Red bricks, grey skies

Views of Providence along Benefit Street and South Main from earlier today. That's my Mum in the brown jacket(from behind). Despite it looking pretty gloomy and grey in the photos(click on any of the mosaics to view larger), it was actually a really nice warm day.
Maybe this could be a little wordier, as it's my 300th entry here(woot!), but I have a headache..again, and so it's mostly photos today. I'll be callling in for some pizza for supper(was going to make some chicken soup but don't feel up to it) and then I guess early to bed.

Grey Day

...and a "play day". Took these photos on the road to home, after returning from Providence. Went to the RISD museum (an exhibit of engraving from the 1400's to 1600's-amazing!) with my mother for some "cultcha" and lunch in the "not-so-big" city.

The Fall of The Wall

Some more thoughts about this anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall and the opening of all the borders surrounding East Germany.
It just makes you think how much has changed since, and what was always simply there(as insane as the whole idea of a wall built to keep a country's citizens from leaving, and that East Germany pretty much bankrupted itself by spending so much to build, man, and maintain the wall which surrounded the entire country, not just the east section of Berlin) since I could remember growing up, is already a thing of the past.

Because my mother is from Berlin, I visited that city a number of times when I was a child and then on into my 20's. Most of my mother's family was lucky--they lived in West Berlin(meaning they could travel freely wherever they liked in the world, even coming to visit us in the USA a few times), but there were some cousins who had stayed behind in what was known as the "Ost Zone"(East Zone). They exchanged letters and cards but never could meet.
The "Wall", as strange as the whole concept seems now, was a daily, accepted fact of life for Berliners, and all Germans from the time it went up in 1961. When we visited my relatives, it was just always there in certain places--a looming concrete barrier with warning signs in English, German, Russian and French nearby. Sometimes a backdrop for photos--a odd sort of tourist attraction , like near the Brandenburg Gate. Sometimes, when taking a walk in one direction, you would come to the end of the American or English zone and there was that wall again. Even when on a boat on a river or lake, there, in the middle of the water was a sign sticking out, warning not to cross a certain point. You could see across the water at some buildings and knew this was East Germany. You spotted watchtowers (on both sides of the wall) and accepted it as normal.
The last time I was in Berlin was 1989, but in the early spring. I wish I could have been there in November, for the joyous events. But already, there was a feeling of some loosening up of the strict rules that most Soviet-influenced countries usually experienced. While taking the photos(in slideshow below)at the Wall one day, I was approached by a young man who told me he was from Russia and he gave me a few pins of his city--St. Petersburg. But at that time, still, it was called Leningrad. And I was somewhat surprised that the Russian was on the West side of the wall! Things were definitely changing and 1989 was an amazing year.

In 1989 the first free labor union was founded in the communist Poland.
The end of the communist system had begun.
The Soviet Union could control their satellites yet but with the new leader Mikhail Gorbachev their politics changed in 1984. Gorbachev's reforms, Perestroika and Glasnost should renew the Stalinist system in the Soviet Union but not replace the communist system.The reforms in the Soviet Union also had its effects on the other communist countries, especially in Poland and Hungary.
On August 23, 1989 Hungary opened the iron curtain to Austria.Months before East German tourists used their chance to escape to Austria from Hungary and in September 1989 more than 13 000 East German escaped via Hungary within three days. It was the first mass exodus of East Germans after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.Mass demonstrations against the government and the system in East Germany begun at the end of September and took until November 1989.Erich Honecker, East Germany's head of state, had to resign on October 18, 1989.
The new government prepared a new law to lift the travel restrictions for East German citizen.At 06.53 pm on November 9, 1989 a member of the new East German government was asked at a press conference when the new East German travel law comes into force.He answered: "Well, as far as I can see, ... straightaway, immediately.
Thousands of East Berliners went to the border crossings. At Bornholmer Strasse the people demanded to open the border and at 10.30 pm the border was opened there.That moment meant the end of the Berlin Wall.Soon other border crossing points opened the gates to the West. In that night the deadly border was opened by East Germans peacefully.

info from The Fall Of The Berlin Wall website

I'll never forget waking up the next morning and seeing the happy, peaceful event on the TV news--the masses of happy East Berliners streaming into the West and the welcoming West Berliners greeting them. Like one big party. It was amazing and even last Sunday when I watched a documentery(mostly about the brave attempts to escape over the wall by some East Germans), I got all choked up and emotional at the end, watching once again, the footage of what happened on November 9, 1989. My mother was woken up early that morning by my ecstatic uncle, telling me their cousins from East Berlin were actually in his apartment at that very moment, and the border was open!

Monday Mumblings

Since I had a headache all weekend and got preoccupied with other things in my life, and just didn't have the mindset to sit and write a blog, I'll have to post something later today about this historic day--Nov. 9--the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I got out my photo albums and looked through them--I have some photos I took of the wall(on the then "West" German side) on a visit there in April of 1989--about 7 months before it all came officially tumbling down. I'll have some more photos and thoughts about all this later today. For insight on this from the perspective of someone who has lived on the inside as well as the outside of the "East Bloc", please visit Protege's blog- excellent writing over there today.

How do you like my scary little "owl-o-lantern"? To view the owl before the rotting set in and the squirrels plucked off all the sunflower seeds, go here. I noticed lots of rotting, creepy carved pumpkins, in fact, on all the doorsteps, in the last few days. Funny how they end up looking way creepier the week after Halloween.

Fuzzy image of Brandenburger Tor(Gate) as it used to look, taken from my old photo album.

5 on the 5th-November Edition

My first blog entry in November and its
5 Happy Things......

1. Discovering a birthday package in my mail box(a week...or so late, but I don't mind at all....stretches out my birthday!) all the way from a thoughtful friend in Guatemala(Hola Claudia!), which included four pairs of..striped socks(Claudia remembered my love of striped clothing, especially socks and stockings).

I now have very happy feet. Which.... makes me think of this video:
2.) Old movies, images and music from the 1920's through the 1940's make me happy.

3. Discovering, by accident, the "color swap" setting on my digital camera as the perfect setting for capturing my black dog's cuteness(black dogs are notorious for being difficult to photograph which is why you'll rarely see one used in advertising). I have tried with flash(too harsh and makes her black fur shine and her eyes gleam like a possessed zombie) and without(too dark) and felt I never could quite get a true representation of Jewel before discovering that toned down color swap setting.

4. A beautiful day off in early November, spent partly on the town beach with my dog. I got her to stop for a moment from her seagull chasing and seaweed sniffing, for this photo.

and finally,

5. Getting a little excited for an upcoming day trip(early December) to Manhattan!

And, the Chrysler Building is a wondrous thing, isn't it?? I hope they never actually change the name of it, since by now there isn't even any company called Chrysler and the building is owned by Germans...or is it a firm from Abu Dhabi?