What's On Your Mind Atm??

Started by PearlThompsonsBloodflower, January 03, 2018, 22:52:40

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MeltingMan

Quote from: SueCIs the work finished now?

No, not at first. The neighboring town, i.e. Bad Oeynhausen, has to be bypassed extensively anyway. Now I was in Eidinghausen today (by bike) and it doesn't look much better there. Even on the zebra crossing, pedestrians / cyclists are no longer safe. As long as the weather is nice and still bright enough in the morning, I use the bike. 😎
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

MeltingMan

A cute antique shop with strange opening times. Yes, yes, we are spoiled by the Internet, but who doesn't open until twelve o'clock and close on Wednesdays all day !? Not even doctors' offices do that. Today was the second time I stood in front of closed doors and not only that. The brass candlestick I picked out in July was bought by someone else, but I expected that. So don't complain about 'dying inner cities' and that customers are migrating to Amazon. It's your own fault! 🤨
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

SueC

Too right, @MeltingMan, and good on you for supporting them!  :smth023

Mike Scott wrote a song about that:


This song is super live when he gets the audience singing the chorus bwahahahaha!

PS: I found a previous post with the live version which has Brett's entertaining commentary on the band's keyboard player... :lol:

SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: MeltingMan on September 08, 2021, 16:28:46Today was the second time I stood in front of closed doors and not only that. ...
So don't complain about 'dying inner cities' and that customers are migrating to Amazon.

Sadly this "trend" has grown stronger due to Corona. (Shops closing, inner cities slowly dying.)

I haven't forgotten how I went to a local shop to get something for my office (I always bought it there), when I asked I got the reply "we don't order those any more, look on the internet". Oh my and I'd come to them to support the local business...  :1f633:
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

@Ulrich, that's like reading about how the box office in the US on a recent holiday weekend had almost identical takings as pre-pandemic, but with only half the movies. :pensive:  Meaning, we're losing the small independent stuff and the diversity, as always happens with this bloody economic/political system we are cursed with, which as time goes by impoverishes basically everything - ecosystems, human cultures and languages, the majority of people on the planet economically - in order to obscenely overstuff the pockets of the people pulling the strings. :pouting-face

And small businesses are outcompeted by large, not simply by economies of scale but by regulations lobbied for by big business specifically designed to make life hard for small business by stealth. And ordinary people like you and me pay taxes that are overwhelmingly funnelled off to corporations who themselves generally don't pay tax via "legal" (because of who makes the rules) loopholery and money disappearing to the Cayman Islands... with the result that the weathiest people on the planet are now parasitic on the rest of humanity and the planet's ecosystems, minerals etc.

I find that so depressing, because it's so hard to do anything against this entrenched systematic corruption. Here in Australia, we had this thing called "Jobkeeper" which was paid to EMPLOYERS not employees during the pandemic, and as a result, over $13 billion (Australian dollars) was paid to large corporations who went on to report vastly increased profits next accounting period, and who paid their executives massive bonuses - during a pandemic. Those $13 billion were paid by taxpayers like Brett and me, not by big business - to big business.

But our government, having knowingly done this, is refusing to force these corporations to pay back this money, while they ARE forcing pensioners who got extra pandemic funding to pay back every penny paid to them in error...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/13/pensioner-slugged-with-jobkeeper-debt-accuses-coalition-of-double-standards

Because that's how it always is, and I honestly don't know how this can be changed, because democracy isn't doing it - our government will probably be re-elected next term in spite of their corruption and incompetence. Not by me, but there's enough people in Australia who are either greedy enough or stupid enough to re-elect them - and the other major party in the duopoly we have is just slightly to the left of these right-wing neoliberals, and lost their backbone years ago, and since we don't have proportional representation in this country, but winner-takes-all like in the US and UK, minor-party voters simply don't get representation, just your vote ends up with whichever of the two main parties is considered less evil by your party of choice.

Maybe I should be on the ranting thread today. It's so dire and depressing. And while I'm at it - it occurred to me that we were all born into a cult. The cult is called growth economics. It posits things that aren't rooted in reality (most glaringly, the myth that you can infinitely expand resource consumption on a finite planet - and that doing such a thing would be a good thing, even if it were possible), and it makes its priests and their immediate circle rich, at the expense of everyone and everything else.  :disappointed:
SueC is time travelling

MeltingMan

Quote from: SueCToo right, @MeltingMan, and good on you supporting them!

Maybe it will work the third time. But then this shop probably no longer exists. It is located in the old town of Minden / W. My consolation: I saved money for something else. 😏
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

MeltingMan

@Inbals Tarot

Scenarios and tricks were incredibly precise. Thank you!
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

SueC

QuoteBob Enyart, a conservative radio talk show host in Denver who urged listeners to boycott Covid-19 vaccines and vowed never to get a shot, has lost his life after contracting the virus, one of his co-hosts announced earlier this week, in what is but the latest instance of a right-wing radio pundit succumbing to the coronavirus.

On his show, entitled "Real Science Radio," Enyart falsely claimed the vaccines were developed using aborted fetal cells and wrote on the show's website blog in August advising "everyone to boycott Pfizer, Moderna and the Johnson & Johnson to further increase social tension and put pressure on the child killers."

According to a Washington Post report, Enyart "used to gleefully read obituaries of AIDS sufferers while cranking 'Another One Bites the Dust' by Queen," and repeatedly called for women who received an abortion to be sentenced to death.

At least four other right-wing radio hosts have died of Covid-19 since early August after each previously cast doubt on the safety of vaccines or fought against mask mandates and other public health initiatives.

Dick Farrel, a Florida-based conservative radio host and anchor on Newsmax TV who had called vaccines "bogus bullsh*t" and characterized Dr. Anthony Fauci as a "lying freak," died on August 4 due to complications from Covid-19.

In late August, Marc Bernier, who spoke out against Covid-19 vaccines and even called himself "Mr. Anti-Vax" on his radio show from Daytona Beach, died after battling the virus for weeks.

Jimmy DeYoung Sr., a religious radio broadcaster from Tennessee who published an interview advancing a conspiracy theory that the Pfizer vaccine would make women sterile and asked if the virus and vaccines were forms of governmental control, died on August 18 after contracting Covid.

Phil Valentine, a popular conservative talk radio host in Nashville who voiced vaccine skepticism and mocked Democrats' efforts to encourage people to get the jab, was killed by the virus in mid-August after reportedly telling his brother he regretted not being a "more vocal advocate" of getting inoculated.

from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/09/16/another-anti-vaccine-radio-host-is-killed-by-covid-adding-to-a-growing-list/?sh=48704cd73105

I freely admit to having zero compassion for these people. If you go around deliberately digging a pit for others, it's only fair that you fall into it yourself.

And with my biologist hat on, I'd have to point out that this seems to be a case of actual natural selection in modern humans.
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

It's a strange feeling, trying to meet someone you never met, but have "known" for 20 years. Back then, it started in a chat room (or something like that), switched to email soon, nowadays it's FB...

At some point, when we had both taken a walk in the same area, we joked about "what if we had actually met?"XD

Thus now, a real "meet & greet" is on the cards. Just a walk and a coffee perhaps. As I'll be driving by her town anyway on my way to a friend, it seemed like a good idea. Or is it? One thing is sure, we shouldn't let another 20 years go past...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

Quote from: UlrichOne thing is sure, we shouldn't let another 20 years go past...

I see the same way. Life is so short. However, it can also work 'the other way round', so you get to know someone 'in person' and after the third or fourth date you get the feeling that you may never see the person again or not for a very long time. This is due to the circumstances, some of which you don't know, or a lack of sympathy or bad timing (!). And when ten or twelve years have passed, the person has changed in such a way that you do not recognize him / her, and you have also changed yourself. The feeling of wasted time can be very frustrating.
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

Quote from: MeltingMan on September 19, 2021, 11:01:50it can also work 'the other way round', so you get to know someone 'in person' and after the third or fourth date you get the feeling that you may never see the person again or not for a very long time. This is due to the circumstances

Yeah, well, in this case the circumstances were: we had knocked up this "online" friendship and exchanged emails for years - for reasons unknown, we never even thought about meeting. (I knew she had a boyfriend and later got married, now has 2 kids.)
It was just a few years ago, when we started to realise that maybe we should finally get to meet, after such a long "distant" friendship.

There was no "romanticism" involved, thus we weren't there to "impress" each other. Nothing awkward, just 2 old friends chatting together. She's a nice person (something I knew before, of course). We enjoyed it and chatted for a long time in a café (sitting outside near the park) and later standing in the sunshine on the historic marketplace, before we said bye, with the intention of not waiting too long before the next meet-up (maybe in a few months). :cool
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

FAREWELLING ALICE



Today was Alice's funeral. There was a bit of a delay in when it was held, so her grandson from Melbourne could attend - currently that's a two-week quarantine coming into Western Australia, which has so far been outbreak-free. It was good to see him again. He still wears pointy shoes and still has glorious hair, and the aura of an arty person working in a museum, which is what he does. Indeed, he designed the lovely booklet commemorating Alice, which Brett (longtime graphic designer) praised thoroughly.

We've neither of us been to many funerals, not having extended family in Australia and not quite being at the age where your friends start dying regularly. Brett has only been to two - to Rob's ten years ago (Alice's husband), and to Alice's today. I've been to four; my step-grandfather's when I was very little (I remember my grandmother crying and his waxen appearance in the candlelit open casket), and the funeral of the mother of a 12-year-old boy I was teaching, when she died in a traffic accident; before Rob and Alice.

We parked up the road and walked in because we knew the official car park at Amity Rose would be overflowing. The large chapel was three-quarters full; many people had turned out to farewell Alice. A favourite poem was read, which spoke volumes about Alice's values.



Granddaughter Kate did the eulogy, filled with anecdotes that made the people assembled laugh: The things she called certain politicians, things she had said to Rob, how she accidentally served him up scraps that had been kept for the dog once by leaving out the wrong freezer container for him, and he actually ate it - all the more remarkable because she was an excellent cook. The courtship of young Alice and Rob, and how he proposed on the third date. Farm life and three children, and voraciously reading books all her life, and listening to international radio. Bottling the fruit, making magic in the kitchen, children with happy memories. Alice's glamorous streak which meant she and all her kids looked fabulous even working in a sheep pen. And indeed I remembered when she came with me in 2010 to help me appraise the farm block we now live on; there was no gate yet and she and I clambered through the barbed wire fence, Alice in her finery as usual, complete with handbag, deftly getting through the fence without tearing or scratching any of her outfit.

Stories of books and clothing being passed on routinely from Alice to others - so true; often, just as you were leaving, she'd say, "I've got a little something I was thinking I'd like you to have." Usually it was books; there's several on my coffee table now about French cafés, the Scandinavian countryside, women's huts and hideaways, etc; plenty more on the shelves, and it was always something about the subject or the story that had made her think it would fit something in your life, and that's always how it was for me.

I also have three scarves Alice gave me over the years, that she'd worn herself before passing them on to me and part of the loveliness was that you'd wear the scarf and it would smell of her and you'd feel as if she was hugging you in absentia. Two of them are particularly snuggly material; one a soft grey, one cherry red, long and elegant and wonderful to wear in winter. The third is lighter, very colourful and exotic.

There was no question what to wear to her funeral today, for me: The jacket I had on last time I saw her, a couple of months ago. She'd moved to a unit complex for seniors and I thought I'd go see her. We sat in the sun with a new friend and neighbour of hers - Kate, in her eulogy today, told us the two of them had bought a trolley full of wine and then took it back home together; at one stage, to cross the road, one of them pulling at the front, one pushing at the back and the cars stopping for them - and I'd met this exact new friend that day, and Alice had been very taken with my jacket, which is a stripey hippie number with a pixie hood with a long dangly tail that's been like a second skin from the moment I first tried it on. The day I last saw her, I had teamed the jacket with screamingly loud matching patchwork pants I'd originally bought as a joke but which kind of grew on me - they look like they are made from the curtains in an opium den. That's also exactly the kind of thing that appeals to Alice, and she was very happy to see me so colourful.

So I'd said to Brett, who had been lamenting the absence of black formal wear from his wardrobe for this occasion, "Don't worry about that! She'd not want you to wear black because of her funeral, she loved colours. Above all, she'd just want you to be you." Alas though, I personally couldn't wear my opium den pants because I've worn holes into them already and the one thing you'd definitely not want to happen at a funeral is for the seat of your pants to split, which is always a risk with well-worn pants. Therefore I settled for their more subdued fraternal twin.

And the necklace she'd given me many years ago. Alice was like that. She said, "I saw this and knew it was right for you, here it is." Charcoal grey transparent beads cut into intricate polyhedrons, finished with similar beads in solid cherry red, two each side with a silvery metal bipyramid spacer between each pair; another cherry red polyhedron and another silver bipyramid suspended from the catch, and then a three-dimensional silver heart pendant nearly an inch across. I'd never seen anything like it; it was lovely and I've worn it often when there's occasion to dress up; it's something timeless you can wear at age 30 or age 80.

Brett was resplendent in light grey pants, charcoal shirt and dark fitted corduroy jacket - the same jacket he wore at our wedding, the paperwork of which Rob and Alice were the official witnesses on. Alice would have smiled on us, and most of all because we came in holding hands, sat down holding hands, lined up to put flowers on her casket holding hands, and left holding hands - without even thinking about it; it's just one of those automatic things when something emotional is going on. Her granddaughter mentioned in the eulogy that it's a wonderful feeling growing up with grandparents who are still obviously in love with each other. Alice knew I'd had a difficult childhood and would have crossed her fingers and toes hoping our relationship would work out like that. She saw the early bumps in the road, but thankfully she also lived to see us get past them; when Brett puts his arms around me I feel like a ship in a safe harbour, and this is not a feeling I ever had in previous relationships, or growing up.

Listening to Kate's eulogy and stories today, I was laughing and crying, and very struck by how she said many of the same things I thought and wrote the night Alice was dying, about what she was like and why we all loved her so much.



I laughed and cried again when they did a slide show of her life, from childhood through to last month and everything in-between. You can be simultaneously raw because you're missing a person and are sorry they don't live anymore, and grateful for their life and for the time they had, and all the many ways they made the world a better place and touched your own life in ways that continue to make ripples through all your interactions in this world, and you can laugh because of the funny and good-crazy things they said and did that are always going to stay with you.

I miss Alice. I miss Rob. I miss knocking on their door on Serpentine Road, hugging them, bantering, making tea together, talking about books and life around their table or on the sunny balcony outside, admiring their photographs all over the house of family past and present, children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all well-loved and all knowing it. In all my adult life I've never missed anyone like I miss those two. I miss bringing buckets of Arum lilies to their place in the winter, as I used to when we still lived in town, down the road from an Arum infestation - Arums are a declared weed here and Alice loved lilies, so I was doing an environmental good turn at the same time as I was flooding her house with white lilies. Which is funny when you think about it, since my name is Hebrew for "white lily" and I never thought that fitted, but in this instance it was prophetic. I don't think I'll ever be able to go past an Arum lily again for as long as I live without wishing I could go give it to Alice.

Today, Alice's children had brought baskets of eucalyptus leaves and wildflowers for us to put on her casket. It was a wickerwork casket with an enormous bouquet of wildflowers already perched on top, around which we placed things we had picked from the baskets. I ended up choosing a banksia flower, but what would really have fitted symbolically is a small bird's nest. We have some at home, as they occasionally get blown out of hedges in storms, and because I didn't have one with me, I might have to make some art out of one in memory of her. Because Alice taught me so much about home, about nurturing - more than anyone else I've ever known.

Her wickerwork casket looked friendly, just as she always did when you met her. When they carried it out, I was thinking, "Light as a feather!" - because of that team bonding game where you get eight students to pick up a friend off the floor using only one hand each slid beneath the friend, which always amazes them. And how did our Alice choose to be conveyed hence? In a little glass-sided carriage towed by a Harley Davidson motorbike, and we all applauded her when they began to move. Then Popcorn started to play loudly over the speakers, and we laughed and laughed. Just as she would have wanted us to. Wonderful human being, who will for a long time be speaking from beyond the grave, like she did today, without needing to be a ghost in order to do it. ♥

SueC is time travelling

MeltingMan

@Ulrich gave me an idea. I looked at the subject a while ago and that's when this text came to my mind. The search took a while. It is taken from Kierkegaard's diaries:

QuoteWhat is romantic actually lies in the fact that the two halves of an idea are kept away from each other by something alien in between. When Adam was created, the idea of Adam required its completion in Eve. (The animals came to him and he gave them names — the manifold is there — the choir, if I may say so, is there — the irony is there —.) Eva comes, and the romantic is over, there is rest.(...)
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

Quote from: MeltingMan on September 20, 2021, 17:28:37"Eva comes, and the romantic is over..."

Huh? I don't get it.  :?  :1f633:
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

Sorry. Perhaps this text from the register volume, the penultimate section in the 'Collected Works', will help:

QuoteKierkegaard had a very conscious relationship with language. At first he is simply a romantic. For him, language is the instrument with which subjectivity can express itself in all its ambiguity, mood and personal character in such a way that only those of the same opinion understand what is meant.

Over the years, however, Kierkegaard shows an increasing tendency towards the linguistic accuracy of expression, with which he tries to counter the romantic danger of subjective disappearance.
In particular, for Kierkegaard, language is the real bearer of national peculiarity. Kierkegaard had a very close relationship with his Danish mother tongue and, like Grundtvig, also worked as a writer to cleanse the Danish language of all foreign, i.e. at that time German, influences.

With all his attention to the meaning of language, Kierkegaard never fell into the delusion that human liveliness and inwardness did not go beyond their linguistic expression. He has always differentiated between the thing and its expression and has warned against overestimating and absolutizing the communication media.
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)