Festung Europa: Celebrating Five Years

Gentle reader,

Five years ago in February, Festung Europa was born. In honor of the occasion, we'll try to put together some special retrospective posts of your favorites, plus a few new features to get the blood pumping in this blog once again.

I started this project on the occasion of my uncle, John R. (Junior) Meyer's death on Saturday, February 18, 2006. His passing caused me to reflect a bit on what he stood for as a farmer of the old school, and so, I posted a short tribute, the second post of this blog. From there, this blog has served many different purposes: information, commentary, geneaology, beverage reviews and general weirdness. Festung Europa has probably given friends, family and interested Internet searchers way too much information about the world of the Stingray Regime. Please know that everything posted has been approved for declassification by our censors working out of Uranium City, and of course, don't believe everything you read. Disinformation is our specialty.

For a while, I tried to ditch Festung Europa in favor of my now defunct heathen blog, Yggdrasil, but that project turned out not to generate the interest that this blog has. And so, after roughly a year of posting there, I merged all the pagan posts of Yggdrasil with Festung Europa.

I suppose Festung Europa has given way a bit over the years to Facebook, which, in addition to being a time waster par excellence, sucks effort away from what could turn up as my musings here. This blog did start out as a communications platform for me to keep in touch with my worldwide friends and family, but I concede that Mark Zuckerberg's creation does it better. Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain, with the barkers and the colored ballons! (Zuckerberg's German-Jewish nomen translates as such auf Deutsch.) Facebook also enabled me to contact a plethora of intereresting people on the fringe, once profiled here and otherwise lost forever. Out of eighteen flesh and blood acquaintances profiled in this feature, only seven remain unaccounted for. Even the subject of the quickly deleted "forbidden" post has been found. And a quick Facebook search reveals some that may be better left alone. Don't tread on me, indeed.

Let me take this opportunity to thank you, gentle reader, for your continued support of Festung Europa. I look forward to writing for you for many years to come.

Your humble servant,

CRM

Painting: The Figure 5 in Gold, 1928
Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
Oil on cardboard

35 1/2 x 30 in. (90.2 x 76.2 cm)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.59.1), The Metropolitan Museum of Art