Latest news with #Zink
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Colonel John Zink shares his story of service in the United States Air Force, Army Air Corps
May 2—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham announced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program May 2. This week, they highlight the service of Colonel John Zink who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force. Zink, the son of a World War I Veteran, decided to join the military after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. He went into the service in June 1942 while attending flight school. Even though Zink had never ridden in an airplane before flight school, his love of aircraft began as a young child. "Well, as far back as I can remember, I was always interested in airplanes. One of the car dealers in my county had a Stenson Reliant. He used to land it in my neighbor's pasture field, and every time he did, I'd run down there and drool over the airplane — I guess that's the right term — and I always wanted to fly." Like his peers, Zink felt that joining the military at this pivotal moment for America was the "right thing to do." He also recognized that the emergency circumstances created by Pearl Harbor's bombing would allow him to fly in the military without attending college. When discussing his first flight, Zink said he had two feelings. "Number one was I'm gonna do it, and the other one was, I'm sort of scared to do it. And I guess the joy overtook the other one." Zink graduated with the rank of second lieutenant and was extremely pleased to go on to fly fighter aircraft, specifically the Lockheed P-38 Lighting. Zink described this historic fighter, saying, "A P-38 was a twin-engine fighter plane built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. It was designed in the late 1930s by Kelly Johnson and his engineering staff. Kelly was the head of engineering at Lockheed in those days. And first flew in late 1940 [...] The first ones were probably delivered to the Air Force in mid-1941 in very small quantities. And then, when the war broke out, the contracts were increased." At an Air Force base in Rabaul, near the Solomon Islands, Zink recalled that the Japanese had six airfields with over 400 planes. He was a part of the 13th Air Force, and they were to cover 24 Douglass SBD Dauntless dive bombers and 24 Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers on a dive-bombing mission. "We had 16 P-38s on the mission, and as they started the dive-bombing run why, the Japanese fighters attacked from above. We don't know exactly how high they were, but we were about 16,000, so they were probably 20,000. There was a thin deck of cloud above us, and we couldn't see 'em. And so, we followed the dive bombers down, and as we went down, I saw several P-38s crash in the water." Zink also described the dangers of compressibility that afflicted the P-38 and how one pilot was rescued after being shot down during that mission. "As you gain speed in a P-38, the lift point would move back on the wing, and if it got to a certain point, it would actually blank out the elevator, and you couldn't pull out of the dive. Whether these airplanes got into compressibility or actually were shot down, we'll never know for sure, but we did see three of 'em go down in real tight formation and hit the water [...] there were 16 P-38s — 8 of them shot down or lost. We picked up one pilot seven days later, and, by the way, he's 90 some years old and still living. We escorted the bombers back out off the target, and then we headed home." Zink spoke about the difficulty of losing friends and people he had attended flying school with and how combat was a rough experience as they fought the numerous Japanese forces. However, as they learned, Zink said, "We became more mature [and] gained experience from the mistakes that we made. We stopped losing airplanes, losing our fighters to the Japanese fighters. One of the things we've always been very proud of is that we never lost a bomber we were escorting to the Japanese fighters." The P-38 pilots flew several bombing missions themselves, and Zink recalled being proud of the accuracy of their bombing with relatively little experience. He flew missions near northwest New Guinea, the Celebes, the East Indies, and Borneo for nine months. Zink recalled participating in long-range missions that cover over a 700-mile radius. He flew an incredible 157 missions over the Pacific Ocean while being deployed for 20 months. Though he was discharged and needed rest due to combat fatigue, Zink's military career did not end after his service during World War II. He would also make an impact during the Korean War as a top-notch pilot. Click here to listen to Colonel John Zink tell his story.
Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Deadly new Viagra-cocaine trend that millions of men are secretly doing before WORK... as addicts reveal terrifying tales of 7.30am binges
For six years, 30-year-old Eric Zink's morning routine did not vary. He'd wake at his home near Los Angeles, pour himself a 7.30am shot of vodka, do a line of cocaine, and take a Viagra. Then he'd drive to work. At the time, Zink had been an alcoholic and drug addict for almost a decade. The cocaine ramped up his libido, but restricted the flow of blood to his penis. So his dealer was supplying Viagra, in addition to his steady stream of cocaine.
The Guardian
26-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sister Europe by Nell Zink review – all the ideas Trump deems most dangerous
On 7 March 2025 the New York Times published a list of words that the Trump administration was systematically culling from government documents and educational materials. This list, which includes the words 'gender ideology', 'affirming care', 'confirmation bias', 'ethnicity', 'identity', 'immigrants', 'racism', 'prostitute', 'political', 'intersectional' and 'privilege', reads like a bingo card for Nell Zink's astonishingly prescient new novel, Sister Europe, in which a large cast of racially, economically and gender-diverse characters convene over the course of a single evening to attend a literary awards ceremony in Berlin. On its surface, Sister Europe is a comedy of manners set among Berlin's exclusive and elusive cultural elite. The prose is searingly quick, revelatory and funny: Zink's dialogue reads like our best plays. Entertaining banter could be this book's largest trophy, were it not for the contents of the banter, which are so ambitious and ethically interested that they make it clear that Zink is one of our most important contemporary writers. Like the film classic My Dinner with Andre, in Sister Europe the interactions between characters are vehicles through which philosophical quandaries are explored. However, while the questions in My Dinner with Andre are largely posed in the abstract, here they are shockingly specific. For example, Demian, a German art critic, struggles to reconcile his admiration for the Arabic writer being honoured, Masud, with racist elements in Masud's writing: On reading [Masud's] books, Demian discovered to his consternation a grating and persistent anti-Black racism. Was it excusable? He excused it, on the grounds that it would be hard for an anti-Black racist to do much damage in Norway, where anti-Muslim racism was a deadly threat (admittedly much of it intersectional, directed against Somalis). Was it patronising to suspend his ethical standards because the man was a genius, or Eurocentric not to suspend them, and which was worse? In this way, Zink repeatedly names systems of power without being moralistic. She is simultaneously stringent and funny, which is disarming. Humour is one of our best tools for processing extreme violence: Zink knows this, and accordingly deploys her singular wit throughout. Over the course of the evening, Zink's characters vocalise their desires, fears and prejudices. Nothing, including narrating from the consciousness of an economically privileged 15-year-old trans girl who tries her hand at streetwalking, is off limits. The most working-class character in the book is an Israel-loving antisemitic German cop who takes bribes from pimps but also delivers an exacting critique of the decriminalisation of prostitution under the Social Democratic-Green German government in 2002. In this way, Zink endows each of her characters with both moral high grounds and glaring blind spots. In Sister Europe, as in life, who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor is not fixed. The ever-shifting flow of social and sexual power between the characters is nerve-racking and tantalising: there are no saints and no demons. Though her work is rarely discussed in the context of politics, Zink is one of our most ambitious and explicitly political writers. Here she shows us that the Trump administration's embargoed words are not weapons, but questions. Nothing is more dangerous to a dictator than someone who can anticipate, and therefore interrogate, their actions. Sister Europe performs an intellectually rigorous interrogation of the ideas the Trump administration deems most dangerous, all the while dressed in the outfit of an extravagant Hermes-clad literary gala. While this is a novel of ideas, the narrative is never cold or cerebral. It's beautifully felt, and emotionally open-handed. I wanted love and joy for each of the 13 main characters, which the book (surprisingly!) delivers. As the long night is coming to an end, and morning is threatening to creep over the winter streets of Berlin, Zink's large cast pairs off and an unlikely couple trade pillow talk: Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion He whispered hesitantly, speaking into the towel over her ear, 'You want to change your life.' 'That was stupid,' she replied. 'Life should change me. I don't want to be destructive of a living thing, flattening it with my identity.' She said the word slowly. As though identities were something ubiquitous, but distasteful, like dust mites, that might be dispensed with, given careful hygiene. This book is not a rejection of identity politics, but a plea for the possibility of an evolving self; a bid against inner stagnancy. Like Erasure by Percival Everett, Sister Europe addresses the claustrophobia that can accompany an identity. No character, real or imagined, enjoys being flattened. Rita Bullwinkel's novel Headshot is published by Daunt. Sister Europe by Nell Zink is published by Viking (£14.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Election 2025: 5 races we are watching in Whiteside, Lee counties
Apr. 1—DIXON — Sauk Valley-area voters headed to their polling places Tuesday to choose who will represent them on city, school, park, library and township boards. After the polls close at 7 p.m., visit the Sterling Gazette/Dixon Telegraph's website for election night coverage and updates on the races. Here are five local races we are watching: Rock Falls City Council Ward 2: Running for a four-year term, Brian Snow — who has held his seat for more than two decades — is going up against former 4th Ward Alderman Marshall Doane. Snow was first elected to his 2nd Ward seat in 2005 and has been reelected four times. Doane ran for a four-year 4th Ward seat in 2021 against Violet Sobottka. Doane lost the election but was appointed to a two-year term as the second 4th Ward representative alongside Sobottka. He resigned in 2022 after purchasing a home outside 4th Ward boundaries, Doane said in an interview with Shaw Local. Doane has lived in Rock Falls almost his entire life and works as a logistics coordinator with Riverside Logistics in Sterling. He also owns his own business, Phoenix Wicks Candle Co. Rock Falls City Council Ward 3: In the 3rd Ward, also running for a four-year term, incumbent Steve Dowd will face off against newcomers Mary McNeill and Austin Zink. Dowd, a retired Northwestern Steel and Wire worker, was first elected in 2021 by defeating 12-year incumbent Jim Schuneman. Newcomer Zink is a 25-year-old looking to get more young people involved in the city. He will be graduating from Northern Illinois University in May and works at Anne's Garden Center in Dixon, Zink said in an interview with Shaw Local. He has lived in Rock Falls his whole life and is a Rock Falls High School and Sauk Valley Community College graduate. Sterling City Council At-Large seats: In the running for two four-year alderman-at-large positions on Sterling's City Council are incumbents Jim Wise and Kaitlyn Ekquist as well as two newcomers, Ryan Nares and Allen Przysucha. Wise was first elected to the council in 2017 and was reelected in 2021 to serve his current four-year term. Ekquist was first elected to the council in 2021 for her current term. Nares is a business owner who in October opened The Mercantile, 117 W. Third St. in Sterling, with his wife Ashley Nares. The couple also own Nares Event Co. and 'Til Death Photo and Film. Przysucha currently serves on the Sterling planning commission and as a youth committee member for Sterling Township. He is also a board member at United Way of Whiteside County and is a member of the Sterling Noon Rotary Club. Dixon Township highway commissioner: Incumbent Corey Reuter is running against newcomer Cameron Magne. Reuter has been involved in township government for almost 20 years. He first started as a part-time employee at Dixon Township in 2006 and has held the position of highway commissioner for the past five years. Magne has worked for the city of Dixon for 13 years and currently serves as the general foreman in the water department. The Whiteside County Public Safety Sales Tax: Whiteside County voters are once again being asked to consider a countywide sales tax to help fund emergency dispatch services. Residents were asked in November to consider the same 0.5% public safety sales tax but the measure failed after 65.85% of voters said no. If approved, the sales tax would add an additional 50 cents for every $100 that shoppers spend on general merchandise in Whiteside County. The tax would not apply to groceries or items that must be titled or registered by a state agency, including watercraft, aircraft, trailers, mobile homes, qualifying drugs (including over-the-counter medications and vitamins) and medical appliances. Amy Robbins, the county administrator for Whiteside County, said dispatch services cost $1.8 million annually to operate. Outside of radio surcharges, the county and the cities of Sterling and Rock Falls foot the bill. Robbins said there is a deficit of about $500,000 each year. If Whiteside County voters approve the tax, cities would not have to pay to cover the services, and the money that Sterling and Rock Falls now spend for 911 services could possibly remain in their general funds for other uses. If the tax does not pass, cities throughout the county would have to pay for services. The tax is estimated to raise an annual $2 million that could only be used for matters of public safety. Any funds left over would be used to buy equipment and radio and software upgrades while allowing for multiagency interaction.
Washington Post
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
In ‘Sister Europe,' witty conversation is action enough
'Sister Europe,' the compact and spiky new novel from Nell Zink, begins late on a Tuesday afternoon in Berlin and ends at 4 the following morning. Only a recluse, though, would mistake what happens here for a wild night on the town. Set in 2023, the novel's main events are a literary awards ceremony and a trip to a Burger King. Sure, one character gets drunk on wine and another contemplates buying cocaine, but this novel's drug of choice is unfiltered conversation laced with wit and desperation. Zink makes sure there is enough for everyone.
