The sound of broken glass and broken bones

Today is the 75^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On 9 November 1938, in “response” to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a minor functionary in the German embassy in Paris, by a teen-aged Polish Jew, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated “spontaneous” acts of outrage on Jewish homes, shops and synagogues throughout Germany.

More than 200 synagogues and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked and torched throughout the Reich (which by then included Austria and most of Czechoslovakia), starting the night of the 9^th and; continuing through the next day. Efforts by municipal fire and police services to stop the conflagrations and violence were blocked by Nazi storm troopers. More than 90 Jews were murdered and 30,000 men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Hermann Goering, Oberbefehlshaber of the Luftwaffe, Prussian minister of the interior (thus head of the largest police force in Germany) and chief Nazi clothes horse, berated Goebbels for mismanaging the affair—since despite countless millions in goods looted, not a pfennig had made its way into state coffers.

By way of placating Goering, Goebbels decreed that German Jews should pay an indemnity of 1 billion Reichsmarks “for causing the damage” that now littered communities throughout the Reich.

And he collected.

“Kristallnacht“doesn’t really convey the full horror of these events. Although the Nazis had been steadily closing in the walls on Jews according to the blueprint patently evident in Mein Kampf, and had even essayed a public boycott of Jewish businesses (unsuccessful, as it happens, so not repeated) shortly after taking power in 1933, this was the first instance where widespread violence and murder were unleashed on the community.

And this time they were successful. There were no substantial protests either internally or from the fraternity of nations. The Nazis had removed their gloves and revealed their brass knuckles—and no one cared. There were a few lackluster objections from here or there, but no official recognition (much less outrage) that this was a state act of collective violence against a group of people. Likewise no one seemed to connect the dots that there could be other groups on the murder list to be lined up after the Jews were eliminated.

Some time ago, I was following the pilgrim’s route from Paris to Santiago de Compostela. I’d checked in to the Auberge de Jeunesse in Bordeaux and was riding my bicycle around the town. At one stop light a young man on a bicycle came up beside me—he must have recognized by the panniers that I wasn’t a local—and we struck up a conversation. He was also outfitted for distance—I think he was working the vendange (I ran into a lot of kids at hostels who were following the harvest around the country), but at this point I can’t really recall.

Anyhow, he was German and told me that he was heading over to the “main” synagogue (the Great Synagogue). Seems he’d never in his life (of probably 20 years) seen a Jewish temple, and thought he should do so. (My first thought was, “Okay, there’s a reason you’ve never seen a synagogue on the hoof—do you know what that is?” But I didn’t bring it up and neither did he.) He’d been by earlier but was told he should return in the afternoon. He invited me along.

Well, my only diary-entry for Bordeaux was going to be the Centre Jean Moulin (museum of the Résistance), so he and I cycled over to the shul. He was such a trusting soul he didn’t even lock his bike, just leaned it up against the wall.

He rang the bell and we were buzzed in; no one came to greet us, we just went in. I have to say I felt a little on edge—didn’t know whether he was going to pull a Molotov out of his jeans and finish off one of the ones the Nazis missed 35 years earlier. But in the end we just wandered around the sanctuary, unescorted, looking at the space so different from Christian churches.

Actually, at the time this was only the second temple I’d ever been in, so I wasn’t that much further along culturally speaking that my companion.

We could hear voices in other rooms, but no one ever did come out to check on us. After a while, we let ourselves out. He went on to find a place to camp for the night (the hostel’s couple of francs was more than he wanted to spend) and I headed off to the museum. (Which, BTW, had a terrific collection of propaganda posters. Some of them are still quite vivid in my mind.)

I wonder if he’s remembering his first visit to a synagogue on this anniversary, and how he had to travel hundreds of miles out of Germany to find it?

I also wonder if we’ve progressed since 1938—no one did much about the Serbian or Rwandan versions of Kristallnacht, did they?

A few years ago I wondered if we’ve progressed since 1979—would the keepers of a synagogue anywhere today buzz in someone to have unaccompanied free rein of the sanctuary? I found out in 2009 when I retraced the French part of my pilgrimage: you can’t get close to the Great Synagogue; it’s fenced off and I couldn’t even see where you might ring to get someone’s attention. Looking at that iron fence I thought, well, I guess 1979 was that brief window of lull in the storm—between the Nazi anti-Semites and the Islamists and National Front varieties of today.

So, I still don’t know how much progress we’ve made since Kristallnacht. But it’s a start if we remember.

One word, and it's not "plastics"

No—it's "catvertising".

I don’t know how I’ve missed this for the past two years, but it’s just as timely now as it was back when it was first posted.

Because “Nobody wants to see ads anymore; they want to see cat videos.”

I have to say that tears were leaking out my eyes as I watched this. I mean—that “Ninja Kitty” story board? Or the bar chart on cat videos overtaking online porn? This john st. crowd are just wicked funny, eh? (They’re Canadians.)

I’m keeping this one in clicking distance. I’m sure I’ll need it. 

Ecumenical sign of the times

I think this sign, which is on my walking route to the House of Skeletons, kind of summarizes the whole California gestalt:

I don’t know exactly which element takes precedence in terms of the California life—I mean, you’ve got Methodist, Lutheran and…um, I dunno sharing premises. In close temporal quarters—looks like the Methodists are still hanging about on their coffee hour when the Lutherans show up on a Sunday. And knowing how Lutherans like to settle in for gospels and stuff, I imagine they’re still there when the unknown denominational Koreans appear.

It’s not actually that unusual to see English-speaking congregations sharing with Chinese or Korean groups around here. It’s the ecumenicalism of this one that interests me.

Plus—you just gotta love a group that calls itself “The Very Good Church of Silicon Valley”. Or of anywhere else, for that matter.

Sorry to say that I missed the junque sale. 

Something for the roadmap, Facebook

I’ve installed a FireFox add-on that blocks Facebook ads—you know, the things that appear in the right-hand rail that are the result of web activity tracking cookies.

(Actually, I didn’t quite know what everyone was talking about when they complain about them until some FireFox extension kept crashing my browser, so I cleared off everything. Then—whoo, what a load of crap. So I fished out Adblock Plus and installed it again. Relief!)

But I still get some sponsored “suggestions”, which I’ve allowed (I think there is a way to expunge them, too, but they don’t bother me so much), including groups that friends may have joined, etc.

This one, I’m not so sure about:

As it turns out, this shows up every time I like something from UK Cop Humour. You know, the suggestion is—if you like UK Cop Humour, you might like these pages.

Well, no, not really. Might want to tweak your algorithm some, Facebook.

Genius marketing...not

I had to download a “free” 30-day trial subscription to Citrix’s Go-to-Meeting for a job interview a week ago. This was followed by “buy-our-software” emails every 36 hours. I found their “unsubscribe” link buried in the very small print at the absolute bottom of the emails and unsubscribed. But here’s what it tells you:

What the hell? Ten days? How crappy is their database that it takes ten bloody days for an unsubscribe request to filter through it? Not really a ringing endorsement of the power of their software design.

Here’s something for free, Citrix: you aren’t really going to sell a lot of subscriptions to your software after someone’s already told you they don’t want to hear from you. Any decision that I can influence in the future is going to be towards your competitors.

WebEx, anyone?

Gratitude Monday: Lights in the room

Yesterday marked the first day of the Hindu festival of Diwali, so today I’m grateful for all celebrations that mark the symbolic triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness and of sweetness over bitterness.

As I have since coming to the Valley they call Silicon, this year I again massed candles to drive back all manner of dark things. Not only do I like the soft light that groups of candles give off, the very act of lighting them one at a time and nursing along some of the ones at the end of their life slows me down. It calms me down.

Filling a room with candle light takes time; you can’t flip a switch and move on to the next task on your to-do list. And if you’re lighting those floating jobbers, you have to be very focused on not disturbing the water, because then it dowses the flames and you have to wipe them off and start over again. It’s like the count-breaths-to-21 methodology of meditation: if you lose count because your monkey mind is distracted, you have to begin again from one.

There are some days I never make it into double digits.

But there’s something about knowing how happy the moving lights will make me that enables me to persevere with candles. I light them, sit back and watch; and for at least a few minutes the world around me is peaceful and full of hope. Light prevails over darkness, love conquers fear, and good triumphs over evil.

Happy Diwali, all.

Not exactly a duck to water, but...

Okay, for our post-Halloween Friday silliness, here’s a swimming cat. And one who’s evidently not too happy about it.

Frankly, I kinda wonder how that cat came to be in a partially-filled bathtub, because the noise of water through the taps isn't generally music to their pointy little ears. But it's clearly happy. 

Almost Zen, in fact; except for that nervous tapping from its pal.

Scarier than a startup

I pointed out last year that here in the Valley they call Silicon, Halloween seems a pretty big deal. At least when it comes to decorating your yard. A couple of jack-o-lanterns and a construction-paper black cat slapped on the front window just do not cut it.

That one house I showed you last year is at it again—I think they must keep adding stuff every year.

This time around the two skeletons dining outside the gate have a dish of tiny skulls and bones shaped like spiders:

And the sleeping dog isn’t just lying, it’s covered in spiders and spiderwebs:

Then there’s this welcoming…ghoul, I guess:

This thing is so elaborate that they’ve been putting it together over many, many days. I took this about a week ago:

They were just getting started; note how the flying skeletons have been “fleshed” out:

And now there’s this:

I’m telling you—those spiders are working overtime to produce all this web stuff.

But, while really paying attention to detail, this particular household isn’t by any means alone in their enthusiasm. On my morning walks around the area, I’ve been finding all sorts of evidence of, um, skullduggery. And a lot of stuff hanging from trees. Like this:

And this:

And, from the same tree, this:

Over in Mountain View, I came across a tree witch:

(If you notice, there’s a light that could shine down on her; spooky.)

Nearby is one that wins the Best Use of Child’s Swing award:

If you notice the hand reaching up from the grass, that leads us to another theme—the From the Grave category. Lot of that going around.

Then there’s the splat witch:

She would hardly count, but there was also this:

Here’s another nightmare yard:

And another view:

(Notice the red light ready to cast a hellish glow. I’m telling you—Trick-or-Treaters are walking the gauntlet these days.)

One of the interesting things to me is that the people doing this stuff aren’t in…well, I was going to say they’re not in expensive houses. But that, of course, is relative. The houses are selling around the million mark (I pick up real estate flyers, too); but that’s pretty much low-range around here.

There’s one house on Sunnyvale Road, which looks like it’s maybe a two-bedroom-one-bath crackerbox. They went completely whole hog—well, whole zombie. Take a look:

This guy is almost stepping onto the sidewalk to go down the street to Target:

Obviously, he’s anxious about the sales:

His friend is so far behind him, she’s going to miss all the good stuff:

You can see her in the yard:

Where those (probably Bangladeshi) spiders have been hard at work covering the flamingo:

And, in the pink theme, here's the next generation of zombies:

Okay—not everyone is as inventive or as extravagant. This place in Mountain View is a sad attempt:

And this one isn’t even a nice try:

Happy Halloween!

Follower number six--my claim to fame

As you know, I find the Twitter-dot-com a great place for people watching. You can follow anyone there—from convicted felons to the Pope. I use my account to tap into all kinds of perspectives, including a few people who fall into the celebrity category.

No—not Kardashian-celebrity. But it turns out that William Shatner, for example, is pretty clever. And he really understands social media: he does a pretty good job of engaging with people; he does some promoting, but isn’t obnoxious about it; and he doesn’t get involved in flame-wars.

Well, I was Twitter-searching for Names I Know one day and came across Ray Stevenson. And I quite like some of his acting work, so I became follower number six (about which I tweeted). Even though I thought his presence there was kind of, well, bewildered. In a sweet, rather Titus Pullo way:

  

Since then he’s deleted a few tweets and added a couple, for a total in his queue of six tweets in five months.

Clearly he’s not quite grasping this whole thing, not even to the extent of hiring some tenth grader to toss out a few tweets every couple of weeks. He’s still collecting followers, though; and I live in hope.

But, you know, I'm not really following him for his social media skills; he has other assets.

One more perfect day

There’s been a whole lot of verbiage swirling around the Internet about Lou Reed since he died Sunday at age 71. I really only knew him from his Velvet Underground days—which had to have been named after his voice.

But it turns out that Reed was an exceptionally thoughtful, intelligent and aware human, as well as a solid songwriter and performer. He performed at benefit concerts for Tibetan causes, for Amnesty International and the ACLU. Two years ago he joined protestors at Occupy Wall Street.

You get a strong feel for his brain and his heart in this review he wrote of Kanye West’s Yeezus.

I’m sharing two videos with you. The first is a montage that distills Reed’s creative process and shows his adeptness at dealing with interviewers. He pretty well obliterates the one with his monosyllabic responses from behind those shades. But when he talks with Rose about his purpose in writing, and how he thinks of his music as being one-on-one—damn.

I think Reed would have despised the unavoidable 30-second advertisement attached to it.

And here’s his “Perfect Day”.