"I've got it, yeah, baby, I've got it!"

 

Well, well, well... For days I was in a position that Yours Truly utterly hates: I was "Anonymous" - even on my own blog! 

"You only see those standing in the light/ Those standing in the dark you do not see"wrote our sociocritical poet Bertolt Brecht. 

Have you ever got the impression that I hate standing in the spotlight? Not me. Even while getting older I do not accept to be overlooked. NO. 

The photo above I took a few days ago - here in the early morning you sometimes see only a wall of fog, and a few tree tops. 

INVISIBLE. Bah! I even asked for help in the community, and they kindly answered - Thank you! - in English - THAT was not the problem, no - my problem was their technical jargon - and honestly: if someone does not know what they EXACTLY mean with a browser you have a problem. Which I had.(Though I know how to help myself and scrolled the Internet, which kindly did not start it's answer with "Dear Idiot"... :-) 

Of course I suspected that "cookies" had something to do with it - I avoid them as the devil avoids the the holy water as we in Germany say while you say: "to avoid something like the plague". 

Well - if you see how many users want your and my cookies... 

Long time ago Son explained: "Mama, you either pay with money or with data". 

But here I do not even have a choice. If I want to be seen. 

So: to be able to communicate with you further, also with  Rachel and others who will have very good reasons to close their blog completely against any anonymous commentator I scatter my cookies all around. 

Here, cookie monster: chick, chick, chick: munch, crumble, gobble! 

Back and almost ready for Easter

 

As you might guess: I spent one wonderful week in the Netherlands. 

Now I have a lot of work to do before I can start blogging again. 

I apologize to all of you for not being able to comment your blogs: I read them, but evidently I muddled something contra Google's wish for data - thus I am kept away from commenting. 

I'll try to fix that. 

Till then: I wish you a Happy Easter time. The little village here is already nicely adorned: 

Posture - or: How To Look Slim, Energetic, Powerful and Younger in a second

Posture.              Well, well, well...   "Stand tall!"  "Sit upright!"  mother reminded us. 

I have to confess that my posture never was Very Good - I am a tall woman, 1,78m, and though I found out that this has many advantages (I could work as a model and now silver model, was not overlooked when I entered a room - very important for a committee or as teacher) - it has also some drawbacks. 

When you are 15 years old you want to be as everybody else - so in my peer group I curved my shoulders. 

A tall girl seldom wants a lover who is shorter than her (though there are exceptions: beautiful Carla Bruni and Monsieur Sarkozy). And though I know that this is very shallow, and found out that in bed the flaw disappears, I wanted to wear kitten heels or High Heels and "look up" (silly again).    

"You" - a dressmaker said to me, " will get problems with your hip if you stand like that!" 

I looked at her and thought "Prattle on!" (I was 15) - and protruded my right hip in the typical model angle - très chic. Today I think: she had a point. No big problems with my hip, thank God, but sometimes I can feel it. 

Walking with the then tiny triplets made my not very good posture even worse. 

So now it is really, really time for action. I read some enlightening books , go to the fitness club, do exercises from Youtube - and try to recall it when I stand up from an armchair WITHOUT using my hands (at least I do not say "Phew!", as some friends of mine have started - "phew" when they sit down and "phew" when they try to get up...) 

"Keeping up appearances" - a dress looks so much nicer when you hold your head up tight (young people nowadays slouch over their cellphone - and their posture is as bad as mine...) 

Your waistline looks so much slimmer when you stand tall. 

And you look younger. Definitely. 

But it takes some effort now.  (Phew!) 

I Feel Overprotected! "Dressing Instructions" for your tights

 

We all will have read about "helicopter parents". 

A difficult balance in a world to protect your child - without making it feel helpless. (I was always a supporter of the maxim "Do not support someone by giving him everyday a fish - better give him an angling rod.") 

Nowadays they pamper us, average adults, with suffocating eagerness. Whining they see problems everywhere - today I read that PETA, animal rights activists, in earnest call for forbidding wooden animals on roundabouts - carousel animals would give children wrong impressions how to treat animals. 

Politicians "care" about what you SHOULD eat. Don't get me wrong: I think it is great to eat healthy vegetables - but you should have heard the rage of German citizenry when our Green politicians wanted to establish a "vegetable day" once a week for all of us. (Sugar or unhealthy fast food has a big lobby -  you don't hear much to protect children on that front, though timid attempts are made to implement a sugar tax - so: I am not against protecting children).

And now I found that dressing instructions for tights. 

Honestly: the triplets, now 4 and a half year old, can put on their tights without those instructions, thank you very much. 

What will they try to "teach us" next???  

Foto-Exhibition Chameleon by Abe Frajndlich in the Kunstfoyer Munich

 

This huge photo of the Rolling Stones at the launch of their album "The Bridges of Babylon" 1997, was the very first Wow!-impression when I entered the Kunstfoyer Munich.  

It was a spontaneous decision to go there by train: I needed a splash of "bit city". 

Abe Frajndlich was born in 1946 in Frankfurt/Main Germany in a camp for Displaced Persons. His parents were Jews from Poland - Holocaust-survivors, who met each other in that camp after WWII. Abe's life was full of personal tragedies: his father was murdered, and when he was 10 his mother died after an operation. As a child he moved a lot: from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv and back, followed by Paris and Brazil, and finally to the USA, New York. (All these details from SZ-journalist Christian Mayer). His Photo teacher was Minor White, and he has lots of friends among famous photographers as Irving Penn, Annie Leibovitz, and many others. 

Wonderful photos of New York, and great portraits of famous people (but of strangers  too). 

 

Guess who she is? 

You can see photos of Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Cindy Sherman , Charles Bukowski, Yoko Ono. And maybe you know this one of Jack Lemmon. 

"It's all about seeing 

and all the things 

that get in the way 

of that simple act (...)" 

 

Abe writes in a long sort of poem 

"Site Specific Investigations Of A Glove". 

A very interesting exhibition which you can visit till 1.April - free entrance. 

 

 

Answer to Tom Stephenson's post

 nachrichtensprecherin bricht in lachen aus 

I love this one too - Susanne Daubner normally is a pillar of correctness.   (One has to wait a little bit with this link: it is a video, not only the photo!) 

PS: At the moment I have a huge problem with Google: I cannot comment on your blogs, have to find my password for Google (oh...), so I hope I find a way... 

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Sheep - and change

Here they are again: more than 100 sheep grazing on the huge water meadow. As every year, and not every farmer is delighted at that.  

The profession of shepherd has changed a lot. 

Once the shepherd was a gnarled loner, with a long loden coat and a big slouch hat on his head leaning at his wooden barren-hut gazing at his sheep, his sidekick, the faithful dog running around to keep the sheep together. Trust me: as a child I saw some of these duos.

When I drove my purchases home, the shepherd, quite youngish, leaned at the hood of his car and stared on his cellphone. He didn't look up. His faithful dog seemed to regret that he hadn't a cellphone either - to him the sheep were too -- sheepish -- so why should he care? 

Next morning the sheep had left (an euphemism: they bunked) - "The grass is always greener on the other side" - and show me a  weak electrified fence that can keep a stubborn sheep with an intention. 

A neighbour of mine came and tried to bring them back - another neighbour telephoned. The shepherd slept in his house in another village, and had taken his faithful dog with him. 

And we wonder why so much is heading south?  

Baa....