November 8th 2024年11月8日
High up on one of my towers is a weather vane - a Kazamidori かざみどり - what a lovely word !......Once I saw a pigeon sitting on it, and I thought "hey, get off my kazamidori, you fat bird!" 🤣
一度鳩がそこに止まっているのを見たことがある!
Sometimes it just stays put. You could say it was pointing to Langen. Where it's all go on the Bahnstrasse. A new Jaques Wein-Depot 🍷opened last week, literally opposite me......
今、向かいに新しいお店、ワインセラーがオープンしました!
..and the town council has decided it's time to prune the plane trees that line the street (after all, we don't want all those messy leaves on the streets do we?) It's called Baumarbeiten.....
"Tree Work". It is a lot of work, yes.....
木の剪定
...and involves a man swinging about in the air brandishing a cutting machine. They actually look uncanningly like riot police....
Across the road someone has decided to build a house, except that they didn't expect to reach the ground water level when digging out the foundations. So the project has stalled. Looks a bit like a the walls of a Japanese castle to me......
日本の城のような
The foundations of Edo (Tokyo) castle......
東京
When the weathervane shifts slightly north it is pointing towards Frankfurt, and beyond that, the Taunus hills.
Which was where I was last Sunday, trying out my new walking boots.......
タウヌスでのハイキング
Our group walked 22 km through a magical Autumn landscape north of Kronberg. Starting and ending at the Casals Forum, the lovely new concert hall. It was all like a European version of Koyo 紅葉, when the leaves turn from green to red, or orange, or somewhere in between.......
We passed through swathes of Spruce, Fir and Beech......
....with a low November sun......
The weather vane swings East, where I have just had an online lesson with Miki-san, who is in Bangkok......Now when I have language lessons the first thing we both notice is what we are wearing. So if I come on screen wearing a warm fleece, the response is usually something like "....Oh!, is it cold in Germany?" So when Miki-san came on screen last week in a light summer attire my comment was....."hmmm...it must be warm in Thailand" In fact: Langen was 10°c, Bangkok was 28°c.
And it is busy in Bangkok.......
先週、私の先生はバンコクにいました
Photo みきさん
......with lots of nice food on sale......
........meanwhile, even further East, in Ota city, Tokyo, a friend of mine is selling stuff at a flea market. It doesn't look too cold there either.......
大田市 のみのいち
Photo: 友子さん
She will soon be selling more stuff at the annual Japanese flea market in Frankfurt.....if you live here come along! It's at the Japanese Cultural Centre https://japanisch-kulturzentrum.de/- a stone's throw away from the Hauptwache - above Urban Outfitters. You just ring the bell and go up in the lift.....
のみいち....フランクフルト
You may see things like this on sale....
See you there! It's only on for two hours. Usually the nicest things go first!
それでお会いしましょう 🙋♂️ 2時間だけの開催です。通常は、一番素敵なものが先に行われます💨
I try to steer clear of politics in this blog (it divides friends and relatives and is usually hot air around a restaurant table)
このブログでは政治については触れないようにしています. 興味があれば、これを翻訳する必要があります
But when the weather vane swings to the west, and hence to the U.K., I see trouble in the air. But also good people doing what they can.
During the time I lived in London I used to attend silent Quaker meetings at St Martins Lane, (next to the English National Opera).
Who the heck are the Quakers you may ask? Some weird religious sect? You can at this point go to wiki and read a long article. Not surprisingly long, because their history goes back to the 17thc. The people I met in London were thoughtful people. And I respected them because of the work they did, their sincerity and the fact that they did not try to force their views on me. They were from all walks of life. Honest, and not afraid to challenge the "establishment" in pursuit of social justice. Holding out on unfashionable words like truth, respect, decency.......but not turning in the wind like my weather vane. So when I was sent this article from their newsletter I felt it needed a wider audience:
Climate Justice and the Rights of Jurors and Defendants
Quakers’ connection with the rights of modern day jurors goes back a long way. In 1670 two Quakers, William Penn (who later co-founded Pennsylvania) and William Mead found themselves up in court for preaching peacefully to a crowd the law deemed ‘an unlawful assembly’. Despite being locked up for two days without food or water and only being freed on payment of a fine, the jurors refused to follow the judge’s direction to deliver a guilty verdict. One, Edward Bushell, refused to pay the fine and, pursuing the issue from his prison cell, eventually achieved a ruling from the Chief Justice that gave legal status to jurors’ right to give their verdict ‘according to their convictions’.
A plaque, visible to all, in the hallway of the Old Bailey commemorates this crucial ruling, and the protection from a biased judiciary that the ordinary citizen’s conscience can offer has continued to this day.
Not, however, without a very recent challenge. In March 2023 Trudi Warner (69) wrote out this ruling on a cardboard placard and, for 30 minutes, stood silently beside the entrance to the Inner London Crown Court where climate activists from Insulate Britain were on trial. She was arrested for contempt of court, with her placard seen as an attempt to influence the jury – a charge with a potential prison sentence of two years. The previous government’s subsequent pursuit of this prosecution shocked many people and Quakers joined others across the country in holding similar placards at subsequent climate activist trials, themselves risking prosecution.
Although the High Court found no basis for the prosecution the government still lodged an appeal and only in August 2024, when the new government dropped the appeal, could Trudi finally breathe easy.
The shock waves have not ended there. With climate activists increasingly banned by judges from mentioning the climate crisis in their defence, jurors may not even get the chance to hear defendants’motivations, let alone take them into account in their deliberations. Defendants who defy this ban are receiving prison sentences for contempt of court.
Add to this the length of sentences recently meted out to peaceful climate activists committed to averting climate catastrophe and the picture becomes more worrying still. Five people on a Zoom call discussing the plan for disrupting traffic on the M25 were convicted of ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’ and given prison terms of 4 and 5 years – a sharp contrast to the much shorter sentences given recently to many rioters apparently bent on spreading racist violence against people and property. Quakers are urged to ‘discern what love requires of us’ and to ‘take heed to the promptings of love and
truth’ (Quaker Faith and Practice 26.01), advice that needs an ever more urgent response where climate justice is concerned.
Cilla de Lande Long
sentences
Just for the record, we did have some fun there. Here is Simon (one of my flatmates at the time) and myself playing Handel at the Friends Meeting House in London.......
友人とヘンデルを演奏中。ロンドンのクエーカー教徒の集会所にて（30年前）
I end this blog not with a hike, but a recent stroll........through the 18thc. Schlossgarten in Darmstadt........blue and gold....
ダルムシュタット
Bye bye.....see you soon....matane.... またね！
Nigel 🙋♂️
THE END おわる
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