ritas kleine welt

in celebration of international women's day, here are four portraits of women from my family. my great-great-grandmother singer, my great-great-grandmother trültzsch and her daughters, johanne and gertraud, my great-grandmother and great-aunt respectively. when these four ladies were born, women in germany had not yet acquired the right to vote!

the work for equality for women is not over yet. not by a long shot. but! this country has sure come a long way since 1919.

here's to all the women of the world and their struggle for equality and a life in simple human decency.

a couple of days ago, the fabulous eldivinomarques over from LJ and i got talking about vintage photography and how it looks very much different from what is being produced today. for starters, changing the paper on which the prints themselves are/were produced already is largely responsible for that. of course the old papers were incredible instable with their silver coating and the pictures fade over the years because of that. but the silver also brought out a wonderful translucient quality in the images. something that has been lost ever since.

spring has arrived with a whizzbang, sun, temperatures and all. so mum, sis and i decided yesterday to make a day of it and go for a walk through the woods -- with wet feet, an encounter with ants and frogs. seems like mother nature was just about ready for the warm season to kick off as well.

as i was going through some of the scans of my old family pictures, i came again across three of my favourite images. they must have been taken some time between the 1930s and 1960s. unfortunately, except for one picture they are undated and you can only guess from the people in the pictures or the clothes they wear. but that does not take away from the beauty of those photographs at all.

finally, it has arrived. winter is here and it brought along a big load of snow. good thing it was sunday, so we all could enjoy the magical powdery stuff properly. no snow plows dug their ways through the snow and all the cars went on very carefully. and then there were all those people having some splendid time -- building snow creatures, igloos and taking their sled to the next hill (which in leipzig is about 2 metres high...). so, in order to keep up with all those people out there, maria, denise, obi and i just went with the flow.

and what did you do today?

whilst at home visiting my folks last weekend, i was whinging to my mum that i couldn't find a packet of räucherkerzchen here in leipzig that didn't cost me an arm and a leg. it appears like there is some sort of export/import tax placed on the goods as soon as they leave the erzgebirge to be shipped to those other exotic parts of germany, such as the northern part of saxony.

anywho,... mum did not want to have her erzgebirgische daughter suffer a horrendous pre-christmas season and provided her with a generous stack of 3 packets of crottendorfer räucherkerzchen. (KNOX incense sucks!). i was entirely content with the prospect of fumigate myself into oblivion and beyond -- until this morning when i recoiled in horror.

last sunday, my mum and i took the oportunity of a nice and sunny sunday morning and went for a short stroll around the woods at home. although it was rather windy, as soon as we were lost between the trees and underbrush, there was no more wind and here and there, we saw some sunny spots on the ground.

----- Original Nachricht ----
Von: Michael Schwarz <XXXXXXXXXXX>
An: Carola Schwarz <XXXXXXXXXXX>
Datum: 14.04.2008 13:40
Betreff: Stoppt Kinderarbeit!

Noch immer müssen tausende von Kindern auf Baustellen Ihr Brot verdienen
(siehe Anhang) ... deshalb fordern wir jetzt: STOPPT
KINDERARBEIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ein Rundschreiben der Initiative "Frauen an den Herd - Kinder ins

Laufgitter!"

look behind the cut to view the attachment. suffice to say, i laughed my head off when i received that message. turns out, my mum's husband has a sense of humour after all.

well, so i did manage to watch the second half of the game germany versus austria after all, even though the online stream was delayed by almost an entire minute. which made the whole thing a bit boring because i was on the phone with my mum -- who kept me up to date and always told me in advance that a tight situation was just about to come up. which took most of the excitement out if the game. but anywho. at least i was bored and inspired at the same time and managed to make a silly doodle of a screen capture of mr netzer...

quite unexpectedly and just with sheer luck, we (mum, sis and i) attended the closing church service of the Evangelischer Posaunentag 2008. although official sites had stated that there were no more tickets available (they were more some sort of seating vouchers than tickets and didn't cost a cent), we got in without any problems. strike twelfe the service kicked off and more than 16,000 brass players played their tunes and formed the world's largest brass choir. a welshman would have wept tears of joy.

for the interested, please, find a little story and a video (both in german) on the great event. it goes without saying that hearing such a vast number of brass players was mind boggling beyond compare!

edit: just found two more videos straight from the stadium here.