Makes you wonder

There has been so much said in the last years about remixing, piracy, copyright, creative commons...
These two videos certainly add to the conversation:


Everything is a Remix from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Kirby Ferguson, the creator of the videos, writes,

"Remixing is a folk art but the techniques involved — collecting material, combining it, transforming it — are the same ones used at any level of creation. You could even say that everything is a remix.
To support this series please visit this site."



There are still two more videos to the series. Can hardly wait.

Thinking of Pakistan this holiday season*

At the end of October, I watched the video below, which was taken six weeks after the flooding outside Pakistan's southern city of Sukkur. There is no commentary, only music and images. Please watch it. The video shows footage of enormous areas of land still under water and unconceivably large number of people living under tragically insufficient conditions as a result of the floods.



It doesn’t take any intelligence to know that while the news media has moved on to the next sensational story (i.e. today’s arrest of Julian Assange), the victims of the floods are still in desperate need of our attention and help. It is for this reason that I’ve decided to take this holiday season to offer what assistance I can, but also to take some time each day during Advent and study about the history and culture of Pakistan.

There is no time like now to shine some light upon my ignorance concerning this country and its people. If you have any suggestions as to which online newspapers, books, or blogs I should read, please leave me a comment or write me an email at the address given on this blog’s sidebar.

If you wish to find out more about how you can help, please go to the following two links (1 and 2) and learn more.

* I am not one to celebrate anniversaries, but this is my 1,111 blog posts, which is called a Schnapszahl in Germany and considered a luck number. 

Short Days and Sleepless Nights

Just bits and pieces of going-ons and mundane reflections...

Is it only me, or does your sleeping patterns change with time of year and increasing age? I used to hibernate in winter. Literally, sleep long and deeply through all the dark months. Now, I'm battling to get five or six hours a night. Sorry, this sounds like more a complaint than it does a reflection.

October is a month of quiet anticipation in Luebeck. No one starts with Christmas, but you can see that the shops and the marketplaces are itching to pull our their decorations and lighting out. I love this city for its music and lighting during Advent. I'm going to see if I can post a photo a day (ok, every few days) capturing the delight of the season.

We have an optics shop around the corner from us that is owned by a suppressed drama queen. For, let's face it, there is nothing more sobering than spending your days helping people to try on glasses. The only way the owner can let loose is in his choice of window decorations. He does really unique decorations so numerous and varied it is hard to know where to start. Oh, yes, how about the decoration he put up just for Halloween: a lifelike mannequin lying down with contorted limbs, covered with a white sheet, stained red as if from a bullet hole; pronouncing the victim one from a murder scene. The figure is outlined with chalk and glasses bejewel the "installation". Totally bizarre. The fact that the optics shop is right next store to a toy shop only makes me wonder how many traumatized kids are going to remember this window display for a long long time to come.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Overheard Converstation of an Idiot

In stressful situations, not all people can remain cool and calm. Renovating a home: laying tiles, putting up wallpaper, painting window- and door-frames, though not rocket science, can put a strain on any marriage.



Yesterday, I passed a home in our neighbourhood (similar to the house above) where a couple have been working feverishly to renovate their new old home. They been at it since the beginning of the month and seem to be doing all the work themselves.

As I walked by their open front door, where the husband was laying down tiles in the entrance area, his wife came up to him with a cup of coffee she had just pored out of their themos. She was covered head-to-toe in a dusty overalls and paint was sprinkled all over her head. (Yeah, guess who got the job of painting all the ceilings.) As she was handing over the cup to her husband, she tripped and a slurp of coffee fell on his newly lain tiles.

The spontaneous poisonous barrage that came out of her husband was startling. After being rendered speechless, the wife apologized profusely. To which the husband responded, "Being sorry won't stop a plane from crashing." Talk about over-reacting. Talk about being an idiot.


All of this happened in the time it took me to walk by their front door. I know the incident is just a micro-moment in a relationship, but I did wonder if the couple will manage to move into their new place. And if they do,  how long will they stay together.

Concentration at Work/ Working with Concentration

It took six days for a group of Buddhist monks to create a mandala of compassion out of coloured sand. I think this is the first time-lapse video that I’ve seen that was captures the work of someone producing a singular piece of work over such a long period of time. The monks of Drepung Loseling Monastery who created the work apparently then destroyed the mandala and scattered the sand into a river for it to be carried off into the world.



To read more about the creation of this mandala you can go to the following links (here and here).

From Another Perspective

One of the reasons I so delight in going to cafés is because I love looking at the mundane day-to-day dealings of life viewed through the eyes of a stranger (me), yet also that of a participator (customer).

This lets me sit and watch two fellow customers idle away the morning waiting for the rain to stop.



Or just watch a veteran waiter work the espresso machine with an ease of movement that is highly enviable.



Or, consider how our choice of footwear can say about our personalities.



In the end, the experience of sitting in a café is similar to being both an insider and outsider all at the same time.

Easter Midnight Concert

We enter the dark cathedral. A glow of subtle moonlight offers us a suggestion of light to guide us through the darkness to the slowly filling pews. Faint mummers catch the corners and wander fluidly along the floor. Hundreds of people sit quietly. In prayer. In expectation.

One candle lights the darkness accompanied by rarefied voices of Gregorian chant. Darkness. Twilight. Midnight. Dawn. Winter Deprivation. Hope. Heresy. Faith. Science. Senses. Sensations. All aspects of the momentous transformation from darkness to light studied though words, voice, song, sounds: and graciously carried by ten thousand glorious candles into the Easter morn.

Repossessing Virtue (5/5)

What sort of wisdom or leadership are you looking for at this time of your life?

I think that I am looking for wisdom and leadership in those around me, rather than those who hold important offices or have important jobs. Maybe this stems out of a certain cynicism or lack of trust, but maybe part of it comes from the fact that I know or have known many wise and kind and generous people.

And so, there are remembered conversations with my father who died years ago, but whose ideas and opinions on matters still influence how I look at current situations. Or, there are the day-to-day conversations with my husband, a few dear friends, my mother-in-law, Rev. Wasike in Kenya… they are my leaders. Not because they are rich or successful or could be considered perfect in any standard way. But, they are perfect to me for they teach me what I need to know.

For instance, there is the example of my mother-in-law who bore and raised nine children almost single-handedly while working on a production line job. She came from Italy to live in Germany as a Gastarbeiter in the early 60s. She retired officially nine years ago, at the age of 60, but she has not stopped working because she cannot live well on her pension.

I tried to convince her that she should allow each of her nine children to pay her a small sum of money every month and then she wouldn’t have to work any more. She didn’t want this. She prefers to live independently of their giving. After running up against this wall of her self-imposed independence, I finally asked her what she would accept. She answered that she would like us to help her find a smaller apartment near our place. Not only did she wish to reduce the amount of rent she paid, she was living in a high rise apartment in the suburbs, where she feared going out after dark because she didn’t know who she would meet in the parking lot. She wanted to move into town where she could move around freely.

Fortunately, the apartment across the hall from us became available, and so she moved into the studio apartment about a year and a half ago. Her life changed positively. The place is really small, 37 square meters or less than 400 square feet, but it is a stone’s throw away from the local bakery or doctor’s office. I swear she walks with a lighter gait, and is happier now than she was before.

She’s still working, but says she’ll stop this year. We’ll see.

Repossessing Virtue (4/5)

And what are you doing now that is different?

I’m choosing the people I seek information or advice from more carefully than I once did. I am learning as much as I can about why we are in the mess we are, but I don’t feel as if I know enough yet to make proper decisions about what to do or change.

Concretely, we choose carefully where to shop and who to give our business to. There is a long tradition, in most German towns, of small stores and businesses. You can go and buy nearly anything you need directly from the owners of the shops. I have the feeling that I am helping keeping their business open. I also try to be conscious of mentioning how wonderful it is that there are such shops or businesses to people I know. Some say that the most effective form of advertising is word-of-mouth.

It’s odd, but I used to find a lot of comfort and inspiration in reading contemplative or religious texts. And even though I still find comfort doing that, I’m now more interested in learning about people* who are doing great things using technology in smart ways. It is through them that I leaned about concepts such as social networking, creative commons licensing, crowdsourcing, extreme-scale collaboration, tribes, and massive cognitive surpluses, public distributed computing. The language they use might be different than that which we are accustomed to, but the intrinsic principles behind their ideas are very sound and based on the traditional values I was raised with.

So much of my own ideas and actions have changed by reading what they write and watching what they accomplish. For, instance, the creative commons movement slowly came into being about 10 years ago at a time when it was almost impossible for a normal person to obtain use of photo material online. Now there are over 100 million photos on Flickr alone that anyone can use for free, within certain restrictions. A hundred of my own collages are part of that 100 million. Equally, I made my first micro-financing loan to a shop owner in the Ukraine in 2006, and now I’m helping some women in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Cameroon set up their own businesses.

I’m involved in co-ordinating various projects in different countries, which I do on a volunteer basis. These projects concern the health, education and care of orphans and vulnerable children. We are building new schools, setting up women co-op businesses, organising new sources of clean water, and other things.

On the surface people think I am the one who’s leading the projects, but in reality, the people I am involved with in these projects are teaching me very important things about how to live well, or meaningfully. They often live very different lives to the one I am living, but still manage to kindly share their worries and joys with me. And in return, I share all of these lessons and stories with my husband and children. This gives us a lot to talk about over the dinner table.


* People like Lawerence Lessig, Seth Godin, Garr Renyolds, or Clay Shirky.

Repossessing Virtue (3/5)

What resources are you bringing into this situation?

I guess the only answer is just to say that I’m taking baby steps. Trying somehow to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps as well. She had a humble, but infallible commitment to live her life for the betterment of her family and community.

The difference between her family and mine is that her family was blood family, and my family is what I call chosen family. And her community was her church community, and mine is anyone from my elder neighbour living across the way, to my young neighbour living in an orphanage in Kimilili, Kenya.

I’ve been following the Repossessing Virtue series, and I noticed that many of the people on the show are speaking about community, interconnectedness, and our social responsibility. I share their concern that as individuals, we have to learn to behave differently and act more consciously when it comes to our dealings with other people, cultures and environments. I think we must all participate as best as possible. We should take all of our resources that we have and re-create and re-define what it is to live successfully in times like these.

I remember hearing a speech given by Kofi Anan just after he became secretary general of the United Nations in 1997. He spoke about how he thought that governmental decisions in the future would be determined by individuals, masses of individuals, and not by the politicians. He said times will change and governments will no longer tell us how to live rightly, instead we will demand that they do right. And, now, just a little over 10 years later, masses of individuals and not the powerful politicians, lobbyists, voted in your present president. It was a remarkable thing to witness.

Yet, I fear that many people think the job is done, rather then the work is just starting. I worry Americans will forget that all of the global attention given to them throughout the last election years was not only out of wonderment, but it was also a request from people living in other countries for Americans to do right. The decisions made by your government and the actions of the people living in your culture have very weighty consequences on everyone.

I don’t have to be an American to see my life savings disappear in the Wall Street crisis. My life savings were invested in what I was told “solid banking funds”. Well, their worth has depleted over 60% already and I don’t know if they are going to disappear completely. What I do know is that we are not sure whether we can afford to send out children to university. We will definitely not be able to retire before we’re 70, if at all. We could well be the first generation since the Great Depression that will not be able to retire. We are having to do with less and will continue to have to do with less, even though what we have at the moment is very modest.

So, getting back to the question about what resources I am bringing into the present situation… I’d have to say not much, expect perhaps a belief that I must be diligent in my life’s practices. So, I work a lot. Whether it is working at my paid job, or all the volunteer work I do in schools, or on projects with friends, or creative projects, or global projects… I just keep on working.

And by working, I hope that I pass on the meaningful lessons to my children about how to live their lives well. My father lived his life well and he retired at the age I am now, 51. His was a success story of his generation. I am trying to live my life well within the modest means we have, and I hope that in the future my children will look back and also think that my life was a success story of my generation. Though obviously, at least materially, it is not going to be a success story as we currently define success.

Repossessing Virtue (2/5)

In what way do you consider this a spiritual or moral crisis of your own or of our culture?

Well, the short answer to that question would be “in every way”. Anything that has to do with how we are living, or working, facing challenges, or admitting defeat, is both spiritual and moral. Though I have to admit that I have a hard time seeing our present situation as a crisis. We didn’t just become entangled in this situation recently; we’ve been creating it on material, spiritual and moral levels for many years now.

So, it seems false to say crisis, for that denotes on some level that it comes unannounced and its occurrence is out of our control, or we think that it is going to go away quickly, and that certainly isn’t the case.

Everything from expert advice to common-sense has warned us about the consequences of living imprudently. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about corporations, governments, or individuals, this holds true for us all. Therefore, the questions we should ask ourselves about our past behaviour are: who did we believe in the last years, whose advice did we seek out, what warning signs did we ignore, why were we blinded by greed, stupidity or fear?

I think the moral crisis we are facing, is nothing other than learning that we are accountable for our actions and responsible for our decisions. And, I mean in the most fundamental of ways. Starting with realising what the consequences are in believing what we believe and doing what we do by those beliefs.

In my personal situation, my moral dilemma has shown me that somewhere along the line, over the last decade, I lost my ability to trust certain people near-and-dear to me, and, more importantly, I lost trust in myself. Trust in my ability to overcome those existential challenges that came along. And so, about a year ago, I started a formal study on the meaning of trust.

I read all sorts of academic papers, popular literature, wise testaments about this topic, as well as had many discussions with friends. I also sat in silence and contemplated questions like; How do I decide, not only to what extent I can trust someone, but what this person can be entrusted with?

I learnt, not surprisingly, that trust has many facets. If I was to name the three most important ones, I’d say the first one is, we must find someone who is equally committed to the outcome of the situation we are entrusting them with, as we are. I trust my husband with my worries about my impending unemployment (my work contract is coming to an end in a few months’ time), not only because he loves me and cares about my concerns, but because our financial livelihood is dependent on my contribution.

Secondly, the person we trust has to have the required skill or ability to carry through the task we are entrusting them with. It is not prudent to trust someone with your life-savings, if they’re always living on the brink of financial disaster. Lastly, there is always an element of unpredictability, or risk, when we trust someone to do something. If there wasn’t any risk involved, then it wouldn’t be trust.

So when I reflected back on situations or persons who had failed to live up to my expectations, I asked myself why did they fail: lack of commitment or lack of skill? And, as it turns out, it is nearly always the lack of skill that was the central cause for the failure. Not only were their skills lacking, but I was also lacking in proper judgment. Why would I trust someone with something they have no ability to succeed in?

And now, it turns out that this question of trust is not only relevant concerning my personal relationships, it is also relevant concerning governmental or banking practices … for they all affect me directly and indirectly…the list keeps on growing every day.

Repossessing Virtue (1/5)

On Wednesday, I gave a telephone interview on one of my favourite podcasts, NPR: Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. It was the first time I have done a radio interview and it was a rather fun, if not bizarre experience. The interview is to be part of their Repossessing Virtue series and will be published later,

“Repossessing Virtue is part of our ongoing series exploring the moral, spiritual, and practical aspects of the economic downturn. We've been contacting familiar voices of wisdom and insight, and asking them a series of questions about the current economic climate.”

Originally, I wanted to do the interview in our living room. But, the noise of passing buses on the cobblestone road outside our building cancelled this possibility. The fact that my husband was lying in bed with a 40 degree C fever, cancelled my going into our bedroom (much more quiet). The fact that my children’s bedrooms were inexcusably messy and not indigenous of intelligent thought, cancelled those possibilities. So, I ended up sitting on the floor of our bathroom, trying to feel as if this was a good place to hold an interview.

I have no recall of what I said. Since I cannot guarantee that I spoke succinctly or even well during the interview, I thought I would publish the answers I prepared for the interview.

The producers of the series ask the same four questions to each person:

In what way do you consider this a spiritual or moral crisis of your own or of our culture?
What resources are you bringing into this situation?
And what are you doing now that is different?
What sort of wisdom or leadership are you looking for at this time of your life?

A lot of what I wrote I didn’t have the opportunity to say, for there just wasn’t enough time or I didn’t find the right entry to expand on a topic. Some of what I write is a variation on what I have written before (e.g. trust in question 1), but there are other new ideas as well. I would be very happy to hear from you about what your answers would be to these questions.