Summer could not have come sooner.

 

the first lily

 

As usual, spring was just a skip and a hop, a nervous day or three with sunlight and blossoms opening and now we have summer. Full on. When I was a kid, my mother and German people in general, had this thing about Übergangskleidung - transitional clothing - when you get to wear a somewhat lighter anorak and ditched the mittens and scarf on your way to school but still had to stick to the warm tights. Not here in the valley of the fat river. From one day to the next, it's all tank tops and Birkenstock sandals. 

Anyway, this summer is different because I don't work anymore, it doesn't matter if there's a thunderstorm or if it's getting too hot to work without the fan on and the blinds down. I am only two weeks into full retirement and I am head over heels in love with it.

That's the good stuff.  

the veg patch is exploding, the glas cover is there to protect the corn, the pots in front are even more potatoes, all in all I think, we are growing eight different varieties this year

The not so good stuff is that eating contimues to be like gambling—sometimes I win, but mostly I lose. After some complicated blood work and bioelectrical impedance analysis I have now officially earned the title of malnourished and in the spirit of, let's try whatever, have been refered to the department of nutritional science where I was swiftly included into an ongoing study on the gut microbiome. I will do my bit for science even now! For the next three weeks I have to follow a very restricted diet and ingest something called PHGG. It's only a stopgap, a distraction of sorts, however, while I await the scheduled second and third opinion on possible surgery options and these now include removal of some of my intestine. To add some entertainment I have enrolled in an online course on improving muscle strength, eight weeks, every second day, 40 minutes including warm up and cool down. Another gamble, but so far, I am surviving.

the plumeria look kind of odd this year

 

On the outside, I am the same skinny woman, I walk a lot, cycle a lot, I use my roll of FKNZ stickers to cover the neonazi graffiti along my walking route and elsewhere. I chat to people, dogs, cats and birds. I whisper my appreciation to the rambling rose and the plum trees.  I sleep well, read a lot and solve cryptic crossword puzzles.

I knitted these three pillow cases using up some of the left-over wool that I had marked retirement. The pattern is from ravelry (designed by Jenise Hope) and R will do the sewing and stuffing, he is a talented tailor in disguise as long as the seams are in a straight line.

from 1979 to here and now

The year of 1979 was an educational year for me. I was a second year student at the university of Heidelberg, I had just turned 21, was really naive and impressionable, although at the time I considered myself to be extremely well versed in all things politically. Every day I collected the leaflets handed out on campus, I even read most of them but possibly didn't quite understand all of it. I frequented the radical and the feminist bookshops, I attended various meetings, admittedly some because I wanted to impress a guy or was involved with a guy who tagged me along. I campaigned for amnesty international, reclaim the night and rape crisis groups, I attended various South and Central American exile groups mainly for the great music and food but ostensibly to support their fight against autocratic regimes. I rolled my own cigarettes, wore dungarees, had long hair, occasionally took the odd illegal drug, went to festivals, rallies, sit-ins etc. and in between somehow managed to attend courses and sit exams.

Among my friends at the time were three sisters from an Iranian family, whose father had fled to Germany to escape the corrupt regime of the last Shah. These three women knew how to have a good time and could be found at the best parties and festivals. Politics was never on the agenda until the weeks in January and February 1979 when the Shah fled Iran and the exiled Ayatollah returned. First, all three of my friends - together with happy fellow students also looking for a good time - were celebrating, there was dancing and drinks and food and lots of rejoicing. During the day, they were distributing leaflets about the Iranian revolution and freedom and the end of oppression of all people and especially women and so on. Within maybe a week or two, that changed. My friends were now wearing black headscarves, chanting slogans about the new supreme leader and the power of Islam. I didn't understand what was going on. Still don't.

I think of them often these days, when I watch images from students protests across various countries, mine included. I rewatched again and again a short clip of three masked but very apparently not Arab young women, somewhere in the US, shouting, we are Hamas, we are Hamas, we hate you, at a small group of Jewish people.

I want to accept that it is probably not really hatred that drives them, but the feeling that justice is being trampled underfoot. Justice is such a high motivation for many people - I get that. The suffering of the people in Gaza is obvious, as is their helplessness against a locally overpowering Israel. 

And yet, I am searching the various media channels to see if there is any resentment towards Hamas anywhere among the protests, and I find none. 

Yes, there must be an urgent end to the violence, a human catastrophe, possibly genocide, is unfolding in Gaza. Yes, the Israeli army is guilty of several war crimes, this must be investigated. Yes, the situation of the Palestinian civilian population is intolerable, a solution must finally, finally be found that enables peaceful coexistence in the region.

But, Hamas is a terrorist organisation that not only accepts the suffering of the civilian population, but has deliberately caused it in order to make political capital out of it. Hamas is a racist, homophobic, anti-women organisation. Maybe they are not (yet) as bad as the taliban but if you follow the money, you can see the relationship. Please educate me if I got this wrong.

On a more amazing and possibly cheerful note, two things here that moved me this last week:

The Chauvet Cave was discovered in 1994, one year after we had spent the summer roaming around that part of France and I like to think that we may have been near it, maybe pitched our tent on a meadow close by. Inside the cave, there are paintings, works of art created 32,000 years ago. Like this one:

click here for source and more

 

Then I read this report on how Orang Utans use herbal treatment on infected wounds. 

And suddenly, the world has become big again, full of wonder of possibility, and we humans, we are back to being just small co-inhabitants.