WASHING WITHOUT GETTING WET

What a year!

2011-10-15T21:36:00.023+02:00

This year AD 2011 was quite outstanding considering what has happened to me and what thankfully did not come about.

First stunt
One of the first days of January, I visited my Dutch friend here in the village. He showed me the crumbling wall of the boiler building standing on a kind of embankment. I ran down the slope and got my left foot entangled in some brambles.

So instead of running down I had a short flight and the prospect of a hard landing on the tarmac. Thus I tried some rowly-poly but anyway, you have to touch ground on something and in my case it was the elbow instead of my head. Hospital, arm in a sling, 20 sessions with a physical therapist.

Even now, my left arm remains slightly bent instead of stretching straight as it should be. But I could have landed on my face!

Second stunt
A left arm "out of service" means no paragliding. But end of May I was ok again and thus we decided to have one weeks' holiday at the Atlantic Coast, paragliding on the Pyla Dune and having a good time both of us.

On the highway after twenty minutes' driving my wife said to me "I think the roof box opened". At 80 miles/hour that is bad news. I stopped the car on the side lane and looked back. A sleeping bag, a rug and a plastic basin lay on the fast lane. At that moment a car was driving over the basin. Bam, a noise like a canon firing or a plane crossing the sound barrier.

So I sprinted back as fast as I could to retrieve the stuff and avoid an accident. You are not supposed to spread your belongings on a French motorway where people speed along at 130 or 140 km/hour (80 to 90 miles/hour).

My left foot Achilles tendon did not appreciate the highway racing and broke under the strain. The last meters or feet I was limping along but I got the stuff. I even crossed the two lanes to retrieve the rug that lay on the left side and than limped back to the car.

When the highway police came I was already busy fixing the roof box with a sturdy strap. "Did you cross the highway" one of the cops asked me. "Certainly not", I said and he was obliged to believe me. Quite friendly the chap and even helped me to get back on the highway, slowing down those other speeders passing by.

I drove to the nearest cafeteria. Sitting next to my wife, sipping some lukewarm coffee, I had to tell her that our holidays finished here. I showed her my left foot. There, where the tendon should show a hard tight surface it has a belly-like feeling. She drove the Audi back home, slowly.

The next day, operation, three nights in the hospital, then 45 days in plastic plaster with two clutches: that is a very different way to live. Two clutches means you have no hands, only four legs. And after that the muscles are gone so I had to learn how to walk, increasing the distance one can make on foot. That takes takes time. In September I was back again at about 80 percent.

Could have been worse, I never had any pain and the highway race, let's forget that one.

During those 45 days on clutches, I decided to try obtaining the "Air Transport Pilot Certificate" on Microsoft's Flight Simulator. It's the most difficult one to get, it requires quite a lot of knowledge, a high degree of concentration and very fast reactions. Obligation to do the right thing at the right time. If somebody is interested just to have a look on YouTube, here is a kind of "walkthrough" showing what to do in order to succeed Splendidly made video. Sure, I will never fly such a plane in reality but it gives a good idea of what is required. Since I am a flightsimmer, I have the highest respect for those pilots doing this demanding job. In case your Internet connection is fast enough, don't forget to click on the HD definition.

Stunt number 3
On a beautiful Thurday morning, three weeks ago, I was driving to Aurillac to buy this and that and meeting my wife there at noon to have a bite. The road from the village to the main road is narrow but large enough to cross even a truck. Each one goes a bit on the grass at the right side and that's it.

I see the car coming towards me, driving confortably in the middle of the road. I sverve to the right, the other one, nothing, I drive a bit more to the right, rien à faire, BAM, BONG. All four airbags came out. Inside the car there was powder smoke as if I was in the midst of the battle of Trafalgar, right near a cannon, on the lower deck.

Keeping my breath I scrambled out of the car. Starting to yell at the other driver who had stopped, too. In the middle of the road where we met. Out came a very old man, nearly 80 years old, I guess. He was a bit shaken and did not say a word. Don't know what happened, he must have been dreaming or looking at the green grass in the fields. Afterwards his son told me he is in bad health and his wife has a nervous breakdown.

Those airbags of my 12 year old Audi saved me, or at least my front teeth. The bags came out so fast I don't remember seeing them coming! One of these days I go to see the old man to have a little friendly chat and to ask him how he is doing. The insurance will pay me the full value of my car but by old banger is 12 years old. They give me 5500 €, about 7400 US$.

I think I'll get me another Audi A3, I owe something to that company, oh yes, I am an Audi addict and the next car will be flaming red again.

Astronomy - a dream job

2011-08-26T17:05:00.023+02:00

When I was around 12 to 15 years old I knew what I would like to do: become an astronomer, a stargazer.

That was largely before Hubble was launched giving us those gorgeous photos I coulnd't even dream of seeing. Nevertheless, there was open space, unlimited distance, the infinity, the idea of stars being light-years away from here.

Our little computer room. How do you like the desk top image on this 24" LED flat screen? On the wall are my flight simulator diplomas: my every-day-hobby.

Later it became obvious to me that my mathematical possibilities were next to a deflated tyre. In fact I dreaded the math classes in school, geometry, algebra, I was always a struggler, the rear guard and tried my best to be invisible to the teacher during those hours.

Professionally I had to do something else, no doubt about that. But the fascination remained. And there was something else about astronomy that would have made trouble. I don't like to stay awake at night. My daily adult life span ends at Midnight AT THE LATEST, to be continued happily next day.

Being obliged to stay awake during the small hours of next day, 1, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning: I hate that. As an astronomer I would have been compelled to become a Sun specialist, no doubt about that. But I am not that much interested in our Mother Star.

However, this love for astronomy brought me a lot of splendid hours. And it taught me a few important things and answered some questions:

- is there any sens in life, is there a destiny? No, there isn't. Look at those black holes, super novae and exploding and imploding stars, colliding galaxies. They come and go and we can do nothing about it.

- is there a superior being, a God, looking benevolently at you and me? No, there isn't, sorry for that. We are like the mice our cat is chasing day and night. If you have the right trajectory, you pass unscathed. If not..............

In about 2 billion years our galaxy the Milky Way will have a collision with the Andromeda Galaxy and in about 3 billion years they will have merged into a new, bigger one. Milky Way King Size. What does that mean to our Solar System and to our Earth? Nobody knows but all options are on the table.

Upgrading the house insulation

2011-07-19T17:23:00.033+02:00

Our house must have been built just before the 1st Oil Price Shock, around 1973/74. At that time, heating was no problem, oil was cheap and consequently, the houses were barely insulated.

Happy times, gone forever.

Furthermore, practically all houses here are made of stone, the heavier the better. Wood is only used for the roof structure. That is a bit astonishing because France's Auvergne region is covered by forests in all directions. Pastures for cows or forests, that's it, more or less.

When we bought our house towards the end of last Century (sounds good, eh?), we decided to heat the place with a wood stove insert. So starting in 1998 I am in charge of the log preparation. We used about 15 cubic meters of firewood or 530 cubic feet. A huge pile of wood!

Finally, I was fed up to pass 2 months every year to transform oak tree trunks into logs. And an efficient outside insulation is the best method to reduce that big heap to a smaller one.

Thanks to the Internet and Google I found a company that covers the house with a 10 cm (about 4") thick polyurethane layer plus, on top of this, about 2 mm of painted aluminium, a little less than 1/10th of an inch.

Thus in August last year we got the job started and a week later all that remained to be done was to pay.

Funny thing is, the look of the house is the same as before. Only the walls are now about 4 inches thicker. And last Winter, the log consumption fell from about 530 cubic feet to about 350 cubic feet (from 15 m3 to 10 m3) meaning about one third less. And the cherry on the cake was that Goverment gave us a fat tax reduction.

Thus this year I had a new stove installed that is supposed to further reduce consumption. Mister stove's name is Max Heavyweight. Here, have a look at Max in all his glory.

Next week the missing pipe will be installed and if the present foul weather persists, we'll have a trial run.

Right now, my wife uses her iron for about half an hour and the temp rises 1°C in the living room!

The racists are among us

2011-05-27T21:04:00.048+02:00

All news I hear of come to me through the different TV channels. I read an US weekly but this is more for in depth info world wide. If I am feeling they try to force-feed me some half truths or that I get only a lopsided picture I go to Google to find out.

So about ten days ago this stunning affair about the accusation of rape and sexual violence in a New York hotel against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK as he is called here) came to my knowledge. Via the French TV, sure, at the evening news.

I know the man, like most people who live in France. He might well have been the next French President and I said to my wife, some months before "could be I would vote for him, if I were French".

The very day of these accusations and the videos showing him handcuffed in front of the NY prison, people, important well-known people, were interviewed and asked to comment .

Here is what I heard:

- Jack Lang, former minister of culture on television TF2 : "This was a kind of lynching inspite of the fact that no one was dead".

- Jean-François Kahn, journalist, writer and politician on France-Culture: "what happened there was a stripping of a servant".

- Robert Badinter former minister of justice) on television TF2 during a lengthy interview where he talked endlessly about the plight of DSK but not a word about the victim. When asked about this he said : "Yes, the victim, sure, that's a problem".

Bernard-Henry Lévy, philosopher, writer, movie director, journalist etc. on his blog and on the DailyBeast website : "...what I know is that nothing in the world can justify a man being thus thrown to the dogs...".

Jean Daniel, writer and journalist: "The fate inflicted upon Dominique Strauss-Kahn by the American justice system makes me think that we don't belong to the same civilisation ".

All these words have two things in common: first the men commenting seem not to care very much about the victim and second they are all jewish. The first point has been amply commented by now and I suppose this was the last time you can hear or read this kind of thoughts over here. Next time they will be more prudent I guess. But point number 2: nothing. Not a word. They are all rushing to the defence of the party but the very fact is not mentioned.

Now something else but there is a relation.The number 1 sports activity here is soccer, football as we call it rightly and the French national team won the World Championship some years ago. Have a look at this photo of "Les Bleus", the blue ones as they are called affectionately in the media.

About 3 or 4 years ago there was an uproar about the national team. The President Georges Frêche of the Langedoc-Roussillon region (bordering the Mediterranean) said one word too much "... in this crew of 11 there are 9 blacks. It would be normal to have 3 or 4...."

This triggered a big scandal. His party stripped him of his membership and they tried everything to avoid his reelection as president. Now have a look. What did he do? Nothing more than state a fact.

To conclude, Shakespeare's Hamlet comes to my mind: "There is a method in the madness" and the other one "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".

The pleasure of reading - second thoughts

2011-05-06T21:48:00.014+02:00

Some time ago I wrote a post about books I like most. When writing this list I really did my best and tried to be objective.

These days I am reading a book I have already read about three or four times and there are others I have even read nearly ten times. But not one of those books and its authors are in my list.

So I think I owe them something.

The book I am reading right now - for about the third time I guess - is "Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red" by Harry Kemelman. This is a thriller as it should be, a real page turner, but there is something more to it.

The whole plot is set in a Jewish community situated near Boston/USA and this rabbi is a male version of Agatha Cristie's "Miss Marple", well known to those who like the genre.

The author who looks a bit like Ian Fleming

wanted to write a book about Jewish life in the United States but his editor told him that such a subject would be unsalable. So he wrapped it all into a thriller/mystery story and had a huge success worldwide with his rabbi stories.

So while reading this you learn a lot about those American Jews and about their religion. Strange to say, most of those Jews depicted in this book (and in the other ones) are not very likeable at all. They are constantly quarreling among themselves, are self centered and do their very best to annoy our worthy rabbi and are constantly scheming to make him loose his job.

A very interesting part of the book are comparisons between the hebrew creed and christianity. Quite enlightening, at least for me who is very much interested in religions (though myself I have none).

A very endearing person is the Assistant District Attorney Bradford Ames (not a Jew) who belongs to a very old family in the town and considers he has a duty towards his fellow citizen. He is a kind of rebublican aristocrat made in USA. Then there is police chief Hugh Lanigan, a cop as a cop should be, intelligent, broad minded, friendly.

Reading what I wrote hereabove, I have to admit that I don't say much about the plot. But it is a page turner allright, you see the police and our rabbi chasing the different links that frequently become dead ends.

I am sure, this is a great book out of a great series though it will never make it to "world literature" and the author was certainly never eligible for the Nobel Price.

Last not least, if someone feels inclined to give it a try and read a book from Harry Kemelman just after having glanced through this post, I would like to hear how it goes.

Cheers to all of you.

Heroes - they pay for us

2011-03-21T19:23:00.024+01:00

When the Tchernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, the Soviet government sent thousands of army draftees and miners to dig tunnels or clean away debris before erecting the steel coffin to contain the radiation.

These people did not realize fully what they were asked to do: to face certain death within weeks or months or long, painfull illnesses. They suffered for the common good and I can only hope they are honoured by their people for this.

But what unfolds right now in Fukoshima is of an entirely different kind. The Japanese people know what radiation means and most certainly those who fight the monster right on spot. These days I frequently have a look at NHK World, the Japanese news channel in English and saw there those Tokyo Firefighters shaking hands before trying to spray water on those melting nuke rods. Normally, the Japanese are a kind of poker face nation but here I saw they were fighting back tears.

To do this you have to be nearby and nearby means death, a very unpleasant slow death. They were volonteers I have been told and if the word Hero has any meaning they are.
They face death out of their own choice so that others may go on living! Heroes.

As to nuclear power plants, they should have been scrapped since long. This technology is just too dangerous for dumb human species. I have been working in industry all my life and we had the saying "something that can go wrong, will go wrong, one day".

This "Sword of Damocles" hangs above our heads and this for thousands of years because nobody knows for certain what to do with the nuclear waste. Even without Tsunami, earth quakes or terrorist attacks we are all facing this threat due to our collective stupidity. And this technology is not even cheap, one of these lies we are being told from time to time. There was a Tchernobyl type power plant in Eastern Germany, shut down about a months after reunification. Now, more than 20 years later, the plant is still not totally dismantled at a cost of about 1500 Million Euro or nearly 2 Billion US Dollar! Just dismantling.

As to the waste, nobody know what to do with it. There is not a single place on Mother Earth where the geologists can say "this hole deep down is safe for the next five thousand/ten thousand years". But the search for a waste dumb goes on, worldwide, to the tune of Billions of Euros or Dollars, Billions, really, no exageration. So, for the time being, the stuff remains somewhere behind each power plant, safely stored away in big costly steel drums. But in forty, fifty years, those containers have to be replaced. Everywhere, all over the world! And so on, and so on and so on. No need for a Tsunami or a king size quake to shiver a bit. No need to panic either, those are old facts, nothing new, no surprise here.

Last not least: don't swallow anti-radiation iode pills. They are useless unless your home adress is Fukoshima or Tchernobyl. Better sit under a table with a pillow over the head.

Pieces of Music I love most

2011-02-05T11:07:00.095+01:00

The last post here gave the list of my ten most loved books. Now I am doing the same but this time with music. My top ten are right here but it is understood that number 1 is not the biggest love, it only means I have to start somewhere and I do it at 1.

Marie-Paule Belle - La Parisienne
This is a song of a young girls who starts living in Paris and what sie does to get popular. Very dahing, daring, osé, bold and melodious. Here is the text in French

Exultate Jubilate - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Lucia Popp
This music is like Champaign, it bubbles with the joy of life. Nothing to do with the customary dour church music. And Lucia Popp is my preferred singer anyway.

Wo die Nordseewellen - Lale Andersen
This is a song dedicated to the North Sea and the people living at its shore. Lale Anderson has a very strange voice. She sings in the Northern German dialect (Plattdütsch).

Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben - Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven - Matti Salminen
This endearing song is all and exclusively about money. You need to have it. The singer is a powerful basso; he starts "if you don't have it you can't be happy". Here are the lyrics in German and in English

Der Freischütz - Carl Maria von Weber - Hunters' chorus/Jägerchor
That's one of the very few operas I feel strong enough to listen from beginning to end. This "Hunters' Chorus" is great fun to look at: the choir director killing off his singers one by one.

The Dubliners - Dublin in the Green
I love them. Such powerful music. As far as I know I have more or less everything they published. So it is not specially this song, it's the group! They are unique. The singing black beard is grey now but the rasping voice is the same.

Carl Orff - Carmina Burana/In Taberna quando sumus/Drinking chorus
This drinking song has a latin text. I especially like the part where they sing the long list of who is boozing along: everybody. This list starts at about 1:40.

Paul McCarthney - Mull of Kintyre
This guy was one of the Beetles. The song is melodious and the lyrics are wonderfully nostalgic.You can click on two versions, the first sung by PMC, both are great.

Joseph Haydn - Cello concerto in D major - Mischa Maisky
Another piece of melodious music! I love this concerto so much I bought 3 versions and even to me - I am not a learned music lover - there is a clear difference.

Bairisch-diatonischer Jodelwahnsinn - Münchner Gestanzln/Monika Drasch
Thi is modern Bavarian folk. Jazzy folk I would say. Monika Drasch (click on her name) belonged to this group. She is the good lokoking girl with the red hair and the green violin. In the second recording, she talks first in Bavarian German and then sings about a love sick ox driver (kind of cowboy in US English). The lyrics are from a Bavarian girl who immigrated around 1900 to the USA and died in Chicago, totally unknown and penniless.

Mikis Theodorakis/Pablo Neruda - Canto General
This is a genious of a composer. And he shows that there is more to present day Greece than brainless spending of money you don't own. Powerful melodious music. Here, too, I have two different videos of different parts of the Canto. Maria Farantouri belongs to the original performers, her voice is unforgettable. The second recording replaces her by a beautiful blonde from Finland.

Paco Ibanez - Erase una vez........ El lobito bueno
A very endearing voice and a great composer. Met him first when I tried to learn Spanish. All that remains now are his records. This is the story of friendly wolves and nice witches. This is an old recording. He is still active and singing but his voice now is not what it was (too many bottles I was told).

Hubert von Goisern - Kuamelcher
That is a kind of contemporary yodel music performed by an Austrian singer and composer. He has been some time in Tibet and in Northern India and I think he created a kind of Zen-yodeling, I am not kidding.

Sick note (kind of singsong)
For those who wish to have some fun and nothing more. This is for you!
And anyway, who is reading and hearing this from one to ten? I wonder. The Sick Note is performed by The Dubliners but it is not really a song. It is about someone who had a ton of bricks falling on him, he explains how it happened and why he could not come to work.

One last word. Those recordings come from different countries but looking at my list, all the music I really love is from here, from this small place called Europe. I did not do this on purpose, it is like that though I know that every country, every continent has music, loved by its people. So I know, like and appreciate for instance Ragas from India, Chinese flute music and those choirs from South Africa. There is some music from Morocco I like and some songs from Ms Kalsoom, the Egyptian singer but it does not go to the heart. That is sad to say but so it is.

There is however one exception to what I said here: music made in USA. Non is included but I did not do this on purpose because there are some I love very much, oh yes. Like "John Brown's Body", "Clementine, oh my darling Clementine", "Father Death Blues" sung by Allen Ginsberg, one of my all-time favourites, "Duelling Banjos" out of the movie Deliverance, or "Sisters of Mercy" by Leonard Cohen or Nina Simone singing "Ain't got no.." Another singer, long dead, too, is Paul Robeson, this amazing basso voice. "Joe Hill" is the song I love most. Most of these people are dead, dead for many years. In my heart they are classical, classics, not forgotten by me and as I can find these people on YouTube I suppose I am not the only one.

The pleasure of reading

2011-01-28T18:13:00.041+01:00

There are people who never read. By never reading I mean never reading a book for pleasure. It simply does not occur to them. They might read a daily newspaper, the television weekly but a book? Never.

As far as I could find out through observation of others, never reading a book implies a certain lack of curiosity. Reading a book - nearly any one - makes you enter the life of someone else. I have always thought that reading can b e a kind of fast lane to the experiences of others and that might come handy one day.

As to me, well I have been reading nearly all my life. By nearly I mean since I learned reading, about one year before entering school. When I was about five years old my grandma read those Till Eulenspiegel stories to me. This guy who lived in the Middle Ages was a kind of impudent trickster and I could not hear enough. Thus when my grandma stopped I was so impatient to know what will happen next that I managed to learn it without any outside help.

Here, have a look at this photo. This is Till Eulenspiegel's stature in his birth town. I owe him something.

Not long ago I read in Smorgy's blog a very exhausting list of his readings. And in the comments he gives even the ten books he likes most. So I just imitate him and give a list of my favourite ten. Here is it, I tried to do my best. Number 1 does not mean this is my absolute best, I only start at one.

1. Peter Weiss - Fluchtpunkt
2. Arno Schmidt - Kaff auch Mare Crisium
3. Bertold Brecht - his collected poems
4. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - his collected poems
5. J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in The Rye
6. W.H. Davies - The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
7. Raymond Queneau - Le Dimanche de la Vie
8. Michael Crichton - Timeline
9. P.G. Wodehouse - Psmith/Jeeves stories
10. Egon Fridell - Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit
11. Mika Waltari - Sinuhe the Egyptian
12. Ernst Vollbehr - Bunte leuchtende Welt

Well, those ten became twelf. I am unable to delete two books from that list.

Some are well known but others , like No 1, 2 and 10 are somehow lost, forgotten but to a very small number of readers. Some more years to go and nobody will remember.

And something should be mentioned, too. It is very difficult to find a factual description of a book. I mean a review that tells you what is going on inside. Instead of this the reviewer talks and talks but I am not wiser at the end. One of the rare exceptions to this is the blogger I Me My . But maybe this is so because this person is not a professional book reviewer.

Works of art are subject to aging like people. The fastest to age are movies. But books age, too. There are those famous writers of the 19th century, monuments of literature, but I can't help it they seem lengthy and boring to me. Most of them. Long descriptions of situations and surroundings, I am not so very much interested in. So it could well be that each century or each time has its own literature or let's say interesting and thrilling books.

Busy with other people's affairs

2011-01-14T09:53:00.027+01:00

Imagined conversation: "..........and when you talk to the Chinese Prime Minister, don't forget to mention the Human Rights situation in his country".

To tell the truth, I hate this. Why not talk about the human rights situation right at home? There is certainly a lot to do!

These two YT's are not really unforgettable or outstanding; they just illustrate a bit this subject.

These days, it's those "presidential" elections in Ivory Coast (somewhere in Africa). Having finished these elections they landed with two presidents ready to cash in, one who did win but could not get in and one who got in but did not win. Now, in dozens of countries worldwide, they are being told what to do. "Be democratic", everybody is clamoring, respect this, respect that. Armies are made ready for a peaceful intervention, the UN votes something, etc, etc, etc. Why not leaving these countries alone and why not refrain from fostering on them our democratic procedures ?

Dear reader, if you managed to read down to this line, this is something you might appreciate:

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve (Bernard Shaw)

And here another one from Winston Churchill:
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter .

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires a change of heart.
Mahatma Gandhi

I like especially the last one. So true.

Democracy is one of the few products that are absolutely homegrown, cannot be exported and should not be imported. Otherwise, we'll see those lousy copies like in Afghanistan, Irak, Kossovo and elsewhere.

However, we should try to improve our own democratic procedures. That would be a big job and would keep us busy for dozens of years. Especially our politicians - many of them - need some tuition and some improvements, not to speak of our institutions. Useless to go into details, every country has its own shortcomings.............

When a country is subject to a catastrophic event, like an earth quake, tsunami or heavy floodings we should help and everybody is honoured by doing so. Nevertheless, there are questions that come to my mind.

Take the case of Haiti: last years' quake killed about 250.000 people and flattened their capital Port-au-Prince. Now about one year has passed and I hear they have managed to clean about 5 (five) percent of the rubble. On television I see some of our gallant helpers from Europe or North America (the ever expanding NGO's) working with a shovel to help shifting the rubble from A to B.
Why can't the Haitians clear the rubble away themselves?
Yesterday I saw on the telly Haitian women complain of rape gangs operating inside those tent cities. And the Haitian police force? And the other people, living near-by?
Some months ago they had a cholera epidemy starting and Haitians got busy accusing rescue workers sent by the United Nations to be responsible by means of witchcraft. Some UN soldiers even got killed.

A few months ago, we graced the Haitians with one more election, financed by other countries through the United Nations. They elected a musician as president but it seems not everybody there is ready to dance according to his tune. So they are fighting in the rubble streets, do a little killing among themselves because not everybody is happy with the counting of the votes. Some ballots disappeared, others were counted twice.

Considering all this, my idea is that help - meaning our money - should go where the concerned nations are ready to work themselves towards the same goal and show it! That's not a new idea, the dicton "help yourself and God will help you" was not coined yesterday.

So let's stop giving lessons to other nations and to far away peoples. They don't like it as we don't appreciate to be told what to do. I remember the uproar when at the height of the second oil crisis, the OPEC boss and king of Saudi-Arabia told a reporter "if you feel cold at home because you have no heating, just put on a warmer sweater".

The Soviet Union - The Evil Empire

2010-12-16T16:00:00.013+01:00

Yesterday - my wife was out at the local gym session - I switched to the TV channel ARTE and saw the docu-fiction "Stalin-Molotov, the tyrant and his double".

The Soviet Union disappeared from the map in 1990 and nowadays it is nearly never mentioned anymore. But to me this state means a lot, the Soviet Union accompanied practically my entire life!

When I was born, the communist SU and Nazi Germany, The Third Reich, were mortal ennemies. Looking back on this I can't help thinking they hated each others guts so much because they had a lot of things in common.

I am born in Berlin and spent my youth there. At that time, after the Second World War, the city was divided. And this dividing line, The Wall, marked the border between the Communist East , sponsored and maintained by the Soviet Union and the Western World, as we called it at that time.

Like everybody else, everywhere, I lived my life. But the impression lingered on: we are being observed by a snake that waits patiently - and sometimes less patiently - to gobble us us, me included. Those who are older may remember those sayings "better red than dead" and the other one "better dead than red".

Years later, after my military service, I decided to take a break, have a sabbatical, and I went to India.

I had some money saved but not a big heap, so I hitchhiked and passed by cars or trucks through Yougoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. All countries I crossed - in Europe and Asia - had something in common: up north was the Soviet Union. I covered thousands of miles but up North was the big entity ready to rake me in, whenever possible.

In Afghanistan I even met Russians. At that time Afghanistan was still a kingdom but also something like a colony in waiting, ready to be gobbled up. The Russians there, in the Northern and Western part of the country were doing some development work there, kind of NGO's, probably with a hidden agenda, like all great powers.

That was the time of the Cold War and thus the US Americans were present in the Kandahar region. Looking back, thinking back, I wonder if those two ever met and talked it over............

Many, many years later, I lived in Paris and managed to pass a little holiday in Bruges/Belgium, one of the most beautiful town I have ever seen. In the street someone talked to me and said "The Berlin Wall has fallen". I could not believe it. This wall and the Soviet Union behind it seemed everlasting to me.

Now this is already twenty years in the past. The mighty Soviet Union, the nightmare of millions and millions of people, lasted only 70 years!

And what will remain of it in hundred or two hundred years: probably not much more than a footnote or some lines in history books.

Wikileaks and the national interests

2010-11-30T16:28:00.016+01:00

Wikileaks: big hullabaloo about secrets of state, gone public. Thank you. We are being entertained by the US government, free of charge and at prime time. And not only this: many secondary choirs and solo singers give their best .

Sure, not everybody likes it. Some shit green or yellow. They stand there naked and exposed when - a moment before - everything looked so wonderful.

About 150 years ago, the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nitzsche said this: "State is the name of the coldest of all monsters. Coldly it tells lies and this crawls out of his mouth: I, the State, am the people".

Those in power, everywhere or nearly everywhere, tell us they are busy for the common good and acting in the national interest. That might be partly true but only partly.

When I hear the word "State" I am thinking not about a cold monster but about a huge bureaucracy that never sticks its head out but its members most certainly have interests. Permanent interests. Interests for soft life, money coming their way, influence and power and all this with as little responsibility as possible for their doings hence the need for secrecy, anonymity and hypocrisy to make it happen.

There is no such thing as an abstract body called STATE. There are only people who have chosen to hide their actions behind this word.

When we hear the "national entertainers" from here and there, let's think about this a moment before applauding those brilliant and convincing speeches.

The new aristocrats

2010-10-19T08:26:00.016+02:00

On the left side: "we are fed up" and on the right side: "we are on strike"

A friend once said to me, France means three things to him: Paris, wine and strikes. Well, that's putting it into a nutshell. I have been living here now for over 25 years and I can testify there is more to it.

But there is no denying it: strikes are aplenty over here. What is less well known is the fact that it's always the same people who are on strike: the state employed teachers, the National Railway people and public transport in general. The public sector in general at all levels, state, cities, any kind of administration plus those companies that have at least strong ties with the public sector (the State being an important shareholder or so).

And when they have finished one of those stikes their speakers ask for compensation - meaning the salary paid in full - and if there is some hesitation to grant this, there is pronto another strike.

Good old Karl Marx's definition of strikers "people who have nothing to loose than their chains" is really an old hat.

These happy strikers are not the downtrodden poor, they are our aristrocrats and consequently, we have to feed them! As the aristocrats of old, they have prerogatives and special rights, like a secure job unless you kill father, mother and your boss, few hours of work, garanteed days of illness (oh yes, in some public sectors), 7 weeks of holidays per year at a minimum, pension at 55 or 58 at the latest with a monthly amount identical to the last salary.

When you talk to a civil servant, they always tell you how little they earn. But they never mention the numerous bonuses they get, for having children, for not working or living in the place where they have been engaged, three days of paid leave for one child that is ill and so on, and so on, paying less for their pensions than the private sector but getting more in the end.....

And there is another similarity with the pre-revolutionary aristocrats: they are not thankful for being fed by the taxpayer who pay their salary, their pension and their workplace.

I have been late at my job because of the railway strikes. I got sacked due to the railway strikes. The only solution for me is to die but even this I can't do because of the railway strikes!

The only exception to all this, as far as I know, is the police, they don't go on strike, they work long hours in frequently dangerous surroundings and they are grossly underpaid. The other exception is the people working in the public health sector, doctors, nurses etc. Long hours of work, unpaid overtime, stressful surroundings.

Here, the trade unions are very small compared to other countries. And their members are nearly exclusively "busy" in the public sector. Therefore, they have plenty of time to walk the streets shouting slogans and having a good time. When it rains they are less numerous. Nearly any reason is good for a strike here or there and when they are being asked you generally hear it's for the common good. Those striking teachers and public transport people see themselves as a kind of vanguard. They show us the way and do what we can't do. Thank you!

Small universe

2010-09-25T10:02:00.022+02:00

September, 22, last day of a glorious Summer. Walking round the house, in the Sun, I thought what a happy life. No more city dwelling for me, surrounded by concrete, noise and bad air.

This is a big garden and I have the privilege to live there. Sure, I own the place but all the other inhabitants, the plants, birds, squirrels and so on happily ignore this. They live their own life and I try to have a light footprint.

The above apple tree is a tree baby. I planted it a year ago because the original tree was uprooted by a small cyclone. Thanks to global climate change, we had our first whirlwind ever over here, two years ago. Say hello to Oklahoma/USA.

The previous owner lodged his little dog in there. Now it is empty but I keep repairing it because of the roof. Those stone shingles are typical for the region. You need huge beams to support the weight of those stones. A normal roof would simply collapse under its weight.

Meet Mister Atlantic Cedar, cedrus atlantica. He is twice as big as the house but only slighly older. At least, that's what I suppose because hundred years ago this was grassy farmland for the cows. And peasants don't plant cedar trees! Let's hope he will never fall on the house. But in this area, the big storms always come from the South-West, never from the North-East...............

That's hard to believe, but they grew right here! These lepiota (in Latin macrolepiota procera - parasol mushroom) have a wonderful taste. Just put them in the frying pan like a steak if it is open. Add some butter. After frying, add some salt and pepper and then iam, iam.

Great to look at, don't know what happened when I made the second photo but I could not resist. Home-made abstract art, painting with light. And in this time of the year, the birds feast on them. End of October, the flowers are empty shells, not a single grain left.

Still life in a shady corner behind our "doll house". A good place to sit on a day with blazing sunshine, 40°C (or 104°Fahrenheit).

Same place as before, just another angle of view. Fuchsia flower. See the wooden door in the rear. I made it.

During the warm months, a frog is living there. And the second day I installed the little pond, some water fleas settled there. Where did they come from? Where did they live before? Another mystery.

A little excursion into paleobiology

2010-07-03T20:57:00.025+02:00

I like science. I am interested in it. Any science, or nearly because there is science and science. You can study subjects at a university that may be worthwhile but only remotely related to science. So you can become a major in political science meaning you have got some coaching and training to con people into believing you will do something for them.

Or you can study theology so as to be mentally equipped to become a priest, a bishop, mullah, ayatollah, rabbi. Fully trained to speak convincingly about a specific eternal truth. However, you cannot study for a degree in animist religion, cargo cult (invented in Borneo), scientology, vodoo. Not yet. No, you cannot become a Science Major in Louisiana or Haitian Vodoo. That's a pity but so it is, for the time being!

No, the kind of science I am interested in are those branches where people try to find out, to understand, to improve.

Well, sorry, the stuff above is a digression. The subject right now is paleobiology, linked to evolution of animals and plants. People working in this field try to find out the evolutionary history of life.

The point I am interested in is the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 Million years ago. There was this big comet crashing somewhere on this unhappy planet and wham, all the dinos died. Those living on the land, on the ground and in the air and those living in and under the water.

In a nutshell: I don't believe it. Some must have survived. Why shouldn't they? The sharks exist for more than 400 Million years and they managed to stay with us. Same for the crocodiles that crawl around for about 200 Million years and they are still here. So why only the dinosaurs vanished totally in a very short time?

So my idea is that though most died when this killer planet made Mother Earth dive into a long Winter, some survived and carried on. I am even convinced the first humans must have met some of those last dinosaurs, the biggies, kind of Tyrannosaur, I suppose.

Why I think that? Because in all civilizations there is talk of dragons. And when you look at pictures of those dragons one frequently sees a kind of big, snake-like lizard with big claws.

Here, please look at this Chines bronze showing how these people imagined a dragon.

And this one is a German engraving showing Hercules slaying the Hydra, the ancient Greek mythological dragon.

This is the Klagenfurt Lindworm. Well, I don't think that proves anything but I show it nevertheless because this is a beautiful stature. However, if you have a look at the old coat of arms of that city, the dragon there looks very convincing.

This last sculpture shows a very impressive dragon on the Kaiserbrücke in Mains/Germany.

This is a bit out-of-the-way subject. I wonder if I have convinced anybody and some of my readers might think "I don't care". Sure, right or wrong, nothing changes either side. But the same is true for evolution vs. creation. However, the outcome of this little quarrel might have huge implications.

Lawyers - the scourge of our time

2010-05-26T21:26:00.022+02:00

In the year 8 at the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions during a battle that lasted several days. Those tribal people must have had a red-hot hatred against lawyers, called "legal pleaders" at that time. Lucius Annaeus Florus tells the story thus: "They sewed up his mouth after first cutting out his tongue, shouting: at last, you viper, you have ceased to hiss".

Sorry to say that but I love that story. Two thousand years have passed but the quality of those millions of "legal pleaders" has not improved.

Do you believe in God? - Depends on the client

Nearly all Western parliaments are swamped with lawyers of all kind. Due to their efforts, nearly everything is complicated, they are churning out laws, orders, edicts, rulings, regulations.

Generally ambiguous, those laws have the merit to keep busy and well paid that army of legal experts, feeding on the people like leeches.

As to me, I cannot change this situation. But at least I have made a solemn private oath never to vote for anyone who has a legal profession. There are hands you cannot cut off but at least nobody can oblige you to kiss it.

I have been told that in the USA lawyers sometimes contact people after an operation just to find out if there is a possibility to sue someone for money. We are not yet there but will have the same situation within the next ten years.

Right now there is a shortage of engineers and scientists in many Western countries. On the other hand, students of law are aplenty, studying to become parasites of their own and hoping to haul it in big.

A country functioning without rule of Law and security makes life a misery for everybody with the exception of some strongmen. But this cancer-like proliferation of litigations could well be our undoing.

Behind this big screen of legal safeguards lurks the real lawlessness. Just listen to the news.

How to become a tree hugger

2010-04-28T21:00:00.020+02:00

This is my new paraglider. Swiss made, called Epsilon 6 and I am eager to get my first flights under the belt.

Here I am in the Dordogne valley, about a fortnight ago. The wind was quite strong, a bit too strong to be honest. Look at the wind sack, filled like sausage.

There was another paraglider pilot and the chap didn't hesitate a moment to prepare for take-off. He had some difficulties to launch but finally he made it in the air. His example made me decide to go as well.

First, I managed to lift off in spite of the strong wind. Here, I have already gained the first foot of height. Just lifting off.

Unfortunately, I made a mistake. Instead of speeding up (hands up at head level) I was braking (hands at hip level). Consequence, I was flying backwards, and in no time, I was back on Mother Earth

have a look

Being on the ground, the canopy above and behind me, I could not do very much. Du to the wind I was dragged backwards. Two or three seconds later the glider wrapped itself around this young oak tree and I came to rest near its trunk.

My flight was over. All I had to do was to disentangle the canopy and this I did.
It took me about an hour of intense work. A little later another pilot came and helped me from below.

Those photos were made by the wife of the airborne pilot. Thanks to Odile's photographic skills this little incident is thoroughly documented for the posterity. She proposed to send me some pics and I gave her my e-mail address. And she kept her word.

A paraglider is a high-tech machine, made of cloth and lines. To disentangle the stuff from a tree requires patience, lots of it. Don't tear on the lines, don't tear on the canopy. Patience, patience. The idea was to roll the glider right in the tree before getting in down all together. Fortunately, someone was helping me.

I don't even know his name. But we met yesterday before yesterday at the same site and I thanked him again for his help. If I meet him a third time, I'll ask his name. It's useless to propose a glass of beer in a pub, there is absolutely nothing near Mound Mercou. Just trees.

Friendly people.

Number 2 - Escaping death by a hair breadth

2010-04-04T16:05:00.034+02:00

It seems I feel like adding one more post on this subject. But not chronologically, let's jump to the 1945 event "The School Yard Slaughter". The last of my near death experiences that happened during the Second World War.

My mom could not stand those daily bombings any longer. My father had a weak heart and was thus not drafted into the armed forces. But in 1945, the last months of this war, they took everybody who was at least able to crawl and he left for the militia (Volkssturm).

Old people reading the announcement that they are being called into the militia

My father gone, she decided to go to Vienna his native town. She thought in Vienna everything was peaceful, no air raids day and night. In this she was totally wrong but she did not know. In Prague our train trip came to an abrupt end. We never made it to Vienna.

/> Beautiful Prague - in peaceful peacetime

I don't remember what happened then, I don't remember but I know there was an air raid, a big one, king size air raid, have a look at Wiki here in case someone wishes to know more about this one. Anyway, I see myself walking through the streets of Prague, the houses on fire to the right and to the left. It was so hot we had to walk in the middle of the street.

Then a army truck picked us up and soon Prague was behind us, we were passing through the country side. Suddenly the driver stopped and even to me, now an old war hand six years old, it was quite clear why. Ahead of us, to the right and to the left side of the road, there were burning cars of all kind, a flaming car cemetery. We all stepped out, our flight ended here.

We were herded by Czechoslovakian or Russian soldiers into a kind of garden park. I think we waited there quite a long time. A soldier came, took some chocolate out of his pocket and looked at me, quite a long time. Finally he made up his mind, ate the chocolate himself and strolled away.

Finally we left the place. A long line of civilians and a few wounded soldiers. After some time we reached a school built of red bricks. They parked us in the square school yard, surrounded on all sides by the school building. On first floor, running all around, was a colonnade.

The armed men who guarded us stood in this colonnade, looking upon us.

Suddenly they started to shoot. A panic brought out, people were running in all directions to escape the bullets. We, too. There was a nurse tending to a wounded soldier: her throat was half ripped away and she was standing there. Our eyes met.

In a corner right under the colonnade were cellar doors and windows. Someone smashed those windows and my mom and myself found refuge there. At least they could not reach us from above. Our cellar was packed to capacity. We were standing there like sardines in a tin.

At some distance from where we were standing I hear a whimper: "water, water, water please". And then some else answered: "no way, he'll die anyway". Some minutes later we were standing knee-deep in ice cold water.

So we left the cellar. The shooting had stopped............

----------------------------------------------

Yesterday, I had my first real flight with the new Swiss made paraglider. The wind was very strong, too strong. While starting, I was lifted up some meters, came down again and was dragged backwards on the ground. Then the canopy was stopped by a small oak tree wrapping itself around. I had nothing, not even a scratch. But it took me more than an hour to get the paraglider back to Mother Earth.

Escaping death by a hair breadth

2010-03-23T17:56:00.021+01:00

Some weeks ago I saw at the television a show called "Incredible but true". The last video in this series was about a lady in the United States who had escaped death several times. She even had a near miss on Sept. 11, 2001. Instead of boarding one of those airplanes hijacked by Al-Qaida, she took one earlier or the next one. I don't remember. I think she had this kind of luck six or seven times.

That made me think about my own life. It's a fact, I have escaped death by a hair breadth at least six times. Just for entertainment an to continue filling this blog, here is what happened, chronologically.

1943 - Berlin: an incendiary bomb fell right near my bedside

1944 - Berlin: nearly roasted alive in a bomb shelter

1945 - Prague: the school yard slaughter

1976 - Brussels: near miss by 3 or 4 inches, stupid car accident

1986 - Granada/Spain, Serra Nevada: avoided falling down an iced over mountain slope

1993 - French Alps, Winter holiday, missed a frontal car accident on sludgy
road

1993 to 2010: over 520 flights in a paraglider: nothing. Life is great!

1943 - at that far-away time, my parents and yours truly were living in an outer Berlin suburb, more trees than houses. Nevertheless, bombs were falling nearly every night. Thus we took part in the war, potential collateral. Going to bed, prior to sleeping, meant that my grandma was reading a story to me. She was a bit deaf and did not hear the sirens warning of a new air raid and the signal to run for the bunker. Ours was in the garden. But I didn't tell her because I wanted to hear the end of the story. Then the bombers came, I still hear the overhead drone but I continued to keep mum.

Then it happened: a big black bomb landed right near my bed, between me and my grandma. It must have crossed the roof, then the first floor and last not least the roof of my room without exploding. A man living upstairs burst in, grabbed the heavy bomb and threw it out of the window. Without opening it! It exploded outside, yellow flames of a phosphor bomb. It burned a large part of our hedge, mostly wild roses.

This is the first of those unhealthy happenings and one of my first childhood souvenirs. I cannot help thinking that I remember this mostly because this unknown hero who saved us did not open the window prior to throwing the bomb out. I still see this today as if it was yesterday.

Those other events? Maybe another time. This one is already long enough and most people don't appreciate reading long text on the screen. Me, too.

Sports journalists - masters of empty talk

2010-03-06T10:20:00.013+01:00

As I said in my post about the Olympics, I finished to dislike those journalists who talk and talk and talk without saying anything worthwhile.

As I could not stop them I thought it might be fun to copy this stuff. Those comments I have captured were originally given in French or German. Here is the English translation. It's up to you to compare this to the homegrown verbiage in the English speaking countries.

- He is the first: mission accomplished

- He has hatred and rage: he must get a medal

- Damned: he has been denied a good starting gate

- That's the Dark Lord

- Our Rock and Roll skier

- He is the little nervous one

- Enormous, enormous, enormous

- I am struck with shock

- this is monstrous, monstrous. Monstrous I am saying

- Monstrous, he is skiing on the roof of the world

- the guy is an alien

- push the accelerator, damn it

- Yelling: enormous, immense, monstrous, a genious

- She took over the controls. (A little later): she has been disqualified

- one gold medal is not enough for her

- Let's concentrate on the competitors

- He has got a problem in his head

- She is flying away and the others remain nailed down.

- You made us dream

- The guy advances as if he had been stung by a scorpion

- He was completely flat

- She got gold, I cannot believe it

- And now, suddenly, she is back in business

- It had to be done, he looks disgusted, but it is good anyway

- The greatest skier on planet Earth

- The Italian curse continues now for 18 years

- They have a monstrous female squad

- She is 19th, well, we have to look how the others are doing

- The public is totally charmed

Olympic Winter Games

2010-02-17T17:12:00.034+01:00

Being a couch potato means, it seems, relaxing in front of the telly while others run around. Well, right now, I am potatoing quite a lot, looking at sports activities I rarely see in real life.

The vast majority of the athletes have friendly, open faces, a pleasure to look at. In this they differ markedly from other people in show business like singers, artists, celebs or fashion workers who feature several layers of paint to hide wrinkle inducing life style......

The time lag between Vancouver and here is terrible. When they start to get going, let's say around 10 a.m. it is 7 o'clock over here, supper time. Thus I record the events on tape and look at it next day.

I am German though living in France and this gives me a split personality, these days. I like to see the French win against anyone except against the Germans. When my wife feels differently I have to make a mental effort to understand. That's particularly strong and irritating like in Biathlon/Nordic skiing where athletes from the two countries compete against each other.

Unlike F1 car racing or professional football (soccer) where the players feature brazenly brand names like Samsung, Siemens, Toyota etc. etc. on their clothes, the olympic athletes are probably forbidden to do so. But all is not lost. Their gloves come from somewhere, someone made them and thus I see with pleasure the camera dwelling for some seconds on those gloves to show the manufacturer's name printed on them in huge black letters. Same for the shoes and helmets, the lower parts of skate boards the riders insist on showing.

Downhill racing is one of my favorites. Maria Riesch and Lindsay Vonn. You need tremendous courage to do this at over 100 km/h (70 miles/h), especially when the slope is partially iced over. Normal people hesitate even to hit the side walk when some snow is falling.............

I wonder if the winter games are being shown in Muslim countries like Egypt, Yemen, Iran or Pakistan. I'll try to find out. In these hot countries women are frequently dressed in black curtain stuff (obituary quality) with a piece of cloth hanging over her nose. There is a slit for the eyes: they must have a vision similar to a tank driver or a submarine operator in WWII, looking through the snorkel.....

As the days pass by I come to dislike journalists more and more. They talk and talk and talk, say what I see anyway, make corny jokes and have a marked tendency to fake turning hysterical with high-speed talking when a beloved national approaches the finishing line.

Sometimes, assisting those know-everything-journalists, there is a person who has done the activity herself or himself. What a difference: more facts, more humility, no digressions, no lame-brain language.

When the Games started, there was a lot of talking about the "First Nation" people, meaning those Indians who lived in the Americas before Christobal Columbo (ha, ha, ha) hit the place five hundred years ago. Well, I don't like this First Nation word. Must have been coined by some communications wizard because it sounds like a publicity stunt.

Anyway, looking at some of these FN-people being interviewed is was somehow flabbergasted; they look like people over here in Central France, like you and me. I remember well those black and white photos made in the second part of the 19th Century showing Indians in North America. They looked like Mongols, people from Central Asia. Nothing to do with those Sally this and Johnny that, McDo-fed European looking people. Maybe there is some relation to the US habit who call everyone black who is not rosy-white. Or the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese who are called yellow though they have exactly the same skin color as I have. Another interesting riddle to humanity to find out. Some explaining comments from my readers would be welcome.

ON THE DOWNWARD SLOPE

2010-02-05T10:26:00.017+01:00

Last weekend we have been invited for dinner by a couple living in a nearby village. He is a farmer and his wife works as a medical secretary in the next town. Three children under ten.

I don't really remember what we were eating but what he told me left his mark. Pierre's wife is a city girl but his family were peasants in this area since the end of the 16th Century.

That's a huge span of time. In AD 1588 Queen Elisabeth I defeated the Spanish Armada and Pierre's ancestor was the first to make his mark in the local church at his wedding.

Pierre is a dairy farmer, meaning he has around 50 cows and he makes his living by selling the milk to the local processing plant at a price fixed by the Agricultural department of European Union.

The cows over here, Salers breed, look splendid. See this website in English

When Pierre's father retired his elder brother took over the farm, the cows and the fields. He told me "you must have the farming job in your blood, working with animals. Otherwise you do something else".

Pierre has the professional qualifications, he had been at a farmer's college, but this job needs a lot of land, some cows to start with, machinery, a barn. When he started "peasenting" in 1981 the price of milk was such that he considered to be able to make a decent living.

So he rented the land and bought some fields whenever he make some extra profit. There are no lazy farmers. They get up at dawn and come back from work after sunset. And in Summer they work frequently late at night, to make hay or cut the corn.

Sometimes, during glorious warm Summer evenings, I see the headlights of their tractors and hear the distant rumble of the machinery. Sometimes till 11 pm! A lazy farmer becomes a has-been in no time. And they always work alone, sometimes with their wife, but never, never, I have seen a peasant here employing a paid farm hand.

Over the years the price of milk decreased, slowly but steadily. For a year now he sells his milk for less money than he needs to produce it.

He is covered in debt, about 20,000 Euro (about 30,000 US Dollar). Last year, we had a splendid Spring and Summer but for him that meant not enough rain. The maize (corn) was withering on the stem and he had to buy additional food.

This year 2010 might be his last one as a farmer. The price of milk does not and will not go up, he can work 18 hours per day, this would not clean up his debt, only add to it. His wife has to work, it has become vital.

Quitting farming means the debts have to be serviced and he dreads that moment of truth. He fears that their house - not yet fully paid - might get lost, too.

It should be said Pierre's situation is in no way extraordinary. There are thousands of farmers in many UE countries facing the same situation. They work and work and it is not good enough. And they produce food, there is not enough of it worldwide, but they cannot meet ends and many of them will go under.

When the earth quake hit Haiti, hours after it the governments worldwide sent airplanes with all sorts of help. And hundreds of NGO's and other professional do-gooders were crowding the place. But in this case I am talking about, nobody seems to be concerned. They face silent death.

Science and scientists

2009-11-28T20:58:00.023+01:00

About 40 years ago the physicist Vera Rubin made a strange discovery: considering the weight (mass) of all stars belonging to the Andromeda Galaxy it turned too fast. In order to be clear, have a look at this merry-go-round. It turns at the right speed. But if it would turn ten times faster, the little chairs with the kids would first be horizontal and some seconds or minutes later the chains would break. Same for the outer stars of Andromeda. At the measured merry go round speed the galaxy should disintegrate!

The center of all those galaxies behaves in accordance with the laws of gravitation, see Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. The problem is thus only with the outer portion who does not fit in.

To make it simple (that's my specialty) there are two solutions: Einstein's law of gravitation has to be modified - because only partially correct - or some extra weight has to be added to those galaxies so as to make them behave as they should.

Thus the theory of the black matter has been invented. And as time goes by, the theory of the black matter turns into a fact. Right now, the black invisible stuff is staple food for 99,9 percent of all astronomers. And it should be said that the black matter has one big advantage: no need to tamper with Albert Einstein's findings. And that's important because he is something like a God of Science.

Cast doubt on Holy Albert's theory? Forget it. Let's better gorge those galaxies with some extra weight - in fact about 95 percent, to be added to the 5 percent of conventional matter we know - and the scientists can avoid to rock the boat, to create fuss, avoid the shit to hit the fan, to be considered a lame brain half-wit.

That is the spiral galaxy M81. I suppose this one, too, turns too fast but what a beauty. And here, last not least, is our advent wreath, made by my wife to hang above the chimney till year's end. A home-made galaxy.

Blogging and living

2009-11-10T17:36:00.031+01:00

Already one month since my last post. But there is trouble in the air. It started in early September. At around 5.30 pm the internet disconnects and revival is around 8.30 am next day. Naturally, I complained at the Call Center but these peple don't seem bother, I could have "pissé dans un violon", could have pissed into a violin. They don't care as long as I keep paying my dues.

I might change the internet provider though this means my email address changes, too. The very near future will tell.

Instead of blogging I was working hard to construct a new gate and finally installed the thing. The installation alone took me one day from morning to evening. I am dedicated and enthusiastic but only moderately gifted.

This gate installed and being quite high, it might discourage people to jump over it within the framework of their municipal duties. This happened from time to time with the old gate; like the water metering man. The guy who looks at the water gauge in the garden and writes down how much we consumed during the year and how much we have to pay............

And that's not all. Our garden is gently inclined everywhere. In fact the place constitutes the ultimate proof that planet Earth is not flat but round. Come here and have a look and be convinced. Thus I decided to create at least one flat spot for a pleasant summer breakfast or dinner under three spreading birch trees.

Thus I started a week ago to flatten a circle of about 4 m (15 feet) diameter. Big job, it needed about 3 or 4 cubic meter (about 106 to 143 cubic feet according to Wiki and Google). Then, on top of this, I took grass from other parts of the garden to plant it on this food intake and friendship gathering spot . Thus it will be operational when heavy sunshine is back again, somewhere next year.

There is another project in the making. Have a look at this work bench. I bought the drawings in the USA (the economy is humming again thanks to guys like me) and now I am busy trying to understand the stuff and computing those inches into centimeters and millimeters. The wood is already ordered as well as a planing-surfacing machine and some special router dips. Last not least I bought an INCRA T-rule, from the USA as well (the $ is down, the € is up, thank you). All this will keep me busy during winter when the sun is shining exclusively on the upper side of the clouds.

All this to explain why I was not very assiduous on the blogging front. One post every fortnight, that should be cruise speed. Subject no object. The next post might be about science, astronomy and intellectual honesty. Could be some of my esteemed reader would prefer this to router dips and planing machines. Though, let me insist, there is not very much that gives so much pleasure as the achievement of beautiful precise woodworking. Nobody should miss this.

In the midst of life - Slide-show-girl

2009-10-07T07:31:00.032+02:00

It all started on a bench in a public park. I was in my mid-thirties and it was Summer.

Sitting on that bench, I was busy sorting out and inspecting color slides in order to put them in specific order for projection. A park bench is certainly not the best place to do this but I needed open air.

While doing this and fuzzing around with the slides a girl came and sat down near me and started to read a book. From time to time she stopped and looked into the distance and we came to talk. We talked a lot, probably more than an hour and before leaving I had an invitation for the next day to come to her place and show her my slides.

This I did - I mean the coming - but, as far I can remember, I never really showed her those slides. But I stayed there for the night and next morning at breakfast she told me her story.

Ten years ago she was going to be married. Everything was arranged, papers, the ceremonies at the town hall and in the church, dinner, everything. Three days before the fixed date her fiancé met her somewhere in town and told her that everything is off. No reason given, no explanation, just the statement, "I'll not see you again in this life" he told her.

Naturally, she tried this and that but to no avail. She never managed to find out what has happened and she had to face it alone.

This kind of broke her. For ten years her life was limited to her studio apartment, going out only for work and for buying food and other necessities. "What did you do all this time", I asked her. "Nothing, just sitting there or playing the piano for hours".

"Play something for me" I said, "Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, whatever you like. "No, she said, and then she added "I play only Dvorak". I asked why but there was no clear answer, as far as I remember.

During the week that followed we saw each other nearly every day. "You are the very first person that came here after my failed marriage", she told me. But she must have been ready for something else some time before. She had published an advertisement in a newspaper asking for someone ready to go with her to the USA for a months' holiday, on shared expenses. And she got a positive answer because there was a Dutchman ready to go with her. Departure next week.

"Don't worry, she told me, I'll be back in no time".

The first half of that month I was away, too, crossing Iceland with a bunch of backpackers. Coming home, I started waiting. At the appropriate time, probably a little too early, I made my first phone call. Nothing, not yet back. Some days later, I called again and was amazed to hear "no connection under this number". This same evening I went to her place: her name on the apartment was gone. Then I managed to talk to an old lady living next door. "Oh, she moved out some days ago."

She had vanished without leaving a trace. I was not broken but certainly shattered. I talked it over with some friends and she became "the slide-show-girl" whenever the subject was raised.

More than a year passed and one day, in an inner city street, I hear "Bonjour, Georges" : my slide-show-girl! She told me Part 2 of the story. During those holidays in the United State States they decided to live together and back in town she married right away. When I met her she was certainly six months pregnant.

Happy end.

Democracy - an export product?

2009-10-01T21:23:00.036+02:00

Being a regular reader of Newsweek, I remember quite well those days and weeks right after the invasion of Iraq. Democracy will finally brought to the Middle East, I was reading. There was one argument brought up again and again. "We brought democracy to Germany after the war and it worked so well. Why shouldn't it be the same in Iraq".

Holy innocence. These journalists, professional line scribblers, just don't know what they are talking about. Could be, too, that they were simply repeating what they gathered "from well informed sources".

Six years later nothing has come out of those noble efforts but democracy is still very much on the official agenda.

Bringing democracy to a country like Afghanistan or Iraq is like trying to teach step dance to a paralytic in a one-week-crash-course. I don't wish to say this is bound to fail. No! It is downright crazy.

Democracy is a frail plant, it needs constant care from everybody and its main ingredient is the rule of law. And the rule of law is only possible if the vast majority of the people concerned is honest and law abiding and not only when a police officer is breathing down their neck.

When the US forces took Baghdad in 2003, for several weeks or months there was no authority in the town. Saddam's forces of evil were disbanded and the Americans did not care and did not bother. They only guarded the Oil Ministry (and the oil fields in the country side, sure). And what happened? Hell broke loose, thousands of citizen started to loot and steal wherever possible. Any object not solidly embedded in concrete, museums, shops, administrations were looted and gutted. With people like this democracy is impossible. They need a benevolent dictatorship and naturally, that's what they get and deserve.

Next stop Afghanistan. There is the saying that the quality and the seriousness of a democracy is not shown during voting but during counting.

Afghanistan is not really a country or a nation. It is a big tribal area called Afghanistan and its people are dedicated poppy growers. The smallest entity is the family and at its head is the husband. Women and children are kind of property and if they know their place and behave accordingly everything goes well like in all families. If the family gets desperately poor - as is happening now - the master sells a girl.

Next comes the tribal chief. This guy is something like God's representative on earth, he alone gives security and rule of law, the tribal law meaning Muslim Sharia, the religious law. You don't vote against the Chief. If the Chief decides for superior reasons that he opts for socialism, conservatism, liberalism or any other -ism for money or power, the tribe votes along those lines. And in case the Chief has a new inspiration and switches - for superior reasons - from one ism to another ism, or from friend to foe, the tribal members change, too. That is their duty and their honor.

So, in a nutshell, let's keep democracy at home. Let's improve it here because we are far from perfect, everybody knows that. We should always be ready to give advice and a lend a helping hand like training specialists, opening our universities, activities like that. But, please, no more voting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia or elsewhere, sponsored by Western nations and paid by its tax payers.

Getting older - knowing less

2009-09-01T17:18:00.027+02:00

Some days ago, the ARTE channel featured Wim Wender's movie "Paris,Texas". Wow, I said to myself, another one I better avoid.

Many years ago I saw "Wings of Desire" directed by WW and starring Peter Falk, you know this Colombo character. Well, I didn't like this movie. It is about my home town, Berlin, I was born there, lived there for many years, love the city, have been there in her darkest hours.

Young Wim made a modern art movie, lots of talking but saying not much relevant. Kind of abstract painting where you are invited to swoon without knowing why. So Wim landed on my black list "You got me once but it won't happen again".

Coming back to present-day telly, I thus by-passed "Paris-Texas ", told my wife "that's a bore" and chose "Bones", this good looking young doctor dissecting cheerfully dead bodies having been murdered. One session of "Bones" lasts about one hour, so when that came to an end I tried to find something else before going to bed (hitting the sack in good American).

While searching the channels, I passed Wim Wender's movie "Paris, Texas", had a moment's look and got stuck. Got stuck badly. It is a kind of road movie, and the roads in the USA are long, so it was near midnight when we reached "The End". In a nutshell, this is a masterpiece, exactly the kind of stuff I like.

In this special case I clearly jumped to conclusion. Nobody was hurt, one might say but that is not totally true. While looking at the movie I asked myself "how many occasions did I loose by prejudice, judging without knowing?" Getting older means I have to fight this tendency to narrow my views and to being less and less open to all those countless new possibilities.

There is a job waiting for me. But first, tomorrow morning, I am going for some days to the Pyla Dune at the Atlantic coast for some joyful flying. If weather permitting.

Have a look at this video, if you feel like it. Well made, showing some average pilots like me. I don't like the music, though. Would have preferred some less "teenager dum dum stuff" as Glenmed once said on YT to give his preferences.

TIBET - are these people really so poor and downtrodden?

2009-08-21T21:57:00.014+02:00

We are living in surroundings where half-truths, omissions, or slight distortions of events have a fair chance to become the real thing. They might become fully confirmed facts and are thus supposed to make us salivate like well trained dogs seeing a bone............

Some months ago I saw a report on the telly regarding the fast disappearing Indian tiger. The animal was killed by poachers right in the Indian National Parks where it was supposed to live unmolested. But it remained unclear why and what happened to the furs.

Then the author of the report realized that the skins were smuggled to Tibet where they adorn wealthy Tibetans. And then I had the pleasure to look at those people wearing Indian Tiger skins. See for yourself, look at those photos in Belinda Wright's "The End of the Tiger trail"

Now that killed me. For years and years, whenever Tibet was mentioned, I saw those desperately poor, downtrodden people, living miserably at the feet of the cruel Chinese. Those photos just don't square with the general idea about that country. Each one of those skins fetch several thousand Euro (and a little more in US Dollars). Unlike those poor Tibetans I am unable to shell out that money for a weekend outfit and I don't know anybody around here who could and would do this and spend this amount.

A tent made up of 108 tiger skins

The poor downtrodden Tibetans: can't help thinking this to be another case were we are being force-fed another piece of crap and bullshit.

BEAUTIFUL HOUSES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

2009-08-05T08:59:00.034+02:00

Beauty is unfortunately an exception. Most houses here - like nearly everywhere else - are simply ordinary and some are downright ugly. Nevertheless, I made those photos just by cycling around, meaning there are plenty of good looking ones. And there are not necessarily hundreds of years old either.

The really ugly ones, those created by architects, poorly brained and raised in steel, glass, concrete worship do not abound over here: maybe the region is too rural , too austere.

This one here above is modern, as far as I can judge built ten or fifteen years ago in the style of the region.

This one has the bad luck to stand on a very busy road. That must be the reason why it is so frequently for sale or for rent.

Here we are in a tiny hamlet, about two kilometers from the village. It is a farmers' house.

Another farmers' house with his barn in the foreground. Do you see those columns, looking like chimneys? They belong to a hundreds of years old ruin, its stones served to restore the village church.

In bygone times the living quarters and the stable were frequently under the same roof. The round door on the ground and the stairs on its left testify for that.

This house surely belongs to some wealthy Parisians. The gate and the high well groomed hedge all say the same: do not enter, don't even look at us! The hedge must be cut with the help of a ruler.

In the foreground the round, wooden door: "I am a converted stable". In fact they sell antiquities over there, the stabble of old might be the store room for all that expensive trash they hope to sell to the grockels (UK English for tourists).

Another old style barn in another hamlet.

This house is one of my favorites. It's a converted barn, standing at the outskirts of the village. The people who made this did a great job here.

Couldn't refrain from showing this. It's the sore spot of our village. I wonder what will happen now. Keep tuned.

Another specialty of the region is the material they put on the roof. Sure, mostly you will see conventional tiles, used everywhere. But many houses still feature "lauzes" as shown on the two following photos. These "lauzes" are stones, thick and very heavy. A normal wooden roof structure would not be able to support them. Sturdy beams, generally made of chestnut trees are a must and you need a thick wallet, too, to pay for it. But living under it, no storm will be able to bother you and your family. The cosy comforts of stone age.

Rejoice, this is the last picture:Last not least, this is the town hall, though it should be said a village is not a town and a house is not a hall. In this house, the mayor has an office and he is present three times per week.

If you enlarge the photo, you'll see something strange: the wall is partly made of bricks, partly of stones. Till now, I have been unable to find out the history of this house and what happened there in the past.

Encounters during holidays

2009-07-20T13:43:00.058+02:00

Frequently, when on holidays, you don't meet anyone, just grockeling around, sometimes talking to waiters, hotel personnel etc.

But I happen to be a camper whenever possible and the activity of paragliding makes it easier, too, to engage a conversation with strangers.

After grockeling around for a weekend in Pau (on video till 1.30) and deprived of sleep in the local camp side by a bunch of night-boozers and dedicated beer-singers we moved to Accous for more peaceful surroundings, the splendor of the mountains and for flying.

First encounter:Jean-Luc in his camping car. He was squatting near the glider landing patch, looking longingly at the sky. "Not today, he said to me, ceiling far too low". In the evening, after dinner, we had our first pow wow, no camp fire but a glass of Porto.

He had become a paraglider addict. Nothing else counted any more. He bought this camping car, kind of live-in truck and took a three-months-leave to travel from one flying site to another. He regretted his girl friend, met two months before, but that's life, he explained to us. Before hitting the Pyrenees, he had been to Greece, Spain, Morocco, Portugal. His son from an earlier marriage, living nearby, came to visit him for the week-end. "Papa has gone crazy", he told me. "What about visiting the Lescun mountain circus" (see also video, from 5.07 to 5.50), I suggested one day. "There is certainly no flying today". "No, no, thank you, he said, "the weather might turn at noon and then I am ready".

Second encounter: Pierre, the hard of hearing. He had booked a 5-day-session at the local flying school for about 450 € (about 500 US$) and camped right next to us. They start the real flying right on the second day but he didn't dare. On the third day he had a tandem flight but still was unable to do it alone. Did the instructor talk too fast? I don't know, I wasn't there.

I told him that to be afraid is normal. "Each time I decide to leave for a flight somewhere, I have to go to the toilet, every time. And this though I have now about 500 flights under the belt". He was afraid and I understand him. Each pupil carries a walkie talkie attached to his harness but Pierre did not fully understand the messages and probably only half of what the instructors told him. Who would dare to launch himself under these conditions?

Third encounter: Mister X, the smoker-boozer: He arrived during the bad weather period and was obliged to set up his tent when it was raining cats and dogs. We felt sorry for him. Next day he told us inside everything was dry. The first day he just sat inside his open tent on a low chair smoking cigars as thick as my middle finger and coughing from time to time. Late afternoon I met him again in the nearby little supermarket where he bought a bottle of rosé wine. When I came back to our tent he was already sitting on his chair, smoking, coughing, his bottle next to him.

Second day: no movement to report. Whenever we came back he was sitting there, steadfast.

Third day: no movement to report. Just smoking, coughing but the wine looked like red one.

Forth day: no movement to report. Just smoking, coughing but the bottle seemed to contain something else.

Fifth day: same as before. I was a bit uneasy having never met someone like that. We exchanged polite greetings plus some small talk remarks about the weather. In the late afternoon I took the shuttle that ferries the pilots to the paraglider launching pad (at 1.47 till 1.52 in my video). And who was standing there, red in the face and smoking a cigar: Mister X! I proposed him to take the shuttle down but he declined. Walking up there takes you about 3 hours and a little less to get you down.

But he had not finished to astonish us: one day in the late afternoon we suddenly heard a very loud, lousy gangsta rap coming from a house near the camp site. There was a bunch of teenagers sitting on the terrace and having a good time. After an hour or so it stopped. Next day, same time, same "melody". But as I walked past the car of Mister X I suddenly realized that he and not those youngsters had the rap stuff coming out of his car radio!

Fourth encounter: superman. We met him first while walking from the campsite to the village. A bus stopped at the main road, he got out carrying his huge paraglider on his back, a backpack in front and trailing a luggage caddy. Next day I met him in the shuttle going to the launching pad. There was no wind, so we all had to run as fast as possible to take off. He was the only one who managed to stay in the air. It was amazing. This guy was the best pilot I have ever met. One of the next days we were sitting at the launching pad, waiting for some wind coming out of the right direction. When you sit on the ground, your trouser pants come up a bit. This guy had only one leg and was wearing a prosthesis!

Another day, Luis the superman was sitting next to me in the shuttle. "Let's relax a bit" he said, took his wooden leg off and swallowed some pills. Pain killers I imagine.

Then came a five day stretch with very bad weather. Not the slightest chance to fly and thus we moved around to visit places. Luis told me his intention to leave for the Atlantic coast, flying at the Pyla dune. But when the weather cleared up, he was there, waiting for the shuttle. He did not leave at all but had remained inside his bed and breakfast house, all holed up, becoming invisible to the outside world. He had no car and could thus go nowhere.

Where did he loose his leg? He was vague about this "it was an accident" but living in Tel Aviv/Israel I can imagine what kind of accident that was.

PS: The last post had 185 visitors. Not bad for a shithole!

Shit hole rejuvenated

2009-07-15T16:09:00.013+02:00

Sorry for this vulgar title but let's face it, sex and sh...., these are potent centers of human interest. Thus I thought to give it a try and let's count the number of readers between now and one month from here. Right now, on the counter, the score is 2045!

The wording taken apart, here is a serious subject.

Living outside of a tiny village, this house is not linked to a sewage treatment installation where the toilet and washing water disappear through a pipe to an unknown destination. No, we have to do the job locally and the system is called "septic tank".

Quite ingenious: the waste liquid goes into a huge underground tank where the stuff ferments and the solids separate a bit from the water. Even the toilet paper is totally digested. That not so clean but reasonably clean water runs then through a quite large underground gravel bed and what comes out - but never to the surface - is clean water.

And every eight to ten years I have to order a tank truck to suck the stuff up, pay 200 € (about 250 US $), fill it with clean water and the cycle starts again.

Now it is well known that not all houses over here and elsewhere in rural France are thus equipped. Many farmers have simply a covered-up shit hole like their forefathers and are happy with this. But not the administration. So they voted a new law obliging every rural household to equip themselves with an up to date septic tank.

In order to win over the reluctant bone heads, the local administration organized meetings. Rough going. There was this old peasant yelling "I won't install your shit tank, only over my dead body". And adding, for good measure: "what we have is perfect and satisfied my family for 50 years. It works perfectly! Perfectly I tell you!!"

The last words were probably a mistake. There were catcalls. "Hey, Marcel, don't you remember the postman, some years ago? He fell into your shit hole with a letter for you and he couldn't even come out by himself. There was laughter, everybody roared. Even old Marcel joined in, at least he was in the center of interest. He'll do the job like everybody else and shell out the money.

So much for the basics.

The next step was to send an inspector to every house in the realm. The guy comes, you show him what you have, he makes an analysis of your system and gives you four year for upgrading. Here at home, I just had to upgrade by installing a ventilation and this I did.

On the last photo, you see the red-brown pipe chimney right above the gutter. That's me, I did it. And believe me, IT DOES NOT STINK. Halleluja!!

The European Union

2009-06-08T21:51:00.005+02:00

Some years ago, there were referendums in every country belonging to the European Union to adopt a common constitution.

This project went down the drain because the French and Dutch voters posted a majority of NO.

Some months later my brother in law told me he had voted against it. "Why did you do this", I asked him. "Well", he said, "I voted against it because I did not know what they were up to".

This guy is a very decent chap, good family man, very friendly. Nevertheless, he rejected a project only because he was too lazy to find out what was going on.

It's a fact: far too many people do not seem to know what a united Europe has done to them. At every election for the European Parliament voters' participation goes down. Now it was 42 % in Germany, 33 % in France and 25% in Poland. Just to give an example.

Before the creation of the EU, there were not even a dozen years without a war, in any century. That fact alone should make all of us sturdy supporters of the idea.

But no!

On this planet, nothing is permanent. And it could well be that in fifty years from now, the EU is only a souvenir. Thanks to its lukewarm citizen who let it happen.

It might be useful to quote here Albert Einstein: Only human stupidity gives us an idea what infinity really means.

FLOWERS AND MUSIC

2009-05-20T15:41:00.028+02:00

This is truly "le joli mois de Mai", everything is so colorful, especially here in the countryside.

This post has two aims. First, I would like to pay a little homage to two bloggers, Berenice and Betmo, who published beautiful pictures of flowers and nature in general. So this video is dedicated to both of them.

Like everybody, or nearly, I like very different kinds of music. But very much on top is the wonderful warm and clear voice of Lucia Popp. She was above all an accomplished and beautiful opera singer. But I have also recordings of children's songs and operetta arias. Here is her photo

The song on the video is "Du mein Schönbrunn". A very melodious, beautiful but nostalgic aria about Empress Maria-Theresia's love for the castle and garden of Schönbrunn. Here are two photos of the place.

Don't miss to pay a visit to Castle Schönbrunn when in Vienna/Austria. That's Old Europe.

People and faces

2009-05-13T19:49:00.015+02:00

A fortnight ago my wife told me we need a break. So we took off for a long weekend in Périgord, just 2 1/2 hours' drive from here.

Instead of making photos as I did during all my life, I am trying to get the same thing done per video. Life is movement - at least for most of us - and thus a photo is something artificial, same as those black and white pictures made 25 years ago.

It must be said however, making a good video is darn difficult. So, please, look at this with leniency.

The part of the young woman sitting in the grass smoking and reading near her little dog is endearing though. And near the end, there is that Arab woman who looks quite forlorn, somehow lost in a strange country. The little beautiful girl munching a sandwich. At the end yours truly.

My camera has an optical zoom of 12 and a digital zoom of 48. That is a lot and I can look at people without being seen. I don't bother them and they don't bother me. I am not a peeping Tom, kind of voyeur. It's just I like to see people go through their everyday life. So there is nothing special here, just life. Your life, my life.

Is there a God ? - What governs our lives?

2009-04-29T09:53:00.002+02:00

My parents must have been of the cautious kind. Because, contrary to custom, I was not baptized when I landed over here. Thus I remained in neutral gear till about fourteen. As I am born in Berlin, it was natural to become a Protestant, as was everybody else around me.

Thus I asked to get "communion" like all the others and then it came out I had never been baptized. So I was baptized on Saturday and got communion on Easter Sunday, between 13 and 14 years of age.

Then something strange happened. Right as I was sitting there in church during the communion service and I fell out with religion. "What am I doing here?" I asked myself. "There is nothing, fair chance it is all a kind of hogwash".

Since then, I was always interested in the subject though I never talked about it. First time someone mentioned the riddle of human destiny to me was by reading Somerset Maugham's novel "Of Human Bondage".

Regarding religion, no need to defend the idea of evolution. These firmly established facts are now under attack from the creationists, most of them but not all coming from the United States. Can't help thinking that creationism is linked to a hidden political agenda and has nothing to do with the search for truth. So, let's forget about this. I'll file "creationism" next to the "Flat Earth Society".

Everything around us - ourselves included - evolve in accordance with this iron law of evolution. But it should be said not the fittest and the strongest survive - as Darwin thought - but those that are best adopted to circumstances. You take shameful advantage of the situation and you have a fair chance to thrive. SO LET'S BE FLEXIBLE.

Unfortunately - as I see it - that's not the only law. There is another one and it is called chance. You do all the right stuff, you are strongest and best adopted and then bam! The roof is falling on your head.

These random happenings occur all the time. You can be born rich, intelligent and in good health and you can be born poor, not very bright and with a defect in your genes. And so it goes on till we are dead. We all know this in our hearts but I suppose we don't like to admit it as a fact of life.

Thus our longing for a good, benevolent God who who gives us a helping hand, from time to time and set matters straight for us.

As Plato the Greek philosopher said 2500 years ago: "Be kind, for everybody you meet is fighting a hard battle".

We desperately ask for a happy end, Hollywood style. Thus the idea of a paradise, a perpetual happy end to look forward to after all that shit during life. By the way, it is typical for our Western outlook that paradise is very much on the agenda among the faithful but nobody talks about hell and purgatory any more...................

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes;
Laudate eum, omnes populi.
Quoniam confirmata est
Super nos misericordia ejus,
Et veritas Domini manet in aeternum.
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper.
Et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Does that mean everybody should try to become a cat and all the others are mice, just good to be devoured if they can't help it? Some people seem to think this and try to live it out. But this Law of Chance I mentioned here above is truly democratic and preys upon everybody, high and low. Look at Bernie Maddoff, the mad dog of shares and charities.............

To finish this long story, here are a few lines of the poem "On the devine" from
Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Let man be noble,
Generous and good
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all the living
beings we know
.................
.................
Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful

(here, the entire poem in English and in German)

Last not least: without religion, we all would have missed Händel's Messiah and Mozart's "Laudate Dominum", those Gothic cathedrals standing nearly everywhere in Europe as well as some truly outstanding humans, the first one coming to my mind is Jesus himself. That should not be forgotten.

First nightingale this year

2009-04-25T17:03:00.010+02:00

Yesterday we had a hot Summer day over here. And today, Saturday, 25th April, back to early March with lots of rain, pouring down continuously.

Outside, in the garden, I hear the booming voice of Mr. Nightingale. The rain does not stop him. As every year, I try to locate the elusive bird. In vain. I have never succeeded to see him. Not once in all those ten years we are living in this green paradise.

Then it occurred to me that I could at least make a recording of his song. Thus the video does not amount to very much but you can hear him, loud and clear. Let's hope he'll get his wife not too early because I imagine that will stop him singing.

TV crime series - Comparison USA and Great Britain

2009-04-13T10:32:00.025+02:00

Like many of my contemporaries, I watch the crime series of the moment. Here in France, you can choose between several different ones, each day of the year.

There are those made in France. But considering the number of channels available, there are series made in USA, made in Great Britain, made in Germany plus a tiny little sprinkling of the others from Sweden, Italy, Belgium.

Considering that this is a blog in English language (at least I try to do my best), let's talk about those made in the United States and those coming from our northern neighbors, the Brits.

What do they have in common, these series made in USA and Great Britain? Absolutely nothing because here all those actors talk in French exclusively!

The idea is generally accepted that the Americans and the Brits have a lot of common outlooks, kind of shared values (though the notion of "values" has fallen in disrespect, lately). Thus it occurred to me to compare these series with regard to the differences.

Because there are differences, big ones.

Here are the two series from England:

1. Inspector Barnaby

2. Inspector Lewis

And here are just three from the United States:

1. Bones

2. CSI Miami

3. Navy NCIS

In a nutshell, I would say the English ones are homely and the Americans are gorgeous.

In NCIS each photo made of a corpse produces a sound, something like slapping a wet towel on a drum. Slap, slap, slap. And invariably, they are gripping those huge McDo plastic cups filled with coffee or CocaCola. Could be those paper plastic cups are not from McDo but from Starbucks, I don't know but they are huge, king size big. And they continue to bring one to each other as a sign of sympathy or friendship.

Our two English cops drink, too. But they are inside or outside a pub, having a beer and when they meet a suspect, they are frequently offered a cup of tea and some biscuits.

Chief Inspector Barnaby and Lewis never carry any weapon and their criminal investigation is carried out without any violence. However, in the Barnaby series, dead bodies are aplenty. It's never one stiff but mostly three, four or occasionally even five. And these English village people hate each others guts red hot. But violence, no sir.

Nothing to do with the Americans. They live with their pistol. In NCIS, that Mossad girl seems even to sleep with her gun under the pillow and they keep it under the bed or at the night table when making love.

But the biggest difference is their looks. Dr. Brennan (Bones) is a real beauty. And that goes for all the others, too. With the exception of Bruce, the athletic FBI cop and the sexy artist Angela, all others are high-end scientists but their looks somehow do not correspond to their activity. Too much beauty, splendid make up, even when they are a bit smeared or dirty, they are beautifully dirty.

In CSI Miami it's even worse. The boss, Horatio, very impressive character, is strangely ugly, he could be an albino. But all the others have those aggressive good looks. There is this doctor whose job is to cut up dead bodies. But she looks like a bar hostess, trying to make you drink costly Champagne and there is a male scientist who could be a South-American pimp or a Bolivian drug dealer.

I would not like to meet this good looking chap at dusk in an empty street!

Those two inspectors from Britannia are middle aged, wear rumpled clothes. They are neither good looking nor ugly. And their associates, Sargent Troy, Sargent Hopkins or Hathaway are cast in the same mould. Mr. Barnaby's wife looks a bit worn out, though cheerful and their daughter seemed ugly to me in the beginning. Now, after three years, I am accustomed to her. She looks good in her own way. Sargent Hathaway is a former student of theology and quotes Shelley, Shakespeare and Latin authors at unsuspected moments. I like that.

There is a meaning behind those differences.

Adventure in Afghanistan - slumdog travels east

2009-03-31T09:17:00.000+02:00

Afghanistan has never been a land for tourists. Thus Oxford-Johnny and myself only got a kind of transit visa with a 14-day-limit.

We arrived and left Herat, near the Iranian border and continued to push forward to Kandahar, right in the middle of this strange country. We were in a hurry because 14 days is not much when hitchhiking, meaning www waiting, waiting, waiting. Here the story begins.

At that time, Kandahar was somehow an American zone of influence. Thus the city had a slight Western tinge to it, shops , restaurants with chairs and selling beer, things like that. Thus, instead of camping somewhere, we went to a cheap hotel and stayed there.

Next day we set out in the morning to hit the road. You don't start to hitchhike in the middle of a town and it took us quite a long time with our heavy backpack to reach the outskirts of Kandahar and the road leading to Kabul.

Road is just of way of talking. It was a large dirt path with wide and deep potholes everywhere. So we were squatting by the roadside, waiting for a car. Since Turkey, we never met many cars or lorries but those we saw invariably stopped.

Noon was coming and going, the heat was getting severe but no car, no lorry, no truck, nothing. At about three in the afternoon I got upset and desperate. "Johnny", I said to my pal, "we have to do something, otherwise we'll stay here for all eternity".

In a Third World Country, the only authority worthwhile is the police. So we trudged back to town and went straight to the Kandahar Police Headquarters. Johnny did most of the talking "take us to your leader", he told the cop in rags sporting a gleaming rifle in front of the entry door.

Inside, we explained our problem. "You see, Sir, we just can't find the British and German embassy! We must go there to ask for money. And we know there is one here in Kabul but nobody could show us the way". Naturally, the police officer told us "this is Kandahar, not Kabul" and then "In Kandahar, no embassy".

We explained in length that we thought we were already in Kabul and that we must go there in order to fetch our money. "What can you do for us? Please help us".

And he did. First, he walked us to the hotel where we stayed the previous night and ordered the manager to put up with us till next morning. The hotel manager was disgusted. He had to serve us food for free by order of police. First thing he did was to empty the room completely to show us who is the master of the premises.

We were used to rough it. Having a good meal under our belts we spread our sleeping bags and slept soundly till next morning waiting for our free breakfast. At around noon, the police officer came back and took us to the the bus station for a free trip to Kabul.

We thanked him effusively, he did a great job on us two leeches. At the bus station, we were to ride to Kabul in two buses. I suppose he did not want to put too much strain on the drivers who were probably the owners and who were under order to ferry us to Kabul for free.

The bus started around 5 pm because of the intense heat during day time. Sitting on the roof of the bus, the wind dried up my face in no time. I really felt my skin turning into parchment. Next to me were sitting some Afghanis about my age. "Want some snap". I said no because the stuff smelled foul and was green. Till now, I don't know what "snap" is. It had a smell like synthetic shit, really, no kidding. Was it dope?

Eventually, the bus stopped somewhere near a shag-like restaurant. For me there was another problem. I was hungry like everybody else. But my free ride hinged on the fact that I had no money.

The idea to have very little money, something like the minimum does not sound convincing in a desperately poor country like this one. Furthermore, lots of the passengers were carrying some kind of weapon with them. So I stayed mum near the bus waiting for things to happen (or not).

Then some nice and friendly people people invited me into the restaurant. Sure, I was thankful but very much annoyed and uneasy, too. Annoyed with myself and I wowed to avoid such ambiguous situations in the future.

The bus ride was an adventure in itself. The cooling system of the motor had sprung a leak and fresh water had to be added all the time. Thus the motor slave* sat or better straddled the motor servicing it during the ride with a iron watering can, spilling more than half of the precious stuff.

We drove through the night, desert country. Never seen a sky like that, clean deep blue, the Milky Way clearly visible!

We arrived in Kabul around noon. A bit shaky, I felt every bone inside and was hungry, too . Early in the morning we had a second stop for ritual prayer washing and breakfast. But I refused to be invited again pretending to have stomach trouble.

*Motor slave: I met them again and again in Iran and Afghanistan when I managed to pick up a truck. Normally, these young men of about my age were always clad in greasy rags and made the trip sitting somewhere behind and when off duty outside on the running board. They had to do all the dirty work and when we were eating with the driver he was never invited to join us.

Every year again - preparing of firewood

2009-03-26T20:24:00.005+01:00

Some of my blogger friends suggested to go on with some more chapters about my travels in far away lands. Well, I'll do this, but not right now.

Life being as it is, each winter I have to buy and prepare firewood. And this job keeps me busy outside, not much time left for computering or blogging.

Here is the description how I proceed. Enters Mr. Bornet who supplies the tree trunks in lengths of 2 meters,(about 7 feet or 3 yards - and here the 100 Dollar question: is there any chance the US-Americans decide to switch over to meters and liters, to square meters and cubic meters like nearly everyone else on our planet Earth? Even the English did so, though reluctantly, I admit.

We need about 16 m3 (cubic meter) of firewood per year and sorry, I am unable to compute this into cubic feet. This batch is for the Winter 2010/11, so as to enable the logs to dry peacefully.

To see the video, don't click on the photo, click on the writing under the pic.

Have a look, please. May I present you Mr. Bornet. If ever someone comes here to settle permanently, this is the guy to approach for firewood. Admire how he handles his grapnel. He is really a wizard with this contraption and could draw you a tooth with this in no time. He told me it took him 6 weeks to handle those eight levers correctly. Having done the job, see how he manages to drive backwards. The video ends when he disappears behind the house. But that is only half of the distance. He has to circle round our cherry tree, go down the lane and reach the street by passing the gate, leaving only about 15 to 20 cm (half a foot) on each side.

Three cheers to Mr. Bornet, king of precision backwards driving.

Chapter too

To see the video, don't click on the photo, click on the writing under it!!

Now I have to get busy with my chain saw to cut those trunks into lengths of 50 cm (about 1 1/2 feet). Tiresome job, nevertheless, because some of the trunks are really heavy and I have to move them out of the sawing area first and then to my log splitting machine. The sawing area behind me must be free so that I can jump backwards at a seconds' notice when the log heap suddenly decides to collapse or to crumble, whatever you prefer, anyway, kind of garden avalanche. Bad for health.

Well, right now, all this is just beginning. One of the next posts will show my wonderful log splitter and the self-made-high-rise-log-wall. Great things to come. Stay tuned everybody and try to remain interested in non political slightly boring subjects.

Homage to English language - smile a bit

2009-03-22T19:47:00.011+01:00

Some years ago, I went to Northern Wales for a hiking holiday. In one of those boutiques where they sell stuff for tourists, I found this advertisement of old.

Let me tell you I love it. Such funny phonetic English. Whenever some guests come here for a visit and knowing more than the basics, I cannot resist to show this text.

Success and appreciation is by no means guaranteed. Some don't find this readable at all, others don't care and don't see why they should bother reading this when a Martini, Whiskey or Muscat is waiting.

I just hope some of you like and appreciate Roger Giles' message to humanity.

For easier reading, try the second photo.

In fact, I found it in a little town near Carnarvon Castle. For those who are not familiar with British history, it's there that the English created the Prince of Wales. A very clever publicity stunt invented 700 years ago to convince the Welsh to stop fighting and become part of England.

Letter to the editor - refused by Newsweek

2009-03-10T19:35:00.009+01:00

Normally, I am not very keen on writing letters to the weekly I read. But in this case, something rankled.

Many economists, I think, can be compared to psychologists or meteorologists. Very learned coves indeed and thus always ready and available for an exhaustive explanation. But when the events prove them wrong - that happens not infrequently - , don't wait for an excuse, you are wasting your time.

Thus I wrote a letter to the editor of Newsweek but they did not publish it. So I thought nothing should be wasted in these hard times. My letter might be worthwhile reading inside this wonderful blog.

All this is about Robert J. Samuelson's article "It's really a global crisis".

So, if someone needs to smile a bit, here is Georgyporgy's idea of how to save the economy pronto.

Quote
It might be a great help if one of these economics pundits would admit the fact that they are clueless, more or less. This recession will subside until people finally operate a change of mind and start spending again. Not before.

All those government induced spending programs won't change this situation. You could built new roads, you could even level the Mojave dcsert and cover it with a slab of concrete three feet thick: that would certainly boost the cement industry but not the manufacturer of toothpaste or the shipyards. Etc, etc, etc.

However, let yourself be inspired by Roosevelt's inauguration speech, back in 1933. He asked for special powers to tackle the problem at hand. "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe".

Having achieved this, the incumbent president could vote to have the National Guard be equipped with axes or heavy clubs. Nationwide. Then these so armed recession fighters would enter every home and start destroying the following items in each household: 1 TV set - 1 car - 1 washing machine - 1 cell phone plus about 100 items of more or less value laying around.

Before leaving they should paste a written recommendation saying those goods have to be replaced by items manufactured inside the country. No need to boost those Asiatic economies, right?

These harsh measures would get the country humming in no time and once again the rest of the world would rush to imitate.

Here in France, however, we would start by going on strike, sure.

Unquote

Your comments, please. As to me, I am busy these days with the chain saw and the log splitting machine. Hard work.

End of youth - adulthood

2009-02-10T08:40:00.024+01:00

During my apprenticeship in Aachen with at an import-export company I became friend with Bernie. We met at school and decided to go to India, after certification. Our choice fell on India because you can go there by road and thus we had long meetings to work out the details of our trip.

Then came my military service at the Air Force (18 months) and after discharge and back in Aachen, first thing I did was to call on Bernie. His mother answered the phone: "Well, yes, I remember, this trip to India", she told me. "One has to grow up, hasn't one." What could I replay to that? "Give my greetings to Bernie" I said and hung up.

So I was once more on my own. This time to hitchhike to India. And in Istanbul I met an Englishman, Oxford-Johnny, and we decided to go east together.

Somewhere in Western Iran, a truck driver dropped us in a little town or village. So we squatted by the roadside, waiting for the next transport. The dirt road passed through a valley, its right side scattered with little houses, made of mud and stones. Behind many of these houses lay huge boulders that must have come tumbling down from the mountain. Simply by looking at those houses I smelled the danger. The rocks could move again, others might come down and they would not give any warning.

Photo of an Iranian village. But beware, it is NOT the place I a am talking of though this is the landscape I came through. I pasted it here only for its beauty.

Why did these people live there? They could not go elsewhere, I suppose. On the left side of the road, the ground was flat and there was a very long wall, about 1 1/2 meter (5 feet) high. Behind the wall I saw a big stately house.

Suddenly, a door in the wall opened and out came a guy carrying two platters with food and drink. "My master gives you his best wishes. Eat and be restored", he said, put the platters before us on the ground and left.

Wow! We did as he asked and left the cleaned platters at the door. Should we have gone in to say thank you? I don't know. That was neither the first nor the last time people - complete strangers - were friendly to me. But never like that.

About two months later I finally arrived in India. Oxford-Johnny had left me in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. "I think from here on, we better carry on separately", he told me. I liked his company and don't know why he said that. Years later it occurred to me that he might have realized I knew where he was hiding his travel money. But that's just a guess.

One day I came to Amritsar, the Golden City, in Northern India. Looking around there I made the acquaintance of a Sikh who invited me into his house to stay with his people, for some time. This I did, ate their food, slept with them on the roof of their house with the other members of the family.

Photo of people in Amritsar. Found it on the Internet. Nothing to do with the people I met there.

When I left, ready to say good bye to those I have met in the house, the Sikh, the old Gentleman, said to me: "you never asked our name, never". I just don't remember what I answered to this. But it still rankles. I was tried and found wanting. Was I a self-centered young brat or was it only my timidity? I don't know.

Words of our last Emperor

2009-02-03T12:18:00.017+01:00

In 1898, William II (Wilhelm II) visited officially the Holy Land. At that time the area was called Palestine and it was under Turkish rule. Have a look at him.

On his way he came to Damascus where he delivered a speech and said something that went far beyond the usual politeness of a visitor from a foreign land. "If I were not born as a Christian, I would have been a Muslim"

That is more than a hundred years ago and I am wondering what made him say that. Were those Muslims he saw and talked to the same kind of people we hear of these days? I just can't imagine that. They must have been very different.

Time has changed. Now, a hundred years later, who would like to repeat those words?

This video about the stoning of a girl of 17 has been sent to me by a French blogger-friend.

There are people who hurt her and there are others who are busy making a movie with their cellphones. Until someone "finalizes" with a block of concrete, similar to those I am using when building a wall (about 20 kg each).

No need to imagine how is hell in the afterlife. It's nearby, just a few airplane hours from here, equipped with battery powered cell phones.

The murdered girl's name was Doa Khalil Aswad, 17 ans. She was subject to to public murder because she fell in love with a young man of another religion. One more life wasted by or for Sharia.

During the murder procedure, her thighs become visible and you see her slip. Then someone covers that part of her body to protect her dignity. Can you imagine. That's what I call perverse.

There is a petition so as to stop this Sharia business in Kurdistan/Iraq.

Important statement received as comment by an Afghan blogger living in Pakistan:

Hi Georg, I'm with you against madness practiced in the name of any law, whenever, wherever it is practiced. But facts should remain facts. Du'a Khalil Aswad was not stoned under Sharia Law. She wasn't even a Muslim. She was a Yazidi, and she was stoned by the people of her own religion for having a Muslim boyfriend. It was a case of honor killing.

Islam, that like any other religion preaches of love and peace , its image has been enough tarnished by a bunch of savages who think they are being Muslims.

I request you, to kindly set the facts straight about the video in your blog.

I had a look at Wikipedia under Yazidi and they even mentioned this stoning. So I made a mistake. The poor girl was not Muslim and Sharia - this time - is not to be incriminated.

Gaza - Israel - all that

2009-01-13T18:03:00.018+01:00

Some days ago a friend sent me an email asking me to sign a petition for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Well, I told him that I will certainly not sign this petition.

The Gaza strip is a kind of concentration camp. When Israel was founded in 1948, the Palestinians living there were driven out and put into storage in Gaza. The place is the most densely populated area in the world. Crammed with refugees for now 60 years precisely. People who are obliged to live there on a subhuman level, survival alone is assured and even that not always, war or no war. No work, no future, no getting out. No hope.

Can't help thinking that what is happening now in Gaza bears strong similarities with the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. There is however one big difference: in 1943 the inmates were Jews and they were facing death by the German SS and in Gaza the supervision is carried out by the Israelian army. (For more details, see Sunday Herald - 1.13.09 "Gaza ghetto is destroyed and the world stays silent" or Reuters - 1.10.09 "Shadow of Warsaw ghetto over Gaza".

Sure, no government in any state could or would tolerate that its people are being targeted by rockets. However, these rockets have caused much fright and about 15 deaths. In Gaza killing is carried out on a wholesale basis, should now be well over thousand. And I can't help thinking that it would be better - if I were there - to die right on the spot than being treated in a hospital where there is more or less nothing.

For those who are interested, here is a video made by reporters from the British newspaper "The Guardian".

In order to win this "war", the Israeli air force is lavishing white phosphorus (WP) on the inhabitants. Imagine YOU come in contact with this chemical. It burns on your skin unless deprived of atmopheric oxygen and the particles continue to burn right down to the bone until the chemical is used up. For more details, see "globalsecurity.org" - White Phophorus and "haaretz.com" - 1.12.09 "White Phosphorus shells".

It should be said that the state of Israel has always cherished special treatment for the people conquered in 1967. Land confiscation, housing demolitions, driving people into abject poverty and hopelessness. Want more details? See UN report And in order to keep the stolen land and avoid any hostile reaction from the victims, they build a wall. In that they surpassed even the Communists whose Berlin Wall was at least erected on their side.

In a nutshell, they should be stopped. What is being done to the Palestinians is wreaking havoc worldwide. Hypocrisy and denial reigns. All this is not even in the interest of the Israelis themselves. Nobody with at least a little common sens can imagine to prepare a secure and carefree future for the coming generations when showing such total disregard for all neighbors and everybody else.

Customary well wishing

2009-01-06T17:20:00.011+01:00

Here in Western Europe, we have this burdensome habit of sending greeting cards to each other. I have this English friend who humbles me each year by being the first to send his card with wishes for merry Christmas and a happy new year.

His card arrives in early December and gives me the signal to get busy.

On the other hand, the French post their cards till mid-January. Sure, it's a bit late for the "merry Christmas" stuff but you can always purchase cards who cater exclusively for the next year.

All this is a kind of chase where the first-comer humbles the late-comer. Because you have to answer those cards and make believe the other one that both cards crisscrossed somehow. Meaning something like "I am not the uncivil one who waited or was about to forget. I am just a tiny bit late. The postal service was probably on strike."

I hate this custom but don't dare to go silent. Because you can't receive all those well wishings without answering accordingly. I must admit: I don't have the guts to do so.

There is a positive side to all this. You can gloat and boast about all those cards received. We are stacking them on the chimney are are proud to have so many. Meaning without saying so: "I got more than you".

Here, look what we harvested this year:

It might be fun to send those stereotyped wishes in July with a remark saying "to be activated in December/January" or something like "covers a 12-year-span - best before 2020. Then you can live in peace till that date or even better: die before.
RIP

Christmas

2008-12-24T17:08:00.009+01:00

To all my blogger friends - worldwide - happy and merry Christmas. And to those of other faiths, creeds or ideologies: some peaceful days at home.
Christmas: let silence enter.

And to all of us - regardless of everything - the good news is this: the sun is coming back, the days get longer, Summer is just behind the horizon.

That's the kind of activity I am looking forward to, within the next five months.

Best wishes to all of you, for the days and months that lie ahead of us.

Harsh winter when it's automn still

2008-12-18T16:01:00.008+01:00

Living in a tiny village - center of France thus center of world - has multiple advantages. But our electricity grid is certainly not one of those items to be proud of.

For last Sunday we had a meteorological red alert: stay at home good people. It started to snow in the early morning hours and continued right into the next night. That might be nothing worthwhile mentioning for those living in Norway or in Canada but here?

And what about global warming? Where are you, please?

In the evening we had three or four short power cuts and the fifth settled it for good. Light the Christmas candles, let's go to bed early, best thing to do.....

Next morning, Monday, everything was so peaceful. No car running, no street lighting, tepid water coming out of the boiler, house decidedly cold but peaceful, too.

So we stayed at home, admiring the white out. I did not dare to start the wood fire because it is equipped with little fans for more efficiency. They are not supposed to stay idle; ball bearing don't like to be heated up.

Here, have a look at the living room, fire ablaze. That is "normal procedure", electricity being supplied.

No more. Fortunately I bought eight years ago a little stand-by stove for an emergency like that, running without electricity. And the dear little thing made of sheet steel or so did the job. See here:

Suddenly, the place looks impoverished, a place for displaced people who make go with what is available. And so it was.

25 hours later - on a road cleaning job - I heard the church bells chime again: hosiannah, the juice was back. An hour later the phone went dead for another 20 hours. But who cares. And yesterday, the washing machine got a bout of Alzheimer's. The darling is quite willing to turn around but refuses to pump and seems to know only one program these days, anyway.

That's a slice of life at the beginning of the 21st century. Everything is available, but on a temporary basis only.

On the downward slope - let's get slim

2008-12-04T17:49:00.021+01:00

If you are only moderately interested in economics, just listen to the ABBA singing "Money, money". They know all about it.

.........

The economy - everywhere - is heading south, bye bye boom days. Most of us are mere onlookers while the future unfolds, but not everybody is idle.

Opposition or governing parties - right, left or center, green guys or oil hawkers - realize their hour has come. Now is the time to tell us what to do to get the economy humming again. "Don't worry, good people, we'll manage".

What I have not yet heard is that: you might easily loose your job, could be we'll have to fight inflation, quite possible taxes have to be raised. On the contrary, I am listening to a tune I know too well: "we'll do the washing without your getting wet".

Some days ago a worthy politician (no name given, no country specified) told me this:

"Every citizen should get a bonus of 500 € (about 600 $) to be spent immediately with the only condition to add 200 of his own.

Imagine I get the 500 what would I do with this: I would buy a new computer so as to be able to run "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" thus making happy Hewlett-Packard and Bill Gates. And afterwards? Nothing. Same script as before, just read again the first two lines here above. Useless, costly straw fire.

Others are clamoring - a big chorus, worldwide - for a substantial tax break. That's more or less the same as the 500-€-stunt. Most of us don't pay a fortune in taxes anyway thus the break will look like a pittance. And the big income people will like it, certainly, but it will just make a splash in their wallet.

And all that money where does it come from?

a) from the state coffers - but I hear they are empty

b) borrowed somewhere - but the money has to be paid back and
before there are the interests.

c) the good old money printing machine - say hallo to inflation

So I think we have to solve the recession the hard way: cut useless prestige spending, raise the taxes where possible.

Because if we don't want to go under, become a kind of backwater, this has to be done: upgrade our schools and universities, research and development in real science, credit to people who wish to create new businesses. Stop our addiction to oil coming from non palatable countries.

These are the challenges and there the money must go. Our money.

Meanwhile, if someone of my dear and esteemed readers wishes to save souls from hell by doing something for or against the beast exposed, the economic collapse 2008-2009, the number 666, the anti-christ revealed, just listen to this one:

RELIGION : Paradise & praise the lord

2008-11-26T22:43:00.002+01:00

When Mohammad Atta boarded his plane on 9/11, seven years ago, he was freshly starched and washed, clean inside/outside, ready to embark on his historical suicide-killing spree. And all that because he knew after his death he would go to paradise.

His kind of paradise is truly enticing, at least for a man who happens not to be gay and who is in excellent health. Imagine: 72 beautiful virgins at your service, good wine, good food, soft bed. All this free of charge and no end to it.

Compared to this Five-Star-Paradise the Christian one looks drab. When I was a little boy, I was told up there the good, deserving people would sing in a choir praising the Lord and/or polishing the stars and anyway, I would be an angel able to fly around with the help of my wings.

Both have at least this in common: they are somehow childish. A modern paradise, revealed these days, would probably look different and if someone of my readers has any ideas about it, don't hesitate to explain what happens there.

The three big religions with their monopolistic god have lots in common. They all come out of the desert, those dry, sandy stretches, too hot during the day and too cold at night. And they don't like women.

The male Jews thank god in their prayers not to be made a woman. the Muslims don't allow them to drive a car (Saudi-Arabia) or give them only half the value at law suits (Iran) etc., etc, etc. The Christians (Catholics, Orthodox) don't consider them good enough to be priests or pope.

And here comes something truly astonishing. in all those three religions women play an important role. Not on top, sure, but on the lower echelons they are aplenty. How is this possible?? Not one of these big three One-God-Religions has to complain of a scarcity of women!

If I would be a female I would quit an organization that considers me inferior. But they don't seem to see it in this light.

Next point: in a remote corner of our garden is a little aunt heap. They live there and I leave them alone. I don't ask the aunts to praise me for that and I would be slightly amused if I would learn that they are praising me for letting them going after their business.

But in religion that is not so. On the contrary: Praise the Lord is mandatory, here on earth and it even seems to go on in paradise. I can't help thinking this praising activity is just an oriental, Near East habit. In this part of the world, when you happen to meet your cheikh, sultan, padishah, bey, king or emperor, better tell him this: "you are splendid, wonderful, your face is shining with wisdom, your decisions are always right, I am mostly wrong, thanks for letting this insignificant servant live on nevertheless, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you". .....

And there is another aspect to it: this praising activity is a pious attempt to corrupt your god into giving favors, frequently totally undeserved. What about replacing this praising activity by doing something useful?

Last not least, there is this little poem written by the American Joe Hill, probably nearly hundred years ago:

You will eat (You will eat)
Bye and bye (bye and bye)
In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high)
Work and pray (Work and pray)
Live on hay (Live on hay)
You'll get pie in the sky when you die (Thats a lie)

Flying in total safety - Microsoft Flight Simulator

2008-11-17T19:29:00.014+01:00

In one of my last comments regarding religion, I promised Vinod Sharma to write a second chapter on that matter.

But religion is a terrible subject. Awe inspiring, ridiculous, dangerous. So I put the idea in cold store, for the time being.

Right now my main worry is not how to improve humanity through the power of my postings. No, these last weeks I tried - in vain - to pass the Instrument rating test ride at Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

The idea is to fly an airplane - here a Cessna 172 - exclusively with the help of instruments, without any visibility. Flying above clouds, in pea soup fog, heavy rain and above all, being able to land safely under these conditions.

Contrary to a widespread idea, man's brain - and even the brain of a woman - is unable to do two things simultaneously. We do one job after the other and in case we do it fast enough, we can pretend to do them together.

Naturally, I know what to do to pass successfully the check ride. The problem is I have to fly perfectly steady, never deviate from any course, maintain height, maintain speed, respect sink rates and angles of climbing, set the radio and the navigator VOR1 and VOR2 plus ADF. Fly a holding pattern and execute a missed approach. The cherry on the cake, at the end, is to land the plane without seeing anything worthwhile.

And the slightest mistake I make, there is this female voice telling me "sorry, you have to start over again". I hate this voice. Having said this, she continues cheerfully to enumerate the list of my shortcomings.

It's a kind of mission impossible but I have set my teeth to it to get the green light to print my certificate.

This YouTube video is a simulation of this checkride in clear weather and with the help of the Autopilot. Just to show and give an idea. To those who are not yet bored stiff (my compliments to them, they merit a seat in pilot's paradise).

Why I am doing this? Flying under these conditions is a real pleasure but a challenge at the same time, it obliges you to concentrate deeply, this is an intelligent video game.

Religion, power and money

2008-10-31T18:10:00.013+01:00

Maybe you know the joke: two Jews stroll around St. Peter in Rome - tourists I suppose - and suddenly they see the Pope arriving in a black Mercedes 600 or so. Said one to the other: "You see that, Shlomo! That's what I call a career. Their Jesus Christ came into Jerusalem on a donkey and now look at his successor: he travels in this big car!

That's only an introduction into the subject.

I know a few people who seem to be deeply religious and what I am saying here does not concern them. They are religious and religion is a means for them to be good to others and at peace with themselves.

No, I am talking of the upper echelons of those various religions that thrive on this unhappy planet. The bosses of these institutions, the movers and shakers, the chiefs and CEO's of all these numerous and different creeds.

They are all talking, endlessly and volubly and what do they say, all of them: "The other religions are very bad, stick to mine, the only true one". Or even better, more convincing: "If you leave this one, you'll be dead in no time".

And they are right, from their point of view. Religion means profitable and continuous business, steady income and thus the power to keep the stuff smoothly flowing in. Who would like to loose his customers to the competition?

It should be said, to be true, here in Western Europe, religion has fallen on harsh times. The number of the faithful is dwindling year by year, nearly all churches stay empty most of the time - they serve now as a tourist attraction and are used for social customs by the "Four-Wheel-Christians", those who drive there for baptism, marriage and burial.

But this is not the end of religion in Europe. The potential for brisk business continues to exist and numerous start-ups are competing for customers. First, there are the immigrants from Africa and Asia - the Muslims - plus all those numerous minority creeds that cater mostly for us Europeans, a huge untapped potential in the spirituality business. The Moonies, the Scientologists, all those overfed Swamis from India who sponsor their Ashrams here and there for a regular fee, the Buddhist and Zen monks in their yellow uniform who don't feed on a daily rice bowl but on a more substantial fare. Let's not forget the Mormons from Utah/USA, always neatly dressed in white shirts and tie who propose their kind of paradise against a tenth of my income. Same for Jehova's Witnesses and last not least all those Evangelicals made in USA who try to re-Bible us. Honestly, I don't know in which way they would cash in later - but my American friends are certainly able to supply some input on that matter.

They all keep a kind of low profile. They are - for the moment - a tiny minority and thus are very tolerant. But on their home turf, where they happen to be important because numerous, you might experience a very different tune. The fight for supremacy is on and no kidding about it. Want some examples:

Buddhism: splendid dictatorship in Burma/Myranmar. The very affluent rulers there give lavishly to the official monks and monasteries. For the rest, the country is poor.In Sri Lanka they wage a bloody civil war against the Hindus in the North. No compromise in sight.

Communism: just say you would get rid of the commies and you are eligible for a prolonged sojurn in a labour camp where the only washing is brain washing.

Islam: in Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi-Arabia you face death in case you decide to quit Muslim religion for another one.

Jewish religion in Israel: land grabbing and evictions of the locals in Palestine go on there for dozens of years.

Hinduism: killing Christians and Muslims in India during well organized riots seems to be on the agenda of a political party there.

Christianity: we are the only good ones, everybody knows that. And besides, this post is already too long (as always). So, if you don't agree, just make a comment to complement the picture.

ABOUT DRINKING

2008-10-20T10:25:00.043+02:00

When I made my military service at the German Air Force we were lodged in rooms of four in kind of barracks. One night at about 12 pm or so, my room mate came back from a drinking expedition.

I heard him singing/talking/laughing to himself, on the other side of the closed door and I tried to stop him from entering. I shoved a broom under the door handle and told him to go to hell or sleep in the sink.

He did not insist and went away but some minutes later the chap entered through the window. While crawling into the room he vomited copiously on my little radio standing on the table right under the window.

That radio was precious to me, it was the very first thing I bought with my own money earned by working during school holidays. He vomited so much on it that the little thing nearly disappeared under it.

From that day on I am regretfully unable to show any tolerance for active drunkards. I mean I shall not help someone drunk who cannot walk upright and is falling down. Must be the vomit,I fear.

On the other hand, I love drinking songs. Please lend your ear to Ivan Rebroff, one of the deepest basso voices I know and nevertheless able to go into high pitch (near the end of this song). It's about someone sitting in a wine cellar and telling how he feels. "Im tiefen Keller", composed in 1802.

Lots of my friends and acquaintances drink too much. They are never drunk - at least I've never witnessed this - and when it is obvious they have had too much at a party, there is always their obliging wife who takes to the steering wheel.

Strange world. If you drink too much and let other see it you become a social outcast in no time. But if you are a tea-totaler - total abstinence from alcohol - then very easily you achieve the same goal.

As to me, I like to drink a glass of red wine in the evening. Just one glass. And I have been drunk once in Paris in a restaurant where we went with friends. My wife was clasping me and I needed it to prevent zigzag-walking towards home.

Now have a look here. This is out of Carmina Burana "In taberna quando sumus" (when we are in the tavern drinking)

Composed in Latin about 800 years ago, music from Carl Orff. To those of you who have enough fortitude, try to follow the music in Latin (right in YouTube). It's great - no need to know Latin, just for fun - especially the second part where he gives the list of all those who drink. Quite exhaustive. One more point: when you play this, make it loud, very, very loud. This is not for the faint hearted.

Georgyporgy's ideas about fashion

2008-10-05T13:29:00.013+02:00

Living in a farmer's village, people who dress "à la mode", on top the current fashion don't abound. In fact, you could say we just cover us, we don't dress as long as we stay here in the country side.

Last weekend, our village club made an excursion to Brive-La-Gaillarde, a beautiful city 80 km (50 miles) from here, near the Dordogne valley.

Everybody was dressed up, did his/her best to show that we might be living behind the moon but not on excursion day. And in fact, looking around at the slick city people passing by and comparing them to us I must admit: there is absolutely no difference in the cover-up.

Nearly everybody clad in shades of gray, brown or black. The eternal November under blazing sunshine. Look for yourself, I am not kidding

That was our guide from the local Tourist Office. Good looking gal, very chirpy but dressed like the oldies from here.

Here she is again. Could be my best photo made on this trip. Could not resist showing it to humanity.

And here, look at the lady, half hidden, on the right side of the photo. She and her husbald are quite well off, big car and so. Have a look at those pants she is wearing. Shit brown and full of creases. To me she looked as if she got her outfit at the local outlet "Christians care for the needy", or the Kathrina Refugees Center. You pay 50 cents or even nothing and you get some clothes in case you were obliged to leave home in pajamas or in a nightshirt.

My wife told me this stuff must have have cost a pretty penny, latest fashion, boutique stuff.

This pic has been made in Samoëns, French Alps, during our last holidays. Look at the couple in front. He is having his symphony in grey and she is is trying to communicate with him color wise. And under her white shirt there hangs something slightly grey. And both are having those "high water pants", very good for fording rivers without getting wet.

I know that's today's fashion but I don't like it. Why should I? Colorless and miserably looking, as if everybody gets ready for for World's End.

I can't help thinking that fashion is for people who have no taste of their own.

Sometimes I wonder if there is meaning behind this. Why do we live in this colorless world? Our buildings are cheap, square and devoid of color, our cars are mostly in "elegant light grey", even the girls manage to have strands of grey 30 years before this happens naturally to them.

And that was not always like this. We have evolved, lately. But as I see it, we are on a downward slope.

That is the Changing Of The Guard in London. Two hundred years ago, all over Europe, those who could pay were colorfully dressed.

And that is a numerical reproduction showing how the Parthenon in Athens/Greece may have looked like around 450 BC when it was constructed.

So, in a nutshell, my message to the world at large. Dress at least colorful, throw the grey or shit brown stuff in the dustbin or any other bin available. Stop complaining. End of message.

MORE ABOUT POLITICS

2008-09-18T11:31:00.008+02:00

Right now, on behalf of the present financial crisis, I am reading that Alan Greenspan said this one to be the worst crisis of the century.

About a fortnight ago, I heard on the telly that the Mayor of New Orleans called the approaching hurricane the worst of the century and thus he invited his fellow citizens to leave town.

Well, being a born Berliner, we would say to this kind of braggadocio "one size smaller would be welcome".

I take the liberty to remind everybody the century barely started, we have still 92 years to go before we are able to make an evaluation. So let's be patient and leave the subject to our children or even better to our grand-children.

Another well-known fact, the stock exchange goes up and down, some get burnt and other get rich and probably next year we'll have other "events of the century" to consider. As to the king-size hurricane over New Orleans, the Mayor mishandled the evaluation of this one as he did on behalf of the previous one thus I suppose he will be reelected triumphantly by his thankful citizens.

Another thing I am quite fed up with is the "War on Terror". Every one of us has a bigger chance to win a Billion Dollar or Euro at the Sweep Stakes or the Lottery and afterwards get struck by lightning rather than being killed in a terrorist action. An efficient police force and a Secret Service that is doing his job on the ground are amply sufficient to neutralize these buggers.

And let's stop talking endlessly about September 11 when its main aim seems to be using it merely as an excuse to embark on actions that shy the light, a kind of smoke screen with an exceeding long shelf life.

Because there are problems and there are dangers facing us. Climate change is one. During the last Ice Age the average temperature fell 2°C. Not very much one might say but now we are in danger to live through increases of 4° to 6°C!! That means lots of more deserts everywhere as well as flooded and definitely disappearing coastline everywhere around the globe.

Another one is overpopulation. If we go on like this the horror movie "Soylent Green" depicting life in 2022 will become a reality well before the end of the century. I have seen recently a documentary about Dhaka the capital of Bangla Desh: that was hell on earth, just to look at it. Those unhappy people have already achieved this kind of concentration..............

Have a look at overpopulation at home. Fortunately, it lasted only one evening and half of the night. We were celebrating our ten years' living here.

All this to let off some steam and to entertain my friends worldwide who want to read something about politics.

SOME POLITICS - JUST FOR A CHANGE

2008-09-03T11:46:00.012+02:00

That's me, taking off for another subject. Rejoice.

These days the little war between Russia and Georgia and its aftermath are very much in the headlines. And as nearly always nowadays I hear all the time the same tune: the Russians are very bad, bloodthirsty and imperial and the Georgians: poor innocent lambs in danger of being slaughtered by Mister Big.

Well, I don't agree.

First, just as a reminder, Georgia's biggest contribution to mankind was Mr. STALIN, the Russian dictator. When he finally died they did not celebrate and still now he is to them what Napoleon is to the French.

There are many different peoples living in the Caucasus area and all of them have one thing in common: they hate each other's guts. Their grievances go back to centuries, unforgiving, ready to jump at each other's throat when there is a possibility to get away with it.

Georgia's independence was such an occasion. There were accounts to settle with the Abkhasians and the Ossetians who lived as a minority within Georgia but don't belong to this people. So Georgia embarked on a nasty little war against everybody else who had the misfortune not to be Georgian.

In a nutshell: if these Abkhasians and Ossetians don't want to be Georgians, let them go. To independence or to Russia, whatever. Just let them have a kind of referendum so that they can decide for themselves democratically where they want to be.

By the way, in the case of Kosovo, once a Serbian province, this independence was granted. So why not here?

I think we should stop meddling into other people's affairs in far away countries. What about minding our own business, improve our own way of doing things, stop talking about democracy and human rights when in reality we only try to lay our hands on oil and gas they have and we don't.

Coming back to Georgia: they make real good wine there, it seems and I would very much like to taste it but can't find it here in France. What a pity.

Back from holidays

2008-08-06T21:25:00.023+02:00

So here I am at home again. Back from camping in Samoëns, a little village-town south of the Geneva lake and 2 hours' drive to the Mont Blanc, highest mountain in Europe. A splendid little bourgeois holiday, just as I like it (or nearly so).

N° 1 and 2 = Those are the tourists - called "grockels" in English English - standing in front of the Geneva Lake. On the other side is Switzerland. As you see, not all French are slim and those people are certainly not Dutch.

N° 3 = Here you see the Mont Blanc, from a distance. I made that photo with a zoom at its maximum. Mister Big dwarfs everything around.

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Coming to the camp site I was amazed to see for the first time in more than 20 years a sizeable number of tents. Till now, those campers were mostly people driving motorhomes (kind of live-in lorries) of various sizes and a slowly shrinking number of caravans. I suppose motorhomes simply were more fashionable. And lastly, in a corner, there were some tents.

This time big change: about half of the spots were occupied by tent campers. Some of those tents were real holiday cathedrals, never seen such big ones before. Stupidly I did not make any photos, it just did not occur to me.

The reason of this change is certainly the amazing price of gas and Diesel. Maybe in ten years' time I'll arrive on my holiday spot in a high-speed rickshaw, like in Vietnam. That might help us save gas and money.

And who is going to pull those rickshaws. Certainly not me but what about hiring some prisoners? All those murderers, thieves, crooks, dopers, dealers, rapists are idling in their cells. You cannot make them look at the telly for more than ten hours. That would be inhuman. Furthermore, it seems, here in France, the prisons are overflowing, they are now being put inside in layers, like sardines. So some rickshaw exercise would do them a world of good, add color to their pale indoor cheeks and lessen the burden of the unhappy impoverished taxpayer.

Well, so much for some social engineering of my invention.

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But we went to the Alps for a little change of surroundings and furthermore, Samoëns is famous for its paragliding flying possibilities. Have a look

N° 4 = That is Plateau de Saix (yes, unpronouncable for nearly everybody). All those people are preparing for take-off. When you are in the air, you have about 800 m (about 2500 feet) of air below you. After soaring a bit above the launching pad Mount Blanc is clearly visible.

A fellow pilot told me that two years ago a guy was able not only to go there by paraglider but even land on its summit of 4800 m (about 14500 feet). And when he stood on our number 1 mountain he was all alone because Mt. Blanc was closed for climbers that day. A heat wave made the snow cap and glaciers unsafe and avalanche prone. So he just stood there for some time, Italy behind him, France in front and then flew away, happy.

Samoëns has not only two splendid launching pads but also a king-size landing spot. It has the size of about two football fields. Touching ground there gives me the feeling to land on Frankfurt International. No danger to hit a church tower, a car park, a lamp post or just a big tree towering in front of you.

N° 5 = The landing area though you see here only a small portion of it.

N° 6 = A better view of the landing area. Pure bliss.

Three days before the end of our holidays I had another start on top of Mr. Saix, see first picture. As there was no wind, I was running at top speed to get the paraglider taking off.

While running I fell into something like a rabbit hole and had my feet torn a bit. In the air I thought "that was a near miss" and when touching ground it hurt a bit. But next morning, I could not move my foot, it hurt like hell. The worst was going up and down the stairs to the lavatory. The night after I was even pissing in a plastic bottle to avoid climbing those stairs.

My wife told me about an old grandmother's remedy fighting inflammation. Just take good olive oil and add some drops of lemon and mix the stuff. It works, ladies and gentlemen. Really, it works! The third day I was already climbing those stairs up and down, bye bye piss bottle. Born again for further action.

Here, some more photos:

N° 7 = Mountain bike girl. T5his activity seems to be more risky than paragliding. Good to know.

N° 7, 8, 9, 10 = Have some more. Could not resist showing them.

Lost in the dark - wake woke woken

2008-07-06T22:05:00.014+02:00

Absolutely nothing to do with the subject

Saturday night: could have been around three in the morning; I was suddenly waking up. Ok, let's go to the toilet, the time of the chamber pot is over for more than sixty years.

So I started fishing for my slippers in the dark. They did not seem to be really where they should be - propped against the wall - but soon enough I had them on my feet and stood up.

Turning to the right made me collide with something like a lamp shade. Looking around in my pitch dark surroundings I saw some light filter through the window shutters.

Going to the window seemed the reasonable thing to do. I am an old hand going to the toilet at night without any light and the window has always been an important landmark. Even in a moonless night it is never totally dark outsite.

Touching the window frame I was a bit astonished of its feel. Seemed to be somehow metallic cold instead of wood but anyway, from here on I know where to go. From the window to the right and this I did.

Two steps further on I had another collision with something, don't know what.

So I went back to the window - what else should I do - and took the other direction. On my left I felt the edge of the bed. That was reassuring so I just carried on. Straight ahead, right for the door of this room.

I never managed to make it to that door. Instead I banged into something I could not define. Now I was really in panic. WHERE AM I AND WHAT IS GOING ON HERE??

This is the room where it happened - made the pic five minutes before leaving

My blundering around was far from noiseless and finally my wife woke up and asked "what are you doing?". "I don't know where I am". I imagine she would switch the light on and I "saw" another difficulty coming up. There is no switch on her side of the bed, only on mine. So we'll soon be groping together through this bewitched room.

Hardly had I finished this thought the light came on: I was not at home at all but in my in-law's guest-room! Felt a bit foolish. "From now on I can manage", I told her "you can switch off the light". Well, well. Five stressful minutes are laying behind me.

Back in my bed I could not find sleep. Then I hit on the idea to relate this night stunt in my blog and started composing my text right away. "Suddenly I wake up at night". Then the word wake seemed strange, should it be "woke" instead? Wake, woke, waken, or better wake, woke, waked, or maybe wake, woke woken? These grammatical exercises had an immediate effect. I was fast asleep in no time.

Good night to everybody and don't forget to remember where you are. Could come handy.

VOTERS'S STUPIDITY

2008-06-24T10:31:00.017+02:00

Nearly half of the blogs I have met so far talk about politics and what's gone wrong. They loath the government and let us know about this and why.

Let's not talk about those happy dictatorships where there is no real voting. People living in those remote-control-countries are free from the burden to take any worthwhile decision about politics and politicians. Generally, they are invited to occupy themselves with other subjects like gardening, making money (get rich and shut up), religion (sure, you are poor and bedridden but in Paradise you'll have fun every day), yelling at football tournaments and other sports events.

No, the voters I have in mind live mainly but not exclusively in the European Union or in USA/Canada where they are invited to exercise their talents and judgement.

Let me give an example: some years ago the European Union organized a referendum in every member state for a Constitution. The main idea was to establish majority votes in the EU Parliament and have a President voted into office for longer than six months.

This constitution was rejected by the voters in France and in the Netherlands. I don't know about the Dutch but here in France the no-votes were motivated frequently by this:

- more job security, no more outsourcing
- life has become more expensive
- more social justice
- They didn't want the Turks into the European Union

All this are worthy subjects but they are not decided by the Union. So this was brainless voting, there is no other word for it. It's like as if I am asking you for directions in a city and you answer me "this morning we'll expect rain".

Or take another example regarding our friends in the USA. The present government has been reelected three years ago. And this in spite of the disastrous war in Iraq, stubborn negation of climate change and probably other topics I don't know about. Now, it seems he and his party are at an all-time low. So the question is why did the majority vote for him a second time?

In Germany, Ms. Angela Merkel, our current Prime Minister, got her job with a very thin majority. During those elections it became more and more clear that all those indispensable reforms would come at a cost. So lots of voters got cold feet and voted for parties that promised to do the washing without getting them wet.

Thus, in a nutshell, we are responsible, too, if things go wrong. It's not those on top who - alone - are stupid, thrifty, tricky, grafty, dishonest. We made them and put them there, they are like us, remember.

As the saying goes "every country has the government it deserves".

PRAYERS FOR RAIN

2008-06-12T19:39:00.010+02:00

Some weeks ago I hit on a website where it was said that the US Governor of Georgia prayed publicly for rain to end a severe drought in his state.

At first I couldn't believe what I was reading. Sure, I know many people pray when in deep trouble but praying for rain, today, makes me think of our Middle Ages, a world full of demons, devils and sorcerers. To pray to your god for a little help seemed the reasonable thing to do, at that time.

When you pray for rain, plenty of it - much more than what you need to wet the flower pots - it means this: gimme the stuff, right now and LET THE OTHER ONE HAVE THE DROUGHT, because I need it more than everybody else, everywhere!

But praying for rain means something else, too. It means: we have cut off all trees, for years and years, we have watered our fields by draining our rivers, we don't preserve nature and we don't respect it. Everything that is not invoiced is free and we take it. And now we are facing the end of this happy time and don't like it.

So what we do? We don't say we have abused for dozens of years and now we pay the price. We don't replant the trees and make hedgerows around our fields. Oh no, that's too expensive. We don't invite everybody to make amends for our stupidity and take action.

We take the short road and pray: that's not expensive and if granted would enable us to go on living as before. And when we have some money to spare, could be we decide to replant some trees. Could be.

That's it what it means to pray for rain in a Western country, at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Any news from Africa?

2008-05-26T20:04:00.016+02:00

Talking about politically correct subjects in a politically correct way?? Not always, it's too hard for a blogger like me.

So this is about Africa. You know this big place down south, on the other side of the Mediterranean.

Not a day passes without news from there. The melody is always the same, CHAOS in all its forms plus a never omitted mention of colonialism. Whatever happens down there in Africa, it is somehow our fault, always.

You want short sleeves or long sleeves? In case you answer short, they cut your arm above the elbow. In case you opt for long sleeves, off comes your hand (Liberia, The Analyst, 10 January 2008).

In South Africa between 500 000 and 1 million women are raped per year, babies included. (World Net Daily, 27 May 2008).

Want to know how to make speed killing without any modern weapons? Please inquire in Ruanda Burundi. There, only with the help of machetes and other big size knifes they killed about eight hundred thousand people in just three months.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is so fertile that you can plant a broom stick into the ground and you have a fair chance to see it turning green. Nevertheless, famine is endemic over there. It should be said that that the Congo is indulging in a civil war that goes on nearly since the Belgians left there in the early sixties. The horrors happening there everyday defies imagination (CBS News, 27 May 2008).

And so on, and so on. The list is endless.

AIDS is spreading over there like a wild fire. Naturally, we are being told that this is due to cultural particularities and culture has to be respected, anywhere. So they need Bill Gates and his billions + plus European Union Aid + President Bush and his aid program + all good people world wide. Nobody seems to tell them and us that they should simply stop screwing around whenever they leave home.

By the way, in South Africa many people think raping a baby girl is a proven remedy against aids (BBC News, 9 April 2002).

Looking for a country with inflation well above 1.000.000 percent? Just go to Zimbabwe (Associated Press).

And then - at the telly - I see those Africans dancing around and I hate to see this. Dancing for just any reason. Got a new remedy against Malaria? Let's have a dance. Someone from far away Switzerland or elsewhere shows them how to make a stove, how to cook, how to purify water, how to plant a tree that is not withering away next week! another dance. Got a new president elected at 99 percent, the old one has been assassinated: let's have a dance.

So I think Africa and our media should give me a break. Stop talking about this endless list of horrors streaming out there as well as their perpetual non-performance.

I know they are poor but they are not the only ones. Why are the Koreans able to build big ships and TV flat screens? 50 years ago this country was nothing but a heap of rubble after a devastating war. And only 25 years ago China was as underdeveloped as Mongolia. And now?

So why not Africa? Why is there not a single manufactured product coming out of this continent?

These are the real questions to be asked and to be acted upon. By the Africans themselves, just for a change.

FLYING ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

2008-05-14T19:19:00.028+02:00

Once or twice a year I am having a little flying holiday. My favorite place to go is the Pyla dune, south of Bordeaux/France. With a maximum height of 110 m (about 350 feet) this dune is the highest in Europe.

The camping is situated right at the foot of the Pyla dune, in the pine forest, five minutes' walk through the quicksand and I am right at the paragliding launching pad.

However, no wind, no flying. The day of our arrival, nearly cloudless sky but no wind. Not the slightest. There were roughly two dozens of paraglider pilots standing in the sand, waiting, waiting, waiting (www. in abbreviation).

Next day, blue sky again but the very strong wind was blowing from the land to the sea. Flying under these conditions would be a suicide mission. So we had another walk on top of Master Pyla, tourists among tourists.

The dune advances inland about 1 meter (three feet) per year, at most places. Thus all those camping sites on the inland side of the dune get smaller and smaller over the years. When walking along the water, you see the remnants of shore defense bunkers, laying half hidden in the ocean. They were built by the German army during the Second World War, now subject to tagging. When they were constructed in 1942/43, they were on top of the dune!!

Pyla is a big tourist attraction and restaurants are aplenty. There I saw a waitress who had a new way of carrying her dish towels. Have a look.

The third day was sunny again but again without any wind. Thus we went to the nearby Hydroplane Museum, featuring this kind of airplanes from about 1905 till now. The museum was closed, exceptionally. No sweat, a real "grockel" (English for tourist)can always fall back on something else. What about a Cappuccino in a good looking Café?

Well, all this is a side line. I came here for some paragliding and now I am reading Patrick O'Brian's "The Ionian Mission". Splendid book, I recommend.

Here, have a look at the camping site, right on the Pyla dune, under big fir trees.

This camp site is one of the best I know. They feature clean toilets and if you feel like it, you can get a kind of paper ring to put on the toilet seat. Hygienic shitting of stand-alone quality. I am always coming back to the place because of this.

Sunday, our last day at Pyla. Again heavy sunshine but no wind. Again those idle paraglider pilots are standing or sitting on the dune, www for some wind. Then suddenly, a paraglider appears in the sky, just one.

Everybody gets excited because there is no wind. We are all running to the other side of the dune to have a slice of this happiness. Alas, when we are there, the lone paraglider is still alone in the sky, slowly gliding down to Mother Earth. He must have had a gust of warm air, for some minutes and was smart enough to act upon it.

Monday morning, we are leaving. Thanks to YouTube, have a look at my beloved activity. I like the video because the pilots are a bit nutty. Youthfully excited as well as the music. This is "Plastic Bertrand" singing a hit of about thirty years ago, very much to the point "ça plane pour moi" (something like 'I am high' - but not in the air but in the head). Naturally, I am not flying like this, coffin lid open, but still flying, peacefully in the sun, over the sand and the water, over the tree tops.

Another post that is a bit too long. Sorry.

Breakfast in the garden

2008-05-04T19:36:00.017+02:00

This Saturday morning - 3rd May - is important. It was sufficiently warm and sunny to have our breakfast IN THE GARDEN. First time this year!

Weekend breakfast is always special. We load the table to capacity. That's what we had:

Croissants (four in all - two for each one) - plus baguette with sesame or poppy grains outside

Black Assam tea (for me with milk and a glass of orange or apple juice (I prefer the last)

Forest honey and Moor honey, both from nearby

Unsweetened almond paste and hazelnut paste (those two big jars) and Nutella

3 jams: cherry, cherry plum, quince.

Well, that's the breakfast. Let me stress this however: it's not French, it's not German, it's just ours.

My fellow blogger Bere in her blog A Chronology of Stupidity shows the photo of a very different kind of breakfast, US American style, I suppose. It is her post "time lost, weight gain", you have to scroll down a bit after landing there.

Here in France, most people have a very simple b. Black coffee, baguette, butter and some marmalade or jam. Frequently, the jam is skipped. So many different ways to start happily into a new day.

Being tagged

2008-04-28T09:40:00.021+02:00

My fellow-blogger Patrick Joubert Conlon Born-again Redneck
had me tagged and here are the details of what this entails:

The rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people
and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves
them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and
asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

The questions are as follows:

1.) What I was doing 10 years ago?
2.) What are five things on my to-do list for to-day? (not in any particular order)
3.) Snacks I enjoy
4.) Things I would do if I were a billionaire
5.) Three of my bad habits
6.) Five places I have lived
7.) Jobs I have had

1.) What I was doing 10 years ago?

In 1998 I was living in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, a Paris suburb and worked for a German company selling gears, gear grinding and gear controlling machines. In July I married after having lived together for about 7 years. In September we left our jobs and moved 600 km down south to live in a village. I am still there, happy.

2.) Five things on my to-do list for to-day

a) Racking my brain to answer the tagging questions.

b) Continue working on the overhaul of the wooden terrace railing (balustrade), using an orbital sander, a power planer, a router, a band saw, a jigsaw plus a pot of paint.

c) If weather permitting, driving down to the Dordogne valley for some paragliding. Spring is the very best period for this. Half an hour of flying right above the treetops would be wonderful.

d) Calling on my friend in Brussels to talk about the last piece of music on my blog. He wrote me that clarinet player is not good enough and he has a better one.

e) Last not least: buying at Amazon.fr "Blandings Castle" from PG Wodehouse, Patrick "The Redneck" (see above) recommended to me. Incidentally, I met him by making a Google blog search for this beloved writer and now I have to find out, too, at Wikipedia what "redneck" really means in USA English.

3.) Snacks I enjoy

Black forest cherry cake, Tiramisu, bitter almond chocolate.

4.) Things I would do if I were a billionaire

Make a trip around the world, have a look at Australia, Japan, some US National Parks. Opening a world-wide TV station, kind of personal CNN but very much less boring and no publicity. Buying a car with a huge trunk that runs noiselessly and uses no petrol. Kicking out all those I don't want to see: that's the privilege of the rich.

3.) Three of my bad habits

I like to convince those who are not convinced. - I like reading when others make small talk - should eat less chocolate, pastries and other blow-up stuff.

5.) Five places I have lived

In Berlin-West before the Wall came down - in Aachen/Rhineland where Carolus Magnus had his HQ more than thousand years ago - in Brussels/Belgium where it rains more often than not - in Neuilly-Sur-Seine where the current French President was town mayor - in Rouffiac the farmers' village, far away from cities, noise, industry, business, pollution.

7.) Jobs I have had

In AACHEN as an apprentice for transports, export/import. Having got my diploma, I made the solemn oath never to work again in the transports business.

In BRUSSELS in a company where we were selling turn key plants to Third World countries and to the Soviet Block. We went bust when Saddam launched his war against Iran instead of paying us. Professionally speaking, my best time.

In NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE near Paris selling gears and machine tools made by our German mother company to French industry. Thrilling but stressful job.

THE END of this huge task. Now let's shut down the 'puter and hit the road for the Dordogne valley, see 2-c here above. Bye bye.

SOME MORE MUSIC?

2008-04-22T20:19:00.018+02:00

Judging by the number of comments, my last post about the opera singer Lucia Popp was quite (reasonably) popular.

What astonished me most was the fact that people from far away and from very different cultural background appreciate Mozart's music and the singer, too.
Unfortunately, I am sorry to admit that this is only partially true the other way round. So I don't fall for Chinese Opera but like their instrumental music.

This YouTube video features a composition from Carl Maria von Weber. The clarinet is played by Sabine Meyer. Please lend them both your ears for three or four minutes. It's really gorgeous, there are not many pieces of music like this.

When clicking you are being jumped to YouTube and that is ok because it gives you the possibility to read the comments.

Depending on the piece of music, some of these are truly ferocious. The pleasure to destroy, humiliate, downgrade. Music should not be the means to let off steam.

HAPPY DRIVING - PRICE OF DIESEL

2008-04-16T20:29:00.011+02:00

Yesterday fellow-villager Valérie told me that the amount of money spent per month for Diesel by herself and her husband has reached 850 Euro (about 1300 Dollar at present exchange rate).

Quite a lot for a family that is not hauling it in with a shovel. Then I asked her how she is driving and she explains she drives sportingly. Meaning, she accelerates than brakes, braking accelerating, braking accelerating.

Well, I don't drive like this. In fact, you might say I am driving like my own grandfather. This is not due to fear of traffic and speed. I am accelerating smoothly, I brake only when I can't help it, preferring the motor brake by shifting into low gear. When reaching a village where the max. speed is 50 km/h (about 30 miles), I leave the gas pedal and frequently go into idle speed for better gliding.

You might consider this a rather boring driving technique. But it isn't because I am doing all this with a passion. I want to become world champion of low consumption. In case the title will ever be given I am ready to compete.

Last October my wife bought a new car - VW Polo Diesel TDI 1,4/80 HP - and this car is equipped with a kind of computer giving the average consumption of the current trip.

When she comes back from work in Aurillac, 40 km (25 Miles) from here, I frequently check her average consumption. Now it happens more and more often that she uses only 3,9 liter on 100 km or goes 60 1/3 Mile per Gallon!

Splendid, really. Good for the budget. Especially now with one liter of Diesel selling at 1,28 Euro (7,51 US Dollar per Gallon). But what amazes me is how she is doing it. With all my gimmicks I cannot do better and she is just an ordinary driver, like many women. She never goes into idle speed when the road is downhill. Just a careful, reasonable driver without any fuzz and addiction to overtaking whatever appears in front of her.

I would like to know and solve the riddle.

The first photo shows my wife where she gets the keys from the Volkswagen dealer. The lower one is our last homage to my Golf. I bought this car 20 years ago and it was still in top shape, passing the Technical Control with flying colours. When I made an ad in the local paper to sell it for 6OO Euro I got more than 30 phone calls.

PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS PIECE OF MUSIC

2008-04-01T08:48:00.009+02:00

About ten years ago I heard for the first time an aria sung by Lucia Popp. Since then, she has been my favorite classical singer. I can't really say why because my technical knowledge of music is scant. I just love to hear her singing.

Lucia Popp's voice can go very high up but to me there is a difference with most other opera singers: even on top, she remains melodious, there is spare room and she never becomes the screechy slate pencil voice you hear so frequently.

Here, Lucia Popp is singing Laudate Dominum out of Vesperae Solemnes de Confessore from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. When he composed this piece of music, Mozart must have been very young, about 20 or so. If I had faith and were a believer I would say Mozart was divinely inspired when writing this piece of church music.

Last not least, I would like to say thank you to YouTube that made all this possible and to the British chappie Glenmed who posted the recording. On his personal page Glenmed explains "I try to avoid present-day teenager dum-dum stuff". God bless England and the English, may they never loose their splendid sens of humor.

ARE THERE SOME ARTISTS OVER HERE ?

2008-03-28T17:13:00.011+01:00

May I give you here my very personal and unsolicited opinion about modern arts: exception for movies and literature, I see it as mostly cheap, fast stuff made by con men/women who should thank God not to be obliged to work in an assembly line.

Painting has deteriorated to a kind of decoration but more ugly. In former times, a painter learned his job for years and years and the great ones never stopped learning and developing. Nowadays, a painter is someone who holds a brush in his hands, has some expensive color on the table nearby and busies himself to transfer the stuff on a flat surface.

A painter nowadays is nearly exclusively a person who has scant knowledge of painting techniques and is unable to make a living from it.

Sure, there are some real painters among us. Unfortunately, these people need one or two months at best to finish their job and nobody wants to pay thousands of Dollars or Euros to an unknown artist. If they don't want to die of hunger they have to do something else to make a living.

Last not least, the art of painting has no rules, these days. Nobody knows what is a good painting and what is a bad one.

Thus, painting as an art is dead, stone dead. Later centuries will probably look aghast at our artistic performances.

For those who are not yet tired of reading, what about this story that took place in some years ago in Beaubourg, the Paris museum of modern arts. Upon arrival in the morning (probably around 10 a.m., this is not a factory), the guards discovered to their stupefaction that one of those works of art had changed substantially over night.

If I am not totally wrong this happened to a work from the German artist Joseph Buys. It shows a fully equipped room featuring an unmade bed and various other items, mostly disposed in artistic disorder.

Unfortunately for this world famous artist, the charwoman (also called surface technician over here) newly hired by the museum took herself to the job to clean the room thoroughly.

Well, I imagine the restoration squad of the museum could face the challenge.......

PS to all that: just added a third picture following Anrosh's comment. This drawing from Käte Kollwitz is neither beautiful nor a homage to nature. But it gives emotion, plenty of it. Ms. Kollwitz lost her child in the last war and this drawing shows a mother taken away by the death far too early for her young child.

AFGHANISTAN - WHAT ARE WE DOING THERE?

2008-02-23T20:37:00.008+01:00

In my youth I have been twice there, as a hitchhiking tourist, before the Soviet invasion. In my memory this was the country I liked most compared to Iran, Pakistan and India.

At that time, to me, Afghanistan seemed to be a fairy tale country, straight out of Thousand and One Night.I liked these proud men (proud of what?) in their baggy pants, frequently in rags, but carrying nearly always a gun slung over the shoulder.

Considering that half of the population is female in every country, I never saw one. Never. It took me some time to realize that these statures walking around and wearing a kind of blue sack covering from top to ground ARE the women I never saw.

So, when saying something about Afghanistan it must be said I only talked to men, met only men, saw only men, had only their opinion.

There was only one exception to this: in Kandahar, in an electrical appliance shop, I talked briefly to a German woman who had married an Afghani. She wanted to bail out of this country as fast as possible but could not because her husband confiscated her old passport as well as all her other papers. Furthermore, her marriage made her an Afghan national. She was the sales girl in this shop and during the 15 minutes I met her she told me her dream: to return to Munich, sit in the sofa at home, watch the telly and sip a cool beer.

All that is snow from yesterday.

The fairy tale country has long ago changed into what it is and probably always was: a God forsaken place with too much religious fanatics. And even those who are not practice a "way of life" coming straight out of the darkest part of the Middle Ages.

Afghanistan is the worlds' biggest heroin grower and exporter; the trade being protected by the armies of about ten NATO countries. The chase of Osama bin Laden has long ago turned into a farce. The Taliban fighters who happen to be made prisoners don't have to worry: they pay 1000 Dollars or more to the Police to be free again, back in business.

What are we doing there?

For good measure, here is a photo from a work of art made right there, but about 2000 years ago. It is safely in a Paris museum otherwise the present day people would either have smashed it or stolen it to be sold abroad for easy money.

Last not least: the first picture has not been made in Afghanistan but in Yemen and sent to me by a friend who went there. I like it, it is so funny. Hope you appreciate, too.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE - HOMMAGE TO BLOGGING

2008-02-09T18:30:00.000+01:00

For me, English is a foreign language, I have never stayed in an English speaking country longer than a fortnight.

Considering all this it is clear that I am fully qualified to talk about usage of English. Why limit oneself to subjects you know all about? There would be too much silence all around.

So here we go.

When people talk to me, in real life or at the telly, I always hear again and again "you know", "you know", "you know". I hear it frequently in every second or third sentence and I hate it.

Sometimes, I try to interrupt by saying "no, I don't". Generally, I get an astonished look but no comment, never.

Next, there is a word that should be forbidden. "Nice". I hate that, too. Nice is not warm it is tepid. It is a mild agreement of something vaguely comfortable. A horrible hat on someone's head, "nice hat you have there", the weather is nice, a girl is nice. "Nice pic", seen frequently on blog comments for splendid photos. Nice be hanged.

And here comes the summit: "cool", bloody hell and damnation, I dislike "cool" intensely. Don't know why but it is non grata to me. I hear it in English, in French and in German and God knows in how more languages the word is being used.

"Cool" seems to be the macho version of "nice". "Nice" is kind of old spinster language, wishy-washy, no offense given no offense taken. "Cool" and its counterpart "uncool" is Rambo-English. "That's cool, yeah". "And that's not so cool, yeah".

The good thing about the Internet and especially about blogs is that everybody can have his saying. You and me. Now I can unburden and tell the world what is on my mind. Sure, there are 30 Million blogs outa there and I have about 50 readers max. Never mind. Better than nothing, far better.

MEET YOUR GREAT GRANDPARENTS - THEY LIVED AROUND 1900

2008-01-30T21:16:00.000+01:00

Ask anyone of your family about your great grandparent's life and I bet you'll draw a blank. No details available with the possible exception - if there is a family tree somewhere - of the life span, profession and the indication where these people lived.

These great grandparents from you and me must have been born between 1890 and 1900. By all means that is not so very long ago. Nevertheless, I don't have the faintest idea what mine did. I asked my wife about hers, same answer.

I can't help thinking that's a sad state of affairs. We are not animals who vanish without trace. All these previous generations could read and write, there was paper and ink, even writing machines.

Hundred years have passed and it looks to us as if they have never lived.

To illustrate my point, I am only talking about those great grandparents. But it is absolutely sure, members of our family, yours and mine, lived somewhere when Christobal Columbus discovered America. They lived at the time of the Roman Empire, at the time of Christ and they must have been somewhere when Alexander The Great marched from Greece through Persia to India and died in Babylon.

I would have loved to know all those life stories, or at least some of them. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing.

These losses can't be made good. But at least you and me, we can do this: write down our own life story. Hundred pages or so, why not two hundred? Make copies, put it on CD-ROM, give it to your lawyer to be kept for 100 years. Who knows, maybe at that time it will be vastly interesting to the buggers living around 2110. If your text survives till then, it will be an icon, because unique. And will enter the National Library, I bet.

As to me, ay have already started some years ago. But then I stopped, because I discovered video games (Half-Life) and thought this more fun. It's a shame, ok. But the first twenty pages are on my hard disk and I wow to carry on.

MUSIC LOVERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

2008-01-16T12:44:00.000+01:00

There are very few people who are indifferent to music, like Captain Hornblower of the Royal Navy. And his excuse was to be tone deaf.

What amazes me however is the wide variation of music itself and what people consider to be wonderful (cool in neoworld language) and what this or that kind of music means to them.

For instance: my father-in-law used to start into annual vacation a little after midnight, because there was less traffic. In order to stop him from dozing off while driving he usually switched to Arabic music. "Keeps me awake", he said and never more about this subject.

Years ago, I saw an Indian movie "Jalsaghar- The Music Room" from Satajit Ray. Basically, it was about an impoverished Indian prince who loved music and dancers but had to sell some valuables in his palace in order to hire both for a performance. Somewhere during the action he hears in the distance an Indian "oompah" band playing a kind of marching music. He says something like: "everything is going down the drain, now they even play this crappy music from Europe". For him, European music was that, badly played, badly chosen, barbaric. By the way, the Indian music and dancing in this film is splendid.

As to me, I know what I like and what I dislike. However, I am totally unable to explain this. The longer you discuss the subject the more you get off the mark.

What you are invited to listen to here is certainly a YouTube sideline but give it a try nevertheless.

Meet Margret Almer, she is a yodler, a real good one. Having heard her first time, I jumped at Amazon to get the CD. But there is a difference to see her performing. When I play YouTube on the PC, my wife comes and listens with a smile though she does not understand German: "joyful music", she says, "heartwarming".

Hope you like it, too. If not, well, don't make any bones out of it, nothing personal, just rot in peace.

To know more about her, I had a look at Wikipedia. She won prices at Austrian and German folk festivals and published three CD's. But she never made a breakthrough. She is currently working at the Austrian Postal Administration. Sad, isn't it?

My blogger friend Vinod Sharma from New Delhi sent me this Yodel song from India. That's called intellectual outsourcing.

http://www.allpunjabi.com/songs/6229/Main_Hoon_Jhoom_Jhoom_Jhumroo.html

WINTER BIKING TOUR IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

2008-01-10T18:02:00.000+01:00

This morning, a cloudless sky and the thermometer well below freezing level. Over here, at 550 m (about 1700 feet) that inaugurates a splendid dry winter day ideally suited for some biking.

I always owned a bike, but only last year I finally managed to get a real good one, a 24 gear hybrid with disk brakes for the front wheel. Pure bliss!

Over here, we have a lot of tarmac roads, narrow but well kept. Our village is small, 250 people it seems, hamlets included. That was not always so. In 1850 there lived here about 1200. The first hamlet I try to reach is "Les Vigues", not far away but high up. Heavy going, first gear. The old house on the left would be great for a museum but it is occupied. I would like to have a look inside but how to get invited?
1 Hamlet called "Les Vigues"

Right near this place I pass by this abandoned saw mill. Please admire the roof. On the left side
it has no supporting structure - never had since I came here - and nevertheless, the roof does not collapse. A miracle. The owner died two or three years ago. He was my first and last local enemy. Never greeted me when I met him. That was due to the fact that in the first year of our coming here he supplied me with wet firewood. So the next year I looked for someone else. He did not like it.

2 Abandoned saw mill - don't miss the roof

The road continues to climb. All around nothing but fields for the cows. Don't know how many are here but certainly two or three times more than humans. These cows are special because of their red-brown color. Very hardy, most stay outside night and day, winter and summer.
They are called "Salers", special breed only existing here in Cantal region of Central France. Have a look, see photo N° 4.

N° 3 Dirt road near "les Fraux"

This pic N°3 is only shown because I like it. Don't go there, this time, the ground must be a little muddy. In winter I am a tarmac lover.

Having passed this dirt road, I reach the top, nearly 100 m (350 feet) above the village. I am sweating profusely because of two pullovers plus one anorak. Must wear this because when racing down, the wind will be icy. The Département of Cantal has nothing but ups and downs, ups and downs. The biking fool is continually sweating, respiration wheezing followed by downhill racing where you feel the cold.

N° 4 Salers cows in front of the Cantal Mountains

Pic N° 4 shows the highest point of the village surroundings. Those mountains are good for skiing, cross country and alpine. One hours' drive and I am there. But not now. Down we go but not too fast. Because, over here, it's not only up and down but continually turning.
Except the main roads, nothing is straight. Fortunately I have a disk brake on the front wheel, a great invention.

When living in Paris and going to work on my bike, my Peugeot cycle was equipped with those crappy rim brakes. The bowden cables broke every three months and in the cycle shop they explained to me that this is normal. Those cables are wear and tear I was told. I put Peugeot on my personal black list and wowed never to buy from them anything else. No bike, no car, no household appliance. Nothing.

N° 5 The road to Pleaux

Pic N° 5 shows a road pretending to be horizontal. But it isn't. And please admire those sign posts. Some show the distance, others not, some give you the road number others not. Don't know why, nobody knows, could be a state secret.

This main road is reasonably straight. They have been doing there some serious road ironing. When biking along, I see right and left portions of the old small ever bending country road. The tarmac is slowly eaten up by weed and I imagine in 20 years from now those bends have disappeared from sight. Could be food for archaeologists, thousand years from now. Opening up this old road with the help of a tooth brush............

N° 6 The village of Cros de Monvert

This is our neighbor village. Nearly as dead as Rouffiac but only nearly. Because we have a pub!
In fact it's the only one in the area and thus attracts rural boozers from everywhere. The place is at the same time a restaurant but the food is ghastly. Don't dare to tell more about it, lawyers may be lurking to make some quick buck on me for slander.

This one is a bit long (I mean this story). The last 4 or 5 km till home feature one long uphill and a steep downhill. Photo N° 7 shows the deepest spot between our two villages. In winter the sun never shines here.
N°7 From here it's uphill, either side. Always slippery

Plus a place where ferocious farm dogs race along with me. Trouble is this portion is uphill! The dogs run and I try to go fast. Next time I'll bring my alarm pistol with me. It makes a big noise and I hope they run away, those barking devils. I'll tell you the outcome, stay tuned.

Here, at the end, a sample of the local dance "La Bourrée".

THE CREATION - REALLY SO GOOD?

2007-12-30T17:33:00.000+01:00

In the first pages of the Bible - the Genesis - the creation of everything is being explained as if it all happened in six days.

Each day ends with the words "God saw that it was good". And at the end of the sixth day - marking the end of the creation - He he even said: "God saw all that he had made and behold, it was very good".

Well, I do not agree with that and try to explain why.

Looking around and looking up at the sky, night or day, one must admit: everything works smoothly. But it is far from being optimized. I mean we all live in a kind of crocodile creation. Mister Big feeds on Mister Small. That goes for ants and for cats and especially for us, you and me.

If you can, you devour those who cannot help it without having much qualms about it. Eaten or being eaten: that is the motor of all that is living, crawling and growing on Mother Earth.

And if you look up at the sky, at those stars sparkling so peacefully above, the same script prevails. There are those black holes gobbling up everything in the vicinity. And even our sun will not warm us dutifully for ever. In some billion years she will explode and roast the whole system. No mercy here either.

That's what I call the crocodile creation. It works, true, but only at the price of immense suffering at absolutely all levels.

CHRISTMAS - TO MORE DAYS TO GO

2007-12-22T13:32:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas to all of us. Let it happen, everywhere.

And for the next year AD 2008?
Best wishes? Lots of everything?
Let's be open for surprises!

ABOUT HUNTING

2007-12-17T20:15:00.000+01:00

Sunday afternoon, blazing sunshine, we are walking through the forest on one of those GR hiking food paths, crisscrossing France from east to west and from north to south. We are not alone in this oak forest. A guy all clad in dark green but with a shining red cap stops us: "be careful", he tells us, "pay attention! This is hunting period and they are shooting with real bullets".

I loath hunters, I dislike them, I hate them. But hypocritically I keep those sentiments to myself.

I only say, politely as hell: "well, as far as I know, it's up to the hunters to be careful. We are just walking on this hiking path". Let's not forget my golden sens of humour and I add to make him smile: "I hope all your shortsighted colleagues are wearing specs and have a look before shooting".

He does not smile, he just stares at me as we walk on.

Being a hunter these days means, you are killing for pleasure and in total safety for yourself. Hunting is a kind of sport, it seems.

Hunting season. You get up in the morning, too early for telly. So what to do? Let's do some killing, great fun, no danger involved. The boars, the rabbits, the stags, the pigeons are not armed.

Imagine all those little and big animals outfitted with rifles, even little submachine guns. I bet all those hardy sportsmen would prefer to stay at home or gather around the billiard table, boozing in safety.

Or what about sending all those game killers to places where shooting is important if our hunter wants to stay alive? I imagine a hunter asking for a hunting permit "You want to hunt?"
"No problem", he is being told, "in order to get this permit you must engage for one year in active warfare. For the moment, this means you would be on service in Iraq or Afghanistan".

I imagine our happy weekend killers would think twice before going for places were hunting means always being hunted, too.

That's my dream.

MOUSE IN THE HOUSE

2007-12-05T17:54:00.000+01:00

We have two cats living with us in the house. There is Mitsi the female stalker hunter and big heavyweight Katzi. Is he hunting, too? I am not sure about that. During daytime, when he is not sleeping, he follows my wife and gives her those tragic looks of total love.

Mice are aplenty here. Must be. They are basic fare for barn-owls, called white lady in French, for the buzzards, other owls of all kind and naturally for the dozens of village cats that are generally kept but not fed by the local farmers.

If God has created mice he must have done so just to supply food to scores of other more fortunate animals. Thanks therefore for not having been created on that precise part of the food chain. Thank you.

Well, that's not the subject but it might be useful to give it some thought.

So, with our two predators over here, mice don't have a chance. Nearly every morning I find some dead and/or mutilated corpses on the premises.

Unfortunately, the situation changes when it rains at night. Cats don't like water . Without being sure, I think rain does not keep them from hunting but they prefer to have dinner in dry places, meaning here in this house. And as everybody knows, cats like to play, fooling around with the dinner prior to eating it.

Next morning of a rainy day, I find Katzi and Mitsi sitting in front of a bookshelf or another piece of furniture. Miaw, miaow miaow or mie, mie, mie, meaning mousy has escaped from the playground and is now in hiding.

At this precise moment, my wife swings into action. She is a great hunter, too. Mousy has no chance. As a indoor hunter, she does not carry a gun but but a dish towel plus sometimes a coat hanger or a broom stick. Boum, the towel zeros in on the little beast and some seconds later it is wrapped in and carried out of the house. Second chance for the mouse to go on living a mousy life. Or get caught again by our two home predators.

Katzi and Mitsi are mere onlookers at that stage. For them, towel hunting is far too fast. The mouse is already back to nature for a considerable time and our cats are still prowling in front of the book shelf looking for the vanished mouse.

As to me, I am just onlooker. Like any male lion (I am born in August) I don't hunt but get a share of the food.

Heating the house

2007-11-27T09:18:00.000+01:00

We had a rotten summer over here in Cantal, a splendid September/October and now, instead of going through a peaceful automn, nature kickstarted winter time.

Low peaks were -9°C and my wife clamours for winter tyres on her car (Its my job to fix them). Global warming is bypassing us and has been replaced by something I would call global chaos weather.

The entire house is heated by wood, the electric wall heaters are only for emergency use or in the bathroom, in the morning.

The main idea of this text is to pay homage to the kind of heating generated by oak logs. The place is warm but it is NOT the warmth you get from a central heating system.

This warmth is like a winter kiss, gentle and firm. Wood heat radiates right through you and those everchanging flames behind the glass wall makes you feel splendid. In fact, the feeling is difficult to explain, like colour to a blind.

Here is a photo of our insert and I hope everybody appreciates those drying babushkas on top. They are the cherry on the cake.

Late in the evening, I let the fire die out. In order to achieve this I shift all the burning stuff in the middle and that gives rise to a kind of small size fireworks.

I am so glad we have this instead of the central heating system I knew all my life in Berlin, Brussels and Paris.

ON STRIKE

2007-11-15T16:28:00.000+01:00

The first strikes happened in Europe - as far as I know - around 1850 and the main reason was the same as the one that occurred in ancient Egypt, more than 3000 years ago "we are hungry".

Right now, here in France, all the public transport has come to a standstill, trains, subways, buses.

The reason for this is quite clear: these transport people have a special pension scheme. They retire at 50 or 55 and get a pension equivalent to 100 percent of their last salary. The money for this comes from taxes meaning from all those other working people who retire at 60/65 and get 50 to 70 percent of their last salary.

During the electoral campaign, The newly elected French president promised to end this situation and now he is trying to implement this. Thus the strike.

In Germany we have a strike of the train conductors, freight trains and passenger trains. Those conductors created first a trade union for themselves and now ask for a 30 percent rise of salary. The German Railway refused, thus the strike.

Has this anything to do with "we are hungry"? I don't think so. This is pure blackmail carried out by a group of people who happen to own something like a "joker".

On the French and the German telly, I see the faces of these trade union bosses. I see glee and triumph there, kind of "fuck you, we shall overcome". "We'll get you, shell out the money or kick the bucket."

That is what I see on their faces. If the country comes to its knees, they don't care. They want the money and pronto, a soft life for their members, featherbedding paid by others who work harder and longer.

ON HYPOCRISY

2007-11-03T17:02:00.000+01:00

This goes on for months and months. Nearly every day we are being told by our faithful media how big efforts are being deployed to prevent the Mullah regime in Iran to develop the Atom Bomb. This big mushroom explosive that could terminate human species.

The Americans talk to the British who talk to the Chinese who consult the Russians who speak to the French and they are all of the same opinion: the Iranians should not be allowed to develop the Atom Bomb. No Sir. Far too dangerous, they could use it. Or better, it is even sure they would use the Atom Bomb. Because those Iranians they are not such good and honorable people as we are, they are not feeling so responsible as we do!

It's such a pleasure to hear from all these responsible nations and people how hard they are working to prevent humanity to destroy itself via the Iranians.

However, all these months I am waiting to hear from one of those humanitarians this: in order to give an example, we are destroying our own Atom Bombs stockpiled at home.

LONG LIFE - BE AN OPTIMIST

2007-10-11T10:06:00.000+02:00

Some days ago I saw an article at Frieda's blog INSPIRE, MOVE & TOUCH that made me think ever since. She mentioned a book "Health at 100" where it is said that people with positive outlook live longer than negative oriented.

Reading this the normal question is to which category I belong. According to my wife I am p. but as to me and myself, I feel I am both, it just depends on the situation and what is going on.

Being negative means you think no good comes out of this or that. Next, it gives you the impression to understand fully what is going on without dreaming about a happy fairy tale ending.

Here is a poem from Bertold Brecht that illustrates the idea (my translation - I do hope it still has some meaning)

I have to admit: I don't have any hope.
The blind talk about a way out.
I see.

When all errors have been used up
The last companion sitting in front of you
Is nothingness.

That's not black, it's bleak and in fact he made it only till 58. So be warned.

A positive attitude towards life could certainly be illustrated by the famous words said by Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago:

Who loves not woman, wine and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.

This guy loved life, don't you think? Here is another one from Martin Luther (the one who lived 500 years ago, not the one who was killed in the sixties):

If I would know doomsday coming tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.

Last not least, let me tell a little joke. A patient came to his doctor and said:

"Doctor, I wish to live till 100 and in perfect health". And the doctor : "well, do you smoke?"
"No "
"Do you drink?"
"No"
"Women"
"No"
"Well", said the doctor, "you might live that long but just tell me WHY"