Every year during the Holiday season we get fruitcakes from our neighbors. We smile politely and hand out a tin box of cookies in exchange -always thinking they got the better deal. The fruitcakes end up in our fridge. It’s like during a rainy summer when you end up with too many zucchinis in your garden -all football size and bigger- and you try to come up with a solution to get rid of them. Continue reading
I can’t help but smile when I think about all the Holiday geese who found their way into our kitchen. Roasted goose with potato dumplings and homemade red cabbage. A feast of the past, today a treat I rarely prepare anymore. It’s not worth the effort I have decided, but the smile on my face tells me otherwise. Continue reading
The first migrant workers arrived in Austria, following an invitation from the Austrian government.
I was born 4,500 miles away in a small village in the Alps. One foot one the Italian side, the other on the Austrian side my Grandma always joked. I met Gastarbeiter/Migrant workers), who were guest/gast in our country, invited by our government. Most of them came from the former Yugoslavia, a few Turkish men followed the invitation as well. Continue reading
Lent was a big deal in our Catholic boarding school. 40 days of fasting was the motto, which didn’t bother us too much, we were used to it. Boarding school food is a bit like hospital food, and fasting comes naturally. Continue reading
I’m not happy. I feel a genuine sense of heartbreak every single day. A lot of it has to do with me being hyper-observant and somewhat intelligent. Not meaning to toot my own horn, but there’s a threshold, I believe, where too much knowledge, too much awareness, too much understanding makes it literally impossible to attain a state of happiness. Continue reading
It’s hard to watch TV these days, negative campaign adds left and right! How much nicer it would be if the candidates would just tell us what they stand for. “Hello…introduce yourself! I am your audience and a potential voter. Give up the smear campaigns, it gets you nowhere -at least not in my house.” Continue reading
Born in poverty, raised with hunger, we listened and learned.
God only helps the ones who help themselves they said, and it made sense to us.
We knew what we had to do, we packed our things and left. Continue reading
While we established who is not welcome in my workroom, and who I would not work for, how about I tell you who is welcome. I have some funny rules and regulations in place. Some have been planted in me by my Grandmother, others I only follow because of the fear of my Grandmother, who, if her wishes and beliefs came true, is enjoying eternity aka The afterlife sitting on a cloud watching me. Who also might have the capability to jump of her could anytime she wants to, to slap me silly. One can never know. Continue reading
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Colorado baker has the legal right to refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, because of his own religious objections to same-sex marriage and I understand the ruling -what might come as a surprise to many of you. Continue reading
“People say you’re born innocent, but it’s not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can’t wash off. … We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent.”
― Hugo Hamilton, The Sailor in the Wardrobe Continue reading
