LL-L 'Transitions' 2006.10.01 (03) [E]

Sun Oct 1 22:32:28 UTC 2006

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L O W L A N D S - L * 01 October 2006 * Volume 03
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From: 'Elsie Zinsser' [ezinsser at icon.co.za]
Subject: LL-L 'Member news' 2006.09.30 (02) [E]

Hi all,

Thanks, Arthur, for expressing the outrage that we are feeling here in SA,
whether we are Black, White, Brown, Indian,
Chinese or Brown people.

I often get the impression, and even from my extended family in the US, that
now that a 'democracy' is in place, (which is
in actual fact a one-party coalition of the ANC, SA Communist Party and
labour unions), the rest is simply a means to a less
that ideal end.

When a minister of police services claims that the crime stats look
'rooskleurig' (rosy) and while 18 people instead of 21 people are now
murdered each day and a rape still occurs every 10 minutes, one wonders
whether he is blind to the ugly reality or merely well-protected in his
boomed and guarded enclave of state protection.

When already one million well-qualified professionals have left this country
to give their children and parents a safer life, more than 3 million job
losses have occurred as a result. As South Africans are apprehended, often
raped and tortured before being murdered in their homes and on their farms,
so thousands of illegal immigrants are welcomed over the northern borders
without the ANC regime checking their criminal records or their
qualifications. Nigerian drug lords are enjoying a boom in SA while 31
Somali refugees have been murdered in the Cape during the last three months
because of jealousy and resentment of their success in business.

It is this evil cycle that I wish the international society would start
waking up to and, as they have expressed their outrage against the apartheid
government, should now also do the same against the current ineffective,
corrupted fat cats of the current government.

Okay, perhaps not quite Lowlands languages related, but heck, an injury
against one Lowlander should be an injury to all Lowlanders!

Regards,
Elsie Zinsser

From: Arthur Jones [arthurobin2002 at yahoo.com]
Subject: LL-L 'Member news' 2006.09.29 (01) [E]

Hoy laaglaners,

Mark and Ruth are reunited, our meditations have been heeded, their
spiritual
family can now go get some rest and relaxation. What wonderful news.

Now, to the hard part: HOw many more of our brothers and sisters must be
hurt;
how many more taken away; how many more be mourned; how many perish even
short of
the grotesque toll of war?

Can we not address the authorship of this vile, unwitting, low violence?

Is this not the proper point in time?

Welcome back.

Arthur

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From: 'jonny' [jonny.meibohm at arcor.de]
Subject: LL-L 'Language and genetics' 2006.09.30 (01 [E]

Sandy wrote/quoted:

> 'Would you believe that I never knew when we crossed the Border, and me
> no' been further south than Galashiels before!
>
> 'Miss Jean says to me, "You're over the Border now, Margaret," says she.
> I never let on that I hadn't notticed the difference, but I jaloused
> that something had happened, for the train gave an awfu' bounce, and
> very near upset the man that was nippin' our tickets all to nonsense. I
> saw a field of turnips in England the very same as the one next
> Oldhamstocks Church; but, when you think on it, one neep is very like
> another at the green end.'
>
> - "Marget Pow", by Catherine P. Slater.

This reminds me of a visit in the neighbouring Netherlands, my first contact with
a foreign country in my life. I'd been about 12 years old, and for my
disappointment really *nothing* happened, when my father and I crossed the
border. Though it still was in the early 60ies we weren't controlled by the Dutch
border-officers (but by the Germans, when we came back ;-)), didn't need any
special paper and had no significant difficulties to talk with the people over there.

Perhaps I should add: we came in business intentions; we wanted to buy a tractor
there...

What an immense difference some years later when we visited the eastern district
of Berlin, at that time part of the former GDR.

BTW: yesterday I made an (exhausting) trip to the nearness of the Polish/German
border. I hadn't been there for 13 years and was surprised by the incredible
amounts of vehicles coming from all the new and old Eastern European countries,
using the autobahn between Hamburg and Berlin: Poland, Russia, Czech Republic,
Hungaria, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, White Russia/Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia,
Latvia, Croatia, Slovakia...
Europe really is re-becoming an Economical Union, more and more, and an open,
undivided Germany is the turntable and melting-pot as it had been in the times
before the WW's. It's sometimes hard to follow this development with all its
light and shadow, in special for those people having been isolated for about 60
years, first caused by the Nazis and then by the Iron Curtain.

Greutens/Regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Transitions

Elsie, the way I assess the situation is that the world media generally still
find it hard to report negative things about the new South Africa, because
everything was supposed to get better with the fall of the apartheid regime (and
certain things do indeed seem to have improved).  The way I see it, people
expected everything to turn into a bed of roses with the victory of former
underdogs, and they don't want to admit that the honeymoon was short-lived, or,
better to say, that it never happened.  I suppose it's part and parcel of
humankinds desire to find reality in black-and-white images (and definitely no
pun is intended here), a desire to find solutions by choosing between extremes.

Sandy and Jonny:

> > - "Marget Pow", by Catherine P. Slater.
> 
> This reminds me of a visit in the neighbouring Netherlands, my first contact with 
> a foreign country in my life. 

And it reminds me of entering my first foreign place in my mid-teens: crossing
from Flensburg, Germany, into Denmark -- Northern Slesvig/Schleswig on the
Jutland Peninsula, to be precise.  I had learned some Danish and had listened to
Danish radio, and it was rather exotic to me then.  But things looked pretty much
the same on the other side of the border post, with the exception of a few
architectural details and Danish language signs and posters. I felt let down at
first, and I learned to look out for the small differences.

Fast forward in time ... I had become accustomed to Western Australia's climate
and culture and had come to think of it as an extension of my native European
one, with my experiences in Britain as a bridge and as a more advanced catalyst
toward becoming aware of a more expansive Lowlands identity. And here I suddenly
was in Beijing, China, in November, still too sun- and freedom-soaked to be aware
of the biting frost, at the very tail end of Cultural Revolution.  Although I had
been to Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan before, I had expected
everything to be very, very different, and my mind was wide open for it.  The
first strong impressions were not "exotica" but a plethora of things that
reminded me of the early part of my childhood ... a thousand shades of gray
against a frosty white sky, ice-crusted fields, the omnipresent odor of
less-than-fresh cabbage, bundled-up people waddling along on badly paved roads or
riding decrepit bicycles, choking coal smoke everywhere, impersonal apartment
blocks in between ramshackle old houses and narrow alleys, surly sales people,
stolid bureaucracy, playing by the rules, an overriding feeling of insignificance
and impotence as an individual ... I felt that I had returned home ... to Eurasia.

"What does it mean ... 'Heimat'?" is a frequently recurring theme in today's
German literature.  Among today's Low Saxon authors it is frequently being asked
and addressed by Snorre BjÃ¶rkson who recently published his novel _PrÃ¤ludium fÃ¼r
Josse_ (Aufbau-Verlag, ISBN 3-351-03085-1), in German, though the earlier version
was in Low Saxon ... (Well, well ...)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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