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Lee Kuan Yew on the fundamental differences between East Asian and Western societies dominiccummings.substack.com…

This reminds me of Helen Vendler’s 1980 Presidential Address to the MLA: “Our students come to us from secondary school having read no works of literature in foreign languages and scarcely any works of literature in their own language. The very years, between twelve and eighteen, when they might be reading rapidly, uncritically, rangingly, happily, thoughtlessly, are somehow dissipated without cumulative force. Those who end their education with secondary school have been cheated altogether of their literary inheritance, from the Bible to Robert Lowell. It is no wonder that they do not love what we love; we as a culture have not taught them to. With a reformed curriculum beginning in preschool, all children would know about the Prodigal Son and the Minotaur; they would know the stories presumed by our literature, as children reading Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare or Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales once knew them. We can surely tell them the tales before they can read Shakespeare or Ovid; there are literary forms appropriate to every age, even the youngest. Nothing is more lonely than to go through life uncompanioned by a sense that others have also gone through it, and have left a record of their experience. Every adult needs to be able to think of Job, or Orpheus, or Circe, or Ruth, or Lear, or Jesus, or the Golden Calf, or the Holy Grail, or Antigone in order to refer private experience to some identifying frame or solacing reflection.”

Oh I suppose I should tell the story of one of the most remarkable training requirement stories I’ve ever heard of. After the Vietnam war, all four branches of the US military that were involved went through a period of soul searching. This period led to a number of reforms.

Nobody ‘believes in’ ethnicity, they observe it. It’s not something that requires faith. It just requires not being ideologically lobotomised

About 1,200 km (745 miles) off Mexico lies a lonely ring of coral that belongs to France. In July 1917 an American warship found its last inhabitants: three women, a teenage girl and seven children. However, that very same morning two of the women had killed their 'king'. 1/n

The first Native American allies to answer the call of the American Revolution were not from New England militias, but the Christianized Stockbridge-Munsee. On April 21, 1775, just two days after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, an express rider arrived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, carrying news that war had begun. Within a week, two companies of Stockbridge-Munsee warriors had established camp near Harvard, ready to join the Patriot cause. Their decision was rooted in generations of experience. These Native allies had long resisted what they regarded as the illegal seizure of their lands by the Philipse family, supported tenant resistance in the Hudson Valley, and built enduring relationships with Patriot communities. Through their missionary settlement among the Oneida, they also helped strengthen an important alliance between Native nations and the Revolution. As they marched to war, the Stockbridge-Munsee represented far more than an early military response. They embodied centuries of resilience and a determination to defend their homeland, their rights, and their place in a rapidly changing world. Their presence in the Patriot ranks reminds us that Native Americans were active participants in the founding of the United States. If there is a true “Last of the Mohicans” moment in American history, it is perhaps the Stockbridge Massacre of August 31, 1778. Fighting in what is today the northwestern section of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Daniel Nimham and approximately forty of his warriors were killed while defending the mainland approaches to Kingsbridge against the Queen’s Rangers. They fell protecting not only the Patriot cause but also their own vision of a future in which their people could preserve their homeland, their community, and their rights. Their sacrifice was one of the final great demonstrations of Munsee-Lenape commitment to the American Revolution. The courage of Daniel Nimham and the Stockbridge-Munsee deserves to be remembered alongside the better-known stories of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Their legacy endures as a testament to the resilience, sacrifice, and patriotism of Native peoples who helped shape the birth of the United States.

if you read two pages from any biography, you should read these

🇬🇧🇯🇵 Thirteen shells. One small river steamer. A Japanese convoy escorted by warships. HMS Li Wo attacked anyway! On February 14, 1942, the former Yangtze passenger steamer was escaping Singapore toward Batavia, in the Dutch East Indies. Aboard were 84 people, a makeshift company that included survivors of sunken ships, Army and RAF personnel, and a civilian. Her weapons were a single 4-inch gun and two machine guns. According to her captain’s Victoria Cross citation, the gun had just thirteen shells. Then Japanese transports and their escorts appeared. Lieutenant Thomas Wilkinson gathered his men and announced his decision to engage. Li Wo raised her battle ensign and closed in! Her gun crew hit a transport and set it on fire. But the little steamer was taking devastating punishment. After more than an hour, she was sinking. Wilkinson turned toward the damaged transport in a final attempt to ram it. Eventually, he ordered his men to abandon ship. He stayed aboard. Only about ten survived. They became prisoners of war. Wilkinson received a posthumous Victoria Cross in 1946. Its citation recognized both his sacrifice and the men who fought beside him. Remember HMS Li Wo. Share their story. Follow @Vanguard_WW2

Four thousand years ago, Indian merchants were living in Mesopotamia in large enough numbers to have a village of their own and a professional interpreter to deal with them. Texts from Lagash written towards the end of the third millennium BC, record a village of Meluhha inside Sumerian territory. Meluhha is the Sumerian name for Indus-Sarasvati lands. The Louvre holds the cylinder seal of a man called Shu-ilishu, whose inscription describes him as an interpreter of the Meluhhan language. Around 2300 BC, Sargon of Akkad boasted that ships from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun were moored at the quay of his capital, Agade. Indus seals have been found at Ur, Kish and Nippur, while hardly any Mesopotamian seals or objects have been found in the subcontinent, suggesting the pro-active merchants were Indian. The monsoon blows one way across the Arabian Sea for half the year and back for the other half, so a merchant who sailed west could spend months in a foreign port waiting for the wind to turn. This goes a long way to explaining both the village and the interpreter. The Sumerians knew perfectly well whose ships were tied up at their quays, and they wrote the name down. Episode 3 of my graphic novel, Maritime World: The True Cradle, is called The River That Fed the World and follows one of those merchants from Lothal to a Sumerian market and home again. Link in the reply.

Princess Hirrihigua Mound in St. Petersburg, Florida. She saved Juan Ortiz, the only surviving member of the 1528 Spanish attempt to find survivors of the Narvaez expedition which happened a year earlier. She saved Ortiz from execution (being burned alive) 3 times and helped him escape to the leader of a rival Timucan tribe. Ortiz lived and became the interpreter for DeSotos' 1539 venture, only to die in 1541 in Arkansas.

By the start of 1650, a beaver pelt was worth about 10 guilders, which converted to 1,200 white wampum beads or 600 black (purple) beads. By 1673, beaver pelts were fetching 24 guilders, with a conversion rate of 2,880 white beads or 1,440 black (purple) beads. Manack provides a description of how wampum, or sewan, was made: “The Indians divided their beads into two general classes, the ‘wompam,’ derived from ‘wompi’ or ‘white,’ and ‘sukauhock,’ a compound word combining ‘sucki’ or ‘dark colored’ and ‘hock’ or shell. The white wampum was created from the central column of the whelk shell, and the black was composed of the eye of hard-shell clams.” As currency in New Netherland, clam-based wampum was widely used, with four purple beads or eight white beads equaling one guilder. The 1641 Lion Daalder was equal to two guilders (top right, modern reproduction). The bottom left shows a modern reproduction of a Dutch stiver; twenty-four stivers equaled one guilder, or forty-eight equaled one Lion Daalder. The bottom right is a modern reproduction of a ducaton, worth three guilders and three stivers. It is important to remember that the vast majority of bullion did not circulate within the colony itself, trade goods and pelts were the essential mediums of exchange. The Dutch West India Company’s regulation of wampum prior to the English takeover in 1664 effectively froze exchange rates. At the same time, the supply of beaver pelts declined, forcing their value in guilders to rise. A single fathom (about 360 beads) equaled roughly 4 guilders and 10 stivers, underscoring the enormous scale of such payments. Even smaller bounties were substantial: 10 fathoms equaled about 45 guilders, and 20 fathoms about 90 guilders. Richard Manack identifies a case of wampum-based extortion along the Connecticut River in 1622, when 140 fathoms were demanded for the return of Pequot Grand Sachem Tatobem. This amounted to roughly 50,400 beads, nearly 1,000 guilders, or about $100,000 in modern terms,at a time when the average annual income was only about 300 guilders. The Iroquois League typically required ten fathoms of wampum as compensation for a murdered man and twenty fathoms for a murdered woman. The family of the offender could often pay an additional ten fathoms to avoid execution or the adoption of the killer into the bereaved clan. Dutch authorities adopted these same compensation rates for their own murdered citizens; official proclamations offered identical rewards in exchange for Native perpetrators being turned in. However, few have explicitly connected these Dutch policies to the broader wampum-based restitution systems of neighboring Native societies. “On Thursday, being the 4th of July (1641), whereas the Indians of the Raritan are daily exhibiting more and more hostility… we have therefore considered it most expedient… to induce the Indians, our allies hereabout, to take up arms… and in order to encourage them the more we have promised them ten fathoms of seawan for each head, and… 20 fathoms… for each head.” Translation: K. Scott and K. Stryker-Rodda, eds., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vol. 4, Council Minutes, 1638–1649, trans. A. J. F. van Laer (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974).

“Nelle foreste della Turchia, un cucciolo di orso bruno ha fatto la scoperta della sua vita trovando un alveare di rododendri. Il problema è che le api di quella zona producono il "deli bal" (miele pazzo), una sostanza naturale con fortissimi effetti allucinogeni. I forestali lo hanno ritrovato ore dopo: l'orsetto era seduto a pancia all'aria sul cassone di un pick-up, completamente stordito, che fissava il vuoto ansimando e barcollando. Trasportato dal veterinario per smaltire la "sbornia" da miele, il video della sua faccia sconvolta ha fatto il giro del pianeta.” ~Il Mio Cane Bau ~

LOCAL HERO (1983) is the kind of film that makes you fall in love with a place you’ve never been. A sleepy Scottish town, wonderful locals and Mark Knopfler’s wistful soundtrack make this feel like a little escape from the world you won’t want to leave.

Remembering Captain John "Wild Bill" Crump of Washington-and Jeep, the only coyote to fly combat missions during WWII. After joining the USAAF, Bill found a young coyote during pilot training and named him Jeep. The two became inseparable. Determined to serve overseas together, Bill secretly brought Jeep aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth to England. Jeep was officially adopted by the 356th Fighter Group, complete with dog tags, and flew on five combat missions. Tragically, Jeep was k!ll3d in an accident on October 28, 1944, and was buried with full military honors at Playford Hall. Bill honored his companion by painting Jeep's portrait on his P-51 Mustang and went on to fly 77 missions, surviving the war. He returned in 1992 to pay respects at Jeep's grave. Bill passed away in 2008.

In 1993, when I was 16, I landed my first yacht delivery job: sailing a magnificent yacht from New York City to an exclusive yacht club on Long Island Sound. There was just one problem. We were teenagers, and we were terrified the marina manager or police would stop us before we even left the dock. Fortunately, one of my buddies knew a kid at a fancy boarding school who taught us how to dress like “rich assholes nobody would dare question.” So there we were, strutting down the dock in borrowed cordovan penny loafers, sport coats and slicked-back hair, looking like we’d just stepped out of a country club catalog. We jumped aboard, tossed the lines and shoved the throttle forward before anyone could ask questions. Perfect getaway. It was a glorious day on the water. Blue skies, fair winds, not a care in the world. Until we approached the East River. That’s when tiny kittens started crawling out of a deck box. KITTENS. The yacht had been sitting idle for weeks, and apparently a stray cat had decided it was the perfect maternity ward. Now we had a boat full of kittens. What the hell were we supposed to do with them? We had a yacht to deliver, a fancy yacht club expecting us, and absolutely no idea how to explain our unexpected passengers. Eventually, we arrived at the club, where a large party was underway. People were gathered on the veranda of a magnificent Victorian mansion overlooking the harbor. They watched as this beautiful yacht glided in. We collected the kittens in a cardboard box, climbed aboard the club launch and headed ashore. Picture three teenage boys walking toward this grand clubhouse in borrowed penny loafers, navy blazers and slicked-back hair, carrying a box of kittens. That’s when we realized the party was a wedding. And that’s when one of my buddies looked up at the veranda, which was packed with beautiful women in their twenties, and shouted: “ANYONE WANT A KITTEN?” I have never witnessed anything like what happened next. An honest-to-god stampede. Women came pouring off the veranda, practically trampling one another to get their hands on a kitten. Suddenly, three awkward teenage boys were THE most popular men at the wedding. We each took responsibility for finding homes for a kitten. My buddy Adrian took three kitties but I just wanted to find the ONE perfect match. I picked out a gorgeous, classically beautiful woman who looked like she’d stepped out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement. She was 26. I lied and told her I was 19 and home from Annapolis. For the next several hours, we wandered the club grounds together, taking turns holding the kitten while I pretended to be terribly reluctant to part with it. Eventually, she had to leave. I agreed to surrender the kitten, but only after extracting a solemn promise that she’d invite me to her Manhattan apartment to check on it. She agreed. Of course, she’d been drinking, and I figured there was absolutely no chance she’d remember my phone number, much less call. Remember, this was 1993. No cell phones. No texting. No Insta. Just a telephone number scribbled on a napkin and a teenage boy’s impossible dreams. Then Thursday arrived. The phone rang. I bolted out of my bedroom toward the hallway extension. But my mother was standing in the kitchen and answered first. “Hello?” A beautiful female voice came through the receiver. “Is John Konrad there? I’d very much like to invite him to dinner tomorrow night to see my kitten.” She said TO SEE MY KITTEN 😳 And she said it in a VERY sultry voice. Now, to understand what happened next, you need to know something about my family. 1/2

Have you ever seen a cemetery with epitaphs like these?