A NEW Christmas Song: “White Christmas “ #Christmas

Posted on 2014/12/25 by gmroeder

By Giselle Roeder, – Melody – ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star…’

First group sings:

“What beats Christmas in the snow?
Jingle bells and forty below?
Boots and parkas, scarfs and mittens,
Cozy homes and cuddly kittens.
Sitting ‘round the fire place,
Happiness for every race?”

Second group sings the answer:

“A beach snow white and sun aglow,
turquoise waters, people slow…
Suntan lotion, bathing suit –
A big white ship and lots of food:
Tell me, is that not a scheme
Against your ice cold Christmas dream?”

Both groups sing together:

“But you miss your friends at home,
I see you run to ev’ry phone.
You think ‘Christmas’ – and go shopping –
Drown your thoughts while barstool hopping.
And in all the glittering light
YOU DREAM OF A CHRISTMAS – WHITE!”

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

A Christmas Fairy tale: “The Weeping Angel.” #Christmas

Posted on 2014/12/23 by gmroeder

Big tears were welling up behind his eye lids. He tried very hard to blink them away. He was flying within a large flock of fellow angels, wings spread wide, arms stretched out as if ready to embrace someone. You see, this angel was new at angel-ling. He could not yet hide his feelings behind an angelic smile.

He couldn’t take his eyes of the planet earth: There it was, hanging in the atmosphere, slowly, ever so slowly turning around and around. Because of this, our angel could see many different countries, many different people, and they were all doing many different things. It was Christmas time, the time when humans on earth celebrated the Lord Jesus’ Birthday, different ways in different countries, even different dates. They do so every year, have done so for more than two-thousand years. Now, once again, they were singing of love and Peace on Earth, giving presents to each other, thinking more than usually of helping and sharing with the less fortunate and the poor. Our angel wondered: Why didn’t they do this all year ‘round? Didn’t the Lord say, “The left hand does not need to know what the right one does”? Wouldn’t this mean they should not have a reason for helping but just do it? Why wait for Christmas? Couldn’t it be like Christmas all year ‘round?

Oh, our angel thought, there is so much trouble down there. The humans are trying to destroy each other, and their beautiful planet in the process.

It was not the fire from the deep bowels of the earth, spit out by angry boiling volcanoes, which was trying to reach way up into the sky. No. No, it was fire made by the humans to destroy other humans, burn each other’s cities and kill each other’s people. They call it “War.” There seems to be war in many countries, on many continents. Where neighbours destroying neighbours? Our angel spotted a prison camp in the middle of nowhere. You couldn’t escape from there. A barbed wire fence was built around it anyway. Watch-towers were on the four corners, and several heavily clad soldiers on each of them with machine guns pointed to a large group of shivering men in the middle of a square. Many had no shoes, just old rags wrapped around frostbitten feet. A well-dressed commander stood before them. A huge flag on a pole beside him did not move. It was twilight, the time between the parting day and the rapidly approaching night. Frost crackled in the air. The breath of the men, coming like tiny puffs of smoke, suspended over and around each of them. What an eerie scene, useless in the big picture of history, but still already part of it.

Wait! What was that? Sounds of music? Was that a sound coming from a single, shy voice in the wintry night air? The sound got louder, stronger, steadier, as all the men in the middle of the square joined in, despite the warning shots fired around them, bouncing off the hard, frozen earth. Loud and clear it rang up to the sky:

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…”

The flock of angels slowed their flight, even descended a little. They were allowed to do that if they saw something unusual, you know. A magical night it was. A wondrous feeling was evoked by this chorus of men in the middle of nowhere, kept in a camp from which there was no escape, even if the barbed wire fence and the guns would not be in place. The angel saw they were lost but there was hope against hope.

Is there still a chance for “Peace on Earth”? Maybe. Maybe all isn’t lost yet, thought our angel. Now, what was that? All the armed soldiers put down their guns. They joined the singing in a strange, guttural language. As our flock of angels moved on they saw and heard it happen in many countries as they passed over the slowly, ever so slowly turning planet earth. Soldiers came out of the trenches and shook hands with their enemy, even gave each other little gifts and kicked a ball around. Tomorrow is another day; they may have to shoot at each other again.

The tears behind our angel’s eye lids welled up mightily. No blinking them away anymore. Large and hot, they silently rolled over his cheeks and dripped down into the atmosphere. They froze to tiny icicles, falling, falling and falling until they reached warmer air, melted slightly, changed their shape and turned into snowflakes. They drifted down to planet earth, a few at first, then more and more, and still more! You see, all the angels had started weeping, just as all the men had joined the singing in all those languages, after one had had the heart to start the song. The angels flapped their wings to hold them steady in the air, and because of all the flapping, a wind came up.

The wind made the snowflakes dance, up and down, around and around. Soon the air was filled with snowflakes, closer and closer to planet earth they came. They fell on the upturned faces of the singing men, they fell on people who had lost a loved one; they fell on children who had nothing to eat or didn’t even have a place to call home. The snowflakes mingled with all the tears. Soon you wouldn’t know which of the drops, rolling down young and old cheeks, were tears and which were melting snowflakes. The cold dark night, the endless loneliness of a faraway but star filled sky filled the hearts of all people with a longing so strong that it hurt. How they wanted to be with their loved ones, oh, to have a bed again, a warm room and a warm coat, and hot soup to fill the belly. But mostly, they were longing for Peace on Earth!

And so it was, and so it is: When you see a single snow flake drift down, look up for others. Because, angels fly in flocks you see, and when one is sad and sheds a tear, it is never over a trivial thing. Therefore, all the other angels will be kind and supportive and compassionate, and soon, they cry too. During all the commotion, they will lose height and will have to flap their wings, just like birds, to stay in the air. And that is the wind that makes the snowflakes dance. You can count on it. The angels are just overhead.

You don’t believe me? Go out on a snowy winter night at Christmas! You will see it for yourself.

E – Day?

Posted on 2014/12/15 by gmroeder

No idea what “E – Day” is? For me it is a very special day in my life: Emigration Day.

I stepped into an airplane at the Frankfurt Airport. The plane lifted off and I saw the fields of Germany, seemingly laid out with a giant ruler getting smaller and smaller, the many little villages with the steepled church towers always right in the middle of the surrounding houses placed like toys out of building box. I saw the endless grey line of the autobahn reaching out through endless forests finally giving way to floating clouds and then there was nothing. We were “above it all”. Above the Earth! I had left the land of my ancestors. I was on the way to a new life on a different continent. I had escaped all my troubles I thought… it is hard if not impossible to explain my feelings: Weightless? Floating like a feather in the wind? It had nothing to do with FLYING; – no, I am talking about myself: my emotions, my feelings, even my physical body. When I drifted off into semi-consciousness I had an out-of-body experience: I had no emotions, I had no feelings and I had no physical body. I looked down on myself sitting in the airplane, eyes closed with a crease between the eyebrows, hands folded in the lap. And all of a sudden a desperate small voice woke me up and brought me back to reality:

“Lady, can I have a drink?” My new daughter. The four year old girl cuddled next to me knew I did not speak much English. She did not want to wake up her “new mommy”. She was calling the stewardess. She couldn’t sleep. Her dad was waiting in Vancouver. She was like a pebble on the beach, rolled around by wind and waves. Her mother had left her. For several years she had lived with her dad in room and board, for the last nearly three months with her paternal grandparents in Germany. When I came “home” on weekends she wouldn’t let go of my hand. She was desperate for motherly love and would proudly introduce me to anybody who would stop by: “My new mommy!”

It was December 13^th 1963. We had a refueling stop at the International Airport Keflavik in Reykjavik, Iceland. Holding her little hand tightly in mine we seemed the only people on the planet. We walked the frozen grassy airfield for almost an hour before they let us board again and start the long flight over the green fields and mountains of Iceland and the white icy peaks of Greenland occasionally visible through the clouds towards North America.

That’s when I learned that Iceland is green and Greenland is white! I have looked down on Greenland many times thereafter and it always irked me that I did not see any green…but incredibly beautiful white peaks and valleys. It’s hard to believe that there are places for people to live and to make a living.

Heading towards Lions Gate Bridge

December 14^th: One of the most special days of my life: Arrival in Canada. The Vancouver International Airport was a shadow of what it is today. The Vancouver Hotel was the highest building in the city. Halfway across the Lions Gate Bridge my Canadian Husband asked me: “Well? What do you think?”

“This place is too beautiful to live here. It is more like a holiday destination…”

He laughed: “You better get used to it. This is where you will live.” Five months later we moved to Winnipeg and while driving through the Rockies my little girl asked her dad: “Why is mom crying so much?”

And now my friends, I have given away part of the sequel to “We Don’t Talk About That”!

It would make sense for you to read that book to understand WHAT it was that drove me to leave the land of my ancestors, marry a pen friend and have an ‘instant family’. At one point in “We Don’t Talk About That” I had told my parents: “That’s what I want, I want ‘later children’– because neighbours had mentioned that ‘later children’ are easier when my third sister was born. She had been such a quiet, easy going kid.

E – Day. 14^th of December is my E-Day. It’s also my second sister’s birthday and the birthday of her first daughter, – but for me, the 14^th of December is and always will be like

“MY NEW BIRTHDAY”.

Paradise… #PearlHarbour #WWII

Posted on 2014/12/10 by gmroeder

Where is YOUR paradise? Try imagery; – when they tell you in a relaxation class or even for pain relief that you should imagine a beautiful place, let your thoughts fly there, remain, feel the sunshine, see the flowers, hear the waves – where are your thoughts going? Do they go to the mountains, to the sea, or to deep forests? Mine always go to the Hawaiian Islands. For me Hawaii offers ALL facets of beauty, it’s not just a feast for the eyes, the scent of the flowers please my nose, freshly cut pineapples make my mouth water, the warm sand under my bare feet and the sun on my back make me feel good but it is the serenity, tranquility and the sense of the “Aloha” that encompasses all of this in its people in the parts of the Islands that are still truly “Hawaiian”. To truly soak in the “aloha” don’t go where the action is, – look and find the quiet areas. Once, I was under a black velvet night sky with trillions of diamond stars close over my head that I thought I could touch them. It was so endlessly dark and sparkling but it was the unearthly stillness that got to me. I couldn’t help it but I wanted to kneel down and melt and become part of it all.

Does this make sense? It’s hard to explain. I went back to the same spot on the Big Island several years in a row but I have never seen the sky so near and never again had this almost out of body experience. It left a longing in me and I wonder if it will ever be fulfilled.

I love old movies. Purely coincidence: I happened to come across the movie “From here to Eternity”. A happy lighthearted soldier’s tale – until, – did you guess it? No, I don’t think so. ‘We Don’t Talk About That’ anymore. Until the Japanese planes appeared like a swarm of hornets and disrupted breakfast on a Sunday morning with many of the soldiers not even up or still in underpants. The scenes of the filming brought back memories of my first visit to Pearl Harbour many years ago. Taken totally by surprise thousands of young men were killed by an attack from a country with whom the US was not even at war. Most of the US Naval ships were destroyed on this fateful Sunday, December 7^th 1941. And the USA who had diplomatically tried not to get involved in WWII was drawn into it and the rest is history.

By writing my memories of WWII down in the book published in April 2014 “We Don’t Talk About That” my friends always comment what a relief it must have been for me to “get it all off my chest”. I must admit that the opposite has happened. I have never thought about it as much as I do now and I have never been more interested and involved in war history as I am now. The more I think and read and follow the news and see the larger picture I do see many seemingly small incidents that have had large consequences. It’s almost like a network of roots branching out in every direction. I can’t help asking myself “what would have happened if …?” How would our world look today?

If you have not read my book yet, – do yourself a favour, click on Bookstore above and order it NOW! It will make you think and see how the past plays “catch-up” if we don’t become more alert. Besides, – “We Don’t Talk About That” makes a terrific gift for many readers who appreciate a book “that you just can’t put down…”

Angela Merkel- most powerful woman? #Merkel #Germany

Posted on 2014/12/01 by gmroeder

Angela Merkel through the years

Reading this article gave me a whole new perspective looking at or listening to what this woman who doesn’t care for the “lime light” has to say on the world stage. I knew that her father was a pastor and that they lived in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I didn’t know that they actually lived in Hamburg when her father decided to take over a post in East Germany where the churches were not favored by the Politicians. I didn’t know that her mother was an English teacher and I had forgotten that Angela graduated in Quantum Chemistry and even has a doctorate. I also didn’t know that she had something with me in common: she was bullied and teased in her young years. I remember my feelings of disbelieve when I heard years ago that she had been elected German Chancellor. She had the guts to say “no” to Obama when he requested something she felt was not appropriate and I admired her for saying the things she did to Putin and his admiration for her: “The first head of State that I can converse with in my mother tongue!” And I was surprised to learn that Putin even speaks better German than Angela Merkel speaks Russian.

The article is not just of her even if she is in the center of it. The writer provides a really good overview of the development of and Germany’s effect on Europe and how she dealt with the problems and leaders of all the powerful states. I am tempted to tell you more – but read it for yourself! It’s lengthy but incredibly interesting. I want to read it again.

George Packer, the writer did more than his homework – thank you so much. Your write-up is better than a history book – because it puts your reader directly into the story.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german

Cancer Month #Cancer #ErmaBombeck

Posted on 2014/11/27 by gmroeder

November was CANCER month:

Is there any family who is not affected by this terrible disease? A number of prominent people have made it possible to talk about it publicly, – the facts, the treatments, the pain and the loss. I lost a 17-year old sister to a fast growing sarcoma, my father to lung cancer, a cousin to pancreatic cancer, another relative to stomach/colon cancer and my youngest sister is a survivor of breast cancer.

I met Erma Bombeck years ago when we were both on the speakers list at a Health Convention in Texas. I loved her books and her talent to turn the most ordinary happenings of her family life into stories full of humour the world loved. I enjoyed her lecture and laughed heartily, had lunch with her and was amazed that she was actually a serious person. She was just a woman like any other. When I heard of her struggle with cancer I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Erma, – this outwardly happy person who made everybody laugh at her children’s antics, has cancer? No way! And when she died I was grieving for her, her family and all her untold stories.

A friend sent me the following, – and I must say Erma’s message has deep meaning for all of us. Look it over, think about it and how it might apply to your own or a loved one’s life. If you are directly or indirectly affected by the big CA pass it on to your friends.

IN honor of women’s history month and in memory of Erma Bombeck who lost her fight with cancer.

Pass this on to five women that you want watched over. If you don’t know five women to pass this on to, one will do just fine.

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER – by Erma Bombeck
(written after she found out she was dying from cancer).

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren’t there for the day.
I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the ‘good’ living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.
I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband..
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have sat on the lawn with my grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wiling away nine months of pregnancy, I’d have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle..
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, ‘Later… Now go get washed up for dinner.’ There would have been more ‘I love you’s, more ‘I’m sorry’s.’
But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute; look at it and really see it; live it and never give it back.. STOP SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF!
Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what
Instead, let’s cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us…

If you don’t mind, send this on to all the women you are grateful to have as friends.
Maybe we should all grab that purple hat earlier.
Please send this to five phenomenal women today in celebration of Beautiful Women’s Month.
If you do, something good will happen–you will boost another woman’s self esteem.
2 KEEP IT LIT!
IN MEMORY … . … . ….
These are the colours that represent the different cancers.
All you are asked to do is keep this circulating, even if it’s to one more person, in memory of anyone you know who has been struck by cancer.
A Candle Loses Nothing by Lighting Another Candle.

J.F.Kennedy Assassination #JFK #Kennedy

Posted on 2014/11/18 by gmroeder

November 22^nd 1963 12.30 PM:

J F K with Haile Selassie in Washington DC, 1st Oct, 1963

It is almost impossible to believe that 51 years have gone by since the world was rocked by the assassination of the 35^th President of the United States. J.F.Kennedy was smiling at the people lined up along the road. He was riding in an open car with his beautiful wife Jackie beside him passing through the Dealey Plaza in Dallas and hundreds of onlookers saw him collapse suddenly after a couple of shots were fired. Hundreds of theories and many inquiries into his death were never resolved; the why and by whom. Was it the lone shooter Harvey Lee Oswald who was originally arrested for shooting the officer J.D. Tippit and then was, himself, shot within two days, or was it an international plot, or a group of people? There are no final answers to the question to this very day.

Four other Presidents have been shot before J.F. Kennedy:

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and Warren G. Harding in 1923. Did you know that shooting an American President was not a Federal Offence until 1965?

Do you remember where you were when J.F.K. was shot? Do you remember what and how you felt when you heard the news? I do: I was having breakfast in a small restaurant in Saarbruecken/Germany and the next bite literally got stuck in my throat. I never finished my meal. An unreal silence enveloped everybody with only the news reporter’s announcements on the radio searing through to our brains. We could not understand or accept what was being said. What? Why? For heaven’s sake, why? Many people in the restaurant started crying. It was as if everybody’s best friend had suddenly been killed. Nobody left, everybody was sitting as if nailed to their chairs for hours.

I remember JFK’s famous exclamation during a speech in Berlin: “Ich bin ein Berliner!” It wasn’t just the Berliners who loved him for it, – the Berliners who suffered under tight restrictions living in a divided city, the Berliners who remembered the blockade of their city by the Eastern block and Western planes landing every few minutes at the inner city Airport Tempelhof to bring not only food but fuel and everything else the city needed to function. It was the Americans who kept the western “sectors” of Berlin alive. Otherwise they would have had no choice but to succumb to the Communist pressure and become part of the Eastern Block. After all, Berlin was an “Island” within East Germany. J.F.Kennedy stood for the dream that was ‘America’ – and that word and everything associated with it spelled “Freedom”.

And now this man, the President of America, had been shot. This man was no more. The western world had lost a great man, loved and admired and now mourned by millions…Who would forget the photograph of the small little son who stood at attention and paid his respect to his dad when the coffin was carried by?

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when it happened? Please add your remarks and/or comments.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall #BerlinWall

Posted on 2014/11/02 by gmroeder

It was in 1968 that my father and I had a chance to talk about his last will and testament. He lived in East Germany, I lived in Canada. East Germany was a communist country with strongly fortified borders, rows of barbed wire fences, mine fields in front of those and guard towers with sharp shooters present around the clock. Within the country you could move freely as long as you always registered with the police after arrival when visiting relatives in a different city for more than a few days. You also had to de-register when you left and register again when you came back to your permanent home. It was practically impossible to get a visa to visit relatives in West Germany – unless you were a 65 year old male, or 60 if you were female. Younger people were kept “in” since too many had escaped before the Berlin Wall had been built. Now, at the end of the sixties older people had a chance; – if they didn’t come back, no loss and one person less to pay a pension to.

Father would never get a visa for Canada but he got one to visit his second daughter, my sister in Hamburg, West Germany. I sent a flight ticket to her, she got him a West German passport in exchange for his East German one and he came to Winnipeg for three glorious weeks. He asked “Wouldn’t it be better to take the train from Hamburg to Frankfurt instead of flying? I am afraid I’ll be late and then I’ll have to hang on to the straps and stand all the way to Canada.”

We talked about a will. He did not have one since he did not know how to do it. His youngest daughter stull lived in East Germany close to them, one daughter lived in Hamburg and I, his oldest, lived in Canada. I tried to convince him to leave everything to the youngest since she would be the one to look after my parents when they were getting on and needed help. He thought it not fair and thought we, the two in the “West”, should have something as well.

“Dad, we don’t need it. We are both established and we couldn’t spend it anyway.”

Eastern money had to stay in East Germany. Even if we came to visit we had to exchange West money one to one for each day we stayed there, so any inheritance would be useless.

With a guileful expression he looked at me and whispered ironically: “My girl, you will see, it will change one day. The way things are going at home can’t go on. Sooner or later the wall will come down.”

“Dream on, Dad that will never happen.” I did not believe him. But I did convince him to make a will leaving me out and my sister in Hamburg agreed to it as well. He never felt comfortable about it but eventually he did leave us out of his will.

On the evening of November 9^th I was resting on my couch in my cozy home in Vancouver reading and listening to a Mozart concert when my phone rang. It was my son:

“Mom, do you have the TV on? They are dancing on the Berlin Wall! Mom, hurry – switch your TV on, this is history in the making. You ought to see this! The East German Police have put their guns down, hundreds of thousands are streaming through Check Point Charley into West Berlin, people are hugging and kissing, dancing and singing and drinking champagne, they are hacking away at the wall, Mom, you ought to see this!”

My son in Winnipeg and I in Vancouver, connected by the telephone, sat up long into the night, ran up a huge phone bill, but it did not matter. The wall was coming down! The wall that had divided thousands of families for nearly thirty years, ours included. We shared these first hours and laughed and cried. I had taken him to Berlin when he was about twelve years old and we had looked over the wall from a platform built on the west side, almost twenty years hence.

My father had been right. Oh, how I wish he could have lived to see the day, I know that his tears would not have stopped running down his beloved face. He died in 1983, six years too soon.

Now we are close to November 9^th, 2014 celebrating:

“Twenty-five year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Escape to West Berlin #Escape #EastGermany

Posted on 2014/10/05 by gmroeder

The 5^th of October 1955 changed my life forever. How? Let me tell you. I lived in East Germany.

I was a Phys Ed teacher. I loved my job and the school principal repeatedly reminded me to join the SED, the communist party. “How can you be a teacher if you are not able to pass on the ideology of communism to your students?” Without being a member you had no chance for advancement and risked your job security. But so far I had resisted the pressure.

On October 4^th something drastic happened which drove me to the decision to leave East Germany like so many thousands of others were doing. Early the next morning I took the train to Berlin. Just outside Berlin proper, in Bernau, all the passengers had to leave the train, line up at a table to have passports checked by police and then continue on with the S-Bahn (city train) to the inner city. The “Wall” had not been built yet so the city train still stopped at some West Berlin stations. Waiting for my passport to be checked, the city train pulled in. When it started moving again I lost my nerve and started running towards it. The police had shooting orders for people trying to escape. Two shots were fired. They missed, either by accident or by design. We will never know. If witnesses claimed they missed on purpose the shooter would be severely punished, put in jail or even shot. Two Berliner men held the automatically closing train doors open and pulled me into the last wagon. I expected the train to be stopped…..

Those two Berliners told me to get out at the next station which happened to be in the “West Sector”. I had to wait for another train, one not going through the “East Sector”, to Marienfelde. This was the place where one had to register in West Germany. I was thunderstruck by the long line-up of people; everybody who had escaped this day was in line yet it was still only very early in the afternoon. Most had no luggage at all or only a small bag, some didn’t even have jackets or coats. I moved forward with a young dental assistant, a nice girl who hoped to be sent to the Black Forest since she had relatives there. I had no idea where I would end up. We stuck together and were given a bunk bed in a room with only five other bunk beds. I took the upper one and kept my coat on top of my blanket and my shoes close to the wall. We had been warned to look after our few belongings because things “disappeared”. Most other rooms had fifteen or more bunk beds. We felt so very lucky. But don’t even ask about bathrooms or showers, – it was all very well organised but very simple. There was an air of relief, but not much talking. After our experiences in East Germany nobody trusted anybody. We were afraid to say anything. What if the Russians were coming?

Most girls in our room were “processed” as it was called within a few days. Everyday new ones were occupying the beds. I was the only one kept there for three weeks. We had been told that on Oct. 5^th over 16.000 people had escaped, not all through Berlin though. I was repeatedly interviewed by the Americans, the English and the French officers but in the end I could not tell them more than I already had. Actually, through their questions I learned about military installations on the Island of Ruegen I had not even imagined. Finally they decided to fly me out to Hannover while my final destination was supposed to be Dortmund. My first flight was not exactly a flight into the sunset but what all of us thought of as FREEDOM. New challenges were awaiting me in the “golden West” as we “easties” called it.

You want to know what happened on October 4^th that drove me to leave my family, my hometown, the job I enjoyed, my beloved boat and all my kayaking buddies? For that, dear reader, you’ll have to read my book We Don’t Talk About That…

Book Reading – Parksville #WeDontTalkAboutThat

Posted on 2014/09/27 by gmroeder

Despite the very rainy weather we had a good gathering in the Council Chambers at Parksville Library today. One lady who came to hear what I had to say remembered my home town, Stresow, where I spent my childhood and, in further discussion, it became evident that she came from the very same town where my father was born. What a small world it is. She confided that she had escaped rape by having short hair and dressing as a boy.