The Meaning of a Minaret
I suppose this article is more an editorial than a travel piece, but one of the reasons travelers love to travel is that ‘travel is so broadening,’ as Sinclair Lewis was wont to say. In my view, the term ‘broadening’ entails a readiness to learn about and perhaps even embrace the unknown and the unfamiliar: in some countries, people relish dishes with squid ink or bird’s nests, in some countries, people have unfamiliar art or dance forms, or customs or holidays or forms of worship.
Last year at this time I was in Dakar and watched as Muslim men of the Bocoum family prepared the ritual sleep for slaughter for the feast of Tabaski. This practice hearkens back to the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son when asked to do so by a higher power, and what I loved in Senegal was the way in which Catholics and Muslims lived side by side, in peace, sharing one another’s customs and holidays, inviting their neighbors of another faith to come partake of the feasting and celebration. I was an outsider, unable to speak their language and unfamiliar with many of the major tenets of Islam.
Viva Colonia!
Last weekend while at the debating workshop, I fell in love with a coat.
Generally I try to save such profound feelings for animate beings rather than insentient things, but this was stronger than reason or will power, and my next door neighbor offered to take me back to Cologne in her car to go get it, as I had successfully resisted the initial impulse as both too expensive and too impractical for a bicycle-riding schoolteacher with no social life to speak of.
The Great Debate
I have only just returned from an incredibly inspiring two-day seminar on school debating held just outside of Cologne (a city infamous for having created one of the - to my mind - most unpleasant fragrances of all time, 4711 http://www.4711.com ).
A teacher in training had approached me about doing the workshop, and as a newly-appointed teacher in the social sciences myself, I could immediately see a number of advantages to incorporating the practice of formal debate in the classroom, so I agreed enthusiastically. (The other reason I agreed with such alacrity was that I would get to miss school on a Friday, a day when I teach eight hours back to back, so what could be bad?)
Two Heads of State
It was quite exciting for me to see Merkel chatting easily with Obama in the White House during her historic trip to address the US Congress; in some way, as the daughter of a German mother and American father, I was pleased and proud to see the leaders of my two homelands coming together in this fashion. As is good and proper, she thanked the Americans for their help during two critical periods in German history: the end of WWII and the fall of the Berlin wall, which led to the reunification of Germany twenty years ago.
Yet Merkel was in a bit of a pickle because she was also supposed to address two key issues at which Germany is slightly at odds with the US - ticklish themes such as Afghanistan and united action against global warming (to the consternation of the international community, the US, one of the world’s biggest polluters, has still not yet signed the Kyoto protocol). As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the Germans, like most Europeans, are critical of the notion that America is the world’s policeman, and would have preferred not to become involved in the war. However, having acknowledged US help in the past and expressed gratitude for it, Merkel had very little choice but to announce continued support for a foreign policy that is actively disliked by most German voters. Similarly, in the guise of a grateful guest, it was difficult for her to exert much pressure on her hosts to mend the error of their ways and radically cut their outrageous carbon dioxide emissions
A Thanksgiving Gift
Admittedly I am jumping the gun a bit because we are nowhere near Thanksgiving just yet, but I felt truly fulfilled the other day and wanted to write about the experience.
Portrait of an Artist and a Man
A friend of mine from back in Freiburg days has been a full professor of English at the University of Leipzig for a decade or more now. When Elmar of the blue eyes, very curly hair and infectious smile recently emailed me an attachment of a painting he had just finished of a beautiful area called Soest, close to where I now live, I was absolutely astonished – I knew he dabbled in the arts in addition to his work at the university, but I had no idea just how talented he was, nor could I understand how he managed to find the time. So I asked him if he might answer a few questions for me, and thought a portrait of such a versatile personality deserved to find a space here.
Did you ever expect you would be a prof?
Yes, at the age of ten or eleven I wanted to become a professor of history, but then the idea faded away and was replaced by “chemist,” “psychologist,” “writer.”
Who has more to offer?
Today is quite a big day for the Germans, as today will decide the shape of government for the next four years. I like the fact that the Germans vote on a Sunday, which means that most people do not have to stress on their way to work.
Unlike the US two-party system, the Germans have a huge number of parties. There are the ecologically-minded Greens, special interest parties such as the Grey Panthers (senior citizens), the Bible-Abiding Christians, etc., although there are two parties that emerge as the strongest, the relatively conservative-minded Christian Democratic Union or CDU, epitomized at the moment by Angela Merkel, and the SPD, traditionally known as the party of the working man. Although the parties are supposed to hold more or less antithetical views, they governed jointly in a grand coalition over the past four years as neither was able to gain the majority, so that the televised ‘debates’ a few weeks ago led to yawns all around (one US-born political science teacher who shall remain nameless even dozing off between times). But realistically, what choice did the two parties have but to laud themselves for a job well done? The ‘duel’ became a ‘duet,’ fumed the press, and therefore less than compelling to watch.
Running Amok
During my first week at school in Dakar, I had heard an odd noise during a meeting with the school’s director and could not resist looking out the window. The sound turned out to be the bleating of a sheep, and I was amused, as this was not the sort of thing that would ever occur during board meetings in New York. This strange noise and the occasional bit of homework not done were memorable among the ‘challenges’ I faced during my time teaching school in Senegal. The students were bright, articulate, rose to greet their teachers and, more astonishing still, usually (though not always) remembered to clean the board without prompting at the beginning of class.
At my first school meeting in Dortmund, on the other hand, two big topics of discussion were a) the swine flu and b) what to do in case a student went amok. Fears re the latter had intensified because of a recent incident in a quaint city of half-timbered houses near Stuttgart. In the usually peaceful haven of Winnenden, Tim Kretschmer killed fifteen people and then himself on March 11, 2009. He was only seventeen and came from a fairly well-to-do background. Talk about culture shock! Such an occurrence would have been simply unthinkable in my Senegalese school, so I decided to conduct a bit of research on such incidents in Germany.
September 11 in History
It was a shock for me to realize in class today that my present ninth graders were in KINDERGARTEN when the Twin Towers fell. I remember the morning as if it were yesterday – walking from the subway to my workplace on 20th Street, running into my friend Leah on the way, standing still in astonishment and wondering how any pilot could be so daft as to fly into the World Trade Center. I remember Leah telling me in no uncertain terms that we were witnessing a historic event, when the thought had not yet begun to percolate.
I remember the uneasy atmosphere at work, everyone exchanging stories and trying to find a radio station, attempting to call loved ones to make sure they were all right, trying to find some way to grasp what was going on, some logical explanation for what appeared to be inexplicable.
On Making a Difference
When I first opened the door to my new apartment in Dortmund, Germany (I seem to be curiously drawn to places beginning with a ‘D’?!), I was enormously moved to see that my new next door neighbor, Bettina Broekelschen, an artist, had left me two prints of local scenes as a welcoming gift – the kindness of strangers! As I did not yet have a coffee machine, I suggested that as a thank you perhaps I could invite her to a local cafe where we might sit and get properly acquainted sometime.
Today was that day, and what an inspiring story she has to tell! She can read artwork the way other people read books, she explained, and she often uses the medium to understand troubled young people. She spent years working with a nonprofit organization helping local homeless children. She has great empathy for them, for she grew up in the north of Dortmund, which even today is considered quite rough, and managed to get herself kicked out of school not one, not two, not three, but FOUR times! She excelled in sports and in art. This is how she managed to rally all the kids in her class on her side, to the extent that they did a great deal of her schoolwork for her, which is how she muddled through. She always found school and its restrictions too boring to hold her interest and sought various ways to spice things up, generally to the deep and abiding displeasure of the school’s leadership.
