squirm

the cruelest month

yesterday, attempting to kill time at lunch, i decided to stroll through the kleine tiergarten, a leafy environs bookended by two churches - one built friedrich schinkel, where the local drunks argue the finer points of philosophy. reaching the far edge of the park, enjoying the sun and still averse to returning to the office i thought i'd take a gander at the spring greenery in the nearby wilsknacker strasse graveyard. the small cemetery marks the mass grave of over 300 locals killed during the final, desperate battles fought here in april of 1945. it also is home to the headstone of albrecht haushofer - author of moabit sonnets - executed by a roving ss death squad hours after being released from prison as the russian beared down on the neighborhood. wandering over to his headstone i was taken aback when i saw the date of his death - exactly sixty four years ago to the day! coincidence or something more?

elderly people benefit from caloric restriction

not the words of a holocaust denier - but the results of a study conducted at the university of münster. see - it was just a big health improvement program - kind of like pilates, only with striped gym outfits...

The Cold Weekend

seems just a bit more sufferable now that I've discovered European Film Treasures, a partnership between a few dozen film archives around the continent dedicated to preserving the early history of European cinema. Browse their listings, watch the films online and read about their creation. Thus far I've thrilled to the exploits of Danish stuntwoman Emilie Sannom, witnessed Kaiser Wilhelm II pop by the neighbors, and dreamed of summer afternoons frolicking at the Wannsee. And that's just in the first ten minutes!

Credit Crisis

The DHM does its part to assist the global economic recovery with a new web based job portal.

switzerland's warm welcome

lately i've been watching

a few histories of the House of Tudor and the English Reformation - which proved handy when i came across this,,, 

missed only two and i don't even live there anymore

amurkans can take this civics literacy quiz to test their knowledge of their history and gummint.

Rio di San Vio

"...we set forth that dull cold afternoon on the top of a high tide and a flowing sea, from the Club, up Canal Grande past La Salute, turning off at the Duchess of Madrid's red and yellow posted palace with the gilded Florentine lilies, to go up Rio di San Vio. And then, just after you pass the Erastian temple, the Rio di San Vio narrows, and is crossed by a bridge, before it widens again into a very decent canal with quays for pedestrians on both sides of it. We had swirled through the narrow part and under the bridge, when the calamity occurred. I was rowing at the prow, and Emily was steering at the poop, the pace being my usual swift and hectic one. A big unwieldy barea of firewood came suddenly towards us, rowed by two of my former gondoglieri, Piero Venerand and Ermengildo Vianel, who had gotten a better winter job than mine in the firewood business of the latter's father. To avoid collision Emily precipitately twitched my barchets to one side without much judgement. I incontinently lost my balance; and, disliking the notion of crashing ignominiously inboard to sprawl among the oars and forcole, I made no ado whatever, but just gripped my short pipe more tightly between my teeth, and took a neat header into the canal, passing right under the approaching wood barge. As I shot through the air I saw all the hands of all the people on the two fondamente being flung to heaven, and I heard all their voices bawling, 'Ara, Ara! O Mariavergine! For pleasure here is an English going to drown himself fastidiously!' So as soon as I got under water, I told myself that the said English had better give these people something truly rare and wholesome to cough about. Wherefore I swam, submerged, about thirty yards up the Rio, passionlessly emerging (to a fanfare of yells) in a totally unexpected place, with a perfectly stony face, and the short pipe still stiff and rigid in an immovable mouth." Frederick Rolfe - On Cascading into the Canal, Blackwood's Magazine, July, 1913

speaking of simon

here is his take on the legacy of the fast disappearing 43rd president of the united states.

"it hasn't really been all George Bush's fault, the stupendous American fiasco. He came to power armed with an ideology that was about to crash and burn; that was, years before the present tumult, already fatally disconnected from historical reality. It was on his watch that American government needed reinventing. It was responsible government that was needed in Iraq and Afghanistan; government that was desperately needed in New Orleans after Katrina, while all George Bush could manage was a fly-by. It is government that this most anti-governmental of all American administrations is learning that is needed now to save the United States from a second Depression"

indeed, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

three magic words that every little boy loves...

secret

nazi

bunkers!