This comment was chosen by Mod HS from the post “Moveable Feast Cafe 2016/05/10 … Open Thread”. The moderator found this comment created impressionist images of childhood. Where the future and world is yet to unfold; parents, grandparents and old pets still live and everyday is an endless adventure.
thanks BroAnon for the link – as usual – there are a lot of videos regarding this subject, so just have to put some order in my daily doings then watch it ( and dream).
Yeah, dream, because after watching this one some time ago, when I posted it for first time,I felt myself back in my childhood on grand ma’s garden, free of any kind of pesticide, with worms in the apple – but having a real apple taste – and without washing it or even our hands, yet we were more than healthy.
The summer was summer, the winter was winter – with snow and -20 – 30°C and the people were not obese. I can continue; the women were women and the men were men; when a girl and a boy get in loved and the romance was helped by the nature; the smell of green; the smell of flowers; the smell of baked bread; the evening rings of bells when the cows were coming back home through the valley, each of them knowing the way to her stall.
Then watching the millions of stars and the moon, thinking to my love. That was freedom,no one thinking of war, the war was left behind. The men and women were making love and have many kids, they were to build their families, their homes. My grandpa took me to the church every Sunday. Of course I was watching better the icons and the clothes of the priest rather than listening on what he said. As a child I was much closer to the angels than they could imagine; I was innocent and the near of God was to me something normal. The priest’s speech was for the adults. Why ? Only later understood that why.
That child in me is still there, deep in my soul and I try to take care of him as being his father or the defender of him. I don’t want to get rid of him, why should I do that ? to lost the innocence in my soul forever ? I am he and he is me, and both we are one…But now let others to comment.. OK kid,you’re right.
The souls of children may be innocent, but the flesh of adults is not. Since my childhood, over 4.5 billion people have been added to the world population, the results of people having many kids. Summers with fireflies and every sort of butterfly are a fading memory. Seas with an abundance of fish and healthy coral, deep old woods one could get lost in, all gone. Even the stars of the milky way have been banished from the night skies as modern people are afraid of the glorious dark and demand streetlights in even the most quiet suburbs.
There are truly evil persons who have an endless appetite for power. But, mostly the ruination of our natural would is due to innocent foolishness. We have made a wasteland and called it civilization. May God have mercy on our souls.
ioan: OK kid,you’re right!!!!!
Wonderfully said.
I often hear many saying the very same (including my inner voice).
We could add a zillion points, such as:
bread still smelled and tasted like bread, even though the price was not 3 to 4 EUR but in todays’s terms 0.22 EUR. It was not wrapped a thousand times in plastic and what not, but was sold without any wrapping. Sometimes there was some paper one could take, mostly not even that. But it was still bread. Without such artificial toxic smell and “taste”. And which would not be trash if not in a refrigerator for 2 days. It lasted at least a week, would then harden, but never go bad.
Same for sausage. Unbelievable – one would go to a butcher’s shop (what’s that?) and buy some 100g of this or 50g of that real sausage (what’s that?)
Politeness was still politeness (what’s that?). Happiness still happiness (what’s that?) and there was something else nobody can now imagine: Solidarity, a mutual strive for peace and against Fascism, the feeling that the society is making progress.
Children behaved like children, not like wannabe Terminators or throat cutters.
And flowers were still flowers.
Then: Once upon a time there was something really really beautiful: Borders. Not only across countries, but across every aspect of society! Any living organism without cell borders – dies
That’s why “our” “society” (what’s that?) is dying.
Better times: Учат в школе (Learn at school) ….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt0EyZcPjtg
Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR Teil 1 / Берлин, ГДР
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZdxuOK3YuE
Ah, and although the West always ridiculed our currencies, because according to them only western money was real money: _WE_ had the price stability. for 40 years.
All who destroyed our paradise: In the past criminals still used to get punished. Because correct: We still had a justice system deserving this name. We had law, justice, peace and order.
Here historic footage from the western side of the Berlin wall in 1987. Nothing could better illustrate the clash of civilisations. A real human (Eastern border guard) against today’s western brainshit cowardly zombies :
DDR-Grenztruppen-Oberst wird 1987 am Berliner Checkpoint Charlie von ehem. Flüchtlingen gereizt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUvy1YI0vf8
Martin,
My first visit to DDR happened to be in 1981, with a similar Merceds bus seen in the video in Berlin Ost. I remember well, I managed to get a roasted chicken and a cup of beer for nearly 2 Mark. Ah, the famous pioniere movement in the East, yeah, I was also part of it.Thanks for the link and sharing with us.
Hi, yes, this roasted chicken had a DDR-typical name “Broiler”.
For years the westerners made jokes about this. But it was really good and cheap. Now it’s simply called “Haehnchen” (Chicken).
Mercedes Bus: We in the East had exclusively Hungarian Ikarus buses (at that time the pre-war production of various manufacturers had already been scrapped). They chose western cars and tourist buses for this promo video because it was produced for educating border guards, or maybe to advertise the profession (I said profession, rather than job) to young students who just finished school. Of course there were many such western tourists back then who sat in their busses and watched us like zoopark animals.
I must add one very important thing which doesn’t exist anymore across all western countries: Real milk! In Ukraine I could still find some few producers, but most was already the modern stuff which doesn’t smell like milk, doesn’t taste like milk and doesn’t behave like real milk.
Real milk is only milk if it goes bad in 1 day if uncooled (the opposite to bread).
But today you can store that synthetic crap 2 weeks at 35 degrees and it still doesn’t turn bad. Like mineral oil … or acid …
I know with certianty that those younger than 40 have no clue and no idea what I am talking about. (unless they have a cow themselves).
Ah, Martin, you beat me to the complaint about milk!! :-) I am a couple of years past 40, and about 25 years ago, the milk just changed somehow. Into some other substance. Here in BC, they now sell “artisan milk” – local, small herd, grass fed, non-homogenized. Artisan prices, too!
Salt doesn’t taste like salt anymore.
If this sounds crazy, it is nevertheless true.
In Ukraine I still found real salt just 4 years ago.
Not sure if it is still in production.
The modern western salt get various different chemical additions, such a jod, even flour but in every case: binder substance. Then they whiten it atrificially. It is not salt anymore. In Ukraine I bought me 2 kg in 2013 (it lasted until 2015), I could compare the difference, it is no joke.
Куда уходит детство (Where does the childhood go/disappear???)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajXSQuUH6co
Lyrics:
http://www.karaoke.ru/artists/pugacheva-alla/text/kuda-ukhodit-detstvo/
Quick uncorrected autotranslation:
Where the childhood to what cities leaves,
And where to find to us means,
Again to get there.
It will leave quietly,
So far all city sleeps,
And won’t write letters,
And will hardly call.
Both in the winter, and in the summer
Unknown to wait for miracles
There will be a childhood somewhere, but not here.
And in snowdrifts white,
And on pools at a stream
Someone will run, but not I.
Where the childhood where it has left leaves,
Likely, to the region wonderful,
Where every day cinema.
Where also at night blue
The moonlight streams,
But to us with you from now on
There is no road.
Both in the winter, and in the summer
Unknown to wait for miracles
There will be a childhood somewhere, but not here.
And in snowdrifts white,
And on pools at a stream
Someone will run, but not I.
Where the childhood leaves,
To not far-away countries,
To children in the neighbourhood
Same, as well as I.
It has left quietly,
So far all city sleeps,
And won’t write letters,
And will hardly call.
Both in the winter, and in the summer
Unknown to wait for miracles
There will be a childhood somewhere, but not here.
And in snowdrifts white,
And on pools at a stream
Someone will run, but not I.
Три белых коня (Tree white horses) 1982
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWf-YuxT7Hc
Drei Nüsse Für Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) CSSR)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqamJZ3Jiy4
That’s it since 35 years to me – grown up child – now in it’s 75th year of life
for the troubles you mention
rule of the world is not an American project but a Jewish one
The events in Ukraine provide specific evidence of this in my view. On a superficial level – the nations of the world agree that the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany was harmful and destructive. Let’s assume self-serving rather than altruistic perspectives: this would indicate that all nations suffered on a practical level from the acquisition of power by the Nazis. OK, geopolitical lesson learned.
Fast forward to 2014: the Obama/Clinton/Nuland-led USA executes a coup in Ukraine, knowing it will allow the (neo)Nazis to gain geopolitical power. They will have a base in Kiev, and a foothold for acquiring more geopolitical power. So the Obama, Clinton, Nuland Whitehouse expects to gain geopolitically from the rise to power of Nazis.
I thought all nations suffered harm (geopolitically) from the rise to power of the Nazis. The actions of these three powerful people in Washington demonstrate that someone came out of the Nazi era as a winner. Thus, this decision would be made with the expectation that history will repeat itself. The same equation will produce the same winning outcome. The only nation that fits this geopolitical power equation is Israel.
And I think we need to look closely at how the Nazis came to power the first time, given this repetition of history. Was this formula for geopolitical success present the first time too?
Thanks for the lovely memories. Btw, your name comes up “loan” on the intro.
I was born and raised in Wisconsin, USA. I remember the snowdrifts and the milk in bottles with cardboard caps. Piles of leaves in the fall. So many precious memories from childhood that your post evokes.
Our job is to restore the best of the past with the best of the present. Make this place a renewed Eden which I understand in the original means: pleasure where waters flow.
How well I remember growing up in a time so ably described in the article. I’m an old man now, my day has come and gone but I do not pine for those days, I remember them well with a gentle fondness and a warm glow of times past. It seemed that life was easier then, more kind, more quiet, people were not so frantic in their daily lives, not rushing hither and yon, not always late for something, not rushing through their short holidays.
I remember picking strawberries in my grandmother’s little garden at their farm, I was very young then, maybe 6 or 7. I did not object to the hot sun or the seemingly endless, in the eyes of a 7 year old, rows of strawberries to be picked before they spoiled in the sun and time. I knew that after dinner that evening there would be fresh baked and still warm strawberry pie baked in Grandma’s wood stove. She never measured anything when she cooked or baked, it was a pinch of this and a dollop of that and she seemed to sense when the little oven was at just the right temperature to bake the pie. My mother cooked the same way and with the same stellar results.
I remember going in to the fields of feed corn with my grandfather and he taught me how to check the maturing ears to catch them in the two or three day window when feed corn is more sweet and flavorful than the best sweet corn Grandma grew in her garden.
I well remember how my uncle taught me how to bake potatoes in the campfire, how to get the bed of coals just right and where and how to put the spuds carefully balanced on two stones. He also taught me how to bake the ears of corn the same way. Good heavens but they were delicious.
And of course, living on a farm I was taught how to use a rifle and how to hunt. I was also taught how to drive a tractor when I was ten and how to drive the small farm truck which I was driving when I was twelve. It was nothing to see half the teachers at school or the congregation at Church up the road a bit with rifles propped up against the rear seat of their car or a pistol laying on the dash and all we boys carried a pocket knife all the time.
There was also discipline back then. No such thing as a ‘time out’, whatever that is, the lightest punishment for a transgression, and I manged to accomplish a lot of them, was grounded, no book reading, no radio, cold dinner and to bed the moment I finished my homework. If you really screwed up, like the time me and Moose got caught borrowing some apples from the orchard in the next farm up the road, whoever caught you knocked the puppy snot out of you and sent you home. By the time you got to your back door Mother would be standing there with the belt in her hand and looking decidedly unhappy.
Yes, the times have changed and it does grieve me a bit. I know that many of the readers here did not grow up in those times and have forever missed how life was 50 and 60 years ago. Sure, there were problems then but nothing compared to today.
In a way I feel I have failed the younger generations. I am leaving you a world that I do not recognize although I understand it very well, I failed you by not making sure the world you inherit from me is as pleasant is the world I grew up in.
Auslander
Author.
Great comment Auslander. I loved the part about the berry pie, the smell,the kitchen, wood stove. I grew up on a ranch and I remember feeding the horses at night, the smell of the oat hay then the quiet sound in the barn as the animal munched their hay. Day was ended and all were at peace.
I can still smell that pie as I write of it. She also baked a grand apple pie, we had a small orchard at the rear of the house and the apples were grand.
We had cows, milk from them paid for a lot of the farm operations and then some. Still, as you said about the horses, we fed the cows as we did the evening milking and all you could hear was the cows munching away and the subdued sound of the milker. Winter wasn’t bad, snow and all, but summer was totally grand, calm, quiet, peaceful.
Hello Auslander,
tnx for this wonderful comment.
My addition: _Yes_, that’s how real GrandMa’s used to be :)
You exactly described mine.
May she R.I.P.
I lived through your wonderful descriptions. The time has changed, and we could say, we lived something like this and it was real.
Yes, ioan, it was real, a time gone now and for me lamented very much. You and I lived in a time that was heaven, a time the younger generations will never experience.
Auslander,
Sir, ’tis no fault of yours.
You are a mere leaf in a maelstrom & pandemonium of turbulent times post-WW2…
Sadly, my generation (“Gen Xers”) worship mammon above all other things.
We may be beyond Redemption…
But fret not – as we Chinks say – “Each generation shall have to learn to resolve their own issues.”
I pray you shall find some semblance of joy with your loved ones somewhat & God bless you.
Being a proletarian neighborhood girl, my childhood smells of teargas and my memories bring images of rubber bullets flying all around, truncheon blows right and left without asking who the culprit could be and above all massive general strikes…and most probably I must be thankful for this to the USA…. Thanks, folks!
C R G Pais Vasco años 80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwueKsfMNY
Elsi, that sounds sad.
your video is not watchable here btw:
“””””Unfortunately, this video is not available in your country because it could contain music from UMG, for which we could not agree on conditions of use with GEMA.
Sorry about that.”””””
Of course I can work around this by putting “ss” between “www. ” and “youtube.com” and can then download it. If that didn’t work one needed to use VPN or some proxy. Just to let you know.
Do not worry, I had also a good time during my childhood when still children could play in the streets, especially during the summer when it isn´t raining so much here, without fearing any danger. Despite the absolute absence of any superfluous luxury, we were really happy, despite the fascists. It is not so easy to embitter elsi.
I remember going to the beach even when it was raining, and putting our clothes under the arches in Playa de la Concha, going to the beach was the cheaper could be done. We were in the sea till we were purple of cold!
Ok, that relieves me.
In Berlin are also many lakes, also many cheap swimming halls (most were teared down after 1990) so it was possible to have a bath.
Here the very area in which I grew up.
It was wonderful. Seriously.
Humans were still humans and not everything was made from plastic.
I loved sitting on roofs of the old buildings. Or I climbed buildings or jumped from one building to another. But unlike those who are doing this as young adults (in modern Russia), this was my young childhood:
Ostberlin XIII – Prenzlauer Berg (b/w) vor der Invasion (before the Invasion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5q1lI8aEfA
I have also memories of being happy with little things and almost nothing but our imagination….
We survived
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9tCC-5nWDQ
For all those of us who were born in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v27C9IzCeV8
All I get is
“””””Unfortunately, this video is not available in your country because it could contain music from SME, for which we could not agree on conditions of use with GEMA.
Sorry about that.”””””
Also I must say that the time spans cannot be extended that far.
The hard imit is 1980.
elsi,
“… Being a proletarian neighbourhood girl … ”
That was during the Spanish Civil War, right, no :-?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3iKa8jOweA
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Fern Hill
Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953
10 years ago i chose to leave the chaos and the pressure from where I was born. All the small villages near the cities have been swallowed by high ways, enormous living areas and too much people on too little surface. Now I live in an old farm in the middle of nowhere with no luxury. But what do you really need? I pay no rent because if the place is sold I have to leave within one or two months. Not many people dare to take that risk. I am living here already for six and a half years. I am very grateful for not being afraid to take a chance and enjoy my freedom here. Nature is beautiful here, the nights are dark and when no clouds there are thousands of stars.
I work as a volunteer on a small biological farm close to me, almost a neighbor. It is there like the old days. Raw milk fresh from the cow, in the morning still warm. Home made bread, vegetables and fruit from the garden. They make yogurt and cheese, jam, fruit juices, pies, cookies. There are cows, pigs, chickens and all are biological fed. The taste of this meat not comparable with even biological supermarket meat. There is a small shop at the farm. farm
I was never really a big meat eater. Once or twice a week is ok for me. But last week the farmer and his wife asked me to help out. The four pigs were big enough to be slaughtered and they needed extra hands to portion and wrap the meat, what is always done in a slaughter house. Which I did although I would have never thought I would dare. But well, if you eat meat, don’t be a hypocrite I said to my self. Quite a very intense experience. For me no meat in the near future. But it is good to experience that this is part of it. That you knew the piggies which were so funny and happy in the mud and came running to you when you fed them.
It makes my life richer working there and learning so much about farming and all that comes with it. It also interesting to see how creative small biological farmers must be with all the rules from the government. Not an easy task and very very hard work. But they enjoy their way of living. Not so many people are nowadays. Try to make your life the best you can is my motto.
Many thanks for Mod HS for choosing my comment.
ioan, I almost missed a chance to congratulate you and your comment on being selected. I just saw it right now Tuesday night, May 24, and so, Congratulations!!
You see, I also almost missed all the rest of this below here, and back to the original May 6 Article by Saker /counter-propaganda-russian-style/#comment-235371
I will let my “back to the land” sister in Oregon know that her forwarding the video of the rural Russians had even more of a ripple effect than I first reported to her.
For the record, here is that video from Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XtRYmu2otA&feature=youtu.be
And also a very enthusiastic comment from a Russian visitor, Valery /counter-propaganda-russian-style/comment-page-1/#comment-235371
Valery confirms he is Valery 4 days later, May 11, after seeing my question May 10.
And then there is a comment TODAY, quite long, and good by an impassioned older German fellow from Munich, Bavaria, I was there in 1990 at Hof on the border greeting East Germans, congratualting htem on reunification, but warning them, also of the intent of the AZ Empire. . Here is his comment: /counter-propaganda-russian-style/comment-page-1/#comment-239928
Sorry for all the links, but I was quite moved by the length of time (almost 3 weeks!) that all these ripples have been bouncing off the shores of the world.
Dear Saker and friends,
Let us never forget… please, for Inna.
Let us never forget… 2 June 2014.
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/06/for-inna-video-which-should-be.html
https://revolution-news.com/the-bombing-of-civilians-in-lugansk-by-the-kyiv-government-graphic-behind-ukraines-walls-of-fire-iv/
Remember Inna Kukurudza and continue to spread the word about what happened to her on 2 June 2014.
Q.
I could write a whole auto-bio novel here but I restrict myself, for now, to the fact
that I was out to pick wild strawberries this afternoon and I found about a pound of them
– this is quite a lot for German circumstances – ,
tiny, dark red, delicious…
not out in the forest, but simply on the grass stripe along the rails of our little regional railway line,
in the small town of Bad Driburg, Germany.
Here things are generally still rather normal, weather, lifestyle and all that… even the refugees don´t bother us much, there has of course been a rise in burglaries and thefts in our town too, as in the whole Republic, but not much else.
Nature does rule, and always will.
Man is part of Nature.
Down with the illusionary reign of The Machine!