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I had to add this little preamble because something has gone wrong with the software. For some reason the sidepanel does not display unless I add this fixed "Welcome" post and a second "blank" to the top. The mysteries of computer software. Perhaps I should stick to playing my accordion. Last night a neighbour hammered on the door. It was already past midnight! Luckily, I was still awake as I was playing my accordion - only joking; we live on seven acres and the only neighbour is the river.
In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, twenty-six-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and "Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser" was published in Vienna to immediate success. It is now an international bestseller and available in almost thirty languages across the world.
In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the Stone Age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of mankind’s experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity’s achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.
The book was written for younger readers, but isn't old age supposed to be a second childhood? Anyway, there's nothing better than to listen to this beautifully read audiobook while reclining in my usual position on the sunny verandah. I could even listen to it in its original German - click here - but, strangely, after more than sixty years away from the (c)old country, even a German book sounds better when read in English.
When Padma went to the post office yesterday to pay the next twelve months' mailbox fee, she also picked up a 2026 calendar for the kitchen. "If it's Monday, it must be lentil soup; if it's Tuesday, it must be Chinese stir fry ..." She is such an impulse-buyer: I had expressly told her to wait until June to get it at half-price!
While there, she met an elderly acquaintance whose friend in Sydney is bedridden with advanced pancreatic cancer. This elderly acquaintance now drives to Sydney once a week and also phones her each night to talk to her over the phone. Human kindness at its best! But here comes the kicker: his friend has now registered him as one of her NDIS-carers and the government pays him a fat professional fee. Next thing I know he'll get himself his own ABN! Human kindness commercialised!
By the way, that kitchen clock emits on the stroke of each hour the sound of the bird depicted. All the birds are European ones unknown to me. Mercifully, they stop calling during the night; in fact, I can even shut them up during the day by putting my hand over the light sensor.
That's just about all I can still shut up in my own house these days; everything else is up to the gods and whatever mood Padma is in.
Speaking of which, I have just joined the 3-Day Challenge which may make me a little short-tempered and abrasive in the next few days.
Every day the market teaches me about life and the dilemmas we face. Take yesterday, for example, when I sold some - but not all - BHP shares at $58. This morning they dropped to $56.88 and I regretted not having sold even more yesterday.
Believing that they had bottomed, I placed an order at $57 to buy back the shares I had sold yesterday, but by the time I had placed the order, the shares had already gone up to $57.50 again. Then they went back to yesterday's closing price of $57.75. I was facing an emotional dilemma: I wanted the price to go down to buy back the shares I had sold, and I wanted the price to go up to increase the value of the shares I still had.
Peter Singer's book "How are we to live? - Ethics in an age of self-interest" is full of examples of dilemmas — from the Ancient Greek dílēmma, meaning "two premises", and adopted into English to describe a rhetorical argument forcing a choice between two equally undesirable options. And here I face a dilemma: appear superior by using a word you don't know, or patronise you by telling you what you already know. (Not the best example, I know, but I'm Peter Goerman, not Peter Singer.)
Unfortunately, the book is not available for online reading, unless you can read German — if you can't read German, why not? give us half a chance and ve haf vays to make you talk! — in which case click here.
It's now after four o'clock. What happened to BHP's shares? They closed at $58.41, twelve cents higher than yesterday's all-time intraday high, and sixty-six cents higher than yesterday's closing price. Go figure!
P.S. At the start of the year BHP was $45.76. By the end of January it had gone to $50.57 which I thought was a good time to sell. Luckily, I only sold a few shares because by the end of February they had gone to $58.41, an unbelievable increase of 27% for a heavyweight like BHP.
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
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