Hello Cruel World
Monday, November 09, 2009
 
A different 9/11 remembrance

Since the start of this blog, usually on this day, running up to Remembrance/Armistice Day on 11/11, I commemorate the 9/11/1938 Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), also called the State Pogrom Night. Especially since, not only due remembrance for itself, it has examples of political and propaganda uses, twisted mendacity in language, an interlocking step-by-step spiral of violence and oppression, and breathtaking fraud (including monetary).

(2008) Crystalline: 9/11 (9th November)
(2007): It's 9/11 (9th November) again – Kristallnacht
(2006): Anniversary: The First 9/11 — Broken Glass & Ashes
(2004): The First 9/11 — Broken Glass & Ashes
(2003): Repeating the Kristallnacht 9/11 entry from 2002
(2002): Remember Kristallnacht – 9/11/38 [In Australia 9/11 is November 9th]

One year, I remembered another sad incident associated with this date: (2005): 9/11 Returns: Stari Most at Mostar

There's a collection of historic German November 9ths at selenak's LiveJournal, Musings, originally from 2008, in the almost-immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's election as US President. (http://selenak.livejournal.com/429403.html)
(The Yorkshire Ranter added a couple more in comments.)

But this year has happier memories. It's the 20th Anniversary of the 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall. Perched on my grandmother's living room floor watching the B & W television showing coverage of the Building of The Wall in 1961 is one of my earliest datable memories. So reliving those days and nights 28 years after that and 51 after "the start of The Holocaust" — well within a human lifespan — it's good to celebrate its joy.

Here's some quick links to places where thoughts and memories were shared about this: It was twenty years ago today. As well as some in the Musings LJ post mentioned above, this year's 9/11 there is called Freiheit schöner Götterfunken... (a poem later altered to Freude schöner Götterfunken).



































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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 11/09/2009 04:14:00 am
Saturday, August 29, 2009
 
Friend's Stroke: fortnight report

Two weeks on, he's half-opened one, then both, eyes, and shown some more responses. Still has a nasogastric feed tube, lots less IV stuff though. Breathing 'spontaeously', if through tubes into a tracheostomy, means they will soon move him out of Intensive Care so the machines he's not needing can be used by someone in direr need.

So, progress! Small and slow, but some. We push for more.
Thanks for all and any who've wished him well.

For my birrhday we took in some cake & other goodies, had a couple of bits ourselves, then sliced up the rest and scattered it around for the nurses and relatives in the Unit. Felt good to share; they've a hard job.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 8/29/2009 11:30:00 pm
Monday, August 03, 2009
 
A Birthday Sonnet (Even Keats made this thought seem a little whiny)

Sonnet
: "If I should die some night and never see
Dawn's light, my email, and my morning tea,
I face the thought with equanimity,
In fact, it would be worse for you than me.
Not that I want to die and turn to clay.
I'm only half-way through, I want to stay,
I want more years, more books, more chance to say
I love my life, my work, my friends, my day.
But I would know for sure the mystery
Perhaps go on to live again and grow
But even if there's nothing, I would know.
My death I view with calm philosophy
It's other people's death that makes me rage
Weep, grieve, and curse, demand another page."
Jo Walton (papersky: BlueJo)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 8/03/2009 02:02:00 am
Thursday, April 30, 2009
 
Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams

Between ANZAC Day and Mother's Day, as April turns over into May, Sydney feels the breath of winter approaching. There are birthdays and anniversaries important to me in the first week of May, immovably connected with the memory of walking out in the chill of dawn, watching puffs of breath mist out into the air. Daylight saving's ended; dark closes in earlier & earlier; thoughts can turn towards larger themes.
From Bartleby, an excellent & useful site:
Modern Essays, 1921. (Christopher Morley, ed.) 30. Beyond Life by James Branch Cabell:
… romance tricks him, but not to his harm. For, be it remembered that man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams. Romance it is undoubtedly who whispers to every man that life is not a blind and aimless business, not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that his existence is a pageant (appreciatively observed by divine spectators), and that he is strong and excellent and wise: and to romance he listens, willing and thrice willing to be cheated by the honeyed fiction. The things of which romance assures him are very far from true: yet it is solely by believing himself a creature but little lower than the cherubim that man has by interminable small degrees become, upon the whole, distinctly superior to the chimpanzee …
And it is this will that stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and the affairs of earth, not as they are, but “as they ought to be,” which we call romance …

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 4/30/2009 09:27:00 pm
Sunday, March 29, 2009
 
An Anniversary Villanelle

One Art
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
    so many things seem filled with the intent
    to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

    Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
    of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
    places, and names, and where it was you meant
    to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

    I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
    next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
    some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
    I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

    – Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
    I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
    the art of losing’s not too hard to master
    though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

                        — Elizabeth Bishop
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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 3/29/2009 02:38:00 am
Sunday, November 09, 2008
 
Crystalline: 9/11 (9th November)
Crystal Night, 1938
When, on November 10 1938 at 3 o'clock in the morning, I drove up the Berlin Tauentzien in a taxi, I heard glass tinkling on both sides of the street. It sounded as if dozens of wagons full of glass were being turned over. I looked out and saw, on the left and right, a man standing in front of about every fifth house, each using an iron rod to smash store windows with mighty blows. The job done, he walked over to the next shop with a measured pace and, with powerful calmth, dedicated himself to that one's still intact window-pane.
Except for these men, wearing black breeches, riding boots and civil jackets, there was no human being in sight. The taxi turned into the Kurfürstendamm. Here, too, men were standing at regular distances and with long bars smashed "Jewish" show windows. Each one seemed to have some five to ten windows for a job. Cascades of glass fell down, crushing on the concrete. It sounded as if the entire town existed of nothing but crashing glass. It was a drive right through a madman's dream.
Between Uhlandstraße and Knesebeckstraße I asked to stop, opened the door and was just putting my right foot on the street, when a man emerged from the nearest tree and softly and energetically told me: "Don't get out! Drive on at once!" It was a man in hat and cloak. "But listen", I started, "I just wanted to…" "No", he interrupted threateningly. "Getting out is forbidden! Get on your way at once!" He pushed me back into the car, beckoned the driver, threw the door shut, and the driver obeyed. On we went through the ghostly "splinter night".

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 11/09/2008 10:55:00 am
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
 
Poem from Bluejo's Journal; Birthday; Testament

Bluejo's Journal, 14th October 2008:
She dances golden, in a drift of leaves,
she dances stark, skeletal, in the dark,
she dances in a cloud of solid green,
she dances with her branch and leaf and bark.

She dances with the birds, the wind, the street,
with child in stroller, with a hurrying nun,
with gardners, shoppers, lovers as they meet,
she dances, as we dance, around the sun.>
My late father's birthday. He now is "Rolled round in earths diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees".
Made my Last Will & Testament today. At least a first best draft of it (signed, sealed, witnessed). Avoiding for once my besetting sin of Making The Perfedt The Enemy of The Good, I settled for a simple, cut-down version which at least gives a start, and will avoid for my survivors the hideous mess I was landed in by Chris' death intestate.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 10/15/2008 01:42:00 am
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
 
PZ Myers: Darwin Year begins now

Pharyngula The Darwin year begins…NOW!:
It was on 1 July 1858, 150 years ago today, that the idea of natural selection was first presented to the public in a joint reading of Darwin's and Wallace's papers at the Linnean Society of London
Some Darwin-related Links
    Darwin Today - a joint initiative of Research Councils UK aimed at educating the public about evolution
    The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online; free, includes items not in public domain
    Works by Charles Darwin at Project Gutenberg; public domain
    Darwin Correspondence Project: Text and notes for most of his letters
    The Darwin Digital Library of Evolution
    On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Free LibriVox Audiobook
    Digitized titles by Charles Darwin in Botanicus.org
    Works by or about Charles Darwin in libraries (WorldCat catalogue)
    Charles Darwin at the Open Directory Project
    Institut Charles Darwin International
    A Pictorial Biography of Charles Darwin
    Twelve different portraits of Charles Darwin, National Portrait Gallery, U.K.
    Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a Racist

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 7/01/2008 10:12:00 pm
Monday, June 30, 2008
 
A Century of Tunguska

Monday, June 30, 2008 — One hundred years ago today, something exploded over Siberia
At a little after seven in the morning, settlers near the north end of Lake Baikal saw something bright appear in the sky, crossing to the northwest leaving a trail behind it. As it touched the horizon, it was transformed into a column of black smoke in which flames could be seen. Soon after, they felt a thump in the ground and heard a series of bangs that they compared to artillery in the distance. Other villagers to the west of them gave similar descriptions. Later scientific expeditions would locate the ground zero of the explosion in a remote area among the tributaries of the Podkamennaya (Stony or Lower) Tunguska River. Seismic stations around the world recorded the ground movement and set the time at precisely 07:17:11 AM.
(An excellent telling of the history in the 'Archy' blog)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 6/30/2008 10:04:00 pm
Saturday, May 03, 2008
 
May Day plus One

Mother's Birthday.
Anniversary at work. Went into work after doctor's appointment at lunchtime, where I felt sick and weak and had to lie down. Still didn't feel that good, but plugged on with a bit of trying to set up changed stuff following merger of company. My immediate boss had taken the day off for a long weekend, so I couldn't talk about leave & such. I guess they weren't expecting me — I said I'd try to get in, but couldn't say for sure, and had missed Special Merger Event recently with similar message — so there was no particular celebration for the anniversary.

Decided that sickness & such was probably due to lack of proper food combining badly with chemotherapy drugs, so ate food I'd planned on saving for dinner. Also bought ‘karmically correct’ chicken dinner with roast veggies from Roaming Bird near Coles in Pyrmont. Then friends invited me to their place for dinner, so although I was still shaky, ended up well-nourished and watched good Fellini film called “Intervista”.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 5/03/2008 10:55:00 pm
Saturday, March 01, 2008
 
Sydney Mardi Gras

Thirtieth Anniversay. Paranoid about immune suppression, as well as very tired and weak, so just had a quiet time. Very early on took some photos of crowd, caught a distant glimpse of the march, went & sat in pizza parlour to rest, home, then watched the aftermath from the roof; crowds moving up & down my street, and sitting in the local cafes. Not a night anyone living here can sleep early, far too much noise: whistles, cheers, fireworks – 'Nessun Dorma'.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 3/01/2008 11:20:00 pm
Monday, December 31, 2007
 
New Year's Eve Fireworks in Sydney 2007-2008


Wal, that t'were right purdy. I'm back to eat dinner after watching the 'family fireworks' over Sydney Harbour. They start at 9pm AEST, just as the last colour deepens into a dark sky.

There was talk about there being new '3D' pyrotechnic effects. I think they meant those ones that seemed to be in spiral or lozenge shapes, and some odd-looking ones that might have been the outlines of cubes. Lots of a variety of the classical types too, I like the multi-puffball, where a dozen or so small dandelion-seedhead-shaped puffs arc out gracefully into a near-sphere from a central explosion. The pyrotechnicians use about 14 laptop computers (half are backups in case of failure) to coordinate and set off the 'cues'.

Looking forward to midnight, when we get more, plus a special display on the Harbour Bridge — that'll be the one you'll probably see clips from on New Year Celebrations coverage. I'm not well enough for the buffeting of the crowds in the streets and parks, so one of the advantages of the flat near the hospital I picked is that the roof (with clotheslines) is accessible and has a view towards the harbour (from one corner you can even see the bridge).

Wishing all reading whatever they hope for the future turns out, and their fears don't.

This latest medical trouble was a shock, and quite rocked me back on my heels. Disruptions from holiday closures and people being away means we still don't quite know what the situation is yet, more tests are scheduled over the next weeks. I just finished watching all of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer on DVD, and that and Hogfather might have helped my morale.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 12/31/2007 09:49:00 pm
Thursday, March 29, 2007
 
Five Years

Dirge without Music


I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,–
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
(via)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 3/29/2007 04:59:00 am
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
 
St Valentine's Eve — Hilton Bomb
There didn't seem to be very much made of the 25th Anniversary of our 'terrorist bomb', back in 2003, and the memorial actually disappeared for quite a while, first during pre-Olympic developments, then major refurbishment of the Sydney Hilton. Luckily, a plaque has re-appeared, moved to a slightly obscure pillar. But I'm hoping that next St Valentine's Eve, the 30th Anniversary, will bring some recognition (and perhaps some related government papers will get released).

Restored memorial plaque to the 3 dead in the Sydney Hilton Bombing, after major refurbishment of hotel.
mez-at-the.blogspot.com/darkroom/2005/08/good-news-on-restoration-of-hilton.html
"To the memory of Alec Carter, Arthur Favell and Paul Burmistriw, two city council garbagemen and a 1st class police constable, who were killed here as a result of a bomb explosion on 13th February, 1978. Forever in our thoughts. Your workmates."
Update February 2008: Some of the coverage of the 30th Anniversary (no photo of the new memorial yet):
ABC News – Sydney Hilton blast to be remembered 30 years on (www.abc.net.au/ news/ stories/ 2008/ 02/ 13/ 2161121.htm)

Sydney remembers Hilton bombings
February 13, 2008 - 4:35PM
news.smh.com.au/ sydney-remembers-hilton-bombings/ 20080213-1s0q.html

A smile, a morning hello and their world exploded
David Humphries with Paul Bibby
February 14, 2008
www.smh.com.au/ articles/ 2008/ 02/ 13/ 1202760398954.html
www.smh.com.au/ news/ national/ a-smile-a-morning-hello-and-their-world-exploded/ 2008/ 02/ 13/ 1202760398954.html
TIME and counselling have eased her pain, but Rosamund Dallow-Smith's campaign for justice is no nearer success than at any time in the 30 years since serendipity spared her life by inches but ruined innocence around her.

"I had just walked past him, smiled at him, and taken just my first step inside the staff entrance when I heard this enormous explosion,"


City of Sydney Re-dedicates Plaque Commemorating Hilton Hotel Blast Victims (Sydney City Council site)
12 February 2008
www.sydneymedia.com.au/ html/ 3513-city-of-sydney-re-dedicates-plaque-commemorating-hilton-hotel-blast-victims.asp

Sydney Hilton Hotel blast commemorated
February 13, 2008 - 7:44AM
news.theage.com.au/ sydney-hilton-hotel-blast-commemorated/ 20080213-1rwb.html

Remember the Hilton bombing
by Premier Morris Iemma
February 13, 2008 12:00am
www.news.com.au/ dailytelegraph/ story/ 0,22049,23202422-5001031,00.html

Articles : Scams and Scoundrels
The Hilton Fiasco
by Ben Hills
12 February 1998
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
www.benhills.com/ articles/ articles/ SCM38a.html

Current Wikipedia version of Sydney Hilton Bombing

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 2/13/2007 11:26:00 pm
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
 
The First 9/11 - Broken Glass & Ashes
(In Australia 9/11 is November 9th)

Remember Kristallnacht - 9/11/38


Two sites of many
www.remember.org/fact.fin.kristal.html
www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/kristallnacht.html

November 9th is still a pertinent anniversary: "Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass".

In 1938, incensed by hearing of his family in Germany being forced into "relocation camps" in the November snow under Nazi laws, an adolescent Jew in Paris shot and killed a German diplomat.

Goebbels used this for propaganda about conspiracies against Germany, inciting Germans to "rise in bloody vengeance", culminating on the long winter night of November 9th in organised widespread violence. Non-Jews who protested were beaten. Police and firemen watched people brutalized, buildings smashed, looted and burnt.
Morning footpaths were impassable under an icy glittering crust of broken glass and ashes.

Lack of public protest encouraged the Nazi government to pass even more repressive laws in the next few months. Prominent Germans who protested were arrested. Ordinary Germans who protested were beaten up.

Can we hope that we've learnt from last century's several examples of disasters wrought by stirring up - for power, for gain, for dogmatic religion or ideology - the darker side we all have?

From www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/kristallnacht.html
what disturbed the German populace was less the sight of synagogues burning (fires take place all the time, after all -- it depends on the scale) than of the savage and wasteful vandalism that confronted bystanders everywhere, disrupting the clean and orderly streets (to say nothing of consumer convenience). What was indeed memorable was the sheer quantity of broken glass. A third point was the economic outcome of this massive breakage. Germany didn't produce enough plate glass to repair the damages (synagogues did not have to be replaced -- quite the contrary). The result was twofold: the need to import glass from Belgium (for sorely needed cash) and the outrage of indemnifying the Jewish community to pay for the damages.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 11/09/2004 09:09:00 am

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/ . Lives in Australia/New South Wales/Sydney, speaks English. Eye color is hazel. I am what my mother calls unique. My interests are photography, reading, natural history/land use, town planning, sustainability.

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Australia, New South Wales, Sydney, English, photography, reading, natural history, land use, town planning, sustainability.