Barbara's Away Game
4/28/2012
I am gone…
Bees
International Geograffities
Bees! They make honey for us, they pollinate our flowers and fruit trees and anyway they are the prime example for social insects. They communicate, they have a queen, working division of labor and we can find intelligence we actually don’t expect at life forms of this development stage.
It’s no question that they are very useful for us humans and this is the basic difference between them and other insects, which are similar structured. I mean ants, wasps and termites. They also are useful in a special way. They serve for us indirectly, because they clean our environment. They count to the garbage removal system of Mother Nature. But sometimes they collect things we have still in use, like food in the kitchen, on the garden table or the picnic rug, also termites sometimes try to clean up entire wood walls, stairs and balustrades although we are still using them.
The unquestioned utility of the honeybee and its sophisticated inner specific communication make it so amiable.
In my university time I had sometimes to do with them. The high point was a three weeks field practice about the behavior of the honeybee in relation to different environmental factors. I don’t want to go in details, only: it was great!
Few weeks ago I had big luck to watch a huge swarm of bees, which was obviously looking for a new home. I ever wished to see someday such a collected swarm of bees hanging in a tree. It hung three days until it disappeared.
This is the beginning of the new series in Barbara’s Away Game: International Geograffities, short views in our beautiful environment.
5/11/2012
I am gone…
Rattlesnakes
International Geograffities
Did I ever mention that living here in the hills is almost like living in paradise?
Almost!
It’s so calm; you only hear the voice of the birds and the noise of the leaves when the wind blows from the south. Well, between 10am and 5pm there is the sound of the water pump from the pool, but you can forget, it has a good reason.
Paradise! Half exotic birds, no fight, harmony between man and nature. So far the theory.
Ticks and poison oak remind me that we don’t live in paradise, they are evil. Humans’ revenge; dumping entire old cars, matrasses, wood and everything you can imagine, because it’s free in paradise. Ticks and poison oak don’t care, other inhabitants do. What a pity!
That’s not enough. They plan houses and a water pipe system and since a year they are from time to time surveyors, looking, surveying and writing funny colored signs on trails, trees and bushes. Last week there was a digger with his friends, digging in the middle of nowhere and I thought, they would start the construction work. They didn’t. Next day the digger was gone, just a couple of cleared spaces in the wilderness left. I wondered, but ok, it’s not the first time, I was wondered in America.
The digger helped taking soil samples. Slowly the hill is moving downwards. The street, they’ve built, is already damaged and they try to avoid, that the same things happen to the water pipe system and the houses they had planned.
Why do I know this? Digger’s friends, the surveyors, told me.
I talked with two outstanding nice men, one of them on top of that pretty handsome. (If my story became a movie, he would be nominated for the Oscar: best manly minor part)
We didn’t talk out of the here common delight to chatter or my curiosity. It was this friendly note hanging on my door as I came home on Thursday, that we started a conversation.
Rattlesnakes, oh my gosh!
I was slightly excited, the surveyors as well. They heard that I was back, came to my gate telling me that they did their work at our property and they saw a huge rattlesnake under our deck. It was a 6 feet snake, thick as the circle you can describe with two thumbs and two index fingers.
One of the men stepped on it and it crawled in a whole in the concrete edge under our pool. I asked them if they could show me the place that I can avoid going there. They did.
In these wholes the snake has obviously its burrow. Last year I heard once loud rattling of a snake. Now I know it was the sound of a huge one. I think the snake lives here longer than we. And maybe it tells its relatives: „Ssss, 5 humans live over me on the deck, 4 are really huge!“
Of course we were excited and sure I googled everything about rattlesnakes. I found these useful hints, which I recommended my sons to read. Better you are prepared.
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/snake.html
Actually I assume that the surveyors just rousted the snake and there won’t be any change. It’s not more dangerous than before. The snake hasn’t any interest in us. Maybe there will be a change when the construction work begins and the snake, maybe there are more than one, will be homeless and scared.
Here could be the end of the story but it isn’t, because the coincidence has upped the ante.
In the evening Moritz and Samuel brought the trash carts downhill to the road and became witnesses of a natural spectacle I already heard about, but I never thought I would see something like that. Well I didn’t but Samuel. He videotaped it with his pretty smart phone.
A female turkey is fighting against a rattlesnake. (Presumable it is not our rattlesnake, because it was only a 2 feet rattlesnake)
International Geograffities, Rattlesnake vs Turkey
Next morning I met John, my neighbor. He talked before with Samuel. His eyes shone bright and he said: “Some people are waiting their whole live to see something like that!” I know what he means. He saw the last rattlesnake 20 years ago and it was a tiny one. This sign in his yard just should keep uninvited guests out.
Next morning the snake lay in a pool of blood. So sad! I think finally it was hit by a car.
I’m happy to have such neighbors. A friendly neighbor to talk with whenever we meet, and a dangerous neighbor that reminds me; I live almost in Paradise. Be careful with the snakes!
5/22/2012
I am gone…
Church
In Germany we have a saying: You have to celebrate the feasts as they come, so do my columns.
America and the church...better churches; that’s an entire theme by itself, actually I wanted already to write about it. It’s so wide that I could make an own series of it, if I would deal with it, but though I don’t.
Episcopalism, Unitarians, Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists, Corpus Christi, Seventh Day Adventist Church, Presbyterians, Methodists, Venture Christian Church, Calvary Church, First Church of Christ Science, just to mention a couple which I pass everyday in my neighborhood.
I only have Churches of San Francisco in my archive
Hallelujah!
As a reader of John Irving I had already an introducing in the confusion of the American Church. I am a daughter of a mother, who worked and lived in the German Protestant Church, so she was professional-Christian, who dealt in Great Britain with the Anglican Church and every year at the “World Prayers Day of Women” also with a lot of other religions. After her retirement she converted to the Roman Catholic Church. So I am not totally inexperienced in denominations and their differences, but I feel not wise enough to write a column about Americas Churches.
Sure I could mock. You can find here so excesses that it would be easy to make fun of it.
I could be critical, because you can find here odd directions, which are really dubious: moral too high, message ancient and too much influence above the modern life. Criticism is adequate where people preach that there never has been the evolution and the world has been built in seven days.
There are preaching radio- and television stations, itinerant preachers and for sure people who proclaim messages more than questionable.
Also I could mention that there is competition due to the huge number of religious orientations, free enterprise all-inclusive! Churches do advertising. They have slogans. Every pot can find its lid. For example there is the “Divorce Relationship Recovery“ of the Calvary Church. They offer emotional help for divorced. A delicate theme in some churches, here no taboo but service, a gap in the market of churches. Also they offer on websites that you can listen to missed messages online, so you don’t have to go to church anymore.
I remember with joy at the luminous advertising last year for the Christmas services. It looked like the here common savings announcements. (Attend two worship services get the third one free or something like that, just kidding they are always free.)
I don’t want to mock I want to understand.
Here are so many different churches and when you pass them on Sunday you can see parking lots as full as they are in Germany just on Christmas Eve.
Competition is good for business; that’s true even for denominations. A lot of them count in Germany as sect. For us Germans it’s not easy to get through it.
My mother told me as we left, if I’m looking for a parish I shall search for Lutherans. It would be almost the same like the Protestant Church in Germany. She said: “Look for a Lutherans parish if you search one!” But I didn’t!
Celebrate the feasts as they come!
On Sunday we were invited on the confirmation of Jonathan’s classmates. Amelie and Hannah had two years confirmation class in a Lutheran Church and they were confirmed on Sunday. It was a really nice worship service; good mix of formal and casual. The biggest difference to protestant services in Germany was just the language. A small choir with band made the music, nothing unusual in Germany either. The service structure, the ceremonies and even the coffee together after it were almost the same like I know from many confirmations I joined in Germany. You always have local differences.
I was almost disappointed about all the parallels. No colored robes for the gospel singers, no praying moral preacher, and no illuminated parishioner singing about the befallen grace. (Maybe I watch too much movies)
I feel confident that I would find such a church if I would search for it, but I won’t.
My mother was right: I experienced in the Lutherans Church an absolute usual protestant worship service. Sure I’m not disappointed, I’m happy about the normality: totally normal church in a totally normal country with totally normal people...
The feast after was also nice. Friends were invited because the relatives of the Confirmands remained due to the big distance in Germany. We ate sushi, ice cake and cheesecake and the weather was awesome.
Oh Happy Day...Confirmation Sunday in the Immanuel Lutheran Church Los Altos. Congratulation to the Confirmands!
Thank you for the invitation!
5/25/2012
I am gone…
Last Day of School
Today was the last day of school for Samuel und Moritz. Next week is off so they can prepare themselves for the oral exams in two weeks. Friday the 8th of June we will celebrate graduation.
Usually I don’t write about my kids, they don’t like it and actually I take care.
But you have to celebrate the feasts as they come and last day of school is not only a great day in the life of our kids.
School is over. Samuel didn’t come home. He stayed with friends to celebrate this evening on any electro-music event. As Moritz came home he got the daily question for the last time in his life: “How was it in school?“ ...and I got the final answer: “Pfffftttt! As usual!“ He still added: “I feel no difference!”
Not yet!
It’s over! I am convinced that with the last day of school there will be a lot of changes, just the same as with the first day.
Samuel (first day of school in 1997)
Moritz (first day of school in 2000)
First day of school, actually a really great day in the life of a child but full of consequences. It isn’t able to foresee when it unpacks its school cone. (School cone/ Schultüte is a German tradition. First graders get a school cone with treats and gifts on their first day of school)
With receiving the school cone it’s over with kinder garden child’s freedom. The teachers tried to build the bridge between free play and annoying duty carefully and slowly. However my sons detected it from the beginning.
Both, Samuel as well as Moritz, never liked working for school. Samuel always had better stuff to do and he never was interested in school things. Moritz was interested but he always wanted to have the competence without doing something for it. Neither the one nor the other is ideally!
There were times we paid a lot of power. I remember at elementary school, at tears due to minus signs, at stupid -divided by-s, at the spontaneous change from the anarchistic spelling in 1st grade to the ridiculous dictatorial spelling rules, which made the life of the boys hard, at the beginning of middle school, crisis due to vocabularies, which had to be learned, pink slips and their consequences, a bungled summer cause of a re-exam and again and again conflicts due to school achievements or better existence-threatening non-achievements.
It became better. On the one hand the way of learning changed in higher grades, on the other the subjects and last but not least there is a change in the maturity of the student. Someday at the end of puberty or at the latest with the beginning of adult age the friskiest and most distracted guy will be ready for school!
I don’t have to mention that there is a difference between my sons how they dealt with school. Both have cost energy, the one more, the other less, the one longer, the other shorter.
The revenge of a mother to her sons? No! There is no reason for revenge! I just try to be honest and to release my joy and relief that it’s finally over.
I already stopped intervening long time ago. Nevertheless I tell them from time to time that there will be something like exams, that they maybe should put their noses into books or prepare themselves somehow. I do this more out of old habits than in belief that anybody here will listen to me.
Well, then there is still the maternal care that something eventually won’t happen, as the student does imagine.
Mom, everything will be fine!
Hopefully! And if...anyway, it would be too late!
I wish them luck and I hope that they know to handle the freedom they gave up with receiving the school cone and they now got back. Be responsible!
Pirates! It’s gonnA BI legendary!
This was the slogan of the class of 2012 at the German International School of Silicon Valley. ABI is the short cut for Abitur, the German high school graduation. A bilingual play of words.
Pirates? Freebooter! Your capture is freedom, knowledge and independence. Don’t bury your treasure on a lonely island! Use it and conquer the world with it.
Picture: Pirates and their teachers! Thank GISSV (Source: Website of the German International School of Silicon Valley, there you can also read a short article and watch some more pictures)
Finally I will celebrate like a Caribbean Queen that you guys leave the school.
5/29/2012
I am gone…
Breaking News
I’ve already mentioned it; I have two news-apps for my pretty smart phone. If anywhere in the world happens something more or less important, I get informed by the Tagesschau (German broadcast) via short message. I don’t receive text messages from the ABC7 News-app but I click periodically, so I miss nothing. Breaking news appear on the top and with a red headline so you can easily detect them as priority message.
That’s not necessary, the entire pretty smart phone is not necessary, but I don’t want to live without it any longer. It’s like running water in the house. We are so inured with it, that we take it as a matter of course.
This week it happened again, we were without running water. The water valve of the garden hose was not entirely closed. So the water run the whole night out of the cisterns until they were empty because the source is dry due to the rainless winter. Next morning the houses on the top of the hill were without water. No shower, no toilet flushing, I was not able to do the laundry, not even the hands could be washed. Therefor I used the arrowhead can with the drinking water. The tank truck came four times to fill the cisterns. It’s us who get the bill.
While I was waiting for the water, I blew off my steam in Facebook. My own breaking news as online-sigh! Inspired by Facebook, Tagesschau and ABC7 News I thought: I can do this too... on my own website!
Here we go: Breaking News in Barbara’s Away Game, topical, briefly worded and in English. You find it on the sidebar with the date of the latest news.
Little events which remain unmentioned and never will find in a column, or great events which still didn’t find in a column due to lack of time, will be worked up here always topical and sensational. Little information will be exaggerated with few words until it reaches disaster level.
I add the current weather too, because if there is anytime nothing to write about; the weather is always something noteworthy.
Short cuts, daily information, few words, pictures and movies will be published there without epic broadness but maybe sometimes with poetry.
6/19/2012
I am gone…
Columnist’s Note: I need to apologize to my American readers. I wrote two German columns, the third one is in my head and I didn’t translate them yet. My father was here and I had actually no time to write. Sometimes I have to write otherwise I would explode...but writing and translating are complete different things. When I write I relieve my soul, when I translate I have to work. It happened a lot and the next visitors are coming in two days, so I have absolutely no time for translation. But I want to share with you, especially with the American readers, so it will be not a translation of the columns it will be just a short embrace, written down directly in English. If you are interested how things are going here in the next weeks, you are welcome to look in the BREAKING NEWS (sidebar). They are written in English for you guys! Columns will be rare when I have guests.
Blüh im Glanze dieses Glückes...in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave
The most important thing that happened was the double graduation of my two big sons. They made the German Abitur and the American High School Graduation at the German International School of Silicon Valley. That is on the one hand big relief and on the other hand I’m absolutely proud. Two different kids, two different ways of taking school and two different futures we look forward to.
The graduation ceremony was for sure different to any Abitur Ceremony in Germany and also different to any High School Graduation Party, because there were only 14 graduates (and this is the biggest count of graduates ever for this school). It took place in the German Consulate General in San Francisco. I save my words...just look at the pictures:
The celebration community gathers in front of the school
VIPs in front of the Limo to San Francisco
the folk took the school bus
German Consulate General from the outside...
...inside
from inside out...
the luster...
celebration community in the luster
Consul General handing out the diplomas...
the principal congratulates...
Graduates (from the left: Moritz, Johannes and Katrin)
I love this picture!
a happy double-graduation-family
Back to Mountain View the grads took also the bus.
Both National Anthems were sung. It was the first time in my life I sang both and listened to the lyrics: Blüh im Glanze dieses Glückes...in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave
(translation of Blüh im Glanze dieses Glückes: flourish is the blessing’s glory)
That’s it! Short and striking! It describes what I felt in the moment I looked my two sons in the matured faces while we sang.
I’m endless thankful that my sons had the opportunity to make this experience. Happy, curious, relieved, proud, emotional and pretty excited I’m looking forward in the future.
Summer Vacation
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