WaspReporter_19.4_inkijkexemplaar

number 4

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volume 19

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April 2021

WaspReporter

THE CARBON FOOTPRINT FANTASY

e v e i l e b s t i r One in six B

s g n i d n a l n o o m d e g a t s were SNIFFING OUT THE SMELL OF DISEASE

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Contents 3

A quick fix

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Nomads

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10 Addicted to life 

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12 Moon landing deniers  14 Conversion therapy  16 The filthy rich 

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18 Not the end of the world  20 Footprint fantasy 

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22 Sniffing out disease 

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24 Society con woman 

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26 The limits of friendship

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Scan the QR codes to access the audio files.

Johan Graus Editor

This past December, Sheila did a Skype interview with an old friend, Sue. Sue lives in a village called Selsey and talks about her life there.

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Welcome to the final issue of WaspReporter Magazine to come out before the summer holidays. It has been a tumultuous year with a global pandemic ravaging the world, climate crisis still not abating, and conspiracy theories flourishing. But maybe, just maybe, things aren’t as bad as they seem. As ‘Not the end of the world’ (pp. 18–19) explains, people have an innate tendency to view reality more negatively than it actually is. Rationally speaking, the world is doing much better than a generation ago: people live longer, fewer of us die of genocide and wars, and poverty is declining.

Nevertheless, we are programmed to focus more on the negative than the positive aspects of our lives – a genetic remnant of our survival instinct. In these difficult times, though, it’s perhaps good remember that overall we’re still better off than even our parents or grandparents.

With the attacks on the American Capitol in January this year, we’ve seen what consequences conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts’ can have. But if you think they’re a relatively new phenomenon, you’re wrong. Take for instance the Apollo 11 mission: on 20 July 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first human to ever walk on the Moon. This indisputable fact is still being challenged by one in six Brits, who believe that the moon landings were a hoax. But truth will out, as the article ‘Moon landing deniers’ (pp. 12–13) proves by debunking all the arguments the conspiracy theorists have come up with.

We hope you’ll enjoy these and all the other articles we’ve selected for you. And if you’re looking for more opportunities to improve your English, don’t forget to check out our website at www.waspreporter.nl.

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E dit orial

Hello everyone,

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BBC

Laura wanted a fat-reducing cosmetic procedure after being bullied about

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her weight at college. She tells her story, and a therapist offers advice

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Laura Baylis is 25 and has been thinking about having a cosmetic procedure called liposculpture. She appears on the new BBC Three series Plastic Surgery Undressed, to watch the operation being performed on someone via a live stream, and to meet people who’ve already had it done.

Liposculpture is when fat is removed from specific areas of the body to reshape it. After the procedure, it’s advised to keep up a good exercise regime to maintain the results. Research by Comres, commissioned by BBC Three as part of the show, saw just over 1,200 UK adults polled on their attitudes to cosmetic surgery. It suggested that one in five people in the UK

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aged 18–30 has had a cosmetic procedure* – and half of people know someone who has.

Of those who have had work done, 58 per cent did not speak to a body image counsellor or therapist beforehand. Laura told us her story of how she came to be considering having a cosmetic procedure – and then we asked a psychotherapist to give her verdict on Laura’s situation.

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‘Back in high school, I was really skinny. I don’t know why, I did get fed! People used to make comments about it. Then I went to college and started putting on a bit more weight because I did dance,

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so my muscles got bigger. People started saying I’d put on weight – they were meant to be my friends, but they were calling me fat. I don’t know if it was jealousy or not, but words stick, and I started to think, “I’m this horrible person”. Not a day goes by that I don’t squeeze my stomach and look at the size when I get changed in the mirror.

Sometimes I don’t realise I’m doing it – I’m my own worst enemy.

‘I didn’t get much sympathy from family when I talked about being bullied. It wasn’t practical for me to move schools, so I just had to ride it out. I felt really lost as a teenager – I’d try to speak to my friends, but they’re the ones who were being the bullies. It was

* The research included non-surgical procedures like lip fillers, Botox, chemical peels, permanent makeup, and microblading in its definition of cosmetic procedures.

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a really hard time. Throughout growing up and being an adult, I always had that weight on me because I kept everything inside – I wasn’t able to speak to anyone.

And when you see all these people from reality TV on social media too, that has an effect. I’d look at them and think, “I want a body like that”.

A few years ago, that’s when I started thinking of getting surgery.

‘When I went on the show, I was sure I wanted liposculpture. Going to the gym is easier said than done – there’s the anxiety of actually walking through the door. I thought the procedure was an easy way to getting the perfect body. I thought it was a quick fix to becoming happy with myself. I asked the surgeon if it would give me the body I wanted without the effort, and he said, “No, you have to go to

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the gym before you even get this procedure, and once you’ve had it you need to maintain it by going to the gym.” I was so disappointed!

‘I have had one procedure done already – fillers in my lips. But I’ve never seen a counsellor or a specialist about the possibility of liposculpture. If I’m honest, I think the reason I haven’t is because I don’t think their answer would be what I wanted to hear. They might have told me I didn’t need it as I don’t have a health condition or excess fat. I feel like, if I did get this done, it would progress to wanting something else, and I’d be stuck in a continuous cycle.

‘Social media has an impact as well. It’s like a competition – who can get the most likes and followers, who’s got the curviest bum, who’s the gym freak. It made

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‘They were meant to be my friends, but they were calling me fat’ 4

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me feel like an absolute potato, and I wouldn’t do full length pictures.

It’s only recently I’ve started to upload pictures where you can see my whole body, because my confidence is starting to grow.

‘After going on the show, I can say that I don’t think the surgery is for me. I want to try going to the gym and eating healthily – there are so many options I can try before turning to surgery, and I hadn’t thought about the possibility of it going wrong. A lady who had it done spoke to us over Skype, and showed us the damage the procedure had caused to her leg. This is almost a year after it happened, and she’s still suffering.

That was the turning point for me.

I just thought, “That could happen to me”.

‘Going on the show really helped me – speaking about the effect the bullying had and why I wanted the surgery felt like a weight had been lifted. Opening up to my friends and family has really helped as well. I’d never say never to counselling in the future, but right now, I’ve started to feel much happier in my body. I’m slowly

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starting to listen to my friends and not be so stubborn, so if someone compliments me, I’m not thinking, “They’re lying or doing it to take the mick”. I’m owning it and saying, “You know what, I look good today”, and not questioning it.

‘On the show, I was looking at the other participants thinking, “You don’t need surgery”, and they were probably looking at me thinking the same. But it’s all about what’s happening in your head. If you’re not happy, you’d do anything to change that. I hope if people watch the show and they’re going through the same thing, they can relate to my situation and hopefully feel better.’

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Rebecca Sparkes is a psychotherapist specialising in eating disorders and addiction who has worked with several clients with body image issues. Here’s her advice for Laura, and anyone who might be in a similar situation.

‘Although I work quite a lot with eating disorders and people with body dysmorphia, I’m not in any way against anything that changes the way people look, including plastic surgery. But Laura’s story raised some red flags for me as a psychotherapist. I think she might have some self-esteem issues as a result of the bullying at school, being called fat, and identifying with the bullies – she said at one point she started to believe them.

‘Laura is a very self-aware young lady, and I was really encouraged by that – but my concern would be that the bullying left her with some self-doubt and body issues. She’s seeking to change that through plastic surgery. I think she could be in danger of having an expensive or possibly risky procedure, and my fear would be that nothing would change for her. What often happens if people get a procedure is they then fixate on another part of their body. The problem of underlying low self-worth hasn’t gone; it just gets displaced somewhere else.

‘It seemed to me like Laura didn’t have much help through the tough times when she was younger.

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Childhood trauma, like bullying and name-calling, and not having a supportive adult, can all lead to mental health issues. I would advise her to have a proper evaluation with a professional before going down the surgery route, if she decided to do that in the future.

‘I think it’s useful for anyone considering plastic surgery, especially if they’ve had a history of feeling they don’t look the right way, to have some form of therapy so they can separate what they want to change on the outside from how they feel inside. No therapist will tell you not to have surgery, but might advise you what to be aware of. Examining your issues frees you up to make an informed and conscious choice.

‘In my private practice, I see many 20-30-year-old clients for whom social media causes anxiety.

I don’t think social media is a bad thing we should stop, but I would

‘I hadn’t thought about the possibility of it going wrong’

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advise being aware of how you use it and how it impacts you personally. If you’re more vulnerable to comparing yourself to others, ask yourself if you should limit the time you spend on it.

‘It sounds like Laura now has friends who care for her and support her, and I’m glad to see that. Supportive friends and family are good for mental health, and if someone feels they don’t have that network, talking to a professional could really help.’ <<

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Elle

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Gavanndra Hodge grew up surrounded by addiction. She could have followed the same path, until something made her choose a different future

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My father is in bed: a mattress on the floor. It is midday; the curtains are drawn, the room smells of sweat and cigarette smoke. I am seven years old and we are meant to be going to London Zoo – he promised – and yet here he is, groaning, white foam gathered at the edges of his mouth.

‘Daddy,’ I whisper. He answers, ‘My head, my head is broken.’ He digs his fingers into his skull as if to stop it splitting in half. I am terrified. Is dad dying? I look closer.

There is no blood and his head seems fine. I quietly walk away, go into the sitting room, turn on the telly. We won’t be going to the zoo today.

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My dad, the addict

My dad was always breaking promises. He was a heroin addict, but it wasn’t just heroin – he was 10

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addicted to pleasure, which he chased with an intensity that would have been impressive were it not so damaging. He was a hairdresser. He was also a part-time dealer, selling heroin, cocaine, and dope to the Chelsea aristocrats who came to our flat to buy drugs in the 1980s.

My mother, a former model, was an alcoholic who couldn’t take her drink. She would be asleep by 9 p.m., unaware that I’d stay up long past midnight to watch the sons and daughters of baronets as they held a lighter under a strip of silver foil, melting the heroin and inhaling the thick yellow smoke it released.

I was waiting for them to pass out so I could do my fire checks (clear away the smouldering cigarettes, blow out the candles) and feel safe enough to go to bed, finally.

My father got clean when I was eight. We had been raided

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one too many times and the court offered him a choice: rehab or prison. He chose rehab and my mum got sober. A new phase began, of Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous, and help groups for addicts’ children, where I had to talk about how I felt.

It was a time of relative normality. I got into a posh girls’ day school and discovered that I loved Latin, chemistry, order, and rationality. My parents, who’d both left school at 14, were freaked out by my newfound bookishness, especially Dad, who was so dyslexic he was almost illiterate. Still, they encouraged me, were proud of me.

My life started to feel like it was under control.

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It was all brought to an abrupt end when my sister Candy died of a

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to life

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rare virus in a hotel room in Tunisia, aged nine. In the aftermath of that awful moment, my mother found God and my father found strong alcohol. They were both crushed by pain, but Mum was able to face it and Dad was not. The morning after Candy’s death, he had drunk a whole bottle of whisky by 10 a.m.

And that was just the beginning.

My dad never took heroin again, but he took everything else: MDMA, weed, my grandmother’s painkillers. Now, instead of just watching, I joined in. I was 14 when my dad gave me my first spliff; 15 when he gave me my first line of coke. Our drug-taking was a shared secret, but it was also about an inability to feel the grief of Candy’s death. I numbed myself with booze and drugs. I did my History GCSE on speed.

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The hardest thing about being the child of an addict, I think, is the disappointment. Nothing matters more to an addict than their drug of choice. And that is a tough lesson when you are a little girl (or a big girl): that a pile of powder is more lovable than you. It was a lesson I

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and his choices – but I could change my behaviour. I stopped taking drugs and going to clubs on school nights. My dad moved out (and in with his girlfriend) and, even though this was another grief, it was a blessing. Without him telling me I was being boring, I could rediscover my love of study.

I went into sixth form and I worked. Bloody hard. It paid off. I won a place at Cambridge to study Classics. When I arrived, I felt light – like I was finally on my own path.

Of course, these things are never so simple. The pull of the past was always powerful. I still went through phases when I took a lot of drugs and drank too much, lured by the ease of pleasure you can buy. But I began to enjoy the feeling of waking up without a hangover more than how I felt after my third Martini. My father still disappointed me, but it became less sharp. I never stopped getting angry with him, but I also never stopped loving him.

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Breaking the cycle

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never really managed to learn.

I discovered my father was leaving my mother for a girl who was at school with me on the same holiday I got my crappy GCSE results. I felt like I was drowning.

But the children of addicts are strong. We have to be. So I made a choice: I would not drown. I realised there were things I couldn’t change – my father, for instance,

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I was heartbroken when he died, suddenly, of pulmonary complications, aged just 64. (He’d had a party the night before, taking coke and MDMA, two stereos going at once.) By then, I had my own baby, and I’d made decisions about the childhood I was going to give her. In fact, this decisionmaking process started when I fell in love with a man who couldn’t have been more different to my father: honest and responsible; funny, clever, and kind. Mike made me feel safe.

I decided to give my daughters the childhood I hadn’t had. They know that if someone promises

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to take them to the zoo, they will be going to the zoo. And that is because I chose to break a cycle that, if left unchecked, could spiral from one generation to the next.

It is not always easy. There were times when I was fighting so hard to be this upstanding human – with a career, family, home – that I started to lose sense of who I really was. It made me feel isolated and unemotional and mad all at once. I realised I had to integrate my past into my present, in ways that didn’t involve taking MDMA or dancing on a restaurant table after six sambucas. I went into therapy and started talking to my children about their grandfather and their aunt.

They say that you are always an addict, that being sober is the work of a lifetime. Well, I will always be the daughter of an addict, and this is an ongoing process but, right now, I’m good with it. << WR number 4 • volume 19

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After struggling to reconcile her sexuality and her religion, Shulli spent over a year undergoing gay conversion therapy

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During my early 20s, I was convinced that I had to be straight to be happy. As a Modern Orthodox Jew, I was desperate to lead a ‘normal’ life – getting married to a ‘good Jewish boy’, having a family – and to be accepted by my religious community.

So, I went to a therapist. Sitting in his office, I reluctantly tried to engage in his quest to find a root cause for my sexuality. Naively, I thought the pain of picking apart my childhood was worth it because, I believed, I was going to come out 1 woman. the other side as a That was all I wanted back then.

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Although I grew up in London in an open-minded family, I didn’t know anyone who was gay, lesbian, or

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bisexual. Aged 11, I told my mum that I fancied a girl I knew. She told me that lots of people fancy the same sex when they’re going 2 , and I was too through young to label myself.

In my first year of university, I tried to talk to my parents about my sexuality again, but it wasn’t any easier. I threw myself into student life and tried to push my sexuality to the back of my mind. I got involved with one of the Jewish groups there and, at the end of my first year, I signed up for their summer trip to Israel.

The trip lasted two weeks. One night I got really drunk and let it slip to one of the older people on 3 . the trip that I fancied The next morning, I awoke in a hangover panic. I was terrified the person I had confessed to would

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tell someone, but he promised to keep my secret. I was relieved that he didn’t seem to judge me.

After the trip, I started meeting up with him on a semi-regular basis, as he was the only person I’d confided in. I cried a lot but it felt good to finally open up. I told him that I wished I could just be straight 4 . and my life be During one of our conversations, he said there was a way for me to find ‘happiness’ – that someone he knew in Israel offered gay conversion therapy. The plan was for me to take a year out from my studies, and apply to live in Israel in a religious school. I was excited 5 in equal measure. It was and a drastic step but I was determined to give it my all. I was desperate to find a way to feel better.

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Conversion therapy

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Trying to turn straight

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My parents offered to cover the £1,000 cost because they could see how much I was struggling emotionally, and they just wanted to help. None of us knew anyone who had been through gay conversion, and we had no idea of 6 . In Israel, as of 2019, the doctors can be expelled from the Israel Medical Association if they carry out the procedure, after the organisation banned it many years after my own experience.

My therapy lasted 18 months – I continued over video chat once I got back to the UK. One of the 7 to take seriously methods I – and found really unpleasant – was past-life regression, a controversial form of hypnotherapy that supposedly lets you access memories from your previous lives.

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I was terrified confessed to would

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In my case, we were searching for a sin I’d committed in a past life that might have ‘made me gay’.

I was made to close my eyes and asked what I could see. I tried to say it wasn’t working, but they kept telling me to try again. Eventually, I cracked and told them that I had 8 , owned a farm and tried to though of course this was entirely made up. Looking back, I can see how strange that sounds, but I just wanted the experience to end.

Another, for me, unpleasant process I was put through was eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR). It’s still relatively new and scientists aren’t exactly sure how it works, but it’s been found to reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in some people.

In my case, I was asked to think about things that scared me or that

9 – like having sex I didn’t find with a guy – while forcing my eyes to follow the therapist’s pen from side to side. The idea was to get rid of any negative feelings I had toward straight sex but, obviously, it didn’t work and picturing myself in those situations really messed with my emotions.

A dark place

the person I had tell someone

Despite the advances on LGBTQ+ issues in the past five decades, gay conversion therapy – a pseudoscientific practice that attempts to change sexual orientation, or reduce feelings of sexual attraction to others of the same sex – is still carried out in many countries. In the UK, a ban is being considered after a landmark report was published in 2018.

The report was based on an anonymous survey of LGBTQ+ people which ran online and received more than 108,000 responses. It found that, in the UK, 2 per cent of people who responded to the survey said they had undergone conversion (also known as reparative) therapy in an attempt to ‘cure’ them, and a further 5 per cent had been offered it.

The American Psychiatric Association has clarified that ‘the potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behaviour, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient’.

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Once I got back to London, it was clear that I was in a very dark place emotionally. I was feeling worse and worse without seeing any change in my sexuality and that’s what made me think things had gone too far.

I realised that I didn’t want to live my life as a lie any more. That I didn’t want to be without love or sex and that I needed to 10 .

Now, six years later, I’m much happier with who I am. One positive

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has come out of this: my parents are now my biggest supporters.

Having their support gave me the strength to move forward with my life.

I think many religious LGBTQ+ people struggle to find a place where they can feel fully accepted.

In the religious world they might be told their sexuality is unacceptable and in the queer world their faith might be seen as 11 or unwelcome. Until this puzzle is solved, young, scared LGBTQ+ kids will feel they have to choose between religion and their true identity.

For years, the therapist’s words 12 me – I found it hard to stop hearing his voice in my mind. But, now, I’ve finally come to a place of acceptance with who I am and I’m much happier because of it. <<

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Every few years, a story will capture the public imagination and become something akin to a parable for our times

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In an age in which the Kardashians and their ilk can earn billions out of their ‘curated’ lives, stories about successful society debutantes tend to be ones of ambition, self-invention, and audacity to the point of effrontery, in which fact is supplanted by fiction on an epic scale. The protagonist of this particular story is Anna Delvey, a fake German heiress who became headline news and provoked a global sensation.

Delvey, now 29, was a petulantlooking tawny blonde with 40,000 Instagram followers and an exotic accent. Using a combination of lies, loans, and guile, she convinced the New York elite

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that she was a European trustfund princess with $60 million to her name. She claimed to be establishing an art foundation members’ club with a stylish Soho House-type vibe. Delvey and her project attracted the attention of Manhattan’s beau monde celebrities from the worlds of art, finance, and publishing, film stars and musicians. Meanwhile, she embarked on extraordinary spending sprees, gorging on designer clothes, luxury hotels, chi-chi dinners, glamorous parties, celebrity trainers, $800 highlights, and $400 eyelash extensions, high on a never-ceasing flow of vodka, Pouilly Fumé, and champagne.

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Think Jay Gatsby meets Clueless, ending in the notorious Rikers 1 German heiress Island jail, Anna Delvey was actually Russiaborn Anna Sorokin, who had not a dollar to her name. And the money she threw about so wildly had been swindled out of banks, businesses, and friends, although a favourite method was to ‘dine and dash’. In total she stole more than $200,000 – and she had been attempting to procure a $22 million loan shortly before she was caught.

During Sorokin’s month-long trial last year, where she was charged with theft of services and grand larceny, her lawyer, Todd

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Spodek, drew comparisons with Frank Sinatra in a nod to his song ‘New York, New York’. ‘In a city that favours money and the appearance of money,’ Spodek said, ‘my client and Sinatra both created their own opportunities’. Not only was this a Big Apple tradition, it was the contemporary modus vivendi. ‘In her world, this is what her social circle did. Everyone’s life was perfectly curated for social media. People were fake. People were phoney. And money was made on hype alone.’

A year on from the trial, it’s a take that he stands by. ‘In today’s culture, lying is so prevalent in order to get to the next step,’ he tells me. ‘Whether it be portraying yourself as someone you’re not on social media, or expanding your work experience on your résumé or LinkedIn profile, pretending you’re a certain type of person on online dating, or trying to obtain capital in business meetings – puffing is permitted and accepted.’

Certainly, there are signs that Sorokin has been taken up as some sort of folk heroine for the Instagram age. A Google search for ‘Anna Delvey’ delivers 138,000 results, ‘Anna Sorokin’ 93,000. In Brooklyn, one can still spot T-shirts emblazoned with ‘Free Anna Delvey’, ‘Fake German heiress’, and ‘My other shirt will mail you $30,000’. Her Instagram followers now stand at 72,000.

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But who exactly is the baby-faced master criminal with a penchant for pouting selfies? Anna Vadimovna Sorokina was born in the former Soviet Union in 1991. From the start, novelistic elements abound: 1991 was the year the Soviet Union was dissolved and communism gave way to capitalism, as she was seduced by it some 20 years later.

Her surname, brilliantly, means ‘magpie’, that thieving interloper with a fixation for shiny objects.

She grew up in Domodedovo, a Moscow satellite town, hooked on fashion magazines and the movie Mean Girls.

In 2007, Sorokin’s father, an occupational opportunist,

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transplanted the family to Germany.

At 16, Anna found herself in another small town, struggling to learn the language. Classmates nicknamed her ‘Barbie’. She chose a more grandiose role model in Marie Antoinette, acquiring a wrist tattoo in tribute to her icon.

In 2011, Sorokin graduated from high school, her ambitions immediately going global. Via a stint in fashion PR, she landed a coveted internship at Paris’s Purple magazine. It was here – as she insinuated herself into the jet set – that she started calling herself ‘Anna Delvey’. Towards the end of 2013, this creation took herself to New York. Suddenly, she was everywhere at the right dinners, the right parties. Her father was variously rumoured to be a diplomat, an oil baron, or a solarpanel magnate, a multimillion-dollar inheritance heading her way on her 26th birthday.

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Rachel DeLoache Williams, then a 20-something photo editor at Vanity Fair, met Sorokin in early 2016 in a bar with fashion friends. Anna’s face was already familiar. ‘I’d seen her on Instagram, smiling at events, drinking at parties, oftentimes alongside my own friends,’ Williams recalls. Now here she was in the flesh, all Gucci sandals and clingy black dress, proffering glasses and an ice bucket.

Sorokin’s approach to the friendship lay somewhere between grooming and gaslighting. As Williams, now 32, remembers, ‘Anna was parasitic. She would latch on to people and keep them close before taking from them all that she possibly could, and she picked her hosts carefully… I was useful. The fact that I worked at Vanity Fair lent her a degree of credibility, and I balanced out her eccentric behaviour by normalising it, apologising on her behalf, or laughing off what might otherwise have been offensive.’

Williams was swept into a whirlwind of massages and manicures, personal-training packages and gourmet meals,

designer cast-offs and $100 tips.

Eventually she found herself with Sorokin in Morocco, in a $7,000/ night riad for a week. Here things soured.

Sorokin persuaded Williams to pick up the tab because her credit cards failed, merely as a temporary fix. And then she obfuscated, forever claiming that this cool $62,000 was about to be reimbursed. This trick had worked with wealthier playmates.

However, the bill was more than Williams’s annual income, and she fought tooth and nail to reclaim the money, turning from police station to civil court to finally seeking help from the New York County District Attorney’s Office.

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In July 2017, the New York Post had run a piece entitled ‘Wannabe socialite busted for skipping out on pricey hotel bills’. Sorokin, due to face court at the beginning of September, instead escaped to a $60,000-a-month LA rehab facility, her Instagram bio proclaiming ‘Let them eat cake’. Williams became involved in a police operation to flush her out, ensuring Sorokin was arrested in October, accused of stealing $275,000 through a variety of scams, and attempting to steal millions more.

I ask Williams what we are to take from the Delvey story, and why there is such a collective obsession with it. ‘I’d say American politics feel depressingly relevant. The parallels between Anna and our nation’s former president are not a coincidence. People are enchanted by bold, charismatic individuals who exude confidence and aren’t afraid to break the rules.

‘These masters of illusion peddle a promise of greatness – be it in the form of a country or an art foundation – and it’s human to want to believe. Meanwhile, behind the curtain, their true agendas appear entirely self-serving, motivated by an insatiable hunger for power, with zero regard for humanity. Ruthless ambition untethered from truth and devoid of a moral compass is a terrifying force.’ << WR number 4 • volume 19

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While we have made every effort

Eight things to remember about Memorial Day

to trace the copyright holders of articles and illustrations contained in this issue, we would be grateful for any information that might assist us in identifying sources we have as yet been unable to find.

Memorial Day is observed in the United States on the last Monday of May. It commemorates all men and women who have died in military service for the United States. Many people visit cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day, and it is traditionally seen as the start of the summer season. Here are some facts to give the holiday some perspective.

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Johan Graus Editorial assistant Aafke Moons

Memorial Day began as a response to the Civil War

Memorial Day was a response to the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War, in which a total of some 620,000 soldiers died between both sides. The loss of life and its effect on communities throughout the country led to several spontaneous commemorations of the dead.

Compiled by Marleen Cannegieter Erik Cats Christien van Gool Johan Graus

Major General John A. Logan made the day official

Caspar van Haalen

General Logan issued General Order No. 11, which set aside May 30, 1868 ‘for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defence of their country during the late rebellion’.

Aafke Moons Ine Sanders Frederike Westera

Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day

The holiday was long known as Decoration Day for the practice of decorating graves with flowers, wreaths, and flags.

Teaching enquiries

Memorial Day is more of a franchise than a national holiday

Photos on cover

Johan Graus, jgraus@xs4all.nl

Calling Memorial Day a ‘national holiday’ is a bit of a misnomer. While there have been ten federal holidays created by Congress – including Memorial Day – they apply only to federal employees and the District of Columbia. For the rest of the US, the holiday was enacted state by state.

Castleski, Mopic, Erik Lam, Angyalosi Beata / Shutterstock Editorial agency Marjan den Hertog, Deventer

Memorial Day has its own set of customs

General Order No. 11 stated that ‘in this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed’, but over time, several customs and symbols became associated with the holiday. Most notably, it is customary on Memorial Day to fly the flag at half-staff until noon, and then raise it to the top of the staff until sunset. The World War I poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, by John McCrea, inspired the Memorial Day custom of wearing red artificial poppies.

Graphic design Maura van Wermeskerken, Apeldoorn Subscriptions (also for Belgium) Mijntijdschrift.com

Each Memorial Day is the unofficial start of the summer season

Curieweg 16

There’s no question that Memorial Day is a solemn event. Still, people don’t feel too guilty about doing something frivolous (like hosting a barbecue) over the weekend.

Memorial Day is not Veterans Day

Some people get Memorial Day and Veterans Day (11 November) confused. Veterans Day is a day to honour all of the men and women who have served in the US armed forces, Memorial Day to honour those who lost their lives.

On Memorial Day there are a lot of parades

Across the United States, the central event on Memorial Day is attending one of the thousands of parades held in large and small cities. Most of these feature marching bands and an overall military theme with the Active Duty, Reserve, National Guard, and Veteran service members participating along with military vehicles from various wars.

8013 RA Zwolle (088) 22 666 93 waspreporter@mijntijdschrift.com © PHOTOSTOCKIMAGE, AXL / SHUTTERSTOCK

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Editor

Subscription terms and rates See Teacher File or www.waspreporter.nl © ThiemeMeulenhoff Amersfoort, Netherlands, 2021

Looking for more fun, articles, or a web quest?

Check out WaspReporter’s website at www.waspreporter.nl

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