Justin’s Newsletter: March 2023
Justin’s Newsletter: March 2023
Vol. 3, Issue 3
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What’s Up With Me
The 20th episode of “Well Read with Justin Chapman” features an interview with Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole, author of We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. It’s an epic read, covering various aspects of Irish history and culture from the 1950s to the present day, and we had a wide-ranging conversation about Ireland, from the Troubles to Brexit. Watch the episode here.
The latest episode of "Pasadena Monthly with Justin Chapman" features a discussion with Southern California Public Radio’s Chief Content Officer Kristen Muller about KPCC changing its name to LAist 89.3. Watch the episode here, and catch future episodes every fourth Friday of the month at 5 p.m. PT on Pasadena Media’s cable channels, streaming apps, and YouTube.
Around Town This Month
Stories to Keep an Eye On
International: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “delays” his plan to take over the judicial system a day after firing his defense minister for suggesting he do the same thing. Not because that’s what he wants to do. But because the Israeli people made it untenable for him to continue pursuing it… for now. That fight is far from over, but kudos to the people who put their foot down to maintain one of the core pillars of their democracy.
National: So Trump’s getting arrested, huh? I’ll believe it when I see it. How are we in the 2024 presidential election season already? As Trump himself puts it, 2024 is “the final battle.” That’s for damn sure. There’s a real sense of apocalypsia—new word—in the air.
California: Apparently, taxpayers in “most of California” now have until October 16 to file 2022 federal individual and business tax returns and make tax payments that were originally due on April 18, due to the recent and ongoing severe winter storms, flooding, landslides, and mudslides, according to the IRS.
Local: The judge in the lawsuit filed by the California Apartment Association against the City of Pasadena over Measure H, the voter-approved rent control charter amendment, rejected CAA’s arguments, and therefore rent control will continue to be the law of the land in Pasadena.
Great Reads
Here are some recommendations for great books I’ve read recently:
The Hunt for Martin Bormann: The Truth—Charles Whiting
I’m just endlessly fascinated by the story of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary who ruthlessly wielded much of the power of the Nazi Party. Give me any book that claims Bormann survived after fleeing the Führerbunker shortly after burning the corpses of Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels, Magda Goebbels, and the six Goebbels children after they all committed suicide on April 30 and May 1, 1945, as the Red Army bombarded its way to the center of Berlin. The official account is that Bormann died on May 2 near a bridge not far from the bunker, that he carried a copy of Hitler's last will and testament, traveled with a group through a U-Bahn tunnel to Friedrichstraße station, where they tried to cross the Spree River on the Weidendammer Bridge by hiding behind a tank, which was hit by a Russian rocket. They then walked to Lehrter station (now Berlin Hauptbahnhof), where two bodies were supposedly later seen by witnesses. German postal worker Albert Krumnow said in 1963 that Soviet soldiers ordered him to bury those two bodies. In 1972, construction workers discovered human remains just 39 feet from the spot where Krumnow said he buried them. Glass in the skeletal jaws indicated they’d committed suicide by cyanide. Supposedly, Hitler’s dentist reconstructed Bormann’s dental records from memory, which along with a forensic examination of the skull identified one of the skeletons as Bormann’s. In 1998, the German government conducted genetic testing on the skull by comparing it with DNA from a relative of Bormann’s, and they said it was a match. The remains were cremated the following year and scattered over the Baltic Sea. This book looks at the many stories and claims of Bormann sightings in South America, Russia, Europe, etc., including the intriguing claim by General Gehlen (Nazi intelligence official turned West German intelligence chief) that Bormann was really a Soviet agent all along and contributed to the Third Reich’s downfall. And that, since the Russians were very secretive about Bormann’s fate, perhaps he had fled to Moscow to live out his days. I could totally see that being the case. Also totally plausible that he died in the warzone that was Berlin in Spring 1945. But the idea of his survival is much more interesting and terrifying.
Thread of the Silkworm—Iris Chang
This is the biography of Tsien Hsue-shen, a Chinese national and member of the Suicide Squad at Caltech in the 1930s and 40s along with Jack Parsons and Frank Malina who revolutionized rocketry, turned it into a science, established JPL, and invented jet propulsion during World War II. After the war, during the anti-communist hysteria of the Red Scare era, the U.S. government accused Tsien of being a communist with no evidence, placed him under house arrest for five years so his knowledge of rocketry, weapons, and space travel would become obsolete, and then deported him to China—where he promptly joined the ruling Communist Party and launched China’s space program and nuclear missiles program. He is considered a national hero in China. It’s a shameful story and a strategic blunder by the United States.
Spotlight on My Past Stories
Back in 2006, Charles Bukowski’s widow Linda Lee donated the writer’s archive to the Huntington Library, where I happened to be working at the time. I got to interview Linda Lee about her husband’s storied and sordid career for Pasadena Weekly. She also found a previously unpublished photo of Bukowski that she found in her attic, which became the cover image for my story.
And read all of my journalism here.