trim, trace and cross-quarter

I discovered this nice Christmas spread decking the altar of country church in mid-January earlier this year.
Ignoring for a moment the big take-away that this is a woefully inaccurate representation of the event, what with the pious farm animals, most churches, including the Vatican, keeps out its Christmas decorations through Epiphany (Dreikönigstag) and the ordinary time (ordinary in the sense of ordinal, counting the weeks until the next big season) before Lent and Passiontide until the feast of Candlemas (Darstellung des Herrn, presenting Baby Jesus at Temple) at the beginning of February. It’s OK if one does not get to taking down the lights and tree right away, and it is a nice thing to let the celebration linger. The Pope is not calling for a tightening up on symbols and idols and Catholics should not fear for the loss of these trappings—besides (it really bothered me that some body understood all the Pope’s scholarship for some amounted to livestock and time of the year), the latest papal blunderbus about tagging staff and domestics in the city state to monitor their movements, like Texas public school students or married Saudi Arabian women (but for quite different reasons), seems to have become the next big take-away.

concession: friendship is magic

I do not really understand what this is all about, but some are too clever to ignore.

turn-around or partial-swing

Civilization tends to congregate around sources of energy, and the freer and less effort required the better, from hunting grounds to floodplains and navigable rivers. Maybe civilization’s problems and deficit of power arose once communities established at those naturally landscaped headlands began to dig for more, and boom towns sounded out untapped reserves. Industrial colonies grew up around mines and wells and sought out these resources in exploitable lands.

Now Germany, not alone in its aspirations, certainly, but possibly exposed to more criticism and dissection, is struggling with its commitment to wean itself away from disinterred sources of energy. This sort of business is forever dirty and not without compromise, and though not the sole source of engineering through subsidies and regulation, the government’s diagram does play an important role in achieving those ends—especially short on sacrifice and innovation.

It seems, however, that the paths to these ends are anything but well marked: progressively higher rates are imposed on consumers and put businesses in an awkward situation either to lobby politicians for tax-breaks or to quit the country over the expense of power, but these premiums are not really being held in trust, as a price maybe more reflective of the true costs. Rather than shoring up extra funds for infrastructure improvements including turning kinetic energy, surplus electricity into potential energy and finding places and means to store it all, it is mostly feuding that emerges unscathed and only contentions are fully mapped out. Each political division has paved and developed its own corridors of power, returning to those original resources of geography and geology, and have their own notions how to best approach the situation—which has the potential to over- and out-do the best intentions of their neighbours, particularly when the central government is reluctant to manage the politics of inefficiency, protectionism and patriotism. Bavaria would rather promote its own solar, bio-mass, or hydro-power than support a circuit from the windmill powerhouse of the North Sea to the voracious south.  Multinational energy companies, with different allegiances, have their own ideas, too, which all make for a weird inversion of the not-in-my-backyard mentality that for many years kept nuclear policy off of people’s minds.

jobbing or come-uppance

Following the template of job security safety nets already in place in Austria and Norway, the European Union social services commission will put forward, within an obligatory framework, a mechanism to hold the problems of high unemployment among young people to account.

Just as there are para- chutes to try to slow the other concussions and pancaking of the fall-out of currency crisis, the EU is recognizing the debilitating and demoralizing urgency of the lack of prospects and direction, especially among the youth, which besides over-taxing government welfare and lends less to pension funds, leaves young people with some difficult and disheartening choices about career, family and home. Governments would like to be able to guarantee all people under twenty-five years old either a new position or at the very least, an apprenticeship, within no longer than four months after losing a job through redundancy or upon completion of their education and poised to enter the workforce. The details, associated costs and trade-offs are still being ironed out (in most EU countries, there are weighted social criteria, years to retirement, number of dependents, that are statutory considerations when it comes to letting people go, and whether such guarantees over warranties bias the scale and hurt established workers) and the promise may prove too ambitious, but it is a positive signal for governments to commit to their well-being of their up-and-comers and much as for their own reputation and safekeeping.

oranges and lemons say the bells of saint clement’s

Here is a nice Christmas punch to keep you toasty on a cold evening. I call it the St. Clement’s because its ingredients include lemons and Curaçao Triple Sec, orange liqueur, and this recipe yields enough for four cups:

• 250 ml (1 cup) orange juice 250 ml (1 cup) of Triple Sec 250 ml (1 cup) of dry white, wine—if available in your area, another thing to try would be Thüringer Holunder Punsch, a fortified holiday beverage, a white wassail seasoned already with some of the other spices 
• The juice of one lemon (Zitrone)
• One stick of cinnamon (Zimt), whole cloves (Nelken), and some ground cinnamon and whipped crème for garnish

Place all the liquid ingredients into a sauce pan to warm on low heat. Add the cinnamon stick and six cloves and cover. Monitor to make sure the mixture doesn’t scald or boil, and after about fifteen minutes, when the cinnamon stick starts to break up and the mixture takes on a buttery complexion, it should be ready. Pour through a strainer to avoid getting pieces of cinnamon and cloves in your glass. Top with whipped crème and ground cinnamon and enjoy with gingerbread (Lebkuchen).