hadj-podge and Swiss Miss

Sunday, against the advice of its government and the governments of the European Union, Swiss voters lent their support for a ban on the building of new minarets.  Now there are four mosques to compete with church steeples, but apparently no more.  I don't know what this move says about the constituency, but I understand that the intent of the passage was not to promote religious discrimination but to counter it, since some would argue that Islam has institutionalized gender inequalities, which go against Swiss law.  Elsewhere, there is controversy over head scarves in France and plans to build Europe's largest mosque in Koln, next to one of the largest cathedrals.  What I think is most interesting about this vote, however, is the attention given to the fact that Switzerland is bucking the recommendations of others.  I remember the fact that before 1918, not so long ago, the only democracies in Europe were France, Switzerland and tiny San Marino.  Every place else was a monarchy.

1. advent

Here is some of the festoonery. There is still stuff squirreled away in the basement somewhere that I plan to drag out before it's too late again. When we moved, I didn't think that I would be rummaging for decorations this soon, and alternately, I didn't think I would have already forgotten which random spots I tucked things in.

gratitude, don't give me no attitude

H and I spent the Thanksgiving day holiday with my parents and it was a wonderful kick off to the season. My mother had decked up the place with the santa claus clone army--usually there have been the turkey place-setting minders but there were too many of them, tucked away in a basket and it looked like a turkey massacree. It was really a fun time and inspired us to decorate our place in earnest.

telephony

Mostly I leave my handy on silent mode because I feel there's enough pervasive tinnynest for the universe to give back, but my ears lift up and listen whenever I hear some of the horrible ASCII chimes and ring-tones from ghosts of telephones past. It's a strange sort of recognition of familiarity, like seeing one has the same R2 unit. Incidentally, I believe the next hyped-up plague will be the droid-flu, H2D2.

nog

I could not drink wassailing wine all around but I think the only thing good about the annual increasing precedence of the Christmas season, making it a movable feast that comes earlier every year, is that one can find such drinks. The latest one is a spicy concoction called Glogg from Sweden, by the purveyors of all things Swedish and flat-pack.

let's play global thermo-nuclear war

Watch this turn out to be an advertising ploy for the new disaster movie 2012--but a top bank is urging its clientele to prepare for total and sustained economic collapse. I wonder what sorts of contingency plans they have formulated and whether they are anything better that pushed the economy down that staircase in the first place. Or how about a nice game of tic-tac-toe?

the word gullible

I had always guessed that Americans were the only ones with national obsessions and tolerances for hoaxes and general strangeness: like Groundhog Day, overwhelming bureaucracy, toothfairies and hand-sanitizers. It seems however, Germany has quite a few of its own. There is an old elm tree in the northwest of the country that has its own zip code and people send postcards to the tree. I love it--that's so much better than mumbling to the Lincoln Memorial for advice. Now, I found that the SPD has had a non-existent member of the Bundestag since 1973. He's even counted in the officially partlimentary rolls.

some people call me Maurice

H and I took a short trip on a lazy Sunday to nearby Coburg. Usually, I have to hunt through the city center to find a unique manhole cover to take a picture of, but in Coburg, every one had a depiction of the crest, an image of St. Moritz the city's patron. It had been years since I had been in Coburg and had never managed to see the town itself, only the fortress on the hill where Martin Luther was kept under house-arrest and finished translating the New Testament into German. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert cohabitated there for a time as well, and the whole city is drenched with seated and dethrowned royalty. There's row upon row of fantastic art deco buildings and a sackful of little castes knocking about--including one that looks like a transplanted Buckingham Palace. Albeit, there were some notorious things that went along with that hertitage as well, but it seems that sometimes city's forget and maybe appreciate the reminder that they are not some historical backwater. Even our fair village was founded by Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne as a gift to wife, and who's ever heard of Wickedawesomestadt?