h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Last year I tried to write something every day about where I live. It really is lovely and crops up in world history in surprising places. Today I read in the paper that it was a chappie from Landau (about 25 km down the road from us) who suggested to Coubertin that they should include the Marathon in the Olympics when they first re-opened in 1896.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Br%C3%A9al

Michel Breal was his name. He was studying in Paris and seems to have spent most of his life there. He was a semantics expert, and wrote papers on education in France, the teaching of ancient languages, and the reform of French orthography. All fascinating subjects in themselves. According to the wiki entry he also compiled a dictionary of Latin etymology. Now that IS something. Most etymological explanations these days go back to the Latin and stop there!

(I've tried the link out - it works despite the %s)

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Today is Volkstrauertag. The massed choirs of the village (well, about 30 singers) joined the village band, the Mayor, a local pastor and some officers and young soldiers from the local base, for a wreath-laying ceremony at the local cemetery. This event features in my NaJaPoMo every year, as, of course, it always falls in November.

After a very stormy (but dry) night, it was a very windy morning and the sky was a dramatic arrangement of greys and whites with a strong sun appearing every now and then. There were no leaves left on the trees and the cemetery had been swept completely clean of fallen leaves for the event.

There were speeches and prayers, and although few people were there apart from those making the music or with other parts to play, everyone agrees that it is important to carry on the tradition and to remind ourselves every year how lucky we are that there has been no war in our part of the world since 1945, but that there are people suffering all over. We finished with a minute's silence for those killed in the Paris bombing on Friday.

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Actually, apart from having a chance to sing, I mainly go to ogle the fit young airmen standing guard over the wreaths who serve to represent the rest of the military. But this year they were all girls.

"trauer" has connotations of being in mourning or missing the dearly departed. So, Volkstrauertag is a choral memorial to those who have died.

Sorry, I didn't translate. "Volkstrauertag" is the national day of mourning. It was probably instigated by the War graves upkeep people, and is not a religious or political event.

[Amy P]