In which we find ourselves glued to a chair.

More specifically, the past few weeks have found me snuggled into this corner:

In my own little corner, in my own little chair, I have been compiling a year's worth of research into a Great Summarizing Document. This means I've been digging through my notes, cutting them apart with a pair of mental scissors, translating them from the German into the English, and then smooshing them back together with words from the observational part of my brain into a big, colorful collage of war and life and theater and how they all interact with one another. It's kind of like smooshing an entire loaf of Wonderbread into a 1-inch cube, except infinitely more rich, interesting, and nutritious. I'll even go out on a limb and say it's more useful, but that's my own biased opinion. Whatever the case, this whole process is fascinating and the material is fascinating-- so much so that I keep getting distracted by more in-depth research about people, events, etc. and BAM! Two hours later, the sky is a little more sunset-inclined, my brain is bubbling with newly-acquired knowledge soup, and the neglected Great Summarizing Document is giving me a passive-aggressive silent treatment. So I get up, stretch, make a new pot of tea, and restart my Philip Glass playlist, and restart my Philip Glass playlist, and restart my Philip Glass playlist.

The first question that gets asked when I tell folks about what I'm doing is, "Are ya gonna gittit published?" (paraphrasing, of course). Weeell, dunno. It's actually not a goal at this point. I'm mostly just writing it for me, and to share with whoever wants to read it. This research project has taught me some pretty incredible things about how people work, for better and for worse, and I don't want to forget it. This whole thing has become much more important to me on a personal level than I had anticipated, and, yeah, I want to be able to share that-- especially seeing as the majority of this information has never been translated into English, at least not in-depth.

I remember learning all about World War II in high school, and I also remember learning all about World War II in Germany-- living in a city that was mostly destroyed by British and Americans, enjoying fireworks by a lake once filled with the corpses of burning people trying to save themselves from miles of flames, reading books in parks where thousands of terrified souls were gathered to be herded off like cattle to concentration camps, walking each day on sidewalks studded with forgotten brass memorials for people whose lives had been stolen from their own homes-- buildings where I do my grocery shopping, dance salsa, have tea with friends, forget about what had happened to the people sitting in the same rooms 70 or so years ago, and breathing in the air of a place where history, both good and bad, is still very real, very vivid-- if you let it. (You say, "Now Margaret, aren't you being a little over-dramatic?" --I say, "Well, sometimes reality is over-dramatic.") Of course, it is much more pleasant to live in this moment, in this time, in this city-- my favorite city-- the one that grew from that city with the help of the very best humanity has to offer. This history somehow never made it into the story I learned in high school. And I want to share it.

That's my excuse for an absence of July postings. Now back to work.