Dr. Filomena

Faiche Stiabhna / St. Stephen’s Green
a beautiful park in Dublin
photo by dr. fil (click to enlarge)

As I mentioned here, the recital of France Prešeren’s works by the best Slovenian performers is something to behold. It’s most enjoyable in person, but if you can’t be in beautiful Ljubljana on 8 February at noon, the second best thing is watching the event from anywhere in the world online live at:

http://www.radiokaos.info/ 

(Virtually) see you there!

(source)

It’s been a “look at a Government website” week, I  suppose. Starting with the White House and ending with Slovenian ministries. It seems that on the English part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the former Minister held on to his eternity at least in the URL field (click the image to enlarge). Sloppy webmaster.

Polde Bibič reciting Slovenia’s national anthem Zdravljica by France Prešeren (the lyrics are worth reading, click the link)
Courtesy of Radio Kaos

On 8 February each year, Slovenians at home and in communities around the world celebrate the Slovenian Cultural Day or Prešeren day as many call it is annually on in Slovenia and among Slovenian communities around the world in celebration of the rich cultural heritage marking Slovenians as a nation with a distinctly recognized identity.

France Prešeren is widely regarded as the greatest Slovenian poet of all times and on this date, the prestigious Prešern Award is presented to deserving persons in the area of culture with a lasting impact on our society.

For me, personally, the most enjoyable part of the day is the recital held on Prešeren Square in the centre of Ljubljana at noon. As I’ve moved to Luxembourg, I am even more thrilled that I can watch it and listen to it live on the internet.

Prešeren’s poetry is about love and peace. Hearing his works presented by the very best Slovenian and guest performers is a treat! So I’d like to invite you to visit http://www.radiokaos.info/ this Sunday at noon and catch glimpse of my beautiful home town and listen to our poetry. You may not understand every word, but you may very well “get” the atmosphere.

Cheers!

PS: If you have a Facebook account, you can keep up with the event here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=48908602146

source

Thanks to Had’s note, I read an interesting article on the redesign of the whitehouse.gov website. I’m no expert on design and my opinion is irrelevant, but since this post is listed under ‘ramblings’, I might as well saay that I find the design sufficiently clean, but not striking in any way. I’d have preferedan even cleane, simpler design with less variation as to fonts. Two at the most with less or no italics.

What really caught my eye immediately, however, is the display of Sony logotype on the TV set in the first photo on the very first page of the site, carrying an image of a rather tired-looking President. This ad must rival those of the Super Bowl commercials when it comes to audience reach. Could our governments start advertising companies instead of offering them straight out financial assistance? Hey, costs us less. Possibly.

Conspiracy theories are far too compelling to give up as entertainment on Monday mornings, and in view of Sony’s trouble helping the company through arguably subliminal advertising sounds nice enough. Reading up on the company, however, I’m confused as to what country it pays its taxes to and where most of its employees are.

Nice website, though. Really.

Ramblings over.

Photo taken in Paris, France by dr. Fil

Having just watched the Frost/Nixon movie I couldn’t help drawing lines between its subject matter and some actions or omissions in current politics.

The movie’s tagline is “400 million people were waiting for the truth.” Actually, for an apology after Gerald Ford granted a pardon for “for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”

Many were surprised by the not only polite but rather kind attitude of Barack Obama towards George W. Bush. In his NYT column entitled “Forgive and Forget?“, Paul Krugman, for example, states that failure to investigate what happened during the Bush years would mean “that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power”.

Ever since coming into power, Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor has been going out on a limb to make a point that his Government was going to act differently than the one defeated in the elections.

There are of course big differences between the action of Gerald Ford and the anticipated inaction of Barack Obama and Borut Pahor, one of them being the fact that Ford was never elected, not even to the position of the Vice President, while both Obama and Pahor won elections in clear opposition to their predecessors.

Just at the end of last week, the party of the former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, which still holds that it should have (or even actually has) won the elections, obstructed the work of the Parliamentary session that was to vote on the ratification of Albania’s and Croatia’s NATO accession protocols. Taking the country’s international relations and repute as hostage, the party stated it would continue to obstruct the ratification process until the Parliament verifies the state budget report drafted by Janša’s cabinet for 2007, which was refused due to irregularities found by the state revision revealing a deficit instead of an alleged surplus.

It will be interesting to watch how this move will affect the Pahor’s benevolence in the future. And how last week’s Republican display of zero support will influence Obama’s.

Belgrade, photo by dr. Fil

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
—
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Above: Inmate number 1-9-9-6 was among the few Roma to survive Auschwitz. The Nazis didn’t bother to tattoo an ID number on Antonin Hlavacek’s arm. Romani children, like the elderly, weren’t meant to live long, so his number was written in ink. (source)

January 27 is the International Day of Commemoration to honour the victims of the Holocaust. It is forgotten far too often that holocaust does not only refer to the atrocities suffered by the Jewish people during WWII.

Rejecting any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, the General Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution (A/RES/60/7) condemning “without reserve” all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, whenever they occur.

It decided that the United Nations would designate 27 January – the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp – as an annual International Day of Commemoration to honour the victims of the Holocaust, and urged Member States to develop educational programmes to instil the memory of the tragedy in future generations to prevent genocide from occurring again, and requested the United Nations Secretary-General to establish an outreach programme on the “Holocaust and the United Nations”, as well as measures to mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help prevent future acts of genocide. (source)

It seems therefore appropriate that we should take a good look at the world as it is now and judge whether people learned from the horrendous lessons of both world wars and the too many occasions thereafter when entire nations were/are targeted and denied their basic rights.

Violence begets violence. The world forgot the words it once uttered: Never Again! Remember! Before it’s too late.

I dedicate this blog entry to my grandfather’s sister. While he was out there fighting the occupation forces in Slovenia, she was taken to Auschwitz. She was not a Jew, she was not Roma, she was simply the sister of a man who would not bow to the territory-hungry aggressor who’d tried to make his Slovenian family deny its roots and turn its members into his nationally correct citizens. Aunt Pavla survived and as, unlike the Roma above, she was deemed worth a tattoo, she can still show her camp number to the younger generations. I would have liked to add: lest we forget. But honestly, so many other horrors have been committed by and upon humanity since and are in progress now that nobody walking the Earth with open eyes could or should possibly let it slip from mind.

More cleaning up of the fridge to do. I found myself faced with three cubes of yeast that would go bad tomorrow and a bunch of spicy olives that would only hold for a few more days. So while waiting for the washing machine to be delivered, I managed to bake three types of bread. Rye bread, buckwheat bread with walnuts and – for the first time – white bread. With an olive twist. The idea for the basic recipe comes ssilva at Kulinarična Slovenija. Thanks!

I prepare my fresh yeast slightly differently, not with sugar etc. I mix it with half a cup of cool water and salt and let it sit for 12 to 24 hours. I find this gives me better results. Let’s call it the “salty yeast mixture”.

Dough:

• 1 lb flour – I deliberately used the cheapest white type to see how far the “frugal” bit of the title can go, so this cost 25 euro cents or 32 US cents
• salty yeast mixture (cost: exactly the same as the flour in this recipe, actually)
• some more salt
• warm water

Extras: 1 cup olives cut in halves, rosemary, 1/4 cup olive oil

Knead the dough well. I mean really well. Keep kneading until the dough is nice, soft and even. I let this rise for 15 minutes and in the meantime cut up 1 cup of spicy olives I’d bought on sale for about 1 euro or about $1.3.

I added the olives and some rosemary as well as 1/4 cup of olive oil and again kneaded well. Then let rise for about 45 minutes.

Place on baking sheet and make a few cuts on top to allow for nice even baking without the crust breaking. Cover up and allow to rise again for 30 minutes, then place in a hot oven. Bake at 200°C for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 180°C and bake for another 50 minutes.

I must say I’m very happy with the result. This bread is truly delicious! Now if I could figure out how much the electric cost for the oven, I could possibly even calculate how much baking the bread cost 🙂 but anyway, the goal was achieved: food not thrown away and enough bread in the freezer for the next couple of weeks, I believe.

With thanks to my favourite moose, this is a quote from my new read, Alles Gute von Ephraim Kishon (an interesting life story there!), originally published in 1992.

Hohe Politik:

In England wählt man die Regierung aus Prinzip, oder besser gesagt aus Gewohnheit, ab. In Italien werden Wahlen zur Konfrontation zwischen dem lieben Gott und der Armut, und in den USA sind sie eine Art öffentlicher Wettbewerb um die grössere Ähnlichkeit mit John F. Kennedy.

I’m having a very German-influenced day, having also watched the beautiful Das Leben der Anderen movie again.
Thanks for this wonderful and totally unexpected surprise, my friend! 🙂