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