T minus zero
Posted on January 24, 2022 by canadaslim
Landschlacht, Switzerland, Monday 17 January 2022
“T minus zero” means “out of time“.
This comes from acountdown convention used in by both theAmerican military and NASA.
Generally, it is used when counting down to a major event that will happen at a specific time.
Mathematically, T is time, minus whatever amount of time is left until the event happens.
If the New Year’s ball is dropping in ten minutes, one could say “The ball is dropping in T minus 10 minutes and counting!”
Therefore, “T minus zero” means that there is no time left.
“Tolerate what is created because of the Creator.”
(Yunus Emre)

“The past is a foreign country.
They do things differently there.“
L.P. Hartley,The Go-Between(1953)

This evening I find myself thinking a lot about the past and not the future.
Of at least the past as it pertains to the future.
In the short time I am in the area, when my time and attention is not required by the wife, it is a question of when and where I can meet friends from my Starbucks days.

So far, I have met Nesha (of Serbia) and Volkan (of Turkey), and my former students at Dimetix in Herisau, Naomi and Alanna of Canada, and Augustin from…..
Everywhere.
I am still hoping to see Sinan of Amriswil, Katja and Michael of St. Gallen, Sonja of Luzern, and whomever I can arrange time with, next week.
The dilemma I am presented with in all of these reunions lies in the explanation of where I have been and what have I done since I left Switzerland on 1 March 2021.
What have I seen in Turkey?
How is teaching in Eskişehir?
What was my life like?
And the problem is I am not really sure what it is I should tell them and, more importantly, what it is they want to hear.

I have been to faraway places with strange-sounding names as distant in their imagination as Hogwarts or Oz is in mine.


Far away places with strange sounding names
Far away over the sea
Those far away places with the strange sounding names are
Calling
Calling me
Goin’ to China or maybe Siam
I wanna see for myself
Those far away places I’ve been reading about in a
Book that I took from a shelf
I start getting’ restless whenever I hear the whistle of a train
I pray for the day I can get underway
And look for those castles in Spain
They call me a dreamer
Well maybe I am
But I know that I’m burning to see those
Far away places with the strange sounding names
Calling, calling me
Me.

I search for words that can transport them from the reality they know to the reality I have experienced, but perhaps this is as impossible as describing an experiment with LSD to someone who has always been clean and sober.

It is akin to showing a postcard of the Colosseum and hoping that you can recreate in them the sensation of running your fingers lightly across the centuries-worn marble blocks, trying to visualize those whose hands carefully shaped and placed each one.
Photographs are never the same as memories.

To feel the dusty, stony streets of Pompeii beneath travel-sore feet on a blazing summer day with the crater of Vesuvius looming over you.
It changes the way you think about what happened there 2,000 years ago.
I couldn’t tear my gaze from the preserved figures showing the bodies of human beings and animals contorted in fear and torment, ghosts winding their ethereal and melancholy way through the empty doorways and windows of everydomus.
I felt ashamed in looking on their suffering as a mere spectator.
I could hardly bear to look and taking photos felt like sacrilege, but I couldn’t stand not to lock each one in my memory.

Do I bother speaking about Wall Street English Eskisehir?
Its cast of characters – staff and students?
Do I bother mentioning our jargon – Encounters, Complimentary Classes, Social Clubs – or do I remain silent and save myself many explanations?

Do I speak of what is Western about Eskişehir (for example, the traffic, the ES Park shopping mall, my fitness centre in a three-star hotel, the city’s energetic mayor Yilmaz Büyükersen, the high speed trains to Ankara and Istanbul, the flashy tram system, the city’s three universities, the nachos and rum Sunday evening feasts with my colleague Rasool) or would they be more enchanted by descriptions of meerschaum trinkets, the appealing crop of Ottoman houses in the Odunpazari district, the fairytale castle, the beauty of Parisian bridges and Venetian-style boats of the Porsuk River, the tranquillity of Sazova Park, and the poetry of native son Yunus Emre?

“The waters always flowed, dried up, passed the time, many sultans left the throne, the world is a window, and everyone looked.”
(Yunus Emre)
“Let’s meet, let’s make it easy.
Let’s love, let’s be loved, the world is left to no one.
Ingenuity is to be able to see beauty, to have the secret of loving.
I have read and collected the meaning of four books.
As for love, I saw it was a long syllable.
I am a bunch of dirt and a little bit of water and that’s what I am proud of.
If I don’t say I love you, it is because I am choked by love.
My job is for love, the place of love is hearts, and I have come to make hearts.”
(Yunus Emre)
Of what shall I speak?
What can I say?
Shall I speak the truth?
Do I know what the truth is?

I think again of the airport from whence I flew back to Switzerland.

Sabiha Gökçen Airport, Pendik, Istanbul, Turkey, Monday 27 December 2021
The airport is named afterSabiha Gökçen, adoptive daughter ofMustafa Kemal Atatürkand the first femalefighter pilot in the world.
She is commemorated by an airport, but how should she be seen?
According to official Turkish sources and interviews with Sabiha Gökçen, she was the daughter of Mustafa Izzet Bey and Hayriye Hanım, both of whom were ofBosniak ancestry.

During Atatürk’s visit toBursain 1925, Sabiha, who was only 12 years old, asked for permission to talk with Atatürk and expressed her wish to study at aboarding school.
After learning her story and about her miserable living conditions, Atatürk decided to adopt her and asked Sabiha’s brother for permission to take her to theÇankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, where Sabiha would live with Atatürk’s other adoptive daughters, Zehra,Afet and Rukiye.



Sabiha attended the Çankaya Primary School inAnkara and the Üsküdar American AcademyinIstanbul.

After the introduction of theSurname Law, Atatürk gave her the family name Gökçen on 19 December 1934.
‘Gök‘ means sky inTurkish and Gökçen means ‘belonging or relating to the sky‘.
However, she was not an aviator at that time,and it was only six months later that Sabiha developed a passion for flying.
Atatürk attached great importance toaviationand for that purpose oversaw the foundation of theTurkish Aeronautical Associationin 1925.

He took Sabiha along with him to the opening ceremony ofTürkkuşu(Turkish bird)Flight Schoolon 5 May 1935.
During theairshow ofgliders andparachutistsinvited from foreign countries, she got very excited.
As Atatürk asked her whether she would also want to become a skydiver, she nodded:
“Yes indeed, I am ready right now“.

Atatürk instructed Fuat Bulca, the head of the school, to enroll her as the first female trainee.
She was meant to become askydiver, but she was much more interested in flying, so she earned herpilot’s licence.
Gökçen was sent to Russia, together with seven male students, for an advanced course in glider and powered aircraft piloting.

However, when she was in Moscow, she learned the news that her sister Zehra had died, and with collapsed morale, she immediately returned to Turkey, isolating herself from social activities for some time.
After a while, with Atatürk’s insistence, Sabiha began working again.

At Eskişehir Aviation School, she received special flight training from Savmi Uçan and Muhittin Bey.
She began flying a motorized aircraft for the first time on 25 February 1936.
Gökçen, due to the success in flight training, Ataturk himself said:
“You’ve made me very happy.
Now I can explain what I have planned for you.
Perhaps you’ll be the first military woman pilot in the world, the world’s first military woman pilot to be from Turkish descent is a proud event, you can imagine, right?
Now I will act immediately and send you to Tayyare School in Eskişehir.
You will receive a special education there.”
As girls were not being accepted by theTurkish War Academiesin those years, Sabiha Gökçen was provided, on Atatürk’s orders, with a personalized uniform, and attended a special education programme of eleven months at theTayyare Mektebi(Aviation School) inEskisehirin the academic year of 1936-1937.

After receiving her flight patents (diploma) she trained to become a war pilot at the 1st Airplane Regiment in Eskişehir for six months.
She improved her skills by flying bomber and fighter planes at the 1st Aircraft Regiment inEskişehir Airbase and gained experience after participating in theAegean andThraceexercises in 1937.
In that same year, she took part in military operations at theDersim rebellion and became the first Turkish female air force combat pilot.

She stated later in her life in an interview regarding her bombing and killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians that:
“I saw them as animals when I bombed them, not as humans.”
A report of the General Staff mentioned the “serious damage” that had been caused by her 50kg bomb to a group of 50 fleeing Kurds.
She was awarded with atakdirname(letter of appreciation).
She was also awarded theTurkish Aeronautical Association’s first Murassa(jeweled) Medal for her superior performance in this operation.
In 1938, she carried out a five-day flight around theBalkan countries to great acclaim.
In the same year, she was appointed chief trainer of theTürkkusu Flight Schoolof theTurkish Aeronautical Association, where she served until 1954 as a flight instructorand became a member of the association’s executive board.
She trained four female aviators, Edibe Subaşı, Yıldız Uçman, Sahavet Karapas andNezihe Viranyali.
Sabiha Gökçen flew around the world for a period of 28 years until 1964.
Her book entitled A Life Along the Path of Atatürk was published in 1981 by the Turkish Aeronautical Association to commemorate Atatürk’s 100th birthday.

Gökçen made headlines and sparked controversy, in 2004, whenHrant Dink, a journalist of Turkish-Armenian descent, published an interview with a person claiming to be Sabiha’s niece that claimed that she was ofArmenian origin.
Many contested the matter, including her adopted sister and the last living daughter of Atatürk, Ülkü Adatepe, disputing this during an interview and stating that Sabiha was ofBosniak ancestry.
According to Adatepe, Sabiha’s mother Hayriye and father Mustafa İzzet were ethnicBosniaks.

The notion that Gökçen could have been Armenian caused controversy in the country.
The Turkish General Staffsaid the debate “mocked national values” and was “not conducive to social peace“.
Hrant Dink, the journalist who wrote the article, came under criticism, most notably from newspaper columnists and Turkish nationalist groups.
AUS consul dispatch leaked byWikiLeaksand penned by an official from the consulate in Istanbul observed that the entire affair “exposed an ugly streak of racism in Turkish society.”
It is also believed that the affair was one of the reasons that led toHrant Dink’s assassinationin Istanbul in January 2007.

Sabiha Gökçen died of heart failure at the age of 88 atGülhane Military Medical Academyon 22 March 2001.

It is sad to think that there was less controversy about her being the adopted daughter of a leader some view as a dictator and her view of Kurds as animals than there was over the possibility that she was descended from Armenia.
Certainly I can respect the first woman entering any formerly male-exclusive profession.
Frankly, the only criteria we should judge a person on is their character and their capabilities.
I don’t care what the name of an airport is as long as it effectively does what it should: facilitates travelling.
My point of mentioning the airport’s name at all is to wonder whether history is truly fact or whether it is truly a story to explain events that we ourselves were not there to witness or could fully understand.
It is said that opinions are a lot like noses, in that everyone has one.
By virtue of each person’s individuality opinions between people will consequently vary.

I try to follow the François Hemsterhuis view:
“Beautiful is that which gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time.“
I seek a view of history which is by this definition –
Beautiful.
But can we see history beyond our own blinders?

This world is a child’s playground for me
A spectacle unfolds day and night before me.
How can Sahbai be a poet?
He has never tasted the wine, nor has he ever gambled.
He has not been beaten with slippers by lovers,
Nor has he ever seen the inside of a jail.
It is not praised if you are the only one to understand what you speak
Interesting is the situation when you speak and the others understand.
I don’t need appreciation neither do I need any return
Let not be if there is no meaning in my couplets.
The eye began to see, the arm found strength
That which was wrapped in ancient clothes,
Now put on a new dress.
It should be said, it’s an excellent inventory
So what’s there to see that’s worth seeing?
And if you talk with me of Laws and Rules
Open your eyes, and in this ancient halting-place
Before the Laws and Rules that the times now have
All others have become things of yesteryears
If what the eye sees does not rankle in the heart
Sweet is the flow of life in travel spent.
Indian poet Ghalib

Truthmay be found in theheart of aphilosopher,but seldom in the figures of a statistician.
It is far too delicate a thing to be pinned down to columns of numbers on ruled paper.
Much of the material is controversial, butif controversy means the stimulation of thought and ideas, so much the better.
It is only thus that the citizens of a republic may protect themselves from the evils threatening them from within their borders as well as those which threaten from beyond.
American writer Louis Bromfield

Not onedeathbut many,
not accumulation butchange,
The feedback proves, the feedback is
thelaw
Into the sameriverno man steps twice
No one remains, nor is, one
Around an appearance, one common model, we grow up
many.
Else how is it,
if we remain the same,
we take pleasure now
in what we did not take pleasure before?
Love?
Contrary objects?
Admire and / or find fault?
Use other words, feel other passions,
Have nor figure,
appearance, disposition, tissue
the same?
To be in different states without a change
is not a possibility.
American poet Charles Olson

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 28 December 2021
Perhaps one needs to be medicated to appreciate yesterday’s poetry.
And medicated I surely am.
I have consumed, upon arrival back home from Zürich Airport and Konstanz, NeoCitron (a lemon concoction), MediNacht (an absinthe-looking vile liquid that knocks you out for the night), aspirin and Tiger Balm (for my headache that will not leave) and Wicks vapo-rub (for the cough that will not die).



I have a man-cold.
I am not happy.
I think of the apartment wherein I have lived in for a decade.
I have been absent for ten months and much has changed.
My clutter from common areas has been piled into my bedroom, the kitchen has been renovated into a postmodern wonder I no longer recognize, there are new windows around the apartment, new light switches on the walls, new faucets in the sink.
Of course, traces of the familiar remain: same furniture, same posters on the walls, same magnets on the metallic door frames, same clothes in the closets and on the coat racks, same books on the shelves, same sentiments between man and wife.
But am I the same?
Is she?

In all my travelling today there was no chance to pick up a New York Times, so to aid sleep – for I am restless despite all the stuff in and on my person – I am left with the English language newspapers I picked up at the airport earlier today: the Daily Sabah and the Hürriyet Daily News.

What awaits me upon my return to Eskisehir is a pile of these Turkish papers yet to be read and written about, for there is within me the desire to show the world the places I visit from the perspective of the places themselves.


Travelling adds something powerful and vital to the experience of studying history.
Whenever I have travelled to a location hitherto known to me only in the pages of a book, I have been overcome by awe and wonder.
But might such experiences lead to exactly the kinds of distortion that the modern profession of history exists to straighten out?

One remarkable aspect of Turkey is the veracity of the slogan:
Turkey: the world’s largest museum.
The slogan is the theme of a project, initiated jointly by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the Turkish Travel Agencies Union (TÜRSAB) Museums Initiatives, and the Bilkent Cultural Initiatives, to promote Turkey’s historical heritage in an active way, to be helpful in the field of the history of civilizations.
There are museums and ancient sites all around Turkey, each with their own impressive stories, that reveal the importance of the history of humanity in the Republic, a cultural and historical heritage from the Paleolithic age to the Hittite, Seljuk, Byzantine, Ottoman and Republican eras.
I am a mere speck of dust lost in the winds of change.
The Daily Sabah, for all its quality, speaks little of the heritage of this land.
But regularly the Hürriyet Daily News seeks to educate the reader about the heritage that is their home.

For me, it is in moments of travelling to the places that history books and travel guides reveal that I discover the concrete reality of what has up until then only been described to me.
Any lingering assumptions or biases about an ancient people due to my own modern standards or expectations begin to melt away.
To the extent this is possible, I leave my own time and culture that much further behind as I become more fully immersed in another ‘when’ as well as another ‘where’.
Evoked by the right ancient and modern authors, my imagination, as well as analytical understanding, is shaped and magnified by standing in the places where history (even ostensibly or at least reasonably enough) occurred.
Visiting a remnant of the past reaffirms my connection as a concrete human being in his complexity and ambiguity, rather than simply a notetaker of an abstract or legendary historical figure who functions as a mere symbol for something else.
Travelling has the ability to de-mythologize history, while at the same time to experience that a mystical sense of awe and wonder by seeing and touching the locations and artefacts of history.
International travel with its requisite cultural sensitivity and flexibility easily translates to helping me seek (to the extent it is possible) to understand other times and places on their own terms rather than according to my own standards or assumptions.
All of this is true for me regardless of the location or its particular historical associations.

The past is so different from the present, just as visiting a foreign country for the uninitiated is such a different experience from living at home.
However faithfully we preserve, however authentically we restore, however deeply we immerse ourselves in bygone times, life back then was based on ways of being and believing incommensurable with our own.
The past’s difference is, indeed, one of its charms:
No one would yearn for it if it merely replicated the present.
But we cannot help but view and celebrate it (except) through present-day lenses.
People did do things differently back then.
So, the problem for the student of history is to try to figure out what they did, what they thought, how they lived and then to make some sense of all that for ourselves, for our own situations.
Making a connection with the past is sometimes hard, sometimes easy.
But sometimes, students of history must simply admit that we just do not know, that we just cannot understand fully, how folks lived in the past.

In The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton wrote eloquently about the limits of doing history.
“The other day, a scientific summary of the state of a prehistoric tribe began confidently with the words: ‘They wore no clothes.’
Not one reader in a hundred probably stopped to ask himself how we should come to know whether clothes had once been worn by people of whom everything has perished except a few chips of bone and stone.
It was doubtless hoped that we should find a stone hat as well as a stone hatchet.”
It is not contended here that these primitive men did wear clothes any more than they did weave rushes, but merely that we have not enough evidence to know whether they did or not.”

Sometimes, we have to admit that we just don’t know.

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.
This is why I keep a journal.
This is why I read newspapers and history books.
This is why I write.

The mountain-rimmed basin of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers is perhaps the most exotic part of Turkey, offering travellers a heady mix of atmospheric ancient sites and bustling Middle East style towns.
Forming the northern rim of ancient Mesopotamia (“between two rivers“), the region has been of importance since the Neolithic period.
The eastern boundaries of the Roman and Byzantine empires lay here.
The two rivers were crossed by Arab Muslim invaders from the south and east after the birth of Islam in 632.

Almost everybody of any import in Middle Eastern affairs has passed through this region: Crusaders, Armenians, Selçuks, Turcomans, Mongols, French, Americans…..

Traditionally, smallholding farmers and herdsmen scratched a living from this unrewarding land.
Today, the dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (SAP) have dramatically improved the fertility of the area, but population drift to the big cities continues.

Close to the border with volatile Syria, Arab influence is strong, but even here Kurds predominate and ethnic Turks are in a distinct minority.
The separate sympathies of some Kurds means that there is often a security presence in the area – particularly around Diyarbakir and the frontier zone south and east of Mardin.

First stop coming from the west is the city of Gaziantep, booming on its new-found industrial wealth.

East of here, the road shoots across the plain to cross the River Euphrates at bleached Birecik before cutting through rocky uplands to the pious town of Sanliurfa, simply called Urfa by the locals.

Urfa is a good base for exploring Harran – an evocative village of beehive-shaped houses, the extraordinary Neolithic temple complex of Göbekli Tepe, and the natural gateway to Yuvacali village (near Hilvan) where you can experience a genuine slice of rural life.


Urfa is a place of pilgrimage for many religions and the reputed birthplace of the prophet Abraham.
Its chief attraction is a beautiful mosque complex, reflected in the limpid waters of a sacred pool.
Much of the population is Kurdish, a significant minority Arab.
Here you will find bazaars full of veiled, henna-tattooed women and men wearing baggy trousers and traditional headgear.
This city of the prophets has gained a reputation as a focus for Islamic fundamentalism.

Although Urfa is one of Turkey’s fastest growing cities, thanks largely to the SAP, it still ranks very low in terms of economic development, a fact that is clear from a walk around its impoverished backstreets and by the number of occasionally annoying ragged urchins working them.

The Hurri, members of one of Anatolia’s earliest civilizations, built a fortress on the site of Urfa’s present citadel around 3500 BCE.
Later came the Hittites and Assyrians.
But only after the city was refounded as Edessa, by Seleucus Nicator in 300 BCE, did it eclipse nearby Harran.
Edessa later became an important eastern outpost for the Romans against Persia.

From the 2nd century CE, Edessa was a thriving centre of Christianity.
Abgar V had made it the world’s first Christian kingdom in the 1st century CE.

The city changed hands between Byzantine and Arab several times.

According to Syrian Orthodox legend, it was once ransomed for the Mandalyon, a handkerchief bearing the imprint of Christ.

As Byzantine control ebbed, the Arab moved in, staying until the 11th century.
During the First Crusade, French Count Baldwin of Boulogne stopped off en route to Tripoli and the Holy Land to establish the country of Edessa, a short-lived Christian state.

In 1144, the Arabs recaptured Edessa, giving the rulers of Europe a pretext to launch the Second Crusade.
After being sacked by the Mongols in 1260, Edessa never recovered.
The city declined into obscurity and was eventually absorbed as Urfa into the Ottoman Empire in 1637.

Fifteen kilometres northeast of Urfa, set where the southern foothills of the Toros Mountains fade into the scorching flatlands of upper Mesopotamia, Göbekli Tepe (Hill of the Navel) ranks among Turkey’s most intriguing archaeological sites.
Here, on a hilltop 870 metres above sea level, stands a manmade mound, some 300 metres in diameter and 15 metres high, carbon-dated to between 9500 and 7500 BCE.
The enclosures have burnt lime floors and are lined with stone benches, but most remarkably contain a series of T-shaped monoliths, the tallest of which are 5 metres high.
Clearly anthropomorphic, many of the monoliths are liberally covered with incredible relief carvings of wild animals, from scorpions and snakes to lions and wild boar.
The enclosures were almost certainly used for cult purposes and the site is much hyped as “the world’s first temple“.

Göbekli Tepe also appears to disprove the theory that only settled societies were capable of producing monumental buildings and sophisticated art.
Most of the work here was done when Man was still in the hunter-gatherer stage of development.
No evidence has been found of human settlement.
An unslightly protective roof was removed in 2011 and a new wooden walkway added, allowing visitors to walk right around the main enclosures.
Göbrkli Tepe is merely one of the many archaeological discoveries made in Anatolia, which has hosted dozens of civilizations due to its geographical location in the middle of three continents, that are being followed with great interest in the world.
Archaeologist Professor Sengül Aydingün – who introduced to the world the city of Bathonea (located on the Avcilar side of Kücukcekmece Lake) – brought together the most important discoveries and excavations of 2021 by consulting 71 experts in their fields to explain and evaluate Turkey’s historical values for the Turkish daily Milliyet.
Above: Professor Sengül Aydingün



They chose the human-headed cult room in Karahan Tepe as the most important discovery of 2021.

Some structures of the same period as Göbekli Tepe and a human statue with a leopard on its back were unearthed during the Karahan Tepe excavations.

The interesting Neolithic-era artifacts and sculptures were put on display at the Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum and introduced to the world at a ceremony attended by the Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.


Excavations at monumental site Karahan Tepe, near the Turkish-Syrian border, suggest that society was established before the dawn of agriculture.
Sacred and secular spaces were built simultaneously at Karahan Tepe despite no remnants of farmed vegetation being found, suggesting that the inhabitants remained hunter-gatherers.
Turkey is hailing the discovery of this 11,400-year-old monumental site as one the world’s oldest villages, challenging the prevailing science on when and why humankind first settled down.
Karahan Tepe, the first of a dozen prehistoric sites to be exacavated by Turkish authorities in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border, includes homes within a vast ritualistic complex that demonstrates that hunter-gatherers built permanent settlements long before the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago.

“Now we have a different view on history.”, said Necmi Karul, an associate professor at Istanbul University who is leading the dig at Karahan Tepe, a site carved into the slope of a hill on a high limestone plateau between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
“Our findings change the perception, still seen in schoolbooks across the world, that settled life resulted from farming and animal husbandry.“, Karul said at a September 2021 presentation of the site.
“This shows that settled life began when humans were still hunter-gatherers and that agriculture is not a cause, but the effect, of settled life.”

Sacred and secular spaces were built simultaneously at Karahan Tepe, where humans dwelled year-round about 1,500 years ago, but no remnants of farmed vegetation have been found.
Karahan Tepe is located around 35 kilometres from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Göbekli Tepe, billed as the home to the world’s oldest temple structures.

Dating to 9600 BCE, Göbekli Tepe reshaped ideas about early civilization when field research led by German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt was published in the mid-2000s.
Previously thought to be a lone destination where nomadic people came to worship, Göbekli Tepe is now considered part of a constellation of contemporaneous settlements that extends over 100 kilometres and includes Karahan Tepe and at least 11 other unexcavated sites.
Recent work has also revealed domestic structures at Göbelki Tepe.

“In this region, we encounter monumental structures for the first time in the oldest villages in the world.“, Karul said.
Scientists long believed that the domestication of plants and animals around 10,000 years ago is what compelled humans to adopt a sedentary lifestyle and that the boom in food production allowed them to develop complex societies and lay the foundations of civilization.
But the mounting evidence that Stone Age people built permanent structures for spiritual, rather than strictly essential, pursuits is disrupting conventional thinking that they lacked a large scale society with divisions of labour and shared ritualistic motifs.

“It will take time for the scientific community to digest and accept this game-changing research.“, said Mehmet Özdogan, professor emeritus of archaeology at Istanbul University.
“We must now rethink what we knew – that civilization emerged from a horizontal society that began rasing wheat because people were hungry – and access this period with its multifaceted society.“
The Neolithic era, coinciding with the end of the Ice Age, marks humankind’s dramatic shift from forgaing to farming.
“The foundations for today’s civilization, from family law to inheritance to the state and bureaucracy, were all struck in the Neolithic period.”, Özdogan said.

Karahan Tepe’s circular rooms were planned out in advance.
“The very skillful processing of bedrock reveals an impressive prehistoric architectural engineering.“, Karul said.
“Building multiple structures with different purposes is the reflection of a complicated belief system.
It is not possible to talk about religion in its true sense, but we see a set of distinct limited rituals that are radically set forth.“

This is manifested in a chamber that contains what Karul called “one of the most monumental and earliest examples of phallic symbolism“:
Eleven giant penises carved from the bedrock and watched over by a bearded head with a serpent’s body that emerges from the wall.
Karul has deduced that the space, which includes a separate entrance and exit and a channel for water, was used for rites of passage.
Almost entirely absent are female figures.
Stone reliefs of wildlife range from insects to mammals, and include attacking beasts gripping men’s heads.
There are more depictions of humans here than in the menagerie found at Göbekli Tepe, which is around 200 years older, indicating that humans had begun to see themselves as distinct from the animal world.
Scores of T-shaped stelae – an abstract rendering of the human form, have been unearthed at Karahan Tepe.

Archaeologists have unearthed 1% of the 60,000 square metre site since 2019, working in record time as remote university instruction during the extended dig seasons.
While excavations continue, Turkey could open Karahan Tepe to tourists in 2022, according to the culture and tourism minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.
The government eventually hopes to attract five million visitors a year to Göbekli Tepe and the string of Neolithic sites, which it has dubbed Taş Tepeler (“stone hills“).
The government is investing around $14 million to expand excavations to as many as 30 sites in the area and to build a Neolithic research centre, Ersoy said in September 2021, although no time scale for the projects has been announced.

At the end of Karahan Tepe’s lifespan, its inhabitants painstakingly buried their temples “as you would a person who had died“, Karul said.
He acknowledges the risks of reopening the site now to millions of people, but said:
“Everybody has a right to access these archaeological sites.“

The excavations have uncovered 250 obelisks featuring animal figures to date.

The ancient structures at Karahan Tepe were discovered in 1997 by researchers near the Kargali neighbourhood in Tek Tek Mountains National Park.

The site is located near Yağmurlu, roughly 35 kilometres east of Göbekli Tepe, which is often referred to as its sister site.

Karahan Tepe is part of the Göbekli culture and Karahan Tepe excavations project.
The area is known as “Kecili Tepe” by local people.

Karul told Anadolu Agency in 2019:
“Last year, excavation work restarted in Karahan Tepe and we encountered traces of special structures, obelisks, animal sculptures and depictions as well as similar symbolism.”
The site was filled with dirt and rubble at some point, preserving T-topped columns carved into bedrock, just waiting to be discovered.

Dirt and rubble and the silence of time conceal secrets.
All that I was will one day be covered by dirt and rubble and the silence of time.
Only the words that survive, somehow, somewhere, for some time, may serve as a record of the spirit of what and who someone was.
Without a record of those who were, their past remains elusive and prone to false interpretation.
Ruins are lifeless clues as to whom they might have been.
Whoever once lived here has long ago been robbed of vitality.
Their spirits are mere pedantic pauses in academic study, hypothetical arguments debated with ignorant sophistication, cold conversations of unsympathetic commentary, as dead as dusty tomes in ancient libraries buried by quakes.
Obscure objects with a voice that only the erudite and creative can hear, that only the educated and learned can read.
Where are its poets to expound on the value of their lives?
How may we consort with their spirits without literature to lead us?
The average man can only stand in awe and wonder, in amazement (and amusement) and ponder the past that is the city of Urfa, and the Tepeler of Göbekli and Karahan.

In a way, Karahan Tepe reminds me of the need to write, to expound on the value of our lives, to consort with the spirit of our age.
And yet even if my words are written down, there are no guarantees that I will be understood, for the past is another place and yesterday’s man is a far different man than the one who types these words.

I have been away from Switzerland for ten months.

I have not lived in Canada for over two decades.

How can I communicate all that I have learned, all that I have felt, with so much time and distance between us?
A man’s history is written in hieroglyphics only he can write and very few, if anyone at all, can read.
But the words must be written nonetheless.

“For whom, it suddenly occurred to him, to wonder, was he writing this diary?
For the future, for the unborn….
How could you communicate with the future?
It was of its nature impossible.
Either the future would resemble the present, in which it would not listen to him.
Or it would be different from it and his predicament would be meaningless….
How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?….
He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would even hear.
But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken.
It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage….
How could you tell how much of it was lies?….
The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones….
It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness.
Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance to the lies that streamed out of the screens or even the ideals that were trying to be achieved.
Great areas of it were neutral and non-political, a matter of slogging through dreary jobs, fighting for a place….
Day and night, the screens bruised your ears with information.
Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved…..
It might very be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy….
Everything faded into mist.
The past was erased.
The erasure was forgotten.
The lie became truth….

Nothing is easier than to falsify the past.
Woodrow Wilson

And yet he was in the right!
They were wrong and he was right.
The obvious, the silly and the true have got to be defended.”

Television, radio, magazines and the Internet are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary.
The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day.
The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, the downloader from the Internet, is presented with a whole complex of elements – all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics – to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort.
But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, the listener, the reader or the user does make up his own mind up at all.

Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player.
He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so.
He has performed acceptably without having had to think.

There is a sense in which we are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.
Knowledge must grow in the mind if learning is to take place.
An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.

I want to believe that we live in a marvellous age with numerous freedoms created by a global village that is instantly and effortlessly accessible to all, but villages have always been dominated by conformism, isolation, surveillance, boredom and malice.
What should liberate and unite us is oft-times nothing more than a spectacle of vulgarity.

My biggest fear for the past is that tourism, human circulation from somewhere else, becomes fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.
The sorrow of ruins, the destruction of history, finds us retreating into remote realms of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

My biggest fear for the future is that science will no longer be asked to understand the world or to improve any part of it, but will be asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens, wherein the vast tree of knowledge is cut down in order to make truncheons.


In the conflict between survival of the flesh and dignity of the spirit, if we cower to preserve ourselves, we become mere zombies, despite our trappings of prosperity.
If we stand up for our dignity, we live nobly, no matter how much we risk or suffer.

But the ruins of Karahan Tepe remind me that power and money often reign supreme.

In truth, in too many places, education and ideas count less than the wielding of wealth and the display of domination.
We live in an age where love, truth and sacrifice have been reduced to emojis, while philosophy is encapsulated in a text message, and betrayal and collective amnesia are merely a matter of course.
As it has always been and probably as it will always remain, the individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

“To be your own man is a hard business.”
(Rudyard Kipling)

The ruins of Karahan Tepe speak of the termination of tribes but not of the inspiration of individuals.
We know nothing about the lives of those who came before us nor that of the lives of those who might come after.
Oh, to be able to find the words of a poet, someone with whom we can feel that we have eaten their bread, savoured their salt, drunken their water or wine, have led their common lives and have died deaths worth mourning.
The sadness of dirt and rubble, the emptiness of eternity reflected in the ruins of yesteryear is nevertheless the dignity of existence that I long to understand.
One day, God willing, I shall stand in chambers old covered by unsettling dust and I shall write what I see and feel.
Perhaps the wind from without shall carry the whispers of the past and inspire from within words that convey the promise of tomorrow.
Perhaps I too, like the dead and disappeared of Karahan Tepe, am merely dust in the wind.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / “Karahantepe: Discovery of the Year“, Hürriyet Daily News, 28 December 2021
Unhappy anniversary
Posted on January 10, 2022 by canadaslim
Eskişehir, Turkey, Sunday 26 December 2021
“It was about the beginning of September 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the Plague was returned again in the Netherlands.
For it had been very violent there, particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet.
Others said it was brought from Candia.
Others from Cyprus.
It mattered not from whence it came, but all agreed it was come into the Netherlands again.
We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumors and reports of things….
But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponed abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only…..
Hence it was that this rumor died off again and people began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true.“
Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year


It had been a stressful week thus far, especially the last 48 hours, for not only was I changing apartments in Eskişehir, but I was preparing to take a leave of absence from Turkey until mid-February 2022.

I worked every day Monday to Sunday this week, allowing our newly arrived American colleague the opportunity to have Christmas weekend off.
I worked Christmas Day, that night I attended the staff Xmas party, and I spent the remainder of the evening packing to change apartments this Boxing Day evening after my PCR test, required before I would be allowed to fly on Tuesday.

COVID-19 testinginvolves analyzing samples to assess the current or past presence ofSARS-CoV-2.
The two main branches detect either the presence of the virus or ofantibodies produced in response to infection.
Molecular tests for viral presence through its molecular components are used to diagnose individual cases and to allow public health authorities to trace and contain outbreaks.
Antibody tests (serology immunoassays) instead show whether someone once had the disease.
They are less useful for diagnosing current infections because antibodies may not develop for weeks after infection.
It is used to assess disease prevalence, which aids the estimation of theinfection fatality rate.
Individual jurisdictions have adopted varied testing protocols, including whom to test, how often to test, analysis protocols, sample collection and the uses of test results.
This variation has likely significantly impacted reported statistics, including case and test numbers, case fatality rates and case demographics.
Because SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs days after exposure (and before onset of symptoms), there is an urgent need for frequent surveillance and rapid availability of results.
Test analysis is often performed inautomated, high-throughput, medical laboratories by medical laboratory scientists.
Alternatively,point-of-care testing can be done in physician’s offices and parking lots, workplaces, institutional settings or transit hubs.

Positive viral tests indicate a current infection, while positive antibody tests indicate a prior infection.
Other techniques include aCT scan, checking for elevated body temperature, checking for low blood oxygen level, and the deployment ofdetection dogs at airports.

Detection of the virus is usually done either by looking for the virus’ innerRNA, or pieces of protein on the outside of the virus.

Tests that look for the viralantigens(parts of the virus) are calledantigen tests.
There are multiple types of tests that look for the virus by detecting the presence of the virus’s RNA.
These are callednucleic acidormoleculartests, aftermolecular biology.

As of 2021, the most common form of molecular test is the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test.

Other methods used in molecular tests include:
- CRISPR gene editingis agenetic engineering technique inmolecular biology by which thegenomes of living organisms may be modified. It is based on a simplified version of the bacterialCRISPR-Cas9 antiviral defense system. By delivering the Cas9nucleasecomplexed with a syntheticguide RNA (gRNA) into a cell, the cell’s genome can be cut at a desired location, allowing existing genes to be removed and/or new ones addedin vivo (in living organisms). The technique is considered highly significant in biotechnology and medicine as it allows for the genomes to be editedin vivowith extremely high precision, cheaply, and with ease. It can be used in the creation of new medicines, agricultural products, andgenetically modified organisms, or as a means of controlling pathogens and pests. It also has possibilities in the treatment of inheritedgenetic diseasesas well as diseases such as cancer. However, its use in human genetic modificationis highly controversial.
- Isothermal nucleic acid amplification – Anucleic acid test(NAT) is a technique used to detect a particularnucleic acid sequence and thus usually to detect and identify a particular species or subspecies of organism, often a virus or bacteriumthat acts as apathogen inblood, tissue, urine, etc. NATs differ from other tests in that they detect genetic materials (RNA or DNA) rather thanantigens or antibodies. Detection of genetic materials allows an early diagnosis of a disease because the detection of antigens and/or antibodies requires time for them to start appearing in the bloodstream. Since the amount of a certain genetic material is usually very small, many NATs include a step that amplifies the genetic material — that is, makes many copies of it. Such NATs are callednucleic acid amplification tests(NAATs).
- Digital polymerase chain reaction(digital PCR,DigitalPCR,dPCR, ordePCR) is abiotechnological refinement of conventionalpolymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods that can be used to directly quantify and clonally amplify nucleic acids strands, includingDNA, cDNA or RNA. The key difference between dPCR and traditional PCR lies in the method of measuring nucleic acids amounts, with the former being a more precise method than PCR, though also more prone to error in the hands of inexperienced users.A “digital” measurement quantitatively and discretely measures a certain variable, whereas an “analog” measurement extrapolates certain measurements based on measured patterns. PCR carries out one reaction per single sample. dPCR also carries out a single reaction within a sample, however the sample is separated into a large number of partitions and the reaction is carried out in each partition individually. This separation allows a more reliable collection and sensitive measurement of nucleic acid amounts. The method has been demonstrated as useful for studying variations in gene sequences — such as copy number variants and point mutations — and it is routinely used for clonal amplification of samples fornext generation sequencing.
- Microarray analysis techniquesare used in interpreting the data generated from experiments on DNA (Gene chip analysis), RNA, and proteinmicroarrays, which allow researchers to investigate the expression state of a large number of genes – in many cases, an organism’s entiregenome– in a single experiment.Such experiments can generate very large amounts of data, allowing researchers to assess the overall state of a cell or organism. Data in such large quantities is difficult – if not impossible – to analyze without the help of computer programs.
- Next generation sequencing – Massive parallel sequencingormassively parallel sequencingis any of several high-throughput approaches toDNA sequencingusing the concept of massively parallel processing. It is also callednext-generation sequencing(NGS) orsecond-generation sequencing. Some of these technologies emerged between 1994 and 1998and have been commercially available since 2005. These technologies use miniaturized and parallelized platforms for sequencing of 1 million to 43 billion short reads (50 to 400 bases each) per instrument run.
Many NGS platforms differ in engineering configurations and sequencing chemistry.
They share the technical paradigm of massive parallel sequencing via spatially separated, clonally amplifiedDNA templates or single DNA molecules in aflow cell.
This design is very different from that ofSanger sequencing — also known as capillary sequencing or first-generation sequencing — which is based onelectrophoretic separation of chain-termination products produced in individual sequencing reactions.
At this point in time, if your eyes have glossed over in the realization that you, like myself, haven’t the foggiest idea of what all this science actually means in terms that anyone can comprehend, please know that you are not alone in this regard.

The first COVID case in Turkeywas recorded on 11 March 2020, when a local returned homefrom a trip to Europe.
The first death due to COVID-19 in the country occurred on 15 March 2020.
Turkey stood out from the rest of Europe by not ordering a legallockdownuntil April 2021 (a month after I arrived in the Republic), when the country enacted its first nationwide restrictions.
The government kept many businesses open, and allowed companies to set their own guidelines regarding workers.
The resulting wave of infections never came close to overwhelming theTurkish health system,which has the highest number ofintensive care unitsin the world at 46.5 beds per 100,000 people (compared to 9.6 in Greece, 11.6 in France, and 12.6 in Italy).
As of 3May2021,Turkey’s observedcase-fatality ratestands at 0.84%, the 148th highest rate globally.
This lowcase-fatality ratehas generated various explanations including the relative rarity ofnursing homes, favorable demographics, along legacy ofcontact tracing, itshigh number ofintensive care units,universal health care,and a lockdown regime that led to a higher proportion of positive cases among working-age adults.

On 30 September 2020, Turkish Minister of HealthFahrettin Kocaacknowledged that since 29 July 2020, the reported number of cases was limited to symptomatic cases that required monitoring, which was met with rebuke by theTurkish Medical Association.
This practice ended on 25 November, when the Ministry started to report asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases alongside symptomatic ones.

As of November 8, 2021, the total number of patients infected with the corona virus in Turkey was 8,259,503 and 1,405 of the existing patients were being treated in intensive care.
So far, the number of patients recovering is 7,737,259 and the number of patients who have died is 72,314.
A total of 99,834,300 tests have been carried out to date.
A total of 24,278,886 people werevaccinatedas of 5 May 2021.
Of these, 14,327,674 people received the first dose of the vaccine, while 9,951,212 people received a second dose.

(I was vaccinated on 17 July 2021, 3 August 2021, and 1 January 2022 in Weinfelden, Switzerland.)

Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir,Bursa andAntalya were among the top five cities where the most vaccines were applied.





In addition, Turkey is the 6th most vaccinated country in the world after theUS, China, India, the UK and Brazil.

As of 30 April 2021, Turkey was the 5th country with the highest number of cases among 193 countries, behindBrazil and France, and 19th afterUkraine in the number of deaths.

The outbreak has led to radical decisions in Turkey that have had many significant impacts and consequences in social, economic, political, economic, administrative, legal, military, religious and cultural fields.
Education and training in primary, secondary and high schools in the country was suspended, while spring semester classes were canceled and exams were postponed in all universities.
The Directorate of Religious Affairsannounced a pause in prayers with the community in mosques and mosques, especiallyFridayprayers.

All restaurants, cafes, museums, classrooms, courses,shopping malls, hotels, barber shops, hairdresser salons, beauty centres, coffee shops, gyms, concert venues, nightclubs, association locales and wedding/engagement halls were temporarily closed.
All citizens were banned from picnics and barbecues in forests, parks and gardens.

All football leagues in the country have been postponed and all sporting events cancelled until further notice.

The Ministry of National Defense announced that all subpoenas, referrals and discharges at military barracks have been postponed for a month.

(My WSE colleague has had his conscription twice postponed.)
About 90,000 prisoners and detainees were released after Parliament passed a law aimed at reducing the occupancy of prisons, with the risk of the epidemic spreading to prisons and disrupting public order.
In the amnesty law,terrorism, murder, drugs and sexual offences were excluded.
The Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) announced that all hearings, deliberations and discoveries were suspended until 15 June 2020, except for detainees and emergency work and statute of limitations.

All airlines, especiallyTurkish Airlines,announced that they were terminating all international and domestic flights until further notice.

The obligation to use masks in public areas, such as markets, was put into effect.

Intercity travel was granted the Governor’s permit and sparse seating arrangements were introduced onpublic transport.

Hundreds of settlements, villages and towns were quarantinedunder COVID-19 measures.
In order to minimize the economic impact of the pandemic, many arrangements were made and support packages were announced.
Flexible working systems were introduced with minimum staff in private and public sectors.
The Treasury and Finance Ministry (HMB) said it had lowered, deferred or waived taxes on many items.

Under the law, employers were banned from laying off for three months by theMinistry of Family, Labour and Social Services (ASHB).

In a speech, President Erdoğan described the outbreak as the biggest crisis sinceWorld War II in terms of its economic consequences.
The government first imposed a curfew on people aged 65 and over to reduce the rate of spread of the epidemic and maintainsocial distancing between people.

(A practice much ignored generally in my experience in Turkey.)

It later extended the restriction to include children and young people aged 20 and under.
The public was urged not to travel outside the country and also to stay indoors unless they had to.
On 10 January 2020,the Corona Virus Science Board was established within the Ministry of Health to combat COVID-19 in Turkey.
Thermal cameras were installed at airports by the Ministry of Health on 24 January.
The Ministry also began to subject passengers fromChina to additional screenings and announced that anyone showing signs of corona virus infection would be quarantined.
Screenings were later expanded to include countries that reported large numbers of confirmed cases.
Other measures at airports included infrared screenings, disinfection of all customs gates, free masks and the distribution of instruction leaflets.

On 31 January, the Turkish Government sent a plane to pick up 34 Turkish citizens and citizens of other countries fromWuhan.
Other nationals included seven Azerbaijanis, seven Georgians and one Albanian.

China ordered 150 million masks annually, as well as 200 million masks from Turkey.
On 3 February, Turkey announced that it had suspended all flights from China.

On 23 February, the Iranian border was closed and flights with Iran were unilaterally suspended afterthe Iranian authorities failed to comply with Turkey’s recommendation to quarantine the Iranian city ofQom.


On 29 February, Turkey said flights to Italy, South Korea and Iraq had been mutually suspended.
Shortly afterwards, the Iraqi border was also closed.
The Ministry also established field hospitals close to the borders of Iraq and Iran.

On 8 March, disinfection began in public places and public transport in some provinces.
In Istanbul, the municipality decided to install hand sanitizers at metro and bus stations.

On 10 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that a Turkish man who contracted the virus while travelling to Europe was the country’s first case of the corona virus.
The patient was isolated to an undisclosed hospital and his family members were taken into custody.
On 12 March, a five-hour meeting was held under the chairmanship ofPresident Erdoğan, attended by all ministers, some presidencies and members of the Health and Food Policy Council, to discuss measures against the corona virus.
Presidential Spokesman IbrahimKalin announced the decisions after the meeting.
It was decided that sports events should be played without spectators until the end of April, that the departure of public employees abroad should take place with special permission, and that the President should postpone his visits abroad.

On 13 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on his official Twitter account that a person close to the first patient under observation had also been diagnosed with the corona virus.
With the new announcement made in the evening, it was determined that three more people in the same family as the first patient carried the corona virus, thus increasing the number of confirmed cases in Turkey to five.

On 14 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that a person returningfrom Umrah (the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca) had been diagnosed with the corona virus, bringing the number of cases in Turkey to six.
Of the 10,330 citizens who returned from Umrah, 5,392 were quarantined in Ankara and 4,938 were quarantined in state dormitories in Konya, according to the Ministry ofYouth and Sports (GSB) on 15 March.



Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that the first case had been diagnosed with two people in the vicinity who were under observation, and that there were seven cases from European countries and three from America.
The number of confirmed cases has risen to 18.
On 16 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that 29 new diagnoses with contacts in the US, Europe and the Middle East, bringing the total number of patients to 47.
On March 17, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced the death of an 89-year-old patient with Chinese contacts who had been quarantined, 51 new diagnoses and a total of 98 cases.

On 17 March 2020, the Turkish Medical Association, the TTB SpecialistAssociation, the Public Health Professionals Association, the Turkish Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, the Turkish Thorax Association, and the Turkish Intensive Care Association held a meeting to evaluate developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The final statement of the meeting called for transparency.
The statement also found that the pandemic poses significant dangers to health workers and patients, that deficiencies in information and measures lead to confusion, and that inadequate information on medication use, access to tests and various issues complicates the fight against the pandemic.

On 18 March, a “Anti-Coronavirus Co-ordination Meeting” was held inÇankaya Pavilion within the scope of the fight against the corona virus.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on his Twitter account that a 61-year-old patient had died, bringing the number of cases to 191.
Also on 18 March,it was announced that the Commander ofthe Army, Aytac Yalman had died of the corona virus three days earlier and that his wife wasin quarantine.

The Sultan Abdulhamid Khan Training and Research Hospital Chief Medical Officer announced on 19 March that Yalman’s cause of death wasCOVID-19,which developed within the framework of thepandemic.
“Given that the clinical picture of the deceased Aytaç Yalman was also compatible after his wife’s test result was COVID positive, it was concluded that he had died due to COVID-19,” the chief medical officer said.

On 19 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca stated that the corona virus was the cause of death of former Army Commander Aytaç Yalman, who died on 15 March 2020.
Thus, the number of people who died due to the corona virus in Turkey increased to three.
The Minister of Youth and SportsMehmet Muharrem Kasapoğlu announced the postponement of football, volleyball, basketball and handball leagues.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that an 85-year-old woman had died, with 168 new cases.
The total number of cases was 359, bringing the death toll to four.

On 20 March, all private and foundation hospitals were declared pandemic hospitals with the circular issued by the Ministry of Health.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, in a message posted on his Twitter account, said there were 311 new cases and five more had died.
The total number of cases rose to 670, while the death toll was nine.

The Human Rights Association (IHD), the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, the Lawyers Association for Freedom, the Association of ContemporaryLawyers, the Health and Social Workers Union, the Civil Society Association in the Penal System, Covid-19 Outbreak and Measures to Be Taken Urgently in Prisons issued a statement.
The statement included provisions such as the release of elderly and sick, children, pregnant, pregnant, child detainees and the necessity of regular public information about quarantine practices and the health status of prisoners, especially family and lawyers.



On 21 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, in a message posted on his Twitter account, reported 277 new cases and 12 deaths.
The total number of cases rose to 947, with 21 deaths.
On 22 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, in a message posted on his Twitter account, said there were 289 new cases, nine people had died and the total number of tests carried out was 20,345.
The total number of cases rose to 1,236, with 30 deaths.

On 23 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced at a press conference that the drug Favipiravir had been brought in from China that was said to be good for the virus and was being applied to patients in intensive care.
Koca also announced that health workers would be paid additional wages for three months.
Koca posted a new message on his Twitter account later in the day, explaining that there were 293 new cases and that seven people had died.
The total number of cases increased to 1,529 and the number of deaths increased to 37.
On 24 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on his Twitter account that there were 343 new diagnoses and that seven people had died.
The total number of cases increased to 1,872 and the death toll increased to 44.
On 25 March 25, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca andMinister of National Education Ziya Selçukheld a joint press conference.
It was stated that schools were closed until 30 April, the number of existing patients in the intensive care unit was 136 and two patients over the age of 60 were discharged and that data on the cases in Turkey would now be published digitally.
Later, Fahrettin Koca posted on his Twitter account that there were 561 new diagnoses and that 12 people had died.
The total number of cases rose to 2,433 and the death toll rose to 59.

On 26 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on his Twitter account that there were 1,196 new diagnoses and 16 more had died.
The total number of cases was 3,629, while the deaths rose to 75.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced after the Corona Virus Science Board meeting on 27 March that 42 people had recovered, 341 people were in intensive care, 241 were in intensive care, 2,069 positive cases had been detected in the last 24 hours and 17 people had died.
Thus, the total number of cases increased to 5,698 and the number of deaths increased to 92.
On 28 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that there were 1,704 new cases and 16 people had died.
Thus, the total number of cases increased to 7,402, while the death toll was 108.
The total number of tests carried out so far was 55,464.
On 29 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that there were 1,815 new cases and 23 people had died.
Thus, the total number of cases increased to 9,217, while the death toll was 131.
The total number of tests carried out so far was 65,446.
On 30 March, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that there were 1,610 new cases and 37 people had died.
Thus, the total number of cases increased to 10,827, while the death toll was 168.
The total number of tests carried out so far was 92,403.
On 31 March 31, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that there were 2,704 new cases and 46 people had died.
Thus, the total number of cases increased to 13,531, while the death toll was 214.
The total number of tests carried out so far was 92,403.

Also on 31 March,Turkish business leader Ergun Atalay issued a written statement demanding a ban on layoffs and a halt to all work except mandatory production of goods and services for at least 15 days.
Atalay stressed the need to quickly deploy the resources of the Unemployment Insurance Fund against the loss of income caused by these, and to provide income support to all workers who lose jobs and income by the employer, the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the state.
The Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK), the Confederation of Public Workers Union (KESK), the Union of Turkish Chambers of Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) and the Turkish Medical Association (TTB)published texts containing seven emergency measures and started a petition.
Among the emergency measures:
“All jobs except basic, mandatory and emergency goods and services should be stopped urgently during the epidemic.
Layoffs should be banned during the epidemic, small trades should be supported, employees should be given paid leave and unconditional unemployment benefits should be paid for the unemployed.
Consumer, residential and vehicle loans, credit card debts and electricity, water, natural gas and communication bills should be deferred without interest being processed during the risk of an epidemic.”




(According to data from the Istanbul Police Department during the epidemic, the rate ofdomestic violence in Istanbul increased by 38.2% in March 2020.)

On 1 April 2020, Health MinisterFahrettin Koca announced that a total of 277 infected people had died, with 15,679 current cases.
At the same time, it was announced that there were cases in all 81 provinces and deaths in 39 provinces.
The provincewith the highest number of cases and deaths was Istanbul with 8,852 cases and 117 deaths.

Istanbul was followed byIzmir with 853 cases and 18 deaths, andAnkarawith 712 cases and seven deaths.


It was also stated that 601 health workers were infected and one doctor died.

On 2 April 2020, Health MinisterFahrettin Koca announced that 18,757 new tests had been carried out, 2,456 new cases had been identified and 79 new deaths had occurred.
With these figures, the total number of tests increased to 125,556, the total number of cases increased to 18,135 and the total number of deaths increased to 356.
Koca said on his Twitter account that the number of tests increased by around 4,000 compared to the previous day and the number of positive cases decreased compared to the number of tests, explaining that 82 patients had recovered in the last 24 hours and that 82% of those who died during this time were 60 years of age or older.
Deputy Minister ofForeign Affairs Yavuz Selim Kiran announced that as of 4 April 2020, the total number of citizens of the Republic of Turkeywho lost their lives abroad due toCOVID-19 had reached 156.
Kıran said on his Twitter account that 55 Turkish citizens died inFrance, 31 inGermany, 22 in theNetherlands,16 inthe UK,14 inBelgium, seven in the US, five inSweden, three inSwitzerland, two in Austriaand one inLebanon.

The Istanbul Medical Chamber said the figures provided by the Ministry of Health are based on cases that test positive for PCR and do not include the number of “suspected/probable cases” in hospitals or outpatient follow-up.
The Medical Chamber also criticized the practices of private hospitals in Istanbul.

On 11 April 2020, a large-scale curfew was declared for the first time, 20 years after the 2000census.
TheInterior Ministry announced two hours in advance that a two-day curfew would be imposed over the weekend in Zonguldak Province,where lung diseases are common in30 metropolitan areaswith 64 million people, equivalent to 78% of Turkey’s population.
In many cities where the ban would be enforced, citizens flocked to grocery stores and bakeries, causing long queues, mayhem and heavy crowds.

Interior MinisterSuleymann Soylu announced that he accepted criticism of the timing and implementation of the ban and announced his resignation the next day.
However, his resignation was not accepted by PresidentRecep Tayyip Erdoğanand Soylu was announced to continue in office.

The curfew was continued the following weekend.
On 20 April 2020, President Erdoğan announced that the curfew would be maintained in 30 metropolitan areas and Zonguldak between 23 April and 26 April, including NationalSovereignty and Children’s Day (23 April) and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Grand NationalAssembly and the first three days ofRamadan (24 – 27 April 2020).
Between 23 May and 26 May 2020, curfews were imposed inall 81 provinces for four days.



Foreign MinisterMevlut Cavusoglu announced on 5 May that 473 Turkish citizens had died from the corona virus abroad.
Cavusoglu also said that more than 65,000 Turkish citizens from 103 countries had been evacuated and brought to Turkey.
While 116 countries requested assistance from Turkey, medical supplies, including N95 masks, overalls, protective goggles, respirators, test kits and visors were sent to 44 countries, including theUS, the UK, Spain, Italy and Iran, which were most affected by the outbreak.

The IBB Scientific Advisory Board shared the results of the meeting and announced that a 7+4 day curfew should be announced to cover 16 May to 26 May.
Addressing the risks of starting to discuss normalization steps, the statement said:
“The plateau provided was achieved as a result of the great compliance of our people with the restriction guidelines carried out.
This state of well-being should not bring relief or a temporary relaxation of measures.
In the report prepared by the IBB Scientific Advisory Board, the transition period in the restrictions is defined in excess and the transition process is detailed.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke after a cabinet meeting on 4 May 2020.
He noted that the daily increase in patients had now decreased to thousands, the number of patients connected to condensation care and respirators was constantly decreasing and the number of patients recovering had increased exponentially.
He announced that 1 billion 910 million Turkish Liras had been raised in the campaign against the corona virus.

Announcing the gradual start of the return to normal life, President Erdoğan stated that the government had made arrangements for the gradual stretching of restrictions by spreading them to May, June and July in general.
The explanations for this normalization process were as follows:
- People over the age of 65 would be able to go outside for one of the curfew days and for four hours.
- Malls would start operating as of 11 May, provided that the rules were followed.
- Children up to the age of 14 would be able to walk outside between 11.00 and 15.00 on 13 May.
- The 15-20 age group would be able to walk outside between 11.00 and 15.00 on Friday 15 May.
- City entry and exit restrictions would be completed for Antalya, Aydin, Erzurum, Hatay, Malatya, Mersin and Mugla.
- Military discharges would begin on 31 May.
- The Ministry of National Defense’s appointment, assignment and personnel procurement activities would resume on 1 June, subpoenas on 5 June, and paid military service on 20 June.
- As of 5 May, the application of single-double plates for commercial taxis in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir would end.
- Businesses such as barbershops, hairdressers and beauty salons would be able to operate on 11 May.
- The High School Entrance Exam (LGS) would be held on 20 June, and the Higher Education Institutions Exam (YKS) would be held on 27 June.

On 5 May 2020, Minister of Industry and Technology Mustafa Varank announced that all major automotive factories in the country would resume operations as of 11 May.

On 6 May 2020, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced the normalization process and called this new period “controlled social life“.
Minister Fahrettin Koca said the risk remains and citizens should remain vigilant.
Koca stated that the outbreak has been contained in Turkey, but the threat has not disappeared and the last carrier will not be removed without isolation and treatment.
Minister Koca also said that the phrase “return to normality” is not true, they constitute “the normals of new life“.
Minister Koca stated that their goal in the first period was to control the disease and explained that their aim in this second and new period was to eliminate the opportunities in front of the disease and to reorganize life.
He said citizens would live a free but cautious life.
Stating that it is now confirmed that the virus is transmitted through breathing, he noted that the mask and social distancing are two complementary measures.

Minister Koca also mentioned the mobile application “Life Fits Home” (HES) developed by the Ministry.
Minister Koca noted that they see the application as one of the extremely important needs of this new era, and mentioned that thanks to the application, people can see the extent to which they can face a risky situation in their environment and where they want to go and take immediate measures.
According to the density map prepared with Ministry data, users can see where there are patients and how much social distance is exceeded during the day using Bluetooth and location services.

Minister Koca also announced that they will increase the number of tests instead of reducing them.
He said they would detect cases early and conduct regular screenings at public places.

Minister Koca added that citizens will need masks more during this period, explaining that more than 40 million people have accessed the application, which includes the free delivery of a five-pack mask every 10 days to the 20 – 65 age group, and that 160 million masks had been distributed to date.
He stated that there would be citizens who may need more during this period of limited freedom, and emphasized that it paved the way for people to buy surgical masks from many places, including pharmacies, grocery stores and medical stores, provided that there is a ceiling price.

Minister Koca stated that the Ministry was responsible for the announcement by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) that football leagues would continue in Turkey, and that the Federation could make its own decisions.

In addition, Minister Koca announced that 150,000 people would be screened by sampling method as part of their study with the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) to see the degree, carriership and disease status of the outbreak throughout Turkey, and that this study would be a large, perhaps rare, study that would demonstrate carriership, protection and disease status by performing both PCR and antibody tests.

On 7 May 2020, the ceiling price of surgical masks was set at ₺1.
A guide published on this day announced that barbershops, hairdressers and beauty salons would not accept unmasked and unscheduled customers in the process and that no one would be present at work except the customer and the employee.
In June 2020, theAssociation of Emergency Medicine Specialists announced the launch of a story contest titled “Covid-19 Stories“.
The Association said they would evaluate the stories that processed the impact of the pandemic in the competition.

In August 2020, “How has the information ecosystem in Turkey been affected by the pandemic process?” research conducted jointly by Tandans Data Science Consultancy was published with Onay.
On 30 September 2020, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at a press conference after the Corona Virus Science Board Meeting:
“Not every case is sick.
Because there are those who tested positive but showed no symptoms, and they make up the vast majority of them.”
Explaining the distinction between patient and case definitions, Koca said:
“The number of new patients announced every day and we focus on should be the subject of attention.”

On 9 October 2020, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced the latest developments in domestic vaccination, saying that vaccinations on human subjects would probably begin after two weeks.
On 25 November 2020, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca stated that they will also start to disclose asymptomatic (symptomless, mild) cases that they have not previously disclosed.
As of 25 November, 28,351 new positive cases and 6,814 new patients were announced.

(There has been various controversy since Health MinisterKoca announced on 25 November that an agreement had been reached withSinovacfor the Covid-19 Vaccine and that 10 million doses of vaccines would be provided.
It was claimed that the Coronavac vaccine was inadequate and unreliable due to the fact that phase-3 studies had not been carried out.

HDP Istanbul MP Garo Paylanproposed adding TL 15 billion to the Ministry of Health budget and applying the German (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine to citizens free of charge instead of the Chinese (CoronaVac) vaccine, but the motion was rejected.


On 9 December 2020, CHP Ankara MPMurat Emir claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine from China had arrived in Turkey and had been being made to AKP politicians and their relatives for 10 days.
Health Minister Koca denied the allegation.)


On 25 December 2020, Health Minister Koca announced that 4.5 million dosesof the Pzifer BioNTech vaccine would arrive by the end of March 2021.
“By the end of March, 4.5 million doses of vaccines will be delivered to our country,” Koca said.

On 30 December, the first batchof the CoronaVac vaccine produced bySinovac was brought to Turkey.
On 13 January 2021, theCoronaVac vaccine produced bySinovacreceived “emergency use approval” in Turkey.
On the same day, national vaccination began.
The vaccination process in Turkey began on 13 January 2021, when Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and members of theScientific Council were vaccinated live on air to encourage citizens to get vaccinated.

(In January 2021, the vaccination, scheduled to start on 23 December, had not yet begun.
According to Sebnem Koru Fincanci, president of the Central Council of theTurkish Medical Association,on 26 January 2021, only 10 million people can be vaccinated in three months if 100,000 vaccinations are given per day.
He said that figure was not enough for social immunity.)

On 3 February, the South African and Brazilian variants were also seen in Turkey.


(On 23 February 2021, CHP LeaderKemal Kılıçdaroğlu claimed that $12 million was paid for 1 million doses of free vaccines.
On 6 March 2021, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca rejected CHP Leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s claim and accused Kılıçdaroğlu of putting the vaccination programme at risk.
Koca said thatthere was absolutely no free vaccine agreement between us and China, and our state did not pay anything other than the prices agreed with Sinovac.“)

(Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on 25 February:
“The important thing for us is to be able to complete this vaccination process in April, May at the latest.
In total, we know that we will have access to 105 million dosesof the vaccine by the end of April, May at the latest.
If we vaccinate 50 million people before the fall, the epidemic will cease to be severe pressure”.
There was a reaction when the vaccination calendar, which Minister Koca announced as “spring“, was postponed to “autumn“.)

On 1 March, Turkish President Erdogan announced that an on-site decision period would be implemented as part of controlled normalization.
He said 81 provinces would be separated by “low, medium, high and very high” risk based on the risk situation of each province, and that governorships would make decisions.
He also said the risk map would be updated every two weeks.
In low- and medium-risk provinces, the ban on the over-65s and under-20s was lifted, training begun at all levels of education, and the weekend curfew lifted.
In high and very high risk provinces, only primary schools and preschool education institutions were opened.
The ban on the over-65s and under-20s was not over, but curfews were increased.
On weekends, it was only forbidden to go out on Sundays.
In all provinces except very high risk provinces, businesses such as cafés and restaurants started to accept customers again at a 50% capacity.
The curfew between 2100 and 0500 continued throughout Turkey.
In all provinces, all high school levels were tested for the 1st semester.

On 24 March, 1.4 million doses of the vaccine arrived in Turkey.

On 12 April 2021, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine became available.

As of 14 April 2021 at 19.00, a two-week partial shutdown was implemented.
Restrictions were imposed in many areas, especially the implementation of curfews between 1900 and 0500 on weekdays to cover the entire weekend.
A full shutdown was announced until 17 May 0500 to be implemented from 1900 on 29 April 2021.
Training was suspended at all levels and exams were postponed.
It was announced that intercity public transport would operate at a 50% capacity.
Chain stores were to be closed on Sundays.

On 28 April 2021, Health Minister Koca announced the signing of 50 million doses of the Sputnik Vvaccine.
On 30 April, the Sputnik V vaccine was approved for emergency use.

On 16 May 2021, theMinistry of the Interiorissued a circular effective from 17 May 2021.
According to the circular, curfews would be imposed between 2100 and 0500 on weekdays and full days at the weekend.
Curfews were lifted for citizens under 18 and over who have been vaccinated with two doses.
For individuals aged 65 and over who were not vaccinated despite being eligible for vaccinations, they were allowed to go out between 1000 and 1400 on weekdays.
Citizens under the age of 18 and over 65 were banned from public transport regardless of whether they were exempt from the restriction.
Shopping malls opened between 1000 and 2000 on weekdays and were completely closed on the weekend.
The visitor restriction, which was already in place in social protection/care centers such as nursing homes, aged care home rehabilitation centers and children’s homes, was extended until 1 June 2021.
Ugur Sahin, thefounder ofBioNTech,attended the Corona Virus Science Board meeting held on 20 May 2021.

The first shipment of the Sputnik V vaccine took place on 14 June.
On 30 June 2021, Health Minister Koca announced that it had been decided that those over 50 and health workers should get a 3rd dose of the vaccine.
Turkey moved to the 3rd stage of gradual normalization as of 1 July 2021.
Many of the restrictions that had existed for 15 months disappeared.
Accordingly, the curfew ended completely, while many restrictions on food and drink places were lifted.
Mask and social distancing rules taken within the scope of corona measures continue throughout the country.

(On 30 July 2021, the Sputnik V vaccine, which received Emergency Use Approval on 30 April 2021, was criticized for still not being used.
Following the Scientific Council meeting on 2 September, Health Minister Koca was asked why the vaccine was not available.
“There was a dose for 200,000 people related to Sputnik, that is, 400,000.
There is a difference of the first and second doses related to Sputnik, not the same vaccine.
They’re different.
Therefore, due to the vaccine difference that has come in, we have been in contact in the new period, especially yesterday, we are striving for the arrival of both one and second doses of the vaccine more intensively.”)

On 16 August 2021, due to the request of two doses ofPfizer-BioNTech vaccine by some countries on their departure abroad, two doses of Sinovac and one dose of BioNTech were granted a 4th dose of vaccine.

(After the 4th dose vaccine decision, Prof. Dr. Esin Davutoglu Şenol explained that:
“There is currently no direct evidence for repeated doses other than indirect data.”

Prof. Dr. Kayihan Pala stated:
“Making arrangements without data/evidence that are not based on scientific knowledge is another example of mismanagement.”)

On 19 August 2021, President Erdogan announced after the cabinet meeting that all levels would start full-time training on 6 September 2021, while non-vaccinated teachers and staff would be asked to test for PCR at least twice a week.
Starting from 6 September 2021, the Ministry of the Interior circular issued on 20 August 2021 required PCR testing for non-vaccinated persons for activities such as concerts, cinemas, theatres and public transport such as non-private vehicles (planes, buses, trains).
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said vaccination appointments have been opened for those with chronic diseases over the age of 12 and for the over-15s.
In the new period, it announced that there was no closure.
Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer said that students and teachers can come to school wearing masks.

(WSE teachers tend to wear masks these days whilst teaching.)

On 3 November 2021, Health Minister Koca announced that two doses ofPfizer-BioNTechvaccine would be given after six months.

During the pandemic, Turkey has provided funds, doctors, dispatched medical equipment such asPPE, PCR testing kits, and other assistance to at least 55 countries.
The dispatched medical equipment includes 1,300,000 N-95 masks and 300,000 PCR testing kitsin April 2020 alone.
By setting itself up as a provider rather than a recipient of aid, Turkey portrayed itself as a valuable partner in combating the global spread ofSARS-CoV-2.

Has the pandemic been handled well in Turkey?
In my assessment, it has.

In Turkey, a person is required to obtain a HES code for contact tracing.
(I was issued mine on 1 March 2021 at the Istanbul bus terminal before I was permitted to take a bus to Eskişehir.)

HESstands for Hayat Eve Sığar, which in the Turkish language means “Life Fits Into Home“.
The code helps you safely share your Covid-19 risk status withindividuals and institutions fordaily activities such as transportation or circulations for traveling.
It is mandatory to have a validHES(Hayat Eve Sığar) code when purchasing a bus, train,plane ticket, travellinglong distancesbetween cities insideTurkey, or entering public assembly areas such as shopping centres.
In order to get the code you have to fıll in a form.
In case you haven’t filled in the form correctly or you gavemisleading statements, you mightface administrative and legal sanctions or even may not be permitted to enter Turkey.
(Unless you are a Turkish citizen or residence permit holder).
The HES Code is a personal code implemented by the Ministry of Health in order to reduce the presence of those who tested positive for COVID-19 or have had contact with a positive patient, to prevent them from participating in public activities.
Shopping centres will often have sensors that record your body temperature to ensure that feverish individuals are denied access to public exposure.

The PCR test at the hospital this evening was performed by a woman encased behind a plexiglass barrier with plastic sheathed openings where her gloved arms reached out with a large stick to impale me in my nostril.


I am reminded of the line used by Chandler (Matthew Perry) in an episode of Friends:
“You have to stop the Q-tip when there is resistance”
Before cleaning one’s ears, a person has to make sure that they don’t push the cotton swab too deep inside the ear because the more you push it inside, it actually starts damaging your brain.
So whenJoey(Matt Leblanc) talks utter nonsense,Chandlerjust came up with the line:
“You have to stop the Q-tip when there is resistance”.
This is to portray howJoeyhad been pushing the cotton swabs too deep inside his ear that his brain got damaged and couldn’t make sense while he was talking.

It feels like brain matter must surely be punctured when the test stick is violently rammed up one’s nose.
Clearly it takes a special sort of person to regularly stab folks up the nose on a constant basis.
I wonder what the job description must be for this activity.

I received a negative result the following morning and then dashed off to the train station bound for Istanbul.
I would need to show this result before boarding the train in Eskişehir, at the Istanbul airport check-in, at the airplane boarding gate, upon arrival at customs in Zürich, Switzerland, and upon entering a steakhouse restaurant that same evening in Konstanz, Germany.



Landschlacht, Switzerland, Thursday 30 December 2021
The only ray of light which illuminates the gloom is when – miracle of miracles, wonder of wonders – you have somehow still avoided contracting the corona virus.
You have been a sensible soul – for the most part.
These past two years you have worn a protective mask, have endured lockdowns, have kept your distance from others, have been vaccinated (twice) and you anticipate your appointment to get your 3rd shot – a booster – soon.
You certainly are not enjoying these times wherein you find yourself.
Masks are uncomfortable and make it challenging for those with glasses to see.
You cannot remember the last time you attended a concert and you wonder when or if you might ever go to one again.
You resent the compulsion of governments and institutions that demand proof of health and record of vaccinations as almost an invasion of your private medical history.
And yet in the name of public safety you cooperate with all the rules and restrictions, seeing no reason to doubt science or the deadly dangers of this prevalent pandemic.

TheCOVID-19 pandemicis an ongoing globalpandemic of corona virus disease 2019(COVID-19) caused bysevere acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2(SARS-CoV-2).
Thenovel virus (avirus that has not previously been recorded) was first identified from an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhanin December 2019, and attempts to contain it there failed, allowing it tospread across the globe.

TheWorld Health Organization(WHO) (aspecialized agency of the United Nations responsible for internationaldeclared aPublic Health Emergency of International Concern(a formal declaration of “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response“, formulated when a situation arises that is “serious, sudden, unusual, or unexpected”, which “carries implications for public health beyond the affected state’s national border” and “may require immediate international action“) on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.

As of 28 December 2021, the pandemic had causedmore than 281 million cases and5.4 million deaths, making it one of thedeadliest in history.

113 countries have more confirmed cases than thePeople’s Republic of China, the country where the outbreak began.
All countries with more cases than China have at least 100,000 cases, including Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Chile, Egypt, Austalia, Japan and South Korea.

Thailand was the first country to report at least one case outside China.

TheUnited States andItaly were the first two countries to overtake China in terms of the number of confirmed cases.

The country that overtook China in terms of the number of confirmed cases several days later was theUnited Kingdom.

Japan was the first country inEast Asia to overtake China in terms of the number of confirmed cases.

The second country in East Asia that overtook China in terms of the number of confirmed cases was South Korea, while the third and most recent one wasMongolia.

The most recent country that overtook China in terms of the number of confirmed cases wasLaos.

Today, 13 most affected countries have at least five million cases, including the United States,India, Brazil, the United Kingdom,Russia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy andArgentina.

At the moment, 27 most affected countries, including Thailand,the Czech Republic, South Africa, Canada and Poland, have at least two million cases.

The first person infected with the disease, known as COVID-19, was discovered at the beginning of December 2019.
The disease has spread very easily to the United States, India, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Poland, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Thailand, Canada, Romania, Chile, Japan, Portugal, Hungary, Greece, South Korea, Egypt, Australia, and many other countries.

The COVID-19 outbreak has been apandemicsince 11 March 2020.
A total ofabout 5.4 million deaths worldwide pertaining to COVID-19 was reported as of late December 2021 (early winter in thenorthern hemisphere and early summer in thesouthern hemisphere).
At the beginning of December 2021, the second anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak was commemorated.

COVID-19 symptoms range fromnone to deadly.
Severe illness is more likely in elderly patients and those with certain underlying medical conditions.
COVID-19 isairborne, spread via air contaminated by microscopicvirions (viral particles).
The risk of infection is highest among people in close proximity, but can occur over longer distances, particularly indoors in poorly ventilated areas.
Transmission rarely occurs via contaminated surfaces or fluids.
Infected persons are typically contagious for 10 days, often beginning before or without symptoms.
Mutationsproduced many strains(variants) with varying degrees of infectivity and virulence.
There are manyvariants ofSARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19.
Some are believed, or have been stated, to be of particular importance due to their potential for increased transmissibility,increased virulence, or reduced effectiveness of vaccines against them.
These variants contribute to the continuation of theCOVID-19 pandemic.
Five SARS-CoV-2 variants have been designated asvariants of concern (a category used forvariants of the virus where mutations in theirspike protein – the largest of the four majorstructural proteinsfound incorona viruses.
The spike protein assembles intotrimers (a macromolecularcomplex formed by three, macromolecules)that form large structures, called spikes orpeplomers that project from the surface of thevirion.
The distinctive appearance of these spikes when visualized usingnegative stain transmission electron microscopy, “recalling thesolar corona“,gives the virus family its name.

TheAlpha variant, also known aslineage B.1.1.7,is avariant ofSARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19.
One ofseveral variants of concern, the variant is estimated to be 40% – 80% moretransmissible than thewild type (the typical form of a species as it occurs in nature)SARS-CoV-2 (with most estimates occupying the middle to higher end of this range).

Alpha was first detected in November 2020 from a sample taken in September in theUK, and began to spread quickly by mid-December, around the same time as infections surged.
This increase is thought to be at least partly because of one or more mutations in the virus’spike protein.
The variant is also notable for having more mutations than normally seen.
As of January 2021, more than half of all genomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 was carried out in the UK.
This has given rise to questions as to how many other important variants may be circulating around the world undetected.
On 2 February 2021,Public Health England reported that they had detected “a limited number of B.1.1.7 VOC-202012/01 genomes withE484K mutations“,which they dubbed Variant of Concern 202102/02 (VOC-202102/02).

Imperial College Londoninvestigated over a million people in England while the Alpha variant was dominant and discovered a wide range of further symptoms linked to Covid.
“Chills, loss of appetite, headache and muscle aches” were most common in infected people, as well as classic symptoms.

(The name of the mutation, E484K, refers to an exchange whereby theglumatic acid (E) – an α-amino acid that is used by almost all living beings in thebiosynthesis of proteins, non-essential in humans, meaning that the body can synthesize it – is replaced bylysine(K) – another α-amino acidthat is used in the biosynthesis ofproteins, which the human body cannot synthesize, but isessential in humansand must be obtained from one’s diet.
It is nicknamed “Eeek“.
E484K has been reported to be anescape mutation(i.e., a mutation that improves a virus’s ability to evade the host’simmune system) from at least one form ofmonoclonal antibody (anantibodymade by cloning a uniquewhite blood cell)against SARS-CoV-2, indicating there may be a “possible change inantigenicity (the capacity of a chemical structure to bind specifically with a group of certain products that haveadaptive immunity)”.

(White blood cells, also calledleukocytesorleucocytes, are thecells of theimmune systemthat are involved in protecting the body against bothinfectious disease and foreign invaders.
All white blood cells are produced and derived fromcells in thebone marrow known ashematopoietic stem cells.
Leukocytes are found throughout the body, including theblood and lymphatic system.)

The Gamma variant (lineage P.1),the Zeta variant (lineage P.2, also known as lineage B.1.1.28.2)and the Beta variant (501.V2) exhibit this mutation.
A limited number of lineage B.1.1.7 genomes with E484K mutation have also been detected.
Monoclonal and serum-derived antibodies are reported to be from 10 to 60 times less effective in neutralising virus bearing the E484K mutation.
On 2 February 2021, medical scientists in the United Kingdom reported the detection of E484K in 11 samples (out of 214,000 samples), a mutation that may compromise current vaccine effectiveness.)

One of the mutations (N501Y) is also present inthe Beta andGamma variants.
N501Y denotes a change fromasparagine(N) (an α-amino acid that isused in the biosynthesis of proteins, non-essential in humans, meaning the body can synthesize it) totyrosine(Y) (one of the 20 standard amino acids used by cells to synthesize proteins, and found in many high-protein food products (such aschicken, turkey, fish, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, peanuts, almonds, pumpkn seeds, soy products and lima beans, but also inavocados andbananas), theDietary Reference Intake(recommended dietary allowance: RDA) is 42mg per kilogram of body weight).
N501Y has been nicknamed “Nelly“.
This change is believed to increasebinding affinity because of its position inside thespike glycoprotein’s receptor-binding domain, which bindsACE2in human cells.

(Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2(ACE2)is anenzyme (a protein that acts as a biochemical catalyst)that can be found either attached to themembranceof cells (mACE2) in the intestines, kidney, testis, gallbladder and heart, or in a soluble form (sACE2).
Both membrane bound and soluble ACE2 are integral parts of theRenin Angiotensin Aldosterone System (RAAS) that exists to keep the body’s blood pressure in check.
mACE2 also serves as the entry point into cells for some corona viruses.)

On 31 May 2021, theWHOannounced that the Variant of Concern would be labelled “Alpha” for use in public communications.

TheBeta variant,also known aslineage B.1.351, is avariant ofSARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19.
One of severalSARS-CoV-2 variants believed to be of particular importance, it was first detected in theNelson Mandela Baymetropolitan area of theEastern Cape province ofSouth Africain October 2020,which was reported by the country’shealth departmenton 18 December 2020.

TheWHO labelled the variant as Beta variant, not to replace the scientific name but as a name for the public to commonly refer to.
The WHO considers it to be avariant of concern.

TheGamma variant, also known aslineage P.1,is one of the variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19.
Thisvariant of SARS-CoV-2has been named lineage P.1 and has 17amino acid substitutions (a change from oneamino acidto a different amino acid in a protein due to point mutation in the corresponding DNA sequence), ten of which in its spike protein, including these three designated to be of particular concern:N501Y (Nelly),E484K (Eeek)and K417T.

This variant of SARS-CoV-2 was first detected by theNational Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID)of Japan, on 6 January 2021 in four people who had arrived inTokyo having visitedAmazonas, Brazil, four days earlier.
It was subsequently declared to be in circulation in Brazil.
Under the simplified naming scheme proposed by the WHO, P.1 has been labeled Gamma variant, and is currently considered avariant of concern.
Gamma caused widespread infection in early 2021 in the city ofManaus, the capital of Amazonas, although the city had already experienced widespread infection in May 2020,with a studyindicating highseroprevalence (the number of persons in a population who test positive for a specific diseasebased on serology(blood serum) specimens, which is often presented as a percent of the total specimens tested or as a proportion per 100,000 persons tested) of antibodies for SARS-CoV-2.

A research article published in Science Journal indicates that P.1 infected people have a greater chance of transmissibility and death than B.1.1.28 infected ones.
The Gamma variant comprises the two distinct subvariants 28-AM-1 and 28-AM-2, which both carry the K417T, E484K, N501Y mutations, and which both developed independently of each other within the same Brazilian Amazonas region.
Gamma is notably different from theZeta variant(lineage P.2) which is also circulating strongly in Brazil.
In particular, Zeta only carries the E484K mutation and has neither of the other two mutations of concern, N501Y and K417T.

TheDelta variantis a variant ofSARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19.
It was first detected in India in late 2020.
The Delta variant was named on 31 May 2021 and had spread to over 179 countries by 22 November 2021.
TheWHO indicated in June 2021 that the Delta variant was becoming the dominant strain globally.
It has mutations in the gene encoding the SARS-CoV-2spike proteincausing the substitutions T478K,P681Rand L452R, which are known to affect transmissibility of the virus as well as whether it can be neutralised by antibodies for previously circulating variants of the COVID-19 virus.

The name of the mutation, P681R, refers to an exchange whereby proline(P) (an amino acid used in the biosynthesis of proteins) is replaced byarginine(R) (another amino acid used in protein biosynthesis, which determines the development stage amd health status of the individual).

The name of the mutation, L452R, refers to an exchange whereby leucine(L) (anessential amino acid used in thebiosynthesis of proteins in humans, meaning the body cannot synthesize it, so it must be obtained from one’s diet) is replaced byarginine (R) (another α-amino acidthat is used in the biosynthesis ofproteins, classified as a semiessential or conditionallyessential amino acid, depending on the developmental stage and health status of the individual, though most healthy people do not need to supplement with arginine because it is a component of all protein-containing foods).
L452R is found in both the Delta and Kappa variants which first circulated in India, but have since spread around the world.
L452R is a relevant mutation in this strain that enhances ACE2 receptor binding ability and can reduce vaccine-stimulated antibodies from attaching to this altered spike protein.
L452R, some studies show, could even make the corona virus resistant to T cells, that are class of cells necessary to target and destroy virus-infected cells.
They are different from antibodies that are useful in blocking corona virus particles and preventing it from proliferating.

The Delta variant is thought to be one of the most transmissible respiratory viruses known.
In August 2021, Public Health England(PHE) reported secondaryattack ratein household contacts of non-travel or unknown cases for Delta to be 10.8%vis-à-vis10.2% for theAlpha variant.
The case fatality ratefor those 386,835 people with Delta is 0.3%, where 46% of the cases and 6% of the deaths are unvaccinated and below 50 years old.
Immunityfrom previous recoveryorCOVID-19 vaccinesare effective in preventing severe disease or hospitalisation from infection with the variant.
On 7 May 2021, PHE changed their classification of lineage B.1.617.2 from a variant under investigation (VUI) to avariant of concern(VOC) based on an assessment of transmissibility being at least equivalent to B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant).
The UK’sScientific Advisory Group for Emergencies(SAGE) (aBritish government body that advises the central government in emergencies, usually chaired by theUK’s Chief Scientific Adviser)using May data estimated a “realistic” possibility of being 50% more transmissible.
On 11 May 2021, the WHO also classified this lineage VOC, and said that it showed evidence of higher transmissibility and reduced neutralisation.

On 15 June 2021, theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) declared Delta a variant of concern.
The variant is thought to be partly responsible forIndia’s deadly second waveof the pandemic beginning in February 2021.

(India began its vaccination programme on 16 January 2021.
On 19 January 2021, nearly a year after the first reported case in the country,Lakshadweep became the lastregion of Indiato report its first case.
By February 2021, daily cases had fallen to 9,000 per-day.

However, by early-April 2021, a majorsecond waveof infections took hold in the country with destructive consequences.
On 9 April, India surpassed 1 million active cases,and by 12 April, India overtook Brazil as having the second-most COVID-19 cases worldwide.
By late April, India passed 2.5million active cases and was reporting an average of 300,000 new cases and 2,000 deaths per-day.
Some analysts feared this was an undercount.
On 30 April, India reported over 400,000 new cases and over 3,500 deaths in one day.

Multiple factors have been proposed to have potentially contributed to the sudden spike in cases, including highly-infectious variants of concern such asLineage B.1.617, a lack of preparations as temporary hospitals were often dismantled after cases started to decline, and new facilities were not built,and health and safety precautions being poorly-implemented or enforced during weddings, festivals (such asHolion 29 March,and theHaridwar Kumbh Melawhich was linked to linked to at least 1,700 positive cases between 10 and 14 April including cases in Hindu seers),sporting events (such asthe Indian Premier League),state and local electionsin which politicians and activists have held in several states,and in public places.



An economic slowdown put pressure on the government to lift restrictions.
There had been a feeling ofexceptionalism based on the hope that India’s young population and childhood immunisation scheme would blunt the impact of the virus.
Models may have underestimated projected cases and deaths due to the under-reporting of cases in the country.

Due to high demand, the vaccination programme began to be hit with supply issues.
Exports of theOxford-AstraZeneca vaccinewere suspended to meet domestic demand,there have been shortages of the raw materials required to manufacture vaccines domestically,whilehesitancy and a lack of knowledge among poorer, rural communities has also impacted the programme.

The second wave placed a major strain on thehealthcare system, including a shortage of liquid medical oxygendue to ignored warnings which began in the first wave itself,logistic issues, and a lack of cryogenic tankers.
On 23 April, Modi met via videoconference with liquid oxygen suppliers, where he acknowledged the need to “provide solutions in a very short time“, and acknowledged efforts such as increases in production, and the use of rail and air transport to deliver oxygen supplies.
A large number of newoxygen plantswere announced.
The installation burden was shared by the centre, coordination with foreign countries with regard to oxygen plants received in the form of aid, and DRDO.
A number of countries sent emergency aid to India in the form of oxygen supplies, medicines, raw material for vaccines and ventilators.
This reflected a policy shift in India.
Comparable aid offers had been rejected during the past 16 years.

The number of new cases had begun to steadily drop by late May.
On 25 May, the country reported 195,994 new cases — its lowest daily increase since 13 April.
However, the mortality rate has remained high.
By 24 May, India recorded over 300,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
Around 100,000 deaths had occurred in the last 26 days, and 50,000 in the last 12.
In May 2021, WHO declared that two variants first found in India will be referred to as ‘Delta‘ and ‘Kappa‘.
Karnataka announced a COVID-19 Memorial.
On 25 August 2021,Soumya Swaminathan said that India “may be entering some kind of stage ofendemicitywhere there is low level transmission or moderate level transmission going on” but nothing as severe as before.
In other words, India is learning to live with the virus.

India announced a mandatory 10-day quarantine on travellers arriving from United Kingdom irrespective of their vaccination status starting 4 October 2021 after the UK also put the same restrictions on travellers from India by not recognizing India’s vaccine certificate.

On 8 October, the UK opened up the restrictions on travellers from 47 countries and locations including India.
It later contributed to a third wave inFiji, theUKandSouth Africa.

The WHO warned in July 2021 that it could have a similar effect elsewhere inEurope and Africa.
By late July, it had also driven an increase in daily infections in parts of Asia,theUS, Australia and New Zealand.
Yet another COVID variant, Omicron, followed.

TheOmicron variantis avariantof SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19.
As of December 2021, it is the newest variant.

It was first reported to theWHO from South Africa on 24 November 2021.
On 26 November 2021, the WHO designated it as avariant of concernand named it “Omicron“, the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet.
The variant has an unusually large number of mutations, several of which are novel and a significant number of which affect thespike proteintargeted by mostCOVID-19 vaccinesat the time of the discovery of the Omicron variant.
This level of variation has led to concerns regardingits transmissibility, immune system evasion and vaccine resistance, despite initial reports indicating that the variant causes less serious disease than previous strains.
The variant was quickly designated as being “of concern“.
Travel restrictions were introduced by several countries in an attempt to slow its international spread.
Compared to previous variants of concern, Omicron is believed to be far more contagious (spreading much quicker) and spreads around 70 times faster than any previous variants in thebronchi(lung airways), but it is less able to penetrate deep lung tissue, and perhaps for this reason there is a considerable reduction in the risk of severe disease requiring hospitalisation.
However the extremely high rate of spread, combined with its ability to evade both double vaccination and the body’s immune system, means the total number of patients requiring hospital care at any given time is still of great concern.
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The new variant was first detected on 22 November 2021 in laboratories inBotswana andSouth Africa based on samples collected 11–16 November.
The first known sample was collected in South Africa on 8 November.

In other continents, the first known cases were a person arriving inHong Kong from South Africa viaQatar on 11 November, and another person who arrived inBelgium from Egypt via Turkey on the same date.

As of 16December2021, the variant has been confirmed in more than 80 countries.
TheWHO estimated that by mid-December, Omicron likely was in most countries, whether they had detected it or not.

Symptoms of COVID-19are variable, ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness.
Common symptoms include:
- headache
- loss of smell (anosmia)
- loss of taste (ageusia)
- nasal congestion
- runny nose
- cough
- muscle pain
- sore throat
- fever
- diarrhea
- breathing difficulties
People with the same infection may have different symptoms, and their symptoms may change over time.
Three common clusters of symptoms have been identified:
- one respiratory symptom cluster with cough,sputum/mucus, shortness of breath, and fever
- a musculoskeletal symptom cluster with muscle and joint pain, headache, and fatigue
- a cluster of digestive symptoms with abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea.
In people without prior ear, nose, and throat disorders,loss of taste combined withloss of smellis associated withCOVID-19and is reported in as many as 88% of cases.
Of people who show symptoms:
- 81% develop only mild to moderate symptoms (up to mildpneumonia)
- 14% develop severe symptoms (dyspnea/shortness of breath, hypoxia – a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequateoxygen supply at thetissue level, classified as eithergeneralized (affecting the whole body) orlocal (affecting a region of the body) – or more than 50% lung involvement on imaging)
- 5% of patients suffer critical symptoms (respiratory failure, shovk or multiorgan dysfunction).
At least a third of the people who are infected with the virus do not develop noticeable symptoms at any point in time.
Theseasymptomatic carriers tend not to get tested and can spread the disease.
Other infected people will develop symptoms later, called “pre-symptomatic“, or have very mild symptoms and can also spread the virus.
As is common with infections, there isa delay between the moment a person first becomes infected and the appearance of the first symptoms.
Themedian delay for COVID-19 is four to five days.
Most symptomatic people experience symptoms within two to seven days after exposure.
Almost all will experience at least one symptom within 12 days.
Most people recover from the acute phase of the disease.
However, some people – over half of acohort of home-isolated young adults– continue to experience a range of effects, such asfatigue, for months after recovery, a condition calledlong COVID.
Long-term damage to organs has been observed.
Multi-year studies are underway to further investigate the long-term effects of the disease.

COVID-19 vaccines have beenapproved and widely distributed in various countries since December 2020.
ACOVID‑19 vaccineis avaccineintended to provideacquired immunityagainstsevere acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2(SARS‑CoV‑2), the virus that causes corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Prior to theCOVID-19 pandemic, an established body of knowledge existed about the structure and function ofcorona virusescausing diseases likesevere acute respiratory syndrome(SARS) andMiddle East respiratory syndrome(MERS).

Severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS) is a viralrespiratory disease of zoonotic (coming from animals) origin caused bysevere acute respiratory syndrome corona virus(SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS corona virusspeciessevere acute respiratory syndrome-related corona virus(SARSr-CoV).
The first known cases occurred in November 2002.
The syndrome caused the2002 – 2004 SARS outbreak.
Around late 2017, Chinese scientists traced the virus through the intermediary ofAsian palm civetsto cave-dwellinghorseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan.


SARS was a relatively rare disease.
At the end of the epidemic in June 2003, the incidence was 8,469 cases with a case fatality rate(CFR) of 11%.
No cases of SARS-CoV-1 have been reported worldwide since 2004.

Middle East respiratory syndrome(MERS) is a viralrespiratory infectioncaused bythe Middle East respiratory syndrome-related corona virus(MERS-CoV).
Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe.
Typical symptoms includefever, cough, diarrhea and shortness of breath.
The disease is typically more severe in those with other health problems.
The first identified case occurred inJune 2012 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Most cases have occurred in theArabian Peninsula.
Over 2,500 cases have been reported as of January 2021, including 45 cases in the year 2020.
About 35% of those who are diagnosed with the disease die from it.
Larger outbreaks have occurred inSouth Korea (2015) and inSaudi Arabia (2018).
MERS-CoV is acorona virus believed to be originally from bats.
However, humans are typically infected fromcamels, either during direct contact or indirectly.
spread between humans typically requires close contact with an infected person.
Its spread is uncommon outside of hospitals.
Thus, its risk to the global population is currently deemed to be fairly low.
Diagnosis is byrRT – PCR testingof blood and respiratory samples.

(Polymerase chain reaction(PCR) is a method widely used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies (complete copies or partial copies) of a specificDNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it (or a part of it) to a large enough amount to study in detail.
PCR was invented in 1983 by the Americanbiochemist Kary Mullis at Cetus Corporation.

It is fundamental to many of the procedures used in genetic testing and research, including analysis ofancient samples of DNAand identification of infectious agents.
Using PCR, copies of very small amounts ofDNA sequencesare exponentially amplified in a series of cycles of temperature changes.
PCR is now a common and often indispensable technique used inmedical laboratory research for a broad variety of applications including biomedical researchandcriminal forsenics.
Applications of the technique include:
- DNA cloning for sequencing, gene cloning and manipulation, gene mutagenesis
- construction of DNA-basedphylogenies, or functional analysis of genes
- diagnosis andmonitoring of genetic disorders
- amplification of ancient DNA
- analysis of genetic fingerprints forDNA profiling(for example, inforensic science andparentage testing)
- detection ofpathogensin nucleic acide testsfor the diagnosis ofinfectious diseases)

As of 2021, there is no specificvaccine or treatment for MERS,but a number are being developed.
The WHO recommends that those who come in contact with camels wash their hands and not touch sick camels.
They also recommend thatcamel-based food productsbe appropriately cooked.

Treatments that help with the symptoms and support body functioning may be used.
Previous infection with MERS can confer cross-reactive immunity toSARS-CoV-2 and provide partial protection againstCOVID-19.
However,co-infection withSARS-CoV-2and MERS is possible and could lead to arecombination event.

Reassortmentis the mixing of thegenetic material of a species into new combinations in different individuals.
Several different processes contribute to reassortment, including assortment of chromosomes, andchromosomal crossover.
It is particularly used when two similarvirusesthat are infecting the same cell exchange genetic material.
In particular, reassortment occurs amonginfluenza viruses, whose genomes consist of eight distinct segments of RNA.
These segments act like mini-chromosomes, and each time a flu virus is assembled, it requires one copy of each segment.
If a single host (a human, a chicken, or other animal) is infected by two different strains of the influenza virus, then it is possible that new assembled viral particles will be created from segments whose origin is mixed, some coming from one strain and some coming from another.
The new reassortant strain will share properties of both of its parental lineages.
Reassortment is responsible for some of the majorgenetic shiftsin the history of the influenza virus.
In the 1957 “Asian flu” and 1968 “Hong Kong flu”pandemics, flu strains were caused by reassortment between an avian (bird) virus and a human virus.
In addition, theH1N1 virus responsible for the2009 swine flu pandemic has an unusual mix of swine, avian and human influenza genetic sequences.

This knowledge about the structure and function ofcorona virusescausing diseases accelerated the development of variousvaccine platforms during early 2020.
The initial focus of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines was on preventing symptomatic, often severe illness.

On 10 January 2020, the SARS-CoV-2genetic sequence data was shared throughthe GlobalInitiative onSharingAvianInfluenzaData (GISAID).

By 19 March, the global pharmaceutical industry announced a major commitment to address COVID‑19.
The COVID‑19 vaccines are widely credited for their role in reducing the severity and death caused by COVID‑19.
Many countries have implemented phased distribution plans that prioritize those at highest risk of complications, such as the elderly, and those at high risk of exposure and transmission, such as healthcare workers.

As of 28December2021, 9.02billion doses of COVID‑19 vaccines have been administered worldwide based on official reports fromnational public health agencies.
By December 2020, more than 10 billion vaccine doses had been preordered by countries,with about half of the doses purchased byhigh income countriescomprising 14% of the world’s population.

GISAIDis a global science initiative and primary source established in 2008 that provides open-access to genomic data ofinfluenza virusesand the corona virus responsible for theCOVID-19pandemic.
On 10 January 2020, the first whole-genome sequences ofSARS-CoV-2were made available on GISAID, which enabled global responses to the pandemic,including the development of the first vaccinesand diagnostic teststo detect SARS-CoV-2.
GISAID facilitates genomic epidemiology and real-time surveillance to monitor the emergence of new COVID-19 viral strains across the planet.
Since its establishment as an alternative to sharing avian influenza datavia conventional public domain archives,GISAID has been recognized for incentivizing rapid exchange of outbreak dataduring the H1N1 pandemicin 2009, theH7N9epidemicin 2013, and theCOVID-19 pandemicin early 2020.
GISAID was recognized for its importance toglobal health byG20health ministers in 2017.
In 2020 theWHO chief scientist called the data science initiative “a game changer”.
Its closed access license, however, has been criticized by hundreds of researchers.

Other recommendedpreventative measuresincludesocial distancing, masking, improvingventilation and air filtration, andquarantining those who have been exposed or are symptomatic.

Social distancing, or physical distancingis a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures taken toprevent the spread of acontagious disease by maintaining a physical distance between people and reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other.
It involves keeping a distance of six feet or two meters from others and avoiding gathering together in large groups.

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing and related measures were emphasised by several governments as alternatives to an enforced quarantine of heavily affected areas.
According toUNESCOmonitoring, more than a hundred countries have implemented nationwide school closures in response to COVID-19, impacting over half the world’s student population.

In the UK, the government advised the public to avoid public spaces.
Cinemas and theatres voluntarily closed to encourage the government’s message.
With many people disbelieving that COVID-19 is any worse than theseasonal flu,it has been difficult to convince the public to voluntarily adopt social distancing practices.

InBelgium, media reported arave was attended by at least300before it was broken up by local authorities.

InFrance, teens making nonessential trips are fined up toUS $150.

Beaches were closed inFlorida andAlabama to disperse partygoers during spring break.

Weddings were broken up in New Jersey and an 8p.m.curfew was imposed inNewark.
New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania were the first states to adopt coordinated social distancing policies which closed down non-essential businesses and restricted large gatherings.

Shelter in place orders inCalifornia were extended to the entire state on 19 March.

On the same day,Texas declared a public disaster and imposed statewide restrictions.

These preventive measures such as social-distancing andself-isolation prompted the widespread closure ofprimary, secondary and post-secondary schools in more than 120 countries.
As of 23 March 2020, more than 1.2billion learners were out of school due toschool closures in response to COVID-19.
Given low rates of COVID-19 symptoms among children, the effectiveness of school closures has been called into question.
Even when school closures are temporary, it carries high social and economic costs.
However, the significance of children in spreading COVID-19 is unclear.
While the full impact of school closures during the coronavirus pandemic are not yet known, UNESCO advises that school closures have negative impacts on local economies and on learning outcomes for students.

In early March 2020, the sentiment “Stay The F**k Home” was coined by Florian Reifschneider, a German engineer and was quickly echoed by notable celebrities such asTaylor Swift, Ariana Grande andBusy Philippsin hopes of reducing and delaying the peak of the outbreak.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram also joined the campaign with similar hashtags, stickers and filters under #staythefhome, #stayhome, #staythefuckhome and began trending across social media.
The website claims to have reached about two million people online and says the text has been translated into 17 languages.

It has been suggested that improving ventilation and managing exposure duration can reduce transmission.
Treatmentsincludemonoclonal antibodiesand symptom control.

Governmental interventions includetravel restrictions,lockdowns, business restrictions and closures,workplace hazard controls, quarantines,testing systems, andtracing contacts of the infected.

The pandemic triggered severesocial and economic disruption around the world, includingthe largest global recession since theGreat Depression.
Widespread supply shortages, includingfood shortages, were caused bysupply chain disruption andpanic buying.

The resultant near-global lockdowns saw anunprecedented pollution decrease.

Educational institutionsand public areas were partially or fully closed in many jurisdictions, and manyevents were cancelled or postponed.

Misinformation circulated throughsocial media andmass media.


Political tensions intensified.
The pandemic raised issues ofracial and geographic discrimination,health equity, andthe balance between public health imperatives and individual rights.

There have been protests, demonstrations and strikes around the world againstnational responsesto theCOVID-19 pandemicby governmental bodies.
Some have protested against governmental failure to stem the spread of the virus effectively, while others have been driven by the financial hardship resulting from government measures to contain the virus, including restrictions on travel and entertainment, hitting related industries and casual workers hard.
Protests continue against restrictions on people’s movements, compulsory wearing offace masks, lockdowns, vaccinationsand other measures.

The virus was confirmed to have spread toSwitzerland on 25 February 2020 when the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed following aCOVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

A 70-year-old man in the Italian-speaking canton ofTicino which borders Italy, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
The man had previously visitedMilan.

On 27 February, a 28-year-old IT worker fromGeneva, who had recently returned from Milan, tested positive and was admitted to theGeneva University Hospital.
A 55-year-old Italian who worked in an international company also tested positive in Geneva.

Two Italian children, who were on vacation inGraubünden, tested positive and were hospitalised.

A 26-year-old man inAargau, who had gone on a business trip the week before and stayed inVerona, tested positive and was hospitalised.

A 30-year-old woman, who had visited Milan, was admitted to a hospital inZürich.

A 49-year-old man living in Franceand working in Vaud was confirmed positive in Canton ofVaud.

A young woman, who had travelled to Milan, tested positive inBasel Stadt.
She worked in a daycare centre inRiehen, and after her test had been confirmed, the children at the daycare were put into a two-week quarantine.

On 28 February, her partner, a 23-year-old man, also tested positive inBasel Landschaft.

Afterwards, multiple cases related to theItaly clusters were discovered in multiple cantons, includingBasel City, Zürich and Graubünden.
Multiple isolated cases not related to the Italy clusters were also subsequently confirmed.

The government began to hold COVID-19 press conferences to which several members of theFederal Council(Swiss Cabinet)and the Head of the Swiss Corona Task-Force,Daniel Koch(dubbed “Mr. Corona” by the media) assisted.

On 27 February 2020, following the confirmation of COVID-19 cases in the region, Graubünden cancelled theEngadiner Ski Marathon.

On 28 February, the Federal Council banned events involving more than 1,000 people in an effort to curb the spread of the infection.
Multiple events such as carnivals and fairs were either postponed or cancelled.

The Geneva Motor Show, Baselworld, theBern Carnival and theCarnival of Basel were cancelled.


The University of Bern replaced all face-to-face lectures with more than 250 attendees with online lectures.
On 28 February 2020, the national government, theFederal Council, banned all events with more than 1,000 participants.

On 3 March, theUniversity of Zürichannounced six confirmed cases of the corona virus at the Institute of Mathematics.
As of 5 March, there were 10 confirmed cases at the University of Zürich, at least seven at the I-Math and one at the Center of Dental Medicine.

On 5 March, theLausanne University Hospitalannounced that a 74-year-old female coronavirus case had died overnight.
The patient had been hospitalised since 3 March, and had been suffering from chronic illness.

On 6 March, the Federal Council announced a “changed strategy” with a focus on the protection of the most vulnerable individuals, i.e., older persons and persons with pre-existing conditions.

On 11 March, a 54-year-old male died from COVID-19 in the Bruderholz Hospital inBasel Landschaft, marking the 4th fatal case in Switzerland.
He had joined a religious event inMulhouse, France,previous to contracting the virus and suffering frompneumonia.

On 13 March, the Federal Council decided to cancel classes in all educational establishments until 4 April 2020, and banned all events (public or private) involving more than 100 people.
It has also decided to partially close its borders and enacted border controls.
The canton of Vaud took more drastic measures, prohibiting all public and private gatherings with more than 50 people, and closing its educational establishments until 30 April.

On 16 March 2020, a State of Extraordinary Situation under the Federal Law of Epidemics was declared.
Most shops were closed nationwide.
On 16 March, the Federal Council announcedfurther measures, and a revised ordinance applicable on 17 March.
Measures include the closure of bars, shops and other gathering places until 19 April, but left open certain essentials, such as grocery shops, pharmacies, (a reduced) public transport and the postal service.
The government announced a 42 billion CHF rescue package for the economy, which included money to replace lost wages for employed and self-employed people, short-term loans to businesses, delay for payments to the government, and support for cultural and sport organizations.

Shortly thereafter, on 20 March, all gatherings of more than five people in public spaces were banned.
Additionally, the government gradually imposed restrictions on border crossings and announced economic support measures worth 40 billionSwiss francs.
The measures were gradually removed in several phases beginning in late April until June 2020but new measures were imposed in October as cases surged again.
On 20 March, the government announced that no complete lockdown would be implemented, but all events or meetings over five people were prohibited.
Economic activities would continue including construction.
Those measures were prolonged until 26 April 2020.

On 16 April, Switzerland announced that the country would ease restrictions in a three-step, gradual way.
The first step began on 27 April, for those who work in close contact with others, but not in large numbers.
Surgeons, dentists, day care workers, hairdressers, massage and beauty salons could be opened with safety procedures applied.
DIY stores, garden centres, florists and food shops that also sell other goods could also be opened.
The second step was to begin on 11 May, assuming implementation of the first step without problems, at which time other shops and schools could be opened.
The third step would begin on 8 June with the easing of restrictions on vocational schools, universities, museums, zoos and libraries.

From 25 June onwards, the Government pays for the costs of an eventualCOVID test, if a patient has enough symptoms of COVID-19.
In July and August, masks became mandatory, first on public transport and then also in airplanes.

In October 2020, following a rapid increase in corona cases, the authorities imposed stricter public health measures.
These include limiting public gatherings to 15 people, prioritising home office and making masks mandatory in all enclosed public spaces.

On 19 December 2020, the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products (Swissmedic) approved thePfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine(Comirnaty) for regular use, two months after receiving the application, although it was expected to give a decision later than other European countries, as Swiss laws do not allow emergency approvals.
After the application was processed with high priority using all the available resources, the head of Swissmedic stated that the vaccine fully complied with the requirements of safety, efficacy and quality.
This constituted the first authorization by astringent regulatory authority under a standard procedure for anyCOVID-19 vaccine.
Three days later, 107 000 vaccine shots were received by the army to be dispatched in the cantons.

On 23 December, 302 days after the first official case, the first patient, a 90-year-old woman from Central Switzerland, was vaccinated in a retirement home inLucerne.
On that day, the cantons ofLucerne, Zug, Schwyz, Nidwalden and Appenzell Innerrhodenlaunched the vaccination campaign,marking the beginning of mass vaccination in Switzerland and continental Europe outside Russia.

In January 2021, after a month of corona cases remaining at a high level, additional measures were passed that required the closure of all restaurants, sport and cultural venues as well as shops that do not sell products for daily use.
Most cantons followed by 4 January 2021 and all the rest of them by 11 January.
By that day, about 0.5% of the population received the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

On 12 January 2021, Swissmedic approved the second COVID-19 vaccine: themRNA-1273made byModerna.
TheLonza Groupwhere the vaccine is produced was visited by Federal CouncilorAlain Bersetthe previous day.

Up to 800,000 vaccines per day are expected to be produced there.
A year after the first COVID-19 outbreak, the number of vaccinated people largely outnumbered the official cases.

On 7 March, about 10% of the population received at leat one shot of the two approved vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) and about 3% were fully vaccinated.
A third vaccine, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (AZD1222), which comprised 5.3 million of the doses ordered by Swiss authorities, was rejected for approval by the Swiss medical authority, SwissMedic, citing insufficient data.

In March 2021, theSwiss Federal Health Ministry (BAG)reported that approved vaccine deliveries have increased steadily every month.
Switzerland received 1.1 million doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in January and February 2021, and another 1 million vaccine doses in March, exceeding initial expectations.
As of 16 March 2021, 843,974 people had taken the first dose of corona virus vaccine.
The country planned to have its 8.6 million residents vaccinated by summer 2021.


In April 2021, there were reports that vaccine administration and production efforts at theLonza Group plant inVisphad been hampered due to overly stringent immigration rules in Switzerland, reducing the influx of qualified biotech and healthcare workers, particularly with regard to non-EU/EFTA states.

The Valais National Councilurged the Swiss federal authorities to create exemptions from the current immigration rules for essential biotech industries.

On 1 August 2021, Switzerland achieved a vaccination rate of 52%.

From 13 September 2021, access to indoor public spaces like restaurants, bars, museums or fitness centres is only permitted with a valid Covid certificate.
This measure will expire by the end of January 2022.

By 5 November 2021, 11,178,041 doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered.

The COVID-19 virus has an especially high mortality rate for the elderly aged 65 and over.
This was especially concerning for Switzerland which had an elderly population of 18.3% in 2018, above the average forOECDcountries.

Only two days after my arrival in Switzerland, I am once again required to be tested for COVID-19 – at least until I receive my 3rd dose of vaccine two days from now.
It is not without irony that I note that the testing centre in Kreuzlingen is in the same building where I once went to the gym.
Again the question is:
Am I fit?
Another stick up the nose and half an hour later it is confirmed that I am still virus free.
If only the entire planet could say this…..

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Saturday 1 January 2022

Less than a week has passed since I vacated my apartment in Eskişehir to travel west to Istanbul, Zürich and Landschlacht, and I have already been tested for the corona virus twice and today I received my 3rd dose of a vaccine.

The news of the world in respect to COVID-19 is not as optimistic.
Though Swissmedic has approved the use of the monoclonal antibody cocktail Ronapreve, developed by Roche and Regeneron to treat severe COVID-19 patients, and the use of the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine as a booster dose for people over the age of 18, I find myself depressed by news from my home and native land of Canada.


Canada has surpassed two million confirmed COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, according to CTVNews.ca’sCOVID-19 tracker.
Official tallies of case numbers were delayed over the weekend due to some provinces and territories not inputting data because of the holidays.

However, Monday saw Ontario report more than 9,400 cases for the fourth day in a row and Québec report more than 8,000, pushing the country over the two million mark.
As of Monday afternoon, 27 December, there were 159,431 active COVID-19 cases, 1,836,475 recovered and 30,172 deaths.
Widely reported testing delays during the holiday season, long lines and laboratory backlogs also mean the true scope of where Canada stands with COVID-19 cases may take a while to determine.
The arrival of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has seen case numbers skyrocket across the country, leading to restrictions and cancellations.

On Boxing Day, 26 December, Québec capped private gatherings at six people or two household bubbles.

Athletes testing positive for COVID-19 saw Curling Canada cancel the Olympic mixed doubles Sunday.

Several provinces have requested residents only get tested if they are displaying symptoms.
Quebec’s seven-day average now stands at 8,020 cases with 1,469 recorded active outbreaks, and Ontario’s rolling seven-day average has surged to 7,550 up from 2,863 last week.

And the number of new COVID cases are rising around the world:
- Iceland: 672 new cases (27 December)

- Cyprus: 2,241 new cases (28 December)

- France: 179,807 new cases (28 December)

- Greece: 21,657 new cases (28 December)

- Italy: 78,313 new cases (28 December)

- Portugal: 17,172 new cases (28 December)

- UK: 138,831 new cases (28 December)

- Ontario: 8,825 new cases (28 December)

California became the first state to record more than 5 million knowncorona virusinfections, according to the state dashboard Tuesday, which was delayed by the holiday weekend.
The grim milestone, as reported by the California Department of Public Health, wasn’t entirely unexpected in a state with 40 million residents poised for a surge in new infections amid holiday parties and family gatherings forced indoors by a series of winter storms.
The first corona virus case in California was confirmed 25 January 2020.
It took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on 11 November of that year, and 44 days from then to top 2 million.
California’s caseload is also ahead of other large states.
Texas had more than 4.4 million and Florida topped 3.9 million as of Sunday.
California has recorded more than 75,500 deaths related to COVID-19.
The state has fared far better than many other states that are dealing with a coronavirus surge, with areas in the Midwest and Northeast seeing the biggest jump in cases and hospitalizations amid frigid temperatures that have kept people indoors.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists California as a place with “high” transmission of the virus, along with nearly everywhere else in the country.
But in the last week California averaged 16.4 new cases per 100,000 people, less than a third of the national rate.
Meanwhile, corona virus related hospitalizations have been rising slowly in California, up about 12% in the last 7 days to 4,401.
That’s less than half as many as during the late summer peak and one-fifth of a year ago, before vaccines were widely available.

On Tuesday, San Francisco announced it was canceling its New Year’s Eve fireworks show because of the rising caseload, while Contra Costa County in the Bay Area announced that it would require masks to be worn in all public indoor places as of Wednesday.

Previously, some vaccinated people had been allowed to remove them.
The timeline of COVID-19 in America often comes back to California.

It had some of the earliest known cases among travellers from China, where the outbreak began.
The 6 February 2020, death of a San Jose woman was the first known corona virus fatality in the US.
That same month, California recorded the first US case not related to travel and the first infection spread within the community.

On 19 March 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order, shuttering businesses and schools to try to prevent hospital overcrowding.

It is unclear how many of the newly reported cases were attributed to the Omicron corona virus variant.
Much about Omicron remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness.
Scientists say Omicron spreads even easier than other corona virus strains, including Delta, and it is expected to become dominant in the US by early 2022.
Early studies suggest the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing an omicron infection but even without the extra dose, vaccination still should offer strong protection against severe illness and death.

With cases surging, the nation’s largest state-basedhealthinsurance marketplace urged more than 1.1 million uninsured Californians to sign up by Friday for subsidized coverage that would then start with the new year.
Covered California said the average cost of an intensive care corona virus hospitalization is $127,000, but estimated that 85% of those eligible for the state-brokeredhealthinsurance can get coverage free of charge, with government assistance.
Those who sign up after Friday will have their coverage start on 1 February 2022.

- USA: 512,553 new cases (28 December)
- France: 208,099 new cases (29 December)
- Greece: 28,828 new cases (29 December)
- Italy: 98,030 new cases (29 December)
- Malta: 1,337 new cases (29 December)

The autonomous communities have notified this Wednesday to the Spanish Ministry of Health100,760 new cases of COVID-19, 59,867 of them diagnosed in the last 24 hours.
These figures are higher than those of the same day last week, when 60,041 positives were reported, which shows theupward trend in the evolution of the pandemic.
The total number of infections in Spain already rises to 6,133,057 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official statistics.
The cumulative incidencein the last 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants stands at1,508.39, compared to 1,360.62 yesterday.
In the past two weeks, a total of 715,741 positives have been recorded.

Wednesday’s reportadded 78 new deaths, compared with 50 last Wednesday.
Up to 89,331 people with a positive diagnostic test have died since the virus arrived in Spain, according to data collected by the Ministry.
In the last week, 271 people have died with a confirmed positive COVID-19 diagnosis in Spain.
The positivity rate in diagnostic tests also remains high,up to 20.3%, on a dayin which82 deaths from the corona virus have been reported.
And, according to the report of the Ministry of Health, infections continue to skyrocket, but the hospital pressure is contained, despite the fact that in the ICUs the occupation is 19.1% (4 tenths more than yesterday) and in the plant of 8.5% (half a point more).
The ICUs of Catalonia are the ones with the highest occupancy and almost double the national average (37.5%), followed by those of the Basque Country (26.2%), the Valencian Community (25.6%) and Castilla y León (24.8%).
As for the transmission of the virus, Madrid is the community with the highest number of new positives in the last 24 hours, with 16,612, while the Basque Country is in second place, with 7,179.
In terms of incidence, Navarre occupies the first place, reaching 3,236.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days.
The autonomous communities have carried out 2,386,657 diagnostic tests, of which 1,325,336 have been PCR and 1,061,321 antigen tests, with an overall rate per 100,000 inhabitants of 5,075.16.

Likewise, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, has requested that thepositives for self-diagnosis testsin all communitiesbe notified to thenational surveillance system to have an accurate accounting of the evolution of the pandemic.
On Wednesday at the press conference after the meeting of the Interterritorial Health Council, it was announced that the members of the Public Health Commission have been placed to continue working on this matter, “especially hand in hand with the presentation of alerts” and will meet again next week.
“It is clear that we needthe positives to be communicated to the national system“, said Darias, who acknowledged that there is currently a situation of bottleneck in communications, especially in some primary care centers.
Therefore, the head of Health has ensured that her department works with the communities so that this notification is possible and the accounting of the cases can be kept.

In Madrid, the general director of Public Health of the Community,Elena Andradas, indicated on Tuesdaythat the positive self-diagnostic tests that citizens perform and that communicate to the number of covid information arecounted in the statistics of the region, but they are not dumped in the national surveillance system ofthe Ministry of Health.

- UK: 183,037 new cases (29 December)
- Australia: 18,243 new cases (29 December)
- Zambia: 5,255 new cases (29 December)

The Ministry of Health reported on Wednesday42,032 casesofthe corona virusin the last 24 hours in Argentina, a record number since the pandemic began in March last year.
In addition,26 deaths were reported, bringing the total number of deaths officially registered nationwide to 117,111 and 5,556,239 infected since the beginning of the pandemic, respectively.
The curve of infections continues to grow exponentially since a couple of weeks ago.
Such is the increase that Wednesday’s figure surpassed the record of 41,080 cases that was set on 27 May 2021.
Meanwhile, on Monday 20,263 cases were reported, while on Tuesday there were 33,902 in 24 hours.

Regarding the third wave, the Minister of Health,Carla Vizzotti, admitted that:
“We can say thatArgentina avoided a wave, that is an achievement of the whole country, and at this moment we are going through the third wave”.
In the same vein, the official differentiated the situation in Argentina with that of other regions of the world that “are already going through the fourth wave like the United States and many countries in Europe.
Most regions are transiting their fourth wave and South America is starting its third wave.“
The Health portfolio indicated that there are977inmates with the corona virus in intensive care units, with apercentage of adult bed occupancy in the public and private sector, for all pathologies, of 34.9%in the country and 36.3% in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area.
Vizzotti also announced on Wednesday areduction of the days of isolation to be fulfilled by people infected with coronavirus and close contacts who have the complete vaccination scheme, in a measure that will begin to take effect from thisThursdayand that was agreed with all the provinces within the scope of the Federal Health Council (Cofesa).
The Minister said in a press conference held at the Government House that she agreed with her provincial peers to reduce from ten tofive days the isolation for close contacts of asymptomatic positive cases, provided they have the complete vaccination scheme, while those who arepositive with mild symptomsmust be protected forseven days.
The official explained that for those people who areasymptomatic close contacts without vaccination or with the incomplete schedule, the isolation will be reduced to 7 days with a negative PCR testor, if the test is not available, the currentten days will be maintained, as well as for those who are positive and have not beenvaccinated.

The positivity rate of the tests continues to rise, with 30.98%, well above the 10% set as a reference by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Of the total infected,5,556,239 were discharged and 155,218 are confirmed active cases.
According to the Public Vaccination Monitor,the total number of inoculated amounts to 75,644,660, of which 38,036,381 received one dose, 32,587,409 both, 2,436,423 an additional one and 2,584,447 a booster, while the vaccines distributed to the jurisdictions reach 93,954,966.
The Ministry also indicated that135,645 testswere carried out in the last 24 hours and since the beginning of the outbreak there have been 27,790,142 diagnostic tests for this disease.
The report stated that 16 men died.
On Wednesday, 15,135 cases were registered in the province of Buenos Aires.

- Greece: 35,580 new cases (30 December)
- Italy: 126,888 new cases (30 December)
- Ireland: 20,554 new cases (30 December)
- Portugal: 28,659 new cases (30 December)

Russia has overtaken Brazil to have the world’s second-highest death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, behind the United States, data from Russia’s state statistics service and Reuters calculations showed on Thursday.

The statistics service, Rosstat, said 87,527 people had died from coronavirus-related causes in November, making it the deadliest month in Russia since the start of the pandemic.

Russia’s overall pandemic death toll reached 658,634, according to Reuters calculations based on Rosstat figures up to the end of November and data from the coronavirus task force for December, overtaking Brazil which has recorded 618,800 deaths.
The death toll in the United States is higher, at 825,663 people, according to a Reuters tally, but its population is more than twice as big as Russia’s.
Reuters calculations also showed Russia recorded more than 835,000 excess deaths since the beginning of the outbreak in April 2020 to the end of November, compared to average mortality in 2015-2019.

Some epidemiologists say that calculating excess deaths is the best way to assess the true impact of a pandemic.
So far, Russia’s death toll has not been affected by the Omicron variant and was mostly caused by a surge of infections in October and November, which health authorities blamed on the Delta variant and a slow vaccination campaign.
On Thursday, Russian authorities ordered hospitals to get prepared for apossible surge in COVID-19 cases.

- UK: 189,213 new cases (30 December)

Québec is bringing back its controversial overnight curfew beginning Friday at 10 p.m., which is New Year’s Eve, and continuing to 5 a.m. the next day.
Québec Premier François Legault made the announcement Thursday amid increasing hospitalizations and an exponential growth in COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant.
Also beginning on Friday, private gatherings in homes will be prohibited.
Only people who live alone or need caregivers will be allowed to join another family bubble.
Dining rooms at restaurants will be closed but take-out and delivery options will be allowed to continue.
The province reported a record-breaking 14,188 infections and an increase of 135 pandemic-related hospitalizations for a total of 939 patients, including 138 in intensive care.
Legault said the number of cases to be published Friday is above 16,000.

Earlier in the day, Québec’s Institute for Excellence in Health and Social Services (INESSS) released its modelling predictions which show an already dire situation getting even worse.
The more optimistic scenario, based on average growth rates, shows that COVID-19 hospitalizations could reach 1,600 in the next three weeks, while those for intensive care patients could jump to 300.
The second scenario projects up to 2,100 COVID-19 patients in regular beds and 375 in intensive care, which is higher than what the province saw in previous waves of the pandemic.
The Institute, however, said the intensification of vaccination efforts, coupled with newly-implemented or upcoming public health measures, could slow the predicted increase in hospitalizations.
Legault pointed to INESSS’ report and modelling from the public health institute as reasons to bring in more measures.
“Our experts tell us there is a risk that we won’t be able to treat everyone, all those who need it in the coming weeks,” he said.
“I know we’re all tired but it’s my responsibility to protect all ourselves from this. This is why I’m announcing new restrictions as of tomorrow.”

Essential workers, people seeking medical care, or people travelling for humanitarian reasons will be exempt from curfew.
Anyone outside their home during curfew hours could be asked to justify their movements.
Fines for breaking curfew range between $1,000 and $6,000.
The province first imposed a curfew during the pandemic on 9 January 2021, and only lifted the health order on 28 May.
Québec is the only province in Canada to have imposed a curfew during the pandemic.
Legault admitted bringing it back was an extreme move but a necessary one under the circumstances.
He promised it would be the first restriction to be lifted once the situation in hospitals stabilizes.
“We’re not doing this for fun, but out of necessity to save our network and save lives,” Legault said.

- France: 232,200 new cases (31 December)
- Cyprus: 5,048 new cases (31 December)
- Greece: 40,560 new cases (31 December)
- Italy: 144,243 new cases (31 December)
- Florida: 75,900 new cases (31 December)
- New York: 85,476 new cases (31 December)
- England: 162,572 new cases (1 January)

France became the 6th country in the world to report more than 10 million COVID-19 infections since the outbreak of the pandemic, according to official data published on Saturday.
French health authorities reported 219,126 new confirmed cases in a 24-hour period, the 4th day in a row that the country has recorded more than 200,000 cases.
France joined the United States, India, Brazil, Britain and Russia in having had more than 10 million cases.

Saturday’s figure was the 2nd highest after the 232,200 record on Friday when French President Emmanuel Macron warned the next few weeks would be difficult.
In his New Year’s Eve address, Macron did not mention a need for more restrictive health measures than those already announced, adding that the government should refrain from further limiting individual freedoms.
But the government said earlier on Saturday that from Monday wearing masks in public spaces would be mandatory for children as young as 6 versus 11 before.

And some big cities, including Paris and Lyon, have re-imposed wearing of masks in the street for everyone.
The seven-day moving average of new cases in France, which smoothes out daily reporting irregularities, rose to an all-time high of 157,651 – jumping almost five-fold in a month.
The number of people hospitalised for COVID-19 has increased by 96 over 24 hours, standing at a more than seven-month peak of 18,811.
But that figure is still almost half the record 33,497 reached in November 2020.
The COVID-19 death toll increased by 110 over 24 hours to 123,851, the 12th highest globally.
The seven-day moving average of new daily deaths has reached 186, a high since 14 May.

- Ireland: 23,281 new cases (1 January)

Europe has surpassed 100 million cases of the corona virus since the pandemic began nearly two years ago, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center.
Worldwide, nearly 290 million cases have been recorded.

Nearly 5 million of Europe’s cases were reported in the last seven days, with 17 of the 52 countries or territories that make up Europe setting single-day new case records thanks to the highly contagious omicron variant, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Saturday.

More than 1 million of those cases were reported in France, which has joined the US, India, Brazil, Britain and Russia to become the 6th country to confirm more than 10 million cases since the pandemic began, Reuters reported.

India’s health ministry reported 22,775 new cases of the corona virus Saturday, saying the new cases bring the country’s Omicron variant count to 1,431.
Public health officials, however, have warned that the country’s COVID-19 tallies are likely undercounted.

TheSydney Morning Heraldreported Saturday that paramedics in the Australian state of New South Wales had a “record breaking” level of calls overnight, resulting in its busiest night in 126 years, as the Omicron variant of the corona virus sweeps across the globe.
New South Wales Ambulance Inspector Kay Armstrong told the newspaper the telephone calls included, “the usual business of New Year’s Eve—alcohol-related cases, accidents, obviously mischief—and then we had COVID on top of that.”
The Herald reported paramedics also received “time-wasting calls from people wanting COVID-19 test results”.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of Britain’s NHS Confederation, said the Omicron variant will “test the limits of finite NHS [National Health Service] capacity even more than a typical winter.”
Taylor also predicted that hospitals will be forced to make “difficult choices” because of the variant.

CNN reports that more than 30 colleges and universities have changed the starting date of their spring semesters as the Omicron variant crosses the United States.

The Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center on Saturday reported more than 289 million global COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began.
The Center said 9.1 billion vaccinations have been administered.

Happy New Year?

I receive my 3rd dose of vaccine today in Weinfelden.
The staff are friendly and efficient.
The process is quick and painless.

I get a message from my cousin Steve, back in Lachute, Québec, Canada, to call him.
He has been organizing our last high school reunion (Class of 1982) set for 13 August 2022.
As one of his oldest friends, he seeks my opinion.
Should he postpone the reunion until 2023?
I tell him to wait until 1 March before making this decision.
But truth be told, I find it hard to maintain my optimism.

COVID-19 haschanged normal routines around the world.
During the beginning of thepandemic, everyone wanted to learn more about thevirus.
After four months, withdeath tolls rising and isolation not being over anytime soon, psychologicalfatigue has set in.
There is fatiguefrompandemic news throughout the world.
Thisfatigue persists despite knowing someone withCOVID-19.
Either we simply cannot care any more or we cannot hear any more bad news.

Hi.
I feel badly even writing this, but all of this conversation about COVID-19 is depressing me.
And I mean that clinically…
I have major depressive disorder, and things are hard enough already.
This pandemic is making me feel so much worse, and I just need to tune it out for a while — but that seems so…
Insensitive?
Am I wrong for just needing to ignore it for a while?

Here’s a fun fact for you:
Dozens of people are asking more or less the exact same question.
So if this makes you a bad person?
There are alotof bad people out there right now.
Let’s address the more basic part of your question first:
Are you a bad person for needing to unplug for a while?
Not at all.

When we live with any kind of mental health condition, it’s very important to set boundaries around social media, the news cycle, and the conversations we can and can’t have at any given time.
This becomesespeciallyimportant when something traumatic is happening on a global scale.

I think social media has created a kind of pressure where people feel that if they unplug from what’s happening in the world, it makes them complacent or selfish.

I don’t believe that taking a step back is complacency, though.
I believe that having strong boundaries around issues that activate us emotionally is what allows us to show up for ourselves and others in healthier, more impactful ways.
I also want to just validate how you’re feeling.
Years into this pandemic, so many of us are burning out.
And this makes a lot of sense!
Many of us are experiencing some serious fatigue and dysregulation brought on by chronic, pervasive stress.
And if you’re someone living with depression?
That fatigue is likely going to feel a lot heavier.
Don’t apologize for taking care of yourself, my friend.
That’s exactly what you’re supposed to be doing right now.

As long as you’re still being mindful of your impact on others (wearing a mask, practicing physical distancing, not stockpiling toilet paper that you don’t need, not blocking traffic because you’re mad that you can’t get your hair cut or go to Olive Garden, etc.), I wouldn’t worry about it.

And if you’re thinking:
“Duh!
I have depression and there’s a pandemic!
Of courseI’m depressed!”
I’d like to ask you to pump the brakes for a second and hear me out.

Sure, yes, it makes a lot of sense that you’d be feelingburnt outand depressed about the state of the world.
Even so, when life gets tough — regardless of the reasons why — we deserve support to get through it.
And I’d say that when we start noticing our mental health taking a hit?
It’s always a good time tocheck in with a mental health professional.
Because yes, a global pandemic is scary and difficult.

But I can fortify myself by making sure I have all the proper support around me.
There’s a difference between grieving the state of the world and giving our mental illness a free pass to torment us.
You know what I mean?

One piece of great advice that I heard recently was that, rather than thinking of this as the “new normal”, we can think of it as the “new now” instead.
So, reader, if in this “new now” you find yourself more depressed than usual?
Meet yourself where you’re at and get someextra support.
Taking each day as it comes is the best I think any of us can do right now.

And it sounds like today, you’re having a hard time.
So rather than writing off the significance of those feelings or trying to cope by checking out, how about we address them head-on?
Something to consider.
Reader, if taking care of yourself makes you “bad” somehow?
I hope you’re bad to the bone.

If there were ever a time to build a blanket fort and shut out the rest of the world for a while, I’d say the time isdefinitelynow.

Raise your hand if you’re tired of hearing about COVID.
I get it.
On so many levels I am, too.
What makes me tired is the constant information that, seemingly, does nothing to change peoples’ minds on the severity of the issue.

Wear masks.
We know.

Above: “Afectos en pandemia,” Hilda Chaulot
Stay distant.
We know.

No large gatherings.
We know.
No, we don’t.

For every person who has had COVID, some people are quick to point out:
“Yeah, but…look at the number of people who have been cured.”

For every person who has died from COVID, some people are quick to say:
“Yeah, but…so-and-so probably had an underlying condition.”

I’m tired of defending the simple idea that deaths are preventable.
Why?
Because I honestly feel that most of these stories do not make a difference.

My hope is that we realize that COVID is not just a danger for the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions.
This is a virus that is impacting countless people and families – neighbors, loved ones – more than we can truly comprehend.

More than anything, my hope is we will reignite our passion and desire for being proactive, for wearing masks, for staying distant, for staying away from large gatherings.
Be decent.
Be good.
It might not be your safety you’re concerned for.
Maybe you’ll be fine, untouched by COVID-19 or any of its symptoms.
I certainly wish for that to be the case.
Some people, though, have not been that lucky.

I have, so far, been lucky.
I have had colds and headaches and backaches, but none that have proven to be symptoms of a greater consequence.
Certainly, I have known those who have been afflicted by the virus, though, happily, I have not known anyone personally who has died from it.
Am I tired of the pandemic?
Most definitely.

TheCOVID-19pandemic may have brought many changes to how you live your life, and with it, at times, uncertainty, altered daily routines, financial pressures and social isolation.
You may worry about getting sick, how long the pandemic will last, whether your job will be affected and what the future will bring.
Information overload, rumors and misinformation can make your life feel out of control and make it unclear what to do.

During theCOVID-19pandemic, you may experience stress, anxiety, fear, sadness and loneliness.
And mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression, can worsen.
Surveys show a major increase in the number of adults who report symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression and insomnia during the pandemic, compared with surveys before the pandemic.
Some people have increased their use of alcohol or drugs, thinking that can help them cope with their fears about the pandemic.
In reality, using these substances can worsen anxiety and depression.

People with substance use disorders, notably those addicted to tobacco or opioids, are likely to have worse outcomes if they getCOVID-19.
That’s because these addictions can harm lung function and weaken the immune system, causing chronic conditions such as heart disease and lung disease, which increase the risk of serious complications fromCOVID-19.

For all of these reasons, it’s important to learn self-care strategies and get the care you need to help you cope.
Self-care strategies are good for your mental and physical health and can help you take charge of your life.
Take care of your body and your mind and connect with others to benefit your mental health.

Take care of your body
Be mindful about your physical health:
- Get enough sleep.Go to bed and get up at the same times each day. Stick close to your typical sleep-wake schedule, even if you’re staying at home.

- Participate in regular physical activity.Regular physical activity and exercise can help reduce anxiety and improve mood. Find an activity that includes movement, such as dance or exercise apps. Get outside, such as a nature trail or your own backyard.

- Eat healthy.Choose a well-balanced diet. Avoid loading up on junk food and refined sugar. Limit caffeine as it can aggravate stress, anxiety and sleep problems.

- Avoid tobacco, alcohol and drugs.If you smoke tobacco or if you vape, you’re already at higher risk of lung disease. BecauseCOVID-19affects the lungs, your risk increases even more. Using alcohol to try to cope can make matters worse and reduce your coping skills. Avoid taking drugs to cope, unless your doctor prescribed medications for you.

- Limit screen time.Turn off electronic devices for some time each day, including 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime. Make a conscious effort to spend less time in front of a screen — television, tablet, computer and phone.
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- Relax and recharge.Set aside time for yourself. Even a few minutes of quiet time can be refreshing and help to settle your mind and reduce anxiety. Many people benefit from practices such as deep breathing, tai chi, yoga, mindfulness or meditation. Soak in a bubble bath, listen to music, or read or listen to a book — whatever helps you relax. Select a technique that works for you and practice it regularly.

Take care of your mind

Reduce stress triggers:
- Keep your regular routine.Maintaining a regular daily schedule is important to your mental health. In addition to sticking to a regular bedtime routine, keep consistent times for meals, bathing and getting dressed, work or study schedules, and exercise. Also set aside time for activities you enjoy. This predictability can make you feel more in control.
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- Limit exposure to news media.Constant news aboutCOVID-19from all types of media can heighten fears about the disease. Limit social media that may expose you to rumors and false information. Also limit reading, hearing or watching other news, but keep up to date on national and local recommendations. Look for reliable sources, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

- Stay busy.Healthy distractions can get you away from the cycle of negative thoughts that feed anxiety and depression. Enjoy hobbies that you can do at home, such as reading a book, writing in a journal, making a craft, playing games or cooking a new meal. Or identify a new project or clean out that closet you promised you’d get to. Doing something positive to manage anxiety is a healthy coping strategy.

- Focus on positive thoughts.Choose to focus on the positive things in your life, instead of dwelling on how bad you feel. Consider starting each day by listing things you are thankful for. Maintain a sense of hope, work to accept changes as they occur and try to keep problems in perspective.

- Use your moral compass or spiritual life for support.If you draw strength from a belief system, it can bring you comfort during difficult and uncertain times.

- Set priorities.Don’t become overwhelmed by creating a life-changing list of things to achieve while you’re home. Set reasonable goals each day and outline steps you can take to reach those goals. Give yourself credit for every step in the right direction, no matter how small. And recognize that some days will be better than others.
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Connect with others
Build support and strengthen relationships:
- Make connections.If you work remotely from home or you need to isolate yourself from others for a period of time due toCOVID-19, avoid social isolation. Find time each day to make virtual connections by email, texts, phone or video chat. If you’re working remotely from home, ask your co-workers how they’re doing and share coping tips. Enjoy virtual socializing and talking to those in your home.If you’re not fully vaccinated, be creative and safe when connecting with others in person, such as going for walks, chatting in the driveway and other outdoor activities, or wearing a mask for indoor activities.If you are fully vaccinated, you can more safely return to many indoor and outdoor activities you may not have been able to do because of the pandemic, such as gathering with friends and family. However, if you are in an area with a high number of newCOVID-19cases in the last week, theCDCrecommends wearing a mask indoors in public or outdoors in crowded areas or in close contact with unvaccinated people. For unvaccinated people, outdoor activities that allow plenty of space between you and others pose a lower risk of spread of theCOVID-19virus than indoor activities do.

- Do something for others.Find purpose in helping the people around you. Helping others is an excellent way to help ourselves. For example, email, text or call to check on your friends, family members and neighbors — especially those who are older. If you know someone who can’t get out, ask if there’s something needed, such as groceries or a prescription picked up.

- Support a family member or friend.If a family member or friend needs to be quarantined at home or in the hospital due toCOVID-19, come up with ways to stay in contact. This could be through electronic devices or the telephone or by sending a note to brighten the day, for example.
“To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others.”
―Giovanni Boccaccio,The Decameron

Stress is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the demands of life.
Everyone reacts differently to difficult situations, and it’s normal to feel stress and worry during a crisis. But multiple challenges, such as the effects of theCOVID-19pandemic, can push you beyond your ability to cope.
Many people may have mental health concerns, such as symptoms of anxiety and depression during this time.
And feelings may change over time.
Despite your best efforts, you may find yourself feeling helpless, sad, angry, irritable, hopeless, anxious or afraid.
You may have trouble concentrating on typical tasks, changes in appetite, body aches and pains, or difficulty sleeping or you may struggle to face routine chores.
When these signs and symptoms last for several days in a row, make you miserable and cause problems in your daily life so that you find it hard to carry out normal responsibilities, it’s time to ask for help.

Hoping mental health problems such as anxiety or depression will go away on their own can lead to worsening symptoms.
If you have concerns or if you experience worsening of mental health symptoms, ask for help when you need it, and be upfront about how you’re doing.
“Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.”
―Giovanni Boccaccio,The Decameron

To get help you may want to:
- Call or use social media to contact a close friend or loved one — even though it may be hard to talk about your feelings.
- Contact a minister, spiritual leader or someone in your faith community.
- Contact your employee assistance program, if your employer has one, and ask for counseling or a referral to a mental health professional.
- Call your primary care provider or mental health professional to ask about appointment options to talk about your anxiety or depression and get advice and guidance. Some may provide the option of phone, video or online appointments.

You can expect your current strong feelings to fade when the pandemic is over, but stress won’t disappear from your life when the health crisis ofCOVID-19ends.
Continue these self-care practices to take care of your mental health and increase your ability to cope with life’s ongoing challenges.

No, it ain’t over till it’s over.
The pandemic persists.
Let’s try and live through it.

One hundred tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men.
They shelter in a secluded villa just outsideFlorence in order to escape theBlack Death, which was afflicting the city.
To pass the evenings, each member of the party tells a story each night, except for one day per week for chores, and the holy days during which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights ofstorytelling over the course of two weeks.
Thus, by the end of thefortnight they have told100 stories.
Each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company for one of the ten days in turn.
This charge extends to choosing the theme of the stories for that day, and all but two days have topics assigned: examples of the power of fortune, examples of the power of human will, love tales that end tragically, love tales that end happily, clever replies that save the speaker, tricks that women play on men, tricks that people play on each other in general, examples of virtue.
Only Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to his wit.
Recurring plots of the stories include mocking the lust and greed of the clergy; female lust and ambition on a par with male lust and ambition; tensions in Italian society between the new wealthy commercial class and noble families; and the perils and adventures of travelling merchants.
The various tales of love inThe Decameronrange from theerotic to the tragic.
Tales of wit, practical jokes and life lessons contribute to the mosaic.

“And the plague gathered strength as it was transmitted from the sick to the healthy through normal intercourse, just as fire catches on to any dry or greasy object placed too close to it.
Nor did it stop there:
Not only did the healthy incur the disease and with it the prevailing mortality by talking to or keeping company with the sick.
They had only to touch the clothing or anything else that had come into contact with or been used by the sick and the plague evidently was passed to the one who handled those things.”
―Giovanni Boccaccio,The Decameron
“Since the beginning of the world men have been and will be, until the end thereof, bandied about by various shifts of fortune.”
―Giovanni Boccaccio,The Decameron

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Facebook / Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron / Albert Camus, The Plague / Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year / “Spain exceeds 100,000 cases of COVID daily, the highest figure of the pandemic“, El Periodico, 29 December 2021 / Debora Mackenzie, Covid-19: The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened, and How to Stop the Next One / Dr. Michael Mosley, Covid-19: What You Need to Know about the Corona Virus and the Race for the Vaccine / Annabelle Olivier, “Covid-19 – Québec brings back nightly curfew, private gatherings prohibited as cases soar“, Global News, 30 December 2021 / “Russia’s Covid-19 death toll climbs to world’s second highest“, Reuters, 30 December 2021 / Christy Samos, “Canada surpasses 2 million Covid-19 cases since start of pandemic“, CTV News, 27 December 2021

The still centre
Posted on December 22, 2021 by canadaslim
Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, Part Three
Eskişehir, Turkey, Wednesday 23 December 2021

I have friends and family who occasionally ask me:
Where is the novel we know you can write?
I stutter and stammer my response, for the answer is never as easy to express as the question, so let me begin to explain myself by first referring to other glorious writers who have come before me as I emerge blinking and blind into the light of day.

“There are three rules for writing the novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
(W. Somerset Maugham)

This is true.
For it is not so much as the way a writer writes, for I think I can on occasion string words together as crudely as a garland of popcorn on a Yuletide tree.

“What’s writing really about?
It’s about trying to take fuller possession of your life.”
(Ted Hughes)

How I write is significant, certainly, but the why I write matters more.
“You are miming the real thing until one day the chain draws unexpectedly tight and you have dipped into the waters that will continue to entice you back.
You have broken the skin on the pool of yourself.”
(Seamus Heaney)

Writing, for me, is an intimate act, privately created for public perusal.
It is closely intertwined with notions of perception, personality, morality and possibility.
Writing is akin to serendipity.
I never know what wonderful and/or terrible thing I will accidentally discover about myself and the humanity that binds me to others.

Writing is a choice to examine the choices I have made in my life.
And this revelation leaves me as exposed as a stripper inside a congregation of the righteous.

But this is an exposure far more intimate than that of an overweight scarred aging man’s body, but rather it is the cross-sectional microscopic examination of the contents of my heart, my mind, my soul.
“There are strange tales told beneath the Arctic sun by the men who moil for gold,
The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold,
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights but the strangest they ever did see….“
(Robert W. Service)

….was the night in the room of shadows of gloom when I revealed the real me.

The winds of opinion can be as cold as a “three dog night” in Tuktoyaktuk.


And so an exposed psyche feels hesitant at times.
Sentences sentence me as the testimony of the sum and signature of my person, the deepest reflection of an identity undefined and undefinable crawling haltingly from the cocoon of my consciousness, is read against me.
Each word is made of Roman characters chiselled from the frozen fortress that protects me from myself.

My mind is relentless with endless discussion, examination, testing, moulding and learning.
Layers of tone and texture make a man and could, should make a solid story.
What’s going to happen?
To whom?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?
What’s the story?
My novel is much like my life.
Much, God willing, left to be written.

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Sunday 28 February 2021

Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin, but it is not only what you read that is important, it is how you read as well.
As to what I read, this is a combination of serendipity for new literature (at least new for me) and a nostalgic return to old previously read works.

It has been suggested that when starting to read a novel for the first time or re-reading an old favourite that the reading writer should try to view it as an editor would, looking “through” the text in X-ray fashion.
Reading books in this way allows you to examine a narrative closely, locating and identifying dee p structure and embedded themes.

How does the writer bring their themes to life?
What most appealed to you about the story?
How was that dramatized in the narrative?
It has been suggested that we should try to begin reading not just for pleasure, but also for ideas.
Reading in this way can be a great source of inspiration.
You should not hesitate to use all the stimulation and motivation to kickstart your own work.

“A work is eternal, not because it imposes a single meaning on different men, but because it suggests different meanings to a single man.”
(Roland Barthes)

It is good to read as widely as possible – especially outside your race, class and gender.
The reading of other writers and noting how they write is one of the least expensive and gentlest schools of learning of all.

That exploration of extensive reading is done through the search of each calendar date and the subsequent revelation of authors who have lived, published or died on that date.

Which, on this day of days, has led me to Stephen Spender…..

Historyis the ship carrying living memories to thefuture.
(Stephen Spender)

Stephen Spender was a member of the generation of British poets who came to prominence in the 1930s, a group—sometimes referred to as the Oxford Poets — that includedW.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, andLouis MacNeice.

In an essay on Spender’s work inChicago Tribune Book World, Gerald Nicosia wrote:
“While preserving a reverence for traditional values and a high standard of craftsmanship, these poets turned away from the esotericism ofT.S. Eliot, insisting that the writer stay in touch with the urgent political issues of the day and that he speak in a voice whose clarity can be understood by all.”

Spender’s numerous books of poetry include:
- Dolphins(1994)

- Collected Poems, 1928 – 1985

- The Generous Days(1971)

- Poems of Dedication(1946)

- The Still Centre(1939)

Stephen Spender was born on 28 February 1909 inKensington, London, to journalistHarold Spenderand Violet Hilda Schuster, a painter and poet, ofGerman Jewish heritage.


When achild, mydreams rode on yourwishes,
I was your son, high on yourhorse,
My mind a top whipped by the lashes
Of your rhetoric, windy of course.
On his father in “The Public Son of a Public Man“, as quoted inTime magazine, 20 January 1986

My Parents
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes
Their thighs showed through rags they ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.
I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron
Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms
Ifeared the salt coarse pointing of those boys
Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.
They were lithe they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud
While I looked the other way, pretending to smile.
I longed to forgive them but they never smiled.

He went first toHall School inHampstead and then at 13 toGresham’s School, Holt, and later Charlecote School inWorthing, but he was unhappy there.



An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum
Far far from gusty waves these children’s faces.
Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor:
The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-
seeming boy, with rat’s eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir
Of twisted bones, reciting a father’s gnarled disease,
His lesson, from his desk. At back of the dim class
One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream
Of squirrel’s game, in tree room, other than this.
On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare’s head,
Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.
Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map
Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these
Children, these windows, not this map, their world,
Where all their future’s painted with a fog,
A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky
Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.
Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example.
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.
Unless, governor, inspector, visitor,
This map becomes their window and these windows
That shut upon their lives like catacombs,
Break O break open till they break the town
And show the children to green fields, and make their world
Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues
Run naked into books the white and green leaves open
History theirs whose language is the sun.

On the face of it, Stephen’s childhood in Hampstead and Norfolk couldn’t have been more privileged.
His mother, Violet, came from a wealthy Anglo-German Jewish family called Schuster.

His father, Harold, was a tireless campaigning journalist whose friends numbered Henry James and Lloyd George.


(Visiting the latter in Downing Street, Harold took so long about it that young Stephen, waiting in a taxi outside, was forced to relieve himself out of the back window).

Denied contact with poorer children, in case they were carrying diseases, the Spender children were brought up largely by servants – though once a day, tidied up, they would be brought to Violet and allowed to play with her jewel-box.

The three younger children – Stephen, Humphrey and Christine – lived in the shadow of the oldest, Michael, whose infant beauty prompted a cringe-making poem from Violet (“rosy cheeks, eyes blue and tender! / Neighbours, have you such a one? / All the neighbours answer, ‘None!’“).
Stephen’s allotted family role was that of namby-pamby.

Things got worse when he went to boarding school.
As well as being flogged for stupidity and persecuted for his Hunnish origins, he was flung down the kipper hole at the back of the school dining-room, along with meal scraps intended for pigs.
His piano teacher consolingly prophesied that he’d be happy once an adult.
In the shorter term he was rescued by his mother, who died when he was 12, after which he was allowed home again as a day boy.
The death left him guiltily unmoved and “longing to be stricken again in order to prove that next time I would be really tragic“.
On the death of his mother, he was transferred toUniversity College School (Hampstead), which he later described as “that gentlest of schools“.
Teen age brought further embarrassments.
The widowed Harold was possessive of his charges and studiously monitored their bowel movements to ensure they “did their little duty“.
The children were also enlisted as canvassers when Harold stood (and lost) as a Liberal MP, which meant being dispatched round the streets of Bath in a cart pulled by a donkey with “VOTE FOR DADDY” round its neck.

For the hyper-sensitive Stephen, who felt “skewered on the gaze of everyone” even when unobtrusively walking down the street, nothing could have been more humiliating.
“I had the most tormented adolescence anyone has ever had in the whole of history,” he later wrote.
Luckily, Harold outlived Violet by less than five years, suffering a heart attack after an operation on his spleen, after which Stephen had “a very happy last year” at school.

Spender left forNantes andLausanne and then went up toUniversity College, Oxford.
(Much later, in 1973, he was made anHonorary Fellow).



Academically, he was still a laggard.
In fact he failed every exam he took apart from his driving test.
(And terrified passengers doubted the wisdom of that result).

But poetically and politically he had found his niche, and won a place at Oxford, where, after much angling for an introduction, he met Auden, already a legend at 21.
In the many different accounts Spender gave of that meeting, the word “clinical” is unvarying, pinpointing what the master has and what his acolyte lacks.
Auden wields a surgeon’s knife.
Spender is woozier.
Perhaps his closest friend and the man who had the biggest influence on him wasW. H. Auden, who introduced him toChristopher Isherwood.
Spender handprinted the earliest version of Auden’sPoems.


“But do you really think I’m any good?” a nervous Stephen Spender asked WH Auden, some six weeks after they’d met.
“Of course,” Auden said. “Because you are so infinitely capable of being humiliated.”
Humiliation was Spender’s lifetime companion.
Few poets have been more savagely reviewed.
And none has nurtured a greater sense of inadequacy.
This is the man who, having dismissed John Lehmann as a potential lover because he was a “failed version of myself“, adds: “but I also regarded myself as a failed version of myself.”
With Spender, self-deprecation reaches comic extremes of self-abasement.

He left Oxford without taking a degree and in 1929 moved toHamburg.

Isherwood invited him to Berlin.

Every six months, Spender went back to England.

By now Spender was a strikingly handsome young man.
In the German gay-arcadia of 1930, every Hans, Helmut and Harry was a willing bedfellow.
But it was Tony Hyndman, a sandy-haired Welsh ex-soldier, who consumed Spender’s emotional life for several years.

Few friends saw the point of Tony.
Feckless, drunk and pilfering, he could also be wildly possessive, and in his later career as a stage manager took revenge on his former lover Michael Redgrave by sprinkling tacks on a couch on to which the actor was obliged to throw himself.

If Spender escaped more lightly, that’s because he remained oddly loyal to Tony.
The embarrassing struggle to extricate him from Spain, where he was fighting for the Republicans, was the extent of Spender’s Spanish Civil War – and the beginning of his disillusion with Communism.

Spender was acquainted with fellowAuden Group members:
- Louis MacNeice

- Edward Upward

- Cecil Day-Lewis

He was friendly withDavid Jones.

He later came to know:
- William Butler Yeats

- Allen Ginsberg

- Ted Hughes
- Joseph Brodsky

- Isaiah Berlin

- Mary McCarthy

- Roy Campbell

- Raymond Chandler

- Dylan Thomas

- Jean-Paul Sartre

- Colin Wilson

- Aleister Crowley

- F. T. Prince

- T. S. Eliot

- Virginia Woolf

Paris Review interview, May 1978:

I knew Dylan from very early on.
In fact, I was the first literary person he met in London.
Edith Sitwell made the absurd claim that she’d discovered Dylan Thomas, which is rubbish.
All she did was write a favorable review of his first book.

There was a Sunday newspaper calledReynolds Newsat that time, and it had a poetry column which was edited by a man called Victor Neuberg.
He would publish poems sent in by readers.
I always read this column, being very sympathetic with the idea of ordinary people writing poetry.
And then in one issue I saw a poem which I thought was absolutely marvelous —
It was about a train going through a valley.
I was very moved by this poem, so I wrote to the writer in care of the column, and the writer wrote back.

It was Dylan Thomas, and in his letter he said first of all that he admired my work, something that he never said again.
Then he said he wanted to come up to London and that he wanted to make money —
He was always rather obsessed by money.
So I invited him to London, and may have sent him his fare.

I felt nervous about meeting him alone, which is what I should have done, so I invited my good friend William Plomer to have lunch with us.

We took him to a restaurant in Soho.
He was very pale and intense and nervous, and Plomer and I talked a lot of London gossip to prevent the meal from going in complete silence.
I think he probably stayed in London —

He was a friend of Pamela Hansford Johnson, who became Lady Snow.

Then, right at the end of his life, Dylan wrote me a letter saying he’d never forgotten that I was the first poet of my generation who met him.
He was thanking me for some review I’d written —
This was the most appreciative review he’d had in his life, I think he said, something like that.
Mind you, he probably wrote a dozen letters like that to people every day.
And he certainly said extremely mean things behind my back, of that I’m quite sure.
I don’t hold that against him at all —
It was just his style.
We all enjoy doing things like that.

After those very early days I didn’t see Dylan often.
One reason is that I never get on well with alcoholics.
Also he liked to surround himself with a kind of court that moved from pub to pub.
And Dylan was expected to pay for everyone, which he always did, and he was expected to be “Dylan”.

Of course when I was atHorizonwith Cyril Connolly, Dylan was always coming in, usually to borrow money.

Richard Burton was funny telling me about Dylan.
He was a young actor and absolutely without money.
He would be playing somewhere and Dylan would turn up to borrow a pound.
When he left, Burton would always hear a taxi carrying the pauper away.

Spender began work on a novel in 1929, which was not published until 1988, under the titleThe Temple.
The novel is about a young man who travels to Germany and finds a culture at once more open than England’s, particularly about relationships between men, and shows frightening harbingers of Nazism that are confusingly related to the very openness the man admires.
Spender wrote in his 1988 introduction:
In the late Twenties young English writers were more concerned with censorship than with politics…. 1929 was the last year of that strange Indian Summer—the Weimar Republic.
For many of my friends and for myself, Germany seemed a paradise where there was no censorship and young Germans enjoyed extraordinary freedom in their lives.

The Templeis a semi-autobiographical novel written byStephen Spender, sometimes labelled aBildungsromanbecause of its explorations of youth and first love.
It was written after Spender spent his summer vacation in Germany in 1929 and recounts his experiences there.
During the holiday in 1929 on whichThe Templeis based, Spender formed friendships withHerbert List (photographer) andErnst Robert Curtius (German critic), the latter of which introduced him to and cultivated his passion forRilke, Hölderlin, Schiller and Goethe.
Spender had a particularly significant relationship with German culture which he found heavily conflicted with his Jewish roots.
His taste for German society sets him apart from some of his contemporaries.
However, even after contemplating suicide if the Nazis were to invade England due to his abhorrence of their regime, he still maintained a love of Germany, returning to it after the war and writing a book about its ruins.
It was not completed until the early 1930s (after Spender had failed his finals at Oxford University in 1930 and moved to Hamburg).
Because of its frank depictions of homosexuality, it was not published in the UK until 1988.

(Does a person’s sexual orientation have anyone to do with creativity?
I don’t believe so.
Frankly, what an author’s private life is (or isn’t) should not affect my ability to enjoy their public creations.)

The Templebegins in Oxford, where Paul Schoner meets Simon Wilmot and William Bradshaw, caricatures of the youngW. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwoodrespectively.

They encourage him to visit Germany, hinting that Paul might prefer Germany to Britain because of Germany’s liberal attitudes towards sex and the body.
During this section, Paul is introduced to Ernst Stockmann, a fan of his poetry who later invites him to visit his family home in Hamburg.
Paul visits Ernst Stockmann, meeting his wealthy mother and friends, Joachim Lenz and Willy Lassel.
During his time at the Stockmann household, Paul experiences the liberality of German youth culture first-hand, attending a party at which he drinks too much and meets Irmi, his later love affair.

Paul, Ernst, Joachim and Willy also visit Hamburg’s notorious quarterSankt Pauli.
In Sankt Pauli, at a bar named The Three Stars, Paul meets some young male prostitutes who claim to be destitute.
It is on this evening, while he is drunk, that Paul agrees to go on holiday to the Baltic with Ernst despite being uncomfortable in Ernst’s company.
When Paul and Ernst arrive at the hotel by the Baltic where they will be staying, Paul is distressed to find that Ernst has booked them into a shared room.
Paul feels suffocated by Ernst’s clear affection for him and tries to deter Ernst by telling him that he is not interested.
Afterward, Paul ponders Stephen Wilmot’s quasi-Freudian premise that it is kindest to offer love in return to those who love you, especially if you do not find them attractive.
As a result, when Ernst comes on to Paul in the hotel room, Paul accepts his attention and they have an uncomfortable sexual encounter.
In the morning, Paul is keen to escape the hotel room, and runs down to a beach, where he meets Irmi again.
They have a more satisfying sexual experience on the beach.

In the next chapter, Paul goes on a trip with Joachim Lenz to the Rhine.
On this trip, Joachim makes it clear that he intends to fall in love, but there is little indication that he and Paul could be lovers.
Nevertheless, Paul is distressed when Joachim books him an adjacent hotel room so that he can stay with a young man named Heinrich who he had met on the beach.

In Part Two, “Towards the Dark“, Paul returns to Germany in the winter of 1932.
Spender admits in his introduction to the 1988 edition that both parts had taken place in 1929 in reality, but that he moved this part forward to winter 1932 to increase the sense of foreboding (asAdolf Hitler came to power in Germany later that winter).
In this section, Paul visits several of his friends again, most notably Willy Lassel, who is now engaged to a Nazi woman, and Joachim Lenz, whose relationship with Heinrich is struggling.
Heinrich has made friends with Erich, a fascist man.
Paul meets him and is disgusted and disturbed by his ideology.
Soon after, Paul visits Joachim again and finds him with a cut on his face, staying in a trashed flat.
Joachim tells Paul how one of Heinrich’s Nazi friends had threatened him and destroyed his possessions after Joachim defiled a Nazi party uniform belonging to Heinrich.
This discussion about their former acquaintances is the end of the novel.

Spender was discovered byT. S. Eliot, an editor atFaber & Faber, in 1933.
His early poetry, notablyPoems(1933), was often inspired by social protest.

Living inVienna, he further expressed his convictions inForward from Liberalism, inVienna(1934), a long poem in praise of the1934 uprising of Austrian socialists, and inTrial of a Judge (1938), anantifascist drama in verse.

The 1930s were marked by turbulent events that would shape the course of history: the worldwide economic depression, the Spanish Civil War, and the beginnings of World War II.



Seeing the established world crumbling around them, the writers of the period sought to create a new reality to replace the old, which, in their minds, had become obsolete.
For a time, Spender, like many young intellectuals of the era, was a member of the Communist Party.

Spender believed that Communism offered the only workable analysis and solution of complex world problems, that it was sure eventually to win, and that for significance and relevance the artist must somehow link his art to the Communist diagnosis.
Spender’s poem, “The Funeral” (included inCollected Poems: 1928 – 1953, published in 1955, but omitted from the 1985 revision of the same work), has been described as “a Communist elegy”.
Auden’s Funeral
One among friends who stood above your grave
I cast a clod of earth from those heaped there
Down on the great brass-handled coffin lid.
It rattled on the oak like a door knocker
And at that sound I saw your face beneath
Wedged in an oblong shadow under ground.
Flesh creased, eyes shut, jaw jutting
And on the mouth a grin: triumph of one
Who has escaped from life-long colleagues roaring
For him to join their throng. He’s still half with us
Conniving slyly, yet he knows he’s gone
Into that cellar where they’ll never find him,
Happy to be alone, his last work done,
Word freed from world, into a different wood.
But we, with feet on grass, feeling the wind
Whip blood up in our cheeks, walk back along
The hillside road we earlier climbed today
Following the hearse and tinkling village band.
The white October sun circles Kirchstetten
With colours of chrysanthemums in gardens,
And bronze and golden under wiry boughs,
A few last apples gleam like jewels.
Back in the village inn, we sit on benches
For the last toast to you, the honoured ghost
Whose absence now becomes incarnate in us.
Tasting the meats, we imitate your voice
Speaking in flat benign objective tones
The night before you died. In the packed hall
You are your words. Your listeners see
Written on your face the poems they hear
Like letters carved in a tree’s bark
The sight and sound of solitudes endured.
And looking down on them, you see
Your image echoed in their eyes
Enchanted by your language to be theirs.
And then, your last word said, halloing hands
Hold up above their heads your farewell bow.
Then many stomp the platform, entreating
Each for his horde, your still warm signing hand.
But you have hidden away in your hotel
And locked the door and lain down on the bed
And fallen from their praise, dead on the floor.
(Ghost of a ghost, of you when young, you waken
In me my ghost when young, us both at Oxford.
You, the tow-haired undergraduate
With jaunty liftings of the head.
Angular forward stride, cross-questioning glance,
A Buster Keaton-faced palegravitas.
Saying aloud your poems whose letters bit
Ink-deep into my fingers when I set
Them up upon my five-pound printing press:
‘An evening like a coloured photograph A music stultified across the water The heel upon the finishing blade of grass.’)
Back to your room still growing memories –
Handwriting, bottles half-drunk, and us – drunk –
Chester, in prayers, still prayed for your ‘dear C.’,
Hunched as Rigoletto, spluttering
Ecstatic sobs, already slanted
Down towards you, his ten-months-hence
Grave in Athens – remembers
Opera, your camped-on heaven, odourless
Resurrection of your bodies singing
Passionate duets whose chords resolve
Your rows in harmonies. Remembers
Some tragi-jesting wish of yours and puts
‘Siegfried’s Funeral March’ on the machine.
Wagner who drives out every thought but tears –
Down-crashing drums and cymbals cataclysmic
End-of-world brass exalt on drunken waves
The poet’s corpse borne on a bier beyond
The foundering finalities, his world,
To that Valhalla where the imaginings
Of the dead makers are their lives.
The dreamer sleeps forever with the dreamed.
It has been observed that much of Spender’s other works from the same early period—including his play,Trial of a Judge: A Tragedy in Five Acts(1938),his poems inVienna(1934),and his essays inThe Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs(1935) andForward from Liberalism(1935)—address Communism.




InPoets of the Thirties, D.E.S. Maxwell commented:
“The imaginative writing of the thirties created an unusualmilieuof urban squalor and political intrigue.
This kind of statement — a suggestion of decay producing violence and leading to change — as much as any absolute and unanimous political partisanship gave this poetry its Marxist reputation.
Communism and ‘the Communist’ (a poster-type stock figure) were frequently invoked.”

The attitudes Spender developed in the 1930s continued to influence him throughout his life.
As Peter Stansky pointed out in theNew Republic:
“The 1930s were a shaping time for Spender, casting a long shadow over all that came after.
It would seem that the rest of his life, even more than he may realize, has been a matter of coming to terms with the 1930s, and the conflicting claims of literature and politics as he knew them in that decade of achievement, fame and disillusion.”

From Stephen Spender’s The Destructive Element (1935):
I have taken Henry James as a great writer who developed an inner world of his own through his art.
I have also tried to show that his attitude to our civilization forced him to that development.
The process had two stages:
The first was his conviction that European society – and particularly English society – was decadent, combined with his own despair of fulfilling any creative or critical function in civilization as a whole.
Secondly, he discovered, in the strength of his own individuality, immense resources of respect for the past and for civilization.
He fulfilled his capacity to live and watch and judge by his own standards, to the utmost.

His characters have the virtues of people who are living into the past: an extreme sensibility, consideration for and curiosity about each other’s conduct, an aestheticism of behaviour.
In some ways their lives are a pastiche, but this pastiche is an elaboration of traditional moral values.
The life that James is, on the surface, describing, may be false.
The life that he is all the time inventing is true.

James, Joyce, Yeats, Ezra Pound and Eliot have all fortified their works by creating some legend or by consciously going back into a tradition that seemed and seems to be dying.
They are all conscious of the present as chaotic (though they are not all without their remedies) and of the past as an altogether more solid ground.


“In the destructive element immerse.
That is the way.”
(Joseph Conrad)

“Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood dammed tide is loosed and everywhere.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
(Yeats)

Paris Review interview, May 1978:
I met Yeats, I think probably in 1935 or 1936, at Lady Ottoline Morrell’s.
Ottoline asked me to tea alone with Yeats.
He was very blind and I don’t know whether he was deaf, but he was very sort of remote, he seemed tremendously old.
He was only about the age I am now, but he seemed tremendously old and remote.

He looked at me and then he said:
“Young man, what do you think of the Sayers?”
I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about — I thought perhaps he meant Dorothy Sayers’s crime stories or something — I became flustered.

What he meant was a group of young ladies who chanted poems in chorus.

Ottoline got very alarmed and rushed out of the room and telephoned to Virginia Woolf, who was just around the corner, and asked her to come save the situation.
Virginia arrived in about ten minutes’ time, tremendously amused, and Yeats was very pleased to meet her because he’d just been readingThe Waves.

He also read quite a lot of science — I think he read Eddington and Rutherford and all those kinds of things — and so he told her thatThe Waveswas a marvelous novel, that it was entirely up to date in scientific theory because light moved in waves, and time, and so on.


Of course Virginia, who hadn’t thought of all this, was terribly pleased and flattered.
And then I remember he started telling her a story in which he said:
“And as I went down the stairs there was a marble statue of a baby and it started talking in Greek to me.”—
That sort of thing.
Virginia adored it all, of course.

Ottoline had what she called her Thursday parties, at which you met a lot of writers.
Yeats was often there.
He loosened up a great deal if he could tell malicious stories, and so he talked about George Moore.

Yeats particularly disliked George Moore because of what he wrote in his bookHail and Farewell, which is in three volumes, and which describes Yeats in a rather absurd way.
Moore thought Yeats looked very much like a black crow or a rook as he walked by the lake on Lady Gregory’s estate at Coole.


He also told how Yeats would spend the whole morning writing five lines of poetry and then he’d be sent up strawberries and cream by Lady Gregory, and so Yeats would have to get his own back on George Moore.

Another thing that amused Yeats very much for some reason was Robert Graves and the whole saga of his life with Laura Riding.

He told how Laura Riding threw herself out of a window without breaking her spine, or breaking it but being cured very rapidly.
All that pleased Yeats tremendously.

I remember his telling the story of his trip to Rapallo to show the manuscript ofThe Towerto Ezra Pound.
He stayed at the hotel and then went around and left the manuscript in a packet for Pound, accompanied by a letter saying:
I am an old man, this may be the last poetry I’ll ever write, it is very different from my other work?—
All that kind of thing — and:
What do you think of it?
Next day he received a postcard from Ezra Pound with one word on itputrid.
Yeats was rather amused by that.
Apparently Pound had a tremendous collection of cats, and Yeats used to say that Pound couldn’t possibly be a nasty man because he fed all the cats of Rapallo.

I once asked him how he came to be a modern poet, and he told me that it took him 30 years to modernize his style.
He said he didn’t really like the modern poetry of Eliot and Pound.
He thought it was static, that it didn’t have any movement, and for him poetry had always to have the romantic movement.
He said:
“For me poetry always means:
‘Yet we’ll go no more a-roving / By the light of the moon.’”

So the problem was how to keep the movement of the Byron lines but at the same time enlarge it so that it could include the kind of material that he was interested in, which was to do with everyday life —politics, quarrels between people, sexual love, and not just the frustrated love he had with Maud Gonne.

The idea for a book on James gradually resolved itself, then, in my mind, into that of a book about modern writers and beliefs or unbeliefs.
The difficulty of a book about contemporaries is that one is dealing in a literature of few accepted values.
At best, one can offer opinions or one can try to prove that one living writer is, for certain reasons, better than another.
At worst, such criticism degenerates into a kind of bookmaking or stockbroking.
A living writer does not diminish in accordance with rules laid down by donnish minds.
Impertinent criticism means that the critic is projecting on to writing some fantasy of his own as to how poems should be written.

D.H. Lawrence is a kind of traveller to uncharted lands.
As a psychologist, in his poems, and in Fantasia of the Unknown, he is unique and has no follower.

All these writers seem to me faced by the destructive element, the experience of an all-pervading present which is a world without belief.
On the one hand, there are the writers who search for some unifying belief in the past or in some personal legend.
On the other, those who look forward to a world of new beliefs in the future.
Both of these attitudes are explained by the consciousness of a void in the present.

What interests me is what writers write about, the subjects of literature today.
I am not defending the young writers from the old writers.
I am defending what is, in the widest sense, the political or moral subject in writing.

Lawrence’s own books are descriptions of his experience.
His writing is so inextricably bound up with the value he set on living, that it seems a part of the experience.
It does not seem at all cut off from his life.

The organ of life, the moral life of human beings, is the subject, the consistent pattern.
To write a poetry which represents the modern moral life, which is yet not isolated from tradition.

In Yeats I see a fundamental division of the realist from the practical politician and mystic, the reporter attending séances.

I see Eliot as an extremely isolated artist of great sensibility, a deaf and neurotic sensibility that produced great quartets.
James believed that the only values which mattered at all were those cultivated by individuals who had escaped from the general decadence.

Before everything else, the individual must be agonizingly aware of his isolated situation.
Nor is he to be selfish.
He is still occupied in building up the little nucleus of a real civilization possible for himself and for others possessing the same awareness as himself.
More recently, however, the situation seems to have profoundly altered, because the moral life of the individual has become comparatively insignificant.

In times of revolution or war, there is a divorce between the kind of morality that affects individuals and the morality of the state, of politics.
In time of war, the immoral purpose invented by the state is to beat the enemy and the usual taboos affecting individuals are almost suspended.
Those taboos which serve to make an individual conform to a strict family code may become regarded as ludicrous.
In revolutionary times it is questions of social justice, of liberty, of war or peace, of election, that become really important.

Questions of private morality, of theft, of adultery, become almost insignificant.
In private life there remain few great saints and absolutely no great sinners.

The old question of free will, of whether the individual is free to choose between two courses of action, becomes superseded by another question:
Is a society able to determine the course of its history?

Society is, of course, made up of individuals, and the choice, if there is any, lies finally with individuals.
But there is a difference between public acts and private acts of individuals.
There is a difference between the man who considers that he is a great and exciting sinner because he leads a promiscuous sexual life, and the man who decides not to live too promiscuously because to do so embarrasses and complicates his revolutionary activities.

To the second man the question of a morality in his private life becomes a matter of convenience, whereas his political conscience governs his actions.
In times of rest, of slow evolution and peace, society is an image of the individual quietly living his life and obeying the laws.

In violent times the moral acts of the individual seem quite unrelated to the immense social changes going on all around him.
He looks at civilization and does not see his own quiet image reflected there at all, but the face of something fierce and threatening that may destroy him.
It may seem foreign and yet resemble his own face.
He knows that if he is not to be destroyed, he must somehow connect his life again with this political life and influence it.

The extraordinary public events of the last few years, the war, revolutions, the economic crisis, are bound eventually into the tradition of literature, the organ of life.
It is not true to say that poetry is about nothing.
Poetry is about history, but not history in the sense of school books.
Poetry is a history which is the moral life, which is always contemporary.
The pattern, the technique, is the organ of life.

I find myself opposed to the distinguished critic who says that art is, or should be, non-moral and non-political, but external and satiric, as much as I am bound also to oppose those who say that literature should become an instrument of propaganda.

The greatest art is moral, even when the artist has no particular moral or political axe to grind.
Conversely, that having a particular moral or political axe to grind does destroy art if the writer:
- suspends his own judgments and substitutes the system of judging established by a political creed
- assumes knowledge of men and the future course of history, which he may passionately believe, but which, as an artist, he simply hasn’t got

The poet is not dealing in purely esthetic values, but he is communicating an experience of life which is outside his own personal experience.
He may communicate his own experience yet he is not bound by this, but by his own understanding.
Pure poetry does communicate a kind of experience and this is the experience of a void.
For the sense of a void is a very important kind of experience.
All theories of art for art’s sake and of pure art are the attempt to state the theory of a kind of art based on no political, religious or moral creed.

“The old gang to be forgotten in the spring
The hard bitch and the riding master
Stiff underground; deep in clear lake
The lolling bridegroom, beautiful, there“
(W.H. Auden)

I am not stating how writers should write or even what they should write about.
That is their business, not mine.

At some time in his life an artist has got to come to grips with the objective, factual life around him.
He cannot spin indefinitely from himself unless he learned how to establish contact with his audience by the use of symbols which represent reality to his contemporaries.
If he does not learn this lesson, he ceases to be.
He needs to be islanded with imagery, which is derived from realistic observation.
Just as dreams express the desires censored by our waking thoughts figure those desires in pictures which are actual to us.
Thus we find a museum full of the symbols which were at first observed as conditions in real life are used as symbols for different states of mind.

“I have not the least hesitation in saying that I aspire to write in such a way that it would be impossible for an outsider to say whether I am at a given moment an American writing about England or an Englishman writing about America, and far from being ashamed of such an ambiguity I should be exceedingly proud of it, for it would be highly civilized.”
(Henry James)

The most limited theme is capable of the greatest development and variation.

James is the spectator at the edge of life always refusing to enter into it.
His characters all listen and talk and comment and do not act.
The Beast in the Jungle is the study of a man in whose life nothing happens, it is all spent in waiting for the beast to spring.

A life of leisured and comfortable journeys to frequented and beautiful cities or parts of the country is, in the majority of cases, the most uneventful life our society has to offer.
If it provides excitement, it provides excitement with the least possible amount of friction.

The personal conflict is a conflict between the desire to plunge too deeply into experience and the prudent resolution to remain a spectator, to absorb the tradition without losing own individuality, to choose between two kinds of isolation:
- the isolation of a person so deeply involved in experiencing the sensations of a world foreign to him that he fails to affirm himself as a part of its unity
- to be isolated in the manner of absolutely refusing to be an actor in the play which so impressed him

“What, then, have you dreamed of?“
“A man whom I can have the luxury of respecting!
A man whom I can admire enough to make me know I am doing it, whom I fondly believe to be cast in a bigger mould than most of the vulgar breed – large in character, great in talent, strong in will.
In such a man as that, one’s weary imagination at last may rest or may wander if it will, but with the sense of coming home again a greater adventure than any other.”
(Henry James)
The tragic muse is a book in which all the conflicting aspects of life are represented:
The life of political action, the aesthetic life, and the drama.
Intelligently responsive critical interest in an artist’s work is an almost necessary stimulus to creation.

“It was as if he had said to me on seeing me:
Lay hands on the weak little relics of our common youth:
Oh, but you are not going to give me away, to hand me over in my raggedness and my poor accidents, quite helpless, friendless.
You are going to do the best for me you can, aren’t you?
And since you are going to let me seem to justify them as I possibly can?”
(Henry James)

At the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, which published the first edition of James Joyce’sUlysses, historic figures made rare appearances to read their work:


Paul Valéry, André Gide and Eliot.



Hemingway even broke his rule of not reading in public if Spender would read with him.
Since Spender agreed, Hemingway appeared for a rare reading in public with him.

Paris Review interview, May 1978:
Hemingway I knew during the Spanish Civil War.
He often turned up in Valencia and Madrid and other places where I happened to be.
We would go for walks together and then he would talk about literature.

He was marvelous as long as he didn’t realize that he was talking about literature —
I mean he’d say how the opening chapter of Stendhal’sLa Chartreuse de Parmewas the best description of war in literature, when Fabrizio gets lost, doesn’t know where he is at all in the Battle of Waterloo.


Then I’d say:
“Well, what do you think aboutHenry IV?

Do you think Shakespeare writes well about war?”
“Oh, I’ve never read Shakespeare,” he would say.

“What are you talking about?
You seem to imagine I’m a professor or something.
I don’t read literature.
I’m not a literary man.”—
That kind of thing.

In Chicago, Hemingway worked as an associate editor of the monthly journalCooperative Commonwealth, where he met novelist Sherwood Anderson.
It is believed that Anderson suggested Paris to Hemingway because “the monetary exchange rate” made it an inexpensive place to live, more importantly it was where “the most interesting people in the world” lived.

In Paris, Hemingway met American writer and art collectorGertrude Stein, Irish novelistJames Joyce, American poetEzra Pound (who “could help a young writer up the rungs of a career“) and other writers.



The Hemingway of the early Paris years was a “tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man.”
He and Hadley lived in a small walk-up at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine in theLatin Quarter, and he worked in a rented room in a nearby building.

Stein, who was the bastion ofmodernismin Paris,became Hemingway’s mentor and godmother to his son Jack.
She introduced him to the expatriate artists and writers of theMontparnasse Quarter, whom she referred to as the “Lost Generation“—a term Hemingway popularized with the publication ofThe Sun Also Rises.

A regular at Stein’ssalon, Hemingway met influential painters such asPablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Juan Gris.



He eventually withdrew from Stein’s influence, and their relationship deteriorated into a literary quarrel that spanned decades.
Ezra Pound met Hemingway by chance atSylvia Beach’s bookshopShakespeare and Companyin 1922.

The two toured Italy in 1923 and lived on the same street in 1924.
They forged a strong friendship, and in Hemingway, Pound recognized and fostered a young talent.
Pound introduced Hemingway to James Joyce, with whom Hemingway frequently embarked on “alcoholic sprees“.
During his first 20 months in Paris, Hemingway filed 88 stories for theToronto Starnewspaper.



In September 1923, the Hemingways returned to Toronto, where their sonJohnwas born on 10 October.
He missed Paris, considered Toronto boring, and wanted to return to the life of a writer, rather than live the life of a journalist.

Hemingway, Hadley and their son (nicknamed Bumby) returned to Paris in January 1924 and moved into a new apartment at 113 rue Notre-Dame des Champs.

Hemingway helpedFord Madox FordeditThe Transatlantic Review, which published works by Pound,John Dos Passos, BaronessElsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and Stein, as well as some of Hemingway’s own early stories, such as “Indian Camp“.
WhenIn Our Time was published in 1925, the dust jacket bore comments from Ford.

“Indian Camp” received considerable praise.
Ford saw it as an important early story by a young writer.
Critics in the United States praised Hemingway for reinvigorating the short story genre with his crisp style and use of declarative sentences.

Six months earlier, Hemingway had metF. Scott Fitzgerald.
The pair formed a friendship of “admiration and hostility“.

Fitzgerald had publishedThe Great Gatsbythe same year:
Hemingway read it, liked it, and decided his next work had to be a novel.

He was very nice when one was alone with him, but the public Hemingway could be troublesome.
On one occasion, I remember we went into a bar where there were girls.
Hemingway immediately took up a guitar and started strumming, being “Hemingway”.
One of the girls standing with him pointed at me and said, “Tu amigo es muy guapo.”—
Your friend is very handsome.
Hemingway became absolutely furious, bashed down the guitar and left in a rage.
He was very like that.

Another time, my first wife and I met him and Marty Gellhorn in Paris.

They invited us to lunch, someplace where there were steaks and chips, things like that, but my wife ordered sweetbread.
Also she wouldn’t drink.

So Hemingway said:
“Your wife is yellow, that’s what she is, she’s yellow.
Marty was like that, and do you know what I did?
I used to take her to the morgue in Madrid every morning before breakfast.”
Well, the morgue in Madrid before breakfast really must have been something.

Above: Ernest Hemingway with Lady Duff Twysden, his wife Hadley, and friends, July 1925 trip to Spain
Hemingway always said of me:
“You’re okay.
All that’s wrong with you is you’re too squeamish.”

So he would describe modern war.
He’d say:
“If you think of modern war from the point of view of a pilot, the city that he’s bombing isn’t all these people whom you like to worry about, people who are going to suffer —
It’s just a mathematical problem.
It’s like shading in a circle with dark areas where you drop your bombs.
You mustn’t think of it in a sentimental way at all.”

At that same meeting in Paris, he told me again I was squeamish, and then he said:
“This is something you ought to look at, it will do you good.”
He produced a packet of about 30 photographs of the most horrible murders, which he carried around in his pockets.
This toughened one up in some way.

He told me that what motivated him really, while he was in Spain, wasn’t so much enthusiasm about the Republic, but to test his own courage.
He said:
“Only if you actually go into battle and bullets are screeching all around you, can you know whether you’re a coward or not.”
He had to prove to himself that he wasn’t a coward.
And he said:
“Mind, you shit in your pants with fear.
Everyone does that, but that isn’t what counts.”
I don’t remember quite what it is that counts —
But he always wanted to test his own courage.
Physical courage to him was a kind of absolute value.

In 1936, Spender became a member of theCommunist Party of Great Britain.

(TheCommunist Party of Great Britain(CPGB) was the largestCommunist party inGreat Britain between 1920 and 1991.
Founded in 1920 through a merger of several smallerMarxist parties, the CPGB gained the support of manysocialist organisations and trade unions following the political fallout of theFirst World War and the RussianOctober Revolution.
Ideologically the CPGB was a socialist party organised uponMarxism-Leninist ideology, strongly opposed toBritish colonialism, sexual discrimination and racial segregation.
These beliefs led many leading anti-colonial revolutionaries, feminists, and anti-fascist figures, to become closely associated with the Party.
Many prominent CPGB members became leaders of Britain’s trade union movements.)

Harry Pollitt, its head, invited him to write for theDaily Workeron theMoscow Trials.


(TheMoscow Trialswere a series ofshow trials held in theSoviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation ofJoseph Stalin.

They were nominally directed against “Trotskyists” and members of the “Right Opposition” of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.


At the time the three Moscow Trials were given extravagant titles:
- the “Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center” (orthe Zinoviev-Kamenev Trial, also known as the ‘Trial of the Sixteen‘, August 1936)


- the “Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center” (orthe Pyatakov-Radek Trial, January 1937)


- the “Case of the Anti-Soviet ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’” (or theBukharin-Rykov Trial, also known as the ‘Trial of the Twenty-One‘, March 1938)


The defendants wereOld Bolshevik Party (“old party guard“) leaders and top officials of theSoviet Secret Police (KGB).

Most were charged underArticle 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with the Western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restorecapitalism.
Several prominent figures were sentenced to death during this period outside these trials.
The Moscow Trials led to the execution of many of the defendants.
The trials are generally seen as part of Stalin’sGreat Purge, a campaign to rid the party of current or prior opposition, including Trotskyists and leadingBolshevik cadre members from the time of theRussian Revolutionor earlier, who might even potentially become a figurehead for the growing discontent in the Soviet populace resulting from Stalin’s mismanagement of theeconomy.
Stalin’s rapidindustrialization during the period of theFirst Five Year Plan and the brutality of the forcedagricultural collectivization had led to an acute economic and political crisis (1928 – 1933), made worse by the globalGreat Depression, which led to enormous suffering on the part of the Soviet workers and peasants.
Stalin was acutely conscious of this fact and took steps to prevent it taking the form of an opposition inside theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union to his increasinglytotalitarian rule.)

In late 1936, Spender marriedInez Pearn, whom he had recently met at an Aid to Spain meeting.
She is described as ‘small and rather ironic‘ and ‘strikingly good-looking‘.
Spender was married to his first wife, Inez, having been part-converted to heterosexuality through an affair with an American, Muriel Gardiner.
Sleeping with a woman, he told Isherwood, was “more satisfactory, more terrible, more disgusting, and, in fact, more everything“.
One of his poems speaks of having “a third mouth of the dark to kiss“.
The marriage to Inez ended as the Second World War began.

In 1937, during theSpanish Civil War, theDaily Workersent him to Spain on a mission to observe and report on the Soviet shipKomsomol, which had sunk while carrying Soviet weapons to theSecond Spanish Republic.
Spender travelled toTangier and tried to enter Spain viaCadiz, but was sent back.
He then travelled toValencia, where he met Ernest Hemingway andManuel Altolaguirre.

You stared out of the window on the emptiness
Of a world exploding:
Stones and rubble thrown upwards in a fountain
Blasted sideways by the wind.
Every sensation except loneliness
Was drained out of your mind
By the lack of any motionless object the eye could
find.
You were a child again
Who sees for the first time things happen.
When you smiled,
Everything in the room was shattered;
Only you remained whole
In frozen wonder, as though you stared
At your image in the broken mirror
Where it had always been silverly carried.
“To A Spanish Poet” (for Manuel Altolaguirre), The Still Centre, 1939

(Tony Hyndman, alias Jimmy Younger, had joined theInternational Brigades, which were fighting againstFrancisco Franco’s forces in theBattle of Guadalajara.)



The guns spell money’s ultimate reason
In letters of lead on the spring hillside.
But the boy lying dead under the olive trees
Was too young and too silly
To have been notable to their important eye.
He was a better target for a kiss.
His name never appeared in the papers.
The world maintained its traditional wall
Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well,
Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange
rumour, drifted outside.
Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?
“Ultima Ratio Regum“, The Still Centre, 1939

In July 1937, Spender attended the Second International Writers’ Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war, held inValencia, Barcelona and Madrid,and attended by many writers, including Ernest Hemingway,André Malraux and Pablo Neruda.


Pollitt told Spender “to go and get killed.
We need aByron in the movement.”

Deep in the winter plain, two armies
Dig their machinery, to destroy each other.
Men freeze and hunger. No one is given leave
On either side, except the dead, and wounded.
All have become so nervous and so cold
That each man hates the cause and distant words
Which brought him here, more terribly than bullets.
“Two Armies“, The Still Centre, 1939

Spender was imprisoned for a while inAlbacete.

In Madrid, he met André Malraux.
They discussed André Gide’sRetour de l’U.R.S.S..

Because of medical problems, Spender went back to England and bought a house inLavenham.
In 1939, he divorced.

His 1938 translations of works byBertolt Brecht andMiguel Hernández appeared inJohn Lehmann’sNew Writing.



Spender felt close to the Jewish people.
His mother, Violet Hilda Schuster, was half-Jewish.
(Her father’s family were German Jews who converted to Christianity, and her mother came from an upper-class family ofCatholic German,Lutheran Danish and distant Italian descent).

Spender’s second wife,Natasha, whom he married in 1941, was also Jewish.
In 1941, he married Natasha Litvin, 10 years his junior.
The end of the War coincided with the birth of their first child.

Spender continued to write poetry throughout his life, but it came to consume less of his literary output in later years than it did in the 1930s and 1940s.
Critics praised his work as an autobiographer and critic.
In aTimes Literary Supplementreview, Julian Symons noted “the candor of the ceaseless critical self-examination Spender has conducted for more than half a century in autobiography, journals, criticism, poems.”

Spender was at his best when he was writing autobiography.
The poet himself pointed echoed this assertion in the postscript toThe Thirties and After: Poetry, Politics, People, 1933 – 1970(1978):
“I myself am, it is only too clear, an autobiographer.
Autobiography provides the line of continuity in my work. I am not someone who can shed or disclaim his past.”
In 1942, he joined the fire brigade ofCricklewood and Maresfield Gardens as a volunteer.

Spender met several times with the poetEdwin Muir.

After he was no longer left-wing, he was one of those who wrote of their disillusionment with Communism in the essay collectionThe God that Failed(1949), along withArthur Koestlerand others.
(The God that Failedis a 1949 collection of sixessays byLouis Fischer,André Gide,Arthur Koestler,Ignazio Silone,Stephen Spender and Richard Wright.
The common theme of the essays is the authors’ disillusionment with and abandonment ofCommunism.)
It is thought that one of the big areas of disappointment was theMolotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which many leftists saw as a betrayal.


Like Auden, Isherwood and several other outspoken opponents of fascism in the 1930s, Spender did not see active military service inWorld War II.
He was initially graded “C” upon examination because of his earliercolitis, poor eyesight,varicose veins and the long-term effects of atapeworm in 1934.
But he pulled strings to be re-examined and was upgraded to “B“, which meant that he could serve in the LondonAuxiliary Fire Service.

Spender spent the winter of 1940 teaching atBlundell’s School.

After the War, Spender was a member of theAllied Control Commission, restoring civil authority in Germany.

All the posters on the walls
All the leaflets in the streets
Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain,
Their words blotted out with tears,
Skins peeling from their bodies
In the victorious hurricane.
All the lessons learned, unlearned;
The young, who learned to read, now blind
Their eyes with an archaic film;
The peasant relapses to a stumbling tune
Following the donkey`s bray;
These only remember to forget.
But somewhere some word presses
On the high door of a skull and in some corner
Of an irrefrangible eye
Some old man memory jumps to a child
— Spark from the days of energy.
And the child hoards it like a bitter toy.
“Fall of a City“, Selected Poems, 1941

WithCyril Connolly andPeter Watson, Spender co-foundedHorizon magazine and served as its editor from 1939 to 1941.




Apoet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.
Poetry does not statetruth.
It states the conditions within which something felt is true.
Even while he is writing about the little portion of reality which is part of his experience, the poet may be conscious of a different reality outside.
His problem is to relate the small truth to the sense of a wider, perhaps theoretically known, truth outside his experience.
“Foreword“, The Still Centre (1939)

From 1947 to 1949, he went to the US several times and saw Auden and Isherwood.

Since we are what we are, what shall we be
But what we are?We are, we have
Six feet and seventy years, to see
Thelight, and then resign it for thegrave.
“Spiritual Explorations” fromPoems of Dedication(1947)

He was the editor ofEncounter magazine from 1953 to 1966, but resigned after it emerged that theCongress for Cultural Freedom, which published it, was covertly funded by theCIA.
Spender insisted that he was unaware of the ultimate source of the magazine’s funds.



He taught at various American institutions and accepted the Elliston Chair of Poetryat theUniversity of Cincinnati in 1954.

In 1961, he became professor ofrhetoric atGresham College, London.

Spender helped found the magazineIndex on Censorship, was involved in the founding of thePoetry Book Society and did work forUNESCO.

(Index on Censorshipis an organization campaigning forfreedom of expression, which produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London.

It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd. (WSI) in association with the UK-registered charity Index on Censorship (founded as the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust), which are both chaired by the British television broadcaster, writer and former politicianTrevor Phillips.

Indexis based at 1Rivington Place in central London.
WSI was created by poetStephen Spender, Oxford philosopherStuart Hampshire, the publisher and editor ofThe Observer David Astor, and the writer and expert on the Soviet UnionEdward Crankshaw.



The founding editor ofIndex on Censorshipwas the critic and translatorMichael Scammell, who still serves as a patron of the organization.

The original impetus for the creation ofIndex on Censorshipcame from an open letter addressed “To World Public Opinion” by two Soviet dissenters,Pavel Litvinov andLarisa Bogoraz.


In the words of the samizdat periodicalA Chronicle of Current Events, they described “the atmosphere of illegality” surrounding the January 1968 trial of Ginzburg and Galanskov and called for “public condemnation of this disgraceful trial, for the punishment of those responsible, the release of the accused from detention and a retrial which would fully conform with the legal regulations and be held in the presence of international observers.“

(Alexander Ginzburg resumed his dissident activities on release from the camps, until expelled from the USSR in 1979.

The writerYuri Galanskov died in a camp in November 1972.)

The Times(London) published a translation of the open letter and in reply the English poetStephen Spender composed a brief telegram:
“We, a group of friends representing no organisation, support your statement, admire your courage, think of you and will help in any way possible.”

Among the other 15 British and US signatories were:
- the poetW. H. Auden

- English philosopherA. J. Ayer

- American-British musicianYehudi Menuhin

- English man of lettersJ. B. Priestley

- English actorPaul Scofield

- English sculptorHenry Moore

- British philosopherBertrand Russell

- American writerMary McCarthy

- Russian-French-American composerIgor Stravinsky

Later that year, on 25 August, Bogoraz, Litvinov and five others demonstrated onRed Square against theinvasion of Czechoslovakia.



A few weeks before, Litvinov sent Spender a letter (translated and published several years later in the first May 1972 issue ofIndex).
He suggested that a regular publication might be set up in the West “to provide information to world public opinion about the real state of affairs in the USSR“.

Spender and his colleagues, Stuart Hampshire, David Astor, Edward Crankshaw and founding editor Michael Scammell decided, like Amnesty International, to cast their net wider.
They wished to document patterns of censorship in right-wing dictatorships — the military regimes of Latin America and the dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal — as well as the Soviet Union and its satellites.



Meanwhile, in 1971,Amnesty International began to publish English translations of each new issue ofA Chronicle of Current Events, which documented human rights abuses in the USSR and included a regular “Samizdat Update“.

In a recent interview, Michael Scammell explains the informal division of labour between the two London-based organizations:
“When we received human rights material we forwarded it to Amnesty and when Amnesty received a report of censorship they passed it on to us.”

Originally, as suggested by Scammell, the magazine was to be calledIndex, a reference to the lists or indices of banned works that are central to the history of censorship: the Roman Catholic Church’sIndex Librorum Prohibitorum(Index of Forbidden Books), the Soviet Union’sCensor’s Index, and apartheid South Africa’sJacobsens Index of Objectionable Literature.



Scammell later admitted that the words “on censorship” were added as an afterthought when it was realised that the reference would not be clear to many readers.
“Panicking, we hastily added the words ‘on Censorship’ as a subtitle“, wrote Scammell in the December 1981 issue of the magazine, “and this it has remained ever since, nagging me with its ungrammaticality (IndexofCensorship, surely) and a standing apology for the opacity of its title.”
Describing the organization’s objectives at its inception, Stuart Hampshire said:
“The tyrant’s concealments of oppression and of absolute cruelty should always be challenged.
There should be noise of publicity outside every detention centre and concentration camp and a published record of every tyrannical denial of free expression.”

Index on Censorshipmagazine was founded by Michael Scammell in 1972.
It supports free expression, publishing distinguished writers from around the world, exposing suppressed stories, initiating debate, and providing an international record of censorship.
The quarterly editions of the magazine usually focus on a country or region or a recurring theme in the global free expression debate.
Index on Censorshipalso publishes short works of fiction and poetry by notable new writers.

Index Index, a round-up of abuses of freedom of expression worldwide, was published in the magazine until December 2008.
While the original inspiration to create Index came from Soviet dissidents, from its outset the magazine covered censorship in right-wing dictatorships then ruling Greece and Portugal, the military regimes of Latin America, and theSoviet Union and its satellites.
The magazine has covered other challenges facing free expression, including religious extremism, the rise of nationalism, andInternet censorship.
In the first issue of May 1972, Stephen Spender wrote:
“Obviously there is the risk of a magazine of this kind becoming a bulletin of frustration.
However, the material by writers which is censored in Eastern Europe, Greece, South Africa and other countries is among the most exciting that is being written today.
Moreover, the question of censorship has become a matter of impassioned debate and it is one which does not only concern totalitarian societies.“

Issues are usually organised by theme and contain a country-by-country list of recent cases involving censorship, restrictions onfreedom of the press and otherfree speech violations.
Occasionally,Index on Censorshippublishes short works of fiction and poetry by notable new writers as well as censored ones.
Over the half century it has been in existence,Index on Censorshiphas presented works by some of the world’s most distinguished writers and thinkers, including:
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

- Milan Kundera

- Václav Havel

- Nadine Gordimer
- Salman Rushdie

- Doris Lessing

- Arthur Miller

- Noam Chomsky

- Umberto Eco

Issues under the editorship of Rachael Jolley have covered taboos, the legacy of theMagna Carta andWilliam Shakespeare’s enduring legacy in protest.


There have been special issues on China, reporting from the Middle East, and on Internet censorship.


The Russia issue (January 2008) won anAmnesty International Media Award 2008 for features by Russian journalistsFatima Tlisova and Sergei Bachinin, and veteran Russian free speech campaigner Alexei Simonov, founder of theGlasnost Defence Foundation.
Other landmark publications includeKen Saro-Wiwa’s writings from prison (Issue 3/1997) and a translation of the CzechoslovakCharter 77 manifesto drafted byVáclav Havel and others in Issue 3/1977.


Index published the first English translation ofAlexander Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Index on Censorshippublished the stories of the “disappeared” inArgentina and the work of banned poets inCuba, the work of Chinese poets who escaped the massacres that ended theTiananmen Square protests of 1989.



(TheTiananmen Square protests were student-leddemonstrations held inTiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989.
In what is known as theTiananmen Square Massacre,troops armed withassault rifles and accompanied bytanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military’s advance into Tiananmen Square.
The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declaredmartial law and sent thePeople’s Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.
The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the’89 Democracy Movementor theTiananmen Square Incident.

The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reformChinese Communist Party(CCP)General Secretary Hu Yaobangin April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change inpost-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country’s future.

Thereforms of the 1980s had led to a nascentmarket economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others.
The one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy.
Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy,and restrictions on political participation.
Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy,freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.
At the height of the protests, about onemillion people assembled in the Square.

As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership.
By May, a student-ledhunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators.
The protests spread to some 400 cities.
Among the CCP top leadership, PremierLi Peng and Party EldersLi Xiannian andWang Zhencalled for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win overParamount Leader Deng Xiaoping and PresidentYang Shangkun to their side.





On 20 May, theState Council declaredmartial law.
They mobilized as many as 300,000 troops to Beijing.
The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process.
The military operations were under the overall command of GeneralBaibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.


The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre.
Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China.
The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests.
More broadly, the suppression ended thepolitical reforms begun in 1986and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed afterDeng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in 1992.
Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China, limits that have lasted up to the present day.
Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of CCP rule and remains one of the most sensitive and most widelycensored topics in China.)

Index on Censorshiphas a long history of publishing writers in translation, includingBernard Henri Lévy,Ivan Klima,Ma Jian and Nobel laureateShirin Ebadi, and news reports includingAnna Politkovskaia’s coverage of the war in Chechnya (Issue 2/2002).




Tom Stoppard’s playEvery Good Boy Deserves Favour(1977) is set in a Soviet mental institution and was inspired by the personal account of former detaineeVictor Fainberg andClayton Yeo’s expose of the use of psychiatric abuse in the USSR, were published inIndex on Censorship(Issue 2, 1975).
The play was first performed with theLondon Symphony Orchestra.
Stoppard became a member of the advisory board ofIndex on Censorshipin 1978 and remains connected to the publication as a patron ofIndex.

Index on Censorshippublished the World Statement by the International Committee for the Defence ofSalman Rushdiein support of “the right of all people to express their ideas and beliefs and to discuss them with their critics on the basis of mutual tolerance, free from censorship, intimidation and violence“.


(As much as I advocate freedom of expression, I feel that this power to express one’s opinions needs to be balanced by a sense of responsibility.
Those who were surprised by the trouble caused by Rushdie’s book failed to understand that in questioning the singularity of God the Satanic Verses ignored or subverted the supreme importance that all Muslims bestow on God’s unity – in addition to being disrespectful to the Prophet.
Rushdie’s sin was to give credence to a pre-Islamic belief that Allah had three daughters, each of whom held divine power.
The Prophet Muhammad’s teaching holds that God had neither wife nor children, and this would have been incompatible with His role as the Creator and the Almighty.
To believe that God is not omnipotent (all and solely powerful) is to commit shirk.
In strict Muslim societies, shirk is so serious that the only appropriate punishment is death.
The West regarded the outcry over the Verses as an affront to freedom of speech.
However, the important lesson to be learned from the Rushdie incident is that, to strict Muslims, the central tenets of Islam are so powerful that they can transcend all other considerations.
Personally, I think that God, should He exist, can defend Himself and does not need Man to defend His honour for Him.
That being said, Rushdie is a fool who should have known better, considering he came from an Islamist background and is a highly-educated man.)

Six months later,Indexpublished theHunger Strike Declarationfrom four student leaders of theTiananmen Square protests of 1989,Liu Xiaobo, Zhou Duo, Hou Dejian and Gao Xin.



Index Index, a round-up of abuses of freedom of expression worldwide, continued to be published in each edition of the magazine until December 2008, when this function was transferred to the website.
The offences against free expression documented in that first issue’sIndex Indexlisting included censorship in Greece and Spain, then dictatorships, and Brazil, which had just banned the filmZabriskie Point on the grounds that it “insulted a friendly power” – the United States, where it had been made and freely shown.

(Zabriskie Point is a 1970 American drama film directed byMichelangelo Antonioni (1912 – 2007) and starringMark Frechette (1947 – 1975), Daria Halprin and Rod Taylor (1930 – 2015).
It was widely noted at the time for its setting in thecountercultureof the United States.
Some of the film’s scenes were shot on location atZabriskie PointinDeath Valley.
The film was an overwhelming commercial failureand was panned by most critics upon release.
Its critical standing has increased, however, in the decades since.
It has to some extent achievedcult statusand is noted for its cinematography, use of music, and direction.)
Index on Censorshippaid special attention to the situation in then Czechoslovakia between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and theVelvet Revolutionof 1989, devoting an entire issue to the country eight years after thePrague Spring (Issue 3/1976).


It included several pieces by Václav Havel, including a first translation of his one act playConversation, and a letter to Czech officials on police censorship of his December 1975 production ofThe Beggar’s Opera byJohn Gay.

The magazine also carried articles on the state of the Czech theatre and a list of the so-called Padlock Publications, 50 banned books that circulated only in typescript.

Index also published an English version of Havel’s playMistake, dedicated toSamuel Beckettin gratitude for Beckett’s own dedication of his playCatastropheto Havel.
Both short plays were performedat the Free Word Centre to mark the launch of Index‘s special issue looking back at the changes of 1989 (Issue 4, 2009).

Free Speech is not For Sale, a joint campaign report by Index on Censorship andEnglish PEN highlighted the problem of so-calledlibel tourism (actively searching for reasons to sue) and the English law of defamation’s chilling effect on free speech.
After much debate surrounding the report’s ten key recommendations, the UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw pledged to make English defamation laws fairer.
“A free press can’t operate or be effective unless it can offer readers comment as well as news.
What concerns me is that the current arrangements are being used by big corporations to restrict fair comment, not always by journalists but also by academics.”
He added:
“The very high levels of remuneration for defamation lawyers in Britain seem to be incentivising libel tourism.”

These campaigns and others were illustrative of then CEOJohn Kampfner’s strategy, supported by then chair Jonathan Dimbleby, to boost Index‘s public advocacy profile in the UK and abroad beginning in 2008.

Until then the organization did not regard itself as “a campaigning organisation in the mould ofArticle 19 orAmnesty International“, as former news editor Sarah Smith noted in 2001,preferring to use its “understanding of what is newsworthy and politically significant” to maintain pressure on oppressive regimes (such as China, from 1989) through extensive coverage.

Index on Censorship also runs a programme of UK based and international projects that put the organization’s philosophy into practice.
In 2009 and 2010, Index on Censorship worked in Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Tunisia and many other countries, in support of journalists, broadcasters, artists and writers who work against a backdrop of intimidation, repression, and censorship.
The organization’s arts programmes investigate the impact of current and recent social and political change on arts practitioners, assessing the degree and depth of self-censorship.
It uses the arts to engage young people directly into the freedom of expression debate.
It works with marginalised communities in UK, creating new platforms, on line and actual for creative expression.

Index on Censorship works internationally to commission new work, not only articles for print and online, but also new photography, film & video, visual arts and performance.
Examples have included an exhibition of photo stories produced by women in Iraq,Open Shutters, and programme involving artists from refugee and migrant communities in UK, linking with artists from their country of origin, imagine art after, exhibited at Tate Britainin 2007.


Index has also worked with Burmese exiled artists and publishers on creating a programme in support of the collective efforts of Myanmar’s creative community.
Index also commissioned a new play by Actors for Human Rights,Seven Years With Hard Labour, weaving together four accounts from former Burmese political prisoners now living in the UK.

Index also co-published a book of poetry by homeless people in London and St. Petersburg.

In December 2002, Index on Censorship faced calls to cancel a charity performance of theJohn Malkovich filmThe Dancer Upstairs at London’sInstitute of Contemporary Arts(ICA).

Speaking to students the previous May, Malkovich had been asked whom – as the star ofDangerous Liaisons– he would like to fight a duel with.

He pickedRobert Fisk,The Independent newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, andGeorge Galloway, at the time aGlasgow Labour MP, adding that rather than duel them, he would “rather just shoot them“.

Fisk wrote an article saying that Malkovich’s comment was one of many threats he now received and that “almost anyone who criticizes US or Israeli policy in the Middle East is now in this free-fire zone“.

The media rights groupReporters sans Frontieres (RSF) (Reporters without Borders) condemned Malkovich, but in an online article Index‘s then Associate Editor (now deputy CEO)Rohan Jayasekera, dismissed the actor’s comments as “flippant” in an article on the organization’s site.

In November 2004,Index on Censorshipattracted further controversy over another indexonline.org blog post by Jayasekera that, to many readers, seemed to condone or justify the murder of Dutch filmmakerTheo van Gogh.
The blog described Van Gogh was a “free speech fundamentalist” on a “martyrdom operation, roaring his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities” in an “abuse of his right to free speech“.

Describing Van Gogh’s filmSubmissionas “furiously provocative“, Jayasekera concluded by describing his death as:
“A sensational climax to a lifetime’s public performance, stabbed and shot by a bearded fundamentalist, a message from the killer pinned by a dagger to his chest, Theo Van Gogh became a martyr to free expression.
His passing was marked by a magnificent barrage of noise as Amsterdam hit the streets to celebrate him in the way the man himself would have truly appreciated.
And what timing!
Just as his long-awaited biographical film ofPim Fortuyn’s life is ready to screen.
Bravo, Theo!
Bravo!”

Submissionis a 2004 English-language Dutchshort drama film produced and directed byTheo van Gogh, and written byAyaan Hirsi Ali (a former member of the DutchHouse of Representativesfor thePeople’s Party for Freedom and Democracy).
It was shown on theDutch public broadcasting network(VPRO) on 29 August 2004.
The film’s title is one of the possibletranslations of the Arabic word “Islam“.
The film tells the story of four fictional characters played by a single actress wearing a veil,but clad in a see-throughHijab, her naked body painted with verses from theQuran.

The characters are Muslim women who have been abused in various ways.
The film containsmonologues of these women and dramatically highlights three verses of the Koran, by showing them painted on women’s bodies.
Writer Hirsi Ali has said:
“It is written in the Koran a woman may be slapped if she is disobedient.
This is one of the evils I wish to point out in the film“.
In an answer to a question about whether the film would offend Muslims, Hirsi Ali said that:
“If you’re a Muslim woman and you read the Koran, and you read in there that you should be raped if you say ‘no’ to your husband, that is offensive.
And that is insulting.“

Director of the film, Theo Van Gogh, who was known as a controversial and provocative personality, called the film a “political pamphlet“.

The film drew praise for portraying the ways in which women are abused in accordance with fundamentalistIslamic law, as well as anger for criticizing Islamic canon itself.
It drew the following comment from movie critic Phil Hall:
“Submissionwas bold in openly questioning misogyny and a culture of violence against womenbecause of Koranic interpretations.
The questions raised in the film deserve to be asked:
Is it divine will to assault or kill women?
Is there holiness in holding women at substandard levels, denying them the right to free will and independent thought?
And ultimately, how can such a mind frame exist in the 21st century?“
Film critic Dennis Lim, on the other hand, stated that:
“It’s depressing to think that this morsel of glib effrontery could pass as a serious critique of conservative Islam.“
Another critic referred to the stories told in the film as “simplistic, even caricatures“.

After the film’s broadcast on Dutch television, newspaperDe Volkskrantreported claims of plagiarism against Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh, made by Internet journalist Francisco van Jole.

Van Jole said the duo had “aped” the ideas of Iranian American video artistShirin Neshat.

Neshat’s work, which made abundant use ofPersian calligraphyprojected onto bodies, had been shown in the Netherlands in 1997 and 2000.

On 2 November 2004, Van Gogh wasassassinated in public byMohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim with a Dutch passport.
A letter,stabbed through and affixed to the body by a dagger, linked the murder to Van Gogh’s film and his views regarding Islam.
It was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and called for ajihad (holy war) againstkafir(unbelievers or infidels), against America, Europe, the Netherlands, and Hirsi Ali herself.
Bouyeri was jailed for life, for which in the Netherlands there is no possibility of parole, andpardonsare rarely granted.

Following the murder of Van Gogh, tens of thousands gathered in the center of Amsterdam to mourn Van Gogh’s death.

The murder widened and polarized the debate in the Netherlands about the social position of its more than one millionMuslim residents.

It also put the country’sliberal tradition further into question, coming only two years afterPim Fortuyn’s murder.

(Pim Fortuynwas a Dutch politician, author, civil servant, businessman, sociologist and academic who founded the partyPim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn or LPF) in 2002.
Fortuyn criticizedmulticulturism, immigration and Islam in the Netherlands.
He called Islam “a backward culture“, and was quoted as saying that if it were legally possible, he would close the borders for Muslim immigrants.
Fortuyn wasassassinated during the2002 Dutch national election campaign by Volkert van der Graaf, a left-wing environmentalist andanimal rights activist.
In court at his trial, van der Graaf said he murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as “scapegoats” and targeting “the weak members of society” in seeking political power.
The assassination shocked many residents of the Netherlands and highlighted the cultural clashes within the country.)
In an apparent reaction against controversial statements about theIslamic, Christian and Jewish religions— such as those Van Gogh had made — the Dutch Minister of Justice,Christian Democrat Piet Hein Donner, suggested Dutchblasphemylaws should either be applied more stringently or made more strict.

The liberalD66 party suggested scrapping the blasphemy laws altogether.)

There were many protests from both left- and right-wing commentators regarding Rohan Jayasekera’s comments.

Nick Cohen ofThe Observer newspaper wrote in December 2004, that:
“When I asked Jayasekera if he had any regrets, he said he had none.
He told me that, like many other readers, I shouldn’t have made the mistake of believing thatIndex on Censorshipwas against censorship, even murderous censorship, on principle – in the same way asAmnesty Internationalis opposed to torture, including murderous torture, on principle.
It may have been so its radical youth, but was now as concerned with fighting ‘hate speech’ as protecting free speech.“

Ursula Owen, the chief executive ofIndex on Censorship, while agreeing that the blog post’s “tone was not right” contradicted Cohen’s account of his conversation with Jayasekera in a letter toThe Observer.

In December 2009, the magazine published an interview withJytte Klausen about a refusal ofYale University Press to include theMohammed cartoons in Klausen’s bookThe Cartoons that Shook the World.
The magazine declined to include the cartoons alongside the interview.)

Across this dazzling
Mediterranean
August morning
The dolphins write such
Ideograms:
With power to wake
Me prisoned in
My human speech
They sign: ‘I AM!’
“Dolphins“, Stephen Spender

Spender was appointed the 17thPoet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1965.

During the late 1960s, Spender frequently visited theUniversity of Connecticut, which he declared had the “most congenial teaching faculty” he had encountered in the United States.

Great poetryis always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
As quoted inThe New York Times(26 March 1961)

Spender was Professor of English atUniversity College London (UCL) from 1970 to 1977 and then becameProfessor Emeritus.

He was made aCommander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) at the 1962Queen’s Birthday Honours, andknighted in the 1983 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

At a ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of theNormandy Invasion on 6 June 1984, US PresidentRonald Reagan (1911 – 2004) quoted from Spender’s poem “The Truly Great” in his remarks:
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem.
You are men who in your “lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honour”.

The Truly Great
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Spender also had profound intellectual workings with the world of art, includingPablo Picasso.

The artistHenry Moore did etchings and lithographs conceived to accompany the work of writers, includingCharles Baudelaireand Spender.
Moore’s work in that regard also included illustrations of the literature ofDante Alighieri, André Gide and William Shakespeare.
The exhibition was held at The Henry Moore Foundation.
Spender collected and befriended artists such as:
- Jean Arp
- Frank Auerbach

- Francis Bacon

- Lucian Freud

- Alberto Giacometti

- Arshile Gorky

- Philip Guston

- David Hockney

- Giorgio Morandi

- and others.
InThe Worlds of Stephen Spender, the artistFrank Auerbachselected art work by those masters to accompany Spender’s poems.

Spender wroteChina DiarywithDavid Hockney in 1982, published byThames and Hudson art publishers in London.

The Soviet artistWassily Kandinsky created an etching for Spender,Fraternity, in 1939.

Personal Life
In 1933, Spender fell in love with Tony Hyndman, and they lived together from 1935 to 1936.
In 1934, Spender had an affair withMuriel Gardiner.
In December 1936, shortly after the end of his relationship with Hyndman, Spender fell in love with and marriedInez Pearn after an engagement of only three weeks.
The marriage broke down in 1939.
In 1941, Spender marriedNatasha Litvin, a concert pianist.
The marriage lasted until his death.

Spender’s sexuality has been the subject of debate.
Spender’s seemingly changing attitudes have caused him to be labelled bisexual, repressed, latently homophobic or simply something complex that resists easy labelling.
Many of his friends in his earlier years were gay.

Spender had many affairs with men in his earlier years, most notably with Hyndman, who was called “Jimmy Younger” in his memoirWorld Within World.

After his affair with Muriel Gardiner, he shifted his focus toheterosexuality,but his relationship with Hyndman complicated both that relationship and his short-lived marriage to Inez Pearn.
His marriage to Natasha Litvin in 1941 seemed to have marked the end of his romantic relationships with men but not the end of all homosexual activity, as his unexpurgated diaries have revealed.
Subsequently, he toned down homosexual allusions in later editions of his poetry.
Nevertheless, he was a founding member of theHomosexual Law Reform Society, which lobbied for the repeal of Britishsodomy laws.

Spender sued authorDavid Leavittfor allegedly using his relationship with “Jimmy Younger” in Leavitt’sWhile England Sleepsin 1994.
The case was settled out of court with Leavitt removing certain portions from his text.

I am not really sure what I should say in regards to Spender’s proclivities.
Frankly, what happens in the bedroom in my opinion should remain in the bedroom.
Do I really need to know about Spender’s extracurricular affairs to enjoy (or not) his poetry?

In the 1980s, Spender’s writing — The Journals of Stephen Spender, 1939-1983,Collected Poems, 1928-1985,andLetters to Christopher: Stephen Spender’s Letters to Christopher Isherwood, 1929-1939, in particular—placed a special emphasis on autobiographical material.


I’m struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoringyouth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.
On turning 70 inJournals 1939 – 1983(1986), as quoted inTimemagazine (20 January 1986)

What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening thewill
Leaking the brightness away
For I had expected always
Some brightness to hold intrust,
Some final innocence
To save from dust
“What I Expected Was“, Stephen Spender

One, a poet, went babbling like a fountain
Through parks. All were jokes to children.
All had the pale unshaven stare of shuttered plants
Exposed to a too violent sun.
“Exiles From Their Land, History Their Domicile“, The Still Centre, 1939

In theNew York Times Book Review, critic Samuel Hynes commented that:
“The person who emerges from Spender’s letters is neither a madman nor a fool, but an honest, intelligent, troubled young man, groping toward maturity in a troubled time.
And the author of the journals is something more.
He is a writer of sensitivity and power.”

On 16 July 1995, Spender died of a heart attack inWestminster, London, aged 86.
He was buried in the graveyard ofSt Mary on Paddington Green Church in London.

Death is another milestone on their way.
With laughter on their lips and with winds blowing round them
They record simply
How this one excelled all others in making driving belts.
“The Funeral“

Spender’s name was most frequently associated with that of W.H. Auden, perhaps the most famous poet of the 1930s.
However, some critics found the two poets dissimilar in many ways.
In theNew Yorker,for example, Vendler observed that:
“At first Spender imitated Auden’s self-possessed ironies, his determined use of technological objects. … But no two poets can have been more different.
Auden’s rigid, brilliant, peremptory, categorizing, allegorical mind demanded forms altogether different from Spender’s dreamy, liquid, guilty, hovering sensibility.
Auden is a poet of firmly historical time, Spender of timeless nostalgic space.”

In theNew York Times Book Review,Kazin similarly concluded that Spender “was mistakenly identified with Auden.
Although they were virtual opposites in personality and in the direction of their talents, they became famous at the same time as ‘pylon poets’— among the first to put England’s gritty industrial landscape of the 1930s into poetry.”

The term “pylon poets” refers to “The Pylons” a poem by Spender that many critics described as typical of the Auden generation.

The much-anthologized work, included in one of Spender’s earliest collections,Poems(1933),as well as in hisCollected Poems, 1928 – 1985, includes imagery characteristic of the group’s style and reflects the political and social concerns of its members.

InThe Angry Young Men of the Thirties(1976), Elton Edward Smith recognized that in such a poem:
“The poet, instead of closing his eyes to the hideous steel towers of a rural electrification system and concentrating on the soft green fields, glorifies the pylons and grants to them the future.
And the nonhuman structure proves to be of the very highest social value, for rural electrification programs help create a new world of human equality.”

The Pylons
The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages
Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.
The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.
But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning’s danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.
This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.

Over a 65-year career, Stephen Spender wrote scores of poems, hundreds of reviews and essays, and arguably one of the finer memoirs of the 20thcentury.
And yet he may end up better remembered for a cab ride.

In 1980, Spender battled a lost wallet, an octogenarian driver, and 287 miles of dismal weather to taxi from a lecture in Oneonta, NY, to a dinner date with Jacqueline Onassis in Manhattan.
(“I simply had to get there” is the breathless quote detractors are happy to supply.)

Fairly or unfairly, Spender’s reputation as a toady has steadily consolidated, while his reputation as a poet has steadily declined.
His most recent defender, John Sutherland, over 600 pages of an otherwise reverent biography, makes only the meekest case for Spender the literary artist.
“They never stopped trying”, Sutherland writes on Page 1 ofStephen Spender: A Literary Life, alluding cryptically to unidentified enemies.
“But somehow his quality (and I would argue, his literary greatness) weathered the assault.”
It’s nice to know Sutherlandwouldargue it.
Maybe one day he will.
In his current book, though, the case for Spender’s greatness stays parenthetical, optative, and firmly stuck on Page 1.

So we’re faced with an interesting question.
Why has every decade since the ‘30s bothered to rough up an “indifferent poet”, as Spender’s good friend Cyril Connolly once described him?
Why has posterity consigned Stephen Spender to oblivion?

As aforementioned, Spender first emerged in the 30s as part of a coterie of Oxford prodigies that included Louis MacNeice, W.H. Auden, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Christopher Isherwood.
In a round robin of mutual admiration, the poets dedicated their early books to one another and soon came to be known, somewhat derisively, as “Macspaunday”.
If a coterie is incidental to a genius, as it certainly became to Auden, it can get rung around the neck of a lesser talent.
And Spender has never quite lived down the suspicion that he was little more than a well-placed satellite.

He produced indifferent poems —
”Hope and despair and the vivid small longings/ Like minnows gnaw the body” is a fair sampling —
But he was deft at courting the great, to whom he appeared pleasantly unchallenging.

“A loose jointed mind,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary after one encounter, “misty, clouded, suffusive.
Nothing has outline.
We plunged and skipped and hopped — from sodomy and women and writing and anonymity and — I forget.”

Not surprisingly, this was not a personality that organized itself around abiding convictions.
To piece together his literary life, Spender went high and went low.
He spent weekends with the Rothschilds at Mouton, and he trundled as a stipendiary from American college to American college.

When Auden told him to stick to poetry, he dutifully complied, just as he complied when Auden later told him to write nothing but autobiographical prose.

He fell into the reigning Oxford cult of homosexuality, and just as easily fell out of it.

Communism was a brief, intense fascination — he even announced his party membership in theDaily Worker — but the depth of the Party’s hatred of the bourgeoisie finally only baffled him.

Before the war, Spender was gay, Communist, and a poet of reportedly blazing promise.
Soon after the war, Spender was a husband, a liberal demi-Cold Warrior, and a thoroughly bland cultural statesman.

Both he and Auden posed an answer to a question that has, always and everywhere, overwhelmed poets, but had lately taken on new powers of vexation.
That question was:
What does a poet still have to offer a modern world?

Auden answered it with great, painstaking care, and correctly, or at least importantly.
Spender answered it facilely, and incorrectly, or unimportantly.
To understand their answers, one has to have some appreciation of the atmosphere of the 1930s.

As self-pleased as Auden and his circle were, they were also deeply serious poets-in-the-making, who to a man wanted to address themselves to — and change — the world.

The modern poet is “acutely conscious of the present isolation of the individual and the necessity for a social organism which may restore communion,” wrote Cecil Day-Lewis in 1933.

“The majority of artists today are forced to remain individualists in the sense of the individualist who expresses nothing except his feeling for his own individuality, his isolation,” Spender wrote in the same year.

How to restore public communion, when public speech is increasingly being given over to sloganeering — or, worse, aggression and persecution?
History, they felt, had handed them a choice, to be aesthetes or to be propagandists, and with their collective heart they hated the choice.

Consequently, two seemingly contrary complaints have been lodged against the Auden generation.
The first was that they naively overcommitted themselves to political causes.
“The literary history of the thirties,” Orwell wrote, in the essay “Inside the Whale”, “seems to justify the opinion that a writer does well to keep out of politics.”
The second was that, enamored of their own feline ambivalence, they lacked any conviction whatsoever.
The confusion is not baseless.

Even in his mature poetry, Auden can appear as both a dealer in hopelessly obscure private parables and the over-explicit schoolmaster.
But this confusion was also the source of Auden’s triumph, which was to rescue from a debased public life the possibility of genuine, eccentric human intimacy, and to rescue from intimacy, in turn, something like a quasi-public idiom.
“We need to love all since we are/ Each a unique particular/ That is no giant, god or dwarf,/ But one odd human isomorph.”

Thiswas the task of the poet, then.
To remind people they were fully human, which is to say, not reducible to convenient ends by dictators, or for that matter, by corporate managers or mass marketers.
And to remind them in a language that bore no trace of manipulation or officialdom.

How did Spender answer the question?
Poorly.

To begin with, unlike Auden, Spender seemed to possess no guile whatsoever.
“When the muse first came to Mr. Spender,” Randall Jarrell once wrote, “he looked so sincere that her heart failed her, and she said:
‘Ask anything, and I will give it to you.’
And he said: ‘Make me sincere.’”
Sincerity is a nice enough virtue in acquaintances, but it keeps a literary voice from carrying.

His poem about meeting the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty begins:
“I walked with Merleau-Ponty by the lake.”

Part of the problem, apparently, was that Spender was averse to loneliness.
And so he crammed his life with luncheons and international symposia.

Visiting D.H. Lawrence’s widow, Frieda, in New Mexico, Spender treated himself to six weeks’ isolation on the ranch where Lawrence’s ashes were laid.
Later in life, Sutherland tells us, Spender recalled this as the “only time in his life that he had truly experienced loneliness” (a condition he normally abhorred).
During these lonely weeks he produced a first draft of what would becomeWorld Within World.”
Is it any accident this remains his one eminently readable book?

The larger defect, though, was that Spender, as perfect counterpoint to his facile idea of the revealed self (the original title forWorld Within Worldwas “Autobiography and Truth”), maintained an equally facile belief in the poet’s duty to projects of large public renovation.

In the postwar years, Spender jetted from conference to conference, as if something as delicate and strange as poetry might be featured as part of the Marshall Plan.

(TheMarshall Plan(officially theEuropean Recovery Program,ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid toWestern Europe.
TheUS transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $114billionin 2020) in economic recovery programs to Western European economies after the end ofWorld War II.
It operated for four years beginning on 3 April 1948.
The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-torn regions, removetrade barriers, modernizeindustry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spread ofcommunism.
The Marshall Plan required a reduction of interstate barriers and the dissolution of many regulations while also encouraging an increase inproductivityas well as the adoption of modern business procedures.)

For his part, Spender was indefatigable, lecturing at one point on how the modern writer “is a kind of super egotist, a hero, and a martyr, carrying the whole burden of civilization in his work.”
For their part, modern writers were happy to take Spender’s handouts, then disparage to others his missionary naiveté.

“I met Spender a few weeks ago,” Dylan Thomas wrote to a friend.
“It was very sad.
He is on a lecture tour.
It is very sad.
He is bringing the European intellectuals together.
It is impossible.
He said, in a lecture I saw reported:
‘All poets speak the same language.’
It is a bloody lie:
Who talks Spender?”

Exactly.
Who talks Spender?
Though cruelly arrived at, this is the rub.
No one talks Spender, just as no one talks Esperanto.

Until we are firmly rooted in our strange selves, we cannot begin to speak to others meaningfully.
Conversely, if you start from that lovely ideal, of culture as a universal idiom, you quickly find yourself softened into a nonentity.

(This is why Auden, I suspect, was willing to court the disgust of the high-minded when he wrote, in his elegy for Yeats, that:
“Poetry makes nothing happen”.)

The aim of serious writing isn’t statesmanship, proximity to the rich, or the production of culture, whatever that is.
People lock themselves in rooms, and tolerate the sound of their own inane voices on the page, to rescue from “the most recent cacophonies … the delicate reduced and human scale of language in which individuals are able to communicate in a civilized and affectionate way with one another.”

The strength of Spender’s literary reputation, which was international in scope, made him something of a nomad as scholar and poet.
His homes were in St. John’s Wood, London, and Maussanne-les-Alpilles, France, where he spent his summers.


But he was often on the road, giving readings and lectures and serving as writer in residence at various American universities.
Spender’s domicile in Houston was a penthouse apartment atop a high-rise dormitory on the university campus.
The walls of the apartment are glass and afforded the poet a 270° view of America’s self-proclaimed 20th century city.
His fellow residents in the dorm were mostly athletes, a fact that especially delighted Spender at breakfast, for with them he was served steaks, sausage, ham, eggs, biscuits and grits.

At the time, Spender was busy with several projects:
Besides preparing for his imminent departure and saying goodbye to his many friends, he was completing the text forHenry Moore: Sculptures in Landscape, which was published in 1978.

He had also been invited by the University to deliver its commencement address, an event that took place on the afternoon of 13 May.
“I’ve never even been to a commencement before.
What does one say?” he asked.
“I suppose I will tell them to read books all their lives and to make a lot of money and give it to the university.”

In 1960, Spender was renowned as a figure from the past – a poet of the 1930s – and his work was deeply out of fashion.
Indeed, the 1930s were out of fashion.
He was seen as a tragicomic literary epoch in which poets had absurdly tried, or pretended, to engage with current politics – one in which pimply young toffs had linked arms with muscular proletarians in order to “repel the Fascist threat” when they weren’t at Sissington or Garsinghurst for the weekend, sucking up to Bloomsbury grandees.
Cyril Connolly called them:
“Psychological revolutionaries, people who adopt left-wing political formulas because they hate their fathers or were unhappy at their public schools or insulted at the Customs, or lectured about sex.”

Someone else had dubbed Spender “the Rupert Brooke of the Depression.”

Most of us had been told in school that of all the 30s poets Spender was the one whose reputation had been most inflated.
He lacked the complexity of Auden, the erudition of Louis MacNeice, the cunning of Cecil Day-Lewis.
He was the one who had believed the slogans. –
“Oh, young men.
Oh, young comrades.“-
And, after the War, the one who had recanted most shamefacedly.
He was the fairest of fair game.
I remember my school’s English teacher reading aloud from Spender’s “I think continually of those who were truly great” and substituting for “great” words like “posh” and “rich” and “queer“.
The same piece involving Spender’s “Pylons, those pillars / Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret.”
“Even you lot,” he would say, “might draw the line at girls who looked likethat.”
My teacher was in line with current critical opinion.
He usually was.

The late 50s was a period of skeptical naysaying.
It was modish to be cagey, unillusioned.
The only brave cause left was the cause of common sense, the only decent political standpoint the refusal to be taken in.

“Look what happened in the 30s!” was the common cry.
And it was not just political wind-baggery that was distrusted.
There was suspicion, too, of anything religious, arty, or intense.

“A neutral tone is nowadays preferred,” Donald Davie wrote in a mid-50s poem called “Remembering the Thirties“.

Thom Gunn – the young poet 1960s students most admired – was preaching a doctrine of butch self-reliance:
I think of all the toughs through historyAnd thank heaven they lived, continually.I praise the over dogs from AlexanderTo those who would not play with Stephen Spender
It was better, Gunn said:
“To be insensitive, to steel the will, / Than sit irresolute all day at stool / Inside the heart.”
Such tough talk was music to our ears.

After the war, Spender joined UNESCO as Counsellor to the Section of Letters, and this marked an new phase of his celebrity:
A 20-year-long stint as a kind of globe-trotting cultural emissary.

The postwar years were good years in which to be an intellectual.
The civilized world had to be rebuilt, but thoughtfully:
This time, we had to get it right.
Huge congresses were organized at which famous thinkers debated the big questions: “Freedom and the Artist“, “The Role of the Artist“, “Art and the Totalitarian Threat“.
Spender was in regular attendance at such gatherings in Europe, and was soon in demand for trips to India, Japan, even Australia.
These “junkets“, as he described them, were usually paid for by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, based in Washington, as part of America’s hearts-and-minds offensive against Communism.
In 1953, he was approached by the Congress to edit the literary side of a new monthly,Encounter, which would be “anti-Communist in policy but not McCarthyite.”
(He was told that the money for it came from the Fairfield Foundation, a supposedly independent body.)

Spender, it had been noted, contributed to the much discussed 1949 anthology “The God That Failed“, a collection of contrite essays by six of Europe’s most prominent ex-Communists.
His 1936 flirtation with the Party was no longer to be laughed at:
He had experienced that of which he spoke and could thus be seen as a Cold Warrior of high potential.
As Spender saw it, there was nothing at all warlike in the politics he had settled for – a politics that transcended immediate East-West disputes, that dealt not in power plays but in moral absolutes.
“I am for neither West nor East,” he wrote in 1951, “but for myself considered as a self–one of the millions who inhabit the Earth.”
Freedom of speech, the preeminence of the individual conscience – in short, the mainstream liberal verities – would from now on be the components of his faith.

I am for neither West nor East, but for myself considered as a self — one of the millions who inhabit the Earth.
If it seems absurd that an individual should set up as a judge between these vast powers, armed with their superhuman instruments of destruction I can reply that the very immensity of the means to destroy proves that judging and being judged does not lie in these forces.
For supposing that they achieved their utmost and destroyed our civilization, whoever survived would judge them by a few statements. a few poems, a fewtestimonies surviving from all the ruins, a few words of those men who saw outside and beyond the means which were used and all the arguments which were marshaled in the service of those means.
Thus I could not escape from myself into some social situation of which my existence was a mere product, and my witnessing a willfully distorting instrument.
I had to be myself, choose and not be chosen.
But to believe that my individual freedom could gain strength from my seeking to identify myself with the “progressive” forces was different from believing that my life must be an instrument of means decided on by political leaders.
I came to see that within the struggle for a more just world, there is a further struggle between the individual who cares for long-term values and those who are willing to use any and every means to gain immediate political ends — even good ends.
Within even a good social cause, there is a duty to fight for the pre-eminence of individual conscience.
The public is necessary, but the private must not be abolished by it.
And the individual must not be swallowed up by the concept of the social man.
World Within World, 1951
He had by this time become the Spender who disconcerted us in Oxford.
No longer the holy fool of 30s legend, he was transmuting into an itinerant representative of liberal unease.
During the late 50s and throughout the 60s, Spender was perpetually on the move, sometimes as troubled ambassador for Western values, for the Congress, for International PEN, or for the British Council, as agency for promoting British culture abroad, and sometimes as hard-up literary journeyman, lecturing on modern poetry at Berkeley or Wesleyan or the University of Florida – wherever the fees were sufficiently enticing – or dreaming up viable book projects, such as “Love-Hate Relations“, a study of Anglo-American literary relationships, and “The Year of the Young Rebels” and account of the 1968 upheavals in Paris, Prague, New York, and West Berlin.

The ultimate aim ofpoliticsis not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State.
Therefore an effective statement of these activities —e.g.science, art, religion— is in itself a declaration of ultimate aims around which the political means will crystallise.
Asociety with novalues outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with nopurposein its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need forlove.
Life and the Poet(1942)

Would I have liked Spender had we lived at the same time and had met one another?
Hard to say.
Do I think Spender is overrated as a poet?
I guess this depends on whom is rating him.

I am very honoured by your wanting to write alife of me.
But the fact isI regard my life as rather afailurein the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed.
I have not written thebooks I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written.
My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain topeople close to me — and I always feel that thefeelingsof the living are more important than the monuments of thedead.
Response to a would be biographer in 1980, “When Stephen met Sylvia“, The Guardian, 24 April 2004

“There is a certainjustice incriticism.
The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife.“
Lecture at Brooklyn College, as quoted inThe New York Times(20 November 1984)

In my humble opinion I find Spender overrated as a poet no more than Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987) was overrated as an artist.
There is much about Spender’s craving for the spotlight and surrounded himself with celebrated society that is reminiscent of Warhol.

What does come through is Spender’s talent for friendship – and how his seemingly artless curiosity opened him to people, places and experiences he would otherwise have missed.
There was a kind of bravery in that.
A shrewdness, too.
He’d have liked to write more poems.
But in the end it mattered more to him to have an interesting life.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Ian Hamilton, “Spender’s Lives“, The New Yorker, 28 February 1994 / Magsie Hamilton Little, The Thing About Islam: Exposing the Myths, Facts and Controversies / Stephan Metcalf, “Stephen Spender: Toady?“, Slate.com, 7 February 2005 / Blake Morrison, “A talent for friendship“, The Guardian, 23 January 2005 / Richard Skinner, Writing a Novel / Stephen Spender: The Destructive Element / The God that Failed / Life and the Poet / Poems of Dedication / Poems / Ruins and Visions / Selected Poems / The Still Centre / The Temple / World Within World / John Sutherland, Stephen Spender: The Authorised Biography
Canada Slim and the House of Cain: GroundFloor
Posted on December 11, 2021 by canadaslim
Eskişehir, Turkey, Saturday 11 December 2021
In theBiblical book of Genesis,Cainand Abelare the first two sons ofAdam and Eve, the world’s first two humans.
Cain, the firstborn, was afarmer, and his brotherAbel was ashepherd.
The brothers madesacrifices toGod, but God favored Abel’s sacrifice instead of Cain’s.
Cain then murdered Abel out of jealousy, whereupon God punished Cain by condemning him to a life of wandering.
Cain then dwelt in theland of Nod(נוֹד, ‘wandering‘), where he built a city and fathered the line of descendants beginning withEnoch.

The story ofCain’s murder of Abel and its consequences is told inthe Christians’ Bible in Genesis 4: 1-18:
“And Adam knew Eve his woman and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said:
“I have got me a man with the Lord.“
And she bore as well his brother Abel.
Abel became a herder of sheep while Cain was a tiller of the soil.
And it happened in the course of time that Cain brought from the fruit of the soil an offering to the Lord.
And Abel too had brought from the choice firstlings of his flock.
The Lord regarded Abel and his offering, but did not regard Cain and his offering.
And Cain was very incensed, and his face fell.
And the Lord said to Cain,
“Why are you incensed and why is your face fallen?
For whether you offer well or whether you do not, at the tent flap sin crouches, and for you is its longing, but you will rule over it.“
/Cain-GettyImages-166466276-5899f4913df78caebc1a7e82.jpg)
And Cain said to Abel his brother:
“Let us go out to the field.”
And when they were in the field Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him.

And the Lord said to Cain:
“Where is Abel your brother?”
And Cain said:
“I do not know:
Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And the Lord said:
“What have you done?
Listen!
Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil.
And so, cursed shall you be by the soil that gaped with its mouth to take your brother’s blood from your hand.
If you till the soil, it will no longer give you strength.
A restless wanderer shall you be on the Earth.”
And Cain said to the Lord:
“My punishment is too great to bear.
Now that You have driven me this day from the soil, I must hide from Your presence.
I shall be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me.”
And the Lord said to him:
“Therefore whoever kills Cain shall suffer sevenfold vengeance.”
And the Lord set a mark upon Cain so that whoever found him would not slay him.
And Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and dwelled in the land of Nod east of Eden.
And Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch.
Then he became the builder of a city and he called the name of the city like his son’s name, Enoch.”

My problems compared to many others on the planet are mild.
I have a job that I like.
I have my health both mental and physical.
I have much more in my life to be thankful for than many other people do.
I sometimes forget, like George Carlin so cleverly quipped, that the blessings in my life are not rights.
They are privileges.
A right is not a right if what is given can be taken away.

And yet….
We have convinced ourselves that we as members of humanity have inherent rights, because we deem ourselves superior to the rest of existence.
Logically we acknowledge the sad reality of our lives.
Emotionally we refuse to admit this.
Instead we either delude ourselves and “wrestle against powers and princes and principalities” that eventually wear us down or we console ourselves to loving our servitude in the illusions cast by religion and the state that what our society accepts as correct must indeed be correct.

Psychologically and politically I lean towards FDR’s Four Freedoms:
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour — anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium.
It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”

It is this thirst for these Four Freedoms that drives us.
It is our hunger for these Four Freedoms that defines us.

An understated Museum in the (some say, easily forgettable) city of Winnipeg brought home to me the powerful message that even the unattainable fantasy of these Four Freedoms is worth living for, and, in some cases, worth dying for.

I live in a land where freedom of expression is discouraged.
I live in a land where the freedom of every person to worship (or not to worship) God is discouraged.
I live in a land where everyone could share in a common wealth, but too few do.
I live in a land where we are told not to trust those who are not us.
The land is not merely Turkey, but the planet as a whole.

We console ourselves in the faith of our fathers and devote ourselves to the loyalty to our land.
We don’t have the knowledge, we don’t have the wisdom, we don’t have the resources, to resist the definition of ourselves by our society, the identification of one’s self by others.

Critical thinking is discouraged.
Passive acceptance is easier.
Don’t ask why.

When I think about what I perceive are my rights I am reminded of my visit in January 2020 to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Monday 13 January 2020
The Museum is no mere building.
Its stories, architecture, artifacts and design are an experience.
This stunning building with its diverse array of exhibitions and galleries focuses on the stories that highlight our collective experience, nationally and internationally, with human rights.
It is my hope that these blogposts will help you engage with these stories and help you better understand the important journey we are all on towards a world where all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Regardless of how illusionary this dignity and these rights might be.

“I have occasionally heard potential visitors express reluctance to experience the Museum, believing that they must first “prepare themselves” for the content.
While it is true that the Museum’s stories include tragic examples of inhumanity, both past and present, what resonates most is the spirit of survivors and the courage of those who took a stand for their own rights and the rights of others.
In this regard, I believe that the overall Museum experience inspires us to better appreciate the rights we enjoy.
It cultivates gratitude for the commitment and sacrifices of others.
It strengthens our resolve to treat others with respect.
It encourages us to passionately pursue our obligations to pass on to future generations vibrant communities that resonate with our individual and collective responsibilities for human rights.”
(John F. Young, former Museum President and CEO)
A tour of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights begins in the Bonnie and John Buhler Hall – a large room on the ground level, just beyond the main entrance.
On a typical day, you will find an architectural model of the Museum in the middle of this Hall.

It is at this gathering place where tours start and end the journey of the Museum, and here the visitor can find an ATM, a boutique, the Burns Family Patio (understandably closed in winter), a cloakroom, drinking fountains, the ERA Bistro, the Manitoba Teachers’ Society Classrooms, ticketing and information.

Consider the model of the Museum in context.
With around 700,000 inhabitants, Winnipeg accounts for more than half of Manitoba’s population and lies at Canada’s centre, sandwiched between the American border to the south and the barren Canadian Shield to the north and east.
The city has been the gateway to the Prairies since 1873 and a major transcontinental hub when the railroad arrived 12 years later.
From the very beginning Winnipeg was described as the city where “the West began” and it still has something of that gateway feel – at least in the parts of body and soul not frostbitten by Winnipeg winters.

The eye-catching Canadian Museum for Human Rights gives Winnipeg a heavyweight attraction as it is truly an example of whizz-bang modern architecture on the banks of the Red River.
Assessing this nebulous, yet vital, concept of human rights was always going to broach uncomfortable and controversial subjects, but in fairness to the Museum’s modern multimedia and presentation techniques it does make an intelligent attempt at it.
This giant building – give yourself hours to explore it – was created by American architect Antoine Predock who took inspiration from Canada’s landscape.
The lobby floor resembles cracked earth, while the building itself bursts from its Manitoba limestone shell in a mass of swirling glass that celebrates light, soaring into the heavens as a single pinnacle.

The five-year construction project started in 2009.
Predock, of New Mexico, had been selected five years earlier through a juried international architectural competition.
Predock’s inspiration for the CMHR came from the natural scenery and open spaces in Canada, including trees, ice, northern lights,First Nationspeoples in Canada, and the rootedness of human rights action.
He describes the CMHR in the following way:
“The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is rooted in humanity, making visible in the architecture the fundamental commonality of humankind-a symbolic apparition of ice, clouds and stone set in a field of sweet grass.
Carved into the earth and dissolving into the sky on the Winnipeg horizon, the abstract ephemeral wings of a white dove embrace a mythic stone mountain of 450 million year old Tyndall limestone in the creation of a unifying and timeless landmark for all nations and cultures of the world.“

The design has four major components:
First, four stone “roots” connect the building to the land and with the past, drawing strength from both.
Second, a “mountain” of limestone houses the Museum’s core galleries, jagged and rough, representing an arduous climb.
Third, a glass “cloud” comprised of 1,669 uniquely shaped panes embrace the Museum much like the folded wings of a dove, a symbol of peace, housing office space, the Stuart Clark Garden of Contemplation and elevators to the Israel Asper Tower of Hope.
Fourth, the glowing beacon that projects from the top of the Museum suggests an unfinished link to the perfection of Heaven, a tower, a 23-storey glass spire that rises 100 metres into the sky, providing panoramic views of Winnipeg and the Prairies beyond.

The unfinished appearance of the CMHR is a reminder of the work that lies ahead as humanity strives to respect the dignity and rights of all.
Within this edifice Predock created a journey that winds its way up, up, up 800 metres of magnificently glowing alabaster ramps, climbing more than 100 metres in elevation through 11 galleries and five theatres.
The ramps clad in pale Spanish alabaster are lit from within, creating a mystical pathway of light through the dark shadows of black concrete walls.

More than 3,500 m² and 15.000 tiles of alabaster were used, making it the biggest project ever done with alabaster.
Architecture interacts with exhibition creating experience.
The galleries are viewed from a variety of angles creating perspective.
Experience and perspective result in engagement and inspiration, underscoring the importance of human rights and the significance of humanity’s existence.
The Museum is passion, action and interaction, augmenting reality in all its awfulness and awesomeness.

To those who study history there is many an irony to be noted regarding the Museum’s location.
Named after the Cree word for murky water (win-nipuy), Winnipeg owes much of its history to the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, which meet close to its centre at The Forks.

Fort Rouge was founded nearby in 1738 in an attempt to extend French influence west and prospered from good connections north to Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay, and west across the plains along the Assiniboine.
After the defeat of Nouveau France in 1763, local trading was absorbed and dominated by the Montréal-based North West Company (NWC), until Thomas Douglas, the Earl of Selkirk, bought a controlling interest in the rival Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1809.

The story of the battle for control of the region was told first by Pierre Falcon, a Métis balladeer whose songs record the struggle, as he witnessed it, from the Red River Settlement in 1812 to the Red River Rebellion (1869 – 1870).
Falcon returned to Red River, after his education in Québec, in 1806 to work for the NWC’s trading post, Fort Gibraltar.

The NWC was opposed to permanent settlement in the West because of the impact farming colonists would have on the fur trade.

NWC officials were troubled by the appearance in 1812 of the first colonists for Lord Selkirk’s Red River Settlement – planned on a 116,000-acre site, at the Rivers’ junction, granted to Selkirk by the HBC in 1811.

Selkirk resettled many of his own impoverished Scottish crofters in farmland around the Forks, which he named the Red River Settlement, or Assiniboia.

Falcon was present at the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816, when his brother-in-law Cuthbert Grant, a NWC clerk, led an attack on a group of Red River settlers, in which 20 of them and their Governor, Robert Semple, were killed.

Armed conflict ended in 1817.

R.M. Ballantyne – who worked for the HBC from 1841 to 1847 – wrote of the events between 1814 and 1816, when the Red River Settlement became a focus of conflict between the NWC and the HBC.

After Selkirk died in 1820, the growth of the Red River community was administered by the HBC from Fort Garry, completed in 1818.
After 1821, when the NWC merged with its trading rival, Falcon worked for four years with the HBC.

For 30 years, the colony sustained both farmers and Métis (mixed Indigenous-French) hunters, and trade was established along the Red River to Minnesota.
Frederick Niven’s Mine Inheritance follows the story of the Settlement’s growth from 1811 to 1827.


But with the decline of the buffalo herds in the 1860s, the Métis faced extreme hardship while the HBC fought for effective territorial control.
At this time, politicians in eastern Canada agreed to Confederation in 1867, opening the way for the transfer of the Red River from British to Canadian control.

The Métis majority – roughly 6,000 compared to 1,000 – were fearful of the consequences of Canadian expansion and their resistance took shape around Louis Riel, under whose impetuous leadership they captured the HBC’s Upper Fort Garry and created a provisional government.

A delegation went to Ottawa to negotiate terms of admission into the Dominion, but their efforts were handicapped when the Métis executed an English settler from Ontario, Thomas Scott.


The Red River Rebellion resulted from the plan by the Dominion government to purchase the HBC’s western land holdings and from fear among the region’s Métis people that this would destroy their way of life.

The subsequent furore pushed Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald into dispatching a military force to restore “law and order” and precipitated the 1870 Manitoba Act which brought the Red River into the Dominion, renaming the settlement Winnipeg.

How all of this connects to the Museum is its quick acknowledgement that the land upon which the building stands is Treaty One territory in the heartland of the Métis people.
This land at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, commonly called The Forks, has served as a gathering place for Indigenous Peoples for countless generations.

Prior to the Museum’s construction, the largest block archaeological excavation ever conducted in Manitoba recovered more than 400,000 artifacts, dating back a thousand years.
Fragments of ceremonial pipes and ceramic potters reveal much about the importance of this location as a place where people lived, built alliances and gathered for trade and celebration.

One of the more remarkable findings was a moccasin print that had been preserved in the earth for about 750 years.