What a weekend, folks. And we survived! Both the Ice Hockey World Championships and the EU election. And the pics taken after Finland won 3-1, oh man, they’re priceless! How do people celebrate? They find the nearest fountain and dive in in their undies. No fountain? No problem, just find the nearest market square and within minutes there’s a spontaneous party going on. Foolish Canadians, going in thinking easy win. Awesome Finns, not giving in or giving a toss about NHL stars, stats or what the bookies were saying. What a game, folks.
A new European Parliament is in the making. The populists and nationalists made gains at the expense of the old guard, but it wasn’t quite the sweeping victory they were expecting. The Greens are on the rise and with the times, at least in western parts of Europe. How far can regressive rule take the rest of Europe? I mean how far back in time. Younger Europeans have no firsthand experience or memory of what it was to live under communist rule or fascism. Older Europeans still do. And not many are willing to go back or see history repeating. The names and faces may have changed, but the new boss looks suspiciously like the old boss, the new order like the one they used to have. No thanks, never again.
I hope you remember why the EU, or any intergovernmental organization promoting cooperation, peace and order, was formed. I hope you agree this world still needs these organizations. Above all, I hope that despite their flaws, you don’t give up on them, on us, but commit to working things out for our sake. What a task, folks, beating the odds, but together…why not?
Dita Parker
Monday, May 27, 2019
Friday, May 24, 2019
Cheers (drink to that)
Temperature: a lush but cool 10/50 degrees
Eating: some lunch salad in a minute
Drinking: a friend of mine certainly is; when she is happy and when she is sad, when she wants to celebrate or commiserate, any excuse will do, really, but I don’t think she needs one anymore, she needs that drink and since she’s a big girl she’s having it, she doesn’t need anyone’s permission; and her friends have tried tough love, we’ve tried talking sense and health, physical and mental, every angle we can think of, but she’s not listening, she’s withdrawing, and if you’ve ever been there you know the pain and sorrow and horror we’re all feeling watching her drown in something that used to be a fun night out
Watching: The Ice Hockey World Championships, look at those Finns go! (Förlåt, Sverige, bara en kan vinna.)
Listening: to my kids make music every chance they get, sure I’m biased but wow
Reading: I want to recommend some: How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.
Thinking: Time to vote, Europe! We got an awesome Eurovision winner (no flashy costume, no fireworks, just a song, a story, not from a hit factory but the heart), now it's time to choose us a new parliament. And please please please not something along the lines of Poland's Law and Justice, which serves neither. In a session that took a mere 3 hours and 37 minutes they went for the jugular, the judiciary, and it's been all downhill from there. Let's not take that path. Let's not bring more provincial bickering, more division, more strong-arming into a house that must work together to tackle the problems that concern and threaten us all.
Feeling: Re the U.S. abortion bans: We're back there again? Women are shocked but not surprised. Also, we're frustrated, and exhausted of having to prove our full humanity when it should be a given. But it's not. It's still not. Not by a long shot and not universally as it should be. Help us out, gentlemen. Don't just empathize; sympathize, out loud. And many of you do and it's wonderful and we're grateful, but let's keep going. Let's keep showing up and speaking up and letting the powers that would like us to sit down and shut up know that we're present and listening and watching closely. And we're not gonna take it. We won't be subjugated or silenced. We are NOT going back there again, we are moving forward, together.
Eating: some lunch salad in a minute
Drinking: a friend of mine certainly is; when she is happy and when she is sad, when she wants to celebrate or commiserate, any excuse will do, really, but I don’t think she needs one anymore, she needs that drink and since she’s a big girl she’s having it, she doesn’t need anyone’s permission; and her friends have tried tough love, we’ve tried talking sense and health, physical and mental, every angle we can think of, but she’s not listening, she’s withdrawing, and if you’ve ever been there you know the pain and sorrow and horror we’re all feeling watching her drown in something that used to be a fun night out
Watching: The Ice Hockey World Championships, look at those Finns go! (Förlåt, Sverige, bara en kan vinna.)
Listening: to my kids make music every chance they get, sure I’m biased but wow
Reading: I want to recommend some: How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.
Thinking: Time to vote, Europe! We got an awesome Eurovision winner (no flashy costume, no fireworks, just a song, a story, not from a hit factory but the heart), now it's time to choose us a new parliament. And please please please not something along the lines of Poland's Law and Justice, which serves neither. In a session that took a mere 3 hours and 37 minutes they went for the jugular, the judiciary, and it's been all downhill from there. Let's not take that path. Let's not bring more provincial bickering, more division, more strong-arming into a house that must work together to tackle the problems that concern and threaten us all.
Feeling: Re the U.S. abortion bans: We're back there again? Women are shocked but not surprised. Also, we're frustrated, and exhausted of having to prove our full humanity when it should be a given. But it's not. It's still not. Not by a long shot and not universally as it should be. Help us out, gentlemen. Don't just empathize; sympathize, out loud. And many of you do and it's wonderful and we're grateful, but let's keep going. Let's keep showing up and speaking up and letting the powers that would like us to sit down and shut up know that we're present and listening and watching closely. And we're not gonna take it. We won't be subjugated or silenced. We are NOT going back there again, we are moving forward, together.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Human league
We celebrated Europe Day on Thursday. What do you mean you didn’t? What do you mean there’s nothing to celebrate?! I thought we agreed we’re neither cynics nor quitters, dearest denizens, hmm? Desperate times call for decisive measures. Desperate times are the perfect time to commit to core values. What do you mean you have trouble remembering what those are? Ah, I think I know what you’re thinking…
Money, numbers, trade cycles, corporate jargon…they permeate everything. The only value acknowledged seems to be market value. More and more you feel not like a citizen but a consumer, a customer. Well, sweetie darlings, if that’s the lingua franca of the world, let’s be really, terrifyingly demanding customers, locally, nationally, internationally. Our money, our choice. Demand to know where the money goes, when, why, what is done with it and who benefits from it. Cui bono? Who stands to gain? (And that is the question. And I don’t mean in a what’s-in-it-for-me kind of way; the treasury is not your piggy bank, it’s ours. I mean it in a do-decisions-benefit-the-99%-or-the-1% kind of way? Are we talking common good or private profit?) Demand transparency and accountability. Your money, your right.
Where people go politicians and policies ought to follow. Don’t sit out elections; local, national, EU level. Ever. Vote. Don’t lament the state of policy or politics or politicians, vote. Vote. Engage. Participate. Challenge. We put our representatives in place and we have the power to put them out of their jobs if they’re not doing theirs. Simple as that. Unless you live in Turkey, for instance, where the ruling party did not get the result they wanted in Istanbul so let’s have another round and see if we can’t get a result more to our liking. Now there’s a country sliding so fast under authoritarian rule they’ve stopped being subtle or sneaky about it. If they ever were, in hindsight. And speaking of hindsight, here’s a common reasoning error:
If the present state of things seems bad, things must have been so much better in the past. So the logical move is to turn back the clock at all costs, disregarding the fact that things weren’t that grand in the past and that the present is a vast improvement. Pining for a uniform culture is the greatest lie of all. But that’s what the rising tide of nationalism and nativism panders: a return to an imaginary past of imaginary glory inhabited by supposedly happy citizens living in a peaceful and prosperous homeland. Where everything and everyone is in agreement. Or else. Which sounds kind of like North Korea. And no one wants to live in North Korea. Not even North Koreans.
It’s an incremental process, stripping us of our rights and liberties, a chance to have our say, to dissent. It’s a local decision here and a legal precedent there. One move might not be alarming but string them and you start to see a pattern. Reason fights against reading too much into things, venturing into conspiracy territory, people tend to see patterns where none exist, and I mean they wouldn’t, would they? But they have. All over the world, time and time again. They most certainly would and could even in our neck of the woods, given a chance. How many rights and liberties can you surrender before you live in a totalitarian state? Better not let things go that far because the day you get your answer it will be too late.
And what is this grudge with government people seem to have? Is it a case of not understanding what the government or the EU is and what it does and what purpose it serves? A government works for the people and the common good. Your government works for you. The EU works for EU citizens. We, the people, make up that union. Its home is not in Brussels or Strasbourg but in every household in the Union. We are all part of it. We all have a part to play and we all have a say in how things are managed. And if you feel they’re being mismanaged then speak up, and vote. United we stand, divided we fall. It’s up to Europeans to make the stars on the European flag align, for our sake. And what is this beef with socialism the Trumps of this world have? That’s like saying this government will never work for all its citizens but…yeah, who does it work for then?
[And dearest Americans, please try to distill the signals from the noise. You have an administration taking data and services designed to serve you all, paid for with your tax dollars, being suppressed and monetized by freeloading companies selling that same data and the very same services back to you for a profit. Oh, you don’t have to take my word for it. Ask the Department of Energy or Commerce what’s going on.]
The problems our home planet faces observe no borders. They climb walls, they swim channels, they cross oceans, they are airborne. They are our problems. Not something for someone else to take care of but ours. Nothing will get fixed if we start hiding behind walls, across channels and oceans thinking nothing can touch us now. Start thinking that and you’ll have another think coming. We need multilateral treaties and agreements, fact-based decision making, and cultural sensitivity. We need reminders of what we can achieve working together and what we stand to lose if we choose isolation and imperialism.
What we really don’t need is a nostalgia trip into our not so distant and very violent past when our raison d’être was to go against one another. Just look at our track record. Those were some pretty shitty times. Because our worst instincts always lead us astray. They lead to bullying, blaming the victim, playing the victim, hatred, cruelty, and war. It never ends well. It always ends in death, devastation and centuries-long grudges. Humans at their worst. There’s no pride, glory or victory in being a human devoid of humanity, homo idioticus instead of sapiens. But it’s easy, isn’t it? It’s easier reacting, being angry, petty and vindictive than prudent, benevolent and respectful. The latter require an effort, a commitment, focus. But without that effort, commitment and focus, without a warm heart and a cool head, we are just homo idioticus about to get ours.
We are one another’s safety net, sweetie darlings. We are family, and like all families we have our disagreements and our screaming matches, our conflicting views and values, our frustrations and limitations. But when the chips are down, we ought to pull together to help one another. Because that’s what families do. That’s what friends do. That’s what humans do best.
Oh, you socialist…idealist…dingbat. Aww, thank you! There’s more where this came from. It was so good talking to you, human to human. Now let’s get back to work. Yours. Mine. Ours.
Money, numbers, trade cycles, corporate jargon…they permeate everything. The only value acknowledged seems to be market value. More and more you feel not like a citizen but a consumer, a customer. Well, sweetie darlings, if that’s the lingua franca of the world, let’s be really, terrifyingly demanding customers, locally, nationally, internationally. Our money, our choice. Demand to know where the money goes, when, why, what is done with it and who benefits from it. Cui bono? Who stands to gain? (And that is the question. And I don’t mean in a what’s-in-it-for-me kind of way; the treasury is not your piggy bank, it’s ours. I mean it in a do-decisions-benefit-the-99%-or-the-1% kind of way? Are we talking common good or private profit?) Demand transparency and accountability. Your money, your right.
Where people go politicians and policies ought to follow. Don’t sit out elections; local, national, EU level. Ever. Vote. Don’t lament the state of policy or politics or politicians, vote. Vote. Engage. Participate. Challenge. We put our representatives in place and we have the power to put them out of their jobs if they’re not doing theirs. Simple as that. Unless you live in Turkey, for instance, where the ruling party did not get the result they wanted in Istanbul so let’s have another round and see if we can’t get a result more to our liking. Now there’s a country sliding so fast under authoritarian rule they’ve stopped being subtle or sneaky about it. If they ever were, in hindsight. And speaking of hindsight, here’s a common reasoning error:
If the present state of things seems bad, things must have been so much better in the past. So the logical move is to turn back the clock at all costs, disregarding the fact that things weren’t that grand in the past and that the present is a vast improvement. Pining for a uniform culture is the greatest lie of all. But that’s what the rising tide of nationalism and nativism panders: a return to an imaginary past of imaginary glory inhabited by supposedly happy citizens living in a peaceful and prosperous homeland. Where everything and everyone is in agreement. Or else. Which sounds kind of like North Korea. And no one wants to live in North Korea. Not even North Koreans.
It’s an incremental process, stripping us of our rights and liberties, a chance to have our say, to dissent. It’s a local decision here and a legal precedent there. One move might not be alarming but string them and you start to see a pattern. Reason fights against reading too much into things, venturing into conspiracy territory, people tend to see patterns where none exist, and I mean they wouldn’t, would they? But they have. All over the world, time and time again. They most certainly would and could even in our neck of the woods, given a chance. How many rights and liberties can you surrender before you live in a totalitarian state? Better not let things go that far because the day you get your answer it will be too late.
And what is this grudge with government people seem to have? Is it a case of not understanding what the government or the EU is and what it does and what purpose it serves? A government works for the people and the common good. Your government works for you. The EU works for EU citizens. We, the people, make up that union. Its home is not in Brussels or Strasbourg but in every household in the Union. We are all part of it. We all have a part to play and we all have a say in how things are managed. And if you feel they’re being mismanaged then speak up, and vote. United we stand, divided we fall. It’s up to Europeans to make the stars on the European flag align, for our sake. And what is this beef with socialism the Trumps of this world have? That’s like saying this government will never work for all its citizens but…yeah, who does it work for then?
[And dearest Americans, please try to distill the signals from the noise. You have an administration taking data and services designed to serve you all, paid for with your tax dollars, being suppressed and monetized by freeloading companies selling that same data and the very same services back to you for a profit. Oh, you don’t have to take my word for it. Ask the Department of Energy or Commerce what’s going on.]
The problems our home planet faces observe no borders. They climb walls, they swim channels, they cross oceans, they are airborne. They are our problems. Not something for someone else to take care of but ours. Nothing will get fixed if we start hiding behind walls, across channels and oceans thinking nothing can touch us now. Start thinking that and you’ll have another think coming. We need multilateral treaties and agreements, fact-based decision making, and cultural sensitivity. We need reminders of what we can achieve working together and what we stand to lose if we choose isolation and imperialism.
What we really don’t need is a nostalgia trip into our not so distant and very violent past when our raison d’être was to go against one another. Just look at our track record. Those were some pretty shitty times. Because our worst instincts always lead us astray. They lead to bullying, blaming the victim, playing the victim, hatred, cruelty, and war. It never ends well. It always ends in death, devastation and centuries-long grudges. Humans at their worst. There’s no pride, glory or victory in being a human devoid of humanity, homo idioticus instead of sapiens. But it’s easy, isn’t it? It’s easier reacting, being angry, petty and vindictive than prudent, benevolent and respectful. The latter require an effort, a commitment, focus. But without that effort, commitment and focus, without a warm heart and a cool head, we are just homo idioticus about to get ours.
We are one another’s safety net, sweetie darlings. We are family, and like all families we have our disagreements and our screaming matches, our conflicting views and values, our frustrations and limitations. But when the chips are down, we ought to pull together to help one another. Because that’s what families do. That’s what friends do. That’s what humans do best.
Oh, you socialist…idealist…dingbat. Aww, thank you! There’s more where this came from. It was so good talking to you, human to human. Now let’s get back to work. Yours. Mine. Ours.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
May Day
Temperature: 11/52 degrees with Arctic winds blowing in
Eating: funnel cake and churros
Drinking: a local variety of mead
Watching: You get one guess, and one hint: it rhymes with Name of Scones.
Listening: to the sounds of spring
Reading: some stuff for work
Thinking: All hail Saint Walpurga for giving us an excuse to take a mini spring break.
Feeling: Flashes of eye-watering, nausea-inducing pain in my hip; the toll of four decades of busting moves? Better not be, I’m planning on at least four more.
Eating: funnel cake and churros
Drinking: a local variety of mead
Watching: You get one guess, and one hint: it rhymes with Name of Scones.
Listening: to the sounds of spring
Reading: some stuff for work
Thinking: All hail Saint Walpurga for giving us an excuse to take a mini spring break.
Feeling: Flashes of eye-watering, nausea-inducing pain in my hip; the toll of four decades of busting moves? Better not be, I’m planning on at least four more.
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