I can’t help but smile when I think about all the Holiday geese who found their way into our kitchen. Roasted goose with potato dumplings and homemade red cabbage. A feast of the past, today a treat I rarely prepare anymore. It’s not worth the effort I have decided, but the smile on my face tells me otherwise.
Let’s go back 45 years and let’s travel to Bavaria, in the South of Germany -again. A girl in her robe, wearing Austrian knitted houseshoes, is on her way to the auditorium. In one hand a blanket, in the other a plastic cup full of gummy bears, she joins all the other girls and the nuns who watch over them when school is over and during the nights. The little girl sits down full of anticipation. During the day the room was used for music classes and the drama club. On special events, the parents and family sat in the audience and watched the children sing and perform.
Days later it struck me that I had watched a man die when I saw George Flyod’s begging for air. The video showed George Floyd, the man, at his most vulnerable moment and I witnessed it -unable to help, unable to change the outcome.
My blogging friend Lisa, who I call “The Birdlady” as a form of endearment, posted this beautiful piece on her blog A DAY IN A LIFE. The following text resonated not just with me, but with many of my friends who I forwarded it to. I don’t like the reblog function, so with Lisa’s permission, I repost this here on my blog.
Stay home, they say and I do.
Don’t stress out, they say and I try.
We are in it together, they say
and I know they are lying.
Brother Richard Hendrick, a Capuchin Franciscan living in Ireland, has written a touching poem about our uncertain times living with the coronavirus.
Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
If luck you chase, you have not grown
enough for happiness to stay,
not even if you get your way.
There should be nothing here I don’t remember . . .
The Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts
and ship’s wheel in the lobby should still be
rising out of the sand like a cake decoration.
My brother and I should still be pretending
we don’t know our parents, embarrassing us
as they roll the luggage cart past the front desk
loaded with our scruffy suitcases, two-dozen
loaves of Cuban bread, brown bags bulging
with enough mangos to last the entire week,
Wilhelm Busch confessed later on in life, that some things in his book really did happen. His friendship with the miller’s son Erich Bachmann and their childhood antics together likely inspired the figures of Max and Moritz. A pencil portrait that Bush drew at age 14 shows Bachmann as a young man with thick, round cheeks like those of Max.
Regardless of how one interprets the story of Max and Moritz, the famous picture book is actually considered to be the pioneer of modern comics.