Sigi, one of the Best

The wonderful world of

Sigi Kulterer.

An artist even I like.

His colours are strong, partially aggressive,

warning of a damaged world.

Even though he could not be called a "realist",

you can read the message in his work. 

sometimes there is something threatening.

A warning:

Smarten up, or else!

I see a blood red sky, the remains of a burnt forest,

and ice covering what used to be a meadow.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum

To follow the above suggestion is not always easy.

On November 25, 2016 Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz died in Santiago de Cuba, at the ripe age of 90.
Fidel Castro, as he was known to the world, ruled his country with an iron communist fist for 47 years from 1959 to 2006.
He and his rag-tag group of revolutionaries, after a long struggle, defeated Cuba's dictator,
Fulgenico Batista in 1959.
Here was Fidel's chance to change the fortune of his country for the better.
Unfortunately, for his people, he blew it, setting up another, this time a communist dictatorship.

His supporters, including current Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will tell you what a great man he was, bringing health services and education to his country.
What they will not tell you is that, in order to achieve this the country and his people paid a heavy price.
In his earliest days as the head of Cuba he called himself a Marxist and a Leninist and set himself squarely against his close neighbor, the United States of America.
Within Cuba he established a repressive system of Government, depriving its citizens of basic human rights, incarcerating tens of thousands and executing thousands.
This is his real legacy: over 7000 dissenters killed, 9 billion dollars worth of property confiscated, and causing over 1.5 million Cubans fleeing to Florida, and sending his troops far afield to assist fomenting revolutions.

So what is it with Mr Trudeau, when he calls Fidel Castro a great leader and friend of the Cuban people? He brought the misery of Communism to a country which deserved to be freed from a brutal and corrupt dictator Batista, but then should have been led to the prosperity of a democracy.
President Obama showed his diplomacy when he said:  ... history will judge him.

Bertstravels
always a bit hasty
makes his judgement today.

The Immaculate Conception

In Catholic Austria, and I am certain also in many other countries, this happening is celebrated on the 8th day of December.

What exactly is it, the believers are celebrating ?

A surprising number of people will tell you that it is the day when the Holy Ghost impregnated the Virgin Mary, causing this “Immaculate Conception”, resulting in the birth of Jesus Christ.

Even the mathematically handicapped should be able to count almost on their fingers that this would have given Mary a pregnancy period of 17 days.

So, this one is out. It cannot be it and, of course, it is not the cause of this celebration.

This day is celebrated because, allegedly, Mary's parents, Joachim and Anna, were told that they could expect the birth of a baby. (There is no reference made to Joachim and/or Anna in the Bible so somebody must have dreamed up these names.)

Since, 9 month later, on the 8^th September, Mary was borne without Original Sin, her mother, so it is claimed by some, also must have been borne without this infliction.... and her mother... and her mother... until back to Eve ?

Throughout the Middle Ages, the arguments raged back and forth about this issue:

Was Mary, conceived in the normal physical way by her parents and was she freed from O.S. by God's intervention even prior to her birth, or was it this or was it that... or was it an altogether other thing ?

In any event, it was not until 1854 that Pope Pius IX issued the Papal Proclamation (Bull) declaring the Immaculate Conception of Mary a fact revealed by God and therefore beyond doubt or question.

It became Dogma.

It is really wonderful, how the Catholic Church can decide upon something 1854 years after the fact, something about which there is no mention in their “book of books” and claim that all of it has been revealed by God himself and therefore must be the absolute truth.

Very convenient, isn't it?

Bertstravels

just shakes his head.

English is not difficult !

Off of.....

It does not exactly drive me crazy, but it causes a slight annoyance when people, who should know better, misuse the English language.

You may read it in Newspaper columns, in Books, and in Magazines. The living shall remain nameless, since I want to spare them this degrading embarrassment.

This is what you may read: “With his right hand he brushed the snow flakes off of her hair.”

or this: “She took the book off of the table.”

If they ever bothered to look up the word “off” in a dictionary, or just go to Google and ask: define:off, they would be able to read : “away from the place in question.”

In other words: “off” already means: away from, so there is no need, in fact it is inaccurate, to add the word “of”.

It would suffice if “he brushed the snow flakes off her hair.” or if she “took the book off the table.

When famous writers, like the late Thomas Wolf, as well as current Journalists, use the words “off of” it does not “drive me off of my mind,” but it gently annoys me.

There is another common, all too common, mistake made in the respective use of the words:

“waiting on” and “waiting for”. Particularly in conversational English, but also in the written form, people will say and write:  "Where were you? We've been waiting on you for hours.”

Of course they have not done such a thing! They have “been waiting for you.

The difference is quite simple to remember:

A waiter stands at the entrance of the restaurant, waiting for his guests.

Once they have arrived, taken their seats, then the waiter can start “waiting on his guests.”

Yeah, I know, why worry about little things like that?

Because it's the English Language which gets maltreated in a way it does not deserve.

That's what annoys me.

Bertstravels

Nobody Home

I knocked and I knocked.

There was no answer.

Maybe there is nobody at home.

Sailing Regatta

Spent a month in Toronto last summer 

and was lucky to catch a sailing regatta

in Lake Ontario, between Toronto's shore line and Center Island. 

It was one of those perfect days: 

Not a cloud in the sky

and great wind conditions.

and now, with Winter approaching in giant steps

I thought it was a good time to remember

the great days.

Misericordia et misera

Hallo! Hallo! Did you read that? Did you hear it on the News?

A new wrinkle out of the magic bag of the Catholic Church.

The holy year of “Compassion” has come to an end and the Pope himself closed the “Holy Gate” of

St. Peter's Cathedral.

Before he did that, however, he issued an “Apostolic Letter”, titled: Misericordia et miseria” with which he extended the right to forgive the sin of abortion from Bishops to regular Priests.

Think about that for a moment!

A woman, for whatever reason, decides not to carry a child in her womb to full fruition, birth.

This, under the rules of the Catholic church, in itself is a grave sin, forgivable only by her confession to a Bishop.

Should she be unable to make this connection, she will, so preaches the Church, be condemned to Hell. ( where- or whatever this is. )

Hell must be pretty crowded with suffering women, since only very few, who committed this sin of abortion, would have, or could have sought forgiveness from a Bishop or from certain specially appointed “confessional priests”.

What about the “ever forgiving, compassionate” God, through whose compassion every sin, however serious, can be forgiven.?

Well, dear God, you are just out of luck.

Even though in the “Misericordia et misera” Pope Franciscus states:

“God, who is capable of looking into the heart of each person, sees the deepest desire hidden there.”

and later: “God's love must take primacy over all else”

Where does this leave us now?

The Church teaches: A person who has committed a mortal sin, and abortion surely is one of those, then dies without having confessed this sin, will be condemned to spending an eternity in Hell.

Then the Pope tells us that “God's Love must take Primacy over all else.”

So what is he ( God ) to do ? His Church talks about the punishment as an eternity in Hell, but his number 1 representative allows for His love to “take Primacy over all else”.

None of this, of course, should puzzle us. The Catholic church is involved in so many contradictions, so many irrational statements that it absolutely boggles the mind, and we cannot expect that they, in this very controversial issue, should be able to come up with a cohesive, sensible statement.

When you read this Apostolic Letter you may also come to the conclusion that Franciscus is trying hard to make a little sense of it all. He is, however, confronted with 2000 years of utter gobbledygook and finds it difficult, if not impossible to make his rational way through the jungle of nonsense.

Bertstravels

could lend him a machete.