One of the many pictures that I have made during my holiday in Krkonoše this spring. Unfortunately insects were not out en force yet, so I only have a few macros. Pines and spruces were blossoming this year, so everything was dusted with their pollen.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.
In the Czechoslovak Socialist republic everyone had a right to work. That is, everyone was entitled to be employed and make wages that guaranteed you shall be able to live off of them.
That sounds good on paper, but it did not work out so well in praxis.
First problem was that whilst there was some possibility of improving your income through work if you were a good worker and happened to be paid not per hour but per manufactured piece (or mined tonnage etc.), this was very strongly discouraged. The norms were still being evaluated and re-evaluated so if people worked too hard and earned too much, they would be re-adjusted so their income falls. This has led to peer pressure against too “hardworking” people to keep their heads down and not exceed the norms too much. Some minimal income was guaranteed, wo why work too much? If you do, you will have to keep working hard but you will not get more, so why bother? That was the general consensus among the populace. Nobody feared unemployment or not making enough money, and everyone knew that their chances at making more are abysmal, so people generally skived off of work left right and center. In trying not to get anyone too rich, the regime only succeeded to keep everyone poor (with exceptions, on that later).
Since It was not possible to keep an eye on everyone everywhere, the supervisors often did not even try. Greater care was taken to make the numbers look good on paper than to do good work, since it was easier. There were of course companies and individuals that did a good job. Some such companies were kept as the forefront for the regime and occasionally some random worker who exceeded the plan was paraded around as a PR stunt. I saw a discussion with one such worker on TV towards the end of the regime where the reality of this state of affairs was mentioned – that a lot of produced pieces was junk that once written into the glowing reports went not to the shops, but on the scrap pile. This was huge problem that has caused a lot of economical damage to the regime and has led to significant waste of resources.
Another problem was that it actively discouraged improvement and development. In the town where I live there was a small factory that has manufactured computer monitors. Our class was one day on an excursion in there and one moment stuck in mind. It was when the foreman was showing us a piece of new equipment, an automatic soldering table that was capable of soldering all components on a circuit board in one go in a bath of molten tin. He said “but we cannot use it too much, because otherwise we would not have work for all the women in soldering department”. To which our teacher, a bit zealous communist, replied with a sneer “but some capitalist would lave to have it so they could lay off those women”. The foreman looked baffled and not to pleased with this comment, but did not reply. As a child I could not put my finger on exactly where the problem lies with this reasoning, but it felt wrong. We were taught that advances in technology are a good thing, and making work for people easier is a good thing, but here people had to do manually work in an environment full of poisonous fumes even though the work could be done by a machine? It did not feel right. Well we need to keep those buggy whips manufacturers employed…
From that stems the fourth problem. A lot of work done was “work for work’s sake”. Not only was employment guaranteed, but unemployment was illegal. In order to achieve the nearly 100% employment, even with a lot of people skiving off and not working their best as a rule, there was an awful lot of busy but ultimately pointless jobs around. I remember how my brother finished his machinist’s education and went all giddy to his first job. He was actually looking forward to it. He came home all downcast and disappointed after his first day – he was given a stack of notebooks, a pencil and a ruler and he had to draw lines in the notebooks. Completely pointless task, but the factory – coincidentally the same one as in previous example – just did not have anything better for him to do.
Fourth problem was the widespread corruption. Most jobs that required higher education (like a physician, or a teacher) were assigned centrally so that availability of some services is evenly distributed. Not a completely bad idea since distributing these works purely on market basis means that countryside is without schools and doctors. However the implementation was deeply problematic, since party membership and family histories were a part of the consideration for who gets assigned where. So the countryside was sometimes stuck with teachers or doctors who were sent there as a form of punishment for not being subservient to the regime enough – and that was better option than those being sent there for mediocrity or incompetence. And the good spots were reserved for the competent – and, more importantly, the well-connected.
All in all this has led to the regime not progressing economically too much and average people were not particularly well-off. It tried to hide this behind the iron curtain, but some people did manage to visit western countries and word of mouth spread their experiences. And when the iron curtain fell, we could go and see for our selves the reality.
A sparow on the roof “If I were a big bird, chibbi, chabbi, chaibbi-chibbi-chumb…”.
I am not done with the polishing yet, since the hardened layer was too thin and I had to start all over again with hardening. This time i made it during the day with controlled temperature. And also a different hardening mixture because the thinness might have been caused by phosphorus in the steel, which inhibits dissolution of carbon. I shall not go into technical details here, maybe another time in another project, but the result is twofold – the dagger has now really, really hard surface, maybe too hard, it eats abrasives. And it has a few discoloured spots, which I was trying to avoid by using charcoal. It is a beautiful blade nevertheless so I had to solve the conundrum how to keep it from scratching. I cannot just lay it on the workbench, because there will always be abrasive grains from angle grinder, sandpaper etc. and highly polished surface gets unseemly scratches in a blink. So I decided to start on the scabbard.
I intend to do proper, wooden scabbard and for this I have set aside a piece of fast growing poplar (Max 4 (Populus maximowiczii x P. nigra)) that I grow in my garden for firewood. It is very light, porous and soft wood, feels in hand like balsa but does not split or break very easily – it tends to keep hanging on threads. That makes it an ideal material for a scabbard. Since it is a modern fast growing hybrid, it is not authentic material, but it is closest to authentic material (P. nigra) I can get my hands on straight away. The piece I have here is from a four year old tree that I harvested this spring.
Cutting a rectangular block with a draw knife and a plane, cutting the block in two halves and facing them, all was a matter of mere minutes. The wood is extremely easy to work with.
A scabbard must be tight enough for the knife not to fall out with its own weight, but not so tight as to make it difficult to pull it out. So I had to cut half-blade grooves in both halves (I also took this opportunity to use my belt grinder to sharpen all my chisels and carving knives, it was long overdue in any rate). For this a bit harder wood would probably be slightly easier to work with, because with wood this soft I had to be really careful not to cut too much. I did however cut a little more than for a perfect fit, because after the grooves were cut, I had to rough the halves with a hacksaw blade for greater surface and therefore better glue adhesion which takes about half a mm off. There is a special type of plane for that, but I do not own it and even if I did, this is too small surface for a plane. The hacksaw blade is an old and tried trick. Only because the blade teeth are asymmetrical it is important to turn the blade around in order to get symmetrical grooves, or check the direction of the teeth and make them match.
Thus prepared wooden halves were then glued using a hide glue that I cooked from sinews a few years back.
I do not like working with hot hide glue, but not only is it a medieval authentic material, it has one huge advantage over modern glues – it can be redone and repaired with the help of steam over boling water multiple times, so any mistake can be corrected.
Not that I ever make mistakes that must be corrected. The mistake I did not make and therefore did not have to correct this time was forgetting that since the scabbard is hollow, the warm gooey snot gets squeezed not only on the outside, where it is of no consequence, but also on the inside, where it constrains the already tight fit. I also most definitively did not make the scabbard too tight the first time so it was nigh impossible to get the dagger in and out. But after a few days and multiple attempts … What am I saying. After I glued it and clamped it over night it was fit and ready.
Later I left it dry naturally in the sun for a day and I heated it with hot air pistol with the blade inside so the wood forms better around the blade and also to dry it as much as humanly possible. After that all that remained was to cut it to proper length and chamfer the edges. Now I have safe storage for the blade during final polishing and a piece of work done at the same time.
I am not a fan of any particular superhero comics, I have never read any and do not plan to do so in foreseable future. I do however on occasion read some web comics. And the one I wish to recommend today is Hominids by Jordan Kotzebue.
The comic is probably NSFW though (partial nudity), but the artwork is exceptional and the storytelling very captivating. I think you will enjoy it.
Multiple of our many Hibiscus plants have decided to blossom this spring. Three different colors so far, I hope the red ones join the party too.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I thought that I am done with skeleton, I really did. I was wrong and I admit it. There is one more. The rib cage.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
However I cannot remember any interesting story about ribcage from my education. I have a personal story instead regarding deformities of the rib cage.
I had so-called Pectus carinatum, aka pigeon chest, as a child. The worst thing about it is not the physical deformity itself, which is now nearly invisible, but the way it fucked up my head. In addition to my other medical problems I had also suffered from shortness of breath due to constrained lungs. That meant that no matter how much I tried, I never had much stamina for running or swimming or any sport really.
This is where gym teachers come into picture. I find it astounding how all the athletic people I have ever met are convinced that accidents of birth played no role whatsoever and that they are the sole instigators of their strength and beauty and they take all the credit. So children who were not born physically beautiful and strong get ridiculed, body shamed and blamed – sometimes even by teachers whose should know better.
To this day I dislike being seen topless, the subconscious fear of ridicule is still there. And I hate PE teachers.
Another idle doodle made on a piece of blotting paper.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.
In this particular case, much of what I know now I did not even remotely see or experience as a child and I only learned about it later on. Further, I must first state my bias.
My experiences with Romani people were overwhelmingly negative throughout my life, behind the Iron Curtain as well as afterward. I am in no way an objective and dispassionate observer on this matter.
First experience was at the age of approximately 10 years when the merry-go-rounds were in town. I have met a slightly younger Romani boy who was totally downcast because he did not have money for any of the attractions. I offered to lend him 10 crowns (which was a lot). We agreed that he will give me the money back one crown at a time whenever he gets pocket-money and we went on and had loads of fun together that day. He only returned the first crown and his mother has seen him doing so. I have seen her to tell him something very loudly afterwards, but I did not hear what it was. However, next time he only offered threats of violence. After he pulled out a knife on me, I stopped politely asking and avoided him altogether. It was first time someone has betrayed my trust and I could not make sense of it.
(That same boy has tried later to rob a newspaper stand, was caught by police and subsequently beaten by his mother. Allegedly not for trying to steal, but for being caught, which given my experience I unfortunately find believable. At the age around thirteen he attempted to rape a woman near a disco club who fended him off. I have no idea what became of him afterward, I have never heard about him since.)
Second instance was the age of twenty-five. Not having learned my lesson, when a Romani employee at the company I worked for asked me if I would be so kind as to lend him some money for he had run out and he needs to buy diapers for his children, I obliged. On payday, when he was due to give the money back as agreed, he offered me threats of violence.
Third instance, at the same employer, was a conflict with Romani fork-lift driver whom I caught drunk on the job. I tried to be nice and told him politely that he cannot drive fork-lift in this state and should go home to sleep it off. He started to get agitated, my attempts at de-escalating the situation totally failed and he assaulted me. Afterward I was being told that it was all my fault for not being nice enough to an aggressive drunkard. My today position is that I should have called police straightaway and not try to pussyfoot around someone breaking the law.
And there were the all too common instances of Romani people being drunk in public and having shouting matches that can be heard for hundred meters no matter the time of day.
To be clear, I have plenty of negative experiences with plenty of people of different nationalities too. I try my best to not leave these above mentioned experiences to cloud my judgement, but I am wary around Romani people. This has to be mentioned up front for the sake of honesty.
The only people of color present in any meaningful numbers in Czechoslovak Socialist Republic were Romani and Vietnamese. An average Czech only knows other people of color from TV. An average Czech was, and is, also unfortunately very racist, as is typical of people who grow up isolated from outside world. Which makes othering an easy thing to both being deliberately done by politicians and emerging amongst the people themselves.
The official stance was that everyone is equal and racism is bad. Case closed, right? No, of course not. The Romani people were widely disliked and there was a lot of casual racism towards them. Somehow I have managed to not meet this racism until fairly late age (thus my willingness to lend money to a Romani boy), but it was there and eventually I have seen it. The mentions that I was an idiot for lending money to a G∗y, to a N∗r. The mentions how their dark skin is dirty by default and that they are disgusting no matter how well washed. The mentions how they are inherently untrustworthy and treacherous.
The regime did actually try to address the problems on both sides, but did so completely wrong. As with many other things, the regime did not approach the issue by evaluating what the situation is and trying to devise the best way to deal with it. It approached it as many other things with having an answer up front and trying to force everyone into that answer.
Nobody asked Romani people what they want. Nobody asked them how they would like to live, what they have to offer and what their needs are. The regime had all the answers remember? In this case – the best thing to live is in urban settlements and working at a factory. Therefore Romani people have been forced to abandon their nomadic life-style and were forced to live in urban settlements and work in factories. And Czechs were told that from now on everything is hunky-dory and everyone will live together in a happy ever-after. Which of course did not work.
For a societal change of this magnitude to happen first it is necessary to change people’s minds. The attitudes then follow. That takes time and cannot be done by decree, an actual work needs to be done over decades, even generations. But that is not how totalitarian regimes function, so a decree was made and it was expected of everyone to obey.
So Romani people were forced to live in communities with which they had no experience living in, and a lifestyle they did not know how to live. They were not used to eight hours work days so their work morale was terrible. They did not know how to care for an apartment. They were not financially literate so they did not know how to manage a big income once a month instead of many small incomes throughout. The communities inevitably became ghettos in an abominable state of disrepair and skyrocketing crime rates. This in turn instead of weathering down the prejudice of Czechs strengthened them, because they only saw (and see) the Romani as leeches abusing the social safety net.
The regime also knew that an ideal family has only a few children. So some Romani women were sterilized without their knowledge and their consent. An inexcusable violation of bodily autonomy if I ever saw one.
The one thing where the regime had the best chance to get a good handle at things, it bungled it too completely. As it almost always is with such things, education is the key. But Romani people were denied that too, although allegedly not completely deliberately.
Part of the problem was that many Romani children did not learn Czech at home and were not sent to kindergarten. And because the ghettos were very isolated when the time came for them to go to school, they were not able to communicate with teachers and other children properly and were behind other children. Which was of course misconstrued as a lack of intelligence and therefore Romani children were overwhelmingly concentrated in special schools whose purpose on paper was to help to educate children with special needs (mentally and/or physically handicapped). So even in this regard the regime totally failed to break the self-reinforcing cycle that kept Romani people poorly educated and socially isolated. There are Romani individuals who manage to break that cycle for themselves, but they have to beat incredible odds working against them to do so – they get obstacles on both sides of the cultural barrier, with Romani communities not wanting to let them go and Czechs not wanting to accept them.
Unfortunately with the fall of the Iron curtain the situation did not get any better. If anything, it has gotten worse and I think it will not get better during my lifetime. Czechs have proven to be way too much racist and easily manipulated with racist fear mongering, and when Romani people ceased to be a convenient scapegoat, Muslim refugees took their place as convenient boogeyman. As with many other things, the most effective Iron Curtain runs through people’s brains, not through the countryside.
There was a wide variety of doors and windows to be seen, some looking more authentic than others, some being very evidently modern. And of those modern ones some made a better job at concealing this than others.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I think that maybe the two doors at the castle gate (Alte Kanzlei) were truly authentic, or at least very old. Wood and iron can survive centuries when kept dry and these both were good hidden from immediate reach of the elements. The one on the left was on the back side of the building, the red one on the right on the inside of the gate arc.
What I found interesting however is the aforementioned mixture of authentic looking and modern. I am not very well informed on this problematic, but to the best of my knowldedge in CZ if someone owns an authentic historic building that is listed as such and is protected by law, then all repairs must be performed with technology authentic to the time the house was built – at least on the outside, or on the specific part that is being protected. Once I have talked with an old lady whose house had authentic wooden shingles on the roof and she complained about how difficult – not to mention expensive – it is to find somene to do repairs that are confirming with law.
It seems that in Idstein not all houses have such strict protection , although some perhaps do. There was definitively a visible hint of plastic here and there.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
When the spring is in full swing.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
He was not happy having to search in that snow, not happy at all.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Since I am currently in the process of making a rondel dagger like knife, I think it is fitting to hear bit about rondel daggers from someone much more knowledgeable than I am.