Singing in the subway station bomb shelter

I finished the book Find Me by André Aciman. This is the sequel to Call Me By Your Name I read and wrote about a couple weeks ago. In reading the first book I wondered what would be in the sequel because the first one projected lovers Elio and Oliver meeting in the future. I’ll start with what I didn’t like. The story can be annoyingly vague. It begins with Samuel meeting Miranda. Wasn’t this supposed to be about Elio and Oliver? It took a long time for the story to tell me Samuel is Elio’s father. It took so long I peeked at the description of the book on the back cover, something I rarely do. The second part of the book took a while to tell me this is about Elio. A third part took a while to say it was about Oliver. Why is the book so coy with names? The book opens with Samuel on the train to Rome. Miranda gets on in Florence and share’s Samuel’s compartment. She warns him that relationships with her don’t last long because she quickly tires of lovers. By the time they get to Rome Sami is entranced enough he ditches most of his plans for the day. And we know where this is going even though Miranda is half Sami’s age. In the second section Elio, now about 30 and in Paris falls in love with Michel, a man twice his age. This section adds a puzzle. Elio is now a concert pianist and Michel hands him a piece of music handwritten by Léon that had been given to Michel’s father Adrien. In trying to track down Léon they begin to suspect he and Adrien were lovers. In the third section Oliver has lots of regrets. And the brief closing fourth section needed a lot more explanation. The individual stories were lovely and Miranda is quite a character. But because of the vagueness this gets only a weak recommendation. I may not have bothered mentioning this book (many books I read don’t get a mention in this blog), though I did because I had written about the first book. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated yesterday. I now have data covering more than 800 days. The number of new cases per day over the last three weeks have been 2572, 3116, and 4524. This is definitely going in the wrong direction. The deaths per day has remained low over the last two weeks with one day at 12, another at 10, and the rest in single digits. At least this is good news. I haven’t written about the war in Ukraine for perhaps close to a week. One reason why I haven’t is there seems to be little happening. The other is the abortion rights story consumed all my writing time. So here’s a break from that story. From a report posted last Saturday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that Ukraine announced a counteroffensive on the Russian positions between Kharkiv and the border. Sumner then discussed heavy artillery fire very close to one of the bridges across the Siverskyi Donets River. At this point the evidence got a bit confusing. This river is formidable and a strong barrier to moving armies – in either direction. There was also fighting around Izyum, one of the places Russia is pushing into Ukraine territory. On Monday Sumner wrote about the big May 9 Victory Parade in Moscow to mark the end of WWII. There was a great deal of speculation that Putin would announce something – a big victory, a fresh mobilization, actually declaring war on Ukraine rather than calling it a “special operation.” That speculation prompted watchers to say Putin would do this or that in Ukraine so that he would have something big to announce at the parade. And ... not much. Few planes flew overhead – the official reason bad weather, though the sky was blue. The unofficial reason might be there aren’t enough operational planes. The number of soldiers and heavy equipment was smaller. There was no top general to stand with Putin (rumored to be injured near Izyum). Putin’s big speech repeated his basic points – Nazis everywhere but in Russia – but no claim to victory, no declaration of war, and no general mobilization. Sumner graded it a C+ at best. Sumner also reported that in Eastern Ukraine, in Donbas Russia is making slow and incremental progress, a kilometer at a time. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of Daily Beast who wrote while giving that speech Putin sounded like a loser compared to Ukraine’s Zelensky:

In a carefully crafted video message, Zelensky’s point was inescapable: Russia’s effort is doomed precisely because Putin has not only forgotten the lessons of World War II but because he’s defiled and abused the memory of its victims and heroes. Zelensky’s video was stark and involved none of the flash and posing of the Russian “celebration.” But in that simplicity and starkness, it revealed the sham and betrayal of Russia’s parades.

In a report posted Tuesday Sumner wrote about a grisly finding (no judgment if you want to skip to the next paragraph). From the start of this war Russia has obviously been undercounting its dead. Many family members are told their soldiers are missing in action or accused of going AWOL. In the Donetsk region thousands of men – well, their bodies – were stacked in a dump. Putin has promised to increasing the compensation for relatives killed in action (with caveats and limitations), though one can be sure there won’t be a payment if the soldier is merely “missing in action.” So maybe this isn’t surprising. Lefty Coaster of the Kos community quoted articles from Newsweek and The Hill about briefings at the US Defense Department that not only are soldiers refusing to obey orders many of the midlevel officers are too. Well, many times the officers are saying they will follow orders but not actually do so with the promptness expected. In some units, full of conscripts, they are sabotaging their own vehicles. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that Bono and U2 bandmate The Edge have been performing in Ukraine, including a 40 minute concert in a Kyiv subway station that is used as a bomb shelter. Cool! Though Russian troops have withdrawn from around Kyiv the city is still occasionally being hit by missiles. In Tuesday’s update Sumner reported that Ukraine has cleared an area west of the Siverskyi Donets River all the way to the Russian border. Sumner cautioned that there is no official confirmation of the drive, though there are several unofficial sources. There is still a pocket of Russian forces north and northeast of Kharkiv, though there are reports they, or some of them, are withdrawing back across the border. Part of the drive along the west side of the river was first seen as an attempt to get to the last bridge over the river before Russia blew it up. Alas, all the bridges are now down. This means for Ukraine to clear Russians out of the east side of the river they have to come up with some way across. Sumner included bits of the map from Ukraine War Mapper that showed the territory near Kharkiv that Russia held on April 27 and again on May 11. The later map shows a lot less territory held by Ukraine. In a Wednesday update Sumner discussed in more detail Russia’s apparent withdrawing from the Kharkiv area. If true the effort is in progress. Sumner also pointed out a few places where that river might be crossed with a pontoon bridge. Of course, both sides can build pontoon bridges. In a post from yesterday evening, Sumner related the story of a Ukrainian engineer who posted a thread about a Russian attempt to cross the river. This engineer figured out were Russians would start to build their bridge and where the other end of the bridge would end up. He saw that Russia would need eight sections to get fully across. So when Russia got seven sections in place – and when the waiting Russian troops were most exposed – Ukraine opened up the heavy artillery and brought in a few planes. The bridge was destroyed, as was a great deal of Russian equipment. Plus a lot of men, including those with bridge building expertise.