I just love weather!

Sargans, Switzerland, 4 June 2024

"I just love weather", exclaimed my classmate, a young woman from Vancouver Island, when it started to rain on our school trip to one of the valleys in Costa Rica. That was in 1996. No, she was not on drugs, she simply was like that. I thought her refreshingly naive, I liked her and sympathised with her attitude which was then beyond me..

Her comment recently came to mind on a rainy summer's day in Eastern Switzerland, when all of a sudden the sky turned grey, and then dark. Thunder was to be heard, and then the rain started to pour heavily. I felt entranced by these changes. And, I think it strange that for most of my life I haven't really paid attention to weather. It is something new to me to contemplate weather changes, to realise that one moment is different from the next, and that there is no continuity whatsoever. 

The dark and low hanging clouds suddenly give way to sun rays which in turn stay for a short while before the wind comes up and a light grey starts to dominate .... To see and experience constant change is truly fascinating

It just is what is.

A World of Difference

“I’m French,” she said. “You’re American. There’s a world of difference. An American gets sick, she’s outraged. How dare that happen to her? She must have the fault corrected immediately, at once. But French people understand that first you live, and then you die. It’s not an outrage. It’s something that’s been happening since the dawn of time. It has to happen, don’t you see? If people didn’t die, the world would be an awfully crowded place by now.”

Civilian notions about unreasonable search and seizure and warrants and probable cause stop at an army post main gate.

Lee Child: The Enemy

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction

An elderly woman wearing a rabbit’s paw brooch came in and complained that I had sold her Trainspotting by Irving Welsh as a Christmas present for her 76-year-old railway enthusiast husband. She said, ‘It’s nothing but filth and Scottish words. My husband had to double his blood pressure tablets after reading it.’ I swapped it for Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.

Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, formally Roy Jenkins, died today, aged eighty-two. Had he been able to pronounce his Rs he would almost certainly have become prime minister.

I was asked to name the next book. I suggested Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. Bernard Hopkins blustered and swore and said, ‘If I’d written a book called Stupid Black Men, I’d have been had up by the race relations industry’

I asked her what she loved about me, and she said, ‘Your kind face, your gentle voice and the way your hair curls on the back of your neck.’ I was slightly disappointed; I had expected her to mention my intelligence, general knowledge and wit.

We stayed sitting on the floor, and Mohammed explained that his personal interpretation was not shared by anybody else, including his sons. ‘Each Muslim interprets the Koran in their own way,’ he said. Melanie sighed and said, ‘I’m a bit disappointed to hear that. I was hoping to find some definite rules on how to live my life.’.

… I watched the plane hurtle down the runway and throw itself into the sky ….

Daisy was up at 5 a.m., washing, ironing and packing her little trolley suitcase. I took her to catch the 7.19 train to London. On the way I asked where she got her energy from. She said, ‘Drugs’, I hope she was joking.

Sue Townsend: Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction

Überschriften

„Im Laufe der Zeit und mit zunehmendem Alter hat er sich dann aber ganz auf die Überschriften kapriziert. Hin und wieder zeigt er mir seine Manuskripte – zwanzig Seiten für eine Überschrift. Er hat mir erzählt, dass ihm manchmal, wenn er den ganzen Tag und auch noch abends zu Hause gearbeitet hat, die endgültige Version im Traum erscheint. Dann wacht er auf, notiert sie und kann vor lauter Aufregung nicht mehr einschlafen.“ „Sind denn die Überschriften so gut?“ fragte ich. „Mir kommen sie stinknormal vor“, sagte Mr. Margin, „neulich hat er mir eine gezeigt, an der er zwei Tage gearbeitet hat. Es ging um eine Rezension über eine Stadtgeschichte von New York City. Die Überschrift lautete: ‚So war New York’“.

Charles Simmons: Belles Lettres

Una mirada Suiza sobre la realidad

 Un periodista y fotógrafo suizo, Hans Durrer, recorrió Uruguay y estuvo en la ciudad de Colonia. Con una profunda trayectoria el europeo analiza las más importantes exposiciones del mundo.

El periodista suizo Hans Durrer llegó a esta ciudad después de recorrer el Chuy, Maldonado, Piriápolis y Minas. Su viaje continuaba por Paysandú, Rivera, para regresar a Brasil porque allí está trabajando como profesor de inglés en Río Grande do Sul.

Su enseñanza del inglés se lleva a cabo en una escuela particular y está destinada para adolescentes y adultos que trabajan en la plantación de tabaco. Además Hans Durrer es abogado, licenciado en derecho, por muchos años estudió educaciones postgraduales en Gales, en periodismo y después esto lo llevó a Australia donde obtuvo una maestría en lingüística aplicada.

Hace un año atrás enseñaba en Mendoza República Argentina. También estuvo en China, tiene 54 años y su oficio trashumante no le ha permitido poder formar una familia. Él dice que es imposible vivir así con una familia, "no se puede". Sus temas en el rubro del periodismo es el funcionamiento de los medios y la fotografía y cuando está hablando de la fotografía es tratar de entenderla. 

"Por ejemplo se dice que una imagen vale más que mil palabras, yo diría que exactamente lo contrario. Se necesitan menos de mil palabras para entender una imagen. Imagina por ejemplo que te muestro una foto de un hombre y este hombre te parece cansado, con barba, con ojos cansados y tristes y si tú no sabes nada de nada, te puede este hombre. Pero si te digo que esta foto fue tomada en Grosni Chechenia después del ultimátum que los rusos dieran a los chechenios de salir de la ciudad y cuando tú sabes la leyenda de la imagen de este hombre que no puede salir porque es ciego y con esta información que este hombre es ciego tú ves otra foto. Ahora tú vas a tener un film en tu cabeza que no tiene nada que ver con la persona pero con tu imaginación y únicamente con esta información que es sustituir las mil palabras tú entenderás. Se necesitan palabras para entender la imagen, se necesita información. 

Otro ejemplo que es más fácil. Yo pienso que George Bush es un tonto y en todas las fotos veo a un tonto, no importa qué me muestra la imagen, no puede haber una segunda lectura".

El Eco, Agosto 2008.

Aus Stendhals Rot und Schwarz

Je höher man die Gesellschaftsleiter hinanklimmt,’ sagte sich Julien, ‚umso liebenswürdiger werden die Manieren.’

Sie gelangen zur Macht, aber um welchen Preis, du grosser Gott!

‚In meiner Eitelkeit habe ich mir so oft etwas darauf zugute getan, dass ich anders bin als die übrigen jungen Burschen. Nun, ich bin alt genug, um einzusehen, dass „Anderssein Hass erweckt“, sagte er sich eines Morgens. Diese grosse Wahrheit war ihm soeben durch einen seiner bittersten Misserfolge vor Augen geführt worden.

Und was finde ich hier? Hochmut, seelenlose Eitelkeit, alle Abstufungen der Selbstliebe, sonst nichts!

Welchen Wahnwitz wir auch aus Furcht begehen, er wird entschuldigt. Entartetes und trostloses Jahrhundert!

.... ein Jäger gibt im Wald einen Schuss ab, seine Beute fällt, er eilt auf sie zu. Sein Stiefel fährt in einen zwei Fuss hohen Ameisenhaufen, zerstört die Wohnstätte der Tiere, verstreut weithin die Ameisen, die Eier ... Die besten Philosophen unter den Ameisen werden nie begreifen können, was das für ein schwarzer, riesenhafter, schrecklicher Körper war, dieser Jägerstiefel, der mit einem Schlage rasend schnell in ihren Bau eindrang, nachdem es einen furchtbaren Knall und eine rötliche Feuergarbe gegeben hatte ... So wären Tod, Leben, Ewigkeit ganz einfache Dinge für einen, der Organe hätte, weit genug, um sie zu begreifen ...

Stendhal: Rot und Schwarz

Economic Totalitarianism

 "Look, sweetie, you got your own reality going." Purcell replied. "But that isn't the reality of the United States. Huh-uh! After the doctors and the scientific experts testified in Congress that cigarettes cause or compound not only cancer but a number of other diseases and are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, the senior Senator from Kentucky stood up just shaking with anger and moaned, 'You're trying to wreck our economy.' And what did Henry Ford II say when the government began insisting on safety devices in cars? 'The American people don't want anything that's going to upset the economy.' And, what's more, Ford was right. Fifty thousand a year dead on the highways, but don't rock the economy. Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in their bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy über alles. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and driving an entire civilzation insane. Don't spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming."

Tom Robbins: Another Roadside Attraction