June - already

It has rained and it is getting hot.  In other words, summer.

lily season

This afternoon, I sat in the auditorium of a concert hall and listened to 500+ primary school kids, aged 6-8, sing their hearts out. Not only did they sing, they used sign language and various percussion instruments incl. their hands and feet and heads and it was a most joyful afternoon. This choir is part of a local initiative to bring together children of all backgrounds and nationalities in about 25 different primary schools in our city. In the end, we all sang - three times! - Beethoven's Ode to Joy in German, Kurdish, Arabic, and Urdu. Imagine standing and singing "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" (all people become brothers) surrounded by 500 small kids and try not to be moved.

As I cycled back home in the evening sunlight, my mind was a whirling mess of thoughts. All morning I had heated debates with R and a couple of friends and family about recent political events in Germany and while we are nowhere near the US scenario, there are signs of clear danger and we are experiencing the first open and brazen illegal actions by the government, copying what others so openly do.

It seems that wherever I look, in countries near and far powerful people believe that the best way for them to hold onto power is to hurt other people. And their logic appears to be that the more all of us are afraid of them and of each other - our shared humanity - the more they win. Seeking to dehumanize marginalized communities and anyone who opposes them, attempting to outlaw our active civil society. 

So where do I stand? First, I know that what matters is solidarity. Personal networks, personal relationships, community. Always has been what kept me going. 

And deep down, you can see it in every crisis, in every misfortune, when someone stumbles and falls on the street and someone will run to help. Because we do not believe that this person deserves to have stumbled and fallen, and it doesn't matter whether that person has paid their taxes, how they make a living or whom they love, and if we like them or not. A person who needs help is helped. Big or small. This for me is humanity, this is what I call socialism. We need to make sure that we dig out this humanity again, that we stop people from being turned into wrecks, into ruins by fascists and neoliberals. How nice it would be if we simply lived in a human future.

A lot gives me hope. so many people just get it, so many people show solidarity, are co-operative. If you let people be, nobody wants to be mean to their neighbour. I don't want to come across as naive. But in evolutionary terms, this has been the survival strategy of the human species.  It's not so easy to stop people from being that way, even if it has been successfully attempted, by neoliberalism, which pushes us away from any form of community, and by the extreme right, which pushes us away from any form of trust in other people. Either way, we would be doomed. I think all fascist movements thrive on that death wish anyway but that's another story.

There is a video making the rounds where a mother reads out the first half of sentences she was told by her parents when she grew up maybe 30-40 years ago and asks her kid to complete the sentence. The one that made me cry was "As longs as you put your feet under my table . . " - the eternal threat shouted by my angry father when confronted with yet another teenage behaviour he could not tolerate - and today's kid replied ". . . you are safe."

Also, spelling is really necessary when dealing with AI.

 

 

how to stay engaged

This. Just listen. I am glad I did. Click on the "Last Year's Move to Toronto" heading and then play on the video on his substack page.

 

Last Year's Move to Toronto by Timothy Snyder

And This Year's Politics (video and commentary)

Read on Substack

small talk about the weather

 

things have grown

Before reaching a decision in favour of surgical removal of a gallbladder with neither acute inflammation nor stone formation, the gods have placed another MRI as well as more lab tests and outpatient appointments. In other words, still more waiting. 

When I mentioned that this will cost me at least another kilo in weight loss, the medical expert's eyebrows twitched slightly and he added the word "urgent" to the MRI request. On a scale from one to ten, how is the pain during a colicky period, he asked. Like the final hours in childbirth, I replied and his facial expression flinched slightly. Have you tried painkillers, he asked next. I gave him my most hollow laugh and explained how I alternate between hot showers, distraction and gravity (aka letting my body hang from the nearest doorframe) and he shook his head with a couple of tsks. Look, he eventually said, I am with you, most likely this is a partial torsion of your gallbladder with diffusely thickened wall and pericholecystic fluid built up but we need to see it before we believe it. 

Because where would we be if we remove an unnecessary organ without following the guidelines simply because it could result in a favourable result? Insurance pays you more the more procedures you impose, I added under my breath. 

But reader, I remained polite to the end and only cried when I was back where I had locked my bicycle. Also, I kicked the bike stand hard and shouted swear words. But lucky for me and the world, on the way home, cycling through the lushest of forests, I remembered that distance is the prerequisite for all perception and I turned my mind to better and more delightful issues.

it's the year of the potted potatoe varieties

In fact, I have recently taken a liking to short, not too in-depth conversations about the weather, mainly because of the progressively more worrying state of the world but also because I need to avoid thinking about health and weight loss all the fucking time.

Hence, weather, temperature, wind, lack of rain, and before you know it, birds, insects, pests, weeds, no wait, blossoms, fruit, berries, roots, back to temperature, lack of rain, roots again, this time tree roots, water, watering. watching, digging, soil, dirty fingernails.

Is watching the weather, the garden a way to shut myself off from world events and health issues or is it actually a means of remaining alert, wide awake even in view of what is at stake, but nevertheless also a concern about my own well-being. What use is it if everyone collectively falls into depression?

On top of it, I seem to have developed an almost obsessive devotion to birds. The app that recognise bird calls explains that what some think is a blackbird is actually a blackcap and I feel like a good schoolgirl for having recognised this. And almost 25 years after her death, I still believe that my mother visits me in the disguise of a bird.

I find nothing nicer than being able to sit outside on the patio late at night without a jacket, but there are now days and nights every spring that are so warm that they make you feel melancholy, for lack of another more positive word. At least I do.

I have a brother with extensive climate and weather knowledge, I have a nephew who works on research vessels on far away oceans. The smallest bit of small talk with either of them could send anybody with a spark of a mind into a dark place of despair  feeling melancholy.

But every time I cycle through this forest and every morning when I look up at the sky scrutinisingly, I have to admit that checking the weather and the tree tunnels of a thick forest, relaxes me inwardly. My breath deepens, my pulse slows down, the evil noise of the world falls silent. 

 

 

fast moving sloth

 

 

current scenario upon opening of the patio door

Another couple of quotes I had saved ages ago and which pop up now that I am killing time while waiting, still waiting for the phone call from the surgery department. Instead my lovely GP calls to cheer me on.

It has been heartening to read your comments to the chocolate quote. I could respond and write about the cardiovascular and gastrological health benefits of chocolate, especially dark chocolate (numerous, well researched, click here to read about it) and in particular, the beneficial effects of chocolate on mental health because chocolate contains endorphins, which are the little cousins of magic mushrooms.

But I could also dwell on the fact (FACT) that due to climate change, we are fast approaching a chocolate crisis which is a double sided hardship because not only will the price of cocoa rise exponentially, making chocolate a very expensive and rare luxury before we know it, the people depending on growing and selling cocoa beans are already beginning to suffer greatly as rising temperatures and erratic rainfall dramatically hammer cocoa harvests. So, get it while you can (afford it).

 

Naivety is one thing, ignoring the incontinent elephant in the corner of your living room is quite another.

source unknown  

What you people call collapse means living in the same conditions as the people who grow your coffee.

Vinay Gupta

 

            Wisdom is chasing you but you are faster.
 
Nigerian proverb 

Like our planet, sloths are actually moving extremely fast all the time, so fast that it seems like they’re not moving at all. We are wrong about sloths; they’re quick and fast. Science will prove this one day.

Michael Kleber-Diggs
 

The fact that people seem happy enough to cite heat as a number of degrees is surely a sign of what Adorno called reification, by which he meant the habitual response in modern culture to abstract and then quantify even lived experience as though it were money. If you do this long enough, the abstraction comes alive and seems self empowered like a person or a god. 

Michael Taussig

 

three more quotes I saved years ago

To know one drop is the first step to know the boundless ocean

Światosław Wojtkowiak

 

 There are two types of women – those who like chocolates and complete bitches.

Dawn French

 

 And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: 'I am not empty, I am open.

Tomas Tranströmer 

 

The link between the first and the third quote I had saved way back in 2014, is of course chocolate and the lamentable fact that I haven't been able to digest any, not even the tiniest crumb, without painful side effects. Like the fool Iam, and also because I am not a complete bitch, I do nibble the occasional bit - the man has a vast supply - and pay the price and I tell myself, I am open, the ocean of colic is boundless.

patient wait

Things are rough right now, waiting for the next call. I cannot remember when I had the last proper meal. I push myself through my daily schedules, determined to not let this condition allow me to shrink and hide. Soon, R reassures me, soon you will feel better. An elderly woman with a chronic condition has to make way for emergencies, I understand, I smile and nod and act the patient. Also, more tests to keep everybody busy. The old kidney scare resurfaces and I tell the junior radiologist that it's nothing, read the notes from years back. In the end, he thanks me for giving him this learning opportunity.

I do stuff, I walk and I cycle, I visit the library, galleries, parks, gardens, I sit in cafes with a cup of something, I smile and talk to people, visitors, friends, family. Early morning, I walk through the garden, inspect the courgettes and the sugar peas and the lettuce and tomatoes and so much more. I pick strawberries I cannot eat but admire their beautiful shape and colour. We are waiting for rain that will not come. In the evening, we watch mice eating the bean seedlings. I put out flat dishes of water around the garden, R sets traps.

I try to remain attentive, aware and mindful, that magical word, in between distraction. I am tidying up my blog, all these quotes I collected. In 2014, I saved this one. 

Solitude is a description of a fact: you are on your own. Loneliness is a negative emotional response to it. People think they will be lonely and that is the problem – the expectation is also now a cultural assumption.

Sara Maitland

hello May

 

 

 

 . . .  and my point is, there is always something. I think as a species we have a desire to believe that we are living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we are uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millinia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

 

Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility 

The weather last week was beautiful, sunny, the kind of not-too-hot warm air that makes me want to spend all day outside. Which is what I did more or less. That and three mornings on the ongoing diagnosis trail which culminated in an endoscopic sonography exam, a most pleasant experience as I was knocked out by propofol. And now I am waiting for the verdict. I must say that everybody has been very nice and pleasant and professional and informative about the usual caveats and risk factors. But seriously, I am so tired of it by now and my face is hurting from smiling and looking upbeat and friendly all the fucking time. Thank goodness, it's May at least.

 

80 years ago

I know the material reasons for the rise of fascism. I also think another reason - which doesn’t get talked about as much because it’s embarrassing that humans can be that naive - is that when you are financially comfortable but bored, abstract cruelty can give you a sense of purpose.

Musa Okwonga 

On 29 April 1945, eighty years ago today, US soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp. Hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned there during the nazi era. They were at the mercy of the arbitrary behaviour of the guards and were harassed, abused and tortured. Tens of thousands did not survive their imprisonment. Dachau is a small town roughly 20 km to the north of Munich. The camp was  built in 1933, the first of the nazi concentration camps. 

The GIs found more than 30,000 people in the completely overcrowded camp, which was originally built for 6,000 prisoners. The prisoners were emaciated and exhausted, many suffering from disease. Typhus and dysentery were rampant in the camp. In the newspapers and on the radio, on tv, today we read and watch and listen to documentaries and eye witness reports and commentaries of this day. This is an excerpt from The Liberation of Dachau by Marguarite Higgins, New York Herald Tribune on May 1st, 1945:

There was not a soul in the yard when the gate was opened. As we learned later, the prisoners themselves had taken over control of their enclosure the night before, refusing to obey any further orders from the German guards, who had retreated to the outside. The prisoners maintained strict discipline among themselves, remaining close to their barracks so as not to give the S.S. men an excuse for mass murder.

But the minute the two of us entered, a jangled barrage of “Are you Americans?” in about 16 languages came from the barracks 200 yards from the gate. An affirmative nod caused pandemonium.

Tattered, emaciated men weeping, yelling and shouting “Long live America!” swept toward the gate in a mob. Those who could not walk limped or crawled.

Yesterday, I walked in a crowd of 20 people for three hours through the center of the city we live in, following a young man with a long beard and many tattoos who guided us from one house, street corner, park to the next, where he carefully pointed out memorial sites and their significance in today's fight against fascims. Because fight we must.

Meanwhile, the garden provides solace.

 

 

dawn chorus

Yes, I know the world is in bad shape, I could go on. Yesterday in the queue at the supermarket, I stood behind two teenage girls who debated whether they will or will not go on the upcoming climate ralley or maybe instead to the anti nazi one and like the old fool I am, I barged in and said, go to both, Very politely, they turned and smiled and said, yeah, but, and then, ok why not. And I smiled back and they pulled out their cell phones and asked for a selfie.

I’ve been in several meetings and conversations these past few weeks about what we will say if we can’t say “climate” anymore. We’ll say “extreme weather.” We’ll say “heat wave.” “Flood.” “Wildfire.” “Drought.” “Coastal erosion.” We’ll say “clean air.” “Clean water.” And we’ll say “cancer,” “asthma,” “birth defects.” We’ll say “cheap, reliable, locally produced energy.” We’ll say “healthy farmland,” “good soil,” “regeneration.” “Animals.” “Plants.” “Life.” “Help.”

And if they ban those words, we’ll come up with more. I loved this earth before I knew the word “earth,” and I will love it the rest of my life.

Anya Kamenetz

And today I spent the best and the longest part of the day with doctors. I set out very early cycling through the lush forest, it was just gorgeous. And for the next eight hours, I was examined by hands and eyes and machines and body fluids were sampled and many questions were raised and yes, answered. And now I will have to stop thinking of the worst outcome which includes but not necessarily will result in necrotising and death. Whereas the best outcome could be regaining my ability to process food - to an extent beyond the current scenario. The diagnostic term is cholecystitis due to gallbladder torsion and one of the surgeons expressed his delight with this relatively rare challenge. I got a handy list of symptoms that necessitate an immediate trip to the ER and otherwise have been told to sit tight and wait for the phone call. After a couple more tests and stuff to properly determine possible causes and risks, the GB will go.

It helps to know more of the why and how and seriously, I already feel so much better. The funniest bit was when I mentioned that I haven't had any coffee for the past four weeks and every person in the room went, oh no, poor you.

Cycling home through the forest was again lovely and a balm to the soul. I pity all of the people who haven't got access to an early morning forest cycle path. So, click here for a link to an amazing soundmap of the world's dawn choruses.

apricots and peaches

Happy Easter. I am a bit late, Easter Sunday is almost over. But in this secular country, we have Easter Monday tomorrow, another public holiday with all shops closed - apart from the bakeries until lunch so people can stock up on buttery sugary Easter baked goods. Wikipedia tells me that Easter. Monday is the second day of the Octave of Easter, which is where I leave it because that's the first I ever heard of. Any excuse, my radical atheist father would say. As far as I remember, the story was like this.

I am looking at the list of stuff I want to do and wonder how did I ever fit paid employment into this schedule. Not that I have done anything from that list for the past week. Yesterday, I spent watching an entire season on the adventures of the Bavarian Voluntary Mountain Rescue team, both in winter (on ski!) and summer and marvelled at various dramatic rescues of ignorant, ill equipped and poorly shod tourists in the Alps. What had me hooked was the strong Bavarian accents of the women and men who go out at any time, sprinting up steep ravines like young mountain goats and the way my inner linguist Franconian, albeit born in Upper Barvaria, was proudly and successfully able to reject the subtitles. 

We had a small bit of rain, nothing substantial. I marshalled my meagre energy levels and watered some of the plants that have not been eaten by slugs and increased the level of warfare against the ants under the patio stones. I told them that there is plenty of safe and comfortable space elsewhere. 

Here are our baby apricots. 

And the furry baby peaches.

 And the vegetable bed, with some extra potatoes in pots in front and two bolted fennels in the back left.

And the last of the tulips, this has been an excellent tulip year but I think I will replace all the fancy ones with a wild variety that bees and other insects actually feed on because the big showy ones here are totally insect free, they could be made of plastic for all the good they have to offer to biodiversity, namely null, nil, zilch.

Health wise I am three steps forward, two steps back, in other words, it's fucking slow. But this an old cranky body, so patience.

And so I have managed to write a post without doom and gloom despite the fact that I could. 

Crazy times don’t have to make us crazy. They can inspire new levels of coherence, meaning, and purpose. There’s nothing like a rocky sea to make people find their best compass.

Douglas Rushkoff

it's a Wednesday

I keep thinking that today is Sunday. Maybe because it's raining and so very quiet outside and many of our neighbours are on holidays. Or maybe because I feel shitty and ill and slow. Earlier I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and I told myself, just stay with it. This will pass. As if that helps.

This morning I read an opinion piece of one of the daily national newspapers, the left wing one from Berlin, with the heading I want to fight injustice instead of breathing it away mindfully. It's all about mock solutions and avoiding responsibility and the cynical appeal of a positive mindset catering to individuals and their fears. The promising balm of kindness and avoiding stuff that is too hard and may disturb our ever so important inner peace. Have the courage to be angry, it ends.

To which I may add, get me the energy. And while I lack that specific item, also the positive mindset is very faint at the moment, all I am left with is reading and watching and listening. Here are some cherry blossoms from a few days ago.

I am reading Werner Herzog's memoirs, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is really a long rambling jumble of the outrageous thoughts and anecdotes and wild insights of a person with an enormous ego. Great reading. Really great.

We dusted off the old record player and connected the ancient tuner system to the big fat speakers and I am now listening to our vinyl collection - the remains of it - one LP a day. Today's one was Dire Strait's Love over Gold, which we bought for 2.99 pounds (Irish) at Golden Discs in the Dun Laoghaire shopping centre in 1982 a week or two before the birth of our daughter. The shopping centre is long gone, but Golden Discs is still around. It was great fun listening to a young Mark Knopfler. I am just pulling the records off the stack as it sits here, without looking and the rule is to play it no matter what. Tomorrow it will be The Inner Mounting Flame, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. That's one of R's records, from long before we met and I have a vague memory that I never really liked it. Back then that is.

And a final thought, something that came up in a conversation a few days ago. You know why we Germans are so pedantic about data protection? Someone around 90 years ago went through all records available, selected people with certain criteria, with the help of IBM, and then killed them all.

spring always too fast

 

the pink tulips

When we lived in the small tropical country we call paradise, just three degrees below the equator, I would tell my small daughter stories about what life is like in Europe, about cities and traffic and shops and playgrounds and most of all, about seasons, lest she forget. When we returned to Europe after a couple of years, the first winter was as I had described, snow and ice and sledding and snowball fights. But spring, I had forgotten to mention that spring happens seemingly all at once and not really in slow noticeable steps - daffodfils, leaves on the trees, roses, strawberries, peaches, sunburns. One day while we were eating strawberries on her grandparent's patio, she actually complained that this was all happening much faster than anticipated.

pear blossoms

 

And I feel it every year. Some of my garden pictures are already old news.

St. Agnes flower/March cups (leucojum)

 

I think I am done with diagnostics for now at least. My pharmaceutical cocktail has been remixed and topped up and I spend most afternoons pleasantly dozing as prescribed. The digestive system is still protesting but there's hope it will calm down and let things be, eventually. Waiting for appetite to find its way home, too.

 

wild garlic

Other than that, life is full of good stuff. Surprisingly. I mean I could write long and extensively about the disappointing and in part decisively inhuman coalition agreement of our new government and maybe a bit about tariffs and presidential insider trading but why.

 

asimina

The biology teacher (retired) in my life tells me that everything alive is evolving all the time.

Also, I read that a single rotation of a modern wind turbine (approx. 10-11 kWh) produces enough energy for an electric car to travel around 50-70 kilometres. There's a lot of hope in such a single finding.

I participated in an online ceremony commemorating the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp 80 years ago and listened to a speech by Marina Weisband, Ukrainian-German politician and psychologist.

We say we are fighting fascism - but what is this fighting actually? And when does it begin? Fascism is not recognised because we secretly expect that the film music will somehow change at the end of democracy. That the sky will turn an ominous grey. That banners will be unfurled. But that doesn't happen. When fascism comes, the sun is still shining. The birds sing. We go to work. Everything is normal. Only trans people lose their rights. And asylum seekers. And immigrants. And disabled people. And Muslims. And Jews. And left-wing journalists. And then other journalists. And me. And you. And nobody realises when it actually became too late.

I don't want to fight. I want to love. I want to be curious about my fellow human beings. I want to listen. I want to be empathetic. I don't want to be in competition, I want to build great things together. Nazis can't deal with that.

I want to open my heart wide to people. To stand between them and inhuman ideas. That's how I understand my place. Not fighting against what I hate, but protecting what I love.

And I know many of you may think that's incredibly naive. Love. It seems like such an inappropriate, unrelated word in light of the news today. But I think it's naïve that we can banish fascism if we don't learn to love ourselves and others.

Even if the worst happens tomorrow - if my whole world collapses and I lose everything - there will still be a day after tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow, the world will go on somehow. With me or without me. But then I want to leave something behind. The dream of a world in which we no longer inherit violence and don't see ourselves in constant struggle. That's why I want to sow the seed in the ground today. Even if there is a forest fire. Then it's my job to bury it so that it can germinate afterwards.

the thing about groceries

My first thought when I read this stuff about groceries was a childhood memory. I was five years old and we had recently moved to a new city, or rather a new suburb of the city where my dad had been offered a job. On the corner of our street, a small supermarket cum butcher shop was to be opened, run by a young couple with a toddler, a baby and two cats. We watched through the glass doors of the shop while they were stacking the shelves with the radio on inside at full blast and every so often, they would stop and dance. The Twist! We were floored and full of admiration. Back home, my sister tried to show me how to do the twist but I just hopped up and down.

The day the shop opened, my mother sent me there with a coin in my hand and the carefully practised sentence: one pound of mince meat but not too fat and a small sweet for me instead of change. This sentence has been my memory mantra for new and slightly scary situations ever since.

And then I remembered the endless hours we played shop at home and on the curb in front of the garden gate, selling stuff to neighbours walking past and buying it back with paper money, filling our grocery bags with tiny crumbly apples and flowers and stones and small toys and legos. My child often played shop and shopping for groceries, we, the assembled adults, would carefully select our goods from her wares and buy them and sometimes, she would watch us with alarm and asked for reassurance that we understood that it was only a game. And yes, we sent her to the corner shop, the bakery, the ice cream van with a handfull of coins or maybe a banknote and instructions or a shopping list we drew together. And this afternoon, as I walked down to the river, I passed a table on the sidewalk where two girls, maybe six or seven years old, were selling handmade stuff and I stopped and selected a set of handdrawn playing cards and one chatterbox folding game. When I asked how much I had to pay, they discussed options for a while and then decided I could have it all for free because it was a nice and sunny day.

 

That man who said the stuff about groceries probably, most likely, definitely never experienced the excitement of going to a shop for the first time, bringing home a pound of not too fat mince and feeling amazingly grown up and rewarded and loved. Somehow I don't feel sorry. As it turns out, he thinks that the poor old US has been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered" by Cambodia, Lesotho and Madagascar, three of the poorest nations on earth, which must therefore pay the highest tarifs. 

 

 

discuss with examples

An old fashioned term that we use -- groceries. . . . It's such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Groceries. It says a bag with different things in it.

 

April is here

The last couple of days in a few short sentences.

If you want to make loud phone calls in a doctor's waiting room, no problem. But a short ‘what happened so far’ at the beginning would help us all, waiting is so tedious.

There's only two genders: fascists and anti-facists.

Why is it said that young men are turning ultra right-wing because of feminism and not that young women are turning to feminism because of right-wing men? Are we again blaming women for the mistakes of men?

We are reaching peak magnolia season.

I got yet another diagnosis, a sort of tag along diagnosis, something that gets explained to me as an almost inevitable consequence of what has been going on in my body for seemingly ever, like 10 or so years (?). The doctor was polite and carefully explained that this is most likely another novel aspect of the autoimmune disease and we smiled at each other when I replied, well it seems we can blame this shit for everything that goes bad in my body. I even chuckled. Back home I kicked at the sofa and had a bit of a meltdown. Later, we watched the first episode or two of the apocalyptic Danish series Families like Ours, and what can I say, I feel fine in comparison. (I also have gastritis, so no coffee, no black tea.)

 

A child’s body is very easy to live in.  An adult body isn’t. The change is hard. And it’s such a tremendous change that it’s no wonder a lot of adolescents don’t know who they are. They look in the mirror—that is me? Who’s me? And then it happens again, when you’re sixty or seventy.

Ursula K. Le Guin

apple crumble and partial solar eclipse

Saturday morning, the house smells of apple crumble, R tells me he is using up the jumbo oats. His cooking and baking skills improve with every new step on the road to using up food that could go off. When many years ago, his parents had a nasty stomach bug, he began to silently clear way-past-due-date items from their fridge and freezer every time he visited in an attempt to keep them healthy. They both died of cancer and much too young but not because there was any rotten/rotting food in the house. His mother initially got furious and called it waste but after all, he is a science teacher and they loved each other. Anyway, just to explain why R makes apple crumble at 7:30 am on a Saturday.

This time of the year, the garden is taken over by pansies (which is what we call primulas because family folklore), those little flowering bunches that just sit there in the shadows of the big and famous plants. The thing about pansies is that they spread, like buttercups, quietly and efficiently, so much so that today, I stopped counting at 100, including the ones that have come up between the paving stones. Here's a selection, inconclusive but they are all different in small ways. We could do our own Gregor Mendel pea flower evolutionary research with our pansy fleet.

 

 

There's much to enjoy and be delighted about in house and garden and family and I am trying hard to stay with it, while watching the polls and the way the neonazi column is growing and listening to various government officials on the real danger of what that mad man in Moscow will do next.

 

And then we watched Adolescence, of course we did and when it was over R, bless him, said, will there be a second season concentrating on the women, the girls? I realised that at times I had held my breath in anger. Don't get me wrong, excellent tv and all, but maybe read Rebecca Solnit's review also.

 

And I'll leave this here from poet Hollie McNish. 

And right now, there is a partial solar eclipse, nothing dramatic, the birds did not stop singing, but I can see my neighbours of all ages on their patios and on the sidewalks looking at this celestial wonder through weird googles and there's much whoa and awe.

In the twenty-first century, evolutionary thought shifted to the group and culture as the units of analysis. Discoveries of the cooperative tendencies of young children; our universal inclination to share; our instinct to attach, belong, and be tribal; and the neurophysiology of empathy, contagion, mirroring, connection, compassion, and exploration were revealing a new lens upon human nature: we are hypersocial species who accomplish almost all survival-related tasks, from raising the vulnerable offspring to provision of food, in collaborative, often altruistic groups. 

Groups that collaborate well and build a sense of shared identity, this reasoning would advance, are more likely to prevail and survive. And culture - the system of beliefs and practices that unite individuals into community - is an ever revolving repository of shared knowledge and experience, a collective mind that enables us to adapt together to the challenges and opportunities in our natural and social environments.

Dacher Keltner

 

D Day group chat

 

This is making the rounds here, no idea who started it.

Some background information:

Group captain Stagg was a British meteorologist attached to the Royal Air Force during WWII who persuaded General Eisenhower to change the date of the Allied invasion of Europe from 5 to 6 June 1944. (source Wikipedia)

Field marshall Montgomery was in command of all Allied ground forces during the Normandy landing on D-Day, 6 June 1944 (source Wikipedia, but you all knew that OK?)

Air force officer Tedder was deputy supreme commander under Eisenhower during the Normandy landing on D-Day, 6 June 1944 (also Wikipedia, you all know who Eisenhower was I take it)

Air chief marshall Leigh-Mallory was the air commander during D-Day operations on 6 June 1944 (Wikipedia again)

Admiral Ramsay was commanding the naval forces on D-Day, June 6 1944 (thanks Wikipedia, his name is spelled incorrectly in the image above)

Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper (aka mouthpiece) of the German nazi party from 1920 until the last months of WWII (take my word) 

Signal is an open-source, encrypted messaging service for instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls, a safe-ish alternative to whatsapp et al., it is non-profit and was launched in 2018. I just did a lot of research on it recently.

 

magnolia week

The greenhouse is filling up.

It's magnolia week in the neighbourhood. 

 

The garden is starting to show off. Most of the seedlings are planted out, the potatoes are in the ground and I did assist in almost all of the work. Now we wait and see and collect kill any snails and slugs.

 

The peach trees are flowering, the apricot is already finished flowering and the plums, pears and apples are about to. This is what's called the vineyard peach, with small deep red furry fruit, excellent for jam.

 

 

Last week, I spent a couple of hours on a guided tour across one of our city's cemeteries visiting the fields where unknown displaced persons and forced labourers from the nazi era are buried. It was long and gruesome, thankfully we could sit down from time to time, and when we reached the section where the children of the young, mostly Ukranian and Polish women, who were forced to work in local industry during the war, were buried, I almost broke down. None of the children born to these women (often as a result of rape) lived for more than a couple of weeks, months and it was nuns who "looked after" them and let them die. I don't know why I continuously do this, go to these lectures and tours but now I have my name down to help with a project digitizing local data of victims and survivors of nazism.

It's been a year now since I retired and surprise, surprise, we have neither gone bankrupt nor tried to poison each other. In fact, it has turned out rather well, I am still not inclined to take on any of the free-lance jobs I continue to be offered and wish it would stop altogether. I also started to enjoy going to bed really late and/or getting up in time to listen to the dawn chorus. There have even been days when I had three cups of coffee. But the dreaded fatigue, together with a couple of other symptoms and lab results has come back, all of which indicating that the current medication has possibly run its course and I have to face the next available magic potion with its side effects. I am seriously fed up with all of this but needs must and always look on the bright side, etc.,

Worse, however, is the decline of my trusted bike, which has me currently searching for a necessary spare part that is no longer commercially available. 

The grandchild has been sharing their reasons for feeling anxious right now.  We counted on our fingers, new house, new school, new friends, loss of old neighbours, growing out of favourite clothes, having to get used to new clothes and several more and we almost ran out of fingers. Then it was time for showing some drawing and cutting-out and reading skills and of course, there's the dog.

. . . when you’re born, you’re born with a big lack. You’ve got this body that needs food, needs clothing, needs shelter, needs medicine, and you’re not born with an entitlement to those things. If you were really entitled to them, they would come on their own. The fact that they seem to come on their own when we’re children is because our parents are looking after us, but that means they have to go out and do extra work just to provide for this big, gaping hole they’ve just given birth to. And so as you grow up as a human being, you not only carry this huge load of needs around with you, but you also carry a big debt to the goodness, the work of other people. It’s important to keep that in mind.

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

to clarify

Thank you for all your comments on my post re secure internet etc. I am delighted that I am not the only one and not a nut case.

I should clarify that the main impetus behind my efforts to investigate my social media/internet use and to initiate any changes I think are necessary is not just a safe internet - whatever that may imply and I don't think I am any way close to it - but to move away from tech companies that are in the hands of very few, very wealthy men who blissfully embrace fascism. I am not even going to discuss this last point.

So, in wake of events unfolding in the US, the desire to shift away from these big tech oligarchs is growing every day in my country and from what I can gather, many other European countries. And with it comes a growing interest in understanding how this internet stuff actually works and who runs what and how entangled and used we may actually have become. I've been to a couple of public lectures on culture wars/fake news, big tech monopolies, data protection laws in the EU, political influence from Russia, China and the US/Musk and all this - there are more events scheduled here - has given me so much to think about, you have no idea. 

Now, I love the internet, I love switching on my laptop and I enjoy my morning routine of reading online news, checking newsletters, blogs and emails, obviously the daily contact with my family far away - I cherish it all and would not want to miss it. During lockdown, we ordered a lot of stuff online, it was a life saver in many respects, especially prior to the arrival of the vaccines for someone like me, with a chronic disease and immune suppression medication. We are lucky that we don't live out in the sticks, have markets and shops and pharmacies etc. within walking distance, so we rarely need to fall back on online shopping now. Occasionally, I order used clothing and second hand books from online sellers and we use ebay/etsy and their German equivalents for some purchases - but also to sell some stuff we are clearing out. And of course, there's online banking and the other stuff like pension, health/car/house insurance, tax office, the various public utilities and on the few occasions when we travel, bus/train/plane tickets. 

I have friends and family who are paranoid of anything online, who would not even check the rain forecast because some evil service will steal their identity or - worse - send them advertising. I have a friend who is regularly predicting the end of the world's water and electricity supply due to bitcoin and yes, there is some truth in that but you can go and read about that yourself. I openly admit that I am ignorant about A Lot of what goes on online. 

But as with so much that is happening right now - fascism, climate change, the threat of (hybrid) war, my deteriorating health and the looming diagnostic detective work - the curse of my curious nature will not allow me to just let it be. I have to stick my nose into it, come what may. 

Having worked in science editing for 25 years, I have learnt a thing or two about checking sources, double, triple checking of "facts", identifying images, figuring out who is paid what to publish what and when and so on. With the rise of AI, this has become more difficult and I am often relieved that I am retired and only need to open up that new can of worms when I feel ready.

Basically, I want to feel informed, always wanted to, I am nosy. I don't want to feel trapped or used or bought. I know it's unrealistic to think I can be morally/idealistically free of any unsavoury influence. I am only human and often lazy. But I want to be On The Ball as much as I can and I think it's Very Very Important for as many people as possible to be that too, no matter where on this planet we are. 

There was a time, sometime in the early 1990s, when R explained computer programs and the internet to me - at least he tried to - and what I remember is that he stressed, it's a tool, just a tool. People use it.

I could go on but I won't. Instead, I would love to continue to hear from other people how they feel about it.

These two blog posts by Australian writer Joan Westenberg have expressed it all so much better. So if you are still reading, I recommend you continue here:

1. How I’m Building a Trump-Proof Tech Stack Without Big Tech

A quote:  Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and other tech companies operating on American soil can talk a big game about their sovereignty, independence, and encryption. But talk may be all it is; there can be no guarantee that an authoritarian U.S. government will not compel American cloud, email, productivity, and messaging providers to open their databases and records to partisan law enforcement.

2. On Ideological Purity

A quote:  You don’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to make every decision a moral battlefield. You don’t have to sever every tie to every compromised system - and you sure as hell don’t have to do it overnight. You have to engage. You have to stay aware. You have to keep questioning the default. If enough people tried—just tried, even imperfectly—things would shift. If more people opted for alternatives when they could, if more people supported independent platforms even three times out of five, if more people put even a fraction of their energy into challenging the defaults, it would matter. A lot of folks don't, or won't, because they think - they've been scolded into believing - that if they can't do it completely, it's not worth doing at all. It is. Every step you take in the direction of your values matters. Every time you make a choice that reflects what you care about—even if it's small, even if it's incomplete, even if it feels incremental, marginal, unimportant—it reinforces something. Not just in the world, in yourself. And that's what counts.

 

 

 

 

 

secure your communications

 

This is a quick translation (my own) of some of the information I mentioned in my previous post regarding  #unplugtrump and withdrawing as much support and dependency as possible from big tech oligarchs.

My main source is a private blog by Stefan, in German (https://blog.unkreativ.net/secure-your-communications/). 

Even if it seems tedious, take a look at what technology you use and who you give what data to. Also think about security and damage. Here's a brief summary: Threema instead of Whatsapp, Bluesky instead of Twitter, Vero instead of Instagram, your own blog instead of Facebook, don't use a cloud solution from Google or Microsoft. And when was the last time you made a backup?

More detailed: Why should I protect myself?

Many people believe that nothing can happen to them and that they have nothing to hide. Both opinions are fundamentally wrong. You are a popular target for digital blackmail (ransomware) as well as for access to your private data for commercial purposes. But your access data is also highly coveted, e.g. to send spam via your accounts. State actors are also increasingly interested in your data.

Basically, privacy is on the retreat everywhere on the planet. This affects the real world with increasing video and audio surveillance just as much as the digital world. You need to realise that even if you don't notice it, you are being spied on in many ways every day.

And very, very importantly: there is no such thing as a free lunch: services that appear to be ‘free’ at first glance will cost you. Because you are the ‘product’ and the money comes with your data. Beyond open source software, you should therefore live by the principle that software worth using is also worth paying for.

One of the biggest problems is that most of the services you use come from the US. In case of doubt or negligence, they don't care about EU law or even German law. Your data is often analysed in a non-transparent way and, especially with social networks, the operators not only determine what you see, but also what you are allowed to talk about.

Web services
Facebook, Google and Co

I probably don't need to explain to you why it's not smart to be on Facebook. Especially not now that Zuck has kissed Trump's ring. Big platforms like Facebook thrive on analysing every millimetre of your life. This also applies to Google, of course. Such providers lure you in with supposedly free offers and then have an interest in ‘locking you in’:

The idea behind this is that you shouldn't have to surf through different websites, but get all your information in one central location. The problem with this is that a company, or even a CEO, essentially determines what you read and listen to.

There are two major components to using Facebook and the like: Firstly, the providers take away all your privacy. Secondly, they also control what you think and how you feel.

This is no joke, because not only are there scandals like the one involving Cambridge Analytica, but there are also studies that show that the feeds that algorithms show you can affect your mood. In other words. Facebook can influence you positively or negatively.

In the process, your data is sold. Behind this is almost always ‘advertising’ and this goes so far that you are categorised into thousands of super precise groups in order to advertise to you in the most targeted way possible. The advertising industry, I kid you not, assumes that you even think it's cool to read as many adverts as possible, as accurately as possible. 

E-mail

Email is another of these things. Email has to be easy to use, and generally free. So isn't it great that Google has GMail. Or Microsoft gives us Outlook?

But remember: if it costs nothing, you are the product. Google analyses your emails for advertising. Microsoft goes one step further and uses Outlook to obtain your access data for e-mail accounts that are not held by Microsoft itself. I can't understand how people allow themselves to be analysed in this way. But there are ways to do something about it.

You should never send unencrypted emails. I don't mean the transport between your computer and the email server, but the content itself. You must realise that even if the transport route is encrypted, anyone can access the content of your emails. This can be fully automated and doesn't even have to have ‘evil’ intentions, it can just be about advertising.

However, you must also realise that there is no way to consider e-mail itself to be secure. In particular, the fields that show the sender's e-mail address or the sender's name can be falsified at will.

Email signature

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) / OpenPG offers the option of digitally signing e-mails. This allows you to verify that the sender is the person they claim to be. This is increasingly important because attacks on you are becoming more and more sophisticated and it is becoming increasingly difficult to protect yourself against them. Signing an e-mail is an important building block here, which leads to considerably more security. It also means that the email remains unchanged and you can be sure that the email has the content that the sender intended. As anyone with access to email servers can read your emails, anyone can also change them. The digital signature protects against this.

Email client

One way to avoid being completely tracked down is not to use webmailers, whether on a website or, for example, the new Outlook. The latter looks like an application, but is essentially just a webmailer in disguise. (there are apps for browsers like Firefox that filter out and block webmailer searches, e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/email/)

Instant Messengers

Far too many of you are still using WhatsApp, which comes from META (Facebook). And no matter what you say and think, you can trust Zuck only as far as you can throw a piano.

Most people's excuse is that there are so many other people on there. But you and your friends might have to consider whether you should really use technologies that are potentially dangerous purely out of peer pressure.

I cannot judge whether META keeps its promise that WhatsApp messages are effectively encrypted. But you have to assume that META analyses the associated data, the metadata. In other words, who is communicating with whom and when. This alone tells them a lot about people.

Social Media

It's no secret that social media is a problem.

YouTube: Here, all your data belongs to Google, which also bombards you with loads of adverts. The videos you watch reveal who you are. The suggested videos then want to influence your political orientation or your emotions.

Instagram, Facebook, Workplace: Here your data belongs to Facebook, essentially the same applies as for YouTube. A rapid decline in values can currently be seen since Trump took power again. The parent company META decides what you see, how you feel and, above all, what you are allowed to say / write. 

Twitter / X: Here your data belongs to Elon Musk, who can now be safely labelled a right-wing extremist. He decides what you are allowed to say / write.

There have been promising alternatives to Twitter for some time now. Probably the most recommendable is BlueSky, which is currently growing rapidly. There are several things here that are worth mentioning. One of these is that it is open to the connection with other networks (Fediverse). In a nutshell, this also means that if Musk decides to buy it, you can simply move all your data and followers over to another alternative.

Adblocker

Advertising is a huge problem on the internet. Not only because ads try to target you as precisely as possible with the data you leave behind on Facebook and Google. But also because advertising costs you a lot of money in the form of data and electricity consumption.

And what many people don't realise, ads can also contain malicious code to take over your PC, encrypt your data and blackmail you.

Browser

Many browsers today function on the technical basis of a browser core from Google (Chrome / Chromium). And yes, of course Google collects your data. But Google goes one step further and now makes it almost impossible for ad blockers to protect you from adverts. Of course, Google earns money from advertising. A lot of money.

A good alternative is Firefox, which, like Thunderbird, is developed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. Here, too, not all that glitters is gold. But when it comes to privacy, Firefox is currently way ahead because the browser also uses technologies to slow down Facebook's snooping mania, for example.

However, you also need to follow a few rules. This includes, for example, configuring your browser so that it deletes cookies every time you close it. Browsers collect vast amounts of your data locally to make surfing more convenient and to target you more efficiently.

Passwords and password safe, 2FA

Basically, you should use your own passwords (plural!) for every service, every website and simply everything you use. There are relatively secure solutions such as Keepass or Vaultwarden to help you manage this. These solutions also come with plug-ins for Firefox, so they can automate logging in to websites. And remember, always delete cookies before you log off.

Please, please, please switch on 2FA (two-factor authentication) wherever possible. Whether by app, SMS, email or otherwise. A second factor increases security immensely, because knowing the password alone is simply not enough. 

Cloud

When using cloud services, you must always remember one thing: Cloud only means that your data is stored on someone else's computer. If you use Onedrive, your data is stored with Microsoft. With iCloud it's with Apple, with Google Drive, you guessed it, Google has it. And so on. As a rule, and Apple is a notable exception here in many cases, the data is not encrypted, which means it's free for whoever wants it.

This means that companies can analyse your data however they like. Some even simply scan everything ‘to prevent criminal offences’. If the companies believe that you have broken the law (and mind you, US law), in the worst case scenario your account will be closed - you will lose access to all your data and there is usually no legal recourse unless you want to file a lawsuit in the US. You may even lose access to your computer.

Updates:

It is extremely important that you keep your software up to date. This applies to Windows, Linux and iOS as well as to the programmes you use. As there is still no serious liability for software errors today, software almost always has security vulnerabilities. These are dealt with in updates, so check often enough to see if there are any. At least once a week.

Backup & recovery

For heaven's sake, make backups of your systems and, above all, test the recovery.

This means a backup of your entire system, preferably before you install new software or updates, and very regular backups of your data. The devices on which the backups are stored should not be connected / switched on unless you absolutely need them.

Most importantly, make yourself independent of META, Microsoft and Google. There are alternatives for everything, locally, nationwide, worldwide. Check with local IT geeks, friends, groups, forums and more.

singing and data mining

There are some good things going on, depending on how you look at it of course. 

Some lovely stuff, wonderful conversations and story telling and picture sharing and dog adventures with the grandchild - all via the camera on my smartphone. 

Some inspirational stuff like the free online lectures from various organisations including my city's adult education center, the university, many schools and churches on how to ditch, circumvent, replace US oligarch social media platforms, servers, online shops, streaming services, browsers, data clouds and so on. Every day, the hahstag #unplugtrump is in the news, even the big national outlets provide ever longer lists and instructions of the many alternatives that at least appear to prevent data theft, data collection, commercial (ab)use of shared images, information, family and professional details. Don't let them get rich on your data, don't let them spy on you, don't give them personal information and so on. I am working my way through it. The old idea of an internet for all is slowly coming out from a dark shadow. I am learning a lot about digital monopoly and how big tech is controlling our lives. This is the English version of one of the online lectures from last week, click here if you are interested.

A rich man and a poor man, there they stood,
And judged each other as best they could.
The poor man said, his voice at low pitch,
If I were not poor you’d not be rich.

Bertolt Brecht

Some nice stuff like the singing group I have joined recently. It is not a choir, we don't really know how to sing well. It's not karaoke. It's a group of mostly women, two men so far, of all ages, young students with rasta hair, middle-aged mothers, some with headscarves, several grannies. We meet up once a week in a room at the local school and for about two hours, we just sing as best we can. The initiative came from a retired opera singer and she starts each session with a bit of breathing and do-re-mi and then we're off. Usually, it's a mix of well-known German folk songs, the odd hymn, lullabies, pop music, even an aria or two. We each bring sheets with the lyrics, sometimes talking a bit about what the song means to us and usually someone/most know the melody. We also try our luck with harmonies and rounders, there is a lot of clapping, snapping and even dancing. Also lots of laughter.

This week we sang The Ode to Joy, Yesterday, Muss I denn (Elvis called it Wooden Heart), Moon River, a couple of German and two Turkish folk songs, Que sera sera, Le Champs Elyssees and If I Had a Hammer.  

To finish the session, we belt out rounders of Frère Jacques in German, French, Turkish and English at the top of our voices and then it's Good Bye, see you next week.

 

the magic of J S Bach

After some beautiful sunny and mild days, almost a week of it, the cold and predominantly grey skies are back. But there's no denying that a shy spring is here.

This is today's view on my walk along the river. I can see potential.

As I walked, I noticed a man with two lurchers. He was wearing an impressive outfit of waxed hunting jacket and one of these Aussie slough hats, and he was deep into making a show of his dog training methods, lots of clicking and sharp words and obedience. He also did this smack in the middle of the cycle path necessitating cyclists to stop or moving onto the grass to avoid hitting him or the dogs. It was quite the spectacle. When I got closer, I realised that this was the local representative of the far right nazi party. Some time back last year during one of the election campaigns I had made the mistake of attempting a debate on something or other at his party's road side stall and it culminated in him blocking my way - getting far too close - and shouting in my face, sue me, sue me, if you dare, you stupid cow. Then he was still sporting that silly upper lip moustache, which - for reasons - has now disappeared.

Anyway, in the recent general election, his despicable party got exactly 7.9% of the vote in this city. So I decided it was not worth my while to observe more of his dramatics and just there and then, the beautiful music algorithm of my smartphone started to play a piece of Bach and I turned back to the river as a barge with a name tag Inspiration floated by, and I felt a wave of relief that my country has also been home to this gifted composer and that his work endures and continues to bring such joy on a foggy day.

 

sad days

I've spent some time - years to be honest, many years and I am not finished - trying to understand the war trauma of my parent's generation, the people who were kids during the nazi years, who became adults when WWII was over, started careers, a family, a life with modest luxuries, healthcare, safe pensions, the lot.

One of the many books I have read on all of this and one that I have come back to repeatedly deals with the silent ruins the war left behind. The unspoken guilt, shame, loss, fear and so on that was passed on to the next generation. The way we were made to finish what was on the plate no matter how long it took, whether it made you gag or whether you were sent to eat it on the back door steps, the way we were never allowed to be idle, not allowed to waste time, always showing to the world that we were on the way to achieve something, shape something, make something of ourselves, the way we were told that "a real person does not feel pain" and sent to school with a fever, the way we were to suffer the strange unreasonable punishment procedures, the silent treatment, the never ending fear of your mother falling apart.

The war experiences of our parents as children, as teenagers were never really shared, only sometimes mentioned in passing or when we were given what my mother called "war food", soup made from old bread, potato peel, or the dreaded turnips. All we got was fragmentary knowledge, diffuse impressions that we tried to understand and fit into our own childhood experiences. 

I know now, many years later, that all this, the unspoken, the unspeakable, the things nobody wanted to remember and yet could never forget, has seeped into my own unconscious, has shaped my generation's fears and nightmares. 

In a conversation, a friend who is about my age mentions that the first thing she did after it became apparent in the last week that the US government is handing matters to Putin was to stock up on food and water and check all the locks. She laughs and shakes her head, what on earth did I do that for? And yet, I did the same, and more. 

I watch videos where seasoned army generals explain what to expect in case, when and how the next Russian cyber attack may hit, the electricity networks, water supply, railway systems? I check the distance between the US troop bases in Germany and my city, my mind swirling with movie images of invading soldiers. 

Below is a photograph by Lee Miller, the famous and courageous war time photographer, taken on this day in March 1945. What you see is the ruins of the Münsterplatz, one of the main city center areas of the city that has been our home for over 30 years now. You see a large bronze statue of the city's famous son, Ludwig van Beethoven, erected on his 75th birthday in August 1845. I wonder if the GI in this picture knew any of Beethoven's music. But who cares, what matters, then and today, is that he and all of his fellow troops came to this dreadful country that had caused such unspeakable horror and death, so that it once again could become a democracy, where my parents could live their adult lives without war, where I could live my life in peace without ever wasting a breath questioning it. So far.

When I walk down to the river, as I do on most days, I pass a memorial plaque for the Hodges bridge, a pontoon bridge the US forces built between March and April 1945, enabling US troops to cross the river Rhine, enabling a ceasefire and thus eventually within weeks, the end of WWII. 

If I cycle south for maybe a half hour, depending on the direction of the wind, I'll reach the remains of the bridge at Remagen, which was a critical strategic river crossing captured by US forces in March 1945 . Maybe you have seen the 1969 movie version of the battle and the dramatic collpase of the bridge.

 

I have never been to the American continent, despite the fact that many members of R's Irish family have travelled, worked, lived there, several are still living there (and elsewhere on the planet). But traces of the US are everywhere in my country, so many ties, so much to celebrate, enjoy, share. Travellers, students, colleagues, companies, so many friends. So much we have taken for granted and with gratitude, endless inspirations, thoughts, words, music, fun. Oh the fun!

On now, people have started to check out #UnplugTrump suggestions, beginning to say goodbye to US big tech, looking through the surprising selection of ad-free, independent apps and open source platforms. I watch people scanning items with madeometer.com and in the shops, suddenly we have become careful and discerning customers. A twelve step program for independence. Digital and beyond.

It feels strange but at the same time, so obvious, so easy, so weird. So sad. So very sad.