On a personal note, this is the first photo I have ever taken with an iPhone.
Showing posts with label living in Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living in Germany. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Sunday, 7 April 2013
On the wall of the bathroom stall at the Wal-Mart where I worked stocking shelves my last year of college, someone had scratched the start of a game of tic-tac-toe. X in the center. O in the upper corner. (The start of a stalemate, a cat's game).
On the wall of a corridor in the hospital in Tübingen where I've been this last week, there are framed portraits of famous people who had diseases. FDR had polio, and look what he did with his life. Gauguin had syphilis, but didn't let it hold him back.
The lesson of the first wall is one I am only slowly unlearning.
The man who put the tic-tac-toe game on the wall probably didn't have health insurance. I certainly didn't have health insurance working at Wal-Mart. My hours were kept below the minimum for full-time employment, the point at which certain labor laws would have kicked in and required benefits. I made 50 cents an hour more than minimum wage, if memory serves. Part of training was a video on what to say if approached by union organizers. One of the benefits that did come with the job, after a few weeks of a paperwork and a probationary period where you could be fired without cause, was an employee discount on groceries. With the money I saved from that I got a tattoo -- a cheap tattoo -- when I quit the job, and graduated college, and moved south to where I met my wife.
I tell people the tattoo is from a book that was really important to me, when they ask. I tell people, sometimes, that it's what the aliens say in this book whenever someone dies. I could also say it's an answer to the set-up for a cat's game, a phrase that's important to me for how it acknowledges and accepts the world as it is, but makes a decision against despair. This was one of the first conversations I had with my wife, though at the time of course she wasn't that yet, and I couldn't yet know how amazing she would be if you fell off your bike in a field and were in excruciating pain and had to go to a German hospital.
She reminded me of this conversation this week as I recovered from surgery to fix my broken shoulder with a metal plate and eight screws. "Thank you," she said, "for not despairing."
When I broke my shoulder, I was in the middle of a field, on a path with an unfortunate rut in it where my bike slipped and I flipped onto my shoulder. I had to walk to a nearby landmark where a taxi would pick me up. It took about a hour, because of the pain. Every step jostled the three fractures where my arm no longer lined up with my shoulder. I kept walking, though, and got there, and the taxi came, and we went to the hospital. This would not have always been the case. When I signed into the hospital left-handed, and did the necessary bureaucratic form-filling, I wasn't overwhelmed by it. Even though I am basically always overwhelmed by even the most benign bureaucracies. Just the thought of bureaucracy is normally enough to fill me with shaky dread, a frantic certainty that such institutions loom with secrets and rules to hurt me. I didn't think about the cat's game, though, the lesson of the X and the O already where they are. I signed wrong-handed, shaky and uneven, and then signed the next thing, and focused only on what was next.
I walked around the hospital a little, waiting for the surgery, on pain meds and with my arm safe in a sling. That's how I found the wall of pictures of people who had had bad stuff happen to them but were okay anyway. The person who put that on the wall probably had health insurance. Which I do too now. It's a very different kind of a lesson, on this wall. One that's hard for me. That may be why the message was so unsubtle: stuff goes wrong sometimes, but it's okay.
The writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote of someone in one of his books, "she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
As I replace the bandages over my sutures, that sew up the two surgical incisions now perpendicular to my tattoo, I know how that feels. It feels pretty good.
Like things are going to be okay.
On the wall of a corridor in the hospital in Tübingen where I've been this last week, there are framed portraits of famous people who had diseases. FDR had polio, and look what he did with his life. Gauguin had syphilis, but didn't let it hold him back.
The lesson of the first wall is one I am only slowly unlearning.
The man who put the tic-tac-toe game on the wall probably didn't have health insurance. I certainly didn't have health insurance working at Wal-Mart. My hours were kept below the minimum for full-time employment, the point at which certain labor laws would have kicked in and required benefits. I made 50 cents an hour more than minimum wage, if memory serves. Part of training was a video on what to say if approached by union organizers. One of the benefits that did come with the job, after a few weeks of a paperwork and a probationary period where you could be fired without cause, was an employee discount on groceries. With the money I saved from that I got a tattoo -- a cheap tattoo -- when I quit the job, and graduated college, and moved south to where I met my wife.
I tell people the tattoo is from a book that was really important to me, when they ask. I tell people, sometimes, that it's what the aliens say in this book whenever someone dies. I could also say it's an answer to the set-up for a cat's game, a phrase that's important to me for how it acknowledges and accepts the world as it is, but makes a decision against despair. This was one of the first conversations I had with my wife, though at the time of course she wasn't that yet, and I couldn't yet know how amazing she would be if you fell off your bike in a field and were in excruciating pain and had to go to a German hospital.
She reminded me of this conversation this week as I recovered from surgery to fix my broken shoulder with a metal plate and eight screws. "Thank you," she said, "for not despairing."
When I broke my shoulder, I was in the middle of a field, on a path with an unfortunate rut in it where my bike slipped and I flipped onto my shoulder. I had to walk to a nearby landmark where a taxi would pick me up. It took about a hour, because of the pain. Every step jostled the three fractures where my arm no longer lined up with my shoulder. I kept walking, though, and got there, and the taxi came, and we went to the hospital. This would not have always been the case. When I signed into the hospital left-handed, and did the necessary bureaucratic form-filling, I wasn't overwhelmed by it. Even though I am basically always overwhelmed by even the most benign bureaucracies. Just the thought of bureaucracy is normally enough to fill me with shaky dread, a frantic certainty that such institutions loom with secrets and rules to hurt me. I didn't think about the cat's game, though, the lesson of the X and the O already where they are. I signed wrong-handed, shaky and uneven, and then signed the next thing, and focused only on what was next.
I walked around the hospital a little, waiting for the surgery, on pain meds and with my arm safe in a sling. That's how I found the wall of pictures of people who had had bad stuff happen to them but were okay anyway. The person who put that on the wall probably had health insurance. Which I do too now. It's a very different kind of a lesson, on this wall. One that's hard for me. That may be why the message was so unsubtle: stuff goes wrong sometimes, but it's okay.
The writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote of someone in one of his books, "she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
As I replace the bandages over my sutures, that sew up the two surgical incisions now perpendicular to my tattoo, I know how that feels. It feels pretty good.
Like things are going to be okay.
Monday, 4 March 2013
From the USA Today:
It's not difficult at all, on the other hand, to check facts about where a city is located. The very simplest fact in this newspaper story is where Tübingen is. Most newsrooms are connected to the internet. If the USA Today's offices aren't, perhaps they could invest in a world atlas.
Supposedly newspapers care about these things, details and accuracy, since it's a matter of credibility. If you can't be trusted with an easily verifiable detail, why should a reader trust any other detail in your story? Saying that Tübingen is a Bavarian town is sloppy.
It's not in the state of Bavaria, nor in the region. Nor is it even particularly close. This is akin to saying New York is a plains state, or that Louisiana is in the Southwest. Pope Benedict is a Bavarian. Maybe the cat was Bavarian. The town where Ratzinger supposedly had a cat listening to his lectures is not Bavarian.
Tübingen is in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in the region known as Swabia. This is relevant because Bavaria is strongly Catholic. Swabia is predominantly Protestant, with a strong tradition of Pietism. The town itself has both a Protestant seminary and a Catholic seminary, which is unusual in Germany, and is known, historically, for the "Tübingen School" of theology, which pioneered higher criticism, the hermeneutic so important to the religious liberalism and modernism that Benedict has commitment much of his life to opposing.
That means there were three ways that Tübingen was an alien place for Ratzinger (at least three, not even counting what was going on in German universities in '68 or his fraught relationship with Hans Küng). In the standard narrative of his life, his time in Tübingen is pivotal.
He probably could have really used a friendly cat, if the one in the story didn't actually exist.
It's easy to say that it doesn't matter. What's a detail like geography? But if it doesn't matter, then context doesn't matter, and facts don't matter, and understanding stuff doesn't matter. And then why have journalism at all? This is almost certainly an overreaction on my part, but there's a fine line between overreacting and just giving a damn.
The cat thing is cute, though.
Back in 1968, when Rev. Joseph Ratzinger was a theology professor in the Bavarian town of Tubingen, a neighbor's cat visited him daily.
'It even accompanied him to his lectures and to Mass. It was a black cat, a very intelligent pussycat,' the older brother writes.That's a very nice story about the cat. Dubious, but nice nonetheless. It's very difficult to check the facts on such things.
It's not difficult at all, on the other hand, to check facts about where a city is located. The very simplest fact in this newspaper story is where Tübingen is. Most newsrooms are connected to the internet. If the USA Today's offices aren't, perhaps they could invest in a world atlas.
Supposedly newspapers care about these things, details and accuracy, since it's a matter of credibility. If you can't be trusted with an easily verifiable detail, why should a reader trust any other detail in your story? Saying that Tübingen is a Bavarian town is sloppy.
It's not in the state of Bavaria, nor in the region. Nor is it even particularly close. This is akin to saying New York is a plains state, or that Louisiana is in the Southwest. Pope Benedict is a Bavarian. Maybe the cat was Bavarian. The town where Ratzinger supposedly had a cat listening to his lectures is not Bavarian.
That means there were three ways that Tübingen was an alien place for Ratzinger (at least three, not even counting what was going on in German universities in '68 or his fraught relationship with Hans Küng). In the standard narrative of his life, his time in Tübingen is pivotal.
He probably could have really used a friendly cat, if the one in the story didn't actually exist.
It's easy to say that it doesn't matter. What's a detail like geography? But if it doesn't matter, then context doesn't matter, and facts don't matter, and understanding stuff doesn't matter. And then why have journalism at all? This is almost certainly an overreaction on my part, but there's a fine line between overreacting and just giving a damn.
The cat thing is cute, though.
Monday, 25 February 2013
Monday, 18 February 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Wohl dem, des Hilfe der Gott Jakobs ist; des Hoffnung auf den HERRN, seinem Gott, steht; der Himmel, Erde, Meer und alles, was darinnen ist, gemacht hat; der Glauben hält ewiglich; der Recht schafft denen, so Gewalt leiden; der die Hungrigen speist. Der HERR löst die Gefangenen. Der HERR macht die Blinden sehend. Der HERR richtet auf, die niedergeschlagen sind. Der HERR liebt die Gerechten.
Der HERR behütet die Fremdlinge und erhält die Waisen und Witwen und kehrt zurück den Weg der Gottlosen.
-- Psalm 146, Luther Bible, 1545
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners: The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous:
The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
-- Psalm 146, King James Version
Der HERR behütet die Fremdlinge und erhält die Waisen und Witwen und kehrt zurück den Weg der Gottlosen.
-- Psalm 146, Luther Bible, 1545
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners: The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous:
The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
-- Psalm 146, King James Version
Monday, 7 January 2013
Monday, 31 December 2012
Monday, 10 December 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Tuesday, 21 August 2012
Monday, 20 August 2012
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