Get Up, Stand Up:

For Nobel Peace Prize recipient and democracy fighterAung San Suu Kyi who has been imprisoned in her house for the last 13 years in Burma (Myanmar).

She went on trial this week for supposedly violating her house arrest when an American loony tune swam two miles across a river to visit her. He claims God told him to protect her. . .The military "government" of Burma needed an excuse to prolong Suu Kyi's sentence anyway, which comes up for review this year. Help mound the pressure and leave a
message calling for the release of Suu Kyi.

For gay people in California, who no longer have the right to be legally married. When I recently researched miscegenation laws in America, I realized that marriage between a black and white couple was illegal in some southern states the year before I was born! I do believe that our children will shudder when they one day read about this blatant denial of civil rights, the same way I did when I read about miscegenation laws in America.

And, big question, how is it constitutional to say the 18,000 gay couples who were married before Proposition 8 have the legal right to stay married and gay couples after Prop 8 can not? Really? This point vaguely reminds me of the Eastern German government right before The Berlin Wall came down. They knew they were swiftly losing control and announced they would start issuing passes for Eastern Berliners to visit the West. They tried to give in just a little. But once the flood of Eastern Berliners rushed to the gates, there was no way to hold them back and they literally pushed their way to freedom.

Those 18,000 intact gay couples represent to me a crack in the wall, an uncertainty that history will show as an opening for all gay couples to be legally married in California and other American states.

For all the political prisoners around the world who are held illegally, without due process of law and subjected to torture. If you don't know what water boarding is, this very brief (WARNING, disturbing around the minute mark )video from Amnesty International gives a glimpse of just how inhumane a practice this is.


Peace.


Photo: Laura Hartrich

German Dreams about Obama

This week, Die Zeit ran a piece called,"I am A Dream", about ordinary Germans and their dreams about Obama. The dreams are described in detail and are then analyzed by a dream researcher who decodes the dreamers' fears, insecurities, and even hopes.

In one dream, Obama calls a man, saying he needs a cultural interpreter of sorts, to understand the Germans. Obama offers the man the job.

In another, a young woman and her friend wonder how they will ever make money. Suddenly they realize they have totally forgotten about the $300,000 checks in their jeans pockets, given to them by Michelle Obama. Oh yeah. . .

In another, an editor dreams that Obama visits her editorial department but only wants to speak to the young journalists. The editor doesn't get a word in and Obama gives her only so much as a nod.

How bizarre and wonderful that Obama has crawled into these people's subconscious minds. I thought it was only Americans who dreamt that the Obama's would start handing out checks! I kid.

Seriously, though,these dreams signify to me how Obama still represents far much more than a head of state. He is on and in people's minds, present in ways they don't even understand themselves.

Photo: BarackObama.com

Three Chinese and a Bass

This childhood favorite, Drei Chinesen mit dem Kontrabass, can be found in every book of German nursery rhymes and German music CDs. We even sang it in my kids' music class a few years ago.

At first I thought, ok, no big deal, three Chinese with a bass. But as the song went on, a red flag went up in my head. The text is repeated with different sounding vowels in German: ae, oe, ue which then make the song sound tonal and silly. It's also why kids like to sing it.

When I mentioned how the song could be offensive, though, every German told me I was, again, making something out of nothing.

But when I had lunch with two Asian women recently (one Chinese, the other Taiwanese) they told me how much they loathe that song. They don't allow their kids to sing it. They feel like the song disrespects the Chinese language.

I'm trying to remember how long it took for Americans (especially in the South) to stop saying "Eeny meeny miny moe, catch a nigger by his toe" or "Indian giver"?

I wish there was a way to bring things like this up with German school teachers. Any German readers know if teachers here have cultural sensitivity training as part of their university education curriculum? (and not just pertaining to Turks)?

I don't think Germans are purposely being offensive. But I wonder if a German kindergarten teacher heard my Asian friends explain why they feel offended, if the teacher would then continue to sing it?


Photo: flickr

"Boys in White Dresses"

Today a school principal in Utah was asked to apologize after he forced a boy pupil wearing a kilt to change clothes. The principal accused the boy of, gasp, cross-dressing.

After some prodding from the school board, the principal came around and apologized for denying the boy the freedom to express his Scottish roots.

Hello, isn't there something else missing here? Like, I don't know, the principal might have been preventing the boy from expressing himself, period?

Is it wrong to allow a 14 year-old boy to cross dress? That's what was going through my mind as I heard the story on NPR today, on my way to pick up my three sons.

The boy was said to be preparing an art project. Was the project about cross-dressing? Transgender issues? Maybe not at 14. But the ultimate question for me is this: If we have subjects like art, in which we encourage children to express themselves, how can we then tell a boy it is wrong to wear a skirt/kilt if that's how he chooses to express himself?

I'm sure most 14 year-old boys would think twice about wearing "girls" clothing to public school. There is a huge risk of being bullied, ostracized and teased. So the boy's decision (if he wasn't only expressing himself as a Scottish descendant) was deliberate, and if you ask me, pretty brave.

I wonder if the school board in Utah would have asked the principal to apologize if the boy's kilt had simply been a skirt?

Photo: flickr

One Love

There are plenty of things I could complain about on this beautiful, bright Sunday afternoon, but it would require turning my head away from the sun. Life is too short. . .

Wishing you all a peaceful day.

One Love.

KEEP THAT S---T TO YOUR SELF!

I have criticized the Germans on several occasions for their directness and their lack of attention (or interest) to PC language, which can be shocking to those of us from more subtle Anglo backgrounds. In America, I have argued, we still stand by politeness, service with a smile and, perhaps, a touch of indirectness if we think the full truth can be offensive. Most of us in America, I once thought, grew up hearing, "If you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything at all."

Well, it appears that those days are over. Although curse words can be bleeped over in a television or radio program, there has been a revival of rude, crass, shameful public behavior in America recently that is more complicated than simple cussin'. Listen here to radio host Andrew Wilkow call gay blogger Perez Hilton a "vile sodomite" and asked, " What do gays constitute? They could announce the cure for AIDS on Logo and nobody would know for two weeks." He also called lesbian MSNBC journalist Rachel Maddow a "little boy". Geez, hate much?

And what was up with Republican Kim Hendren referring to Democrat Chuck Shumer as "that Jew"?

Come on, public figures, you are not simply leaving a comment on a blog. There are real consequences for bad behavior like this. For the apologies that come a day later, whatever, the bile is out there once you opened your pie holes. Stop using your freedom of speech to spread hate. . .it could get you banned from a country. . .


Photo: flickr

When Nazis Grow Old

John Demjanjuk is 89 years-old and can barely breathe on his own. He can't walk and is confined to a wheelchair. His family in Cleveland, Ohio argued that he was unfit to stand trial for the crimes he allegedly committed as a Nazi death camp guard over sixty years ago during World War II. They didn't come out and say it, but it was clear that they were asking for some mercy. Demjanjuk, his family claims, is a sick old man.

Theresa Mohr, who my German family remembers as Oma (Grandma) Resi, was 70 years old, diabetic, and terribly frail when she was sent to a supposed spa for elderly people like herself, in 1942. She was promised round the clock medical care, nutritious meals and a lovely environment for the hefty fee her family was charged for the accommodations.

But Oma Resi, my husband's great grandmother, was Jewish and the luxurious elderly retirement community was actually a concentration camp called Theresienstadt (in the now Czech Republic), where at least 35,000 other elderly Jewish people were killed between 1941 and 1945.

Already ill from her diabetes and barely fed in the camp, Oma Resi didn't last long. She starved to death in Theresienstadt less than six months after she had been deported.

When I was told this story, I wasn't sure which was crueler? That the Nazis deported a weak old woman, not in much better condition than John Demjanjuk is in today? Or that they tricked her, told her that she would be taken care of, only for her to be treated worse than a dog, to die suffering, far away from her home and family?

There is no shortage of evidence that shows just how merciless The Nazis were. They were equally cruel to the elderly, sick, severely disabled and even children. John Demjanjuk is accused of helping kill 29,000 people in Sobibor, a death camp in Poland.

Demjanjuk already escaped conviction and a death sentence in Israel in 1988 based on reasonable doubt that he was an especially vicious guard known as "Ivan the Terrible." There was another call for his deportation in 2005 but he got off on the technical problem of no country accepting him. Then, last month, he was allowed to stay in Cleveland when an American judge put a stop to his deportation to Germany based on Demjanjuk's poor health. This final stay of deportation sparked a controversy that questioned just how old is too old to be held accountable for past crimes?

Part of me wondered what the point of trying Demjanjuk was if he couldn't even mentally understand the charges being brought against him? But then I thought back to Oma Resi, who was deceived about her cruel fate yet still forced to confront it.

Demjanjuk was finally deported and arrived in Munich yesterday. It's unclear if he'll first be sent to a jail or to a hospital. If Demjanjuk is mentally too far gone to remember his crimes, then he has already been spared. If he is convicted and meant to spend his final days in a heated jail in Munich with regular meals and visits from his family, then he could, unlike Resi, consider himself pretty lucky.



Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Importance of Humor

As much as multiculturalism (or any other coming together of difference) is celebrated, let's be frank, it's hard; a long-ass process rife with potential misunderstandings. Sometimes I understand why two people who grew up in the same little village end up getting married and having kids and live five blocks from their parents' homes. The familiarity must be comforting and grounding. That is not for me, but I can respect and understand it.

But for those of us who ended up in places we never expected to be, the only way to feel at home, I have found, is to find a way to laugh. Not everything is funny, at first, and not every experience makes me want to chuckle. But humor doesn't deny my right to feel slighted. In fact, humor works best when it rings true, when it resonates to the core.





I was tickled by Barack Obama's approach to humor this past weekend at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Not all of his jokes were funny (the best are in the first five minutes) but he kept it going for a while, making jabs on both sides of the political aisle. He even made a little fun of himself.

It is no wonder that a recent study cited by The Telegraph found funny men to be luckier with attracting women. Humor is very attractive and, if the humor doesn't get lost in translation, it is often a huge release.


(If you missed Wanda Sykes on that same evening, check her out here on The Huffington Post . Nothing short of hilarious.

A Mother's Day Duh Moment

I know it sounds trite, but I didn't really appreciate my mother until I became one myself. It isn't just that the job is hard and that I shudder when I consider what I must have put my mother through. What really went through my head this morning when I thought of my mother, a serious duh moment, was this:

I can't remember life without my mother but she can remember a life without me! She had a life before me.

Sorry for stating the obvious, but how often do we really think of our mothers pre-dating our own existence?

I notice this sense of shock in my own children when they look at a photo of just me and ask, "Where am I?" Even later in life when we see old pictures of our mothers, I think it is hard for many of us to fathom our mothers as single women, flirty girls, lovers, sisters: adults with a life that has nothing to do with diapers or breast milk, homework or college applications.

So Happy Mother's Day to all the women who decided to become mothers. It's the toughest job in the world but ultimately, always, the most rewarding when we consider our lives before we were hired.


Photo: flickr

Forget About the Birds and the Bees. . .

What do you do when your five year-old son asks, "Why is that woman standing in the street with only her underwear on?"

On a sunny afternoon, on our way to the zoo, we spotted a prostitute and she was pointing her well-endowed backside, barely covered by lace panties, toward our car. It was the thigh-high boots that caught his little brother's attention: "She has galoshes on. . . but it's not raining?"

On the next block, with the light inconveniently red, we saw another prostitute with a very tight fitting corset on and a forlorn look on her face. My older son looked at her, looked at the John approaching her and sat in that confused silence known to small children and puppies.

Sex is everywhere in Berlin. Not far from where we live, there is a sex shop with pictures of topless women wrapped around the building, directly across the street from a large drug store. When I'm with the kids, I tend to avoid that store.

A German acquaintance of mine said, "It's better than pictures of guns. Violence is everywhere in the US."

As I've mentioned in another post about gun violence, Germans associate guns with everything sinful but sex, well, not so much. It is a stark difference between the two cultures in which I've lived the longest and it presents an interesting problem for me now, as a mother.

I am certainly opposed to guns and I don't allow my children to play with toy guns. But I also don't want my three sons getting used to seeing women's bodies always for sale. Prostitution is legal in Germany, which I intellectually agree with, but I wish it didn't have to be so visible to young people who don't know what prostitution is.

Those prostitutes were standing a block away from a daycare center and a church in a relatively poor neighborhood. We were in a car and could drive away but what does a mother who has to stroll her child by that everyday say to her kid, I wonder?

Bees pollinating flowers is one thing, but this is a whole other challenge.

"Maybe she's hot," I said, knowing it was a lame answer.


Photo: flickr

Neger Kuss: Part II

So I'm at a birthday party with the twins and I hear a white, German mother with a half black, half African son offer him a Negerkuss.

"Did you just ask your son if he wanted a Negerkuss?" I asked her, incredulous.

"Yeah, it's an old habit," she said. "It doesn't mean anything. People are overly sensitive."

"Your son may not think that one day," I said. It probably wasn't my business, but I made it my business anyway.

Clearly annoyed, she went on to tell me about people being able to get past "overly sensitive" race hang-ups.

"I come from a conservative, Catholic family in Bavaria and it was a big deal for me to date a black man." I was interested to see where this might go.

"At first my father didn't want to meet him. But when he realized that he would lose me if he didn't accept the man I love, my father eventually came around. And do you know what he called my husband the first time he met him? The burnt one."

The burnt one. I let that slosh around in my head for a while.

"And what did your husband say?" I finally asked.

"He made a joke out of it. When he calls my father on the phone, he says, It's me the burnt one. They're pals now."

What the friggity frack? It's like when Archie Bunker called his daughter Gloria's husband Meathead. Archie Bunker wasn't only joking, he really hated Meathead and found his own Archie Bunker way of dealing with his son-in-law. I wouldn't exactly say he accepted him. The burnt one almost sounds like something Archie Bunker might say. . .

I use the term Bush Girl in a facetious way, obviously, based on an encounter I had once with a German man. Can't give that away here, I'm afraid, you´ll have to wait for the book.

But if my German father-in-law started calling me the burnt one, I'd probably cut ties right quick.

When does the joke stop/start? How much can one re-appropriate and in what context without becoming a clown?

Photo: flickr

A Boy and His Beer

You know the cliche about Germans and beer? Well, it's absolutely true. They don't just love beer here, they also take their beer very seriously and have a pledge of purity that every brand of beer has to uphold. What I've always wondered, though, is how they seem not to get plastered on hot days like these when they drink beer to quench their thirst, the way I might drink a soda?

A recent conversation between father and son gave me a clue:

"Papa," son asks husband, "Have you ever been in the hospital?"

"Yes, once when I was 16, to have my tonsils taken out."

CUTTING OUT THE 46 WHYS? FROM SON TO KEEP STORY MOVING

"What did you eat in the hospital?"

"Well, I had lots of ice cream. And with my dinner the nurse brought me a nice cold beer."

"What?" I ask. "In the hospital? At 16, they brought you a beer?"

"What?" husband says, "I was sixteen."

"I don't understand why beer is being served in a HOSPITAL? Hello?"

See husband give wife one of those What is your problem? looks.

Son smiles. "Can I have beer if my tonsils are taken out?"

"No," I answer.

"First when you're sixteen," my husband says, "then you and I can have a beer together."

See mother shake head in amazement.


Photo: flickr