End of Term Essays, Exams, etc.

It's less than a month before the end of the university semester, so the 3,000-word essays that I will need to write before October are beginning to be discussed in my classes and two exams are looming. Besides I am in the middle of a rewrite of a Spanish language essay.

I can't say I look forward to these academic milestones with great excitement. I am hoping to wrap them up neatly at the very beginning and at the very end of the summer holidays, so that university and leisure don't blur into each other in a psychologically dysfunctional soup leaving me exhausted, cranky and dull-witted next year.

That said, one of the essays will compare a neoclassical Spanish play with one of Molière's plays, and I'm excited about that since Molière is indulgent, fun reading to me.

But what I'd actually wanted to do during the summer is to forget university and work instead, since both Detrumpification and trying to offset Berlin's budget cuts are looking like increasingly expensive endeavours. Lately I've been economizing on mealtimes at university because I'd like to spend my weekly money ration on fixing problems, and I'd rather remain financially independent as long as possible. Today's splurge was donating to the Christopher Street Day parade.

Besides, I wouldn't mind having a steady income so that I can go off of my financial diet after 26 months of (mostly uninterrupted) unemployment. New books, sheet music, museum outings, new clothes, CDs, travel, magazines, sessions at the bouldering gym, concerts, etc. — it would be nice to splurge again, or at least enter stores and feel like I can theoretically buy things again.

Returning to the Christopher Street Day parade, the local evening news broadcast reported a few weeks ago that American companies that co-sponsor the parade have been pulling back this year due to political pressures at home. On the one hand I guess it's nice to know that American companies were supporting LGBTQ+ rights in Germany. On the other hand it's depressing that the companies let themselves be intimidated by a spiritual lightweight like the 47th president.

I watched Barack Obama's recent interview with a historian in Connecticut, in a YouTube video, and more or less agree with what he said: for wealthy and influential Americans who have been reaching out to him for advice about how to deal with various pressures from the current presidential administration, his message is that no one's forcing them to make Nelson Mandela sacrifices like sitting in prison for 28 years. (On another note, my armchair assessment is that Obama still seems seriously burned out and should probably not be spending so much time thinking and talking about his country's morally bankrupt regime until he feels better.)

To give credit to my last and deeply unlamented employer, despite their shortcomings, however, they're not shy about celebrating Pride Month on a certain social media job website.

Anyway, returning to the idea of a summer job, I've applied to do monkey work for an edition of Hannah Arendt's collected works, and I'm quite excited about it. Sending the application is something I'd probably do anyway, but I also like feeling that my father would have been intrigued and delighted by the opportunity and by my giving it a try. My more rational side admits that a 41-hour-per-month job that therefore stretches out to 10 hours per week will probably be quite a drain on time and energy that I need for my homework. That said, I've been calculating the cost and preparing to pay up, and there's little more one can do.

But I think that just sending one application to one job is not enough. I might look into working with pre-schoolers, since I like that curious, squawking, exploring age very much but am not sure if I have talent dealing with them. It's too long ago since I was an overbearing older sister to a kindergartner. So a practicum or mini-job should do.

Beautiful British Columbia: Our September 2024 Holiday, Part Six

New Denver's claim to fame so far is, sadly, that it was one of many sites far away from the Pacific coast where thousands of Japanese-Canadians were interned, as supposed enemies of war, starting in 1941.

Entrance of the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre,
New Denver, Canada. September 2024.

The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre was set up in the 1990s, encompassing three original houses that were built in the 1940s to hold the displaced Canadians, and a community centre. A garden with maple trees and cedar shrubs, ferns, a flowing dry gravel stream, and other features, designed by a former internee, runs amongst the houses and to the street's edge.

The Hastings Park Exhibition Grounds in Vancouver,
where Japanese Canadian internees were held.
There even seem to be bunk beds in the bleacher seats.
As a Berliner, the view reminds me disquietingly of the asylum seeker accommodations
at the former Tegel Airport.

The internees at "The Orchard" had likely been summoned to large halls in, or near, the towns or cities where they lived, with a few suitcases. They were forced to leave homes, businesses, and cars behind; these belongings were 'held on their behalf' and — more often than not — sold, without their consent, for bargain prices. (While the Holocaust went further, the profiteering of a fellow citizens in Canada from racist prejudice against a minority group does feel shamefully similar to expropriation of Jewish Germans' possessions in Nazi Germany.)

After being held, the Japanese-Canadians were shipped off into remote inland villages. The first winter in New Denver was freezing, and the Memorial Centre doesn't leave much to the imagination about conditions: a tan-colored tent like the ones in which many women and children were left to sleep is set up in the museum, with a small oil-fueled heater and a blanket, as a black-and-white photo shows the real 1940s tents steeped in snow.

It was only in the following winter in the 1940s that the cabins were finished. The houses that survive in the memorial centre have thin cedar shingle walls. Tar paper seemed to do most of the remaining work of insulation and waterproofing. Outhouses with washrooms were a later addition. Over time, the houses were customized and improved, but they don't look much more winter-proof.

To make things worse, families were sometimes separated again after the original deportation. Over 1,000 Japanese Canadians were sent to Ontario to work. Women were sent off to work as domestic servants; a sign in the Centre suggests that the women's wages were garnished to pay for their family members' internment. Men were sent to Ontario as well, as labourers to build highways, farmers or foresters.

A few men, at least from other British Columbia camps, were kept in the province but sent to fight forest fires: at the entrance to the museum garden, a section of tree trunk that was found again much later by a logging company shows the names of Japanese-Canadian firefighters from Lemon Creek Camp, engraved into the wood during a mission in 1945.

In the modern day, the houses in the Centre are furnished roughly as they might have been like in the 1940s: beds in rooms that are barely large enough to hold anything else, a few wooden shelves sticking out from the walls, and modest piles of adult and children's clothing, as well as comforts like handheld paper fans. A radio in the entrance, perhaps, and a dining/entrance/kitchen area with a dense throng of waste pail, old-fashioned iron stove on four legs, broom, pots, and cooking ingredients. Then one or two rooms that hold Japanese-Canadian nostalgia: cosmetics and newspapers with Japanese writing, a large rectangular tin labelled "Japanese Crackers." A few of the artifacts are post-war, as the camp was fully dissolved later, in 1957.

Table in one of the cabins at Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre.

Despite the stressful conditions, the exhibits record a sense of community: the community hall amongst the family houses is a literal example, and the building still hosts a Buddhist shrine and a bath house. Photos also capture annual celebrations like a Christmas concert. In the Centre's gardens, a vegetable patch or two shows the gardening skills of many Japanese Canadians who had been farmers in British Columbia before the war, and later grew crops like broad beans in the internment camp. 

At the end of the war, the government — far from recognizing its injustice — told Japanese-Canadians that they were no longer wanted in British Columbia. One or two exceptions were made, but most former internees were ordered to Japan or to Eastern Canada. I was wondering if this banishment was ordered because their Canadian neighbours were ashamed, didn't want to give back the possessions that they had stolen, or still genuinely feared a Japanese invasion, were too steeped in racist stereotypes, or felt resentful of Japan's military actions during the War. Regardless of motivation, the order was revoked in 1949, but I am guessing a lot of damage had been done by then.

A plaque signed The Village of New Denver at the entrance of the Memorial Centre now says, "It is a humbling reminder of the courage of the Japanese Canadians interned during World War II and their contributions to the social and cultural character of the area."

The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre is not the only site in New Denver that commemorates the detention of Japanese Canadians. A few private homes in the village are left over from the internment camp and can be identified based on their shape and size, although internment camps were generally bulldozed after the war. Besides a garden was laid out at the water's edge.

I seem to remember the Kohan Reflection Garden was, like the Centre, co-funded by Japanese Canadians. From its shoreline we admired the flights of two remote-controlled model float airplanes over Slocan Lake, the swishing waters on the pebbled lakeside, the wood-shingled red and black tea house, a gardener's work, and the trees and bushes (rhododendrons, hydrangeas, bamboo, ...) and ornamental stone lanterns and bridge of the garden itself.

I wondered why the Japanese Canadians who had been interned didn't just spit in the eye of the oppressor after the war, but instead created beautiful things. Still, I guess they took the wiser path.

Student Elections and the Protest That Went Off on a Tangent

In the weeks since my last post about university, I've been sleep-deprived and overwhelmed, but it's still a far better semester than my last.

The Eurovision Song Contest, a musical flashmob for peace in Middle Eastern politics, an Italian-language lecture about an archaeological site in Italy where many villas have been excavated (no, it's not Pompeii) took up part of my time throughout the month of May.

***

Then in the first week of June I was given a chance to earn money again, as an election helper for my university's student parliament. It was intense, although the earnings were good and we were showered with snacks to feed us through the 6- and 3-hour shifts. Besides it was worthwhile (as I'd hoped when applying for the job) to learn the rigorous procedures, because they are reasonably close I think to elections outside of the ivory tower as well.

It was also a happily bizarre experience. Two fellow students and I were set up in a hallway with large glass façades, doors leading to lecture halls for over 120 people, but barely any foot traffic except for the same librarians and office staff ... opposite a horse skeleton to celebrate the building's second function as home to Veterinary Medicine. I'd thought at first that it was a prehistoric animal, but something felt off (i.e., in retrospect, that prehistoric horses were actually smaller). Instead, it was the skeleton of Prussia's King Frederick II's favourite horse, as I discovered the second day of elections.

For hours I did homework, read a book by Isabel Allende, and chatted with the fellow election helpers. Of course I also helped people to vote, but if we averaged out the daily tally, only about 6 people voted per hour, which left a whole lot of time for lollygagging.

On Day Two, I went over to photograph the horse skeleton. But the glass vitrine and lights made for awkward reflections. Then, an hour or so later, a mildly nervous-looking university staffer turned up with a photographer. He tried a few shots of the horse skeleton with his analogue camera, then profanely pronounced the lighting conditions 'Sch*e.' (It felt validating, as it implied that my technique was not at fault.) He took a few last shots with his smartphone 'to give the client a variety to choose from,' and then left.

It felt again weirdly like I  'mesh' with far more experienced photographers, despite my own lack of experience. I'd suggested removing an election banner that might be in the way of his shots, and it turned out to be exactly what the man had needed.

But in general the vote-counting work was, like the work at the ballot boxes, a mixture of intense activity that alternated with a cosmically nihilist absence of purpose: sometimes as I sat around uselessly, I worried that I wasn't earning the very generous €16+ hour.

*

It's been busy after that as well, but I'm not sure how much to ramble on about it. A university budget cut protest on June 4 turned into a pro-Palestinian protest mixed with a little bit of the original protest, culminating in about 400 people howling at the university president's building for him to come out and show himself, as a serried line of fluorescent-yellow-and-black riot police stood in front of the entrance. The speakers felt inter alia that the university should drop charges against the handful of activists who — a few months ago — had armed themselves with axes etc. and broken into the building...

Regardless of my thoughts about this 'interesting' interpretation of how to help Palestinians, some of the police activity earlier had seemed pretty ridiculous to me. 3 to 5 people had unfurled a Gaza banner from an upper level of a different university building, one of them had a Palestinian scarf swathed around his or her face like a babushka, and someone waved a huge Palestinian flag. (I still figure that if you think your actions are right, you won't hide any part of your face; but either way I didn't feel threatened.) In response, however, a police officer, down on the street where I was, started running a few feet toward the 'scene' and excitedly reporting into his walkie-talkie about 'vermummte Personen auf dem Dach.'

I haven't kept up to date with Berlin's pro-Palestinian protests enough to say so with certainty. But generally it seems to me like Berlin's police's guidelines have shifted, and even things like scarves or flags that have not been ruled unconstitutional by any German court are being considered unwanted at protests. And I think it's a bad development. Public relations and convenience are not enshrined in Germany's basic law, while freedom of speech (even if I would never use it that way) is.

Anyway, the howling at the protest sounds entertaining now that it's written down, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate it at the time.

Beautiful British Columbia: Our September 2024 Holiday, Part Five

It's the Pentecost weekend, which means that Monday is a statutory day off in Berlin, so I want to spend time diving back (in my imagination) into last year's holiday!

***

We entered New Denver just before the shops (specifically, the shops that were still open after the main tourist season) began to close for Friday evening. It is, as a man told us later in our journey, a town that looks like it did during the 1960s.

In fact the 1960s were why Uncle Pu had decided to take us there. My paternal grandfather had been a schoolteacher in that decade, and he was assigned to New Denver and lodged in a house just at the entrance to town, at the corner of 6th Avenue. Uncle Pu pointed it out to us immediately: a beige, weatherboarded two-storey house with a peaked roof, kept in a tidy state that preserved its historic appearance.

We parked on 6th Avenue and wandered down the slope to Slocan Lake. I imagined that tourists would throng through the village in summer months, skiers with drawling leisurely voices who would be heading into the 'back country,' mountain bikers, and the kayakers and canoeists. In one yard, someone was advertising vinyl records for sale; in another, men around middle age or older were sitting in a garden arbour at what looked like a café. Further down the street, there was a pharmacy and an art gallery and further up the street and far beyond it, a forested mountain looked blue in the mist.

I popped into a souvenir shop, which sold (amongst other things) postcards, clothing, balls of yarn, books including a copy of the 2022 bestseller Remarkably Bright Creatures that was also circulating in Berlin — as well as books by Indigenous authors like Richard Wagamese and Eden Robinson, and decorated chopsticks. I ended up getting a card that showed a dark wooden shack with a mountain ash tree in front: it raises funds to preserve the remaining houses from a Second World War-era internment camp. When I paid for the card, the man at the counter was pleased that I'd chosen it; he spoke about the cause with the same respectful gravity that I'd hear from other New Denverites later.

A fabric shop was closed; and the Valley Voice newspaper office had a sign on it saying that the owners had decided to pass the legacy to someone else and were looking for someone interested.

Next I wandered into a back yard from a local museum. The first exhibit, impossible to miss, was a lovingly restored wooden boat, "Lancet," from the early 20th century: it was now sheltered beneath a roof a little way from the sidewalk.

When I turned into the back yard, it was to find a range of forestry and agricultural implements arranged in a semi-circle. Hanging from the rear wall of the house, there were the 'Forest Finds,' everything from oven doors and shovel heads and axe heads through metal ladles to enamel dishes and colanders, some dating back into the Victorian era, that had been found amongst the trees around New Denver.

Nearer the boat, a "Wood shaft bucket" ("used to clear rock from a vertical shaft") whose slats had drawn apart near the bottom and whose iron frames were orange with corrosion, hung from a roof. A black "forge bellows" was hanging above an iron crank. A metal file, and several pincers and shovels displayed beside the bellows could have belonged to a forge, too.

"Forest Finds" around Silvery Slocan Museum, New Denver. September 2024.

It was not hard to picture miners and loggers sitting around campfires or in a woodland cottage, or working, and using these tools, a hundred years ago. I also liked picturing locals or visitors finding these tools embedded in dark, cedar-needle-strewn forest soil decades later, being delighted and confused, and bringing them to an expert who'd tell them what it was and when it had been made.

From there, we walked to another weatherboarded, street corner building that used to house the Bank of Montreal. 'This is,' our uncle told us, 'where I opened a savings account in the Sixties.'

We found out from a signs that it stopped being a bank by the 1970s, when it became the Silvery Slocan Museum.

Now the late 19th-century bank building's windows have been recast as vitrines: mini-collections of everything from an engraved musical brass instrument, through a Lydia E. Pinkham bottle, to a spittoon or two, all of which looked like purest Laura Ingalls Wilder — as well as an electric iron from the 1920s, oil lamp from Hong Kong in the 1940s, and a flower-painted, glass-walled butter churn. The selection paid implicit tribute to the variety of nationalities and backgrounds of immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

On the museum's second floor balcony, we spotted antique chairs rocking chairs arranged in the open air, as if ghosts were holding a conversation. I seem to remember that one of the chairs looked as if it had been burned in a fire.

Below the house, I also seem to remember mining carts rested on a pair of train rails, as a sign commemorated the galena ore extraction industry. (One of New Denver's streets is named Galena Avenue.) It looked like a nice museum to visit in the summer season, when the interior is also open.

— What was disconcerting in several places in British Columbia, admittedly, was that while there was a lot of visible history, little to none of it was Indigenous. Of course that speaks for itself: it shows how long ago Indigenous people were already forced from their land. But it would still be more satisfying to know which cultures did exist there and how they lived in the landscape. —

Slocan Lake, September 2024.
The mist between two of the mountains is
the smoke of a forest fire.
The cedar in the foreground is showing signs of drought.

Then we reached the lakeside.

An Edwardian pump house in white weatherboard with green trim stood beside it, underneath trees. Nearby – and this excited me most of all – there was a rectangular brown garbage can with a bear-proof sticker.

It was sad to see, while standing in the gaps between the trees on the New Denver bank, on the other side of the lake how much Valhalla Provincial Park has been injured by forest fires. Swathes of the evergreen forest were black or red, smouldering steaming smoke was seeping from several parts, and the snow fields above were contaminated and grey, long after the fire was first fought back. That said, the weather held the promise of more rain to help relieve the forest.

On the way back up 6th Avenue, I looked at the signs that described the historic origins of the buildings: one was built in 1894 as a mining office, then used by a doctor, before it was used as a mining office again. Another was a newspaper office that was partly rented out to a carpet and furnishing store, until 1904. A former hotel, milliner's, butcher's shop turned general store, ...

Like a bear near a garbage can, but in a much more appetizing way, we also began to think of food. We saw a restaurant, underneath a huge leafy tree that (in my mind at least) had its own unearthly aura and seemed to have a gin fragrance. A few droplets of rain clung onto the outdoor tables, and autumnal wasps were visiting.

We ordered ice cream and brownies from the dessert menu, and began to chat with the family of owners. It's often said that it's a small world: so it's not entirely surprising that despite the fact that we were in a village of around 500 inhabitants in western Canada, two of the family had lived in Berlin, and could chat about Prenzlauer Berg and the Avus highway with us in German.

In the meantime, the mother of the family (a hard worker who turned her hand to a lot of things, so that I was in awe of her throughout) was tending to the plants around the parking lot, while her grandchild toddled behind her wielding a large shovel. And after our meal, they kindly offered us plums that they had picked themselves. It seemed part and parcel of a neighbourly ethos I likely haven't travelled often enough to see anywhere else, and I hoped I showed that I appreciated it.

The owner family also told us about the summer's forest fires. New Denver had been on evacuation alert (or watch?) after three days of 40°C weather. A thunderstorm arrived, and lightning strikes found the forest dry as kindling — 'jeder Blitz ein Treffer' ('each strike was a bull's eye') our host commented dryly. Then a fire had broken out around Silverton, 5 kilometres to the south.

We decided to stay overnight in their inn: a pastel-blue-painted building with stone elements that looks like it might be from the 1970s or earlier, and flowered wallpaper and what I seem to remember as dark wood wainscoting along the inner hallways.

Uncle Pu absolutely wanted a chance to kayak around Slocan Lake, and this was part of his negotiation with the owners. But I was too timid to enjoy the idea of me or anyone I cared for navigating an unfamiliar waterway, and so was secretly relieved when elaborate plans to take to the water didn't work out after all.

Before we thought of turning in for the night, though, there was the remaining afternoon and evening before us. We walked to the Nikkei Memorial Internment Centre on the other side of town, across the rocky Carpenter Creek.

Spanish Philology, Spring Sunlight, and World Politics Shadows

It will be the 80th anniversary of 'Victory in Europe' Day tomorrow, so university classes will not take place.

I have a lot of sleep to catch up on, because I stayed up past 3 a.m. to finish homework for my Spanish language learning class. We are reading texts about migration across the Algeria-Spain, Mexico-US, Morocco-Spain, and international waters-Canary Islands borders, discussing them in small groups and as a class, and besides expanding our working vocabulary of adverbs and connectors (asimismo, de ahí que, etc.). When I'm tired, I still struggle to speak in Spanish. But my months of rest during the holidays since the winter semester have really helped: I'm finding myself speaking fluently enough for the classroom context. Besides the atmosphere in the class is very warm and supportive, the instructor — who is from Spain this time — engaged with us as people and not just as students. Two of the classmates are going out, and it's difficult not to be in a good mood when they exchange loving glances and subtly hold each others' hands.

The second class today was a literary theory course that's part of my Modern Greek studies. It's a little nerve-wracking for me because the head of the department is teaching it, and I have trouble following him when he speaks in Greek. But the only classmate is very well read and travelled, and between the two of them a high standard is set. It's not uncommon for them to bring up examples from ancient Greek tragedies, Shakespeare, Molière, or Brecht. But I have a lot of reading gaps in Greek tragedies and comedies and Brecht, haven't read Shakespeare's plays that recently, and have been so used to thinking that no one cares about these topics that I haven't been prepared to discuss them with great accuracy or depth. So I think I am the least intellectually impressive member of the trio. But I've found that despite the trope that since I'm old I should be wiser, it's surprisingly pleasant to be challenged and impressed by the younger generation.

After class I cycled home through the warm weather, lilac flowers drying up on their stalks in the droughty spring weather, but chestnut trees fluffy and blossoming and thriving. We had rain recently, at least, and it's only the wiry acacia trees that don't appear to be properly leafy yet. The stall that sells asparagus, rhubarb, and (I think) potatoes at the thatched Domäne Dahlem U-Bahn station building was open.

For grocery shopping, however, I went to the zero-waste store. Dinner: asparagus, ciabatta bread, rhubarb cake with whipping cream.

Last night I was a very little bit worried that nuclear war would break out between India and Pakistan, and I'd never wake up again. But today was quiet, perhaps ominously so as it's still not clear how Pakistan plans to respond militarily to India's missiles.

Aside from that, I just read that the chimney in the Vatican City has sent up black smoke, so no new Pope has been elected today...

The New Semester and Spring

The dentist's visit I mentioned last time had a happy sequel: I went for a check-up, three cavities were discovered and filled. Per the doctor, I didn't need anesthetic; I was less convinced when one cavity twinged. Nevertheless, it was a quick and easy process for me (not sure about the dentist and his assistant). By the time I walked out the office door again, the puffy cheek and other symptoms of the infection that have been haunting me since December had miraculously disappeared.

In general I've progressed from struggling to even hold a bird-dog yoga pose in early December, to being able to do high-intensity exercise like 'burpees' again. Even the intervening months of needing to stick to gentle exercise like ballet had benefits: I've unexpectedly improved in ballet. So all's well that ends well?

In consequence I feel fit as a fiddle, and ready for university classes on Monday:

It's my second semester of learning Spanish as a major with Modern Greek as a minor.

I'm not sure how interesting these details are:

The recommended courses include Spanish literature, language, and linguistics classes, and Modern Greek seminars.

Most of the Greek seminars will likely be done per video call, so I will be able to sleep late instead of rushing off to campus.

If it can be squished in between my other classes, I will also audit a journalism/media studies lecture.

That said, Allgemeine Berufsvorbereitung (career preparation) courses are theoretically meant to be done now, too. But I'm putting them off because my schedule is already full.

I've also applied for an office cleaning mini-job in the neighbourhood that would require 4 hours of work per week. But so far there has been no reply to my email.

*

Fortunately, my Detrumpification programme has become cheaper since the 47th president called off the tariffs above 10% for all countries except China.

I've:

1. bought (before the high tariffs ended)

a) gruyère cheese and chocolate from Switzerland
b) butter from Ireland

2. mended 6 socks & 1 turtleneck sweater

3. watched TedX videos about racial justice

4. regularly watched the PBS News Hour and Radio Free Asia videos on YouTube, as well as an Associated Press livestream of Senator Cory Booker's marathon speech against federal US policy

5. shopped at a zero-waste shop

6. read a memoir written by a 'DREAMer' (i.e. a second-generation U.S. immigrant).

What's missing, admittedly, is more patriotic support for Canada's economy.

*

Lastly, I've finished my grand Beethoven sonata playing project — only leaving out a funeral march because of superstition.

And spring is turning into summer: deep yellow Oregon grape blossoms scented a side street with a fragrance like honey. Trees are largely green around the nearest church. And the sun was so intense that I uncharacteristically remembered to apply sunscreen before going to the street market to buy vegetables.

A Picaresque Shopping Adventure, and Springtime

It's been a reasonably boring few days: the weather was sometimes overcast and dim.

I've mostly stayed at home. On Monday I had a dentist's appointment, which was mildly dramatic for the dental hygienist insofar as apparently there was a lot of bleeding.

On Thursday I was walking to the Musikinstrumentenmuseum to give myself a treat, after being a little apartment-bound during a lingering cold, when I had a wild adventure.

A lady in the street asked if I'd pay for some milk for her children, and we turned back to a chain store. She and her children ended up loading baskets full of merchandise, despite my attempt to tell her that my debit card has a daily limit. I became more and more exhausted the more they added to the cart, because I pretty much never spend more than 50€ on one shopping trip. The merchandise turned out to be over €300 once the cashier rang it up. Even though the lady put back €163 worth of stuff, my debit card was still declined. The cashier and her colleague, fed up, suggested just returning everything to the shelves. But they were really kind when I offered to help out with sorting the merchandise back in and they saw that I was genuinely sorry for the trouble.

The lady in the street, having asked to sit down outside a café further along the street, then asked for the €10 I had along in cash, which I forked over. She also suggested that I could bring her more money the next day. Since I was no longer convinced that she was in genuine need (inter alia, the mop bucket, powdered milk and diapers were amongst the first things she gave back to the cashier) I had no intention of doing so. Nor was I even sure if my debit card would work.

But her 'offer' did make me worry that I can't walk around that area again, for the foreseeable future, without being asked for my savings.

So I went home, without the museum excursion, short the last 10€ in my wallet, worried that my debit card was locked for good, and kind of scared to go outside again. I knew that by staying inside the next days that I was punishing myself for no reason, but did so anyway...

Anyway, the experience would make an entertaining short story. But as it was my real life, after two years of unemployment and rigid budgeting, and it reminds me vaguely of shopping trips with my parents when I was small where I constantly felt guilty for wanting things, the humour in it was somewhat wasted on me.

It's good that the next dentist's appointment was scheduled for next week, because yesterday my simmering tooth infection flared up. Kind of heaping on the misery.

*

Fortunately, however, yesterday was also the first day to sign up for classes in the upcoming university semester. I signed up online for all the required lectures and seminars, which instilled peace of mind. Already in March, when I'd cobbled together a tentative schedule, it had also been a relief to see that I have no classes earlier than 8:30 a.m.

Also, my blood pressure's still doing well.

Besides I'm making progress in my nerdy project to play the first of two Beethoven sonata volumes from cover to cover. (The second volume I'd already played from cover to cover around 2022, so after the first volume my work is done.)

Lastly, I've ended my self-imposed spending ban, and when I bought groceries today, my debit card worked! And as I walked around, I took in the blue sky, tender green spring leaves, daffodils, forsythia blossoms, violets, and eccentric 'Zum Verschenken' offerings along the sidewalks, and these things made me happy.

Armchair Ideas about International Diplomacy and the War Chest

While world events are hardly inspiriting, I've been quite happy in my personal life lately.

Partly I do attribute it to my new technique of 'Detrumpification': when I read news that I find depressing, I put it into a spreadsheet and try to quickly find something positive to do about the relevant issue. 

It's informed the books and articles that I read: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, transgender rights, Latine writers, a lengthy work about the history of U.S. immigration, and independent Canadian publishers, are now major elements of my reading list. It's led to the embarrassment of riches that I now have in the way of freshly mended socks (to add something to the ecological side of the world's ledger). It's inspired me to look up official YouTube channels for Cuban and Mexican music. It's emboldened me to use my preferred gender pronouns in an email just because it feels good that I can do that without being fired from a job. And so on and so forth.

Besides, I'm simply happy about the university holidays and my freedom. It's the best I've felt since the earlier, glory days at my last job.

That said, I'm apprehensive about the social budgets being cut in Berlin and presumably in other parts of Germany, as well as e.g. closures of hospitals due to unprofitability and a new federal law that alters funding structures. Because I think that the extreme right is profiting a great deal by the economic impacts of Covid and the war in Ukraine. And it is a fair question, not just in Germany but also for example in France, to ask why taxpayer money that was unavailable to regular citizens in the face of steep inflation and regal rents is suddenly available to arm Ukraine.

I think that arming Ukraine is necessary and that abandoning Ukraine to its own devices (as a certain somebody has largely done) is morally deficient. But even in terms of dispassionate military strategy I think it is best at the same time to prevent social discord in the countries that will pay for it. €100 million [Edit: billion] for infrastructure investment, as the CDU and SPD have proposed, doesn't seem like enough. Do I wish that (by and large) the far right would be honest about the role that its beloved partner the Russian president had played in invading Ukraine and crashing the economy, and that the far right would stop promoting his views and interests and ridiculously blaming the effects of his malfeasance on migrants and refugees? — Yes, but I'm not holding my breath that they will finally be truthful, either with themselves or with anybody else.

At the same time, although I figure that Russia's government and media landscape (like those of other countries) could use serious reform, it was a relief to briefly have hope that warmer diplomatic relations would be reestablished. On the basis of its President not invading any more countries, and in some way being fair to Ukraine. Even after that hope was killed off in the Oval Office, I was quite pleased that President Emmanuel Macron took the opportunity of his speech on French television to say that he could envision a good relationship in future. That said, returning to the topic of reform: Looking at domestic Russian politics, I'm struggling to think of any historical parallel where it worked well for a population to have its dictator stay in power after he had killed off tens of thousands of citizens, and destroyed their economy, in an arbitrary war that had 'sounded good to him at the time'. They deserve better.

*

Spring has brought a string of mild and sunny days to Berlin, and golden winter aconites, snowdrops, purple and yellow crocuses are everywhere. Last weekend I saw a budding pink hyacinth and daffodils on the verge of opening into flower, and in the allotment gardens I saw freshly set out primroses. But otherwise it's still quite wintry.

I only have one photography class left, for which I need to take another roll of film. It's still not clear in my mind what to photograph, although perhaps the pro-Ukrainian protest on Sunday is an option. But this weekend the class was postponed due to International Women's Day, which has recently become a statutory holiday in Berlin.

Snapshots of Berlin on the Eve of the Federal Election

For the second weekend in a row, I've gone to the crash course in darkroom photographic techniques.

This week I did make black-and-white prints from the negatives I'd developed last time. I was pleased with my prints. The borders are topsy-turvy at times or the margins too large, and as I'd often photographed 19th-century buildings they were old-fashioned and it looked like I'd just filched a few images from a Victorian album. But as long as the photograph itself is clear and its motif modestly dramatic, I'm happy. For example, I'd forgotten that when shooting the arch over an U-Bahn entrance, birds had been flying in the background, and by happy coincidence they looked (at the instant they were photographed) like proper birds instead of like amorphous extraterrestrial projectiles...

I wasn't especially pleased about being out-and-about before 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday, but after two more weekend classes I can wallow in my indolence. Besides I saw a purple crocus, snowdrops, and yellow winter aconites on the way home, as well as lingering pools of snowdrifts and a red crabapple tree.

Tomorrow will be the day of fate in Germany — in other words the federal elections. It wasn't too noticeable today except insofar as a Green Party supporter was handing out leaflets at a street market in my neighbourhood.

I'm a little worried that yesterday evening's news that a 19-year-old Syrian refugee has stabbed a Spanish man at the Holocaust memorial here in Berlin will lead to more votes for the far right. While I go by there reasonably often, I'm still not afraid of being stabbed myself, and I really think that Berlin would not be Berlin without its cultural mix and (idealistically speaking) respect for international humanitarian law.

A Winter's Walk Through Germany's Snowy Capital

Two bright spots in my existence lately are, firstly, no norovirus infection for me, which meant that I could attend my final exam, on the history of Romance languages, which I passed with a little over 70%. Secondly, the end of the university semester.

On Saturday, I went to an intense weekend workshop for developing black-and-white films and making prints. It was a snowy day and the workshop took place at a picturesque pre-war square, which was convenient as I only had colour films along and had to buy and shoot a new roll with the hybrid digital-analogue camera that my mother bought for me when I graduated high school. (I used the camera regularly when I was a toddling undergraduate at the University of British Columbia, taking shots of the old and new buildings and sunsets etc. on campus. But since then I have felt too broke to be able to regularly afford to buy film and pay for it to be developed.)

Today I was planning to travel to a steelmaking town on the outskirts of Berlin to report on the possible effects of the steel and aluminum tariffs that might be impending in April, and the aftereffects of the last round of tariffs over 4 years ago. It's a town where, last autumn, it was also announced that a transportation manufacturer would close up shop. But now it's looking likelier I'll do it later this week.

First of all I needed to finish writing an essay for my Spanish & Portuguese literature class, so making progress on that took up some time this morning. Secondly, I wanted to photograph the makeshift memorial of candles, photographs and flowers on Unter den Linden in honour of Alexei Navalny, 1 year and 1 day after his death. Thirdly, since economics have never been my strong point, I'm feeling a considerable impostor syndrome about the ambitious steel works reporting plan.

In the end, at least I did make progress on the essay and take photos at the makeshift memorial.

On the way, I passed by the Berlinale film festival hub at Potsdamer Platz, and heard the delighted screams of fans at the red carpet during the premiere of Vivian Qu's film Girls on Wire. When the celebrities had passed along the carpet, the fans scuttled in groups as fast as their feet could carry them to the security tent. Presumably they still needed to show their tickets and enter the film screening itself.

Today's red carpet event, although I didn't follow it in detail, felt pleasantly wholesome. I'm still a diehard red carpet event skeptic, because seeing one in person (from a distance) in 2023 disenchanted me and I've never seen the need to revise that opinion since.

That said, later I felt gloomy and foreboding while treading across the snowy expanse in front of the Reichstag parliament building. It's not even so much the forthcoming federal elections and the impending rule of the CDU party. It's rather that after 4 years of glorious freedom during the last Trump administration from being too affected by his particular brand of mayhem, it feels like the grubby mitts of his regime, and possibly of Russia's 'democratic' leadership, are also being laid on Germany and Canada.

After J.D. Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference last week (apparently the absence of white supremacist thought at the prow of European public discourse is a sign of the European Union's lack of freedom) and the American/Russian/Saudi den of dictators deciding Ukraine's future, it's not just European heads of government who are croaking of impending doom.

I hoped as I walked that I will still be able to tread across the lawn of a free parliament in a free Germany in two years' time. (I also hoped that I wouldn't fall and break my face on the ice; the area around the Brandenburg Gate, Tiergarten Park, and Reichstag is often embarrassingly bad for tourists to maneuver. In this case, the worst case scenario is that they are never able to travel anywhere again because they've slipped on the vast rinks of compacted snow and ice, cracked their skull and died.)

Less doomily, it was quite satisfying to walk past the US embassy with a Canada t-shirt underneath my coat, and to waltz into the Ibero-American Institute on the way home to familiarize myself with the maligned culture and history of Latin and South America.

Early February 2025: Nausea on Many Levels

It's still a Berlin winter, although I've seen snowdrops, winter aconites, lilac twig buds, and a few shoots of bulb flowers on my walks in the past weeks.

I had a bit of a breakthrough in early January when it turned out that I have high blood pressure: at first it was near the danger zone at around 170 systolic pressure.

Now it's much better, and I was down to 138 this morning. I still need to take medication another 2 weeks or so, because the diastolic pressure is not improving so quickly.

Since then, I feel a lot less anxious. It's easy to become absorbed in things like walks and looking around and reading books and making plans. I'm no longer constantly feeling like I'm a pressure cooker on legs.

And I feel even smugger about quitting my last job. Firstly, I think it didn't improve my blood pressure; secondly I'm also a bit concerned because I'm wondering if it would have been killing me in a literal sense. But I wish that my father (who also had blood pressure issues) had felt like he deserved to go get medical care before he died: if he felt as miserable as I did, his life could have been made a lot more comfortable, even just with one type of medication, and encouragement to go and enjoy life in the great outdoors for the sake of his health once in a while.

***

That said, reading the news is not especially healthy right now, and I think I need to be much more careful how often and how long to read websites. The same goes for attending protests.

Over the past weeks I've been to observe protests against the rightward shift of German politics. The CDU is looking to gain votes by assuaging fears of, unfortunately, the majority of voters who are blaming the results of household budget cuts on migrants and asylum seekers. It didn't help that in southern Germany, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan who has, if I recall the national Tagesschau newscast correctly, been in psychiatric treatment three times, stabbed a 41-year-old man and a toddler recently.

By legitimizing discourse that casts rare occurrences as systemic cause for genuine concern, I fear that the CDU strategy is undermining democracy and the rule of law — including undermining its own strength insofar as it is still democratic and bound to the rule of law.

The first protest was a 'sea of lights' at Brandenburg Gate, with thousands of attendees, who mostly criticized the AfD and partly the CDU leadership.

Then, a few days later, the leader of the CDU introduced a motion into Parliament that suggested blocking Germany's borders, refusing entry to any asylum seeker who did not have papers with them, and jailing undocumented migrants (if I remember correctly) nonstop until their extradition.

– Regarding the jailing: In the past, as Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg mentioned in a recent report, Berlin for example did have its own deportee detention centre. After suicides and other tragedies, the centre was closed down. Apparently, however, some politicians and many fellow citizens have learned nothing. –

The anti-migrant, anti-asylum seeker motion passed because the neoliberal FDP party, splinter Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, and the far-right group AfD voted with the CDU.

That evening, I heard shortly after 7:30 p.m. that a protest against the motion had begun outside the CDU party headquarters at 6 p.m.. I spontaneously went. By the time I arrived, the event had evidently formally ended. But masses of riot police officers on foot were still guarding the area.

I felt that protestors were unusually determined to stay to the end of the event, instead of skipping out early to hang out with friends or do other things; I had the same feeling the next day.

In that protest, a larger mass of people filled the street between the party headquarters, down the row of embassies and foundations, past the Chinese cultural centre.

Speakers from church groups and other organizations addressed the crowd. A leader of Fridays for Future Germany spoke about needing the cooperation of critical voices within the FDP politicians' ranks and elsewhere, to help defeat the anti-migrant legislation. A sign suggested that CDU leader Friedrich Merz should not play the role of Von Papen.

Then the next day the CDU party leadership submitted the vote on a law to Germany's parliament, patterned on the CDU's motion, that would have made the new rules legally binding. Fortunately, politicians from several parties did not vote at all, or abstained, and the law failed.

So, by the time Sunday arrived, I thought that Berliners' interest in protesting CDU etc. migration policy had fizzled.

So I was surprised when I turned up late at the Straße des 17. Juni. Foot traffic near Brandenburg Gate was a little thin. But a long stream of people was pouring down the Yitzhak-Rabin-Straße from the lawn outside Germany's Parliament building, and it clustered around the Victory Column before branching off toward the CDU headquarters. It was the kind of protest where the tributary streams are already as large as most regular protests. There were over 160,000 demonstrators according to the police, so in other words it was the largest political event I have been to since the first protest against the invasion of Ukraine.

The depressing antithesis, of course, is that 66% of Germany's voters were apparently convinced that Merz's plans were reasonable. I'm not sure how that can be changed. To be honest I'm pretty irritated that people whose houses and apartments are still standing, pantries adequately supplied with food, no armed forces running around with guns, and no bombs dropping, genuinely but foolishly claim to be 'in fear of their lives.'

But German politics are only the tip of the iceberg. Following events in the United States is even more horrifying.

***

On a domestic note, food poisoning (norovirus?) has gripped the household. First J. fell sick two nights ago, then our mother and Ge. followed last night. They've been in bed all day.

Sitting here under a figurative Sword of Damocles, I'm wondering if I'll still become ill and, if so, when. My final exam for Romance Studies is tomorrow, so it is not a good time to purge my stomach or be potentially infectious.

New Year's Circus in Berlin

New Year's Eve was extremely lively in my neighbourhood. I might write about it some other time; it's possible that the next days will bring further developments.

One thing that's less sensitive to mention is probably that we heard an explosion in the smaller street beside our apartment, then a car alarm going off. Because the explosion sounded a bit contained, I'd rightly surmised that it had begun beneath a car.

At first we just heard the car alarm. Then, after a minute or two, I looked outside again to see that a fire had kindled, and flames were shooting out to the left and right, lapping toward the black car on one side and the little smart car on the other. Pale grey smoke was billowing from the rear.

No one seemed to be doing anything about it. It also seemed to be near my little brother's window. Although I was guessing that at the rear of the car the flames wouldn't do much damage at first, I didn't fancy the fuel tank exploding, blowing in his windows, and injuring him.

So I very reluctantly went out of my building in my loungewear. As expected, a stray firework instantly landed maybe 3 metres away from me, bouncing off the house foundation; I haven't gone outdoors on New Year's Eve in years, maybe a decade or more, for this very reason of stray pyrotechnics thoughtlessly fired off. There was also a bad rubbery smell, overlaying the usual pyrotechnic sulphur, from the burning car.

I rounded the front of a huge silver-and-blue police van that was parked in front of my building, around the corner from the flaming vehicle. (~3 police vans had been circling up and down the block like a Barnum & Bailey unicyclist since around midnight, as had groups of 6 riot police officers on foot.) I gestured to the driver. He rolled down the window, pulled down the black balaclava material from around his mouth with a patient expression, and heard my report. He answered, 'The fire department is on its way.'

One of our upstairs neighbours was standing excitedly at the stair balustrade on a higher floor when I reentered the apartment building. Another neighbour joined and chimed in from an even higher floor.

After sharing the meagre gossip that I had, I went back into my apartment.

What I'd missed while going outdoors, but the neighbour had seen, is that in fact someone had already extinguished the fire. From a window I soon saw a group of young men encircling the car. A riot police officer with helmet standing near the car's rear surveying the damage, like George Washington inspecting a military parade. (Later, three riot police officers came and, again with flashlights, checked all around the car, probably to make sure that it was still entirely extinguished and maybe to gather evidence.)

It was just as well that someone took the initiative: the fire department never seemed to arrive anywhere near the car. Next day, in the evening news, a fire department official mentioned that within an 11-hour timespan, over 800 fires had been reported in Berlin. The year before, it'd been under 700. Clearly they were overwhelmed.

My brother Ge. looked out the window too. He immediately saw that the car that had been on fire belongs to one of our upstairs neighbours, and texted the neighbour to alert him. The neighbour is retired, I think, and a dedicated do-it-yourselfer who might be an alumnus of the hippie movement; and we like him a great deal. His partner is a nurse or care aide whom I've sometimes met on the staircase, for example returning home after a night shift, or in the streets around the apartment, or carrying firewood.

After a while, the neighbour went out with a flashlight and glumly inspected the damage. Now, days later, the car is still sitting there, while he's waiting for an expert to inspect it and tell him if it's safe to drive.

Fortunately the cars to the left and right seemed fine. Looking displeased and, like our upstairs neighbour, tired, the cars' drivers checked whether their doors and locks still worked properly, and then drove off.

I wish that the New Year's revellers had showed more empathy.

Instead, after the car was already injured, someone added insult to injury by finger-writing messages in the dust of the fire extinguisher material on the rear window pane, like 'PKK.'

I don't want to be too mean, but aside from feeling stupefied that the human species has survived so many generations given the stupidity I witnessed, I also felt that the posturing youths were pretty darn cowardly. For example, as far as I recall, a firework flew straight at someone who belonged to the revellers but was circumspectly crossing the street; instead of telling the person who'd fired the projectile to get a clue, the potential victim just smiled sheepishly.

As insane as the evening up to that point already sounds in retrospect, it escalated further.

I might be too biased because of the events in my neighbourhood, which I think were especially severe because we were on the periphery of a 'fireworks-free zone' that I think just exacerbated the problem where we were. (The German term verschlimmbessern — roughly translatable as 'improve-worsening' — comes to mind.) But I am peeved at Berlin's mayor Kai Wegner and at Germany's chancellor Olaf Scholz for not taking the mayhem and destruction seriously enough to agree to a fireworks ban.

(Local internet commenters suggest that Berlin's CDU party doesn't want the city to miss out on tax revenues from pyrotechnics sales.)

Admittedly I found it boring when my family lived in Canada, where we would squint through trees to see the upper crests of the official fireworks display at the nearby community hall. So I actually enjoyed New Year's Eve in Berlin around 2006. I only began to consider supporting a ban when two fires broke out in my neighbourhood maybe two years ago. But this New Year's Eve has tipped the balance.

I genuinely think that the two above-mentioned politicians should stay overnight in my neighbourhood next year — they don't even need to set foot outdoors — so that they have better informed views.

Anyway, I was a bit traumatized, in the non-medical sense of the word, by New Year's Eve. But at least now I'm able to make jokes about it?

Shakespeare's Complete Works Reading Challenge: Fifth Day of Henry VI

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? I've had a hankering to read and half-liveblog all of Shakespeare's plays (again)... in chronological order, onward from Henry VI, Part 1: written by Shakespeare (b. 1564) in 1591. I'm using an old Complete Works of Shakespeare edition from the Clarendon Press.

See also: Previous Henry VI blog posts:

• Act I Scene 1: Henry V's funeral

• Scenes 2, 3 & 4: French dauphin meets Joan of Arc, Duke of Gloucester clashes with Bishop of Winchester, the Earl of Salisbury is killed in fighting in Orléans

•  Scenes 5 & 6: Joan of Arc fights Lord Talbot, French celebrate lifting of siege on Orléans

*

• Act II Scene 1: The English reconquer Orléans

***

Aurelia Franciae civitas ad Ligeri flu: sita
A map of Orléans from 1581 to 1588
Source: Civitates Orbis Terrarum. Liber tertius.
Köln, G. Kempen, 1581-88. Bibliothèque municipale d'Orléans.
via Wikimedia Commons

4:45 p.m.
ACT II.
Scene II.

The Duke of Bedford poetically declares to England's forces, within the city walls of Orléans:

The day begins to break, and night is fled,
Whose pitchy mantle over-veil'd the earth.
Here sound retreat, and cease our hot pursuit.

Lord Talbot has retrieved the corpse of the Earl of Salisbury, whom he had seen dying in Act I:

Now have I paid my vow unto his soul;
For every drop of blood was drawn from him
There hath at least five Frenchmen died tonight.

But one fact dims his satisfaction: France's leaders have not fallen into his men's clutches.

The Duke of Burgundy, an ally of England, chimes in, reporting that he thinks he saw Charles VII and Joan of Arc escaping from Orléans:

Myself—as far as I could well discern
For smoke and dusky vapors of the night—
Am sure I scar'd the Dauphin and his trull,
When arm in arm they both came swiftly running [...]

*

Then a messenger arrives, on behalf of the Countess of Auvergne.

The noblewoman requests that Lord Talbot visit her castle, since she has heard of his prowess in battle. She wants to lay eyes on "the man/Whose glory fills the world with loud report."

(This sub-plot resembles the knightly romances of the Middle Ages, and epics like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I think. I can't recall Shakespeare's later works doing the same, but may be mistaken.)

Lord Talbot, outwardly charmed, accepts her invitation.

Inwardly, he has reservations and plans of his own. He calls one of his soldiers:

Come hither, captain. [Whispers.] You perceive my mind.

Capt. I do, my lord, and mean accordingly.

***

Scene III.

We meet again at Auvergne.

The Countess speaks to her porter. But she reveals in a monologue afterward that she has laid her own plot against Lord Talbot.

When Talbot arrives, she is shocked at first, since he is small of stature:

It cannot be this weak and writhled* shrimp      *[wrinkled]
Should strike such terror to his enemies.

Talbot turns away, looking for proof of his identity. But when the messenger detain him, he insists that he is indeed Talbot. Upon which the Countess of Auvergne tells him that he is now her prisoner:

Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me,
For in my gallery thy picture hangs:
But now the substance shall endure the like.
And I will chain these legs and arms of thine,
That hast by tyranny, these many years,
Wasted our country, slain our citizens,
And sent our sons and husbands captivate.

Talbot laughs uproariously. He and the Countess exchange words. Like Schrödinger's cat (if Schrödinger's cat could have spoken) he tells her: "You are deceiv'd, my substance is not here [...]"

The Countess exclaims, bemused,

This is a riddling merchant for the nonce;
He will be here, and yet he is not here:
How can these contrarieties agree?

Her English guest solves the riddle: he winds his horn. At this signal, English soldiers burst through the doors. Lord Talbot is free.

His hostess apologizes profusely.

Victorious Talbot! pardon my abuse:
I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited,
And more than may be gather'd by thy shape.
Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath;
For I am sorry that with reverence
I did not entertain thee as thou art.

Talbot responds, "Be not dismay'd, fair lady [...]",

What you have done hath not offended me;
Nor other satisfaction do I crave,
But only, with your patience, that we may
Taste of your wine and see what cates* you have;     [food]

Delighted, the Countess of Auvergne lets bygones be bygones:

With all my heart, and think me honoured
To feast so great a warrior in my house.

(As the Countess had likely invested years into wishing for his downfall and weeks plotting the details, this about-face is a little sudden. But I guess she was happy to be alive?)

***

Historical Note: In real life, Lord Talbot appears to have been a disagreeable fellow, also one of many English sent to Ireland on his government's behalf to make the local population's life a misery.

Shakespeare's Complete Works Reading Challenge: Fourth Day of Henry VI

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? I've had a hankering to read and half-liveblog all of Shakespeare's plays (again)... in chronological order, onward from Henry VI, Part 1: written by Shakespeare (b. 1564) in 1591. I'm using an old Complete Works of Shakespeare edition from the Clarendon Press.

See also: Previous Henry VI blog posts:

• Act I Scene 1: Henry V's funeral

• Scenes 2, 3 & 4: French dauphin meets Joan of Arc, Duke of Gloucester clashes with Bishop of Winchester, the Earl of Salisbury is killed in fighting in Orléans

•  Scenes 5 & 6: Joan of Arc fights Lord Talbot, French celebrate lifting of siege on Orléans

***

2:30 p.m.
ACT II.
Scene I.

"Joan of Arc in the protocol
of the parliament of Paris (1429).
Drawing by Clément de Fauquembergue.
French National Archives"
[Wikimedia Commons]

We meet our cast of characters in Orléans again.

Reading the words of a French sergeant, one is tempted to wish that modern soldiery were as eloquent:

Sirs, take your places and be vigilant.
If any noise or soldier you perceive
Near to the walls, by some apparent sign
Let us have knowledge at the court of guard.

The French sentries are not pleased to be out in the weather.

Thus are poor servitors—
When others sleep upon their quiet beds—
Constrain'd to watch in darkness, rain, and cold.

But then English forces with Lord Talbot and the Dukes of Bedford and of Burgundy arrive at the walls, giving purpose to their vigil.

One would suppose that the English would be attacking at night to offer an element of surprise, so silence would be enforced. But Shakespeare writes in the stage directions of "their drums beating a dead march." I checked on Wiktionary: this means a "mournful," slow march, not a march with muffled drums.

The English lord and dukes pause to chat. The Duke of Bedford calling King Charles VII of France a "coward" for enlisting "witches" to help — since he allegedly cannot win in battle any other way. Talbot, who had also condemned the French leaders' "art and baleful sorcery," is determined to avenge the death of the Earl of Salisbury.

"God is our fortress," insists Talbot,

in whose conquering name
Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.

(I don't think attacking one fortress in the name of another fortress makes very much sense, but that might be why I'm not a playwright. As far as I can tell, Orléans didn't have any flint buildings, either – a modern rearrangement of stones from an old Fort des Tourelles at Orléans remains, evidence of materials used in Henry VI's time. But let's read "flinty" as a figure of speech.)

Meanwhile, Shakespeare's French sentries haven't heard or seen a thing. It's only when the English "scale the walls," and break out into war cries, that a French sentry calls the alarm.

But the French, "Having all day carous'd and banqueted", are ill-prepared to defend themselves.

The Bastard of Orleans and the Dukes of Alençon and Angers run onto the stage from different directions, "in their shirts" and "half ready, and half unready."

Shortly Charles VII and Joan of Arc join them. From what I can understand, 'leaping over the walls' means that they are already seeking safety away from the field of battle, not attempting any defense.

Now the French leaders squabble.

Charles VII turns against Joan of Arc.

Joan whines that she cannot be awake 24/7: "Sleeping or waking must I still prevail[...]?". She blames the watch for not keeping a better lookout. (But if the Virgin Mary is appearing to her to tell her to save France, surely it is Joan of Arc's responsibility to do more than what is humanly probable?)

France's dukes, when Charles begins to blame the Duke of Alençon instead, point out that their own parts of the fortifications were adequately defended.

***

I think that the play treats Joan of Arc as a charlatan.

But I almost wonder if a cheeky, young Shakespeare was criticizing Elizabeth I, although I have found no scholarly evidence of this.

Before the Spanish Armada reached England, in her speech at Tilbury, Queen Elizabeth I had placed herself in a military role when she said,

I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

She appealed to religion just like Joan of Arc:

we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people

But her influence, like Joan of Arc's, seemed ambiguously helpful.

The Spanish Armada was expensive. The English military, even though the defeat of the Spanish Armada was treated as a huge victory across England, faced disaster:

"The day after her Tilbury speech, Elizabeth ordered the army disbanded, the camp at Tilbury dissolved five days later, then discharged the navy, sending them home without pay." (Wikipedia)

Many soldiers died of sickness, too. The Queen had explicitly promised pay in the Tilbury speech. But the Wikipedia article suggests that her reputation survived. Besides, it was William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who had advised in his role as Lord High Treasurer that "‘by death, by discharging of sick men, and such like . . . there may be spared something in the general pay [...].’" (Machiavelli had nothing on him!) Elizabeth's main participation in this betrayal had, to put it generously, been to ignore protests against Burghley's ideas by men like the Lord High Admiral, Charles Howard.

Then, in the English counter-Armada that was launched in 1589, over 11,000 men were killed on the English side. The Spanish had lost about as many during their Armada. Even Philip II came out of it looking like a comparative naval genius. (And even now, this embarrassing little episode doesn't seem to enter many discussions of British history.)

It's tempting to wonder if a failed English attack on Lisbon inspired Shakespeare when he wrote of the better-fated one on Orléans?

Again, I'm not sure if Shakespeare did mean to satirize Elizabeth I. But a cursory read of another Wikipedia article reveals that Elizabeth was hailed as an "Astraea," which is the same mythological character that Joan of Arc was compared to in Act I. Merely circumstantial evidence? A cliché of the Elizabethan Age that would have been widely used anyway?

***

Returning to Scene I: Joan of Arc and the French nobility at Orléans finally stop arguing. She suggests repairing France's defenses.

But it is too late. A moment later,

Enter an English Soldier, crying, 'A Talbot! A Talbot!' They fly, leaving their clothes behind.

(I certainly hope that the dukes, king, and Joan of Arc were holding extra clothing and armour over their arms, and not that the stage direction means that they scampered off in nude abandon. Either way, the English soldier happily picks up the spoils.)

Christmas and Chaos

After 1:45 p.m., the Christmas holidays have officially begun!

Fridays the first class is at 10:15 a.m., and it was only mildly awkward because I hadn't been able to find and read the article that we were supposed to be discussing. (My error was to search for it in German instead of in English.) Fortunately the rest of the class — which was admittedly smaller today since it was the day before the holidays, and many were tootling off into the liberty of the vacation early — had read it.

The professor courageously offered us mini-New Testament Bibles and chocolate as Christmas presents. I had to decline because through grandparents, maybe my own parents, and possibly my great-aunt, there are a lot of New Testaments in German, English, Latin and New Testament Greek in our family apartment already.

I've still been feeling sick. The anaemia symptoms seem like they're under control as long as I don't exercise strenuously or lose sleep. But I'm fairly certain there's something brewing underneath, because of weird puffy face symptoms, redness and heat, and a weak feeling especially in the left arm that started this week. It's too much information, but having a slightly stuffy nose or tight clothing also makes the anaemia more evident again. I stayed up past 2 a.m. on Monday to finish an assignment, and also paid the price for that: even in the late afternoon I didn't feel strong enough, and called in sick for class. Anyway, January 2nd is my next doctor's appointment; it had been scheduled sooner, but due to the doctor's sickness and personnel shortages (a Berlin-wide phenomenon these days), it has been rescheduled twice.

Anyway, after the first class, I went to the university cafeteria. It was still too early for many of the food booths in the back, and I wasn't familiar with the ones that were open yet. So I returned to the booth at the entrance and ordered a rectangle of blueberry streusel cake and got myself a mug of hot cocoa at the machine. The cafeteria lady at the cash register was in a beaming mood, despite her being busy with paper and the inner workings of something behind the counter. I hazarded a guess that the impending vacation might have been inspiring the mood, and offered, "Schöne Feiertage" as I left. She lit up even more and returned the greeting, so I felt like a Sherlock Holmes.

Then we had a lecture where we looked at an artifact, two drawings, and text excerpts from the inglorious period of European conquest in the Caribbean and South America.

In the lobby of the large lecture halls in the university building, students were playing an upright piano that had been painted green (which makes me shudder) and placed there I think as part of a sustainability initiative. 'Sustainability' is a very, very flexible word. But a few of the students played beautifully, for example one of Tchaikovsky's Seasons, and the audience — and, I kind of thought, one of the cleaning crew who was standing with his trolley around the corner — loved it.

*

It's not very Christmassy, but I realize that I haven't commented on news lately, and there's a lot of it.

For Berlin: The debate about budget cuts continues to rage. Joe Chialo, senator for culture, said persuasively that Berlin's cultural scene is part of Berlin's society as a whole; and if Berlin's society a whole is facing a tight budget, the cultural scene cannot be magically exempt from sharing the problem.

That said, some of the budget cuts there seem wrong, as do ones for social charities that regularly appear in the Berlin evening news. Then, according to an email from the student's association ASTA, apparently some of Berlin's universities and colleges have already laid off staff in anticipation of the budget cuts to the educational sector.

Finally, there are budget cuts to the green transportation sector, which I find especially shortsighted because if from a meteorological standpoint Berlin becomes Dubai 2.0 in fifty years*, we'll really have wished we had those electric buses and better rail network. The dysfunctions of 'green' transportation methods that do require costly fixes are also probably deepening resentment against the Green Party, as a party that seemingly equates moral purity with voters' inconvenience, and any leftist-to-moderate government it was or will be a part of. As right now Berlin is ruled by a coalition of the centre-right CDU and centre-left SPD, it's unlikely that the mayor intends to weaken the trope.
*I'm exaggerating slightly.

For Syria: I haven't spoken to any Syrian citizen about the situation, but like everyone else I was also awestruck that the removal of a dictator, something that 13 years of deep suffering didn't achieve, happened in two weeks. At the same time I think the country's factions and the fates of divers regions, villages, and perhaps even city districts are so complex and individual that I am a little worried about the 'now everyone's an expert on Syria' effect that seems to have spread through news media not just in Germany, but also in the UK, USA. In other words, 5-minute segments will necessarily go nowhere near doing justice to the situation.

That said, it is also strikingly tragic to hear that so many disappeared political prisoners really are likely dead. Also, on the smaller individual scale, it's sad to hear that Austin Tice — the American journalist — is still not returned to his family. It boggles the mind that I've worked a job for 7 years, quit it, and started studying full-time, during the same period of time he hasn't been able to talk to his family or go home.

I have also written enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to make my feelings clear: both that it's necessary that the Israeli hostages be released and returned to safety, and that the deaths of now over 45,000 Palestinians are unjustified. As for more recent developments: I'd need a lot of convincing to believe that the encroachment on the Golan Heights now, in defiance both of international law and the feelings of the Druze residents, is any way not colonialist. (And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's unmitigated cheek in wearing a yellow hostages ribbon, I'm presuming to enhance his own image, when he appeared at his Israeli court hearing on charges of corruption, has made me hopping mad. He seems a narcissist on the level of the 45th US President at times: any justified criticism of him seems to feel to him like a tragedy greater than the death of thousands.) But the same thought as mentioned for Syria applies to this: I am not an expert.

In reading history it becomes clear that there are many crises, many times where crises converge into what feels like a black hole of chaos. In between, there are still stretches of peace, and people who work competently and hard to make those stretches happen. So I am determined to remain optimistic.

Beautiful British Columbia: Our September 2024 Holiday, Part Four

On Friday, September the 13th, I woke up at 5:45 a.m.

Daybreak in Lumby,
where the highway leads to Cherryville.
(Salmon Trail branches off to the right.)
All rights reserved.

We had plenty of time before breakfast: the brothers and I went walking along a new branch of the Salmon Trail: the Chinook Trail. (I had considered the hike on Sugar Mountain as a final exam on whether I was free of anemia during our Canadian tour, and it was wonderful to find out that I was.)

First we retraced the part of the trail we already knew, which took us along the industrial yard we'd seen the day before.

But this time a mist blanketed everything. The dawning sun glowed through the haze and the summer's desiccated weed flower heads and husks. White-tailed deer bounded away from us, behind chainlink fences, into blurry infinity.

The Chinook Trail itself turned off onto a broad gravel road, where a few hopeful pine saplings were planted.

Crossing an asphalted street, we passed along the bed of a defunct railroad. It may have been a railroad for freight trains instead of passenger trains.

There were traces (to the left) of an industrial wasteland. A building complex had been torn down: piles of rubble rose from the floor. It would have been more tidy than haunting, except that trees and bushes screening the terrain lent an air of mystery. I could picture train wagons waiting here, to bring or fetch away products – not so long ago, judging by the new-looking concrete that had been poured beneath the torn-down building. A pick-up truck rattled along the gravel past us.

A car renovation business advertised itself with a VW Beetle on a rooftop of a nearby edifice. The yard's driveway entrance itself was decorated with what looked like a vintage 1920s car, its roof down, skewered on a pole (my notes: "like a beetle with a pin"), beside a huge needle tree and a second VW Beetle. Given my months of obsession with early 20th-century history in Europe, I was aghast.

Behind it, many parked cars looked like post-2000 models. It was only when we walked around the very back of the lot that piles of disassembled car parts and pieces of old lumber were stacked near the fence, as far as I remember.

We walked until we came to an Andrew Wyeth field with an abandoned-looking barn of wooden planks that had been greyed to a fireplace colour, unused railway track still laid and disappearing into infinity. Dried burdock stalks, thistles, rosebushes with hips, and cattails lent autumn hues to the deep green grass, and I seem to remember that a few saskatoonberry bushes and hawthorns flourished near the barn.

Nature took the upper hand.

The marshy landscape felt like wilderness even if we knew that the houses and businesses of Lumby were not far off, and even if the trimming hand of humans had clearly arranged the paths, fences, and other elements. We spotted a reddish deer at the far end of a field. Then a bald eagle flew in. It was hounded at first by a retinue of other birds, but finally perched in a tall, dead tree. There it was soon proudly alone, presumably scanning the marsh beneath for prey. I wondered what it thought of our smartphones and our diligent photography.

Bald eagles have become so rare that I felt honoured to have seen one.

We had, speaking for myself at least, the pleasant sense of being monarchs of all we surveyed when we were alone except for the animal kingdom. – While at the next moment we equally enjoyed the company of locals who were out for a stroll themselves.

We emerged at a bicycle park where cyclists do stunts in better weather, then walked back through the town.

In the yard of a house right at the park, two or three layers of sandbags across the garden hinted that the creek overflowed, flooding the area, at other times of the year.

On a nearby street, a large and small deer that were dark brown, looking like a different species from the white-tailed deer earlier, were roaming the neighbourhood. Three logging trucks passed us before we reached the motel. But I also remember one or two quirky late Victorian or Edwardian buildings surviving into this modern era beside the busy road.

We were culpably late: Uncle Pu was waiting for us.

*

THEN we all set out together to a bakery. It was crammed with customers. It also had a heady selection: plain glazed doughnuts, Boston creme doughnuts, carrot cake, etc. inside the glass-paned counter, and I seem to remember Nanaimo bars and brownies that came in a vegan variant in a refrigerator, and a shelf full of breads in bags near the door. I asked for carrot cake.

Afterward we returned to the motel, eating the doughnuts and carrot cake in Gi.'s motel room. It was nostalgic of the 1970s: in its homelike kitchenette, the gas oven had analogue dials and the flooring was pressed vinyl or linoleum. Earth tones were everywhere.

THIRDLY, we went to a coffee house for breakfast. It was the most hipster establishment I'd seen since leaving Berlin! A sign even informed us that we could order oat milk. (Generally the only concession that British Columbian restaurant menus made was to gluten-free diets, which I wrongly thought had gone out of fashion in the early 2010s.)

Two middle-aged men sitting at the dark wooden tables in the back resembled college professors; one of them was mentioning that it was Friday the 13th. Two young women resembled urban creatives. They were absorbed in their conversations and we felt less like pleasing novelties than on other occasions. Later two paramedics (judging by their work uniforms) drifted in. The café had been recommended by the lady at the dollar store, a hint that it was a community favourite.

The dispenser of recycled paper napkins on our tabletop  – not a single fast food restaurant in Canada has bleached white napkins any more – warned us to think of the environment before digging in.

Country music, despite the left-wing, urban vibe, was playing from the kitchen. I think it was modern country music and not Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash etc. classics.

I ordered a California BLT sandwich on multigrain bread. We were recovering from Bitter Mountain and weren't planning to hike again soon, so a lighter meal seemed enough. I was pleased to find that the sandwich's layer of mayonnaise was thin, and that mashed avocado had been layered on the bread too. To drink, I had a hot chocolate, which seemed to be based on chocolate syrup. The others had caffè latte, burgers, and a lumberjack breakfast of sausages with 2 eggs and hash browns and toast.

*

We filled up our gas tank before driving to New Denver; while near Cherryville regular gasoline cost 154.9 cents per litre, here it was 152.9. (I remember when the cost of gas per litre in British Columbia was under 1$...)

As the minivan was grimy after our mountaineering, we went to a car wash.

An automated car wash is to be built in Lumby, according to a sign opposite the supermarket: in the meantime we went to the manual car wash.

You drive your car underneath an open roof, and feed loonies or toonies into a coin drop. Then you wash the car with water spurting out of the long hoses, or soapy water spurting out of the squeegees. You top up the loonies and toonies as needed when the water or soap run out. Perhaps all very ordinary, but as I don't drive a car, it was engrossing.

Soap
Presoak
Tri-Foam Brush
Tire cleaner
Wax
Rain X clear coat
Rinse
Spot free rinse

Uncle Pu and Ge. took care of the rinsing, paying, soaping, paying, and rinsing. I sat inside and watched the deluge of water and bubbles, and read the 'menu' beside the coin drop.

***

Feeling more respectable, we drove out into the countryside.

We saw advertisements for straw, firewood, and artisans on roadside signs; other signs said PRIVATE PROPERTY and WATCH FOR LIVESTOCK.

We saw a hay barn and a field with hay bales, as logging trucks and motorcycles passed us, and a flower stand.

The evocatively named "Goldpanner Campground" hinted that miners had haunted the area, too.

The "thin, spire-like trees" were characteristic of the high altitude, as were my popping ears. Eventually we passed the Monashee Summit, elevation 1241 m, near Struttell Creek.

Another roadside cross paid tribute to someone who had died.

A new sign had something like this wording:

Hunters

To hunt please get permission from owner of property

Above the road, a "shuttered small building advertising ICE CREAM" appeared, I seem to remember. Then the next RUNAWAY LANE appeared.

*

Boater Advisory

Arrow Lakes is a
hydroelectric reservoir.

Be aware of:
* changing water levels
* submerged hazards
* floating debris

BC Hydro

To our delight, we took a half-hourly car ferry at the Needles Ferry Landing. (It is free of charge.) Uncle Pu brought us there just in time for the next sailing, and we rolled on board alongside 2 motorcycles, 1 compact car, 2 pick-ups, 3 RVs, etc. The ferry's journey was brief: in 5 minutes we had already landed on the other bank of the Arrow Lakes and saw a sign, "Welcome to Fauquier."

SET BRAKE, SHUTOFF ENGINE,
REMAIN IN VEHICLE UNTIL
VESSEL HAS DEPARTED

A dark green tugboat floated near logs in the water. Mountains that are still green enough to feel hilly embrace the Lakes, and the Lakes feed hydroelectric dams. The Lakes have such a long circumference that two ferry routes (that I know of) lead across it, to save driving time.

As we drove uphill and downhill through the terrain around Nakusp, the snug-looking houses, gardens with dahlias and other flowers, hedges, and general air of middle-class suburban bliss, resembled southern Vancouver Island.

On the road, at least eight motorcyclists passed us, profiting by the mild temperatures. The unincorporated community of Hills advertised a garlic festival. I tried to guess if the area's climate would be icy and inhospitable in wintertime, or temperate even then.

The road signs suggested the winters were harsh: WATCH FOR BLACK ICE, and SKI AND SNOWBOARD AREA, near an advertisement for the skier's destination Valhalla Hills.

But later we caught sight of another danger: wisps of smoke and steam rising from the uninhabited-looking, hazy blue mountain slopes on the opposite bank of Slocan Lake. When we reached the level of Rosebery, the scent of woodsmoke infiltrated the car. We were wondering if this was an undiscovered wildfire; many signs asked drivers to "Please be careful. Report wildfires," and one such sign was nearby.

Finally we reached New Denver.