(Jackson Street) Books on 7th is around the corner and on the internet tubes. We strive to be your full-service new and used bookstore, emphasizing good literature, progressive politics, and, of course, books about baseball. Opened in Hoquiam October 1, 2010
Sorry for dawdling with my travelog entries, but as you all know, X-mas is exhausting... However, seeing as one of the main reasons for this trip at this time had been for me to have a real X-mas (i.e., not in summer) with a real tree with real candles on it, I thought I’d send you a few pics of said tree. So, here we go, the tree being chosenwrapped transported home expertly and decorated By the way, in Germany Santa, who around here is not called Santa but “der Weihnachtsmann” (the Christmasman), comes to bring his presents on the evening of the 24 December. The kids usually wait in the kitchen, while one or the other parent oversees the transaction in the living room. The wait in the kitchen is on average 3.7 days long when you’re six years old, and then progressively decreases over the years until it is but a few minutes when you’re 36. (I timed it over the years, and can send a time series graph on request.) I hope der Weihnachtsmann was as generous with all of you as he was with me (yay! I can afford Disneyland now!), and that you all had a wonderful time!
More episodes to come... Serenity
P.S. Still no snow. I asked mom to have a word with the weather. The forecast says there is a chance for "a few flakes” over the next few days. It’d better snow before I leave here on Monday! S.
Having been "tagged" by the Rev. Paperboy over at his place, The Woodshed, I submit to you the worldly earnings of SeattleDan:
Made construction tools (very menial) for my good friends father's business Ran a music shop that sold bootleg 4-track, then 8-track tapes Bussed tables/Washed dishes for the UCLA cafeteria Retail Clerk B. Dalton Books Portland, Or. Retail/Shipping Receiving Clerk Pickwick Bookshop Beverly Hills Owned/Operated Agenbite Books Seattle, Wa. Retail/Shipping Receiving Clerk/Asst. Mgr. Tower Books Seattle Sales Rep University of Chicago Press Chicago Ill. (very short stint) Store Mgr./District Mgr. Crown Books Seattle, Wa. (horrible company, good riddance to bad trash-main perk was meeting Tammy) General Book Buyer/Eventually Asst. Mgr. Seattle University Bookstore (17 years, first 15 great, wonderful boss; last 2 miserable, with worse boss ever) Owner/Operator Jackson Street Books formerly of Seattle, now conveniently located in Hoquiam, Wa.
SeattleTammy's resume: Strawberry Picker Babysitter Raspberry Picker Ole Lady HouseCleaner/ButtWiper Service Sales and Water Duty - Plant store in Parkland, next to a yarn store, 2 blocks off of PLU campus Dairy Dell- learning how to make chocolate/banana milk shakes and french fries? DeliveryVan Driver Floral Shop- everybody loves you but no one tips you. Job Duty #1: comb out shop owner's 4 foot long hair and braid it. also became floral arranger. The Depot, stained glass studio! OMG! I am PUTTY GIRL! I am so honored! Especially when I drive to Puyallup 15 years later and see my drawing on a Billboard. (note to self: Never leave drawings behind.) Graphic Artist: Johnson-Cox Printers: I had a great drawing room in an ancient building, until the art director laid blame on me for mis-casting the type on a brochure. Tony Ford Ad Agency, I did a Don Bonker brochure and the back page of a Sunset Magazine Jenny. That was a lost year! What didn't I do? Azteca waitress. It's hard being the token gringa! Waldenbooks! Vi Bruster taught me how to sell books. Crown Books! Pat S introduced me to Dano... Sales Rep: New American Library, Dutton, Scholastic, later Penguin et al Seattle Mystery Bookshop dogsbody. I once hosted 84 authors over 3 days and it worked! Jackson Street Books: the Rest of My Life.
Another pre-X-mas episode in our series “Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels”. On Sunday, the fourth Advent Sunday, mom and I went to the city centre to hear Berlin’s Children’s Choir sing X-mas songs in the Konzerthaus Berlin (pics #18 and 19). The Konzerthaus is one of the many beautiful venues for classical music events in Berlin see the German Wikipedia site for a couple more pictures, and it is located on one of Berlin’s most beautiful squares, the Gendarmenmarkt. Currently, the square is taken over by a Weihnachtsmarkt (pics #20 and 21). After the concert, mom and I had planned to visit my sister-in-law at her booth at a different Wihnachtsmarkt. I tried to persuade mom to start a drinking game; at every Weihnachtsmarkt we pass on the way, we would have had to have a mug of mulled wine (pic #22). Mom did not want to play. :( But I got to make more mulled wine at home later on. :) Here is my sister-in-law at her booth (pic #23). She makes angel-type creatures. Seriously, that’s the best I can do to translate “Engelsame Wesen”, which is what her enterprise is called. ;) And here, finally, a photo of our local Weihnachtsmarkt (pic #24) in front of the closed-down cigarette factory. Rather a little bit sad looking, but I had a nice waffle with cream and advokaat. Apparently, Berlin has some 80 christmas markets this year, so with a bit of planning one could have had a pretty good buzz with my drinking game... ;) Hope you are all well! Merry X-mas and/or Happy Holidays to all of you!!! Serenity
P.S.: No snow for X-mas, that seems to be for sure now. But mom has decided that there will be snow next Sunday. Let’s hope the weather is a good little weather and listens to mom. S.
When I got up this morning, everything was coated with a rime of ice. Couldn't get a decent picture until after daybreak, when it was already melting. Thought it would be easy enough to walk across the street and get a picture for you, but one step onto a "wet" looking sidewalk sent me ass over tea kettle, so I hope you really like these two. Only one bruise, we'll see about my back tomorrow.
The car had a lot of snow drifted on the driver's side. The rains formed a crust that remained after the drift melted. Lacy ice shelf, about 6 inches deep.
Another entry in my travelogue; hope you will find this one interesting. On Wednesday, my mom and I went to a concert by the Dutch artist Herman van Veen. Mom has been a fan for decades and I quite like a lot of his stuff. He certainly is an amazing singer and songwriter. The concert took place in one of East Berlin’s synagogues. I did not take my camera, so no original photos, sorry; but I found this website about the Synagogue. Shame that the pictures are all so small. It is quite an amazing building.
In case you read the website’s text, I would like to add a personal note. By the time I came about in the early 70s, official policy in the GDR (East Germany) had changed considerably from that of its very early days. For lack of a better description, Stalin had been turned away from and was as a rule not talked about; kind of like the black sheep in a family. Overt Stalinism was not condoned anymore. Kids in my generation were raised in the spirit of antifascism and antiracism. There was no anti-Semitism in my upbringing, not in my private life nor publically. The Holocaust was portrayed to us (e.g., in school) as the biggest crime against humanity in recent history, one that needed to be remembered in order for it to never happen again. There were memorials to it on the grounds of every school I went to, and every school class would go on field trips to concentration camp sites at least once or twice over the years. I do not mean to downplay the fact that a lot of crap went on in the country I grew up in, but the persecution of Jews was not something that existed in my experience. If anything, all religious institutions suffered from the popular spread of atheism during East German times. This, of course, was consistent with public policy in the GDR and often aggressively so, but was something that obviously stuck with the population, as is demonstrated in the persistently large difference in the statistics on religiosity among East and West Germans today.
Another note of interest is the sad fact that all visitors to the concert had to pass through metal detectors—devices not usually seen in Germany outside airports and other high-security facilities. And, of course, there was the police guard outside the building, which, mom tells me, is a permanent fixture outside all synagogues in Germany these days; a sign of the growing anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism in Germany and the resulting need to protect Jewish facilities on a day-to-day basis.
On this note (and I want to apologise for the length of this post; I really set out at the start to only report on Herman van Veen’s gig, I swear!), since I arrived the following has been a prevalent item in the news: The police chief of the Bavarian town of Passau was attacked and almost killed at his home by a neo-Nazi. A basic theme in the news reporting on the incident has been that neo-Nazism in Germany has “taken on a new quality”. A leftist satirist on TV the other day commented along the lines of asking whether this was to mean that the numerous attacks and even murders of foreigners, or Germans of non-White background, by Nazis over the past years were therefore considered to be of lesser significance...
Back to Herman van Veen. This website has the booklet for the programme he presented. It includes a mini-biography in English and English translations of some of the poems he transformed into songs. The theme of the evening were the poems written by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, a young Jewish woman who died in a labour camp in 1942. It was a very impressive evening.
Just a light dusting last night and this morning. Nothing like we hear from our friends back in Seattle. The Hoquiam River, about a block and a half from our house. I love watching the tides come in and ebb out. The shipyard's old roof seems to be sagging more. I'll be sorry to see the old building go. I hope they fix it this next year. More Summer Winter comparisons. The snow starting last night.
Hope you are well! Here is instalment #4 in our series “Nothing much interesting about Serenity’s travels”; and in this episode, Serenity actually left the house! ...well, I had to, because my passport is only valid for another couple of weeks, so I tramped to our local (i.e., for this borough of Berlin) town hall to apply for a new one. Our town hall, however, is actually quite pretty, so here are a few pics for you. The building was erected between 1901 and 1903. The internal shot (pic #16) is the entrance hall, just as you get in through the main doors (pic #15). And, since there was scaffolding covering some of the facade today, I nicked the last pic (#17) from the intertubes. (Ed: that's at the top there now)
The website I stole that final pic from, by the way, seems to be of a local person; the domain translates as Grampa Hagedorn He even greets visitors per audio in the finest of Berlin accents. I recommend having a look. There are a bunch of photos of an exhibition (which had apparently been held in the shopping centre across the street) of stuff inventive people in the DDR had built in their spare time, including a racing car made from the same material as the Trabant ...Duroplast, My family had a Trabbi until just before the wall came down :) ); a home-built computer; a DDRmini-motorcycle disguised as a BMW one; a beer dispenser made from a cement mixer; and other such gems. Oh, the stuff you find through random intertube-picture-stealing! :)
Hugs y’all! Serenity (Editor: Dammint! I know I rotated that picture before uploading. Tip yer head sideways for a moment... Thnx.)
We have a couple inches of snow, and winds haven't been too bad. Overall, we are enjoying the Winter Wonderland. Here's a comparison, Summer and Winter from the same window. And another. Stay warm!
wrapped
transported home expertly
and decorated
By the way, in Germany Santa, who around here is not called Santa but “der Weihnachtsmann” (the Christmasman), comes to bring his presents on the evening of the 24 December. 
The kids usually wait in the kitchen, while one or the other parent oversees the transaction in the living room. The wait in the kitchen is on average 3.7 days long when you’re six years
I hope der Weihnachtsmann was as generous with all of you as he was with me (yay! I can afford Disneyland now!), and that you all had a wonderful time! 
