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.86- The Communist Soviets: All power to the Soviets!*

*The Communist Party

As is quite often the case, there is a lot of different subjects packed into this one episode.  I feel like each of these different subjects could have been a whole episode in its own right, but as always Mike Duncan is doing a balancing act between covering the material and keeping the narrative moving.

For example:

At the beginning of this episode, Mike Duncan briefly mentions that in 1918 and 1919 there were revolutionary movements going on everywhere, not just in Germany.  Examining this could easily have been a whole episode.

And then, there's the formation of the 3rd International, which also could have probably been a full episode on its own.  (The history of the International fascinates me--as I've written before.  Granted, the 3rd International is not quite so interesting, because it very quickly devolved from an idealistic organization to the foreign policy wing of Moscow.  But then again, tracing that devolution would be an interesting subject in its own right.)

Then, we get into the depressing stuff--the massacres and the atrocities carried out by the Red Army and the Communists.  (I'm currently listening to the history of the French Revolution, and I'm struck by the parallels between the two in how the peasant uprisings were treated.)

And then we get into the slow transformation of the Communist Party from an idealistic organization to a corrupt organization.  And this is also depressing, but it's also fascinating.  And it's particularly fascinating because Mike Duncan makes the point that the same thing was happening on both sides of the Civil War--the Whites were just as bad as the Reds.  There are any number of interesting discussions about human nature which could be had here.

I also found it interesting to hear about how the money and supplies from the British actually just encouraged more corruption in the White Army.  It reminded me of any number of similar cases throughout history.  

For example, as I wrote in an addendum to my review of  Sideshow by William Shawcross:

         The US congress did attempt to cut funding to the Lon Nol regime, but as Shawcross details in his book, Nixon and Kissinger found a lot of clever ways around this, and lots of money did flow into the Lon Nol regime during this time period.  Shawcross argues that this money was destructive.  It encouraged corruption in the Lon Nol regime, and it made the Lon Nol regime entirely dependent on the United States for its defense. 

            Furthermore, a fair amount of Lon Nol’s commanders were making accommodations with the Khmer Rouge and selling their weapons to the communists.

            Given this state of affairs, it’s difficult to see how things could have been improved even if more money had been pumped into Lon Nol’s government.

...also I believe the same was true of the South Vietnamese government.  And the U.S. supported governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.  History does indeed repeat itself.  Human nature can sometimes be incredibly predictable.

A new Steve Donoghue Q&A this week.  The whole thing is fun to listen to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  

As usual, I put in my own question: 

"Lord of the Rings"--Could Tolkien have benefited from a stronger editor, or is the work perfect just the way it is?

Steve answers my question on video 2 at 12:24

Obviously this question is based on the fact that I'm currently reading Lord of the Rings.  And I'm suspecting that there's no way an editor would let this thing be published nowadays.  As I said in my review of The Fellowship of the Ring:

So, I know Tolkien is still much-beloved today.  But if he were a new and unknown writer, there's no way he could get these books published nowadays, right?  I feel like the publishers wouldn't allow such a slow pace in a fantasy series nowadays.

Given Steve's confused reaction to my question, I perhaps should have phrased it differently.  Maybe "Could Tolkien have used an editor?" or "There's no way an editor would publish Tolkien nowadays, right?" Or something like that.  But I think Steve's answer still works.

For my other forays into Steve Donoghue's Q&As (the ones I've blogged about anyway), see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE , HERE and HERE.

started: Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum (from The Complete Stories of Oz)

Started: The Complete Stories of Oz by L. Frank Baum

...and now it looks like the problem with the Blog Archive has been fixed.  Looks like I posted one day too soon.  (I waited a week, but I should have waited one more day.)

So, I'm going back to my original blogging style.  Hopefully it stays fixed.  I'll keep my eye on it.  If it ever goes back to displaying "No Title", I'll quietly start putting titles on all my blog posts, but in the future I won't bore you all by making a big announcement of it each time.