And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
“Evan is the first Jew I really met,” said Patrick Reimer, a teammate on the Metro Stars and Kaufmann’s roommate last weekend on the German national team’s trip to Belarus.
Reimer said he felt a sense of gratitude that a Jew could be named to the national hockey team and sad that it had taken so long. Since the 1930s, in fact, when a star named Rudi Ball led Germany to a bronze medal at the 1932 Winter Olympics and was said to be the only Jewish participant for Germany at the 1936 Winter Games in the Bavarian resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
To be honest, Reimer added, he did not pry into details of the darker events in the Kaufmann family history. “There is still a barrier in the head,” he said. “We both know it should never have happened, what happened 70 years ago.”
Frieder Feldmann, a spokesman for the DEG Metro Stars and a history teacher at a private school, has encouraged Kaufmann to tell his story. But even Feldmann fumbles for the words, seeks the neutral ground of euphemism.
“I can’t speak with someone when my people killed his people,” Feldmann said.
Hockey is safer territory. On that subject, the Metro Stars speak effusively of Kaufmann, his calm, his ability to read the game, his willing muscularity for a small player. “I can use him in any situation,” Coach Jeff Tomlinson, a Canadian, said.
At the tournament in Belarus, Kaufmann was named Germany’s star of one game. On Tuesday, in league play, he scored in a victory over first-place Berlin. On Friday, he scored again in a shootout victory. There are still times, he said, he wonders whether he is doing the right thing. What would his grandfather think?
“Knowing he was planning on coming back after all those years, I think it shows he was ready to forgive,” Kaufmann said. “That helps me be comfortable with it.”
Next season, he will play for Nuremberg, which has its own fraught history. It trivializes the Holocaust to call Kaufmann’s presence in Germany closure or a happy ending, Feldmann said. “But if it is ever possible to have peace in this story,” he said, “maybe it is a small brick in a good wall.”
I love this ad. And I think I need these girls to follow me around. (My boyfriend says that I sound like a teenager when I say "ew". I explained to him that most grown women have within them an inner teenage girl.)
I am currently reading some A.J. Liebling on my Kindle. The piece I just finished reading was called "Westbound Tanker," about Liebling's having hitched a ride on a Norwegian tanker back to the States from Europe during World War II. (During that trip, the Pearl Harbor attack happened.) His descriptions of Norwegians crack me up -- he talks about Christmas celebrations aboard the tanker with grim-faced Norwegians drinking glog and singing carols (with nary a smile or tear) and he talks about his farewell party. The crew made him a big cake and again, without a smile, presented it to him. "Norwegians are not effusive," he writes. But then he sees that the cake has "Farvel," (farewell) written on it in icing. So sweet.
You know, I love my Kindle, but the problem is I can't lend the Liebling book to my mom, who would love it (though she would never smile or laugh while reading it).
If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms that American power has supported will decline, too. Or more likely, if history is a guide, they may collapse altogether as we make a transition to another kind of world order, or to disorder. We may discover then that the U.S. was essential to keeping the present world order together and that the alternative to American power was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophe—which is what the world looked like right before the American order came into being.
(Emphasis mine.) So many people glibly and freely pronounce that America is what causes all the problems in the world and that if only they would dial it back we'd all get along. So foolish. So untrue.
I removed the Clint Eastwood/Halftime in America post because the ad was removed from Youtube. It appears to be back up, but just in case it gets taken down again, I won't embed, but I will link to it here.
I thought the ad was terrific. I have been feeling hopeless lately and it made me feel like I could face the future -- Clint will do that to a girl! But it got an awful lot of criticism from people who said it was an Obama commercial and so forth. I didn't see it that way. I thought Clint was just being patriotic. It was a pro-America ad. From what I know of Eastwood, he is a libertarian and would not likely be a big fan of many of Obama's policies.
My boyfriend and I were out last night in his FIAT500 and of course, he mentioned that FIAT owns over half of Chrysler. Not sure one can exactly picture Clint in a Cinquecento...but I still think it's a great piece of pro-America advertising.
Bird sounds can reduce cortisol and adrenaline, which are produced by the human body in response to stress, Mr. Treasure says. Ever since early man had to worry about forest predators, he says, people found singing birds reassuring. "We've learned over hundreds of thousands of years it's when they stop that we need to worry," he says.
It is plausible that Lancaster's bird sounds would have their claimed effect on crime, says Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist at McGill University, as long as an individual genuinely found that sound pleasing and songbirds were used. "The obvious thing is it can't be the sound of vultures ripping apart a bison or anything," he says.
Well no, although that sound might make criminals run and hide.
Beauty in the snow appears to be my theme this week (see previous post). This little gaffer is the newest attraction at the Toronto Zoo. For the below photo (but larger) and more pics of him -- including a couple where he hasn't got himself covered in muck yet -- check this link.
...the suit/toque combo? Love the grim expression (damn you, snow!). Picture taken in Parma -- match postponed due to players not wanting to freeze their little knees.
Whatever the Prime Minister [Erdogan] might think about the state of Israel, the fact is that free speech exists there and no writers or journalists are in jail. According to the latest numbers gathered by International PEN, there are nearly one hundred writers imprisoned in Turkey, not to speak of independent publishers such as Ragip Zarakolu, whose case is being closely watched by PEN Centers around the world.
A refreshing change from so many in the arts world who reflexively (and often unjustly) criticize Israel and think nothing of attending events in countries with questionable practices in regards human rights or free speech.
Another crush of my youth is gone: Ben Gazzara. I got a crush on him as a kid when I watched QBVII on TV with my parents. Later in life I heard Elaine Stritch talk about her relationship with him and how it ended and what a silly decision she made letting him go:
For those who believe snark is an invention of our age, rest assured 'tis not the case. I think the mistake we make now is using snark all the time. It is far more effective when used with discretion -- as in the case of this letter, from a freed slave to his old master. The old master, it seems, wanted his now-free slave to come back and work for him again and sent him a letter requesting as much. The newly-freed man replied. Read it and laugh at the glory of the use of language from someone who was not very educated (apparently, he dictated the letter). But boy, could he make his points.
The president of the German parliament on Friday called on Germans to actively stand up against all forms of right-wing extremism, speaking on the 67th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"It is these people who set an example and demonstrate courage," Bundestag President Norbert Lammert told lawmakers in a speech commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The memorial day falls on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
In his speech, Lammert mentioned the series of murders blamed on a neo-Nazi cell uncovered in Germany last fall, saying that hate and violence were unacceptable. He also cited current research that shows 20 percent of German citizens are latently anti-Semitic.
"In Germany, that's 20 percent too much," he said.
It's 20 percent too much anywhere, of course. I do commend Germany on their ownership of their horrid past -- can't say the same for, say, France.
And while right-wing extremists are one place to look for anti-Semitism, I would say much, if not most anti-Semitism in the past ten years (longer, actually) has been coming from the left. I've got some relatives who are positively creepy in this regard. And if you check out your average anti-war/Occupy protest I would wager virtually anything that you'll see placards about the evils of Zionism and Israel and those tentacled Jews with their endless amounts of power and influence.
