The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: Germany

  • An Open Letter to a Professional Genealogist

    From one of a dying breed who is desperate to keep the candle burning.

  • Ancient Dental Tartar: A New Avenue of Inquiry for Archeology

    This almost makes me want to stop flossing my teeth.

  • Happy Birthday, Estonia!

    If any country deserves a piece of cake, it’s this one.

  • The Mystery That Is Kaspar Hauser

    People just love an unanswered question.

  • You Have Been Warned

    I’ve seen two things recently that have made my hair stand on end because they seem to be so prescient. We are living in terrifying times. And they’re all the more terrifying because these things have happened before. The first thing I’m referring to is the Hulu series, the Handmaid’s Tale, which is based on…

  • My Magical European Summer

    Recently, I came across a diary that I wrote when I was 19, and I read it for the first time since I wrote it. That summer was the high point of my life. (So far, at least. Who knows what the future holds.) I was traveling through Europe, and I was falling in love.…

  • Trump is the New Hitler

    I have a German last name, and because of that I have always taken the events that led up to, and occurred during, World War II very seriously. Growing up, I was fascinated by the Diaries of Anne Frank and all things related to concentration camps. I was proud of the fact that my father…

  • Jeannette Rankin: A Woman Who Stood Alone

    Recently I watched a program about the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and in it they mentioned in passing that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt went to congress to ask them to declare war on Japan and there was only one vote against it. Think about that for a minute. That had…

  • Messages in Bottles

    Last month a German fisherman pulled the world’s oldest known message in a bottle from the Baltic Sea. It was tossed into the water back in 1913, and contained a postcard that included the writer’s home address in Berlin. Due to water damage, the rest of the message is illegible, but work will soon be…

  • The Plight of Haitian-Dominicans

    It’s a small island. You’d think Haitians and Dominicans would have learned to get along by now. Not so much. In May, the Dominican Republic ruled that if you were born of Haitian parents any time after 1929 (which means, basically, all of them) you would be stripped of your Dominican citizenship and deported. Never…