Take one if you miss your dad too.
Showing posts with label in memoriam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label in memoriam. Show all posts
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Friday, November 21, 2025
Sunday, November 16, 2025
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Friday, March 14, 2025
A New Tartan Memorializes Those Executed Under Scotland’s Witchcraft Act
A new Scottish tartan has been crafted to honor the thousands of individuals—predominantly women—who were executed for witchcraft in Scotland between the 16th and 18th centuries. The Witches of Scotland, a movement advocating for "Justice for people accused and convicted under the Witchcraft Act 1563-1736," spearheaded this effort.
The initiative was driven by Witches of Scotland founders Claire Mitchell KC and Zoe Venditozzi, with the artistic vision brought to life by Clare Campbell, the creative mind behind the Prickly Thistle tartan mill. This meaningful design was formally registered on February 11, 2025, in the Scottish Register of Tartans.
The tartan's color palette is deeply symbolic: black and grey evoke the somberness of the period and the ashes of those who perished, while red stands for the bloodshed, and pink highlights the legal ties that bound the trial documents both then and now. Intricately woven into the fabric, the thread count subtly encodes the years 1563 and 1736 (1+5+6+3 = 15 and 1+7+3+6 = 17), these numbers are carefully included within the black and grey bands, encircling a white check pattern of three threads that symbolize the campaign’s three key goals: achieving a pardon, an apology, and establishing memorials. Additionally, the 173 black threads intricately stitched into the tartan’s squares commemorate the 173 years during which the Witchcraft Act was enforced.
https://www.witchesofscotland.com/
https://www.pricklythistlescotland.com/
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Sunday, May 12, 2024
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Thursday, November 16, 2023
Sunday, June 18, 2023
Monday, November 21, 2022
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Monday, January 17, 2022
MLK Day 2022
Americans reinvented MLK after his assassination. Let’s remember what he really stood for
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
JANUARY 16, 2022 7:13 AM
Martin Luther King Jr. was not a well-liked man. He was one of the most polarizing figures in the United States during his final few years of life. He was not the cuddly creature we re-invent every King Day to lie to ourselves and our kids about how he only wanted us to get along. His approval rating began to rise only after he was no longer here to demand America live up to its ideals.
King wanted peace, but not at the expense of equality. He wanted little black girls and boys to play with little white girls and boys, but not if it meant pretending racism didn’t exist. He respected authority, but challenged those wearing badges and carrying batons and sitting in the Oval Office.
He wanted moral clarity, not cheap comfort. Were he alive today, he’d still be hated by those wedded to the status quo. Because he’d notice the poor still being vilified as lazy. He’d see large corporations, like Walmart, brag proudly about modest pay increases then quietly announce thousands of layoffs. The GOP would still have enacted a tax law skewed to the rich then pass work requirements for Medicaid benefits – something they have never required of wealthy Americans receiving government largesse. He’d know the government pays private collectors triple what they retrieve in back taxes from the low-income while high-income tax cheats skate.
That’s why we should shelve the “I Have a Dream” speech this King Day. It has been used too often as an excuse to not have to face hard truths or fight for the most vulnerable among us.
Let us instead remember when King refused to denounce protesters by saying “a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
And when he critiqued capitalism: “Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.”
And when he demanded “a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”
And when he said, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
And when he was exasperated by those telling him to wait: “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
He wanted justice and peace. If he could have only one, there’s no doubt which he’d choose.
Link to original article:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article257338422.html
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
JANUARY 16, 2022 7:13 AM
Martin Luther King Jr. was not a well-liked man. He was one of the most polarizing figures in the United States during his final few years of life. He was not the cuddly creature we re-invent every King Day to lie to ourselves and our kids about how he only wanted us to get along. His approval rating began to rise only after he was no longer here to demand America live up to its ideals.
King wanted peace, but not at the expense of equality. He wanted little black girls and boys to play with little white girls and boys, but not if it meant pretending racism didn’t exist. He respected authority, but challenged those wearing badges and carrying batons and sitting in the Oval Office.
He wanted moral clarity, not cheap comfort. Were he alive today, he’d still be hated by those wedded to the status quo. Because he’d notice the poor still being vilified as lazy. He’d see large corporations, like Walmart, brag proudly about modest pay increases then quietly announce thousands of layoffs. The GOP would still have enacted a tax law skewed to the rich then pass work requirements for Medicaid benefits – something they have never required of wealthy Americans receiving government largesse. He’d know the government pays private collectors triple what they retrieve in back taxes from the low-income while high-income tax cheats skate.
That’s why we should shelve the “I Have a Dream” speech this King Day. It has been used too often as an excuse to not have to face hard truths or fight for the most vulnerable among us.
Let us instead remember when King refused to denounce protesters by saying “a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
And when he critiqued capitalism: “Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.”
And when he demanded “a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”
And when he said, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
And when he was exasperated by those telling him to wait: “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
He wanted justice and peace. If he could have only one, there’s no doubt which he’d choose.
Link to original article:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article257338422.html
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Saturday, October 24, 2020
LGBT History Month: Walter Degen
During World War II, the Nazis arrested 100,000 gay men, and imprisoned 50,000, many of whom were slaughtered. While this post focuses on one man alone, Walter Degen here stands for all the gay men who were brutalized and killed simply for being gay.
WALTER DEGEN
This profile of Walter Degen appears on the site "Faces of Auschwitz", a collaboration between the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, a Brazilian photo colorization specialist Marina Amaral, and a dedicated team of academics, journalists and volunteers. The goal of the project is to honor the memory and lives of Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners by colorizing registration photographs culled from the museum’s archive and sharing individual stories of those whose faces were photographed.
In this age where Fascism is once gain on the rise globally but most shockingly in the United States, at a time when xenophobic hate encouraged by the current President runs rampant, and the Supreme Court of the United States is about to install a justice whose extreme, radicalized ideas threaten the future of gay rights (among MANY other rights), we need to remember how far it can all go, now more than ever.
https://facesofauschwitz.com/gallery/walter-degen/
WALTER DEGEN
Walter Degen (nr 20285) was born on 4 January 1909 in Mörchingen – between 1871–1918 Mörchingen was located in Germany, today it is a commune called Morhange in North East France. Walter was a locksmith. He was transported to the camp within a group of 21 prisoners deported by the Stapo and Kipo from Vienna, Brünn, Prague, Troppau, Breslau, Schwerin, Frankfurt an der Oder and Kattowitz. They were registered in the camp on 29 August 1941. Walter Degen was registered both as a homosexual and a German political prisoner.
Paragraph 175 In Auschwitz, prisoners of German nationality designated by a pink triangle were arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code as “asocial parasites” for “endangering the morality and purity of the German race”. Paragraph 175 made homosexual acts between males a crime. The Nazis arrested an estimated 100,000 homosexual men, 50,000 of whom were imprisoned. The majority of the several thousand homosexuals arrested before the war ended up in concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, or Flossenbürg. According to the current state of knowledge, at least 77 prisoners of Auschwitz were persecuted for their homosexuality, of which at least 43 died. Homosexuals were among the most abused groups in the camps.
PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS
Conditions in the camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals. As was true with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. At Buchenwald concentration camp, SS physician Dr. Carl Vaernet performed operations designed to convert men to heterosexuals: the surgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone. Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as “asocials” or “prostitutes.” One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled “licentious Lesbian” on her mug shot; but she was also a “stateless Jew,” sufficient cause for deportation. Among the Jewish inmates at Ravensbrück concentration camp selected for extermination, she was gassed in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, a “euthanasia” killing center in Germany, in 1942.
Consequently, the vast majority of homosexuals arrested under Paragraph 175 were Germans or Austrians. Unlike Jews, men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in eastern Europe. Nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler’s military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy.
After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused. Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic (West Germany) until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration. Source – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In May 1942 Walter Degen was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp. It is not known if he survived.Paragraph 175 In Auschwitz, prisoners of German nationality designated by a pink triangle were arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code as “asocial parasites” for “endangering the morality and purity of the German race”. Paragraph 175 made homosexual acts between males a crime. The Nazis arrested an estimated 100,000 homosexual men, 50,000 of whom were imprisoned. The majority of the several thousand homosexuals arrested before the war ended up in concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, or Flossenbürg. According to the current state of knowledge, at least 77 prisoners of Auschwitz were persecuted for their homosexuality, of which at least 43 died. Homosexuals were among the most abused groups in the camps.
PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS
Conditions in the camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals. As was true with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. At Buchenwald concentration camp, SS physician Dr. Carl Vaernet performed operations designed to convert men to heterosexuals: the surgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone. Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as “asocials” or “prostitutes.” One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled “licentious Lesbian” on her mug shot; but she was also a “stateless Jew,” sufficient cause for deportation. Among the Jewish inmates at Ravensbrück concentration camp selected for extermination, she was gassed in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, a “euthanasia” killing center in Germany, in 1942.
Consequently, the vast majority of homosexuals arrested under Paragraph 175 were Germans or Austrians. Unlike Jews, men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in eastern Europe. Nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler’s military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy.
After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused. Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic (West Germany) until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration. Source – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This profile of Walter Degen appears on the site "Faces of Auschwitz", a collaboration between the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, a Brazilian photo colorization specialist Marina Amaral, and a dedicated team of academics, journalists and volunteers. The goal of the project is to honor the memory and lives of Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners by colorizing registration photographs culled from the museum’s archive and sharing individual stories of those whose faces were photographed.
In this age where Fascism is once gain on the rise globally but most shockingly in the United States, at a time when xenophobic hate encouraged by the current President runs rampant, and the Supreme Court of the United States is about to install a justice whose extreme, radicalized ideas threaten the future of gay rights (among MANY other rights), we need to remember how far it can all go, now more than ever.
https://facesofauschwitz.com/gallery/walter-degen/
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