Hochspannungsmasten

(Ach, wie gerne würde ich zu diesem Titel was über die Berliner Salonswing-Band Herr Nillsson* und ihren Titel ‘Hochspannungsmasten’ schreiben, aber den gibt’s leider nicht auf Youtube…)

Nein, eigentlich ging’s auch um was ganz anderes: Ich habe nämlich gerade festgestellt, dass ich mittlerweile doch schon einige Fotos von und mit Hochspannungsmasten in meiner Sammlung habe. Ja, manchmal kann ich sie halt nicht ausblenden, ohne dass ich auf ganz besonderes Licht oder eine einzigartige Stimmung verzichten müsste, und so habe ich sie dann eben ‘mitfotografiert’. Nur haben es Hochspannungsmasten so an sich, dass sie unmittelbar zum Hauptbildgegenstand werden, von daher habe ich dann entschieden, ihnen eben gleich die Bühne im (hoffentlich) stimmungsvollen Bild zu überlassen.So kam das alles.

Das sind ja auch wirklich ganz besondere Ungetüme, diese Hochspannungsmasten! Alle ganz verschieden, manche anmutig sich nach oben verjüngend, andere klobig mit fetten Querstreben, manche im Weg, andere sich irgendwie in die Landschaft einfügend auf so eine Berlin trash-Art. Ich freue mich, dass ich schon einige von ihnen digital gebannt habe. Heute abend haben sie mich wieder fasziniert, wie sie da so stumm dastanden und mit mir zusammen dem Sonnenuntergang beiwohnten. Tolle Kerle!

Was man auch nicht so oft sieht: Ein Hochspannungsmast, zu dem Leitungen hinführen, von dem aber keine weggehen. Manche würden es wohl eine Stromsackgasse nennen…für andere wieder stellt dieser losgelöste Mast zweifellos ein ontologisches Mysterium dar…

Wo ich gerade dabei bin, hier noch mal wie zur beiläufigen Erklärung der bildhafte Grund dafür, warum Bilder wie die obenstehenden in den USA seltener zu finden sind:

Stümper.

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* Dafür aber den wunderbaren Titel ‘Deutscher Film’, der uns nicht nur denselben näher bringt, sondern auch einen klasse Einblick in das Leben deutscher Künstler gibt:

Euphemisms – do they really help?

As we all know, over the last year or so New Zealand has been hit by big earthquakes and their concomitant aftershocks. Curious to find out what the situation is like at the moment, I read the NZ Herald this morning. In a news story about Kaiapoi, a suburb of Christchurch, I read the following:

The Press this morning reported “up to one third of quake-hit Kaiapoi could be abandoned”, with a final decision to be made next week.

The paper quoted “sources familiar with the plans”, who said a recommendation will go to Cabinet that between 700 and 1000 of the town’s orange zone homes will be reclassified as red zone.

Red zone homes are on land that is not considered stable enough to build on and these properties would be abandoned.

Parts of Christchurch have already been declared as red zone and thus cannot be built on any more. The story is discussing whether or not the red zoning of parts of Kaiapoi were leaked, and home owners in Kaiapoi are understandably quite anxious to know what is going to happen to their homes.

from www.beforeafter.co.nz

There is a real strange euphemism at work in the passage above. Have a look at how it talks about homes having to be demolished: they will have to be ‘abandoned’. What a curious choice of words! Does it not suggest a picture of the house standing there all by its lonely self whilst the family drives away in their family car waving good-bye? Tears are rolling and 50s music is playing in the background. I may be left field here with my interpretation but I feel that this unlikely scenario is suggested when you’re talking of ‘abandoning homes’. Stupid political language! It is much more likely that red-zoned homes will de pulled down as according to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, ‘full land repair in these areas may mean that every house would need to be removed, regardless of its degree of present building damage’.

I wonder if the euphemism ‘abandoning a home’ that is used in the newspapers is helpful at all. Sure, taking out the hard-hitting emotional impact of having to imagine the house being destroyed as it is pulled down, it conceals the sad reality of what may (or may not) have to happen. But speaking of ‘abandoning’ a home does not make this any less sad, right? It romanticises that which is distateful, and it romanticises it probably for the wrong reasons by using an inappropriate euphemism.

There never are that many reasons why euphemisms are used in the first place. As James Valentine explains, ‘euphemisms are necessary where politeness demands that the distasteful is given only indirect reference’. This means that ‘euphemisms are encouraged in a society where politeness is highly valued, where indirect reference is considered a sign of good taste, and where direct reference can be embarrassing’.

Now I am thinking: In times of distress, would it not be more helpful to avoid ambivalent language such as when speaking of ‘abandoning homes’ and to be sensitive, clear and honest at the same time? In other words, I sympathise with the notion of using soft language so as to avoid unnecessary pain but I am also for calling a spade a spade – sensitively and with feeling, of course. This means one would have to be rather direct about the unpleasant facts of life which, in polite society, is not considered appropriate, however. Thus, in polite society things always take longer to be discussed as people are tiptoeing around each other avoiding to come out with clear statements.

I have my personal axe to grind with so-called polite society – which can often be not polite at all but rather backstabbing and treacherous, if you ask me. The imminent (or not) red-zoning of parts of communities in the earthquake hit areas around Christchurch begs the question, however, and this goes way beyond my own petty concerns: Shouldn’t rules of polite conversation be abandoned (pun intended) in times of distress so as to help people more effectively? And does this not mean that one should attempt to communicate rather more instead of less clearly? In other words, is this really the time for euphemisms and obfuscatory language?

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James Valentine (1998) Naming the Other. Power, politeness, and the inflation of euphemisms. Sociological Research Online 3(4), <a href="” target=”_blank”><http://www.socresonline.org.uk/3/4/7.html>.

Blue hour

There is such depth to the blue hour…it beckons one to reflect on the deeper meaning of life and the minute role of self in it. Despair is never far off in this twilight hour, I feel; you never know if good things will come off it, whether the bright day will tip into an evil night or a velvet-embracing wonderful night. Anything can happen.

I’ve long been wanting to reflect on one of the most precious hours of the day, the blue hour, the time after sunset and just before it gets dark. Alas, today, after the quake in Japan, thinking of the blue hour foregrounds that other meaning of blue, i.e. sad. Why don’t we all of us take a few minutes tonight, during the blue hour, to send positive energy, hope and prayers, whichever rocks your boat, down the road to our brothers and sisters in Japan?

This is what the blue hour looks like, just so that we’re all on the same page:

No TGIF today.

Lebst du noch oder schwimmst du schon?

How better to dive into the stream of consciousness and let your thoughts float than in a floating home?

from http://inhabitat.com/mos-architecture-lake-huron-floating-house/

With rising sea levels something very similar to this house on Lake Huron is needed (for full article on the house, click on the image).The ‘coolest’ floating homes can be found here.

I have a very bookish interest in this topic. I imagine without being able to explain why – this is called an ‘intuition’ and it is legitimate to reason with them, as I have learned – that thinkers writing books and thinking thoughts in floating homes would be less prone to indulge in dualistic thinking than thinkers who feel the softness of their own flesh against the unyielding surfaces of their stationary homes.

Put down that weapon

“Write like the wind!”, my doctor mum said to me the other day, and here I am, writing like the wind on the penultimate thesis chapter. My main aide: great music. Truly I tells ya, there’s nothing to fire one on like truly good music! Kills a couple of birds with one stone: you (obviously) have the happy tunes and therefore no longer sit in silence at the desk, so you don’t feel cut-off from the world. Furthermore, if like me you you listen to music that you already liked as a teenager, you even have the unexpected company of your Younger Self. Can be great – you’re so much more accomplished than her! Still as geeky, ok, but that’s good.

So yah, I am sitting here listening to Midnight Oil and I’ve got to say, what a great band!! Moves me to the core the way they’re fighting against racism, pollution, war and social inequality. That kind of sincerity and care about anything really is precious and timely. You don’t often find it, or when you do it often seems so trite and clichéd.

It took me a while to find a suitable track – stupid Sony Music Australia blocks most official videos. But this one here, ‘Put down that weapon’, seems a suitable tune for the day; from the 1985 album Diesel and Dust, the ‘weapon’ here is probably a nuclear one but this doesn’t dimish the necessity for us today to put ‘it’ down, whatever weapon it may be.

Visiting beaver land

The habitat of the beaver is the riparian zone, inclusive of stream bed. The actions of beavers for hundreds of thousands of years in the Northern Hemisphere have kept these watery systems healthy and in good repair, although a human observing all the downed trees might think that the beavers were doing just the opposite.

In the beaver habitat at Bays Mountain, Kingsport, Tennessee: dead trees to the left

The beaver works as a keystone species in an ecosystem by creating wetlands that are used by many other species. Next to humans, no other extant animal appears to do more to shape its landscape.

Beaver dams are created as a protection against predators, such as coyotes, wolves and bears, and to provide easy access to food during winter. Beavers always work at night and are prolific builders, carrying mud and stones with their fore-paws and timber between their teeth. Because of this, destroying a beaver dam without removing the beavers is difficult, especially if the dam is downstream of an active lodge. Beavers can rebuild such primary dams overnight, though they may not defend secondary dams as vigorously. (Beavers may create a series of dams along a river.)

The lowest dam in a series of beaver dams

 

Next dam up.

 

Wetland created by beavers

 

Beavers fell trees for several reasons. They fell large mature trees, usually in strategic locations, to form the basis of a dam, but European beavers tend to use small diameter (<10 cm) trees for this purpose. Beavers fell small trees, especially young second-growth trees, for food. Broadleaved trees re-grow as a coppice, providing easy-to-reach stems and leaves for food in subsequent years. Ponds created by beavers can also kill some tree species by drowning but this creates standing dead wood, which is very important for a wide range of animals and plants.

This is how the beaver bites

Source: Wikipedia

Travelling back cheesily

My home river, the River Havel, is a tributary to the the Elbe River which enters the North Sea in Hamburg. It is a small river, insignificant to most but the main structural force in my home town. The river connected the first settlers which were of Slavonic origin with Cölln (now Berlin) in the East and the old trade routes in the North Sea via the Elbe. The Havel is split up into several distinct arms in the city centre area which is therefore constituted of several islands, each with its own distinct history. The diocese of Brendanburg which my town emerged from was established in 948.

The little bridge that you can see on the right-hand side on the photo below was an important part of my childhood. My kindy was in this area and we’d always walk over this bridge, every day. Pretty scary that was, too, at least for children because the individual steps up the bridge have gaps in them (like a ladder, not like a death trap). Dropping something, anything, meant most likely dropping it into the water straight away. Which one girl did: Lioba Pitt (this memory comes with the girl’s complete name, I’m not sure why) lost her shoe on the bridge one day, I don’t know how she did that, and it dropped into the water. The nursery nurse had to crawl down by the side of the bridge to try and get it whilst we other kids were standing on the scary bridge waiting, developing an intense dislike for Lioba for bringing us into this situation.

Originally uploaded on de.wikipedia by Benutzer:Leonce49 at 18:33, 8. Aug 2005. Filename was ROLAND.jpg

The bigger bridge in the distance is called the Jahrtausendbrücke, the One-thousand-year bridge. It connects the Old Town with the New Town. Legend has it that the town charter was connected with a big Roland statue and that whichever town, be it the old or the new, had the Roland in its possession had the market right and all the rest of it. So the Roland which is now made of sandstone but was originally made of wood was stolen and retrieved several times, always during the night, and it was always carried across the Jahrtausendbrücke. The statue is over 5m high and even when it was made out of wood it must have been heavy. I always chuckle at the futility of stealing this thing back and forth several times – so much effort!!! But having a Roland meant possessing freedom and the saintly protection of the heroic Roland who, according to myth, defended his people who lived somehwere in the Pyrenees against a invasion by the migthy Basques in the 8th century.

My town was pretty grey before the wall came down but has become increasingly pretty in the last few years. Tourism is flourishing now. Look at these neat little rafts; you can hire them and cruise through the city, hehe!

Cradle of civilisation rocks again

Saddam Hussein had the unique marsh lands of Southern Iraq drained so as to punish the local Arabs, Der Spiegel reports, but the marshlands are being nurtured back to life.

Water buffalo snort as they swim past the boat. Alwash, a broad-shouldered man with bushy gray hair and a moustache, is beaming as he sits upright on the rowing bench. “Just look at this,” he says. “There was a desert here just a few months ago.”

1974, The Marshes, near Nasiriya, Iraq --- Marsh Arab Village --- Image by ?? Nik Wheeler/CORBIS

These marshes are believed to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. The local people, the Madan, supported the last Shiite rising against Saddam Hussein who retaliated by destroying the marshes.

Within a few years, the marshland had shrunk to less than 10 percent of its original size. In a place that was once teeming with wildlife — wild boar, hyenas, foxes, otters, water snakes and even lions — the former reed beds had been turned into barren salt flats, poisoned and full of land mines. In a 2001 report, the United Nations characterized the destruction of the marshes as one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters.

The marshes are being flooded by and by, and it looks as thought 40 per cent of the original area could be restored again in the long run. But what strange prospects: the landmines are there to stay, to be submerged by the waters and who knows what damage they can still cause.

But this is how it might be again within the next few years:

In Al-Hammar, a labyrinth of waterways leads through dense, meter-high reeds and comes together to form larger lakes. Dewdrops glisten on the reeds, rustling as they recede alongside the passing boat. A crescent moon fades away as the sun grows stronger. Tiny fish dash through the water, fleeing a water snake. And the birds are back: night herons, pied kingfishers, purple herons, little grebes, black-tailed godwits and marbled ducks.

Reed huts surrounded by sleepy water buffalo stand on small islands. Men and women with sunburned faces and long robes glide through the water in boats, cutting reeds, occasionally raising their hands in greeting.

That is, until the oil companies push to drill for oil in the area.