Saarbrücker Gespräch

Jürgen Albers also attended Ludwigsgymnasium, an all-boys classical grammar school in Saarbrücken. We both belonged to a very unusual, small group of students – we decided to continue voluntarily with Latin for another three years after receiving our advanced Latin qualifications (Großes Latinum). My own motivation was simple: I expected that after six years of vocabulary and...

Die Zukunft liegt in Manderscheid

Before his retirement, Rainer Petto was in charge of the regional (Saarländischer Rundfunk) television program Kulturspiegel. In the 60s, we both attended the same all-boys school in Saarbrücken, the then-famous Ludwigsgymnasium, a classical grammar school founded it 1604. Rainer and I have been friends since our days at Ludwigsgymnasium. One thing we had in common was our interest...

Geh uff die Hidd

I wanted to use the time I spent in Germany this year to record a couple of conversations in German. I asked three people with radio experience, and they all agreed. For me, this was a unique opportunity to learn about sound editing. I used Audacity to edit the conversations. I found it surprisingly easy to cut out unwanted noises and to change around the position of sentences. At the...

Über-Gourmet

Living in a city where, according to a quote whose source I cannot pinpoint right now, “smoking marijuana is legal, but watering the lawn before 5 pm can get you arrested,” I am pleased to see that someone is addressing the concerns of those who don’t want to ruin the beneficial effects of pot by smoking and the damage it can do to the lungs. The key term you have to...

72 Suburbs in Search of a City

This famous quote by Dorothy Parker reminded me that as a result of my recent move I keep hearing this question from friends and family: How big exactly is Los Angeles? There’s no simple answer. In other countries, there seems to be an ongoing consolidation among neighboring communities. Not so in the L.A. area. Therefore I will be writing “city of Los Angeles” to mean the...

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles

One of the reasons that I put this blog on hold in June of 2012 was that the all-consuming task of purchasing a condominium in Los Angeles made it impossible to set aside the time necessary for blogging. When we started to visit properties up for sale in the city, we were still renting a house in Claremont on the easternmost edge of Los Angeles county. We had been trying for many years...