Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Carl's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Monday, June 22nd, 2009
5:39 pm	I habe a code I found this on the Waterlooplein flea market a couple of months ago. The guy at the stall thought it was a sort of typewriter or calculator. It's a cipher machine made in 1945 by AB Cryptoteknik, a Swedish company which was basically one guy, Boris Hagelin. (Now it's Crypto AG.). Once a year I find something cool like this. The rest of the time I buy a lot of crap. ( moar ) Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Numbers - Kraftwerk (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
12:55 pm	Verjaardagsfeest! On Monday the 1st I'll be 47, an especially nondescript age. Though I like to think I'm in my prime (maths joke). Anyhoo, any of you who are in shouting distance of Amsterdam and are not going to Leipzig next week are invited to my house for caeks and ale on the 31st. Sunday, Sunday Sunday!!! Rozengracht 143/2 06 5231 7354 if'n ya get lost starts at 6, to accommodate the poor bastards who have to work on Pinkstermaandag, and runs late, for the rest of us who don't. Be there aloha! Current Music: Guitar Hero - Amanda Palmer (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
6:01 pm	You were the best Axel 12 October 1991 - 27 April 2009 He had a great life and he went easy, after a short illness. Current Mood: sad Current Music: Via Con Me - Paolo Conte (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
9:09 pm	Cruising 'round the Horn AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But congrats on the captain's rescue (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
8:14 pm	Art, Bob, Absinthe One a' them LJ-thingies... 2) art ( Moar below the fold ) Current Mood: accomplished (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
6:23 pm	One a' them LJ-thingies... 1) nasa It seems like another life now. I worked at NASA in Houston, TX, for 10-1/2 years, starting six months out of college. I only made C's in my major (Mechanical Engineering) so I had to find my own way in. I worked at a nearby record store, and, whenever someone paid by check and wrote their daytime number on the back, if it was the 483 exchange, which belonged to NASA, I asked if anyone was hiring. One day the answer was yes (a major contractor, not NASA itself). I got a contact and an interview that went pretty well, but had to be cut short late in the morning. That was 28 January 1986, the day the space shuttle Challenger blew up, 73 seconds after launch. It was also 21 years and one day after the Apollo 1 launch pad fire that killed three astronauts during a countdown test. I went home but was invited back after a week, during which President Reagan came and went. I finished the interview and got to work. Three years training astronauts, another three editing contingency procedures that nobody had hitherto taken seriously and a bit of time tracing every wire and fusebox in Spacelab, the international pressurized laboratory module that was sometimes carried in the payload bay, and finally four years training to work in Mission Control, in the big front room. I quit to follow the siren song of the intertubes, but I had a good time at NASA (except for the part about being a contractor--the eternal lament). I saw pictures of the Shoemaker-Levy Comet hitting Jupiter in 1995. Funnily enough, I also learned about the brewing disaster in Yugoslavia before it reallly hit the news. E-mail was just coming in during the late 80s/early 90s, via IBM PROFS system (the same one that ensnared Oliver North at that time). The software came with a news digest subscription. When things were slow I'd read news items about NASA. The news filter also picked up articles published by Nasa Borba, an independent Yugoslav newspaper that enjoyed the same reputation for honesty as Radio B.92 would later. 2) art I've always loved to read and especially loved weird history (sort of goes with all the sci-fi I consumed in grade school.), though I avoided liberal arts courses in college, since my engineering course load was heavy enough. Once I'd safely graduated, I got into history in a big way. (to be continued.( 3) bob 4) absinthe 5) surrealism (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
12:57 pm	It's about time we grew up FUK YEAH!! MONDAY NIGHT REHABILITATION!!! (Catch it on Fox!) The sun shines a little brighter and gravity sucks me down with slightly less force, and I am hungover from drinking too much of the hot, angry, bitter tears of wingnuts. *** As for Bush, pfarley writes a much better epitaph to the Bush era than I ever could, but here's my shot... [edit - broken link fixed] Remember how the 1960s were supposed to be the Age of Aquarius, the New Left and Don't Trust Anyone Over 30? And then most of it sort of collapsed, because few hippies were any good at organizing their own lives, individually or as a group? The Right always professed to hate hippies for having a good time for free, doing drugs and having lots of sex. Even consequences like overdoses and AIDS didn't satisfy the Right, who wanted to wipe out the very idea of unpoliced fun, to make everyone sorry even for considering it. But the Right had their own ideas of fun, mostly spending lots of money, earned, unearned or outright stolen, in front of poor people and then beating them up for complaining about it. They wanted their own utopia in which they could do this all the time. So they set out to create their own Age of Aquarius. The Right came up with (revived, really) the term "Culture War" to legitimize their vision. They created a straw enemy, an elite of politically-correct Marxist college professors and a supposedly liberal media supoposedly oppressing the country. Then they built a parallel academic and media universe of think tanks and talk radio to research effective ways to restate and broadcast this idea. The US has enough media and had enough spare money to envelop a generation of rightwingers. When they were ready, they brought forth a right-wing Age of Aquarius lasting from about 1980 to 2006. And they reproduced all the idiocies and cruelties associated, fairly or not, with the Left, and invented a few of their own. - Weathermen -> Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and bombers of abortion clinics - Underground campus newspapers -> [Insert University name here] Review - Communist cant -> Free-market and religious cant - Living on Welfare -> Living on Wingnut Welfare (scholarships to rightwing "institutes" and jobs in TV and print subsidized by rightwing billionaires) - Gender Studies -> Intelligent Design - Postmodernism -> "We make our own reality. You will watch us and learn from us." - "Feeling" over science -> religion over science - Bummed by the money trip -> blind faith in unregulated markets - Revolution Now!-> War - Charles Manson, Timothy Leary -> Leo Strauss, Ayn Rand The Bizarro-World Age of Aquarius actually held together awhile, as long as the US economy could support it, like the clichéd hippie living off a trust fund. But real world problems were cause for worry and crises were cause for panic. The TV series "24" is the Right's "Eve of Destruction." It's 7-1/2 years of the Right pissing their pants in fear and denouncing those of us with unstained pants. Another left stereotype is the Maoist feminist vegetarian commune that couldn't grow so much as a carrot because of all the consciousness-raising and "self-criticism" (actually a lot of such communes did OK in the end). FEMA, run by Bush cronies, couldn't deal with a real diaster like Katrina. The FEMA of Bush I's time failed with Hurricane Andrew, because it was staffed by Reagan-era cronies wanted it to help rounding up dissidents instead. Appointing Regnery interns and (Jerry Falwell's) Liberty University graduates to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq made less sense than turning over a university to its students. A 26-year-old journalism school dropout was put in charge telling NASA scientists what to tell the public. When one scheme after another failed, the cause was enemies, internal or external, because the ideology was always correct. Political correctness as a phrase didn't exist before the early 1980s, when it appeared in rightwing campus newspapers. The Stalinist 1930s never used it. There are plenty of Communist and Socialist newspapers and journals sitting in archives everywhere. If the phrase existed, it would have been found. PC was created to excuse racist jokes and to make rightwing authoritarians feel like rebels. If you want politically correct, ask some of my very conservative relatives for their views on the Bush legacy. Stupid, ignorant, spoiled, thin-skinned, ideologically-driven, short-sighted, whiny, spendthrift, living off their parents--pretty much everything said of hippies turned out to be true of the children of Reagan and Bush. You couldn't ask for a more perfect repudiation of the Rightwing Hippies than a youngish man with maturity replacing an older man who never really grew up. Current Mood: relieved Current Music: Soundtrack to "Hair" (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
11:03 pm	w00t!!!! Mahalo. Aloha Oe. I'm really, really proud to be an American today. Blessings to Queen Liliuokalani (sp?) who deserved better. Ma'am, I hope you're watching. Current Music: Aloha Oe - Queen Liluokalani (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 19th, 2009
1:18 am	My first taxi complaint! (updated) The taxi company actually called me back to apologize! But-Holy Crap!-they really do charge €15,- fixed rate after midnight. If the driver hadn't been such an asshole he could have let me see it for myself. I wouldn't have liked it much, but I wouldn't have grounds to complain. He's gonna tell off the driver. Current Mood: determined Current Music: anything by Ministry (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 9th, 2009
4:31 pm	This painting deserves a better title... ...because neither the title nor the explanation given at the bottom tell anything about what's going on in the picture. The painting was acquired in the 1950s, but you'd think someone would have put examined it at least a tenth as much as they did other, better-known paintings. (Follow the pic-linky, in a separate page, to Flickr, then go to All Sizes and Original. It's still a bit blurry, as befits a clandestine photo, which was taken at the mini-Rijksmuseum gallery at Schiphol airport, near Amsterdam, while awaiting the plane to Houston.) It looks to me like a presentation and a sizing up are in progress. The two gentlemen at right and the dogs on either side provide the biggest clues. The leftmost gentleman (Mr. A) is looking to the other, somewhat older gentleman (Mr. B) as if expecting a reaction, but he isn't getting one. Mr. B is looking instead into the middle distance and appears to be mentally weighing something. Unfortunately, with the blurriness of the photo, you'll have to take my word about Mr. B. Therefore, Mr. A wants something from Mr. B. There's also a second young man standing with the older men, but I'll get to him later. Meanwhile, the old saying about dogs and their owners holds true here. The spaniel on the left obviously represents the young man, while the toy fox terrier-type on the right is the woman. The jeweled collar reinforces the point for those slow on the uptake, like the guys who wrote the explanation below the painting (the Dutch text isn't any more illuminating). Note also that the dogs aren't together, so we know the couple aren't married (yet). In those days, jewelry was only supposed to be worn in intimate company and on special occasions. The company in the garden would have to be intimate, meaning family or prospective family. Gentleman A's face is slightly rounded, like that of the girl, while Gentleman B and the young man have similar chins. The tableau then makes sense. Mr. A is presenting his daughter in her finery to assure Mr. B that she will come with a suitable dowry, while Mr. B is sizing her up, examining her clothes and jewels. The two gentlemen are about to open wedding negotiations. I only now noticed that the the empty chair (extreme right) to which the young man is leading the girl to has a red cushion on it like the one Mr. A is sitting on. If Mr. B is sitting on a cushion, it is hidden, so it's a safe guess that Mr. A is the host and the girl is indeed his daughter. The young man with the two gentlemen has his hand on the shoulder of Mr. B, and he has Mr. B's chin. Anyway, it's unlikely he would put his hand on a gentleman he didn't know. So the second young man came along with his father to watch the negotiation, as he should learn all of his father's business, including that of checking out prospective in-laws. The statue on the wall is of Hebe or Ganymede, a minor god who poured nectar and ambrosia for the other gods and is therefore a symbol of the beauty of eternal youth. Greek and Roman gods were a common theme in garden ornaments as they are now, but this statue can be taken as a blessing, meaning the dowry negotiations will be successful. I don't know what the gardener in the extreme right background is doing, unless his presence is meant to imply that marriages, like gardens, don't just happen but are planned and cultivated. Nor do I know plants well enough to see how the pots on the wall figure in the tableau. The building in the right background may be a clue also, but it doesn't look like any building I know of in Amsterdam, where Graat spent his entire career. Anyway, just my 2 euro cents. Current Mood: creative Current Music: Vincent Van Gogh - Jonathan Richman (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
12:03 am	I hab a code (but I finally got the New Year's vids up) Urgh! Sick for three days and maybe more. Left me a lot of free time to read 300-year-old satirical plays and figure out why my NYE videos were dark on YouTube. Fixed now (except the cold), so enjoy: After we chased everybody off the terrace, we got to work. A box full of firecrackers and Hell Money and ready to blow! Plenty of money to burn, so here's another. Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
1:00 am	We Never Learn - The Great Crash of 1720 < Harlequin The Stockbroker (detail) I've started on a personal project, to try to translate a Dutch book into English, as quickly as possible. I've posted the whole book, about 130 pages of text and 15 engravings, on Flickr. Het Tafereel der Dwaasheid, aka The Mirror of Folly, published in 1720, was a satirical book of cartoons, poems and plays about the great financial disaster of that year. As with most financial collapses not related to war or a really bad harvest, this was due to rampant speculation. The better-known Tulipmania, the 1637 speculative bubble in tulip bulbs, affected those involved in the flower trade, while the 1720 crash wiped out the whole investor class. In this respect it's akin to the 1990s "dotcom" bubble that ruined anyone who invested in technology stocks or accepted tech stock options in lieu of a salary. The 2008 crash, which affected people who'd never heard of Collateralized Debt Swaps, looks to be far worse, but I simply *had* to post the Tafereel der Dwaasheid while it was still topical. Anyway, magazines like Forbes are starting to write about the crash. The Ruined Stockholders Revied By A Feted Harlequin Three speculative bubbles arose and burst at about the same time. The South Sea Bubble is named after the South Sea Company, in Britain, which sold shares based on the riches to gained by exploiting the "South Sea," meaning the waters around South America, especially via a royally-granted monopoly on the slave trade in the Americas. In France, the Mississippi Company, created in 1684 to exploit the wealth of the Mississippi Valley and bought by John Law about 30 years later, made similar promises of untold wealth. Both companies based their business on exploitative monopolies granted by their respective governments in exchange for taking over government debt. However, the British South Sea Company expected the War of the Spanish Succession to break their way, when instead the it was won by France (Bourbons), England's ancient rival. Also, the South Sea Co. knew nothing about the slave trade. As for the Mississippi Valley, the promised wealth never materialized. In the Netherlands, cities and rich individuals bought in, while the Rotterdam Bank of Lending jobbed shares in similarly harebrained Dutch projects. All three companies excited the avarice of their respective investor classes, raised loads of money and burned through it quickly. All of this happened within a couple of years. It was a perfect financial storm. Investors were burned, government officials were embarrassed, the usual. Ironically, all three companies survived the crash. The South Sea and Mississippi Companies lasted until the Seven Years War (1759-1765), when their respective governments bankrupted them. The Rotterdam Lending Bank still exists today, as the City Bank of Lending (Stadsbank van Lening). I don't know how much popular literature there is on the 1720 bubble. In Britain there are a few cartoons by William Hogarth and a number of satirical broadsides. As for France, I have no idea. But in the Netherlands, the Bubble merited a whole book. Het Groote Tafereel Der Dwaasheid was a hardbound compilation or portfolio of 50-60 (later 80-90) satirical engravings, a dozen plays, pages of satirical verse and a reckoning of the companies in all the Dutch cities (except for Amsterdam, Haarlem and Leiden, which did not participate). The compilation had no author. None of the plays or verses are signed. Almost all of the engravings are anonymous, though some are known to be by famous engravers such as Jan Goeree and Benoit Picart. At least one of the plays is by the playwright Pieter Langendijk (source is in Dutch). Those publicly and financially embarrassed included many prominent figures whould be happy to share the misery by shooting the messenger. As the collapse unleashed a wave of Dutch schadenfreude, new prints and texts appeared throughout 1720 and into the next year or so, and the book rapidly went through many editions, each new edition having its complement of plays, verses and prints, subject to availablilty. Some engravings went through at least two states, to keep up with breaking news. The imagery is a satire of emblems, which were bizarre (in 21st-century eyes) allegorical pictures meant to embody the sorts of ideas that prudent Christian readers should hold. Emblem books belong mostly to the early 1600s, but were around awhile. I have a few pages from a 1619 emblem book. There are a lot of references to "Quincampoix" with various spellings. Rue Quincampoix, in Paris, was once home to the office of John Law, the Scotsman who ran the Mississippi Company and almost bankrupted France. Quincampoix is a synecdoche, like "Wall Street," standing in for the ground zero of speculative fever. Vianen is a city in the Netherlands, near Utrecht, and was once the city of financial refuge. If you could pay the toll to enter the city, your creditors couldn't pursue you there. A bankrupt, was said to have "gone to live in Vianen." Harlequin and Bombario appear in many prints, because of the popularity of Italian-style theater (like Commedia dell'Arte) at the time. Most prints refer to the Mississippi Company or the South Sea, and say little about any Dutch company, since most of the speculative action was with those companies. The rest isn't too hard to figure out, even if you don't know any Dutch. I have no idea how many books were ultimately published, but complete ones in good condition fetch from €1000 to €5000. I got a copy of the book for under a hundred euros because almost all of the engravings had been sliced out. The plays were intact, and I hope to translate them, like one about a greedy merchant trying to marry his daughter off to a stockbroker who can only talk about shares, or The Asylum for Stockholders, about the inmates howling about their surefire moneymaking schemes. That one has possibilities. Since then I bought about 15 more prints at an auction. I have a few duplicates, so it's a bit like collecting baseball cards. I would love it if today's cartoonists and artists compiled such a book for the current fiasco. Bombario: O Death: Too ruinous in need! Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Brother Can You Spare A Dime? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
12:55 am	Happy New Year! (Sixty-five million euros up in smoke!) HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! Now in its fifth big year, our New Year's Eve fireworks party went on the road, specifically to a semi-abandoned building at the top of the Warmoesstraat, as a joint venture with kreepygrly and the estimable Fifi L'Amour! We had a whole terrace this time! The Dutch spent 65 million euros ($87,000,000) on fireworks, and I can think of no more appropriate way to commemorate the potential 60 trillion dollars due to evaporate this year and the next. And thus this year's theme... One bank stuffed with Hell Money One WW1-era detonator Result! Neighbor's balcony! (Don't worry, it got cleaned up. Even though the neighbor is a jerk.) Much lulz, a few duds, moar pix on Flickr, these being a small selection. Many thanks to the Lovecats, without whom the show would have been impossible. Ditto the aforementioned Fifi and kreepygrly. Also spidertangle,thisc0rrosion, frumiousb, nikkyb, kaltesherz, gods_wil, manraypat, ratagosk and rhialto. Most of all, thanks to S.! Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Cars - Gary Numan (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
7:52 pm	New Year's Eve Party is ON! ************************ New Year's Eve Party!! 31 December, starting at 10pm Warmoesstraat 12, a semi-abandoned building above Conscious Dreams NOT AT MY HOUSE!! This is a joint production between me and kreepygrly and the estimable Fifi L'Amour!. Fifi will almost certainly do a few cabaret sets in the main room and we'll most likely have a DJ in the small room. Since the place belongs to a friend of a friend, the logistics will be a bit different. - It'll be a cooperative party, so please bring a bottle. - On the 3rd floor, which includes a large living room and a smaller bedroom leading to a terrace (for fireworks) and with access to the roof for the especially brave and not too drunk. - Fireworks as usual! And phenomenal view of other people's fireworks on the Nieuwmarkt. Flickr set of photos gives an idea of the space. - To get in, ring me (06 5231 7354) or S. (06 2471 8171), due to no doorbell or direct view of the street. See yez! Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
11:39 am	New Year's Eve Party! (initial notice) Seeing as I'm leaving this Friday to go to Houston, TX until the 30th *and* I expect spotty internet reception, I don't know whether I'll have time to gin up a pretty invitation, so here goes. ************************ New Year's Eve Party!! 31 December, starting at 10pm Warmoesstraat 12, a semi-abandoned building above Conscious Dreams NOT AT MY HOUSE UNLESS THIS FALLS THROUGH!! This is a joint production between me and kreepygrly and the estimable Fifi L'Amour!. Since this place belongs to a friend of a friend, the logistics will be a bit different. - It'll be a cooperative party, meaning bring a bottle or a sixpack. - We have the 3rd floor, which includes a large living room and a smaller bedroom leading to a terrace (for fireworks) and with access to the roof for the especially brave and not too drunk. Phenomenal view of other people's fireworks! Flickr set of photos of the space will give an idea. Fifi will almost certainly do a few cabaret sets in the main room and we'll most likely have a DJ in the small room. - To get in, ring me at 06 5231 7354, because there's no doorbell yet and there may not be by the end of the year. I'll try to scare up another number or two so I'm not the sole point of contact. I'll post updates. If the party at the building somehow gets cancelled, it'll be at my place instead. See y'all! Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
3:19 pm	Flemish Liberation Army Against Freedom!!!!! (My old Powerbook (5 years!) got hosed last week, just when I had a great reason to post. I thought the hard drive was dying so took it to the Mac repair shop around the corner. It's more expensive than the Apple Store, but guaranteed fix by 48 hours (and me leaving for Houston this Friday). Hard drive was OK, but the drive cable was hosed, so instead of swapping the drive for a bigger one, for €329,- parts & labor, all I got was a new cable, for €229,- all in. Prices were fair, but, got-damn! Well, at least I got my computer back. I hadn't backed anything up for over 2 months, so lesson learned.) Volcano of Justice!!!!! Flemish Liberation Army Against Freedom (F.L.A.A.F.) Text, more or less: Leader: Friends and enemies! Today we have received a gift, from our trusted Belgian comrades--Volcano Of Justice!!!! Henchman1 & Henchman2 (WHISPERING TOGETHER) "Volcano Fantasy..." Leader: Let us wait no longer to demonstrate our combined power! (On balcony of apartment block. Below, Abdul is placing the Volcano o' Justice) Leader (HOLDING FUSE RIBBON): Light up! Henchman 1 (HESITANT): But Abdul is still standing there Leader (INSISTENTLY): Don't you see how long the fuse is!? Light it, you donkey! You can guess the rest. Holy crap! That's shock tube for a fuse, presumably in keeping with this actually being a professional firework. Backstory: This is actually Belgian (Flemish) public service announcement (PSA) against buying of illegal fireworks. It's actually a succesor to the L.A.A.F. PSA from last year (link at the bottom of FLAAF site, not YouTube vid). Happily, it's not as grisly as a Dutch PSA on the same theme that involved large and graphic pictures of blown-off fingers, a few years back. As non-Dutch readers may be aware, New Year's Eve is when the Netherlands and Belgium go totally nuts about fireworks and some people get hurt. Me, I try to play safe. Relatively. The PSA is also a bit rude, as befitting a country where the far right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), led by one Flip DeWinter, did well in the polls. Well, it's funnier than Fitna (I won't link it), an anti-Muslim propaganda film by the Netherlands' own racist politician Geert Wilders. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Man In The Black Sedan - Snakefinger (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
10:48 pm	10 years!!!!! As of this morning, I've been here 10 years! It's been good and I hope the next ten are too. I'm damn glad it won't be the kickoff of a long exile. I couldn't find a digitized photo from 10 years ago, but here's one from 10 years, 4 months ago, in upstate New York... WARNING! NSFASF (not safe for a straight face) Current Mood: bouncy Current Music: Amsterdam - John Cale (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
2:43 pm	Huzzah!!! Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Jimi Hendrix - Star Spangled Banner (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
2:16 pm	Think of it as shock treatment If Gov. Palin fails to connect with undecided voters and disgruntled Democrats, McCain may go with his original choice... Current Mood: amused Current Music: Dancing With The Bears - The Fibonaccis (Comment on this)
Friday, July 18th, 2008
6:15 pm	Anthropology: East German "Indians" Friday 20 June 2008 De Pers (The Press) [a free paper on the metro - translated by me, so all errors are mine] Culture: In the footsteps of Karl May INDIANS IN GERMANY Strange cult from the DDR-era still lives on. [note: Karl May (1842-1912) was a former teacher who wrote romantic novels about the American Wild West, strongly influenced by "noble savage" stories of James Fenimore Cooper. May's novels mostly centered around the Apache chief Winnetou and his "blood-brother," the white frontiersman Old Shatterhand. The stories were wildly successful, mostly because they depicted a way of life that was the complete opposite of that of regimented Imperial Germany (this was the 1890s), and maybe also because they tapped into the blood and soil ethos that underwent a revival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The stories were translated into many languages, even the artificial Esperanto (!) and Volapuk (!!) of the 1930s, but only recently into English. A number of movies were made, based very loosely on the novels. - Wikipedia and me] Jeroen Kuiper Berlin Hartmut Felber, Mohawk from the East German Hohen Neuendorf, catches his breath after a wild raindance. An enormous headress adorns his head, a breechcloth protects his family jewels. Felbers's hair is long and black; he looks like a real Indian. Felber, in 1980 the founder of the Indian club Mohawk, was at the time one of thousands of Indian fans in the DDR (German Democratic Republic; East Germany). The first clubs were set up shortly after WWII. The Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst) found them suspect. The interest in weapons, the US and the yearning for freedom, those could not be good, even though Karl May, the godfather of the Indians, came from East Germany. This writer gifted the world with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. This would not do; already in the 1950s was May suppressed by cultural commisars. According to the Berliner Zeitung, he was an "inculcator of a fascistic attitude," whose "super-German men" [encouraged in] "youth an inhuman atttitude." Despite official discouragement, the popularity of the "Indianistic" scene grew. Starting from 1973, once a year there was an "Indian week," which thousands of people attended. Trabants traveled, packed full of wigwams, feathered headdresses and beaded necklaces, to the far corners of the GDR, for a week of freedom. Felber: "The week still exists, only it's gotten somewhat smaller. For 10 days we live our dream, without electricity or gas. Running water we have to accept; that has ministry [of the interior, probably] required. The location is now secret. Shortly after the Wall fell we got requests from tabloids, who just came for the bare female breasts. We still do." Why exactly the DDR became Indian territory, no one can really say. Jens-Uwe Fischer, and Ossi [East German] from Thüringen, who, with the Wessi [see Ossi] Friedrich von Borries wrote a book about the socialist Indians, says about it: "According to some Indianists it had to do with the fact that the DDR citizens, just like the Indians in the US, lived on a kind of reservation." Despites its wariness, the DDR leadership got the idea they could use the Indian-cult. Fischer: "So in the '60s and '70s the 'solidarity-Indians' came into existence." They fought for the rights of the oppressed original inhabitants of the US." [Me: Around this time, Defa, the East German state movie studio, did make Westerns that emphasized the plight of the Indians, but none of them were based on Karl May's stories. Some of these movies starred the American folksinger-cum-East German pop sensation Dean Reed (1938-1986. Look him up).] Many "solidarity-Indians" would ultimately be disappointed. "After the fall of the Wall, lots of Indianists could visit their favorite tribe in the US. They returned seriously disillusioned, that the aid packages they'd sent for years had never arrived. Others saw alcohol abuse in the reservations. Some people were so shocked that they never donned a feathered headdress again. After the Wende ["Turning" - when the Wall fell], some Indians tried to turn their hobby into their work. There were even Karl May theme parks and indian villages planned. Of those, only one is known to survive, in the small town of Templin. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Ennio Morricone themes (2 Comments |Comment on this)