Letters from Usedom

Where have the ducks gone?

2012-01-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

They haven`t been to our place for a long while, where are you, duckies?

Oh well, the winter wasn`t too cold so far, we can still find enough food here on the canal. See, enough hiding places, can you still see us now?

No, indeed! Clever ducks!

I only wanted to make sure all was well with you.

So Paco and I walk on to the beach. Let`s see what it looks like today.

Ah yes, better. The sand is back.

In the distance I see the crane (not the cranes, they are flying above my head). People are getting their hotels ready for the summer tourists, but no hurry.

Most of them wait till Easter when Spring is in the air.

They don`t know how beautiful the sea is when it is cold and crisp and the air is stinging, and the sea-gulls fly over your head.

My camer wasn`t quick enough to catch the ten white swans that crossed the sky above me. Did you ever the sound their large wings are making. You cannot help but look up and smile.

Oh, but I do love the sea-gulls, too. They saw me get my camera out of my bag and hoped I had something to eat for them, like the tourists who feed them. But I know there are enough little fish swimming near the shore. You are not starving, come on, show me how you can dive!

Does it sound as if I am talking to the birds? I think I am. And not only the birds. When I pass a barking dog behind a fence, I usually make friends with him, too. It`s easy, you know.

Tell him what a great watchdog he is, and how pretty, and that his folks can be proud of him! Try it, you`ll see him smiling, I swear!

This is one of the beautiful hotels I pass as we walk down the promenade. It is a very long promenade, if I walk on and on, I`ll cross the Polish border in about an hour. And along the way, I will see an incredible number of these hundred-year-old, wonderfully restored houses.

If you turn your back to see what you would find if you look out from the balcony, well, this is it.

Dunes and pines, sometimes a bench to rest, and in only ten meters or so the beach begins. No skyscraper hotels, no crowds, even in summer, just a ten-thousand year-old landscape. The Baltic Sea was formed after the last glacial.

Some people say the next one is due every ten thousand years.

That is: NOW.

I hope not today.

Although, can you see how the trickling water is starting to freeze?

We have only -3°C, but in Moscow they have already -25°.

And SNOW.

I think we should walk home now, my feet are getting cold, Paco`s, too.

In our warm cosy home we can have a cup of hot chocolate. And maybe I will knit some more. Lori had sent me a pattern, for my little 3 months-old grandson. This is what I made of it. The emblem I sewed on is of his daddy`s favourite football club (Bremen). That`s how you breed fans, haha.

Well my dears, it`s been nice having you along. I hope that we`ll not get snowed in too soon, but the weather report is warning us.

If you don`t hear from me....

Today we have storm and high water!

2012-01-14T05:42:00.000-08:00

Can you feel the wind in your hair and breathe in the fresh air? We put on our warm Polish jackets!

The beach usually goes down for about 20 or more meters! But we have a North Eastern wind coming from the sea and pushing the water to the coast.

This is where the canal flows down into the sea.

oops, the same one again. Well, just look a little longer. And come with us...

You must hold on to the rails! The wind can blow you into the water! I wish you could hear the sounds of the waves, and see the glistening sun!

In summer you can rent a beach seat here, remember? Now you cannot even walk.

The sea is breaking parts away from the dunes!

That was a refreshing walk! For those of you in Africa who are suffering from humidity and heat waves, we are close to zero °C, and the wind is cool and the air crisp.

I hope you enjoyed our walk!

Cheers from Usedom!

Do I have a destiny? But what if...

2012-01-05T05:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we wonder, don`t we, if there is a plan to our lives. Do we have a destiny, tasks to fulfill, people to meet, roles to play? Were we MEANT to be someone?

But what if we never meet the people we should have, because we never travelled, or never found out what we should have achieved, and can`t think of a lasting deed we have done?

Is our life then wasted? And what about our free will? If we just did not FEEL like achieving anything?

Look at that young tree up there. Full of promises. Young. Healthy. Willing to grow.

And in the background the one that has already lived a while. It was clipped, cut at its ends. Not half as tall and wide as it could have been.

Is that what life does to us (gardeners, in this case)?

My father used to proclaim that children ought to be treated like plants, and be cut short, so that they grow strong.

Well, he was brought up in Nazi-Germany where that was the ideology.

I always felt strangely out of place in my family.

They said I was too delicate, I should adjust and be quiet.

But in my fantasy I was somewhere else, doing other things than I was expected to do.

Was I trying to follow "my own secret star"?

But I knew not what or where it was, and I did not dare to follow it, even if it had been clearer to me what it was.

Now that I am much older and look back, I am amazed at how things worked together to make me the one I am now. How so many of my dreams were fulfilled, but also how sometimes my route took funny turnings. Der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt, is a wise German saying.

Man thinks, but God leads.

Is it God? Karma? The Universe? Or no one at all? Are we just taking decisions along the way and have to face the consequences?

Well, I think that every human life is a unique piece of art. Even if we sit on a chair most of our lives, contemplating, looking out of the window... we are still part of the breathing, thinking earth. Our main destiny is only to LIVE.

What we make of it has to do with our talents, our wishes, circumstances, and often the strangest, funniest coincidences! (I can tell you lots from my own life). But mainly it has to do with what we WANT our lives to be.

Here is a house whose picture I took this morning.

Look how pretty and cared-for and freshly coloures it looks.

And here is the SAME house, two years ago.It was shattered, neglected, looking fit for being torn down.

But then somebody looked at it and loved it, and was kind to it, and now it has pride again.

So, you see what I mean?

There are roads we walk, with crossings which can lead us either way. We are able to swim rivers, climb up the other side, or take a boat and float down with the stream, that is all up to us. But if we have picture of how we WANT things to be,

we can walk through strange doors, and encounter whatever is behind that door. And we will make the things happen which we want to have in our lives.

I think it is good if we have a beautiful, kind, spirited picture of ourselves. Then, no matter how it started, or what trials it brought us, at the end we can say,

It was a good life.

2012, my bucket list

2012-01-03T02:42:00.000-08:00

A short while ago I read Reya`s list of things she still wants to do "before kicking the bucket", haha, what a nice expression. It sounds so energetic. Kicking at my bucket when I think I`ve had enough. Spilling the last dreams, but being content with what I had in my life bucket. A great picture.

Makes me think of Tessa`s favourite saying (I quote from memory): " Life is not meant to be a journey to the grave where we should arrive in a well-preserved body, but rather a joyous trip, finally ending when we skid in sideways, totally worn-out and yelling, Hell`s Teeth, what a RIDE!"
Tessa, our blog pal, lived like this, and she died a year ago, but I still think a lot of her. The images of her paintings and the landscapes she saw and shared with us, they stay with me.
Life should be joy and fun and laughter in the presence of horror and pain. We cannot eliminate it, the pain, or the "badness", even in each of us, we are made that way, selfish and mean and envious, but we are ALSO good and loving and generous. There is a balance in everything, somehow, and it helps to accept the way life just is.
We can only choose the way we want to look at it. And my credo is: Life IS this joyous trip that I want to enjoy while I´m here.
A German picture of speech is, that when you are really jumping with joy and glee, you get "out of your cottage" (aus dem Häuschen sein). I like that idea, too. That when you are really happy and overjoyed, you cannot stay inside your little house, but must run outside and spread out your arms and sing and dance.
Picture yourself doing that!
Running outside, shouting yahooooo, hopping around on a flower meadow, looking at the white clouds, breathing fresh air! Feeling that life is GOOD.
Doesn`t even that picture make you smile?

So, instead of putting more dreams into my bucket (I still have some leftovers, but really a LOT have come true), I am filling yours and my buckets with images like these:
Run "out of your little house", feel the grass underneath your bare feet, jump and sing and dance, feel your heart widen, and breathe deeply.
Do this every morning, imagine yourself this way. I`ll try to do it.
What a year it will be!

Do things have souls?

2011-12-21T00:32:00.000-08:00

My camera was definitely kaputt! No use, ready for the garbage.
But I BELIEVE in good will, even from cameras!
So I put it back on its station, letting it load and load. For two weeks I looked at it, trying if it was perhaps magically healed. No.
Then this morning Paco and I looked out of the door when I let him out. This is what we saw!
SNOW all over the place, just right for Christmas!
If only I had my camera to take a picture of this, I thought. And gave it another chance ... and how did it respond? With friendship!

Now I don`t know if there is a mechanical answer, why a thing is broken for two weeks, and healed spontaneously the next day. (It has happened before with my things, don`t ask for an explanation).

Haha, Amanda asked in her last comment (thank you dear!) what my secret for youthfulness was.
The answer is my genes, of course (at 91, my father still digs his garden) (well, my mom died at age 73...). I still skip when running and climb trees which look inviting. I walk my dog for miles, and I don`t smoke and am not overweight, all good things, and easy to follow.
But secretly I think it is my magical side that keeps me young (at 63). I believe in the good of the world around me, even in cameras. I see in children what they have hidden inside, and tickle it out. And I try to be as honest as I can (well, you can only TRY), giggle and laugh at awful situations, and SEE people beside me. - My grandson and I (must tell you this story!) were walking to the underground train in Hamburg the other day. There was a long tunnel, and commercial signs were scattered along the way. The little boy ducked, went on his hands and knees to crawl underneath one before I could scream (children have the most incredible ideas). Then we both looked at his dark dirty hands, and I said, If only we had some water to wash your hands! And out of the blue (darkness) a silent man in a worker`s overall appeared, pushing a broom. He looked foreign, and did not speak much German, but when I pointed at the dirty hands and sighed, smilingly, the man smiled back.
He led us to a hidden door, opened it and provided a water hose! Jojo washed his hands with glee under that hose, and then I gave the nice man a piece of Lindt chocolate which I had buried in my bag, making him smile again. Afterwards Jojo said, He did something nice, and he got something. Good!

I guess that`s it. Justice. Keep yourself a feeling for justice. Treat everyone like a friend, and they will be friends.
Even cameras.
And that makes me go back to Amanda. If you want to warm up your heart, go to Amanda`s blog today and read Travels with Persephone. You`ll see why. Pictures say more than words sometimes.
Praise to all the cameras of the world!
Cheers from
Angela

Do you remember the Times...

2011-12-20T02:38:00.000-08:00

...when you have held your head high...? No, I wasn`t going to talk about that song, it only came to my mind from the first line. Do you still know Buffy St.Marie, a singer of the Sixties? Beautiful voice and lyrics. (This song is called "Now that the Buffalo`s gone", she is a Native American).

What I was really going to say is that my camera is broken. Not broken, actually, but simply kaputt! Gone with the wind. The pictures aren`t to be recognized, only pixels appear on the screen.
And I thought to myself, Do you remember the times...
when you bought a washing machine and knew you could keep it for at least forty years? TV sets, radios, refrigerators, cars, toys, cameras, the whole lot. All were made to last.
But then they (you know, "they") thought, Who the heck is going to buy a new washing machine in two years? How will economy grow this way? And they invented little disorders which would make a facility man come and have a look. And then the nice man would say, Oh I am so sorry, but the repair will cost just as much as a new one! Look, we have new ones to offer!
So this is how it all started. Buy new, throw things out, don`t darn socks! The new things were most often not any better, just new. With more electronics which is so much more vulnerable.
Oh, I wish I still had many of my old things.
Amd my camera would still work!
Does that mean I am getting old and decayed myself?
No, don`t answer that, haha!
Happy Christmas, all of you!
Christmas, after all, is still there.

Some Hamburg Impressions

2011-12-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

Instead of too many words, I send you an invitation to join my stroll through the new "Harbour City" in Hamburg.

There are still many old buildings from the times of the Free Port, but also new modern architecture now adds to the silhouette.

Some very old cellar restaurants have signs, saying, this was first run by Benno of Bremen, who owned large areas here in 1470.

These dogs are not as old, but I liked their haughty look.

See what I mean - old and new.

And now is the time of the Weihnachtsmärkte, with caroussels and music and Lebkuchen and Marzipan. And happy children.

Hey guys, what are YOU doing here again?

Haha, on the Reeperbahn in St.Pauli they have what are called Koberer, men who try to escort you into their establishments... (telling you this is the nicest strip bar of all), for the sailors who seek distraction. But no thanks, we don`t feel like coming in now.

In the afternoon we are expected for tea and biscuits and a candle at a friend`s house. This is an Adventskranz, have you got that too?

It is part of German Christmas decoration, it smells so good of fir in the house.

But we are still walking on and look at the old trading stores, where the flat ships used to land and unload their goods, coffee sacks and carpets and pepper and spices.

These canals, called Fleete, give an easy access to the stores. Now they are mostly offices, but some are beautiful museums and keep history alive. The trading is still done, only with container ships and on bigger scales nowadays.

I love these old brick houses and their green copper roofs, though.

You can book a boat tour through the harbour and will get told of former days.

Hamburg has been a trading place ever since it was founded around the year 800.

Still up to these days, young people who grow up here, love to travel. My cousin`s father left for Argentina in 1910. My brother and his best friend emigrated to South Africa. Me, I spent a year in Pennsylvania when I was 16. It`s in our blood to want to see the world.

I do hope that our connections to the British Isles will not be disrupted by the latest turbulences. Trading and talking together is what connects people.

Have a happy Adventstime, you all!

Love from

Angela

Every crisis bears a chance

2011-12-10T03:10:00.000-08:00

We are watching Sky News today, and German N(ews)TV, and read German newspapers, and speak with each other, and watch English News again.

What is going on in Euroland? I don`t usually come up with my political positions (except when I asked Mrs.Merkel to help support the Libyans in their freedom fight), but now I am wondering and would like to hear your comments.
There is undoubtedly a financial crisis in Europe, and I should say in other parts of the world as well, as we are all connected these days. What has led to it? "People" (traders, bankers, politicians, you name them) have forgotten what money really is. It is a way to trade easier, but it has to be backed by material worth. And you cannot spend more than you are able to pay back. And you have to continue to work and be honest and reliable, and there must be some trust among trading partners.
I told you before of the Society in Hamburg, called "Der Ehrbare Kaufmann".
Firm owners, traders, business people who want to join will sign a document, saying: We will act trustworthy in our deals. It sounds like a simple, superfluous thing to say, but if you look around, is it that?

Every householder knows you`ve got to turn your money twice before spending, and when you take up a credit, you`ve got to pay it back in your lifetime.
Too many have acted lately as if this did not apply to public money. Greed was the main idea, and the paying-back could be postponed.
And now the finance markets have broken down, and people look at each other.

The 27 countries of the Eurozone have come together, talked and negotiated. Old rules were suddenly considered valuable again. And why not? It might take a few years till trust was re-established, and this time there will have to be controls and sanctions, but if we all agree on this and give up some of our national pride and self-government, why not give it a try? Yes, European countries have all got a different history and culture, and isn`t that wonderful and what makes us rich and interesting? But in such a common crisis we should still work together, until things have been pushed into the right direction.
Most European countries have agreed. Some are still thinking, or must ask their national parliaments.
Only Britain has turned its back on the rest of Europe.
Splendid isolation is an old British agreement. And apparently many British people still like this idea.
You are our cousins, we wanted you in the boat! Your main market is the European Union. The French and the Germans and the Italians, Lithuanians, Spanish, we all think we have a lot to give to each other. Don`t you see this, too, my English friends?
We are very disappointed.
But we are still friends.
Love from Angela

You are needed, my sisters!

2011-12-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

Dear sisters of my age, with some time at hand,

in case you have a little time to share, say, an hour each week, go and hang up a sign!

Haha, I did it again, using "direct speech", which the Germans are so ridiculed for. "C`mon, do this! Go there! Don`t waste time!"
English-speaking people are much more polite and seducing.

Wait, I`ll start again.

My dear girls,

in today`s letter I will ask you a favour. I am not using pictures (you know why, ahem), it`s only fantasy that I beg of you.
I have found out what is really, really lacking in our society. It is TIME.

So instead od asking you to donate money at this time of year, I ask you to hang up a sign (that sounds better, doesn`t it).
anywhere where people linger. Say, a church, a grocery store, a school, a kindergarten, whatever.
To make it sound more "professional", offer to share the skill you have.
Can you sing? Found a singing circle. Singing together is great. Knit or crochet? Play the recorder? Speak a foreign language?
Offer classes. Do Origami? (My daughter can make the most beautiful cranes out of a piece of flat paper. Wonderful table decorations).
It really does not matter WHAT you can do. Invite children. Teach them what you can do yourself. Bake cookies, perhaps. Let the parents come along, to get to know you. Then they will be happy to leave you and go shopping in this extra hour.

You will see that children thoroughly enjoy to "have" this grown-up person, outside of their family, to themselves. If you have some unusual out-fashioed things, let them use them. A spinning wheel, scales with weights, a grandfather clock that they can wind, an old telephone to dial numbers ("Hi Granny, are you there?). Or you find some unused postcards and teach the children how to really write an old-fashioned greeting to Granny, with a stamp!
You get the picture? And the most important thing which children love is ASKING QUESTIONS!
You will be surprised what`s on their minds. Answer each question as honestly and straightforward as you can.
"Will my mom still love me when the new baby is born?" "Always and ever!"
"Why did my Grandpa have to die? I miss him so." "His life was over. Just think if all the people who once lived would still be around! But he loves you still."
"What can I do that my mother respects my privacy in my room?" "Hang up a sign: Please do not disturb!"
"What if my stepdad does not respect the privacy of my shower?" "YELL at him: OUT with you!"
"My sister steals my nail polish, and I get so mad at her!" "Tell her you love her, but she must ask you."

You see? Simple things like that, but children are often confused about what they may or may not expect from their family members.
One thing is crucial, though.
Whatever you hear about the family, bury it deep in your heart!

I tell you, you cannot do a better thing for yourself - giving time.
Think about it and then tell me what you come up with!
Much love from
Angela

A good-night-walk

2011-11-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hi my walking friends, would you like to join me again?

We start off in bright sunshine.

See our pretty church up the hill?

And along the way we marvel at some of the old houses that were built around 1900 and have survived changing times.

This one is now a five-star guest house. Shall I book your next holiday here?

But let`s turn towards the beach now. As it is getting dark soon, I doubt that we`ll make it all the way tonight. At 4:15 p.m. the sun is rapidly sinking.

But I love this lane. The lines (Linden, I think that is line?) have lost all their leaves in yesterday`s storm, and the branches make beautiful silhouettes now.

No Thanksgiving here, just an Autumn Stroll

2011-11-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

It is a typical November afternoon, which means fog and clouds and an early evening to expect.

So Paco and I look at each other and say, Let`s take a stroll before it gets dark!

We pass the empty playground with the nice long slide. No children are here. Paco, can I tempt you?

But Paco rather sniffs around in the brown fallen leaves by the railroad tracks. " Maybe I can find a mouse here? I used to be a great hunter, but at my age a mouse would do."

As we walk on we see the deserted storch nest up on the pole. The storchs have left for Africa a while ago. Oh, maybe only we say Storch, and you say stork? No dictionary with me.

When they come back in the spring, they bring the little children! I like that thought.

Well, the grass is still rather green, but it is not growing anymore. Soon it will all be covered in snow! Though I am fond of White Christmas and sledge rides and glistening fir trees, I still hope that snow will not arrive too soon this year.

But all the other colours are gone by now. No more flowers and butterflies and apples and plums on the trees.

Only the "headache house" as I call it still provides some colour. (In reality it does give you a headache! The red really jumps at you!)

Well, Paco dear, let`s turn around and walk home. No mouse in sight? Wait, I`ll give you a piece of your stinking dried - what is "Pansen"? That cow`s stomach thing, really smelly? He LOVES that.

Here the sign says, End of walkway. Street ahead of you. How nice to tell me.

I wonder if women still wear such skirts?

Not in this weather, surely. Me, I am wearing my warm coat and boots.

Now this our nice uneventful walk is also ending. It was good to breathe some fresh air and think of this and that.

I hope that you, all my American friends, have a delightful day, too. May all your various relatives and friends be friendly to you and each other, may they appreciate your food and hospitality, or in case you were invited, your company.

Me, I am using the rest of the day to bake two Christmas Cakes which we call Stollen.

If your turkey or your company was not to your liking, just slip out of the house, grab your magic broom and join me for a cup of tea!

This cake is really delicious!

Have a happy day, wherever you are!

Angela

Today is Repentance and Prayer Day!

2011-11-16T03:38:00.000-08:00

In Germany it is called Buß- und Bettag.

The ChurchYear is ending next Sunday in our Protestant church, and the day is called Eternity Sunday. Ewigkeitssonntag, or Totensonntag. It is a day of remembrance of the ones who passed away this year. We go to the graveyards and put down flowers or just stand and think.

Only after this contemplative time the Advent`s Time will begin. Bazaars, Christmas markets, candles and Glögg.

It will be a hectic time.

But before this last quiet Sunday comes, we celebrate, if you can call it that, this Day of Repentance.

Sometimes it helps to just get up and change your perspective.

Am I content with this life I am leading?

Is it a life that is worthwhile, happy, fulfilled? Am I acting the way I would like to be treated myself? Life is short, only three whole days till Eternity Sunday. What if...?

I like to think that kindness is the best. That no matter how busy we are, or how stricken with our own affairs,

a little chat over the fence, or a cup of tea with friends, or a handwritten card

can make us breathe deeply and smile.

Even if the flowers look a little shattered at this time of year, and a fallen brown leaf is spoiling the picture, life is still good and happy, and I can add my share.

I think of the dead friends I have lost. I still miss Tessa`s blog and her spirit and wicked sense of humour. But I cherish the friends I have found here in blogland.

YOU!

Come on over for a cup of tea and tell me of your day.

Love from Angela

My magic teahouse

2011-11-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

Look, here it is, our magic learning place. The doors are open, if you are curious and eager to study, and more or less seven years old (never mind if you are A LOT MORE), then let`s go in.

The doors are WIDE open, and we have

enough chairs, and enough wisdom for all..

Here comes the inside, with all my equipment.

My Australian calendar (thank you so much, Natsy, beautiful pictures in it!), my wand, enough scrap paper and pens, a heap of books (covered), and -

very important -

my jar of sweets.

AND the letter biscuits! The children`s favourites, and good to teach the alphabet!

Oh no,

here it comes again!

We KNOW you have magic power. I already SAID so.

Last night we had such a cute gathering again. Only five of the seven dwarves appeared, two could not come, but one of the boys brought his little brother. Maurice would not be shaken off but wanted to see what his big brother was up to. So we agreed he was allowed to stay and could pass the time by drawing pictures.

But though he was only five or so and had never studied English before, we soon heard him join in the choir of the others.

"Noooo, Paco is not a kangaroo! He does NOT live in Australia!"

Very funny.

I wish you could have all been there.

And in the end, shortly before the parents come to pick their offspring up, we all pour out into the moonlit night and take a running round around the garden, along the hazelnut bushes and the chestnut trees, and try not to fall into the pond ( a bit of excitement is adding to the fun). Luckily Carl is wearing his new cool sneakers with the blue neon lights which shine in the dark.

Do you see why these children think that learning is something they wouldn`t miss for the world?!!!

Good Days in Autumn

2011-11-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

Doesn`t my little teahouse look a bit windshaken, haha?

But it`s only breathing with delight and bursting with children`s laughter, even when they are not in. Tonight at four thirty my "Seven Dwarves" are coming again, taking their places (three boys, four girls, all aged 7)

Mut und Kraft, my wonderful mantra!

2011-11-01T03:33:00.000-07:00

If you ever feel scared and need a mantra to get you through, take mine. Mut und Kraft. Pronounced like Moot and Kruft, and meaning Courage and Strength.

Try it, in any language.

It will fill you up to the top with both.

It will even make you swing sideways. And laugh out loud.

Me, it brought me through my adventure trip, when I had to take a plane all the way to Switzerland on my own. Really, you`ll laugh, but I hadn`t flown since almost 40 years, and never ever travelled on my own. And so it was a big, exciting challenge.

Mut und Kraft, I mumbled. Kraft und Mut. (You can switch it around)

And then I stepped into the aircraft on Hamburg airport and got out after only ONE HOUR in Zürich. Which was a marvel in itself. Is Germany that small? But then, we travelled at 700 km/hour, in a height of 11 km. Wow! When we started I felt like Nils Holgersson, the little boy how flew away with the wild geese. (I am reading this book with my German-student from Bulgaria who loves it).

However, only one week later (yesterday) a plane in Hamburg had to return to ground, because a wild goose had flown into the engine...

I`m glad I wasn`t in that one.

But then we landed safely in Zürich, and I found my suitcase and bought a tram ticket and caught the right trams and finally rang at my daughter`s doorbell.

I had got all the courage and strength I needed!

And after that it was all bliss. Holding my girl, and her little boy, and her big boy, and then going on walks and playing on the playground (me, as you can see above), and discovering the city, and watching the people (the Swiss, apparently they look away from strangers. But I gave them an opportunity to be nice and helpful whenever I felt lost or wanted something out-of-the-way, and THEN they responded).

"Be a little silly, don`t always think of your business", I felt tempted to shout over to them. But a good deal of soberness seems to be in their character. Nevertheless, all worked well, especially with their tram system. And they even had a gear-driven rack railway which I loved to use.

It`s a cul de sac (sack station), just going up and down the mountain.

And when you have reached the top, you get an incredible view over the Zürich Lake, and the city across.

Well, you should look to the left, I`m in the way.

But after only three days (remember, fish and visitors smell after three days), we all had to part. My hotel which was breathtakingly expensive (and where they hid the croissants from the guests` eyes and let them boil their morning eggs alone and served only one cup of coffee) saw me go happily.

But then I just walked around with my suitcase on wheels and sneaked into the University building and a church along the way (NOTHING in there, except for a few rows of chairs, but beautiful glass windows. Swiss Protestantism is also of the sober sort). Then my daughter and grandson saw me off at the tram again, and whoosh, we were gone.

Now here I am back home. My lovely home and my sweet husband, and I am happy again.

You just can`t have EVERYTHING in one place.

But I left them my mantra, and I still own it, too. I managed to travel on my own, and I am so proud of myself.

Once in a while, they say, we should leave our comfort zone.

And I can advise you to do the same - be courageous, and you`ll be rewarded!

Have a lot of fun, all of you!

Angela the travelling grandma

Thank you, all you Blog Fairies!

2011-10-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

Oh my God! He has arrived, and I am so relieved. It was not easy, my poor child (and also the Papa) had to go through a lot. But Little Boy made it into the open, and he is healthy and well and lively.

I am thankful beyond saying. Singing praises all day, sending blessings over to Switzerland (so far away!) and bestowing good wishes on our precious little new grandson.
Our son-in-law called us on the phone, and we could hear him smile when he said, And he looks like Hans!
Which made Opa rise in height and pride, haha!
Finally we could breathe out, and of course we had a glass of Swiss wine last night (Dôle) to celebrate. But most of all I am humble and happy for my children. May all of you recover soon and forget the hardships, and may Little Boy look at life with curiosity and courage, and feel the love he is wrapped in.

You, my dear Blog Fairies, have helped me survive this time of waiting, and I thank you dearly!
All of you who have children of your own, or have a close relationship to children, you KNOW what the moment of birth means.
It is a great wonder, every time again, and here is our promise:
Newborn child, we will help you, and keep you, and love you. You can turn to us, and we will try to be a big friend to you. May your life be wonderful all along. It may not be EASY at times, it is probably not meant to be, but you can count on us to be there to guide you, or console you. And we want to laugh and giggle with you, and share our own joy, and learn from yours.

This promise goes out not only to my own grandchildren. Ever since I became a mama myself, I have looked at other children the same way. They, too, are somebody`s loved one, and unique.
It takes a village to raise a child, the Africans say.
Our Blog Village is one great village, too!
So all my dears, I am celebrating with you, and wishing you and ALL your little children my very best.
Your thankful
Oma Angela

What a lazy baby!

2011-10-13T04:41:00.000-07:00

My knitting achievements are growing and growing! I asked our other old Teddybear to put it all on, and he meddled around with it, then saying, There is no cap, so he wrapped the scarf around his head.
Of course I immediately started knitting a blue cap, too.
But if the baby STILL does not come, I will run out of patterns. With my limited abilities I was proud enough to have come this far! But I want to LOOK at you, baby boy, and see how big you are and how broad your shoulders (haha), so I can make you a winter jacket.
But he sits still and put and does not come out!
I told my daughter of the old trick of swallowing a spoonful of castor oil, but she shuddered and refused.
Does anyone of you know how to lure a happy and comfortable baby out of its nice place into the big, noisy, overwhelming world of ours?
All suggestions will be appreciated!

What is this life...

2011-09-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

... if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare,
no time to stand beneath the bows
and stare as long as sheep and cows?

One of my favourite poems, I forgot the author, was it a Mr. Davis?

I too have been pondering this question lately, or more so than usually, I should say.
What IS this life?
Do butterflies ever ask such questons, I wonder?
Or stillborns?
We are expecting the birth of a new little family member, in only a few days.
You can tell from my knitting attempts (thank you for your help, Lori and Anushka and Maike).
We are all getting prepared, especially the young parents, but I wonder, what does the stillborn think, or expect? Tell me, little one!
You have been growing and sucking your thumb in your sheltering womb, listening to your Mama`s favourite music, her voice, and your daddy`s, you even went to the theatre and the opera with them, and you surely listened, and perhaps wondered was going on out there.
Soon you will be finding your way out, out into the light and the cold and the confusing theatre we call Life.
So what is it?
One thing is for sure, we are taking part in the play for only a while, then we leave. Or return, to the place we came from, who knows. Do you still know what was before you? Or where?
I remember when your Mama was born. She opened her eyes right away, and she looked around her, and then she smiled.
I thought, What a happy way to approach life.

Everyone has to find his or her own answer. What am I here for? Does this all have a meaning? Can I influence the path which my own life will take? How will I look at all my experiences, as challenges which should be solved and learned from, or as threatening obstacles which I should try to avoid?
These are your own decisions, my sweetie, yes, you CAN take choices. Not on the encounters you will have, or the turns and twists your life will take, but HOW you deal with them.
May you become like your Mama and smile.
I wish you that you will cope with difficulties, smile, and be proud of yourself for not giving up. Be humble, too, and thankful for the ones who love you and help you on your way.
But most of all, ENJOY the life that lies ahead of you.
Me, and all the Blog Fairies who have accompanied me, your Oma, so far, we all love you already. I know they too are surrounding you by their blessings. Can you feel them?

Welcome, baby boy! I can`t wait to hug you!

Education and wands

2011-08-31T04:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, I KNOW that it takes effort and some hard work when you want to learn something new.

I`m trying to learn Polish, so don`t tell ME anything. Come on, say:

Czy moglaby pani mi prosze przytrzymac drzwi?

Meaning, Could the lady please hold the door open for me? A question which you should understand when you are asked, lest you appear impolite!

But when you enter my magic schoolroom (which happens to be our lovely pavillion in the back of our garden), you will find my supernatural wand on the table. My most essential equipment!

It was easy to make, out of a stick, the dried beard of a dwarf (no, not really, just something from a corn cob), and a golden star.

But it has all the power it needs to make children curious and willing to study!

I have little helpers in form of the Mr. Men.

The children love them.

The idea for the wand I got from this book, where the witch also has one.

She doesn`t really need it, because she has her broomstick to travel on, her cat to accompany her, and her cauldron to make good soup in. She could be all satisfied with her life.

On her trips through the sky she gains NEW friends, though, and they help her to scare the dragon away. A book full of wisdom!!

And when I teach children, I use this wisdom.

I create a place in which they feel sheltered. I treat them like my friends. When they make a mistake, we laugh it off. They are ENCOURAGED to make mistakes! How else should they learn?

This mixture of soberness and magic, the belief that I can heal their injuries at school with my wand and with my laughter, that makes the children feel at ease. And suddenly their heads are free again to allow new thoughts in. When I turn to them casually and ask them a question in English, they answer me! Without even noticing.

Children really WANT to learn, I am convinced of that. But in our eagerness to teach them OUR outlook on life, our ideas of what is right and wrong and useful, we sometimes forget that each child should find their own answers.

They are living in a new world. It is changing every day. Things that we learned as children are sometimes not even true anymore, or heavily outdated.

So should we not be patient with children, ask them questions to ponder about instead of making them learn our answers?

Mandy from FireByrd is approaching a new grip on teachers, you can read it in her blog.

Janet from Under the Blood Red Sky works for Walks in the Wilderness and is showing neglected children their own nature habitat. Lori from Lori times Five is teaching knitting to children and grown-ups.

And all of us who bring up children, we know how children ought to be treated.

WHY, I ask, do our schools not understand this?

Dear teachers everywhere, you are not too old to change your ways.

See, I am trying to learn something new, too.

I wonder if I`ll ever manage to make a SECOND one, but at least I am trying hard with a first!

Please, teachers and educators, don`t make children feel small and stupid. Make them feel eager and ambitious and proud!
Go get yourselves a wand. It is easy to make! And it will change the atmosphere in your classroom.
My best wishes to you.
Angela

Did you ever feel like a skinny rubber chicken?

2011-08-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

That`s me. That very unenergetic hen there.

Sometimes in the last weeks I looked at my last post and thought, Should I write something new on my blog? And then I chewed on my pencil, so to say,

and nothing, at least no words, appeared in my mind.

Not that I have nothing to tell you about. Lots of things have been happening, as they always do.

Friends come and go, new acquaintances are made, problems arise and are solved, children have their first day of school, some cry, some like it there.

Life just keeps on turning.

Mine and yours.

But aren`t you busy enough with your own doings?

Do you really care about my life on this island?

I still have Tessa`s lovely little calendar, you know. Tessa who was my good blog pal, who always understood the silliness in my words and commented or wrote me emails that I laughed about.

Tessa has died and left a hole.

I have friends who still live and who mean a lot to me. I know that they care about me and wish me well, and I thrive on their friendship. And there are others to whom I write letters and try to cheer them up. And I meet children whose hearts I try to reach. And even after a few encounters I feel that I might have succeeded.

But in the end, what is it all good for?

We have summer here, everything is green and beautiful, no time for such thoughts, really. But they do come sometimes. You know that chapter in the Bible, of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher?

All is in vain, he says. There is a time for everything under the Heavens, but in the end it is all in vain.

Is that so?

Or do we truly touch other people`s hearts?

Sometimes I do not know.

Still, I`m sending you all my good wishes. They never cease to grow, even after I gave so many away.

May they wrap you in good thoughts and feelings.

I hope my energy will grow again, too.

Love, Angela

Out of time

2011-07-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

This is such a rainy, rainy day.

The old, neglected roads can`t even hold the water. Paco and I stumbled over the rotten sidewalk/pavement and felt somehow out of time.

Here in former East Germany some places and sights still feel like 50 years ago.

So let`s pass through the circus entrance and change into another world.

This here is our library, with shelves full of books. And nothing else, no CDs or DVDs, none of such modern nonsense.

There are index cards for every book, and you get a stamp on your card if you take one out. But the two lovely ladies are generous and don`t mind if you turn it in late. This year they started taking money at all, 12 € for the whole year. Even buying only ONE book is more expensive!

Today we also walk to the shoemaker`s. His shop is hidden somewhere in a side street. Two days ago when I looked for him to have some shoes repaired, I said (after I finally found him),

"You should put up a sign or some ads so that people can FIND you!"

Here, he is (sometimes) behind THIS door.

And behind this window.

Inside the shop he had a little dog who had made a big puddle on the floor, at least outside of his basket. But he (the little dog) jumped up at the next client`s leg, with his peed-on feet and all. Arrg.

The shoemaker who is also the key maker (his opening-hours-sign says: Open from 8 to 12 and 14:30 to 18 hours, but only if not away on key emergency!) frowned at me.

"What should I put up signs for?" he said grumpily. "I have enough work till Christmas! No time to spend all that money anyway."

"Do you mind if I bring you some shoes to repair then?" I asked. But he graciously took them and mumbled, "Till Thursday." So we came back today, only having to wait a while till he appeared around 2:45, and then I had to help him find the shoes...

After that experience Paco and I ran down to the beach which was lovely, rain or no rain. Actually it had even stopped for a while. The tourists wanted to take a look, too.

The beach has been here since at least 10 000 years, when the last glacial formed it. What a soothing thought. No hurry here.

Then we saw another thing, way out of time.

I wonder what stories this boat in the front yard can tell. It is still complete, but a tree growing out.

Let`s go back to the circus now

and feed the camels.

Camels are such old-fashioned animals, too, aren`t they?

I hope you are having a happy, quiet, old-fashioned day, like me. They are sometimes the best.

My cordial regards to you!

Is that an old-fashioned enough greeting?

Angela

This `n That

2011-07-12T03:11:00.000-07:00

Our water lillies are in blossom! I love them!

I feel like sharing some more of my photos, if you have the time to look.

Here is my favourite garden bench. We got it from our daughter.

The gooseberry bush beside it is Paco`s (that`s what he thinks). He can really and truly pick the berries from it by sucking them in. Never seen that before! Amazing dog.

Our sunflowers are growing, too.

My husband is working on a new sculpture. This last one has found a good place, don`t you think?

And while I am actually really busy with summer activities, like weeding, digging, entertaining guests, washing and ironing bed sheets, never-ending chores, you know how it is...

I still find the time to read my friends` blogs, though not as much as in winter. But I saw that Lori presented all her Africa books, and so I did the same! I even made a list,

in case anyone wants to know titles and the stories behind them. Three alone I have of Norman Carr, my brother`s father-in-law, who even signed them for us.

And Lori made a new cover for one, thank you so much, Lori!

One is a book my brother wrote (The trouble with Africa)

and I am still waiting for yours, Miranda!!!!

Hey, who put this photo in here again? It belongs to the top. My computer (or Blogger?) does strange things, I will never completely understand how this-all-wonderworld-magic works!

Anyway, here are some of the titles, and Lori`s cover! Val gave me the Chickens-book, and Vic the Bobo-book about the dogs. Scary, that. Mma Ramotswe is fictitious, but so nice! Botswana must be a happy place, is it, Karen?

Oh. here is a funny old photo I still have of the day when Vic shook hands with Prince Philip and Andrew. A painting of his, showing the Black Rhino, later found its place in the Royal Train. Look at the two bodyguards sneaking behind the door, haha.

And while I am reminiscing, I cannot resist showing you a card I once got from Astrid Lindgren. In her own handwriting she added to her usual thank-you-card (in return to my letter to her - in Swedish, or I hoped it was Swedish)

"Dear sweet Angela... thank you for a lovely letter!" And her signature. Astrid Lindgren.

One of my treasures.

Aaah. and here is something which I remembered while writing my "old" adventure-story. As you know, I am writing a story about my (5) now six-year-old pupils visiting me in 1954, the year when I came to school! This is one of the things we did then: Glueing liquorice salmis on the back of our hands (with spit, oh well) and then licking them thin.

We were easy to please back then.

Have a great day, my dears. I must now run and DO things.

Byeee from whizzing

Angela

Too busy to blog

2011-06-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

This is not really a blog post. I am up to my ears in strawberries. And cherries. And after some washing, cutting and cooking, also in lovely home-made strawberry jam. About 30 jars so far. The rest is frozen in, oh yes, and became part of my yummy rum-pot.

All jars with hand-written labels, Shiny, like it should be! The cherries are not as plenty as they should have been, but we have these ever-hungry winged friends in our yard, you know... No, not Mr. Humpel, he is more addicted to our black bread crumbs. But our garden is full of song due to to all our birdies, so I don`t even mind to share.

And apart from harvesting there was a lot more. General garden work in June, like weeding, watering, mowing, but we are also knee-deep in visitors, so to say.

First the Americans, that was fun, then holiday guests in our apartment, coming and going from June till September, changing weekly or two-weekly. That means cleaning house, washing sheets, explaining, chatting, repairing bicycles (sharing strawberries), no end...

Most are very nice, some are a little different (twice we had the unusual combination of two young men and one woman, once even with baby, but all pleasant), but you always need to be there to give hints or help out with extras. Generally our apartment is well-equipped, though. And our guests usually write nice things into our guest book.

Then our daughter came for a long weekend which was just wonderful.

Paco is always so happy too.

She can take the loveliest pictures of him.

And since she is pregnant and we had so much fun going baby-clothes-shopping, I now miss her company a lot.

But I gave her something to take along.

Usually bears do not smile, but she chose the one who does.I wish you a happy smile from someone today, too!

Don`t know when I`ll be back or if my computer holds a little longer. It already creaks and refuses to send e-mails so don`t worry about me. Just send me a postcard!

Take care, all of you!

Angela

Do you remember how times were when you were six?

2011-06-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

As you might know or not know, I am inventing an adventure story for my six-year-old pupils. I am creating a world of magic for them in which they have strange experiences but which still feels sort of "real" for them.

In my story I am also six again. We have gone back to the year 1954, and I am showing them my life back then. We play the old games and we buy things in the small stores we used to have then, and use the old equipment which belonged to everyday life.

How can you put yourself back into those times? Remember all the old stuff?

When I walk past this house I sort of imagine how the old lady (a witch?) steps out and cackles at me. At once I see it all before my eyes!

Her telephone rings. Of course she has an old one, like this. Her other witch friends are coming over! In her kitchen she makes a bread pudding, after the recipe which my grandmother used to make. With home-grown cherries, and flowers in a crystal vase..

She probably also has a button box, for children to play with. Just like the one I inherited from my grandmother Marie.

At the time there were no digital watches or letter weighers. And sweets were stored in glass jars like this.

This is a grandfather clock like the one of the fairytale where the youngest little goat could hide from the wolf! How can children of today imagine how that worked with a clock of modern design?

Yes, we still cherish our old stuff, too. And when I look at these things, my memory eyes "see" all the places and people I used to know and love. Like the man who walked from lamp to lamp every evening at dusk and lit the gas lights - what an amazing task! That was the job I wanted to have! Making light!

Oh yes, it is fun to write my story...

Today I read the latest part to two of the kiddies. I am sure they "see" the same images I have in my mind. They can`t wait for more.

Have you tried to tell your little ones such stories of the "olden days"? I wish my grandparents had done more of it. Imagine they had told me of THEIR grandparents` time, of the things of daily use then, of the rlationships they had, their wishes and dreams.

Wonderful! Go do it! Don`t let your memories get lost.

I am just thinking of more ... That ticket seller in the street car with his leather bag and change boxes, and haha, that embarrassing moment my mother had when she was expected to name her goal, and she said, "A bottle of Muskateller, please!"

Cackle...

I`m inviting you...

2011-06-15T00:16:00.000-07:00

All my unknown friends, wherever you live, with all your joys and sorrows, your stupid relatives or bodily burdens, your despondency or lack of money, your courage and singing in spite of it all,

here, let me give you a bunch of pretty spring flowers

and then invite you into my garden.

We are going to have a picnic!

We spread out our blankets, distribute glasses and wine or lemonade, cookies/biscuits and meat balls, my piroschki and potato salad (you are allowed to bring your own delicious treats). This is going to be fun with no meaning.

The ducks are joining us. There you can see Mr.Kumpel`s ball which he thinks is an egg and sometimes tries to sit on (Kumpel, what ARE you?), and they all come close and hope for some crumbs.

The only thing I expect of you is to feel better. I know some of you have a streak of not feeling so good at the moment.

I learned a new word called fug, which is Mief in German. If this fug is currently surrounding you, chase it away!

Let`s start singing that canon song where it goes "merrily, merrily, merrily merrily, life is but a dream". (The ducks fly away but so what)

When you have finished all our food and the last drop, and you have to go home,

I want you to feel empowered and courageos and full of new smashing ideas for your life. Think anew! Let fresh joy and hope run through your veins!

Eat, drink and be merry, is what you can learn from Lola.

Share beautiful pictures from your home country, as Lori, Karen, Val and numerous others of our blog friends do,

share your sad emotions when they start overwhelming you,

we are here to listen and comfort you.

Come back, my dears.

Any time, in your dreams.

I tried to add a little gingerbread house sight but I wonder where it went. Either it will appear down here somewhere twice, or not at all.

Never mind.

It was lovely having you.

Cheers from Angela

I laughed tears!

2011-06-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

My Polish neighbour has this tiny, tiny dog girl, named Sissy. But she is such a whirlwind, you can hardly see her!

Yesterday she came up running, though, when she saw her great buddy Paco - only taking a picture of her was near to impossible.

But something was different. She looked even tinier than usual!

No wonder I could not catch her with my camera.

"Hey, what happened to your doggie?" I asked my neighbour. "She looks so - um, slender?"

"Tak," said my Polish friend proudly. Which does not mean "thank you", as in Danish, but "yes". Once you start messing with foreign languages you can really get mixed up. Have I told you about my English friend who refused to eat semolina because in German it is called Grieß, and she thought that sounded too much like grease?

Anyway,

my neighbour told me with her funny Polish accent,

"She been to the dog-frizjer" (that being a hair dresser) "and now she so pretty again. Have a real waist. Show, Sissy!"

And Sissy posed, in all her beauty and pride.

And my friend added, "Now she look like model. Such long legs! Look just like Claudia Schiffer!"

Exactly!!

My American visitors

2011-06-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

The reason that I was away from blogland and even e-mail-land for the last two weeks was NOT (thank you for asking) that I got infected by those vicious bacteria that hid on bean sprouts and cucumbers in North Germany, but that our American visitors were here.

I promised that I would not write too much but here are just a few of our photos.

If you want to read more, you can go to J`s blog called opuselements.blogspot.com

We went on bicycle tours,

tried to sell her son a nice old villa for cheap money, only a bit of renovating needed,

had cake, well not only cake but also Bratwurst, freshly smoked salmon, ice-cream, kebab, more cake, lasagne, rote Grütze, soup, black bread, and (THEM, not me) vegemite which they brought along, to put on croissants (I think) (I looked away, the smell was too awful).

We also met with Russian neighbours and went to Poland.

There I bought this little baby body for my new grandchild. I asked the saleslady what it meant, and she sniggered and laughed and said, It means, The snail eats the herring! So funny!

Z drogi sledzie

slimak jedzie!

WHAT? There isn`t even a herring!

I asked my Polish friend Ewa and her family who came for coffee, and they also cracked up and shouted, That is hilarious for a baby!!

It means something like, You herrings, get out of the way, here comes the king of the road!

Or something.

Go figure. That`s Polish humour.

Anyway, we also visited a castle and an old church, very old in fact, with a graveyard around it and an oak tree which was 670 years old

and had cake

and went to the beach and bought fish, and had fish in a fish restaurant -

okay, it sounds a bit boring,

so I will leave you now and enjoy the sun a little.

Yesterday we had a real horrible thunderstorm, but now all is nice and peaceful again.

I hope it is at your place, too.

Love as always from

Angela

My morning-wandering thoughts

2011-05-24T04:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I felt like taking a longer walk with Paco. The sun was bright, the air still, birds chirping, all was beautiful. So we strolled past the gnome-farm with the lonely little dog (the only one alive) among all the silent busy gnomes, and then on to the Sheltered Workshop.
Just then my neighbour overtook us, the one who has a handicapped daughter. They have an extra-designed bike where the mother rides the bike and the daughter is pushed in a seat at the front. They stopped to chat a little. I had heard their story before - the daughter is the same age as my youngest one, 34, and was polio vaccinated at age 4. By some terrible chance in that year there was a small number of children who were brain-injured by this vaccine. They got a life-long rent, but the damage is irreversable.
They are both pleasant people, the young woman likes to shake my hand and always smiles at me, but her talking and understanding is limited. They don`t expect pity, life is just the way it is.
As I walked on, the bus was coming and unloading all the other brain-handicapped people who work there for the day. I looked at their faces, none seemed unhappy. Some were even eagerly running in, some chatting with their friends. Only one man stood and waited for us. I said, "Do you want to stroke my dog?" "Yes," he said, and as Paco always loves it when somebody bends down to him, they both had a happy moment. Then he silently shook my hand. As he turned and walked in, he waved back at us.
I thought of the place in Hamburg where my daughter always buys her Christmas gifts, the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. These wooden things which are made in such sheltered workshops are often so lovely. We already have a little bench to step on when I cannot reach the upper drawer and a bird`s house for our garden. Once we were there together, and one man kept telling me and insisting that my then young girl had a son! (Not then, but NOW it is true).
They are all so extremely friendly and proud of their work. Who am I to say they are not happy and doing useful work? And making visitors smile?
Just the other day when I walked home with my three little six-year-old pupils, a man passed us in his wheel chair. He was very fat, one cannot put it otherwise.
"Oh, I feel so SORRY for the man!" one of the girls shouted! "Why?" I asked. "Him in a wheelchair, and so FAT" (she was actually pretty loud).
"I don`t think we should be sorry for other people," I said. "How can we know what THEY think of their situation? Maybe he is happy to have a wheelchair and must not walk on his bad legs, and surely he KNOWS that his fatness comes from his love of eating too much. If HE did not like that, he could simply decide to eat less. So what are you sorry for?" And I added,"I don`t want you to pity ME for being old, either!"
"Oh, but I DO!" she said. I had to laugh. "But I am wise now and have lived such a long happy life. Me, I don`t pity you, either, for being young and stupid!" I teased her. "I am not stupid," she shouted back, but of course I know better (tehee).
So as I wandered on this morning, I was pondering a little more about this. There are many situations in our lives which we cannot change. War and accidents and tornados and such, you know. Things we cannot influence, even if we tried hard.
But there are so MANY things which we CAN influence, more than we often believe. It takes courage, it takes a clear cut, sometimes you have to give up old thoughts, places, friends - but it can empower you so much to turn away from old rotten paths. A situation ,or a neighbourhood, or a relationship which makes you suffer and takes too much energy from you - why would you want to keep it? Only because you are afraid of the unknown? Then no baby could be born! No one get married, no one take a journey to foreign places!
As long as you have a choice, I will not feel sorry for you.
Or is that wrong?
Love from
your old (not all that wise, I was lying)
Angela

Would you like to be a public person?

2011-05-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

I absolutely admire the English Queen. I saw her last night on Sky News, being 85, where many others her age spend their days in senior homes, looking out of the window. She visited Ireland, doing important symbolic acts, trying to reconcile, heal terrible old wounds, even speaking a little Gaelic at the beginning of her marvellous, warm-hearted speech. During her whole life she never lost contenance, always spoke softly, kept her humour, loved her husband, endured the press and the paparazzi.
How can anyone get along with those vultures, though, I wonder? (If you are a paparazzo, always hunting for the latest scandal, of course you can tell me how you need to feed your hungry family and would lose your job if you did not join in the manhunt... but would I have to like you for it?)
Of course, if you marry a Prince, like Kate and Mary and Mette-Marit and Máxima - hmmmm, all those M`s, except Kate, well, I forgot the M in Middleton. It must be a requirement - you probably know what`s waiting for you. But if you are running for a public job, like Governor or President or Head of the International Währungsfonds, you`ve got to be sure you have no spot on your white vest. The press, or the internet community, will find it. Or a greedy, bribed neighbour.
Here, they just pulled a young politician down, one who was becoming very popular and perhaps threatening other aspirants. They looked for a fault in his life. Aah, too bad, no sex affairs, but he copied parts of other publications in his doctor`s degree work without referring to them as such. Head off!!
If you are a simple doctor of law or medicine, you can have even BOUGHT your title (there are people who openly sell them, somehow. One wonders about some jobs...), and no one would bother to find out. But as soon as there are envious competitors for a public office, you had better behave like a monk. Not that monks always behave. But like the PICTURE of a monk.
Humans are humans, which means they are not perfect and try to get away with it. I forgot to put out the garbage box today and only noticed it when the big truck drove by. Rats! Too late. I hope no paparazzo was sitting behind a bush, clicking on his camera, catching my long face! Did you also see the picture of Goldie Hawn, walking to her mail box early in the morning, in her bathrobe and unkempt hair? Yes, we DO look at such pictures and secretly enjoy them. Otherwise those press-people would not earn so much money.
But as I said, I am glad I am not a movie star or otherwise well-known.
What I am now watching with mixed feelings, is the manhunt of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He is a powerful, intelligent man and was on his way to an important international meeting. Then, in the hotel, he had a shower before leaving, and the maid entered the suite (perhaps not knowing he was still there) to clean.
What happened then is not yet quite clear. The maid claims he tried to rape her. He says (at first), I was not even there at the time. Then: She agreed to sex. She says, NEVER!
It is so far not a case of who is to be believed. If it happened this way, it was a criminal act and she was darn right in reporting him to the hotel and then to the police. They were right in arresting him, even out of the plane, to secure evidence. (We all know those police series where DNA evidence plays a big role).
BUT, just in case (in CASE, I say), this was a false accusation, as they do happen, for various reasons, what then? In Europe, we have the strong agreement that a person is to be considered innocent before being proved guilty. That means, no pre-judgement, no photos in handcuffs.
The American law - or practice? - says, Even the mighty people shall not be treated differently , and we want to show it! See, This man is accused of a criminal act, and now we are going to find out more.
Mind, if even only ACCUSED.
Already his reputation is gone. He stepped down from his chair and knows he can now NOT become the next president of France.
If he is a rapist, he needs to be dealt with for his terrible deed - his believing any woman coming his way was available for him and had to "agree" to his sexual attacks. I could spit out before men like that!
But what I do not think right is that he is already "destroyed" by the press, before his case was even brought to court.
I must admit, I follow the "case" with interest. Am I part of the game then? Curious? Not minding perhaps innocent people`s reputations? Many years ago there was such a story in the press in Germany. A military general was suddenly "accused" of being gay. Nowadays nobody really cares anymore. You are gay? So what? You can become Berlin`s or Hamburg`s Mayor (Wowereit, von Beust) or Secretary of State (Westerwelle), and why not? (It is STILL another thing with football heroes, though. I have no idea why).
Anyway, the general and his wife objected, but how can you PROVE you are not gay?
His reputation was destroyed, he was demissed as a liar and cheater. Years later it was found out that the East-German Stasi had strewn that rumour. It was false.

What do you say, how should such things be handled?

...keep the Old. One is Silver, the Other Gold!

2011-05-17T01:46:00.000-07:00

Next week I am expecting a visitor from my American past life! She sat beside me in "American Government and Economics", the one senior class I chose. I was a junior then, back in 1964.

This whole American school system bewildered me totally. In a German school, you are put into permanent classes, or forms. That means, ALL of you (about 28 to 30) students (in a German "Gymnasium", that is an advanced learners`school) enjoy the same lessons, of

German, English, French or Latin, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Geography, History, Music, Art, Sports. You share one room, and during the breaks after each lesson

the TEACHER switches rooms.

Not so in my class room in State College, Pa. where I spent my one "foreign" school year.

First, I was asked to choose six subjects from NINETY which had me totally perplexed, and then I got a list of my different school rooms. In the only three-minutes breaks after each lesson I had to jump up, gallop down the hall and try to find my new room - where I had to sit on a different seat, with new school mates.

It made me feel like in a stampede! With an unknown outcome!

So I chose subjects after my own liking. No maths! Just languages (English composition, French and Spanish - of course not in German but in English! And that was still a foreign language to me!)

and among others this really interesting subject of American Government.

We had a good, humorous teacher (hi Mr. Griffith!), and the class was composed of partly brilliant students (one was admitted to Yale at the end of the year). I had told you about the "Let`s elope-letter" I got in that class before (which I did not understand, haha) (but Mr. Griffith did!).

Anyway, on my right side next to me

there sat this girl, Joan. This is her photo in our 1965 year book. Oh God, look at those BOYS!

She was my anchor and help. She liked to laugh and giggle as much as me, and she was endlessly patient with me and my funny questions. She even bought me a pencil sharpener with a box when she saw I left my pencil- sharpening- leftovers under my desk.

With my "own desk" in my German school nobody cared, here the next one had to find them, she explained me. Yeah, thank you, Auntie Joannie!

We became real good friends, she slept at my place, met my Uncle John, we took excursions to the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania (did you know that existed? There are snapping turtles!), and when I had to leave after one year, she was the one who got up at 3 a.m. to see me off!

Ever since, we have held contact. Five years later, shortly before she got married, she came over to Hamburg to visit my new husband and me.

After that, her life took her to many places, in the States, but also to Australia and New Zealand, there was a second husband, two sons, many jobs, one even on a ship cruising line around Hawaii (not advisable, apparently!!), and now a computer teaching job in Arizona.

We have shared it all. And now she is going to visit us here on our island! Next week!

I can`t wait!

Just to let you see the difference from those olden days to now, I took another blurred yearbook-picture from my album.

None of the girls wears trousers. Many in neat checkered over-knee skirts (great fashion then) and with orderly hair. And NO, actually not one, black student in the whole school. Amazing.

Many of their faces still look familiar to me. It is funny how we do not forget!

This is what I wanted to tell you. I have never forgotten how Joannie treated me, back then, when I was new and clueless in my strange unfamiliar surroundings.

I never forgot how I felt then, and how just one smiling person can change the world for the better.

Love to you from

Angela,

(now 62)

Wood and wishing-well and walk

2011-05-11T10:33:00.002-07:00

On Monday we got a pile of firewood dropped on our driveway.It may not look like much, but it was five cubic metres, all nicely cut birchwood for our oven. If the next winter will be as cold as the last two, we`ll be happy to have it stored.

Stored, hmmm.

A part we could fit into our carport, piled up at the far end.

But all the rest?

We filled our wheel barrow about a hundred times, pushed it up the little hill at the end or our garden, and there my clever husband lay a circle of wood pieces.

It looked like a well.

A wishing-well!

Quick, make a wish before it grows too much!

Back with the empty wheel barrow to the never-ending wood heap.

In the end (late afternoon) it looked like this:

All filled inside, too.

We put a tarpaulin on top, and now rain and wind can come. This stack will hold!

The next day my legs hurt, but Paco and I detected a lovely new walk, hidden on the other side of the tracks.

The fence is old and bent, no one lives behind it. No one who can watch us and send us anonymous letters.

Paco loves such interesting paths. We even found an old forgotten tree house.
Oh, I forgot to add it. Next time.
When we came home, Mr. and Mrs. Humpel were already waiting for us. Right after Easter they got married! He is, as you know, a lame, limpy duckman, but a very sweet-natured guy. When he did not appear for a whole week, we were already getting worried. But then he came back, proudly introducing to us his lovely, gentle young wife. They fit so well together, flying in side by side, then after feeding time, walking back to our pond, quietly talking, and then they sit together in the sun or take a little swim, splashing and drinking, obviously having fun.
Such a sweet couple! See, even when you have been alone for a long while, or are handicapped a bit or have other reasons to feel shy, don`t give up! Your mate is just around the corner!!

With this optimistic post I say good night to you now.
Love from
Angela

I got an anonymous letter, hahaha - and my public reply to it

2011-05-10T01:29:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking that this my blog doesn`t really exist anymore, because I have nothing much to tell you anyway, but clearly I was wrong!

Look what we found in our garden, well, looking a little different. It was not crumbled before, but stuck in a neatly sealed but unwritten-on white envelope. It was dropped on the lawn, not even put into our mailbox.

My husband said, throw it away, and of course I should have, but then my curiosity got the better of me.

So here is what it says (with a few explanations from me)

"Worthy co-inhabitants,"

(worthy is the East-German equivalent for dear, or honoured, not to be taken literally, or even ironic. And co-inhabitants of what? Our town? Planet?)

"due to given occasion we want to firmly reprimand you"

(I had to look some of the words up, not my diction: "mit Nachdruck darauf verweisen"),

"to immediately dispose of the remnants of your dog and take them away and not simply let them lie.

To elegantly cover them with grass and gallantly walk on, as done on

Saturday the 5th of May, 10:20 a.m.

in front of the lot Neuhoferstraße 11 A."

(I see she really intends to use a colourful sophisticated language, but somehow got tangled up in her sentence. It has no end)

"In case of repetition it will be brought to attention of the municipal public affairs office."

(Interesting: passive tense)

Then - no signature.

An anonymous letter, my first one ever!!

I showed it to my husband who crumbled it and threw it into the dustbin.

But I secretly got it out again and photographed it.

What a treasure!

Now I ASSUME it was the lady of nr. 11A (it looks like a woman`s handwriting), but I cannot be sure, with no signature. She, however must know ME, as she found the right garden to drop her message - about ten minutes away!

So, all I can do is publicly reply to her, and this is what I want to say.

"Worthy Mrs.Anonymous of Nr. 11A,

(not, I hope, taken literally or even ironically)

I was quite pleased to find your un-addressed letter in our garden, thank you for taking all that trouble. I see you think I need some reprimanding and teaching, and you felt obliged to do the job.

Not everybody would do that!

As you found our place, you have probably watched me do my grocery shopping since the 3 1/2 years we have been living here and saw me and my dog pass by your house. You might have seen my dog usually walk on to the park beside your lot where he finds hiding places to drop his burden. As you will also know, there is a doggie bag automat in that park, from where I fetch a bag and then dispose of his pooh into the public dustbin. (Just have a look into the bin, you`ll see).

Usually I even have some of the bags with me in my jacket pocket. On this Saturday I had put on a different jacket, and also the automat had not been filled up for a few days. And my dog was in a hurry and looked for another grassy spot where he could hide (he is a nice, well-trained dog, never ever dropping his pooh on the sidewalk). So he found this overgrown place between a fence and the pavement, where, as you surely know, any dog`s or cat`s pooh will be disposed of by the ground bacteria and the next rain during the next week, it being pure nature stuff.

But as on this day I had no bag (and did not want t carry it away in my hands) and still wanted to cause no one vomiting because of the heap`s looks and smell (I am well-trained, too), I plucked up a good amount of grass and covered the sight from delicate looks.

So you see, I did not really need all that reprimanding and threatening, but I am sure it did you good.

But please let me add a few musings of my own.

Until we moved here, I lived in "the West" as it is still called here - on the ground of the former DDR. As a young person I thought that the DDR was a large state prison which kept its inhabitants locked. A few thousand people lost their lives, drowning in rivers and the Baltic Sea, creeping through tunnels, taking great risks, or directly being shot dead at the mined border, when all they did was try to LEAVE THEIR OWN country. I thought that FREEDOM was the main thing everybody must crave for.

And it proved true, for many millions, who finally forgot about their fear of the Secret State Police, the Stasi, which overshadowed all their doings, and who gathered on the streets, shouting,

WE ARE THE PEOPLE.

It still gives me shivers.

It makes me proud of this peaceful revolution, ALSO, I want to add, due to those police officers who would not shoot at their own people and let it all happen.

So when we moved here, we thought that after 20 years we had all become ONE people. And that things had changed here we could see from the new streets and buildings, the clean rivers and the general more colourful sights everywhere.

But I had forgotten about many of the older people`s hearts. They were trained in the youth camps and schools and kindergartens of the socialistic state.

They were taught to BELIEVE that the State has a right to control his people, and many were only too eager to help. After all, this was going to become a new, wonderful society, and those who would not swim in line were aggressors who had to be closely watched.

To some it became second nature. They had been rewarded then, and it felt good to be "on the right, the MORAL side".

Did you see the movie "The Life of Others"? Of that hidden spy up in the attic? To me this was a scenario of utter horror.

But I see that I probably am considered a too loose-minded, liberal intruder, by some.

I feel that a little smiling and dancing and chatting and not taking rules too strictly (I run across the street NEXT to traffic lights sometimes) are still unusual here. You see, a little chat across the fence would have done the job of "advising me" just as well, don`t you think?

But never mind, my worthy planet-co-inhabitant, I mean what I always say,

You live your own life and I live mine.

Cheers to you from

Angela

I want to think of nice things

2011-05-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

This was such a nice sunny day. My Polish friend Ewa came for lessons (she teaches me Polish, I teach her German), and we pulled the table out on the lawn, sat comfortably down on our garden chairs and sipped a cup of coffee (along with a piece of King`s Cake).

That felt so spring-easy. Like floating on a cloud. Chatting, laughing.

After she left, Paco and I went for a long walk along the railroad tracks. I had put a bag of marigold and hollihock seeds into my pocket which I randomly dropped along the way.

We passed this lovely fence. Doesn`t it look magic? So unprofessional! Has someone started to paint it and ran out of paint? Or has he added more pieces as he had more money to spend? Even fences have their stories to tell!

This walk along the railroad leads us down to the small cemetery which I have once shown you before, and there are enough benches along the dusty unpaved road to give you rest. I like this custom here to provide benches for the tired walkers!

There are open meadows where Paco can run freely, and we stop and look up at tall chestnut trees with beautiful green leaves but no blossoms yet. In the gardens which we pass we see apple and cherry trees in full blossom, though.

I have simple but good thoughts. No world news, no Bin Laden, no quarrels and fights. Just the sun in my eyes and a happy Paco by my side.

Good!

I am taking deep breaths.

And on our way home we pass this funny double-tree that I had always wanted to show you. Here it is!

It looks like a living picture! These two trees are only about an inch wide, just pressed against the wall, but growing and healthy. They probably have unfavourable conditions, are too close to the wall, whatever. But they make the best of it.
Cheers to you, my tree friends! Don`t let circumstances get you down! I enjoy seeing you whenever I pass by.
Don`t you think they`ll like that?

Sending you good thoughts today!
Angela

A letter to late Mr. Bin Laden

2011-05-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

Mr. Bin Laden, Sir,
(I will not call you Dear Mr. Bin Laden, I hope that is okay with you),

your time on earth has come, I have heard. And so you are now somewhere else, wherever that may be.
De mortuis nihil nisi bene, is an old rule from Roman times, and I totally agree. It means, if you don`t have anything good to say about the deceased, say nothing. They cannot defend themselves now, in case you hold grudges.
But a letter TO you, in all respect, should be allowed?
Regardless of what you or I believe or have believed about this time of passing, there are only two possibilities. Either when we die, we die totally, and nothing except the memories of our deeds remain. Then you won`t hear me, and you cannot give any thoughts to your life.

Or that part of us which was our spirit, or anima, our "soul" (which, someone who weighed people right before and right after their dying, said weighs exactly 27 grams), that which differs in each of us and makes up our life energy - that does not die with us but remains alive somewhere.
Then your soul is still around. You will know now, I don`t yet.
But I hope so.
Rosaria has just blogged about this sudden moment that can catch us unawares at any time (a friend of hers had just come in from mowing the lawn, and died. Where did he go? Why was his life over?), and only yesterday about a million people gathered on the St. Peters Place in Rome to the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II. - they also wondered about what has happened to this man`s soul - is it still alive? They all said yes!
The man Karol Wojtila who became the first Polish Pope and influenced the life of many people, some say he even shattered the Iron Curtain and started the Peaceful Revolution in Europe, only by his moral force, he is considered not dead but still alive somehow, and now "blessed". He was loved by many, and still is, and his life is considered to have been rich and was followed close to God`s will.
I wonder, Mr. Bin Laden, if people will say that of you, too?
What do YOU think?
I know that the generally considered "bad guys" always think that THEY are, in fact, "the good guys".
And probably you always, having been an intelligent and religious man, thought of yourself as having good causes to fight against the Western World and its "unbelieving immoral inhabitants". Even if it meant killing thousands whom you did not even know.
While you lived.
How do you think about that now?

After our death, said someone I had listened to - was it the teacher Louise Hay? I forgot - we will all first go to a huge library where we get to read our own "Book of Life". It shows us our whole life, our choices and decisions, and how we have influenced the lives of others.
Wow! I don`t know what I will get to hear then! I can remember quite some scenes which I would NOT like to see again, people I hurt or have not treated as I should have. But maybe I will also hear of some things which I have not considered big but meant something to others. Will there be a balance? Will the good and considerate or the thoughtless, selfish, outweigh the other?
There is no judgement in that library, that teacher said. We are just confronted with our life on earth.
What, Mr. Bin Laden, do you think of your life now?
Just askin`. In all respect.
Sincerely,
Angela

Me too, I watched The Wedding...

2011-04-30T02:39:00.000-07:00

and I loved it!!
Have some cake with me and let`s chat about it!
Whenever our English cousins go about a celebration, they really make something of it!! We Germans are a little envious of all the coaches and the horses and the livrees and the handsome uniforms - after we got rid of our Kaiser and disempowered our nobility (which we do not regret), our nation`s celebrations tend to look a bit poor, compared to Monarchies.
And the English sure outdo all the rest!
Just look at Westminster Abbey - what a church!! Fitting 1900 guests into it, and have them all singing hymns! Beautiful! I also loved that boys` choir - oh the cute little guy with his glasses, so earnestly singing!
And I did love the sermon, and the reading of the chapter of the Bible (Letter to the Romans) - well done, brother! My sweet husband always nudged me and said, Don`t you think that sister is pretty? Yes, they all look a nice family. And Catherine so composed - yes, I must say I enjoyed it all, weddings are just such hopeful and loving ceremonies! Everyone turning out to look good (oh those hats!), and really EVERYONE behaving well and appropriately. isn`t that a marvel in itself?
That was something that struck me all along.
Those cheering crowds in the streets, tens or hundreds of thousands, who can tell. And ALL of them being peaceful and friendly and happy and smiling, wearing funny hats and waving flags, being patriotic but not exclusive. All the guests who came from Australia and South Africa, America and Germany, they were all welcome to cheer along.
I loved that. Congratulations, my dear English neighbours!
Other pictures come to my mind of street gatherings. Often, we see those crowds in the streets of countries in the Middle East. There the young men wave their fists and scream out their hatred against others, and I shudder and think, I wish I could exchange their fierce energy of hatred against something GOOD and positive!
Or in my mind I see those scenes of mass street "celebrations" in countries like North Korea or China where the "beloved Leaders" are honoured with thousands of "subjects" (what is Untertan in English?) who move and turn at the same moment and form pictures and shout slogans, all without a smile. Don`t you see that, you Beloved Leaders? That there is nothing but fear in their faces? The love you expect cannot be commanded! It has to come spontaneously.
And that I saw yesterday.
Cheers to the young couple, and cheers to the English people!
Your friend
Angela

Imagination? Reality?

2011-04-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

This is the pirate`s treasure which I added to my pirate story for the children. First I read them the adventure story in which they all had a leading part.

We had found a bottle with a message on our first trip with my magic broom. So (I read to them) we gathered in my garden gazebo and opened the bottle, finding a treasure map. The map showed an island with a palm tree and a cross (I know, I know, all the old ingredients, but they BELONG to such a story!).

Anyway, after we consulted the Wise Pig Arabella she gave us her granddaughter Bella the Piglet along to show us the way.

So we reached the island which was hidden in fog (so nobody else had ever found it) and crashed into the palm tree where we got stuck. But then Bella sang us a pirate`s song, and as everybody knows, singing makes the brains clear, so after we had all sung along and stopped laughing at our stupid helpless situation

(us on top of a tall palm tree, with a treasure hidden beneath us, but unable to get down) - hey, WHY do you think this image is showing up again and again? Who is doing that? -we finally remembered that I had my magic wand along! So we managed to minimize our tree host and fell onto the ground.

After some more discussing we found the place where the treasure was hidden (the island was called "Island of the Stinking Bones", due to Louis` suggestion), and therefore Paco was only too eager to dig for it.

Anyway, after we had secured it and dragged the heavy box to the beach,we found the pirate`s ship, with the old bewitched pirate up in its mast, waiting for night to come so he could play cards again with the Jinn who had GOT him into this mess but was now a friend (sleeping the days off in an old tea pot) ... we could break the spell... too long story to tell - it had to do with finding children with good hearts who were the only ones able to do it ...

but in the end we returned home to our gazebo with the treasure box,

and each child got his/her share to take home! In REALITY!

On the left you can see the Stinking Bones (that was Paco`s share).

I think it was this mingling of imagination and reality which made the children say this was the best story they had ever heard.

"Children Need Fairytales" is a book I once read, by Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist. And not only children, I want to add.

How can anyone of us grown-ups live with the world as it is?! You turn on the radio for the news and you want to turn it off the next minute. Wars among people, everywhere, including rapes and torturing. When you read blogs, you get told of poaching of rhinos and elephants for their horn (and what FOR? So some stupid horny old guy can get a better erection? Vomit!) - yes, it MUST be told and heard, but it all makes me sick.

Why are we humans like that?

But isn`t there also something else in us? A belief in the GOOD of human hearts? The good that only has to be tickled and allowed to come out?

Maybe I grew up with too many fairytales, but I have this strong belief.

If we tell our young children that it is THEM who can break the spell, because only children with a "good heart" can overcome the bad in the world,

don`t you also think

they might might wish to change the world for the better?

I sometimes wonder...

2011-04-15T02:03:00.000-07:00

There are many things I sometimes wonder about. Then I sit here at my desk, look out of the window and shake my head.
My computer gives me riddles of all sorts. Well, we`ve been talking about that. Some of it is caused by my own inadequacy, I know. But what shall I make of it when I try to comment at my bloggie pals` sites, and after I wrote a long comment to Mandy, even being the first one which is a privilege, and as I press "publish", Blogger shows up, grinning insidiously (I looked that word up, it is "hinterhältig" in German) and telling me, "Sorry, Blogger has a problem! Can`t publish!" Or when I want to read Crystal Jigsaw`s post, and Blogger tells me, "Sorry (oh yes, always polite), but the blog Crystal Jigsaw doesn`t exist!" - while I know that after Kathryn`s blog was once Blog of Note, she has about 1400 followers, and I have read her blog since about 2 years.
Liars and cheaters everywhere, hinterhältige Lumpen!

There is another problem I face. I am a German, as you know, and the Germans are known for their
know-it-all-attitude. Although I often think I know very little, and I usually just make up the rest, I am afraid you might think I am trying to teach you all my "wisdom", and get bored stiff! Yes, you like my pictures perhaps, and hope to learn something about Germany, but then you think, "Aah, is she trying to be a wise-crack again!" Just in case you feel that, let me tell you I am only an asker. And the things I have learned in my life and which I try to share are simply my own questions. The answers which have appeared to me, are only my own, and I don`t want to impose them on you. All I hope is that (at least my little students), or perhaps you, might be brave enough to ask questions yourself. It does take courage, I know that! And it took me years to do it myself. My father told me NOT to ask too many questions, for whatever reasons, so I did not dare to for a long time.
But as soon as I allowed myself to turn around and say, "Why? Is there a good reason? Must I really behave the same way? Can I not find my own path?" it was so incredibly freeing!

The reason why I am so worried you might perhaps misunderstand me is my map. You see, up in my right corner I have my readers` map. If I click on the line underneath, it shows me the countries from where my readers all come. Amazing!! There are countries like Malaysia, India, Japan, Russia, Ecuador, Spain, NZ, Lithuania, Sweden... all places where I have no blog pals. You anonymous readers have never commented!
So I have no idea what makes you come for a look. Do you agree to my muddled ideas and ridiculous stories, or do you read and think, "How strange! I will certainly NOT comment!"
Hmmm. That really puzzles me.

Nevertheless, I must now switch over to my own Adventure Story which I am writing for my pupils and which must be finished for Easter. It involves a magic broom, a talking piglet, a message in a bottle from an old bewitched pirate, and of course the four children who come to me for English and who always scream with laughter when I make them talk in our story!
So, you have a lovely day, too!
Your certainly not know-it-all-Angela (how will the story go on??)

It`s not all about Gnomes

2011-04-12T02:16:00.000-07:00

What?

What happened to my beginnings on the left side?

Hahaha, Blogger, I see you are trying to amuse me. After our little, let`s call it, argument, you want to show me how stupid I am.

Okay, I admit it.

You are the one who decides here.

I offered you my pictures, you added them in a funny sequence.

My words appear as in a poem.

Never mind, I will just begin writing now, regardless.

But why you are so incomprehensably SLOW, is beyond my understanding. I thought the two Trojan Horses which you mentioned were isolated?

Never mind, I put a new computer on my birthday wishing list anyway, so let`s finally begin now, right?

What I was going to tell you about, you, my dear readers I mean,

is what people put in their gardens.

This here is a new sculpture which my husband created.

He calls it Storm.

Not quite finished yet, but the fun is in the making anyway.

Some

people just like flowers. They are so pretty in spring, too!

But some

buy sculptures of squirrels, oversized.

Or a lion or two.

Oops, here comes the squirrel again. Sorry. But look at the lake in the background, full of now invisible but real swans. If you turn your back on the obtrusive squirrel, this is a beautiful place.

But some people overdo it. Paco pretends not to be impressed, saying, I am just as big as you (dogs think that, at least his little rat-sizeYorkshire girlfriend barks at him as if she thought so). But in reality this dinosaur sure looks BIG!

And some people just collect plain but MANY garden gnomes.

And some enjoy coming across a hiding fairy.

Every one to his liking.

What I was really intending to say, with my poem-like post, which is trying to develop a life of its own, is that people are DIFFERENT.

While that tall scar-faced squirrel would annoy me, I love my husband`s creative ideas. That elusive fairy, well, not. Or the working garden gnomes, no, but a dinosaur, why not?

In my now pretty long life I have learned to RESPECT people`s sometimes (to me) funny ideas. I am a strong believer in happiness. Meaning that people should do as they please as long as they don`t annoy others. Life is hard and difficult enough, everyone tries to get through, needing places or moments of enjoyment.

A garden can be such a place, to me mine is, but I also understand when people say, a bar is, where I meet people, or a sport stadium is such a place for me, or ANYTHING that is not disturbing or hurting others.

What I CANNOT understand is why people think they must rule and regulate other people`s pastimes. Or ways of life.

When my brother grew his hair long for a while, it drove my father crazy (well, back in the sixties) We now think that was silly, as young people normally "come to their senses" after a while. But what if people choose a different lifestyle altogether? Or maybe cannot choose but are made that way?

What if your neighbour was a homosexual? Lives with a man? Will you respect them?

What if your children said no to your plans for them?

My brother chose to study art instead of becoming a business man. He moved to Africa, lived in the bush, brought up his lovely children there (Miranda of The Times of Miranda, and Tam from Fleeing Muses), had an extraordinary life. If he had followed our father`s ideas of what his life should be like, what would he have MISSED!

Our own thoughts are limited. We cannot, not even in our dreams, see what will become of us, let alone of others, may we even think we know them well. We don`t.

So why not simply nod and respect their ideas, hoping they will find their goals. And lean back and enjoy our own life!

I will now go out and dig my veggie garden, before it rains. I love that.

May you do something really enjoyable today before the sun sets!

Love from

Angela

How to Gain Friends

2011-04-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

Why do so many people live alone, I always wonder, when in reality they would much prefer to have a companion by their side? Often they don`t know how to address people. Or they start off with thinking, Why should anybody like me? Look at Paco! He doesn`t ever think so! He sees a nice-looking dog on the beach, runs up to him and says hello. (And then he goes sniffing at his private parts which is, I declare, NOT advisable with humans).

Yesterday I got to talking with a nice-looking young mother. She said she was divorced since three years and alone with her daughter. "But you are a beautiful young woman!" I said. "You should not live alone." She smiled and liked the compliment, but said, "How and where can I meet a nice man?" That got me to thinking.

How do you gain friends? Or lovers? When I talk about this with young people (and nothing is of higher interest to them), I usually say this to them: First of all you should BE someone. Learn to live with yourself, accept who you are, be confident, create a life of your own. This will give you a straight posture and an air of independence.

Don`t wait for someone to "make you happy" or do the things you`d like to have done and don`t dare yourself. Make others look at YOU! Then you will draw the same kind of active, self-reliant people, which will be the healthiest kind of friends. Every attempt to cling or show neediness always has the wrong touch to a friendship. And then, when you have met someone you find attractive, let him or her know. If you are shy and keep looking away, how will he or she know you care?

In my old flirting days I always threw sideways looks at the guy I had chosen (girls always choose, that`s for sure) until he had noticed me. Then I looked away, busying myself with other things. When I felt his eyes on me, I looked up and smiled. And then I walked away. It drove them crazy! But let`s say, you have met someone and would like to become a closer friend. What do you do? Again, don`t wait.

Do what Uncle John said: BE the friend you want to be. When you think about people you cherish, your friends. What do you like about them? To be honest, I think much has to do with that THEY, my friends, also like me. They send me letters, or give me calls, asking about me. They think of my birthday or remember what I like to eat and buy those sweets for me when they come across them. They visit me or exchange books with me. Nothing spectacular. Just showing they KNOW who I am and like me for just that.

Yes, caressing is also good, hmmmmm.

So, what I say to the young people is, If you want to HAVE all these little signs of love from others, go and start GIVING them! Tell the other one how smart/pretty/talented/just plain fabulous he or she is. No, he won`t sneer at you, don`t worry. You didn`t say it because you want to flatter, but because you think it is the truth. Everybody will like to be "recognized" for what he or she really is. And believe me, you`ll have a new friend. Like me.

Your bloggie pal Angela

A Stern Letter to Blogger!

2011-04-03T02:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen at Blogger`s, I must have an open word with you today! How long have we been in good and respectful business relations? Since back in August 2008. And so far, I could always rely on you. You published the posts I wrote, no matter if you doubted their sense, and I say thank you for this! Well yes, you might have expected me to write you such a praise letter before, but you know how it is - in Berlin they say: "Nich jemeckert is Lob jenuch!" Meaning: "Not complained is praise enough!" Anyway, if you want money for your work, why didn`t you say so? My community library just told me they want 12 € a year as fees from April 1st on, and I am willing to send you the same amount. But don`t play dirty tricks on me! This is hinterfotzig, as the Bavarians call it, malicious and very bad behaviour! What happened is this (in case you pretend not to know). I wrote a new post, and I called it "About Gaining Friends". You may not think this an important topic (although maybe you should!), but I simply WANTED to write it, and so far you have never censured me. Such a topic needs enough room to have thinking gaps, as I call the paragraphs. But after I finished writing it, posted it, and you said "Successfully published", I wanted to read it, just for the control of my writing, and what did I see? You have cut out every single paragraph! Everything was written as in one long sentence, no breaks at all. Breathless! It was simply unreadable! So I thought, hmmm, a mistake, and I edited it, publishing it again. The SAME thing! Was it my fault? I asked Val who is always so helpful, but her electricity in Africa did not play along (see, I admit that this was NOT your fault), so I sent it on to Lori in California who is equally helpful and good at computering, and she tried - with the same result! She even re-wrote the whole text! No other outcome! Is this censuring, I ask you now? Do you not want me to write my letters anymore? Did you just not like this one? Must I doubt your character? Now I will publish this (I hope polite enough) letter to you. And I wonder how you will choose to print it, if so. With paragraphs or without! In all respect, but puzzled, your former friend Angela

About gaining friends

2011-03-31T04:59:00.001-07:00

My old Uncle John used to say, "If you want to have friends, be a friend!" He even got marriage proposals from much younger women when he was 70! But he knew the secret, I always thought. He was what you call "a ladies` man", courteous and obliging, opening the door for you, asking for your wishes, being funny and entertaining, but most of all, a real friend. Why do so many people live alone, I always wonder, when in reality they would much prefer to have a companion by their side? Often they don`t know how to address people. Or they start off with thinking, Why should anybody like me? Look at Paco! He doesn`t ever think so! He sees a nice-looking dog on the beach, runs up to him and says hello. (And then he goes sniffing at his private parts which is, I declare, NOT advisable with humans). Yesterday I got to talking with a nice-looking young mother. She said she was divorced since three years and alone with her daughter. "But you are a beautiful young woman!" I said. "You should not live alone." She smiled and liked the compliment, but said, "How and where can I meet a nice man?" That got me to thinking. How do you gain friends? Or lovers? When I talk about this with young people (and nothing is of higher interest to them), I usually say this to them: First of all you should BE someone. Learn to live with yourself, accept who you are, be confident, create a life of your own. This will give you a straight posture and an air of independence. Don`t wait for someone to "make you happy" or do the things you`d like to have done and don`t dare yourself. Make others look at YOU! Then you will draw the same kind of active, self-reliant people, which will be the healthiest kind of friends. Every attempt to cling or show neediness always has the wrong touch to a friendship. And then, when you have met someone you find attractive, let him or her know. If you are shy and keep looking away, how will he or she know you care? In my old flirting days I always threw sideways looks at the guy I had chosen (girls always choose, that`s for sure) until he had noticed me. Then I looked away, busying myself with other things. When I felt his eyes on me, I looked up and smiled. And then I walked away. It drove them crazy! But let`s say, you have met someone and would like to become a closer friend. What do you do? Again, don`t wait. Do what Uncle John said: BE the friend you want to be. When you think about people you cherish, your friends. What do you like about them? To be honest, I think much has to do with that THEY, my friends, also like me. They send me letters, or give me calls, asking about me. They think of my birthday or remember what I like to eat and buy those sweets for me when they come across them. They visit me or exchange books with me. Nothing spectacular. Just showing they KNOW who I am and like me for just that. Yes, caressing is also good, hmmmmm. So, what I say to the young people is, If you want to HAVE all these little signs of love from others, go and start GIVING them! Tell the other one how smart/pretty/talented/just plain fabulous he or she is. No, he won`t sneer at you, don`t worry. You didn`t say it because you want to flatter, but because you think it is the truth. Everybody will like to be "recognized" for what he or she really is. And believe me, you`ll have a new friend. Like me. Your bloggie pal Angela

Is Half the Truth almost the Truth or almost the Un-Truth?

2011-03-28T10:33:00.001-07:00

This is my post about prejudice. About all the things we take for granted or have never doubted because "everybody" knows they are true. The more I thought about this subject in the last week, the more I got fascinated. What do I think about other people ... Polish? Irish? Italians? Homosexuals? Women`s rights? My neighbours? - What do YOU think about Germans? And Arabs? Can Arabs ever do democracy? Can they learn to respect women? Then I saw this thing in one of our neighbours` gardens. What do you see? A dragon worm creeping through the lawn? Haha, you DO? There are things we believe, or are made to believe, but are they TRUE? C`mon, these are just three pieces of pottery, giving you the illusion of a creeping worm, right?

That is my point. Of all the firm beliefs we have, which ones can stand a little kick you give them? A look from a different angle? An innocent question?

What MADE you believe that your assumptions, or convictions, or the firm ground you stand on, are actually the truth?

And not, perhaps, a temporary state? Like a ploughed field in springtime? One which will give you a totally different picture when you return only three months later.

Don`t you think this barren tree can bear leaves and fruits when you only wait a while and allow it some favorable conditions?

And even if it will not bear fruit, it could perhaps become something else most wonderful, like, say, a fantastic climbing tree?

When you meet a (tree) or a person with such an attitude, saying "I know what you are. You are only that which I see now, and that is not to my liking, so I will not even deal with you," aren`t you LIMITING that (tree) person to its temporary outer appearance, or even simply to the IMAGE you have of him or her?

I will tell you a few examples of my own experiences.

It was 1964, in the days when students` exchanges weren`t as common as they are today, and some of my American high-school mates met their first German ever (me). One girl looked at me, frowning. "Are you a Nazi?" she asked me. I wasn`t even quite sure what a Nazi was, being only 16 and not all that interested in politics. "No," I said, "of course not." That satisfied her, and we became good friends. Another one asked, "What does your home look like? Do you know such a thing as - wallpapers?" "We don`t live in caves," I said. "My home looks much like yours. Yes, we do have wallpapers." They were only curious, I did not mind their questions. But I had to laugh at this one (she apparently had no clear picture of where Germany was): "Oh, so you are from Europe? I have an aunt in Italy, do you know her?"

Asking questions was a simple way to find things out. I liked this much better than when people thought they KNEW about me, without asking. Like the Danish shopkeeper whom I had politely addressed in Danish, and when I was at loss for words, asked him if he perhaps spoke German. "Tysk?" he screamed. "Du er tysk?! UD!" (You are German? Get out!") He had probably made some not good experiences with German soldiers during the war, but I was only 15 and taking a bicycle tour through Denmark in a group of girl-scouts. Not really threatening. But okay, I had to accept it.

And chuckle, I also had my pre-set ideas. Before I visited the US, I had seen many movies and thought I knew a lot about the American people. Either they were Cowboys or Indians, galloping through the prairie, or gangsters in Chicago, like Al Capone, or like the Jets and the Sharks in New York (West Side Story really had impressed me). I was NOT prepared for the normal everyday American neighbors we had. They came to our house (well, curious, but that is something I like) and after only a moment of hearing me talk (British accent, hilarious!), they all assured me it was "so nice to meet me". I asked my Uncle John about that. "How can they KNOW it is nice to meet me? Maybe I am a real brat!" But they gave me their friendliness in advance. It made me shake me head, but I liked that attitude.

I took another picture today, which expresses what I want to remember.

If we don`t stick to our own place/attitude/ideas, but allow some movement, a turn left or right, a different angle, take a look up and see how much ELSE lies hidden behind the obvious, then we are no longer limiting us - or the one next to me, who may simply look or talk or even think a little different. It is FUN to get to know just THAT which is different from us! I have always profited from that curiosity which I have (also sometimes asking stupid questions, sorry!).

So here comes a peaceful, serene picture at the end. A horse, munching hay. What better life is there?!

Well, maybe getting a nice piece of cake (or two), to make you satisfied and never feel limited.

Lots love from

Angela

Right or wrong, my country?

2011-03-19T03:37:00.000-07:00

It is the root chakra, the first one, that ties us to our "roots", our family, our tribe, our country. It makes us scream for our local football club and not report our brother to the police, even if he is a nuisance.
But we are allowed to think for ourselves, right? And to shake our heads when we cannot understand a decision that our country takes.
Was it the "German Angst" again? Or the upcoming elections? The fear of uncalculated risks? What makes us think too much of the possible dangers for our own safety, may they come from nuclear plants, dioxine in eggs, or joining the global community in breaking down a dictator`s force, than listening to our hot hearts?
Husband and I have been watching the news with bated breath, for weeks now, either on CNN or Sky News. First it was Tunisia`s uprise, then Egypt, now Libya. The reporters of both channels were there, close up, always well informed, with more coverage from experts at home, it was truly fascinating (glad we can understand English).
Libya`s crisis was looking bad in the last week. Gaddafi announced he would show no mercy or compassion once he would have his troops march into Benghasi, the rebel town. So the UN moved together, came to a resolution, and most countries said YES, we will support this. But not China, Russia, Turkey... and Germany! Germany said, we approve of the aims, but would rather only threat with sanctions.
Grrrrr. We watched and listened to first David Cameron`s speech on TV yesterday, where he said, this will not be a new Iraq war, this is just STOPPING a dictator killing his own population. And then, last night (our time) Barack Obama`s speech! (Wow, did the man really speek freely, without a manuscript?!!). I LOVED him at that moment, would have tried to shake his hand if I had been there. Such clear words.
And look, Gaddafi has immediately sensed that things were going down for him - and tried to come up with new propaganda, as usual. "We are obeying the cease-fire!" But this morning the Western reporters caught pictures of a Gaddafi-troops-plane attacking Benghasi, aparently shot down by defenders.
Oh man, I am really a peaceful person myself, I don`t want wars to arise, and I wish we could all live together in harmony. But brutal murdering dictators - they must be stopped.
Frau Merkel, hear my voice! Join the United Nations in this. Don`t try to be sensible and moderate, grow a hot heart!
Yours sincerely,
Angela

If I were an oak tree...

2011-03-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

How would that feel, what do you think?
In winter I`d stand barren, with lots of time to contemplate. I`d have some knobbles from my long life, but I am strong and healthy. I have only grown acorns since I was fifty, did you know? And humans (women) think fifty is old age, ha! I have relatives who are as old as a thousand years!

See? I am still growing new branches! There is so much life under my ragged bark. Humans believe I cannot talk (but didn`t they think so about whales, too?), but they forget there are other means of communicating. I have my roots deep down in the earth and feel every footstep of a worm, so to say (I have humour, would you have thought?). I stretch my branches into the air and can sense when rain is coming.

At this time of year my juices are rising. My twigs get all itchy - new leaves want to burst out! Hmmm, that feels good.

I am standing by a running water, so I am never in fear of drying out. And my friends the ducks are passing by, in pairs, I can see they are getting busy now. In the long cold winter they climbed out of the water, gathering around me for shelter. I liked their little feet on the ground, and their constant talking.

And now I am soon expecting my other winged friends, too! I wonder if last year`s birdies will come back, or if others will come and tell me of their story. I never run out of news!

And down below, there is chat going on, too! Humans walk their dogs, ride their bikes, some even look up at me and say, "Oh, what a beautiful tree!" I smile at them, oh yes, I like some admiration!

Sometimes I wonder how it would be to pull my roots out of the earth and walk on. See other places of this earth. How is it elsewhere? Better?

Naah, can`t imagine that. My life as an oak tree is wonderful.

I wish you can all say that of yours, too!

Love from

Angela

My Thoughts are Dancing Ringelpitz

2011-03-09T02:03:00.001-08:00

Better do not read this post, as there will be no use in trying to follow my entangled thoughts! I have so many things on my mind, and they are all jumping around, playing hide and seek

or dancing Ringelpitz mit Anfassen (a German folk dance, with touching each other). Does that mean that Spring is in the air?

Last week I was in Hamburg, meeting with my grandchildren. This is my favourite church in Hamburg, St.Petri. Under Napoleon`s occupation the French soldiers used it as horse stable, but it recovered and is one of the prettiest Gothic churches I know. And nice and cool in hot summers. With my little ones I rather went into a nice old-fashioned book shop, though (one with a winding staircase), and they had fun choosing books. Line came up with a hard-covered one where a furry mouse stuck her head out of a hole in the book, and carried it right to the salesman, and what did Jojo choose? Chuckle. He is five and cannot read yet, but the cover pictures told him of the contents. "Where the little children come from" it said, and he explained to me, "I want to know how things happened with my little sister"! Understandable, right? I said, Give this to Papa, he will read it to you! (This is the fun of being a grandma!)

When I am there in my old home city, it always feels funny. All those memories of different stages of my youth and adulthood spin up when I see a street or a park, or I drive in the heavy traffic and feel so URBAN again - many mixed emotions. Still, when I lived there, my yearning was always to get out into wide open places. Wyoming was the land of my dreams! And it was one of the happy turnings of my life that I got to see it!! It was part of my "American Adventure" at 16/17. When we drove past the tiny town of Tie Siding, I clapped my hands and shouted, "This town I know!" It was mentioned in the book I had loved as a girl - My Friend Flicka! And then we even visited a real ranch, one that was called Split Rock Ranch, not too far from Rawlins, Wy. I wonder if it still exists - It has impressed me deeply.

You see, my mind always meanders, that`s how it is made.

Here is something else I`d like to show you. I ordered my own BLOG BOOK! It came in two volumes, and not in gold, as I had ordered, but still in nice hard-cover and well done.

Sadly, they also left out all the comments which I had wanted included (I think the comments are the most fun of all!), but that must have been some misunderstanding, sigh. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful diary! I can advise you to order one, too (not cheap, though, and you only get ONE copy, nothing you can give your family for Christmas presents), before, who knows, all those posts may disappear in a computer crash one day!

We had beutiful sunshine lately, and I always take my camera on my walks. Mandy said that depressions are best cured while walking. Not that I am usually a depressed person, but the long winter cold has affected me towards the gloomy side, and some worries and unhappy feelings can visit me, too, I am no exception. So I enjoyed the sunshine and blue skies, and I loved the sight of a galloping horseman riding past us on the beach, radiating joy!

When walking home, I passed this cute little house by the name "Hexenhaus" (witch`s house) which I always smile at. It makes me think of a friend who told me of an old unmarried aunt who lived alone in a little house on a hill, only surrounded by daffodils and pastures for her goat. The goat was her best friend, and she said when that goat died (of old age), she wept more than over her mother`s death. True friendship, I call that.

Oh well, I have warned you that this a post not worth reading.

That which is MOST on my mind will be boring for you anyway, because I have talked about it so much before. Val will be leaving for Mozambique next week, and she will visit "our" little Matsopane Primary school (that our extra blog talks about) and deliver goods again, but mostly our collected money for benches and desks which the fathers will now build, after they have finished the solid school building. I hope all works out. Val said she`ll take many pictures!

She will also hand Lucas the letter which I wrote to him - which is a story in itself! I thought up this letter in German, then wrote it down in English, sent it to our Japanese blog pal Mina who lives in Brazil and speaks Portuguese. She - a day before her second baby was born! -
translated it for us, sent it back to me in Germany, I sent it on to Val in South Africa who printed it out and will take it along in her car! Don`t say we are not inventive when direct communication is difficult!

I told Lucas in my letter that a primary school in St.Louis, America, (due to Amanda`s connecting abilities) wants to get in touch with them, exchanging letters and pictures. That is such a great idea, I think! Thanks for your efforts, Amanda!

And now I`ll stop wasting your time and look at a summer picture which I took last year!

Such flowers will grow again!

My best wishes to all of you!

Angela

Time and the Sea

2011-02-22T10:02:00.001-08:00

Today we had -7°C, but the sun was shining beautifully, so I took my bicycle and went on an excursion.
This place where I live used to be a fisherman`s village, only two centuries ago. Compared to other towns in Germany which celebrate their 1000th founding year, the Baths along the Baltic Sea are often only 150 years old. They came to life when wealthy families from Berlin spent their summer holidays here, building beautiful villas along the tarred promenade. They founded ladies` baths and gentlemen`s baths (separate, of course) with wheel carts from which they bashfully dipped into the water.
The fishermen thought they were crazy.
"Du büss so dumm as`n Badegast!" they said if they wanted to insult each other. "You are as daft as a bathing guest!" But they built restaurants and theatres and sold their fish, and so around the turn of the 2oth century, when even the Kaiser came to visit, life was happy and carefree.

But as times are, they are a`changing.
First came WW I, then the Great Depression, then terrible poverty. Hitler rose by promising better times, and the Nazis and the second Big War changed everything. The old owners were chased away, or killed, many being Jews.
And when the war was lost Socialism began.
This meant that the Working Class was spending their summer holidays in the old villas now. The workers of the DDR factories in Sachsen-Anhalt and Thuringia were sent to the Baltic Sea
to recover, and they enjoyed the beach as much as all the former bathing guests. Only they wore no long swimming dresses anymore, in fact they invented nude bathing as a means of equalness. And the sea-gulls and the fish watched them with serenity, as they had always done.
When Socialism`s economy broke down and the Peaceful German Revolution came, the two divided parts of Germany were reunified. The West German government searched for the former house owners, or their families. They were given back their property. Often the houses looked like the one above, some still do.
But most of the villas were restored and became hotels or apartments. Some were turned into something special, like the two houses below.
Together they make the local Youth Hostel! Not bad, eh?

The beach is right across the promenade, the front windows facing the sea. I never get tired looking at these old places and wondering what they have seen during the last 100 or more years.

And then I go down to the beach. Here is my favourite place! A seat in the sand, surrounded by beach grass -

and a view which cannot be any prettier.

There is still some snow, and people wear warm clothes (like me). But compared to summer, I am almost alone.

I breathe the air and I hear the sea-gulls, and I understand why they are so serene. What do they care about history, or changes in fashion, or human politics.

They enjoy their life, and the bountiful fish, and today`s sun.

What better advice can they give me?

Cheers from

Angela

Mut und Übermut - Courage and ...hmmm, what??

2011-02-08T02:46:00.000-08:00

If I could pass two qualities on to anyone who meets me, I`d choose these two. Reya says our friends can change our DNA. Why not? I`d like to infect you with 1. Courage and 2. Übermut.

No, Übermut does not mean over-courage, although, maybe it does. What it has to do with mainly is skipping and twinkling at people with titles and throwing chocolates down at the audience on the ground seats when you have a theatre seat on the balcony. Doing the unexpected, the silly, the childish things. High spirits as a conviction.
I have plenty of that and can easily share. Such rubber animals (the best thing is its snorting deep loud voice) make me giggle and I can`t pass it without giving it a squeeze. I might be too old for jumping into puddles like my granddaughtie, but who should tell me? I can laugh uncontrollably at stupid jokes or animal pictures (did you get the ones about cats pulling faces, with funny captions?), and am I not all the healthier for it? A good long belly laugh moves lots of muscles, they say, and jolt up your endorphines.
So no harm in high spirits, huh?

Maybe it`s another thing with plain normal courage. It might take you to strange places.
Its counterpart is fear. And fear keeps us from falling off trees and horses and doing risky things. Sometimes a useful quality!
But courage brings us UP the trees and the horses and INTO those risky, wonderful, heart-thumping situations that no one knows how they`ll end!
There is a German song-writer whose name is Heinz-Rudolph Kuntze, and he looks exactly like his name. He used to be a teacher, in fact, and wears heavy glasses. But he writes the most intelligent song texts and is extremely successful since over 30 years in Germany. Don`t know if I can translate properly, but one goes: "Ich geh` meine eigenen Wege, ein Ende ist nicht abzuseh`n. Eigene Wege sind schwer zu beschreiben, sie entstehen ja erst beim Geh`n..." That is so GOOD!

"I am going my own paths, the end is not in sight. My own paths are hard to define, they only start existing while I go them..."
How often do we shrink back from a crazy but great idea we have?! For fear of the outcome. What if I stumble, or lose my money or get hurt, what if people will laugh at me and I lose my reputation? What if...? - No, the end is not in sight. And sometimes not even the path, for all the fog or the overgrown grass, or the good advice that keeps me from looking ahead and finding my OWN way and solution.
All those of you (and I know there are many) who want to write a book, go and DO IT! And even if it were only for your grandchildren! (I cherish the diary I have from my granny). Nobody has ever seen the world the same way as you have! And some of you are real poets. Do you know Janelle`s blog - Ngrorobob house ...Life on the hill? She IS a poet, with so much crazy phantasy, and look at Miranda`s (The times of Miranda) African play group which she founded, she had to learn proper Swahili for it (her first group acted in Chinyanja, from her own scripts) and is becoming world-wide known by now! And no one showed her the way.

In the beginning there is always a dream. And the next thing is COURAGE! Let your dreams come to life. Shout: I am courageous!!!!
Isn`t this what the Tunisians and Egyptian young people did? They did not know the outcome, but they poured out into the streets.
And if your own path includes a few puddles, put on your gum boots and JUMP! (Me, I´d splash right in. But of course you may rather hop across). Still. life is meant to be FUN, I am convinced of that.
Love from
Angela

Who can tell?

2011-01-26T01:28:00.000-08:00

These last weeks, I have been thinking about education again. In many respects.
Concerning our little African school, but also while talking with desparate parents.

How did you learn best? With freedom or under pressure?
The answer you always get from a lawyer (I live in a lawyer`s household) is: That depends!

And it`s true with me. The things I WANT to learn, the ones which interest me and make my heart sing, they come flying to me without any effort.
Of course I am lying. It also takes dictionaries and practice and red ears (when your newest cake recipe proved uneatable) and sometimes YEARS till you can pretend to be an expert.
But on the whole I never needed a rod if I was determined to learn a new thing.
But what if I wasn`t?
There were subjects at school which just passed me by, and with no pressure or bribes was I able to comprehend them. I still get headaches when I read numbers. Does it have to do with my sadistic maths-and-physics teacher who loved to embarrass us at the blackboard?
Naah, I guess I am just not the figures-and-technic-type. But who can tell?
Does it depend on the teacher? Or on your general ability to absorb information and then play with it?
That is my conviction - you probably NEED to shovel some information into the children, even under pressure, and make them practice, even against their will. But THEN they should be allowed to play and dance and throw all their knowledge into the air and juggle with it. Let them make some mistakes, but encourage them to USE it!

Yesterday I had a phone call from a new pupil. She has heard of me giving private lessons, and would I have time for her? "Why do you need private lessons?" I asked her. "I am bad at English," she said (in German, of course). So I said (in English), "Say something to me in English!" "I can`t", she said. "But you are in tenth grade, you had five and 1/2 years of English!"
"Yes, and I am good at participles and irregular verbs, but I cannot speak it!"
"You come to me," I promised her, "and you`ll learn! We`ll be talking English, and you`ll be surprised how well you can do it already. Now shout with me: I AM COURAGEOUS!"
She laughed and shouted, and we`ll meet next week.
Why do these kids need someone like me and don`t learn the simplest things at school? Language has to do with communication!
Last week I had the loveliest encounter with three of my "old" pupils in Hamburg. They are now ten, but were seven when I left them. They had come to me for three years, just to learn English in a playful way.
They insisted on walking down to our horse stable and my vegetable garden, and to the river, and they told me of all their happy memories (how they dug out potatoes and harvested pumpkins with me, how they waded the river for treasures, how they had brushed the horses and rolled down the slope). "Tell me in English," I said, and they did!
I would love to show you the pictures I took, of their smiling faces and their self-confidence. But I can`t do that, without their permission. But these kids, they were never shy with me, or had to be forced to learn.
I wonder if you heard of Amy Chua, author of the book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom". She is a Chinese mother in America, also a Yale professor of Law. She says Chinese parents expect only VERY BEST grades, and if the children don`t get them, it is just a sign that they haven`t worked hard enough. And they make them work harder! Including methods of punishment and shame, like my cruel maths teacher.
I also read that David Brooks of the New York Times said, "A Tiger Mom is taking the easy way! To make a child practice the violin for hours on end and not let her play with school mates deprives her of essential experiences. The real difficult and painful things are the fights with peers, the power struggles, the jealousies among children, all these things that are necessary for the brain development of young people.
But no denial - the Chinese are successful. If this is the success you want for your child.

Me, I am more for the Kuschelpädagogik. How do you say that in English (dictionary! No, it`s not in)
Cuddle education, perhaps. With a soft toy to support you, and laughter!

Here is a picture of our ancient dead apple tree. Or we THOUGHT it was dead. It had been choked with ivy, it was hollow inside and its main branches had broken off. When we moved away, we thought it could never recover.
And now look at it, with new sprouts, and last autumn it was full of the most delicious apples again.
Always believe in miracles!
And allow some time and freedom. Even in children who make you sigh. They will recover!

Lots of love to you mothers and fathers
from
Angela

Good Will Thrill

2011-01-11T02:51:00.000-08:00

"Wes das Herz voll ist, des fließt der Mund über", is a sentence which, if I remember right, Martin Luther said. The Reformation Monk, not the King, therefore it is in old-fashioned German.
What it says is, Whose heart is full, that one`s mouth overflows. Not good English, perhaps? But you get the point.
So I MUST write another blog post about my overflowing heart and mouth, but first let me show you what our beach looked like around the New Year. Waves frozen in motion, Paco can`t believe his eyes. Watch out, Paco, I am NOT inclined to rescue you!
Looking the other way there is more ice. We`re not in Alaska here, this is just plain Germany.

While you walk there, with your warm jacket and high boots, you think that this is forever. The moment of NOW always seems like forever.
But things can change. The ice is melting, waves are rolling again. And you know my love for metaphorical thoughts - this is what can happen every minute! The world can change.

One of my blog pals claims to be a cynic, and she says she does not believe in a friendly, compassionate world. And oh, don`t I know she is so right! You know what I am talking about, need I mention Arizona... humans are much too often incredibly intolerant and cruel to each other. But nature is, too. Think of Australia`s floodings right at this moment, an area the size of Germany and France together is under water, with all animals, houses, people.
No, this world is not a sugar place, not at all. And us humans are not a perfect species.
We are all just struggling to get along. Trying to survive.

But, in spite of all our helplessness, we can look around us.
The birds are hungry? Let`s feed them.

It`s that simple, really.
Those of us who have all we need, a place to sleep, enough to eat, and someone to cuddle us, because that is really all we need, we often have MORE than that, a lot more, come to think of it.

So why not share a little of our time, our food, our pencils and paper, with some other humans who sometimes lack what we have in abundance.
This thought got us started around nine years ago, Val and me. Just a simple thought. Imagination is really all that is needed. The "deeds" manifest by themselves, once the thought is in the world.
Maybe you`d like to read our new blog called http://www.matsopaneschool.blogspot.com/
It tells about the little school in Mozambique we have been supporting since 2002. When Val and I started blogging in 2008, we sometimes mentioned the joy and fun we had, and the lovely encounters that followed, which led us to more joy, here and there.
And how and why I cannot say, but with the beginning of this new year, suddenly ideas and input of our blog pals seem to be exploding. It is not money we are asking for, that is really the least big item (believe it or not), it is this cumulated energy that pulls us all into a vortex of joy and new ideas. One of the ideas still came from Tessa, so she will always be involved.
It looks that we can help the children finally get benches and desks for their school (so far they are sitting on the ground). What is fantastic is that it is the local fathers who will build them, all they needed was the wood and perhaps some tools.
It is the COMBINED good will that makes things happen.
Can you see why I am so thrilled?
It is the EMPOWERMENT I can sense, and that almost makes me shout with glee.
Yaaay, yippee!
Happy New Year, you all!
Angela

Joy to you, my winged friends

2010-12-24T02:51:00.000-08:00

Girls and boys, she is COMING!!

On the left you can see the almost frozen canal, and they all have climbed up the steep banks. They must be really hungry, after three weeks of snow and icy temperatures, but here rescue is near! Paco had to be tied to a pole (what a temptation!!), but finally that Woman-with-the-Black-Bread has arrived! Hurry uuuuup!!

ONE swan has mingled with all the ducks, and he or she is actually taking the bread from our hands! Such a feeling!
,

When I speak of my "winged friends", I mean these, but also the ones above. AND, mostly, the ones below, with the invisible wings.

You and me.

When you share a smile, or a written card, or a present to a dear one, you are no less than that.

An angel.

Merry Christmas to you!

Your friend

Angela

Just waving from afar

2010-11-25T04:22:00.000-08:00

No no, I am not really back. My "out of office" sign ist still at its place, I only sneaked past it to rummage in my drawers, find postal addresses and look at old pictures.
And while I sat there, dreamily looking out of the window, to see the above view, I thought I might as well wish you a Happy Thanksgiving Day. That`s what it is today, at least in America.

I wonder what it is like for you. Do you have family and friends assembled around your dinner table, chatting away happily? Or are there some guests you`d rather not have, or some who were left out? Or are you perhaps not having enough food to celebrate? Perhaps you have no one to visit today and feel a bit lonely when everybody else seems so busy.
Then come over here to my place. It is cold, the first snow is on the ground, but we have floor heating in the house, and I already baked some cookies and my famous Butterstollen (yes Lola, you`ll get the recipe!). We`ll light a candle and talk together quietly.
Thanksgiving is really such a nice thought.
I have just found a newspaper article reporting about research done at the university in Zürich. Psychologists had collected samples of 24 character forces. They have found that six of them lead to especially good feelings. They are: optimism, thankfulness, humour, hope, the ability to love, and curiosity.
The researching team pleads for children to be strengthened more in these qualities. Good role models and mentors can help people become happier in life, is their conclusion.
That sounds so self-evident that I almost had to smile. Don`t we all know that?

Then I thought on to what has been on my mind recently.
I don`t know if it is due to this dark and cold time of year, but I have been contacted lately by many old friends who wanted to talk, and needed someone to listen. I like to do that, as you know, and always, always do I learn something myself. So it is never a one-sided affair. On the contrary, the interaction I experienced these last weeks amazed me tremendously.
One thing was especially strange. I had dreams, apparently carrying messages. My old American Uncle John (who would now be 115) gave me two sentences to remember (I forgot one). The second one was: When you get old and think back on your life, Geli, you love to remember the good times you had and dwell on those happy memories. So, while you are young, keep this in mind. The happy times which you will remember later, NOW is the time to create them!

And in that same dream, I met a blog friend, and we sat and talked, and I told her of my encounter with my uncle. I could even speak her language which is not one of my best. But she understood me. So when I woke up I knew I had to tell her in reality! And when I did, I got a prompt answer! She said, Thank you for this message. It was exactly what I needed. Now I know how to decide!
Gave me shivers, I must say.
And this is only one example. I also "saw" a friend who had just passed away, and he told me on the phone (in my dream) of the restaurant he and his wife had been to and which he still enjoyed so much thinking of. And I also saw the restaurant with its red curtains and red table cloths and gold decorations. When I wrote his widow a letter, telling her that, she called me and said, "How could you KNOW?! It was our last outing together, and it looked exactly as you have described it! Now I know he is still connecting with us. That makes me so happy."
I could go on, but this has already become a longer chat than I had expected.
What I was trying to pass on to you with all this chattering is that I think it would be just wonderful if you called one friend today, asking how she or he was, and exchanging news for a while. Maybe saying you were thankful to know him or her?
Would that not be a good Thanksgiving Day?

Love to you from
Angela-with-the-funny-dreams

Part of a beautiful Tapestry, lovely, but not forever

2010-11-09T08:36:00.001-08:00

This is what our garden looked like in the harvest time this autumn. Beans and leek, onions, strawberries, parsley and potatoes, and a high-rising sunflower.
And our compost heap in the background. Holy rot, as Reya calls it, sacred compost. Where all the dead and decayed plants go, get munched up by our fat and busy eath worms, and turn into beautiful soft black soil.
I love my compost. Reya (at The Gold Puppy) (yes, I know, I quote her often, but when you read her last two posts, beginning with "Honoring the Dark", you will understand) has said so good things about it.
This is the time of year when the fog and the rain take over, the frosty nights kill all the dahlias and last roses, well, at least here in Germany, in the Northern Hemisphere.
Strange that there are places on our globe where nature starts blooming now and birds build their nests. Look at Nicky`s post on her winged garden friends (at Absolute Vanilla) and the crazy climbing squirrels. Here our squirrels have prepared for the first snow, they carried most of our haselnuts to hidden places (hope you don`t forget them, guys!), and the bumblebees and wasps have disappeared. Spiders weave beautiful nets to catch a last fly or moth, but most of the garden life has come to an end.
My vegetables were harvested, the strawberies are frozen in, the plums and sandthorn fruits were turned into delicious jam.
And we humans cuddle into our chairs and look out of the window. And we think of this and that.

This morning my husband and daughter (who was here for a long delightful weekend) have returned to work, leaving me and Paco here. Yes, I felt a bit lonely, the house was suddenly so quiet.
So (as you can tell) I read your blogs, my friends, and they made me get lost in pictures and thought. How lovely that I can always turn to you! Many of you have asked me for my address and have written me mails or even real letters which I LOVE. Today I found four of your mails - each one made me happy. Thank you!
Another friend wrote me, one who lost her husband a year ago this month, but she told me she was happy that it was me who had thought of her! And another old girlfriend (we have known each other since age 13) called me on the phone and told me of something she needed advice about. We talked for almost an hour, and she felt much better afterwards.
I feel like I am woven into a tapestry, I am part of this friendship pattern. When we need a shoulder, someone listens to us, and then again we can be there and cheer our friends up.
And our plants grow and have their life, bumblebees and squirrels and humans come to feed on them, then they grow old and die, and become earth again, out of which new life springs.
And our ancestors were here before us, they lived and laughed and fought and danced, they had children, and then they died, and their grandchildren live on, until they become grandparents, or aunts, or carers, and they give their heritage on.
What a circle!
Don`t you love it?

My 199th post on Omi Marie

2010-11-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

These are lousy pictures, I know, taken from my old album or phptographed from my computer (where they were too big for blogger), and they are very old anyway.
But Reya (from The Golden Puppy) has been talking about ancestors, as today is All Souls, or El Día de los Muertes, and that made me think of mine.
That lovely old couple, sitting together on a bench (ha, that bench theme following me again!), in their Sunday clothes, they were my grandmother`s parents, Anna (a born Vandré of Huguenot origin) and Claus Elfers, a well-to-do undertaker.
They had two children, Ernst, who later emigrated to Buenos Aires, and Marie, who was to become my grandmother (Omi, in German).
On this picture down here Marie was about 16 or 17, with an elaborate hairdo and a beautiful embroidered blouse.
It was taken in 1910 or thereabouts, because she was born in 1893. I first met her in 1948, when the war had just ended and her husband was dead, and she was still sweet but old before her time. She became the one who brought me up.
My mother gave me her diary. It was written in the old German script which looked so neat but was hard to read. I asked my very old neighbour to read it to me, and I copied every word of it down. It was too amazing to me!

It started on her 17th birthday in 1910 and was carried on till two years later when she had finally found her dream fiancé. All the time in-between she had gone to dances and amusements, all in the direct approach to search a husband!
That`s the problem in the city (they lived in Hamburg), there is no natural solution, like adjourning neighbours` children or distant relatives who would make a good match in the eyes of their parents. But in 1910, it still was clear for a young girl that it was proper for her to get married.
She went to a dancing school and then to balls, and she wrote very enthusiastically about the young men she met and what dresses she wore and at what time she got home. Incredible! Six in the morning was not seldom! Usually one of her newly met cavaliers accompanied her home. Many of them promised to write her afterwards, but they seldom did.
"Men!" she sighed.
When I read her diary, I see a young, careless girl, with not much interest beside herself, but absolutely enjoying life!
"Hamburg, March 2, 1911.
I am so much looking forward to Saturday! Then I will go to the Hunters` Ball with Uncle Fritz
and Aunt Marie, They will pick me up by carriage. Elly will also take part, and Heini and Mimi. We will be 14 acquaintances all in all. Simply chic! Yesterday I was at the opera house with my mother and three other ladies. They gave "The Count of Luxembourg". It was wonderful! Especially the two songs "Is it you, laughing luck?" and "Girl sweet, girl fine".
From April on I will go to a gymnastic school. I will taylor my own costume."
"Hamburg, March 17, 11
The Hunters` Ball was just terrific! My best ball up to now. I danced with lieutenants all the time, once even with a major. A young lieutenant asked me to dance several times. He entertained me well. I also met one of the cute sons of our butcher, Herrn Oldenburg. We had met only late at night, but then he danced with me many times. Uncle Fritz kept on laughing about me being asked so often by lieutenants. Uncle and Aunt told me that they soon expected one of their nephews back from the Rhine, Herrn Spreckelsen, because he was supposed to take over the wine trading business of an uncle in Stade soon. That was the man I should take for a huband! I laughed very much about this suggestion, as I am still so young. But they kept on talking about it.
On Saturday I will go to another ball again."
"January 15, 1912
We are confronted with a big change in our lives. My brother Ernst will leave on Feb. 3rd. He takes the Cap Finistere to go to Buenos Aires, for supposedly 2 1/2 years. If all goes well, he plans to return for the Silver Wedding of our parents. It will surely feel strange for all of us at first. Yesterday Ernst and I went skating on the frozen Alster Lake. Ernst and I get along so well these days. We also go out together often."
Well, Ernst stayed in Argentina and had four sons. The youngest was Lorenzo, who came to visit his "old family" and found it very moving to see the old places which his father had left. He still speaks good German (though a bit old-fashioned), but his sons speak only Spanish.

Today I found Amanda`s post (travels with Persephone) who has also just visited her "old family" in Slovenia and suddenly had a feeling for her "roots".
Many of you who read this, in America, Brazil, Canada, Australia, you still have family here somewhere. It has been one adventurous ancestor who left home and began a new life abroad. But he or she was not forgotten by the ones who stayed! Go look them up! They will be delighted!
And what happened to Marie? Yes, she found a young man, but not on a ball, but on a holiday tour in the mountains which she did first time without her parents. A few friends and her went hiking in the Harz Mountains (beautiful, many years later I also went there, on a school excursion. Very romantic, like in those Grimm´s fairytales), and they met two Hamburg fellows - one of whom fell in love with her and married her.
They went on a honeymoon with a couple friends, by ship, and visited Genua and other places in Italy. Look, still dressed up to latest fashion!

Her diary broke up after her engagement. So I learned nothing of the outbreak of WW I or what became of her young family in the economical breakdown afterwards.
Her son and daughter were born and grew up loved and sheltered. But then the Nazis took over and everything changed.
But that`s another story.
Cheers to you, my Omi Marie! I lift my glass on you tonight. We could have been good friends, you and I, had we danced and skated together, a hundred years ago.
I am trying to be as good a grandmother as you were to me!

To our ancestors who made us! How can we not cherish you?

Change can be easy!

2010-10-28T03:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am only kidding. Change can be quite an adventure and may take some patience and courage. I only wanted to catch your attention (using reverse psychology. Haha, yes, I am even learning from myself!)
But to convey my point, I will show you what I mean.
Imagine you have a box full of apples. Not best looking, but fresh and with no pesticides. Just normal juicy apples from a garden.
You can look at them and wonder what to do with them.
Consider them as choices.
You can pick one and think, ah, sour. And here is a worm. Can`t even sell them, the crooked way they look.
And then you drop it.
Or you can go to work.
Wash some raisins, buy a few almonds, some spices (no success without investing work and costs), cut and peel the apples.
Let them mix and wait a while. The best ideas come while you do something else for a while.
And then you bake a wonderful apple cake. Perhaps this kind,

or this. Yum!

Or what we always take for a Birthday Cake, my husband`s favourite!

I could carry on endlessly, no limit to imagination and apple cakes!

My point is, it is up to you to decide what you do with chances. Neglecting them, sure, is also a choice.
But picking up opportunities and changing them into something real GOOD, is better!

If you put some effort into your life, trying to make the best of your chances, after your OWN wishes, this is so REWARDING!

You can not only make yourself happy, but you can also invite others to share your joy, and the cake.
Actually it was not the apples which inspired me to this post. It was a man named Noor Huda Ismail. A former hard-liner Jihadist from Indonesia. I read an article about him in a paper, and then found him at google, too.

What a change this man has made, all by his own choice! He is now 38. As a young man, he wanted to fight in Afghanistan for the "Holy War", and became pupil in an islamic boarding school called "AL Mukmin Ngruki" which taught hatred and recruited some of the Bali-Bombers. But by chance (he was caught with the daughter of one of the teachers and therefore not considered pious enough) he drifted away from the scene. He studied political sciences and communication. He worked as tourist guide and so met with foreigners. Then he made his Master`s Degree for International Security at the Scottish St. Andrew`s University. There he was impressed by the way former enemies in Northern Ireland learned to become "anti-radical". Then he worked as correspondent for the Washington Post where he interviewed and anylised some of his imprisoned former school mates.

And NOW he has found a mission, where he can use his background. Noor Huda Ismail is a one-man-anti-terror unit. He rehabilitates terrorists by leading them back to a non-hating way. He founded the "Institute for international peace-building". His internet blog is called "Bridging without prejudice". He wrote a book "Temanku, Teroris?" (My friend, the Terrorist).

The imprisoned terrorists in Indonesia who are set free can easily turn back to their old ways, he says, and I want to help them. I speak their language and know what made them.

But he has an even stronger motive: His young son shall not become a radical terrorist one day.

Now tell me, can you think of a greater change? And no, it was not easy, and it took courage, but he uses his life for something GOOD now.

I love happy endings.

The Merits of Mental Stubbornness, and ten perhaps honest scraps

2010-10-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

I just love the science page in our daily newspaper. It comes up with enlightenments which lead me back all the way to my grandmother.
Can you imagine - I was a very stubborn child! (haha, who ME?). But I was, and still have it in me.
When I felt people wanted me to do things, I became obstinate. The only one who knew how to handle me was Omi Mariechen. She served me fried liver, and I looked at it and pushed the plate back. She said, "Oh good! I`m glad you won`t eat much of it, because this is a very rare and exquisite dish. You are only allowed to cut small pieces from it and eat it slowly and with concentration, as you won`t get it often. Much too expensive and delicious to gulp it down."

NOW I know! She used "the Paradox Intention", a thing which Victor E. Frankl first named, and about which a modern author named Marvin C. Shaw wrote a book, and he gave it the subtitle "Reaching the Goal by Giving Up the Attempt to Reach it".
Frankl called it "an Appellation to the Defiance of the Spirit", and it sure worked with me!
(I still cut fried liver into small pieces)

The newspaper article gave lots of examples. Like, when you easily blush in public, don`t FIGHT the urge, or expect humiliation (which is always worse than experiencing the "real" thing). Tell yourself to NOW BLUSH on purpose, right now, go ahead! BLUSH! Or why not faint?! Even better! - Your subconsciousness will raise its eyebrows, saying to you, Aren`t you exaggerating a bit? And perhaps start grinning.
Or you mother-in-law comes again with her dustcloth and cleaning equipment and you get a stomach ache days before. This time give her a bucket, a detergent and a cloth, and tell her you are really thankful!
Your children want to eat nothing but noodles and no brokkoli? Okay, give them noodles, and more noodles, and tell them they can ONLY have brokkoli after they finished up ALL the noodles!
It sounds so simple and easy to see through, but surprisingly enough, it works!! A teacher said, My pupils were awful, they would not listen to me, and I felt so helpless - until I did the unexpected. I said, "I apologize! Please believe me, I am so sorry. Here I am giving you lessons on things that do not interest you, and all the while I KNOW that you, Linda, are having problems with your dyslexia and you Paul, are worried about your graduation, and you... and you "(no irony please, but true concern). She said, the children listened to her in awe and afterwards said, "In reality it is US who should have apologized to you, but it was good to hear this from you. Thank you."
You see, what it does is, it gives you back the Power of Action. You are not helpless anymore.
You accept the situation and even push it over the top, until it lost its frightening shadow.

One more example was about husbands who never help in the household. Wife was nagging constantly, and he not even listening anymore. The therapist said, Wife, you tell him a thing he will LIKE to hear! "This weekend I FORBID you to help me in the kitchen or carry out the garbage. Don`t move a finger, dear. Just sit and watch your sports canal. Don`t let me catch you do something like sweeping the floor or picking up your socks!"
I bet he goggled at her!
One exception, they say.
It only works with people who have at least a BIT of humour. Otherwise your blushing friend will REALLY faint when you tell her to, or the husband will turn around and say, "Told you so! Finally you learned".
And what do you think of a child like my granddaughtie who LOVES brokkoli and will prefer that to everything else on the table?? A different sense of stubbornness? Doing the unexpected all by herself?

I think I got carried away again. But isn`t this a FUN topic?

Can you still read on? Otherwise come back tomorrow.
Nicky from Absolute Vanilla gave me the Honest Scrap Award, thank you sweets! You can read about the details on her blog, and I can only say, I would have picked exactly the same 7 to 8 bloggers to pass it on to, but I will try to fulfill the other requirement and share with you ten honest scraps about me. Or what I THINK is honest, who knows how much I know about me?

1. I can easily be betrayed. I always want to believe what you tell me. So don`t misuse my trust.

2. Necklaces and bracelets and especially earrings drive me crazy. I LOVE them (have them in my drawer), but my skin is so touchy it screams when I wear them. So necklaces only on top of blouses!
3. I can soothe wildly barking dogs and make cheeky goats sit on my lap.

4. My hair is naturally straight as straw and has to be curled to look at least decently.

5. In the last 20 years or so I have donated 25 litres of my blood. It all grew back, fortunately. Otherwise I would look pretty skinny by now.

6. I have a vivid picture-imagination. You tell me a story, and I burst out laughing because I can see the scene in my mind, with some extra funny details!

7. I am silly and laugh about many apparently sober things. Much to the disgust of some serious people, and the delight of children.

8. Children feel a related soul in me. Actually, even three years after we moved away, my former pupils still write me long letters. A ten-year-old, only last week, sent me two pages and a drawing!

9. I can never get drunk because I fall over after half a glass of wine.

10. I love to write letters but I am bad at telephoning. I always want to SEE you! (Or is it that I don`t want you to talk back?) Chuckle.

Enough about me now. It is YOUR TURN to tell me something.

I promise I`ll laugh about your jokes!
Angela

When a new baby is born

2010-10-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of our first meeting.
You are my child. I am your Mama. Welcome, my baby.

I was never a mama before. We will have to learn this together.
But I LOVE you, as much as I have never loved before. And I will care for you, this is my promise.

When I remember this first moment, I am still overflowing. This love has never left me.

I am thinking of you now, Tam. Enjoy these first wondrous moments.
Later, there will be sleepless nights, and bruises, and cut knees, and you will have to cope with children`s birthday parties (arrgh!) and cheeky answers, but this little boy will have just one mama, you (the one he will always turn to), and one daddy (his big role model!), and he will love you both as much as you have never been loved.
It is really the greatest wonder in the world.

You can be sure that all the Good Blogland-Fairies are standing around your bed now, each one bestowing you and him with good wishes.
May your life together be blessed.

Your Auntie (one of the Good Fairies)

A book I have come across

2010-10-19T00:15:00.000-07:00

In the literature supplement of our Saturday newspaper I came across a book report.
Maybe you have heard about it, I had not, so far.
The authors are called Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn, and the book`s title is "Half the Sky".
The German subtitle is: How women worldwide fight for a better future.

Now I am not so naive as to believe that books can really change the world, or good will or words or nobel prizes can set a society to think. But sometimes an ambitious book can rattle me up, and maybe if I tell you about it, you will feel the same way.
I copied a few quotes.
Here is one by George Clooney:
"I think it is impossible to stand by and do nothing after reading Half the Sky."
Greg Mortensen:
"I read half the Sky in one sitting. It is brilliant and inspirational, and I want to shout about it from the rooftops and the mountains...The book ends with an especially compelling "What you can do" to exhort us all to action."
Fareed Zakaria:
If you have always wondered whether you can change the world, read this book."

Does that not sound uplifting? The main theme of "Half the Sky" are personal stories of women who were ill-treated in the society they live in. But each one tells a story of success. Instead of killing herself, as tradition wants it, after a mass rape in Pakistan, the woman Mukhtar sued her tormenters, and won! The African Mahabouba was married against her will, had a child who died at birth, her neighbours leaving her bleeding, all alone in a hut, with hyena waiting. But she made it to a hospital, was operated, and her new life began.
All these women showed courage and had a vision of a better life, and often this was done with the help of husbands and fathers. Many men HAVE by now understaood this. As Bill Gates` father states: "
Lift women, and you lift the world."
The problems are known, and many of us have donated money, but we all were left with this feeling that money only drips away into the sand. But here we get told stories of women who went to action themselves, and show solutions.
"The trading of girls, and mass rapes", the authors say, "should not be considered as "women`s affairs", just like slavery should not be considered as a "negroes` affair", or the holocaust as a "Jewish affair". All these bad things were and are humanitarian causes, which cannot be reduced to the colour of skin, the gender, or an ethnic or religious identity."
With the globalisation we have all moved closer together. Were we not all touched by the rescue of those Chilean mine workers who none of us had known before? Can we now close our eyes to the lives of women, who after all, make up half the world`s population, and are still treated in many societies as if they had less rights than a cow? Why do we allow this?

The report ends with these words:
"This book is ambitioned. But of the vision of a better life, of a right for happiness and bodily unscathedness (is that a word? I am translating) many are touched. Ten minutes, say the authors, one should take, to study the internet addresses of the many small organisations and to decide. "We want to attract you. Become a volunteer. Open your heart and take part."

The problems are well-known. Now there are solutions on the horizon."

Greg Mortensen, me too, I want to shout about it from the rooftops. And here I am, up on mine.
Can you hear me?

A Beautiful Autumn Stroll

2010-10-13T02:15:00.000-07:00

The colour of the leaves are turning, and slowly they are falling to the ground. On Vagabonde`s blog I found a beautiful song, presented on video by Yves Montand, Les Feuilles Mortes (the dead leaves), it breaks your heart,
...et la mer efface sur le sable
les pas des amants désunis.
(and the sea wipes out on the sand the traces of lovers, parted)

and also that Rilke-poem always comes to my mind in autumn
"Herr, es ist Zeit, der Sommer war sehr groß...
wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr, wer jetzt allein ist,
wird es lange bleiben, wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben,
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben."

(Lord, it is time, the summer has been large...
who has no house now, will not build one anymore,
who is alone now, will remain so for a long time,
will wake, read, write long letters,
and will walk the alleys up and down,
while the dead leaves are falling.)

But oh, even everyday sights can become so beautiful.
We forget the sadness and enjoy the last flaming flowers.
And it is good when you have stored enough firewood on the side of your garden shack!

The garden chair is empty now, dreaming of past sunny afternoons.

And family gatherings on the lawn will become rare now.

But at least someone has a wishing well!

Paco and I walk on along the wild-appletree-meadow. Oh see, another bench! Let`s rest a while.

Then we cross the railroad tracks and see the shimmering lake in the distance.

I just LOVE to walk here, you cannot help breathing deeply!

Just look all around you, take the peaceful scene in. A couple of ponies are grazing on the hill, they look up when I take a picture. Oops, they are hiding now. Or were they just fairies?

Can you see how happy Paco is here?

You all have a beautiful sunny day! Forget all your worries and walk on behind Paco. All he cares about are wild mice and moles.

I`m sending you hugs and peace in your heart.

Love from

Angela

Maybe I am not compatible?

2010-10-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

No, I`m not going to take it personal, or wonder about her behaviour, but do you mind if I share my experience with you?
It will help me understand, perhaps, or at least stop shaking my head.

You know I have been reading stories to the local kindergarten children, and we have grown fond of each other, the children and I. Usually I choose books from the library and do not use the ones they have on their own library shelves, not after I leafed through them and still found some old DDR "literature", trying to influence the children to become good little socialistic pioneers.

Sometimes I take my own English picture books along and translate them while reading. One of them is their absolute favourite. It is called Room on the Broom, written and illustrated by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. These two are a fabulous team, and they have invented other crazy and well-ending stories, like The Gruffalo, and the Snail and the Whale, and Mr.Stickman - all of them absolutely sweet.

So, what I did last week was write a story, based on this book, which had all my seven faithful listening children as heroes.
I called it An Adventure for Adeline, Joanne, Luis, Marvin, Nina, Emily and Lena.
Today I read it to them, and they were giggling and open-mouthed and asking about details, they had never been so keen while listening!

Let me try to translate the beginning.

"What is that you have brought with you today?" the kindergarten-children asked me after we had gathered in the reading room.
"You remember," I said, "the book of that witch who kept losing everything on her broomstick, while flying through the air, and who picked up a new companion every time she landed and had to look for her stuff? Until finally her broomstick broke? And how then she and her friends brewed a fantastic new broom in her cauldron on which all of them had a seat?"
Of course they remembered.
"Well, I brought you such a broom today, with room for all of you!"

"But this one is much smaller!" says Luis and points at my mini-broom. Luis is very smart and always notices things quickly.
"Ye-es," I say, and out of my bag I fetch something else - my magic wand with a star. (I had one with me in reality)
"With this wand I am enlarging my small broom to exactly the size we need it!"

"Are you a witch then?" Nina asks and looks at me thoughtfully. This is something she had not known about me.
"Oh no," I wipe this idea off. "Not such a one with a wart on her nose and a hunch and a witch-cottage. But yes, I do have some magical powers. By the way, everyone has them! My great-aunt Mimi could heal colics by simply putting her hand on a cow`s stomach. She did not even have to make an effort, all she had to do was WISH very hard that the cow should get better.
And with me it is quite the same. When I really really want something, then it happens!
At least most of the time.
And now I really wish that my small broom shall grow real large and have seats for all of us!"

"PENG!" it goes, and suddenly a wonderful big broomstick is standing there in front of us, ready for our first flight! Ah, and there is even a basket for Paco.
The children jump up and inspect the funny flying instrument.
"But where can you get it started?" Marvin asks sceptically. Marvin is also pretty smart!
"I do it like the witch in the book. I simply knock at the broomstick, and then WHOOSH, off we go, out of the window! Now we must only decide WHERE we want to go."

"East!" Adeline cries. "To Kazakhstan, where my grandma Nadya lives!"
"West!" Joanne, Emily and Marvin shout. "We have English names, we want to go to England. There we can meet other children who have our names."

etc, etc. In the end we decide on Bornholm, an island not too far, situated between Usedom and Sweden. After we landed there, Nina found - what else - a bottle with a message, but before we can open it, we have to go home, because the Mamas will come at three, and so we have to find out about the message next time. Maybe there is a task for us in that bottle?

I had to read this story twice, and they all made suggestions what the message would contain (a map for a treasure, was the final solution of course), and happily we parted.

On my way out, the headmistress came after me.
"Um," she said, "we have not talked for a while. There is something I must tell you."
I said nothing. "Um," she said again. "Well, we are all very thankful for your coming and reading to the children, but another woman has spoken with me. She is the grandmother of two of the children here. SHE would like to do the reading now. And well, we thought it would be too much for the children to have TWO reading afternoons, and to take turns would confuse them, and so ..." "You want me to draw back?" I said. "Yes," she said, relieved that I was not making a fuss.

And that was that. Two of the little girls had heard this and accompanied me to the gate.
I explained to them that this was my last day. "But why?" they asked.
"Maybe the new lady will be very nice, "I said.
"But we know you as the very nicest of all," Adeline said. "Thank you for writing us our own story!"
Maybe the next grandmother will write a sequel?

It may be that this was just a situation the headmistress could not handle. Perhaps the grandmother had threatened her (not that we get paid any money, but it has to do with influence), or maybe it was my unorthodox way of talking with the children which some mothers may have complained about.
Who knows.
But my little friends will surely tell me how their new reading afternoons will develop.
Perhaps with some more DISCIPLINE, haha.

Oktober-Schnipsel

2010-10-04T03:02:00.001-07:00

Schnipsel is German for snippet, and as you know for the c we always write a k, you can easily read Oktober-Schnipsel, a perfect German word!
I haven`t got any time to write blog posts or even comments or mails really, so please don`t take it personal, but right now I am way too busy, living my "real life".
I`ll just show you a few glimpses and add some explanations, so you understand!

First of all, the above picture shows my mail box! Hint, hint!
At this autumn time the last flowers are especially rich in colour and look beautiful. These are our Ringelblumen, or Calendula, underneath the box.
And here is one of the reasons why my fingers are stitched with thorns and my kitchen looks a mess: our sand thorn is ripe, and the fruits are full of vitamin C and very tasty, so I am making jam and juice in masses, adding apples (which I also have to pick first, slice and cut), and then I am standing in my kitchen, filling these:

Yummie!

What else is happening? The Garden Gnomes have disappeared! All walked away one night, to their hibernating place in a dark cave perhaps? What kind of icy winter do they expect???

Last week I was in Hamburg again, seeing my LGs (lovely Grandchildren)
Very daring, the 5-year-old!

And I took lots of pictures of our beautiful plot on the river again. I can never resist. This time our neighbour`s horses were out on our meadow, chewing grass. I LOVE to see horses doing that. Such a peaceful scene!

But it is all a bit overgrown now and needs a caring hand. The buyer who was so keen on buying it has backed up (suddenly he found out he did not have the money he thought he had, hmmm...).

That means it still belongs to us (which I like), but it is up to us to mow the lawn and cut the hedge again. Yeah, next time...

While I was there I felt inspired to write a story for my kindergarten children in which each one appeared with their names. I bet they`ll like that! Tomorrow I will read it to them.

Yesterday Germany had a Big Celebration Day - 20 years of Reunification! A wonderful day. Just think that the suppressed people in the DDR stood finally up, shook off their fear and walked through the streets, in Leipzig up to 70 000, every Monday, again and again, and shouted:

WE are the people!

And the whole torturing regime vanished like hot air. The Truth is so powerful!

Now it is up to the North Korean people to do the same thing! Courage, my friends behind that last Iron Curtain!

Yesterday was also another big celebration day: Germany`s Thanksgiving! It is always the first Sunday in October, and my favourite Church Holiday. I also have reasons to be thankful, and look at what my own garden produces!
A carrot with humour!!!

Now cheer up, my dear friends, and have a wonderful week!

I am running out to pick more sand thorn fruits!

Love from Angela

(with pricked and yellow fingers)

The Liberation! The Empowerment!

2010-09-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

This topic has been following me around. It comes back to me from every corner. It has so many different angles that I doubt I can fully write about it, ever.
But I will give it a try.
Let me start with a TV report I once saw, and that made me chuckle - and stop in my shoes. There was a man who pointed at a large picture. The photo showed a huge mass-gathering of people, in the streets of Berlin, with Hitler driving down the street, his arm lifted. And you could almost HEAR the crowd shouting "Heil!", their faces full of enthusiasm for the Führer.
And the watching man smiled and said, "That was all just ME! "
He was right. He was the first one I heard admit it. Apparently no one else was there.

It takes courage to admit a thing you are not proud of. And it is so much easier to hide behind the phrase, "but the OTHERS did it, too!" (especially when none of the others can remember anything). But it truly liberates you when you stand up tall and say, "Yes, I did it. I remember. I might have been young and foolish, but I was among the cheering crowd, and I had my share in whatever bad things happened, because we fed the ego of this man."
In after-war Germany you did not find many who said that. And in after-socialism times you do not find many who admit, "Yes, I was spying for my regime as a Stasi Informal Helper, and I damaged the lives of many." (Did you see the movie Das Leben der Anderen, the Life of Others?)
But those who did it and seeked a personal talk, asking forgiveness, they were hardly ever turned down.
It is called personal responsibilty, perhaps. Or standing up for yourself.

This is the one side of it. But what truly lifts my spirit is to see the positive other angle! The EMPOWERMENT it gives you to say, I am in charge!
When I imagine the world as a better, juster, happier place, I can DO something about it. It`s up to ME to want it.
It works, alas, also with the bad, selfish ideas, and we know, see above, how far even one person can harm his whole surroundings, poisoning the souls of those "following" him. But that is the point - who tells us we must follow another`s thoughts?
We are enabled to think for ourselves, consider what we think good and right, and how WE want and imagine the world.
Did you ever notice that it is always the ONE PERSON whose ideas changed the world? I can count up hundreds, without thinking much: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Jesus, Muhammad, Nero, Stalin, Mandela, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther, M.L. King, Hildegard von Bingen, Einstein, Humboldt, Shakespeare, Caesar, Rüdiger Nehberg...
Rüdiger Nehberg?
You have not heard of him? He is a German baker, with an imagination. He started off as a man who tested his own endurance, got the name of Sir Vival, because he went on all sorts of expeditions, en passant saving the Yamomani Indians in Brazil from extinction, but all that was not his main goal. He founded the organisation Target, which is fighting against female mutilation. And he is not just holding up a sign, saying, I am against it. He talked with the Muslim authorities, he showed them videos, he asked them to get active. In Nov. 2006 he managed to have an International Conference called up in Cairo, of Islamic Theologians, and then the miracle happened.
The top religious scholars said female circumcision was an aggression against women and should be stopped. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the head of the Al-Azhar mosque, Sunni Islam`s top authority, told the conference, "In Islam, circumcision is for men only."
Ali Goma`a, Egypt`s top official Islamic scholar, or Grand Mufti, told the congregation that in the Prophet Muhammad`s life, no examples of the practice could be found. Religion offered no justification. The practice should be banned and punished.
Wow!
Now, Nehberg says, I want to go to Mekka. I want the most influential leaders of Saudi Arabia to listen to me and this cause. I want to see this awful practice be banned in my lifetime.

It all started with imagination.

As I said, so much more to be said and thought about this topic. Like: All the small things we do are equally important. I mean it, equally! If you smile at a sad stranger, or write a letter to a mourning friend, or offer to carry a heavy weight for an old lady, or help a crying child find his toy - each little thing that you do changes the world into a better place. If you do it with love. And then it will give you back a tremendous gift. The feeling of being part of this beautiful creation, in which you can play along. YOU are important!
Here is a last quote (from German into English, may not be perfectly done). It is the quote of the just now beatified John Henry Newman (for which the German Pope Ratzinger has visited England. I thought that was a courageous act, too. To be the first after almost 500 years.).
Newman said,
"I have an assignment. I am a member in a chain, and a strong rope petween people. The Holy Master has not created me for nothing. I am here to do good. I am to do carry out his work. I am to be a messenger for peace and a preacher of the truth, here where I stand."

Through the Lens of a Five-year-old

2010-09-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

Can you remember yourself at five?
Although at the time I thought that I might perhaps still turn into a boy if I behaved like one, in playing football with my brothers (my brothers were allowed to get dirty and never were expected to help my mother with the dishes. They were undoubtedly better off!), I usually had a clear picture of the world.
I can even still remember what I thought and felt at that age. I really do.
Do not ever underestimate a child of five.
Now I am a grandmother of a five-year-old boy. He loves to play with cars and asked me if he could have my camera to take a picture of his remote control car to take home with him (he lives three hours away from us).
So he did, and then I took one of him, being happy.

And then I said, let`s ride to the grocer`s with our bikes. I have to buy some things to eat.
Can I take the camera? he asked. Sure, I said.
So he did, and then he took pictures of everything he thought worth while. Like:

The bicycle stand.

His own bike, parked there.

The pretty red roses.

Oh, I forgot to add the vegetables with the fiery red radishes. Too late now.

He sure has a sense for colours!

The delicious looking sausages.

Haha, see his newly-bought magic wand sneaking into the picture (me holding it).

And then, most important, the column of sweets!

And now you, Oma, he said. I could not help laughing. he was so earnest in telling me where to move (in front of the flowers. That will look nice!)

Do you see why I think children are so precious?

They look at the world from their angle. And they have clear eyes.

We should give them only good things to see.

Love from Granny Oma Angela

My Friends, the Mentally Wondrous

2010-09-14T03:19:00.000-07:00

My last post was of barking mice and whinnying cows. And this morning I read Absolute Vanilla`s interview which also had the subject of living "different" lives.
I truly think there is no such thing as "normal". In Germany, we have this picture of the "Schwäbische Hausfrau", the thrifty Swabian housewife who always dusts her furniture, gives her husband a package of buttered sandwiches along for work, and who`d never think of undressing her neighbour in a dark alley or finding herself drunk under a park bench. This paragon of virtue as being the desirable role model!
Oh God!
Not that I´d care for doing that myself, but KNOWING these things are other people`s fun, and rightly so, is part of my life`s philosophy.
And as I never judge anyone (except for being mean, that`s different), many people confide in me and tell me the most incredible and hilarious stories (which, sorry, I cannot pass on to you here), knowing I will laugh out loud but never condemn them. Apparently they don`t mind my laughing, but the being frowned at which they get too often.
I KNOW everyone is just a tiny bit out of order, to put it mildly. Don`t you think? And therefore no one should look down on the other`s peculiarities.

And I even like the ones who are a bit on the real crazy side.
When we still had our horses, we used to buy our straw and oats from a near-by farm. It was run by a stout, friendly farmer who was in charge of it all, and of the men who worked for him.
They all belonged to the mental hospital across the street and came every day to feed the chickens, muck out the cow sheds, dig out the potatoes, water the plants in the greenhouse, you know, the daily farm work. And they also helped when customers like us came to buy straw. I remember Günther who used to come up running when he saw us and said, "Me and my boys, we can sell you straw! There is enough for you!"
He always pretended he was the boss, and then he stood there, smiling, with his suspenders and his white shirt, the saliva dripping a little from his mouth, so eager and helpful! Another one was called the Colour King by the others, because he always moved up very close to people (at first I stepped back, but he came after me), pointing a finger at my jacket, saying loudly, "this here is ... blue!" "Yes," I learned to say, "you are right. Blue!" Then he smiled and was happy. Another one waved at us each time, luring us into the barn where all the machines were standing. "Look at this," he shouted then, proud as a peacock, "We even have a manure spreader!" And each time we marvelled at his beautiful and cunning machines!
Do you see what I mean. If you just accept their little peculiarities, they are simply nice people!
If you tell them what to do, they are able to work and do their job well. The chickens don`t mind if they get told what colour they are.

I think I learned there, at this farm with the wondrous-minded guys, that I must step down from my podest, thinking a good education and clean clothes make a "normal" person. These fellows lived in their own world, but they were much friendlier and easy-to-be-with than many in the so-called business world.
In fact, my husband is a bit colour-blind and can well make use of being told that these shoes he wants to buy are not brown but GREEN!
Chuckle.
Cheers from a rainy day in Germany!
Angela

My Cow Speaks two Foreign Languages

2010-09-11T03:02:00.001-07:00

You wouldn`t believe it when you look at my pink toy cow, would you? I bought her for 1.89 €, that is pretty cheap and you would not expect much from her! But I noticed right away how interested she was in our foreign pictures and statues.

So I said, Would you like to speak foreign languages, like my pupils? She nodded, so in a quick operation I opened her behind and inserted one language chip in her right hind leg and one in her left.

Now when you press those buttons, she either whinnies, or she goes whoof whoof, like a puppy!

(I had to observe her being from the animal tribe, of course.)

Now she is a very proud and happy cow. Look at her smiling face.

Next time when my 15 year-old student came who is struggling with English and French, I let my cow perform her skills.

He was duely impressed.

Can`t you put those chips into my head, too? Those for English and French? (not for whinnying), he asked.

Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn`t it?

But I showed him how I was learning a language myself.

The old-fashioned way.

And I have even invented a story in Polish. About me walking alone in a dark wood and meeting a crow with a crown (wrona z korona) who said, I am the Queen of this Forest, and me exclaiming,

Am I crazy? (Jestem szalona?) ... You see how my mind works, I never really grew up.

Anyway, it made my student sigh and see that there was no other, simple way.

But he made the cow go whoof whoof again!

Enviously.

And here is another toy I made myself. It was SUPPOSED to be another dog, but I had forgotten how to make the snout, and the ears, and so it turned out to be what my husband calls "The spotted barking Monstermouse of the Gothensee" which is only true in the sense that it can bark. With its right foot (because I put a barking chip in there) (you can buy them in those "Build-a-bears" shops).

But, um, it sure looks a little peculiar.

Oh well. All creatures great and small, the Lord God loves them all.

Greetings to you all from Angela, creator of strange barking monstermice-dogs.

Pub Stinks

2010-09-09T03:25:00.001-07:00

When I drove by this sign in Poland, I could not believe my eyes. WHAT?

What a peculiar way of luring people into your establishment! So next time I passed by, I got out of the car and looked closer.

Aaaah! PUB SFINKS!

Just a unique way of spelling Sphinx! The Polish way.

To that I can only shout in Polish:

Wielu przyjemnosc! (that means: Have fun!) Try it, you`ll surely have fun breaking your tongue. Polish is a tough language to learn.

Actually, this simple way of spelling surprises me. Normally easy, everyday words like "working together", seem inexpressible. Say: wspólpracowac.

Or how about making compliments? Say "Jestesz przepienkny!" and give your crush a

"przyciagajacy wzrok" (an inviting look).

You see what I mean? People who speak like that do not avoid difficulties!

But here we have a PUB SFINKS.

Doesn`t that crack you up?

You want another Stroll? With Benches?

2010-09-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

Here we go, then. I suppose not many of you have visited the island Usedom before? Or other parts of Northern Germany?
When I watch the Tour de France each year, I never care about who wins. What I like is when the camera lingers in the small villages and peeks behind the fassades of the houses, when I see the fields and the roads leading away from the main street. And when I visit strange towns I like to sit on a bench at market places and watch the natives going after their business. I like to see how children play and what gardens look like. Just pure noseyness.
Come, we`ll do the same.
We begin our walk along the neighbourhood houses. Dogs come barking to the fence and wag tails with Paco. I took pictures, but I don`t want to let this become too long. But here, a nice castle for the two little kids who live in this house. I would have loved that as a child!

Now we are heading toward the railroad tracks. These are the last gardens. When you look south, you face the large meadow with wild apple and pear trees, and brambles, and even some black snakes. There was one, taking a sun bath! But when we approach, he was too quick. No photo! I am not sure what it was, about a yard long (not quite a metre), thin and black. Are you dangerous, Snake?
Oh, and here comes the first bench. Just wooden, nothing remarkable. But helpful when you got a pebble in your show and want to untie it!

Here is even a small playground, with a slide! In winter the children let their sledges run down the hill. Most of this island is made of sand, with quite a few big rocks as leftovers from the last glacial about ten thousand years ago. Not really much, in Earth Time. Can you imagine (we look up) to have all this cvered with 1000 m of ice?

We walk on along the Gothen Lake now. It is pretty here. C`mon, let`s sit on this bench, facing the lake and the horse meadows. There is a hotel behind us. They sure have a pretty view.

A falcon circles in the sky. What a peace!

These fields are already ploughed. The oats that grew here are harvested.

We walk on and come to the football/soccer field. The little boys spend much time here after school. No baseball in Germany, our youngsters like to play football. Can you see the bushes on the right?

They are our local vitamin-producing plants: sandthorn. You can make very good juice and jam and desserts from them. They are only hard to pick. The long, mean thorns gave them the name for a reason!

Now we reach the lane with the old "datchas", small cottages/huts which were granted to the DDR inhabitants so they had a small place of freedom. People could grow some tomatoes and flowers and spend their summer vacations in a deckchair. Very popular to own such a place of happiness in a reglemented country!

But of course there were and are always those who think reglementation is a great thing! And when you have collected a meadow full of garden gnomes you should surround it with a fence of barbed wire!! (I took this picture for you, Martijn! Know you`d enjoy it. Have you ever seen such a sight in the Netherlands?))

Well, now folks, that was it for today. No serious talk, no unhappy thoughts. Just a walk and a few benches.

Sometimes this is just the right thing.

Don`t you think?

Cheers from

Angela

We took a Stroll this Morning

2010-09-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

When I need to get distracted, I look at Paco and say, You want to go on a stroll?
He nods, never fails to, and we run down to the lake. There is the lovely old-fashioned sign which sends us in all different directions.
We decide on one, and then we walk in the sunshine and whistle (well, me. Paco just smiles) and I feel light-hearted again.
The funeral will be on Saturday. After that I will surely get better.

Then we meet this fellow behind a hedge.

He is fantastic, don`t you think? I have to circle him. Feel like saying: Boooh!

Look at that accurately-cut hedge! I wonder if behind it one of those old former block-wardens live, who spied on everyone`s coming and going.

But of course this is only a caricature of them old fellas! Glad we live in new times. The DDR and its Stasi-guys have vanished.

The lake is shimmering in the sunlight. We are quite alone and breathe deeply.

Then we both feel a bit tired. Paco and I enjoy finding benches everywhere, even if they look old and paintless.

I should collect pictures of all the benches well-meaning people have put up. Such a simple but wonderfully caring idea.

Now I will sit for a while, think of this and that, and then we`ll walk home.

Have a lovely day, you all!

Angela

In the Middle of Life...

2010-08-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Mitten im Leben sind wir vom Tode umfangen... In the middle of Life we are embraced by Death...
Yes. So we are. Knowing it and never quite understanding it.
How can we understand Death?
The friend we have visited last week and who offered us soup and looked at us, being the same person we knew for 22 years, even though thin and aching now - gone for ever? Where to?

Today her sister called me on the phone, the sister whom I knew quite as long. They both saw our daughters grow up, the sister owning a restaurant where our girls earned their first money, they both belonged to our lives. My friend was our neighbour, she had a dog, too, my dog`s best pal. His name was Maillon. Once a woman said to me, "I know what that dog is called: Croissant!"
Silly little things I have to think of.

You know how all the memories come back, suddenly...

We cannot live without losing someone. This is part of Life. Losing, saying good-bye, being left-over, and at one time becoming the one at whose grave our friends will stand.
But can we comprehend it?

I am sad today. Thinking of Elke, my friend. She has visited me here, we have seen and done things together, and when I will pass the places, I will remember how we laughed.

A wise word: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we must die.

You know how I feel because you have experienced it, too. Embrace me, and I will feel comforted.
Love to you from a quiet
Angela

The Honourable Businessman and the Purple Hat

2010-08-24T01:23:00.000-07:00

Chuckle! No, I did not mean together, although... Why, do you think, it is mostly the women who wear the purple hats? Except, of course, the sixty-year-old men who marry a young chick, believing they are loved for their good looks/interesting personality - THEY are surely wearing an (invisible) purple hat, haha!
No, I`m coming to those hats and newly gained self-assuredness later. Digressing again before I even got started!
What I wanted to ask you was - are you, like me, the type of person who believes in people`s good will and word? I am probably unforgivibly naive and trusting, but you can tell me anything, and I will nod and believe you! Usually I am not even mistaken, either. Perhaps people are so amazed that they do not want to disappoint me, or this trust really tickles out their best sides. Who knows.
And I also read a report (my newspaper DIE WELT has a daily science side) about two groups of people who were told lies by job applicants. There were the ones who usually trusted everyone, and the others, the grumpy misanthropists, and both had to decide where they were cheated.
And guess what! The well-meaning ones were the smarter ones in detecting lies! Interesting, hey?
But because I am so, I am always deeply shattered when people try to outwit and fool me. A given word is a given word, right? No later additions after the hand-shake, no: "you will surely understand that I would prefer this handling in my favour?" or such like.
Am I old-fashioned?
Actually, I was brought up in an old Trading City which belonged to the Hanse-League. Hamburg, my home-town has a special institutional tradition, called "Der Ehrbare Kaufmann" (if you speak German, you can look it up at Wikipedia). During the time of the Hanse League, in the Middle Ages, all the neighbouring states sited at the Baltic Sea were dependent on fair trading. So in 1517 a group of Hamburg tradesmen put their basic ideas of honourable tradesmenship into a paper and signed it (using even older ideas coming from Italy). It says that once you have given your word, you are bound, and that you will always consider your partner`s good interest when making deals, you know...that sort. This "Society" still exists, by the same name, and anyone who wants to follow its rules, can join it.
I like that idea, and somehow I keep thinking that such POSITIVE groups can do a lot of good, just by existing.

And then they can even wear funny hats to show they are members!

Which makes me get the curve to the purple ones (see, always a connection! My writing is not as incoherent as it seems)).
Did you also get that "purple hat" mail circling around the internet? About not caring what other people think of you when you just do as you please, wearing the clothes you like and enjoying your life YOUR WAY?
There are so many women (mostly women) who try to walk on tiptoes all their lives, trying not to disturb anyone, behaving like others want them to, not even finding out who THEY actually are, and one day they look up and say, What? Is there no more than that to my life? AVOIDING confrontations? Letting other people do what they wish, but never insisting MY wishes are heard?
Away with that attitude! I`ll do something positive from now on. Ask myself what gives me BLISS! And if it is camel-riding in the Marocco desert, or going to the fair after a theatre show and ride the chain caroussell in my long evening dress! I have a 78 year-old widowed friend who called me yesterday and told me just that story, and I wish her a lot more good ideas!

Go, mates, go! Follow your bliss.
I will now run out into the storm with my dog and let my hair fly!
Love from blissful
Angela

Satsangs and Kindergarten

2010-08-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Satsangs? I never had, hitherto, until I got sent a book from an old friend, called (in German) "The Enlightened Ones are Coming". My friend is one who visits seminars and goes to meetings where she hopes to learn about her own enlightenment. (I think)She has done that for years, and she says she profited a lot.

So obediently I started reading the book. The author describes how all these Truth-Seekers gather around a guru (mostly a man, aren`t gurus mostly men?) who has rented a room before, where everybody finds a place to sit, and then they all get a chance to either put a question to the guru, or if they are too shy, can listen to the others. Apparently some gurus even keep silent the whole time, but what all they all get and why they have come, is to get a LONG LOOK by the Enlightened One. They all agree that afterwards they feel energized and refreshed, and the donation they are asked for at the exit was worth it!
When I first read that I could not believe it. How lonely must these people be, to pay for a LOOK? Even from a VERY ENLIGHTENED PERSON? Of course I know that many people have the feeling that no one really recognizes them, and that they hunger for some friendly and caring attention. But this seems to be a broad movement, with many followers.
As I read on, I saw there was some more to it, there always is (never judge from first sight).
The translation of Satsang means something like "coming together in truth", and of course it is this Truth they want to learn about. So what the guru tries to convey to them is "Forget about your ego, and your body, and the material things you are concerned with. Have no fear, don`t waste your energy with the past which you cannot change, or the future which you do not know, all your life is an illusion anyway, your inner being is nothing but Love, so try to reach that hidden part in you which is eternal."

Or such like.

And I thought, pffft.
I need no meeting or a Guru-Look for that. Everybody knows this! I am no more enlightened than anyone, but the fact that the truth is already in us and we just have to become quiet and listen to it, that is nothing new. And when it comes to the one answer, the solution, the main aspect of everybody`s life, I am not telling you a secret, it is LOVE. You can give it all sorts of names, but it boils down to nothing else.
Once you have detected this burning flame in yourself, you know that passing it on is what makes you most happy in the world, and that this is what will remain of you once you are gone.

Maybe I should rent a room and put up my sign, Donations HERE, please!
Hahaha!!!

But here comes my practical application. What if I were a Good Fairy and could convey this simple truth into my kindergarten children?
You know that I am reading stories to five-year-olds in our local kindergarten, once a week. I was there yesterday, but as I passed the yard this morning, some of the children stuck their heads through the hedge, "Will you come again today?" and I said, "This is not my day", but they insisted. "What do you need to do today? We WANT you to come!"
So I went again, and as the weather was pleasant, we sat outside in the playground, under a slide where there was a bench for all of us.
My stories are always appreciated and discussed, but most of all they love my attention. I look at them (yes, they all get a LOOK!) and see the different types they are. The smart, good-looking boy who knows how he can tease the others until they cry, the friendly boy who always gets trodden on, the pretty girl who throws her long hair back like a movie-star, the shy girl who never talks, the fat outcast who cries for affection, and all the alliances between them... These kids often come from not whole families. One new girl has two younger sisters, and, the others tell me, her daddy has just died. Another one is the youngest, and all three kids have different fathers. But they are all sitting here on their free will (today about nine of them), and they listen to me. They can feel I love them all, each one, and I know it because sometimes they get up and hug me, or one who got hurt, lets me tell him sweet things ("I was so amazed at what you have remembered from last week! You are so CLEVER! Did you even know that about yourself?") until he smiles again.

Yes, this is what I can do, but it is only little. In reality I wish I had a wand and could shed golden stars of wisdom over them.
But myself, I had to learn the hard way, too. We are not born wise and compassionate.
And yet I wish they will never have to pay for a LOOK.
So my dears, please recognize the child you meet tomorrow. Show it your respect, it will one day be a grown-up who shall look at others with love.

My best wishes to you,

Angela the Giggling Guru

Let it be Honesty!!

2010-08-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

My dear friends, how many people do you know who LIVE what they proclaim? Who not only talk of "how life should be!" but behave like it?
I once watched a politician (Hamburg`s mayor) give a speech on the townhall market place. All the while when he spoke of the things he was going to carry out, he involuntarily shook his head or shrugged his shoulders. There was probably still some honesty in him, haha!

Here is a story which I just got told by my daughter. It is the short version, as it really was a long and winded one, and she said she wants to write it down herself and send it to a Cape Town newspaper.
So I will not steal her story from her, but I MUST share the essence of it with you.

My youngest daughter and her husband have just returned from a beautiful holiday in South Africa. They were there for the first time, and after their arrival I got a quick mail, telling me how overwhelmed they were of the beauty of the country and the incredible friendliness of ALL the people they met. Only one sad thing happened, they forgot their expensive camera in a taxi, with not much hope of getting it back.

Well, I thought, that`s Africa in a nutshell, isn`t it? But at least no mugging involved, just bad luck.
This shows how prejudiced from all the horror news of Africa I still am, is spite of the many African friends I have! And isn`t it true, that most of what we hear about Africa is bad news? Famine, riots, wars, diseases, crime... So it made me happy when during the Soccer Worldcup all we heard was quite the opposite - good happy spirit, great hospitality, lots of wonderful encounters!
And here the story begins. With an encounter.
The first day after their arrival, M and F had visited the Table Mountain, thrilled by the view, still full of excitement about everything they had seen. When they took a taxi to the hotel (which was NOT the one they stayed in, important!), they got to chat with the driver.
"I am a refugee from Zimbabwe", he told them, "and I am glad I found work here. Where are you from and what are you doing at your home?" So my children told him about their lives and that they were both lawyers, and F was preparing to be a law teacher. The taxi driver said, "When you will teach law to young people, there will surely be many among them who will become important and powerful later on. They might even go into politics. You know, we in Africa have problems with bad governance, and most of all with corruption and dishonest leaders. So, when you teach your students, teach them one thing - to be honest!"
They parted in friendship and mutual respect, and the driver let them out at the hotel they had named him. Then he drove off and only THEN they noticed they had forgotten their camera in the taxi.
I will skip the three days in which they tried to retrieve it, with no success. Finally, they bought a new camera. On their way back to their own hotel, they passed the one at which they had got out the first time - and they saw the car of that Zimbabwean taxi driver, standing in front of it.
They hurried into the lobby, finding the man, talking to the receptionist who refused to be of help. All the taxi man wanted to do was FINALLY give back the camera, but the receptionist said, No, these German people are no guests in this hotel!
But as Fate or Good Luck or what you will call it sometimes takes over and steps in when people know no further, M and F appeared, ran up to the driver, hugging him (daughter) and rejoiced as he told them how he had tried his best to find them and give them back what belonged to them!

They gave him a reward, took his picture and were as thankful as can be. And the camera shop even took back their newly purchased one, with no fuss!
Such stories always make me tremble with joy.

You know, I once read that there is an inner connection of things. Scientists did research on How to Improve Bad Governance. They said there are usually the same couple of issues that influence each other: Corruption, bad education, poor health care, no women`s rights, no access to free markets, no electricity, no good infrastructure, pollution ... I may have forgotten some.
But, they found out, strangely enough - if you improve just ONE of these items, just one! - ALL other things will improve with them!
When women get more rights, they open up more small fruit shops and people`s nutrition will improve, they send their children to school who learn about health care or can become doctors themselves, or engineers who build streets or wells - somehow all these things are interdependent.
And the ONE THING we can all start with, at no cost, is the one I am talking about here. Truthfulness.

And as I can never stop talking once I began, I will give you another example of honesty. The other day I came home from shopping in our local grocery, and a few minutes later I got a phone call. "I found your purse, with your phone number in it. You must have forgotten it at the baker`s shop where I work. Please come and get it!" I hurried back to her, quite relieved, as my ID card was also in there, apart from the money, and I said, "Please, here take some money as your reward! I am very thankful to you!" She protested, but I said, "This is important to me. Good deeds must always be rewarded!"
And that is the other side of honesty, or of all such wonderful behaviour. Never take it for granted. Be thankful and show it.
And now shut up, Angela! This is nothing new to your readers.
I know. That`s why I cherish you so much!
Love from your friend on the island
Usedom

My head is spinning like a chain carousel!

2010-08-03T00:34:00.000-07:00

Finally the heat is over and some gentle rain has set in. Thank you, that is so lovely and much needed.
Now please send some rains, even heavy ones, over to Moscow`s people who SUFFER from the relentless heat and fires all around them, coming closer every day. And please, also send some over to the fires in California, and make it that these fires will not reach my Bonnie Lori!
And please, read Shiny`s post of today, about her young friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer, and please think of Birthe, too. Make them healthy again!
This sounds like a prayer, doesn`t it? I guess it is. We need, at least I do, someone to turn to when I am feeling devastated after some terrible news, but also I need someone to say thank you to! I have so much to be thankful for, so much, it sometimes bursts my chest! And I feel like lifting my arms and praising life (oh, I do sometimes! No embarrassment here, I love it!).

But then I just turn around and see how cruel life can also become. Floodings in Pakistan, with more than a million people affected, earthquakes, fires, small personal catastrophes... and then again, love and heroism, overwhelming signs of helpfulness and friendship. Does it keep a balance? The sad and the good?
Nature just acts as it does, there is hardly anything we can do, we small fragile humans. But we can look across our own little circle and see the need of others.
Even the one of next door. I love the saying I read in blogland, was it at your blog, Tessa? By Mother Teresa, "If you cannot feed a hundred people. Feed one."

This has become a strange blog post, different from what I had meant it to be.
I HAD wanted to tell you of my own good news, all the lovely things I have experienced last week.
Of my grandchildren here, how we went to the circus and the beach, and how my old lullabys had made them fall asleep (one really remembers the words of twenty long un-sung songs for more than 30 years!) and how the little boy had first dared to ride a chain carousel, and dive in a pool, and copied his cool 11 year-old friend when walking behind him with the same swinging shoulders, like a very small John Wayne, so heartbreakingly cute!
And how we have finally settled the deal and sold our old place -wow! THAT excitement! With the three potential buyers, all trying to outwit the other, and my husband, staying serene in all the hustle, and finally the virtual handshake on the phone...
On Sunday night Husband opened a bottle of Krimskoje Red Champagne for the celebration, and I had a WHOLE big glass, which made me walk into bed on hand and knees, I am not kidding.

Anyway, so much to be happy about, and to say thank you for, and even if Life is not just, or ever really easy, it is still good.
This is what I really needed to say, I guess.
Danke, lieber Gott!

An award, and an old Irish ballad

2010-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

Val from Monkeys on the Roof bestowed me with an award. It is a lovely one, but it has complicated rules to follow, and I am also supposed to answer questions.
Questions of the sort which make me wake up at night and think - my favourite book? How can I answer that?! The ones from my childhood days? I remember which fairytale influenced me most - definitely Frau Holle (what is that in English? Where the Goldmarie and the Pechmarie were rewarded by the old woman in whose sevices they were). But does that count? Or perhaps I should say, the Odyssee and the Ilias, which I read at 12, devouring all the family structures of the Olympic Gods and how they influenced the deeds of poor humankind?
But that was not the question, I suppose. I should settle for one book.
To Kill a Mockingbird? The Little Prince? I read so many a book, and sometimes it was worth reading it for one line. Can you guess who said, "Love is not looking for perfection, but forgiving horrible faults!" Isn`t that a beautiful sentence? It was Rosamunde Pilcher, who would have thought?
Anyway, I know for me this is impossible. And when at night I just thought, I think I`ll settle for... before falling asleep again, the voice in my head said, "And what is your favourite song? Huh?"
And that made me sit up straight again!
Val, your answers sound so easy and well put, and except for that long Scottish song which I must still finish reading (love it!) I could just agree to all of yours.
So what is MY favourite song?
I am a simple person (in case you haven`t noticed by now). I cook my own food and love sunshine and rain and my husband (no lovers, no vices). My music taste is also simple. I like a melody and a story told in a song. Ballads is probably the answer. Did you ever listen to the songs Johnny Cash sang shortly before he died, with his already broken voice? Fantastic. Or the early Kris Kristofferson-songs, of the Silver-tongued Devil (whose song he stole), or the songs which the Cherokee Buffy St.Marie wrote, like "I want to be a Country girl again"... don`t get me started. Ballads. Stories told, sung to a guitar.
Maybe it was my guitar-playing brother who influenced me most, I used to like to listen to him as we grew up and he sometimes played songs just for me. Here are the words of an Irish ballad which I remember. Maybe you know another version, but this is what I remember.

John Reilly

There was a maid in a garden,
a strange young man came riding by.
He said, Fair maid, will you marry me?
No, kind sir, was her reply.

No, kind sir, I cannot marry thee,
for I`ve a love across the sea.
He`s been gone for seven years,
still he will return to me.

What if he`s in some battle slain,
or drownded in the deep salt sea?
What if he`s found another love
and he and his love both married be?

Well, if he drowned in the deep salt sea
and never shall return to me,
or if he`s in some battle slain,
I shall die when the moon is wane.

And if he`s found another love
and he and his love both married be,
I wish them love and happiness
where they live across the sea.

There he picked her up in his arms so strong
and kisses gave her one, two, three.
He said, Come my love, come with me,
I`m your long-lost John Reilly!

A story with a good, unexpected ending! Yaay. Love that.
Simple, I told you. But not harming anyone.

All my good wishes for a happy ending to you, my dears!
Love from
Angela

Are you ever tempted to give good advice?

2010-07-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

I really don`t mind giving advice when asked for it.
There can be situations when, as the German saying goes, you cannot see the forest for all the trees that are in the way. They seem to close in on you until you feel smothered.
And then you turn to a friend and say, Can you help me find a way out of this mess I got myself into? I simply don`t see the road to take.
In case it`s me you are turning to I would put my thinking cap on, look at you and the other people involved, consider the entanglements or the situation that has you in its grip, and then I would give you the best advice I have in my sleeve. Very sensible and heart-felt. Most often simple and easy to follow.
And then I`ll turn around and know you will surely NOT follow it.
Because this is how it is.
Even though you may not know what to DO at this time of your life, you certainly know what you will NOT DO, and that is follow good advice.
The reason being, if you would, it would make you admit that your judgement of the situation so far was not sensible (because otherwise you had changed it before).

Your husband who is drinking himself blind will surely just need ONE more chance!
Your hip pounds will disappear if you add butter and cream to every dish because it tastes so well.
Your school grades will improve all by themselves when you use your afternoon to watch the boys at the skating rink instead of doing your homework.
You will gain new friends by sitting in front of your TV, waiting for phone calls.
All the "others" (family, colleagues, school mates...) will consider your wishes just by intuition even though you never dared to mention them.

Shall I continue? No end to my imagination. And well, my friend, I know it is not easy to accept that these things are just not true. And that the only person who can change the situation is yourself. Because you alone know what you REALLY want, and what is most important for your inner peace. I truly cannot know.
So my advice invariably is,
Find your own solution, and then CARRY IT OUT BRAVELY!

Will you promise me to that?
You will feel incredibly free and light and proud of yourself.
Believe me. I know what I am talking about.
Love from your friend
Angela

Summer pastimes, funny and scary

2010-07-12T03:57:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went to see the "Baltic Fashion Award" on the seabridge.
The bridge is 400 m long, and the models have to walk the whole length. Some designers were so friendly as to let them walk on barefeet, but of course there were also these ankle-breaking devices with some.
At least they had put a (blue) carpet on the wooden planks, and I sat on a bench in the shade while the poor boys and girls had to show their clothes off in 36° C! Luckily there was a light breeze going
and me, I was wearing my new silky Escada dress and white high-heeled sandals AND a pretty wide-brimmed hat (which made me appear as the rich strange lady when I had pinched a piece of melon during the break, from a table for the VIPs, so that the hostess was in doubt if maybe I should be addressed humbly instead of chasing me away, hahaha)
and there were more and more models coming (40 in fact, the moderating lady said)
Some dresses were nice and wearable, but some had to be counted to the scary part.
especially with the male models.
With some I shuddered so much that I did not get a photo. This one was okay, but some, arrrgh!

And more and more

until I found I had seen enough and went to the ice-cream shop to get myself a big vanilla ice-cream cone!

I had to take this picture because of the three ladies all having the same posture! Amazing.

Then at home I saw there were STILL more gooseberries which waited to be turned into yummie jam

and then Paco said, hey, let`s go on a nice evening walk. (In trainers (sneakers), my high heels kicked into the corner!

And now comes the scary part, the real one.

We have no lions here (like Val has on her front porch) or snakes or bears, but what we have is wild boars. They even come to the beach sometimes, or walk on the promenade.

When they are stuffed-out, they look kind of cute, even.

But then Paco and I went for a walk along the train tracks.

And there Paco found a head.

Only a head. And it looks very much like a boar head to me.

Grrrr.

So with this site I am leaving you to go after your own pastimes, may they be funny or scary, or both.

Me here on my island, I enjoy them all.

Love to you,

from your pal Angela