end of November

Last week's offerings:

Limited sunshine, one gorgeous sunrise and the entire remaining quota of grey clouds left for November. (Temperatures are climbing now amid rumours and actual meteorological forecasts of an unusually mild "summer" December. We shall see.) While around me people declare to be seriously suffering from seasonal affective disorder, my version is more of an allergic reaction when facing the various xmas offerings in the shops complete with seasonal music.

Otherwise I am working on reestablishing my gut health after ten days of antibiotics. This is what the gods invented Greek yoghurt for.  

The grandchild continues to read to us, we are working our way through the Dog Man opus, which I cannot praise high enough for style, narrative structure, language and plot climax. I am serious. In today's chapter, Dog Man told us that it's usually darkest before dawn and also that sometimes stuff happens totally random. 

We also went for a long walk and when my hands and feet were more or less frozen solid checked into a nice hotel by the river where ducks and herons and swans woke us the next morning at sunrise.

Reading, listening and watching.

• Reading:  

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich. As always, this writer does not disappoint and I stayed up late into several early mornings reading it. And as always, when I have read the last page of any Erdrich novel, I need to sit quietly for a while, sorting through my head and heart and the first thought that always comes to mind is, thank you.  

The Writers' Castle by Uwe Neumahr. All about the famous writers and journalists who came to Germany to observe and report on the Nuremberg Trial against the captured leaders of nazi Germany. I read this for three reasons, no 1, it was 80 years ago when the Nuremberg Trial started and there are heaps of documentaries and reports in all of the media currently, no 2, I spent a large part of my childhood and teenage years in Nuremberg and no 3, the castle in question, where the press camp was set up, sits across the road from the home where my grandmother lived for the last ten years of her long life and where she went for her daily walk in the castle park until one morning, aged 103, she decided she had had enough of it all, stayed in bed and died. 

• Listening:

As I have grown a bit tired of the Blindboy Podcast (but still think the episode "A Psychosexual history of Digestive biscuits and their use as instruments of Physical Force Republicanism", episode 342, season 1, is one of the best episodes ever in the whole podcast world) and cannot really stomach any more true-crime-that-never-really-gets-solved podcasts, I happily switched to Ill advised, the wonderful podcast of the wonderful British actor Bill Nighy. As a longtime fan of Bill Nighy (and long before Love Actually) I am obviously biased but really, there is nothing to complain here, true to his words, it's "for people who don't get out much and can't handle it when they do" and it comes complete with his well curated weekly playlist and book recommendation at the end of each episode. 

• Watching:

We worked our way through two series based in Northern Ireland, both excellent in our opinion, one for content, historical accuracy and acting and so on, Trespasses, which is based on the excellent novel of the same name by Louise Kennedy. The other, Blue Lights, in more than one way completely unrealistic and incorrect, but great stories and acting and entertaining (but not funny).

As was to be expected, we now have completely unintentionally started to take on the Ulster accent.

 

 

And finally, in his soft Limerick accent, the outgoing and all over the island much admired and loved Irish president Michael D. Higgins said yesterday: 

I see that President Trump refers to the ‘Third World.’ I think he had better realise that the people he’s talking about are the future world and they will believe in universalism in a way that he strongly opposes, and they will make new international institutions that he has destroyed with a respect for international law that he does not have.
The sooner the majority of the world is represented in the decisions that affect all future generations, the safer our planet will be. 

Sunday's child

Today is our daughter's birthday. As always, the events of that day - and the 48 hrs before her birth - are on my mind. And not just today but that's to be expected. 

During the day, we have a little competition of who remembers the most outrageous, funny, sad, and so on, thing about her and our parenting show. It is a cold and grey day, we are both retired, so we are at home, busy in our separate spaces with the doors open as we call out memories to each other in a way that would make our teenage daughter cringe and our grown up daughter and now herself a mother  probably teary eyed. How silly are parents etc., but she is far too busy. As were we at her age.

Three memories.

When she was ten years old, she changed schools and we trained her to come home by herself. This involved her walking half a kilometer from the school to the nearest bus stop, on the way crossing a busy road via a pedestrian light crossing, waiting at the stop where three different bus routes merged and getting off the correct bus after 15 minutes, crossing another road via a zebra crossing, walking through a pedestrian railway underpass and along a quietish street home for maybe one kilometer. All of this during the day, in a busy town, with many other school kids. For about a week, I was waiting behind a tree close to the bus stop near her school, watching how she carefully crossed the road, take her seat behind the bus driver while I sat at the back, unnoticed, and with a serious determined face and stride getting off at the correct stop walking home when, suprise, surprise, I would happen to come along. 

Years later when she set off into the wild night life, we once or thrice, sat in the car parked illegally behind some advertising billboard by the central bus station and watched her in the crowd of happy teenagers waiting for the nightbus after midnight, driving home once she was safely on the bus and seemingly asleep by the time we could hear her key in the front door.

Fast forward a couple more years, with me sitting at my desk at work, reading her email. She wrote that she had just travelled through the night on a bus in Laos, sitting next to a monk, which meant she had to leave her feet firmly on the floor and sitting up straight but how this inconvenience offered a sense of security as apart from the monk, most passengers were armed soldiers. She was writing this email at sunrise on the banks of the Mekong waiting for the morning ferry to Thailand where a group of taxi drivers had invited her for coffee. She was, she wrote that day, extremely happy.

She has been surrounded by invisible guardian angels, helped by common sense and a sharp mind. Always certain that humanity is our family. Long may it last.  

 

 

half way through November

 

A reliable sorce informed me a while ago that the various AI apps can  - depending on variables such as age, habits, career, family and whatever else they have on you - calculate how many more movies and series you will watch, how many more books you will read, and how many new people you will meet before you die. And here I was thinking AI was mindless shit.

In a convoluted way it does bring to mind the much adored (by me) German performance artist/theatre director/filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief who said shortly before his death from cancer in 2010 that he would give anything to lie awake at night and just ponder whether he had taken out the rubbish or not.  

This post is not meant to be all gloomy but it is November after all and today we had the whole programme from stormy winds to sleet and hail and snow and back to briefly sunshine and now frost. And drizzle. Drizzling frost freezing on the roads. The house makes a clicking noise only I can hear.

Last Friday I finally accepted that the headcold symptoms were getting a tad too intesive and that after two weeks there should really be some improvement and not shivers and fever and later that morning, my friendly GP gave me a stern look and a short lecture about immune suppression and risks and ladila and a prescription for antibiotics with rest. To top it, R has set up a regimen of inhalations and keeps putting very large glasses of water within reach and I have watched a couple of Scandinavian thriller series and obviously, read all the internets.

Here is what I found:

• For decades, scientists have been collecting brittle stars, or Ophiuroidea, a relative of the starfish, and storing them in museums and universities. Now, DNA analysis from thousands of these ancient, prickly crawlers shows that family ties extend across oceans, plural. All that deep water is much more interconected than previously thought possible. In fact brittle stars from the South Pacific near New Zealand, for example, are related to those found as far away as the Indian Ocean and the North Atlantic. For marine invetebrates, tiny creatures living on the sea floor, the oceans are a connected superhighway.

• While I watched the inauguration of the wonderful new president of Ireland, Catherine Connolly, and listened to her gentle voice speaking as gaeilge (in Irish) not understanding a word, I, for the hundredth time, decided to finally once again have a go at learning this amazing language (I am the only person in the family unable to utter even a few words of it). Obviously, I was running a temperatur and no, it's not going to happen, who am I kidding. Just consider the word for hole: one dug into the ground after dark by an animal is uachas. Or one made by fish in a sandy riverbed for spawning is saothar. One hollowed out by the hooves of beasts and then filled with rain is plobán. And one where a lobster is hiding in is fach and a hideaway by a wild beast is puathais. The Irish word for president is uachtarán and it translates as the the cream that rises to the top and thus the presidential palace in Dublin is called Áras an Uachtaráin or house of the president or to some, the country's creamery.

And then I found this: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the power of novelists

As mentioned a few times here, English is not my first language and since I had been told during my school years that I had no talent for modern languages, I did not waste much time trying to speak or read let alone understand English.

As also mentioned several times here, this all changed dramatically in the summer of 1979 when, at age 21 on the wild Atlantic coast of Connemara, I met R who has been the man in my life ever since. And while he speaks a couple of modern languages, German was not part of his repertoire. And since I can be determined when I want to, my talent for one of the modern languages improved rapidly and the rest is history. (He also speaks German by now.)

I may have also mentioned that I am an avid reader and incorporating English into my life opened the door to a whole new world of literature. At first reading in English was like driving without headlights, I just guessed my way through the narrative, but it did not stop me.

The first novel in English was The Magus by John Fowles. It was quite the rage at the time and had made a huge impression on R and when I asked him to tell me what to read, he got me a copy. To say that I struggled with it would be an understatement but I got the general drift and did read it to the end. I tried reading it again a few years back but just could not get into it.

The second novel in English was The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. There are many ways to read this massive and amazing book and I have read it three times by now.

The third novel in English was Them by Joyce Carol Oates which blew me away with its sharp honesty, describing a world I could only try to imagine - being 21 and living in the safe cocoon of love and affection and happiness. 

I've read a good few of Joyce Carol Oates's books since, did not like all of them but whenever I find one of her titles in a shop or library, I pick it up and have a look. Which is why this little missive by her is such a refreshing, uplifting and to-the-point thing to read:

Other than that I am grumpy and mean spirited since I picked up R's head cold a week ago and while he recovered within a couple of days and is now frolicking like a young deer, I am nursing the worst symptoms in the history of head colds. 
 

my life in ten objects: union card

I don't have an actual union card any longer. The last one looked like a credit card and I had it tucked away somewhere with my work papers. It's all online now but I left the last union I was in when I retired.

The first union I joined was the German Education Union, which organises educators and teachers in schools, universities, early childhood education, vocational training and adult education. 

I joined because my father had urged me to do so. Also, a cousin and various other family members and I had grown tired of the discussions as to why not and so on.  

It was the time when I was a student and trainee teacher and I remember lots of action but mostly fun. And learning workshops on all sorts of stuff. The union financed the interrail tickets that enabled me to travel all over Europe during the summer, visiting festivals and doing voluntary work in many different settings (mixing cement for school renovations, chaperoning youth groups, serving coffee to old age pensioners, cleaning hospital floors, replanting beach grass at the coast, you get the idea). And along the way, I met the man I am still sharing my life with.

When I moved to Ireland and worked in bookshops, I joined IDATU, the Irish Distributive and Administrative Trade Union, which then was the trade union representing workers in Ireland. I wasn't an active member, not someone who went to meetings and such, but when in 1984, several female workers and one man at Dunnes Stores, one of Ireland's large department stores, refused to sell South African grapefruits as part of the growing campaign against the Apartheid regime, my union branch decided to follow and soon enough, there were pickets all over the country where I spent many hours, my small kid asleep in the buggy or playing with others between our signs and banners.  

This guy tells the story quite well and almost like a joke: 

I found out a bit later that my name, together with all other IDATU members, was on a list of people barred from South Africa at the time. When we moved to Germany, I dutifully joined the next best union and paid my membership fees and helped distributing newsletters from time to time, collected signatures on petitions and funds for people in need. I had nothing to worry about but I had my rep's contact details and the knowledge that any time any place I had the legal protection of my rights at work - as well as being part of a collective muscle for lack of a better word. 

A while back, during one of my father's family dinners, the above-mentioned cousin was explaining to another guest why he, now a well off retired academic, had always been a union member. It's because I never wanted to lose my sense of solidarity, always wanted to remind myself what social responsibility means and why it matters. But also, because I can.