John Brown's Notes and Essays

image from Putin dies and goes to hell, but after a while, he is given a day off for good behavior. So he goes to Moscow, enters a bar, orders a drink, and asks the bartender: -Is Crimea ours? -Yes, it is. -And the Donbas? -Also ours. -And Kyiv? -We got that too. Satisfied, Putin drinks, and asks: -Thanks, how much do I owe you? -5 euros. (via a friend)

Even Russian liberals and dissidents have traditionally shared Putin’s view that Ukraine has no distinct cultural identity By Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal , April 28, 2022 12:57 pm ET [original article contains an additional illustration] As a young poet in the Soviet Union, Joseph Brodsky was persecuted by the authorities before escaping to the U.S. in 1972 and going on to win the Nobel Prize in literature. In Soviet-era Kyiv, Ukrainian intellectuals used to trade coveted samizdat reprints of Brodsky’s poems, reciting them at clandestine gatherings. But the affection wasn’t mutual. At a reading in 1992, less than a year into Ukraine’s existence as an independent nation, Brodsky offered a new poem titled “To the Independence of Ukraine.” “Farewell khokhols,” he intoned, using a racial slur for Ukrainians. “We’ve lived together, now enough. Wish I could spit into the Dnipro river, perhaps it would now flow backwards.” Brodsky went on to predict that when the ungrateful Uk...

Governments see Ukrainian success offering chance of curbing Russian expansionism  image (not from article) from By William Mauldin in Washington, Max Colchester in London and Laurence Norman in Berlin, The Wall Street Journal , Apr. 29, 2022 1:05 pm ET [original article contains illustrations and a video] Ukraine’s military successes against Russia have transformed calculations in Washington and other Western capitals, leading to a sharp increase in military help for Kyiv as a war that started with Western efforts at damage control has become one that offers a strategic opportunity to constrain Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The U.S. and its allies are now shipping large volumes of heavy weaponry to Ukraine, including more advanced Western systems to supplement the light weapons and Soviet-era arms that were funneled into Ukraine since before  the invasion  started. Those shipments are aimed at supporting Kyiv in the next decisive  phase of the war  in comin...

Headline: Man in Wheelchair Shot in DC, 3 Suspects Wanted “People like that deserve to be in jail because they have demonstrated they cannot live in community”  By Gina Cook, NBC News • Published April 29, 2022 • Updated on April 29, 2022 at 6:48 pm Metropolitan Police Department Police released this image of the three suspects. A man in a wheelchair was shot last week, and D.C. police are searching for three teenage suspects they believe were involved. The man was shot in the 7000 block of Blair Road NW just before 7 p.m. on Friday, April 22. Three men about 17 to 18 years old ran from the scene, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said during a news conference on Monday.  Medics took the victim to a hospital. His condition and the extent of his injuries are unknown at this time. "That is unacceptable," Contee said angrily. “People like that deserve to be in jail because they have demonstrated they cannot live in community.” Contee image (not from article) from

Richard J. Franke, who has died at age 90, specialized in tax-exempt securities as CEO of Nuveen and founded a humanities festival in Chicago image (not from article), with caption: Piano Donated by Franke Family Fosters ‘Extraordinary Musicianship’ at UChicago’s Department of Music  By James R. Hagerty , The Wall Street Journal , Apr. 28, 2022 10:01 am ET Richard J. Franke was a history major at Yale before earning his M.B.A. degree at Harvard in 1957.   Later, as chief executive of John Nuveen & Co., a Chicago-based fund manager specializing in tax-exempt bonds, he considered that history degree at least as important as the business training. He was more apt to quote Sophocles or Montaigne than any financial guru. He hired people with degrees in philosophy, English or theology as well as those with financial skills.   Sophocles image from Wikipedia The humanities [jb - see , note reservations ("humanistic" ones?) about this Wikipedia entry] , Mr. Franke argued, ...