The father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, in Washington, D.C.:

Taking his "Here I Stand" pose, as he so often does when appearing in statue form, Dr. Luther is memorializing his glory days. You know, the Diet of Worms; his dramatic refusal to recant; his death sentence and midnight escape.

The statue is a replica of one which stands in Germany at Worms (pronounced "Verms") according to Wikipedia. (On Worms being pronounced "Verms": I may have gone all through confirmation class, at a Lutheran church, unaware that using the wobbly English 'W' in that name was not quite right).

More photos of the statue and vicinity are below (including one from the 1920s):

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I once had a Costco Korea membership. That was January 2013 to January 2014. I used it at the Ilsan and Youngdeungpo stores a few times. My conclusion was that Costco Korea's negatives outweigh its positives. The prices are not better than the other "marts" like HomePlus or E-Mart, and you have to buy in bulk. It's also a chaotic atmosphere in there. Visits are stressful, and it's a long trip there.

There are two pluses, though:

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A few weeks ago, I found a DVD of "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" which is set during the Korean War. It's a classic, though an obscure one.

The war ended in July 1953. This movie was made in 1954 and released late that year.

The movie is set during that long, cynical stage of the Korean War without a clear and decisive objective and without the intention of victory. American policy was deliberately to "not win the war" starting in spring 1951. From then on, strategic policy was to fight for a status-quo stalemate. (Parallels to Vietnam are here for the taking.)

Now, "Bridges at Toko-Ri" is not what you'd expect. In theory, it's about the war in Korea. In fact, we see hardly any "War" and even less "Korea" (i.e., there is very little combat and very little of the movie takes place in Korea itself).

The movie interests me for a lot of reasons. One is the differences between the 1950s-USA and the 2010s-USA. There are too many to comment on.

Here is one: During a "mission briefing" scene, almost every single character is puffing away on a cigarette. If you look closely below, you can see four or maybe five of the men with lit cigarettes. The leader is puffing on a big cigar. You won't see this so much these days. It surprised me to see smoking on a Navy vessel in the first place. Apparently it was done a lot, but is on the way out according to "Smoking in the United States Military"wiki article.

The hero, Brubaker, is seated in the middle (he is the John-Wayne-looking character [actor: William Holden]).

Everything about this character/man fits a certain archetype in pre-1970-or-so American cinema that we seldom see anymore, I think: The "Artistocratic-Yet-Rugged Heroic American Male": Admirable; honorable; noble. A certain accent, a certain manner, and a certain look. Today, this William Holden would much less likely be cast as the quintessential, timeless American Hero, and much more likely as the "quintessential" Villain!

But it is still 1954. A man like Brubaker is still a heroic figure to be looked up to.

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