Times change

Times change and so does technology. Not only the fiber optic speedways, but also the low tech stuff as well.

I am on my way south on my favorite Bundesbahn and I noticed something. The railway tracks are built on cement pilings and not wood ones, as they once were. Gone are the days of my childhood in Canada when we would wander down railway tracks in the countryside, heading to the next village store.

I imagine the cement used now is some super duper bionic material that is completely impervious to weather conditions, all the while being amazingly strong and flexible at the same time. Strange to think of some engineer spending their time inventing such a material. Not media worthy news. Yet it is used over thousands of miles of tracks.

Another day, another cafe

One of the reasons I decided life in Germany is a fine thing, is its long standing tradition of cafes. In every town and city there are a wealth of cafes to explore.

The cafe in the photo is fantastic in its simplicity of decor, excellent lunch, and proximity to one of my favorite museums in Berlin, the Berggruen.

It is also the first place where I met with my new-found blogging friend, Charlotte, for the first time in person. So, if you are reading this, Char, in your home far away, greetings from Charlottenburg.

Grey day with sunny pursuits

The day rose grey and cold. We sat long over breakfast and got caught up with all those familiar topics friends talk about, who haven't seen each other in a year's time.

To outsiders it might appear we are serving ourselves to a smorgasbord of random thoughts and happenings, but to connoisseurs there is a method underlying our conversational meanderings. We taste certain sweet bits first and save the sadder, lovely bits for later. It doesn't matter what we are discussing, there is such a sense of good will, a fine tingling lightness lingers as I go and brush my teeth and get ready to go into the city.

We travel by bus, train, streetcar, bus, walk along long ugly streets whichwas once Eastern Germany. The endless uniform apartment blocks were built sixty years ago under the communist /socialist regime.

The last twenty, since the wall came down, there has been a lot of effort and money spent to create change. The only thing a stranger like I can see is in the diverse looks of the people' s faces populating the sidewalks and the fantastic organic food served in a nearby cafe.

The greyness permeates my outer winter self. The only warmth is in our laughter.

Underway

I am on my way to my favorite yearly outing to Berlin.

A long weekend of chatting over endless cups of tea, good food, lot's of laughter and exciting exhibits to see...

Will try and keep you updated. I'm trying to go mobile.

Guardian Goggles

Had a good laugh this morning. Don't know if you guys have been following the hype about augmented reality glasses. It started a year or so (maybe two!) when Google announced Google Glass.

And this is sort of where things are today...

When I was working at the local university a few years ago, I did some research in augmented reality application and pervasive gaming. It was a really interesting time in my life. The work showed there are some very silly, as well as very useful ways of using augmented information.

For instance, the ability for technicians to receive augmented information for the repair of machinery in dangerous and critical situations. This would allow someone in a seperate location to look at the present installation and then send relevant instructions to the technicians in exactly the form they need it.

Whether we, the normal folk, will ever need augmented reality glasses is doubtful. Our lives are often overloaded with information as it is!

Winter wonders

Let Ideas Compete

Oh, the wonders of this sparse northern German winter landscape / traveling back on a train after being away on a two-day business trip / anxious to be back in the warmth and safety of my home / the sun sets orange over the grey, brown, tired land/ swarms of fowl populate the bristled fields / this is their brief stop over on their way to Sweden from Africa / all the while I listen to the brilliant author Tarun Tejpal talk about his childhood spent in India on the Canadian podcast, Writers and Company / so many complain about our life here being provincial / what do they know!

Barking up the wrong tree

This video shows the results of Harvard business economist's study about the wealth distribution in the States. The study asked 5,000 Americans what they think would be the ideal distribution curve and secondly, what they think the reality is. The video uses smart infographics to show these results and then with a twist painful twist, what is the cruel reality.  

I tried to find out what the actual reality of wealth distribution in Germany is. Germany is not a social state to the extent the Scandinavians are considered to be, but it is a social state nevertheless. Since we have social medicine and social assistance, I hoped the wealth distribution would be fairer.

After a briefly researching the internet, I found these figures:

• 0.5% of Germans own 25% of private wealth (in comparison, 1% of American's own 40% of their nation's wealth)
• 5%  own 46%
• 10% own  67%

Sitting on the side of the chart which the video above describes as, "just scraping by" these German figures appear to me to be similarly appalling, even if they are admittedly mathematically not equal with the States.

So, what conclusions can I draw? Maybe, that from the perspective of us normal folk, the wealth distribution is stupendously askew in all so-called industrial countries. Could we even be barking up the wrong tree, always comparing wealth distribution with costs of socialism? 

Meaningful Coincidences

They say there two types of people: Freudian or Jungian. I’m a Jungian type of gal. Ever since I heard his thoughts on “meaningful coincidences”, he had me hooked. My understanding of what Jung was saying is, “Hey, you there. The universe is aligning its stars and there is going to be a series of events you will find freakishly random, but that isn’t to say they aren’t of great importance. So pay close attention!”  As a teenager, I experienced such a series of freakish events. They propelled me kicking-and-screaming directly into a friendship with my ghostly nemesis, Nerida.

In 1970, when I was thirteen years old, I transferred from a large suburban public high school to a small private girls boarding school in the center of Montreal. The only reason I enrolled in the school was because I needed to live downtown, so I could attend ballet lessons for several hours every afternoon and on Saturdays at Les Grand Ballet Canadiens. Boarding school seemed a pragmatic solution for overcoming commuting hassles. What I wasn’t prepared for was the strict Anglo-Saxon school regime they enforced. Hogwarts hadn’t been invented yet. I found school uniforms, houses, prefects, matrons, demerit points, detention, and bad school food difficult to adjust to.

The teachers and matrons quickly became exasperated by my rebellious behavior. They could not comprehend why I found their Anglo-Saxon ways so restrictive. Their lack of understanding was because they had had a boarder the previous year from Newfoundland, who was also a dance student, and she’d caused them no difficulty whatsoever. Her name was Nerida. What a dear child. So sweet-natured. So obedient. Such lovely angelic curly hair. Did I know her?

Right then and there I decided I hated Nerida, even though I had never met her. Not because she was obviously a wimp, but mainly for her lovely angelic curly hair.

Nerida’s perfect behavior was held against me at every twist and turn. Then another freakish event happened. I had to get braces and it was an excruciatingly painful procedure. Every month, I would go and get my braces tightened. The orthodontist would hover above with his instruments of torture and sternly reprimand me for having not worn the elastic bands he prescribed.

As luck would have it, he had a patient last year who was also a dance student and she ALWAYS wore her elastics. Did I know her? Her name was Nerida.

Fast-forward two years … I moved from Montreal to Cannes, France, as a student of the Rosella Hightower’s International School of Dance. I was ecstatic having blissfully escaped the restrictions of the boarding school regime. What a carefree existence; the type a sixteen-year-old lives when completely free of parental care or adult supervision.

A few months after I moved to Cannes, I received a letter from my mother back in Montreal. She wrote about how she’d gone into the city for a dentist appointment and decided to stay in town and eat lunch before heading back to the suburbs. The maitre d' of the restaurant she chose approached her and asked her if she wouldn’t mind sharing her table with someone. She said yes, and a charming elder Torontonian businessman came and sat at her table.

“You won’t believe it. He’s originally from Newfoundland and one of his daughters is also studying dance in Cannes. Her name is Nerida. Have you met her?”

Sure enough, a few days later, Nerida came into the girls’ changing room and searched me out. Her father had written her about this Canadian girl who attended Trafalgar (the boarding school in Montreal) and was now in Cannes.

In bursts this bubbly, curly-haired girl and runs over to me and says, “Hi. Did you go to Trafalgar?” My response... “You must be fucking Nerida.”

After note: this all happened over forty years ago.  Nerida and I became best of friends and our friendship remains deep and loving and riddled with meaningful coincidences.

Along my walk today

The bracing wind churns
Up the grey ice water and
The winter debris either slaps
Back and forth, ineffectively,
On the beach front, or it bobs
Up and down just below the
Foaming surface. It all looks
So cold and dejected, rejected,
Depressed. My boot toe loosens
The corner of a torn luggage tag...
GUA to FRA... Guatemala to
Frankfurt on a grey spit of a beach
On the Alster lakefront. What a
Story it tells. My ears are closed
Muffled by my blue wool hat. 

My heart flips though in excitement.

Treating Yourself or Others To A Treat

I want to post this English Lesson I wrote for one of my training groups. Hope you enjoy it!

It’s Valentine’s Day. Some people like to give gifts to their loved ones on this occasion. Others not. Molly Wizenberg, the author of A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, wrote in her blog:

“I’m not a curmudgeon*, I swear. I’m not one of those bitter types who while away February by spitting on the displays of pink-and-red heart garlands in the grocery store. It’s just that Valentine’s Day doesn’t really excite me. It’s not like Thanksgiving or Christmas, those holidays that come with catchy tunes to hum under your breath, the holidays that invite all sorts of baking and splurging and beautiful, endless buffet tables. Valentine’s Day feels a little stilted, that’s all. Too often, it’s like an obstacle course or a big end-of-term exam, a test to prove how good you are, or how impossibly romantic you can be. I like my romance under less fraught circumstances. It just feels more romantic that way.”

*curmudgeon: grump, bellyacher, moaner

It is easy to understand why many Germans believe the whole Valentine’s Day hype is just a circus. Valentine’s Day is not a German tradition. 

I wanted to share with you a description of what Valentine’s Day used to be, way back in the Stone Ages, before commercial marketing went amok.

During my childhood in Canada, we used to make Valentine cards for our friends, siblings, and parents. The cards were made of coloured paper pasted with napkin doilies. On the inside of the cards, we wrote poems we composed ourselves. They went something like this:

Roses are red. / Violets are blue. / I am happy to be your friend. / I hope you are happy to be mine too.

Rose are red. / Violets are blue. / I like your freckles / and your curly hair too.

Roses are red. / Violets are blue / You are so pretty / and really nice too.

Okay. You get the idea. It was not great literature. But, the thing was, we all really enjoyed making and receiving the valentine cards. There weren’t any gifts of expensive flowers, Belgium chocolates, or romantic dinners at a chic restaurant. It was just giving the people you liked a small personal treat.

Who doesn’t enjoy receiving a treat, no matter how small and no matter how insignificant the occasion? And during my childhood, Valentine’s Day really was insignificant. It was a sunny blip in deadlining ECG curve of those long cold dark winter months.

Here are a few suggestions for how you can treat yourself or others on Valentine’s Day:

•  Call your mom and wish her a Happy Valentine’s. You will get more gold stars for this than you will calling on Mother’s Day, since that is more or less a duty call.

• Compose a poem and send it as an email to a friend living far away (feel free to use the samples mentioned above).

• Anonymously place marzipan hearts on each of your officemates’ desks. Enjoy the secrecy of your generosity. (Don’t forget to put one on your desk too.)

• Take your children out for an ice cream treat. It’s fun eating ice cream in the middle of winter.

Exercise 

Many people don’t give Valentine’s Day gifts because they do not; a) want to be pressured to buy something on this day and prefer to give when they spontaneously want to treat someone with a gift, b) want to be part of the commercial hype

Try and recall the last three times:

•  you gave someone a gift spontaneously

• someone gave you a gift without it being Christmas or your birthday

• you treated yourself to something special

I don’t know if your memory is anything like my own is, but I remember best the gifts I received on special occasions. Maybe the special occasions act as thumbtacks to fix the gift to the person in my mind.

Sharing the Love

I saw the above video last year for the first time. Today, I watched it for a second time and liked it just as much, if not more.

A lot has happened in my life in the last 12 months and I just wanted to say thank-you to all my family and friends (and you online friends as well) for your support, generosity, kindness and... love.

You know you are tainted when...

You know you are tainted when this,


makes you more excited than the news that the Pope is stepping down in the next weeks.

Favourite Sites: Slew of Podcasts II

There is no place better to find stories and storytellers than in the Internet. There are countless podcasts out there to fill your life with good stories. I've have "gone through" many over the last 10-12 years and here are some of the podcasts that have stuck to my subscription list like Velcro and I listen to faithfully.

Eleanor Wachtel is a champion interviewer. She generously sets a stage for storytellers to tell their stories every week, in Writers And Company . Ms. Wachtel's questions writers about their work and their lives. Her interviews are well-prepared, probing, prodding, expansive journeys. The writers are give a large berth to explain and explore how their personal biographies or life experiences contextually influence their writing.

One of the interviews I have listened to countless times is titled the Irish Panel,

"This week, the magic of the Irish short story, then and now - with Roddy Doyle, Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry."

If you delight in lively banter and the discourse of master storytellers, this is a good place to start.

Michael Ondaatje interviews Eleanor Wachtel on the occasion of the show's 20 anniversary. It turns out that Eleanor Wachtel can give as good as she gets.

Next on the list of my Top 5 Favourites is, This American Life.

"The radio show and TV show follow the same format. There's a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It's mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There's lots more to the show, but it's sort of hard to describe. Probably the best way to understand the show is to start at our favorites page, though we do have longer guides to our radio show and our TV show. If you want to dive into the hundreds of episodes we've done over the years, there's an archive of all our old radio shows and listings for all our TV episodes, too."


This is the trailer to a fantatic show they did in NYC and live-streamed across the US, Canada, and Australia. Sure wish I had been there, but watching the video is also fun.

Last fall, my daughter and I met up with my mother (from Grenada), my sister (from Santa Cruz), in Toronto. Coincidentally, Ira Glass was giving a show on the future of radio during this time. My daughter and I not only got to attend this fabulous show, but we also got to meet Mr. Glass in person.

When we went to pick up our tickets at the box office, we followed a line of people into the theater, not knowing it was the back stage door. Once we were in the theater, we realised we had made a mistake and explained this to the next security guard we met. Somewhere in the explanation I said, "We are here to see Ira Glass...", and the security guard translated this to "meet Ira Glass". Subsequently, he escorted us into a closed bar area that turned out to be where all the CBC VIPs were taken to so they could chat with Mr. Glass before the show.

I did manage to gather the nerve and introduce my daughter and myself and thank him for producing such a wonderful show. The whole encounter was thrilling, awkward, and embarrassing all at the same time.

Here are three other podcasts telling great stories for you to explore as well:

• The New Yorker: Fiction Podcast
• The Moth
• StoryCorps

Please leave the names of your favourites storytelling podcasts as a comment. So, there you go. Start listening.

Favourite Sites: A Slew of Podcasts (I)

I'm a great fan of podcasts. Even before they were called podcasts there were a few radio shows who would put some of their weekly programs online. (BBC was one of the forerunners.) I'd like to write a series of posts with short descriptions of My 10 Favourite Podcasts*. Today's post will be about This I Believe and On Being.

Here goes:

This I Believe

"This I Believe is an international organization engaging people in writing and sharing essays describing the core values that guide their daily lives."

Listening to This I Believe podcasts is a guarantee to make me feel grateful for the gift of the day. They are moving, thoughtful reflections by people both famous and not. They write about their personal beliefs and not just their opinions. Even if some of the authors write about core values very different to my own, their essays give me insight into how they live their lives.

This I Believe has been going since the 1950s, when it was a radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow (one of my all time heroes). You can read the essays or hear them spoken. I love to hear the authors read their essays out loud. It lends a special dimension to their thoughts.

 On Being

I don't quite know where to begin singing the praises of On Being with Krista Tippett. Perhaps I should just start with two examples of marvelously interesting people conversing with Krista on her program:

A Wild Love for this World 
"Joanna Macy is a philosopher of ecology, a Buddhist scholar, and an exquisite translator of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. We take that poetry as a lens on her wisdom on spiritual life and its relevance for the political and ecological dramas of our time."

Words That Shimmer
"Elizabeth Alexander shares her sense of what poetry works in us — and in our children — and why it may become more relevant, not less so, in hard and complicated times."

It is possible to listen to the unedited and edited versions of the show. I nearly always start with the unedited version, then go onto the edited version, and then go to the site and look at the extra material. Crazy. I know. But the ideas shared are just that good!

In these times where everything is being whittled down into easily digestible bites, On Being is a pioneer in Slow Thoughtful Conversation. The program editors are masters in preparing savoury many-course meals for happy consumption.




If listening to podcasts is not one of your regular past times, I can only encourage you to give it a try. They are highly enjoyable, informative, contemplative and there are no commercials! Pure entertainment.

*As you may have noticed, the list includes public radio program podcasts. There are many excellent amateur** podcasts that are as good as the ones I mention.

For example, if you are interested in finding about news in the tech world, I'd venture to say the amateur podcasts are the places you should be going to.

**Amateur: not in the sense of lacking in quality or not being professional... rather... Amateur: filled with passion, zing, and commitment, but not under public radio contract.

Second Chances

There are safe harbours, instant successes, love at first sight, roller coaster rides, the Middle Way, the long tail, and the long road. You don't reach my age without having experienced nearly all of these phenomena. The one thing I don't think I've experienced is the Second Chance. That is until today.

Years and years ago, I wrote three gaming scripts titled Talkshow Rivals, Sydney Soap, and London Live. (The fourth, Atlanta Gold, is a rough story sketch.) The games are interactive soap operas: part video sequences, part mini-games. 

In my scripts, a helluva lot (maybe 60%) of storytelling is going on, dispersed with gaming activity (40%). When I tried to sell the script to a large Japanese publisher (think S**y), video games consisted of 10% storyline and 90% game playing. (I'm being generous here!)

Still, it was a thrill to be given a chance to pitch my idea to their marketing and R&D departments. Ultimately, they turned down the scripts because they said production costs would be too high. (WoW and the first Harry Potter version on PS2 and Xbox had just launched.)

Their refusal made me put the work on the back shelf. I took all the folders and stored them in one of our cupboards. There they stood for the last ten years.

Fast forward to today... an acquaintance of mine, who has known me since way back when is going to introduce me to a new neighbour of hers. This said neighbour has worked in the gaming industry for many years. Can this be a Second Chance?

My goal is to sit down once again with someone in the know and talk seriously about my vision of what gaming can be. I'd like to know whether my concept was just before its time or just way out of the field.

Wish me luck.

Can't top that

One of my pet peeves is when an English word is introduced into the German language incorrectly. There are a lot of examples: handy for cell phone, walking for speed walking, mobbing for bullying... the list is long.

 

I went on a lovely long walk today and came across this sign at a bar. The bar was in the red light district. I wasn't so sure if it was an unembarrassed blatant advertisement for possible services from the women who live above the bar, but the price made me realise it was probably the price of a shot of cheap schnaps.   

Frozen Perfection

 
Returning to work today
After many days of living simply:
In the family, mostly indoors,
Occasionally in flights of fantasy.

Thanks to Lady Fi for allowing me to use her photo in this collage.

Favourite Sites: Letters of Note

You probably have to be of a certain age to even know what letter writing is all about. I'm in my mid-fifties and belong to one of the last generations of letter writers. We wrote party invitations, Valentine letters, thank you notes, pen pal letters, letters of complaint, letters of introduction, love letters, long epistles to dear friends living far away, and letters to family reminiscing good times long gone. Some of my closest relationships were formed and sustained almost solely through letter writing. It is/was considered an art form.

The website, Letter of Note, succeeds wonderfully in showing how delightful letter reading can be. Each letter opens a window of insight into the person's life, opinions, or history.


On the site's archive it is possible to browse through letters according to dates, categories, or author. If you prefer serendipity, there is a "random letter" generator on the right-hand sidebar.

I have subscribed to the blog for a few years now, so I've enjoyed whatever is published new. But, there are over 900 letters in the archive, so occasionally, I consciously seek out letter from some of my favourite persons. Here is a sample list:

• Harper Lee describing touchingly how reading books was the only means she and other local children had during the Depression to discover worlds outside of their homes or village.   
• David Bowie responding to his first fan mail from America
• E.B. White patiently explaining the burden of having to answer fan mail
• Frank Zappa appealing to his fans to rise up to action
• Harold Pinter rendering whiplash upon someone of Little Brain
• Spike Milligan doing the same...

Letters of Note also points you in the direction of other collections of letters. These two letters of Kurt Vonnegut inspired me to order his extraordinary collection. This letter written in 1824 by  Charles Lamb surprisingly illustrates how Man Colds have existed for centuries. The letter also made me remember the part Charles Lamb letters played in the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Delightfully, his letters are available for free at Google Play.

If you are a teacher, parent, grandparent, or just avid reader there is much wealth of knowledge to be discovered here.

Favourite Sites: The Poetry Archive

I thought I would do a series of blog posts over the next months describing some of my favourite sites and how their content enriches my life.

The first site I would like to mention is The Poetry Archive.  The site started out as a archive where you could hear poets read their works and has expanded over time into something quiet remarkable.

Initially, I went to the site with the vague hope of rediscovering the innocent pleasure I experienced listening to poems as a child. My school days did a fair job of making sure I thought reading poetry a highbrow, but torturous activity. Something best left to scholars. I hoped to change this perception.

What I discovered was, if I can read the poem while listening to the poet speaks it, I understand the musicality, the magical nuances of the words in surprising ways. Poetry is no longer inaccessible, but tangible and fantastical all at the same time.

What started out as just a happenstance visit to the site developed into a true friendship. I go there to heal myself from the miseries of my overly busy life, to study the works of my favourite poets, or just to randomly explore the poems depending on my mood of the moment. It is possible to find poems by themes (such as belief, eden, islands, neighbours, or shipwreck) or forms (haiku, short, songs). Sometimes, on a whimsy, I just put in any old word that mind in the search window and the archive usually comes up with a poem for me to listen to.


It is through the search window that I discovered Jackie Kay talking in Old Tongue about the yearning she feels to go back to her young self, her authentic self. She dreams about speaking the same language she spoke as a child, before she grew up and away from her home and neighbourhood in Glasgow.

I fell in love with her poems. She speaks with a voice that mirrors so many of the unspoken words in my heart.

It is also possible to listen to an interview with Ms. Kay. Her advice about how to create an environment and structure to encourage your writing to go well, is particularly insightful.

There are separate pages on the site for teachers, students, children, historical recordings, and guided tours. The guided tours are guides put together by poets or famous people who are poetry lovers and want to share their favourite poems.

As one of my favourite poets of my childhood A.A. Milne once said,

No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.

It's flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn't keep up with it,
Not if I ran.

But if i stopped holding
The string of my kite
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.

And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes...
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.

A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six

So, let your kites fly with The Poetry Archive and discover where the wind goes...

New Year's Eve in Grenada

End of year, sitting on the terrace
Alone. Happy in my solitude
Looking over the oceanscape,
The Atlantic side, not the Caribbean
Warm seabreeze, tropical birdsong
Filling every cell in my body
Delicious pleasure. A blessing. Joy.

My mind drifts back into the cold
Snow-covered woodlands with the
Crunch, snap, whip of frozen winds
Shivering thrill of discovery.
Fairy lights, falling dusk,
Abandoned home. A suspended bridge 
Leading no where, for no one.

Thanks to Lady Fi for allowing me to use her photo in this collage.