Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

BERLIN.  – “Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht,” wrote Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of Germany’s greatest poets and most famous Jews, “Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht” – “If I think about Germany during the night, it robs me of my sleep.”  A partially sleepless night preceded the writing of this review, for [...]

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Herewith some additional horrifying background material on how the Lone Star State tells the country’s supreme legal authority to kiss its Lone Star ass and insouciantly continues its self-legalized killings, including some prisoners awaiting appeal proceedings that could reverse their previous sentences.
From The New York Times on June 14th:
“Texas juries in capital cases must make [...]

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When I went over into eastern Berlin Sunday night to cover a premiere at the grand old State Opera on Berlin’s showpiece boulevard named Unter den Linden (because of the quadruple columns of trees marching down the center separator green strip, I had to take the subterranean U-Bahn because yesterday I got a call from [...]

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Volker Hagedorn, the music critic of our classy Hamburg-based weekly newspaper Die Zeit, visited Henze at his home above the Tiber valley in Italy, where he composed Phaedra, his newest opera, recently unveiled at Berlin’s Deutsche Staatsoper.  Hagedorn reports:

Henze sat in the shade of the terrace gazing at the olive trees. He seems smaller than [...]

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Siegburg, den 26. September 2007
Benefiz-Fußballturnier mit großem Rahmenprogramm
Rhein-Sieg-Kreis (mw) – Sportliche Spannung und viel Unterhaltung verspricht ein Fußballspektakel der besonderen Art: Am Sonntag, 7. Oktober 2007 von 9.30 Uhr bis 21.00 Uhr findet am Sportplatz in Sankt Augustin-Birlinghoven unter dem Motto „Knackis kicken für Kinder“ ein Benefiz-Fußballturnier mit großem Rahmenprogramm statt.
Der Erlös aus dieser [...]

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I can’t recall when I’ve read a recent news story quite so horrifying and disgusting as this one I found waiting from me when I came home from dinner this evening.  Its headline says it all: “No Justice for El-Masri” – and that summation applies to a country constantly harping so piously on “freedom and [...]

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If anyone reading this still thinks riches mean happiness, just consider the fate of the great (in more senses than one) operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died last week, and think again.  He left an estate estimated in the neighborhood of half a billion (repeat: Billion) dollars – i.e., $500,000,000 – and an interview published [...]

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Berliners’ love for animals – especially dogs – has long since become legendary in this country.  Most recently this city-state has gone stark, raving mad over a polar bear cub, rejected by his mother at birth and bottle-fed every two hours by an Ersatz mother named Thomas Dörflein, a personable staff employee of western Berlin’s [...]

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Herewith the text of an email I’ve just given maximum distribution worldwide:
After my broadcasting that link – and testing it to make certain that it did indeed still work – an early-rising Washingtonian emailed me the equivalent of “What clip?”
Rosalyn Bloch’s original email from Brentwood, in which she had thoughtfully made it available to me, [...]

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As a knee-jerk journalist of the compulsive-communicator type, I’ve automatically followed this tragi-farce closely, and thus done a lot of your homework for you.  Offhand I can’t recall any recent scandal, political or otherwise, that’s provided the American media with such tasty fodder for  a comparable feeding frenzy.  This morning’s Sunday edition of The New [...]

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