tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35235995366259136082024-03-28T18:02:18.685+11:00Limes Germanicus"Irgendwo über den Bergen Muss meine ferne Heimat sein." Hermann HesseUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger673125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-64191317408576195462024-03-28T11:26:00.023+11:002024-03-28T18:01:45.049+11:00Ich - Mein Leben ... bis jetzt<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiglqwwKVcIhYsx3qjDYrpY5thTuTsXkqx9e_3Xvu4Um96b2ZReTDHymOimUlzGPqgbLPAmA4GHVQhKH2CZXKsxD2C8FtAn50OfJuNd89afKGf_VCGkY0dMY43-rxEW7q8S-bdpIfJElrzhBF6-E9szS7m-aEpevBDrOVnMb8gxXLxFBkAc0Tl6N-TZTR8/s1230/renate-page-001.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="550" data-original-height="1230" data-original-width="868" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiglqwwKVcIhYsx3qjDYrpY5thTuTsXkqx9e_3Xvu4Um96b2ZReTDHymOimUlzGPqgbLPAmA4GHVQhKH2CZXKsxD2C8FtAn50OfJuNd89afKGf_VCGkY0dMY43-rxEW7q8S-bdpIfJElrzhBF6-E9szS7m-aEpevBDrOVnMb8gxXLxFBkAc0Tl6N-TZTR8/s600/renate-page-001.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">E</span>s war einmal eine Buchdame in Berlin bei der ich ein paar deutsche Bücher bestellte und dann wurde daraus eine Freundschaft. Erinnerst du dich noch an Helene Hanffs <A HREF="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZN7wptk41A" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">"84 Charing Cross Road"</FONT></A>? Es war nicht ganz so aber ähnlich.
<P>
Das war vor vielen Jahren und ich habe schon lange keine Bücher mehr bestellt und nicht nur weil die Buchdame ihren Laden zumachte und keine Bücher mehr verkauft. Anstelle dessen schreibt sie jetzt ihre eigenen. Ihr letztes <I>magnum opus</I> ist ihre Autobiografie "Ich - Mein Leben - bis jetzt".
<P>
Ich habe es gleich verschlungen, denn immerhin werde ja auch ich in diesem <I>magnum opus</I> erwähnt: <I>"Als die Umsätze im kleinen Laden nicht mehr so gut waren, habe ich mit Internet angefangen bei ZVAB. Das Internet-Geschäft lief gut, ZVAB war ja weltweit. Ich bekam eine Bestellung aus Australien. Fritz Delfgen</I> [sic - es war Heinz Helfgen] <I>'Ich radle um die Welt'. Daraus hat sich eine lange Freundschaft entwickelt bis zum heutigen Tag. Durch ihn lernte ich auch seinen Bruder aus Kiel kennen, bis heute in Kontakt."</I> Ich werde es wohl noch ein- oder zwei- oder vielleicht sogar dreimal langsam und gemütlich über Ostern lesen.
<P>
In der Zwischenzeit werde ich über ihre abschliessenden Worte im Buch nachdenken: <I>"Meine Jahre sind gezählt, ich blicke noch einmal zurück auf meine Kindheit, auf 41 Jahre Ehe und sehe die noch verbleibende Zeit. Ich werde auch in die letzten Monate oder Jahren wieder meine Mitmenschen enttäuschen, das schaffe ich noch, bestimmt."</I>
<P>
Das hast Du bei mir nicht geschafft, Renate, denn Dein Buch liest sich sehr spannend und hat mich überhaupt nicht enttäuscht. Vielen Dank dafür! Und träume weiterhin und auch ohne Hund von der Freiheit und der Ferne bis zum Horizont und warte nicht schon am Morgen auf den Abend.
<P>
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-47521577879789167982024-03-28T05:00:00.000+11:002024-03-28T05:00:00.165+11:00A sick Roman joke<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTJCjOS5_g3xDmGSlIgvG153gFgpU1LZangVFBAVPk5R-b4Qotuw3o9NnUFrkfgXAPoKWYd3prw8DRjkF70Ro1hkv6hqUi2fI6z6H_fPTSMdfGEDw3X4kB7XSm_TveUuhR2mqxGBjxM4ccshK-v_Xiy7RsadcSCVKUwJxk_m8ol5SoXpGVeLsId2hFHQ/s908/jokeromannumerals.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="500" data-original-height="908" data-original-width="750" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTJCjOS5_g3xDmGSlIgvG153gFgpU1LZangVFBAVPk5R-b4Qotuw3o9NnUFrkfgXAPoKWYd3prw8DRjkF70Ro1hkv6hqUi2fI6z6H_fPTSMdfGEDw3X4kB7XSm_TveUuhR2mqxGBjxM4ccshK-v_Xiy7RsadcSCVKUwJxk_m8ol5SoXpGVeLsId2hFHQ/s600/jokeromannumerals.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">A</span>part from telling sick jokes, Roman numerals really don't have much going for them. Adding CLXXVII to XXIII may be relatively straightforward, but try multiplying CLXXVII by XXIII or dividing CLXXVII by XXIII.
<P>
These days you see Roman numerals only in descriptions and references, such as
sequels to films (e.g. Rocky III), dates on statues and public buildings, names of monarchs and popes (e.g. Elizabeth II), and also on coinage, general suffixes, sporting events (e.g. Superbowl XLIX), and copyright dates on movie credits and TV shows. And the odd sick joke!
<P>
So that you can work out for yourself the copyright date of that old movie you thought was rather corny, here are the very simple rules:
(which I was taught before I left German primary school in MCMLX)
<P>
There are just seven Roman numerals:
<P>
I (1), V (5), X (10), L (50), C (100), D (500), and M (1000).
<P>
And there are just three simple rules:
<BR>
<UL>
<LI> If a smaller numeral comes after a larger numeral, add the smaller number to the larger number<BR>
<LI> If a smaller numeral comes before a larger numeral, subtract the smaller number from the larger number<BR>
<LI> Do not use the same symbol more than three times in a row
</UL>
<P>
The rule of not using the same symbol more than three times in a row means that the highest number in pure Roman numeral form is 3,999 - which is written as MMMCMXCIX - because the number 4,000 would have to be written as MMMM which would make for an even sicker joke.
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-42093243231351312442024-03-27T05:00:00.013+11:002024-03-27T07:17:56.523+11:00Never go to sleep at night until the debits equal the credits<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OoTc3wLTqkk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><BR><FONT SIZE="-2"><A HREF="http://athomeatriverbend.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/ian-paterson-aasa-acis-aaim.html" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Ian Paterson</FONT></A>, AASA, ACIS, AAIM, grand-daddy of all accountants,<BR>used to say, <I>"If the debits don't equal the credits - make 'em!"</I></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">T</span>he accountant of a large business had the same daily routine: on arriving at work, he would unlock the bottom drawer of his desk, peer at something inside, then close and lock the drawer. He had been doing this for thirty years.
<P>
The entire staff was intrigued but no-one was game to ask him what was in the drawer. Finally the time came for him to retire. There was a farewell party with speeches and a presentation. As soon as he had left the building, some of the staff rushed into his office, unlocked the bottom drawer and peered inside. Taped to the bottom of the drawer was a sheet of paper. It read, <I>"Debit on the left, credit on the right"</I>.<BR><FONT SIZE="-2">This joke isn't funny with Arabs - well, nothing is - whose debits and credits are vice versa.</FONT>
<P>
I wonder if this joke made the rounds of accountants who in 1994 had gathered in the small Italian town of San Sepulcro to celebrate the publication five hundred years earlier of the first book on double-entry accounting by the Italian monk Luca Pacioli (pronounced pot-CHEE-oh-lee), who was born there circa 1445.
<P>
While Pacioli is often called the "Father of Accounting", he did not invent the system. Instead, he simply described a method used by merchants in Venice during the Italian Renaissance period. His system included most of the accounting routines as we know them today. For example, he described the use journals and ledgers, and he warned that <I>"a person should not go to sleep at night until the debits equalled the credits!"</I> His ledger included assets (including receivables and inventories), liabilities, capital, income, and expense accounts. He demonstrated year-end closing entries and proposed that a trial balance be used to prove a balanced ledger. Also, his treatise alludes to a wide range of topics from accounting ethics to cost accounting -- see translation by J.B. Geijsbeek, <A HREF="https://ia802508.us.archive.org/30/items/ancientdoubleent00geijuoft/ancientdoubleent00geijuoft.pdf" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping</FONT></A>).
<P>
Practising Pacioli's teachings afforded me a comfortable living, and although my personal life was not always perfectly balanced, I never went to sleep at night until all the debits had equalled the credits (or, to get an early night, by posting the difference to a suspense account, as my friend Ganesh Sharma Krishna in Singapore shrewdly observed).
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-81201371130285004702024-03-27T05:00:00.008+11:002024-03-27T05:00:00.135+11:00In memory of Noel Butler<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYo0848vnHND-45Z_IJhyphenhyphenTg4f_-vhwKOYHgnGd6iTEG2dBuLpW7UPTLo9dYnyM9fGrM-_fsAAfr3xBcaTzv8yiNYmJj3FKDZ2jgexBHqTANh3Z3BuYKgxtRLXCJXwt-FwFF1xKNUqSDAc/s1600/noel1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYo0848vnHND-45Z_IJhyphenhyphenTg4f_-vhwKOYHgnGd6iTEG2dBuLpW7UPTLo9dYnyM9fGrM-_fsAAfr3xBcaTzv8yiNYmJj3FKDZ2jgexBHqTANh3Z3BuYKgxtRLXCJXwt-FwFF1xKNUqSDAc/s1600/noel1.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">Noel (left) and I at Wewak in New Guinea sometime in the early 70s</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P> <P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:165px;line-height:135px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">B</span>asically your friends are not your friends for any particular reason. They are your friends for no particular reason. The job you do, the family you have, the way you vote, the major achievements and blunders of your life, your religious convictions or lack of them, are all somehow set off to one side when the two of you get together.
<P>
If you are old friends, you know all those things about each other and a lot more besides, but they are beside the point. Even if you talk about them, they are beside the point. Stripped, humanly speaking, to the bare essentials, you are yourselves the point. The usual distinctions of older-younger, richer-poorer, smarter-dumber, male-female even, cease to matter. You meet with a clean slate every time, and you meet on equal terms. Anything may come of it or nothing may. That doesn't matter either. Only the meeting matters.
<P>
Noel Butler was such a friend. Some friends are more or less replaceable with other friends. Noel was not. I last heard from him on this day exactly twenty-nine years ago. He'd sent me one of those funny "Greetings from Childers by Night" postcard which was all black except for those words. On the back he had written, <I>"Hope your outlook on the future is not as black as this; mine is but that's inevitable."</I> I was then far too young and far too busy and far too full of myself to think that this was more than a funny card. Four months later, Noel was dead.
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpSiQAQL78SjE_sJsLJmg0MnLkiNdJAOBigVXGHwZt4FGmaSs0SSb-EnepNkbY-isY3jvXIYrmSf6A4KqAmmG8rsQaz8XM2l7U0fujd4er7zsHtdyZ9bWwsx6fH84eCBqSdWDl8LlShBhXe-TN62JKJcgZRe0Fqb6N_Y9uYh4k4R4F5HngVdECeg7Iow=s870" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="870" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpSiQAQL78SjE_sJsLJmg0MnLkiNdJAOBigVXGHwZt4FGmaSs0SSb-EnepNkbY-isY3jvXIYrmSf6A4KqAmmG8rsQaz8XM2l7U0fujd4er7zsHtdyZ9bWwsx6fH84eCBqSdWDl8LlShBhXe-TN62JKJcgZRe0Fqb6N_Y9uYh4k4R4F5HngVdECeg7Iow=s600" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
Rest in Peace, Noel! Your memory lives on at "Riverbend" and so does your card which, beautifully framed, sits on top of the mantelpiece.
<P>
<B>As long as we live, they too will live,<BR> for they are now a part of us,<BR> as long as we remember them.</B>
<P>
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-8959649356018444112024-03-26T17:48:00.005+11:002024-03-26T19:25:03.790+11:00My default option for car insurance<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKbk3MVxjLtPxDc9-oZb7zWYMu44xWS5OGT5x6nV42RfbelfRsGKmteTP55xOy0_uXp2fk2DtwXL1-e13dRfOHQEjIu2g-KX4IbOJOP3rD1anpdjy9CoGfLgOq9eXgoqQHfmzvJK6YsAp09IjGgWFgtvLpbjYvRd-L51OMEokLJl2KDCCUddcTUuFAGBk/s1754/comprehensive-page-001.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="500" data-original-height="1754" data-original-width="1276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKbk3MVxjLtPxDc9-oZb7zWYMu44xWS5OGT5x6nV42RfbelfRsGKmteTP55xOy0_uXp2fk2DtwXL1-e13dRfOHQEjIu2g-KX4IbOJOP3rD1anpdjy9CoGfLgOq9eXgoqQHfmzvJK6YsAp09IjGgWFgtvLpbjYvRd-L51OMEokLJl2KDCCUddcTUuFAGBk/s600/comprehensive-page-001.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:150px;line-height:110px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">M</span>y default option for all insurances is to buy the cheapest policy with the highest excess, if not in fact "self-insure" as I do with flood insurance on "Riverbend" which would cost me a ridiculous $6,000-plus in premium. Instead of paying this money to an insurance company, I save it for a "rainy day", if you will pardon the intended pun.
<P>
After I'd bought that cute little <A HREF="https://athomeatriverbend.blogspot.com/2024/03/ohne-worte.html" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">MG3</FONT></A> (for no better reason than that Padma liked its metallic skye-silver colour), I walked into the office of my friendly NRMA insurers next door which whom I had been insured for the past 35 years, and asked for a Third Party Property Damage Motor Insurance which I've always thought to be the cheapest option. That was two weeks ago and I was right: it cost me only a very affordable $210.08.
<P>
When I had reason to be back there again today, I was attended by another equally friendly lady who, while glancing over my existing policies, asked, "Is there any reason why you took out only third party property damage on your new car and not a comprehensive third party fire and theft policy which covers your own vehicle to a maximum of $10,000?"
<P>
"Because a comprehensive policy is too expensive", said wise old me. "Not that much more expensive", said the friendly lady (whose name turned out to be Nicole). "The extra cover would only cost you an extra $60 a year!"
<P>
We cancelled the old policy and I paid the extra $60 - well, $62.56, to be precise - and now the cute little MG3 can go up in smoke or be hotwired by a roving gang of car-crazed teenagers, and I still get $10,000 back from the insurers. That's what I call great service! Thank you, Nicole!
<P>
<P>
<P>
P.S. Nicole, your head office just now emailed me a customer survey. You will be mentioned in despatches!
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-79078333397213407522024-03-26T05:00:00.003+11:002024-03-26T05:00:00.245+11:00I, too, was a homeless person once<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfOBwla9mCTXibYLZBeyP7ERJWr5GbtLrOJ4SCHiDodPj3N-AsVKTIQBTNNLnvoPMXNhfK9I2VCeAEN3b4DU9Xv3zt1pv6bdGjlBlshZ-UDtlI62uhyphenhyphenojJneYQLEz6gAMWc8qUQk5V7G0/s1600/bartonhouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfOBwla9mCTXibYLZBeyP7ERJWr5GbtLrOJ4SCHiDodPj3N-AsVKTIQBTNNLnvoPMXNhfK9I2VCeAEN3b4DU9Xv3zt1pv6bdGjlBlshZ-UDtlI62uhyphenhyphenojJneYQLEz6gAMWc8qUQk5V7G0/s1600/bartonhouse.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">Sunday morning after the night before: chilling out on the front steps; "yours truly" in dead centre, wearing sunnies and checkered shirt. Notice the chap on the far right having a "hair of the dog" from a McWilliams flagon left over from the night before. If that didn't do it, there was always BEX powder and a good lie-down!
Or take Vincent's with confidence for quick three-way relief. All things of the past now! </FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">T</span>he Council to Homeless Persons says the people who live on the streets are just the tip of the iceberg as their definition of 'homelessness' also includes people living in rooming houses (smart move to up their 'membership'! ☺)
<P>
Thank you, <A HREF="http://chp.org.au/" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Council to Homeless Persons</FONT></A>, for your research which is probably as 'quackers' as, and probably even dearer than, the 300,000-Pound taxpayer-funded U.K. study <A HREF="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/20/research-proves-ducks-like-water" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Why-Ducks-like-Water</FONT></A>.
<P>
It's one thing to regard as homeless those who slip into a pair of cardboard pyjamas and only read newspapers they've slept under, but to include people who live in rooming houses? Really! They could've made even bigger headlines if they had included people who live in houses with fewer than four bedrooms and an ensuite!
<P>
Anyway, at least now I know that I, too, was a 'homeless' person once as was my immediate boss in the ANZ Bank and many other 'Bank Johnnies' who in the 60s and 70s lived, two to a room, in what was then <A HREF="http://www.riverbendnelligen.com/bartonhouse.html" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Barton House</FONT></A>, one of Canberra's many boarding houses - or rooming houses, if you will.
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoghT2ImEXMIaoH7O3bKRG0m9svOnvICiiiBPgBT-uCh8G-z5c_-v4WClcaqTr8ASJ6CjF7whsfvzNrLs2_seYVhU9FNXU3cxn6X8rL3bMEErjtBXRIqUhnDa_uPVzjP5tKeGcj7k-FnQ/s1600/untitledbartonhouse.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoghT2ImEXMIaoH7O3bKRG0m9svOnvICiiiBPgBT-uCh8G-z5c_-v4WClcaqTr8ASJ6CjF7whsfvzNrLs2_seYVhU9FNXU3cxn6X8rL3bMEErjtBXRIqUhnDa_uPVzjP5tKeGcj7k-FnQ/s1600/untitledbartonhouse.png" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">The 165-bedroom <B>Barton House</B> in the late 60s</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
Another boarding house I remember was the ORIENTAL PRIVATE HOTEL at 11 Milsons Road at Cremorne Point. In that esteemed establishment I occupied the dark, windowless end of a corridor which had been walled off and grandly called a "room". No window, no ventilation, just a bed and a wardrobe but it was all I could afford at the time.
<P>
These boarding houses were the sort of "homes" that prepared me well for the house I later shared in Rabaul with two fellow-accountants and the camp accommodation I occupied when I went to Bougainville Island.
<P>
I am glad I was a 'homeless' person once. I wouldn't have missed it for the world because it gave me the confidence to go out into the world and deal with all manner of people and situations in future years.
<P>
<P>
<P>
P.S. The ORIENTAL PRIVATE HOTEL has since been turned into twelve strata-titled apartments, each costing close to a million dollars. And that's the cause of the <I>real</i> homelessness today: the lack of boarding houses which became uneconomical to run because of ever-increasing rules and regulations, rates, property taxes and insurance costs.
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz3AN2r3BhiFEwZZARkKl6Iby1nPPO8fkI32_Pgvqd7Txm932KgQF4ix3DIJ7_yIPh9zjrSmZZyTv2VVTY2BZnmQ8qCVqEmbSmHD1i0XxIQicMDkHxSzVtmhLWw4PecbRXwOAhOxH5VXU/s1600/untitledcremornepoint.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz3AN2r3BhiFEwZZARkKl6Iby1nPPO8fkI32_Pgvqd7Txm932KgQF4ix3DIJ7_yIPh9zjrSmZZyTv2VVTY2BZnmQ8qCVqEmbSmHD1i0XxIQicMDkHxSzVtmhLWw4PecbRXwOAhOxH5VXU/s1600/untitledcremornepoint.png" width="300"/></a></div>11 Milsons Road at Cremorne Point today
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-45178836233186993712024-03-26T05:00:00.001+11:002024-03-26T05:00:00.244+11:00Green Murder<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-bpt2QtxLjc" title="Professor Ian Plimer speaks to the IPA on his new book 'Heaven and Hell'" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span>t has never been shown that human emissions of the gas of life drive global warming. Large bodies of science that don't fit the narrative have been ignored by IPCC, COP and self-interested scientists paid by taxpayers.
<P>
A huge subsidised industry of intermittent unreliable wind and solar electricity has been created based on unsubstantiated science. The same hucksters now want subsidised hydrogen, costly inefficient EVs, subsidised mega-batteries and other horribly expensive tried and failed schemes to impoverish people, create unemployment, transfer wealth and enrich China. Germany, Texas, California and the UK had a glimpse of Net Zero with blackouts, astronomically high electricity costs and hundreds of deaths. We once had reliable cheap electricity and now that governments have gone green, we are heading for hard economic times.
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOH8BldQL2yoAKe5LcVZbVFg7Qbr49eV-c8S2UL9183fCUQJoLUMwzVXGggcT3GDqxeYrUfC7byDoSwgFdP7syTB0dEMSZDQI7dxm8AyILMbdlyc5qEUltGqZIVrvM-cwht31EiEGjJSryzcAb6MLJtPbleo5i3H8YEyYfyXPKX8nrKsnJlfdXLfQNS31d/s1360/bookgreenmurder.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="907" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOH8BldQL2yoAKe5LcVZbVFg7Qbr49eV-c8S2UL9183fCUQJoLUMwzVXGggcT3GDqxeYrUfC7byDoSwgFdP7syTB0dEMSZDQI7dxm8AyILMbdlyc5qEUltGqZIVrvM-cwht31EiEGjJSryzcAb6MLJtPbleo5i3H8YEyYfyXPKX8nrKsnJlfdXLfQNS31d/s600/bookgreenmurder.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigwaaBVyhSlz-oOLz8qrgf8QFYglruApTjShkkJfBN9lOeb2-PFRTGEl0y6bcOKMVzf85K-NkMQ6M4ZnE0OOS4E1tE5zZmxwC5ObRK8wizw6yClzvN3hh7uG85Qy10W_IcHoOBgRM7ulNCpBtvmKZIXUmRm1iPcJ63O28TvI7XaZN4TjcU4stRLF_M0DyW/s1360/bookgreenmurderback.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="907" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigwaaBVyhSlz-oOLz8qrgf8QFYglruApTjShkkJfBN9lOeb2-PFRTGEl0y6bcOKMVzf85K-NkMQ6M4ZnE0OOS4E1tE5zZmxwC5ObRK8wizw6yClzvN3hh7uG85Qy10W_IcHoOBgRM7ulNCpBtvmKZIXUmRm1iPcJ63O28TvI7XaZN4TjcU4stRLF_M0DyW/s600/bookgreenmurderback.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">Available for $34.75 at <A HREF="https://www.booktopia.com.au/green-murder-ian-plimer/book/9781922449825.html" target="_blog">booktopia</A></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
In this book Professor Ian Plimer charges the greens with murder. They murder humans who are kept in eternal poverty without coal-fired electricity. They support slavery and early deaths of black child miners. They murder forests and their wildlife by clear-felling for mining and wind turbines. They murder forests and wildlife with their bushfire policies. They murder economies producing unemployment, hopelessness, collapse of communities, disrupted social cohesion and suicide.
<P>
They murder free speech and freedoms and their takeover of the education system has ended up in the murdering of the intellectual and economic future of young people. They terrify children into mental illness with their apocalyptic death cult lies and exaggerations. They try to divide a nation. They are hypocrites and such angry ignorant people should never touch other people's money.
<P>
The greens are guilty of murder. The sentence is life with no parole in a cave in the bush enjoying the benefits of Net Zero.
<P>
<P>
<P>
P.S. I know you want to hear more from and about the man; click <A HREF="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_seReO9-dc" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">here</FONT></A>.
<P> <P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-85921862048422897942024-03-25T15:25:00.002+11:002024-03-25T15:44:21.290+11:00"Your coming here would give me a new lease on life"<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCe_3URzbX24F4NWjFtS9oCuLMYUwIZGyBtr7p4Km-6pgadbgY_7OKWVmtUG8UuAXbXJvCigjQnn2Kh70sY8SNE_kWYPv5vuqEIQ_isECPdxSmoG16rk4P9gctVeestaQfNhgucw7DeBfM/s1440/mtperry1956.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCe_3URzbX24F4NWjFtS9oCuLMYUwIZGyBtr7p4Km-6pgadbgY_7OKWVmtUG8UuAXbXJvCigjQnn2Kh70sY8SNE_kWYPv5vuqEIQ_isECPdxSmoG16rk4P9gctVeestaQfNhgucw7DeBfM/s600/mtperry1956.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">The main street of Mount Perry, circa 1956, when it was still in its heydays</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span><I>t is possible, I suppose, to construct hypothetical circumstances in which you would be pleased to find yourself, at the end of a long day, in Mount Perry, Queensland - perhaps something to do with rising sea levels that left it as the only place on earth not under water, or maybe some disfiguring universal contagion from which it alone remained unscathed. In the normal course of events, however, it is unlikely that you would find yourself standing on its lonely main street at six thirty on a warm summer's evening gazing about you in an appreciative manner and thinking: 'Well, thank goodness I'm here!'"</I>
<P>
So wrote Bill Bryson in his book "Bill Bryson Down Under" in chapter 12 about Macksville, New South Wales. I took the liberty of quoting from it, only substituting Mount Perry for Macksville, both of which I know, Macksville because an old accountant-friend from my days in New Guinea had opened an office there, doing little more than helping cow cockies fill out unemployment claim forms, and Mount Perry because my best friend, also from my New Guinea days, had settled there sometime in the early 1980s when I was still working in Athens in Greece and started receiving letters from him postmarked "Mount Perry Qld 4671".
<P>
That was years before the internet, and I had no way of knowing where Mount Perry was or what it looked like. That eye-opening revelation was left until mid-1985 after I had returned to Australia and, unable to find work in Townsville in Far North Queensland, I moved down to Sydney and visited Mount Perry on my way south. By that time the last traces of some former mining boom had disappeared, the picture show had been closed for years, the local mechanic had just moved to Gin Gin, the only shop in town hardly ever saw a customer, and the post office which had postmarked all those letters seemed on the verge of closing. In fact, my friend who waited for me in town to guide me to his lonely plot of land, had parked in front of it, and his was the only car in the main street.
<P>
He'd sent me this photo while I was still working in Greece and after he'd just bought himself this small prefab on a five-acre plot. It was the sort of place where you went when you had little money and life hadn't been too good to you and you needed time to lick your wounds.
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHh_HSbJWRiTYqbskOphuSvfdmoCgmb0nezWYRZnfXqx5dTHZdYRG1s6oSEgO4kQBIBNCk9mU_GqBDMfIULKcVzxEoy9XpinUi83nKcjP8hj4q_ksCmYZUrcsj8GZiEVpwzh5fCXxpGxNe/s764/noelmountperry1-page-001.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="764" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHh_HSbJWRiTYqbskOphuSvfdmoCgmb0nezWYRZnfXqx5dTHZdYRG1s6oSEgO4kQBIBNCk9mU_GqBDMfIULKcVzxEoy9XpinUi83nKcjP8hj4q_ksCmYZUrcsj8GZiEVpwzh5fCXxpGxNe/s600/noelmountperry1-page-001.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">Noel's prefab on his five-acre plot. As he wrote on the back,<BR>"It's as isolated as it looks, but plenty of crows and wallabies for company"</FONT>
<P>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
Following my return to Australia due to a misdiagnosed case of home-sickness, life hadn't been too good to me either, and I was also licking my wounds in Sydney when my best friend invited me to join him at Mt Perry. "Your coming here would give me a new lease on life" he wrote - words from a quiet, lonely man who had sought a refuge and become stranded. He had stayed away too long, and everyone had forgotten him. It was the nearest he'd ever come to admitting that his own home-coming after a lifetime in New Guinea hadn't worked out the way he'd hoped, and he was feeling lonely and in need of like-minded company.
<P>
My friend's <I>cri de coeur</I> - for that is what it was - never quite registered because, while I'd experienced my own bouts of loneliness which had always been cut short by the excitement of forever chasing work around the world, I still had another twenty-five years of work ahead of me.
<P>
As so often happens, the story had a happy ending for both of us: I left Sydney for Canberra where I was able to establish my own practice, and Noel could sell his isolated plot with "plenty of crows and wallabies for company" and resettle on the edge of Childers, within walking distance of shops and pubs and medical facilities, where I revisited him in 1990 to spend our last Christmas together before he passed away in 1995.
<P>
<P>
<P>
P.S. So much has changed at Mt Perry since Noel left in 1986: the old gold mine reopened, the old cinema was restored to a motel and restaurant, and that bit of a cow paddock across the dirt road from Noel's old place is now a fully-fledged golf club. Why, they now even have their own <A HREF="http://www.nelligennet.com/downloads/mtperryvisitorsguide.pdf" target="_blog1"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Mount Perry Visitors Guide</FONT></A>! Noel would have loved it!
<P>
P.P.S. And this is how Noel's place looks today: <A HREF="https://athomeatriverbend.blogspot.com/2023/01/noel-wouldve-loved-to-see-these-photos.html" target="_blog1"><FONT COLOR="yellow">click here</FONT></A>. How Noel would've loved to see these photos!
<P> <P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-9166431993706597312024-03-25T02:00:00.000+11:002024-03-25T02:37:14.965+11:00I can count the number of my friends on the thumb of one hand<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kBKCym-ERyY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><FONT SIZE="-2">Sorry, Chasers, but Peter Roget - despite his 'Frenchie' surname - was a proper Englishman</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:120px;line-height:90px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span>f you suffer from monologophobia – the obsessive fear of using the same word twice – you reach for Roget's Thesaurus, published in 1852 by Dr Peter Roget who longed for order in his chaotic world and so, from the age of eight, began his quest to put everything in its rightful place, one word at a time.
<P>
Roget was not just a doctor. He was also a polymath whose work influenced the discovery of laughing gas as an anaesthetic, the creation of the London sewage system, the invention of the slide rule and the development of the cinema industry – as well as being a chess master and an expert on bees, Dante and the kaleidoscope. All of which showed up in the work that he christened a "thesaurus", borrowing the Greek word for "treasure house".
<P>
His Thesaurus was constructed as a crystal palace of abstraction, each of whose 1,000 lists pushes a reader, often antonymically, to the next, “certainty” leading to “uncertainty” leading to “reasoning” leading to “sophistry.” I've never made head nor tail of the system and always go straight to the index — added by Roget almost as an afterthought — to use it as a book of synonyms even though Roget thought there “really was no such thing,” given the unique meaning of every word.
<P>
I've always thought that people who claim to have lots of friends probably couldn't spell the word 'acquantance' ... 'aquantence' ... 'acquaintenance' ... well, you know, 'friends'. Looking at their facebook pages, I was amazed at the number of friends some of my acquaintances have and promptly reached for Roget's Thesaurus to see if the words 'friend' and 'acquaintance' are synonymous. According to the good doctor, they are!
<P>
So go ahead, Hengky Tambayong - who is, incidentally, a real nice guy and Bali's best hotel manager! - , and enjoy your 2,354 friends! I shall keep counting the number of my friends on the thumb of one hand.
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-60937300089209358362024-03-24T15:30:00.003+11:002024-03-24T15:41:44.802+11:00I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately ...<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CLTgTvOSd84" title="Walden Film" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:140px;line-height:110px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">H</span>enry David Thoreau's two years on Walden Pond are better known to posterity than the other forty-three of his brief life. His shack was smaller than a contemporary single garage but, Thoreau emphasised, it was sufficient. In it he kept three chairs: 'one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society'.
<P>
Thoreau's masterpiece, "Walden" (1854), is possibly the most popular book of philosophy ever to emerge from the United States, It is beautiful in every way. People can quote lines of it without knowing their source, such as the adage 'to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life'; or, 'a man who has at length found something to do will not need a new suit to do it in'. And, of course, his enduring 'I went to the woods because ...'
<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7giE8cxjYa1LuEnrJ-_2kwELUEKr-SlkLUXmid4Di7tsFjVDvYax7RqdhWnwHbiYfjN6irRp99ndttkjwe2Kml2zwyTGLqGaKwWYhsel7js9_IYr-fvUAljs4bNn35MwOAspc3Gn5wr27rrNxsodb9K4CjSQUV7ZQ6hbtDfl-Ak1-EVosZ31xRduRy49Y/s826/iwenttothewoods.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7giE8cxjYa1LuEnrJ-_2kwELUEKr-SlkLUXmid4Di7tsFjVDvYax7RqdhWnwHbiYfjN6irRp99ndttkjwe2Kml2zwyTGLqGaKwWYhsel7js9_IYr-fvUAljs4bNn35MwOAspc3Gn5wr27rrNxsodb9K4CjSQUV7ZQ6hbtDfl-Ak1-EVosZ31xRduRy49Y/s600/iwenttothewoods.jpg"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
I have my own "Walden" here at "Riverbend". I call it "Melbourne" so that when I'm there and the phone rings in the house, Padma can excuse me for not answering it by saying, "Peter has gone to Melbourne".
<P>
I hadn't been to "Melbourne" for a while because of all the rain, but today I went and I spent several peaceful hours there, reading passages from the illustrated edition of "Walden" against the backdrop of the river and the sounds and smells of the nature all around me.
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJUVKLTlu0B6livnUxssPhPptsiqdxz0YclLgjaBmL3ppChakSiTWQCxXaq31dscQzX6K2AvaDPRM_2MthbUGS_5dzb0SHEWmx9x_Rh79awHQgO1OUbNRkPt9BvyMh2q5wrWgtXokP50p9yBKGtMwVv439WkvZpxFbZxWEZBZZHsxRG5Ml0WCzewYNMLOZ/s500/walden.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="500" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJUVKLTlu0B6livnUxssPhPptsiqdxz0YclLgjaBmL3ppChakSiTWQCxXaq31dscQzX6K2AvaDPRM_2MthbUGS_5dzb0SHEWmx9x_Rh79awHQgO1OUbNRkPt9BvyMh2q5wrWgtXokP50p9yBKGtMwVv439WkvZpxFbZxWEZBZZHsxRG5Ml0WCzewYNMLOZ/s600/walden.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">Read the book online at <A HREF="https://archive.org/details/walden0000thor_y2g2/mode/2up" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">www.archive.org</FONT></A></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
Next time you phone and Padma tells you, "Peter has gone to Melbourne", you'll know where I am, won't you? - click <A HREF="http://athomeatriverbend.blogspot.com/2023/01/cosy-melbourne.html" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">here</FONT></A>.
<P>
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-40424272867526202912024-03-24T09:00:00.010+11:002024-03-24T13:59:25.741+11:00Think about it and take as much time as you like<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAuufXYbvmS5GWOTFYfGxafBJlFqTUO716ZmaVoywSEcex70JNjQ1jKkaj1R8TMRPPW7B4YTSyRv0RrV_NyIWqgLW9rPQe-vWpMcudEk-zejdcAE0aRKKBLIt0VXazyZCkH2Ss3OZtqWs6hpehymW03gY4NmCUPp7ZO_0vxe4S_KGNA4cxA5LPnvmPxMQ/s720/adamandeve.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="500" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAuufXYbvmS5GWOTFYfGxafBJlFqTUO716ZmaVoywSEcex70JNjQ1jKkaj1R8TMRPPW7B4YTSyRv0RrV_NyIWqgLW9rPQe-vWpMcudEk-zejdcAE0aRKKBLIt0VXazyZCkH2Ss3OZtqWs6hpehymW03gY4NmCUPp7ZO_0vxe4S_KGNA4cxA5LPnvmPxMQ/s600/adamandeve.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:140px;line-height:110px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">Y</span>ou know what's funny? Paintings of Adam and Eve where they both have belly-buttons. Mind you, lack of a belly-button on Adam and Eve would've been one of the biggest tourist attractions in the pre-Flood world, as the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren would've come up and said, 'Why don't you have a belly-button?'
<P>
I was still at primary school when I asked the biology teacher, 'Why do <i>we</I> have a belly-button?' The umbilical cord was not yet part of our school curriculum and his reply was an evasive, 'So that our tummy can breathe'.
<P>
Even at the age of fourteen I found this hard to believe, and I kept asking uncomfortable questions. Questions about the Spanish Inquisition got me a less-than-top mark in 'Religion'; not believing my biology teacher got me a less-than-top mark in 'Naturlehre' which is what Germans call biology. (I had also questioned the androgynous origin of boys' nipples but his answer was lost in the tumultous noise suddenly coming from the back of the class; I seem to have been precocious before I became promiscuous.)
<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28IEd67SkgZmRe0-jxSAWhWGyPS-qJJLIajk9HGkd0C063We7a9Wws4OIyRHorgUDuyQtML_XY04g2OOG92Jfqo2TiILe63S2-dSVoHgtRjPAswPE9sXcdEpYHAoC5J-nDd4vAok96-4-ueBNCRFdz68NEZuPnPSpMTCRwv5U7sXk18OujwO2RO6M4hE/s1600/referenceabschlusszeugnis.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28IEd67SkgZmRe0-jxSAWhWGyPS-qJJLIajk9HGkd0C063We7a9Wws4OIyRHorgUDuyQtML_XY04g2OOG92Jfqo2TiILe63S2-dSVoHgtRjPAswPE9sXcdEpYHAoC5J-nDd4vAok96-4-ueBNCRFdz68NEZuPnPSpMTCRwv5U7sXk18OujwO2RO6M4hE/s600/referenceabschlusszeugnis.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
I've been asking questions all my life and many have got me into trouble. I'm now reduced to just 'What's for dinner?' and 'What's on television?'
<P>
<P>
<!---
Because your belly-button (navel) is a sign that you were once attached to your mother. You depended on the umbilical cord for your nourishment from her body as you developed inside her. But our first parents, Adam and Eve, didn't develop that way, if you want to believe the Bible.
<P>
So why are Adam and Eve always depictured with belly-buttons? Think about it and take as much time as you like.
Did Adam have a belly-button? I believe we really have an answer to that, and we can say, 'No — Adam didn't. Neither did Eve.'
Why? Because your belly-button (navel), or tummy-button as it's sometimes called, is a sign that you were once attached to your mother. You depended on that life-line — the umbilical cord — for your nourishment from her body as you developed inside her.
God would not have planted on them a false indication that they had developed in a mother's womb.
But our first parents, Adam and Eve, didn't develop that way. I believe that God would not have planted on them a false indication that they had developed in a mother's womb.
When God created Adam and Eve in mature form, the day they were created they might have appeared to be, say, 30 years old. But God wouldn't want or need to create the appearance of a false history, any more than the mature trees created by God would have had growth rings initially. Those are things which would develop in their offspring as a result of processes later on.
What's more, this would be a tremendous testimony to God's creativity. Ken Ham once put it this way: Lack of a belly-button on Adam and Eve would be one of the biggest tourist attractions in the pre-Flood world, as the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren would come up and say, 'Why don't you have a belly-button?' And they could recount again and again, to generation after generation, how God had created them special by completed supernatural acts, and yet had designed them to multiply and fill the earth in natural ways that are equally a part of God's continuing care for what He created.
--->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-19882927260535686972024-03-23T14:30:00.003+11:002024-03-24T10:45:23.446+11:00Hab' ich da was vermisst?<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rQhBTB-2Q4g" title="Unsere 60er Jahre Teil 1" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:140px;line-height:110px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span>n der Doku-Serie "Unsere 60er Jahre - wie wir wurden, was wir sind", wird Zeitgeschichte konsequent als dokumentarische Familien- und Alltagsgeschichte erzählt, aus der Sicht der Menschen in den beiden deutschen Staaten. Gemeinsam mit den Protagonisten wird also ein Jahrzehnt durchschritten, das jeden Einzelnen prägte.
<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2iwNer9mlIc" title="Unsere 60er Jahre Teil 2" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
Am Ende wird sich zeigen, wie sich alle verändert haben, in kleinen Schritten und mit vielleicht großen Folgen. "Unsere 60er Jahre" ist ein gesamtdeutscher Blick auf ein Jahrzehnt, ein eindringliches, persönliches, emotional dichtes und politisch aufschlussreiches deutsches Sittengemälde beider deutscher Staaten.
<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vlLZyhEzhlY" title="Unsere 60er Jahre Teil 3" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qpoix7mADnQ" title="Unsere 60er Jahre Teil 4 Abspann" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
Hab' ich da was vermisst? Ich bin ja schon in 1965 von Deutschland weg.
<P>
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-81484274026525496892024-03-23T05:00:00.012+11:002024-03-23T08:18:17.042+11:00Schlimm by name, schlimm by nature<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgU5rw8p1zWY32gZGCIF7QGoedevSzgARc1_xpHqViar1J5x1lVHU-FbvswEe9gX6jhDMq6UrZ-B_YkSk9o5ufg8vdnlMD4fN2IfhX3ygO9YPbc-qzCWjEthgrsMB5fyM3S57WjvYyPdpGT3zkPkTb3tKxAr93373NJILAqtkFsVENNzWTi6ggepSgXzg=s2048" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgU5rw8p1zWY32gZGCIF7QGoedevSzgARc1_xpHqViar1J5x1lVHU-FbvswEe9gX6jhDMq6UrZ-B_YkSk9o5ufg8vdnlMD4fN2IfhX3ygO9YPbc-qzCWjEthgrsMB5fyM3S57WjvYyPdpGT3zkPkTb3tKxAr93373NJILAqtkFsVENNzWTi6ggepSgXzg=s600" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">For more empty cans to fill up your empty time and space, click <A HREF="http://www.rschlimm.de/dosen/canthumbs.html" target="_blog4"><FONT COLOR="yellow">here</FONT></A></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:140px;line-height:110px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">S</span>chlimm, of course, means 'terrible' in the language which we'd all be speaking if a certain Charlie Chaplin-like person had had his way all those many years ago. And Reinhold <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/reinhold.schlimm.50" target="_blog1"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Schlimm</FONT></A> is the name of a certain person who left a comment on my facebook page which led me to discover his collection of empty softdrink cans. Schlimm indeed!
<P>
I guess we all have the collecting instinct in us. I started collecting postage stamps when I was a boy in Germany. Selling that collection to raise the necessary money for my fare out to Australia put a final stop to that.
<P>
For the next twenty years I travelled light and didn't collect anything other than work experience. Since settling down at "Riverbend" I have been collecting books, at first in mint condition and, after discovering op-shops, second-hand, and movies, first on videos and then on DVDs.
<P>
I've always felt a bit guilty about my book and DVD collecting habit (although not as bad as a certain model railway collector in the U.K. whose collection grew so big that his family had to move out of the house), but seeing Sclimm's collection of empty softdrink cans makes me feel slightly better. His collection is really 'schlimm', but there's hope for me yet!
<P>
And just think, Des, what a big collection of empty COKE cans you would have by now, if back then in Camp 6 you had started "doing a Schlimm"!
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-55295148542296717012024-03-22T21:01:00.002+11:002024-03-22T21:02:11.705+11:00One of my favourite movies - again!<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/the-shiralee-part-1-1987" width="400" height="250" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/the-shiralee-part-2-1987" width="400" height="250" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:60px;line-height:50px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span>'m amazed at how many Australians have not heard of - or perhaps forgotten - some of the most quintessential Australian movies - or have I become more Australian than the quintessential Australian?
<P>
"The Shiralee", based on D'Arcy Niland's book by the same name, is one such movie. It's the story of the itinerant rural worker Macauley - sometimes described as a 'swagman' or 'swaggie' - who suddenly finds himself taking responsibility for his child. Having returned from 'walkabout', he finds his wife entwined in the arms of another, and so he takes his four-year-old daughter, Buster, with him. The child is the 'shiralee', an Aboriginal word meaning 'burden'. In their time together, father and daughter explore new depths of understanding and bonding. The barren landscapes of the outback are central to the swagman's love for his country and provide a backdrop to the richness of his developing relationship with Buster.
<P>
Of course, there's nothing like curling up with D'Arcy Niland's book ...
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNCCtvFRV2zqW77xfwlAGP-XeBmsPvRl61Ee6LI6vC06VsfRFlwwMpwRyRbAtr0Fpf-NQ2lS42zWKVU3hKTBleDxZz4TODaAcoHB230uYxG2ERD7QebKk6qTacDlOnnaq_5uYxjbL47JV6_6FPBiNKLYzCwS-ud0VUxqcIqzW8xjS9SXFm_qWpu3HGSg/s681/shiraleefirstpage.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNCCtvFRV2zqW77xfwlAGP-XeBmsPvRl61Ee6LI6vC06VsfRFlwwMpwRyRbAtr0Fpf-NQ2lS42zWKVU3hKTBleDxZz4TODaAcoHB230uYxG2ERD7QebKk6qTacDlOnnaq_5uYxjbL47JV6_6FPBiNKLYzCwS-ud0VUxqcIqzW8xjS9SXFm_qWpu3HGSg/s600/shiraleefirstpage.png" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">To read the book online, click <A HREF="https://archive.org/details/shiralee0000darc/mode/2up" target="_blog">here</A></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
... but if you're more visually than cerebrally inclined, you'll find both the 1957 movie version with Peter Finch and the 1987 remake with Bryan Brown faithful screen adaptations of this wonderful book.
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3U1CB0fitMo" title="The Shiralee (1957) Sat-1-Dec at 15:00 / Wed-12-Dec at 18:00" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><FONT SIZE="-2">The original black-and-white movie from 1957 starring Peter Finch</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
D'Arcy Niland wrote another masterpiece, "Dead Men Running", which was made into a TV mini series in 1971. I wasn't in Australia then and so I missed it. If you can find it on YouTube or on DVD, please let me know.
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-55268964378493776472024-03-20T08:29:00.001+11:002024-03-20T08:29:48.113+11:00A book worth waiting for<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchIRhB_Zktdxny3wlohtNZCQr_Xd9w07EWUhHL2fC9tKZJ9YMhlOk6fhIeSqyOtmTYeTdQ2-agF1tMXSsKrz6CzEgGkJ3NraDQUGSgTTVtSWNG4BuNv-hltzui7y8S6q8w0xEQbljNs3OZoSj43Mni192K6GNBe-XMyBp_1XlrutFTbF5nc-NHF7WUX4/s1920/conrad.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchIRhB_Zktdxny3wlohtNZCQr_Xd9w07EWUhHL2fC9tKZJ9YMhlOk6fhIeSqyOtmTYeTdQ2-agF1tMXSsKrz6CzEgGkJ3NraDQUGSgTTVtSWNG4BuNv-hltzui7y8S6q8w0xEQbljNs3OZoSj43Mni192K6GNBe-XMyBp_1XlrutFTbF5nc-NHF7WUX4/s600/conrad.png"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:120px;line-height:90px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">T</span>here's nothing written by Joseph Conrad which I haven't read, and I also try to keep up with everything that's written about him. Martin Edmond has just now published "Marlow’s Dream - Joseph Conrad in Antipodean ports" which he talks about in yesterday's episode of Phillip Adams' <A HREF="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/how-joseph-conrad-visits-to-australia-influenced-his-writing/103602694" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Late Night Live</FONT></A>.
<P>
It's a book worth waiting for, but I may only find it in a Sydney bookshop when we go there next month, as there wouldn't be too many Joseph Conrad readers in the Bay. In the meantime, I'll watch a couple of his short stories made into short films:
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/87OtpXFF-Nc" title="An Outpost of Progress -- by Joseph Conrad -- Short Story Film -- 1981" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><BR><A HREF="https://www.online-literature.com/conrad/184/" target="_blog">An Outpost of Progress
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/epOee4LsK_c" title="Short story Film -- The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><BR><A HREF="https://www.online-literature.com/conrad/2047/" target="_blog">The Secret Sharer</A>
<P>
<P>
<P>
<!---
https://archive.org/details/orson-welles-heart-of-darkness
Das Herz der Finsternis:
--->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-32672450114885131662024-03-18T11:48:00.014+11:002024-03-18T12:59:54.490+11:00Retirement can be tough<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhni0l7A_3LnesIStr2eqRhbd2D55tJ6seWGyILlZi633mKwLB8SK4r-Ehgb0Vl2n5IbW5ivoOOSIslRbWlHLJVB7TmHGVLKd-6mUFgNjeDrN7P4m-pVwVOxuILfaE4YURR_wVmgEKJNhq6xR5Kw1c696oa1d5s-ZZ5ERumHGb4ySm_bPl_aEW5ttMnxcQ/s1500/frankderrick.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="984" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhni0l7A_3LnesIStr2eqRhbd2D55tJ6seWGyILlZi633mKwLB8SK4r-Ehgb0Vl2n5IbW5ivoOOSIslRbWlHLJVB7TmHGVLKd-6mUFgNjeDrN7P4m-pVwVOxuILfaE4YURR_wVmgEKJNhq6xR5Kw1c696oa1d5s-ZZ5ERumHGb4ySm_bPl_aEW5ttMnxcQ/s600/frankderrick.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:200px;line-height:160px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">T</span>oday is as wet outside as inside the pool: it rained all the way down to the Bay and it's still raining now, and more is forecast for the rest of the week. Met a new chum in the communal shower who had tattoos all over him, including one on his willy. "Why do you have 'WOOL' tattooed down there?" I asked him, "Are you a grazier?" He looked down on himself, "Ah, that one", he said. "No, I'm from Sydney. When I was younger, it used to read 'WOOLLOOMOOLOO'"
<P>
Afterwards, Padma dropped me off at Vinnies while she went shopping at ALDI and COLES and WOOLWORTHS (she always shops in alphabetical order). Good ol' Vic at Vinnies had a few more DVDs for me: Season 9 and 10 of "NCIS" (that's not an acronym, Des, but an initialism which stands for "Naval Criminal Investigative Service").
<P>
In Vinnies' book section I found a book which read on its backcover, "Frank lives with his cat Bill in a typically British town. He watches DVDs, spends his money frivolously at the local charity shop ..." Hey, stop right there! I thought. They've written a book about me! Okay, so my name isn't Frank, I'm not 81 (yet!), and I don't have a cat, the typical town we live in is not British, but as for the rest ... I'll let you know when I've finished reading it.
<P>
Now it's time for lunch, followed by a snooze. Retirement can be tough.
<P>
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-80612296795895646712024-03-17T11:55:00.007+11:002024-03-17T12:45:58.882+11:00Jeder stirbt für sich allein<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C0v52B2KGTk" title="Jeder stirbt für sich allein (new) Deutschland 1976 Literaturverfilmung nach Hans Fallada (2024 New)" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><FONT SIZE="-2">Deutsche Verfilmung von 1976</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:140px;line-height:110px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span>rgendwann als meine Klassenkameraden noch Karl May Bücher und G-Man Jerry Cotton Schmöker lasen, hatte ich meine Nase schon in solchen Büchern wie Erich Maria Remarques "Im Westen nichts Neues" und Hans Falladas "Jeder stirbt für sich allein". Als man mir dann noch zu meinem achtzehnten Geburtstag den Wehrpaß zuschickte, wusste ich schon daß ich auswandern würde.
<P>
Nur lange nachdem ich mir ein neues Leben in Australien aufgebaut hatte, bekam ich Zeit diese Bücher noch einmal zu lesen - unter den englischen Titeln "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Every Man Dies Alone".
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX7b1kZAzX-HhJQL5S6pr4aAgdgypUXap-CuQXxiuEznTyHQbb4xpeuuqDXYafRi5wv9j7y04lqw7t_5HKamDNzg8O15kqhSD7xd-RBNrN-YZZdJNPdjtDAdr3G49YryRBGUpGV2rFkXWNAnIt9mRKFTTvF5cEu9SZMLjk4Sa5Hh_2ciWel56MwMbnWUE/s500/s-l500%20%281%29.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX7b1kZAzX-HhJQL5S6pr4aAgdgypUXap-CuQXxiuEznTyHQbb4xpeuuqDXYafRi5wv9j7y04lqw7t_5HKamDNzg8O15kqhSD7xd-RBNrN-YZZdJNPdjtDAdr3G49YryRBGUpGV2rFkXWNAnIt9mRKFTTvF5cEu9SZMLjk4Sa5Hh_2ciWel56MwMbnWUE/s600/s-l500%20%281%29.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2"></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
"Jeder stirbt für sich allein" wurde fünfmal verfilmt. Die erste Verfilmung wurde am 19. Juli 1962 ausgestrahlt mit Edith Schultze-Westrum und Alfred Schieske in den Hauptrollen.
<P>
Ende der 1960er Jahre ließ das DDR-Fernsehen den Roman von der DEFA als Dreiteiler verfilmen, der im September 1970 erstausgestrahlt wurde. (Die DDR und Stasi hatten wohl genug Erfahrung diesen Film zu drehen.)
<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HjCpem0PVz8" title="Jeder stirbt für sich allein · Teil 1" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MI4kAwkxgFQ" title="Jeder stirbt für sich allein · Teil 2" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jXqHn9predU" title="Jeder stirbt für sich allein · Teil 3" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
Sechs Jahre später spielten Hildegard Knef und Carl Raddatz die Hauptrollen in der 1976 Kinoverfilmung - siehe YouTube ganz oben.
<P>
In 2004 den Film "Ve Smrti Sami" für das tschechische Fernsehen, und in 2015 erschien die Hollywood-Verfilmung unter dem Titel "Alone in Berlin" mit Emma Thompson und Brendan Gleeson in den Hauptrollen.
<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Je9-SGlKE30" title="Alone in Berlin | Hollywood movies | True Story" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
Leider ist das Buch noch nicht - oder nicht mehr - auf www.archive.org erhältlich aber beim Youtube gibt es da ein Hörbuch:
<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ESBUz-49OrU" title="Hörbuch Jeder Stirbt Für Sich Allein ein Meisterwerk von Hans Fallada" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
Dieser Eintrag ist für meinen Eigenbedarf da ich mir diesen Film noch einmal anschauen möchte, aber falls auch du Interesse hast, auch gut.
<P>
<P>
<!--- https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Schillinger-t.html The Otto and Anna Quangel of Fallada's novel are stand-ins for real-life Berliners, Otto and Elise Hampel, a working-class couple who conducted a postcard campaign for more than two years at the height of Hitler’s power, after Elise’s brother was killed in the war. Arrested in October 1942, they were sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) in January 1943 and executed by beheading. Their Gestapo files came into Fallada’s hands in the fall of 1945, entrusted to him by a poet and postwar culture official, Johannes Becher, who knew of Fallada’s prolific literary output and recognized his gift for objective narration. --->
<P>
<P>
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-28165394741730530312024-03-17T07:16:00.008+11:002024-03-17T10:19:39.280+11:00I love a rainy night<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CXXn8sANoj4" title="I Love A Rainy Night - Eddie Rabbitt" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:80px;line-height:50px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span> love a rainy day even more because it gives me an excuse not to sit on my ride-on and cut the constantly-growing grass but instead sit in my library among my books which constantly beg me to be read.
<P>
I first heard - and heard of - Eddie Rabbitt during my "Singaporean days" when I used to stay at the Raffles and supervise grain transhipments at Sembawang for my Saudi boss. Until that time I had been listening to the pop music of the eighteenth century - you know, Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and all that - but Singapore was awash with the sound of Eddie Rabbitt at the time and he had become something of an earworm.
<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaXwZ7yq06NU8qetMOFcLNaBKmjUOBGAyONkliJ5lw82vtE_dAF_J3vZGCMZ0ZLWa9Zuz2D5Hn6CpZlDw3vz_1OZKYA8pKwBnxC59AymQAPh-UIJz3xSXM7waEWUhjxlwWKZ8iBfKWJ70JfSgRlohY4ZbeDX-y2eAEeB5vi5RD8GWohY_b5jzIf8ENiRc/s1600/s-l1600%20%281%29.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1587" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaXwZ7yq06NU8qetMOFcLNaBKmjUOBGAyONkliJ5lw82vtE_dAF_J3vZGCMZ0ZLWa9Zuz2D5Hn6CpZlDw3vz_1OZKYA8pKwBnxC59AymQAPh-UIJz3xSXM7waEWUhjxlwWKZ8iBfKWJ70JfSgRlohY4ZbeDX-y2eAEeB5vi5RD8GWohY_b5jzIf8ENiRc/s600/s-l1600%20%281%29.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
I don't know what happened to Eddie Rabbitt since then but the music of Mozart is still around. I'm in my library among my books; I've popped "The Best of Mozart" on the record player; and I've started to read one of the many books still left on the shelf labelled "Books I pretend to have read".
<P>
It's going to be long rainy day - possibly even a long rainy night.
<P>
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-22679412109695919942024-03-17T05:00:00.017+11:002024-03-17T13:12:35.536+11:00Never on Sunday<P>
<P>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L2hntwGNGlU/Tc4X4QEhd0I/AAAAAAAADKo/mNMexbGjwOU/s1600/piraeus1.jpg" target="_blog"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NHsNvnjEidI/TcY9BoMMh8I/AAAAAAAADJg/sbnviHEgNOo/s400/piraeusbardame.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604233884486895554" /></a>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:120px;line-height:90px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">A</span> former girlfriend in Germany sent me a whole pile of old letters and aerogrammes - remember aerogrammes? - which I had written her since the day I left Germany in 1965 and again from early 1984 after I had attended my father's funeral in Germany and had revisited her.
<P>
They make for some interesting reading and bring back many memories, some which I had forgotten and others which I had been trying to forget.
<P>
They also included some old photos such as this one of me in my favourite bar in Piraeus with my favourite barmaid, Lindelia Konionikoli, after a long day in the office. It was just around the corner from my apartment at Boudouri 2 at Marina Zea. Good memories from the good old days!<br /><br />
<P>
<P>
P.S. Read also <A HREF="https://athomeatriverbend.blogspot.com/2015/07/armchair-travelling.html" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">"Armchair-travelling on a cold day"</FONT></A>.
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-2206529333475036772024-03-15T14:56:00.006+11:002024-03-16T08:02:28.570+11:00The Art of Solitude<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwf7QSd4_WBkYy-QoZW7XPOgbwQJ2xL2c3xNe4VhcZZGInwM1GUm209W9l8sDqIUWayOsaPZS_eWCLw3CgMb_pgYnANRozJbF4fI1co95CQp8_4hiY_TGI6jdjZRltzRwao5cUbxj-y_e2F1G40oD7w8mGS7omAZ4vjX9ULt3aOSw5hkCbKpgrhO5m6Us/s1024/800px-Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwf7QSd4_WBkYy-QoZW7XPOgbwQJ2xL2c3xNe4VhcZZGInwM1GUm209W9l8sDqIUWayOsaPZS_eWCLw3CgMb_pgYnANRozJbF4fI1co95CQp8_4hiY_TGI6jdjZRltzRwao5cUbxj-y_e2F1G40oD7w8mGS7omAZ4vjX9ULt3aOSw5hkCbKpgrhO5m6Us/s600/800px-Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog.jpg" width="400"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">"Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" (1817), Caspar David Friedrich</FONT>
<!---<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiriU3H2wXnQZyLIROgKqCx9ntuL8gzt43br1HDQbkueVwvbRFQjAYyLshNCkyLEyZNKz11sbd9YnWcN4E4eTnhl8xbhIkuW2_ZEnDBVj3HHwQ1PxuxcfdGHv3BzeXfZdW2yhg25cbwevuOOLZ1yAAKBT4xy0DiXKzb9UK1f5dmYanAVJotVy6o0zPlEOE/s1920/Nighthawks_by_Edward_Hopper_1942.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1048" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiriU3H2wXnQZyLIROgKqCx9ntuL8gzt43br1HDQbkueVwvbRFQjAYyLshNCkyLEyZNKz11sbd9YnWcN4E4eTnhl8xbhIkuW2_ZEnDBVj3HHwQ1PxuxcfdGHv3BzeXfZdW2yhg25cbwevuOOLZ1yAAKBT4xy0DiXKzb9UK1f5dmYanAVJotVy6o0zPlEOE/s600/Nighthawks_by_Edward_Hopper_1942.jpg"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">"Nighthawks" is a 1942 oil-on-canvas painting by the American artist Edward Hopper that portrays four people in a downtown diner late at night. Hopper said that he "didn't see it as particularly lonely but unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city".</FONT>--->
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:110px;line-height:60px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">O</span><I>ur language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone."</I>
<P>
We can thank one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, Paul Johannes Tillich, a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian, for this rather elegant explanation of the difference between loneliness and solitude.
<P>
My love of the glory of solitude has deepened for me with age. This may well be an old man thing that comes from a sense of time running out and not wanting to waste a moment of it. As Einstein wrote, <I>"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."</I>
<P>
Sitting on the bench at the back of <A HREF="https://athomeatriverbend.blogspot.com/2023/01/cosy-melbourne.html" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">"Melbourne"</FONT></A> on a hot day, with bees humming in dozens of shoulder-high callistemons which I planted only a few years ago, with the expanse of "Riverbend" before me and the slowly-flowing river on two sides, I revel in the mere act of breathing in and breathing out. Solitude fills me with peacefulness and a simple gratitude for being alive which all too often tends to get lost in the crowd.
<P>
Mind you, I am not so sold on solitude as was Henry David Thoreau, the American philosopher who spent months on end alone on Walden Pond. Wrote Thoreau: <I>"I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."</I> (while writing about the importance of solitude, Thoreau would run into town and have people cook dinner for him, and before heading back into the woods, he would dump his laundry at his mother's house.)
<P>
I still value my time with good friends but only in short bursts. Just now I received an email from an old - in both senses of the word - work colleague who had dropped in on us at about this time five years ago, totally unannounced and uninvited. At the time, he was just passing through and we improvised with a hastily thrown-down mattress on the floor of the library and made him feel welcome for the - what? - two or three nights of his stop-over which required few changes to our lives.
<P>
He now wants to come to "Riverbend" to spend his holiday here. <I>"How long would you put up with a grumpy old man and his 'she who-must-be-obeyed', of course?"</I> he asked. If it's just for another two or three nights, no problem (although our guest cottage is now our movie house and choc-full with my DVD collection, and since his last visit I had to strip its bathroom which had been infested by termites, and it's been left bare and unlined since then, which creates some creature comfort problems).
<P>
So what do I tell him? That I prefer my solitude? That I would rather spend my remaining time breathing in and out on my bench behind "Melbourne" than spend it being the life of the party? Or do I just send him this post?
<P>
<P>
<P>
<!---
https://nuvomagazine.com/daily-edit/the-art-of-solitude
Once again a lovely photo of Riverbend and the river………. The alluring view would be one if the glues that hold you there………
We are now back KL, after a long time in Penang and Ipoh. Doesn't time fly…..
OK, I am due to head to Perth in mid April…..arranged a colonoscopy and heart CT scan…… never thought of such niceties when drinking coldies in Panguna…… Was thinking if heading your way for a visit…..questions
….. how long would you put up with a grumpy (as sweety likes to call ne) at your cottage…(+ she who-must-be-obeyed of course) If OK
…… recommended Canberra - Batesman bay by bus; Melbourne Batesman bay by train/ bus; or Sydney Batesman bay train/bus? We would fly back KL from Sydney or Melbourne………nothing booked yet…. Not looking at getting a rental car at the moment..
….Timing would be latish April/early May………we would pay for our coldes and food wine/cheese & sausage….etc + your elect and water….etc………(as a BnB)
Food for thought………….Roy
--->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-25672794014213864072024-03-14T17:47:00.008+11:002024-03-14T19:45:42.190+11:00It's "Feierabend" at "Riverbend"<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YUVtkWfzWCs" title="Top 10 words we should steal from German" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:80px;line-height:50px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">A</span>fter half a day of sitting on the ride-on and cutting grass, the rain set in which allows me to watch this entertaining YouTube clip about the ten words we should steal from the Germans.
<P>
I agree with nine of them - and I would add "Fingerspitzengefühl" and "Tapetenwechsel", the former of which I needed in my work and the latter I exercised more than fifty times in the course of my working life - but "jein" didn't even exist when I turned my back on the "Vaterland" nor was there any need for it because back then the world was pretty much either black or white for all of us, and so it was either a straight "ja" or "nein".
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzXhkMJu7B9vAiBidqUyMeArhi5wbulJ4en8A0-u68HeO91MdGYsMuN04rDEqkwKNU4hpAFUec6eJvLf0vlLSF2nYFO-t-y3svpv-JgqXnPyDpubkiAmi4oa3sK1JY67TwHQXULG-N3n8QzlESouMDZQrjmzgFhptiEtMQFSH1fP6RR51cbu6SfFH6SQ/s1920/evening.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzXhkMJu7B9vAiBidqUyMeArhi5wbulJ4en8A0-u68HeO91MdGYsMuN04rDEqkwKNU4hpAFUec6eJvLf0vlLSF2nYFO-t-y3svpv-JgqXnPyDpubkiAmi4oa3sK1JY67TwHQXULG-N3n8QzlESouMDZQrjmzgFhptiEtMQFSH1fP6RR51cbu6SfFH6SQ/s600/evening.JPG"/></a></div>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
It's six o'clock in the evening here at "Riverbend". It may've be a bit of a "Schnappsidee" but I've cracked open my first and, with my drinking days behind me, only beer of the day and wish you all "schönen Feierabend".
<P>
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-91775719107988507362024-03-14T03:30:00.002+11:002024-03-16T13:20:45.555+11:00Don't ever question the value of volunteers. Noah's Ark was built by volunteers; the Titanic was built by professionals.<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QXJOSvUkX1E" title="Berlitz Commercial - We Are Sinking" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">W</span>hen I went into retirement more than twenty years ago, I was scratching around for something to do. Being fond of sailing and enjoying being around boats, I volunteered with the Marine Rescue Batemans Bay at Hanging Rock.
<P>
Everything went swimmingly - if you will pardon the intended pun - until they promoted me to radio operator and that fateful call came in: "We're thinking! We're thinking!" Since then I've had lots of time for reading.
<P>
<ACRONYM TITLE="Always ready">Semper paratus</ACRONYM>.
<P>
<P>
<P>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-89672439687031822892024-03-13T16:49:00.000+11:002024-03-13T17:49:41.687+11:00It's the beer for any occasion<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OmoqjyIc2OE/WHlC87nlKNI/AAAAAAAAaeM/QMsETXDP-d4ztDP6Uh4FE1HAVpFmHUXAQCLcB/s1600/fuckinghell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OmoqjyIc2OE/WHlC87nlKNI/AAAAAAAAaeM/QMsETXDP-d4ztDP6Uh4FE1HAVpFmHUXAQCLcB/s1600/fuckinghell.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">T</span>his reassuringly foul-mouthed beer takes its fruity name from a small Austrian village known as Fucking, whilst the word 'Hell' is a term for 'pale beer' used in Southern Germany and Austria.
<P>
The unusual combination of words has now been sanctioned by the <A HREF="https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">European Union Intellectual Property Office</FONT></A>, which says in their verdict that "the brandname could not be blocked simply because it has a different connotation in another language".
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aPe4TZ9PlTs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
It's the beer for any occasion. From stubbing your toe to seeing your team finally lift the World Cup. Drink it to capture the moment, to celebrate, to commiserate, to exercise your demons and raise a toast to life's ups and downs.
<P>
<P>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-60341039068999193722024-03-12T16:39:00.011+11:002024-03-13T04:10:49.514+11:00Der alte, weiße Mann<P>
<P>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1MnGTHuaeTo" title="Norbert Bolz: Wie die woke Linke den Westen bekämpft | Interview über "Der alte weiße Mann" | VAKUUM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:120px;line-height:90px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">D</span>ieser Norbert Bolz hat Mut die Wahrheit zu sagen; Mut den die ganz schweigende Mehrheit längst verloren hat! Wir brauchen dieses Buch in englischer Übersetzung damit es ein größeres Publikum lesen kann. Inzwischen werde ich versuchen es mir per Post aus Deutschland zu bestellen.
<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHGFtHWqixfnJs2ZFA5PW79oFtPgEG_Rw12OX4RPv22Ouv7KUyfSn9ZDYqhNuxT1rn44FrOlRdWqJeIJZiZF8DVnr3Jwh4HMW9CUHjAe7Ftcf_WfES65puF4l2kdgdygqqaELpEyEuQV4C-4MuUmD5fp0Zkw24arDwoZlOM0ilSw-5lXrhtzYpZ-nRck/s900/s-l1600%20%281%29.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHGFtHWqixfnJs2ZFA5PW79oFtPgEG_Rw12OX4RPv22Ouv7KUyfSn9ZDYqhNuxT1rn44FrOlRdWqJeIJZiZF8DVnr3Jwh4HMW9CUHjAe7Ftcf_WfES65puF4l2kdgdygqqaELpEyEuQV4C-4MuUmD5fp0Zkw24arDwoZlOM0ilSw-5lXrhtzYpZ-nRck/s600/s-l1600%20%281%29.jpg"/></a></div><FONT SIZE="-2">Leseprobe <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite1.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 1</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite2.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 2</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite3.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 3</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite4.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 4</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite5.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 5</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite6.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 6</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite7.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 7</FONT></A> - <A HREF="https://nelligennet.com/downloads/seite8.png" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">Seite 8</FONT></A></FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
Die meisten Menschen ordnen sich lieber dem Druck der Politischen Korrektheit unter, damit sie ihre Ruhe haben, damit sie nicht diffamiert und an den Pranger gestellt werden. Politische Korrektheit, Wokeness, Cancel Culture sind bereits so weit gediehen, dass es zu Diskussionen und intelligenten Auseinandersetzungen gar nicht mehr kommt. Nur eine kleine, aber langsam wachsende Gruppe von freiheitsliebenden und kritischen Menschen lehnen die Bevormundung kategorisch ab und wehren sich. Dieses Buch von Norbert Bolz ist dazu eine gute Anleitung.
<P>
Die Beschreibung "Alte, weisse Männer" ist jetzt zu einer Beschimpfung geworden.
Aus dem deutschen Grundgesetz: "Artikel 1. (1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt." Das gilt für die Mehrheit wie auch der Minderheit.
<!---<P>
<P>
Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein? Nein, schon lange nicht mehr!--->
<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyYyIn0YOBmOgGHmcZyF_vRKlYsD2eYzXSXl91hyYr3sN0oirM7tRj7Q5dYEnq7tZdl4mDy4wZS6A-ju2ah-WObYwXjHcZ6J9zhf7DhfXmMfBaZJIfcS7fkwSl2D3iVTTmjaZ-ntKX8t2whMr3WoXlJmOVVY3mdYZlbU1QsF0EFY9yu8FxWg9bCFU-Al8/s1200/Quotation-Edmund-Burke-The-only-thing-necessary-for-the-triumph-of-evil-is-4-17-35.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyYyIn0YOBmOgGHmcZyF_vRKlYsD2eYzXSXl91hyYr3sN0oirM7tRj7Q5dYEnq7tZdl4mDy4wZS6A-ju2ah-WObYwXjHcZ6J9zhf7DhfXmMfBaZJIfcS7fkwSl2D3iVTTmjaZ-ntKX8t2whMr3WoXlJmOVVY3mdYZlbU1QsF0EFY9yu8FxWg9bCFU-Al8/s600/Quotation-Edmund-Burke-The-only-thing-necessary-for-the-triumph-of-evil-is-4-17-35.jpg"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
<!---
Alte weisse Männer»: Wie aus einer Beschreibung eine Beschimpfung wurde
Die Demütigung «alter weisser Mann» lässt sich nur mit Mühe an ihren Ursprung zurückverfolgen. In der Schweizer Mediendatenbank taucht sie erstmals am 24. Dezember 1998 auf. Der Amerika-Korrespondent des Nachrichtenmagazins «Facts» schrieb damals, die Feministin Betty Friedan habe die Republikaner als einen «Haufen dreckiger, alter weisser Männer» bezeichnet, weil diese ein Amtsenthebungsverfahren gegen Präsident Clinton vorantrieben.
Friedan war jedoch nicht die erste, die den Dreiklang der Macht – alt, weiss, männlich – abwertend benutzte. Der Wandel von der Beschreibung zur Beleidigung setzte Anfang der 1990er Jahre in den USA ein, als Junge, Schwarze und Frauen ihr Recht auf Mitbestimmung einforderten.
«Ich habe es satt, dass alte weisse Männer den Schwarzen vorschreiben, was sie tun dürfen», sagte ein schwarzer Konzertbesucher in Georgia 1990 einem Reporter über das Verbot von anstössigen Rap-Texten. Und eine Pflegefachfrau in einer Abtreibungsklinik in Texas ärgerte sich 1991 über alte, weisse Männer, die jungen Frauen das Recht absprachen, über ihren Körper zu bestimmen.
Und selbst wer sich nicht bevormundet fühlte, musste zugeben, dass die Artenvielfalt in Geschichtsbüchern, Parlamenten oder auf Richterbänken gering war. Überall alte weisse Männer.
Die Reihenfolge der Wörter ist übrigens kein Zufall. Es geht nicht um alte männliche Weisse oder um weisse männliche Alte. Ganz oben auf dem Podest der Privilegien steht das Geschlecht, dem die Rasse und schliesslich das Alter folgen.
Am Anfang benötigten die alten weissen Männer noch Adjektive wie langweilig, mürrisch, fett oder eben dreckig, um die Beschreibung ins Verächtliche zu kippen. Aber schon bald reichten Anführungszeichen. Heute braucht es nicht einmal mehr diese.
Der Bedeutungswandel beförderte die Karriere des Ausdrucks. Im Google Books Ngram Viewer, der es ermöglicht, die Häufigkeiten von Begriffen in sechs Millionen Büchern zu ermitteln, geht die Kurve für «old white men» ab 1994 steil nach oben.
Im deutschen Sprachraum dauerte es etwas länger, bis sich der Begriff als Provokation etablierte. 2012 bezeichnete die deutsche Bundesministerin Ursula von der Leyen die schwächelnde deutsche Wirtschaft als «old white man». 2021 erfolgte der Ritterschlag auf dem Cover des «Spiegels»: «Aufstand gegen den alten weissen Mann», stand da im Juli neben der Zeichnung der Büste eines Mannes, die vom Sockel gestürzt wird. Selbst wer einer ist, will keiner mehr sein.
Wie erwartet gehen bei der Frage, ob der Begriff rassistisch sei, die Meinungen auseinander. Linke Kreise haben Rassismus so definiert, dass eine privilegierte Gruppe grundsätzlich nicht darunter fallen kann. Konservative machen den Substitutionstest: Wäre es zulässig, über junge schwarze Frauen so zu sprechen wie über alte weisse Männer? Wohl kaum.
Aber was ist überhaupt ein alter weisser Mann? Heute hat sich diese Bedeutung eingeschliffen: Ein Typ Mensch, der seine Privilegien verdrängt, den gesellschaftlichen Wandel belächelt und glaubt, seine Position ausschliesslich aus eigener Kraft erreicht zu haben.
Wer seinen Niedergang öffentlich kundtun will, hat heute verschiedene Möglichkeiten. Zum Beispiel das feministische T-Shirt mit dem Aufdruck «I’ve heard enough from old white men» oder die Kaffeetasse «Vote old white men out of office».
=========================================
https://www.amazon.com.au/alte-wei%C3%9Fe-Mann-Norbert-Bolz/dp/3784436536
Für die Übel dieser Welt kennt die aktuelle Debatte vor allem einen Schuldigen: den alten weißen Mann. Er steht für Kolonialismus, Rassismus und Sexismus und auf sein Konto gehen sowohl die Armut in der Welt als auch die Zerstörung der Natur und natürlich der Klimawandel. Doch wie wurde er zum Sündenbock und was steckt hinter dieser kollektiven Schuldzuweisung? Norbert Bolz analysiert den Begriff und zeigt, dass der alte weiße Mann zur zentralen Symbolfigur in einem kulturellen Bürgerkrieg geworden ist. „Alt“ steht dabei für Tradition und Erfahrung, „weiß“ für die europäische Rationalität und technische Naturbeherrschung und ,,männlich“ für Mut, Risiko und Selbstbehauptung. Dabei wird deutlich: In diesem Konflikt, der immer unbarmherziger geführt wird, geht es nicht um die Beschimpften, sondern um die Grundlagen der westlichen Welt.
==========================
--->
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523599536625913608.post-45258295710833937302024-03-12T11:44:00.020+11:002024-03-12T15:49:42.232+11:00Travelling North totally by chance<P>
<P>
<CENTER>
<iframe width="400" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1QVIrRr28Hg" title="Travelling North (1987 Australian Movie)" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><FONT SIZE="-2">Travelling North tells the story of Frank (Leo McKern), a crotchety old man with an unending zest and passion for life and Frances (Julia Blake) his much younger companion travelling to Queensland to enjoy their retirement and each other. Unfortunately the idyllic North cannot calm Frank’s complex personality and desire to live life to the fullest and Frances watches helplessly as Frank struggles to understand his own emotional and physical limitations.</FONT>
</CENTER>
<P>
<P>
<span style="float:left;color:silver;font-size:120px;line-height:90px;padding-top:2px;font-family: times;">I</span> was searching YouTube for a copy of "The Hustler" with Paul Newman to email to someone in Port Moresby whom I had known more than fifty years ago in Rabaul as "Felson", when totally by chance I came across a full-length copy of one of my all-time favourites, "Travelling North", with Leo McKern and Julia Blake.
<P>
It was uploaded only eight days ago by <A HREF="https://www.youtube.com/@throwbacktv-Aus" target="_blog"><FONT COLOR="yellow">"Throwback TV - Australian Classic Movies & TV"</FONT></A> and, knowing YouTube, it won't last long, so watch it now!
<P>
(The same YouTube channel has more than a dozen very "watchable" Australian movies, including "Cliffy" and "Caddie" and "Fields of Fire".)
<P>
<P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFkjC-DcInVKpTSNZxZ3ejsdeFhWjRW__xC51IXRaOR-5pFs4ijcAOOPnZYY1fwUsbFr2n_EG0RO93dUbUCOCHj-2YhaUuIy5wV8clxhKaeLq910n0Kk19D4W_8GavaZoXIgAuERx6VjdamEZA04Ssi3PYDkcerHEW7v97ojjn4HCI6o2jBlWxA0Dprxg/s640/0371c213837d5bbba98b328adc59638dcefda9b8.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="473" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFkjC-DcInVKpTSNZxZ3ejsdeFhWjRW__xC51IXRaOR-5pFs4ijcAOOPnZYY1fwUsbFr2n_EG0RO93dUbUCOCHj-2YhaUuIy5wV8clxhKaeLq910n0Kk19D4W_8GavaZoXIgAuERx6VjdamEZA04Ssi3PYDkcerHEW7v97ojjn4HCI6o2jBlWxA0Dprxg/s600/0371c213837d5bbba98b328adc59638dcefda9b8.jpg" width="400"/></a></div>
<P>
<P>
The movie is based on a play by David Williamson - who also wrote "Don's Party" and "The Removalists" and more than fifty others - which in essence is a serious drama with some comedic touches. It has been described as "a deeply moving comedy with insightful ruminations on youth, vigour, ageing and death" and is considered one of Williamson's best loved works.
<P>
I've watched it at least half a dozen times, and I'm sure you will, too.
<P>
<P>
<P>
P.S. Sorry, Grahame, but I couldn't find a full-length copy of "The Hustler".
<P>
<P>
<!---
https://archive.org/details/travellingnorth0000will/mode/2up
--->
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com