On manners

Ná cuir do chorran angort gan iarraidh.

Do not bring your reaping-hook to a field
without being asked.

Life, laughter and the unexpected

This morning Miss J. and the astrophysicist returned from a trip to the Baltic Sea, bringing fresh warm rolls for breakfast, plus - not for breakfast, though - twelve sea-washed pebbles and two beautiful stones they had found at the beach and carried more than one kilometre to their tent. They will embellish our stone garden, and one is supposed to become my worry stone. :)


Well, collecting pebbles and stones was not really a reason for making this trip. The astrophysicist thought the partial eclipse might not be observable where we do live, but did not want to miss it. Right he was, as here we had clouds, clouds, clouds.


The breakfast? Oh yes, it was marvellous. And Mrs. J. decided that we'll have a trip to the Baltic Sea to watch the next eclipse - in 73 years.

We shall be 128 then, Miss J. and the astrophysicist 99 respectively 103. No doubt it will be great fun, the more as our mother will be accompanying us.


Well, unless something unexpected is going to happen, 'cause life, laughter and death not seldom are close-knit, as we got reminded by a tiny noise on balcony.

August beginning

:)
Variatio delectat. Instead of replying (to the first seven commenters) in the comment-section,
here's an update.

Prologue:
Do you sometimes have so many thoughts/posts in your mind that you just can't decide?
Well, I do. Often. Plus: Words (not only in English) often don't come easy to me. The proper words I mean. The words which are able to exactly tell what I mean.
All I 'knew' was the title of this month's first post: August beginning. - the adjective/the month and the beginning.
To cut it short: At last - in my despair - I decided to post one of those ten photos I'd take with me on the legendary island.
And never I'd thought, let alone intended it could incite quiz-like questions.
A lovely surprise. Thank you all.

Well, jmb, it was not winter when the photo was taken. It was middle of May. Minutes later it would rain cats and dogs. Not somewhere in Australia, Ardent; not 'edge Dartmoor', Crushed;
closest got Chris and Jams.
The photo was taken 1991, in the West of Ireland, Connemara, a couple of miles behind Leenane, driving in direction of Kylemore Abbey, on the left hand side.

Why would I have spontaneously stopped, jumped out of the car, climbed over a wall? Two thoughts: What a motif. And: 'Soon nobody will know you've existed. In my photo you will (at least for a while) live on.' :)

Yes, jmb, it's a dead tree. And - indeed - you'd not find it anymore. It remains existing ... in this photo.

Ha - the 'tartly' Sean; the one who'd call a bastard a bastard, a cretin a cretin, a criminal a criminal?
:)
Hm, that's why there's this very header - it's part of Omnium.

Epilogue:
Mostly I do trust on that my (constant/regalar) visitors* do feel 'it', but tonight I do feel the wish to write it 'black on white': It's good to have you.

* do I need say that I do not 'only' mean those who commented on this post? :)

PS:
Cherrypie, I did not know where to put you(r comment), as it was rather a statement than a question. Will you forgive me? :) - The photos you posted tonight, once again do incite my desire to visit the Lake district which is one of the (few?) 'spots' in England I did not 'happen to' visit up til now.

D'accord

Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

Counterstatement :)

First thrilling story:

[Tucker Bounds, a] spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain blasted Barack Obama for cancelling plans to visit wounded US soldiers while in Berlin, adding that the Democrat prioritized "throngs of fawning Germans."
Continue here.

Second thrilling:

A German politician has called on US presidential candidate John McCain to take back disparaging remarks made about Germans by his campaign after Barak Obama visited Berlin last week.
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff wrote that he, and the German public, was surprised and dismayed by the comments, according to the newspaper.

Full article here.

Well, being part of the German public I do herewith declare: Mr Lambsdorff does not speak for me. I am neither surprised, nor dismayed.

Mr. Bounds may have missed the bounds of diplomacy, a tiny bit. So what? A subaltern babbler is truthfully babbling what his would-be-president babbled. It's his job, isn't it?

Does anyone know how often this poor soul is being called a stupid mothertucker?
Human beings sometimes are cruel, and do not care about 'No jokes about names'.

It's interesting to see, however, that Mr. Bounds - and thus Mr McCain - some might say: the disabled doter who'd like to succeed the current criminal cretin - obviously would have prefered a demonstration of 'Anti-U.S.Aism'.

Very interesting, indeed. The German public should remember this, in case Mr. McCain once were to visit Germany.

Oh, did I say that Mr. Tucker Bounds did tell nothing but the truth? I watched the faces of Walter Steinmeier, Klaus Wowereit et. al.
Absolutely euphorized, one could say. Or, near an orgasm.
Mr. Bounds prefered other words.

Thus, to end with Robert Frost:
Go on talking,
but don't take
his style away.
It's his face,
may be no good,
but anyway - his face.


P.S.
Spake Tetrapilotomos: I'd not be surprised if once in Berlin Mr. Bounds would love collecting wet thongs of euphorized German (wo)men.

That's politics.

Verses on a cat

A cat in distress,
Nothing more, nor less;
Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye,
As I am a sinner,
It waits for some dinner
To stuff out its own little belly.

You would not easily guess
All the modes of distress
Which torture the tenants of earth;
And the various evils,
Which like so many devils,
Attend the poor souls from their birth.

Some a living require,
And others desire
An old fellow out of the way;
And which is the best
I leave to be guessed,
For I cannot pretend to say.

One wants society,
Another variety,
Others a tranquil life;
Some want food,
Others, as good,
Only want a wife.

But this poor little cat
Only wanted a rat,
To stuff out its own little maw;
And it were as good
SOME people had such food,
To make them HOLD THEIR JAW!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Whodunnit?

Praised be my laziness. It has its advantages. :) When Sunday I happened to read the first news of the bomb attack in Istanbul I intended to write a post but didn't as I was pretty sure that one of the many Turkish 'opinion-tellers' soon would get close to what I am thinking, and thus save me lots of time*.
And, voilà:

It did not take much time for Turkish officials, and even less time for the Turkish media, to put the blame of Sunday evening's deadly blasts on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, terrorist gang. The explosions in Istanbul killed at least 17 people -- five of them children -- and wounded scores of others. Although Istanbul Governor Muammer Güler stressed that investigations were ongoing, he also said the blasts appeared to have been the work of the PKK. It also did not take much for the PKK gang to issue a denial. The pro-PKK Kurdish news agency, Fırat, quoted Zübeyir Aydar, one of the senior chieftains of the gang, as saying that the PKK “has nothing to do with this event … this cannot be linked to the PKK.”

Irrespective of who might actually be behind the deadly Sunday evening attacks, I am confident that sooner or later one of those creative prosecutors – who have successfully demonstrated their rather superb skill in literature with the 2,455-page “Ergenekon indictment” masterpiece – will find a way of incorporating this tragedy among the heinous crimes they believe a cocktail of hardcore leftists, Maoists, Kemalists, patriots, nationalists, ultra-nationalists and fascists have committed with the aim and intention of disrupting public peace and order, creating conditions for a military takeover, or provoking a national outburst and thus getting rid of the elected government of the country.
Full article here.

* Saturday evening I had asked a friend in Turkey to translate a sequence in a Hurriyet article about the 'Ergenekon affair'. She did, after following introducing words which now do again let me chuckle:

You don't mean all 2455 pages but only this article hm? :)
Believe me these silly plays are not worth your giving time.

Well, at least sometimes ...

Is maith an sgathan súil charad.

The eye of a friend is a good looking-glass.

Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Pausch

Life.

Since it is not granted to us to live long,
let us transmit to posterity
some memorial that we have at least lived.
Plinius the Younger, Letters

Yesterday while we were celebrating the 84th birthday of my mother(-in-law), Professor Randy Pausch died.

There's much I could write; even wish to write, but why when (almost) everything can be put into six words?

Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Pausch.

More hype than substance

I wonder why so many people who live in fear of the pest would be delighted of the cholera.

Didn't they listen to Mr. Obama's speech(es)? Don't they care who are the self-styled (?) saviour's advisors?

Once, now and tomorrow

War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight,
The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade,
And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones
Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.

Krieg ist des Staatsmanns Spiel, des Priesters Lust,
Des Richters Scherz, das Handwerk des feilen Meuchlers,
Und für die gekrönten Mordbuben, deren Throne
Durch Verrat und Blut und Frevel jeder Art erkauft,
Ihr täglich Brot, die Stütze ihrer Macht.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab, Canto IV

Praise of taciturnity

Binn béal 'na chomhnuidhe.

The mouth that speaks not is sweet to hear.

:)

The peace of the night.

Habermas on a "post-secular' society

“Tolerance” is of course not only a question of enacting and applying laws; it must be practiced in everyday life. Tolerance means that believers of one faith and another and non-believers must mutually concede one another the right to those convictions, practices and ways of living that they themselves reject. This concession must be supported by a shared basis of mutual recognition from which repugnant dissonances can be overcome. The required kind of recognition must not be confused with an appreciation of an alien culture and way of living, or of rejected convictions and practices (n18). We need tolerance only vis-à-vis worldviews that we consider wrong and vis-à-vis habits that we do not like. Therefore, the basis of recognition is not the esteem for this or that property or achievement, but the awareness of the fact that the other one is a member of an inclusive community of citizens with equal rights, in which each is accountable to everybody else for her political contributions (n19).

Extract from an essay* presented by Jürgen Habermas at the Istanbul Seminars organized by Reset Dialogues on Civilizations in Istanbul from June 2nd to the 6th 2008.

* A "post-secular" society - what does that mean?



On a personal note:
I intended to offer my Turkish readers a link, so that they could read this essay in their language. To my surprise and regret I could not find one.

It would make sense if the organisators of a 'Dialogue on Civilisations' taking place in Istanbul made the effort to let translate such contributions into Turkish, wouldn't it?