The King's Speech

The German and I saw the trailer for this while in London (and watching Harry Potter) and we thought it looked great. Based on the true story of the problem with stuttering that Prince Albert, who became George VI after the unexpected abdication of his "golden" (although Nazi sympathizing) older brother (to marry his divorced American mistress).
So when we finally found a new babysitter (our last opened her own kita and left us forlorn)— and let me recommend kijiji.de for finding a babysitter that allows you to find and interview people based on their PZL— we decided that we would love to see it.
Earlier in the week I had heard an announcer discussing the movie's chances in the Academy Awards (and later it won several, including Best Picture), and they had included a clip: in German. The clip discussed how Albert— or the new George VI— would soon need to discuss war with Germany and it was strangely disassociate to hear it spoken in German (all movies released in Germany are dubbed in German. One of the more interesting careers here is that of being the "voice" of a Hollywood actor— these voices remain the voice of that actor throughout the career of the actor and Germans know only the German voices rather than the actual voices. That can be odd when a German voices two actors who play in the same movie and I am told that in such case, one voice is replaced, which must be very strange to the listening Germans!).
So we decided to see it in OV (original voice), which is always a bit of a hike, and it was a belated Valentine's Day outing, combined with dinner at ( very good fast food Italian) Vapiano.
We both enjoyed the movie very much. Not a "big" movie, but a very warm and interesting one. I can see why the writer also completed this as a play (and it will appear soon), because I can see it operating extremely well in a drawing-room.
I only had a momentary panic attack at the H**ler in Berlin newscast, and the focus was on Prince Albert (Colin Firth) and Logue (Rush). It was wonderful to see their faces (and that of the later Queen Mum, Helena Bonham Carter) as human faces: they looked real and lived in and wrinkled and not plasticised, plastic surgeried or Botoxed.
One of the items I found interesting was that Derek Jacobi played the Archbishop of Canterbury and that of course, one of his most famous roles was as the stuttering Claudius of the wonderful I, Claudius series.
It was also wonderfully humanizing and a bit sad to hear of the treatment of children at that period and to think about how far we have come and yet how some children are still mistreated. The German was a little nonplussed when I pointed out that the young, vibrant woman he saw portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter was the woman he remembers at 90+ as the Queen Mum: what amazing world changes she saw in her life time

Discourse

I don't want to specifically discuss the horror of what happened in Arizona on the 8th. Already people are pretending that this should be a knee jerk of one side defending itself against (justified) charges that it has embraced polarizing discourse.

Instead, I want to think aloud about the state of public discourse.

A few days ago I posted some thoughts on the New Year and one of those thoughts was that I needed to remove certain people and attitudes from my atmosphere. I talked about how individuals, empowered through the internet, were increasingly using ad hominem attacks and how glad I was that the bullying could not become physical because I live in a civilized society.

I spoke too soon. Or the USA is not civilized. At least here in Germany the likelihood of someone attacking me with a gun is vanishingly small and my odds of surviving other physical attacks is much greater. The verbal attacks are, to a certain extent, forbidden by law. And those in the internet which I find intemperate or uncivil, I have removed from my view.

But the question is why individuals feel entitled to act in such a manner? So I'm going to look at three specific examples in the past year that have either silenced me or forced me to curtail my activity and active exchange of thought.

The first was earlier this year. Another expat blogger posted an ad campaign that she found amusing. It was a British campaign and I found it sexist and as such, a bit misogynistic. Some other commenters saw my point and some thought it was funny in spite of that and some did not see my issue.
That's not the point: what happened as the result of my comment was. Another blogger attacked me, took a post from my blog to say that I myself was sexist, posted it on his blog with commentary and without telling me or permission. Then another of his friends told me that I had no sense of humor, suggested that I needed to have sex more frequently to give me a sense of humor and used common misogynist language to belittle me. His wife told me that being told I "needed to get laid" was neither an insult to me nor to my husband (whom they had both met). She assured me that she had taken feminist studies and therefore knew that this language was not sexist or misogynist. I didn't point out to her at the time, but will now: I understand that we all tell ourselves stories to live with the unbearable. Telling a woman that she has no sense of humor about sexism and misogynism, that she needs to have sex enacted against her, that her ideas and opinions are formed by her hormone levels: this is indeed the heart of misogyny. Let me direct you to Feminism 101 and more specifically to this.

I removed these people from my blog reader.

The next issue that arose came in the context of the removal of Elizabeth Moon from the Guest of Honor position at Wiscon 35. Wiscon is a science fiction convention concentrating on issues of feminism. This is their statement of intention:

Wiscon is the world's leading feminist science fiction convention. WisCon encourages discussion and debate of ideas relating to feminism, gender, race and class.

Moon was "dis-invited" as the result of an interview that she gave wherein she stated that Muslims in the US have the same responsibilities as all Americans.

This is a small quote:

...I can easily imagine how Muslims would react to my excusing the Crusades on the basis of Islamic aggression from 600 to 1000 C.E....(for instance, excusing the building of a church on the site of a mosque in Cordoba after the Reconquista by reminding them of the mosque built on the site of an important early Christian church in Antioch.) So I don't give that lecture to the innocent Muslims I come in contact with. I would appreciate the same courtesy in return (and don't get it.) The same with other points of Islam that I find appalling (especially as a free woman) and totally against those basic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution...I feel that I personally (and many others) lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom. It would be helpful to have them understand what they're demanding of me and others--how much more they're asking than giving. It would be helpful for them to show more understanding of the responsibilities of citizenship in a non-Muslim country. (And the same is true for many others, of course. Libertarians, survivalists, Tea-Partyers, fundamentalist Christians, anyone else whose goals benefit only their own group. There's been a huge decline in the understanding of good citizenship overall.)...

Leaving aside whether one disagrees with what Moon said, I see nothing against feminism here: in fact, it stands up for women against a religion which when followed as Islamists do, is misognistic. This ( from Reclusive Leftist) is a good discussion of that aspect.

However, I personally agree with what she said. I am a member of a religious minority and I want the country I live in to protect me from other religious groups. I am a woman and I want my country to protect me from groups and individuals that seek to curtail my freedom as a tenet of their religious faiths. I am afraid of Islamists and I have every right to be so, as I pass through gates guarded by policemen with machine guns on a daily basis and know that in India, people just like myself were sought out by Islamists, to be murdered, for no other reason than their religion or their visiting of a place associated with my religion.

When I said that, I was attacked personally for my beliefs. No one explained why my fear was wrong, but I was told that I was racist (it's tough to not have a word for fear of religious extremism or one for hatred of a specific religion or cult, I know– that's why Jew haters are called antisemites although they really only hate Jews). Someone who I had been corresponding with for years told me that she was "afraid of me".

Here we see the concept of the Big Lie. Here are some specific words of Hitler from Mein Kampf, where the phrase originally arose (and was used specifically against Jews) and was then used by Göbbels:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Was my acquaintance afraid of me? No. We go to conventions together– does she feel in any danger from me? No. Does she feel that any of my actions will damage anyone's freedom or speak negatively against a single individual? No. But when I say that I am afraid, she says that she fears me. Now the emphasis seems to show that my saying that I am afraid (we won't discuss lack of action) has engendered a sense of danger in her.

That's the same type of lie where Sarah Palin says that when the world looks at her "attack map" with gun sights and says it helped to create an atmosphere of rancor and acceptance of violence, that: it's a blood libel. Does she even understand the Jew hating context of that phrase? This type of appropriation is often part of the big lie, as when the above blogger takes my fear for her own and dismissed mine in its entirety.

Lastly is the reason for my New Year's post, after which I determined to continue to rid my environment of people who think that attack is a replacement (or synonym) for debate or discussion. Another blogger had posted a list of posts that had the most viewers this year and one was a discussion of the way some parents fear allowing their children to go to school alone, in relation to commuting. I mentioned that the same morning I had heard, on the BBC, the statistic that 2000 children in the US go missing every day.

The same expat blogger from my first example told me I was wrong. Now, he didn't say the BBC was wrong, so the implication was that I lied. In a few seconds, I looked up and supplied the link from the interview where the pertinent information can be seen: "An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing each year – more than 2,000 children every day." This information is sourced from the FBI and the Department of Justice.

But the blogger told me that I was wrong, that statistics lie, that my unwarranted fears and these lies were responsible for the atmosphere of fear in which people live. He also said that the organization lied and made up a bunch of statistics to prove that the numbers were not possible.

Here we see misdirection: he was shown the source for what he called a lie, and now has no direct response (because he won't apologize). Another commenter posted that many of these missing children would have been taken by parents: absolutely. With a little Google-fu one can discover within moments (also from the FBI and DOJ) that many kidnappings are guardian or non-custodial parent(although that certainly does not make them less tragic to the child or parent/guardian, although one could at least hope that in those cases the children were not being harmed). This same magic of research comes up with 7000 children "permanently" disappearing a year: still quite a lot, but not 800,000. Not pertinent to my original comment of having heard an interview, but would have been useful if mentioned later by someone commenting.

I do look forward to seeing the FBI and the Department of Justice change their statistics in response to the blogger's off the cuff analysis.

I didn't respond, because responding to individuals who attack in this unreasoning way leads one to be attacked by them and their friends but as I understand (and do not know because I don't read this person's blog) he has discussed this at length on his blog and once again attached a link to mine: I see this because individuals I don't know are coming to my blog through his. That's what stats view allows. These individuals are attacking and I have moved to comments moderation as a result.

And that's what silencing is about. (Or as wikipedia calls it, suppression of dissent.)

What's been happening in the US is remendous stridency and usage of terms of violence and hunting terminology from the Right, but whenever anyone mentions this atmosphere, the right responds that the left does it as well.

Well, they really don't. But many normal individuals just can't deal with the violent rhetoric and in your face behavior of the new normalized wacky Right, and we give up.

Here's a look at the Insurrectionism Timeline put together by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (which one would have hoped was non-partisan, even if it isn't to the wackos).

That's sad and that's dangerous.

The Holiday whirl: In the UK, the National Gallery, Shakira and back to Berlin

On Sunday morning we moved from the Holiday Inn to the Sheraton Park Lane (another freebie with points). What a difference. Right on the park, only a few blocks down from the tube station, gorgeous view. ( We could see both the London Eye and Buckingham Palace from our windows.)

It was also warm and had a real King size bed (rather than a pretend one, which is when hotel staff says the bed is king size but one knows it is not and wonders why they are lying.)




They let us check in super early (9:30 am) which was great as I hate leaving my bags at the desk and we needed to run off and meet a friend at the National Gallery.









I particularly liked this piece of art that was outside the Gallery- I hadn't noticed that it changes but since this ship in a bottle wasn't here a few months ago, it must be a rotating gallery.

When we had made plans for the visit to London, the only thing that I really wanted to do (besides my usual wandering around and looking at things and having food without pig in it) was to visit the National Gallery. It seems that every time I go to London I go to the British Museum and although I could continue to do so for the rest of my life and not see everything (and although the design is fabulous) I wanted to see something more intimate and more focused. Because i fell in love with Venice last year when we visited (it really feels as if one is walking through a painting), this exhibit seemed particularly appropriate.

And did I really not talk about that either? Our anniversary trip last year in October, from Venice (as the acqua alta began) to Naples to Pompeii and then back to Rome, with the entire day lost wandering through the Vatican Museum and the final achievement (so many years after my four years of Latin) of spending the entire foot weary day wandering through Pompeii. I love Italy.

Since C works with museums, she put up with the amount of time it took me to wend through the exhibit: ever since we used the audioguides at the Vatican Museum and then at the Alte Pinakotkek in München, I have decided that they are really great and worth the time and expense (as opposed to many years ago when I first tried them and they were no more than the same words I would read on the displays) and this "guided tour" was very interesting.

Afterward we ate lunch at a pub and the cider that I had (in bottle) was over 20 oz- or 2.5 servings for a woman when looking at the guide printed on it. I had to give half to the German and I can see why Britain has an issue with over consumption of alcohol— the cider was cheaper (and larger) than the soda water he was drinking.
Then we said good bye at the station and wended our ways in the falling snow: a very pleasant visit.
In the evening we went to see the new Harry Potter and were amazed at how expensive movies are, but enjoyed the evening out then had a quick meal at the cafe in our hotel.
Monday we walked around the city a bit and in the evening we were off to the O2, again by public transport and again, although warned of problems, we had none. The O2 in London is amazing: a mall, a movie theater, an ice rink, a huge arena and much more. Also very pretty.
We had a bit of an issue at the pick up window (the clerk couldn't find our tickets), which was stressful, but at least this time we had a contact number which someone actually answered and they dispatched someone to clear up the issue, so the discomfort was the attitude that perhaps we were fibbing? A woman rushed up and asked the folks behind us if she could drop some tickets- she said she "played the violin" and the man asked, in his adorable British accent, if he would see her in the show. She said yes, which was an understatement: she had some amazing solos and was wonderful but my goodness- what a difference costume and make up made! I think the tour bus must have been very late, which also explained why the concert started after 9:20.
I had gotten the tickets to Shakira simply because they were free and we would be in London when she was playing, but I liked her act very much. What a difference between her and Lady Gaga! Her voice and range were amazing, her dancing was fantastic, and her dress was modest and her moves athletic and exciting. Gaga had a good voice and fun songs, but Shakira both surpassed her and was not profane or hypersexual: we enjoyed the concert very much. This was, I think, her last gig of the tour and we were surprised that the sold out venue started emptying out before her encores, perhaps because she started late. We stayed and enjoyed two wonderful songs and had no problems getting back on the Tube.

This isn't the best quality sound, but gives a really good view of her dancing.

A few people still sleeping in the Heathrow terminal- we ourselves had no issues going out (an hour late), but they were triaging folks, not allowing them into the terminals without a ticket which was showing for an uncanceled flight, so it was a bit SFnal seeing the hordes standing outside the doors being kept back by security.Then security moved us to the head of the amazingly long luggage drop line because we were in two hours of departure.
After that, everything went very smoothly and we got back to Berlin to discover lots of snow but no issues with transportation. It was good to be home.

The Holiday whirl: Off to the UK, War of the Worlds

After last year, I had planned on never attempting to visit the UK or travel within Europe by plane during the months of December or January.

(Wow- looking back I can see that I never blogged about being abandoned in London, having RyanAir leave me sleeping on the floor without even a blanket, having ValueJet cancel a booked flight even before the booking, while I made my way to Luton to find only contracted workers telling everyone nothing, while in mud to our ankles, and finally getting out on BerlinAir, to the wrong city and then traveling to Düsseldorf and onward by DBahn! Suffice it to say that it was plenty horrible. Including the cancellation of trains from Brighton and being left standing outside for 3 hours while waiting for laid on buses to a functional train to get me to London in the first place— all due to perhaps 5 inches of snow! RyanAir still hasn't repaid my flight, let alone the two days in hotel or multiple rides to the airport while they messed with me.)

Unfortunately, we had been looking forward to seeing Jeff Wayne's 3oth Anniversary War of the Worlds tour right here in Berlin at the O2, when we received an e-mail, telling us that the show had been rescheduled for 2012. When I went to the tours site to discover why, I found out that the German promoter had decided to pull the tour and have it redone in German, which was why it would take an extra year until it was ready.
I was not enthusiastic. The character of the narrator, Richard Burton's voice, is integral. And I love the original and don't really have the desire to hear it translated/dubbed into German. The production company offered those of us the option of buying tickets for any of the remaining venues in the tour and the day that made the most sense (if I were to go with the German) was the last: Saturday December 18th at Wembley Arena. The date gave me a certain amount of stress, considering what had happened last year. Before booking, we got agreement from the (unbelievably great) in-laws that they could come and take care of the children for an extended weekend, as school would be in session, and we were able to add another concert on Monday the 20th— tickets to Shakira at the O2 in London were available for hotel points and we thought— "Why Not?".
So we booked a flight out Friday morning the 19th, assuming that would give us some time to deal with weather emergencies and I was grateful: England had two inches of snow and the beginning of what would be a serious weather emergency did impact us. On our side, Berlin had snow, T2 was ill, and the in-laws came in a bit earlier than they had expected to make certain they would be in place. We were two hours late taking off, but no biggie, and it was interesting to see the de-icing operation.
When we got into London, we had some coffee, grabbed our bags, and bought Oyster cards, which are the only way to economically get around on the London transit system. We planned this trip to be economical and were in no hurray, so we took the regular Tube into Central London rather than the Heathrow Express.
We stayed the first two nights at Leicester Square Holiday Inn through points, so it was free, but the location was not perfect. Although close to Leicester Square, it was a bit of a drag getting our luggage through the snow, ice and slush to the quiet hotel several streets back. In addition, although we were under the roof in a decent looking room with an adequate view, it was cold!

I spent the rest of the day being ill (as the German was the following day) and we think it was a manifestation of what T2 had, although thankfully without the projectile vomiting. We kept the heat cranked up and used extra blankets but it was cold and snowing and the windows in the bathroom were, we think the source of the cold due to inadequate insulation.

We wandered the area in the snow after a nap and stepped into a wonderful Thai place, the best I've eaten in since Munich, and the spices definitely helped my headache:). It was a lot of fun window shopping in the center of the London shopping district and looking at the lights, although we actually didn't wind up buying anything in the city at all. London always feels much more like home to me than Berlin does: it's not just the language, but the design and energy are so much closer to NY than Berlin.

On Saturday we wandered a bit more through a deserted London— there were outages throughout the public transportation system although examining them, it was clear that the real issues were on the lines that had above ground areas due to signal failures. The damage to the shopping season must have been great because entire streets were empty of walkers in what should be a dense shopping area and there were almost no vehicles moving. I think they had had 4 inches in total.

There were also scheduled outages and a scheduled work stoppage (that is, a planned strike) on the Tuble lines. We were concerned that it might be an issue getting to Wembley and asked a cab driver what a cab there would cost. When he told us "it would depend on traffic" and we could see almost no cars on the road, we knew that it would be a total rip off. We looked at the different means of public transport and decided to leave earlier and see how far we could get.

When we got to the Leicester Square station, we asked what "serious delays" meant and one of the many workers (wow, how nice to have workers!) told us a 10 minute delay. I laughed and felt a lot of reassurance:).

So we got to Wembley early and stopped outside the station at Subway. Why does Subway in Germany have meatball subs on the menu when none of the restaurants in Berlin actually serve them? I really enjoyed having all beef meatballs with jalapenos. Then on to Wembley, which is a charming arena. We had wonderful seats (all the seats had been freed by the promoter and press) in the 14th row and Wembley is set up really well— buying refreshments is made as easy as possible due to multiple kiosks. I had a cider and found it very amusing that the bottle was actually made of plastic! (Of course it makes sense, but why not serve it in plastic cups rather than producing non-standard plastic bottles?)

There were significant gaps in the further reaches of the Arena, which were probably due to the travel difficulties— at a guess they were bus loads of people that were not able to get in to London. A whole large family filed in past us a few minutes after the music started, with the apology of the dad that it had taken them 8 hours to get there.

I really enjoyed the musical. I didn't take any movies myself because I bought the DVD:). During intermission we chatted with the people around us and after the show we had backstage passes (part of the apology) which was also tremendous fun, although I'm too shy to really benefit from that. I did get an autograph and a picture with Jeff Wayne and got to watch all sorts of famous people interact while snacking and having a soda, though. We chatted with some folks from Zurich who were there for the same reason as us, but who had believed the "serious delays" and taken a cab. At 50 GBP, I'm glad we didn't! They joined us on the train back to London and we wished them luck on their flight back to Zurich the next day (which I am certain that they did not make, considering the chaos that was unfolding at Heathrow).

Our seats and view were a lot better:)

What the well dressed Dwarf is wearing

American customer service, as accessed abroad. aka Kenneth Cole is great.

I spent the weekend celebrating a birthday by going to DiscWorldCon for a weekend away with my husband. It's a celebration of Pterry Pratchett and his world and I may talk about it later.

But I started with a lovely conversation with Kenneth Cole customer service. As I have been decluttering, one of the first targets is damaged or broken items. This suitcase had a broken wheel. We had thought about taking it back with us to the US this summer to have it repaired, but the thought of dragging it along without a wheel, while traveling en famille, was insupportable (ah, Steampunk, it's catching).

So, I called their customer service. Who gave me the number for their warranty service for luggage (as opposed to The Luggage). When I called the number, a got a voice-mail telling me for a faster response I could use e-mail, as the person in charge would not be available.
I sent an e-mail and got back an out of office reply. I also said that I did not have a receipt and could only make a guess as to the store I got it in (although I knew the approximate time period).
Within 5 minutes the person whose e-mail it was got back in touch with me and asked for a specific piece of information that was attached to the suitcase.

I sent that and reminded her that (as per my address), I was out of country and wouldn't want to return the suitcase for warranty work until next back in the US: I was calling only to see what I would need to do and whether there was a possibilty of having it repaired in Europe rather than in the midwest.

She waived the requirement and said that she would get a replacement suitcase right out. Wow.

That is just amazing. I had thought the cost of shipping and repair would be too great and that I would just discard the suitcase and feel bad.

Instead I had several great experiences with people who knew exactly how to direct me and were generally chatty and friendly while looking up information that I required, someone who helped me out while not even at work, and who actually took my personal circumstances into consideration.

It was great and in celebration, while on the way to shop so that my (unbelievably great) in-laws could have food for the weekend, I stopped off at the recycling Hof and T2 and I recycled it:).