Presented & Analyzed by
"AS PITHY AS A PHOTOGRAPH"
"It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don't do it."
-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, testifying before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, May 7, 2004
All photographs by Gwendolyn Stewart; copyrighted 2024; all rights reserved.
MOSCOW CELEBRATES VICTORY IN EUROPE IN WORLD WAR II Seventy Years On
LIST OF SUBJECTS (Partial & Growing)
U.S. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS 2016
SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS
May 1, 2016: U.S. Presidential Hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders Speaks at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. More Sanders here
FIFTY YEARS ON
SENATOR JOHN F. KENNEDY (D-MA) PHOTOGRAPHED ON TV DURING A 1960 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S GRAVESITE AND ETERNAL FLAME, ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
November 22, 2013: Gone, but not forgotten, it seems clear. It is fifty years today since U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (b. May 29, 1917) was assassinated.
RELIGION & ART
UNFINISHED RELIGIOUS OBJECTS SEEN ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD ON BALI, INDONESIA
November 3, 2013: Religion & Art: Work in Progress?
BECAUSE WE CAN? OBAMA AND THE NSA
STATUE OF THE BOY BARACK OBAMA ("BARRY SUTORO"), JAKARTA, INDONESIA
November 1, 2013: The statue of Barack (Barry) Obama as a boy at one of his elementary schools in Jakarta, Indonesia, has a butterfly perched on his left hand and a surveillance camera above his head.
CAR CRASHES THROUGH TIANANMEN SECURITY; THERE ARE CASUALITIES
THE FORBIDDEN CITY AND THE PORTRAIT OF MAO ZEDONG PHOTOGRAPHED AT NIGHT ACROSS TIANANMEN SQUARE, DRESSED UP FOR THE 18TH CONGRESS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
October 28, 2013: A vehicle identified by some as a Jeep drove through the barriers in front of the Forbidden City in Beijing and crashed and burned, killing the three occupants and injuring pedestrians and security personnel today. Whether or not this was an accident is yet to be determined. I have been a pedestrian there myself.
Update: There are now reported to be at least two more fatalities, one tourist from China and one from the Philippines, and thirty-eight injured.
THE 2013 APEC SUMMIT, BALI, INDONESIA, below (more on Indonesia here)
CHINA AT THE BALI APEC
CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING AND HIS WIFE PENG LIYUAN ARE WELCOMED TO THE BALI 2013 APEC SUMMIT GALA
October 7, 2013: With the U.S. President Barack Obama a no-show, Chinese President Xi Jinping is center stage at the 2013 APEC Summit in Bali, Indonesia.
THE BALI APEC HOST
October 6, 2013: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono hosts the 2013 APEC Summit in Bali, Indonesia; the handover to China is symbolized at the Gala.
THE DANCE OF BALI
October 6-7, 2013: The "Kul Kul Night & Dance Performance" is dress-rehearsed and then performed at the APEC Summit in Bali, Indonesia. (More on Indonesia here.)
BALI APEC
ON THE ROAD TO NUSA DUA AND THE 2013 APEC
October 2, 2013: The 2013 APEC Summit is opening in Bali, Indonesia.
DRONES R US?
DRONE MODEL EARLY ON
May 23, 2013: President Barack Obama goes public about drones. In the spirit of The Best Defense is a Good Offense, the President said right up front, "The very precision of drones strikes, and the necessary secrecy involved in such actions can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites. It can also lead a President and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism."
IT'S OFFICIAL
XI JINPING
November 15, 2012: The Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party is announced in the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Newly confirmed General Secretary Xi Jinping makes an address; takes no questions. The English text of the speech is here.
TIANANMEN STYLE
HU JINTAO TIANANMEN SQUARE
November 8-9, 2012: On the first day of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao, the outgoing General Secretary, reads the Report ("FIRMLY MARCH ON THE PATH OF SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS AND STRIVE TO COMPLETE THE BUILDING OF A MODERATELY PROSPEROUS SOCIETY IN ALL RESPECTS") from the podium of the Assembly Hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, surrounded by flowers. Outside on Tiananmen Square the next night, floodlights pick out a fantasia of flowers celebrating the "Shiba Da," the "18 Big" Congress.
THE 18TH CONGRESS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY OPENS
HU JINTAO (l) AND JIANG ZEMIN (r)
November 8, 2012: At the start of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao, the current but soon to be former General Secretary of the Party, and Jiang Zemin, the former General Secretary, stand applauding, above.
When he came forward to begin his Report to the 18th Congress, General Secretary Hu Jintao first bowed to the assembled delegates in front of him; others of his comrades on the dais applauded, but not former General Secretary Jiang Zemin (sixth from the left). When Hu repeated his bow, this time towards the dais and specifically in the direction of his predecessor, Jiang gave him his applause.
Hu Jintao is in the foreground, bowing, in both photographs; left to right on the dais: Li Peng, He Guoqiang, Xi Jinping, Jia Qinglin, Wu Bangguo, Jiang Zemin, Wen Jiabao, Li Changchun, and, in the left photograph, Li Keqiang. The empty chair is Hu's.
A video of the opening ceremony of the 18th Congress can be found here.
WELCOME TO THE 18th CONGRESS
AT THE PRESS CENTER FOR THE "18TH DA" IN BEIJING
November 6, 2012: The world media comes to Beijing for the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
THE FIRST TELEVISED U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
RICHARD M. NIXON AND JOHN F. KENNEDY DEBATE IN 1960
October 22, 2012: In honor of the last of the three 2012 presidential debates today, a look back at the first ones televised.
AT THE DMZ
LOOKING NORTHWARD
September 14, 2012: Standing on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), seeing what there is to be seen. High-power binoculars provided. For a price. No photographs allowed at the wall, or for several feet in front of it. Hold high the camera.
NORA EPHRON DIES
NORA EPHRON IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES
June 27, 2012: Author-journalist-screenwriter-director-producer Nora Ephron (b. May 19, 1941), died today. More on a project on which she was working (with Tom Hanks) when she died, here.
February 4, 2012: Slogan of the Day: "Power to the millions, not the millionaires."
ANDY ROONEY DIES
ANDY ROONEY AT THE 1988 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
November 5, 2011: Long-time CBS "60 Minutes" Commentator Andy Rooney (b. January 14, 1919), died today in the hospital to which he had gone for "minor surgery." CBS has a long appreciation here.
THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (CCP) TURNS NINETY
RUMORS SWIRL ABOUT THE ABSENCE OF
FORMER CHINESE PRESIDENT JIANG ZEMIN
July 1, 2011: The party for the Party reached its grand climax in the usual grand setting in the Great Hall of the People. (For a look at the presentation of the setting of the First Congress, July 1, 1921, see the posting under July 1, 2009, below.) Yet the buzz afterwards seemed to belong to former CCP General Secretary and former PRC President Jiang Zemin, who was not there.
NEWT GINGRICH PULLS THE PIN
FORMER SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH
May 11, 2011: Newt Gingrich formally announced for the presidency today. More Newt here.
GERALDINE FERRARO
GERALDINE FERRARO & WALTER MONDALE ARE CHEERED
AT THE 1984 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION IN SAN FRANCISCO
March 26, 2011: Geraldine A. Ferraro, born on August 26, 1935, died today.
In 1984, then Representative Ferraro (D-New York) was the first, and until John McCain chose Sarah Palin for the Republicans in 2008, the only woman nominated to the national ticket of either major U.S. party. Ferraro and Palin were both picked as vice-presidential nominees by the men who had already clinched the top spot.
Ronald Reagan and George Bush beat Mondale and Ferraro in 1984.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden beat McCain and Palin in 2008.
None of this prevented more loose talk about glass ceilings cracking today.
And as for the presidency....
ELDER BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU?
DELEGATES TO THE 17th CONGRESS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
LEAVING THE FLOOR AT THE END OF THE CONGRESS (Beijing, October 2007);
ONE (upper right) LOOKS TO BE CHECKING HIS MESSAGES
March 3, 2011: Now the authorities will be using the twenty million cell phones of Beijing to monitor all users in "real time" and "detect and prevent protests."
FAREWELL ADDRESS OF A SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY WITH THE PENTAGON IN THE BACKGROUND
February 25, 2011: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates' West Point address today invites several turnings of the kaleidoscope. Whom is the SecDef emulating? With whom does he wish to be compared? George Washington, even? No entangling-regime-change-land-wars?
Most immediately striking of course is the "Never Again" quote: "in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it."
STABILITY, HARMONY, & JASMINE
HU JINTAO TAKES PREEMPTIVE ACTION
February 19-20, 2011: On February 19, Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China, and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, gathered his ministers and provincial leaders together to emphasize the need to " build a socialist social management system with Chinese characteristics...." On February 20, they sent in the "troops" (police in this case).
PROMISES, PROMISES
BARACK OBAMA & THE WOUNDED WARRIORS' CAREGIVERS
February 15, 2011: Promises & Pretty Speeches. Oh, yes. Results? Oh, no. President Obama makes sure to cover himself with the flag (see above), but deeds matter, not just words and symbols. As to the actual results, you can find some of the reporting here and here.
Speaking as an Army brat, and a caregiver (not of one of the current Wounded Warriors; no direct personal "special interest"), I find this most unfortunate, even reprehensible, but as one who has seen Pentagon promises (and presidential promises) broken before, unfortunately not surprising.
Speaking as a political scientist and student of leadership in organizations, I can even "understand" it. There will always be another war, hot or cold, and its needs will be -- or seem -- more pressing than combat/missions five or ten or twenty or thirty or more years in the past. And then there is always the need for more military hardware just to keep up with (and surpass! even more) the Joneses or the Wangs....
But shame!
ZHONGNANHAI
THE SEAT OF THE CHINESE AUTHORITIES
February 14, 2011: CHINA OVERTAKES JAPAN AS THE WORLD'S NUMBER TWO ECONOMY. OFFICIALLY.
February 1, 2011: BORIS YELTSIN WOULD HAVE BEEN EIGHTY TODAY. Somebody has apparently decided to "honor" the first president of Russia by erecting what appears to be a gargantuan statue in his hometown of Yekaterinburg, the former Sverdlovsk, of which Yeltsin used to be the Party boss. The current (and third) president, Dmitry Medvedev, did the unveiling; Yeltsin's widow, Naina, and both daughters attended. Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's immediate successor, did not.
To see the more human side of Boris Nikolayevich, go the April 23, 2007 posting, 
below. Surrounded in the former Manchuria by admiring Russians, particularly older Russian women, calling out to him enthusiastically, Yeltsin was obviously touched, and softened.
January 29, 2011: THE VISUAL IS VISCERAL. To get a real feel for how long HOSNI MUBARAK has been president of Egypt, see the May 14, 2009, posting 
below.
PLACIDO DOMINGO
AT CONSTITUTION HALL, WASHINGTON, D.C.
January 21, 2011: BRAVO! to Placido Domingo, born January 21, 1941, and singing today in his native Madrid.
JOAN BAEZ
AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
January 9, 2011: Hail to Joan Baez, the "queen of folk music" -- back when that really mattered -- born January 9, 1941, twenty-eight years to the day after Richard M. Nixon. She is seen above in what now, after three-score-years-and-ten, might properly be thought of as her middle period.
WHAT WAS HE THINKING?
WHAT IS PUTIN THINKING?
MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY IN HIS HEYDAY AS 'THE RICHEST MAN IN RUSSIA'
December 30, 2010: The sentences of Khodorkovsky and his "business partner," Platon Lebedev, were extended from eight to fourteen years.
BOSTON POPS MAESTRO ARTHUR FIEDLER
IN HIS OFFICE AT SYMPHONY HALL, BOSTON
December 17, 2010: Arthur Fiedler was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1894, and died at home in Brookline, Massachusetts, next door to Boston, on July 10, 1979.
These bare facts conceal a far more peripatetic and complicated existence, and so does the quick summary of his accomplishments. For over half a century he led the Boston Pops Orchestra, with enormous success and acclaim. But -- like a beauty who wishes to be known for his/her brains? -- he apparently hungered for more: acknowledgment of his musicianship and his gravitas.
His daughter, Johanna Fiedler, wrote of his story (and hers) in ARTHUR FIEDLER: Papa, the Pops and Me (1994). The New York Times in its obituary called Arthur Fiedler "grandfatherly," and said that he "projected a jolly, unsnobbish image." Perhaps so, but that there was more to him was clear already from the time I spent photographing him.
LARRY SUMMERS SOON TO LEAVE WASHINGTON FOR HARVARD AND BEYOND
LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS AS PRESIDENT OF HARVARD
November 30, 2010: Lawrence Summers, born on this date in 1954, Director of the National Economic Council for the first two years of Barack Obama's presidency, is soon to decamp again for Harvard. For some commentary, see here.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE HAS A BIRTHDAY AND A BOOK
CONDOLEEZZA RICE AT THE PUTIN-BUSH PRESS CONFERENCE OF THE 2006 G-8 SUMMIT, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
November 14, 2010: Condoleezza Rice, born on this date in 1954, has written a personal memoir first, before tackling the hard issues of her time and performance as President George W. Bush's National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.
Rice, an erstwhile Soviet scholar, is shown above at the first, and so far only, G-8 summit to be held in Russia, talking to her counterpart, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. To her far right is Igor Ivanov, Secretary of the Russian Security Council (national security adviser); to her immediate right is Stephen Hadley, Rice's successor as U.S. National Security Adviser. Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett sits behind the Secretary of State.
ANOTHER OF THE "BIG FEET" OF THE YELTSIN ERA IS GONE
VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN
November 3, 2010: Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin (born April 9, 1938) dies. He was Boris Yeltsin's longest-serving prime minister: "We wanted better, but it turned out like always." Two appreciations, here and here.
November 5, 2010: Chernomyrdin is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, "beside his wife." The AP headline: "Putin chokes back tears at Chernomyrdin's funeral."
TED SORENSEN DIES
TED SORENSEN
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
At the John F. Kennedy Library
October 31, 2010: Thedore C. Sorensen, speechwriter for and confidante to Senator and then President John F. Kennedy, born May 8, 1928, died today in New York. It was not long ago that he was called on once again to contribute his memories of working with Kennedy, this time in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates.
GORBACHEV CRITICIZES SUCCESSORS NOT NAMED YELTSIN
October 27, 2010: Mikhail Gorbachev calls the ruling United Russia party, the party of the "Tandem" of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a "bad copy of the Soviet Communist party."
UNDER A MAMMOTH LENIN, MIKHAIL GORBACHEV PRESIDES OVER THE 28TH, AND LAST, CONGRESS OF THE "REAL" SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY
PRESIDENT KENNEDY GOES ON TV FOR THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
October 22, 1962: U.S. President John F. Kennedy 
goes public with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
From the Anthony Lewis piece in the New York Times:
"Washington, Oct. 22--President Kennedy imposed a naval and air 'quarantine' tonight on the shipment of offensive military equipment to Cuba.
"In a speech of extraordinary gravity, he told the American people that the Soviet Union, contrary to promises, was building offensive missiles and bomber bases in Cuba. He said the bases could handle missiles carrying nuclear warheads up to 2,000 miles.
"Thus a critical moment in the cold war was at hand tonight. The President had decided on a direct confrontation with--and challenge to--the power of the Soviet Union."
JIMMY BRESLIN TURNS EIGHTY
JIMMY BRESLIN AS THE HARVARD COMMENCEMENT CLASS DAY SPEAKER, 1971
Jimmy Breslin, born October 17, 1930, in 1986 won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. The citation lauds his "columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens."
JOHN UPDIKE IS ARCHIVED AT HARVARD
June 21, 2010: "In Archive, Rabbit Revised": The New York Times runs a long piece by Sam Tanenhaus on John Updike's archive at Harvard. It is previewed on the front page with a photograph from that archive taken by Gwendolyn Stewart. A copy of the photograph can be seen below in the January 27, 2009, posting, with links to more Updike.
John Updike to Gwendolyn Stewart, May 25, 1972: "They're all really great, very alive. It's hard to choose. But I took two, one head, the 'straighter' head [above, and on the front page of the June 21, 2010, New York Times], though the other is well-night [sic] irresistible, and the one of Mary and me where there is a glint of hope that we may reconcile our differences."
JERZY POPIELUSZKO IS BEATIFIED
INTERIOR OF THE THEN NEW CHURCH AT NOWA HUTA, KRAKOW (CRACOW), POLAND, IN 1981, IN THE TIME OF SOLIDARITY
June 6, 2010: Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the "priest of Solidarnosc" (Solidarity), was beatified in Warsaw; he had been murdered in October 1984. An accounting and an appreciation is to be found here.
IN HONOR OF THE LIBERATION OF ROME
LONG AGO NOW, TWO MEN MEET BESIDE THE ARCH OF TITUS, ON THE VIA SACRA LEADING TO THE ROMAN FORUM
June 4, 2010: On June 4, 1944, Rome became the first of the Axis capitals to fall to the Allies in World War II.
The Arch of Titus is, we are told, "The oldest surviving arch in Rome"; it is also "the simplest, has only one opening, and is perhaps most well-proportioned of the arches still standing." It is the model for the Arc de Triomphe, "which maintains the exact proportions of the Arch of Titus, though several times larger." (Two academic discussions of the Arch of Titus can be foundhere and here.)
The Narva Triumphal Arch in St. Petersburg, in turn, was designed in answer to the Paris Arc de Triomphe, and in celebration of the Russian victory over Napoleon.
I ended up photographing the Roman Forum on an excursion from Germany as an Army brat in the Cold War. Who the two men were and what they were so engrossed in discussing is one of the retrospective mysteries of photography.
PATRIOTS & POLES & MORE PLACES TO PARK U.S. TROOPS
POLISH SOLDIERS PARADE AT THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, WARSAW, POLAND, 1981
May 26, 2010: On May 26, 2010, AFP reported that Polish Defence Minister Bogdan Klich "formally welcomed the 100-strong US unit that had arrived at a Polish army base in the northern town of Morag at the weekend, and viewed the three unarmed Patriot missile launchers which Polish troops will be trained to use.
"'Your arrival here in Poland has two dimensions, political and symbolic. Politically, it's about Poland's security. And symbolically because on Polish soil, for the first time, US soldiers will be stationed long-term,' he [Klich] said." [italics added]
May 25, 2010: Two Hundred Posts and Counting: THE PICTURE OF THE DAY to be found here
BERKELEY STREET SCENE
May 9, 2010: Seen on the street in Berkeley, California: a vignette -- and the rest of the story?
SUNDAY IN THE PARK IN WEST GERMANY, IN THE EARLY YEARS OF "FULL SOVEREIGNTY"
May 5, 2010: On May 5, 1955, the Federal Republic of Germany, "West Germany," was declared fully sovereign; four days later it joined NATO.
NIKITA SERGEYEVICH KHRUSHCHEV
April 15, 2010: In commemoration of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader born on this day in 1894 and known for his contradictions, captured in the memorial on his gravesite.
Khrushchev died September 11, 1971; the New York TIMES obituary can be found here.
OBAMA & THE SCREW UP
BARACK OBAMA
LOOKING FOR THE CULPRIT
January 5, 2010: Obama aides let it be known that the president knows there is a problem.
A REVOLUTION IS NOT A DINNER PARTY
BUT A PARTY CONGRESS MAY BE A TEA PARTY
THE TOMB OF THE UNKOWN SOLDIER
June 14, 2009: June 14 is Flag Day and Army Day in the U.S., and there is related material on these subjects elsewhere on this site.
Today, unknown soldiers from another land are honored here, with flowers in the red and white national colors of Poland, in the year of Solidarity, 1981.
June 12 was later designated Russia's National Day, the "Day of Russia."
To show that he was closer to the people than his rival, Mikhail Gorbachev, the head of the USSR, Yeltsin allowed people to literally come "up close and personal." In the photograph above Yeltsin is returning from his polling place to the car (for a photograph of Yeltsin holding his putting-the-ballot-in-the-ballot-box pose, look under June 12, 2006). Some of the fervor he inspired, and the scrambling to get near him, can be sensed. Boris Yeltsin has the car door in his hands; his chief bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov, has his back. And the crowd is pushing, pushing.
Subjecting himself to a popular election won Yeltsin a meeting with U.S. President George Bush in the U.S. nine days later, and then, on July 30, a courtesy call by President Bush on President Yeltsin in his new Kremlin office (a photograph of the meeting can be found here).
Today, June 12, 2009, George Bush turned eighty-five and went sky-diving in Kennebunkport, Maine.
But we are once again at war, again fighting enemies who favor "asymmetrical" warfare, and an old "metric" from the McNamara/Vietnam era has come back, and gained currency: The Body Count. The military, and Donald Rumsfeld, had turned against it in Iraq. But now we are being told -- seriously -- that it is good to use in Afghanistan.
David Halberstam named his Vietnam book The Best and the Brightest, and bridled afterwards when some did not realize he meant the term ironically. Are we in danger of another Best and Brightest moment?
June 6, 2009: STRUGGLE IN THE AMAZON. THE PERUVIAN AMAZON. The conflict between the government of President Alan Garcia (pictured) 
and indigenous protestors has turned deadly, for both protestors and police. 
An earlier report on the subject here.
June 5, 2009: Update to May 18-19, 2009, item: According to the U.K. Telegraph, Barack Obama is now also on record with the Nixon-Goes-To-China analogy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
"Israeli analysts said Mr Obama had effectively given Mr Netanyahu the choice of alienating his Right-wing coalition allies and imperilling his fragile government or alienating Israel's most powerful ally.
"But Mr Obama, in an interview with regional newspapers, said Mr Netanyahu's Right-wing stance was an advantage. He compared him to the former President Richard Nixon whose impeccable Right-wing credentials made possible his outreach to Chairman Mao's China in the early 1970s."
THE WHEEL TURNS TO ... CHINA?
NANJING, CHINA, 1981
June 1, 2009: More and more there is talk about China becoming the new giant in the automotive industry.
So, a look back to the reality on the ground, literally, just over a generation ago, in 1981 in Nanjing. Private cars were forbidden. The blue number above doubtless belonged to one official -- cadre -- or another, or more properly, to the official's work unit. Curtains in the windows encouraged privacy.
Somebody Important must have come in that car.
To be continued.
AN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ICON ... IN JAPAN
IN HONOR OF JFK, BORN ON THIS DATE IN 1917, IN BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
U.S. PRESIDENT, JANUARY 20, 1961-NOVEMBER 22, 1963
May 29, 2009: In 1981, en route to China for my first visit there, I had a chance to dash downtown to Tokyo for an hour-and-a-half, and grabbed it. I was back in the country where I lived for a year as a child (in the town of Sasebo), and where, at age eight, I had taken my first photographs. And what did I see but an image of our slain president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a store front window on the Ginza -- being used to sell glasses.
Such is the power of icons and the mystery of iconography, and of cross-cultural exchanges.
May 27, 2009: OTHER WEDDINGS, II Red is the traditional color for brides in China. But though the young woman in this couple is dressed in white, in a "Western" gown, tradition has not been altogether neglected. Observe the touches of red.
Here, in 1994, a video camera is also coming up the stairs to the heights of QINGDAO's famous Bell Tower.
May 26, 2009: OTHER WEDDINGS As June is almost here, and with it the wedding season in the USA, two weddings from other countries, other cultures: In today's photograph a newly married couple in the Siberian city of NOVOSIBIRSK comes in 1984 to be photographed at the foot of the Lenin statue in the heart of town.
May 25, 2009: HE'S NOT HEAVY.... Arlington National Cemetery, In Honor of Memorial Day, with Caisson and Riderless Horse.
May 24, 2009: Honor Is Due. John King Fairbank, Harvard Professor, the "Dean" of American China studies, was born on May 24, 1907. Here he is pictured at home in the Winthrop Street house he shared with Wilma Cannon Fairbank until his death on September 14, 1991.
May 23, 2009: Thinking Again About Communism, III. The USSR on the Eve of Perestroika: Lenin Billboard & Car, Rostov-on-the-Don (Russia), USSR. "To Us the Most Precious Is the Preservation of Peace -- V.I. Lenin," the slogan on the billboard says. The year is 1984.
Lenin died in 1924. (More in HERE BE GIANTS)
Katowice Coal Mine, Poland, 1981
May 22, 2009: Speaking of the fall (or not) of communism (see "All Rise," May 21, 2009, below), we are in the primetime of the twentieth anniversaries of the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.
The year 1989 saw the second "Springtime of Nations." In astonishment, and uncertainty, the outside world, and even the political actors within the various members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, watched as events unfolded and limits were pushed.
Now, twenty years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, serves as a stand-in for all the regime changes that year. And the violent climax of the downfall of all the Soviet-bloc regimes in Eastern Europe came on Christmas Day, in Romania, when the just-deposed former leader Nicolae Ceausescu -- and his wife -- were executed by firing squad.
But the Polish story should not be overlooked. Timothy Garton-Ash believes "to this day that the Round Table -- that is to say, the negotiated revolution -- was a particularly Polish discovery, and is in a way Poland's gift from 1989 to the world."
The backstory includes the founding of the Solidarity trade union in Poland in August 1980, and its rise and rise until it was crushed in December 1981. When I took photographs all over Poland in the summer of 1981 (including the coal miners in Katowice, above), it was obvious how entrenched Solidarity was in the workplaces, and in society more generally. At its height, there were said to be ten million members, out of a population of thirty-some million.
That summer, and into the fall, there was nervous speculation as to whether the Soviet Union would invade; it was the era of Leonid Brezhnev and the Brezhnev Doctrine ('what we have, we hold'). But in the end, on December 13, 1981, Poland's own leaders imposed martial law. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders were thrown in jail.
Solidarity came back to life again after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow and seemed to embrace the possibilities of reform in other communist countries besides his own. Still, as Garton-Ash testifies, "You have to remember that nobody knew what would happen next and nobody knew what the Soviet Union would accept."
The 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
May 21, 2009: Today, in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama made a rather strange statement for someone who is supposed to be so bright, and who is in charge of the national security apparatus of the U.S.
Here is the wind-up: "Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world."
Okay. Then: Enemy soldiers...strong alliances....
Then, "It's the reason why we've been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism and outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free peoples everywhere in the common cause and common effort of liberty."
"...outlast the iron curtain of communism...."
Oh, yes? The People's Republic of China, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, has fallen? (and the regimes in Cuba, and North Korea, and Vietnam....)
Twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan came back from his first trip to what he previously had been pleased to call "Red China" and spoke of the "so-called Communist China." This was in 1984, five years after the Carter administration had recognized the People's Republic of China, and Reagan had attacked the president for doing so.
In the fall of 2007, at the time of the most recent Chinese Communist Party Congress, I showed an American in Beijing a copy of the photograph above, taken at the previous Congress, the 16th (November 2002). He looked at the giant hammer and sickle and said, Oh, Russia.
Whatever one may think of what has happened since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Communists have not ruled there since December 1991, while in China they go on and on. So far.
For a recent example: "Just as it took a Richard Nixon to go to China, it will take a Netanyahu to enforce a peace settlement that will require a withdrawal from most of the West Bank settlements." -- Kishore Mahbubani, Japan Times, Sunday, May 10, 2009
But Netanyahu has been here before, and so have we.
He was Prime Minister the first time from 1996-99. "He wants to be Nixon going to China and still be honored by the John Birch Society," we were told. By Thomas L. Friedman, in the May 19, 1998, New York Times. Friedman was asking, "Who Is Bibi?"
We might ask, why do we keep falling back on this cliche?
May 17, 2009: India went to the polls, and surprised the pollsters and the experts. The Congress Party won an "emphatic" victory, seen as clearing the way for the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to enact further economic reforms. The Prime Minister (left) is pictured here 
with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Arguments raged about which path to reform was superior, the Soviet or the Chinese. Which was the brighter "Red Star," Gorbachev or Deng?
A SUNNY DAY AT RONALD REAGAN'S WHITE HOUSE
May 14, 2009: This week President Reagan's unabridged diaries go on sale. They reportedly offer an "unvarnished look at people ranging from Pope John Paul to Mother Teresa to Mikhail Gorbachev."
It should be interesting to look up the date of this meeting (above), and see what kind of comments Reagan offers (there is an official transcript of the report and their meeting and brief Rose Garden Q&A). Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, and died in 2004. Hosni Mubarak is still president of Egypt.
MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE
MAO ZEDONG'S CAVE RESIDENCE IN YAN'AN, CHINA
May 13, 2009: This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the final stage of which was a campaign fought north to south by the People's Liberation Army. This was a victory years in the making.
As we have seen with more recent guerrilla movements, weak governments which cannot control their peripheries can be threatened by rebel groups which seize power in the borderlands or "badlands."
So it was with the Chinese Communists, who escaped the "bandit extermination campaigns" waged by the KMT, or Nationalist, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek by making the daring, desperate, Long March (1934-1935), which brought the remnants of Mao Zedong's forces to Yan'an, China.
There a residence could properly be a home in a cave carved into the hillside, and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership shared a compound of such houses.
THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON
MAO ZEDONG'S HORSE ON DISPLAY IN THE MUSEUM IN YAN'AN, CHINA
May 12, 2009: In this year of the sixtieth anniversary of MAO ZEDONG'S leading the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army to victory over Chiang Kai-shek's KMT, a look at one of the icons of the era before Mao seized power. Mao's horse (see above) seems to have been lovingly preserved.
Yan'an was the site of the revolutionary base Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party established at the end of the Long March (1934-1935).
May 11, 2009: PERU SCENES, the video-slideshow, is now up on YouTube.
From travels in Lima, Urubamba, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu, and Cusco, Peru, at the time of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit: 1. The Ghostly General 2. Looking for the "Leader of the Free World" at the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit, Lima, Peru 3. Bring Me the Head of John the Baptist 4. Standing Guard over Machu Picchu 5. Mother & Christ Child 6. Mother & Child & Horse 7. The Lovers 8. Santa Claus & Mrs. Claus 9. A Family Dinner Out 10. Standing Guard over Lima at the Time of APEC 11. Playing Out the Leaders 12. Our Car & Their Car 13. A Stony Beauty 14. Night Falls in Machu Picchu the Town 15. Mt. Salcantay (More PERU SCENES)
May 10, 2009: Happy Mother's Day! "Any nose/May ravage with impunity a rose." -- Robert Browning
So it was left to an angry woman in this city in which, as the Soviets saw it, they helped save the world from the Nazis, to inform me that President Ronald Reagan had threatened to bomb the USSR.
The Cold War had newly heated up. It was the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, and the Soviets were staging a tit-for-tat retaliatory boycott of those Olympics. We had devastated them by boycotting their 1980 Moscow Olympics after they had invaded Afghanistan.
The Chinese could not have wanted their Olympics more than the Soviets wanted theirs.
Into this time of tension, Ronald Reagan let fall his "joke," in the warm-up to one of his Saturday radio addresses. He declared "Russia" an outlaw nation and announced that the bombs would fly in five minutes.
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