The Art of Tetman Callis

“Deep in the heart there dwells relentless care And secretly infects us with despair; Restless, she sways and poisons peace and joy She always finds new masks she can employ: She may appear as house and home, as child and wife, As fire, water, poison, knife— What does not strike, still makes you quail, And […]

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“Hope never seems to leave those who affirm, The shallow minds that stick to must and mold— They dig with greedy hands for gold And yet are happy if they find a worm.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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“I have, alas, studied philosophy, Jurisprudence and medicine, too, And, worst of all, theology, With keen endeavor, through and through— And here I am, for all my lore, The wretched fool I was before.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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“The Germans are really a strange people. With their profound thoughts and ideas, which they seek everywhere and project into everything, they make life harder for themselves than they should.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, May 8, 1827 (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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“The more incommensurable and incomprehensible for the understanding a poetic creation may be, the better.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, May 8, 1827 ( from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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“A life chequered with uncommon varieties is seldom a long one. Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick despatch.” – Thomas Paine, “Reflections on the Life and Death of Lord Clive”

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“There is nothing which obtains so general an influence over the manners and morals of a people as the Press; from that, as from a fountain, the streams of vice or virtue are poured forth over a country.” – Thomas Paine, “The Magazine in America” (emphasis in original)

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“The wisest assemblies of men are as liable as individuals, to corruption and error. The greatest ravages which have ever been committed upon the liberty and happiness of mankind have been by weak and corrupted republics.” – Thomas Paine, “A Dialogue Between General Wolfe and General Gage in a Wood Near Boston”

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“Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, […]

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“Most of the Galician Jews, like Polish Jews residing in the General Government, died in the course of 1942 after spending months isolated from the rest of the population in ghettos created on Nazi orders. Acting on instructions of German police commanders, the Jewish and Ukrainian police rounded them up and shipped them to extermination […]

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“The Holocaust was the single most horrific episode of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, which had no shortage of horror. Most Ukrainian Jews who became victims never made it either to Auschwitz or to any other extermination camp. Heinrich Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen, with the help of local police formed by the German administration, gunned them down […]

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“Ukraine under German occupation became a large-scale model of a concentration camp. As in the camps, the line between resistance and collaboration, victimhood and criminal complicity with the regime became blurred but by no means indistinguishable. Everyone made a personal choice, and those who survived had to live with their decisions after the war, many […]

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“In December 1940 [Hitler] signed a directive ordering preparations for war with the Soviet Union. The operation was code-named Barbarossa after the twelfth-century German king and Holy Roman emperor who had led the Third Crusade. He had drowned while trying to cross a river in heavy armor instead of taking the bridge used by his […]

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“By early October 1939, the Polish army had ceased to exist . . . . The Red Army, which was no match for the Germans in mechanization, demonstrated its superiority to the Polish troops in the quality of its armaments, which included new tanks, aircraft, and modern guns—all products of Stalin’s industrialization effort. But to […]

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“The past is not made out of time, out of memory, out of irony but is also a crime we cannot admit and will not atone.” – Eavan Boland, “Making Money”

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“Was the Great Ukrainian Famine (in Ukrainian, the Holodomor) a premeditated act of genocide against Ukraine and its people? In November 2006, the Ukrainian parliament defined it as such. A number of parliaments and governments around the world passed similar resolutions, while the Russian government launched an international campaign to undermine the Ukrainian claim. Political […]

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“The ‘Russian revolutionary sweep’ that Stalin wanted to combine with American efficiency came to Dniprohes with tens of thousands of Ukrainian peasants unqualified to do the job but eager to make a living. The number of workers employed in the construction of the dam and the electric power station grew from 13,000 in 1927 to […]

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“The Ukrainian national anthem begins with the words, ‘Ukraine has not yet perished,’ hardly an optimistic beginning for any kind of song.” – Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe

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“Courts acknowledge that running a prison is an inordinately difficult undertaking that requires expertise, planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. Courts must therefore accord substantial deference to the professional judgment of prison administrators, who bear a significant responsibility for […]

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“Is it not well that even for a little time the light of life shine—though it shine through fear and sadness—than be cut off altogether? For who knows where the trails tend that lead through the darkness of the night of death?” – The Elder Maiden of Héshokta, “Átahsaia the Cannibal Demon,” Zuñi Folk Tales […]

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“My face is in front of me, and under a roof is no place for men.” – Mátsailéma, “Átahsaia the Cannibal Demon,” Zuñi Folk Tales (recorded & translated by Frank Cushing)

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“ ‘Ye of the Home of the Eagles! Ye do I now inform, whomsoever of ye would gather datilas, whomsoever of ye would gather piñon nuts, whomsoever of ye would gather grass-seed, that bread may be made, hie ye over the mountains, and gather them to your hearts’ content, for I have driven the Bear […]

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“Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.” – Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1985-1989

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“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” – Nelson Mandela

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“Pretty girls care very little how their husbands look, being pretty enough themselves for both. But they like to have them able to think and guess at a way of getting along occasionally.” – “How the Corn-Pests Were Ensnared,” Zuñi Folk Tales (recorded & translated by Frank Cushing)

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“Now, there are two kinds of laugh with women. One of them is a very good sort of thing, and makes young men feel happy and conceited. The other kind is somewhat heartier, but makes young men feel depressed and very humble.” – “How the Corn-Pests Were Ensnared,” Zuñi Folk Tales (recorded & translated by […]

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“Utopianism isn’t hope, still less optimism: it is need, and it is desire. For recognition, like all desire, and for the specifics of its reveries and programmes, too; and above all for betterness tout court. For alterity, something other than the exhausting social lie. For rest. And when the cracks in history open wide enough, […]

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