Visiting Rosemary's Castle

Well, with Rudi & Renate, we did three local castles and a cloister yesterday, all within easy driving distance of Berlin, and were rewarded with the first day of brilliant sunshine in more than a week.
One of the castles has a fantastic restaurant in the courtyard, and there, in Burg Rabenstein, we enjoyed a superb lunch (and could play a natural wood xylophone on the way back down).
So you may all know what sort of place this was, here, in a quickly rendered translation of the text on the back of the postcard-sized admission ticket to climb to the top of the castle tower, is the legend of the castle.

The Legend of Rosemary

A knightly couple that once dwelled in the Castle "Rabenstein" had a daughter named Rosemary. One evening, on Saint John the Baptist's Day, she was sitting at her window looking towards the village of Raben and noticed how much fun the village youth were having playing games and dancing. The desire to take part in this joyful activity grew ever stronger in her breast. Rosemary put on simple clothes and sneaked off to the village and mixed in with the common people. She didn't notice how time passed. Suddenly, the clock struck midnight and the horns sounded from the tower of the castle. That meant that Rabenstein's gates were being closed. The maiden was shaken by fright and rushed back to the castle. But she came too late. Only after much pounding on the door was she let in by the tower guard, who of course reported the incident to the Knight. Rosemary's parents ordered her to appear in the chapel before them and all her ancestors. There, she was accused of serious misconduct and her punishment was pronounced. Rosemary was banned to the tower, invisible for everyone, and had to make twelve shirts from the linen given to her. Upon completion of the shirts, her misconduct would be atoned and she would be free again. However, she was only allowed to sew one stitch every fifty years, unless a bold young man managed to climb up the outside wall of the thirty-meter high tower without any aids whatsoever and unite with her.

Rosemary has now been sitting in the tower for hundreds of years, as young and beautiful as ever, though invisible, and wanders through the castle at midnight.

Once a year, in the night of St. John the Baptist's Day, Rosemary's ancestors arise and gather with her in the chapel to reproach her again and again for her misconduct.

We neither saw her nor tried to free her, but the steak béarnaise in her restaurant was delicious, the xylophone was fun, and the pictures below will show you how much fun you can have on a sunny May day visiting castles just west of Berlin.

Satire Perfect

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with ...
... a rabble rouser of incredible venom, slight intelligence, extreme foxiness, obtuse references, and extreme danger,
then watch this to free yourself from the beckon of beck:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Visionaries in Berlin

Three dimensionality recycled.

8 May 1945 : 65 Years of Liberation

Nicolas Sarkozy in Alsace
8 mai 1945 : Nicolas Sarkozy en Alsace pour "réparer une injustice" - LeMonde.fr

Nicolas Sarkozy a célébré les 65 ans de la victoire des alliés sur l'Allemagne nazie à Colmar, l'une des dernières villes françaises libérées, où il a rendu hommage aux "malgré nous", samedi 8 mai. Dans un discours d'une quinzaine de minutes, le chef de l'Etat est surtout revenu sur le sort des Alsaciens et Mosellans incorporés de force dans l'armée allemande. "Ceux qui n'ont rien fait pour empêcher cette ignominie perpétrée contre des citoyens français ont trahi les valeurs de la France, l'ont déshonorée. Vichy a trahi la France et l'a déshonorée."

Angela Merkel im Gespräch - Süddeutsche Zeitung
''Wir müssen sprachfähig sein über unsere Geschichte''

SZ: Frau Bundeskanzlerin, was bedeutet der 8. Mai 1945 für Sie?
Angela Merkel: Das Ende eines schrecklichen Krieges. Das Ende von millionenfachem Mord, des Holocaust. Damit ist der 8. Mai der Tag der Befreiung Deutschlands und Europas vom Nationalsozialismus.

Rosselini Continues to Seduce

And this link appears to be accessible in Europe, too! (With thanks to DarthR!)

Unification!

And along with Isabella, a little salute to the subversive surrealists of nearly 100 years ago. (Consider how modern you are today!)

Topography of Terror - Finally Opened!

Topographie des Terrors

As long as I have been here in Berlin, I have been visiting the grounds of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais, where the Gestapo and SS had their "headquarters" for the organization of persecution and terror in Nazi Germany. The basement cells where people were held and tortured for the most absurd reasons were visible along the perimeter on my first visit there. Throughout the years there were various efforts to preserve what had come to light and construct some sort of exhibition space to document what happened here and to provide a roof to prevent the slow decay of those subsurface torture chambers.
Finally, yesterday, the new structure was inaugurated and the grounds once more made accessible to the public. Standing at one of the few remaining sections of the Berlin Wall and across the street from Göhring's Luftwaffenministerium, now the German Finance Ministry, it is a must for anyone interested in history, so as not to forget the extremes of cruelty to man man is capable of.
In our age of rather generalized amnesia, this site of memory, recollection, commemoration, and thought is a welcome signal!
Take the time to visit when you are in Berlin.

Five Years Remembering

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin celebrated the fifth anniversary of its opening yesterday, and I would like to pay this small tribute to this effort to stamp into the heart of this city a suitably sustantial call on us all never to forget the horror of calculating humans rather than encouraging humans to think and live and love.

"Die Fabrikation von Leichen in Gaskammern und Vernichtungslagern" [MH GA 79, S.27] was not only murder, genocide, but indeed also the horrid robbery of the victims' very death, depriving them of their own "Tod ... das Gebirg des Seyns im Gedicht der Welt" [ibid., S.56] .

May this memorial massively restore at least to their memory a mount in the poem of the world.

A Fantastic Day !

Now with some photos of the day.

STOP ARIZONA! STOP DISCRIMINATION! ENTER THE 21st CENTURY!

I simply must quote the New York Times Editorial in full. The world cannot affort such parochial close-minded belly-button gazing as Arizona is attempting to do. We are in this together, on one planet, and had better soon stop allowing powerful lobbyists to persuade us that those who do not look like us are the source of danger. The source of danger is from the bigots and the bigotted, from the well-to-do who tell us to envy the down-and-out.
Wake up and stop hating each other!

Editorial - Stopping Arizona’s Anti-Immigration Law - NYTimes.com
Editorial
Stopping Arizona

A fight is brewing over Arizona’s new law that turns all of the state’s Latinos, even legal immigrants and citizens, into criminal suspects. And this is not a local fight. The poison is spreading; there is talk in Texas of passing a version of the Arizona statute.
President Obama has called the law “misguided” and promised to keep an eye on it. But when racial separation finds a foothold in any of the 50 states, the president needs to do more than mildly criticize. He should act. Here’s a partial but urgent to-do list:
DEFEND CIVIL RIGHTS The Justice Department needs to challenge this law forcefully in court. The statute requires police officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant. Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law but says she doesn’t know what an illegal immigrant looks like, leaving that to others who think they do.
The Justice Department knows what kinds of abuse that invites. It is already investigating the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, who raids Hispanic neighborhoods in and around Phoenix. His deputies demand people’s papers based on the shirts and boots they wear.
Federal law requires noncitizens to carry documents but does not empower police officers to stop anyone they choose and demand to see papers. Arizona’s attempt to get around that by defining the act of standing on its soil without papers as a criminal act is repellent.
STOP ARIZONA COLD Arizona’s scheme will rely on federal databases to determine immigration status. It will also need the cooperation of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, in accepting detainees. ICE says its priorities are dangerous criminals and fugitives, not the peaceful workers and families who are overwhelmingly the targets of the new law. In that case, ICE will deny Arizona authorities data, cooperation and scarce resources.
TAKE BACK IMMIGRATION POLICY The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot make their own immigration laws. The Arizona debacle gives the Obama administration another chance to make it clear that the nation’s immigration policy cannot be left to a ragged patchwork of state and local laws.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama praised a federal court’s decision striking down a law in Hazleton, Pa., that made it illegal to hire or rent housing to undocumented immigrants. To start forcefully asserting the central federal role in immigration, the administration should rescind a once-secret 2002 memo from President George W. Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, that declared that state and local police had “inherent authority” to make immigration arrests. It should have done that long ago. It should also weigh in against another reckless Arizona law, now before the Supreme Court, that revokes the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
The administration’s actions elsewhere have sent the wrong message. Janet Napolitano once vetoed extremist immigration-enforcement bills as Arizona’s governor, but as the homeland security secretary she defends the use of state and local police as “force multipliers.” Ms. Napolitano needs to end dangerous experiments like the 287(g) program and Secure Communities, which hand over vital federal duties to untrained, unsupervised local deputies, openly enabling racial-profiling and undermining community policing and public safety.
These steps are no substitute for immigration reform, the future of which seems pretty murky after Mr. Obama started gingerly backing away this week. But the federal government must react forcefully to the Arizona statute. Is our core belief still the welcome and assimilation of newcomers? Arizona has given one answer. It’s time for Mr. Obama to give the other.

The New York Times, April 30, 2010

Let's finally start to think and deal with real problems!

Perfect Discourse

New interview with Philippe Sollers, by Guillaume Chérel and Franck-Olivier Laferrère, on April 14. Words more thoughtful are rare indeed!

Entretien Ph. Sollers Partie I
Uploaded by Cid-Errant. - Arts and animation videos.

Philippe Sollers « Pour vivre cachés vivons heureux » The interview as published in full in L'Humanité on April 29.

It Should Be Done !

Too bad this was only a brainstorm, it should be made reality! Everyone everywhere who comes in contact with Maledictus or receives him as a visitor to their country should confront him with modernity. Is he so narrow-minded that he cannot even be expected to HEAR other views?

Pope 'condom' gaffe: Foreign Office apologises - World news - The Observer

The Foreign Office was last night forced to issue a public apology after an official document suggested Britain should mark the Pope's visit this year by asking him to open an abortion clinic, bless a gay marriage and launch a range of Benedict-branded condoms.

I, for one, do NOT think they should have apologized!

ASH !

Ash wasn't gray or black or ugly or smelly;

ash was blue-skied azure, immaculate,

ash was fiery sunshine streaming down at you,

ash was the absence of even the slightest vapor trail,

ash was quiet, calm, pristine, restful.

No ash isn't bright or clear or pretty or fragrant;

no ash is dark skies streaked with all sorts of clouds,

no ash is very little daylight penetrating the gloom,

no ash is renewed jet engine exhaust across the sky,

no ash is noisier, more hectic, blemished, restless.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,

we must simply await the next eruption.

- In Memoriam of the Ash Crisis, April 17-21, 2010

Censored in France!

But via the internet, you can watch this interview with Nicolas Sarkozy there and everywhere. Sarkozy successfully precluded broadcast of this report made by Télévision Suisse Romande because they asked to many questions about his pressure on the press and disruption of free reporting.


So, watch and learn that freedom of speech must NOT be curtailed, even by the president of France!
Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:


And finally a link to the original broadcast from June, 2009, on the website of French-speaking Swiss Television.

Here's To Berlin !

Grateful to relish life amidst urban troubles rather than suffer tranquility in the provinces!

[Thanks to Claudia for putting me on to this one!]

Progress IS Possible !

May Obama prevail over the clouded fears of the manipulated to move the United States ever more out of its self-imposed Dark Ages into the light of thoughtful and compassionate statehood!

Obama extends hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners of gays [The Washington Post, April 16, 2010]

President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.

Presidential Memorandum - Hospital Visitation

I truly welcome all the enlightened actions of this administration, hope indeed that it can push back the resentments that all too many Americans seem to have made into their new guiding ideology.

-- And a note on deficits, people: Who turned a budget surplus into the BIGGEST deficit ever? The Bushbaby ! And that Paling tea cozy babbling in your ears would like to "reduce" taxes and increase the deficit even more. Have you ever stopped to consider that those who benefit the most from tax cuts are those who have so much money they don't notice the difference, while those with hardly anything might just be able to buy one more loaf of unhealthy squishy white bread per month with the benefits they receive?
Come on, think and stop whining!

Penance, Endlessly

Yes, Maledictus, do penance! All of you should do penance, endlessly, for all the crimes you have indirectly committed or directly covered up, all the lives you have abuse that were naive enough to grant you and yours tutelage over them or to come to you seeking ministry.
And you can do penance for your Pius Brother Williamson, now finally on trial for denying the Holocaust.
Penance, though, will hardly be enough.
Begin thinking, and tell all who have been satisfied and betrayed by faith to think as well.

Seaside right next door

A wonderful trip yesterday all within easy reach of home: Rheinsberg, Himmelpfort, Müritz

A Memorial for the WTC & Philippe Petit

One of the memories connected with the World Trade Center in my own mind which make it always tower high into the sky... 1974...

Saturday Before Easter in the City

My Easter Bunny

This year it hopped into my hands as the latest edition of L'Infini, light and joyful for reading on the way here and there during the four-day weekend.