Search for Something New ~

Read in the newspaper this morning that the first victim of "coma boozing" died this week. This is the lastest fad among teenagers here in Germany.

World's Oldest Benedictine Monk ~

He recently turned 106. He is doing just fine. At 99 he started to learn Spanish. When he was 100 he set out to learn how to operate a computer. His ardent desire: to one day go home to his Maker.

Lighting Up the World ~

Just think for a moment what it would be like if a baby couldn't do this.

Concert: J. S. Bach, Mass in B minor ~

When the concert ended there was dead silence, a pause of 135 seconds before audience started to applaud.

Displaced Persons ~

There was a remarkable show on German TV the last two evenings. It was the story of aristocratic German family in East Prussia that had to flee, along with their indentured servants, among whom there were several French prisoners, from the approaching Russian armies in 1945. I had read an account by another person who had gone through the same harrowing experience, Marion Hedda Ilse Countess Dönhoff in her book: Names No Longer Used: East Prussia - People and History. She participated in the resistance against Hitler's National Socialists with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. After the war, she became one of the leading German journalists and intellectuals.


A close friend of mine made the trek with his parents from Breslau to Bavaria when he was just four years old.

General Robert E. Lee ~

Then I ran across this observation by the famous Civil War tactician:

"It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."