Lightning bugs

I just saw the first lightning bug of the season! It is quite a bit sooner than I remember seeing them, but it is so hot that the sleeping critters must have been awakened earlier than normal.

Lightning bugs always remind me of summer evenings when I was younger. I loved to catch them, put them in a glass mayonnaise jar, punch holes in the metal lid, put a bit of grass in the bottom, and keep them next to the bed while I slept. I don't remember them glowing much during the night, and they had a unique and somewhat disgusting smell in the morning. the magic was over once the sun rose.

So what my fellow lightning bug catchers do with them? My brother used to smear them just as they lit, creating a long glowing line on the driveway or sidewalk. While fascinating to see the line, it was a bit too cruel to me. Kristen had a series of bug houses, sometimes even several at one time, and would fill them with not only lightning bugs, but just about every kind of small critter that inhabited the yard. Her bugs survived, and were often let go the next morning to be caught again.

It wasn't until I read children's books with my own children that I realized that lightning bugs lived in the grass and that the males flew about to look for the females, who were often higher in the trees. I remember one story where the slow dance from the grass to the trees was described in reverential tones.

Lightning bugs are one of the very few bugs that do not scare or bother me (the other are the cicadas). They seems very peaceful hovering, lighting. They are easy to catch. They do not bite or sting. What's not to like?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Sabbatical approved!

I was just catching on the blogs I follow, and noticed that Sue was reminiscing on what she was doing one year ago during her sabbatical.  That started connections to form to my life, since one year from now I will be on sabbatical.

I've laid out a fairly ambitious plan for the 4 month break (alas, no longer, since only one semester is allowed, and as chair I have to be back in May and will also be leading a study program abroad in May).  First, and most importantly, I need to finish the dissertation.  At a minimum, a full draft must be completed.  I look forward to the editing, but getting that draft out is troublesome, and common, as I have heard from just about everyone I know.

In March next year, I hope to report that my plan was successful.

Bis dann.

Coffee pots

 June 2013 update:  Just found this as part of synching with new iPhone and just posting now.  Coffee pot is working well and consistently, and I have learned that I do not need to drink one full liter of coffee every day :)

When my Braun Aroma Master coffee pot died a few weeks ago, I needed to find my back-up four cup Mr Coffee brewer until able to find a replacement.  While it is usually functional, I have to be very vigilant in placing the filter, minding the grind (not too fine) and measuring the coffee or it overflows coffee and grounds onto the counter and in the coffee grounds, necessitating a refiltering before drinking.  This is the reason the still functional pot sits in the back of the storage cupboard, reserved for emergencies.

Which brewer shall be the replacement?  I like the Braun, it has served me well, and first look at a updated Braun model.  There is one that looks great, with many of the same features that attracted me to my recently defunct one some 15 or 20 years ago.  Alas, none of this brand are currently available in the US.  Then I remembered the great coffee I had visiting Ele (Rosenheim) and search for the Krups 458, which forces the water, placed below the pot up and over the grounds.  It seems to be perpetually out of stock in the US, so I wrote to the company in Germany for guidance, and in what I am coming to see as a pattern in German service, was given a website to go to, along with the assurance that of course it was available.  The website does not sell to the public, all links there did not sell the item, and the coup de grace was that a couple days later, the item disappeared from all Krups sites.  Olcotts, a California company listed it for sale, so I ordered it, only to receive an email three days later that the item was non longer available. Screw you Krups.  This model is your highest rated one, consistently getting rave reviews, and this is the one you aren't producing to meet demand?!

I did not want to get something made in China, so the search continued.  I finally settled on a model made in Holland, the Technivorm, which comes with a 5 year warranty.  It has different features than my former machine, the neatest of which include guaranteed precise temperature of the water and a thermal carafe with NO heating element.  That may sound odd, but I will not have to worry about leaving the coffee pot on all day (it's happened more than a couple times).  A coffee bean company in Connecticut serves as the importer, and offered a nice deal a, including two pounds of coffee, a packet of filters, coffee maker cleaner and no shipping.  Ordered, and now on the way, the tracking information states I will have my Christmas present to myself on Tuesday.  I'm really looking forward to forming a relationship with my new machine.

Update:  the machine as arrived!  First pot--WAY too strong for me.  Second pot--better, but still too strong.  Today's pot--discovered that the measure scoop that came with the machine is equal to two of my former scoops (a tablespoon).  I used my tablespoon sand tried to guess what I'd need, since I was used to either 6 or 8 oz cups and this model is based on 4 oz cups, and the water measure is based on 1 liter. I cannot do math before coffee, and the result is as bit weak, but really full flavored.  Definitely on the right path, I'll add a bit more tomorrow.

Crazy men: The relationship between giftedness and inability to form relationships.

Ruth and I have looked at a couple of crazy people in Vienna. Freud, father modern psychoanalysis, seems to have been quite the grand poo bah. The home movies edited and narrated by his daughter Anna show Freud as the center of the entire family, with everyone catering to him while he lay in a bed/chaise covered due to his illness. Other videos show him with his grandsons practically hopping through the countryside in what appears to be in good, if not perfect, health. He did die about one year after (finally) fleeing Austria in 1938 for London, so reports of his I'll health most probably were correct. Still, his role in the family was undeniable as the wise father figure whom everyone deferred to. In one essay on women, he stated that he had a good marriage as his wife was neither very abnormal nor was she often ill. AARGH, nothing worse than a sick wife. He was able to live his life because his wife bore children, took care of them, catered to him so that he would be free to read, think and write. Oh, and meet and counsel female neurotic patients...

Our next stop was the Friedensreich Hundertwasser exhibit at the Kunsthaus Wien, a building designed by Hundertwasser (Stowasser) along with the apartment/office complex of the Hundertwasserhaus. His art work has always fascinated me, and the museum had a large collection of paintings, graphic silkscreens, and architectural models. The most fascinating part of the museum was the film about his life and art with him as the focus of the film and which he narrated. This guy was completely unable to relate to others, since he had dedicated his life, and all his energy, to exploring how nature and architecture needed to live in harmony. He stated that he did not want to enter into a relationship with a woman since could afford no distractions, and would not want to lose time from his work. Interestingly, he sailed around to various points in the world, constantly painting, with a (possible companion) who organized the functioning of the boat, and presumably his meals. There was a poignant scene with his mother where she poured his coffee, added the milk, and sliced a piece of cake for him. This man had caretakers so that he could completely give his life to his life as an artist. Other scenes documented his work, e.g., lying on a slab of ice in a small brook, watching the patterns in the melting ice or sitting nude on a beach, painting. He apparently like to be nude, the first layer of all humans.

David Černý and other humor in Praha

Today the penny dropped. David Černý is the same artist who ran afoul of the EU with his installation celebrating the Czech presidency of the EU in which he ridiculed just about every European nation by using mean stereotypes in the project. The same David Černý who designed the babies, the hanging Freud, the peeing men in front of the Kafka museum, and painted the former Russian tank pink (now floating on a raft in the river). Ruth and I had a mission--find all the various Černý installations around the town. Accomplished (except for the TV tower, which is just too far, and there are representative babies by the river).

The peeing duo at the Kafka museum supposedly write out quotations of famous Czech people, and people there can text messages so that they will write out that message.

One thing is certain, his art is meant to be interactive, and the tourists here do just that. They climb on the babies (oddly disturbing)and play with the peeing statues' winkies or just rinse their hands in the stream.

Photos to follow!

Rituals

Rituals

After talking with Ondrej and his Hanna, I've been thinking about rituals.  His included rolling cigarettes (with the small filter hanging out of his mouth while he prepared the paper and tobacco), making coffee in a mokka-kanne, and brewing tea by a variety of processes.  I asked out the rituals associated with absinthe, which permeates this city:
1. Collect absinthe, a fireproof glass, a perforated spoon, a sugar cube (invented in CZ!), and matches.
2. Balance the spoon on top of the glass.  Place the sugar cube on the spoon.
3. Pour absinthe over the cube into the glass.
4. Light the sugar cube and let the flame melt it into the glass.  The absinthe in the glass will also be aflame.  Let it burn for about 5 seconds to burn off some of this (very) high proof alcohol.
      -alternate method: pour a thin line of sugar onto the center backbone of the perforated spoon, dip this carefully into the absinthe already in the glass to moisten it, place the spoon over the glass and light the moistened sugar
5. Put out the flame:
     Men: put palm over the burning drink (tough guys)
     Women (who should not even be drinking this):  place a coaster over the top of the glass.
6. Drink slowly and have ABSOLUTELY no more than one drink per evening out.
7. Follow with a glass of orange juice and/or water.
  OR: with an espresso to experience a unique effect of the absinthe opening the arteries and the espresso providing a caffeine buzz.

Seems like a lot to do to enjoy the bitter, slightly medicinal drink.  But why not allow the ritual to make the drink special?   

What other rituals do we follow? And do the rituals bring their own form of enjoyment and enhance that pleasure?  

The first thing I (and I am sure many of you) do in the morning is to make and drink coffee.  For this adventure I packed tea bags just in case I could 't get coffee immediately.  Well, the hotel neither has a coffee maker nor a water boiler, and I have to wait for coffee until the "Bohemia Bagel" shop opens at 7:30 am to get coffee.  Their coffee is very good, and they serve a bottomless cup, so I have no complaints, but I miss the ritual of grinding beans, measuring the water, hearing the water begin to boil, and finally smelling the brew. On the basis of just this one example, I'd have to say I enjoy and need my rituals.

Traveling provides the opportunity to examine habits and rituals, as well as the necessity of adjusting rituals and adding new (if only temporary) ones.  In the last week and a half, I've changed my laundry routines (daily rather than weekly), my eating habits (big cooked breakfast since it's included in the hotel price) along with lighter cold lunch and dinner, my walking habits (more in general and many more steps), etc.  So what traveling really does is to force me to live a bit differently in a different place by removing or changing rituals.  I bet coffee will taste wonderfully familiar when I get back home.

Update on student handwriting

:-)
The final exams for fall quarter included an unrehearsed dictation, but one that included words from the first quarter and some from previous dictations.  So how did the students do on this?  Amazingly well!  In fact, the majority of students wrote with fewer mistakes that I would have expected.  While this is anecdotal, I feel they did much better than what students wrote (not dictations necessarily) in the past.  Will this skill transfer to their general writing?  Curious minds want to know.

Schreibschrift

Who would have thought that the request that students write out a text to practice for dictation would have stirred up such a hornet's nest?  The first assignment was near impossible to read at times, and then I noticed that only ONE student had written in script.  I changed the directions for the second text, asking that it be written in cursive.  This was one of those days where we worked up till the last moment, so I told the students I would post the homework on Blackboard, something I did in addition to the usual in-class assignment of homework activities.  For this assignment, I give the students the text, which they have to write out by hand two times, and then trace the capital letters in a contrasting color.  The purpose is not only to practice the spelling of the words, but to call students' attention to the fact that capitalization (and the lack of it with some words) is different than English.

As soon as I entered the room before class the next day, a Wednesday, I was inundated by grumbling complaints about the assignment.  Clearly, I had poked the next and the hornets were a-buzzin'.  I heard all sorts of explanations of why this was unfair, including "I don't know how," which upon questioning was not true.  All but one had learned how to write cursive (the one being a Russian student, who had learned to write Cyrillic, but not our alphabet), but had not practiced this kind of writing.  I also heard "I don't know how to form the letters," and "It takes too long to do."  Both of these were quickly addressed.  The book has an illustration of all the letters in cursive German script (they could copy it and thus learn how to write German script, an added bonus).  I was happy to hear that it took longer, as that was exactly I had hoped they would do in the practice, i.e., slowly consider how the words are spelled and capitalized.  In the end I did compromise, saying that at least one of the two copies of the text had to be in traditional cursive.

Now I sit looking at the assignments, and am moved by the absolute beauty of some of the students' handwriting.  Some indeed did look at the German letters, and their writing reminds me of German pupils' school handwriting.  Others had to slow down, and now I am able to read what letters they wrote.  Some wrote both copies in cursive, others just the one copy, where the printed copy was also considerably more legible than in the previous assignment.

In my opinion, this is a serendipitous success.  And although I do not stay up late at night thinking of ways to torment students (as I sometimes tell them), I will continue to require at least one copy in cursive handwriting.

City Council Meeting

Report and analysis coming soon.  I've got work to do!

UPDATE: almost one one year later--I probably won't get to this.

Stasi files

Frank and I have worked together for a number of years on this exchange.  We work well together, but there is a bit more to the relationship we have created than just co-workers. I have always found our working relationship to be quite pleasant, in that we enjoy each other's company.  After we had discussed the troubles that semester conversion will bring, and how we will not be able to either come or host students in the foreseeable future (serious problems for sure), he made some yummy cappuccino, we started talking about the unlikelihood--25 years ago--of either of us even considering that we would some day be working together.  We talked about changes in politics (now called the peaceful revolution/Wende--the term political changes is gone).  He asked whether I had seen The Lives of Others (I teach it in the film course), and how intensely that film had affected him.  If you are not familiar with this film, please let me know and I'll get you a copy to watch.  It is one of the best films I have ever seen, and as Frank (and nearly every other fomer GDR citizen I know) reported, the accuracy of portrayal of life in the GDR is spot on.

He said that watching that film made him consider whether he had a Stasi (secret police) file, so he went to Berlin and asked to see his file.  Sure enough, he had one, but the most shocking part was when it was begun.  It started when he was 12 years old.  I asked why so early; had he been a trouble-maker?  On the contrary, at 12 he had to make (ok, probably his parents had a role in this decision) choice.  Would he go the sports specialty training and school (in Oberhof, where all the East German winter sports medal winners lived/trained--it's about 20 km from here), or would he go to college prep school.  He ended up in college prep, but noted that anyone who could consider this intense sport training was checked (along with neighbors, teachers and friends).  Why?  They were all considered possible deserters.  So most of his entries were about this topic. 

The other entries were tied to his work during his military service.  Since he had no relatives in the west, and since he was married, he was considered a low risk for desertion, and served in Potsdam, outside of Berlin, at the Glienicke Bridge over the Havel river.  If you have ever seen movies (the 1960s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or even news articles about Cold War spy exchanges, where one spy stands at one end of a bridge, the other spy on the other side, and they silently walk past each other in the exchange to their "home" country, this is the bridge where that happened.  His memories of the time were troubling to him and to me.

So who kept tabs on him?  Turns out it was his best friend from school.  They met once after a longer absence, both in ther 20s, and during the conversation Frank noted that his friend was unable to answer some questions, and then admitted that he worked for the Stasi.

Frank's summation:  There was nothing glamorous about the GDR and anyone who wants that system again is nuts.  Of course, there are old and young communists here who want precisely that, just as there are strict conservatives who want no part of what they did.  It seems there is a middle ground emerging consisting of centrists, include the new "Pro Bockwurst," abbreviated PBW, a bit more on the left of center, who grew out of the university and want to incorporate reason and transparency into the process.  But more about them later...