May we all remember what a wonderful joyous privilege it is to begin another year, a new year, to go on with our lives, living with love, sharing that love, and smiling, yes, laughing, simply because we are there and aware and mindful of being there!
HAPPY NEW YEAR - FROHES NEUJAHR - BONNE NOUVELLE ANNÉE - BUON ANNO
To celebrate reaching the ripe old age of FIVE MONTHS with my new (Terri's, thank you) stem cells with vigor and élan to become ever better, ever stronger, ever more, I am posting this festive piece by Mozart to match my mood and spread joy to whomever may happen to hear it. Joy and love is what we are all here for, and I know that is what I celebrate every single day of my new life.
Merrry Christmas, everyone, and don't forget to celebrate your life and the life of all those dear to you. Rejoice in love and smile with that joy.
Let us ALL do what we can to ensure that all those in our world teetering on the edge of life are able to continue to live, let us help the sick and the needy, let us bring smiles where there are frowns, let us constantly think about how wonderful it is to be alive.
With that, Christmas and the New Year can be a gift for everyone.
With the greatest of respect for this most honorable defender of human rights, I am deeply grieved that VÁCLAV HAVEL has died today. His voice and thoughts will be sorely missed in our age of increasing human rights with simultaneous increase of threats to precisely those rights. Let us all be vigilant to carry on the cause of one of the authors of CHARTER 77.
Yesterday was International Human Rights Day.
In Berlin, Nobel Literature Prize laureate Herta Müller joined in a demonstration at the Chinese Embassy for human rights and especially to free the Chinese author and Nobel Peace Prize winner LIU XIAOBO.
Also yesterday, Nobel Prize laureates around the world called for the release of LIU XIAOBO from the prison in China in which he has been held since 2009 for an eleven-year sentence. This call was made on the eve of the presentation of this years Nobel Prizes in Oslo and Stockholm.
I wish for more such fellow countrymen before the country of my birth sinks fully into the dark night of medieval ignorance and prejudice. Mr. Prayer-Perry should perhaps ask his god who gave him the right to demean and discriminate other fellow humans or to deny them the rights and privileges and duties he enjoys himself. He is not running a campaign for president, but a campaign for Ayatollah of America. Watch out, people, before they put you under a veil with stars and stripes and introduce a christaria reminiscent of the horrors one of the first great American authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne, described in The Scarlet Letter. I for one will always be in solidarity with all the Hester Prynnes everywhere!
The New York Times, by RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., Published: December 8, 2011
OKATIE, S.C. — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas’ hard turn the past two days on gay issues, in which he has suggested that gay rights are inconsistent with both American and Christian values, has generated enormous criticism from lesbian and gay organizations and some religious groups, and has even helped split Mr. Perry’s top campaign aides over a new ad.
In that campaign ad, released on Wednesday, Mr. Perry says “you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday” to know it is wrong that gay men and lesbians openly serve in the military at a time when there is no organized prayer in public schools.
Christa Wolf Dies at 82; Wrote of the Germanys
By DAVID BINDER and BRUCE WEBER, Published: December 1, 2011, The New York Times
Ms. Wolf, a leading writer from the former East Germany, explored the weight of history on ordinary people as well as her own struggles with Nazism and life in a Communist society.
Siang Be, a new friend from my last brief stay in Station 51 due to a fever episode, is just beginning his battle against mantle-cell lymphoma and will have as much support and encouragement along the way as Detlef and I can possibly muster for him.
His wife Steffi will enjoy that support, too, and we will share all that those who have been down such a road are unique in being able to give to others just entering such uncharted territory.
There is a special solidarity possible among "patients"; a nod, a smile, a little shake of the head is enough between us, because we know this "dark cloud" from the inside, know therefore HOW MUCH LIGHT there is inside that supposed darkness.
Siang will be beginning his chemo today, and I am simply calling upon everyone who read's this to think of him and his wife - they are two REAL people! - and wish them strength and healing. They needn't know you; you needn't know them: just send positive vibrations into room 13 of Station 51 of RVK so that he can achieve the cure I have achieved due to the successful beginning of my fight in precisely that same Station!
YOU CAN BEAT THIS, SIANG! HANG IN THERE, STEFFI! WE ARE THERE FOR BOTH OF YOU!
Choo choo train, bouncy bus, puff puff boat ... and then tomorrow all the engine noises will stop and there will be the island
with only the sounds of horses and bicycles, waves and wind, rustling leaves and joyful birds, and even our own voices will become quieter.
To wake up, there is always the triple horn blast of the first ferry out, and at this time of the year, sunsets are early enough for us to see every one of them before dinner.
It's going to be great!
Glad now to be a regular subscriber, the "front pages" of the first two issues I have received (starting by my special request with the controversial one from last week that led to the arson and destruction of Charlie's offices).
MERCI BIEN, CHARLIE ! Satire à plus forte raison !
What a dream is about to come true for us this year...
In the "debate" on immigration currently raging in the USA (and which is much more a populist diatribe to coddle the fearful and get their uninformed votes, especially in "Republican" circles), I would simply like to remind us all of Lady Liberty's position on that issue, as engraved on a bronze tablet there:
Without the screws in his leg, Detti is back home and life is as it should be.
Time to visit Koko, even if it's too cold to bring him out, but I can't let Detlef walk around alone right now with his incision and screw holes still on the mend.
We are so very in love!
A shameful prohibition of photos in the "restored" Tränenpalast, the infamous border-crossing at Friedrichstraße Station in Berlin, where the control procedures were everything from intimidating to demeaning and inhuman and "no photos" allowed, was something I would never have thought possible. So before the guard told me "photos forbidden", I had already photographed the old GDR sign "photos forbidden", the row of control cabins, one of which you were closed off in alone to be able to enter or depart the GDR, and the interior of one of them.
The explanation given, upon my complaint up front, was "copyright issues". Now, I'm asking who claims a copyright to GDR signs and control cabins? The personal mementos in showcases elsewhere were of no interest to me anyway, neither to look at nor to photograph; I only wanted to see that horror site without the horror guards who were once there. They have unfortunately been reincarnated under other auspices.
Shame on the organizers!
Without sorrow and with much relief I am pleased to announce the death yesterday of the F.ully D.um P.arty in Berlin. With election results at a level between the "animal protection party" and the neo-nazi proto-party (which also fortunately sank since the last election here), these neo-liberal worshippers of deregulated markets and lower taxes for the wealthy have disappeared from ALL parliaments in Berlin, i.e. from the city-state parliament (Abgeordnetenhaus) and from ALL twelve of the district assemblies (Bezirksverordnetenversammlungen). They garnered a mere 1.8% of the votes in the state and district elections here yesterday.
An added benefit to the city and its districts is that all of those self-serving free-marketeers will now have to find a job on the free market themselves. Until now they have been able to play well-to-do yuppies with party jobs, parliamentarian assistants, party work-groups etc. And jobs in the party organization will also be greatly reduced, as the F.ull D.ummies P.rotectorate will have very little money in the coming years; party financing here depends largely on the number of votes in the last election, so they will be nearly bankrupt. I look forward to those yuppies veering into Arbeitslosengeld II (unemployment welfare), being tossed from one unpaid trial job to another, and having to accept wages far below anything reasonable because THEY so long opposed any minimum wage in this country. Yes, the organization's and the individuals' bankrupcies are looming near. And, to borrow one of their latest populist slogans and apply it to them:
