heated mittens

Yes, there’s darkness—in this world and in your one, small life—but there is also light streaming in from many directions. Some is coming from so far off, it hasn’t reached you yet. Turn your face to it as often as you can. No darkness deserves your full attention.

Maggie Smith

This was the snow situation three days ago. We had a pleasant walk, the way pensioners amble around the forest and climb a hill to marvel at the view.

It's all gone now, today we are enveloped by a thick mist, just as cold, and the ground is frozen, which makes walking a tad risky. I will gather my inner and outer strength eventually to brace the elements and get a move on, partaking of the sticky foggy air and so on. Yesterday evening we went to a public lecture on democracy and how it can fail and it took me several minutes to warm my fingers so that I could put the key into my bicycle lock. R looked on impatiently and has now ordered an expensive pair of heated mittens that apparently charge via usb stick. 

The lecture was in one of the big lecture theatres at the university, packed to capacity. It was a weird deja vu experience sitting on these fold up seats, wooden desks with that neat groove for the pencil and faint scratched graffiti. And so we listened and were told that democracies are delicate structures and that not everyone likes them. This is because it is not the strongest who wins, but usually the community in the form of majority relationships. And the wheeling and dealing of politicians and lobbyists and that you cannot sue politicians for not delivering on their promises. The positive message for me was the large audience and the mix of ages and the lively discussion at the end.

Cycling home in the cold and dark was another story. Hence the heated mittens.

This weather makes me slow down, not in a nice way. In fact, it makes me feel my age, also not in a nice way.

The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; one feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone, no longer in hope or fear, only observing.

Albert Einstein

snow is shit

 

We cannot know the future, but remembering the past with care and accuracy equips us to navigate it.

Rebecca Solnit 

not my snowman

 

It's been a tough week, winter doesn't help matters at all. I don't care about the brilliant intensity of the sunshine on snow and however blue the sky is to some when the ground is crunching and slippery with refrozen slush and also it's too damn cold. On the worst day, I had an early appointment with the regular experts and after carefully following the predictions of the weather app, I had concluded that it would be ok to cycle there provided I wrap up and put on the reflecting gear as it involved starting before sunrise. Well, the weather app, in fact all the weather apps, got it wrong and I woke up to roads frozen solid after a rainy night. To add some excitement, snow was starting to fall. In this part of Germany, this kind of weather always comes as a complete surprise to the road traffic departments with predictable results. My initial reaction was to just stay home but after much deliberating, I remembered the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism which emphatically state time and again that we must accept another’s generosity otherwise we are interfering with their ability to generate good karma. With that thought, I joyfully accepted R's offer to drive us there, knowing that he simply loves a challenge. (This is a man who in his younger days drove a dilapidated Austin Minor across East Africa.) Let's just say, he had fun. And after he spent an interesting morning sampling the various coffee options on campus until I had been told what I knew they would tell me, we crawled back home on the icy roads.

 

Apart from that, things could only get worse better, and so they have. As the saying goes, modern day fascism is not shouting: Look here, it's me, fascism. Modern day fascism grins and says:  Come on, it's freedom of speech.

Modern day fascism wants you to think that it's the new, fresh way of understanding the world and the people who still insist on issues of justice and human rights are just yesterday's fluffy goody-goody bores who haven't heard the shot. We have a general election in eight weeks and it looks grim.

All I can come up with that I need to stand sturdy, holding onto my morals and my humanity, to live as I feel we should be living, to remain defiant. To not go into internal emigration. To be aware that in a dictatorship, you are not allowed to tell what you see, you are not allowed to say what you think and you are not allowed to write what you want.

Open our eyes to the beauty of things, however imperilled, degraded, or difficult to love the world may appear to be.
We do not look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope - the necessary driver of change - to inspire us to action.
Hope has an earned understanding of the sorrowful or corrupted nature of things, yet it rises to attend to the world even still. We understand that our demoralisation becomes the most serious impediment to bettering the world. In its active form, hope is a supreme gesture of love, a radical and audacious duty, whereas despair is a stagnant rejection of life itself. Hope becomes the energy of change.

Nick Cave

Spring cannot come soon enough.

there's a power in hope

In hopeless times, we can never afford to lose hope. When we feel beaten, we can take a breath and love: a word, a view, a dog, a dream, a person, a hope. We can act and work and hope like citizens of a better country, a better time. We can make 2025 find out there’s a power in that.

 

AL Kennedy

Knackered. I am starting this year knackered. Spent too many hours sitting down with siblings talking, talking, talking. Trying to sleep in unfamiliar cold rooms and to crown it driving four hours through swirling snow, aka mini blizzard, on the motorway in Germany. This in itself is madness even without snow as speed limits are minimal and even when they are, nobody pays any attention.

Before the snow started to fall so furiously, we stopped for a while in another small Franconian town, dating back to the 11th century. Everybody was asleep, every door was closed, no food was available, just pertrol on the way out.

 

It took me several years to actually get the meaning of the word 'knackered' despite the fact that I used it regularly. Actually, there are many words I use in English that I couldn't translate into my first language. In the early days when I was introduced to R's family, when my English was really limited, they had great fun playing charades on a Sunday after lunch and my first test was to act "Deliverance". To this day, I haven't a clue what it means in German and I haven't seen the movie - I think. Of course, I failed, there was much laughter but somehow I must have passed the test because my next clue was "Casablanca" - which I delivered with great skill. They were just as rough with each other. This was a long time ago.

 

I have cleared the paper stacks on my desk, I have defrosted the freezer and got rid of the out-of-date stuff from the medicine cabinet. I am ready for 2025.

    So hope for a great sea-change
    On the far side of revenge.
    Believe that a further shore

    Is reachable from here.
    Believe in miracles
    And cures and healing wells.

Seamus Heaney

And a hopeful lecture to listen to, here:

so this was xmas

We opted for xmas day as the perfect day for a hill walk and it did start out nice and mostly sunny, albeit cold. By the time we had parked the car and put on our boots, however, a big bank of fog moved in and decided to stay for the rest of the day. So, instead of grand vistas, we were surrounded by mysterious blankness.

This kind of cloudy presence created a deep silence around us and at times, all we could do was stumble through it, never sure what was around the corner. Yet, we discovered ancient sulphuric springs dating back to the Roman times.

 

And suddenly, a bit of clear sky to cherish the deep beech forest.

 

With thick mosses and lichens.

 Volcanic remains from an eruption dating back 200,000 years.

Eventually, we settled down for our xmas dinner in an old hunting shed.

And arrived back at the car with much mud to clean from my boots bring home.

The next morning, we woke to brilliant blue skies and not a trace of cloud in sight. Ah well, I suppose we can have a walk in sunny weather any time, whereas climbing and sliding through foggy mud is exceptional. 

Since every commercial aspect, such as shops and restaurants, comes to a standstill for three days here over xmas, I am only slowly getting my orientation back, reminding myself what day of the week it is and so on. Suddenly, I am noticing that pile of papers and files on my desk I think I may have to sort through before the (tax) year ends and I get the tiniest inkling of stress but only briefly. But then, a shrug, who cares.

 Here I am. What happens now, happens to me.

Anna Seghers

one day past midwinter

 

This is an old picture. Today, the view was still the same, a few more clouds but the wind just as cold. 

Yesterday, we watched the light beam make its way into the chamber of Newgrange and luckily, it was a sunny morning. We watched it on the tiny screen of R's cellphone and it was ridiculous and wonderful at the same time.

This is an older video but it looked just like it. Those ancient Celts knew their stuff.

 

 

When walking in the cold, I usually end up counting my steps, pulling my knees up and rolling my feet with every step to stay warm. This eventually sends me into a kind of drowsy absentmindedness, just functioning, for a while and then a string of thoughts starts up, sending my mind all over the place. Today, there were snippets from a podcast on the end of civilisation (Margaret Wheatly in conversation with Sarah Wilson), the new school the grandchild with go to after the xmas holidays, my brother's birthday coming up, how to use all of the leftover wool for one big project so I start from scratch, how reading thrillers is like "eating chocolate in bed" (a quote by Siri Hustvedt) and that I have actually read 99 books this year - most of them thrillers I don't even remember.

As usual, R had announced that his new year's resolution is to not have any resolutions, while I silently started to make a list. Or two. Out loud, we compared our lists of the number of doctor's visits we need to schedule, strictly check-ups and vaccine updates. It's going to be an exciting year. Watch this space.

 

No matter what times we live in, no matter who holds power or who is being oppressed, we all have to hang onto ourselves, to what we know to be right and good, to not sacrifice those values even for our own skin, much less our own power, success, or status.

The moral codes we live by do not have to be immaculate. They do not have to check every box of what we think is expected of us, or what we expect of ourselves. All they must be—and this is harder than it sounds—is sturdy enough to withstand the wreckage of history.

Antonia Malchik

Almost midwinter.

the apricot tree asleep

The sun set at 04:28 pm today. The wind is fierce but we enjoyed an almost blue sky when we went out for the afternoon walk. Earlier, R insisted on going up on the roof to nail down the zink top of the chimney that was blown down. This was accompanied by me complaining hysterically about him taking risks while these kind of events and repairs are covered by the expensive insurance we keep on paying and never claiming. But there are things a man must do. Or so it seems. Anyway, he noticed my distress and voluntarily joined me on my walk.

The garden is more or less dormant. This is the vegetable area with a stretch of sprouting broccoli and Brussel sprouts in the top right, some chewy green leafy stuff from a Chinese plant in the top left, a last bit of hardy spinach and couple of parsnips in the front left and green manure (phacelia) in the right front. The rest is a neglected mess. We share the parsnips with the magpies and the squirrels, strictly on a first come first serve basis.

In the greenhouse, I am nurturing two surprise avocado plants from stones that started to sprout while sitting deep inside the compost and two pots with next spring's new lilies or maybe iris. I forget.

I have again been odered to document my food intake (energy, protein, B12) for a couple of days and this has been today's fare. You are welcome to skip this bit. And I won't do this every day.

• Breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal porridge with low fat milk and a delicious clementine fresh from Spain. Two cups of black tea, each with a drop of low fat milk.
• Mid-morning snack was a slice of spelt toast, with a bit of that vegan butter stuff that's meant to be rich in omega 3, topped with a slice of fol epi (French cheese from the Loire valley) and  another cup of black tea with a drop of milk.
• Lunch was a soup I made from a large fennel bulb, a chunk of cauliflower and two small potatoes, all of which I first roasted in the oven with a generous dash of olive oil, salt, pepper and baharat (Middle Eastern) spice mix before I whizzed the lot with an added handful of Thai basil and some left over feta cheese in the blender. Ate it with another slice of spelt toast with that omega-3 spread on top of it. Followed by a large cup of coffee with hot foamy milk.
  
• Mid-afternoon snack was the daily dose of protein powder (pure whey) mixed in a cup of Greek yoghurt and a handful of fresh raspberries - they come from Morocco these days.
• Dinner was cottage cheese mixed with cherry tomatoes and Thai basil. More black tea with a little bit of milk and three slices of Zwieback. 

I enjoyed all of it, most of these are from my favourite foods list anyway. As long as I can remember I have been a big fan of Zwieback, which is sometimes translated as rusk but that's not quite it. At some stage, I even baked it myself but it's a bit labour intensive (Zwieback translates as baked twice) and much easier to just buy it. The variety of Zwiebacks is vast, I am currently partial to the "whole spelt with butter" version. It must be dipped into tea or coffee. My mother and women of her generation made a baby dish of Zwieback soaked in some hot water or milk - depending on the age of the baby - and then mashed with a banana. It is also excellent in a decent sherry trifle.

Here is a picture I have borrowed from Wikipedia.

On our walk we talked about the state of the planet, we always do. We covered fake news, our own set of blinders when it comes to how (not) to avoid fossil fuels, plastics and other comfortable stuff that we are too lazy to change. We talked about the civilization collapse and the roof skylight that needs repairing. Also, Black Doves on Netflix.

 

What motivates us to act is a sense of possibility within uncertainty – that the outcome is not yet fully determined and our actions may matter in shaping it.

Rebecca Solnit

when we were gods

These are the days of darkness and cold. It's barely above freezing outside. While I was cleaning the downstairs windows (I enjoy cleaning windows BTW), I notice that something or someone has been gnawing away a bit of the frame from the patio door. The door is made from very hard hardwood and has been unblemished until six weeks ago when I last washed the glass and the frame (I take window cleaning very seriously). We decided that it's not the end of the world and that for now we shall observe hoping that the door will not collapse. Maybe the termites are coming to take over the house. Last night I dreamt of being back in Africa fighting with never ending columns of red ants.

My mind is otherwise blank and blissfully useless. I got yet another letter from the pension people in Ireland promising even more arrears to be paid shortly. As a matter of fact, shortly could mean anything and R thinks it's a scam anyway. 

Here are some mostly anonymous bits from the wise internets. That's all I have the energy for.

History has shown time and again that defeating injustice is much easier than achieving justice.

 

You can relax. If you decide against climate protection, it does not mean that you are selling your soul. You are only selling those of your children and grandchildren, and if things go well for you, you won't even have to watch.

 

Lauren Hough

For all the mothers out there, I wish you would read this post, it's longish, so take your time. I admit that I got quite emotional reading it. And I am a hard nut as the saying goes.

https://katywheatley.substack.com/p/a-very-long-post-about-maternal-burnout

diagnostic dead end

 

In fairness, it was kind, the way he told me over the phone. In my mind's eye I could almost see him shrug. We have reached the end of diagnostic options. And I replied that I understood, obviously. I almost laughed. After four experts and I lost count how many procedures, it has been agreed that the displacement of various bowel segments due to chronic inflammation scars and whatever else could - in theory - be surgically repaired but what's the opposite of in theory here, maybe in fact. In fact, surgery is not an option because of the compromised immune system due to the past 10+ years of immune suppression therapy, which most likely saved my life or at least the life expectancy of my liver, kidneys, heart and lungs. Also eyes and ears. And ayway, surgery in otherwise healthy people without an autoimmune disease has a success rate at only around 50 percent.

In short, this is the shape of things from now on. Me, hoping in the morning that the small bland yet pleasant breakfast portion will not cause a wave of painful bloating that could last until evening, while creating an Ottolenghi style lunch with said bland ingredients.

I have long ago accepted how limited my personal autonomy actually has become with a body that's a site of complication and now that eating has become a trial-by-error assault course, I can only shrug.

As Virginia Woolf said, in illness, the mind gives way to a thousand fantasies we don’t find time for in health.

Other than that, it's winter and cold and wet. I push myself outside, well wrapped, listening to a gruesome thriller, feeling slightly embarrassed for doing so when this is the view.

I could share my thoughts on stuff, like how the more feminist achievements there are, the more patriarchal violence increases. And how the crisis situations we are living in - climate crisis, wars, increasing poverty - motivates men to abuse and humiliate those who are below them in the hierarchy and how this behavior is increasingly accepted. How global right-wing extremism celebrates a traditional, alpha image and how religious fanaticism, whether evangelical or Islamist, celebrates the oppression of women. But then what? Right now, I just want to get from one day to the next, have a decent walk, digest my food without too much pain and find out who did it (in the thriller).

 

and everything moves

 The sky this afternoon just before sunset, 28 days to midwinter.

 

Today, suddenly and with a strong wind, it got mild again. I went for a long walk along the river, feeling lucky and content for the moment. The nasty cold is behind me and as for the rest of my health concerns, something will work out eventually. Maybe, hopefully. Enough to feel good. For the moment.

Unlike last Friday evening, when I attended a debate on the war in Ukraine and what could, may, will happen next, now that the madman in Moscow has begun to deploy his new range of weapons. It was not an evening of easy listening. What do I know. All I could think of afterwards was how glad I am my parents are both dead, my mother would be so frightened, so freaked out. 

After reading Eve (Cat Bohannon), I am now halfway through Mother Nature (Sarah Blaffer Hrdy) another book on motherhood and evolution or according to the subtitle: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species. It helps to engage with a broader viewpoint of humanity for a change, to consider how recent and how pretty amateurish and stupid our footprint as homo sapiens has been to date and how minute in the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, this country I am living in is preparing for a general election in February. The tone is getting increasingly nasty, the hype of fake news while not quite (yet) trump material, nevertheless gaining ground. I try to remind myself that although it appears that the cement within this society is no longer solidarity with one another, but common hatred of others, every system, be it a democracy, a dictatorship, an autocracy, you name it, is led by individuals.   

In view of this, I have started to set up a little toolkit, a collection of essays, handouts, opinions, guiding voices from here and there, maybe just to calm my nerves, maybe to reassure myself that there are outspoken, sharp, caring, attentive, thoughtful people out there, around me. People who will keep their eyes and ears open, ready to step in, step up. I may figure out a way to create a link to it eventually. Currently it's just a mixed bag in three languages. While I am working on this, here the main theme (taken from here):

• As much as possible, we should do things fascists cannot do. 
• As much as possible, we should not do things fascists want us to do and we should do things fascists don't want us to do. 
• Never accept the fascist offer.

Thus,

We do have to call them out, and name them as the Windigos that they are, with all the ethical, moral jeopardy associated with that.

Robin Kimmerer

 and

What is a tyrant but a grotesque clown, a farcical reflection of humanity’s darker nature? He, like all despots, will pass. The earth will continue, wounded perhaps, but enduring. 

Philippa Perry

Hence,

Underground is where the work gets done.
For decades this has been true and the moment to get to work has been here for a long time…. A long time.
I think it’s time to go underground. Stealth care… Create women’s health clinics that are safe and secret. Create assistance and care for climate disaster victims. Create portable homes for people in motion. Create safe havens for whistle blowers and dissidents. Create help for immigrants. Create care centers for substance and tech addiction. Tend the communities of people who are making new paths. Make music. Create restoration of waters and soil that are not state bound. Time to go beyond borders and tend beyond nationalistic boundaries. Tend your and others’ mental health. It’s time to get off the stage and on the ground. Time to get to work in ways that are not ensnared in polarized politics. Unseen and unnoticed acts of generosity and triage are needed, regardless of who has the microphone.
No meme or model or glamor will do it.
Be a dandelion; persistent and filled with healing gifts. Expand into the minutia.

Nora Bateson

and more:

I'm just a sucker for courage. As I say so often, I'm moved by the gift of courage, because when you walk towards danger, in the danger, and dare to do what's needed, you put your own safety at risk so you become in some way larger than life. Fear makes you shrink, doesn't it?

Joanna Macy

As the institutional care of dominant politics breaks down, as politics becomes a vassal for something else, revealing other desirous vocations that disrupt the idea of the isolated discerning human subject, may we find the openings to do more than we think possible now. Something more compelling than victory (and the moral assemblage that makes finish lines and trophies meaningful) shimmers in the near-distance. Something that urges us to lose our way, together.

Bayo Akomolafe

We say everything comes back. You cannot divert the river from the riverbed. We say every act has its consequences. (. . . ) We say look how the water flows from this place and returns as rainfall. Everything returns, we say, and one thing follows another. There are limits, we say, on what can be done, and everything moves. 

Susan Griffin

It is a help towards sanity and calm judgment to acquire the habit of seeing contemporary events in their historical setting, and of imagining them as they will appear when they are in the past.

Bertrand Russell

 

Totally unrelated, but as (grand-)parent, I can feel it:

the best day, the hardest day

Today is the birthday of our daughter. The hardest day of my life, the most beautiful day of my life, the best day of my life. (I have written about it here.)

This morning, we woke to frost and a dusting of snow, so we wrapped up well and went for a walk. Every year on this day, when we share memories, it's different. Today, R talked about how he feared we were close to death, how he thought we would die, our premature baby and myself, how he tried to stay calm. And I remembered his shaking, cold body when I tried to lean against him, his white face, and that I asked the midwife to look after him. I remember watching blood running down my legs and trying to think why. I also remember signing my name under a short note I wrote in a shaky hand (when this is over, never again) but no note was ever found. I remember roaming the house all night, shouting and laughing and roaring. It has taken me years to speak calmly about the nuns and the nurses at the hospital where S spent two weeks incubated in a brightly lit room, where we had to fight for access, had to beg for my milk to be fed through the gastric tube. So on this cold and grey day we walked full of wonder how it all turned out, how we are all sane (?) after all. And at one stage, this girl was walking towards us, maybe six, seven years old, on her way home from the school down the road. She was deep in an imaginative play, gesticulating, hopping, whispering, not noticing us or anything else. And R looked at me and smiled, wonder what's her story, he said.

 

And I will raise my hand up into the nighttime sky
And count the stars that's shining in your eye

only 32 days to midwinter

There's the good and the not so good but what the heck. It's November, what do you expect.

The good news. We spent most of the weekend potting small tree sapplings and then putting up notices online and by hand on the garden gate and throughout Sunday, people came to pick them up. Once upon a time, these sapplings were squirrel food storage, now long forgotten. I checked and no, squirrels are not into planting trees for future harvest. They just bury too much stuff and also, they are forgetful, which, if you happen to be a growing forest, is a nice touch of evolution but when you have a medium sized garden in suburbia, the number of trees you can grow is limited.

Next, I potted most of the aloe vera offspring, all the small bits that grow around the big ones. I'll give them some time in the greenhouse to grow roots and then they'll go the way of the sapplings.

After much deliberating, we moved all the plumeria into the big basement room where there's almost no daylight.

The bad news, I divided up the amaryllis shoots into individual pots and now they look miserable and maybe won't flower at all. 

Also in bad news, I am still working on that cold. I tried ignoring it and went for a long walk in the rain and did some yoga and cycling around for an hour or three - not all on the one day - but this cold is of the stubborn variety it seems.

Almost forgot the other good news which arrived in the shape of an official letter from the back and beyond of County Sligo in the far northwest of Ireland, which is where the Department of Social Affairs (pension, contributory) has been abandoned relocated in an effort to decentralise things away from Dublin. Anyway, the good people inform me, in a long letter written both in English and as Gaeilge, that I am entitled to a pension as of November of last year and that I will therefore first of all receive an arrears payment, followed by monthly instalments. Hurray for paying PRSI tax back in the dark ages while working for pennies in the worker's co-op. I am now able to afford a large pizza for three every month. Or maybe one for two including drinks. And since I am currently unable to digest pizza and don't partake of the drinks, this is even better. I will be rich!

Another bit of not good news is that the weight loss has moved from discreet, which was deemed acceptable, to concerning. But I tell them it's probably an outlier, a bad month, that kind of thing. This was met with disbelief. Instead, I had to provide another stool sample to check on flare-up control, with mediocre results. I may be looking into a change of monoclonal antibody, which is tedious but still preferable to surgery. Or maybe not. Some days, I get a brief and sudden taste of some almost forgotten food right there in my mouth as if I'm eating it. Odd things, like bland chicken breast, or, yesterday, warm German custard. German custard  - Vanillesosse - is usually runny, a thick sauce poured over overly sweetend desserts. Even with a healthy digestive system, I wouldn't really eat or cook either but who knows, maybe one day. Which is to say, I am still hopeful that this digestive conundrum will come to an end eventually. 

Temperatures are in the single digits (Celsius) and there has been snow in the distance which means rain and more rain here. Four and a half weeks to midwinter.

The news from Europe are that Europe stares war in the face because Trump is aligned with Putin who wants to crush Ukraine, and also maybe the Balkans and Poland and the governments of Sweden and Finland are now instructing households on how to prepare for war. While we watched the footage from hīkoi mō te Tīriti, yesterday's march for the treaty, in Wellington, NZ, knowing that our family is somewhere there in the happy, peaceful crowd, we felt such relief knowing that where they are, neither Putin nor Trump can touch them, yet. And that maybe, maybe, maybe, a strong indigenous community will continue to keep this corner of the world safe and alert.

 

small acts of resistance

This here, watch, spread it and think.

 

When the nazis came to power in Germany, my father was a toddler, when Germany finally capitulated, he had just turned 16. Throughout his childhood, his primary school years and a big chunk of his secondary education, access to literature, art, music, media, was strictly controlled. Only one radio station was permitted and households had to purchase a specially designed radio, the Volksempfänger, for this. I know from his recollections that many households had more than one radio and that even on the Volksempfänger, foreign radio stations could be listened to. It took some fiddling and obviously, secrecy. There is this story that one day, my father's older sister was picked up by a suitor for a date and apparently, he turned pale and rushed to my grandfather's big old radio to quickly move the dial from BBC back to where it had to be. 

Anyway, imagine a childhood and education where most books were banned, where all education materials, including songs, music, outdoor activities, sports and so on were strictly controlled. Also, imagine children in compulsory uniforms. (This is one reason why there are no school uniforms in Germany and youth organisations like the Scouts are not very popular here.) In 1939, six years after the nazis came to power and just before Germany started WWII, the Hitler youth, which had existed for a decade as a "voluntary" youth club for boys (in fact a paramilitary training camp) became mandatory for all boys from age 10 upwards. My father turned 10 that year. My grandfather managed to convince the local police chief that my father, his 10-year old son, a small shy boy, was very skilled with horses and could be trusted to look after the parade horses the police kept for special occasions. My father had never been near a horse but one of his uncles gave him a crash course and so my father - instead of marching and parading with uniformed school boys - mucked out stables and groomed horses for many years, all of which could obviously not be done in uniform. I call this an act of resistance, albeit a small one.

Another one was my father's classics teachers. Secondary school with only nazi approved literature, just try and think what it may entail.  While the officials were busy banning and burning novels and picture books and history books, my father and his school mates studied Latin and Greek, they translated and discussed in the original language, texts on democracy, failed tyrants, how to debate, the power of public participation, philosophy, but also the beauty of nature, poetry, art. Nobody stopped them, ancient classics, these old dusty books, they meant nothing to the nazis, they had no idea. We used to laugh at my father's party pieces, quoting original verses and lines from Homer and Plato, Aristotle and Tacitus. 

 

news in brief

"A Russian state news channel aired nude photos of former U.S. First Lady Melania Trump as newscasters reported on her husband, Donald, who, since launching his successful campaign for 45th presidency of the United States in 2015, told supporters that being eaten by a shark was better than being electrocuted, said that he wanted to purchase Greenland, claimed that American bowel movements require fifteen flushes, speculated that the hairspray he uses to maintain his “gorgeous head” does not contribute to climate change because he keeps his windows closed while spraying it, stared directly into a solar eclipse as his aide shouted “Don’t!,” told a widower that her husband was looking up at her from hell, denied his first ex-wife’s accusation that he assaulted her in a fit of rage after a botched operation to reduce the size of his bald spot, buried his first ex-wife near his New Jersey golf course, recounted to a group of boy scouts the details of a decades-old cocktail party featuring a pro-segregation real estate developer that was attended by the “hottest people” in New York, repeatedly praised a fictional serial killer, said that “Second Amendment people” could “maybe” kill his opponent, accused congress members who didn’t clap for one of his addresses of treason, reportedly condoned the idea of his supporters killing his vice president for certifying the presidential election he lost, said black Americans should vote for him because he was “discriminated against” when he was arrested and charged in Georgia with attempting to subvert the state’s vote tally in that same election, and said he would act for one day as a dictator if he was reelected as the 47th president, which he was, by a margin of almost 4 million votes."

 

Harper’s Weekly Review, today

news? truth?

"Social media is mainstream media now. It’s where the majority of the world gets its news. Though who even cares about news? It’s where the world gets its memes and jokes and consumes its endlessly mutating trends. Forget “internet culture”. The internet is culture. And this is where this election was fought and won … long before a single person cast a ballot.

Mark Zuckerberg has ditched his suit, grown out his Caesar haircut and bought a rapper-style gold chain. He’s said one of his biggest regrets is apologising too much. Because he – like others in Silicon Valley – has read the runes. PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, creeping around in the shadows, ensured his man, JD Vance, got on the presidential ticket. Musk wagered a Silicon Valley-style bet by going all in on Trump. Jeff Bezos, late to the party, jumped on the bandwagon with just days to go, ensuring his Washington Post didn’t endorse any candidate.

These bros know. They don’t fear journalists any more. Journalists will now learn to fear them. Because this is oligarchy now. This is the fusion of state and commercial power in a ruling elite. It’s not a coincidence that Musk spouts the Kremlin’s talking points and chats to Putin on the phone. The chaos of Russia in the 90s is the template; billions will be made, people will die, crimes will be committed.

We’re all wading through the information sewers. Trump is a bacillus but the problem is the pipes. We can and must fix this."

 

Carol Cadwalladr (klick on her name to read the rest)

seven in flower

 

the one in the middle only flowers in summer

 

In the analysis and debate following German reunification in 1989, when things didn't exactly proceed as fairy-tale-y as imagined, there was this one statement that - at the time - captured it: A nation has risen to be able to go shopping. 

Today, in one of the many comments on the US election results, I read: You voted for fascism because cereal, eggs and gasoline have become more expensive?

Obviously, that's not the whole picture and I am an ignorant old woman from Europe. But still. I made the mistake (?) of downloading the entire Project 2025 and started to get the shivers on page 3: Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. WTF. No source given, of course, no research results, no statistics, no evidence, just a nasty piece of opinion.

Also, on Wednesday after we got the news on the US election in the morning, our own government collapsed in the afternoon - these two events are not (yet) related and while our own versions of the ultra right wing and the not quite ultra right wing but nevertheless nasty populists are all getting ready, we don't seem to have as nasty a piece of shit in line as trump (yet). But when in the far future, two German historians should meet and one asks the other, what's your area of research? and the answer is, November 5th 2024, the next question inevitably will be, am or pm?

I believe there are two things that can stop the fascists. The first is their own vast incompetence. The second is all of us. I think I'd rather count on the second than the first. Actually, here is a third thing: climate change. 

Remember. There is a lot of power in society that is not in hands of elected heads and their staff. There is power in state and local governments, the courts, federal bureaucracy, schools, nonprofits, businesses, churches, mosques and synagogues, in local communities and yes, in families, with or without a father. Much of this power can be used to work to stop or mitigate the bad things that a fascist, autocratic whatever government is imposing.

I have a cold, my throat is raw, R made me do a covid tests (neg) and I am grumpy. Also, angry, because I want to go outside but: too exhausted.   

Finally:

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have never looked at the world.

Alexander von Humboldt

Now pay attention: you and I are among the most privileged people on this planet. We have access to information. Not only do we have the right to freedom of expression, we can even exercise it. We can be politically engaged citizens in our societies. It is absurd for people like us to think about despairing or giving up.

Anne Applebaum

A depressing day for freedom and tolerance.  The outcome of the election in the US points the way to an age of intolerance, lies and violence - worldwide, not just for Americans. Other, smaller countries have long since gone down this path. And my country, Germany is already on the way.

What do people around the world may learn from this? Why be honest and kind when lying and being rude/criminal gets you elected president twice. This overwhelming desire for leadership through authoritarian conservatism will serve as a model for populists everywhere whereby malice, unscrupulousness, brutality, isolation, lies, selfishness, wealth, lawlessness, oppression are the accepted means to success. 

Our world and humanity have suffered a great deal of damage. Yes, and maybe the only positive thing about this day for some will be to remember it for the rest of their lives. But people everywhere, we have no choice but to show courage, solidarity and organization. First and foremost, we must look after the planet, each other and the less privileged and show them that they are not alone. 

When in Germany earlier this year, the ultra-righwing fascist party gained 30% of the vote in three federal states, we went through a period of shock. But eventually, we recognised that 70% did not vote for them and that we must concentrate our efforts there. And the same is true for what happened now in the US, a slim majority voted for intolerance and hate, but a large minority did not.

This day has a great tragedy, let's make it a great strength.

 

Here a good example of what a joint effort can look like, from Valencia, Spain, earlier this week.

migration

I often feel embarassed to admit that I'm an optimist. I imagine it knocks me down a peg or two in people's estimations. But the world desperately needs more optimism. The problem is that people mistake optimism for 'blind optimism', the unfounded faith that things will just get better. Blind optimism really is dumb. And dangerous. If we sit back and do nothing, things will not turn out fine. That's not the kind of optimism I'm talking about.
Optimism is seeing challenges as opportunities to make progress; it's having the confidence that there are things we can do to make a difference. We can shape the future, and we can build a great one if we want to.

Hannah Ritchie

All day, we were busy in the garden. I was busy sitting down and watching and drinking cups of tea while R was busy mowing and clearing and mulching and all the stuff that he has been doing for ever.

And all that time, thousands and thousands of crane were flying above us, on their way from Sweden and Finland to their summer homes in northern Africa. They do make a lot of noise. I waved to them and asked them to please come back next March.

to refrain from encroaching on what we don’t quite understand

 

 

I did many wonderful things this week, I laughed often, appreciated my excellent fortune of where and how we live, had enjoyable and enlightening times outdoors, indoors, in conversation and while contemplating.

Somewhere along the line in the past years or so, I think, I must have figured out that I want to have all that (above) despite the ongoing ill-health issues. After a while, it's either giving in and breaking into pieces or getting on with it, sort of.

When I had the three sessions with the clinical nutritionist earlier this year, I was introduced to the proper way of recording food intake, its positive and negative results and why. At first, I found it tedious and thankfully, I only need to do this for 2-3 days every so often to keep on track, but in hindsight, it makes sense and yes, shows some sort of cause and effect.

Anyway, the barium paste seems to have left the body and the bad days are not quite as bad which gave me enough energy to go for another long hillwalk with the man.

We started with a short steep climb to a 11th century castle ruin.

 and proceeded through dense forest in gorgeous autum colours

and found a small cemetery from the middle ages

some excellent views once we got up high

and a soft path with thick gorse bushes on the way down

with plenty of mushrooms

On Thursday was Samhain, one of the Celtic quarter days better known as Halloween and wrongly described as a US custom. I don't mind, really. It's slowly arriving here too but the few kids we saw running around were basically just after bags of sweets.

We built a small fire in the fire bowl on the patio and R talked about the Samhain rituals of his Irish childhood which involved apples and nuts and bairín breac (barmbrack) and much scary laughter and story telling. Athough he grew up in middle class suburbian Dublin, the ancient folklore traditions were part of his life. It was around this time of the year, when I first arrived in R's family and I had No Idea. Especially when the barmbrack was served and my slice miraculously contained the much cherished ring. A barmbrack is a sweet raisin bread that is used for fortune telling (more here). I also thought the entire family was slightly mad when we proceeded to do the weird thing with apples in a bucket of water. 

This here is a lengthy but enjoyable podcast episode put together by the National Folklore Collection of the University College of Dublin explaining and celebrating the Samhain origins of Halloween:

AmbasadaIrlandii · Samhain event recording

 

Folklore is a beautiful way for us to connect with our local landscape—our own natural environment—through the symbols and stories and narratives that are told about it. I think there’s a tendency nowadays to look at these things in terms of “They may be a bit twee,” or “They’re slightly footy because they’re so odd,” or “Ha-ha, who could take those silly things seriously?” But I think they should be afforded much more dignity. So much of this has been distilled through countless generations. The contemporary experience of modernity that we’re passing through now is a sort of restless discord, a feverish hand-wringing. And these structures—whether fairy lore or ritual or belief or custom found in our traditional practices—hold a lot of joy, profanity, wit, wisdom, humor, darkness, even, which is useful. They’re meaningful, they orient us, they ground us. They can help us move from disenchantment to enchantment with the world around us. When you look out across a landscape, it’s not just some bleak void—there’s a mystery and depth and richness to it. Suddenly, there’s a flash of the fantastic into the ordinary, into the everyday.

 Jonny Dillon (archivist of the National Folklore Collection at the University College of Dublin)

 

fog's sake

This is what greeted us late afternoon today. It was very silent for a Sunday and yes, beautiful. But not my beautiful.

It has been a shitty week with seemingly endless cramps and bloating and all the heavy stuff that goes with it. There are times when I hang from the door frame like a woman in labour, followed by long hot showers. More often, I feel the urge to drop the grin from the grin and bear it approach and instead kick the door frame or whatever else comes my way. Which is when R thinks it's time for the ER but so far, none of the real emergency events have occurred that I have been informed should neccessitate such a trip (vomit, blood, fever). This started after I had a strange imaging procedure on Wed morning, involving a sticky toothpaste like barium paste, and things have been going downhill since. I am hoping for an uphill turn eventually. The intestine is such a massive disappointment currently. Somehow I do believe I am on the way to possibly have some of it removed. I wonder when the day comes. Meanwhile, food intake is tricky.

My daughter was almost in tears when I told her this morning that I don't see myself going out for a meal ever again. The life of the young loses meaning without sushi or pizza. I told her that I have had my share of delicatessen, some of which I would not eat again even if healthy (octopus, bat, pig's glands, snake, escargots) and that I have excellent and fond memories of eating in amazing places on several continents. It calmed her down a bit.

The silver lining in all this is of course being retired, having time and place for distraction, for the making of bland soups in their endless variations, for gardening and staring into space while sitting in a deck chair wrapped in several warm blankets, for watching the jays flying in to elegantly pick the peanuts I place on the patio for them. Also, we cycled through glorious sunny forests yesterday and sat down for coffee in the Portuguese cafe where I watched R munch a warm pasteis de nata. Now that is something I wish to eat again one day. 

And of course, reading, this not for the first time, but the book is so amazing:

So I think there was one moment in the evolution of human language that marked a dividing line: before it we were not yet human, but after it we where.

It was probably the smalles thing, neither heroic or grand. More than likely, it was the intimate moment, probably late in the evening in the low blue quiet before dreaming, when a single human being told the very first story.

I doubt it was told to a group. If anything, it probably took shape between two people who already spent most of their time trying to talk to each other: a fussy child who needed to sleep and a mother who needed to sleep even more.

Cat Bohannon in: Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution (2023)

And finally, a poem that spells autumn for me:

    

 

Rock Me, Mercy 

    The river stones are listening
    because we have something to say.
    The trees lean closer today.
    The singing in the electrical woods
    has gone dumb. It looks like rain
    because it is too warm to snow.
    Guardian angels, wherever you’re hiding,
    we know you can’t be everywhere at once.
    Have you corralled all the pretty wild
    horses? The memory of ants asleep
    in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.
    The magpies gaze at us, still
    waiting. River stones are listening.
    But all we can say now is,
    Mercy, please, rock me.

 

Yusef Komunyakaa

the news today

The garden is all autumn.

The cabbage season beckons.

The eight xmas cacti came inside and promptly started to produce buds. 

We walked for a couple of hours in the forest 

 

 

 to visit a waterfall

 

and marvel at the horizon

 

I am living in the country where in my parent's lifetime, books were burned, people were persecuted for their political, religious, personal opinions, children with disabilities were selected and institutionally murdered, where the Holocaust was invented and carried out with great precision. I am also living in a country with a long history of great thinkers, creative artists, composers, architects, painters, inventors.

In most towns and cities in my country, there are memorials, statues, museums, stepping stones, monuments, signposts, street names, commemorating resistance fighters, Jewish or Roma or Sinti or gay or otherwise persecuted citizens.

One set of my grandparents were nazis, the other tried to avoid any involvement with them, tried to keep out of it and did nothing. My parents went to school at a time when flags with the swastika were on every building, when almost all activities, from sports to music, chess to scouting were under nazi control. Both my parents remembered friends, neighbours, shop owners, public figures disappearing. My family made it through twelve years of fascist rule, too many wounds and scars to count, but safe and apart from one cousin killed in Russia alive.

Until most recently, we would almost laugh out loud when someone like trump used the word fascist or nazi. You haven't the faintest, we muttered, your idea is based on a cheap Hollywood version where the good guys win.  But now I am not so sure any more. I read this here today by Heather Cox Richardson:

Examining a number of types of Americans, she wrote that the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so completely in the promise of American democracy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easygoing to join a struggle. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”

Read the entire letter, I urge everybody and not just in the US. This could happen anywhere. Trump, coronavirus, the Russian attack on Ukraine and Hamas terrorism have only been the triggers that have made a change visible, which in turn lies more in the reactions to these events. Epidemics, wars and terrorist organisations have happened before. The insecurity they trigger has more to do with the fact that we cannot find an appropriate response to them. We withdraw, stop reading the news, shrug and concentrate on the mundane, dinners, shopping, gardening. There don't seem to be any institutions left to handle crises effectively. Instead, it looks more and more that it's not who is right that wins, but simply who is stronger. Is it just me that finds this scary? 

There are days when I try to reassure myself that all fascist states have failed eventually and utterly, some sooner  (Germany 12 years), a few lasted longer (Portugal, Spain), but they collapsed nevertheless. 

Because: people stopped them. People. Like us. We are people.

Also, climate change could speed it all up dramatically.