Note: This is a series of articles from my recent trip to Dallas to spend time with my mother, who recently celebrated her 80th birthday.
When I was stationed in Romania (1989-1991), I sent back some stuff to my mother through the mail. Some of the items were packed in newspaper. We were going through some of that old stuff and found this old newspaper from the Nicolae Ceausescu era. It’s dated in the summer of 1989, about six months before the Romanian dictator was overthrown and shot by a firing squad on Christmas Day.
I’d forgotten how utterly worthless the “news” was in the Communist Party press, which was the only media allowed to show domestic and international news and current events. Each and every day, the front page looked like this — a glowing review of the dictator’s latest victory…..whatever activity, decision, or speech he made that day….along with an unreadable amount of gibberish about the glorious state of the national economy or some other contrived falsehood.
“Scinteia” means knowledge in Romanian and is derived from the Latin origin. Not to be confused with “Scientia,” which is a highly-respected Romanian publisher, created after Ceausescu’s downfall.
Thing was, there was no knowledge to be gained from reading the newspapers (or watching either of Bucharest’s ONLY TWO television stations, which were appalling yet also deviantly entertaining for all the wrong reasons in a Mystery Science Theater sort of way). Indeed, it’s a mystery why these were even printed and sold daily, since no one read or trusted them. But, they did make for good wrappings to mail stuff back home.