vailian

2011-03-21T23:12:00.001+01:00

Everyone is posting pictures of the "super moon" so I guess I have to join in.

Did this one from my balcony, night before last.

Vacation

2010-08-11T19:24:00.002+02:00

Spent my vacation motoring around the Cote d'Azure and then a week in the Austrian Alps. France was fascinating but expensive and hot and crowded.

I can thoroughly recommend the Austrian Alps. We got a half of an old farmhouse for a week, it could sleep 7 and was very reasonable. And the views!! (this is just the view out the FRONT door!!)

We went on hikes every day, about 6 hours each, the brilliant thing about hiking in Germany or Austria or Switzerland, at the top of every mountain there is a fantastic view AND a wooden chalet serving beer and meals.

The New Piece

2010-04-04T11:19:00.003+02:00

My new piece actually got done in time... well, just barely in time. It was finished about a week before rehearsals started, but I still had to print up parts and distribute them. I was grateful to our orchestral librarians, who kindly helped with this part of it.
Such a lot of work went into it, it lasts about 12 minutes and is relatively complicated. There was a lot of resentment in the orchestra about having to play a new piece, and one from a basically unknown composer. I was very nervous before the first rehearsal, felt like a soldier must feel going into battle-- there is an excitement but also dread, knowing there will be violence but hope that one will come out of it all unscathed and maybe a little victorious.

But it was a victory, of course on a pretty modest scale, but the house was full (2000 people) at all three concerts and the reception was very good, there were cheers and 4 curtain calls each time.

And it has affected the way my colleagues see me, I think-- not just as another player but as a serious composer.

Very good for the ego. I am perfectly insufferable this week.

Composing--Decomposing

2010-02-09T15:43:00.002+01:00

Composing is a very lonely job. You don't talk to anyone for fear the wispy sounds you have in your head get blown away.

It is kind of like the story of Pygmalion. You have a block of marble, it is smooth and promising, and you know the girl of your dreams might be inside. You chisel away gently, but don't know if you are smoothing her thighs or putting a metal point through her heart.

You check your tools and maybe buy a new set. Are the old ones too rough? Maybe rough tools are better for her.

You have revealed her outlines and know there are some very pretty parts of her, but will she come to life or lie there cold and inert when it comes time to push her out of the studio into the warm sun?

I am ready to push her out very soon, whether she is ready or not. I know she is not perfect, but I am not sure I will make her more beautiful by fussing with her accessories.

I hope the people I have not spoken to for weeks now will remember who I am, that they will forgive my silence.

And that they and the performers and the audience will be gentle with her. March 21.

2009-11-01T17:46:00.000+01:00

Catch the looks, smells and sounds of autumn now.

Forced myself to go out this afternoon and don't regret it.

I could have done without the venison schnitzel at the Forest-Cafe though; it was not especially nice.

Have worked out that if I schedule my time and energy perfectly from now until Christmas I still won't get my ironing done OR the bathroom cleaned.

Everyone who knows me also knows I love my job and feel very lucky to be doing what I do. But sometimes it still seems like very hard work.

Obsolesence Frustration

2009-09-18T21:24:00.001+02:00

Finally find some time this week to start working on a major rewrite of an old composition of mine. It is scheduled to be performed by a big orchestra, and I have promised to get the score an parts out as soon as possible.
I wrote the piece in the 90s, and carefully stored the files on the most modern devices: the floppy disc, and the Orb disc.
The Orb Disk? OK, so the Orb disappeared in months. But I had the floppies.I had been assured that the floppy disk would be around for centuries.
How was I to know that these disks would be overtaken by CDs? Remember that in those days, the largest hard drives had a capacity of 2 megabytes!!! I knew every system file on my drive by its first name.
OK, I have a keen appreciation for progress, and did not protest when the CD arrived on the scene. I even copied many, many floppy disks onto the new medium, and patiently put my disks into storage when the floppy drive became extinct.
And I noticed (because this is the kind of thing that I notice) that the program I had used to write my piece was no longer being updated. I promptly purchased a copy of the music program that was its successor. There was a promise on the box that the new program was perfectly compatible with the files generated with such love by the old program.
What I neglected to do was to print out clean copies of all my pieces onto hopelessly oldfashioned sheets of paper.
This has proven to be a disastrous oversight.
I had copied some-- but, as it turns out, not all-- of my music files onto CDs. The composition in question had made it onto a CD, but only in a very early and incomplete version. The original floppy disks were put into storage about 10 years ago, and I have no idea, where.
At least, I thought optimistically, I can rescue at least some of the work from the early version. No such luck-- the original music notation program had been aimed at the serious classical composer, but its successor only understood pop music and philosophies collided, seriously. My painstakingly notated rhythms were heedlessly smoothed into values which could be easily understood by Miss Brittany Spears. .. the detailed performance instructions were mercilessly deleted as superfluous.
I do have some copies of some of the original instrumental parts, but the full score printout is missing. It is horribly frustrating.

What is the moral of this story?

Try to take an inventory of what you know your kids will want to have. Believe me, it doesn't include your tax returns from 2001 or your emails from the co-workers about the scheduling.
If you are thinking of passing on some pictures or videos, think about how they could be stored. We are using DVDs at the moment, but there is no question but that after 15 years or so they will begin to degrade. The external hard drives are very convienient, but who is willing to bet that those motors will still be reliable in a dozen years?
So maybe you are uploading to a server? How many of those will still be online in 5 years?

What are you doing about this problem? Any suggestions?

Health Care in Germany--My Experiences

2009-08-19T12:37:00.000+02:00

As an expat living in Germany, I get asked by friends and relatives to explain the health system here. I cannot back my experiences up with statistics, and I don't know if I am typical, but will try to detail some of my dealings with the German medical apparatus.
First some background: I have lived here for over 25 years and --by necessity-- have become fluent in the language. This gives me an advantage over other foreign workers who may not be able to express themselves adequately (this is a big problem among the Turkish population, who often never learn the language). However, my written German is not error-free, so I will usually get someone to check my grammar if I have to write an official letter.
My children were born here, so my first dealings with the system were to do with maternity issues. My wife began to have premature labor pains in the second trimester, and so it was recommended that she be medicated. She was given a room in the hospital and stayed there for 5 weeks. By which time she was so excrutiatingly bored that she decided to come home. The hospital stay didn't cost us anything.
When she went into labor, we just drove to the nearest hospital. There was a midwife on duty, and a doctor. The midwife was experienced and skilled, the doctor was a young woman probably only a couple of years out of medical school. It was funny to watch, because the doctor would make some suggestion and the midwife would say, "Nonsense!" and go back to chatting with me about opera.I was encouraged to stay for the birth.
The birth went without complications, and after delivery, they gave my wife a glass of champagne and took her back to her room while the baby was examined.
They stayed in the hospital for about a week, which seems to be a normal length of time. No charges for anything.
My boys have been pretty healthy, but we have used the system for dental work (fillings are free; crowns depend on what kind of material you want-- the silver ones cost nothing, but they charge for ceramic); one boy had a hernia operation, the other had some asthma. No charges, either for the examinations or the operation, and the medicines have only a nominal charge.
A couple of years ago, I had a pinched nerve in my neck. The doctor recommended having it operated on because it was affecting my playing. I could have had the operation locally but decided to have it done in Heidelberg at a private clinic because it could be done a week later, whereas at the local hospital I would have had to have waited a couple of months. The operation, which I then paid myself, cost roughly $5000, but that included all the fees and hospital stay; and I could deduct the cost from my income taxes.

The cost of health insurance here is based on your income. This means that the higher income brackets subsidize the lower ones. I could have joined a "private" scheme, which is slightly cheaper and gives you access to a greater range of specialists, but I made the conscious decision to stay with the "public" insurance because I find it such an improvement over the American system-- I don't mind paying a bit more to show my support for the scheme.

In Germany, there is far less reliance on medicines, except of course for chronic diseases. I have never heard of anyone (for example) getting drugs for ADD, and the use of tranquilizers is extremely rare. (Maybe it helps that many people have a beer at lunch?) I am always amazed at the array of drugs I find in people's bathrooms in America.

Why is it then that in America so much more money flows into the heath system, but the benefits are nowhere to be seen? Here are some statistics:

Looking at the World Health Organization’s Core Health Indicators, Germany has better numbers than the US in most health care related statistics. Here are some highlights:
Life expectancy at birth, for both sexes combined, is 80 years in Germany and 78 in the US
Healthy life expectancy at birth, for both sexes combined, is 72 years in Germany, 69 years in the US
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 births) for Germany is 4.0, the US is 7.0
Hospital beds (per 10000 people) is 83 in Germany and 32 in the US
Physician density (per 10000 people) is 34 in Germany and 26 in the US
Total expenditure on health as percentage of GDP for Germany is 10.7%, the US is 15.2%
and Per capita expenditure on health is $3250 in Germany and $6350 in the US

My feeling (no statistics to back this up, this is just a theory) is that in America, because the cost of medical care is so high, and so many medicines are available in supermarkets (here even asperin has to be purchased from a licensed pharmacy) that people tend to overuse drugs and invent their own prescriptions, leaving the underlying problems untreated until they are in a much worse condition.
Added to this is the pervasive medical litigation, which drives malpractice insurance costs very high for workers in the health professions. Germany's legal system precludes working for contingency fees and class action suits. Legal fees are strictly regulated and are required to have some relation to the amounts involved in the case.
So what disadvantages does the German system have?
In hospital, unless you pay an extra fee, you will be sharing a room with 2 or 3 other people.
Extra or unusual treatments will generally not be covered.
Cosmetic surgery is not covered unless your doctor can convince the insurer that it is really necessary.
Lawyers are not generally filthy rich.

Summer, ongoing

2009-07-21T19:43:00.002+02:00

Had a great course in Croatia, now in Berlin for a week before going to my next one near Leipzig.

Free Day

2009-05-28T10:01:00.001+02:00

Don't you hate those days that have big gaps in them so you can get all those things done that you have been avoiding for weeks?
Then you get blogged down in Facebook etc and the morning seeps away like sand in an hourglass.
My son has joined a Facebook group "telling Dick Cheney to shut the hell up". There is a grassroots movement to declare a National Day of Joy that George and Dick are gone.
It is 9:38 and I am still in my pyjamas. Yesterday I got a GPS thingy (the Germans call it a Navi) which I am hoping will be useful on my bicycle.
Last night we played a Mozart Mass at the cathedral. Mozart is amazing and magical. It was a benefit concert and was (surprisingly) a packed audience.
Mozart is there to remind us that humans are not all bad.

View from My Window

2009-05-24T09:24:00.003+02:00

The sun is shining, I cancelled my teaching this morning, I want to get a whole lot of stuff done but I feel nothing but inertia. I just want to sit still and resist the urge to get dressed. Anyone else ever feel like this?

I live high up in a fine old house, and this morning I can see others being industrious..

or perhaps not...

Scandal. Almost.

2009-05-15T18:21:00.001+02:00

Our latest opera production nearly didn’t happen… the director saw fit to fill it with so many scenes of violence and rape and pillage --and dozens of people running around the stage half and full naked --that we got national notoriety even before the premiere performance.

I don’t know what the director had in mind. Most of the cast are of the opinion that he had a very miserable childhood and needs round-the-clock psychological counseling. My own theory is that he was hoping for a scandal for the publicity angle.

In any case I don’t intend to help his career by mentioning his name in this post.

We were all geared for the worst on opening night, but in the end the violence was no worse than you see on an average TV evening what with various war news and your run-of-the-mill crime series. The singers were good and it actually had good reviews. The director got a lively mix of cheers and loud boos, no worse than usual at a premiere.

Why anyhow is it considered worse to depict sex onstage than any number of murders? Can someone explain this to me?

Friends...

2009-05-11T11:16:00.002+02:00

What do these movies have in common?

The Mission
Willow
Young Guns
Field of Dreams
The Patriot Games
Clear and Present Danger
Braveheart
Jumanji
Legends of the Fall
Apollo 13
The Devils Own
Titanic
The Mask of Zorro
The Shipping News
The Missing
Mighty Joe Young
Beyond Borders
Four Feathers
Troy

They all have a musical soundtrack featuring my old friend from my London days Tony Hinnigan, who was the cellist in my string quartet. We were quite successful in a student kind of way and had visions of world fame but the quartet fizzled out as we all realized that we actually had to make a living somehow or other; and playing chamber music, lovely as it was, was not the way to put food on the table, especially if you had a growing family-- which I, at that point, did not yet have, but 2 of the others did.

Tony just has to be about the most versatile musician I know-- classically trained cellist who found his international niche in playing whistles. You know, like "penny whistle" or ocarina or pan pipes or any of those things... he has hundreds of them. He also plays dozens of obscure ethnic drums and other things you hit, but in a musical way. Any time a movie composer of international repute needs something that is neither rock guitar nor piano nor straight symphony orchestra, he may end up needing Tony. His first big success was playing all the flutes in the movie Titanic, and of course single-handedly making the film the world-wide blockbuster it became.

He has not lost sight of his roots though, and still teaches master classes in classic cello repertoire, doing Beethoven and Mozart-- but if you are lucky enough to attend one of his classes, make sure to follow him to the pub afterwards, where over a beer or 3 he will tell amazing stories and probably at some point pull a whistle out of his pocket.

And his blog is amazingly funny and well written.

Sad Days for the GOP

2009-05-10T22:00:00.002+02:00

Headline this evening:

Cheney Says He Favors Limbaugh Over Powell as Model Republican

This says a lot about how our former Vice-President sees the world. A bigoted hate-monger is preferable to an intelligent and respected military man.

Preserving History

2009-05-03T19:16:00.000+02:00

Am trying to back up my pictures onto an external harddrive... it is taking a long time; apparently I took some thirty thousand pictures in 2008 alone.

Took my daughter to the Roman History Museum here this afternoon. It is a splendid place filled with artifacts from the pre-historic and Roman periods found in and around Cologne.
She said, wonderingly, "Isn't it amazing that something becomes more valuable the older it is?"
After but a tiny pause for thought, she added, "I guess it is nearly time to sell you!"

Misery

2009-04-20T17:34:00.002+02:00

I love Spring! But it has come so suddenly this year that every flowering thing known to Man has decided to forcibly expend its pollen in my direction. I have Hay Fever in all orfices, cannot breathe or think.

Anyone have a solution?

2009-04-08T14:25:00.001+02:00

Mashed together this video because I thought the boys' voices were so cute at that age...

Education

2009-03-31T08:30:00.002+02:00

A series of posts by Tatiana detailing her fury at dealing with narrow-mindedness in her children's new school made me think about the differences in school systems between here and the US, and her latest post shows her considering alternative schools, specifically Waldorf Schools, which are quite common in Germany and western Europe.
I left a comment on her blog, because I have some "issues" with the Steiner system, at least as it is practiced here:

I can really feel your frustration with the system-- and it is undeniable that the Peter Principle (people rise in an organisation until they land in the position for which they are not competent, at which point they languish for the rest of their career) is especially evident in smaller communities where there is not a large pool to draw on.
But as someone with an education background, I have become pretty sceptical of the Waldorf/Steiner schools.
For many years now, I have lived in areas that have alternative schools (mostly Waldorf), and have worked with students from those schools, even teaching part-time in one of them near Cologne.
I find that the orthodoxy of the state schools is merely replaced by another in the Steiner system, and it makes me very uncomfortable to walk through the halls of the Waldorf school and see that all the student drawings have to be in washy pastel.
But the worst thing for me (as a violin teacher) is that the Waldorf schools have a philosophy that discourages discipline, apparently-- I see evidence of this repeatedly with my students.
My advice these days to parents who ask me about schools is that it depends on the child's character: if he is naturally the type that always gets up on time, dresses neatly, has homework done on schedule, loves reading and is articulate (not a very common type, I know!), then Steiner schools are ideal because they allow a lot of intellectual freedom.
If on the other hand the child is lazy and sloppy, does only the essentials in school, and finds it hard to stay motivated and disciplined, then the Waldorf school will not do much to change this. (I, tragically, fall quite squarely into this category)
And an interesting thing is that here in Germany where the Abitur (high school graduation exams) are nationally standardized and quite rigourous, the kids who go to the Waldorf schools often go into a complete panic going into their final year when they realize that all the stuff they were supposed to be learning in the last 6 years they never got around to studying-- many of them then change to a state school for the last year.

How I Ruined my Child's Life

2009-03-27T21:56:00.003+01:00

My daughter, who is 11 and doesn't live with me, went into shock when she saw my cell phone.
"You have the same phone as me! How awfully HUMILIATING!"

Side Hustle

2009-03-27T21:02:00.003+01:00

Heather, now in England, mentioned how she enjoyed doing little jobs on the side, not necessarily connected with her profession, and it made me try to remember what odd jobs, some quite strangely unconnected with my job, which is playing the violin. She calls it side hustles, I don't kinow if there is a better term.

OK, so doing a paper route as a kid is not so unusual, a lot of boys my age did that too.

But when I started college and had to support myself and pay my tuition, it was soon evident that I was going to have to use my imagination-- there are 6 kids in my family, and we all went to college; and my dad said, "I will pay the first semester tuition and housing, then you are on your own."

These are some of the things I did to earn money in college:

Play in an orchestra.

Tune autoharps for unmusical music education students.

Sell childrens clothes and women's bras in a department store.

Housesitting.

Teaching the violin at the University of California Davis.

Play for Jack Benny in the casinos in Reno.

Play background music in restaurants in Aspen in exchange for meals.

(There were probably other things I did, but I have forgotten or repressed them)

After finishing college I started working as a musician but somehow I have kept on doing odd things on the side. These are some of the things I have actually been paid for:

Taking photographs of people and things

Doing graphic work.

Last week I did a calligraphic project-- it has long been a hobby of mine but this was the first time I got paid.

Translating part of an art book

Doing acoustical research

writing computer programs

repairing computers

Organizing music festivals

Web design

CD covers

Various translation projects in German, French, and English

Teaching specialized computer music applications

Writing music

Managing rental properties

I think all of us are multitasking most of the time, what do you do to help make ends meet?

What do you do with a Free Day?

2009-03-23T20:58:00.002+01:00

I practiced for the rehearsals tomorrow. I bought a presentation folder for my parchment. I decided to learn to play the piano: read through 2 Mozart sonatas, a book of pieces for piano by Grieg, and 2 Chopin etudes.

The poor neighbors.

2009-03-23T14:09:00.003+01:00

I got tickets for one of my flatmates for Salome the other night... he brought his new girlfriend, who had never been to an opera before.
Afterwards, she was quite pleasant about it, but later she complained bitterly:
"Here I got a new dress and put on makeup, and where does he take me? To a beheading!!"

My latest Project

2009-03-19T13:35:00.003+01:00

This is what I have been doing during my odd time off over the past 2 and a half weeks. It may not look like much but it took a long time and was a lot of work.

The vellum I had to order from the last place in Germany that still does calligraphic skins. Then had to decide on a layout for the text, and also the type of calligraphy to use-- I settled on a quite conservative form of Fraktur because I thought it was the most appropriate for the occasion. The letters are all hand drawn (putting a big calfskin into my injet printer was just not feasable) and the decoration and sketch are also freehand. (You can click on the picture to get a closeup view)

I am sure real calligraphers do much more careful planning-- I tend to just sweep with the pen and hope it looks all right.

Never having worked on vellum before, I was pretty nervous, as the skin cost over $100, and once started, you can't go back. Unlike a computer, it is not possible to erase or correct. Once the pen hits the surface, you just have to keep going.

The monks who used to do books before Gutenberg always said prayers that they wouldn't misspell before they started work every day.

I Go Shopping for Shoes

2009-03-17T23:03:00.002+01:00

I hate shopping for clothing-- shirts, suits, trousers, shoes-- but I had a couple of hours between rehearsals yesterday and really needed some new shoes.

Went to shoe store. That is always a good start. (Actually this is not true: I first looked at the shoe sections of 2 department stores, didn't see anything remotely like I wanted)

Saleslady (competent and eager) "Can I help you?"

Me: Probably not, I am notoriously difficult.

SLady: What are you looking for?

Me: Well, I want a pair of shoes and they have to fulfill certain criteria:

They have to be leather. I don't like plastic shoes.

They should be black or at least dark blue or brown.

I need to be able to put them on without looking at them or touching them with my hands, while seated in an airplane.

They need to be able to cope with snow in Minneapolis and the beach in Honolulu.

I expect to climb modest mountians in them, in hot weather, but the tread on the soles must not be so deep that they capture the mud and doggy poo....and they should be able to survive the occasional mountain stream.

They shouldn't be heavy-- there are 90 steps up to my apartment.

Another essential: they must not look out of place on the stage of a classical music concert.

In addition, it would be nice if they were very cheap.

Saleslady: (speechless)

OK, I will Try

2009-03-13T16:27:00.002+01:00

I have been getting many complaints from my faithful readers, both of them, that I am not writing enough in this blog.

So I am going to try a bit harder. The thing is, I don't know what to write. This is either because I have so much to write that I haven't the time nor the energy to start, or life is so utterly tedious that I don't waht to bore you. Or that the things I want to write about are just too embarassing.

Many bloggers are good at writing witty and pertinent things about their daily lives.

So what has happened today that caused me some excitement?

Well, the most exciting thing that has happened today (so far, of course; I am not ruling out the possibility that something REALLY exciting could happen yet later today): for lunch I made myself a baked fish and potatoes casserole because I was REALLY hungry, and boy did it smell good! When I took it out of the oven, it all FELL ON THE FLOOR! I proceeded to make certain remarks which are better left unblogged.

Now that floor does get cleaned from time to time, but not all that often. Terrible quandary: scrape the fish casserole (which still smelled mighty good!) off the less than sterile floor (trying not to think of all the places my shoes have been the last week), or start all over and make macaroni and cheese (Kraft brand, imported from America for just such emergencies)?

Local Tragedy-- Local Miracle

2009-03-12T00:55:00.003+01:00

This rather forbidding-looking building is the Cologne City Archives. It houses local records and documents of historical interest going back to the 13th century. I ride my bicycle past it every day at least once, and the high school my boys graduated from is on the other side of the street.

The city of Cologne has been building a new stretch of subway system under this street, which by the way was the old Roman road from Cologne to Bonn-- the street has been a construction site for the last ten years and we have all been hoping the new subway line (which is very short and seems to only serve to enrich some local construction companies) would be finished on schedule next year.

Well, forget that. Last Tuesday the sandy wet earth under the City Archive building poured into the subway trench without warning, and within minutes the building collapsed completely.

It is a tragedy because there were thousands of priceless and irreplaceable documents stored here. It is a tragedy because the high school (on the right in the picture) is going to have to be torn down (along with several old apartment buildings).

The subway construction has been halted, because there are fears that the safety of the whole route is endangered. And it has emerged that the Archives were not insured-- the building was considered too safe.

But it is a miracle because only one person died (a baker's apprentice, who was asleep in a neighboring building that was in the path of the collapsing building). If it had happened even a half an hour earlier, the street would have been full of students going home from school. (One of my students included).

And if it had happened a week earlier, the death toll could have been enormous-- the local Mardi Gras parade goes right by here and there were hundreds of people lining the street.

We are all grateful that there were no more deaths or injuries. But it is going to have an effect on my orchestra, because we have been planning to have the opera house renovated starting next year (it has not been repaired since it was built in 1958) but it now looks like the city cannot afford to do it.

How to Save the World

2009-02-27T17:57:00.003+01:00

Maybe I am very stupid, but this desperate game governments all over the world are playing called "Rescue the Banks" seems to be designed to save the greedy idiots who got us into this in the first place. Tax revenues handed over in great dollops to financial institutions will certainly be used first to finance the life styles of bankers, and only if there is something left over, will be available for lending.

My solution is as simple as pie: if the bank is really broke, than it should declare bankruptcy. If the government deems it essential, it can take it over and start by firing all employees (thus voiding their bloated contracts) and hire back those who seem honest and competent, but this time at normal salary levels.

Meanwhile, if the government's aim really is to provide loans, why can't they do it directly (as they did for a long time, and successfully, with Fanny Mae), rather than continuing the proven corruption of the banking industry?

Or am I missing something vital here?

2009-02-22T21:07:00.000+01:00

Even the policemen paint their cars and wear funny hats...

only the horses are allowed to keep their dignity

Carneval!!

2009-02-22T19:29:00.000+01:00

These are some of the things you do at Carneval...

Get dressed up funny...

Funny as in ridiculous...

But some look lovely even as vampires!

It is that time of year again...

2009-02-19T17:11:00.000+01:00

As every year, Karneval brings Cologne to a standstill (as I reported here and here... and last year I had special vistors from Carol's family).
Traditionally, Carneval starts on the Thursday before Mardi Gras, at precisely eleven minutes past eleven. This day is known as "Weiberfasnacht", and women do strange and inebriated things. (The normally staid and dignified wife of the American consul in Germany told me she is planning to get dressed up and join a bunch of ladies who are going to storm the Dusseldorf City Hall. )
I was in the local home repairs shop this morning shortly after 11, and the salesgirls were already dressed up and handing out free beers to anyone who looked vaguely over the age of 15. And partaking freely themselves, I might add.
The schoolkids are let out at noon on this day and begin wandering around with their friends, (picture above in front of my apartment), and by evening there is a thick carpet of empty bottles, like new-fallen snow, on the streets in town.
But the atmosphere is generally good-natured and there is surprisingly little trouble.
I am not complaining. We also get the next 4 days off.

2009-02-16T11:53:00.002+01:00

Realized with a jolt that all of the cleaning women I have employed here have had university degrees. (This could be extended to include my ex-wife, but we won't go into that)

They were also all foreign.

I try very hard not to wander around cyberspace reading new blogs, although the temptation is enormous. (For a start, the varieties of English that you find-- try reading teenager blogs from the Phillipines, for example). I stick to reading the ones I know, for the most part. Otherwise I would never get ANYTHING done.

People are always interesting. Some can express themselves better than others, OK. But I love following the days of people I have come to know through their posts. Some blogs, though, stop you in your tracks, with nearly every new post.

Take this blog, for example, written by a girl living, I guess, somewhere in Pennsylvania. Today's entry:

WHAT DID YOU THERE

We were in a tiny blue tiled kitchen, we were like the last people left in the world. Thinking about how much fucking and childbirth was going to be required of me to repopulate the country, feeling tense over the fish scales and guts on the cutting board. I put olive oil in the pan. All we had besides the pan and the fish and olive oil was a bar of chocolate. My big toe had been stubbed three mornings in a row by the grade change onto the tile. I kept it lifted off the floor while cooking, and it was my private joke how beat-up and sad this purple toe looked.

When he came in I asked him to dump the fish guts outside. He didn't. Him. You. You know that I only keep up this stupid blog so that you can find me whenever you want. If you read it a month from now, ask yourself, what crazy generous act is going to bring me back?

Instead of trotting off with the fish, my loyal shaggy dog, you reached for the open bottle of olive oil and lifted it above my head. When the heavy stream hit my head, some neuron attempted to smack you with fishy hands but my brain shut itself off and I could only stand. The oil was warm. I closed by eyes, it fingered down. Then we were sliding all over, I bruised my elbows, we made a fucking mess. Your dick slipped in just fine, which was a great relief, because you never know, when you are stuck with the last man on earth, whether his piece will fit. When you turned away I circled the scar on your shoulder around and around with my index finger until the oil sank into it.

That night the little ants that lined up in the tile cracks made a move onto my thighs. I could feel their confusion on my hands as I swiped them away in sleep, but I didn't have the heart to wake up and get rid of them completely; they only wanted a bit of our juice to take back to their fat queen.

This woman doesn't allow comments on her blog, for which I am very grateful. She is a musician, I can feel her wavelength. But I am very glad I don't know her personally, somehow. Where does she find the courage to write these things?

Birthday Trip Slide Show

2009-02-04T15:39:00.002+01:00

alpbach

A very nice break from the routine in Cologne... I hadn't been skiing in some 12 years, so I was worried but aside from a few falls and crashes, I did OK for someone of my advanced age.
I did notice, though, that getting up after sitting down in the snow seemed to take longer than it did 12 years ago!

Where I went for my Birthday

2009-01-30T14:22:00.000+01:00

More to follow...

The End of an Era

2009-01-18T23:52:00.002+01:00

You have to feel sorry for President Bush. He is now (slowly) realizing that he doesn't have the popular support he thought he had, and to remedy that for his posterity, he is establishing a Presidential Library and a Public Policy Center in Dallas to try to justify some of the controversial actions that he was responsible for during his tenure.

He admits to having made some questionable choices during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but is steadfast in his defence of his course after 9/11. I think that the events of the hurricane were a genuine miscalculation, and can be excused. Not so the philosophy that guided his policies after the events of September 2001.

I am hoping that during his retirement he will be able to answer questions from the American people, rather than having his input filtered by a synchophantic entourage. If I were allowed to ask him a few questions, I would put these to him:

Mr. Bush, you espouse the spread of democracy in the world, especially in the Middle East. Why is it then, that you want it everywhere except in Saudi Arabia and in the Gaza Strip?

Mr. Bush, you appeal to the law of justice and equality for all people of the world. Why does this not apply to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay?

Mr. Bush, you have deeply-held Christian beliefs, which include moral tenents. Does this preclude you from accepting the deeply-held moral beliefs of Muslims?

I know I will not get answers to these questions, but as I watch the inauguration of Mr. Obama on Tuesday, I am hopeful that I won't have to ask similar questions of him in 8 years.

Holidays

2009-01-04T22:33:00.001+01:00

It is unusual here for it to stay cold for more than a few days... but we have had a cold snap and on sunday EVERYONE was out on the various frozen lakes and canals.
I was persuaded to put on some borrowed ice skates, even though I have not been on skates for 20 years or so and was NEVER a good skater. I protested loudly that my Skaters License had expired, but I actually managed to stay more or less in a standing postion for the best part of twenty minutes.

Glorious.

The swans, who normally have complete command of the lake, were huddled resentfully in the one remaining puddle of open water, casting malicious looks at the blissful skaters.

Where Has He Been?

2008-12-23T10:06:00.005+01:00

I envy all those people who can put out blog entries on a regular basis-- I have permanent Bloggers Block which makes me agonize over what I can or should put up here... I constantly find myself thinking, "Oh, it would be great to put those pictures up" but then (because most of my pictures are of people) I resist because I don't want to do it without their permissions.
That said, because it is Christmas Eve Eve, I am reporting in here because I don't want you all to think I have died or lost interest.
There have been... things... happening here, most notably I am now half a thyroid lighter. This was a real scare but thankfully unfounded, and I now have the uncommon luxury of being able to draw a salary and not having to work for it, until the end of December! I love the German health system!
My Christmas tree is now in place and decorated, much to the horror of the Germans, who traditionally don't put up the tree until Christmas Eve.
I baked my first Christmas cookies, under the stern supervision of the Ossie, for whom there is no deviation from recipes.

We will be going to her sister's family for Christmas Eve (as I have for the last few years), I alternately anticipate and dread it-- the Christmas Cult (as even she calls it) is rigidly adhered to; it involves meticulous rituals of the unwrapping of presents and takes hours. But on the other hand the food is excellent and it is the closest thing I have to family here in Europe.
There will be lots of loud arguments (mostly about differing interpretations of the proper Christmas Eve rituals) and --for Americans-- rather strange presents: there will be (if the past Christmases are any indication) nothing made of plastic, nothing made in China, nothing that takes batteries. Books. There will be books. And homemade things. Odd little sculptures.
I will try to give a resume when it is all over, but now I have to go out shopping, try desperately to find something that is neither plastic nor made in China.
Wish me luck.

An Institute I am Not expecting Great Things of

2008-12-06T20:06:00.002+01:00

Soon-to-be-ex-President George is working hard already to protect his fragile legacy.CNN reported today:

Bush and his handlers are mapping out this phase of the president's post-White House years. Plans are well under way for a "Freedom Institute" that will aim to promote democracies abroad.

The institute, where Bush is expected to play a significant role, is expected to be unaffiliated with an academic institution. Its members are expected to be analysts whose views are in line with the neoconservative outlook that shaped the president's approach to foreign policy.

"This is going to be Bush vision." Brinkley said of the institute. "Bush has never liked the academics, and this is a nonacademic institute aimed at cutting to the core of things: only pro-democracy foot soldiers who are green-lit by George and Laura Bush are in the mix."

As someone who is not "green-lit" (whatever that may be) by these folks, I don't expect to be in the mix. But it appears he is putting together an organisation for making statements and judgements about world affairs, but is excluding anyone who has any kind of expertise.

This seems to me an exercise in idiocy.

Thanksgiving, Belated; Male Rivalry

2008-12-02T00:18:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, I took in a homeless American clarinetist, Mike, whose marriage is not functioning properly... anyhow, he loves to cook, and asked if I didn't want to organize a Thanksgiving dinner. OK, I said.
I am not a great cook; my repertoire extends to hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. But in the event, I found myself cooking a 12 lb turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with maple syrup and walnut caramel sauce. Mike did squash, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.
Mike brought home the turkey. "Give me the giblets and I will make the stuffing and the gravy", he said, "and you can cook the bird."
"Where are the giblets?" I asked. "Don't know, look inside the bird", he said.
I rummaged around inside and found a little packet and handed it gingerly to him.
"Where is the other kidney?" he asked indignantly. "how should I know," I said.
"those Germans have stolen one of my kidneys," he sputtered. I should add that he says he needs to drink while cooking. He was working on the red wine.
We never did find the second kidney, but there were no complaints from the guests.
A half hour later, I was still trying to stuff the bird. I had to ask him whether one put the stuffing in at the front or the back. He looked at me very pityingly.
Meanwhile, he was making gravy. He announced, "The gravy is done!"
I looked, and there were about 5 tablespoons of gravy for 8 people.
"Am I allowed to stretch this?" I asked.
"Just how were you thinking of stretching it?"
"Don't know, milk and... red wine?"
"If you must.."
I pour a half bottle of merlot and a quart of milk into the saucepan, and stir like crazy. I REALLY want to throw in a package of mushroom soup mix but he is watching me like a hawk.
The guests arrived at that moment. German style, that is at 7:30. Not a minute earlier or later. Simultaneously. There are no excuses with Germans for being late. (Strangely enough, only one of the guests was German, the others were Australian, English, Indian and I don't know what else.)
I am not ready. Not dressed, and don't have drinks poured for the guests. I throw some Glühwein on the stove.
They generally refuse the Glühwein: the Australian and English girls have just come from the Christmas Market and are somewhat illuminated already, and the Englishman has turned Buddhist and doesn't drink.
I realize I have not started the cranberries, which are lying resentfully in their packages on the table. I throw them into the rejected boiling Glühwein, which turns out to be an inspiration for preparing cranberries. I intend to do them this way forever after.
The gravy, which now tastes like red wine and boiled milk, is going to be a problem. I start shaking the contents of a bag of flour into the pot. This doesn't change the taste but it does change the texture, which goes from merely disgusting to lumpy disgusting. Mike is not taking his eyes off me, I suspect because he knows if he looks away for an instant, I am going to add mushroom soup mix. This seems like a good time to put in pepper and salt and a dash of Worchestershire sauce, which is pronounced "Wooster" Sauce in England, just like the name Featherstone-Haugh is pronounced "Fanshaw".

What do you Call This?

2008-12-01T23:37:00.000+01:00

Does this exist in America? Found it at the local supermarket and it is wonderful: a plastic pouch filled with, uh, "Moor-Mud"... you stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and it stays warm for hours, you use it as a hot water bottle, only it is much less of a hassle.

First Snow

2008-11-24T19:15:00.003+01:00

The first snow on my roof garden is always worth a picture. I don't have to feel guilty that I haven't done watering or weeding. The temptation to build a snowman is pretty great, but seems somehow frivolous. Maybe Cordelia will come round and we will build one together.

I bought carrots specially.

Free Speech in America

2008-11-24T11:56:00.004+01:00

My brother, who is a producer for NPR with a distinguished pedigree, found that a "lewd text" was discovered-- and promptly excised-- from his biography.
The offending passage was "Summa Cum Laude".

I am just idly wondering just who found that offensive or titillating.

Ubuntu Linux Rocks!

2008-11-22T20:22:00.003+01:00

Don't worry, this is not going to become a Geek Blog...
I have been doing computer stuff all day, and running back and forth between the laptop and the desk computer-- and about a third to a half of the things I was doing had to do with trying to keep Windows running clean. Update the virus programs, uninstall crud that had gotten into my program list without my knowledge, try to figure out why the machine was running even slower than usual..
etc.
etc.
etc.

Then, trying to upload some photos to Facebook, and things came to a standstill. In desperation, I shut down Windows and booted into Ubuntu.

Everything works at least twice as fast. No firewall, no antivirus program. And the Ubuntu system is free.

Once the programs are installed (and they are free as well), using them is intuitive and easy. You don't need any special knowledge to use the various applications (OK, I admit that if you have to mess with the internal workings of the operating system it can get a bit geekier... but on the other hand you don't have to do it as often as with Windows). There is no Internet Explorer, but there is the far superior Opera and its close rival Firefox. The Open Office package does everything that MS Office (Word, Excel, etc) can do, just (mostly) better. You have native versions of Skype, Picasa, Google Earth, VLC (for watching movies). Email works wonderfully and you don't have to have programs running to check the attachments for viruses.

What do I miss from my Windows environment? Pincipally, my beloved ACDSee photo viewer, and various music composition programs, and Photoshop.....but there are Linux alternatives, perhaps not as advanced yet, but perfectly useable.

I don't miss Bill Gates and co breathing down my neck, trying to think of ways to get me to buy something else. Building booby traps into their software so I have to buy the newer versions. Deliberately designing obsolescence into the applications so they cannot be used after a couple of years.

And I like the Ubuntu desktop background, it is calming and somehow human.

End of rant, I promise.

OH, but did I mention, IT IS ALL FREE!

New Beginnings

2008-11-22T16:10:00.003+01:00

My latest New Yorker--the election issue-- has a lovely cover picture. It somehow captures the essence of what we are all feeling now, a sense that there will be changes, but there is some anxiety mixed in.
I wonder what the cover would have looked like if McCain had won? (I am assuming they had an alternate cover ready)

Winter has arrived here with a vengeance... in just one day all the leaves got scoured from the trees and the wind brought bitter cold. Makes me want to curl up in bed for most of the day.

Spent last evening downing a bottle of nice Riesling with one of my new lodgers, a very nice young American clarinetist whom I will call Dan, who is living here because his wife decided that she doesn't want him any more. It is a pity, because they were a cute couple.

Reaction

2008-11-09T09:40:00.002+01:00

@jeffrey, who wrote a comment on one of my entries: Thanks for taking the time to respond to my humble blog!
Just wanted to clarify a couple of things:
First, I don't actually belong to any political party. I believe that the office of President is SO important that I think we should vote for the person rather than the party for this office.
You accuse me of pissing on the President... well, I guess I just have a different definition of pissing than you do. I do indeed feel that GWB worried and worked for 8 years; at the same time, I feel his leadership was misguided --and the polls indicate that 75% of Americans agree with me (although I reserve the right to think differently than a majority, which is why I respect your right to disagree with my views).
In my (humble) opinion, after 9/11 he should have persued the terrorists as the crazy criminals they were, and not have punished a whole region. Afghanistan has always been a country well able to resist foreign influence and would-be regime-changers: look at how long the Russians tried, and before them the British, who sent army after army into Afghanistan over a period of 30 years in the 19th century, with similar results to what we have now: Kabul could be forcibly tamed, but in the countryside the people have been ruling themselves in their own way for millenia and I suspect they will prevail in the long run. Moreover it is dangerous, I feel, to treat them as proxies.
What everyone seems to forget is that the 9/11 bombers all came from Saudia Arabia and their expressed justifications had to do with grievances with the Saudi regime, so why didn’t Bush address the quest for true democracy in Saudi Arabia rather than an arguably more democratic form of government in Afghanistan?
Could it just have to do with his lifelong connections with the Saudi royal family? (Just thinking aloud here.)
I do respect the President by nature of his office, but I think we all have the right... no, the DUTY to watch the actions of our President and try to make sure that he is making farsighted judgements.
You mention the surge in Iraq, and that the insurgency has been defeated. This is open to interpretation, as shown by the fact that the Iraqi government is desperate for a strong, long-term presence in Iraq for American forces, and by continuing news stories — albeit pushed aside by election news— like the one this morning mentioning suicide bombings yesterday that killed at least 8 people near Baghdad.
Yes I agree with you that GWB showed courage and command during difficult times. But Hitler also showed those qualities and I think you will agree with me that that didn’t make his leadership something to emulate.

My Head Hurts!

2008-11-08T23:04:00.002+01:00

Didn't go to Brussels in the end... it seemed like too much of a hassle for a couple of hours in the town.
Desperately need to practice for a concert next week, and it is not going well. My apartment is full of homeless musicians, and the girl upstairs can play faster than me, damn it.
ON the bright side, my windows got cleaned day before yesterday (some of them for the first time in about a quarter of a century) and my placid POlish cleaning lady was here this morning so the place has at least a hint of spic and span.

Avoidance Therapy

2008-11-07T16:31:00.003+01:00

I should be practicing for a concert I have at the Hochschule next week. I should be doing my long overdue taxes. I should be sorting out my life.
Instead I am reading blogs and catching up on my ironing, and considering making a quick trip to Brussels tomorrow to get my fix of Art Nouveau buildings and Belgian beer at my favorite Brussels restaurant with the delicious name: De Ultieme Hallucinatie.

I have no self-discipline.

Pity poor George

2008-11-05T19:57:00.003+01:00

Poor George. He had to make a statement on the election, and it was through clenched teeth that he acknowledged a Democratic victory.
He spent much more time talking about McCain than Obama, but indicated that he was looking forward to having Barack stop by so he could tell him how to run the country.
You could tell that it was horribly agonizing to have to make a speech without using the word "terrorism". (He came close though, when he said that the government's main job was to "protect its people")
Bush said that he and his family will be leaving the White House with many cherished memories. But of what? I wonder... What event in those 8 years can he remember with pride? He has squandered the resources of America in every way he could and set his own party back years. As Colin Powell remarked today, the Republicans are going to have to go through a period of reflection on what their values and goals should be.

But hey, there's hope! Sarah Palin this morning didn't rule out running in 2012!!

Yipeee!!! I can Fly the Flag again!

2008-11-05T12:40:00.002+01:00

For many years, an American flag was our upstairs bedroom window.

After the Iraq invasion, I took it down.

Now I can put it up again.

(Assuming I can find it, that is)

Went to my daughter's house last night and we made hamburgers and drank Coke in honor of the election.

When I got home about 11, turned on the TV and sat down armed with a bag of candy corn, a package of Cheetos, and a fifth of bourbon. Can't get more American than that.

Realized after an hour and a half that results were not going to come instantly, and I do have teaching and a performance at the opera today, so I went to bed. Set the alarm to 6:30, heard the news and said: "Yipee!!" in my best American accent.

Fox News: Gotta love those Guys!

2008-11-02T13:47:00.002+01:00

The mega-important American election just hours away, genocide in the Congo, oil prices up, the economy in tatters, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan, and our major news network, Fox News, (the cable channel with the most regular listeners in the US) has this as their main world headline:

Gay Pledge for Kids

Card handed out to kindergartners asks them to sign agreement saying they'll help fight homophobia

Ex-Pat Bloggers and the Election.

2008-10-27T17:58:00.002+01:00

Christina is going to be interviewed about the election by a Connecticut NPR station. These are some of the questions she is going to be asked, and I thought I would answer them also--

As an “expat blogger” what do you blog about when it comes to the election?

I have been pretty apolitical all my life... feel that individuals who have the urge to become politicians need to be regarded with deep deep suspicion. But the Bush Administration has so thoroughly succeeded in making life for me and my children much more dangerous in so many ways, that for the first time I have been moved to write about my concerns. I have expressed my sense that Obama has judgement and ideals that I would like to see at least expressed in the self-serving seething morass that is Washington. Likewise, I have written of my unease at the prospect of Sarah Palin's fingers anywhere near the nuclear buttons.

What are people saying about American politics in Germany where you live?

Germans-- at least the overwhelming majority of those I know-- are appalled at the turn American politics has taken in the last 8 years, and yearn for a return to what they see as American ideals.

What is the general sense of how Americans are perceived?

Americans here are not discriminated against; but most Germans resent what they interpret as arrogance on the part of the Bush government in dealing with other countries, and feel that there is an almost willful ignorance of foreign cultures and beliefs.

Do you wish you were in the US during this election season?

I have to answer NO to this... I am glad to be able to vote from a safe distance, I want to make up my own mind on the issues and not have to listen to advertising from either party.

I am So Fed Up with Windows!

2008-10-27T16:08:00.002+01:00

Microsoft-- despite my best efforts-- is not trying hard enough. I have a machine with all the newest updates, and every update makes the laptop slower.
Their last Service Pack rendered my computer useless for weeks, and the "help" they gave me ranged from laughable to downright wrong.
I have Windows XP, and a change to Vista at this point doesn't leave me with a good feeling, particularly because half of my software and hardware won't work with it (why they can't use backward compatability, I don't know) and I resent having to buy several thousand Euros worth of stuff just to replace my setup.

Not to mention that I have a birthday coming up and I really like the look of the new MacBook Pro...

Any opinions out there?

More on the Campaign

2008-10-24T10:11:00.001+02:00

This is really funny.

Seasonings

2008-10-21T09:00:00.001+02:00

Taking advantage of a free afternoon and glorious autumn weather, we walk around the Heider Bergsee. She is one of the those people who knows all the mushrooms by their first names, and will collect them and put them onto the menu at the slightest provocation.
These, she informs me, are NOT edible (as opposed to these, which we devoured); but I take their picture anyhow.

How my Daughter Saves my Ass

2008-10-08T20:17:00.000+02:00

Yesterday John and CC and I flew back to Minneapolis from my sister's house in Seattle.
It was hard to leave Seattle-- the sun had come out and the lawns were gleaming.
Got to the airport 2 hours early (I hate panicking in the airport) but found that the flight was going to be delayed by an hour. What to do? We had already gone through the security scans (belt off, laptop out, remove shoes, show liquids... who could have imagined this a few years ago??), rode the cute little train on the loop to the gate-- the amount of entertainment at the gate was very limited for an energetic 10-year-old girl.
She pleads with me to go back to the main gate areas to look for a present for her sister in Germany.
So we left the luggage with John at the gate and got back on the little train and up one flight of stairs to the main terminal gates. I ordered a quick coffee, and then looked around, and said, "You know, I think we are on the Wrong Side of the Security Gates."
So we started walking back out the way we came, and were immediately surrounded by a bunch of Big Security Guards. I expleained that we had just come out 2 minutes earlier and were trying to get back to our gate.
"You will have to go through Security again."
Oh Drat! I exclaimed, and so we trudged down the long corridor to the security belts. Fortuntely, I thought, we didn't have all the luggage to put through the scanner.
"Where are your boarding passes?" they asked. "At the gate with my son," I explained.
"You will have to have new passes issued by the airline."
So (slightly nervous now) we headed back to the ticket office... the woman takes pity on us and gives us new boarding passes... I think we now have the worst behind us but I hadn't reckoned with the slow stupidity of the security supervisor.
"Where is your passport?"
"Like I keep saying, about a hundred yards from here with my son at the flight gate"
He didn't want to accept my German public library card as proof of ID.
"I will have to call in on this," he said, and VERY SLOWLY called some bombproof bunker far underground in Virginia.
It turns out that the US Government has no records for me (mostly because I have lived abroad for over 30 years, probably). I do not exist.
I plead with him. "Can you come with us to the gate, my documents are all there? Please? Or page my son in the terminal?"
"No, we have started this identity check now and we have to carry it through. You don't have any ID".
"Can't my daughter go through and have John bring the passports back?"
He thinks for a LONG time (the clock is ticking, and the plane is due to board in 15 miutes).
"Do you think she can manage on her own?" He looks at her, she is 10 and speaks very little English.
"Sure!" I say, but I am not sure at all. This involves getting through the luggage check, finding the little train and getting off at the right stop, even though the labeling is only in English and japanese.
"Sure!" she pipes up, although she is not sure either.
And off she trots, braving the security gates all by herself, disappearing into the bowels of the airport. The Stupid Security Supe says to me, "Stand just there where I can see you!"
The plane is scheduled to take off at 4:25; it is now 3:40. Can they make it?
And I wait, and wait, and WAIT. It is 4:15 before John and CC appear, racing down the hall, loaded with all the luggage. John is cursing (he has exams he cannot miss the next morning-- missing this plane would spell disaster for him) and we sweat through the sec checks for what seems the 100th time this morning, race to the little train, run up 50 stairs with heavy bags (lucky I have training in stairclimbing from my apartment in cologne), get to the gate just as the last passengers are going through.
"We have made it!" I triumph, but too soon, because my boarding pass now has a red mark on it: because of the identity check, I have to be pulled out for an Extra Special Security Check, which involves escorting me and my luggage and CC down to the Interrogation Dungeon and no fewer than 5 husky "experts" give me the most thorough examination I have ever had.
NOT fun, and CC keeps asking me if the plane is going to leave without us.

The Trip So Far

2008-10-08T17:25:00.000+02:00

On Mount Rainier

2008-10-06T05:03:00.002+02:00

I came all the way to Seattle to do some hiking here, it was lovely but mushy.

The Debate

2008-10-03T16:08:00.003+02:00

Watched the debate from the safety of my brother's lovely home in Minneapolis.
To fortify ourselves, we went to the Walgreens a block away to get some munchies.
Ahead of us in the checkout line was Garrison Kiellor.
I had had low expectations for Sarah Palin, but she did do better than I thought she would. She was cool and collected and didn't stumble, showed she has a lovely voice and poise.
Governor Palin did roughly what I had anticipated: had fluent and pat answers to the questions she was prepared for, and simply refused to respond to the ones for which she didn't have a prepared text block. You never got the feeling that she listened to a question and thought about an answer.
But more than that, she worried me on a number of counts:
She said at least 7 times that she was "working for American energy self-suffciency" --and was obviously talking about expanding oil production in Alaska--and repeatedly claimed to be an expert on energy. But she neglected to face up to the point that America has 3% of the world's oil reserves and yet accounts for over 20% of world consumption.
She holds fast to the notion that the Afghanistan war is somehow going to be "won" with a "surge", which shows me how ignorant she is of the history and current situation of that country (one only needs to read the sorry story of the long Russian occupation to get a sense of the real story).
Her multiple accusations about tax-raising by the Democratic ticket was not balanced by some explanation as to how she and McCaine would finance their lingering wars and economic bailout.

I would also like to mention that her inappropriate smiles and the odd flirty winks contributed to my unease about her ability to seriouly and independantly grapple with the complex issues that would face her as Vice-President or (God Forbid!) President.

But you know what made me scream at the TV most? Her gratuitious and repeated mispronounciation of "nuclear". (she says "nukyuler") This coming from someone who feels that energy policy is her strongest suit.

More Jury Duty

2008-09-21T18:19:00.002+02:00

Judging another competition for young musicians this weekend. It is heartbreaking to see all the effort and talent and not be able to give more prizes.
Got into a heated argument with another juror over one entry: a young boy soprano singer with the most extraordinary voice performed a piece by a modern German composer, fiendishly difficult, and he executed it flawlessly. Superb diction, perfect intonation, lovely sound. Aged 12.
But one of the fellow jurors (there were 6 of us) was a singer, and he insisted that the boy's teacher should not have given him such an adult piece (very much about Weltschmerz and Death) which required such outbreaks of passion. He called it a Circus Number, which is about as insulting as you can get in German.
The argument went on and on, and finally in the interests of peace and harmony in the jury room, we reduced the number of prizes (there were 3 big cash prizes, and we could have divided them up but in the end we didn't) and so he was left out (as were some other groups that I maintain were very deserving).
I am going to have a guilty conscience about this for months. I should have fought harder, because I could have convinced the others, I am sure.

Desperate Days

2008-09-21T10:28:00.002+02:00

Excuse me, but I just have to have another short rant.
The ABC website reports on this ongoing story:
A group of historians is suing Vice-President Dick Cheney for refusing to promise not to destroy his records and documents pertaining to his time in the White House. His defence?

The lawsuit stems from Cheney's position that his office is not part of the executive branch of government.

OK. So I guess we learned that all wrong in history class.
It is a pity, because I was actually hoping to learn something of the real chronology of the lead-up to the Afghan-Iraq war.

And I am hoping someone can educate me as to what possible advantage to the average citizen this new bailout of the financial institutions is going to have? The government is basically going to buy the bad debts from the derivatives companies at their face value, not even (as is normal in such cases) at the usual rate of 10-15% of their book value-- which at least would give a reasonable chance of getting some of the money back.
Then of course there will be the almost impossible task of unravelling the infinitely complex mortgage holdings; even the companies owning them don't have a clue what is in them... this aspect alone is going to cost the government billions.

It is desperate days in the White House, let us all pray fervently that the next Administration can re-assert the law of reason and justice in America.

Thinking about Sarah

2008-09-19T00:13:00.003+02:00

We can all learn from Sarah P, potential Vice President. She is a quick learner and energetic. She is raising 5 kids and still has time to learn about Russia (by looking out her window) and buy cute glasses. She knows how to use the Internet (more than we can say about her running mate); she even has a striking and original email address:
Gov.Sarah@Yahoo.com
Well, at least until yesterday that was her email address. It is not any more, which is sad because it is an address which is easy to memorise. It is an address which has "Hockey Mom" written all over it. The Founding Fathers would have liked it (even though they might have been woefully ignorant of either hockey or the Internet). I am sure the first GW would have gone for the address: Pres.George@Yippee.Com.
Not bad for a gal who knows so much about foreign thingys, despite the fact that she didn't bother to apply for her very first passport until last year.

Why I Love my Job

2008-09-18T23:50:00.003+02:00

These were my co-workers this summer. Nice bunch. And no, I am not in the picture, I am TAKING it.
They were younger than in some previous years, which means they were not as advanced technically in some cases, but it also meant I had more to teach them: that is FUN.
And the castle was great.

Switzerland, Watch Out!!

2008-09-18T19:42:00.002+02:00

President Bush appeared on TV this afternoon, his backdrop this time neither cheering crowds nor an American flag, nor even tasteful blue curtains, but peaceful trees in the White House garden, and read a short prepared statement about the actions he and his advisors were taking on the rapidly unravelling financial system. He seemed unprepared and took no questions, which is perhaps just as well because even the most seasoned experts are not sure what actions are called for or even possible.
What is clear is that the US Treasury has poured acres of money into stopping various holes in the system, and reports are that behind the scenes they are also desperately buying dollars in order to prevent a disastrous devaluation of the $. These actions-- and there is every indication that the problems are not solved yet-- plus the enormous expenditure on the war effort, have already put America deeper into debt than at any time in our history. And this is without calculating in the cost of nationalizing Freddy and Fanny.
(Is there still someone out there who doesn't think GWB is the worst President in living memory?)
Now he and McCaine are calling for setting up a commission to find out Who Was Responsible. This commission will follow the money trail, and discover the guilty culprits to be none other than the dreaded...
Gnomes of Zurich!!
Then Bush will talk to various advisors and God and demand that Switzerland produce the Gnomes and hand them over to Justice. When (as is to be anticipated) the Swiss refuse, the President will call on the American Congress to move the troops from Iraq to a Nato base in the French Alps, and from there they will march victoriously through Geneva and fight their way north to Zurich, where they will search out and capture the furtive criminals in their underground palaces!
. The Gnomes must be defeated!

I hate Politics

2008-09-12T09:39:00.002+02:00

Now I want to say, I am a firm believer in democracy. A society should have the means to choose its own leaders, they need to believe they are helping shape their own destiny.

But mygod, at least they should make an effort to make an informed choice! there should be a way to force voters to actally think about the candidates' credentials. Does being a Hockey Mom somehow automatically qualify someone (not mentioning any names here) to be President? Does the fact that she shows good taste in eyeglasses indicate an ability to understand complex issues of national sovereignty? Why is there so much more coverage in the media of this kind of fluff than on the actual issues-- so vital to America's future-- that the candidates must address??

McCaine's view of America is very much based on suspicion and mistrust, and is colored by a military background. Is it too cynical of me to suspect that a great many people who support him believe firmly that we somehow won the war in Vietnam because he was a prisoner? The same people who remember how we won the wars in Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq?

The fact is, there is only one war America has won in the last 60 years. And it wasn't the war in Vietnam or Korea or Granada or Cuba, or the war on poverty or illiteracy or obesity, no, it was the Cold War. And that one was not won on the battlefield, but because at some point the leaders got together and thought, this is a waste of time and money.
And now Bush is trying his best to reignite that war. Is this necessary?

I like Obama because he has a vision of America that reflects the ideals that made America a leader in the first place: Social conscience, youth, energy, faith in the future, integration of immigrants... above all, I like his optimism.
Maybe his vision has not been spelled out in detail, maybe his trust in humanity could get him into trouble-- but I believe he could help the country (and the world) see what is great about America.

My long stay working in Europe has probably turned me into pathetic Eurotrash,
perhaps I am not seeing the situation clearly. I will be in the US in October with my daughter, and intend to see if my view of American culture is jaundiced.

(The BBC posted an interesting set of interviews with American soldiers yesterday)

I don't Hate Sarah Palin..

2008-09-09T09:28:00.002+02:00

.. but I am worried about some of the things she seems to stand for.
We have had a president the last 8 years who is convinced that faith and military might can cure all evils.
But I think the process in Iraq has probably demonstrated that shock and awe is not guaranteed to ensure peace and understanding in the region.
And his designated successor also has a military background, meaning perhaps a continuation of this philosophy?
So it was with a bit of relief that I read that he has a female running mate, a working mother with (I am hoping) some social sensitivity.
But I keep running across snippets of her biography that seem to point in another direction.
ABC News ran an article this morning which includes these quotes:
On the war in Iraq:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving do to what is right. Also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God.

.."a task that is from God"? Not "a task to help the Iraqi people" or even "to help America"-- but a "task from God"? Now that is calling in the Big Guns!! This reminds me forcibly of justification for the Crusades. And suggests that she may have that attitude that her God is somehow superior to theirs.
It is reported in the same article that the speaker at the last church service she attended in Alaska before the Republican convention had this to say:

He told congregants that terrorist attacks on Israel were God's "judgment" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity. Brickner said, "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."

Anyhow I guess she is probably a good choice in the sense that she represents a logical continuation of the present course in the Middle East. Whether that is a Good Thing is perhaps debatable.

My Computer Problems: update. Interesting.

2008-09-03T22:13:00.002+02:00

My last post outlined a problem I am having with my laptop-- the latest Windows XP service pack effectively turned the machine into a brick.
In an unprecedented move (I am not a complainer, and not of literary bent), I actually wrote to Microsoft, outlining the problem and asking for advice.
To my great surprise, there was a response to my email. I received an email from Amy Zhang (presumably not her real name), who gave me a detailed set of instructions on how to roll back my installation to its previous level.
This was sweet, and I did appreciate it... but there were sveral aspects that made me sit up and think.
First: the very fact that Microsoft felt obliged to answer my mail means that they realize that something very serious is wrong with the latest XP update.
2. That "Amy" was able to give me such a detailed scenario means that I must be one of many thousands who have had a problem.
3. A quick Google of the the terms "XP SP3 Problem" shows that there is a real mess involved.
4. Many of the bloggers who got caught in this fiasco have admitted they bought copies of Vista to solve the problem. Now Vista is not an improvement; it just takes you deeper into the morass. IMHO.
5. Very Interesting: "Amy" suggests--in writing and obviously with the full support of Microsoft Inc.-- that in order to get into Windows (because the boot process has been bombed) I should(and I quote her email here):

please try to borrow a Windows XP installation CD from your friends. After that, please perform the following steps to remove SP3 from Recovery Console.

Now as far as I know, it is illegal to use a Windows Installation Disk that you don't own. And none of the last four Windows computers I have bought have come with Windows Installation disks, only with System Recovery CDs. These can restore the factory HD images, but the process erases ALL computer data and renders the machine absolutely helpless in the face of present-day viral dangers. (not to mention eradicating my parallel Linux installation.)

I am deeply, deeply suspicious. I CANNOT imagine that a company like MS, with its intimate knowledge of its own operating system, is not in a position to provide an emergency boot file to deal with this kind of situation. That I should be asked by them to beg for an installation disk from "friends"???!!! And what if the "friend"'s disk doesn't pass the MS Illegal Copy test? Does that mean I am then going to be prosecuted?

My conspiracy theory is that this is a ploy to force customers to upgrade to Vista (much of my software and hardware won't work with Vista, so this is not a n option anyhow). But-- at least in my case-- this is having more the effect that I want to leave Windows completly, and either join my sons (who are avid Macintoshians, or Applers or whatever they are called) or to use Linux exclusively.

I love the way the Mac laptops can just be shut, and when you open them up later, you are back where you were. Why can't Windows have this ?

BSoD-- not Even! Hate Mail.

2008-08-30T10:55:00.002+02:00

All of us who use Windows regularly know this image very well, in fact I bet it is the most common computer picture in the universe.
The dreaded BSoD, or Blue Screen of Death. Indicating that some obscure process has poisoned the opererating system to the extent that there is no returning to your virtual desktop and the only answer is a primitive interruption of the power supply.
I know this screen especially well, as I tend to push my machines to their limits anyhow.
But now Microsoft has done one better: the latest Service Pack, downloaded behind my back and installed without my knowledge, has managed to do what no carelessly programed application has done to me before: the machine is simply no longer bootable.
If it were, I know a few things that I could do to fix it, you know, things like massaging my hard disk and slipping asperin suppositories into the the rearend of the WIN32/ directories.
But at the moment the laptop whizzes away, starts to load Windows, gives me a stern warning that my hard disk has been messed with, does a tedious validation check of the file systems, tells me I need to refer the problem to my supervisor (!!), gives a mighty sigh, and does a reboot... and the whole process begins anew.

I have another computer or two around the house, so I google for confirmation that I am not alone with this. At a conservative estimate, at least half a million users have been similarly struck.

But the appalling thing is that Microsoft insists that it is not a problem, or that it is not THEIR problem, even when it patently is. They provide a "workaround", giving you 4 different ways of restarting and repairing the system. 3 of them involve using a working Windows system, which I obviously cannot use because the machine is in a constant reboot loop. The last one involves using a Windows CD-- and this solution, lovely as it may be, is of no use to me because the CDs I got as recovery CDs with the laptop only give me the option of returning the machine to its pristine factory setup.
That is: all data erased, all programs needing reintallation, plus (and this is the inevitable question) returning to Windows XP without ANY service packs... and the automatic download will be of Service Pack 3, which caused the problem in the first place.

For the interim, I am scanning cyberspace for a solution (anyone out there got a good idea?) and using Linux. (one year running and nary a system crash!)

My office this week

2008-08-08T21:53:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately they won't let me stay past next Sunday.

Culture

2008-06-29T04:45:00.005+02:00

In New York there is the most extraordinary tolerance for extreme lifestyles, which exist on top of each other, in plain view in the streets.

But there is a strict and unyielding class structure, immediately apparent. The rich dress one way, the poor another, the middle class another. The younger generation tend to wear their shirttails out, and the branding on the tshirts signals their financial status. The middle class strivers tuck the shirts in, again here it is easy to spot the financial level. The rich tend toward clothes with obviously ironed creases and looks of infinite disdain.

I cannot afford the clothes that they wear but I am working on the disdainful demeanor.

So far with little success.

(the picture by the way doesn't come from New York, but from a smallish city in Germany, but it was taken last week during rehearsals for the New York project so I feel entitled to put it in here.)

NewYork

2008-06-28T23:28:00.001+02:00

Leaving the plane: the humid heat rushes at you like a Turkish bath. Inside the airport terminal the smell is identifiably American Institution, a mix of metallic and permanent air conditioning.
The passport people are scary. Intimidating from the first contact, they try to provoke. Not a pleasant experience. Necessary? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not invariably necessary. I explain to the musicians I am travelling with (many of whom are arriving here for the first time) that these guys are trained to do this, and that the average American is friendly and trusting. Like me.
The hotel is a Holiday Inn, verging on seedy. We are a big group (50) and they haven't prepared the roomkeys. Jetlagged and exhausted, we huddle around the reception counter. There is a leak in the ceiling and some of us get damp.
I am happy to report though that the room itself is perfectly adequate, albeit with a rattling noisy airconditioner. (The Ossie, who will arrive later this evening, will hate that.)
I walk down the street an savor the unique experience that this city always provides. Beside me, on the street, a whump and metallic crunch and the unmistakeable sound of a taillight being pulverised. The drivers involved honk furiously at each other and scream invectives in some unidentifiable languages. No one bothers to look. One of the drivers races away, hurling insults. The other (a taxi) curses and then drives off as well. In Germany this would have drawn a crowd and involved several police cars within 2 minutes, here (apparently) it is normal.
I go into a deli, order a tuna sandwich. It is made with virtuoso speed in front of me, and sliced with surgical precision.
The best tuna sandwich I have had in my whole life.

Soccer Mania

2008-06-25T15:34:00.002+02:00

I am not a sports fanatic. Anything but. My idea of extreme sports is fifteen minutes of Frisbee in the park.

Living in America, I never watched sporting events. But I love the national soccer championships that come up every 2 years. Soccer is a much better sport than American football-- you can actually see who is playing and the players don't spend most of their time holding their crotches. The last World Championship games were in Germany (including some games in Cologne); this year the European championships are in Austria.

Tonight is a big one for Germany: they are playing Turkey. Germany should win it, but you never know. Anyhow there is great excitement and anticipation, but everyone is also slightly worried that there could be post-game violence (if, for example, there are some disputed fouls or goals), so most of the timid souls among us are going to watch at home. Like me.

I am going to watch with my lodger Max and some of his friends, and my Ossie and some colleagues from the orchestra, and maybe my cute Turkish pianist.

Who am I rooting for? Well, neither one is my favorite because I prefer a kind of elegant or stylish playing style and both of these teams are more grim power types. I am for Germany because I live here and for Turkey because they are the underdogs and are considered second-class citizens here.

Just hope it is a good game.

Vacation!! kind of...

2008-06-21T19:56:00.002+02:00

Last night was the last day of a dreadfully stressy week. I don't know how I survived it. I don't even know if I have survived it.

It should have been an easy week, the last few opera performances before our season ends tomorrow. The plan was, a week off here to recuperate and do some long-outstanding home repair assignments, then off to an idyllic Bergpension in the Austrian Alps, just underneath the Grossglockner Glacier.

Alas, greed and curiosity have changed that.

Got a call from an orchestra near here, asking if I would be free to do some rehearsals and performances. No, I said, I am on vacation. The manager said, Wait, we are doing an opera by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, a fairly obscure German composer. (He didn't know it, but I happen to be a big fan of Zimmermann's works). Which one, I asked. Die Soldaten, he said.

Now I have always been curious about this piece, which was composed around 1964 and labelled unplayable, unproduceable, unsingable, and hell to listen to. But it was written about a mile from my apartment, and I have had a moderate success playing other pieces by him.

I couldn't imagine, though, the smallish orchestra in B playing this piece-- first, they never play opera, only concerts, and second, it requires a truly monstrous number of players and singers, more than a dozen percussionists, piano, harpsichord, 2 harps, 2 organs, jazz band. And the piece is physically, technically, musically, mentally quite impossible. The manager admitted that it had taken the orchestra about a year to learn it. (Remember that a normal symphony concert is generally rehearsed and performed in a week).

They gave me 2 days to look at it.

But I am doing it, because I suspect it is a masterpiece, and:

We are doing it for 2 weeks in New York City!!

So far it is ruining my health and my love life. I have been running back and forth on the train to B for rehearsals every day (it is about 70 miles away) and having to race back here for evening performances. My dream of having mountain expeditions will have to be put off for another year (because I have to go directly from New York to my teaching in Croatia).

The next lot of rehearsals will be in New York, and I have 5 days to try to sort things out before I fly.

But I couldn't say no. We have a nice hotel in Manhattan and a whole lot of time off while we are there.

Life is full of surprises.

Key Wars

2008-06-21T19:47:00.002+02:00

The war of the Key Service Armies is ruining our front door. Weekly (more or less) furtive figures slink from door to door and paste their little ads on the doorframe, but first they scratch out the names and telephone numbers on the 20 other little ads for emergency locksmiths.

This has left our front door littered with scratch marks and vestigal stickers. I am thinking idly of calling all the numbers on the list and telling them that their rivals have just defaced their pristine sticky.

Let them kill each other.

Ha.

Cricket

2008-06-16T23:03:00.001+02:00

Do you listen to the BBC Radio 4? I have been listening for, well, about 30 years I suppose, and I love it.

But one thing always irritated me: the coverage of Cricket. Interminable, tedious, arcane, waffling, pretentious, and --even after 30 years-- absolute gibberish for me.

I never bothered to learn what the game was about, or even vaguely what the point is in the game. I only knew that one game could last days and days on end, and was (even for the live commentators) so inutterably tedious that most of the commentary had almost nothing to do with the actual actions on the field (I mean pitch) but were stream-of-consciousness ramblings by some self-satisfied commentator with an irritatingly plummy voice and an English accent dating from around 1935.

But, astonishingly, I continue to keep listening (sometimes for as much as a half an hour) even though the descriptions have no meaning for me whatsoever. Wickets, overs, century, 190 not out, ... all these terms have not been sorted out in my head.

And now of course I am too proud to read up on the subject, and even though my ex-brother-in-law is an avid (the English would of course say a keen) cricketer, I refuse to ask anyone to explain the sport to me.

A jolly good waste of an airwave, I say.

An Afternoon in the Country

2008-05-29T00:04:00.000+02:00

I have an important concert on Saturday, preparation for it has been pretty much draining me for weeks, but the Ossie dragged me out to the countryside this afternoon, a grill party at a colleague's house. They live some 30 miles from here, in a little village. They are just finishing building the house, a 2-story wooden construction with a big garden. Our host told me proudly that the heating system, the latest design of eco-friendly, worked so well this winter that they didn't have to heat the house once. (How that works exactly is a mystery to me, has something to do with extracting heat from the ground and chanelling it into pipes in embedded in the floors... evidently the princple is of a refrigerator in reverse) .
There was a copious supply of wine and beer, and the food was pot luck-- this is very unusual in Germany, where a hostess prides herself on the menu. The standard of the dishes was very high... I didn't cook anything but the Ossie made her famous Dill Quiche.
What was there to eat? A fabulous homemade Tzaziki (very high garlic content), some excellent Frikadellen (kind of large meatballs, eaten cold). Various salads, both of the green and potato variety. German, Turkish, and French bread. Lamb chops and sausages and whole fish on the grill. Various and sundry desserts, many of them heavy and sinful with chocolate.
And this plant in the garden, I have no idea what it is but it is BIG, the stalk is about 4 feet high and the flower the size of a tennis ball. Anyone out there know what it is (the owner couldn't tell me).

I get in Trouble

2008-05-14T17:42:00.002+02:00

I got in a lot of trouble this afternoon.
We have a lot of entries with either recorder players or accordion players, and as one group set up I said quietly to my colleague, "Oh, another compressible cupboard" and the remark was overheard as luck would have it by the President of the German Accordion Association, who took it as a racial slur.
Which is nonsense, I am a big fan of the accordion as it happens... and in any case the group involved (who had come in from Berlin) were fabulous and got probably the highest rating we are going to give this week.
But I am going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut.
It is lucky no one in the audience has caught the viola jokes that the jury foreman tells at least three times a day.

Random notes from a judge

2008-05-13T13:30:00.002+02:00

It is great being a judge. Everyone is terrified of you, they look at you with these hopeful faces.
I can only say how grateful I am to be sitting behind the judging table, and not standing on stage. I have always hated competitions because I was so terrible at them.
Today is the first day we got a lunch break. The other days I survived by scoffing pretzels during the short consultation breaks.
We are doing 12 hour days. Frustrating because I need to be preparing some pieces I am doing with orchestra at the end of the month. Have been getting up at 6:30 so I could get an hour's practice in before the judging starts.
This has the corollary effect that the competitors who come between 3 and 4 in the afternoon don't get the the same alertness from this juror as the ones who play before.
The weather is gorgeous, unusual here. I haven't been able to go outside at all, very maddening.
It is funny how you can tell the good players from the mediocre just by how they set up before playing. The ones who are not so good don't look like the instruments really belong to them. The girls who are spending more time fiddling with their hair than straightening their fiddles are less likely to be really in command when they start playing.

Agonizing Decisions

2008-05-12T19:50:00.002+02:00

It is so hard to judge these kids. they are all talented (after all, they got to the national level in the competition) and have worked hard.
But how do you differentiate between a group that plays flawlessly, but playing a piece that requires almost no instrumental expertise, and on the other hand a group that has chosen repertoire on a very advanced technical level, where there are bound to be mistakes?
And we in the jury had an argument (now ongoing for 2 days) over a group who wowed the audience with their performance- they sang and danced and played recorders, had terrific charisma-- but who couldn't be really considered as expert recorder players (the piece required playing skills that someone with a musical background could have picked up in a couple of weeks).
I judged the group on the merits of how they brought the piece over with their combined skills (and they had honed the performance to perfection), giving them a fairly high point count. But there were colleagues on the jury who gave them what were in effect failing grades because they had not demonstrated a whole lot of technical skill on their instruments.
This is probably a fundamental difference between the American and German way of seeing it. I am a sucker for a good show.
I get in the same kind of argument regularly with my girlfriend, who rejects a LOT of music as "inferior". I just say it is different.

And as I write this I am sad because I am missing my son and his band playing in Cologne because I am stuck here.

Away from Home

2008-05-12T10:53:00.002+02:00

This week I am judging a national music competition in a German city on the French border.. it is much harder work than I thought it would be.
There are 2000 participants (OK, I don't have to judge all of them!) and I am one of a tiny handful of non-Germans on the juries; I am trying to keep my grammar problems hidden. It is very nerve-wracking not only for the young competitors (they are all between the ages of 10 and 19) but for us because the decisions we make can affect their whole life directions. these are the final rounds of a big national contest that started in January. We listen to the performances and then award points and prizes, and do some councelling.

On the first evening a group of us went out and I was confronted with a local custom that I have not seen before: a group of girls in odd costumes confronted us, one wearing fairy glitter and antennae and holding a cardboard tray filled with small items-- candies, lipstick, drugstore type things-- and she asked me if I wanted to buy something. I was startled but she was cute, so I said why not. She explained that it is a custom here that on the night before her wedding, the bride goes out with her girlfriends for a last night on the town, and has to sell some things to complete strangers. I don't know what this custom is called, and am wondering what it signifies. Selling her soul?

Do I take Too Many Pictures?

2008-04-15T23:39:00.002+02:00

Picasa (one of my photo browsing programs) reports that I have some 96,000 pictures on my hard disk. At least 90,000 are ones I took myself... and I have hardly begun to scan in my slides and black and white negatives..
No wonder I have trouble finding pictures I know I have stored somewhere on my computer.
Must figure out some way to sort them out so that the ones that might be of interest to my children are separated from those that should expire with me.

More Trash Pictures

2008-04-13T22:38:00.001+02:00

I have no idea if the things I am finding are valuable or not, it doesn't bother me, they have to be useful or pretty.

My Addiction to Rubbish

2008-04-13T21:42:00.005+02:00

Heather reminded me about one of the things I love about Germany: Sperrmüll.
Literally translated this means Bulky Trash, but denotes the German tradition of putting unused household items on the street at designated times to be collected by special tours of the sanitation engineers. It replaces the American tradition of garage sales, or the English one of Car Boot sales. Only difference (and this is the crucial one for me) is that here no money is expected. According to German law, if something is put out on the street, it is for anyone to take.
In Constance (my first domicile in Germany) I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I witnessed this-- one day a month the streets were suddenly blooming with an abundance of exquisite found items, most all in pristine condition (these people are, after all, Allemans, living right on the Swiss border and have nearly Swiss standards of perfection).
Tables, chairs, bicycles, pottery, clothing, radios, TVs-- in short, all the things that I was used to finding in antique shops and junk shops in America-- only difference being the lack of price tags.
When I bought my apartment in Cologne, and was faced with furnishing a 3 story dwelling without much cash (up till then we had lived in furnished apartments) Sperrmüll was the perfect solution. For years nearly everything here had been scrounged from the streets.
OK, so over the years there has been an insideous influx of Ikea into the apartment, a result of a certain embarassment at the often obvious provenance of the furnishings.. the odd snide remark from girlfriends making me regretfully push out the tacky 60s chairs or the blatently multi-pre-owned carpets.
But I have stubbornly held on to quite a few items, the pictures illustrate just a tiny random sample of the objects trouvées in my downstairs rooms...

Schadenfreude

2008-03-14T23:49:00.002+01:00

Reuters reports:
“Taking the gross domestic product of both economies in 2007, the combined GDP of the 15 countries which use the euro overtook that of the United States when the European currency surged to a record high of more than $1.56 per euro.”
(Full article here)

The people who are going to be hurt by this are not the ones who caused the problem in the first place. The banks thought they would be clever by taking mortgages off their balance sheets.. pocket the fee-- lose the risk-- but it meant that there was no incentive to actually check the transactions (what is the real value of the property? Does the buyer actually have enought income to pay the monthly bills? Is there a balloon clause hidden in the fine print?) and so the real estate bonds' value cannot be realistically estimated.
The banks are now waiting for government handouts to save them. The bill for this goes to the taxpayers.
Meanwhile the homeowners find themselves forced into foreclosure, and the ensuing glut on the market means that house prices are going to be weak for the next few years.
We should hope that the next Administration is better able to balance financial resposibility and social justice, and repair some of the damage done to America's international reputation.
IMHO.
Or am I missing something here?

A Day in Terezin, Czech Republic

2008-03-10T22:14:00.003+01:00

Going through some pictures, I ran across the one above that I took just after playing one of my pieces, and I thought, this is the kind of story that could be put on a blog:
Some years ago I was commissioned to write a piece for a memorial concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the transport of many Jewish musicians and composers to Auschwitz from the prison town of Terezin, which had been turned into a ghetto. Almost none survived.
The piece I wrote, called "VLAK"- Czech for "train"-- is for solo violin, and I played it not in the concert hall, but standing in the rain on the actual train tracks leading out of the town.
At the time, I wrote a description of that day:

Got up before 7, get ready to go, pack violin, tape recorder, music,camera, lenses.
Very foggy morning, the motorway out of Prague shrouded in mist. I wonder what the weather was like 50 yrs ago on this day.
I try to imagine how it was then, the musicians, the composers, how they felt about the coming Osttransport. They had been through so much already, they didn't know exactly what was in store for them.
Viktor Ullmann packaging up his works, carefully, numbered and wrapped up, gives them to his sister in the camp. He gives her instructions: Whoever has to leave gives his manuscripts to someone who is staying. Gideon Klein takes all his works with him, in the hope that there will be an orchestra or musicians to play his pieces where he is going: he doesn't know that he is going to his death, in Auschwitz.
There is a light rain, I worry about my violin, it cannot get wet while I am playing or the glue will dissolve and the instrument will come apart in my hands. We have to drive very slowly because of the dense fog. We settle in behind a brave Czech truck that looms up in the distance and stay on his taillights all the way.
Terezin was never a real town, although it looked like one, it has a big Baroque church, and orderly streets and neat 18th century buildings of all sizes.
But it was built as a garrison town, with a marvellous fortress, state of the art in 1750, containing some 30 km of underground passageways and an elaborate moat system. built as a defense against a Prussian enemy force that never came, the village housed varying numbers of troops over the next 2 centuries, and its prison was used for deserters and political criminals. Its most famous prisoner before WWII was Gavrilo Prinzip, assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand, and unwitting starter of the First World War.
This town that never was a town lost even the few soldiers it had after the German occupation, and in 1939, its few permanent residents were paid to move elsewhere, and the fortress was used as a Gestapo prison, for politcal prisoners. The town became a temporary home for Jews assembled from the conquered territories. They were mostly from the Czech ghettos, but nearly all of them were German Bohemians, that is, they lived in Prague and other Czech towns, but thought of themselves as German. Kafka, for example, could speak Czech, but he thought and wrote in German, and although he lived his whole life in Prague, he is not considered even now by the Czechs to be one of their own, and they don't publicize his presence here. His sister was one of the inmates in Teresienstadt, and Kafka himself would certainly have landed there had he lived so long.
Prague now is, from the motorway, much like any other European city. there are the same road signs, the same markers, the same traffic even, the blend of car makes is not different from those you see in Dresden or other eastern cities.
Out of town, the countryside is flat and rural. Dvorak was born 3 miles from this road. This was Bohemia.
Having arrived in Terezin (about an hour's drive), we park in front of the house where the concert is to take place. There is a friendly Hausmeister. Nearly everyone can speak some German. English is not so common here, after all the East German border is only 20 miles away, and even before reunification, this was the road that the East Germans used to visit their socialist comrades.
I find a room downstairs and shut myself in to do the last frantic rewriting of my piece, now titled VLAK, which is Czech for "train".
None of us know how many people to expect. The town itself has only a handful of residents, mostly people who run the restaurants and hotels, so they can't come, the whole audience arrive somehow from Prague, this on a cold, foggy Sunday morning, in October.
Gaby Flatow, who has organized the memorial concert, has invited many people, including 700 survivors of the camp who are known to still be alive. (Only a tiny number still live in the Prague area, but Gaby has written to everyone anyhow). People from the embassies have been contacted. The room holds maybe 250.
(The first year of the Nazi camp, cultural events were forbidden. but in the second year they were actually encouraged, partly because it was to be a propaganda showplace. There were no gas chambers here, no real mass crematoriums. Musicians were encouraged, there were plays, satirical reviews, etc...)
In this room, concerts were given by the inhabitants. Not only here--there were several rooms in the town that served as concert halls. I look at the floor, the ceiling, Just as these musicians, Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann, must have looked at them in those days. Did they sit in this chair where I was sitting? They certainly waited in this room.
I go to the toilet downstairs. There is a marking on the door, in Czech. Men or Women? I have no idea. Go in tentatively.... Mens, to judge by the old urinals. The plumbing is from the socialist era, the floor obviously dates back to the early 19th century, the toilet is prewar. They must have sat on this toilet, I muse, and stared at this set of old tiles, just as I am doing now, waiting for their turn in the program, just like me.
A handsome trio of local teenagers man the cloakroom, 2 boys and a girl, 15 or 16 years old, wearing starched Scout uniforms. There is a military tradition here which won't die, even now that the Feindbild is so blurry.
The first audience members drift in. After I count ten or twelve, I decide it is worth it to play, even if more don't come
Speeches are to be given by the Mayor of Terezin, and by one of the survivors of the camp; and the German Ambassador. and Gaby.
The occasion for the concert: Gaby has discovered in the course of her research for a program that 4 composers central to the musical life in the camp plus the concertmaster of the Czech Phil, were among camp inmates transported to Auschwitz on this day, October 16th, 1944, exactly 50 years ago. Also transported on this day: the wife of Karl Ancerl, conductor of the Czech Phil and their infant daughter (1 and a half). After this day the music in Terezin effectively stopped.
These composers, all of whom were active in Prague's musical life before the war, were actively composing right up until their removal from the camps. Their styles were different, but reflected the progressive expressionistic school that Berg and Schoenberg also followed in Austria. There is little in this music which is recognizably Czech, or Jewish. None was internationally famous, but their talents were recognized before the war and they were respected.
As the 11:00 starting time drew closer it began to be obvious that we had underestimated the number of people who would come.
In the end there were close to 300 people. The room was packed, we moved chairs in from all other rooms and everyone got a seat, but there were many without programs.
The speeches were greeted with applause, for which I was grateful, because I was afraid that there would be silence after the performances out of respect. but this is not what the composers would have wanted, I am sure.
The program:
Gideon Klein: Trio for Strings (Jan Jouza, Violin, Josef Spacek, Viola, Petr Verner, Cello.
Pavel Haas: 4 Songs based on Chinese Poems. (Richard Novak, Baritone, Drahmoira Riszova, piano
Hans Krasa: Dance for String Trio
Viktor Ullmann: Hölderlin-Lieder (Olga Cerna, mezzosoprano, Cornelis Witthoefft, piano)
Victor Ullmann: Arias from "Der Kaiser von Atlantis": Das waren Kriege; Ich bin der Gärtner Tod (Krassimir Tassev, Baritone, Cornelis Witthoefft, Piano
Viktor Ullmann- Piano Sontate Nr. 7 (Cornelis Witthoefft, Piano)
GW: VLAK for solo violin

The performances are committed, sure. The performers involved know and respect this music and are not doing it for the first time. (Except for me, of course) During the concert, I sat in the lighting gallery, recording the music. I also took some photographs. After the concert, there was applause for the whole group.
I packed up my recording and photo equipment and rushed out to the short stretch of train tracks that were built to transport the prisoners to the extermination centres further east, built by the prisoners themselves. There is only a short section of rails, about 20 m, left. On one end, they disappear under the road surface, asphalted over, on the other end they have been cut abruptly.
The tracks are found on the outskirts of town, not far from the crematoria. It was here that prisoners arrived from the west, from Bohemia , from Germany, from points west, some from Holland, even Norway.
The audience have to get ther coats from the trio of Scouts, it is a cold and foggy fall morning, so I didn't really need to rush out, anyhow I am first to arrive on the tracks, about a 5 minute walk from the building where the concert has just taken place.
I set up my recorder in the bushes, so it won't be too obvious. It is cold, but fortunately there is no wind and no rain, although the humidity is around 95%.
The rails here have been decked out with white flowers and black ribbons.
People were sent to Auschwitz in a series of transports, 63 in all during the years 1941 to 1944. An Osttransport was the thing that all the ghetto inhabitants feared the most. They didnt know about the gas chambers that were at the end of those tracks--only the Gestapo knew this--, but they did know that no one had ever come back, and that they would be leaving a community they knew, where all their friends and relatives were.
Osttransport was a common punishment for violations of even trivial rules and regulations in the camp.
As the audience filtered through the trees from the town, the sun shyly got stronger. There wasn't much talking, the atmosphere was hushed. Dr. Blodig, head of the Ghetto Museum in Terezin, stepped forward when everyone had assembled, and read out, first in Czech, then in German, a description of the meaning of this short stretch of rails, the former staging area for the Osttransport. Flowers were handed out and I took out my violin.
I discovered that the violin wouldn't fit on my shoulder because of the bulky jacket I was wearing (it was bitter cold and the fog made the town fade in the near distance) . I hesitated, then took the jacket off. After all, I thought the camp inmates didn't have good coats either, had to play and practice in unheated rooms.
My manuscript, hastily inked the night before, and with pencilled additions made only minutes ago, was held up for me by Astrid , a pianist from Münster. She was staring into my eyes the whole time, which made me uncomfortable.
I try to explain to Gabi and Astrid later the genesis of the piece, how I knew I wanted to start with an f-sharp because I liked the sound of that note on the violin. I wanted to have the melody broken up..I imagined a violinist who is about to go on the transport, has to give up his violin, playing the last few notes he will ever play, playing fragments of melodies...and then on the train imagining, or hearing through the noise of the moving train, a choir singing a Jewish song...
The music I wrote is simple, deliberately so. The works of Ullmann, Krasa, etc. are dense, concentrated pieces, and full of the echoes of Viennese expressionism. I wanted to get as far away from that as possible, and chose to write something that (I hope) is poignant and accessible, like a series of sighs; the second part a four-part chorale heard dimly through the sound of the moving train.
When I changed over to the second part of the piece, where I have to change bows, I tried not to break the concentration of the audience. When I finished there was absolute silence. The police had blocked off the road, and were listening attentively.
I packed up the violin, put on my coat, switched off the tape recorder. People drifted away, deep in thought. A boy came over and asked if I spoke English, and requested a copy of the music. I took his address and promised to send him a copy.
I wandered around the town for an hour or so afterwards, in the cold fog. The town was deserted again, a ghost town once more, and I walked to the highway and caught the local bus, full of chattering teenagers from Teplice, back to Prague.

Exploring the Frontiers of Good Taste, English TV

2008-02-18T15:25:00.002+01:00

This interview with the Beckhams would probably not have been allowed on American TV. On the other hand, I wonder if Americans (who haven't lived in England at some point) would understand a word of it?

ExPat Query

2008-02-14T16:35:00.002+01:00

Anyone out there know what "non-detergent soap" is in Germany? I want to wash a rather grimy down-filled jacket.

the Poetry of the Chinese

2008-02-10T19:01:00.000+01:00

I don't speak Chinese, but wish I had been able to on our tour. They are making a great effort (in view of the coming Olympics) to make the cities navigable to foreigners, which means there are signs translated into English.
This one I really liked, it has a wistful poetic feel to it, and despite making no grammatical sense, is perfectly understandable.

Pretty Pictures: An Art Exam

2008-02-07T20:49:00.000+01:00

I don't know where this originated, but it is very compelling and a nice use of computer power.
It is also interesting to see how many of the pictures you have seen before, and whether you can identify them.

Minor Karneval Parade

2008-02-06T18:46:00.000+01:00

There is a huge Carneval parade in Cologne every year , always the day before Shrove Tuesday (is there a name for this Monday in English?)... it is worth avoiding because if you don't know the songs and you are not REALLY drunk, it is 5 hours of agony.

But there are small local parades in every neighborhood, usually the elementary schools all try to organize some costumes and march. This one was in Sulz, about a mile from my apartment.

Carneval Visitors

2008-02-06T16:53:00.001+01:00

Today, Carneval in Cologne is over. The streets have been more or less cleaned and the steady rainfall is doing the rest. The Germans have gone back to being serious, sober, and, well... German.

Had a few houseguests over the last few days, L dragged some friends up from Munich, and these 2 flew in from Boston and Seattle respectively. This was possibly the only occasion when I saw them awake and uncostumed. Needless to say, they had a great time.

Birthday in Berlin

2008-02-04T09:32:00.000+01:00

It was cold and rainy in Berlin last weekend. that didn't stop us from walking a lot, which we always do.
I thought these statues , across the river from the Palast der Republik-- now being reduced to a pitiful ruin--, were a nice symbol of the nostalgia for the less confusing times in the DDR, when no one worried about getting a job and nudism was perfectly acceptable (people who yearn for this kind of thing can now book a flight on a nudist plane.)

Birthday in Berlin

2008-01-24T09:15:00.000+01:00

Me and Mozart, we share a birthday, I am tired of staring at the walls in Cologne so I am going up to Berlin this weekend to celebrate.
Anyone want to join me, I will be in the Prenzlauer Berg area.

Some things explained

2008-01-12T10:33:00.000+01:00

A friend sent me this, explaining that it demonstrated in simplified form, the workings of a woman's mind.

The version for males, he went on to say, does not need to be sketched because men only have 2 balls, which determine all his actions.

But on studying this carefully, I would say that the mechanisms are much too logical and predictable to describe female thought processes.

Chinese Adventure

2008-01-09T18:05:00.000+01:00

We have returned safely from China... I would have loved to have written daily blogs about the experience, but sadly blog sites are blocked by the Chinese authorities (as is the BBC and many other western news sites). YouTube is available, but will be blocked in the next month or so.
I loved the country and am desperate to go back. Am thinking of trying to learn Chinese.
China is a huge country (DUH!) and I had no previous knowledge about it. Just that it was big. Now of course I know a lot more, you can learn a lot in a week!
The tour was a success, but in ways we didn't quite expect. The halls were fairly full, and everyone was appreciative; on the other hand we could see that Western classical music is still a novelty and concert etiquette is not always observed there. Especially in Peking (Beijing) people were talking during the concert, mobile phones were ringing, every couple of minutes people were taking flash pictures. Applause was limited and slightly uncertain... until we got to our last encores, which were arrangements of Chinese folktunes. Especially our last encore, "Jasmine Flower": we only had to play the first four notes and the audience would roar with astonishment and pleasure.
The rest of the program though was evidently unfamiliar, although we stayed at the very center of the repertoire (Brahms 2nd symphony, Stravinsky Firebird, Strauss waltzes).
The hotels were excellent, especially in Shanghai and Canton.
The food was amazing. Even though I have no idea what we were eating most of the time. Strange thing about Chinese food: it usually tastes completely different than what you expect when you see it on your plate. I tried to be brave and ate at least some of everything we were offered (and they often tried to serve us "Western" dishes, with varying degrees of success). I liked the pigs' intestines and the Squid Slices. Didn't try the snake but was told it was excellent.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T10:31:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year to everyone from here in Shanghai, where it is clear and sunny but Arschkalt as the Germans say.
After the concert here last night, we went on a night cruise on the river and admired the amazing skyline and were treated to a beautiful banquet; a splendid way to usher in the New Year.
This morning I set out to find the house where a neighbor of mine grew up-- Peter is a writer from a Jewish community that spent the years of Japanese occupation in Shanghai in a "restricted area", that is, a ghetto.
I had only a street address, phonetically transcribed, so I wasn't too hopeful of finding the exact house, but we navigated the subway to the area and managed to find the old synagogue. We asked a few people about the street name, but our mangled pronounciation made it difficult. We got a lot of stares though; this is definitely not a tourist part of town, and I think many residents had never seen foreigners wandering the streets.
Finally, an old woman pointed us to a street (no one speaks English here, not even the most common words-- we had enormous difficulty finding someone who understood the word "toilet"!-- but on the other hand my Chinese is also rudimentary :) ) and we found ourselves in front of a gated courtyard, and the gate was locked.
We were nervously taking pictures through the gate of the huddle of tiny houses, sort of mini-apartment blocks, maybe ten of them, each with 4 entries, trying to work out which one it could have been, when someone came out and we mumbled something and scurried inside.
I knew it was house number 3, so I asked a woman standing outside, and she pointed to a house, and then rapped on the window.
After a moment, the door opened, and a man came out, and I began trying to explain why we were there: "My neighbor-- Germany-- war-- " I began, and he said, in surprisingly good English, "Oh yes, there were many Jewish people living here back then!" and he invited us in for tea.
Soon we had his whole family there, and he was telling me about his life and asking questtions about ours, as we sat in his tiny living/bedroom.
The apartment has 3 floors, each floor with about 50 square feet of living area. Two families live there. But they don't complain.
He said, "Shanghai is changing a lot, and they will probably tear these houses down soon because the property is very valuable." I said, Oh, then you will get a lot of money! and he said, "No, because the property belongs to the State" but he is assuming that they will offer them housing in one of the new flats that will be undoubtedly be built on the site.
But it is a pity in a way, because the old houses have a warm atmosphere and the highrise buildings are so impersonal. But the people have to live somewhere (there are 16 million living in this city).

I would write more, but we have to go to the concert hall now. I am trying to put some pictures on the web, but a lot of the sites I use seem to be blocked here. Will keep trying though.

On Tour again...

2007-12-28T03:53:00.000+01:00

Well, we landed safely here in Beijing, the weather might be a bit better, now off with the Ossie in tow to check out the Forbidden City.

Why I like My New Camera

2007-12-17T09:10:00.000+01:00

The model is one of the finest young soloists around but complained that she was not photogenic, and worried about her figure (she has a young son). I don't think she needs to complain.

What did I go to America to buy?

2007-12-13T16:14:00.000+01:00

Ask any ex-pat what he misses about the home country: 80% will be edible.

These are some of the things I brought back with me (spent a blissful hour and a half in Target).
Not pictured: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (already, I regret to say, gone the way of all consumables), Triscuits (I left the packaging behind), Grapenuts (ditto), chili powder, 2 cans of Clam Chowder; a nice Merino sweater, 2 pairs of trousers, underwear, and a Veronica Mars video.

I realize that everyone's list will be different, so I would be interested in yours!

Rehearsal for the reunion

2007-12-11T02:31:00.000+01:00

These two love performing, and are looking for paid venues.

More Reunion pix: Cast of Characters

2007-12-11T01:48:00.000+01:00

One of the first events was a swimming pool birthday party for my nephew William. John and L and their cousin Sophie were happy to join in the pool fun.

This is Eric, who is an engineer in Minneapolis. We call him The Guru because he is very very wise.

Vince and his wife Anne were our gracious hosts. They put up with an awful lot while we were there.

And here is Sarah, who flew in specially from Hawaii. Hard to believe she will turn 50 in a few weeks.

Cecily, Sarah's Big Sister, lives in Seattle, and was a calming influence on us all.

This is Ned, who lives in Washington, DC and is a senior producer at NPR. He is my baby brother. So if he is Senior, what does that make me, ferchrissake?

..and here is the birthday girl with her cake. She is a remarkable woman-- brought up 6 kids under really difficult conditions, taught generations of kids in California and North Dakota, and continues even now to teach university students who are training to be teachers. She plays a mean piano (she did a solo for us on Wednesday night) and is an inspiration to us all... (example: because she doesn't speak german, she communicated with my daughter-- who has been living in Barcelona the last few years-- in Spanish that she had learned in high school over 60 years ago)

Family Reunion: Returned

2007-12-11T01:33:00.000+01:00

We assembled over a period of 3 days in St. Paul, me and my son L from Germany, the others from North Dakota, Seattle, Arlington, and Hawaii. Fortunately my brother Vince has a big house!
L had never met his younger sister CC until this reunion. Really. But they turned out to be made for each other.
My other son, John, who has been living in Minnesota for the last year and a half, was showing off his brother to his American friends "like a shiny new toy" as he said. When we took L to the airport (he had a concert to do in Italy), it was emotionally difficult. John said, as we drove away from the airport, "Well, I managed THAT without crying", and then (about 60 seconds later) "..almost..." and we both broke into tears.

Reunion Update

2007-12-03T15:08:00.001+01:00

Everything going more or less to schedule, the cousins meeting for the first time get on fine, despite a serious language barrier!
C and Lionel are turning out to be a fantastic musical team.
Lots of activities and no time for blogging, but will post this picture of C and her cousin S at the Mall of America.