The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Today's 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall takes me right back. Here's an excerpt of my upcoming book I once had a Farm in Ireland.

"The political situation in Germany that had influenced our decision to buy an escape place in Ireland had changed. The historical landmark for that was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

Ask any American where they were on 9/11, and they will know. For a German, the equivalent date is 11/9, the day the Berlin Wall opened in 1989.

On that historic day, I was away from Germany on a two-week golfing vacation by myself in Tunisia. During the preceding months of world-changing events in Eastern Europe, I had been elsewhere mentally because of the drama going on in my own little world.

Mac fixed a date for our emigration. It was his decision. I only reluctantly supported the idea and still went to therapy to get used to this change in our lifestyle. I needed a break.

Mac and his mother stayed back in Germany to mind our children, then two and five years old, so that I could have a holiday, recharge my batteries and come to terms with our future.

The resort of Port El Kantoui provided enough distraction: sun, beach, food, and golf. In those pre-Internet days, my hotel didn’t have a TV in the room. What I heard on the news in the noisy lounge bar was unfathomable: Hungarian and Czechoslovakian borders had opened to let Eastern Germans leave their country. Calling my husband back in the Fatherland, I found him equally puzzled. We both watched developments anxiously. Our firm belief was that Mrs. Thatcher would rather give up Northern Ireland and let it reunite with Ireland than the Soviets would tolerate this insurrection. They had intervened before in Prague in 1968 and suppressed Hungarian liberation attempts in 1956.

Living in Germany during the armament race and the Cold War in the 1980s had always felt like living on a powder keg. This situation in 1990 had all the hallmarks of escalation. One evening, I was so troubled by the developing news in eastern Europe that I suggested to come home earlier to have the family back together.

“Let’s watch on TV if there are Russian troop movements, you from Tunisia, and we from here,” Mac said. “If the Soviets are sending tanks westward, don’t bother to come back to Germany — then it will be time to reconvene in Ireland. The Americans won’t just stand by and watch. There’ll be war.”

Rush Hour

Just stumbled across this post card while tidying space for our upcoming home swaps.
We lived on a small road in a boreen like this. Country lanes such as this get really hectic twice a day:when milking time approaches in the morning and in the evening, but also when herds have to be moved. And sheep are not the easiest to steer. We had a really good sheep dog which was a a master at rounding up cattle and sheep most of the time. Except when they had to be moved across our little river.Then it was next to impossible until one sheep took the courage- then all the others followed ...proverbially, even without being led to the slaughterhouse. On one occasion they even left their lambs behind and we had to carry the lambs over.
Now imagine yourself facing this herd coming towards your car. There is no way to go but wait until they file or flow around your vehicle. If there is a tractor involved, it requires more patience yet.
But you get used to these things, living there. It's only the tourists who panic when they have to drive their cars so close into hedges that their cars get scratched.

IE 101: Irish- English for Beginners

As a native German speaker I’m somewhat foolish to write in English. I studied at a German university where BBC English or British Standard English was taught. After that, I spent almost 20 years in Ireland where my accent stuck out like a sore thumb but where I acquired some its lingo. To complicate matters further, I now live in the US. Just having installed a new PC, I was confronted with the question which nuance of the English to make my default language: BE /AE/ AusE/ Polynesian Island E…. (British English, American English, Australian ...)No IE (Irish English), however! I’m also using Dragon Naturally Speaking –a dictation software- and that poor program is utterly confused by my brogue.

Since I write about my previous life in Ireland, I naturally use an Irish English vocabulary – not Irish-Irish (Gaelic), mind you. Two editors of my books and also fellow writers in a creative writing class advised me to drop those Irish expressions that they didn’t understand: Snogging? A tenner? A piggery?

Who do you write for? Who is your audience? My aim is to tell stories in an Irish landscape and if that includes a modicum of Irish vernacular, doesn’t that paint a more colorful and believable picture?

When my American husband and I first met we had a lot of fun over some differences in both versions of the language. I adopted the words “cart, gas, trash can, realtor” instead of “trolley, petrol, wheelie bin and estate agent.” He learned that I wanted to be picked up when I asked him to collect me at 8 p.m. He will call me when I ask to ring me or give me a bell. He understands that I’m not nibbling at his iPad when I take a tablet.

Now to some Irishisms…

“A cuppa” (a cup of tea) is welcome not only for “elevenses” (second breakfast or coffee break mid-morning) and” a pint of the brown stuff” anytime, really if you like Guinness. “Punters” beware ─ too much of it or you get "plastered" or "langers"! Because of Ireland’s cold and damp climate, you will need a "brollie" and a "wooly jumper", maybe even "wellies" if you work on a farm as I did “myself”. We grew "courgettes" on the farm and raised "bonhams" (piglets); briars abounded in the hedgerows. Most Irish farms have "cocks", nothing indecent but a rooster and also "bullocks". Not to be confused with "bollocks": a swear word that is acceptable in polite society, well almost. Expect some "bollocking, slagging , and having to take the mickey", as the Irish sense of humor is different. (Wikipedia or Urbandictionary will enlighten you if I’ve just lost you). Replacing the vowel “u” with an “e” makes a ubiquitous swear word passable, or simply say “effing” or “frigging.”

“Gurriers” and “knackers” I have to explain in my upcoming book: “I once had a Farm in Ireland.” I don’t want to leave my readers too much in the dark; I need to clarify the meaning of an “AGA” and a “JCB”, too.

Spelling differences are easy: tyre, grey, or jewellery─ the spell checker will pick that up if set to AE as default.

In case you travel to Ireland you should know that the Dail is the parliament, a garda is a policeman, and that the Irish say slánte! when toasting - be that with “poteen” (some moonshine booze) or any other drink.

So now for you! Are you with me now? There you have it in a nutshell! Before you get too bored and are “away with the fairies”, let me leave it at this and say slán! Good-bye!

Please like my new FB site: https://www.facebook.com/IOnceHadAFarmInIreland?sk=messages_inbox&action=read&tid=id.148084505352872. Thanks!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 

Not so Goodies in our Food

In Europe, scientists found out in the 70s that food additives, artificial colorings in particular, are detrimental to children's development. This plus other additional goodies that turn up in our food scared us: pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, growth promoters; and then there are the preservatives. It also made us think and come to the conclusion that we wanted to produce our own food  and not digest industrial foods anymore that can make you sick.

The soil was polluted, lakes and rivers were, air pollution grew and lead to the big phenomenon of "trees dying" due to acid rain. How could anything healthy grow out of this. Discovering that all these "goodies" were enhancing or rather compromising our food--our stomachs turned and made us think. We decided to grow our own and become self-sufficient. First in the constraints of our house in the the city; well, rather the house of my mother-in-law. After a while, however, she didn't like her shrubs to be replaced any more with strawberries and Brussels sprouts. She wanted her evergreen ground cover back. We had too find our own place; a cottage in the country. A few years later, even that wasn't far away enough to get away from pollution: Chernobyl happened. Taking all of this into account, we opted for a healthier life-style and chose to go to Ireland to make this dream come true.

Now, in Europe and Germany in particular with its stringent environmental laws, food additives have either been  banned or have to be declared on the individual product. "To regulate these additives, and inform consumers, each additive is assigned a unique number, termed as "E numbers", which is used in Europe for all approved additives. Within the EU E numbers are all prefixed by E ". See the full list of what is regulated as a food additive.

In the US, the FDA claims that food dyes are safe, but the experience of some parents and the results of some studies tell a different story. A 2006 study published in the Toxicological Sciences journal showed that exposure to certain dyes during the first few years of life could cause behavioral and developmental disorders in children.

Other countries have already banned or require warning labels for artificially dyed foods. For example, Kellogg’s cereal bars are made using Red 40, Yellow 6 and Blue 1 in the United States, but contain no artificial dyes in the UK. Instead, the same bars are produced there using beetroot, paprika and annatto extract to provide color.

"The problem was first identified in the 1970s. Europe controls and even bans them in foods. The FDA is finally getting around to wondering if they're might be a problem." ADHD comes to mind.

http://www.therealfoodchannel.com/page/20470.html  3min 35 if you want to take the time.

Thanks to Brasscheck that provides invaluable info on many topics.

Have my green cap on again.

Since I'm about to finish my book on my Irish adventure, I'm wearing my Ex Farmer'sWife's hat more often again as you may have notice. I need a cover artist and some rally cute drawing because the pictures I had in my coffee table version of my book"I once had farm in Ireland" don't translate well into a paperback.
It's been too long and this blog was on the back burner for some time while I've been busy promoting my novel Next time lucky. This will be remedied now and I will give an advance notice soon when it's coming out.

Also appreciate your recommendations on different publishers like Lightning Source of Iunivers. Anybody used them and has some experience to share? I will create  a FB page for the Ex Farmer's Wife.
In the meantime let me recommend my latest find, anew pp that makes life easier for every blogger and more interesting for your readers.It's called glossy, put together in minutes and here's my link to give you an idea how it looks:
http://www.glos.si/siggys-omnibus . I had set up something similar over the few months to give an overview of my various websites. Took e forever. Admittedly, it looks better in y views, but glossy is a quick news round up of all your social networking activities. You tell me. More soon
The Ex Farmer's wife

Eerily Familiar

It's been 2 weeks now since disaster struck Japan. Every day, American news media report in their typical over the top sensational manner about what might happen, could have happened...and do we really know what happened? Is nuclear technology any safer now than 25 years ago. How can it ever be?
The beginning of my blog www.Ioncehadafarminireland.blogspot.com takes me right back and is eerily familiar:
"It was the environmental disaster of Chernobyl in 1986, and the overall nuclear threat that motivated us enough to opt out of the rat race and start afresh in Ireland. After Chernobyl, in Germany fall out levels were dangerously high. The government discouraged people to feed milk to their children, not to eat fresh vegetables --and this was early summer- and our new Geiger counter measured excessive radiation levels in our children’s sandbox. Ireland had escaped almost unscathed due to the prevailing weather pattern in the 2 weeks after the disaster in Ukraine."
Radiation was measured yesterday in Hawaii, the West coast, even in Colorado. Depending on prevailing weather patterns - that merry-go-round of thermodynamics and the big unknown that weathermen never seem to get right- the whole world might be in for a few u-turns and imponderables, unforeseeables, and God forbid the unexpected. Imports from Japan have been banned widely. But what do the poor Japanese do?
After Chernobyl,we went to a country that was minimally affected to grow our own healthy food. Twenty-five years later, a massive new scare. BTW, do you know the half-life of Plutonium or Cesium? Surprise, surprise, remnants are still lingering in Ukraine. Regions unfit to live in for thousands of years--except for those unfortunate who cannot leave the area and have to stay put. They still suffer the horrible consequences. European Journal, a show broadcast from Germany on PBS -thank God for public radio and TV- reported about big nuclear accident before Chernobyl, an event even I had never heard about: MAYAK, 50 years ago. Guess what: People there and their children and children's children are still exposed to the radiation caused then and suffer from horrific congenital diseases. Because the half-life of Plutonium 239 is 24,000 years! Geiger counters still go crazy in that area. If the Mayak area has a hot summer again, people will swim in the Techa River yet again and soak it right in.
So what can a single person do who wants to let his species survive? Or an organic farmer? "Even if I knew the world came to an end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today." (Martin Luther)

Happy St. Patricks Day

Even if you don't dye rivers green in Ireland- you might just be painting the town red- happy Paddy's day on both sides of the Atlantic. Seize the Day! Nil Se'n La! Wishing you lots of luck!
The world needs it and can do with it big time. All our joint organic efforts may become null when our environment ceases to exist the way we know it. It reminds me of our Chernobyl experience that I describe at the beginning of this blog www.Ioncehadafarminireland.blogspot.com. It was the reason for us to take our family to a safer country. But where is safe, ultimately.
Here is the link to the well-informed article of a German scientist friend, Stefan Thiesen, (earth and sea)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Michio-Kaku--We-live-in-a-by-Stefan-Thiesen-110317-693.html. We all live in a bubble. Think about it!
Or go to the Celtic Women and enjoy their music: http://www.somemusicecards.com/celtic-woman/share/?ec=a6e77217d803b881f2b6ee3d316f5869
Beannachtam na Feile Padraig! May you be poor in misfortune, and rich in blessings, slow to make enemies and quick to make friends. And may you know nothing but happiness from this from this day to life's end. Sl'n agus beannach!