I suffer, you suffer

This is what was in front of my house the other day. Yes, I did get out a ruler and measure it for all of you; no one believed me when I said they were 4 inches long. Enjoy.



The blue-green pellets are the "slug corn" I put out to kill the beast. It ignored them disdainfully. So I eventually had to get a stick from the woodpile and flick it (they scrunch up rather painfully appearing when they are poked) several times until I could push it down the hole in the manhole cover in front of the neighbors' house. I couldn't let it just go about ravaging the neighborhood, could I?

Then the (brave?) slug slayer celebrated with a cup of coffee, extra cream. Livin' large!

German woes

I'm taking an intermediate German class. After we were a third through the first term, our first teacher disappeared to a full-time job, and our new teacher came. Let me describe her: she is about 6 feet tall, size 6, obviously a runner, and sweet as a summer's day. She is also made of steel and carries an invisible whip made of smiles. You can't decide if you should fear her or take her out for coffee.

I come home from this evening completely exhausted. The exhaustion comes from having had some concepts of grammar I've had in my head for 30 years completely turned on its side, taking my head with it.

Turns out that what I've always fondly called an adjective in English isn't always in German - sometimes it's an adverb. And it wasn't even the subject of the exercise, this dismantling of my understanding; the point was a review of German declinations. Take this example:

The beautiful woman (die schöne Frau)
The woman is beautiful (Die Frau ist schön).

Now, we always learned in school that in sentences where the verb is essentially, "to be", the verb is essentially an equals sign and there's no real predicate - what comes after the verb is equivalent to the subject. And you can't really modify "is" in English. We also learned that anything that describes a noun is an adjective. So in English, both "beautifuls" are adjectives. Turns out that "beautiful" in the second sentence is, in German, an adverb. I'm told this should be clear to be because it's not declined (the "e" missing from "schön" in the second example). But I'm really still trying to get my mind around the concept that, in German, you can modify "to be".

This is made the more earth-moving to me by the fact that I took my first German course in 1991, and you'd think that maybe, just maybe, I'd have gotten this concept down 17 years ago.

I am not well tonight. Wait, I just modified "to be", didn't I? Now I'm really not well.

On top of that she inflicted upon us a particular kind of German academic torture called a "diktat". Not like Dictator, but like dictation. The teacher reads a text, perhaps slowly (yes, this time), perhaps repeating phrases (no, this time), which the students have to write out. German kids start this in first grade; it's actually a subject appearing on their report cards. Being the person I am, I had to ask, WHY? Supposedly, she explained (indirect speech is one place German has English beaten), it trains the children (and childlike foreigners) to write things down automatically, without stopping to agonize over punctuation and spelling.

We wrote the short paragraph and self graded this mini exam (my 10 errors put me far from the leaders in the class, but I suspect some fellow students of undercounting). She announced that she was giving this to us because, when she asked if we had understood every word in the text, everyone nodded immediately. Once again, being the person I am, I had to point out that I had understood the paragraph and all the words in it; my problem is simply atrocious spelling and lack of any sense of German punctuation rules. So sadly, I learned something, but not apparently what my teacher was trying to show me.

Why here and not there?

I've been wondering why, given my last post, in Germany we have a female Chancellor (Bundeskanzlerin) - Angela Merkel - and it wasn't that big a deal (although a historic first) while it's a gut wrenching ordeal with allegations of sexism and female inadequacy in the U.S.

I think a big part of it is that she comes from the East, which had, during the communist era, more of a tradition of working mothers. But I think perhaps a bigger factor comes from the way the German system elects its politicians.

When Germans go to the polls, they vote for an individual (who has a party affiliation) to represent their district, just like in the U.S. However, at the end of the day, officials determine not only the winner of each individual race, but also the overall proportion of votes cast for each party in the election. Each party (as represented by the candidates) that receives at least 5% of the vote, receives seats in the assembly so that the overall proportion of the seated reps is brought into line with the vote. If a party has more elected representatives than would be indicated by the overall vote proportions, those representatives are still seated (the "overhang"). If fewer representatives are directly elected than the proportional vote calls for, the parties appoint representatives from a previously publicized list. The executives, such as Merkel, are usually then elected by the assemblies (although in the national elections, the parties usually publicize who they'll put forward for the executive spot if they win).

So, coupled with the fact that the parties put forth directly elected candidates, plus their opportunity later to fine-tune the representation, means that the parties, if it's a goal of theirs, can further the role of women in their party. Now, when I look at lists of Moers representatives, I see some women in there who list their profession as "Hausfrau". So I believe the parties are working to bring some parity to the representation.

Well, now, once you have the women in the pipeline, it's inevitable that one will eventually rise to the top.

Contrast that with the U.S. system - because every representative is directly elected by the populace, each race is again a struggle to overcome whatever societal prejudices exist - whether gender, race, religion, orientation, or one I haven't heard of yet. Yes, direct representation is a near-holy tenant of the American system, but here you can see how it can actually hinder the promotion of underrepresented groups. Of course, this process in Germany means that the parties have a lot more control over who actually gets seated - which could be a disadvantage.

What do you think?

-the d.h.

Raven Mothers

Interesting article today in the NY Times about the German working woman's dilemma - whether a mother or not. It confirms earlier posts of my own debunking the widely held belief among American women that German women are better off, family-balance-wise. A SciAm article I read recently found a statistical link between the level of support for working mothers in Europe and the country's overall fertility rate.

Wage Gaps for Women Frustrating Germany

One hears occasionally of private daycares opening up, but folks and the government don't seem quite to know what to make of that trend yet...

But it's one example of official government policies (maternity leave, equal rights, prohibiting the question about being pregnant) being ahead of societal (and business) norms. I've heard numerous comments from German friends that confirm a lot of the trends mentioned here, and I personally know just one mother working full time - even the occasional single mother seems only to work part time. And that one mother has told me a) she couldn't do it without the extensive support of her own parents, b) her in-laws only accept her working because her husband is partially disabled, and c) she chose not to have more than 1 child so she could continue working...

Granted, we live in a relatively well-off area; but that just means that most women here, if they absolutely don't have to, don't make the effort. Because they don't want to, or feel they can't ? - that's the question.