I miss the days when they didn’t know I was tricking them into taking silly photos.
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Beer Hall Putsch
In 1923, Adolf Hitler attempted a coup at a beer hall in Munich. He got away with a slap on the wrist and held rallies at the beer hall celebrating the coup’s anniversary.
In 1939, Georg Elser tried and failed to kill Hitler at one of the rallies. Elser was caught and held at Dachau concentration camp, where he was eventually murdered.
The beer hall was demolished in 1979. The site is an arts center and hotel. The only remnant of the site’s infamy is a plaque in a public courtyard. It honors Elser.
German text: An dieser Stelle, im ehemaligen Bürgerbräukeller, versuchte der Schreiner Johann Georg Elser am 8. November 1939 ein Attentat auf Adolf Hitler. Er wollte damit dem Terror-Regime der Nationalsozialisten ein Ende setzen. Das Vorhaben scheiterte. Johann Georg Elser wurde nach 5 1/2 Jahren Haft am 9. April 1945 im Konzentrationslager Dachau ermordet.
English translation text: On this site, in the erstwhile Bürgerbräukeller, on November 8, 1939, the carpenter Johann Georg Elser made an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler. He intended therewith to put an end to the terror regime of the National Socialists. The attempt failed. After 5 1/2 years of imprisonment, Johann Georg Elser was murdered on April 9, 1945, in the Dachau concentration camp.
Every year Munich’s city government awards the Georg Elser Prize to honor courageous acts in support of democracy.
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Kmart, saw and conquered
For the December 25, 2003 issue of Creative Loafing, I reviewed a Kmart. By the way, my dad really did buy me a vacuum that year.
As part of its effort to emerge from the K-Hole of bankruptcy, Kmart is testing out a nifty publicity scheme to get folks back into its stores called the Kstage. The Kstage is an actual stage in the back of the stores that hosts gurus who’ll help you improve your life — presumably via shopping at Kmart.
On Saturday, I visited the Kstage at the Mableton Kmart store. Instead of obvious gurus like Sri Lahiri Mayasaya or Sri Paramahansa Yagananda, the Kstage people went a little left field and brought in Robyn Freedman Spizman.
Spizman was on hand to discuss her book on gift-giving, The GIFTionary. The GIFTionary‘s premise is simple — give gifts based the recipients’ hobby interests or your feelings for the person, then mar the gift with a really bad pun in the note.
For example, give your friend a deck of cards with a note telling them that they’re the “real deal,” or your lover a pack of mints with a note saying “We’re mint to be.”
My dad just told me he’s getting me a vacuum cleaner this year. I hope he doesn’t include a note telling me that I suck.
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Decatur City Commission, District 2
Congratulations Cheryl Kortemeier, the new Decatur City Commissioner for District 2 (my district!). There are a handful of people who show up and work hard at every neighborhood or school event that needs volunteers. Cheryl is one of them. We’re lucky to have her as our rep.
Turnout for this election was enormous. In the last competitive election for this seat in 2019, 1,880 people voted. Cheryl and her opponent, Deanna Jue Sutandi, both received more than 2,000 votes. The population here didn’t double. Enthusiasm for voting did.
Voter enthusiasm in this election is primarily the result of our democracy-enjoying area being fired up about [waves hands in the direction autocrat], but credit to Cheryl and Deanna for being two great candidates who the neighborhood was excited to support.
Like Cheryl, Deanna is someone who volunteers her time and skill for all of us. When I was on PTA, she took the hardest volunteer job (the auction) and was great at it. When she asked me to put a sign in my yard, I was proud to. I hope she runs for something else.
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I have issues
My city will elect a new commissioner for my neighborhood this fall. To help the two candidates pander to me, I’ve drafted a list of local political issues that matter to me.
I invite these candidates to propose solutions to these pressing issues.
- Protected bike lanes from a main street in every neighborhood to every school.
- An organized municipal effort to provide help for homeless people in our neighborhood instead of our fend for yourself system.
- Playgrounds that are 20% less awful; built for 2025 leisure activities, not 1950 leisure activities (soccer goals, anyone?); with drinking water and bathrooms; and shade structures because climate change.
- Lower speed limits and put speed cameras everywhere, because you drive too fast and are texting.
- A bigger sign for La Chiquiada. How are people supposed to find it?
- Umbrellas at the public pools, and keep pools open until October because it’s warm.
- Better curation of our Little Free Libraries. People really need to stop putting their garbage books in those.
- Revamp homestead exemptions so higher income people pay higher millage than lower income residents. It doesn’t promote economic diversity in our community to give our wealthiest residents tax breaks they don’t need.
- The My (Browned-Eyed) Girl Is My Wonderwall Act to require street karaoke buskers and Universal Joint patio musicians to expand their repertoires a bit.
- Decatur has a Bell Street but doesn’t have a Bell Street Burritos. Forget Trader Joe’s, that’s the real missed opportunity.
- Trash bags with more durable drawstrings. Alternately, let me buy stamps or something that lets me pay the trash fee while using working trash bags.
I’ll add to this as I think of more.
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ICE kidnapped my friend, update
On Wednesday, August 27, my friend Reza Zavvar will have a court hearing in Greenbelt, Md. to learn why he has been held captive by the Trump Administration for two months.
Trump says – and Fox reports – that he’s focusing ICE on criminals. This is a lie.
Reza is not a criminal and is not charged with any crimes. He is a legal resident of the U.S. and has been since he was 12.
He was kidnapped by ICE in June while walking his dog outside his mother’s house – where he’d been staying to help take care of his grandmother.
ICE keeps moving Reza around the country – he’s been in at least 3 federal detention facilities, in appalling conditions, with no explanation. The White House is doing this to make it harder for detainees to engage with their lawyers.
Reza is one of many people enduring violent, vindictive treatment from this White House. What they are doing to him – and many others like him – is obscene. Free societies do not imprison people on the whims of elected officials. I hope Reza is released tomorrow. If he’s not, his friends will keep speaking up for him. And if he’s released we need to keep speaking up for everyone else on the receiving end of this criminal cruelty.
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ICE kidnapped my friend
Reza Zavvar and his grandmother Reza Zavvar was kidnapped by ICE while walking his dog in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Why do I call it kidnapping? Because he is not charged with any crimes; he hasn’t committed one. He’s a legal, permanent resident of the U.S. and has been for 40 years. His detention is cruel and unjust.
Many of us know him as a friend and Walter Johnson High School Alumni classmate. I know him and his family as extraordinarily kind, thoughtful friends who held me and my mother up when my dad was dying of cancer.
This NBC4 story refers to him as a gentle giant. That’s exactly right. We played high school football together, and one of my clearest memories is Reza’s worried face looking down at me after he accidentally knocked me out during a tackling drill. That our team had a starting defensive tackle whose primary personality trait is empathy might help explain our team’s poor record that season.
His kindness, his loving family, and the affection so many have for him should not matter. He’s a human being with human rights—a legal resident of a nation of laws. Reza should be at home right now. Instead, he’s being held in an ICE jail in Texas while his family grieves and tries to figure out how to get him back the freedom that is the right of every person in this country.
Keep Reza in mind and spread the word about what is being done to him and others like him, others like us.
