port of call

Though living in Germany for many years, I cannot recall a holiday season when we were visited with such unrelenting, top-quality snow.  It keeps coming down, occupying all available real estate, and turns seeing family and friends into a challenge, but one that we have been able to meet with success.  There is no definitive answer why we are awarded with a second Christmas (2. Weihnachten) to celebrate, but it seems that the day is reserved for travel and alternately recognizing good service, since domestics and renters usually had to work on Christmas for their lords and ladies.  The denomination of "boxing" relates to this charity, alms-giving but my favourite account, besides the the Irish traditions, was of the Christmas boxes of the Golden Age of Exploration, a donation box, which priests installed on great ships while in berth preparing for the voyage.  Crewmates contributed coins to this box throughout their journey and presented it to the priest as thanks for a safe trip upon return during the next Christmas, who distributed the wealth among all his parishioners.  Of course, this business with money was not to be conducted on a high, holy day.  Adventures on the icy roads, where the wind curls and whips the loose snow like streams of plasma, and the sky is dark and heavy with successive storms, is a lot like navigating the high seas, and safe passage and return is something to be grateful for.

and the bells have flown to Rome

Merry Christmas, peace on Earth and goodwill toward all--and thanks to everyone for visiting our blog.  Seasons greetings!

annus miribilis or choose your own adventure

The wire services have just released its annual review of most significant news stories for the past year.  Here are the top headlines, as pantomimed, by the classic stick figure samaritans and fabulists--all with quite thoughtful expressions, which one finds in the literature in the waiting rooms of school clinics, infirmaries and counselors' offices.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its terrible environmental legacy with the industry and consumer choices and policy that perpetuate these disasters.

The Health Care Reform initiatives in the US, that showed America's strange sort of envy at odds with the true aims of the effort.

US Mid-Term Elections and reversals of power, that was harrowing for what was sometimes characterised as a weary and disappointed electorate.











The US economy and world-wide economic crisis with the bailout and contributing factors that precipitated the collapse and wherein lies the blame and the lesson.

The devastating earthquake in Haiti and the recovery effort.










The popularity of the so-called "Tea Party" movement and its influences in US politics, part appeal to libertarianism and part to militantism.







The drama, tension, technological wonder and cooperation that led to the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners.

The US government leaking like a sieve in the most sensitive areas, call and response.












The ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the private toll war-making exacts.

word cloud

The Association for the German Language (GfdS, Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache) last week in Wiesbaden announced its superlative word for the year: Wutbürger (enraged citizen). This choice reflects the mobilization of many to call attention to various, serious causes during this past year--protest rallies in Germany and abroad, from anger over the Stuttgart 21 train station renovation, to raising tuition fees, to atomic energy, to genetically modified crops, to austerity measures cued by financial instabilities, to immigration, to the privacy and protection of personal data, and all shades of solidarity in between. The German language is more tolerant of nonce words--and does not emphasize the novelty of the neologism as much, when appropriate to string a daisy chain of words along into a compound meaning. Wut, however, can also connote rabid--whereas, not all causes being equal, many of these protesters, I think they deserve to be called Mutbürger, brave citizen.