Коробе́йники

With moving day more than a month away, I feel I can take my time with the process and first repackage the rubbish that I've lugged across the earth, the what's out of sight or seasonal, before taking down any thing that is part of the landscape. So things looked untouched, unless one were to see the dozen boxes stacked in the extra bedroom and check in emptied drawers. Arranging objects in a safe way, wrapped in paper and bubble-wrap and cushioned with the odd pair of winter socks, sometimes I hum the Tetris tune in my head and think of ways to bettr place and rotate shapes. What would fit snuggly between the uranium glass platter and Villeroy-and-Boch antique porcelain mannequin arm? And then sometimes I take something from the visible population of the house. The amber hedgehog paper-weigt--or in this case, the little tiki idol with mother-of-pearl eyes and the Chinese Wise-Mens? Once safely packed, believe it or not, I notice thier absenses right away. One wouldn't think I would be so sentimental and bothered, having moved so many times in my life, in jobs, and with such antique, ancient things that have so far managed to survive and are not fated to crumble at my hand.

Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp sh'Bomp Bomp, who put the Ant in Antananarivo?

I realize that there are more serious goings-on with the Malagasy people, but I am an academic widow this week with H devoted to intense study and preparation--I am missing H very much--but I want to know what it is about Madagascar that puts them at liberty to have such fun and lyrical names. President Ravalomanana was deposed in a military coup and ceded control to a former DJ. Who was that man? I'd like to shake his hand. He made my baby fall in love with me.

play of the day

Within the past few days, Sarkosy passed an initiative through Parliment with the intent that France re-join NATO in full. Four decades ago, de Gaulle withdrew from the treaty in kind, in part, that French soverignity no be in thrall to a foreign conglomate, feeling that the Soviets were entitled to a position other than adversarial in Weltpolitik and to keep open negotiations in case the Iron Curtain were to seep over in neighbouring West Germany. I can't get a read on Sarkosy's motivations for this change. Will France quarter a standing-army of Americans, like German, Italy and BeNeLux? Perhaps it is a quirk of timing that Russia is just now announcing its intention to revamp its military forces. That entity called NATO has always been antigonistic for eastern parts, and how is one to say whether Russia is bracing itself for some coming-skirmish over natural resources or girding itself for another Cold War?

This St. Patrick's Day--No one is more Irish than Barack O'Bama

So we should cease and detest in talking down the world economy? I am all for a hopeful note--cheer up world, it may never happen--but just because US president Obama said that the crisis is called off, that the situation is not as bad as it seems, does not mean that one ought re-join that orgy as if there were a morning-after pill for all contingencies. Now it seems almost a little offense, so yesterday, that the media are still taking about recession now having been banished. the Americans have a taste for phony crises, and there is just as much of a craving for the hollow reassurance. As much as I myself was a true believer, I must admit that the US has a penchant for electing good cheerleaders. With cursorary and short-lived attention, they may hope that flowers would be blooming, like with the groundhog superstition, and solve the economy, health care and housing in one blow. Not enough care paid to reform is much more dangerous in the long view, promoting unregulating policies that have no sense of good governance. All in all, maybe it's a good sign thatI can muster the wherewithal to criticize the US president. Better a better man.

red menance

Rather than understanding the Swedish bank reform model--that Obama is eyeing, as remediation, Americans shudder, sometimes violently, that the banks are going to be nationalized, that America is on a slippery slope towards socialism. Media sources like to call it the "S-Word," I hate that--which s-word and why for are you afraid to spell it out? Socialism is always bigger than mere economy--more over, it is about public good and welfare, and I don't think America is under a serious assault from the forces of socialism. The only form of welfare that the US has mastered is the corporate kind, with bail-outs, kick-backs and rank protectionism. Revolutions were sparked in order to give the worke his and her share in the means of production. America does not make much, nowadays, the factories long since shuttered. There has not been a viable auto-industry or agricultural production in years. America is a highly abstract services industry. There will be no revolution for a stake in the loan underwriters' association or for the celluar service provider--it's not food on the table and it's not even the mobile phone, just the trafficking and the usury.

Morgen, Sam. Moin-moin, Ralph

Whether as an ice-breaker, small-talk or as a segue, Americans tend to ask strangers what they do for a living. That's a ham-fisted way of putting on in one's place. There is a saying that while Americans live to work, Europeans work to live. Remember these characters? Ralph, the wolf, and Sam, the sheepdog? I used to think about how they clocked-out when the whistle blew, no longer arch-enemies, whenever 16:00 cam around and I could hear the punctual clatter of my German co-workers as they took to the stairwell and out the door, right on the dot. Once, having stayed late myself during that week several times, H expounded on the rationale why that was. I had never shared the opinion that the majority of Americans hold that that shows lack of dedication, being kept on a pretty lax leash myself, and, unless it was an emergency (and there were few objective emergencies) anything could wait until morning--especially considering most of the administrative gate-keepers were German and had called it a day already. H explained that with any job, factory work or a more nebulous otherwise, there was an allotted amount to finsih one's assigned tasks--that people more expert than us decided what could be accomplished in a day and we were not the first to cycle through, and having to stay later either reflected poorly on the employee's ability or on the supervisor's for time-management.