Lavender Blue

Shared with Photo Tunes

Ladies in Lavender

... they enjoy the heat of last super-summer

and the pictures warm me when I'm looking at

in cold gray winter time without colors

Posted for GemsWeeklyPhotochallenge v.3

and shared with Photo Tunes, image-in-ing

Friday Five, "Stasiland" and purple...

Good morning,

it's time again for Willy Nilly Friday Five and Five on Friday.

I

Today only one photo, it's helichrysum italicum, the colors are edited.

I have it in my garden.

You can use it as a spice or only enjoy it's smell.

II

I just make a purple color mood in my blog,

please visit the main site to see the colors.

III

Since yesterday the bad rainy cold seems finally over.

15th of may is the traditional opening day for public swimming pools, 

but in last weks I've often thought, they can open for ice skating...

IV

I've just finished the book "Stasiland" by Anna Funder.

I read about it by Tanya and bought it in German translation.

The Australian Journalist was in Berlin 1995 and 2000 and followed the feeds 

of security org. "Stasi" in the former GDR. 

She spook with some victims and security men and wrote their stories.

I grew up here in Stasiland and I found some parallels to my own life, 

even if the described victims were more extreme cases. 

But she did a good research and this was exactly how it was: our alldays life!

Maybe, that all sound horrible for outsiders, but it was for us litterally a normal life.

We have suffered many things, but not only that.

We knew nothing else, nothing better ...

The feeling was always there: to be careful and not to trust anyone. A kind of grunting.

And at the latest, when you got constantly open letters, 

it became a sense of a duffle threat, of isolation.

I think that was wanted. 

That were really dark years and I have certain evidence 

that the collapse of the GDR saved me from the worst.

Some things in the book were new for me: The report of a woman about torture cells 
in prisons (and the author could look at it herself). 

We did not known about the camouflaged prisoner transports.

The channel under the border in Berlin was a legend - I haven't known,
 that it has really exist.

And often I've wondered, what was happened with one of our music bands

 - it is written in this book too.

There was always a heavy prison sentence for attempted flight or 

help to flight (or for the unproved accusation of it).

 But there were many people who were not to be blamed for, and who tried to live 

a normally honestly life. Frequently, however, these people were also

 in the sights of the security forces, simply because they were too independent,

too little adapted. And often they were placed in psychiatric institutions,

  treated with medicines, from which they were detrimental for the rest of theirlife.

Anna Funder writes nothing about this - it would fill a second book ...

The collapse of the GDR, the unification of Germany, 

was a salvation for us Eastern-Germans and for me personally too.

But it was not only a good end: economic structures were smashed, 

too fast came the unemployment and poverty for many families.

Today many people have a dependency on offices to get the most necessary money 

to live (the payment for jobs is often very-very small!) and I sometimes wonder 

what is more degrading: the control of personal letters at that time 

or the total control by the authorities today - 

every bank account statement is copied and kept in the office - -

Now I'm retired, but in my working life I've often watched, 

that the former security men had strong networks, their

structures were not really smashed and they help another to the well-paid jobs. 

While the former victims often worked for pittance.

And again are those up, who were up earlier!

Well, they die out slowly, but it works still into the next generation.

Writing this is perhaps not politically correct, 

but it is my opinion through my own experience.

For many people here the liberation was not really freedom, 

because it's now a freedom of capital. 

- What sense makes for you an open border,

 when you never have the money for a railway ticket?

And, what I would even to say, who reads this book in an always free State, 

may regret us and may find it all terrible.

But I think, KGB in Soviet Union, Securitate in Romania and all the other 

bad conditions in North Korea and dictatorships all over the world 

are certainly worse and made more victims. 

That is the true being of dictatorships, 

the eastern part of Germany was more a "human" country, despite of that all.

V

At last a random page from my journals, just for colormood.

Have a nice weekend.

Fast Blog

Purple Madonna

One time on Hollywood Boulevard I saw a young girl with a baby. It was a crisp winter morning & her hair shone dark purple in the sun. She was panhandling outside the Holiday Inn & the door clerk came out & told her to be on her way & I wondered if anyone would recognize the Christ child if they happened to meet. I remember thinking it’s not like there are any published pictures & purple seemed like a good color for a Madonna so I gave her a dollar just in case.

- storypeople -

Shared with Tuesday's Treasures, image-in-ing
Paint Party Friday

The color purple...

Shared with I heart macro, Macro Monday2, Macro Monday Mixer

Wordless - без слов -

Shared with Wordless Wednesday, WW@Crafty Spices,

IN HIM WE LIVE, WW@Create with Joy ,WW@A Mama's Corner
Louis' la Vaches WW, Aquarianns WW

It is always the simple...

It is always the simple

that produces the marvelous.

- Amelia Barr -

Shared with Sunlit Sunday, My Sunday Photo

Sunday Snapshot, Weekly Top Shot

(For more pictures of crocus look here)

Precious gift

Let me tell thee, time is a very precious gift of God;

so precious that it's only given to us

moment by moment.

- Amelia Barr -

(For more purple pictures see here)

Shared with Still Saturday, I Heart Macro
The Rosegarden in Malevik
Straight Out of the Camera Sunday, Our World Tuesday  

Random 5 Friday

I

This week I celebrate the purple. I am totally enchanted and inspired by the color of crocuses in my garden.

They are very many become , the bulbs have multiplied over the summer and now light purple color spots everywhere .

Until Sunday I 'll show photos in purple color mood and I wear some purple clothes now...

II

I bought a macro lens 4x . So I can move closer with my camera and finally succeed me flowers photos.

III

Spring is in the air all over . At night it is cold, but the day warmed up already the sun. The best time for me is the dawn. When I open the window in the morning, I hear countless voices of birds from near and far . This song in the half darkness gives me a special feeling of the vastness of space . I call this the real stereo effect ...

Enjoy it very much.

IV

Last friday I wrote about the death of blogger and made me thoughts about the traces, which left blogger .

In the evening, I found a text by Anais Nin about writing (again, what a coincidence! ).

I think it hits very well for me at blogging. Although I usually just tell in pictures, instead of writing ... but this is actually quite similar. Even with the images I create my own world. They are a reflection of reality , but my focus is only on what is beautiful and comfortable for me what enriches me and sometimes distraught and whatever I get so into my own world to me ....

A very expensive text to think , I have been looking for him in English and found.

V

As poetic part today the words of Anais Nin, from her diaries (1937 )

"Why one writes is a question I can never answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me – the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

...

"We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely … When I don’t write, feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."

(for more purple pictures see here )

Have a lovely and colorful (purple) weekend all.

Written for Nancy's Random 5 Friday
 Shared with The Rosegarden in Malevik

The Color Purple - vol. 2 -

I'm enjoying of the many blooming crocuses in my garden

all the purple is so amazing...

(for more purple pictures look here)

Shared with  Friday Photo Journal, Give Me Your Best Shot
Friday Photo Story, Floral Friday Fotos, Today's Flowers

52 Photos Project: How I start my day

I start my day with a black or green tea and a delicious breakfast.

Then I read a random poem

or look a nice book, if I have enough time

When I fed the cat and stroked enough,

we both go out to the garden,

the cat from the roof, I through the door...

I'm  looking for the small spring flowers

and enjoy in their colors.

The unpleasant things of the day

come later soon enough ...

Shared with Thursday Little Things, Share The Joy Thursday

Rurality Blog Hop

Wordless - без слов -

(for more pictures of crocus see here)

Shared with Wordless Wednesday, WW@Crafty Spices, IN HIM WE LIVE

WW@Create with Joy, Aquariann's WW 
Louis la Vache's WW , WW Blog Hop

The Color Purple - vol.1 -

I am so fascinated by the color

of crocuses in my garden - they are so many

this year than ever before and they shine ...

Shared with Our World Tuesday, Wednesday around the World 
Outdoor Wednesday