The Branch Davidians of Amirim

In 1985 Vernon Wayne Howell visited to Israel, where according to him, recieved a vision that he was a modern day Cyrus, and hence changed his name to David Koresh (Koresh being the Hebrew version of Cyrus).  The trip to Israel is usually described as the turning point in Koresh’s leadership of the Branch Davidians of Texas, a saga that would ultimately end in the tragic 1993 standoff and fire in Waco.

Koresh was not the first person who traveled to the Holy Land and believed that he was endowed with special messianic gifts (hence the entire Jerusalem syndrome  phenomenon), nor was he the first Branch Davidian who made the  pilgrimage to Israel. In 1958, Benjamin and Lois Roden (whom Koresh would succeed as leader of the group), and other Seventh Day Adventists (whom the Branch Davidians are an off-shoot of), were the first organized Christian group to be recognized as an immigrant group in Israel. The Rodens and their followers settled 3 villages, two which were loss due to lack of inhabitants, but they had far greater success with Amirim.

Today a vegetarian resort village  near the Golan Heights, in 1958 the Rodens and others settled Amirim as the first vegetarian village and co-op in Israel.  On the International Vegetarian Union website, there is an article about the village’s founding (although no mention of the Rodens):

NO PILLS. NO INJECTIONS IN VEGETARIAN VILLAGE
Extract from “The Jerusalem Post,” Dec. 11th, 1958:

 ”SAFAD – Israel’s first vegetarian-naturist settlement, called Amirim – was inaugurated on Tuesday with a modest but impressive ceremony in which members of the vegetarian-naturist movement from all over the country participated.

 The secretary of the new ‘moshav shitufi,’ Mr. Mordecai Tarnari, said in his opening speech that to settle at Amirim was not only a physical act but also a spiritual one. ‘The return to nature will bring man back to the state he enjoyed in the Garden of Eden, to a comprehension of the great harmony of nature and the liberation from extremist theories,’ he said.

Mrs. Gila Gun, wife of the chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, said that the purpose of the settlement was to create a healthy, sensible and, above all, happy type of man. She claimed that, because of proper nutrition, there would be no cases of polio in this settlement, fevers would not be reduced artificially, by pills, and there would be no inoculations or injections.”

But as the book “The Branch Davidians of Waco” explains, Amirim was not exactly a utopian experience for the Rodens. Strict keepers of the Sabbath, the Rodens didn’t realize that as part of the co-op community, they would be collective owners of orchards and equipment utilized on the Sabbath. With their refusal to participate, tensions grew between them and the other settlers-eventually the Rodens moved to Jerusalem and eventually back to Texas.

The Last Sultan

The day I arrived in Turkey funeral services were held for a Mr. Ertugrul Osman in Istanbul. Had history taken a different course, Mr. Osman would have been Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Instead Osman, who spent his childhood romping around Dolmabahce Palace became an all too typical figure of 20th century-the stateless exile. He returned to Turkey for the first time in 1992, and on one trip he revisited the Palace, which he insisted on seeing with a tour group just like everyone else. 

 Although the quiet spoken Mr. Osman never spoke of any desire to restore the Ottoman dynasty (or the caliphate for that matter), for years he traveled the world not with a passport of any country (he had lived in New York since 1933), but with a certificate provided by his lawyer-because he still viewed himself as a citizen of the Ottoman Empire. In 2004 he asked for and was granted a passport from the Republic of Turkey.

Out of the Country

Sorry blogging has been so sporadic for the past month, anyways, I’m traveling to Turkey for 2 weeks starting on Friday, when I come back, I hope to have tons of new blog posts, and if I figure out how to upload pics from my digital camera-pics as well.

Rose Wilder Lane & King Zog

Reading this New Yorker article about Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane (of Little House fame) I was struck by this little gem; among Rose Lane’s associates was Ahmet Zogu aka King Zog of Albania.

Excitement peaked, I tried to research as much as I could about Lane and King Zog. Unfortunately, despite the fact that she at one time rejected a marriage proposal from Zogu (and wrote a letter home about it) and despite the fact that both were considerably well known figures on the world stage-there is scant information, either primary or secondary source directly about their relationship. Needless to say, if I ever came across said letter to her parents describing Zogu’s failed marriage proposal, I would consider that the holy grail of my research. However, thanks to google books, in particular the books  “The Ghost in the Little House” and “Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane”, I was able to get a few more insights.

One of the most obvious questions, is what made them click? On the surface, there seems little common interest between a Minnesota libertarian and an Albanian Monarchist. But both Albania and politics appeared to serve as natural conduits for their relationship. Lane traveled in, and wrote extensively about Albania. But more than just wild frontiers and the ”picturesque romance” (to borrow a term straight from that time period) of 1920s Albania seemed to attract Lane to Zogu. Politically, Lane saw in Zogu what she saw to be a kindred spirit. For Lane, Zogu was a national hero, a strong man in the mold of a Herbert Hoover (if you read the New Yorker article, you’ll know that Lane was a very strong (to put it in polite and mild terms) supporter of Hoover). 

 Alas, while there is  little specific info on the web in terms of King Zog and Rose Wilder Lane, I did stumble on this brief account of Rose Wilder Lane in the Shala Valley and her encounter with a blood feud: (after all, if you cannot write about love, might as well write about death).

In 1921, Rose Wilder Lane daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and someone
well familiar with frontiers, visited the Shala Valley of northern Albania with
a pair of Red Cross co-workers who hoped to establish a school in the moun-
tains. They were accompanied by Rrok Perolli, an agent of the interior ministry,
Rexh Meta, a 12-year-old Muslim orphan (and head of his household) whom Rose eventually put through Cambridge University, and a pair of well-armed
gendarmes. In her memoir of the trip, The Peaks of Shala (1923), Lane vividly
describes the customs and beliefs of the members of the Shala tribe she encoun-
tered and recounts a number of discussions she witnessed concerning the place
of tribal society within the nascent nation state.
Throughout her account, the Shala and neighboring Shosh tribes are in
the midst of a blood feud. She relates one story in which a Shala man abducted
a Shosh woman so that his son might marry her (Lane 1923: 30–31). Not an
unusual event, except the woman turned out to be married and her husband took
offense. To preserve his honor, the husband shot and killed the son. According
to the Kanun, the murder was unjustified, since it was the father who should
have been shot not his son. The result was a series of retribution killings (sanc-
tioned by the law code) that ultimately settled the dispute. Such feuds were
endemic to tribal life and leave their material traces in the form of kulla.
Punctuating periods of blood feud are besas, local peace treaties during
which all killings cease. A besa may be performed to negotiate an end to a feud,
to give men an opportunity to participate in the harvest, or to cope with an
outside threat.

“I Feel Slovenia”

The Slovenian Press Agency has a short blurb on how Slovenian products primarily sold in foreign markets will now carry the tourist slogan “I Feel Slovenia” on them. Evidently hoping that the next time a couple Hamburg bites down on a Gorenjka chocolate, they will also feel motivated to visit Slovenia.

The blurb got me thinking of tourist slogans in general. Take for example, Slovenia’s. Thanks to Sleeping with Pengovsky, I can’t help but think of double entendres every time I hear that slogan.

But, what about other countries? I like India’s “Eternally Yours” slogan, and Cyprus’ “A whole world on a single island” slogan, and Spain’s unpretentiously simple “Smile! you are in Spain.” As for Wales’, “Big Country”, were they even trying?  

Not surprisingly, country slogans are often subjected to academic, marketing and political analyses to test their viability. Only a few weeks ago in S. Korea, presidential adviser  Euh Yoon-Dae worried that their slogan “Dynamic Korea” would remind potential tourists too much of demonstrations and unrest, and not of S. Korea’s impressive transformation into one of the most advanced IT countries in the entire world. Nor can slogans be separated from current events and political upheavals, as is the case last winter with Georgia’s somewhat bombastic  tourist slogan “And the Winner is Georgia.”

And speaking of names and geopolitical headaches, Balkan Insight reports that Skopje favors the compromise ”Northern Republic of Macedonia”  in their ongoing naming war with Greece. As for myself, I’m partial to Belgraded Blog’s commentator Paul C.’s suggestion “Macedonia (Not Macedonia).”

Your Life in Six Words

From Smith Magazine:

Everyone has a story. Can you tell yours in six words?

The creative-prompt has also been turned into the book “Not Quite What I Was Planning” among the excerpts:

After Harvard, had baby with crackhead.
- Robin Templeton

70 years, few tears, hairy ears.
- Bill Querengesser

Watching quietly from every door frame.
- Nicole Resseguie

Catholic school backfired. Sin is in!
- Nikki Beland

Savior complex makes for many disappointments.
- Alanna Schubach

Nobody cared, then they did. Why?
- Chuck Klosterman

(Yes, it is a slow blogging day).

Six degree of seperation

A few days ago I wrote about the release of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. It also turns out that there is a link (albeit weak) between Fromme and the Croatian diaspora (or at least the actvist pro-separtist branch of the diaspora). Among Squeaky’s memorable events in prison was her attack on fellow inmate, Julienne Busic. Busic, along with her husband Zvonko, were convicted of hijacking TWA flight 355 in 1976.

If things had turned out differently between Fromme and Busic, Squeaky might have been promoting “Poziv na dostojanstvo i slobodu” instead of “ATWA”

A Rabbi, a Priest, a Monk and an Iman…

No, this does not end with them in a bar, but rather in a T.V. studio. “Penitents Compete” is  a new Turkish reality show where the aforementioned religious authorities try to convince a group of atheists to convert to their religion.-In addition to their new found spirituality (and fame) the converted will also get a free trip to a holy city/country (Vatican, Mecca, Jerusalem, Tibet) of their new  faith.

With slick, if not exactly subtle advertising (“You will find serenity in this competition,” “We give you the biggest prize ever; we represent the belief in God,” “Believe, repent, God will forgive you”), the show producers view their show with loftier ambitions than your run-of-the-mill reality T.V. (No doubt thinking of reality show rival ”Ver coskuyu”- where contestants attempt to belt out a tune, all while being showered with bugs & subjected to electric shocks.)

Esoteric ambitions aside, not everyone is convinced the show is a good idea, with the show accused of everything from “tastelessness” to having a “secret Islamist agenda.”  When the President of Religious Affairs, Ali Bardakoglu refused to suppy a Turkish Iman, show producer, and no stranger to hyperbole, Sisi Soylu, responded that he was guilty of “committing a sin.”

Alas with a Tunisian Iman in place the show is geared to debut this fall after Ramadan.

Important Questions

My attempt at water cooler blogging: So, did anyone else see the season 3 premier of Mad Men ? Or, in to make this post more Balkan centric: “Ljudi sa Menhetna” as the show is known in Serbia or “Momci s Madisona”-the Croatian version.

Squeaky Sings

When I decided to change the focus of this blog from strictly Balkan related “Blogging Balkanistan” to the Balkans and whatever else I felt like writing about “other eccentricities”, it was pretty much designed for a moment like this. On August 14th, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was released from prison. For those not familiar with Squeaky Fromme, this excerpt in the New Yorker is a pretty good summary:

Squeaky Fromme is out of jail, which either means that the dramas of the seventies have finally been played out or that the decade is back and here to stay. Fromme, whose real name was Lynette, pointed a loaded gun at President Gerald Ford while wearing a red robe, before being wrestled away by Secret Service agents. As a child, she was a member of a dance troupe that appeared on the Lawrence Welk show. Later, she became a follower of Charles Manson, and, though not one of the Sharon Tate killers, she made a spectacle of herself at his trial. Later still, in 1987, she broke out of jail and wandered in the West Virginia woods for a couple of days. She is only sixty now.

And while Fromme never took part in the Tate-LaBianca murders, few “family” members (with the obvious exception of Manson himself) have had such an indelible, if ill-deserved place in Ameican pop-culture.  Arguably her biggest moment of pop-culture fame outside her connection with the Manson group, came courtesy of Stephen Sondheim and his musical “Assassins“, about assassins and attempted assassins of U.S. presidents. And if that sounds like an odd concept for a musical, than it is probably no stranger than a performer from the Lawrence Welk Show becoming one of Charles Manson’s most devout followers.

“Assassins” features, among other things, Charles Guiteau doing a cakewalk up the gallows and Leon Czolgosz accompanied by a hoe-down. As for Fromme herself, in the musical she sings a duet with Sara Jane Moore (also an attempted Ford assassin), but her big number is her duet with John Hinckley, as the LA Times blog describes  it:

Hinckley, who was obsessed with impressing actress Jodie Foster, sings to “Jodie darlin’ ” and Fromme to “Charlie darlin’.” Consider these snippets of the lyrics. Hinckley begins:

I am nothing
You are wind and water and sky, Jodie.
Tell me, Jodie
How I can earn your love.

 A bit later, Fromme sings:

I am nothing
You are wind and devil and God, Charlie
Take my blood and my body
For your love.
Let me feel fire,
Let me drink poison

Somehow the desire for approval leads to murderous thoughts. After swapping lyrics back and forth, the two finally sing in unison:

Let me prove worthy of your love.
I’ll find a way to earn your love, Wait and see.
Then you will turn your love to me

Confounding and pathetic? Certainly. Beyond understanding? Indeed. And that, perhaps, is the point. Except to the assassin, or would-be assassin, the attacks and killings on our presidents have never made sense.