That stirring speech
A SIGNIFICANT anniversary passed almost unnoticed this week. Fifty-five years ago on Tuesday, US president John F Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech (I am a Berliner).
He was speaking to huge crowds at the infamous Berlin Wall that separated West from East Berlin, West Berlin being an enclave in communist East Germany, controlled by the US, Britain and France, part of the unfinished business of World War II.
West Berlin was a place of freedom, Kennedy declared. People around the world who believed in freedom were all of them citizens of Berlin.
"Ich bin ein Berliner!"
Heady stuff! Right under the noses of the commies.
One problem though. In the local idiom, a "Berliner" is a jam doughnut. So Kennedy was saying: "I am a jam doughnut!"
It took 26 years, but eventually the values of the jam doughnut prevailed over the iron-hard authoritarianism of the Soviet Union and its satellites. The Berlin Wall came down.
Is this a metaphor?
And what of other walls? Donald Trump's Great Wall of Mexico? Will a jam doughnut emerge to frustrate that plan?
Deep divisions
KENNEDY, a Democrat, took over from Eisenhower, a Republican. The transition was seamless. That was a feature of the American system in those days.
People fought an election, called each all kinds of uncomplimentary things, then accepted the outcome. Everyone closed ranks for a few years.
Today? A year into Trump's presidency the place is still riddled with unpleasantness, a country deeply divided.
Take this business of the three pastors, two rabbis and two retired judges who are trying to revoke the liquor licence of the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
Local by-laws require that only a person "of good character" can hold a liquor licence. The group have approached the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board asking for the licence to be revoked due to Trump's "egregious conduct", according to the BBC.
This attempt surely cannot have a snowball's hope. It can be seen as astonishingly petty. But does it not indicate a degree of desperation in a divided America? One gets a sense of social unravelling.
'Tis as sad as it's alarming.
Rupee rat
A RAT got into an ATM in India and ate rupees worth R260 000. But rats and rupees don't go well together. When bank employees opened the ATM, they found a lot of chewed banknotes and a dead rat, according to The Huffington Post.
It happened in the town of Tinsukia. The rat seems to have got into the ATM through a gap for cables.
Fatbergs
WHO would take a trip down the sewers of London? Not too many, one imagines.
Yet they're flocking to the Museum of London to look at a piece of a "fatberg", according to Sky News.
What is a fatberg? No, it's got nothing to do with the damsels of the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties, it's a lump of congealed fat, oil and wet wipes that gathers in the sewers.
The piece on display in
the Museum of London was taken from a "monster fatberg" that was found under the streets of Whitechapel. It was 250m in length and weighed 130 tons.
People have been flocking into the museum to view the mini-fatberg, so much so that the curators are looking to a way to preserve it for future viewers.
Nowt so queer as folk.
Tailpiece
A POLISH woman is having her eyes tested. The optician shows her a chart with the letters CKOPVWXCZY.
"Can you read this?"
"Sure I can read it. But how did you know my maiden name?"
Last word
I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it'll be much harder to detect. – George Carlin
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