For 2008

The Berlin Mom is home again, will be facing radiation and chemo-therapies in the next months to ensure that, despite the successful removal of all cancerous tissue detectable, no malignant cells are flitting around to give rise to some new tumor elsewhere. So we will be caring for this mom to get through this ordeal, but in the knowledge that this is a battle for maintenance of health rather than for defeat of any specific malignancy.

This encourages us to think of the wonder of being, something that only we as humans are able to do, as we are the only creatures who, mortal, can consider that mortality.

So in 2008, whatever the malignancies affecting the world - and there are many, so many I've alluded to here, far too many to list again -, let us simply strive TO BE, to be thinking humans feeling what it means to know we will one day die, loving the life that we can enjoy by thinking and loving, living in this world so as to let it continue to be a place hospitable to human life, to thought, to love. Perhaps we can make the world even more livable for thinking beings.
Let us not fall into the dark contemplation of death, for that is the true victory of nihilism; let us not await some pie-in-the-sky glory or joy, for that is nihilism's destruction of life : LET US BE WITH ALL THAT WE CAN BE ! That is joy here and now and then and in the future and for all time.

Dangers offer a chance to see the void into which all can be tumbled and out of which all can emerge ! Fear is a nihilistic mode of existence, one that cancels being and prevents us from considering the wonder of what it means TO BE !

And I will continue to think and speak and read and write and live and love with all my might in this coming year.

Being Patient

Biopsy report for Edith still not available due to the holidays, we are all exercising patience, but the GOOD NEWS: She'll be released from the hospital on Saturday. Detlef & I will go and pick her up and walk home with her (!) as she insists on doing and said this morning the doctor said she's allowed to do. Hopefully we have the other report before she leaves, but in any case, she is quickly becoming physically fit again, which will be of great help to her if it should prove that she does need follow-up radiation or chemo treatment. But all signs are looking good. And Christmas is proceeding apace!
Christmas Eve was with Heiko & Steffi and today we're off to Bernhard & Rosi.

No Results Yet, and everything you shouldn't do in the hospital

Well, still waiting on biopsy results for the Berlin mom, who's recovering ever more feistily from her operation. May well be after Xmas before we hear for sure that there's (as we're telling ourselves) nothing needing further treatment.

Anyway, Edith informed us that in the hospital:
- you don't take flowers with you, they must stay in the room when you leave;
- you should tell her well in advance before they move her for the holidays to consolidate stations, but they didn't;
- that you shouldn't take photos, but allowed it after all when I told her I knew about that trick of hiding under the covers: then she came out and smiled;
- that you don't bother the nurses when the laxatives they give you cause you to make a mess: you clean it up yourself, which she did;
- that you don't watch TV when they're doing a quick surgery on another patient in your room, as another roommate of hers did
- that you don't have to come visit her every day, even though she's glad when you do.

(We were only able to slip two snapshots past her.)

Necessary Quotation

From Ligne de risque n°23, novembre 2007, p.40, François Meyronnis in answer to a question on language, literature, "loving words":

Celui qui a un mauvais rapport avec le langage a un mauvais rapport avec la vie. Avec un langage misérable, toute possibilité d'affranchissement se retire.

And here, for those who wish to grasp, even if not for the masses, my English and German versions:

Anyone who has a bad relationship with language has a bad relationship with life. With miserable language, all possibility of liberation is withdrawn.

Wer einen schlechten Bezug zur Sprache hat, hat einen schlechten Bezug zum Leben. Mit einer armseligen Sprache zieht sich jede Möglichkeit einer Befreiung zurück.

-----------UPDATE---------

As if leaving a physical commentary to this post, Jennifer surprised the bonkers out of me/us as we just returned from visiting Edith (with freshly shampooed hair and some kind of foam fixer ?? she likes to put on it and ever more rambunctious), with a delivery crammed in our mail box. It contained the wonderful (from first glance) volume ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE by Fonseca & Carolino, which I'm sure will prove even more fantastic upon more thorough perusal. So thanks, Jenn, for commenting on this post - in a proper manner - without even yet having been able to know about it. (Like minds, etc......)

everything out

The docs confirmed that the long surgery was indeed good: all of the tumor, along with uterus, ovaries, lymph nodes, was removed and there were at least no visible signs of anything left.
So Edith is having her patience tried while having to be still to recover from the operation, can finally eat again, and yesterday walked a bit. Today, she said, the nurses expect her out in the corridor.
Otherwise, biopsy results by end of the week (hopefully) will reveal whether there is anything more that would require follow-up treatment.
And we've already threatened to make hospital photos for web-posting. Let's hope the results remain as positive as the surgery indicated.

Waiting

OP - long, long - behind her, our Berlin mom is slowly and feistily recovering from the surgical ordeal. Long should mean good. We think. MMMT / carcinosarcoma is what she's dealing with, and there would have been the chance they couldn't have operated anything out, then surgery would have been short. That's why we think long surgery means good results. Today we're off to the hospital, hope to learn more, see her smile. But this Berlin treasure still needs a lot of support, which is hard for her as a determined care-giver to take, but we're giving and counting on everyone else to think of her and beam her what they can. Probably means part of Christmas will be bedside in the hospital. Unrealistic to expect her home already then....

Time to Take Care of Another Mother !

Well, there's another Countess who needs tending to, a true Berlin treasure of a mom and mom-in-law who's in the hospital for a radical hysterectomy and has lots of strong wishes from us all for success in removal of the tumor completely in surgery without signs of metastasis. Should there be any, well, then we're calling on radiation therapy to handle that.
She's a great lady who deserves many more years: and the chances, we're sure, are good.
Think of Edith, please, and all the people she's so dear to!

U.S. Supreme Court Considering JUSTICE for Guantánamo

As the media around the world report and the civilized world where justice is done sincerely hopes, the Supreme Court will apparently again decide that the playpen must abide by the rules of law and order, of justice, of fair procedure, that it claims to be upholding by denying inmates in Guantánamo the right to a trial. A fair trial could still be ordered by the Court, a speedy one, as the constitution also requires, is no longer possible: many have been sitting there for 6 years already. Two previous Supreme Court decisions ordering rights for those detainees have met with measures of circumvention by the playpen. Every time the courts order them to do something, they change a side issue and force the whole thing through the courts again. Perhaps with this decision, not due till summer, the bushbaby will finally have to administer justice !
We can only hope.

The New York Times
Washington
Justices to Answer Detainee Rights Question
By LINDA GREENHOUSE; Published: December 6, 2007
A majority of the Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to agree that detainees were entitled to invoke some measure of constitutional protection.

No Irani Nuke Program : Good News

The National Intelligence Estimate of the joint US spy and intelligence services today made public its November report stating that Iran suspended efforts to develop nuclear weapons four years ago. That they aren't working on them and no war can be justified - at the moment - as necessary to stop what they've already stopped is a double bit of good news !

The New York Times
International / Middle East
U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work
By MARK MAZZETTI, Published: December 3, 2007

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting a previous intelligence report.

U.S. Officials: Iran Halted Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003 - washingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure but is continuing to enrich uranium, which means it may still be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015, senior intelligence officials said Monday.

Russia Electing a New Tsar ?

The NYTimes says the only thing Putin doesn't yet control in Russia is culture and the arts and seems to take for granted that he will become the new potentate after todays "election" of a new Duma.

French Papers speculate on whether he will take over the National Security Council (leaving Cunning Condy to wonder why she gave up that post in the playpen) or have himself elected Tsar as in 1613 when the Romanovs came to power or have himself granted plenipotentiary powers as did Stalin in 1937.

Le 2 décembre de Vladimir Poutine, par Marie Jégo
Visiblement, la Russie, tiraillée entre le modèle de pouvoir de 1613 et celui de 1937, a tourné le dos à la modernité. "Tout est fait pour éradiquer les mécanismes européens de transfert du pouvoir au profit d'un système byzantin de succession", explique l'ancien dissident Sergueï Kovalev. L'ancien compagnon de Andrei Sakharov en est sûr : le modèle byzantin est appelé à durer.

LE MONDE 01.12.07

©

In any case, Glasnost is over in that vast land, and the world is witnessing the slow choking of a fledgling democracy.

And here, a reproduction of a photo made by Russian artists V. Mizin and A. Shaburov which Putin's Kremlin and National Unity Party have declared an insult to the fatherland and successfully forbidden from exhibitions in Russia and managed to have removed from an exhibition of new Russian art in Paris.



Here a link to their gallery, which was unable to fight off Putinesque censorship, where there are also links to the two artists. At least THIS cannot be censored.

Wake up call

From Philippe Sollers' Guerres secrètes, the following short quote in my English rendition, followed by his French original (Paris, CarnetsNord, 2007, p.298) and then my German version. A method well worth trying in our world of distractions from what we should be considering, since, as Sollers says, we need to be awake.

Saying yes to the "passing" of time, if that's possible, delivers you from resentment and the spirit of vengeance whose secret war against joy never pauses for even a second. [...] Awakenings to the constancy of transformation, or, if you prefer, to the renewal of the immutable.

Dire oui au « passer » du temps, si c'est possible, vous délivre du ressentiment et de l'esprit de vengeance, dont la guerre secrète contre la joie ne cesse pas un instant. [...] Reveils à la constance de transformation, ou, si vous préférez, renouvellement de l'immuable.

Dem "Vergehen" der Zeit ja sagen, wenn möglich, befreit Sie vom Groll und vom Geist der Rache, deren geheimer Krieg gegen die Freude keine Sekunde innehält. [...] Erwachen zur Beständigkeit der Veränderung oder, wenn es Ihnen lieber ist, zur Erneuerung des Unveränderlichen.

You could also say, Being is always a chance, IS a chance.

A Cousin Lost, An Uncle to Cherish

Pamela Tyson Allen
Pamela Tyson Allen, 48, of 1921B Stokes Road died Sunday, Nov. 25, 2007, at U.N.C. Chapel Hill Hospital. A memorial service will be held Thursday at 8 p.m. from the Church Street Chapel of the Farmville Funeral Home by the Rev. John Bowman and the Rev. Clynt White. Ms. Allen was preceded in death by a son, H.R. Allen IV; her mother, Helen B. Tyson; and brothers, Amos Tyson Jr. and Alan Tyson. She is survived by a daughter, Lacey Lynn Allen of Greenville; and her father, Amos Tyson of Farmville. The family will receive friends from 7 to 8 p.m. prior to the service and other times at the home of Amos Tyson, 6522 Stantonsburg Road, Farmville.

Amos is a bulwark of love and is due the respect and support and love of all his extended family, who will surely let him know how dear he is to us all. To his sister he was always simpy "Brother", an endearment he understood and returned to her and her children as he lost his own. You helped us, Amos, when mama was dying, just by being, and I hope you can feel the sustenance our being provides for you.

Too little time for billboards...

A disease (another one) is rampant in our age and in our cities: billboards, or actually gigantic posters several stories high covering the entire sides of buildings to advertise for something that I, for one, will never buy, even if I had before intended to. In Berlin it has gone so far that some buildings as yet unbuilt, on Leipziger Platz for example, are "indicated" by a scaffolding in the shape they may one day have with a canvas covering to show how the facade may look but which is to about 90% itself covered with a billboard advertisement, the real purpose of the whole thing. Fake buildings - you could say a Hollywood set or Potemkin village - placed there only to bear enormous ads. On the north side of Leipziger Platz there are more fake than real buildings. The Catholic cathedral on Bebel Platz has covered its facade in a building-sized billboard for some other form of escape, I believe it's an internet provider, before it was a car, maybe the church thinks it can reach more people that way. The bed tower of the Charité hospital is completely wrapped in an ad poster. Many of the buildings Unter den Linden are shrouded in consumer hypes. It has become impossible to look at the city as more and more buildings are hidden by ads.

Meanwhile, there is so little time in so many lives, no one knowing when, but surely that, their life will end. There is so much beauty to see if we allow ourselves and each other to look. There is no time for advertisements at all, much less for billboards.

And many people pay more attention to these unrealities than to the reality around them, which, I'll admit, has become more difficult to perceive, but let us try. Best would be for our many individual gazes to burn holes through all those posters of the unreal hiding the real from us. How about getting a campaign going against mammoth posters advertising junk, a campaign for looking at the real world around us?

A Parade you can be thankful for

Thanks, NYTimes, and thanks, Macy's for letting us see this parade everywhere! And thanks, New York City, for being, thanks from a former New Yorker and current Berliner, thanks, merci, grazie, danke!

NYTIMES: Photographs from the 81st annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

... but no thanksgiving for the playpen!

Bush More Emphatic In Backing Musharraf - washingtonpost.com:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general 'hasn't crossed the line' and 'truly is somebody who believes in democracy.'
Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.
...
Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said that "it's hard to imagine how the administration will be able to achieve anything in Pakistan if the president is so disconnected from reality."
"Almost everyone in Pakistan who believes in George Bush's vision of democracy is in prison today," Malinowski said. "Calling the man who put them in prison a great democrat will only discredit America among moderate Pakistanis and give Musharraf confidence that he can continue to defy the United States because Bush will forgive anything he does."

And here's the transcript of the bushbaby's latest proof of his inability to understand what democracy, human or civil rights, justice, or anything else important is: the transcript of that interview in which he made his ludicrous statements, from ABC-News.

This man doesn't deserve a turkey: he is a turkey. And Musharraf is anything but a democratic leader... And he has nuclear weapons, which he, unlike the bushbaby, can probably pronounce, and which in his country might easily get into the hands of fundamentalists lusting for a go against the playpen fundamentalists.

So don't forget to laugh about these fools, while being sure to comprehend their foolishness. These are the worst technocrats. And their faces are splattered with the mud of their idiocy.

UPDATE, Sat. 24.11.2007: Since this posting, the Commonwealth has suspended Pakistan's membership due to its disrespect for democracy stating that it can regain membership only after bushbaby playmate M ends emergency powers and restores democracy in Pakistan. So much for the one the bushbaby thinks is good for democracy there!

Happy Thanksgiving

... thankful for each human life and its unique and vital link to, implication in, necessity for Being itself, to the EVENT of Being. Enowning each of us as we enown ourselves with Being.

It is a wondrous event to BE.

Consider the depth of the statements I AM ; YOU ARE ; Being IS the necessity for each human.

( And IS, as well as all other forms of "to be" here, are to be taken TRANSITIVELY ! )

What makes each of us human is our ability to speak, not to babble, but to SPEAK, to form the WORD that IS, to consider, to know that death is always approaching us, but that this knowledge is unique, a gift and a responsibility to THINK about what it is to BE.

We are the only creatures capable of thinking of our own death and of our own BEING.

Being relies on us to consider it ; We shouldn't relinquish this responsibility to the calculators and technicians, for they are unable to think Being and allow it to withdraw into darkness.

And Being considered is the site of LOVE. Love IS Being. Being IS Love.

When you love, you are, and you are at once and at the same time another as well.

Happy Thanksgiving!

...***...

Added on Thanksgiving Day, something else to be thankful for: a new issue of Ligne de Risque has just been published, n°23, ICI LA PAROLE, with the participation of Valentin Retz, Jean-Jacques Schul, Jean-Claude Milner, Philippe Sollers, Laurent Bevilacqua, François Meyronnis, and Yannick Haenel.

Visiting the Fish

Friday, we finally took a day off to let Lea cash in on her birthday coupon: A trip to the big aquarium in the middle of Berlin. There, she confessed she'd already visited it with her kindergarten group, but she wanted her outing with "the boys". Edith brought her into town, we met them at Alexanderplatz, and all walked over to Spandauer Straße for Sealife's fish spectacle, ending with a trip via elevator through Europe's biggest fishtank. Somehow, it seemed that Lea enjoyed eating noodles with tomato sauce at our house afterwards and seeing Koko again just as much as she enjoyed the fish. Anyway, we had fun, and so did she.

Mixed Report from IAEA on Iran's nuclear aspirations

The Real News:
"Iran: IAEA report sparks controversy
Aijaz Ahmad: New IAEA report says Iran has not lied; US demands new sanctions, China says no."

Don't let Iran thumb its nose at the world; demand a diplomatic resolution; block the spread of nuclear weapons.
Operate within the UN to achieve these aims; avoid unilateral action; laugh at petty dictators with long names.

Norman Mailer: Jan. 31, 1923 - Nov. 10, 2007

Another of the few Americans writing with intelligence, compassion, concern, and thought has died.

Norman Mailer

If for nothing else than the following remarks excerpted from his contribution to The New York Review of Books' article in its issue of November 4, 2004, Vol.51, No.17, "The Election and America's Future", he earned undying respect and admiration, at least from the writer of this blog. His was another voice which will be sorely missed and hardly possible to replace.

A victory for Bush may yet be seen as one of our nation's unforgettable ironies. No need to speak again of the mendacities, manipulations, and spiritual mediocrity of the post–9/11 years; the time has come to recover from the shock that so abysmal a record (and so complete a refusal to look at the record) looks nonetheless likely to prevail. Who, then, are we? In just what kind of condition are the American people?
[...]
People in Alcoholics Anonymous speak of themselves as dry drunks. As they see it, they may no longer drink, yet a sense of imbalance at having to do without liquor does not go away. Rather the impulse is sequestered behind the faith that God is supporting one's efforts to remain sober.
Giving up booze may have been the most heroic act of George W.'s life, but America could now be paying the price. George W.'s piety has become a pomade to cover all the tamped-down dry-drunk craziness that still stirs in his livid inner air.
[...]
Perhaps it is no longer Jesus or Allah who oversees our fate but the turn of the Greek gods to take another run around the track. When it comes to destiny, they were the first, after all, to conceive of the Ironies.

And he is remembered especially in New York and Old Europe:

The New York Times
Focus

Norman Mailer, mort d'un géant de la littérature américaine
LEMONDE.FR 10.11.07

©

A Real No-Brainer !

The playpen's infamous chainy once called waterboarding a no-brainer, and meant that anyone with a brain must know it's something you do when you want information from someone resisting your efforts to get it out of him, necessary for the war on terror, etc. At the time I could only take no-brainer literally and consider the chainy one to be one with none, i.e. with no brain. If you waterboard someone you can probably get him to confess to having given birth to the virgin Mary, to Buddha, and to Abraham Lincoln while smoking a cigar and standing on one foot: really essential information, in other words, and especially reliable, since the only thing the waterboarded person's words mean is "STOP IT!"

So, it is indeed heart-warming to learn that according to

a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. telephone poll of 1,024 American adults
Waterboarding is torture
Story Highlights
69 percent say technique is torture; 58 percent say U.S. shouldn't use it.
Interrogation method an issue in attorney general nomination.
Michael Mukasey's refusal to reject technique troubles some senators.

Let us hope that ever more see the light!