Bad News

I follow the news and I don’t like it. The next years don’t at all look good. Then I ask, “Does it matter for me?” And conclude that it probably does not for me and most of my family, who are in positions not likely—but not surely—to be affected by these goings-on. Except Mark who has the misfortune of living in the real world. I greatly hope he escapes from the effects of reality.   

Born and Living in Germany until the Age of Twelve: a Brief Account

    I am now reading Laurence Rees’s recent book, Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss. While much of the account is familiar from prior reading, there is also a good deal that is new to me, especially details—people, specific events. It’s a well-crafted book, even if the author reminds us more often than needed that such and such a whatever is a function of Hitler’s charisma. That doesn’t explain as much as Mr. Rees believes. But reading that book has reminded me of my own life in Germany and is now prompting me to set down, in brief, what I remember of those years.

   I was born in Heidelberg in 1927 and my guess is that relevant recollections of mine start when I was about six years old. While that was the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, I was of course not aware of that. I do remember my first-grade teacher, Fräulein Sonnenschein, whom I probably also had in second grade, if I’m right in recalling Herr Müller as my teacher in the third. During the earliest of these years I also played with kids in our neighborhood, though that recollection is very fuzzy.

   Then things changed very radically, in conformity with the anti-Jewish legislation of 1935, the so-called Nürnberg Laws. The neighborhood kids no longer played with us and all Jewish kids were kicked out from German public schools. At first that lead to a segregated Jewish class within a public school building. I reached it by bicycle since it was on the other side of the Neckar from our house in Neuenheim. But soon that stage followed by the establishment of a small Jewish school, housed in a building on the Bunsenstraße belonging to a Jewish organization the name of which I can’t conjure up. Our main teacher was Herr Durlacher who had lost his job as a Jewish public school teacher, but we also had a couple of Jewish teachers who had been dismissed from Gymnasium jobs and didn’t quite what to do with little kids like us.

   During those same years we had religious instruction from Lehrer Jacob and quite faithfully observed Jewish holidays. While that didn’t go so far as to prohibit us from turning lights on and off on the Sabbath, it required us to walk to services at the synagogue in the Old City across the river, since riding was forbidden on Shabbat and some holidays.

   This all ended on November 9, Kristallnacht. My father had been advised to stay out of the house in the hope that things would soon return to normal. But he decided to stay in our apartment. They came for him early in the evening; “they” being very polite officers of the Heidelberg police. Their advice was to take a warm coat, since he was headed for Dachau, the concentration camp, much colder because more elevated.                                                                  

   He got out in January, haggard, but not physically injured. We had been fortunate to have a low number for appearing at the American consulate in Stuttgart and that’s where we went to get our visa to the US. For me, age 11, the most remarkable fact was seeing someone writing with his left hand.

   Back in Heidelberg, the furnishings that were going to New York were being loaded into “Lifts” (forerunners of containers), with each item that left the house being checked off as being on the permitted to-go list as it was leaving the house.

   My 12^th birthday was recognized if not exactly celebrated before we left for the train that would take us out of Germany. When the Rheingold got to the Dutch border, the passengers were ordered to get out on the platform to be checked. A dignified older gentleman in our car spoke up, “Aber nicht die Leute mit Kinder!” (But [surely] not the people with children), so we had our papers checked in the car. After a while the train took off and we were in Holland, out of Germany. 

      

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The Effect of Trump

What’s Good About Trump

   In my view, Donald Trump is a vile person. I don’t know enough history to say that he is the worst president that has ever sat in the White House, but he is certainly at the very bottom—by far—of those who have held that office in my lifetime.

   If that is so, what’s so good? Not anything that he did or said. I remain puzzled about how Trump got elected. My grasp of the views and motives of my fellow citizens is insufficient for me to understand how they could vote for him. Had he run against another red-blooded American man he surely would not now sit in that White House. But there he is: I ask again, what’s good about that?  The answer: the reaction of the American public.

   To be sure, it helped a lot that Trump was made responsible for serious offenses to children. That my fellow citizens will not accept. So, it’s a mixed bag. That’s surely the best kind now available.

Who Trump Is

Trump’s Cruelty and the Crying Children of ICE Detainees

Donald Trump is not wrong or misguided (etc.); he is a vile person. Face it, we have a vile person as president.  I applaud when, as now, his behavior is offensive to a large number of Americans. The more that happens, the less he is looked upon as the president of the United States. The office will survive this decline; not, I hope, the current incumbent.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-cruelty-and-the-crying-children?mbid=nl_Daily%20061918&CNDID=40407924&spMailingID=13720689&spUserID=MTMzMTg0NzczMDY3S0&spJobID=1421733816&spReportId=MTQyMTczMzgxNgS2

Now Lincoln

   Herewith another brief report on my reading. I suspended my reading of Slezkine’s big Russian volume, as too detailed for the patience I could muster at this time and have now made a good start on a very different narrative, Dan Abrams’ Lincolns’ Last Trial. While Lincoln has been on the scene from the beginning, I have not yet reached the point where he moves to the center of the stage. The account from the start has been interesting. It’s about a murder and it’s made utterly clear as to who killed whom and why. So I much look forward to read of Lincoln’s role.

   The account is so interesting in good part because it is very detailed. Very. I have done no research on this event, but I do wonder how so amazingly much—and detailed—information was  actually passed on.

The Past Recedes

      It’s about six years that I’ve lived in Mexico, my third country of residence. To be sure, it’s very likely to be the shortest. Moreover, I am retired here and pretty removed from the hurly-burly of this capital city. My main people are my daughter, Ellie (whose main job is that of principal clarinet with the Sinfonica Nacional), Miguel, her husband (who is much in Queretaro where he is principal oboe in the orchestra) and their friends, quite a few of whom speak English. Max and Eva, the two grandchildren have been mostly away, with the former just graduated from RISD (and soon off for a job in the States); while Eva is very busy in her second year in the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. I see Max and Eva when they are home on vacation. Finally, there is Antonia, the young and very competent household assistant (for want of a better word) with whom I do not share a language.

   Now you know the people I’m with on a day to day basis, a most harmonious group. I’ve never been much of a phone person, so I add little traffic to that contraption. The main and only regular phone partner is my son Mark in Los Angeles.

   You have just gotten a picture of the people who make up my world, appropriately reduced commensurate to my age. What happens when I make an attempt to broaden this circle of contacts with acquaintances? Basically nothing: nada, niente, rien, garnichts.

   Granted my attempts were neither inventive nor vigorous. Emails sent off to past acquaintances were mostly not answered, though there were exceptions. I blame no one, since I have hardly been Mister Gregarious in my life  and now harvest what I have sown. I can’t say that if I could roll it over again, I’d want to change much of anything. Not having regrets about the past is a better sleeping potion than any drug.

Flops?

  I’ve never been good at abbreviations, puzzled when everybody else got it. Clearly MY problem, whatever its undiagnosed cause. But lately I’ve come across quite a few cases where expecting the general reader to get it is something of a stretch. Writers in the world of journalism have come to count on an “in” audience of which I am not a member.  I may be in a minority, but I am far from alone. Look at an example.

“Although impressive, Summit can be seen as a placeholder. Supercomputers that are five times faster — 1,000 petaflops, or an exaflop — are in the works, both abroad and in the United States.”

   Are we supposed to know what those “flops” are? From where? In the past, the world caught up with the experts. No doubt it will again; but it hasn’t yet.

Conducting

I just finished reading Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting by John Mauceri. Even though the author has had a long, varied, and distinguished career as a conductor and actor in the world of music, I must confess that I had never heard of him. My loss, no doubt, especially if his music-making is as competent as his writing. If you are interested in conducting, are coversant with “classical” music, though, like me, not an expert, this is a good book to pick up; a Kindel version is available from Amazon.