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| It was a relatively warm day when the kids and their kids came over to meet their uncle |
Well with all the fall colors it is pretty out but still a sad time for me as the cold kills off all the flowers I spent hours growing. All that is left growing in the ground are pansies petunias snapdragons and mums and half of my baskets that I protect on cold nights. I spent hours digging up glads, dahlias and canna lilies. Also a lot of time was spent bagging dead zinnias, cosmos and sunflowers. Bags and bags. It is easier to run but harder to bike with the strong cold wind. It snowed on me during my run today
Elections. On the Michigan ballot is a proposal to protect women’s right to abortion. The main campaign against it argues that it’s too confusing so don’t vote for it. It’s not confusing at all.
A cousin’s husband sent an absurd video claiming that if your ten year old son wanted to transition to a girl, there would be nothing you could do to stop the surgery because the proposal says you can’t interfere with someone’s right to sterilize themselves. Trumpers are getting crazier and crazier I fear for this country
9 comments:
I loved the landscape photos.
Yes, things keep getting crazier and crazier. I just blogged about the local Republican candidate for US Congress who is receiving widespread Republican support despite leaving "likes" on the blogs of teenage in bikinis, and joking about strangling women to death during sex. Yet, Republicans are the people who claim the moral high-ground. Now, they're even denying that Pelosi's house was broken into. It really lowers my respect for my species.
Hi Snow. I am writing this the day after the election and I have more hope for mankind. Several of the Trump anointed lost so he seems to losing his hold Maybe he will go away? That despicable Oz whose whole platform was that local politicians should make decisions for women and that he doesn’t have a brain that injury like Fetterman. But at least he conceded he lost unlike the Arizona lady who will never concede. She is much scarier. She might be Trump’s successor
Michigan went even bluer so I am happy about that
As I type this it’s early in the morning and I’m on a river cruise near Regensburg Germany. Yesterday was in Nuremberg, Nazi center
Hi Snow
Somehow I seem to only be able to respond as anonymous but this is Sue
It’s the day after the election and I feel more positive about my fellow Americans especially in Michigan. Trump is losing his special powers. Despicable Oz lost but at least he conceded unlike Trump’s hand maiden in Arizona. She is scary
I am on a European cruise now. Yesterday was spent in Nuremberg where Hitler had his rallies. Lots of parelells
"Several of the Trump anointed lost...
I hear that he's pretty bummed about it too, but he will no doubt cheer himself by finding someone other than himself to blame. On the downside, this means that Trump might not run again, and I think it likely that he would be easier to beat him than some other candidate.
"Yesterday was in Nuremberg, Nazi center."
Which probably wasn't why you were there! I actually own a Nazi flag that was brought back from Italy during WWII. I considered burning it, but the more I pondered the possibility, the less I liked it because doing so would have represented to me the pointless destruction of history in the self-righteous belief that doing so would mean that I was noble. I then decided to send the flag to a museum, so I emailed the Jewish museum in LA. They said thank you very much but we have all the Nazi flags we need. However, here are some other ways you might get rid of it. I still own it though because it's such a powerful symbol, and it touched so very many lives that it's if it radiates all that waste, suffering, heroism, and struggle. To give but one small example, my father was on two merchant ships that were sunk by U-Boats (the second time he was near the boiler and was scalded). When he got old, I moved him from Mississippi to Oregon to live with Peggy and me. When I later learned that the government had decided to award veteran status to wartime Merchant Marines, I was able to obtain for my father his war record and--when he died--a flag.
If you've never seen the Ken Burn series about WWII, you might want to do so.
Trump did blame Melania for anointing Oz but she said, can’t blame me, I always choose wrong man
Yesterday we were in Regensburg. As with many of the medieval cathedrals, theirs had a “judensau” carved on its side (Jewish sow) these always featured a pig with either Jews suckling from it , eating its excrement or having sex with it. Regensburg went with the suckling Jews. Anyway the message is clear
God approves of your hatred
Fast forward five hundred or more years. There was a recent court case as the Jewish people want these highly offensive sculptures removed. Nope they stay , it’s history
Throughout Europe there is a project called ‘stumble stones’ which has 4 inch bronze plaques on the street engraved with the name of a Nazi victim in front of their last residence. There are so far 90,000 of these. All of the ones we have seen so far have been Jewish victims until yesterday. We found one near the Dom
Dr Johan Maier
Domprediger
Didn’t sound Jewish. I looked him up. He was a priest that urged his flock to surrender to the approaching Allies (which just happened to include Steve’s father) peacefully This was late April 1945
The gestapo arrested him and hung him and then fled themselves
Trump did blame Melania for anointing Oz but she said, can’t blame me, I always choose wrong man
Yesterday we were in Regensburg. As with many of the medieval cathedrals, theirs had a “judensau” carved on its side (Jewish sow) these always featured a pig with either Jews suckling from it , eating its excrement or having sex with it. Regensburg went with the suckling Jews. Anyway the message is clear
God approves of your hatred
Fast forward five hundred or more years. There was a recent court case as the Jewish people want these highly offensive sculptures removed. Nope they stay , it’s history
Throughout Europe there is a project called ‘stumble stones’ which has 4 inch bronze plaques on the street engraved with the name of a Nazi victim in front of their last residence. There are so far 90,000 of these. All of the ones we have seen so far have been Jewish victims until yesterday. We found one near the Dom
Dr Johan Maier
Domprediger
Didn’t sound Jewish. I looked him up. He was a priest that urged his flock to surrender to the approaching Allies (which just happened to include Steve’s father) peacefully This was late April 1945
The gestapo arrested him and hung him and then fled themselves
I googled Regensburg's judensau and also Johan Meier (who was only 39 when he was murdered). A long history of keeping hateful representations in place is hardly reason to justify their continuance, and the fact that the court decided to as it did could even be interpreted to mean that anti-Semitism is alive and well in Regensburg. However, what would have been right in that situation is not so obvious to me as I believe it is for you. I tried to come up with comparisons in this country, but I failed, because renaming a building, or banning a book, or removing a statue from a park would seem to be on a different level for various reasons.
Here in Eugene, a mob destroyed a statue of a woman and her two children (the work was entitled "Pioneer Mother") The mob's main objection was that the Oregon Trail Pioneers occupied land that had been stolen from the Indians but, of course, the members of the mob occupy the same stolen land, so why is okay for them but not for her? I heard an hour long interview with a man who had "cleansed" "Huckleberry Finn," of its racist language so that schools would feel good about having the book in their libraries. Yet that language was essential in depicting Huckleberry's evolution from a hardcore racist to someone who regarded black people as human beings rather than as property, someone who told God that he was willing to endure the fires of hell for helping a runaway slave because helping the slave was the right thing to do even if he had to do it in the face of God.
I really don't know what would have been right in Regensburg because there are, I believe, various ways that people who value human rights and human dignity could have looked at it. I do wish that the decision could have been made following prolonged community dialogue versus by the decision of a judge.
I think the judge thought it was wrong to rewrite history even if that put the Catholic Church on the wrong side of history. Steve who is Jewish thinks the Judensauen should stay
As for the pioneer woman sculpture just because they were on the frontlines of land stealing, with the government’s approval Unless the protesters are native Americans, they aren’t any better morally
I am back from our European adventure. Lots of history and I took lots of photos which I will eventually post
I am happy with the midterm elections. I was especially happy that the Arizona governor candidate lost despite her silver tongue. Maybe she will show up as trump’s running mate? Scary because she will be a better speaker than him
"Steve who is Jewish thinks the Judensauen should stay."
I'm pleased to hear this, if only because I feared that my uncertainty about its removal might have angered you. The more I thought about its presence, the stronger I felt that removing it would have the effect of white-washing history. After all, no one can look at something like that and fail to realize that hundreds of years of a hatred so strong that it was enshrined on church walls might result in something like the Holocaust.
Given that Steve is Jewish, perhaps he would especially appreciate a novel entitled "The Young Lions, which is set in WWII and has three main characters, all of whom are soldiers. Of the three, two are Americans and the third a member of the Nazi party. One of the two Americans, Noah Ackerman, is Jewish (as was the book's author), and suffered from the effects of anti-Semitism from bootcamp onward. It's a horrific story that is worth reading.
Given that you're in Germany, perhaps you haven't heard about the weekend crash of a heavy WWII bomber called the B17 Flying Fortress at an air show in Dallas. Of the 12,731 Fortresses produced, we're now down to only eight that can fly. These planes had ten man crews who were allowed to go home after they survived 25 missions, but the average survival rate was only 14 (120 B17s planes went down in just two bombing runs over a single ball bearing plant in the city of Schweinfurt). No doubt in your German travels, you've often been in places from which you could have once looked toward the sky and seen the icy contrails of hundreds of B17s.
I, too, feel better since the election because it appears that enough people are finally coming to their senses that, just maybe, Trumpism won't destroy the country.
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