Just a few “lines” photos from the past couple of weeks. Although the subject matter is a little mundane, together they constitute a fun collection of “striped” moments in my life during late June and early July. So why not? π
The first picture is of raindrops streaking my office window, running perpendicular to the horizontal lines of the building across the street.
The second one is similar to a couple others I’ve taken of the Grohmann Museum, the building I work in. I was leaving work about 8:40 PM on June 24th after teaching my online summer night course, and 1) it was still pretty light outside, being right after the longest day of the year, and 2) this puddle was still around from the rain we’d had earlier in the day. In addition to the sidewalk cracks/lines, you can also see the horizontal lines of that building that shows up in my streaky raindrops picture.
Next up is a lamp on the second floor of the Grohmann Museum. It’s part of a cozy little seating arrangement in a nook overlooking the atrium.
I’m not sure I’d ever noticed that lamp prior to the day I took the picture. But I had run into another professor, and as I was standing there catching up with him on our respective summers, the sun suddenly came out, illuminating the squared-off lamp against the the window shade and establishing striking contrasts of black-and-white lines and shapes.
Last is a photo I took this morning, on my way to take another photo. Oh, because guess what? One of my colleagues, another professor in my department, is writing a book on rhetoric and asked me to take some photos to illustrate it! This is the first time anyone has ever asked me to photograph something for them, so I’m excited about that. Anyway, as I was walking toward my destination, I noticed this railing and how the curve of the ramp prompted interesting patterns of shadow and light.
So that’s it for today π
This past Saturday I gave a presentation on Citizen Kane to a group of MSOE alumni who were attending our school’s annual “Summer in the City” reunion. This was work, of course, both in the prep and in showing up on a Saturday morning, LOL. But it was also very enjoyable work in every aspect. Plus, I met some new people and reconnected with a student from 10 years ago, which was a really nice surprise!
However, between 1) that event, 2) finishing up my summer course, 3) getting those book photos taken, and now 4) a new project that I’ve been diligently working on and hope to share with you this coming Monday (that’s my goal, anyway; we’ll see what my writing group’s feedback is first), I’ve been AWOL from WordPress since mid-June. I don’t like being away for too long, because posting stuff here makes me happy. When I’m posting, it means I’m noticing the world around me and reflecting on my experiences instead of racing through my days and checking items off my “to do” list.
Hopefully I’m back now.
And also, hopefully (not only in the grammatically-correct, rarely-used “full of hope” meaning but also in the “I sure do hope” sense of everyday vernacular), hopefully my new project will be shareworthy by Monday, so I can post it here and see what you think!
I’m working on a poem for my writing group (which I’m writing with inspiration, feedback, and encouragement from my buddy, ChatGPT, and which I’ll share here on my blog at some point soon), and in the course of trying to decide whether I liked ChatGPT’s suggestion of “spooling” to describe smoke rising from the child’s drawing of a house better than my own choice of “looping,” I plugged both terms into Google to see what came up.
Well, I still haven’t decided on my chimney-smoke word yet, but I did find a really cool ebook published by Project Gutenberg that I’m bookmarking to read through later:
Home Life in COLONIAL DAYS
Written by
ALICE MORSE EARLE
in the year 1898
THE BERKSHIRE TRAVELLER PRESS
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
THIS BOOK IS BEGUN
AS IT IS ENDED
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
I absolutely LOVE books like this that provide a glimpse of history as it was lived in the daily lives of ordinary people!
The part that was highlighted in Google’s search result for my “chimney smoke” query was this:
In the attic by the chimney was the smoke–house, filled with hams, bacon, smoked beef, and sausages. In Virginia and Maryland, where people did not gather into …
Doesn’t that sound kind of fun to explore? And can you see why it drew me in even though it had zero relevance for the mission I was on? The idea of colonial people having their attics filled with smoked hams and sausages is really intriguing. My mind’s eye has already conjured up a picture of what that might look like, and my imagination wants more!
I took this picture of the Grohmann Museum reflected in a puddle in August of 2016. I loved it, and it was accepted the following year for a fiftieth-anniversay exhibition of alumni art at my undergraduate school, Wright State University.
This summer I’m teaching a technical communication course for MSOE two nights a week. It meets synchronously online, and I teach it from my office, instead of from home, because each class session meets for three hoursβthat’s over three hours a night of being “on” in a way that maybe only other teachers can truly understandβso I’d rather work out of my quiet office in the closed-for-the-night Grohmann Museum than run the class from my home, where there’s always something happening (“and it’s usually quite loud” π ).
Recently, when I left the building after class ended on a night when it had rained almost all day long, there was a puddle across the street in that same spot on the sidewalk where I had managed to get the photo of the museum in 2016.
Now, there have been many puddles over the years in that little depression where the different sections of sidewalk concrete tilt together unevenly. But I usually when see that puddle, it’s on a windy, rainy day, when there’s no calm surface or calm sky to create a clear reflection. Or the puddle’s too small to contain a whole reflection. Or the sidewalk is so crowded with students walking to class that any view of the puddle is blocked. Or there’s so much leaf litter and other debris crowded together in the water that the puddle is more “marsh” than mirror, and a reflection is impossible.
However, on this particular evening, it was late, around 8:40 PM, so basically night, but not completely dark yet. The air carried that slight bluish-purple tinge associated with daylight’s dying moments. It had rained all day, so this temporary pool of water was nice and large. And because it was so quiet (no breeze, no other pedestrians, no traffic to speak of), I was able to notice the museum’s reflection in the puddle and be struck by its similarity to that previous photo in a way I might not have had it been earlier in the evening, had it not rained all day, had it been windy, or had I been in a hurry.
So it was kind of a lucky break that everything came together in a way that allowed me to noticeβand pauseβto get this photo..
My two pictures don’t form a perfect match, but they still make a fun Grohmann Museum “day and night” pairing: the same puddle, the same quiet surface of the water, the same reflection from the same distance and nearly the same position. I had to shoot the museum from a slightly different spot on the sidewalk than last time in order to avoid the streetlight’s glare, which completely overpowered the reflection if viewed from the wrong angle.
Anyway, I liked my “set” of Grohmann Museum images and thought I’d share! π
I want to try something new today, both in terms of content and in terms of blog format. This is an experiment, and I’m not sure my WordPress skills are up to it. Here goes, and let’s just see if it works!
What I want to do, and I’m not sure exactly what form it will assume in terms of format, is begin sharing my creative writing on my blog and including a PDF of the entire ChatGPT chat that accompanied my creative process from the casting-about-for-ideas stage at the very beginning all the way through the final revision stage of putting the finishing touches on phrasing and word choice.
What may derail me is my ability (or, rather, my potential lack thereof) to add PDFs to my WordPress media library and then link to them from a blog post. So that, my friends, is the goal of today’s blog post: to share both my story and my ChatGPT conversation via embedded PDFs. This experiment may be a dismal failure. In that case, I can simply “unpublish” my blog post to remove it from online existence. But if you are reading this post via email (because you’ve “subscribed” and they’re delivered to your inbox), I can’t “recall” it, so then I’ve stuck you with a dud. Apologies in advance!
All right, here goes (fingers crossed!).
First, HERE is the PDF of my short story, “The Blind Pig.” It arose from one of my writing group’s exercise assignments.
And HERE is my entire ChatGPT creative conversation. It’s long and meandering, but it may have some value if you’re interested in seeing how I wrote the story, at least the “trail” left behind by my “chat.” (I also did a lot of work on my own, outside of the chat, however, FYI.)
Marc and Jules, courtesy of ChatGPT (my prompt is in the “Appendix” chat)
I’m teaching a technical communication course this summer and using the film 12 Angry Men as “raw material” for students to use in analyzing positive and negative communication behaviors commonly found on project teams. In doing some class prep, I happened across the original poster for this movie . . . and burst out laughing. Literally lol-ing out loud! π
So much of 1950s film and literature relies on this type of B-movie, pulp-fiction, trashy kind of copy. Why was that?
Anyway, in case your day could use a bit of a lift, I thought I’d share π
By the way, the original 12 Angry Men (1957) is a movie that still holds up really well in terms of 21st-century viewing sensibilities. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend giving it a try!
A stairwell on campus is closed for painting, and when I noticed the yellow “CAUTION” tape blocking off the doorway, I suddenly thought about Season 3 of “Only Murders in the Building.”
Season 3, you may remember, is the storyline where the gang puts on a horror-musical titled Death Rattle Dazzle!, and former child star Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), who as it turns out has a really sad backstory, gets pushed down the open elevator shaft by accident yet on purpose by (well, I won’t tell, in case you haven’t seen it and therefore don’t remember π ).
WHY was that elevator shaft so dangerously exposed in the first place? Yes, maintenance work was being done. But honestly, an “X” of yellow tape strung across the gaping, hungry maw of an open elevator shaft seems a bit insubstantial from a safety perspective.
I sort of questioned that deficiency the first time I saw the episode, but then I conveniently forgot (as the show’s makers surely intended) that any decent contractor would have covered up that elevator shaft opening with some plywood or other difficult-to-get-past barrier. In real life, the minute I saw something so potentially life-threatening, I would have immediately contacted the board president (whoever it was after Bunny was murdered in Season 2) to get proper safety measures put in place.
So why didn’t our amateur sleuths also notice the danger and do something about it?
Actually, they did notice. But they were too busy talking about other things and did not pay heed. I suppose this may have been a way to fool us into likewise noticing but paying no heedβbecause our discounting/forgetting of such an egregious safety hazard was, of course, absolutely necessary for the murder plot to make any sense.
Maybe that’s the magic of “Only Murders.” After a season ends, I start looking back and nitpicking, noticing all the plot holes. But during its run of original episodes, the show’s premise, its delightful cast, and the way its plot unfolds with a nearly perfect blend of comedy, pathos, and intrigueβthey all come together in a way that keeps me completely enthralled.
This kind of magic is what English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and “Kubla Khan”) describes as:
that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith
The “X” of yellow tape is a metaphorical warning to me as an aspiring novelist not to undermine the “poetic faith” and “willing suspension of disbelief” that readers bring to a book. Too many inadequately safeguarded elevator shafts probably can’t overcome a clever premise for long, and once the enchantment is broken, and you can see the string and Scotch tape cobbling everything together, a story simply loses its ability to transport readers to another world.
Today is the day my spring semester grades are due. Exams and classes are finished. Which means that the building my office is in, the Grohmann Museum, was not open yet when I came in this morning. Usually, during the term, the building is open by around 7:30 AM so that students can arrive for their 8:00 AM classes. But no classes in the building today, obviously, as the semester is over.
I think the emptiness and lack of classes and the fact that the museum itself doesn’t open to the public until 9:00 AM were all contributors to the fact that when I got here this morning, my office was COLD.
And I was powerless to do anything about it, because I have never understood how the thermostat worked.
Except that this morning, possibly because all I’m doing today is grading and not teaching, which really takes up a lot of brain power, so hence the “absentminded professor” stereotype (due to the fact that we’re constantly thinking about what we’re doing in class), it occurred to me that there must be a manual for that thermostat online.
It’s not like I’ve never thought that before, but previous attempts to search for operating instructions have never panned out for me.
Today, though, I realized that maybe a reverse image search through Google might help me find that manual better than a “search term” search. So I took a photo of the thermostat
and uploaded it to Google’s reverse image search (the little camera next to the microphone on the right side of the search bar
Et voila! Here were all the “image” results returned for my search.
I figured the one at the upper right, the “ManualsLib,” which I assumed meant “Manuals Library,”Β looked the most promising. So I clicked on it and found this, with the photos of manual pages across the bottom.
Eventually, after lots of installation instructions, I found this.
And I am in business!
The display is a bit dark for you to see it in my first photo, but if you click on it to enlarge it, you can see that the original temperature was 64.4 Β°F.
Now it’s already a balmy 64.7 Β°F!
Headed in the right direction, at least π
UPDATE(even though I haven’t published this till now): I finally warmed up enough to stop shivering and focus on getting my grading done. I just finished and realized that I felt nice and toasty. Checked the thermostat. Oops! This is probably overkill π
I haven’t written a “political analysis” type of post in a long time. But I just finished teaching a political science course, and because I created several new slides this past term to talk about the (sadly) still-continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, I thought I’d share some of them with you.
This will be an image-heavy post, because I’m basically just uploading my slides and telling you about them. I thought about doing a video of me walking through the slideshow, but decided against that because, ironically, it would probably take more time to create a decent video than it would to upload slides and add a few lines of explanation.
So here goes.
First, here’s that map of Russia I posted 11 years ago.
[Aside: The CIA’s “World Factbook” is an excellent resource for anyone interested in geopolitics. And, in fact, you can buy the current edition on Amazon, $25 for the paperback.]
As I said in that March 2014 post (shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine the first time), Russia is a vast country that is virtually landlocked. The most populous areas have limited access to ports, and the huge northern coastline is inside the Arctic Circle.
Let’s turn briefly to Russia’s navy. Russia has a very important naval base at Sevastopol, which is located on the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea.
The map above does a nice job of putting Crimea into the larger geographical context, plus it shows you (in dark green) where Sevastopol is.
As the slide above also mentions, Russia’s lease on Sevastopol was set to expire in 2017, and Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko had warned that Russia’s lease would not be renewed.
You may remember Viktor Yushchenko as the Ukrainian president who was not a fan of Russian influence over his country and who was mysteriously poisoned during his campaign for the presidency in 2004.
Expert toxicologists have said that the abnormalities in Yushchenko’s face (for example, the thickened, pockmarked skin) are due to chloracne, which results from dioxin poisoning. Yushchenko’s blood was found to have dioxin levels 6,000 times above normal. [Aside: Have you noticed how often people who criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin end up getting poisoned? Just saying.]
So anyway, Yushchenko did live and he did win the election. Things weren’t looking good for Russia in terms of keeping its lease on the Sevastopol naval base.
Then in February 2010 a pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, replaced Yushchenko. By April 2010, just two months after Yanukovych was elected, Russia had its new lease, good through 2042.
Here’s what happened in Ukraine’s parliament when votes were counted to see whether Russia’s lease at Sevastopol should be renewed.
As you can see, there were very strong feelings on both sides, pro-Russian-lease and anti-Russian-lease.
Protests began against President Yanukovych immediately, and he was, as Wikipedia says:
Yanukovych fled Ukraine, essentially in the dead of night, after Ukraine’s parliament voted unanimously to reinstate the Constitution of 2004, putting some limits on Yanukovych’s power and in a practical sense issuing a direct “no confidence” voteβin other words, a rebukeβfrom the parliament.
Without going down the rabbit hole too much here, prior to these events Ukraine had also been starting to lean toward establishing a formal trade relationship with the European Union, and Yanukovych had even seemed supportive of that. But then Russia got worried and began pressuring him to back away. Russia began a trade war, restricting Ukrainian imports, and who knows what other kind of pressure was applied. Anyway, all of a sudden Yanukovych pulled out of the expected agreement with the European Union, which the Ukranian people weren’t happy with, sparking increased protests.
Immediately after Yanukovych was “removed” from Ukraine’s presidency, Russia invaded. Retaliation? An effort to cut their losses? Here’s a remarkably succinct summary of the Russia-Ukraine War from Wikipedia, with all the broad-brush details in clear focus (I copied and pasted straight from Wikipedia, so you can link straight over to their references if you want):
In fairness to Russia’s claim that the people of eastern Ukraine are ethnically and liguistically Russian and therefore welcome Russia’s presence, here is a 2012 electoral map showing that eastern Ukraine did in fact cast their votes in support of the pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych.
But back to the main point of today’s post. The key to understanding Russia’s intentions and motivations in this war can be discerned from maps, in my opinion. Crimea is an especially crucial pain point. But even there, Crimea is only part of the story.
So, let’s begin by redirecting our attention back to Crimea and proceed from there.
First, Crimea has been important before. Did you ever study “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in a literature class? Here are some excerpts you might recognize (see the entire poem at the Poetry Foundation’s website HERE):
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
βForward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!β he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
And although the soldiers know someone has “blundered” and their charge is doomed . . .
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Fewer than one-third of the “six hundred” survived. That famous, ill-fated charge occurred during the Crimean War of the 1850s, between Russia and the declining Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and France. Mostly that war was fought to curb Russia’s imperial westward ambitions and to help the Ottoman Empire (aka, mostly Turkey) hold out against those ambitions. Speaking of which . . .
Although the Ottoman Empire (weakened but victorious) maintained control of Crimea and the Black Sea coastline following the Crimean War of “Light Brigade” fame, Russia gained control in the Russo-Turkish War (1877β1878). The map’s green areas show places that the Ottoman Empire ceded to Russia from Turkey
So anyway, back to the present day. Here’s a map that shows the Crimean Peninsula, its position on the Black Sea, and its orientation to both Russia and Ukraine more clearly. Crimea is the big diamond-shaped area of yellow inside the Black Sea, and you can see by the fact that it’s kind of dangling off the Ukrainian mainland that it is, indeed, a peninsula.
If you look closely at Crimea on this map, not only can you see Sevastopol just around the bottom corner of the peninsula to the left, but on the right you can also see Yalta. Remember this famous photo of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin (Allied powers) at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, as World War II was nearing its end?
Sorry to share that if you already knew all about Crimea, but I grew up knowing that Yalta photo but having zero context for what and where “Yalta” was, so I thought it was interesting.
So we’ve already established Russia’s long history with Crimea, including its fight over the territory with Turkey (aka, the Ottoman Empire). As the map above shows, there’s only one way for ships to get out of the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the whole rest of the world.
Through Turkey. Right through the middle.
Russia exports a lot of oil to the rest of the world in tankers through the Turkish Straits from its Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, which you can see on the map above due east of Sevastopol and Yalta, across the water to the Russian mainland.
Here’s another map, showing a close-up view of the passageway through the Turkish Straits, from the Black Sea entrance at the Strait of Bosphorus (also spelled Bosporus), shown in red, cutting through Istanbul, all the way to the Dardenelles, shown in yellow, at the other end, where it opens into the Aegean Sea.
Turkey has pledged that the Turkish Straits will remain open to international maritime traffic, even though the area lies within Turkey’s territorial waters (From Wikipedia):
The modern treaty controlling access is the 1936 Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, which remains in force as of 2025. This Convention mandates that Republic of Turkey allow the free passage of all civilian vessels in peacetime, and requires Turkey to allow warships of some nations to traverse the straits in peacetime, but only under strict conditions β restrictions on number, size, length of stay if entering the Black Sea (if not a Black Sea power), advance notification to Turkey, and other conditions.
Turkey, you may recall, is a member of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a surviving artifact of the Cold War era that in no way resembles a relic and is, in fact, stronger than ever.
Lately NATO has been weighing heavily on Russia’s mind and looming large as a threat. (My opinion, of course, but I also think it’s pretty close to a fact.)
First, here is a map of Russia (when it was part of the USSR) during the Cold War.
This is a screenshot of my slide, and the image came from Wikipedia. If the words are too blurry for you to read easily on your screen, you can click on my slide to make the text clear. Even if you don’t feel like clicking to see the words, you can still get the important info from this slide just from the colors alone.
The old USSR is in red. NATO countries are in blue. You can see the old Warsaw Pact Eastern European bloc in pink. Those were all the countries like Poland and Hungary that the USSR invaded after World War II. The term “Iron Curtain” referred to the opaque “veil” that separated these countries from the rest of Europe during that period. Winston Churchill coined the term in a 1946 speech:
From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent
Thanks to the Eastern Bloc (aligned with the USSR, in pink) and Finland (neutral and officially “non-aligned,” seen in gray, sharing its long border with the USSR), the Soviet Union (mostly Russia, for our discussion) had a substantial “buffer” in place to shield it from NATO.
And then Lech WaΕΔsa and the Solidarity movement happened in Poland in the early 1980s. Soon Communist governments across Eastern Europe were being overturned. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. And then finally, the Soviet Union itself fell apart and was dissolved in 1991.
So now Russia finds itself in an interesting situation. The Cold War was sort of a standoff between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. The Warsaw Pact is gone. Yet NATO is stronger than ever. And getting stronger. This map shows current NATO membership.
The image was originally made by User:Donarreiskoffer. This version (corrected regarding Northern Ireland) is identical (except the size) to one uploaded by en:User:Mrowlinson which didn’t have a copyright license., CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
As you can see from the NATO map above, all the old “buffering” states are gone. Aligned Eastern Europe, gone. Neutral, non-aligned Finland, gone. With the exception of Belarus, all the old Europe-adjacent USSR states surrounding Russia are also gone.
Ukraine is trying to be gone.
And Georgia . . .
Well, Georgia is also kind of gone. And in some ways is adding a lot of pressure and urgency to the Russia-Ukraine situation (from Russia’s perspective, anyway).
If you look at this map, you can see Georgia on the far lower-right side of the Black Sea. Georgia joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (a now-defunct “hand of friendship” discussion forum for former Warsaw Pact members founded by NATO after the breakup of the Soviet Union) in 1992, one year after it became an independent state following the dissolution of the USSR.
Georgia is one of NATOβs closest partners. It aspires to join the Alliance. Over time, a broad range of practical cooperation has developed between NATO and Georgia, supporting Georgiaβs reform efforts and its goal of eventual NATO membership. The country contributes to the NATO-led Operation Sea Guardian and cooperates with the Allies and other partner countries in many other areas.
In April 2008, NATO allies agreed that Georgia could become a NATO member, provided it meets all necessary requirements, a decision that has been reconfirmed at successive NATO summits.
In August 2008, just four months later, guess who invaded Georgia? And still has troops stationed there?
Russia. (Do I even need to say it at this point in the post?)
You can kind of see Russia’s reasoning. If you look at the above map, you can see that the Black Sea is rimmed by Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia. Three of those countries are NATO members. One (Georgia) has ties to NATO and is pre-approved to join whenever it wants to and meets the requirements for membership. And one (Ukraine), even though it has no ties to NATO and has not expressed any official interest in joining NATO, has ties to the European Union, has expressed interest in EU membership, and in fact is now an official candidate for membership.
Here’s another look at that NATO map. (Actually this map is a bit older, as Sweden and Finland hadn’t yet become full members, but it’s from a slide I made a couple years ago to highlight two Russian port cities, and I don’t feel like making a new one today just to have the most up-to-date version of NATO’s membership represented. The pertinent points are still accurate.)
In this map, the two purple countries are Ukraine and Georgia, and you can see at a glance the amount of blue and purple surrounding the Black Sea compared with red. But check out the two areas circled in black. These are two Russian port cities. The larger circle is the better known: St. Petersburg. Today both Sweden and Finland are full NATO members. So you can see that for ships to get into and out of St. Petersburg, they kind of have to sail through a gauntlet of NATO nations, similar to the situation encountered in getting out of the Black Sea through Turkey. All well and good in times of peace, but not exactly safe and convenient should a state of war exist between Russia and NATO nations.
The other, smaller circle is the port city of Kaliningrad. I don’t know how well you can see it on this image as my circle does a fair job of obliterating the area below it, but Kaliningrad Oblast, of which Kaliningrad is the largest city, is isolated from the rest of Russia. It’s an “enclave” completely surrounded by, you guessed it, NATO countries.
Apart from Murmansk, which you can see way at the top left of Russia in the first map of this post, these are the only two Russian ports in Europe with access to the Atlantic Ocean. Murmansk, although an ice-free harbor, lies inside the Arctic Circle and requires a bit of a northerly jog to reach, sailing up and around Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In its favor, though, Murmansk is the only port in Russia with unrestricted access to the Atlantic. Everything else requires some degree of acquiescence from the NATO countries that surround/enclose their sea access.
Back to Russia and Ukraine. Remember the title of this blog post? It has been so long ago now since you started reading, LOL, so here it is:
“Pragmatism vs. Idealism (Or, what to do about Russia and Ukraine?)”
“Pragmatism” and “idealism” are some basic political-science vocabulary words that I want my students to learn. Here’s a slide that defines them.
We also spend a fair amount of time talking about “ideology” in my political science class, because I think it’s crucial to understand that human beings are extremely complex and have vastly different values and ways of perceiving and acting in the world. “Pragmatism” and “idealism” are similar to “ideology” in that some people lean toward pragmatism, while others lean toward idealism. The extremes on both sides perceive the world through their highly different lenses and have great difficulty comprehending, much less respecting, how someone else could see things a different way.
In the case of the Russia-Ukraine War, an “idealistic” take on the situation would be that Russia is in the wrong and cannot be allowed to get away with invading and unilaterally annexing the territory of another sovereign state. The United Nations charter is quite clear about behavior like this.
It’s hard to imagine a more idealistic institution than the United Nations. International politics is kind of like the Wild West. The UN as a world governing body has nowhere near the sovereignty of a state. The UN cannot force a sovereign nation to do something it doesn’t want to do. And every state on earth is “sovereign.”
One widely accepted definition of a “state” among political scientists, in fact, is that a state is an entity holding a monopoly on violence over a geographical area. From the Wikipedia article on “Monopoly on Violence“:
In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area.
And
[ Late 19th- and early 20th-century German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist, Max] Weber, claims that the state is the “only human Gemeinschaft which lays claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. As such, states can resort to coercive means such as incarceration, expropriation, humiliation, and death threats to obtain the population’s compliance with its rule and thus maintain order. However, this monopoly is limited to a certain geographical area, and in fact this limitation to a particular area is one of the things that defines a state.”[2] In other words, Weber describes the state as any organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory. Such a monopoly, according to Weber, must occur via a process of legitimation.
An “idealistic” solution would involve application of the “international law” in this situation to force Russia to leave Ukrainian soil. But the United Nations does not have the monopoly on violence that a state does. It does not have a police force, it cannot arrest a country’s leaders and put them on trial, convict them of a crime, and sentence them to prison or even death.
Yes, there is the International Court of Justice, but a state is not bound to comply with its decisions. The United States, in fact, withdrew from the ICJ’s “compulsory jurisdiction” under President Ronald Reagan in 1986. We view ICJ rulings as “advisory” now. And the ICJ has no authority to enforce its rulings.
There is also the International Criminal Court, a far more recent arrival on the scene (2002). It has the jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc. But like the ICJ, the ICC has limited power to enforce its rulings, and several countries have already “opted out,” as it were.
[NOTE – Additionally, as of today the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan, has reportedly decided to go on leave while allegations of sexual misconduct, apparently in the form of coerced sexual intercourse with a staff member on multiple occasions over a period of months, are investigated, which is bad enough, but there are also allegations that he may have charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with war crimes associated with Gaza partly in order to discourage his accuser from coming forward, as she was reluctant to do anything that might derail the war crimes investigation, and partly to gain support from anti-Israel countries in case she came forward anyway. If these allegations are true, they will foster mistrust in the moral authority of the ICC and damage the legitimacy of its role in adminstering international justice.]
So in some ways, the United Nations is a nice idea but one that may also ultimately prove to be as ineffective as its predecessor, the League of Nations, in achieving its mission of maintaining world peace.
Yet, at the moment, it’s all we’ve got. And ironically, although it’s technically against UN rules, several UN member states are applying severe sanctions against Russia. If nothing else, the presence of the UN has allowed for immediate, transparent, and ongoing cooperation among these states to impose a punishment that the official body cannot, especially given Russia’s position as a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Security Council.
An “idealistic” solution would require returning Ukraine to its pre-invasion status and also “punishing” Russia in some manner for its transgression. If Russia “wins” by getting to keep the territory it has invaded while also getting to enjoy full membership status in the United Nations (including a permanent seat on the Security Council), then the UN charter is worthless and the member states are hypocrites. Russia cannot keep Crimea or eastern Ukraine.
However . . .
As the map above shows (slide’s original image source is the Institute for the Study of War, via the Visual Journalism team at BBC News), the area of Ukraine currently occupied by Russia is like a “freeway” strip of land leading straight down from Russia to Crimea and Sevastopol. You may also remember that map earlier in this post showing election results from the 2010 Ukraine presidential race, in which the pro-Russia candidate captured this narrow strip plus even more of eastern Ukraine. So the area currently occupied by Russia isn’t as anti-Russian as western Ukraine is.
“Pragmatism” means looking at things the way they are instead of the way that they should be. Pragmatically and realistically, it’s easy to see that Russia will NEVER give up Crimea voluntarily, nor will Russia give up the land route to reach it. Especially when you consider the centuries of bloody history behind acquiring this piece of land and its strategic importance today for Russia’s military and economic viability.
Furthermore, check out this slide.
A “pragmatic” solution would look at this death toll and seek to “make a deal” to end the ongoing conflict. Making a deal most likely means, pragmatically and in actual fact, finding a win-win solution that both parties can live with, even though both parties may not get everything they want and feel they rightly deserve. A “win-win” solution will probably not be “right” in terms of international law and an idealistic view of right and wrong. A pragmatic solution will leave many people unhappy, even though it may be the only way to reach a negotiated solution.
Idealism in many ways precludes negotiation. For example, protestors occupying college campus buildings during the late 1960s and early 1970s often issued “non-negotiable demands” as their terms for ending the situation. And there is also the general rule against negotiating with terrorists, both because it is wrong and because it changes the rules by incentivizing future terrorism as an effective tactic. Such an idealistic stance stands in total contrast with the very tangible, immediate, and pragmatic reality of negotiating with these terrorists in this specific situation and getting a hostage released today.
In the end, the question of what to do with Russia and Ukraine depends on which approach, pragmatic/realistic or idealistic/principled, ends up in the driver’s seat.
One “condition” for peace on Russia’s part that I’ve heard mentioned (in other words, one of Russia’s “non-negotiable demands”) is that Ukraine can never be allowed to join NATO. In this post I’ve shown a lot of maps and talked a lot about NATO. Suppose the war ends with Russia somehow keeping the territory it has taken over and seeing to it that Ukraine is barred from ever joining NATO.
The question for an idealist might be: Is that fair or right?
The question for a pragmatist might be: Would it produce a truly lasting peace?
I, of course, don’t have an answer.
In fact, the main thing I came here to say is that no one really has THE answer. Someone who values principles over pragmatism will see the situation in terms of right and wrong, good versus evil. And someone who values pragmatism over ideals will see the situation in terms of achievable reality versus lofty, unreasonable, and unrealizable expectations.
Oh dear! I just saw how long this post is: over 4,000 words! Like, 13 times the length of many of my posts where I just share a photo and talk about it. But I guess 4,000 words is what it takes, in my opinion, to talk about political situations.
If I were to talk about Israel and Gaza, who knows how many words I’d require! Like, a book could be written and not do justice to the complexity.
But despite the complexity and our limited access to all the facts, we do seem to have plenty of opinions about conflicts in places like Israel and Gaza, Russia and Ukraine, and every other troubled spot on earth. Our somewhat under-informed opinions aren’t “bad” or “insubstantial,” but they probably aren’t “right” or “wrong,” either.
Now that I think of it, I don’t like hearing statements like, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” or “If you’re not outraged, you haven’t been paying attention.” It bothers me when people pile on the hate because someone expresses (or even holds) an opinion other than their own or the current social consensus.
We saw it during the COVID-19 pandemic with mask wearing (or not, or incorrectly), outdoor gatherings (protesting lockdowns versus protesting police violence), and vaccination (or not). As our knowledge changed or as we sensed social pressures changing, public opinion fluctuated wildly and angrily. Opinions expressed via words or actions were assigned moral weight, and both personal and societal relationships were fractured as a result.
Each of us has a strongly established internal value system, a permanent, fairly unalterable lens through which we see the world. Maybe saying this reveals me to be a pragmatist? I’m not a relativist, and I don’t think I lack an ability to discern and judge among myriad points of view and articulations of reality. But I also don’t see the world in black-and-white terms or feel any certainty that I have the “right” answer. I don’t think anyone has that.
But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. π
If there’s one thing I feel certain of, though, it’s that I wish we could more readily acknowledge the humanity and “divine spark” (in a “namaste” sense) of others. We are all separate beings, individuals with diverse characteristics, experiences, and values, yet we are also all part of a singular human “spirit,” sharing a common human identity and existential interconnectedness.
Evil exists. And not just in terms of “good” people and “evil” people. The potential for evil exists inside all of us (I believe), and even “good” people are capable of monstrous acts.
But on the flip side, goodness also exists. People who have different worldviews and values and opinions can be good people, who want good outcomes. It would be so nice if that automatic leap to judgment and anger could more frequently be set aside in favor of assuming good intentions, or at least not bad intentions, as the underlying motivation of people we perceive as doing “bad’ things.
Or at least in favor of trying to understand other people’s ways of seeing the world.
[Aside: This post is now over 4,800 words. Plus, I can feel myself getting preachy, a sad tendency of mine that I try hard to avoid, so it’s time to wrap things up and call it a day. Thank you so much for reading if you’ve gotten this far!β€οΈ]
So this is what happens when you live on a large body of water. When the lake is colder than the air temperature, you get fog. Conversely, in winter when the lake is much warmer than the air temperature you get these amazing little wisps of steam curling up off of the lake. (Iβve written about that phenomenon before (HERE).
It has been fairly warm the past few days in Milwaukee, and somewhat humid, too. (As measured by the amount of frizziness in my hair, which I have found to be the most accurate and precise hygrometer around!π)
The area closest to Lake Michigan this morning was blanketed with fog. You basically couldnβt see the top half of any office buildings east of the river. This building, the same one I posted a picture of the other day, is right on the river, literally on the eastern bank. So, close-ish to the lake but several blocks away.
As I walked down the hill next to MSOEβs Campus Center around 10:30, I noticed the very striking way that sunlight had pierced the thinning fog to illuminate the buildingβs upper reaches. The light reflecting off of those pointed caps looks like little searchlight beams, donβt you think?
I need to get out more. The academic year is ending, so that should help. I love taking pictures, but lately no pictures have been coming my way.
What a silly idea, though, right? Like good photos are going to walk up to my door and knock?
Cool things are happening all the time, but theyβre OUT THERE and I need to go out there, too, and meet them where they live. If I want to get good pictures, I need to be there when they happen.
Iβm not really talking about taking my nice camera out on an intentional βphotography walk.β What I mean is I just need to spend more time getting out of my office.
It was a sad day for me as an amateur photographer when they closed the Red Arrow Starbucks down the hill from my office (kitty-corner to the building shown in todayβs photo, in fact). I used to run down to Starbucks for coffee twice a day every weekday for years. Lots of fresh air and exercise and lots of fun photos happened for me during these little jaunts.
Moss in a sidewalk crack, for example π
You know what I mean. I need to be in the world and ready, with my phone handy, for those chance moments when good photos reveal themselves.
Kind of my own little iPhone corollary to the famous Arthur Fellig quote: βf/8 and be there.β
I discovered a cool AI feature in my iPhone 16’s photo-editing tools yesterday: an image eraser!
Remember yesterday’s post about the fog-draped office building on an otherwise sunny afternoon? Here’s the interesting background on how I very quickly edited that photo before publishing and how I realized that I needed to do more.
Here is the original photo I took.
See the truck in the foreground?
I try not to include personally identifying info in any photos I publish on my blog, so it bothered me that on the original image, you could make out the license plate number if you enlarged it. The photo you see here is a screenshot of the original, which is just lower enough in quality to blur the plate number. I didn’t realize that a screenshot degraded the image, so that in itself is also interesting to learn.
I was looking at that original image yesterday, wondering how I could blur out the numbers or maybe crop the picture so as to cut it right at the license plate line, which would have resulted in a stupid-looking photo, when I noticed a little “eraser”-looking icon at the bottom of my editing screen.
Could it be? I duplicated the image, wanting to preserve the original, clicked on that icon, then swished my pinky over the truck. Poof! The truck disappeared from my image!
Well, that was exciting. And I was in a hurry to post because this is finals week at Milwaukee School of Engineering, the college where I teach, so I had many other things to do besides post a picture on my blog. So I quickly did another edit, cropping and enlarging the top of the building so you could see the fog more clearly, and then I went ahead and hit “publish.”
Done.
Except something kept nagging at me in the back of my mind. You know how you see things but they don’t register at the time, but then you realized they actually did register because all of a sudden, long after the fact, you remember what you saw but didn’t notice? If that makes sense.
Here’s the photo I published yesterday, except in the form of a screenshot with some relevant items circled.
The item at the lower right is the image “eraser.” The item in the photo is the now-vanished truck’s shadow, shown in more detail in a cropped portion of the original photo below.
So I decided to try re-editing my edit with more “erasing,” and it worked fairly well to eliminate the truck’s shadow.
Cool, huh?
If you have a similar phone, this may all be old news to you, but as I’m still only two iPhones removed from my old Nokia flip phone (that was broken in a way that allowed me to open it with a flick of my wrist like Captain Kirk), I’m constantly impressed with what my iPhone 16’s camera can do!
Katherine Wikoff 
