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Whilst this afternoon sitting with Antonio Molina Muñoz, I enjoyed this view. |
Five and a half hours later I took a shot of today's lunar eclipse... |
Thirty-one minutes later, Ms Luna had reappeared from the Earth's shadow. |
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Whilst this afternoon sitting with Antonio Molina Muñoz, I enjoyed this view. |
Five and a half hours later I took a shot of today's lunar eclipse... |
Thirty-one minutes later, Ms Luna had reappeared from the Earth's shadow. |
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This afternoon, whilst sitting with Mercé Rodoreda and a cup of coffee on the balcony, when looking up, once again I felt privileged. |
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Quètxup d'espécies un dia després del 276è aniversar de Goethe. * Spiced ketchup one day after the 276th anniversary of Goethe. |
* [For first time visitors]:
Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.
I consider myself lucky. Victor Català's ‘Solitud’, published in German in 2007, has ‘found its way’ into my library – antiquarian, at a good price and remarkably well preserved. What a book!! |
Aloma (1938), La Placa del Diamant (1962), La meva Cristina i altres contes (1967) Mirall trencat (1974), Jardí vora el mar (1967), Quanta, quanta, guerra (1980) |
La meva Cristina i altres contes * My Christina & Other Stories |
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Fortune favours fools, or as a German saying goes, "Die dümmsten Bauern ernten die größten Kartoffeln." / "The dumbest farmers harvest the biggest potatoes". Once again I feel relieved. |
* [For first time visitors]:
Typo in the title?
Nah.
It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.
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Pawlowa or how to smuggle a donkey halfway around the world * Certainly neither the original title (‘The White Umbrella’) nor the writer (Brian Sewell) would have piqued my interest. Being sometimes a donkey myself, though, I could not resist the German title. ;-) For an enjoyable read ... |
Escric per viure.
O bé al revés, tal volta:
visc per escriure.
I write for living.
Or vice versa, this time:
I live for writing.
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Tonight, 30 or 40 swallows were hunting for their dinner. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never get more than four in one photo. |
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They are so incredibly fast. |
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Living room idyll designed by granddaughter |
* [For first time visitors]:
Typo in the title?
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Eilean Donan Castle ... around half past four in the morning, when the pub had closed its doors. * Memories of morning freshness on a very hot day 27 years later. ;-) |
Most two-legged neighbours don't like thistles in their gardens, unaware that they are in the minority ...
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... as the buzzing and humming inhabitants of Seanhenge prove. |
As in any well-organised household, everything preserved at Seanhenge is labelled and dated.
So I was all the more surprised when I recently opened a tin of homemade tomato puree to prepare a tomato sauce “à la Sean”:
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Instead of the usual date, I read: “The day before Goethe's 275th birthday”. Sometimes I even make myself smile. |
Granddaughter sitting in the courtyard, observing three swallow nests and looking around. Suddenly a small cry. ‘Grandpa, oh no! A little bird.’ – On my way to the garage, I return and glance into the drain: ‘Ah, no, it's but a leaf.’
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To cut a long story short: Granddaughter's eagle eyes were right. So I advised her to find a leaf. |
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Later I asked myself: Why would people do this? |
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He, f.e., kept a promise he had given to himself. |
For my Català-speaking friends and visitors.
To spare you lengthy passages in German, I have listed below when poems by Maragall can be heard, recited in Catalan by Jaume Villalba, in German by Àxel Sanjosé.
• 05:16 – 08:12
• 24:27 – 27:20
• 34:10 – 35:38
• 41:45 – 43:39
• 50:58 – 54:41
• 58:39 – 1:02:04
• 1:12:52 – 1:15:52
May you enjoy.
Joan Maragall (10 October 1860 – 20 December 1911)
"At 70 years old if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words 'Fuck off' much more frequently".
Helen Mirren * 26 July 1945
Happy birthday, ma'am!
* [For first time visitors]:
Typo in the title?Jews do not commit genocide.
A matter of principle.
In this they are similar to Germans,
Russians, US-Americans and other peace-loving folks.
Just a pious people.
* * *
Ha! No mention of 7 October?!
That of course authorises genocide.
While I was busy proofreading the 1669 pages of my opus magnum
‘Pre-Assyrian Philately in a Nutshell’, a gasp made me look up. My
friend Sean was standing in front of me, as white as a sheet, staring at
me with terror-filled eyes.
‘I need your help,’ he groaned. And
he told me that he had been looking round an antiques dealer when a man
in a white hat entered the shop. "The dealer seemed to know him, greeted
him and asked what Mr. mayor was doing here. The man answered that he
was attending to his secret business, turned round, our eyes met and
suddenly daggers flashed in his eyes. The next moment, he pulled his hat
down low over his face and disappeared."
photo: sa lluna |
photo: Xavier Puyol |
"I didn't want to scare him", he said. "I was just surprised to see him here because we have an appointment tonight at L'Estany de l'Illa."
"An enormous responsibility lies in the hands of political leaders today. [...] A mentally ill or power-obsessed dictator could then [...] doom the civilised world, but with it also his own country, to radiation death. [...] Such a possibility must never occur, and hence the need for truly international control over the development of nuclear weapons, or better: peaceful coexistence of all peoples. [...] Today, war is no longer 'the continuation of politics by other means'. In a bomb war there are no longer victors and vanquished."
Otto Hahn, 13 February 1955
Five months later, 15 July 1955, the Nobel Prize Laureate initiated the Mainau Declaration at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. Among the 52 signatories worldwide were the physicists Werner Heisenberg and Max Born, as well as 15 other German and international Nobel laureates.
Two further declarations followed in 2015 (on climate change) and 2024 (on nuclear weapons).
Mainau Declarations
Bertrand Russel on 9 July 1955:
I am bringing the warning pronounced by the signatories to the notice of all the powerful Governments of the world in the earnest hope that they may agree to allow their citizens to survive.
Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)
Albert Einstein ( 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955)
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Plenty to nibble on for the hoverflies in Seanhenge. |