Rebane's Ruminations

Judea Pearl, Turing Laureate

George Rebane

Judea Pearl, Professor of Computer Sciences UCLA, received the A.M. Turing Award last night at the awards banquet of the Association of Computing Machinery at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.  He now joins the forty-three previous laureates of the ‘Nobel prize of computing’, of whom twenty-five were in attendance to honor him.

Jo Ann and I joined the gala celebration as guests of the awardee, and sat with family and friends, most of whom we have known for decades.  (I am a lifelong member of the ACM.)  The awards banquet also honored other contributors to the field and culminated in the Turing Award presentation.  Here is ACM’s official, yet still modest, recounting of Judea’s accomplishments.

The Pearls became family friends soon after Judea Pearl collaborated on a project with a ‘black studies’ company I was running in the 1970s.  Judea’s wife Ruth (an accomplished software engineer in her own right) is a consummate hostess.  Jo Ann also had (still has) a reputation for putting on mean soirees that, with the passing hours, devolved into impromptu performances ranging from poetry recitations, through heated debates on various arcane and absorbing topics, to planned revivals of long ago salons of the Englightment.

We were often at each other’s house for such dinners, parties, and special noodling sessions.  These always included music that had us singing with guitars and keyboard for accompaniment.  Judea is an accomplished guitar player, keyboardist, and has a great singing voice.  He’s also a world class choral conductor and has performed numerous times at the LA Music Center.  (I was the less practiced one on both instruments, making up in volume for what I lacked in technique.)

A couple of shared memories from a rich catalog.  For Ruth’s birthday one year Judea invited us and another couple to a small westside bistro in LA.  We knew that something special was going to happen because Judea brought his guitar; but what could that be since we were eating in a restaurant?  Not a problem, soon the main course was finished, and after dinner drinks were in hand.  The lights were low and the atmosphere was perfect as Judea reached behind his chair for his trusty guitar and putting a foot on his chair, he launched into a medley of love songs to his bride of many years.

The other patrons in the restaurant were enthralled along with those at our table.  I recall Judea ending his special gift to Ruth (and the rest of us) with a rendition of a soulful Spanish adagio for solo trumpet and guitar from a piece I could not place.  It was a night to remember, as Judea kissed Ruth to the applause of the entire restaurant.  (Solo trumpet?  Did I fail to mention that Judea also has a unique gift, the ability to purse his lips, puff his cheeks, and perfectly simulate the sound of a virtuoso trumpet?)

Another memory is when I got a call late one afternoon from Judea saying that Ed Feigenbaum was in town and could drop by for some dinner and talk; would I care to join them?  (The techie reader will recognize Feigenbaum as a renown giant of AI, ‘father of expert systems’, and Turing laureate who taught for years at Stanford - now professor emeritus.)  Long story short.  After one of Ruth’s ‘oh it’s nothing’ fabulous meals, the three of us retired to the patio and spent the next four (five?) hours talking about the state of machine intelligence, who was doing what, and possible directions the science would take and its impact on society.  At the time Judea had already published his landmark 1986 paper and was working on his 1988 book on Bayes nets (I was one of Judea’s doctoral students doing research in Bayes learning).  It was clear that the torch would soon be passed from Feigenbaum’s expert systems to Pearl’s Bayes nets (with causality soon making its early murmurs).  Truly another memorable night.
   
So that was the basis for all the fuss this weekend at the Rebane household.   Yesterday morning we dropped off our puppy with the Steeles, and headed through a hot and crowded central valley to San Francisco.  Judea and I were able to spend some quality time together before the band started playing.  (The picture with the other white haired professor catches a debate on who has known Judea the longest - I foolishly thought c'est moi.  I came in a distant second to the good professor who has known Judea since they were playmates on an Israeli kibbutz eons ago while the Brits still ran Palestine.)

Jo Ann and Ruth picked up where they left off (top picture).  Ruth also sits on the board of the Daniel Pearl Foundation which is dedicated in memory of their son and has as its mission statement –

The Daniel Pearl Foundation has been formed by Danny's family and friends to continue Danny's mission and to address the root causes of this tragedy, in the spirit, style, and principles that shaped Danny's work and character. These principles include uncompromised objectivity and integrity; insightful and unconventional perspective; tolerance and respect for people of all cultures; unshaken belief in the effectiveness of education and communication; and the love of music, humor, and friendship.

(Full disclosure: Jo Ann and I are ongoing supporters of the foundation, especially its work in bringing greater mutual understanding between Islamic and western cultures.)

An apology for all occasions

George Rebane

[In my long working career I was privileged and very lucky to have worked with and under some truly remarkable and very smart people.  One of these was an older systems engineer extraordinaire and a complete gentleman by the name of Skip Case.  I was technically his peer, but I never considered myself as such.  In a number of different ways Skip taught all of us who worked with him.  Those who also bothered to learn, benefitted from his wisdom.

Skip died a few years back, a little before I started RR, and was then only occasionally posting on the SESF website.  When I heard the news, it hit me that over the decades I and several others had been profitably using a phrase that he taught us years ago.  To remember Skip, I wrote the following vignette and posted it on the SESF website.  My most recent use of the phrase in a comment recalled the vignette, and I retrieved it to share with RR readers.  You may also find it useful some day, especially in the heated discussions of complex issues we cover here.]

Skip Case RIP

George Rebane – 21 May 2007

The conference room was crowded with the company’s elite engineering talent and top management for a very important system design review meeting.  The decision taken today would impact the company’s standing and future role as the nation’s leading nuclear submarine combat systems developer and manufacturer.  In 1968 as a young hotshot engineer I was privileged to be included in that tense gathering of greats in a very secretive industry critical to the country’s well-being, yet almost completely and purposefully unknown to the outside world. On board every operational fleet ballistic missile and attack submarine of our Navy, our company’s systems were the ones that would likely fire the opening salvos of WW3.

One of the company’s senior project engineers had just completed a presentation of an important design concept on which the effectiveness of the new system would hinge.  He was a man in his late forties of small yet lithe stature and thinning neatly combed hair.  What especially distinguished Skip’s presence was his gaze – he had the most focused and level gaze which when turned on you established an intellectual connection that would bind like a taught rope.  Using the fewest words needed, Skip always spoke precisely and with a calm urgency that made the listener want to lean forward in his chair so as not to miss a single pearl.

Engineering, as a demanding technical profession, is often a ruthless forum in which mistakes and errors are pounced upon by peers for ego gratification, reputation enhancement, and generally counting coup.  Such critiques are most often spontaneous but sometimes, especially when corporate management will be present, they are planned ambushes of great sophistication.  That morning a mid-level division manager with a short career as a practicing engineer rose to deliver a withering critique of the just concluded presentation.  It was obviously a long-planned critique that had still been in deep rehearsal while Skip was talking. And it was apparent to us all that he had not understood the very essence of the design approach.  As he concluded with a knowing glance to the company’s chief technical officer (Chief Engineer in those days), all eyes turned to Skip.

Remaining seated with hands folded, Skip fixed his attacker in that signature gaze and, with incredible calm and no hint of sarcasm, said,
 
“I’m sorry, I didn’t say it well enough for you to understand.”
 
… and paused.  As the semantic impact of this simple sentence settled in our minds most of us were astounded.  I remember scrambling to record those words in my notebook and I wasn’t alone. The managerial upstart was dumbfounded, he didn’t know on whom those contrite words put blame or shame.  He wanted to strike back, but no obvious target had been presented.  While his would-be nemesis was so consternated, Skip proceeded to quickly correct the man’s error and the meeting went on to a productive conclusion.

In his wisdom Skip Case settled a potentially contentious and divisive situation with a sentence that allowed everyone to draw their own distinct yet proper meaning of the occasion depending on their position and perspective.  All of us left the room with those words in mind.  I was fortunate to count Skip as one of my mentors and to sit at his knee during those early years.  And since that time I also have learned to apologize when I could not say it well enough for my respondent to understand – but still not as well as Skip.

Happy Mother's Day

George Rebane

 

Ellen Rebane (1914 - 1990)

 

Christmas in 1949

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary which was broadcast on 16 December 2011.]

‘Tis the season for Christmas stories, so I’m going to tell you about my first Christmas in America.  The year was 1949.  Dad, mom, and I had arrived here in May on a troopship packed with east European refugees.  All of us had gone through WW2 on the wrong side, and then spent the last four years in refugee camps in Germany.  We arrived here with three suitcases and the clothes on our backs – no language, penniless, and literally no idea what was going to happen next when we got off the boat.

By December mom, dad, and I had gone through a hectic summer on a Connecticut chicken farm and were now living in a rented room with a shared bathroom.  It was located across the street from a noisy bar in downtown Willimantic, a poor New England ‘threadmill town’ that in 1949 already looked long of tooth.  Dad and mom had found work in the big threadmill as thread machine loaders – mom started working the day shift and dad was on the night shift.

Actually, mom had spent the summer in Essex as a dishwasher in a café, while dad and I worked on the chicken farm near Danielson.  Without going into the gory details, mom had a heart problem, and the extra heavy work in the threadmill did her in.  She spent most of the fall of 1949 in the hospital.

Early after starting fourth grade that fall, I wandered into the Willimantic fire department, drawn by the bright red fire trucks on display every afternoon.  My less than perfect English gave me away, and after the firemen quizzed me, they ‘adopted’ me.  Since my father was asleep during the day, there was little for me to do in our room except wake him up, therefore I was told to report to the firehouse every day after school for a hot meal, do a few light chores around the big fire engines, and play with the duty Dalmatian that was a resident of almost every fire house in those days.  My father approved the arrangement, and the firemen became my extended family to make up for the one I seldom saw during those months.  In spite of everything, that fall was exciting for a nine-year-old, I even got to ride on the fire truck responding to a couple of small fires.

As the weather got colder and the New England snows came, I looked forward to Christmas because, well, I had always looked forward to Christmas.  Even in the refugee camp it had been a festive time of music, hand-made decorations, Christmas tree, special church services, hope for a renewed life, and, of course, the anticipation of my present.  But this Christmas was going to be different because my mom would not be home until after the holidays, and dad would only get off on Christmas Day.  I knew that at dad’s $40 per week, presents were out.  Refugee kids become money savvy at an early age.

But I was also part of the fire department, and there was plenty to do to decorate and prepare the fire house for Christmas.  I was pretty much blown away by all the lights and bright shiny things and wreaths and boughs and the big Christmas tree that were part of an American Christmas.  The local Lutheran church had also taken us under their wing, and going to the Advent services was a real introduction to American Christmas music.  It was amazing how much more went on in an American church, especially during the holidays, than at the Estonian church that we had attended in the camp.

About a week before Christmas we found out that mom would be released from the hospital, and we would all be together in our first real home in America at 38 North Street, Willimantic, Connecticut, second floor.  With mom on the mend and expecting to go back to work soon after the holidays, things were again looking up.  Dad and mom were already talking of better jobs which would let us move into a real apartment with a bathroom.  We all felt that the way to an American future was beginning to take shape.

Then a week before Christmas my teacher told me that I was invited to a special Christmas party with a Santa Claus to be held at school.  I remember walking back to school through the snow in the evening.  The room was full of kids I didn’t know, there was a Santa Claus, and when it was my turn, he handed me a toy filling station with a garage and pump island on it.  It was used, but still in good working order.  I was more than a bit embarrassed by this, and walked home carrying the cumbersome filling station.

What had stunned me was that this was a Christmas party for poor kids, and I had been singled out as a poor kid.  But I knew that they had gotten something terribly wrong.  During and after the war I had seen plenty of kids and families who were really poor.  And I knew, that especially on this Christmas, I was definitely not a poor kid.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, and on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Merry Christmas.

Lucy Pearl at Seven Months

George Rebane

Just so that everyone understands that the ideas debated on RR are not without consequence, I want to remind everyone that I have six grandchildren and one great-grandchild - Lucy Pearl, the little darlin that you see below.  What we talk about in these pages is important, and doubly so for her and her parents.  I don't do this just to pound my pud.  It is part of the legacy that all who contribute here leave for whatever search engines may excavate these thoughts tomorrow or generations from now.  In these times, this is what we thought and said.  It's good to reflect on that because you also, dear reader, have to consider your own arrows into the future.  To the extent that your contributions mold and express your worldview, our chatter is not idle.

 

Epiphany at Trinity

George Rebane

It was our first solo trip with our ‘new’ trailer.  Jo Ann and I got back from Trinity Lake yesterday afternoon after spending a few days under the trees at Pinewood Cove RV Park.  We are lifelong dirt campers, so talking us into upgrading to a starter trailer wasn’t all that difficult.  It only took Russ and Ellen Steele about five years to help us switch from a ripstop tent to an aluminum box on wheels.  Memories of weeds poking into our undercarriage were a definite goad to less surprising twilight head calls.

So there we were, practically lakeside and under a thick canopy of tall pineys with our little toyless toy hauler all properly hooked up and canopy deployed.   The RV park grounds sit on, what else, scoured red dirt.  You know, the kind we have right here in Nevada County.  Our little  camping chairs and tables were all set up in the stuff.  Our puppy took no never mind to it, and, rejecting her nice clean bed, stretched herself out on the dustiest parts, being careful to change sides regularly so as to apply an even coating.

Meals were fun because Jo Ann could use the kitchen to prepare some really special vittles for eating around the campfire.  We brought along our own firewood - cured digger pine which makes and maintains a beautifully tight flame mass for hours (contrary to popular local myths, I have yet to burn a bad piece of madrone or digger pine).

The pictured idyllic little scene was made possible following a six hour drive that involved some very curvy roads after we headed west from Redding on State 299.  While there, the major entertainment consisted of driving down to Weaverville to celebrate our 49th, and watching RVs occupy neighboring sites.  From this educational spectator sport one learns a little bit each time as vacationers of various skill levels maneuver their rigs into place and go through the set-up chores – the Germans also call this shadenfreude.  It’s especially relaxing after you are already comfortably ensconced with martooni in hand, and covered with red dirt beyond caring.

‘Estonia, the little country that could’

George Rebane

A friend and RR reader emailed me the link to a Washington Times article by Richard Rahn that summarizes the economic history of Estonia.  Readers may recall my posts from our 15-29jun08 visit back to the old sod (see posts under ‘My Story’, right column).  Misplaced modesty prohibits my adding anything to the Rahn article.  I only draw your attention to it as a part of the larger apologetics that may be seen to underpin my socio-economic biases expressed in these pages.  As such, the source may all be in my double-helix, or perhaps in the water I drank as a young child.  Hard to tell.

Elizabeth & Lucas: Grandpa's Bragging Rights

George Rebane

 

Grandkids Lucas and Elizabeth, of our Northern Tribe in Washington, went to Spokane this weekend for the state's high school track championships.  They attend Bear Creek School in Woodinville, and their track team qualified for the championships in several events.  Both kids and the team did well as you can tell from their expressions.  Lucas also plays basketball for the school, and Elizabeth is on the school's volleyball team.  Their little sister Catherine, another basketball player (actually none of the Rebane sprouts are little) is off playing in the AAU league on a team for which she was recruited.  Mom (daughter Sini) is a trained sports photographer, and took the pictures.  Just thought you all would want to know ;-)

Lucy, the Trump of Hope

George Rebane

Tonight Jo Ann and I became great-grandparents when granddaughter Claire gave birth to Lucy, a healthy and ready for the world bundle of joy.  Lucy weighed in at 8lbs 15oz and stretched out to 20 inches long.  Mama and baby both did real well and are glad that the hard part of the evening is all done – now it’s time for a little celebration with friends and family, some of whom flew to Denver where Claire and husband David make their home.  Pictured here is Claire’s mom, now a tired Grandma Teine, with little Lucy who is definitely ready to call it a night.

With all the crises and bad stuff happening in the world, events like this remind us that hope always trumps.  A blessing indeed. 

Surviving Augsburg Once More – 1945

George Rebane

[This autobiographical sketch recounts the Rebane family’s entrance into the post-war world of displaced persons just after the war ended in Germany, and before the ‘final disposition’ of the east European refugees would stabilize.  We and thousands like us were still in mortal danger of being forcefully ‘repatriated’.  This was to be our second escape from Augsburg.

The chronological order of these sketches and their links are listed below.  These and future additions, including other related travels, are assembled in the My Story section of RR.  Background on Estonia and stories from my earlier years during the war are marbled into the series 'Road Ruminations' written during our June 2008 return trip to Estonia.] 

‘Christmas in Stettin – 1944’ , ‘The Last Train from Stettin’ , ‘1945 – The year Easter was cancelled’ , ‘The War Ends in Liederberg’ , ‘Sixty years ago today – 4 May 1949’

This piece follows the events described in ‘The War Ends in Liederberg’.  The upcoming story of the Geislingen Displaced Persons Camp years will conclude the pre-America phase of my life.]

 

Our ride south from Liederberg in the back of the Army ¾ ton truck ended in Augsburg, the war devastated city where in 1518 Martin Luther was examined for heresy and escaped northward in the dead of night.  Within two weeks of the war’s end on 8 May 1945, the western allies established a series of collection points – it was too early yet to call them actual camps – for the hundreds of thousands of east Europeans who were lucky enough to find themselves west of the Red Army when the bullets stopped flying.  Vello, Ellen, and their son Jüri Rebane were among the very fortunate – or were they?

Babenhausen Remembers

George Rebane

On Friday morning (15 October 2010) the Babenhausen Veterans and Friends were welcomed by Babenhausen’s mayor (Burgermeisterin Gabriele Coutandin) into its city council chambers specially configured for the long-planned ceremony.   Twelve of us former/retired Army officers along with our wives had returned to the duty station where we all served in the early 1960s.  Our artillery unit was based in the Kaserne (military compound) just outside of town.  Over the years this forward base housed 'STRAC' artillery units (two hours from combat, 24/7) whose mission was to plug the Fulda Gap about an hour or so to the northeast.

 

The main Kaserne facilities were built in 1901 on the site of a historical military base that goes back to the 18th century.  One of the things we found out on this trip was that Babenhausen (which is in Hessen) was the home of the Hessians that Britain used in our Revolutionary War.  And it was these same Hessians that General Washington crossed the Delaware River to rout on Christmas Eve 1776 and thereby change the course of the war which until then had been going poorly for the Americans.

The local count in the area that included Babenhausen ran into money problems with a noble lady he was pursuing in the 1770s.  He had this finely trained regiment of Hessians at Babenhausen which appeared to have some value to King George III of England.  (Recall that old George was really a German and that the court language of England in those days was German.  English had yet to become a language of culture and learning in Europe.  Everyone who was anybody spoke and corresponded in either French, German, or Latin with their equally uppity peers.)   Anyway, the good count dropped a note to the King and a deal was made wherein the Hessian unit was literally ‘sold’ to England, which then shipped them off to fight its unpopular war du jour in America.

Disconnected and Reconnected in Germany

George Rebane

We arrived in Germany last Friday, flying British Airways from SFO to London to Munich.  There we rented a car and took off into the countryside heading for southern Bavaria to attend the birthday gathering of a longtime friend we have known for 50 years.  About 35 people, most of whom we know, from two extended families joined us in the spa town of Bad Wörishofen.  The Germans sure know how to celebrate such events, and our ears were thrown into full immersion in German within hours of getting off the plane.  Everyone seemed to talk faster than we could listen.

We were there for three days and took a lot of opportunities for extended conversations about what’s going on.  The German government is beginning to get more and more worried about the Muslim settlers in their country, or as they put it, the “non-assimilation problem”.  For the first time we saw severely covered Muslim women in some smaller towns.  Previously, they were only visible in the bigger cities.  On TV the Interior Minister was giving interviews talking about how the old assimilation programs have not worked, and that there is great urgency to come up with something that might put a dent into the growth of insular Islamic communities.

We found out that the problem was abetted from the start by the German bureaucrats themselves.  By far, most of Germany’s Muslims are from Turkey.  Some years back when Germans wanted to provide schooling for the Muslim children, the Turkish government offered to sell the German schools secular Turkish school books (Turkey has been a secular Islamic country since Ataturk overthrew the Ottomans earlier in the 20th century).  The Germans refused the books on account that they were not produced in the EU.  So the Islamic schools in Germany were taken over by the local imams who, of course, were of the ‘Islam will conquer the world’ ideology.  And since then the Turkish kids have been going to schools in Germany, funded by the German government, and run by radicalized imams.  No matter where one encounters it, government is government.

Time to Soak the Cannons?

George Rebane

Today we break bread and hoist a glass with friends to celebrate the anniversaries of a number of auspicious events that happened on August 8th.  Among these was America’s signing the UN charter in 1945, and Richard Nixon resigning the Presidency in 1974.  Perhaps not so well known is the Estonian tribes’ victory over Sweden near the town of Lihula in 1220.

Lihula (translates to ‘butchers’ village’) was the Estonians’ last major victory against invaders (Swedes, Germans, Russians) from three sides who ultimately defeated the loosely knit tribes, and then took turns fighting each other as they ruled and ravaged the country for the next six centuries.   During this interval Estonian peasants rose up against their foreign masters about every 70 to 80 years only to have their rebellions be ruthlessly put down.

 

With the advent of gun powder, Estonians secretly made their own cannons for besieging the local fortresses that housed their rulers.  However, because steel was expensive and hard to fashion, Estonian cannons were made of thick oak staves banded with steel usually pilfered from the wheel rims of the ruling nobles.  Until it was time to use them, these wooden cannons were hidden deep in the forests.  There they dried until the cracks between the staves were too large to effectively fire a cannon ball.  (The photo shows a 19th century Vietnamese wooden cannon of similar design.)

To reseal them in preparation for battle, the cannons were moved in the dead of night to a nearby stream or bog, and placed into the water to soak and expand, thereby making the wooden tubes tight again.  To this day Estonians acknowledge the coming time of trouble and tribulations by asking each other, ‘Kas paneme kahurid likku?’, which translates to, ‘Should we start soaking the cannons?’

Remembrances of John Wooden – RIP

George Rebane

John Wooden, a gentleman, mentor, and a teacher of character, died today aged 99.  John Wooden was also the legendary basketball coach at my alma mater UCLA, and a man revered by all who were fortunate enough to know him.

My high school basketball coach Sy Korach was a friend of John Wooden, and when I announced that I would be attending UCLA in the fall of 1958 Mr. Korach wanted to introduce me to him.  I recall that Coach Wooden invited us down to the Westwood campus on one spring evening in 1958.  Mr Korach drove me down and marched me into the Men’s Gym to Coach Wooden’s office. 

He greeted us both very cordially, sat us down, and after a few words with his friend Coach Korach, he turned to me and put a very nervous 18-year-old at ease with questions about my basketball experience and academic plans at UCLA.  He invited me to come out for the team that fall.  As we said our good-byes, it was clear to me that this man taught his players more than basketball.

The War Ends in Liederberg

George Rebane

[This is another in a continuing series of autobiographical sketches that I have been asked to write by friends and family.  I share it with you, my readers, in the hope that these little vignettes (see 'My Story' category) of history and the American immigrant experience are of interest.  But most of all, I hope it may help you understand what shaped the lens through which I interpret our human story, and view the events that are the subjects of these commentaries.]

The German country road streamed like a ribbon from under the ¾ ton Army truck we were riding in on that May morning in 1945.  The war had ended a few days ago and now the little Rebane family was being taken back to a collection point in Augsburg for war refugees who were not German nationals.  I sat between mom and dad on some olive drab colored military looking boxes; we were facing backwards with our three makeshift suitcases piled at our feet.  This road from the little farming village of Liederberg passed through some incredibly green fields on this bright, sunny, and cloudless morning.  Our stay in that very ordinary Bavarian farm community lasted about three weeks, but these short weeks left us with a lifetime of memories – memories that simply were tossed now onto a very big pile of similar memories to be sorted out later.

We must have been a sight as we walked into Liederberg in the latter half of April.  Our party of four was made up of my mom and dad, me, and Rita.  Rita, good-looking and in her late twenties, was my mom’s friend from Estonia.  (How Rita joined us is a saga all of its own and not mine to tell.)  That morning we arrived in Monheim on a narrow gauge train that connected the small town to the city of Augsburg, thirty miles to the south.  Our little episode with the P-51s (see ‘1945 – The Year Easter was Cancelled’) convinced my dad that we would seek a less exciting place in which to wait for the arrival of Patton’s Third Army and the Americans.

To continue reading, please download 'The War Ends in Liederberg'.

1945 - The year Easter was cancelled

George Rebane

[This is another in a continuing series of autobiographical sketches that I have been asked to write by friends and family.  I share it with you, my readers, in the hope that these little vignettes of history and the American immigrant experience are of interest.  But most of all, I hope it may help you understand what shaped the lens through which I interpret our human story, and view the events that are the subjects of these commentaries.]

After five years of war, April of 1945 turned out to be the most harrowing of all for our little family.  We found ourselves in Augsburg, Germany, camped in an abandoned cabin or equipment shed across the road from a now defunct Luftwaffe airfield.  I have no idea how my father and mother found this shelter after getting off the ‘mystery train’ from Berlin.

Two days ago we had left behind a Berlin that was once again in flames from another massive allied bombing.  There Hitler was preparing for his Gotterdammerung somewhere near the Reichstag.  Having arrived from Stettin after sunset, our intention was to keep going southward by any available means.  With the audible drone of a thousand approaching B-17s, and air raid sirens wailing over the city, our definite intention was to make our stay in Berlin as short as possible.  Everyone in the Stettiner Bahnhof railroad station knew that the Red Army had crossed the Oder River and was now positioning itself for the last thrust that would overrun the capitol of the dying Third Reich.

The western allies were approaching the banks of the Elbe River to the west, a line which Stalin had cleverly negotiated at Yalta to be their eastern-most advance.  As a reward for all the suffering it had endured, the USSR would now be allowed to take Berlin and Hitler, and then sweep west to meet the waiting allies.  I was too small to understand any of the irony in this.  And most of the world at that time had also forgotten that in September 1939 Stalin and Hitler had been partners in starting the greatest war of all time.  But then Hitler double-crossed Uncle Joe in June 1941 when he launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet heartland.  Now in April 1945 it was payback time, and Stalin urged his generals to give no quarter.  The devastation in East Prussia and Poland, as witnessed by many huddled that night in the railroad station, gave proof that the Red Army knew exactly what was expected of them.

The ‘mystery train’, under steam and standing quietly, was some distance from the Stettiner Bahnhof. It was discovered by my mom (as described in The Last Train from Stettin (v2010)).  The air raid was already starting as the sky lit up with sweeping searchlight beams and the din of firing AA batteries.  The train itself, hidden in the rail yard among rows of abandoned railroad cars of all descriptions, was blacked out and illuminated only by the muzzle flashes of a nearby battery as it joined with the remaining batteries throughout the city in their futile exercise.

What drew my mother’s attention was the stream of people that appeared out of nowhere.  All were carrying suitcases as they quietly approached and climbed aboard the silent train.  These had to be very special people who knew when to be where so that they too could escape capture by the Soviets.  Staying in Berlin also meant death for our family – to the Soviets we were fugitive ‘enemies of the people’ who were already wanted escapees from Estonia, and would now be accused of aiding the hated Germans.  Mom put two and two together and knew that the train would be heading south, the exact direction that we had to go.  Staying alive meant getting to Bavaria in time to meet General Patton’s Third Army and the Americans.

Christmas in Stettin, 1944

George Rebane

Sixty-five years ago we celebrated Christmas 1944 in a small uninsulated cabin the Germans called a Behelfsheim, a ‘temporary accommodation’.  The Third Reich built these to house the tide of refugees fleeing the Red Army then rapidly advancing from the east.  Our cabin was in a long row of such cabins next to a large empty lot (it seemed like a field to me) near the edge of Stettin.  I remember a howling snowstorm outside was trying to force its way in through the thin walls.  That Christmas we had a little green bush with lit candles on the table but no presents.

My great-aunt Alvi (Alvina) had come to visit with some small hard-to-get delectable that we had shared for the Christmas Eve meal, and then we huddled around the wood stove to hear Herr Goebbels’ evening radio talk to the nation.  Every night he informed us of the great victories the Germans were winning.  After the war my father told me that the German propaganda minister was not fooling anyone because the victories were constantly being won closer to Germany.

Leading up to this Christmas the big news had come from the west.  The Germans had launched a major offensive designed to stop the Allies advance in France and set up conditions for a negotiated peace – or so everyone thought.  History would lump all these battles together as the Battle of the Bulge, and recognize it as a speed bump on the march to the Rhine.  Nevertheless, it was the season of hope and all of Germany was hoping that the terrible five-year war would soon be over.  

My mom, dad, and I had arrived in Stettin the previous spring.  We were part of the growing wave of east Europeans fleeing the Red Army as it began its final offensive on Nazi Germany.  Our native country of Estonia had fallen to the Soviets that September, and it later turned out that almost one hundred thousand or 10% of the population had fled.  Those who stayed believed that after the war the Red Army would quietly go back across the USSR border and Estonia would again be free.

Sixty Years Ago Today – 4 May 1949

George Rebane

 

At first light on 4 May 1949 the USS General Harry Taylor (above) had already slipped through the Verrazano Narrows by the time my father and I joined the other men and boys on the deck of the troopship.  We all wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and the lights of New York that still defined its skyline in the hour before sunrise.  Today we would finally set foot in our new chosen homeland after spending more than four eventful and uncertain years as refugees in the displaced persons camps of post-war Germany.

The port side-rails of the ship were packed as the big troop transport slowly made its way toward the waiting berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Soon it would be joined by two tugs to help nudge us gently into the dock.  But that was still a good hour away and now everyone was looking at the biggest harbor, city, and everything else that they had ever seen.  I remember the conversations were all carried in quiet awe of the passing scenery and anxious anticipation of the momentous events awaiting each family on this most mutually auspicious of days.

The Statue of Liberty was at first hard to make out from the lights of New Jersey.  Everyone, of course, wanted to catch a glimpse because they knew this moment would be remembered forever.  Finally, I saw it for sure when she came abeam of us across the harbor in the west.  In the dim light it looked majestic and exactly like in the pictures I had seen on posters and pamphlets that were handed out to refugees in the camps.  Now her torch seemed very bright.  For me, seeing the monument meant that my mother, father, and I would no longer have to crowd into small single rooms that had been home since Christmas of 1945.  On that May morning we didn’t know that that promise would be delayed for almost a year, but that’s another story. 

Road Ruminations – 29jun08

George Rebane

We are definitely ready to head for the barn.  This is our last night in Estonia and tomorrow morning we drive to the airport, turn in our mud splattered Opel sedan, and fly to Frankfurt.  Yesterday afternoon we arrived back in Tallinn after a short drive from Muhu and Saaremaa, the country’s big island in the Baltic.  There our stay in Pädaste at the renovated manor cum luxury hotel was most pleasant.  On Friday night we ate in their gracious dining room, this time with sharing it with guests that had arrived for the weekend. 

The five course dinner was a “set table” wherein the entire meal was designed by the chef.  This was a good thing because I probably would have blown the whole thing and ordered stuff that wouldn’t go together – I can imagine the twittering at the neighboring tables.  But seriously, the food was expertly prepared and the portions, which initially caused some internal panic, turned out to be more than sufficient – even for a pudgy old Viking like me.  The only problem with the dinner was its extended elegance – it started at seven and lasted until almost ten – which was camouflaged by the long summer evenings’ light at this high latitude of almost sixty degrees.  Jo Ann and I are early eaters, and they sent us to bed with very full bellies.

One of the gentleman guests ordered a glass of port and a cigar as the dessert was being cleared and the last coffees served.  He properly went to enjoy his smoke and drink on the nearby steps just outside the big glass-enclosed patio.  This stirred up some long-dormant juices, for once long ago I too enjoyed those pungent delights after such dinners.  But today, seeing such pleasures from a distance, all I do is pine and start telling stories of when I too … .  As we left the dining room, I decided to stop by the cigar case for a last, longing look, and discovered another little commentary on Estonian culture – their mandated warning label on tobacco products.  The government here doesn’t go into twisted tirades about tobacco causing, perhaps, lung cancer, or possibly aggravating your emphysema, or maybe having your baby born with its three legs in a knot.  No sir, in very big, black-bordered print they get right to the point – “Smoking can kill.”

So yesterday morning, after saying goodbye to the owner, Mr. Martin Breuer, and a couple of especially helpful staff, we drove to the ferry port Kuivastu and got on to the ferry that was just ready to depart.  Half an hour later we were back on the mainland and on our way to Tallinn.  We took some back roads so that I could visit Vasalemma, the small town outside of Tallinn where my aunt once lived.  My dad took mom and me there during an interval in 1943 when the Soviet bombers were hitting the capital every night.  The old train station was the only building there that I could say with certainty that I had passed through, we no longer have my aunt’s old address.  Oh yes, this report would be incomplete without mentioning the obscene field of wildflowers we drove by.  It’s amazing how fast I can still react to an authoritarian voice screaming that I stop the car so we could take a picture.

Road Ruminations - 27jun08

Jo Ann Rebane

More cultural notes from Estonia.  First, it must be said that WiFi connectivity, although promised at our hotel in Pärnu, was slow to non-functional.  And here at the Pädaste Manor on Muhu Island the excellent wireless connection we had initially was knocked out by yesterday's mid-day thunder, lightning, and hail storm (George said it fried their router's network card).  While we dinned in the Seahouse Restaurant the storm raged outside.  We walked back to our room under clearing skies and the promise of sunshine.  Please visit the hotels’ website to get an idea of the splendor of this place called Estonia’s finest hotel and spa.  Truly, our arrival timing was fortunate.  We were the only guests last night and this morning, so they kindly upgraded us from the simplest “double” I’d reserved, to a fabulous two story suite in the Carriage House (two left hand windows on the second floor are ours).  It looks just like the picture on the website! This morning the entire dining room was all ours for a private breakfast with very attentive service and beautiful music in the background - they even lit all the candles in the dining room and on the patio for us. 

Continuing with cultural notes:

• Tidy road sides.  We learned from a store clerk (studying 20th century wars) that two months ago (May) 50,000 Estonians turned out across the land to pick up trash in public areas and along road sides.  That’s one more explanation for the pristine countryside we see.
• Holidays and businesses.  June 23rd and 24th are both national holidays in Estonia.  We’ve encountered more “closed for the holiday” signs in shops and restaurants than you’d ever see in Nevada City or Sacramento or San Francisco.  In Tartu, merchants aren’t prepared for tourists and tourists don’t come… Is this a chicken and egg problem?  Thank goodness our hotel feels a responsibility to its guests and maintains a first class restaurant.
• Public restrooms.  I’m pleasantly surprised to find restrooms (WC) widely available, free, clean and stocked with toilet paper, soap and paper towels.  What a relief!
• Wildlife sighting.  I saw a mini deer (not a fawn but a small scale deer) today standing at the interface where the forest meets the road’s shoulder.  We were driving from Pärnu to the ferry terminal at Virtsu on a secondary road.  That was a real surprise and treat.

Road Ruminations – 24jun08

George Rebane

Estonian Health Care.  In Viljandi Jo Ann and I were surprised to learn that our friend Bruno, who is a surgeon at the large provincial hospital (pictured on the horizon), is paid less than we pay our yard and garden help in Nevada County.  The country has a socialized health care system of the kind that our progressive politicians are trying to put in place.  Estonia, on the other hand, is currently seeking other solutions.

The system has the usual problems of long wait periods for certain kinds of treatments, difficulty of referral to specialists, and so on.  And the situation is getting worse because Estonia trains excellent physicians (e.g. here at the University of Tartu) who are much in demand all over the world where they can enjoy much higher wages relative to their cost of living.  Therefore, many of them emigrate and consequently leave the country with marginal staffing levels at hospitals and clinics.

Also the good Dr. Bruno and many others are forced to go to other countries to get timely medical care, especially for those involving procedures that the state declares to be discretionary.  It’s always puzzled me how these bureaucrats know what I consider critical and/or necessary to my quality of life.  They just sit there at a distance and tell the population what it really needs, and what it doesn’t need – amazing!

Estonian national health insurance adds an employer paid 13% burden to each worker’s base pay.  Additionally, each worker pays a 26% flat tax deducted from his paycheck that will be stepped down to 20% in about four years.

It will be interesting to see what these very practical people come up with as they seek to fix their healthcare system (a good summary of which is found here).  The respected think tank Cato Institute studies American healthcare as one of its main public policy research areas.  They have some information about healthcare solutions here that you don’t see on the evening news.  Sometimes it feels that in many areas we in the US are following a trail littered with abandoned and derelict public policies picking and choosing among the worst as we mindlessly mumble the new mantra ‘change’.

Tomorrow we leave Tartu and drive across southern Estonia to the beach resort city of Pärnu.

Road Ruminations – 23jun08

Jo Ann Rebane

Some cultural observations from Estonia:

• The Estonian people are physically beautiful, especially those in the big cities of Tallinn, Viljandi and Tartu.
• Service staff (hotel front desk, wait staff, store clerks) seem to have a aloof, couldn’t care less attitude.  Friendly, helpful personnel are the exception.  We’ve had particularly helpful young people manning the front desk here in Tartu.  They are university students eager to speak English.
• People are strictly formal with newcomers, taking time to assess intent.
• There’s affluence here.  We see Jeeps, Toyota land cruisers and families in minivans.
• On weekday mornings and evenings people walk with a sense of purpose, briskly headed to train, bus and job.
• Evenings we see people carrying cut flowers surrounded by a cone of brown paper and wonder who will get the flowers.
• In Tallinn we saw very few babies, so few that we began to count them. We counted on average ten a day in a city of 400,000 which seems very low.  In Viljandi, population 20,000 and located in the center of the country, babies and mothers were everywhere so we abandoned counting strollers and buggies.
• It’s rare to see a police car – maybe 3 a day, total.
• These people, the youth in particular, haven’t heard or don’t believe that smoking causes cancer.  Almost all smoke.
• The Otepää “alpine” resort area we visited reminded me of the German or Swiss alps except many fewer people have trod the paths, dropped their bottle caps, and snuffed out cigarette butts.  Therefore that place seemed fresher.  It’s also less crowded.  Less impact from fewer people.  Just wait!
• In the countryside the dominant color is green.  Green rye and turnip fields, green forests, green weeds.  It’s no wonder country housewives prefer bright red flowers in their gardens.
• There’s a bus stop about every two kilometers.  Sometimes it’s just a wide spot in the road marked by a signpost.  Other bus stops include a shelter of various designs with roof and benches.
• Wood piles.  Wood is widely used for heating, probably year round.  Therefore each dwelling, including apartment blocks have huge stacks of firewood.  We have seen firewood stacked against a building, in free standing rows, covered and uncovered, massed in multiple rows, and the most interesting – in the shape of a stout cylinder.
• Field stones.  Glaciation tumbled boulders across the land and deposited them everywhere.  The smooth boulders which are too big to move have been left in fields and plowed around.  Smaller stones are dug up and moved to the edge of the field and piled up there.  In Otepää and in eastern Estonia near Lake Peipsi the stones have been arranged into low walls and to form planted garden mounds.
• Old people.  We were told that it’s cheapest for them to live in very rural villages.  You don’t see many really old people in the cities but it is common to see an old woman shuffle across a country lane oblivious to the occasional automobile.

Road Ruminations – 22jun08

George Rebane

Today was another one of those days which makes you think whether you took the wrong turn somewhere and wound up in a travelogue film.  We took a trip down to Otepää (unpronounceable by tongues born and bred in the US), a resort and winter sports training community in southeast Estonia about 30 miles from Tartu.  The country here, now a bit more hilly, continues to be what one can only call Disneyesque – every scene is sculpted to perfection, we have yet to see our first piece of trash *anywhere*.

Before going to bed last night, a squall passed over Tartu and in its waning trail left a complete double rainbow.  I had to take a picture of it through the rain covered skylight window in our hotel room.  Note that the brighter rainbow strongly demarks the regions of light and dark sky as if they were painted that way on purpose – they were.

We headed south toward Otepää along what have now become typical Estonian highways – Jo Ann says she is getting a bit jaded by it all and wants to see something out of order.  For those of you having been in New Zealand or the German Alps, this is the closest to which I can compare this land.

We stopped in Otepää for directions to Pühajärv (Holy Lake, equally unpronouncable) that was also visited and consecrated by the Dalai Lama in 1992.  This beautiful lake is the jewel of the region and has two swimming beaches, an eight-mile-long paved and wide hiking/training trail that circumnavigates the 2.5 mile long lake.

Road Ruminations – 21jun08

George Rebane

We arrived in Tartu – Estonia’s university city – early this afternoon after a short 40-mile drive from Viljandi that passed by Võrtsjärv, Estonia’s largest lake.  Again, it was a beautiful drive along a countryside where every community has assembled the makings of the annual and traditional very large ‘John’s Day’ bonfire.  This is the summer solstice weekend which in 2008 gives the Estonians a four-day period of merrymaking and we can already hear groups of young men belting out traditional and not-so-traditional songs in the big town square in front of Tartu’s impressive city hall – a rendition of the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ just ended.

We settled into the hotel and then got directions to go on another discovery trek, this time to find the location of where a well-known and oft-described 1936 photo of my uncle Ralph and his girlfriend.  We found the location, but that’s another story.  On the way there we stopped for a picnic lunch at a park across the small lake that separated us from our destination.  Seeking a place to sit down next to the lake we ran into the abomination of a war memorial pictured below.

Carved in stone are commemorative lies in both Russian and Estonian –

“1941 Great Patriotic War 1945 – Our defenders and liberators, the sons of all the  peoples of the USSR are gratefully remembered forever by (the people of) Tartu.”

Such monuments are a blight on the Estonian countryside and a reminder of a wound that has little chance of healing.  Estonians who witnessed and lived through the horrors of Soviet occupation would tear down such monuments in a heartbeat.  However, the Russian ethnic minority would then riot as they did last year when such a monument in the center of Tallinn was only moved to a less prominent place.  This incident launched the first cyber attack by one nation against another when denial-of-service messages from Russia flooded the Estonian internet servers and sites.  With the help of a multi-national team that included US experts, the attack was thwarted and now Estonia is the site of a new institution in which such tactics of future IT wars are studied.

Road Ruminations – 20jun08

Jo Ann Rebane

This is a land where we are very comfortable.  Not because we have our very own language expert and native Estonian speaker along (the language is very hard for the foreigner to pronounce, much less read).  We’re comfortable because the countryside is tidy and homes well tended.  The roads are good and the cities are easy to navigate once the traveler has a good map in hand. 

These Estonians are a strikingly beautiful people, especially the young.  They are overwhelmingly tallish, thin, blond and beautiful.  Every other 20-30 year old is simply gorgeous.  One can hardly take your eyes off of the toddlers and their mothers.  Estonians dress in that international style, indistinguishable as to nationality.  And that’s what’s so confusing.  We’re in a wonderland of attractive people.  How can it be?  Did the homely ones emigrate or did the Soviets send them all to Siberia?