The Girl from Berlin

The Girl from Berlin by Ronald H. Balson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An old lady living in Italy is to be evicted from her property which she owned since she remembers.
An US lawyer - Catherine and her husband - Liam, are asked to help her.
They are given a old handwritten memoir of Ada, a German girl with Jewish roots which should help is solving all mysteries surrounding this case.
The book gives an equal share of space to those two yarns - entries from the diary alternate with the actual events.
My first objection - why Catherine did not read the diary much faster? She got lots of time during travel from USA to Tuscany and she could easily skip most of the story to read the decisive last pages which connect to the current problems.
The answer is obvious, it would kill the book.
Unfortunately for me it is not a good answer. From the very beginning I felt manipulated by the author.
Secondly, the story of legal efforts of Catherine and Liam was for me terribly repetitive and boring, I continued reading only to learn the Ada story.
The Ada story - for me it got an additional attraction - classical music scene in 193o-ties.
I found some parts of this story unbelievable, but I was still touched by heroism and sacrifices of main characters and it was the only reason I continued the book and rated it so high.
I still consider it as a foul play of the author.
P.S. One of main characters of Ada story is a famous conductor of Berlin Philharmonics - Gustav Furtwängler. After a war he has been investigated by an US denazification commission. I recommend a very good movie about it - Taking Sides - CLICK.


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Gold Mountain

On Saturday I went downtown to a concert at the Scots Church. The program - Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach - performance on harpsichord- CLICK.

Goldberg variations, so many associations, where to start?

Maybe from the beginning...
It started with Augustus III Saxon becoming the king of Poland.
As a Saxon Elector, he was also the king of Johann Sebastian Bach, who lived in Saxony.
J.S. Bach saw already during the times of Augustus II "the Strong" Saxon, what was going on and approached the royal court in Warsaw with an application for the position of court composer.
He wrote a special Catholic mass for this occasion (Mass in B minor).
After a considerable delay, the application was approved and Bach realised what was squeaking at the royal court.

Squealed the Russian ambassador - Herman Klaus von Keyserling, who suffered from insomnia and hired a young, very talented composer and harpsichordist, born in Gdańsk, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (Gold Mountain) to play for him to help him fall asleep.

During Keyserling's visit to Dresden, J.G. Goldberg met the Bach family, and J.S. Bach commemorated this acquaintance with a composition

I encountered the Goldberg Variations many years ago, thanks to Glenn Gould's famous recording - CLICK.

This recording was so popular that I did not look around for anything else, so something else came to me in the promotion from Australian Chamber Choir.

Scots Church, just in the centre of Melbourne...

Nearby there are many churches - Baptists, Methodists, the Catholic Cathedral of St. Peter, the Anglican Cathedral of St. Paul - these were the times of gold rush in nearby Ballarat, and since gold attracts a sin then there was a search for salvation.

There are banks squeezed between the churches - this red sign on the glass skyscraper is the symbol of the Westpac bank.
Complete harmony.

The disadvantage was the location of the church - right in the middle of Melbourne, there is no way to get there by car, for my wife taking a tram, including transfers, was too troublesome, she stayed home.

Inside the church...

This is what I expected - the spring school holidays just starting, the Australian Football and Rugby League finals are next week, and it's a beautiful, sunny day with crowds pouring through the streets of Melbourne.

Mountains of gold are difficult to reach, but at our fingertips we have the sweets of this world available - the Mountain of Sugar (Zuckerberg).

The overall impression of the concert - definitely positive - I am not a fan of the harpsichord, but in many cases the harpsichord provided effects unavailable to the piano.

Time to return, I'm going to the tram stop, on the way I'm stopped by a demonstration commemorating the death of Mahsa Amini in an Iranian prison...

The last look on the city...

Again, a church brings harmony and a peace of spirit.

Armageddon soon

Few days ago I was stirred by a news that our neighbour Papua New Guinea decided to open an Embassy in Jerusalem  -  CLICK .
It reminded me that city of Jerusalem got a bit strange status - UN and EU consider it a "corpus separatum" sort of a state within a state - CLICK.

Most of countries placed their capitals in Tel Aviv, exceptions are: USA, Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo.

Why Papua New Guinea is so keen to have an Embassy in Jerusalem?
News under the first link clarifies it - decision was taken under pressure of local Christians, who strogly believe in St John's Apocalypse - Jerusalem will be a place of Final Judgement, from there will be a straight road to Heaven.

PS. In England there are the last days of a wonderful music feast - BBC Proms, a permanent position of a final concert is song Jerusalem which mentions that Jerusalem could be in England - CLICK. 

I suggest to Christians in PNG to do the same.

P.P.S. Facts - city of Jerusalem was built by Canaanites, ancestors of Palestinians. God of Israel gave their territory to Israelites with instruction to eliminate the original inhabitants.
King Davis conquered Jerusalem many years later, ruled there some 40 years, his son king Solomon built there a Temple, few years later the Kingdom of Israel disintegrated and was swallowed by neighbouring countries.
State of Israel reemerged almost 2500 years later, in 1948 - CLICK.

Fury

Fury by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First 2 pages impressed me very much, specifically author's eloquence.
I gained trust that the author can carry me everywhere.
Then I realised that it is not so promising - yes, he can carry me everywhere, but he is just running in circles.
I recommend review by BlackOxford, he/she put it so nicely and clearly that I cannot add nor subtract anything from it.
P.S. Due to my Polish background I appreciated author's mentions of few names of popular Polish artists, but again - what for?

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Wordle

 I discovered Wordle some 7 months ago.

Explanation: simple word's game - find a 5-letter word in 6 tries.
After each try you receive confirmation - which letters you guessed in correct position  (green) and which in wrong position (yellow), it looks like that:

After 1 month I implemented a simple strategy: enter 3 words, each using different letters.
In these 3 tries I use all 6 vowels and 9 most common consonants.
In above example it was sufficient to make a guess.
Since I implemented this strategy I think my success rate is some 98%.
Failed cases were words I did not know and some obvious omissions on my side.