history

I run my finger along the crease of the envelope, feel the weight of history inside. Wherever I'm going next, these are coming with me.

Santiago de Cuba has the Antonio Maceo Airport (MUCU/SCU), which was home to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Shown in the photo is a Cuban Mig 21 inside the VT-45 hanger. Santiago de Cuba had 12 of these Russian built fighters situated at the San Antonio de los Baños Airfield in Cuba. Now the airport is essentially a turboprop hub, however it can also accommodate mid-sized jet aircraft. There are about twenty international flights each week, but most arrivals are by domestic airlines. The eastern location and the international status of MUCU/SCU has spurred the interest of foreign airlines as a promising future destination.All in all, Cuba now has ten international airports, capable of serving long-range commercial flights.Follow the daily blogs by Captain Hank Bracker posted exclusively on Facebook, Goodreads & Captain Hank Bracker__ Webpage. He also has frequent Tweets and weekend commentaries headed __rom the Bridge._ His dual award winning book __he Exciting Story of Cuba_ is available from Amazon.com and other leading book vendors. Soon to come are his books __eawater One_ & __urpressed I Rise (Revised Edition).

I suggest that the Western impact, at least in nineteenth-century China, was overstated (and misstated) by an earlier generation of American historians. An especially egregious example of this, I argue, was American treatment of the Opium War, the objective importance of which was not nearly so great as we__nd an almost unanimous corps of Chinese historians__ave imagined.

It__ still hard to live in a foreign country with unfamiliar people, even when you__e with the person you love. I don__ have any roots or history of my own here. A person needs their history around them to remember who they were and to remind them of where they__e going. I__ worried about leaving my history and memories behind me.

If she opened the closet with her skeletons, they might drag her in with them.

The monumental tragedies of the 20th century -- a world-wide Great Depression, two devastating World Wars, the Holocaust, famines killing millions in the Soviet Union and tens of millions in China -- should leave us with a sobering sense of the threats to any society. But this generation's ignorance of history leaves them free to be frivolous -- until the next catastrophe strikes, and catches them completely by surprise.

One of the things, though, that has always afflicted the American reality and the American vision is this aversion to history. History is not something you read about in a book, history is not even the past__t__ the present. Because everybody operates, whether or not we know it, out of assumptions which are produced and produced only by our history. Now the history of this country is not bloodier than other countries, but it__ bloody. It is not more criminal than that of other countries, but it__ criminal. Or in short, it__ not worse than the history of France or England or any country we can name__ut it__ different.

...the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and ___odernity.__ By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western scholars can place the West at the center of any discussion, and subordinate backward Asia to Western history, without explicitly condemning Asian cultures and polities or arguing for a narrowly Eurocentric view of the world. Nevertheless, modern history is effectively a racist pursuit that not only elevates white Westerners above all others, but also actively denigrates Asian history.

I know one thing, that I know nothing.

There is always a city. There is always a civilisation. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilisation, but to become that city, that civilisation, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated was what you did not understand.

As historians, our aim is to do our utmost to understand and elucidate past reality. At the same time, in pursuit of this goal, we must use ordering concepts that by definition inevitably introduce an element of distortion. I believe that our task as historians is to choose concepts that combine a maximum of explanatory power with a minimum of distortional effect.

History is the business of identifying momentous events from the comfort of a high-back chair.

To gain an understanding of the mind leads on to an appreciation of what it means to be human.

Technology has become the West__ main prop to its claims of inherent superiority over the non-West, and the reason why the non-West should adopt Western culture. If advanced technology is particular to Western culture, then it is only by Westernizing that the non-West can obtain it. This argument collapses if Western technology can be adopted in isolation from the broader culture, or if other cultures can generate significant technology independently.

The past is magnetic. It draws us in.

I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what had made me become a Communist, but what had attracted me to the movement more than anything, dazzled me, was the feeling (real or apparent) of standing near the wheel of history. For in those days we actually did decide the fate of men and events, especially at the universities; in those early years there were very few Communists on the faculty, and the Communists in the student body ran the universities almost single-handed, making decisions on academic staffing, teaching reform, and the curriculum. The intoxication we experienced is commonly known as the intoxication of power, but (with a bit of good will) I could choose less severe words: we were bewitched by history; we were drunk with the thought of jumping on its back and feeling it beneath us; admittedly, in most cases the result was an ugly lust for power, but (as all human affairs are ambiguous) there was still (and especially, perhaps, in us, the young), an altogether idealistic illusion that we were inaugurating a human era in which man (all men) would be neither outside history, nor under the heel of history, but would create and direct it.

Thanksgiving at Sea"Most of us will enjoy Thanksgiving Day ashore in the comfort of our home but some will be at sea, because they are working on some boat, barge or ship. Others will be out on the brine by design as passengers, now considered guests on cruise ships. What came to mind however, was my father who was a ship__ cook in the 1920__, and the stories he shared with us. Best as I can tell, the year must have been somewhere around 1924 when his ship was in Shanghai, which is now China__ biggest city. Tied up at a rickety dock on the Huangpu River, he could see the famed waterfront promenade lined with the now famed colonial-style buildings. The time had come to butcher one of the penned goats, brought along for this expressed purpose. Being on a German freighter, Thanksgiving Day had no special meaning but stew made of goat meat was always a treat for the crew. Fast forward to the present_ almost every single cruise ship at sea or in a foreign port, will celebrate Thanksgiving Day with a marvelous turkey dinner, plus joyful entertainment. Whether you celebrate the day with your significant other, or take along an entire gang of friends and family; Thanksgiving Day at sea will be far from the lonely day it once was. Holidays, including Thanksgiving are always especially festive at sea.

To forget is to render the pages of history as entirely blank, and the lessons of history as never taught.