My Paternal Grandparents in Lodz

Haus von Josef und Hulda Spickermann during the 40ties

Above the house of Josef and Hulda Spickermann in Lodz during the years before the end of World War Two.

Josef Alexander and Hulda celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary in November 1943. All their children with all their spouses and most of the grandchildren were present. Josef and Hulda had three daughters and three sons: Olga, Jenny, Elisabeth (Lies) and Edmund (E), Alexander (Oleg) and Ludwig (Luttek). I have a picture of the Golden Wedding with everyone in it. Here it is:

Golden Wedding (2)

My father was the second son of Josef and Hulda. He married my mother, Irma Charlotte Summerer, on the 30th of September 1930. My mother was only nineteen at the time. Four years later, on the 21st of September 1934, I was born. In June of 1935 my parents travelled with me to Lodz (Poland) to visit Dad’s family there. My mother and I, we did not have our own passports. We were included in Dad’s passport as can be seen in the following picture.

Passport 1935

As far as I know we stayed in Lodz with Tante Lies and Onkel Alfred. I have several pictures that show me with their son Horst who was born on the 7th of February 1935. Tante Lies was about the same age as my mother. Whereas Onkel Alred was twenty years older than his wife. He owned huge properties. We always thought they were rich.

Juni 1935 in Haeuslers Pk Lodz

In the above picture I am in the pram with my cousin Horst. There are also cousins George and Gerd, the sons of Tante Olga as well as cousin Ursula, the daughter of Jenny. (Olga and Jenny were of course the older sisters of my mother.) The picture is taken in the park of the Häuslers, Horst’s parents.

Ute ist 6 Wochen alt

When I was six weeks old the grandparents, Hulda and Josef, came to Berlin for a visit, where they saw me for the first time. They were proud to have a grandchild by one of their sons. (Their other two sons did not have any children yet at the time). I think my twenty-three year old mother looks very pretty in that picture.

9.Juni 1938 Bodo ist nur ein paar Stunden alt

On the 9th of June 1938 my brother Bodo Alexander was born. He was born at home in our apartment in Berlin, Bozener Strasse. Here in this picture he is only a few hours old. I was thrilled to have a baby brother! I believed the ‘Klapperstorch’ had brought him. Mum’s sister Ilse was very excited about this addition to the family as well. Later on I always heard stories about how this home delivery took place. And I did sleep through all of it. When I woke up in the morning, Tante Ilse led me to the cot in the parent’s bedroom. And surprise, surprise, der Klapperstorch had brought a beautiful baby boy. There he was lying in the cot!

Ute mit Opa Spickerman am Reichssportfeld Juni 1938

Here I am with Opa Spickermann at the ‘Reichssportfeld’ in June 1938 soon after the birth of brother Bodo. I was a time when Mum still had to stay in bed. Tante Ilse and her husband Adolf Schlinke owned a ‘Wanderer’ car. In that they drove Dad, Opa and me to the Reichssportfeld for an outing. Probably so Opa could see a bit of Berlin. Presumably he had come all the way from Lodz to Berlin to see his first born grandson by the name of Spickermann.

Dad, Granddad, Tante Ilse and little Uta, (I guess, Onkel Addi took the picture.)
Dad, Granddad, Tante Ilse and little Uta,
(I guess, Onkel Addi took the picture.)
This is a picture of Dad's sisters from 1927 in Lodz.
This is a picture of Dad’s sisters from 1927 in Lodz.

Back to the Future

Ja, Berlin ist eine Reise wert. Tenth trip to Berlin. This is quite an achievement, coming all the way from Australia! Best wishes for a good time in Berlin, Peter! Indeed, I am very much looking forward to this trip too.

berlioz1935's avatarBerlioz1935's Blog

“Back to the Future”, everyone knows that title from the film trilogy  by Robert Zemeckis with Micheal J. Fox in the starring role. It is with a rather quiet satisfaction that I can say, I thought of the title already in 1977  before anybody thought of the film.

The title came to my mind for a diary I was going to write about my first trip back  from Australia to West-Berlin.

Germany, and with it West-Berlin, had experienced an economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) and I wanted to see those changes.

I bought a big, fat copy book. Its title is still  the only written evidence  of that trip. Actually, it is no evidence at all, just a thought bubble.

Now, thirty-eight years later, it came to my mind again, as my wife and I, plus a large number of my family are preparing for another trip to that beloved city of my personal history.

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An Amazon Book: Ritual and its Consequences

Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity 1st Edition
by Adam B. Seligman (Author), Robert P. Weller (Author), Michael J. Puett (Author), Simon (Author)

Going to the above link I found this interesting write-up:

“This pioneering, interdisciplinary work shows how rituals allow us to live in a perennially imperfect world. Drawing on a variety of cultural settings, the authors utilize psychoanalytic and anthropological perspectives to describe how ritual–like play–creates “as if” worlds, rooted in the imaginative capacity of the human mind to create a subjunctive universe. The ability to cross between imagined worlds is central to the human capacity for empathy. Ritual, they claim, defines the boundaries of these imagined worlds, including those of empathy and other realms of human creativity, such as music, architecture and literature.

The authors juxtapose this ritual orientation to a “sincere” search for unity and wholeness. The sincere world sees fragmentation and incoherence as signs of inauthenticity that must be overcome. Our modern world has accepted the sincere viewpoint at the expense of ritual, dismissing ritual as mere convention. In response, the authors show how the conventions of ritual allow us to live together in a broken world. Ritual is work, endless work. But it is among the most important things that we humans do.”

Here are some more editorial Reviews:

“In this whirligig world we do not know what to do apart from the done thing. Ritual and courtesy are, in contemporary parlance, suspect activities surplus to requirements. Like conformity, ritual attracts the adjectives ‘mere,’ ‘meaningless,’ ‘external,’ ’empty’ and ‘inauthentic.’ This book brilliantly expounds the creative potential and the necessity of ritual, and exposes the destructive possibilities of sincerity. It could be seen as part of a Jewish riposte to Christianity or a Confucian one to the Enlightenment, but Catholics and members of enclosed orders will like it too. Everybody should read it, especially American Protestants and post-Protestant secularists who suffer more than most from the ills of sincerity.” –David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics

“In this whirligig world we do not know what to do apart from the done thing. Ritual and courtesy are, in contemporary parlance, suspect activities surplus to requirements. Like conformity, ritual attracts the adjectives ‘mere,’ ‘meaningless,’ ‘external,’ ’empty’ and ‘inauthentic.’ This book brilliantly expounds the creative potential and the necessity of ritual, and exposes the destructive possibilities of sincerity. It could be seen as part of a Jewish riposte to Christianity or a Confucian one to the Enlightenment, but Catholics and members of enclosed orders will like it too. Everybody should read it, especially American Protestants and post-Protestant secularists who suffer more than most from the ills of sincerity.” –David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics

“An enormously important and paradigm-changing book. The audacity of its scope is refreshing–a turn to grand theory in an academic culture whose trend is to say more and more and less and less.”Common Knowledge

“…A new, interesting, and very fruitful approach towards understanding and using the concept of ‘ritual.'”–Religion

About the Authors
Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion and Research Associate at the Institute for Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. Robert P. Weller is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Research Associate at the Institute for Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. Michael J. Puett is Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University. Bennett Simon is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Training and Supervising Analyst at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

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Extract from an AIM Interview with Malcolm Turnbull

This interview, according to our prime minister, shows how important it is to look after the rich. This for sure gives people an incentive not to be poor. Indeed, why do we have to pay foreigners to do the sort of work Australians could do if only they had the wish to become rich!

http://theaimn.com/little-balance-liberal-party-seem-rather-unbalanced-lately/

” . . . . After all, we live in a capitalist system and that’s something that the Labor Party don’t seem to understand. It’s only by looking after the rich that people have an incentive not to be poor and then they’ll take on the sort of work that we now have to pay foreigners to do.”
“I did get your letter, thanks. I noticed that it told us that Export Trade Deals would generate 19,000 new export opportunities and you said that 200,000 more jobs would be created in the next financial year. Where did you get those numbers from?”
“Well, it’s common sense really.”
“So you’ve just plucked them out of the air.”
“No, we put them down on paper.”
“But why, did you say 19,000 opportunities?”
“Well, it seemed like a pretty good number. We’re being conservative because we could have said that as there are billions of people in the countries we’ve negotiated trade deals with that there are billions of opportunities, but that sounded too much like we were just making it up.”
“But did you do any economic modelling?”
“Of course not, economic modelling is far too costly and theoretic and it’s far better to go for the tried and true method of using a number that’s small enough to be believable but still big enough to be impressive.”

Introducing Kate Tempest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Tempest

Kate Tempest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kate Tempest
Born Kate Esther Calvert[1]
22 December 1985 (age 30)
Brockley, South East London, England
Occupation Poet, playwright, rapper, recording artist
Notable work Hopelessly Devoted, Wasted, Brand New Ancients, Everybody Down, Hold Your Own
Website katetempest.co.uk
Musical career
Genres Spoken word, hip-hop
Instruments Vocals
Labels Big Dada, Ninja Tune
Kate Tempest (born Kate Esther Calvert, 22 December 1985) is an English poet, spoken word artist and playwright. In 2013 she won the Ted Hughes Award for her work Brand New Ancients.[2] In 2015-16, she was a visiting fellow in the Department of English, University College, London.
Contents [hide]
1 Life and work
2 Reception
3 References
4 External links
Life and work[edit]
Tempest grew up in Brockley, South East London, one of five children. She describes growing up in “a shitty part of town, but in a nice house where there was always food”, and developing her work ethic by seeing her father go from working as a labourer, through night-school to becoming a criminal lawyer by the time she was eight years old.[3]
She enjoyed her primary school experience but was unhappy at secondary school. She cites her English teacher Mr Bradshaw as an encouraging influence who read her early poetry and gave her books to inspire her. She says she had a “wayward youth”, living in squats, “hanging around on picket lines rapping at riot cops”. She worked in a record shop from age 14 to 18. At 16 she studied at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon and she went on to graduate in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London.[2]
She describes the London marches to call an end to the Iraq war as a point of disillusionment when she saw that the message of millions of people did not change the direction of the war.[3][4][5][6]
Tempest first performed when she was 16, at open mic nights at Deal Real, a small hip hop store on Carnaby Street in London’s West End. She went on to support acts such as John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and Scroobius Pip. She toured Europe, Australia and America with her band ‘Sound of Rum’ and worked with organisations such as Yale University, the BBC, Apples and Snakes, The Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Tempest has performed at venues such as Glastonbury, Latitude, The Wandering Word tent at Shambala, The Big Chill and the Nu-Yorican poetry café, where she won two poetry slams. Her first poetry book was Everything Speaks in its Own Way, followed by her first work of theatre, Wasted. At 26, she launched the theatrical spoken word piece Brand New Ancients at the Battersea Arts Centre (2012), to great critical acclaim.[3][4][5][7] The piece also won Tempest the 2013 Off West End Award (“The Offies”) for “Best TBC Production”. Tempest’s influences include, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, W B Yeats, William Blake, W H Auden and Wu-Tang Clan.[4][5][8]At the Barbican launch of ‘The Bricks that Build the Houses’, Tempest explained how many people thought of Virginia Woolf when reading her work but she had never actually read much Woolf. Tempest also explained how all writers and artists are using the same material, the bubbling content of humanity, and that this causes continuities between writers, even those that have not read one another.
In 2014 she released the album Everybody Down (Big Dada), which was produced by Dan Carey and was nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize.[9] In January 2015 the album was given the inaugural “Soundcheck Award” for the best album of 2014 by Radioeins and Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin.
Reception[edit]
The Economist said of Tempest’s commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company: “A stunning piece by Kate Tempest, a London-born performance poet, comes bursting off the screen. Rarely has the relevance of Shakespeare to our language, to the very fabric of our feelings, been expressed with quite such youthful passion. (It should be mandatory viewing for all teenagers.)”[10] The Huffington Post describes her as “Britain’s leading young poet, playwright and rapper…one of the most widely respected performers in the country – the complete package of lyrics and delivery. She is also one of the most exciting young writers working in Britain today.” (2012)[3] The Guardian commented of Brand New Ancients, “Suddenly it feels as if we are not in a theatre but a church… gathered around a hearth, hearing the age-old stories that help us make sense of our lives. We’re given the sense that what we are watching is something sacred.”[11] In 2013 the newspaper noted:
She is one of the brightest talents around. Her spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry, the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart… Tempest deals bravely with poverty, class and consumerism. She does so in a way that not only avoids the pitfalls of sounding trite, but manages to be beautiful too, drawing on ancient mythology and sermonic cadence to tell stories of the everyday.[12]
In 2013 she won the Ted Hughes Award for her work Brand New Ancients.,[2] and was selected as one of the 2014 Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Society.

The system is the problem — The AIM Network

By Christian Marx Over the past three decades, the political and sociological narrative has become narrower than ever. Sensible social policies are now trumpeted as “dangerously communist”. The most basic social systems are labelled “hand outs for bludgers”. The Murdoch press is a hateful echo chamber for the intellectually stunted and the shallow thinkers. It……

via The system is the problem — The AIM Network