Incoherent Scribblings

A Letter to SmartFTP

Dear Makers of SmartFTP,

I understand the need for a company to make money. However, I am sadly disappointed that you have decided to abandon the majority of your users (educational institutions and poor graduate students) in favor of the all-mighty dollar.

I have used the freeware version of your product since I cut my FTP baby teeth using version 1.X to learn FTP basics as a poor graduate student. However, I recently learned that you have decided to do away with the free version for private and educational use. Professional software is expensive and for those of us who need professional software but work in education (an area that the government is always quick to cut) it is a great disservice to begin charging this segment of your user population. In an era where open source software is quickly coming of age, it seems a better business model would be to expand your free product, not do away with it.

Thanks for memories SmartFTP, but I am afraid I will be re-investigating my free FTP options.

FireFTP here I come!

Sincerely,
Renée, education professional and part-time poor graduate student.

On Citizenship

citizen: noun a legally recognized subject or national of a state of commonwealth, either native or naturalized

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been following a story here in Germany that centers on the introduction of citizenship tests.

The main controversy concerns whether or not these tests unfairly target Muslims and their compatibility with local (aka “German”) values, but that isn’t why I have been following the story: I have been following the story because as a result of my marriage to A., I am more than likely a permanent resident of Germany and after I have lived here for a few more years I could technically apply for German citizenship.

Honestly, though I have thought about it from time to time, abandoning my American citizenship for German citizenship is something that I am not sure if I could do. If dual citizenship were option for me I might consider it, but according to both American and German law, it isn’t.

A. claims that citizenship is just another “piece of paper” and honestly doesn’t understand my reluctance to abandon my American passport. Because A. is technically an Austrian citizen who has never lived in his “home” country, I believe that the reason he doesn’t understand my perspective is because he doesn’t have a real sense of what a person’s citizenship can mean to his or her identity.

I don’t fault him for his view, but I just feel that no matter how long I live in Germany, how well I speak the language, or how much I know about German history and culture, it will never make me solely German. If I were to become a German citizen I would feel like a fraud because no matter where my destiny takes me, I was born and raised in the United States and those experiences mark me as forever American.

That is not to say that I don’t believe that as an expatriate I don’t have a responsibility to attempt to integrate myself into German society: I think I do merely out of respect for the place where I am living and the people that I am interacting with. However, on the other hand, I don’t believe that during the process I can’t also be an American.

Some days I wonder at how successful my attempts to integrate into Germany really are: After all, A. and I still speak English together and if you walk into my house it looks like a little slice of America. However, though I might not be tempted to become an official German citizen any time soon even if I can successfully pass a completely unauthorized German citizenship quiz, the idea of becoming the equivalent of a “permanent resident” seems just a little more feasible than it did four years ago.

Silence at Last

Even though we live in what I refer to as a “suburb” of Munich and the population is many times greater than that of the rural Iowa town that I grew up in, our “suburb” was historically an independent village with a lot of farms that survive even today.

As I have mentioned before, I am no stranger to farms. I grew up in Iowa and most of the people my hometown were either farmers or had family that were farmers. For those of you that do not know, Midwestern farms are big… really BIG. Many cover hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of land with the farm houses and buildings set in the middle of these expanses. Because of this, if you live on a Midwestern farm it is not unheard of that your closest neighbor lives more than a mile away and it takes you 20 minutes to drive into “town.”

German farms, on the other hand, don’t necessarily reside outside of the town-proper. The farm’s house and other buildings are often inside the city limits and the farmers “commute” to the land outside of town. In fact, in little villages like ours, it is not unheard of for farms to be smack-dab in the middle of town.

As a matter of fact, even though we live on what can only be described as our little village’s Main Street, directly next door to our apartment building is a fully-functional farm. This farm is jokingly referred to as “Old Mc Donald’s Farm” by A. and me. I am not exactly sure where the land that Old Mc Donald farms is, but I have seen him driving his tractor down Main Street on numerous occasions on his way to plow, plant, or harvest.

And like most farmers, Old Mc Donald doesn’t just work the land: He also has livestock in the form of at least one dairy cow and a handful of mixed fowl. I am familiar with this barnyard menagerie because it is nearly impossible to ignore them when the chickens crawl under the rickety fence and start wandering around the parking lot below my balcony, when old Bossy starts mooing because her udders are full and she needs milked, or when the rooster starts crowing at the break of day and doesn’t let up until the sun sets.

In all honesty I don’t really mind seeing the chickens or hearing the cow on occasion. In fact, A. likes to tease me that all of the noise should make me feel right at home… never mind that I never lived on a “proper” farm in Iowa.

However, I will admit that the damned rooster does tend to get on my nerves! I thought that roosters crowed at daybreak and that was it. I didn’t know that if left to his own devices, a rooster will crow any time of the day or night that he feels like and often he will crow for minutes on end. But after three and a half years of living next door to Old Mc Donald, I have finally gotten used to the rooster and his crows are no longer anything more than background noise.

Then yesterday it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard a peep out of the rooster for a few days. I thought maybe Old Mc Donald had finally gotten tired of listening to him and convinced his wife to make fried chicken for dinner.

However, when I mentioned to A. that I hadn’t heard the rooster for a few days, he remarked that while it was possible that Old Mc Donald had finally eaten the rooster; it was more likely that he had been shut up in the chicken coop.

It was then that I remembered that as of last week all domesticated birds are no longer allowed to be free-running in Bavaria as a precautionary measure against the bird flu.

Bavarian Flood Pictures

No Swimming Allowed

Originally uploaded by blondelibrarian.

In comparison to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in my former stomping grounds of Mississippi and one of my favorite U.S. city of New Orleans, the floods that hit Bavaria last week seem relatively minor in comparison.

However, I did take a few pictures the day that the water crested on the Isar…

Cookiegate

When I was a wee little girl watching that staple of children’s television programming, Sesame Street, there was no Elmo. And for that I am forever grateful. I don’t know what it is about Elmo; I just don’t like him. (I mean, that whole “Tickle-Me Elmo” phenomenon? In my opinion, one word: Disturbing!)

Anyway, when I was small Sesame Street only had Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Grover, and the Cookie Monster. (OK, technically there were other characters, I mean who can forget the Count? But those were the main players.) At that time Grover was the Elmo of Sesame Street. He was the goofy, spindly legged whatever-he-was-supposed-to-be that all American toddlers worshipped. But for me, since I couldn’t really pinpoint what Grover was I didn’t find him particularly appealing and I always thought that he was too much of a goody-goody anyway.

For me, Sesame Street was defined by the presence of the Cookie Monster. We all remember the Cookie Monster: that lovable googly-eyed scruffy blue monster who ate chocolate chip cookies (and the occasional plate or paper sack) like they were going out of style. I remember mimicking his words to my mom at least twenty times a day. “Me eat cookie?” I had a Cookie Monster stuffed animal and we even had a cookie jar in the shape of the Cookie Monster. On my corner of Sesame Street, Cookie Monster was the star.

I also seriously think that the Cookie Monster’s one-track mind in the area of cookies had a profound impact on me as a child. I sincerely believe it was through him that my love of sweets, and chocolate chip cookies in particular, was nurtured to the point where even today my favorite breakfast is one of warm gooey chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven and a big glass of milk. (Mmmm… Cookies…)

So imagine my shock this evening when I read that Sesame Street is doing the unthinkable: They are putting Cookie Monster on a diet!!! Oh the horror!

OK, so according to his spokesman (who knew that Cookie Monster had his own spokesman?) “[They] are not putting him on a diet. And … would never take the position of no sugar. [They are] teaching him moderation.”

Either way you look at it, I am still appalled. You should never see the word “cookie” and “moderation” in the same sentence. It just isn’t done.

I know that childhood obesity rates in America are sky-rocketing and I do believe that a healthier life style with less fast food and more exercise would tremendously benefit America’s youth, but why should the Cookie Monster have to suffer?

Cookie Monster represents life’s guilty pleasures: We all know that instead of just eating one or two cookies we would like to eat the whole plateful, just like Cookie Monster so unashamedly does. And without those guilty pleasures, life would be as bland as a carrot stick and glass of water… and, really, who wants that?

USA Today article: Cookie Monster Cuts Back