M&M: A Hidden Life

A while ago I watched the movie “A Hidden Life” from the year 2019 for the first time. It was on my imdb.com list of movies that I wanted to see and tells the story of the farmer Franz Jägerstätter from the small town St. Radegund in Austria, who refused to fight for the Nazis during the second world war.

Franz Jägerstätter really lived. Which was one of the reasons, why I decided to watch this movie. Normally I'm not at a point where I'm skeptical about watching “Nazi movies” or movies set around that time and avoid them. It should be noted that this movie is almost 3 hours long. One of the reasons why I hesitated watching it.

Franz Jägerstätter is played, convincingly, I think, by August Diehl. Valerie Pachner took the role of his wife Fani and I thought of her as equally fitting. As for the other actors, I didn't know anyone other than the one playing the priest Fr. Fürthauer, namely Tobias Moretti. Jägerstätter is conscripted to fight for the Nazis once, but is send home to his wife and three daughters. When a second letter for conscription arrives, he talks to Fr. Fürthauer, but quickly notices that he won't get much support from him for the resistance to fight in the war. So he has to go to war. When he refuses to swear on Hitler, he gets arrested. Fani and Fr. Fürthauer as well as others try to talk him into swearing on Hitler. The Nazis won't care what he really feels and thinks and his death because conscious objection will basically be inconsequential and therefore unnecessary. It's suggested he can go do medical service instead of being a soldier and fight. He refuses all of that. That's how important it is for him to truthfully and openly defend his point of view. First his wife and children at home get support, but then they all feel the hate from the other town people and they become outsiders, who have to work hard to keep doing their farm work without a husband and father to keep the farm going. In August 1943 Franz Jägerstätter is finally executed.

The movie starts by showing the calm and peaceful family life. Although set in a war time and being an exceptionally long movie, the viewer doesn't see a single shot fired. On the internet I read reviews that Fani should have fought harder and should have convinced her husband more to do what's necessary to stay alive. Watching the movie I did get the feeling that she tried for him to keep on living. His point of view and showing it openly was more important to him than his own life.

During my school time our religion teacher was enthusiastic about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who also resisted the Nazis and paid with his life for that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Protestant priest, so it's not surprising my religion teacher liked him. I personally was more impressed by the simple farmer Jägerstätter and how he stood his ground and wasn't even going to pretend something else, if he didn't want those things. I don't want to badmouth Bonhoeffer or belittle him. I do believe however that for a priest the belief in god and acting according to his will is in the end a logical decision. The decision of farmer Jägerstätter to abandon his wife and children to defend his own view is rather impressive to me.

It's easy for outsiders to look back on this terrible time period and say, “I would have refused, too.” or “I would have been one of the good ones.” It's easy for us to say as our life right here and right now is not threatened. I believe that whoever makes those statements or similar ones recklessly, doesn't really have an idea about the general atmosphere of the people and the pressure people were under at that time.

The movie is long and takes its time. This seems fitting for me though in the depiction of the country life in contrast to the hectic city life and later also during the time in prison where just not much was happening. Although I was aware of the unusually length of the movie from the beginning, I didn't feel bored and it didn't seem long winded to me. I'm sure one could have cut an almost three hour movie somewhere. I wouldn't know where I would have cut it though. I didn't know Jägerstätter before the movie. Then again, he was Austrian and we didn't talk about people, especially people in the reistance movement, in other countries in school. According to the trivia comment section on imdb.com to this movie Jägerstätter and his fate wasn't known outside St. Radegund for a long time anyway and he was discoved by accident. The American Gordon Zahn came to St. Radegund in the 1970's and uncovered Jägerstätter's history and made it known. Now there are several movies about him.

The sparkling inventor: Nikola Tesla

Dear reader,

I didn't enjoy Physics at school at all. Biology was more interesting for me and even the Chemistry basic course was enjoyable for me. We once made sparklers ourselves. Something I'd like to do again. It seems that at least some of the ingredients are not that easy to get your hands on as a normal person though, because they're classified as dangerous. Sad actually. I'd especially like to make sparklers that burn in other colours, but exactly those substances are the ones that are difficult to get. Also I'm not certain which of the ingredients are responsible for the colour and would need to be substituted. I hardly remember anything from my Physics class. I can remember we had to calculate stuff with formulas. What exactly we did calculate, I don't have the faintest clue anymore.

I caught up on a bit of Physics later on reading a couple of books by Stephen Hawking. I came across a special Physicist, Nikola Tesla, in the movie Prestige. In the movie he helps a magician. In the book, which I only read several years later, there's much more on what Tesla achieved. Of course the book and the movie tell a fictional story and what's happening in the book as well as the movie, could at least not have happened during Tesla's time. It's been several years since I got curious about Tesla after reading the book and I watched documentaries on Tesla on the internet. Most of the details I already forgot. But I promise you this: if a Physicist of Tesla's time had been able to do what happens in “Prestige”, then it would indeed have been Tesla. Just so you have an idea on what time we're talking about: Tesla was Serbian and lived from 1856 to 1943, so he lived when Thomas Edison was alive, too. In fact Tesla worked for Edison for a while. There's even a rumour that says that Tesla invented the light bulb, not Edison.

If you look at Tesla's life career, it seems to be characterised by a certain restlessness and reoccurring periods of lack of money. 1883 to 1884 Tesla was overseeing the installation of the new electrical light system at the train station Gare de l'Est in Paris and with that he was sort of working for Thomas Edison's European branch of the company. Without any means he travelled to America after that to work for Edison directly. But the two of them had different ideas of Tesla's payment, so the work relationship didn't last long. Tesla went on and got together with two other businessmen and found the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company. For some readers, who are more knowledgeable about this sort of stuff than I am, the two-phase electric power, may mean something. That's one of Tesla's inventions. With his new found company also started the registration of Tesla's first of many patents. As far as I know Tesla is among the people with the most patents. I heard some day that a Chinese or Japanese guy caught up and topped him now. The English Wikipedia reads “over 300 patents” as a number of Tesla patents in an article specifically on them.

Tesla was repeatedly lacking money. But the industrial magnate George Westinghouse heard of him. Westinghouse was in a dispute with Edison, which was later called War of Currents. I barely know anything about Tesla's personality. But I could imagine that Tesla found stimulation working with Westinghouse and in a way against Edison. Who knows.

In 1893 Tesla was approached and questioned how the powers of the Niagara Falls could be used. He suggested an alternating current system in cooperation with Westinghouse, which was then implemented. To use the powers of the Niagara Falls was a dream project for Tesla for a long time, which finally was finally reality.

There's something else that fascinated Tesla, which was the use of wireless energy. Tesla foremost thought about the sun as an energy source. But the earth is also surrounded by a magnetic field, which could be used as a source as well. More recent documentaries on the universe talk about antimatter, which supposedly can be used as a fuel for spaceships. For now we only know very little about this power. If only the machines existed to collect this energy and transform it for us to use as electricity. Free energy is seen as pseudo-science and there exist (conspiracy) theories that there are already scientists, who managed to build machines, but the knowledge about that is suppressed. I heard Tesla is said to have built such a machine, but destroyed it again himself. I don't know if those things are true or fiction. I like the idea that that energy is free and usable for everyone though. Sadly I know nothing about Physics really. Regardless of how many “knowledge about that is suppressed” stories are true, I do believe that this knowledge would be an actual threat to huge energy companies indeed. Because who would willingly pay even just a penny for electricity, if you can use energy that's free of charge and surrounds us, for free and unlimited?

Until next blog,
sarah

Perception Is Everything

Dear reader,

in "A Scandal in Bohemia" there's a moment between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, where Watson shows surprise how much Holmes sees all the time. Holmes then asks him how often he walked the stairs to their rooms. Hundreds of times, Watson replies. And how many stairs are there then? Watson has no idea. That's the difference between seeing and observing.

I was probably about 14 years old when I read the Sherlock Holmes books. Naturally we had to visit the Sherlock Holmes museum then when we went on holidays in London. The hat, which we so often connect with Sherlock Holmes, was never mentioned in the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) by the way. Only once he writes about a "flapped traveling hat. The famous "Sherlock Holmes hat", the deerstalker, derives from the illustrations provided by Sidney Pagets.

The modern Sherlock Holmes of the current BBC series then has every right to roll his eyes about this hat. Which by the way is introduced at a rather late time, namely the 1st episode of season 2 (A Scandal in Belgravia). Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in a theatre in that one, investigating a murder. It's obvious to them that outside the reporters are likely to be waiting for them. So Holmes grabs a hat for himself and throws another one to Watson. But the reports are not only waiting, but also recognising the two of them. So the inevitable happens: Pictures get taken of Holmes and this way he is forever connected with that hat. So the famous deerstalker gets even more famous and becomes the "Sherlock Holmes hat". Originally it was a hat used for hunters, probably not exclusively for deer hunters. The flap at the front and back exist for practical reasons: at the front it shields like every other hat, too. The flap at the back is against rain, so the rain would not drip down the neck, but further back on the jacket or coat.

Back to Holmes and Watson. Many movies show the two of them together and that's taken for granted. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, who play Holmes and Watson in the BBC version once stated in an interview that it only occurred to them during the filming what people may think about two men living together. Holmes and Watson get to know each other the first time in the story "A Study in Scarlet". Both are looking for cheap accommodations. Holmes found a flat, but it's too expensive for him alone. Watson is wounded and back from the Afghanistan war and also has not much money. But a friend who knows them both brings them together. The first time they met, a single look reveals to Holmes that Watson is a soldier and was in Afghanistan. Watson is naturally speechless.

It's interesting that in the BBC series Watson is wounded and back from Afghanistan, too, just like in the book. Suddenly the possibility of a story involving an invalid soldier from Afghanistan is very much up to date and real. Holmes and Watson have a landlady, Mrs. Hudson. I almost wrote "housekeeper", but like she keeps telling in the BBC series time and again, "I'm not your housekeeper!" and still she takes care of their flat of the two of them. Mrs. Hudson is played by Una Stubbs. Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes, and Una Stubbs know each other in real life. His mother and Stubbs are friends. So the friendly relationship we see in the series also exists in real life. Maybe many fans prefer the British series, because they're closer to the books, with some changings and adaptations to a modern time.

In the American series there's some diversity that has to do with Holmes and Watson: Watson is played by Lucy Liu. Yes, Dr. Joan Watson is a woman! With this there are some exciting new possibilities regarding their relationship. Time will tell what actually happens for both of them. In the American version Holmes is played by Jonny Lee Miller. He and Benedict Cumberbacth are friends. A while ago both played together in a theatre production of Frankenstein. In it both alternated playing the monster and Dr. Frankenstein. On youtube you can watch samples of that. I would have loved to see the two of them together live.

A typical thing with Sherlock Holmes is that he often comes across as a bit snotty and rough. Er sees... sorry... observes... far too much than sometimes is good for him. He analyses everything and constantly, can't turn it off. That's why he sometimes seems unfeeling. Most of all however he needs to work on something all the time. Boredom is like poison for Sherlock Holmes. That's why in the books he sometimes takes drugs. For the BBC version Sherlock Holmes has nicotine patches to help him quit smoking. The more or less known "three pipe problem" from the books turns into a "three patch problem" and Watson finds Holmes with 3 nicotine patches on one arm. The American series goes even further. Because there Watson is his sober companion after a detoxification. This is where Watson comes in. Holmes' mind is so sharp, he often lacks sense for what's socially accepted behaviour and he also doesn't take care of himself and bodily needs and doesn't eat for some time. Watson takes care for both of them then, with the help of Mrs. Hudson. I think that Holmes is a fascinating character, because he sees so much and his mind is so sharp. But in the end, I believe that seeing everything all the time and not being able to turn it off is a curse in the long run and not a blessing. Maybe it's a curse of genius and not just Sherlock Holmes: they are very good at a few limited things and fail at certain daily things, which others take for granted.

Many people, even today, believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. It's impressive how Sherlock Holmes worked and dealt with problems. He's a model for investigators at the police even today, rightly so! But the person Sherlock Holmes never existed. Arthur Conan Doyle, a doctor himself, had a model for Sherlock Holmes namely a certain Dr. Joseph Bell. Much like Sherlock Holmes, Bell had a great power of observation. He showed that often by deducing the occupation and recent activities of strangers. This lead to the fact that in court they started to care less about witness statements and instead developed forensic science.

Doyle, by the way, wasn't very happy with Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to put an end to it with the story of "The Final Problem" in 1893 when he killed him. It's the final of a set of several short stories that can be read in "The Memoires of Sherlock Holmes". In it he and his arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty fall into the Reichenbach falls. Moriarty is the only person, who's intellect equals that of Holmes. Maybe excluding the rather unknown brother of Holmes: Mycroft. Huge protests and an outrage broke out among the readers. In 1901 Doyle heard the story of a mysterious ghost hound. He used that legend and brought Holmes back to life in "The Hound of The Baskervilles". The explanation of how Holmes survived can be read in the story "The Empty House", where Holmes comes back and tells Watson what happened.

Speaking of which: the final episode of season 2 of the BBC series took "The Final Problem" as the model. Which means Holmes dies. In this case he jumps of a house. The final shot has Watson at the grave of his friend and Holmes is standing far away hiding. So he survived. The question is: how? There are many theories on that on the internet. The revelation will certainly come with the next episode of the new season. Which fans are desperate to watch, of course. What interests me personally more though is something, which people seem to agree more on, which is the question of how Holmes and Watson will meet the first time after. In the story Watson faints. But that doesn't make much sense for the BBC Watson. A stream of curse words seems more fitting. At imdb.com you can read already for the 1st episode of season 3 that parts of how Holmes faked his death was already shot during filming the previous episode and can be seen there, too. We'll have to wait... presumably until spring 2014. Until then we can enjoy watching Benedict Cumberbatch as the necromancer and the dragon Smauch and Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit."

Until next blog,

sarah

The purple wizard of the desert

Dear reader,

today is a big day. I fulfill my promise to write about Milton Erickson. He was born december, 5 1901 in Aurum, Nevada. His birthday seemed more appropriate to me to write about him than his day of death: march, 25 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Erickson was born into a farmer family with 7 sisters and only 1 brother. Erickson took his time when he started to speak as a child. His mom was fine with that though. She simply said, "When the time arrives, then he will talk." He was 4 years old when he started talking. He had a rough time at school first. He'd start reading a dictionary not at least going through it starting with the first letter of the word he was looking up, but started reading with at the letter "a", until he finally came to the letter and word he actually wanted to look up. Hence his nickname "Dictionary". He was dyslexic.

In 1919 he graduated from high school, but everyone thought this would be the end for him. Erickson got a polio infection (his first) and was completely paralysed when he overheard the doctor in the next room telling his mom that "The boy will be dead by morning." Erickson found out through much, much practice that he could control one of his eyes and make it move the way he wanted and he spent many hours getting his mom's attention and he was able to communicate to her to move the chest in his room some way. What he couldn't tell her was that the chest was blocking his view from the window and he wanted to see the sunset, before he died. Well, he only saw part of it He was unconscious for 3 days.

He needed to learn everything again. His youngest sister was just about that age where she'd start to learn how to walk, so Erickson was able to look and learn from her. This time consciously. Erickson himself said the polio infection gave him a "terrific advantage" over others. Even when he was sick in bed, unable to move, he studied his family and other people in the house. He found out that his siblings could say "yes", but mean "no" or say "no", but mean "yes". So he learned the basics of careful observation, phrasing and body language. When he was reasonably able to walk again, Erickson and one of his friends decided to go on a canoe tour. Luckily his family wasn't present at the actual time of departure, because on short notice his friend cancled the tour. I think his family wouldn't have let him go alone. When Erickson had to move the canoe, he needed help. He made an experiment out of that for the tour to never ask for help directly, but always create a situation in which others would ask him or offer help. That's how more often than not people would find him sitting learning german vocabularies for his medical studies, until someone would come along.

Even as a student he was interested in hypnosis and worked in hospitals, in psychiatric hospitals first. His boss once told him that the walking cane he needed to walk, was helpful and made him likeable for both patients and colleagues. The female patients wouldn't feel threatened by a man with a walking cane and male colleagues wouldn't see him as serious competition. In 1947 he had an unfortunate accident on his bike and although he didn't like to get vaccinations, he decided to get a tetanus vaccination this time. He got an anaphylactic shock, which he was lucky to survive and which gave him pollen allergies for the rest of his life. That was the reason for him to stop working in hospitals and move to Phoenix, where the desert climate was nicer for him with the allergies.

In 1953 he got a post-polio syndrome on top of the discomfort he already had to deal with. He worked closely with many well known therapists, among them Jay Haley, Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead. John Grinder and Richard Bandler, who created neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and analysed and used Erickson's hypnotic language patterns for that. My friend John is one of those methods, as I explained in earlier posts already.

As maybe you could tell from my, this post here already, there are many stories around Erickson. Even if I spend the next posts to tell some of those, it would take some time. Erickson was a genius story teller. But he didn't just tell stories for entertainment, but to help and heal in an indirect way.

Many people then and now know Erickson from his older days when he was half paralysed in a wheel-chair, hard of hearing, had double vision and suffered from chronic pain. It's impressive to see him even in short youtube videos. Even in those you can sense he was full of lust for life and energy of life although (or maybe because?) he suffered so much. I think, his obvious physical problems made him more believeable for his patients. Who would you believe more readily, when he tells you that pain control is possible: a seemingly young, healthy, energetic doctor, or a sickly elderly man in a wheel-chair? ;-)

These are only a very few aspects of Erickson's life and work. Many stories and aspects I know and thought of as I wrote this, I left out. One single post isn't enough by far.

If you're interested in learning more about Erickson, I can warmly recommend to read Sidney Rosen's collection of Erickson stories My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson. If you want to get a glimps of what Erickson was like with his students, I recommend his 5-days-seminar, which his student Jeffrey Zeig recorded. The written version of that is published under the title A Teaching Seminar With Milton H. Erickson. If you have further questions or want more suggestions, just write to me. For now this will be it about Erickson. But I'm sure this won't be the last post, where I'll mention him.

Until next blog,

sarah

The magician, who unleashed the world

Dear reader,

on Halloween 86 years ago, october, 31 1926, the magician and escapologist Harry Houdini died. Many people know little or nothing about that name today. Although he achieved quite big things actually, not only in the field of entertainment as a magician and escapologist. I want to take the opportunity today to write a bit about him.

What many people don't know is that Harry Houdini wasn't his real name. He was born in Budapest in 1874 as Erik Weisz. His family moved to america when he was still young, they ended up living in New York. The family changed their name to "Weiss" and Erik called himself "Ehrich". When he was 17, he started doing magic shows and used the name Harry Houdini for himself. There are different theories why it was "Harry" as a first name. On the english wikipedia-page you can read that friends already called him "Harry". On the german wikipedia-page it reads that the magician Harry Kellar was is idol and he took the first name of him because of that. The name "Houdini" came from another magician-idol: Eugène Robert-Houdin. A friend of Houdini's told him that in french when you add an "i" at the end of "Houdin", it would mean "like Houdin". That's actually not the case, but makes a nice story about how he came to the name, I think.

He worked in a circus and traveled not only in america, but also europe, including germany and also russia. He's certainly most known for his escapology. Among other things he let himself be tied up and put under water in rivers. He also once was locked up (as part of the trick, not because he had done something wrong) and tied up in the Tower of London and was able to free himself. But he also did magic in different ways and for example he wrote a book on paper magic. He describes techniques to fold things out of paper. (Essentially how to do something like origami.) I heard he was quite good and skilled with card magic, too. He's known today for his escapology though. In a documentary on Harry Houdini that I saw, they said that he did his escapology at a time when the people in america felt captivated/imprisoned. To see that he unleashed himself was more than a mere entertainment act then. It was a symbol of freedom for themselves.

Harry Houdini was a mama's boy and when she died, he was very sad. At that time there were many people, who claimed they could get contact with the dead. But Harry Houdini with his own knowledge about magic, was smart and saw through the tricks of those people. Since he knew about the pain of this loss through the death of his own mother, he spent the rest of his life debunking charlatans and to safe moaning people from con artists. Because you can very well make pretty good money that way, if you're "skilled" enough and know how to do it. But I have absolutely no respect for those people. My point of view is that they really use this pain and make money from that. It's one thing if a funeral parlour wants money for the coffin, the memorial and funeral and all that. But to say that one can talk to the dead and in reality it's all just an act, that's clearly crossing a line for me. Maybe some of those people believe, that they truly can talk to the dead. But I believe that most of them know very well that this isn't reality and that what they do is simply a disrespectful tall tale.

The american magic duo Penn & Teller have a tv series where they investigate things we take for granted and let experts talk about that. The series is called "Bullshit" and the first episode was on talking to the dead. At the beginning Penn is standing in front of a grave stone with Harry Houdini's name and dates on it and talking to him. That even after so many years and his attempts people still talk to the dead. Then he turns to the camera saying, "See? Anyone can talk to the dead. Getting an answer, that's the hard part."

Harry Houdini's death is pretty mysterious. They say this is what happened: He had some blind gut or belly problem prior to october, 31. A student came to see him october, 22 to test Houdini. He had claimed that by contracting the muscles, he could be hit by someone and feel fine and be unhurt. So this man came and hit him in the belly. It's said that Houdini later claimed the belly problems came from the hitting and he, Houdini, didn't have enough time to prepare for the hitting. The belly problems got worse after that. A doctor diagnosed him with appendicitis. Houdini did his final show october, 24, went to the hospital after that and died there october, 31, aged 52.

Houdini and his wife thought up a code word. After one of them was dead, that person would try to make contact with the one still living. That word would be the proof that the connection was genuine. The code word was "Rosabelle believe". Up until 10 years after Houdini had died, his wife held an annual séance, to get in contact with her husband. This never happened at any time though. After the final try, she commented, "ten years is long enough to wait for any man."

Until next blog,

sarah