“Pancho Villa’s Air Force”

It is amazing who you meet at the beach. Learning I had written “Dos Gringos,” a book set in The Mexican Revolution, a nice woman introduced me to her friend saying the friend’s father was involved with building an air force for Pancho Villa.  The father was Frank Wallace, one of those adventurous aviation pioneers during the wild days before, during, and after WW I. Wallace’s story is full of thrills and survival. His first flight was at the age of eleven when his foot caught in the rope of a hot-air balloon which hauled him up, ankle first over Bellingham, Washington. They pulled him into the basket, but the crowd thought it was part of the show and so he continued to do it, for money.

No, Pancho Villa never had an “air force” as badly as he wanted airplanes to bomb the Federáles. But, there was no shortage of money for this after all the banks were robbed.  It was Frank Wallace who was involved to get these planes, but it all fell through as much seemed to do for all sides, and the money into various pockets. Villa had an American or two flying reconnaissance for him at times, but neither the airplanes or the pilots lasted for long. That’s a bigger story. The photo above is of the famous Curtiss JN-4 “Jenney” used by the fledging American forces to chase Villa after he invaded New Mexico.

In his flying life Wallace knew them all– Glenn Curtiss, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford and was a member of the esoteric Quiet Birdmen society. He soloed at Curtiss’ North Island School in March, 1911, then barnstormed and flew in Mexico, South America, Italy, Poland, and Costa Rica.  His story, and voluminous notes are compiled in a draft by his daughter JoAnne Rowan who shared the stories with me.

Buy a copy of “Dos Gringos”  here.

A Forgotton War: Warsaw 1920

A friend of mine, originally from Krakow, Poland recommended this book to me. I had never heard of this war—at this critical time and place in European history. In this book, Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe  by Adam Zamoyski reminds us about an obscure war that had great ramifications. Coming as it did between the World Wars the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1921 was pivotal in stemming the Soviet advance into Europe and in saving the Versailles peace conference and a reconstructed Poland. Zamoyski believes that this Polish victory saved Western Europe from being overrun by the Russians, with consequences that would have created Communist states in Germany, other Eastern European states, and possibly even as far West as France.

The new Soviet state was a mess after their brutal civil war, and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to a ruined Germany. As usual, geography dictates. Between Russia and Germany lay Poland. Egged on by Trotsky, Lenin launched a massive westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky and the Russians were only a few kilometers from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week’s march away. Then the Miracle of the Vistula occurred: the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history and Lenin was forced to settle for Communism in one country—for a time. What a mess it was, hundreds of thousands of men fought and died and a look at the maps seemed to me like four football teams on one field with no set boundaries or goals. So many mistakes, such a big victory.

Pushkin was right!

“To the orders of God or muse be obedient.

Don’t be afraid of insult,

don’t demand the laurel wreath.

Slander and praise receive

with equal indifference.

     And never argue with a fool.”

This is from a poem Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1836. The epigraph is from Horace – “Exegi Monumentum”

Maybe if he had taken his own advice, he would not have lost in life in a senseless duel in St. Petersburg not long after he wrote this. Nevertheless the advice is not to be ignored. I gave these words in a calligraphic poem, framed, as a gift to my teenaged grandchildren for their home or college room walls. It is advice we all should follow.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

The Cossacks are Coming

Recently I was introduced to a Russian lady here in California who soon informed me she was in fact a Cossack. In my interest in Russian history and culture I know about the Cossacks, but hard facts are elusive as to who they really are.  I knew them from the dramatic pictures and wild stories and that they chased Napoleon out of Russia in 1812. A few questions from my ignorance brought her answer, “Cossacks are a nation.” The origin of the name “Cossack” is from an early Turkic word meaning “free man”—anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority.  An independent people they have always been.

Olga told us of her family, its terrible treatment under Stalin, the “disappearance” of most of the men, Meeting Olga encouraged me to do a little research and I find their identity goes back the 16^th century in that southern steppe lands of Eastern Europe and Asian Russia, around the Dnieper and Don rivers—that geographic location destined to be forever in the way of invading armies going south or north, with  the Cossacks allying with one side or the other, or both.

As I underline in “Walking on Ice, an American Businessman in Russia,” I am always amazed at the determination and strength of many of the Russian women who come here for a new life. To meet a Cossack woman, here only three years, with a good job, and hear her decent English and resolve to better herself in this totally different culture, is admirable. The Cossacks are coming, but maybe only one at a time.

The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan of Turkey, the painting by Ilya Repin shown above is in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg

Coco Chanel and WHO? Rasputin??

No, they were not lovers. Really!! But there is a connection, albeit a long thin one. Grand Duke Dimitri was one of the handful, led by Prince Felix Yusupov, who murdered Rasputin in Saint Petersburg in December, 1916. Czar Nicholas II sent the conspirators far out of town and Dimitri was sent to a military unit in Persia. In the next year, 1917, it was all over for Czarist Russia and the Grand Duke never returned. Like many other fleeing Russians he ended up in Paris. And who do you think took notice of the aristocrat’s arrival? Coco Chanel. She was eleven years his senior but that didn’t stop either one.

 The French perfume business was booming because the scents didn’t last past eleven in the evening. So they bathed in the stuff. (Can you imagine!) But, as I heard the story, Dimitri said to Coco that she should not sell big bottles of perfume for cheap prices, but small bottles for high prices. He introduced Coco to Ernest Beaux, a successful Russian-born perfumer from St. Petersburg, whose French employer, Coty, would not follow his suggestions. Beaux insisted that the addition of deer musk would make the perfume last the night. Coco hired Beaux, added dear musk to the eighty-some other ingredients and voilà- Chanel No. 5 was born—that was 1920. The Coco-Dimitri affair was in 1921 and while she moved on to others, the relationship in indeed historic. You may have seen the film “Igor and Coco” about her affair with Stravinsky. It seems she liked Russians – famous Russians.

In my next book, “The Lady with the Ostrich Feather Fan” you will learn more about Rasputin’s murder, but it is really about the “life” of two Rembrandts that were the pride of the Yusupov collection and now hang in the National Gallery of Art. More on that later. This perfume story is just one of the many side-stories that emerge when writing.

To read more about all this read “Chanel” by Edmonde Charles~Roux.

The Spirit of the Siberian Tiger

Alexander Dolitsky is deeply absorbed by the Russian heritage of Alaska and lives in Juneau.  He has written many books on this subject, but the ones I have been so enthralled with are the tales and myths from Siberia, and especially his book, “Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East.” It is a masterpiece of story-telling, of art, poetry, and information. The illustrations are phenomenal. The stories focuses on the cultural significance Siberian tigers have held in the Russian Far East and tells us much about the native people, the Eskimo and Chukchi.

Dolitsky, who heads the “Alaska-Siberia Research Center,” is now beginning a new series of tales from the north country that will be published in the future. It is certainly a pleasure to be on the edge of this and see it growing.

To acquire a copy of “Spirit of the Siberian Tiger…” contact adolitsky@gci.net or write  the Alaska-Siberia Research Center, P.O. Box 34871, Juneau, Alaska 99803.

“Dos Gringos” for Latinos

The interest in “Dos Gringos” amongst the Latino community is growing.   As Dena Burroughs writes in the “LatinoLA” and earlier in “LA Arts Examiner,“  the story in Dos Gringos is of particular interest this year as November 2010 will mark the centennial of the onset of the Mexican Revolution.”

She points out, “While World War I created havoc on the other side of the world, civil strife went on in Mexico for ten years in a war that became known as the Mexican Revolution. Those years saw a simple bandit become a revolutionary man whose name is today a Mexican icon – Pancho Villa – in a war fought between two sides supplied with arms by one same foreign outfit. It was also the time, says Frederick R. Andresen in his book Dos Gringos, when a Norwegian and an Irishman found themselves hired in El Paso, TX, to work at a gold mine in the town of Parral, Mexico.

The adventures of Arthur Johannesen and Michael Flaherty, amidst gun fire and colorful country sceneries, are what Andresen describes in his book based on the tales told to him years later by his 70-year-old father – the Norwegian of the story.”

Dena Burroughs recommends, “Dos Gringos is an entertaining read presented in 28 short chapters. It feels familiar with the names of real towns both north and south of the US/Mexico border and by the use of…Spanish sentences within the dialogue. It is likewise a tale of immigration – Europeans who left their land to come to the Americas in search of work and tranquility and who married, worked, built, and made this continent their home and a home for their children.”

I am pleased this little episode in that crazy and dangerous time finds an appreciative audience with our Latino friends.

See http://latinola.com/story.php?story=8814  for the whole article

Texas History Rewritten

Napoleon said, “History is what men have decided upon.” When I saw a PBS television show a few years ago about The Battle of the Alamo, I knew what he meant.

 As a high school student in El Paso, Texas, we dutifully learned all about the founding of The Republic of Texas and the famous 1836 Battle of the Alamo.  But we never were taught about the thousands of Hispanics who lived there long before its settlement by the migrating Anglos from what were later the southern states of the new United States of America. These Hispanics were the Tejanos, an independent frontier people who immigrated from the Spanish Canary Islands originally in 1731 and settled in San Antonio which was then northeastern Mexico. This was long before the stories of Davy Crockett, James Bowie, or John Wayne. They were farmers and merchants, who rebelled from Spain, and produced leaders such as Juan Seguin who commanded a force that fought Santa Ana and helped establish an independent Texas.  And there was Jose Antonio Navarro who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.  

I am glad to now know, after all these years, about this small but brave people who settled Texas, fought for its independence and died along the famous names we learned about  in the Texas history books.   We read now again in Texas the identity and role of the Tejanos is being dismissed in their textbooks. Napoleon was right.

Read more about Texas. Buy a copy of “Dos Gringos”  here.

Confessions of a Russophile

From the review for “Walking on Ice. An American Businessman in Russia” from Russia Profile magazine, by its editor, Andrei Zolotov, Jr.  

Of the legion of Western entrepreneurs who came to Russia in the early 1990s in search of opportunities, many came here guided not just by greed, but by a quest for adventure. But there were few who had become infatuated with Russian culture built their businesses as a cultural matchmaking of sorts. They had the inquisitive minds and open hearts of cultural interpreters, which helped push their projects in the land, where, as one such person, Frederick R. Andresen put it, “everything is difficult—and everything is possible.”

Andresen put his insightful observations into a tenderly written, concise book, which is neither an academic study, nor a memoir; neither a business manual, nor a cultural history. Yet it somehow manages to serve all these purposes and can be recommended as an easy and highly educational read for aspiring Russia scholars and people preparing for a tour of duty in Russia.

  Read more »

St. Petersburg is a City of Cats

St. Petersburg is a city of cats. From the streets at night, you can see their shining eyes, peering through the arches from the inner decay of “Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg,” the faceless blocks of communal flats behind the Italianate buildings on the main streets. The cats hang comfortably in the dead trees, dine elegantly in the overflowing garbage, sit regally on the broken steps. In front of our office, in the winter, the last car to park was identified by the presence of the cats, healthy and fat, curled up on the warmest hood.

Petersburg is a proud city which keeps itself as different from Moscow as possible. On one hand it disdains the crass commercialism, the naked power of Moscow and on the other is jealous for some of it. But with Messers Putin and Medvedev and their colleagues from the city, changes are taking place.

St. Petersburg is a feminine city. She is an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. It is the most beautiful Italianate city in Europe. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, canals, architecture, statuary, museums, performing arts, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten.

St. Petersburg is all things, but one wonders at times if it really exists. Beneath the 300-year-old veneer of classical European architecture and fantasy lies the decrepit relicts of communal communism, the “the Dostoevsky St. Petersburg”―and the satisfied cats. To me, it is the most thrilling city in Europe.

(Moscow is a city of dogs. Stay tuned.)

Read more about St. Petersburg. Buy the book here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”