Friday, November 28, 2008

Protected: And happy Thanksgiving to you too.

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Monday, October 20, 2008

Top 5 Reasons Why Obama Supporters shouldn’t Rest Easy

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knowshow racism may affect what voters tell pollsters–or what they do in thevoting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days,John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign hasgone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from therolls in some states. They’re whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justifymore challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting processhave started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, manycounties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCainsmear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis withIran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history… In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote aftertrailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reaganwas eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win.Races can shift–fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universalhealth care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance,drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need thekind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

Note: this is not my own writing but from an email sent out by MoveOn.Org

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Disconnected

How quickly things can go from smooth routine to a total disconnection. My photo blog - myView was a regular. Every day I’d take a picture with my iPhone and via email upload it… and the months went on and the months filled with pictures, a nice kaleidoscope of my year passing. It was smooth sailing until… until I got my new iPhone, the iPhone 3G. As much as I love it and it’s new features, the mail program in it changed and now I can no longer upload directly to my blog. Something is different than before, either it’s sending at HTML or adds some additional symbols, some other sort of encoding… something. And with this a working installation broke and with it my daily photo blog came to a stutter and then to a standstill.

Next to that life has been very busy with work and family… and one stutter led to a second one and suddenly I feel very disconnected from my own, personal blog. I know it will roll and flow again. But for now: nada.

Monday, August 18, 2008

What is HOME to you?

While driving through this most beautiful August day and on my way home from work, my thoughts once again swirled around this subject.

What IS “home”?

Is it where you know you can close the doors and nobody bothers you? Or is it where your family is? Is it where people not only talk your language but also understand your viewpoints? Or is it where your heart yearns to be? Or where the memories of the past are more good than bad? Is it the place you are not able to let lose or is it where you grow solid? Is it where you feel safe?

As long as I was living in Switzerland, these questions never came to my mind. But I do remember back when I tested my wings and when I called Paris my home, that it felt like that, like home… yes, I probably would still be living there if it would not have been for the hard to get work permits at the time. Switzerland and Paris, yes, these 2 places definitely where “home” to me.

In less than 2 months I’ll be living for 11 years here in the US. A citizen.

My house feels like “home”. But people here still don’t. New York instantly did. There was a spot on the highway in Minneapolis - when the 2 radio towers became visible - that always triggered that feeling of “coming home” in me, as I knew it would be only another 5 or 10 minutes before entering our garage. Suburbia doesn’t feel like home, no matter how much I love my neighborhood. Family here is now “my family”, but in the end it remains ‘his family’, it can never replace my own, “real family”.

But way to soon I’ll be the oldest in that tribe, and once all my tight, tight ties like parents, uncles and cousins are gone - where then is my “home”? Usually people create their own by having and raising children. Not so here. And even my family “back home” as I remember and as I feel it is disintegrating and a lot of it has gone by age, separation and death.

Switzerland, Baden, Zürich, Wengen and Paris will remain always “home” - but with people gone, a large part of that “home” is solely based on fond memories and a melancholy as these times and people constellations have passed and will be no more.

I do not know where I will feel “home” in 20 years.

One thing though that I know for sure is that I am grateful to have had all these “home”s and that fond memories like that make me suck-in and inhale warm summer days as this one to the last drop.



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