Book Talk: All the Frequent Troubles of our Days

 

I’ve just finished All the Frequent Troubles of our Days, by Rebecca Donner. For me 2022 has so far been a year of extremely good books, but this one left me in awe. I’m not one for idle praise or liking a book only because I have a connection to it or its author. Donner is a brilliant storyteller, and I was pulled in from the first chapter. She ended the story with touching and poetic words, and, not knowing it was over (there were 74 more pages!), when I turned the page and saw “Acknowledgements” I actually shouted “No!” Although she ended the story beautifully, I was not ready to stop reading. So for the first time in my life I read every one of her acknowledgments and am now going through her end notes.

When I taught high school German in Wisconsin, I alternated the curriculum each year in my combined level 3 & 4 class. One topic was the resistance: one year I taught “die Weiße Rose” (the short novel followed by the 1982 movie), and the next year I taught a unit focusing on the 2000 film “Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace.” Since I was teaching at a Catholic school and we were expected to begin class with a prayer or reflection, I was able to teach my students one of Bonhoeffer’s prayers: “Gott, in mir ist es finster, aber bei dir ist das Licht.” In the film Bonhoeffer prays this prayer through the wall with the prisoner in the cell next to his.

Many of the names in Donner’s book are familiar to me. In fact, when my mom first told me in autumn 2021 that there was a book out about Mildred Harnack, I knew her name right away. Admittedly I was more familiar with her husband and brother-in-law than with Mildred, as she only gets a brief mention – if that – in general sources about the resistance.

Indeed, while reading Donner’s biography about Mildred I found myself wondering many times how it is that I’d never realized her importance in the story of the Circle (known by many as “die Rote Kapelle”). How greatly this would have enhanced my teaching of both stories – die Weiße Rose and Bonhoeffer!

Mildred was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin – 68 miles from the school where I was teaching.
Mildred was the only female U.S. citizen to be executed by the Nazis.
Mildred was the only U.S. citizen to be executed on direct orders of Hitler.

Those points alone would have brought the stories closer to my students.

Now to the book. Rebecca Donner used primary sources where she still could, having found Don Heath Jr., Mildred Harnack’s young courier in Berlin, and speaking with her own grandmother, Jane Donner Sweeny (nee Esch), Mildred’s niece. Additionally, as she tells us in the Author’s Note, she used letters, postcards, memoirs, diaries, and handwritten notes, along with secondary sources such as newspaper articles, archived documents, and the first biography of Mildred Harnack.

The twelve sections of the book follow the people and their stories chronologically, though there are now and then helpful flashbacks or jumps forward that helped me keep track of who everyone was and how they influenced or told about the events. The people involved in the resistance came alive for me on the pages, as Donner described their personalities so vividly. I can only imagine daring what they did under the watchful eye of such a brutally sadistic regime.

We think such a thing as Hitler and his Nazis could never be in power again, and if so we (the western world) would handle things differently. But then I read about how many Germans were unconcerned in the early days of Hitler because he was just eccentric and claimed Germany wanted peace, and later how the western world tried to deal with him first with diplomacy and appeasement. If he gets the Sudetenland, maybe he’ll be satisfied and quit. That rings too many bells at this point, considering Crimea, Ukraine and Putin.

I can recommend this book to anyone interested in WWII history, especially in the resistance movements. Also to anyone wanting to read about women who faced great risks to fight for a better world. I believe those who know the stories of the two most well-known resistance groups better than I do will be intrigued by the connections between them and the names they’ll recognize:

• Mildred and Arvid Harnack
• Falk Harnack
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer*
• Klaus Bonhoeffer
• Hans von Dohnányi** (married to Bonhoeffer’s sister)
• Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
• Hans and Sophie Scholl (siblings involved with die Weiße Rose)

*Well-known German actor Ulrich Tukur acted in both "die Weiße Rose" as Willi Graf, friend of the Scholls and resistance fighter, and 18 years later as Dietrich Bonhoeffer in "Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace." 
**Justus von Dohnányi, the grandson of Hans, is an actor and directer who acted in the film “Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace.”

…as well as details from the resistance story Donner also tells about in her book:

• Falk Harnack meets with Hans Scholl in November 1942 about distributing leaflets and connecting the resistance groups (depicted in “die Weiße Rose”)
• Bonhoeffer secretly sent messages to his fiancé and family by marking one letter every 10 pages in books (backwards) that prison guards allowed visitors to bring to him
• Bonhoeffer and von Dohnányi were involved in the “Valkyrie plot” to kill Hitler, which failed and led to their arrests
• Bonhoeffer, as a Lutheran minister, had conflicting thoughts about being involved in the plot to murder a person even as despicable as Hitler
• Prisoners held in brick cells and carefully watched still found ways to communicate with each other
• forms of active and passive resistance

…and the places that Donner mentions:

• University of Wisconsin, Madison and State Street
• Wannsee, near Berlin
• the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens, largest department store in Europe)
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Alexanderplatz, Berlin
• the Black Forest, where Mildred and Arvid take a hiking vacation to rejuvenate
• UW-Madison, Sterling and Bascom Halls: Arvid and Mildred met because Arvid mixed up the two neighboring lecture halls

Bascom Hall? Or Sterling Hall?
Madison, Wisconsin

The familiarity of these names, events and places drew me in, but it was the details I did not previously know that made this book special for me. A book only gets a top rating from me when it makes me think more deeply about something or when I learn something valuable from it. And I certainly learned a lot from this book about Mildred’s life, the lives of those close to her and the resistance movement. It's also pretty impossible to read a book like this and not ask yourself what you would have done under those same circumstances.

 

Plötzensee Memorial, Berlin

When I was on the student exchange in 1986, the coordinator of the exchange in Esslingen (now my Schwiegermutter/mother-in-law) took us to Berlin for 5 days. While there, we visited the site of the Berlin prison, Plötzensee. I took a few pictures of the site, as well as the large memorial urn that contains dirt from each of the concentration camps, but didn’t know much about the significance of it then. That is where Mildred and Arvid Harnack were executed.

Memorial urn at Plötzensee
"Die Urne enthält Erde
aus deutschen Konzentrationslagern"

Lastly I will mention, though it is not important to Mildred’s story or Donner’s book, I share a family connection to Mildred and Rebecca if you dig through the family tree thoroughly enough to explore the Esch and Jung lines. Apparently Rebecca and I are 4^th cousins, meaning we share an ancestor. 

The book will be available in Germany in August 2022, and Rebecca Donner herself told me the German translation will be released in September 2022!

Gott, zu dir rufe ich!
In mir ist es finster,
aber bei dir ist das Licht;
ich bin einsam,
aber du verlässt mich nicht;
ich bin kleinmütig,
aber bei dir ist die Hilfe;
ich bin unruhig,
aber bei dir ist der Friede;
in mir ist Bitterkeit,
aber bei dir ist die Geduld;
ich verstehe deine Wege nicht,
aber du weißt den Weg für mich.

     ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Reading Banned Books

In the midst of the horror of Putin’s attack on and invasion of Ukraine, it seems petty to write about anything else. Another part of me says those of us who are able also need to keep living and functioning while we still can. The outpouring of aid in the way of helpers, goods, and money going to those having to flee their homes because of that man’s madness is at least something to give us hope. Reading and writing is a way for me to keep a grip on what still works in this world.

Before Putin’s war started I was planning my reading strategy for the next few months: focusing on books banned at some time and place in the US during the last several decades. That began after I found out that Art Spiegelman's Maus had been removed from the 8^th grade curriculum in a Tennessee district due to nudity (it’s a graphic novel about the Holocaust featuring mice as the main characters) and a few “naughty words.”

Not pictured: Looking for Alaska
I gave it to a friend to read.

Notice: This post contains no spoilers. 

I ordered the book again (having left my first copy in my German classroom when I left the US), though I accidentally ordered the German version. Therefore I can’t speak to the “naughty words” other than assuming “verdammt” (damn) was a problem. And indeed, there is a drawing of a human in a bathtub – the author’s mother in a flashback scene – and two curved lines and dots amount to human breasts. In a drawing. These book-banners are unbelievable. Spiegelman’s graphic novel is a brilliant way to introduce young readers to the horror of the Holocaust. The fact that the Jews are mice and the Nazis cats softens the shock a bit for younger readers. But because of two breasts and a few swear words, this group of parents and/or school board members thinks the book should be removed.

From there I moved to the Handmaid’s Tale, which I found less shocking than I expected to. That one has been banned/challenged for profanity and “sexual overtones.” Those who aim to ban books haven’t been listening to their children or their children’s friends, have they? It's more than a little ironic that the book-banners don't object to the fact that an entire class of women are nothing more than breeding machines with no rights, but a few swear words put them on alert.

Looking for Alaska was the next one, having earned a spot on the Office of Intellectual Freedom's Top Ten Most Challenged Books list several years running. Challenged because of a sexually explicit scene that could lead readers to experiment and for profanity. I’m sorry to say I don’t even remember the sexually explicit scene. Very briefly put, it tells the story of several teenagers at a boarding school and the struggles of growing up. 

George, by Alex Gino, was my next banned book, having appeared as #1 on the above Top Ten list for the last 3 years in a row. This is a YA (young adult) novel about a child in grade school who was born a boy but is sure she is really a girl. It’s a story told from the point-of-view of a trans girl, and that apparently scares book-banners. One of the stated reasons for the challenge is that the book contains a transgender character. I think they fear that reading such a book might make a reader say, “Yes, that is the life I want for myself.” I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that’s not the way it works.

My most recent book was The Kite Runner. I’d heard of it before but didn’t know anything about it. This multigenerational novel tells the story of two boys from Afghanistan: Amir and his family’s servant’s son Hassan. I got choked up on the last page, and that does not happen to me often. The objections to the book that I find most ridiculous are that it could promote Islam (several of the characters pray, some regularly) and that it contains homosexuality. It does NOT contain homosexuality, for heaven’s sake. There is a rape scene and both perpetrator and victim are boys. But that is not homosexuality. Do we describe a rape scene where the perpetrator and victim are different genders as “heterosexuality”? Honestly…

I’m now reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, and feeling somewhat scornful of myself for not having read this earlier in my life.

The other books I have read so far this year, with the exception of Getting Along with the Germans, would very likely also be banned or challenged somewhere in the US because of “profanity.” It seems that the appearance of even one “goddamn,” “fucking,” or “holy shit” can get a book challenged by people who clearly don’t spend much time around the young readers they are pretending to protect from the realities of the world. 

I watched the part of a school board meeting in McKinney County, Texas in which students, parents, and teachers were invited to speak about a list of 282 books a set of parents wanted removed from the library shelves, and my jaw dropped several times. Already during the second speaker a man had to be thrown out for trying to shout her down for opposing the ban. Happily there were others who also spoke against the challenge. Here is an open letter from the author of one of those books, which I have on order. The letter fell on deaf ears because it was published before that school board meeting. What else would you expect?

One parent said he objects to his tax money paying for books he finds offensive to be on the shelves. I could almost understand that, until he said parents who don't object to those books should just go out and buy them. Some children can only read what the library provides because their parents cannot afford to order from Ama*on every time their child wants to read a book. How much of that first dad's tax contribution goes toward a $14 book? Or even 282 $14 books? He needs to sit down.

As one person on Twitter wrote, “Parents, your kids have access to the entire internet on their phones almost all day long. Books are not the problem.”

"STOP BANNING BOOKS!!!"

On the other hand, the best way to get kids to be interested in something is to tell them they shouldn’t be. The best way to get kids to read a book is to tell them it’s off limits.

But seriously. Stop banning books. Go to your child's library, give the librarian a list of the books your sheltered child is not permitted to read, and leave the rest of the world alone. Better yet, when your child wants to read a book, you read it also and talk about it together. Oh damn. I forgot. One of the challenges to the book George (see above) was that "schools and libraries should not 'put books in a child's hand that require discussion'." Good grief.

By the way, book banning is not a thing in Germany nowadays. It was once, but they've wisened up since then. 

Kestrel Rescue

I might have saved a wee Turmfalke (Kestrel, a small falcon) today, at least from death under the wheels of some vehicle or being finished off by crows. For a falconer this is nothing remotely new, but this was my first time, so it has been quite an experience for me.

I was actually on my way to Hekate’s Voliere, because her falconer is in France on business and asked me to look after her. At one point I saw a small bird or owl right on the side of the road as I drove past. I have too often seen buzzards (hawks) too close to the road and feared for their safety if they should take off across the road in front of a car. This little one was way too close, so I screeched to a halt, parked off the road, grabbed my falconer’s glove and went over to shoo it away from the road. I crossed to the other side so I would approach it in a way that, if it could fly away, it would do so toward the field rather than the road. Then I saw a bus coming! I gestured to it to slow down and cringed, hoping he wouldn’t drive any closer to the right! The resulting wind knocked the bird over, but it was still alive. I crossed over to her (by now I could see it was a Turmfalke and was pretty sure it was a female) and saw right away that one eye was badly injured. She also couldn’t fly away, so she tried her best to scare me off.

I talked soothingly to her while she tried to fight me, gently grabbed her so her wings were against her body and her little talons were somewhat secured, and brought her back to my car.

poor little dear

For crow hawking I always have hand towels and a rectangular bucket in the car, so I swaddled her in the towel while she tried to bite and claw me, laid her in the bucket, covered her with another towel and wondered what the hell to do now. What a time for my mentor to be out of the country!

I sent her and M a message asking for ideas but drove to Hekate's Voliere, since I knew there was a vet's number there who deals with raptors. Hekate was clearly happy to see me, confident I'd be bringing her lunch. My mentor sent me the phone number of a falconer she knows who might be able to help, so I called him. He picked up on my second try, rather confused (and at work). Once he understood the situation, though, he told me where he was - basically back very close to where we live! I apologized to Hekate, jumped back into the car, and drove to where the falconer (Ron) was, checking every 5 minutes or so that the falcon was still alive. Ron had a look at her, determined the eye injury might not be so bad but her left wing was also broken, so there might not be much hope. There was still plenty of life in her as she tried to claw and bite Ron, who at one point asked me to pry one of her talons out of his hand.

We went to Ron’s van where he had a cardboard box, and as he opened the back he said, “I have a bird in here.” Sure enough, one of his falcons was sitting on her cadge on the floor of the van. The life of a falconer…

Ron put Kessie* in the box with the towel, and she just lay there, poor thing. He said he'd call a vet he knows who specializes in raptors, and he'd keep me posted. He warned me that a broken wing on a Turmfalke is usually too hard to repair because they are so small. And perhaps she would die quietly in the box - but at least it wouldn't be on the side of the road. I said I couldn't just leave her there, and he said he would have done what I did.

*I definitely did not name her Kessie, because you shouldn't
name wild animals that might not make it.

I drove back home to eat something and then returned to a confused but hopeful Hekate. She knows me well by now, but this was the first time I was with her alone. She came right to my glove, sat patiently while I fumbled to secure the jesses, stepped onto the scale like a good girl, and then when I released her back into her Voliere, she went right to the feeding perch and banged on the door to make it clear to me that I was to feed her. NOW. I really am like the staff. I serve her her meal (a yummy crow wing I’d kept in a plastic container in our fridge since Sunday), wait while she eats, and then I get to clean up the mess she made. Feathers everywhere. I should have taken a picture of that. The photo below is just what was on her food perch. The entire ground was full.

Dude, you've got feathers stuck to your beak.

Staring intently at the Futterklappe (food hatch)
hoping for more

A few hours later I got a call from Ron, who said the vet was not put off hearing about the Turmfalke’s broken wing, and so there’s still some hope. I hope Kessie makes it! I will post an update when I know more.

Finally fed and content again

Update: The Turmfalke / kestrel was humanely euthanized by the veterinarian after it was determined that nothing could be done for her.

Shooting in English

Vor Kurzem hat jemand in einer Facebook-Gruppe für Falkner eine Frage gepostet:

„Gäbe es zufällig Falkner aus Bayern, deren Tiere man für ein Shooting buchen könnte?“

Ich bin Amerikanerin und meine Muttersprache ist Englisch. „Shooting“ ist ein englisches Wort und bedeutet „Schießerei“. Also, nein, ich bin mir sicher, dass keine Falkner – egal wo – würden zulassen, dass ihre Greifvögel und Eulen für eine Schießerei gebucht werden.

Wenn ich meinen Eltern eine E-Mail mit dem Betreff „Shooting at a falconry center“ schreiben würde, würden sie schockiert weiterlesen, um zu schauen wie viele Menschen und Tiere erschossen wurden. Es passiert immer wieder in den USA. Ok, eher in Schulen und Gebetshäusern als in Falknereien, aber du verstehst, was ich meine.

Das könnte ein Fotoshooting sein.

Ich weiß, viele Deutsche denken, "Shooting" ist eine Kurzform von "Fotoshooting". So steht es sogar auf dict.cc. Aber das ist leider nicht so. Und weil Amis (besonders wir aus dem Mittelwesten) so ungeheuer höflich und nett sind, werden wir euch niemals korrigieren. Wir werden kurz mit großen Augen schauen, versuchen das Kopfkino schnell umzustellen, oder, wie immer wenn wir etwas nicht verstehen - lächeln und nicken.

Wir hören "Shooting" und unser Kopfkino fängt hier an.

Aber jetzt sage ich es, meine liebe deutsche LeserInnen…bitte hör auf, „Shooting“ zu sagen und zu schreiben. Es ist „photo shooting“ oder „Fotoshooting“. Ganz ehrlich.

Stell dir vor, wir Amerikaner fangen an, das deutsche Wort „Schießerei“ zu benutzen, weil Fremdwörter cool sind:

• „Are there any dog owners out there who book their pets for a Schießerei? I need some practice!”
  
• “There was a Schießerei before my friend’s wedding last weekend. It was so nice!”
  
• „When we arrived at Ludwigsburg Castle for our tour, there was Schießerei going on!”
  
• “I’m available for Schießereien! Click here for my prices.”

Das könnte ein Fotoshooting sein,
aber kein Shooting!

Ich gebe zu, wir verwenden verschiedene Versionen von "to shoot" auch im Bereich Fotografie und Filme:

• "How many pictures did you shoot today?"  (Fotos machen)
• "Oh, that's a good shot!"*
• "I got a lucky shot of a falcon the other day."   (Foto)
• "How long did the shoot take yesterday?"    (Foto- oder Filmentermin)

*Das kann beides bedeuten: Du hast ein tolles Foto gemacht, oder du hast [mit einem Gewehr] gut geschossen. Aber für die zweite Bedeutung (gut geschossen), würden wir das eher im Präteritum ausdrücken: "That was a good shot."

Aber schau mal. Diese zwei Sätze bedeuten überhaupt nicht das Gleiche!

• “No one was injured during the shooting yesterday.”   (Amoklauf/Schießerei)
  
• "No one was injured during the shoot yesterday.”  (Film/Fotographie)

"Shooting" bedeutet für einen Amerikaner nur eines: eine Schießerei oder ein Amoklauf.

Oder als Verb: In this photo I am shooting at a target.

Es gibt weitere englische Wörter, die Amerikaner anders verstehen, als die Deutschen sie verwenden. 

Beispiele (und zum Schluss ein deutsches Wort, das die Amerikaner falsch verwenden):

• Handy (für Amis ist das ein adjektiv und bedeutet "griffbereit")
• Public Viewing (vor einer Beerdigung, wenn der Sarg offen liegt, damit man dem Verstorbenen seine letzte Ehre erweisen kann)
• Backside (Po;  für "Rückseite" braucht man ein Leerzeichen - "back side")
• Body bag  (Leichensack)
• Football  (amerikanischer Fußball, NFL)
• Foosball, "Fußball"  (Tischkicker)

P.S. Ich begrüße Korrekturen, wenn ich etwas falsch formuliere. Schick mir eine E-Mail (link oben)!

The One I Didn't See

Yesterday I had a Harris hawk on my glove who was very disappointed in me. How do I know this? Because of the circumstance and the look on her face as she stared pointedly into my eyes. Am I projecting? Sure. But I’ve been a teacher long enough, and I know that look.

We had spotted a crow strutting around on a sloped field close enough for Hekate to have a good chance, and we had to turn around to get back there. Hekate was on my glove and her falconer was driving. She and I were focused on where we were turning, when suddenly Hekate launched herself to my right. She is not tied to my glove, but I hold her jesses (Geschühriemen) tightly enough between two often frozen fingers that she can’t get loose just by deciding it’s time. As I said to her, “Not yet, there’s nothing th…” I looked to my right and saw a magpie (Elster) standing at a perfect distance, frozen in place. Arg!! It was too late by then because the magpie figured out he’d better bugger off, so Hekate settled herself back on my glove. And then she looked at me.

I don't have a photo of "the look."
This is her usual stern expression.

She’s always looking around for crows and magpies when she’s on my glove. Usually to my right, in front of us, sometimes behind me. Now and then she seems to glance at me but quickly looks away again. I’ve been told and have read many times that one should not look directly at a bird of prey because they see that as a threat. Predators look directly at them, so it’s best if we don’t. Hekate isn’t too bothered by my looking at her, but I also don’t stare.

This is Aik, Hekate's smaller half-brother.
Somehow he has a softer expression than Sis.

Yesterday after the magpie flew off Hekate looked directly at me for longer than a glance. When she’s on my glove her beak – which is sharp enough to tear into a feathery crow or a tasty rabbit – is about 20 cm (7 in) from my face. Yesterday I understood why it’s better not to look directly at one’s hunting partner. In that look I read, “You do that again, Human, and I will f*ck you up.”

This gives an idea how close the bird is.
We're waiting in the car because it's raining.
(That's Aik again)

Hekate’s falconer assures me this happens because we’re human and make mistakes. We miss things. Hekate has better eyes than we have and doesn’t get easily distracted (except by dogs and wheelbarrows, which she hates). Hekate makes mistakes, too at times, but more often than not, it's the falconer's screw-up.

Her falconer and I switched a while after that, and at one point she sent Hekate off after two crows and a Nilgans (Egyptian goose). The crows took off early enough to escape, but the Nilgans was slower. Hekate has not really been in the mood to go after Nilgänse since an incident a year or two ago when one fended her off, and yesterday she flew in that direction but just plopped down near the goose as if to say, “Nope, not today.”

I can’t really blame her. I mean, there was my screw-up, and then when her falconer sent her off after 2 crows with a buzzard not far off, she missed the crows and the buzzard came after her! It was just a brief encounter, and the buzzard flew off when Hekate’s falconer shouted, but that couldn’t have been pleasant. Then with the Nilgans I think she was just done.

We were hawking for about 2.5 hours yesterday and came away with no Beute (loot, swag, quarry). During this entire season, which started in early September, that was only the third time we came away as tailors (Schneider). It happens. By the way, German hunters, falconers and hawkers say, when no kill was made, that they “came away as tailors.” I have no idea why, but I’ll research that and get back to you.