Things I loved in 2021

 

We're almost there! I know the 2020s have been tough, but there was a lot to love about this year. So, here are 10 things that made my year.

1) For a reason I can't fathom, I read a bunch of books about the Eastern Front in World War II during the cold, dark month of January 2021. 

City of Thieves by David Benioff is an adventure story of a young man who avoids execution in exchange for an impossible mission in 1940s besieged Leningrad and behind German lines. It's like reading a movie. Good stuff. 

We, Germans by Alexander Starritt is told from the other side. This story is told by a German artillery officer as the Wehrmacht retreats and everyone realises they've lost the war, but most can't admit it. Sobering stuff.

Just when I thought I couldn't go darker, I read Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Synder. This is a sweeping non-fictional account of how much it sucked to live in the (blood)lands between two totalitarian states in the 1930s and 40s, and a reminder that we're living in good times. Sad stuff. 

2) Every few months, I get a vicious migraine that knocks me out. I'm usually too discombobulated for screens or reading, so I treat myself to an audiobook that I don't mind falling asleep too. Jason Isaac's reading of Thunderball is marvellous. The accents. The pacing. The almost satiric humour of the opening chapters. The hilariously cheerful American submarine captain. It's great stuff to listen when your brain feels like it's being stabbed with hot nails.

3) There is high-definition "technicolour history," which is the recorded history of Ancient Greece and onward. Then there's the "black & white history" that relies on stone reliefs, monoliths, and ruins. Technicolour history isn't so kind to the Persian Empire, but black & white History is revealing the Persians profound influence at that time. King of Kings, a set of Hardcore History episodes, is an accessible, thoughtful primer on the Persian Empire. It provides a rich context of the history of the region, into the Greek-Persian Wars, and ends with the devastating arrival of Alexander. 

Coincidentally, as restrictions eased over the summer, my wife surprised me with a birthday visit to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin to see some remnants of that Black & White History.

The Sumerian god Nisroch.

4) Like many kids growing up in Ontario without cable, I spent Saturday evenings watching either hockey or the classic movies on TVO, the province's public broadcaster. One of the joys of watching The Mandolorian is catching the references, retellings, or remixes from The Searchers, The Magnificent Seven, The Good, Bad, and the Ugly, Shane, The Wild Bunch and others. I watched it dubbed in German to keep my Bad German from getting worse.

4) Dune Part I. This was a date afternoon, since the toddler is impossible to get asleep and stay asleep during normal people's prime movie-watching time. What a movie! I could've done with less slow motion brood-y scenes, but it's a stunning movie to watch that doesn't dumb down too many of the book's many layers. More than any of the other adaptations, this one captures the book's cosmic immensity of things.

5) Rise and Kill First: A Secret History of Targeted Assassination by Ronen Bergman. For fifty years, Mossad has been waged a secret war and this book reads like an epic spy novel about that secret war —  the missions, near misses, and the cast of characters that move it along. In a way, Israel's targeted assassination program's success feels tragic, since Israel's leaders often saw it as an end, rather than a means to an end. The author is legit on this topic too, and recently published this story about an AI-assisted assassination in Iran that could be a follow-up to the book.

6) I read a chapter now and then from Plutarch's Lives. The biographies of Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander the Great get a lot of love. But the sketches on Alcibiates, Sertorius, Sylla, and Lysander are also great. It takes a while to get into the language's verbosity, but if you put some mental effort into it, you get to know some interesting people and gain sense of the times they lived.

7) I've have a soft spot in my heart (and stomach) for Korean food. It might be from my time working at a Korean restaurant in my London days. Maybe its some subliminal influence from the work of Park Chan-wook. It might be Korean cuisine's focus on cabbage-y goodness (Kimchi) and meat mastery (Bibimbop, Bulgogi, pork bone soup). Or all of the above. 

Since leaving Baldwin Village in Toronto, where I had a Korean restaurant across the street from me, I've been eating Korean and searching for my favourite dish: Daeji Bulgogi, Korean grilled pork. It's also difficult to find, like a Holy Grail of grilled meat, so I haven't quenched my thirst for it... Until I found Seoul-Kwan in Berlin and I've been reunited with my pork.

 

8) Watching my wife create 12 pieces of original art for her annual calendar was probably one of the most inspiring things to witness this year. Work, family and the minor emergencies that inevitably pop up tend to suck in our time. So, it's amazing to see someone carve out time to make something. I know artists are suppose to focus on the process, not the result, but as an admittedly biased observer, I think the result is lovely.

Focus.

9) Remember seven or eight years ago when everyone in advertising describing themselves as storytellers? In a book-ish attempt to be a legit storyteller, I tried to read Hero with a Thousand Faces and couldn't get through it. The wrong book at the wrong time for me. But, this year I read the Power of Myth, which was a series of conversations between Campbell and Bill Moyers. It's an accessible shortcut into Campbell's research, theories, and his incredible compassion for the struggle that is being human. Once you read it, you'll notice all those themes, tropes, and patterns pop up everywhere.

10) Reading Ursula Le Guin's translation/adaptation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching was one of the most strangely calming experiences of 2021. It's poetry. It's wisdom. It's like ancient Chinese Twitter for the soul. Here's a good one:

Wanting less  

 

When the world’s on the Way,  

they use horses to haul manure.  

When the world gets off the Way, 

they breed warhorses on the common.  

 

The greatest evil: wanting more.  

The worst luck: discontent.  

Greed’s the curse of life.  

 

To know enough’s enough  

is enough to know. 

"Bear Music on the Radio!"

Strange things happen when you put your entire music collection on shuffle. Sometimes, it's magical when one great song you forgot you loved is followed by another, then another, until it gets awkward. 

You know those moments? When it goes from a cool tune to something that's just for you, like that Peter Frampton song from High Fidelity, or anything from Swallowing Shit, or your super-secret anthem.

You want to go to the next song, but the skip button is too far away. It's impossible to casually make a move without drawing attention to secret song shyness. It's even worse when iTunes does that thing where it starts playing the next song before the previous song is finished. There's no time to make a diving leap for the Skip button.

It's shuffle roulette, and sometimes you got the bullet.

This was a common social situation for those of us in the 2000s, just leaving the age of CD shuffle and entering the wonderful world of digital music. A world of downloadable music where you could dangerously venture outside of your tastes, into other genres, and gleefully listen to guilty pleasures. 

We didn't understand playlists. We grew up with mixtapes, which took effort. So, most of us either learned to slap together a playlist without overthinking it or settled with Russian Shuffle Roulette and hoped it doesn't land on a bullet.

This was a problem in my household. My wife has good musical tastes. But, I'd be playing family-friendly Arcade Fire, and as the song would finish, Bane would come roaring on. The toddler gets a little freaked out, and I get a nod of disapproval.

Thankfully, I discovered a foolproof technology that prevents these awkward yet excusable social situations: the radio. In particular, the celebrity DJ on the radio. 

When Burton Cummings plays something that off-kilter while you're listening with your musically-judgemental friends, then their judge-y glares are directed towards the guy from the Guess Who.

If Henry Rollins spins some Devo after Bad Brains, we all forgive him.

Lately, we've been listening to James Newell Osterberg Jr., and he plays some great stuff... and some really weird stuff. It goes from some 70s punk band that makes you nod your head along to something as random and amazing as a Swedish pipe organist. But, I don't get any looks over the shifts from genre to genre. Why? It's difficult to argue with a radio DJ who fronts a band and is mainly known by his onstage name: Iggy Pop.

With the miracle of on-demand listening, we play Iggy on-toddler-demand. So, my almost-three-year-old son has taken a particular shine to Iggy Pop's DJ sensibilities. James Brown's Make it Funky has become "Bacon Pocket!" Listen to the song. You'll hear it. 

But it's Iggy's deep, growly voice that commands his attention. Every morning, he asks us to play "Bear Music."

Some old technologies never get old.

Berlin's New Plattenbauen

Filling in Berlin's blanks with new buildings.

While reading Farnam Street's newsletter, I came across this interesting long read, The Housing Theory of Everything.  

The TL;DR version is that overpriced housing leads to all sorts of problems — inequality, lower economic productivity, climate change, and lower birth rates. You get overpriced housing when demand exceeds supply. 

Like any theory for everything, some of its arguments are flimsy. But there are some takeaways that make sense, like building higher-density communities to increase housing supply in a smaller area.

Berlin is struggling with a housing shortage. Everyone has a story about how hard it was to find an apartment. Prices are also rising. And there's a fear that locals will be priced out of their own communities and the character that draws so many people to the city will be gentrified beyond recognition. 

Berlin has been fighting it in different ways. When we moved to Berlin last year, there was a rent cap in place. It was thrown out of the constitutional court. In the recent election, a referendum passed that allows the city to appropriate property from the large companies that domain Berlin's real estate market.

Measures like that, which run against free market orthodoxy attract a lot of love, hate, and headlines. But, there's something else grinding on, away from the headlines. 

Berlin is pocked with all sorts of bits of unused land. There are swaths of land running along the city's commuter railways. Strips of what was once the kill zone on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall. Empty lots that were levelled in the war, and left empty for decades.

These are all spaces where new modern, residential high-rises are rising, or Neubauen. Berlin is gradually adding high-density residential housing to meet the growing demand, filling in the blanks on the city map. There's just one hiccup.

Berlin's architecture was dominated by big, stone apartment blocks built in the late 1800s (and rebuilt in the 40s and 50s) seem like they were built to last centuries. The housing built after the war feel eternal, but feel like they have some durable staying power.

Some of the new builds are nice to look at. But, having looked a few of them while we were apartment hunting, many feel like they might fall apart soon after you've moved in. They're built quickly and cheaply to maximise profit for the developers. The density pushed by that long-read doesn't necessarily mean quality.

In some ways, they're no different than the Plattenbauen, those old prefabricated East Bloc residential buildings that make seems to make so many eyes sore. The purpose was the same: create supply to meet the demand for housing. The difference is that some one is walking away with a fat profit.

A Tale of Two Elections

 

"Look at those lovely trees. Let's put a sign up in front of them!"

Germany and Canada have elections this September and I came across some interesting stats. In Germany, 41 percent of voters are undecied. In Canada, it's 13 percent. 

What's up with that? Are Germans more indecisive voters? Do Canadians just have their minds made up vote by habit? Or is there something else?

Let's start with how they vote.

Germany's federal electoral system is a mixed-member proportional representation system. This means that you vote for your local candidate, and you vote for a party. They don't have to be the same. In 2017, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union won 185 of the 299 local seats, but only 15 of the 410 proportional party seats. But the far-right Alternative for Germany, the Greens, the Social Democrats, the Left (former DDR communists), and the liberal Free Democrats all got somwhere between got 95 and 60 votes respectively. 

Canada has a first-past-the-post electoral system, so it's one vote for your local candidate who is a member of a political party. The party with that wins in the most local candidate races wins. First-past-the-post is straight-forward, but most of it's Wikipedia page is about its disadvantages.

Often, first-pat-the-post systems allow political parties to form a government with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. This is something the mixed member proportional representation solved. By adding that second party vote, Germany's Bundestag adds a popular vote to the mix that nixes some of Canada's first-past-the-post issues. 

Every vote counts in Canada. But every votes counts more equally in Germany. 

Before he got elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau ran in 2015 on a platform of electoral reform. He was going to hold a referendum on whether to move on from the current system to another. 

But, J.T  wasn't interested in proportional representation. Even though a commision he formed recommended it, he inaccurately claimed it would allow crazy fringe parties into parliament. Germany and other countries set a 5 percent threshold of the party vote that parties most reach to earn seats in the Bundestag for that very reason. So, the Pirate Party, the Vegan Party, the Bavarian independence party, and the Nudist Party must convince 5 percent of the people they're not too crazy to be taken seriously.

Trudeau wanted a ranked ballot system, which his commission didn't recommend and that some experts pointed out would favour his own arrogantly nicknamed "natural governing party." When he wasn't going to get what he wanted, Trudeau gave up on electoral reform in Canada.

Now, how does that long digression come back to undecided voters?

My theory is that German voters are strategic voters. They might have their minds made up for their local candidate, but they're keeping their options open for their party vote. So, someone might vote for the mainstream right-wing CDU, but cast their party vote for the Greens or the AfD because they're worried about climate chnage or want a bit of crazy in the Bundestag.

This makes the elections unpredictable. So, chancellors are loathe to call an opportunistic snap election and stick to the four-year election schedule.

If you're living under the tyanny of the first-past-the-post system, then you only have one vote and you have to go all-in for the mainstream parties or for the crazy parties. There's no splitting your vote on the party level.

That's probably why most Canadians usually have their minds made up. Which means if a prime minister is arrogant enough, he might call an election during a pandemic that no one wants in the hopes of going from a minority government to a majority government.

First-past-the-post system might not keep all the crazies out of Parliament.

Why Dessau isn't a Disneyland

Why doesn't Dessau push its Bauhaus heritage a little more?

For a few glorious years in the 1920s, it was here that some of the most influential work was done at the famed Bauhaus school. Its workshops pushed out texile, interior, and industrial design brilliance. Artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and László Moholy-Nagy were lured into teaching positions. Even the city joined the Bauhaus-ing craze and commissioned a work office and a housing estate.

Yet, they only finished a museum to Bauhaus' influentia output last year. The Masters' Houses are five homes inspired by Bauhaus' design concepts. They look lovely on the outside -- gleaming white concrete blocks in a stand of pine ona quiet residential street -- but, they're underfurnished on the inside. They designed furniture, after all!

The exception to this underappreciation is the original Bauhaus building. Long since re-purposed for tourists, it houses contemporary art exhibition spaces, a Bauhaus store, and a canteen in the basement. You can even spend the night in one of the old student dorm rooms.

Why isn't more of the city optimized for taking toursitic advantage of its Bauhaus awesome-ness?

First, it might only be design and architecrure nerds interested in making the pilgrimage to Dessau. That's not a big demographic, so the town might be as optimized for Bauhaus tourism as it can get.

That reality check aside, let's remember Bauhaus was a design school at the local university, and Dessau is still a university town. In fact, it feels like a calm, rich university town that's comfortably cashing in on some of its Bauhaus fame.

But, that's not the only side of Dessau.

The city is modernizing its old, dreary East Bloc pre-fabricated apartment buildings, or Plattenbau's, but the DDR's clumsy fingerprints are all over this town, from the ramshackle sidewalks to questionable city planning that puts a playground beside a highway.

This is a blue-collared town, and it feels like it. Just a few blocks down from the Bauhaus building is a magnesium smelter. The folks you meet here aren't just university professors and design nerds. They're workers and 9-to5-ers. Guys in coveralls drinking a beer at their local kiosks or taking their kids to a playground beside the highway before supper. Or both. My kind of people.

A good Discovery Walk reveals a lot more of Dessau. The beautiful nature parks. The winding bike paths along the Elbe river. The old, princely palaces. The friendly folks. The tasty local beers. Bauhaus isn't the only star in town.

And some Bauhaus architectural landmarks aren't treated like fancy architectural landmarks. They're still used for their original purpose. The work office is still a work office. I was chased out by a security guard when I poked my head inside. The Kornhaus is still a lovely restaurant on the banks of the Elbe, perfect for a lunch and a cold Weizenbier. 

Wasn't that the spirit of Bauhaus? Architecture and design made for the people. Accessible for everyone.

It's refreshing that Dessau hasn't Disney-nified its Bauhaus heritage or put tourism before its own residents. It's a better place to visit when Dessau itself is able to shine. 

One of Dessau's many beautiful nature parks.

A Crazy Little Thing Called Hope

Spring is feeling a little more… springier in Berlin.

The patios at bars and restaurants have re-opened. People are lining up outside recently opened stores cluthching negative Corona test results. Hipsters and not so hip old guys like me are drifting into the public parks.

The weather has been sunny, warm, and perfectly timed with Berlin's loosening restrictions.

Normally at this time of year, the people of this outdoor-drinking-loving city emerge gradually from their indoor-drinking hibernation. But, in case you haven’t heard, and you're not as sick of this phrase as I am, this is the "New Normal," so this spring’s awakening feels less like coming out of hibernation and more like awaking from a coma and sprinting madly outdoors.

And the whole city is outside. We’re walking around, sucking in the semi-fresh air and soaking up our Vitamin D the natural way. Some of us are walking about with beer in hand. Others are trying to keep their toddler out of the traffic. We're all quietly wondering, “What is this feeling?”

It’s hope.

And it’s probably too early to admit to feeling that feeling. At the time of this writing, Berlin's infection rate is dropping and 2,391,749 vaccinations have been given. But, with variants lurking around out there and a Merkel-less federal election this fall, we're all senstive to the tooth-grindingly awful fact that our fortunes can shift at any time.

So, we won’t bask too long in this sunny sensation of hope. Instead, we’ll crack open another cold beer and cautiously enjoy what we have right now: sun, a little more freedom, and a mad desire to just get out there.

Escaping Social Media

The year was 2013,
and I had an awesome company phone.
photo by Kata Varga

As an old millennial, that “digital native” label just doesn’t apply to those of us who grew up in the age of dial-up internet.

We lived without smartphones. Although, I did use a pager before trading it in for a flip phone in 2006. 

Social media was our neighbourhood Robin's Donuts where we all hung out.  

And we got bored. All the time. We couldn’t whip out a phone and check the ‘Gram while we waited for a bus. If we were smart, we brought a book. But mostly, we just waited and did nothing…

I’m not like every old millennial. I was a slow adopter. Some of my peers jumped onto new tech as soon as they could. I still remember a media-information-techno-culture friend patiently explaining the difference between MySpace and Facebook in 2006 -- the year of my flip phone.

As time wore on, I slowly started adopting these technologies and social media (a word that wasn’t even used then). It began with that MSN instant messenger. Then creeped into Facebook. Twitter. And so on.

Older millennials like me weren’t entirely prepared for it, because we didn't grew up with it. People made jokes about their "CrackBerry." MSN chat interrupted our essay writing time. You checked your Facebook daily for updates. Twitter was firehose of realtime... "content."

At some point, social media and its ilk stopped being a novelty and become a compulsive thing you did when you opened a tab on your brower, looked at your phone, or when you were bored. And most of the stuff didn't matter much.

By 2012, I had enough. I was going to quit it all. Which would not have been hard. I had email. I had a flip phone. I could call my small circles of friends. Send a terse SMS to my mom. Mostly, I met friends and family face-to-face.

Then I moved to Budapest. Suddenly, these social media traps became more difficult to escape. Without face-to-face interactions, Facebook felt like a legitimate way to keep in touch. I wasn’t seeing family and friends every few days, so at least I had a witty update or a nice looking photo to share. I clicked "Like" to tell them I liked something and let them know I'm there.

And so social media remained in my life, becoming a lifeline back home. To quit Facebook or Instagram or any of that would sever that lifeline.

Since then, I've tried to achieve balance with social media. Its utility is hard to dismiss, but its compulsive nature is easy to resent. Remember that old saying? "If you're not paying for it, you're the product." I wanted to use social media without being used. 

But that’s next to impossible. These things are cleverly designed to hijack our attention. We upload photos and check for the ‘Likes,’ again and again. Every new feature, newsfeed tweak, smartphone notification is an underhanded way to get us to log on and get sucked in.

It feels like the only way to stop being used by social media is to stop using social media.

I'm not quite there, yet. With family and friends far away, I can't deny that social media does have its uses. So, I've been experimenting with quitting without quitting.

I tried no social media first thing in the morning. Then most of the day. I deleted most social media apps from my phone. Shut off most notifications. I check my accounts weekly, if that. 

The change has been incredible. A background anxiety that I didn’t know existed has evaporated.

When I see an amazing thing, my first impulse isn't always to whip out my phone to snap an Instragram-worthy photo. It can be an amazing thing that I can experience, without thinking about the little ripples it will make in my tiny social media following.

It's actually nice to be bored sometimes, alone with my own thoughts, without inputs screaming into my skull. 

I feel better. 

And it’s not a new feeling.  As an older millennial, I remember life without constant connection. Sure, we still had to go to Blockbuster to rent a movie, get our party photos professionally developed, and ask someone about their relationship status. But there was a stillness in our lives back then. 

Drastically cutting my social media use has shown that stillness wasn't a young-person-with-nothing-better-to-do thing. It was a social media thing.

There are drawbacks to my quitting social media without quitting it. Long-distance relationships maintained by these social media channels aren’t being as well maintained. Getting acccustomed to simply posting and liking "content" on my social account has made me lazy.

So, I’m recommitting to chat groups, emails, and video calls. I'm also recommitting to this blog and its comments section (so write back, if you feel like it!). 

This new habit is not a final solution to our social media problem. There are engineers and scientists constantly tweaking and optimizing their social media platforms to hook us, so I'll have to keep tweaking my habits to stay ahead of them. I might even write another update here.

Playground Rules

When Berliner parents take their kids to the playground, or Spielplatz, they often bring little buckets, shovels, and other sand toys. The parents plop them into the sand. The kids either play with them or run towards the more interesting swing or slides.

Other kids find the unattended sand toys and play with them. There's a sand toy social contract that says it's alright to share your toys at the Spielplatz.

My son discovered a toy dump truck at one of our local playground and started playing with it. That moment of bliss (he's going through a construction vehicle obsession phase) lasted about 10 seconds.

Another kid screamed NEEEIIIIIIN!!!!! He ran across the playground to Levi. He snatched the excavator from him and shouted Nein! once more. Levi ran crying to me. The other kids' mother tried to explain the concept of sharing to him. Not all kids grasp the sand toy social contract.

Our neighbourhood playgrounds offer endless opportunities for surreal interactions like this. 

Children in Germany are astonishingly good at lining up to await their turn on the slide. They give space to the youngsters. They won't push or shove unless someone plays with their sand toys. Then they drop the gloves.

Social distancing can also be easily described as social awkwardness, expecially around strangers. 

Kids have been picking up on this social awkwardness. I see it with Levi. He sees another kid, and he wants to play, but he stands back, cautiously. You can see the wheels turning. Should we play? Is it safe? Why wouldn't it be safe? Maybe I'll just stare from a safe distance for a little while longer...

Playgrounds are an oasis for the kids during a lockdown. But smartphones are clearly a survival tool for bored parents who visit the same Spielplatz day in, day out. I decided a while ago to stop looking at my phone when I’m out with Levi. If you try this, you will start notice how much time other parents are on their phone at the playground.

My favourite is the dad – and it’s almost always a dad – who looks at their phone and gets sucked in. They’re mesmerized and lose all track of time. Their kid – because they’re a kid and can't stay still for longer than 7.4 seconds – runs off to another end of the playground while the dad is lost in his screen.

After a few minutes, the dad looks up to where their kid was playing a few minutes ago and doesn’t see them. A bunch of expressions play out on his face. Surprise. A bit of panic. Mostly it’s that facial expression that says Oh, no, I have to tell the mother that I lost our kid because I was playing Break-a-Brick. 

There’s a frantic visual scan of the playground, but it's a subtle visual scan, because he doesn't want to make a scene. Then there's relief when he sees his kid at the other end of the playground. Then finally, a smile of satisfaction as he resumes his game of Break-a-Brick.

What I learned from Christopher Plummer

Back in 2004, my old university gave Christopher Plummer an honorary degree. I covered it for the student newspaper, guessing it would be like most of these ceremonies: coma-inducingly dull. Not this one. Plummer stole the show.

He leaped to the podium and bombastically cried out to all the newly minted graduates that, "You have finally escaped! Let's hear it for the inmates!"

Then, he took a more somber tone, and admitted he always regretted not attending university. He wished he got to experience the fellowship and camaraderie that comes with a few good years of university. Then he signed off with a rousing call to grab life by the neck and hold it close, or something far more eloquent like that.

Afterwards, there was a short press scrum with some local press. One reporter asked about his regret over not getting a degree.

Plummer corrected him. No, he said, I don't miss the degree. What I regret is missing out on the university experience. The rich friendships that come from that experience. The camaraderie.

 

Whether he was playing to the crowd or not, his regret of not getting the university experience – like most regrets when someone admits them – was also advice: We should wring as much experience from this surreal time as possible. 

That advice didn’t turn my worldview upside down. It did confirm my existing bias for mixing academics with debauchery. I worked hard on my class assignments and wrote for the student newspaper. I also partied hard, destroyed my hearing at loud concerts in small dive bars, travelled when I could, crashed on countless couches, and even tossed a dwarf. Along the way, I made life-long friends who shared in those experiences.

Now I'm older, and slightly wiser, so I know that Plummer’s advice isn't just good university advice. It’s damn good life advice. You don’t even need to go to university. Life well lived is an informal education made up of new experiences, strong friendships, and, to use Plummers’ term, camaraderie. 

Whether I was predisposed to this point-of-view or Plummer influenced me, I'm not sure. I usually opted for grabbing the richer experience than the "smart" move. Stay home or go out and meet friends. Stick around in Toronto or move to Budapest. Big or small, grabbing those crazy choices that life threw at me unlocked incredible experiences, sparked new relationships, and strengthened existing friendships – or camaraderie. 

If you read Plummer's obituaries, you see a man who’s seeking different roles and stories. Acting on Broadway, or in Hollywood. The Sound of Music then Hamlet. A historical drama here, a crime thriller there. How about Star Trek IV? Lead roles, bit roles, and everything in between. That sounds like a man building a life, grabbing one experience after another. That's a good life, and education, to emulate.

Berlin Remembers

 

Yesterday, as I was picking up my son from the Kita, I saw one of those red memorial candles on the ground beside the door. Someone had lit a candle and put some carnations in the plague that commemorated Rosa Luxemburg having lived in that building for a few years in the early 1900s.

It turns out that yesterday was the anniversary of her murder by paramilitaries in 1919.

So what does a Marxist killed 100 years ago have to do with anything? 

Nothing... And everything.

I don't think there's another city that goes out of its way to remember as much as Berlin does. The good bits and the bad, ugly bits. Rosa Luxemburg is just one of many brutal openers to the tragedies the city would experience. The Nazis. The War. The Holocaust. The Defeat. The Trials. The Wall. 

Guilt is a word that gets thrown around a lot in Germany. But, another accurate word is courage. It can't be easy for a country to reckon with its past the way Germany does. To openly remember its history, instead of revising it. 

It's both chilling and refreshing to walk along the streets of Berlin and see the golden stumbling stones that bear the names of Jewish deportees, along with their fate: liberation, escape, or death camp. 

You see these types of memorials everywhere. The small statue in the quiet square where the July 20 plotters were executed. The eerie stone monuments to the Soviet war dead. The concrete and steel foundation line that still runs along the path of the Berlin Wall.

In Berlin, and much of Germany, history is still a lesson you can learn from, instead of a myth that you believe in, an ideal you buy, or a grudge you nurse.

We live in a strange age where everyone lives on their own plains of reality, feeding on information that only confirms their biases. And the way things are going, that looks like it isn't going to change soon.

Being honest about our history is getting tougher. But it's good to see it's still happening in some places.