by Peter H Frank | Nov 11, 2014 | Culture, How I Know I'm Not in New York, Life in Romania, Politics |
“The Remus Vote”
It’s been quite a while, but my Romanian friend, Remus, and I finally found time to sit down for a beer to talk about the election.
“Remus! Remus! Over here!”
“Hey there, my friend. Sorry I’m late. But parking was a nightmare. And then I got all caught up in some stupid protest out there.”
“That’s ok. How are you?”
“I’m ok, I guess. Just really annoyed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that protest really ticked me off. I mean, why do they have to make things even worse out there? Traffic’s bad enough as it is.”
“I’m not sure where you mean.”
“Near Universitatii. There’s a big crowd out there complaining about lines in Paris or London or someplace. I was in Paris once, there were always long lines. Everywhere. What’s new about that?” (more…)
by Peter H Frank | Oct 27, 2014 | Politics |
My father loved to tell an awful old joke. Given the fact that both Romania and the US are about to hold elections worthy of an awful old joke, here it is:
There were two best friends – two construction workers who had grown up together, gone to school together, played football together, entered the army together, learned the same craft, found their first jobs together, married at the same time, moved to the same neighborhood, and now sat and drank and talked every evening together.
Oddly, though, despite the fact they worked for the same company, in all their years they had never been assigned to the same construction site. They always ended up working on different projects. Then finally, one day, it happened – they were told that the next day they would be working together.
So there they were. It was the first day on the job and they were as happy as children. After working the morning shift, lunchtime finally came. The two friends sat down on a bench together, opened their lunch boxes and took out their sandwiches.
“Mmmm,” the first man said as he bit into his sandwich.
“ARGH!!” shouted the second man. (more…)
by Peter H Frank | Aug 24, 2014 | Literature |
For any of you who have ever stopped and marveled at the purity and simplicity with which children speak their many first words – and especially for those of you who also have wondered at the silence that words break – one long and one short contrasting passages from Max Picard’s beautiful 1948 book, The World of Silence.
“The child is like a little hill of silence. On this little hill of silence suddenly the word appears. The little hill becomes quite small when the first word of the child is spoken. It sinks beneath the pressure of the word as if by magic, and the word tries to make itself look important.
“It is as though with the sound that comes from its mouth the child were knocking on the door of silence and silence were replying: Here I am, Silence, with a word for you.
“The word has difficulty in coming up from the silence of the child. Just as the child is led by its mother, so, it seems, the word is led by silence to the edge of the child’s mouth, and is held so firmly there by silence that it is as though each syllable had to detach itself separately from the silence. More silence than sound comes out through the words of children, more silence than real language.
“The words a child speaks do not flow in a straight line, but in a curve, as if they wanted to fall back again into the silence. They make their slow journey from the child to other people, and when they arrive they hesitate a moment, to decide whether they should return to the silence or stay where they are. The child gazes after its word as it might watch its ball in the air, watching to see if it will come back again or not.
“The child cannot replace by another word the word it has brought with difficulty out of the silence; it cannot put a pronoun in place of an noun. For each word is there as it were for the first time, and what is there for the first time, what is quite new, naturally has no wish to be replaced by something else.
“A child never speaks of itself as ‘I’, but it always says its name: ‘Andrew wants…’ The child would think it were disappearing if it were to replace its own name by a pronoun — its own name that has just come up out of the silence with the word and is there as it were for the first time ever.
“The child’s language is poetic, for it is the languge of the beginning of things, and therefore original and first-hand as the language of poets is original and first-hand. ‘The moon has got broken’, says the child of the new moon. ‘We must take it to mother to mend it.’
“This child’s language is melodious. The words hide and protect themselves in the melody — the words that have come shyly out of the silence. They almost disapper again in the silence. There is more melody than content in the words of the child.
“It is as though silence were accumulating within the child as a reserve for the adult, for the noisy world of the child’s later years as an adult. The adult who has preserved within himself not only something of the language of childhood but also something of its silence, too, has the power to make others happy.
“The language of the child is silence transformed into sound. The language of the adult is sound that seeks for silence.”
and yet we come to this:
“Silence no longer exists as a world, but only in fragments, as the remains of a world. And as man is always frightened by remains, so he is frightened by the remains of silence.
“Sometimes in a city a man suddenly collapses and dies in the midst of the noise of the highway. It is then as if all at once the shreds of silence, still lying around, amongst the tree tops by the roadside, suddenly descend on the dead man. It is as if these remains of silence had crept down to the silence of the dead man in the roadway, and there is a momentary stillness in the city. The remains of silence are with the fallen man in order to disappear with him into death, to disappear through the fissure of death. The dead man takes the last remains of silence with him.”
by Peter H Frank | Apr 18, 2014 | Business, Culture, Politics |
In case you missed it last week, the European Commission announced it wants to make it easier for companies with single shareholders (meaning small and medium-sized firms) to operate throughout the EU. It would do this by standardizing lots of things so folks would not have to travel around or spend lots of money to expand their businesses to other EU countries. [Link here]
I say “hooray!” Great idea! There are lots of companies in Romania that would love to start doing business internationally. And now, thanks to the EC, they’ll soon have a little help.
But really, come to think of it, why stop there? The world is bigger than Europe. Just aligning a few things here is a good start, but why not do something that will have a REAL impact? Many of the companies I’ve met here dream of truly hitting it big. They are writing their websites in English, hungrily peering across the Atlantic, seeing their futures conquering the US.
So no, I say if these brains up in Brussels really want to be useful, they would concentrate on doing something even more important than merely unifying regulations and standardizing documents. They would give these small-business folks a list of vital dos and don’ts that goes beyond just the documents and helps standardize behavior. (more…)
by Peter H Frank | Mar 6, 2014 | Journalism, Literature, Media |
From Salmagundi, a series of satirical pamphlets written by Washington Irving, his brothers and friends in New York City from January 1807 to January 1808.
The following excerpt is from the editors to readers in the first issue, dated Saturday, January 24, 1807.
***
“Our intention is simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age; this is an arduous task, and therefore we undertake it with confidence.
“We intend for this purpose to present a striking picture of the town; and as everybody is anxious to see his own phiz [face] on canvas, however stupid or ugly it may be, we have no doubt but the whole town will flock to our exhibition. Our picture will necessarily include a vast variety of figures; and should any gentleman or lady be displeased with the inveterate truth of their likenesses, they may ease their spleen by laughing at those of their neighbors – this being what we understand by poetical justice.
“Like all true and able editors, we consider ourselves infallible; and therefore, with the customary diffidence of our brethren of the quill, we shall take the liberty of interfering in all matters either of a public or a private nature. We are critics, amateurs, dilettanti, and cognoscenti; and as we know “by the pricking of our thumbs,” that every opinion which we may advance in either those characters will be correct, we are determined though it may be questioned, contradicted, or even controverted, yet it shall never be revoked.”
[In case you look it up, the full name of the publication was Salmagundi; or The Whim-whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. & Others.]
