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Well my attempts to do my blog posts on my trip failed miserably!  The hotel's internet was down, though they swore it was not, however no one could connect.  So, the only working wireless was at a gas station, where a little band of die hard's gathered behind the gas station trash, playing vampires with the station's internet.  I am not so hard core as to do that!  Especially since it rained quite a bit there and I love my little Acer.  Sigh.

However, it was interesting to see how German culture is mimicked, the actual culture is long dead of course, killed by the invasion of Americanism, which has eroded all of the old values.  Of course, some needed eroded, like the love for Nazi's.

Food was but a pale comparison to my memory, and how I cook at home, though I did find one place which was excellent.  I sat amazed as I watched an old US GI down a four person meal, as I ate my one!  He was still going strong when the desserts had all been polished off.  I guess he has never heard of heart disease - yet!

But, oomph-pah-pah music was everywhere, after all Oktoberfest begins officially on the 17th!  So, many a man were downing vast quantities of beer and the next morning shop keepers were all out hosing down the urine and stale beer projected upon the sides of their buildings the night before!  I hate Oktoberfest season.

As you might have read, Germany has just allowed gay marriage and so many a happy "couple" were staying at my hotel.  Call me inappropriate but their behavior in public certainly was!  I was torn to call them to account or just ignore them and realize that they are on a road of their own choosing.  Discretion being the better part of staying alive at times.  It literally broke my heart to see what has become of my countrymen and culture.  We have finally out Frenched, the French.  Sigh.

However, I do not wish to leave you with the impression I whimped out completely while there!  I noted the first day two teenage girls working the street.  Next morning, I did take them on!  The 14 year old, made a rather dramatic reversal on her appearance, apologized and I did not see her return for the rest of the time there.  I can only pray God will see to it that her path is going to get a whole lot straighter and narrower in the very near future.  The 19 year old was a bit more difficult to work with because she was a mite hardened.  And for her I wished I had longer there because I would like to see her turned over to one of the matriarchs of the village.  It took a bit for her to see my viewpoint, she had never considered there was another way, another culture, it was all she knew.  But, again, she disappeared as well and I can only hope God will deal with that tiny grain of truth to get in.  I just can not tolerate innocence being trashed by the sickness of this culture.

Mostly, I kind of hung with a group of Polish Germans.  They felt rather out of place (like me Germans of the old fashion) and if you ignored the mouthy female my age, they were a great group to hang out with.  We went horseback riding, though all of the older ones declined to go, just the young adventurous ones and me went!  It was a great morning ride with lots of wildlife to be found.  My knees are still killing me from that one!

In all, it was wonderful to be back in something close to my culture as a child, painful noting the differences and heartwarming to be back home with my grandchildren.

To my children, thank you for a wonderful trip, you spoil me.  To my friend, heartfelt thank yous for all of the communications, you are very much missed.

Musical Saturday Morning

Okay, you guys are never going to forgive me for this one!  But, it is from the 1980's.  Yeah, roll your eyes now, just so you are past it before you start the video ...



Franzl Lang was probably the best yodeller I have ever heard.  I can remember trying so hard as a child to mimick his vocal sounds, alas, to no avail - I just never had that musical gift, talent or even a hint of it!

In this video I thought I was going to die I was laughing so hard at his horse hair mane on his Tyrolean cap!

Is This Justice?

Otto Eichmann, one of the designers of the holocaust, escaped Nuremberg trial by moving to Argentina and remained there until captured by an Israeli group, hustled off to Israel to stand trial and eventual execution for crimes against humanity.  It was 1962 and as I struggled as a seven year old to read the newspaper accounts, I really was thinking about my great-uncle.  What if this was him?  How would I feel to have one of my family ripped away and murdered......  Yeah, I was a precocious 7 year old.

I had no idea what a Jew was, did not know that my father actually was one, nor that my mother was - genetically anyway, but I went to my father and demanded an explanation for this whole holocaust deal.  He was old German, I expected an answer and he was honor bound to give one.  I anticipated he would lie about anything which would point to him, because I already understood that my father was a liar.

At the beginning of grade seven, even though I was in Canadian NATO schools, I was still forced to tour a concentration camp.  There is nothing un-appalling about one, but I was not like my German peers, I pushed back and demanded explanations for each and every statement made.  Yeah, I learned a great deal, between the beatings from the older Germans.  Towards the end of the day, an elderly man came up to me and sat by me as I cried in anger at the justice being denied me.  He explained the problem of "history" and history.

As I grew older, I came to understand this elderly man's opinion even more and to see how right he really was.  We have what is politically correct to know and then what is politically incorrect to know.  Being correct does not equal right nor true, it equals acceptance by society.

Kurt Mathesius, was a family friend - before my time, and commandant of Nordhausen.  My uncle was violent in his reactions when you mentioned the Nuremburg trials or that fact that he was accused of murdering 300 prisoners.  The same prisones whom were photographed being dug out of the rubble when the Allied bombers flattened Nordhausen thinking it an ammo dump.  Yeah, he was innocent and his association with  Nordhausen' scientist camp, was considered the entire Nordhausen complex.  So facing a death, he hung himself in his cell.  My uncle was livid.  How could a prisoner, stripped of almost everything, hang himself?  He believed this just another Eisenhower move to kill Germans without trial.  Yeah, my uncle was vocal and history has show he was correct, however, "history" clearly shows he is wrong....  Get the picture now?  As for truth, uncle's brother was one of 15 guards charged in that complaint and remains at large.  No even when my uncle died a few years ago, he still had no idea where his brother was.

The Dutch women, captured in Holland in the 1980's, were all over the press when I moved my work to Europe.  Imagine, there were a small group of Dutch women, accused of siding with the Germans during the war and of course, people they turned in, never came back. Oh were both sides of the press arguing that one!  Do you prosecute a group of grandmothers, whom have lived exemplary lives for 40 years or do you mow them down for what happened when the world turned upside down?  But, if you don't - then how do you deal with Anne Frank, patron saint of Amsterdam?

Anita Bryant was crucified in the press for her stand against the gay agenda in the 1970's.  Well, she was not wrong then, she is still not wrong today and in fact all she predicted has come to pass.  Yet, what she said was politically incorrect in the 1970's, she was even outright rude in my book, but the agenda is even worse too day!  And like so many others, she was tossed upon the waste can of history for not being relevant, espousing an ideal as old as the Bible itself in virtually all cultures.  Of course, the entire issue really deals with sexual sin and this is lost in her argument.  I stopped drinking orange juice for decades as my protest against the state of Florida and its banning of Bryant.  No, I did not like her, and no one was forced to listen to her viewpoint either, but a state of this Union decided to shut her up because about 1.7% of the population announced a boycott.  Yawn.....

And today, another person I do not care a wit about, Paula Deen, is being attacked for having actually lived in a racial and bigoted south.  She even used the "N" word, though could not give an example.  Her real crime was attempting to throw a birthday party based upon the old south plantation system and wanting to hire color waiters.  Oh wait!  She was gong to pay them?  They really were not going to be slaves there?  Gees, America, grow up!  As I said, I have no use for her and as a celebrity "chef", she isn't.  Might be a good cook though....  Don't know, don't care, but again the populous destruction of someone based upon vague rumors and to silence them.  She will probably become the patron saint of Mississippi now.  Sigh...

And what of my father?  He, along with some 10,500 other German scientists, were politely excused of their pasts in order to gain the lead in the nuclear Cold War and entry into the rocket age.  Should he have been executed or jailed for life for helping to invent the Godzilla of all weapons of mass destruction?  I can not answer that question; he is my father and even if I never could have loved him, I did respect him.

Is the justice we are looking at today really just revenge under the guise of political correctness?

Y'all gotta wonder.....

Just My Life

A significant part of my young life was lived in 1960's Germany.  A Germany where terrorism was well known.  A Germany where every teenager was a suspect and controlled accordingly.

To leave my village of Miesau requited a permit from the chief of the police.  My sister and I would often ride for miles on the country roads on our bicycles.  But, the day before we had to get a permit from the police stating the route and towns expected to be visited.

With pass in hand, I had to stop at the next village upon arrival and have the police mark in the time on the pass.  Yeah it was a pain.  However, I could sort of understand this because someone was bombing public gatherings and places where US GI's would gather.  I always figured this had to have been the work of the Baader-Meinhof gang, but it seems none of what happened around the Pfalz was to be attributed to them before 1971.  Makes one wonder who did do the bombings!  Luckily, I managed only one of those, when someone set off a bomb at the Kaiserslautern Saturday market.

But even in traveling through Europe, I was stuck numerous times in full blown anti-American riots in France.  No, I was German but that was good enough for the French to equate me to the Americans.  On one trip, two of my friends were dragged off the bus and butchered, with machetes, on a northern France castle tour.  And people wonder why I am not too excited to ever return to France.

But, in 19969, I found the US to not be much better.  The KKK was having a grand time in South Carolina.  I was unfortunately bused about forty miles to a black high school and on any given week, there would be at least one day in which our bus would be stopped, flipped over and set on fire.  Eventually, someone on Shaw Air Force Base would see the smoke and call for the fire engines ... and eventually a replacement bus.  Yes, it was frustrating if you had studied for the tests that day or had done your homework.  And then there were the bombings at the high school, both fake and real.

The world was a very hazardous place in which to live through my eyes.

When we moved to the mid-west, I hoped for something normal.  But, that was not to be.  My first weekend in my new town and someone stole a gas truck, dumped 5,000 gallons of high test fuel into the sewers and attempted to blow up the Fourth of July parade later that day.  They launched all of the sewer covers off of of the street for about a mile, but that was all.  (It was actually sort of funny, to be born so stupid....)

The governor declared a 9 pm curfew on all youth under 18 years old.  Sigh.  So terribly unfair, to just blame high schoolers when I am certain it was the college students whom did this one.   Yes, I and my friends were high on the lists of "offenders"!  Us troubled youth, you know, sentenced constantly to pick up trash for our offenses to mankind, but staying out too late at the Shakey's Pizza Parlor.

And I gave up on mankind.

Aircraft hijackings, car bombings, blowing up power transmission towers, acts of terrorism almost everywhere I have lived.  Of course the 1980's were nothing to write home about where I lived!  And I have thought on this.

Is violence the last resort of those whom have no longer a voice in society?
Is it a question of mental health?
Perhaps a certain class of drugs being used?
Out of control government /  politicians?
Or is it the loss of a sense of value for human life?
Is a blood lust just normal?

I think all of them are probably answers. to my question.


Today, as I write this, I have John Lennon's words cycling through my mind, "Just give peace a chance...".  Yes, naive perhaps, not going to happen, etc.  All the same statements from the 1960's echoing through my mind.

And yet ...