Friday, June 30, 2023

Why They Wear That Hat

In this video, 1st Lieutenant Clement from the 27th Brigade Chasseurs Alpins unit explains the various uses of la tarte, from keeping your feet warm to protecting your eyes from the sun. Clement and his fellow mountain infantry soldiers deployed to Rena, Norway for Exercise Brilliant Jump 22, which tested the ability of the very high-readiness component of the NATO Response Force.

Following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of French troops – including the Chasseurs Alpins – have been deployed to Romania to reinforce the Alliance’s east.

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Snakes

Not something every boinero/a will experience, luckily - finding a snake in your beret!

Serhiy Baturyn (Сергій Батурин)

Serhiy Baturyn (1960) is a Ukrainian writer, author of novels and short stories, poems and the journalistic chronicle "Ukrainian Slaves of the Third Reich ", laureate of a number of literary prizes.

Baturyn graduated from the philological faculty of the Kyiv State Pedagogical Institute named after O. M. Gorky, in 1981.  He worked as a teacher in Kyiv and served in the ranks of the Armed Forces.

From 2007 to 2012, he was the secretary of the Kyiv organization of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine. Baturin's main interest is history, possibly the reason to predict real events in his novels.

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Ma Zhongxin

Ma Zhongxin was born in Lanzhou, China, and grew up in Taiwan.

After meeting a traveller in his thirties, he started travelling in his imagination. From being a backpacker for the first time at the age of 39 and traveling around the world, simple travel has become his life and career, and always wearing his trademark beret.

Since then, in the simplest way, relying on his own feet, he has walked on steep mountains, deep jungles, and deserts of gravel. He even served as an expedition team member to explore Antarctica.

After seeing the most desolate and magnificent, and experiencing the most dangerous and solitary, Ma Zhongxin not only broadened his vision and mind, but also had a different understanding of life. He began to speak, write, and take pictures, recording ordinary people.

Ma Zhongxin, now 81, frequently gives lectures on his travels and photography at universities.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Paul Brunton

Paul Brunton was a yogi, mystic, world traveler, and best-selling author. It is reported that two million copies of his books have been purchased, an incredible number for spiritual literature. It was his book A Search in Secret India that made Ramana Maharshi famous; before Brunton wrote about Ramana in 1934, few people knew of him even in India.

Brunton was a superb writer and a dapper dresser.

 It’s quite possible that Brunton did more than anyone else — even more than Schelling or Müller or Blavatsky or Vivekananda or Paramahansa Yogananda or the Dalai Lama — to make Westerners interested in Yoga and enlightenment. It is odd that Brunton cast such a large shadow and yet his name is practically unknown.



Monday, June 26, 2023

Sunday, June 25, 2023

LES DEUX BÉRETS

Originally from the Southwest of France, the owners of Les Deux Berets wanted to wink at the berets worn by their grandfathers. To them, they represented the French tradition and good food. 

The story began with pizzas, in a small truck in Saint Jean de Védas, where everything was homemade. The story now continues in a “small” restaurant, where their passion continues. 

In addition to pizzas, Les Deux Berets offer traditional daily specials, meal salads, vegetarian dishes, gourmet desserts and craft beers, to satisfy everyone.

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Friday, June 23, 2023

Eugene Anthony (2)

Boineros/as familiar with my book Basque Berets should recognize the piano player below:

It is Eugene Anthony from Perth, never seen without a beret!

Thanks Eugene!

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Baret Beer from Diest

The Baret is a fresh, fruity triple (8%) brewed by the Bastion Brewery in Diest (Belgium). 

Central to the concept of the brewery is the citadel as an iconic building of Diest. The logo of the brewery is the pattern of the citadel complex and on the label a para-commando with a red beret is pictured against the background of a window in the casemates of the citadel. 

The red beret is the trademark for the 1st battalion of paratroopers that was stationed at the citadel of Diest from 1953-2010.

Thanks Bro

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Celebrity Blockade at the Mutlanger Heide

The Mutlanger Heide is an area in the municipality of Mutlangen in eastern Baden-Württemberg (the West Germany). Due to the NATO double-track decision, medium-range missiles of the United States Army type MGM-31 Pershing were stationed on the site from 1983 to 1990. The nuclear weapons carriers belonged to the 56th Field Artillery Brigade.

When NATO's stationing intentions became known, this triggered violent protests from the peace movement. The opponents of retrofitting protested throughout Germany and formed so-called "peace chains". In Mutlangen, demonstrators repeatedly blocked the access to the US camp.

From September 1 to 3, 1983, as part of the peace movement 's peace camp, sit-ins (also known as rocket blockades) took place in front of the US military base in Mutlanger Heide. Since around 150 well-known personalities took part in the campaign, it is also known as the Celebrity Blockade.

Around 1,000 people protested against the planned stationing of nuclear Pershing II missiles at the sit-down; writers (Nobel Prize winners Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass), artists, women and men of the Church, politicians, doctors, judges and prosecutors, university teachers, and others. 

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Martin Rickelt

Martin Rickelt was born on September 2, 1915 in Berlin-Friedenau, Germany. 

He was an actor, known for Lindenstrasse (1985), Emil and the Detectives (1931) and Ein Robinson (1940). 

He was previously married to Tamara Renkó . He died on April 9, 2004 in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Monday, June 19, 2023

Werner Schubert-Deister

Werner Schubert-Deister (1921 - 1991) was a German painter and sculptor.

Between 1937 and 1940 he studied double bass and piano at the Music Academy in Bad Frankenhausen. He was seriously injured in World War II and has suffered from a stiff knee ever since. He continued his music studies in Sondershausen from 1946 to 1949. Between 1950 and 1952 he attended the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, where he was a student of Professor Elisabeth Voigt and Käthe Kollwitz. 

Self Portrait

Between 1952 and 1986 he lived as a freelance painter and graphic artist in Friedrichroda . The building of The Wall in 1961 ended the acquisition of paintings by art museums such as the West Berlin National Gallery and contact with West German artists. Visits from the West were not allowed again until 1974. A married couple who were friends brought part of his work to Germany and enabled exhibitions in Hamburg, Speyer, Constance and Neuburg an der Donau in 1978 and 1979, which Schubert-Deister himself was not able to visit.

In 1979, when they visited again, his sponsors were imprisoned for two months by the GDR authorities, who used this to blackmail the return of the 190 pictures that had been brought to the FRG. Several exit applications from the GDR submitted since 1981 have been rejected. It was only in 1986 - after intervention by the UN Human Rights Commission - that he was able to move to Borsum near Hildesheim with his wife Christa and his children, where he spent the last few years ascetic and lived a very busy life. As a politically disillusioned person who saw in himself and his work the only political task, he also maintained a great deal of scepticism towards the western side of the Iron Curtain.

Sunday, June 18, 2023

T Snook of Bridport

It is not often that I post about a fellow beret seller, but T. Snook of Bridport (UK) is well worth the exception.
The shop was founded in 1896 when Tom Snook began his career as an apprentice tailor. He soon opened his first shop at 18 West Street, running it as a gentlemen’s outfitters – incorporating hats, naturally, as in those days everybody wore one
Tom's son Tom Jr, took over the shop in 1946. During WWII the premises at 18 West St sustained bomb damage, leading to Tom Jr, eventually, deciding to relocate: in 1964 he bought a property just down the road at 30-32 West Street and shifted the shop into No.32.

In 2010 Roger and Monica Snook, with the help of a voluntary committee, launched the first Bridport Hat Festival, which was a huge success. Eight years later they handed the now-annual event fully over to the committee to carry forward, having raised both the profile of hats and many thousands of pounds for head-related charities.

Saturday, June 17, 2023

Transgender Boineros/as

Jacob Tobia

Living in a country with a first openly transgender mayor in the world (1995) and the world's first openly transgender member of parliament (1999), I follow the now daily developments in US (and especially Florida) politics regarding gender and trans- rights with interest and amazement.

Rym Gallardo

Although I fail to understand why someone’s personal orientation and preferences can be polarizing to the level of national (US) politics, I thought it interesting to delve into the subject in relation to berets.

Ceval Omar

Not surprising, there are many transgender boineros/as, whether from a sense of style and fashion, or as part of their (military) uniform.

By some estimates, the U.S. military is the single-largest employer of transgender people on the planet, with an estimated 15,500 active-duty trans personnel. Trans people are twice as likely than the general population to serve their country, but they had to conceal their gender identity because military policies banned their service. On January 25, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order to reverse the ban, allowing most transgender individuals to serve in the United States military.

Staff Sergeant Byun Hee-soo was the first known transgender soldier in South Korea. She was a tank driver before being discharged from the army in January 2020 after she underwent gender reassignment surgery.

On October 2021, South Korean court ruled that the military discharge was unlawful and cancelled the discharge, but by that time Byun Hee-Soo had died...

Most (Western) militaries have no issues including LGBT individuals. Captain Hannah Graf is an Officer of the British Army. She is a decorated Officer, having deployed to Afghanistan, Kenya and Canada. Hannah was awarded an MBE in the 2019 New Years Honours List, receiving the award from HRH The Duke of Cambridge in June 2019.

The Dutch military became the first to allow LGBT individuals to serve in 1974 and it was also the first to set up an LGBT military support organization. The Royal Netherlands Army embraces a "Do Tell" policy and routinely organizes floats in pride events.

The New Zealand Defence Force has been lauded as a world leader in diversity and for support of the LGBTQI community, and has been ranked as number one for integration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender personnel into the nation's military.

And while LGBTQ Russians were Putin's first target in his war on the West, this Canadian soldier can publicly kiss his partner. 


A glimpse into the lives of four soldiers who risk dismissal or demotion to fight for transgender rights in the US armed forces: