Paula Kirby
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paulakirby.bsky.social
Paula Kirby
@paulakirby.bsky.social
610 followers 1.4K following 130 posts
Internationalist. European. Scot by choice. Linguist. Political. Love landscapes, art, books, culture. Passionate believer in society. Trying to be Greener. Have (mostly) fond memories of my 2 years in the GDR (E. Germany) and may sometimes post pics of it
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paulakirby.bsky.social
Rostock #DDR, 1978 © Lars Henrik Pontoppidan via Facebook.
Run-down for sure, but those of us who still have fond memories of the time & the place will also see a softness, a tranquility, a lack of pretentiousness, a simplicity & a reminder of a time when appearances and money weren't everything
May 13, 2025 at 8:52 AM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Life in the #DDR:
#Naumburg 1988, returning home with the shopping © Reimund Schwarz via mittelhessen.de
I love this one! That old lady with the bike's going to be me in a few years' time! 😉
#GDR #EastGermany
Black and white photo. Quiet town street (cobbled) with old buildings that have beauty and character despite their peeling paint and plaster. 2 elderly ladies, one pushing a bike that looks too big for her, both carrying bulging shopping bags, both striding out and looking very determined.
April 3, 2025 at 9:47 AM
paulakirby.bsky.social
White text on a multi-coloured background: “You are allowed to say, at any point, I can’t support this. Even if you did. Even if you were unsure. You can at any point say, “This has gone too far.” And while the best time to say that was earlier, second best time is now.”
February 22, 2025 at 1:58 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
I tend to find Owen Jones a bit hit and miss as a commentator, but this paragraph (taken from www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...) is absolutely spot on in my view.
Here’s the problem. Our economic model has stopped offering sustained rises in living standards and improvements to the public realm. Two possible outcomes flow from this. Either voters are offered an alternative, which means challenging the concentration of wealth and power in the bank accounts of a few. Or voters may simply conclude that democracy no longer delivers, and be susceptible to messages that blame migrants and other stigmatised minorities for decline. The latter is now on the ascendant across the west, because the former is missing in action.
February 6, 2025 at 7:11 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Posted by the Buddenbrookshaus on FB today, for reasons my German-speaking followers who have been following the news from Germany (www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...) will immediately understand.
If you haven't yet read it, Klaus Mann's Mephisto is a Must Read for our times, whether in ENG or GER.
Text: “Waren es Glück und Stolz allein, die ihn erschauern ließen? Oder spürte er auch noch etwas anderes – zur eigenen Überraschung? Es war beinahe Ekel. ‘Jetzt habe ich mich beschmutzt,’ war Hendriks bestürztes Gefühl. ‘Jetzt habe ich einen Flecken auf meiner Hand, den bekomme ich nie mehr weg … Jetzt habe ich mich verkauft … Jetzt bin ich gezeichnet!’” Klaus Mann, Mephisto, 1936 Still from the film Mephisto, showing the face of Hendrik Höfgen, a thinly disguised portrait of German actor Gustaf Gründgens, in stage make-up, with the words, “Der Pakt mit dem Teufel, das Bündnis mit dem Bösen, hat in Deutschland eine lange Tradition, literarisch verarbeitet im Faustus-Mythos – auch von Thomas und Klaus Mann. Heute stellen wir vor: Klaus Mann: Mephisto. Roman einer Karriere, 1936
January 29, 2025 at 7:17 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Serious question: who is it now?
January 20, 2025 at 11:56 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
I'm not normally vindictive.
But I'm prepared to make exceptions ...
January 20, 2025 at 3:17 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Word
January 20, 2025 at 2:56 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
From Red Bird, © Mary Oliver, 2008
Of The Empire We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
January 19, 2025 at 8:34 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Frank Wilhoit (the American composer, not the political scientist)
January 11, 2025 at 10:18 AM
paulakirby.bsky.social
The only real difference between 1914 and now is that the injured no longer hate and curse their exploiters, they put them on a pedestal and elect them to high office 😕
The last sentence is particularly powerful.
Extract from The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, (1914). "... [The capitalists] Rushton, Didlum and Co.--might be classed as criminal lunatics who injured others as well as themselves. In a properly constituted system of society such men as these would be regarded as a danger to the community, and would be placed under such restraint as would effectually prevent them from harming themselves or others. These wretches had abandoned every thought and thing that tends to the elevation of humanity. They had given up everything that makes life good and beautiful, in order to carry on a mad struggle to acquire money which they would never be sufficiently cultured to properly enjoy. Deaf and blind to every other consideration, to this end they had degraded their intellects by concentrating them upon the minutest details of expense and profit, and for their reward they raked in their harvest of muck and lucre along with the hatred and curses of those they injured in the process. They knew that the money they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet with the tears of little children, but they were deaf and blind and callous to the consequences of their greed. Devoid of every ennobling thought or aspiration, they grovelled on the filthy ground, tearing up the flowers to get at the worms."
January 3, 2025 at 4:22 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Tram in the snow, Kröpeliner Straße, #Rostock, before 1961 © Dr Günther Römer via ow.ly/vVI6307WCIX
#DDR #GDR
Black and white photo, snowy street scene at night. A cream-coloured tram is at a tram stop, in a shopping street. Elegant three- or four-storey buildings, their ground floors used for shops, which have their lights on, their upper floors dark. 7 people – 2 of them walking separately, 2 gazing in a shop window together, 2 men stopped and talking together, and another man on his own at the tram stop, presumbaly waiting for a different tram. The scene is illuminated by a street lamp in the top right hand corner, which allows us to clearly see the snow as it falls.
January 2, 2025 at 10:54 AM
paulakirby.bsky.social
My sentiments entirely 🧐
Telegram sent by Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley, 31 December 1929: YOU COME RIGHT OVER HERE AND EXPLAIN WHY THEY ARE HAVING ANOTHER YEAR.
December 31, 2024 at 5:16 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Flora, Roman goddess of spring.
Fresco, more than 2000 years old.
Definitely coming with me to my Desert Island, should I ever be asked ...
December 29, 2024 at 5:57 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
While the 51st state bunkum in the Telegraph is not intended to be taken seriously, other than to send the Overton Window still further to the right, the idea behind it always was the whole point of Brexit: to turn the UK into a wholly unregulated billionaires' paradise and devil take everyone else.
December 28, 2024 at 3:51 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
#Leipzig 1969, Christmas market on Marktplatz (Market Square)© LVZ-Archiv via ow.ly/FjQn3067Rxb
#DDR #GDR
Black and white photo, night. Market square surrounded by elegant, historic buildings, including the city hall. In the foreground, a big illuminated Christmas tree, plus lots of Christmas market stalls, a roundabout and other amusements.
December 22, 2024 at 5:36 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
December 21, 2024 at 2:14 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
We Scots are a friendly bunch, always happy to lend a hand ...
Illuminated outdoor Christmas decoration: a giant, blow-up Loch Ness Monster wearing a Santa hat and holding a wrapped present in her mouth.
December 19, 2024 at 7:11 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
#Rostock viewed from Gehlsdorf, with the River Warnow in between. 1977. © Peter Dobbert via ow.ly/CMric
#DDR #GDR
Summer, sunshine, bright blue sky, bright blue water. On the bank of a wide river, wooden jetties, about 10-12 small sailing boats. On the other side of the river, Rostock city: lots of buildings, some in the traditional Hanseatic style (stepped gable roofs), and a church tower.
December 19, 2024 at 5:28 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
#Dresden Christmas Market (Striezelmarkt), late 70s/very early 80s
Photo: K.-H. Böhle, Dresden in Farbe, VEB Brockhaus Verlag, 1981
#DDR #GDR
Colour photograph. Crowd of warmly dressed people in front of stalls at the Dresden Christmas Market. Christmas lights in the background. In the foreground, two children gazing intently at one of the stalls, though we can’t see what they’re looking at. They're holding slips of paper in their hands, so perhaps it's a Lucky Dip or similar?
December 11, 2024 at 3:35 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
East #Berlin, Leipziger Straße, Jan 1980 ©Bundesarchiv #DDR #GDR
Black and white photo. Winter, snow, bare trees. A wide street in East Berlin. High modern buildings on either side, including a “Fine Food” store (delicatessen) on the left. Pedestrians and parked cars. In the foreground (and the main focus of the photo), a bus stop with a group of about 10 young children and two adult women (presumably their teachers), all wrapped up warm, boarding a bus with their sledges.
December 10, 2024 at 12:50 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
#Leipzig, Landsberger Straße, around 1980 © Renate and Roger Rössing via tinyurl.com/2rxujub4 #GDR #DDR
Street scene, late autumn/early winter. It looks cold, but there is a little sun. Pavements lined with bare trees with leaves swept into piles on the ground. Street with tramlines. A tram coming towards us. Cars parked on the right hand side, an orange Trabant the only identifiable one. A light blue Lada parked on the pavement on the left. A few pedestrians, a couple of cyclists. Elegant, older style buildings to left and right, most of them 5 storeys high. In the foreground a dark-haired man with a moustache, dark coat and red scarf, riding a bicycle, with a young boy on the crossbar. The boy is wearing a winter jacket and a woolly hat.
December 8, 2024 at 5:25 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Best winter salad ever?
It does take a little while to prepare, but it's worth every minute!
www.copymethat.com/r/usnBcvYZc/...
December 5, 2024 at 8:14 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Dresden, Kesselsdorfer Straße, 1990
Photo © F Morgenstern via ow.ly/oJwRs
Taken some time in the #DDR #GDR 's last summer
Sun breaking through dark clouds. Busy street scene. Older style, mostly 4-storey residential buildings on both sides of the fairly narrow street. The street itself is packed solid with a 2-carriage, cream-coloured tram, plus cars for as far as the eye can see. The cars are mostly Trabants and Wartburgs, but there are also at least 2 western cars among them.
December 4, 2024 at 12:26 PM
paulakirby.bsky.social
Ok, people seem to be enjoying the GDR pics, so here is another one.
Dresden, 1982, Altmarkt, Kulturpalast (Palace of Culture) and palace ruins. Note the huge expanse of greenery, with cheerful flowerbeds plus beautiful tree, all gone now, of course. Photo © Michael Ward
Sunny day in summer. Long row of elegant older-style buildings on the left (ground floor portico with shops, then 5 storeys above, plus another at roof-level. In the background the modern Kulturpalast (Palace of Culture) with the palace ruin and catholic cathedral behind that. Lots of parked cars, plus people relaxing on benches. But the photo is dominated by a big expanse of grass, flower beds and a tree.
December 3, 2024 at 11:59 AM