Back in Germany again, for treatment this time. I may have mentioned before that I have Morbus Hodgkin, a cancer of the lymphatic system: a rather curable one. It's been in remission twice, but a few tests I did last month in Singapore indicated that it's active again. I choose a German Clinic near Hamburg for the treatment, which allows to stay in contact with my brother in law and the diverse nieces. The doctors are said to be cutting edge professionals, so I'm quite confident. Treatment will start next Monday.
Should have chosen another time of the year, though. The early winter at the North Sea coast of Germany is a damp and cold affair. 
Mist obscures everything, and you stay indoors most of the time. But I'm not here for my personal pleasure, aren't I. I'll miss my lashes and eyebrows, nevertheless. Chemo therapy is lethal to roots of hair, and it takes months to re-grow them. But then, strange enough, the first thin and soft saplings tend to be of the original hair color, and it takes months until I'm back to my geriatric white... But enough of that.
Found this article (published a few days before the election) in the German Online Magazine of "DER SPIEGEL". It may hurt, but that's the way the US are perceived from the outside...
DER SPIEGEL(Nov 5th, 2012) I'd subscribe to most of the theses...
No one (not even the Germans who are very fond of Obama) envies the president these days, his tasks pile up to a sheer nightmare.
They seem unsolvable.
Sometimes I can understand the common moron's romantic withdrawal into the fifties... If only the narrative weren't so obviously wrong. After all, it was the time when the female part of the labor force was sent back home to make sandwiches for the returning war heroes, who of course were given job priority after cleaning the world from German and Japanese dictators, and a booming post-war victor economy. The tea party, aside from making use of the ancient "Golden age" myth, ironically refers to the government propaganda aimed at facilitating that switch from war- to peace-production, especially on the labor market, plus the integration of tens of thousands of impaired GIs. After all, PTSD as a mass phenomenon has occurred in all wars of the 20th and 21st century.
This propaganda, together with the imposed conformism of the McCarthy era, when you could lose your job for having social contact with a nonconformist, can be easily spotted when you watch Hollywood movies of that time. The dialogues just don't sound like real people, and everyone is either of WASP or, sometimes, Italian descent... It's really amusing to see that the "Defenders of small government" refer to this era of high federal taxation and strong government control over the media as a "Golden age". Looks like they have the attention span of a fence post, combined with an unusual amount of confirmation bias...
Apropos fence post...
And now I'll creep under the voluminous sheets of my little guesthouse on the island of Juist, where I spend the last week before therapy.
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